CHASSON'S RUN-Daniel Zimmerman

former penpalell turned wife. True crime author Daniel Zimmerman Shots in the Dark brings the shocking escape to life, detailing how Chason, wounded and bleeding from self inflicted wounds, was first transferred to a hospital for treatment, then, using a forty five automatic smuggled to him by his wife, who was disguised as a nurse, took hospital guards and staff

hostage before fleeing under a hail of gunfire. Dubbed the Bonnie and Clyde of Massachusetts, the couple's daring run across the country captivated the nation, and they would evade capture for years, living under assumed identities. They nearly made it until from America's Most Wanted led to their eventual capture in nineteen eighty nine. The book you were featuring this evening is Chasin's Run, the prison break that captivated America and the love story that fueled it. With my special

guest author Daniel Zimmerman. Thank you very much for this interview and welcome back to the program. Daniel Zimmerman.

and I'm getting some pretty good feedback. I'm getting excellent feedback on the story on my method of telling it.

in the in the area MCI Walpole. MCI stands for Massachusetts Correctional Institute, so it was MCI Walpole, which is a notorious prison and on the East Coast, and then also MCI Norfolk, which is a medium security kind of a step down from warpole for inmates. So this ambulance service that I worked for, I was one of the nts that was responsible for transporting inmates, whether they're sick

or injured, to nearby hospitals. This story came into play more or less in the Laby Day weekend of nineteen eighty two, and I was actually scheduled to work that weekend. I was on the calendar to be working that weekend, and I decided that I had a girlfriend at the time.

We eventually married, but we decided we wanted to kind of go away for the long holiday weekend, and I reached out to one of my colleague his name is Bobby's a Meadow and asked him, Bobby, could you work for me this laby Day weekend and I'll cover fore

you another time, and he was agreeable. He took the shift, and when I came back to work on Tuesday morning after the holiday weekend, I walked into the office to do my thing and get my ambulance ready, and Bobby comes over to me and he puts both hands around my neck and starts to choke me, kind of, you know, chokingly. He wasn't really trying to hurt me in anyway. But I said to him, I said, Bobby, you know what gives?

What's the matter what he says? He says, because I worked for you, I had a gun held on me. It's your fault. I could only I should be dead right now. And then he told me the story behind it so needless to say, I was it was supposed to be me in that ambulance with mister Chas and not Bobby, but wow, I did feel the impact.

on a beer run. Yeah, they were running a little bit low on beer, and he agreed to take take the car and zip up to the nearby package store and buy buy some beer for the for the party. He was approached by Leroy Chasin saying that he wanted to come along, and you know, he'd helped put the bill for the beer and so forth. He had other emotives that he did not share with Fitzgerald at the time.

So they get in the car and they head to the package store, and in the midst of that a conversation takes place where mister Chason he wants to take a ride to Quinsy, Massachusetts, which is about half an hour south of where they actually were. Wendsay's on the south side of Boston. Ll he's on the north side of Boston. That Fitzgerald agrees, but really doesn't want to do it. It's, first of all, it's not his car with his girlfriend's car. Second of all, he doesn't really

know this guy Chasing. He had met him once before, very brief meeting, and he also heard some things about Chasing that kind of were unsettling. He had done a lot of time. He was a known criminal, a little bit of a bragget when it came to that too. He kind of bragged about his criminal escapades through his early years. You know, Fitzgerald was kind of a captive audience. I guess you could say. He's in the car and even though he's a big guy and could handle himself.

He was nervous about chasing as far as if he said, note him, if he refused the ride to Quinsy, you know what, bad things could happen. So he agreed to do it. So they bought the bear at the package store and off they went, heading south on what we call the express Way, which is into State ninety three, and they took the trip from Chelsea to Quincy relatively quickly. It was in the evening. They end up at Pageant Field, which is a huge complex in Quincy which with baseball

fields and other facilities for the Quincy youth. And while they're there, there's a party going on, which is almost a nightly type thing with these kids, they're all twenty somethings. The Quinsy police really don't mind them hanging out there and having a beer or two, is, you know, because they're keeping out of trouble and they're not bothering anybody. And on arrival at Pageant Field, mister Chasin approaches a

gentleman by the name of Kevin Rossett. Kevin was a former drug dealer who had done some wrong to one of Lee Roy Chasin's friend in prison. As far as not sending in the full order or overcharging him and so forth. There was some money involved. And Chason actually the reason he was going to pageant Field to encounter this gentleman, mister Rossett, was because a a cellmate at

