Step into the world of power, loyalty, and luck.
I'm gonna make him an offer you can't refuse.
We're family, Canoli's and spins mean everything.
Now you want to get mixed up in the family business.
Introducing the Godfather at chumpacasino dot com. Test your luck in the shadowy world at the Godfather Slough.
Someday I will call upon you to do a service for me.
Play the Godfather now at chumpacasino dot com.
Welcome to the family vdW group. No purchase necessary.
If we were bribited by loss he terms and conditions eighteen plus Judy was boring Hello, Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
It's my little escape.
Now Judy's the life of the party. Oh baby Mama is bringing home the bacon. WHOA, Take it easy, Judy, Jump the chumba life is for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your chance to redeem some serious prices. Jump chumpacasino dot com. No necessary que comitted, last terms and condition applying se what secret details.
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 VTK 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 Zufanski, Good.
Evening, best selling author, co host of the hit podcast The Murder Squad, and true crime investigative journalist Billy Jensen goes to Columbus, Ohio, where he examines the unsolved cases of eighteen dead and missing women whom he suspects were the victims of serial killers on the loose and operating
under cover of the opioid epidemic in America's heartland. In Chase Darkness with Me, listeners learned Billy Jensen's journalist origin story, his struggles, his call to adventure, and his first successes in solving murders. In Killers admist Killers, listeners will ride shotgun with Jensen as he takes on serial killers who are walking among us and planning their next moves in real time. The facts are not in old police reports
and faded photos. They unfold before our ears. Our story begins in twenty seventeen, when two young women best friends, Danielle and Lindsay, go missing within weeks of each other, and their bodies are found soon thereafter. As Jensen investors agatest Danielle and Lindsay's cases, he comes across other missing and murdered women, and before long he uncovers eighteen of them, all unsolved and no one was talking about it. These
are not women who were raised in the street. They got hooked on pills, the pills were taken away, they got hooked on heroin, and when the money was gone, they had to sell themselves. It all happens very quick. Through his investigations and the help of experts, Jensen identifies serial killers in Cleveland and Columbus. Why there, because it's easy. Sharks go where the swimmers are. Serial killers go where the easy prey are. Ground zero of the opioid epidemic,
the heart of America. Jensen hunts these predators to bring peace to the victims suffering families while putting a spotlight on a system that is leaving hundreds of thousands of bodies in its wake. The book that we're featuring this evening is Killers amidst Killers, Hunting serial Killers Hiding under the Cloak of the Opioid Epidemic with my special guest journalist and author Billy Jensen. Welcome to the program, and
thank you very much for this interview. Billy Jensen, Thanks for having me, Dan, thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book, Killers amidst Killers.
Thanks, Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been it's been a long, long journey from start to finish.
As we mentioned in the introduction, you started in Chase Darkness with me, and people learned about your origin story and your call to adventure and your first successes in solving murders. Now you're talking in Killers amidst Killers. Listeners will ride shotgun with you as you take us on take on serial killers who were walking amongst us and planning their next moves in real time. In this book, you get right to this story Columbus, Ohio twenty seventeen
and Lindsay mccaby. So you start off telling us a little bit about the outline of her too short life and her background. So tell us about Lindsay mccaby.
Yeah, Well, you know, the original germ of the story started when I was I had read a small article about and it said that two women who were best friends had gone missing and were murdered in Columbus, Ohio. And from that small article, I had been working at a show. It was a Warner Brothers show called Crimewatch Daily at the time, and I pitched that to my producers, you know, was able to go down to Columbus, and while I was at Columbus, I interviewed these people there.
They apparently had lived in a house that was called the on the Streets. It was called the Home for Lost Children. It wasn't even a house that was you know, it wasn't a social services thing or anything. It was just everybody just kind of crashed at this one elderly gentleman's house. And I met the third best friend, and the third best friend whose name was Ceci.
She said that, you know, I was talking to her and.
You know, trying to find out what happened to these two women because the cases were unsolved. And I asked her, does it give you pause that, you you know, to get in a car again, because you know, her friends were sex workers and Cec was a sex worker, right, And she said, yeah, but I have to because I'm a drug addict. And that's really that devastating saying, you know, sentence is what started me on this journey and really digging into it. So, you know, looking into Lindsay and
Danielle's backgrounds. You know, Lindsay was a mother of two, you know, and both of these these women were mother of two children.
She was a mother of two.
She had, like so many of the women in Columbus, had gotten addicted to opioids and needed to get money in order to fulfill the habit. She started working on the street. And these were when we talk about sex workers. Obviously there's a lot of different types of sex workers, these were women who walk the streets of South Columbus. So talking with the family and unraveling the family's journey throughout this entire thing was incredibly heartbreaking, and I said,
there's got to be a story here. So then it just kept on going from there.
