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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them, Gacy Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK.
Speaker 6: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 6: and infamous case, but he's in true crime history. True
Speaker 6: Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. On a clear, brisk night in September of
Speaker 5: two thousand, thirty three year old Della Brown was found
Speaker 5: sexually assaulted and beaten to death inside a filthy, abandoned
Speaker 5: shed in a seedy part of Anchorage Alaska. She was
Speaker 5: one of six women, mostly Native Alaskan, slain that year,
Speaker 5: stoking fears a serial killer was on the loose. A
Speaker 5: tanned and thuggish twenty year old would eventually implicate himself
Speaker 5: in three of the women's deaths and confess in detail
Speaker 5: to Della's murder. Yet after a three month trial, Joshua
Speaker 5: Wade would walk free. In two thousand and seven, when
Speaker 5: Wade kidnapped a well loved nurse psychologist from her home
Speaker 5: and then executor in the remote wilderness of Wassilla, two
Speaker 5: astute female detectives joined forces to finally bring him to justice.
Speaker 5: Ice in Bone is the chilling true account of how
Speaker 5: a demented murderer initially evaded police and avoided conviction, only
Speaker 5: to slip back into the shadows and kill again. Journalist
Speaker 5: and writer Monty Francis tells the harrowing story of what
Speaker 5: eventually led to Wade's capture and reveals why the true
Speaker 5: scope of this murderous rampage is only now more than
Speaker 5: a decade later coming into view. The book that we're
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is Ice and Bone, Tracking an Alaskan
Speaker 5: serial killer with my special guest, journalist and author Monty Francis.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to
Speaker 5: dis interview Monty Francis.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much, damn it the pleasure.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much. What first off, how did you
Speaker 5: come to want to write this story? Give us the
Speaker 5: circumstances in which you came to write Ice and Bone.
Speaker 4: Well, I was actually looking for a subject for my
Speaker 4: second book, because I'd already written one back in two
Speaker 4: thousand and seven. I worked as a TV news reporter
Speaker 4: here in the San Francisco area and was just at
Speaker 4: the point where I felt like I wanted to write
Speaker 4: another book, and I was just sort of researching unsolved
Speaker 4: crimes because that that intrigued me. And I came across
Speaker 4: this newspaper article out of the Anchorage Daily News about
Speaker 4: these six women who had been murdered within roughly the
Speaker 4: same time period, about eighteen months or so, and I
Speaker 4: decided this sort of this article was dated, you know,
Speaker 4: the year two thousands, So I decided to sort of
Speaker 4: follow through with each of the cases and see which
Speaker 4: were still which had been solved, in which had been unsolved,
Speaker 4: And I was surprised to learn that three of those
Speaker 4: cases were still open, were unsolved. And then there was
Speaker 4: a strange thing that had happened in one of those
Speaker 4: cases you mentioned in the intro, Della Brown. She was
Speaker 4: one of the six women, and in that case, the
Speaker 4: killer had been acquitted of her murder and had gone
Speaker 4: out and murdered someone else. And then later during that
Speaker 4: second trial, that second murder, which had nothing to do
Speaker 4: with the original six, admitted that he had indeed killed
Speaker 4: Della Brown. So I thought there was something there, and
Speaker 4: I called Desa Jacobsen, and she is a Native activist
Speaker 4: who lives in Anchorage, and she was mentioned in this
Speaker 4: newspaper article. She had gone on a hunger strike to
Speaker 4: protest the verdict in the Della Brown case because she
Speaker 4: felt that that was a terrible injustice. And she was
Speaker 4: also trying to draw attention to the fact that Native
Speaker 4: Alaskan women were being victimized in Anchorage and no one
Speaker 4: seemed to really care. That was her view. And so
Speaker 4: I called her, you know, and keep in mind that
Speaker 4: says like fourteen years after the fact. I called her
Speaker 4: out sort of out of the blue, and she answered
Speaker 4: the phone, and I think she was quite shocked that
Speaker 4: she had about these cases, these old cold cases. I
Speaker 4: think because she felt that everyone had forgotten about them,
Speaker 4: and we just started talking, and she's sort of the
Speaker 4: one who convinced me it was a story worth telling.
Speaker 4: I decided to take a leave from my television job
Speaker 4: and I booked a one way ticket to Alaska. People
Speaker 4: who were laughing at me because I thought, you know,
Speaker 4: that's what an adventuest thing to do, and I just
Speaker 4: went to go find out if there was a story there.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about Della Brown. And also, maybe just before
Speaker 5: Della Brown, maybe you can set the stage for not
Speaker 5: everybody knows what Alaska's like, and what kind of population
Speaker 5: we're talking about, and the sort of racial mix and
Speaker 5: and sort of the really the acceptance of the Alaskan
Speaker 5: Aboriginal the natives themselves in their own communities in Alaska.
Speaker 5: So before we introduced Della Brown in her Sad life,
Speaker 5: let's first talk about Anchorage in Alaska.
Speaker 4: Well, okay, so Anchorage has the most the highest population
Speaker 4: of any city in Alaska. I forget the percentage, but
Speaker 4: a great percentage of the people who live in Alaska
Speaker 4: live in Anchorage. There's about three hundred thousand people who
Speaker 4: live there. Now, I think it was more like two
Speaker 4: hundred and forty thousand at the time of the murders.
Speaker 4: A lot of people there work sort of in the
Speaker 4: oil industry, and as you said, there is a large
Speaker 4: Native population. I was shocked because, you know, Desa Jacobsen,
Speaker 4: we sort of became friends, and she showed me around Anchorage.
Speaker 4: I was shocked to see how many Native Alaskan people
Speaker 4: were homeless in Anchorage and living on the streets. There's
Speaker 4: a section of town where many of them camp out
Speaker 4: on the street out in the cold. You know. I
Speaker 4: think it was like eighteen degrees when I was there,
Speaker 4: and people were, you know, making fires and sleeping outside,
Speaker 4: and I was actually in the rental car with decent
Speaker 4: She got quite upset and she kept saying, these are
Speaker 4: the landowners, these are the landowners. And I didn't really
Speaker 4: realize what she was saying at first, but later realized
Speaker 4: what she was saying was these were the folks who
Speaker 4: were here to begin with, and now they're relegated to
Speaker 4: living on the streets. And she found that to be
Speaker 4: very upsetting. And there is a history of racism against
Speaker 4: Native Alaskans in Alaska. If you look back sort of
Speaker 4: in the history there, you can find pictures of you
Speaker 4: whites only signs and we don't serve natives here, that
Speaker 4: kind of thing in Juno and there. There continues to be.
Speaker 7: A problem with alcoholism in the Native Alaskan population, as
Speaker 7: we've seen also the Native America community here, and also
Speaker 7: a problem with fetal alcohol syndrome, which was very rampant
Speaker 7: among the Native population in Alaska.
Speaker 4: I think they've done a lot to sort of correct
Speaker 4: the problem now, but for people who don't know, it's
Speaker 4: just a it's a syndrome that results when a woman
Speaker 4: drinks while she's pregnant and can cause a number of
Speaker 4: problems for the child, you know, developmentally and otherwise. So
Speaker 4: that sort of and the other thing too, is that
Speaker 4: a lot of these you know, when you talk about
Speaker 4: the epidemic of rape among Native Alaskan women, it's really striking.
Speaker 4: And I don't think that the statistics even reflect the reality.
