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Speaker 7: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 7: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 7: written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 7: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 7: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 7: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 8: Good Evening. On March eleven, two thousand and three, In Brownsville, Texas,
Speaker 8: one of America's poorest cities, John Ellen Rubio and Angela
Speaker 8: Comaccho murdered their three young children. The apartment building in
Speaker 8: which the brutal crimes took place was already run down,
Speaker 8: and in their aftermath, a consensus developed in the community
Speaker 8: that it should be destroyed. It was a place neighbours
Speaker 8: felt that was plagued by spiritual cancer. In two thousand
Speaker 8: and eight, journalist Laura Tilman covered the story for the
Speaker 8: Brownsville Herald. The questions it raised haunted her, particularly one
Speaker 8: asked by the sole member of the city's Heritage council
Speaker 8: to oppose demolition. Is there any such thing as an
Speaker 8: evil building. Her investigation took her far beyond that question,
Speaker 8: revealing the nature of the toll that the crime exacted
Speaker 8: on a city already racked with poverty. It sprawled into
Speaker 8: a six year inquiry into the larger significance of such acts,
Speaker 8: one so difficult to imagine or explain that their perpetrators
Speaker 8: are often dismissed as monsters alien to humanity. With meticulous
Speaker 8: attention and stunning compassion, Tillman surveyed those surrounding the crime times,
Speaker 8: speaking with the lawyers who tried the case, the families,
Speaker 8: neighbors and relatives, and teachers, even one of the murderers,
Speaker 8: John Alan Rubio himself, whom she corresponded with for years
Speaker 8: and ultimately met in person. The result is a brilliant
Speaker 8: exploration of some of our age's most important social issues,
Speaker 8: from poverty to mental illness to the death penalty, and
Speaker 8: a beautiful, profound meditation on the truly human forces that
Speaker 8: drive them. It is disturbing, insightful, and mesmerizing an equal measure.
Speaker 8: The book that we're featuring this evening is The Long
Speaker 8: Shadow of Small Ghosts, Murder and Memory in an American City,
Speaker 8: with my special guest journalist and author Laura Tilman. Welcome
Speaker 8: to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing
Speaker 8: to this interview. Laura Tilman, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 8: Thank you very much. Incredible story again, just an amazing
Speaker 8: another slice of a Marria, Canada that we knew nothing about. Incredible.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about how you came to be involved with this.
Speaker 8: Let's talk about that you were. You say that you
Speaker 8: were about midway through your first year as a newspaper
Speaker 8: reporter when you walked to the apartment in Brownsville, Texas
Speaker 8: where a couple had murdered their children. So tell us
Speaker 8: before this investigation how much you knew of this. It
Speaker 8: wasn't really your forte But what did you know about
Speaker 8: this crime before you came to this assignment? And then
Speaker 8: tell us about this assignment In the first six months
Speaker 8: as a reporter.
Speaker 9: So I knew a little bit about it, mainly from
Speaker 9: the other reporters in the newsroom at the Brownsville Herald
Speaker 9: where I worked. It was a case that had really
Speaker 9: haunted the community of Brownsville, and some of my fellow
Speaker 9: reporters did tell me about it. There was a file
Speaker 9: cabinet in our office that I remember was filled with
Speaker 9: pages of documentation from the first trial of John Allen Rubio,
Speaker 9: and in that filing cabinet was a copy of whose
Speaker 9: written confession, and I remember reading that and finding it
Speaker 9: really disturbing and difficult, especially because there were all of
Speaker 9: these tiny details of things that had happened that were
Speaker 9: so specific, and it just made the crime really come
Speaker 9: to life in a difficult way. So that was kind
Speaker 9: of the first time that I started hearing about the case,
Speaker 9: and then as time went on, I was sent to
Speaker 9: go to the building where this crime had happened because
Speaker 9: of this debate of whether or not it should be
Speaker 9: torn down, and that visit made a big impression on
Speaker 9: me right away, mainly because it seemed like people were
Speaker 9: suddenly voicing these questions and concerns that had something to
Speaker 9: do with the building and the case that really had
Speaker 9: to do with much more profound meditations on the meaning
Speaker 9: of that case and their community and their lives, of
Speaker 9: what it said about their town that something like this
Speaker 9: could happen there, And this question emerged of whether the
Speaker 9: building itself was sort of being blamed for human crimes,
Speaker 9: and also whether there was a parallel to be found
Speaker 9: between the execution of this man, John Allen Ruveo on
Speaker 9: death row, and the destruction of this apartment building.
Speaker 8: Now at the time you have this assignment for our
Speaker 8: audience for the timeline, because we talked about in the
Speaker 8: introduction that there's a couple trials at this point, where
Speaker 8: are they in terms of in between the first or
Speaker 8: the second trial appeal? Where are they at the time
Speaker 8: of that assignment for you to look at this potential
Speaker 8: demolition of this haunted building.
Speaker 9: I believe at that point John had been sentenced to
Speaker 9: death during his first trial, but then had won his
Speaker 9: appeal because his common law wife, a woman named Maria
Speaker 9: Angela Camacho, who also was a participant in the murders,
Speaker 9: had the attorneys for the prosecution had entered into the
Speaker 9: trial of videotape of her answering questions from detectives, and
Speaker 9: because she didn't testify, there was a ruling that John
Speaker 9: won on appeal because his defense team was never able
Speaker 9: to effectively cross examine her. Because of this, John was
Speaker 9: granted a second trial, but it took some time for
Speaker 9: that to happen. That didn't actually happened until twenty ten,
Speaker 9: So we're talking about two thousand and eight when I
Speaker 9: was writing about the building, which is midway between these
Speaker 9: two different trials.
Speaker 8: Now you get back to the building and your assignment,
Speaker 8: and there's the outside of the building, and you interview
Speaker 8: people neighbors. You talk about Minerva and another gentleman, so
Speaker 8: you ask them about the building, what they think, what
Speaker 8: their impressions are, and you also talk about interspersed through
Speaker 8: this whole story, but in the very beginning, you lay
Speaker 8: it out the history of Brownsville in terms of poverty.
Speaker 8: You lay it out where they are in terms of
Speaker 8: the status of the poorest in America. And it's proximity
Speaker 8: to Mexico. So tell us where it is close to
Speaker 8: and tell us a little bit about Brownsville, so we
Speaker 8: can set the stage for this story too.
Speaker 9: Absolutely so. Brownsville is at the southernmost tip of Texas.
Speaker 9: It is if you sort of look at a map
Speaker 9: and you look at where Texas meets the Gulf and
Speaker 9: meets Mexico at the very bottom, that's where Brownsville is located.
Speaker 9: And it has been ranked at off and on as
Speaker 9: one of the poorest areas of the country, if not
Speaker 9: the poorest area of the country. At times it's a
Speaker 9: historically disenfranchised area. There's no medical school in Brownsville. There
Speaker 9: isn't a law school for in Brownsville or for two
Speaker 9: hundred and fifty miles around within the United States. So
Speaker 9: it's an area where the best and brightest has been
Speaker 9: kind of subject to a brain drain, where they often
Speaker 9: leave and go to Austin or go to other parts
Speaker 9: of the country looking for higher education or better jobs.
