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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 Night Stalker 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 Zupanski for the program True Murder, The most shocking Killers in true crime History and the authors that have written about them. The Rocky amount Hold celebrated place in the wildest West of both myth and reality. Yet this is the first ever travel guide to the many sites associated with Colorado and Wyoming's notorious past, complete with precise GPS coordinates of significant places.
Written with the same fast paced, gripping style of best selling crime author Ron Francell's wildly praised earlier work, The Crime Buff's Guide to the Outlaw Rockies, takes you on a time traveling tour through the haunts of Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch gang, serial killer Ted Bundy, the Columbine Massacre, and hundreds of the West's most lawless characters.
It's an indispensable resource for both criminal history enthusiasts and travelers because each site description includes a concise summary of the location's significance, historical content, context maps, directions, and photos, all with exact GPS details. Our book this season that we're featured is The Crime Buff's Guide to the Outlaw Rockies with my special guest, Ron Franzel. Thank you for agreeing to this interview and welcome back to the program. Ron Franzel, glad.
To be here. Thank you for having me.
Dan Well, thank you very much.
Always fun to come to your show.
Oh great, you're making me blush here. It's about an audience. Can't see that. So now, for those people that aren't aware and didn't listen to our last interview last year, when you were good enough to come on and talk
about Delivered from Evil, you're really best known for. Even though you've written some nonfiction and of course some true crime, and you've been at it for a little while here quite a while, you're associated with What's now considered even though it just came out in two thousand and eight. What's considered now a true crime classic and that's called The Darkest Night about a murder in a small town, and you were personally involved where you you knew people
intimately involved in the story. So this really was really close to home for you, and not just metaphorically. And like I said, you did Deliver from Evil. And then last year in twenty ten, you put out the book The Crime Buffs Guide to Outlaw Texas. And I know that you live in San Antonio, Texas. But what I found interesting was coming from the true crime perspective and also being a of a fictional writer and a nonfiction writer, but having this classic The Darkest Night and Delivered from Evil.
What made you or what brought you around to the idea of combining basically two genres, which would be true crime, true crime history and this practical travel guide. What you know, I know that I've looked into your past would work as a journalist with the Denver Post. But tell our audience how you came about to this idea of combining these two genres and coming up with the Crime Buff's Guide to the Outlaw Rockies.
Well, you know, the answer kind of goes back a little bit to the point when I decided I was going to write The Darkest Night. My intent was to explore this monstrous crime that happened in nineteen seventy three to two childhood friends of mine who lived right next door to me, and not just that crime and its aftermath, but also the effect on community and why even to this day, now nearly forty years later, this small town continues to treat this as a fresh wound. And I
really wanted to explore that. And I didn't start out saying I want to write a true crime. I started off saying I want to tell this fascinating story and then go a little deeper and and touch some of the humanity that sticks, that sticks to our memory for such a long time. And now I was fascinated by that. So so the book did come out, of course and became a bestseller, shocking nobody more than me, because I thought I had just told a good story. It wasn't a true crime writer. It just had to be a
true story that was about a crime. Well, that suddenly landed me in solidly in the genre, to the point where doing anything else became very difficult. Agents, editors, people along the way. Now they want a new true crime. So I continued in that, but I've always been a history nut and a course as a journalist, I'm fascinated by moments when people are seen at their best and their worst, and that usually comes down to two things, war and crime, and so I was fascinated with those
stories as well. Well. Along comes well, I should say, and I love the road. I love to be on the road. So all of a sudden, these three things kind of came together. And I was going out and exploring on weekends here in Texas with my wife, and we were we were finding all kinds of history. Among it were these crime sites, and I began to think that we might have something here if we could just do this little history book that was about crime and
just tell people where these sites are. Because I really believe the history, that our perspective on history is greatly informed by standing where it happened, or at least standing in places that were significant to that history. So it all came together beautifully. We did the Outlaw Texas book, which was very successful, and the publisher had already contracted to do the Rockies book. Because I grew up in Wyoming and worked in Colorado, this was a natural for me.
And then next year we'll have a third installment come out. It'll be The Outlaw d C for the Washington DC area, just in time for election year here in the United States.
Right.
Interesting, yeah, interesting. All the characters you're gonna find there, well, you'll just have to yeah.