MCI Conquered had asked him to do that. Basically, his name was Mark Bray and he wanted to get his money back or the drugs that were owe to him. He couldn't go to Quincy himself because he had also he had escaped from prison and he was kind of on the run and he didn't want to show his face. So he asked mister Chason, who was out free he had been paroled, would you mind running this errand for me. So off he goes, and he gets into an accounter

of this verbal kind of exchange between them. It's kind of heated and Chason basically just slugs Rossett knocks him to the ground and as a result, Rossett's friends who were nearby, launched themselves at lee Roy Chason to protect their friend who was lying on the ground that assault. During that assault, Chason pull pull out a knife and he started randomly stabbing people. He stabbed two, one fatally. He soon left the passiont Field with Fitzgerald, who drove

him out of there. When the police later asked him, you know, you knew, you knew he'd stab people, you knew he was assaulting people with knives, you know, more or less white, Why did you drive him out of there? And Fitzgerald's reasoning was that Jason was still kind of in that groove where he might have hurt more people, and he felt it was his responsibility to get to

get him out of there, and he did. He drove, He drove the alleged killer out of Passion Field and back to Chelsea, back to the party house.

his mother. They had stopped at the mother's house briefly he wanted to wash up. He was covered with blood and Jason was with him. Not much said between the mother and Chason, but she did witness the bloody shirt and her son, Brian Fitzgerald basically said, we got to fight. We got in a fight. He excused it as a fight. The police later visited with her and determined it was

far more than just a simple fight. When he got back to the party, he did call his mother and she confirmed after being visited by the police, she confirmed that yes, in fact, Paul Melody had perished and that was shared around the party. Mark Bray, who was there. Mark Bray was the trigger of this entire event because he's the one that sent Jason on this mission. Kind of I guess you could say. He ducked his head in shame and eventually left that house after everybody had

learned what took place. He left that house. Chason went into the went into one of the bathrooms to you know, try to rinse off the shirt from the blood that he was covered with blood. And he tried to rinse the shirt, and then he teamed up with Mark Bray who went with him and the third gentleman, and the three of them made their way out of the party. They did not stay long long enough for a lot of accusatory stairs. There was a very tense time at the house, but Chason left and then he went to

his apartment in nearby Somerville. The three of them drove to the apartment. Now at this apartment was his girlfriend, Linnell, Jason's girlfriend, Linnell Travers, and her roommate, and a three year old by the name of Derek Travers. Derek was according to Leroy and everybody else Leroy Leroy, Chase and son. So he was a living boyfriend with Linel and they had a son, and he was three at the time

of this event. That's important and later on in the book, because things are revealed after later on in life to Derek the toddler. So anyways, Leroy goes to his apartment in Somerville. He's there to get a fresh shirt and his guns. He's going on the run. He's going to go on the lamb and he needs his weapons, so he retrieves guns out of a bureau draw that he had stashed. He and Mark Bray leave Somerville in the stolen car. The third man who was with them, he

stayed behind to face the music. He wasn't going on the run with them. He wasn't involved in the actual murder of Paul Melody, and he knew that, and he figured he could he could dance dance out of it and just face charges for perhaps a stolen car or aiding in a betting an escape future in this case. So he stayed behind and off Chason and Bray went

in the car. They eventually made their way to Rhode Island, spent one night in a motel to kind of collect their thoughts and make their plans, and then after that

night they made their way back to Boston. Mark Bray had a room that he had rented at a nearby hotel kind of off the beaten path in Boston, a place called the Milner, And because he was an escapee from prison, he figured that the best thing to do was to stay at a place where he with the police likely wanted check for him, like we want to

look for him. He was wrong about that. Actually, they did eventually go to the Milner to see if he if he was there, but he and Leroy had long since made their way out of there with a third party. Somebody had joined them in the midst of this escape. Her name was Kathleen MacDonald and her story is hugely interesting. She had arranged to meet up with Chason in Boston. Leroy had sent Mark Bray to retrieve her and bring her back to meet him where they were. He was

holding up it. He was sitting at the in the Boston Common waiting for her. And the story behind Kathleen Chasin is that she was a married woman with six children living in the Weymouth area, which is a town adjacent to Quinsy ironically, and she met Leroy by way of a you could call it a pen palce situation. Leroy Chason was in jail. He was incocerated for on robbery at the time, and he was seeking an appeal

and he needed five hundred dollars. The lawyer wanted five hundred dollars, so he put a chase and put an ad in the Boston Phoenix newspaper, which is a local paper that runs kind of kind of strange ads, I guess, you could say, And he wanted five hundred people to send him one dollar so he could accumulate that money. And Kathleen had read the ad and she felt for him and sent him one dollar in a greeting card.

And she actually within that card left her a return address and Lee where I wrote back to her, wrote a letter and they started a correspondence and in simple terms, they fell in love with each other. She left her husband, she left her children, and she became his prison prison girlfriend. They eventually got married in the prison and that's how that's how they get together. By way of being a simple pen pal. Mark Bray was was best of friends.

