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Whatever you doing, 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 Zupansky. Good Evening, This is your host Dan Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Mary Jean Pearl and John Battagulia's marriage seem picture perfect from the outside. With her two young daughters, Faith and Liberty, they made their
home in a wealthy Dallas suburb. John was handsome, charming and successful, but behind the mask of normality lay a vicious, violent abuser who had brutally beaten his first wife and who made Mary Jean the new target of his irrational rages. After nine hellish years, she divorced Bataglia, but on Christmas Day nineteen ninety nine, during a court ordered family visit, he attacked her in front of their daughters. For the
next two years, he threatened, harassed, and stalked her. Mary Jean feared for her life, but not for the lives of the children, which whom Batagulia was never anything less than caring, loving and gentle. But in spring two thousand and one, when Faith and Liberty were visiting their father, Mary Jean received the message to call her daughters helpless Horrified, she heard her older daughter's pleading cries. Then came the
sound of gunshots, followed by silence. What evil impulses had driven a seemingly devoted father to the ultimate act of violence and betrayal? And how could justice ever be served? No, Daddy, don't a father's murderous rage a mother's worst nightmare. With my very special guest, Irene Pence, thank you very much for agreeing to this program, and thank you for coming to this program. Irene Pence, thank.
You for asking me, Dan, I'm good at being here.
Thank you very much. I think we're gonna have a great program. This is a fantastic, incredibly disturbing, but fascinating tale, very important story, I think really in the end result, it's a fascinating story. Now let's start off right now with let me let me get you to set the stage of where this story occurs. There is a couple cities,
but maybe let's start with maybe Dallas. Set this in this wealthy Dallas suburb that that you spoke about in the introduction, or I spoke about in the introduction, set the stage a little bit for us for at least the first city in this incredible tale.
Well, the actual crime occurred in Dallas, Texas, and John Battaglia was a CPA and he met Mary Jean Pearl one night at a restaurant. And he's very handsome. He's a model per Kim Dawson that's here in Dallas, and that was just a side job because he's actually a CPA. And she is the daughter of a very wealthy family and she was just really taken by him, and he's charming, there's no question.
Now you start your story with another woman. The first woman of our story is a woman named Michelle Ward and then she later is married to Dale Laborde and she becomes Michelle Laborde and they have a son named Billy. So take us back to Michelle Leboard who is she and tell us about her life because this is a very important part of this story.
Right.
Michelle is just a fabulous, brilliant and beautiful person. She lives in bat Rouge, Louisiana, and she's very bright and she was always, you know, graduating in the top one percent of her class. And she married quickly out of college and they had a baby about three years later, and it didn't work out, and so she divorced that man, but she did have this little boy. Then she decided to go to law school and so she again graduated
in the top one percent of her class. And she really wanted to teach, but her instructors suggested that she practiced law for a while and that would give her good experience for teaching. So she moved to Dallas and joined a large law firm, aich, Strashauer and Feld, and she was very well paid. And then a fellow lawyer had introduced her to John Battaglia, and that's how they got together. And it was kind of a whirlwind romance. But then again, the handsomeess, the polish, he could talk
on any subject. He's very bright and charming.
And he had done some modeling too, so he had model good looks, about six foot tall, you described this guy, and obviously very charismatic and intelligent guy. So she was a little bit younger than him, if I correct correct on that and tell us how they met, and you say it was a whirlwind sort of relationship.
Was one of the attorneys she was working with at AIChE and Gump introduced them, and so that's how she got to know John Bataglia.
Now, what happened you say it's a whirlwind. What happened quickly in the relationship? How did it develop and how serious did that relationship become?
Well, they were dating and she started noticing troubling signs about him. He carried a gun, and he seemed to get nervous and irritated easily, and she was thinking about breaking up with him. And then she found out she was pregnant, and she didn't want to marry him, but her mother kind of shamed her into it, you know, don't have an illegitimate child, so forth, and that's why she married him.
Now what was her belief though, Was she really confident that this man may change? Because you really do express this sort of duality that he was, especially in the beginning, such a loving and doting person. And part of the reason why she trusted him is because of how he dealt with her son, Billy.
Right, he always professes to have love children and he would go over to her house and play with Billy before they would go out, and she wondered if was he really more interested in Billy because he showed such love for him.
Right, it's very interesting now, so did they so obviously they were married, and then how did the relationship proceed? How did it? How did his behavior change or escalate?
His behavior changed rapidly Actually when the daughter that they had, the second child that Michelle had, when she after she was born, probably only two or three months old, he got mad at Michelle because he didn't think she was paying enough attention to him, and he hit her and knocked her down with the baby in her arms. So that was the first first ringing of the bell to make her realize that something terribly wrong was in her marriage.
