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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
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Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. When Karen Foster was told that something had
Speaker 5: happened to her eighteen year old daughter, Bonnie Craig, she
Speaker 5: knew what it meant. The Alaska State troopers investigating the
Speaker 5: scene ruled it a hiking accident, but for Karen, the
Speaker 5: pieces didn't add up. Bonnie would never have ditched class
Speaker 5: to go hiking, and she didn't drive, so how would
Speaker 5: she have reached Mihu Creek, miles out of town in
Speaker 5: the first place. Armed with little more than her own conviction,
Speaker 5: Karen set out to find the truth behind her daughter's death.
Speaker 5: After a long series of false leads and dead ends,
Speaker 5: it seemed the case would forever go unsolved. Then, after
Speaker 5: twelve years, of public campaigning, private despair, and increasingly tense
Speaker 5: dealings with the detectives work in the case, Karen received
Speaker 5: an email that would change everything. The system, at long last,
Speaker 5: had produced a match for the unknown DNA in the
Speaker 5: case from a man in a jail all the way
Speaker 5: across the country. Here is a chilling tale of a
Speaker 5: mother's unflagging fight to track down the monster who stole
Speaker 5: her daughter's life, and the battle to ensure that he
Speaker 5: and others like him would no longer be able to
Speaker 5: evade justice. The book that we're profiling this evening is
Speaker 5: Justice for Bonnie, an Alaskan teenager's murder and her mother's
Speaker 5: tireless crusade for the truth. With my special guests Karen
Speaker 5: Foster and ij Scheckter. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 5: you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 6: I J Scheckter, thanks very much for having me DNE.
Speaker 6: I appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. I guess Karen Foster is having
Speaker 5: a bit of an issue connecting, so we'll just wait
Speaker 5: for that. But in the meantime, as the author of
Speaker 5: this book, we will go from here. How did you
Speaker 5: become involved with this story and with Karen Foster, How
Speaker 5: did you come to write this book? Justice for Bonnie?
Speaker 5: Tell us about that.
Speaker 6: My meeting Karen in the first place was a bit
Speaker 6: of a happy accident. My parents happened to winter in Florida,
Speaker 6: we were up in Canada, and they ended up renting
Speaker 6: in the building where Karen happened to be staying. So
Speaker 6: they encountered Karen one day and heard her very tragic story,
Speaker 6: And the first thing they did was to call me
Speaker 6: and ask me if I would have a conversation with
Speaker 6: her as well. They know that I choose stories based
Speaker 6: on things, which is one do they have for me
Speaker 6: as a person? And two do I think they weren't
Speaker 6: being told? And do they have a space for the
Speaker 6: public to see them? So when I heard Karen's story
Speaker 6: and saw the news footage, I immediately did contact her
Speaker 6: and went down to Florida to meet with her. And
Speaker 6: I was struck not only by the heartbreaking nature of
Speaker 6: the story, of course, something no families should go through,
Speaker 6: but I was also really struck by Karen's resilience and
Speaker 6: I stood in admiration of her approach to this. The
Speaker 6: first thing I asked her, very straight up was how
Speaker 6: do you go on I mean, I have three kids
Speaker 6: myself who are younger. But very frankly, I told her,
Speaker 6: I don't know if I could endure this losing one
Speaker 6: of them. How do you do it? Is it faith
Speaker 6: in God? Is it spirit? What made you survive? And
Speaker 6: she simply said, you know, when something like this happens
Speaker 6: and your heart is torn out like this, you have
Speaker 6: two choices. You can choose to go on or you
Speaker 6: can choose not to. And Bonnie, she said, my daughter,
Speaker 6: Bonnie would have wanted me to choose the path of
Speaker 6: going on and honoring her legacy in the best way
Speaker 6: that I could. And she had other kids that she
Speaker 6: had to be there for and a life to live
Speaker 6: in purpose to honor Bonnie. So we had a very
Speaker 6: frank and open conversation about not only that, but details
Speaker 6: of the horrors that her family had gone through. And
Speaker 6: I really appreciated not only how honest she was with me,
Speaker 6: but the rest of her family as well. They brought
Speaker 6: me into this world of pain and the nightmare that
Speaker 6: they had endured, but never with a judgment or expectation.
Speaker 6: They just gave me the information I needed, including the
Speaker 6: emotions and the feeling in their sense of solidarity and
Speaker 6: support to write the story in the way that I
Speaker 6: hope that I felt it would deserve to be told.
Speaker 5: So you came aboard completely after this entire her entire
Speaker 5: journey and process through the judicial system. So was after
Speaker 5: that entire ordeal or journey.
Speaker 6: When I came aboard, it was just concluding, So not
Speaker 6: to jump ahead, but when I connected with Karen, the
Speaker 6: trial for the for the man who was accused of
Speaker 6: murdering her daughter was just coming to its conclusion.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, great, So let's talk about Karen Foster. She
Speaker 5: hasn't joined us, so but you again got to know
Speaker 5: her and really know her and know her family, and
Speaker 5: you were brought into the worst time in her life.
Speaker 5: But yet at the same time, as we just meant,
Speaker 5: you came aboard at the time of the trial. So
Speaker 5: as we alluded to in the opening, that's a twelve
Speaker 5: year journey for her and her family, but Karen Foster
Speaker 5: to find out what really happened. So and it's an
Speaker 5: incredible story. So let's talk about Karen Foster, her background
Speaker 5: that would prepare her for this campaign, for this crusade,
Speaker 5: for this fight of her life. Tell us what her
Speaker 5: background is.
Speaker 6: Certainly. And I'll just make one small correction to something
Speaker 6: you just said, which we'll talk about later. But you
Speaker 6: mentioned it was a twelve year journey. In fact, at
Speaker 6: the seventeen year journey, it was twelve years until they
Speaker 6: found the gentleman who did this, and it was another
Speaker 6: four years of trial, but we'll get to that after.
Speaker 6: Karen is a very strong, vibrant woman who has been
Speaker 6: involved in a lot of different things in her life,
Speaker 6: including journalism, law enforcement, real estate, and a number of
Speaker 6: other things. She has multiple kids from different relationship and
Speaker 6: at the time before this awful event happened, she had
Speaker 6: not only Bonnie, her daughter, who was eighteen, but three
Speaker 6: other kids as well from different relationships. She had also
Speaker 6: gone from her original home in a small town in
Speaker 6: Canada to a number of different places, in large part
Speaker 6: because one of her husbands, who worked for BP, the
Speaker 6: oil company, had been moved around both Canada and the States.
Speaker 6: So they had lived everywhere from Chestnut Creek in California
Speaker 6: to Anchorage, Alaska for a period, and many points in between,
Speaker 6: and eventually they landed back in Anchorage. But there had
Speaker 6: been time in Calgary, there had been time in different
Speaker 6: parts of the state, so they moved around a lot.
Speaker 6: They had fairly complicated but busy and fun life with
Speaker 6: multiple kids and different households and such. Bonnie was just
Speaker 6: starting to attend the University of Anchorage in Alaska, so
Speaker 6: it was a very It was a very busy time
Speaker 6: for the family, lots of kids doing different things, Karen
Speaker 6: trying to maintain and juggle this all but a very
Speaker 6: very happy and positive existence. I encourages somewhere between kind
Speaker 6: of a small town in big city. I think most
Speaker 6: people think of it as a bit of an outpost
Speaker 6: because it's Alaska, but in fact it's on par with
Speaker 6: places like Pittsburgh and Saint Louis in terms of its size.
Speaker 6: So it's still a very big, kind of thriving community,
Speaker 6: but because of Alaska, and it also has a very
Speaker 6: nice small town mentality where everybody kind of knows everybody.
Speaker 5: Now, let's try to explain. I guess Karen would be
Speaker 5: obviously the person to understand Bonnie absolutely the best. But
Speaker 5: from your work with Karen, you had a very very
Speaker 5: good idea of what Bonnie was really like, from her behavior,
Speaker 5: from her past behavior, from her actions, and just from
Speaker 5: just some of the antidotes obviously from her mother that
Speaker 5: imparted to you put in this book, so tell us
Speaker 5: what Bonnie was really like and before we talk about
Speaker 5: just before this murder.
Speaker 6: Certainly, and I do feel very strongly in a way
Speaker 6: that I do kind of know Bonnie, even though of
Speaker 6: course by the time I connected with Karen, Bonnie was
Speaker 6: sadly no longer here, but in a very real way
Speaker 6: from the stories others tell in the comments that you
Speaker 6: get and the stories that her family tells, you can
Speaker 6: get a really strong sense of a person. And I
Speaker 6: do feel I have that having written the book and
Speaker 6: talked to Karen and her family so much. Bonnie was
Speaker 6: a very driven, optimistic, cheerful young woman who was liked
Speaker 6: by everybody around her. She had a real activist kind
Speaker 6: of side to her. She had a friend who sadly
Speaker 6: lost her life in a drunk driving accident, and no
Speaker 6: sooner had that happened than Bonnie had started a group
Speaker 6: called Students Against Drunk Driving at her school. She was
Speaker 6: the first female on the school wrestling team, so she
Speaker 6: was very sporty. She was very active. She was a
Speaker 6: very happy and popular sibling to her brothers and sisters.
Speaker 6: Very driven in her school work. She would get up
Speaker 6: early and go to school and study hard and then
Speaker 6: go work at Sam's club after school. So she was
Speaker 6: that of girl that people picture when you think of
Speaker 6: that kid who wants to do well, succeed, be liked,
Speaker 6: be good to people, and by all accounts, just a
Speaker 6: really fine person.
