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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 4: Week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 4: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening. What happens when ordinary people in real life
Speaker 2: murder clubs set out to investigate crimes, both recent and
Speaker 2: cold cases. The Netflix hit Don't Fuck with Cats was
Speaker 2: based on the twenty twelve Montreal murder of thirty three
Speaker 2: year old Lyn John by his porn star boyfriend Luca Magnauta. Previously,
Speaker 2: Magnata had anonymously posted videos of himself killing kittens. This
Speaker 2: spurred horrified Facebook Sluice into working tirelessly to uncover his
Speaker 2: identity and location. Other investigations include a self taught forensic
Speaker 2: artist who uses computer software and coroners photographs to help
Speaker 2: identify victims by showing how they looked when alive, The
Speaker 2: mother who swore at her murdered daughter's graveside that she
Speaker 2: would get the gang who had sprayed her car with bullets.
Speaker 2: It took fourteen years in the case of one gang member,
Speaker 2: but she finally entrapped him via the fake profile she
Speaker 2: created on MySpace. The retail clerk turned citizen sleuth who
Speaker 2: helped to match a photo of a missing man to
Speaker 2: a skull found in a bucket, which resulted in the
Speaker 2: conviction of the victim's best friend. Web Sleuth's matched the
Speaker 2: IP address of a suspicious contributor to a lottery winning
Speaker 2: victim's financial advisor, which led to his body being found
Speaker 2: Beneathan newly Ford concrete slab in his advisor's boyfriend's garden.
Speaker 2: Sometimes citizen sleuthing goes wrong, though, with innocent people being
Speaker 2: targeted or accused of crimes they haven't committed, with tragic results.
Speaker 2: The real life version of Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder
Speaker 2: Club is grittier, with intrepid amateur investigators delving into truly gruesome,
Speaker 2: unsolved crimes in pursuit of justice. The book that we're
Speaker 2: featuring this evening is The Real Life Murder Clubs Citizens
Speaker 2: Solving true crimes with My special guest journalists and author
Speaker 2: Nicola Stowe. Welcome to the program, and thank you very
Speaker 2: much for this interview. Nikola Stowe, thank you, thank you
Speaker 2: so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book. All thanks
Speaker 2: don Now, let's first talk about because I wasn't familiar
Speaker 2: with the name Richard Osman, tell us who Richard Osman
Speaker 2: is and what is the Thursday Murder Club and you
Speaker 2: were asked to write this book and so what were
Speaker 2: you surprised with in this regard with the Thursday Murder
Speaker 2: Club and your real life Murder Club book.
Speaker 5: So I was asked to write this book obviously by
Speaker 5: Adli Publishers. The idea of being Richard Osman is a
Speaker 5: TV presenter who had a wonderful selling book out novel
Speaker 5: called The Thursday Murder Club, which is about a group
Speaker 5: of pensioners living in a retirement village and there's a
Speaker 5: murder and they set about trying to solve the crime
Speaker 5: and they have a Thursday Murder Club where they all
Speaker 5: grouped together. So the idea behind the real life murder Clubs,
Speaker 5: Citizens Sold and True Crimes was to find the real
Speaker 5: life citizen sloops, people that actually spend their time like
Speaker 5: their spare time around jobs searching the internet and trying
Speaker 5: to identified bodies and sold cold cases.
Speaker 2: So what did you find from the fictitious murder clubs
Speaker 2: with this group of people that were surprising in the
Speaker 2: very beginning of this investigation into real life citizens solving crimes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a lot grittier, I must say. It
Speaker 5: wasn't like cozy like it's portrayed in the novel. But
Speaker 5: then that's you know, that's the novel, and these people
Speaker 5: are serious, tenacious, and dedicated. What I found particularly poignant
Speaker 5: was how people how the sleeves got into doing this.
Speaker 5: They often had personal reasons for doing so. Like Billinda
Speaker 5: Lane that we're going to be speaking about daughter was
Speaker 5: shot and killed, and so that inspired her to go
Speaker 5: on a decade long mission to find her daughter's killers.
Speaker 2: Now you say that you were hugely impressed by the
Speaker 2: skills and impressed by their skills and vast forensic knowledge,
Speaker 2: and you've spoke to many of these people. Now let's
Speaker 2: introduce these citizens Sloves via the contents of this book.
Speaker 2: You have. The first chapter is why did you kill her?
Speaker 2: And so we just mentioned you alluded to the Belinda
Speaker 2: and the crime of her daughter Crystal being shot.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's right. So that's the first chapter in the book. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I found this really poignant and it was incredible the
Speaker 5: investigations she did tell.
Speaker 2: Us about Crystal Theobald and March eight, two thousand and
Speaker 2: six in Riverside, California.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So Crystal Theobold was a mother of two. She
Speaker 5: had two young daughters and a training nurse. One day,
Speaker 5: she's with her mum, Belinda Lane, and her brother and
Speaker 5: their friend one Patlan, and they decided one evening to
Speaker 5: go to the seven eleven.
Speaker 2: It was just sort of.
