BOGEYMAN-Steve Jackson

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From the New York Times best selling author of Monster and No Stone Unturned, comes the incredible cold case manhunt of one of America's most horrific serial killers. The book that we are profiling this evening is Boogie Man with my special guest, journalist and author Steve Jackson. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to this interview. Steve Jackson.

his his peers know him for what he is. And anyway, he had had mentioned his work and several other people actually had mentioned, uh, you know, talk to Gary about this case that he worked on for seven years, I believe, and uh, so we started talking about it, and I I was intrigued both because of the uh the nature of the killer and how long he had gone without being made accountable for some of his crimes. But as I started looking into the story, the story became about

you know, so often detectives and police officers. We only hear about the bad apples and the guys who don't do their job or do their job incorrectly, and we don't hear about some of these detectives who will put seven years of their lives and if you think about it, all that time away from their families and their focuses on these sorts of things. And Gary sweet is if you're gonna talk about police officers and detectives, He's one of those guys that you hope is out there when

when you have some troubles. He's your modern version of a night and shining armor who is trying to do his best against what he sees is or saw at the time, was pure evil.

lay this out. We first get introduced to Bob Holloman and Bruce Brass Bradshaw, and again you're right the perspective it comes from these police and we really get inside these police officers' lives and also see the toll that being a really great cop, a person that takes their work home with them, it's a dangerous thing as well. But let's get to Bob Holloman and Bruce Bradshaw and Linda Meeks and Mesquite Police Department. Let's talk about Christy

Meeks and Tiffany Easter. Let's talk about the first murder that we encounter and the first police officer officers that we encounter, the detectives that are brought in in this case.

of her home cooking dinner. She's a divorced wife and her children had been off to see their father for the weekend and they were back and so she's getting dinner ready and Christy Meeks, who is I believe five years old at the time, and her brother and another young girl, Tiffany Easter, are outside playing just like any number of other kids were that day, and people are I mean, it's not one of those things where it's a kid alone in a park after dark or something

like that. It's broad daylight, lots of people around. And suddenly the Tiffany Easter, her and the brother come rushing in to say that some man had approached him and offered cookies, and Christy had unfortunately gone off with this man right right in front of who knows how many people, and she disappeared. So Linda Meeks of course calls the police department and says, you know, I have this report.

And so Bob Holloman and Bruce Bradshaw were both working for the Mesquite Police Department and their crimes against children and also sexual assault crimes, and they get called into this. It's they're both at home enjoying time with their own kids. They're fairly young detectives at this time, and so they have some young families. And part of that is, of course, what what pays a great toll on these guys, is that they have children that are in that same age

group at the time. This happens when Christy disappears and she literally just disappears in front of, you know, hundreds of people who happen to be out that day, and so they both respond to this call for this missing child, both thinking that has this typical the child will show up having wandered down the block or over to a neighbor's house or something like that, but it becomes apparent that something else has happened, that she's been abducted.

so he's not all that descript. It's not until actually a couple of months later, when they get a police artist on this that she suddenly remembers he had a large mole on his face above his right eyebrow, which becomes an important detail in this case. But Tiffany's able to give a description of this man, and the officers canvassing the neighborhood are also able to find a couple of young Hispanic boys, and one of them remembers her getting into a car. They weren't sure on the color.

It was a sedan, small sedan of some sorts, and they say greenither gray or yellow or maybe gray with a yellow racing stripe or you know. These are these are small children and they're the only witnesses surprisingly on this day.

neighborhood and looking for any other witnesses. The two officers you'd mentioned, Bob Holloman and Bruce Bradshaw, they essentially went home long enough to pick up Warmer, and they stayed out all night, searching fields and culverts and going house to house, and and this goes on for for a number of days until essentially they it's it's she's disappeared.

It's in broad daylight with all these people around. Uh, this girl got into a car with a this man and disappeared from her family and from her friends, from her community, and the community was pretty much left with no answers, a big, big hole on what could have happened. And of course, as you can imagine, you know, you have children, they're out in the yard, they're they're playing, and yet somebody can walk up, uh, take this child and disappear without a trace. The police officers Bob Holloman

and Bruce Sprat, of course stayed on it. They they these are the days. This is nineteen eighty five, so this is these are the days before sex offender registries and all these sorts of things. So they're doing their best to track down all the sex offenders in the area. And they actually have some guys they think may be good for it, but none of them turn out none of them work, And they keep working the case, but it grows colder and colder.

she hadn't been stabbed. There were no ligature marks as far as from a rope or that sort of thing, so the belief was that she had been asphyxiated or strangled or possibly drowned.

these sorts of guys. So they actually the day of the of the memorial service, those those detectives Holoman and Bradshaw, as well as other officers, were out there taking license plates and running those down and trying to figure out if anybody was there that didn't belong there. They actually planted microphones near the headstone, wondering if somebody would approach at some point, maybe by themselves, and say something that

would would reveal they were trying almost anything. They This is the mesquite and as we'll get into some of these other departments, they're very small departments, and they didn't have large resources to devote to these sorts of things. And this had never happened, this sort of a stranger abduction out of nowhere had not happened to misquite in the history that they'd remembered in some of these other departments.