Now was the result of this assault? How did she proceed? And and her reaction to this assault obviously led to his further behavior. So what did she do and what did she not do? Result?
Well, her problem was that she didn't do anything. She was embarrassed that she was beaten by her husband, so she didn't tell her family. When she went to work one day, her secretary noticed bruises, so she took her to the lady's room and showed her her back how purple it was from John Sis. And so then another lawyer came by after they got out, and he said, is anything wrong and Michelle said, oh, no, everything's just fine.
It's sort of the typical abused wife syndrome. And we're talking about a very very bright woman.
Right, So what at what point does she contact? Well, obviously she confided in somebody at work, but how does it who does she further contact, if anyone, what's her next step and how does his behaviors still further escalate?
Well, when he beat her again, she called the police and so tried to get them to do something to keep him away from her, but he would come back with flowers and apologies and promises that he was going to change, and she believed, which is a typical pattern.
And there would be some change for a certain period of time, but he was on.
A three month cycle. He would be able to clean up his act for about three months and then well, he essentially was bipolar, and so that's kind of what triggered everything. He didn't like the meds that he made him more calm, and so he didn't want to take those. He was real controller and the fact that he didn't have his meds just he spun out of control about every three months.
So this this assault, How serious was this assault? And what was the what was the police's but the police and their reaction and tell us a little bit more about that court case and the result.
Well, the police unfortunately, as with Mary Jean, they didn't They just didn't take domestic abuse seriously enough, and she would file papers on him and he would manage to wiggle out of it. The most serious assault that John Bettaglia did was after they were divorced, when he beat her so terribly and broke her nose and dislocated her jaw. And but before that though, she she made up her mind she was going to get divorced.
Now she moves out or has him move out of the home. There is other some other features as well, including stocking. Tell us about the stocking, because it's particularly it's one thing to be peeping or following. He went to much more extreme levels.
He was really clever, and that dan because she was under such peril with him, she hired a lawyer and he told her to keep a log of all the things that he had done. So they could present this to the judge and perhaps that would get someone's attention, the judge's attention. So I had the benefit of Michelle's log.
You know, like on Thursday at two o'clock in the morning, he came over and you know, he would she would get the locks changed on her house, and he would call the locksmith and say, oh, I've locked myself out, would you please make me a new key? I just feel so silly about this. And you know, smart, charming, good looking goes a long ways, And so the locksmith would make him a new key, and then if that
happened again, then he took call a different locksmith. But she would wake up some mornings, you know, at one two in the morning, and he'd be hovering over her bed and threatening to you know, hit her. I could really take care of you now, and you're I've got control of you. And she was scared to death.
Now what did the police do as these beatings and stockings and threatening phone calls and uh, could she not get a restraining order against them? But what was It seems incredible that she couldn't get anything done. You say, well, they didn't really treat domestic violence. So seriously, but how could they how could they go how could she not get protection from this man?
Well, she suits for divorce and that she was going to go that route, and she actually went through her father, who was also a lawyer, and she finally had to tell her parents that John is beating me. I've got to leave. And so her father, who lives in Louisiana, had called friends in Dallas and said, I want the name of an attorney that can help my daughter with
domestic abuse. So someone gave her a name and she went to him and was all laid out for a protective order where John wouldn't be able to come within five hundred feet of her. And one night he came in and just came into the house and stole some things out, and she was furious with them, and he said, well, you can't do anything about this, and she said, I have a protective order, and she called the police and they came and checked on it, and she didn't have
a protective order. The lawyer that her father had suggested through a friend had not filed the protective order, so it wasn't on record. Therefore, the police couldn't do anything about John coming into her house. Because it was also his house too.
Yeah, it must have been. I could you could really get the sense of horror that this woman was having. There was no there was no solution to when she was dealing with whatsoever. No, she was sitting duck well, and her parents were very active after they had been notified of this violence. And it's not like they weren't important people, and they had certainly had some means as well. So what eventually happened? What did she have to eventually do to be able to well?
She had to move back to Baton Rouge, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, because she was just too much for sitting duck in Dallas. She had to quit her fabulous job at the law firm, very prestigious law firm, and she went back to Louisiana and she was able to roll her children in the private school back there and eventually got a job teaching law at the University of Washington in Baton Rouge.
Now did the harassment and immediately when she moved to Baton Rouge. Was that the end of the story.
No, he tried legally. Then he tried to get her, to find her, to get her to come back to Dallas because he was interfering with his parental custodian chip and so she had to fly back to Dallas.
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At least once a month to answer all these charges in court. Somehow he managed to get the attention of judges when she couldn't, and she was really a victim.
