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What you are now listening to? True Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski. Good evening, terrifying things are happening to Kay Wedden, forty, single mom and
high school teacher in Salisbury, North Carolina. Despite having no known enemies, Kay's home, car, and peace of mind are under atten throughout nineteen ninety three. Most chilling of all are the senseless attacks on only on her only son and the shot fired in the night through a wall of her house which narrowly misses his head as he sleeps.
Kay's new love interest is the charming Victor Gunnerson. He's a handsome Swede who left his home country to seek political asylum in the US after being charged with the nineteen eighty six assassination of Sweden's Prime Minister Palmy. Victor was briefly held in custody, but subsequently released due to lack of evidence. The romantic connection between Kay and Victor is immediate and intense until Victor disappears without warning, leaving
Kay baffled and sad. Kay leans on her loving, elderly mother Katherine Miller for solace until Catherine is brewly murdered inside her home by an unknown intruder. With nowhere else to turn, Kay reconnects with her ex fiancee, Elsie Underwood, a seasoned police officer particularly a depth at criminal investigations. Elsie assures k he will get to the bottom of
the incessant and tormenting occurrences. When Victor's nude body is found two hours away in the snowy Appalachian Mountains, local Sheriff's detective Paula May is assigned to investigate his murder. What follows is an intense, hair raising investigation that will shock you from the bitterly cold beginning to the unthinkable end. The book that we're featuring this evening is First Degree Rage, The true story of the assassin and obsession and murder
with my special guest, author and detective Paula May. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for reading to his interview.
Paula May, thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you so much. It's a fascinating book, and your first hand experience and access to this makes this all the more remarkable. Let's both Blue Ridge Mountain. Thank you. Let's go to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia. As you do, as you introduce us to the story here, tell us a little bit about your work, a little bit of your background where you were at this time in nineteen ninety three and Wataga County Sheriff's Department in Boone,
North Carolina. Just tell us a little bit about your work there and a little bit about the community itself where it is.
Sure the area is where I was born and grew up. Attended elementary school, high school, and college there at apple Wachistek University in the city of Bain. And while I was in college, I started working part time for the local sheriff's office there, and when I graduated with criminal justice degree, the sheriff hired me full time. I became a sworn officer and he sent me to training, and he did not have any female officers at the time.
And as I began to become involved in child abuse cases, rape cases, and cases of domestic violence, there appeared to be a real need for female investigator in the sheriff's department, and so he hired me in the investigations division. And I had been working there for about six years, and it was a small division, so I investigated every kind
of crime there was. I began to get involved in the more serious investigations, and eventually a lot of the murder investigations, all kinds of death investigations and violent crimes. And I was on call on this particular day in January. It was actually nineteen ninety four. So although the book talks a lot about the events of December of nineteen
ninety three, I became involved in nineteen ninety four. It was January seventh, with the discovery of the body of a nude man who was found by some Department of Transportation survey workers who were looking for landmarkers in the woods there and came upon a pair of bear feet seeking up out of the snow.
Now you originally don't know whose jurisdiction this is, because this might be US Park Service or the FBI's jurisdiction. Tell us how you proceed from that, what's the result of that, and who joins you in this investigation.
That's correct. The location where the body was found was kind of in the corner of the woods there at the intersection of the Blue Rich Parkway, which is of course a federal highway, a scenic highway, and US for
twenty one. So we we did not know on that moment of our arrival if we were going to be on federal property there or actually just on the county property, which while we were there, we would have all worked together initially at the crime scene anyway, assisting each other, but as far as the responsibility of the investigation that would follow, that would fall with the federal jurisdiction of the Park Service, and you know, I'm sure they would
be assisted by the FBI, or the primary jurisdiction was ours would be ours, And as it turns out, the body was found just thirty nine feet off of federal property, so it was our responsibility for the investigation. I was the detective on call on that day, and it was a very cold, very cold, windy and snowy day, and I had not intended to do anything but stay in the office that day. But of course, you know, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men kind of thing.
But so I ended up with the investigation.
You talk about two and this is you mentioned this phrase a few times in the book, and I think it's important you talk about the line intervention in that this surveyor found the body. But it was very, very lucky. You say that it wasn't overlooked, and you attributed this as just one of the instances of the mind intervention in this, don't you Absolutely?
And I can tell you that from beginning to end of that investigation, and of course not just that investigation, but absolutely God had led our footsteps through that investigation and he I'm a one hundred percent convinced the case would not have been solved otherwise because from the beginning of the discovery of the body, all the way to the end of the discovery of the amazing discovery of the physical evidence. I think that was Vaniell and have
often said to speak, I think that was all divine intervention. Absolutely, it was also investigative work, Don't get me wrong, but absolutely, as he helped us all the way through, as he does.
Now your long term sheriff, you have a relationship with them, Lyons. He said, let's get the SBI to help us. Not's North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. So a person came temporarily sellers and agent sellers, but then the agent that was assigned was Steve Wilson, So Steve Wilson became part of your investigative team. What did you get from that original crime scene you talked about the victim being nude.
You had found that the body had been there for some days, and some animal preditation had had occurred on the ear and the nose, things, you know, which is not uncommon. What did you comment before you tell me about what you could deduce you and your team could deduce from that crime scene itself? Initially? What did you deduced from the idea that this person in the winter was left nude in the snow.
Well in the beginning, as only his feet were you know, visible coming out of the snow, we did not know at that point if this entire body was nude, because that was all that we could see. But obviously there was some animal activity on his left foot. He was laying on his back and both his feet were a thought of the snow, But there was some animal activity on his left foot and toes, and so that caused us to think he had been there at least, you know,
for some time. But also because of the extreme cold temperatures, his body was very well preserved, whereas if it had been spring or summertime, the decomposition would have been a lot greater and there would be less evidence to obtain
from the autopsy and so forth. But once we began to remove a little bit of the snow from him, and we we did try to preserve as much as we could of the dirt and the snow and things right around his body as we loaded him onto the stretcher, because we did not know if there were you know, other pieces of maybe trace and fiber evidence in that snow.
But after we realized that he was nude, we did see that he had a watch and a ring on his left hand, So we felt at that point that it was unlikely to have been a robbery because those items appeared to be gold and appeared to be, you know, of some value. Also, it was clearly evident that he was shot twice in the head, once on the left temple and then on the right side of his neck, so it was very obviously a murder, not a suicide.
