THE ALASKA MAIL-BOMB CONSPIRACY-Burl Barer

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there had been an earthquake. David died instantly, but Michelle survived. Michelle told us postal inspectors that Doug Gustavson was involved. It was no secret that Douglas Gustafson and his cohort Raymond Cheeley, despised George care had knowledge of explosives and liked to blow things up. However, they had perfect alibis

they were already in prison for murder. An investigative task force was formed led by US Postal Inspection Service with assistance from the Anchorage Police Department in the US Department of the Treasury Bureau of Alcohol to back when Firearms ATF to solve this case. The book they were featuring this evening as the Alaska male Bomb Conspiracy with my special goals, the legendary Burrel Bear. Welcome to the program, and thank you for very much for greing this interview.

The legendary Burrel Bear.

Northwest Publishing. And it was during my investigation of Man Overboard that I met the United States Postal Inspectors who were involved in that case as well. They're the ones who told me about this horrific, just absolutely awful, awful case of this mail bomb conspiracy and what it took to solve it. And I thought this was absolutely fascinating, and I did a proposal for the book. We got

a good deal and I started working on it. And I tell you, the US Postal Inspector were so thrilled to be having a book done about them, because even in the United States of America, where people are so astute and knowledgeable of government issues, people were totally ignorant of the US Postal Inspectors. In fact, Jim Bordenay, who I must credit with being absolutely fantastic in his help in putting this thing together. He made sure that this book or audio book, however you want to call it,

is one hundred percent factual. I mean, he made sure I made no mistakes, and if I did, he maybe correct him. So you know, you're getting a real deal story here. But he brought this to my attention and we started working on it. And then I didn't get paid, and I didn't get paid next or the next and they called and said, Burrell, how's this book going on the US Postal I said, well, here's the problem. I haven't been paid in about two or three months. And

that's kind of brought everything into a screaming halt. Well, I went fishing for a couple of weeks with my kids at a loon lake, Washington, and I got back and there was a facts on my fax machine, remember those I had a fax machine, And there was a message from the US Postal Inspectors saying, dear mister Behar, you will appreciate this press release pages of the United

States Postal Inspection Service or office whatever they're called. Rated the offices of Northwest Publishing confiscated their computers and they went down. Turns out the true crime was allegedly the publisher and his son, who allegedly were spending the money rather than paying the bills. Over that he was like three million dollars in corporate checks cashed at the money tree in the mall, paying over two hundred and fifty

thousand dollars in check cashing fees. So for a while, the Alaska mail bomb conspiracy was one of the assets of the company that was in the litigation, and it took a few years for me to get the get the material back and the wrights back because it was considered an asset of the company. And then what am I going to do with it? Well, several years later, let's fast forward to the wonderful author and editor R. Berry Flowers got hold of He had asked if I

would yes go ahead? Did you say something there, dad?

then what was I going to do? Well, I already had all the research on the Alaska mail bomb conspiracy, and I found the still had Imbordinate's phone number tucked away somewhere, and even though he'd retired, he's still well connected within the department and had all the information, and he volunteered to help me make sure I got it right and got it accurate. And we launched into this thing,

and I'm really happy with the way it came out. Now, while it's shorter than a traditional true crime book, I've always had the feeling, in fact, I have Frank Gerardo

and I put this in writing. I think, well, we said it out loud when we did the book, A Taste for Murder and Betrayal in Blue, and that is, to put a mandatory word count on a true crime book isn't really rational because if you have to do one hundred thousand words on a story that takes eighty thousand to tell, it, really well, what are you doing with the other twenty thousand words? And that's always bothered me.

So when you read a really fast moving mystery such as so say mine to bias my novel Headlock, it's going to check in between fifty five thousand, maybe sixty five thousand tops. You know what, a good quick read, perfect for the beach. But sometimes you go with a lot of true crime or what they call him now non fiction thrillers. You find yourself reading the reviews and go, oh, I'm sure he padded this with unnecessary facts. We don't just tell us who killed who and have lots of pictures.