I mean, the hardest part is trying not is trying to avoid having it be a political book. So I put a high value on finding crimes that weren't political, even though there were a lot in there. I really wanted to find something that went a little farther afield.
Well, you know, after this, the third one, the guy the Crime Buffs Guide to Outlaw DC, you'll be pigeonholed and no agent or publisher or want you to do anything.
But well, if that's the case, then it's worked out.
Well.
If they're successful, at least I get a few road trips out of it.
Yeah, that's great, that's very good. Good for you. Now, you know, it's for those people that don't know. It's incredible. When I went through the book and looked at all the characters, the famous characters are not so famous, how many you know, it's just double the list of people that you have written about in this crime buff skuy to outlaw Rockies. Now some of the more famous and we we should go through that because it is fascinating to have some of the the the biggest names in crime,
I think in true crime history. Uh. Maybe you can tell us what you found and whereabouts? Uh geographically this is is Butch Cassidy where some of his haunts and uh and also his gang, the Wild Bunch. Tell us about Butch Cassidy.
Well, Butch Cassidy was, you know, a young a young fellow that born in in Utah, raised in a Mormon family, and and and sort of at a very young age started to go bad, hanging out with the wrong people and just in general not staying out of trouble.
Uh.
At one point in there, he takes a job job in a butcher shop in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Uh.
And it just happens that the guy who runs this butcher shop is for lack of a better term, though a butcher to the to the rustlers. The rustlers would russell cattle, bring them in, and and this this fellowed slaughter them and cut them up. And and we've disposed of the evidence and made a buck. So Uh. This is one of his first jobs, and that's where he His name to that point had been George l Roy Parker.
At that point he's known as Butch, and he takes another last name, Cassidy, and that's how Robert le Roy Parker becomes Butch Cassidy. He then goes on to the Hole in the Wall country in Wyoming and where, which is really an area that, because of its seclusion, is very popular with all kinds of outlaws, and everybody who hung out there was loosely called the Hole in the Wall Gang, even though they weren't a gang. It was just a bunch of outlaws that came and went as
they pleased. It was there that Butch starts starts doing things. He does his first bank robbery and Telluride, Colorado, and that's one of the sites in the book. The butcher Shop in Rock Springs is in the book still exists. He in the late in the mid eighteen nineties. He decides he can do this himself, he can put together his own gang, and with a buddy of his, not the Sundance Kid, they put together a gang and they
begin robbing banks. The Sundance Kid comes along later, and we tend to think of Butch casting the Sundan's Kid as being these lifelong inseparable but in fact their acquaintance comes much much later, and and they they are presumed, of course, to have died together in Bolivia. But even there are even sites around the West that that are connected to the legend that they didn't, that they survived and and came back to the United States and and
lived out their lives. But Butch is a fascinating character. It's said that he really didn't like hurting or killing people, and in fact there's no real evidence that he ever did. Some of his gang did. But he gained the reputation of being a pretty friendly operator, almost a Robin Hood
sort of character. And I think if somebody wanted to write a great book, they'd write a business management book based on Butch Cassidy's approach to his business, because he took care of the people who were important to him, and those were the ranchers and the people along the way that someday he might need to, you know, call upon for a place to sleep, a fresh horse, place to hide, you know, or just not turning him in. So he really does a pretty good job. He's got
a pretty good business model going there. So he's one of the fascinating characters. And I think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid would be fairly well known outlaws to us in North America. But the movie in nineteen sixty nine starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford really really just skyrocketed their and to the point where it is today.
Now along along the way in some of these places, is there any attempt to set any of these up as tourist attractions? Is there anybody capitalizing on these locations or trying to capitalize on them setting them up as sort of tourist attractions along the way at all? Is there anything like that? Oh?
Absolutely, yeah. I mean a lot of people, you see a lot of communities that are that have been, you know, desperate for money and tourism for a long time, long ago, started recognizing the potential of these outlaws to bring people to town. In many of these places, when you go and you find outlaw graves, for instance, there are a lot of places in Colorado and Wyoming, for example, where well known outlaws came in and tried to rob a bank and the citizenry just rose up and took matters
into their own hands and killed them. They typically were buried out beyond the fence of the local cemetery, maybe in an unmarked grave. As the years pass and as the sensibilities change, and as the town fathers kind of recognize that they've got something here, you know, after a few people show up at the Chamber of Commerce and say, hey, could you tell me where Tom McCarty is buried? Then they realize, hey, these people are coming to town and spending money.
