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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 Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. 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 Zupanski.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. The disappearance of a twenty one year old
Speaker 7: woman from a Massachusetts suburb became one of the most
Speaker 7: discussed crimes of the twentieth century. The discussion intensified when
Speaker 7: the public learned that she worked as a prostitute in
Speaker 7: Boston's notorious red light district, the Combats, and was linked
Speaker 7: by a trail of blood to a famous professor from
Speaker 7: Tufts University. When Robin Benedict vanished, the investigation and media
Speaker 7: circus that gripped the city of Boston hadn't been seen
Speaker 7: since the days of the Boston Strangler case. On a
Speaker 7: Sunday morning in March nineteen eighty three, a small time
Speaker 7: pimp walked into a police station and claimed his girlfriend
Speaker 7: was missing. He said she had been on her way
Speaker 7: to visit a client named William Douglas. In the year
Speaker 7: that followed, the case drew in detectives, state troopers, scores
Speaker 7: of journalists, and even psychics, but Robin was never found.
Speaker 7: Boston Tabloid reconstructs a grizzly murder and explores one man's
Speaker 7: bizarre obsession. In revisiting this legendary crime, Don Stradley consulted
Speaker 7: journalists involved in the media frenzy, prison authorities, arresting officers,
Speaker 7: and psychiatrists, all in an effort to unravel a most
Speaker 7: tangled story. Why was the city and the nation swept
Speaker 7: up in this sordid tale. It remains a grim and
Speaker 7: fascinating moment in Boston's history. The book they were featuring
Speaker 7: this evening is Boston Tabloid, The Killing of Robin Benedict,
Speaker 7: with my special guest, journalist and author Don Stradley. Welcome
Speaker 7: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview,
Speaker 7: Don Stradley, my pleasure, Dan, thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 7: Let's get right to the beginning of Boston Tabloid, and
Speaker 7: as you write, you introduce William Henry James Douglas born
Speaker 7: nineteen forty one in Saranac Lake, New York. Tell us
Speaker 7: about his father, Bill Senior and his mother Eleanor, and
Speaker 7: a little bit about their life and his early development.
Speaker 4: Well, Bill Douglas was this sort of child who was
Speaker 4: shuttled around. They lived in a few different areas in
Speaker 4: upstate New York. His father was I believe he was
Speaker 4: a plumber, but he wasn't working full time. And his
Speaker 4: mother was also made at near hotels. She was a
Speaker 4: hotel maid, and even that was not full time work either.
Speaker 4: So Douglas had a couple of parents who, you know,
Speaker 4: struggle to make ends meet. And what I noticed about
Speaker 4: Douglas and other criminals that I've written about, is that
Speaker 4: he was sort of a poor kid growing up in
Speaker 4: an affluent area. And I've always wondered, I've always wondered,
Speaker 4: does that sort of thing have an effect on kids
Speaker 4: as they're growing up. You know, they're constantly seeing how
Speaker 4: the other lives. You know, they were living in a
Speaker 4: very nice area, but they were sort of stuck in
Speaker 4: this kind of lower class kind of lifestyle. And Bill
Speaker 4: Bill was a bit of a spoiled kid. He was
Speaker 4: a bit of a strange kid. He was off and
Speaker 4: by himself or just stuck in the trailer with his mother,
Speaker 4: left to his own devices. I think because he was
Speaker 4: an only child and he was born to parents who
Speaker 4: were a bit old. They were well into their forties
Speaker 4: when they had him. He just grew up as a
Speaker 4: bit of a misfit, bit of an oddball. But he
Speaker 4: developed an interest in science and turned out to be
Speaker 4: very handy in his science classes, and he managed to
Speaker 4: become one of the top biology professors in the country.
Speaker 4: He was really cutting edge.
Speaker 7: You talk about earlier on, before he becomes a star
Speaker 7: and after he discovers this aptitude for science and specifically biology,
Speaker 7: is that he had discovered pornography, and you write about
Speaker 7: the particular type of pornography that he discovered early on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he had an interest in pornography. He grew up
Speaker 4: in that period of time in the late fifties early
Speaker 4: sixties when there was just a big, massive boom in pornography,
Speaker 4: possibly because Playboy magazine had been such a success. Pornography
Speaker 4: was everywhere, magazines were sold fairly regularly, and bus stations
Speaker 4: and even supermarkets. But he loved pornography, and he developed
Speaker 4: a taste for bondage type of publications. He loved imagery
Speaker 4: of people being tied up and maybe tortured a little bit.
Speaker 4: I don't know that he ever acted out these fantasies
Speaker 4: that he saw portrayed in magazines, but he had an
Speaker 4: ongoing interest in pornography, particularly bondage, and I guess you
Speaker 4: might even say some of the sato masochistic publications that
Speaker 4: were coming out he gravitated to that.
Speaker 7: He read about his father dying in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 7: and so he was just early twenties, and his mother
Speaker 7: psychologically deteriorated greatly after the death of her husband Dinj.
Speaker 4: Yeah, psychologically and physically. She was probably in her sixties
Speaker 4: at that time and was barely able to look after herself.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it was some sort of Parkinson's
Speaker 4: or Alzheimer's. It was some sort of issue that left
Speaker 4: her a bit of a recluse. And so suddenly the
Speaker 4: roles were reversed. William was now sort of the head
Speaker 4: of the household and he was going to college. At
Speaker 4: the times he was starting to branch out. He didn't
Speaker 4: really have time to be a doting son for his
Speaker 4: sickly mother. He was moving out soon and on his
Speaker 4: way to becoming an academic star.
Speaker 7: You're right that the college setting was very good for
Speaker 7: William and his intellect gave him an air of sophistication
Speaker 7: that he hadn't known before, especially due to the poverty
Speaker 7: that he grew up in.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, you know, that happens with a lot of people.
Speaker 4: I think particularly it happens with young men. You know,
Speaker 4: suddenly they're in a new environment and they can show
Speaker 4: off a little bit. Had a particular talent for science,
Speaker 4: and you know, I think it brought him out of
Speaker 4: his shell. As they say, there were a lot of
Speaker 4: young girls who were suddenly interested in him, which had
Speaker 4: never happened before, and you know, he played that for
Speaker 4: what it was worth. I don't think he ever became
Speaker 4: a ladies man. I think he remained the awkward, little
Speaker 4: oddball that he'd always been, but now he had a
Speaker 4: little bit of a personality now, a little bit of
Speaker 4: swagger that he could use. Was it must have been
Speaker 4: startling for him suddenly to be going out with women,
Speaker 4: Suddenly he had male friends, he joined a fraternity. I
Speaker 4: think he was being a young college man of the era.
Speaker 4: And if if you see a picture of him in
Speaker 4: his college yearbook, you know he's just a typical, typical
Speaker 4: guy from that period. You know, flat top, haircut, suit
Speaker 4: and tie. And he lost a lot of weight in college.
Speaker 4: He'd always been an overweight kid, and in college he
Speaker 4: slimmed down, and you know, it looked like he was,
Speaker 4: you know, heading into some kind of normal adulthood.
