A SOCIALITE SCORNED-Kerrie Droban

Her name was Pamela Phillips, an Aspen socialite, divorcee and mother of Trianno's two children. She received two million dollars upon his death, but evaded suspicion for more than a decade. Finally, half way across the globe in Austria, authorities caught up with the Blonde Bombshell, igniting one of the most explosive

cases in Arizona history. The book they were featuring this evening is A Socialite Scorned the Murder of a Tucson High Ruler, with my special guest, journalist and author Kelly Drobin. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for greening his interview. Kelly Drobin, you much for having me. Thank you very much. This is an incredible story. Let's get right to how you came to be in a position, why you felt compelled, or why you wanted to write this book, A social ighte Scorn.

You know, everybody knew where they were when this happened because it was so shocking. And so I was a lawyer at the time, and in two thousand and five, you know, flash forward, Ron Young was named a person of interest on America's Most Wanted. It was a show

that I watched pretty regularly for crime stories. And in a strange twist of fate, Jay Dobbins, who was the subject of my first book, Running with the Devil, was the very close friend of the investigator on the Gary Triano case, Detective Gamber, and Detective Gamber had asked him to help him orchestrate and America's Most Wanted episode that

employed people to look out for Ron Young. And so when Ron Young was you know, eventually arrested and finishing his trial for the murder of Gary Ciano, that's when I knew I had to write the story. I was positioned, you know, in the location for it. I was living in Phoenix at the time, but I was very close to Tucson. I knew the bombing. I mean, I had been, you know, around when that happened, and it was just, you know, it was right. It was an incredible story,

and I thought, I've got to jump on this. So so I had already written two books before I jumped on A social life Scorned and you know thought, this is a fascinating This is like a writer's dream, you know, to go in there in mind the story and be able to write it from the point of view of basically two sociopaths.

likes of Donald Trump. He would go to parties and events and buy rounds of cocktails for everyone, tipping waitresses ridiculous sums of money. He was like a character out of a Hollywood movie. And one of the most striking things about him, just to set the stage for this is his home. Will give you a great indication of how he viewed himself. He had portraits of himself in his home as Indian chiefs, and everywhere you look bronze reliefs of his head. He was just a larger than

life person. So the murder or when this happened, it was almost he led an explosive life, and so he had an explosive end. He played golf at the La Paloma Golf Resort, which is a pretty swanky place in Tucson it was at the time, and he had he was kind of a creature of habit, so he had a regular tea time and he would go there and

play golf. And so on the date that this happened, he was playing golf, and it was he was on his way to his birthday party, which was actually a surprise birthday party, but he got into his Lincoln Town car. He habitually left the windows down and there was a bag like a sack sitting on the passenger seat, and he thought it was I mean, this is obviously presumed, but he thought it was a birthday gift. So he reached over to open it, and that's when his car exploded.

He exploded, and it was a sensational crime because the explosion, it was in broad daylight. There were a ton of witnesses, There were people dining at the fancy restaurant right above the golf resort, and the explosion was so large that there were pieces of the car that landed in the swimming pool. There were you know, the car itself is still you can still view it's it just it was

completely pulverized, and Gary Trono himself obviously was pulverized. So it was it was a crazy explosion, and it had the hallmarks of a mafia hit, and so it started this investigation into you know, over thousands of suspects. It was one of these these crazy who done it? Case of magnitude proportion, so it had a daunting list of

potential suspects. The timeline for this murder it spanned a decade because whenever you have a bomb, it's going to bring in multiple jurisdictions, multiple agencies trying to track down, you know, the origins of the bomb. Because Gary lived

this larger than life existence. He had so many enemies and so many people that had a motive to kill him that it became this this crazy landscape for this one detective who, ironically enough, I mean, there are lots of ironies whenever you write a true story, but this case had a ton of ironies because they detective this was his first or second murder case ever in the department, and he was almost single handedly tasked with the idea,

with the job of finding suspect. So it was it was just really an incredible crime scene and then an incredible investigation that followed. And I should mention too that the fact that it happens, I mean, not only do you have this explosion in Tucson, which I indicated a little bit earlier, is sort of known as this eclectic and safe place to live, but it's also the town for reputed mobsters who retire there because it's considered the

sort of open territory among mobsters. So they come and they can They used to come and conduct illegal activities without violating a hierarchy of organized crime. So you have the famous Arizona Republic reporter Don Bowles who was targeted in nineteen seventy six by the mafia and he was blown up outside also killed in a car bomb outside

of a hotel. So there were all kinds of you know, tentative links to the two kinds of crime, and then that sort of set this in motion, as you know, perhaps a mob hit.

unaccustomed to. And you talk about right away the Gamber and his partner, Sergeant Keith Saint John, and they are seeing they're getting reports of vehicles leaving the scene. But like you say that there's so many leads, so many conflicting reports, and then you talk about Pamela Phillips and and you tell a little bit about her background, this attractive real estate agent. So tell us a little bit about Pamela Phillips and what she's doing before she meets Gary Triano.

