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Now listening to True Murder the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. 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 Zufanski.
Good evening, Police Chief Greg Adams was out on patrol. Christmas was coming to Saxonburg, Pennsylvania, a quaint borough of just thirteen hundred in three short weeks. The winter air was crisp, colored lights sparkled on houses. He was only a block and a half from the police department, and this was just an average traffic stop until it wasn't. The devoted husband and father of two little boys was
about to meet any law enforcements officer's nightmare. Moments later, he would lay dying in a pool of his own blood on that white winter snow, while his killer vanished like an operation into thin air. Despite as many aliases, the true identity of the murder was quickly found. The killer himself was not, As State police and FBI investigators peeled back to twisted layers of low level mobster Donald Webb's life. The path of the killer would wind through
decades toward a shocking conclusion. After all, secrets can only be kept for so long. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Ghost, the Murder of Police Chief Greg Adams and the Hunt for his Killer, with my special guest, journalist and author Maureen Boyle. Welcome back to the program, and thank you so much for this interview. Maureene Boyle.
Oh, thank you very much for having me. I always enjoyed talking with you.
So do I and it says again, congratulations on this book, The Ghost, remarkable, remarkable. Let's go right to the beginning of this and this is in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. As we did in the introduction, just tell us briefly before we get right into this December fourth, nineteen eighty and inside the Freeling home Midge and Donald were home. But before that, just tell us your connection to this area, Saxonburg, Pennsylvania.
Well, actually I don't have a connection to Saxonburg. I learned of this story. I live in Massachusetts, and I was a reporter in Massachusetts, and I had just finished one book, one a true crime book, and I was looking for another idea for a book, and I discovered the killer of our Chief Adams was from this area, and that really intrigued me because I had been a police reporter in the New Bedford area and this is where the killer was from in the nineteen eighties, in
the mid eighties through the nineties. And while I knew the name of this individual, Donald's Web, I really wasn't aware that he might that he was still wanted, that he could even be in the area. So that was my connection to the story, and it took me to Saxenburg where it all started, and we went down there. Saxenburg is a lovely, lovely community, very very tight knit, and what struck me from the minute I went to Saxonburg was how those in the community have never forgotten
the chief, our Chief Greg Adams. They were really determined in spirit to find him, and those members of law enforcement who were involved with the case, even after they retired, they were still working on it with new investigators. So that's sort of the sum of how I got involved
with it. And I just found it a very very very fascinating case of how someone could kill, especially a member of law enforcement, and then just vanish, and that people could keep the secret of where he might be for so long.
Yes, you take us to December fourth, nineteen eighty in Saxonburg, and you take us inside the Freeling home. And this is Donald as a teenager. He's staying home from school and his mother is home, Midge, and he hears something that he thinks is like hitting a stick against a tree, and then he hears a loud boom. And then he also thinks that he heard a faint cry for help, but he couldn't see anyone. So he called for his mother and said someone is calling for help. Take it
from there. What the mother and the team do and find that day December fourth, nineteen eighty.
Yes, the tiger heard something outside. He looks outside, can't see anything. You tell his mom. Then he thinks he's here. He's hearing someone calling for help. And he's telling his mom, hey, someone's outside, someone's calling for help. And she's just she's vacuuming, and she's thinking, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be talking about So Saxonburg is a very quiet town. They live, not fought up from the Aguay Hardware store. Nothing nothing
ever happens in town. Uh. And then she hears something. They go outside and they find that she's in the snow and he's he's mortally wounded. At that that point, they call for police and then the it's the Because Saxonburg is so small, the amts are actually part of the fire department and they are all volunteers. So she
calls and the ambulance arrived. One of the ambulance workers is also a member of the police department, and they recognize who it is immediately, and they're in the back of the ambulance trying desperately to save the chief's life, and they're talking to them and they're telling them to hang on, hang on, hang on, as they're racing along these country roads in the snow, in the ice to
get to the hospital. And they get there in record time, but you know, it's nineteen eighty they don't have the best equipment in the ambulance, you know, not like we might have today. And you know, they get there and they're like, you know, just hang on, hang on, hang on, Greg. But by the time they get to the hospital, he's
already gone. And it's just heart wrenching. When the those that were in the ambulance they're telling the story, I mean, would it breaks you horror, because here is someone who's a colleague, here's someone who's a friend, here is someone who they know, and they are seeing him die before their very eyes. And to this day, when they're telling the story, you can tell that it's still playing in their minds. It's a scene that they'll never ever forget.