Speaker 7: You're right about meeting Nancy Bolton, this plane, heavy set
Speaker 7: and prim and proper woman. She had lost her father
Speaker 7: at a young age. Tell us about how they met
Speaker 7: and what soon happened afterwards.
Speaker 4: Well, she was a nursing student, I believe, and he
Speaker 4: was often coming in contact with nursing students, and I
Speaker 4: think he played on that too. He was this aspiring
Speaker 4: professor and aspiring scientist, and I think he liked the
Speaker 4: idea of nurses that would be his assistance, as well
Speaker 4: as maybe a wife. And yeah, they married right after college.
Speaker 4: I think she may have still been in college right
Speaker 4: after he graduated. They married, and again it looked like
Speaker 4: they were on their way to a pretty normal life,
Speaker 4: just a married couple in the late sixties by then.
Speaker 3: I think you're right about that.
Speaker 6: He was.
Speaker 7: He applied for and was granted a National Scienceant's Foundation
Speaker 7: fellowship for a year a postgraduate study at Yale. Right,
Speaker 7: this turned out to be a pivotal moment in his life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he liked the idea that he was fitting in
Speaker 4: with a high browse set. You know, he was at Yale.
Speaker 4: Now he wasn't just going to you know, a small
Speaker 4: teachers college in upstate New York. He was at Yale.
Speaker 4: And I think that really boosted his ego. And that
Speaker 4: was when he started to show some of the signs
Speaker 4: of the aggressive ego, maniacal character that was to come
Speaker 4: as just being exposed to the people at Yale made
Speaker 4: him think, yeah, he's a big shot. Now he doesn't
Speaker 4: have to do what other people tell him. He's a
Speaker 4: yalely he.
Speaker 7: Writ about his assent and got a research job of
Speaker 7: a w Alton Jones Science Center in Lake Placid. He
Speaker 7: became director of the center's electron microscopy facility as well
Speaker 7: as an associate director of education. And he made his
Speaker 7: name known in research circles you write, specializing in tissue culture.
Speaker 3: And he was well liked.
Speaker 7: And now he was a family man with three kids,
Speaker 7: and he also seemed to be a pretty good dad
Speaker 7: and by all appearances a decent husband as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in writing this book and trying to learn what
Speaker 4: I could about Douglas. I really couldn't decide if he
Speaker 4: was a decent family man who had a dark side,
Speaker 4: or if he was just a man with a dark
Speaker 4: side who happened to have a family. You know, I
Speaker 4: never really figured out what side of the fence I
Speaker 4: was on, And I feel that way about a lot
Speaker 4: of criminals, you know. They You'll talk to some psychiatrists
Speaker 4: who study these types of cases and they'll say everything
Speaker 4: is just a ruse, you know, everything is masquerade. But
Speaker 4: I think he did have feel for his family and
Speaker 4: particularly his children. I think he wanted to be a
Speaker 4: good dad, even if even if it was on a
Speaker 4: superficial level. He wanted to present himself as a good dad,
Speaker 4: and he got involved in all of their activities. But
Speaker 4: then again, you hear about, you know, all the serial
Speaker 4: killers who also do the same thing. You know, from
Speaker 4: BTK killer to whoever else. They all seem to be
Speaker 4: involved in, you know, civic activities, and they do present
Speaker 4: themselves as members of the community. So maybe maybe that's
Speaker 4: what he was doing. I don't know. He was a
Speaker 4: hard one to read it.
Speaker 7: Sometimes you talk about him having some problems arising at
Speaker 7: Alton Jones, but he was such a highly esteemed person
Speaker 7: at this lab that he had a lot of free reign.
Speaker 7: But you talk about the Boston's combat Zone, and you
Speaker 7: introduce this place and describe it, So tell us about
Speaker 7: Boston's Red Light District, the combat Zone.
Speaker 4: Well, Douglas was eventually hired by Tufts University Medical School,
Speaker 4: and the medical school was only about a block away
Speaker 4: from Boston's Red Light District, which was four or five streets,
Speaker 4: basically a neighborhood that was set up to be the
Speaker 4: adult entertainment district for the city. I don't know if
Speaker 4: other cities had did it so deliberately, but in the
Speaker 4: late sixties early seventies, Boston actually designated an area to
Speaker 4: be the adult entertainment center, and you would see X
Speaker 4: rated movies, you would see exotic dancers, bars, nightclubs, peep shows,
Speaker 4: which I don't even know if they still exist. But
Speaker 4: back then, you'd pay a quarter and look through a
Speaker 4: hole of the wall and it'd be a girl on
Speaker 4: the other side doing something. And it was also heavy
Speaker 4: with the sex and later on the drug trade. So Douglas.
Speaker 4: Douglas had probably heard of the combat zone because he
Speaker 4: was in Providence at one point he was in Connecticut
Speaker 4: going to Yale. In Providence, he was going to Brown University,
Speaker 4: i think, and the combat zone was such an established
Speaker 4: area that he had known about it positive and when
Speaker 4: he landed at Tufts he probably quietly celebrated to himself,
Speaker 4: you know, not letting his wife know, but he was
Speaker 4: probably very happy to be near the combat zone as
Speaker 4: it was called, because, Yeah, right after work he could
Speaker 4: just put on his coat venture on out to where
Speaker 4: all the strippers and prostitutes were. It was paradise for
Speaker 4: a guy like that who had grown up as a
Speaker 4: pornography addict. Now he was in a way, it was
Speaker 4: like going to Disneyland for him.
Speaker 7: You talk about a particular place that became his favorite hangout,
Speaker 7: which was a good time. But before that, he moves
Speaker 7: out to a very wealthy suburb called Sharon, named Sharon,
Speaker 7: and so everything appearances look like they've really arrived and
Speaker 7: achieved a certain status. Meanwhile, he was fully immersed in
Speaker 7: going to this combat zone, which is close to where
Speaker 7: he worked.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's true. Sharon is a beautiful suburb and at
Speaker 4: the time it was one of those up and coming places,
Speaker 4: and he bought a beautiful home for his family. But
Speaker 4: he was also you know, just pull on exploring the
Speaker 4: combat zone. You know, he just had a huge appetite
Speaker 4: for anything pornographic. At the time, the pornographic bookshops were
Speaker 4: like they were almost like cathedrals. They were so enormous.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm old enough, I remember you could walk
Speaker 4: around in the combat zone, and as I say in
Speaker 4: the book, it was so close to you know, the
Speaker 4: shopping discst in the business district that it was not
Speaker 4: uncommon to just see businessmen having you know, lunch in
Speaker 4: the zone, just going to one of the barrooms and
Speaker 4: having a drink under lunch hour. And you'd see little
Speaker 4: old ladies wandering around because you could you could get
Speaker 4: a good slice of pizza in that neighborhood, you know.
Speaker 4: And so Douglas was probably able to walk around without
Speaker 4: drawing much attention because a lot of everyday people were
Speaker 4: spotted in the zone. If you saw him in the zone,
Speaker 4: you wouldn't automatically think that he was up to no good.