I describe her as a sociopath. She is a figure who used and abused people to get what she wanted, and and what she really wanted was money, no matter the cost. So case in point, she she marries Gary for money, she divorces him over money, and she eventually kills him for money. She she felt like a Uh. She comes into the marriage, she has two million dollars in assets, and so she when she targets Gary, Gary at the time had about two million dollars in assets.

He was involved in the casino world, the Indian gaming casino business, and so she believed that she was getting into a marriage that was on equal par with her. You know, she brought money in, he had money, and they were gonna build an empire together. And so what eventually happens, and what she learns pretty early on in the marriage is that Gary is not what he seems or who he seems. In fact, he's embroiled in about seventy four lawsuits. He is on the verge of bankruptcy.

He owes everybody money, he owes his attorney money, ninety one thousand dollars to an attorney, he owes sixty eight thousand dollars to his mother, thirty thousand dollars to a fitness club. He's one point eight million dollars in business debts and loans. So he's really not who he seems. And so Pamela discovers this, you know, as I said, early on in the marriage, and so she feels very entitled and very scorned. And that's really the why the

title of the book is is pretty apropos. So when they get divorced, they have a number of fights over child support and alimony, and because Gary has filed for bankruptcy and he doesn't have the assets that she once believed that he had, she is incensed over this and

she takes him back to court multiple times. But the key part of this investigation and why Detective Gamber ultimately zeros in on her as a possible suspect, is that during the marriage, Gary purchased a life insurance policy and he insisted that and the life insurance policy coincidentally is worth two million dollars, and he insisted that she'd be the beneficiary or the trustee, and his children were the beneficiaries, but she was the trustee over that until the children

reached the age of eighteen, and so the premium for the life insurance policy was not paid by Pam. Pam, as she always did and very consistent with her character, would commission other people to do her bidding. And so she had entrusted her good friend Joy Bancroft with the

task of paying her life insurance premiums. And so Joy Bancroft was a person who had over the years loaned Pam a lot of money because Pam's one of Pam's sicknesses or illnesses is that she always believed she had no money, even though she had money and never worked a day in her life when she was married to Gary, she always believed she was just, you know, impossibly poor. So she commissioned Anne Bankrupt to pay the life insurance premiums.

And so around the time of the bombing, Pam discovered that Joy had neglected to pay the premium when it was the October premium, and so the life insurance policy was going to lapse. So here she had orchestrated this murder and expected to recoup what she believed she was entitled to. She brought two million into the marriage. She believed she was entitled to the two million back and she was going to get it no matter the cost. And so, you know, her payback was going to be

the life insurance policy. So when she discovered that Joy Bancroft had not paid that premium, she almost went into a panic, almost almost drove herself insane, and was on the phone trying to get the premium paid, you know, trying to have a grace period. And so eventually she gets that premium paid and eventually the life insurance policy

pays out. But that becomes the trigger for a detective Gamber, you know, because usually the spouse is the number one suspect in a murder case, but this was an unusual case. They had been divorced, she lived in Aspen at the time. She had already established a different life in Aspen, so she wasn't even in into Tucson. She had no proximity to Tucson. In fact, she and Gary had this parenting plan where Gary would have to fly out to Aspen to see the children. The children were sometimes flown from

Aspen to Tucson. Is very complicated, so she was not an immediate suspect because she wasn't even in Tucson, and they couldn't fathom how she could possibly have, you know, orchestrated a bombing or constructed a bomb. So she was very far removed from the actual murder until detective Gamber had exhausted a number of leads and kept coming back to that life insurance policy.

of death threats. And whether or not those actually panned out are you know, I don't know the Detective Gamber was ever able to support that.

