Episode 1: The Rumor

Pushkin. I've been a journalist for twenty five years, and there's this little ritual that I do at the end of every interview. When it works, it shakes everything up, creates a bit of chaos. I call it the hail Mary of questions. It's like a last ditch effort to find something, anything that I might have missed. I just say, hey, what's a question I should have asked you. Most of the time, like ninety percent of the time, the answer is I don't know. I think we covered it all.

One of the things that like I will routinely do, is is there anything that we should be looking at that could be investigated that we're not looking at.

Back in two thousand and four, Scott posed this very question to a woman named Patricia Miller. At the time, Scott was visiting Patricia at her home in Delaware to learn more about her ex boyfriend, a guy named Tom Guybison. There had been some rumors that Tom, her ex, was plotting to go after a local cop, and the FBI had asked Scott to look into this to do a

She mentions, well, there is this alleged murder to have taken place, that when he was in high school, that he had committed a murder for black man in order to gain access into this white supremacy group within Delaware.

Patricia goes on to say that Tom, her ex, was proud of this murder. It happened back when he was younger, a teenager, but even years later he bragged about what he does, how he'd driven into Philadelphia late at night and shot a pedestrian, a random black man, all allegedly so we could earn some street cred as a racist skinhead. Scott pressed Patricia for details. Was there any evidence? Did

If there's no evidence, and there's no witnesses, no cameras, so let's move on, and that's what Tom would be banking on, and just be a drug deal gone back. That bothered me, That bothered me.

Scott may have been upset about all this, but he was also at a loss. How do you investigate a murder when you don't even know who the victim is. Eventually, Scott and his partner paid a visit to the Free Public Library of Philadelphia. They wanted to find that newspaper article covering the victim's death. Scott recalled Patricia saying it was in the Philadelphia Inquirer. They felt like if they could just somehow get a hold of that article, it might answer so many questions.

In other words, would this give us a name? Would this give us a location? Would this give us a date? Because we still didn't have a date.

But there's got to be countless articles people that were just randomly killed in Philadelphia.

Not only countless articles, but then you realize there are other newspapers. What if she's wrong, it's not the Philadelphia Inquiry. It sounds like a fool's Errand I'm glad we did it. I'm glad we made the trip, but I don't think we found anything. Nothing.

So game over right. I mean, this murder, if it even happened, would have occurred approximately fifteen years prior. It was a cold case. And yet Scott and his partner, a guy named Terry Mortimer, they had this feeling that if they persisted.

We might uncover something. Were destined to uncover. That may sound corny, but I felt something. I think Terry felt something, and we didn't know quite what, and it could have been absolutely taking us down another rabbit hole of something that's just never could be proven.

So what do you do with that?

Exactly? What do you do with that? What do you do with something that's.

Yeah and not to be cute, but you can't exactly go back to your boss and say that me and Terry feel a sense of destiny here right now. So this was mission creep big time. Plus, it's not like there was anyone that they knew of anyhow demanding justice for the victim.

Terry and I could have easily said we're done and let's walk away. Nobody's going to be calling us to say, hey, Terry and Scott, do you have any updates for us? You know we're waiting. We haven't heard back from you that was missing.

But is somewhere in the back of your head, are you imagining that, like there is a mother or brother who's trying to understand or figure out what may have happened to their loved one that was left for dead.

I think that that aspect was the driving factor we couldn't just leave it alone. Somehow it was making sense that Terry and I were put together for this very reason of solving this hate crime, this murder that took place on the streets of Philadelphia because somebody was black, that we've felt like we had a duty to this person, and somehow this person was drawing us.

And that's it. You can almost hear it, the door creaking open. This is a story about what happens when two guys uncover a clue about something terrible, something evil, a crime for which there has been no justice, and they have nothing to go on. They don't have a victim, don't have a body, don't even have a name. I'm Jake Halper and this is Deep Cover, Season four, The Nameless Man, Episode one. The rumor, so to recap, Scott and Terry's investigation did not start off as a quest

And this is the thing about gangs is there are gangs, and there's like, you know, not real gangs that people say they're part of a gang, but they aren't. Kind of thing.