Speaker 5: Five minute drive away in Riverside, so they left. Belinda
Speaker 5: went in her own car and Crystal, brother Justin, and
Speaker 5: one were in another car following, and there was three
Speaker 5: of them. There's three seats in the front and Crystals
Speaker 5: in the middle. One was driving. Belinda gets to the
Speaker 5: intersection and all of a sudden, a white fud expedition
Speaker 5: in suv comes screeching around the corner. Her to swerve
Speaker 5: and stop. She then see a guy that looks youngish,
Speaker 5: a baby face she called him, possibly Hispanic, who gets
Speaker 5: out of the suv and holds a gun. He pulls
Speaker 5: the gun out and goes to she ducks down in
Speaker 5: the car, thinking he's going to shoot her, but then
Speaker 5: she just hears this explosion of glass and at five
Speaker 5: bullets exploding. When she looks up that the SUV's sped
Speaker 5: off and the car her daughter's in goes off down
Speaker 5: the road. She tries to follow, loses them and to
Speaker 5: cut that part of the story, so she ends up
Speaker 5: going back home and the police are already there. Son
Speaker 5: comes running up the street, her son, Nicholas, saying Crystal's
Speaker 5: been shot. So she ended up on a Crystal ended
Speaker 5: up on a life support machine and sadly, the medics
Speaker 5: said her brain had died, and Belinda had to make
Speaker 5: that awful decision that no mother should have to make,
Speaker 5: to tell them to turn the machine off. Crystal died
Speaker 5: in Belinda's arms in the hospital, and she made a
Speaker 5: vow to a daughter, I'm going to get the people
Speaker 5: that killed and are going to make them pay. So
Speaker 5: that was what she said about doing. And then she
Speaker 5: set up with a niece, Jamie. She was at just
Speaker 5: fourteen at the time. They set up a MySpace account.
Speaker 5: Initially there's a girl called Rachel and they've found members
Speaker 5: of the fifty one fifty gang who they suspected was
Speaker 5: behind the shooting, and there'd been a rumor that they
Speaker 5: were looking for rival, a member of a rival gang
Speaker 5: who was threatening to kill one of their members, and
Speaker 5: they were allegedly in a similar car to what Crystal
Speaker 5: and Judio and Justin werein.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what happens is that she does, along with
Speaker 2: her nephew or niece, set up this predecessor to Facebook MySpace, yes,
Speaker 2: and set up this profile attracting these fifty one fifty
Speaker 2: members gang members to be attracted to this profile in
Speaker 2: this well the state profile and photo that's right, But Belinda,
Speaker 2: being who she is, she gets sort of impatient and
Speaker 2: somehow decides to post her dodge Crystal's photo on another
Speaker 2: profile and then approach these fifty one fifty And also
Speaker 2: there's an interaction with a detective as well, tell us
Speaker 2: the lengths that she goes to be able to pursue
Speaker 2: this person that she believes is driving the vehicle in
Speaker 2: which the killers shot her daughter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so she knew that obviously suspected that this gang
Speaker 5: was behind the shooting, and it's a mistake. So she
Speaker 5: finds a name for the person she believes to be
Speaker 5: the getaway driver, who was William known as Joke Stella Stello,
Speaker 5: and she basically under this profile that they used Crystal's
Speaker 5: picture and called her Angel as she starts befriending this
Speaker 5: William Ctello and the dialogue continues, she's getting angry and
Speaker 5: angry because she went to Detective Rick Wheeler who was
Speaker 5: investigating the case, and they did get Ctello into questioning
Speaker 5: after she he had Bitteres that he drove a Ford
Speaker 5: expedition at White SUV, so he went. He was called
Speaker 5: in for question but they didn't have enough evidence, so
Speaker 5: they had to let him go. So Belinda continued and
Speaker 5: it's becoming even more frustrating. Obviously, she even got to
Speaker 5: the point where you know, it became justice and revenge
Speaker 5: became quite blurred, and she she had a gun, and
Speaker 5: she even set up a party called the End of
Speaker 5: Life's Party on the sixth, the sixth, two thousand and six,
Speaker 5: and she was going to lure to Tello and other
Speaker 5: gang members to this remote location with the idea being
Speaker 5: to kill them. But luckily that didn't happen. And eventually,
Speaker 5: like everything just before that party was due to happen
Speaker 5: but didn't, she confronted Setello on MySpace, and yeah, that's
Speaker 5: where she was. She basically said, do you know who
Speaker 5: you're talking to? You know, I'm Crystals, theobold. You murdered me.
Speaker 5: Why did you kill me? And he didn't respond to that,
Speaker 5: and then he disappeared.
Speaker 2: Right when he had originally spoken to police though he
Speaker 2: had incriminated this Julio Heridia, and so the police were
Speaker 2: working with that lead, unbeknownst to Belinda, and she had
Speaker 2: confronted this Sotello and he went on the run.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 2: She had contacted this Detective Wheeler and he had basically
Speaker 2: at one point told her to back off. But anyway,
Speaker 2: she continued to work and continued to look for this
Speaker 2: Sotello as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's correct, and her radio was the actual gunman
Speaker 5: and he actually got life in prison without parole in
Speaker 5: twenty eleven, but that happened later after he got lot.
Speaker 5: He did the death penalty. Was Belinda did fight for
Speaker 5: that at the time and then changed her mind. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but then she Soletto went on the run, as you say,
Speaker 5: and it wasn't until twenty fourteen when she had a breakthrough.
