With the Lucky land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the weather's fine, but we're just gonna circle up here a while and get lucky. No, no, nothing like that. It's just these cash prizes add up quick, so I suggest you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and start getting lucky.
Play for free at Lucky Landslots dot com. Are you feeling lucky? No purchase necessary void. We're prohibited by Law eighteen plus. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Hello, it is Ryan and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino dot com. I looked over at the person sitting next to me, and you know what they were doing. They were also playing Chumba Casino. Coincidence, I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumpa Casino's home to hundreds oft casino style games you can play for free anytime, anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet. So sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com to
claim you're free. Welcome bonus. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com and live the Chumba Laine, No, We're necessary, I Daly Voidhever everybody lost your reading play loop to Canadian.
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. In nineteen seventy seven, four teenagers were kidnapped and attacked near and on Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Only one survived. This book is written by the first responder to the call, Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper JB. King. He goes back in time to tell how it was from the moment of the crime until the conviction of
Military Police game Warden Johnny Lee Thornton. His purpose is to tell the story of Pulaski County, Missouri's crime of the century, in detail and with clarity, from the first minutes after this attack was reported. The United States Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, CID and the United States Attorney's Office work together to bring the killer to justice. This book is a first hand,
comprehensive look into the investigation and the shocking story. The book they were featuring this evening is Frozen Tears the Fort leonard Wood MP Murders with my special guests, retired law enforcement professional and author JB. King. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for greeing this interview. JB.
King shape the opportunity to talk to your audience today.
Thank you very much. It's a remarkable book and an equally remarkable case. Now you open this in January thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven. Tell us what your role was, what we were doing professionally in law enforcement and with who? Tell us a little bit about this, also this Fort leonard Wood Reservation military base. Tell us about this where it is. Tell us a little bit about this and what you were doing in your official role at that time.
Well, Dan, that's a pretty broad question. Fort leonard Wood was established in nineteen thirty nine, when World War Two was looming on the horizon and the United States government appropriated roughly seventy five thousand acres of land in the Central Ozarks Island just off of Route sixty six at that time and established the military base of Fort leonard Wood. It was used for training combat troops going overseas and has basically been used for the same purpose ever since. Now.
At the time this particular case came up, I was a trooper with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. The Patrol did assignments by counties, and my assignment was Pulaski County, Missouri, which includes the Fort leonard Wood Federal Reservation. The fact that it's the federal reservation leads to some special legal circumstances because on the federal land, all criminal activity is
the strict purview of the United States government. So in this particular case, the actual crimes were committed on Fort d Wood, where I had no jurisdiction, but the surviving victim walked off base into my territory, so to speak, and as a result, I got a chance to interview her and start this case. Rolling forward.
Now, you write that the call came in at one eighteen pm, and this was mister Needham. Tell us what he says to you and what you discover about his daughter and this entire case. What do you find out at that time was he.
Saying, Well, he called in to Troop I headquarters at Rolla, Missouri and basically told the dispatchers there that he was the father of a runaway girl aged sixteen, and that he knew where she was and where the other kids were. But then he added the fact that one of them had been shot, which at the time did not make
sense on the initials scenario. So my role was as a trooper patrolling Pulaski County on that particular day shift, I was sent south on Missouri seventeen to contact mister Needham and find out exactly what was going on.
You also found out around about this time that there had been four teens reported missing Wednesday night. Tell us about that, and tell us some weather conditions that night as well.
Okay, we had a miscommunication or not enough information was given. I'm not sure at this late date which way it went, but we had no knowledge of any missing kids. While I was driving to the scene, the Troopy dispatchers contacted the Fort Leonard Wood Military Police and learned that the
four kids had been reported missing the night before. Now, it took me quite a while to get down to the scene because unfortunately, I was driving a rear wheel drive vehicle and we had eight inches of snow and ice on the road, so speed was not exactly a factor in this response.
Yeah.
Now, when you came up to mister Needham, you describe him as being hysterical, and he had a woman in the vehicle, So tell us what he says in what you observe.
Well, the first thirty seconds to a minute, I don't know what he said. I couldn't make out what he said, and he, I think, got frustrated with me because he finally paused for a minute, took a deep breath, and then he pointed toward his vehicle and said, we'll do something. She's been shot in the chest. So I walked up to the vehicle and there was a slender, young lady sitting there quietly crying, very well dressed, very clean, no blood in sight, no dirt. Definitely did not look like
a gunshot victim. And I believe I said to her that he said you were shot. She lifted up her left arm and showed me what appeared to be a bullet crease across the arm. It could have been made by some other mechanism of injury, but it did appear to be a bullet crease. And then I said, well, he said, you were shot in the chest. And at that point she lowered her blouse and she had a major caliber entry hole right near the top of her breast.
And the wound was obviously many hours old. It was glazed, crusted over, and it clearly was not a serious wound, despite the fact that it was obviously a major caliber wound. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but that's the way it was. She was exhibiting no signs of physical distress from the gunshot wound, but she was obviously and I hate to use the word, a catatonic state, but she was close to it. She was frightened out of
her mind and like I said, crying. So very unusual site to look at this young lady.
Now, what's the tale that she tells you that she imparts to you.
