You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK 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 Zupanski, Good Evening.
In nineteen seventy one, Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff James Tappan Hall was gunned down outside a Maryland country club. The case went cold, no suspect, no answers, no closure, but never gave up trying to find her father's killer. Fifty years later, cold case detectives finally reopened the investigation and identified a suspect whose shocking confession revealed a detail never
released to the public. Hall was shot twice. A Second Shot by doctor Michael Wiseberg is a gripping true crime story of justice delayed but not denied, and a deeply personal tale of second chances for both a grieving family and the author himself. The book that we're featuring this evening is a Second Shot, The Pursuit of justice in Maryland's oldest cold case murder. With my special guest author Michael F. Wisberg. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Michael F.
Weisberg, Thank you very much, Dan for inviting me.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on your book A Second Shot.
Thank you.
Now, I understand you are a doctor, a gastro enterologist, and you have a patient named Anna Hall who was referred to by a colleague. Tell us about how you became involved in the author of this book.
Anna Hall was the only patient ever sent to me by her doctor. It just happened that she came to see me as an elderly woman, and when she came, she came with her daughter, Carolyn Filo. Carolyn decided that she liked the way I took care of her mother, so she asked me to be her doctor as well. I took care of her for over thirty years until one day in twoenty and twenty two, she came to me and told me that her father, who had been murdered in nineteen seventy one, over fifty years before, and
the case had gone cold for fifty years. That the detectives, three female detectives, had come together and had been able to figure out by re looking at the case, the clue that everyone else had missed, they'd been able to solve the case, obtain a confession, and now she wanted a book to be written.
About the case.
And because she'd enjoyed my two novels that I had written previously, The Hospitalist, and in the end, she wanted me to write the book.
You didn't immediately agree to write this book. What things did you have to consider before agreeing to write this book?
I was not a journalist, and it sounded like it was the kind of book that would be a journalist. I enjoyed doing fiction for my imagination, this would be a true story. It would require a lot of research and a lot of interviews, and I know if I had these skills to be able to do that. But finally she convinced me that the story was already there for me. The murderer had confessed, he had waived extradition, Everyone would be willing to talk to me, including the
detectives and prosecutors. The case was there and just needed to be written. So that's what convinced me that I could go ahead and do it. It was just a matter of taking the story and put it into a way that would be appealing to readers.
Now you're right about the first meeting May one, twenty twenty three. You flew from Dallas to Washington, DC, which is about you saying put a thirty minute train ride from Rockville, where this murder happened originally, and you went to the Pilos and their family and went to meet them. Caroline and Bob tell us about this meeting and what happened at that meeting.
Carol and Bob picked me up at the metro station in Gaithersburg, and they took me to the courthouse where we were going to meet with the sheriff. Sheriff you who met with us and talked to us the about his understanding of the case, what had happened to Carolyn's father, Captain J. T. Smith, James T. Smith, who was a deputy sheriff. And then I was going to meet with the prosecutors and talk to the detectives. The prosecutor came
in be prosecutor. Prosecutor who was prosecuting the case, Donald Fenton, came into the meeting room, and I introduced myself and talked to her and told her I was recording things, and she informed me that I could not record anything, that the case was now going to be contested, that the suspect had withdrawn his guilty plead, and that a private law firm from Washington, d c. Which with my research I found was one of the top law firms in the world, Covington and Berling, was going to take
his case. And so since it was now going to be prosecuted, that no one could give me any information, and that I would just have to follow along and write the book as things went along.
Yeah, things have changed from their original prognosis of this case exactly. Now, let's get to October twenty third, nineteen seventy one and the night of the murder.
Okay, So, James T.
Hall was a gentleman who worked on bus transmissions for a company called Metro Transit. But he also had a job as a deputy sheriff. And he got that job by working security at a amusement park in that area. And they also had them working security at the Manor
Country Club. There was a beautiful country club where they'd had in the area quite a few break ins and different things going on, and so they wanted to have deputy sheriffs patrolling that area to keep an eye on things that also had reports and people trying to break into the coke machines at the country club, people doing vandalism.
He wasn't sup to work that night, he was off, but he was called thirty minutes before the shift started by the sheriff who was supposed to work, Sheriff Jim Young, who asked him to work and said he had a family mat matter to ten to two, So he left.
James Hall left his family at the house.
It was a rainy, dark night, got his raincoat, got his flashlight, gun pipe which he loved to smoke, got in his car and drove to the Manor Country Club where seven o'clock to one o'clock shift where he would be in charge of patrolling around the parking lot at the country club.
And keeping an eye on things and what happens during the course of the night.
During the night about four and a half, about three and a half hours into his shift, at ten point thirty, he apparently got out of his car and saw something in the area of the parking lot next to the golf course. He started walking over there and probably saw things that were there were household items that were sacked up in that area, and they included a jack, lantern and a step stool, as well as other things, and apparently he saw someone and said what are you doing?
A shot rang out and hit his flash flight, which he turned on to be able to see things on this rainy, dark night, and knocked it ten feet out of his arms. Behind him.
He turned, probably to get away, and as he turned to get away, a shot was fired, the second shot which hit him in the back of the head, in the lower part on the left side of his back of his head, and went all the way through his head scullen brain to where it lodged behind his right eyebrow.
He fell to the ground and was found there on the ground, still breathing barely, by a couple who are coming back from a date, and then by five boys who were trying to vandalize the coke machines that night and who had left because they'd heard sirens which turned out to be fire trucks, but then came back and found him his body lying there. They went into the country club and had the operator call for the police and ambulance to come get him, and they saved with the body until they.
Came now you're right about the family. A call to the family about JT's shooting and requesting a rush to the hospital.
That's right.
The children, the grandchildren were staying with the grandmother, Anna Hall, and the Rob Bob and Carolyn Filo had gone out on a date and were at their own house. The call went to Bob Filo, who was a canine officer and then a police officer, and he and Carolyn called Anna Hall and then went and picked her up and they went to the hospital where JT was in the emergency room. A surgeon, a neurosurgeon, came in dressed in a tuxedo, examined JT.
Examined, looked at the.
X rays that had been done, and pulled Bob to the side and said he's not going to make it. There's no brain function. He at that time was on a ventilator because he couldn't breathe and to protect his airway, and he eventually ended up saying three days in the hospital before it was there was still no brain function, no hope for any recovery, so he was taken off the ventilator and within a half an hour he died.
