THE KILLING SPREE-Anita Paddock

him of his violent ways. It failed. Released from prison because he was uncontrollable, he began a multi state crime spree that culminated in the rape and murder of three young people and the shocking assault on a Fort Smith, Arkansas policeman named Randy Basnett. In a matter of days, Swindler's lust for death grew into an unforgettable killing spree.

On September twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six, two men, John Edward Swindler, a force for evil an officer Randy Basnett, laying his life on the line for good, came together. The results altered their lives and the lives of many others. This is their story. The book that were featuring this evening is The Killing Spree, a true story of a string of brutal murders, rapes, and the cop who tried to stop it. With my special guest, author Anita Paddock.

Welcome back to the program and thank you for this interview. Anita Paddick, Hello, thank you so much for this interview.

doing his detective work. Anyway, Cindy was a real few little girl. Nobody's traded on Cindy. She adored her mother and father, and Randy's parents were really kind to her and she loved them as well. And on this particular day of September twenty fourth, she had taken her children and gone out to visit with Randy's parents because they had bought an ease swing set or the older children and mister Basnett had put it up and so she was.

Cindy was in the kitchen with Peggy bass Set. They were just visiting, having a good time, and then while they were in the kitchen visiting on the two way radio, they heard that there had been a shooting in the north side of town, and so they both kind of perked up then because they knew that Randy patrolled that part of town. They all, both of them knew what the dangers were of being a policeman and what the heartache could be are a policeman's family if something would

go wrong. Now, then I'm going to take you back to a week earlier when John Edwards Swindler got off the bus at a bus station in Columbia, South Carolina. That's where he was from, and he had he had been involved with a lot of really petty crimes and our son, and he was really a bad guy. He had been in he had been in Levin War and in Leavenworth. He was such a he was in and out in solitary and nothing that the warden or anybody else at that prison could do to stop him from intimidating,

sodomizing other prisoners. So they just let him out and sent him home, gave him forty dollars and a bus ticket to South Carolina. When he got off the bus, he was met by his brother. The brother wanted to help him, wanted to get him, find him a job, wanted to find him a place to live, but John Edreds Swindler was not interested in that. He immediately as soon as his brother left, he immediately started walking and

kidnapped the man who was driving a car. He had stopped at a stop lot, and John Edwards Windler just jumped in the car before this guy he wanted happened, and he stole that car and drove it until it ran out of game, and then he left it. Then he went to a He walked to this kind of Hamburger place, a drive in Hamburger place, and there in her father's car sat Dottie and Greg and they were

sweethearts in high school. They had just graduated from high school, and she was driving her daddy's car and they were getting a Hamburger, and he just there again opened the door. He just walked up to him, opened the door, and she was behind the wheel because she had driven him there, of course in her daddy's car, And he stuck a pistol in Greg's side and told her to drive to this nearest. It was like a place you could go

fit go fishing. It was like a park and she knew where it was, and so they had it off that park and all the time she was driving, she was trying to go fast that police maybe would stop her for speeding, but that didn't happen. She was very worried about what her father was gonna say, because he had told her just to drive this car to work

and back her parents. When she didn't return home in the car, they grew concerned and they called Greg's parents, and Greg's parents said, well, he's not home either, so they knew something bad had happened, so they called the police. The police ended up searching around and they found Greg and Dottie's bodies. Greg had was all his clothes had, and he was naked, and he was lying on top of a falling down the trunk of a tree. She was tied up to a tree, and the car was

stolen and Greg Greg had been shot. He was dead and she too had been shot. So two days days after he got out of leven Word he had killed this really nice young couple, Greg and Dottie.

her in, and then he steals their money. She has a husband who comes downstairs, and he seals their money. He seals their car, and the man has a gun cabinet, and he looks in that gun cabinet and he sees a real pretty rifle that has a brand newscape that goes with it that's already in a box, and he and a couple of shotguns. So he seals those guns and puts them in the back of their car, along with the money. He sold from them, and off he goes.