Speaker 5: She by this point handed the MySpace account back to
Speaker 5: Detective Wheeler. Meanwhile identified two other gang members who were brothers,
Speaker 5: William and Manuel Limas. They actually gave information on Heredia
Speaker 5: about the gunman for immunity and then and then Herredio
Speaker 5: was jailed. But the twenty fourteen breakthrough came when she
Speaker 5: was Belinda was searching on Facebook and she was still
Speaker 5: looking for Catello and she was searching on Facebook and
Speaker 5: found a profile of him. He was using Crystal's picture
Speaker 5: but had using a different name. So she went to
Speaker 5: a detective Wheeler with this information, but he said, like,
Speaker 5: he's in Mexico, but he said, we can't, you know,
Speaker 5: we can't do anything without an address for him. And anyway,
Speaker 5: she managed to get an address through some beauce that
Speaker 5: she met on this profile, and they captured in Mexico
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen and there's led to him. He pleaded
Speaker 5: guilty to voluntary manslaughter and gang on firearms charges in
Speaker 5: like a plea bargaining with prosecutors and was sentenced to
Speaker 5: life without parole.
Speaker 2: Right and very interesting too that two people were given
Speaker 2: life sentences with no parole and this person that she
Speaker 2: started right to the end the drive got twenty two years.
Speaker 2: So she was very very successful in her sleuthing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you know, she never wanted to give up.
Speaker 5: She admits became become quite dangerously scared herself, you know,
Speaker 5: when she was trying to learn them earlier on in
Speaker 5: the investigation. But no, and she now helps other people.
Speaker 5: She's got a Facebook group, So yeah, I reckon she'll
Speaker 5: go on to maybe get some results in other cases, hopefully.
Speaker 2: In the contents to your next chapter is the world's
Speaker 2: first cyber Sleuth and you s like Kerryville, Campbell County, Tennessee,
Speaker 2: Autumn two thousand and nine and Todd Matthews's Citizen Sleuth
Speaker 2: just briefly tell us a little bit about what kind
Speaker 2: of sleuthing is employed here in this citizen Sleuth story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so Todd Matthews, he was in spite of it
Speaker 5: because he's younger. Robin's sister died when they're just like babies.
Speaker 5: He liked the fact that he would go and see
Speaker 5: their names on the graves. But his stephan came about
Speaker 5: when he met his well who became his future wife,
Speaker 5: Laurie Riddle, And they were at school one day and
Speaker 5: they were telling like Halloween stories, and she told a
Speaker 5: story about how a dad Wilber was founder body in
Speaker 5: the canvas tent bag and the woman she was believed
Speaker 5: to have been the aged between sixteen and nineteen, and
Speaker 5: she was completely decayed and she was never identified as
Speaker 5: she just became known as Tent Girl. He found her
Speaker 5: in nineteen sixty eight and Todd Matthews became obsessed with
Speaker 5: this story and consumed him for over a decade. He
Speaker 5: managed to identify her eventually. But yeah, he's very much
Speaker 5: into giving people their names. He likes mysteries and finds it,
Speaker 5: you know, like some of these cases where people haven't
Speaker 5: been like the case of tenth Girl identified for years.
Speaker 5: But to give people back their name, it means a
Speaker 5: lot to Todd.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You talk about the third chapter is my first soul?
Speaker 5: Yes, that's Ellen Leech.
Speaker 2: And tell us what contribution she has as a citizens.
Speaker 5: Yes, so Allen Leech. She works at hobby center hoobby
Speaker 5: Lobby it's called, and she spends hours like checking the
Speaker 5: internet for missing people and unidentified bodies. So one evening
Speaker 5: and her journey started really in two thousand and four
Speaker 5: when she was she got home from work and she's
Speaker 5: spending the night looking on the internet for clues that
Speaker 5: might match around identified bodies to miss in person cases.
Speaker 5: But she found herself drawn to a picture uploaded to
Speaker 5: the dough Network, which is actually set up Todd Matthews
Speaker 5: was a co founder of It's a List of Unidentified
Speaker 5: People and the image this image showed a reconstruction by
Speaker 5: Jack Bender of a head that belonged to a man
Speaker 5: in his fifties who had been murdered. So she looked
Speaker 5: at this picture and she was drawn back to it.
Speaker 5: But she was also interested in this story about a
Speaker 5: head been found in a bucket outside a Lorry layby,
Speaker 5: and she because this reconstruction been done and the picture
Speaker 5: of the missing person she'd seen, she it reminded her
Speaker 5: of this missing person she'd seen, and she that they
Speaker 5: managed to identify this guy that she didn't match them
Speaker 5: up eventually.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's an extraordinary story. Your fourth chapter is we
Speaker 2: can I'd like to discuss further because she's such an
Speaker 2: important person and well known, and this is the title
Speaker 2: is web Slues, And yeah, you take us to how
Speaker 2: she became involved in being a citizen Slouth Murray, Utah,
Speaker 2: September nineteen seventy four Bisha Griffith and the Fashion Place
Speaker 2: Mall and Tricia Griffith is just fifteen years old, tell
Speaker 2: us how she comes to be a citizen Slouth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so this when she went to the fashion place
Speaker 5: small in Utah. She was her first trip to them
Speaker 5: all alone without her mother, and she'd given her money
Speaker 5: to buy clothes for going back to school September time.
Speaker 5: So she's very excited, obviously, and she's a brother drops
Speaker 5: her off there and she walks through one of the
Speaker 5: first department stores, and then she's approached by this terribly
Speaker 5: attractive man who's just really handsome. And she described herself
Speaker 5: as being boy crazy at the time. And he approaches
Speaker 5: her and asks her for directions to a shop said
Speaker 5: CMI was, and she says, no, let's not here. It's
Speaker 5: in Cottonwood, More, which is like about a ten minute
Speaker 5: drive away from here. So he's walking along with her,
Speaker 5: chatting to her, and she's quite taken, quite smitten by
Speaker 5: this guy because he's so handsome. And then he says, well,
Speaker 5: I've got my car, why don't you come with me?