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Everything else to see this old outlaw. So maybe we better do something about that. So you see that all over all over the Colorado and Wyoming, but other places, even Texas, where interpretive signs have been put up. Maybe there's a billboard on the edge of town that says, you know the place where you know this outlaw died. But yeah, they are capitalizing on You see it all
over and it's rather fascinating. Really, Sundance, Wyoming, it happened to be that a guy named Harry Longiba, a young fifteen year old horse thief, gets caught in Crook County, Wyoming and thrown in the Sundance jail. He ultimately, you know, he does his time and his release, but he also gets a nickname, the Sundance Kid. Of course we igno
about that. It was within the last few years Sundance, recognizing this, has has a life size bronze statue out on the courthouse lawn of Harry Longabah the Sundance Kids sitting in a jail cell. And it's a very popular attraction for people outside of Sundance. People in Sundancers a little discomfort because they've just put up a statue to a criminal, right interesting, But people go and see it,
they take pictures and it's a popular little attraction. So you see that you see that across the West when when it's possible, uh, you you see these interpretive signs, you see communities taking advantage of that. Another more macabre example, a train robber named Big Nose George Parrot participated. Well. He was being chased by a posse and he killed two lawmen. When he was ultimately caught, he was convicted, but before the sentence could be carried out, he was
lynched the local townspeople. It was an extraordinary lynching. Actually, local doctor cuts him down and takes him back to his uh you know, doctor's office in his house, and and dissects him, you know, just in the interest of science, he says. But when his dissection is done, he begins to do some pretty strange things. He takes Big Nose George's skull and turns the skull cap into a candy dish. He strips the skin off of Big Nose George and
has a pair of shoes made. This doctor ultimately goes on to become the governor of Wyoming, and he wears the shoes to his inauguration.
Yeah, it's incredible.
The skull and the shoes and other artifacts are on display in the rollins the Carbon County Museum in Rollin's, Wyoming for anybody to look. It's a rather grizzly display, but again capitalizing on the interest of tourists.
Yeah, amazing what they used the scrotum. They made a medical bag, ashtrays, change purse. It's incredible.
Yeah, I take a tobacco patch, tobacco pouch out of the scrotum of this outlaw.
So incredible. Now we'll just going to go backwards a little bit before we introduce a little bit more characters. I want. I think we didn mentioned that what is the expanse of time that you've covered modern homicides in this not just Tales of the Wild Wild West? But
how far back do you go? How many years would you say the expanse is between the modern homicides that you do cover more modern homicides and where you started off in terms of this Wild wild West history and primarily what states are you primarily concentrating on in your travels and in terms of specific locations.
Yeah, I'll start at the end with that. This particular book only looks at Colorado and Wyoming, right, Subsequent books will probably undertake Montana, Nevada, and Arizona. New Mexico, which all have rich outlaw histories too, but in this case
only Colorado and Wyoming. The span of time that's covered is from roughly the you know, the period right after the opening of the West to the White Man so you know, the mid eighteen hundreds, all the way up into the two thousands, so that we have this span that goes from essentially the Mountain Man period through the gunslinger outlaw age, and then up through the gangster era, and then finally, you know, the more contemporary where we
have serial killers and mass murderers and white collar criminals, and of course some even more interesting things on the good side of the law, where we see the development of some really fascinating technologies and some heroic people. So it really covers the gamut in terms of time.
Now, in eighteen sixty four you talk about the Sand Creek Massacre, and you know, I had not heard about this, so it was all new for me and the Union Colonel John Shivington Colorado cavalry killed hundreds of Indian women and children. Tell us why why you included that? Why you felt this was an important historical story to include in this book.
I in general, I tried to stay away from in all of these books. I try to stay away from acts of war, because we could we could talk about whether the massacre of Custer the Little Big Horn was a crime or was just a battle in a war. But there would be no disputing between you and me and probably any of your listeners if I included the me LII massacre in a book of crimes because it was a crime. It wasn't. It wasn't. It certainly happened
during a war, but there was criminal behavior, sure. The Sand Creek massacre is an example, is the me lie of the Indian It's one of the me lies of the Indian Wars, where a loosely confederated military unit Colorado, you know, Colorado Cavalry just gets together and goes out looking for Indians to kill. There's there there they they they come upon uh settlement of Indians who were friendly and who were who had been given permission to be
where they were. But the the soldiers get drunk and and they just just sort of slice into this this encampment of Indians mainly women and children, uh and massacred them.
