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You are now listening to true Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good evening. This is your host Dan Zupansky for the program True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. It was a time of innocence, a time of hippies, flower children in the Age of Aquarius, a time when young people felt free to roam the countryside, hitchhiking without fear. A time when law enforcement was trusted by the people they were sworn to protect and serve. That time was
shattered by one of law enforcemen's own. His name was Gerard Schaeffer. He was a former Florida police officer who lied his way into the office of the Martin County, Florida Sheriff's office. He used his lie to continue to perpetuate his crimes of torture and murder of young women who hitchhiked along Florida's roads. Schaefer not only destroyed the lives of as many as thirty four young women, he kept trophies of his kills, and he lived the crimes
over and over again. He believed he was doing the world and his victims of justice by ridding the world of the whores who hitchhiked. Gerard Schaeffer was a narcissistic psychopath who wanted his fifteen minutes of fame. He believed he had earned it. My special guest this evening is Yvonne Mason, and the book will be discussing is Silent Scream. Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to be on True Murder. Yvonne Mason.
Thank you Dan for having me. This book is very close to my heart.
I could tell that by reading it, and I'm sure the audience will recognize that as we go on with this. This is one of the most incredible stories that I hadn't heard anything about before I read this book. So I also have to think I should have had the guest pardon me. One of the listeners to the program is the person that recommended and I had sent you the email with that gentleman's name, but he had highly
recommended that I contact you. So I've got to give props to that person for turning me on to you and this book, and now for our audience has the benefit of this incredible story. Now, first off, silent scream. It's a story that's older. It happened in the seventies. The crimes. Please tell us how you came to this case itself and why you decided to write about this case. Tell us about that.
When I moved to Florida to be with my now husband, he had retired from the State Attorney's office as their chief investigator and their administrative person. Right, he took me on a tour of our fair city and part of the tour was South Hutchinson Island and as we were going down A one A, he said, Yvonne, right over there is where a serial killer committed his crimes and
kept his teeth as trophies. Well, because of my background, which is criminal justice, and I am a bounty hunter and my degree is criminal justice with a side in serial killers, which is my passion, because they're such an anomaly that just set off all the creative juices. And because I had access to my husband and to the law enforcement agents that worked the crime and to all of the evidence that we used to bring him to
trial and conviction. The story begged to be written. And once the victims had names, they got him ahead and would not leave. They had to be heard. And the more I read and the more I found out, the sicker I got, and the more that I knew that I had to write this story for their benefit because they were forgotten. Some of the bodies have never been found.
Certainly.
Yeah, and it was important that these young women, through no fault of their own, have a voice, because Schaeffer stole that voice.
I see. Now, let's start at the beginning with Gerard Schaefer and let's our John. Gerard Schaeffer actually is full name. So let's go back. And as much I know that what you wrote in your book is that his family, they grew up as devout Catholics, and I think that's
the big part of part of the story. They take us back to Dori Shaeffer and her husband or John, pardon me, Shaeffer's father tell us about his early family life, so we can have some idea on what shaped this person to become the monster that he did become.
Well apparently, and I never could prove this. But from everything that I read and everything that Schaeffer said, apparently his parents had to get married because they were she was pregnant with him. So he always said that he was a byproduct of an unhappy marriage and his father. They lived in Atlanta. His father was a traveling salesman for Kimberly Clark, so he's gone a lot. And apparently his father was very abusive when he was home because
he was an alcoholic and his mother was a control freak. Well, when his father would leave home, that left Shaeffer and his mother. And though I was told that Shaeffer slept with his mother until he was sixteen years old, I left that as an open ended question in the book because I did not put anything in the book that
I could not back up with fact. Right, But there was a psyche vow, and in that psyche vow it was stated that he did sleep with his mother until he was sixteen years old, and one of the agents that were at the crime gave me that information. Well, if a child, especially boy, sleeps with his mother up until he's sixteen years old, that's problem sure. And of course when his father would come home, Shaeffer was out
of his mother's bed. So at a very early age, at twelve years old, Shaeffer started hanging himself for sexual pleasure.
So we're talking about auto erotic affixiation for those that aren't so familiar with this, that is to hang themselves to magnify or increase the sexual orgasm exactly.
And not only did he start doing that, but he started killing small animals and insects, which is a classic sign of a sociopathic killer. He would go out and kill things just for the pleasure of it, things that didn't bother him, like when they got to Florida, he would go out and kill the fan crabs, or he would pull the wings off of flies, or he would sit and shoot birds with the b begun just because
he could, and then dismember them. So he started at a very early age with his sociopathic sociopathic tendencies, and then, of course as he got older, he got involved. He said, he got involved with a girl who liked to be raped. Now I tend to disbelieve that. I believe that that was part of his narcissistic tendencies and that everything was
everybody else's fault. But he is I think that he enjoyed raping her because she broke off the relationship, and he never understood why, because he always said, she always asked for it, she wanted me to do it. Then he graduated to even more out of you know, erotic fantasies and wanting to do bad things, but he always justified it.