Of course, there was no weapon there and so forth, but there were no other identifying characteristics that we could see at that point, and we knew that within our own jurisdiction we did not have an active missing person report currently.
Right, you had another bit of evidence, though what was important was two kinds of tape, so that you could conclude that the victim was bound with tape when he was shot. Tell us a little bit more about this tape discovery.
Sure, absolutely, and it was Sheriff Lyons himself who found that tape, not the crime scene investigators, but as we were waiting for the State Bureau of Investigations to arrive with the field agent and then the crime scene team, which we requested because of the sheer, you know, size of the area that needed to be covered, we did try to locate anything that we could see before darkness fell, because this is in the in the evening on this day, the late afternoon, and so two or three feet away
from the body, Sheriff Lyons was examining some of the area on the ground and he uncovered a length of tape and it was one strip of tape, but that particular strip, which was probably about eighteen inches long, that particular strip was made of both masking tape and black electrical tape, and the masking tape was underneath and the back of the masking tape where the adhesive compound is were adhered appear to be head, dark short hair, and tiny droplets of blood and also one very notable hole
that appeared to be about a twenty two caliber bullet hole, which it was. And then eventually we were able to show that the hair and the blood all came from the body of the victim. So there was no evidence from that particular piece of tape as far as far as being able to link the suspect to that tape, with the exception of the electrical tape which later we found to match in twenty some different characteristics with electrical tape that was found in the suspect's residence.
Okay, let's get back to what you found at this with. You have the tape, you also have that you get a call shortly after while you're looking through missing me ports in the county itself, you get a call from a Lieutenant Harrison from Salisbury Police Department, which is two hours southeast of Boone between Wiston, Salem and Charlotte. So this person has identified as forty one year old Victor Gunnerson.
And as we mentioned in the introduction, what do you find out you and your team about this Victor Gunnerson and his past very interesting.
Well, that was when I probably the first time I realized this was not going to be an ordinary almost i'd kay, because what I've learned from that initial conversation with Lieutenant Harrison was that they had a man whose physical description in general, the physical description that we had broadcast about our unidentified murdered body. And he said, of course, we don't know for certain if this is the same man or not, but as I'm talking to him on this phone call, he shares with me that if it
is Victor Gunnerson. Victor Gunerson had been in his jurisdiction, the city of Salisbury in Rowan County, North Carolina, and had been there because he had fled the country of Sweden seeking political asylum, and in fact he had been arrested and charged with the assassination of Prime Minister Olof
Palme in February of nineteen eighty six. What I learned subsequently was of course more details about that, but essentially he had been arrested fairly quickly after the assassination, and he was in custody and his wife or the wife of the prime minister, who was with them at the time he was shot, got a glimpse of the shooter space.
And so when they presented her with a lineup which included Victor Gunnarson, she was unable to identify Victor Gunnarson from that lineup, and so they released him from custody. And then Victor Gunnarson ended up suing the government claiming false arress and so forth, and came to the United States. Right. That assassination, by the way, remains unsolved to this day.
Now, let's get to Victor Gunnerson once. Obviously they find him in the woods, naked, and there's little evidence of to point to any perpetrator. Now you go to his apartment, what do you find with his apartment? And how do you proceed after going to that apartment? As you write in the book, you tell us the proper procedure is to reach out to all kinds of people, associates, neighbors.
Tell us a little bit about how once you find out about Victor, how do you proceed with finding out more information about how he came to his demise.
So there was a number of avenues that we initially explored from the very of course, we're trying to get the body identified, So we're speaking with inner Poll and other national and international organizations and law enforcement agencies to help us get dental records and fingerprints and so forth from Sweden to identify him. And at the same time we're talking with those authorities and learning more about him, his family, what happened with him in Sweden, and the
assassination of the prime minister. So that was very intriguing to me dealing with all of those international agencies in a homicide investigation. But at the same time I also learned that Victor Gunnarson had been reported missing in December from his apartment in Salisbury, and because that he was reported missing to the local authorities there, they had been
investigating the missing person's report. So there were officers who had already gone to Victor Gunnarson's apartment and although you know, they did not alter anything or so forth, but there have been other officers present there to give us an idea of what to expect before we ever went there.
And so Don Gale, he was a major character in the book, was the Phield agent assigned to the UH to the case there, and Terry Agner was an investigator with the Rowan County Sheriff's office, So they were they were already involved and teaming up investigating from that end, just like Steve Wilson and I and the others were investigating from Watauga County. So we met up with him very quickly, and the four of us very quickly combined
the efforts to you know, carry out the investigation. But to answer your question, once uh, we got inside a Victor's apartment, we found he was living on an inn apartment of a two story complex that he was on the second story on the end, with a set of steps right beside his apartment. We learned that his apartment door had not been shut and locked all of the
all the way since he was reported missing. His only car was still in its parking spot where he always parked it, and in the same manner he always parked it because he never pulled in straight. It was a long car, uh the Lincoln, and he parked it diagonal and it was still parked that way. Inside his apartment, his passport, his keys, his wallet was still there, his shoes,
his leather jacket that he wore all the time. Then it appeared that possibly from the way his bed was that he had been in bed and just pulled the covers back and gotten up out of the bed and speculating maybe that you know, he had gotten up to answer the door.
What about the what did the officer note about the telephone and message in those days as an answering machine attached to a telephone.
So initially the apartment manager and the custodian of the apartments and other people had noticed that the answering machine
was on and he appeared to have several messages. But by the time that we and other law enforcement got in there, the cassette tape was missing out of his answering machine, and the answering machine was no longer working, and people that tried to call him and check on him before his body was ever found noted that all of a sudden's answer machine had changed and what they heard allowed them to allow them to not be able to leave a voicemail message right whereas they had before.
Yeah, Now, in this investigation, like I had mentioned, you have to find out who could possibly know, So you look up the associates of everyone to find out if there's anybody that knows anything about this. Again, this is there's so much any mysteries to this, and you have read at the very beginning of this investigation, How does it come that you find out about Kay Wedden tell us about thoughts?