Uh.
And and though those that they don't go on a uh you know, an incredible journey to get away all the way to Montana. So nothing is ever done to Shivington, although there there are two two of his office who absolutely refuse to participate because they see what this is and and they meet interesting and quick ends after all of this. But there is no prosecution. And it's one of the real dark moments in our Western history. I deemed it a crime because ultimately, when you look at it,
there was there was. There was almost no other explanation. It was pure prejudice and pure hatred and pure stupidity behind it. There was no military purpose. There was really even no military bearing at all. It was. It was a horrific event. So it was one of those acts that happened during a war that I decided really qualified as a crime, and there really are a lot of those.
But that was one, right I agree to another story. This person was hung at the age of forty three and nineteen o three, and he was called the detective and the law man, and his name was Tom Horn. And it seems to be that he was lynched and hung for was for a murder that he was accused of. Now now tell us why years later he was There was some talk of him in review of this case that he might have been wrongfully convicted. Tell us about that. Yeah, fascinating.
Tom Horn is one of the great legendary figures in the West, and very and in a lot of ways, very typical of characters that we see throughout our history here here and in Canada as a matter of fact, who who at different times in their lives have been good guys and bad guys. And sometimes the line blurs and we're not really sure if they're good guys or bad guys. Doc Holliday, Wyatt, Earp Bat Masterson, Uh, you know, Big Ben Thompson. There's there's a string of these people. Uh,
we're not really sure. Well, Tom Horne is one of them. And and here's a he's a war hero. He's got all kinds of of of adventure in him.
Uh.
He ends up going and becoming a stock detective during during the the the worst part of the Range Wars in in Colorado and Wyoming. And and he's known to be a cold blooded killer. And he's acting on behalf of the ranchers who hired him. And there's a string of people that he's been that he's killed. And I don't think anybody anywhere has ever made the argument that Tom Horn is not guilty of murdering people. The question comes up, did he murder the fifteen year old boy
whose death sent Tom Horn to the gallows? And I think that it could be argued both ways. It is true that Horn confessed to it. It's just the lawyer's arguments were that, well, he was drunk and he always talks big when he's drunk. So did Tom Horn kill Willie Nickel? I don't know, but it's certainly one of the great mysteries of the Old West. Horn is one of the great figures of the Old West, and a lot of the sites where a lot of the this
particular crime and Horn related site still exists. Horn himself is buried in Boulder, Colorado. Willie nicol the little boy, the fifteen year old boy who he is he was convicted of killing and then hanged, is buried in Cheyenne. But then then you dig a little farther and you find some other interesting things. The gallows that Tom where Tom Horn was hanged, were innovative. They were invented by a local Cheyenne guy named James Julian, and they were
the first gallows that didn't require a hangman. In other words, the the condemned man would walk up the steps, and when he stepped onto the trap door, a series of water buckets began pouring, uh, until his own weight would would snap open the trap door and he would if in effect, hang himself. Uh. But Julianne is buried there in Cheyenne, and the gallows themselves are still in the Frontier prison in in a in a storage room uh
in Rawlins, Wyoming. Uh. And they were actually used a few times after that, did you get Oh sure, yes, I and I actually saw them for the first time when I was doing research for The Darkest Night, because the two killed in that book had spent time on death row in that prison. In fact, no more than ten paces from the gallows and the gas chamber. So you can imagine waking up every morning and seeing.
Yeah, yeah, that's atmosphere for you. Yeah, yeah, that's incredible.
Well Horn, you know, Horn is a fascinating figure. He too, was made even more famous by Hollywood when Steve McQueen played him right in a movie back in the seventies. I think, so, it's a lot of these people enjoy a lot of these characters enjoy new life because of Hollywood.
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Era, so to speak, we have someone that probably true crime fans aren't as familiar with. Of course we'll get to Ted Bundy, because we no show would be complete without a little bit of Ted Bundy. But we have a gentleman, a young man named Charlie stark Weather, and is a young girlfriend, fifteen year old girlfriend. This is the nineteen fifties, and this is quite shocking. For the fifties,
we think the good old days and a time of innocence. Well, please tell us about the Charlie's Charlie Starkweather and his girlfriend in their crimes.