Terry was a special agent with the ATF the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He worked in intelligence, and he focused heavily on guns and gangs. So Terry wanted to know what was Tom's deal.

I knew he of course was imprisoned obviously for gun charges. You know, spent a good stint in prison federally he had I guess prior contact with the law.

Terry learned that Tom was first to rested at the age of fourteen on a deadly weapons charge. A few years later, when he was nineteen, he was convicted of reckless endangerment after he shot a gun at a moving car full of people. At the time, a local newspaper in Wilmington, Delaware ran an article on Tom. It described him as a hulking weightlifter with a number of tattoos, including a clenched fist on the top of his scalp and the words born in the USA on the back

I know enough about gang members is sometimes things aren't what they say they are. That they though might get a tattoo and purported to be something that's really isn't true, or just kind of build their rap a little bit.

Terry was skeptical that Tom had killed someone just to join this skinhead gang. Maybe Tom was just posing building up his rep as a really violent dude. I mean Honestly, maybe this whole thing was bullshit, right.

I couldn't really establish, you know, intelligence wise, of Tommy was part of a skinhead gang. I didn't think he was. I think he was kind of more self described skinhead.

And this raised the question, would a self described skinhead acting on his own, really murder someone for what? So he could give himself a tattoo? And all of this while he was still in high school seemed like a stretch. Okay, here's the second clue, and it was a promising one. According to the ex girlfriend Patricia, Tom had bragged about having an accomplice, a guy named Craig Peterson. Allegedly they orchestrated this murder together and both of them got those

We found out he's in He's in Vermont, like a remote part of Vermont. And I remember, I said, this dude's hiding. Man, he's hiding. I said, that cat from Wilmington, Delaware living in Vermont. Man, I said, dude, Nick, it's cold up there. Man, I mean, that's a cold place. Bro.

So they put on their winter coats and headed north. It was now December of two thousand and four. It had been about a month since they first heard the rumor, and now here they were in the car, driving into the chill of a Vermont winter. Temperature was hovering around freezing that night, and as they sped along through the green mountains, past the darkened forests of evergreens, they had no idea what to expect, Like, what are you hoping to find out?

Hey? At this point, we're like, man, whatever he's got, he's got to give us something, man, because we're again, we're spinning our wheels. It felt like, man, if this has come through, I think, honestly, I think we're.

Done Terry recalls on that drive up to Vermont, they talked a lot about why they couldn't or shouldn't give up on the case.

So we had great discussions, and that's when I really we both realized, wow, wait a minute, this is not an accident that he and I are team together. This was like, literally, we didn't do this, we couldn't plan.

This, and there was a reason for this feeling. Turns out there was a strange symmetry to their lives that dated back before they ever met. So we're going to leave Scott and Terry in the car heading up to Vermont and turn back the clock. For Scott, it all started when he graduated high school. He wanted to be a cop, but by his own estimation at the time, he was too small, too skinny. He weighed just ninety three pounds, so instead he opted to become a priest.

I would be sitting in a pew, maybe praying in a church. Somebody would come by and start confessing, and people just start pouring their souls out to me.

In these moments, Scott was learning how to listen, how to suspend judgment, how to be patient as people grappled with some burdensome secret, inching their way towards the precipice of truth. He spent five years training to become a priest, but dreams are stubborn things, and his didn't go away. He left the seminary to become a cop and then an FBI agent.

It is harder to leave than it is to go in. And that's ultimately because I think, now you have ventured this relationship with God, and now you're afraid of pissing him off.

For Scott, this shifting careers seemed like a natural progression for him. The seminary prepared him for this work, prepared him to listen and see his way through a messy world fraught with moral dilemmas. But when he'd tell people about his past, how he'd almost become a priest, they're like, oh, my gosh, I can never imagine. The two are totally opposed to each other. And I never understood that. But there was at least one person who got it completely Terry.