He was trying everything from trying to get her to pay spousal support and to get custody more than you know, to call her an unfit mother. He did everything in his power to harass her through the courts.
Right, he's got a lawyer for the divorce. Initially and the lawyer said quit your job so that your ex wife will have to pay youth support. So he did incredible.
Now, John Battaglia is he's a certified he's an accountant, but also another sort of aspect of his personalities, he's also a whistleblower and he's also a person that thinks he's very very efficient and knows how to run things if he can. So part of his personality a little bit about what's happening in John Battaglia's life as well.
At that time, you mean with the RTC.
Right, he was.
Working still as an accountant, and so he had access to the files back then, and he was upset with a company that was supplying the RTC with the information on the files because the banks had gone bankrupt and this was back in the eighties when they had to close a lot of properties and sell them off and get them out of their books. And so he actually joined and they with the government, US government, and they sued this company for overcharging the US for their services,
and it really flipped upside down. And the company had good lawyers and they were able to show that they were doing a good job. And John but Taggi blew a whistle that shouldn't have been blown, and it all flew up in his face and that really made him further further angry. This is when he was married to Mary Jane Pearl.
Now, how did he meet Mary Jane Pearl? And uh, yeah, tell us how he met Mary Jane Pearl.
And that was when they were at a restaurant and she was with friends and she saw this handsome man looking at her from across the room, and her friends were kidding her about it, and you know, he really looks like he's interested in you. And so pretty soon the man was over there, and all of her friends thought he was cute and had a great sense of humor, and they just urged her on that this is the guy for you, Mary Jane, and she agreed. She knows how to behave.
She was still in high school at that time.
No, she was out at high school, then at high working for her mother's antiques company.
Oh that's right, Sorry, I stand corrected, Okay, But she was much younger than him. It was it was quite a few years in different so that's she was.
She was a few years younger he was, and she was very.
Impressed with his worldliness and what the image he could convey to these young younger girls.
Right, Well, like I said, he could talk on any and he subject. He's very well read. He knows art and literature. I mean this without being bipolar in such a control freak. He could have been just a really fine person because he was, you know, intelligent and good looking. Right, but he didn't use it.
Right now, how did Mary Jane Pearl and John Battagulia's relationship develop? Who did it develop any differently? Obviously it must have been somewhat different than his original relationship with Michelle Aboard. But tell us how their relationship progressed and how quickly did she see some of the signs that eventually would lead to disaster.
Well, they when they got married, her parents, who were wealthy, gave them the house. It was the family home, and they just gave it to them, and so they moved into this nice, big, four bedroom house and John kind of felt kept. He wants to be in control, but the fact that his wife owned the house bothered him somewhat. But he he ride off. I guess he snored and Mary Jean couldn't sleep with him because she couldn't she
was pregnant. Soon after they got married, and she wasn't getting her rest, and so she'd go to another bedroom and that angered him. And so first of all it was mainly verbal abuse with Mary Jean. And then the baby started coming, the first little girl, and again John preparedly did love children, but he he hated Mary Jean more than he loved the children. So that's why the
ultimate ending of this. But while these children were being born, he played with them, he loved them, and so he enjoyed these two little girls.
Now, how was his relationship with his own child with Michelle the board, how was that relationship?
Well, they would come over and when the girl got a little older, she would sometimes they'd meet halfway. Sometimes Michelle would put her on the plane and send her to Dallas spend a week in her so with John, and that was pretty good. And then she loved her little stepsisters, her half sisters that were you know, of the second marriage, and so that that was fun for Michelle's daughter to do. And then one turning point was when she came over for Christmas and John, who wasn't
supposed to be in Mary Jean's home. They were divorced at this time, and he came in, I guess in his mind going back in seeing well at this point, now it's the second home that her parents had given her, and it's a four or five million dollar home in Highland Park, Dallas, and it's beautiful. And he goes in and he sees all the presents she was able to give her the daughters, and he can't do that, and
it comes upstep. So he followed her up the stairs and beat her to such a point he even pulled her hair out in spots, and so it's on the floor. And Michelle's daughter sees all this, and that will forever mark the relationship that she has with her father, right.
Yeah, so everything, the relationship instantly changes at that point. She has no more tolerance for her father, right right, She's on guard. Okay, now what else? What else goes on? I mean, obviously we're going to get to the point where this you know, the eventual day. But how does it further progress after this beating, after he now his daughter from the original marriage is thinks he's a monster, How does what happens next?
