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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: Killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week,
Speaker 6: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host
Speaker 6: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening. For nine years, South Carolina officials struggled to
Speaker 2: identify the Boy in the Woods, a young man whose
Speaker 2: body had been discovered just south of Myrtle Beach in
Speaker 2: a fishing village called Morel's Inlet. Meanwhile, twelve hundred miles
Speaker 2: away in Kansas City, Missouri, Frank mcgonagall's family searched for
Speaker 2: him at Grateful Dead concerts and in the face of
Speaker 2: every long haired hitchhiker they passed. Consumed by guilt by
Speaker 2: how they treated him, Frank's eight siblings came to understand that,
Speaker 2: like Jerry Garcia, saying he's gone and nothing's going to
Speaker 2: bring him back. Frank mcgonagal was finally found and identified
Speaker 2: as the Boy in the Woods. Four years later, the
Speaker 2: case still unsolved. Jim Cosgrove, a mcgonical family friend and
Speaker 2: investigative journalist, picked up the trail of Frank's coal case
Speaker 2: and began uncovering connections to a ruthless local crime boss,
Speaker 2: and blunders by the threadbare Sheriff's department. When his research
Speaker 2: began to stall, a chance meeting with the soft hearted,
Speaker 2: straight talking energy reader Carol Williams provided a metaphysical spark
Speaker 2: that reignited Jim's resolve. Although his work as a journalist
Speaker 2: trained him to be skeptical, Cosgrove found himself starting to
Speaker 2: become a believer when Carol provided the details about Frank's
Speaker 2: murder that turned out to be freakishly accurate. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: Cosgrove returned to Morel's Inlet with one of Frank's brothers
Speaker 2: to dredge up old leads and settle Frank's case once
Speaker 2: and for all. The book that we're featuring this evening
Speaker 2: is Ripple, A long Strange Search for a Killer, with
Speaker 2: my special guest and guest of investigative author and journalist
Speaker 2: and narrator Jim Cosgrove. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 2: you so much for this interview. Jim Cosgrove, Thank you, Dan,
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Thank you so much. This is an
Speaker 2: incredible tale. As I was mentioning just before, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for joining us.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, you know, I love to talk about it.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about how you got this start. You say
Speaker 2: that this book has its start in Saint Peter's Catholic
Speaker 2: Church in Kansas City, Missouri, in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four. Who were you We mentioned in the introduction
Speaker 2: about you being a journalist. Tell us where you were
Speaker 2: professionally and your connection to this Frank mcgonagal and the family,
Speaker 2: and how this book got started in the fall of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 7: Yes, you bet well. I grew up in Kansas City,
Speaker 7: and Frank was the middle child of another large Irish
Speaker 7: Catholic family in our neighborhood. And in our neighborhood it
Speaker 7: seemed everybody was Irish, Catholic, or Jewish. That's just the
Speaker 7: way it ended up in our neighborhood. And we all
Speaker 7: belonged to the Jewish Community Center, and we had kind
Speaker 7: of an idyllic community there where everybody knew each other,
Speaker 7: and everybody, seemingly, at least on the surface, got along.
Speaker 7: And their family was close with my family. Our parents
Speaker 7: were friends, and many of my siblings were in school
Speaker 7: with many of the McGonagall siblings. But by the fall
Speaker 7: of nineteen ninety four, I had been I'd moved and
Speaker 7: I was living in Albuquerque in New Mexico, and I
Speaker 7: was writing for the Albuquerque Journal at the time. And
Speaker 7: I happened to be home back in Kansas City for
Speaker 7: a vacation or just to see to see my mother,
Speaker 7: and she asked me to take her to Mass at
Speaker 7: Saint Peter's Church, so I did. It was a midday Mass,
Speaker 7: and as we were coming out, there in the courtyard
Speaker 7: is a statue of a Saint Francis of ASSISI and
Speaker 7: I looked at the plaque and it was dedicated to
Speaker 7: Frank McGonagall, and I said, oh, yeah, Frank, I remember
Speaker 7: when he disappeared. He disappeared when I was in high school.
Speaker 7: And I said, you know what, And I knew that
Speaker 7: that there had been, you know, some resolution as far
Speaker 7: as the family at least finding out kind of what
Speaker 7: happened to him. And I said, you know what, whatever
Speaker 7: came of that, and she kind of filled me in
Speaker 7: on it and had got my wheels turning. And I thought,
Speaker 7: you know, that would make a great story. And do
Speaker 7: you think you know, I asked her, do you think
Speaker 7: that mcgonagall's would talk to me? And she said sure,
Speaker 7: they're very open about it, and so I approached mcgonagall's
Speaker 7: with the intention of actually just doing a story about
Speaker 7: their journey and what they went through nine years they
Speaker 7: searched for Frank. They didn't know what had happened to him,
Speaker 7: so I kind of wanted to just focus on that.
Speaker 7: And I needed a subject for a master's thesis for
Speaker 7: I was getting a master's degree while I was working
Speaker 7: at the newspaper, and I thought, hey, this would be
Speaker 7: a perfect subject.
Speaker 2: So you decided to use this as your master's thesis,
Speaker 2: And first thing you had to get cooperation from the
Speaker 2: mcgonical family and do the necessary interviews tell us about that.
Speaker 7: Yes, so you know, I approached them. The mcgonagalls are
Speaker 7: very well known in Kansas City. Bill McGonagall opened a
Speaker 7: meat market in nineteen fifty and everybody, at least on
Speaker 7: the south side of Kansas City knew the mcgonigal's. They
Speaker 7: had the best meat in town and you went there
Speaker 7: to get your brisket seure in your turkeys at Thanksgiving
Speaker 7: and everybody, and they had such a lot large family
Speaker 7: that everybody kind of knew someone who knew a McGonagall,
Speaker 7: and so they were locally well known and great people,
Speaker 7: very very generous, and they helped out people in their
Speaker 7: in the neighborhood who maybe you know, would fall on
Speaker 7: hard times, and so they were well loved as well.
Speaker 7: So I approached them and said, I'd like to do
Speaker 7: this story, and I would like, you know, to just
Speaker 7: to just find out kind of what you went through.
Speaker 7: And so I arranged interviews not only with Bill and
Speaker 7: Joe and McGonagall of the parents, but every one of
Speaker 7: Frank's siblings, and over the next several months I was
Speaker 7: able to do that and write my thesis. Now missus
Speaker 7: McGonagall Joan asked me at the time to not publish
Speaker 7: it as a book. She said, we get into too
Speaker 7: many family you know, you know, and family secrets, and
Speaker 7: it's a difficult subject. And as a mother of a
Speaker 7: large family, that was her life's work and any mother
Speaker 7: would understand that. And so I said, sure, I will
Speaker 7: just use this as my master's thesis and I won't
Speaker 7: publish anything. Well, many years later, well I guess it
Speaker 7: would have been almost ten years later. I, my wife
Speaker 7: and I were at a brunch with my mother and
Speaker 7: some of her friends and Joe mcgonagall's there and she
Speaker 7: pulled me aside. She said, hey, Jim, I've been thinking
Speaker 7: about you know, the story you did about Frank. And
Speaker 7: she said that you if you want to publish it,
Speaker 7: go ahead. I give you my blessing. And I said, okay.