I went to college at a very small Bible College and was preparing for ministry.

From a young age. Terry felt destined for the ministry, but later on, when he was in Bible College, he had second thoughts. As graduation approached, a friend asked him, you ever consider becoming a cop. The short answer was no. But on a whim, Terry applied and met with a recruiter.

And this guy, he was a hardcore dude. I mean he looked at me. I was back then, I was skinny. He looked at me and said, you're from where and you want to do what You're from Bible College, and you have any idea what you're applying for, what you're trying to do. I said, no, sir, I have no idea.

Terry was undeterred. He became a cop and then an agent with the ATF. And this was not a consolation job for Terry. He's very clear about this. He feels that God had a purpose for him in law enforcement. And that's the thing you gotta understand about both Terry and Scott. These are not men who look at the world and see coincidences. What they see is much closer to fate or God's will, and when they became partners,

You know, as we started realizing that wait a minute, we're we're on a mission from God.

But yep, just like the Blues Brothers.

We didn't really say that, I'm just making it up, but that was the feeling. Well hey no, but it was like, no joke, like this is a real deal. It's almost like we're walking through almost like a dream, like what is going on here?

So yeah, even though all they had was a rumor of a long forgotten crime that might not have even happened, these two almost ministers, the God Squad as it were, still felt certain that they were here in this car heading north into Vermont for a reason, and they were convinced that something important was waiting for them. That's when we get back. Both Scott and Terry had this hunch that there was a reason Craig, the alleged accomplice, was up in Vermont, up in the mountains, that he was hiding.

It was late. I feel like we were closing in on midnight, and we didn't want to put it off. We were just so full of energy.

It was late for a door knock, very late, but their excitement eclips their caution, so instead of waiting until morning, they drove right to his house. Their plan was to say hello, introduce themselves, and arrange to have a formal sit down the following day.

And when we finally found where he lives, he lives literally on top of like if it's on a mountain, it's a very very tall hill. It's very tall and very steep.

I remember being very very dark, like I don't think I could see my hand in front of me, And as soon as we got out of our cars, I think we got out a few feet and then floodlights. I just remember floodlights like we were in a stadium, just shined upon us.

I mean it was like bright as he had hooked up these spotlights and trees illuminating the whole area, and we can see his house dimly up the top of the hill. I think I may have made a comment to Scott. I said, man, if he had any ill intent, he we'd be dead men right now.

That told me a lot that Wow, you know what is inside this person that he has this going on where he wants to be made well aware of anybody arriving.

I'm thinking, man, he does not. He doesn't want to be found.

Scott and Terry start trudging up the icy, snow covered hill. They can hear dogs barking from within the house. Eventually they get up to the front porch and Craig walks out. He's medium height and stocky, with a closely cropped haircut. Scott calls out to.

Him, Craig Peterson, you don't know us, but we're here. I'm going to talk to you. Federal agents. Can we approach you? Can we come up to your house and within ten seconds, just a very friendly, inviting demeanor, come on up and come into my house is a sigh of relief of that, but definitely a side of release. First and foremost, we've achieved our first goal is finding him, achieved our second goal of being able to be face

Craig invites them inside, he introduces them to his fiance. It's all very normal and Craig he seems unfazed.

He was very relaxed, very gracious. I mean, just almost opposite of what I was expecting.

Scott and Terry explained that they just have a few questions for him about an old matter from the past. They keep it deliberately vague, and they ask if he'd be willing to meet with them the following day down at the barracks where the Vermont State Police are stationed. Craig's like, sure, I'll meet you tomorrow after I'm done with work. All the while, Terry is studying both Craig and his fiance, trying to get a read on them.

His fiance was way more concerned than he was, Like she was like, what's going on, Like what's this about he's not stressed at all, Like there's no stress with this dat like there's nothing. I'm like, this is unbelievable.

