SIMILAR TRANSACTIONS-S.R. Reynolds

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neglected pieces of the puzzle into place. Reynolds on Earth's a string of heinous kidnappings and rapes across the South, crimes that span decades. A picture begins to form, Patterns appear, and all that evidence points to one man, convicted sex offender, Larry Lee Smith. As a result of Reynolds's efforts, the Knoxville Police Departments reopened the cold case in Michelle's dis disappearance. But Larry Lee is about to be released from a

Georgia prison where he served time for related crime. A similar transaction the book that we're featuring this evening, a similar transaction, A true story with my special guest journalist and author S. R. Reynolds. Welcome to the program. Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. Sr.

Our parents were separated, and on July twelfth, nineteen eighty one, she is out with friends. It gets late, she has a curfew and her friend Tom, which was a ride or could be a ride, wasn't ready to leave at that point. She was wanted to meet that curfield. She's still she needed a ride, and a young main man named Larry Lee Smith volunteers. Now, as you write the Tom writes down the man's license plate number and his

own phone number and hands it to Katherine. Now what happens on that ride home with Catherine and Larry Lee.

with him, just to kind of keep things moving along. She isn't yet seeing him as any kind of dangerous person. She isn't afraid at this point, but she's kind of alert. Once they are in the apartment, however, she realizes that there's no one else in there. They're alone. Suddenly he grabs her by the neck and shoves her into the bedroom. He chokes her, which is kind of one of his signature things. He chokes her, punches her, throws her down

on the bed, and he rapes her. He threatens to kill her if she tells, kill her family if she tells, And she's sort of astute for a young girl, so she decides that a good survival strategy would be to play along with him. She's utterly alone at night with him, so she gives into his demands to a degree. She begins to act like she's okay with what's happening. He even asks her afterwards if she enjoyed the ordeals or rape, and she says, yeah, yeah, sure, keeping him humoring him.

Before leaving, he has her bathe in an effort to erase any evidence. I guess you thought he was pretty clever. He also gets the piece of paper from her with a tag number on it. When they get down to his truck, he tells her to slide down cover her eyes, you know, determining that she can't see where they're leaving from,

so she won't be able to identify where they've been. Uh. And on the way home, he makes chatty, flirty small talk with her, feeling like maybe she actually likes him her she's kind of convinced him, and then she has him drop or once they return to Port Richie neighborhoods, she has him drop her about half a block from her actual house, so we won't know really where she lives.

He drives off and then she races down the street, bursts through her front door, and you know, the screams to her mother, I've been raped.

which leads to the rest. A few weeks later, he is arrested for kidnapping and rape, and the trial was December nineteen eighty one. By by January nineteen eighty two, it was dealt down to in voluntary sexual battery and he was given five years and at that point there was a recommendation by the judge for psychiatric evaluation. Now, once in prison, what was that diagnosis and what crucial information did he tell a psychiatrist at that time about his six year old niece.

he's diagnosed as a mentally disordered sex offender. He consults with a number of psychiatrists while he's in the prison, and he admits to one of them some of his prior sexual offenses, including an attempted rape of his pet, h wife's friend, and he tells the psychiatrist that he's attempted to rape his niece. He tells the psychiatrist's niece was eight when he was probably about fourteen or fifteen.

She was actually just six, And from my research, that rape was consummated, so he didn't attempt to rape his niece. He actually did rape her when she was actually six, and he tells the psychiatrist that he would like to understand why he's attracted to young girls now while he's in the prison. He well, it's recommend The psychiatrist recommends that he enters a program for mentally disordered sex offenders at the State Psychiatric Hospital. He agrees to that plan.

It is a program that requires one to be committed to doing the treatment. It's called a self help program. You have to be willing, you can't be forced into it. He's there about a year, but they determine that for the most part, he's non compliant. He's defiant, he breaks rules, he won't do his therapeutic assignments consistently, he doesn't cooperate in group when they give him personality inventories. He fakes his answers in order to influence a test one way

or another. He's just kind of conning. And after about a year he tells them that he no longer wants to be in the program, that he wants to be discharged and return to the general prison population. That he thinks he can get out sooner that way. And I guess he'd probably maybe do what he was talking about because they did discharge him back to the general population.

