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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about him Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. 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. Discover the dark side of human nature with Blood on the Tracks. This true crime book takes you on a journey through the most heinous murder cases in history, including unsolved mysteries that will leave you wondering. Each story is expertly researched and crafted to provide a captivating account of the events leading up to the crime and the investigation that followed. From the infamous Thanksgiving massacre to the shocking case of the vanishing bride and groom to the
unbelievable story of a dominatrix center doppelganger. Blood on the Tracks leaves no stone unturned. As you turn each page, you'll feel the tension and suspense build as you try to piece together the clues and solve the case alongside the investigators. Don't miss out on this captivating journey through the world of murder and mystery. The book that we're featuring this evening is Blood on the Tracks, Real life tales of murder and Mystery with my special guests, journalist
and author Rod Cackley. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview, Rod Cackley.
Bie, Dan, thanks a lot for having me. I appreciate it.
Welcome back. Thank you so much for this interview for this new edition Blood on the Tracks. First off, and in the introduction, we talked about that this true crime book takes us on a journey through the most heinous murder cases in history, including unsolved mysteries that will leave you wondering. I might seem obvious, but what was the criteria for this book and what are some just a couple of the infamous murderers that are featured.
Well, I think, Dan, what I was really looking at. Here are stories of murder that could happen to you. Quite honestly, you brush up in this book against crimes that could happen to you or someone you love that could happen in your neighborhood. Like the first one we were going to talk about, the murder of Ashley Wadsworth, is the story of a young girl who goes to England to meet the man she fell in love with online. And another thing is usually the killers in these stories,
the criminals, they're first timers. Okay, these are not people for the most part, who have killed before, or maybe have not even committed a serious crime before, certainly not a felony. We do look at others who are serial killers in this book, but all stories of crimes that could happen to you or someone you love.
Let's talk about the murder of Ashley Wadsworth for the very first story. How you say so not involving infamous serial killers whatsoever. And you talk about this Ashley Wadsworth from Vernon, British Columbia, Canada. And they had met when she was twelve and he was fifteen and just a platonic relationship online. He lived in Essex County in England and she lived in Vernon, b C. Like I had mentioned,
and so they had this online relationship. Tell us at what point this relationship changes and as as far as a trip that she is going to go and venture on to England to meet Jack. Simple.
When she turned nineteen, Dan Ashley got a six month visa to meet Jack in person. She flew from Canada to England. This happened during her gap year, and at first it was just as amazing as idyllic as she could have. This is right out of a storybook to begin with. But then Jack a guy who's a big guy, one of the thick necked kind of guys. Big shoulders. I mean, the shoulders are so big you almost have to look at him one at a time. Okay, heavily
tattooed arm. She sent some pictures back online to her friends and family in Canada that showed she and Jack were having a great time. But quickly everything goes wrong. Jack turns violent, she lashes out at Ashley. Then Ashley starts sending messages back home, writing in code because Jack is monitoring everything. She writes, everything, she texts and tweets back home. He's monitoring all of it. So he's a very controlling individual. Now he's become very controlling. He's psychologically,
mentally and even physically abusive toward Ashley. She's on a six month visa. She has no way to go at home. He's got her tickets home. She can't just fly back, so she's got to live this out. She's got to get through this somehow.
He also resorts to she had made some friends while she was on this brief trip, and now this trip was going to be cut short. She was planning to stay till April, but now she was making plans to cut this trip short, and she was going to leave February third. But in the interim, she also was sending messages to friends she had met in England to warn them to try to get them to contact police because she was afraid of Jack and afraid of this impending leading sooner than she had planned.
Yeah, two days before she was going to go home on the third. On the first, February one, twenty twenty two, Ashley walks to a neighbor's house, knocks at the door, and as soon as the door opens, Ashley tells the person inside that she's afraid Jack is going to kill her. The neighbor, of course, was concerned to walk Ashley back to Jack's apartment, even though that Ashley said she was afraid Jack is going to kill her. Then go back to Jack's apartment, and there Jack assures the neighbor that
he and Ashley had simply had a lover's quarrel. Everything's okay and there was nobody and she was not in danger at all. Well, then Ashley grabs Jack's Facebook account to send messages back home, or rather to people she'd met in England and pleading for their help. He wanted them to dial nine nine nine, the number four police assistants in England. A couple of the friends in Essex. They come to Jack's apartment to check on Ashley. They knock on the door, but the door does not open,
so they called nine nine nine four police assistance. Meanwhile, a fight breaks out in the apartment. Neighbors can hear the sounds of this horrendous fight and they too start calling nine nine nine police arrive. Jack won't let them in the apartment. He refuses to even answer the door. The police officers are forced to use a battering ram to get inside.
Yeah, Well, they use a battering ram and they find Jack alive, but Ashley dead.
Ashley's dead. She's in bed, laying in the bed Assex police talk to Jack at the time when they broke in. They find Ashley dead, they find Jack alive. But what's Jack doing. He's on a FaceTime Paul to his sister, showing her the body. Credible, He's showing Ashley's body on FaceTime to his sister. And as there ought is a god awful, bloody mess. Ashley was stabbed ninety times. The autompsy would show Ashley suffered stab wounds to her stomach, liver, lungs,
and heart. Her face, neck, legs, and arms were bruised. Jack immediately, you know, Jack offers no explanation to the police except to say, I'm sorry. I strangled her and I stabbed her. I went psychotic.