Speaker 4: Chances are he may have been just on his way
Speaker 4: to get a beer somewhere or grab a quick lunch
Speaker 4: because it was near Chinatown, so you could sort of
Speaker 4: be anonymous, which I think he probably used that to
Speaker 4: his benefit. He was just a big guy walking around
Speaker 4: in the combat zone. Nobody really paid attention to him,
Speaker 4: so you could be sort of anonymous. Even if your
Speaker 4: friends saw you, well, they were there too, you know.
Speaker 4: Isn't that big a deal, right, And it was also
Speaker 4: the kind of place where they still had pool rooms
Speaker 4: and the video game Boom was just starting, but at
Speaker 4: the time they still had pinball alleys. I don't think
Speaker 4: anyone under the age of forty knows what that is,
Speaker 4: but they were still sort of recreational places that people
Speaker 4: would go to. So I think he liked the zone
Speaker 4: because even though he knew he was looking for prostitutes,
Speaker 4: he could have just been a guy going out for
Speaker 4: a drink in a game of pool.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about as you write, his behavior grew much
Speaker 7: stranger by the middle of nineteen eighty two. He started
Speaker 7: coming late for work, maybe an hour or more. He
Speaker 7: had fanciful excuses, and people in the office said it
Speaker 7: sounded like he was telling lies. And people discovered also
Speaker 7: that he was spending nights on the couch in his office.
Speaker 3: He looked pale. He looked sick.
Speaker 7: He was sweating heavily, and he would sometimes disappear in
Speaker 7: the middle of the day. Some of his coworkers thought
Speaker 7: he was overworked. Tell us about their questions about a
Speaker 7: mysterious grad student named Robin Benedict.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, by then he was starting to burn the
Speaker 4: candle at both and says they say. He was spending
Speaker 4: all of his nights in the combat zone. And he
Speaker 4: met this young woman who was about twenty or twenty
Speaker 4: one named Robin. And he was head over heels for
Speaker 4: this young woman, and in order to help her make money,
Speaker 4: he started adding her name to his list of interns
Speaker 4: and employees at the school, and he would say that
Speaker 4: she was his assistant. He never introduced her to anybody,
Speaker 4: and she never came into the school, but he would
Speaker 4: fill out his expense report and say, oh, yes, this
Speaker 4: woman Robin, she works for me. We owe this much money.
Speaker 4: And people were getting suspicious. He didn't know what was
Speaker 4: going on. They just know he was. He was looking
Speaker 4: sickly exhausted all the time. Their suspicions were growing.
Speaker 7: The Good Time Charlie's is a strip club that Robin
Speaker 7: worked at. And this is the club that Douglas frequented
Speaker 7: and that's where they did meet. But you say that
Speaker 7: Robin had a background that included a miss SEUs and
Speaker 7: also so that you write that she was sort of
Speaker 7: a hybrid of escort stripper and messus and so on.
Speaker 7: So tell us about this relationship and what it's characterized
Speaker 7: by with Douglas and Robin.
Speaker 4: Well, she looked at him as the cash cow. You know,
Speaker 4: she saw this lonely guy who was fascinated by her,
Speaker 4: and I think she played up to it. She saw
Speaker 4: him as an easy target. I don't think she wanted
Speaker 4: to be in the sex trade permanently. I think she
Speaker 4: wanted to get in there, make a big score, and
Speaker 4: then go on to do something else. That was what
Speaker 4: she kept saying. Now, of course, a lot of a
Speaker 4: lot of women in the sex trades say the same thing,
Speaker 4: you know, they say, oh, I'm only doing this part time.
Speaker 4: But she looked at him as her big score, and
Speaker 4: he was giving her a lot of money. He would
Speaker 4: set up meetings with her throughout the day, you know,
Speaker 4: at night. He wanted to be the first guy she
Speaker 4: saw when she started her shift, so to speak, Yes,
Speaker 4: and he wanted to be the last guy she saw
Speaker 4: when she knocked off for the evening at two in
Speaker 4: the morning or whenever it was. So they would set
Speaker 4: up trysts so he could always be in her sight line.
Speaker 4: And it was so strange that after a while it
Speaker 4: wasn't even sexual, which is one of the oddities their relationship.
Speaker 4: He was paying just for her company. At some points
Speaker 4: he wouldn't even set up sexual encounter. He just wanted
Speaker 4: her company. He wanted to take her out for a
Speaker 4: drink or dinner, go sit in the park on a
Speaker 4: park bench, and just be close to her. He was
Speaker 4: fascinated by her, so you know, she didn't play into
Speaker 4: his bondage fantasies. It's not like he had his pornographic
Speaker 4: fantasies fired up by her. He kind of looked at
Speaker 4: her as almost some sort of you know, angelic figure.
Speaker 4: Maybe he started out thinking of her in more pornographic terms,
Speaker 4: but in a while he looked at her in a
Speaker 4: more angelic way.
Speaker 7: You write in this book that Robin had a life
Speaker 7: that was unusual for somebody that ended up in sex work,
Speaker 7: especially at this younger age. But you talk about that
Speaker 7: she had an affair with a New England's Patriot linebacker
Speaker 7: and that she adapted to his religion.
Speaker 3: He was a Jehovah witness.
Speaker 7: And then he went back to his wife and his child.
Speaker 7: She had asked him if they could have a child together.
Speaker 7: He was not interested. And then while she was going
Speaker 7: out with this person the Acoustic, he was approached by
Speaker 7: a person named JR.
Speaker 3: Tell us about JR.
Speaker 7: And tell us about their meeting and what happened afterwards.
Speaker 4: Well, Robin had been sort of the All American girl
Speaker 4: in a way. That was how a lot of people
Speaker 4: remember her. She was, you know, she was in the
Speaker 4: you know, the marching band and the drum and Bugle corp,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. And she had always been interested
Speaker 4: in art and she wanted to go to art school.
Speaker 4: She had a very sort of suburban all American childhood,
Speaker 4: but she grew up in kind of a rough area,
Speaker 4: an area in Massachusetts that's a bit north of Boston,
Speaker 4: which is at the time was known for a lot
Speaker 4: of drugs, a lot of sex trade. So she was
Speaker 4: even though she was an All American kind of kid,
Speaker 4: she was in an area that was a bit rough,
Speaker 4: and she wanted out. She wanted glamor, she wanted money,
Speaker 4: and she wanted it as quickly as possible. This character, JR.
Speaker 4: Was a small time pimp and he knew some players
Speaker 4: on the New England Patriots, and he was one of
Speaker 4: those characters who was always hanging around guys who had
Speaker 4: some money and liked to party, and he would get girls.
Speaker 4: He'd bring in the females, and he saw Robin at
Speaker 4: a party and you know, nobody has it documented obviously,
Speaker 4: you know, there's no tape recording what happened. But apparently
Speaker 4: he just approached Robin and sort of put the idea
Speaker 4: in her head that she could make money working for him.