You say there's a funeral October twenty ninth, nineteen seventy one. But also let's talk about Robert Filo Junior, JT's son in law now at Rockville. He's offering a reward for two thousand dollars, but the newspapers refused to publicize it. Explain who Robert is at that time, where he's working at that time, and tell us about this reward dispute.
It was actually working at the same police station from Montgomery County that the detective who was assigned to the case, ow Sweat was working, so they fairly quickly moved Robert out to another station so he could not be around it. He could not ask questions about the case. What he did do was he and the family in the funeral notice in the obituary said that rather than anybody sending flowers, they wanted people to contribute to a fund to try
to find the killer of James T. Hall. The country club man or country club also said they would match with the amount that was raised. A thousand dollars were raised, was raised, and they contributed a thousand dollars in the country club, so he had a two thousand dollars reward. They asked the police chief at that time to publicize that, but for some reason it was not done. They would not do an article about it at all, and Bob
became very disillusioned. As he said in an interview about seven years later when he was practicing law, and he said they had two dogs that had been murdered around the same time. They offered a fifty dollars reward for whoever found who had killed these two dogs. That was put into the newspaper and publicized. But this reward for JT. Hall's murder, finding the murder suspect or finding who had done it was never publicized.
Let's get back to how JT was found and in what condition, And also we have to mention the reason for the patrol for the sheriff Department to be hired at this Manor County country Club was that there was people breaking into the soda machines and other various theft and robbery or burglaries in the area. Tell us about the Soda machine gang and actually who found JT and reported to police.
Well, the driver of the car of the soda machine gang was a man named a young man named Norman Shoemaker and his father was actually also a policeman with Montgomery County, but he was known as being someone who was constantly in trouble with the law. There were other boys in the car with and one of them was named Robert Cannaveri, and they had just broken into some laundry machines at a different location when they decided to come over and break into the coke machines that night.
So they're breaking into the coke machines when they heard sirens. They were unsuccessful in breaking in, but they got into the car drove away, but then we're able to pass by the sirens, which were coming from fire trucks, so
they came back. When they drove back, they found something that they thought was just a bunch of garbage in the middle of the parking lot, and they could have almost run over it, but they got out of the car and they realized that it was the deputy sheriff, dressed in his yellow raincoat.
His hat was off, his head was bleeding.
There was blood everywhere, but there was so much rain it was washing.
The blood away.
He was lying with his head at about a forty five degree angle and barely breathing. The boy, Robert Cannaveri, stayed with him and held his head to try to help him breathe, while the other four boys who were part of this was called the Coke Machine Gang, who were breaking into the Coke Machine that night, all went into the country club to tell them to a call
for police and an ambulance. It's happened that they had been beaten there by a couple who had come across the body a few seconds before and who were out on a date, and they had also gone in and asked the operator to call. He was barely breathing, there was blood everywhere. The rain was washing everything away, and they stayed with him until the boys and the couple stayed with him until the ambulance arrived to take him away.
So how did police proceed with this case? Before we talk about it going cool?
That night, there was Sheriff Boone who was sorry's gonna be off. Detective Boone who was in charge of this crime scene, and he tried to rope things off and keep things as safe as possible. They were able to find that night a gun, which as it turned out, belonged to James T.
Hall, and when they.
Moved his body they found it underneath him. It was outside of his jackets. We'd probably reached for it after the first gun shot. The also were able to find the flashlight, which had been knocked out of his hand by a gunshot, about ten to twenty feet away from the body. And they also found his pipe which he probably instead of pulling out the gun, pulled out his pipe which he loved to smoke, and that was in a water drainage that was about defeat away from the body.
The rain had washed all the way down far away from the body. Detectives that night were they're called ow Sweat, who was the lead detective on the case. He was a gentleman who was considered their top homicide detective. He had done about forty cases in his career, and when I talked to him, he told me that he had closed, which in their parlance means he had solved thirty nine of them.
But the one he never closed and he wanted to close the most was Bob Filo, who was working in the same district office as him, his father in law, JT. Hall.
So what he did was he interviewed, he said seventy five to one hundred people. They did looked at the crime scene, they looked for any kind of physical evidence, but there was absolutely no physical evidence they could find.
There were no fingerprints.
Anything the possible could have been a fingerprint probably was washed away. They interviewed everyone there, include the Coke machine boys. They went and interviewed neighbors, and they could not find anything that would lead them to a suspect in the murder case. Ow Sweat said that he went over it, worked it, and he centered in on Norman Shoemaker as being.
The likely culprit.
Why well, first of all, Shoemaker's father, who was a policeman, told him not to talk to the police. So unlike the other boys who were willing to give the comments and remarks about what they saw what they did, Norman Shoemaker was very reticent and really wouldn't.
Cooperate with the police.
Also, he had a history, as I said, of run ins with the law, and each time when he's had these runnings with the law, his father had stepped in for him, which to keep him from having anything happen to him. And I think that left a very bad taste in the mouth of the other police officers. So in what we could in both medicine and in police work,
they have what's called tunnel vision. You get one thing once something happens, there's one characteristic one lab test, went X ray and medicine, or one thing that happens one suspect in a murder case like this, and you center in on that to the exclusion of everything else. And
it seems as like what over ws Sweat did. And because of that, thinking that this was a man who did it, and not being able to find anything to really prove it, the case was pursued by him for a couple of years and then by other people and it went cold. When a case goes cold, that means the original investigative team has either left, there's no one that's still working the case, or has been tried for at least three years. They've been looking for a suspect
and none has been found. And that's what happened with this case.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you talk about this case going cold, But Caroline follow doesn't let this go. She waits a couple years for the police to run their course in terms of the investigation, but after that she is routinely calling them and asking them for any updates. She wants this thing to be solved, doesn't she.
That's exactly right.
She had an incredibly close relationship with her father.
She loved him, and she idolized him.
And she realized at the age of twenty eight that she was now without this man who'd been such a central.
Part of her life and how important he'd been for her.
And so she said that even as she aged, She said that if as she aged, she realized she was still alive, so that the person that had done this to her father very.
Easily could still be alive.
Also, she was also inspired by her husband, who become a very successful attorney. He decied the police work was no longer for him, probably at least in some great part due to his disappointment in the failure of the police to tholve this case. He'd become an attorney, and she marveled at how on these different cases he would find some angle for something to do in order to
win the case. And she thought, his brilliance and winning these cases, why couldn't someone use brilliance to look at this whole case of her father and figure out what had happened and put the pieces together. So she would call on a regular basis. Her mother, Anahal, who lived until two thousand and five and who actually remarried later on and then her second husband died she'd lived in two thousand and five, was very bitter and very upset
that they never found the murderer of her husband. But she wasn't as active as Carolyn, who took the lead for the family.