They're just haunted to this day. So at that point, the chiefs are someone contacts the chief's wife. She's at home. They have two young children, one is a toddler and the other one is an infant, and someone comes over to watch the kids, and she gets to the hospital and that's when she's told now her husband is gone. And in that moment, you know, one moment, she's planning for Christmas, the next moment, she's a widow, and her wife is turned completely inside out. The entire town is
turned inside out because Saxonburg. People joke in the area about Saxonburg. They say, it really is like Mayberry. It is very community oriented. It is a quaint, tight knit town with a lot of festivals parades. Someone once told me that Saxonburgh is the type of town that will have a parade for a parade because there's a certain joy in the town, and the killing of the chief really did it killed part of that joy, even though
they keep on kept on moving forward. But in that moment when the chief is brought to the hospital, police throughout the area just converge on Saxonburg. There's only two full time police officers in Saxonburg. One of them was in the ambulance and one of them had just died. So say police in the area converge on the community. They send up helicopters looking for the killer for the car that just drove off, and they can't find them.
Roadblocks are set up because they've already got speed traps in the area anyhow, there's a lot of traffic enforcement around there, so they're blocking off the area and the killer just seems to have vanished. And that has always puzzled people in that area. It's very rural and when we went through there and the current chief took us through the area, and unless you know where you're going, you don't know where you're going. It's one of those
those areas well. It's always been puzzling how the killer was able to escape detection.
But he did talk about what definitely let's talk about Let's talk about what was found at the crime scene. Before we talked about this person that was a phantom and disappeared seemingly. What was found at the crime scene? What evidence did they have, What did they determine happened to the killer? Tell us about what police could determine forensically from that crime scene.
Well, they believed that the at that time, they believed that the chief may have shot the killer because there was quite a bit. There was blood there, both the chief's blood and this unknown and blood that they believed was that of the killer. They NFL found a licensed driver's license there, uh and that that license that that was the name of the individual by the name of Stanley Portis.
Uh.
So they started checking on uh on that uh the license was out of there was a New Jersey. It was out of New Jersey. So they wound up looking for uh, some of the R and B records to see if uh where this individual lived and uh and that uh it wound up it wound up being a puzzle. They wound up piecing together this very intricate puzzle of well, once they got the name, the name of Stanley Portis, and then they eventually discovered that was an alias for
a man named Donald's web. But at the scene of the crime, it was it was clear that there was a scuffle, there was blood, and there was a driver's license.
Right now. You also talk about there was a witness that said that they had seen somebody limp away from this car and they didn't get another description of the person because the person was ducking down. But also very important there was a description of police took it very seriously. Description of the car, what was the model, and the color of the car.
It was white and it was a Mercury Cougar. They were able to eventually track down where through a series of just plain hard hard work amongst the police officers and the investigators trying to track down where this this car was, and they determined that it was a car rental car and eventually we're able to track it down to who rented the car and after even mural work, where it was where one of the vehicles this individual had rented a number of cars, and tracked down where
the car was rented from, and everything eventually pointed to Massachusetts, and that's where they believed that the killer was from and may have fled.
To You talk about the you talk about this investigation into his New England connections, But what was the what was the criminal gang that they found that he was a member of, and what was some of the information they found out about the characteristics of this gang?
