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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, DTK. 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. Please, no, don't make me go back to the park. I can draw you a map. I promise, I can show you where everything happened. Own survivor trembled as she pleaded with investigators. For over forty years, the events of what happened at kit Chee Manitoud the night of November seventeenth, nineteen seventy three remained a mystery to all but a few. Then the lone survivor broke her silence. Five teenage friends had driven to the park to spend
a few hours around a campfire. By morning, four had been murdered, and only she was still alive. Gitchee Girl Uncovered is a chilling account of the strange twists and bizarre details discovered by an elite team of investigators under intense pressure to catch the killers. After spending hundreds of hours with the lone survivor, investigators and family members of the slain boys, and by gaining access to court records.
Authors Phil and Sandy Hammond give the reader out what will happen next inside story of the monstrous crime the Shukton Midwest. They bring the reader into the deviant world of the brutal killer with an up close look at how they think and operate. The Hammond's book Getchie Girl, the survivor's inside story of the mass murders the Shock the Heartland, rose to become a bestseller. However, both books were written so that they can be read in either
sequence or independently. The book that we're featuring this evening is Getchy Girl Uncovered, a true story of a night of mass murder and the hunt for the deranged killers, with my special guest journalists and authors Phil and Sandy Hammond. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview Phil and Sandy Hammond. Ydan
good evening, Thank you very much for this interview. Now, Phil and Sandy tell us a little our audience about your connection in terms of geography to this story and also your personal connection to this story.
See Dan. The murder took place just across yeahwall border. But these were all Souit Falls, South Dakota kids, and that's where Sandy and I grew up and were raised and went to school. I actually went to school and knew all the boys that lost their life that did you managed you that night? In fact, Mike Cadres was my childhood best friend. I lived right in the same neighborhood with all of them very close.
As you do in the book, you take the reader immediately and in a series of flashbacks where we go to February thirteen, two thousand and sixteen, a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Soux Falls, South Dakota, and Sandra Cheski and yourselves tell us about this.
What happens right.
Sandra Chesky, the lone survivor of those Getchy managed to mass murders, had been silent about what happened that night for forty years. She didn't speak about it until our first fit book came out. Getsch you girl. So we have this book signing at Barnes and Noble and it was a path house. Sander's mouth dropped open. She just kept saying over and over all these years, I didn't think anyone cared about me, but then people did. For
two to three hours, people kept coming in. They would give her hugs, They'd say, I thought about you.
Over the years.
I've wandered off and on whatever happened to that girl who survived, or I prayed for you. And women would come up and say, I need to tell you something privately, and they whisper in her ear, I was sexually assaulted, and you've made me feel like I can get through this and maybe even tell my story sometime. And Sandra just all those years, those forty years, she thought she'd been dealing and coping with what had happened. But that
day she realized she hadn't been. And I recall her telling a group of people that during the trials, her attorney gave her a good advice. He said, when we go outside, there's going to be media. So whenever we go outside, put your head down. Then all they can give of is a shot at your forehead. And she said, for four years, I've been walking with my head down, And she told a few people at the end, no more. After today, I am walking with my head up. And
she realized that by sharing her story that day. That's when she started to heal. And we said in the book the tough little girl from Gischie was back. And we'll get to that nickname later on.
Right, let's talk about November seventeenth, nineteen seventy three, and the name Getschie Girl comes from Getchie Manitou State Park. And tell us about the friends that went along with Sandra that faithful evening.
Okay, Dan, November seventeenth, nineteen seventy three. You know, teenagers couldn't just pop in a CD and watch a movie like they can today. They didn't have all the electronic video games. Kids got together, they went to somebody's house, went to a park, a lake, and that's what this
group of friends did. You had each year old Stuart Baby high school senior working long hours at ups after school, had bought his own old beat up sixty seven Chevy band and he was a general generous one, drove everybody around. Then you had seventeen year old Roger Assam, fifteen year old Mike hadrafth fourteen year old Dana Baby that Stuart's younger brother, and then of course Sandra Cheske, who was thirteen at the time. A group of friends decided to
get together. Now kidson Manitu State Park is located about fifteen miles east of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, just across into the Iowa state line, and it was a popular place where kid could go and hang out. Winding river there, rock ledgers, tree, rolling hills, kind of a beautiful place. And that November seventeenth, seventy three, November was a pretty
mild fall. We had good temperatures, and the kids decided to go out there, build a fire, bring a guitar, long and hang out for a couple hours at the park that night. And so that's how that's the group that went out there.
Now you say that they scrounge enough money to get a joint, the smoke and there was again one of them was going to play acoustic guitar. And Sandra had been dating this Roger for a little bit, you know, again not serious dating, but they knew each other and that was somewhat of a date that this was, this get together was. Now while they're there, Soon after they're there, what happens.
Well, you know, again, the marijuana comes into play later on, and of course Sandra's age related to kind of dating, Roger Wressom comes into play. The kids had driven around for about two hours. The older kids thought it would be cool to be musicians and have a little marijuana. They finally found for me that would sell them one
join the marijuana. Vicious rumors around this murder later on, So the kids get out to the park about nine thirty at night in November and the Midwest, it's already dark. So they get some firewood together, they build a fire.