Well, Mary Jean is not timid about calling the police and going to court and trying to do something about John, but the cooperation she got was just her lack of cooperation was just incredible. John was able to talk judges out of being held accountable. That if he tricked Mary Jane one day and said, let's meet before we have our court date for a protective order, Let's meet and
I'll sign those papers for a divorce. Now, he did not want a divorce because this was plush living where he was with her, and so Mary Jean fell for it, and she thought she was going to meet first for the divorce, and course she gets to back court and they have no record of it, and so she realizes what the situation was. So she called the second courtroom she's supposed to be in and she said, I'm coming. There's been a problem, and the judge wouldn't hold the time.
And so when it was time for the court proceedings to take hold, the judge says, well, he must not be very important to her, so he was going to cancel the protective order request and Mary Jean's, well, the journey would be. District attorney knew what the situation was, and she said that they would have to say they weren't ready and give us, you know, the minimum they could wait for six weeks, and so the judge agreed to that.
Right now, I guess.
I was just going to say the judge hurt himself politically over this case, because there's the the court advocates that just happened to be in the courtroom that day were seeing what was going on and they were horrified by it.
And so.
The judge in this case was going to run for the to be the district attorney, run against the current one, and Mary Jean and these court advocates got on television and told them what this judge had done, and he lost the election.
Right well, in terms of the result, that's that's no wonder, you know, And that's these people run on a law and order sort of platform. Right so, right now, now this person has had these violent rages, but we talked about his work is undercover work, and this blowing up in his face, and it really blew up in his face because it looked like something that's going to make
him a lot of money. We're talking millions of dollars which would set him straight, and he thought he would get his he'd have his own money instead of being feeling like he was kept or feeling like he'd been just kicked out of a couple of wealthy homes and good situations. So he thought he was going to make a lot of money from his undercover whistle blowing work.
And in fact, because of something he didn't do, it specifically blew up in his face and was especially bad, so his legacy, the money that he thought he would make, his reputation was damaged. So this seems to be the final trigger. Not that he needed too many triggers to do anything over the top, but tell us about what happens after this, and tell.
Us about it.
Well, he thought he would get four or five million dollars because he figured there were one hundred million that the company had overbuilt the government, and he just knew that he was going to get her a percent of that. And when it didn't come to fruition, he was furious with himself. All the time he had wasted his own clients in his CPA business that he was doing work for. He didn't give them the attention they needed, and so that business wasn't doing well and this and he turned
it all on Marriaging. This was just something that she was responsible for, and she was like, you say, he was jealous that she had the money, and he thought for once that he would be independent financially, but he was really in the hole.
Win, So tell us what he did do, and tell us about the faithful day in question, and what happened. Take us through that entire day, and as much information as you had and put in your book. Tell us a little bit, as much as you can about that day in question.
Everything I wrote in the book, well, no, when I write it, I read it. He started out. He knew because of he was on parole at this point, and he had to report to his pro officer, and at one point the pro officer said, the courts have asked for your file, John, so there's a chance you're going to be arrested. And that was the ultimate control. He wanted to be the controller. The fact that Mary Jean had any control over him was absolutely the last thing
he wanted. He spent the day calling friends trying to get them to talk Mary Jean out of doing this and drop the charges Mary Jean, so I don't have
to go to jail. And so that that didn't go anywhere because the friends we had called Michelle Getty in Louisiana and she was busy at school and so she didn't get the call still later, but he went through all that, and then he was supposed to pick up the girls in a shopping center at six six o'clock, I believe, and he had his current girlfriend called because he wasn't allowed to call Mary Jean. And she said, yes,
that's okay. We're playing on John being here or having the girls, and the girls at this point did not want to be there. And I think there's some of these things that went on that night that haunt Mary Jane to this day. Because the youngest one, six year old, she was hiding. She did not want her mom to find her and take her to meet her father, and the nine year old didn't want to go either, but
she was sort of resigned to it. And they looked all over and they found this little girl underneath her bed, shaking and scared and so upset that she was going to have to be with her father that night. And that's something that Mary Jane has always felt badly about, like she delivered her baby to her killer. But anyway, they did did go ahead and they met at the shopping center. And also what haunts her seeing the girls for the last time, and how sad they looked, and
their sad little waves to her mother, their mother. It was just very heart ranching for everybody. And then well I was just going to say yeah. After that, Marria Jane was going to go to a meeting, and she got a call from her mother. In the meantime, John had taken the girls back to his loss that he lived in at the time and told the older one to call the mother. He had a question.
In fact, the question was, it is Ryan here, and I have a question for you.
