An anthology of haunting murders written by acclaimed true-crime writer Michael Benson and his “boots on the ground,” Private Investigator Donald A. Tubman. Featured stories include the murders of Joanne Lynn, Pamela Moss, Shari Smoyer and Jack King, Tammy Jo Alexander, Damita Gibson, Victoria Jobson, Kelley Gaffield, Cathleen Krauseneck (The Brighton Ax Murder), Brittanee Drexel, Regina Mae Armstrong, Loretta Jo Gates and Terri Lynn Bills, plus many more—including updates on Rochester N.Y.’s Double-Initial Murders and the “Genesee Junction” murders of George-Ann Formicola and Kathy Bernhard. HAUNTING HOMICIDES-Michael Benson
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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Don't talk radio.
You are now listening to true murder, the most shocking killers in true crime, history and the authors that have written about them: Gacy, Bundy, Dahmer, the night stalker Dgk every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime, history, true murder, with your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
An anthology of haunting murders written by a claim, true crime, writer, Michael Benson, and his boots on the ground, private investigator Donald, a Tubman feature,
storage, hey its flow, and you know it would have never understood top
but aren't all hats on top there, like the top this part of every outfit, unless I've been doing it wrong. That's where I stick with simple words like flow tection. It means the sense of security you'll feel when your new home is protected by home insurance through me and progressive. Also, there shouldn't be a top hat and less there's a bottom hat. Wait is that what underwear is so even average of seventeen percent on car insurance, when you bundle home and auto through progressive, progressive casualty, insurance company, affiliates and other insurers discount not available in all states or situations, would include the murders of Joanne Lynn, PAMELA Moss share
ACE, Moyer and Jack Tammy
Alexander Damita Gibson Victoria, Jobson, Kelly Gas Field, Kathleen Neck, the Brighton Axe
Brittanee Drexel, Regina Mae Armstrong, Loretta Joe gave
and Terry Terri Lynn, bills, plus many more, including updates on Rochester New,
Double initial murders and the Genasi Junction murders of George and and Kathy Bernhardt, the book tour featuring this evening is hunting Homas.
With my special guest journalist and author Michael Benson
come back to the program and it's really good to have you back Michael Benson, thanks Dan's pleasure to be here. It's always
the pleasure of your books are incredible, and you been here right from the beginning. Right
ten years ago. So let's do it. Let's get to again it's worth repeating. We spoken about this before we talked about the Janice, the junction double at Tennessee Junction and tell us about what event what event in your life. I was instrumental in your decision to become a and an author, and now
best selling a claim to crime. After all, right I was I never volunteered to become a true crime writer I was drafted one
I was nine years old, my babysitter
and her friend from down the road girls. I knew went to school with,
went swimming in a swimming hole behind my house and never came back and
months later they were found horribly mutilated. A mile to the w near some railroad tracks are lovers. Lane happened at graduation night June, 25th one thousand nine hundred and sixty six and that's the story, that's in the devil at Genesee Junction, and at that time I teamed up with private investigator Donald eight.
My boots on the ground and dying. We are. We got some paperwork signed by the mom of one of the one of the victims and were made. The family investigators got us in in with the law enforcement great had access to files, we ordinarily would not found, and we did a great deal to I think answer. Some of those questions highlights Bernhardt. The mom has since passed away, but I I'd like to think that we gave her a little bit of closure makes me feel pretty good, because here we gave her name instead of a question mark.
Absolutely, let's get to that case a little bit later in the episode here. Let's start off with Joanne INA Lynn. Um
This is a September she's in six grade and tell us a little bit about Joanne in INA Lynn,
and her son school this day, yeah yeah the first case in the book haunting homicides is the oldest one happened, Monday September 19th. Now.
One thousand eight hundred and forty nine victim was Joanne Lynn, an eleven year old from Hemlock New York. That's near Hemlock Lake, one of the finger lakes and her school bus had mechanical problems. So for the first few weeks of school, the kids would normally take the bus were forced to walk down the busy highway to school.
She was abducted police believed by a perverted motorist who lured her dragged her into his car
and she was found shot with a nine millimeter gun and left dead beneath the Thorn apple trees. Few miles up the road.
Now she usually walk to school with her brothers and sisters and friends, but on this day she was alone, and this day she took a brief detour southward. Stopping at her for
sue. Carpenters house only learn that sue had already left and by that time, her brothers,
their friends who usually walk with her, were already well up the road
so that left showing in alone for the walk to school. She was by all accounts in a great mood. That morning she had things to look forward to the hemlock
fair was that weekend. It's been saving money out of her lunch money to ride all the rides that weekend and that leads to one of our favorite suspects, who was Ferris wheel operator, will
Henry Redmond, a man running from town to town with carnivals and fairs and who had twice during the 1930s, been arrested, convicted and jailed for attacking girls. When he was still a teenager, then on April twenty six, one thousand nine hundred and fifty one this couple years after Joanne Lynn,
murder. Redmond took his attacks to the next level and murdered a little girl who wanted a free ride on his ferris wheel. No,
she was found in a truck on the grounds of the pen. Premier show carnival in trainer Pennsylvania,
twenty eight years old, Jane Marie Alpha off phone lying on her back cross, the seat of a tractor trailer with their feet towards the drivers door. So Joann Lynn in Hemlock was a little girl who couldn't wait to ride the Ferris wheel. So the connection was made eventually between these
So there was a major disappointment when it turns out that Redmond was not a dna match with the semen that was
order in Joy Lynn slip. Now the interesting like silence even sense that the book has come out just a few weeks ago down to open- and I have made progress- and this case is fifty with seventy year old case, I'll grant money for doing the math in my head. But we we put a couple pieces information together, I think came up with a leader. Maybe no one looked at before involves the blood hounds at the.