Now this is we're talking about John Gerard Schaeffer. He's no dummy. This guy's got been tested IQ wise. He's well over one hundred and thirty, so it puts him in the above average category. From the account in your book, he said he grew up the devout Catholic, so he had the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to either confuse him or to enlighten him. Maybe you can tell us because part of his part of the allure of these guys, and with this gentleman in particular, is his charm.
Please describe his physical looks. Was he a good looking person? Tall, muscular? About that?
He was an extremely good looking man. He was a very charming man. When the two victims that got away were interviewed, they said he was very charming. He was very nice, he was very persuasive, He had the smile that would literally knock you dead. The picture that I have in the book that was taken when he was on trial, the eyes are dead, but the smile is
just as charming as it can be. And that's how he managed to lure these young women into his vehicle and into trusting him, because he knew how to talk to them in such a way that they didn't mind getting in the call with him.
Right.
In fact, he getting back to his Catholic upbringing. He would watch his neighbor across the street and he told his friends they always knew what times she got ready for bed, and he told his friends that she was a whore and that she was asking to be raped, and he was just gonna go over there and knock in the door and go and give her something because she would like it, and that's what she wanted, right, So he.
Was peeping tom early on.
Oh, very early on.
Yeah. There is one thing I found quite interesting too, is that maybe you can tell us when this happened, approximately, is that he had thoughts of becoming a priest.
And that was, yeah, that was shortly. That was when he was in college. He had already washed out of teaching because he had gotten in trouble while he was what they call a student teacher. He'd gotten in trouble there, so he decided he would go into the priesthood. And I think that goes back to his sense of guilt for his past behavior, and also it gave him an open doorway to get rid of young women. I mean, who doesn't trust a priest?
Now, what happened with his bid for the priest or his interest in being a priest? What did the prospective, not the clergy, but what did the people in power have to say to him? And was his what was his faith as a priest? Did he well?
He never made it because they told him that he did not meet the criteria. Apparently there was something and one of either the psyche vowels or one of the tests that they gave him that said, we don't think we can use you. You're not what we're looking for. You're not the caliber person that it takes to be a priest.
The other thing was that you had alluded to was that he had gone through teachers college, or he wasn't teacher's college, and he was a teacher's assistant or like say, a student teacher, but he was dismissed from two different schools without any real explanation on why they didn't want him as a teacher at these schools. Isn't that correct?
Yes?
And in hindsight I have a feeling it was because he might have messed with some children, and that being that time period, as with the Catholic Church at that time, nobody wanted to say anything.
Now, the other interest that he has, among many things was but one of the mean interest that he had in terms of occupations, was he wanted to be a police officer in that area. Did he go to school criminology? What did he do to that? For that pursuit?
He went to the police academy and he passed the police academy. But while he was in the police academy, there were several men there that were very leary of him because of his bragadocious attitude about how he treated women and what he did with women. But he did pass.
He passed.
I mean, the man was a genius. And then he got on one of the police departments down in South Florida, and he worked there for a while and he got in trouble. And when he got in trouble, he decided it was best if he left, so he falsified his chief signature on a letter of recommendation and got hired by the Martin County Sheriff's Department.
Well, now, where's where is Martin County? That's in Is that Fort Lauderdale?
That is north of Fort Lauderdale. It's about an hour north of Fort Lauderdale. It is It is south of Saint Loucy County, where I live. But it's it's between Stuci is between Saint Lucy County and Broward County, which is Fort Lauderdale, which is where he was from, right, But he had moved when he got the job with the Martin County Sheriff's Department. He moved to Stewart, which
is in Martin County. Well, not knowing his background and not knowing that he had falsified the chief signature on this letter of recommend recommendation, the sheriff at the time hearting,
of course, remember this was in nineteen seventy. They didn't talk to each other, right, And they hired because of his great grades at the academy, and he had gotten some accolades at the police department he had been at prior, and they were in dire need of good sheriffs in Martin County because the county was growing by leeds Van, so they hired him. But he had already been killing.
He was involved. The accolade that you talk about was that he assisted or was majorly involved in a drug bust. Yes, okay, now let's get to when he's on the Martin County Police Force. It's his first incident that we see, and you introduced Nancy Trotter and Pamela Sue Wells. Describe what happened when John Gerard Schaeffer met Nancy Trotter and Pameless who under what conditions? Please explain that incredible story.
Well, those two young ladies had made their way to Florida from their home state. They had stopped in Biloxi, Mississippi, to visit one of the one of the sisters, and had hitched height to Jensom Beach. Jensen Beach is in Martin County. They were apparently making their way to the beach that day when Shaffer pulls up in his patrol car ask them what they were doing, and they told him they were going to the beach, And he said, well, why don't I ask them where?
They were.
He asked them where they were staying, and they told him, and so he said, well tomorrow I will be off. Why don't I come and pick you up and I'll take you to another beach, a better beach. So the next day his wife had a dentist appointment down in Fort Lauderdale. So Schaeffer and his civilian clothes goes and picks up these two goals. But instead of taking them to a beach, he tell them he wanted to show
them an old fort. Right, Well, there's no forts in this part of them, in this part of the county, especially on that island, there's no forts at all. So he takes them to a remote area.