Speaker 5: You can direct me to them all. So alarm bell
Speaker 5: started ringing Patricia and she managed to get away. She
Speaker 5: fortunately she saw her cousin at the mall and she
Speaker 5: phoned her brother and he came to collect her, although
Speaker 5: he wanted to go after this guy. He's brought a
Speaker 5: hammer with him, so that sort of you know, that
Speaker 5: happened and it shook her up, but she didn't think
Speaker 5: any more of it until a few years later when
Speaker 5: she saw an article in the newspaper like the seventh
Speaker 5: Faces of Ted Bundy, and she recognized him as the
Speaker 5: guy that approached her at the mall. So she did
Speaker 5: ring law enforcement and report this, but obviously they you know,
Speaker 5: she she just felt the incredible guilt after that, because
Speaker 5: not long after Tricia's incident, Carol Durnch was approached by
Speaker 5: Ted Bundy at the same mall, right, and she posed
Speaker 5: as a police officer then said that it was something
Speaker 5: wrong with her car. They needs to go to the
Speaker 5: police station and she probably no got her into her
Speaker 5: car and ended up like taking her to a remote spot,
Speaker 5: trying to handcuff her and threatened to blow her head
Speaker 5: off and pulled out a gun and then she got
Speaker 5: out the car and he chased them with a crowbar,
Speaker 5: but she did get you know, she get away, but
Speaker 5: he did get jailed for that. Yeah, So when she
Speaker 5: you know, she just felt terribly guilty Trisha for not
Speaker 5: speaking up at the time, but obviously she didn't know
Speaker 5: it was Ted Bundy. So that kind of got her
Speaker 5: into to sleuth and that and the Jean Bernet case
Speaker 5: as well that she round back the end. It was
Speaker 5: just the time, as you know, start of the inn
Speaker 5: I ran about nineteen ninety eight, so she had like
Speaker 5: an old fashioned dialogue, yeah, but she did end up
Speaker 5: like joining it. She found like this forum about John
Speaker 5: Benet Ramsey and she she started like typing on there,
Speaker 5: and then that led her to set up forums for
Speaker 5: justice dot Org, which was, you know, like another sleeping
Speaker 5: forum that's to discredit scandale accusations that were going on luggage,
Speaker 5: which of course would do happen online. But then it
Speaker 5: was so then she always had this massive, interesting true
Speaker 5: crime but the Ted Bundy situation did inspire her the most,
Speaker 5: something she's never forgotten. And then in two thousand and
Speaker 5: four she bought the webs forum and this yeah, it's
Speaker 5: got over two hundred thousand members I think now.
Speaker 2: And you researched and discovered what kinds of people make
Speaker 2: up this diverse group of people, and what kinds of
Speaker 2: people are on these kinds of this site in particular.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a it's a kind of mixed. I mean
Speaker 5: some people are you know, like ed and Leaps. They
Speaker 5: do their day job and this is just something that
Speaker 5: intrigues them that they do in their spare time. You know,
Speaker 5: they might not have any that law enforcement background or
Speaker 5: anything like that, but you do get like some like
Speaker 5: retired detectives or lawyers, nurses, They had a forensic handwriting
Speaker 5: expert as a member. So yeah, it all walks a
Speaker 5: life really.
Speaker 2: You also talk about another case that was really instrumental
Speaker 2: in making web explode, and that was Keighley's Anthony's death.
Speaker 2: And also you write about the Florida Sunshine Lawn and
Speaker 2: what that meant to a group like webs especially at
Speaker 2: the time of Casey Hilley Anthony's death and Casey Anthony
Speaker 2: being accused.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the law means that the police have to give
Speaker 5: over handover all evidence unless there's a special reason for
Speaker 5: not doing so. So they had a lot of access
Speaker 5: to records. Certainly is the case in America or so
Speaker 5: then over here anyway, So yeah, that was one of
Speaker 5: the biggest cases on websites. Tricia said. The Kaylie Anthony case.
Speaker 5: They found they did look that they did like a
Speaker 5: ping map. They managed to prove that Anthony wasn't where
Speaker 5: she was like I said, tracking the phone calls when
Speaker 5: she said she was. They found another on a she
Speaker 5: searched another major search for full proof suffocation on another
Speaker 5: search engine. It was later found out that that was
Speaker 5: the case and that evidence wasn't put forward at trial.
Speaker 2: You're right too that one of the detectives Tricia mentioned
Speaker 2: was that he had contacted web slues and thanked them
Speaker 2: for their contributions. Let's use this as an opportunity to
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Speaker 2: murder Now, Nicole, we were talking about Trisha Griffith and Websluse,
Speaker 2: and there was another incredible case that Tricia Griffith and
Speaker 2: Websluse were involved with, and that was as you write
Speaker 2: about Abraham Shakespeare, a forty two year old who had
Speaker 2: won thirty million dollars in a Florida lottery three years before,
Speaker 2: and then he was reported missing November two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: yet nobody had seen him since April of that year.
Speaker 2: As the Forum's debate you write about Shakespeare gathered momentum.
Speaker 2: Sluther's became suspicious about a prevalent poster in the thread.
Speaker 2: One person named Dories d D. Moore, who had befriended
Speaker 2: Abraham Moore, had come into his life claiming to be
Speaker 2: an author working on a book about his rank to
Speaker 2: Richest story and how people had taken advantage of him.
Speaker 2: Now Moore's apparently had taken over the lottery winner's assets.