So they've got this roaring fire going, and a heavy fog starts rolling in a thick, heavy fog, and so as the kids are kind of talking, them playing the guitar and you know, just doing the teenage things, dan, they start to hear strange noises crumpling the leaves, twigs snapping, you know, it sounds like denim scraping on a branch, and the kids are getting spooked. You know, it's spooky night anyway with all the fog. But you know, they're just convincing themselves it's a wild animal. But it just
didn't sound like a wild animal. In fact, Roger said, probably a bear and kind of laughed. You know, in the Midwest where we're at, in South Dakotin and Iowa. There's no bear, so they were trying to just brush it off. And every time they'd hear these sounds, the kids would go quiet and listen, but then the sounds would go quiet. Not much longer after that, all of a sudden, three shadowy figures appeared on a rock ledge about thirty yards above the campfire, and the kids look.
They were holding weapons. Roger some step forward and said, who are you guys? What do you want? And then Dan, with the blast of a shotgun, the night of Terror started.
As you do in the book, Sandy, you take us back to Sandra's incredible beginning just to start, just to just to illustrate, I think the beginning of a very difficult life.
Talk about exactly.
Sandra's mother, Lolo, was walking up to the sitter's house after work and she's going to pick up her three boys when she goes into labor with Sandra. So this sitter gets very excited. She calls this neighbor, Barbara, who is a beloved grade school teacher, and she says, Lolo just went into labor. Can you drive her to the hospital. Well, Barbara has never met Lolo, but that can't stop her from helping out.
She says, sure, I'll.
Do that, and she says to her teenage daughter Joyce, come with me, you know, just in case. So they drive the three minutes to the hospital. They pull up and Lola says, oh no, she said, not this hospital. I thought, you know, I had to go to Eagle Butt. Lolo's part Native American, and so because of that, in order to get medical care, she can only get it at certain Native American hospitals. And at the time, her marriage is hanging by a thread, and her husband's off.
He's not sending money. She's doing what she tend to make ends need. And Barbara says, Lola, that's seventy five miles away, and they discuss it. Lolo says, no, I have these long labors. Trust me, I'll make it. So they head off west. The only road is this old car highway, and as soon as they head west, the sun sets. They're just thrust into darkness and blackness except for the headlights. They're having to constantly slow down for
deer and animals. It's a windy road and all of a sudden, based on Lolo's breathing, Barbera knows that baby's ready to come. She's just a very astute person. And she tells her daughter, we're pulling over, get in the back seat, and throws her a towel, and so Joyce the daughter gets back there. Fortunately, Joyce worked as a nurse's aid at the hospital, and so she had seen a lot of deliveries, hadn't helped with one that had seen them, and like her mother, she was very observant.
She delivered Sandra with no problem. So in the back seat of this fifty seven Chevy, Sandra's born. They drive on. Yeah, they get to Eagle Beat where mom and baby get checked in, and then Barbara and Joyce ask when we go see the baby, and the nurses say, well, no, she might be contaminated. She was born in the backseat of the car. So to this day Sandra will say, geez, even when I was a newborn, I was excluded from
the group. And like you said, her unusual birth foreshadowed a light that would follow the same kind of unusual path.
Absolutely, let's get back as you do. In the book to November eighteenth, nineteen seventy three. A day later after this event, a couples in Gischee, Manitou State park and they see three figures lying in the grass. Of course they call police, but what do police find as soon as they get there? From what county? You explain that there's certain there's overlapping counties involved in this case and
in this park actually as well. But you introduce to Craig Vincent and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation Terry Johnson. So tell us about what the couple finds, the police that they call, and what happens.
Okay, so, right, a couples out test driving a car. They decide to go through the park. They see these bodies laying there and the first thought is a gentleman gets out and as soon as he gets up there, he sees a lot of blood, he sees drag mark. He gets back in the car. They race out, go to the nearest farm, because there are a lot of farms around gets Manchu State Park and they call the police.
The suit balls.
Police get there very quickly. The sheriff of the county that it's in is Craig Vincent and he has one deputy, Leery Roy Greasy. They also get there very quickly. Now around this area, possibly no one who showed up had ever investigated a murder before. Sheriff Vincent and Deputy Greasy definitely had not, but they knew everyone knew right away. What they needed to do is get that park field
off protect the evidence. They didn't have anything in their vehicles to do that, so they go to a nearby farm, ask for some snow fence and poles and get that set up. And at the same time, what happens in small counties is Vincent and his deputy still have all of their daily work to do.
They have to run the jail, they have.
To arrest people and all that kind of stuff. So what they do is they call the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in Iowa, and this is a group of people who move around to different areas where a county needs help. So several of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation agents come in, headed by Terry Johnson, and they arrived one by one at the park and it is getting very dark and very late, and they eventually have to just close down until daybreak.
Now, Craig Vincent tells BCI agent. He tells them that there is a survivor. There's a person, a girl who survived the murders. And you say that Johnson was stunned and tell our audience where they there's still an imminent danger because they don't know who these killers are. So for her protection, where is sandrak And where is she housed at?
And then tell us again, Yeah, Terry, there's suppose these killers are running around and of course they've got a living witness. This young girl has lived through this mass murder. And so she's housed at the juvenile detention center and
so falls South Dakota. It's a lot of facility. Actually, the head of the facility did not want there, okay, he you know, his job was to protect the other kids that are locked up there and his staff, and he's thinking, what if these killers find out the loan survivors here and they need to rub her out, they could come here, you know, kind of went back and forth, and you know, the powers above him made the decision, and she was house there for her protection with some
extra round the clock police, uh, you know, surveillance of the place. So that's where she was kept for her protection while this investigation started kicking off.
Now with this survivor, there's also the identity or the identification, the difficult identification of the boys and themselves and then Vincent's job is to notify the boys' families and find out any information on why they might have been there that night. And then one of the most dramatic things of this book is what Vincent and Johnson know that they need from Sandra. Tell us about that?
