ROCHESTER'S MOST STARTLING CRIMES-Michael Benson

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of Chilai. Read about serial killers Arthur Shawcross and Robert Bruce Bahalski, the savage murders of Kathy Bernhardt and George Anne Formacola, the All in the Family murders of Tabitha Tabitha Bryant and Jim Tann, The hunt for Bucky Phillips, the disappearance of Flossy Wilbur, plus much more, and many shocking photos. The book they we're featuring this evening is Rochester's Most Startling Crimes with my special guest, journalist and

author Michael Benson. Welcome back to the program. Thank you once again, Michael Benson.

the other. But Charlie Tann was apparently a new man who ran his own company, had a lot of money, and tried to run his home in the same way and was abusive to his wife and children until on January twenty eighth, twenty fifteen, his fifty two year old wife, Jean, called nine to one one and complained that her husband

had choked her and was trying to kill her. The woman had just managed to say her address, which was in a really upscale street in Rochester suburb of Pittsford, when the dispatcher heard a shuffling noise and then a male voice came on the phone and said, you'll have to excuse my wife. She's very childish. There is no emergency here. The first time he's encountered a man who used the word childish to describe his wife because she

was calling nine one one on him. Now, dispatcher didn't like it at all and sent a sheriff's deputy anyway, and when the deputy got there, Gene Tan declined to have her husband arrested, which is what usually happens, and the ancident could hardly be regarded as a one off because it was the seventeenth time the Sheriff's office had been called to the tannhouse, dating back to two thousand and three. Now a week later, Jeane and Jim's nineteen

year old son, Charles Tan, begins behaving unusually. This is February fifth, twenty fifteenth, and the same day his friend Whitney Nickerbarker purchased a shotgun and child has a series of meetings and meals with old friends, and he's exuding an uncomfortable feeling that he's saying goodbye, and this troubles his friends. At eight forty on February fifteenth, Jim Tann, that's the dad, send his final email to an employee at Dynamax, his company, and that was the last anyone

heard from him. An hour and twenty minutes after the email was sent, Charlie, his son, meets up with a friend, Jacob Grossman. Seems very anxious and says to Jacob that he's going to have to be leaving the country well.

Charld's behavior was so abnormal that Grossman took it upon himself to call nine to one and suggested that the Sheriff's deep heeds go over to the tent house make sure everything's okay, and when Deputy William Connell gets to the house, they speak to Charlie, who has calmed down and says his dad's not home, at which point Charlie Canada and stays for a couple of days, but by February nine he's back in Pittsford with his mom, and around dinner time, an email is sent to his fraternity

brothers saying he's going to be having some trouble in the near future. He's waiting a visit from the authorities, and minutes later, Charles' mom picks up the phone and makes the eighteenth and final nine one one call from the can home. She says, my son, my husband, he was trying to protect me. My husband was trying to torture me. Deputy Christopher Cooper is the first responder gets over to the house, which is very impressive two thousand

seven hud square foot colonial. Charlie is outside waiting he's ordered to the ground, handcuffed, tells the police that the body's upstairs in his dad's office and the gun is in the garage. Now, sure enough, Jim Tann's dead from multiple shotgun blasts. I've been shot in the chest, arm, neck, and face. He's a pile of clothes and coagulated gore, basically, but there's a surprise. There are indications of decomposition. The deputy expected a corpse, but a fresh one, and Jim

Cann has been dead for some time. So in the case becomes truly exceptional. Charlie Tan appears in court and it becomes apparent he has a sizeable fan club. His supporters call out to him, they pledge their love and allegiance with his cause, and it comes clear to prosecutors that any attempt to prosecute Charlie Tan is gonna have

to deal with his supporters. And there are many. And someone said, well, it's just like Charlie Manson with his Manson family, But it wasn't, because the Manson family was on drugs and they were weird. Of Charlie Kan's fans were like the best and the brightest kids in Monroe County, as was Charlie Tan. You know, everybody you talked to him said, hey, Charlie Kan's not a good kid, He's

a great kid. So District Attorney's office knew that sooner or later they're gonna have to deal with the sentiment. And it was pervasive that Charlie Tan killed his father because his father needed killing. And then there was aspect of the time, the way. Now it wasn't just that it was a gruesome killing or why it was done, the odipule nature of it. But Charlie shot his dad long before his mother called nine to one one. Their

mom was living with the body. So in the past, warriors had successfully defended women who had been accused of killing their husbands, saying that their clients suffered from battered spouse syndrome. But did that syndrome transfer to the woman's child? That was the question the jury in this case was going to have to answer. You know, psychologists waded in. They likened the Charlie's experiences to a veteran who spends

too long in a war zone. It might have been post traumatic stress that caused him to kill his dad, ah, but wouldn't prolong trauma also negatively influence a person's behavior. Well, in Charlie's case, maybe not so much, because he was a popular person and an excellent student, and to disassociate himself with the hell that his home life was, he overachieved and this fairly common compensation for a troubled home life.

Now at the trial, now the prosecution is introduced into evidence a list taken from Jeanne's purse listing several criminal defense attorneys. So she was thinking about defense even before she called the police. And during the defense's final argument to the jury, they brought up for the first time the possibility that Charlie's mother, jean had fired the fatal shot. She had the same mode of an opportunity as he saw.