Speaker 4: I mean, because a lot of these villages where Alaska
Speaker 4: and live, there is no law enforcement, there's no mechanism
Speaker 4: to report these kinds of crimes, there's no road access,
Speaker 4: there's you know, so the ones that we know about
Speaker 4: are the ones that show up the statistics, and they're
Speaker 4: striking right there. They have like the highest per capita
Speaker 4: rape in the country in Alaska, and that doesn't even
Speaker 4: factor in the Native population, and when you do it did,
Speaker 4: it's even more dramatic. But there's certainly a lot of
Speaker 4: challenges that exist in Alaska when it comes to Native
Speaker 4: people and what and what they're dealing with. So that
Speaker 4: sort of sets the stage for this story that I
Speaker 4: tell in Ice and Bone and these these these unsolved murders.
Speaker 5: Now, let's talk about Daisy Pigott and that's Della Brown's
Speaker 5: real mother, as we will find out in this story,
Speaker 5: and tell tell our audience about the circumstances that Della
Speaker 5: was born.
Speaker 4: So Daisy told me that Della was the result of
Speaker 4: a rape, and that Daisy was eighteen years old when
Speaker 4: it happened. She lived with her mother and her stepfather,
Speaker 4: and she told me she wasn't getting along with her parents,
Speaker 4: that she wanted to sort of, you know, leave and
Speaker 4: start a new life. And so what she did was
Speaker 4: she left her daughter, her newborn daughter, Della, with her
Speaker 4: mother and then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. So kind
Speaker 4: of didn't have a part in Della's life as she
Speaker 4: was growing up and then finally reconnected with Della when
Speaker 4: Della was an adult, and by that time, Della had
Speaker 4: a number of problems. She become addicted to alcohol, and
Speaker 4: she claimed Della claimed that she had been the abuse
Speaker 4: of the victim of sexual abuse in the family and
Speaker 4: had endured it for a number of years and that's
Speaker 4: what had driven her to develop these addictions.
Speaker 5: Now discontinuing this cycle, she of course, of course, but
Speaker 5: not surprising, she hooks up with a guy named Rudy
Speaker 5: who's brutal, and does she have children and what happens
Speaker 5: in that case?
Speaker 4: Yeah, she didn't have children with Rudy, but she did
Speaker 4: have She did have a son, Robert, with someone else.
Speaker 4: That's the only that's the only child I know of
Speaker 4: Ella had. She has siblings that she came to know
Speaker 4: later after reconnecting with Daisy. Half siblings. Yeah, but Robert
Speaker 4: is her son.
Speaker 5: So let's talk about In the beginning of your book,
Speaker 5: you talk about Della Brown, and you take us right
Speaker 5: to the point where, of course the mother and daughter
Speaker 5: have reconnected, but you say she's in such a bad state,
Speaker 5: and you, I guess hammer that home with with the
Speaker 5: real fact that she's calling her mother. And when she
Speaker 5: calls her mother in this connection and this life separated,
Speaker 5: what's the kind of conversation that can happen often when
Speaker 5: Della is intoxicated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she did this more than once, but I think
Speaker 4: she basically the way the conversation would go is she
Speaker 4: would call her when she would get in these states,
Speaker 4: whether she was you know, drunk, or she was and
Speaker 4: cocaine or whatever, she would call her mother and say, look,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't be this way if you hadn't abandoned me,
Speaker 4: which of course triggered this enormous guilt and daisy guilt
Speaker 4: that I think he tortures her. She feels like, had
Speaker 4: she not left Della, maybe things would have been different.
Speaker 5: So what's happening in Della's life? And how old is Della?
Speaker 5: Just tell us a little bit about how you know
Speaker 5: her stature, what's her size, what is she like? Really
Speaker 5: beyond the addiction itself, tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: Della Brown? And how old is she when this story
Speaker 5: really shakes place.
Speaker 4: Okay, she was thirty three years old when she was killed.
Speaker 4: She as she was described to me, and I talked
Speaker 4: to people of several family members who knew her and
Speaker 4: one of whom was her half sister Keinak, who met
Speaker 4: her when she was maybe pre teen, pre adolescent, and
Speaker 4: Della kind of took her under her wing and they
Speaker 4: would go to the movies together, and they would explore
Speaker 4: the outdoors together. And Kenoch described her as actually not
Speaker 4: just Kenok, her her mother and other siblings as well,
Speaker 4: said that she had this very endearing smile. She was
Speaker 4: very kind, you know, when she was sober, she was
Speaker 4: very giving and nurturing. She would cook meals and often
Speaker 4: share them with other kids in the trailer park who
Speaker 4: would come to her door who were hungry. She loved
Speaker 4: the outdoors. She had a part time job calling numbers
Speaker 4: at a bingo hall, which she quite an joyed. She
Speaker 4: just was a tortured person though, because of these addictions
Speaker 4: and because of what had happened during her life. And
Speaker 4: I think she just had a really sad, a sad life.
Speaker 5: Now, how does she come to bump into a person
Speaker 5: named Joshua Wade? What happens? Will you tell?
Speaker 4: You?
Speaker 5: Take us to the liquor store and she stole in
Speaker 5: her boyfriend Rudy's credit card and got herself a bottle
Speaker 5: of ian J Brandy so tell us how what are
Speaker 5: the circumstances in which these two souls collide.
Speaker 4: Well, so on the night, on the night of her murder,
Speaker 4: I mean, they haven't pen Quinte exactly, you know, when
Speaker 4: it was that she died. There's some question as to
Speaker 4: when exactly she died, but the circumstances that led up
Speaker 4: to that she was drunk and had also consumed some
Speaker 4: cocaine and had passed out in the street. Joshua Wade,
Speaker 4: who's this young drug dealer, is around in his father's
Speaker 4: Cadillac with some of his friends and they come across
Speaker 4: Stella Brown, who's passed out in the middle of the street.
Speaker 4: Joshua Wade makes allegedly makes some joke about running her over.
Speaker 4: Someone in the back seat says no, no, don't do that,
Speaker 4: and gets out of the car one of the passengers
Speaker 4: and sort of drags her out of the of the
Speaker 4: road and onto the side of the road near a
Speaker 4: near a shed that was located near a TV station.
Speaker 4: And this is in sort of a CD part of
Speaker 4: Anchorage at the time. And so then later that night,
Speaker 4: Joshua Wade and his friends returned to this garage where
Speaker 4: they're doing work on a couple of cars. They're doing
Speaker 4: like an engine swap on these cars, and they're sort
Speaker 4: of hanging out and getting drunk and this kind of thing,
Speaker 4: and Joshua Wade disappears from the garage and says he's
Speaker 4: going to go check to see if the lady has
Speaker 4: any money on or something like that, and comes back
Speaker 4: later in the night, according to the people in the garage,
Speaker 4: covered in blood, which he then washes off, and he's
Speaker 4: acting agitated and pacing back and forth and begins to
Speaker 4: tell pull people aside and tell people various things of
Speaker 4: what he's alleged to have done to Della Brown, and
Speaker 4: all of this sort of came out at the trial.
Speaker 4: Do you want me to get into that as well,
Speaker 4: like what he is, what he had done.