You talk about early in this book about a book you happened to read which was centered in the same area in Montgomery County. It was from an author named Mark Bowden and was titled The Last Stone. What did you garner from reading that book in terms of comparisons to the case that you were writing about.
First of all, I had read that book. I've read it now twice straight through as well as going back. And it had occurred in the same area Montgomery County and Maryland, and both occurred in the nineteen seventies. The murder of James T. Hall occurred in nineteen seventy one. The case that you're referring to, which is in Bowden's book, was the abduction of the Lion's sisters, who were ages ten and twelve in broad daylight from the Wheaton Plaza
Mall in nineteen seventy five. These two young girls were abducted, They were raped, murdered, their bodies were burned, and they were never found. They never found any traces of them. They were thought to have been buried somewhere in Virginia. Both cases had similarities that were very striking, first of all, and we'll talk about the suspect and how they found them in the JT.
Hall's case.
But first of all, it turns out that both the suspects in these cases were teenage boys who were living on the streets, not in houses, but had been thrown out of houses and were living on the streets. Both of them had made statements to the police. In the case of the Lion's Sisters, the man's name was Welch, and he had gone to the police a week after the murders and said to them that he had information that he had seen who had abducted the girls from the mall.
The police listened to his what he had.
To say and decided that although he had some of the facts right and things like that, that other things were not true. They also gave him a light detective test, which he flunked, and so they felt that everything he said was not factual and was just being used to
try to get through ward money. As I'll we'll talk about later in this case, does Mike I dig detail on the second shot the accused had gone to the police eighteen months after the murder had occurred while he was a prisoner in jail for other charges, and had told the police various details about the case in order to try to gain leniency from his burglary charges and also from his escaping from jail charges. The cold case teams in both cases had some of the same members.
Chris Hamrock was the detective who put together the cold case teams and played an important role, especially in the first case with the Lion sisters. And then Katie Leggett was a cold case detective who was very important in both of these cases.
Okay, so let's fast forward to what happens to initiate this cold case investigation of this fifty on the fiftieth anniversary. How does it come together that this case is reopened, And as you mentioned, Chris Homrock and Katie Legate are involved as they were involved in this other cold case successful prosecution.
It was decided on the fiftieth anniversary that they better try something now because if not everybody was getting so old, if there were any witnesses, if there was anything to be found, they needed to do it now. Plus, as you said before, Carolyn Filo had been calling on a
regular basis please reopen the case. So Chris Homrock decided to reopen the case on the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting, which was in twenty twenty one, and Katie Leggett by that time had been a cold case officer for ten years.
Unlike what in the nineteen seventies, where you really didn't.
Have the subdivision of police and did the homicide, robbery, different divisions, cold case, everybody kind of worked the cases together. One of the tremendous improvements in police worked is that we now have these specialists. And she was a specialist in cold cases and had done an incredible job.
She had an incredible background.
She'd worked initially cases of indecency and sexual harassment and sexual abuse of children. So she came from that background initially and then worked as a detective, and she learned she also was a lie detective administrator, and then she became a cold case detective. It just so happened that right at that time, a detective named Lisa Killen, who was a playing close officer, decided that she wanted to see what cold case work was like and asked to
be transferred to the cold case unit. They immediately accepted her, and they said to her that your job is going to be to reopen this case and start looking at it and see if you find anything that hasn't been found.
The third person who's put on the case was another woman named Sarah White, who was a homicide detective, and she The three of them made up the cold case team, with Lisa Killen being the one who was instructed to initially go through all the evidence everything that had been done for the case, which was put in a cardboard box on her desk.
In that cardboard box was all the evidence that had been gathered by police, but also Lisa did some reinterviewing the Soda Machine Gang, these guys now in their sixties. But in that box Lisa found a real to reel tape labeled as an interview with Richard Hobart. Now, who is Richard Hobart and what does Lisa Killen do As a result of finding this reel to reel interview.
Richard Hobart's name and the license plate from his parents' vehicle were found in a notepad that James T. Hall had and that he kept with him at all time, and so there was concern whether or not he might have been involved. As it happened, he had passed away. He had died within about ten years of the case, and it was they had talked to him. He actually on his own gone in to talk to the police and was not considered a suspect. He was able to have an alibi, so he was not considered a suspect
in the case. But Lisa felt that she needed to listen to what he had to say, and she needed to find a way to get the tape in a way that she could listen to it because real Thrill there was not the technology in twenty twenty one to
be able to listen to it. She went to several sources, including the police departments, someone who was had a store that did different types of things with audio, but finally was able to get the FBI to convert the tape to digitalize it into a form that she could listen to.
What did she discover listening to that tape that struck her in her mind as a break in this case.
The tape had nothing to do with Richard Hobart. It was completely mislabeled. What it was was a several hour interview with a young man named Larry Becker. Larry Becker had been in jail. He had been convicted for the burglary of a townhouse, and while in jail and on a work release program, he had escaped. So not only was he serving his jail term for being involved in a burglary, but also.
Had years added on for the escape. So it turned out he had a.
Sentence for about eight years. In the tape, he had decided to ask for leniency by providing the Greek police officers with information about the murder of Deputy Sheriff Hall. The tape goes through the interrogation and in this interrogation, Smith says two very important things that were police holdbacks.
In other words, when the police have a murder or something happens, a lot of times they will hold back evidence so that when they confront someone they consider a suspect, if that person relates that evidence to them that suggests that they were at the crime scene of the crime or that they may have been the perpetrator.
Right. The two main things that he said.
Was one, he said there were two shots that night, and he said that several times.
He said that he was an eyewitness.
He'd come to the Manor country Club after being with a friend named Rizzo, and he'd come to the Manor Country Club and he saw these boys trying to break into the coke machines and then he saw someone come up and say, hey, what are you doing, And he said that there had been two shots fired. And the second thing he said that had not been released was that the deputy sheriff was holding a flashlight, and that had not been released, and he had a flashlight.
And so Lisa listening to those two pieces.
Of evidence that he said, and also the fact that he put himself at the scene of the murder, they'd had no eyewitnesses before, and that was her way into the portal as to what was happening, what had happened fifty years before when the murder took place.
There was problems initially though he had mentioned four boys that he said by name out of the eight and mentioned their names, and it checked out they had alibis.