Yeah, incredible, no explanation whatsoever. Let's talk about another extraordinary tale, the murder of Sidney Sutherland. And this is August eighteenth, twenty twenty Jackson County, Arkansas, a place called Tuckerman, and this is Sydney. She did this. Has come back from a little I guess, a little vacation, little trip her and her family. And Sidney is a dedicated runner and decides to go for a run down this country road
forty one. He's a twenty five year old. And then you write about Meanwhile, a guy named Quake Lillowin is also on Jackson County Road number forty one. He's twenty eight years old. Tell us about this intersection of these two people. They had gone to the same little high school. They sort of knew each other, but not very well. Tell us what happens that one day on Jackson County Road for forty one.
Yeah, Tuckerman is one of those small towns where everybody knows a little bit about everybody else. So they knew each other. They were familiar with each other. They had been in the same high school at the same time, but they weren't really close. However, as we'll find out, Wake wanted to be a lot closer to Sydney than Sydney ever imagined him to be. Now, these two, their lives are not going on a parallel course, even though they live in the same town and they're about the
same age. Quake is working for his family's business. They owned rice fields, and rice fields are very big in Arkansas. His whole day involves driving around in a GMC pickup trucks checking the rice farms his family's rice farm in Arkansas, checking the wells and the rice field. So that's what he's doing on County Road forty one. Now, Sydney is about to begin the second chapter of her life. She's just passed her boards and is now a registered nurse
at Unity Harris Medical Center. So she's going off in a different path, of professional path, if you will, and she's going out for something she does every day. She's going to run on Jackson County Road forty one.
Now.
As you said, she and her family just got back from a vacation in Florida and they still had a cargo unpack and laundry to do. Her mom, Maggie, begged Sydney not to run this day for some reason. She said, we've been gone, you need to rest. You just did an hour long hard workout. She worked out with a train or too. She's very physically involved. But Sydney would not change her mind. She would not listen to her mom. She went out for this run because, as Sydney put it,
it just releases me. So she's on County Road forty one running. Quake is on County Road forty one driving his pickup truck. While Sidney was a high school cheerleader, Blonde Beautiful Quake was one of those middle of the road see student kids, but doesn't attract a lot of attention, either good nor bad. So they've got that too. Quake's mother and father divorced when he was young. She remarried. He is close to his stepfather, a real father figure
in his life. No history of violence. There's another thing I was talking about. With most of the criminals in this book, I put together, he has no history of violence. One fight at junior high, but that's kind of you know, that could be typical. Got through high school without any serious problems. So now he and Sydney are going to intersect. Their lives will intersect County Road forty one. He sees
her running. He recognizes her immediately. He passes Sydney. They were Facebook friends for a while, so they know each other, but they're not close howls or anything. He turns his truck around after passing her while she's jogging on the County Road forty one. He drives back towards her, but then there's a cloud of dust that kicks up and he can't see Sydney anymore. She disappears. Quake feels the impact he hits her. I don't know if you've very hit a deer on the road, but it's quite similar
to that, I guess. Quake kicks Sydney with his pickup truck. He, though, is not sure what happens. Of course, he's hoping that the worst hasn't happened. He gets out of his truck to investigate, and he finds Sydney. He kneels down beside her broken body, asking if she's okay. She does not respond or Quake freaks out. He's out of his mind again. Nothing like this has ever happened to him, And what's he do? Does he run to a farmhouse for help, maybe grab his phone and call ninety one one?
No, he does not.
He picks up Sydney's broken body, puts her corpse in the bed of this pickup truck, and drives off. He's not looking for medical help. He's sure the woman is dead.
Now what happens? He's still working. He's still on his shift, so feels compelled to continue his shift. So he finishes his shift, and then he goes home to a stepfather's house and has dinner.
No, actually he goes to his house to have dinner. He goes to his family's home. He and his wife and her kids, who how he treats as his own. Now, Quake now is hoping that if he ignores this, if he forgets about it, it will be like it never happened. Okay. So he takes the body, and as we write in the book, he undresses the corpse and messes around with it before burying it in a shower grave. But now he's hoping that if he can forget about all this,
that it will never have happened. Okay. So he goes home like nothing special is going on. He sits down with his wife and step kids and his parents home and where he does live with his parents and his step parents, as he said, and cleans up, takes a shower, has dinner, and then after they finish, his father calls. His father says, you know everybody's talking about Sidney Sutherland. She's disappeared. Have you seen her? If you've heard she
was missing, did you know that she disappeared? And Quake says, I have not heard the stories, but I did see Sydney running on County Road forty one. It looked like she was going home. After that, he goes to bed again. He's going His plan is that he's going to pretend that this didn't happen.