a victim of domestic violence. So that was the portrait that she portrayed to Detective Gamber. She also told Gamber that Gary had mafia connections and that maybe this was a mob hit and he should be investigating, you know, those connections or those links, and so over the course I mean this, this investigation lasted a decade and Detective Gamber would go down various bunny trails, you know, to see whether any of them were going to pan out, and none of them actually did, but he got calls

everything from potential mafia hits to health angel connections, you know, and he had to investigate every one of them because he just you know, you never know until you go down those bunny trails whether or not you can eliminate them as a witness. So she was very clever in doing that and in painting that picture that Gary was a volatile person, never paid back his debt a ton of people money, and that part was true. He did, oh a ton of people money. He did have failed

business deals. He you know, was involved in casinos and things that certainly could have led to people having a beef against him. There was another key suspect, and whether or not Pam had planted this or this was Detective Gamber's own finding. But he became a potential suspect a man by the name of Neil MacNeice who was an acquaintance of Gary's, and he agreed to purchase an item at a charity auction. Neil paid Gary greed to pay Neil fifty percent, and they tried to get him to

go into business together. But eventually Gary asked Neil for a loan and he used Pam's wedding ring as collateral.

And the wedding ring was worth two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars and Gary wanted an eighty five thousand dollars loan, and so Gary switched the ring and he gave Neil a cubic circonia ring, And so there was this whole backstory that Neil, you know, Neil potentially had a motive to kill Gary because he was obsessed with the you know, the bait and switch that Gary had done and so were there were all kinds of stories like that that Pam concocted to kind of throw Gamber

off the path. And what was interesting about it was, you know, while Detective Gamber is investigating all of these leads, you have the the ATF and the other federal agencies investigating the bomb. So you know, one part is investigating the people, the other part is investigating the actual you know, manner of death. The bomb, which which happened to be more sophisticated than most. It was unusually long, it was stuffed with red dot powder. It was the same kind

of powder that was used to reload shotgunshelf. It had six folt battery lantern, which was very popular in the seventies, and so they were trying to get a profile on the bomber. So that was what was going on on

the federal level. So you can imagine all the movable parts with all of the various characters involved, and so that was I think Gamber's challenge was he was dealing with Pam, who was, you know, a very skilled sociopath, knew how to use people, knew how to manipulate people, and knew how to twist things to serve her own advantage.

or they're pretty much guilty. So she's she's very evasive, and the whole time that she's being interviewed by Gamber, she's deflecting, you know, and basically going back to you know, not I wasn't there, I were. We've been divorced. You know, Gary's got multiple enemies, and so they're actually almost they're almost startlingly feeling about her character and who, you know, how she operates.

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that knew Gary's schedule. And strangely enough, even though Gary was a creature of habit, this particular tea, he had actually changed his schedule, so somebody would have had to have known, you know, who had changed the schedule, and so so Detective Gamber had to look at, you know, the list of possible suspects or people that might have

known that might have played with him. You know, Gary had a golf partner that played with him, so there were there were a number of sort of what I call secondary characters that Gamber had to exhaust as possible leads.

And I think when Melissa gave him the list of players, you kind of get a picture of Gary as you know, he had he had so many enemies, so many potential people, and it sort of comes with the territory of somebody who is that connected, that involved in different business deals, and also somebody who was, you know, touting himself is fairly wealthy, so he was a target not only for who he was as a persona, but also for who

he may have pissed off during his business feelings. So yeah, it was a completely exhaustive list, and it went from everyone from his CPA to his golf partner.

you know, to keep that pregnancy quiet. So she became a person of interest in Gamber and his partner had flown down to interview her as well to find out a little bit more about Gary and you know, what that arrangement might have been and whether she had had a motive, And she also had had conversations with Pam.

It was almost like that had become I don't want to say confidence, but you know, they were they were sort of having a telephone communication about Gary and about how they had both sort of been scorned by him. So you know, she became the the woman scorned on the opposite side. So it became this really entangled web of you know, Gary and his his relationships with business people, and Gary and his relationships with his ex wife and his girlfriend and you know, whomever else he may have

been involved with. So it was really a complicated, tangled web of you know, people that did head of Gamber had to sift through. It was almost like sifting through bomb debris, but you know, metaphorically debris from from Gary's personal life that had just exploded, and and Gamber had to sift through all the you know, all the pieces for that too.