So Frank and I just said on that book, let's just write the book, and when we've told the story, we've told the story, and we did very well with that. I think this is kind of the same theory on this this book. This could have been expanded to whatever word count anybody wanted, because it was. Let me tell you how extreme this was in the investigation, and I'll tell you a little bit about the crime too, that would be helpful. But almost everybody in the state of

Alaska was wire tapped, and I'm not exaggerating. They'd get federal authorization to wiretap almost everybody in Alaska it could possibly have any connection to any of the people that they thought may have been involved in They may have been involved, so that meant everybody. So as a process of elimination, if we can eliminate as many people as humanly possible, then we could get down to who may

have committed this absolutely horrifying crime. Now you mentioned that Michelle survived, I think there have been many times when she wished she hadn't. Not only was her husband killed and her house destroyed, her face was melted, her eyes were filled with glass, almost horrifying, and it's cruciating pain for this woman, not only physically, but emotionally, psychologically, financially. I'm sure there are many times when she wished she'd

been a thing forgotten and forgotten, quite very tragic. And no one was trying to kill her, and no one was trying to kill her husband. The two people who actually it comes down to about three or four responsible

for this horrible crime. We're trying to kill a cute little puppy dog, George the teenage boy or you know, young adult boy, because they were mad at him because he testified against them in the murder trial, and so they decided to kill him from prison and Pegy, the sister pregnant as you mentioned, drove to the post office over a very bumpy road. Could have been induced labor right there on the spot and for two dollars and twenty two cents. Male's death and destruction to the home

of George and his father and stepmom really horrible. I mean, they found his knuckles the roof. That's how powerful that explosion was. And it's just a horrifying thing. So so ask me something and I'll answer it.

they became the best of friends. They went to Chugak Heights School, a well known educational institution where they dissipated their mid teen years and repeated displays of antisocial behavior. And they had a bunch of buddies that hung out with them. There was Travis and Eric and this guy and that guy, and they did all sorts of typical fun teenage things like blowing up mailboxes. You know, there's

not too much to do in Shoegiac. Everyone liked Chili because he had a big suburban and he'd organized parties. He could get a lot of people in that suburban. And they were also known for as the Burden Brothers because they used to put out their cigarettes in their arms apparently a shortage of astrays in Shoegiac. They didn't think to show they were tough or nuts. We're both or one of the two. They were fairly fearless. They

would rob places, do all sorts of stupid stuff. Yeah, they would get arrested to get in trouble for things. They were juveniles, and he can't do too much to them.

You know, you don't want to because with the law enforcement theory, if a juvenile's a linquin can make it to the age of twenty four, you got nothing more to worry about because usually by then they've either grown up or they've got married, and that'll usually slow them down tremendously when they've got a ball in chain if it's not the president's spouse, so that usually takes care of him. But with Chili, not Raymond Chili, but rather Lizard Gustus. And if they wanted to give me the

nickname Lizard, I wouldn't be that pleased. But apparently didn't bother him. He always wanted to be a sniper, whether officially or unofficially, so he mail ordered I believe a nice sniper rifle. Of course, what's the kid going to do with a rifle like that? Except he was it recklessly. He apparently didn't take very many gun safety courses, or

if they did, they totally ignore them. For driving along in the car Smiley is driving, Lizard is in the passenger seat, and little George is in the back seat. Lizard has his brand new weapon and he decides he's going to fire it, and so he does. That sniper rifle arrived October nineteenth, nineteen ninety and They had a

funny evening set up. They had some prostitutes meeting them at a motel where they're all just going to you know, smoked open ab sex, which sounds perfectly fine to me, except that on the way to this old party, Lizard decides he's going to take a pot shot with the rifle. The bullet comes out of the rifle, goes through the rear window of another car and kills this kid in I don't mean a little kid, but you know, a young man in the passenger seat. Now that's fairly shocking right there.

gun was fired. Hanging out with teenage the tough guys is one thing, but murders something else entirely. And that's when he told his boss what happened. Now by Shirk Wittens, his boss's attorney was there at the same time, and he told the kid to go to the police and do it immediately. So he did, and he told the cops everything and agreed to wear a hidden recorder to tape incriminating conversations with she lead Gusterson. So oh well, David Carratt thought his son was at work. He was

really out with the police getting wired up. Long story short, Uh, he got them on on wire, you know, blatantly talking about killing. Uh, shooting either intentionally or intentionally this uh, Jeffrey Kane Fellow and the media attention on this, as you can imagine, was beyond extensive. It was Anchorage's first drive by shooting and uh, you know what else you got to talk about up there, you know, Uh, and it became really a big story.