And then the lawyer pauses, says, no, she had more of a motive and more of an opportunity to pull the trigger. Well that the trial ends up in a mistrial. The deliberation by the jury is called short by Judge pan Piano in an unusual way that the Jersey are saying, no, we're making progress, now, we'll get this done. And yet

he calls a mistrial and orders the trial reheld. Afterwards, the jury said that we were leaning to acquit, So it means that the judge probably pulled the plug for fear that there was going to be an acquittal and Charlie was going to walk free. Now what happened after that even more bizarre. Charlie goes back to Canada and when he comes back into the country for a special event, he's arrested by the federal government and for gun charges, and he's convicted of that trial and sentenced to twenty

years in federal penitentiary for the shotgun. It's a large, large sentence for a gun charge. It's more like they were trying to get back at him for getting away with murder, which is how I since they felt about it, and the appeals were just beginning and the pandemic began, and presumably there will be Charlie Tann court appearances in the future as the trier, perhaps less in the federal charges, if not getting him off entirely. That was the first story.

That's that's exciting enough that there's what's sixth sevenister in the book.

and a little girl. And because of courtroom vagaries and weirdnesses and deals and this, and that he was charged with only one of the murders, killed two kids, was only charged with one of them and ended up being sentenced only ten years and was never tried for the other crime. So here is he's done ten years. He's a child killer, and they want to release him back into the world. New York State Department of Corrections had a problem. They kept putting him in little towns. They

were similar to the towns he grew up in. Where they thought he'd thrived. But the instant somebody found out who he was, there would be you know, near riots. He was chased out of town three or four times, at least once by a potential lynch mob.

his victims from then on are there. There are sex workers, street women, not exclusively. One of them was just mentally disabled and a friend of his, but there were women he could easily get into his car and then take them someplace and kill them. He left the first few bodies in near bodies of water. The first one was near Salmon Creek in Northampton Park of the town of Sweden, which is a suburb of Rochester. Second one was along the banks of the river the Genesee River Gorge, as

was the third. There were from then on a few murdst near the river, not necessarily down in the embankments to the gorge, but near the at the top of the gorge. He killed Patty Eyes, killed June Stotts.

left hand. Franny Brown of Otis Street in Rochester, she's next. The person who founder was praying that it was all new a mannequin, but he knew it wasn't a twenty nine year old Elizabeth Liz Gibson No. Twenty fifth, nineteen

eighty nine. They're coming along much quicker now. He found what he likes to do, and he's doing it regularly, and we get to Darling, Trippy, June Cicero, Felicia Stevens, and then a jogger finds the final victims' boots in a park and by this time the police know they have a serial killer who's killing sex workers for the most part, and he is revisiting their bodies, he's having sex with bodies, he's cutting them up, So they don't release the news that the boots have been found, and

instead they keep a constant surveillance on the area and sure enough, already comes out to play and he's spotted by a helicopter standing over the body with his penis in his hand, and that's it. He's done. Incredible that yeah, Yeah, that's Arthur Shawcross and he is Yeah, he's Rochester's number

one villain. So note book about Rochester's most startling crimes would be complete without him, even though I dealt with other aspects of his criminal career, possible other aspects, and I thought that giving the the main reason why he is famous in Rochester was important to put in this book, and that was the eleven murders of nineteen eighty nine.

twins as well. So you do cover Robert Bruce Boholski very incredible story in this book.

than one person killing women to begin with. But the senseless murders of women in Rochesters did not stop when Shawcross was arrested, and Robert Bruce Bahalski was one of the reasons why he'd grown up in their duell in Elmira, New York. He did time for stealing stuff, and just like Shawcross, once he'd finished a long stint, they placed him in Rochester, where they thought he might be able to assimilate into society and straighten his act. It didn't

work out that way. On December thirty first, nineteen ninety a Sunday. This is the twenty four hours before New Year's not sex work of Moraine Armstrong's turning a trick in ear Lake Avenue apartment and she was heard to scream. About twelve hours later, Rochester police are called in. Moraine's friend who'd found the body called and said said she was hanging. When I got there, she wasn't hanging. She was on the bed with electric appliance cords tied tightly

around her neck. Now, I spoke to Detective Frank Campione. He and I went to the same school for a year, and he knew that at a crime scene like this, he was there, you had to keep your eyes and ears open for that guy who's just a little bit too interested in what's going on, a little too curious, curious in a Nancy way. Police called it the witness who had his belly button against the police tape. So on January first, he's working in the Lake Avenue crime scene.

Suing up. There's a guy who was fascinated by what's going on. Kenny Nancy, He's a nervous guy, says. His name is Robert S. Paholski's thirty six years old and says that he didn't really know Moraine, but he'd seen her around, but he sure was interested in what happened to her. So it's that case came and went became cold right away. All of the witnesses were on drugs and in different states of being brain addled, and Leeds ended up evaporating and came to be almost seven months later.