Speaker 5: Now in nineteen ninety four, where is Bonnie in terms
Speaker 5: of her life? She has a boyfriend named Cameron, has
Speaker 5: just gone to school in California. So tell us about again.
Speaker 5: We'd explain her character, but explain this relationship, how serious
Speaker 5: it is it, and just tell us where Bonnie is
Speaker 5: in terms of her life. In September of nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6: Sure, Bonnie had just started at the University of Anchorage
Speaker 6: in Alaska, and Cameron Miyasaki, who was her boyfriend for
Speaker 6: the previous months as well, was a boy that was
Speaker 6: very smitten with her and she with him. They would
Speaker 6: write to each other all the time and spend a
Speaker 6: lot of time together, and Cameron had just gone off
Speaker 6: to Berkeley to begin his studies there, but they were
Speaker 6: still closely in touch and corresponding daily and had a
Speaker 6: really sweet, sweet love affair going on. And Bonnie had
Speaker 6: just started her studies in September ninety four at the
Speaker 6: university and was studying diligently and putting in lots of
Speaker 6: hours in the school library and in class and as
Speaker 6: I said, working a part time job as well to
Speaker 6: make money and helping take care of her younger sister,
Speaker 6: and just starting the life of a very buttoned down
Speaker 6: freshman wanting to do great at school.
Speaker 5: Her father is Gary, if I'm correct, and she is
Speaker 5: eighteen years old, and she has just decided to move
Speaker 5: in with her father rather than live with her mother.
Speaker 5: So tell us about how serious that decision is or
Speaker 5: is that just some form of practicality. She seems to
Speaker 5: understand that decision, so tell us about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was in part of practical decision. Gary was
Speaker 6: the dad who raised her, not her biological father, but
Speaker 6: the one she had grown up with. And she was
Speaker 6: eighteen years old and becoming more independent, and obviously because
Speaker 6: of her schedule both school and work, she wanted to
Speaker 6: make things as efficient as possible. So it was a
Speaker 6: decision that she made. And Karen, though it was a
Speaker 6: little bit painful for her of course to have her
Speaker 6: daughter move out, understood and supported her fully. So she
Speaker 6: went to live with her dad and be closer to
Speaker 6: school and be able to get to and from places.
Speaker 6: We're a little more expedition, So that was the reason
Speaker 6: for that. It didn't it didn't cause any discord in
Speaker 6: the family. It's just, you know, it's hard to let
Speaker 6: your let your kid go. You give them roots and
Speaker 6: you give them wings, but it's it's obviously tough to
Speaker 6: to to let them go as much as you love
Speaker 6: and support them. So she had just she had just
Speaker 6: made that move and was living with her that at
Speaker 6: the time, and the other kids were split between living
Speaker 6: with with Karen and living off on their own. Her
Speaker 6: older son, Jason was living off on his own.
Speaker 5: Now, tell us about where Karen is and what she's
Speaker 5: doing when she does get the fateful call. Tell us
Speaker 5: what she is up to and her reaction to that call.
Speaker 5: You cover this in the book incredibly, to cover every
Speaker 5: painstaking and painful and horrific moment. Tell us what she's doing,
Speaker 5: even what her mood is at that time before this
Speaker 5: fateful call.
Speaker 6: Karen is an avid sailor, as many people around the
Speaker 6: Alaska area are, and has spent a lot of time
Speaker 6: on the water. She and a gentleman named Jim, the
Speaker 6: gentleman she was currently in the relationship with at the time,
Speaker 6: had gone down to a place called Saint Mark's in
Speaker 6: Florida because Jim's brother Ken was getting married and so
Speaker 6: they were down there to attend the wedding and celebrate
Speaker 6: and had taken the sailboat down around the western lip
Speaker 6: of Florida, and one night there were sounds on the
Speaker 6: boat in the middle of the night that awoke them,
Speaker 6: and it turned out it was Ken, the brother, coming
Speaker 6: to tell Karen that he had received some news from Alaska.
Speaker 6: The Alaska and Alaska and Skate States trooper had contacted him.
Speaker 6: They couldn't reach Karen because she was on the boat,
Speaker 6: so Uh, that's who they had somehow gotten to. He
Speaker 6: showed up at the boat and Uh reached out with
Speaker 6: a yellow post it note saying to Karen, I got
Speaker 6: a call from an Alaska State trooper saying they need
Speaker 6: to talk to you, and in a in a shaky voice,
Speaker 6: he said it's about Bonnie, and so of course, UH
Speaker 6: in that moment, it's hard to describe for anybody who
Speaker 6: hasn't gone through it. I I fortunately haven't, though I
Speaker 6: feel through Karen that I can understand it about as
Speaker 6: well as someone Ken who hasn't actually lived through the
Speaker 6: nightmare of that moment, and I think, uh, though it
Speaker 6: would be clearer coming from her. My sense of it
Speaker 6: is that it becomes kind of surreal instantly. You are
Speaker 6: in the twilight zone. You're you're somewhere else. You're spinning out,
Speaker 6: trying to make sense of what is a piece of
Speaker 6: simple information that someone has just given you. There's a name,
Speaker 6: there's a phone number, and there's news about your daughter.
Speaker 6: But because of what all this implies or could imply,
Speaker 6: your mind obviously races and goes to the darkest places.
Speaker 6: As a parent, your mind goes to those places. Even
Speaker 6: on the best of days, your kid runs across the
Speaker 6: street and you freak out. You lose years off your
Speaker 6: life just from that event. So you can imagine what
Speaker 6: it feels like when someone reaches out with the number
Speaker 6: of a trooper and says it's about Bonnie. What he
Speaker 6: said was she was in a hiking accident. That is
Speaker 6: the news that he had received from the trooper. So
Speaker 6: he relayed this to Karen as well. Karen was trying to,
Speaker 6: through her confounded state, make sense of it, so she
Speaker 6: asked him a number of questions over and over, even
Speaker 6: as she was trying to keep it together, and he
Speaker 6: kept saying, look, all I have is a name and
Speaker 6: a phone number, and they just need you to call them.
Speaker 6: So they immediately packed up their things from the boat,
Speaker 6: went into town, found a payphone, and then she made
Speaker 6: the call to the trooper and the trooper told her
Speaker 6: her daughter had been in an accident, had fallen off
Speaker 6: a thirty foot cliff at a place called McHugh Creek,
Speaker 6: which is a popular place to go in Anchorage. And
Speaker 6: was that.
Speaker 5: Now? We talked about Karen's background, but the background also
Speaker 5: includes some serious police work, undercover work, and and some
Speaker 5: heavy undercover work. So she's what, I don't even know
Speaker 5: what the word is, but she's a veteran and she's
Speaker 5: hard nosed and and so immediately, what is her reaction
Speaker 5: in terms of how she deals with this Some people
Speaker 5: would deal with it differently, But how does she deal
Speaker 5: with this news initially besides this initial sort of denial
Speaker 5: that but when she does get that information, what what
Speaker 5: is inn her mind in terms of when she hears
Speaker 5: hiking accident? What's Bonnie's experience? What does she immediately think
Speaker 5: in terms of a hiking accident.
Speaker 6: I agree with you that different people react to that
Speaker 6: kind of news differently. I think some people get angry,
Speaker 6: some people get defensive, some people deny, some people simply
Speaker 6: freak out emotionally. Karen had spent some time as a
Speaker 6: volunteer undercover detective on the Anchorage Force and had spent
Speaker 6: a lot of time participating in everything from detective raids
Speaker 6: to drug busts to trying to bust people who were
Speaker 6: doing wrong in the community, So she kind of snapped
Speaker 6: into what I would call detective mode when she first
Speaker 6: heard hiking accident. Her first reaction was was that it
Speaker 6: couldn't be. One of the things she thought was Bonnie
Speaker 6: would never go alone out there. How did she get
Speaker 6: up on a cliff? How would she fall off a
Speaker 6: cliff accidentally? How would she get there? She didn't drive
Speaker 6: a car. She started asking all of these questions naturally
Speaker 6: because of I think her detective work, and immediately started
Speaker 6: kind of interrogating in her own mind to try to
Speaker 6: put together the pieces of a that was obviously very
Speaker 6: fuzzy and preliminary for her, but that was her natural bent.
Speaker 6: So when she got on the phone to the trooper
Speaker 6: in Alaska. She started asking these questions, and of course
Speaker 6: they had very seq ansures. They simply kept repeating the
Speaker 6: information they had, which was that we're very sorry to
Speaker 6: tell you this, but she fell off. She's lost her life,
Speaker 6: and it was clearly an accident. So she started saying,
Speaker 6: where's her idea, where was her backpack, where's her wallet,
Speaker 6: none of which they had. They had identified her from
Speaker 6: her class ring, which is all they had. So one
Speaker 6: of the questions she was asked, Karen was asking, was
Speaker 6: then what accounts for where her stuff went? How did
Speaker 6: you get there? How can you explain a fall? Is
Speaker 6: this is an athletic girl who's strong, coordinated, and it
Speaker 6: seemed immediately absurd to her, not only the story that
Speaker 6: she would go out there by herself, but that she
Speaker 6: would have an accidental slip and fall off a cliff
Speaker 6: from that height in that way. So she immediately went
Speaker 6: into that mode and stayed there, maybe as a defense
Speaker 6: mechanism to try to keep it together. I think we
Speaker 6: all do different things in the face of news like that,
Speaker 6: to try to stay composed, let's say, and I think
Speaker 6: that was her way of staying composed in the moment,
Speaker 6: going into interrogation mode and trying to get information. So
Speaker 6: she called journalists that she had known from the city.
