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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 BTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 4: Good Evening. Losing a loved one to murder is life's
Speaker 4: ultimate tragedy. But when the killer is never captured, a
Speaker 4: family's paralyzing grief only compounds. In this pass pain grows,
Speaker 4: time heals nothing. Parents, spouses and children of the victims
Speaker 4: never find peace. Investigators continue to lie awake, night after night,
Speaker 4: year after year, thinking if only cold cases fascinated us
Speaker 4: because of the endless possibilities. What if Alice Hachossler hadn't
Speaker 4: driven her daughter home from work while the strangler was
Speaker 4: running loose. What if Oda Apple's wife hadn't sent them
Speaker 4: to the corner drug store. What if Linda Bricca hadn't
Speaker 4: been so beautiful and her husband not a workaholic. J. T.
Speaker 4: Townsend takes us on a sinister journey through thirteen cases
Speaker 4: which took place in Cincinnati, Ohio, between nineteen o four
Speaker 4: in nineteen seventy one. You'll meet Francis Brady, a pretty
Speaker 4: bride to be gunned down at her own front door.
Speaker 4: Tommy Coby, a eight who arrived home to an empty
Speaker 4: house and learned later his parents were lying dead in
Speaker 4: their car. Patty read Bolts, a popular cheerleader who was
Speaker 4: bludgeoned in a neighbor backyard while walking to break up
Speaker 4: with their teenage boyfriend. What do these cases have in common?
Speaker 4: A fleeting, irrational act of violence with no resolution. Somebody
Speaker 4: literally got away with murder. Each episode took place in
Speaker 4: sheer moments, but hundreds of innocent people still remember, still mourn,
Speaker 4: and are still haunted by horrible, unbearable images. Townsend's riveting
Speaker 4: accounts include never before published details from police files and
Speaker 4: insights from both investigators and witnesses who done it. Well.
Speaker 4: Never know for sure, but we can certainly make some informed,
Speaker 4: calculated guesses. Meanwhile, on these pages, each victim returns to
Speaker 4: vibrant life, becomes as real to us as those loved
Speaker 4: ones that they left behind, and still cries out for justice.
Speaker 4: The book they were featuring this evening is Queen's City,
Speaker 4: Gothic Cincinnati's most Infamous murder Mysteries, with my special guests,
Speaker 4: journalist and author JT. Townshend, Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 4: thank you very much for greeing to this interview. JT.
Speaker 5: Townshend, thank you, Dan, glad to be here.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for coming on. Very very fascinating
Speaker 4: book you have here. First off, just tell us how
Speaker 4: you came to be in a position to want to
Speaker 4: write this book. What drove you to or put you
Speaker 4: in a position to write Queen City Gothic, Dan, that's
Speaker 4: a great question.
Speaker 5: You might say. I turned to crime to beat cancer.
Speaker 5: I was a regular corporate working stiff. In two thousand
Speaker 5: and seven, I got a colon cancer diagnosis. While taking chemotherapy,
Speaker 5: I decided to go through all my cold case clippings
Speaker 5: and write this book I've been wanting to write. Six
Speaker 5: months later, I was cancer free, and I had a
Speaker 5: pretty bad first draft. A couple of years of editing later,
Speaker 5: Queen City Gothic hit the market, and the rest, as
Speaker 5: they say, is history.
Speaker 4: Interesting. Tell us what you have thirteen you've submitted thirteen
Speaker 4: of Cincinnati's unsolved classic unsolved homicides. How were the thirteen
Speaker 4: cases selected?
Speaker 5: Well? I had I think I had a list of
Speaker 5: about fifty. A lot of it had to do with
Speaker 5: media coverage at the time. A lot of it had
Speaker 5: to do with more prominent victims, more upper middle class neighborhoods.
Speaker 5: You know, everything that makes a good murder, you know,
Speaker 5: a hint of scandal, a whisper of sex, you know,
Speaker 5: the personal cause homicide where the killer and the victim
Speaker 5: are somehow involved. And all these cases in Queen City
Speaker 5: Gothic were front page fodder for weeks and months after
Speaker 5: these crimes occurred. I think probably the coverage, more than
Speaker 5: anything else, probably dictated which cases would make it.
Speaker 4: In one quick question, why the what's with the name?
Speaker 4: What's the background or the history of the name Queen
Speaker 4: City for Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: You know, that's a nickname Cincinnati's had, I think since
Speaker 5: the mid eighteen hundred. It was considered the gateway to
Speaker 5: the West, and the name just kind of stuck, the
Speaker 5: queen city of the Midwest, and I don't know, it's
Speaker 5: kind of stuck all these years.
Speaker 4: We're going to discuss in particular three of the incredible
Speaker 4: stories that are in the thirteen just because we won't
Speaker 4: be able to cover too many of these fascinating stories
Speaker 4: week just between us picked these stories to highlight and
Speaker 4: what you call in particular terror in the gas Like district.
Speaker 4: And this is about the Cincinnati Strangler and the particular
Speaker 4: one of the most I guess, memorable cases in Cincinnati
Speaker 4: history for the horror and the terror that inflicted that
Speaker 4: would inflicted on the city because of the Cincinnati Strangler.
Speaker 4: So let's talk about the Cincinnati Strangler. And you start
Speaker 4: this in nineteen sixty five. So tell us Cincinnati, what's
Speaker 4: going on in the city, in the Queen City at
Speaker 4: this time, and you talk about October nineteen sixty five
Speaker 4: and Elizabeth Creco, So tell us about what the city
Speaker 4: is like at that time, and then tell us a
Speaker 4: little bit about Elizabeth Kreco and what happened.
Speaker 5: I tell you, if I was gonna give you a
Speaker 5: quick blurb, a conservative Midwestern city in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 5: confronts a serial killer and its own burgeoning racial turmoil. No,
Speaker 5: this is not a John Grisham novel. It's the unknown
Speaker 5: legend of the Cincinnati Strangler. This was a major serial
Speaker 5: killer in nineteen sixty six that barely anyone has heard of.
Speaker 5: Boston Strangler was well known from sixty two to sixty four,
Speaker 5: the term serial killer had not yet been coined, but
Speaker 5: I think with the Boston Strangler, people started to realize
Speaker 5: that there were killers who did kill multiple victims with
Speaker 5: a passage of time. And suddenly, in October of nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty five, we had a woman named Elizabeth Creco attacked
Speaker 5: in the Walnut Hills neighborhood, strangled into unconsciousness, raped, but
Speaker 5: she did survive, and that is considered to be the
Speaker 5: beginning of the Cincinnati Strangler saga.
Speaker 4: Now, what are some of these signatures and the mo
Speaker 4: of this person. Right from the beginning, you say she
Speaker 4: was attacked, but she survived. So what was the description
Speaker 4: that was out there for police and what was the
Speaker 4: description they released, and how did the investigation proceed after
Speaker 4: this attack?
Speaker 5: Well, she described her attacker as a short, slightly built
Speaker 5: black man. She was a white woman. The Strangler, as
Speaker 5: he moved through his series of crimes, was known to
Speaker 5: improvise a ligature. I think the ligature in each of
Speaker 5: the stranglings was different. A pair of stockings, a men's tie,
Speaker 5: the belt to a bathrobe, a clothes line. And he
Speaker 5: would be someone we'd describe as an unorganized offender, someone
Speaker 5: who would base do just a little stalking, pick a
Speaker 5: victim of chance, kill the victim, leave them right where
Speaker 5: they were murdered, no attempt to cover up any clues
Speaker 5: or to cover his own trail. And that would contrast
Speaker 5: with an organized serial killer like a Ted Bundy, someone
Speaker 5: who had a lengthy stalking behavior, someone who took a
Speaker 5: victim and did not create a crime scene, take the
Speaker 5: victim across jurisdictional lines, jump the body somewhere. So that
Speaker 5: is not what we had in Cincinnati. We had someone
Speaker 5: operating in their own comfort zone, taking victims of chance,
Speaker 5: basically in this case women that were fifty years of
Speaker 5: age and older.
Speaker 4: Right, yes, Elizabeth Greco is sixty five years old. You
Speaker 4: say that nineties. Nine days later, two more women were assaulted.
Speaker 4: Both of these attacks. You say, these people reported that
Speaker 4: black males had assaulted them, but there were different descriptions.
Speaker 4: There were, and you talk about October twenty this, yeah,
Speaker 4: go ahead, no, go ahead.
Speaker 5: Again, this is all in the Walnut Hills neighborhood, so
Speaker 5: it's been very confined at that point. Again, this similar
Speaker 5: description short, slightly built black man. But was their facial
Speaker 5: hair was there not? Was he wearing a beret? Was
Speaker 5: he not? There was a lot of discrepancies in these descriptions,
Speaker 5: and you know, so far we haven't had any fatalities,
Speaker 5: so Cincinnati really at this point, okay, we've got some
Speaker 5: hit and run assaults, but I don't think anyone had
Speaker 5: an idea of really what was to come.
Speaker 4: Right now, you talk about October twenty fifth, there's another
Speaker 4: attack Margie and she's thirty nine years old, and someone
Speaker 4: tried to put a rope around her neck. So tell
Speaker 4: us about that attack and then the subsequent attack on
Speaker 4: December second with Emma Jeen Harrington, fifty six years old.
Speaker 5: All right, Yeah, Margie Helton again in Walnut Hills, leaving work.
Speaker 5: And we've seen this in some of the other attacks.
Speaker 5: A young black man asks for street directions and then
Speaker 5: attacks the victim. In this case, he looped a rope
Speaker 5: around Margie Helton's neck, managed to steal ten dollars, but
Speaker 5: she screamed, managed to hit her car horn. The attack
Speaker 5: was broken off. December second, nineteen sixty five, the first
Speaker 5: acknowledged victim of Cincinnati strangler was found. It was fifty
Speaker 5: six year old Emajeen Harrington. She had just come home.