Now you write that Quake. Meanwhile, Sidney's boyfriend calls Sydney's mother, Maggie, and he's in concern that she's not returning his calls, and Maggie calls Sydney and there's a voicemail, and the mother knows that something is wrong. Around seven pm, she calls police, and you write that news of the disappearance
spreads quickly across northeast Arkansas and detectives start investigating. Tell us about how the parents get involved in doubting their son in the first place, and that how that leads to the word getting out that he had actually seen Sydney that day running and which led to more and more questions.
Yeah, there is, as he said, no sign of Sydney. This is August twentieth. Now, Sam, her boyfriend, gets a call from a friend. He tells him that Quake might know something. The friend says, Quake told me he saw Sydney running south on County Road forty one two days ago, like she was heading home. And if that's true, it means Quake was the last one to see Sydney alive, or last one to see Sydney. Nobody now knows she's dead yet, except for Quake. They go out. The troopers
go out to the field where to search. They find Sydney's stone in a field about a mile from the Sutherland family home. Unfortunately, that's the only good news today. If ground search shows nothing, they've exhausted all of their leads. Well, Maggie and her friends turn out. Hundreds of people actually turn out to search for Sydney. They find nothing, But you know what happens when they're searching, Maggie looks over and sees Quake standing by a tree. Maggie knows something's off.
It's like he's lurking there. She goes over to talk to him and says, and she knows that Sam's friend said that Quake might have been the last person to see Sydney the day she disappeared. And Maggie asks Quake if she can tell him, if he can tell her anything, like what was Sidney doing? Did you meet anybody? Was she with anyone? Quake said no, she was just running. But you didn't see her, right, Maggie says, And Quake doesn't speak, but he just nods to indicate the answer
is yes. And he just says all she was doing was running. Well, then Maggie can't think of anything else to say, but at the same time, she doesn't believe Quake is telling her the truth. She's about to ask one more question. Quake steps forward. Now, Quake is a very big.
Guy, all right.
He's like well over six feet tall. He's like three hundred pounds. He's a big dude. He walks up and gives Maggie a hug. It's not like a full embrace. It's just like a quick, embarrassed squeeze, like two strangers, perhaps two people who haven't seen each other in a long time. And that really flips Maggie out. She just like is shivering as Quake walks away. She just knows
something is going on here involving Quake. Now, Quake's father, as you said, his father gets suspicious because he knows Quake was driving on the road where Sydney was last scene. And again he asks Quake if he knows anything about what happened. And Quake's mother is suspicious too. So the first thing they do is Quake and his father go to the Arkansas State Police Post to talk to detectives there and they give troopers permission to search the truck.
They have no lawyer now, they just give him permission, the troopers rather permission to search the truck. Both Quake's father and mother are suspicious at this time.
As you said, the forensic team goes to work. He gives permission to search the vehicle. So and is what do they find? The forensic team when they search that vehicle.
They find blood in the cracks of the truck's tailgate, and they find a dent in the front of the twenty nineteen GMC pickup truck. The blood in the tailgate that's where he put her body. That's where he put Sydney's body after he picked her up off the road. So that's where the blood comes from. And the dent obviously makes them suspicios as well. And then Crestin Hutton, who's a senior special agent on this from the Arkansas State Police, he takes a look at Quigg's phone and
Quake it hands it over to him. Again, no lawyer, president, right, That's another thing in this book. You'll find that a lot of these the criminals in this they don't have lawyers with them. They don't Hutton tabs the Life three sixty phone app on Quig's phone. He traces Quigg's movements on the nineteenth, and that shows that he and Sidney were very close together according to what Sidney's phone showed.
There's also the app leads them very close to the point a few yards from where they'll find her corpse buried in the field. But at this shallow gravesite troopers see footprints from the same kinds of boots that he would wear at work and that he was wearing at the time.
Yeah, right, exactly, He's actually wearing the same boot still, so again, he's obviously not a hard and criminal who knows how to beat the system. They read him as Miranda writes. The app leads them to just a few yards from where they will find Sidney's corps eventually buried in the field. They read him as Miranda writes. He can't handle the guilt. He confesses it all. He says it was all just a blur. I didn't kill her on purpose. He's asked, why didn't you call nine to
one one. Quaid says that I don't know. I was just scared.
You have the idea too, that at the same time, Sam and Maggie worrying about their daughter. In a group of searchers searching for their daughter. Sam gets a call from Sheriff Lucas. Doesn't he yes.
Sheriff Lucas calls with one of the toughest calls he's ever had to make. As you said, Maggie, Sam, and hundreds of people, they're back on County Road forty one this morning. They're on their hands and knees, literally crawling looking for clues that might show that Sidney was at least there. One of the women there, one of the friends, says, explains it explains the hundreds of people who showed up
by saying Jackson County is just this way. We just want her to be safe, referring to Sydney, of course, and to be found. And finally Maggie shouts, I have a bea from a necklace. He finds a bead from the necklace that she knows Sidney was wearing, so she knows Sidney had been in that area. But then, as he said, Sheriff Lucas calls Sam's phone, and Lucas won't tell him why they need to talk. He just says, Sam, you and Maggie the whole family. Please get everyone together,
we need to talk. So there they have to get into Sam's car and they drive to the Jackson County Sheriff's office, which had to be the longest, most difficult drive of Sam's life. He knows in his heart what they're going to hear. There's only one reason that Sheriff Lucas would be calling them. If he'd found Sydney alive, he would have shouted that over the phone, but he didn't. So they know. They know what Sheriff Lucas is going to tell them, but they have to drive to his
office to hear it. And there Sheriff Lucas does perform the sad duty of explaining that Sydney has been found dead.