And you know, he's he's just sort of shattered personally by this because it's almost it becomes his It's the case of his career, certainly, and he puts aside everything. He puts aside his personal relationships, his other cases, and it becomes his life's quest to solve this case for Heather. And so he's actually very close to the family now and he's close to Heather. But I think at the time he was he was really haunted by this and

it was his motivating factor. It was almost like he lived, slept, breathed, you know, finding the killer, and you know, and so as he would develop one lead, Heather would be calling him and showing up and saying why, you know, why can't we find this person? And and it you know, to some degree, I think it really it really ate away at Detective Gamber and it really it destroyed him, and it left him with this sort of empty feeling.

You know, if I don't find this person, I will have spent a decade of my life, you know, trying to solve something. It was. It was the who done it of his career, you know, trying to find that out. But it was almost an impossible task for or not only a new homicide detective, but any homicide detective. It would have been an impossible case. And so he was like a dog with a bone, you know, I've got to find out who did this?

ski socialite people. And Ron Young was really a kind of a bum up an Aspen, and he was a con artist, and he called himself an outfitter, and he was almost Pam's mirror self. He was a very except

that he was very gawky, very socially awkward. But what he had in common with Pam was that he aligned himself with people that he could use and abuse, and so they had a very strange symbiotic relationship where as long as he was useful to Pam, he could stay in her life, and as long as Pam found him useful, she would keep him around. So he became the hit man in this case, and she commissioned him to help her get rid of what he termed the one hundred

pound the three hundred pound gorilla. So he determined that Pam needed his assistance to help with the Gary problem, and she hired him to do that, and so they concocted. Over the course of a period of time, they conspired together to figure out how they were going to do this. Now, it's unclear whether Pam knew that Ron was going to use a bomb as the weapon, because they had gone

and they had tried various things. I mean, I think she thought it was going to be a gun or a rifle or something, and they had taken a trip together to try to purchase that. So Ron kept what's really termed as a treasure trove of information. He kept every piece of document, every conversation, every fax, every card, Everything that he ever had any exchange with Pam he kept. And it was so almost like he was a pack rat, except it was probably a little bit more diabolical than that.

He didn't want to be screwed over. So he kept the gun that they purchased. It was a sot off shotgun. He kept it in a case in a van. He kept the postcards that Pam sent him. She actually sent him a Hallmark card that said, you know, I'm basically to the extent of I'm looking forward to the vision of our future. I'm looking forward to being you know, having this this completed. I mean, it wasn't a confession,

but it was tantamount to that. You know, that they had colluded together to do this, but he kept that every conversation they had there he recorded, and he kept all the recordings, and you know, the he had documents from Pam's divorce in this van because at one point he had gone down to Tucson to kind of scout out the assets. This is what he told Pam. But he was looking to to find out where Gary might have hidden money, you know what, what his hidden assets were.

So he was down there as a QUASEI investigator and he had checked into a hotel down into Sonia had stayed for eighteen days. He used the name of a dead person to check into the hotel and he was sort of stalking Gary for eighteen days. But those that documentation, the receipts, the rental car receipts, the divorced documentations, was all kept in this van. And so after Ron, I mean,

there's so much involved in this. But Ron eventually steals from Pam, and he steals about three hundred thousand dollars from her, and he believes in his mind that he's entitled to this because he has quote unquote helped Pam with her business, and her business at the time was an astrology business. It was called Star Babies, and so he believed that he was being helpful to her by helping her with her finances, so he took the three

hundred thousand dollars. Pam reports that, not realizing that Ron is the one who is stolen from her, so she reports it to Detective Crowley, who's with the Aspen Police Department, and as Detective Crowley starts investigating this, she Pam realizes that it's Ron who's done this, and so she backs off of the fraud investigation. So Crowley is now on the hunt for Ron. There's a fraud warrant out for him.

Ron takes off from Aspen and he goes back to yur Belinda, California, which is where his parents live, and strangely, he parks this van with all of the paraphernalia from his relationship with Pam. He parks it on a street that's like a block from his parents in ur of Belinda, and he leaves it there and then Ron goes undergrounds. It's Tective Crowley is investigating this fraud investigation. He sees on the news that there's been a bombing in Tucson

and the name Ron Young pops up. Or I don't even know if it's Ron Young, but it's the bombing and there's this investigation, and so he starts to link up with he finds this van and he sees information in the van that links back to that bombing, and so that's when he contacts Detective Gamber and they start this whole investigation and they zero in on Ron as a potential suspect. So it's a very complicated, convoluted thing, but Ron Young is the one that he leads this trail.