His discharge diagnoses from the sex at Her treatment program was mentally disordered sex offender unimproved, and they actually had a prognosis that he was probably more aggressive, more likely

to violently act out. But then eight months later he is parolled from the Florida prison after having served just under half of his five year sentence, and he remained in Florida about another year year and a half until sometime in nineteen eighty six, and then he returns to his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Lee Smith. What happened according to Chaz that night with.

been drinking. Chaz and a few of the other kids walked from the party they were at to a convenience store to get some more beer, but the clerk refuses to sell it to them because they're underage, and they meet a stranger in this convenience store who overhears this interaction and who offers to by the beer for them.

And this stranger is Larry Lee Smith. He invites himself back to their party, and then afterward he invites Chad and Michelle and another girlfriend to come over to his party and or excuse me his apartment and continue to the party to party a little longer. Not the smartest thing to do, but everybody's been drinking. I guess judgments were not too good. Some things go on there. There's some questionable things, and Chaz and Michelle get into an altercation.

They begin to have an argument, voices get loud, Michelle runs out of the apartment, and Larry Lee tells them that he will take them home now, but he makes Chaz sit in the back. It's below freezing at this point. So January night, he makes him sit in the back of his truck in the bed, and he and Michelle are up in the cab and he drops Chaz off near his house first. And the understanding that Chad has, and I'm sure that Michelle had too, was that Larry Lee was going to drop her off next but that

did not happen. He I'm sorry to put my trailers out there. It's freezing out, so, like I said, so he drives off with Michelle, and so Chaz thinks that she's been taken home when Michelle doesn't return home the next morning. Ever, when she never returns home that night and the family contacts Chas and says, do you know where Michelle is? He tells them the story that I've just shared about Larry Lee and him riding off with

Michelle to take her home. So they all go over to Larry Lee's house to try to get some answer. He's not there initially, then he shows up. He sees him outside, he panics. He runs out of his apartment without saying anything to them, jumps in his truck and speeds away. The police are called. The police take statements from both parties. They tell me that they'll look for Michelle, that they'll begin a search, but everybody's told to go

home for the rest of the night. And they never questioned Larry Lee again that night about Michelle's disappearance.

from Chazzis. He tells them that Michelle was upset because of her argument with Chads, and she wants to talk to Larry Lee and that they just go riding around and talking and then it's like a couple of hours later, he claims and Michelle says instead of being taken home, she wants to be dropped off at the corner near Chasit's house, you know, in the wee hours of the morning. And so he claims that's what he did. He claims that the last time he saw Michelle, he had dropped

her back. Dear chat has housed and detector McNair determined that, based upon Larry Lee's story, she must have run away, which really made sense to no one. I mean, her friends didn't think she ran away. Manita didn't think she ran away. But he was the detective in charge. He said he looked at Larry Lee's police record, the local one,

and that it wasn't that bad. Of course, he didn't discover the record of sexual assault in prison and imprisonment in Florida just a few years earlier, and he doesn't know anything about that early isn't going to tell him that obviously, So you know, there is no investigation into her disappearance until her potential kidnapping because the detective in

charge treats it like a runaway. He tells the Needa to go to her family court on missing person's report, you know, a pickup orders, which is the thing that's issued for a run away is you know, but there's nothing, So there's no real investigation at all by the police at that point in time.

that Larry Lee's car was vandalized. And then the next day, coincidentally, a note appeared on Anita's door, Shelle's mother. What was written and contained in that note, Well, this again.

and it is written in Satanic verses. It says Michelle something like Michelle is with us, she is ours forever, come close again and she will suffer more Dante of Hell, blood of the Virgin and other nonsensical ramblings. And there's a couple of drawings that look like they're made in blood, and there's a duplicate copy placed on the friend of the car, of a friend that had also been participating in the search. So you know, at first the notes given to the detective McNair, I don't know what he

made of it. It doesn't take I mean, it's too long to come to the conclusion that it's probably a tactic by Larry Lee or someone in his circle to throw them off. You know, he's probably getting a little scared if he's responsible for her death so or her disappearance rather so, anyway, that's what happened with that, the Satanic verses written on her door.