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On Hutchinson Island and Hutchinson Island is an island. It's a long island that is situated between the Indian River and the Atlantic Ocean. In the nineteen seventies, there was nothing on a one to a but mangroves and road. This is very remote, so it takes them to an area that has got a lot of mangroves with a heavy roots on them. He proceeds to bond them to gag them and to hang them, and he bound them
with handcuffs. He forgot whatever it was that he needed, one of his tools of the trade, and he told them that he was teaching them a lesson because that they could get picked up by slave traders and he was going to teach them a lesson. So he leaves them and he goes back to his house and as he comes. When he comes back, the girls are gone. So he goes back to his house again and he
calls Sheriff Crowder. So he's out front cutting his grass and he tells Crowder that he's done a bad thing, and Crowder asks him what he's done, and he tells him that he's done this to these two girls and there they're gone. Well, Crowder tells him to come down to the station. In the meantime, Crowder gets in his patrol car and starts north on a NA and he comes upon a car with a gentleman that's standing beside the car, and one of he has one of the girls.
And what it happened is the girls had gotten loose, they'd gotten out of the noose, and one of them had haulbuggy down south on a one A Crowder pulls up. They put her in the car. Then she takes them back to the place where the other girl had been left, and she's not there. They find her in the Indian River, trying to get away. They bring both the girls back to the Sheriff's department and they tell their story, and
in the meantime, somebody's interrogating Shafer. Well, when it was all done, Bob Crowder had the guts to arrest Shafer on two counts of kidnapping and two counts of assault because Crowder had the nerve to do that when he ran for sheriff the next time, he lost because you didn't do that, you did not cross the blue line.
Well, so he.
Lost his job as sheriff. When Shaffer went in front of the judge, the judge gave him six months. They dropped all the charges but won assault charge. The judge gave him six months in jail. Shaeffer said, well, can I take some time to get my affairs in order? This was like in September. Can I get times to get my affairs in order? Because I need to get my wife down to Fort Lauderdale to stow with my mother,
and YadA, YadA, YadA. So the judge not knowing the history because, like my husband said, they didn't even know what a serial killer was. He said, it was something you ate for breakfast. And they did not know all these other girls had disappeared. He says, Okay, you have to report on January the fifteenth, to do your six months. From September until January, the aide Shaffer killed six more young women.
Wow. So to the judge's credit, though they gave him six months, they did drop a bunch of charges, but they didn't buy into his story that he was just trying to scare these women into not hitchhiking. They didn't buy that.
They didn't buy into it, but they didn't take it far enough because they didn't know any better.
Wow. Now he gets the six months, he goes to jail. Is there any events? It was it eventful his time in prison? Tell us about his time in prison.
He was due to get out in April mid April. On April, the first two gentlemen found two bodies on South Hutchinson Alan at Blind Creek, which was down from or north of the power plants.
And when.
My husband and the other law enforcement agents got there and started working the crime scene, it dawned on them that this was the same ebo that Shaeffer was serving time for. The stories were just what it looked like to them, matched with the two girls had told that got away, So that gave them probable cause for a search warrant. They got a search warrant for Shaffer's apartment in Stewart, and they got a search warrant for Shaeffer's
mother's house in Fort Lauderdale. When they got down and they had to bring in the Broward County Sheriff's Department because they they crossed jurisdictional lines, so they had to bring them in. When they brought them in and they executed the search warrant, they found a treasure trove of trophies. And not only did they find trophies, they found photographs.
They found a book that Schaeffer was writing that he said was fiction, but when they read it, it made them all very very ill because it was confessions of the crimes.
He had committed, or at least it seemed like it.
It seemed like, so they brought him up on charges of murdering the two girls. They convicted him of it and he got life because at that time in nineteen seventy two, Florida Supreme Court and all of its infinite wisdom, struck down the capital punishment. Right, you couldn't kill anybody
for a capital crime, you could only give them life. Well, the two girls were killed in September of seventy two, and when they brought him to trial, even though they brought him to trial in seventy three, they could only give him life. They couldn't ask for the death penalty.
Now let's go back. Let's talk about the trial a little bit. He really didn't the police, despite everything they had, what they did find at his mother's house, at Dorothy Schaeffer's house. When you talk about trophies, the trophies were things like a purse, personal effects, correct, And so what they did find was they found personal effects of people that they didn't know were missing yet or certainly didn't
know anything about. But at the same time, what I want to talk about is the trial is that despite not having overwhelming evidence, they had a lot of circumstantial evidence, and yet they still got a conviction and gave him a life sentence. But tell us a little bit about the kind of evidence that they did cobble together to be able to convict him murder of these two women.
They found a brown swede bag that belonged to Susan place. They found a GOLDERI box that belonged to Georgia Jessup. And when the when they were putting all of the things that they were bringing in a house, when they were doing an inventory log, there was an officer sitting there writing it into the inventory line, and he asked Dorris Schaeffer if she recognized these two articles, and she
said no, she had never seen them before ever. Right but when it came to trial, the family circled the wagons and purged themselves on the stand and said that the jewry box belonged to Grandpa Shaeffer, and that the brown swayed bag belonged to Shaeffer, that he had bought it to put his bullets in. And they never could swathe them that those did not belong to the people they said they did. But the victim's parents identified both of those items as belonging to their children.