He wants to go to Kansas City because there's some people who live in Kansas City who wronged him in when he was in Living Word. So off he goes, and he is as far as Georgia when he hears on the car radio that a Georgia policeman has has spotted this car. So he hides behind a filling station that has a great, big like a sign that would that he could hide the car behind. And he stays there trying to decide what to do. You know, he continue on west or go back east where he knows

the area better. He's at a real disadvantage because he can't read or write, but he goes into when it gets down, he goes into this all night, twenty four hour filling station and he robs this guy who works there, and then he hides him in. He locks him into a closet and tells him not to try to get out, but the guy does try to get out, and he hears him trying to get out, and so Swindler takes the gun and shoots this guy and then leaves him in there, leaves him for dead. The fellow, the attendant

who was shot. Eventually he lives, but he has to be in the hospital for many many weeks. He's really his back is he's really really damaged by this shotgun anyway, and the people there's a couple parked in the car in front of the service and they see what's going on. It's a mother and her son. And then they see the man leave and then they call the police that they just tell them about the man shooting somebody in the filling station and that he was that he was

driving a gold Plymouth Gosha. So off he goes, and he decides that he will go west, and he picks up a hitchhocker. He doesn't try to rob the hitchhicker because he knows that he's probably poured or he wouldn't be hitchhocking. But he asks the hitchhacker if he has a map that he could draw on and tell him how to get to how to get to Kansas City.

And so the guy does. He has a map and he draws and he tells him you keep on this forty, how hey, forty and then when you get to Alma, Arkansas, you turn right and go go left, or you turn right and go north on Highway seventy one, and that'll

get you to Kansas City. So he heads that way for Alma, and he's driving real fast, and he's drinking along the way, and he passes by Alma and heads on, heads on west and when he gets when he gets to a filling station that's just across after he's crossed the Arkansas River, he knows that he's gone too far and he stops at the very first filling station that he can and that's on Kelly Highway. And Kelly Highway

is a real busy street. And on Kelly Highway, across the street from this filling station and convenience store is the Arkansas State Patrol Office, a real big, fancy, nice office. And coming to that office is a policeman named Chuck Lambert, and he has seen this. He is I've seen swindler on the highway and already thinks, ooh, that guy looks weird. And he's driving this South Carolina license plate. So he's

far from home. And when he gets and he's so he pulls off and goes into the State Patrol office and gets the business that he's supposed to be getting. He's an undercovered narcotics inspector. He looks out the window and sees it that same car that he noticed on the road is parked at that filling station. So he keeps goes on about his business, but keeps looking out and seeing that that car is still there.

Randy often frequent this gas station. In the convenience store in walked in this as you said, this big, huge, three hundred pounds smelly guy that was looking for directions said he couldn't read and had a map and wanted assistance. Take us to this scene where Carl and Randy Bestnett encounter John Swindler.

an all points bulletin sent out about Swindler. And by this time they knew that he thought he was driving because the elderly couple had said, he's driving our car and it's a gold Plymouth Dodger and the last South Carolina license plate, and then describes the man, and the man is the man's The description fits the description of this guy who's in the asking for directions. And Randy bassetent looks out and sees this car that's parked right

outside the door to the convenience store. So he he says, well, guys, I've got to get back to work. And so he leaves mister Tinder there in the office with this Swindler and he goes Raady Bassett goes to his car, gets his notebook, calls in to his office and tells him that he's seen this guy and where he is and

just send back up. And then Randy, I suppose, was afraid that maybe this guy was going to get in the car and take off, and so he walks over to the fellow swindler who's working under the hood of his car, and he asks them if he has any identification, and the fellow says, let me put Swindler says, let me put the trunk the car pud down and I'll get it out of my car. So Randy sort of stays there fairly close to the car, and the swindler

gets in. He reaches over as if he were getting his wallet to show his driver's slices, but instead he reaches in and gets a revolver, and he swings around and hits and uses the gun and shoots Randy twice in the stomach at close range. And when Randy Bass then is falling down after being mortally hit, he is able to get his gun out of the holster and fire off six shots into that car, and one of the shots hits Swindler in the left thigh, and then

