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Speaker 7: Lock Hope Radio, you are now listening to True Murder,
Speaker 7: the most shocking killers in true crime history and the
Speaker 7: authors that have written about them.
Speaker 4: Gasey Bundy Stahmer, The Nightstalker Dck. Every week, another fascinating
Speaker 4: author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in
Speaker 4: true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and
Speaker 4: author Dan Zupansky.
Speaker 8: Good Evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the
Speaker 8: program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime
Speaker 8: history and the authors that have written about them. In
Speaker 8: September nineteen eighty nine, is a natural. By all appearances,
Speaker 8: twenty nine year old Wesley Allen Dodd was the perfect
Speaker 8: all American boy, model, high school student, camp counselor, and
Speaker 8: US Navy enlistee. But behind his mask of normalcy lurked
Speaker 8: a predatory sex fiend with a seventeen year history of
Speaker 8: appalling acts of molestation and violence. Children were his victims,
Speaker 8: and the parks of the Pacific Northwest his personal hunting grounds.
Speaker 8: In September nineteen eighty nine, his unnatural desires had driven
Speaker 8: him past simple satisfaction to abduct, torture, and kill two
Speaker 8: young boys in Vancouver, Washington. Dodd killed a third innocent
Speaker 8: victim only weeks later near Portland, Oregon, but only when
Speaker 8: he was caught trying to kidnap a child from a
Speaker 8: local movie theater. Was he finally taken into custody by police,
Speaker 8: confessing to these heinous murders. He was convicted on all
Speaker 8: three counts and sentenced to death. The book that we
Speaker 8: are dealing with to see profiling this evening is Driven
Speaker 8: to Kill, the terrifying true account of sex killer Wesley
Speaker 8: Allan Dodd, with my special guest, journalist and best selling
Speaker 8: true crime author, Gary C.
Speaker 3: King.
Speaker 8: Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to
Speaker 8: this interview.
Speaker 9: Gary C.
Speaker 3: King.
Speaker 9: Hi, Dan, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having
Speaker 9: me on.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. It's been a while since I
Speaker 8: tempted to have you on and I'm very happy and
Speaker 8: I'm sure our audience will enjoy the interview this evening.
Speaker 8: You're one of the more important true crime authors today,
Speaker 8: and you're past with some of the incredible stories and
Speaker 8: some of the incredible books, and we'll talk about that
Speaker 8: a little bit later, but let's get to this particular
Speaker 8: story now. You have a you've been in the true
Speaker 8: crime business for thirty two years, but specifically with this
Speaker 8: book Driven to Kill, about this incredible killer, Wesley Allen Dodd.
Speaker 8: What was it, how, what were the circumstances that came
Speaker 8: about that you felt compelled or were drawn to this story,
Speaker 8: or how did you come to write Driven to Kill
Speaker 8: about Wesley Allen dodd Well.
Speaker 9: At the time, I was writing for the Detective magazines
Speaker 9: and I had written a piece I believe it was
Speaker 9: for True Detective, and that's what initially what my appetite,
Speaker 9: so to speak, for this particular story, and I saw
Speaker 9: it as something that really needed to be told, something
Speaker 9: that parents needed to be aware of. And my editor
Speaker 9: at True Detective also thought that that should be the case.
Speaker 9: So she introduced me to an editor at Pinnacle Books
Speaker 9: named Paul Dennis, one of the best true crime editors
Speaker 9: I've ever dealt with, and he immediately wanted to do
Speaker 9: a book on this particular case. And that that's really
Speaker 9: how it came about. It started with a short nonfiction
Speaker 9: story and developed into a book over a period of
Speaker 9: a few months.
Speaker 8: We've got to give the credit to though, I've got
Speaker 8: to say that Pinnacle is the kind of the independent publisher,
Speaker 8: the kind of publisher period that doesn't shy away from
Speaker 8: some of the stories that even some real big true crime,
Speaker 8: the biggest true crime imprints kind of shy away from
Speaker 8: Don't you agree with that?
Speaker 9: Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I've published several books with them,
Speaker 9: you know, over the over the years, but this was,
Speaker 9: I believe, this was my first one that I had
Speaker 9: published with Pinnacle, and you know, everybody you know had
Speaker 9: misgivings about it. I mean, just the subject matter alone, yeah,
Speaker 9: is horrific. But I had decided early on that I
Speaker 9: wanted to write a book that would really raise awareness
Speaker 9: to people like dot sexual predators who basically kept parents
Speaker 9: as hostages, you know, whenever they're they're committing their crimes.
Speaker 9: And when he was doing his thing, nobody knew who
Speaker 9: was doing and we, you know, we didn't know if
Speaker 9: he was gonna suddenly switch and go after girls, whether
Speaker 9: it was strictly going to be boys, And it really
Speaker 9: didn't matter because you know, kids are kids, and no
Speaker 9: parent wants to see their kids become a victim. And
Speaker 9: I myself was a parent, I am a parent, and
Speaker 9: my kids were small at the time, and this was
Speaker 9: so disturbing. We wouldn't even let our kids play outside
Speaker 9: unattended until after, you know, he was apprehended and the
Speaker 9: killing stopped. So I decided early on this had to
Speaker 9: be a book that was geared toward raising awareness, at
Speaker 9: least in parents' minds, that they can't be vigilant enough
Speaker 9: over their child's safety. And I did it in a
Speaker 9: form of shock treatment. For lack of a better way
Speaker 9: to say it, I guess. And the book is very
Speaker 9: disturbing the way that I wrote it, and it was
Speaker 9: intentionally made to be disturbing, because you can't sugarcoat stuff
Speaker 9: like this. It has to be told the way it is,
Speaker 9: and that's exactly what I did. And you know, I've
Speaker 9: been thanked over the years from parents who you know,
Speaker 9: are happy about it. I've been put down, if you will,
Speaker 9: by other parents who said that I've gone too far
Speaker 9: with it. Personally, I think I could have went farther,
Speaker 9: but I did tone it down a bit, but I
Speaker 9: didn't sugarcoat it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I got to say that you really handle this well,
Speaker 8: and it seemed that you didn't really have much of
Speaker 8: a backglass. There's always somebody that has opinions about true
Speaker 8: crime authors, and you know that they just have a
Speaker 8: distaste for a period, so you never can really satisfy
Speaker 8: those people. But I really thought this was very uncompromising
Speaker 8: and unflinching and a lot of people, again, a lot
Speaker 8: of publishers might say, well, shouldn't have to include that,
Speaker 8: but I think it's very important that you did. And
Speaker 8: like I said, I think I'm appreciative, and I think
Speaker 8: most readers would be appreciative of giving us the whole
Speaker 8: truth and nothing but the truth. Now getting to that,
Speaker 8: this very again, very very graphic and shocking book, and
Speaker 8: especially when you consider that we're talking about small children,
Speaker 8: we're talking torture, and we're talking about this person being very,
Speaker 8: very very candid. So this is an amazing portrait of
Speaker 8: a killer. Definitely. Now, maybe to introduce our audience to
Speaker 8: how this book is written much different than most books
Speaker 8: in that the incredible access you had to all the information,
Speaker 8: but also the killer of themselves again being very very candid,
Speaker 8: and so that there's interviews of the killer, there's interviews
Speaker 8: from police. There is the diary, and we'll talk about
Speaker 8: that right away because that's very important. But you really
Speaker 8: is because of the access, because of the killer wanting
Speaker 8: all of this information to be known and willing to
Speaker 8: be interviewed, and also this diary where he kept documentation.
Speaker 8: So with this incredible access, we also have and this
Speaker 8: candidacy from this killer. We have a really good account,
Speaker 8: which is maybe unusual, what is unusual for to have
Speaker 8: and you know that as an author, So tell us
Speaker 8: from the incredible information you have his earliest life and
Speaker 8: his account of his.