Speaker 9: So that's part of what contributes to it. It's a
Speaker 9: very beautiful area. Geographically, there's it's sort of a subtropical area.
Speaker 9: It's not when people picture the US Mexico border. I
Speaker 9: think a lot of the time they picture the Sonora
Speaker 9: Desert in Arizona, where they picture the deserts around El
Speaker 9: Paso and Warez. That's that's not what we're talking about
Speaker 9: when it comes to Brownsville. This is a fertile river valley.
Speaker 9: There's a lot of citrus sugar cane grown here. It's
Speaker 9: a place where there are lakes and palm trees interspersed
Speaker 9: among the houses. And they're also different parts to the city.
Speaker 9: Not all parts of the city are as poor as
Speaker 9: the section where this crime takes place. This crime takes
Speaker 9: place in an area called Barrio Buenavida, which is translated
Speaker 9: as the good Life. Ironically, unfortunately, this is one of
Speaker 9: the poorest areas of the city and therefore of the country.
Speaker 9: It's a place where a lot of the crime centers
Speaker 9: in Brownsville. It's a place where there are a lot
Speaker 9: of transient people who are on their way somewhere else,
Speaker 9: who are very vulnerable. And it's also a place where
Speaker 9: drugs and prostitution kind of center in the city as well.
Speaker 8: Now, when you looked at this house, and I know
Speaker 8: people might believe, and you may believe that you would
Speaker 8: feel something in this sight of this horror, But tell
Speaker 8: us a little bit about your impression and some of
Speaker 8: the inner use what the like again, what the neighbors,
Speaker 8: like Minerva had to say about either this building being
Speaker 8: haunted or should it be demolished? Tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So the building, which is there's a photograph a
Speaker 9: lot of it on the cover of the book. Actually,
Speaker 9: if people are listening and want to get a sense,
Speaker 9: you can just google it and it'll come up. It's
Speaker 9: a very unattractive building, I think in virtually every way.
Speaker 9: It's a two story apartment building, that's white, but over
Speaker 9: the years has been left in disrepair. It's kind of
Speaker 9: a filthy color. It's at times had there were small
Speaker 9: improvements sort of made on it over the years, if
Speaker 9: you could call them that. As I was reporting on this,
Speaker 9: but when I began, there was a staircase on the
Speaker 9: back that was sort of halfway falling apart, doors and
Speaker 9: windows that looked like they had kind of fallen apart
Speaker 9: years ago and just been left to deteriorate. This is
Speaker 9: actually building in one of the central areas of the city.
Speaker 9: It's just blocked from the federal courthouse and the police
Speaker 9: station and the county courthouse, and in fact the newspaper building.
Speaker 9: But I think it's carried different legacies over the years.
Speaker 9: When I talked to Minerva about it, a lot of
Speaker 9: her memories of the building were from her childhood, because
Speaker 9: it had been there, you know, as long as she'd
Speaker 9: been alive. She'd been living in that house her whole
Speaker 9: life and was very used to it. But it had
Speaker 9: kind of turned from a place where humble shrimpers and
Speaker 9: their wives lived, where there was a gas station at
Speaker 9: one point and a small store, to a place that
Speaker 9: was one of the cheapest places in the city to live,
Speaker 9: but was not kept up and had become a place
Speaker 9: because of the murders that was kind of haunted by
Speaker 9: that legacy. I remember an instance where I went was
Speaker 9: finally able to go inside the building, and Minerva told
Speaker 9: me to get some holy water. So there was a
Speaker 9: sense that not only was the building kind of haunted
Speaker 9: by the murders, but that the people who surrounded it
Speaker 9: and who came into contact with it were also similarly
Speaker 9: haunted or sort of affected by it. People said they
Speaker 9: heard the sounds of the kids screaming at night and
Speaker 9: things like that, and it just had become an eyesore
Speaker 9: on the community. At the same time, this is a
Speaker 9: historic building because of its age, it has some historic
Speaker 9: status in Texas, and that gave it a measure of protection. Really,
Speaker 9: without that measure of protection, I wouldn't have written a
Speaker 9: book at all, because I think the building would have
Speaker 9: been destroyed long ago. But because of its historic status,
Speaker 9: there was this sort of necessary gureaucratic debate over what
Speaker 9: funding could be used to demolish it, whether they would
Speaker 9: need to document it in some way, whether there was
Speaker 9: an argument to preserve it and turn it into something else,
Speaker 9: and that really fascinated me, because when you see something
Speaker 9: that so many people have written off as not only
Speaker 9: just unappealing and unattractive, but in fact perhaps haunted or cursed,
Speaker 9: and then there's this idea that you could go beyond
Speaker 9: that and you could turn it into something that would
Speaker 9: actually help people prevent the kinds of crimes that had
Speaker 9: occurred inside. It seemed like such a revolutionary concept because
Speaker 9: it was just so far away from the way that
Speaker 9: most people perceived this place. So I think that that
Speaker 9: was a big driving factor for me in the beginning
Speaker 9: of writing this was really to question, well, what do
Speaker 9: we do when these crimes occur? Is there some sort
Speaker 9: of constructive way of making meaning out of them instead
Speaker 9: of writing them off as simply horrible events that come
Speaker 9: and go, or a way to act in the spirit
Speaker 9: of prevention instead of destruction. And I think that goes
Speaker 9: back to also the way that we look at prisoners
Speaker 9: in our country, do we try to genuinely rehabilitate them?
Speaker 9: When we look at criminals, do we act in the
Speaker 9: spirit of punishment or rehabilitation and in a way try
Speaker 9: to appeal to the best of ourselves, our most maybe
Speaker 9: not leave hopes for how we can make the world better.
Speaker 9: And so one of the things I think I confronted
Speaker 9: when talking to people was a question of whether I
Speaker 9: was just being my knee and my pursuit of those answers,
Speaker 9: or whether there was really a chance for something, something
Speaker 9: good to be made out of this somehow.
Speaker 8: Now, in that pursuit, you have to do, as you
Speaker 8: talk about an exploration and a full exploration. As a journalist,
Speaker 8: you have to talk to as many people as you can.
Speaker 8: You say that you were kind of surprised that you
Speaker 8: did have a correspondence with John, So tell us how
Speaker 8: this came about, and just tell us how what you
Speaker 8: did to get him to agree. And then where there's
Speaker 8: some conditions, where there's some did he have conditions, did
Speaker 8: you have conditions? Tell us just a little bit about
Speaker 8: that first beginnings of the correspondence between you two.
Speaker 9: Yeah. So I wrote a letter to John. When I
Speaker 9: first started writing this book, I was really focused on
Speaker 9: the building and then it kind of expanded out from there,
Speaker 9: But I was really just focused on the building itself
Speaker 9: and kind of the question of its state. And when
Speaker 9: I wrote to John, my initial questions for him were
Speaker 9: about life inside of this building and what he remembered
Speaker 9: about it, and whether he thought of it as a
Speaker 9: sort of good place for his family to live or not.