Speaker 5: It was a Thursday afternoon. The Claremont apartments very nice neighborhood,
Speaker 5: very nice, broad daylight. She went looking for the janitor
Speaker 5: of the building to help her carry in groceries, and
Speaker 5: somewhere in the basement of this cavernous apartment building she
Speaker 5: ran into the Cincinnati strangler. She was hit a crushing
Speaker 5: blow to the head, taken down, raped, strangled, and left
Speaker 5: there in a an a basement restroom, and the janitor
Speaker 5: she'd been looking for found her body. She was the
Speaker 5: wife of an aerospace scientist at the University of Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: Fairly prominent victim. So on December second, we have our
Speaker 5: first murder in Walnut Hills.
Speaker 4: You right that there's a double knotted very much a
Speaker 4: double knot just very much like the Creco rape.
Speaker 5: So closeline double knotted on each end, you know.
Speaker 4: So police make that make some connection very very early
Speaker 4: on in these cases, and all.
Speaker 5: These attacks have again been in the Walnut Hills neighborhood
Speaker 5: of Cincinnati. Appears to be a comfort zone for this attacker. Again,
Speaker 5: a disorganized attacker is not going to go far away
Speaker 5: from his territory. So it's all confined to the Walnut
Speaker 5: Hills area. And we've got one near fatality, we've got
Speaker 5: one murder in at least three or four attacks leading
Speaker 5: into the end of nineteen sixty five. But again, I
Speaker 5: don't think Cincinnati really realizes what is in store at
Speaker 5: this point.
Speaker 4: You right by April fourth, nineteen sixty six, you say,
Speaker 4: the phantom struck again. And this is Lewis Dant. She's
Speaker 4: fifty eight years old and her husband just goes out
Speaker 4: for a short period of time and comes back and
Speaker 4: tell us what he finds and what's the condition of
Speaker 4: his wife. Lois Dent.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I tell you, Dan, this one bothers me. She
Speaker 5: and her husband were always together on Monday morning when
Speaker 5: he would go help. He would go to the parish
Speaker 5: and help count the collection plate from Sunday. It's the
Speaker 5: only period of time during a week when she would
Speaker 5: be alone in her apartment. And that's when the strangler
Speaker 5: got her. Her husband came home, found her bludgeoned, raped,
Speaker 5: strangled with one of her own stockings. He just missed
Speaker 5: the killer. He was coming in the back door as
Speaker 5: the killer was leaving the front door. This one was
Speaker 5: interesting because the victim herself was able to tell us
Speaker 5: what was going on. Right before her murder, she was
Speaker 5: on the phone with her cousin, said there was a
Speaker 5: knock at the door. The cousin heard her answer the door.
Speaker 5: She came back on the phone and said it was
Speaker 5: some man looking for the caretaker. Talk with her cousin.
Speaker 5: Doorbell rings again. She said, well, maybe it's that same man.
Speaker 5: I'll call you later. She hangs up and goes to
Speaker 5: the door. And that's the killer. The door to the killer.
Speaker 5: And yes, her husband found her. I've seen the crime
Speaker 5: scene photos. Boy, I no husband should ever have to
Speaker 5: see something like that. And again we've got the same
Speaker 5: improvised ligature, a blow to the head to take the
Speaker 5: victim down, then the strangulation and the rape, which in
Speaker 5: this case was posthumous. I believe the victim was almost
Speaker 5: already dead when the rape occurred. Now, this is on
Speaker 5: the west side of Cincinnati, Dan in the Price Hill neighborhood.
Speaker 5: This is way across I seventy five from where this
Speaker 5: offender has been operating. And this is a extremely in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six, a white neighborhood. And it's hard to
Speaker 5: believe a black man could have operated in this neighborhood
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty six without attracting some attention. And I
Speaker 5: speculate that if a black man had been at her
Speaker 5: or she might have mentioned that to her cousin. That
Speaker 5: would be a real singular experience in this neighborhood in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six. So with this crime, you have a
Speaker 5: killer who appears to know that the victim will be alone,
Speaker 5: and you have a victim who really didn't appear to
Speaker 5: be alarmed at whoever this man at her door was.
Speaker 5: Makes me think that if it had been a black man,
Speaker 5: she would have mentioned that to her cousin, but she
Speaker 5: did not. So now we've got a second murder similar
Speaker 5: to the first. Cincinnati is starting to become a little
Speaker 5: tense about this.
Speaker 4: You say that some police, though hesitated to think the
Speaker 4: murder with the Harrington, would connect this murder with the
Speaker 4: Harrington murder.
Speaker 5: Why would that be, Well, again, the fact that she
Speaker 5: was killed during such a tight window, but when her
Speaker 5: husband is always with her except on Monday morning, and
Speaker 5: it seems like an odd time for a serial killer
Speaker 5: to be operating on a Monday morning. So we have that,
Speaker 5: we have the fact that she did not say the
Speaker 5: man at the door was a black man. And again,
Speaker 5: in this neighborhood in nineteen sixty six, that might have
Speaker 5: been caused for alarm for a white woman at home.
Speaker 5: Not so much today, of course, but in nineteen sixty
Speaker 5: six to have a black man in that neighborhood would
Speaker 5: have been quite unusual, and with a lot of the victims.
Speaker 5: As we went forward, they found pubic hair consistent with
Speaker 5: a black man. In the lowest dance case, they did
Speaker 5: not find that pubic hair consistent with a black man.
Speaker 5: So there's been some speculation that this may or may
Speaker 5: not have been one of the Cincinnati strangler victims.
Speaker 4: Now what you say, though, interestingly, is that within weeks
Speaker 4: this investigation is stalled, and then on June tenth, a
Speaker 4: man finds a woman's badly beaten body. Again, this is
Speaker 4: a feature that we talked about battered, and so some
Speaker 4: of these bodies are badly beaten above the head. You're
Speaker 4: talking about crushing.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Yeah, the June tenth murder in Burnett Woods, that
Speaker 5: would be our third victim. That was Jeanette Messer, fifty
Speaker 5: six years old. She's merely doing something she does every day.
Speaker 5: She's walking her dog in a beautiful public park near
Speaker 5: the University of Cincinnati called Burnett Woods. Sun's not quite
Speaker 5: up yet. Other dog walkers see her. She takes a
Speaker 5: normal trail through the woods and she meets the strangler. Again,
Speaker 5: we have this crushing blow to the head and not
Speaker 5: multiple blows. This is basically almost like a shark would do.
Speaker 5: Just put the victim down, I mean unconscious. And in
Speaker 5: this case she was strangled with a man's necktie and
Speaker 5: her dog was tied to a nearby tree by the killer.
Speaker 5: And she was found all her clothing had been ripped off,
Speaker 5: fractures about the face, strangled with a necktie, and raped
Speaker 5: in a public park with really quite a lot of
Speaker 5: people moving about that morning. This was a very audacious crime,
Speaker 5: I would say, kind of almost Jack the ripperlike, and
Speaker 5: it's daring.
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Speaker 4: Now, throughout this you provide an account of what is
Speaker 4: going on in terms of society, and part of that
Speaker 4: is the reaction from society based on what the media
Speaker 4: is writing. And you talk about the Enquirer, and you
Speaker 4: tell us about the headline that they had, despite what
Speaker 4: the police are saying, despite what they may know and
Speaker 4: what they don't know. What are the headlines and what
Speaker 4: is contained in the headlines at newspaper like the Inquirer,
Speaker 4: Well after the.
Speaker 5: Third crime dan rather provocative headline. I'm looking at it
Speaker 5: right now, Negro killed three women. Police say, of course
Speaker 5: they're using the term negro that was used at the time.
Speaker 5: But the CINCINNTI police kind of had to make a
Speaker 5: decision here do we have one killer do we have three?
Speaker 5: And they looked at everything in total for these three
Speaker 5: murders Harrington, Dant, and Messer, and they basically came out
Speaker 5: and said, we have a single killer operating. Again, the
Speaker 5: term serial killer was not used or coined yet, but
Speaker 5: after that third murder June tenth, the word came out
Speaker 5: that we have a black man killing elderly white women
Speaker 5: in Cincinnati. And it is the mid sixties. We've got
Speaker 5: Vietnam War protests, we have race riots, civil rights issues,
Speaker 5: we've got hippies, we've got counterculture, we've got the Beatles.
Speaker 5: It's a time of tremendous change, and yet Cincinnati prides
Speaker 5: itself on being immune to change. I think it was
Speaker 5: Mark Twain that said, if the world was coming to
Speaker 5: an end, I'd moved to Cincinnati and spend ten more
Speaker 5: glorious years. So I think the headlines were basically saying,
Speaker 5: how can this happen here. We're not New York, We're
Speaker 5: not Los Angeles. You know, this is the Queen City.
Speaker 5: We're innocent, So how could this be happening to us?
Speaker 5: I think that was the focus of a lot of
Speaker 5: the headlines. You know, how could it happen here?
Speaker 4: You add the historical juxtaposition too, that's very interestingly. July
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty six is also a time of the infamous
Speaker 4: killers arising, and you talk about two in particular, Richard
Speaker 4: spec and Charles Whitman, and you say they had ushered
Speaker 4: in the era of modern mass murder. Spec butchering eight,
Speaker 4: Whitman shooting thirteen boy Dan.
Speaker 5: We'd we'd never seen crimes like this. I mean, there
Speaker 5: was no template to process. Richard Speck killing the student nurses,
Speaker 5: and two weeks later, Charles Whitman going up top of
Speaker 5: the tower at the University of Texas and sniping the
Speaker 5: fourteen people. We just hadn't seen things like this. I
Speaker 5: think we've become kind of inured to it today. You know,
Speaker 5: mass shootings are really not so unusual anymore. But in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six, a guy kills eight student nurses, and
Speaker 5: then a guy goes up on a tower and shoots
Speaker 5: fourteen people two weeks apart. It was just shocking. I
Speaker 5: was twelve years old. I just remember reading these stories
Speaker 5: like what is going on here? There was just no
Speaker 5: there was no template to process these kind of crimes,
Speaker 5: and they're certainly a part of this story without question.