July twenty first, nineteen ninety one, and it's one of the hottest days of the year and Officer Gerald Smith is on Emerson Street in the city of Rochester to do a wellness check and she's just he's just a block away from where Maureen Armstrong was killed. So he's parks his car and looks out and he sees this little ento eyes of neighbors coming towards his car with grim expressions on their faces, and it's just, what's the matter, and they are foullooader. There's a fouloader coming from that

house from the front apartment. So he crosses the street and he sees something that's so grittily that, you know, it gives him the willies to think about it for the rest of his life. The side window to the front apartment is covered on the outside with a black blanket of flies. Yeah right, flies They want in and yike,

you know there's nothing good in there. They open They finally open up the house and just unbelievable odor and the body of Adrian Berger is on the floor there so decomposed they would never be able to determine how she died. I interesting thing about there was that her boyfriend was a kind of a dirt bad type named

Robert Bruce Spohoansky. Yeah so uh. Spohosky makes money for a while turning all mail tricks, and among his pickups was an otherwise respectable Rochesterian named Charles Grande, who had the misfortune of inviting Spohalsky into his home on Tuesday, October first, nineteen ninety one. So this is a couple of months after Adrian Berger. ECU think and Spihoski thought that Grande was rich because he was a landscaper from Grant.

Grande wasn't, but Spohalski had a very limited perception of what true affluence was, so he takes takes Spohalsky home with him. Spahski tries to rob him, ends up hitting him over the head with a hammer and caving his head in. He steals Grandee's car, he picks up a woman, and he's stopped by a police officer in Grandy's car with a sex worker in the front seat with him, and he shows Grande's license to the policeman. Yeah, the policeman hands the hands of it back and doesn't sense

it anything's wrong. Grandy's guy's five eight and Spallsky is a huge He's six y three, completely muscular. If he and his twin had stuck with it and hadn't gone bad, they might have been Olympic gymnasts. They have, and they were really good shape. Spalsky once broke a pair of handcuffs, though, right off his wrist, by snapping them with his strength. So anyway, the cop doesn't notice that this guy's twice

the size of the person on the driver's license. And when police finally tracked down Spohansky, they can't arrest him for the murder of Grande or they don't have enough evidence, but they arrest him instead of criminal impersonation, and he gets off because the jury refuses to believe that a policeman could be so stupid as to mistake a five eight guy for a six Foorga, and wow, Spohoalski walks out, and now I was pen pails with Spohoalski for many years.

Claimed swore up and down that for the next ten years or so he didn't kill anybody. There was a lady who lived in one of his apartment buildings who was strangled to death, and somebody turned up the thermostad all the way, just as had happened at Charles Gandhi's house in an attempt to speed up decomposition. But anyway, he claims that wasn't him, and there wasn't enough evidence to arrest him, so what are you going to do?

But his next kill is when he is smoking crack with his friend Vivian in his apartment on Spencer Street in the city of Rochester, and he smokes so much crack, and of course this is his story, that he sees Vivian her Azari turn into a demon, so he sets about vanquishing her. He hits her over the head with a hammer, he strangles her and kills her. And then when his hallucination lifts, he realizes he's killed his best friend, and he's very He puts her in the basement where

it's cool that he can slow down decomposition. But he's in a gym because he's HIV positive, he's on drugs. He doesn't have the wear with all the moves, the body anywhere. So his only bet, his only chance of surviving, is to turn himself in, and that's what he does. He walks into the police department on November eight, two thousand and five, and confesses to all four murders. But I've always suspected that Robert Bruce Boholski was responsible for more than just four.

going to find the evil gene. We're going to find what chromosome or lack of chromosome causes people to be psychopathic, and you know, we may be able to isolate the evil gene. H And I guess if you want to look far in the future, eliminate it and make the world a nicer place. But yeah, I think it's it's not just horrible upbringings that make evil people. It is something in their makeup from birth.

he escaped from prison story. So I was intrigued by the Ralph Bucky Phillips story from the start made national news at Staying Power. But when Richard Matt and David Sweat escape from the Clinton Gretchel facility in Dana, Mora during the spring of twenty fifteen, I was lucky enough to be assigned to write the book for the University Press of New England. And I spent the better part of six months investigating that story, which in some ways resembled this one. So I put off writing about Bucky

until now. Bucky he escaped from a jail near the Alden Correctional Facility where he was where he was sentenced, using his wits and a can opener. Now the bizarre thing right off the bat. Now the old in correctional facilities in Erie County. That's westernmost New York State, almost Pennsylvania or Ohio. Bizarrely, Bucky took off only four days before the end of his ninety day sentence for parole violation. Yeah, incredible, So he kneeded out. It was like a panic attack.

He kneeded out, and he got out. And he was for the next few months, perhaps at his happiest. I mean, Bucky's dad had been a mean drunk. He'd run away frequently as a kid. When he ran away, he would have to get away from his mean dad. He'd run through the woods, sometimes fifteen miles from Cossadaga to Jamestown to go to his aunt's house. So how to go long distances without ever having used the road? And one thing he had going for him even when he was

little is he wasn't afraid of the dark. So Bucky grew up bad, always in trouble, stealing stuff, mostly lots of time in jail, had no don't really hurt anybody. But now he's freaked out. He's escaped from jail and he's on the run. And at first state police just didn't care that much. I mean's he's cutting four days off of a pearle violets sentenced. If the guy wants to go home that badly four days early, you know,

let him right. But there there was a search, and there was also and this is interesting because this is not that far in the past. It's only what six years ago. But there's the assumption, there's just the assumption that because Bucky Phillips has Native American blood in him, that he is an expert outdoorsman, that this gives him a intrinsic uh superiority over his predominantly white pursuers in the woods because he can read trails and use the moss on trees as a compass and all of it.