Okay, it's Whedon, k Whedon, and so Don Gale and Terry Agner are the investigators in Salisbury. One of the first things that they made us aware of was the fact that they were investigating the homicide of a missus Catherine Miller. She was murdered inside her home, two gunshots to the head, She was seventy seven years old, no known enemies, and that homicide had occurred on December eighth
of nineteen ninety three. And the one thing that linked Victor Gunnerson and his murder to the murder of Katherine Miller was the fact that Katherine Miller's daughter was Kay Whedon. Kay Whedon had also been dating Victor Gunnarson for about a week before he went missing, so she was the
common denominator in both of those investigations. Jain so that immediately drew the attention of the investigators to her and began a series of many many interviews and conversations with Kay Whedon, also with her son, Jason Miller or Jason Wadon.
I'm sorry, now, what did you find out initially from this about his behavior, his behavior but also his character. What did you find out right from the get go from speaking with Kay about this.
Person, about Victor Gunnarson or about.
Someone else, about when you talk about when you talk to Kay and when you talk to her about about about her boyfriend, about the person that she leaned on about the cop so okay, when she when she talks about that, when you were talking to her about her relationship with Underwood, what does she say about his character? What is right from the get go some of the things she has to say about the relationship.
She said that her relationship with her former fiance's name was They'll see Underwood was very dysfunctional. It was very controlling. Underwood was very manipulative towards her, very threatening, and I heard very little that was positive about their relationship. Now at the beginning, and as we learned from talking with other women that had been involved with him in his past,
at the beginning, he was very charming. He was he seemed like he had everything together and uh, you know, every every woman's dream.
And the.
Most interesting part to me about him when I first learned about him was the fact that he was a police officer and he was currently employed at in December of nineteen ninety three as a school resource officer for the City of Cauldbury.
Right when you spoke with Kay Whedon as well, you talked about the relationship with Victor, as you discover that there was this relationship, tell us how she met Victor and the nature of the relationship, and then you spoke to her about that very last evening that they spent together.
Okay. Kay was at the time an English teacher at the local high school, not at the high school where Underwood worked, but nearby, and she of course was a single mom. She was divorced, and she was raised and her teenage son Jason.
And.
As had been as she had done before, she had an exchange student in her home who was Jason, her son's age, and his name was Michel and he was from Denmark, I believe, And so there was a little
trouble communicating at times. And one of Kay's girlfriends had said that she had a friend that was from Sweden and apparently they had a lot of things in common, and she wanted to introduce Ka to her friend, who turned out to be Victor Gunnarson, so that they could all get together and Michel you know, could have someone, uh that he could communicate well with and talk with
and so forth. So a mutual friend introduced K to Victor, and apparently there was you know, sparks right away and uh mutual attraction and they started talking and had lengthy conversations and began seeing each other. And that was just over a week or so before Victor went missing, so they saw each other practically.
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Three nine, you know, had long conversations on the phone and so forth. And the last time that Kay saw Victor was the night of Friday, December third, when she, her mother, and Victor had gone out to dinner at a local feafood restaurant, and then Victor had come over to her house and had spent the evening they uh. Jason came home a little later, and he and his friends and Kay and Victor were all sitting around the fire pit right outside Kay's home by the street, you know,
just chatting and talking. And it was at that time that Kay noticed and had some conversation with Victor about the signet ring that he was wearing, which is the ring that he was still wearing when his body was discovered in Wataga County. But was here that night that they saw a car they recognized drive by, and Jason made the comment Monte Carlo to communicate to Kay that
was Underwood driving by. Now Kay knew that she had been the subject of his stalking, of Underwood stalking for some time, but you know, was hoping that that was becoming a thing of the past and that he was no longer terrorizing her, but he was indeed still stalking her.
Now, in your investigation, I know that the audience will be still not clear of what's going on in this story. But in your investigation, you talked to all kinds of people, including the former police chief or the police chief of Salisbury Police Department, and talk about Underwood, Lamont Ce Underwood and his stay there and some of the things that
happened in his tenure as a police officer. So, as you write in the book, tell us what you found out about his career and again his career and his character as a police officer.
Well, so the book begins with when I got involved in the case and then and so this is just exactly the order that things happened as far as the investigation.
Once we realized that Underwood's name kept coming up and that he had become a suspect in the you know, in both situations, Captain Miller and Victor Gunnarson, we went back to the very beginning to Underwood's childhood and started investigating everything that we could find about him, and we learned that he had been abandoned by both his parents, he had stayed with some family members for a short time, and that it was a physically abusive and mentally abusive situation.
They eventually pretty much dumped him off at the orphanage in the city of Winston Salem where he grew up once he turned eighteen. The day he turned teen, he left there and he attempted a brief military career and he got right back out, and so he went into a law enforcement career, and he started working at North Wilks for a police department as a reserve officer, and from and everybody that's in this area all you know,
all these places are familiar. But he went from there to another agency, and another agency and another agency, and each time that he spent at each agency, he would eventually get into trouble over a woman or women, and some dysfunctional relationships, some very violent relationships where he would stalk them, he would beat them. One lady spent several
days in hospital. But he terrorized them in many different ways, and probably the worst was the psychological because we find him spray painting graffiti on their homes or in one case, on the outside wall of this lady's church, something really ugly and derogatory, and it's always in red spray paint. And incidentally, red spray paint cans were found in the trunk of his patrol car at one of the departments.
And so back then, and this is particularly something that gets under my skin, is the lack of documentation in the personnel files. We would get our court orders and we'd go there and we'd hear about these things happened, happening, and when we get to these agencies, would look at this personnel file and there is no documentation of these incidents there. So then we went and we would try to find find, you know, the sheriff, the chief or
a supervisor and talk with them. And in many cases it was a time period where that kind of documentation just was not maintained, where they preferred to handle things face to face personally, and a sheriff, for instance, would say, you know, no need to write all that down, I just need to handle it, you know, man to man,
and so he got very little discipline. He got a lot of lectures, but very little discipline, and if it got to be too eated, he would just move on to another la enforcement agency that carried him for nineteen years in law enforcement. I think he'd been eight years with the Salisbury Police Department before he was finally suspended. It's just unbelievable to me, having been a policey for
you know, the past ten years. We document everything, even in certainly in the investigations, everything is documented, and so there was a different time period and I realized that, but it just, you know, it would get under my skin that there was not a documentation of these things that for number one, were criminal in nature and should have taken his certification. But you know, a lack of documentation and a lack of discipline, you know, I just have a problem with that.