Well, according to her, her three friends and herself had been spending a quiet evening together playing cards and having fun, and the gentleman who owned the vehicle, Tony Bates, decided that he needed some gasoline, and so they all piled into the vehicle and went to the gas station in their small town locally, which was closed, and at that time there was not a whole lot of commercial estate publishment south of Fort Leonard Woods, so that meant they
had to drive across the base to the wayins Old Saint Robert area on the north side of Fort Wood and obtain their gas there. School had been canceled throughout the area because of the snow, so they weren't worried about getting back late or anything along those lines. So they set out driving across post.
Now who do they encounter and what does this person say to them? What does he do?
They encountered a military police officer in a marked vehicle who stopped him and began questioning them, asking for identification. After a moment or two, he told the kids that their vehicle was a match for a vehicle that had been used in an armed robbery of the Southgate, Texas which is on the south side of Fort Leonard Wood, and that he was going to have to take them
in for questioning. Now, the two boys did not I would imagine they were not too alarmed at this point because one of the boys, Wesley Hawkins, his older brother, worked at the gas station, so I don't believe they had any fear of, you know, charges being filed or anything like that, so they very quietly allowed the officer to handcuff him. He put them into the back seat of his patrol vehicle, had the youngest girl sit between them in the back seat, which was a bench type seat,
and he had the other girl sit up front. He then went around and started to get into the vehicle, and then at that point he stopped. He drew out his forty five caliber semi automatic pistol and fired three shots. He shot each boy one time and had one complete miss.
Now, the reaction from these women are one of the girls asks why did you do that? Why did you why did you shoot these words?
And his answer was basically, so they wouldn't get rowdy. A number of reasons why you would have done it that way, But the sheer shock of the moment has got to be an extremely emotional impact on both of the young ladies. Obviously, the two boys, each of whom has been hit by a forty five caliber slug, is completely different. So basically he obtained control of the situation totally at that point.
You're right that one of the boys is unconscious. It looks like or not making any noise, and one is groaning. So you have that situation. Now, what is this person in this MP's vehicle saying that he's got these people suspects in armed robbery. I don't know if anybody can believe, you know, especially the girls can believe this at this point. But what does this person do and where does he take them and what does he say?
Well, he started to leave the scene of the abduction. Then he stopped and drove back a number of yards back to the car that these kids had been in. He got out of the vehicle and took a knife and punctured a front tire so that the vehicle would display a flat tire. While he was doing that, he left the International Scout running. But it was a stick shift vehicle and neither one of the girls knew how to drive it, and so they lost the golden opportunity to escape from him right there.
Yeah. One of the things that we didn't touch on, and I think this is important, it will be important later, I think, is that he asks if any of these people he looks at their identification, but he asked if any of these kids are military dependents.
That's correct, he was screaming very carefully.
Now where do they go? Where does he go with these women? And what does he have them do?
The four hundred Wood Reservation, as I said earlier, is about seventy five thousand acres at that time. It's now down to about seventy two thousand, but it has thousands of acres of land that I think the average person would say it out in the middle of nowhere, out in the boondocks. And he took these four kids down to a what you would call it, I guess the
shack on the river. Now, at the time, the Rubydoo River was frozen over, and this shack is cold, there's no electricity, but there is a pot bellied stove in it that you can put wood in and crank it up and actually get the place somewhat warm. And that's what he did. He left the boys in the scalped vehicle out back, took the two girls inside, started a fire in the stove, and got the place reasonably warm.
You talk about, not to get into the details, but what does he have these women doing? What does he oddly and strangely say to them.
Well, he made a number of statements. He made one statement that he was in an MP. He made another statement that he was deserting the next day, but his actions were much more serious. He kept the forty five in his hand at all times. He forced the two young ladies to strip everything but their socks, and he then forced them to commit a series of sexual acts upon each other, and then later after he had taken off his clothing, to perform sexual acts on him, and
then he raped both of them. This entire scenario took about three and a half hours. As near as we can calculated.
They were under the impression, these girls because he had said things to them like that if they complied, so there was not they did comply because there was this insinuation that if you cooperated, if they complied, that they would be okay and he wouldn't hurt them.
Correct, And it probably got a little more excuse me complex than that, because several times during the course of this three and a half hours he had to leave the shack and go outside and get more wood, and every time he did that, they heard him talking to the boys in the scout, and so the surviving girl got the idea somehow that he had sedated the boys, which she didn't quite understand what was going on, but yes, they retained an element of hope that if they cooperated,
then they would come out of this nightmare, you know, alive and well.
Soon. Though they hear gunshots, don't they We only have one witness, but they both hear the same thing. What do they hear? What do they what does he do? Well?
At the end of the three and a half hour period, when he was done, he made the statement that it's four twenty am and I'm behind schedule. So we had the girls get dressed again, put them back in the vehicle, and drove about another mile and a half from the shack, and then drove just a little waist down a dirt path,
I guess you would call it. When he stopped, he had the girls get down and start walking down the path, and they got about twenty yards or so from the scout vehicle, and he told him to stop and turn around, and when they turned around, he fired shots at him. The surviving girl was hit and fell to the ground.
