You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker 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 Zupanski ideming from her small town Michigan roots to becoming a New York Times bestselling author, and Rule's life journey is as fascinating as the cases
she covered. Discover how she revolutionized crime writing, influenced FBI profiling, and Rule's faithful encounter with a murderer at just nine years old. Go behind the scenes of Rule's most infamous cases, including Ted Bundy, The Stranger Beside Me, Randy Woodfield, the I five Killer, and Diane Downs small sacrifices, and explore her personal insights into the murderers and Rule and Jagger
both studied. Featuring never before revealed true crime cases, jaw dropping interviews, and the little known story of Rule's time
as a sex decoy for the Seattle Vice Squad. This book also delves into the extraordinary three decade friendship between and Rule and Jagger with exclusive letters from notorious killers and an inside look at Diane Downe's chilling correspondence with Manson murderer Susan Atkins and I five Killer Randy Woodfield, author and Jagger and I discuss and Rule's faithful journey to become the undisputed queen of true crime, her family's
law enforcement background that shaped her perceptions of crime and punishment, and her transformative rule in true crime writing and true crime history. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Rule of Crime and Me, an intimate view of and Rule shared by her friend of thirty years with my special guest journalist and author and Jagger. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
And Jagger, you know and Rule had an extraordinary childhood, one that is very hard for us to comprehend. She used to spend her summers, all summer and holidays at her grandfather's jail in Stanton, Michigan. Now this wasn't your usual type of jail. This is an old timey jail where the prisoners and the family all reside under one roof.
It's hard for us to imagine that this could even happen, But this is how it was done in the old days, and you know, up until oh, probably nineteen fifties or something. So she lived there with her grandfather, who she revered. He was the sheriff. Her grandmother cooked the meals for the prisoners and for her own family, and then Anne would serve meals to the mail prisoners downstairs from a little tiny slot, oh about the size a little bit
bigger than a mailbox slot. And they cock their heads to one side and say, how are you doing, little missy, And she thought they all seemed so nice, like all of the rest of her family who was in law enforcement, and now one of the prisoners. The females were upstairs, and that's where the bedrooms were, and Anne slept in one of the bedrooms, but she also liked to sleep in the empty cells up there.
Wow.
But when she was getting dinner for one woman who was accused of shooting her husband in cold blood because he stepped out in the new Chevy truck, she bought him with one of her girlfriends. Anyway, this woman's name was Viola, And as she's taking the tray to Viola, she gets to meet her, and Viola is crocheting quickly, you know, trying to probably put boredom and worry anxiety to the side, and she ends up teaching Anne how
to crochet between bars. Now, first of all, children would never be allowed in that situation again, right, But if you think about it, a crochet hook is a dangerous, dangerous weapon in a cell. If you're somebody who's accused of murder, you could hold someone hostage, you could kill somebody else. But I think this experience with Viola, when it would come out later in her life, really started her fascination with personalities, aberrant personalities, and why people commit
the crimes. I mean, she knew at the time that there must have been something very wrong with this crochet teacher, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. So Viola. When I went back to Michigan to study Anne's roots and her hometowns, I'm made an effort to go to the Calm County Sheriff's office, which is now a big
new building. They don't live under one roof anymore. And I went through all of the great, big old books, the booking tomes that had all of the nails names in it unless they were a lodger, which sometimes they would just be described that way because they were from outside of the county, But it was all the crimes that were committed what happened to their cases. Now, searching through all of those great big books, I went through probably close to four thousand names, probably three hundred and
three thousand and six hundred something like that. Looking for Viola. I wasn't able to find her, and I suspect that's because she was a lodger and not listed by name. But I did find another woman. Her case seemed very close to Anne's, and I ferreted back into Anne's past to figure out how Anne might have crossed past with this woman. If she was not Viola, then she would have met this woman too.
What was her grandfather, Chris Hansen's overall philosophy that he imparted Dan and influenced Dan in her life.
He believed that people made mistakes and that they were still entitled to being treated with dignity and respect. Now that didn't mean that there weren't a lot of rules around that. But Anne also was this way, and I think she got that from her grandfather, and he was an excellent sleuth. He could pick up a cigarette butt, a piece of cloth, or a bullet, and he could get confessions easily. In fact, he was known far and wide, and especially in Michigan for the confessions that he garnered.
And you know, Anne listened to a lot of confessions and a lot of denials.
She also learned that and had a philosophy that the criminals in all cases, the perpetrator would leave evidence behind at the scene and also take something with them, right.
And that's an old adage that she did learn from her grandfather, Chris Hansen, and you see evidence of that rule in all of her books, because nothing is so minute that it can't help solve the case. Now, this was back in the late thirties early forties, but they were pretty smart back then too, without the advent of DNA and surveillance cameras and cell phones.
You're right that Anne came to this law enforcement or this bug honestly with her grandmother being involved with the grandfather at the jail, but also her aunt Freda married under sheriff Elton Samson later and they had their own
home jail as well. Uncle Carl was a medical examiner and at Millie worked at juvenile court and her cousin Bruce was a prosecuting attorney, and she'd kept a copy of her grandpa father's nineteen forties forensic science book as a lifelong treasure, even though, as we mentioned, some of those principles were outdated. She really had a dream job in mind. Tell us what she did in pursuit of that dream job.