Speaker 2: So tell us about web slues and what they do
Speaker 2: with this information and how they do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, Tricia became quite suspicious of this Dori ste
Speaker 5: d Moore she was posting. She said, she seemed quite
Speaker 5: sort of flashy show offee person. She was claiming to
Speaker 5: be best friends with Shakespeare. She said that he'd granted
Speaker 5: her power of attorney. She'd helped him get out of
Speaker 5: town after his lottery win because you know, it was
Speaker 5: being bt by gold diggers. According to More, she was
Speaker 5: posting on the on web sleeps stand, I'm taking care
Speaker 5: of his money. But as Tricia said, she seemed flashy
Speaker 5: this woman, and she became very suspicious. So they started
Speaker 5: looking into two more and one member of web Slues
Speaker 5: managed to get her bank record to believe, and when
Speaker 5: confronted by Tricia Black, I think Tricia did contact More
Speaker 5: and she denied it was her posting on web slues,
Speaker 5: and she said that somebody else was fraudulently using her address.
Speaker 5: So Tricia obviously she knew she More was lying because
Speaker 5: the IP address of dd More atched the IP address
Speaker 5: of the email that she'd sent back to Tricia. So
Speaker 5: Tricia confronted her and she said, look, somebody must have
Speaker 5: broken into your house and used your computer. Then at
Speaker 5: this point, Tricia's convinced that she's behind maybe that Shakespeare's
Speaker 5: disappearance is more to it. So she made one exception
Speaker 5: because web slue is tightly moderated and she has a
Speaker 5: strict like no name in a shaming policay, Tricia, she
Speaker 5: made one exception and she posted saying D. D. More
Speaker 5: killed Abraham Shakespeare. More went crazy and started contesting every
Speaker 5: piece of incriminating evidence against her. Basically, I've been had,
Speaker 5: More was saying, but you know her actions they just
Speaker 5: goalvanized web suspicions even more, and she was eventually exposed
Speaker 5: as a scam artist and became a person of interest
Speaker 5: when Abraham Shakespeare's body was found underneath Moore's boyfriends concrete
Speaker 5: in the patio in Mah's boyfriend's back garden. It shot
Speaker 5: twice in the chest and buried five feet below a
Speaker 5: newly built patio. And this is great result for web
Speaker 5: slues because law was eventually convicted the first degree murder
Speaker 5: and sentenced to life in prison. And that's when the
Speaker 5: detective contacted web sloues to thank them later.
Speaker 2: You're right though that, and I think this is somewhat understandable.
Speaker 2: When Rolling Stone wanted to do an article on Webes, Florida,
Speaker 2: officially police department said, now, we no one contacted web sloops.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what Trusia said. She said that they which
Speaker 5: was frustrating for her because she does say that, you know,
Speaker 5: it's hard to be taken seriously at times by law enforcement,
Speaker 5: and that's one of her goals is to well, one
Speaker 5: of her goals, she says, is to drag law enforcement
Speaker 5: kicking and screaming into the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: It's somewhat understandable that they just, I mean, if police
Speaker 2: forces came out of jurisdictional conflicts, never mind what they
Speaker 2: might consider non professionals interfering as you write in cases
Speaker 2: or the potential for people. So I think this public acknowledgment,
Speaker 2: I don't think it will come. But a private acknowledgment,
Speaker 2: as Trisha talks about and has said to you, does occur.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, that's right. I think there have been occasions,
Speaker 5: several occasions where detectives of contacted their baby and thanks.
Speaker 2: He absolutely, you're next chapter you talk about the mother
Speaker 2: Load and Paul Haynes, a Los Angeles citizen and his
Speaker 2: partner Michelle namara. People might know who she is. Tell
Speaker 2: us just briefly about what you write is the mother
Speaker 2: Load and what Paul Haines and his partner, what their
Speaker 2: goal is, their mission and what they actually accomplish.
Speaker 5: Yes, so the mother Load refers to It was records
Speaker 5: hell that the Orange County sheriff Department's headquarters and the
Speaker 5: room basically containing containers of information for the Earon's case,
Speaker 5: and the EURONS stands for Easter AIA Rapists and Original
Speaker 5: Nights Talker. So it was the case that had gone cold,
Speaker 5: as you know, the rapes and killings that were free
Speaker 5: crime spreeese really across California, but the case had gone cold,
Speaker 5: and Michelle McNamara was a crime blogger. She became obsessed
Speaker 5: with this case and felt that needed more lightshon on
Speaker 5: it too, so she started looking into him and writing
Speaker 5: about about this attacker, and Paul Haynes joined her basically
Speaker 5: became her lead researcher, and the pair of them together
Speaker 5: like spent five years obsessively researching these reams of data
Speaker 5: which they managed to get because Michelle had good contacts
Speaker 5: with detectives and everything, they trusted her. So basically they
Speaker 5: went on the mission to the Orange County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 5: They called it a heist to get the mother load
Speaker 5: from the evidence room so they could investigate all the
Speaker 5: paperwork and evidence that might have been overlooked during the
Speaker 5: investigation years before. So they managed to so her contact,
Speaker 5: they managed to sort of let them into the room,
Speaker 5: and then they transported all the documents it's thirty seven
Speaker 5: containers boxes i think altogether, into the back of the
Speaker 5: two SUVs and they made away with it in Shell's
Speaker 5: house and then they began going through all the paperwork
Speaker 5: and trying to identify who the Scarea rapist, original nightstalker was.
Speaker 2: The next chapter is Snaring the Golden State Killer again.