They were He and Chason were pretty tight. And Mark Bray had no idea that he had this woman, this girlfriend, Kathleen Chasin, that he had been corresponding with and seeing on a regular basis because she was visiting Chason in prison. But Mark Bray, you know, he was willing to help his friend. They were both on the run together, they were doing what they had to do. So the three of them teamed up in Boston and eventually made their

way north. The proposed destination brought on by Chason was Montreal, Canada. That's where he wanted to hide out. He never gave his colleague any indication as to why Mark Bray wanted to go to Florida, somewhere warm, and he had connections in Florida. But Jason was kind of a stubborn guy and he really didn't say no to him. Throughout the book, throughout the story, very few people had the nerve to say no to le Roy Chason in any respect, any

respect at all. So everything he insisted upon Marc Bray accommodated him. So the three of them off they go. They end up in western Maine, near the New Hampshire border, and the destination is a antique store. Chasin had gotten wind that there was an antique store that had these very expensive clocks that if he stole them, he had a fence lined up that he would be able to sell the clocks and have some seed money to help them be on the lamb and continue their escape. Unfortunately

worded trickle Down. Unfortunately for Chasing. I should say word to trickle Down that this may happen. The local law enforcement there set up a kind of a sting to

wait for them at this clock store. They had actually visited it once they were seen, and then they took off, but then they came back and the law enforcement, the sheriff set up a sting and they eventually apprehended Marc Bray coming out of the store, Kathleen who was sitting in the car waiting, and were handcuffing them in front of the store when Leroy Chasing came out of the building with a hostage, and that was the owner of

the store, the hostage. There was a little bit of a tense moment where Jason was holding a gun on the sheriff and they were pointing basically pointing guns at each other. But Jason got better of it and then his hostage escaped his grasp. He happened to be the owner of the store. He ran into the store and disappeared, and Chason took off back into the store, found his way to the back of the building and an open window and jumped out and he took off through some

open fields to safety. It took four hours to apprehend him. They set up a police dragnet. There were state police from New Hampshire, from Maine, local officers, and one officer who happened to own a small plane. He got up in his plane and spotted Chason on the other skirts of the woods, and they zeroed in on him and arrested him, took him into custody.

the Quinsy Police. They sent a contingent of officers along state troopers from Massachusetts to be able to bring him back to Quincy to face questioning and be officially charged for the crime of murder and I'm robbery now because of the antique store. So they were brought back to Quincy. They were all questioned the sequence. In the meantime, there

were a lot of interviews going on. As you see in the book, there were interviews going on between the Quincy police detectives, a lot of the witnesses that were at Pageant Field and night of the murder. They kind of went through them one by one. A lot of

resistance on the part of these kids. When I read over the documents provided by the Quincy police, it was a four hundred page report book length itself, just on the questioning of these individuals, and there was a lot of resistance on the part of the witnesses because many

of them had done time. They were there's a lot of a lot of drug activity in the late seventies and Quinsy and basically everywhere else but Quincy was known in Eastern Massachusetts Greater Boss scenario as being a kind of a hotbed for drug activity, and so a lot of these kids had spent time in jail and there was that kind of built in resistance to any anything

the police would do. That and the fact there were a couple of them that that didn't want to talk because they didn't want to be what they what they called rats and kind of spell out their own their own friends. Even though Leroy Chason wasn't a friend of any of theirs, they still felt that, you know, they just didn't want to share the story and be described as a rat in this crime. So the police had there, they were cut off with them as far as interviewing

these folks. And then when when Lee Roy and Kathleen and Mark Bray were apprehended, those interviews as well. Then it go quite as they had hoped, but they did get enough evidence. The murder weapon was eventually turned up. There was a quite the search for that, and it turned up it was actually thrown by mister Chason as

he's escaping the antique store. He kept the gun he had on him, but he threw the knife into a fireplace and the business owner eventually found that knife and turned it over to the police, and that became a piece of evidence when the trial came up in nineteen seventy eight, the actual murder weapon.

covered in blood. He wasn't getting on a train at least not being without being noticed. So I mean, the police basically knew he was lying, and he just he eventually told the truth. He eventually came clean with the police detective that was interviewing Lieutenant Neil McDonald, and he came clean. And the charges were according to his sister, who I spoke with when I was working on the book,

there were minimal charges. It was just kind of a slap on the hand because there were so many moving parts in this case and they just did not eventually just did not go after some of the lesser participants. And even though Fitzgerald played a substantial a role because he brought brought leehre Chase, a two pageant field to commit this crime and then brought him back to a

place I guess you could say of safety. It was always at the at the threat of being harmed himself, and that was his That was his defense as far as any any type of reprimand was that he felt at any moment he could be stabbed, killed, shot again. Because he was a huge guy. He had a reputation for protecting people and coming to people's aid in those situations.