Well, she was always a fabulous writer, but she never wanted to be a writer. She wanted to be a policewoman. Now, her father was an athletic coach and an athletic director, and there were no females in that profession either. But Anne always wanted to be a policewoman, and she became one in Seattle. Now, there's a funny, kind of in a sad way story about that. When she got on with the Seattle Police Department, they once asked her to
be a sex decoy in Pioneer Square to catch a flasher. Now, women back then had to wear three inch heels, they had to wear skirts, and it was a cold night. She had on a coat, and the cops are in cars all watching her from outside the park. They've got their police radios, they've got their handcuffs, they've got their guns and all she has is her purse and she's walking along trying to find a flasher. Now, she didn't
find a flasher that day. They didn't rest anybody. But she said to me much later, when she was almost eighty, and here I was a virgin, and they send me out as a sex decoy, you know, to find this guy. So she was relieved it was over. And oh, she would laugh hysterically. She had this wonderful way of bobbing her shoulders up and down when she thought something was funny. And we howled about that. But I was kind of gobsmacked at the idea of her being out there and
doing that. Now a little bit later, of course, she had to pass the written test, and that was a cinch, but she had to take an eye test. And this was an old, antiquated belief system in police shops all over the nation that you had to have very good eyesight couldn't wear glasses. The belief was that if a perpetrator knocked your glasses off, you might not be able to defend yourself or perhaps your partner. So Anne actually was legally blind, and she wore glasses for the rest
of her life. But she failed that eye test, and it crushed her all her life. This is all she had ever wanted to do, and now she wouldn't be able to do it. She did meet lots of contacts in the sheriff's departments and with all of the police departments around Seattle, and they became a lot of her sources and inspirations for her book. You know, it didn't all go for not It did pay off, but just not in the way that she had expected it to. And she would always try to avoid the police department
because she would cry. It was just too painful every time she saw it.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages, now, you write. In fall of nineteen fifty and decides to switch schools and move to Seattle, and she majored in creative writing and start leaning hard, You write into a career in criminal justice. But she was also taking criminology courses as well. She minored in criminology, psychology, and penealogy, and she eventually earned an Associate of Arts degree,
And you write it. She loved criminology classes and studying the causes of crime, prevention, statistics, and behavior.
She had such a love for learning, and through those classes and going to autopsies and talking to criminologists, she was able to be so knowledgeable about all of those facts. And of course, with the study of prison reform, she witnessed that in her childhood. So I mean the adberant psychology classes. I mean, if you just think off the top of your head about some of the awful criminals that she wrote about, you know they would be on the front page of her criminology classes.
You write that her writing starts, she has a lot of rejections, but eventually is writing two articles a week for detective magazines that became very, very popular at that time. Tell us about some of her early writing practices and the circumstances of which she was writing. You say that she was raising children while she was writing. Tell us how she juggles all of these duties and still ends up writing all of this material.
She was prolific. Now when she wrote for True Detective and some of those other magazines, these had to be based on had to be true stories. Some of the names could be changed and things like that, but they had to be true stories. That also attributed to her vast knowledge of criminal and victim behavior as she's writing for these detective magazines which line the bookshelf in her office. She was able to then get a toe hold in writing because she was so prolific. These were huge articles,
sometimes for pages at a time in these magazines. She would be able to write with her tremendous powers of concentration. She could write with four kids running around and monkeying around. She said that as long as they didn't land on the typewriter, she was able to write. Now her first seven years, I think the first year she might have made like one hundred dollars, and by year seven she had only made about one thousand dollars. But she was
on her way. When she and her husband got divorced and she was a single mother, she was able to keep on writing and ended up writing full time in nineteen sixty nine. So she had found her niche in that time period.
You're right that taboo subjects for her at that time were, and for her entire career were torture, motorcycle clubs, mob crime, families, and drug rings.
Right. She thought that torture was abhorrent and didn't want to have anything to do with it. That's why you never see any bloody pictures in her books, as you do in some others. She thought the motorcycle clubs were too dangerous and too prolific, and I think we all know the problems with trying to do stories about the mafia, so she chose wisely.
You're right though, that she was heading into the eighties and began cranking out her hits full time author, writing about a bevy of murders, among them Lust Killer nineteen eighty one about Jerry Brutos, want ad Killer nineteen eighty three about Harvey Carigan, and the I five Killer in nineteen eighty four about Randy Woodfield.
Yes, those books were originally written under the name Andy Stack, which was her pseudonym for the True True Detect Disease that she worked for, and then they were later released under her own name. And at the same time she was doing this, she was writing Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy, and then she found out about the Diane Downs murder case, and she was at the trial for the book Small Sacrifices.
You write about a personal tragedy in Anne's life that led her to volunteer at this Seattle suicide hotline and ended up working alongside Ted Bundy. Tell us what happens with her brother and the meeting and encounter with Ted Bundy working with him.
Well, her brother Dawn, who she loved so much, was going to Stanford and he was a pre med student headed to Harvard. Well, apparently life got to be too much for him and he committed suicide. Now Anne could barely talk about this throughout her whole her whole life. She was so devastated by the loss, and she wanted to turn that loss into something productive, something positive. So
she decided to volunteer at the Seattle Suicide Hotline. And it's there she met this young man who was a work study student named Ted Bundy, and they worked overnight together trying to save lives and she would be Anne would be talking to them, and he would be trying to trace the calls or find out where the people who were contemplating suicide were living so that he could send ambulances there or police there to demonstrate that you know,
tomorrow things may get better, Please don't do this now. And it was her way of, I think, honoring her brother. But little did she know that a man that she had a book contract to write about, who was a serial killer, going you know, a long eye five and leaving the women's bodies in the woods. She had a contract to write about this man, but they didn't know who he was. It wasn't until she left the suicide hotline that she found out information that led her to
report Ted Bundy twice to the Seattle detectives. And he turned out to be not only what had been her friend, but he was he was the killer. He's the serial killer. Very hard to reconcile those two faces in one person, and she detailed it so beautifully and masterfully in The Stranger Beside Me.
Absolutely, you say that she was in correspondence with Ted, because it wasn't immediate at all that she was convinced that he was the killer. Again, just the demonstration of his charm, right.