nonsense story about anything helped preparing the truck. Well, here's his dad standing there listening to his son tell him about this murder while the perpetrators are standing right there next to him. So he has to do it best to cover up what he's saying, what the conversation is about, without tipping off Chili. The George has already gone to

the cops. Now as a precaution, the cops sent George to talk to Doug Augustus, And meanwhile the police contacted everyone on the fringe of Chili Shrinking gang and got all of them to wear wires, so everybody's recording everybody else, and the fans to authorize wiretops on everybody in Alaska's phone. I mean, this comes up later, you know, this comes up after the after the kid puppy dog George is attempted murder, when his father is killed and his step

mom has melted. So you've got this big story, a big trial. Chili and Gustus and are sent to prison for life. Now this doesn't stop Chili from gritting constantly, and it doesn't stop lizend from being cold. But Chili puts together a hit list of everybody he's going to get even with, and he's going to kill him. He's gonna blow him up. He's gonna do something horrible to him, everyone from the judge to the prosecutor. But most of all, who they most despise, who they most hate, is George,

Little George, puppy dog, George, cute kid. They want to kill him more than anything because he rated him out and he did it smartly, needd it immediately. Well, the question is is how do you get a mail bomb, how do you make it, how do you mail it? And how do you kill your victim? Well, they did everything except the last part. They killed I can't say the wrong people because it's not right to kill people, but they killed George's father and destroyed the life pretty darn much of his stepmom.

resulted in this innocent guy's death. They shot on the highway, but they blamed George for talking about it, and so their big revenge was to kill him. And the way they're going to endure it is a mail bomb.

you talk about an Inspector Matthew Allen. We all know that well that most or I think all prison will record on cow call but are reported.

his giant box of transcripts of wire taps on these characters. Now, just listening to their conversations is bad enough, but reading them, if you have any command of the language, is a horrifying experience. I'm at a loss for words. As a word smith, I'm a loss for words. I got so tired of a four letter word that begins with F and ends with K that if I never saw that word again in my entire life, I'd be perfectly happy. Every every word was prefaced with some form of that.

So it was like George Carlin is a comedy Boutino and how useful that word is. It could be now a verb, an age, and an averb. They used it in ways even Carlan never mentioned. And I'll tell you, their conversations were as blunt as their vocabulary, devoid of any depth, and there was just just even to read it, I mean, have to get too deep. I mean, these guys weren't famous for the use of metaphors. It was it was all right there, you know, but every other

word was an expletive. They just like rained on it constantly. So this is an example of how cooperative everybody was in this case with me. And one reason for that s the fact that one of the story told and sold well was that the US Postal Inspection Service hadn't been the subject of anything since nineteen forty nine movie Post Office Investigator, starring what male lead was, but Audrey Long was the female lead, and she was the wife became wife of Leslie Charteriss, author of The Saint See

What a Small World It is? Yes it is, So that was kind of an interesting little tie in there, But I mean they were really aggravated. I think Jim Bordinay when we were first talking about doing this book, he said I was watching the news, and he said FBI agents aided by postal workers righted the office of such and such. That sounded like you visualize, you know, these mail carriers rushing in pulling machine guns out their mail bags. Well, no, the United States Postal Inspection Service

has a bigger and better lab than the FBI. That usually doesn't incur to people. The US Postal Inspectors Investigative Service is state of the art everything. They're ready beyond the FBI, or at least they were at the time. Now here's the shocking little thing that I uncovered that most people don't know. In the nineteen nineties, early nineteen nineties, I came who was head of the FBI then called me.

I think may have been well, I can't recall one of the to the average teenager in America had more computer power in their bedroom than the FBI had altogether. The FBI still didn't have computers with hard drives. They had like you know, Franklin A's twelve hundred oms, you know, with CPM on floppies. This is what the FBI had because there hadn't been a budgetary allocation for computers for

the Federal Bureau of investigation. Can you imagine that they had to bring in someone from the computer industry, which they did to testify before Congress. It was imperative that the United States come up with the money to buy the FBI computers, in fact, computers with hard drives and computers that had a mouse. I mean, that's how what the state was had a log of our FBI in the early nineteen nineties. So there had to be a

lot of upgrades h to the FBI. That's a little sidebar story there you might find of interest because we always think of the FBI as being state of the art. Well, the art of the state had to get up with the state of the art whatsoever at that time.

and laughed so hard. That's not a good sign. Now. The phone recordings also revealed Peggy's erotic dream in which she kills George with her bare hands after hitting it with her car. That extra was actually included the original charging documents final against Pegy, which formed the basis for

her initial arrest. Those are pretty wild, and you know, I started off the book with that, with that dream where she because it was really weird, because she's telling her brother about this herotic dream she has where she shits George on purpose with her car and then he's laying there on the gravel with blood coming out of his mouth, and she breaks his neck with her bare hands, and she's got blood on her hands and she almost has an orgasm telling this story. And so does her brother.