Speaker 9: Earliest life, well, much of his uh earliest life was
Speaker 9: accounted to me, not only by him, but in the
Speaker 9: pages of his diary. We started calling it his diary
Speaker 9: of death, because that's really what it is. But he
Speaker 9: started out at a very young age experimenting sexually with
Speaker 9: you know, relatives, cousins and so forth, and uh young children, uh,
Speaker 9: a little bit younger than himself. And and a lot
Speaker 9: of it had to do with uh, you know, touching
Speaker 9: and you know, exposing and this sort of thing. And
Speaker 9: that's that's really his earliest beginnings. And uh he was
Speaker 9: he was caught a few times, and you know, his
Speaker 9: hands were slapped. But as he got older, as he
Speaker 9: developed into an adolescent, he began uh uh doing these
Speaker 9: things in front of school children, uh, exposing himself and masturbating,
Speaker 9: uh in front of children as they walked past his
Speaker 9: house or his apartment. And that was a fairly short period.
Speaker 3: It was because when the police.
Speaker 9: Came that pretty much shut him down. He he stopped
Speaker 9: doing that, he realized that he couldn't do it from
Speaker 9: the comfort of his home, that he had to go
Speaker 9: out and start trolling the city streets and parks and playgrounds,
Speaker 9: et cetera, to find you know, willing or unwilling depending
Speaker 9: on the caves. Uh, victims, and and uh this is.
Speaker 3: What he did.
Speaker 9: And you know, in his earliest days, he was brought
Speaker 9: brought in and questioned and about various sex crimes, most
Speaker 9: of them relatively minor compared to the things that he
Speaker 9: ended up ultimately doing. And he was basically had his
Speaker 9: hand slapped. He he was you know, he received psychological counseling,
Speaker 9: but never finished any of it. He was never sentenced
Speaker 9: to any difficult time. Uh. He was always to sort
Speaker 9: of let go, or he slipped through what I like
Speaker 9: to say, he slipped through the cracks of the system.
Speaker 9: Perhaps at the time people really didn't know how to
Speaker 9: deal with him. I don't know. But the point is
Speaker 9: that I'm trying to make is he was never punished
Speaker 9: for his earliest crimes, and he was pretty much allowed
Speaker 9: to continue until he, you know, started committing the ultimate
Speaker 9: crime of murder.
Speaker 8: Can we talk about his diary and the extensive interviews
Speaker 8: that he gave to various people, various authorities. It seems
Speaker 8: incredible in your book that he talks about every detail
Speaker 8: of it seems rejection from and he felt intimidated from women.
Speaker 8: There was a rejection. He'd pulled his pats down. Some
Speaker 8: of the earliest things he had done with neighborhood boys
Speaker 8: was pulling his pats down and exposing his venus. It basically,
Speaker 8: in sort of all you can get from the beginning
Speaker 8: is that he had issues with his sexual orientation or identity.
Speaker 8: He may have had this rejection, he may have felt humiliated,
Speaker 8: he might have had issues about his manhood in various aspects.
Speaker 8: But then he jumps to what we would think is
Speaker 8: more deviant things like sticking safety pins in his penis
Speaker 8: in so he was experimenting with some things. It is
Speaker 8: a fairly slow evolution from flashing to molestation. So we're
Speaker 8: talking about nineteen seventy five, and like you say that,
Speaker 8: each time that he is either accused or questioned by police,
Speaker 8: he just seems to get the benefit of the doubt,
Speaker 8: and no one either recognizes or both recognizes and then
Speaker 8: punishes him. But we're talking about that in this diary.
Speaker 8: Seems curious to me that he seems to rationalize his behavior,
Speaker 8: his making this leap to fantasizingable molestation and abduction, but
Speaker 8: he offers no real rationale for what happened other than
Speaker 8: his parents were arguing and he had these some of
Speaker 8: the same things that happen to most people.
Speaker 9: I would think, Yeah, of course, a lot of people
Speaker 9: have been through the same types of things that he
Speaker 9: had been through, and they didn't go on and do
Speaker 9: the things that he did. But I tried to drag
Speaker 9: out of him during my interviews with him his sexual orientation,
Speaker 9: and he didn't really want to talk about it. I
Speaker 9: had the sense that they didn't really like women a
Speaker 9: whole lot. He did admit to me that he had
Speaker 9: dated one woman, but he wouldn't go into detail about it.
Speaker 9: He's very evasive, and that's really all I could find
Speaker 9: out from him, you know, about any kind of uh
Speaker 9: orientation with the opposite sex. So but uh, yeah, he
Speaker 9: just uh, he just went into really great detail, uh
Speaker 9: in his diary. He when he when he talked to me,
Speaker 9: he didn't really blame others too much.
Speaker 3: For what he did.
Speaker 9: He he talked mostly about how, uh this was a
Speaker 9: compulsion that he had and that he couldn't stop and
Speaker 9: the only way he could stop was to die. I
Speaker 9: don't I don't know what you can take from that,
Speaker 9: but uh, he he definitely fits the mold if your
Speaker 9: typical every day sex offender who usually you know, isn't
Speaker 9: helped with treatment, Some are, most aren't. But you know,
Speaker 9: it's really hard, it's really hard to pin down anything
Speaker 9: that might have contributed to this uh sickness, if you will,
Speaker 9: from lack of better better term, that caused him to progress,
Speaker 9: you know, to murder.
Speaker 8: Anyway, Now he has these murderous fantasies. So part of
Speaker 8: the fantasy is that he documents his feelings and his plans.
Speaker 8: So what are some of the plans that he has
Speaker 8: and at what point does he make this conscious decision
Speaker 8: to probably target boys? And why is that other than
Speaker 8: his sexual orientation? Is there another reason as well?
Speaker 9: I don't recall there being another or particular reason why
Speaker 9: he targeted boys. Perhaps, you know, it seems like something
Speaker 9: I recall. I recall that he thought it was easier
Speaker 9: to talk with boys, but he had extensive plans and
Speaker 9: even before he attacked the near brothers in David Douglas Park.
Speaker 9: He had set out very extensive plans on how he
Speaker 9: was going to you know, carry this out. And it
Speaker 9: was over a period of a couple of days where
Speaker 9: he made plans to go out and stalk and and
Speaker 9: uh regret l you know, uh check the place out
Speaker 9: and and really it was like a reconnaissance mission where
Speaker 9: he he packed his lunch and and uh went out
Speaker 9: for the day and if he came out with a victim, great,
Speaker 9: If not, then he would go back the next day.
Speaker 9: And he kept it was a kind of like a
Speaker 9: trial and error that he went through at first.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 9: And I suppose part of that was building up his
Speaker 9: nerve to a certain degree to to actually, you know,
Speaker 9: make an abduction and and uh to kill someone.
Speaker 3: But uh, he he.
Speaker 9: Was very extensive in his planning. He had lots of
Speaker 9: future plans his uh, his diary detailed a crudely made
Speaker 9: torch wrack that he had actually constructed, in which I
Speaker 9: included a picture of in the book that he you know,
Speaker 9: hoped to tie his victims down on and commit surgeries
Speaker 9: on them while they were alive, you know, unconscious, things
Speaker 9: such as you know, removing their their their penis or
Speaker 9: their testicles. It was just it's pretty horrendous.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he wanted to experiment with them and and also
Speaker 8: have sex with them after they had they were dead,
Speaker 8: so in necrophilia. Yeah, and he documents all of it.
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Speaker 8: We talked about how we evaded any kind of serious
Speaker 8: punishment from authorities, but at one point he did get
Speaker 8: a ten year sentence, and just to illustrate how unfortunate
Speaker 8: he wasn't unfortunate the rest of is this is society
Speaker 8: and his victims were. He served only four months of
Speaker 8: that ten year sentence. And it seems like those constant
Speaker 8: times that he spent one hundred and eighteen days in prison,
Speaker 8: and at some point he made that conscious effort to
Speaker 8: change the way he did things and be more serious
Speaker 8: about anyone telling authorities because he had been reported to
Speaker 8: authorities numerous times.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Now we also goted to talk about he did
Speaker 8: move some three times, because we talk about in your
Speaker 8: book that he was where was it in Washington he
Speaker 8: was born? Sorry, hopefully I don't mispronounce this topping' Topinish Toppinish, Washington,
Speaker 8: and then he later moved to Seattle and then later
Speaker 8: to Vancouver, Washington.