Charlie stark Weather was a young, you know, juvenile delinquent in in Nebraska. Really he fit the classic mold of what we think of as the sort of greaser kid from you know, West Side Story or you know, Greece. He just fit that mold. But he was definitely a rebel and probably didn't have a cause. He had this girlfriend, Carol Fugate, Carol Anne Fugate, and you know, they did the typical teenage kind of thing. Some point in there.
Her father and decides, you know this, this is just not a good relationship for her, and puts his foot down. And Charlie, who at that moment, unbeknownst to anybody else, had already killed a service station attendant a couple of them months before, comes to his girlfriend's house, kills her mother, her father, and her baby sister. And then they hit the road and they begin this killing spree across you know, the breadth of the Nebraska and ultimately find themselves in
Wyoming where they are going to steal a car. They kill a traveling salesman who's sleeping in his vehicle next to the road, and it's at that moment, a sheriff's deputy drives up and sort of catches them red handed. Carol Anne Fugate runs to the arms of the deputy, and Charlie Starkweather steps on the gas and escapes. He's ultimately chased by local lawmen and arrested. And he's a fascinating figure because you know, you're right, this is the
nineteen fifties. There have been mass murders by that point. I mean, we are not virginal in North America at that point. We've seen mass murders happen, but not really in the heartland, not like that. This seemed so senseless and so shocking. And it's barely a year later when the Clutter family is wiped out in Holcombe, Kansas, not really that far away. So all of a sudden, right there at the end of the nineteen fifties, nineteen fifty eight and fifty nine, America is shaken to its core
by these senseless killings. And it really probably for at least Charlie stark Weather's case, But when you look at the two of them together, you're seeing some of that discomfort between generations getting more uncomfortable, and Charlie Charlie was bad to the end. Shortly before he was executed, he he was hanged, they asked if he would donate his eyeballs to science, and he said, no, why should I. Nobody ever gave me anything. And that was that was it.
So he was He's interesting. And of course again we go back to Hollywood. Martin Sheen plays a Charlie stark Weather character in the movie bad Lands. We see similar characters in Natural Born Killers.
Sure absolutely, Now the locations that you visited that concerned Charlie stark Weather on his week long rampage here this killing spree, Well, how many locations would you say that there are? And tell us about some of those, some of those specific locations that you travel to and that we're regarding Charlie stark Weather.
The key ones are the place that moment when he has he and his girlfriend have killed this traveling salesman in his vehicle and a deputy just by chance drives up that spot is known, not widely known. I actually interviewed the son of that deputy. The deputy is dead now, but his son, he had taken his son there. You know, this was the biggest thing in this deputy's life. He had taken his son there over the years and said
here is where I found Charlie stark Weather. And so that son was able to take me to that spot. Charlie was ultimately arrested after this high speed gun battle many miles away at a little crossroads, again known because of police reports at the time, and then some of the people involved. We have located their graves now so that we know where those are. The jail where he was held is no longer there, but we know the spot.
So it's things like that, And when I get around to Outlaw, Nebraska, we'll have many, many more related to Charlie stark Weather.
Now, he's a character that really when we talked about people turning things into tourist attraction, and I mean, obviously he doesn't have the mythology or Hollywood be you know, Hollywood hasn't immortalized them per se. But Charlie stark Weather, there's not too many it's not turned into a tourist attraction concerning him and his girlfriend. So much is it?
No, And I think it might be a little too fresh. Where you mainly see that is with the long long dead Outlaws, who almost occupy a different realm, you know, a different parallel universe. We, like I said, outside of the people of sun Dance, who are uncomfortable with building a statue to a criminal, you don't see many people like that.
You see.
Plaques in Tell Your Ride, Colorado. There's a plaque on the building that was the bank when young Butch Cassidy robbed his first bank. And so they have a plaque on the bank buildings. You know, this was the first bank that Butch Cassidy robbed, not not this was the bank. I'm making this up now, But why don't we see plaques that say, now, this is the bank where young Sam Walton put his first dollar, or you know, Warren Buffett,
or we don't see that. But we have this fascination without laws, and I think that that's that's what we're seeing. And and this, like I said, I think what's what's interesting to me is that in crime and war both we see humans in their most vulnerable. We see them at their best and we see them at their worst,
and we see heroes, we see terrible, terrible villains. So this life story gets played out, and if we can get enough distance from it so that it doesn't seem personal, then we can revel in it to a certain degree. And so yeah, I don't think you're going to see Charlie Stark weather monuments or anything maybe ever, but it is certainly not not until a few more generations have passed.