As we'll get to, our our killer was good at that he knew these sorts of things, and and so they were desperately trying almost anything that might lead them to the killer. Obviously had it had changed from an abduction and an abduction where they believed the child was probably dead to knowing the child had been murdered. And now all they're looking for is a suspect.

and now she's walking to school. She notices a man in a van on the other side of the street at first, who's kind of watching her walking to school. He's in this neighborhood, and he gets out of the car and begins to approach her, and although there's nothing howardly threatening about him, he's smiling and he's trying to lure this child near. She starts to run, but he catches her fairly quickly and takes her and throws her

into his van. At this point, he for some reason is talking to her, and he'll later tell another inmate that she was too pretty to kill. But he hands her a what was called a bagphone at the time.

I don't know if you remember m I barely do, is sort of the speakers to cell phones, and tells her to call her mom and him tell her mom that she's been abducted, and he allows her to do that, and soon as he gets that one sentence out where he grabs the phone back and then tells her if this ever happens, if I ever see you alone again next time, you won't get away, and then he tells

her to leave the van. She leaves and runs home and tells her mom that this stranger had her, and her mom's a little bit not sure is Tiffany making up an excuse because she didn't want to go to school or what is this whole wild story, but they do look into it, and they do eventually call the police, and the police take a report, but there's nobody else's reported some stranger lurking in a van in the neighborhood picking up little girls, so they allow it to go

with just a having taken a report from Tiffany.

by her aunt. And my understanding it was the sort of thing that you would collect, those little Valentine's we used to get when we were kids in school, and she had this box and suddenly she disappeared, and all they actually find is the box, and once again this isn't. We're not talking very late at night or in the dark or anything else. She simply disappears. And both these girls, Tiffany and Christy, were within several blocks of the elementary

school that they both attended. So Tiffany, for some reason, this this man I have termed the bogeyman, this monster let her go and but then continued to hunt in that same area and grabbed Christy Procter instead.

a predator on the loose who's actively hunting children. And of course, because it is so close to Mesquite and it's only been a year or so since Christy Meeks had disappeared, that they're starting to draw some correlations between that disappearance this disappearance, and of course because of the nature of this most disappearance, most child abductions are somebody in the family, you know, there's a divorce in the family and one parent or the other takes the child,

or somebody in the family thinks they're rescuing the child from the parents, or even a family friend, and a lot of these get tracked down. But I think people would be surprised that stranger abductions are actually a very small percentage of these. So when you have someone like this who is actively praying on children and doing so in a methodical way around certain areas, certain school areas,

certain socioeconomic groups are tard you you. I mean, just imagine as a parent that you are your child is out there, your child's got to walk to school. You can't necessarily take your child to school every day. You can't walk them home every day, You can't see them to their friends' houses. And this is a neighborhood where some of that had had gone on, and children, like children everywhere, will we'll go to friends' houses. And now suddenly it's as if a lion had been turned loose

in your your neighborhood that was preying on children. But this is a lion that no one sees. One that could be the guy walking down the street next to you, on the sidewalk across the street, the guy you saw in the store, or the stranger you don't. You know, you start looking at every car. You start wondering about that guy who's a little bit odd, who lives in the apartment above you. You you know, you start questioning everybody,

You question your friends. You you wonder who this could possibly be, who could take children during the daylight hours and not be seen and or be seen only by other children. It's in some ways it's it's like one of those Stephen King books where the adults can't see the monster and only the children can.

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body as a man picked up your child. And even at that point, are you thinking, well, was it just a friend who was taking them home or whatever. So even connecting with the police can take, you know, quite

a bit of time. And then the police respond, they talk to you, they try to get a feel for as in the case of Tiffany Ibarra, where you know, they were trying to you know, the mom and said, well, I'm not sure if she's telling the truth, and so the police are trying to question her to figure out, you know, how much veracity can we give to this report, so they you know, an hour hour and a half passes, and with interstates, how far can you get on an

interstate before the alarm even goes out off? I mean, and like you said, these are the days before amber alerts,

so nobody is sending much of anything that way. And this particular monster was very smart about crossing jurisdictional lines, taking a child in one jurisdiction and doing what he was going to do in another jurisdiction and leaving a body and in another jurisdiction with all these knowing that the police department communications at that time, computers were even then a fairly new thing as far as connecting with each other, and the Internet was you know, still a dreamy that ways away.

victims and the living. But with mister Sweet, so tell us about him and Garland, Texas near Dallas, and his I don't know, sort of untypical rise to a position where he would be this kind of person that he becomes.