Exactly there were so many things that he said that were wrong. For example, as you just said, he named Greg Schwar as the shooter. Greg Swar was alibied, was not there. There's no way he could have been the shooter. And the every other boy he said was there, none of them were there. They were not part of the
Coke Machine gang. The person that he said that he was with as he walked to the Manor Country Club was actually in the Navy at that time in California, so there's no way that he had been there either. He said it was a knight that was very calm, that the weather was beautiful, we could see things, and we know that it was a terrible stormy, rainy night,
and that everyone was soaking wet. He said that the person that was shot was wearing a uniform like a police officer, but no nothing like a raincoat or anything like that.
And when JT.
Hall's body was found, he was found to be wearing a yellow raincoat which was easily identifiable.
What does Lisa Killen find out about the conclusions police made after that interview with Larry Becker.
Lisa found out that the three officers who interviewed him and who had had nothing to do with the investigation up to that point, knew nothing about the police hold back of the evidence that they concluded that he did not have eyes on the scene, he was not there, he was lying just to gain leniency.
They rejected his plea and they sent him back to jail.
So Lisa Killen looks at this information at least like you had said, where she believes that he puts himself well, he does put himself at the scene of the crime, so she believes he's either involved or witnessed who was involved, who was the shooter. So she decides, along with Katie Leggett, to go interview or to at least try to find Larry Becker.
That's correct.
So she does a deep dive to try to find him and can't find him. There's no Larry Becker around, but she knew that he had a brother named Leslie Becker, so she looks to find Leslie and she finds his obituary, and in the obituary it says that he is survived by a brother, Larry Smith, who's living in Little.
Falls, New York.
And when you go back, she went back and found out that Larry Smith had been adopted by the Becker family along with Leslie and two other siblings when he was seven years old, and so his name had been changed to Becker. But now in twenty twenty one, he was living in Little Falls, New York under his original name Larry Smith.
But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, another part of this seemingly brilliant strategy is Lisa Kielan says, why don't I look up John Rizzo? And so she contacts long John Rizzo. But what does she ask John Rizzo in regards to helping police.
They wanted to make sure that Larry Smith was indeed Larry Becker, and they also wanted to see what he would do if pressure was put on him by someone who he had said was at the scene or he had been with him when he walked to the scene. So they made what are called controlled calls. They had Rizzo to two control calls. And in the first call, first of all, I should say control calls when the police monitor the call, so they're listening to everything that's
being said and done. In the first call, when Rizzo called him, Larry Smith denied being Larry Becker. He said he didn't know Rizzo, he didn't know anything about it, he'd never lived down there, and that.
The guy must have gotten it made a mistake.
Rizzo turned up the heat even in that first call, saying that the police are coming after him because of the evidence that Larry Becker Smith had given them in nineteen seventy three when he'd had that interview, and he'd said that Rizzo had been there also, and Rizzo needed an out. He needed Larry to give him an alibi and needed him to tell him what to say to them. As mentioned, he just refused to talk to Rizzo that first call. But interestingly enough, after that a call was
made by Larry Becker to someone named the Raven. His name was Bobby ray Edwards, nicknamed the Raven, and he basically left the restage on the Raven's machine, which Raven later turned over to the police, saying, this is Larry Becker was calling and I'd want to.
Speak looking for the Raven.
Raven was someone that he had hung around with a lot when he was younger and possibly had done different burglaries and things like that with, but he had called
him afterwards. Before the second control call was made by Rizzo, two days later, and in this call, Larry Smith admitted to being Larry Becker, and he talked a lot about the one burglary that he'd gotten arrested for that townhouse burglary, and he seemed to think that Rizzo was talking about that, and he kept saying, no, there was no policemen, there were no gunshot, nothing like that.
And Rizzo kept egging him on what should I do? What should I do?
They're coming after me, and I'm going to tell them all about you. And finally he said to him, he said, listen. He said, I'm not going to tell you what to do. You're not scaring me. I'm gonna you know, if the police come after me, that's fine, but I have nothing to hide. And they hung up the phone and that was it between the two of them. But they were convinced after that phone call that indeed this was the man that they were looking for, that this was Larry Becker.
So they decided to go visit Larry Becker and they bang on the door. He answers the door and lets him in. They go along Katie Levitt Leggett and Lisa Killen and also two state troopers. So they all are invited into his home. What does he agree to? Does he agree to an interview? Does he talk to police?
He lived in a senior citizen's home that was a high rise and they had security so that they had to be let in. And before they went up to see him, they looked around for a room that was quiet enough that they can record an interview with him. They couldn't find anything, so they went up to his door, knocked on the door or let in, introduced themselves, and he kind of said he knew they had becoming just because of the calls that he had gotten from Rizzo, right.
And once they got in there, they explained that they wanted to just talk to him and get information, and they couldn't find the room would be quiet enough to use the recording the devices that they had. Would he mind going back to the police barracks in Herkimer County, New York. He agreed to do so, and he went back. There were two male police officers from Herkimer County. He drove back with them, and Lisa and Katie followed in their car.
So tell us what happens at police headquarters and how did the interview goes? At first, very much like the phone calls with Rizzo. There's a little bit of a warming up process in the questioning, isn't it Yes.
First of all, the room that they use for interrogation there is there's no windows, one door, and they put their seats very close to him, and he was in the corner. It's very important to mention that many times, both on the way there or when they were in the apartment, and then later on they told him he was not under arrest and he was free to go at any time he wanted to, so that they did not have him in custody at that time. That becomes
an important point. Later on they sit down and start talking to him, and as you said, initially the interview is just somewhat fact finding and talking back and forth, and he seems interested in talking about the burglary at the townhouse, and he thinks that that's what.
They're asking about.
Don't forget this is a man now who's fifty one years later, and he had been through a lot. He had had a lot of health problems going on, part to disease, heart failure, just a lot of other things going on, and he was now being interviewed and he was talking, answering their questions by what he thought they
wanted to know about the townhouse burglaries. They finally were able to steer him towards what happened at the country club that night, although he could never remember during the entire interview having made a statement to the police in nineteen seventy three, eighteen months after the murder. But when they got to the interview part they initially started it was more friendly and things like that, and then they let him take They took a break and they let
him go. He wanted to smoke. He was a heavy smoker at one time. It was a three pack per day smoker. So he wanted to go outside and smoke. He couldn't smoke on the police grounds. It was against the law to do that. So he went across the street and he was if he'd want or to he was free to go. But he went across the street smoked, and then later on came back for the next part of the interview.