But I think that the police extended because they had the killer and the killer's accomplice in Marc Bray, they kind of were lenient with mister Fitzgerald and some of the other participants. He eventually the time he was in his twenties at the time of this event, his father had passed away and he became the father of the family. And I think there was some sympathies because of that

situation in the Fitzgerald family. And he eventually the pressure of you know, being being a stand in father for his siblings and kind of running the household, a lot of things caught up with him and he committed suicide in his forties. Yeah, it was kind of it was kind of a tough situation. The sister said he never got over the killing of Full Melody. It really depressed him and kind of set the tone for the next couple of decades when he finally ended his life.

stay there. He was just a pure, pure violence and braggart. He liked to talk about his crimes, you know. And I can see that, and I understand that because as an e MT with Norfolk Personal Ambulance, I spent countless hours basically in the back of the ambulance with men who had committed murders and rap and assorted other crimes. And nine out of ten times during the trip to the hospital, if they were able, they'd want to tell

you their stories with detail. And you know, I recall a discussion I had with a gentleman who would rape somebody, and he wanted to describe the rape to me, and I asked him, I said, please, I'd rather not hear that. He says, well, you're going to hear it anyways, He said, you can. You've got me chained up, like, you know, chained up like with all these chains and handcuffs and ankle bracelets and everything else. He says, but you can't. You can't cover my mouth. So I'm going to tell

you the story. So what I did is I struck up a conversation with the corrections officer who was riding with us, tried to blot it out as best I could to know that my subject lee where Chason often bragged about his crimes, assorted crimes. I fully understood that I knew where that was coming from because I had experienced it for many year.

His defense, though th Rabo, was that the knife wasn't his right, that it was dropped during the during the fight, during the melee in that park, and that he just picked it up and wielded it as as as a defense mechanism, that he was stabbing out people because they were all attacking him. But obviously, as the attorney, the prosecuting attorney for the Colmwealth Massachusetts easily disproved that theory and the autopsy did as well, that Jason brought the

knife with him and then he did. You know, it's kind of in hindsight Fitzgerald was right. As they're driving in that car, Jason still had the knife. It was hidden on his body and at any point he could have reached you know, if if Fitzgerald had challenged him in some way, Jason still had the means to do some harm. So he was right by I guess you could say was right by accommodating Chasin at that point because it could it could have gone pretty bad for him.

checks just to make sure there were no warrants. They intentionally had Kathleen to the driving because she did not have a record, But had the trooper asked for IDs from either Chasin or Mark Bray, things could have gone darkly more, you know, things could have got out of hand. Basically as far as the shooting episode in that park, you know earlier on I'm sure you read it. Le Roy did have a shooting episode as a youth. He was in an apartment in Somerville on the second floor.

He was high. I spent the day drinking and sniffing paint, is what he did in those days when he didn't have actual drugs. He would sniff paint. He saw outside his window a bunch of kids just kind of hanging out, having a good time, and he invited them up to the apartment for a party, and they gave him a bad time. They laughed at him and gave him, gave him a few words, and so we went and got his gun and started shooting out the window at these kids,

and he actually hit a girl in the face. I wasn't a fatal wound, but it left her scarred for life. And the Somerville police came along and they arrested Chason brought him off to jail. He did a little bit of time, but he was still young and the Admittedly, the legal system in Massachusetts can be questionable some of the things that have taken place over the years, and he was eventually released even though he shot a young

girl in the face. It wouldn't it have been his first shooting at the New Hampshire restop had he done that.

used it against them in my to protect myself. But just the fact that he continued to attack others in the park and pageant field, swinging that knife in a threatening way and trying to hurt others, told the prosecutor in the jury that he wasn't, in fact trying to get away. He was actually perpetrating his own attack of these people. Self defense just didn't play into his case, even though he tried that top to bottom. The tire entire tritle was on his part. On the defense part

was self defense. I was only trying to protect myself. They were just beating on me relentlessly, and I used the knife in such a way to try to get away. But he didn't. He didn't speed awave, you know what I mean. He didn't he didn't run for safety. He stayed and continued to be on the attack. One of the things that Fitzgerald had said as he got him in the car and got him out of there, was that these were still his friends and he did not

want to see any anybody else get hurt. Had he left either on foot, which he could have done, or in the car and left behind Chason no idea how many more people could have been either hurt or killed in that situation, so he felt it was his responsibility to get him out of there, and he did. Yeah, the trial didn't go very well for Chason. Oddly enough, that court room I mentioned it in the book was the scene of the old Saco and Vinzetti trial some

decades before. Basically the same courtroom where this this trial took place. And even more ironic, if you've heard of I'm sure you've heard of Karen Reid. Yes, that trial is going on as we speak. In fact, my my wife is upstairs watching it with with white eyes, same same courtroom, same same courthouse, same courtrooms where all these famous trials took place.

an attack as he claimed it was. He really had no defense in my opinion, and the and the district attorney, according to descriptions I received from folks who had attended, was very animated in some of his during his closing, where he would actually take the knife and drive it forward a couple of times, really emphasize the action of killing Paul Melody and how it took place. The jury jury definitely reacted in such a way that mister Chason was not going to win this this trial.