You talk about Lindsay and her brother Stacy, and her sister Jenny, and talked to her mother Sharon and father Gordon. Now let's talk about you. You talk about the pain pills being the origin of everybody's problem in this story. Tell us where she got her start. Lindsay and before we talk about the railroad crossing in rural Ohio and the bus full of children.
Right, she had started, you know, dating.
You know, one of the things that you notice in this story is that almost everyone's origin story starts around a guy. You know, a guy had she was dating somebody of the guy had given her these pills and she she just got hooked on them because they are incredibly addictive, you know, That's what you know, You'll see a thread throughout the book that often it's a guy that introduces these pills to these women.
What was Jenny's state despite her sister Lindsay's.
So after Lindsay was murdered, Jenny kind of got on the case and was trying to She had a notebook and she was trying to put clues together and trying to figure out who did this. And then while she was doing that, sadly, Jenny overdosed from heroin and she passed away.
Now, also you look at this problem of of course people beginning their addiction starting off with doctors and their prescription and prescribing pain pills for supposedly legitimate ailments. But you also cite what happened with this oxycodone and this opioid problem in the United States, and what was the reaction by authorities and as a result, what were addicts left to do?
Right?
You know, And you know, this book's started in twenty sixteen when I started, you know, working on it, and or twenty seventeen, so it's you know, the landscape has even changed even more. But you know, we know that.
The the opioids, which started with with oxy and obviously you had vicot in as well, there was a lot of prescriptions being written.
There was a lot of pill doctors.
There was a lot of people going down to these pill mills, you know, people down and up. You know, I had talked to some people about in the story going to Florida. There was a lot of stuff in Florida and then making the run from Florida getting the pills, driving them back up to Ohio. And you know, what we're seeing now is that fentanyl has completely taken over, taken over everything, right, just because it's so much cheaper, and it's cheaper on the streets. It's cheaper for everyone
because it's so it's synthetic. You don't need the op you don't need a poppy for it, you know, that's where we're at right now. While before when you would talk about overdoses, you would talk about first it was heroin. Then people were overdosing on maybe oxy or something like that, or they went from oxy into heroin right because the oxy had dried up. But now it's all fentanyl. You know, a lot of the deaths that we're seeing right now
with fentanyl are poisonings. You know, a lot of times, you know, just because there's so many people that are taking of you know, somebody might give them and say it's a vicain, but it's a vicad and they bought on the street and it has fentanyl in it and it was made in somebody's basement, and then they die. So that's where we're at right now, and it's even more dangerous than what you're seeing in the book.
Now you are not just talking about addiction in this book, obviously, you're talking about murder. And in twenty seventeen you write about a railroad crossing in rural Ohio. A bus full of chill then pulls up to a railroad crossing and the driver sees something in the field. What does he see? What happens a month later, pretty close to the same location.
Yeah, so a I mean, imagine you're a kid on a bus going to school. You hit a railroad crossing and there's really there's nothing around this railroad crossing. This is this is really it's a it's a railroad right in the middle of a bunch of fields and you look over and then in a in a clearing.
Just a few miles off, a few feet.
Off the road is a body and it's a naked body and she had been brutally murdered. And that was the body of Lindsay mccabee. From there, you know, just a few miles away, Danielle's body was found and her her body was was more hidden. Her body was sort of probably about half mile or a quarter mile into you know, away from the road, behind a field, you know, the planter. The plantings had all been done for the season, they had already been harvested. So that's where they both
were found, very close to each other. And they didn't you know, they started in in the urban area, and that's where where they were picked up or where we still don't.
Know what happened. That's where they were picked up, right.
But they they you know, went out there and that's where they met their end. And you know, there's only so much you can do when you know, I wanted to go to those crime scenes, so you know, you meet the family, the families in Columbus, and then I drove out with the families actually and the police to the crime scenes. And you know, you really see particularly with where Daniels Danielle's body was found.
Is that.
You know, people were some people were talking that, oh, that has to be a trucker. You know, you hear a lot about right there was this highway serial killer initiative that was had been going on that we talked about how many people are found near highways and a lot of trucker killers. And there are trucker killers. That's truck or serial killers is a thing. You know, you pick up a woman from a truck stop who is a sex worker, you drive them to another truck stop, nobody reports them.
Missing, and then they.
Might get killed along the way and nobody is you know, no alarm bells are wrung out for them. Where Danielle's body was found, you couldn't get a truck back there and somebody would have had to carry her back there. So it really looking at these the circumstances, I surmised that that this had to be somebody local. This had to be somebody that knows where these two areas are and knew this would be a good place to deposit a body.