Speaker 7: But at the time, I was newly married, we had
Speaker 7: a child on the way, a lot of other things
Speaker 7: going on, so I kind of shelved it for a while,
Speaker 7: and it took me then another ten years before I
Speaker 7: got on it.
Speaker 2: Tell us the story of what happens. And you mentioned
Speaker 2: that you talked to all the siblings of Frank's siblings.
Speaker 2: We in the introduction talked about some of the guilt,
Speaker 2: what was this guilt that they had, and how they
Speaker 2: treated him? What was Frank like? And before we talk
Speaker 2: about what happened and his decision to leave home.
Speaker 7: Yes, well, so coming from a large family myself, everything
Speaker 7: I learned from the mcgonagalls was very familiar. I didn't
Speaker 7: hear anything that hadn't happened in our own family, right.
Speaker 7: The mcgonagalls are very energetic, boysterous, opinionated, a fun loving family.
Speaker 7: They very much like ours, just allowed Irish Catholic family.
Speaker 7: And Frank was really not so much like that. He
Speaker 7: was a gentle soul. He was a little bit more
Speaker 7: introverted and quiet. He was a trusting soul, and he
Speaker 7: just never quite kind of fit in, I guess, and
Speaker 7: his siblings would talk about how he just you know,
Speaker 7: he would keep to himself. And then he struggled with
Speaker 7: with depression, and yeah, of course at the time in
Speaker 7: you know, like a lot of the young kids at
Speaker 7: that time, and he's experimented with drugs and he was
Speaker 7: as I interviewed his psychologists later on, he said, Frank
Speaker 7: was almost too gentle for this world, too trusting for
Speaker 7: this world, and so he struggled to find his place
Speaker 7: in the family. And I tell people, almost know somebody
Speaker 7: like Frank Frank was, you know, whether it's a brother
Speaker 7: or a cousin or a friend or maybe we see
Speaker 7: Frank or ourselves in Frank. He was just trying to
Speaker 7: find himself. And he struggled. And he was in school
Speaker 7: college for like six years and never graduated. At the
Speaker 7: time he left home, he was twenty six years old
Speaker 7: and he had moved back into his family home, was
Speaker 7: working at the family market, meet market and grocery, and
Speaker 7: you know, any twenty six year old at that point,
Speaker 7: he's like, you know, he wants to get out, he
Speaker 7: wants to to you know, find him, you know, make
Speaker 7: his own way in the world. But he struggled a
Speaker 7: lot and his family had a hard time. His siblings
Speaker 7: really trying to help him. They wanted to help, but
Speaker 7: they couldn't figure it out. And so when he left,
Speaker 7: they felt a lot of guilt like maybe they had
Speaker 7: not done everything they could to prevent him from leaving.
Speaker 2: He was close with his siblings and he worked with
Speaker 2: his brother. Can we talk about what was said between
Speaker 2: the brothers and the circumstances surrounding that.
Speaker 7: Yes, the youngest four of the nine, the youngest for
Speaker 7: are boys, and they were known as the Boys. And
Speaker 7: they have an older brother too, who was amongst the sisters.
Speaker 7: But the boys were tight and they spent a lot
Speaker 7: of time together. They were always having a game of
Speaker 7: hockey or they played you know, just broomstick hockey on
Speaker 7: their patio. They were playing football, they would play foosball
Speaker 7: in the basement. Anyway, they spent a lot of time together.
Speaker 7: And really his Frank's best friends were his brothers. The
Speaker 7: two of them went away to college and his youngest
Speaker 7: brother Mike was still at home when Frank was twenty six,
Speaker 7: and yeah, all the kids, at one point or the
Speaker 7: other worked at the store. And so at the time
Speaker 7: Frank and Mike were working at the store, they had
Speaker 7: recently taken a long trip to California together and they
Speaker 7: got back and one of their tasks at the store
Speaker 7: was to clean it. And they had a process for
Speaker 7: stripping the floors and waxing them, you know, periodically. So
Speaker 7: this weekend, on a Sunday, when the store was closed,
Speaker 7: they went out to wax the floor and they got
Speaker 7: in silly argument about how to do it. You know.
Speaker 7: Frank was like, this is the way you do it.
Speaker 7: Mike the youngest, was saying, no, this isn't night. You're
Speaker 7: messed up. And anyway, they got in this argument and
Speaker 7: the final words that Mike said to his brother were, Frank,
Speaker 7: why don't you fuck off and die? Yeah, And he
Speaker 7: stormed out of the store and left, And those were
Speaker 7: the last words that his brother, Mike said to Frank.
Speaker 7: And as Mike said, he said, you know, it took
Speaker 7: me five years of intense therapy to get over that guilt.
Speaker 7: And Frank left the next day and he never saw
Speaker 7: him again.
Speaker 2: Now that what we were talking about music and everybody's
Speaker 2: love and this family of the same band tell us
Speaker 2: about the band, and well we alluded to it in
Speaker 2: the introduction, tell us about their love of the band,
Speaker 2: and this is a band that many many people are
Speaker 2: dedicated to following.
Speaker 7: So yes, so the boys in particular in that family
Speaker 7: big fans of the Grateful Dead, and they had all
Speaker 7: been too many shows. In fact, their trip to California
Speaker 7: was kind of a as I think in this book,
Speaker 7: I referred to it as kind of a trip to
Speaker 7: Mecca for a Deadhead's day and went to Berkeley to
Speaker 7: see the Dead. And they had planned this road trip
Speaker 7: and they all went out there, or Frank and Mike
Speaker 7: went out there and met of his siblings out there,
Speaker 7: and it was a bond that they had through this
Speaker 7: music and of course the experiences of going to the shows.
Speaker 7: So when he disappeared, the big assumption was, hey, he
Speaker 7: just you know, he's out following the Dead. So one
Speaker 7: of the things they started to do was starting to
Speaker 7: they started going to Dead shows and to see if
Speaker 7: they could find Frank among the people who kind of
Speaker 7: that community that follows them from town to town. And
Speaker 7: he Frank liked to hitchhike, so they looked for him
Speaker 7: and hitchhikers along the side of the road. They looked
Speaker 7: in newspapers from around the country just to see if
Speaker 7: there were any news stories about someone who was, you know,
Speaker 7: anything from you know, injured in an accident or you know,
Speaker 7: had amnesian, didn't know who he was, and you know,
Speaker 7: they were they were looking at any possible leads that
Speaker 7: they could that they could get. But yeah, the Grateful Dead, definitely,
Speaker 7: they had a real strong bond over their music.
Speaker 2: Tell us of the last day with the family and
Speaker 2: when he leaves and then what is the response from
Speaker 2: the parents, Joan and Bill and the police.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so that the day after Mike and Frank had
Speaker 7: their argument at the grocery store. By the time Frank
Speaker 7: got up out of bed the next day, this was
Speaker 7: a Monday, the boys were out and already at work,
Speaker 7: and so he was kind of at home. The other
Speaker 7: person at home was his mother, and he came out
Speaker 7: and his mother. He and his mother mother had a
Speaker 7: little argument about just keeping the place clean. She said, hey,
Speaker 7: you know, kind of keep this place cleaned up, and
Speaker 7: he got a little argument with her, and then joan.