can get into something else. He's he's a big guy in a former kickboxer actually a very good one who had some ideas of turning pro with this. And so he gets into the police department and initially some of it's for the the adrenaline rush. He likes that nighttime patrol and and mixing it up with the bad guys

and and that sort of thing. And but Gary, as you as you noted, he's he's very devout and becomes more so as he works as a police officer, first on patrol, then he works in the schools, and he has his own children, and he finally becomes a detective. And it's very early in his detective career that he first walks into the Garland Police Department what they call

the murder Closet, which is down in the basement. It's where all the cold cases get stored, and he just he's kind of on his lunch hour and he decides he goes he would like to go down there, and he just starts kind of going through some of the files and a few of the boxes, and he comes across one Roxx and Reis and he remembers this case because he'd actually been on patrol when this little girl

was abducted. So he starts reading about it, and as you've noted in the book, Gary believes very strongly that, you know, of all the cases he could have picked up, and of all the people who could have been there, and as you know, there are a number of other instances that you have to say, well, that's either fate or karma or God or something working because just how

unusual it was. He believes very strongly that he was directed to start working on this case and to revive this case that had as another case that comes from nineteen eighty seven that Christy Meeks and Christy Proctor had already disappeared, and this is another case that they believe that this predator had also been responsible for. But that Gary, for one reason or another, he kind of takes an interest in this case. But he's very young, very new detective.

He doesn't just think that he's even going to be allowed to work on a cold case. So he sort of looks at it and files it back in the box and puts it away for a little while.

I mean, he looks through this stuff. But and concerning David Elliott Penton, what did he read at that time, and what did he know of him? And how did why did this guy's name kind of stick out a little bit?

call it. But the name Pentton sort of jumped out at him, not for any particular reason that he knew at the time, other than as he saw this name and he saw that a couple from Columbus, Ohio, the grandparents of Roxanne Reus, had seen a story about a man who had been arrested for a murder of a child up in Ohio, and so he saw this newspaper clipping and they were saying that the man arrested up in Ohio resembled the police artist's sketch of the suspect

in the Roxanne Reis abduction and murder. And that just kind of stuck with him too. But like I said, at that time, and he wondered. He he said, you know, there's there was nothing in the box. Like I said, it was very haphazard. Things were thrown in there. There was nothing in there to indicate whether anybody had followed up on this lead, or talked to Penson, or talked

to the people up in Ohio or anything else. But so he just wandered a little bit at that time if anybody ever had checked to see if Penson was a viable suspect. And he assumed that the other officers ahead of him had done their jobs and all this had been checked up. But once again, his lunch hour was over, so he kind of packed it all up and thought, well, they're not going to let me do this at my young stage of being a detective. So he put it away for and though every once in

a while it would come up in his mind. For some reason, something kept reminding him of this case and it would float to the top of his consciousness on occasion, but he did nothing else on it for a couple of the years.

barent mind of a murderer, really works. And so you include the story of the eighty year old Smiley Johnson murder. Tell us about this and why you included it, and basically after you tell us, what do you think Gary Sweet learned from that?

from their experiences. And in the case of Gary, and in this particular case, it seemed like some stories, some cases he worked on, were preparing him for his his what you might say is his greatest case, this case and the Smiley Johnson case was Smiley Johnson was an old, elderly woman in her eighties and and she's home one night when she's attacked and brutally stabbed. Just just a

horrific scene there. She's practically gutted, She's stabbed numerous times, still manages to after the assailant leaves, drag herself out to her living room, where instead of calling the police, she calls the neighbor from across the street, and the neighbor comes running over and then they call nine to one one and she says that oh beause a smallish man came to the back door. She thought it might be her, one of her relatives, and she led him

in and he attacked her. Smiley Johnson's an interesting character in that she's not exactly it wasn't your your most upstanding citizen and that sort of thing, and did Hello.

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with his partner. They questioned a number of people, some of the the nephews and sons and grandsons and and all these sorts of things and and talk to different people and uh uh and and at the same time, shortly after Smiley is is murdered, a young black woman

was also attacked and brutally stabbed. She managed to survive and talk to the police, even though she said her assailant was an older black man, but still being so close and same neighborhood and the same sort of attack, and and some of the footprints led back towards Smiley Johnson's house. They they thought something was going on here,

but they couldn't figure that out. So they about a year goes by and and Gary hears back from one of the Smiley Johnson's grandsons, I believe, who said that another grandson had confessed to him that he had killed killed her, that he was into necrophilia and listening to thrash metal bands and and that sort of thing and

had done this. And so Gary eventually tracks him down, and through interrogation, the young man confesses, in fact, happily confesses and talks about all sorts of horrific things that he did. And with Gary, the learning process here is sort of understanding human nature. Is like Smiley Johnson obviously knew who attacked her, but why didn't she say who attacked her? Why didn't she point to her grandson as