The other young lady was not hit, but she fell to the ground, and she then drug her into the woods, deeper into the woods, and evidently discovered that she was faking and stood directly over and fired one shot straight down into her chest. He came back and picked up the surviving girl, drug her into the woods, kicked her a couple of times to make sure she was dead, buried her in a snowbank, just as he had done
the other young lady. And then he went back to the vehicle took out the one young man that was in the vehicle who had taken a bullet right through the heart and had died almost instantly. He drug him off into the woods, buried him in the snow bank, and then he took the fourth young man off that he had shot and wounded earlier, and was leading him off into the woods when that young man, whose name
was Toby Bates. By that time, I had to know what was going to happen next, so he broke free from him and took off running, But he only made it about seventy or so feet before he tripped over a log that was hidden in the snow, and before he could get up, Tarton came up behind him and shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly.
Now you say one, Nita didn't lose consciousness again like the other girl, but more successfully. She has made him believe that she's dead, doesn't she.
Yes, her presence of mind, her desire to live, her fortitude, any way you want to put it. She was absolutely yeah. I'm almost at a loss for words here her actions that they were tremendous, not only for herself but probably in preventing other victims from coming up in the future.
Sure, certainly, certainly now you say too that. Then I asked her just before this to clarify, because you conclude in the book a headline from a newspaper that says she ran twelve hours to a woman's trailer in this eight inches of snow and cold, after witnessing what she witnessed. But you say it was six hours. We'll say six hours. And so tell us about this encounter with this woman, what happens and who does she call?
And Okay, we don't know what time the shooting actually occurred. Thornton had made the statement to the girls at it was four twenty am and he was behind schedule, but they had no way of verifying the time. He then took him off to the other section of woods where he shot him, and then after he shot him, he hung around for about another thirty minutes before he finally left, and the surviving young lady did not get up out of the snowbank until she knew that his vehicle was gone.
So probably we're talking somewhere around five thirty am is going to be when she started walking for help, and at precisely twelve thirty she knocked on the door of a trailer alongside Highway seventeen. Now we know it was precisely twelve thirty because the lady that lived there had managed to get her car stuck in her front yard that day in the snow and could not go to work, so she was determined to watch her favorite soap opera,
which was As the World Turns. And if you're familiar with that show, you know that the opening credit shows a big round globe and it starts spinning, and it's exactly twelve thirty, and that's when the knock on her door came.
Wow.
Her name is Janis Eckleberry. Janie opened the front door and found what she thought was a fourteen or fifteen year old girl standing there. Throws him half to death and almost incoherent in her talk in speech, so she got her into the trailer put her in front of the woodstove began warming her up, and for the next couple of minutes it was kind of spooky because the girl was talking about murders and rapes and Janis was home alone with her two small children and had no
idea what was going on. As the young lady became more coherent as she started warming up, her story made a little more sense. She was talking about being stopped by the MP and him shooting them and being raped. And as this went on but feather Janie realized she needed to help her, so she brought some dry clothing into the room and helped the surviving girl changed clothes. Well.
When she did that, at one point, when they took off Juanita's sock, a men's ring fell out of the sock and rolled across the floor, and Juanita made the statement that that's my boyfriend's ring. He's dead in the woods. When Thornton had had them strip in the cabin, she had taken that ring off and slipped it into her sock because she was determined to hang on to it, and now it's rolling across the floor, And that was probably the first real sentence that she said to Janice.
The other words that she uttered were sort of fragments of sentences, didn't make much sense. And then, of course, while they were changing her clothes, Jane saw the two gunshot wounds, and by giving her the fresh clothing, she presented once she met me a little while later, the image of a person that you know, spick and span, no injury here. After she got the clothing changed and she became a little more, a little more coherent, she
asked to call a friend, and Janie layer call. She called the brother of the older brother of the young man that was down in the woods with her, and that gentleman picked up mister Needham, whose daughter was in the woods, and they came up to get her. Well, when they showed up at the trailer, well, Anita took one look at him and said, don't let him in, and she kind of ran to the other side of
the trailer. And Janis asked her who these men were, and she said, well, one is the brother of my boyfriend and the other is the father of my friend in the woods. And so Janis opened the door and called them back. And while the three of them were talking, and Janie went to the backside of the trailer to check on her two children. She had a seven year old and a four year old a trailer at the time, and she hadn't looked in on him for quite some time because of the wounded girl in the living room.
And once she finally came back up front, the older gentleman asked if he could call the highway patrol and she said yeah. So that's when the call came in the troopy from mister Needham. And then a few minutes later, excuse me, all three of them left went south on Highway seventeen to sit roadside at the point where her tracks came out of the woods and the snow.
Yes, so now you are inextricably involved here what she had also said to you in this again not in maybe an initial interview, but you soon got the information out of her describing the person that was driving this vehicle, but a very eerie thing that she noticed the number and she said, X are two thirty seven. Now, right at that point you made a realization that this was an MP vehicle. But you had also called for backup
from these MPs. Tell us about this this horror. You say you were dumbstruck, You were with your realization and can tell us what happened that you were horrified basically at the prospect that you had learned.
Well, that answer is a little bit longer because when I first started talking to her, it didn't make a lot of sense. And as time went on and she kept giving me more details, including the description, a very detailed description of an International scout vehicle which the MP's
on Fort Wood had. At the time, my first thought was, well, that does sound like an MP vehicle, But we had had this previous impersonation about a year prior where a guy flew in from Fort Bragg to Fort Leonard Wood overpowered an MP, took all of his equipment, picked up a payroll officer, and took him out to a deserted range, locked him in the trunk of the stolen patrol car, and basically flew back to Fort Bragg with about fifty
thousand dollars in cash. Will. The FBI and c IDEA had broken that case and I had heard some details about it, So my first thought is, Okay, we've got another fake MP running around. But then as time went on and kept answering my questions, she gave me answer.