So they.
Apply some pressure in the last part of this interview, if you can tell us the gist of how that putting that pressure on him went and his reaction.
He The interview lasted three hours and forty five minutes in this room, and when they came back, the interview took a turn because they basically with Katie Leggett, who was a tremendous cold case detective and tremendous interrogator. She basically used certain types of principles of interrogation. It's in her own unique style, but she used minimalization, which is where you take something and make it not seem.
As serious as it was.
For example, she eventually said that he was the sheriff had been killed, but instead of being killed, she said, well, maybe it was by accident. She also said told him what it great guy he'd become, and what a great person he was. She didn't want to mess up his life, so I think she put himself on his side. But she also used minimalization to make what he said make even the murder itself not seem so bad.
And I think this was something a technique that she says.
That she had learned when she did these child sex abuse cases and things like that. No one wants to admit to being a pedophile and having sex with the child, so he have to be able to put it in a different way. I have to make it not seem as bad, and I think that's what she did. She made it seem like this was a good man. He was a good man. The sheriff had accidentally been shot
while maybe a burglary. While the burglary had occurred, a house on the other side of the golf course, which was owned by Roger and Diane Schmidt, that same night had been burglarized, and those things that were found on the.
Golf course were items from their house.
So she talked to him and said that, yeah, that this burglary had occurred.
He had put himself with the scene of the crime.
Eventually she was able to talk to him, and he was able to He said that yes, he had been involved in the burglary. And then finally, as things turned more and more, as his screws kind of tightened more and more, he said that he although he was part of the burglary, he hadn't shot the sheriff, That deputy sheriff, That the deputy sheriff Hall had been shot by someone who was with him that night, Raven, and Raven was committing the burglary with him.
This was a total change from.
What was going on the first, say, three hours in the interview, when he really didn't seem to know anything about the country clubs said multiple times, I never committed a burglary at the country club.
My parents lived there. That's where he had lived before he was thrown out on the streets.
So why would I do any kind of you know, damage there where I could easily be found. Well, when he did decide, he did, you know, admit that he was part of the team the burglarized, and then he admitted that Raven was the one who had done it.
Well, Raven, as.
It turns out, was six feet tall and Larry Becker was five foot three. And so they asked Larry in this interrogation, do you know what trajectory means?
Trajectory means? He knew what it meant. It meant the path that something had followed. And they said, well, the bullets.
Started off, hit him the sheriff in the lower part of the head on the left hand side, and traveled upward at an angle where it lodged behind his right eyebrow. Someone of Raven's size couldn't have had that kind of trajectory. It had to come from someone short like you. As I said, he was five foot three and so as they kept talking back and forth, back and forth.
They made it. He said, yeah, you know this.
They convinced him that an accident had happened, and he eventually finally admitted and confessed to accidentally shooting the deputy sheriff two shots and that he had been the one who had done it. It's been an accident.
One of the things that became somewhat a point of contention was he then asked, am I going to jail? And they said no, you're You're going home today. And the police said, we don't lie to people. And they asked him where the gun was, and he said, I threw it away. I think because it wasn't I didn't have it when I went to Maggie's place. But he said, I don't remember where I threw it exactly.
No gun was ever recovered.
He had identified in the interview and nineteen seventy three that it was a thirty eight caliber gun that was fired. The bullets that were recovered both from the brain of w Sheriff Hall, as well as there was a bullet that had gone through the flashlight and lodged in the flash flight were BOUTH thirty two caliber bullets. Which, as it turns out, can be fired from a thirty eight caliber gun, although the reverse is impossibly can't fire thirty eight caliber bullets for thirty two caliber gun.
So that was possible that.
He had correctly identified the weapon that had been used.
And then they even had him.
He said it that during the interview, the interrogation at the end, that he had had a gun that had been given to him earlier in the evening, and he named the person who had given it to him, and he was wearing it. He had it in his waistband, and then he pulled it out and used it to shoot the deputy sheriff.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. So let's get to the first day of the trial and the defense and the prosecution.
The first day of the trial came, and of course they had so much evidence piled up that I didn't get a look. I couldn't see over to where Larry Becker Smith was sitting. I was in the gallery listening to everything. But the opening statements were made and the defense said, this is someone who has the most important
evidence of all. He has confessed to being the murderer not once, not twice, but three times, because it turns out that within a day of confessing to the police, Larry, on phone calls which were recorded from the jail, had called his daughter and told her that he had something he had to get off his chest, and he'd lived with it for fifty years and he'd never told anyone, not even her mother, who was still his wife, he'd never divorced her, but that he had killed someone and
now he's going to go to jail Ford and he pretty much said the same thing to his son, and he called him also. So the prosecution said, we don't have any physical evidence, no DNA evidence, and there were no eyewitnesses. But what we do have is someone who in nineteen seventy three put himself at the scene of the murder and then now has confessed three times, which is the strongest evidence.
It's all circumstantial evidence, was strongest evidence.
And the defense got up and in their opening statement concentrated on the facts that all these wrong things that Larry said initially in seventy three that were completely wrong, which had led the people that were listening to him, the police, to say he wasn't there, he didn't know
what he was talking about. And also they harped on the idea that everything that he had said in his confession had been fed to him by the detectives who were interrogating him, and that none of it was from his own mind, that had all just been given to him, and he'd finally broken and was convinced that did do this even though he hadn't done it.
The prosecution, the state's attorney is John McCarthy. The prosecuting attorney is Donnie Donna Fenton. But there are four defense attorneys in that courtroom, including Kevin B. Collins. Tell us a little bit about Covington and Burling, the Washington, d c. Law firm that takes this case, and why.
When Larry Becker Smith got to back to Maryland he changed his mind. He decided he hadn't done this, and he wanted he withdrew his confession. He said he wanted to with draw his confession as guilty, plea and pleae non guilty once he decided to play not guilty. The public defender who was assigned to his case, that this is the case involved now close fifty two years of information evidence. It's too much for a public defender's off at the handle law firm Covington and.
Berling, which is a large law firm base. This was based in Washington, c but they're all over the world.
They have twelve hundred lawyers from the top thirty of largest law firms in the world and considered one of the top law firms. They're also considered the top pro bono law firm in the country. They've won the award as being the top pro bono law firm ten times, so they're considered someone that a firm that will be very willing to help out in a case like this because for them, it gives their young attorneys the chance to examine, cross examine, and come up with strategy in cases.