as who had done this? And then the young black woman wouldn't come off of her description of her attacker as a young as an older black man, even though it became a parent that the grandson had also done this, committed this crime. And so part of this is and it's learning how to talk to these guys. It's you know, this young man and I believe he was sixteen when

he attacked Smiley Johnson. He's you know, he's done these horrible, horrible things to his grandmother, says that he loves her, but he wanted to know what it was like to have sex with a dead person, and these sorts of things. So imagine having to speak to this person and get as much information as you can so that you can go to court and get them convicted and sent to

prison at the very least. And so he learns part of this is the process of learning how to identify with the killers and be able to talk to him on a level where they will relax and say more than they even know that they're saying. And being able to come across not as a friend necessarily, but as friendly and understanding and these sorts of things, and having to having to swallow what you really feel and think about this character, this killer in front of you, in

order to do your job. So that when it comes to going to court, you can give the district attorney what they need to convict this guy and get him off the streets.

But he asked the black lady. He says, you said, this is a black man, but you say he didn't see his face, So how do you know, Well, he said, well, there's eighty percent black people in this neighborhood. And he said, well, how do you know he's old? Well he had those Converse all Star Chuck Taylor Runners guy Whears those. So I found it really interesting that we get those kind

of details. But that's the kind of police offer, so so thorough to be able to look at something and then just keep digging.

ask the proper questions. And that's the sort of that also comes out of a Smile Johnson case, as you note that he's he's so sure of the details that he's actually able to question the the killer when he makes a statement about having had sex with the old older woman Smiley Johnson and says, I, you know, she

was checked for that and she didn't. She wasn't sexually assaulted, and so where the young man says, well, I sexually assaulted one of the wounds, which you know, is the sort of thing that's it's horrific to to listen to and to know these sorts of things go on in the world, but it's what can make the difference between putting somebody away for the rest of their life, which is not going to happen in that case, unfortunately that that young man is actually up for parole this year,

but because of his age at the time of the crime. But it is the difference sometimes in being able to thwart any defense attempts that you know you have the wrong guy or something else like this. It's those small things that put away the big cases.

bargain given to this kid was thirty. So he's eligible for parole.

gonna break. There's there is no rehabilitation for that sort of killer. You know, the guy who shoots somebody in a bar brawl. You know that you had too much to drink and that sort of thing. It's it's understandable. But the sociopath, the psychopath who enjoys killing or feels they have the right to or feels they have the need to, you know, they're not getting better. He's that that young man is going to come out of prison if they let him go as bad or worse.

table from another number of them. What's what's different? And well, what's different is to me, they're not not truly human. If what makes us human is empathy and a moral set of moral values that prevents us from acting in certain ways, is what defines us as human. These these people are not human. They're wired differently. They don't see

what they do as being wrong. They may know that they have to try to cover it up or do whatever to continue to avoid detection and being caught so that they can continue doing what they're doing, but they are wired to do what they do. It's it's like asking a lion not to hunt zebras anymore when he's been doing his entire life. That's the allion's not going to agree to that. They don't start eating grass.

that's what they're missing. Is they know that, you know, they'll they'll be punished if they get caught for this, but they don't really understand why we feel that way.

or gets these kinds of phone calls. So tell us about the phone call from Tammy Lopez formerly Tammy Reyes and what she had said to Gary.

as he was. As you'd noted before. He liked to take his lunch as early, just at a habit he used to work as a school resources officer, so he got used to having his lunch at eleven before the kids did, and then at noon he'd be in the cafeteria for the kids' lunches, So he got used to that, and then when he started when he was a detective, he enjoyed it because it gave him some time in the office at noon to have it to himself, be able to use the computer, the new fangled thing called

the computer and in some of these sorts of things. So he was alone in the office, and as we all know, s is a little ways down the alphabet. So when a call would come in, not for a specific detective, but for just somebody in the detective unit, the switchboard would first go to the a's and the b's and the c's and the d's and go down the alphabet until they found somebody sitting at their desks. So he was used to sort of in they had.

Their desks were set along the walls, the four walls of the detective unit, and so he'd kind of see the or hear the telephone ring for one guy whose name is in front of him, and then for the be detective, and next for the next detective down the line in the alphabet and to sit there and wait till they'd finally get to an S and and the phone on his desk would ring, and he picked it up.

And in this this time he happened to pick it up, and it was Tammy Lopez, formerly Tammy Reyes, and she was just asking she'd she'd heard something she said about there being something new on her daughter's case. And Gary, Uh, It took him a second because she was going by Tammy Lopez. But when she mentioned rock Sam, he immediately started putting two and two together and and suddenly had

it knew who she was talking about. And because he had one had been on patrol when when Roxanne disappeared, and then two he had gone down to the murder closet and just happened to look in those files. And the fact that there had not been a whole lot of abductions and murders of small children in in this area, and most of the police officers were aware of the name of Roxanne Reis, he was able to put it together.