Speaker 9: I think when you see the building and when you
Speaker 9: see the apartment that they lived in, it's so bleak
Speaker 9: that for most of us it seems like a horrible
Speaker 9: place to live. And he talked about it with gratitude
Speaker 9: and the sense that, you know, his family was happy,
Speaker 9: which is I think a complicated issue. Also is the
Speaker 9: way that he kind of rewrites his own history and
Speaker 9: puts rose colored glasses on a lot of the things
Speaker 9: that happened even before the murders occurred. But I wrote
Speaker 9: to him, you know, asking a few questions. He wrote
Speaker 9: back saying he would answer my questions, but that that
Speaker 9: would be the end of our correspondence. And then once
Speaker 9: that exchange occurred, I continued writing to him, and he
Speaker 9: continued writing back to me for a long time. And
Speaker 9: it was sort of surprising at first to get these
Speaker 9: letters from him and to see that he was so
Speaker 9: willing to talk about things. He had said at the
Speaker 9: beginning that he didn't want to talk about the crime itself,
Speaker 9: but even that in time he sort of volunteered his
Speaker 9: thoughts and feelings about in a way, that was the
Speaker 9: part that I was least interested in talking to him about,
Speaker 9: because there's just so much documentation available not only of
Speaker 9: him testifying about the crimes, but of many other parties
Speaker 9: who investigated and analyzed them. So for me, I was
Speaker 9: mostly interested in his life, who he was, how a
Speaker 9: person from childhood eventually becomes a person who commits a
Speaker 9: crime like this, and whether there was any sort of
Speaker 9: hope of finding measures that we can look at that
Speaker 9: might prevent more of these kinds of things from happening.
Speaker 9: There weren't any conditions per se, But one of the
Speaker 9: things I was most concerned about was making it very
Speaker 9: clear to him that our subject was one of Our
Speaker 9: relationship was one of journalists and subjects. And when I
Speaker 9: wrote to him, I didn't write him the kinds of
Speaker 9: letters that you might expect someone would receive in prison,
Speaker 9: letters to keep them entertained or to connect with them
Speaker 9: on a sort of human or emotional level. My letters
Speaker 9: were really lists of questions that were designed to be
Speaker 9: a long term, sort of interview process between me and him.
Speaker 9: And you know, there were some moments along the way when,
Speaker 9: for example, he asked me for a comic book for
Speaker 9: his birthday at one point, and I had to kind
Speaker 9: of clarify and drive home the fact that you know,
Speaker 9: that didn't really fit in with the relationship that we had,
Speaker 9: because I think for someone like him, who you know,
Speaker 9: has been around the media covering his case but hadn't
Speaker 9: engaged with many journalists before in an interview sense, that
Speaker 9: he was still a bit unclear about what that meant.
Speaker 8: Yes, now in these letters you encourage him to speak
Speaker 8: the way he normally speaks, and so you have these
Speaker 8: and you provide these in this One of the more
Speaker 8: fascinating parts of the book is this rarely revelationary of
Speaker 8: what he reveals in these in these in this correspondence.
Speaker 8: Important part of this is the culture that you talk
Speaker 8: about as well as the curandissimo probably mispronounced that, but
Speaker 8: also how important that was, at least it seemed in
Speaker 8: John's life and his mother's life and in his family's life.
Speaker 8: So let's talk a little bit about this superstition and
Speaker 8: talk about his mother Hilda, and also talk about just
Speaker 8: his early life and what you discovered.
Speaker 9: Right, So, Curan is this kind of folk healing practice
Speaker 9: that I think that the the equivalent people might be
Speaker 9: more familiar with is the idea of a medicine man
Speaker 9: in uh in our country, that there's a person who
Speaker 9: is a healer, who has certain abilities and also certain
Speaker 9: herbs and remedies that they dispensed other people. So if
Speaker 9: you're going through an illness or depression, or if you're
Speaker 9: praying about something, you might seek this person out to
Speaker 9: help you. And that's an important part of the col
Speaker 9: sure in Brownsville and on this part of the border.
Speaker 9: There's also this kind of inverse version of that called brujeria,
Speaker 9: which is more equivalent to witchcraft, which is a negative
Speaker 9: version of this in which someone is actually cursing other people,
Speaker 9: putting the evil eye on them, helping people to maybe
Speaker 9: manipulate others in different ways. And so both of these
Speaker 9: were present, I think in Hilda and John's lives. Hilda,
Speaker 9: John's mother own mother was believed by some in their
Speaker 9: family to be a bucha which to practice witchcraft, and
Speaker 9: this was something that from a very young age on
Speaker 9: sort of saw in his family, and one of the
Speaker 9: psychiatrists who evaluated John Hilda found that instead of doing
Speaker 9: what she said a good mother might do and kind
Speaker 9: of discouraging him from certain suppicious illusions as a young child.
Speaker 9: But I think a lot of us have a kid,
Speaker 9: maybe we're playing with Aligi board, or we get sort
Speaker 9: of nervous about a person in our neighborhood that we
Speaker 9: think seems creepy or things like that. Instead of sort
Speaker 9: of reassuring him that everything was okay, she kind of
Speaker 9: fueled these delusions and belief and that was something that
Speaker 9: this psychiatrist believed to eventually turn into grander delusions as
Speaker 9: he got older.
Speaker 8: From an early age. There he is diagnosed with certain
Speaker 8: mental afflictions, and his IQ has been tested at ninety
Speaker 8: and you say goes down to seventy two by a
Speaker 8: certain fairly young age. There is talk about him not
Speaker 8: being able to discern at an early age fantasy from
Speaker 8: reality as well. Just tell us a little bit more.
Speaker 8: You say that what I thought was fascinating is that
Speaker 8: the family is living off this very poor family's living
Speaker 8: off the disability that he gets because of his illness.
Speaker 9: At one point, Yeah, I think that's one of the questions. Unfortunately,
Speaker 9: Hilda did not agree to be interviewed by me, and
Speaker 9: I wish that I could kind of hear her side
Speaker 9: of the story, because one of the things that happens
Speaker 9: in a courtroom in terms of the mitigation phase is
Speaker 9: that the jury is presented with kind of all the
Speaker 9: horrible things that happened to this person in their lives,
Speaker 9: in their life, including his really difficult and awful childhood
Speaker 9: with these abusive parents and mother who is a drug addict.