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Plus why your mother trying to put me in jail, and so Mary Jane wasn't home, so he called her mother, and the mother used her called marriaging cell phone, and she was able to get hold of her and said, call you know, your girls are down at the lost and they have a question for you. So that's the tragedy of it all. Uh, she called, and so the little the old nine year old answered and said, she's crying, mommy, why are you trying to put daddy in jail? And
she said, oh, John, don't do this to them. That's when the gunfire started, and he was killing those little girls point blank and they were screaming at him, no, Daddy, No. And that's why the title of the book, because that was just so heart wrenching.
And the one daughter was running away from her father and married Jean and told her to run.
Oh yes, run, babies run. The nine year old was on the phone, and so John killed her right then while she was on the phone, and so John was on speakerphone. So Mary Jean screamed and run, babies, run as fast as you can, and that little six year old took off and she was about ten feet from the door when he finally shot her and killed her.
He went through an execution style. They were probably dead, but he wanted to make sure that Mary Jean would never have them again, so he shot them both close up close, blank in the head, Yeah.
Destroying them, yes, completely, And he also then followed that up with something to the tune of Merry Christmas, Mary Jean.
Uhhh. He left a message after the girls had died, He called their phone at home and marry expletive Christmas, Mary Jean. And then he left another call that telling the daughters you were so brave tonight. I was really proud of you. You're in a much better place now, And that just fractured Mary Jean.
Now Mary Jean doesn't really know what's going on. She thinks that this could be the worst nightmare she could ever you know, and ever have. She still has got the wits about her incredibly to do to call the police or to get the police involved with this. So what's her next step and what incredibly happens in this next turn of events with Mary Jean and John and her children.
A continuing scenario. She she's at a friend's house, she stopped by from the meeting, and the she said, my mom has called and wants me to call the girls. And so she's there when she hears this phone call, this horrible phone call, and so she tells her friend to call nine one one. Well she does, her friend does call them, but the operator just doesn't get it.
She writes it down as a domestic disturbance call, and so the police put it on the back burner, and so Mary Jean gets in her car, races down to the loft, which is near downtown Dallas, and she beats the police there. They hadn't even there wasn't one squad car, one ammas, nothing, And she said to the operator she got on the phone after a friend called him, that she had talked to her husband and the children at the laft and she heard gunshops five or six. And
the woman said, oh huh, a disturbance, domestic disturbance. It's like she hadn't heard. So she didn't turn this call in in the extreme that it should have been. So the police put it on back burner and we're going to take care of it when they had time. So she got down there to the loft before anybody, and she was out there screaming and waving when a police
car would go by. And so this one officer was just coming back from a traffic report, so he stops and listens to her, you know, and he's he's amazed too that there's not just a storm of squad cars and ambulances and everything. But they finally got the personnel that they needed. Of course, it was too late.
So a couple other cops arrived, and there's a tenant that's able to let them in, but they're not even quite sure. Mary Jane and her confus isn't quite sure, gives them the wrong address in her statement, and actually John had been moving from one apartment to another apartment in the building, so it was some confusion between at least two of them.
Mary Jean right in the police right, but she was able to get you know, get them the correct loft number by the time she was down there. But the problem was that the operator just didn't treat it as serious.
Right now, when the police go in there, tell us about the just briefly if you can, about the what they did find there and what they didn't find. Where's John Battaglia.
And right, Well, they had to kick the door in and they the first officers now there with two others, so there's three three policemen in the loft, and it's hazy and smoky from all the fire, the fired guns, and the little six year old is lying on our tummy just about ten feet inside the door, and you know, it's just a horrible, horrible scene. And so they assume the John's in there hiding, ready to jump out, although they've kicked the door in and no way even to
walk it after them, so it's open. One of the guns is sitting there by a table. He could have come back in and taken care of them. So they had to be very cautious about how they did this. And they start searching, and they searched the entire loft, and it was difficult because you know, he was just moving in. Everything was packing boxes, a lot of things stacked up. There were lots of places for him to hide.
But they ended up finding fifteen firearms, pistols and long guns, and he had a real arsenal there right now.
They searched the other apartment it's as well, the roof, all kinds of things in and around that building. They did where's John BUTTIGERA.
John had several girlfriends and he went to a couple of their homes and they weren't home, and so he more or less crashed at one of one of the friends, who a girlfriend who never locked her door. She could he could just go in there. And he had taken a lot of tranquilizers after he had killed his daughters, and so he was kind of dizzy and frustrated, and at this point he's sticked to his stomach and he passes out at this girl's house. And so about ten o'clock.
They just happened around seven, So it's about ten o'clock. The girl comes home with her date and they see John passed out and they wake him up, bring him into the living room, and he he he wants some drugs, and her boyfriend isn't into that. Well, I'm out of here, so he leaves, and then John gets back with this girl and he said what he really wants after some drugs,
is are some tattoos. He wants a big yellow rose and a big red rose with his daughter's names on them on his arm so that they'll always be with him. And he offered to give get a tattoo for this girlfriend. So they went on down up to a place not too far from the loss, where they did tattooing, and so this is around midnight that they're down there getting tattooed.