You right, that naked bodies. Naked body of Lindsey had was bludgeoned, her throat was slit, and she'd been missing forty eight hours and last seen, like you say, in South Columbus. And a month later, Danielle Green, who'd been missing thirty days, she was found. They said eighty five percent skeletonized. What we have to mention is, I think
is that they were best friends. They lived together. Yeah, and CCI also so there's there's many people that knew of Danielle and of Lindsay and you got to speak with them. So also tell us a little bit about as you mentioned early twenty fifteen, six women in if I pronounced this incorrectly, Chillicothe, Ohio. And you say, a much different paying attention by people in the newspapers and the media because you said there were ideal victims.
Yes, you know, you know the stories of Danielle Lindsay did not get any national press. But Chilicothy did, and the you know, somebody had had started putting it together that win, there's there's there's some women here. You know, why are there so many missing and murdered women in Chilicothe? It looks like the women in child So that that became a national story, you know. And there was also one of the things that happened is the case that
I had had covered as well in West Virginia. A woman had murdered a man who was she was a sex worker. A man had come over. She murdered the man or the band attacked her, and she defended herself and then killed her. A guy's name is Neil Falls. And inside of Neil Falls's car was a kill kit, which is, you know, everything that you would need to abduct and murder somebody. And you know, this courageous young woman was able to fight him off.
Because of that.
They were thinking, well, who could this person have killed? You know, they looked at Chillicothe because that story had just come out recently about those victims, and it was basically it was four women that were deceased, Tamika, Shasta, Timberly, and Tiffany, and then there was two women that had been missing, which was wanted Charlotte, and they you know, kind of put two and two together and said, well, this Neil Falls guy, maybe he was related to these murders.
So that got a lot of play. It turns out that, you know, nothing was ever connected between Neil Falls and these women in Chillicothe, but there was a small spotlight on Chillicothe and Ohio for just a small bit of time.
You go to South Columbus for this investigation, and you hook up with Scott Green, Danielle's father, and they take you to some, as you write, some scary, sketchy places, and you talk to a guy named Roscoe, tell us about some of the places you see and the things you learn visiting. And the name that comes up right away when you're down there.
Yeah, so you know, talking with Roscoe, and you know, Roscoe is the elderly gentleman who ran the home for lost children. He had lost his wife and he had, you know, just opened his house to anybody who wanted to stay there. So when we got out of the car, you know, and I had had armed security with me. That was one of the things that they always wanted you to do if you were going to be in
you know, potentially going at Harm's Way. And it was interesting because, you know, when we drove up, there was a lot of people just on the street, and we drove up, and then they thought we were cops, so everybody scattered. And then once they saw that it was somebody with a film crew, everybody came back out. You know, it was about probably like thirty people out on the street. You know, they didn't quite know why we were there.
And then we started talking and yeah, the name that had had come out is as far as who might have done this to the two women, was the name white Boy.
That was the first possible suspect. And white Boy was you know, was he a boyfriend, was he a pimp? You know?
But White Boy had been in you know, just talking with the cops. He was in the wind, he had gone missing.
You talk about white Boy, but before we go too much further, is there a significance or tell us the significance of the term white boy.
Yeah, you know, it turns out he was a a light skinned black guy.
That's it.
When you originally in your in your original work, you utilized Facebook pages very effectively, and you your hope with the system that you use to identify Marque Gains attacker, which helped solve other murders. It might be able to aid in the investigation of who killed Danielle and Lindsay. So tell us about this strategy and this initiative.
Yeah, with the.
Marcus Gains case, I had seen a murder in a man had been attacked on the street and there was really good video of the of the perpetrator and it still had been unsolved, and it had been months and months and months, and I thought to myself, I know how to use social media. I know how to get people's attention online. Let me see if I could catch this guy. I was able to you know, sort of a Twitter page, a Facebook page and Instagram page just
for that particular crime. And I was able to, you know, through social media and through crowd, you know, using the crowd, I was able to identify the perpetrator and he was arrested.
So from there I started using that technique for other people that might might have been found who had been murdered and their killer was caught on video that you know, usually the video wasn't clear, but I might be able to using GEO targeted advertising and buying advertising in these areas, can find somebody who might recognize the person and then get a name and then give the name to the police.
You know, I started doing that and had about fifty cases running at one point or another and was able to get you know, there was probably five that I that I really did by myself and was able to get the name that the police didn't have, and then I helped them out with little, you know, other things for the other five that was it was one of
the you know, interesting things that happened with it. And that's what I talk about in the first book, Chase Darkness with Me, is that it was you know, it was a good technique and it was something that you know, using something that everybody was using at the time, which is Facebook, which is definitely the usage, particularly around young people, has really gone down with Facebook. But you know, back then when I was doing it in twenty sixteen, seventeen eighteen, it really was working.
You talk to a lot of people in this investigation and you talk about the work of Thomas Hargrove about serial killer clusters and the Moneyball of Murder. Can you tell us about serial killer clusters and that analysis.