Now he had not heard of anything new. This is a couple of years after he'd been down to the murder closet, and he had not heard of anything new on the case and told her that and said he would check with the other detectives though, and can get back to her. So he hung up, and then he talked to the other detectives and they had not heard of anything new. So he called Tammy back up and regretfully told her that there was nothing new that they

had heard, and you know, he's sorry for it. And it was stuck with him on that one when Tammy just sort of that lingering sadness he could feel even over the telephone lines for this missing child and this lack of answers, and had this monster been caught? Did was he still out there? Was all these all these questions these these families have in these type of situations, and that really stuck with Gary. And it's going to be very important to the case later on.

And and what's revealed?

of this idea of fate or divine intervention. But it's a detective from Fort Worth, Diane Teft, who has is looking into a the case of an abducted and murdered girl in that that area, and she's been contacted by an inmate named Jeffrey Sunnycalb who's a an inmate in the prisons up in Ohio. And and he tells her that he was a cellmate of another inmate named David Penton who was in prison for the abduction and murder

of a young woman named her. You young woman, a young girl ten years old, Nigra Ross up in Ohio. And the sunny Calb guy says, well, he's telling me about all sorts of murders and I've tried to contact some people and nobody seems to be interested. But he calls Diane in Fort Worth and he gives her enough about that case that she's interested in talking to him. And as he talks to her, he says, and there's these three other cases down there in Texas that you

might be interested in. One is Christy Meeks, one is Christy Proctor, another is Roxanne Reyis. And he actually has names to these. And so Diane decides to call Garland and see if anybody over there would be interested in

coming over and speaking. When this Jeffrey Sunny Coalb is scheduled to talk to her again the next day call from prison, so she asks if somebody'd likes to come over and and sweet kind of remembering the voice of Tammy Lopez, and also these these interesting connections to the Rays case, the murder closet, the being there for the first call, the these sorts of things, and then he also recalls the name David Pinson as having been in the file and how he had wondered if somebody had

ever followed up on some of that sort of stuff and it's possible connections to the Ohio cases, and so he says, Yeah, I'd like to be over there and talk to this guy when he calls up tomorrow.

of things, and so just about everybody else. And there's a bunch of police officers showed up at a meeting to talk about this, and they all start falling off to the wayside, thinking well, this Sonny Calp can't be trusted. This stuff could come from you know, they gleaned something out of newspapers and of course now the internet is starting to come to life and that sort of thing. But Sweet, some tell Sweet along with a few of the details that Sonny calf was ever able to give him.

Something tells Sweet to just keep after this. So it's actually Sweet who starts to talk to Sonny Calve has him calling him collect from the prison becomes an almost daily, he's daily occurrence that Sunny Cowp calls collect and they

talk for ten minutes. He's only allowed to talk for ten minutes, and keeps feeding Sweet these these details that he starts learning all the cases, not just the Garland case, the Tammy Reyes case or the Roxanne Reys case, the Meek's case and the Christi Procter case, and trying to put things two and two together and and come up with what he needs to on these sorts of things.

So eventually he does go to He knows he needs help, knows he needs to get into the case files from these other cases, the Meeks and the Proctor case, So he goes to Mesquite where he runs into Bruce Bradshaw, who was many years before, in nineteen eighty five, was along with Bob Holloman, had been working the Christy Meeks case from the beginning, and he knows Sweet knows that they had difficulty with that case because they could not place Penton Uh in the Dallas area and they could

not connect him to a car that was seen. But Sweet has been coming up with, uh, you know, I don't want to give the whole detective story away, but has been coming up with some amazing information that he's able to start putting some of this together and convinces Bruce Bradshaw to to join him in the quest to see if this guy Pinton is indeed their bogey man.

So for Gary to have faith in this person took a lot of well because he's being discouraged by other officers and what they had said. But what I found interesting about Gary is that he doesn't even take the word of his fellow officers as much as he questions Sonny Colb as to why it make a claim where the guy clams up sometimes, So we asked him, how come you clamb up sometimes? Each thing was personally by Gary Sweet cleared because Sonny Colb had a pretty reasonable

explanation for all that. So again, going that extra extraordinary effort, Gary got to the truth. It was incredible.

to talk to Sonny Calb actually earlier. They could have got this guy much earlier and maybe prevented some of these other things from happening, or or at least solve some of this for some of the other families much sooner. But he goes up there and Sunny Calb says, well, I'll talk to you, but I'm I don't want to be recorded. So this other detective puts a hidden camera into the room and it's detected by Sonny calvesul Sonny

Calb stops talking. He doesn't tell him why he's he's spotted the camera without telling the detectives that he has, so uh, he stops talking. So this other officer who ends up being the one who's mostly telling these other officers that you can't trust this guy. He's he's full of it. And you know you got it from this is the nuts. Gary at least was willing to keep an open mind and say, well, why did you did you stop talking? And why did you do these things?