It's almost like a handle and Gretel trail, the popcorn that detectives are able to, you know, sort of follow, and as the pieces start to fit together, that's how they start to zero in on him as a possible suspect.

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Go to ZipRecruiter dot com slash murder. We were talking about, Kelly, about the law closing in on Ron Young and Pamela, But meanwhile, you talk about in the book, very very fascinating this years of this investigation going on, but the relationship between Ron Young and Pamela Phillips and their correspondence, So as you do in the book, tell us about some of the conversations and the deteriorating relationship that they have over the years.

has every conversation, every email, everything saved. The one conversation that he does not record is the conversation where the two of them actually conspire to murder Gary Triana, and that was the subject of the trial and just how strange that was that that is not recorded. So that's all sort of a supposition. But what happens is Pam hires Ron to murder Gary, and she tells him, you know,

I've got this two million dollar life insurance policy. I'm going to pay you four hundred thousand dollars to do this, and we're going to be done. What she doesn't realize, and perhaps what Ron doesn't realize, is that you can't just write somebody a check for four hundred thousand dollars and be done with it, because it's going to be traceable.

So they wind up in this crazy situation where Pam has to figure out how she's going to pay him, and so every week they have this dialogue where Ron says, you know, I want you to send did you send me my stuff? Did you send me my things? They never quite name it, but he's got codes for everything, and so he tries to educate her on how to

communicate in code. So he's got these elaborate coded emails that he thinks are going to disguise his whereabouts, and Pam's emails are very telling it, you know, things like pamphillips Meadow, Aspen at yahoo dot com, you know, and so it's almost like a telegraph, you know, here I am, come get me. So Ron is very frustrated with her inability to understand how to be undercover. So that's the

first problem. The second problem is he'll he'll email her and he'll say, you know, did you get me my stuff? I need sixteen or I need fourteen, And so what that means in code language Pam is she has to get him sixteen hundred dollars or fourteen hundred dollars. And the way that she has to do this is so convoluted because you can't just again, you can't just write

a check. So she has to do this elaborate thing where she she'll go to the grocery store, she'll get three hundred dollars cash back, and so that'll be part of the sixteen hundred she's going to send he Ron. So she's doing that, then she's going to five different banks, taking very small increments out of time. So nobody can trace her. Then she drives from Aspen to this little town called the Salt, which is about twenty miles away. She has to drive there in snow and ice conditions.

She goes to a FedEx drop box. She has to use a dead person's name to send it, so you know, she's confused. At one point she says to Ron, I don't understand I'm a dead person. My sender and receiver are the same name. So she's very confused by the whole logistics of getting him money. And meanwhile, when she sends this money to him, she then has to tell him, you know this stuff has been sent. I sent it

on Saturday. So sometimes she misses the sendate and Ron gets angry and you know, contacts her and says, you know, you missed my delivery, my Saturday delivery. So meanwhile, Ron is living as a mole. He's living underground. He doesn't have a driver's license, you know, can't get a job, can barely rent a place. But he's living in an apartment or a hotel room in Florida. And he has to take a taxi to a money order place to

pick up his money. So he's living in this very sparse, almost invisible existence for a very long time, and so Pam over the course of time, really starts to lose her mind. She starts to go crazy because she doesn't want to have this connection anymore to Ron, and she's living in this state of hypervigilance and fear because you know, each communication she has with him is another opportunity for

the law to come down on her. So she will try things, you know, where she won't communicate with him for a couple of weeks, and then it makes Ron completely paranoid and crazy, and he starts communicating more. So then they have these exchanges where they're just they're perpetually locked in their own prison. Which is the biggest irony of this story is that she does this for money

because she thinks money is going to free her. Ron does it for money because he thinks money is going to free him, and yet they wind up locked together forever in this almost horrific parody of a marriage where they cannot get rid of each other. They can't go a day without communicating with each other, and they have to communicate about the same subject over and over, and if one of them tries to leave the other, one holds it over them. So it's almost like this not

only a prison, but almost like a blackmail situation. And so at one point Ron uses that leverage on her and he says, you know, I have so much stuff on you that you're going to wind up in a

woman's prison one day. I'm going to bury you. And so that's the one conversation or recording that nails them both, that links them and nails them, and so yeah, so neither one of them has the freedom that they wanted, and it really is is sort of it's an interesting explose in what happens to people that are so greedy, that live their life dictated and motivated by money.

he can't be late with payments. Incredible exchange between these two people and she after he pleads with her basically, which wasn't his first approach. He doesn't send the money.