People who would who would bezzle from their companies and still, you know, do an unarmed bank robbery where they pretend to have a gun. Those guys would end up in minimum. But Walpole was was the was the place you didn't want to go. It was it was competed at times too who sing Sing in New York and Levenworth out in the in the Midwest. It was just one of

those really tough prisons. An example would be what a block it was called ten block, and ten block at Walpole Prison was where the worst of the worst were housed. These guys would not only be potentially violent to citizens on the outside, they were dangerous to each other. And it was so secure and such a segregated type prison block that they were there outside time one hour per day was in a cage. Each of the Each of the cells was connected to an exterior wired cage and

the door. The door would open from their cell to the to the outside. They would walk out into the fresh air, but they would be caged in where they couldn't have contact with any other inmate or any any human being and I say after actually when we went there to pick up in the end of this, when we went to pick up inmates who were injured or sick, we'd have to drive into the prison. We would have

to enter through the vehicle trap. Then we would have to go through a series of gates, and each time the Correction's office that was riding with us would unlock a gate, we'd drive forward, he lock it behind us, and we had to do that several times. And the third time before we would reach the infirmary was right in front of ten Bloc. So the inmates, it was a certain time of day, they would be out outside

in their casias. And I'll leave it to your imagination as to some of the some of the visuals that we would see in the ambulance as we're going by. We had people's shooting imaginary guns at us. Certain gestures were given to us. They were yelling cat calling to us. I'm not going to say that we, as E and T's in a stressful situation, didn't retaliate in some way. And we were often asked by the corrections offices not to do that because it just provokes the inmates to

further further attacks. I guess you could say. So it was a really tough place. LeRoy's Leroy Jason's time there was riddled with violence, violent acts against corrections officers, other inmates. He had actually got into a situation where he attacked several corrections officers who insisted that he undressed after a family visit so they could do a skin search. It was protocol, it's what they did when they came back in after having personal contact with wives, girlfriends, and others.

They had to have a skin search to make sure that there was no contraband no drugs, nothing else being ferried into the prison. He refused, and it got into a fistfight with these offices, three of them, and they couldn't control them. It actually a fourth entered the fight. A couple of them were hurt and during the battle with mister Jason. Eventually they got him under control, but not before the officers were wounded, and he was wounded

himself during the course of this fight. So you know that was his He tried to bribe offices to bring him drugs. He set fires in the prison. There was just a lot of bad tidings on the pot of chasing at Walpole, but it was the nature of the house. That kind of stuff went on all the time. One story I talk about in the book is a gentleman that I transported to the hospital. He was playing basketball. It was a warm summer's day and he was playing basketball, and I guess he was a ringer. He was doing

really well, and the opposition team didn't appreciate that. So three of them scooped him up, two of them on his upper body, one on his legs, and they ran him full speed across the basketball stanchion right across his thighs and shattered both his femur bones. And that was because he was playing a good game of basketball. So those are the kind of things that went on quite a bit at mc A. Whoopole.

What they would do is they would tape it up with the electrical tape or masking tape whatever they had their hands on, and swallow it so that the blade would not cut them internally on the way down there to the stomach. And then they would get to the hospital after swallowing these blades and X rays would reveal it was there and they would require surgery to have it removed before it did any other damage. Once the Uh, once the stomach acids, I guess you could say, uh,

got rid of the tape. Now you've got a free floating razor blade. That was one method I had a patient once, transporting them for chewing and eating a light bulb. Some of them were just trying to get to the hospital. Like I said, for a few days of freedom, a few days around nurses people something outside of those prison walls. Others were more serious about their not wanting to be lifers anymore, and they would they would take their own lives.

A lot of hangings that was fairly common. Less common would be an inmate that I had who actually covered himself with his bed sheets and lit them on fire, and it took a little while for the corrections offices to get to the cell and get it opened, and by then he had perished. So there was a lot of desperation in the prison from these guys, and the self inflicted wounds were very common to get a ride

to the hospital. The infirmary, as you mentioned, not the most skilled medical people, as you might guess, sure kind of the set. I called him the second tier of the medical profession. And in the case of Chasin, that was exactly what led to his ability to do what he did in that nineteen eighty two It was the infirm redoct his decisions that you know, not a purpose obviously, but he did aid Leroy chasing in his eventual escape.

him doing, and the distress he's in. Tell us about this supposed distress that Leroy Chason is in and guards encounter.

talking about it. He noticed down the end of a long carda an inmate who seemed to be in some distress, and so we went to his aid, and it turned out to be Leroy Chasin, who was bleeding pretty severely from the abdomen and claiming that he was stabbed by another inmate. This this corrections office, mister Reynolds got his partner and the two of them guided Chasen to the infirmary,

bleeding quite a bit. He was also bleeding from the mouth, and even somebody with a minimum of medical knowledge would know that bleeding from the mouth after being stabbed typically indicates internal bleeding of some sort. So they brought him to the doctor. They gave them, put them on the table, put them on the stretcher, and doctor Cohen did his exam, and at first, with all the blood that was involved, it was quite quite a quite a bit of it. His first diagnosis was he's not going to make it.