Ah yeah, yeah. Orus Benson had to go around in families and break the hard news that they've lost loved ones to a murder and tried to find out any information with there have been some reason they were out there, just could anybody have forced them out there? And so he didn't really get anything. And so now they've got Sandra Chesky who is basically pretty severely traumatized. We will get to the sexual assault here in a little bit during the show, but you know, she said.
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Traumatized young girl and what they really need is the next day for her to go back out to get you Manitu and walk them through the park and tell them where everything happened and how it happened. And this young girl was terrified. She did not want to go back to get you manit to. She begged and pleaded, she tried every way to get out of going back there. But you know, Craig Vincent was very fatherly to her.
He really calmed things down. Terry Johnson believed her. You know, this girl wasn't believed by a lot of the detectives. They thought, you know, why did one girl live through this thing? She knows what's going on, or she's protecting somebody. So there's a lot of controversies surrounding Sandra Chesky. They were finally able to convince Sandra, you said you would do whatever it took to help your friends. Now it's the time, Sandra, You've got to be brave. You've got
to go back to the park. Where we can videotape you walking through there. And so that's what they did the next day with Sandra.
Now Sady tell us what she because we do as an audience, do not know. And this is the first time you're revealing the book exactly what happened and why Sandra was the survivor, at least in her explanation, the only living witness. This is very important. So the videotaping the in the state park where all the locations and what happened, as you do writ in the book, tell us take us back to that November seventeenth and what actually happened after Roger Essam was was shot and what happened after.
Okay, so after Roger is shot, there's another shotgun blast and Stewart Baty is also hit and he falls and the other kids run and hide.
So I'm going to fel tell a little bit about that point. Well, you know, at this point, Mike Chadra's of my childhood best friend. Here's a fifteen year old Chad through the twelve gage shotgun blastoy and he has the heroic quality to grab Sandra Chesk who's frozen with and physically drag her by her jacket to safety behind some big trees, and Dana Baby, the young middle school he ran off and hit as well. And so now you've got a fifteen year old and a thirteen year
old her terrified. Steward is laying out there just wailing. You know, I've been shot. It hurts so bad. Helped me, Oh, somebody helped me. And you know they're whispering what's going on, what's happening. It's dark, you know, there's a dim firelight, and they can see these assailants starting to move around, move off the rock ledge and come down by the fire. They can hear them whispering and talking. And you get two young teenagers that are petrified, and Sandra going should
we run? Should we run it? And they didn't know what to do, and then there's assailants. They start yelling Dan, where the police come out? With your hands up? Where the police come out? And Sandra didn't want to come out, but Mike told her, look, I don't know why these cops are shooting at us, but they have shot at us. We need to come out. And they came out with
their hands up. And when they come out, Mike, as we're walking towards the assailants asked why they're being shot at, and one of the assailants pulls the twelve gigs up to his shoulder and shoots Mike, and he's severely wounded. He spins around and falls to the ground and its instinctively. Sandra falls down next to him and tries to play dead. Dana Batty had also come out of the trees with his hands up as well, and so now Mike is laying on the ground severely wounded. Sandra's trying to play
dead at that poy didn't work. The killers went over and kicked the kids and made him get up, and now they've got him at gun points.
So then after they have marched the kids around the park, they wire Sandra's hands and they get her in the pickup and two of the men stay with the boys at the park, and the oldest one, who calls himself the Boss, takes off with Sandra in the truck. They
don't have a plan. He doesn't have a plan. He's driving around thinking what he's going to do, taking her here and there on these back roads, and after a couple two and a half two to three hours, they wind up at an abandoned farm, and his brothers show up there too, and there's a sexual assault. Sandra is raped and when it's over, only one of the brothers raped her. He gets out and another one climbs in and says, that wasn't so bad, was it. And Sandra
was so strong, she said she refused to cry. She wasn't going to give them satisfaction. She wouldn't cry, but she was just numb. And the two brothers had to leave. We'll probably get to that later. They had to leap, and the oldest one, the boss, is left with her at the farm. It's his job to kill her. Sandra doesn't know that, but it's his job to kill her. And he takes her up to this abandoned house and says, I'm going to take you in there and scare you
to death. Look at those windows first, and Sanders starts to go up to the window, and she says, this is weird. I'm not going up. She starts to take charge and he listens to her. She was just without realizing it did all the things that you should in a situation like that, So very quickly he decides he doesn't know what to do with her, gets her in the car, they start driving. He says, well, I'm going to take you home, and she just can't believe that.
She doesn't know if she should believe him or not. And he says, you have to tell me where you live, and you have to give me your phone number first. Then I'll let till phil.
Yeah. All the while he's telling her he's a cop, he's an undercover cop who was infiltrated the Hell's Angels, and you know, he's gonna let her live, you know, provided he gives her He gives him her phone number, and then he does take her home and drop her off about a half a block away from her house and lets her lets her live that night.
And that's after she gives him her phone number, and he says, I'm putting this in my little black everybody who sells drugs in here, and uh, I'll probably call, you know, look up and call up sometime.
Who does she tell? Who does Satra tell immediately after this about this assault?