She at first, of course, believed in what the detectives were telling her. But he was writing her and saying, you know, well, we'll get together again sometime, and you know, what they're saying isn't true. And she was skeptical for sure, even more than skeptical, but until she started hearing details about what he had done and he was in Florida, he had escaped and there were more murders in Florida. Everywhere that Ted went, a body was sure to be murdered,
so she quit corresponding with him. But it was always jarring throughout her life that this same man who only showed her kindness had this horrible, horrible mask that he
wore as a vicious killer. Apparently he couldn't attack somebody and kill them if he had more than about a five minute conversation with him, because I guess he started seeing them as people, And inevitably, in these people's lives we always find out they had girlfriends or wives and children and they blend in with the rest of us. I personally think that that's the mask they wear and who they really are is that, you know, soulless killer, Yes, that repeatedly kills.
Absolutely this case, Stranger Beside Me her book Ted Bundy and his Murderous Ways and his Escapes really catapulted, and along with brilliant writing research and capturing the essence of just happened to m know this person? And she was working alongside getting the contract and then having to write the book about this person she thought was her friend. Stranger, The Stranger beside Me catapulted her to incredible international fame, didn't it.
Interestingly enough, Anne always said that it wasn't a best seller right away. Well, of course it was in Seattle, her hometown, but it had legs, which we say in the industry to mean it just kept growing and growing
and growing until it was an international sensation. And I think you're right attributing it to her meticulous research skills, the fact that they knew each other and had spent so much time together at the suicide hotline, and she knew the inner workings of his life, or at least she thought she did, and then she revealed a whole new, horrific person.
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now you write about your intersection with the legendary and Rule. You write that you hadn't heard of Van Rule in May nineteen eighty three. The Stranger Beside Me was her first book that you were aware of. Nobody had heard of Elizabeth dan Downs until after the morning and after the hillacious crime on May nineteenth. You heard the news
of the shooting, and right away you had questions. Tell us about hearing the news and the questions you instinctively and initially.
The woman, Elizabeth Diane Down's, twenty eight year old mother of three, was out on a sightseeing trip in Springfield, Oregon, outside Eugene with her three children, and she said a man flagged her down in the middle of the road, and for some reason, with kids in the car, after dark, she stopped and she said, this bushy haired stranger shot her children, murdered one and critically wounded and paralyzed another. And right away I was thinking, something is wrong. Here
is this domestic violence? What is the story about this? And I was bound and determined to make that story my own and to figure out the whys. And Anne and I had that in common, she called I did a documentary on Elizabeth Diane Downs, and Anne used it, she said, in her writing almost every day. She called it the seminal personality profile of a murderous mom. So that's high praise. But the interview in itself was so startling.
You're right that the interview was was startling. But let's get you. You write about how you met and rule in the first place, before this trial, and that's where you met and rule, But before that, you decided to own this story about Diane Downs. These questions were gnawing at your mind. Tell us where you were professionally in your own career at that time.
So I'm headed for a lifetime career in journalism, and Diane Downs, you know, is obviously going to be headed to the slammer. And I had to do everything I could to be able to win that story because it was assigned to another reporter, and I just kept on pursuing it and found out that Christy, the eldest child who was shot in the chest, had had a blood transfusion at the hospital to save her life, but unfortunately it was the wrong blood type and so she had
had a stroke and that set her back a long way. Now, of course, prosecutors in the crime were hoping that they would be able to bring her in as a witness to these shootings. Her brother, Danny, was only four years old, so they knew that he probably couldn't remember very much. So every piece of the puzzle that I found out, I handed into the assignment desk and it went over to the other reporter, and then finally the other reporter bowed out, saying that he wanted to focus on his beat.
It became mine I also was able to go and interview Diane the first time that her parents held a media conference at their home in Springfield. She had, you know, a cast on her arm because she shot herself in her arm. She's right handed and she was shot in her left fore arm. And right away, you know, we were hearing I was hearing background top talk from the police officers and detectives that they weren't believing that a
shaggy haired stranger flagged her down. I mean, why not as a mother, you know, fight like heck to the to the death to save your children, or get everybody out of the car and let him have your car if he wants. So nothing was really adding up, and when we went to the media conference, all the cameras are turning and people are taking notes, and I asked her, you know, Diane, police are doubting your story. You know,
they think that you're the shooter. She was, you know, so vociferously denying it thout doing doth protest too much. That was the get of the day. But then I asked her because she mentioned that there was a towel that was in the trunk, and for some reason, this really fascinated me. I'm like, well, why would she be going to the trunk. Well, the prosecutors believe that that's where the gun was too. And she had folded this towel, you know, like a tied die, so that she could
wrap it around her arm to stop the bleeding. And for me, I was thinking, I wouldn't be using that on myself. I would be ripping that apart and trying to save my children. Turns out, you know, she really didn't want to save her children, and she drove very slowly to the hospital, and people saw her. They were behind her in the car, hoping that they would die along the way. Cheryl was already dead. Christy, of course, was critically wounded, and Danny has been paralyzed ever since.
Please explain how, despite your challenging questions at the press conference that they call that the family home, how do you exactly get her to agree to an interview that you are going to film without her attorney. Please tell us, mastervely, how you convinced her.
Well, I forgot one piece of that media press conference, and that was when I asked her about the towel. Her father got so red in the face and lashed out at me and saying, you're all going to have to leave. Come on, get your stuff, let's go out. And I very quietly turned my head toward him and I said, mister Frederickson, that's Diane's maiden name. These are all questions that the police are asking and viewers will be wanting to know. He calmed down. He was a
real hothead. He calmed down, and he allowed us to continue. After that, I kind of stayed away from her. Other stations would be doing more sympathetic or empathetic stories about her, because after all, she had lost her children, she hadn't been arrested, she had been wounded, she was an alleged victim herself. And then I continued to cull information from all of my sources, waiting to find out as much
as I could. Then, months after that press conference, I called her up and I said, Hi, you know this is and my name was Bradley. Then that's my maiden name. I said, this is Anne Bradley, and I met you at your father's your family press conference, and I'd like to do a sit down interview with you. And I said, you can bring your attorney if you'd like, but how about if you come in on Saturday or Sunday this weekend,
and she agreed. Now I was on pins and needles for a couple of days, wondering is she going to bring her attorney? Is she not going to bring her attorney. I was so relieved when the producer who went to greet her at the front door saw her there all alone. Now, this producer, you know, they're not am to having feelings and realizing that this could be a cold blooded killer.