He just loves to listen, but he reminds me be careful about the blood. After all, word Jehovah's witnesses. We got to watch out for that blood. And they were Jeovah's witnesses. As a matter of fact, no bad reflection on the witnesses. They don't need Peggy and Doug reflecting. I'm sure.

Ryan had absolutely virtually nothing to do with this. He was just a buddy of Chili's. And he said, hey, you go over to the yard like that. If you've ever been to Alaska or be sure, Washington. That much difference. He got people who've got yards, they've got cars and trucks and all sorts of stuff, you know, out there, and pick up a couple of these items for me that her mind has stored over there. And you know this individual items, there's blasting caps and you know, nothing illegal.

And yet he was found guilty of possession of what firearm? Illegal firearm position? He was never charged with it. As a jury came back and he was found innocent of everything, but still sentenced to fifty seven months in prist for a crime that he was ever charged with. That is unique in the annals of American law. Now you think that he would get paid minimum wage for every hour he spent in prison after being found innocent and a letter of apology just did go to the appeals court.

The Court of Appeal said, yes, this is a really ridiculous error, but we don't care. We'll just let us slide. Which isn't very substanti of supportive or legal system where people could be found guilty of crimes they've never been charged with. But it happened absolutely positively. Now, of course Peggy actually did have very direct involvement aside from me. There's no crime to have erotic dreams about murdering someone or listening to them, But knowing that you're delivering a

male bomb, that's culpability for sure. And she knew, she knew exactly what she was delivering, she knew what it was supposed to accomplish, and she thought it was absolutely wonderful idea.

find you. That's not true. As a matter of fact, following some murders where the prison vanishes, they know who they're looking for. They will send detectives first and foremost to Las Vegas, Nevada, because they know. People say they can't go to Las Vegas and not be found. It's not that big a city, for aven sakes. Serial killers will travel across country to go to Las Vegas to

get caught. And people also think they can take counterfeit money or counterfeit money orders to Las Vegas and no one's going to notice, not really realizing that the United States Secret Service has with the biggest office in Las Vegas, Nevada. You know, law enforcements, you know, they may have a ITQ cap at some local department, but when it comes to federal as you're talking about some pretty smart people. Anyway, he runs off not to Las Vegas, but to Los Angeles.

And this is where again it gets very strange. This is like something exactly right out of a movie. He calls back home to his wife or girlfriend, whatever she is, and says there's a was it a ten thousand dollars reward for his capture? So he tells his girlfriend, I want you to get the reward, so turn me in

and get and get the money. Well, she keeps him on the phone long enough for them to trace the call, and they trace it to the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California, which is fairly close to Grauman's Chinese Theater as a matter of fact, and there's a movie being filmed at

the Roosevelt at that time. The technical advisor to the motion picture happens to be good buddies with the real raw enforcement officer who comes crashing in to arrest the kid who's going from the phone booth, but they have to pass through the movie set to get to him, and the advisor on the movie thinks it's a practical joke, but they really are there run to arrest somebody, and that's the kid in the phone booth. So that was a very very strange scene, as you can imagine. Now.

why weren't theyre arrested, Well, a couple of reasons. They wanted to keep their offices open on who all was involved in this conspiracy and who was a conspiracy not like some of the ones that people make up, but I mean, this was a real one and they weren't through all that were involved. Also, investigations of this nature are horrifyingly expensive cost of fortune. Who is going to pick up the tab for this? The uh, the police in Shugiak, the police in law enforcement and Anchorage, or

the federal government. Well, who's gonna who's gonna pay for everything? This is a big issue. And as I'm sure you recall, the reason why you're you're a wonderful serial killer up there Vancouver, the guy with the hog farm, and the reason they didn't go after him, even though they knew it was him and he knew it was going on, was because, well they have three reasons. They said, well, we can't afford it. We don't know what we're doing, is number three, and we're not trained in doing this,