Swindler takes off. He takes off and heads down that is a dead end road, and in the meantime, Chuckelambert looks out the window and he witnesses all this shooting, and he grabs the revolver and he runs outside and when Swindler is passing by. He shoots at that car, but he doesn't hit the car, but he sees the

direction in which the car is escaping to. And about that time, Bob Ross, who is a policeman and Randy's really good friend, he shows up and he sees Lambert, and Lambert tells him what has happened, and he's in this Bob Ross is getting the car with me, and so he does. And then Bob Ross's car shawls and he can't get it to start, so they go back

where Randy Bassett's car is parked. They get in to it and it stalls also, and so they're wondering what the heck is going on here, But finally finally they get the car started. They take off and go down this dirt road that leads to the Arkansas River, and that is that's the direction in which Swindler was going. He didn't know where he was going, he just took off. Ross and Lambert they go looking for him, but they're sort of afraid that there might be an ambush, but

Swindler calls out, I give up. I don't want to be killed, and so they separate. By this time more policemen show up, so they all separated and sneak over to where the voice is coming from Swindler, arrest him and find all the guns that he has, and those policemen are really really angry at this Swindler for killing

one of their own. Sure they take him. They take Swindler to the hospital because he's been shot by he's got this bullet his thigh, and he's all dirty and awful looking because he's been on the run, and so they take him. They take him to the same hospital where Randy Basnett was taken, and Randy died on the way. Mister Tinder went out and stayed with Randy while he was lying on the concrete street. He stayed with him.

Mister Tinder says that he had worked at Edward's funeral home for a long time and he knew something about dead bodies, and by the way Randy's eyes looked, he was sure that he was already dead, but he stayed with him tele the ambulance got there and they took him to Sparks Hospital, where they also took Swindler. And the police were none too gentle with Swindler.

Cindy has been notified, the family has been notified. But what you do, right, is that the grandfather sees it on television unfortunately, that his grandson has been mortally wounded in this altercation with John Swindler. So tell us what happens next. You talk about the funeral, You talk about so many things that happened as a result of this. Tell us what happens in regards to the investigation into other crimes by John Swindler.

They was rumored and I think true that when the doctors were working on Swindler, they did not give him and he didn't use any kind of painkiller because nobody. Nobody likes somebody who kills a policeman. And Randy bas Sent was he was a He was a very likable guy. He was a native of Fort Smith and so Sidney's Sidey's father, Odell Davis, and Randy bas Sent were very very good friends. They fished together and her daddy had been a policeman, so so they had that in common.

And he really took over and helped Cindy out more than anybody could. He went to the police station with her, he talked to the doctors who were willing to give her a senatuvee because it was her local doctor heard about it and he called and said, I want you to take Cindy to the hospital, and I want to the emergency room. I've already called and they're going to give her a senatude because they knew that she had

to be just, you know, really inconsolable. So she stays at her mother and daddy's house and while she's there, the police chaplain rings the doorbell and he comes, and he's the one who really delivers the message that Brandy Best said has been killed. And she she beats him on the chest and says, don't don't don't tell me that. Don't tell me that it's got to be a mistake, and her father soothes her and says, no, this is the truth. And so eventually Cindy and this police chaplain

become very very good friends. He delivered the true message to her that her husband had been killed, and for some reason she latched on to him because he had given her the truth. And so if she's there, she's there and her daddy is with her, her mother is taking care of the children, and mister Cindy's father says, we want you to go lie down and try to rest.

And while she's lying down and resting, the doorbell rings and mister Davis, her daddy, goes to the door and it's two FBI men who want to talk with Cindy. So he goes and mister Davis goes and wakes up his daughter and tells her that there's two FBI fellas who want to talk to her. So she comes into the living room. The FBI guys are extremely gentlemen and they stand up when she enters the room and they tell her that they're very sorry for what had happened.

And then they tell her that the reason John Swindler was even out was because the warden at Levenworth could not control him. And she freaks out over here and that, and she said, well, I hope that that warden is fired, and the guys say, we think that should happen too, and eventually she does find out that that warden was fired, and that's how she found out from FBI guy, which I thought was very nice and kind of them to come to her house or daddy's house and tell her what had happened.

a few days. And then they had to decide what to do about the funeral, and her daddy said, Sindy, everyone tells me that there's going to be some manyople at this funeral that we want to We'll want to have it at a great, big place that can accommodate the people. And they think the Civic Center has better. And she said, no, hell no, I don't want it to be like an event like That's where they had

plays and symphonies. But her daddy said, Cynthia, and she told me that when he called her Cynthia, that she knew that she did it straightened up. So she agreed and it was a great, big funeral attended by many, many people. And when the funeral was over, she left with her parents in the funeral car and they got about a mile away and then she said stop the car, and she wanted to go back to the civic center and she wanted to be alone with Randy in the casket.