You know, there was absolutely no truth in it whatsoever. Bucky looking to steal a hot car and outrun you, he didn't really care that much about the moss on the trees. Sorry that the search for Bucky is a little bit lacka days ago until he decides to throw himself a party one night and gets an abriated and is driving erratically in Shamung County, which is where Almyra is crossing the double yellow in the wee hours of

the morning and picks up the cup car. Saturday morning, twelve fifty am, June tenth, two thousand and six, and we're in veteran New York thirty year old State troopers Shoan Brown and his partner Donald will the patrolling route thirteen. Brown's driving and the troopers saw suspicious vehicle on Parrot Road, hot car Mustang, and the car was in front of them looking like it had just left the tavern parking lot.

Hang out. Police sup trol the roads, you know, have a sixth sense for a tipsy driver, so they decide to investigate. Brown is a married to his father too, is a Trooperson's two thousand and two. Puts on the flashing light, taps the siron a couple of times, and the swerving car obbediately pulls over, obediently pulls over. Now they followed procedure. Will is six months Brown's junior on the force, so he gets out and approaches the car

on the passenger's side. Brown approaches the driver's side, and Brown's closer to the car when a gun from the driver's side comes out the window, shoots Brown in the abdomen and knocks Brown down. Gun pulls back inside the car. Car speeds away and neither trooper has a chance to see the license number. Will drags Brown back into the car, takes the wheel, drives his bleeding partners to the Saint Joseph's Hospital. Brown goes into surgery, comes out conscious and loosen. Well.

The lackadaisical nature of the hunt for Bucky Phillips just went right out the window. Yeah, from here on out. He shot a cop. Now it's now it's serious business. And a cat and mouse camp starts all over the southern tier of New York State, and Bucky leaves breadcrumbs for manhunters because he steals in an abandons cars pretty frequently. One place he robbed was a gun store, and that again, that got cops nervous, because what you gonna use all

these weapons for? They do the police do an interesting thing. They put under surveillance and of even arrest members of Bucky's family so that they cannot give Bucky aid. You can't go home as the message. And on Saturday night, June seventeenth, one week after the shooting of Trooper Brown, the Bucky Phillips case goes big time, goes national when it's featured on America's Most Wanted TV show and there's Bucky Mania. Folks being who they are, looking to make

a buck whatever they can. There's a lot of commerce generated by Bucky Phillips, notoriety bars in particulars into all things Bucky. There's Bucky drinks, there's T shirts Where's Bucky? He Got Fucky? And the most popular T shirt run Bucky Run Now. Some thought it was a riot, some thought it was in bad taste. After all, Poort Trooper had been shot. And at the beginning of August, after almost two months in the hospital, Sean Brown has healed enough to get out and return to work, and he

joins the hunt from the man who shot him. The case takes another serious step into tragedy at six ten pm on Thursday, August thirty, first two troopers are shot down in an ambush Bucky. They're brought in with gunshot wounds. One of the wounded men was brought to Brooks Memorial near fre Donia. The other was flown to Erie County

Medical Center, Buffalo. One was in critical condition, had been shot in the leg and apparently shot through that artery that bleeds out and was near death when he was found. So the two wounded troopers are thirty two year old Joseph Longobardo and thirty eight year old Donald Baker Jr. And Bucky is the only suspect. I mean, there's just nobody out there shooting troopers except the bus rint and the chances of him being taken alive would seem at

this point to be practically nil. I would I would think. You know, if you had asked a candid trooper at that point what his chances were of being captured alive, the trooper would have said zero. And the families said the same thing. You know, Bucky's not going to allow himself to be arrested. He's going to commit suicide by cop. You know, if he wanted to just be peacefully go back to jail, he had done in a long time ago. So anyway, because Longibardo has passed away from the bleeding

out from his leg wound. Bucky's now a cop killer, and what ensues is the largest man hunt in New York State history until Matt and Sweat escaped from Dana Mora a few years later. Personnel were taken away from community oriented campaigns, anti drug campaigns, anti gang campaigns in the cities of New York State, all to join the hunt for Bucky Phillips, who, after all these months, remained

only one man. And the hunt now drifted out of New York State and into northern Pennsylvania, and it was not just growing large, but it was getting smarter as well. Troopers on both sides of the state line had become aware of the pattern Bucky stole cars and moved at night, so they suspected he had hideouts that they still didn't know about, and that those locations were very close to the state line, so they concentrated on area roads between the night and dawn, and it couldn't go on forever.