She told me some of the radio traffic she was hearing over the radio, and the Military police at that time had a very I hate to use the word stylized, but that's probably the best word, A very precise and stylized way that they've communicated over the radio, and if you listen to them any at all, you could recognize their traffic and a heartbeat. And she gave me details of that traffic. She described the vehicle to a t,
including the number on the fender. Well, and the more she talked, it finally got to the point where I realized this was not a fake MP. This was a real, live MP officer in a Mark Patrol vehicle. And as you said, I had just called for MP backup because this crime is on Fort Leonard Wood, I don't have any jurisdiction to investigate it.
Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Lucky in line at the deli, I guess ah, in my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have to say?
Yes?
You do?
In the car before my kids pta meeting? Really, yes, excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten Lucky?
I never win and tell well, there you have it.
You can get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky Landslots dot com. Play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky? No for just necessary boid where my law eighteen plus Terms and conditions of plus website for details.
With Lucky Land slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen the bride and groom?
Sorry?
Sorry, we're here.
We were getting lucky in the limo and we lost track of time.
No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes that add up quicker than a guess registered.
But in that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Play for free at Lucky landslots dot com. Daily bonuses are waiting. No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by long eighteen plus terms and conditions applying. See website for details.
So you call U beck and a Mt. Jensen. So they come in a scout International And what do you notice right away when the scout comes as Jensen and another story back.
So when they arrived on the scene, Captain beck I had asked for MP backup, including the highest ranking officer they could find and four wheel drive vehicles and they sent Captain Raymond Beck of the two o eighth Military Police Company and several other people, and then as time
went on, additional units began arriving on the scene. I had basically given Beck a briefing on what the situation was, and then he stopped me and said, I want Sergeant Jensen here to hear this story because he's going to take the CID team down.
To the scene.
And while I'm talking to Jensen giving him the story again, I realized that he's leaning up against an international scout and the number on the side of it is thirty seven. Well, that's so close to three two seven that I instinctively knew this is going to be the suspect vehicle. And it was kind of a well, you said, dumbstruck, and I won't argue with that. I totally shut down. I froze in place, didn't know what to do.
Now you find out immediately that I believe Jensen says right away that because he's involved with Thornton. He says, Thornton reported shooting some dogs the night before. Why is that correct? Tell us why that would be significant in alarming say the leave, Well.
The surviving girl had described the MP vehicle to a T and she gave us the number off the side. And this number here was so close to the number that she had given that it was almost improbable that it could not be the correct vehicle. And so Jensen has just driven up in the suspect vehicle. And when Beck and I both realized that, and we both had two seconds to think, Beck turned to Jensen and said,
who drove this vehicle last? And Sergeant Jensen was the head of the Fort Leonard with game warden detail at that time, the noncommissioned officer in charge, and he, you know, pumped out two names, one of which was Thornton. And then the realization of what we were saying struck him and his mouth dropped open and he said, oh my god, Tharnton said he shot some dogs last night. And so
just that quick, we've got shots fired. We know it's almost got to be the same vehicle, and just we go from what do we have to read out suspect in about three seconds.
Yeah, now Captain Beck knows again you talk about this that the line has to be secure. You don't want to alert all kinds of media or anyone civilians or anybody. So you take him to a house, to a friend's house. He makes the call right away. What does he call for in terms of arrest or at least containment of Thornton? What does he suggest to do? And then what does it? Almost immediately did they hear from Johnny Lee Thornton.
Well, the communications on this particular date was critical, but they were also compromised. When I was talking to Troop Ayle on the radio at that time, the patrol's frequency was wide open. There were thousands of people in and around Pulaska County with the police scanner, they could hear every word I said, So we had to be very guarded with what we said on the radio. And for that meant the same thing applied to the MP frequency,
anybody could with a scanner could hear it. So Beck instinctively knew he had to get to a phone, and he basically said, I need a phone. And at that point I came out of my trance and I had a friend that lived a couple of miles up the road. So I took him to my friend's house and we basically barged in, grabbed the phone back, called the MP command on fort Wood told him to grab Thornton and the other MP that Jensen had named put him in a room under guard, read them their rights and to
ask them no questions. Well, just a minute or two later he was told that Thorarnton had been in the building and had heard the news of a survivor, and that he had already checked out a forty five caliber pistol and a couple of magazines of ammunition so we could go to work early that day, and had left the building.
And so.
Basically fifty eight minutes after I started my interview with Juanita deck Or roadside, the man hunt for Thornton started.
You say too that they immediately secured some exits and some entrances, and you were assigned to the south exit or back of fort Wood. Correct, while you're there, you stop somebody and you talk to them, tell us about this conversation and with who.