There are women that you speak to in this to learn again about the behavior and character of Elsie Underwood, Lamont Underwood.
Uh.
There are women like Pam and Jeanie and Linda and Monica at different times in this investigation. What tell us about just in general, some of the conversations and information you garner from speaking to these people regarding his character behavior.
Well, after the first couple of ladies that I spoke with, and they were all they were all educated women. They were they were not ignorant, they you know, they they were educated, they were intelligent. Uh, they're very attractive, they were very successful in their careers, and they all seem to have a very good support system as far as
their family and their network. But after about the second one, all the stories were the same, only the faces and the names changed, but their relationships were described to me as all starting out the same way. Elsie was very charming, he was very polite, he was very sensitive and very caring, and then he became very controlling. So he could only
maintain that facade for a short period of time. And each one of them he wanted to push into a serious relationship very quickly, and three of them into marriage very quickly, and of course those marriages did not could
not last. But he would become very jealous, possessive, whether it was one of the girls going to the beach with her friends, and he just about came unglued because she had done that every summer, and that was a girls trip that they would take and enjoy perfectly innocent, but he would just he would go nuts if they did not get home after work at the time that he thought they should arrived home, he would go nuts.
One girl in particular, she realized that he was watching her from across the lake at her house and was counting the grocery bags that she was carrying in her house and immediately calls her and ask her, why you know, who are you seeing? Why do you need so many bags of groceries, and just ridiculous things like that, And the more they tried to get away from him, the more angry and violent that he became.
Right now in this investigation as well, there is the bullet wounds from that. There was an investigation to try to obviously try to determine what that murder weapon was and to find it, if possible, tell us about that that look or that investigation into that gun and what he.
Right. So, Victor Gunnarson was shot with a twenty two caliber weapon and Captain Miller was murdered with two shots of thirty eight. And we knew specific makes and models that could possibly have fired those guns, and then other max and models that could not have fired those guns. But we knew from interviews and from other records that Underwood did have both of those weapons that could have
been fired. But throughout the investigation, as you know from reading the book, those weapons disappeared very quickly after the murders and to this day have never been located. One in particular, he had kept from one of the law enforcement agencies where he worked, and so there's you know,
there's records about that that gun. And then we have eyewitnesses people I talked to that saw the gun, that saw it at his house, or saw him with it, and so we knew with the you know, certainty that he had those each of those weapons up until the time of the murders.
How do you proceed with this investigation once you get a clear picture that this is your suspect. Tell us more about tightening the news around this suspect. Again, it was not an easy or quick process. Tell us what you do next.
It was not a quick process, and it was further complicated by the fact that he was a law enforcement officer. So as you can imagine, people employed at those agencies were reluctant to want to get involved in this investigation. Some were very defensive of him. Some believed there was absolutely no way that he could that he would be
capable of committing such rrible acts. Others who knew him on a personal level were familiar with his personality quirks, and then with his following checking up on stalking of kay Whedon and so they knew more about his personality and they were although hesitant to say, yeah, I think he killed these people, they were more like, well, I think it's possible that he might have.
But we did not.
We weren't real roaded in the investigation who we weren't given false information. But it was a little difficult because people were reluctant to get involved in talk with us people. Other people were very forthcoming with their information. We talked to hundreds interviewed hundreds of people during this investigation, all four of us, and so every everybody might have a small piece of information, but they had a lot to contribute. But what we ended up with ultimately was a strong
circumstantial case. We did not have any physical evidence. The first physical evidence that we found was when the lab contacted us and Well in February. We had conducted a search via a search warrant of Underwood's residence, and one of the items that we seized from his residence was some electrical tape from his utility room from his where's
washing dryer were. And the first call we got with some physical evidence was John Bendura of the State Ree of Investigation in the crime Lab, and he had informed us that in twenty some different characteristics of the tape that the tape from Underwood's utility room matched the tape that Sheriff Lions found at the feet of the body at the crime team. So that was our first piece
of physical evidence. But in talking with the prosecutor in Wataku County, the elected district attorney at that time was Tom Rouser, a brilliant prosecutor, and but he did not feel like that alone was a strong enough case that he wanted to take to a jury in a capital murder trial, so he wanted us to keep working. We ended up with putting a trap in trace and pen register on Underwood's phone, monitoring the numbers that came in
and out of his home phone. We put a mail cover on his on his all his incoming and outgoing mail so that that those were copied, so that we could see he was who he was getting communications from that way, and then the lab had all of the evidence that they had fees for comparisons and purposes that
came from the search for execution. And we had been in contact with John Bandura of the Lab Mini Comms, and he just was simply not finding anything in the evidence that would connect Underwood to the crime scene or to Victor Gunnarson's murder. And in fact, a couple of the items that were seized were the mats out of both of his personal vehicles, his for mats and the
Trunck mats. And until he called us about what he found on that particular at that particular time, we did not have anything but the tape as far as his glevit.
Now, before we talk about what he discovered, and again you note that as again an incident of divine intervention. But but before we talk about that, of all the people that you spoke to, what picture were you getting of where you should go with this investigation in terms of trying to get that bit of information that will be useful for Tom Rusher to be able to prosecute tell us of the because you talk about satellite imaging. So you guys went to all kinds of extent to
try to be able to solve this case. Tell us a little bit more about the extent of this investigation.
Well, there were many many things that we tried in
the investigation, everything from satellite imaging, as you mentioned. At one point we even went to the police firing range where we actually dug up some of the roums that had been fired into the targets and the banks there at the firing range where he typically went to shoot, thinking that we could at least be able to show again circumstantially that where he had gone those rounds would match in different compositions, so forth the rounds that were
fired into Victor Gunnarson and or Katherine Miller and that that was interesting and we got a lot of information, but nothing really specific that the kind of identifying information that we were looking for, so most of our information
came from interviews. We did have another very compelling piece of information because the license plate of Victor Gunnarson was ran through the police system on the night of December third, nineteen ninety three, the same night that kay Whedon had spent her last day with Victor Jennerson, Right, So what happened that at that time was that? And later we learned that Underwood and another person had driven by her
house again stalking her. All of the person that was with him, he gave another preachse as to why they were going by there, But he had gone by, saw a strange car parked at her house, and most likely saw them outside of her house as they were talking
with each other. And he had gone back to his house, called a buddy of his that worked with the sheriff's office and had him call and run that tag number, and that officer got the information as far as the name and address and so forth, and called Underwood and back and gave it to him that night, the night that Victor went missing.