Speaker 5: Well, let's not jump ahead so much because it's it's
Speaker 5: very important what happens in this as well, because he
Speaker 5: has this little again to demonstrate. I think what you're
Speaker 5: demonstrating with illustrating with his book is that again we
Speaker 5: talk about the racism, we talk about you know, Della's
Speaker 5: laying on the street, and not to gloss over this,
Speaker 5: these people say, oh, you know, there's there's somebody in
Speaker 5: the street ooh uh, we better move her along. I mean,
Speaker 5: it wasn't a sympathetic thing. Oh my god, someone's just
Speaker 5: hurt and we should call nine one one. It's not
Speaker 5: any of that. So there's this disregard for these people
Speaker 5: on the road. Just push her aside, don't see if
Speaker 5: she's Oh, she's alive, but just push her aside. And
Speaker 5: so these guys are I guess, I don't know if
Speaker 5: they're punks. But there's some little gang called GTS, and
Speaker 5: there's a guy named Romeo and his brother Gabe, and
Speaker 5: so there's some people at this gradge and he starts
Speaker 5: talking to these people. So some people take him serious,
Speaker 5: some people not so serious. Some people know him, some
Speaker 5: people don't know him so well. But he also wants
Speaker 5: to tell people about it. But he also wants to
Speaker 5: show people, doesn't he He does, And he eventually takes them,
Speaker 5: you know, takes various people one by one to this
Speaker 5: shed to show them, to show them what he's done
Speaker 5: to her, which is essentially.
Speaker 4: Beat her in the head with what we believe is
Speaker 4: a rock and kill her. The reason I said it
Speaker 4: wasn't clear when exactly she died. He apparently he told
Speaker 4: some of the people in the garage that he was
Speaker 4: going back trying various things, and that she that she
Speaker 4: wouldn't die. I mean, he he says it in a
Speaker 4: much more profane way, but he, you know, allegedly tried
Speaker 4: to cut her with a pocket knife, and there were
Speaker 4: she did have cuts on her leg that where that
Speaker 4: were consistent with that. And then eventually, but the coroner
Speaker 4: determined what killed her where the fatal blows to the
Speaker 4: head with the rock. And then and then you had
Speaker 4: mentioned this thing about sort of the racial overtones he
Speaker 4: had alleged. He Wade denied that he was motivated by
Speaker 4: a hatred of Native people, but had said to many
Speaker 4: people that he thought Natives were scum. His father when
Speaker 4: I talked to his father in Seattle, his father confirmed
Speaker 4: that for me as well, that that Joshua Wade had
Speaker 4: a very poor opinion of Native people in general. That
Speaker 4: he admired African Americans and Latinos, but that to him,
Speaker 4: Native Alaskans were like at the bottom of the of
Speaker 4: the wrong there. What did you what was the question again.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, Well, the thing is you were talking about
Speaker 5: he wanted to show people, so there was Again, this
Speaker 5: is an incredible case for some people that realize well,
Speaker 5: and we will talk about what happens at trial. But again,
Speaker 5: this woman, he's already mentioned to people he's come in
Speaker 5: with his clothes bloody. He has now taken a couple
Speaker 5: of people, not really his close friends. A couple of
Speaker 5: his close friends said no, I or one friend said
Speaker 5: I'm not going there. I'm not going with you. So
Speaker 5: he shows some people, so he wants to show so
Speaker 5: there is that kind of evidence eventually that the police
Speaker 5: find out. So tell us what happens in terms of
Speaker 5: somebody seeing his handiwork in that shed.
Speaker 4: Well, he wanted he wanted one of the one of
Speaker 4: the people that he took to the shed to help
Speaker 4: him move move her body because the body was sort
Speaker 4: of her body was blocking the door, and he wanted
Speaker 4: help moving the body, you know, away, and that person refused,
Speaker 4: and so he eventually did it himself. That was always
Speaker 4: surprising to me too through the trial. And don't want
Speaker 4: to jump ahead too much, but you know, given that
Speaker 4: he had come in and out of that shed so
Speaker 4: many times, and the fact that they were not able
Speaker 4: to produce any forensic evidence to connect Wade to the shed,
Speaker 4: I found to be really surprising, and I think actually
Speaker 4: in reality, I think he found that to be wide himself,
Speaker 4: because he said he said this in an interview after
Speaker 4: after the case was over.
Speaker 5: Well, it might not have been a case of the
Speaker 5: police as it sounds like in conclusion too, that possibly
Speaker 5: the police didn't do everything they could have at the
Speaker 5: time that they could have done and had their opportunity
Speaker 5: to let's put it that way, So maybe they didn't
Speaker 5: capitalize on everything they could have capitalized on. I think
Speaker 5: could that be fair to say?
Speaker 4: I think that could be fair. I mean, the explanation
Speaker 4: that I heard from the prosecutors was that it was
Speaker 4: a very difficult crime scene because the shed was so filthy.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was so much dirt everywhere. It was
Speaker 4: hard to get fingerprints, it was hard to retrieve the
Speaker 4: kind of forensic evidence that you depend on these cases.
Speaker 4: So I think that that was definitely a factor. So
Speaker 4: it may not have been necessarily like sloppy police work
Speaker 4: or anything like that, but just the fact that the
Speaker 4: conditions in the shed were so difficult. But you know,
Speaker 4: even the fact that he was walking in and out
Speaker 4: of there. They were testing for shoeprints and that kind
Speaker 4: of thing. That matched his shoes, and there really was
Speaker 4: nothing found. There was a knife, you know, I mentioned
Speaker 4: that he had allegedly used a knife to try to
Speaker 4: cut her. They discovered a knife in his room at
Speaker 4: his father's house, but because the search warrant didn't list
Speaker 4: the knife as something that they could take, they didn't
Speaker 4: take it initially, then called the father and sort of
Speaker 4: over the phone, got permission to take it. But then
Speaker 4: there was some concern that it had been really and
Speaker 4: it never showed up as evidence at the trial, and
Speaker 4: the prosecutors that I talked to said that that was
Speaker 4: one of the big mistakes because it was physical piece
Speaker 4: of evidence that connected him to Della Brown's murder.
Speaker 5: So we can jump ahead here as you have a
Speaker 5: little bit in terms of how do police other than
Speaker 5: him telling other people and a person named Casey, a prostitute,
Speaker 5: known prostitute, calls police to report the body and the
Speaker 5: shed and then they press or how this happened. So
Speaker 5: let's get to why at trial because this is a
Speaker 5: very calmplex case here. Why at trial once they arrest him?
Speaker 5: What is the problem with gathering evidence against Joshua Wade
Speaker 5: in this case?
Speaker 4: Well, first I should have mentioned that the reason that
Speaker 4: they connected Weight was that some of those people who
Speaker 4: called crime stoppers and collected these anonymous rewards to sort
Speaker 4: of connect him. So that's how they initially sort of
Speaker 4: fail and then found out about the confessions and all that.
Speaker 4: But part of the big problem at trial was these
Speaker 4: witnesses they were relying on, because they really were unreliable
Speaker 4: witnesses and they had already admitted to several lies, like
Speaker 4: between the grand jury testimony and then finally the trial,
Speaker 4: and then even at trial had changed their stories. And
Speaker 4: then some of them they were sort of these want
Speaker 4: to be gang members who had been involved in armed
Speaker 4: robberies and had their own cases and then cut deals
Speaker 4: to testify against Wade, and so they would show up
Speaker 4: in court and their orange jumpsuits to testify, further sort
Speaker 4: of deteriorating their credibility. I mean, there were just lots
Speaker 4: of problems with with there were there were a lot
Speaker 4: of problems with the witnesses in the case, so that
Speaker 4: that was a big problem. But when you were talking
Speaker 4: about physical evidence, as I mentioned, there really there really wasn't.