There came a day when the hunters established a perimeter and Bucky was indeed inside it. They tightened the circle until they could see him. Friends and family were ready to start grieving because Bucky's days were numbered. But another surprise, Buck he'd had enough. He could see the swat team. The helicopter was directly overhead, and so he walked out of the woods, very close to Accole, New York, and into a clearing with his hands up and with news

of the capture. The residents of Accollee lined the streets and cheered wildly as a motorcative law enforcement vehicles drew from the area. After his capture, Bucky said he was sorry about the trooper that got killed. Who was sorry about the troopers that got shot both of them, But for the most part, he was proud of himself. He pulled it off. Man, He had everybody on the run there for a while. Yeah, and that's the Bucky Phillips story. Bucky's still with.

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included Flossy Wilbert Vanishes. Before we talk about the Genesee Junction murders, which I know is incredibly personal to you with George n. Formacole and Kathy Bernhardt being your friends. But let's just briefly mention the story of Flossi Wilbert Vanishes.

town and home to maybe thousand people. There's a chance that she was the least liked person in the state of New York. You know, maybe the only only Jim Cannon was a competitor to know her, apparently was the hater. Flossi was a formidable presence, a bundle of negative energy. She's five six, one hundred and sixty pounds, and she looked like she could handle herself, you know that, not like a seventy five year old woman at all. She

looked like she could kick your butt. She usually dressed in roughed up dungarees, work shoes, flannel shirt, and she always carried some sort of club. It wasn't a baseball back, but it had a similar shape. Maybe it was a table leg. No one was really s but she looked like she could put it upside your head if she wanted to. And she was a bitter, hostile woman who combined a nasty disposition with anger management issues to pretty much guarantee she was always alone, which most people believed

was the way she wanted it. Now here's a stat there are at least two people who left Angelica because they didn't want to live in the same village with Flossie wilbur Ed and k Iiker had split down, and Flossie was the reason ed and Kay had appreciated the beauty of Angelica and offered their home to the Fresh Air Kids program, in which kids from the inner city got to have some fresh air in the summer by moving in with a volunteer family in the country. Well,

Flossie was racist to the bone. Who saw that coming everybody? She was bigoted down to her COEs And she saw the black kid playing with white kids next door, and she went nuts. She used every racist, Vulgarican she could muster. She harassed the kers, and it wasn't just verbal abuse. The Aikers would go out and they'd come home to find their home vandalized, smeared and rotten fruit so poof. On August twenty fourth, nineteen eighty five, Flossi had to

go shopping for a few necessities. She got in her car and drove to the village market on Main Street. She left to go very far. She lived on Main Street, only about two hundred yards to the west. It was an easy walk unless you're getting groceries. So she took the car. She had a new car nineteen eighty five. Ford escort and was looking for opportunities to use it. At the store, she bought her groceries, put them in the car, and drove away, and that was the last

time anyone saw her except for her killer. Of course, when Flossie hadn't picked up her newspaper for six days, the two man Angelica Police Force performed a wellness check and Flossie was going plucked from life with apparently she was apparently still bringing groceries into the house from the car. Somewhere in the house. Some were some are still in the car, and police could do nothing but scratch their heads and search, but Flossie was nowhere to be found.

And canvassed main street and talked one time to another to all of Flossi's nearest neighbors, and the more people came in contact with Flossie, the more they hated her guts. So the number of suspects was lengthy. One man, a forty two year old named David Shark. He was tall and lanky. Local antique dealer told cops Flossi went through

feces at my house. So the point here is that the town's all shook up, but they're not grieving nobody's sad, but they are afraid that whatever happened to Flossie could happen to them too, So they're afraid. One woman said that she remember once she was playing with the kids who lived next door to Flossie, and Flossi came out and pointed a shotgun at them. I'm thinking that might be the same incident with the Fresh Air kids from the Inner City. But anyway, it was like that up

and down the street who had a motive. Everybody had a motive. And just as in the Bucky Phillips story, where the slogan had been Wars Flossie and Angelica, the catchphrase was now the face was now, where's Flossi? Set? Around Bucky one? So there were those who preferred to think that Flossi just wandered off, and they someday wandered back. But most looked at the facts and saw a woman who'd been stolen from her life. People locked their doors,

and nobody sat out on the front porch anymore. Now we skipped ahead thirty some years, thirty five years to twenty nineteen and a break in the Flossi wilbercase. Slibel, her killer on his deathbed confesses to the crime and gives authorities a location to search for her body. Now, the killer turned out to be David Shirk, who was the antique dealer who said that Flossi throm feces at his house, so police knew about him all along. He was one of many who might have done it, and

he took credit for it on his deathbed. The problem is it couldn't really sew it up because when they went to look for Flossie's body, they found an area that had been flooded out repeatedly in the thirty years since she would have been buried there, and they didn't find her body. He was supposed to be in the vicinity of the Almond Dam and they couldn't find her. So veterans of the Wares Flossie investigation said that Chirk's

confession didn't come as a complete surprise. He was a currently mentioned in her diary quite a bit as a neighbor she was having particular problems with. She said mean things about him. Yeah, she called people half breeds, bums and idiots, and Shirk, before he could give any other further information about the crime, died on April fourteenth, twenty nineteen at the age of seventy six. And I guess we'll call that case closed. There's no reason for him

to lie, just said. Confessions are usually taking as good evidence, and the fact that they couldn't find the body had a, you know, a natural excuse. But Wilbert Flossie or Flossie Wilder, she's they're still wondering where she is in Angelica, New York.