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hundred dash five hundred. Now, Paula, we spoke about the news tightening around L. C. Underwood, and that by virtue of the fiber forensic specialist Bandura saying that he had found again you've cited as divine intervention, what does he find that ends up being the key to be able to convince Tom Ruscher that you do have enough evidence to be able to rest Finally, Elsie Underwood.
When we executed the search warrant, and a number of items were skyed to check because I described and those mats from the both of Underwood's cars. One of the items that he had was a trunk mat from Underwood and Money car Love. It was a piece of carpet, you know, very common people have those in the trunks of their cars, and so he had taken it back to the lab. I believe it was eleven months that he had that particular item in the laboratory, and he
had taken vacuumings. He had gone through with tapings to collect and pick up fibers and hair and debris whatever might be on that trunk map. Now we already knew before we had executed the first warn and seized those items.
That shortly after the those murders occurred, Underwood had taken both of his cars, his personal cars, to a professional car wash and had the entire interiors and exteriors cleaned from both of those cars, including having them shampoo and vacuum his trunk mats, which most people don't do that usually, And so we thought that was odd. That said, the lab had those items, and they had gone through and they had tried to collect things from the from the
carpeted trunk maps and had came up with nothing of significance. However, after eleven months of analyzing this evidence, John Bendura called and he said, you're not going to believe this. I'm like, okay, And he said that he was rolling the up to package to mail back to us because he had found nothing on that and he as he was rolling that mat up and holding it up under the light, a single hair caught his eye that he had not seen or removed from that trunk map, and so he pulled
it out. He said, in fact, by the time he got finished, there were I believe seventeen hares in that trunk map that were so ingrained in the fiber of the trunk mat that the traditional methods of the tapings and the vacuumings had not pulled them loose, and he actually had to go through and at one point he even cut the fiber of the mat to pull the
hair out without breaking it. And he had looked at them under a microscope and microscopically they were consistent with the head hair of Victor Gunnerson, which we had previously submitted to him. And it was not a definitive match because it wasn't a DNA match, but microscopically they were consistent, and we became very excited at that point. But that's what I mean by divine intervention. As far as his you know, his uh scientific abilities, he had, he had
done everything physically possible to collect that evidence. But when he held it up to the lights, which of course that there's a lot of symbolism there, but when he held it up to the light, that's when he saw the hair that you know, that was the culmination of everything in the case for us.
Ultimately, now you talk about the again, the jubilation or excitement about this new development, is it enough to make an arrest and tell us about speaking finally with Elsie Underwood, as.
You do.
Well, it was certainly uh, it was we had already surpassed the burden of proof as far as probable calls. We had that we had probable cause to make the arrested with the circumstantial evidence. However, this physical evidence plus the physical evidence of the electrical tape, you know, they were very strong and very compelling. But we wanted to do everything that we could, and we were hoping for a DNA match, but John Bandura said that there was not enough of DNA in those hairs to extract to
make a DNA comparison. So along the way, some of the things that we had read were about mitochondrial DNA analysis, and mitochondrial DNA analysis had been used to identify the bones of the Russians art and we had heard about that in the news, and so we started looking into mitochondrial DNA analysis, which was relatively new at the time, and mitochondrial DNA for all the listeners out there that might not know comes from the maternal side of your family.
And ultimately the FBI Crime Lab had gone online doing the mitochondrial DNA analysis. Dan had and Joe Dizino had called me one day of his Good Crime Lab and very similar to talking with John Bandura, told me that he had a mitochondrial DNA match on the from the hair, and that's taken from the actual shaft of the hair as opposed to the root end of the hair, where
traditional DNA analysis can be taken from. But what made that so compelling for us was the fact that anybody on the maternal side of the family could have shared that same DNA But because Victor Gunnerson had came from Sweden and none of his other family members on the paternal side of his family had ever been to the United States, it basically eliminated everybody in this country except for Victor Gunnarson. So that was just like a perfect match for us. So when we took that information to
Tom Racher, we had already made the risks. We had already decided to arrest Underwood on what we had at that point. But the mitochondrial DNA analysis was you know, I'm passing on the cake.
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What you can conclude from also from that forensic specialist, is that the hair was deposited there again. This is one of the more vivid scenes in terms of somebody speculat what happened to Victor Gunnerson. Tell us how, yes, you speculated that those hairs got there again?
I would think absolutely divine intervention. But we talked about it many times, and Victor Gunnerson in as he was kidnapped and placed into the trunk of Underwood's car, it was very evident that he was alive. There were scratch marks inside the lid of the of the trunk of his car. We know he was from the tape that
he was bound at least to some degree. There was what we believe a footprint or shoe print on the under side of the trunk lid, and we believed that he laid there on that trip from Salisbury to Ataga County in the trunk of that car in the freezing cold weather, struggling, trying to free himself, trying to to UH, trying to move around, trying to do anything, and in so doing deposited those and the UH just wallowing around and struggling into the fiber of the carpeted trunk man.
And despite Underwood's efforts to remove any trace of physical evidence, because of course he had been a detective, he was a police officer, he thought that he could commit the perfect crime. He was unsuccessful because there is a greater judge that we all have to answer to, and he's
in control of such things. And there was no combating that knocking in that you know, that spiritual warfare, and and we had the victor on our sides, and certainly he came through for it with it for us in that particular investigation.
Now you have this evidence, and like I mentioned, do you have the opportunity to speak to Elsie Underwood and hear what he has to say about everything, Because he complains about treat me, complains about the SBI agents. Continually throughout this book, he talks to all kinds of people as former police officer friends, and he does have police
officer friends, people in law enforcement. He complains about his treatment unfair, He complains about the treatment by Kay and all these other women that cheated on him and betrayed him and everything. But what does what do you get from him in these conversations that's either incriminating or valuable for you to understand what had happened to Catherine Miller and to Victor Gunnerson.