Speaker 4: They were depending on these recorded police wires as the
Speaker 4: main evidence, and of course these police wires were recorded
Speaker 4: by two of the gang members. Who I mean this
Speaker 4: is this is the idea that the police had sort
Speaker 4: of get Joshua Wade. They had two of the gang
Speaker 4: members show up in a car that was supplied by
Speaker 4: the police officer or the police department. It had a
Speaker 4: recording device in it. They also wired both of the
Speaker 4: gang members and then planted the newspaper from the day
Speaker 4: that showed the murders of the six women on the
Speaker 4: front page in the car, so that what Wade got
Speaker 4: in the car, he would see the newspaper and then
Speaker 4: that would spark some kind of conversation, you know, during
Speaker 4: which he would admit that he had had killed these women.
Speaker 4: So essentially much worked. They pick him up. Wade gets
Speaker 4: in the car, he sees the newspaper, he recognizes Della Brown.
Speaker 4: He says, that's her, that's her, and then he makes
Speaker 4: a comment, there's only three on here. Three women on
Speaker 4: here is what he is referring to. And it's not clear,
Speaker 4: you know, on the recording which three women he's talking about,
Speaker 4: but ostensibly he's making admission and making an admission that
Speaker 4: he had killed three of the women, and the only
Speaker 4: one we know for sure he was referring to besides
Speaker 4: Theela Brown was Michelle Foster Butler, because he makes reference
Speaker 4: to her being black, and she was the only victim
Speaker 4: who was black. So they relied heavily on that recording
Speaker 4: at trial. They played it many times, the only thing
Speaker 4: that they did because they didn't want to. They weren't
Speaker 4: allowed to present evidence that would connect Wade to anyone
Speaker 4: but Della Brown's murder, so they had to edit out
Speaker 4: all the parts where he made reference to any other
Speaker 4: So what the jurors here heard is not the same
Speaker 4: conversation that I take forbade him off the tape that
Speaker 4: appears in the book. So that's important to remember when
Speaker 4: you talk about like why did the jury find him
Speaker 4: not guilty of this murder? And I talked to some
Speaker 4: of the jurors about that and why they made the
Speaker 4: decision that they did. And given the evidence that was
Speaker 4: presented to them, which the prosecutors themselves admit was not
Speaker 4: was not a good case they made I think was
Speaker 4: what was a reasonable decision based upon the case that
Speaker 4: they were presented.
Speaker 5: Now, the fascinating part of this is, you know, all
Speaker 5: the elements of your book in that we have these characters. Basically,
Speaker 5: these guys with their slang and their parents street cred,
Speaker 5: these guys talking really foolishly. But surprisingly they do get
Speaker 5: a fair amount of information out of Joshua Wade. But
Speaker 5: the police are also wiring other people, and Joshua finally
Speaker 5: kept on. So you capture all of that, And that's
Speaker 5: a little bit comic, a little comic relief. But what
Speaker 5: really is nothing funny whatsoever is Daisy Pigott and she
Speaker 5: uproots her family to come to this trial, to be
Speaker 5: there every day too, I guess, feeling guilty obviously, but
Speaker 5: uprooting her whole family to come here, and she has
Speaker 5: to hear of the brutalization of her daughter, the minimalization
Speaker 5: of her daughter, but also that he was told people
Speaker 5: that he wanted he had sex with the corpse afterwards,
Speaker 5: and it wasn't She wasn't killed right away, so she
Speaker 5: got to endure that. And then if that wasn't enough,
Speaker 5: she sees him given a short sentence for interfering with
Speaker 5: the crime scene of I'm not correct, tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit more about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, tampering with evidence was what they found him guilty of. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, you can't imagine what Daisy Pigott went through
Speaker 4: in terms of not only uprooting her family, but having
Speaker 4: to endure this trial that went on for three months,
Speaker 4: and then at the end of it to hear not
Speaker 4: guilty and not guilty and not guilty. I mean, one
Speaker 4: of the jurors I talked to described to me in
Speaker 4: a very moving way, I thought what it was like
Speaker 4: watching Daisy Pigott as the verse was rendered, and she
Speaker 4: said she could hear this sort of wailing sound that
Speaker 4: started quietly and then grew louder and louder, and it
Speaker 4: was like an animal that had been wounded. She said
Speaker 4: she to this day can't get that sound out of
Speaker 4: her head. And I think these jurors really, and the
Speaker 4: jurors too, where I think we're very traumatized by experience.
Speaker 4: Some of them went to like trauma counseling afterwards. And
Speaker 4: you know, many people in the public blamed them for
Speaker 4: letting Wade go because he would then go out and
Speaker 4: murder Mindy Schloss. But yeah, the ordeal Daisy Piya went
Speaker 4: through was horrendous and I don't think anyone can really
Speaker 4: imagine imagine it. And the judge even said so at
Speaker 4: the end, like he apologized to her and said, I
Speaker 4: can't imagine what what this has been like for you.
Speaker 5: Daisy Peggotta, then racked with guilt and also completely devastated
Speaker 5: by the court decision, spirals into depression and abuse and
Speaker 5: can't take care of her family. Basically changes, she becomes
Speaker 5: a different person as a result. You mentioned being a
Speaker 5: Jacobs and I believe her name is the activist. She
Speaker 5: is again enraged, and Joshua Wade does his sentence and
Speaker 5: then quietly gets out, and I think Daisy and Joshua
Speaker 5: will meet again, So this will be a good opportunity, Monty,
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Speaker 5: Let's get back to what happens when Joshua Wad is
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Speaker 5: We kind of skipped over the fact that driving around
Speaker 5: in a Cadillact. There's a reason why he was driving
Speaker 5: around in a Cadillact. It was his drug dealing father's Cadillac.
Speaker 5: So let's go back a little bit at this opportunity
Speaker 5: and talk about the life, the very strange life of
Speaker 5: Joshua Wade.
Speaker 4: Well, he was a very troubled young man and lived
Speaker 4: with his mother. His mother and father split up when
Speaker 4: he was fairly young, and his mother was having trouble
Speaker 4: controlling him. He was delinquent and doing lots of things
Speaker 4: that she found hard to control, and so he was
Speaker 4: sent to live with his father in Alaska. And this
Speaker 4: was not a good thing because his father was a
Speaker 4: drug dealer and did not have the kind of environment,
Speaker 4: the home environment that would have been helpful to him
Speaker 4: at that point. So he sort of fell into the
Speaker 4: criminal element. According to his father, he was stealing from
Speaker 4: his stash and then selling the drugs on his own
Speaker 4: and started to do take part in through criminal activity,
Speaker 4: you know, on his own. And apart from his father,
Speaker 4: his father and mother had a really tough marriage, I
Speaker 4: was told. And Bubba is his father's name. Bubba admitted
Speaker 4: to me that there was domestic violence and that at
Speaker 4: one point he held a gun in the mouth of
Speaker 4: his wife in front of his two children, Joshua Wade
Speaker 4: and then Joshua's sister, Mandy. I also talked to Mandy
Speaker 4: who recounted that same story to me. So they had
Speaker 4: a very traumatic childhood growing up. You know, they the
Speaker 4: father and mother were devout Mormons, but then sort of
Speaker 4: fell away from the church. Bubba became a bouncer at
Speaker 4: a night club and then began to have affairs with
Speaker 4: women that he would encounter the nightclub, and then the
Speaker 4: marriage broke up, and then the mother also had an
Speaker 4: affair and they had a child by another man, which
Speaker 4: is I think, according to Bubba, what caused the incident
Speaker 4: with the gun. So yeah, so there was a lot
Speaker 4: of violence growing up, and then when Joshua Wade gets
Speaker 4: into he tried to commit suicide when he was an
Speaker 4: adolescent and that and then was spent some time in
Speaker 4: a mental institution, was released, was hard to control, came
Speaker 4: to live with his father in Alaska, was still out
Speaker 4: of control, and his father really couldn't do anything to
Speaker 4: help him. So that was sort of the situation Joshua
Speaker 4: Wade was in when you come across him at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the book, that's sort of where he is.