Speaker 6: She called contacts in the homicide department that she had known,
Speaker 6: just trying to pull together whatever information she could based
Speaker 6: on this vague bit of news that she had received.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about she had relationships with police, she also
Speaker 5: hadshi media, and part of her venting or part of
Speaker 5: her reaction to this is that she's angry at the
Speaker 5: police not giving her any more information, even though she
Speaker 5: knows that they can't give her any information. So probably
Speaker 5: against and not that the police are advising her, but
Speaker 5: probably against the wishes of the police because it's an
Speaker 5: ongoing investigation, but they have deemed in an accident in
Speaker 5: her mind, that's what they've told her. What does she
Speaker 5: do to the media. What does she say to the
Speaker 5: media in terms of this hiking accident theory or conclusion
Speaker 5: that the police have made. What does she say to
Speaker 5: the media and how does the media react to her claims?
Speaker 6: You know, Dan, it's very funny. One of the shocking
Speaker 6: things that one discovers in learning about a story like
Speaker 6: this is that the family families of victims of crimes
Speaker 6: like this are actually the people at the bottom of
Speaker 6: the totem pole in terms of receiving information or being
Speaker 6: able to access information or answers. The families actually have
Speaker 6: no standing in the correctional system. So in fact, the
Speaker 6: police are under no obligation to tell the family anything,
Speaker 6: which seems stunning when we say it, but it's true.
Speaker 6: So you really are kind of on an island trying
Speaker 6: to find things out by yourself. So Karen was saying
Speaker 6: to anybody who would listen, including the journalists who were
Speaker 6: now trying to get to her TV people trying to
Speaker 6: get her to do interviews, she would say yes to
Speaker 6: all of it. And of course this is just in
Speaker 6: the hours after finding out, So she was telling people,
Speaker 6: if it's Bonnie, it can't be an accident. It must
Speaker 6: be murder. It couldn't have been an accident. None of
Speaker 6: it adds up. So she was trying to scream it
Speaker 6: from the rooftops and use any pulpit she could. She
Speaker 6: could excuse me to try to find out by enlisting
Speaker 6: the help of the media and the public and the community.
Speaker 6: As I said, it's a tight knit community. Everybody knows everybody,
Speaker 6: and she had many contacts, so she was trying to
Speaker 6: leverage that profile to get people on side, try to
Speaker 6: find out answers along with her. The police were staying
Speaker 6: tight lipped because all they had ruled it an accident,
Speaker 6: and that's the only thing they were telling her. As
Speaker 6: soon as she got back and met with the lead
Speaker 6: detective on the case, she tried to ask every possible
Speaker 6: question she could from every angle, and she was getting
Speaker 6: what she felt was stonewalled. At every turn. They would
Speaker 6: say to her simply, we're telling you everything we can
Speaker 6: right now. It was an accident. We're extremely sorry. We
Speaker 6: will follow every lead and find out everything we can,
Speaker 6: but there's nothing more we can tell you. So Karen
Speaker 6: did a lot of interviews, talked to everybody she could,
Speaker 6: and just tried to build a ground swell of support
Speaker 6: to get information. And you have to remember in a
Speaker 6: case like this, there's immediately a lot of frustration that
Speaker 6: goes around. There's frustration on behalf of the police, who
Speaker 6: feel potentially that they're being told they're not doing their
Speaker 6: job if they don't have everything solved right away, which
Speaker 6: they rarely do, on behalf of the family feeling like
Speaker 6: they're being told nothing where when they're the first people
Speaker 6: who should be told. There's frustration on behalf of the
Speaker 6: community and the public who have suddenly lost a young
Speaker 6: member of They've lost one of their own, and it
Speaker 6: promotes fear and increases anxiety. It creates a whole collective
Speaker 6: feeling of something totally different from what came before, and
Speaker 6: they want answers to So within hours you've got a
Speaker 6: bunch of different parties or factions who were kind of
Speaker 6: necessarily at cross purposes.
Speaker 5: Within about three months, you write that an important figure
Speaker 5: is discussing the book, Sergeant Mars, and Bonnie is contacting
Speaker 5: this person and again voicing her concerns, and she asked
Speaker 5: if her daughter was if Bonnie was raped. Now his
Speaker 5: answer was I'll get you to answer. What his answer was,
Speaker 5: but she also was pushing to fight to see the
Speaker 5: autopsy report. So tell us a little bit about Sergeant Mars,
Speaker 5: the relationship they had, and this question of rape. And
Speaker 5: this is a strong question for Karen to ask, and
Speaker 5: the result from this Sergeant Mars and this question put
Speaker 5: to him.
Speaker 6: Sergeant Mars was the lead detective on the case, and
Speaker 6: he was on one hand being as forthcoming as he
Speaker 6: could with Karen, and on the other hand, she like
Speaker 6: she was getting the information from them, so for every
Speaker 6: question that she asked, she felt like she was getting
Speaker 6: more and more pushed away. The detectives would often tell her,
Speaker 6: it's not a great idea for you to go to
Speaker 6: the media for the reason that if anyone does have
Speaker 6: critical information, you might scare them off. You never know
Speaker 6: when someone might come forward with the critical piece that
Speaker 6: we need, and the more you're out in the public,
Speaker 6: the more that probably diss that person. That was one thing.
Speaker 6: The other thing was that a number of people had
Speaker 6: called into the detectives to give this tidbit or that
Speaker 6: information about what they might have known about Bonnie or scene,
Speaker 6: and every time Karen had heard from one of them
Speaker 6: that they had called and would then ask Sergeant Mars
Speaker 6: or the others, they would say the same kind of
Speaker 6: non answer, which was, we're following every lead. We don't
Speaker 6: really have the time to update you daily because that
Speaker 6: would take away from the time doing the actual work
Speaker 6: of the investigation, to which she would reply, what's the
Speaker 6: work on the investigation that you were doing on not
Speaker 6: seeing any evidence of it? And they would repeat the
Speaker 6: pad answer that the detectives have to give, which is
Speaker 6: we're doing everything we can. When she asked him was
Speaker 6: she raped, she got a similar answer, which was there's
Speaker 6: not much we can tell you. We're following leads. She
Speaker 6: asked to see the autopsy report and again found the
Speaker 6: the shocking result that even as the mother of the victim,
Speaker 6: she had no right to go talk to the medical
Speaker 6: examiner to see the autopsy report. You would imagine that
Speaker 6: she would be the first person to be able to
Speaker 6: see such things. So Sergeant Mars alluded to vaginal injury
Speaker 6: and tear, but she was not able to obtain any
Speaker 6: more information than that, as hard as she tried to
Speaker 6: get more.
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Speaker 5: Us about the event where she sees and how she
Speaker 5: sees this and sees evidence of broken knuckles on her
Speaker 5: daughter Bonnie and scraped hands, and then her reaction when
Speaker 5: she realizes or believes that she has a different conclusion
Speaker 5: once seeing that.
Speaker 6: When Karen and her family had to undertake the very
Speaker 6: awful exercise of going in and seeing Bonnie's body, they
Speaker 6: had lowered the sheet from her face, and Karen had
Speaker 6: already identified her, but now she was with her kids
Speaker 6: and her husband, and when she pulled the sheet down
Speaker 6: further and took Bonnie's hand in hers, she noticed that
Speaker 6: her knuckles were swollen, and she noticed bruising on Bonnie's arms.
Speaker 6: So Karen immediately said to the troopers, you need to
Speaker 6: come back in. These are defensive wounds. She knew this
Speaker 6: from or police training. And there's no other explanation for
Speaker 6: someone having broken knuckles and bruised arms other than, you know,
Speaker 6: probably something other than an accidental slip off a cliff
Speaker 6: that that wouldn't be the case most likely, so she
Speaker 6: immediately identified that as a red flag and then some
Speaker 6: and called them back in to continue investigating, and in
Speaker 6: the course of further investigation, they found extensive other injuries
Speaker 6: eleven different lacerations on the back of Bonnie's head which
Speaker 6: were obviously telltale well which were to Karen telltale is
Speaker 6: something other than an accidental fall, other bruises, cuts, a
Speaker 6: broken finger, et cetera. So that immediately changed the course
Speaker 6: of things.
Speaker 5: When you say change the course of things, tell us
Speaker 5: how we get to the point. Tell us the process
Speaker 5: we get to the point where the medical examiner either
Speaker 5: changes his mind or the official conclusion from the medical
Speaker 5: examiner that it is not an accident. Tell us about
Speaker 5: this process to get to a different conclusion completely.
Speaker 6: When Karen was finally allowed to come in and see
Speaker 6: the autopsy report, in part through the support of other
Speaker 6: groups that had helped lobby and advocate for her to
Speaker 6: be able to do so, she first saw a note
Speaker 6: on the report that said the conclusion was homicide. That
Speaker 6: was one thing. So she had asked the medical examiner
Speaker 6: why she was never told about that, and again, he
Speaker 6: has to be as kind of on the fence as
Speaker 6: the detectives are giving no concrete or conclusive information. So
Speaker 6: she did what she does and asked him as many
Speaker 6: questions as she could. He told her about all the
Speaker 6: different injuries, he told her about the vaginal pairs and
Speaker 6: what that implies, and what he said to her most
Speaker 6: crucially at the end was that we won't call it
Speaker 6: good news, but there's one productive thing that we can
Speaker 6: take away from this. And Karen said, what's that? And
Speaker 6: the medical examiner said, whoever did this to your daughter
Speaker 6: left his DNA and that means that they can then
Speaker 6: try to find a match to someone.