Used during the days when Joanne was still missing before these, her body had been found and the bloodhounds are stopped at a house. Farmhouse called green acres.
Did it formally been a a home for tourists? Spend the summer at the lake the bloodhounds got to the house, stop
and then went behind the house builder
I'm behind the house little bit and then return to the road and police thought. That was the end of the trail, and this was the spot where the motorist had picked up the little girl. But if that was the case, why did the.
Take a right and go behind the house. What were they doing milling around behind the house, and why did they return to the road again before they stopped completely and it it? It occurred to us that you're wearing had gone behind that house of for reasons unknown. So a eight down spent some time in a
in a basement going through boxes of old police records and found a letter that had been written to the Rochester Police Chief in nineteen. Fifty.
Saying that she had a friend and coworker, who had a sixteen year old son who lived in the House green acres and was living with a couple,
a sixty year old, sixty two year old man and his sister. Now why this little pseudo family is living together in hemlock, we don't know, but the letter goes on to say that the sixty two year old man had been kicked out of his house by his wife for trying to fool around with her little stepdaughter
Right so we have, you, know a pedophile and a sixteen year old boy living together in the house
where Joanne Lens sending the blood house stop. So that's that's pretty interesting.
The key now is to find these people.
And uh it's because they were separated from their families, that's proving to be a little bit difficult, but if we can find out where their remains aren't we're assuming that passed away. Although the teenager would be eighty six now very possibly still alive, uh.
But this is a dna case. There was seeming found on the slip of the victim and uh. If we could get a match, then we could solve the case which it, which is pretty exciting for something that seventy years old absolutely throughout this book. It's you
Pepper this book, with, whenever you're doing a book signing for devil at Genesee Junction. Whenever you.
You're, getting responses from that almost immediately
online and you make new contacts and again
need to new leads that you can provide the police
things that no one else had thought of our people that were afraid to contact police or hesitant to contact police. That's this book is entirely full of those kinds of anecdotes. What about the connection between
Althoff and Lynn's DNA? You right part of the mystery of this. Was there a match for that
yeah there there there was no match Redmond the Ferris wheel operator did not you
deposit his his semen on the on the body of Joe and land. There would have been a really nice way to sum up the case, but you're you're actually read what you know before I talk about how I require new leads. I kudos to the law enforcement Livingston County New York with this Joanne Lynn case, because it is right in two years old and they kept that semen sample seventy years when dna technology came in, they had no problem getting in a whole file off of it, and the case is solvable because of that I mean it's a long distance
from what we got from Monroe County with with a making sixty six case in which they complained, that everything had degraded air and then eventually, when we really got interested in it, they said they lost it, so Livingston County to kill whoever whoever bag. That evidence was way ahead of their time, a crime scene investigator from the future. Your is, it said, a lot because I do get.
A lot of phone calls and messages from people who have been abused and because their husband or ex
husband or their father or whoever it was, was a monster they're convinced that they must be the killer of this person or that person
In one case, we
found foundation.
The woman who said that her father had abused her as a child and when double Jesse Junction came out, he
Didn't wanna talk about it left the room in one slash two at one point when somebody asked the question about that: hey didn't you used to live in that neighborhood and subsequently this man move down to Florida, where a little girl was murdered and the Komposit drawing of the suspect was a dead ringer for him. So I mean-
and that's the that's. The way we get we we've been pulled into these cases are in a life at all, and a lot of instances are
were we were interviewing people for either.
Witcher's construction or nightmare in Rochester, the double initial initial murders, and who you know what you're? Looking at that you should look at this one as well to go
through the names that you read at the beginning of the show. You'll find a disproportionate number of them. Are women with the same first and last initial, and that's not to say
those cases are connected in any way. But those were the cases that were referred to us because you do look at we're. Dublin showcases, here's one and that's how we started. I'm not sure Reese, Moyer and checking.
Been in the book are really at the mostly female the couple males thrown in one because use
With a female parent Lee, somebody was mad hat but uh. I think females make the most haunting victims in true crime. The oldest case was the jointly in case from one thousand nine hundred and forty nine, but the most recent was 25th.
They thought the thing they have in common really is that they get under your skin, and these are cases that you'll be
thinking about long after you're done reading what I wrote about the yay.
Are you right so very very eloquently about that cops know how it feels the heaviness of their cases.
On their souls. How these it
crosses chip away at their nose
as of a civilization, civilization, the victims, family,
no buried in their necks in a nightmare that won't end the understand the discomforting power of hunting, homicides, so very appropriate name. Let's talk about PAMELA Moss at fourteen
from Penfield New and she was in ninth grade in nineteen sixty two
and she plan to go to the mall, and this is a good kid active in girl, scouts and volunteering.