Speaker 4: He's sort of been in and out of jail, and
Speaker 4: he's he's done petty crimes or was you know, he's
Speaker 4: been stopped speeding with a weapon in his car, drug chargers,
Speaker 4: these kinds of things.
Speaker 5: Now, where is he living and what is the story
Speaker 5: he gives to people? What is his uh? What's the
Speaker 5: image he's trying to portray? And he's a charming guy.
Speaker 5: You do express in that he has quite a bit
Speaker 5: of success with women. What is his exactly these people
Speaker 5: think about his time in prison? How much do they
Speaker 5: know about what happened before with Della Brown, and how
Speaker 5: much do they care? What is their attitude?
Speaker 4: You mean after he gets out of jail from the
Speaker 4: first Okay, yeah, so he ends up moving into a
Speaker 4: room owned into a house that's owned by a friend
Speaker 4: he met in jail, and just so happens, this is
Speaker 4: the home that is next door to Mindy Schloss, who
Speaker 4: was a nurse psychologist who ended up being another victim
Speaker 4: of Joshua Wade. The people who live in the house,
Speaker 4: so basically it's kind of a confusing situation in that house.
Speaker 4: I mean, there was a mother and father who split up.
Speaker 4: The mother moved away to live with her boyfriend and
Speaker 4: then left her eighteen year old son there living with
Speaker 4: another friend. And then that friend's girlfriend was frequently in
Speaker 4: and out of the house. So it's basically young people
Speaker 4: living in this house by themselves. And then Joshua Wade
Speaker 4: came and basically rented out a room in that house,
Speaker 4: and the FBI said when they went in, I'm jumping
Speaker 4: ahead here, but just to sort of give the listeners
Speaker 4: sort of a visual on this, the house was because
Speaker 4: there's lots of party. There were a lot of parties there,
Speaker 4: so it was very messy in what you would expect
Speaker 4: like of you know, teenagers living there. But then Joshua
Speaker 4: Wade's room, which I understand he had a lock on
Speaker 4: the door, was pristine, very clean, meticulous. Everything was in
Speaker 4: its place, The bed was always made, folded corners, all
Speaker 4: that stuff. But they were aware that he had a
Speaker 4: criminal background because they knew that he had met the
Speaker 4: father in jail.
Speaker 5: There was other women around though, and this is important
Speaker 5: to later in the story that women he even encountered girlfriends.
Speaker 5: Some people that he encountered. Women knew what had happened
Speaker 5: and heard the stories, and yet dismissed it and carried
Speaker 5: on with their friendship with them, didn't they?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they did. I mean you're probably talking about Christina Greaser,
Speaker 4: who I interviewed for the book. She dated had dated him,
Speaker 4: you know, long before, and you know, I think she
Speaker 4: sort of had knew about Della Brown and I when
Speaker 4: I interviewed her, My impression was that she was just
Speaker 4: pretty naive about everything that had happened and viewed him
Speaker 4: as a friend of hers and knew that he had
Speaker 4: had been in trouble with the law. But I didn't
Speaker 4: really register for some reason. And you know, when all
Speaker 4: the stuff started happening with Mindy Schloss, he would call
Speaker 4: up Christina Greaser and asked for rides, and she'd pick
Speaker 4: him up and she'd take him around. And I really
Speaker 4: don't think she she put two and two together right away,
Speaker 4: not until you know, later on, when it became obvious
Speaker 4: and she saw his picture on the evening news, and
Speaker 4: then she realized, I mean, of course, this wasn't like
Speaker 4: a mugshot of him. It was a picture of him
Speaker 4: at an ATM with his face partially covered. It was
Speaker 4: just the bottom half of his face that was showing.
Speaker 4: But she immediately recognized him from that image and thought,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, that's Josh. He's done something to his
Speaker 4: next door neighbor.
Speaker 5: Let's go backwards a little bit, because she has a
Speaker 5: couple great friends, Mindy. She's a veteran psychiatric nurse, psychological
Speaker 5: psychiatric nurse, and so she has friends in that are
Speaker 5: also nurses, and they they're like family to each other.
Speaker 5: So right away, when she is not doesn't fly from
Speaker 5: her home to where she's supposed to, there's the car.
Speaker 5: Tell Us about the circumstances that start leading her friends
Speaker 5: to conclude that something's completely and totally wrong. Tell us
Speaker 5: about those circumstances. What happens to Mindy Lass.
Speaker 4: Well, so Mindy Schloss, as you said, she's a nurse psychologist.
Speaker 4: She would spend you know, one week up in Fairbanks
Speaker 4: and then one week in Anchorage and her house in Anchorage,
Speaker 4: and typically what she would do, which she would she
Speaker 4: lived very near to the airport, so she would take
Speaker 4: a cab to the airport and then fly to Fairbanks
Speaker 4: and be there for her patients on Monday. Well, she
Speaker 4: didn't show up on Monday, and her very good friend
Speaker 4: who she worked with in Fairbanks, thought that that was
Speaker 4: not like Mindy at all. She wouldn't have not notified
Speaker 4: the office or you know, because these people were depending
Speaker 4: on her. And so right away, Kathy Hodges is her
Speaker 4: friend in Fairbanks. Kathy Hodges calls the Anchorage Police department
Speaker 4: and says, something's wrong. I need you to go do
Speaker 4: a welfare check. Go over to her house and see
Speaker 4: if you Mindy's passed out on the floor or something's wrong.
Speaker 4: And so the officer goes by, sort of doesn't go in,
Speaker 4: but looks through the windows, doesn't see any obvious sign
Speaker 4: of a struggle and that, you know, there's no one
Speaker 4: lying on the carpet that he can see or anything
Speaker 4: like that. So and he goes back find So a
Speaker 4: couple more days go by. I think it's Tuesday by now,
Speaker 4: or you know, like tuesday. By Tuesday, she Kathy Hodges
Speaker 4: is getting very worried. She called, She's called a couple
Speaker 4: of times. She calls back again. So then this is
Speaker 4: where the story enters. A detective by the name of
Speaker 4: Pam Pernew she was the lead detective in this case.
Speaker 4: She's on her way home. She's got her twin girls
Speaker 4: in the backseat of her car. She's just picked them
Speaker 4: up from daycares. Going home, she gets a phone call
Speaker 4: from the sergeant says, look, we have this missing person case.
Speaker 4: I need you to go check this out. So Pam
Speaker 4: you know, drops her kids off with her husband, drives
Speaker 4: back over to Mindy's house and there she meets another
Speaker 4: of Mindy's friends, Jerry yet and Harry is Mindy's best friend.