and he was amazingly open with her. He had worked for the family previously. He told her that they were pretty rough folks, and he tells her this is the very first time she learned that Larry Lee has in fact is in fact, the convicted felon that he did was charged with kidnapping and rape of a teenage girl in Florida just a few years earlier and had served time in a Florida prison. So this is amazing and shocking new information. She immediately relates it to Detective but Naire.

He tells her that he will get on it, that he will send for those Florida records. But to the best of everyone's knowledge, e've been up to the present day, that didn't occur at that time. But you know, Anita certainly learns that she's dealing you know, her fears keep growing. She's really I realize that she's really dealing with a pretty dangerous character.

again amazingly beyond coincidence. She stated that she knew Larry Lee's twenty four year old ex wife, Sarah, which led to Anita meeting Sarah. Now, what did Sarah tell Anita about living with Ruby and her son Larry Lee.

really striking, who had endured a horrible early childhood. She experienced the neglect, she was molested by various various family members, and then when she was fifteen, she met Larry Lee. They began a relationship. She doesn't see his dark syd yet before long she's pregnant and she moves in with him. He has a basement apart base in the bedroom in his mother's house, and they move in and at first things seem okay, but then when she's bet in her

seventh month of pregnancy. She begins to see episodes of his other behaviors and she went through extensive abuse, so she tells Anita. After she listens to Anita story about Michelle being missing and last being seen with Larry Lee, you know it weighs very heavily upon Sarah. She's a very caring, empathetic person, and she begins to describe to Anita how she had literally escaped from Larry Lee after being subjected to regular meetings by him, torture. She'd actually

been held prisoner for a while by him. He pimped her out to other men. He had her working as a dancer, a stripper, and she finally managed to plan an escape when she was allowed to keep the baby. She wouldn't leave without the baby. Joey and his mother, Ruby and Larry Lee managed to keep control of the baby all the time, but there was one particular night when they had come to trust her and they both had to work and they agreed that she could keep

Joey and that was her opportunity. She called her mother, who had actually been abusive as well, but now she was her rescuer in the ironically, and her mother allows her to return back to her house, so she actually escaped from him at that point, and she tells Ruby along the way about Larry Lee's horribly abusive behaviors. I mean she she'll say she had said he nearly killed her multiple times, but Ruby will never believe it. She enabled him. She will never believe in the negative thing

about him. He's her youngest son is a baby. Sarah also confirms to Anita that what she heard about Larry having been in prison in Florida is accurate and it was her raping a teenage girl. And then she lets need to know that when he returned to Oxford, he brought a girlfriend from Florida with him, but by the time of the meeting of Sarah and Anita, that girlfriend had actually escaped as well with her young son, and

she had fled back to Florida. And ironically, she fled back to Florida just weeks before Michelle disappears, So it was kind of an interesting possible connection in Larry Lee's life between those events. After hearing Sarah's account of Larry Lee's nature in its history of abusive behaviors as well as the kidnapping and rape, Anita you know, she becomes even more hopeless. She had held on a fire of

hope that Maybee Mayor knew something she couldn't understand. Maybe Michelle really did run away and she was going to see her again. But after she listened to Sarah's story, she she pretty much gave up hope that she would ever see her again.

the case. Tell us how you were involved with doctor Bass and how he was involved with this case.