Tell us what happens on that. That day, with plans to go to the mall LOS yeah panel
came home that day and had plans to go to the mall with her girlfriend, where to pick up a new pair of glasses and when she got home, she called a girlfriend, and girlfriend said
My glasses aren't ready. Yet my mom says I can't go so PAMELA without telling anyone
she was going to go to the mall by herself and she
at the end of a dead end street. You know recently built of suburban housing and the way it was set up.
To follow the main roads to the mall was a mile further than if you just took the shortcut through the woods right, so she needed to get back in time for a babysitting job, but she had that evening. So she decided to go through the woods and her partially clad body was found in a water filled,
gravel pit two miles from the MOSS Home her head was in eighteen inches of muddy water in
PETE where, on the shoreline partially covering the
it was a water log. Four foot wooden ladder. It looked like a been in the water for some time,
body wore a pullover blouse, the underwear and she
parts were found one hundred feet away on the side of a steep hill. Now, unlike many of the cases in this book, this one was solved hum the hunt for
PAMELA Moss Killer, developed into the largest manhunt in mind,
Polk County history. Up until that time, I like most of the murders that we deal with here. We have a name. We have a name to put with the with the horrible child, molester had killer, he is James, Robert Moore, and he was working as a landscaper next door to the MOSS House. Moore's criminal record was enough to make your skin crawl he'd been released from probation in June, sixty two after a November, one thousand nine hundred and sixty convention conviction in Erie County for molesting, two young girls in Depew. That's a buffalo suburb.
More was charged with third degree assault for the Depew Crime and, given a sixty day suspended sentence, he was sent to Meijer Memorial Hospital in Buffalo for observation and his eventual probation,
terms required him to regularly see a psychiatrist which he did uh every move from Cheektowaga the Webster, which is a town just e of Rochester. He arranged to see a psychiatrist. It strong memorial hospital Rochester's number one hospital, and at that point he was allowed to take a job
hedges next door to the mosses, where he could keep an eye on the comings and goings of PAMELA, who is a pretty little girl? No more is still alive.
He is the senior resident of the New York State penal system. These now, then, behind bars for the killing of PAMELA Moss for fifty six years. Well, that was the last murder in Penfield, it's a very nice town until the two thousand and three murder of Tabatha Bryant by her husband and brother, a crime that became the subject of my first true crime book many years ago, called the trail and
The PAMELA Moss case was solved just in time for the Monroe County Sheriff's office, new headlight
read the mystery, the murders of Sri, smarter and Jack king. Yes, what was the do? You include some of the things that how he confessed to police and what he told police disturbing. What do you do he stalked her? He you know he he knew that she she took a short cut to go to the mall, even though you're good girls were supposed to, but they all did because it was such a such a time. Saver,
your round trip it would cut forty five minutes off your walk. He jump during the middle of the woods he raped her. He strangled her to death and then he wrapped her up and put her in his pickup truck and drove her to the to the landfill where he dumped her body on the opposite side of the land full from where men were usually working, which is why the
body. Wasn't found more quickly, write new right to that. He has now is a parole. He
every two years, but he's been on night nineteen he was denied nineteen times last time was two thousand eighteen so well, I did the judge that sentence to said that he was getting life in prison without chance of parole in lieu of of a death sentence right so that, even though the parole rules have changed since then yeah, what are the new? The new judge, who's hearing the case always goes along with the original judge. The discussion temper ever see.
The outside of a prison again for any reason- and he has a good- I don't think you will you say hours later after this sentence was handed down, jacking and sherry somewhere were killed. This is with
really interesting case because
your involvement in the contact that you had with kings nice.
I tell us about acting and sharing small, where sure checking injuries lawyer were a young couple. One Saturday, night July, thirteenth, nineteen, so
Z3 went to a drive in movie on a date to see the three plus Hour film mutiny on the bounty with Marlon Brando.
Because of the length of the movie sure you had to get a special curfew for that night
I should be home by one hundred am a very with the kids never made it home and they were
found shot to death the next morning on a real
really hard to find lovers lane near Pittsford, NY now here's a fun fact fun. With quotation marks around it. I grew up
got. A mile from that drive in, and I remember going with my mom and dad. I was six to see me
Put me on the bounty at the Starlight Drive in you know, I don't I don't know if the bensons went. The same night is is Jack Insuree, but we might have. The other interesting point about this case is that the cover of haunting homicides is based on the marquee.
Yeah the Starlight Drive in alright was adapted by my daughter as the titling byline for the book. I think, gives it a striking in different look. I did.
I don't know of any other. Quite the quite looks like haunting homicides kind of a spooky cover
We know that we know that smaller in King
We went to the movies at night because there was a witness who saw sherry at the concession stand at about nine hundred and fifty p dot m, and the witness was a good one. Twenty year old Carol Beachy she had been smaller tires former West High West High school
classmate did she easily recognize. She read that and vice versa, they waved at one another, sherry seemed upbeat, and there was no evidence of a problem.
The movie ended at one hundred and five am, but for those who fell asleep, there could have been confused.
Because, immediately following the first showing the first half of the,
movie was shown again for the benefit of latecomers, so the theater didn't go dark.
Morning till two hundred and forty a dot m authorities would soon learned that there were two witnesses with a reason to recognize kings car who saw smaller in king at one hundred and fifty a dot m speeding home from the drive in already
twenty minutes late for smaller's curfew. Well, they never made it home.