Speaker 5: Now, speaking of DNA, almost to every one of the
Speaker 5: programs I've done, that's anything I might say current, even
Speaker 5: in the last forty years. We have to explain what
Speaker 5: the status of the DNA was at the time of
Speaker 5: the crime. In a lot of cases, the DNA status
Speaker 5: later at the trial or the when they find a perpetrator.
Speaker 5: And in this case too, it's another case of a
Speaker 5: codis situation. And what is the status of DNA collection
Speaker 5: is what are the rules in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as you mentioned, the boats, the technology for collecting
Speaker 6: changes over time, and of course the rules and policy
Speaker 6: changes over time too, So at the time of Bonnie's murder,
Speaker 6: DNA was not being collected into any database or system
Speaker 6: on arrest as a matter of course, So if someone
Speaker 6: was charged with the felony, their DNA did not necessarily
Speaker 6: go into a system. And we'll talk we'll talk more
Speaker 6: about that when when we talk about the trial. But
Speaker 6: the fact that they had a DNA sample in Bonnie
Speaker 6: didn't necessarily give them give them any further apprehend because
Speaker 6: what you'd need to do at that point is try
Speaker 6: to find matches, you know, a one off, ad hoc
Speaker 6: kind of way. The detectives had been investigating different people,
Speaker 6: and over the course of the subsequent months and even
Speaker 6: a few years, different suspects emerged. A couple of young
Speaker 6: men who had worked with Bonnie at Sam's Club, who
Speaker 6: were potentially suspicious for one reason or another. They would
Speaker 6: bring them in. The detectives would bring them in, test
Speaker 6: them against the DNA sample, and ultimately they all proved
Speaker 6: not to be a match. There was a bus driver
Speaker 6: who had worked on Bonnie's route who also became a suspect,
Speaker 6: who had then moved down to California, and the detectives
Speaker 6: had even flown down to interrogate him and brought him
Speaker 6: in as well to try to match the sample, and
Speaker 6: he was also not a match. So this is a
Speaker 6: very slow, one off, step by step process, and you're
Speaker 6: not actually trying to match people until they become suspects.
Speaker 6: It's a little bit backward, one would say, and you're
Speaker 6: always trying to reverse engineer the process. So at the time,
Speaker 6: there's no database, there's no group of samples from which
Speaker 6: you can choose.
Speaker 5: Now, you talked about what was Bonnie was doing, and
Speaker 5: this is huge portion of this book. Is this crew
Speaker 5: incredible crusade that uh, Karen Foster undertakes. So what are
Speaker 5: the things specifically And you just mentioned a little bit
Speaker 5: of the support of people that she aligns with, some
Speaker 5: of the major characters that she aligns with, with a
Speaker 5: common cause and actual organizations trying to make a huge difference.
Speaker 5: So what specifically does Karen start with and what does
Speaker 5: she move towards in terms of specific changes that are
Speaker 5: important to this story and just important for the fight
Speaker 5: against and fight injustice period.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a very good point, and I think it's
Speaker 6: important to say that in every story like this, in
Speaker 6: every tragedy, in every crusade. There there are always a
Speaker 6: number of small heroes along the way, and that's certainly
Speaker 6: the case in Karen's story, and I think she would
Speaker 6: say the same. There are a couple of individual women
Speaker 6: in particular in the community. One was named Sandy Cassidy
Speaker 6: and another was named Jennis Liinheart, who either volunteered of
Speaker 6: their own court. It's each case simply because she was
Speaker 6: a member of the community who heard about the story
Speaker 6: and cared as a fellow mother excuse me, and in
Speaker 6: genesis case, as someone who had formed a group called
Speaker 6: Victims for Justice because of a tragedy in her own life.
Speaker 6: People like this came out of the woodwork to support Karen.
Speaker 6: In the case of the latter, it was something that
Speaker 6: Sergeant Mars had suggested Karen get involved in as a
Speaker 6: way of finding support from others. And so through those
Speaker 6: different groups and that different support, Karen found at different
Speaker 6: points the continuing strength to go on and continue the
Speaker 6: crusade and the campaign. Part of what they helped her
Speaker 6: do was to raise money to get back into the media,
Speaker 6: continue to give interviews. At the point where Karen had
Speaker 6: kind of lost hope and was becoming really despairing, people
Speaker 6: like Sandy and Janice bucked her up, helped her keep
Speaker 6: the story public, trying to rally the community around the
Speaker 6: story to try to get answers. So they had things
Speaker 6: like ads on the sides of buses saying who killed Bonnie.
Speaker 6: They wrote articles in the local newspaper. They tried to
Speaker 6: get into as much media as possible, and that did
Speaker 6: have the effect of profile of the story. Again for
Speaker 6: pature of these things, because sadly, numbers do happen in
Speaker 6: this world. You're on page one on the first day,
Speaker 6: and then quickly it slips to the back page, and
Speaker 6: then no sooner has that happened than it disappears from
Speaker 6: people's consciousness altogether. So going back into the media and
Speaker 6: raising the awareness again had a positive effect not only
Speaker 6: on people putting more pressure on the detectives, but even
Speaker 6: personally people coming to support Karen. You go from being
Speaker 6: the mother of the girl who was murdered, who people
Speaker 6: tend to avoid because they don't know what to say,
Speaker 6: to people coming up and hugging you spontaneously on the
Speaker 6: street and offering whatever help they can give. So from
Speaker 6: that they pushed for information. They pushed for the detective
Speaker 6: to try to be more open with them. They started
Speaker 6: pushing for laws to be changed about the collection of DNA.
Speaker 6: Karen spent time for with Governor Palin, Sarah Palin, who
Speaker 6: helped her in a matter of I think it was
Speaker 6: thirteen days pass a bill to cause Alaska to start
Speaker 6: collecting DNA on arrest when very few states were doing
Speaker 6: it at the time.
Speaker 5: That's brilliant now and in this evolution from her initial
Speaker 5: anger and her channeling her energy towards something very very
Speaker 5: good and a cathartic for her, really her relationship with
Speaker 5: the police. She even though she had some experience with
Speaker 5: the police in police work, she has a different understanding
Speaker 5: of what the police were doing and her attitude about
Speaker 5: the police from the beginning change. Didn't it towards the police?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think you're you're generally, uh, going from feeling
Speaker 6: like you're in the light to the dark. When something
Speaker 6: like this happens, you obviously want answers immediately, You want
Speaker 6: closure as quickly as you can, as quickly as you
Speaker 6: can get it, And then you go through this terrible
Speaker 6: cycle of hope followed by despair, followed by faith followed
Speaker 6: by pessimism. Every time a new suspect comes up, you
Speaker 6: you hope, and then every time the detective calls you
Speaker 6: and says they're on a match, you're ready to give up.
Speaker 6: And I think that becomes more and more difficult over time,
Speaker 6: so that by the fourth or fifth time, you think
Speaker 6: to yourself, they they must be trying to do their jobs.
Speaker 6: But at the same time, every every person who comes
Speaker 6: up is a false lead or a dead end, so shh.
Speaker 6: You know, you try to take matters into your own
Speaker 6: hands as much as possible. She had done things like
Speaker 6: walked Bonnie's route from home to school to try to
Speaker 6: uncover her own clues or whatever evidence she could, and
Speaker 6: y you want to give the police the benefit of
Speaker 6: the out and have faith that they're doing everything they can.
Speaker 6: And you know that yours is not the only case,
Speaker 6: and you know that unfortunately some things don't get solved.
Speaker 6: But it's hard intellectually, you know that, but emotionally that's
Speaker 6: a hard thing to manage. You still want answers.
Speaker 5: Now tell us about Trooper Tim Hunner and twelve years later,
Speaker 5: where is Karen Foster in terms of just personally in
Speaker 5: her life when she gets the email message and what
Speaker 5: is her reaction and what is contained in that email
Speaker 5: message that is so profound.
Speaker 6: At that time. So it's now two December two thousand
Speaker 6: and six January two thousand and seven, and Karen had
Speaker 6: gone on a trip with a friend who had persuaded
Speaker 6: her to go away and then try to have some
Speaker 6: fun and take some pleasure out of life. The case
Speaker 6: has now for all intents and purposes, gone cold. They've
Speaker 6: tried everything they could, but suspects are no longer coming forth.
Speaker 6: Sergeant Mars has retired from the force, so different different
Speaker 6: people have been assigned to the case, but there's not
Speaker 6: much happening and no information really coming through. So Cara
Speaker 6: was on a trip in Manila in the Philippines with
Speaker 6: a friend, and one night on the little computer that
Speaker 6: she had brought with her on the trip, out of nowhere,
Speaker 6: an email popped up from the gentleman you referred to
Speaker 6: Tim Hunter, who had been on the force for a
Speaker 6: number of years in different capacities and actually had retired
Speaker 6: but then had been asked to come out of retirement
Speaker 6: to go back onto the cold case unit. And she
Speaker 6: received an email from him, just a couple of lines long,
Speaker 6: introducing himself and saying there's been a development in Bonnie's
Speaker 6: case and can you contact me now? Of course she's
Speaker 6: in the Philippines and it's the early two thousands, so
Speaker 6: it's not that easy to make contact. So over the
Speaker 6: course of the next couple of days, in fits and starts,
Speaker 6: she tried to make contact with Detective hunya In exchanged
Speaker 6: a couple of email messages with him excuse me, and
Speaker 6: he made reference to a man named Kenneth Dion. He
Speaker 6: told her over the course of a few emails that
Speaker 6: there had been a hit on the DNA of this
Speaker 6: man who was actually in a jail in of all places,
Speaker 6: New Hampshire for a different crime, and he was serving
Speaker 6: a six to fifteen there excuse me, and that there
Speaker 6: had been a hit in a match and they were investigating. So,
Speaker 6: of course, as they said after the emotional roller coaster
Speaker 6: that she had endured, your hope immediately flares, but your
Speaker 6: skepticism does as well. So a h percent of you
Speaker 6: wants to hope, and a hundred percent of you says,
Speaker 6: don't get your hopes up because we know where this goes.