Right now, what was the behavior in the demeanor of a John Gerard Schaeffer when he's looking at life in prison? What was his demeanor and what was his behavior like at the trial, he was very relaxed.
He was very nonchalant. Was he really believed he would get off? And he threatened to kill the prosecuting attorneys, both Phil Schahler and Bob Stone. He threatened to kill their families. He threatened to kill my ho. Then he's threatened to kill all of the law enforcement that was involved, Rick mcelwaine, everyone that was involved, Steve Williams, everyone that was involved in the case. He telled him that he
was going to kill them. In fact, when they were sitting in court one day before the judge came in, they were in a very small courtroom, and he leaned over to Bob Stone of Phil Schler, and he said, Phil, I saw your wife and daughter at the park yesterday. They sure did look nice.
Yeah.
So he's taunting authorities and the victims' families and anyone else he can. The other thing I found quite interesting too, is that he was married at the time to a woman named Teresa Dean Teresa Schaeffer. Does his wife stick with him through this trial? You talk his mother testifying him on his behalf, what about his wife?
His wife stuck with him the entire time? Incredible in fact, there is something that was left out of the book, and I left it out in ten point because Teresa was as much of a victim as the victims were right when he and again this was secondhand, so I
did not put it in the book. But the source that I got this from is very credible, and the source told me that later Theresa made the statement that before he would allow her in the bed at night, he would make her laid down on the tile floor in the bathroom until her body was cold.
Interesting, Now, what about the media at the trial and how, if, and how does John Gerard Schaeffer, in his being a narcissist and also being a person looking were attention. What happens with the media? How do they how seriously did they consider this story? And then how does he interact with the media.
The media ate it up, and Shaeffer played them like a piano. He was charming. He was, Oh, this is gonna be fine, I'm gonna get off. I'm not guilty. I didn't do this. Bob Stone is a liar. And the media, because it was such a unique crime and it had never happened before, the media it was like a feeding friend. It was like sharks in the water.
People could not get enough of Shaeffer, and they were everywhere, and every time they showed up, Shaeffer had to tell his side of the story, and he lived for it as long as they played his game his way.
One of the sorry one of the stories that he put forth was just to just to muddy the waters.
Was he said that the reason that he was in prison, or that he was charged, was because he was about to reveal information about a police drug dealing story, and as they were, this was a way of the police internally silencing him and he did get I don't know about mileage, but the media did print a lot of the allegations from Schaeffer, and he had a few allegations like you say that Robert Stone, the prosecutor, was this, and so there was a fair amount of attention by
the media and they must have seen him as a good and interesting interview. So George Schaeffer played his journalist.
You know that bad news sales papers, sure, and people they live off of it. But at the same time it was frightening because Stuart was like a back road country town. There was nothing there Port Saint Lucy, where I lived, roads went nowhere. There were no houses, so this Whilarrea was pretty remote, but people felt safe because they believed in their police officers. Well Shaeffer destroyed it. So that's old papers too. Here you have a cop
that's out killing women. How many more cops are out there killing women?
Now? Nancy Trotter and Pamela Sue Wells, the first almost victims of Gerard Schaeffer, did they testify at the trial?
They did, and willingly. In fact, my husband Jack wanted to do a rent so that they could show it at the trial. And they flew the girls back down here, and the girls were more than willing to go back to the scene of the crime, be hung, be bound, and be gagged so that they could shoot the footage for the trial. And when they got on the stand, my husband said they were impeccable.
Right now, the lawyer for the defense you talked about the prosecutor being Robert E. Stone, and we'll talk about a little bit about him a little bit later. But an interesting character is the defense lawyer, Elton Schwartz. Now tell us a little bit about Elton Schwartz and just the tact that he used at trial. You talked about endless motions. So talk a little bit about Elton Schwartz before we give the audience another surprise.
Well, Elton Schwartz was with the Public Defender's office and he was the best public defender at that time. He knew how to defend. But I think in the back of his mind that he really believed that Schaeffer was guilty. And his second chair was Bruce Colton, who had just gotten out of law school. And Bruce had a pregnant wife and needed a job. So he literally was baptized by fire because this was his first capital crime case.
Now Bruce is our state attorney. But Elton would lead his witnesses, especially Doris Shaeffer and Teresa by the hand through the proceedings with kid gloves. He was very kind to them and he was very easy with them.
The thing is with Elton Schwartz at the beginning of the trial, again, he filed numerous motions, basically trying everything he could in his vigorous defense. But one of the things that he tried and wasn't successful, but he really tried very hard, was to have some psychiatrists designate John Gerard Schaeffer as being insane. Yes, yes, to that avail, to that avail, what was it exactly that they were
trying to say was his illness? And tell us just a little bit about the battle of the psychiatrists.