M Now one of the darkest moments in American history is also involved, is also covered in your book as well, with the Columbine massacre in Colorado. For somebody that's just got off a boat somewhere, I guess maybe you could briefly tell us about Columbine, but also the effect, not the effect, because we know the effect must have been monumental for the community. But tell us what you found
in your travel, Why you included the Columbine massacre. I mean, it's obvious, but how important is it is it to the book? And what are some of the significant locations specifically that you've included in and they were obviously kind of moving to you as you've included in the book.
Well, of course, Columbine is one of those transformational moments for those of us who lived at that time. And you know, you've got it wasn't the worst mass murder in American history. It wasn't even the worst school shooting in American history, right, It was partly driven. I think the public's shock was partly driven by the narratives that sprang up very quickly that these guys were getting even with bullies. We now know, of course, that they were
the bullies. They delighted in bullying people, and this was this was just part of a general behavior that they had, although obviously the worst part of it that they were bullies, these were bad kids. They they were delighted that they could do the things they did. But this you know, of course, in nineteen ninety nine, the two shooters were Dylan Clay Bold and Eric Harris, and they killed you know, they went in intending to you know, set off a bomb and then to kill people as they ran to
kill survivors as they ran away. The bomb didn't go off, and so they decided, well, which is going to go in and shoot shoot everybody? And you know, so for basically forty nine minutes, they just wandered around killing their classmates.
And it's horrifying. I think during the during this research, I was given the security the surveillance videos from inside the school where you see them going from desk to desk and shooting kids that are hiding underneath and then ultimately in rather vivid detail, frightening detail, you know what a surveillance tape looks like. It bespeaks a certain reality as they sit down together in the library and count
to three and then shoot shoot themselves. So it's a chilling It's as chilling video as I've ever seen.
Uh.
But in the grander sense, you know, why why did this? Why did this event? Why has this event become uh code? Why has Columbine just the word become code for a mass murder?
Uh?
When when really we have other examples, we have worse examples in McDonald's at Sanny Seidro, in the Texas Tower in Austin, And Uh, I think it's because we were we were just at that moment in our history. One thing I found when I was writing about Delivered, about the survivors of mass murder and Delivered from Evil, was that that I believe we we are, we are in this macau a sort of perverse rhythm, and that we
are shocked by these events when they happen. Then we grow a little complacent, and then we forget, and once we've forgotten, we're ready to be shocked. All over again. And you see these things going on a kind of twenty year cycle, so that you have the Bath Michigan mass murder, which remains one of the worst in the United States ever in the nineteen twenties. By the nineteen forties, you have Howard Unru And when Howard Unrew kills people in Camden, New Jersey, and on his Walk of Death,
people wanted to call it the first time. It wasn't the first time. It's twenty years later when Charles Whitman goes up in the Texas Tower and we're all shocked about it again. Twenty years after that, Sanny Seidro MacDonald and then the Louvi's Cafeteria twenty years after that to Virginia Tech. You know, wow, so and we get shocked every time. It's it's it's an incredible thing to go back and read the accounts and see that Columbine just
kind of fell in there. We were just ready, we were just ready to be shocked again.
You know.
And to give some credit to Dave Cullen as well, he really like initially it was you talked about the narrative that it was these people were being picked on and they call them the Trench Code Gang, you know. So there was a narrative that was, as he discovered and journalists discovered for themselves it was wrong. It was exactly so they jumped to some conclusions and it seemed to be nicely drawn, but it was far more complex than that the story.
But we see that every time, sure, you know, we see it every time. When Jared Lee Loughner shot Gabby Gifford's in Tucson last January, the immediate narrative was, he must be an hardcore conservative who has been influenced by this hateful speech coming from talk radio right. And I was interviewed on CNN, and that was how they wanted it to go. That was the narrative that they were playing right then, and I was saying, no, he really kind of looks like a normal, garden variety mass murderer,
a lone, angry, an angry lone wolf. But that narrative played for about a week before it started to become clear. No, this guy's an angry and deluded lone wolf. So there's there There have been in every big mass murder, there's always been a narrative that immediately leaps out that is almost always wrong. I can't think of one where it was right.