Speaker 9: But that is kind of the extreme version in some
Speaker 9: ways of of what may have actually occurred, and we
Speaker 9: don't have any kind of balancing factored here. You know,
Speaker 9: what was hill the what was Hilla thinking when she
Speaker 9: encouraged these delusions or agreed with these delusions. But one
Speaker 9: of the things that you can't help but wonder is
Speaker 9: if she might have encouraged those delusions because it ensured
Speaker 9: that they would get these checks that were keeping their
Speaker 9: family afloat that you know, her son was diagnosed with
Speaker 9: an emotional disturbance, and because of that, you know that
Speaker 9: they were they were eligible because he was a special
Speaker 9: at all these different things to get some assistance. So
Speaker 9: that that's one of the the difficult things, you know,
Speaker 9: looking back, and one of the things that I most
Speaker 9: wish is that I could have spoken to her to
Speaker 9: really understand more of that context. But from what we know, Yeah,
Speaker 9: John was delusional. He talked about seeing things, hearing voices
Speaker 9: to his siblings the way kids do. They might have
Speaker 9: just agreed with him that they heard him too, to
Speaker 9: sort of be in on a ghost story or thinking
Speaker 9: it was kind of fun, while for him maybe these
Speaker 9: things were more real or genuine that he was hearing
Speaker 9: and seeing. And one of the other things that the
Speaker 9: psychiatrist that I was talking about, who talked about Hilda
Speaker 9: mentions is that John had this kind of superhero complex
Speaker 9: that he developed, where because he felt so powerless in
Speaker 9: his life, he started to sort of pretend that he
Speaker 9: was much more powerful than he really was, that he
Speaker 9: had great abilities to do special things. And later on
Speaker 9: this belief was referred to as this idea that he
Speaker 9: was the chosen one, that he had some kind of
Speaker 9: divine mission from God. And that's an idea that kind
Speaker 9: of manifests when we look at what actually happened in
Speaker 9: their apartments.
Speaker 8: Now, back when he's a child, he looks like he's
Speaker 8: got a fairly normal life. He's got three siblings, two
Speaker 8: of his own brothers and then a brother from a
Speaker 8: previous but his mother resorts to crack Hilda at some
Speaker 8: point her priority becomes crack. So there's people in his
Speaker 8: life to try to intervene. The swim teacher he belongs
Speaker 8: to o OTC. He's not very good at school, but
Speaker 8: his dream is to get into the military. And but
Speaker 8: what happens with his dreams and what does he really become?
Speaker 8: He meets a woman named Gina and she has a child,
Speaker 8: So what happens with his dream and in terms of
Speaker 8: ambition and jobs, occupations, what happens with him? What does
Speaker 8: he do?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 9: So, John, from a young age was interested in joining
Speaker 9: the military. He was compelled by their slogan be all
Speaker 9: that you can be. As he gets older and is
Speaker 9: in high school, he meets a woman named Gina who
Speaker 9: has a couple of kids already. She's about ten years
Speaker 9: older than him, and they start a relationship even though
Speaker 9: he's still a high school student. Then when they break up,
Speaker 9: John starts smoking a lot more marijuana, and he starts
Speaker 9: huffing paint more heavily. He's pretty depressed about the breakup,
Speaker 9: and then he starts sorry about that. He starts pursuing
Speaker 9: the military and taking the exam for entry and failing
Speaker 9: it over and over and over again. And this is
Speaker 9: really devastating for him because he didn't have another plan
Speaker 9: in mind. And at that point, John is really taking
Speaker 9: a lot of drugs. He meets Angela, who is the
Speaker 9: woman who will become his common law life at that point.
Speaker 9: But just to sort of outline I guess a bit
Speaker 9: more what happens to his dreams and what happens to
Speaker 9: his job prospects. He's doing things like working at fast
Speaker 9: food restaurants. At some point, his mother suggests that prostitution
Speaker 9: might be a good money making option for him, which
Speaker 9: is extremely disturbing, and he's just kind of floundering and
Speaker 9: frankly imitating the behavior that he saw when he was
Speaker 9: growing up among his mother and her friends in terms
Speaker 9: of taking drugs and kind of floating from from place
Speaker 9: to place and job to job. And it's an extremely
Speaker 9: troubled time. The other thing that's so difficult about this time,
Speaker 9: I think we can say in retrospect is that for
Speaker 9: most people with schizophrenia, this is about the age when
Speaker 9: that first emerges, when people had their first episodes, and
Speaker 9: that fits in very very nicely with John's age when
Speaker 9: he's graduating from high school.
Speaker 8: And to exacerbate this, which isn't a big leap. He
Speaker 8: likes smoking weed, well okay, but huffing spray paint, and
Speaker 8: he likes huffing spray paint. He thinks this is is
Speaker 8: sort of mind expanding for him.
Speaker 9: So right, yeah, that's I mean, that is extremely detrimental
Speaker 9: to John. And I think that you can see, as
Speaker 9: you mentioned earlier, when you see these IQ scores that
Speaker 9: just sort of plummet in those two years, it's very
Speaker 9: obvious what the culprit is for that. You know, he's
Speaker 9: damaging his brain cells on a regular basis. And while
Speaker 9: in high school there was his swim coach, and there
Speaker 9: was RTC, and there were people watching his progress in
Speaker 9: special ed. When he's on his own graduated, he's kind
Speaker 9: of just you know, has no parental or adult figures
Speaker 9: in his life to see what he's doing and try
Speaker 9: to steer him, you know, on a better path. He's
Speaker 9: just a kind of immature even for him, age teenager
Speaker 9: who's now self medicating and is using drugs as a
Speaker 9: way to escape, as a way to entertain himself, and
Speaker 9: it's just it's, yeah, everything's just kind of starting to
Speaker 9: form into this perfect storm. At that point.
Speaker 8: You talk about the extensive research. You looked into the
Speaker 8: CPS workers come into the family and into the home
Speaker 8: and seeing the conditions that these now they have three children,
Speaker 8: young children in this home previous to March two thousand
Speaker 8: and three. So we'll say early in two thousand and three,
Speaker 8: late in two thousand and two, what are the CPS
Speaker 8: workers seeing, What are the conditions there and the living
Speaker 8: conditions in terms of how many people are living in
Speaker 8: how small an apartment? And the thing that I wanted
Speaker 8: to mention because this I thought was unbelievable. Later you ask, jeez,
Speaker 8: I didn't really see a window. It was there a
Speaker 8: window in this entire apartment that all these people were
Speaker 8: living in. So tell us about those conditions.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's it's really shocking, and I think it's amazing
Speaker 9: that people are, you know, living this way in our country.
Speaker 9: To see this, this kind of poverty that in this
Speaker 9: area is even a step up from how they were
Speaker 9: living before. Because at one point, you know, John meets
Speaker 9: this woman named Angela who already has a young daughter
Speaker 9: and is pregnant with the second child. They they get
Speaker 9: together and then she has a second child, then they
Speaker 9: have a third child together. That's both of theirs, and
Speaker 9: at one point they're homeless, they're sleeping on a mattress
Speaker 9: in an alley, they're sleeping in abandoned buildings, and See
Speaker 9: comes and sees these conditions and gives them the kind
Speaker 9: of choice of whether to, you know, bring the children
Speaker 9: to a relative's house in this case, Angela's mother, or
Speaker 9: to take them away, and they choose to bring them
Speaker 9: to Angela's mother's house. But eventually, after they get the
Speaker 9: kids back, they find this apartment in the building that
Speaker 9: we've been discussing, and it's this apartment that at one
Speaker 9: point was the first floor of a building that was
Speaker 9: designed to be a gas station, and so the first
Speaker 9: floor of the building was never really meant to be apartments,
Speaker 9: and when it was split up into apartments, it was
Speaker 9: just sort of cut into these hallway shaped units. And
Speaker 9: that's what accounts for not being any windows, because you
Speaker 9: have an apartment that's sort of a hallway in the
Speaker 9: middle of a bunch of other hallways, and there's a
Speaker 9: door on the front, and there's a door on the back,
Speaker 9: and there's a little window.