Well, by the time that I actually sat down with just just me and him and a room in the jail, I felt like I already knew him as much as I could ever know anyone else, because we had talked to so many different people, and they came from all walks of blot, all economic classifications, all ages, all you know and everybody. Picture they painted of Elsie Underwood was the same. Even though some would defend him as they
described his personality, it was obviously the same end. He was very troubled, He was at times depressed, that he was extremely anger and angry, and that anger came out in every communication that we had with with anybody who
knew Underwood. And like I said, I had gone from the time that he was born all the way through his personal history, his professional history, so that by the time that he and I were sitting in that room talking, and in fact I told him, I told him, you know, I already know you can't tell me anything about your life that I don't already know. And we talked about that for a little bit, and I said, I also know that you killed Victor Gunnerson and you killed Catherine Miller.
And he said the only thing that wouldn't even come close to being a confession. And at that time he just looked at me and he said, well, and so he would never admit to what he had done. He could he had never his entire life taken responsibility for anything he had done to Kay or to any of those other women. And Bobie accused them of many things. As far as I could tell, none of them had ever wronged him. They had never done anything other than
be good to him. Kay Whedon especially, she exposed to concern for him and cared for his safety long after I would have I would have, you know, said you know sin, but she endured a lot. She's she's a very strong person, she's a survivor, and there's a lot
that could be said about k Wheden. But when I talked to Underwood that day, we had we had had some communications before because when we arrested him, and so for if we had talked that day, when he wanted to talk to me, he basically wanted to glean for me, and I guess being young and female, perhaps he thought maybe that he would could manipulate on me and obtain information. But I don't think that conversation went the way he thought it would.
You continue with your team to find people that again tighten this news, but also find just more incriminating circumstantial evidence that puts him not only at Victor Gunnerson's, but you have evidence of Catherine murders, of Katherine Miller's murder as well, in terms of again circumstantial motive, opportunity and supporting people that seemed to be As this investigation continues, even though he's in prison, he still has people that
are on his side. And then what's very fascinating is when you get to speak to these people, when you're team gets to speak to the police officers who had run those tags, and then you get the police officer to make some calls to talk to Elsie Underwood. So people are very cooperative once they know the truth about Elsie Underwood. Tell us about how you finally come to know and discover about Rex Weller.
Okay, it's Keller, Rex Keller, but pardon no prom so before we got to the tear evidence. Before we had that on the anniversary of Catherine Miller's murder. And this was Don Gale's idea, and he had lots of creative ideas, he and Terry and Steve all did, but John was particularly creative, and he suggested that we air on the local news TV channel a recording that had been made to Kay Whedon threatened, threatened her and threatening her life
and her son. And so we knew it was not the voice of Underwood, but we suspected the Underwood had had someone else make the call. So we did play that recording on the local TV news channel, and lo and behold, a man called and said, I know that voice. I know exactly who it is, And it turned out to be the federal probation officer of Rix Keller and he said, I have him on probation, I see him talk with him regularly, and I know for a fact that that is his voice. And so at that point
we did not contact Keller right away. We did some background investigation a whole other just basically another entire investigation just on Keller alone, and we talked with his associates as well, people women that he had been involved with and so forth, and found out their personalities were very similar. And we talked about this a lot in you know, criminal psychology classes, about how people have a way of finding each other that behave or have a similar personality.
And so ultimately, by the time that we came to talk to him, he had gotten out of federal prison and was getting his life in order. And understand he has done that now and has a family and so forth. But he was very cooperative with with us at that point, and he was actually a great witness against Underwood in the trial.
You spoke to also, Jason, and it's very interesting, uh, when Elsie Underwood tries to direct the focus of police and and also friends to suspect Jason tell us about this seemingly rudicrous notion that.
He espouses the people it was, But the more time that went by and he wasn't arrested, I believe he became more arrogant and thought himself to be more intelligent. But what I believe he was doing at a time was setting Jason up. Number one, to make Jason look like perhaps he had committed the murders, but more likely it was that he intended to harm or even murder Jason. He was resentful of anyone who that cave was attached to emotionally. Her mother and certainly her son to fell
into that same category. But I believe that he was setting Jason up. The things that he was doing, sending anonymous letters, making a threatening phone calls, was under the guise of fictitious claimed that that Jason was involved in drugs and that he had drug debts, and that these mysterious drug dealers were, you know, threatening his life and we're going to come and get him, so that if Jason did turn up dead, the police would believe that it was because of drug activity. But none of that
was true. We found no evidence of that in the investigation at all. And Jason was very young at the time. He did not even have his driver's license and his whereabouts were always accounted for. Kay was, you know, a very responsible parents, and so we knew that there was
no truth to those allegations. But Underwood, when he would talk with people and they would later share with us his comments, Underwood would always disparage Jason and talk about how spoiled he was, how much of the discipline and behavior price what he was and so forth, and how Kay and Catherine Miller bathing him and so forth he was.
He was very jealous of Jason. So, you know, children are very intuitive, and Jason was aware of Underwood's feelings towards him, and he was concerned about Underwood's lack of genuine caring for his mother, for k and so he did not care for him very much, and understandably so.
He also. Underwood also wanted to put the blame for the vandalism on Jason, owing some dealers of drug dealers money, So he also tried to to direct blame towards Jason and his friends for that spray painting and that ugly vandalism as you call it.
Yeah, he didn't do a good job of convincing any one of that, but he did try to blame Jason.
You get to talk to a woman named Beth Richardson. That's a fascinating conversation. And it's always interesting the first approach to some of these witnesses and then you tell them some incredible evidence, incredible things that they didn't know about him, and then the thing turns. So tell us about the conversation with richards and what she imparts to you.