Well, the back gate of fort Wood is a little bit hard to get to, and when this came up, they immediately wanted joint checkpoints at all four of the gates leaving fort Wood, and I was the closest guy to the back gate, so they sent me to the back gate. They sent officers from Troop g which is adjoining highway patrol group up to back me up, and we were stopping everybody coming off base looking for a white male five to nine, one hundred and sixty pounds
you know, probably weren't fatigues. Well, there are about two many of those guys that fit that description on fort hundred Wood. So it was kind of a tense and
edgy time. And we'd been at it for I don't know an hour or so probably when I stopped the vehicle and the driver was an older white male, and after looking in the vehicle and you know he's by himself, I told him to go ahead, and instead of leaving, he kind of leaned closer to me and asked me if this roadblock had anything to do with the missing kids. And that question kind of, I guess set me on edge and be the way to put it. So I
asked him why he was asking that question. He said, well, one of the kids is my son, So that put me between a rock and a hard place. The humane thing to do under those circumstances was to talk to him, so I asked him to pull over, and Michaelemma was at the time I did not know for sure his son was dead in the woods based on all the information I had available and everything the young lady had told me, and our weather conditions, which like I said
at the time, were eight inches of snow. The temperature overnight was in the high teams. During the day it was in the low twenties. We had a ten to fifteen mile an hour north wind blowing. And if the young man could not have gotten up out of that snow bank because of his wounds, then he was going
to be deceased. But that wasn't confirmed. So that decision bothered me for years because basically, I told the man, your son is dead, and I did not know that for sure, but based on everything I had available to me for information, the young man had to be dead, and.
He was appreciative of that information. Will say that so that you don't have to think about that.
When when I was doing the research for the book, mister Bates said, Jones' name was Leroy Bates. He had moved to the state of Alabama since this happened. He came back up here to visit a daughter, and I was able to sit down with him face to face for about an hour and a half and we had a good cry together. And yes, he thanked me for telling him that, because he really wanted to know what was going on. And for me, it was I don't
even know how to express this to you. They really bothered me that I told him his son was dead, but yet I didn't know that for sure. You know what if somehow the inland had made a miraculous survival and I tell the father that he's dead, then he turns out he's alive, you know it Just you don't want to tell people that they've lost the love, not unless you know it's true. But in that particular case, there couldn't have been any other answer, And so I
told him. That really bothered me for a long long time until I talked to him during the research phase of the book, and he was very appreciative of my effort that day. So I'm feeling a lot better over that decision.
Right now. Right away, you write about the CID agents and the FBI working together. They work together in teams CID agent and also FBI agent Bird agents Matthews and roy E Black and Thomas Byrd and Robert oyster O roster pardon me, so they pretty well have this sewn up it looks like. But obviously you never know what can happen with when lawyers get involved. But they have a part of their investigation is try to find bullets
who you write about. Right away, they get into the vehicle in question, this three two seven MP vehicle, and they noticed the bullet wound of not wound, pardon me, bullets in the vehicle itself, and obviously some evidence in that vehicle as well. How does this investigation proceed? Tell us about that?
Well, that gets very complex. In nineteen seventy seven, we had a two man FBI resident office on Fort Leonard Wood. We were probably the only military base in the country that had an FBI office on it. They were here for another purpose. But contrary to what TV and books will tell you, FBI agents generally do not work homicides.
And so.
The only time they're going to get into a homicide situation is like what we have in this particular case, a killing that occurs on a military our federal reservation. And so at that time, the FBI really wasn't training the FBI agents how to do this, and so they walked into a homicide investigation that the decision had already been made for them to take over. Now, let me
back up here a second. When you have a crime committed on a military base, normally it's investigated by the Criminal Investigation Command of the United States Army, basically the Army's Detective Division. However, in this particular case, the kids who were killed were not military or military dependents. They were civilians, and so that almost automatically made it a Federal Bureau of Investigation case. And so the FBI and
CID worked together in an absolutely tremendous fashion. The two agents that were here on base at the time were joined overnight by thirteen more agents sent in, and the next morning when we had our big briefing, we had fifteen FBI agents and fourteen CID agents available. And so one of the smartest moves in this whole investigation, the command team paired up one FBI agent and one CID agent together as a team. And that was done for
a number of reasons. First, it's an FBI case, but you're operating on a military base that the CID agents are familiar with and dealing with military customs, people, chain of commands and things of that. So putting the two together was a good idea IDA. A secondary reason was that the command staff running this case knew immediately that the CID agents had better training in homicide investigation than
evidence securing techniques than the FBI agents did. So that meant that not only were the agents at the same crime scene together or interviewing the same witness together, so that their reports would be very very similar, but also that any evidence picked up by a CID agent would be immediately turned over to his partner standing next to him, and thus getting the proper chain of evidence going for
later court purposes. So putting the two different agents together in one team was an absolute genius move because in that first three or four days after this started, the agents there were fourteen teams of agents and they had seven crime scenes to cover in about twenty some odd people they wanted to interview immediately because those people either worked with Thornton or new Thornton, or were the people
that checked out the weapon to Thornton. So that first three or four days the investigation was absolute frantic chaos.
Let's go back, because we forgot a very very moviesque and vivid scene in this in that he isn't arrested under normal conditions whatsoever. And in fact, it's a very tense situation for the reader, especially not knowing what's the outcome of what happens with this when they try to get this arrest. Tell us about this and then his conditions.
