EYES OF A MONSTER-Ron Peterson Jr.

in nineteen eighty one. Her killer left few clues, and the murder went unsolved. Three decades later, in twenty eleven, Next Generation detective Randy Mayer reopened Olivia's dusty cold case file and began unraveling the mystery. Mayor located a reluctant witness who was a teenager back in nineteen eighty one. She recalled a suspicious man lurking outside Olivia's apartment the morning of the murder and provided a detailed description of

the man. Detective Mayor then researched hundreds of cold cases hunting for a person who fit the description, and used a similar mo he identified a prime suspect, a Smithfield Foods employee, by then in his sixties, previously convicted of several brutal sex sexual assaults. Digging further, Mayor linked him to two other unsolved Hampton homicides. Was this man a serial killer? Mayor enlisted the help of FBI agent Lisa Ludovico cuter Phil Figura. Could the team uncover enough evidence

to bring Olivia's murderer to justice? Is from nineteen eighty one identify him? And would a jury convict in a cold case based entirely on circumstantial evidence. The book that we're featuring this evening is Eyes of a Monster with my special guest, journalist and author, Ron Peterson Junior. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Ron Peterson Junior.

was killed that morning at seven thirty am. And in a lot of murder cases, you know, the time of death is not for sure, but in this case, the murder weapon was her bedroom alarm clock. Her attacker had used it first to strike her in the head, knocked her unconscious, and then she was straggled with the court of the alarm clock. And as an analog alarm clock had showed the time of death, which was seven thirty am.

And that was really one of few clues that the original investigators in nineteen eighty one had to work with.

to enter her apartment. Immediately he could see signs of a struggle, and as he made his way through the apartment to her bedroom, he found her there and she was dead. The investigators came to the scene immediately. Hampton, it should be noted as a city that an average crime rate or motor rate, you know, for cities that size, probably about one or two a month on average. So

investigators were were used to working homicide cases. A very good team of detectives who worked the case, among them a detective by the name of James Staveley and another one by the name of J. P. Jones, both of whom are now retired. But Hamps Belief basically had a full court press and the investigation, you know, was around the clock investigation, and then you know, the days afterwards, and it continued. There was a pool of as many as as five different suspects or persons of interests who

were evaluated. Among them one of the neighbors who was a woman who you know might have had jealousy for some reason as a motive. Olivia Christian was a single woman, lived alone. She had a boyfriend for the past year. He was vetted as a suspect. The paper boy, who

was a teenager was as well. There were at least a few mysterious men reported by neighbors in the apartment complex, and then also a man who lived nearby who was just suspicious by nature, whose name was Michael Austen, who the days after the investigation failed to polygrass, and then

a tracking dog also led to his front door. But perhaps the best league came from a sixteen year old girl who was a neighbor of Olivia Christian lived across the parking lot in an apartment and the morning of the murder, about half an hour to forty five minutes before the time of death, the sixteen year old witness had observed a suspicious man drive in in a distinctive vehicle. She described it to police as an aqua green four

door older Sedan. The paint faded the top a little lighter than the rest of it, and she described a man that was in the car in great detail, an African American man average height and build, with a mustache

and a plain navy blue ball cap. According to this witness, he edited after watching the apartment complet for a while, had seen Olivia Christian that morning and exited his vehicle, went to her apartment window, looked in the window, actually entered the lobby of her apartment corridor, and she saw him. The witness saw him with his ear toward her door, leaning in on the door, apparently listening. At first, detectives

believed she was credible. She provided under hypnosis. The sixteen year old witness provided a description to a police sketch artist and of what the man looked like a very good composite sketch. But as the investigation unfolded, just through a series of circumstances, the police came to doubt this

young girl's story. Some of the neighbors had said she was prone to drama, and for a variety of reasons that my book gets into, her account was not found to be credible, and she was actually interrogated in great detail, and finally she was frustrated that they didn't believe her, so she said, hey, I just made it all up. So the investigation continued and the case, despite a full court press by the investigators, the case went unsolved.

together on your hypnosis. So that fact, you know, made investigators believe that Michael Austen was the man that the witness had seen. She was interviewed again and again came to the police station. As I said, she was put under hypnosis and was also given a light detector test

at one point. And in some ways, unfortunately, she was treated like a suspect because police, or I should say interrogated, you know, similar to the way they would interrogate the suspect, because police had reason to believe that the man she had seen was Michael Austin. However, she told them repeatedly the man I saw looked like Michael Austin, but it was not him. So and you can imagine, you know, putting yourself in her shoes, a sixteen year old girl

under this kind of pressure. Finally, after being you know, grown by these investigators, she said, hey, I made the whole thing up, you know, in large part, just to just to remove herself from the situation.