Speaker 4: Now you continue with this too. We talk about July
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty six, and by August fourteenth, back in Cincinnati,
Speaker 4: the strangler strikes again, and it's a question mark. Barbara Bowman,
Speaker 4: thirty one years old. You talk about a black cab
Speaker 4: drivers reported a Negro cab driver picking her up from
Speaker 4: Clifton's Lark's Cafe. Tell us about what she's doing at
Speaker 4: two am? How does this happen? What do witnesses see?
Speaker 4: Ye tell us what police find?
Speaker 5: You know, was this the strangler? That was the big question.
Speaker 5: She was a thirty year old single woman, I would say,
Speaker 5: way younger than the previous victims. She's drinking in a
Speaker 5: bar and she calls for a cab and a short,
Speaker 5: slightly built black cab driver comes in. She leaves with him.
Speaker 5: They are approximately one block from her house at about
Speaker 5: two thirty am when this cab driver attacks her and
Speaker 5: attempts to strangle her and attempts to rape her in
Speaker 5: the back seat of the cab. Barbara Bowman manages to
Speaker 5: break away in a pouring down poor and starts running
Speaker 5: along the street, and the cab driver pursues her in
Speaker 5: the cab, runs her over and then hops out and
Speaker 5: stabs her in the neck as she's laying in a
Speaker 5: rain swept gutter, and she dies there and the cab
Speaker 5: is disabled. The cab driver takes off, and this cab
Speaker 5: eventually turned out to be a stolen cab, and this
Speaker 5: was a bootleg cab driver who had taken seven or
Speaker 5: eight fare that night, you know, just taking calls from
Speaker 5: a dispatcher until he picked up Barbara Bowman. So she's murdered.
Speaker 5: The cab driver escapes, but we've got a younger victim.
Speaker 5: We've got a stabbing, and again the taxi cab itself
Speaker 5: was used as a murder weapon. I the inquiry called
Speaker 5: this one of the most bizarre murders in Cincinnati history.
Speaker 5: You know, is this indeed the strangler? I mean, there
Speaker 5: is an attempt at a strangulation, but she was actually
Speaker 5: run down and stabbed and there was no rape. So
Speaker 5: CINCINNTI police were kind of divided on this one. If
Speaker 5: you ask me, that's the strangler. He had an opportunity
Speaker 5: with this younger woman. I think he took it. She
Speaker 5: easily could have been strangled, but she was young and
Speaker 5: strong and she managed to break away and was run
Speaker 5: down and stabbed. But I think this is indeed our
Speaker 5: perpetrator at the point. But it certainly didn't fit the
Speaker 5: pattern in many ways.
Speaker 4: What did this do for the community in terms of
Speaker 4: after the headline of three Negroes killed, or Negroes killed
Speaker 4: three women, or negro kills three women. Pardon me, you do?
Speaker 4: You have the composite drawings of the bowman suspect, and
Speaker 4: you'd say that black men, especially Cabby's, are rounded up.
Speaker 4: So black men are rounded up for lineups and questioning,
Speaker 4: aren't they?
Speaker 5: Oh boy, I tell you, I've seen the photos of
Speaker 5: this Dan. You know, the Miranda ruling had just been
Speaker 5: passed in nineteen sixty six, you know the rights of
Speaker 5: the suspect. Cincinnati was in such turmoil and such fear
Speaker 5: that basically they were rounding up any suspicious looking, short,
Speaker 5: slightly built black man who may have driven a cab
Speaker 5: and they were hauling them in for lineups for witnesses
Speaker 5: at the bar that Barbara Bowman was at. There were
Speaker 5: some people that drove by and happened to the attack
Speaker 5: on Barbara Bowman and see the driver in the cab.
Speaker 5: So they were parading these men in front of these witnesses,
Speaker 5: really without any due process. And civil rights groups were
Speaker 5: rightfully outraged, but because of the fear sweeping through Cincinnati,
Speaker 5: no one really cared. People were again, black men were
Speaker 5: being hauled in to the lineups without any real due process,
Speaker 5: and the directive went out from the Cincinnati police if
Speaker 5: anybody's acting strange, just bring them in. So there certainly
Speaker 5: was some racial tension starting to grow at this point,
Speaker 5: and the heavy handed investigating tactics of the CINCINNTI police
Speaker 5: certainly didn't help matters at all. But again, everybody was
Speaker 5: so afraid. I don't think anybody was worried about the
Speaker 5: rights of the suspects when this.
Speaker 4: Was going on, say, before anybody can really get their bearings.
Speaker 4: By September, a woman named Virginia Hinners, forty years old,
Speaker 4: is accosted by a black man and she tells police
Speaker 4: and Jesus survives. Obviously, She says that this guy says,
Speaker 4: do you want what the others got? And it's right
Speaker 4: she's attack Emagen Harreton was.
Speaker 5: Killed, so she is right. She is right across from
Speaker 5: the Claremont apartments where Emageen Harrington was killed in December
Speaker 5: of nineteen sixty five, short, slightly built black man assaulted
Speaker 5: her in the janitor and said to her do you
Speaker 5: want what the others got? And Cincinni police flocked to
Speaker 5: the scene of this assault. This had all the earmarks
Speaker 5: of the strangler. You know, we found a woman alone
Speaker 5: in a church office and made a serious attempt to
Speaker 5: strangle her, but the custodian coming in kind of saved
Speaker 5: her life. But again we're back in Walnut Hills, or
Speaker 5: right across the street from the scene of the Harrington murder.
Speaker 5: So this appears to be our perpetrator, the Cincinnati strangler,
Speaker 5: once again in a failed attempt.
Speaker 4: Now there must have been another composite drawing. Did it
Speaker 4: compare to the other ones? And what is the result
Speaker 4: of this composite drawing? What is the reaction overall the city,
Speaker 4: the police with this further attack with Virgina Hinters, Well, things.
Speaker 5: Are the tension is really heating up. You know those
Speaker 5: composite drawings, they were kind of all over the place.
Speaker 5: There were several of them. They didn't really get any
Speaker 5: hits on those. No one really recognized this composite drawing.
Speaker 5: When when I look at who was eventually arrested, I
Speaker 5: don't see really a resemblance. But I think a September
Speaker 5: rolled in this attack. Everybody was again on kind of
Speaker 5: a heightened alert, when is the strangler going to strike again?
Speaker 5: And of course, within days of this attack on Hinters,
Speaker 5: we had a completely different kind of crime occur on
Speaker 5: the west side of town.
Speaker 4: Right you talk about October dell Ernst and two nights
Speaker 4: later an attempt to strangle a forty eight year old woman.
Speaker 4: But tell us about the attack on dell Ernst, sixty
Speaker 4: nine years old, and this is in October.
Speaker 5: I wonder if I could just back up just a
Speaker 5: second Dan again. Three four days after the Hinters attack,
Speaker 5: a family of three, the Gerald brick Of family, was
Speaker 5: knife to death in their home on the west side
Speaker 5: of Cincinnati. And we've already had a lowest Dan and
Speaker 5: Barbara Bowman killed on the west side. And this was
Speaker 5: a lovely family. A Monsanto engineer, his beautiful ex araline
Speaker 5: stewardess wife and their four year old daughter stabbed to
Speaker 5: death in their home, and the initial the initial reaction
Speaker 5: was that this was the Cincinnati Strangler. Extremely heightened alert
Speaker 5: when this family was butchered in their own home. It's
Speaker 5: hard to talk about the Cincinnati Strangler without mentioning the
Speaker 5: brick a family. And of course, as this turned out,
Speaker 5: the perpetrator of the brick And murders was not the
Speaker 5: Cincinnati Strangler. There was no relation to the Stranglings. Sad
Speaker 5: to say that fifty one years later, the brick And
Speaker 5: murders remain probably the most notorious cold case in Cincinnati history,
Speaker 5: unsolved to this day. Just like the Stranglings are, so
Speaker 5: city's on high alert, and this beautiful family is butchered
Speaker 5: in their own home. Wasn't related to the Cincinnati Strangler.
Speaker 5: Did nothing to ease the tension in the city. And
Speaker 5: as you said, we had an assault in early October
Speaker 5: a very nice part of Walnut Hills. A woman named
Speaker 5: Dell Ernst was attacked in her hallway by a short,
Speaker 5: slightly built black man who would ask her for direction somewhere.
Speaker 5: And again, this has all the earmarks of a strangler attempt.
Speaker 5: So we start rolling up toward October eleventh at this point,
Speaker 5: which was another significant date, right, Will.
Speaker 4: You want to talk about Alice hawk Hustler.
Speaker 5: Boy, Well, this was this was really the climactic event
Speaker 5: of this saga. Dan. She was a fifty one year
Speaker 5: old wife and mother of nine children. Her husband was
Speaker 5: the chief surgeon at Good Samaritan Hospital. They lived in
Speaker 5: the gorgeous Clifton Gaslight district, fine old homes, gas lights,
Speaker 5: a very elite neighborhood. And on the night she was murdered,
Speaker 5: Alice Hawkhausler was out picking her daughter up from her
Speaker 5: job at Good Samaritan, dropping her daughter off at the
Speaker 5: daughter's apartment because she was afraid that the strangler was
Speaker 5: going to get her daughter. And while they were parked
Speaker 5: in front of the daughter's apartment, a car pulled up
Speaker 5: behind them, a two tone Chevy with a lone black driver.