Seven hundred am on Sunday's Moyer's parents called the sheriff and less than
Four hours later, a fisherman from Brighton discovered the bodies a mile and a half from smaller is home on it, difficult x, sister road that led to the state owned hunting and fishing area off of old route. Ninety six, also known as the pits for doctor, wrote.
The bodies were close together, but Padley configured. They were lying on the ground near the front of kings car position in the shape of a t. She was clutching one of his trouser legs. He was lying on his left side. Neither is slacks nor his short sleeve sport shirt were in disarray, he was shoeless, but his loafers lay nearby. The girl was face down wearing Bermuda, shorts, blouse and white sneakers. Her clothing was also
in district. Don't know sex aspect, hello. Therefore, no dna up police speculated that they've been ordered to lie down before they were shot hello and swore, apparently clutched king in fear just before they died. No powder burns on the body suggesting the shots were not fired from point. Blank range of four shells were forty: five were found near the bodies.
And if it was found inside kings, car one slash four in a penny land, the dirt road, fifteen dollars and kings pocket milkshake containers found in king's car small
Add a small amount of money in her purse. So robbery wasn't the motive, checking
not familiar with the area. Actually, now
of them were sherry's parents had only moved to their new house the year before and she's been away at college. For most of that time,
you know if she knew about a lovers. Lane would have been in Genesee Valley Park, which was near the high school that she went to work throughout the suburbs. Now neither of these kids know how to get to the place where their bodies are found, which I think I keep pointing figuring out. Who did it to prove that he couldn't have found the lovers lane? He had a hastily sketched map in his pocket so that he could get to Sherry's house bye.
So then, the difference between the two victims was that Sheree had been beaten in the back of the head. Crushing her skull, the killer had a special anger for her or for females in general, and yet there was no sign of sex in the crime
these clothes weren't, even disheveled in the timeline for the night of the murder, turns out to be a real problem. That post mortem procedures determined that
the teens were shot at about five hundred in the morning, but sheriff's deputies had reported to the sea.
It's three hundred and thirty, a dot m to investigate a report that two cars have been stuck in the sand about two hundred and fifty on the place where the shooting occurred. So at three hundred and thirty, a dot m Cayman, spoiler aren't there. So where were they
at three hundred and thirty? Already long past curfew, we don't know, and
why and how they got to the lovers lane. We don't know the only car
where is Jack's father's car and there's a scrape on the side of the
it. Wasn't there that more don't miss it. One thing I know from experience from first hand, experience is when you went to the Rochester Drive in in the movie and it ever try to get out the same time. There was one exit, the right.
Inside his face the screen out into Brighton, Henrietta Town Line RD and
because they didn't want everybody emptying into the major intersection to the left. There was a
I standing there with a flare and he made everybody go to the left, and everybody tried to merge that get out this small exit and a lot of opportunities for fender benders.
So right, it's possible that somebody scraped, jacks, dad's car Jack
had a bit and somehow the rest of the evening was read that hello, I mean who knows profile is that the time frame said that there was a killer, that the killer was a religious zealot without to punish sinful teenagers for their lustful way.
Days this is, I guess, under the assumption that the killer came upon them already on the lovers lane or perhaps kissing in the car at the at the movies right. Well,
it seemed a little bit wacky to me. But then a guy just like that profile shows up on April 25th, one thousand nine hundred and sixty four about one hundred o'clock in the app
Name a thirty year old, Rochester Manic, Vernon Emma Hunter ran the thruway toll booth in Victor's, New York State Thruway
entering the thruway without taking a ticket it through a major change to call troopers instead of nineteen. Fifty six car just passed without license plates in the chase, began on the thruway suspect across the mall. In return back got,
The route, ninety six and it's ninety miles an hour now, twenty officers in pursuit the chase lasted for close to an hour and it finally came to an end when
He drove across the lawn a cop cars box demand so are when his car was so you've been a ram disk car so that the fender was rubbing against his tire. With this car disabled, his adrenaline plummeted. He just sat there and waited. The rest is now two o'clock in the afternoon. Now when he was captured near panorama plow
as it happens, to be the same plaza that PAMELA Moss was heading toward. He has an army, forty five loaded with six ball shells in his car. Let's take it away from him in high hopes that this will be a match for the.
This Moyer King Ballistics, but it what it was not Mary, was captured and explain
that had been on his way to Auburn, but didn't have toll money for the thruway gave us a dressy said he owned the car, but it was unregistered. It was a six foot, husky veteran and police learned he'd, been in the army for two years with station in Europe, honorably discharged, big big,
took him to the Henrietta substation and charged him with carrying a loaded gun without a permit.
During his arraignment Hunter seemed happy. He was
telling joking said he wanted to call his brother background check, revealed that he had previous address for drunk driving and speeding tickets, but he's never been charged with a felony. Now, while authorities awaited word from Washington on his gun, he began acting weird in his jail cell, so the newspaper reported that he poured water on to his mattress and put his shoes in the toilet. I'm guessing that missed getting urinated on his mattress and put his shoes in the toilet have and the
we found that he had been a former resident of the Willard State Hospital, which was an ancient asylum for the chronic insane and that he's been diagnosed as a schizophrenic and discharge from that facility. On February 15th, one thousand nine hundred and sixty two, as quote improved, unquote yeah his behavior became increasingly erratic. He told cops, he was the Son of God,
The teenagers under twenty five were bad and needed to be punished. So here he was, he was it just what the profilers for the smaller king murders were looking for. Religious fanatic,
well the grudge against young people and it really looked very promising until the FBI ruined it said the gun was no match. No, my own profile, which I developed in conjunction with Don Tubman, all the other smart people. I've talked to over the years is that are killer is a local. It has to be a local defined, the crime scene. I mean it's a dirt road off the dirt road downers.