Well, Elton tried to get the psychiatrist to say that Schaeffer was not responsible for his ashes, that he did not know what he had done, and that he did not know the difference from right or wrong, and that
he had a personality disorder. Well, when tiatrist got through with his evaluation, he determined that Schaefer knew exactly what he was doing, and that Shaeffer was indeed not insane, and that what they did is they took him up to Chattahoochee, which is the local nuthouse, for a thirty day evaluation, and the psychiatrist plainly said that he was a narcisistic sociopath with homicidal tendencies, so they could not
use that defense. And what Schwartz was trying to do was delayed the trial for as long as possible so that people would forget about it and maybe he would get him off.
Didn't work, so he sentenced to life. When all this said and done, and what do we find out somewhat later. But during this whole process, at some point, Teresa Shaeffer files for But why does she file for divorce and who is she now with?
Teresa Shaeffer files for divorce in November. After Shaeffer is sentenced in September, and she turns around several days later and marries Elton Schwartz, the defense attorney.
Incredible and apparently.
At sometime during the course of the trial, she and Elton got very close, and you know, it was like I see it as a psychiatrist in patient relationship. Okay, he was her savior from and I really believe that Shaeffer abused her on many different levels because she was very young when they got married, and he had already been out doing his killings for many years prior to that.
And I really believe that she bought his bill of goods and didn't know how to get out of it, because again, that was a time in history where women were not protected like they are now. And I'm sure she was afraid of him, and I'm sure in his mother's eyes, he did no wrong. So when Elton came along,
Elton was like Krnight in shining armor. And they got married several days after her divorce were finals, and Schaeffer used that and one of his thirty four appeals that he did not have adequate defense because the defense attorney was screwing around with his wife.
Right now, this story has just got so many twists and turns. So he's in prison, but at some point and right away, what he's doing too is trying to get out of prison. So what does he do. He is a turns into a jail house snitch, trying to get information on other murderers. And he's in You say, he's in a minimum security prison, so he has the ability and the freedom to do some things. And what does he do with that freedom? Tell us a little bit about his behavior in prison before he gets shipped
to Stark Prison. Tell us about what he does.
Oh, when he was at Avon Park, which is a minimum security it's like a work camp. Now, he would invite reporters to come visit him and he would have them record him while he read excerpts of his book. He would also this is also at a time when he would write the threatening letters to law enforcement, to Bob Stone, to Phil Shailer, to my husband, to Rick mcelwaine, and to other people. That were involved, and even to
Teresa and to Elton and to Bruce. He would write letters saying that he was going to kill them and he was going to do this, and he was going to do that. And while he was at Avon Park he got involved with Sundra London again. He had been involved with Sandra when they were in high school and had broken up after about a year, and after he became convicted of this crime, Sondra hooked back up with
him because she wanted to become another Ann Rule. She wanted to write true crime and she wanted to get her fifteen minutes of fame, so she hooked back up with Shaeffel Lilee was Avon Park and told him that she would be more than happy to tell his story. Well, his story was his book that he was written called Killer Fiction, which he said was his imagination, which in actuality it was confessions of his crime, which he never admitted to. When Sandra didn't play to his tune, he
started threatening her and her daughter. In the meantime, she gets him all these interviews on current Affair and gets these reporters to go in and resolved his books to him, and he makes statements like did I do it? You tell me is this story real.
Or not?
And he was always playing the mind game and he could get away with it. In fact, he even when he was there, got involved in a scheme where that his father was involved in as well as a Filipino bride and it was a prostitution ring and he was making money. And he was also writing to different people under these different names and he was writing them erotica and he was getting paid for it.
Well, let's let's be clear what this is though, That he met a person named Eric Cross. They became partners. He's a photographer and they through the father, he set up conference calls for Eric Cross to photograph children with animals and got a legitimate organization called dot Burn's Agency, and they actually convinced seven adults he did to pose naked for this photographer and see while both of them are in prison.
And got the children to pens naked.
Incredible, incredible, and the man could do anything.
And when it finally dawned on the law enforcement what was going on, and what they would do is Schaeffer would call his father, then they would three way to the clients. Well, when it all came out, they knew. Shaeffer then to Stark which is also known as Rayford, which is a maximum security prison, which is where the electric chairry is.
And there are a certain amount of famous serial killers, like our audience will know Ted Bundy Otis Tool yes, being some of two of the most notorious serial killers, and especially they shared the same characteristic. They loved the media. They loved either exaggerating or telling the truth or a combination of both.
And they loved braggett. They were braggadocius. Sure, and if you believe what Shaefer said, he and Bundy had this I want to call it love hate relationship because Bundy, according to Shaeffer, said that he read about Schaeffer and that's why he did what he did. And he wanted to know how many Shaffer killed because he killed thirty four. And Shaeffer said, well, I did when And then he
told Bundy there's two types of serial killers. There's an organized and a disorganized Schaefer was a very organized killer. Bundy was not. And he told Bundy, he said, what you do is just wrong. You don't know how to kill. You leave too big of a mess.
Yeah, incredible. Now, one of the stories which involved Ted Bundy and Otis Tool. Oti's Tool is sort of a not so intelligent serial killer, but he had the smarts, I guess, to cause enough trouble and claimed he had killed all these people, including America's most wanted host, John Walsh. John Walsh's son, Adam Walsh was killed and Oti's Tool and John Gerard Schaeffer hooked up to try to extort money from John Walsh fifty thousand dollars for the remains of it Adam.