Some of these people attorneys had ever been in.
A courtroom before, and the four who were assigned by three other attorneys who were assigned to help Kevin Collins, none of them had ever tried a case before. But they decided, after making sure that there was no conflicts of interest, yes, indeed they would take this case. It's thirty minutes a metro ride from Washington to Rockville, Maryland, and that they would take the case and represent Larry.
Before the case went to trial, they tried to have it thrown out by saying that his Miranda rights were violated, that he was in custody, and that they should have said to him, you were had the right to remain silent to anything you say and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to attorney. That was never said before the interrogation took place.
So they attempted to have it thrown out. This was a hearing that lasted three days, and finally the judge mcaulay, who was the judge in the case, in favor of the prosecution and said that he was never really under in custody. He could have left any time he wanted to and he was free to go. They were just interviewing him and therefore his Miranda rights had not been violated,
and that they could he would stand trial. And so the trial was set to start January eighth, and that's when I first got my look at the defense team as well as the prosecutors.
Right, you write a very dramatic scene. We go back a bit where Caroline Folo receives the call when she's socializing about the arrest of Larry Larry Smith. But now this case is taken to trial and that enthusiasm or confidences has been damaged somewhat, but she still has very much confidence in the prosecution. And Donna Fenton doesn't.
She she really does. She has tremendous confidence in her. She loves Lisa Killing, the lead detective. She calls her her second daughter. Kerry Krutcher is her other daughter, who her real daughter. I got to know very welder in this case, who was incredible to talk to him hear her insights. But she was very comfortable with the team, and they had had over a year before the case went to trial of build up of thinking that this
was going to be the resolution for their family. And here she was now eighty years old, and she wanted this to be resolved and have a knowledge of who had done this to her father. And so she and Bob Filo were there attending everything from the miranda hearings to the first day of the trial to the entire trial. And I flew up and I was there also.
Tell us what the charges were that were laid the various counts in this trial.
In this trial, the accounts were a first degree murder, which is premeditated murder, and that's something that was on the books in nineteen seventy one in Maryland when the murder had occurred, So they felt it was important that that that was a murder charge that was allowed to that time. But they also had another charge, which was felony murder, and that's murder that's submitted while in the conducting or doing a felony such as burglary. Right, that
was first degree felony murder. And then the final charge was second degree felony murder. So there were three charges at that time, all related to the murder of JT.
Hall.
Now let's get to this trial and some of the main the main characters. Lisa Killen takes the stand, Katie Leggett takes the stand. Tell us about the central figures that take the stand and what they impart to the jurors in their testimony.
I think that both of them were excellent witnesses and they what they broke it down to was that here was a man who had within eighteen months of this occurring, this murder occurring, had identified himself as being a witness to the murder. He just come across the Manor country Club when it happened. And although he'd gotten a lot
of the facts wrong. They said it well, the way it was phrased by the prosecution was that he was lying, on the one hand, keep himself from being a suspect and the murder, but telling enough at that time to
try to get himself leniency. And I think that with Lisa killing they used her to go back through the entire process of what it was like, all the places they went across the country, interviewing different suspects, people that could have been involved, and then finally how she had found the real, real tape and had it changed into a form digitalized that she could use. And I thought you did a very good job of taking you through.
She took you through these control calls that had been made by Rizzo, and then she took us through the interrogation, interrogation, and then actually Lisa Killen was on the stand and when the tape was played from the interrogation where Becker confessed. Now I should say that it was I kind of felt that the flow of the trial this was a little bit more for the prosecution, but it was because they had to present witnesses when they could get them.
So Lisa Killen's testimony was interrupted several times by other witnesses. For example, they had the son and daughter of Becker testify, and they were going to be up there for a certain day, so they kind of were put in when they could be when they were willing to testify, and they were not cooperative witnesses. They did not say this.
The recording showed that in what his daughter had said to one of the police officers after her talking to her father, they did not say in the court itself that he had confessed to the murders, but only said that he had talked about robbery. And the prosecution even went back to these written statements and recorded statements, said do you remember this and all?
And they said no.
The other people that had to be brought into interrupt Lisa were the police officers from Herkimer County, New York. Hald flown down and could only be used for a day, and so Lisa's testimony was kind of piecemealed through. But eventually they had her do the entire interrogation tape and that was done over a couple of days in front of the jury.
One question I had was how did Lisa or Kate Leggett, but maybe Lisa, how did she explain all of the inconsistencies that David Smith had originally when he came forward to try to get the deal to reduce his prison escape sentence. Is there any anyone asked why he would lie so blatantly but at the same time be trying to gain favor with police to try to reduce his sentence. How would he rationalize lying so much that the police didn't believe his statements? Anyway?
I don't think that that was ever well explained. I think that it was they made it out that almost he was, on the one hand, very savvy and very smart and able to make up this whole story and all these other things that weren't true, but also includes enough details you know, that were true to show that he was there. But when you looked at him, he was a man who at that time had an IQ of eighty seven.
He was not a very smart man.
He had a IQ testing done when he was twelve, he had been sent away to a place for wayward boys, and he'd been tested in his IQ was eighty seven, and then at the time when they did the interrogation and arrested him, his IQ had dropped. Later on with psychological testing that he showed his IQ was eighty three.
So it was a little bit hard to understand how someone that wasn't didn't seem to be that smart, could both give you details that were so accurate to details and then have everything else mixed up and all so that they said it was because of his trying to get leniency but not wanting to be part of you know, arrested or part of the suspect.
It was a little bit hard looking back on it to believe.
Now, this person, Bobby ray Edwards, this person that is accused of the murderer or accused of being with the murderer, testifies that trial. Tell us how effective or not effective his testimony was in the trial.
He was actually brought in as a witness for the prosecution as you know, someone that he had that they were talking about.
But I think that.
He basically gave a to the defense because he was the only one of the boys who had maintained contact.
With Larry Becker Smith both before when he went.
To jail, while during he was in jail, and then afterwards when Larry had moved to New York, and he said that he had not been involved in any burglary or murder that occurred at the Manor Country Club, and that he knew of nothing to suggest that Larry Becker had been involved either, and he was.
Really as close as friend.
So in my opinion, his testimony was waged more for the defense.
Just reading this trial as an observer and other people as well, Caroline Filo most importantly and Bob as well. What was their mood at the conclusion of this trial before the jury went to deliberations, What did they think the outcome of this trial would be.