So the producer I had asked her, would you take Diane in the newsroom until the photographer and I get completely set up, because I just want to go and go in there and sit down and do it. And I didn't want her asking me any questions about what I would be asking her. And the producer said, it was like nothing she had ever experienced here, she could be sitting in the same room with a baby killer. Made her want to run out of the room like
her hair was on fire. Because there's a real stagnant magnetic pull about Diane that you realize once you're in her presence. So took her back to the back room, the back conference room. We went back to the back conference room, and thus started this rangest most compelling, heart wrenching, horrible interview that I had done up until that time. You know, never had people seen a mother talk so openly about the shootings and about all of the blood
and seeing her children lying there dying. So it was extraordinary. And so let me play you this piece of sound from that interview that day, as.
You sure we're lucky, Well, I don't feel very lucky. I couldn't tell my damn shoes about two months. It is very painfully, still painful. I have a steel plate on my arm. I will for a year and a half. The star is going to be there forever. I'm going to remember that night for the rest of my life, whether I want to or not. I don't think I was very lucky. I think my kids were lucky. If I had been shot the way they were, we all would have died.
Now, who says something like that.
Right, right, very very strange responses throughout this just the way she talks about how, of course professing her innocence. Tell us how she professes her innocence in these conversations.
Well, she talks about this man that she didn't know who he was, that he flagged them down, and so she would go through that. I also asked her because I was hearing that she had changed her story, saying it was two men. And then she had a meeting with the detective Doug Welch, and she said she knew the man and if they weren't going to find him, f you and she'd go out and find them herself.
But being in that interview, and I write about this in the book because I hadn't gone back and looked at that whole documentary again for forty years, because I knew its effect on me. At the time, I looked at it more intellectually, more analytically, trying to put the bits and pieces together. But now in writing the book, I was able to access more of my feelings. And it was like being in a river where the top of the river is very placid, but underneath there's a
dark evil undertow. And I would start the video and then I would have to stop it, and I'd realize that my hand was in front of my mouth, I guess trying to protect myself from her words. Again, being in this river and having almost like a read, and you're breathing through the read so that nobody will know or discover you and you won't let on how frightening her words are. And so I would come up for air, and then i'd go back at it, and as I got to different parts, I would have sort of flashbacks.
I'd see in my head Christy on the stand talking about there was no one else on that lonely road and it was her mother. And Diane claimed that the car her Nissan was actually running, was turned on when the kids were shot. Well, prosecutors found out that can't be true because the tape deck would not play music when the car is off. And she claims to have the he's outside her car and feigning throwing them to divert this assailant. So i'd see that in my head,
you know, after seeing the blood evidence. It just all would play back in my mind, and I'd find out, oh, my gosh, I'm supposed to be writing this book, I'm supposed to be looking at this, and I would press play again and try to make it a short way through all again. I don't know whether I was more shocked back forty years ago or when I looked at it again. I always thought it was a good piece of journalism, but I didn't think it would hold up
as well as it has forty years later. And here's something that she had to say during the interview about the blood evidence in the case, which I had discovered, that there was blood on the outside of the car, blood spatter, you know, high velocity blood spatter.
The police found blood on the outside of the car, but one of.
The children, perhaps Cheryl, have fallen out of the car on the passenger side.
DA has come up with this idea that somebody was shot on the outside of the car on the passenger side a new car. I was on the driver's side of the car when I was shot, and.
That's why it was so im going.
It was planted, and it just seemed I mean, it can't be real because they talk about blood spatter, and when they say spatter, I think something being shot out like the blood spatter in the car. You know, it was so uniform, it was so regular samsi s droplet spread evenly in a pattern.
And when they.
Say spatter, that's what I thought of. And we saw pictures of this so called spatter. It's drops. When they took the kids, they took christ and share the driver's side of the car, and it's blood droplets it's when they picked the kids up and carry them over the threshold. There is blood dripping down the side of the car.
Now here's what's wrong with her story. When you cut your finger, it drips blood, all right, and that's what she's talking about. But on the threshold of the car where you get in and end out of the car, down on the what they call the rocker panel, and on the door jam, there was high velocity blood spatter, which travels at an enormous speed and can be only the size of a pinprick, but it does tell the
distance and the location of the shooter. So Diane said that everybody the shooter, and she was outside the car when the kids were shot. But this proved that she had to kneel all the way in. And because Cheryl, this poor child, after being shot once, somehow got a hold of the door and got it to open, and Diane shot her again as she fell out of the car, reaching kneeling on the driver's seat and reaching over the
passenger side to get her. Now, when I was writing, I was considering, you know, I'm not sure that Diane didn't just go around the car and pick her up and throw her on the seat and cover her with her postal sweater. She was a still working as a mail delivery deliverer, and she didn't want to see Christy anymore. But it seemed all the more chilling that she would go around, pick the child up, throw her like so
much trash on the floorboard of the car. But the detectives and the prosecutors all say that she had kneel she'd been kneeling on the seat and reached over to shoot Cheryl, and Cheryl was she was dead. You know, there was no saving that child.
You're right that this incredible documentary Diane Elizabeth Diane Downs in her own words, was ready to air but didn't, and this caused turmoil, and so your station worried about the DA getting his hands on the interview, and also the DA thought that maybe the documentary might be sympathetic towards Elizabeth Diane Downs. But your station fought for the right to protect your sources and this story. So let's fast forward to almost a year after this crime, and you,
as a reporter awaiting this trial. You know that there is a prestigious author that contracted to write the story that would be eventually Anne Rule's book, Small sacrifices. So you thought that Anne Rule was going to be present in the courtroom. Tell us about this incredible encounter that you have with Anne Rule and Leslie Rule and the beginning of the trial underway.