Yeah, So Tom Hargrove is a journalist who started noticing patterns of, you know, murders in areas that had significant similarities and maybe these could draw the conclusion that these are serial murders. So he created this database, the Murder Accountability Project MAP, and you can go on there right now and you can do a search and try to find, you know, everybody that had been you know, how many murders were of young women that were stabbed in a
certain location. And then you know, if you find enough of the same some of the people that were killed under the same circumstances, this very well might be a murder cluster. And it's something that you need to look into. So I got to spend some time with Tom. The data is only as good and that map system is only as good as the data that is sent to him, and so I had certain murders that he didn't have, and then looking through his case his database, and the
database doesn't have the names. The database just has the actual of the murder.
Right, so you know, one thing that does have is the age.
So if you have a twenty five year old woman who was stabbed and you know the year, you'd have to just go and google it and then try and figure out who that was, and which is easier said than done when you're dealing with a city. But when you're dealing with, you know, a smaller city like Columbus, where you were able to figure out who the people were and that opened up that really opened up the Wow, there's definitely an issue here.
You and Tom Hargrove, for at least you both talk about clearance rates and why clearance rates are important to this story.
Yes, you know clearance rates in the in nineteen sixty the clearance rate was ninety percent, and the clearance rate is is basically solving a murder. It's really it's it's somebody is charged with the murder. Clearance rates right now, are you know, maybe sixty percent a little bit less than sixty percent? Now, why is that? There's a lot of reasons. One is that there's a there's a you know, drugs and guns are the two biggest reasons. You can't escape that. The third is that we have a very
transient population. People really don't know each other, people move around a lot and that kind of thing. Fourth is that you know, changes in the law and also you know there were railroading people you know back then and then putting people in jail you know that might not have even done it. But you know, the clearance rates important because obviously, if you don't catch the killer, the
killer could potentially go out and kill again. You know, if somebody had killed one time, they are more likely to kill another time than somebody who hadn't killed anybody before. So that's what we're doing, is when we're talking about the clearance rates and how they're important.
You're right about the Uniform Crime Report created by Congress in nineteen thirty and yet this is a federal, federal initiative. But you talk about but data entry is voluntary. Yeah, and ninety percent of that data provided by the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI in West Virginia. You say, it's messy, incomplete, and the federal government, with the FBI none were reporting their data to the Crime Uniform Report.
Yeah.
So that so the stories that were under the you know, crimes that were under the FBI jurisdiction even weren't being reported,
which is a problem. But yeah, you know, you've got seventeen thousand different you know, law enforcement agencies, and they're all different, they all have all different computer systems, and you know, a lot of them have gotten more technologically savvy, but you know, especially in the nineties, and you know, up till you know, you would always see these police departments and you'd go into the police departments and see the computers that they had and be like, damn, you know,
there's no wonder you know that. You know, these guys, these cops are given the worst computers.
Some of them couldn't even get online.
I remember being in a few police departments and they're just like, yeah, we can't even get online.
You know, you have you know.
I remember when I was I did a show about dB Cooper and they paired me with a former deputy director of the FBI, and I was complaining to him about this very thing, and I was just like, you know, none of them talked to each other, everything like that. And he's like, it's because when we started the country, we were worried about tyranny. We weren't worried about computer systems, and that that's why everything is so separate in America. And you know, it's one of those things that we
just have to deal with. It might have worked a little bit when people didn't move around as much, and there weren't cars and people stuck in the same place.
For their whole lives.
But people move around a hell of a lot now, and we need that data to be a hell of a lot better.
You talk about the murder rates in places like Los Angeles, but also in New York. We're at eighty seven percent back to the murder rate closing of these cases, but in Baltimore, Chicago, Saint Louis and New Orleans, for example, forty six percent from two thousand and eight to twenty and eighteen. So dramatic decrease in these clearance rates.
Yes, yeah, you know, a lot of that just happened, you know, you know, and a lot of these murders are street murders. They're they're yes, typically they will be gang related or drug related. But you know, the murder clearance rates in New York and LA, yeah, they were good. Our murder rates right now are at an all time high. Unsolved killing rates are at a record high right now.
Even you know, this book was finished, you know, right after the pandemic, pretty much, but it was you know, we are we're among the of the industrialized world right now. We are we are sitting at like some of the worst numbers out of everybody in the industrial world. You know, you look at a place like Chicago, I think they're at thirty five percent.
Yeah, and you combine that with the phenomena you call linkage blindness. Tell us how this plays into not recognizing serial killers.
Yeah, you know, you know, linkage blindness is one of the things where you see a great example is the Manson family murders. So with the Manson family murders, you know, you had on the first night, you had, you know, a murder in the Hollywood Hills of Sharon Tate and Jay se Bring and these these people who were sort of this Hollywood elite type of thing. They're murdered brutally, and there was and there was words written on the wall and on the door in blood. The next day
at the Labianca's house, they're murdered brutally. Names are written in blood, and the police said they can't those aren't related because the victims have nothing.
To do with each other. While you're looking at it.