Speaker 7: His mother had to leave and run some errands. So
Speaker 7: he then is when he left, and I don't know
Speaker 7: if he had made the decision. Some of his siblings
Speaker 7: speculated that he'd already made the decision the day before
Speaker 7: leave or that morning. But somewhere in there, he drove
Speaker 7: to the bank a few blocks from their house withdrew
Speaker 7: all of his money. He had thirty eight hundred dollars
Speaker 7: in his account. He took it all in cash. He
Speaker 7: had asked the teller to convert part of it into
Speaker 7: travelers checks, but they couldn't because the bank officer at
Speaker 7: the time who handled that wasn't there. So he took
Speaker 7: it all in cash. He immediately peeled part of it
Speaker 7: off put it in a sock because he carried that's
Speaker 7: where he carried his cash. He always carried a lot
Speaker 7: of cash in his sock. And he left. And when
Speaker 7: his you know family that later that day, when he
Speaker 7: didn't come home, most of them didn't really even think
Speaker 7: about much about it. They thought, oh, well, Frank's gone again.
Speaker 7: I mean, he was not. It was not uncommon for
Speaker 7: him to take off for a day or two and
Speaker 7: either go camping or just go on, go gone. An
Speaker 7: adventure somewhere, but his parents knew he always called, he
Speaker 7: always let them know her. And so a day went
Speaker 7: by and they didn't hear from him. So they thought, okay,
Speaker 7: in a couple of days. When a couple of days
Speaker 7: went by, they started to get a little a little concerned,
Speaker 7: right that, you know, we would have heard from him
Speaker 7: by now. And so then when you know, a handful
Speaker 7: of days went by, they didn't approach the kans City
Speaker 7: Police Department, who of course said, well, there's not much
Speaker 7: we can do. He's an adult. There was no foul
Speaker 7: play or anything or any and he left in his
Speaker 7: own car, and there's not much we can do. So
Speaker 7: they then had to kind of rally their community. And
Speaker 7: you know, so again like I said, we grew up
Speaker 7: in this big Irish Catholic community. Everybody knows everybody. So people,
Speaker 7: you know, mobilized and contacted friends in other cities and
Speaker 7: they they most of them suspected he headed west because
Speaker 7: he loved the west, and so they hadn't really considered
Speaker 7: that he went east, but he in fact then you know,
Speaker 7: that's where he was. And it was just five days
Speaker 7: after he left home that he was he was murdered.
Speaker 2: You write that June fourteenth, nineteen eighty two, Nance's Oyster Roast,
Speaker 2: a restaurant, there's a report of a dead body. Yes,
Speaker 2: what happens?
Speaker 6: This is?
Speaker 2: This is a Deputy Hymen makes a call South Carolina.
Speaker 7: So now yes, so now we moved to the coast
Speaker 7: of South Carolina. So merles Inlet is a little fishing
Speaker 7: village just south of Myrtle Beach, north of Georgetown, which
Speaker 7: is an historic town and the county seat there. And
Speaker 7: so yes, a call comes in from Nance's Oyster Roast,
Speaker 7: which is a well known local family seafood restaurant, and
Speaker 7: they say, we haven't you know, we've they found a
Speaker 7: body in the woods. Can you come and check it out?
Speaker 7: So Deputy Hymen shows up and there are two local
Speaker 7: boys sitting there, and he knows these guys, one of
Speaker 7: whom in particular is a guy who has a lot
Speaker 7: of history with the local sheriff's department. He is a
Speaker 7: local trouble maker. His name's Tommy mcdell. And everybody in
Speaker 7: town when I went down there first and started asking questions,
Speaker 7: everybody and now knew Tommy mcdell. Oh yeah, Tommy mcdell.
Speaker 7: They all had a story about him, and he was
Speaker 7: known for stealing stuff, maybe setting some fires, you know,
Speaker 7: throwing up trouble, shooting them, shooting off guns just to
Speaker 7: just for fun, and generally just stirring things up. And
Speaker 7: so he was there and his cousin, Chris Nant's younger
Speaker 7: cousin was also there, and they reported to the deputy
Speaker 7: that they had been out playing in the woods, riding
Speaker 7: their bikes through the woods and had stepped off the
Speaker 7: path and they found this body up propped up against
Speaker 7: the trees. So they went back to the oys to
Speaker 7: Nance's restaurant and called the Sheriff's department to come up.
Speaker 7: And so there were two part time deputies who patrolled
Speaker 7: merles Inlet at that time, and they and merles Inlet
Speaker 7: is an interesting places. Not only does it it's on
Speaker 7: the coast, and it's got a history of you know,
Speaker 7: pyracy through and the bootleg liquor through prohibition and running
Speaker 7: drugs in the sixteen seventies. But also to make things
Speaker 7: more complicated, the there's a county line that runs through
Speaker 7: literally the north side of town. Part of merles Inlet
Speaker 7: is in another county, and part of it is it's
Speaker 7: an unincorporated but you know, part of it is so
Speaker 7: it straddles a county line, so the jurisdiction over which
Speaker 7: sheriff is responsible for it is often toss up. So
Speaker 7: this fell to Georgetown County on the south side, and
Speaker 7: the sheriff have the sheriff's deputy then deput behind and
Speaker 7: then took these two boys to the woods where they
Speaker 7: showed him where this body was. And from then on
Speaker 7: he was known as the Boy in the Woods.
Speaker 2: Now, the thing is that there's no this is many
Speaker 2: miles away from where Frank mcgonaga is and where the
Speaker 2: police are not even looking for him, but the family is.
Speaker 2: And you say that the family employees everybody that they
Speaker 2: know in their church, and there's mass masses being said
Speaker 2: and every effort to make fires and get the word out. Yes,
Speaker 2: how do you get involved in this and basically investigate
Speaker 2: this case?
Speaker 7: Right? So, at the time he was missing, all of
Speaker 7: us in the neighborhood, you know, knew that he was missing,
Speaker 7: and like a lot of things, you know, as it
Speaker 7: it as it got longer and longer, you know, and
Speaker 7: it became clearer that something had happened to him. But
Speaker 7: then also as time goes by, you move on, right.
Speaker 7: I then went to college and then you know, and
Speaker 7: then graduated from college, and you know, so I kind
Speaker 7: of didn't kind of cat lost track of what was
Speaker 7: going on until that moment with my mother and we
Speaker 7: saw statue when she reminded me of what was going on.
Speaker 7: So that sparked my interest. When I got involved with
Speaker 7: the mcgonigall's and started to interview them, what really piqued
Speaker 7: my interest was Merles Inlet, this little town, and you
Speaker 7: know that they had a suspect, but they just were
Speaker 7: never able to, you know, pin it on anybody. It
Speaker 7: was one of these deals where everybody in town was
Speaker 7: convinced that Tommy McDowell committed this crime, but they never
Speaker 7: had any evidence to depending on them. It was just circumstantial.