Speaker 6: So she asked him as many questions as she could,
Speaker 6: and Detective Hunter said, uh, well, he's he he has
Speaker 6: a record, we've got a DNA hit. His information is
Speaker 6: in the database in codis and uh, we're following up.
Speaker 6: That's that's what he said. We're following up and we'll
Speaker 6: tell you what we can. And so so soon after
Speaker 6: that she started for home.
Speaker 5: Now in he had questioned Dion and so he got
Speaker 5: some information that that Karen now had taken her four
Speaker 5: years to find out. So some information again was gotten
Speaker 5: from that conversation. And then later I guess once there
Speaker 5: was the actual talk of a pre trial. He was
Speaker 5: still a waiting extradition, but they could talk about pre trial.
Speaker 5: So that's how serious they were. So what was that
Speaker 5: bit of information that Karen It took four years for
Speaker 5: Karen to find out that was gotten from that that
Speaker 5: interview that the trooper Hunyer had with Dion.
Speaker 6: Right, so this interview had happened prior to the contact
Speaker 6: the detective hun your maide to Karen, excuse me, But
Speaker 6: Karen didn't know and wouldn't find out until much later
Speaker 6: in the trial that this interrogation had gone. So Detective
Speaker 6: Huner and a colleague had actually gone down to New
Speaker 6: Hampshire and had interrogated mister Dion unbeknownst to Karen at
Speaker 6: the time, it was one of the more fascinating things
Speaker 6: that I'd discovered in the book in terms of detective work.
Speaker 6: Tim Hunter, who would be in many people's minds the
Speaker 6: kind of archetypal figure of a soft spoken midwestern guy,
Speaker 6: very unassuming, but he demonstrated brilliant detective work in this
Speaker 6: interview with this interrogation with mister Dion. Later on they
Speaker 6: would show it at the trial and Karen would see
Speaker 6: it in full and find out everything he had done.
Speaker 6: He established a rapport with Kenneth Dion and started slowly
Speaker 6: asking him questions and uncovering inconsistencies in the story and such.
Speaker 6: She asked him if he had ever known Bonnie, had
Speaker 6: he heard of her? And of course it was met
Speaker 6: with a bunch of denials and contradictions in the story.
Speaker 6: So when you read the transcript or see the footage
Speaker 6: of the interrogation, you come to greatly respect this man
Speaker 6: for his detective work and how pivotal this conversation was
Speaker 6: in turning things around in terms of the pre trial.
Speaker 6: Extradition is more difficult than people think. So you would imagine,
Speaker 6: once you have a hit, why can't you just fly
Speaker 6: the man from New Hampshire to Alaska and start a
Speaker 6: trialing and get on with things. But obviously the wheels
Speaker 6: of justice turn a bit more slowly than that, and
Speaker 6: there are lots of reasons for things to be delayed.
Speaker 6: So incredibly, there were four years of pre trial hearings
Speaker 6: and delays. Judges get switched off, people go on vacation,
Speaker 6: Attorneys and prosecutors claim they don't have enough information and
Speaker 6: need more time, a whole host of reasons that became
Speaker 6: increasingly frustrating for Karen and her family. So on one hand,
Speaker 6: there's the I don't to say exhilaration. There's the satisfaction
Speaker 6: of finding out that there's a man here who they
Speaker 6: think may be the actual killer. There's a real match,
Speaker 6: it's a person who was in the city at the time,
Speaker 6: and that's enough to produce a lot of hope. On
Speaker 6: the other hand, you want to you want the wheels
Speaker 6: to move even faster once you know that. In a way,
Speaker 6: they move even slower because they're processing a lot of cases.
Speaker 6: They're doing these pre trials where you feel like information
Speaker 6: is coming in dribs and drabs, and meanwhile, he's still
Speaker 6: in New Hampshire, et cetera. Eventually she got a call,
Speaker 6: Karen did, from Detective Hunter saying the extradition has happened
Speaker 6: and he's in Alaska. He's in the state. I think
Speaker 6: creates a whole bunch of discrepant feelings in someone like Karen,
Speaker 6: as the mother of the victim. You feel a whole
Speaker 6: new sense of invasiveness and disgust and repugnance for this man.
Speaker 6: And then of course you also feel the hope of
Speaker 6: things moving along, step by step, even if they're moving slowly.
Speaker 6: And so four years later, which is which is now
Speaker 6: seventeen years later from the time of the murder, the
Speaker 6: trial finally began.
Speaker 5: They do offer him not much of a deal seventy
Speaker 5: five years. So of course his defense says no, and
Speaker 5: he goes to trial. We can't go into the entire trial,
Speaker 5: but what are some of the first things some of
Speaker 5: the evidence that again that Karen Foster realizes now for
Speaker 5: the first time, talk about the leaf with a single
Speaker 5: drop of blood, because that seems to be at least
Speaker 5: the defense tries to make a lot of hay out
Speaker 5: of that one.
Speaker 6: Yes, blood was one of the elements that became a
Speaker 6: very big deal in the trial. One has to remember that,
Speaker 6: of course, the onus is on the prosecution here to
Speaker 6: as we've all heard, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that
Speaker 6: the man is guilty. He was accused of four counts
Speaker 6: of three counts of murder and one of sexual assault
Speaker 6: and on all the defense has to do is prove
Speaker 6: reasonable doubt or create reasonable doubt rather than the minds
Speaker 6: of the jurors. The only thing they found with blood
Speaker 6: on it at the site of McHugh Creek was a
Speaker 6: single leaf with one drop of blood. The the the
Speaker 6: team defending beyond made a big deal out of the
Speaker 6: fact that had she been uh beaten, raped, bludge and
Speaker 6: thrown off a cliff, wouldn't you see more blood everywhere?
Speaker 6: Wouldn't you see spatters? Wouldn't you see a trailer? Excuse me,
Speaker 6: a trail of blood on the ground. Wouldn't you see
Speaker 6: uh scrapes, uh, disturbed foliage, debris everywhere? Things like that.
Speaker 6: But they focused a lot on the blood because that
Speaker 6: leaf was the only thing found anywhere on the on
Speaker 6: or near the site with any blood on it. So
Speaker 6: that was one of the things that they made a
Speaker 6: very very big deal out of. Repeatedly They kept coming
Speaker 6: back to that. So on one hand, on one side,
Speaker 6: you had the prosecution placing Kennethy on uh there by
Speaker 6: virtue of the evidence of the fact that his DNA
Speaker 6: was in side Bonnie's body, and you had the defense saying,
Speaker 6: there's no evidence, there's no weapon, there's one drop of blood,
Speaker 6: nobody can say they saw him, nobody saw the car
Speaker 6: that fit his description, So to them that that was
Speaker 6: enough for a reasonable doubt. And they kept coming back
Speaker 6: to the blood again and again. When the medical examiner
Speaker 6: would take the stand and say the eleven lacerations on
Speaker 6: her head are not consistent with what would be an
Speaker 6: accidental fall where you would see kind of a random
Speaker 6: pattern of bruises and cuts and scrapes, they would come
Speaker 6: back to the blood and say, well, where's the blood
Speaker 6: from this beating and rape that you're talking about. There's
Speaker 6: no evidence of a physical beating, there's no evidence of blood,
Speaker 6: and there's none of that.
Speaker 5: To be Again, just to add to this incredible mix
Speaker 5: to this story, there's a video of the crime scene.
Speaker 5: Initially it's lost. There seems to be a deputy was
Speaker 5: in charge instead of the senior person. Interviews were not recorded,
Speaker 5: no footprints, hares, fingernail scrapings, clothing fibers. Of course, no
Speaker 5: weapon was found and very little blood. So again a
Speaker 5: field day for a defense lawyer to try to raise
Speaker 5: reasonable doubt. My correct.
Speaker 6: Yes, indeed, in fact, the reason Bunnie was discovered was
Speaker 6: because a girl in the community happened to be in
Speaker 6: McHugh Creek that day and she was the one who
Speaker 6: spotted Bunny's body down in the creek, and she had
Speaker 6: gone to a phone and called nine one one and
Speaker 6: gotten in touch, and that's what that's what alerted the
Speaker 6: law enforcement to the fact that Bunny was there in
Speaker 6: the first place. And yes, as by all appearances, the
Speaker 6: investigation initially was not done in the most air tight manner.
Speaker 6: They didn't necessarily collect the things they should have. This
Speaker 6: was resolved a little bit later when they showed the video.