But then he peeled away the shirt, peeled away some of the clothing and saw that the wounds were three smaller puncture wounds, and the bleeding had since stopped, and all of a sudden it wasn't quite as bad as he first thought, and he adjusted his diagnosis. Chasing was, I guess you could say, out of danger at that point, but he decided that he should get further examination at a hospital equipped with X ray machines and so forth to make sure there was no internal damage, because he

just didn't know the depth of the wounds. So he decided to transport Chasing by the ambulance to the Norwood Hospital, which was the nearest hospital to Wopole Prison. The corrections officers called for the ambulance. While they're waiting, the corrections officer, Reynolds is starting to think there's something amiss, and I believe that's one of the words I use was a mess.

He later kind of deducted that the blood coming from Chasin's mouth was a what they call a blood capsule, what a child might use at Halloween when he's a vampire. You kind of put it into your mouth and it makes pretend blood that dribbles down your mouth. He thought that that's something that Chasin did to enhance the injuries. He moaned and groaned a lot when he was being moved.

But the key to the whole scenario. One of the protocols at all of Massachusetts prisons requires that when an inmate leaves the facility, whether he's going out to the hospital for an appointment or anything, that he is chained leg irons, a belly chain which wraps around the belly from the back, comes to the front, and then is handcuffed. The inmate's handcuffed to that belly chain, so he can't move his hands up and down. Well, side decide very much,

and that is the protocol. But in this instance, when the corrections officers ask the doctor, how do you want us to chain him? The doctor says, well, no abdomen abdominal chains because that's where his wounds are and we could exacerbate the wounds and make them worse. He could stop bleeding again. We don't want that to happen. So no belly chains, just the leg irons. No handcuffs, just

the leg irons. So it was a huge mistake on the part of the doctor and some people when they look back in the aftermath kind of put some of the blame on him for that decision, and the corrections officers, including Officer Reynolds, where they were totally stunned by that decision, but they know they they follow doctor's orders, I guess you could say. So. The ambulance arrives, they loaded up the two empt's load up. Mister Jason put him in

the ambulance and they transport him to Norwood Hospital. Now, typically when you're transporting an inmate, there are two corrections officers that go with you. One rides in the ambulance. He is unarmed. They do not want any firearms in an ambulance with an inmate that close, in such close proximity, who could but potentially get that take that gun away

and cause havoc. So the armed officer follows behind in it and what they call the chase car, it's a state car, and they follow the ambulance to the hospitals. In this case, they sent three corrections offices because of Chasin's history, because of his escape history, his ability to get out of places or keep out of places, and so they were a little concerns, so they added an

officer to the mix. On arrival at Norwood Hospital, they put him in into one of the trauma rooms, which is a private room, so he's not exposed or in the vicinity of any other civilian patients. And one of the other pivotal moments it takes place. And I found it very very interesting that Officer Reynolds admitted this to me, that he had to use the restroom at that moment,

as soon as they arrived at the hospital. And so he told his partner, who was going into the room with Chasin, into the trauma room with Chasin, I'll be right back. I'm just going to use the restroom, and off he went. The third officer with the gun happened to go up to this and walked on this long card to where there was a bank of phones, and he was calling the prison to let them know that

they had arrived safely. There was no cell phones in those days, no other communications other than tracking down a phone that he could use. Meanwhile, while doctors and nurses and technicians were buzzing around in the room treating mister Chason, inserting an IV to his arm for blood loss, examining the wounds again, adding oxygen, putting leads on his chest to watch his heart rate, things like that, a woman walked into the room, a nurse, or so they thought

was a nurse. One of the MT's, Paul Kilroy, had said to me years later when we were talking about it, that he thought he knew all the nurses in the hospital. He thought he could recognize all of them. This woman did not look familiar to him at all, and it

kind of caught his curiosity. But it was a holiday, it was labor day, and hospitals, nursing homes and so forth, they tend to hire temporary staff to fill gaps by vacations and days off and so forth, so it wasn't common for them to be a kind of an extra nurse on the site. She walked in, she was holding up her arm with a white towel draped over, kind of like I describe it as if you're in a fine dining restaurant and the waiters standing there with a

towel over his arm just in case there's a spill. Sure, And that's how she walked into the room. It wasn't long before she revealed that the towel was actually covering a forty five automatic. This was Leroy Chasin's wife, Kathleen, disguised as the nurse, holding everybody in that room at Bay and then handing the gun over to Leroyd, who needless to say, was not handcuffed. Took the gun, jumped

off the stretcher. He's bleeding from his belly again, he's bleeding from he pulled his IV out of his arm, so she haked it right out. He's bleeding from that. Took off all the other tubes and wires and stood up and as he's pointing the gun at everybody in the room, doctor nurse, a couple of assistants, two empts, one corrections officer. His parting words were sorry, folks, but