or not handled. He feels some concern. He calls detective McNair talks to him a little bit, and then he convinces and Devano convinces to supervisor barely to allow him to open a kidnapping case that normally the FBI would not be involved, but since they don't know where she is or she's been taken across the state line, his supervisor says, Okay, I'm going to let you do this, but you have thirty days to find something, and so he contacts McNair. McNair gives him the proposal that Michelle

is still alive and he begins a search. Now, when Michelle first went missing, as you said, I was living in Knoxville and I didn't know Michelle, but my son had a class with her and he told me about her disappearance. I first learned of her disappearance through my teenage son, and I was concerned about some of the things I was continuing to hear about the handling of

the case. And I actually knew Detective McNair professionally because I had done some abuse and neglect investigations when I worked as a social worker for the Department of Human Services and I was assigned he was he would be an officer assigned to some of the cases I had. We had a rotating officer schedule, and in the cases I shared with him the two cases, i'd been very

concerned about his lack of initiative. He was a pretty passive guy or passive officer, and that wasn't my experience with the others, but it was with McNair, So I had concerns early on when all of this just began. But then Michelle was not my case. I had no say, no right to be in that case. I did call him and talk to him briefly, but I had no role in this case. And then soon after it occurred, I was offered a job in Alabama, so I moved away,

and I really didn't know what had unfolded. After my moves, the case kind of stayed with me but moved to the back of my mind. In the mid nineteen nineties, I mean living in Tuscalous, Alabama, and my husband and I were watching an episode of Forensic Files on television. It was a pretty new show then, and to my surprise, they began profiling a case of a teenage girl whose remains had been found in the mountains of East Tennessee,

about an hour outside Knoxville. Definitely got my attention. I'd lived in Knoxville for a little more than a decade, and it turned out the case was Michelle. They show her picture and suddenly I'm hearing about Michelle's case, and the story said they'd found her remains two years to the month and she disappeared. It remained unsolved, they said. And then there was doctor Bass on the screen being

interviewed for the case. He was the Tennessee state forensic anthropologist who had been called in to excavate Michelle's remains when they were found two years after she went missing in January of nineteen eighty nine. I might be jumping a bit of it here, but I suddenly was watching him on the show, and I actually had some history with him. I had minored an anthropology at the University of Tennessee when doctor Bass was over the program there.

He was the director of the entire program, and he'd actually admitted me to their graduate program where I had studied for about a year under his late wife, doctor Maryanne Bass. So I had again, I had that personal history with him when I lived in knox bill And this story, this forensic File episode, was the first guy knew for certain what had happened to Michelle, that she had in fact been murdered when she disappeared.

she was frustrated. She had her hood up and she was frustrated and she started crying, and lo and behold, a man named Larry Lee offered to help her. He jumped in soon had her car running, and so he said, hey, listen, why don't you just jump in and we'll test it further, make sure it's not the clutch. She had said maybe it would have been the clutch. What happened after she got into her own car, after this good samaritan had got her car running? What happened next?

He's got a good reputation. He's retired now, but he has a good reputation, and he's very diligent, and he

was really putting some pressure on Larry Lee. So and then there was this event regarding the break line, which, as you said, somebody cut his brake line and he's I guess he got nervous with all of that happening, and he pleads to Georgia as investigated likes to say he boogied over to Georgia, and sometime in the spring or some of that year, he actually has another lesser assault that occurred in July, but in October of that year,

he encounters Amanda Sanders. Pretty eighteen year old Amanda Sanders. She's got a hood up. He's coming out of a shop next door to the billiards parlor where a teenage billiards parlor where her boyfriend worked. He sees her with a hood up, and he codes over to her and asks any help. He manages to get the car running, and as she said, once, he's actually in the driver's seed. He's got it in first gear. She's looking at him. He's in her car.

He begins choking her. At one point he actually tries her unconscious. He's attempting to sectually assault her. She's really fighting, She's really is daylight. She says, you know, I have a chance here. I'm gonna fight. Even if he's gonna kill me, I'm gonna fight. So she fights back hard. At some point she regains consciousness before he realizes she has.

She stays very still. She begins kicking and screaming. When they reach a red light and there are people around and and she doesn't escape the car at that point, but she does alert her actions alert a driver in front of them. He was actually a professor from the local art college and he has a little daughter with him. He secures her in the seat. Larry freaks out. He actually pulls off to the side, goes across the yard, starts flying down for an intersecting road, and this witness

begins pursuing him. He gives chase and literally panics. He manages to get back to the billiards where his car actually is. It's a borrowed car, but his borrowed a mc pacer. He gets back, jumps out of Amanda's car, gets into his car and tear.