Speaker 7: So I thought, hey, in order to do this story,
Speaker 7: well I need to go there. So I then in
Speaker 7: the February of twenty fifth time, I'm sorry, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 7: I went to Merles I actually went to Georgetown and
Speaker 7: where the county seat is in the Sheriff's department and
Speaker 7: checked into a bed and breakfast there and started poking
Speaker 7: around and just started the Sheriff's department was very helpful.
Speaker 7: They let me, you know, look at us. The file
Speaker 7: that they had was pretty skimpy file. It was just
Speaker 7: basically had written police report, a couple of poor laroid
Speaker 7: photos of the crime scene, and he's just a few
Speaker 7: other items in there are a few other documents. And
Speaker 7: so I just started poking around and talking to people
Speaker 7: and talking to locals, and my gut instinct was, yeah,
Speaker 7: everybody in town said, oh, Tommy Wodell was he was
Speaker 7: a mess and he was trouble. But my gut told
Speaker 7: me that it wasn't that Tommy did not do this.
Speaker 7: What struck me about Tommy was that all the crimes
Speaker 7: that he had been taken in on, you know, as
Speaker 7: a minor, because this was all before he was eighteen.
Speaker 7: They were breaking and entering and then you know, writing
Speaker 7: the checks on somebody else's checking account, and they were
Speaker 7: but they were not violent. There was nothing in there
Speaker 7: that And my gut told me, I don't know that
Speaker 7: this guy had the would have the guts enough or
Speaker 7: the pension to kill somebody. It just didn't seem to
Speaker 7: add up for some reason.
Speaker 2: When when did you first speak to create? Because Chris
Speaker 2: is is such an important person in this story. Yes,
Speaker 2: talk about Chris and who his father is, and that
Speaker 2: Tommy is a cousin of Chris. Yes, so tell us
Speaker 2: a little bit more about this.
Speaker 7: So Chris was one of the two. So Chris and
Speaker 7: Tommy found the body of the Frank's body in the woods,
Speaker 7: and Tommy was four years older than Chris. They grew
Speaker 7: up together. Tommy was like his older brother and corrupted
Speaker 7: him like an older sible it might. He was often
Speaker 7: and Chris was often involved in some of the things
Speaker 7: that Tommy was involved in. And they kind of ran together.
Speaker 7: And Chris's father ran Nance's Oyster Roast, the local restaurant
Speaker 7: and very well known family establishment. And not unlike the mcgonagall's,
Speaker 7: they were well known in their community. But Paul Nance,
Speaker 7: Chris's father, was also well known for some other things.
Speaker 7: He was one of the big were the biggest drug
Speaker 7: dealer in importer and dealer along the coast there. So,
Speaker 7: as I mentioned before, Merls Inlet is a is an
Speaker 7: inlet from the sea. There's a natural there's kind of
Speaker 7: an inlet from the ocean and has served for centuries,
Speaker 7: has served as a protection from the sea. Sailors would
Speaker 7: often duck in there to do, you know, to get
Speaker 7: out of a storm. Pirates were known to hide out
Speaker 7: in there, and it made a perfect place for drug
Speaker 7: runners to come in, and you know, boats to come
Speaker 7: in and so and Paul Nance had a fleet of
Speaker 7: shrimp boats under his thumb. He bought, so he had
Speaker 7: shrimp and oyster fishermen who would sell to him. And
Speaker 7: so he was a kind of their go to guy.
Speaker 7: Well at the same time as they were bringing in
Speaker 7: their hall, they were also bringing in drugs that then
Speaker 7: he would distribute, distribute up and down the coast, and
Speaker 7: he had an empire, and he was very wealthy, and
Speaker 7: everybody in town kowtowed to him, including as many alluded
Speaker 7: to the Sheriff's department. Many said that, you know that
Speaker 7: the the good old boy network they had. He had
Speaker 7: the Sheriff's department department in his back pocket. So he
Speaker 7: was known for he was the fixer in town. When
Speaker 7: anything happened, well he had he either was involved in
Speaker 7: it or became involved in and and he was feared.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: Chris Nance when I first met him, said, you know,
Speaker 7: he said, I everybody in he said, it was like
Speaker 7: the local mafia. And he said, I as a kid,
Speaker 7: I couldn't get other kids to play with me because
Speaker 7: they were all afraid of my dad. And so when
Speaker 7: I first met Chris, he was rather forthcoming about all
Speaker 7: this stuff. His dad was dead by that time, and
Speaker 7: he wanted to kind of set the record straight. Many
Speaker 7: of his family thought he was rewriting some of the history,
Speaker 7: but he said, you know, my dad was a you know,
Speaker 7: was a drug dealer and he was involved in a
Speaker 7: lot of nasty and very stuff. And everybody in town
Speaker 7: knew about Paul nance And so there's some speculation that
Speaker 7: Paul may have helped Tommy and Chris clean up the
Speaker 7: crime scene when they found Frank's body. There was no
Speaker 7: identification on his body. His car was missing, and it
Speaker 7: was just him and a sleeping bag and a little ring,
Speaker 7: a fire ring that was set up in the woods
Speaker 7: like he was about to start at campfire. All of
Speaker 7: his possessions were gone, So somehow someone had to have
Speaker 7: cleaned up that site, got rid of Frank's car, taking
Speaker 7: his wallet and any other identifying things. So yeah, when
Speaker 7: I met Chris in the then February of ninety five,
Speaker 7: he kind of filled me in on the local the
Speaker 7: family history.
Speaker 2: What I wanted to just mention as well or ask
Speaker 2: you about is that Chris originally what Tommy had said
Speaker 2: is that or there was some contention that Chris wasn't
Speaker 2: at the scene, but that Tommy had then gotten him
Speaker 2: and said you want to come and see this body?
Speaker 7: Oh, yes, there was that. When I spoke to Chris,
Speaker 7: he said he wasn't there when the body was found.
Speaker 7: And I said, well, according to the police report, you
Speaker 7: and Tommy were out the woods and you stumbled upon
Speaker 7: this body. Say no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not
Speaker 7: how it happened, and that he was actually at the
Speaker 7: restaurant and that Tommy came to him and said, Hey,
Speaker 7: I found a body of the woods. Do you want
Speaker 7: to go see it? And then he went back there
Speaker 7: with him and a guy that worked at the restaurant,
Speaker 7: and three of them of them went to look at
Speaker 7: the body, just to see the body. Then they came
Speaker 7: to report it. So Chris says he wasn't there originally
Speaker 7: to begin with. And I personally suspected Chris was somehow
Speaker 7: not really not involved in the actual murder. But he
Speaker 7: said he wasn't even there when they found the body. Yeah,
Speaker 7: which is different than the police report, so there are
Speaker 7: some mixed yes and mixed messages there.
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Speaker 2: this incredible faithful meeting of someone called an energy reader.
Speaker 2: He said, she's not a psychic. Right first, a person
Speaker 2: that named Carol Williams. This extraordinary person tell us the
Speaker 2: circumstances in which you meet her and what you eventually
Speaker 2: team up to do.