If anyone, well, you know, you know, she's so frightened that her mom is still sleeping. It's about five in the morning. Her mom has to get up in about an hour and go to work. She's afraid she's going to be in trouble. She's been raped, she'd been traumatized, she's seen her friend shot. And she goes in and she wakes up her older brother and she starts telling him that these would a cop rape me? Why would these cops shoot the boys? And her brother tells her,
you know, Sandra, they don't sound like real cops. You need to go to the police. And she said, but they know where we live. They said they'd come and kill us. They've got my phone number. And her brother said, Sandra, I don't know. You've got to go to the police. Maybe you should wake up mom. And she was too frightened to She didn't know what to do. He said, go to your bedroom and think about this for a while. But you've got to go to the police. These guys
don't sound like real cops. And so here's this girl. She's traumatized and now she's totally confused that what she should do, and what does she do. The next morning, she kind of dozes off her She sets up in bed with her head back against the wall and kind of dozes off. When she wakes up, her mom is gone and she doesn't have a way into Sue Falls. You're living on an acreage outside of Sioux Falls, about
eight miles. So she called a friend and told the friend what happened, and the friend said, well, we've got to get into Seux Falls. She didn't have any way to do it, So the two girls went to the interstate and actually hitchhiked into the Sioux Falls to the police department, and that's when they went in. Now the cops up there in Sioux Falls, they already know there's been a mass murder. They're on high alert. And now this young girl walks and then she says, I was
out to get you manitude. And instantly Sandra Chesky has read her rights. She's taken to an interrogation room. She's fingerprinted, and she's considered a suspect, and she's started to be interrogated by some of the homicide detectives up there in shoot Falls.
Now you get back to Craig Vincent and Johnson and the people that believe in her story and as a result, try to get information from her. And what's one of the most fascinating aspects of this story is how much
she remembers and what she remembers. So tell us a little bit about how they get this information from her, from this traumatized girl, what relationship is leveraged here, and also what kinds of details does she give them And as a result of those details, what do the police create and implement.
Okay, I'll tell you a little bit and I'll let Sandy takeover. So Kerrie Johnson, BCI, Adrian Head and Vincent come in. They believe this girl. It kind of split the investigative team. There was a lot of controversy. Half the detectives did not believe this girl. They thought she was a lot eyeing through her teeth, and Vincent and Johnson believed her. So they were the ones, obviously that finally got her to go out in videotape at the park.
But then Sandra starts telling them details of this thing and some of the incredible details, what they were wearing, how they looked. I let Sandy kind of take over on some of the details.
They right.
She remembered that there was a crack in the windshield, what color the lights were on the dashboard, there was an inspection sticker with a white border, and it looked like it had been torn off a roll. She noticed that Jagot edges I mean those were small, an inch by an inch, and Shelter remembered that the glove compartment, she said, didn't have like a push button, you turned the handle. And then she remembered that the wristwatch that the boss was wearing, it had one of those stretchy bands.
I mean, that's just the beginning of it. She was noticing everything in spite of going through a rape, seeing her friends shot, being traumatized, and they thought, this isn't right. Nobody remembers that much detail. Oh and then she even remembered what brand of cigarettes. One of the murderers smoked Full Malls And they said, how do you know that? And she just said, well, I asked him. She just had that kind of personality to get to know people. And because she remembered so much detail.
Yeah, she's thinking. They're thinking she knows these guys somehow. Damn. So that's so that's where the controversy comes in and the splits the investigative team.
But then they did interview her three times, which is common because they're saying, if the story stays the same, And one thing that struck all of them, even the doubters, was that her story stayed the same. No matter what they asked or trot how they tried to lead her, her story stayed the same. But based on what she told them, what they implemented was they made a grid around the soup Bowls area and they had her give
a description of the abandoned farm where they'd been. Actually they had gone to a couple of places so right by each other. So they made sketches of that distributed it all over a tri state area, and then every day some of the DCI agents and other people would go out and when they checked an area of the grid, they'd mark it off. If they saw something that looked like it matched the description, they would go and get Sandra at the detention center, bring her out there and
see if it was the place. They asked her, if you saw it again, would you recognize it?
And she said, you bet I would, so yeah, So they're hunting for this abandoned farm where she was raped. That was the big thing. So you've got detectives back and Sue balds in he had good luck finding this abandoned farm. You know, go go keep driving your grid and wasting money. This girl's lying through her teeth. She protected a jealous boyfriend or somebody, and so they continued driving this grid looking for this abandoned farm where she was taken unassaulted.
Yeah.
At the same time, there is another couple of important details that he said he was a drug our apartment, a narcotics officer, and he rifled off a number, a badge number which included eight hundred in terms of her memory and with that information, and also that she had a pretty good description of the seventy one Chevy, so
they were doing a search of seventy one Chevies. And also tell us about what connection they made in their minds, what the importance of that eight hundred number would be, and as a result, what did they do.
Okay, well, here you go, Dan, eight hundred numbers, badge numbers at that time in Iowa were narcotics agents. And since these shooters said that they were police and it was a drug rate, since the kids had a little bit of marijuana, now they're wondering, do we have dirty cops involved in this thing? Okay, they're trying to figure
out the significance of this eight hundred number. They're trying to check out any narcotics agents it might have been operating in the get humanitu area for undercovered drug busts. Do we have dirty cops are involved in killing these kids? Does the eight hundred number means something different? Well, it's somebody's prison number, you know. Somebody just usually doesn't make up a number that's related to something. So that was the big debate going on among the investigators at that time.
So they started sending one of the bcidents that was assisting up to the state penitentiary to start going through eight hundred number prison inmates to see if anybody had been released, Is there anybody that's been involved in shootings or sexual assaults. They were eliminating people that dent max, you know, the aids of the people or things like that, or people that have been deceased. So they're trying to
narrow this thing down. So there's a lot of controversy surrounded this eight hundred number.
But several of the folders that they checked didn't have pictures, so they couldn't determine if it matched the description, and any of the folders without a picture they pulled out and then would grab usually get to those and check into them further, and.