Now and you're saying, how could these not be related? Their names are being written on the walls of blood. The police went and said that because the victimology was different. And it's that sort of thing that is linkage blind blindness. So if you see start seeing, you know, murders of people that are so similar, there's got to be some sort of link to them and not really you know, put putting two and two together. That's what linkage blindness is.
You take us to another case, when you go to Columbus and you see Jamie Bowen's home and a B on that home in your visit, Yes, tell us about that.
Yeah, So you know, this was incredibly eerie because you know, I'm driving around, we're talking about two women who've been missing and murdered. And then Scott Green, who's Danielle Green's father, says, if you just take a left over here, there's another woman who went missing. And you know, I drive past this house and there's a giant banner Jamie Bowen missing, and it was just you know, that was another thing. It's like, what the hell is going on in this town?
I felt like the movie, you know, the movie Lost Boys, where you're you're in this town and then you're seeing all these missing pursing posters up. You know, it's just like there's something something weird is going on here. And I stopped and talked with the family, and Jamie was a you know, very similar to the two women. She was a mom, done sex work, and she had gone missing.
This is an opportunit. I need to stop for a second to hear from these messages.
With Lucky Lancelots, 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 in.
In that case, I pronounce you lucky Hiks for free Lucky Landslots dot com. Daily bonuses are waiting. No purchase necessary board. We're prohibited by long eighteen plus terms and conditions applack see website for details.
Now you write about a dramatic example of what happens with this epidemic and these all of these societal issues and this confluence of events, and you talk about a person named Andrew Mitchell, a vice cop in August twenty eighteen, and Donna Castleberry again a mother of two girls. Tell us about Andrew Mitchell.
Yeah, so amidst all of this, we have this case of Andrew Mitchell, who was a vice cop.
Now he was a guy in his fifties.
He served with the Columbus Police Force. And what he would do is he would pick up women who had been in you know, who were working the streets.
And this is on a he did it.
You know, I don't know if he I don't have any clear examples of anything that he did in South Columbus, but there were two areas in Columbus where you would find sex workers and this was.
On the west side.
And he picked up Donald Casterbury. And this is what he would do, is that he would you know, I'll arrest you or you have to have sex with me. So he's raping these women. He picked her up, he drove her to a secluded area. He parked his car right up against a Now and he's in plain clothes right now, So he parks his car right up against a brick wall. So she's trapped. You know, the passenger
side is up against a brick wall. And you know, Donna knows that women have been murdered, and she's you know, this is twenty eighteen so she has heard the stories about women being murdered. She has no idea who this guy is. You know, this guy's saying is a police officer, but who knows. And Donna tries to get away, and Andrew Mitchell ends up shooting her and killing her. And there is a lot of a lot more comes out about Andrew Mitchell, and then about the vice squad.
You know, I go through that in the book.
You go on and talk about June twenty twenty, in Ohio, ninety five miles southeast of Columbus, sex workers were being murdered and gone missing, and as you're right, no one seemed to be doing anything about it. Somebody said about someone being in a drum in a backyard. Can you tell us the story of William Slayton.
Yes, so you know when it comes to William Slayton. This is a town in Middletown, Ohio, and there's a guy named William. You know, he lives in this house, and really, you know it, it was like a house of horrors on the on the outside of least, I can't imagine what it was like on the inside. But the cops show up to his house to investigate something he starts to run, and they find in his backyard or right behind his backyard, they find a woman in a barrel, A dead woman in a barrel, woman's body
he had. Upon searching his house, they found out that he had cut off her fingertips with a cigar cutter, and cut off her tattoos with a razor blade and put them in a tupper ar bowl.
Wow, yeah, you know.
He he cut then then he then he put her in a metal drum, took it out, you know, towards the backyard. And this guy was, you know, try I think he might have tried to claim self defense, and you know, it was just they couldn't exactly determine the cause of death. She did have some methamphetamine in her system. But you know, obviously you know he was he had abused a corpse.
That was definitely definite. You know. So this was, you know, my introduction to Middletown, Ohio.
He had gone to. You write about him going to the grand jury and trying to pull off a story about how the woman had hung herself in despair. It's very revealing the narcissistic and rationalization that he employed.
Yeah, yeah, now he was, Yeah, he was Slaton, who is by the way, he's like a thirty five year old guy. And the woman was named Cecily and she was twenty one. He eventually, yeah, he was grasping ast draws and he had been charged with murder and I think he pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter and he got about fifteen years fourteen years.
You talk about all kinds of other serial killers and again their favorite target being the sex worker because no one will notice, or as you describe in the book Steven Eggers term the less dead. And so we get to a person named Elizabeth Griffith and you call this chapter Interview with a Vampire. And Sean Gret tell us about Sean Grat.
Yes, so you know Sean Grey was you know, sort of the exam.