Speaker 6: It was actually a positive thing for Karen because it
Speaker 6: helped fill in the picture for her a little bit,
Speaker 6: to show that they had actually done a more diligent
Speaker 6: job than she had assumed. And in fact, after she
Speaker 6: saw that, she stopped the detectives in the hall and
Speaker 6: outside the courtroom and actually thanked them genuinely for doing
Speaker 6: work that she thought they had neglected to do so. Yes,
Speaker 6: while they did provide a lot of fodder for the
Speaker 6: defense to go after them for conducting an investigation that
Speaker 6: didn't necessarily produce the evidence they might have. Frankly, the
Speaker 6: evidence might not have been there anyway.
Speaker 5: What's interesting is that doctor Arendt von Hipple, mean doctor ARNTV.
Speaker 5: Hippole takes the stand and he really doesn't, as you
Speaker 5: write in a book, he doesn't really do anything for
Speaker 5: the defense or prosecution, at least it doesn't seem so.
Speaker 5: What is his testimony regarding Bonnie?
Speaker 6: He was a yeah, he was. He was a bit
Speaker 6: of a an odd duck. He as someone who had
Speaker 6: contacted Karen soon after the murder or soon after the
Speaker 6: death of Bonnie had been known, and Karen had gone
Speaker 6: over to his home and had tea, and he had
Speaker 6: told Karen that he had been out that day at
Speaker 6: McHugh Creek and had seen a group of young people,
Speaker 6: two girls and two two guys, and that he he
Speaker 6: after seeing the pictures of Bonnie on TV, he remembered
Speaker 6: one of them as having been Bonnie, and that she
Speaker 6: was very light hearted and energetic, bounding down the steps
Speaker 6: and so forth, and when he then later took the stand,
Speaker 6: as you said, he was not of much use to
Speaker 6: either side. In fact, he was he was older and
Speaker 6: a little bit I don't want to say flippant, but
Speaker 6: he was. He was kind of just talking. He didn't
Speaker 6: say much that was of help to either side because
Speaker 6: he said what he had said before to Karen that
Speaker 6: he felt he had seen her that day, but he
Speaker 6: couldn't say whether he had seen again any evidence of
Speaker 6: Kenneth Deon. He couldn't really place a time or fix
Speaker 6: her in a specific spot, so the information that he
Speaker 6: gave kind of amounted to nothing.
Speaker 4: In the end.
Speaker 5: He did say that he recognized at the time Kenneth Dion,
Speaker 5: but then later could not say he was sure on
Speaker 5: the identification of Kenneth Dion. So again adding to.
Speaker 6: Right, and again we have to remember that all the
Speaker 6: defense needs to do is create reasonable doubt, and the
Speaker 6: prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. So when
Speaker 6: someone goes up and says I'm pretty sure that was
Speaker 6: the guy I saw, but then later says I can't
Speaker 6: really be sure, that's not proving beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 6: So that plays into the defense certainly. Instead of the prosecution.
Speaker 6: If you're sure, you're sure. And as we know, the
Speaker 6: one thing that can sink testimony right away is any
Speaker 6: kind of inconsistency. And we're not talking about a crime
Speaker 6: that happened a day ago or a month ago. We're
Speaker 6: talking about something that happened almost two decades ago. And
Speaker 6: so one of the big challenges for the prosecution was
Speaker 6: trying to get consistent stories. Well, first of all, trying
Speaker 6: to get people in the first place who could even
Speaker 6: talk about any kind of memory at the time of Bonnie,
Speaker 6: of the event of the timeline, and further to that,
Speaker 6: talk about it in a consistent and or specific way.
Speaker 6: That's hard enough. We've all heard from psychologists about how
Speaker 6: different witness testimony can be. Take three people who saw
Speaker 6: something yesterday and you'll still inevitably almost get three different stories.
Speaker 6: Now go seventeen years into the past and try to
Speaker 6: get consistent stories out of people.
Speaker 5: Right now. This attorney Lambert for the defense is capable,
Speaker 5: and he's you know, aggressive and vigorous defense you can
Speaker 5: put it that way, uh, which includes some attacking of
Speaker 5: not character, but attacking of stories. And so he's he's
Speaker 5: doing what he can what he does though, is that
Speaker 5: he is questioning the character of Bonnie Craig, isn't he?
Speaker 6: Yeah? And I don't think attacking character is an inaccurate
Speaker 6: phrase there, that that is precisely what he did. He
Speaker 6: he took two lines of questioning for most of the
Speaker 6: witnesses who came up. One was, uh, what I talked
Speaker 6: about regarding the blood and the lack of evidence. So
Speaker 6: people would come up and talk about the fact that
Speaker 6: there was what they thought was evidence for the fact
Speaker 6: that Kenneth theone had committed this murder, and he would
Speaker 6: respond it again and again by saying, did you see
Speaker 6: any blood? Can you prove in any way that you
Speaker 6: saw him, that he was there, that you identified his car, anything,
Speaker 6: And of course they would say, well, no, I can't.
Speaker 6: And the second thing he did, which was obviously much
Speaker 6: more objectionable and hurtful to Karen and her family, was
Speaker 6: I guess what any defense team does when they're grasping
Speaker 6: at straws, which was to call into question Bonnie's character
Speaker 6: and integrity. So he would do things like refer to
Speaker 6: the fact that she was out playing pool with a
Speaker 6: group of other students one night and talking to a boy.
Speaker 6: You know, when she had this boyfriend in Berkeley, or
Speaker 6: the fact that she exchanged phone numbers with the classmate,
Speaker 6: things like that. So he would ask Gary when he
Speaker 6: was on the stand about whether as her father he
Speaker 6: knew everything she did and everywhere she was all the time,
Speaker 6: And of course no parent knows that of an eighteen
Speaker 6: year old, and so he would honestly have to answer
Speaker 6: will no, of course, and those kinds of things. This
Speaker 6: is obviously for the purpose of casting doubt in the
Speaker 6: in the jury's mind about what kind of person Bonnie was,
Speaker 6: which is reprehensible when you compare it to the comments
Speaker 6: that you get even today on let's say, the Facebook
Speaker 6: page that we have for the book. The way people
Speaker 6: talk about Bonnie, the hurt that they still feel in
Speaker 6: the community for her loss, the kinds of testimonials that
Speaker 6: you get about her as a person stand in such
Speaker 6: stark contrast to that line of questioning that you know,
Speaker 6: even as someone who is not her parent. It even
Speaker 6: makes my blood boil.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Now there's a couple of things we've got to
Speaker 5: talk about. Is that the death work that that Honyer
Speaker 5: does is that he gets Dion to really relax and
Speaker 5: talk too much, and so as such. He talks about
Speaker 5: his martial arts tools, his edge weapons, his nun chucks,
Speaker 5: and also a weapon called a si sai. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about that and just the importance of
Speaker 5: those weapons.
Speaker 6: Yeah, as I said, it was a demonstration of truly
Speaker 6: brilliant detective work, almost like a movie scene that you
Speaker 6: would see imagining a detective in the movies. Just as
Speaker 6: you say, relaxing someone, establishing rapport and then getting them
Speaker 6: to do what people shouldn't do when they're trying not
Speaker 6: to reveal anything, which is talk. He just got him
Speaker 6: to talk. So Yeah, he talked about the fact that
Speaker 6: he had some drug addiction problems, he had a failed marriage,
Speaker 6: he was into martial arts and carried weapons in his
Speaker 6: trunk and such, and the si is as a small
Speaker 6: kind of hooked weapon, which was consistent with one of
Speaker 6: the key injuries on the back of Bunny's head that
Speaker 6: the medical examiner too. So while the defense was repeatedly
Speaker 6: saying these injuries would not come from a baseball bad
Speaker 6: or an axe or something else, the martial arts weapons
Speaker 6: that he had were a potentially positive reference to the
Speaker 6: kinds of injuries that she had sustained.
Speaker 5: Now we talked about, and I mentioned that the video
Speaker 5: of the crime scene, and this is very important. This
Speaker 5: is a profound scene in the book too. Was originally lost,
Speaker 5: now it is found, and so describe that moment. It's
Speaker 5: a very again movie asque scene. So tell us about
Speaker 5: what happens there and what is the result of this again,
Speaker 5: what was lost and now is found? What's that repercussion
Speaker 5: in court? And tell us how it all works out?
Speaker 6: Well, I think in the first place, for Karen, this
Speaker 6: is a deeply profound moment, as I said, because you
Speaker 6: have in your head a bunch of questions about how
Speaker 6: the investigation played out. You have the feeling, as I
Speaker 6: said before, as the family of being the people who
Speaker 6: should be getting information first, and in fact you're getting
Speaker 6: it last, if you're getting it at all. So you
Speaker 6: have to fill the pictures in in your head of
Speaker 6: what went on or what didn't go on, what was asked,
Speaker 6: what wasn't asked, what was investigated, and what was not.
Speaker 6: So Karen had thought for all this time that not
Speaker 6: only had they maybe bungled the investigation, but maybe had
Speaker 6: not even really conducted a full investigation. She had almost
Speaker 6: no picture in her mind of what had gone on.
Speaker 6: Seeing the video in court really helped her make a
Speaker 6: kind of emotional passage to a place where there was
Speaker 6: some level of closure and satisfaction. On one hand, you
Speaker 6: are seeing you know, I don't want to you can't
Speaker 6: overstate the emotional power of this. You're seeing your child
Speaker 6: lying face down in a creek. That so there's that
Speaker 6: to try to deal with, but it it stands in
Speaker 6: in contrast to the the fact that at least you're
Speaker 6: you're getting some satisfaction that the police did the job
Speaker 6: they were supposed to do. And then in terms of
Speaker 6: in terms of the trial, it also showed that a
Speaker 6: full investigation of the crime scene was done, and it
Speaker 6: showed that Bonnie was down in the creek in the cold.