Well, while we were investigating, and I mentioned that we had the pen register and the trap and trace, we could see that he was having a number of phone calls, lengthy phone calls with someone in particular, and that turned out to be Meneth, and her phone number lent us
to her. She was in the initial stages of a dating relationship with Underwood, I think, and her at a shagged dancing club, and so she still she at that point, in her defense, had not gotten a good taste of Underwood's personality or you know, his crazy jealousy, and so Don and another agent had gone initially and knocked on her door and approached her, and she was very ad a month to them that she was not going to talk to them, that she already knew all about them
and how they were trying to frame Underwood. Because he had told her all about it. But you know, in her defense, all she had ever heard was his side of the story. And so basically Don and the other agent got the door slammed in their face. But Don had left his card in a number with Beth and said, you know, if you change your mind and you want to talk or whatever, you know, here's my number. Given a call, And Don didn't think that she was going to call because she was so mad when they got there,
and I told Don, I said, shen't call. She's gonna call you back, and sure enough she did, and she said, I've been talking to my parents and maybe that's looking back at things. Maybe we'll just hear what you have to say, you know, just to you know, get the other side of the story. So at that point we decided it was a good idea maybe for me to
go with Don and talk with her. So so Don and I went and met with her and her family and they just they had no idea, you know what, who else he was really or what he had been involved in. And at that point Elsie found out that we had talked with her. I guess because she had attempted to end the relationship at that point, and he was furious. I mean, he immediately paved and instead of calling him back immediately, we'd go back to the office
and set up the recorder and so forth. And then Don called and we just listened to him rant And that conversation verbatim is in the book, and it's not a nice conversation, but it's typical Elsie and Don. He was he was calm all of the time, no matter what is going on, just sat there and nodding his head and you know, and listening to him and trying to respond. But Elsie won't. He didn't hear anything that
Don has to say. And by the way, every conversation that's in the book, you know those everything that's been recorded that those are actual conversations. You know, that's not just something that you know, I'm illustrating. But so some of it is a little hard to read because some of it is you know, really there's a lot of anger there and not so much nice talk at times, but that is you know that the truth is that
it is what it is. But that's Eventually I realized what was going on, and then a horrible thing happened that also turned out to be just a huge blessing because that's what the smoker. And the first thing she did, which Elsie knew very well, was when she would come home with the evening and walk into her apartment, she would light a cigarette up as she came in the door.
But after she started pulling away from Elsie and had was learning what actually had happened from us, one day she comes home and her apartment is full of gas from her kitchen stove, from her gas and for whatever reason, again we know it's divine intervention that that's the one day she did not light up a cigarette when she walked into her house, or else Beth would not be here with us today. And we have no way of knowing or actually we have no way of proving that
Elsie had anything to do with that. But you know, we're all fairly confident that he meant to kill her in that incident.
Certainly, now you find the girlfriend of Rex Teller, Sherry Martin, Scher Martin, what does she have to say?
Wow? Talking to her was it was like talking with all these women from Elsie's past all over again. One of the things that we did, one of the that in this investigation, that that took four years. We went to the federal prison and we listened to hours of recorded conversation between Taylor and other people, but the most the bulk of the conversations were between him and his girlfriend, and his degree of suspicion and jealousy and control was well, frankly,
it was nauseating and it's just unbelievable. So by the time we talked to her, we already knew all of that, We knew how we talked to her, We knew what the how the relationship was going, and it was totally dysfunctional. And she was able to share since the cific incident with us, that she had already reported to the police of domestic violence of him assaulting her and her disabled and handicapped son, and it would just it was heartbreaking
and hear heart ranching. But he was also extremely jealous and.
Controlling, and she, again, just like these other women, cooperated once she knew what this investigation was and realized too that it would be a mistake to be involved with these people. And they all said to you, I don't want to testify. It didn't they every.
Single one of them, and one lady in particular, had she came outside her family was inside and she told us, she said, my husband does not know that I was married for a short time to Underwood. Please don't tell him. Please don't get me involved in this case. I'll tell you what you want to know, but please just uh, you know, leave me out of this. And it was
very typical. Now, after he was in custody and he was in jail, they were able to breathe a little easier, and the more time passed and the more they got to know and trust us, they did come forward and were prepared to testify. Unfortunately, the judge uh sided with the motion of the defense who claimed that their relationships were with LC were not relevant to the to the homicide that was being prosecuted, and so the judge did
not allow their testimony. But they but they were there, and they they were very brave and they had prepared themselves and they were going to testify against them. But that in the end they did not have to.
You talked about what was allowed than what wasn't, and so that was unfortunate. You didn't get that previous testimony from those women. But the judge did allow Rusher to introduce the the Katherine Miller murder and all of the related evidence, despite that he had not been charged for that offense. Thus, that is a major victory for the prosecution, isn't it?
It was the four and four The evidence was was uh. I think that was very critical. All of the incidents, Victor's disappearance. Well, as it turns out, we believe that Victor was murdered about four days before Catherine Miller, and all of the incidents, everything that was occurring were so intertwined. It would have been very difficult to separate all of the evidence showing that he had murdered Katherin Miller from
the from the Victor Gunnerson evidence. It's not impossible, and so we were very glad we did not have to try and take take all of that information apart.
This was a capital so he was assigned to attorneys. One was experienced capital case attorney. You talk about the trial opening June twenty seventh, nineteen ninety seven, after three and a half years of work. Basically, the defense its contention was that L. C. Underwood was too disabled and he certainly couldn't do all the stuff involved in that murder. Essentially,
that's what they had said as a defense. Tell Us what the prosecution laid out as the motive and the reason for this murder, well the.
Motives, and by the time all the witnesses got to testifying that the motives were very obvious. He wanted to oscoleate k from anybody that was advising her to stay away from him, or that anybody that she could turn to for emotional support, such as her mother, and certainly any their men that she became involved with, which was obviously Victor Gunnerson.
But the.
Motive, as far as what the prosecutors introduced, was the same old story we hear very frequently in society, the insecurity, the pathological jealousy, and the lying and the violence and
domestic violence. And that's one reason that I wanted to get the book published, because people need to understand that there are people out there who have these issues and they should not be ignoring the red flag when they instinctively, you know, when something comes up in a relationship that they should pay more attention to instead of just ignoring it sweeping it under the rug, they really should look into that. And that's something that Kay Weedon wants to do.
She wants to get to talk with not just women, but other people who are victims by people who are capable of doing the things that Elsie Underwood has done.
Yes, you also have something very interesting go on in the trial. You have these competent and appointed attorneys, but there is talk of a cassette tape. Tell us about this cassette tape controversy.