And the dog he had was a German shepherd, not typically known for their spent work, you know, you think more of bloodhounds, but the dog, by all accounts, had had remarkable skills. Now, this case, another case that I wrote a book about that happened about a year prior to this, was a no body murder case in Bradford, Virginia, the case of Jeina Rene Hall. And this dog tracker, John Preston, and his dog had worked to that case and he testified in the murder trial and essentially helped

convict the killer in that case, Stephen Epperley. That was in nineteen eighty, about a year before this murder happened. So when he was able to come to Hampton to investigate this case, you know, the detectives and the police force in Hampton were really happy to have them there because of his work and his dog. About within a week after the murder, dog was scented on the murder weapon on that alarm clock that I mentioned, it was

brought into the victims apartment. The dog was scented on it, and the dog followed a trail out of the apartment complex the end of the parking lot, down the road, across the four lane road and into a residential area and walked to the front door of the house where Michael Austen lived and alerted on his front door, so that the investigators believed, you know, was one of the one of several bits of proof that indicated that Michael

Olson was the killer. He also took a polygraph test and failed the test, or I should say the results were inconclusive and leaned toward him being you know, lying on the on the polygraph and it should be not also, you know, in the years since polygraph science has really come under a lot of scrutiny. This was during a time period the early nineteen eighties where a lot of police departments really believed that polygraph tests with a good

polygraph operator, you know, they were gospel. They believed they were very accurate. So those were two other other pieces of evidence that pointed at Michael Auston as a suspect. Hence all the pressure on this young sixteen year old witness to indicate that Michael Austin was the man she saw when she repeatedly existed, he I know Michael Austin, but that was not the man I saw. I saw a different man. He looked like him, but it was not him.

was some misunderstanding there. Initially, they said that they had seen Michael Austin acting suspiciously in the complex shortly after the murder, but once they were able to talk to them in person, they realized that their information was not reliable. Among other things, the night before, on a Thursday night, this couple had been out bar hopping very late and we're probably still intoxicated the next morning, you know. They

finally admitted to that. So that was just one of the things that put their uh, This supposed eyewitness account from this couple that were visiting for the weekend from Baltimore. You know that that made it made them realize that was not a reliable account and one of the one of the few reasons why their case against Michael Austin fell apart. And you know, within months after the murder, they realized that that Michael Austin was probably not a viable suspect.

any developments. There is a little bit of an idea that maybe somebody, if an infamous serial killer, might be involved. Henry Lee Lucas was arrested and then people were looked at Lucas almost what happens in that regard, and then introduced Edgar Browning.

His name was Henry Lee Lucas. He was originally from southwest Virginia with kind of a drifter who drifted around the country, and there was a Netflix theories on him recently called the Confession Killer and is just you know, really interesting background by him, but eaveslink to many many murders. He admitted to hundreds of murders, but police realized he

had maybe exaggerated his claims. But he'd been arrested in Texas and he was interviewed in nineteen eighty three, and then in nineteen eighty four, Hampton police got a copy of that interview and actually had a state police officer sit down with him and talk to him to see if there was any link between him and the Olivia Christian murder and other murders that happened in the Hampton

and Newport News area. And you know, after talking with him, they realized that there was not, but for a while that would look like a very promising lead.

call it an interview. In the old days, they called it an interrogation. But you know, he read this kind of cocky guy. You know, people that the kind of guy you meet him for the first time, we'd probably rub you the wrong way. The people that worked with him and knew him, you know, really liked him and

respected the kind of work he did. But he was he was the one that first came to realize, you know, in about nineteen eighty three, nineteen eighty four, that the dog tracker that we talked about, John Preston, was a fraud and that his work in this case was probably fraudulent. So Browning was, you know, was involved throughout the early years of the investigation. He recently passed away this this past year.