so we'll let it slide. You know, after all, who cares how many people get murdered? We just can't afford this. Well. Finally, I believe the wise Canadian government coughed up some cosmic cash to pay for the investigation, very similar to what happened in Spokane with the investigation of the Spokane serial killer, which dragged on longer practically than reruns the Isle of Lucy millions and millions of dollars. Finally, the US government had come up with eight million dollars I believe to

pay the expenses of the Homicide Task Force. People don't

stop and realize how expensive these coordinated investigations are. So there was an agreement made between the FEDS, the federal agencies, and the local investigators that they will all work together, but the Feds would handle the actual arrests, prosecution, etc. So they have these several federal agencies involved, as you mentioned, and they didn't really come out and arrest anybody or press charges until they had all their proverbial culprits together,

and there wasn't a change of venue. I mean, and I can certainly understand that is, how in the world are these guys, the girls, men and women going to get a fair trial when this has been so extensively covered in media that everybody I mean, I mean, it always stuns me. Of course, it's a little different there in Canada, were not allowed to talk about it. Ongoing

case tell us resolved. We're here in the USA. All you gonna do is go on Facebook and listen to these people with absolutely no knowledge of anything, saying I know so and so is guilty. I know, so everybody everyone knows they did it. Well, how do they know they did it? They haven't seen it. All they know is they saw the person's name, you know, as being a suspect or not being a suspect. Oh, I know

who did it. I know we'll never get out a jury, of course of that attitude, but I mean, people do win the conclusion jumping competition in the twenty twenty Olympics every time there's a high profile case. Well, so they moved it, I think, moved it out of Alaska down in San Francisco to try to, you know, get an impartial jury, which is which can be difficult in any situation where is a great deal of cover, which especially

if you have someone. I think it was when Manson was charged the President of United States referred to as being guilty before the trial. That was a little much. Yeah, but you understand what I mean. So they've got to change your venue. The wound up of course, everybody being found guilty of something and even people who were found innoc and went to prison. Which is a Festol hosted a spin on American justice.

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showing a photo of the Michelle and two photos. So tell us about the two photos that almost made somebody.

part of the plan. No, the plan the way he wanted was George gets killed. George didn't get killed, and these two, in his mind, innocent people didn't. He said, he felt really bad about that. So, as you may know, this bizarre twist and the tail here is that Doug Gustusson teamed up with Michelle to sue the state for negligence in not stopping the mail bomb. Right. He felt sorry for her, and he wanted to cost to state a lot of money. But he adding more tragedy to

this story. Insurance had offered her a settlement. I think it was two million dollars. She didn't feel that was enough, and I think she was right. But when they went to court, there was judgments against the state, judgments against Chile, judgments against Augustus, and judgment against Ryan, who was quite

wondering while they all. He wound up at all this, and that the state was only responsible for twelve percent of the total cost which came out by the time he got done with her legal fees and one thing and another, she got less than the two millions she would have got up. She was just taken the deal of the insurance company. So she broke down in tears right there in the court rum when even though she won, she didn't win anything. And that was even more tragic.

It was not one thing and something else, you know, he did Douglas and said he wanted to cost him millions of dollars. And so the state added Augustus and Chile and Ryan as co defendants to share the costs should she win her case. Well she did, but they didn't have any money, of course, and so that meant she got, as my father said, hay Cocks Bolovinis didn't get anything, you know, next to nothing.

and formants are not exactly reliable witnesses. But I think what really did it was the pictures, which I would imagine the defense probably objected to the prosecution showing those pictures as would have so much of an emotional impact, But the facts of the matter were still fairly clear. One error that prosecutors make I've noticed, and I'm sure they notice it too, or maybe they don't beause they're

not true crime writers. Maybe we have the blessing of being a little farther removed, since the perspective is going for the typical one, is going for a common scheme or plan when it isn't and that blows up in their face. Or trotting out unreliable witnesses, paid informants, and people with no veracity to them whatsoever. Then instead of bolstering the prosecution's case, makes them look like they're desperate by bringing out all sorts of people who lie on

the witness stand and blatantly. So I don't think that's ever a good idea. If your case is strong enough, it's not a matter do you think you can win it is? I don't know what about up in Canada, but the United States, it's not so much. The system of true justice in most cases is can we win it? Whether the person is guilty or not, can we win it? And that becomes the contest. I think we can win this one, not, you know, And then that's not what

the prosecutors. People think it's the prosecution's job to prosecute people. It's not. It's to prosecute justice to get justice done of the person's not the one, you know. It doesn't matter if you can build the case, is it true? It says it's really a difficult situation. I'm sure you're aware of the one. And I had the woman on my show too. Maybe you had her on as well.