I had been at the jury selection and there were two rows that were saved by the judge for the media up front because the courtroom was always packed, so he wanted to make sure that we would have places to sit on the day of opening arguments. I rushed in after checking my sources on some other story, and there were no places to sit in those front two rows, which was very unusual. Well, I saw Anne and I recognized her, but I didn't recognize the young woman sitting
next to her, who was about my age. So I said to Anne, Hi, Anne, I recognize you. I'm Anne Bradley and I'm a reporter here in town. But I don't know who she is. I don't know who you are, and these roads are saved for the media, and God forbid, I said, you'll have to move.
Wow.
Tried to figure out a nice way to say it, but it didn't come out quite right. How embarrassing, right?
Right?
Well, I come to find out that that's Enn's daughter, Leslie Rule, who takes pictures for her mom at trials and also jots down witness testimony and the reactions of the jurors and the gallery during the trial. So she introduces Leslie, and I am scarlet faced, thinking, oh my goodness, now, mind you, I'm still standing up in the aisleway and this trial is about to get going, and this is
the big opening arguments. And Anne could have left me out there hanging, and you know, I could see people swirling, craning their heads to hear. What did Anne Jagger just say? Because I had been a long time anchor and reporter there in the market, so some people knew me. But Anne, bless her heart, she said, oh, let's just scoop together and we'll make room. So I scooted together, I sat down,
and I shut up. And that was my first meeting with Anne Rule, which somehow you can see, I guess throughout the rest of the book how that foment turns to friendship because of her charm and willingness to find solutions, and she and I became great friends at that trial.
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages now you talk of offering to show oh the documentary to and Rule and Rule accepting. Tell us about this viewing of your documentary and what Ann Rule has to say about it.
She met me at the television station in the same conference room that I had interviewed Diane the year before, and for most of it she never said a word. She took notes, you could tell what especially drew her in. And my eyes, of course are on her wondering what is this meteoric author going to think about my work in this documentary? I mean, is it going to be up to snuff? Right? And she had tremendous powers of concentration.
I guess it's because of those kids that she had at home and writing for years, and she never took her eyes off the screen. And that's when and she started promoting my work as this seminal personality profile of Diane Downs, and that really linked us together because we were always obsessed interested with the why how of crime.
You also include this glowing, incredible recommendation that she writes for you. Just tell us briefly what necessitated did she write this recommendation and why did she want and feel it necessary to write this recommendation for you. What had happened?
Well, Eugene is a smaller market, and you can't make a good living there, you know, even really enough to support yourself. So I had hoped that I would be able to move on to a larger market. Of course, I had only really wanted to go to Seattle or to Portland, and Portland is where I ended up. So I asked her to write a recommendation letter for me. I was so shocked when this two page letter comes in the mail and is so detailed, and how much
she had watched me and seen me. I'd drug an old typewriter into the lobby of the courtroom during the Downs trial and I would sit there before airtime, typing out a story and then presenting it live on TV for the five o'clock news. So she had watched me do all those things, and there were some other, you know, very personal, nice things that I felt like I had been seen and recognized.
You write the book eventually is small Sacrifices for Manrul And you organized a release party for her at that time, and you write that small sacrifices along with Stranger. The stranger beside me were her two top million selling books.
Yeah, Stranger Beside Me and Small Sackcrifices really set her into the stratosphere internationally as an author. Imagine having Stranger Beside Me and then coming up with another murder case that was as chilling and horrifying as the Diane Downs case. Now, she took no pleasure in writing about the murder of children, but Diane was such a psychopath and sociopath and narcissist that the story had a lot of twists and turns.
Diane was very manipulative, and all of those factors went into her wanting to do that book, and it did catapult her into the stratosphere. I mean, you know, those are two of her best selling books. To this day, she has thirty five books still in print, many many of them were made into TV movies.
You right, that, very much like The Stranger Beside Me, grew to become a cult favorite and a national and international bestseller. That also that the Diane Downs interview that you did, and the story itself. You kept following any new developments, but also twenty twenty took this story a couple more times and raised its profile via television.
Right two thousand, oh, I think it was sixteen or No. Twenty eleven, So twenty twenty came out and interviewed me in twenty eleven about the Diane Down's case, and boy Anne and I both thought, you know, this case is old and it's been put to rest. And they were fascinated by the interview the documentary that I had done and used it extensively. Then they came back in twenty and nineteen, and as Elizabeth Vargas says, you know, the An Jagger interview really helped Diane dig her own grave.
So in both of these instances, it brought the crime back into the forefront. And because it had happened so long before, it was shocking to people that there could be a woman like that out there. They replay it often.
You're right that Small Sacrifices you join and on the set and she's sitting in a director's chair in Edmonton, Canada in nineteen eighty nine and tell us about the role you play and the role and plays in this TV version of Small Sacrifices.
Well, Small Sacrifices was the first movie that was made from one of Van's books, and it was being filmed in Edmonton. My cousin lives in Edmonton, and so I was staying with her, and I was also working my day job, which was actually nights at the television station here in Portland. But I would fly up there and play myself an actress, which I found was a lot harder than it looks because here, you know, as a reporter, you're hoping to get it right on the first take.
Well they do many many takes, and I would find myself getting so bored. I just couldn't muster up the same feeling the authenticity that is required to be a good actress. I loved seeing Ann in a big director's chair with her name on it, and Diane was played by Farah Fawcett, and I noticed that Farah was in all of Anne, and I think she was really wondering
and stayed out of the way. Mind you, she was near the director in the camera, she stayed out of the way, and so I think Farah was really curious, you know, am I hitting the mark? Does she like my portrayal of Diane's How am I doing? One time when I was there, Farah asked me to come to her trailer, and she asked me in that meeting, so what did Diane do during the court testimony, and I told her what Diane did, and she used those same
behaviors in her portrayal of Diane. And then she asked me about this strange interaction when the prosecutor said the music was playing and the kids were being shot, so it was hungry like a wolf. I still can't listen to that song. So Diane, we all know in the courtroom that her children were shot while this music is playing, and Diane is bobbing her head and she's got her legs crossed and she's bobbing her leg up and down throughout the whole song. You should have seen the jurors reaction.