Speaker 4: She immediately starts describing to detective for new things that
Speaker 4: she finds a miss in the house. They're like, there's
Speaker 4: like a wine bottle on the on the counter. Things
Speaker 4: are kind of in disarray. One thing that she thought
Speaker 4: was really strange was that Mindy's bed was made and
Speaker 4: it was made in like this military fashion. That Mindy
Speaker 4: never would have done it that way. She was a
Speaker 4: restless sleeper. She wouldn't have folded the corners that way.
Speaker 4: She thought that was really strange. She also found this
Speaker 4: apron that Jerry had made for Mindy when Mindy's pie
Speaker 4: had won something in the fair. So Jerry had made
Speaker 4: this special apron for her friend, and it had various
Speaker 4: designs it stuff. It was in the garbage, which she
Speaker 4: knew was really strange. Mindy never would have thrown that away. Also,
Speaker 4: her car was not in the garage, which was weird
Speaker 4: because I mentioned she would take a cab to the airport,
Speaker 4: so why was her car missing. She's explaining all this stuff.
Speaker 4: Jerry's just beside herself. She doesn't know what's happened. Mindy
Speaker 4: liked to go out berry picking at that time of
Speaker 4: year because she would make pies and things like that.
Speaker 4: So Jerry thought maybe Mindy had gone out and was
Speaker 4: picking berries and fell, maybe and hurt herself and was
Speaker 4: out there somewhere. So Detective Perneu takes a look around
Speaker 4: the house and she's looking for various things. She goes
Speaker 4: into a back room and she finds a wallet, and
Speaker 4: in the wallet she finds this little piece of paper
Speaker 4: with the four digit code I think it was like
Speaker 4: four to one four seven on it. So she thought
Speaker 4: that was strange, you know, it was a clue, she thought,
Speaker 4: So she made note of that and that comes to
Speaker 4: play later in the case. So Pam Perneu goes, you know,
Speaker 4: back to the office the next day because by now
Speaker 4: it's late. She decides the next day to look into
Speaker 4: Mindy's banking wrecords to see if there are any clues there. Well,
Speaker 4: it turns out there is. She has the help of
Speaker 4: the FBI to do this. Mike Thorson, who's an agent
Speaker 4: with BFBI, helps her out with this. They find out
Speaker 4: that a five hundred withdraw five hundred dollars withdrawal has
Speaker 4: been made from Mindy's account, and then there's also this image.
Speaker 4: They find this image of a man who has a
Speaker 4: bandana around his face and is wearing a hat. But
Speaker 4: at some point he gets close enough to the camera
Speaker 4: where he looks like he's either trying to read the
Speaker 4: screen or do something, and he pulls down the bandana
Speaker 4: enough that she sees the bottom half of his face.
Speaker 4: She knows right away something has happened to Mindy and
Speaker 4: that this person, whoever he is, has had something to
Speaker 4: do with it. So she calls all of Mindy's friends.
Speaker 4: By now, Mindy's former boyfriend Bob Conway is back in town.
Speaker 4: He was way off somewhere in as working on a
Speaker 4: construction project. He's flown back to help look. Detective Pernew
Speaker 4: calls them all together in an court room at the
Speaker 4: police department, sits them down and shows them this picture
Speaker 4: of this man and asks them do you recognize this person?
Speaker 4: And none of them do, and they're all horrified, you know,
Speaker 4: they start crying because they realize this person has done
Speaker 4: something with Mindy, and that sort of starts the investigation.
Speaker 4: At this point, they have not made any connections to
Speaker 4: Joshua Wade. Like Joshua Wade is sort of infamous Anchorage.
Speaker 4: People know his name. They you know, they followed this
Speaker 4: Dulla Brown trial very closely, but at this point they
Speaker 4: have made not a connection to him at all. Eventually,
Speaker 4: one of Bob Conway's friends actually finds the car. Finds
Speaker 4: Mindy's car abandon at the airport, not in the airport
Speaker 4: parking lot where like a passenger would park the car,
Speaker 4: but at this sort of back lot where it was
Speaker 4: the sky chef's parking lot, so the company that supplies
Speaker 4: the food for the airplane. So it's in a strange place.
Speaker 4: Pampernu and detective and the Asian person find surveillance tape
Speaker 4: showing the car coming into that parking lot and a
Speaker 4: man coming out, wiping off the you know, the door
Speaker 4: and then walking away, and it's too far away to
Speaker 4: identify who the guy is, but he's carrying a backpack.
Speaker 4: They make note of like what he's wearing, and it
Speaker 4: appears to be the same man in the image of
Speaker 4: the atm still image. All of that is eventually, you know,
Speaker 4: released to the public, but it's not until like later
Speaker 4: that the neighbors identify this person, Joshua Wade, person who
Speaker 4: live next door to Mendy, and that they make that
Speaker 4: connection with Joshua Wade. Then this triggers a huge manhunt.
Speaker 4: It was described to me as like the biggest, one
Speaker 4: of the biggest man hunts in Alaska history. They finally
Speaker 4: do track him down after a period of time, and.
Speaker 5: We're talking about billboards with this guy's face on it.
Speaker 5: And what I found was fascinating about this book is
Speaker 5: how hard the police have to convince some of these
Speaker 5: young people to give up Joshua Wade. Well, some of
Speaker 5: them are talking about I don't want to be a snitch,
Speaker 5: and really really just not seeing the crimes for what
Speaker 5: they are in itself, and just referring to the friendship
Speaker 5: supposedly that they had with this young man. So the
Speaker 5: other thing that I thought was fascinating right out of
Speaker 5: a Law and Order episode was the incredible team that
Speaker 5: comes down with dogs. Not only do you have a
Speaker 5: Cadiver dog, which I have read about, but this was
Speaker 5: a new one in terms of the coverage you have
Speaker 5: in your book. When was fascinating in that the scent
Speaker 5: dog just to prove where Joshua Wade had gone and
Speaker 5: the route that he had went on his bicycle. And
Speaker 5: so these scent dogs had this incredible ability and were
Speaker 5: trained to take the scent off something even a week
Speaker 5: or two later from the steering column or the steering
Speaker 5: wheel of the car and be able to do their work.
Speaker 5: So I thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that part was really fascinating to me too to
Speaker 4: learn about that, because I didn't know much about that
Speaker 4: before I wrote this book. But yeah, I mean the
Speaker 4: fact that these dogs have such a heightened sense of
Speaker 4: smell that you know, two weeks later they're following this
Speaker 4: trail of a guy from the ATM where he used
Speaker 4: Mindy Schloss's card to withdraw the money all the way
Speaker 4: back to the house next door. I mean that one
Speaker 4: of the most like, I don't say chilling moments, but
Speaker 4: one of the most sort of amazing and the investigation
Speaker 4: is when they're following the dog back from the ATM
Speaker 4: and it goes to Mindy's house, but then stops and
Speaker 4: there's this long fence, and the FBI gave me a
Speaker 4: video a video of this and I will eventually post
Speaker 4: it on the website while Blo Press's website, so you
Speaker 4: can see. But the dog sort of goes up to
Speaker 4: Mindy's door, there's like a deck and it sort of
Speaker 4: smits around, but then it sort of stops and it
Speaker 4: comes back down the steps and you can tell that
Speaker 4: the dog wants to go to the house next door. Well,
Speaker 4: there's this long fence that goes all the way out
Speaker 4: to the street almost, so the dog goes all the
Speaker 4: way down the fence. There are all these like law
Speaker 4: enforcement people following the dog, FBI agents and police, and
Speaker 4: then it goes to the house next door where Joshua
Speaker 4: Wade lived, up to the house, into the carport and
Speaker 4: to the door by the car port, and then that's
Speaker 4: where he ends the trail. And they later find out
Speaker 4: that the people who lived at the house, Joshua Wade included,
Speaker 4: never used the front door of the house. They always
Speaker 4: came in and out of the door near the car port.