Yeah.
He Shaeffer told John Walsh that for fifty thousand dollars he would tell him where Adam's head was. Well, I know that that they closed the case and in a credit to that to Otis Tool. But I studied Otis Tool, and the guy that he killed with Otis Tool was not smart enough to do that on his own. M Otis Tool was a follower. But I know that that Wash won enclosure, so they said, Okay, we're gonna give.
It to Tool.
But Tool was not the brains of that outfit. But Shaeffer was smart enough because at that time that that particular crime was with Walsh's son was everywhere and and it happened in Vero Beach which is north as me and and they wanted to know that, you know, wash One enclosure. So he figured that he would use that to gain a notoriety and the favoritism so that maybe some of his time might get knocked off, or he might get some extra points in prison, some extra freedoms.
And that was not the first time that he had done that. He would pretend to be the jailhouse lawyer to gain information to use against the prisoners that he was pretending to represent.
Right now, back to this is bragging. He does say to some inmate that he has killed thirty four thirty or thirty four young women. Now, in terms of law enforcement, after he is sentenced to life, unlike maybe some other jurisdictions or some other time in history, the law enforcement said, listen, I think we better investigate this guy for other murders and see if themo matches. And so that's what went on.
So in terms of those thirty four, the claim that he had killed thirty four women, what did law enforcement believe and how did they proceed.
They believed that he killed at least nine. And the reason they believe that is because in the evidence that they found at Doris Schaeffer's house was a passport, a driver's license, and a birth certificate and they belonged to two girls that were later found over at oakhamp. As soon as they found that evidence, they went back to South Hutchinson Island looking for those two girls, but they did not find them until later over at oak Hammick Park,
and that was collect goodenough and Willcox Barbrian Wilcox. They also found a phone little phone book that belonged to Carmen Halleck. Her body's never been found either. They found a jumble of other evidence that they never could identify
who it belonged to. At one time they were going to try to take him back to court and convict him for Carmen Halleck and Lee Hanlin because they found her necklace, but they decided not to because they were afraid that if they took him back to court and retried him on the outstanding death that he would get
off on all of 'em. So they decided not to go there and just leave him where he was because he was making all these appeals in the meantime and the judge was throwing him out and joining him out and drown Now until after the thirty fourth one when he said, I've had enough, don't do any more appills. You're not gonna get in front of me again. But Bob Stone made the statement that it was better that he be convicted for the two then go for you for none of them.
Now let's get back to Sondra London, and it was as far as I believe. In your book, you talk about him being his second girlfriend and they broke up. They both went to different schools, so there was not
any trauma there. But this Sondra London, when you talk about she wanted to become the next Ann Rule because she had read Stranger Beside Me, which is Anne Rule's classic book, her first book where she has a relationship with Ted Bundy exactly and his unbeknownst to her at that time that this is the serial killer that she has just been signed on as a book contract to write about an event that he gets arrested. So incredible,
incredible story. Now, what I found interesting was, of all the odds, her boyfriend becomes a serial killer and she becomes involved with the publishing business. She was already involved when she said, okay, listen, I think this is the story that I'd like to deal with, and his book was,
as you've mentioned, killer fiction. I wanted, we do have a little bit of time left in the program, and I was wondering if you would read some of or at least tell us about, if not actually read the words that are contained in Killer Touch, because to see the monster, the beast that he is, is really evident when you read some of the material that, of course he said was fictional, but as law enforcement, yourself and myself and probably anybody that reads it knows that this
is the ranting of a psychopathic killer.
When I was writing about Carmen and I was reading what he wrote, I liked at my husband and I said, this is a concession. This is Carmen, And he said, I know. Let's see what shall I write?
Read what I found particularly interesting if you do can reference this. The most horrifying thing that I did read is what he said about while one woman watched, he did something to the other woman, and then that that other woman died swallowing her own drowning in her own vomit.
Do you remember what page that was?
No? I don't, But what I can say is that while you reference something to read is that what he had said was that he disemboweled one woman while her friend watched. I found that incredibly discissied he did.
That's exactly what he did. Wow, that that is exactly what he did. Let me give Let me get the book, because I have I have killed. I like to never found killer fiction. Killer Fiction is now out of print. Yeah, and if you can find it, it will cost you a fortune.
I'm sure.
Let's see. Let's see what I can find. Here we go, all right. We will need an isolated area assembled, accessible by car and a short hike away from any police patrols or parking lovers. The execution site must carefully be arranged for a speedy execution once the victim has arrived. Ideally would be two soule horses with a two by four, preferably by car. A grave must be prepared in advance away from the place of execution. The victim would be any one of the many women who flocked to Miami
and Fort Laud during the winter months. Even two victims would not be difficult to dispose of, since women are less wary when traveling in pairs. In any case, it may be more preferable to bind and gag the victim before transporting them to the place of execution, then again, depending on what torture or defaminists plan for them, other items may be useful bars of soap and water. These are useful if you would want to wash a woman before her execution, Induce her to urinate and then wash her.