a hospital in the United States and be detected. So it's very complicated for him to actually get the procedure done and for him to have the cash that he needs to be able to get it done. So he is very dependent on her. And while he's spiraling, and again, you know, if you want to look at it metaphorically, he's literally being eaten up, eaten from the inside out because the cancer is getting to him. So the stress of being connected to her, the stress of living like

this mole is getting him as literally killing him. And now she has the power to literally let him die off, you know. So now she'll have two murders on her head. So that's that's almost her ticket out, is to be able to let go and just let him be released. And meanwhile, what she's experiencing is even weirder, where she feels like this need to have this sort of catharsis, you know, clear her energy space. She's very much into

Vedic astrology at this point. She's spending thousands of dollars going abroad, going to Peru, going to India to try to get healing treatments so that she can heal her

inner core. And at one point, in another ironic sort of you know, life imitates art moment, she gets she gets a little bit disfigured on her face, and so she goes overseas to try to get healed, to try to get this you know whatever her skin imperfection is off of her face, and she can't do it, and so she's living with almost the you know, when she looks in the mirror, she sees herself becoming uglier and uglier.

And so it's really an interesting, again, an interesting expoisan what not only what greed can do to a person, but what it can do to live with a secret that the two of them share. They are bonded forever over the secret that they have conspire to murder another person. So you know, I guess it's the ultimate story of crime doesn't pay, because ultimately you're going to either die from the stress, die from the fear, you know, or

die from the prison sense itself. So I think in a lot of ways, especially I think for pam when she finally does get arrested, it's almost a relief because now she can stop living the fly, she can stop running. She's caught, and she can finally just sort of be this crazy person that she's become and be left alone in a cell. And it's a very interesting portrait of what happens to the human condition when they're put in these extreme situations.

And yet that was the added pressure as well. Now as you do you talk about we get back to America's Most Wanted and what the producers and the police met as a result. This was produced in February first, two thousand and five, but it was aired November nineteenth, two thousand and five. So tell us as a result what happened, and tell us about the arrest of Ron.

go in and he would have his chiropractor appointment. But what happened was he stopped paying his chiropractor. And so when America Most Wanted aired, you know it was it was a brilliant move on Detective Gamber's part, and it was also executed in a way that I think it's

sort of unprecedented for that show. And it really happened as a result of the connection he had with Jay Dobbins and all of the media attention that Jay Dobbins was getting for the Health Angels case, and so they were able to get it aired on the show quickly.

And because of the national attention that I got, the chiropractor's office and his chiropractors saw this, saw the you know the episode, contacted America's most wanted and said he's my client and by the way, he hasn't paid my bill and and ps he has an appointment scheduled, and so they were able to come in and arrest him at his scheduled appointment based on that tip and that lead.

likes to take credit for things. He wants people to know that he's the one that orchestrated this, that he's the one that you know, is the mastermind in things. And so he goes into this elaborate detail with the detectives about how you know, he's a gun efficient, he's like either sold you know, things to high powered people.

He paints himself up as this almost larger than life character and it's it's almost to the point of ridiculousness, and it gets him in trouble because prior to him being arrested for this case, he's he's arrested and in custody with a cellmate who becomes a key player in this case, and the cellmate, Andre Mim, is sort of known as the jailhouse lawyer. Ron starts to blab and brag to Andre Mim about how he orchestrated a bombing.

He doesn't go into great detail about who it was, but he says, you know, I'm the one that did that, and he insinuates that he's the one that may have been involved in another bombing in Colorado. So he creates this larger than life profile for himself, which ultimately is his undoing because he has to be recognized. You know, he doesn't want to live in this mole existence anymore,

and this is his opportunity to shine. So that's his undoing, is his sort of braggadocio profiler persona with the detective that is not only bizarre but also kind of nails his coffin.

sh try to link these two together. They link them financially, they have a forensic financial person come in and sort of track the money. They link them through the recordings. They link them through one recording in in particular, which is where they're talking or Ron talks about you know, you'll you'll find yourself or when you're sitting in a woman's prison. You know, they're gonna find all of this stuff, or they're they'll find all of the secrets that have

been buried. And so they start to piece it together because the one thing that Ron was pretty clever about is, you know, he had this coded language with Pam. So they they had a lot of circumstantial evidence, but they didn't have anything necessarily the smoking gun, and so, you know, so they they pieced it together and they and these were the very these were the few audio recordings that actually exposed it, because again, Ron needed to be recognized.