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Speaker 9: You couldn't open, but you could open these doors and
Speaker 9: that was sort of the only sources of exterior light
Speaker 9: or air. They didn't have any kind of air conditioning,
Speaker 9: though they did have a fan, and as I said,
Speaker 9: there's no way to open a window. And this is
Speaker 9: South Texas we're talking about, which you know, during the summer,
Speaker 9: which is about six months out of the year down there,
Speaker 9: the temperature is often over one hundred degrees. It would
Speaker 9: be a really, really difficult place to live. Regardless of
Speaker 9: the fact that this apartment was also inhabited by many people.
Speaker 9: There was a couple, John and Angela, their three kids.
Speaker 9: By the end, there was Hilda, John's mother at times
Speaker 9: living there, sometimes with a boyfriend. There was a transgender
Speaker 9: prostitute living there with them named Urbina who at times
Speaker 9: had her boyfriend Panguino come and stay or would even
Speaker 9: bring men back there at times. So it was this very,
Speaker 9: very full place that was filled with you know, junk
Speaker 9: that they'd kind of collected, videotapes, porn magazines, just a
Speaker 9: really really desolate place and not not a good place
Speaker 9: to raise kids, certainly, But you know, the mission of
Speaker 9: Child Protective Services is to keep families together. And this apartment,
Speaker 9: the fact that they had found an apartment, the fact
Speaker 9: that John had found a job at a certain point,
Speaker 9: was was doing drug testing, that the parents were taking
Speaker 9: parenting classes. They really were doing a lot to try
Speaker 9: to show that they wanted the kids back. And so
Speaker 9: even though this apartment was, you know, very troubled, I
Speaker 9: think the version of it that CPS saw before their
Speaker 9: visits ended wasn't as crowded, probably was cleaner and maybe
Speaker 9: maybe seem like a like a safer place for kids
Speaker 9: to be.
Speaker 8: At the same time, though, you talk about reports of
Speaker 8: the children having insect bites and it just being filthy. Uh. Now,
Speaker 8: in the on the day of the in question here,
Speaker 8: well on in question, but to day the traumatic incredible event,
Speaker 8: what was the reason why, Well, maybe we should talk,
Speaker 8: we should go back a little bit here, because according
Speaker 8: to John, he has been really huffing this paint. He
Speaker 8: loses his job at the Golden Corral, and there is
Speaker 8: a problem with food stamps. So tell us a little
Speaker 8: bit about this confluence of events that happens, and then
Speaker 8: why are they going to the hospital, And tell us
Speaker 8: about what happens how they get to this hospital, but
Speaker 8: tell us what was happening before in terms of his
Speaker 8: drug use in huffing.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so at one point there was testimony that John
Speaker 9: was on a kind of two week binge, just huffing paint,
Speaker 9: you know, every day and not sleeping, not eating, and
Speaker 9: then they get a notification that there's a problem with
Speaker 9: their food stamps. It's not clear whether the problem was
Speaker 9: that they would be totally cut off, that just one
Speaker 9: of the kids would lose their food stamps. This was, unfortunately,
Speaker 9: one of those pieces of evidence that just sort of
Speaker 9: went missing, that didn't seem to be in any of
Speaker 9: the documents when I tried to find it again to
Speaker 9: just really understand exactly what was at stake, but there
Speaker 9: was a problem with the food stamps that was clear,
Speaker 9: and they needed to go and get the social Security
Speaker 9: number for one of the kids. They believe that they
Speaker 9: could get that at the medical center, and so John
Speaker 9: goes and he asks a sort of friend of a
Speaker 9: friend for a ride, goes and knocks on the door
Speaker 9: of their house and he knows they have a car.
Speaker 9: They drive them over. The family just sort of seems despondent,
Speaker 9: and they get to the hospital. They don't seem to
Speaker 9: be able to locate what they're looking for there, and
Speaker 9: then they take the bus back to their neighborhood and
Speaker 9: end up in Market Square. While they're on the bus,
Speaker 9: it seems like John is getting more and more paranoid,
Speaker 9: and he thinks that another child is trying to hand
Speaker 9: one of his kids a poison piece of candy. And
Speaker 9: then when they get off the bus, they see a
Speaker 9: woman who he believes has what they called the mark
Speaker 9: of the Beast on her forehead. That she scratches on
Speaker 9: her forehead that indicate that she's evil, and that she
Speaker 9: gives them a certain look which they interpret as the
Speaker 9: evil eye that she's cursed them. I should say that
Speaker 9: this idea of the evil eye. The mall veokle is
Speaker 9: one of the more sort of accepted and common cultural
Speaker 9: concepts in that area. That you know, even when I
Speaker 9: was working at the Brownsville Herald, if someone would admire
Speaker 9: my outfit and they'd be looking at me for an
Speaker 9: extended amount of time, they felt they had to go
Speaker 9: up to me and touch me to sort of diffuse
Speaker 9: the looks that they had just given me. So, you know,
Speaker 9: this is a common belief in any case. Those are
Speaker 9: kind of the events that start leading up to what happened.
Speaker 8: Now, we haven't talked about Angela at all, but you
Speaker 8: do talk about this and your attempts later to try
Speaker 8: to interview her. She refused that, so, but you talk
Speaker 8: about that. A journalist named Maria Villary Villa Real interviewed
Speaker 8: Angela on camera in two thousand and seven. What was
Speaker 8: she like? I guess you looked at that, you reviewed that.
Speaker 8: What did she note in that interview about her behavior?
Speaker 9: You know, I'm trying to think about that interview. I mean,
Speaker 9: I know that Maria corresponded with her first, and that
Speaker 9: she conveyed to me that she found her and I
Speaker 9: think you can see in the teape that Angela just
Speaker 9: has a kind of childlike quality to her, even more
Speaker 9: so than than John does. That there's a sense of naivete.
Speaker 9: I think also that you know, Angela and in the
Speaker 9: second trial and since then, has tried to make it
Speaker 9: clear that she she really didn't have as much of
Speaker 9: a role in the crimes as maybe was once said
Speaker 9: or believed, and that really she really John was the
Speaker 9: one responsible. So that that's something that's kind of changed
Speaker 9: over time, and the account for that, what accounts for
Speaker 9: that change is unclear. Part of it, I think could
Speaker 9: be that, you know, when this all happened, John and
Speaker 9: Angela were really in love, and that she was kind
Speaker 9: of captivated by him. And after the crime occurs, you
Speaker 9: can see that her first instinct is to kind of
Speaker 9: protect him because in part because she has a very
Speaker 9: low IQ and I don't think she totally understands, you know,
Speaker 9: the extent of what's going to happen to them or
Speaker 9: to her. But later on she's not so quick to
Speaker 9: sort of come to his defense or to try to
Speaker 9: help him by claiming more responsibility.