Kind of an overachiever in the detective squad. The kind of the protocol there is there's enough active cases for the detectives to work in the Crimes against Person unit. There not only homicides, but rate sexual assaults, armed robberies, and you know, crimes against people. And once they're ahead on those cases, or all those cases are closed, then they may have time to work old cold cases. So they don't have a dedicated cold case unit. And that

was the case with the Randy Mayer. He was working on another murder, a cold case murder from the eighties, and and happened just by happenstance, to come across the Olivia Christians cold case file. This was in twenty eleven, as we said, thirty years after the murder, and he brought the file home on a weekend, you know, did not have a lot to do that weekend, spent Saturday reading through the file from beginning to end, and then spent Sunday taking detailed notes and doing some analysis on it.

Came back to work on Monday morning and said, you know, to his sergeant, he said, hey, I'd like to work this case, and his sergeant basically he said, go for it. Over the course of the next few years, Randy Mayer

pretty much became obsessed with this case. You know, again, he had he was very busy with his active caseload, but any spare time he had, as well as evenings and weekends, he'd spend time going through the case, interviewing some of the old neighbors, some of the old friends of the Need of Olivia Christians, as well as some of the persons of interest. And he was able to

eliminate some of the folks that were originally suspects. And the more he read through the file, the more he believed that the witness statement from the sixteen year old witness Anita was was credible that she was she was telling the truth, and that she only recanted because she was pressured so much. So he managed to locate Anita. She was by then, she was in her forties. She lived in a neighboring jurisdiction, and when he asked her, you know, hey, just tell me, were you telling the truth?

If you relying, no problem, you know, I would just like to know, she immediately became emotional. She said, I was telling the truth. She said that man's face has haunted me almost every day of my life. She said, you know, I've had nightmares about it. And so they you know, they have a heart to heart and the conversation ends with, you know, Randy Mayer and her agreeing, you know, together, we're going to try to find this guy.

And then that's when his investigation really gets underway. What he did in studying this case, Detective Mayor came to realize that the attack on Olivia Christian was sexually motivated. This was a sexual predator. His motive was rape, and it was only when Olivia Christian put up such a fight, literally the fight of her life, that you know, things tragically they accelerated and she was killed in this attack.

You know, she you know, literally was not going to succumb to the to the rape, which is just, you know, a tragic scenario. So he then began looking. He was convinced that the Olivia's killer had probably attacked other women, had most certainly attacked other women in that timeframe. So he bracketed the time of the murder and looked at not only active cases, but police reports for a year prior to her murder in eighty one and also a

year after. He cast a wide net, was not only looking at sexual assaults, but incidents of thought peeping tom in decent exposure, you know, any crimes of dominance or power over women. And as he did that, he came across a nineteen eighty two case that happened a year after Olivia Christian was killed. It was a rape in which a man was convicted, and the attacker's mo was very, very similar to that of Olivia Christian's attacker, a lot of similarities and a lot of the same stalking behavior

that he realized had taken place in both incidents. He found a picture of that man who was convicted, who served a sentence, was by then in his sixties and still lived in Hampton after he observed fifteen years in

prison on the rape. When he compared the picture of the composite sketch to the man's picture at the time of the other arrest in eighty two, it was almost a perfect match, you know, just just a dead ringer found a picture of the man's vehicle that he was arrested in, and sure enough it was an awkward green, older sedan with an awkwardreen tight top, lighter than the rest of the vehicle, exactly as the teenage witness had described it on the morning of the murder.

fifty to fifty Caucasian and African Americans. So he was a guy that would would clearly blend in, you know, in the area. His appearance, you know, nothing distinctive about him. I would say. He was born in nineteen fifty one in Hertford County, North Carolina, an area about an hour's drive from Hampton Roads. He was one of fifteen siblings. He was his mother's fifth child when she was eighteen

years old. When he was ten years old, his mother left him to run off with the preacher in their little, small rural area man named Henry Smallwood to live in Newport News. Left him behind and for three years he basically lived on his own under the care of his older brothers and sisters. His father was an alcoholic, you know, did not look after him, was not in the picture.