Speaker 9: Yeah, the film's about right, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Now, tell us a little bit about because we
Speaker 8: just skipped over this. Tell us about his stint in
Speaker 8: the navy, because that it seems interesting that he give
Speaker 8: us the reason why he even stated himself why he
Speaker 8: wanted to enlist in the navy, and how he did
Speaker 8: in the navy.
Speaker 9: What was his experience, like, well, I don't remember anything
Speaker 9: particularly negative. In fact, I don't remember a whole lot
Speaker 9: about that aspect of his life. He didn't talk about
Speaker 9: it a whole lot. And you know, God, this has
Speaker 9: been twenty years ago. You've recently read the book.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. What I wanted to
Speaker 8: point out is very interesting. Again, a lot of people think, well,
Speaker 8: serial killers are very, very intelligent, but for the most part,
Speaker 8: they aren't. And this guy was the at least in
Speaker 8: military terms. He was a very serious military candidate. He
Speaker 8: went into the Navy and was the top of the
Speaker 8: top ten percent of his class, and then they put
Speaker 8: him on sub submarine duty. But of course he was
Speaker 8: discharged for decent taking attempting indecent liberties, but again not
Speaker 8: really punished and not seemed to be recognized for the
Speaker 8: you know, they recommended it to get counseled or counseling.
Speaker 8: So it seemed all along the way there if there
Speaker 8: really is a cautionary tale on how many times somebody
Speaker 8: could have intervened and should have intervened, because there seems
Speaker 8: to be gaps on exactly why he only did four
Speaker 8: months out of ten years, and there seems to be
Speaker 8: some of these very very strong questions.
Speaker 9: And that's one of the really sad things about this
Speaker 9: case is the fact that intervention, you know, was not
Speaker 9: efficiently effective. Any time that intervention did take place, nothing happened.
Speaker 9: And and like you say, he was a bright fellow,
Speaker 9: he was intelligent, he I want to say clever more
Speaker 9: than anything. He knew how to manipulate people and he
Speaker 9: learned that, I think at a pretty young age to
Speaker 9: be able to get what he wants. As far as
Speaker 9: his navy experience goes, it seems like he was honorably
Speaker 9: discharged or I can't remember now, it's just been so long.
Speaker 9: Do you remember what he was?
Speaker 8: No, he was, it was it was. It didn't say
Speaker 8: dishonorably dishonorably discharged. But it was he was discharged and
Speaker 8: he was imprisoned for seventeen days, and it was attempting
Speaker 8: in decent liberties. So it was some he was molesting
Speaker 8: as soon as he got to the to the camp,
Speaker 8: and then there was a couple attempts and then he
Speaker 8: was So everybody was on to this guy shortly, and
Speaker 8: that was part of the moves as well, because it
Speaker 8: seemed to want a new, new, you know, a fresh start.
Speaker 8: But then it all really was was that he was
Speaker 8: refining his fantasies and making it more serious. That uh,
Speaker 8: no one was gonna live to tell the tale.
Speaker 9: Yeah that that uh that says it in a nutshell,
Speaker 9: uh really, because that's that's how he ultimately became. And
Speaker 9: he saw that as a way, I guess, uh, a
Speaker 9: way of preservation so that he could continue doing what
Speaker 9: he enjoyed doing best, and that is, you know, molesting
Speaker 9: and killing little boys. Those were his words to me,
Speaker 9: you know, he it's what he enjoyed doing, that's what
Speaker 9: he lived for. M and it it just it's sad.
Speaker 9: What's really sad, you know. I meant the fathers of
Speaker 9: the boys.
Speaker 8: Uh, the vimes that he murdered.
Speaker 9: And and you know, when you look into their eyes
Speaker 9: and you see the the depth of their their their
Speaker 9: their hurt and their sadness and the emptiness that's left
Speaker 9: behind is just I it's an awful, awful feeling. And
Speaker 9: yet these these gentlemen, you know, were supportive enough of
Speaker 9: me and what I was doing to actually appear on
Speaker 9: TV with me local talk show. And despite the fact
Speaker 9: that you know, they had to look at Wesley Allen
Speaker 9: Dodd's picture on the front of the book every time
Speaker 9: they went to the grocery checkout stand. It's just awful.
Speaker 9: How but what a parent has left with when something
Speaker 9: like this happens, and you develop empathy really quickly when
Speaker 9: you deal with you know, survivors and victims of violent crime.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, no, not at all. I am glad
Speaker 8: that you touched on that, because the thing is is
Speaker 8: that this again, for those that don't know this story,
Speaker 8: if they do any kind of research at all, and
Speaker 8: if they when they do read this book, this is
Speaker 8: one of the most graphic documentations of murder and this
Speaker 8: murder fantasy. It's it's very non typical so and the
Speaker 8: depth of again, this guy's very very candid. A lot
Speaker 8: of these guys might not have might some guys like
Speaker 8: d Bundy would never really admit to necrophilia, or Gacy
Speaker 8: would downplay some of the aspects of his crimes. But
Speaker 8: this guy, like some evil killers, revels in it. But
Speaker 8: it seems to be not exaggerated. It seems to be
Speaker 8: for whatever reason, just very very candid, but very very
Speaker 8: graphic and shocking, disturbing and vile basically and some people.
Speaker 8: So you've handled this with a great amount of care
Speaker 8: and then again to be able to have the fathers
Speaker 8: who really aren't true crime buffs or anything like that,
Speaker 8: and sometimes are you know, critical of some of the
Speaker 8: journalists or you know, the newspapers, the media itself. So
Speaker 8: it's a testament that you handle this with a lot
Speaker 8: of care and sensitivity. Was there a conversation at all
Speaker 8: about the inclusion of because you really don't hold very
Speaker 8: much back in terms of you haven't censored much of
Speaker 8: this diary and its content. So was there a conversation
Speaker 8: at all about that with any of those fathers.
Speaker 9: Not before the publication of the book, No, I did
Speaker 9: you know forewarn them. We had a few minutes to
Speaker 9: chat before we went on the TV program, and I
Speaker 9: did forewarn them that that much of the book was graphic,
Speaker 9: but I also took the opportunity to explain the reasons,
Speaker 9: you know, behind it, and they seem to understand that,
Speaker 9: at least they indicated to me that they did. And
Speaker 9: it's it was just of all the things that I've
Speaker 9: written about, all the murders and crime, and I think
Speaker 9: I've published something like seventeen books now and like five
Speaker 9: hundred short articles, this is the one that has stayed
Speaker 9: with me. I've never forgotten it. It just it's just
Speaker 9: there all the time. You know, it doesn't take much
Speaker 9: to start dredging up the memories of me sitting in
Speaker 9: the interrogation room with him, and that in itself is
Speaker 9: you know, another story. I mean, the guy actually enjoyed
Speaker 9: talking about what he did, and I suppose we'll get into.
Speaker 3: That at some point.
Speaker 9: I don't want to jump too far ahead because I'm
Speaker 9: sure you kind.
Speaker 3: Of know where you want to go with this, but.
Speaker 8: Well it's not it's not so linear. But you know,
Speaker 8: the thing is what we haven't actually spoken about, and
Speaker 8: you can go as far as as you like with
Speaker 8: this in terms of again we don't want to give
Speaker 8: much away or read from the book, you know, in
Speaker 8: terms of what he's actually said, just suffice to say
Speaker 8: that it's the depiction of what he'd like to do,
Speaker 8: the depiction of how he would like to kill, and
Speaker 8: in fantasies of future plans, again which seemed to accelerate
Speaker 8: from from the murder that he had already committed. Murders
Speaker 8: he had already committed. So but tell us about the
Speaker 8: actual we were, if the audience is still with us,
Speaker 8: if we go back to the Douglas Park, the David
Speaker 8: Douglas Park, he had made a diagram of the park.