Yeah, the killer was Eventually they found out this this individual had a number of different names. Uh. They discovered that his real name was Donald Webb. Was originally from the Midwest, but made his way to New England after he joined the service. UH. And he was living in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but he was with his wife, whose first husband was a man named Stanley Portis, and that was one of the names that he used as an alias.
He was a low level mobster. He hung around with a group of individuals from Fall River, which is one city over from New Bedford, and they called themselves the Fall River Gang. It wasn't uh very imaginative, but these individuals would break into jewelry stores, homes throughout the Northeast and sometimes down excuse me, by the way down the East coast. They did not do many jobs in their home area. They would go outside. They'd go to Connecticut,
they'd go to New York. They'd go to Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Florida, Virginia. They would go, they travel in some place, sometimes even into the Midwest, but but not in their in their hometown, even though they're very well known around here. So they were and they were tied a little bit to the Providence mob, but they weren't part of the Providence mall.
Right at the time of the killing. And yes, at the time of the killing. Oh, there was a warrant for uh Donald Webb. Wasn't there at the time. That way stopped him?
Yeah, yeah, yes, there was. At the time of the killing, he had uh he was he had skipped bail out of u uh out of upstate New York. He and a group of his cohorts were pulling a scam up there, a robbery scam. They would go to different houses and pose as UH city workers, you know that old scam of oh, we're here to check the meter, we're here to check the water, We're here to do this, we're here to do that. So they showed up at a couple of houses, and in particular, they showed up at
a house of an elderly couple. And this couple was a little bit suspicious about them, and they wound up calling the police, and you know, after the crew left, the police were already on the alert for these individuals, and they wound up arresting them. The group was arranged, they made bail, and they left, so they skipped bail
and didn't return for their next court date. So there was a warrant out for Donald Webb's arrest, and that warrant was still active when he was stopped in Saxonburg, Pennsylvania. But there's some people who were speculating that he may have fought with the chief because he was afraid that the chief would find out who he was when he called in the stop and he would wind up going
back to jail. However, I really think that Webb's fears unfounded, given that in nineteen eighty, unlike today, it was a little bit harder to check lawrence. They said it was a whole because things weren't computerized, so it was a whole involved process checking someone's name, and especially since he was using the alias, because he want would have been under his name of Donald's Web or even Donald Perkins, because he was using both names, not Stanley Porters, that
would have been one of the aliases. So I'm not quite sure that the name on the license plate on his driver's license would have popped up during a check, but that may have been what web was was fearful of, and that may have been me why there was that fight between the two of them. But that's all speculation. That but that's what law enforcement and the investigators thought. That was probably why there was that confrontation between the two.
You talk about also what you talk about that is also without any question, he was pistol with beaten and shot. He shot twice in the chest and under the armpit. Ironically or interestingly, sadly, he was not wearing a bulletproof vest because his bulletproof vest he needed a new one. The one he had was too small, so he wasn't wearing a vest.
Yeah, yep. And every everything with people people had told me is that the chief was very, very safety conscious and it's kind of did things by the book. He had worked in the in the DC area prior to returning to Pennsylvania. He was a Pennsylvania native and he really liked small towns him. He was uh had worked down in the DC area for about two years and really didn't like it. And returned home and got married because he preferred the small town life and he didn't
like the larger cities. He considered them too dangerous, which is really ironic. He survived working in a larger city and dealing with crime all the time, only to be killed in you know, a safe community, which is just heartbreaking.
Yes, you write that he was working in Washington, d C. Didn't like it and worked with people that were now dead, had been killed on duty. So he went for a bus ride and met mary Anne, who was visiting her sister in Maryland, and there was only one seat left on the bus. She didn't really plan on being meeting anyone. Then they started chatting and by the end of that bus ride they had formed a relationship which they kept
in touch and it seemed quite serious. And then he made his move to go back to Saxonburg for you say, a fraction of the pay to go back to where his roots were, and also with in mind that he and mary Anne would be together, and so they certainly did and were married. But like you say, ironically, he left Washington, d C. And that kind of work for this little place that he felt was and everyone else did. That was really incredibly safe.