Speaker 8: Now we're not going to go through this, I mean,
Speaker 8: every detail, but to show at least some veracity to
Speaker 8: this that the psychiatric claims of insanity, and again we
Speaker 8: won't be able to go through how they examine that
Speaker 8: in court and what the what's this test of insanity?
Speaker 8: But just for the layman's you know, for their value.
Speaker 8: According to Angela, around seven am, what does John do
Speaker 8: with the family pets?
Speaker 7: There?
Speaker 9: So John killed the hamsters that they had had, which
Speaker 9: is just that that's one of the first details. When
Speaker 9: I was saying earlier, I remember reading his confession and
Speaker 9: just being so kind of unhinged by it because you
Speaker 9: have this detail of these hamsters and you're thinking, how
Speaker 9: does this You know, I've never you hear about crimes
Speaker 9: on the news, you know, man kills his wife for
Speaker 9: having an affair or you know, awful things, but then
Speaker 9: to hear something that just seems so bizarre and kind
Speaker 9: of disconnected from what comes next. Yeah, so he kills
Speaker 9: the hamsters with a hammer and.
Speaker 4: Some bleech and.
Speaker 9: Because they're acting strange, they're sort of supposedly acting like
Speaker 9: they're possessed, and that's sort of the first steps in
Speaker 9: this long bay in which he kills the three kids.
Speaker 9: It debating is debatable how much she assisted him in
Speaker 9: that act, but where he starts to believe that the
Speaker 9: different kids are possessed, and he eventually goes on to
Speaker 9: choke them and stab them and decapitate them. He thinks
Speaker 9: that one of his daughters is speaking in the voice
Speaker 9: of his grandmother, who, as we discussed earlier, he always
Speaker 9: thought was a witch. So there's this kind of and
Speaker 9: there's also a strangeness to the events in the sense
Speaker 9: that you know, he thinks the first two kids are
Speaker 9: possessed and they're killed, but the third one, you know,
Speaker 9: he's asleep for a while, and then hours later they
Speaker 9: do the same thing with him. They also become convinced
Speaker 9: that he needs to be killed too, and then they
Speaker 9: walk to the grocery store to buy some milk, which
Speaker 9: I think is another detail that to me, you know,
Speaker 9: he walks, he walks to the grocery store to buy milk,
Speaker 9: which would have sensibly be for something they'd buy for
Speaker 9: their kids who are now dead. And you know, there
Speaker 9: are just a lot of there are a lot of
Speaker 9: things that go on that are just horrific and so
Speaker 9: not of a piece with this man, who, though irresponsible
Speaker 9: and using drugs and kind of going nowhere in his life,
Speaker 9: has never physically abused his kids before kind of knows.
Speaker 9: I think that you can cut and run on your
Speaker 9: responsibilities from the examples in his life. So there's this
Speaker 9: idea put forward by the prosecution that they felt they
Speaker 9: needed to kill the kids because you know, he wanted
Speaker 9: to escape and go start a new life elsewhere. But
Speaker 9: to me, that doesn't really make sense because he could
Speaker 9: have easily done that regardless.
Speaker 8: No, I agree with you too, and that the prosecution
Speaker 8: followed it up with that that John had bisexual affairs,
Speaker 8: and so they pointed to one person in particular and
Speaker 8: built a theory that he was he killed the kids
Speaker 8: because of the financial pressure and he was going to
Speaker 8: go run away with this lover. But again, I didn't
Speaker 8: really see that holding up too much myself at all.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it feels like a very stin theory. I mean,
Speaker 9: at the same time, it's undeniable that he killed the
Speaker 9: kids and did it in this extremely brutal way. And
Speaker 9: also immediately, you know, when when the police arrives, you know,
Speaker 9: confesses everything to the best of his ability to remember
Speaker 9: for it, which I think also when you read his confession,
Speaker 9: when you read transcripts of his videotape confession, he says
Speaker 9: things like he thought that it was a seventy two
Speaker 9: hour time period that they were in the apartment, which
Speaker 9: makes absolutely no sense given the timeline, and is the
Speaker 9: kind of thing that only, I think someone who's in
Speaker 9: this kind of psychotic break with reality would would find
Speaker 9: reality so distorted at that point that they could think
Speaker 9: many days of past.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the touching part of the book is that the
Speaker 8: mortician was able to put incredibly the bodies back together
Speaker 8: and they had a funeral, children looking like little porcelain dolls,
Speaker 8: which was very vivid imagery. Seven weeks after this murder,
Speaker 8: this doctor of val Verda saw John and diagnose him
Speaker 8: as a paranoid schizophrenic. But let's get to your correspondence,
Speaker 8: because again you said early in this book and laid
Speaker 8: it out, that you didn't want to just have an
Speaker 8: account of these crimes to you know, recounting of the details,
Speaker 8: or an easy depiction of somebody as a monster, or
Speaker 8: just to carry on on the myth of what may
Speaker 8: have happened. So what did you find in your correspondence?
Speaker 8: What did you talk about? But what did you discover
Speaker 8: again when you asked them about his children? When it
Speaker 8: talks about remorse. Again, you didn't initially get into this,
Speaker 8: but what was your sense of who he was in
Speaker 8: terms of his love for his children, in terms of
Speaker 8: his actual mental illness. You've corresponded him for quite a while.
Speaker 8: Tell us about that.
Speaker 9: It's hard because, as you know, John's been medicated for
Speaker 9: a long time. By the time I started corresponding with him,
Speaker 9: he's been on medications specifically for schizophrenia, and he's really
Speaker 9: kind of leveled out. So he's still deluded. You know,
Speaker 9: people with schizophrenia often do have these kind of delusions
Speaker 9: of grandeur. There are certain things that he said to
Speaker 9: me at times, you know, that that he was kind
Speaker 9: of the one who held this family together and that
Speaker 9: without him, they've all sort of gone in different directions.
Speaker 9: Which the fact that someone could not could not be
Speaker 9: self reflective enough to realize that it wasn't really just
Speaker 9: him not being there, but the fact that he committed
Speaker 9: this horrible crime, that that caused this risk in his
Speaker 9: family to occur. So he has some kind of ideas
Speaker 9: of himself that don't necessarily square with reality. But at
Speaker 9: the same time, he's he was And I include big
Speaker 9: sections of his letters in the book because I think
Speaker 9: that when you hear about what he did, it's so
Speaker 9: difficult to have any kind of empathy for him as
Speaker 9: a human being. And then when you read these letters,
Speaker 9: he's just so human and sort of non threatening, and
Speaker 9: he has had such a difficult life and has had,
Speaker 9: you know, hopes and dreams, many of them very humble
Speaker 9: hopes and dreams. You know that that maybe he would
Speaker 9: have a house and he'd have a family, and maybe
Speaker 9: he'd joined the military, which you know, most most people,
Speaker 9: if they want to join the military, are able to
Speaker 9: do so. It's it made a big impression on me,
Speaker 9: I would say, just to get these letters and to
Speaker 9: hear his voice. And part of the way I structure
Speaker 9: the book was to put the crime about halfway through
Speaker 9: because I wanted people to read and hear these letters
Speaker 9: the way that I did, before you really hear the
Speaker 9: full extent of what he did, so that you can
Speaker 9: kind of weigh one against the other. And I think
Speaker 9: some people walk away and they just still don't really
Speaker 9: feel any sympathy or empathy for this guy. You know,
Speaker 9: what he did is too terrible, and and maybe he's
Speaker 9: not self reflective enough about that, or his reflection doesn't
Speaker 9: feel authentic to them. But I think for a lot
Speaker 9: of other people read You read these letters and you
Speaker 9: can't help but kind of feel transformed that someone who's
Speaker 9: among the worst criminals that we have in our society
Speaker 9: could also be someone who's so vivid and real and
Speaker 9: who's also had such a difficult life. That for me
Speaker 9: was one of the really important challenges of this book,
Speaker 9: I think, was you know that in our world a
Speaker 9: lot of the time, perpetrators of crimes have also been
Speaker 9: victims of crimes at different points of their lives. And
Speaker 9: how do you square those two things? How do you
Speaker 9: look at a person and see both of those things
Speaker 9: at once and not try to sort of divide everyone
Speaker 9: into two different categories.