He didn't he wasn't gonna go down, you know, the down with the flagship and not be known that she also involved. So that's how they wind up piecing it together and sort of linking her back to that. It's a process of sifting through a lot of this information because you I mean, the thing that they were stumped about was how did she do this because she wasn't a bomb maker, you know, she was more bombshell than bombmaker. How did she orchestrate this from Aspen? And what was

her motive? I mean, the motive I think was pretty obvious. It was money. But you know, there were all of these sort of movable parts as they were trying to piece it together and find her. And then of course by this time, she had already disappeared to Europe. She had some at least one child in Europe at the time, and so they believed that she had gone to maybe visit with her child, but she winds up falling right back into the lifestyle that she had been so successful

at in the United States. She finds a wealthy man in Austria and starts living in sort of a penthouse lifestyle, which again is very unusual because you would think she'd want to go underground, but she didn't. And so things start to to circulate in through the international channel. So Inner Pol picks up a bulletin on her, and ironically enough, she is caught in a very similar fashion to Ron

because her limousine driver turns her in. She doesn't pay her limousine driver, and so she's sort of wanted for petty theft over there. And so when that catches up to the Inner Pol bulletin, now they've got their suspect, and so they capture her in Vienna and they keep her in Vienna. And the complication for the case in the United States is they originally the mac County wants the death penalty, so they won't extradite as long as

there's the death penalty in place. So they had quite you know, another couple of years where they could bring her over. They had they had extradition proceedings, and then eventually they they dropped the death penalty, and so she winds up coming over, but even more complicated than that. Originally Pema County, it Tourneys office, wasn't going to prosecute. It was almost an insurmountable odd you know, to get her over here and to you know, build the case

against Pam. And so the children begin, Gary's children and Robin's child come together in a civil lawsuit and they win in a civil lawsuit. It's a wrongful death civil lawsuit. They win ten million dollars, so all of Pam's assets are frozen. And because they win on the civil case, that drives the criminal case. And it's almost this this theory that you know, Pema County is not going to

They're not. They have to prosecute. Now there's no way that you know, they can lose, so they can, the civil case can win, and then there's no criminal case, no companion criminal case. So that's what kind of fuels it. And then they they bring her over after they drop the death penalty. So very complicated case all the way around.

other you know theory. But so she presents herself as she's mentally ill, she doesn't know what's going on, she's completely innocent, no idea why she's incarcerated, and so her defense team has to take her through Rule eleven competency proceedings, and so she's tied up in competency proceedings for a number at least a year while before they can even bring her to stand trial. So, you know, she's really

pretty delusional when she's talking to her lawyers. But you know, you always wonder is it crazy like a fox again or is she really delusional? So they had to kind of sift through that before they could actually bring her to trial.

he needs. He's clearly in recovery mode. He goes to trial and he's convicted, of course, and he's winding up in the appellate process, but he gets a The judge sentences him to double consecutive life sentences, which is actually an illegal sentence, and so on appeal it's corrected and it's still a life sentence, but it can't you know, the judge was just so incensed at the end of the trial that he was trying to give him, you know, the maximum maximum that you could possibly get, because it

was such a heinous crime and it's left such a human debris in the making.

she even goes to trial. So that's a pro for the defense team as they try to build their case and make sure that she gets a fair trial. Then courtroom itself is a circus. When I attended even Ron Young's trial, it was a circus. It was a very interesting scenario for me because I'm also a defense lawyer, so and I practice up in Maricopa County, and it's very different. I don't know if this is a typical thing or if this is just for their trial, But

the whole courtroom was cordoned off with sections. So the victim's family attended almost every day of trial at Ron's trial, and I have no doubt that they did that at Pam's trial as well. But the whole, almost the entire courtroom was reserved for them. It was a very large family, and then there was a piece of it reserved for the press and for cameras and journalists, and then there was a very very almost standing room only for any public person that wanted to come in. So it was

an unusual setting in that regard. It almost reminded me a little bit of the Jodiarius trial up in Phoenix that happened recently. But so I think for Pam to get any type of you know, I think that was the concern of the defenses. Are we going to get a fair trial for Pam because it's just so everybody already has an opinion formed on this, you know, I imagine trying to pick a jury for that, and then they had to come up with a different defense obviously than than Ron's.