And to each of these things, Sonny Calb had a legitimate reason and and the ability and then and Sonny calv is not a nice guy. He's in prison for he's a pedophile. So you know, to to some some detectives that would mean you, this is a disgusting person that you can't trust for anything. And I just soon not have anything to do with them. But for Gary, it was a matter of keeping an open mind and

finding out was this stuff and not dismissing things. And and Gary is you know he's he said, maybe it's because I was young, or maybe it's because I was being guided to stay on this case. But when other detectives were falling by the wayside, and and he he stayed with it, and and kept pressing for these details. And once again he has a fantastic mind for keeping the details in his head and being able to cross reference them, saying, you know, some it might be some tiny,

tiny little thing. What what kind of shoe was the little girl wearing in that pent And well Penton told me she was wearing a cabine patch doll shoe. Well, some of this stuff wasn't in the public record. And Gary, because he was so familiar with the public, with what had been out in public and what had been kept quiet and these sorts of things, was able to say, you know, that can only come from one person, and that had to come from the killer. And then of

course he from Sonny cob As. I'm sure we'll discuss. He starts moving on to some of these other inmates.

But what did Sonny Calb say in terms of what was really his character like in terms of the things he liked to talk about and boast about.

and regale his fellow inmates. With this thing, and they're all these guys and in this case are in the segregated unit, which is where the pedophiles are, but also happens to be where some police officer former police officers who have run a foul of the law are in there as well. But so he's he's sort of a you know, if it was general population and he's bragging about raping and murdering little girls, he's he's not going

to do so well for for very long. But in this this situation, he's he's among other pedophiles, even if none of the rest of them are quite as as vicious and monstrous as he is. So he he gets off on it. He's, uh, you know, this is sexually exciting to even talk about it. And and you know, he's in prison. He is he can't do this to any more little girls while he's in prison, so there's

a chance he'll get out. And he talks about, you know, if they let me out of here someday, I'm uh, you know, I'm he was going to change some of his his modus operandi and how he does things, but he was still dreaming of doing the same thing. And that's his personality. Is to brag and boast and relive all of this.

this journey. Sometimes the DNA doesn't match, and so we really have further disbelief from many officers because and tell us whose DNA was tested and there was no match for which led them to believe that that Sunny Cob was lying and that Penton was really wasn't their man for many of these murders, including the three that he had.

But when Sweet Sweet had been told by Sunny Cow that Penson had once told him that if you want to hide something, stick it in the uh, the installation of the attic of your house, because police officers uncording to spend that kind of time or effort to get into that. So of course sweet and Brad Saw and a couple of these other guys that are involved, Billy Meeks and boy Don Phillips, they went over to this house and there was somebody else living there now and

they had a warrant. They went up into the attic and actually found a group of rags that had been tied, particularly in a bundle in the insulation in the attic. Obviously had been placed there for a reason. But this is I think by now we're talking two thousand and one, two thousand and two, so it's been seven years stuck

in an attic, and the DNA had there. There was evidence of saliva and blood and I believe some semen on the these rags, but it was so had degenerated to such a degree and once again, you know today with those rags maybe be able to be connected in two thousand and fourteen. I mean, DNA every year is taking enormous leaps forward, but this is two thousand and two, so it was still fairly new, and at that point they had to say that it didn't rule out rox and Reis or Penton, but it wasn't going to be

strong enough to use in court. They were not going to be able to stand up there and say one in a billion or anything else like that. It was too had been too long and too old, and the science wasn't advanced enough at that time.

to confuse the police officers. And that's why these Texas murders, and you know, up to twenty five to fifty if you go by his boast. Other murders have gone if not completely undetected, then are unaccounted for then having difficulty putting cases together. But in the case of Nigra Ross, he happened to be working with Nydra's uncle, was over at the house partying the night before, was seen talking to the little girl the next day, and then all

of a sudden she disappeared. He was a suspect fairly quickly. Is this sord He was last one seen with her. There was some blood found in his van, his white van. Once again, DNA wasn't strong enough. This was approximately nineteen eighty eight and DNA testing and blood testing at that

time was still not very good. He was a suspect, but they couldn't put the case together, and it took him actually several years to put the case together, but they eventually did and convicted him of murder up in Ohio without the death penalty and also with the possibility of parole here and I believe two thoy twenty seven he's eligible, though, as we all know, that can change, and time off for good behavior and laws change and all that sort of stuff, so he's not necessarily in

for life, which was why some of these other cases became important, but he'd made a mistake. Is might have been his only real big mistake that didn't take a detective as good as Gary Sweet to catch him on, even though it did take him three years to put the case together.