Yeah, yeah, that that is. I think that only one of the one of the heartbreaking up turned in this story. You know, he's he a larger city. He was uncomfortable, not necessarily uncomfortable with it, but disturbed by by the crime and what was what he was surrounded by. Uh, and then thinks that he's coming home, He's gonna he gets married, he has two children, he's building a life,
his extended family is nearby. Uh. It's it's a perfect, perfect life, a perfect world for him, only to have someone who he has no idea who this person is. Who the person isn't even from the area, from the state, uh, someone from Massachusetts in a city he's never even been two. This chance encounter completely destroys his world and destroys a community, and you know, multiple and multiple lives.
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Now, Maureen, back to this investigation. There are a lot of dedicated people, state troopers, FBI agents, and the FBI is involved with this in Pennsylvania State troopers and eventually Massachusetts State Patrol troopers as well state police. Pardon me, so let's talk about what they plan to do, and that is to speak to Lilian Web. They figure they need to speak to a lot of people, and they try, but the focus seems to be a good place to
start would be Lilian Web. And then tell us about also this idea about getting a search warrant potentially for her home, but also before that, just the idea that they needed to speak to Lilian Web. And what was the results of those attempts.
Donald's Web, who was identified kill They had obtained a warrant for his arrest for first degree murder on Christmas Eve. But prior to that, the state police Pennsylvania State Police had traveled to Massachusetts to try to find Donald's Web because they knew this was the killer. There was a variety of steps that were taken by teams of investigators.
They'd gone to multiple states to track where the first to positively identify Donald Web and then to try and track where he might be and find some of his quote unquote colleagues and crime to see if they knew where he was. But they were able to determine that he was His family, his wife was living in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and they figured, well, he may return to Massachusetts to seek shelter. There was an FBI office in New Bedford
at the time. The State Police Investigative Unit, Massachusetts Investigative Unit was also in Massachusetts was also in New Bedford at the time, so state police from Pennsylvania came up. They were working very closely with the Massachusetts troopers to try to I find Webb. They had gone to William Webb's residence and she insisted she did not know where he was. I had no idea, I hadn't seen him, no idea where he was. She was not very cooperative.
They did not Obviously, the investigators did not believe her, so they began following her while they were also tracking down some of the people book that he knew. That included doing quite a bit of surveillance in some of the neighboring communities where he was known to you know, quote unquote do business, uh, and where some of his
associates lived. They did a number of steakhouts. They checked local hospitals because based on the amount of blood that was found at the scene, UH, they believed that he may have been shocked, but they could not find any gunshot victims coming into any local hospitals.
UH.
So they decided to spend a lot of time the following brilliance UH. That was his wife, UH. And they sometimes she would take different types of maneuvers, evasive maneuvers when they were tealing her uh, and they couldn't they They were convinced she knew where he was, but they couldn't prove it. When they confronted her, she would repeatedly say, I don't know where he is. But they remained very very suspicious. They had taps on the phone and nothing
really came up. They could not at that time get a warrant to search her house because they had no evidence that he was there. They spoke with different neighbors, they hadn't seen him. They kept a very very close eye on her. There's no indication that she was bringing anything back for another person in the house, and so they began thinking, well, maybe he's hiding someplace and she would read them all to him, and it all came
to nothing. They did recover the car that he was using in Rhode Island and there was blood in the car. They founded in a Warwick, Rhode Island, So then they began thinking, oh, maybe he's in the Rhode Island area. But so they began talking to some of the individuals that he knew in that area there, but they could not get a search one for the house at that time because there was no evidence to back up a search one to say that he was in there. As much as they would have loved to have just kicked
in the door, they couldn't. And later on they discovered he wasn't in the house anyhow at that time.
But they went as far as to put a video camera up on a telephone pole. They did everything they could and it just then talked all the names neighbors, and one neighbor had a view right into the home and said, well, I never saw Donald Webb.