Well, I think one that you've included in your book that really no one ever got wrong for long, I think is mister Ted Bundy, probably one of the most infamous serial killers of all time. Here's a guy that really the people knew from the get go. Anyway, at least law enforcement knew that they had a bad guy here. It's too bad they weren't as secure as they possibly could.
Maybe you could tell us a little bit about Ted Bundy, why you included Ted Bundy in this story and some of the locations that you discovered, because Ted Bundy was a traveling serial killer for sure, not only being in Colorado. But tell us about Ted Bundy and what you discovered writing about Ted Bundy in these and in relation to these locations.
Well, of course, Ted Bundy is in some ways associated with really three states. I don't think his crimes were confined to three states, but but he's associated very strongly with with Utah, Colorado, and Florida. Uh and and to some degree because of Anne rule the Northwest. So those are the spots. Well, of course I'm writing about Colorado and uh, what's interesting I think about Bundy, is he really is the apex of, you know, the serial killer mystique in this country, much in the same way that
Manson is the apex of the mass murderer. But I think that what you see is a handful of of murders, likely well in one case, definitely, And my friend Kevin Sullivan, who I think has been on your show before, could tell you more specifically in some of these cases whether Bundy is in fact guilty or whether it's worse or better than what we think. Because he was never convicted.
Bundy escaped twice while he was to be standing trial for one of those Colorado murders, and of course went to Florida, where ultimately he was caught, convicted, and ultimately executed. And here we are today. Now somebody finds a vial of Bundy's blood and we're putting it into the CODA system to see there if he's related to other unsolved murders. I don't think we'll ever be over ted Bundy, but his time in Colorado, he definitely he definitely left a
trail of bodies in Colorado. I think the question is whether whether there are more than we think, or even in a couple of cases, whether we've we've pinned a murder on him that maybe he didn't do and that the real killer is has gotten away with it.
No, for those that don't know, it's Colorado is where he escaped and went on to Florida. Was there any did you? Was the courthouse or any other location that when he was on the run part of Europe book.
Yes, he escaped twice. He was because he had had gone to law school. He was allowed to represent himself in the in the murder case in Colorado, and as part of that was allowed access to a law library in the county courthouse in Aspen. That law library is on the second floor of the courthouse and it's it's
a fairly tall courthouse. But he he went to that law library one day and crawled out the window and dropped to the ground below and was at large for several days, finally arrested, but then they took him down to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, to be held in what they thought was a much more secure jail. But he then escaped from that jail and ultimately, of course found his way to Florida, so that that Glenwood Springs jail doesn't
still exist, but but we know where it was. And the Pitkin County Courthouse where he escaped from the law library does still exist. And the book they have a you know, I have a picture of the the window where he escaped, so I all so have the place where he abducted, killed and abducted and killed one of his victims in in Aspen, so you know. And then there are other little Bundy related sites all over, but those are the key ones.
Now you if I'm incorrect here there was is it Highland Cemetery in your book where you talk? Is there one cemetery that you visited that has its more than a lion's share of interesting characters residing in this cemetery?
Oh yeah, I mean certainly in Denver. You know, we have Fairmount Cemetery in Denver has has quite an array of people. All the older Denver cemeteries have have a marvelous array of good and bad figures from crime history. One of the interesting stories in here is the story of Cheeseman Park in Denver, which is of imagine Central Park,
but it's in Denver. What Cheeseman Park used to be was the city Cemetery and back at the turn of the last century, a local mortician was hired to dig up all the graves and transplant them elsewhere so that they could make this beautiful park. Well he was you know, he was a con man himself and was overcharging the city. They were sometimes not digging up the graves but charging for it, or they were charging to dig up a grave,
but then they were getting paid by the coffin. So they would order children's coffins and break up a body into as many pieces as they possibly could so that they could get paid three or four times the amount that they should have. Anyway, he doesn't get the thing cleaned out completely before he's arrested, and so we actually have his grave marked in the book. But the fact is this beautiful expanse of green and in the center of Denver, there remained thousands of unmarked graves there that
they run across from time to time. The botanical gardens were just expanding and came across several of them. So every time they stick a shovel in the ground down there, they're reminded of this con man who took him for a ride.