actually Christy Meeks first disappears. And then in May, when he's supposed to be sentenced, he he takes off on the manslaughter charge for his son. He was a judge had allowed him out on an appeals bond on the case instead of putting him away, and so he's out. So Christy Meeks disappears during this time, Christy Proctor disappears during this time. Roxanne Reyus disappears during this time, and Nigra Ross disappears, And of course all those girls were

eventually found. The remains were found and they'd been murdered. So there's four little girls and there were those of us. Gary myself and some other law enforcement are working on some other cases who believe that a number of other murders occurred during this time. That granted, if he's in on manslaughter, he's not going to be, you know, a way for the rest of his life or anything else like that. But you know, perhaps, well those those little girls at least would have not been there for him

to prey upon. And whether he got out of prison and attacked other little girls, that's probably He's probable so on that, but you never know, something could have happened to him in prison, or he could have confessed to one of some other crime and been convicted while still

in prison. So yes, allowing him to go free on an appeals bond during this period of time directly resulted in the death of some other little girls and perhaps being able to put him away for life at that time without ever jeopardizing anybody else.

stone into the into the pond. And and it's not just that that child that he murders, but they're families, the people who love them, and beyond them, the people that we never even think about in these the police officers who become so emotionally and psychologically involved in these cases, and and particularly men who have their own children, and they work all day trying to solve the murder of some child, and then they go home and there's their

children playing and laughing and having dinner and growing up. And these little girls they get to watch their own children grow up to be to graduate high school and get through college. And begin their own lives. And yet these men continue to work on stories of little girls whose lives ended when they were five years older, six years older, seven years old. And that's an enormous toll. And and then you think about their families, where as you know, there's the story of Bob Holloman and what

it did to him and his family. And even when they're there, even when they're home with their families, they're thinking about these other children. And there's I think there's some guilt that they deal with from their home, and they get to see their children and get to enjoy their children, and yet they know and maybe that day talk to some parents who is grieving and asking for questions and why haven't we caught this guy? And how

could someone do this to children. I have an enormous respect for some of these detectives, and particularly for the pain and the suffering they go through, in addition to the people that it's obvious to us who are suffering.

family men that they want to be at home. Bob, unfortunately, uh could not let it go, couldn't put it aside. Uh and it it it wore on him and in a very tragic way. And as you that's one of the stories is that a few years into it, he Molly found him at home in the closet with a gun and sobbing and essentially just torn apart that he could not first it tore him apart in those early days that he could not save this little girl, and then that he could not catch her Killer. Yeah.

Slayer song. His wife, a devout Christian, said, you can't bring that stuff into the house. So what I found really interesting is that these guys are some of the loneliest cops ever because they can really only talk to a couple people, which means a couple cops. Because you can't even talk to the average cop. You can't talk to your wife, can't bring it home, can't talk to your kids. It's a lonely life. And what's interesting to me,

and more even more horrific. If faith didn't intervene, and this guy didn't make extraordinary efforts and take the work home with him and jeopardize his home life, we be none the wiser and who knows, and you know.

that's not even that. The entire point here is that, yes, he'll he's a danger, and he will always be a danger, even if you know, another twenty years from now the courts decide that, well, maybe he's not a danger anymore and release him to do his own thing. But as these families who deserve answers, they deserve to know who took their child. They deserve to know that he is off the streets. Excuse me, they deserve to know that you know, he's being paid, he's paying for his crimes. Hmm,

excuse me. Let me get a.

And that is for the public, but especially for the victims families. They shouldn't have to worry about a parole hearing, whether it's a slim possibility or not. They shouldn't have to worry that this person could be, like you say, a more medium security and he might escape. And even sympathy for these monsters, it's just I'm sorry, I don't have any We shouldn't have any, and we should just have a special place where we lock them away forever.

cases in the in the book that we've discussed. There are cases being investigated right now that may be added to the book or to a future update of the book. But these are the children whose remains have been found. And these are the children who detectives like Gary Sweet and Bruce Bradshaw and up in Indiana, Jeff Heck and some others have have been able to put together enough to say this is the killer of an abductor of your child. But there are families out there who don't know.

There are families I've talked to, families who twenty years later still set up place at the dinner table for that child who disappeared, who, as we know, in the one case in the book, and can leave that one for the readers, but you know, a woman came along many years later who claimed to be their daughter. And there are these families who don't have answers to what happened, and they deserve those answers. So to say that, well, he's away and he's in prison and he may or

may not get out, is not enough. Not when we win with some work and some detective work and some resources, we can give some answers to some of these families who are waiting and keep that place at the dinner table or the light on in the back, hoping that the child comes home someday.

And so I applaud the despite the tight budgets, Despite even when I see some of these killers in prison, convicted for life without the possibility of parole, there are still officers and jurisdictions that want justice for those other families, regardless of the outcome going to make any real difference, he's doing life anyway, that it's still closure for those families and what they really do deserve and what the public what we pay for, We pay for dearly for this.