Yeah, in the early days, there was nothing that showed that he was there. And as the years went by, they put up the video cameras at her. She'd moved to different houses and there was nothing that they could find that would substantiate that she that he was there, or that she could They suspected she knew where he was, but she wasn't leading them to him. She was very very careful, very careful, And they went into neighbors repeatedly, you know, and the neighbors ball said never saw him,
never saw him. And she had moved twice since the killing, and in each place the neighbors never saw him. But in the meantime, while by they're putting a lot of
pressure on William Webb, who is his wife. A number another team of Pennsylvania troopers were checking some of the other areas and following up other leads in the months and years after the killing, and they believed that he was out and about committing other possibly committing other crimes, but there were always like one step behind him and there was a lot of reported sightings of Donald, just like ike in it to Whitey Bulger, the infamous Whitey Bulger who's out of Boston, who was on the uh
FBI on the top most wanted list, just as Donald's web was for a number of years. Were you know, people were uh calling in sightings of Whitey over the years, just as people were calling in investigators were getting reported sightings of Donald's web over the years. UH. But that
for the most part, they they were false sightings. There were a couple uh instances where they believed the information that they had was yet was valid, but they got the information all days, weeks, sometimes months after the fact.
So the the idea too that all these agents were involved in this and they're turning up nothing, and this case is going colder and colder. They're there's different people. There's people retire and then take on the case or
asked to take on the case. You talk about Jim Poyden's was involved right from the almost from the very beginning, and you also talked about the Whitey Bulger case, because there's very important when you talk about agent Tommy McDonald and an agent's bates and what happens in terms of Whitey Bulger after he's FBI's number one top priority. But this case, Adams murder case and Donald Webb as a fugitive, as like you mentioned, is the FBI's top ten list.
So tell us about these agents and the conversation that happened after Whitey Bulger is convicted or arrested. Pardon me, yeah.
For years and years, you know, there's been movies made about, you know, Whitey bull Journey. The case is infamous. Who is on the top ten most wanted FBI's top ten most wanted list for years and years and years, uh until he was finally caught. However, Donald's web had been on the top ten also for years and years and years, and eventually, you know, those that were in the FBI knew of the case and it sort of gnawed at them. In recent years, there was one when there was doing
the Whitey Bulger case. A number of the FBI agents were working on the case were brought in to help work on the case at the end and helped track Whitey Bulger. Once Bulger was found thanks to their efforts, they turned their attention to Donald Webb, Phil Torresny, who's a an FBI agent now retired. He always wanted to be able to find web. He remembers seeing the poster when he first joined the FBI. He's like, you know, I want to get this guy. Want to get this guy.
Uh.
So, once White A. Vulger was found, he began doing a little bit of work on it, trying to do some of the groundwork, seeing what has already been done. H. And then as he started reaching nearing his retirement AIG, he turned to a fellow agent by the name of Tommy McDonald, who had worked on a number of very high profile cases as well as the Vulture case, and said, Tommy, you have to work on this case. You have to do this. He killed a cop. He can't be free.
And so Tommy began asked his superiors as he could work on the case. He enlisted the help of some other agents and they reopened the case and knew and came to he UH reached out to some of the original agents and the original Pennsylvania Troopers. UH. He went down to Saxonburg UH viewed where everything happened. UH and then started interviewing some people in checking out some other leads down in Pennsylvania to see if you know, possibly was Donald's web dead, was he killed? You know, there's
indications that he was shot, did he gunshot wounds? Did did a mobster that he was with U discover that he's mortally wounded and dumped his body someplace or bury his body someplace. So he began you know, tracking some of those those leads also and then turned his attention to Massachusetts and started figuring out other ways and looking at the case differently, and then enlisted the help of Pennsylvania State Police again and Massachusetts State Police. Massachusettstate Police
worked and working in the Attorney General's office. There's a group of state troopers in Massachusetts out of the AG's office who were working on a large scale gaming investigation. And this investigation involved Donald Webb's step son. So they would sort of teamed together to see, you know, looking at finances and looking at a wide range of other things to see if that would from how bring this
case to a conclusion. And it really highlighted the work that they all did to work together that really brought it to a really shocking conclusion. And you know, it really showed that, yes, secrets can be kept when it comes to crimes, but eventually they're told and eventually they're uncovered.