conversation that they had had years earlier. And so she became sort of the smoking gun for the prosecution where she just came out there and said, yeah, you know, Pam and I had this conversation. And so I think that was a surprise to Pam, certainly because they could

find her. There were also a number of nannies that testified that I think sealed Pam's coffin and Ron's coffin, but more so Pam's obviously were one in particular, Kevin McDonald testified that that Pam was absolutely living the life of a social lighte was, you know, had probably more than just a business relationship with Ron. That she was

that Ron was against type. It didn't make sense that she was with Ron because she normally went for the very attractive, swanky, rich, wealthy men and Ron was not that. So that also cast suspicion on that, so it was it was interesting. And then they they brought in you know, there the defense for Pam was that it was Neil McNeice that you know, was actually the killer, so they they cast light on that and and Gary's dealings with Neil McNeese, so there was it was a different case.

Pam's case was different than Ron's, but but certainly more involved.

obviously no makeup. She looked very much like, uh would call it, like a frenetic bird, not really seeming to understand what was going on in the courtroom. Whether that was an act or not, it remains to be seen. The interesting thing about Pam and there was one story where someone had described her. It was very early on in her divorce to Gary, where you know, you take this woman that's dressed to the nines, very well put together, would never be seen without you know, makeup and dulled up.

But she arrives at the courthouse dressed very frumpy, very dowdy, her hair in a bun, sensible shoes, sort of a dress that made her look like a bag. This was her demeanor in court. So it was almost like she was chameleon like. She would dress the part and so or other people would like to surmise that that was actually her true character. It was sort of a like the old story of the witch, you know, the witch who's was coming out out of her her magic spell, and this is.

a career ending case. He retired after this, and I think it just it left, you know, the family destroyed.

Nobody came out a winner in this, and so I think it was one of those cases that you know, people come back to again and again, and certainly this program has is because it's really an interesting insight into what happens to people when you know, it's almost like be careful what you wish for, you know, you know, the two of them murdered for money and wound up poppers, and they wound up in a prison of their own making, and so so you know, was it worth it? No?

You know, it just it led to this path of destruction that you know, now they both kind of got what they deserved.

some kind of piece. In this case, it's very unsettling because you have a victim who you know, he may have been larger than life and very dynamic and very magnetic personality, but hard to say whether he was sympathetic or well liked. He was, you know, embroiled in a lot of stuff, a lot of illegal activity, and he did some not very nice things and I think that all of that got highlighted in this very public arena.

And so yeah, that is one of the strange things about this case and why I actually chose to write it from the point of view of the two sociopaths, because there wasn't It's not a typical case where you have the profile of the victim and you bring out that sort of sympathy and emotional reaction in the reader or the audience or the people watch in this case, so you have to decide how you're going to approach it. And so yeah, in the end of the day, it almost leaves you sort of hollow, and you.

And so I think that you know, Gamber has to find a way to come to terms with that. I mean, he wasn't even recognized in his own department, you know, And I mean he didn't even get the accolades or the credit that he deserved. I think I describe in the book there's an awards ceremony that's given and he doesn't even want to attend. You know, there's nothing rewarding about it. It just sort of took a toll on everybody.

was going through this. So I was working that mindful of what I felt like I could disclose and not disclose in the writing of the book, because I didn't want to unravel a ten year investigation by exposing something that may not be admissible in court. I was fortunate enough to be given access to this treasure trove of information.

I mean, from a writer slash journalist perspective, it was incredible to be able to sit there and listen to recordings and come up with a profile and formulate a way to sift through this information to make it a story that was compelling enough for people to want to

read it. I mean, it was truly remarkable, and I should mention I mean I lived in Phoenix at the time, so I was driving to Tucson three times a week, spending six or seven hours at a time in the police department going through that evidence, and going to the appellate court and going through that evidence. You know, it

was just an astronomical undertaking at the time. But the case was absolutely fascinating, and it really played to a lot of my strengths because, you know, as a capital lawyer, I was doing a lot of that kind of work, going behind the scenes investigating, you know, So it was playing to my strengths that way, and I just found the case so compelling for so many different angles, not only from the perspective of the two sociopaths, but also from you know, the perspective of being able to bring

the experience of Detective Gamber to light. Because I don't think that that's delved into very much in books. You know just what he was going through, so it was very it was a very interesting experience.

Tucson high roller Kelly. For those people that might want to check out other work or is there a Facebook page, tell us how they might contact you or look at other works that you have done.

to air, but sometime in March. I believe put out by Jupiter prorections.