The next day, Scott and Terry Aer down at the barracks of the Vermont State Police and they're just hoping Craig actually shows up.

He ain he ain't gonna show up, Like, what's the odds he's gonna show up? Like, And I was like fifty to fifty Yeah, But.

He shows up. In fact, he's it early, and after a little chit chat, they all sit down and get to business. Scott explains that they're here about Tom Guybison.

Craig, We've made a long trip and we've been investigating Tom for a possible threat, and during the course of that investigation, we've learned that a story was told.

This is the story they'd heard from Patricia, Tom's ex girlfriend, that some fifteen years prior, Craig and Tom had been skinheads, that they'd killed a black man in Philadelphia and then got in tattoos to commemorate what they'd done.

And Craig just looked at us shocked, almost a sense of I can't believe that this is coming back. And then he sat back in his chair and said, I don't know what you're talking about.

Scott keeps pressing gently, very much playing the role of the New England priest, that he almost was concealing any signs of judgment, just patiently probing.

Well, at the very least, would you admit you have the tattoo? Why would they lie about the story? Would they? Would they also lie about the tattoo? So would you raise your would you raise your sleeve? And so begrudgingly he did. He showed us his tattoo.

A gothic looking spider web in black ink, with the elbow directly at the center, similar to what Patricia had described. Craig admitted that he and Tom both had tattoos like this, that they'd gotten them together in high school, and Greg admitted that back in his youth, yeah, he'd been his skinhead, but it had just been a phase.

He said, Man, that was a long time ago. I was a young knucklehead, and I don't believe that stuff anymore, you know, man, I'm up here. I'm working hard, man, guys. I work every day, hourly wage. I work as an electrician. I've got a new life. I don't want any part of this. He just denied the whole thing. But I can't overemphasize. I'm watching this cat. I'm like, he's not stressed at all.

At this point. Despite the fact that Craig had this tattoo, which offered some corroboration, Scott and Terry basically have to let him go. They say, hey, let's keep in touch. If you ever come down to Delaware, please let us know. We'd like to keep talking.

He said, yeah, if I come down there like Jake, no one's ever going to say yeah, yeah, yeah, I look your eyes up. If I'm ever down Delaware, sure like we're gonna have a dinner together. I'm thinking nobody does that. Nobody wants to talk to their least favorite FBI and agent in the world about a homicide they didn't commit.

In Terry's mind, it was weird how friendly he was, and it also seemed difficult to imagine that this guy right here, this laid back electrician living in Vermont, could be capable of orchestrating a murder.

If the dude was in the car and they did a homicide, however went down, whoever pulled the trigger, I'm thinking I'm not seeing it I mean, if it did happen and he was in the very car, I see nothing nonverbal in this guy. There's no stress, there's no deception. I'm looking at his eyes, I'm looking at his whole facial I'm looking at everything. I'm thinking this guy's like the he liked the best liar ever.

So they say goodbye to Craig, They thank the Vermont State Troopers. They walk out of the barracks, get in their car, and head home, all the while trying to make sense of what they've just learned.

And I said, Scott, I don't think it happened, man. He gus, what do you mean. I said, there's no way that, dude, there's no way. I said, maybe Tommy did something. I don't know, but I said he didn't do nothing. I'm telling you that dude is way too cool. And Scott he goes, nah, I kinda think something's there.

Man, this happened, and uh, we're definitely not stopping, I.

Said, Scott, I'm not seeing it, man, I said, dude, I said, I think we're toast. Bro.

After this time passes about a year and a half, and during this stretch, very little happens. In this case, Craig keeps living his quiet life up in the Vermont Mountains. Occasionally the God Squad gives him a call just to check in, but Craig never tells him anything new. Meanwhile, Tom Godbison finishes serving his time in federal prison. He's released, goes back to living in Delaware, where he seems to

Craig says, Hey, basically, I'm coming down to see my mom. You know, do you guys want to still talk to me? I'm incredulous the dude is volunteering. You know, nothing's happened in the year and whatever months it's been. There's no subpoenas as though arrests, there's those search warrants. Nothing. He's got to think he's Scott free.