She wrote a book about a case in San Diego where the woman was convicted of poisoning her husband with a heart snack and then using some of the insurance mind you get a book job and having sex with every marine in San Diego, well not every but every other. She was innocent, but they found her guilty because they were able to push this thing through with enough smoking mirrors,

and they won it on appeal. However, the arcstic evidence experts came forward and said, I told them she didn't do it, but they said they could win it anyway. They'd be a true crime book as heroes versus you know, sending this woman away. Finally, it was allowed that the woman could sue these San Diego prosecutors for twelve million dollars, which she did plus her heart. So, you know, some of the desire to be partially famous in a true

crime book by being the winning prosecutor. If you're prosecuting people who didn't do it, there's no glory there.

evidence that they needed for the prosecution. And when you talk about again and again, another movie esque scene in this is that Raymond Chile Chile's response when he gets sentenced tell us about what happens at the trial in terms of guilt or innocence, and then what does Raymond Chile do in response to the sentence.

to me and continue to be. I think if I ever get in trouble, I'll call them, you know, yeah, helped me out, you guys, I did a poke about uh yes, And I was there when Michelle gave her you know, victim's impact statement, and she just gave him hell. I mean how they destroyed her life, their face, her vision or future, or her husband or home. And Raymond laughed. He didn't just smile, he laughed, Well, she was a

nervous laugh. What you got to be amused about. He's going to be sent off, you know, and he's already in prison for murder. What else are they going to do to him?

at all. I mean, he announced that he was getting a divorce. He didn't want to stay married to her, He didn't want to be faithful to her for twenty four years and six months while she languished in prison for the horrible murder that she helped take place, and weighed on her. I mean, I don't know how much it would have waited on her for the killing of the person she wanted to kill, which was George Contemporary, the only guy with the ethics practically in this whole story.

Said maybe for Craig and Joseph, who was innocent of everything and yet did all the time in prison. Maybury told me that he saw her after she'd been in prison in a while well, and he could see that it was eating her alive. You know what she had done, the pain and suffering and death and destruction, that she had participated in. I'm sure had a negative effect on her self image. You know, it's hard to think well of yourself. And it wasn't that she accidentally fell into it,

like a clean kid into a coal shoot. She joyously participated in what she envisioned as the horrifying murder of George Carr, when instead it was the horrifying murderer of George's father, in the complete disfiguration of his stepmother.

she's standing in the kitchen when this explosion went. It was amazing that she was able to say, Doug Gustafson, you know, and I point that she knew who would have been behind it, that that's how much she doug hated her stepson. But I mean there was firstly nothing left, but her face was gone. She was blind shere ear drums exploded.

surgery on her face to reconstruct it. I mean I saw her the day after she got away from this guy, and she'd just been beaten, and what her face looked like van and then the surgery and I mean now actually actually looks she did before and gave her a nice new face. It's not the face she starts did with.

prosecutor's office. They were really great too, meeting with the federal prosecutor there. And then I got my rental car and I was driving to the home of one of the US Postal inspectors. And I got to tell you it was summertime and it was gorgeous up there, and the sun never said it always looked like it was dusk when the sun went down, it didn't go down. It was like seven o'clock at night, dusk, my favorite time of day. All night and they'd been out hunting

and they were making reindeer meatballs. As a matter of fact, there was no deer in Alaska. It just rein deer, Okay anyway. So I went to drive to this guy's house. I kind of space out. Next thing I know, I'm in the middle of nowhere. Bam. I was out of town that past. You think you're in a capitol city, it's gonna have some streets to it, but it's a small town and everything else is smaller. So when you've

got a major story like this, it saturates everything. It saturates every radio broadcast, every TV broadcast, every pair run of the newspaper, and individuals conversations, and the majority of those conversations were recorded with federal wiretaps.