He does psych evaluation, but he's found fortunately fit to stand trial. And then he is, as you write, he is sentenced to life in prison without parole. And he said he will die in prison.
Right essentially, Yeah, And then you write about the victims statements and overpass on US sixty seven in Jackson County will be named in honor of Sydney Sutherland.
Yeah, that's what our local officials decided to do. The very emotional ceremony when they announced it, and Maggie at the time said, well, at least she will never be forgotten. We know that she will never be forgotten because of the plants that they're going to put up on that road.
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Now let's get to this next story. And it's Thanksgiving massacre. And you write this in an interesting style where you have an exciting, vivid scene right at the very beginning, and you say, this is how the story ended, and this is nine am, just after nine am, July fifteenth, twenty ten. Tell us about this tractor trailer rig and what it's doing and who's inside.
A tractor trailer rig. Yeah, now I will tell you Dan before we really get going here. This was a story that was very personal to me. I didn't know any of the people involved, but I lived in the area where this happened, Muskegan, Michigan, where the murder happened, so I was there, you know, kind of watching it from afar the whole time. Now Here, it's twenty ten July fifteenth, nine o'clock in the morning, Like you said, a tractor trailer rig, big and powerful as they come.
It's racing toward the razor wiretop double chain link fence that's surrounding the Kinioss Correctional Facility in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Three convicted killers are inside that truck. They hijack this truck and they're hurtling toward the fence a desperate bid for freedom. They commandeered the rig. They overpowered the trucks driver got behind the wheel, ram through the gears and
put the pedal down to the middle. This is like something you'd see in a high, high octane action adventure movie, but it really happened in the Upper Peninsula on this morning, July fifteenth, twenty ten. Prisoners. These guys are all in for life. They are going to spend the rest of their life in prison. So what do they have to lose. They have the weapons and the guards weapons that they took.
The truck hits the fence after about one hundred yards and gets wrapped up in the chain link fenced comes to a screeching halt. The convicts inside do everything they tend to bust the truck out of the fencing, but it's no use. They run for it. Two of them, Brian Davison, convicted of beating a man to death, and Andrew Ross, who killed his parents and older brother, are quickly captured. But the third, Seth Pravaki, who the story
is really about, shot in the head and dies almost instantly. Ironic, I write, because Seth admitted to killing four members of his family and his brother's girlfriend by shooting each of them one after another in the head, and that's how the story ends.
Then you write, this is how the story begins, and you go to the last day of Thanksgiving weekend November twenty ninth, nineteen ninety eight, and you write that Seth Privokes is angry. He's eighteen years old and he's been arguing with his father. And you say, in fact, his father, Steven, who teaches fifth grade, threatens to kick Seth out of the family home in Dalton Township near Muskegon, Michigan. And he's six foot four and his parents described him as
a good kid. But he's been some trouble lately. He's been using drugs booze, weed, LSD and then speed and then he starts selling drugs. Tell us about this Thanksgiving day that everything goes wrong.
Yeah, it's the last day of Thanksgiving weekend. He has been fighting with a his father. His dad's threatened to kick him out of the house. I mean, he is a very troubled kid, as you say. One time he broke the family's dishwasher by standing on it. He's a big guy, six foot four. He's been a real problem for the family. But now this is they're going to have a late Thanksgiving dinner. It's the last day of a holiday. At about one point thirty in the afternoon,
they're getting ready. The whole family's coming over. Now, Seth has been caught shoplift and he has had trouble. Okay, so let's get that in there too. But his mother, Linda, who's a receptionist at a medical office, is showering. His father, Stephen, is out of the house. Stephen went to pick up his father, Seth's grandfather, John Fravaki, and brought him to bring him back to the house. From the celebration, Seth's nineteen year old brother, Jedediah, is in the basement watching TV,
waiting for his girlfriend, April Boss to arrive. That's the family scene. Everybody's getting ready for this late Thanksgiving dinner. Obviously, no one has any idea of what's going to happen. Well, while Jedediah is in the basement washing the television, Beth walks up behind him carrying their father's loaded twenty two ruger. He points the gun at the back of Jedediah's head, pulls the trigger, killing his brother instantly. Then Seth, here's
his father's car pulling up at the driveway. He waits with that ruger as John and Stephen Pravaki walk from the driveway to the house. Steth opens fire, killing both men. Even shoots John twice to make sure his grandfather is really dead. Now Linda. While this is happening, Linda's still upstairs in the shower. Beth hears her turn off the water, so he goes up to the hallway outside the bathroom door. As soon as his mom walks out of the bathroom,
he shoots her dead too. That's it. The family's gone. But then Beth, here's the front door opening and then closing. Hohovidappy, it's April April boss, his brother's girlfriend. Beth decides there can be no witnesses, and he shoots her dead too. Now, he's an eighteen year old who has a history of minor like shoplifting, that kind of thing. All of a sudden, he's a guy who stays with the problem of what do you do with five courses?