Hello by the next by you had to go on fishing there or parked there before to know where it was. Google is a local kid and he's got a special grudge against a smaller, more women in general. Now I'm just like Hunter. Just to such a suspect is reported to me by a man we called there. He said his brother EDGAR was the killer.
Carol said that EDGAR had dated jury that summer and it run into her at the movies by accident. He became angry that she was with another guy and followed them afterwards, eventually forcing them to a location that he was very familiar with and he killed them there. Now my informant even said that he'd seen his brother throw the gun into the airy canal and later admit to killing the couple, but there was a Prob Darrell R inform it was a ne'er do well a troubled guy with a sketchy past mental issues and his brother, the accused had no record and was squeaky clean, so the matter came, squealing unable and predictably police talk to both decided. That was a hoax of some sort, and that was that. But you know if EDGAR isn't the guy by this investigation's way of thinking. It's someone just like him,
yeah you you talk about the did. You talk to Lynn, king about Darrell and tell us the interesting conversation what she thought along this whole way, because it was a progression you spoke to him and progressively. It was
all the ideal that it got word of the problems with the story: yeah, that's right. What linking is Jack kings need right and the king family is a huge family and then
she's, beautiful and and and intelligent woman she's a lawyer.
She asked on an eye help with the case, which was fine with
because yeah, we already had a pretty decent file on it. To begin with, all right
we became family investigators. So when I had developed Darrell
to the point where I thought I I I I had them telling a a coherence to corporate, he had problems, he he couldn't finish sentences on the same subject. He started the mining. Everything was everything scheme office sketchy I couldn't ignore. Him is not because he hit all the key points on my profile. Is your step was why the gun was in fact is stable. Why a motor, if that was how the crime scene came to be the crime scene? All these things were difficult to explain. He did it very simply, but in his own job kind of scattered way, he said that your dad was a misogynist. There will be used mom of his brother EDGAR was a misogynist gone through several. Why
He had to admit that even he too had troubles with women largely because mom was addicted to prescription drugs and didn't defend the kids when
dad was on a rampage
and I think a lot of misogynist develop that feeling in this weights. It's the anger towards mom that
been expanded to include all women in the world sure. So I didn't give that piece of information in a fuck kind of weight. When I decided that maybe Lynn, king victims, nice lawyer, trained questioner, should talk to Darrell and see what happened
Well, it didn't go well. He he didn't like being accused of things by a woman eventually,
said. Some really really ugly things about both linking in the king family, which apparently he was making up. You know out of whole cloth, there's actually nothing wrong with the king family order thing.
Hi Nate, then he started in on me, done research, and then we found out that nobody likes me in the bubble. Anyway. He he was becoming a worse when
as time went along. Yes, by by the time the the police took.
Over in and talk to him and his brother. They found a very, very strong case of us, sane and insane, and the same one was one was being accused.
Yeah, but it was very very interesting, though, that this is the
Same part of them was certainly evident in the beginning. It seemed to be very plausible. The story seems, like you say, a lot of parts of it could be checked out, verified to certain degree
And then, at the end it he really does solve some bald face crazy, so
which is pretty happy, and that has been a problem in most cases.
When the witnesses deteriorate
lose their grip on
and the story they're telling it cannot to dismiss them, because you
well, they were just crazy all along and the person refusing to someone as a personal enemy of theirs, but not necessarily a person
well didn't the crime or investigative, but in this case that wasn't so easy at the now had proximity the motives and anger hey anyway. So it's it's.
Very frustrating that it that it happened this way, I we're we're still happening, we're still very hopeful and and and King's lawyer, but the we. We shall see what happens. Yes, let's talk about a case that made
incredible National news, the case of Brittanee Drexel,
advantages on spring break. But of course we know the story that her mother was not aware that she was on spring break. Sounds like a familiar story. Tell us about.
Two thousand and nine very attractive young girl banishes on Spring Break Brittanee Drexel yeah
but again I think I have a little bit more of a personal attachment to this. Then then, the rest of the nation, because through the headlines said, Chai, Lai, New York, girl, missing and, of course, the last time that happened. That was one thousand nine hundred and sixty six and that's the Devil, Tennessee Junction. So it's my hometown yeah. She wasn't just a beautiful seventeen year old girls. She grew up about a mile from where I did try to go away for spring break with her friends. Her mom understandably said no and Brittany. Instead of doing what mom said told a lie said him
spending the night with friends here locally and split for South Carolina. How affected her mother did not know until she was already missing. So it's April, 25th, two thousand and nine Myrtle Beach SC great place to go for spring break
So you don't wind around at night, in your shorts, Britney was staying at the bar harbor motel. She went to visit a friend at
Bluewater resort on Saturday night, which is down the road
and she left to return to her own motel. It was never seen again now, according to her blue water resort friends who are adult and men.