Speaker 8: He like you say, it was like recognisance in that
Speaker 8: he had these plans and extensive notes, and kept detailed
Speaker 8: notes of basically his hunt and when would it be
Speaker 8: the best time to hunt according to his observations so far.
Speaker 8: He even picked out the park, what entrance or where
Speaker 8: he would hunt, would be best to separate boys from
Speaker 8: each other, And then he documented, oh, I saw three
Speaker 8: boys age to this, eight to ten, and one was
Speaker 8: cuterer than this. So detailed sickening, disgusting, and horrifying notes.
Speaker 8: Now tell us about the actual abductions and murders. As
Speaker 8: they occurred, not to say dates, but in terms of
Speaker 8: what he actually did.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, he actually used the term the hunt or
Speaker 9: hunting in his notes, and you know, that's precisely what
Speaker 9: he was doing when he went to David Douglas Park,
Speaker 9: and he included details of how he almost had, you know,
Speaker 9: a victim on a particular day, but he was scared away,
Speaker 9: you know, because it such and such or encountering an
Speaker 9: adult or somebody else or whatever the case may have been.
Speaker 9: But on this particular day when he killed Billy and
Speaker 9: Cole near he basically was out in one of the
Speaker 9: bike paths. David Douglas Park for people who aren't familiar
Speaker 9: with it, you know, covers a significant amount of acreage
Speaker 9: and it's a city park, but it's it seems like you're,
Speaker 9: you know, not really in the city. And he he
Speaker 9: went on these these hiking paths and these bike paths,
Speaker 9: and that's where he he saw these two boys and
Speaker 9: he stoked them for a bit and he approached them
Speaker 9: at some point. They were riding their bicycles. They were
Speaker 9: actually out looking for golf balls that morning, because they
Speaker 9: would collect golf balls from a nearby golf course and
Speaker 9: turn them in for money and something or other. You know,
Speaker 9: they decided to cut through this park and and there
Speaker 9: was DoD and you know, he encountered I don't remember
Speaker 9: which one first, but probably the younger boy, but I
Speaker 9: just don't recall. And basically he told them that, you know,
Speaker 9: he wanted to do things with them, and the things
Speaker 9: that they just you know, were too young to really comprehend.
Speaker 9: I mean, they understood what he was wanting to do,
Speaker 9: but they didn't know you know, why, or what the
Speaker 9: repercussions would be and what the ultimate end would be.
Speaker 9: So there was some you know it I basically made
Speaker 9: made them pull their pants down and so he could
Speaker 9: touch them, and and you know, one thing led to
Speaker 9: another and and he ended up, uh, after I don't know,
Speaker 9: twenty thirty minutes of this, ended up stabbing the boys.
Speaker 9: He stabbed you know, one first, the other one tried
Speaker 9: to get away, caught him, stabbed him.
Speaker 3: They both died.
Speaker 9: It was it was a you know, it was really horrible.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to.
Speaker 9: Yeah, to emphasize that point, but uh, you know, he
Speaker 9: ended their lives right there on the bike path. Nobody
Speaker 9: else was around. It was quiet morning, but did that answer.
Speaker 8: What kind of clues did he leave behind? In terms
Speaker 8: of police, did they have any evidence and at the
Speaker 8: crime scene itself, what was their position. How did the
Speaker 8: police respond at that time other than we've got a
Speaker 8: couple young boys dead.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well someone found the boys, you know, and reported it.
Speaker 9: It seems like he left a knife at the scene. Again,
Speaker 9: this has, you know, been over twenty years, so I'm
Speaker 9: using my memory. If I'm wrong, I apologize, But it
Speaker 9: seemed like he left a knife at the scene. As
Speaker 9: far as other evidence, I don't believe there was much.
Speaker 9: I think the ropes were there, they bound them with
Speaker 9: or whatever he used to bud them with.
Speaker 3: I may not have been ropes strength, and.
Speaker 9: They really didn't have anything to go on. Someone after
Speaker 9: the fact, you know, reported a suspicious character that they'd
Speaker 9: seen lurking around the park, and they provided a description
Speaker 9: which turned out to be pretty darn good. I mean,
Speaker 9: if you've seen the the the the police drawings of
Speaker 9: of the person of interest before they knew who they
Speaker 9: were dealing.
Speaker 3: With, they they looks like dot mm.
Speaker 9: So they had that to go on. But uh, the
Speaker 9: case really didn't didn't move along. It It just sort
Speaker 9: of was if a standstill until he you know, committed
Speaker 9: his next murder. Even then, you know, it didn't go
Speaker 9: too too far. I mean really, uh, you know, the
Speaker 9: way he was apprehended was almost a miracle, blessing, whatever
Speaker 9: you want to call it.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 9: It was luck, and he would have had a fourth victim.
Speaker 9: But again, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Speaker 8: I'm yeah, well, yeah, we'll just go back a little bit.
Speaker 8: Because now Dodd wrote in his diary that he'd like
Speaker 8: to be able to have more time for various types
Speaker 8: of rape rather than just a quickie before murder. And uh,
Speaker 8: and so after the two boys, he decided that he
Speaker 8: decided what when he would like to do his next murder,
Speaker 8: but he also wanted to perform experimental surgeries on his victims.
Speaker 8: He realized that rape and murder was not enough after
Speaker 8: two boys, so he decided that Saturday afternoon after work
Speaker 8: was the best time to find a boy. And then
Speaker 8: he found h s third victim of Lee Ice. If
Speaker 8: I selly Lee? Yeah, four years old?
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah. He found him in Portland Richmond Elementary School.
Speaker 9: There there were him and his brother were out there
Speaker 9: playing along with a friend. His brother Isisley's brother was
Speaker 9: older than him, and he had taken his little brother
Speaker 9: to the park or to the playground that day, and
Speaker 9: cause Lee liked to go play on the structure they
Speaker 9: had there called the pyramid and uh, or at the volcano.
Speaker 9: Excuse me, the volcano. It looked, I actually looked like
Speaker 9: a volcano. It was made out of concrete or some
Speaker 9: sub substance. And and he liked to play on this.
Speaker 9: And Dodd was sitting outside the playground in his car,
Speaker 9: you know, waiting for the perfect victim. And pretty soon
Speaker 9: when Lee Eisley's brother left Lee to play on the volcano,
Speaker 9: that's when Dodd moved in. And you know, he started
Speaker 9: talking to him and you know, promised him candy, toys
Speaker 9: and whatever if he'd get in his car and go
Speaker 9: for a ride with him and.
Speaker 8: Me.
Speaker 9: And the kid was four years old. Uh yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: Dodd seemed harmless enough, so he got in the car
Speaker 9: with him. And that's that's the way Dodd abducted the
Speaker 9: little boy off of the playground and he took him
Speaker 9: back to his apartment.
Speaker 8: You know, didn't he let him watch cartoons?
Speaker 9: Yes, he did. He let him watch TV. He bought
Speaker 9: him a toy to play with, He made lee Is
Speaker 9: as comfortable as possible at first, until he decided to
Speaker 9: start sexually abusing him.
Speaker 3: And you know.
Speaker 9: He he had his apartment all laid out.
Speaker 2: He had ropes with Lucky landslots. You can get lucky
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Speaker 9: Connected to his bed that he would use to you know,
Speaker 9: that he planned to use to tie his victims up with.
Speaker 9: And but Lee, you know, being four years old, wasn't
Speaker 9: too much of a handful for him, and he did
Speaker 9: some of the things to leave while Lee was asleep,
Speaker 9: you know, such as you know, inserting a metal rod
Speaker 9: into the end of his penis and into his urethra
Speaker 9: and h taking it out. Things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: He then he strangled them while he was sleeping right.