UH services of the US postal team. So hence this task force was put together with a lot of people, a lot of investigators, and a lot of emphasis and no constraints in terms of budget for this, did.

to think about it. We don't think about someone destroying our home, murdering our wife, husband and children whatever at the mail and so they uh, you know, when you in the United States, when you put a letter in the mailbox to go out, it is no longer your property. It then becomes the property of the United States government.

Un tell us delivered. And so if someone's messing with it got big problems and the next chiste I wanted to do this post the spectas shourwed me onto which was absolutely fascinating, but no publisher wants it because no one's murdered. Was I'll just take a minute to tell you this. I think you'll find it interesting as a journalist. A lady writes a letter to the Posts Spectrums and said, boy, I'm really mad. I paid twelve dollars a classified ads in the paper to how to figure out my winning

lottery numbers. That was going to get you know, doctor Svendrick's secret lottery, you know whatever, but I never got it. Well, that's a violation of postal law, not selling how to win the lottery. But not if you're charging someone twelve bucks, you better deliver it.

where it was a misdemeanor. Oh well, And they finally finally got this guy who was in India or something. He had several million dollars stashed in Seattle Bank. They were able to seize that. But his total punishment for this most heartless of crimes, which he was making millions and millions of dollars looting these people. He's only people's life savings is he did I think it was eighteen months minimum security in federal prison and then was released

that he had millions stashed all over the world. The only way they were getting it was civil judgments against him. By Ireland I think went after him for thirty three million. The UK went after him for I think an equal amount. Whether they got it or not, I don't know, but you may know heartless someone would be to do that.

And he wasn't doing it alone. He had another woman, another guy working with him, befriending these lonely, sad people who just lost her husband or wife and then robbing him of everything.

fear response of when they were weak. And just that's the thing, if they're asking for it, you see that person was asking for it because that's what they were told. That being weak is asking for it. Yeah, and that's a tragic situation. Until we stopped the whole thing of abusing each other. We'll have bullies.

We never really you don't really mention, but it'd be very interesting to know the fate of Robert Chambers what he felt.

and they said no, because he works undercover. Hello, Yeah, and they didn't want his picture.

the little hearts. I do my show, which is you know, live Saturdays at two o'clock on alfhol RadioLIVE dot com, and Douglas Shearer has been recording it for me every week dutifully for the past couple of years, although I think this coming weeks his last I did recording and someone else I simply uploaded to Anchor FM, and they upload it to every podcast platform that exists, iTunes, Google Play, this one. That one. I don't have to mess with it,

which was driving me nuts. So it's interesting to look at the listenership just on the podcast, not at the live audience, because that's really hard to judge. We know our old server, the thing would blow up and we got to two hundred and fifty thousand, We're gonna sell them, blew up and we got a new server on that. But since it went up on on iTunes and other stuff, I can watch every week, it just goes higher and hire and hire and hire. And what's interesting to me

is what episodes get the largest number of downloads. And ironically was calling me just now was Leonard Bouschell, who is a former drug smuggler who now produces the Real Recovery Film Festivals. He founded Writers and Treatment, which is similar the Music Cares as the founder. Writ is a nonprofit with Robert Downey to provide financial aid and treatment to people who work in the writing and publishing industry who may have problems with drug, alcohol, or other behavioral

problems that they don't have insurance. And he produces the Experience, Strength and Hope Awards. And we did an interview with him a year ago November, I think October November about the upcoming Real Recovery Film Festival, and with everything else, that still remains our most downloaded episode.

kind of interesting because well, how did he get caught. Well, he got caught twice, once because he made a mistake and the second time because someone in the same building as the Diamond highs the taking place. It was like a gym still manufacturing place. You were not a private home. He never did that. It was like a commercial place.

But there were apartments in the same buildings. And this guy went nuts and decapitated the family cat, the family parakeet, and the family father and threw his father's head out in the middle of the street, so he had homicide trying to catch this guy. In the process of trying to catch him, they run in where Punch and his buddy are doing this multi million dollar diamondized and they go, oh, need man, we were just eater trying to buy the same place a smoke a joint they tried to pull

back on. That's so you never know what weird thing's gonna happen. You know. It's like I was you ever seen that Stanley uh uh Kramer Koberilia the too Confused U Kramer filmed the killing starting Stirling Hayden. No. Uh, it's a it's a height movie. It's a racetrack robbery and they plant it down to the last little detail and things. When the things can go wrong, it doesn't take much, you know. And uh, it's a great, great

film if you get a chance to watch it. He couldn't remake it today because the way the restrictions aren't. Getting on airplanes, you can't just go, you know, grab a ticket and get on. That was back in the old days when it was still like a America in America every week.