Speaker 6: This is glacier fed water, so there were a couple
Speaker 6: of implications. One blood that she may have had on
Speaker 6: her may have been washed off by washed away by
Speaker 6: by the creek. Who knows, And also showed a certain
Speaker 6: position that she was in. It showed that she was
Speaker 6: in the creek at a certain time in a certain way,
Speaker 6: and that the the It allowed the prosecution to take
Speaker 6: the position they Kennet may have murdered her put her
Speaker 6: taken her down into the creek for the very purpose
Speaker 6: of trying to wipe away any evidence that could have
Speaker 6: incriminated him.
Speaker 5: Right now, the other thing that Lambert does too, just
Speaker 5: to again do everything he can in this vigorous defense,
Speaker 5: is to get a medical examiner that disputes the claim
Speaker 5: of homicide by the medical examiner for the prosecution, doctor
Speaker 5: Norman Thompson. So a person from San Diego County, a
Speaker 5: guy named Harry Bonnell. He's a chief deputy medical examiner.
Speaker 5: What is his disagreement and what exactly is the root
Speaker 5: or the basis of his disputing that medical examiner Thompson's conclusions.
Speaker 6: A disagreement was largely insubstantial. He had based it on
Speaker 6: some information that people research about something that we call
Speaker 6: falls from heights. So when people fall from certain heights,
Speaker 6: there are lots of studies that show the way they fall,
Speaker 6: the rate at which they fall, the angle at which
Speaker 6: they fall, on how that relates to certain injuries they
Speaker 6: can sustain. They said before, if someone falls accidentally, you
Speaker 6: expect to see a kind of arbitrary pattern of bumps,
Speaker 6: bruss cuts, and so forth. There's a certain area in
Speaker 6: the back of the lower neck which is generally protected
Speaker 6: in a fall, and that's where she had had that injury.
Speaker 6: That was in that interesting shape, which was not just
Speaker 6: a standard one that one sees. So on one hand,
Speaker 6: the medical examiner was saying, that's not the kind of
Speaker 6: injury you would see from an accidental fall, because even
Speaker 6: when someone falls from a height, that's usually not where
Speaker 6: you get an injury. It's just protected because of the
Speaker 6: part of the body that it's on. But doctor Burnell
Speaker 6: was saying, well, now that consistent from that height. But
Speaker 6: the prosecution did a really expert job of dissecting his testimony,
Speaker 6: not only showing that he was not the expert that
Speaker 6: he purported to be in terms of this topic, but
Speaker 6: that he was not necessarily engaged in the way a
Speaker 6: witness should be. He fell asleep at one point between
Speaker 6: the testimonies during a break. They proved that he had
Speaker 6: not been the expert on the literature that he claimed
Speaker 6: to be, And in addition, he was the kind of
Speaker 6: person that testified at a number of different trials, and
Speaker 6: so there was the suspicion on Karen's part that he
Speaker 6: may not have been there as a fully legitimate witnessed
Speaker 6: so much as someone invested in testifying at trials.
Speaker 5: Right, one of the most profound testimonies, and it was
Speaker 5: a surprise for Karen, and I guess it would be
Speaker 5: surprised for anyone. Kenneth Dion's ex wife Tammy Aronson, So
Speaker 5: tell us about the meeting and her testimony. What it
Speaker 5: is that she testifies too that is helpful for the prosecution,
Speaker 5: and then what is Karen's reaction to her afterwards?
Speaker 6: Well, answering your second question first, Karen, as they said,
Speaker 6: through all this goes through real emotional welter. So over
Speaker 6: the course of these years, there's there's such an incredible
Speaker 6: rollercoaster of different feelings, as they said, from hope one
Speaker 6: day to despair the next, from feeling in the dark
Speaker 6: one day to getting information the next, so on and
Speaker 6: so forth. And one of those moments had to do
Speaker 6: with win. Tami Errans And testified this is excuse me,
Speaker 6: Kennethyonzek's wife, and on the stand she talked about both
Speaker 6: the difficulties they had had in their marriage, his aggressive
Speaker 6: and vio streak, and she painted a picture of him
Speaker 6: that I think helped the jurors see him as the
Speaker 6: kind of person who could indeed commit this kind of act. Karen,
Speaker 6: to her great credit and admiration at least in my eyes,
Speaker 6: went out of the afterwards and stopped Teddy and despite
Speaker 6: all the different things that would imagine she could have
Speaker 6: said to her, expressed sympathy woman to woman, wife to wife,
Speaker 6: and told her that essentially she was sorry that she
Speaker 6: had to go through those things.
Speaker 5: Now the defense has another witness. It's a nurse that's
Speaker 5: their supposed rape expert, but not really an accredited I
Speaker 5: guess a rape expert. And as you write, it's not
Speaker 5: a significant helpful for the defense testimony either way. So
Speaker 5: in the end and conclusion and with the prosecutor and
Speaker 5: with the defense, what was the prosecutions stated surmised case,
Speaker 5: so that the jurors could contemplate what was that as
Speaker 5: opposed to the defense summation.
Speaker 6: Well, with regard just quickly, with regard to the nurse
Speaker 6: that you referred to. The defense also made a big
Speaker 6: deal about the fact that yes, there was his DNA
Speaker 6: in Bonnie, but that only proves that sex occurred. It
Speaker 6: doesn't prove rape and it doesn't prove assault. And they
Speaker 6: pointed to the fact that things like vaginal tearing or
Speaker 6: such can happen from rough con sexual consensual sex. It
Speaker 6: can result from dryness, the whole bunch of things. So yes,
Speaker 6: those kinds of testimonies went back and forth. Ultimately, Acution
Speaker 6: appealed to the jury's common sense and uh and and
Speaker 6: sense of truth and logic by saying, you know, we
Speaker 6: we have heard from people, and we now know who
Speaker 6: this girl is and what she was. It does not
Speaker 6: make any sense that she would have been there on
Speaker 6: her own. She we don't know how she could have
Speaker 6: gotten there on her own way. Uh. All the testimony,
Speaker 6: the moony that you've heard, including in particular the pattern
Speaker 6: of the physical injuries and the lacerations, do not have
Speaker 6: any logical connection to the to what would be an
Speaker 6: accidental fall. And you've got a man here with a
Speaker 6: certain history. And it's true, we don't have evidence of
Speaker 6: extensive blood, we don't have a weapon, we don't have witnesses.
Speaker 6: But search your minds and listen to your hearts and
Speaker 6: come back with what is the right decision?
Speaker 5: And what did the defense counter? Again, he has to
Speaker 5: do his job, and what does he how does he
Speaker 5: counter that?
Speaker 6: The defense reiterated much of what they had said throughout
Speaker 6: throughout the munth long trial. Uh. Again those two things.
Speaker 6: You know, we're we're very sorry that this happened. It's
Speaker 6: an obvious tragedy. But the fact is, UH, we need
Speaker 6: to prove reasonable doubt, and there's certainly plenty. There's there's
Speaker 6: no blood where we were we would expect blood. Uh,
Speaker 6: there's no weapon. There's no evidence of disturbance in the area, Uh,
Speaker 6: physic physical disturbance to the grounds. There's no one who
Speaker 6: saw this man who can put him at the scene
Speaker 6: or in connection with Bonnie. Uh. There's DNA that proves sex,
Speaker 6: that proves nothing else. There's no one who saw a car, uh,
Speaker 6: et cetera. So they stuck to the practical facts and
Speaker 6: the truthful line that there was no real concrete evidence
Speaker 6: proving murder.
Speaker 5: What is karen support system there? Who are the people
Speaker 5: that are there? There are numerous people, but just tell
Speaker 5: us of the support system that she has there. And
Speaker 5: at that point, because we didn't cover this the ups
Speaker 5: and downs, you say, the roller coaster of emotions that
Speaker 5: she must have endured through this. She did endure through this.
Speaker 5: But what is her reaction at the end, What is
Speaker 5: her feeling towards the likely conviction She doesn't know, of course,
Speaker 5: but what is her sense having experienced this trial, what
Speaker 5: does she think is going to happen? What's her state
Speaker 5: of mind?
Speaker 6: Well, the one thing she feels is a lot of
Speaker 6: appreciation for the prosecution team because they had kept her
Speaker 6: highly involved and where she had been getting what she
Speaker 6: felt was little to no information from the detectives. All
Speaker 6: this time she was getting a lot of information and
Speaker 6: presents from them, so she was able to contribute opinions
Speaker 6: and help out with preparing the case and choosing witnesses
Speaker 6: and such. So she felt very involved the whole way through.
Speaker 6: After the rest of her family many of them were
Speaker 6: there obviously throughout the trial. Over the course of these years,
Speaker 6: lots of things had happened in her family, marriages, divorces, parents, dying.
Speaker 6: She had left a brother to an accident during that time,
Speaker 6: so obviously, over the course of anybody's life in seventeen years,
Speaker 6: lots of things happened in a family, so there had
Speaker 6: been many changes for her independent of this quest. Excuse
Speaker 6: me to try to find and put away Bunny's killer.
Speaker 6: So when the jury goes out to make their decision,
Speaker 6: it's up in the air. You want to convince yourself, obviously,
Speaker 6: with as much hope as possible, that they'll they'll come
Speaker 6: back and deliver the verdict that you want to hear.