Speaker 4: But there was the other side of that. There was
Speaker 4: a detective who worked on the Caves who also claimed
Speaker 4: Robin had been dabbling in sex work while she was
Speaker 4: still in high school before she met this guy. So
Speaker 4: it's a bit mysterious. It's a bit murky how she
Speaker 4: went from being this all American girl to a prostitute.
Speaker 4: We have most of the puzzle piece, but there's one missing.
Speaker 4: For that detective to say that she'd been doing it
Speaker 4: while she was still a senior in high school. That
Speaker 4: was kind of stunning when I found that out. And
Speaker 4: so when JR. Approached her, well maybe she wasn't so shocked.
Speaker 4: Maybe she'd already been dabbling in the sex trade. She
Speaker 4: was running around with a fast crowd. She knew a
Speaker 4: lot of drug dealers and people who were interested in
Speaker 4: quick money, so she may have turned a couple of
Speaker 4: tricks while she was still in high school. It's a
Speaker 4: mysterious case. Tried to go into it as much as
Speaker 4: I could, but there was only so much information I
Speaker 4: did go.
Speaker 7: You talk about the police intervening knowing that or believing
Speaker 7: that she's not an atypical hooker for lack of a
Speaker 7: better word. And so the parents, John and Shirley Benedict,
Speaker 7: were called, knowing that she was a little bit different
Speaker 7: and maybe that she could be possibly saved by this intervention.
Speaker 7: So they were called. They were called to the police
Speaker 7: station another time. The parents were not support of her
Speaker 7: and Jr. In fact, the former linebacker Ray Caustic called
Speaker 7: the parents and warned them that this JR.
Speaker 3: Was a pimp.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was said. You know the police in Boston,
Speaker 4: the vice squad, they knew of JR. Too. They knew
Speaker 4: he was a really small time pimp, and at that time,
Speaker 4: pimps were really kind of being pushed out of the picture,
Speaker 4: and a lot of sex workers were working on their own,
Speaker 4: So Jr. Was a rarity in that time period eighty
Speaker 4: three eighty four, where he was still trying to maintain
Speaker 4: that image of having a couple of girls work for him,
Speaker 4: you know. But yeah, the parents didn't like him. He
Speaker 4: was just a traditional low life character.
Speaker 7: You're right that Robin introduces Douglas to cocaine use and
Speaker 7: he's often enjoying himself on cocaine and now has the
Speaker 7: attention of a young woman, So you right that he
Speaker 7: must feel like a superhero right about that time, they
Speaker 7: graduate the swanky restaurants, and he also is hemorrhaging money
Speaker 7: as you write, but he's not delusional nor naive, and
Speaker 7: spending the money seemed to be part of the thrill
Speaker 7: that he had with this Robin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of people would say that he was delusional,
Speaker 4: that he thought somehow, if he kept playing this role,
Speaker 4: that she would eventually fall in love with him. But
Speaker 4: I think he was a smarter guy than that, and
Speaker 4: he knew what prostitutes were all about. I mean, this
Speaker 4: was a guy who loved porn, he loves bookers. He
Speaker 4: was not naive in any way. I think He just
Speaker 4: liked the idea that he had this beautiful young lady.
Speaker 4: He'd never known anyone like her. He had this beautiful
Speaker 4: young lady that if you put money in her hand,
Speaker 4: she would hang out with him all night. And so
Speaker 4: he needed to get that money, which led to him
Speaker 4: doing some tricky thing at the school. But I don't
Speaker 4: think he was delusional. Some people who wrote about the
Speaker 4: case years ago had that idea, but I think he
Speaker 4: was smarter than that.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about what he does at Toughs University, the
Speaker 7: chicanery and deception that he employs there. Tell us what
Speaker 7: he says to her in terms of wanting her on
Speaker 7: to have some kind of record of employment and putting
Speaker 7: her on the payroll.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was really becoming like a mentor almost you know,
Speaker 4: a father figure, because it was almost as if she
Speaker 4: had told him that she didn't want to be in
Speaker 4: the sex trade for very long, you know, and he
Speaker 4: was saying, well, you need to have some kind of resume,
Speaker 4: you know, so I'll say that you work for me.
Speaker 4: So he was really pulling a lot of strings making
Speaker 4: it look like she was working for him at Tough
Speaker 4: and went on for quite a while, and it was
Speaker 4: only through the school accountants. We're looking at the docket sheets,
Speaker 4: the accounting records, and they realized, you know, this guy
Speaker 4: Douglas is chalking up a lot of expenses. He was
Speaker 4: saying that he was taking trips to different states, and
Speaker 4: no one could remember if he had actually done any
Speaker 4: of these things, you know, And he eventually got caught
Speaker 4: embezzling good amount of money. Can't remember the exact amount,
Speaker 4: you probably have it in your notes somewhere, but he
Speaker 4: got caught in bezzling and that was the first issue
Speaker 4: he had to face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 7: It was at that time sixty seven thousand dollars worth,
Speaker 7: you say, in today's money, roughly two hundred and fifteen thousand.
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Speaker 7: Now you talk about this vice officer named Dwyer and
Speaker 7: he is going to Robin's trick pads and interfering with
Speaker 7: her business and also seeing Douglas at that time. Tell
Speaker 7: us about this interaction. What does he say to Robin? Also,
Speaker 7: more importantly, what does he say to Douglas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, Dwyer was one of those hard nos Boston cops,
Speaker 4: you know, and he was in the vice squad for
Speaker 4: many years. And yeah, he told Robin, you know you're
Speaker 4: going to end up in trouble, and this is no
Speaker 4: wife for a young girl. Tried to say all the
Speaker 4: usual things to scare her out of the business, you know,
Speaker 4: and you know Douglas, you know, he told Douglas, you know,
Speaker 4: if you're a professor, you know this is not a
Speaker 4: good spot for you. Because he caught the together coming
Speaker 4: out of one of Robin's makeshift pads. They called them
Speaker 4: trick pads. They were just little studio apartments in a
Speaker 4: Boston neighborhood a few blocks away from the combat zone
Speaker 4: and he caught them coming out one morning. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it turned out that Douglas was in cahoots with the police.
Speaker 4: He was feeding them information about Robin, which is another
Speaker 4: strange aspect to their relationship.
Speaker 7: He was working to help the police, you write, by
Speaker 7: telling them when she set up a new trick pad
Speaker 7: and she had no idea because then he was there
Speaker 7: to comfort her and advise her and help her in
Speaker 7: any way. The other aspect of this was that he
Speaker 7: began stalking her as well when he couldn't be with her.
Speaker 7: He wanted to know where she was, and all the
Speaker 7: financial pressure that he was facing made him, instead of
Speaker 7: being so polite like she had first met him, characterized
Speaker 7: by that, he was now demanding and much more possessive.