been shot. He said he and his wife had two boys, three and five years old, and they were in their room asleep. The nine one one operator asked Kevin to check his wife for a pulse, which he did and reported that his wife was dead. And the reason that was different from any other call is that nine one one operators are used to dealing with people who are just absolute panic, and Kevin Bryant was calm. He's collected, he seemed maybe a little bored, sounded if he yawned

at one point. Now, when law enforcement arrives, they're immediately struck by Kevin Bryant's size. He's a tiny man, stood only an inch or two above five feet. He'd been sick as a kid, he'd had many heart surgeries. And the police, even the police women who are there, towered over him, and they took him to the end of his driveway and started to question him. And again, we're much like in the Charlie Tan case. We're on a nice street with beautiful homes. This time we're in Penfield,

New York, which is Pittsford like in its toniness. So he tells police he grew up in Penfield, graduated from Pennfield High in nineteen seventy six, got his law degree from Vermont. Why now, who's a lawyer, had an office on Ridge Road out in the count of Greece, and he admitted that he and his wife had contemplated divorce just the previous Friday. He said his wife was named Tabitha Marie Bryant. She was twenty six years old, he

was forty five. They were married in nineteen ninety seven, and they'd known each other for many years because they belonged to different branches of the community of Christ Church. He had been her divorce lawyer after a short lived marriage to a high school sweetheart didn't work out. They had troubles. She had a boyfriend, a guy named Keith Cromwell. Maybe he's the one who did it, Kevin suggested, hopefully. Kevin, of course, was an instant suspect, the husband always is.

But with the exception of blood on the two fingertips where he checked Tabitha's palls, there was no blood on him and the killer would have had to have been a bloody mess. Police were baffled. There was no sign of fourth entry, no sign of burglary. The husband said he didn't see the killer by time he made it to the top of the stairs look down into the living room, the killer was already out of the house

and in his car, which noisily drove away. Plus, and nobody likes to talk about this, but plus, there was semen on the body. Semen that has never been identified now. Tabitha graduated from high school in nineteen ninety five and soon thereafter married her high school sweetheart. Her husband wore the same tuxs to the wedding that he'd warned to

the prom. He took a job in the town of Avon, which is the southern suburb of Rochester, and Tabitha moved out of her hometown for the first time, and they began to fight almost immediately. She contacted Kevin, the only lawyer she knew, and Kevin, licking his chops, told Tabitha that he would be glad to help her with her divorce, and of course she would need a place to stay.

He had a big, empty house. Maybe she could move in with him, She said, sure, and at first she slept in the guest room, but before long before the divorce was final, she'd moved again, this time into the master bedroom and Kevin Bryan's large bed. Kevin and taminth Tabitha were wed on December twenty sixth, nineteen ninety seven. That's a little about a year after her first wedding. For reasons that are unclear, she wore red spike high heels as she walked down the aisle to join Kevin

at the altar. At first, Kevin and Tabitha seemed like an ideal couple. Kevin's family and church friends were, to put it bluntly, relieved when he, being a lifelong bachelor, had finally taken a wife. The church was very conservative spin off of Churchillatter day Saints, and men were restricted to one wife, of course by American law, but the

church taught that the wife should be obedient. So Kevin had never had a steady girlfriend before Tabitha came along, and the rumor was that kevin sex wife consisted of hiring local sex workers for parties in suburban motels, and even after he was married, Kevin continued to see prostitutes. He took his new bride to strip joints, one in particular in the town of Henrietta, where he enjoyed watching his new bride give other men laugh dances.

His wife and kid had left him, and he had a nervous breakdown and ended up in a mental institution with amnesia. Would it be okay if she would help him remember who he was? Well, I don't know how much of that was malingering, Probably a lot of it. But Tabina says, oh my, you must come only with us. We have this big house. So Cyril moves in. Kevin gives Cyril a job working in his office, and a cast is completed by Cassidy Green, who is Monroe County's

tiniest sex worker. She's four ten, weighs seventy six pounds, and her street name is baby Doll. Now, if a man wanted to imagine himself with a child, she could pretend she was a child, but in reality she was twenty two years old, and she became Cyril Winebrenner's girlfriend and moved into the Briant home. So Kevin, after living alone, has now put together this little family. He's got a wife, he's got a he's got a brother in law's brother in law's girlfriend, a couple of kids, you know, he has.