So what does he do?
You say that he calls his best friend Stephen Wallace.
Yeah, he calls his best friend Steven and says, hey, I've done it and I need your help. What Stephen do? He goes over to the privacy home as soon as he can, Death tells Stephen they have to get the bodies out of the house. They go to work, but then they realize how heavy a dead body is and they've got five of them, five dead bodies to move. Moving all five, Seth realizes it's going to be next to impossible, so he comes up with a new plan.
Beth decides they need to make it look like a robbery that went wrong bought since all five were shot him the head at near point blank range. Deth decides he needs to get some duct tape to make it look like they were all bound, gagged, and then executed, so he drives out to the grocery store to get the tape. First, though, he picks up some spent shellcasings off the floor, and on his way to the store, Seth passes the shellcasings into a gas station garbage can.
Steven meanwhile drives ten miles down the road to a pond and hosses the gun and the clip Seth used to kill his family into the water. Now, after taking care of that crime hiding business, what does Stephen do? He goes to a Blockbuster video store and returns a movie that he rented a few days earlier. And then, and only then, Stephen goes to a church youth group meeting. Yes, after a few hours, they get back to the barvacci abode. Now a house of death, and it's time to move
the bodies into position. After liberally applying duct tape to the corpses, Steth decides that if it was a robbery and five people paid for it with their lives, something of value has to be disappeared. It has to be a robbery, right, So he takes one of the family's television sets outside and puts it in a car and they're going to drive it away somewhere so that TV
will be gone. Now, they're working on the bodies inside the house and one of them decides to go outside to deal with the body of Seth's father, which is still lying dead in the driveway. Wow, it's about midnight now, remember this all I started at about one thirty in the afternoon, and it's a pretty cool to twelve eleven hours later. Now, at that moment, Julie Cooper and her
husband Tom pulled into the Vacci's driveway. They're looking for Julie's daughter April April Boss, the girlfriend who failed to show up for her third ship job and Julie. As she and Tom pull into the driveway, they see a tall man leaning over what looks like a dead person's body. Their eyes meet Julie the man and he runs off. Well, her heart's in her throat. Julie calls nine to one one. She tells the dispatcher she thinks she's found a dead body.
She also tells the dispatcher that she's really worried because my daughter's car is here. The first thing's first, you know, Julie. The dispatcher says, how do you know he's dead? This person? How do you know this person's dead? And Julie sobs because he's filled with blood, he's cold, and he's not moving. He tells the police the need to look for a tall man with a plaid shirt and light colored pants.
They say he also dropped a flashlight. Now, Julie and Tom do not wait for the police because they're worried about April. They go into the house. They turn the lights on, and they spot a trail of blood going through the house and the garage. They're still on the phone with the dispatcher Julia's they walk through the house. Now they stop, they know that blood is there. The sheriffs are on the way, The deputies are on the way,
flashing lights and sirens. Now, this is a very rural area. Okay, we're out in the country now, so lights and silence is on usual. It's not like you're in a city where you kind of hear police all the time. Now, this wakes up everybody in Muskegan County. The sheriff's deputies turn out in force. They go inside the house. Then they find the bodies. Five bodies schedule, there's five. There's the grandfather's outside, but the other four are inside. Blood
is splashed and sprayed everywhere. The county Prosecutor, Tony Tagg says it's the most serious and vicious attack on a household that he has ever witnessed. Tony Tagg is a very interesting guy too. We used to call him TV Tony because he'd loved to be interviewed on TV. Did any of the dead ever have a chance? No, they did not. There are no signs that any of the
dead struggled or fought to live. Tony says each of the killings resulted from a brutal execution style death, and he says the shooting occurred with a definite plan of shooting all five. Well, now they're looking for Seth because he's missing. They're also looking for Stephen Wallace, and they catch up with him rather quickly. They find him walking out of the woods and he says that he has a story to tell them, and then he proceeds to
tell the deputies what Seth has done. Now they found him in the woods outside the house, and that triggers a man like Muskegan County has never seen before. Again, this is a rural area, relatively low crime rate outside of the city of Muskegan. Seth stayed on the run for thirteen hours before they finally got him.
You say that at first he blames Jebediah, but quickly he is in and confesses, doesn't.
He Yeah, right again, this is someone who's now used to dealing with the police on something as serious as this, and he did to blame Jedediah, but then he finally did confess, and plain's his father never had a good thing to say about him, and his brother and mother had turned against him too, so he just went ballistic and started telling the family. That's the way he explained it.
Yes, he was sentenced to five counts of life without parole. But the interesting thing is Stephen was charged as an accessory after the fact, but acquitted by a jury in nineteen ninety nine, and this sounds familiar. The only reason he did it because he feared for his life.
Yeah, but you know that's right, said he feared for his life. But then again, he had plenty of opportunities to get out of this. I mean, he goes to return to tape, he goes to a youth group. He could have talked to the cops any time.