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A detective of a deputy at Sheriff's deputy recognized his car and he was arrested without major event, and he was tried in April of nineteen ninety and was given a twenty year sentence in a Georgia prison for that assault. And an interesting development there was Kathy McWilliams, the Florida victim who had not actually testified because they had done a plea deal, was now a young woman in her twenties.

And really Devano, this is Devano's blessing. He gave he when he learns of Larry Lee's arrest in Georgia, he at the last minute, truly, he lets he makes that prosecuting attorney da he informs her about the Florida charge. And there is something in the Federal rules of Evidence

called a similar transaction. It's a rule that allows evidence to be admitted in a criminal trial if for a prior crime, if it reflects a pattern for the defendant, if it reflects scheming and planning, and things that reflect the pattern we know, like like a serial killer. Celia Rape was somebody who is a serial robber, SI or whatever, so she's able. George is a little bit more liberal with that, as I understand it. I'm their legal scholar, but George is a little bit more liberal with a

similar transactions evidence in sexual sense crime. So luckily this DA is allowed this the DA is allowed to fly Catherine up to talk to testify at Amanda's trial, so she is kind of the final surprise witness. She's brought in to talk about her assault and the similarities. Of course, the DA makes a big point of the similarities between the cases and that sense, So he is, he is convicted,

and he and he begins serving his prison sentence. Back in Knoxville, Devano another FBI agent named Grade Steed and investigating York. They continue to try to solve Michelle's murder, but they aren't successful at it. Eventually, the FBI closes its case and at the Knoxville Police Department. In the Knoxville Police Department, the case just grows cold. Larry Lee's in prison for twenty years in Georgia, and it's all but forgotten at that point.

I determined a way to contact Anita after all these years. I had actually called her right after Michelle's disappearance, just a stranger in the neighborhood when I learned the Ketchus McNair had the case and was saying she was a runaway, and I just called to ask, do you think your daughter ran away? She told me she didn't, But again, I had no role in the case. And then I moved away shortly afterwards. So now it's two thousand and seven, it's twenty or nearly twenty years later, and I contact

her again. She's apprehensive but sort of thrilled, I guess maybe or plead to hear that somebody wants to talk about this case. It's been twenty years, it's never been resolution. You know, the family's just been tortured forever by it. So she sends me some things that she'd written about the case. She sold me in over the phone. She gives me the information about how to look up Larrile

in his Georgia prison inmate page, which I do. That gives me additional information about court numbers and court cases, and I just begin compiling information I get. I actually purchased the entire court transcript from the Georgia trial. I found reports and records. I begin interviewing people. I interviewed all the former officers. Everyone that had worked on the case twenty years earlier was retired so they could all talk to me. I interviewed the victims, the Florida victims, Catherine.

I interviewed Amanda, the Georgia victim. I interviewed Anita, doing the family members, friends, and I begin to sort of put the pieces together, and it's clear that there's a

pattern here, just as a similar transaction evidence indicated. There's a clear pattern to his crime, even though he spent so much of his adult life incarcerated for them, and I'm telling you to that I begin, you know, so a lot of the information I get to the police and things she's never seen, because often, you know, the family isn't told about the investigation, and since the investigation

was never completed, the crime has never solved. I had much more information than Anita did, really about the police side of the equation, so I fill her in. I talk about his patterns, and eventually, when I have enough information compiled that I feel I can present an argument, I contact a local police the National Police Department, and again, as I said, everyone who had worked on it previously is now retired and no one currently there, specifically Lieutenant

Doug Styles over the violent Crimes units. They don't know anything about this case. They've never heard of Michelle Anderson, her disappearance or death, none of it. So I meet with them and I give them what I have, and

I tell them what I know, and it's reopened. Michelle's kidnapping and murder is reopened as a cold case by the Knoxville Police Department, and in October of two thousand and nine, two years after I walked back into the case, he is he has completed his Georgia prison term and he's released, and he returns home to Knoxville, to his hometown of Knoxville, and he is then a registered sex offender at Knoxville.