They thought he would be a convicted of fel any murder first degree. They did not feel that it was a premeditated murder. They felt that he and whoever he said was with him, Raven another man named Mark Jensen, had burglarized the home, were carrying objects across the golf course to take with them, some of which would be good for someone who is living on the streets like Larry was, including sheets and things for beds, things like that.
So they did not They felt.
That the trial had gone very well and they felt that he was going to be convicted. They felt that the defense had done a good job and they were doing all this pro bono free. All the work and all, but they felt that the jury would come back with a guilty verdict.
Now, for the jurors, they were instructed. And I've read many judges instructions to juries, and I marvel at the length that the statements are made by the judge. And then I find it confusing myself. If just the instructions on you could make the decision, It's not anything I say. However, there seems to be a lot of instructions that seem somewhat confusing, but tell us about the the unanimous nature of their decision being integral to these to this case and to this verdict.
The jury from this trial kay Was after three days came back to the judge and said that they were deadlocked, and they talked about it, and it turned out that they also had felt they had voted unanimously that he was not guilty of premeditated murder or the first way murder. But they were deadlocked with regards to the charges of peony,
first refoundy murder, her and secondary phony murder. And interestingly enough, they were deadlocked we found out later ten two or eleven one in favor of him being guilty, but they could not convince the one or two people that he was guilty. The defense wanted the judge to say that because of the innocence, that they should announce a verdict as being innocent on the one count they couldn't reach a verdict on the other accounts, But the judge said no,
she was labeling it all a mistrial. She had been planning on retiring, but she felt that she should be the one because this has been such an incredible case with so many twists and turns, that she should be the one to be.
In charge of this next trial.
So she brought both of the defense and the prosecution to her chambers. After they decided they labeled the trial a mistrial and a hung jury to set a date to have a retrial.
Yeah, it was interesting. I'm glad you made that point that the jurors could not separate these counts in terms of guilt in their decision. They had to be all put together. The judge sided, I think it's very important.
Yes, that's exactly right.
So now right away there's another trial, and of course the prosecution gets set. But there is a distinct disadvantage for them in this retrial and an advantage for the prosecutor for the defense in another trial, tell us what that advantage and disadvantage would be.
One of the charges in the second trial that the was in June of twenty twenty four, so approximately six months at the first trial concluded, was that they made Raven Bobby Ray Edwards an unindicted co conspirator. So what that did was that made it so that Raven, they said that they were investigating further to see the felt that he could be part of the team that burglarized
the Schmid home and killed the deputy sheriff. Because of that, Ravens hired an attorney who advised him to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify at the second trial. And the defense, of course would want him to testify because if he was an underdoted co conspirator and he had said that if he had been involved in it, he said that their client Larry Smith, had had nothing to do with it at the previous trial, they would want to put him on the stand again to say that.
But because he was put as an unindicted co conspirator, it took him away as a witness for defense. He basically took the Fifth Amendment on every charge, and so he was. He did not testify at the second trial.
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now, what else did the defense learn from the first trial and change in their strategy. We'll say in terms of their focus in this second trial.
The defense learned about false confessions, which I found an incredibly interesting topic who read about and learn about. What we don't realize is that jurors and judges will use confessions as evidence above almost anything else. But there are circumstances, and there's now a science based on it that there are things reasons why people make false confessions that they didn't really do something, but they end up saying that
they did. As a matter of fact, there's a statistic that twenty four percent of cases that are overturned by DNA evidence that is irrefutable. In twenty four percent of those cases, part of the reason why the defendant hadden Fould guilty was by a confession. So the evidence showed that they didn't do it, but because of certain factors, they had confessed to doing it.
And as the defense.
Learned more and more, they learned that someone like Larry who was someone who had a low IQ, wasn't best smart, who had medical issues, who wanted to do it, was somewhat of a compulsive liar, someone that wanted to please people, who wanted you if you kept asking him, asking him, he wanted to get a story that would please you.
Maybe a lie, but it would please you. As they dug more and more.
Into this, they decided that they wanted to introduce these two false confession experts to testify at the second trial, and they even had a briefing done for the defense where the briefing was done by someone who was also an attorney and who was an expert in false confessions, and they in that briefing said that they should definitely allow in the second trial these two experts to testify and show that this confession had been given to that the words what the What Kevin told me later on,
Kevin Collins, the lead attorney, was that rather than saying concentrating on what Larry said and things like that, what they concentrated on after talking with these false confession experts was where did the information come during the confession during the interrogation that Larry said When they fighted it back and listened to it, they felt that most of the things are everything that he said tying him to the murder had been fed to him by the interrogating detectives.
Wow, there was one answer that the prosecution tried to say was quite profound after all of this, Why confess to murder to your own children?
Yes, that's exactly right, And that's something that's when I talked to one of the jurors from the first trial. They said, I said, what made you you know it was ten too guilty?
What made you think he was guilty? And she said three confessions, she.
Said, the first confession, but then when you within the next day he confessed to your two children, then that's why I felt he was guilty. So something they felt that even though he'd said that to his children, it had been put into his mind and he was now saying a false set of fact. He was relaying a false set of facts, and that's everything that all three of his confessions were false.
So this trial goes different than the first trial. The defense learns has a completely different strategy and employs a couple expert witnesses to explain the phenomena of false confessions and how it applies to this case.
No, the would not.
The judge decided that she would not allow these false confession experts to testify I see, and she also before the case went to second trial, the defense had also asked that they removed the tag of unindicted co conspirator of Raven Bobby ray Edwards in order that he could be a witness, and the judge also sided with the prosecution on that. So even though they did not have these experts on false confessions, they basically based their case on that and showed how this was a man that
was easily persuadable. It had been so many years, different memories. Although he was only arrested for one burglary, he at one time said he and his colleagues committed daytime burglaries, so he probably was involved in other ones, and that he had just gotten all the facts confused, and that when this new set of information had been presented to him, he eventually bought into it.
The base basically though, the defense had a term for his mental state, but essentially you right, that was dementia. So was the jury convinced that he was suffering from dementia?
No, they had a psychologist evaluate him for the defense and he felt, as you said, that he was suffering from dementia and also from depression, and the prosecution brought on a psychiatrist, an MD instead of a PhD. And what she said was that she did not feel the or any signs of dementia, that his IQ had dropped four points, which was very reasonable considering the year fifty two years had passed, and that he showed no signs of depression more than someone that was in jail would show.
So I think that the prosecution.