Soap provides an excellent lubricant for anal intercourse. Beer is useful to induce urination and make the victim groggy more cooperative. Soap can also be forced into the rectum to induce defecation of bowels. Possibly she may want to defecate, since people generally have a desire to do this when they are scared. A douchebag may be helpful in degrading her further, and is also useful in a soap sud's enema, which would a great indignity, especially if one victim was made
to gurinate or defecate on the other. This would be a gross indignity. Now on, stockings are useful to tie the hands and feet of the victim. The victim should be made to strip at least to her underwear. If stripped completely nude, an attempt can be made to excite her sexually. This effect would be especially interesting if the victim had her neck in the noose and hands tied behind her back. A white pillow case should be placed
over her head and her mouth gagged. Her pennies should be pulled down enough to expose the gentiles gentiles and collateral stimulation applied during the heights of her excitement, that support would be pulled away and she would dangle by her neck. She may be revived before death, if desirable, and subjicated to further indecencies. After death has occurred, the corpse should be violated, if not violated all ready. The body should then be possibly mutilated and carried to the
grave and buried. All identity papers should be destroyed and the place of the execution dismantled. And that's exactly what he did.
Incredible, incredible. Now John Gerard Schaeffer is in solitary confinement. He's considered a rat. He's doing everything he can. He's pretending he's a jailhouse lawyer and being very helpful to other inmates. Meanwhile he's gathering information. In fact, one inmate that he got information from ended up on death row.
YEP.
Now, tell us what the fate of John Gerard Schaeffer was in the Stark prison.
And what was when was that The backstory is Schaeffer, out of the goodness of his heart. And I say that in parentheses, instituted getting a water cooler in the pod, and the water cooler allowed the men to be able to get warm water for their super coffee or whatever when they got it out of the canteen. Well, because he thought that since he had instituted this, he was allowed to get two cups. That could only get one cup, but he decided he was going to get two cups
of water. He went to his room or to his cell, and in nineteen ninety three a mister Rodriguez, who was crazier than Schaefer, followed him into his cell and took a shank and poked out both ice and sliced him from his ear to the other ear across his mouth. And that sent the message, and the message was this you no longer see and you can no longer talk.
He stabbed that man so many times that they couldn't even hardly clean up the blood because he bled out from all I think there were over thirty two stab wounds, and most of them were in his face and in his eyes. Incredible, And even the psychiatrist said that the guy that committed the execution, he was even afraid of him. So it took somebody who was more evil than Schaeffer as that were possible to finally dispense justice.
Now you say that the investigation he wasn't up. He didn't actually it formally charged for the other murders. But maybe we have if you can reference this, maybe we can name a few of these nameless people, these nameless victims I think I have.
I may have a vocall yes, and I did do that at the end of my book. Hold on just a minute. This is the part of the book that I've have a hard time getting getting through because when I do speeches, these people are with me all the time. For eight months when I wrote this book, I didn't sleep because they were always in my head. But the girls are Georgia Josup, Susan Place, call it goodenough, Barbara and Wilcox, Nancy Lichtner, pam Nater, Nancy Charter, Pamela Wells,
Carmen Halleck, Lee Hanlin, Belinda Hutchins. Those are the nine that we know about those girls. Nancy Linchner and pam Nater were never found. They were his first two kills. They were killed in nineteen six sixty six at O'calla
National Forest. They were never found. In two thousand seven, when I first started researching this book, they closed that case because Rick mcelwaine had a file, and in that file was a letter that an inmate had sent him that said that Shaeffer confessed to him that he had killed these two girls, aren't she? Nancy Trotter and Pamela Wells are the two that got away. Carmen Halleck has never been found. She left a baby girl, Lee Hanline
was found. Belinda Hutchins has never been found. Deborah Lowe has never been found. There are two other girls that were eight nine years old that were found years later. Mary Briscolne was one of 'em. They were found years later, but they have now been attributed to Shaeffer. But we know it was Shaeffer because they disappeared while he was a substitute teacher down Implantation and he'd tell it at the school that these girls went to.
Yeah, credible coincidence. Yeah, So now you say that you've lived with this and I can totally understand from reading this book, and anyone who's listening to this interview can tell how passionate you are about the subject and how much it can wear on you to deal with such
a psychopathic and evil person. And then all of these the damage, the carnage basically that he's left behind, the twisted families, the missing children, these were all for the most part, young innocent, well not there's any guilty women, but young innocent, vibrant women in the in the during the time of their life. They were that were snatched up and and for this sadistic, evil killer Uh to
have his his jollies. And I thought, what was interesting too, is the the book that was put out Killer Fiction. And then there was another book put out after that from this Sondra London person. And then at Sondra London again there's another story I dealt with. I think it was Corey Mitchell had written a story about Danny Rowlings. Yes, or maybe just the book I already have. I mean, I'm getting a little concused.
But now she wrote she hooked up with Danny Rollins. After after Shaeffer started fading into the back pages of the newspaper. She dropped him like a bad habit and hooked up with Danny Rollins, and that's when he started threatening to kill her because Danny Rollins was also at start where Shaefer was.
Yeah, incredible, and he's a serial killer that killed eight students, eight students up.