And so her daddy went with her and stood there while she talked to her daddy. To her husband, she was kneeling at the casket, and she talked to him and told him that she loved him and she was going to get through this and honor him and the way that she did it. And so they did Lodu's casket in the car funeral car, and he was buried, and there was a picture in the paper of her leaning at his on his coffin at the grave site. This is a little side of side to tell you.

On Sunday, I was at a book signing and a man came up to me and he had bought a book and he wanted it signed. And he said, he said, I want to tell you it was my honor to sing Randy Bassnet's funeral, and he got all emotional when he told me that, and so did I. But the funeral, the funeral was lovely, and the guest book was signed. One person who signed the guest book was Randy's fourth

grade teacher, mister Witt. After that, they all had to, you know, try to get along and try to try to move on, and Cindy did and everybody did, but it was very, very difficult for her. By the time September turned into November and October and then the December and January. We had a real bad winter that year, and Cindy say, didn't barling at their home, and people would show up to help her get to the grocery

store or get diapers or get baby food. And she was touched by all of that because had such a heart. Winner that the car that it was difficult to drive, that was a remember that was a winner that everybody can remember. It was bad.

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an important message. So she would be staying tuned for an important message, of course, scared and so scared that something had happened to her mother and daddy. And so that went on. And then also Cindy would be driving and she would look behind her and she would see these menacing looking people in a car are following her very closely, so she knew she knew that it was Swindler who was doing that. Then Swindler's cronies started calling

mister Tender at his house. And mister Tender, if you remember, was the man who worked at the filling station and was visiting with Randy when all this happened. And so mister Tender started getting these phone calls that said, you're a dead man if you testify, and so he told the police about it, and they those calls continued, and so the police decided that they would send somebody out to stay at the Tender's home to protect them, and

so they would spend the night there. Mister and miss Tender, her name was Ruth, and Ruth Ruth and mister Tender would go to their bedroom and she would make a big pot of coffee for the men and go to von Houghton's Bake, which was a delicious bakery in Fort Smith and get all these wonderful pastries for them to eat with their coffee. And that went on for two or three weeks, and then one night Tenders were in

bed sound asleep, and the detectives. They detected that somebody was out in the backyard who shouldn't have been there. At one o'clock in the morning, they went into the bedroom of the Tenders and they went in and they said, wake up, somebody is in the backyard. Don't turn on the light. Well, imagine how frightening that would be. Well, they got up, mister Mss Tender got up, and they brought them into the living room to sit with them.

And the next day the police and the prosecutors, everybody decided that they needed to put the Tenders in a safe place, and so they chose this hotel that was on tenth and B and they put the in the

safe place. Meanwhile, living next door to the Tenders was Major Rivaldo with the Fort Smith Police Department and his three children and wife, and they too received threatening phone calls, and so missus Rivaldo took the three children to stay with a family friend of theirs, and police moved into the Rivaldo's house and they looked out the window and were watching the Rivoldo house as well as the Tender house. It was a frightening time for those people, the Revoldos,

and certainly for the Tenders, and so the tenders. Then missus Tender, who worked at this company in Fort Smith, she started getting phone calls. She worked in the office, and she started getting phone calls, and the phone calls would say, your husband's a dead man, you're going to be dead, to just frightening things. And so she called Major Rovaldo, who lived next door to her, before she even called her husband. And so mister Rivaldo went to her place of work and took her back to the hotel.

And from then on they took her to work and brought her home from work. It was a horrible thing for the tenders to have to do. Miss Tender really never spoke about it to anybody for years afterwards.

of course was ridiculous. It was and it was proven that it was not when Chuck Lambert testified that he had been watching across the street and he heard first two shots and then after two shots were fired, he heard six more fired, and so that meant even though Chuck Lambert didn't say it, didn't testify, but he let the judge and the jury draw their conclusion that he didn't know who fired the two shots, but he knew that Randy was hit with two shots and that Randy

had fired back at the car with six shots, and so that blew away his defense. When he told that defense, he claimed that he had been drinking, and he claimed that the police always were after him and guns had been a part of his lives, just like wearing a piece of clothes, and he claimed that He claimed that his mother had Sunday school and that she had led

the choir and he sometimes sang in the choir. Also, he just told a whole bunch of lies to his attorney who was questioning him and trying to make him look like he was a real good guy, which he was not.