I got to go. And off they went. As they leave that room and turn the corner the corrections officer, mister Reynolds, who had to use the restroom, comes out of the restroom. He sees them. She points the gun at him momentarily, but he manages to bolt and get out of get out of that situation, and he runs for the visiting the waiting area. We're trying to find a phone. Obviously, they run out of the hospital. As soon as they leave, Reynolds yells to his partner down

the hall on the phone, we need the gun. We need the gun again. There's only one gun between the three offices. So he comes. He eventually comes, running, goes out the door after the fleeing suspects, and a gunfight ensues. Jason fires. He fires. The only thing that got struck were parked cars, and some of the bullets struck the walls, concrete walls. There were holes left behind in the walls that later on became a tourist attraction. People were coming

by to take photos of them. A bullet almost hit one of the security guards, who happened to all joined in the chase. The hospital security guard, who was also unarmed, nearly hit him in the head. They did some measurements later on and determined that he survived by a whisker. So Leroy, Chason and Kathleen. She's driving, he's in the passenger seat. They scream out of the hospital parking lot and just leave everybody leave the authorities behind. The Norwood Police,

who had been called by Reynolds. They eventually arrived. Reynolds joins one of the police officers in a search and they drive around multiple police cruises, driving around town looking for the vehicle. It was a Chevy and they eventually found it in a parking lot of a nearby supermarket about a quarter of a mile from the hospital. But there was a second car. They had an accomplice, and the accomplice had brought them an alternate car. In that

car there was money, clothing, and both cutters. Because the police found that somebody had used a pair of bowl cutters to cut the ankle bracelets off of mister Jason and relieve him of that. There were also packages from gauze bandages, gauze pads that were obviously used to stem the bleeding from his abdomen in his arm. That was obviously a Kathleen move, knowing that he might need that, and she brought some along. They were well, this was

well orchestrated, well executed. The accomplice arranged. I later found out the accomplished arrange for credentials, they changed their names and from the hospital they won on an eighteen month journey across country on the run.

all by buses from place to place. They chose not to stay in any city or any area longer than than necessary, and if they felt pressure, they felt heat, they would move on immediately without delay. At first they actually got an apartment. Their first apartment was in Chicago, and they found that call it paranoia, but they thought they were seen or recognized, so they eventually abandoned that apartment and moved on and took another Greyhound to the

Seattle area. And then they decided that an apartment didn't make sense because if they wanted to continue to move and move quickly, say after a few days, that the apartment didn't work out. So they started to use motels and they never stayed at one longer than a few days. So imagine an eighteen month run across country staying no longer than a few days in any one place. It was labor of love, but they they actually got work,

and the fact that their skill set. Their working skill set allowed them not to stay in any place very long. For instance, Chasin would take jobs in small cafes or mom and restaurants as a dishwasher temporary. You know, we're only going to be in the area for a week and I work, and most places would hire them and pay them in cash. And Kathleen had her nursing nursing assistant skills, and she took brief temporary jobs caring for

the elderly in their homes. There were always ads. She would find an ad for somebody needing some home assistance, and she'd do it for a week, maybe two, and then they'd move on to the next city. The ironic part ironic part of this this trip was that there were occasions where they encountered police, some that were very interesting to the fact that I described them as teflon. It seemed like they got away with a lot of stuff that you, as a fugitive on the run, you

probably shouldn't get away with. While they were in Chicago, Kathleen went into a Target department store. Their television in their in their place was on the fritz, and she stolen put in the carriage and started to wheel it out. She was captured by the store detectives, and you would figure at that point the police would be called in, they'd bring him into the station, they'd identify them, and back to Massachusetts they would go. But that wasn't the case.

The store detectives find them one hundred dollars and they were on their way. Crush you one hundred dollars and don't ever come in the store again, and that'll be fine. We don't need we don't need to involve with the police. There was some physical altercations on the outside, on the outskirts of Seattle. Chason was checking them into a motel.

Kathleen was standing outside and two drunk, vague vagrants accosted her, and when it was pointed out to Chasin by the motel clerk, he ran out there and and and beat both of them up, left them writhing on the ground. He was a he was a pretty tough kid. When the police showed up, they didn't they didn't arrest him. They were basically saying, well, you know, keep your nose clean. It looks like this is justified that you beat up these guys. They assaulted your girlfriend, your wife, whatever, And

they let them off the hook. So there were instances of that that took place pretty much everywhere they went, and they managed to skate each time without much police involvement. They eventually landed in Denver, which was ultimately their final destination. Kathleen's children were living in just outside of Denver, and so she had an added motive to try to get to Denver and make that her permanent home because that way she could reunite with her children in such a way.