Speaker 4: So it was just like it was absolutely incredible, and
Speaker 4: Detective Perneu, worked to the police department, didn't have any
Speaker 4: experience with those sent dogs and was highly skeptical of this,
Speaker 4: you know. And so when Joline god and the other
Speaker 4: agent from the FBI who was working on the case
Speaker 4: with their suggested it, she was pama skeptical, but said, okay.
Speaker 4: She was just glad the FBI was helping her at all,
Speaker 4: so she said, sure, let's try it. I'm willing to
Speaker 4: do whatever. And when Detective Perneu actually saw it for
Speaker 4: her own eyes what the dogs were able to do,
Speaker 4: she was pretty she's pretty dumbfounded.
Speaker 5: Now let's get to I mean, it's not easy to
Speaker 5: capture Joshuall Wade, even when they have the fact that
Speaker 5: he's the guy that they were looking for. So finally
Speaker 5: they through the girlfriend finally is persuaded by police. So
Speaker 5: tell us about the capture of Joshua Wade. And before
Speaker 5: we talk about the trial.
Speaker 4: Well, so we haven't even mentioned that Joshua Wade was
Speaker 4: married when he was in jail to his girlfriend. This
Speaker 4: was the mother of a woman that he dated. So
Speaker 4: he dated this woman's daughter and then became involved with
Speaker 4: the mother. So the mother was considerably older than Joshua Wade.
Speaker 4: They had a very tumultuous relationship when they find when
Speaker 4: joshuaite is finally captured, they end up getting married while
Speaker 4: he's in jail because Joshua Wade wants the protection of
Speaker 4: spousal privilege so that her name is Lisa Andrews. Lise
Speaker 4: Andrews won't testify against him because what happened was that
Speaker 4: Joshu Wade had basically confessed the crime to Lisa Andrews
Speaker 4: while they were visiting in jail, and he basically described
Speaker 4: everything that he had done in detail, which I I
Speaker 4: was always I was confused about, and I asked to
Speaker 4: take the prenew about that, like why would Joshua Wade
Speaker 4: divulge all this information to Lisa Andrews. And the text
Speaker 4: Pernew thought, well, LEAs Andrews is a smart woman, she
Speaker 4: was very savvy and and he was probably looking for
Speaker 4: her advice like what he should do. That's what to
Speaker 4: tec Perne thought. So anyway, that's how they that's how
Speaker 4: they pieced together what exactly he had done with Mindy Schloss.
Speaker 4: You know that he had led that he had gone
Speaker 4: into the house, broken into the house that she had
Speaker 4: woken up. He then you know, had had tied her
Speaker 4: up in the bathroom, gone back to his house to
Speaker 4: retrieve a duffel bag with all these materials in it,
Speaker 4: and then come back to the house and put her
Speaker 4: in the trunk of the car, driven her out to Wiscilla,
Speaker 4: where he ultimately you know, shot her in the head
Speaker 4: and killed her.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she captured a horror too, And and unfortunately for
Speaker 5: the friends and the former former boyfriend, Bob Conway, that
Speaker 5: they had to relive this horror in the courthouse, in
Speaker 5: the courtroom. But fortunately this time anyway, Joshua Wade was sentenced,
Speaker 5: wasn't he.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was no trial in the second case, so
Speaker 4: that was I think I think that was a blessing
Speaker 4: in some ways for the for the friends and family
Speaker 4: of Mindy Schloss, because going through that trial, as Daisy
Speaker 4: Piggott did, was just such a traumatic experience. You have
Speaker 4: to relive everything. But they were assured that Joshua Wade
Speaker 4: would spend the rest of his life in prison, and
Speaker 4: that's that's what they wanted, and that's what happened. In fact,
Speaker 4: that Joshua Wade has not only spent is spent his
Speaker 4: life in prison. He's been in solitary confinement for most
Speaker 4: of that time because of very you know, various reasons.
Speaker 4: But I talked to his sister about this, and she
Speaker 4: felt like, you know, that's something that really has got
Speaker 4: to make you even more crazy. If you're spending twenty
Speaker 4: three hours of twenty four hours a day in solitary confinement,
Speaker 4: that's just kind of like a crazy person even crazier,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 5: I thought it was a couple interesting points in there
Speaker 5: that he goes out of his way while admitting to
Speaker 5: murder that he doesn't want to claim that he's a rapist,
Speaker 5: and I think that would be part of the solitary
Speaker 5: confinement and his fear in there. But he also mentions,
Speaker 5: and you read in a book that he realizes he's
Speaker 5: got a lousy character. So tell us about his lousy character,
Speaker 5: his solitary confinement, what he considers mistreatment, and how we
Speaker 5: get to him admitting to other murders.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that it's difficult. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: that he's a pretty manipulative person and he's going to
Speaker 4: do what is best for him. I mean I kind
Speaker 4: of figure that out firsthand, you know, because I corresponded
Speaker 4: with him. I'd written to him several times just to
Speaker 4: ask him about these unsolved cases, if there was any
Speaker 4: connection there. I mean, I figured, what did I have
Speaker 4: to lose. He's serving the rest of his life in prison,
Speaker 4: and maybe maybe there's a chance he would admit something
Speaker 4: to me. He didn't respond to any of my initial letters.
Speaker 4: But then when I had brought up some of the
Speaker 4: things that his father had told me and in my
Speaker 4: interview with him about his childhood, he wanted to sort
Speaker 4: of I think, set the record straight or more accurately,
Speaker 4: sort of controlled the narrative, because he wrote back to
Speaker 4: me and said, first of all, there was a there
Speaker 4: was like a legal disclaimer at the top of the
Speaker 4: letter that said, you know, anything that is said in
Speaker 4: here is not for publication, and so I won't tell
Speaker 4: you what he said in the letter. But basically he
Speaker 4: in general terms, he post a legal arrangement that he
Speaker 4: would have, you know, drawnify his attorneys that I would
Speaker 4: sign and agree to sort of tell his side of
Speaker 4: the story. So I wrote back to him and I said, look,
Speaker 4: I'm a journalist. I can't sign a I can't sign
Speaker 4: a contract with you saying that I'm going to portray,
Speaker 4: you know, your side of the story. But I am
Speaker 4: committed to the truth. If you want to, you know,
Speaker 4: talk to me, whether in letter or in person or whatever,
Speaker 4: I'm willing to hear what you have to say. And
Speaker 4: then I wasn't surprised that I didn't hear from him
Speaker 4: again because I really feel like he wanted to control
Speaker 4: the narrative. I felt, and I do feel like he's
Speaker 4: only going to do something if he feels that it
Speaker 4: would be to his advantage. It's the same reason that
Speaker 4: he hasn't written back to the daughter of Michelle Foster Butler.