So I applaud that effort to make sure as many people get the answers to where their loved ones went and who and why, to some answers to their questions.

own families. You know what sort of a failure or failure were you as a parent when what we don't understand is, you know, somebody like Penson is a predator. He's he's stalking, he's waiting, he's using his mind to find those times when I don't care what kind of a parent you are, he's waiting to strike. And yeah, these these people have to live with for the rest of their lives. You know, what did I do wrong?

How bad was as a parent? And then you know the possibility of of some of us, including Gary and and myself and some other officers, are hoping that at some point some prosecutor will hold the death penalty over David Pinson, who is would desperately do anything to save his life if possible, and maybe confess to some of these other crimes and even give parents or police officers an idea of where he left these children, because, as I said, these children had their their remains were found,

at least their parents had had their remains to bury. They have remains to mourn over. And you know, some people don't believe in all that or care about that part of it, But to some people, that's that's what they have left. It's a cold tombstone, but it's the

even colder tombstone if there's nothing buried underneath it. So the possibility of knowing that your child isn't left in the woods somewhere, or you know, these there's there's a lot that can be done and should be done if we if we care for what happened to these other people, these other family.

this is the kind of story they really are affected by. Now, speaking of books and being affected by books, you have an announcement to make you are a best selling true crime author with some of the kind of titles that again would be worthy of coming on this program because it's the most shocking killers in true crime history. How many books true crime books do you have to date and tell us about this new exciting development that should interest our audience to a great degree.

It's under construction. But if anybody is interested in either Bogeyman or any of these others, they can write to us at info at wildbluepress dot com and get on our list and we'll let them know as soon as the site is up and Bogeyman will be available in early June. But we're pretty excited about it, just because it's getting harder and harder to convince publishers that true crime readers are a very loyal in a very dedicated

group of readers. I also write in biographies and histories and even do some fictional crime thrillers, but I think that one of the most dedicated groups of readers out there are the true crime readers. And there's certainly, to me, in many ways the most fascinating group of readers, because they're all into the psychology of these and uh and into the storytelling. And but traditional publishers these days don't

recognize that. And unless it's a celebrity crime or or some uh, some crime that Jodyarias type that has all sorts of little twists like that as opposed to just a a good solid detective story or I keep telling people that In Cold Blood would never be published these days under the traditional crime publishers demands. So we've were a number of us and I'm I'm a couple of weeks. I'd be happy to come back on in a couple

of weeks and let you know. But of us are are forming this company the names are are very quite recognizable and some of them been on your shows, and we'll be well, I I have to wait for two more weeks to be able to do that, and uh and I promise you'll be the first to know dan and and I'll let you know. But it's it's a matter of getting our ducks in order and uh and

making sure that all these things. But the the idea is that we believe true crime readers are a large group and a strong group, and that if we offer them good quality uh true crime books, then we will uh you know this, this publishing company will will do well and and satisfy both the readers and and allow those of us who believe true crime books are important, they're important to the culture into understanding uh what makes

uh uh these people tick you know out there. So while Blue Press uh will be will be putting these books out. And I'd just like to also, you know, you've been very kind to let me come on your show. But if it wasn't for people like you and Burl Bear and and Aaron Habile and and some of the other blog talk radio guys, we'd be we'd be you know, just trying to get the word out would be very tough for true crime authors right now, so I know

on behalf of all of us. So we'd like to thank you guys for I mean, you put a lot of time and a lot of effort into something that you know a lot of people in joy. And I don't know if entertainment is right the right word for true crime, but it's sure, it's uh, you know, it's it's important and I think you're doing a very important job that some other people have failed to do. So I wanted to thank you, thank you myself for that.

have ever occurred. And it's history. I see, true crime is just true history, just with maybe the crime focus. But you don't just get a concentration on the crime anyway. So not only do I think it's important, but I agree with you that it seems that the traditional publisher since the shakeup in two thousand and eight, have lost their minds in terms of this dedicated true crime audience that was looking for more than a wife kills a

husband and a husband kills the wife. I mean, there's nothing wrong with some of those stories, but it's not like the audience is getting more gun shy, and it's not like the audience is getting and dumbing down the audience. I find this to be a very very bright, informed, passionate audience. So I applaud you for having a publishing company that deals with the authors themselves, putting out books

by the authors themselves. And you don't need a big chain of people taking all the profit either, And maybe some of that profit might just go to the deserving authors, and the authors and an author run publishing company will know what books really should be presented out to the audience, and the audience will respond accordingly, I think. So I don't even think I have to wish any kind of good luck. The word will get out and the authors will bring the fans in and you'll have a successful

publishing company. And it's about time the authors took hold of their own promotion and distribution and everything else, because really you and Amazon are partners and now well everyone in the world can have a copy one way or another of these kinds of books, and these stories are

captivating to people throughout the world. So again, thank you very much for coming on the program talking about them, and we're excited to have you back on and talk about the new initiative and the new publishing company and reveal some of those authors and some of the books that are coming down the pike. So I want to thank you Steve Jackson.