the people very much like I do. The people that are the authorities, the authors, the people that were there, the people that are part of the story.

get him killed. But the things he would talk about, like how he wound up in the Russian Mob and why he was in it and everything else. With a crew, you know, we never know what things are going to come your way. And well, ron Chepstick, who also does a true crime show, absolutely, he who was the audience just breaking of course the way as he well should about his show and why he should about yours. You guys don't really do a true crime show. You do

a comedy show that happens to be about true crime. Well, he's partially correct for the first five minutes and maybe a little later, but we get into some serious stuff.

an hour before me? It's got to figure out what you want to do well. One of the l alredio listeners said, well, you write through crime books. Why don't you do a true crime show? Why do you want to do it by myself? Because I like having someone to bouncings off of. And right in front of me was Don Woldman, family law attorney, but he had brilliant man with great experience, and I said, hey, you want to do a true crime So I said, I'd love to do a true crime show. And we had the

best time doing it, we really did. And he had to take a hiatus because of some legal obligations, and Howard stepped into a fill in for him. And then after about a year or so, Don said, I feel bad if I come back, if I don't want to take Howard out of the chair, because he's you know, he's in there now. But Don would come back and fill in, or he'd come back and join us on occasion, and of course when he died, so suddenly we were all just completely shocked. A great guy and with a

joy to work with. And I'll be putting a lot of the old Don Woldman shows up on the iTunes and everywhere so people can enjoy that I still I think one of the most emotionally shocking shows I ever participated in was the first one you did about these Shall We Dance Murders? That was so shocking. I mean, that's an incredible book. I'm not just you know, blowing smoke here. That is I think one of the most gripping true crime books I've ever read. And the guy

is so twisted. Did it mess with your head? I could interview now, Did it mess with your head to deal with that guy?

that psychopathic mind. So certainly I had read some of these things come into life talking to this guy that from these true crime books, these classics, I could understand the kind of mind that this guy, this person was, and he was influenced by the kinds of murderers and killers that you and others wanted to be the.

another sixty years or something. I didn't realize it was so obvious that it affected me that when I came out of the prison, she could tell that I was bothered. But you're right, you know, when you know you're dealing with psychopaths, which is a step beyond sociopaths, You're dealing with people that cannot see beyond themselves. They are the center of the universe and reality is at their whim. That they can make up anything, say anything, and it's

just like they're creating the universes. They go along and facts and information have little or no importance to them whatsoever. And they do not have the ability to feel the pain of others, and psychologically or emotionally, and it doesn't matter carb a Turkey carbon person the same difference. Well,

you know what people think I'm hidden about this. There is a support website for sociopaths, and I can't recall those, called sociopaths dot org or something like that, but it's actually maintained by sociopaths as a public service for other sociopaths. And they didn't like a short story I wrote called Giving Shoulder, which was written for the standpoint of a psychopath actually, and they didn't like it. But that's okay.

I can't please everybody, can't please every sociopath. But there was some interesting letters to the editor statements in there. They know always this what sociopath says. Okay, everything they say about it is true. We only think about ourselves. We're incapable of thinking about anybody else. And so I realized that if I do all these really sick things that other social paths and rip people off, that it's not that Gee, I don't want to cause other people problems.

It's will cause me problems, and I'm the only person that's important to me, and being as I don't want to have problems like going to prison or being you know, treated poorly. I'm not going to do that stuff. Now they're not doing it that he's not behaving because he has a moral code that says I care about others and don't want to hurt him. It's I care about me and me alone, and if I do these things,

I'll be unhappy. So they say that if you can get to a sociopath or a psychopath before the age of fourteen, you can teach him that, but once they get in the system, it's really hard, really good.

loved by the police. So we never really know what the truth is with a psychopath, even when they are being candid and because they can to fool, want to play, think that they're smarter at every stage their life.

and available everywhere. I guess tell us a little bit about where we might get this.

it's a heck of a deal. Also, Mom said, Kill is also now available as an audio book for the first time, and it just came out as an audio book and you could get that free too, I or instead, if you want, if you don't have an account at audible, you signed up, you can get a free audio book and we're welcome to pick one of mineely.