And so that's why they made their home in Denver. Now, needless to say, she was on the run. She didn't spend much time with them. She didn't visit them at their home. They met at parks and places like that where they couldn't be captured because they were not only was Kathleen afraid that the police would arrest her if they were sticking out the house of her children, but they would arrest the children children's caretakers, as I guess you could say, aiding and abetting her. So they were

very very careful. She did get to see the children, but infrequently and very carefully while they were in Denver.

explained what they wanted. They wanted to hire an ambulance and two EMTs to do the reenactment at both Norwood Hospital and the prison, and Norfolk Personal Ambulance management agreed and the office manager, his name was Bruce Vallade pointed. He said to me, he says, hey, Dan, so you

missed the first one six years ago. He wanted to do the second one, and I said to him, you know, Bruce, I'd rather not be associated with a criminal like Leroy Chase, So why don't you give it to a couple other people. I'm sure they'll appreciate it. So they did, and come to find out, the two EMTs that got the job also got substantial royalty checks from America's Most Wanted. So I missed out a second time. Hopefully the third time will be this book. But anyways, yeah, that was my

little America's Most Wanted story. So they showed up at the office. They did the reenactment, and it broadcast mid nineteen eighty eight and turned up zero leads to the authorities. Everything was a dead end, according to the FBI agent that I spoke with, So that the they decided to rebroadcast the show a year later in nineteen eighty nine,

and this one actually turned up leads. Mister Chasin's neighbors were watching the show and they recognized him and made a call to the FBI, and the FBI, needless to say, they did a little tracking, did a little legwork to identify chasing, and they were staked out of his apartment in downtown Denver. He had said all through his later life Kathleen and others who would listen, that there was no way that he was ever going back to prison.

They would never take him back, and those words obviously had a double meaning, but Kathleen was aware that he would not be taken and that was in fact the case once he realized. Once Leroy realized that the FBI had him surrounded at this apartment, he got a hold of his gun, which ironically was later identified as the gun at the hospital seven years earlier, and went outside

his apartment and engaged the FBI agents. He shot first, They shot second, third, fourth, fifth, and took down mister Jason on a hot, steamy sidewalk of downtown Denver, Colorado. Kathleen later turned herself in. She learned of her husband's demise on a television show. She was working at a nearby neighbor's house taking care of an elderly person. She

saw it on the TV. She went to the police, told them who she was, and they took her into custody, and eventually she was transported back to Massachusetts to serve time at our women's prison, which is MCI Framingham, and she did a few years. They didn't keep her long, and then she went on to live her life. Passed away at the age of seventy five and in her house in Maine. Oddly enough, a lot of our children who had lived in Colorado during the escape phase, they

gradually began to move back east. Some of them settled in Maine. Her son settled in New Hampshire, and so they were nearby for her in her later years.

the first year of a Markers almost wanted. It just started broadcasts and I don't think they had the viewers. I think by year one, once they've been on the air for another year, now you had more viewers, more interest in the show. It was generating a lot more view a lot more eyeballs, and eventually somebody did see it.

There was a twist in the book. I'm sure you noticed after Leroy, after Lee Roy was killed by the FBI, his girlfriend back in Somerville, Massachusetts, Linnell revealed to her son, who was now in his teens, that Leroy Chasen was not really his dad and never had been. And it was a stunning moment for him to find out that the man. Even though the man was a criminal and he was on the run from everybody, it was still his father and he thought it was his father, but

it was not his father. His mother Linnell had kept that secret from Leroy because Leroy was supporting them. He was paying for the apartment, he was paying for little Derek as far as clothing and so forth, and she was afraid that if he found out she had kept up this ruse, that Leroy would would come and do harm to either her or her son, or take the son. There was a lot of things going through her mind.

She was unfortunately, she was heavy into drugs. She passed away at a very early age from an overdose in her early fifties. And Derek the way he found out besides his mother telling him that, the way he found out was that he used that system twenty three and meters and did a search for himself and found that his found his biological father in New York City, eventually reunited with some of his first cousins there. His biological

father had since passed away. Interesting story for Derek to find out that all those years that he thought that Chasen was his dad and come to find out as a teenager that he was not in fact his dad.

You know, cut somebody's grass for them, and they're gonna they'll never think, as you're being the nice guy next door that you're an escaped ex convict who murdered a twenty year old and you're on the run from the FBI and just about everybody else. Just it doesn't cross people's mind if you're polite and you're courteous and you're friendly.

And so Chason took on that that personality during this during this hideout, I guess you could say, during while he was on the lamb in Colorado and he had his name is pretty well fooled throughout that throughout the course of that.

from prison. It's not like they didn't know he was a dangerous guy and had some kind of potential, and like you say, they were prepared for these high risk inmates. That's what that blue code room was. So her steadfast support of her husband and her bravery that she needed to pull this crime off were evident of that. That steady, the steadfast love that she had for this convict Leroy Chasin.

he was. Even during the discussion, he was evasive, but then he learned that I was going to do my very best. When I explained to him, I would do my very best to respect his mother even though she had committed a criminal act, that she deserved deserve respect because it was all a lot of love for Leroy. That's pretty much my story to him, I said I would take great care and respecting her, and I had practice in that too, Dan, my first book, Shots in

the Dark, I befriended Roco. During the course of my writing and interviews. I had to respect the victims because one was my aunt. So throughout I managed to write true crime stories but in some way respect the participants as the best way I could.

earlier book, comes up second. And they can read the reviews and look at the the quick bios and captions on from these two stories, and uh, hopefully they'll read my they'll read my books.