Speaker 4: You know, she wrote to him and in prison and
Speaker 4: asked him, look, did you have something to do with
Speaker 4: my mother's death? And he's never responded to her because
Speaker 4: in his you know what, if he have to gain,
Speaker 4: that's kind of how I look at it. He wants
Speaker 4: He wanted to get out of Alaska, that was one thing,
Speaker 4: and I think that's why he then admitted and I
Speaker 4: think we've left that part out, But after he was
Speaker 4: convicted of Mindy Schlaus's murder under that plea agreement, he
Speaker 4: also admitted to having killed Doba Brown, even though he
Speaker 4: had been acquitted. Then he was in Alaska in jail
Speaker 4: and didn't want to be in Alaska because he was
Speaker 4: it was known throughout the system. But he didn't like
Speaker 4: Alaska Natives and the Native Alaska population, I guess was
Speaker 4: making it difficult for him in the Alaska system, so
Speaker 4: he wanted to get out. And the way he got
Speaker 4: out was he said, I will admit to these three
Speaker 4: other murders if you transfer me to a federal prison,
Speaker 4: you know, outside of Alaska, And that's essentially what happened.
Speaker 4: So Joline Godin, the agent who was case, met with
Speaker 4: him and interviewed him, and he confessed to the murders
Speaker 4: of these three men. So not connected to the original six.
Speaker 4: These are totally different. One guy was sort of a
Speaker 4: homeless guy who was shot in the head while walking
Speaker 4: down the road. Another guy was killed in the hotel room.
Speaker 4: And then the third man he said he killed was
Speaker 4: a man who was in the shed with Della Brown
Speaker 4: on the night that he killed Della Brown. That was
Speaker 4: the one murder they were never able to verify because
Speaker 4: they were never able to connect that man to any
Speaker 4: known missing person, nor were they ever able to find
Speaker 4: his body, so they don't know who that person is.
Speaker 4: But the other due Julian Golden told me. Goden told
Speaker 4: me that she was pretty confident that he's killed these
Speaker 4: five people. So after that confession, they then moved him
Speaker 4: to a federal prison in Indiana and then to Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: and he's currently in Texas in a federal prison of Texas.
Speaker 5: Isn't interesting. His psychopathic tendencies got him to talk to
Speaker 5: people that and it was quite foolish some of the conversations.
Speaker 5: In fact, some people he just thought they might have
Speaker 5: something to say, so he prompted them and gave him information.
Speaker 5: So despite maybe he wasn't stupid, he was very very foolish.
Speaker 5: And again, even with the older woman that he married,
Speaker 5: it was just if he would have kept his mouth shut.
Speaker 5: So thank god he didn't keep his mouth shut. And
Speaker 5: thanks to the dedicated people that really had to work
Speaker 5: hard to put Joshua Wade away and the wild circumstances
Speaker 5: that prompted him to admit to other murders was just
Speaker 5: another It was a blessing in disguise in what's otherwise
Speaker 5: a pretty sad story.
Speaker 4: Well, and I don't think I'm fairly confident that there
Speaker 4: are more than five victims. I mean, his sister said
Speaker 4: to me, she's very confident he's still hiding stuff. His
Speaker 4: father said the same thing, So I think we can
Speaker 4: be pretty confident that he killed five at least five
Speaker 4: people and probably more.
Speaker 5: He claimed to start killing at fourteen, So I think
Speaker 5: if you can admit to killing at fourteen, and what
Speaker 5: you have in the book too, And I won't give
Speaker 5: it all the way, but it's incredible some of the
Speaker 5: courtroom banter he has. At first, he's sounds somewhat remorseful,
Speaker 5: but again not too much, but then the judge calls
Speaker 5: him a coward, and so then he exhibits his violent
Speaker 5: behavior and also his disregard for the judge and a
Speaker 5: lot of people. So it's kind of a chilling exchange
Speaker 5: between them. But all of the information that you have
Speaker 5: in this book is that the drawings that he did
Speaker 5: in prison, and some of the things that he has said,
Speaker 5: all the statements he has made, you paint a very
Speaker 5: verbid portrayal of this very very serious and likely, of
Speaker 5: course serial killer. But who knows how many other bodies
Speaker 5: he can be attributed to.
Speaker 4: He is a really explosive or he has a very
Speaker 4: explosive temper, and I think that you're right. He made
Speaker 4: a lot of mistakes along the way. I think that's
Speaker 4: part of what was why it's so surprising that he
Speaker 4: wasn't caught the first time, you know, and that he
Speaker 4: got away and was able to do it again. Joline Golden,
Speaker 4: who I've mentioned, she also worked on the Israel Keys
Speaker 4: case in Alaska. He was another serial killer, but he
Speaker 4: more fits this sort of the stereotype we have of
Speaker 4: serial killers, of this very like cold, calculated, unfeeling person
Speaker 4: who never makes a mistake and who's really hard to catch.
Speaker 4: Like Joshua Wade was not that kind of serial killer.
Speaker 4: He he was emotional, you know, he would he would
Speaker 4: make mistakes and have to go back and cover them up,
Speaker 4: but was manipulative and got away with it, I think
Speaker 4: for a lot longer than he should have been able to,
Speaker 4: Like he probably should have been apprehended like way, way
Speaker 4: sooner than he was.
Speaker 5: Well, just to thank the good people that did dedicate
Speaker 5: themselves to the case, because again you talk about in
Speaker 5: this book, the people living with these cases, the defense
Speaker 5: lawyer parton me, the prosecutors. That again, it's such a
Speaker 5: multi layered story. It's just a fascinating book. Where the
Speaker 5: reality of how people get away with murder is on
Speaker 5: full display. In terms of the prosecutors, there was a
Speaker 5: former prosecutor, she had health and other conditions that prompted
Speaker 5: these very inexperienced prosecutors that were behind in terms of
Speaker 5: gathering evidence. And then some savvy defense lawyers were very
Speaker 5: experienced and were just overwhelmed. So it's another part of
Speaker 5: this just again a multi layered story. So incredible book.
Speaker 5: And in that theme, Wild Blue Press, which is the
Speaker 5: publisher of this book, Ice and Bone, is quite generously
Speaker 5: giving ten prizes away tonight for those people that have
Speaker 5: listened to this interview and very much like the Alien
Speaker 5: Warnos giveaway from just maybe about six weeks ago, these
Speaker 5: ten prizes will be to ten winners and there's five
Speaker 5: audiobooks and five e books of the very fine Ice
Speaker 5: in Bone from Wild Blue Press. And all people have
Speaker 5: to do is the first ten people to email me
Speaker 5: at Dan dot Zupanski zgp A N Sky at gmail
Speaker 5: dot com will get one of these prizes, and then
Speaker 5: I will direct you to the Wild Blue Press site
Speaker 5: that you can collect this fine prize of a copy
Speaker 5: ebook or audiobook which everyone just designate which one or
Speaker 5: stipulate which one you'd like. Five audiobooks and five e books,
Speaker 5: so ten winners of Monty Francis's Ice and Bone from
Speaker 5: Wild Blue Press. So I want to thank you very
Speaker 5: much Monty for coming on and talking about this fine book.
Speaker 5: And I want to if people were wanting to contact
Speaker 5: you or find more information about what you do other
Speaker 5: than Wild Blue Press. Do you do any Facebook or Twitter?
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm on Facebook. I'm also on Twitter at Monty
Speaker 4: m o NTE Reports with an S on the end
Speaker 4: of it. And my website is Montyfrancis dot com m
Speaker 4: O n t E f R A n C I S.
Speaker 4: And it's been a pleasure talking to you, Dan, Thanks
Speaker 4: so much, but.
Speaker 5: It's been great. Thank you very much, Monty. Hope to
Speaker 5: talk to you again real soon. You have a great night.
Speaker 4: Thank you you too, Thanks, good night, good night,