And after three years living alone, he moved to Newport News, which borders Hampton by the Way, to live with his mother and the reverend, and he came to be a blended family of twenty one kids. So you know, I'm not a psychologist, but he was you know, most certainly neglected. In fact, his mother's ability to reproduce was so prolific that her obituary in nineteen ninety listed seventy five grandchildren.

So you know, by all accounts, her son Reuven did slip through the cracks when he came to the area at age thirteen. He did not read or write. He enrolled in junior high school, you know, made straight fs, and dropped out at age fourteen to the job in construction. He first appeared on the police blodder in nineteen sixty five at age fifteen for an attack on a white female. He was convicted of that spent a year in his

juvenile reform center in Richmond, Virginia. When he returned to Newport News, he was sixteen and soon became the suspect in a series of residential break ins. And then in nineteen sixty eight, at age seventeen, he was charged in a case that local residents still remember as the light bulb case. And what happened On March fourteenth, nineteen sixty eight. He broke into a woman's apartment through a bedroom window.

She was sexually assaulted, beaten with his fists during and after the attack, and the investigators discovered that the light bulb at the extraor light picture had been unscrewed to provide darkness to cloak his entry through the window, and this actually matched the series matched them in a series of rapes and break ins over the previous year that they'd attributed to a man they'd come to call the light bulb racist. So he was charged in that case

in nineteen sixty eight. The key evidence against him were his fingerprints on that light bulb, interestingly enough, but a trial, his attorney argued, but since the landlord bought the light bulbs of the local supermarket where Reuben Moore had occasionally shopped, he could have touched the light bulb in the score. The judge threw out the evidence, and then without this key evidence, he was found not guilty. Within a year there was he was charging another rape, attacking a woman

a few blocks from his house. She was beaten, left for dead only you know, was basically dying of her wounds and luckily was found by the milkman. In that attack, he used a knife with a four inch blade, and part of that knife, part of the distinctive wooden handle, was found at the crime scene. The detectives obtained the search warrant to search his apartment and the other part of the knife was found, the wooden handle was missing. It matched up exactly and he was charged with sexual

assault and attempt or rape and attempted murder. In that case, he was convicted in nineteen sixty nine. He was sentenced to life in prison, and from prison, he appealed that conviction, and his attorney based the appeal and the effect on the fact that the affidavit for the search warrant was vague. It only asked for it implements used to commit a felony.

One of the things, you know, in the United States, our Fourth Amendment rights for search and seizure specify that an affidavit for a search warrant has to be specific and accurate. The appeals judges in the Junior Supreme Court when this case was appealed, they determined that that affi davit was faulty, which made the search warrant faulty, which made the key evidence what we would call fruits of

the forbidden tree. So that evidence was thrown out. Was the conviction was overturned, and the prosecutor without that key evidence could not prosecute the case. So he was essentially a free man. He said, you know, just in those cases, some unbelievable luck for him. Then he was charged with another rape in your sexual assault and break in and attack in nineteen seventy one. In nineteen seventy two he was the prime suspect and a murder in which charges

were not brought against him. But you know the folks I interviewed for that, the prosecutor and the lead detectives were one hundred percent sure he was the killer, but just did not have the evidence to prove it. And he was sentenced for rape in nineteen seventy two, served eight years, and came out in nineteen eighty, which, as fate would have it, was about one year before the fatal attack on Olivia. Christian.

So you know that's the charge as they're they're pursuing. So Detective Mayor called him in for an interview, says he's he's investigating, you know, an old case. He gets a DNA sample from Ruben Moore cheek swab and because the original forensic evenance had degraded, you know, there's there's no forensic avenue to pursue there. But over the course of two interviews with Ruben Moore, where he voluntarily came in for an interview repeatedly, Detective Mayor accuses him of

the murder and more. Does not confess, but he says some some very interesting things. First off, he he lies about many smaller aspects of the crime, you know, tells lies that can later be proven in court that he lied. And you know, for for a prosecutor prosecuting a murder case, if you can prove that the suspect has told a lot of little lies during their interview, then you can essentially prove the big lie you know, that they're lying

about permitted the murder. Among the things Detective Mayor tells him, he says, there was a witness that saw you the morning of the murder, and I think you saw her too, and ruben Moore immediately replies, oh, I didn't see nobody out there, which you know puts him basically after scene.