Speaker 4: Yeah, can you imagine being so fascinated and obsessed with
Speaker 4: this woman that you know, not only was he seeing
Speaker 4: her all the time, but he would follow her when
Speaker 4: she was with another guy. You know, he would get
Speaker 4: in his car and drive drives slightly behind them and
Speaker 4: keep track of them. And he would, yeah, he would,
Speaker 4: he would tell the police, Oh, there's a there's a
Speaker 4: prostitute on such and such a street because He wanted
Speaker 4: to create interference, you know, he wanted the vice squad
Speaker 4: to create problems for her so then he could swoop
Speaker 4: in and pretend to save her, be her important father figure,
Speaker 4: however he imagined himself to be. That's a that is
Speaker 4: a big issue or not issue, but it's a big
Speaker 4: side of certain type of stalker mentality where they they
Speaker 4: want to make you uncomfortable so they can rescue, you know,
Speaker 4: they can come to the rescue. It's a weird psychological dynamic,
Speaker 4: and he had everything. Douglas had more than one psychological
Speaker 4: trait that could be explored. He was really all over
Speaker 4: the map.
Speaker 7: At some point, Robin tells him that she no longer
Speaker 7: wants to see him in his stocking. He also had
Speaker 7: stolen a phone recorder, and he had found out, much
Speaker 7: to his dismay, that actually the boyfriend that she lived
Speaker 7: with was actually her pimp, and that Dwyer Weiskopp had
Speaker 7: mentioned that as well and drove the point home to
Speaker 7: him Douglas that he was spending all his money and
Speaker 7: all that money was going to her pimp.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Dwyer was trying to straighten Douglas out, but it
Speaker 4: was a strange thing about Douglas where he knew the
Speaker 4: comp zone, he knew how it worked, he knew how
Speaker 4: the sex trade worked. Yet he acted so surprised when
Speaker 4: it turned out that Robin had a pimp. That was
Speaker 4: curious thing about Douglass. He was I don't think I
Speaker 4: don't think he was delusional, but maybe he was a
Speaker 4: bit naive in that regard. But this Jr. Character, who
Speaker 4: was to me Jr. Is sort of the one of
Speaker 4: the one of the real bad guys in the story,
Speaker 4: because that I'm pretty sure it was Jr. Who was
Speaker 4: telling Robin they with this professor, get as much as
Speaker 4: you can out of them. You know, he's he's our
Speaker 4: golden ticket.
Speaker 7: Now, I mentioned that at some point they have a
Speaker 7: falling out and she says she doesn't want to see him,
Speaker 7: she's not giving him her phone number, she says some
Speaker 7: disparaging things to him, But yet he just drafts in
Speaker 7: an apology. One thing that we didn't mention is that
Speaker 7: when he is not with her, he spends a considerable
Speaker 7: amount of his time drafting letters love letter not so
Speaker 7: much of a sexual nature, but more romantic letters to Robin.
Speaker 7: So at this time, when she says she wants to
Speaker 7: have nothing to do with him. How does he take
Speaker 7: this information? And before we talk about his suspension from
Speaker 7: Tufts University and that pressure that is emanated towards William Douglas.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she was getting tired of him, partly because he
Speaker 4: was running out of money. I think that was, you know,
Speaker 4: the main thing. I think she would have put up
Speaker 4: with him as long as the money lasted, and he
Speaker 4: was hoping she might just give him a chance to
Speaker 4: maybe make some more money because he was losing his job.
Speaker 4: He was looking for another teaching job. He thought he
Speaker 4: was going to maybe move back to upstate New York
Speaker 4: and keep her on the payroll again, just as they
Speaker 4: had done in Tough He was scrambling and he was desperate,
Speaker 4: and he was so focused on her. He would he
Speaker 4: would write these lengthy love letters to her that strangely,
Speaker 4: she kept a lot of them, or maybe she kept
Speaker 4: all of them. Maybe at some point she was thinking
Speaker 4: of using them against him. I'm not sure, but it was. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it was just coming to a climax where he was
Speaker 4: becoming more obsessed with her and she was becoming less
Speaker 4: interested in the arrangement that they had.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about the circumstances in which she does not
Speaker 7: want to see him anymore, but he pleads for her
Speaker 7: to come and see him one more time. Tell us
Speaker 7: about the circumstances on that faithful night in question.
Speaker 4: Well, there had been issues where she claimed he had
Speaker 4: something that belonged to her. It was never clarified what
Speaker 4: he had. He also claimed she had things that belonged
Speaker 4: to him. Sometimes he said it was work related, you know,
Speaker 4: something from an experiment that he was working on at Tufts,
Speaker 4: and she had kept slides that you know, he created.
Speaker 4: And at one point he called the police saying she
Speaker 4: was blackmailing him, and one policeman apparently over her per se,
Speaker 4: you give me my property that i that you have
Speaker 4: and I'll give you this material. So there were a
Speaker 4: lot of, you know, vague hints that they were involved
Speaker 4: in this kind of cat and mouse thing with each
Speaker 4: other's property, but it was all vague, it was never clarified.
Speaker 4: And eventually she was out in about one night in
Speaker 4: Boston visiting a client and the client told the police, yeah,
Speaker 4: she rushed right out. She said she had to go
Speaker 4: see this client in Sharon in the suburbs. That could
Speaker 4: have only been Douglas and she got out there and
Speaker 4: no one saw her again.
Speaker 3: Now JR.
Speaker 7: Is the first person to be concerned. What does he
Speaker 7: do and what are the police reaction to his claims
Speaker 7: that his girlfriend is missing?
Speaker 4: Well, JR. Reports that Robin's been missing, I think, I
Speaker 4: think immediately the day after she disappeared, he went to
Speaker 4: the police and they thought he was suspicious. They they
Speaker 4: found out he was a pimp, she was a prostitute.
Speaker 4: They thought maybe JR. Was somehow involved in her disappearance.
Speaker 4: It took them a while to forget about JR. As
Speaker 4: a suspect.
Speaker 3: What happens with JR. And his talk with police?
Speaker 7: At first, he actually hires a private detective, this Jack
Speaker 7: de Rosa. And what did he say to this detective
Speaker 7: about his girlfriend and who likely was the person that
Speaker 7: was responsible for her being missing?
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, he did. He hired a private detective and
Speaker 4: he basically said that it had to be this William
Speaker 4: Douglas character who was involved. And the detective traced Douglas
Speaker 4: all the way to Washington. Douglas was he was on
Speaker 4: a train to Washington to take part in some sort
Speaker 4: of ghoul related meeting iminine with the veterans. Some kind
Speaker 4: of veterans group. I can't remember exactly, but yeah, he
Speaker 4: found Douglas in Washington, and Douglas looked like a mess.
Speaker 4: And he thought Douglas was suspicious. There was something about
Speaker 4: him that reeked. He was a little bit squirrely, but
Speaker 4: he couldn't pinpoint it. But that's uh, that was really
Speaker 4: the beginning of the end for Douglas. He didn't take
Speaker 4: long for people to be pointing fingers at him.