Speaker 5: This fits the description of a driver and a car
Speaker 5: seen near some of the stranglings. The man eventually drives off,
Speaker 5: and Alice Hawkhausler lets her daughter off and she drives
Speaker 5: home to her house, parks near the garage. Her husband
Speaker 5: and seven of her children are asleep inside. She has
Speaker 5: forty feet to go to the safety of her back door.
Speaker 5: She never makes it. Strangler hits her a crushing blow
Speaker 5: on the driveway, drags her back into the garage, rapes her,
Speaker 5: and strangles her with the belt of her bathrobe. The
Speaker 5: woman was dressed for bed. She was merely picking her
Speaker 5: daughter up and dropping her daughter off because she was
Speaker 5: worried about her daughter. I mean, the irony of her murder.
Speaker 5: She wouldn't even be out at midnight on October eleventh
Speaker 5: if she wasn't worried about the strangler killing her daughter.
Speaker 5: And the strangler kills her twenty feet from her back
Speaker 5: door in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Cincinnati. And
Speaker 5: Dan the Fertilizer hit the fan with this one. This
Speaker 5: was a prominent victim, prominent in the arts and charitable work.
Speaker 5: This is one of Cincinnati's finest neighborhoods. And the strangler
Speaker 5: has really come home to roost and taken a high
Speaker 5: profile victim. And you know, police will tell you we
Speaker 5: investigate all crimes the same, but when the victim is
Speaker 5: high profile, they obviously spend more time. So this again,
Speaker 5: this spawned the largest law enforcement mobilization in Cincinnati history.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at a massive headline now in the Cincinnati Inquiry,
Speaker 5: five thousand man posse beefs up hunt for sex maniac.
Speaker 5: This was Kennedy assassination and Pearl Harbor font And the
Speaker 5: five thousand man posse was milkmen, mailmen, delivery drivers, meter readers,
Speaker 5: anybody moving throughout the city was deputized to look for
Speaker 5: a lone black man in a two tone Chevy. And
Speaker 5: you know, I was in seventh grade then, Dan, never
Speaker 5: seen anything like it in this city, a complete mobilization.
Speaker 5: We've had five murders, a tribute to the strangler, and
Speaker 5: we've had this beautiful family the Brick has butchered in
Speaker 5: their own home. During this same timeframe, the fertilizer has
Speaker 5: hit the fan in Cincinnati. And you know, Dan, you
Speaker 5: even moved they moved Halloween to the daytime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, incredible that year. Yeah, you talk about the Brick
Speaker 4: of murders and you talk about Alice Hawcastler, so so
Speaker 4: too high profile, within a few weeks of each other,
Speaker 4: within two weeks of each other, and you say, now
Speaker 4: the newspaper lines, the newspaper headlines, they were frenzied, feverish
Speaker 4: coverage and you say that coverage was nothing since well,
Speaker 4: I hadn't seen anything like that except the coverage bonned
Speaker 4: by the Cummingsville railroad killer in nineteen oh four, which
Speaker 4: you write about near chapter.
Speaker 5: One in this book, Chapter one, very similar to that. Actually,
Speaker 5: of course those were the back then, nineteen oh four
Speaker 5: nineteen oh five. That was kind of the heyday of
Speaker 5: the yellow journalism. They loved that sensational kind of thing.
Speaker 5: But I'm looking at other headlines here from sixty six
Speaker 5: grim manhunt on for mad strangler, series of sex crimes
Speaker 5: shatters calm of serene Cincinnati. You know, it was I
Speaker 5: would say this was perhaps unprecedented, more so even than
Speaker 5: the Cummingsville ripper of nineteen oh four nineteen oh five.
Speaker 5: This was without question the largest law enforcement mobilization this
Speaker 5: city has ever seen. And Dallas Hawkhouse or murder is
Speaker 5: what really really brought that on. You know, to have
Speaker 5: a victim of this stature murdered steps away from her
Speaker 5: own back door, with her husband and seven of her
Speaker 5: children inside. This this crime was beyond audacious. This was
Speaker 5: the boldest crime the strangler had done. There was an
Speaker 5: outdoor barbecue going on to two yards over there were
Speaker 5: twenty people there. Nobody heard or saw anything. This woman
Speaker 5: was killed on her own driveway. Yeah, Halloween moved to
Speaker 5: the daytime. I mean, the fear was rampant in the
Speaker 5: month of October.
Speaker 4: You talk about a press conference where they linked Alice
Speaker 4: Hacostler's murder to other to the other murders by blood type. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: and you put again, just incredibly exactly one year apart
Speaker 4: from there.
Speaker 5: And almost to the day, really really one day short
Speaker 5: of the one year of the Creek attack. And you know,
Speaker 5: police have been looking at these tips about a short,
Speaker 5: slightly built black man, but they've got nothing. They know
Speaker 5: nothing about this man. They don't have a single solid lead.
Speaker 5: And you know, a crime expert predicted that the strangler
Speaker 5: would next strike in December, and I think, as you
Speaker 5: know Dan from reading it, there couldn't have been more
Speaker 5: wrong about that.
Speaker 4: Tell us what happens. You talk about rose Winstill, you
Speaker 4: talk about how the police link the four out of
Speaker 4: the five attacks and Walton Hills in Clifton area, but
Speaker 4: still no suspects, And then you talk about they even
Speaker 4: pulled state hospital records for the criminally insane and mental
Speaker 4: hospital patients records, but let's talk about what happens. Yeah,
Speaker 4: let's talk about what happens with rose winstill and what
Speaker 4: happens in this case nationally afterwards.
Speaker 5: Well, this was really unusual that the killer would strike
Speaker 5: within ten twelve days of a murder. And this was
Speaker 5: also in Clifton, though you couldn't get much more different
Speaker 5: from where Alice Hawkhouse was murdered in the Clifton Gaslight
Speaker 5: district and rose Winstel was murdered in Coryville, which is
Speaker 5: kind of a seedy neighborhood part of Clifton. This woman
Speaker 5: was eighty one years old, and this crime varied in
Speaker 5: a number of ways. There was forced entry. The killer
Speaker 5: actually had broken down her door and attacked her while
Speaker 5: she was asleep. She was way older than the other victims.
Speaker 5: She was beaten way more severely than the other victims,
Speaker 5: almost like it was a personal attack. And instead of
Speaker 5: leaving the victims spread eagled with a ligature around them,
Speaker 5: in this case, the killer actually covered her face and
Speaker 5: tried to jam the body under the bed. And police
Speaker 5: were responded to this and there was some question is
Speaker 5: this our strangler? Because this woman had been living with
Speaker 5: her brother up to about a week before the murder,
Speaker 5: and he had been moved to a nursing home, so
Speaker 5: she was really living alone for the first time in years.
Speaker 5: And the forced entry that's something we haven't seen at all.
Speaker 5: And the age of the victim. This woman was half blind,
Speaker 5: eighty one years old. I mean, she's not anything close
Speaker 5: to a sex object at this point. I mean, whoever
Speaker 5: this killer is, he just really wants it all. I mean,
Speaker 5: this is an absolute depraved crime. There were bite marks
Speaker 5: on her body. Again I say, she was beaten way
Speaker 5: more severely. And then it was almost like the killer
Speaker 5: and I've seen this before, was ashamed of what he
Speaker 5: had done and tried to hide her body and the bed.
Speaker 5: And this was not how the other victims were left.
Speaker 5: The other ones were kind of displayed, so whoever found
Speaker 5: them would be shocked. This was almost like a killer
Speaker 5: who like was ashamed of what he had done. So
Speaker 5: we have another murder eleven days after Hawkausler. Is it
Speaker 5: the strangler? I think it is? And Newsweek magazine finally
Speaker 5: the strangler goes national. The news Week magazine has an
Speaker 5: article about the Cincinnati strangler based on the rose winstool crime,
Speaker 5: and suddenly we've got national exposure to what's going on
Speaker 5: in Cincinnati. You know, I'm reading here from newsweek. Five
Speaker 5: such killings in ten months had made the signature fearfully
Speaker 5: plain to Cincinnatians and yet hard for police to read.
Speaker 5: So we've got our sixth victims and police have nothing,
Speaker 5: absolutely nothing. They are powerless to stop this man at
Speaker 5: this point.
Speaker 4: You talk. December ninth, police get a good tip and
Speaker 4: boy an incident with Sandra Chappis, twenty two year old,
Speaker 4: tell us about her run in with somebody while she's senior.
Speaker 5: Champis is twenty two years old. She works downtown at
Speaker 5: the Kentner Corporation, and it's slightly after midnight on the
Speaker 5: ninth and she's an attractive twenty two year old woman
Speaker 5: walking home to her apartment, just a few short city
Speaker 5: blocks in downtown Cincinnati. Of course, during the reign of
Speaker 5: the Strangler, a few short city blocks can be awfully long.
Speaker 5: A car pulls up beside her. It is a two
Speaker 5: tone Chevy with a lone black driver. He starts shadowing her.
Speaker 5: She gets within sight of her apartment and runs runs
Speaker 5: into the apartment and runs up the stairs. The driver stops,
Speaker 5: the car, hops out and starts chasing her up the stairs.
Speaker 5: She manages to get to her apartment. A neighbor hears
Speaker 5: the commotion and peeks out and sees a short, slightly
Speaker 5: built black man panting in the hallway like a dog
Speaker 5: and grabbing his crotch. He sees her, he bolts, almost
Speaker 5: runs into this woman's husband coming out the door, and
Speaker 5: he has the great presence of mind to note the
Speaker 5: license plate number of this suspect and repeated it to
Speaker 5: himself until he got upstairs and could write it down.
Speaker 5: So we have a license plate number of a suspect
Speaker 5: who attempted to attack a woman on December ninth. Seems
Speaker 5: like the police really have something here. But as you know,
Speaker 5: eight hours later, the strangler one block over from where
Speaker 5: Sanda Chaps was menaced. The strangler takes his seventh victim.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is really audacious. There's police all over
Speaker 5: downtown because of this chap as assault, and yet this
Speaker 5: guy slips through the net kills eighty one year old
Speaker 5: Lulu Carrick when she comes home from church, strangles her
Speaker 5: in the elevator of her apartment with one of her stockings.