Speaker 7: Yes. So, while I was saying it's been and breakfast
Speaker 7: in George, twenty miles south of merles Inlet, I it
Speaker 7: was off season and I was the only one in
Speaker 7: the place, but one night, two women moved in across
Speaker 7: the hall from me, and we struck up a conversation
Speaker 7: and we chatted up ended up going out that night
Speaker 7: and having some drinks and one of the women tells
Speaker 7: me that her friend who is with her is a psychic,
Speaker 7: an energy reader, and she's worked with FBI and police
Speaker 7: departments and sheriff's departments and to solve crimes. And I
Speaker 7: said okay, And I was very skeptical and like, well, okay,
Speaker 7: I've heard things like that before. And so then the
Speaker 7: next day we are at late breakfast brunch with the
Speaker 7: owner of the bed and Breakfast and it's just a Carol,
Speaker 7: the energy reader, and the owner of the breakfast and me,
Speaker 7: and the owner of the bed and breakfast asks me, Hey, Jim,
Speaker 7: how's your research going. How's your investigation going? And I said, yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, I've spoken to a lot of people in town,
Speaker 7: and I said, I get the feeling that, you know,
Speaker 7: everybody in town thinks Tommy McDowell is the one who
Speaker 7: killed Frank. And I said, I don't. I get the
Speaker 7: feeling that someone else is the perpetrator and he is
Speaker 7: still living here and people are kind of covering for him.
Speaker 7: And Carol just said, you're right, and I said, okay,
Speaker 7: what do you what do you mean I'm right? She said,
Speaker 7: you're right. There is someone else involved and he is
Speaker 7: still alive and living here in town. I said, okay,
Speaker 7: how do you know? She said, I just know, and
Speaker 7: she said with her just still the life pose. She said, Honey,
Speaker 7: you and I met here for a reason. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 7: it was no coincidence that we met this weekend. You
Speaker 7: and I were destined to meet here. And I said, okay, finance, yeah,
Speaker 7: and she said I'm here to help you. And I said, okay, Well,
Speaker 7: I don't know what your deal is, but would you
Speaker 7: be willing to come to me with me to the
Speaker 7: woods where they found Frank's body and see if you
Speaker 7: can see if you can pick up anything. She said, absolutely,
Speaker 7: let's do it. So later that afternoon, we drove up
Speaker 7: to the woods where they found Frank's body and we
Speaker 7: went in. There was a light mist it was late afternoon,
Speaker 7: and it was kind of a dreary, misty day, and
Speaker 7: we're in the woods and it's damp, and she stops
Speaker 7: and she recreated the entire murder scene for me. She said,
Speaker 7: I'm picking some things up. I see three guys standing
Speaker 7: here and she started identifying people descriptions, detailed descriptions. One
Speaker 7: of who met I mean what fit Frank's description perfectly,
Speaker 7: the other one of the others was fit the description
Speaker 7: of Tommy McDowell. And then there was a third guy
Speaker 7: there described as someone who I had not met, and
Speaker 7: she recreated what went down and then her you know
Speaker 7: what she saw, and according to her, was that Frank
Speaker 7: had asked these guys had shown him where there was
Speaker 7: a clearing in the woods where he could camp, and
Speaker 7: he had asked them if there was a place in
Speaker 7: town where he could buy some pot. Hey, can I
Speaker 7: buy some pot around here? And they said, yeah, there's
Speaker 7: a guy in town that I'll sell it to. And
Speaker 7: he said, great, let's go. And they said, well, he
Speaker 7: won't sell it to us if you were with us,
Speaker 7: So why don't you just give me the money. I'll
Speaker 7: go into town right get it. And so Frank peels
Speaker 7: off a twenty dollars bill from the money he's carrying
Speaker 7: in his sock, and the one who fit the description
Speaker 7: of Tommy McDowell leaves then to go by the pot,
Speaker 7: and according to Carol, while he's gone, the other person
Speaker 7: saw the money in Frank sock, pulled out a little
Speaker 7: twenty five caliber pistol and said, hey, give me your money,
Speaker 7: and Frank laughed at him, said I'm not kidding, you know,
Speaker 7: I'm not gonna do that. And the guy fired a
Speaker 7: shot that grazed him, raised his tumble and then shot
Speaker 7: him a second time and it went and yeah, shot
Speaker 7: him in the eye and killed him instantly. And then
Speaker 7: when the other guy came back with the legitimately had
Speaker 7: gone to buy the pot came back, it was like,
Speaker 7: what the he'll happen here, you know, and the other
Speaker 7: guy laughed, Oh, you should have seen his face when
Speaker 7: I shot him. And he's like, whoa, whoa, this isn't right.
Speaker 7: We got to clean this up. And so again this
Speaker 7: is all what Carol saw, and they so they go
Speaker 7: and get somebody else who comes with another car. They
Speaker 7: clean up the site, and then they she said, they
Speaker 7: dry of his car north. They drove both cars north
Speaker 7: and they had eventually found Frank's car several months after
Speaker 7: a couple months after he left home. They found it
Speaker 7: abandoned in a housing project in Wilmington, North Carolina, which
Speaker 7: is just across the border from South Carolina. And so
Speaker 7: she Carol gave me like incredible details about what went down.
Speaker 7: She also got into Frank's psyche and head at the time,
Speaker 7: Like when Frank realized that he was dead, he was
Speaker 7: very upset because he had had arguments before he left home,
Speaker 7: a fight with his mother or his brother, and and
Speaker 7: and Carol would not have known any of this. She
Speaker 7: was did She didn't know themonigles. She was lived in
Speaker 7: North Carolina at the time, and I, you know, I
Speaker 7: was from Kansas City. She didn't There's no way she
Speaker 7: would have known any of that, And that he wanted
Speaker 7: to let his family know that he loved him very much,
Speaker 7: and how sorry was that he had left home in
Speaker 7: that state. And she described for me in incredible detail
Speaker 7: the guy who pulled the trigger. So over the next
Speaker 7: couple of days, I mean, that's what Carol saw in
Speaker 7: the woods, and so over the next couple of days,
Speaker 7: I had a list of people I was still looking for.
Speaker 7: And one of the guys I was looking for was
Speaker 7: a friend of Tommy's and Chris's, and he was on
Speaker 7: the list. And I went to track him down, and
Speaker 7: he was shuck an oysters in an oyster shacked down
Speaker 7: by the water right. And when I knocked on the door.
Speaker 7: He turned her out and looked at me, and it
Speaker 7: was exactly the guy that just fit the description of
Speaker 7: the guy that Carol said had killed Frank.
Speaker 2: Incredible.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, So she said she hair color, he had
Speaker 7: dirty kind of blonde hair, dishwater blonde. He had his
Speaker 7: teeth were gnarled. But she said the main thing about
Speaker 7: him was his eyes. She said he had tan eyes.