Well, and once again the complex. Starting at about three thirteen pm that afternoon, they were looking for him. Manhunt was underway. At roughly six thirty pm, Johnny Thornton called the mp command building and asked to speak to Sergeant Jensen,
and he ended up in a three way conversation. Thornton, Sergeant Jensen, his immediate superior, who was also a close personal friend of his, and the Provost Marshal of Fort Wood or the Chief of Police of Fort leonard Wood, Colonel Perry Elder, And the upshot of the phone call was that Thornton told him, I know you're looking for me, and I know you want to talk to me, and I'll meet you out here in this spot basically out in the middle of nowhere on Fort leonard Wood, but
I'll only talk to YouTube Colonel Elder and Sergeant Jensen, and you have to come unarmed. Well, they kind of cheated on that one. Jensen and Elder both hid stuff in those thirty eighths in their coat pockets, and the FBI agent, who was the resident agent charge of the Fort Leonard Wood office, was hiding in the back seat
of the vehicle with a twelve gage shotgun. They went to the appointed spot where he said he would be, and the agreement was that when they reached that spot and they shined their headlights on the woods, he would come out of the woods and face them and they would talk. Didn't quite work out that way. They're looking at the woods and the headlights and nothing's happening, and all of a sudden he says, I'm here, but he's standing behind them, and so at that point the tactical
situation has gone totally down the tubes. He is not illuminated by the hell lights. They, however, are silhouetted by the headlights, and even worse, the agent who's supposed to save them, Agent Castlebury, is in the back seat of the vehicle between Thornton and the other two officers, so he's kind of trapped and pinned in, and that leads to about a thirty to thirty five minute negotiation as they stand there in the snow Thornton's holding the forty
five that they complainly see. And during this timeframe he makes numerous statements he doesn't know what happened, he don't know what he did, he has a headache, bright lights, bot, I mean, all kinds of dibbers. And they finally convince him to lay his weapon down and they are able to take him into custody.
You talk about the self incriminating statements, but they're not just they're very important because they're made while he's not in police custody. So these are golden. These are you know, these statements don't require him around a warning like you say, to be admissible. And he says a lot of things like you say about the headache, almost sounding like he's prepared for this by saying, well, I get headaches. And he talked about the trauma of being away from his wife,
but they were getting back together. But it was fortuitous that he made those kinds of self incriminating statements that really couldn't hurt the case whatsoever, but.
Only oh no, they were tremendous at trial. He the agents who were working the case from the very first moments that they made contact with him, their gut instinct was that he was shooting for an insanity defense. He was laying the ground working, and all of these notes and all of these statements. Elem me back up. I said all of these notes, and I haven't mentioned the fact that his shirt pocket was full of notes that
he had written. Between the time he knew the manhunt has started and he confront of these officers, he had written all kinds of notes, and when they took them out of his pocket, it's the same thing. You know, I know something happened. I don't know what it was. What did I do? I have a headache, I felt bad for months, just all kinds of things like that. And so the agents were convinced that he was going
to do an insanity defense almost from the very beginning. Now, within three days, they had secured enough evidence that they knew they were going to convict him. The only question was would he be able to get off on an insanity plea? And that leads into a bread large bag of worms.
You say that. What the prosecutor prosecution did right away though, was to make sure that he was They got a doctor for a medical examination, so to make sure he was fit for questioning. So this is an important step that they knew they had to do, and they did it right.
The FBI agent, the resident agent on Fort Leonard Wood, William Castleberry, did an absolutely outstanding job on this case. He recognized almost immediately that knowing what they had, what the circumstances, what the outcome probable situation was going to be, he recognized almost immediately this is going to be an
insanity defense. And so while they're transporting Thornton back to the propos Marshal's office on Fort Wood to do the formal questioning, he asked the propos marshals to come up with a military doctor to examine Thornton and thus have his medical condition on record. And they actually called in the commander of the Fort Wood Hospital, another colonel, to do the examination, and he cleared him. He said, there's
nothing medically wrong with this man. So when it came time for trial, his defense attorneys tried to insinuate that he was extremely fatigued, didn't know what he was saying, and had no sleep, and the information or the examination by the doctor was quite critical at that point.
It's interesting too for the FBI interview, he has a condition that he wants his friend, Sergeant Jensen to be in the room also, so care very interesting too. Now in that interview again he continues and says, look at I remember stopping the car, but I don't remember doing anything. I got a headache. But he said some important things, like about his mother, I love her and I hate her. So he did a lot of talking, did a lot
of self incriminating statements. But again, like you say, it seems like an exercise in trying to set up an insanity defense by saying I know I did something, but I don't know what I did and I can't remember. So it's a poor, you know, poor opportunity, but a poor example of how you might try to do that. But he's doing it well. The ogs are recruiting it.
But it also sets the groundwork for later on for his defense team to say, Okay, yes, our client is disturbed, he's confused, he's mentally deficient, he's insane, he has a They finally settled on the term he has a split personality,
and that bad Johnny made good Johnny kill. And this occurred at a time frame in our country when you had I think two different books going about the three faces of Eve and Sybil, and both of them dealt with cases were people under hypnosis and regressed back to previous lives that they had lived, and that in recounting the details, they would say, follow a certain certain road to the end of it, and you will find a blue house and to the right there will be a
small concrete shed, things like that, and when the people followed up, they would find those particular landmarks where they said. And so at the time it was point the phenomenon. And so by him, you know, doing the split personality. You know, my other personality made me do it. You know, I'm not responsible here.
You described this again, it's so eerie knowing that less than fifty years ago this was accepted in the psychiatric circles, incredibly, that multiple personalities could be accepted. Now in this they have a doctor Claren and it's fascinating you including the book about how he does this through hypnosis and at that time a drug that they considered a truth serum. So he administered the truth serum, administered the also another drug as well, which is very interesting at trial when
of course the prosecution has their own psychiatric expert. And also what's even more interesting, a hypnosis expert, one of the leading hypnosis experts in the country. So tell us first about this doctor clara and his examination and the performance basically of Johnny lease Orton.