get a place. And Larally is among them. He met Aisha just a couple of weeks prior to this assault through her boyfriend Cameron, who has dealt drugs to Larily and others in the building. When Tamary gets arrested that day, and Aisha is alone and just heartbroken and panicked, and she stops by Larially's apartment needing to use a phone. She's feeling desperate and she needs to make a call, doesn't have her own phone. She's waiting in his apartment. She's told to wait there for a few minutes that

a friend is going to get a phone. So she's sitting there waiting and she's crying, and she's trying to get herself together, and he asks her to help him move something on the side of the room. She thinks, we're weird at request, but you know, how do you say no? It's still benign. So she turns to do it, and he makes this move, his signature move, which is to begin choking her. He nearly choked her unconscious, she

begins to lose and he begins to rape her. Ah, there is this odd opportune knock on his apartment door. He says, go away, I'm not I'm not you know, I'm I'm busy, as he lets up on her throat for those few seconds it takes for him to say that, and Aisha scream, I'm here. You know I'll be right, And so she never did know who knocked on the door, but that panicularly he backed off. She begins to put her clothes on, backing away, determined that she's going to

get out of there one way or another. There's a balcony. It's the second floor. She's backing toward the balcony. She'll jump if she asks to, but there's an opportunity to actually flee out the door a few moments later, and that's what she does. She fleed out, and she goes down to the apartment manager's desk and she reports the assault, and the police are called and he's arrested once again.

So he's been out two years. He made it two years after serving twenty before his demons provoked him once more.

vaginal secretions and the DNA. They're talking to him, so explain what he says in response to their questions and assertions.

He knows they're going to find some of the evidence Aisha has already told him about, and he knows that they'll probably find his DNA on her from the assault. So he tells them that he he says, you know, I touched her. You know it's going to be there because I touched her, And they think he's implying consent, but his story evolves and changes over time. He then later says, he just meant I hugged her, you know,

I comforted her, So he changes his story. But they do in fact have the opportunity to find vaginal DNA or his DNA and her vagina rather, so he begins trying to make an excuse, and he actually he actually has a telephone that he only uses for pictures that

isn't operational for calling. But he tells the the investigating officer on the latest assaunt of Baisha, to bring his phone, and he wants to show her something, and he pulls up a picture of a woman on his bed bound by some something around the wrist, and his logic seems to be that he's gonna convince this officer that this is something he does with consensual women, Aisha probably being consensual too, you know. He doesn't come out and say

it directly, he implies it. Then they go to his apartment, they collect some evidence. They come back and the officer says, I'd like to see your phone again. I'd like you to show me those pictures again. She brings it in but he he says, you're gonna use these against me, right, you know he can't think so trad He's just all stretched out and panicking. And she says, well, you know it's your call. You don't have to show me the pictures because he's yet to be a resident. She's being

very non forceful and very respectful to him. Is all being recorded, and he sits there really right in front of the camera without his realizing that he's being recorded, and he proceeds to erase the pictures he just showed her.

band of sisters at one point. But tell us about this relationship that you have developed, at least a working relationship with Leslie Nascios the DA before you tell us about how you connect or how the women in this story are connected.

I mean, whereas when I walked into the Knoxville Police Department saying, you know, I've got this evidence I've collected of about this old crime, there were just you know, all you know, all gung ho, like I was the person with the info. But on the new case that was currently active, you know, I was just some koop writing of a story. You know, I wasn't necessarily given credibility except by the victims that Anita, so I had to kind of earn that in the current current case.