Speaker 7: They were the color of creamed coffee. And I thought, okay,
Speaker 7: that's odd. I had never seen tan eyes before. But
Speaker 7: when he turned around and looked at me, he had
Speaker 7: a cigarette danging out of his mouth and he and
Speaker 7: he had tan eyes. I'm like, oh my god, this
Speaker 7: is the guy that Carol said killed Frank. And so
Speaker 7: I was kind of flustered, and I, you know, just said, hey,
Speaker 7: by you know, I'm in town working on the story
Speaker 7: about the Boy in the woods. Oh, the Boy in
Speaker 7: the woods. Everybody knew the Boy of the Woods and
Speaker 7: I don't know anything about it. And I said, well,
Speaker 7: tell me about the town. Tell me about what merolz
Speaker 7: Inlet was like at the town. I said, I heard
Speaker 7: it was crazy. There's lots of stuff going on, you know,
Speaker 7: people getting cut up with chainsaws thrown to the alligators.
Speaker 7: I mean drug deals gone wrong, he said. He gave
Speaker 7: me the best line that anybody there had given me,
Speaker 7: the best. He said, We've been known to raise a
Speaker 7: little hell around here. And then he looked me up
Speaker 7: and down. You know, I'm this, you know, college journalist boy,
Speaker 7: and he gives me a look from from toe up
Speaker 7: to my head and he said, but our idea, I said,
Speaker 7: I imagine our idea raised in hell's a little bit
Speaker 7: different than yours. Yeah, said, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2: The other thing that Carol had said that we didn't
Speaker 2: mention was a very profound was she even had a name.
Speaker 2: She mentioned the name Paul. But more importantly, and this
Speaker 2: is this is a very vivid, profound scene in this
Speaker 2: book where you go to the trailer looking for this
Speaker 2: Jeff mackenzie, and what Carol had told you was so specific,
Speaker 2: Like again, she identified this person. So when you looked
Speaker 2: at him, it was these are these telltale signs. It
Speaker 2: was extraordinary, you know, you say, this was a you know,
Speaker 2: a rush for you to for this to be happening occurring.
Speaker 2: But at the same time she said something about a
Speaker 2: specific boat. Tell us about this scene when you discover
Speaker 2: and get verification of that. Yes.
Speaker 7: So she just, you know, she threw out whatever she saw.
Speaker 7: She's like, I also see a boat. It's not in
Speaker 7: the water. It's got a name on the back MISSI
Speaker 7: or miss Anna or something like that. And she said,
Speaker 7: I don't know what it means. Well, yeah, so and
Speaker 7: she threw out some possible names too, And Paul was
Speaker 7: on that list. Like she said, I hear the name Paul.
Speaker 7: There were a couple of other names now that I'm blinking,
Speaker 7: but yeah. So the next couple of days, I was
Speaker 7: out driving around Merle's Inlet. I was looking for the
Speaker 7: home of Jeff Mackenzie, who was on my list. And
Speaker 7: I turned down one of these gravel roads and as
Speaker 7: and I noticed, as I'm driving down the road, there's
Speaker 7: a there's a lot with a chaining chainling fence around it,
Speaker 7: and there were several boats parked in there as just
Speaker 7: a storage place for boats and things. And there on
Speaker 7: the lot was this boat with the name on the
Speaker 7: back miss Anna or miss missy Ann or who. And
Speaker 7: I thought, whoa, that's what Carol. That's there's boats that Carol.
Speaker 7: And it was up on blocks. It was for Pedifer's
Speaker 7: sales sign on it. It was, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 7: that's odd. And then right across the street or right
Speaker 7: across the road there was the home. There was actually
Speaker 7: a house and a and a trailer on the same
Speaker 7: property where Jeff McKenzie lived. And so yeah, I went
Speaker 7: went up to the door and spoke to his father,
Speaker 7: and his dad told me he was shuck an oysters
Speaker 7: down by the water. So that's how I ended up
Speaker 7: getting there. But yeah, so that, you know, showed me
Speaker 7: details about the McGonagall family, details about know about the
Speaker 7: you know, the local characters there in merles Inlet, and
Speaker 7: it was truly amazing what she and she made me
Speaker 7: a believer. I mean, I was like, wow, this all
Speaker 7: this stuff is she has come true.
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Speaker 2: Now you talked about Carol, and of course, now you
Speaker 2: want to inform the family of what you found in
Speaker 2: this investigation, and you're hoping that they'll you'll they'll believe you,
Speaker 2: just like, yes, you believe Carol. So tell us about that,
Speaker 2: and then about the plan for this next trip to
Speaker 2: include one of the family members.
Speaker 7: Yes, yeah, So Frank's younger, youngest brother, Mike, was my
Speaker 7: my main contact mcgonagal family. I spoke to everyone, interviewed everybody,
Speaker 7: but he he was my main contact. And right after
Speaker 7: all this happened with you know I, Carol took me
Speaker 7: to the woods and told me, oh, and she also
Speaker 7: one of the things was that the guy who killed
Speaker 7: Frank also has something of his. It's a box of
Speaker 7: some I see a box, it's a it's a boombox.
Speaker 7: This guy has Frank's boombox. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 7: that's a detail.
Speaker 2: But okay.
Speaker 7: So after all this, when I met you know, Jeff
Speaker 7: mackenzie and was freaked out and maybe this was who
Speaker 7: killed Frank. And so I went back to bed and
Speaker 7: breakfast that I called Mike and I told him everything,
Speaker 7: and he was sobbing on the phone, just like, oh
Speaker 7: my god, this is exactly how I had kind of
Speaker 7: envisioned it going down. And he said, I don't know
Speaker 7: if it makes any difference. But Frank had my boombox
Speaker 7: with him when he left home, you know, and I
Speaker 7: was in the car and I was upset about it.
Speaker 7: You know, he took off with my property. And he said,
Speaker 7: I don't know if it makes any difference, but he said,
Speaker 7: my social security number is engraved in the back of
Speaker 7: the boom box, which was a common practice when he
Speaker 7: moved into the dorms at that time. They would engrave
Speaker 7: your social Security number and everything you owned in case
Speaker 7: it was stolen. So and so I presented that back
Speaker 7: to the detective who had been working on the case
Speaker 7: with the Sheriff's department, and you know, and he said,
Speaker 7: you know, that's not doesn't mean anything. He could have
Speaker 7: found it on the side of the road, or you
Speaker 7: could have bought it at it. I mean, even if
Speaker 7: this guy still has it, it doesn't you know, it's
Speaker 7: not evidence against him. So I, yeah, I wanted to
Speaker 7: share this information with the family when I went back
Speaker 7: to Kansas City. So I had recorded everything that Carol
Speaker 7: said in the woods where the woods my tape recorder going,
Speaker 7: so I transcribed the entire conversation with her because some
Speaker 7: of it's difficult to hear. And when I got back
Speaker 7: to Kansas City got together with Joon and Bill McGonagall
Speaker 7: and the siblings who lived there, I played the tape
Speaker 7: recording for them and they read along the transcription and
Speaker 7: it really for me, it was one of the most
Speaker 7: intense and ooignant moments of my life to bring information
Speaker 7: to a family who had been grieving for all those
Speaker 7: years and all the loose ends and the unknowns, and
Speaker 7: to come in and say, hey, this is what I
Speaker 7: found out. I don't know if it's crazy. I don't
Speaker 7: know if you're going to think it's crazy, but this
Speaker 7: is what I found out. And it was so cathartic
Speaker 7: for everybody, but it you know, of course, there were
Speaker 7: tears and almost to the person, everyone of his siblings said,
Speaker 7: that doesn't surprise me at all. That makes perfect sense
Speaker 7: about how this this. It would have been just like
Speaker 7: Frank to go into this town and say, hey, you
Speaker 7: can meet some strangers, Hey, can you show me a
Speaker 7: place to, you know, in the camp. Yet he would
Speaker 7: have trusted whomever he ran into, and it would have
Speaker 7: been like him that, yes, he had his money in
Speaker 7: his sock yep, that's exactly where he kept his money in.