But doctor Clary, I've examined him repeatedly and talked to him and then put him under hypnosis and regressed him back to the date of the crime, trying to figure out, you know, what he did and didn't do. And Thornton made a number of statements under this hypnosis that we're incriminating as can be, but they were the actions of bad John good Johnny, and Clay finally presented the jury that this man has a dual personality. He can't control
what he did. One of Thornton's defense attorneys, i think used the phrase that this is as crippling as any other disease out there, and he's incapable of, you know, withstanding the thoughts of the other personality, to kill these kids. It gets kind of complex, and just talking about it's a little bit hard. You almost have to read the book to get the entire flavor of what doctor Clarey is doing. But he makes a number of critical things occur.
He administers drugs to put Thornton under and that became a major bone of contention later on when the when the prosecution expert came in, because he basically said, the use of any kind of drug is going to finish the ability of the subject to be hypnotized, and that really got complicated again.
It's interesting because it's so dramatic in visually for me because and the reader, because there's a videotape that he makes and that's presented at the trial. So these are
the hypnosis sessions. He administers dexidron sodium amathol, which is the truth serum, but then he puts one hundred and twenty five milligrams of ephidrine, which later with the prosecution psychiatrist he says this would render him drowsy and groggy, again, like you've mentioned, basically negating the or reducing the ability of putting that person in a sufficient hypnotic state, which
is what that correct other psychiatrist testifies to. But during this again, when people are looking at this video and the doctor Spiegel for the prosecution is asked to look and said, did you review this videotape of this supposed hypnosis. There are things that he does in that hypnotic state that doctor Spiegel disagree with in terms of procedure as well, What does he say about the entire thing and what
is the performance that we see on that videotape. What is Johnny Lee Thornton saying and doing in that hypnotic stage.
Okay, another complex question. So I'm going to back up to the fact that the defense made these hypnotic recordings without the prosecution's knowledge. They were not required to reveal this to the prosecution until just a couple of days before the actual trial started, So that led to a certain amount on a panic in the prosecution side of
the fence. But the second agent FBI agent who was stationed on Fort Lennard Wood at the time was Thomas Dauden, and Tom had recently been to an in service training where a similar hypnotic state had occurred in another alleged murder case had occurred in a VA hospital that the FBI had investigated, and doctor Spiegel, the prosecution's defense with her prosecution's rebuttal witness in the end, had been part of that case, and Agent Donawden had attended this seminar
that had gone through some of this and when Agent Donawden watched these tapes of Forton, he immediately detected one of the key points of this whole case. He immediately detected that this was PUREBS because the first thing that tripped him was Thornton is rambling on about this and this and this, and somebody walked into the room and shut the door, which you know, it should have been
a private and it should not have happened. But when that happened, Tharnton quit talking until that person was seated, and then he started talking again. A little bit later, a similar situation occurred when the telephone rang and doctor Clay answered the telephone and Thornton stopped talking agents and now realized instantly that he was not under a full
hypnotic state. And so when doctor Spiegel came in, he was extremely critical of the defense's presentation of those because he said that if a person was in a true hypnotic state recalling an event, they would be totally oblivious to the fact that somebody walked into the room or the telephone rang, And you know, this is pure BS.
Thornton is reacting to the clues given to him by doctor Clarey, and the questioning and responding in kind because he's developed the idea in his head that if doctor Claire says, okay, now, bad Johnny made you do this, right, well, okay, if doctor Claire says bad Johnny made you do this, and I agree with that, then it's bad Johnny doing the killing and me good Johnny over here. I'm just
fine and hopefully I can get off. So basically, Spiegel, Doctor Spiegel said that Barton was play acting going along with the suggestive comments made by the defense psychiatrists.
It's very odd and unreal almost how the psychiatrist is talking with Clary. Doctor Clay is talking to him, and of course he's well, you know, Spiegel calls it coaching,
and that's exactly what it is. But it's also very bizarre some of the things he says about the two personalities, believing wholeheartedly in Thornton's explanation of these two personalities, and then in saying some bizarre things to urge him on in terms of in that hypnotic state to induce to get John versus Johnny, or Johnny bad Johnny, pardon me, bad Johnny versus good john So it's very odd exchange, to say the least.
It gets complex, and basically you have to follow that chapter very closely. Now, during the actual trial, the defense put doctor Clary on and when he finished his testimony, they put a couple of other people on behind him, which was kind of confusing because then at a later date, doctor Spiegel comes out for the prosecution. So I did a I guess you'd call it an editorial something or another. I put the two dueling psychiatrists together in the same
chapter so they would make better sense. You get the defensive side of the good Johnny Matt Johnny routine, and then the prosecution comes in right behind him and disputes everything that the defense has put out about this. So it makes it a lot easier for the reader to follow.
I think you talk about a pretty short deliberation after the closing arguments, because it's pretty well not much after these two dueling psychiatrists go at it in court. Tell us how fast they come back and what's the decision, what's the outcome?