So I may contact via email with the prosecuting attorney, a woman, as she said, named Leslie Nacio, and I asked her, I'm trying to think, how can I get this information to her? She didn't, you know, she's not going to meet with me. I'm not buddy that she's not going to discuss the case with me. So I think, well, maybe I could compile a timeline for an outline and just roughly run through everything I know about this guy and the crimes up into the current events.

really solve anything. And then eventually Anita and I show up for just a hearing that was actually called off prior to his trial, and since Anita's met with Nazios, they have a first you know, they have a face to face recognition I don't live in state. She doesn't know what I look like, even though I corresponded with her via email. And we walk out and she says that you guys want to come over into our conference and we'll talk for a few minutes. So I'm like,

I can't believe it. I'm going to be able to discuss this case finally with the prosecuting attorney. And we do that, We go into her office, and really, I think her main motive was to be kind to Anita. She felt such compassion for what Anita had gone through and never had an answer, and I think she probably bought into the idea that Larry Lee was responsible for

the kidnapping of death of Michelle. So she met with us and she talked with us, and I was able to run ideas by her that I thought and she shared some and that was just a major blessing, and we had her attention and I was able to really make a point about the similar Tree transactions evidence. Now,

the difference between Georgia. Apparently in Knoxville. Again, I'm no legal scholar, but in Georgia, it was pretty easy for that prosecuting attorney prosecuting DA to bring the similar transaction evidence. I ny Catherine from Florida to Georgia to testify, but Leslie had a snow pretty quickly. That wouldn't happen in Tennessee. She said, she'd be much more likely to get evidence admitted if it was a burglar who always wrote a certain kind of notes, you know, or who used a

certain kind of gun. But in sexual senses, they rarely ever allowed similar transaction evidence, even though there was a clear pattern here, so she knew about it. The thing that the outline had done was it managed to make her aware. It managed to get her alerted that nobody was going to do a plea deal in this case. He was going to go to trial.

from Florida. She's living in Charlotte at that point I go there, I interview her as as an adult woman about her history. I've met with the family members of Michelle and everybody. Everybody, of course, was concerned about each other's trauma, but all of the women who's been his victim, including his niece, and I also had contact to a strange set of events which I won't go into here. I actually interviewed via phone and email, the niche he

draped when she was six. She was also now a woman at Foy's, very compassionate about the other victims, and even she everyone felt tremendous empathy for Anita and what she'd gone through losing Michelle, and that he'd never been held accountable. So when I actually managed to have contact finally with Ayisha and learned firsthand her version of what it transpired when the assault her assaults by lar Lee in Knoxville, and when her trial comes up there there's

a grand jury. Ayusha's life was pretty fractured at the point in time that she was Larity's victims, so there's a problem, and the subpoena they sent for her and her mother to come to the grand jury gets her turn. It goes to the wrong address but ironically, because I've been talking everybody and I've kind of become a sub,

you know, among the spokes. Just not long before the trial, they'd lost contact with Ayisha and she calls me and she tells me about this odd visit she'd had from Larry Lee's attorney, and she's talking with me and she tells me she's lost contact, and I refacilitate the contact. I immediately emailed the DA's office the next day. I say, here's her new number.

responsible that how she'd failed her daughter. But she looked at these other women and she's like, you know, it happened to them too, and it just gives her a lot of healing and belief. And we all tend to trial together, and we all go out to dinner the night before the trial and meet one another, and then go to the we all show up the band of sisters what we dubbed ourselves, and we all show up for the trial.

you capture it. But the extraordinary Larry Lee testifying on his own behalf cross examined.

big things can go against me. I don't know. As a lot, he must have thought that Aisha, having sort of a fractured life at that point, was vulnerable and he would come off looking better. I don't know, but he does. He gets up and he testifies, and Leslie Nauci Goes is pretty confident. She's very good at this, and she does a really good thorough cross examination. When we arrived, we noticed that he is dressed entirely in shades of gray. Don't think about it much, just observe it.