Now the police have a description of his vehicle, and a observant police officer finally, after again I missed all this confusion in many hours later, spots this vehicle and then is either he decides or he's instructed to wait till someone comes out to the vehicle.
Right, they knew that it was John's vehicle, and.
This was.
After midnight, and the police tried to to hide. And there's part the vehicle of John's is in a parking lot, so they're in an adjoining, you know, across the street. And so the people that had unmarked police guards and all this they're waiting for John and they have no idea what he's wearing. And it's you know, midnight is dark. And finally they see him come out and open that truck by remote. So they knew they had their man. So four of them immediately went over there and grabbed
John and he wasn't going to give up. In fact, police I talked, he said they were pretty sure that he wanted suicide by cop and because they he was fighting them just and they black and an eye they did, you know, they had to do a lot of things. He was strong and it was a very fit person, and so he wouldn't show his hands to the police. And he tried to make this difficult, and I think he really did want them to shoot him. Put him out of his misery.
Now he's taken into custody, and how do police proceed? What is his demeanor? What does he do? Does he does he talk to police or does he lawyer up? Immediately?
Well, he's quiet going on in but he had a court appointed attorney, the defense attorney, and the judge order who officiated over the case called Paul Johnson an excellent attorney that morning, so that he was just a few hours without a lawyer, and Paul made it went to the judge quarters and he agreed to take the case. So john had appointed attorney right away.
What was John's demeanor when the police initially arrested him, had him in the car after they had subdued him. You make some interesting comments. What was his demeanor?
Well, he didn't say any Oh, I know what you're talking about, Hayes, acting like nothing had happened in the last previously, he has questions about the computer that all the police cars have, and he asked about things like that. He then when they got him down to the court, he asked, well, isn't this the same place they brought Jack Ruby after he shot Oswald? And his mind was going, you know, he's two different people. He can absorb a
situation and be someone different. No, it was you know, he was shocking the police by his demeanor right.
Now at the same time, just for those that this is one of the incredible parts of the book as well, is that Michelle Leboard is almost at the same time, simultaneously, around the same time, fighting for legislation that would protect women like herself as being married to a man like John Batagula, and also for Mary Jean and for those women to get the kind of protection that they've both gone through and had no safeguards from a guy like this.
It could easily, quite easily look like they could, he could manipulate the system, but they were she was creating, So tell us about that situation. Almost at the same time, right Michelle was.
You know, she's this brilliant law professor and because of her many accomplish accomplishments and speaking out on spousal abuse, you know, domestic violence. She is named Woman of the Year in Baton Rouge, and she thought, I'm going to do something with that. I think that if I you know, she got some publicity out of this, and she decided that she was going to try to write some laws herself, and she got on the Governor's committee to write legislation.
And she had taught some students of lords of the legislature in her class in her law classes at Washington, and so she called them. She said, you know, she had no shame. She just wanted to make this work and if she had to use her contacts, she would whatever. And she did. She got pointed to this committee and she actually ended up writing these laws where if you violated your protective order then you had to serve some jail time and not this probation and you know, just
a pat on the hand, right. Uh.
Well. Another interesting aspect, and fat well beyond interesting incredible, is that Mary Jane had the wits about her and just her capacity to to feel for someone else. And again she felt for Michelle the board for her safety. In despite of this certain and almost seemingly disastrous, faithful event. It just happened with her children. She has the wits about her to call Michelle to warn her that John Battaggulam might be coming her way.
And that's what she was thinking of. He's killed these two daughters. He only has one daughter left. Could he possibly be on a plane because to take care of that daughter. And uh so that's why she called Michelle to warn her. And h Michelle had just come in after that call came to do her from Mary Jane, and so she knew. She knew the horror of John Bactaglia and how awful he could be. That she she
didn't take it lightly. She called her sister, and her sister picked her up with her daughter and took her to their house so she wouldn't be home in case John was going to come and kill her daughter.
Incredible, Now this person has again that you talked about. Paul Johnson is assigned his case his murder trial. This becomes a capital case and that means the death penalty is on the table. Tell us a little bit about what how they proceeded in terms of trying to defend John Battagula to this obviously monstrous crime.
Well, the most difficult saying that Paul Johnson did was to try to find a jury. He couldn't get anybody to serve you. He couldn't get anybody. He eventually got twelve people, but not of his choosing. But he wanted people to say, I'm against the death penalty. No, I wouldn't give the death penalty, and that sort of thing. Well, he wasn't finding that. And so I sat for three months at the Coursehouse with John Battagla and his attorneys
and the DA trying to find twelve people. Well it's twelve plus one alternate that that Paul Johnson thought would give John a fair trial.