Now, the GPS, you talk about the GPS coordinates for all these locations as well. Was that your that was initially your idea? Was that someone else's idea? And how has the book been received? First, the Crime Buffs Guide out Law of Texas for that simple fact that people actually just don't have a description that's sort of vague.
They now with this technology of the GPS coordinates so that they actually for those people that are the potential fan and the potential uh inquisitive mind, can go to these actual places and find them quite easily thanks to your your book.
Well, it actually my wife and I were driving in northern Louisiana and I wanted to see the spot where Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and died. So we got to this little small town that I knew to be nearby and stopped and I asked directions, and the fellow gave me some directions that turned out to be wrong. So we came back to the town and asked somebody else. Their directions turned out to be wrong. So on a third trip we finally scored we found somebody who could
really tell us where it was. We went out there, and I think it was at that moment I said to my wife, wouldn't it just be easier that when you asked for directions, somebody gave you GPS coordinates and I think that's when the light bulb went on and I said, well, hey, you know, why don't we do that. Let's write that down. We've got a GPS right here. And that was kind of where it began, the GPS part of this, that's where it began. So yeah, it's fascinating.
I think that people with GPS are getting much more comfortable with them. This gets them much closer. And you know, if there are slight differences between models and whether it can make a few different but you're going to be usually within ten feet of the exact spot.
Wow.
And when we go to these places, we are trying to get an exact spot. One example, the Abraham Zappruter who took the famous film of JFK being assassinated, stood in a specific spot that's a known We were able to put the GPS device where his feet would have been, so you could follow your GPS device and be reasonably certain that you're you're where it happened.
Right. Well, that's fascinating. That's an incredible, incredible addition that you stumbled across or that you came across at the right moment, and then.
It's just sort of keeping your mind open to the possibilities as as you know, being a writer yourself. That's that's half the battle.
Sure, certainly. Oh, that's it's been great talking about that. I also wanted to let our audience know that you're going to be back on in a couple of weeks again talking about a book that's probably very very close to your heart without a doubt, the Sour Toe Club Cocktail, the Yukon added Odyssey of a Father and Son, and the father and son happen to be yourself and your son.
We're going so we're going to be talking about that in a couple of weeks, and that's on Tuesday instead of Wednesday, October fourth, for the audience that's been listening so far this evening, So that's going to be looking forward to that the read. And also, yeah, that's going to be great. That's a very interesting read too, So I'm gonna be starting that very very soon and looking forward to anticipate read that. Now. I just wanted to say too, for our audience, you have written some nonfiction
as well. Maybe you can tell about those three books that are still available, and also we talked about Delivered from Evil and also the classic now soon to be true crime classic, The Darkest Night, really best selling true crime book. It's you can find it everywhere. Tell us about your nonfiction, and then tell us again. Just remind us about when the Crime Buff's Guide to the Outlaw d C is going to be released.
Well, Outlaw DC will be out in twenty twelve. That's as close as I can get right now. I don't think a pubdate has been announced. My three earliest books were novels. The Angel Fire, which was a literary novel set in Wyoming, where I grew up, and then two mysteries, also set in Wyoming, and one of them, oddly has to do with a dead old out La queen. The book isn't about her, but she's mixed in there, and oddly enough, this little town is trying to make her
into a tourist attraction. So those first three novels, and I think that very soon I'll be going back to fiction a little bits.
I need a break, right. Yeah, true crime can be taxing, and I'm sure I've heard that from other true crime authors as well. It's hard to be immersed in it completely and not come up for a little bit of something completely different. So yeah, I can understand that that's great. Well, this is something completely different the True Crime Buff's True Crime Buff's Guide to the Outlaw Rockies and of course
the previous Crime Buff's Guide to Outlaw Texas. So I want to thank you very much for this interview Ron and coming on and speaking about this excellent book. And look forward to talking to you again about another book that's coming up very close to your heart. Hour to a Club Cocktail and that's October fourth. We'll be talking about that.
That'll be great, and it's my pleasure to be on here with you. Dan. Thank you so much.
Well, it's been my pleasure and I'm sure our audience pleasure. And we always get a lot of comments, and you're a great interview and I want to again thank you very much for coming on this little program and have yourself a great evening.
I will see you in a couple of weeks.
Okay, thank you, Ron.
All Right, Dane, good night.
Even listen to the program True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them, with your host Dan Zukanski, good night,