One of them would happen to be sitting and go ahead, yeah, no, so go ahead no, I was going to say, and one of those that didn't have the picture connection to the eight hundred number.
Absolutely. What was the media response at that time, What did the media know and what did the media convey to the public at that time?
Well, you know, they, of course, like in a lot of investigations, while they don't want to release too much, so there was a lot of there was a lot of mystery and controversy. All people knew was that there was one teenager that lived through it, and then here started the rumors. Why did this one teenager live? Is she involved? You know? Was she dating one of the killers?
Who are these killers? And so basically they just gave a little bit of the detail of who was killed, where they were killed, how they were killed, and that it was an ongoing investigation. Now, Sandra did sit down with a sketch artist gave composite sketches of the three assailants, and that was distributed in the paper. Description of the pickup truck with the cracked windshield and what they figured it was a fleet line pickup. Okay, that was all.
And so they had the public on the lookout for that and amazingly, when these killers were apprehended, the compositive sketches matches them very very closely. Andrew did an excellent job describing these killers.
While the police are still continuing this investigation the public. You talked about the rumors, but what was the sense how what type of level of fear was in this community as a result?
Oh yeah, it was.
People were keeping their doors locked, you know, especially in the rural areas out by work that you manit to. People are setting up that night, one family member which step at night with a loaded weapon, trying to guard their homes. You know, there was a lot of fear, you know, and especially in the Midwest at that time, Dan, there was just not a lot of violent crime at all. It was this kind of a sheltered environment. You know. The Gidchee crimes really brought the horror of the world
home to the Midwest where we lived. It was just, you know, it's a lot of fear going on.
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slash true murder. Now, Phil and Sandy, we were talking about the ongoing search and then the split in the investigative team. Half of these detectives, these veteran detectives, thought it was too suspicious that she was dropped off by these psycho killers, potential serial killers. And in the book you write about a couple cases that had some similarities
that set the investigation off for a bit. Detours into those areas before they were deemed that there was no real connection to this tell us about the incredible event that leads to the apprehension of they only knew their names hatchet Face, Sneaky and the boss tell us about this incredible event with Sandra Jeski.
Okay, well, of course carry this. This grid search is going on for nearly two weeks. Okay, they spotted an abandoned farm that kind of matched the description, and so they went to the detention center to get Sandra to take her out there. Well, when they go out to the abandoned farm again, she says, no, this isn't the play. So there's more disappointment. So they've started to head back towards town and Alson Sanders said, wait a minute, I
think that might be the place. Here there was another abandoned farm not too far from the one they went to look at, and she said, yes, I think this is the place. And while they're going to pull in there, all of a sudden she looks up and she starts screaming, there he is. There's one of them. That's the boss. Right there there he is. A pickup truck was coming right down the road right at him, and there was the pickup that they'd been searching for. And it was safe.
Andrew Chesky, the lone survivor that's with us. I mean, it's like crazy, you can't make it up. And she's with these detectives and she spots and she's part of the apprehension of Alan Fryer, twenty nine years old, the self proclaimed boss. He still had a shotgun in his vehicle with him. There was the crack in the windfield,
everything how Sandra described it. There was a pickup that was the murder pickup that night, and they put Ellen under arrest and then immediately they start focusing on his two brothers.
Well what Right after they arrested him, one of the BCI agents got in the vehicle with Alan to just talk with him, see what was going on, and he said Alan went for his weight. He started to reach under his shirt. So the BCI agent's starting to grab for his gun, and Alan pulls a pack of Palma cigarettes out of his waistbands because he'd never known anyone kept his cigarettes and his waistbands, and he said, Allen the Boss looked at him and he said, Alan knew
that I knew that. He knew that I knew that he was the murderer. And he didn't. He didn't resist arrest, but they did come up with some wild stories to justify what they've done, and.
So Dale immediately they focused on his brother's twenty four year old David Pryor and twenty one year old James Bryer. James went by sneaky, David, the twenty four year old went by hatchet face, and of course and Alan the oldest one was the boss.
Which one This is an incredible twist again, it sounds like fiction. Which one of these guys was actually doing a prison sentence or a jail sentence and tell us how he just happened to be not in prison or in jail in custody this night. What was the reason?
Just to add okay, James Bryar and James Bryer, the one that actually raped Sander, the Knight in the pickup truck, was serving time in the Suit Falls Minnihaha County Jail for stolen goods. The jail had a work release program and if by administrative permission, go to their job and then at the end of the shift come back and lock up and have to be locked up on weekends
and holidays. It was a system to try to keep these guys who were locked up in jail from losing their jobs, and so Alan or James Bryer had permission. He was a tow truck driver for a tow truck company, and so was his brother, hatchet Face David, So you've
got Sneaky and David both working for a tow truck company. Well, the night of the Get You Manitude murders, James was supposed to go back to the jail and lock up about five pm supper times, but he had David call and the jail and impersonate his boss and say we're shorthanded. We need James to work a second shift. And the lie worked, the jail allowed him to be out, and then the three brothers got together. They actually loaded their shot and with double lot buckshot they were going to
get you. Managed to to poach a gear that night, but then they're hunt for gear, turning to the hunt for kids when they heard the guitar player heard the kids talking, and so there was a big outcry around the area that this guy was out of jail and he's part of a mass murder and a rape while he's supposed to be incarcerated for crimes that he had previously done. So there was a big outcry around the community against that work release program in the jail. I mean, it's just crazy.
Now what is Sandra's now? She was stayed at the juvenile's detention center. Now these people have finally been captured, these killers, and you talk about when they did just detain Alan the Boss Friar, she cried hysterically, like an incredible release, it seemed so. Tell us what she goes, moves from the juvenile detention center and now these guys are processing these killers. Where does Zadra go?