But he didn't. He came back. Certainly, that's Jesus as an opportunity to stop for a second. To hear from our sponsor. There is no perfect diet, and it's virtually impossible to get all the required nutrients you need from your diet, and so Ritual can help fill the gaps. Ritual has made a multi vitamin that helps you focus on what's important, filling key nutrient gaps to support your
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three months. Visit ritual dot com slash murder to start ritual or as Essential for Women eighteen plus to your subscription today. Now, the next story that we are focusing on is the Torso killer confesses And this starts off in February fifteen, nineteen sixty eight. This story with a woman named Diane Cusick and she was going to the Green Acres Mall in Nassau County, New York by dancing shoes. Hours later, her parents were concerned she hadn't come home,
so they drove to the mall. Can you take it from there? What happened?
Yeah, they drove to the mall, drove to the shopping center, and they found Diane's Plymouth Valiant in the mall's parking lot. Hearing the worst they look inside the vehicle, and they make a Horrifyon discovery, they see their daughter's body, her corpses in the backseat of the car and adh'es a band is over her mouth and her hands are tied together. Diane had been strangled to death. She was pronounced deceased at one forty am on February sixteenth, nineteen sixty eight.
And this is not the story of the kind of guy you never would think would do anything like this. This is the story of one of America's most prolific serial killers, Richard Cottingham. He confessed in twenty twenty two that he killed Diane back in nineteen sixty eight, and he also admitted to killing four other women.
He right that.
Cottingham is now seventy six years old and he's in poor health. So this is almost like a deathbed confession, at least for people trying to get information from him.
Yeah, exactly. And now he would become known as the Torso Killer because of the gruesome way he butchered the victims' bodies. He started killing young women and girls in nineteen sixty sevent he said, and he didn't stop until nineteen eighty. So far at least say he spattered at least seventeen in New York and New Jersey, and that's
only the ones that the cops know about. Cottingham is bragged in twenty in two thousand and nine that he committed at least eighty murders and maybe as many as one hundred, as he put it, perfect murders across the USA, and all of the victims female. In twenty fourteen, Cottingham started confessing her Maybe he was bragging, you know, as he said, it's kind of like a deathbed confession. But then again, I'm thinking maybe he just wants a chance to have one more walk in the limelight, you know,
as he sees it. Maybe he's bragging whatever. He told the New Jersey Bergen County Prosecutor's office that he killed three teenage girls between sixty eight and sixty nine, in addition to the people that he had already said he killed. One was a girl by the name of Jackie Harp, only thirteen years old, when he ambushed the child as she walked home from school band practice. She was strangled to death with the leather strap of her school bag.
Another girl, Irene Blaze, eighteen, vanished on April seventh, her body was discovered based down in four feet of water near the Saddle River near Hackensack, New Jersey. She too had been strangled to death, possibly with the chain of her crucifix. And then there was Denise Alaska, a fifteen year old girl abducted in Emerson, New Jersey, on July fourteenth, nineteen sixty nine. The next day, she was found in Settlebrook,
New Jersey, beside a road next to a cemetery. She'd been strangled to death with the cord or, the examiner said. The medical examiner said perhaps the chain of her crucifix.
So Then on.
December five, twenty twenty two, Cottingham again again begins talking about murders. In addition to the case of Diane Cusick that we already talked about, he confessed to killing twenty one year old Mary Beth Hines. She disappeared in nineteen seventy two. The twenty one year old found face down in a muddy stream. She too had been strangled to death. Cottingham's confession, her sister Janine told the reporters, Honestly, I never imagined her case would be resolved, and then he
just kept talking about other women that he killed. I mean, the guy a death then confession, I don't know, but he just kept talking about women that he had killed.
It's interesting you say, those various women on December fifteenth, that Mary Beth Hines included Laverne moy Arita nive Is eighteen years old, and also the Sheila Hyman, thirty three year old. And what was interesting, of course, unfortunately, as their husband was suspected all along, he never found out about her fate and he died being a suspect.
Yeah, that was really tragic. Yeah, cutting him confessed to killing thirty three year old Sheila Hyman who's found beaten to death. And as you said, the father was the leading suspect in this. He died in two thousand and four without finding out who killed Sheila or having his name cleared.
The police estimated how many victims, regardless of the confession.
Yeah, regardless of the confession, the police were talking about at least seventeen in New York and New Jersey. And that's how many they know about. They're sure that he killed at least seventeen.
And what is the status of their investigation as a result of these confessions?
They are still Yeah, they were investigating them. You know, they're moving forward with the investigations to see if they can confirm his confession.
Let's talk about another incredible tale. Hearing ramped up the graphic nature here, but this is the Kansas Kansas City Butcher, Bob Burdella. He lived near Kansas City, Missouri, and he ran a curio shop in early eighties and was called Bob's Bizarre Bizarre, and he led the neighborhood watch groups and he was known as a pretty good guy and was not known as any kind of trouble in the community whatsoever. And then some male prostitutes began dying.