Speaker 5: No rape this time. This is again an incredibly bold
Speaker 5: crime on a Friday morning with people going in and
Speaker 5: out of this apartment constantly, so no time for a rape.
Speaker 5: Just strangles this eighty one year old woman in the
Speaker 5: elevator and police respond and at the same time they
Speaker 5: finally trace this license plate number to the driver of
Speaker 5: that car and they show up at his workplace to
Speaker 5: arrest him.
Speaker 4: You talk about the suspect postile last twenty nine years old.
Speaker 4: You talk about Wee Steele po Steele, thank you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: You talk about what police questioned him and his disposition
Speaker 4: at that time, but you also talk about that he
Speaker 4: was questioned earlier and also tell us a very very
Speaker 4: interesting thing regarding cab driving.
Speaker 5: Yes, he was a former cab driver. They brought in
Speaker 5: witnesses to the Barbara Bowman situation, people that saw the
Speaker 5: cab driver at the bar. They identify Laski as the
Speaker 5: cab driver. And indeed, they've got the cab driver's voice
Speaker 5: on tape from the night of the Bowman killing, and
Speaker 5: he's using the same call number that Laski used when
Speaker 5: he was a cab driver. So people witnesses to the
Speaker 5: Bowman case start coming forward after Laski's arrested, identifying him
Speaker 5: as the cab driver who picked up Barbara Bowman. And
Speaker 5: they've got a really good case against post Tielaski Junior
Speaker 5: for the murder of Barbara Bowman. Two women who had
Speaker 5: stopped to ask directions of the cab driver as the
Speaker 5: attack was proceeding against Barbara Bowman identified that cab driver
Speaker 5: as post Ti Alaski Jr. As did all the witnesses
Speaker 5: in the bar and several people that rode in the
Speaker 5: cab with Laski before he killed Bowman because he was
Speaker 5: taking fares. He was driving people to where they wanted
Speaker 5: to go in a stolen cab and pocketing the money.
Speaker 5: So he's identified by numerous witnesses and he is charged
Speaker 5: with the murder of stabbing death of thirty year old
Speaker 5: Barbara Bowman in the month of December. Now is this
Speaker 5: the strangler? Good question? Good question? Is this the strangler?
Speaker 4: The police did not do as did not conduct an
Speaker 4: investigation and lay any other charges as a result of
Speaker 4: this or afterwards. After these charges were laid, there was
Speaker 4: no other further charges mentioned or talked about, even though
Speaker 4: they had really done.
Speaker 5: I mean this guy, this Lasky guy, he had a
Speaker 5: sheet as long as my arm. There was a man
Speaker 5: who had four previous convictions and prison terms for assault.
Speaker 5: And on October ninth day and nineteen sixty five, he
Speaker 5: had assaulted a sixteen year old girl very severely, and
Speaker 5: he was given probation and he was out on the
Speaker 5: street later that day, on October ninth, and three days later,
Speaker 5: Elizabeth Craco was attacked in Walnut Hills. And I've seen
Speaker 5: this with disorganized serial killers. Before they get tired of
Speaker 5: being identified by their victims, they're going to continue to
Speaker 5: attack women. They just don't want to be identified anymore.
Speaker 5: And it's very possible that posti Ulaski, as he hits
Speaker 5: the street, you know, some judge astoundingly giving him probation,
Speaker 5: he could have made a decision at that point, I'm
Speaker 5: going to start killing these women. So he is charged
Speaker 5: with the Bowman murder, and he has tried, and he
Speaker 5: is convicted, and he is sentenced to death. And the
Speaker 5: Cincinnati police say they have no comment on the six strangulations.
Speaker 5: Laski has never charged with any of them. All those
Speaker 5: six strangulation murders of the elderly women remain unsolved to
Speaker 5: this day. Posti Ulaski remains the prime suspect in those cases.
Speaker 4: You also talk about the NAACP, and they didn't like
Speaker 4: when the black men were rounded up, and again their
Speaker 4: constitutional rights were obviously not at all, Yes, but not
Speaker 4: go ahead about tell us about what other reactions to
Speaker 4: the verdicts.
Speaker 5: Well, they didn't really like the trial either. This was
Speaker 5: an all white pro death penalty jury. We had white
Speaker 5: witnesses claiming Laski was with Bowman. Laski had witnesses claiming
Speaker 5: he was home that night, mostly family members. So we've
Speaker 5: got a jury believing the white witnesses over the black witnesses.
Speaker 5: We've got Laski sentenced to death. And a lot of
Speaker 5: unrest occurred at this point, and Laski's conviction and death
Speaker 5: sentence eventually led to a major race riot in Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: On June eleventh, we had a week long race riot
Speaker 5: which two government commissions linked it to the arrest and
Speaker 5: conviction and death sentence of Poste A. Laski. A black
Speaker 5: community felt this man had been railroaded. They felt that
Speaker 5: these strangler cases were hung over his head during his
Speaker 5: trial for stabbing a woman, and that he was being
Speaker 5: convicted of being the strangler, not necessarily the killer of
Speaker 5: Barbara Bowman and it led to a serious race riode
Speaker 5: in June of nineteen sixty seven. And I don't think Dan,
Speaker 5: I don't think Cincinnati has ever been the same since
Speaker 5: these events. You know, this is not the kind of
Speaker 5: thing that was supposed to happen in Cincinnati, Ohio. You know,
Speaker 5: a serial killer, racial tension, this kind of thing. We
Speaker 5: really kind of went through the fire or so to speak,
Speaker 5: from nineteen sixty five through nineteen sixty seven, and I
Speaker 5: think it kind of shattered Cincinnati's image of being this nice, innocent, clean,
Speaker 5: conservative Midwestern town where nothing bad ever happened. But hey,
Speaker 5: something did, and seven women died. And it's still kind
Speaker 5: of a mystery. You know, people still tell me when
Speaker 5: I give talks on this program, well, Postiolaski was the strangler, right,
Speaker 5: And I have to remind them he's the alleged Cincinnati strangler.
Speaker 5: He has never been convicted of the six rape strangulations
Speaker 5: of the elderly women. He was convicted of stabbing a
Speaker 5: thirty year old woman in a taxicab. That's the only
Speaker 5: case he was convicted of, and he died in prison
Speaker 5: in nine proclaiming his innocence Throughout he got a death sentence.
Speaker 5: But when the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty, he
Speaker 5: got off death row along with the Manson family. Uh,
Speaker 5: Sir hen Sir Han, Richard Speck, all those bad actors
Speaker 5: got off death row free. So that kind of that
Speaker 5: kind of wraps it up there as far as this story.
Speaker 5: But quite a story, eh.
Speaker 4: Yes, you talk about one. One last thing though, that
Speaker 4: one police officer mentioned that been involved with this said,
Speaker 4: the killings ceased one Zlaski was arrested.
Speaker 5: You know they did. Indeed they did. Indeed, Dan, we
Speaker 5: had some we had some additional assaults afterwards. I like
Speaker 5: to say there's two myths about serial killers that both
Speaker 5: come into play here. One is that they never stop. Well,
Speaker 5: that's silly. They definitely do stop. Jack the Ripper stopped,
Speaker 5: Zodiac stopped, VTK stopped, Texar Cana Moonlight murderers stopped, hillside
Speaker 5: stranglers even stopped. They do stop. And the other myth
Speaker 5: is that serial killers are white males. But if you
Speaker 5: look back through the history of serial murder, black serial
Speaker 5: killers basically occur roughly around twelve to thirteen percent, which
Speaker 5: is basically the occurrence of black people in the population
Speaker 5: of this country. So the representation of black serial killers
Speaker 5: mirrors really the representation of our population. So there are
Speaker 5: black serial killers, and serial killers do stop, and the
Speaker 5: stranglings did stop. You're absolutely correct. Some people take that
Speaker 5: as like the main piece of evidence that Laski was
Speaker 5: the strangler that they stopped. I don't. I think two
Speaker 5: of these cases, Lois Dant and Rose Winstel, those don't
Speaker 5: seem to fit the pattern. It looked like a killer
Speaker 5: who maybe knew the victim would be alone. I think
Speaker 5: Laski did some of these, but possibly not all of them.
Speaker 4: Let's get back to the case that intersected and a
Speaker 4: very very important case and fascinating case too. And we
Speaker 4: mentioned it Gerald Brica and his wife Linda. Oh and
Speaker 4: if you call it in a chapter, you call a
Speaker 4: vision of deadly desire and the brick of family murders.
Speaker 4: And this is right in the midst of this Cincinnati
Speaker 4: strangler that never was.
Speaker 5: Two weeks before. Alice Hawkhausler, Yeah, it's two weeks before.
Speaker 5: I've never seen a case like this. The rumor mill
Speaker 5: is still active after fifty one years. I give talks
Speaker 5: on the West side of town about the brick a case.
Speaker 5: I'll get two hundred and fifty people showing up. This
Speaker 5: case has haunted Cincinnati for more than half a century.
Speaker 5: And you can't separate the Cincinnati Strangler from the Brickercase.
Speaker 5: You just can't. And the brickercase narrowed to a single suspect,
Speaker 5: a prominent veterinarian who was linked romantically with Linda Brica,
Speaker 5: and this gentleman lawyered up and they were unable to
Speaker 5: interview him further in the case stalemated for more than
Speaker 5: half a century. But it is the most notorious cold
Speaker 5: case in Cincinnati history, if you asked me, the second
Speaker 5: in Ohio history, behind the murder of Maryland Shepherd in Cleveland,
Speaker 5: which is also a mystery these days, you know, with
Speaker 5: Sam Shephard acquitted. But yeah, the brickercase is just it's notorious.