But he kind of just said it reflectively, without thinking and as the interview progressed, as ruben Moore admits, you know, and in this he's talking perhaps not specifically about this murder, but about his other assaults on women, which you know, there were as many as a dozen, you know, different ones in that time period. He says, Hey, you know, I admit I was evil as hell one time. I did things out of pure hell meanness. And these are

direct quotes from him. And then he begins to plead with mayor, you know, because it happens so long ago, and because he had served fifteen years on the the other charge for rape that he basically you know, done his penance for that, he tells them, you know, hey, I don't even have that mindset anymore. I'm trying to move past my past. I did fifteen years. And then he even talks about himself in the third person in those interviews. He says, you know, Reuben wouldn't have killed

nobody was something that he said repeatedly. And then, perhaps most deservingly, he speaks of demons. He says, you know, the fact, in the time period when he was committing these crimes, he tells the detective mayor, he said, I can remember being driven by demons. He says, I don't have those demons no more. And then, you know, in an effort to determine his motives, you know, it's obvious and these cases weren't un anomaly in that, you know,

they were attacks outside his race. And the fact is that statistically, you know, a serial rapist will attack within race the vast majority of the time, you know, perhaps as much as eighty or ninety percent of the time. And this was an anomaly because you know, there was many a as like I said, six on the even as many as a dozen attacks, all of them on

you know, white women. So it through the course of the interview, Reuven Moore makes it clear that his motive, that what was driving him to attack these women was the racism that he had faced. And just asn't the size you know, I can say, having grown up in this area, you know, first of all, there's still still racism. You know, racism is still in our society, obviously systemic racism. But back in those days, you know, it was sixty

seventies and eighties, it was a tough time. The area where he lived was, you know, really run down area, and it was the fact that blacks were discriminated against. And this seems to have been his motive in that time. And Detective Mayor asked him, you know what, why did you do it? Why did you attack white women? And Ruben Moore's admits he says, because these are his direct quotes.

He says, racially, the system was dirty, Blacks have always caught the hell and if I could get away with something, I'd do it. And then Detective Mayor asked him, you know, well, what were you like back then? He says, well, you know, I was a macho man. I was a macho black man. He said, what made me do it? If I put candy out and told you you can't have that candy because I'm human and I have a right to it.

So yeah, that that was later presented as in court as his motives, and you know, was a kind of a unique part of this case.

Virginia in the United States. You know, we've all seen the old police lineups on movies or detective television shows. You know, they use a system called a photo array where where someone is shown usually six photographs, where a witness has shown six photographs one by one, and they picked the person who they witnessed out of those photographs. So they're leading up to this, Anita says, you know, hey,

I saw him. I've never forgotten those eyes. The title of the book Eyes of a Monster comes from her quote that she always remembered his eyes because he had the eyes of a monster, and she never forgot what those eyes look like. So she's confident that she can pick this man out. The detective Mayor, on the other hand, is naturally a bit skeptical, so he meets with the prosecutor in Hampton, the Hampton Commonwealth Attorney, whose name was Anton Bell, and they agree, Hey, let's go ahead, have

her do the photo line up. If she picks the wrong person, we can probably explain that to a jury if it goes to trial, and it won't hurt us too much. So they take a photo of Ruben Moore from the time of the Olivia Christian murder back in nineteen eighty one, the photo was actually taking eighty two, along with five other photographs he's picked out of other police files from that time period, and she's shown the

photos one by one. She sits down with the detective protocol as you use a detective who's not involved in the case, who knows nothing about it, you know, another police officer, so that they're not giving you know, subtle clues or any type of you know, nonverbal clues on who to pick. And sure enough, when they get to

the picture it's the fifth one. She immediately has this visceral reaction that's him, that's the man, that's the monster, you know, that's him, and and actually almost has a un emotional breakdown, you know, when she she sees him again. Then she's got to look at the sixth and final photo, which she does and says, Okay, that's sixth one is not him. So with that she'd made the positive identification.

And the book gets a bit more into that, just you know how dramatic it was for her to pick this man out of a photo or array, you know, four decades later.