Speaker 7: And it would have been like him to flash his
Speaker 7: money in front of people, because he would never have
Speaker 7: stolen money from people. Why wouldn't people steal money from him?
Speaker 7: He was that trusting and perhaps naive. But but that moment,
Speaker 7: there was really an intense special moment for me. And
Speaker 7: you know, I'd felt like an outsider and am in
Speaker 7: intruding on the family. But they told me that night, Hey,
Speaker 7: you're part of this. Now, this is this is this
Speaker 7: is your story as well as ours. And they eventually
Speaker 7: did meet Carol in person. They went Joan and Bill
Speaker 7: McGonagall and they were on vacation one year back along
Speaker 7: the coast of North Carolina, and they went and met
Speaker 7: with Carol and had a really beautiful meeting with her.
Speaker 7: And Carol and I stayed connected for a few months,
Speaker 7: but then we lost track of each other for years,
Speaker 7: and it wasn't until like twenty eighteen or so that
Speaker 7: I was feeling the need to resurrect the story and
Speaker 7: actually get it finished and published. And my nieces were
Speaker 7: a big driving force with that. I have told the
Speaker 7: story hundreds of times, as I mentioned in the book.
Speaker 7: I've told it of barstools over you know, enchiladas and
Speaker 7: over you know, and I've told it at family gatherings
Speaker 7: and they would officeay, uncle Jim, will you tell the
Speaker 7: story about the boy in the woods. So one of
Speaker 7: those meetings they they really impressed upon me you need
Speaker 7: to get this done. And I thought, you know what, Okay,
Speaker 7: let's do it. So in twenty nineteen I got my
Speaker 7: brother Tom, who is always a front adventure, and we
Speaker 7: decided to go back to Merles. And he said, you know,
Speaker 7: we really should bring one or a few of the
Speaker 7: mcgonigal's with us, and Mike seemed to be a likely choice.
Speaker 7: So Mike agreed to go to Merles with us in
Speaker 7: April of twenty nineteen, and so the three of us
Speaker 7: went to Merles inlet just to go back and you know,
Speaker 7: tie up some loose ends. If we could revisit the
Speaker 7: sheriff's apartment and a couple of you know, a couple
Speaker 7: of folks there were very helpful and revisited some of
Speaker 7: the people that I had interviewed her originally. And for Mike,
Speaker 7: he wanted to you know, he wanted to tie some
Speaker 7: things up. You know, he had put a lot of
Speaker 7: this to rest already, but there were still some things
Speaker 7: I think he wanted some closure on. And one of
Speaker 7: the people that we visited ended up visiting twice while
Speaker 7: we were there was Chris Nance's mother, Yes, and the
Speaker 7: wife of Paul Nance, the first wife of Paul Nance,
Speaker 7: the drug dealing mafia Boston Town. And Cyndia Nance's beautiful,
Speaker 7: just lovely, lovely, peaceful woman who clearly has processed a
Speaker 7: lot of the stuff that went on in her life
Speaker 7: and she's had a real place of peace when we
Speaker 7: met her, and she was delightful, and she said, come
Speaker 7: in and sit down and let's talk, and I will
Speaker 7: tell you as much as I can and as much
Speaker 7: as I'm willing to tell. And Mike just wanted my
Speaker 7: donecle just wanted somebody in town to take some responsibility
Speaker 7: for what had happened, or point them in the direction
Speaker 7: of somebody that says something that would say, yes, that's
Speaker 7: how it happened. And eventually Cynthia got there and said, yeah,
Speaker 7: I could see I could see that Paul, her ex husband,
Speaker 7: had something to do with this crime or the cleaning
Speaker 7: up of the crime scene least, and for Mike that
Speaker 7: was enough. It was uh yeah, that too was a
Speaker 7: very moving and pointed trapped.
Speaker 6: And visit me.
Speaker 2: Yes, this interaction between this eighty year old woman and
Speaker 2: she said, because Mike was confrontational somewhat and saying, listen,
Speaker 2: I think you're not telling us everything. I think you're lying,
Speaker 2: and then saying you're not telling us everything, she said, listen,
Speaker 2: I know you deserve this. That's why I'm speaking to you.
Speaker 2: You deserve this kind kind of information. And this is
Speaker 2: all the information I can speculate, but this is all
Speaker 2: the information I could give you. But it was very
Speaker 2: dramatic to say that this is certainly honest material that
Speaker 2: she's given you, or information when she talks very candidly
Speaker 2: about the criminal life of her husband, Paul, and what
Speaker 2: she just didn't want to know.
Speaker 7: Yes, right, and and you know, like like you know,
Speaker 7: the spouse of someone who's involved in some nefarious things,
Speaker 7: there is a certain amount of turning your head the
Speaker 7: other way and not wanting to know. And there were
Speaker 7: many times, of course, he said to her, you don't
Speaker 7: need to know this, and for her that was enough.
Speaker 7: And you know, she they had a very successful restaurant,
Speaker 7: said it. Some nights they would run four hundred and
Speaker 7: six hundred people through here in the course of an evening,
Speaker 7: and they were they had a lot of money. And
Speaker 7: she said, I assumed it was most you know from
Speaker 7: the restaurant. Well it was, and you know, dealing cocaine
Speaker 7: and selling weed up and down the coast, and so
Speaker 7: there were a lot of things that went on that
Speaker 7: she did not know about it. And I think legitimately
Speaker 7: so she didn't know because she didn't want to know,
Speaker 7: as she said, very candidly, and I thought beautifully she said,
Speaker 7: I was ignorant to the point of stupid. And but
Speaker 7: and that's what I'm saying about her. The piece that
Speaker 7: I felt for her is that I think she's processed
Speaker 7: a lot of this and it came to a place
Speaker 7: of peace with some of it. Like she said, she
Speaker 7: didn't know a lot of this stuff until after Paul died.
Speaker 7: But she suspects that, yeah, he was involved in you know,
Speaker 7: roughing people up or worse, as she as she said,
Speaker 7: at one point, you know, he had a group of
Speaker 7: thugs who worked for him, who would take care of
Speaker 7: business for him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the likely scenario is that three people were involved,
Speaker 2: one person, as you explained, for the family, for the siblings.