Was able to in a good way refute and just talking to the jurors to refute that argument, and that I don't think that the jury felt that this was a man who was cemented or depressed. I think this was they felt, you know, the consideration was whether or not they would come to the conclusion that he had poor memory, that he could be fed information and then to please the interrogators to get him off his back, to stop the situation that he eventually confessed to do with the murder.
So let's talk about the jurors and the reaction and the verdict, and after we'll talk about Carolyn follow and her family's reaction.
The a jurors went out to deliberate on a Wednesday, and they deliberated all that Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday. The judge was getting about five o'clock in the afternoon. Judge was going to send them home for the weekend, and they said, please just give us a little bit more time.
We think we're close to a verdict. So they gave him.
More time, and then the jury came back into the room and the verdict was not guilty on all charges.
Now it was not only first to be felonily.
Murder, first degree murder, second degree murder, a conspiracy to commit murder with a conspiracy with raven to commit murder, and also burglary.
Charged on all these charges, he was found and not guilty.
You what was your reaction, but more importantly, what was Caroline Folo's reaction and the family's reaction.
First of all, I'm going to say that the family was extremely upset and immediately went back to their hotel and left the city. They felt that justice was not served and were very upset about what had happened in the trial. I had found out a couple of pieces of additional information during the trial. This second trial. They were not brought out in the first trial at all. No one could tell me why it wasn't brought out.
But going into the first trial and hearing all the others and things like that, I kind of thought it was a wash. I thought there was a good chance it could be a hung jury. Although this three confession idea, especially after talking to Katie Leggett, who was an expert at this and who had said she'd never heard an innocent person confess.
I was leaning towards fact that he could be guilty. But during the second.
Trial it came out that in that nineteen seventy three investigation, they had recorded several hours of it with those three police officers. But later on the next day they had taken him, taken Larry Beckersmith to the country club parking lot, and lo and behold who was there to walk at the area with him and listen to the entire story. But ow Sweat, Yeah, w Sweat, who had done forty murder cases and solved thirty nine of them. Ow Sweat,
who was considered their top detective. Ow Sweat went through everything with him. He at all everything he had to say, including these pieces of evidence that the detectives Lisa Kill and Katie Leggott later seized on.
But he also heard about the fact that it was a clear night.
What the sheriff had been wearing where he showed him the o W Sweat where the body had been found was completely different from where the body actually had been found. Ow Sweat listened to everything that Larry had to say, and he concluded that he didn't have eyes on this. So when I heard that, up till that point, like I said, I was kind of iffy one way or the other. But when I heard, and of course I wanted a closure for the Philo family.
For Carolyn Folow, I'd known.
Her for over thirty years right and over this last year she said that she'd become like my mother, although she'd have to be very young to have had me to be my mother.
But I had tremendous empathy for them, and I wanted them to have closure.
But when I thought back through it, and I said, oh, this is the man. He wanted to close this more than anyone. He had a perfect record. You know, it'd be like having a one thousand batting average and then this is your one time you didn't make it. And he said, this man does not have did not have eyes eyeballs on the crime. He was not there, and that to me was the way the piece of evidence that threw it towards Yeah, I agree with the jury.
I think he wasn't guilty.
I don't know why, and no one could tell me, to my satisfaction, including Kevin Collins why I interviewed.
No one could tell me why that hadn't come.
Out at the first trial, but it did come out to the second trial. Interestingly enough, Bob Filo had a different take on it. He was angry at ow Sweat because he said, well, if he had heard him with that time, and it's just eighteen months after the murder, why didn't he jump in on the two pieces of evidence that he did say right that there'd been two shots and that there had been a flashlight and say that he was and have him go to trial. Then, like I said, I came to a different conclusion, and
I think that the jury did also. I'm not saying that was the main thing that swayed them when you talked, when they talked to the jury, when we talked to the jury, they said the main thing that swayed them was the way the defense had gone back and shown how the detectives had said certain certain things in their interrogation, and that Larry Becker Smith had not mentioned those previously, but later on he took those as part of what he had to say.
And putting that all together, you say that Kevin Collins really opened your eyes as well as with what he had to say, but also especially ow sweat and what he had said. So putting this all together, you conclude that it's likely he was innocent.
Exactly although I felt after I said that, and after I wrote the book, I sent a copy to the Filos and they didn't that. They weren't happy with it, and you know, they felt it was that this was man that had done it, and this was the enclosure for them that fifty years of working to get the murderer caught who Carolyn's and murdered Carolyn's father, Bob, father
in law, they were incredibly close. That's you know, how could I have come to such a conclusion, And so I had, you know, looked at everything myself, and I wasn't going to change my mind. But at the end of the book, I let Bob Filo write his thoughts about the case, and that's how the book you know, at the very end of the bok So it shows my opinion what I think. Also, I have Bob Filow writing what he thought.
Well, it's understandable. I think once they have the first trial mistrial, then they have the second trial and it completely exonerates Larry Smith. You can't be happy after that, no matter what you wrote.
Basically, yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. But it was such an important thing to them, to the Filos, that he be found guilty because they felt that he was. They had been fed that, they'd been feeling this for a couple of years. They've been involved from the first time. Carolyn got the phone call saying while she was playing Bunko, saying that we found the murderer.
He's confessed and where he's waived extradition, he's.
Coming back to Maryland to stand trial, and everything's all set up. They were convinced that this was the closure, this was what had happened. That's as I said, I was talking to them, and until I really saw what happened in the second case and relooked at things and relooked at what are false confessions they actually do happen, you know, So after looking at things and re looking at it, and then finding out only in the.
Second trial that ow Sweat had had the chance.
Interestingly enough, when ow Sweat in nineteen seventy three had interviewed him and talked to him, only his interview was not recorded and they did not have any tape of that. Only the first day was recorded with the three police officers. So you wonder if the second day had been recorded if this would have gone to trial.
But it wasn't.
Yes, very very interesting. I want to thank you very much, Michael F. Weisberg for coming on and talking about your extraordinary A second shot the pursuit of justice in Maryland's oldest cold case murder. For those that would like to check out more about this story, do have a website or do any social media?
Absolutely my website, my literary website is Michael F. As in Franklin Weisberg dot com. And the book is available on Amazon and at all bookstores. So if anyone wants to see anything about my previous two books, any other writing, short stories and things like that I've done, they can go to my website and it also has a link that'll take them to buy the book as well.
That's fantastic second shot. The pursuit of justice in Maryland's oldest cold case murder. Michael F. Weisberg, thank you so much for this interview, and you have a great evening and good night, right Dan, thank you, thank you,