Is and I'm paraphrasing here, but you know, basically, it's too ify. We've got probable cause to indict him from murder. But if we're talking about convincing a jury of twelve people, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that's a very different call thing to do. So we need more evidence. So he has Mayor work with a few of the assistant prosecutors and intends to build a case against Mayor, I'm sorry,

build a case against Ruby Moore. Even further, Detective Mayor continues to probe these other two homicides, the nineteen seventy two murder of Helen Sturgis and the nineteen eighty two murder of Linda Sykes, and you know, continues to investigate those and can't quite get any more evidence. And it becomes clear, you know, he's kind of banging his head against a brick wall, and you know, been building a case.

So Mayor has a professional relationship with an FBI agent by the name of Liza Ludovico, who works out of the FBI's Norfolk office. She's just an outstanding investigator. She has some experience working in serial murder cases, and she

agrees to help out with the case. And not only that, but together they enlist the help of a special prosecutor from the State Attorney General's office who specialize in specializes in prosecuting cases just like this and you know, hard to prosecute murder cases that are that are old cold cases. And his name is Phil Figura. So the three of them together become a team and continues to investigate Ruben Moore.

Among other things. Phil Figura goes through the the video recordings of the interviews, you know, there's a few hours of interviews with Ruben Moore and realizes that he said enough things to not admit his guilt, but certainly to imply his guilt, you know, enough things that that could probably convince a jury of that. They go before the grand jury in Hampton and he is indicted. The suspect,

Ruben Moore is indicted for first degree murder. He's arrested, brought in and they, you know, they realized before he lawyers up, they're gonna have one more opportunity to question him, you know, or again you know, we in the old days he used the term interrogate. Now it's you know, interview.

So this time rise Aludavico does the interview, and you know, it's a long up gosha five or six hour interview with him at an FBI office, and I'll linked the interview in which he again he does not admit to the murder, but he says things that will later be used against him in court testimony.

time of his arrest. So I've got a lot of information. And they've got a conference room at the FBI office, which is a satellite office in Newprint News, where the four walls in this room are literally literally covered with everything. Crime scene photos from the three murders, pictures of all the houses where he sexually assaulted women, pictures of the prisons he was incarcerated at. You know, the walls are

liberally covered. Their's strings connecting maps of you know, the victim's house to the house he was living at the time. So it's almost like this, you know, like as I say in the book, it's like, you know, this is your life, Rubin Moore. It's you know, almost like an intervention where they sit down with him, or where Eliza Ludovico, the agent sits down with him, you know, to interview him.

So they make it clear that, you know, they know everything he has done, his entire criminal past, and part of her strategy, you know, she's come to realize that in the years since we' even Moore got out of prison. Uh, he's apparently and I say apparently because it, you know, may not be the case, become very religious and you know, uses that as as you know, part of his actually

part of his defense. So a lot of the interview was kind of a theological discussion about his need to you know, the biblical need for him to come clean, confess his sins and essentially you know, clean himself, and that if he is truly a Christian, truly a Christian man, he'd admit to what he did. And if he can do that, you know, she can can ask for the more. You know, if he confessed to the murder, there could be more favorable terms for him than if a jury

finds him guilty. But you know, after this long interview. Unfortunately, he uh, you know, he does not does not confess to the crime.

was providing were false. And you know, the fortunate thing was in each of these cases, he was convicted in each of them and served a prison term. You know, for each one, the jury did also did not believe her, you know, her alibi that she actually took the stand and then sworn testimony, you know, presented an alibi to the jury for him at that you know that the

time and date of the attacks. In one instance, she said, you know he was he lived with her at the time, and she said, you know, no, he couldn't have done this because you know, my husband and I were watching television in the living room and he was in his bedroom, you know, the entire time. So there's no way, you know, he could have left to do this. And you know obvious, I think for anyone who reads the transcript and reads the other evidence against him, that this was a false alibi.