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Speaker 7: Now you talk about this, you introduced State Trooper Paul Landry,
Speaker 7: and he's almost retired. He's at Foxboro State Police headquarters
Speaker 7: and he gets this assignment and two men had found
Speaker 7: something in a trash barrel. What did they find in
Speaker 7: this trash bag in that trash barrel?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was interesting. In those days, Massachusetts had just
Speaker 4: created the bottle bill, so a lot of people were
Speaker 4: going through trash fins looking for empty bottles to cash in.
Speaker 4: And these fellows got up early on Sunday morning and
Speaker 4: we're going down the highway, going into rest stops, looking
Speaker 4: in the trash bins and all the dumpsters, and they
Speaker 4: found a bag containing a hammer that was spotted with blood,
Speaker 4: and also some articles of clothing that were spotted with blood.
Speaker 4: And these two fellows, who had been just looking for
Speaker 4: empty bottles, were pretty shocked to find this bloody weapon.
Speaker 4: And they stewed on it for a while, and one
Speaker 4: of them finally thought we should tell the police. About this.
Speaker 4: This doesn't look right, you know. So they contacted the
Speaker 4: state police and it was Paul Landry who got the
Speaker 4: call to go investigate this bloody hammer. And it was
Speaker 4: only a day I think, a day after Robin Benedict
Speaker 4: had disappeared and the murder weapon had already been found.
Speaker 7: You say, it was this big sledgehammer with blood and
Speaker 7: one hair on it. So there was a large shirt,
Speaker 7: and we didn't mention that William Douglas is a large man.
Speaker 7: He had lost weight various times, but he ends up
Speaker 7: being overall a pretty large guy. And there's a little
Speaker 7: tan jacket that later is identified by the Benedicts as
Speaker 7: being hers. And also, in a very vivid wild scene
Speaker 7: in this book, Jr. Brings an example or a sample
Speaker 7: of the perfume he bought for Robin and starts crying
Speaker 7: when he realizes that was her perfume and the perfume
Speaker 7: is on the jacket she wore that night.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was all the arrows were pointing to
Speaker 4: something bad happening between Douglas and Robin Benedict at his house.
Speaker 4: It was just all coming together pretty quickly.
Speaker 7: Now there looks like a lot of circumstantial evidence then
Speaker 7: there's some audits and detectives get involved in looking at
Speaker 7: this case much differently. The media at first is reporting
Speaker 7: that this graphic arts student has been is missing, but
Speaker 7: soon the prosecution talks about what they believe is the
Speaker 7: real dynamics of this case and who this professor really
Speaker 7: is and who Robin really is. What is their idea
Speaker 7: for William Douglas, Why would he kill this person? What
Speaker 7: was the real situation despite him saying that if there
Speaker 7: was no relationship, was he in love with this woman?
Speaker 7: And as a result in their investigation, what did they
Speaker 7: find out was likely in their minds, the motivation for
Speaker 7: her to go missing, her to be killed by William Douglas, Well, they.
Speaker 4: Thought it was probably a financial issue. They thought there
Speaker 4: was some sort of a blackmail deal going on, but
Speaker 4: they didn't have concrete notions about anything. A lot of
Speaker 4: them were baffled. They never quite had the actual reason
Speaker 4: for him to kill her. He gave a confesses. People
Speaker 4: had their theories, but they never really did have a
Speaker 4: talk to a lot of people who were involved in
Speaker 4: the investigation. They thought maybe she was going to blackmail him,
Speaker 4: maybe she had information about him, Maybe it was money,
Speaker 4: Maybe it was just an escalation of everything that had
Speaker 4: gone on that led to a violent altercation. Nobody really
Speaker 4: had the real concrete story.
Speaker 7: There was a the investigation try to produce some way
Speaker 7: of determining where Robin's body was, and he was not
Speaker 7: saying anything and not giving up any information and certainly
Speaker 7: not confessing. There were the grand jury indictments and finally
Speaker 7: the trial was set and he's looking at a life sentence.
Speaker 7: So he has a capable attorney named Thomas Troy, and
Speaker 7: Kivlin is the district attorney, one of the district assistant
Speaker 7: district attorneys prosecuting the case. Thomas Troy wants to try
Speaker 7: this case as William Douglas was insane and he and
Speaker 7: William Douglas, as you write, concoct some kind of excuse
Speaker 7: or reason for his odd behavior, his uncharacteristic behavior throughout
Speaker 7: this and they want to attribute it to the starvation
Speaker 7: diet that he went on to try to police Robin
Speaker 7: and as a result he was nutrient deprived and this
Speaker 7: could be a possible defense. Now when they get to
Speaker 7: trial and despite all this circumstantial evidence, there still.
Speaker 3: Is no body.
Speaker 7: How do we get to the defense attorney and the
Speaker 7: prosecutor coming to an agreement and a flea bargain.
Speaker 3: Tell us about that.
Speaker 4: Well, Thomas Troy was a real character and a real
Speaker 4: influential character in the city. He had his hand in
Speaker 4: a lot of different pots, so to speak. And he
Speaker 4: approached the district attorney Ernie who was named Dela Hint,
Speaker 4: and basically he said, we're looking bad. The case is
Speaker 4: making everyone look bad because we don't have a body.
Speaker 4: But what if Douglas promises to turn up the body,
Speaker 4: can we get a manslaughter charge? And basically took off
Speaker 4: from there. Dela Hunt thought it was a good idea,
Speaker 4: so he told the prosecution, you know, let's let's go
Speaker 4: with this. Douglas will tell us where the body is
Speaker 4: and he'll plead manslaughter. So that led to the next
Speaker 4: round of the story, which was just more more mystery,
Speaker 4: more confusion.
Speaker 7: You write that he has offered this manslaughter deal and
Speaker 7: the Benedicts have to sign off, or they're asked to
Speaker 7: sign off, and they agree that if he because they
Speaker 7: want to know where their daughter was buried and they
Speaker 7: want to have that ability to be able to bury
Speaker 7: their their daughter. The idea, though, is that he he
Speaker 7: also has to admit has to outline the details of
Speaker 7: what he did. And he is asked at court if
Speaker 7: he did murder Robin Benedict, and he said, yes, sir,
Speaker 7: So tell us about this endeavor to go where he
Speaker 7: said he had disposed of Robin's body.
Speaker 3: Tell us what happens boy.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, he said that he traveled all around
Speaker 4: New England, apparently with Robin's body in his car, after
Speaker 4: he had legend her with the hammer. He said that
Speaker 4: they had wrestled and fought, and you know, she had
Speaker 4: attacked him first, and he took the hammer away and
Speaker 4: used it on her and made it sound like, you know, oh,
Speaker 4: she hit me first. You know, that was sort of
Speaker 4: the impression he wanted to give. And apparently he put
Speaker 4: her body in his car and then drove all over
Speaker 4: the place trying to find a suitable spot to dump
Speaker 4: the body. He ended up in Rhode Island and said,
Speaker 4: you said he threw it in a dumpster. And of
Speaker 4: course enough time had passed, because it took quite a
Speaker 4: few months before they finally arrested Douglas. So by the
Speaker 4: time he made this confession that he had put the
Speaker 4: body in a dumpster, a lot of time had passed
Speaker 4: and no one could really figure out what would have
Speaker 4: happened to the body in a dumpster six or seven
Speaker 4: months in the past, you know. So they were contacting
Speaker 4: dump sites around Rhode Island trying to guess what, you know,
Speaker 4: what dump it would have been in, and turned out that,
Speaker 4: you know, one one fellow who owned a dump that
Speaker 4: the body might have been in, he said, you know,
Speaker 4: there's probably six hundred feet of garbage on top of it.