Speaker 2: This trip, you said was satisfying because he finally got
Speaker 2: some answers and somebody to say that at least it
Speaker 2: was a very good possibility. Yes, these people sustained themselves
Speaker 2: when they didn't have any answers for those nine years,
Speaker 2: thinking that their loved one just left because of the
Speaker 2: treatment or other reasons. Maybe he was in a hospital.
Speaker 2: They knew he was having problems psychologically. So their faith
Speaker 2: sustained them through this, and the community that they had
Speaker 2: through their church and their pastor was always involved. And
Speaker 2: then Carol Williams becomes involved and talks about that there's
Speaker 2: no you know, no coincidence is meeting you and your
Speaker 2: involvement with this and your involvement with the family and
Speaker 2: growing up so near and saying that when Frank left
Speaker 2: it affected your family as well. You talk at the
Speaker 2: end of the book about visiting the grave site that
Speaker 2: was that he was buried in because they didn't know
Speaker 2: who he was in Georgetown. Tell us about this very
Speaker 2: dramatic and sort of that did you feel a presence
Speaker 2: and did Mike feel a presence?
Speaker 7: Yes, So before we left, we went to visit Frank's grave.
Speaker 7: So in the meantime, so about five years after Frank died,
Speaker 7: the corner in Georgetown, South Carolina. You know, they had
Speaker 7: this body that was in the morgue for five years
Speaker 7: and they needed to do something with it. So they
Speaker 7: he had it buried in a marker that just said
Speaker 7: white male died June nineteen eighty two, and so it
Speaker 7: was a John Doe grave. And then when the mcgonagalls
Speaker 7: found out nine years later about what had happened, they
Speaker 7: decided to leave Frank's body there, not to zoom him
Speaker 7: and bring him home, but just leave him in South
Speaker 7: Carolina and then put a marker on there. So they
Speaker 7: put you know, another marker on there with with Frank's
Speaker 7: name and birthday at all. Right, So so we stopped
Speaker 7: by the yeah, the cemetery on the way home and
Speaker 7: on the week before we left town, and Mike, yeah,
Speaker 7: it was just at an appointing moment. I'm there with
Speaker 7: my brother and then you know, Mike is there at
Speaker 7: the grave of his brother, and there was this moment
Speaker 7: where I. I. My brother came over and kind of
Speaker 7: put his arm hand on me. Here I put my
Speaker 7: I can't remember how that went down. And we're standing
Speaker 7: there and then I and then we're looking at Mike and thinking, wow,
Speaker 7: how is he connecting or feeling and and we didn't
Speaker 7: know what to say, really, but we all felt this,
Speaker 7: this presence and this connection to Frank and to brotherhood really,
Speaker 7: you know, this bond of family. And so Mike says, hey,
Speaker 7: I've got something I've been thinking about this moment. And
Speaker 7: he pulls his phone out and he scrolls through his
Speaker 7: phone and he calls up this app that he has.
Speaker 7: It's called re Listen, and it's got every Grateful Dead
Speaker 7: show that it was ever recorded, and most of them
Speaker 7: were it's got them all. So he scrolls back to
Speaker 7: August of nineteen eighty two when one of his brothers,
Speaker 7: he and his brother another brother went to see the
Speaker 7: Grateful Dead in Kansas City and it's called up Starlight Theater, Kansadin, Missouri.
Speaker 7: Calls it up, and he scrolls over to this song
Speaker 7: He's gone, and he calls up the song and he
Speaker 7: plays it. He sets his phone on the on the
Speaker 7: gravestone and it's a song He's gone, and that the
Speaker 7: lyrics are He's gone. He's gone like a steam locomotive
Speaker 7: run down the track. He's gone, He's gone, and he's
Speaker 7: never coming back. And he said when he was at
Speaker 7: that concert with his brother Jerry, when that when they
Speaker 7: played that song. Then just a couple of months after
Speaker 7: Frank left home, they turned to each other, both of
Speaker 7: them in tears, and he said, we both knew at
Speaker 7: that time that Frank was dead, but we held out
Speaker 7: hope that maybe we were wrong, and for the sake
Speaker 7: of their parents. But he said, both of usk new,
Speaker 7: and so he played that song for us there in
Speaker 7: the cemetery, and man, it was it was intense movie.
Speaker 2: Another grateful dead song that was his favorite was Ripple. Yes,
Speaker 2: you've called this book ripple. What's its significance? Ripple?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Frank, Yeah, one of his favorite songs of
Speaker 7: Ripple and the same same with the brothers. His brother
Speaker 7: Mark's a great musician and he plays it frequently still.
Speaker 7: But you know, and I think it was Mark, his
Speaker 7: brother Mark, who said to me at one time, you know, Frank,
Speaker 7: Frank was a placid soul, you know, he was. He
Speaker 7: was the still water and he said, these guys came
Speaker 7: along and you know, threw a pebble into our pond,
Speaker 7: into our plastid life, and created ripples that you know,
Speaker 7: reverberated far beyond you know, far beyond our family. But
Speaker 7: and you never know, you never know the effects of
Speaker 7: your actions. But he said, I want these, you know,
Speaker 7: the people that were involved to know that what they
Speaker 7: did was you know, cast some you know, some intense
Speaker 7: ripples in our in our life. And later on they found, well,
Speaker 7: we all discovered that each of the three of the
Speaker 7: three guys that they think were involved in this, Chris, Tommy,
Speaker 7: Jeff are all dead and all died in some pretty
Speaker 7: heavy ways. Tommy went to prison, and actually he died
Speaker 7: shortly before I went, shortly before I got on the story.
Speaker 7: He died in prison of AIDS, which is an awful
Speaker 7: way to die. Chris was beaten to death with a
Speaker 7: two by four by his nephew and his nephew's roommate Wow,
Speaker 7: stabbed and set on fire. And Jeff mackenzie was had
Speaker 7: had a lot of health problems for many many years
Speaker 7: and then ended up dying in cancer twenty fifteen, I believe. So, yeah,
Speaker 7: so everybody all the guys involved in this air gone.
Speaker 6: Paul.
Speaker 7: Of course it's also dead.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on and talking about Ripple A Long Strange Search for
Speaker 2: a Killer. The gative author, Jim Cosgrove. You also, I
Speaker 2: mentioned earlier, you are the narrator, which is unusual and
Speaker 2: it's great in this respect that you are the narrator
Speaker 2: for this audiobook as well. Tell us about the release
Speaker 2: and where people might see more information about this.
Speaker 7: Yes, so the book, well, the book is out on
Speaker 7: April fifth, and the book is available. So the book
Speaker 7: is available in either you know, in a soft cover
Speaker 7: or audio, and it's available wherever you get books. I
Speaker 7: of course encourage everybody to order it through your local
Speaker 7: bookseller because I am a big fan of local booksellers,
Speaker 7: and they will have access to it and they can
Speaker 7: order it and they can get it in you can
Speaker 7: get it on any platform where you get audio books
Speaker 7: as well.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Jim Cosgrove, Ripple A Long Strange
Speaker 2: Search for a Killer. Thank you so much for this
Speaker 2: interview day.
Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it. Take care, thank you,