So in order to you know, the fear is that if he's in this current case in two thousand, you know, twenty eleven to twenty eighteen, if he's charged with this case,

that his sister will again provide an alibi for him. So, along with with an FBI agents, detective Mayor traveled to Richmond in preparation for this to actually sit down with his sister to interview her and more or less in a subtle way to make it clear that you know, he knew that she had had testified on Ruben's behalf in the past and kind of get on record that you know, what she knew about at this time and whether or not she had an alibi for him this time, which it turned out she did not.

he was in Hampton Roads Regional Jail. And the thing about telephones, and you know the telephone community communication system in any of Virginia's prisons are those conversations are recorded. The only ones that are not recorded are privileged conversations with an attorney that are protected under attorney client privilege.

All other phone conversations in prison of recorded. So there's a recording made of Ruben Moore calling his sister Gloria, and for the first part of the conversation, you know, it's just general conversation how's the family doing, how's this and that? Then it gets more specific and she asked him about his upcoming trial, about the charges against him, and she happened to ask him, you know, well, has you know have you have you ever been to those

apartments before? And he says, and I'm paraphrasing here, but that you know, the book and the trial transcript had had the exact words. He said, Yeah, I've been there before. I used to do my laundry there, and he provides a description of the apartments. So this recording is is, you know, the prosecutor phil Figura and his routine due diligence, gets a copy of this recording and it's presented in eventually presented in court in his in his murder trial.

postponed a bit before that. There's a few postponements actually by the prosecution, and you know, in Virginia in the United States, there's the provision constitutional provision for a speedy trial. His attorney's waved his right to a speedy trial. So the case finally goes to court in twenty eighteen and he's represented by two very very good attorneys, defense attorneys

that are appointed by the court. Of course, Phil Faguera, who we mentioned, is prosecuting this case, and it's a really unique case and it gets a lot of media attention because you know the sensational nature of it. But it's a murder case from you know, four decades ago, and the witnesses, you know, there's a great deal of strategy and a trial, and the book gets into that

about the witnesses that are presented. The first witness is one of Olivia's old friends and teachers who she taught with, who's actually the one who made the phone call to her parents, Olivia's old boyfriend is presented as a witness, you know, to talk about Olivia as a person, and also because the prosecution knows that the defense is probably going to mention his name as a as a possible suspect,

which you know, and she most clearly was not. One of the old detectives is brought in from nineteen eighty one, James Staveley, who's by then in his late sixties. He goes through the crime scene photos and you know, and

talks about that. And then, of course, the star witness in this trial, and what makes it such a unique trial is when Anita Purcell, who's now in her forties, who is sixteen years old at the time of the murder, but she testifies and the jury's presented with the information of her picking out where even more in the lineup. Very dramatic moment when she actually points him out in you know, in the courtroom as as the man she saw that morning back then. Randy Mayer also provides his

test DEMONI. And then one of the last witnesses is Eliza Ludavico, who who the FBI agent who talks about her interview of Ruben Moore and you know shares her her interpretation of that of that conversation.

the original investigator. They call him back to the stands and you know, to try to to pain his testimony. You don't have much success in that. And then also you know, there's the big moment on cross examination. They had the opportunity opportunity to cross examine a need to Purcell, the sixteen year old witness from eighty one, and tried

their best, you know, to to ding her testimony. But she did a you know, a just an excellent job of you know, keeping her composure and just confidently telling telling what she saw. So that's I guess that's kind of their their defense in a nutshell, they you know, and the book has several excerpts from both their opening statements at the begetting into trial and the closing statements, and you know, in a large part they go with

kind of some other guy did at defense. You know, they talk about all the other suspects who were there and just how the passage of time, you know that it was it was a rush to judgment if the jury should find him guilty. And then also, you know, the big argument if you're on ruben Moore's side is, you know, how could someone who saw a person who saw the suspect for just a few moments, you know, how can you remember what they looked like three, you know,

four decades later, thirty thirty six years later? You know, how could you do that? And that's essentially, you know, the question that the jury has to rely on. Now. It's interesting to note that I've talked a lot about Ruben Moore's criminal past, but one big challenge the prosecution had is they could not introduce his criminal history. They cannot talk about that one bit, and if they brought

it up, it would be a mistrial. So they were handicapped in that so they had to just you know, just rely on one Anita's testimony, and to the other key evidence, of course, was the state. That's that we've been more made that we're not admissions of guilt, but were certainly you know, guilty ish.

still there by the way. But so when it was introduced by the prosecutor, there was sort of little a little shelf in front of the jury box, so you know, he took it out of the plastic bag it was in and set that clock, you know, right in front of the jury, some jurors only a few feet from it. And several people that were in the courtroom, you know, talked about how the you know, the jurors in that front row, you know, just how how squeamish they were, you know, to be that close to it, and that

that was probably when it hit him. You know, wow, this you know, this was this was the murder weapon used to actually, you know, to kill Olivia Christian back in nineteen eighty one. And then in the jury deliberated, you know, that evidence was brought into the the jury room along with the crime scene photos and you know, was there on a on a table in the jury room.