In games at the University of Florida. Now, not only were the victims affected, and not only were the families of the victims affected, but the two girls that were killed at o'calla, there was a stranger who was affected, who became an alcoholic and died an alcoholic when she saw Schaeffer take a body out of the trunk of his car at Paying Prairie Preserve and walk off into the preserve.
You know. The other thing I wanted to say just before this that one of the one of the most important things that happened at the trial was that I think it's Susan place was it? I think it was her mother? She had said, listen, we met this guy and he gave an alias, but the mothers thought something was off off, and she went outside and took the
license plate number down and that led to police. That was a big, big break in this case and also her testimony and that license plate is a very interesting story for those that read the book, that this was this sort of turning point here and very important to the trial, that she had the presence of mind to go out there and check out that license plate. Otherwise he might not even been convicted of those two.
He wouldn't have.
He would not have.
And the.
Sad part is every one of the people who were involved in this case, every one of the law enforcement officers that were involved, were forever changed by the carnage that Gerard Shaeffer perpetrated on these girls. When I went to look there were four boxes of evidence. And when I went to look at the evidence, I took my husband, and my husband is seventy six years old and this was cases over thirty years old, and we started going
through the evidence. He was with me, and he went through the first three boxes with me, and there's one box left that had the clothes that they found at the crime scene that belonged to Susan place in Georgia, jessup and I wanted to touch those clothes and to touch the tree trunk, and to wrap myself around those girls. And I when I went to go through that box. He said, Yvonne, will you be mad at me if
I don't go with you? He said, I can't. I saw my husband transported back to nineteen seventy three, and I saw the look on his face, and it was so sad and so devastating because it was like it happened yesterday, right right, and my husband seen death. He's seen murder. He's seen things that most people don't see in his job. But this case affected every one of those men so much that even going back thirty four years.
Later, it was like yesterday, Yeah, And that's understand This serial killer, John Gerard Schaeffer, is one of the most complex, fascinating, and hands down, I've done this show for almost two full years. I've read countless, countless books about the most famous and infamous serial killers. This guy ranks right up there as one of the most fascinating, compelling, charismatic He really does you know? Ted Bundy is a fascinating character.
John Wayne Gacy, You're gonna have a program on next week the defense lawyer that defended John Wayne Gacy will be on. But really, this is one of those, for lack of a better term, just a hidden gem of evil. This person and a very fascinating, very fascinating.
Now you know, I had to write the book absolutely because the more I dug, the more I had to know, and the more I had to know. It was like several people had tried to write this book before, and every time they'd write it written to sue them.
Oh yeah.
And when I started writing the book, a friend of mine, who is a victim's advocate for the State Attorney's office, she said, if I'm what about the families. I said, Borb, I'm writing this book from a perspective that no other writer has ever gone before. I said, I'm writing this book from a cops perspective. I'm writing this book the way that it was solved, and I'm writing this book in such a way that everything that I have can
be documented. It's all public record. I did not contact not one of the victim's families when I was writing this book. As soon as the book came out, I got an email from Susan Place's niece and she asked me about the book and asked me why I wrote it, and I told her I sent her book. She emailed me and told me thank you because she now had peace.
Wow.
She gave the book to her father. His name is John, and she emailed me and asked me if she could give her father my phone number because he wanted to call me. He called me and he said, and he was squalling. Now we're talking about a grown man. He was sobbing, and he said, I wanted to say thank you because my family has finally found peace. He said, you showed what a truly evil man Shaeffer was, and my family finally has peace. And I said, well, my
husband worked the case. That's how I got hold of all the information that because I got information, nobody else could get sure. And he wanted to talk to Jack. And when he talked to Jack, he was crying. Jack was crying. I was crying, and I don't cry easy. It takes a lot to make me cry. But all three of us were sobbing, and it was like he was finally able to grief and let his sister go.
Well, that's a real testament to what you've done and the sensitivity that you've that's imbued in this book that you've taken and considered. That is your most important focus. And I think that just that phone call itself must have reassured you that what you have done was worth it and how you had handled it was the right way. And I got to say that this incredible story and thank you for the book, and thank you for this program.
So I want to as we're wrapping up here, I want to thank you very much for coming on the pro and talking about your book, Silent Scream. And maybe you can just tell us how the best way to get a hold of this book. This is self published, but tell us how if people were interested in this book, how would they go about finding this book.
It's on Amazon, it's on Kindle, it's on notebook, it's on Lulu, and you can order you can order it on my online bookstore, which you will get a signed copy at the book addict dot a writer dot com.
Great again, people have been listening to the program. This is Silent Scream with my special guest, Yvonne Mason, and join her on Facebook and look up this excellent book and read it for yourself. You will not be disappointed. So I want to thank you very much, Yvonne, for coming on my little program here True Murder. It's been a great interview and I want to thank you.
And you have a great evening, and you too, Dan, and thank you for having me. I appreciate it because because of you, the girls now have even a greater voice.
Well, thank you very much, and like you say, have yourself a great evening, you two, dear, Thank you. You've been listening to program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that are written about them, with your host Dan Zupansky. We've been talking about Silent Scream with Yvonne Mason. Good Night,