You chronicle that she has a couple of escape attempts. But one of the more dramatic things that she agrees to is appearing on Oprah Winfrey with Anne Rule and Oprah Winfrey and Diane Down's incredible And.
That was an incredible interview, and Oprah had done her homework as she usually does, but Diane was aggressive and was ridiculing Anne, and I probably her hatred of her and trying to throw her off. Course, Anne hardly got a word in edgewise because Diane was her typical, voiciferous self and just dominated the room. And Oprah asks her, how could you not be hysterical when your children were being shot? And she said, well, it wasn't like going to the state fair and having hot dogs. Then you
saw the looks on the audience faces. They'd been giving her the side eye, but now all of the eyebrows were raised and she lost them.
Then tell us about just a few of the things that Diane Downs continues to do, and you continue to follow before we talk about what's next for and rule.
Well, yes, I've wanted to make sure that Diane stays in prison, and I've listened in or attended all of her parole hearings, which are quite eye opening. One of my favorite quotes from the last one was people don't hate me because I'm a baby killer. They hate me because I'm famous. You know, so goes her self professed innocence Project. Right, They they don't hate me because I'm
a baby killer. So she admits in that she has another parole hear in coming up this year, and that will be later in the year, but right now they're trying to figure out whether she should get a new trial for attempted murder and assault of her two other
children that survived. And this is because the Supreme Court has decided that Juri's who did not vote unanimously meaning twelve zero to convict on those charges, need to go back and either a provide a new trial, be offer a plea bargain, which I know Diane will never accept,
or they can let it go. Now. I know for a fact that you know Diane would love to get out of the prison in chow Chill and come up here and have a free ride to Oregon, and thank goodness, she wouldn't be staying in the Oregon Women's Correctional Institute in Salem where she escaped in nineteen eighty nine. So if she does have to come back, then you know we'll have to go through it again. Now, there's no evidence left from the case that was all destroyed eons
ago after all of her appeals were exhausted. But they still have the trial transcripts with all the truth inside. But there's also the possibility, if you think of this of revictimizing her victims. Would her daughter have to come back, She's now a fifty year old woman. Would she have to come back and relive that day again to see her mother get what she deserves. So these are all aspects of her high jinks, and she always finds a way to turn the knife.
He read about Anne's relationship good friends with Pierce Brooks, and they both had a drive to understand the psychopathic mind, and Brooks had a reputation as a criminal profiler before he and Anne met. In the seventies, he tracked the movements and behaviors of serial killers across the country with only newspaper periodicals at the library to compare crimes. But by the time he had met Anne, he was using the term serial killer instead of the typical lust spree
or thrill killer. Tell us about this initiative that they both endeavor to do, which ends up being called VISCAP.
Anne is the only author through crime author that I know of or that I've ever found, that not only wrote about serial killers, she did something to try to stop them. She and Pierce Brook's bi She spoke twice to the Senate Judiciary Committee on serial killers, and together they ushered in They got the funding for this program.
It's called ViCAP Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and it's still in use to this day, so her work in trying to track and hunt these people has really diminished their success.
Yes, you're right that. She was a regular keynote speaker at annual Law Enforcement Association meetings and taught a four hour seminar on serial killers for the FBI.
She spoke all across the country. Yeah, and I think, you know, having been a detective or you know, always wanting to have been a detective and then becoming one. In her writing, she wanted to help them get the tools that she had realized about these killers. She was one of the first to figure out that serial killings happen in waves. Before it just seemed so random and senseless. Well, yeah,
it is those things. But psychologically, this need for blood and to hunt somebody down and control them and take their life, to have the ultimate control over them by ending their lives ran in waves, and it might be satiated by one killing, or maybe it was two a day, and then that feeling would be taken care of for a little while, and then who knows, due too some abnormalities in the brain or because of life's circumstances, this quest to kill would build and build and build over again,
and we can see that more clearly now when it's explained that way.
You speak about serial killer mentality and behavior. But you also have a chapter in this book called killer Coincidences, and you talk about that an encountered a killer named Viola in her grandfather's prison, and at that time she might not have known what she was listening to, but she remarked later that she was astounded at the woman's lack of remorse despite the crime itself and her motivation. But you also had a very interesting, to say the
least encounter with a serial killer yourself. Please tell us briefly about this encounter with your family and Charles Manson.
I heard Charles Manson sing his song Ceased to Exist at a campfire in California when I was about ten years old. That song ended up being beach Boys song called Never Learn Not to Love. But when we met him, he was just Charlie. My parents had a travel trailer and we were going through the California Coastal Highway and camping at places these RV parks. Well, there was no room at any of the local parks as it was getting dark, so we ended up camping on this isolated beach.
I think It was outside Santa Barbara, and there was another Pippi bus down there, and there were no camping signs posted, but there we were. And the door to the bus open up, and all of these girls come falling out of the of the bus, and after them comes one guy. He launches himself off the top step and his legs together, his arms out wide, you know, almost christ like, and joins the women. And he and my dad were friendly at these campfires, and I would
come and go. I was afraid of hippies. I really thought he was very strange, with his excitable eyes and how animated and angry he would get. And he kept on asking my dad, do you think I can sell this song? Do you think I can sell these songs? And my dad was a journalist also, not a record producer, but he said, you know, you should keep on trying. He had played the trombone during the war, so I
mean he did know about music. So the next day Dad is setting up something with the trailer and one of the women comes towards the trailer door and I'm outside. Dad's now back behind the trailer, and my mom is in the kitchen doing something, and I go to run to the door to tell my mom, Mom, one of those girls is coming over here. And when I turned to point, I almost got her in the chest, which
you know, quite embarrassing for my mother. I'm sure. The woman asks if she can take me for a walk, and I'm standing kind of behind the young woman, you know, shaking my head no, like a frightened rabbit, because I really didn't want to go, but my mother was sure, I think Anne would like to go for a walk.