He has a family now, which she's enjoying dragging through the carnal mud of you know, sex parties and strip choics. Cassidy became Tabby's babysitter when Tabitha worked as a teller at a branch bank. Cassidy and Cyril developed overwhelming cocaine addictions. Although Kevin was not couldn't use cocaine because of his bad heart, he always had a bunch on hand which

he's used to control people. And that it's fairly common as men who who are regular consumers of of of prostitutes, because sure sex workers do not have long attention spans, and a couple of lines of coke will sometimes keep them interested a little while longer. Anyway, Keavinths is born to kids, She's pleased her church, She's fooling everybody. She thinks everybody's everybody thinks she's happy and enjoying her role as a lawyer's wife. She's not happy. Kevin doesn't seem

to like her. He likes having a hot, young wife, but he doesn't like her, you know. He takes her out, He makes her right on top of strange men, and perhaps it serves Kevin right. But one a night, Tabitha is sitting on the lap of a man and named Keith Clowmwell, and she and Keith hid it all for one thing. Keith a normally sized man, and he's also older, and Tabitha does have a type. He's the same age as Tabitha's mother, so who her boyfriend and her husband

are both a generation older than she is. But finally Kevin figures out something's going on you. He's a private detective. Private detective follows Tabitha comes back with photos of Tabitha and her boyfriend kissing and holding hands. Now immediately, immediately, Kevin starts thinking about having Tabitha killed because he she is disobeying him, she is humiliating him, she is making him coupled, and it doesn't matter how many sex partners he's had during their marriage, the fact that she has

a boyfriend and is without his permission. I mean, she's being disobedient. And he starts asking around, now drug dealers and sex workers if they know anybody who might be willing to bump somebody off for him. Yeah. Now, later Tabitha is dead shot and stabbed under a ceiling fan that is dripping gore. So the story, I said, well,

what the heck happened? And you know, the last kent I'll give you is the contract's finally taken by Cyril Winebrenner, who's so strung out and desperate for money that he agrees to kill his sister in exchange for five thousand dollars in cocaine, money and cassidy. After he cuffs her around a little bit, agrees to drive the getaway car. So, of all the all the motives for murder that I've written about, perhaps I needed cocaine money, so I killed

my sister is the weakest. Yeah, that's that's the Tabitha bred. Tabitha, by the way, is the pretty young woman who's on the cover of the book.

You know, his wife is clearly being attacked downstairs, and he calmly turns another page and his Tom Clancy novel before going to see what's up.

through the eyes of a nine year old boy. So I decided to approach the murders again from a writing point of view, enough from an investigative point of view, and to take me out of the picture and to tell it like a straight police story. So that's what I did. Eventually, I had to show up in the story because there comes a time when all further activity in the case stems from the alliance between Kathy Bernhard's mom,

Alyss and myself as a nine year old boy. I'm basically a bystander and not that important to the story except for the fact that I grew up to become a true crime writer. So June twenty fifth, nineteen sixty six, hot Saturday night in Chili, New York, the first day of summer vacation, graduation night at the high schools and along Valentine Road, two teenage girls were feeling restless. There was fourteen year old George Anne Formacola and her sixteen

year old friend Kathy Burnher. They didn't feel like being around adults, and so around seven point thirty, after asking permission from Kathy's mom, they went back to their favorite swimming hole at Black Creek for a quick cool down before dinner. Alice Bernhard, Kathy's mom, told the girls it was okay with her, but to be back in an hour, And the truth of the matter was she wasn't worried

because Kathy was afraid of the dark. They were going to be back before it got too dark anyway, So the girls are wearing their brand new two peace bathing suits. Around Kathy's way was tied a large beach towel with a cartoon picture of a woman wearing a bikini, sunglasses, and a sombrero. Are it? Kathy wore foot flops, Georgiana was barefoot. Georgiaanne never wore shoes of any kind in

the summertime. These are the things I know, because I was there carrying her small, red wrist held transistor radio, her most prized possession. She'd never been anywhere without it. The radio, as always, was tuned into WBBF nine P fifty am dial and Rochester's coolest station, Coolest DJ Queen b Jessica Savage was spinning the hits. And when the girls got to the swimming hole back by Black Creek,

they were discouraged swimming and picnicking. Were Spanish speaking people from the city of Rochester, so they didn't go in the water, and instead they kept walking along the tracks until they got to the Old Genesee Junction, where the Pen Railroad crossed the west shore line of the New York Central used to be a major transportation hub, but

by nineteen sixty six it's a ghost town. They took a rite and they walked on a gravel road as far as Scottsville Road, where they stopped briefly at a small tavern called the Castle Inn, where Kathy's father could often be found. They bummed some money, crossed the Valentine Bridge over the Genesee River, and went into Coop's Convenience Store,

where they bought cokes and a pack of figures. They crossed the bridge again, walked for a time southward along the scott Ville Road, where a woman remembered seeing them. There was a rope on a tree where kids swung into the Genesee River, but the girls were unhappy with whoever it was or wasn't at the swing, so they headed northward again and settled along the side of Black Creek at its confluence with the Genesee River, now fishing

are the with family of Rochester. Bruce Wit told investigators that at approximately seven point thirty he and his wife saw the girls, who they identified by photographs. They walked down to the creek bank. One of the girls took off her flip flops put her feet in the water.