So I guess a lot of murder cases are that way, where the you know, the murder weapons, the jury is actually in close proximity to it.

not guilty. So the Senate thing, and I'm sorry, I don't have that in front of me. I was just just looking for that. So the Senate thing, obviously, would you know, would would vary a great deal between second degree and first degree murder. The hope of the prosecution obviously was that they would arrive at a guilty verdict on first degree murder. For the book, I interviewed two

of the jurors that I spoke to. Their names, you know, were on the public record in the case file, and they went and began their deliberations and a formal vote wasn't taken, but they kind of went around the table and two of them expressed that, you know, they might have a hard time voting guilty, that they still had a reasonable doubt. At that point, they went through the evidence, you know, item by item, you know, and just went

over a little closer according to jury. For me. You know, there really wasn't any attempt on anyone in the jury to persuade other jurors, but one a vote was finally taken. You know, it was a unanimous decision, and he was

found guilty of second degree murder. The jury recommended forty years center and in Virginia, the judge has the option of either officially pronouncing that sentence that the jury recommends, or with with if there's extenuating circumstances, he can do a you know, either more severe or more lenient sentence. And the judge went along with the jury, as most judges in Virginia typically do, and Sinnens would have been more to forty years in prison.

in the investigation and testify. What was that? What was Anita? What did she have with her that day of Olivia's.

her whole life. So she told Detective Mayor, you know, hey, hey, you know, I just can't go through all this again. You have no idea what I went through back then, you know, I'm sorry. So Detective Mayor goes to Olivia Christian's brother, who's her his name is Thomas Christian. He's her only Olivia's only surviving relative. Her brother still lives in the parents' old house. It happens that he has Parkinson's disease and he's in the late stages under the

care of a full time nurse and Olivia's brother. Thomas writes a letter to Anita says, hey, you know, I understand what you went through back then, but if you can find it in your heart to help out with the investigation, you know, we'd appreciate it. He says, both my parents died without knowing you know, who killed a lived, and I've got a terminal condition and I'm going to die without knowing you know, if you could please find it in your heart to help, please let us know.

He writes this letter, and he puts it in an envelope, and he also puts an item in that envelope with the letter, hands it to Detective Mayor. Detective Mayor you know, reads them. He's seeing the letter, but he has no idea what the item she gave him was. So then Detective Mayor and again this in the early stage of the investigation, gives the letter to Anita. Anita reads the letter, does more soul searching, and you know that's the point when she agrees to help out and cooperate with, you know,

with finding the suspect. So then you fast forward seven years and during the trial, during your testimony, Anita had something in her hands. She you know, she was clutching something. From distance, he could quite see what it was. So at the end of the trial, you know when they're very emotionally, you know, celebrating and I use the term

celebrating hesitantly. You know, they're very relieved at the verdict. Yeah, Phil Figure, the prosecutor says, to a need of the witness, he says, by the way, you need it, you know what's that you have in your hand? I saw you had it on the witness stand and she shows him and it was a crucifix, a gold cross that that used to belong to Olivia that her brother had given

a need. Yeah, So it was a really you know, a really really moving part of the trial, I guess for Phil Figure, and you know, just a really really moving part of the story.

of Virginia. But you know, they're certainly interesting to people all over the country or all over the world, and you know, it's typically what I write about. I've got a couple other books in the pipeline. I'm writing about other crime cases in Virginia. My author website is Ron Peterson Junior dot com. And the book's available you know wherever you buy books either you know, Barnesanmoble dot com. It is on the shelves and a lot of Barnes and Nobles, and also any of the online booksellers in

addition to Amazon. But thanks for asking Dan.