So we walked up back toward the highway the freeway, and there were huge boulders there, and the higher and higher we got, the farther away my parents and that travel trailer got and the woman had this teaky mug in her hand. It was an odd color of green and it had a her She's candy bar a hole her She's candy bar inside and she said here, you know, would you like this? And you know, I said, well, I guess yeah, But I didn't take it right away.
I was still very reticent and hesitant. And the woman said, well, I brought it for you, and so of course that was enough for me. I made it through in about two bites. But in that encounter, the woman starts asking me, what do your parents do for a living? How much money do they have? Do you have any other things in the trailer that you know, like jewelry or you know? Why are you here? And I said, well, right now, my dad doesn't have a job and we're just picking
up produce by the side of the road. He would slow down when we're behind a produce truck and I would run out and get ears of corn or potatoes or whatever and put them in the back seat and then run for the next one. So I kind of was telling her about that too, and then I started wondering about her. I said, well, you know, you're you're so nice to do this. Thank you, And she said, well, you remind me of my sister. And so I said, well where is your sister and she said, oh, well
she's at home. And I said, well, you know, if you miss her, can you see her? And she said no, that she could never go home again. And I could not figure out why a girl who was obviously a teenage couldn't go home. I later figured out that I
think it was Leslie Van Houghton. My mom thought it was Squeaky from but after the amp fire that night, my dad came back in and I was sleeping near the door, and he moved me to the bunk above their double bed, and I could hear them down there talking excitedly, and of course I had told my mother, you know, every detail of what had happened. And the next thing I know, I wake up and I'm in
the backseat of the car. My dad is putting the blanket around me, putting me in the back seat and trying to tell me he was annoyed, but trying to keep me as quiet as possible and not you know, groaning and moaning. So we left and we never I never heard so much as a a squeak of the sand underneath the six wheels of the car and the trailer. And we went all the way home, and we didn't think much about it, really, and it became kind of a secret in my family. Maybe it was just too
horrifying to realize what could have happened. Fast forward a year and a half later, my mom comes running down the hallway, slipping on the nicely waxed floor, saying, Charlie's in the paper. Charlie's in the newspaper for all those killings in California. The date LaBianca and Folger murders, and that's when we learned that Charlie's name was Charlie Manson. And fast forward from there. Years later, about twenty sixteen, before my dad died, I scrolled up the courage to
ask him, you know, Dad, what happened back then? Why did we leave in the middle of the night. What was that about. He said that Charlie had asked him at the campfire, saying that they wanted to use our bathroom. Well, he informed him, which is true, even we didn't use our own bathroom. So he said no, and Charlie said, I only hurt people who are afraid of me, and my dad just stared him down, you know, kind of toe to toe mano amano, and said, I'm not afraid
of you. I'm not scared of you, which at the time, knowing my dad he probably wasn't. That brought back to me all of these memories of being locked in an aluminum box right next to this heinous killer and his so called family, his entourage, and I started looking into it when Charles Manson died, trying to figure out, now, you know, what would they have wanted. Well, obviously, you know they were interested in the money, and they were
interested in what we had. But Charlie had just gotten out of prison not too long ago for trafficking underage girls over the state lines. One of the girls was Diane Snaky Lake right. She was only twelve years old at the time that he met her, and by fourteen she had already had his baby. Well, she was only a few years older than I was. So would they have killed us all and just taken what they could glean from our trailer? Or would I have ended up,
you know, being a hostage. I really don't know the answer to that, but I think given his track record, it's sure a possibility.
Yes, let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now let's get to again A very hard part to read, I guess, and a very hard part to write, the story of You move from Eugene to Portland, Oregon for your new job at KGW, and it just so happened that Leslie Rule lived one block away, so that would necessitate that there would be many visits between you, Leslie and Ann tell us. She as at that point, has over thirty best selling true crime books.
She is considered the Queen of True Crime. Many of her books have been adapted into film TV miniseries, and she has been consulting on those films, writing co writing scripts, being involved in all aspects of taking these books to the big screen. Tell us what happens in terms of your friendship and what happens regarding and health.
Yeah, Anne and I got together as often as we could because Leslie, of course just lived down the street. But Anne and I had a separate friendship from Leslie. Leslie was my age, but Anne and I had a real connection. We bonded over laughter and crimes and you know, covering the same killers. But toward the end of her life, she became injured when she went to a book signing on Whidby Island. She fell and broke her hip. And you know, the experts say that the elderly only live
about three years. Yes, after that, and she was so vibrant, I thought, how could this be universal? Because Anne is doing great well. She recovered from that. She had also recovered from this strange spinal effect that she had that they were never really sure what it was, but meningitis, according to Leslie, was ruled out. She had to be tied to a bed to restrain her because of her it gave her kind of kind of like seizures, you know,
muscle spasms. Imagine seeing your mom in a hospital bed and not knowing whether she's going to live or die. So those were two things that her spirit just kept her up and running. After she broke her hip, she did have to be in a wheelchair. That's when I would go up to her house. And that's when I would go up to her house and plant her garden and you know, just give her laughter as the best best medicine. That was a couple of years before she passed.
But even when she was in the hospital and it appeared that she wasn't going to make it because she was in such critical condition, everybody thought of her as the energizer bunny, you know, takes a ticking or a licking and keeps on ticking. So nobody really thought that at first that she would pass. But I was there in the hospital room with her. Leslie was there. I was able to, you know, make a list with Anne
about who she wanted to see. And you know, I know how hard you're trying, Anne, and I want you to be able to see everybody that you want to connect with and so I'd call them and they'd come in. It was a it was a really sad time. She had had a stroke and wasn't really able to speak, but I helped her learn how to say I love you, so everybody knew that they were loved no matter what they were going through.