Yeah. Yeah, he patronized male prostitutes. This again is in the early eighties, and everybody liked Bob. He represented the South Hyde Park neighborhood groups at fundraising events. He was on their local public TV station raising money for the neighborhood. But what was going on behind the scenes was a totally different story. But nobody really knows yet what flipped his switch and turned him into it serial killer who became known as the Kansas City Butcher. It might have been,
he says now. Bob said it was a movie he saw called The Collector from nineteen sixty five, the story of a young englishman who stalks at co ed before kidnapping the girl and keeping her in a farmhouse basement. He said that inspired him, actually, that he got his start by watching that movie.
It's interesting that a lot of serial killers have actually cited the book and the movie The Collector as an inspiration. And many years ago I found that book in a used bookstore and then recently watched that movie to see all this inspiration was. It's quite an innocent book and an innocent movie as compared to some of the fantasies that end up these serial killers' legacies.
Yeah, and Bob's the way Bob went He well, his first victim was a guy by the name of Jerry Howell, who died in nineteen eighty four. Bob drugged and sodomized him. He didn't just abduct and murder people. He held them as prisoners for up to six weeks, torturing them every day until he finally either allowed them to die or he killed them. And Jerry Howell was the perfect example. Bob tied him to his bed for more than a day,
twenty eight hours to be exact. Finally, Jerry gagged to death in his own vomit or maybe the drugs that Bob gave him. Then he chopped up Jerry's body, dumped the parts and pieces in a plastic bag and left it out at the curb for the garbage man to cart away.
You talk about the next victim, Robert Sheldon, and he was in this torture. He was blinded by drain killer, and he was kept sedated and captive for three days, so it's not just one day now, it's three days. And inserted needles under his fingertips and filled his ears with cocking and then eventually cut his head off and buried it in the backyard.
Yeah, you can see that, as they say, with a lot of cereal Childers. He just keeps stepping up, going up and up and up. One was Mark Wallace. He was the next to guy. And then in the fall, a guy by the name of James Ferris fell victim to Bob. Todd. Stoops was a twenty three year old male prostitute. Bob picked him up, tortured him four weeks before Todd died of blood loss, and then Bob went quiet. As far as we can tell for a couple of years. Then his next victim was Larry Pearson. He was tortured
for six long weeks. Finally Bob put a plastic bag over Larry's head and suffocated him. And like the others all of this, he chopped up Larry's body and most of the corps who was left at the curb for a garbage truck to take away. But Bob took Larry's head to his backyard, buried it, and on earthed Robert Sheldon's sculp which he had also buried, and carried that's Robert Sheldon's head into his house and set the skull up on display.
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Talked about took Robert Shelton skull and set it up on display. Who is his next victim and how long do you torture that person for?
He tortured Chris Bryce and his next victim a twenty two year old guy. He tortured him for days after smashing him over the head and drugging him. It was just days, but.
Then Bob go.
Now, remember Bob's still running his shop, The Bizarre Bizarre. He's still running that every day too. His normal life is continuing while all of this goes on, and these guys are tied and tortured. Chris finds a match, He lights it and uses it to burn through his ropes, and he's naked except for dog collar around his neck. He jumps out of a second story window and hits the ground, naked, running for his life. A gas meter guy is our gas company guy, he told the employee
is reading the neighborhood gas meters he spots. Chris calls the police, and the rest is serial killer history.
You write that Bob makes it easy for the cops relatively. Inside the house, they discovered the two skulls and human teeth and vertebrae, and they found dozens of photos, syringes, and even notebooks in which Bob detailed how he tortured and killed his victims. He agreed to a full confession instead of the death penalty. And you say that he had a heart attack and died in prison October nineteen ninety two. And one of the victims' family members said that he didn't suffer long enough.
Yeah, she said, yeah, and you can understand how she'd feel.
Absolutely. Let's talk about a couple short stories involving real infamous murderers. You have one called to Kill a serial Killer and also dead Man Riding. Let's talk about dead Man Riding involving a person and people might know Randy Kraft.
Yeah. I kind of picked this. I took it. It's a snippet out of the whole story, right, and I just found it fascinating. You know, here was a guy who, again we're talking about a serial killer. Here, we're talking about a serial killer who for years had gotten away with his crimes. But then he makes a mistake that I can't just can't believe. A couple of cops, this weren't in Los Angeles, now Mission Rio. In the Los
Angeles area. Two cops by the name of Michael Sterling and Mike Howard, an officer and a sergeant, respectively, are on the San Diego Freeway and they spot a car driving erradically must be a drunk driver. They pull it over and they find a dead guy in the passenger seat.
And what's the state of this person?
He's dead? Well, Randy, of course, is out of the car. He's the driver of this Toyota. They're doing a sobriety test on him. A fields a variety test on one of the cops. The other cop walks around to the passenger side to see what's wrong with this guy in the passenger seat. His jeans are open, he's hanging out, and the cops figures right away this is more than a drunk driving stop, a lot more. He grasps the
man's cold wrist, nothing hold, no pulse at all. But there are welt red stripes, red angry red stripes on the wrist, so he can say he puts his finger on the guy's neck. Nothing, no signs of life. He knows he's got a dead body in the front seat. He knows something. And if that wasn't weird enough, there's something even weirder going on because his pants are open and down and they go from there they find a dead man writing twenty five year old marine by the
name of Kerry Lee Gambrel. Inside the celic of the Toyota, they find a belt which matches the bruising around his neck. They find booze tranquilizer. It's a variety of prescription drugs and stimulants. And the passenger seat and the carpet are soaked with blood. And just like the last case, we have the Kansas City butcher. They find an envelope photo more than fifty snapshots of Randy Crafts victims, along with notes you know that where he rated each of the
victims and rated the way that he killed each one. Wow, incredible.