You talk about that this investigation of Donald Webb's step son, Lillian's son, ends up being the impetus for the ability for them to be able to get a warrant for her house now, which is super important, and just before that too as well. They have always hounded or looked at other members of this Fall River gang, but one that they focused on was Frank Lack and so interesting. Yes, yes, they had some sort of relationship with them, and you
write that they went there one time. Over they went there several times, but they went there one time with a box of Canol's ten thousand dollars and said, this is one tenth of the one hundred thousand dollars reward if you tell us where Donald Webb is. And then he said very interestingly that that, well, if I did that, then my life would have been meaningless. But on his way out, he did give them some information, or at least information to contemplate and consider. What was that information.
He made him The way he was talking, they believed that that Donald's Webb at that point was dead, and then they just had to figure out where he was, but they believed at that point he was dead and just how he reproaches.
Interestingly, he said that he had been he had died in the nineties, and that a mob connected funeral home had buried him or carew made him under a fake name. So of course the investigators have to look into that possibility as well, don't they.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, They followed just about every wead possible in the case.
And.
Eventually, you know, we're able to dyesthetic some of what
he said. But they did believe that just the way he was talking, that there was a good chance that Donald Webb was said and part of that was, you know, how old that our Webb would have been at that that point that it could be that that that was a real possibility, and you know that that's what makes this case feel very very intriguing, is that there's so many people had different stories about Donald Webb and different theories about where he could possibly be, how uh, how
he eluded the thirties, Did he have help, did he not have help, or was he alive? Was he not alive? Did the mob do him in? And that was also one of the possibilities that was raised, is that maybe someone in the mob had done him in just because he killed a confin. It was, you know, really putting so much heat on the uh uh on the operation, on the finance, financial operation of you know, the mob doing business.
Mm hmm. Let's get back to the search of Lillian Webb's home. What do police find at that search?
Ah, you want me to tell you how the whole case ends, Well, well.
We won't just what find We won't give We won't give away this, No, we can't. Yes, tell us, tell us what they do find.
Oh, when the FBI first gets in there, the FBI goes in there looking for uh. The f I was able to get a search war and to get into the house to get photo photographs of Donald's Webb. They had used photos very very successfully in the Whitey Bulger case.
Tommy McDonald had obtained photos of white Bulger's girlfriend, who is out who is with him all those years while he was on the run, And they circulated photos of her, You were photo photos that they got from doctors' offices because she had cosmetic surgery, and they used that to try to get someone who may recognize her rather than Whitey Bulger. Because Whitey at that point looked like any old man, you know driving a buick down the street,
you know, and nineties buick down the street. Uh, And that's what they were also getting tons of calls about every every guy that was out there. So they used photos to try to identify find Whitey Bulger. So Tommy McDonald, the FBI agent who took on to Kaithan New had talked to his colleagues and they'd got to use photos again.
Let's go looking at the photos. So they went to got a search warrant for William's home to get photos of Donald's web and see if there were newer photos of him, different photos of him that they didn't have. And by getting a search warrant for photos, which is interesting. You know, if you're looking for a gun, that's a larger object, but when you're looking for photos, photos can be slipped into anything. So they were able to look in a wide range of places. Just think about where
you could put a photo. You could put a photo in a book, you can put a photo in an address or draw. You can put a photo on the wall, you can put a photo in the closet, you know, you can put it in a box. You could put it behind something. So they were able to do a pretty wide ranging search at the house because they're looking for photographs. And during this search they found a little space behind a closet that they effect sort of a hiding place, and in that they found a cane and
some and some coins and some other objects. But they could not seize any of that those items because their search warn't was for photographs and you know, related type things related to photographs. But they found that very very intriguing. There was a king in what looked like a hidden room, but it isn't really a room it but just like a like a little croose at hidden closet, which they found extremely intriguing. But they did not find Donald Webb in the house. They but they did find a wide
range of photos. So they found that was one of the things that it's like, ah, maybe he was here at some point, but they weren't sure and as a result, they weren't able to get back into the house after that because their search weren't was for photos. But at that point they're like, well, maybe he was here, maybe he really is dead, and if he is, where is he?