Well, as you know, we did not. In the book, we did not, and to the investigation, we were not able to find the guns which we believe were the murder weapons in both Captain Miller and Victor Gunnerson chases. But Underwood had not offered us a reasonable explanation from
where the guns for where the guns were. He knew that we knew that he had them, and then all of a sudden he did not have them, that he would not come in or cooperate or offer us any kind of reasonable explanation as to where they were other than had given him to his what he called his brothers or his step brothers in Ohio, and they were actually no relation to him, but he had uh he
had gotten close to this couple at the orphanage. And so what cassette, the cassette that was being referred to was something that Keller told us about that he and Elsie Underwood had created, which was a recorded conversation in which Keller was pretending to be one of those so called brothers acknowledging receipt of the guns from Underwood to offer an explanation as to what happened to them. And
we never got our hands on that tape. We knew of its existence, and at one point we knew that Underwood's attorneys, most likely the attorneys he had hired in Fastbury, not the ones appointed in the capital murder case, had that tape, but the joy the judge ordered that the defense had it, they were to produce it, and so
in the middle of the murder trial it stops. Then his attorneys are basically having to answer to the judge and a hearing as to back to sept tape, because had they had we been able to produce that and and they had it, then they would have been withholding, you know, evidence in a murder trial and would have
been in a heap of trouble. But as it turns out, they came in with their own attorney who told the judge that that they were not commenting on whether that tape existed, but that it was not at that time in their possession and they could not produce it, and so the judge kind of let it go.
At that point, I kind of summarized what happened in the trial in terms of the defense thinking that they didn't really need to provide evidence, and as common filed the motion to dismiss, and of course the judges dismissed that, but they just said basically that you know that he was too disabled to be able to do this, and so the prosecution had the onus basically to come out
and explain their entire case to a jury. Now, this being a capital case is mitigating and aggravating circumstances towards that, right. What happens at this in regards to that with the jury with the death penalty, what happens.
It was capital case, and the prosecutors, Tom Bracher and his assistant Jerry Wilson, both extremely capable and did a great job. They made very compelling arguments, and the jury did come back with eleven to one for the death penalty.
Only one juror just cannot commit and as it turns out, how to say, member in another criminal case that caused him to be sympathetic towards the defendant, information that we were not aware of during jury's selection, and otherwise he would have we've gotten the death penalty, but that he did not because it was not unanimous and it was
eleven to one. Then he was sentenced to wife imprisonment for the murder of Victor Gunnarson's first degree murder and an additional forty years for first degree kidnapping, hence the name of the book, first degree rage.
And this is a consecutive sentencing, so not any of this doesn't count concurrent sentencing. This is consecutive sentencing.
That's correct, It was consecutive.
You talked about again, a dramatic part of the trial to a great degree is Kay Whedon. Yes, of course, realizing now what a fool she was, beyond naivety would think, because of course we have the benefit of the hindsight, so we know we're almost yelling at Kay.
What are you doing? What do you?
Don't do this?
Don't do that. It's incredible. But how did she fare at the trial and what did you say to her afterwards?
I've talked with k many times before and after the trial, and she is a friend of mine because you know, I felt like I went through all of that with her, and you know, she felt like, you know, I'm someone who understood because I knew what she had gone through that Kay Whedon has suffered a lot, and it is easy to criticize her judgment, but she's a very compassionate person.
And when Osie Underwood would do things like fake a suicide attempt and call her up and fire the gun off in the phone, you know, she would go and check on him, and she would make sure that police were there and that he was okay. She went in above and beyond, not necessarily because she was naive, but because she's a compassionate and caring person, and she wanted to assure his safety, even though she didn't want to be in a relationship with him. You know, she didn't
want anything to happen to him. And at this point, no one was dead. Victor Gunnarson had not been kidnapped and murdered, and her mother was still alive and well
and just living, you know, right down the street. So you know, we don't think of other people in terms of they're apt to commit the very worst, And she had no way of knowing what how much people was in Elsie's heart, but she not only suffered those kind of things from him, but there were many times when, for instance, one parent of one of Jason's friends asked them not to let Jason come over there anymore because
things were happening decay. They didn't know if she was in danger, but they didn't want Jason over there, putting their family and their son in danger. And so Kay is just like astounded at, you know, being ostracized by some of her friends. And so there's a lot more things going on, and a lot more things she endured other than just at the hand of LC. She's being terrorized. She's she doesn't believe that her son is involved in drugs, but somebody is targeting them for some reason. She can't
imagine that is LC. And in particular, Elsie was at her house with her when she would get a phone call or to he had orchestrated that, but she wasn't aware of that. So she's thinking there's no way that he could have done that. And in many cases like this, once the victim falls under the spell of these kinds of people, they their vision is limited as far as being able to see or predict, you know, what they might do, and so I'm a little bit of kay
and other women like that. You know, it's just like a domestic violence situation. Why don't they just leave? Why don't they just leave? But it's like one lady told me, after being in a marriage of domestic violence for twenty five years, she said, after you get told every day of your life for twenty five years that you're stupid
and helpless, after a while you start believing it. And so, you know, I hate that victims find themselves in those situations there, but usually these people are, you know, pretty smooth operators. They're very convincing at first, and then good people just want to believe the best about other people. And that's not always a good assumption to make. That's not always a good judgment to exercise.
And the thing is too, what he used is again a little bit different than some psychopathic individuals' personalities would use on their their loved ones or people that they claimed love. But he started off with a really good, sob story of his upbringing, and so he used that his whole life to get that kind of sympathy from people, and he used it constantly to plead and beg and say,
look at this is just a product. He said that with Kay over and over again, that this was a product of his upbringing and he was trying to work on and he was getting medication, and he used every lie he could to say mother had cancer. He was spending all his money on her cancer. So he made himself to be a martyr. But as you write in the book, most of these people just couldn't stand it
after a while. He just drove people away with his crying and always his persecution complex that this guy had throughout. But it is fascinating to see that that k should have been able to see some things that as we're reading this book book, like I say, it's very very obvious that he has something to do with her mother's murder and then with the disappearance of this person she just started a relationship with. However, we get the benefit
of that story. I want to thank you very much Paula for coming on and talking about first degree rage, the two stories having. This is a Wild Blue Press release, so this book can be found everywhere on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everywhere else. So thank you very much for this, and I hope to speak to you again soon
Thank you so much, thank you, thank you, good night, good night.