You know, up until this point of the book, we are dealing with victims. And you know, yes, we had found the guy in Middletown. But you know, when you get to showing great in this house of horrors that he had, you know he was, you become you come face to face with an American serial killer.
You know, you come face to face with.
A guy who who was convicted of killing at least five women, in Ohio between two thousand and six to about twenty sixteen.
Tell us about your interview with him, what you ask, what you gained from him, and what you don't.
Yeah, you know, with with Sean, I wanted to talk to him. There was a possibility because it was two thousand, you know, there was a possibility that he could have have been related to some of the murders that I have been working on, you know, and get into his head and you know, talking with him, you could tell, you know, he's he's a liar. He is he's a guy that is bored in jail and will talk to
you and and that sort of thing. But he was just a you know, a dope and then started ending, you know, asking for money and and that sort of things.
But you know, he had he had killed his girlfriends.
He had killed you know, people that he had just just met, uh and buried their bodies in this house that he had, which you know, and I go through in detail just the awful crime scene that uh and and the and the the interrogation of him, which was masterfully done by the police once they had caught him.
Getting back to to Lindsey and Vanielle Green and their families and this investigation and all the things in the interaction that you have with them to try to solve this. But we hadn't mentioned your interactions with police Fairfield County, South Columbus, and Middletown, just the why you thought that to expand your investigation a little bit more about the clusters and your response and your reaction from police in those counties areas.
You know, it's certainly you know, we start in Columbus, so you know, those police wouldn't talk to me because they said, listen, the bodies were found in Fairfield County, talk to Fairfield County. They did talk to me, at least in the beginning they did, and came out with
me to where the bodies were found. And then once you start finding out about these other town Middletown and Dayton and that sort of thing, and you know, just start realizing that you've got these police departments that some of them are talking to each other, some of them aren't. Some of these cases are certainly not a top priority. And you know, working with the police is always going to be a mixed bag.
When you're a journalist.
There's going to be some police that see you as an asset, and there's going to be some police that see you as a menace or see you as somebody that they they just don't want to deal with. So that's one of the things that you have to deal with when you're writing a book like this, and there are certain people that won't even talk to you.
You also advocate in about an open source database for sluice, for amateur sluice and also for police and tell us why, you know.
Let's get you know, there's so many people that are interested in this sort of thing and could put two and two together, you know the listen, the hardest thing is to get you know, with murders like these, obviously you got to get the name first. But you know, once and that's one of the things that I was doing in Chase Darkness with me is that the name was a needle in a haystack. Nobody knew the name
of who might have murdered this person. I was able to find the name and then give it to the police and give them a little bit of evidence and info. But then the police got to build a case, and that's entirely different thing. Yeah, the murder maybe caught on video or they were the person that is shown with the with the murdered person right before the video. But you know, then you've got to you've got to build
the case. But you know, getting that name at the beginning, or putting two and two together is something that we need to do.
My thought was.
That, you know, much like the Murder Cantability Project, but if we had, if we actually had the names of the victims on there, it might make it easier for some of these murders to be able to be solved by and some of the connections be made by regular citizens sleuths, and then you know, sending those off to the police and then the police could do what they want with it.
You even try to contact Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost and his press representative Steve Irwin. Tell us what that reaction? What did you get from them?
Yeah, you know, they originally were seemed like they were going to talk to me and then they pulled out. You know, they did have some stuff that was going on at the time. There was you know, this was in the middle of the pandemic. There was a the death of a woman that had happened in the area, and then there was some marches that were.
Going on and that sort of thing. So but yeah, they just didn't didn't want to talk.
To me, and I explained to them, Listen, you're going to have a spotlight on you when this book comes out, and you're gonna have to, you know, potentially answer for things. So maybe they'll they'll talk more, because you know, a lot of these murders are still unsolved. You know, there's, like I like to tell people, there's two ways to
solve a murder. There's one to actually get in and find the name and then give it to the police, you know, but then there's also shining a spotlight on something and getting the police to to put more resources towards the investigation.
And then, you know, that's what I'm hoping that this book will do.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Judy was boring Hello. Then Judy discovered chumpacasino dot com.
It's my little escape.
Now Judy is the life of the party. Oh baby mama is bringing home the bacon. Oh take it easy, Judy the jump a life that's for everybody. So go to chumpacasino dot com and play over one hundred casino style games. Join today and play for free for your it's to redeem some serious prices. Jump a casino dot com no necessary, weren't comitted by my team, plus turns and conditioned to pl se.
What's every details?
Now you talk? Let's go back to white Boy. You originally had that name for a potential suspect, possible suspect in Danielle and Lindsay's murders and disappearances. You had a number. You spoke to police in Columbus and they said it was a dead end. They had the same number. Now you did some slew thing and came upon his number somewhere else. Tell us about that decision to call and that phone call to white Boy.
Yeah, so I had the number. I asked the police. I said, well, what do you.