Well, she went back to the juvenile detention center right after they were caught, right when she was out at the farm, because she was hysterical and they knew they needed to just get her out of there. But once they were captured, then she was allowed to go back home with her family.
Now, tell us a little bit about the strategy to police employ when they first questioned Alan the Boss Friar, and what happens does he lawyer up or do they get some information from him?
You know, no, he doesn't. Alan Fryar's kind of a wild individual. He was cocky. He thought he could pull the wool over people's eyes. But he was a big storyteller. Here's a guy that said that he hunted predators by hanging out the windows of an airplane while the pilot flew low. He would hang out and shoot at predators. And one time he fell off a SiO, fell off a silo and landed on a cow. And so he starts telling opening up and telling the detectives this crazy story.
Him and his brothers were out there fishing, and all of a sudden, these guys, these boys that got killed, started shooting at them with twelve gage shotguns, and they had to crawl through the weeds and hide, and they snuck up behind one and jumped him and beat him up and got his shotgun. And then now they had a weapon, so they started shooting back, and if anybody got killed, it was in self defense because those boys were shooting at them first. And they don't even know why.
They were just probably because they were all on drugs, smoking marijuana or something. So they had guns and started shooting us. But luckily we beat one up and got their weapon, got the weapon and killed the boys. So that was his story to start with.
Now. At the same time, he's not a very bright guy, admittedly, and so what he's doing is placing himself in that park and in those statements to contain these wild assertions and allegations. He basically is digging his own grave in terms of information. What does he say about the other brother's involvement. Vincent and Johnson have the real information that they believe from Sandrachski.
Yes, right, And so what Alan does is he points the finger at his brothers. He changes his story every time they talk to him, and at one point one of the agents says, come on, Alan, you should know better than to tell a story like that. You know, we're talking to your brothers too. There are other people talking to your brothers, and whoever comes clean first and tells the truth is going to end up the best. Okay, Allen thinks about it. He says, bring everyone in here, I'll tell you the truth.
Well, then he.
Makes up another wild tale, and he had a third one. And when they interview his brothers, they also blame the other two.
So each brother.
Claims to be innocent and blames the other two brothers.
Yeah, they all claim they weren't the trader man. It was the other two brothers that pulled the trader. Typical yeah, you talk.
About one of the brothers though being much different, tell us.
About Yeah, that's James. He was the one that the BCI agents told us he was just cold, hateful, of cold eyes that just would stare right through you. He didn't get nervous, and they said he was just off and of course he actually was. I mean, he was the rapist. He was a violent one. He was one of the lead executioners when they kept the boys out of the park that night. And that was James Fryar, the rapist.
And yeah, we'll tell you a little bit of background on him. When he was arrested for the first time at age nine or ten for taking a car and driving it. And he continued to get in trouble stealing things, candy bars from stores, stuff like that. And then he stole a grain truck from a neighbor and at his dad's request, he was put into planking. And then that
is the state training school in South Dakota. So he gets out and almost as soon as he's out, still the sixty four oldsmobile today from the school parking lot, meets some kids out on county road races, it rests, it ends back up at the State Training School again at fifteen years old now, and he is so out of control and angry and violent that they end up sending him to the state mental hospital.
Right now, there's the information to put this whole case together there. Obviously there's search warrants, search warrants issued, and they gather information. But they get a lot of information from Alan and these other brothers about the murder weapon. Tell us who they get the information from about the murder weapon, where's it supposed to be? Do they find it? Tell us about the search for the shotguns.
Well, you know, the middle brother, Dan, he decides he's going to play guilty and he's going to come clean and he's going to help out the investigation because it might do him good. So he starts opening up and saying that they threw an in a place called grass lake. Actually not a lake. It's like about a football in a field half. It's a big duck sluw or a bog. A lot of people duck hunt there, and so he
broke the weapons down and threw it out there. And the night that he threw it out there, there was no ice covering it. But now by about the time the BCI agents need the weapons. You know, cold Weather has said it, and so now the slew is all frozen over. So David Pryor Hatchet Base, did drive the agents out there and show where he was standing when he threw the murder weapons away, okay, And they.
Used industrial metal detectors to try to find them that they borrowed from the National Guards and also had to get permission to burn all of the cat hills and things off of this slew so that they could even see what was in there.
Yeah, and so they did end up finding one of the weapons broken down. It was a smith Field twelve gage pump. They never did find the barrel, but they've got they got the magazine and you know, the stock and all that stuff. And so they did find one of the weapons where David said it was throwing.
Incredible Now, while these guys are incarcerated another again almost sounds too weird to be true. You talk about Mike Hadrath's brother Bill, just a very interesting coincidence, told us.
Upon Yeah, now, and again since I have a personal connection, now, Amember Mike Hadraff was fifteen who was murdered, get you manic you His older brother Bill was three years older than us, So we were fifteen at the time Mike lost his life, I was too. His brother Bill had just turned eighteen. He was in still in high school, had just turned eighteen, but he started running with some bad kids and he got in some trouble for stealing some stuff. So the judge wasn't playing games with him
since he was eighteen. He got put in jail, the county jail for three months and while, but he on school release, so the jail band would take Bill Hadraff, Mike's older brother, to school every day from the jail. And while he's in jail, he's setting. He's setting there with a killer that killed his younger brother, but he doesn't know it. It's this strange guy, James Fryer, who's
in there for stolen goods. And while this hunt for the killers is going on, well, the hunt for the killers is going on, James Bryer is safely setting in jail, but he's sitting in there with Bill Hadraf, the older brother of Mike who lost his life. It gets humanitude, and so it just it's a crazy, incredible, strange twist.