Speaker 9: Into unconsciousness and revive him.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 9: Once he finally killed him, of course, you know, he
Speaker 9: put him in the clothset and hit him behind uh
Speaker 9: pillows or a blanket or something while he went to work,
Speaker 9: hoping that you know, the body would stay there until
Speaker 9: he got home and then he could abuse it some more,
Speaker 9: and uh and so forth. And he did this h until,
Speaker 9: you know, until decompensation started setting, which doesn't take long.
Speaker 9: I mean you're talking about a matter of hours, day
Speaker 9: and a half whatever. Uh. And you know, and then
Speaker 9: he you know, eventually went out and downbed to the
Speaker 9: after he had sex with the little boy's dead body.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's.
Speaker 8: Yeah, took pictures as well.
Speaker 9: Took pictures, Yeah, yeah, took pictures of the body hanging
Speaker 9: in the closet. I had forgotten about that. He actually, yeah,
Speaker 9: hung the boy from a a rod in the closet,
Speaker 9: and uh my god. I saw those pictures too, and
Speaker 9: I I don't believe I included any of them. I
Speaker 9: don't think we would have.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: No, that's that's too much. Nobody needs to see that.
Speaker 8: I feel sorry for you. Yeah, So it was the
Speaker 8: other thing. He burnt all the clothing, but he kept
Speaker 8: the child's underwear Ghostbusters underwear. Yeah, put in his briefcase
Speaker 8: under his bed, put it under his bed. Is momentos
Speaker 8: under his bed, Yeah, for later use.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And then shortly after I think it's that day someone
Speaker 8: a hunter discovers Lee's body at Vancouver Lake.
Speaker 9: That's correct.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 8: So now they're still looking for a killer.
Speaker 9: They're still looking for a killer. The community is basically terrorized,
Speaker 9: or at least thinking parents are, and all you can
Speaker 9: do is turn on the news and hope that they
Speaker 9: announced that they've caught this this maniac. And that just
Speaker 9: didn't happen right away. Unfortunately.
Speaker 8: Now the police are getting all kinds of leads. There
Speaker 8: are people have said they've seen Lee with someone. There
Speaker 8: was a lot of reports of the child's appearance in
Speaker 8: various places, wasn't there.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it seems like there was. Seems like they went
Speaker 9: out for fast food or junk food at a convenience
Speaker 9: store maybe, But yeah, there were sightings with with him
Speaker 9: and Lee. And it had to be within that first
Speaker 9: critical period of time, you know, from when he abducted
Speaker 9: him and took him back, because he really he only
Speaker 9: kept him I think alive for like a day or so,
Speaker 9: but I remember correctly. Yeah, it wasn't no.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 8: Now are police at all looking at Wesley Allen Dodd
Speaker 8: for any reason during this time? Is there has anybody
Speaker 8: come forward? I know it sometimes when you get investigations
Speaker 8: like this, though, with so much emotion, there's so many
Speaker 8: leads that even good leads get mixed up with the
Speaker 8: not so good leads.
Speaker 9: Well, you had the Clark County Sheriff's Department in Vancouver,
Speaker 9: Washington looking for this killer, and then after Lee Eisley,
Speaker 9: you had the Portland Police Bureau looking for a killer,
Speaker 9: a child killer. And I'm not sure if the Vancouver
Speaker 9: Police Department were was involved or not. I don't believe
Speaker 9: they were. If they were, it was peripherally involved, not
Speaker 9: directly because the cases didn't fall within their jurisdiction. But
Speaker 9: uh so you've got these two fairly big agencies that
Speaker 9: are in fairly close proximity to one another. Portland's across
Speaker 9: the Columbia River from Vancouver, Washington, and they decided at
Speaker 9: some point they needed to work together on it, and
Speaker 9: they did. They started sharing information and and but as
Speaker 9: I recall there weren't any leads that pointed directly at
Speaker 9: Dodd just yet. They were pretty much at a loss
Speaker 9: as who was doing this other than the witness sidings
Speaker 9: and the police drawings.
Speaker 8: Right now, now, Dodd Wesley decides that he's going to
Speaker 8: change things a little bit in terms of the park.
Speaker 8: So his ideas maybe to find a child at the movies,
Speaker 8: and so tell us a little bit about what happens
Speaker 8: at the movie theater.
Speaker 9: Well, he first started checking out a movie theater in
Speaker 9: Vancouver and he didn't have any luck. So he moved
Speaker 9: on down the road a bit about fourteen fifteen miles
Speaker 9: east of Vancouver to a small town called Camus, and
Speaker 9: he went to a theater there called the New Liberty Theater.
Speaker 9: It was playing a movie called Honey a shrunk the
Speaker 9: kids at the time. So he thought, wow, this should
Speaker 9: be good. I had to be able to find a
Speaker 9: victim in there, and so he did. He went in there,
Speaker 9: and he kind of waited and watched, and he saw
Speaker 9: this boy go to the restroom, followed him in, and
Speaker 9: I guess it was a fairly good sized boy, if
Speaker 9: memory serves me correctly, but not too big for Dodd
Speaker 9: to handle. So Dodd decided that the best way that
Speaker 9: he could get him out of there get him out quickly,
Speaker 9: just to pick him up and carry him.
Speaker 3: So he did. He picked the kid up, walked to the.
Speaker 9: Lobby with him. Kid, you know, was kicking and screaming,
Speaker 9: and Dodd recalled later that he he just figured people
Speaker 9: would think that was a angry parent, you know, dealing
Speaker 9: with his kid or some such. But Uh, an astute
Speaker 9: movie gore, who I think had his own kid or
Speaker 9: stepchild or something there to the movies, Uh, saw what
Speaker 9: was happening. So he decided to follow him and he watched,
Speaker 9: and as luck would have it, a few blocks away
Speaker 9: from the theater, Dodd's car broke down, and this good
Speaker 9: samaritan you know, approached him, and you know, he saw
Speaker 9: what was going on. But if if I remember correctly,
Speaker 9: he had telephoned someone or the police, possibly before h
Speaker 9: he approached God somehow he had the police a yep,
Speaker 9: and Dodd was basically arrested at that point trying to
Speaker 9: abduct this kid from the theater. And it's lucky that
Speaker 9: they got him right in an there. He would have
Speaker 9: had a fourth victim.
Speaker 8: Yes, yeah, William Graves, Now we want to talk about too,
Speaker 8: is now that they have the reasonable grounds, they have
Speaker 8: a warrant, and they searched the house, and I alluded
Speaker 8: to this briefcase. Tell us about the briefcase and what
Speaker 8: they found at the house and what they found in
Speaker 8: the briefcase.
Speaker 9: Well, when they went into his room, first of all,
Speaker 9: they noticed that it was very orderly, very tidy, very
Speaker 9: well kept. You know, everything had a place and it
Speaker 9: was in its place sort of thing. Many serial killers
Speaker 9: are like that.
Speaker 3: And he.
Speaker 9: Had the ropes attached to the ends of the bed,
Speaker 9: the bed posts, so they saw that the restraints were there,
Speaker 9: you know, waiting to be used. They found, uh, the uh,
Speaker 9: the briefcase under the bed. They contained uh newspaper clippings
Speaker 9: of the previous crimes.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 9: He'd followed the case fairly closely, very closely actually, and
Speaker 9: uh it kept those either as souvenirs or as you know,
Speaker 9: things to where he could just keep track of what
Speaker 9: was going on, to maybe stay one step ahead of
Speaker 9: the cops, you know. I'm not sure. But and also
Speaker 9: Lee Eisley's you know, underpants were in there. And I
Speaker 9: believe they found other ropes and restraints in one of
Speaker 9: the chest of drawers, one of the drawers in the
Speaker 9: chest of drawers. Uh, what else did they find? I
Speaker 9: I can't remember, it's it's just been so long.
Speaker 8: They did find the torture rack in the.
Speaker 9: Yes, of course, how did I forget that? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 9: the torture rack was there. And that's how I got
Speaker 9: the picture of it. The police gave me the picture
Speaker 9: they took of it.