Why don't you just set up a date with this with this number and then you know, hopefully he'll show up. And the police wouldn't do it, And the police said, we're not running the investigation this way, and I thought, well that's sucks. But I didn't want to get involved in the investigation, you know, at that point, so I
gave them room. But then after a while I was like, let me do a search for this you know, this number, and it turns out I found a new ad for a new girl that he had been working and you know, just said, you know, just he's out here again. He's still doing this, you know, and reaching out to the police and saying, you know, something needs to be done here.
You know, that's one of the things when you really.
Start banging your head against the wall, is that you're finding these things and individuals, whether you're a journalist or a regular civilian type person, there's only so much you can do, obviously, and you know, finding all of this information about him and having them not act is one of the frustrations that frustrations that you read about in the book.
You talk to Scott Green. Scott Green has had a problem in an addiction, and of course you talked to Ceci, who it was central her statement that she was just an addict, just a drug addict. Tell us about the updates on Scott and Cec.
Yeah, I had talked to Ceci and she had she had moved out of Columbus and she.
Had told me that she had had had kicked her habit.
I had heard other reports following that that that she was back in Columbus, and she kind of I lost track of her. She was able at least to get out for for a little bit. Scott, on the other hand, was you know, obviously, you know, he had been he had gotten caught up with the pills and everything for a long time, and he eventually was able to kick the habit, you know. And when I went out with him,
he was he was in withdrawal. I didn't know. I mean, I knew something was a little off with him because he was sweating a lot. And he said when I hooked up with him, you know, a couple of years later. So it's like, yeah, I wasn't really bad with Dual when we were out. When I go and I talked to you know, and this is actually before I got sober.
You know, he pulls out an app and he tells me like exactly how long he had been he had been sober, you know, down to the minute, and you know, I use that app now.
So that's one of the things that I remember about that.
You mentioned that you got sober, and so that is in the afterward in the book, you talk about getting sober and the reason for that, and a conversation with your father as well. Can you tell us about that a conversation with my father about his addiction.
When was this convers I'm not sure when I was that in the afterward, I'm not sure, yes, which you're talking about?
Well, yeah, but you know I was, you know, my thought my father had been a heroin addict.
He was able to kick it before I was born, but he maintained taking pills. He took a Darvon, which was like Vikadin back in the day, and he, you know, one of the things he made me promise was to never do hard drugs. You know, what he was talking about was was heroin and coke. But you know, we never really talked about pain pills. I had taken pain pills before I had got you know, I think if it wasn't for the side effects, I think I probably
would have gotten hooked on him. My drugger choice was alcohol, and you know, I was drinking every day and for you know, about fifteen years and drinking heavily, you know, towards towards the end there, and then you know, was able to go to rehab and pull out of that skid. And you know the book is, you know, because I
was so many people that I was interviewing. Quite frankly, I think almost everybody that was interviewing had had an issue, was either an active active addiction or addiction you know, might have just kicked or was in really recovery. And you know, I think the book would have been those chapters probably would have been a little different.
You know.
One of the things that you know, you always get something, you know, the one quotes that stick with you. And there's a part in the book where I go to I had sort of a halfway house for women who were out in the streets and then they when they go to jail, after they get out, they go to this house and you know, talking with this woman and she was telling me about.
All the times that she had she.
Had overdosed and friends that have overdosed and you know, they had been she had said that she had, you know, the body bag had you know, the cops excuse me, the EMTs had gotten the body bag out and we're ready to put her in and she was revived with Narkhan. Narkhan is the nasal spray that you can carry and can save somebody from an opioid addiction, an opioid overdose, and I asked her. I said, so do all your
does everybody carry opioids? Carry narkan? And she said no. I was like why, but like, this is a thing that you know, could could save you, Like, why doesn't everybody just have it? Because they were that was right around the time that they were starting to give it trip free, you know, and now you can you know, anybody could find darkan now and carry it around with them, and I carry around with me. I asked her why, and she just said, because we're just tired, you know.
And it was it was sort of like if it happens, it happens.
If we overdose, we overdose.
And that was probably, you know, in the same way that that c c saying, but I have to because I'm a drug addict, you know, that started this book. That's like her saying we're just tired. Really is the thing that that caught me and stuck with me as far as from all the interviews that.
I did, what does this story besides the tragic fate of Danielle Lindsey and eighteen others or sixteen others, what does this story and what would you want it to most demonstrate.
Most?
You know, obviously you want and I think we're getting there as a society that these are real people and they're not just sex workers. And I think I think we're getting there. And that's the first part is to show that these are real people. The second part then is to you know, put more and more resources towards the investigations of the crimes. That's that's what I would
like to see. You know, I would like for Scott to be able to get some you know, some you know, whether you believe in closure or not, you know, I would just like Scott to be able to get some answers about his daughter and then obviously the other families.