Speaker 5: I get rumors about it all the time. Recently, some
Speaker 5: people have linked ay beloved Katie show host in Cincinnati
Speaker 5: in the sixties with the brick of murders. Indeed, this
Speaker 5: man was interviewed in conjunction with the investigation in nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty six. So you can't separate the strangler and the
Speaker 5: Bricker case. But the Bricker case, I think because of
Speaker 5: the murder of the child, you know, the four year
Speaker 5: old child who obviously knew the killer. It just incensed people.
Speaker 5: And my next book will cover the saga of the
Speaker 5: Cincinnati strangler and the brick of family murders and what
Speaker 5: Cincinnati went through in nineteen sixty six. I'm hoping to
Speaker 5: have it out by the end of the year. We'll see.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, we won't get into all of it. But again,
Speaker 4: just for those curious, you talk about the four year
Speaker 4: old daughter, and you talk about maybe we could just
Speaker 4: go through the crime scene just as a sort of
Speaker 4: prelude to what you'd be writing about later. And I'm
Speaker 4: sure we'll have you back on the program to talk
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 5: So let's we still have enough time.
Speaker 4: Sure, absolutely, let's talk about exactly who this family was.
Speaker 4: He was twenty eight years old. His wife was Linda
Speaker 4: and very beautiful. We alluded to that, and they had
Speaker 4: a four year old daughter, Debbie. So tell us who
Speaker 4: they were, and before we get into this actual incredible
Speaker 4: crime scene that again galvanized police, confounded police, and has
Speaker 4: captivated Cincinnati and a bigger audience for over thirty three years, well.
Speaker 5: Really for fifty some years now. It was nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 5: Gerald Bricca was a young engineer at the Monsanto Corporation.
Speaker 5: They transferred here from Seattle, rising star in Monsanto. Upwardly mobile, workaholic,
Speaker 5: but in an eighty hour weeks. His wife was a
Speaker 5: stunning former airline stewardess. They had a beautiful four year
Speaker 5: old daughter named Debbie. I'm looking at the pictures of
Speaker 5: this family right now, and you've seen him in the
Speaker 5: book Dan and Sunday Night. September twenty fifth, nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 5: Jerry Brica was seen taking out a garbage can, spoke
Speaker 5: with a neighbor, went back into his house, and the
Speaker 5: family was murdered, probably within fifteen minutes after the neighbor
Speaker 5: saw him outside. Stabbed to death. Killer wielded the knife
Speaker 5: maybe twenty five times. Killer or killers, because there's certainly
Speaker 5: some question about that. I've seen the crime scene photos.
Speaker 5: Pretty bad stuff. Jerry Brica was an extremely muscular young man.
Speaker 5: Linda Brico was dressed in a skimpy neglige. He was
Speaker 5: stabbed in the back and in the neck. She was
Speaker 5: stabbed in the chest, in the neck and thrown on
Speaker 5: top of him. So they're kind of spread eagled on
Speaker 5: top of each other in the master bedroom next door.
Speaker 5: Four year old Debbie appeared to have been dragged from
Speaker 5: underneath a bed, stab four times. The knife went all
Speaker 5: the way through her body. Now the family is not
Speaker 5: seen on Monday or Tuesday. Tuesday night, neighbors have noticed
Speaker 5: newspapers piling up, garbage cans still at the curb. Jerry
Speaker 5: has not gone to work. Neighbors investigate, they open the
Speaker 5: front door, they are assaulted by forty eight hours worth
Speaker 5: of death wafting out of this house. I mean, the
Speaker 5: neighbor who leaned in the door said he knew what
Speaker 5: it was the minute he did. And police descend on
Speaker 5: an absolute atrocity of a crime scene, just a vicious,
Speaker 5: vicious killing. Jerry Brica had two socks stuffed in his
Speaker 5: mouth and a piece of tape. His carottit artery had
Speaker 5: been cut and he was probably gurgling, and the killers
Speaker 5: stuff the socks in his mouth, I think to shut
Speaker 5: him up. There was some question about whether Linda Bricker
Speaker 5: was raped. The coroner initially said she was raped. Lead
Speaker 5: investigator eventually said no, she had recent intercourse and the
Speaker 5: semen they took out of her is part of a
Speaker 5: DNA profile that exists today, and they were able to
Speaker 5: verify that she had sex with someone who was not
Speaker 5: her husband within twenty four hours of her murder. And
Speaker 5: along with that semen, they have Marlboro cigarette butts and
Speaker 5: some human hair found clasp in her hand. So we've
Speaker 5: got a DNA profile on this one. I wish I
Speaker 5: could say it was a really good DNA profile. I've
Speaker 5: been told by investigators, you're not going to get an
Speaker 5: oj Simpson number. It's not going to be one in
Speaker 5: seven million, be more like a one in twenty five
Speaker 5: kind of thing. They've sent a through Cotis known offenders,
Speaker 5: no hits. But of course we've got a prime suspect
Speaker 5: in this one, Dan who's deceased, so remains to be
Speaker 5: seen what's going to happen. But I'm telling you there's
Speaker 5: not you know, you can link the Strangler to this case.
Speaker 5: There's no two more notorious cases in Cincinnati history than
Speaker 5: the Cincinnati Strangler and the Brick of Family murders, and
Speaker 5: they all coincided in nineteen sixty six, probably one of
Speaker 5: the most frightening years in Cincinnati history.
Speaker 4: The FBI is involved in this and unlike the other
Speaker 4: crimes that they report that a black man or a
Speaker 4: negro is on the loose. Are the FBI Do the
Speaker 4: FBI determine if this is a black man or a
Speaker 4: white man, or white men or black men.
Speaker 5: Well, they sent a lot of evidence to the FBI lab.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is nineteen sixty six Dan pre DNA.
Speaker 5: You know, municipal labs are pretty rudimentary. If you've got
Speaker 5: something complex, you'd go to the FBI. And the Hamilton
Speaker 5: County was investigating this case. It fell outside of the
Speaker 5: city of Cincinnati. So we've got the city of Cincinnati
Speaker 5: investigating the strangler in the Hamilton County sheriffs investigating the
Speaker 5: Bricker case. And the county was very quick to put
Speaker 5: a headline in the paper brick a killer believed white.
Speaker 5: And they did that specifically to head off possible vigilante action.
Speaker 5: I think if people thought a black man had killed
Speaker 5: the brick A family, I think we would have had
Speaker 5: some serious harassment of black people in the city and
Speaker 5: county put that out there specifically to let people know
Speaker 5: this is not the strangler. The strangler did not kill
Speaker 5: this family. It was a white man, and they determined
Speaker 5: indeed that it was based on the evidence they had
Speaker 5: based on the hair and certain other things. But you know,
Speaker 5: it's easy to trash the victim in cases like this.
Speaker 5: Linda Brica was a stunningly beautiful woman, There's no question
Speaker 5: about that. She had a troubled marriage with her husband,
Speaker 5: and she appeared to be having a relationship with a
Speaker 5: prominent veterinarian in the area. Linda Brica had a tremendous
Speaker 5: love for animals. She was an animal rights activist long
Speaker 5: before that was fashionable. And this veterinarian had two interviews.
Speaker 5: He certainly incriminated himself in the second interview by his
Speaker 5: demeanor and his answers, and he lawyered up immediately and
Speaker 5: they were never able to talk to him again. It
Speaker 5: just stalemated. You talked about till his death in two
Speaker 5: thousand and four.
Speaker 4: Now, did something happen in two thousand and four that
Speaker 4: made anyone have a renewed interest in this case or not?
Speaker 5: Well, what was interesting is our suspect and his wife
Speaker 5: attempted suicide together and he died and she lapsed into
Speaker 5: a coma. But there was a suicide pact from the
Speaker 5: main suspect in the Bricka murders, and you know they've
Speaker 5: since reopened the case now that they have a DNA profile.
Speaker 5: I was actually on the task force in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: I've been given complete access to all the files. I'll
Speaker 5: tell you, Dan, I thought about this case for a
Speaker 5: long time, and I always thought it was a single killer.
Speaker 5: When I saw the crime scene photos and I saw
Speaker 5: the physique on Jerry Bricka even in death, I think
Speaker 5: it's multiple killers now. All it was was looking at
Speaker 5: the crime scene photo and the whole crime changed for
Speaker 5: me just looking at those photos. I don't think one
Speaker 5: man could have handled him. I mean, if he thought
Speaker 5: his family was in danger, I think he would have
Speaker 5: fought like a tiger. So I think we've got multiple
Speaker 5: suspects here, probably one with a gun. And this family
Speaker 5: was slaughtered without Jerry putting up a fight. There was
Speaker 5: no sign of a struggle. They had two aggressive dogs
Speaker 5: who were found locked in a basement playroom, and the
Speaker 5: dogs possibly were drugged. And again the tape on Jerry
Speaker 5: Brica's face turned out to be veterinary tape. There's all
Speaker 5: kind of clues in this crime that would point to
Speaker 5: a veterinarian, and indeed our prime suspect is a veterinarian.
Speaker 5: But there's actually a number of suspects. I have a
Speaker 5: list of about fifteen bona fide suspects, but that vet's
Speaker 5: number one, without questions. Right, it's a chilling case. And
Speaker 5: you've got the beautiful victim, the workaholic husband. You know,
Speaker 5: it's the sixties. There's wife swapping going on, there's swingers,
Speaker 5: there's key clubs, you know, all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 5: and the conservative Cincinnati and the rumors of her affairs
Speaker 5: started almost immediately upon the finding of the bodies. It
Speaker 5: seemed like everybody seemed to know this woman was stepping
Speaker 5: out and it possibly got her family killed. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: totally obsessed with this case, Dan, I think you.