You couldn't make that up.
Now you talk about James pleading guilty. But what does Allen and or pardon me? What do what does Alan and James do? Then?
Okay, So Alan and James end up in the county jail together and in the summer they decide that they're going to make a break for it. So they break out.
Of jail, get three blocks to steal a.
Brand new pickup, go all the way across South Dakota around an eight hour drive into Wyoming where they dumped that truck and steal another little car and they get to Gelllett, Wyoming where they hit a pedestrian but don't injure them, and that's where they are captured and then returned again. But both of them went to trial. They did not say guilty.
The jail break was really an intense thing too, that created a lot of fear in the area. All they've made their jail break, Dan was the Lion County Jail was a small jail that was very old. That for sure, Craig Benson worked out of Lyon County Rock Rapids, Iowa.
It would get you manto us in that jurisdiction. They had just recently, about eight months before, had put some new locks on the jail doors well, somebody on an oversight, they were bolted into place, but somebody had forgotten to bring in a welder and well built boats from the place, and Alan Fryer saw that, so he got a piece of metal off his bed in the jail, shaped it in the form of a ratchet, and over a few knights worked on those bolts and got them loose enough
to take those locks off. I was sure Craig Benson, who had a very good share, very very diligent, got right in the media, especially after they were recaptured, and he took responsibility for that that it was his responsibility that jail shell Locke should have been welded.
And after Alan escaped out of his jail, then he went and let his brother James out.
James was taking a different jail show, but the keys were in the in the office and Alana hanging on the wall, kind of like the Andy Griffiths show.
Wow and tell us about tell us about the trial, at least the highlights, not to go too much into the ridiculous stories, but the features of who was there and who who wasn't, you know, suspiciously absent, but what family members were there give us some of the things that happened at the trial before we get to what was the result with the jury.
For these three, you know, probably the most interesting thing for your listeners, dan Is Sandra Chesty was the star witness. Here's this frail thirteen year old girl when the murder trial starts. She turns fourteen during but she's so young and so naive. And she gets on the witness stand and repeatedly the judge and the attorneys have to tell
her speak up, speak up. And she was, you know, being grilled by these defense attorneys, and she asked the judge of her mother, Lolo could come up and set in the witness stand with her, and the judge granted that. He allowed her mother to come and set in the witness stand with her and hold her hand. And here this young girl is being grilled day in and day out. There was time where she was on the stand in
for three straight hours. And just to give you an idea of how young she was, one of the attorneys said, now, come on, Sandra, didn't you give consent for the sex that night? And Sandras asked him what does consent mean? I mean, she was just so young, and of course, you know, they you know, their questions are all could trip her up? You know, come on, Sandra, you said yourself, you were frightened, you were hiding in the trees, and you can say it was Alan Fryer that shot my
client shot. You cann't say who did And she said, yes, I did. He was the one with the gun up to his shoulder. No, it was too dark, Sandra, you said that. She said, no, there was enough firelight. I saw he was the one. And so they were trying to trip her up. And here Dan is where she gets a second nickname. You know, around the community, she got known as the Getchy Girl. That's where the title
of the books come from. But at the trial, even the defense attorneys and people on both sides started dubbing her the tough little girl from Getchie. The tough little girl from Getchie keeps coming back, coming back and standing up to these defense attorneys. And of course, you know, they ended up getting the convictions first murder against both James and Helen after a year and a half of trials.
Absolutely, Now, what was the media response to that before we get to a really sad response from Harrisburg High School.
Well, you know the media, you know, the media was, you know, obviously with a media frenzy, you know, because there was just such a huge case in the tri state area there, and of course everybody was elated that they caught these killers and they got their just reward for what they did to those young kids. How to get you managed to that night, and so they really didn't, you know, do anything out of the ordinary of what you would normally see in the newspaper clippings. You know,
they showed they kept updates on the trial. You know, month after month there would be new things in the paper. You know, it just went on and on, like you know those murder trials.
Can't you talk about the effect, Well, we've talked about Sandra and what she went through, the trauma of that event and losing her friends, being sexually assaulted, being doubted by police, they polygraphed her. There was many, many interviews. Use you talk about the effect though in the community, and it's real dramatic. In the book where you talk about Harrisburg High School, she attempts to go back to high school. Now she's been a hero in this case.
So anybody that had any doubt this case should have the depiction of it the stories, the articles, the newspaper response. But what happens at Harrisburg High School?
Well, Dan, it's here where the sad, sad, sad part of the whole story comes about. Not everybody, I want to put it up front, not everybody, but so many people back during that time didn't have a lot of compassion for a rape victim, and she was. It was a time when you kind of blamed the rape victim. You shouldn't have been there, you know, why were you out with a group of boys that night anyway at the park, What were you wearing? Okay, The vicious rumor
started on her. You got what you deserve, Sandra, and they said the Kitchi girl, you know, they started calling her the Gitchie girl. That was the progatory name. Sandra came back to school after missing almost a year and a half at these murder trials, and teachers were helping her to try to catch up with the work, but it was a being shunned by the other girls and
her peers. She would come into the school cafeteria and try to sit down with a group of girls and they would get up and pick their trays up and walk away from her. And the whispers and the taunts, and a couple of girls tried to be her friend, but their moms told her they weren't allowed to hang out with the tainted getchy girl, and then of course the pure pressure from the other teenage girls. Eventually it got too hard and they abandoned Sandra too. She was
just left to be the getchy girl. Nobody talked to her. She went to a school dance one night and stood there. Even though she was a very pretty young girl, nobody would ask her to dance, Nobody would talk to her. And to the point where this girl just dropped out of school, she said, I felt years older than my peers. Nobody wanted me. They don't want the getchy girl, and so she drops out of school.