You sort of have a call to action, then advise people what people can do, can to do that for us?
Yeah, you know, I think as far as a call to action goes, and you know, the call to action can be anything from getting getting loud and called, you know, finding a case in your area and being that person's advocate. You know a lot of people might not even have family, or their family has has sort of disowned them. That doesn't mean that there there shouldn't be somebody looking into it.
You know.
The one thing that I found is that the squeaky wheel gets the grease everywhere. If you're you've got to be a pain in the ass to get the law enforcement to keep looking into your case. Because law enforcem they're over taxed too, so they're gonna they're gonna keep They're gonna keep going if you keep, you know, asking questions.
You know, if you stop asking questions, they're not gonna you know, they might keep working, but some of them are going to move on to that next murder because there's there's been so many of them, and we're getting more and more murders now and we're solving less and less murders. So I think that's one of the big
things and the big call to actions is that. And and you know, I would add to even though I don't really talk about it in the book, but just you know, obviously, everyone, that person, that person that you pass on the street, everybody's going through something and you know they're dealing with they're dealing with.
It however you can.
And there's there's there is a magic pill out there that can get you to forget your troubles for a little bit, but it could also kill you.
Yeah, you say that these people were just trying to get medicine. They're not looking for kicks or last No.
No, they're just trying to feel better. You know.
They're just trying to get through the night. It's not a matter of you know a lot of times when you're hearing, oh, a drug overdose, we hear that as a society and we think, oh, they were partying and that's why this happened. And you know, nine times out of ten, that's not the case. This is just what they need to survive.
Yeah, it's pain management as you as you're right.
Yeah, yeah, and mental health management, you know.
I mean, the bottom line is is that if you're taking you know, medications, I'm on say, I'm on zoloft, and zoloft took you know, so long to kick in, and I was in such a bad state before you know, the zoloft kicked in as I was like trying out different medicines because I'd been on prozac for twenty years and it finally had kind of lost its juice, you know, I remember, and I was I asked somebody, I was just like, why can't they just make a pill that you know, works fast.
It's like they do make a pill that works fast.
It just you know, is incredibly addictive and can destroy everything.
You know, it's it's for some.
People, you know, there is a pill out there that can at least help them either you know, fall asleep or help them just not have to I don't even want to say not have to face trauma, but you know, just can lessen the trauma a little bit or lessen the edge a little bit. And it's you know, they're
not doing this just a party. And the whole idea of overdose, especially now with the fentanyl, it's not like, you know, we hear overdose and we hear, oh, they took too much, you know, and that comes from the overdosing that was happening in the sixties. When you hear about you know, Jim Morrison and Jennis Jopolin and Jimi Hendrix, it's like, oh, they just partied too much and then we lost them.
This is not the case with these people. Yeah.
Now, what is the despite your offer to contribute to these to the police investigations, what is the status of the investigation with Danielle and Lindsey officially.
Yeah, Danielle and lindsay there was are still open cases, you know, and obviously the more the more time that goes by, the less that they would be caught.
But I will say that.
You know, we just we've just gone through a few years now where we've we've been able to get answers on some murders that a lot of people thought would never be solved or you know, had a hard time being solved. You know, Long Ound serial Killer, which is a case that I worked on a lot with the podcast Unraveled, and I think that is, you know, we
didn't know if they had DNA or not. It turns out the you know, they they they didn't catch him with the DNA, They caught him with a with an eyewitness and the you know, obviously Golden State Killer that was DNA. You know, I think we all knew that that was going to be solved at one point or another.
So I think that, you know, there's always a possibility, but it's just a matter of you know, Long Island serial Killer was cautious because there was so much pressure still on the the organization to solve this thing that they put new resources on it and they went back through all the old evidence and then found a found a tip that's what's got to happen, and that happened because people liked the podcast that I was on.
You know, we got loud.
So this book, of course, is another attempt to exert some pressure. Yeah, or for the call for justice.
Yeah.
I want to thank you very much Billy Jensen for coming on and talking about your extraordinary book. Killers Admits Killers, Hunting serial Killers, Hiding under the cloak of the opioid epidemic. For those people that might want to check out a website, do you do any social media? Tell us about the Murder Squad podcast as well.
Well, the Murder Squad podcast is gone. It's over. You know, I fucked that up.
So that was that's you know, if you want to find me online, you know, I'm at Billy Jensen at various Instagram. You know, I'm not really on Twitter that much anymore. Starting to use threads now. I mean, if you want to check out one of the podcasts that I've done, you check out Unraveled. That is five separate investigations that I did with my co host Alexis. So that's one of the things that can check out as far as podcast goes.
Well, thank you very much, Billy Jensen. Killers Admits Killers Hunting Serial Killers hiding under the cloak of the opioid epidemic. Thank you very much for this interview and you have a great evening and good night, Thanks Dan, thank you.