But yeah, it came down to photos. So that there's real parallels between the Whitey Balder case and in this case in terms of the investigative methods that they used between the two of them, and methods that were very, very successful. And that's the one thing about this case that really struck me was that it was basic police investigative methods that really broke this case from the start to the finish. And the only reason why Donald's web wasn't found earlier is just by bad luck.
There was also a well somewhat unique but at least another strategy in this was a lawsuit was launched. Again, we don't want to give away this incredible ending, but how does that lawsuit exert some pressure her on Lilian and her attorney.
Well, they want the Adams family.
Uh.
Uh, the chief's widow and his children. Uh. The FBI had gone back to them, uh, looking for family photos to try to tug at the heart of William Webb, of Donald Webb's wife. There's some photos of you know, the widow who is she since remarried, her with her small children, with the grandchildren, you know, basically showing what don what Greg Adams missed, uh because of her, because
of Donald's web. You know, he missedeing his children grow up, he missed those watching them play baseball, he missed them getting married, he missed uh seeing his grandchildren, he missed you know, lifetimes. And they were hoping to make her feel guilty, uh, and that it did not work. So uh, Tommy McDonald and other fbiations went back to the chief's widow and asked her, you know, do you have any more photos? And at that point the family is like,
you know what, it's it's not gonna work. Uh, and her uh, Marion Marion's kids said, you know, Ilin just sore. Let's just sue her. She knows something and she's not saying what's going on, So let's just file a suit her And okay, we're convinced that she knows where he is and she's harboring him, and let's sere And they did. They in Pennsylvania court, and that I think really helped
helped turn the case because it involved money. Because if they were successful in the suit, they could take her house, they could take whatever money is in the bank, they could go through her finances, and there's just a whole variety of things that could happen. And at this point, Luian Webb is getting on there in years. She's well past the retirement age, and you know, she's living a comfortable life in a suburban you know, raised ranch and
outside of New Bedford. And I think that helped to ultimately resolve this case because sometimes, you know, people, if you hit people in the pocketbook, sometimes that does that works. Does what trying to argue or trying to convince them to him that that doesn't work. So that helped really turn the tide in the case.
You refer to the Whitey Bulger case. And in that case they successfully captured him. And he was an old man in his almost eighty or around his eighties, a little diminutive man, and they captured him, not quite easily, but they did capture him without any struggle. You write in this book. I've never read this before, but this
was very interesting. You said, when a cop killer is caught, the dead handcuffs of the chief or of the of the police officer are traditionally snapped on the killer's wrists. So the handcuffs of Gregory Adams were to be snapped on the killer's wrists if caught. That would be the tradition, wouldn't it that.
That would have been the tradition. Yeah, because that's the type of thing and that that has happened in a lot of cases when it's it's possible. Uh, it's very very symbolic. It is to let the let the killers know, yes we got you, and you know he or she is still here and we we don't forget. We don't forget the people that have been lost. We don't forget law enforcements members that have been killed. Uh, and killers. It it is the ultimate symbolic point of of justice
when they do that. You write about that is often done.