Speaker 4: By now, you know, you'd never find it. So that
Speaker 4: was that was a bit off putting for the Benedict
Speaker 4: family because they'd been promised that the body would be
Speaker 4: found as part of the Plea Barn and now they
Speaker 4: were hearing, now, we're not going to find anything. You know,
Speaker 4: it's buried in some mysterious garbage dump somewhere and we're
Speaker 4: out of luck. So they abandoned the police or the investigators.
Speaker 4: Their hands were tied, and the district attorney called off
Speaker 4: the search, which which was doubly aggravating.
Speaker 7: He called it off when it seemed that William was
Speaker 7: lying or had this convenient lapse of memory, because at
Speaker 7: first there was a certain store, then it was another store,
Speaker 7: and he's a very intelligent guy, so maybe it was
Speaker 7: a very convenient excuse where it was knowing that it
Speaker 7: might be unlikely that they could find a body after
Speaker 7: that much time. What he had to do in court though,
Speaker 7: was outlined some details, and this really outraged a Benedict family.
Speaker 7: In his account of what happened, you alluded to or
Speaker 7: mentioned about, one of the main flanks of what he
Speaker 7: had said was that Robin came with this pretty big
Speaker 7: sledgehammer hidden under her coat, like over her arm. She
Speaker 7: had somehow hidden this sledgehammer and had attacked him. First,
Speaker 7: he gives the account of why tell us this account
Speaker 7: that no one seemed to really actually believe, but the
Speaker 7: prosecution had to go with.
Speaker 4: Apparently, Yeah, he claimed that she had borrowed the hammer
Speaker 4: from him, or actually, more precisely, his wife had borrowed
Speaker 4: the hammer from I think her father. Yes, And then
Speaker 4: Robin claimed she needed a sledgehammer to do some work
Speaker 4: around her apartment, and so Douglas gave her this hammer,
Speaker 4: and then she showed up at his house and that
Speaker 4: night sort of camouflaging the hammer because they were arguing
Speaker 4: over money, and he said that he didn't have the
Speaker 4: money with him. He was a little bit short, a
Speaker 4: couple of thousand dollars that they were dickering over, and
Speaker 4: apparently she took out the hammer and started swinging at him.
Speaker 4: That was his story. Hardly anyone believed it, but that
Speaker 4: was the confession, and surprisingly a lot of people have
Speaker 4: sort of took it as gospel. People outside of the court,
Speaker 4: the state troopers. I talked to the investigators. They never
Speaker 4: believed it because Robin was just you know, a small
Speaker 4: a small young woman, you know, And I've held that
Speaker 4: exact type of hammer and I need two hands to
Speaker 4: get a decent grip and to swing it right with
Speaker 4: the you know. To say that she was going to
Speaker 4: just start swinging at this guy, it was a little
Speaker 4: bit silly. And as one person said that the way
Speaker 4: he described the fight sounded like someone who had never
Speaker 4: been in a fight, you know, And you know, it
Speaker 4: was a fishy confession. And I remember talking to the
Speaker 4: benedict's attorney, I said, how common is it for this
Speaker 4: to happen where they just go behind they go sort
Speaker 4: of behind the scenes, they create this kind of transparent
Speaker 4: story and they present that as a confession. They cooked
Speaker 4: it up, you know, they kind of sculpted it and
Speaker 4: you know, the benedict's attorney, he sheepishly said, it shouldn't happen,
Speaker 4: but it does, and that's the legal system at work.
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes you can kind of finagle your way
Speaker 4: out of things.
Speaker 7: The sentence that he did receive was eighteen to twenty years,
Speaker 7: kind of on the high end for manslaughter, but also
Speaker 7: that he was eligible for parole after twelve years. You
Speaker 7: talk about this case that it grew into a news phenomenon,
Speaker 7: and you talk about the Herald, which is a tabloid,
Speaker 7: and you talk about the prestigious The Globe in Boston
Speaker 7: as well, a newspaper, and also they coverage wall to
Speaker 7: wall on television.
Speaker 3: Tell us about this media phenomenon, Well.
Speaker 4: That was a time when true crime stories were really
Speaker 4: starting to take off. This is around eighty three eighty four,
Speaker 4: and it seemed like everyone was looking for the crime
Speaker 4: of the minute. You know, bookstores were starting to stock
Speaker 4: their true crime section as they'd never done before. Suddenly,
Speaker 4: bookstores were floored to ceiling with true crime titles. There
Speaker 4: were true crime television shows. It was really becoming sort
Speaker 4: of a national phenomenon that the whole issue of crime
Speaker 4: crime was being presented as entertainment, and the Globe had
Speaker 4: tried to distance itself from the more gaudy crime stories,
Speaker 4: and the Herald stepped right in and then embraced this
Speaker 4: true crime explosion. The Herald endless pages devoted to local
Speaker 4: crimes and national crimes, and the Globe thought, well, maybe
Speaker 4: this was a case that they could tap into and
Speaker 4: try to get some of that Herald readership, because the
Speaker 4: Herald was really picking up readers by focusing on these
Speaker 4: criminal cases. The gaudier the better, and so the Globe
Speaker 4: kind of stepped out of their usual style. And some
Speaker 4: people say the Globe lowered itself and got into this
Speaker 4: kind of tabloid war with this newspaper across town, you know,
Speaker 4: but it was a big deal. I remember I was
Speaker 4: a kid, but almost every morning you'd wake up and
Speaker 4: you'd see a picture of Douglas or Benedict on the
Speaker 4: front page of either the Globe or the Herald. It
Speaker 4: became your sort of your morning entertainment, you know. You'd
Speaker 4: pick up the newspaper and you'd be having your morning
Speaker 4: coffee and reading about this case. What happen with a
Speaker 4: lot of different cases, but this was one of the
Speaker 4: first ones to really kick off that sort of crime
Speaker 4: as entertainment phenomenon that we're still enjoying today.
Speaker 7: Now, despite the parents' disapproval of the media portrayal and
Speaker 7: even the police detective that were involved, especially Paul Landry.
Speaker 7: What was the portrayal of Robin versus William Douglass, the
Speaker 7: convicted killer.
Speaker 4: Well, it flip flopped a couple of times. At first,
Speaker 4: Robin was this art student. Then she became a prostitute.