But to be fair, there's one of the criteria is that you haven't heard anything about this crime. And because of the heinous, an extreme and incredible story that it was, it was pretty hard to find people who hadn't heard anything about this. Wasn't that true?
Absolutely, they had eight or nine hundred people in the jury pool, and that's why it took so long to go through. And first of all, they filled out a seven or eight page quiz on their thoughts and their experience with law and so forth. So they had a lot of people to talk to, and it was it was very difficult to get that jury together, because, as Paul Johnson told me afterwards, I guess I couldn't have found twelve people in the city of Dallas that would
not have given him the death sentence. But you say about the notoriety of it. It was splashed all across the Dallas Morning News. When I opened up the paper that morning, I just knew instantly I'm going to write this book. This story has got to be told.
Yeah, so that was the question I did, actually didn't ask you. You came to this story based on your own initiative. A publisher didn't say, hey, why don't you write a story about this? You came to this story yourself and said, hey, I got to write this story right right.
This was this is my fourth book, and so I'd already written three. And the publisher just, you know, assuming very open, wonderful publisher Kencon that you know, if you come up with another idea, let us know. And this was so horrific that I didn't ask. I just said, here's my next book, this is what's going to be about, and they just said, go for it.
Well, of course, it's just it's an incredible story. There's no way that it wouldn't appeal to people to read. It's just you know, I mean, obviously this thing was a major, high profile case and trial, so and it had all the elements as soon as you have handsome people and innocent victims. You can't get more innocent than a person's children. I mean, it's, yeah, one of the most horrible cases I've ever heard of, So I understand that very that's.
The thing about true crime.
You.
In fact, I'm a court volunteer, you know, like the court advocates. I'm down at the Crowley Court House once a month and in overseeing domestic abuse cases and protective orders. And every now and then I run into Paul Johnson and I'll say, well, do you have another another story for me, Paul, And he'll say, not like that one, not not one that's bookworthy. But you know, he said, but there's a lot. But it's you know, it's the someone who doesn't have much, who has few options, that's
what you normally run into. Like you say, I mean a Kim Dawson model and a CPA that the past of the CPA board the very first time he took it. I mean, he's you know, it's just an incredible, uh mix.
Of characters and even Michelle Laborde a beautiful and you know, intelligent,
highly motivated. You know, getting the attention to governor's is no easy feat and getting that legislation together having no real political background, I means, certainly her parents had means, but she went over and beyond you know, what her potential was because she was so personally involved and it is so you know, so it's such an ironic situation for her to have this legislation passing into in the state legislation while her ex husband would have who would
have certainly if she would have not escaped this man, she would have been this victim is setting up legislation so that I know, it's cliche that this will never happen again. There has there has to have been, unfortunately, these kinds of cases to have the impetus to be able to create this legislation. Unfortunately, but at least there is some happy ending that this person's convicted. I'll tell us what the outcome of this case was in the end.
Did he get his just deserts? Did he get the death penalty?
He got the death penalty. And I'm not necessarily real pro death penalty, right, But if anyone deserves it, it's John Patagulia. Because here's what's happening. Dan. There are a lot of people that are anti and that's fine, that's their position and I respect it. However, this is what's happening in Texas. John Pataglia has his own website. The people who are anti death penalty want to help out these poor guys that are sitting on death row. They provide him with a cell phone, they allow him to
on a computer to write out these stories. He is still abusing his two wives. He is saying they're lesbians, their cocaine heads. I mean, he just can't say enough about them in his view to make them seem unappealing, to seem like losers and they're in anything. But and so that is what's going on as we speak. And it's frustrating in Texas. It's automatic appeal if you're given the death penalty and so, and we're paying two hundred
thousand dollars a year to defend John's appeal. Sure and so, and it's seven ten years ago and it's still going on. But Mary Jane continued on the problem, of course, was not having supervised meetings with an abusive parent, and she has gotten twenty five thousand dollars as a grant and has opened the Faith and Pats the Name for Children House at the Family Place where abusive parents can still meet with their children in a supervised setting. Right, so that's been brought around.
Sure, yeah, another a little bit of a bright A little bit, yeah, A little bit yeah, yeah, it's it's it's incredible that throughout this book. It was just amazing to me. I know we've I've heard countless stories of missteps, but this was a confluence of inaction apathy.
It went on.