The other sat on the rocks. They were chatting and appeared in a happy mood Lyitch said that at one point he was trying to cast his line into the center of the creek and it was caught on the Scottsville Road bridge railing, so he walks up the embankment to free his line, and when he's up there, he sees a nineteen fifty five or fifty seven Chevrolet pull over to the shoulder of the road on the bridge, and the car was beat up. It was dark green in color, with either damage to the front end or

a front grill that was missing. Something was wrong with the front of the car. A male youth in his early twenties, dark complexion, possibly of Italian extraction, got out of the vehicle yelled to the two girls to come alone, whistled come on, come on. The girls got up bank and got into the vehicle, which then made a U turn and headed north on Scottsvio Road towards the city Rochester. But before he got to the railroad crossing, they made another U turn and then started driving back towards wit

and Black Creek. After that, the witness paid no further attention and the girls were never seen alive again. Now, the tone of that makes me think those girls know that guy. He said come on, and they were obedient to him. It was more like a friend or a family member, you know, come on, your mom need je

home anyway. At three point thirty pm on July twenty seventh, that's about a month later, forty three year old forty three year old farmer Vincent Zuber smells a rich oder, thinks one of his cows died, goes to investigator on a tractor and finds the bodies of the girls off of a lover lane Lover's lane that runs along the same railroad tracks that the girls had walked along during

their last hours. Both bodies were found face up, about fifteen feet apart, and the lane next to which the bodies were located led to worked farm fields and were noted mostly for being used by local young people as a place for necking in cars. For George Anne, doctor Greendyke, the medical examiner, found five penetrating insized wounds of her anterior, two stab wounds of her left arm, four stab wounds to her perineum, or insized wounds to her neck with

partial transaction of her gold vertebrae. In other words, he cut off her left breast and cut her throat so deeply that she was almost beheaded, and stabbed her multiple times in a cluster on and around her vagina. Now for Kathy. She had three penetrating insized wounds of the interior thorax, two wounds on her right arm and hand,

sharp excision of both breasts and perennium. In other words, she had both breasts removed, she had her bladder and uterus removed, and shelf had many stab wounds throughout her body, like George Anne, all from the front, and because there were wounds to the girl's arms and hands, these were seen as defensive loans assigned that the girls had been attacked suddenly and probably killed before they were sexually mutilated.

Girls bathing suits had been put back on following the surgery, but only to cover up the areas where parts had been removed. Therefore, Kathy had both the tops and bottoms of a bathing suit on, while George Anne's top had been put back on. Her bottoms were found nearby. Kathy had the most sexual mutilation, but it was George Anne who had almost been beheaded. From then on. The story in Rochester's Most Startling Crimes is an examination of the

suspects you know as a jack Star. George Anne's hot headed boyfriend who wanted to marry her, is in Arthur Shawcross but we've talked a lot about today. Did did he come back to Rochester later and mutilate corpses in the same way that these were mutilated? Was it John Miller he Fello from Pennsylvania who had a thing about killing girls in bathing suits with a knife, or was it Clint Wilson? This pseudonym and we don't use the

pseudonym to protect him. We use the pseudonym to protect his family, many of whom we love and are food cooperative with us over the years. Clin Wilson married to George Anne's cousin and a serial rapist, and Clint also had a greaser brother, Keith, who could have passed for Italian and been the man on scottso wrote who said come along. Clint and Keith are not only from a really, really bad family of serial criminals, but they're also in

George Anne's family. Clint has is Kathy's Kathy's neighbor and married to George Anne's first cousin. Keith is married to Georgeanne's sister. So they're in and out of the former coal house all the time. We don't have to imagine

how they've met. They know each other, but we eventually conclude that that Clinton and Keith are the best suspects, just because proximity, we know they're in the area at the time, we know that they're mean enough to do it, and because of intrigue involving the illegitimate illegitimate baby that George Anne had when she was just turned fourteen, we think that there's a pretty strong motive that it was

the Wilson brothers as well. And that's Rochester's most startling crimes and intriguingly, at one point I wrote Volume one, so there maybe might be a Volume two coming down the pipe, but it will be post endemic.

allowed myself in other circumstances, but slightly fictionalized. You know, there's a character in there who doesn't really exist, so I can have him do all of the things that the police did that they don't want attributed to them. We have a fictional character who absorbs all of that for them. And the ending is designed to be an intriguing ending, and not necessarily where the story itself ends,

but I'll say the start. In eighteen sixty three, two police officers are humiliated, tortured, and murdered and the Angel Lounge in the town of Lodi. They heard a gunshot, went in to investigate and were forced to meet Strip and neil Or Pistol, whiped and eventually shot to death. One of the murderers was killed within days by police in a wild scene in a Manhattan hotel. He died

with his pants off, just like the copy killed. The other murderer turned himself in while accompanied by a beautiful female lawyer, and that began a really strange saga in American justice. Because that man was Tom the Rabbi Trantino, who claimed to recall only being a witness to the murder, said he had no recollection of participating in any way, and that despite the fact that multiple eyewitnesses saw him,

you know, helping the murder of both policemen. So Trantino was sentenced to die, but that sentence was then commuted to life. And during his four decades and Trantino proved himself to be a renaissance man. He created surrealist art that was exhibited in Asia and Europe, and he wrote and illustrated two books. And he was doing all these things even as friends and families of the murdered cops

screamed for his execution. So some are screaming he should be executed, summer screaming he should be free because he would be a contributor to and rarely do you hear that the economy quite that wy And like I said, this is experimental prose for me. If you don't like it, you can skip it. It's through pages at the end of the book, but it's written in present tense, very cinematic, and it has a a catch ending that dan Zepansky thought might mean a sequel.

In this particular case, when cops are murdered, humiliated, and tortured, you have a response from law enforcement, don't you.