Speaker 8: And did we mention that was the diary in the briefcase?
Speaker 9: The diary was in the briefcase.
Speaker 8: Yes, And what did that look like? What physically what
Speaker 8: does that look like?
Speaker 9: It was just a number of sheets of paper that
Speaker 9: had been stapled together pretty much or you know, like
Speaker 9: a well, it was kind of a it was actually
Speaker 9: it was in it was a piece of paper that
Speaker 9: were stable together in a binder. It was like a
Speaker 9: plastic binder. And if I remember, Craig was black and
Speaker 9: they it was all handwritten. He took the time to
Speaker 9: you know, printed out.
Speaker 3: He didn't he.
Speaker 9: Used cursive at some points, but most of it was printed.
Speaker 9: And uh, it was just very very meticulous diary.
Speaker 1: And there's the.
Speaker 3: Sorry.
Speaker 8: Then there's the anatomical drawings as well, almost like autopsy
Speaker 8: again to coincide with his experimental plans. An interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 8: and he had he had the drawings right, and yeah,
Speaker 8: it was it was awful. He had a Bible in
Speaker 8: there too. Actually he found that he had scribbled some stuff.
Speaker 3: In the copy.
Speaker 9: It wasn't really the Bibles, I think of the New Testament,
Speaker 9: and he had scribbled some satanic stuff, you know, and it.
Speaker 8: And he had altered some religious pictures as well.
Speaker 3: That's right too.
Speaker 9: He liked like pictures for magazines and.
Speaker 3: Do things with him.
Speaker 8: Now, what was the interview like with police? How cooperative
Speaker 8: or uncooperative was Wesley Allen Dodd with police? How willing
Speaker 8: to talk was he with them?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 9: At right from the get go, he was really willing
Speaker 9: to talk. I think he realized that it was up,
Speaker 9: his time was up, that that you know, he's caught now,
Speaker 9: he's going to have to deal with it. And he
Speaker 9: talked to them fairly quickly. I don't remember exactly when,
Speaker 9: but I do remember the circumstances of my being able
Speaker 9: to talk with him. I can tell you about that. Sure.
Speaker 8: At what point was that that was?
Speaker 9: That was about I don't know, four or five months
Speaker 9: before his execution, and I was over at the Clark
Speaker 9: County Jail, interviewing Lieutenant Larry Byler I believe was his
Speaker 9: name for a different story that I was doing. And
Speaker 9: I was already working on the Dodd book, and I
Speaker 9: really hadn't had any intentions of interviewing him. It just
Speaker 9: seemed so distasteful to me that I didn't really want
Speaker 9: to have anything to do with him, and I didn't
Speaker 9: think i'd be able to either. But you know, when
Speaker 9: I concluded my interview with with Byler, he he looked
Speaker 9: at me and said, hey, you know, we've got Wes
Speaker 9: Dodd upstairs. You want to talk to him? Kind of
Speaker 9: took me by surprise, and I stumbled around a bit,
Speaker 9: and I said, well, sure, you know, if he wants
Speaker 9: to talk to me, I mean, what else am I
Speaker 9: gonna say?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 9: I didn't really want.
Speaker 3: To talk to him, but I ended up going.
Speaker 9: Upstairs into the it's a modern jail, it's a pod format,
Speaker 9: and uh, Dodd was laying in one of the the cells,
Speaker 9: and and Buyler told me that, you know, he lays
Speaker 9: there and masturbate, you know, would masturbate most of the day,
Speaker 9: probably fantasizing about his victims. And so if they went
Speaker 9: and asked ot if he wanted to talk to me.
Speaker 9: He told him what I was doing, and and uh,
Speaker 9: uh he said sure. So they put him in an
Speaker 9: interrogation room across from his cell with me, and uh
Speaker 9: that was the first of our meetings. And we we
Speaker 9: sat there for a good three three and a half
Speaker 9: hours that first meeting, and he basically told me everything,
Speaker 9: you know, from start to finish. I mean, I had
Speaker 9: to come back and start filling in the details later on.
Speaker 9: But but uh, he enjoyed recounting his his uh, horrible deed.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 9: He would kind of roll his eyes back and look
Speaker 9: up at the ceiling and start recounting in very explicit
Speaker 9: detail what he did to these boys and how he
Speaker 9: enjoyed it and so forth. And he was definitely like
Speaker 9: in a dream or fantasy state. And then he would
Speaker 9: come back forward, you know, and look at me and
Speaker 9: start talking to me like a normal person again and
Speaker 9: tell me about the good things, you know, that he
Speaker 9: had done in his life, you know, helping those ladies
Speaker 9: across the street, helping clem and change tires, helping neighbors out,
Speaker 9: the boy next door, you know, type of the good guy.
Speaker 9: And sadly there there seemed to be somewhat of a
Speaker 9: good side to him. I mean, if it just didn't
Speaker 9: exist very often, and you could kind of see it,
Speaker 9: but you could also, you know, see through it. You
Speaker 9: could see through that that he enjoyed this, this telling
Speaker 9: of what he did. It's what he lived for. And
Speaker 9: that's what he told me. He says, I live to
Speaker 9: rape and murder little boys. And and you know when
Speaker 9: he when he said that to the court and said
Speaker 9: that he didn't want to appeal any of his you know,
Speaker 9: it's conviction. He pleaded guilty, I mean anyway, and he
Speaker 9: didn't want to He didn't want to prolong the issue.
Speaker 9: He just wanted to be executed. His reasoning for that
Speaker 9: was because he couldn't do the things he loved to
Speaker 9: do anymore, not be in a jail cell. And he
Speaker 9: didn't want to spend the rest of his life in
Speaker 9: jail not being able to kill little boys.
Speaker 8: Well, so he also kind of surprising too. He asked
Speaker 8: to be hung, he said, because he believed it was
Speaker 8: the most appropriate execution, because that's he said, that's the
Speaker 8: way Lee Eisley died, right, So I got give him
Speaker 8: a little bit of credit, not much, but but.
Speaker 9: There's a lot of speculation about that too, and I
Speaker 9: even myself I wondered about that. Now it is that
Speaker 9: really why he wanted to be hung? Or did he
Speaker 9: I want to have one last thrill of sorts, you know,
Speaker 9: of some kind. I'm not quite sure how to go
Speaker 9: into that because I don't know much about that, but.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3: It's it's hard.
Speaker 8: It's hard for a hard for a person that doesn't
Speaker 8: never you know, doesn't even comprehend what the word remorse means,
Speaker 8: to have some quart of some form of remorse. So, yeah,
Speaker 8: I know what you mean. Not so genuine probably yeah, yeah.
Speaker 8: So did he give any definitive rationale or reason for
Speaker 8: I mean, like I say, I looked at the information
Speaker 8: that just seems to go from confused person sexually to
Speaker 8: now he has fantasies about killing, abduction, torture, cannibalize, you know, castration, experimentation.
Speaker 8: Did he give any reason why he.
Speaker 9: Thought why he thought?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 8: He thought? The reason why he became that he had
Speaker 8: these urges, that he was compelled to do this, that
Speaker 8: he needed to do this.
Speaker 9: All he would tell me was that he couldn't control
Speaker 9: the urges that he would get these urges. He didn't
Speaker 9: know what came over him, but he couldn't control them.
Speaker 9: He said that he had to go through the process,
Speaker 9: and each time that he did go through the process,
Speaker 9: it was like a vicious cycle that you know, ended
Speaker 9: back up at step one after a while. And he
Speaker 9: understood this. He understood this to a degree that it
Speaker 9: was cyclic, but he didn't know why. He just knew
Speaker 9: that these urges existed and would come over him and
Speaker 9: he had to carry them through.
Speaker 8: It seems too like a lot of these these really
Speaker 8: extraordinary serial killers that they have an unusually high sex drive.
Speaker 8: They they claim to have an unusually high sex drive.
Speaker 8: But like you said, you said, they're not, they're not.