I was just under four hours. You caught me on that when I can't remember the exact time right now, like four hours and twelve minutes or two hours and twelve minutes. Very quick, pretty short, Yeah, but the final outcome is he was found guilty on all charges. Now, the charge themselves are kind of unique because a jurisdictional issue arose on Fort Leonard Wood. When Fort Wood was first set up in nineteen thirty nine, it was smaller
than it is now. Later on, the United States Force Service in the state of Missouri both transferred parcels of land over to Fort Leonard Wood to help drow the base,
so to speak. But those parcels of land, several of them, were never properly deeded over, and at the time this case surfaced, it didn't take the lawyers long to figure out that the United States Federal Court might not have jurisdiction over a couple of spots where Fornton did some of his worst crimes, and so, as a result, in the early stages of this case, the United States Attorney's Office in Kansas City, Missouri, presented a federal grand jury
with four very carefully selected charges, and those charges were The first was the assault of Tony Bates for shooting and wounding him but not killing him, which was committed on land that the federal court had jurisdiction on. There was a capital case filed for the murder of Wesley Hawkins, which occurred at a spot where the federal court had jurisdiction. There was a federal capital case again for the rape of Linda Needham, which occurred at a spot where the
federal court had jurisdiction. And then all four of the kids were kidnapped for the purpose of rape, which is a totally different charge. It's also a capital charge, and it also occurred on a parcel of land where the federal court could prove they had jurisdiction. Later on, the actual murder of Tony Bates and the actual murder of Linda Needum occurred on these disputes lands, and as a result,
no charges were ever filed over their deaths. Now, when the trial concluded, Thornton was found guilty on all four charges.
He received life in prison on the three capital charges and got twenty years extra for the assault on Tony Bates by shooting and wounding him, but the federal judge ordered that the sentences be served consecutively and not concurrently, so he basically has to serve the first life sentence before he could serve the second one before he could serve the third one, which in essence means he's not coming out right.
Actually, what we didn't talk about and which is super fascinating as well, is October ninth or tenth, nineteen seventy six, two girls disappear in the same area. The car is found abandoned and Johnny Lee Thorton was the first to advise radio dispatcher about the car, tell us about the shooting dog report, and Albert Hoffmann and Teresa Gossage eighteen and seventeen.
Well, again, this is another part of a very complex situation. When Forton completed his shift on the morning of January thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven, after shooting the three kids, he filed an official report with the NP command that he had shot he had fired six rounds of ammunition to dispose of dogs in hunting area at twenty and that he had dumped their bodies at the stump dump on Fort
Leonard Wood. He had to account for the rounds that were missing from his ammunition that he turned back in. The official document is named social security number. He signed it in front of a couple of people, admitted to everybody he fired these shots, and that was one of the key pieces of evidence in the trial. Well, then going back several months, the night of October the ninth and tenth, the morning of the tenth, two other kids on a double date on Fort leonard Wood, Alfred Marshall
and Teresa Gossig turned up missing. Their car was found parked, they were not there, and that's basically all the military police had to go on at the time. Now, it was especially horrifying to the local population because especially the people that knew Al Marshall, because Al was a you know, the sports figure at the high school, of the jock. He always wore his letter jacket everywhere he went, and
he always carried a hair brush everywhere he went. And book, the jacket and the hair brush are in his locked car and he's nowhere in sight, and nobody hears anything from them then are ever. So basically it's a huge mystery. We don't know what happened to him, for sure, we
strongly suspect we know. But the big difference is is that the Thornton murder case with the three kids has been fully adjudicated in federal court, and at fifty cents a page, you can get as many thousand copies of documents from that file as you want, well, the case with Marshall and Gossige is an open case and you can't get it. You can't get any papers from it,
and he reports. But the federal agents who worked both of them, and they a bunch of agents worked on both of these cases, tell me that there is a similar report that Thornton said he shot dogs the morning October the tenth, and there is a report to that effect in the file which I cannot get. So we simply have to take that as the word, and that word is devastating to the families of Marshall and Gossage.
Absolutely absolutely. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about Frozen Tears the Fort Leonard Wood MP Murders. For those that might want to take a look at more information about this, do you have a Facebook page and a website that people might refer to.
We've established in a public group on Facebook. We're using the title of the book, Frozen Tears the Fort Leonard Wood MP Murders. Log into that group you'll find all kinds of discussion, questions and answer. Several of the sisters and nieces of one of the victims have posted their
own heartfelt messages on that page. It's an interesting page and you can get a lot of information on their Plus on that page, you'll see several different ways that you can actually order the book if you want a copy.
Yes, I wanted to say too, this is a Red Engine Press publishing your book as well. And also I just wanted to also say that you do put a thanks for to Sandra Miller Lindhardt, which is the co author of this book as well.
Well. It's a case where I wrote the book and Sandy came along behind me and rewrote it, which is kind of complex because I have a tendency when I write to start talking, and he did this, and he did this, and he did this, and he did this well. Sandy broke it up into four sentences and made the book a whole lot more readable. And at the same time she did not lose track of what my message was in that particular paragraph of that particular page and
kept right on track. So Sandy earned her pay on this one big time.
Absolutely. Yes, we didn't have time to get into the aftermath of this particular thing, what the military did to ensure that that this would never happen again, but also just the effect on the community and people. Years and years later, you have antidotes of people who's reaction to the MPs and even fear over this incredible case with Johnny Lee Thorton, I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about Frozen Tears, the Fort
Leonard Wood MP murders incredible. Thank you very much. Dabe King. Good night, Thank you for inviting me, thank you, good night, good night,