Yes, you were there at the end with Anne, with family and with friends. And you say that she was still working on her last book, Practice to Deceive Leslie was contracted to finish the manuscript, and she had completed The Still in the Night and previous to that, so thirty five books under her journalistic belt. You had spent three days in Seattle with Anne and with the family and friends, and then you got back and you write of a strange I guess coincidence or a tug from
Anne from beyond. So please tell us about that.
Well, when the last family member got to the hospital, I thought, okay, and your work here is done. You can go home now. She's in good hands. And they moved her into a hospice room of the glare and the beeping cacophony of the ICU. So I went and visited her to her for one last time, It was probably ten o'clock at night, and you know, I ran my hand, almost touching her, but I didn't want to wake her because I knew it was going to be the last time I'd see her. So I went home.
I really couldn't sleep. Next day passes. I hear that Anna is doing okay. She's watching her favorite TV game shows, The Price is Right. She had loved Bob Barker and Animal devote, so I knew things were going as she was comfortable. Things were going as good as could be expected. So I wasn't even doing any thing. I couldn't do anything.
The clock would hardly move. Finally, just after ten thirty that night, outside my bedroom window where I was, I heard gun shots and I heard howls, and I thought, what the heck is going on? Over there? Across the street There had been a coyote who had been prowling the neighborhood, and I knew by the howls the cries from that wounded animal that somebody had shot at with a small gauged gun and had done a really crappy job of it. Then there was one or two more shots,
and there were no more sounds. I got a call just after that that Anne had passed. And I really don't know how to reconcile the feelings within me, but it did seem that Anne was letting me know, not in pain, but in passing that she was gone, because it happened around the same time that she was gone, and she was going to.
Be okay, You right that in the end, Anne never expected all of the incredible success that she earned, but she always retained that she had to know the why. And you say, the most lovable and admirable aspect of Anne rule was her humanity, an understanding, and a kindness towards people. Foremost, Anne became a legend by reinventing the true crime genre for new generations.
You know, I don't think many people realize this today, but Anne was a trailblazer in this way too, not only through her efforts to catch serial killers, but also reestablishing true crime genre. Let's face it, all the books back then when she started were written by men. A lot of people editors didn't believe that a woman could
know that much about forensics and criminology. They soon found out something very different, but the men were writing about it in a very visceral brutal, kind of gory way. And I remember talking to her about the book In Cold Blood by Truman Capoti and saying how mesmerized I
had been by that book. She didn't like it, and I was really surprised because it was really good storytelling, right, And she didn't like it because it glamorized the killers, and that's what the other men in true crime were doing. And came along and rewrote the book on true crime by including the victims, what were their hopes, what were their dreams, what were they like? You know, she was
a mother. She knew that mothers wouldn't want their daughters to only be remembered as you know, some fodder for a serial killer and the horrible ways she died, or that their pictures were up on a police blotter or corkboard in the cop shop, trying to find out who killed them. So and extensively and always was an advocate for victims' rights, and she brought women into the stories
and that brought in millions of female readers. Now, the old guard they didn't like this very much, you know, as Catherine Casey, another friend of Anne Rules and also a megastar true crime author tried to describe it saying, you know, what is the word that they might have been saying? Is it soppy? They thought that this type of writing had no place in true crime. Well, Anne proved them all wrong. And as the true crime as we know it today is all because of Anne. She was the one who started it.
Yes, absolutely, she transformed the trend to be concentrating on the victims stories rather than the at that point, the more fascinating, supposedly story of the killer and the reasons why he became a killer, and had all the reasons why the killer may have become a killer, but also the incredible stories of the victims and the families, and just the overall sheer terror and impact that the murders had on the families.
You know a lot of families asked her to write books about their children. One of her books, I think it was If You Really Loved Me. Sheila Blush told her sister before she was murdered by her ex husband that if anything ever happens to me, I want you to contact Anne Rule and I want you to get her to write about it. And so Sheila's sister did that, and that's where that book came from and in the dedication and writes to the effect of, you know, for Sheila Belush who never had her own who lost her
voice and wanted to bring her voice back. And there was also oh, there were many many times in the still of the night that was because a family member wanted it to be done. And then the murder from it was in a crime files, which was a whole another thing that Anne did. It was a compilation of stories. It was Susan Powell's parents who asked and to write about their daughter after Susan's husband killed her in another state, then brought the children to Seattle and then shot them
and burned the house down with them in it. So she cried with parents. She tried to help them, she lobbied for their causes. She was such a good listener, and it was that humanity that she had. She was always so humble. You know, she could have been a hoity toity author, sure, because she had certainly earned it. But note she was that Midwest girl from Lowell, Michigan, who worked every single day at writing but became a megastar in the industry.
Yes, you're right, that Ann Rule was the small town girl who wanted it to be a detective, but grew up to write the most arresting stories. I want to thank you so much a Jagger for coming on and talking about your incredible The Rule of Crime and Me, an intimate view of and rule shared by her friend of thirty years for those people that might want to check out your other work and also more about this book,
The Rule of Crime and Me. Can you tell us about any social media or website that you have and you do?
Yeah? Well, Dan, this has really made me miss her all over again, but I'm happy for the thoughts again. You can pick up the book on Amazon. It's been a number one new release and it's got five star reviews, so please pick it up. It's only available on Amazon. I have a small website, The Rule Offcrime dot com. If you forget the name and you can't find it on Amazon, you can go there. That'll lead you to where you can buy the book because it's not in
bookstores it's self published. And then also on Facebook, I have a page in my own name, and then I have another page called True Crime LLLC where at the present time I'm posting a lot about Anne and the criminals that we both shared between us and some of the things that some of the escapades we had along the way. And you'll see interviews that I did for
the book. And I really hope that as many people who love and Rule they will discover her all over again and understand what she was like as a friend, as a mentor and as a trailblazer.
Absolutely, thank you so much the Rule of Crime and me and Jagger, thank you so much for this interview. And you have a great evening and good night. Thank you.