Speaker 2: The East Area rapist, the original Nightstalker, Golden State Killer
Speaker 2: one and the same and how that used genetic genealogy
Speaker 2: to finally bring him to justice over forty years later.
Speaker 2: Incredible and to also sort of validate many of the
Speaker 2: things that Michelle had written in her book that came
Speaker 2: out just before. Anyway, the outcome, let's talk about your
Speaker 2: chapter Forever Young in New York twenty and fifty paral Koppleman.
Speaker 2: And he creates digital illustrations of unnamed dead people.
Speaker 5: Yes, and it's incredible what Carle does. He uses that
Speaker 5: coal paintwork. It's a package and basically he so work
Speaker 5: from all topsy pictures so people that and then he'll create,
Speaker 5: like find an image online of someone around about that
Speaker 5: same age and will get like colors of their skin tone,
Speaker 5: and then he makes it translate that sort of about
Speaker 5: ninety percent translucent and then builds layers and then gets
Speaker 5: a close resemblance. So he believes that person wouldn't like
Speaker 5: when they're alive. Yeah, he's it's really fascinating what he does.
Speaker 2: Yes, he did a real service for the family and
Speaker 2: friends of Tammy Joe Alexander, which was she was called
Speaker 2: the Caledonia Jane Doe and that she was found in
Speaker 2: a field in nineteen seventy nine, but not until June
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. Thanks to this person, Carl Koppleman, he was
Speaker 2: able to do this for the family and friends of
Speaker 2: Tammy Joe Alexander, your next chapter is it started with
Speaker 2: a murder and in New Jersey and a person named
Speaker 2: Tracy Boyle and the influence that her late father, Patrick Boyle,
Speaker 2: a detective in Pompton Lake's police department, was assigned the
Speaker 2: case and the influence he had on this citizens lou
Speaker 2: Tracy Boyle.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so her father. When she grew up in Pompton
Speaker 5: Lakes in New Jersey, Tracy, it's a small town where
Speaker 5: not much crime happened. Her dad was a police officer,
Speaker 5: and then one day a woman was bloddoinged to death
Speaker 5: in her apartment and shocked the whole community. But her
Speaker 5: dad brought home the files for this case he was
Speaker 5: working on it, and she started having a peak at
Speaker 5: these files and from there she became fascinated in true
Speaker 5: crime and now she works for today Like Tracy works
Speaker 5: for the DNA dough Networks, which helped identify missing bitwell
Speaker 5: people that have gone unidentified to give them back and
Speaker 5: John and Jane does to give them back their names.
Speaker 5: And so she's worked on a lot of cases.
Speaker 2: Your next chapter is Don't Fuck with Cats, and the
Speaker 2: following chapter read after is unmasking Luca Magnata. As we
Speaker 2: as I read in the introduction, many people will be
Speaker 2: familiar with the Netflix documentary series Don't Fuck with Cats
Speaker 2: and his relation to Luca Magnata, the cannibal killer from
Speaker 2: Montreal that Rena was on the run and found in Berlin.
Speaker 2: What's interesting well this story is you just at the
Speaker 2: very beginning of this story Don't Fuck with Cats, is
Speaker 2: that there is an attendant at a cafe in Berlin
Speaker 2: that thinks, see that someone in this that's at one
Speaker 2: of the computers booths looks familiar. I'll tell us just
Speaker 2: a little bit about this harrowing scene that you write
Speaker 2: about in that chapter.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the guy I've worked in the Insect cafe,
Speaker 5: he sees this. This guy comes in, young, issue in
Speaker 5: his twenties, sunglasses, quite a nice looking young guy, confident,
Speaker 5: and he just walks into the cafe and says, bonjour Internet.
Speaker 5: So he has signs this guy a boost. But there's
Speaker 5: something about him that looks familiar, you know, so he's
Speaker 5: just a cadea. His name is the guy that works
Speaker 5: at the intet caver. He's sort of pottering around like
Speaker 5: empty and bins and keeping an eye on this guy
Speaker 5: because he does look familiar, but you can't think where
Speaker 5: he's seen him. So but when he's looking over his shoulder,
Speaker 5: the guy, the guy who's coming to use the Internet
Speaker 5: is looking at the interval message looking for Luca Magnotter,
Speaker 5: who's who's on the run the wanted sort of poster,
Speaker 5: you know, and he's and then he's looking at other
Speaker 5: news articles about this Luca Magnota, who's wanted for the
Speaker 5: killing of journalin a Chinese student. When he looks takes
Speaker 5: a closer look at the picture, he realizes that the
Speaker 5: guy in the Internet boost is Luca Magnota. Eventually got
Speaker 5: luckily goes outside and there's a police fan going by
Speaker 5: with trainees and he managed to wave them down and
Speaker 5: they come in. If you've see the Netflix service or
Speaker 5: say there's CCTV footage of this happening and Luca Magnotter is.
Speaker 2: Arrested, yes, and what the Netflix documentary for those people
Speaker 2: that didn't see it, and we have to talk about
Speaker 2: it here is that it was an army of people
Speaker 2: that were interested first in Luca Magnotta because they only
Speaker 2: knew him as this person that was posting videos of
Speaker 2: killing and torturing kittens. So of course people are very
Speaker 2: serious about their cats, and there are an army of
Speaker 2: citizens sleuths ready to attach themselves to some project or case,
Speaker 2: and in this particular case, there was an army of
Speaker 2: people looking for this person that ended up being Luca Magnotta.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's correct. It was on the two main sleuths
Speaker 5: in the series, Deanna Thompson and John, a guy that
Speaker 5: you who's the name. It wasn't his real name, John Green. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's that's how it all became began in twenty ten.