She was having an argument with one of the girls she traveled with she borrowed the girls shorts and the girl wanted them back so that Meta none scheduled, walk back to her hotel to change. Now the last evidence of Britney on the earth
is that a surveillance, video that shows her leaving the blue water resort on ocean boulevard. Eight hundred and fifteen p dot m wearing a white top and the controversial black shorts she left by herself and was never seen.
Tell her. Mom last spoke to her at noon. On the day she disappeared.
Dawn mom still had no clue where her daughter was Brittany said she just spent the,
running just hanging out Britney's on again off again boyfriend John Grieco. He was one of the first to realize that something was wrong. They met on a blind date and had been going together for years off and on it went we called her. He always got a call back right away.
But but this time there was nothing no response in five hours without a callback John called Brittany's parents and told them he thought something had happened to Brittany and there was how dawn Drexel found out that her daughter had gone S. So the day after Brittany disappeared, her phone gave a single
king in Mcclellanville, Georgetown, County South Carolina and then went forever silent the skip ahead to twenty. Sixteen seven years later, an FBI investigation uncovered new and incredibly nightmarish information. Human traffickers, snatched Britney
Series of jailhouse snitches ratted out an inmate named Timothy Tyshawn Taylor, there's the
Same guy was arrested six years earlier, for attempting to kidnap of Myrtle Beach. Woman story went to Taylor, picked Britney up in Myrtle Beach and drove her to Mcclellan Bill for each showed her often in there to stir to his friends. He then quote tricked her out unquote, as human traffickers are prone to do hello. One of the informants said he saw Britney being abused tortured for days in a smelly, stash house. One of the informants was named
Taquan Brown, and he said he was at the stash house to meet Taylor, who told him he needed to borrow some money and he saw Britney. There she'd been beaten to sporting a black eye and he watched as she made a run for it. The stash house was in the country and there was a back door that faced a dirt road, but she ran too slow. She was grabbed, dragged back and pistol whipped. Sean Taylor then took her in back of the house. Two shots were fired and Brown did not see her after that he said he assumed they wrapped her up and took her away. That's not the end of the story. Unfortunately, the FBI spoke to other informants who carried the story from there saying that br.
These body was taken to a gator pit and fed to the alligators, so you know haunting, to say the least, the ultimate nightmare for a mother yeah, that's the story, they they told the mother. I mean I couldn't. I couldn't believe, there's so much. It was so many details were spared from some mothers,
again one of the stories where she had to talk to you to find out details.
The Georgia,
Happy's mom Alice sure, Will Kathy's mom yeah.
I you know I I am all in favor of being truthful to mom's. You are just not doing them any favor by sparing them details because
their imaginations and their dread is so strong.
There would be please make them, stop wondering what happened. Tell them. What happened? Yeah, hello, how others feel about that? But thirty! I just don't think that protecting the mom by keeping her in the dark is that's a good thing, maybe if, if, if they're, still a question as to what happened in my one of six, the mom from the grief, but once you know that that's what happened caller, please just torturing her by keeping it a secret. What I've seen in my own experience, people
not informed about details of their loved one killed right thirty, seven years later, so they didn't they're finding out
cool now inadvertently, so I mean more horrible. I would believe, let's talk about Kelly, Gaffield, sure, an August eighth, one thousand nine hundred and ninety five
She's supposed to be home by nine hundred and thirty again, this is a good kid here. Let's, let's talk about what happens that night, instead of coming home, yeah Kelly, Kelly and Garfield was sick.
Teen years old, she lived in Webster, NY, again town, just e of Rochester um.
She told her mother that she loved her and we will be home by nine hundred and thirty and never came back Webster's working Class, suburban town, it's not ritzy like Brighton or Pittsford, and Kelly's mom, Christine Riley
called Webster Police the following morning and said Kelly didn't come home last night and the search for Kelly at the homes of friends was fruitless and she was presumed to have run away during
interviews. Christine was candid about her worries that Kelly was growing up too fast. She found letters
Kelly's room that were troubling, but here's the most haunting part.
There were nine sightings of Kelly Gaffield in the Rochester area in Aug Sept
timber in October of nineteen. Ninety five reports that reinforce the
ocean that she was alive and well but off on her own. You know. Three young people who knew are told
Lisa that run into Kelly on the street- and it briefly spoken to her very first sighting- came on August Eighth, just minutes after she left her house
Her aunt saw her walking into the woods behind the Phillips Village off Kreeger road. It's the apartment, complex where she lived there's about seven hundred and fifteen pm. It was a secluded area known as a teen hang out hello.
Last sighting in early October, was by a male friend who said he ran into her in the parking lot of the tops friendly supermarket down South
Clinton, Ave in town of Brighton and the young man said Kelly appeared agitated. So all of this is adding to this feeling that
Kelly doesn't want to go home, Kelly's left home and she does not want to go home, but Kelly's mom
knows Kelly is not a runaway. She never returned.
Pick up her belongings. She didn't even take her asthma medication. You know her
get some cousins said she was not a runaway candidate. She liked her family. She was willing to talk.
About problems well Kelly's missing person status changed at ten o'clock in the morning on October, 22nd, three solid months after she's, disappeared with her deep
Compose body was discovered by a hunter in a wooded area. E of Phillips, Rd
the Ridge RD in Webster, fairly close to where her aunt saw her on the evening of her disappearance. So not an easy to reach spot. There's no path to kind of have to hack your way through the weeds to get there home.