You write about that the person that was in that ambulance, that other police officer that also wore many service hats that was also an EMT and was in that ambulance
with Gregory Adams. He becomes the police chief of Saxenburg. Obviously, you talk about all of the people Danny McKnight, Chris Burke, Bitchler, Gordon Mainhardt, James Poyden's, Pete McCann, all these people instrumental in this investigation, so many people rooting for the capture and the resolution of Donald Webb mystery where this phantom, where this person disappeared to and how so many people involved, so many dedicated people. What about Mary Adams? What did
she and her boys do? Did she stay in the area. What happened with Marianne?
Her one of her sons is still in the area, but she uh is now now lives down south, she's retired, and her youngest son is doesn't live in the area either. They remember and it is still part of their lives. But you know, life does go on, yeah, and the the legacy of Greg Adams lives on. It lives on in Saxonburg. You know, every year there is a memorial service for him. You know, they have they remember him outside the what would be called a city hall, the
municipal building. They have a memorial there for him, and swallowers are a placed there during police week and also during you know, the honoring the day that he died. Where he is buried in the local cemetery. People come back and leave flowers there, leave momentous there. Even people who have never met him or in law enforcement have left different tokens at his gravesite. So he's never been forgotten. And that's the remarkable thing when it comes to law enforcement.
When someone in law enforcement dies, their legacy always continues, and in law enforcement, make sure that they are never ever forgotten. And in Saxonburg, the entire community, even people have never met him, make sure that he's never been forgotten.
You wondered in this book, you said, how could someone hide so easily for so long in the city you once covered as a police reporter for more than a decade, And so you asked, you pose that question, how he could have done that? And while I asked that is that you refer to the book is called the Ghost. What you talked about him being a phantom and an operation disappearing. Why did you refer this book? Why did you title this book the Ghost?
For two reasons. Well, some members of a law enforcement were calling Donald Webb the ghost because he was like a phantom. But also the chief is also a ghost. His memory haunted the community for decades, as you know, as the search for the killer uh continued. So there
are really two ghosts here. Those the ghost of the killer because he just you know, vanished, but also the ghost of Greg Adams, who just uh haunted investigators, haunted Saxenburg, haunted his family because there was no answer because you know, over what people don't realize is when in unsolved cases and the killer hasn't been brought to justice, the family really is in this limbo. They never know when they'll get that call to say the killer has been found,
that you know, the trial is going to start. We have this new read and it's in this case, it went on for decades. There's that uncertainty. It's and you know, people use the word closure and a term in murder cases, but there isn't a beginning, middle, and end to the case itself. There's always it's always open ended. And that was the thing in this case that the family faced. They never knew when that other shoe, so to speak,
was going to drop. So the ghosts two people, killer and vidcom Yeah, and.
So we didn't talk about the shocking conclusion and it
certainly is. And what's important, I think is that the law enforcement people that rallied around Mary Adam, mary Ann Adams, the people that kept her in the loop as well for this crucial information in this conclusion, and also all of the people that from the past law enforcement, FBI agents, Pennsylvania State Patrol of the State Police and Massachusettstate Police, all these people involved in the investigation, and when it was time for them to retire, they still remained involved, engaged,
and this is an incredible story of the honor to Police Chief Gregory Adams, like you mentioned every year in Saxonburg and all of the people that came to the funeral and all of the people that were involved in this incredible hunt for the killer of Chief Greg Adams. I want to thank you very much, Maureen for coming on and talking about The Ghost the Murder of Police
Chief Greg Adams and the hunt for his killer. For those that might want to take a look at this and your other work, do you have a website that they might take a look at and tell USO at time.
Yeah, it's maureeneboilewriter dot com. There is also a Facebook page for The Ghost the Murder of chiefs Greg Adams. I'm on Twitter as Maureen E. Boyle one and the book is available on Amazon and at Barnes Noble and through the publisher which is Black Line Publishing.
Yes, well, thank you very much. Maureen. Has been fantastic The Ghost, the Murder of Police Chief Greg Adams and the Hunter is Killer. Thank you very much, Maureen. You have a great evening. Thank you so much.
Good night okay, thank you and it was a pleasure by good night,