But as he begins to testify, he talk as you said. They found this chain of neckties, one tied to the next and a loop formed on each end. And it all happened so fast. I Usha had actually not known for sure what it was that would bound her, but she thought it was some neckties. She couldn't really quite make sense of it. They do go to the apartment,

they do find this chain of necktie. So he's being questioned about her on the stand by Nazio's and I don't know I guess again he thought he was being clever. But he turned to the jury and he says, I'm sure by now all of you read fifty shades of Gray and you know it's this. I'm sure you can put fifty shades of grays. And he claims that he's a fan of the of the book and the theories, and that he plays games and he uses the neckties to play games, and he tells them about it, and

everybody's sort of shocked. I think I think some people in the audience actually wanted to suppress a laugh. They were so stunned. And while she can't bring in similar transaction evidence, she is able to extract one piece of real, valuable information from his testimony. He announces that he gets story changes. He has all these different versions, and she uses that against him. You told this version, this version,

this version, this version. And one of the versions was that Asha had tried to get him to enter a drug dealing scam with her to raise some money, and that in his defense, in his refusal, he said to her, I'm not going to do that. That would get me a felony. That first felony would put me in jail. So that was a boom for her. She caught that immediately and that allowed her to bring in testimony about

prior felony. So during a recess, she asked the judge, he has two prior felonies, your honor, there for sex offenses like this one. He has just said that he that would be his first selony. I'd like to impeach his testimony. And the judge, again using that Tennessee caution, he says, okay, you may bring in. You may question him about prior felonies, but you may not indicate that they were related to sexual offenses. So it was really difficult for her to make this case, but she does that.

He does admit that he has too prior felonies. They don't discuss the nature of them. He has found guilty of all the charges in this last trial. And then at sentencing is when she can do it. At sentencing she is able to bring in the prior similar transactions, the prior sexual assault, and it determines a sentence. He gets them, and what is that sentence? He gets life in prison with no chance of school, so he can never get out again. To do this, you tell him,

you know the point I'm making. The book too. Is you know, he he's his own victim as well. He cannot control these impulses he has. He cannot, even after twenty years in prison. I thought it would be amazing if he didn't a thought again, and of course he did.

nothing less to lose. The family truly needs closure. They need to hear what happened that night to their daughter when she was found. When Michelle's remains were found, her

body had just been deposited in this remote wood. She didn't have shoes or underwear on, they're not there with her clothing remains, her pelic girdle, the jeans was still somewhat intact, so they could tell that she actually didn't have them on when her body was placed there, So somebody had removed those things from her prior to taking her body there that night. You know, he could easily he's got nothing less to lose, he can't get out of prison. He could easily give the family the benet

fit of knowing what happened. Did he he choked all his victims? That was a big part of his pattern. Did he choke her an accidentally killer? Did he intend? You know, I can't let another victim escape me. Once I've done this, I have to get rid of the victim. Had he actually progressed, you know, the killing his victims? Now, we'll never know for sure unless he chooses to come clean and tell. So that would be the last goal in all of this, All the goals have sort of

been met. What the last goal would be for him to tell the truth finally, if he's capable.

seemed like a cathartic occurrence. There was a cathartic for these women and yourself at this trial that you all attended.

last assault, she had died. So suddenly she died. And so when we all met, the women all came together a band of sister. Sarah was not with us. That was a sad note. We all honored her, but were very sad. But one of the things that did happen, I did manage to interview Joey Literally's son. That was pretty amazing that I was able to do that. And of course Ruby his grandmother, Larry's mother who actually she

became his adoptive mother. She raised their son. She had not said much to him at all about the event, so my coming in to the scene was painful for him but also illuminating. And he had not ever really known what to make of Sarah's addictions and Sarah's behaviors. But once he read the book, and once well before the book was even written, actually before Sarah passed away, he was able to understand much more about her life and they made peace. Before her death, he met with

her and then he had a family cookout. He brought in her daughter that she'd also given up at age six months his sister. He found her, she'd been adopted. They all got together. So for Sarah, this was an amazing healing. It felt like there was this sort of through this tragedy of this story, these horrible events, there was this sort of a magic threat of healing, enclosure. And even though I was the catalyst, I didn't feel like I was necessarily guiding it. I always felt I

don't know if it works like this. I'm not claiming it does, but I used to feel like doors just kept opening, like I was being guided, you know. I'd feel like that, Chelle, you know, are you doing this? I don't know, but it was very magical in its tragedy. It truly was. At least that was the perspective of.