It almost seems that the police were duped into believing Kelly was still alive, because you know these woods would have been searched if they're all play had been suspected, but they weren't people keep running into Kelly. Not every report of a Kelly sighting was following up on police interviews in the family was now saying the cops dropped. The ball by treating the case is a runaway case. The police defended themselves is that the sightings were so frequent that they had to work on the jury that she was okay but elsewhere. Yeah well, there's never been any indications, for example, which is being held to
mister will and at age sixteen she was being treated as an adult. Now. The frustrating thing in this case is that there's an unchanging list of suspects.
The common knowledge in Webster for many years- and I first heard about the case from an informant who gave me the names of the men on the list and the story- was that she'd been lured into the woods by a group of boys uh
that they had perhaps given her alcohol and drugs
and we're in the process of having sex with her when something went wrong. Yeah make the stories she had an asthma attack and the boys instead of getting her help, they abandoned.
The problem with that is, she had a couple of broken ribs, so they
if she had an asthma attack, because somebody was too rough with her hard to breathe. When you have broken ribs. Stick it into your lungs.
Now, none of the young men who aren't that young anymore have ever confessed to law enforcement, although two of them have committed suicide, which I think
lend some credence to the validity of the list of names. I would urge you know any of those young men who might be listening to tell Tell Webster police you know at this point I don't think you're going to have to deal with,
murder charge. It all happened when you were a kid. It was a bad instant that went from bad to worse,
but I'm not sure that life wouldn't improve
for these gentlemen, if they fessed up, because obviously they have consciences. That's
quite a plausible story, though, when you add that the that was a relative of hers, friends they'd,
used to sort of saying inappropriate things to her than then they had this plan of getting her drunk and it worked, and then this it
is a very plausible story compared to someone plausible stories given by accused in this book. Don't know absolutely absolutely I I I think that we kind of know what happened to Kelly Gas Bill, but for that to be closure, someone who's there is going to have to admit it.
To someone in the in authority. So far it's been discussed a lot of parties and get togethers, and I know that there's one of
The man on the list is ill and here may not have long to live and very hopeful that yeah before you go his life ends. He decides to
to set the record straight, hey, I I I. I guess that they're they're protecting each other as much as they're protecting themselves, but sir. It would be better for all of them if the truth was no tell us again how.
You got and you became involved in the Georgia and Formicola and Kathy Bernhardt, your former friends how you came to write about their case well
Event they I've always wanted to write about the case. I can remember, writing
How did you know
journal when I was twelve with a capped in some of that material ends up in the book, but forty, some years later, yeah yeah. What happened was the khakis.
Kathy Bernhardt's mother Alice and my mom, the post, passed away sense.
We're sitting in a in the backyard Summer Party and folding chairs, sipping beer and my book killer. Twins that just come,
And my mom was bragging to Alice about her Sunday. The crime, writer and Alice said it's too bad that your Michael can't write a book about my Kathy and my mom said. Ask him well was too shy to ask me, but eventually
I got around to approaching Alice and we decided that we had a lot in common and we could be very good for one another, because people
who wouldn't talk to me in a million years, were
going to tell me everything they knew because I'm working for Alice, Bernhardt who's, a beloved member of the community.
True sweetheart, ninety year old woman, who everybody loves to still the neighborhoods Graham and for her she's finally found someone who's going to treat her like a grown up and, like you said before,.
Tell her the truth about what happened, instead of letting her imagination continue to work right, and we did a really good good job. I have to say that, for we teamed up with Donald a Tubman who's been around ever since.
And you're our best lead during the initial investigation. Let us to a set of brothers who are prone to violence against women, including sex sex attacks under threat
in the Devil, Genesee Junction. We refer to them as the Wilson Brothers, but their names are actually Johnson.
And they were from Dundee New York. One of them was married to George and sister and another to her first cousin. The brothers had no scruples. Tell that they wanted him quote, beat up unquote their mom best way to explain the depravity of the family. Is this both our primary suspect Clint
and his father Clint Senior died soon after being caught, raping their own granddaughters yeah. So Junior was a chip off the old block in the sickest possible way and if it's a coincidence that this guy lives next door to one of the victims and is brother in law of another, then died hello. How you might have Georgians nephew said that quote the Johnson boys killed the girls, but that it was okay.
Because they took care of it inside the family, which led us to investigate the deaths of the brothers and many of which were caused by or occured in the vicinity of their wives,
so the winner of the family, took over and systematically disposed to these guys and a haunting armor sites. We get a close up. Look at the investigation into the death of Georgians brother in law, shot to death with a shot gun in the town of Henrietta by his wife's boyfriend, while the wife Georgianne sister was in the car screaming. Are we take a close up? Look at the investigation to that crime, as well as some haunting eye witness accounts of the bizarre cauldron of human depravity that was allowed to fester near Janice, you Junction during the summer, nineteen sixty six
The book also has an update on the double initial murders, which is to merge. The carbon Cologne Wanda Walkowicz Hand
Michelle my ends up in nineteen: seventy one in nineteen. Seventy three in Rochester, all of the work picked up while walking alone on the street in an urban setting and their bodies were found, raped there, the side of a country road,
The very rural setting that was the thing that the time together, they're all ten or eleven years old, and we we get some updates on that. We we follow the the odd pattern set by Kenneth Bianchi and
Joseph Mazeau, which is now joined by a new guy named Paul Frediani, and these are all young men who were in high school.