to be carried out. In the meantime, this was during the time when there was a whole lot of discussion all over the place, in all over the United States about capital punishment, and so it was ruled that it was the Supreme Court rule that it was against the Constitution to have capital punishment, and so that was nobody

in those days received the capital punishment. And so he was sent back to Fort Smith and he was told that he would have another trial in a town that he had not been tried in before, Waldron, Arkansas, which was just a little farming community not far from Fort Smith. And he had another trial there, and that jury found him guilty and found him that he should get the death penalty. By that time, by that time, he had the death penalty had been settled that you could have

the death penalty. I'm not using the exact wording as the courts would have said, but that was the charge of the story. So he was once again, once again

found guilty and they wanted him to be executed. In the meantime, while he was waiting for that trial to happen, he also was held in He was held in the Sebastian County jail, and he discovered that there was a man who worked there who was originally from Florida, and he asked this guy if he could possibly find a newspaper from Florida down in the keys Is where this guy lived and where he wanted the newspaper to be from.

And this guy, that mister Acosta. The jailer said, well, why do you want that, and he said, well, Twindler said, well, I killed somebody down there, and I left a body there,

and I'd like to read about it. So of course mister Acosta told the sheriff about his conversation, and so the sheriff notif I had all the sheriffs down in Florida about what had happened, And they sent Twindler's fingerprints down to them, and they matched those fingerprints to some fingerprints that were found on a cereal box that was under the bed where Jeff McNerney lay dad with his head smashed in by a sledgehammer.

Swindler is awaiting execution, and so he gains comfort. You write from a monsignor O'Donnell, which Swintle had met thirteen years earlier, when you write that he had worshiped Satan rather than Jesus. Now he wanted forgiveness, and these priests and other Catholics campaigned that his life be be saved.

Arkansas had built. And they surmised that he wanted that he thought that would be really newsworthy that he was executed in the first first one in this new electric chair.

a she was a really asset to our community. And she had interviewed Cindy many times and so consequently she and Cindy had become good friends and Cindy did plan to come to the execution and then and then she just decided that she wasn't going to, which is probably smart because Linda Sebould attended that execution and she wrote about it in the newspaper and it was in my book. I've got that in there, what it happened and how it came down, and it was a horrible thing. I'm

glad Cindy didn't go and see it. Linda was very sorry that she had gone to see it, but she did and she called after it was over. She called Cindy, who was staying at her uncle's house in Little Rock because she and the uncle had planned to go to

the execution. So she was still at the in her uncle's house, and she invited to Cindy and her photographer to spend the night there with them, and then drove on back to Fort Smith, which is about three hours away, and so she did, and she and Cindy talked and Cindy really married her soul to Linda about various things, and Linda wrote ended up writing a really nice article about the marriage of these marriage to Randy Basnett and how he was eulogized by many groups in Fort Smith

after his death, and it was a lovely tribute that she wrote.

And Cindy always consoled herself that she was up in heaven fishing with her daddy, and I suppose her granddaddy like Tin Killer. The grandfather loved to fish. Ten Killer was a beautiful spot was made by damming up the Illinois River. It's in Oklahoma. It's a beautiful spot. There's all sorts of camping sites there. People from Fort Smith go fishing, and it's Waterskian there and also from Oklahoma.

It's a lovely place. And Cindy told me that she could imagine hearing Randy when a storm would come up. She said she could imagine here and Randy say all right, everybody inside. And she said it became sort of a comfort to her to look out and see men fishing on the lake, and to look out and see couples walking walking down by de Lay. It just she felt close to Randy. And and so that's the way she ended up. Her children all went to Tallaquah, that was

the nearest town and graduate. Her two older children graduated from Tallaquah. The youngest girl graduated from for Smith High School, Southside High School. It was a very sad story for me to write because that family of Sindy's were so they're a wonderful family and every in every way. And then they were torn up completely by this John Edwards Swindler. Everybody's family of the victims were grieved for their children.

I'm sure never ever got over it. And Swindler was just he was just an evil, evil guy.