Speaker 8: Right, and his attitude as opposed to Again, we talk
Speaker 8: about a death penalty. You talk about the death penalty
Speaker 8: state of Texas and the difference in other death penalty
Speaker 8: states in terms of the practice, How of the inevitability
Speaker 8: of somebody actually being put to death, Texas being much
Speaker 8: different and normally you'd have all these mitigating factors, and
Speaker 8: it seems like those mitigating factors didn't matter in this
Speaker 8: case because of the horror that this inflicted on the community.
Speaker 8: But at the same time, he didn't have the attitude
Speaker 8: that a lot of these other killers in trying to
Speaker 8: deny his responsibility. Tell us a little bit of how
Speaker 8: he felt about this death penalty and punishment for what
Speaker 8: he had done.
Speaker 9: I think at different points he's felt differently, you know,
Speaker 9: right after the crime. He actually the first during the
Speaker 9: first trial, he said, you know, if I'm found guilty,
Speaker 9: then then I don't want to prevent any kind of mitigation.
Speaker 9: I just want to accept the death penalty and I
Speaker 9: want to join my children in heaven. And so, you know,
Speaker 9: he was sentenced to death, and that whole section of
Speaker 9: the trial that would normally occur didn't happen. And then
Speaker 9: in the second trial, by then I think that you know,
Speaker 9: he had been on medication for some time, he'd been
Speaker 9: on death row for some time, he'd had time to grieve,
Speaker 9: and his thoughts on it had kind of changed, and
Speaker 9: he wanted to fight, you know, for a chance at
Speaker 9: life in prison. And actually the law had changed between
Speaker 9: those two trials. During the first trial, if the option
Speaker 9: of life without parole was not available to the jury,
Speaker 9: but during the second trial, during the second trial, actually
Speaker 9: it wasn't made available to them either because he was
Speaker 9: kind of he was kind of still con considered under
Speaker 9: the law as it had stood when he committed the crime.
Speaker 9: But by the time of the second trial, another person
Speaker 9: who would be up for it for a similar case
Speaker 9: would have the jury given the option of life without parole.
Speaker 9: And I think even though in reality, someone who commits
Speaker 9: a crime like this would never be given parole by
Speaker 9: a parole board, that idea, the sort of abstract idea
Speaker 9: that you could one day allow this person to walk free,
Speaker 9: is too disturbing for mostures. So they are kind of
Speaker 9: pushed toward toward giving them death, or had been pushed
Speaker 9: toward giving them death.
Speaker 8: You corresponded with John for quite a bit. Why did
Speaker 8: you feel it necessary to visit him? And tell us
Speaker 8: about that visit.
Speaker 9: It's a good question. I think, you know, well, there
Speaker 9: is a very unequal power dynamic in that relationship. And
Speaker 9: I had read a book called The Journalists and the
Speaker 9: Murderer by Janet Malcolm when I was I'm sure you're
Speaker 9: familiar with and a lot of your listeners are familiar with,
Speaker 9: but just to sort of talk about it very succinctly,
Speaker 9: you know, one of the things that Janet Malcolm is
Speaker 9: analyzing in that book is the inappropriate nature of the
Speaker 9: journalist Joe mcguinnis's relationship with believes Patrick McDonald for the
Speaker 9: book that Joe McGuinness wrote called Fatal Vision, in which
Speaker 9: you know, Joe McGuinness is kind of manipulating this man
Speaker 9: into thinking that he's still writing a book about his innocence,
Speaker 9: even once he's changed his mind and starts writing a
Speaker 9: book about his guilt. And so that was a real
Speaker 9: guiding light for me. I think when I was writing
Speaker 9: to John and just through the whole process was trying to,
Speaker 9: you know, not just not manipulate John outright, but really
Speaker 9: try to think about, like, what's the responsible way to
Speaker 9: conduct this relationship, because it's so easy when someone is
Speaker 9: in a position of absolute, you know, powerlessness, to take
Speaker 9: advantage of that and to benefit from that because you're
Speaker 9: the person writing to them, you're their lifeline. Maybe you're
Speaker 9: the one who could help them get a new trial.
Speaker 9: It's depending on what you write. And I just tried
Speaker 9: to be really clear with John, make him no promises.
Speaker 9: But also I still felt as I was writing his
Speaker 9: letters and receiving letters that you know that it's so
Speaker 9: easy to sort of write what you want about someone
Speaker 9: when you never have to see their face or look
Speaker 9: in their eyes or really fully digest their humanity, and
Speaker 9: you know that there's a person on the other end
Speaker 9: and that you're writing something that really could shape their
Speaker 9: life or their death or how they're remembered. And so
Speaker 9: I just wanted to go, I think, for that very
Speaker 9: simple reason, and see him and talk to him in person.
Speaker 9: And also, you know, I think as a reporter and
Speaker 9: a writer, you want to be able to describe someone accurately.
Speaker 9: There's a difference between being in conversation and just seeing
Speaker 9: a videotape. And so for all those reasons, I just
Speaker 9: really wanted to actually have that experience of meeting him.
Speaker 8: Now, in terms of this idea that you would you
Speaker 8: would visit him out of this book, I don't know
Speaker 8: if I I guess I could get the sense of
Speaker 8: did he understand or care about his depiction in this book?
Speaker 8: I just didn't. You just didn't really mention that at all.
Speaker 8: So what was his take on that? Did he did
Speaker 8: want to scrutinize the book? Did or just was he
Speaker 8: just did he agree to the interviews knowing the full
Speaker 8: scope of what might be done with the material or
Speaker 8: did he care.
Speaker 9: You know, I told him that I was writing a
Speaker 9: book about him and the building in his case, and
Speaker 9: I asked him so many questions over the years, so
Speaker 9: I think that he got a sense of the kinds
Speaker 9: of things about his life I was most interested in.