Speaker 8: The guards are witnessing what this guy is doing. In
Speaker 8: in your book, you document how excited he was after
Speaker 8: a couple of these abductions and murders, or when he
Speaker 8: was first doing this, being sexually aroused for an entire day.
Speaker 8: You know, this, this these sexual desires and thoughts and
Speaker 8: fantasies really dominated his being.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, yeah, they did.
Speaker 9: And my first meeting with them, and you know, like
Speaker 9: I told you, it was very lengthy. I actually felt
Speaker 9: really really dirty, afterward ends with this guy and his
Speaker 9: hands were cold and clammy and almost, you know, kind
Speaker 9: of wet. It was a horrible feat. I could never
Speaker 9: never forget it. The first thing I did when I
Speaker 9: left there that day is I stopped at the men's
Speaker 9: room and washed my hands for about ten minutes before
Speaker 9: I left the building. I just felt awful. Yeah, I
Speaker 9: felt like I was just unclean. Yeah, but yeah, it's
Speaker 9: all about the fantasy.
Speaker 8: So this you had to. You covered a story because
Speaker 8: you were initially thought it was important. Then you got
Speaker 8: probably more involved than you ever wanted if you were
Speaker 8: interviewing the killer when you had no idea you would
Speaker 8: even be doing that. And like you say, you wash
Speaker 8: your hands for ten minutes so and the memories are
Speaker 8: still there. You saw the crime scene, you witnessed the
Speaker 8: crime scene photos which I've never seen any And I
Speaker 8: don't know if I volunteer for it. This is a
Speaker 8: cautionary tale. What do you come away from from writing
Speaker 8: this book that you might not have thought before undertaking
Speaker 8: this endeavor?
Speaker 9: Well, I really, when when I walked away from this,
Speaker 9: I told myself, you know, never again, no more child killings.
Speaker 9: I can't deal with it. It's just too you know,
Speaker 9: despite the importance of getting the information out and presenting it,
Speaker 9: you know, like it really happened to make people aware.
Speaker 9: I just felt like I could never cover another story
Speaker 9: like that. Didn't turn out to be that way, but
Speaker 9: that's how I felt at the time. I mean, I
Speaker 9: I did end up writing you know, more later on, you.
Speaker 3: Know about uh Joseph d Or Duncan Shaster Grony case.
Speaker 9: But what I came away with were some really bad memories.
Speaker 9: Paul Dennis, the editor, flew out from New York to
Speaker 9: meet me in Walla Walla, Washington at the State Penitentiary.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 9: You know, we went to the execution. We didn't witness it,
Speaker 9: really I didn't. Yeah, I didn't really want to witness it.
Speaker 9: But they had a lottery system in place at the
Speaker 9: time to where you know, we drew tickets and my
Speaker 9: number never came out, neither did Paul's. I was thankful
Speaker 9: mine didn't. But we did talk to all the witnesses
Speaker 9: who did see, you know, see him execute it, so
Speaker 9: we got the the report you know, from them, and
Speaker 9: but that was that was an experience of itself.
Speaker 8: What was what was his demeanor, how did he react anything?
Speaker 3: Or the daughter or the editor of God Well.
Speaker 9: No, God, Well he uh he basically took it as
Speaker 9: much like a man as anybody could. I. Uh, I
Speaker 9: don't remember his exact words, but uh, I know that
Speaker 9: uh he did say some words. I think he might
Speaker 9: have even apologized. I I I should have read the
Speaker 9: book before I had this interview.
Speaker 8: Sorry, it's okay, it's fine, but.
Speaker 9: I uh I, I try to put it out of
Speaker 9: my mind. Uh, all of these things that I write about,
Speaker 9: I try to limit the time that it spends inside
Speaker 9: my head before I go on to.
Speaker 3: The next one.
Speaker 9: But uh mm, uh, as I recall, he took it
Speaker 9: like a man and and didn't resist. I've seen heard
Speaker 9: about a lot of them resisting and having to be dragged,
Speaker 9: you know, to their execution. But he walked right up
Speaker 9: to it. They put the net the news around his
Speaker 9: neck after they you know, hooded him, and.
Speaker 3: And uh that was that.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So how long was the the entire project? Again?
Speaker 8: Like again, it it It stays with you and it
Speaker 8: will stay with you forever. But how long was the
Speaker 8: entire uh project? Uh? In terms of lengths for you,
Speaker 8: it was a.
Speaker 9: Pretty fast track book. I did it, and I believe
Speaker 9: we started it in September October, and we finished it
Speaker 9: right after the execution, which was in January of ninety three.
Speaker 9: I think that's right. So it was about a three
Speaker 9: or four month project. Yeah, I typically take longer than that,
Speaker 9: but we didn't have much time on this one.
Speaker 8: And this was not to say that anything's open and
Speaker 8: shot and there's no surprises, but this was a foregone
Speaker 8: conclusion where this person definitely qualified for the death penalty.
Speaker 8: It's pretty hard to find any mitigating circumstances. I would
Speaker 8: think wasn't an issue of insanity? Was it?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 9: No, that never came up, really, I mean, if it did,
Speaker 9: it was never considered. Seriously. There's a part of me
Speaker 9: that really hated to see him executed, simply because he
Speaker 9: was so willing to talk. I think if they could
Speaker 9: have kept alive, that psychologists have learned a lot.
Speaker 8: From him about I think so too.
Speaker 9: Such anomalies of nature, because that's really what he is. Yes,
Speaker 9: but you know that didn't happen in a way. That's unfortunate.
Speaker 9: Plus life in prison would have been a better punishment
Speaker 9: for him. But that's what he would do.
Speaker 8: I would think, Yeah, I would think, you know, I
Speaker 8: don't know personally, but I think Jesus, if you can
Speaker 8: tell me that life in an eight x twelve cell
Speaker 8: is is good or somehow not ample punishment, I don't know.
Speaker 8: I think it's I think it's I think it's ample
Speaker 8: punishment the rest of your life sitting in a cell,
Speaker 8: I think, yeah.
Speaker 9: Well, not to mention, you know how other inmates treat
Speaker 9: people like that exactly, his life would have been a
Speaker 9: living hell.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then he would have at least, and not
Speaker 8: to say, that's what you want, but that's just the
Speaker 8: order of things. He would have experienced the kind of
Speaker 8: fear and apprehension that just the taste of what his
Speaker 8: victims experienced. But at least he would have that, you know,
Speaker 8: universal thumbs down from society and even the convicts and everybody.
Speaker 8: You know, he would have that, he would have that
Speaker 8: to live with, at least. I don't believe in the
Speaker 8: death penitely because there are mistakes.
Speaker 9: So I'm with you. I used to believe in it.
Speaker 9: I've kind of sat on the fence for a while
Speaker 9: and believe it or not, there are killers out there
Speaker 9: that I could probably pull the switch on myself there,
Speaker 9: but there have been far too many mistakes made. Too
Speaker 9: many innocent people have been cleared by DNA, and if
Speaker 9: one innocent person is executed, that's one too many in
Speaker 9: my book.
Speaker 8: Well, the whole system is that they would rather let,
Speaker 8: you know, whatever it is, the fifty innocent people go
Speaker 8: or fifty guilty people go, rather than one innocent person
Speaker 8: be convicted. Well, don't that's just you know, that's just
Speaker 8: flapping your lips when you let somebody die because you
Speaker 8: made a mistake. And you see a lot of resistance
Speaker 8: from district attorneys who prosecuted the cases to ever admit
Speaker 8: any kind of mistake, even though it's a matter of
Speaker 8: life or death for somebody who's been sitting in prison.
Speaker 8: So it's shameful. Actually, so it is, I think, and
Speaker 8: I think the court cases don't really get people, don't
Speaker 8: really pay attention to them, and they're conducted completely differently.
Speaker 8: When you're dealing with a death penalty, all of a sudden,
Speaker 8: you're just worried about that. It does it it's a
Speaker 8: completely different Yeah, it's a completely different situation for a trial.