The judge said he was very good luck. You know you're in trouble when when a psychopath goes to court and the judge is commenting on their good looks, like who cares? But it shows you that that's all it takes. Sometimes, you know, that's he's charming, he's intelligent, he has money, yeah, and but what what about his actions? And so you know, too little, way too late. He never received any jail time, and his ultimate trigger was that he might go to jail,
and that's when he shot his own kids. These are the people he was supposed to love. I think if he would have had an opportunity, he would have killed both women. And obviously he didn't care about children either, So this who knows what he would have done as time would have went on. He was capable of, you know, obviously anything.
So well, like I said, he had an arsenal. He had fifteen guns. Sure, and of course when you were on probation from being a protective order violator, you're not allowed to have one gun. But it just didn't nothing bothered him, no law. He just thought he was bigger than all that.
And like you say, there was some political heads ruled that judge that allowed that maid that grave error. You know, his political railer was finished.
That's right, that's right, It definitely was. And so and that's a good thing because that's he just wasn't, you know, caring about this topic. So that's what happened. But there's been a little There's there's uh Michelle Gay's laws enacted in the by the state legislature. And then there's this visiting place and it's it's really well used in Dallas. That's a good thing, but not enough it's been done. What is Mary Jean's life like now, Well, she remarried
after this. She badly wanted children, She just wanted to have more children, and she just severely loved those girls. But she was forty when this took place, and she remarried, but she never had any more children. And as far as I know, she's still involved in her mother's antique business and lives in her beautiful house in Dallas.
So this must have devastated but it didn't completely destroy her. She's still functioning woman, living, trying to live.
A life better than I could have done. She you know, it just I never felt so sorry for anybody in my life, but she was poised. At the trial, she gave her victims impact statement to John and she did a really good job.
Really great jobhead, Sorry you spoke his testimony. Did Michelle look Board also testify his first wife? Did she testify?
Michelle testified in the punishment phase. I see when she got up and told the jury how he had broken her nose and dislocated her jaw and all that, complete with pictures. I think that was the final stob that this man was just thoroughly evil through and through, and I I think it took eighteen minutes for the jury to decide to give him the death penalty.
Now you spoke of the bipolar and uh, you know, we won't go into a discussion about that. We don't have too much time at all. But obviously the courts didn't take that too seriously in consideration. Obviously if you're going to give him the death penalty with this bipolar and you know, for everybody that is bipolar that doesn't resort to killing their children or committing it as.
A murder, but there are degrees.
So but you did say if this wouldn't happen, then that would have happened. You really believed that bipolar was that much of a reason for as eventual we ran.
And the Sami and his mother committed suicide when he was seventeen. She suffered severe abouts of depression and so in fact she was institutionalized now and man, and in fact it was not the night before she was to go back. Her husband was going to put her into an institution, and that's when she killed herself. But John had, in fact that his defense attorneys brought this up at trial, that he was bipolar, that all he needed was his meds and he'd be just fine. But the jury didn't
buy it. And what do you think, oh, just knowing what he did, I'm you know I had I was privy to so much information that it's typical of somebody like John who likes control. He wouldn't have taken his meds. He wanted that high euphoric feeling, the manic part of bipolar, so he wouldn't have gone that route. Well he's still hasn't He has his website and he's still bashing his wives. Yeah, yeah, incredible change.
Well, lucky people have to really find websites, so you know, how many people are really listening to this person will be negligible. Let's say, of course there's the damage, but it's not the same as the public harassment that he could have. He doesn't have a newspaper, we'll say, or hopefully he doesn't. He's not able to call them.
So but.
I was just gonna say, for uh, several years, well, you know, still in death row. Uh, there was a fascination with him with television news shows and they would go and interview him, and so he would you'd see him on TV laughing and say, oh, this just had to be this just was meant to happen, which made him a look stranger is he.
Is he he didn't get remarried in prison as many of these nice doctor.
And some of these guys I don't know. John's written me a couple of times that I find him so thoroughly horrible that I never answered his That's I did the other others I've written about if they want to write and ask A questions or I might even ask them questions about thank you and so. But John, It's is so thoroughly disgusting.
You had enough of John BATTAGOA. Yeah, that's us. It's an incredible book, Irene. I want to thank you very much for sharing your incredible book with us. I want to tell the audience they've been listening to Irene Pence with her book, No Daddy Don't incredible book. And I want to thank you very much for coming on the program, Irene, and I want you to have a good evening and
the best of luck with any more projects. And of course I'd love to get you back on the program talk about another one of your books sometime in the near future.
So thank you, Dan, I've enjoyed it well, I have to and thank you very much.
And you have yourself a good evening, you too, Good night by bye, bye bye. You've been listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history, and the authors that are written about them. Have a good evening.