Speaker 6: But on the other hand, you've heard the defense for
Speaker 6: weeks repeat the same line again and again, pointing out
Speaker 6: the fact that there's so little evidence, and again all
Speaker 6: they have to do is create a bit of doubt
Speaker 6: in the right person's mind, and then the man walks free,
Speaker 6: so she doesn't know she's hoping against hope.
Speaker 5: And what does happen? How long does it take the
Speaker 5: jury to deliberate? How long does it take for them
Speaker 5: and what as you see in almost all court dramas,
Speaker 5: what does it indicate a short comeback or a long comeback?
Speaker 5: Are there any requests for any against specific requests for
Speaker 5: more information or clarification? How does that little process go?
Speaker 5: And must be the trepidation, must be brutal. And how
Speaker 5: long does it take?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I think in general it's fair to say that
Speaker 6: the longer a jury is out, I suppose the more
Speaker 6: thinking you can do, and the more they're deliberating, the
Speaker 6: more doubt it would cast in your own mind. They
Speaker 6: end up coming back. Excuse me, in just a matter
Speaker 6: of hours, where the expectation was that it would take
Speaker 6: quite a bit longer than that m maybe days or weeks,
Speaker 6: who knows, But they come back in just hours, and
Speaker 6: that's exciting news because again, as a general principle, I
Speaker 6: think it stands to reason that there they decide, the
Speaker 6: more the more clear they are their agreement one way
Speaker 6: or another. Of course, that agreement could be that he's innocent,
Speaker 6: who knows. But it's at least a moment of excitement,
Speaker 6: let's say, to know that there's a decision forthcoming, and
Speaker 6: you don't have to wait any longer to know what's
Speaker 6: going to happen.
Speaker 5: So tell us about Kenneth before we get to the decision.
Speaker 5: What's Kenneth Dion's behavior at trial?
Speaker 2: What is his.
Speaker 5: Any anything that he does say? What is just his
Speaker 5: temperament and disposition at this trial? How does he conduct themselves?
Speaker 6: He is mostly a closed book. He mostly is quiet
Speaker 6: and stares straight ahead. He has a what Karen interprets
Speaker 6: as a certain expression of let's say, quiet, quiet, anger,
Speaker 6: or aggressiveness under the surface, But he reveals very little.
Speaker 6: He keeps his emotions close to the vest. So for
Speaker 6: all intents and purposes, he's a closed book, and we
Speaker 6: don't know we don't know much about him in terms
Speaker 6: of emotional betrayal during the trial.
Speaker 5: So it looked good for a good reaction. Is there
Speaker 5: some happy ending in this, if there can be such
Speaker 5: a thing, Tell us what the reaction is, What is
Speaker 5: Karen's reaction, what is everyone's reaction?
Speaker 6: Yes, there's there's a positive ending in so far as
Speaker 6: when the when the jury comes back, Karen and her
Speaker 6: family get to hear the verdict read on all four
Speaker 6: counts as guilty, guilty, guilty, and guilty, and the sentencing
Speaker 6: ends up being excuse me, ninety nine years plus twenty five.
Speaker 6: So I totally of one hundred and twenty four years
Speaker 6: as a sentence for this man, with no chance for
Speaker 6: even a parole hearing until he'll be in his hadies.
Speaker 6: So yes, we can certainly call that the most the
Speaker 6: most positive result that she and her family could have
Speaker 6: could have hoped for. So their reaction, I think is
Speaker 6: hard to describe. Maybe you'd call it ecstatic relief or
Speaker 6: something again, a hesitant to attach any kind of positive
Speaker 6: adjective to it, because this girl has still has still
Speaker 6: been taken away from them forever. Nothing could ever change.
Speaker 6: But for whatever counts as closure, I think they achieved that.
Speaker 6: In that moment, the family collapses in tears and hugs endlessly.
Speaker 6: And if nothing else, at least the man who did
Speaker 6: it has now been found convicted.
Speaker 5: And will be put away. Oh that's incredible. Another again
Speaker 5: profound moment in the book is when Karen, to as
Speaker 5: a testament the work that she's done and the honor
Speaker 5: that is bestowed upon her, talks about at a Coda's convention,
Speaker 5: gives her a story, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 5: It's a big moment in the book as well.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she had been invited to San Francisco, excuse me,
Speaker 6: at a Cotis convention to be the keynote speaker, and
Speaker 6: at that convention she took the opportunity to tell Bonnie's
Speaker 6: story to talk about the importance of trying to get
Speaker 6: the law and the policy change in terms of collection
Speaker 6: of DNA on arrest. Sorry, and since since then she
Speaker 6: has now made it her personal crusade to try to
Speaker 6: get other states and as many other jurisdictions as possible
Speaker 6: to implement this new law to collect DNA on arrest.
Speaker 6: And the reason for that, of course, is that if
Speaker 6: one thinks about it. Had his DNA been in the
Speaker 6: system at the time of the murder, well, that could
Speaker 6: have been matched in a matter of literally weeks. So
Speaker 6: instead of the number of years that it took not
Speaker 6: only for them to identify him, but for it to
Speaker 6: come to trial, it could have been two weeks, it
Speaker 6: could have been a month. Instead, her family had to
Speaker 6: go through that hell for twelve years before anyone was
Speaker 6: even identified, not to say nothing of the four years
Speaker 6: of pre trial and such. But the important point here
Speaker 6: is that if you have a database of DNA collected
Speaker 6: on arrest, then other family other families can be spared
Speaker 6: the kind of hell that Karen's family had to go
Speaker 6: through for that amount of time. Now you can every
Speaker 6: RaSE the hell of losing a family member, much less
Speaker 6: a child, but you can minimize the time for having
Speaker 6: to live in an awful purgatory of not knowing.
Speaker 5: And as many survivors and people mourning someone's death, there
Speaker 5: are groups where people in similar situations gather to support
Speaker 5: each other, but even more so in Karen's case, not
Speaker 5: only did she communicate and collaborate with people, there were
Speaker 5: other victims. We get to hearing this story in this
Speaker 5: book other tragic stories too, that the people that are
Speaker 5: really really lives are taken away from them. Most people
Speaker 5: would be devastated. These people have taken it upon themselves,
Speaker 5: very much like Karen, to join forces and join organizations
Speaker 5: and form organizations to be able to do what is
Speaker 5: absolutely necessary thinking about people in the future, as you say,
Speaker 5: so that other people won't have to endure this. So
Speaker 5: they turn this very very negative is not even the word,
Speaker 5: this devastating life event, and do some good from this.
Speaker 5: So even though this book is a heartbreaking story of
Speaker 5: murder and years and years of almost this perfect person
Speaker 5: getting away with this murder, it is somewhat of a
Speaker 5: happy ending in terms of the result for the betterment
Speaker 5: of the judicial system itself.
Speaker 6: Yes, no, Dan, I think that's a very very good
Speaker 6: way of putting it. I would return to almost my
Speaker 6: first statement in this interview, which was that, excuse me,
Speaker 6: when something like this happens, you have a choice, which
Speaker 6: is to go on or to not go on, and
Speaker 6: you have to define what going on means. And I
Speaker 6: think for most people, going on means trying to honor
Speaker 6: the legacy of the person whom you've lost in the
Speaker 6: best way you can and in Karen's case and the
Speaker 6: case of so many other parents and families, what that
Speaker 6: means is coming together to try to make changes to
Speaker 6: prevent other people from having to experience the same thing.
Speaker 6: And that's why I hold her so it's great admiration
Speaker 6: because she made the choice from well really from moment
Speaker 6: one to do that instead of to go into a shell,
Speaker 6: instead of to get angry, instead of to lash out,
Speaker 6: instead of to blame others, she immediately made the decision
Speaker 6: to try to get closure, but also to try to
Speaker 6: help others avoid having to go through this. And I
Speaker 6: don't think there's anything better you can say about a person.
Speaker 5: Well, that's great. I want to thank you very much
Speaker 5: I J. For coming on and talking about justice for
Speaker 5: Bonnie and Alaskan Tea murder and her mother's tireless crusade
Speaker 5: for the truth. Karen Foster and I J. Scheckter, thank
Speaker 5: you very much. I wanted to know if there's a
Speaker 5: Facebook page for the book, do you have a website?
Speaker 5: How people might contact you get more information or contact
Speaker 5: Karen or the organizations that she has set up. How
Speaker 5: might people follow this up with this interview?
Speaker 6: Yes? Well, first of all, let me say thank you.
Speaker 6: It's been my great pleasure to speak to and I
Speaker 6: appreciate your giving us the forum to talk about this case.
Speaker 6: As I said, it's close to my heart and I
Speaker 6: feel it's a very important one to talk about. There
Speaker 6: is a Facebook page for the book. One has to
Speaker 6: simply look up Justice for Bonnie. They can also look
Speaker 6: up either Karen or me on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter,
Speaker 6: and we would be only too happy to talk to
Speaker 6: anybody about the case about Bonnie, about how they might
Speaker 6: like to support the book or the story, or the
Speaker 6: policy changes that we're trying to get them.
Speaker 5: Well, it has been my pleasure and I'm very happy
Speaker 5: to present this book. Not only is it it just
Speaker 5: an incredible story, but again a very very honorable and
Speaker 5: important cause that's attached to this and just makes for
Speaker 5: an even more fantastic book for people to enjoy. Thank
Speaker 5: you very much for this and you have a great night.
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, Thank you, Dan bewillkod I