Speaker 4: It was that was when it changed. When when the
Speaker 4: papers were free to call her a prostitute, then the
Speaker 4: case really took on a different kind of atmosphere. She
Speaker 4: was this young, beautiful prostitute and he was this brilliant professor,
Speaker 4: and she was the one who had lured him to
Speaker 4: the point of no return. You know. They went for
Speaker 4: that kind of angle, and it was it was unfortunate
Speaker 4: because he was a bad guy. She didn't lower him
Speaker 4: into anything. He knew all about the combat zone. He
Speaker 4: was a sex addict, which was kind of a new
Speaker 4: phenomenon at the time. No one really talked about sex addiction.
Speaker 4: It was kind of a new thing. But he certainly qualified.
Speaker 4: But the papers loved playing on that beautiful young woman
Speaker 4: driving this guy to murder, you know, but it would change.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it was a beauty and the beast type of thing,
Speaker 4: but once the combat zone became an integral part of
Speaker 4: the story was it was about this Boston sex worker
Speaker 4: who had manipulated this guy, driving him to the point
Speaker 4: of murder. That was sort of a simplistic way to
Speaker 4: do it, but that was how they sold newspapers.
Speaker 7: This story captivated a US audience for all the reasons
Speaker 7: that you mentioned that it had all the ingredients that
Speaker 7: tabloids and newspapers have come to really appreciate. There was
Speaker 7: even a time when, again you feel very bad for
Speaker 7: the Benedict family that when he got out after nine years,
Speaker 7: less than nine years, there was some attempt. He tried
Speaker 7: to make it like there was an attempt for him
Speaker 7: to be able to tell for the first time where
Speaker 7: Robin's body was and answer any and all questions they
Speaker 7: may have for him.
Speaker 3: A meeting was set up. Tell us about the results,
Speaker 3: What he did say? What did he did reveal?
Speaker 4: Oh, he didn't really reveal anything. He had They set
Speaker 4: up a meeting at a little restaurant right and he
Speaker 4: got out early. He played the system. He used a
Speaker 4: good behavior so he knew how to play the system.
Speaker 4: He was brilliant at it in a way. I was
Speaker 4: able to look at his prison records and you could
Speaker 4: just see him. He had the steady correspondence with the
Speaker 4: warden saying that he had been teaching classes in prison.
Speaker 4: He'd done this, He'd done that. He was a member
Speaker 4: of various societies in the prison, and he was teaching
Speaker 4: Bible classes in the prison. So he was able to
Speaker 4: work off a lot of time that way. So he
Speaker 4: set up a meeting with the benedicts, but he really
Speaker 4: didn't say much of anything. He basically told the same
Speaker 4: story that he had told in court, that she attacked
Speaker 4: him and he killed her in self defense, and he
Speaker 4: disappointed the benedicts. That's for sure.
Speaker 7: You're right that he eventually ends up in a assisted
Speaker 7: living facility and passes away in twenty fifteen, maybe even
Speaker 7: suffering from Alzheimer's. That this story still had legs many
Speaker 7: years later. There was many versions of this story in
Speaker 7: various respectable journalists. It was fictionalized, dramatized, and even the
Speaker 7: true crime account was in various books by again esteemed authors.
Speaker 7: Tell us about that enduring interest people in this story
Speaker 7: that was elevated to be such a big story. In fact,
Speaker 7: one of the crimes of the Century in Boston. Noted
Speaker 7: much later.
Speaker 4: Well, it's funny, Dan, because people under a certain age
Speaker 4: don't really have any recollection of the story. They're interested
Speaker 4: when they hear about the book and they want to
Speaker 4: know more about it. But didn't have the kind of
Speaker 4: legs that you know, say the Menendez brothers or are
Speaker 4: a Pamela Smart kind of case. And I think that's
Speaker 4: because it didn't go to trial. He confessed and they
Speaker 4: never went to trial. Those other cases had long, extended trials,
Speaker 4: which allowed more publicity, more coverage. At the time, it
Speaker 4: was one of the biggest cases in America, and I
Speaker 4: think the only reason people have forgotten it to a
Speaker 4: degree is because so many other cases came along after.
Speaker 4: Court TV was not around at the time of this case.
Speaker 4: It came a few years later, and I think that
Speaker 4: the cases that were covered by court TV, they became
Speaker 4: a real sort of household names, you know. But this case,
Speaker 4: it was huge, and not just in Boston, but reporters
Speaker 4: from all over the country were coming into Boston to
Speaker 4: get a look at the combat zone, you know, to
Speaker 4: get to get a look at Douglas. It was a
Speaker 4: big deal and Boston hadn't had one like this in
Speaker 4: a while and wouldn't again for a few years. I
Speaker 4: think it wasn't until the Chuck Stewart case about four
Speaker 4: or five years later that was that they had anything
Speaker 4: that matched the Douglas and Benedict case. And that was
Speaker 4: why I wanted to revisit it, because it felt like
Speaker 4: the window was closing on it, you know, and it
Speaker 4: was about to become this sort of dusty old museum
Speaker 4: piece that almost like no nobody remembers anything before OJ Simpson,
Speaker 4: you know, and I thought, you know, there were some
Speaker 4: big cases before that, so I want wanted to give
Speaker 4: it one last look, you know. And also because the
Speaker 4: other stuff that had been written about it, and the
Speaker 4: occasional documentaries that were made that we can still see
Speaker 4: on you know, investigation Discovery Channel, those depictions of it
Speaker 4: all in you know, in nineteen eighty four, the prison
Speaker 4: door slams, and we don't know what happened after that,
Speaker 4: you know, and I thought, well, a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: probably happened, so I could to explore that his prison time,
Speaker 4: the aftermath that was as interesting to me as the
Speaker 4: crime itself, and I thought, you know, I can capitalize
Speaker 4: on that because a lot of time has passed and
Speaker 4: I'll be able to dig up some info. The only
Speaker 4: downside was that so much time passed that a lot
Speaker 4: of people had passed away. A lot of police officers
Speaker 4: who worked in the case and attorneys who worked on it,
Speaker 4: a lot of them had passed away. And fortunately I
Speaker 4: was able to track down a few people and they
Speaker 4: were very helpful. Landry the assistant district attorney, they were
Speaker 4: all great to talk to. They helped fill in some
Speaker 4: of the gaps.
Speaker 7: Yes, I want to kudos to you for resurrecting this
Speaker 7: incredible story. I want to thank you very much Don
Speaker 7: Stradley for coming on and talking about Boston Tabloid, the
Speaker 7: killing of Robin Benedict.
Speaker 3: For those that might have.
Speaker 7: Wanted to check out your other work, do you have
Speaker 7: a website, do any social media?
Speaker 4: They can look in Amazon. All my books are listed
Speaker 4: on Amazon. I've written five or six. I have another
Speaker 4: one that I'm shopping around right now. But yeah, they
Speaker 4: could just go to Amazon and look up this title
Speaker 4: and see my other books that I have available.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much, Don Stradley for coming on and
Speaker 7: talking about Boston tabloid, the killing of Robin Benedict. Thank
Speaker 7: you very much for this interview. You have a great
Speaker 7: evening and good night.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Dan, thank you.