Speaker 8: Here in Canada, we have abolished a death penalty, I
Speaker 8: think officially in the seventies or in practicality in the seventies,
Speaker 8: so it does not become an issue.
Speaker 3: And we have our own.
Speaker 8: Problems here in Canada with how we conduct murder trials especially, but.
Speaker 3: I think that's.
Speaker 8: Why it bankrupts. It takes some time in some states,
Speaker 8: as you know, twenty years to get the execution done anyway,
Speaker 8: and almost bankrupts the state going through the appellate process.
Speaker 8: So true another good reason not to do it. So now, Gary,
Speaker 8: like I mentioned in the introduction, you've been doing this
Speaker 8: for a long time. Thirty two years, five hundred articles
Speaker 8: published about true crime. You were one of the, like
Speaker 8: I had mentioned, one of the more important, one of
Speaker 8: the most important true crime authors in America, which means
Speaker 8: and that's the world basically. Tell us you have seventeen books.
Speaker 8: I know I counted as well. Tell us about your
Speaker 8: website and how people might contact you, and just tell
Speaker 8: us where they might take a look for some of
Speaker 8: the other titles that you have written over the thirty
Speaker 8: two years.
Speaker 9: Sure, you know you can always contact me through my
Speaker 9: website at truecrimeking dot com. I have some podcasts on
Speaker 9: there too that explained why I write some of the
Speaker 9: things that I write, and all of my books are
Speaker 9: available through there. There's you know, links to purchase on
Speaker 9: Amazon dot com or Barnes and Noble or various other outlets.
Speaker 9: And I also have a new page up with Facebook.
Speaker 9: It's Facebook dot com slash true Crime King. And I'm
Speaker 9: always happy, you know, to interact with readers. It's one
Speaker 9: of the things I enjoy.
Speaker 3: About this job.
Speaker 9: I mean, you look for things to enjoy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 9: really not fun to actually do the writing about them,
Speaker 9: but I see a need for it, so that's what
Speaker 9: I do. But those are the two best ways to
Speaker 9: contact me True Crimeking dot com or Facebook dot com
Speaker 9: slash true Crime King, little play on the name, but.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and what's interesting too, and I'm really glad we've
Speaker 8: finally got I convince you to come on the program
Speaker 8: is because, as the title indicates, the most shockingkillers in
Speaker 8: true crime history. And it's not like I'm not interested
Speaker 8: in one off killers or you know, wives murdering husbands.
Speaker 8: But the thing that most fascinates me and was the
Speaker 8: killer that I profiled in the book that I did,
Speaker 8: Trophy Kill, was very a lot of shared characteristics with
Speaker 8: Wesley Allen Dodd and some of the most heinous Dennis
Speaker 8: Nielsen some of these people. And that's and even before that,
Speaker 8: I always found those type of killers, for some odd
Speaker 8: reason more interesting than everyone else. Again, because they seem
Speaker 8: to be such a freak of nature, whether it's mob
Speaker 8: killers are interesting to me. And I've read numerous books,
Speaker 8: but something keeps gnawing at me to try to understand.
Speaker 8: And this book, Driven to Kill is like no other
Speaker 8: in terms of getting inside. I know it's a cliche,
Speaker 8: but inside the mind of a serial killer. Again, you
Speaker 8: need a mental shower after you read this book, because
Speaker 8: you get inside and outside, and as fascinated as you are,
Speaker 8: you need to read about Wesley Allen Dodd. And so
Speaker 8: I want to thank you for Driven to Kill, but
Speaker 8: a lot of the other titles that you've done as well,
Speaker 8: including Texas Seven Important Cases, but also featuring some of
Speaker 8: the most shocking killers in true grime history. So I
Speaker 8: got to say that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I've written about a few of them, and I've
Speaker 9: veered off the path a few times, and I always
Speaker 9: keep coming back to these kinds of killers because I'm
Speaker 9: fascinated by what does go on inside their minds, and
Speaker 9: it's always a challenge to see if you can, you know,
Speaker 9: get a glimpse of what goes on inside their minds,
Speaker 9: and that kind of drives me. I mean, you can't
Speaker 9: tell that to an editor. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 9: I went indy because they keep, you know, wanting to
Speaker 9: do what they want to do. And frankly, I need
Speaker 9: to do what I want to do because I know
Speaker 9: what it is I like to write about and study.
Speaker 9: And but I'm with you. I think these people are
Speaker 9: fascinating and people need to learn about them.
Speaker 8: Yes, absolutely, And you know the thing is too when
Speaker 8: you talked about going independent as well. I think the
Speaker 8: publishing industry is going through, you know, a major evolution,
Speaker 8: I guess, but I think a lot of authors that
Speaker 8: have paid their dues like yourself, and paid and paid
Speaker 8: and paid and got not so much of the profit.
Speaker 8: I think it's hopefully the Internet is going to be
Speaker 8: one of those things that levels out that playing field.
Speaker 8: And obviously people can access your books and get the
Speaker 8: information and find out about these cases and then find
Speaker 8: that you've written a book about that particular case, and
Speaker 8: so not to say goodbye publishers, but hopefully it ushers
Speaker 8: in a new time in that's a little more equitable
Speaker 8: for authors.
Speaker 3: I think so.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Well, I'm very grateful to the traditional publishers. You know,
Speaker 9: they gave me a break when I needed it, and
Speaker 9: they helped build my name recognition and that's all helped.
Speaker 9: But now it's a new day, and in that sense,
Speaker 9: I'm just beginning.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I want to say too that for people
Speaker 8: that might miss this as well, this book was originally
Speaker 8: released in nineteen ninety three, so it seems like Pinnacle
Speaker 8: is coming out with this the true crime classics, and
Speaker 8: this book did exceptionally well and super well received. So
Speaker 8: I got to congratulate you too that It's Driven to
Speaker 8: Kill is one of those official basically a true crime classics.
Speaker 8: So I urge people to go out there and seek
Speaker 8: this out and get one of those classics. So I
Speaker 8: want to thank you very much Gary for coming on
Speaker 8: the program. Hope to speak to you again. What is
Speaker 8: your latest project that you have released and or what
Speaker 8: are you working on soon to be released?
Speaker 9: Well, my latest project is called Crime Scene True Stories
Speaker 9: of Crime and Detection. It's a compilation of fifteen pretty
Speaker 9: fascinating stories that I've written throughout my long writing career
Speaker 9: and I just put it in a book for him.
Speaker 9: It's available as an ebook as well as a trade paperback,
Speaker 9: and so far it's being pretty well received by readers.
Speaker 9: I didn't know if it would be or not. I've
Speaker 9: never done anything like that, and I'm working on that.
Speaker 9: And right now I'm doing an Amazon non fiction short
Speaker 9: on the mystery deaths of the Spreckles Mansion in San Diego.
Speaker 9: It's not a mystery as far as the police are concerned,
Speaker 9: but it's a mystery as far as the relatives of
Speaker 9: Rebecca Za Howe and Max Shag and I are concerned.
Speaker 9: There's some things that need to be answered. Hopefully they'll
Speaker 9: reopen that investigation at some point and come up with
Speaker 9: either the same determination but with more answers, or a
Speaker 9: different determination. But that's my latest project. I hope to
Speaker 9: have that released in a few weeks. But aside from that,
Speaker 9: I've got some other stuff coming down the chute.
Speaker 8: Well great, Well let me know, and we'd love to
Speaker 8: have you back on, or I'd love to have you
Speaker 8: back on, and I'm sure the audience will enjoy that
Speaker 8: as well. So again, I want to thank you very
Speaker 8: much Gary for coming on and talking about Driven to Kill,
Speaker 8: the Wesley Allen Dodds story and thanks very much and
Speaker 8: have your stuff.
Speaker 3: A good evening.
Speaker 9: It was my pleasure, Dan, thank you. I enjoyed speaking
Speaker 9: with you tonight and I hope that you will.
Speaker 3: Have me back someday.
Speaker 9: Absolutely, good night, all right, thank you, good night,