Speaker 9: But you know, he just didn't seem really that inquisitive
Speaker 9: about it, which again I have to wonder is maybe
Speaker 9: a symptom of schizophrenia, that there's sort of a lack
Speaker 9: of being able to see beyond yourself, and that you know,
Speaker 9: even when I visited him, he asked me very few
Speaker 9: questions about myself, even you know, I'd been writing to
Speaker 9: him for years and and part of it was because
Speaker 9: I had kind of very carefully kept it a depersonalized
Speaker 9: relationship between the two of us. That I wasn't in
Speaker 9: the habit of sort of offering up information about myself
Speaker 9: and my life in the letters. But you know, he
Speaker 9: just wasn't that what isn't that inquisitive about about that stuff?
Speaker 1: And he.
Speaker 9: That I, you know, eventually found a publisher and that
Speaker 9: it would publish, and I think he was happy because
Speaker 9: you know, even though this book, I think is not
Speaker 9: flattering book about him in a lot of ways. You know,
Speaker 9: he does a lot of horrifect things in this book
Speaker 9: beyond the crime. You know, he's not a good responsible parent,
Speaker 9: he's doing drugs, he's you know, really engaging in some
Speaker 9: very dangerous behaviors. At the same time, it was an opportunity,
Speaker 9: I think, for him for the first time, in his
Speaker 9: own words, to kind of tell the story of his life,
Speaker 9: because up to this point, everything's been really written about
Speaker 9: him and about his case, but never are really engaging
Speaker 9: his perspective on any of it. He wasn't able to
Speaker 9: testify during the trials strategically because you know, that was
Speaker 9: a decision that's typically made in these cases by the
Speaker 9: defense team. And so, yeah, it's interesting to hear you
Speaker 9: say that. At the I wanted to add though, that
Speaker 9: once the book was published, I got a letter from
Speaker 9: him saying but that he understood that we were not friends,
Speaker 9: and that I was a journalist and he was the subject,
Speaker 9: but that this book for him was like an answered prayer,
Speaker 9: which was not something that I was my sort of
Speaker 9: goal in writing it was to answer his prayers. But
Speaker 9: you know, he he seems to feel very positively about
Speaker 9: the project.
Speaker 8: Well, you treated him with a measure of humanity that
Speaker 8: he wasn't getting from the entire community, and I'm pretty
Speaker 8: sure the jailers weren't giving him it either. In conclusion
Speaker 8: with this what again, we spoke very in the beginning
Speaker 8: about well, possibly, what could we learn from this? What
Speaker 8: could we anticipate in the future from this story. I
Speaker 8: won't ask you that kind of question if we could
Speaker 8: really get that clear cut points to consider and that
Speaker 8: this won't have her happen again. But this confluence of conditions, circumstances,
Speaker 8: mental illness, drug use, poverty, the history of the community, superstition.
Speaker 8: What did you come away from after at the end
Speaker 8: of this book with what was the biggest lesson or
Speaker 8: thing that you learned from this complex event that can't
Speaker 8: be looked at in a one dimensional way? What did
Speaker 8: you take away from this entire event?
Speaker 9: I feel like I learned so many things from the
Speaker 9: event itself. I was looking for meaning, I think initially
Speaker 9: in the wrong place. That is to say, I don't
Speaker 9: think that the event like this is meaningful. I do
Speaker 9: agree with people when I think people kind of reacted
Speaker 9: to me with some measure of disgust or concern that
Speaker 9: I was kind of so interested in finding a purpose
Speaker 9: or a lesson out of the event. I don't think
Speaker 9: that the event itself is meaningful, but I think that
Speaker 9: there is an opportunity once the dust has settled in
Speaker 9: cases like this, because sadly, you know, I think a
Speaker 9: lot of communities have seen a case that was a
Speaker 9: real trauma, a real collective trauma that went beyond just
Speaker 9: the people involved, that there are constructive things that we
Speaker 9: can do to work together to make meaning out of
Speaker 9: our future, to sort of take something like this and
Speaker 9: work toward prevention. And you know, as you say, I
Speaker 9: don't think it's sort of a direct correlation all the
Speaker 9: time that you can say, you know, if we do
Speaker 9: this thing, or that we can prevent these crimes unilaterally
Speaker 9: from happening. I don't think that's fair also to the
Speaker 9: people involved, because then you're sort of pointing fingers at
Speaker 9: you know, the CPS agents or the families, And I
Speaker 9: don't think that it's fair to kind of directly point
Speaker 9: a finger at them for a crime that they didn't
Speaker 9: commit themselves. You know, they didn't they didn't intend for
Speaker 9: things to manifest in this way. But I think that
Speaker 9: you know, one of the things that happened in the
Speaker 9: aftermath is that the community planted a garden behind the
Speaker 9: building and they named it after the kids, and since then,
Speaker 9: community gardens have popped up all over the city. They're
Speaker 9: you know, hundreds of people who are growing vegetables for
Speaker 9: their families, who are selling them at farmers' markets, and
Speaker 9: who are making more income. And that's not the kind
Speaker 9: of thing that you can say prevents murders, but I
Speaker 9: think that there's a lot of subtlety to the way
Speaker 9: that people come together, make each other feel cared about
Speaker 9: and valued, make each other feel like if they have
Speaker 9: a problem, that there's someone to turn to, that there
Speaker 9: are resources available for them, and to sort of also
Speaker 9: keep an eye out for the most vulnerable people in
Speaker 9: our communities and see how they're doing and if they
Speaker 9: need help. You know that there's a lot, there's a
Speaker 9: lot that can happen afterwards that can be positive, even
Speaker 9: in the shadow of something so dark and painful. And
Speaker 9: I think the mistake or the mistakes maybe to not
Speaker 9: the right word, but the app is that it's so
Speaker 9: painful when these things happen that people want to forget,
Speaker 9: they want to erase and they want to move on,
Speaker 9: and they don't want to dwell inside of these events
Speaker 9: and contemplate them and contemplate the future in the light
Speaker 9: of them. And so that's kind of what the building
Speaker 9: has forced the community to do in Brownsville, that there's
Speaker 9: this memory that's just stuck around and force people to
Speaker 9: kind of reckon with this crime over and over and
Speaker 9: over again. And I just think that there's value in that.
Speaker 9: I think there's value in the aftermass, and there's value
Speaker 9: in thinking about things that are really really hard to
Speaker 9: think about.
Speaker 8: I agree completely. And you talk about the community garden too.
Speaker 8: It's appropriately named Three Angels Community Garden in the name
Speaker 8: of in the Memory of Lyssa, Mary Jane and John Stefan.
Speaker 8: I want to thank you very much for coming on
Speaker 8: and talking about this incredible book, The Long Shadow, A
Speaker 8: Small Ghost, Murder and Memory in an American City. Thank
Speaker 8: you very much, Laura. For those that might want to
Speaker 8: contact you find out more information about your work. Do
Speaker 8: you do Facebook? Do you have a website? Can you
Speaker 8: tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so you can find me on my website Laura
Speaker 9: Tillman dot net. And I'm also on Twitter at la
Speaker 9: Tillman T I L L M A N and you
Speaker 9: can find more contact for me.
Speaker 8: Well, thank you very much, Laura, and it's been good
Speaker 8: talking to you. And have a great night. Good night,