Let's talk about another short story to kill a serial killer? And who does this involve? And again it's another snippet of a much bigger story.
Yeah, this is this involves Girled by the name of Ronda Louise Williams. She's fifteen years old and she's off with a friend. Somebody she got with a friend, seventeen year old Elmer Wayne Hemley. Now he's hooked up with the serial killer that everybody knows about, Dean Arnold Coral. From nineteen seventy through ninth August nineteen seventy three, Dean Arnold Coral raped, tortured, and murdered more than two dozen
boys and young men in Houston and Pasadena, Texas. Elmer Wayne Henley would bring victims to him, but in the case of Ronda Louise Williams, Elmer Wayne Henley wouldn't do it anymore. He couldn't take it anymore. They had a girl, and they had another guy, a pizza delivery a thirteen year old pizza delivery man. A kid showed up with the pizza, and they had these two trapped, and they were going to Henley. His idea was Karl's idea was going to torture and kill both of them. But Henley,
Wayne Henley, decided he'd had enough. He takes Coral gun, holds the gun on quarrel. Karl says, you will never shoot me, but Henley did exactly that he shot him in the stomach and in the shoulder with a twenty two caliber pistol. And that's how the murder spree of Coral ended, was with a gun held by one of his longtime accomplices.
That's an extraordinary end to a story that because Elmer Wayne Hemley had brought Ronald Luise Williams around, that's what enraged Dean Arnold Coral so much so that he would put in ject Elmer Wayne Hemley, his assistant. But as you say, Elmer decided that enough was enough and this was the end.
Yeah, he was and now, but he too was. Henley was sentenced to life in prison. Carl was killed. He killed him right there. The police found him naked and dead. But then he did the Henley and the other accomplished books were both sentenced to life in prison because it helped him commit several abductions, rapes and murders.
Absolutely, some of the other stories that are involved in this book tell us just the outline of some of the other stories that populate this collection.
Blood on the Tracks, Yeah, we have, for instance, murder on del Rio Drive. This is the story of a woman who finds out that her stepfather had taken pictures of her and her friends naked for years and had kept them and finally she decides she can't take it anymore. She brings him home from an alcohol rehab center, kills him and leaves his body out on the sidewalk on Del Real Drive, covers it with garbage and nja away.
That's in murder by design. Then we have murder on Delrio Drive, another case of the normal people who snap. But I've also included, along with murders in this book some cases of disappear or. The murder of Gay Gibson is the story that goes back number of decades and she was an actress who in nineteen forty seven she was on a cruise liner from going from South Africa to England. She meets up with one of the workers on the ship and who really mate, takes delight in
having sex with a woman on every single cruise. He goes on a deck steword by the name of James cam She dies while they're having sex, and rather than reporting it, he pushes her body at a porthole window into the water, so her body was never discovered. And I do include a number of stories in this book about people, usually women, who have disappeared and we have no idea what happened to them.
Now.
In that case of Gay Gibson, James Camm was convicted of murder and he was sentenced to death, but then before he was ready to die, he was great. Britain decided to do away with the death penalty, no more capital punishment, so he got out in like eleven years. And even Winston Churchill spoke on that he thought that was terribly bad. But I also include stories about people
who have disappeared. The vanishing honeymooners couple who back in the twenties decided to go down the Colorado River instead of speed record their raft. They vanished. Nobody knows what's happened to them. That's a rather famous story too. We've got the gangster who got away, a Chicago gangster who just couldn't be put down until he died in bed. A vigilanti mom who decided to kill the man who molested and killed her daughter in court. She pulled a
gun and killed him in court. So there are a lot of awfully different different stories here that some of you may have never seen before, like trench warfare with some bank robbers who had been trained in World War One and they used their combat abilities learned in World War One to rob a bank and several banks. It's an interesting book, I think absolutely.
I want to thank you very much Rod Cackley for coming on and talking about your latest Blood on the Tracks, Real Life Tales of Murder and Mystery. For those that might want to take a look at your other work, what would you recommend? Website? Amazon, social media.
Yeah, Amazon is probably the best place to go. They do a great job of putting all the books up there, including another new book I have out called The Deadly Duel or Tale of Trying Clime and Chaos, and this one's fiction, pure fiction, but I think you might like that one too. But yeah, Amazon is a real good place to go. Just put my name in Rod Cackley, or you can go to my website at Amazon rodcackley dot com and look me up there too.
Thank you so much, Rod Cackley, Blood on the Tracks, Real Life Tales of Murder and Mystery. Thank you very much for this interview, Rod Cackley, and goodnight