Speaker 4: Know that what's interesting is that it seemed that the
Speaker 4: knife there was a carving knife possibly uses the murder
Speaker 4: weapon which was missing, but also that it was the
Speaker 4: carver's knife was also part of the home. It's so
Speaker 4: that is another interesting yes, question, isn't it knife was missing?
Speaker 5: People always felt thought that that carving set had been
Speaker 5: kept hidden away and that someone who was familiar with
Speaker 5: the house knew where it was. So I've been told
Speaker 5: by someone I interviewed who babysat for the brick was
Speaker 5: the carving set was out on the buffet. The fork
Speaker 5: was still there, the knife was missing. The knife was
Speaker 5: six and a half inches long. It certainly fit. The
Speaker 5: wounds was never found, but this was a confident killer
Speaker 5: or killers who managed to control the dogs, control the
Speaker 5: family use of ligatures. The family was tied up, no
Speaker 5: defensive wounds, No neighbors heard anything, and the houses were
Speaker 5: very close together. There were neighbors out and about. People
Speaker 5: were at home watching the television premiere of Bridge on
Speaker 5: the River Qui. That night, sixty million people across the
Speaker 5: country watched that movie, and the brick of TV set
Speaker 5: two days later, when the bodies were found, was found
Speaker 5: on that channel that was playing the movie, so they
Speaker 5: apparently had settled in to watch this movie. Jerry had
Speaker 5: just gotten home from work on a Sunday night when
Speaker 5: the killer or killers arrived.
Speaker 1: Just a.
Speaker 5: Stunning case. It just gets under your skin like a splinter.
Speaker 5: Everybody that looks at this case becomes obsessed with it.
Speaker 5: And yes, we had a strangler running around at the
Speaker 5: same time. Just an astounding year in Cincinnati for crime.
Speaker 5: Really was.
Speaker 4: You talk about the crime scene itself, tell us if
Speaker 4: this is your deduction or partially police deduction, that it
Speaker 4: seemed that it wasn't ransacked, but rather that incriminating evident
Speaker 4: was removed.
Speaker 5: There's certainly drawers were pulled out, it looked staged. Nothing
Speaker 5: of value missing from the house. And again the speculation was,
Speaker 5: we're incriminating things linking Linda Brica to the killer, perhaps
Speaker 5: taken the killer. Killers appeared to spend a long time
Speaker 5: in the house after the murders. The Monday morning paper
Speaker 5: which hit that driveway about two thirty am was missing,
Speaker 5: could have been used to wrap a knife in, could
Speaker 5: have gone in the brick of garbage cans which were
Speaker 5: picked up that morning. You know, we don't find the
Speaker 5: bodies until Tuesday night, about about ten o'clock. So the
Speaker 5: first forty eight hours in this investigation are gone. I mean,
Speaker 5: the police are already hamstrung. I mean witnesses. You know,
Speaker 5: forty eight hours go by, people start to forget what
Speaker 5: they saw or what they heard, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: you know, can you remember something you saw or heard
Speaker 5: two or three nights ago. Probably not. So there was
Speaker 5: kind of hamstrung from the beginning, and as we see
Speaker 5: in a lot of crimes back then, Dan, the crime
Speaker 5: scene was utterly compromised. There was no clear jurisdiction when
Speaker 5: the bodies were found. There was a period of about
Speaker 5: ninety minutes when this crime scene was not controlled, numerous
Speaker 5: first responders wandering through, firemen, EMTs, cops from four different jurisdictions.
Speaker 5: I interviewed several of the people in the house. They
Speaker 5: said people were picking up things and looking at them,
Speaker 5: you know, wandering around, and finally Hamblin County took control
Speaker 5: and kicked everyone out. So we've got a probably a
Speaker 5: compromised crime scene. But you know, back then, Dan, almost
Speaker 5: all crime scenes were compromised. You just had to weed
Speaker 5: out the stuff that the detectives brought in in basically
Speaker 5: against the actual evidence. So the one big rumor was
Speaker 5: that it was a screw up, and the other big
Speaker 5: rumor about why this case wasn't solved as it was
Speaker 5: a cover up because the suspect was so prominent, and
Speaker 5: that somehow the police let him skate, you know where
Speaker 5: they kid gloved him kind of thing, and I see
Speaker 5: no evidence of that. They put surveillance on this man
Speaker 5: for years after this crime. They were following him into
Speaker 5: the nineteen seventies, and he continued to run his veterinary
Speaker 5: practice over there. So they never let up on this guy.
Speaker 5: But they just didn't have enough to go to a
Speaker 5: grand jury with. I mean, they could link him to
Speaker 5: the female victim. His demeanor and behavior was very suspicious.
Speaker 5: He did not have an alibi for the murder night,
Speaker 5: but that's just not enough. And he refused to cooperate
Speaker 5: and supply fingerprints, blood or hair, and he got himself
Speaker 5: a very good lawyer, very good player, and the whole thing,
Speaker 5: the whole thing just stalemated. Yeah, what was the.
Speaker 4: What was the The other employees were interviewed, and this
Speaker 4: is how it led to him being interviewed. And then
Speaker 4: his behavior raised some red flags, you say, But was
Speaker 4: there anything to the idea that he was a forty
Speaker 4: five year old man maybe spurned by this twenty three
Speaker 4: year old beauty.
Speaker 5: He was actually he was actually he was actually thirty five.
Speaker 5: He was married with five young children. He from what
Speaker 5: I've seen, he was a bit of a hound. Linda
Speaker 5: Brica would have been a she's only twenty three, just
Speaker 5: a stunningly beautiful woman who loves animals, and she appeared
Speaker 5: to really enjoy working with veterinarians. They actually interviewed Dan
Speaker 5: seven veterinarians in conjunction with this case that knew her,
Speaker 5: that's how crazy she was about animals. But during the
Speaker 5: second interview, he was unable to account for his whereabouts
Speaker 5: that night, and they caught him in several lives like literally,
Speaker 5: you're lying, and here's how we know that. And then
Speaker 5: he terminated the interview and immediately went out and lawyered
Speaker 5: up and that was it. They never spoke to him
Speaker 5: on the record again. His lawyer gave them such restrictive
Speaker 5: conditions for a third interview, the police refused to do it,
Speaker 5: and it just stalemate it. You know, I guess they
Speaker 5: could have had a grand jury subpoena him. I spoke
Speaker 5: with a county prosecutor, would you have done something different
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty six, and he said, I could have
Speaker 5: called a grand jury. They could have subpoened him as
Speaker 5: a witness, and he would have taken the fifth and
Speaker 5: that would have been it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So sometimes you got a clear suspt you just can't
Speaker 5: make the case. For whatever reason, you cannot make the case.
Speaker 5: And that's what we have here. And the brick A
Speaker 5: murders Haunts the West Side. To this day, I have
Speaker 5: people on a waiting list for this book about this case.
Speaker 5: And in my new book, the Bricker case will be
Speaker 5: the A plot and the strangler is the B plot,
Speaker 5: because you can't separate one without the other.
Speaker 4: So what was a media response to them not making
Speaker 4: an arrest and how much did they know about the
Speaker 4: suspect and what did they write about that suspect?
Speaker 5: Well, he was never identified, never officially identified at all.
Speaker 5: But you know, I was able to learn who he was.
Speaker 5: And you know, I see headlines like neighbor of brick
Speaker 5: A cleared, Police want certain man, Brica probe narrows to
Speaker 5: sing suspect. One brick of suspect remains, Police admit, here's
Speaker 5: one that's particularly on the anniversary of the brick Of
Speaker 5: murders one year later, prosecutor believes he knows who killed
Speaker 5: brick a family pretty much just putting it out there.
Speaker 5: Prosecutor said, you know, here we have a man who
Speaker 5: killed three people, but there were no witnesses, and because
Speaker 5: of the Miranda ruling, we can't grill this guy. You know,
Speaker 5: we've been deprived of those tools by the Supreme Court,
Speaker 5: and you know, so it just it just stalemate it.
Speaker 5: I know, it was frustrating for all the law enforcement people.
Speaker 5: I've interviewed the wife of the lead investigator who's passed on.
Speaker 5: She said he was haunted by this case, never got
Speaker 5: over it. I mean, he was unable to close the
Speaker 5: biggest case of his life. And she told me he
Speaker 5: was quite positive that the veterinarian suspect was the killer,
Speaker 5: had no doubt in his mind that they had basically
Speaker 5: brought this investigation to this guy's doorstep. They couldn't they
Speaker 5: couldn't close it. It's a it's a I tell you,
Speaker 5: I've been I've been obsessed with this case since it
Speaker 5: happened Dan, you know, and and and you know, I
Speaker 5: was already everybody was afraid of the strangler, and suddenly
Speaker 5: this beautiful family's butchered at the height of the strangler terror,
Speaker 5: Like what is going on in Cincinnati? And it's interesting
Speaker 5: to me that the strangler really got very little publicity.
Speaker 5: I mean, people today they know who the Boston strangler,
Speaker 5: they know the Boston strangler case very well, but they
Speaker 5: don't know the Cincinnati Strangler. People don't know this case.
Speaker 5: And by the way, Dan Albert de Salvo was not
Speaker 5: the Boston Strangler, And I think that's a great that's
Speaker 5: a great show for another time. I'd be happy to
Speaker 5: talk about that.
Speaker 4: But absolutely, Yeah, Well we haven't covered at all whatsoever.
Speaker 4: So so many murders and so many so little time.
Speaker 5: Well, we that's one we should maybe talk about at
Speaker 5: some point. The only evidence against Albert de Salvo was
Speaker 5: his own confession, which included the similar errors that were
Speaker 5: in the newspaper. He had a photographic memory. I think
Speaker 5: he just memorized the accounts of these murders and uh,
Speaker 5: he was interrogated by a guy who asked him leading questions,
Speaker 5: you know, like what color was a bathroom? Was it blue?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think the Boston Strangler was a number of different killers.