Speaker 5: Deanna being a animal lover, when she first saw the
Speaker 5: cat video, she thought it was going to be a
Speaker 5: cute kitten video. There was that these little two little
Speaker 5: kittens sitting side by side on a silver blanket with
Speaker 5: a picture of a wolf, and then of course it
Speaker 5: just gets darker and he suffocates the two kittens. So
Speaker 5: this obviously had really disturbed her and they started trying
Speaker 5: to find out who who the person was because more
Speaker 5: videos did follow as well, and you fed to hit
Speaker 5: into a python, drowned another in the bath. It was horrific.
Speaker 5: But they realized that he was using like sock puppet
Speaker 5: accounts and they really did delve into finding out who
Speaker 5: he was and eventually did link this the guy in
Speaker 5: the video to Luca Magnotta.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's so interesting the various the separate skills
Speaker 2: that were employed. They were looking at the background in
Speaker 2: the video itself, items itself, trying to see any differences,
Speaker 2: and it was amazing the connections that they made and
Speaker 2: wore be able to put together and really displayed the
Speaker 2: strengths of a group versus just a single person doing
Speaker 2: an investigation of the sort.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely, I mean they haven't. They spent hours and
Speaker 5: hours and hours, and I think that the final photograph
Speaker 5: they because like Nosti used to post pictures of himself,
Speaker 5: like doctored pictures of him, like by the Eiffel Tower
Speaker 5: and all these exotic locations, and I think it was
Speaker 5: John Green that first noticed that that's you know, the
Speaker 5: skin color and his neck was different to his face
Speaker 5: and realized that they edited these pictures. But the picture
Speaker 5: that they did find was him standing by a wall
Speaker 5: university in Montreal. But they managed to go on to
Speaker 5: Google street View and I think it was through the
Speaker 5: through the traffic lights and the shape of the traffic
Speaker 5: lights in one picture and the wall. It was like
Speaker 5: a like a rock ball, and they're able to find
Speaker 5: that location which put him in Montreal.
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Speaker 2: Now, the next chapter that you have is called The
Speaker 2: Lord of Bioinformatics and you set it in Stateville Correctional Center, Illinois,
Speaker 2: May tenth, nineteen ninety four. And everybody's favorite serial killer,
Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy at execution. Tell us about John Wayne
Speaker 2: Gacy's brain, Yeah.
Speaker 5: They retained after he was after was given the leaf
Speaker 5: for injection, because I think the idea of being that
Speaker 5: must be something abnormal there to cause him to commit
Speaker 5: these terrific crimes. But they couldn't find anything untowld. But
Speaker 5: it was I think they do do this in some
Speaker 5: cases with serial killers, that they keep the brain for
Speaker 5: scientific study.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they found nothing wrong. They were surprised. But the
Speaker 2: one thing that he went to his grave with was
Speaker 2: the identity of eight bodies, eight unidentified victims. And you're right.
Speaker 2: By twenty eleven, with DNA advances, within weeks of them
Speaker 2: testing DNA, they had their first victim, William Bundy, a
Speaker 2: nineteen year old. Then it took six years later twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen Jimmy Hackinson. Then in twenty twenty one, Francis Wayne
Speaker 2: Alexis pronounced his last name. So you spoke to a
Speaker 2: person named Kevin Lord, an engineer in genetics salute at
Speaker 2: the DNA doc project. What tell us about this conversation?
Speaker 5: Yees, So, Kevin they managed to get Obviously, like France's
Speaker 5: Wayne Alexander, he was just known as Victim number five
Speaker 5: wasn't identified obviously for years, but Kevin worked at the
Speaker 5: DNA Dough Project, so they managed to They managed to
Speaker 5: get some DNA from victim number five's molar teeth, which
Speaker 5: they sent away for sequencing by experts. Kevin basically from there,
Speaker 5: he's got quite a unique role within the DNA DOE project.
Speaker 5: I'll read you the title. He said. It's some director
Speaker 5: of leven Agency Logistics at the DNA Dough Project and
Speaker 5: he's basically the main point of contact with all the
Speaker 5: agencies the beginning of an investigation. So he did the
Speaker 5: DNA sequencing based on this this sample, and then they
Speaker 5: go to like put this into JED match and then
Speaker 5: he was able to find relatives which eventually led them
Speaker 5: to France's Wayne Alexander and he was identified as John
Speaker 5: Waye Cases.
Speaker 2: Yes, extraordinary genetic genealogy too. Years later identified these victims
Speaker 2: and give some solace and again overused cliche closure to
Speaker 2: some of these victims' families. But it is important to
Speaker 2: victims families or this kind of somewhat closure, isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. I mean imagine that people are waiting decades
Speaker 5: not knowing what happens to their loved ones, and then
Speaker 5: you know they finally find out the answers are never
Speaker 5: going to bring their relatives back because it does think
Speaker 5: just to see justice served as well in many cases,
Speaker 5: it's some comfort for familiest.
Speaker 2: And this testament to how many people are involved in
Speaker 2: these groups as volunteers. They have day jobs, many people,
Speaker 2: but they are still contributing hours and hours of their
Speaker 2: valuable expertise to be able to contribute the kind of
Speaker 2: closure that I spoke to and solve some of these
Speaker 2: cold cases that are beyond the police resources or as
Speaker 2: you see with these big groups that galvanize over a
Speaker 2: particular case, that they can be much more effective than
Speaker 2: the limited investigators and the way they have to approach
Speaker 2: a case, especially a cole case Meyer.