In the Rochester area at the time of the double initial murders and all of them moved to California and became convicted killers. Well so here it's weird names, of course, is the most unusual of the bunch because his victims all had to
came first and last night at all, but most of them had the same first and last initial and he killed a woman in California, whose name was also Carmen Cologne, same name as the
double initial victim in the Rochester area.
Now that's a that's a dna case, the limited dna case. We have dna from the middle victim, but not some of the other two and
Obviously so far, there's never been a dna match with any of these suspects. What is the most profound thing that you discovered in haunting homicides of all the profound things that you discovered in all the investigations that you undertook with these cases and all the contacts and leads that you followed up on was the most profound thing about this book. Well, I I think what we have here is are symptoms of a disease that, in some cases, police didn't yet know, existed um
The idea that human monsters went out and hunted people ed, the victims were usually non threatening types of such as children and diminutive women, and that the crimes were done for sexual gratification, ugh one Forsman up until the end of world war, two very, very good.
Solving murders that accompanied robberies and murders. The word ball. It involved to domestic disputes. Yeah the wife died, the husband always did it in order for the gas station guy was shot, it was the same. Guy went to the cash register,
drawer. But this we found an eleven year old girl, partially clad in the weeds. That stuff was kinda, be fuddling, so the whole idea of serial murder was n't thought of that much they. The Boston strangler was one that was known, but until the MID 60s, when a spot Pandora's box is opened pretty much during the summer. One thousand nine hundred and sixty six same time is the child, I'm artist with it. By the end of the 60s. We knew that serial killing was was a thing that evil was without their and there were human predators, but to watch the light bulb, go on slowly.
Is, is a very profound for me. The two we're we're spurs so much smarter now and to the point where the nature of mind boggling, we horrible crime, is changed. We don't see the the the serial killer, who allows the pressure cooker to build up in between crimes of the one who taunts police but stays a shadow. Today we see
spree killers, guys who arm themselves in one way or another and then go to a crowded place and try to kill as many as they can and usually it turns out to be a particularly violent, horrible form of suicide because they end up dead either shot by a police officer or their own gun, so
there's this period at the end of the 20th century, where there's this this phenomenon of serial, killing, hey
it is, I don't think it'll ever cease to fascinate me, because it was the thing that terrorized me to the point of trouble. When I was a kid yeah right, I'm not glad I gave tell us Bernard some closure, I'm not sure that I'll ever get myself closure and now what could click for for true crime readers? I yeah. I think I will always be searching for answers involving the
or to correct absolutely. It is also fascinating to see for for the younger reader are. They must be
astonished at the the the sense of trust of people that they weren't. They wouldn't report
their children missing four hours later, I guess after they exhausted all of the the
obvious ideas where they thought their kid might have gone to
the the constant phone contact that we have now
would enable us to know about things that or at least believe that something had gone arrive much much earlier than afterwards. Now,
when, when you read this stuff now, you can't believe the difference is that these kinds of crimes in these kinds of criminals have made with everyone's life in society. Today,.
Yeah, when Joanne Lynn is abducted at,
eight hundred o'clock in the morning uh the school knows she's absent, but her parents don't know she's absent until she doesn't come home from school and even then
You know the thinking is that maybe she stopped at the store all in all. Eleven hours passed before police are informed that this little girl didn't show up at school that
those rules treatments, your your card, even the brother of, doesn't know he sees it, doesn't see his sister there
but doesn't think to call again. We would do that today doesn't think to call home just thinks. Well, I guess she just stayed back
are you really allergic and credible, and I you know I can certainly remember the days before cell phones yeah, you you needed. You need to find somebody with a phone or drive a pay phone in order,
call, and you wanted to make really sure that nothing
as an actual emergency. Because of you called in and set your mother. It turned out to be nothing yeah. You might get yelled at yeah here. Let me just the whole idea that there might be a good cry. A crime occurring didn't occur to people now.
Credible yeah, I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about hunting.
Besides, it's been a real pleasure,
those that might want to look at your other work, you're twenty five years of true crime. Writing. Is there a facebook page for this in a website they might
two? Well, you can you can go to Amazon dot com? I have my own page. There doe
confuse me with the the Michael Benson who writes about outer space
no one with the White Beard. I had one thing in the book at the end of each chapter for the open cases, I've given a phone number for the appropriate law enforcement and if, as so often happens, you know something air and you never want to talk to a police officer ever ever ever you can get in touch with me. Yeah, I'm at officer, Michael Benson, gives give a quick plug for stuff coming up.
Sure not still on sale at a bookstore near you is Carmen. It Carmine, the snake, biography of Mafia Legend, Carmine Persico, the road, Frank Dimaggio on sale next month, Brooklyn to Baghdad, Christopher Strums, memoir written with Jerome Price for myself, but a New York Police Department,
The gay shun expert who have to retirement goes to Iraq, to fight terrorism and next year. My next mob opus, written with Frank.
Mario called Lord high executioner, it's just
free of the man who ran murdering Albert Anastasia, wow, fascinating.
Thank you very much and thank you
Michael for your work with Donald Tubman on hunting homicides, it's been fascinating. Thank you very much, Michael, have a
appreciate. It always a pleasure, always a pleasure. Thank you. Goodnight take care.
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Transcript generated on 2019-10-15.