Are you?

Are you pretty surprised to get this phone call?

Yeah?

I mean again, I'm like, this is unbelievable. I doesn't make any sense to me, But I honestly, I literally felt like, does he want friends? Does he need friends? There's some things that are miraculous. They don't look miraculous. But they literally are miraculous, So that doesn't happen in a real world. Man, it doesn't happen.

Terry and Scott are determined to make the most of this meeting, and they go for a new strategy. They've tried the whole good cop routine and it hasn't worked, not really, So to apply a little pressure, they get a subpoena requiring Craig to testify before a grand jury about the murder that allegedly took place. This is no joke. The subpoena will put Craig on the spot because lying before a grand jury is a serious offense. They can

Our mindset is this, we had a subpoena, We're gonna give it to him. You always have to hand deliver it. There was going to be no more willer room, no more postponements. This is now going to be the make it or break it.

So Craig shows up at the FBI's offices in Wilmington, Delaware, he's got no idea that there's a subpoena waiting for him. What happens next we piece together from talking to the agent's and reading their report from that day. Initially, it's all smiles. Terry keeps the whole thing really upbeat.

Hey, we thank you for coming down. This is awesome. You know, we really appreciate it.

They asked Craig again about the rumor of the murder down in Philadelphia. They tell him, we don't think you're telling us the truth, and this time, instead of denying the whole thing outright, Craig concedes that maybe back at the time there'd been some chatter about this.

I think he said something like, yeah, we heard rumors about that that someone said we did a homicide. But man's now, that's nothing to it. We didn't do any homicide. It's a bunch of junk. Didn't happen. Yeah, maybe Tommy said that's gonna.

Build our rep a little bit, in other words, a bit of bragging, but nothing more than that. The agents push Craig tell him, we believe a homicide occurred and that you participated in it. Eventually, when the meeting is almost over, the hand Craig the subpoena and kind of hold their breath.

And again we're shooting blanks. We have nothing right. Well, his whole demeanor changed when he got to subpoena. He's like what the stress right? Went from like zero to like he's he's hitting about a ten.

That meeting ends without a breakthrough. Craig didn't admit to anything, but a few days later he calls them back says he wants to meet again, have another sit down. So they reconvene, and at this meeting, right off the bat, the mood is tense.

When he arrived, I could tell he was depleted, shaken. His whole body had changed to a defeatist demeanor.

He was like completely complete hundred ay degree change and he literally it's hard to describe. It was literally like an invisible hand was pushing him down in the chair. He physically got smaller. I saw him shrink like like like he was like getting deflated. He started sweating, beads of sweat were popping out.

You could feel the tension, but you can also feel like he's about to say something. And then he's he says, I'll tell you everything.

I'll tell you everything, I'll tell you everything, And at this moment it seemed like maybe, just maybe they'd been right all along not to give up on this, and that the truth was finally at hand. Coming up this season on deep Cover.

We have to do our job and we have to find out who did they kill.

Not that any murder isn't disturbing, but this particular murder and the reason for it the hate.

This was a hate crime. I believe Tom guys Soon is innocent. They had no physical evidence, they had no gun, they had nothing.

We didn't like the speculation the family, and I thought that this would be good if we found at least what happened to them. Can't do nothing about it, can't bring them back, but at least we'll find out the truth.

Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith. It's edited by Karen SCHAKERJI mastering by Jake Gorsky. Our show art was designed by Sean Carney. Original scoring in our theme was composed by Luis Gara. Fact checking by Arthur Gomberts. Our story consultant was James Foreman Jr. Special thanks to Jerry Williams, Sarah Nix, Greta Cone, and Jake Flanagan, I'm Jake Albert