Speaker 5: But they all do you know, they do give up
Speaker 5: their spare time DNA day project. They're all volunteers. You know,
Speaker 5: it's not paid work, but they're dedicated to the cause.
Speaker 5: And it's inspirational to say.
Speaker 2: Now, your last chapter is when sleuthin goes wrong and
Speaker 2: you said it at the Boston Sheridan Hotel April eighteen,
Speaker 2: twenty and thirteen and a FBI chief Rick Laurier and
Speaker 2: of course the Boston Marathon and suspect one and two
Speaker 2: and how the police are enlistening immediately the public to
Speaker 2: help and the cc the images that were captured tell
Speaker 2: us how all of this plays into when sluthing goes wrong.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so of course there was a Reddit gripe started
Speaker 5: and that seens these pictures are out there, these reddit
Speaker 5: uses rising about who these two suspects could be and
Speaker 5: bombos in this this site with comments and pictures and
Speaker 5: video footage and basically like from the identifying people on
Speaker 5: the on this site, and it all went terribly wrong
Speaker 5: from there.
Speaker 2: The one thing that police warned was that the CCTV
Speaker 2: images were the only official photos that people should use,
Speaker 2: and there were the only photos that were credible. Now
Speaker 2: in this regard what happened.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well that's they wrongly identified one man who was
Speaker 5: known as Blue Roadman, and it ended up on the
Speaker 5: New York Post basically because one of the pictures that
Speaker 5: the guy of his bag became known as Bagman, and
Speaker 5: the New York Post did a story so bag men
Speaker 5: fed to seat these two pictures at the Boston Marathon
Speaker 5: that the actual the real person wasn't anything to do.
Speaker 5: Wasn't the suspect at all. They were just a pair
Speaker 5: of running enthusiasts you've gone to watch watch the race,
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's a case of misidentification. But because people
Speaker 5: getting oded on the Reddit site and.
Speaker 2: What was again uses as your last chapter, is there
Speaker 2: is this a cautionary story compared to the other stories
Speaker 2: where you have the moderators or the people hosting these
Speaker 2: sites saying no rumors, no naming, no shaming, but still
Speaker 2: like Tricia Griffith throwing out people that are troublemakers. So
Speaker 2: there is some policing of how people operate and conduct
Speaker 2: themselves on these sites. Is this a cautionary story on
Speaker 2: how things can innocently go wrong or that it's a
Speaker 2: breakdown in how things should work on any site, especially
Speaker 2: when you're dealing with something so important as this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's certainly very dangerous. I think it's
Speaker 5: a dangerous example of how it can go terribly wrong,
Speaker 5: you know, putting two together and five. So, yeah, it
Speaker 5: is a cautionary tale. And I think things have tightened
Speaker 5: up a lot since. And I think also with you know,
Speaker 5: with online everything being online now online news stories even
Speaker 5: you know, it travels so fast news. You know, all
Speaker 5: it takes is one rumor by someone and it's somebody
Speaker 5: else that another news site has done a story on it,
Speaker 5: and yeah, results can be devastating, especially for innocent people.
Speaker 2: And especially when you see that once a person has
Speaker 2: been accused, whether there is retraction, it seems to not
Speaker 2: be benefit of this person, and the damage has certainly
Speaker 2: been done by that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's still out there, isn't it. I
Speaker 5: mean it's all you have to do is look on
Speaker 5: Google and it's there, So it doesn't go away just
Speaker 5: because it might have been taken down from one site.
Speaker 5: The damage has been done, as you say to that
Speaker 5: family already, you know it was there.
Speaker 2: In doing the research for this book, tell us just
Speaker 2: how interesting it was speaking to these real life citizens loves.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was fascinating as a as a family introduction. As
Speaker 5: a journalist myself, it was. It was interesting to hear
Speaker 5: about the methods they use and the the systems and
Speaker 5: the lengths they go to to try to gather evidence
Speaker 5: and ultimately solve crimes or give names to people. And
Speaker 5: I just love that they're all so passionate about what
Speaker 5: they did as well, which was really lovely and it
Speaker 5: was interesting to see that most because most of the
Speaker 5: stories obviously apart from Luca Magnotta, were in America. Over
Speaker 5: Here it doesn't seen such a big thing, maybe because
Speaker 5: we don't have access to as many records as you
Speaker 5: do over there, so that was interesting. When I was
Speaker 5: trying to find interviewees, I did struggle to find anyone
Speaker 5: in the UK. It was all many people in America,
Speaker 5: and they were also generous with their time and forthcoming,
Speaker 5: so it was a brilliant experience. I just got a
Speaker 5: lovely message from Belinda Laane yesterday saying how much you
Speaker 5: enjoyed the book, So that's always heartwarming when people do that.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 2: for coming on and talking about the Real Life Murder
Speaker 2: Club Citizens Solving True Crimes for those people that might
Speaker 2: want to take a look to you have a website
Speaker 2: or do any social media?
Speaker 5: Yeah, my webs that's just Nicholas Stowe dot co dot
Speaker 5: uk and that's Nick Writer on Twitter.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you very much Nicola Stowe the
Speaker 2: Real Life Murder Club Citizens Solving True Crimes. Thank you
Speaker 2: very much for this interview and you have a great
Speaker 2: evening and good night.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thanks for lot Dan, thank you, thank you,