And I will say all these years later that here is for Communitia has come back and supported her than one of those people who wasn't nice to you. I'm really sorry about it, and Sandras said. One regret she has is that her mom developed dementia just before the book came out, and she's never been able to tell her mom that now she has all this support from people that her mom wouldn't have to be embarrassed of her anymore.
Yeah, you talk about too that that's yeah, Yeah, go ahead, you talk about too that the counseling was not available in the seventies. It was never was never offered to her.
Yeah. You know, Dan, I'm still a high school teacher here in Iowa, and we've got a lot of teenagers that are reading this book. They just can't understand that. And I said, you guys, it was just a different time. You guys know that if we had kids murdered in our high school, there'd be an army of counselors in here tomorrow talking to all of you that were upset teachers. But not back then. They just didn't offer the counseling
like they do now. I mean back and if you had, you know, quite a bit of money, you might go see a psychiatrist. But it just wasn't offered. And so Sandra had to find all these ways to deal with being the getchy girl in this horrible rape and the murder of her friend. She had survivor's guilt. She would go to those boys's grave and sing to them and talk to them, and the weather was nice. She she
had survivor's guilt. She didn't want to be alive. She was suicidal for a long time, and she even discovered that.
When she was around animals like other people's dogs, that she would start to feel better and feel calm. And she based me on her own before that was even a term.
So and so that's why we say the tough little girl from Gitchie kept coming back. She had to find all these ways emotionally, spiritually, physically after that that rape. You know, she had to find all these ways to come back and to keep her head up on her own. Yeah, on her own.
Even the trauma of the I would say the trial would have been traumatic as well, with the you know, blown up photos of the atap see photos of her friends. The grilling that was done didn't seem to be interrupted by anyone. Really considering the age, you know, now you would have it would be much different, I think because
of the age and also our attitude towards rape victims. Now, it wouldn't be as advantageous to a defense lawyer to cross examined her the way she was cross examined as you write this book.
Yes, and at the time it was an open court even though she was thirteen and turned fourteen. As the trials went on. So it was full every day of strangers. Sometimes high schools would show up there as a civics part of their civics class. So in front of a room full of strangers, she has to reveal all of these intimate details and tell about being raped and everything that happened, and with those.
Killers sitting right there far from her, glaring at her. I mean today, a minor rape victim would probably be allowed to be in another room and there would be videotaped and be piped into the court and a lot of you know, it depends on the state I suppose that you're in.
And their name would be kept crying out.
Yes, this poor girl was just pounded relentlessly from every side. I mean, what a strong girl.
Absolutely, the strength is incredible. And you talk about too not to and it's almost downplay, but we forget that she was plagued with insomnia. You talk about skin lesion, severe weight loss, nausea. You know this is these are the real things that weren't dealt with and that she had to overcome. And then you take us as you do and originally in the book to in the beginning of the book to twenty sixteen, when getche Girl the first the first one came out, the survivor's inside story
of the mass murder of Shock to Heartland. You talk about that was a healing process for because she didn't know how much support was really outfit and like you say, people had probably treated her bad came forward. That's very cathartic. You also have something to say about this book and its effect on her as well.
Tell us, well she continues to heal, Dan, I mean, the book signings have been incredible. I mean we're blessed as authors. We have events, and I mean there are packed houses, and of course Sandra's when especially when she's there, it's even more of a packed house. And of course it's they're always positive, they're always supportive. And so she continues to heal through the second book, and it's she keeps telling her story now over and over and it's
her therapy getting it out now. And she Now, when we first started the book, she just blocked so many emotions. She was very robotic about telling this story. Now Sandra laughs at certain things. She'll laughs at the story of her mom trying to get to the Ego Butte hospital and her having to be born in a car. She'll cry. She'll break down and cry now when she's telling about that night when she first started telling us, she was just just stoneface. She just had blocked this big emotional wall.
But so it continues, the healing continues for Sandra Cheski and for as authors. One thing, that's one thing we're really proud of.
Absolutely, she didn't move that far from the area, did she. She didn't move all across the country.
No, she didn't. She tried to get away for a while. Dan. She moved away from South Dakota to Minnesota and was living with a friend. But her friend was dating somebody was gone at night and she's still to this day fearis tonight. So she had to be by herself. She said it was better because I could walk the streets and nobody recognized me as the Get You girl. But she didn't have her mom and her family around her.
She needed that support group. So she came back and lived in the area, and she still lives in So Falls, South Dakota. She has stayed there. A tough little girl from Get You stayed around. Yep.
Absolutely incredible. Well, this is an incredible story and an incredible tale of strength and perseverance and you can't make up this stuff. This is incredible story. Thank you very much for coming on and talking about gets You Girl Uncovered, a true story of a night of mass murder and the hunt for the deranged killers. It's been an absolute pleasure. Is there a facebook page or a website that we might people might take a look at this book and maybe your other book as well. All right.
Our Facebook page is Phil Hammon and Sandy Hammond, and there is another Facebook page Getchy Girl.
Yeah, it's been We've been a pleasure.
Thank you. Thanks for having us on, Dan, thank you. We love your show.
Thank you very much. It's been an absolute pleasure. You have a great evening. Hope to talk to you both again soon.
Good night, Thank you, thank you.