Speaker 5: In the case of the younger victims, there were clear
Speaker 5: suspects that knew these women and had reason to kill them,
Speaker 5: but it all got grouped together under one killer. So
Speaker 5: that would be a good show for another time.
Speaker 4: Definitely, absolutely what you speaking of conclusions and deductions, you
Speaker 4: do that in this book, So tell us this unique
Speaker 4: sort of aspect of your book and why you've decided
Speaker 4: to do it.
Speaker 5: I've I've ever seen it done this way, and you know, Dan,
Speaker 5: I wrote this book for true crime people. You know,
Speaker 5: I didn't put twenty photos in the middle of the book.
Speaker 5: I've got one hundred and fifty photographs spread through each chapter.
Speaker 5: As you know. On my on each beginning chapter page,
Speaker 5: I have a picture of the crime scene as it
Speaker 5: looks today, pictures of the victims immediately. But at the
Speaker 5: end of each case, I did a thing called eye witness,
Speaker 5: not an eye in my head, but I as in me,
Speaker 5: and I wrote a used a different font, I wrote
Speaker 5: in present tense, and I recreated the murders, and I
Speaker 5: pointed a finger. I attempted. There's my attempt to solve them.
Speaker 5: I've had some of my fans of this book say, boy,
Speaker 5: those eyewitnesses were really something. Who wrote those? I said,
Speaker 5: I did, well, it would read so different than the
Speaker 5: rest of the book, And I said, it's just, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm trying not to leave people hanging. I don't want
Speaker 5: people to finish the chapter and go, wow, I wonder
Speaker 5: who killed them? This is what I think happened. I've
Speaker 5: had a really positive response to that. I've never seen
Speaker 5: that done in a true crime book. But yeah, I
Speaker 5: don't skimp on the photos. True crime. People like a
Speaker 5: lot of photos, don't they absolutely?
Speaker 4: You know, they don't want them.
Speaker 5: I don't want them in the middle of the book.
Speaker 5: Don't you hate that trying to turn into a middle
Speaker 5: section to look at a photo and then turn back
Speaker 5: to your chapter. I would I would never do that.
Speaker 5: In my readers, the photos are where you need them. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 5: So the eyewitness thing people seem to like it kind
Speaker 5: of reads like a little short story. I was able
Speaker 5: to kind of stretch my novelist chops a little bit there,
Speaker 5: and yeah, I named the killers. You know, uh, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm giving it, given up my best shot. I think
Speaker 5: you know, these are all cold cases. It's I dedicated
Speaker 5: the book to the victims, my attempt to achieve a
Speaker 5: sense of social justice for them. I didn't want these
Speaker 5: people to be forgotten just because their cases weren't solved.
Speaker 5: And I've talked with a lot of family members and
Speaker 5: I think people really appreciate what I did here to
Speaker 5: get these cases back out.
Speaker 4: Tell us about your task, tell us about your task
Speaker 4: force involvement. Tell us more about that.
Speaker 5: Oh the brick a case. Yeah, I was invited, one
Speaker 5: of two civilians to to actually come and look at
Speaker 5: the brick a file, and I had been attempting to
Speaker 5: get into this file for more than a decade without
Speaker 5: any luck. The Hamilton County jurisdiction refused anyone access to
Speaker 5: this file. They would say, you know, it's an unsolved case,
Speaker 5: so there's no freedom of information, and I reminded them
Speaker 5: at that point unsolved status does not preclude a freedom
Speaker 5: of information search. Now, the sheriff at the time who
Speaker 5: was guarding this file retired and the new Hamilton County
Speaker 5: sheriff was able to let me in and we had
Speaker 5: a series of meetings with detectives, had some action items assigned,
Speaker 5: looked at suspects. I went out and interviewed more people,
Speaker 5: and unfortunately the two detectives eventually got swamped with actual
Speaker 5: current crimes. We met off and on for about a year,
Speaker 5: and basically, I believe my book, my forthcoming book, will
Speaker 5: be the best chance of solving this case. Our prime
Speaker 5: suspect has been dead since two thousand and four, and
Speaker 5: I don't see DNA solving the case at this point.
Speaker 5: I wish that wasn't so, but I don't think that
Speaker 5: is going to happen, So it's kind of on me now.
Speaker 5: I'm the caretaker of this story. The strangler, the Brick
Speaker 5: of Family, and you know what happened to Cincinnati in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six. I mean, people really need to look
Speaker 5: at this. It's two crimes that haven't gotten a lot
Speaker 5: of national publicity, but as sensational as anything else that
Speaker 5: was happening around the country, as far as crimes. I mean,
Speaker 5: seven women murdered by a serial killer, beautiful family of
Speaker 5: three murdered in their own home at the same time,
Speaker 5: Richard Speck, Charles Whitman. Valerie Percy, the daughter of the
Speaker 5: Senator in Chicago, was murdered the week before the Brick
Speaker 5: of Family. I mean, it just really a lot of
Speaker 5: high profile, true crimes in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 4: Without question, you talk about a three hundred percent increase
Speaker 4: in either violent crime or murder in ten years in Cincinnati.
Speaker 5: Yeah back then, you mean, yeah, absolutely, yeah, that's what
Speaker 5: the statistics said. There had been a real upsurge in
Speaker 5: violent crime in the sixties. Wasn't just these high profile
Speaker 5: cases we've been talking about either. I don't know if
Speaker 5: it was just a byproduct of the sixties, you know,
Speaker 5: racial problems, Vietnam protests, hippies, it just really seemed to
Speaker 5: be a major upsurge and all kinds of crime during
Speaker 5: that decade. And if you look at Queen City Gothic
Speaker 5: my table of contents, one, two, three, five of my
Speaker 5: cases took place in the sixties. It's the most represented
Speaker 5: decade of the book by far, and really the most
Speaker 5: high profile cases. Patty Rebholtz, the brick Is the Strangler,
Speaker 5: the Dumbler, triple murder in Mount Lookout in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 5: all of these unsolved, you know, just waiting, just sitting there,
Speaker 5: waiting to be opened by somebody, you know, like a
Speaker 5: present under the tree that's still sitting there. So yeah,
Speaker 5: quite a year.
Speaker 4: And you talk about the fast the nation with these
Speaker 4: cold cases to these unsolved murders, and this book, you say,
Speaker 4: being very important in the city of Cincinnati and being
Speaker 4: a bestseller there. Tell us also about just a little
Speaker 4: bit about Queen City Notorious. And before I let you go,
Speaker 4: maybe tell us how people might be able to look
Speaker 4: at your other work. Go to your website, tell us
Speaker 4: a little bit about that contact it's information.
Speaker 5: Yes, I wrote Queen City. You know, Queen City Gothic
Speaker 5: changed my life. I was able to retire from a
Speaker 5: thirty two year business career. Longest book. It was a
Speaker 5: It was a regional bestseller. The library Public Library of
Speaker 5: Cincinnati had sixty copies. The book was on hold for
Speaker 5: eighteen months. Literally copies came in and they went right
Speaker 5: back out. Certainly sold a lot, and several detectives I
Speaker 5: worked with, you know, these old cold case guys, said hey,
Speaker 5: j T. You know, great book, but we kind of
Speaker 5: looked like we weren't very competent in some of these cases.
Speaker 5: Can you write a book where we solve the cases?
Speaker 5: And Quincy Notorious is that book. It's dedicated to the
Speaker 5: detectives some extremely high profile cases in Cincinnati where you
Speaker 5: actually get to meet the killer, see the trial, see
Speaker 5: the punishment. And these are all killers next door. These
Speaker 5: are all ordinary people for the most part, that were
Speaker 5: driven to murder, and some of them are some of
Speaker 5: the most unlikely killers you will ever see, and yet
Speaker 5: they've killed. And this book was my ode to the detectives.
Speaker 5: It's a great book. It has not sold as well
Speaker 5: as Queen City Gothic, And based on my research and
Speaker 5: what people tell me, people want mystery, not justice. I
Speaker 5: watch a lot of crime shows. I like to see justice.
Speaker 5: But there's something about the lure of a mystery. People
Speaker 5: just can't get enough of the mystery. And Notorious has
Speaker 5: done well out there, and I'm glad I put it
Speaker 5: out there. I wanted to show how an investigation is successful.
Speaker 5: They won these investigations. These killers were caught, in several
Speaker 5: cases electrocuted. But there's something about the lure of the mystery.
Speaker 5: But both books are available on Amazon or anywhere else
Speaker 5: books are sold. My website is jttownshend dot com. I
Speaker 5: have a Facebook page, JT. Townsend True Crime Detective, which
Speaker 5: has got tons of stuff about these cases. I encourage
Speaker 5: people to get on there, and certainly like the page.
Speaker 5: My website has some longer pieces. I was on Coast
Speaker 5: to Coast AM radio a couple months ago talking about
Speaker 5: the Lindberg baby kidnapping. Have a lengthy, lengthy article on
Speaker 5: that on my website with exclusive photos from inside the
Speaker 5: house where this child was taken. And I don't know
Speaker 5: anybody that has these photos. So if you want to
Speaker 5: see the room where the child was taken and what
Speaker 5: the inside of the house look like, hop on JT
Speaker 5: Townsend dot com or hop on JT. Townsend True Crime
Speaker 5: detective on Facebook. I point the finger right at Charles Lindbergh.
Speaker 5: I will kid you not.
Speaker 4: Well, it's been fantastic. I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 4: Dat Townsend coming on and talking about Queen City, Gothic,
Speaker 4: Cincinnati's most infamous murder mysteries. It's been a pleasure. Thank
Speaker 4: you very much. You have a great evening and.
Speaker 5: I appreciate you having me. I'm looking forward to a
Speaker 5: future program.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I can't wait till next time. Thank you very much,
Speaker 4: thank you, good night, good night.