THE SERIAL KILLER'S APPRENTICE-James Renner

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most notorious unsolved crimes in Northeast Ohio. Investigative reporter James Renner reopens cold cases and delves into dark secrets that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including murder. Beverly Jerros, just sixteen years old, felt a dark foreboding in the months before she was stabbed to death in her quiet Garfield Heights home. It all started with an anonymous gift stole an identity. Joseph Newton Chandler of East Lake was not who he claimed to be. Some think he was a

Zodiac killer. Others say he was d B. Cooper or even Jim Morrison. Suicide or murder. Joseph Kopcik had gambling problems from friends and family until he was found at the bottom of a nine story parking deck in downtown Cleveland with multiple stab wounds heist. In nineteen sixty nine, Lakewood Bank employee Ted Conrad nabbed two hundred and fifty thousand from the vault one day after his twentieth birthday. The FBI still shows up at his high school reunions controversy.

Jeffrey Crotein was thrice tried for the grizzly two thousand murder of his wife and ultimately acquitted, to the frustration of Cuyahoga County prosecutors, detectives, and even jurors. These stories venture into dark alleys and seedy strip clubs, as well as comfortable suburbs and cozy small towns where some of

the region's most horrendous crimes have occurred. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Serial Killers Apprentice and Other true Stories of Cleveland's most intriguing unsolved Crimes, with my special guest, journalist and author James Renner. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.

my time there, kind of rose rose up, and eventually the group behind Free Times merged with Scene, and a lot of Free Times folks stayed on. So now there's one paper lefted Scene and they kind of rolled the roost there and they're doing great journalism again. So it was the the most fun I've ever had, the best job I've ever had, But it was at a time where when I was working there, it was the decline

of the newspapers. I started in two thousand and three, and at the time a cover story like one of these stories in the book, a feature story would pay twenty five hundred dollars. By the time I left, seven years later, that same story paid about two hundred and fifty dollars, and we had gone from a staff of fifteen to three. But it was while it lasted. It was a fun ride, and I became known as the true crime guy because I'd write at a lot of

these crime stories and they build up. And these are the twelve best that I've written, and a couple of them have been featured in Best American Crime Reporting and Best American Nonfiction, you know collections.

So he was living on you know, kind of the west side of Cleveland, and he had a couple of jobs. He was working at Wendy's and you know, with this group and and it also started working at Steak and Shake, which I don't know if that's kind of like a national chain, but it's you know, it's it's good. It's it's like a chain diner, you know, where you can get cheap hot dogs and hamburgers and French fries and spaghetti and uh, you know, he was doing that to

make ends meet. Now, unknown to a lot of his friends and family, he was also very involved in online gambling and he had uh, you know, sometimes he was up, uh and sometimes he was down. And it looked like he was at the time that he died. Uh, he had lost just lost for his age, a decent sum

of money. So the particulars of his death. He was supposed to work at Stake and Shake that day, and this is two thousand and six, and the story goes, he showed up for work and they didn't really need him, so they sent him home, and instead of going home, he drove into downtown Cleveland, about a twenty minute drive, and his car ends up in a parking deck that's owned by a bank downtown and it's several stories tall, and he drives up all the way to the top,

you know where it's just open to the elements up top, and he parks the car flashed forward to the next night, you know that. Later that night, his body is found on the sidewalk low the parking deck, as if he had fallen that entire length, you know that that drop, and he's nearly dead when he's found. A guy that had come out of a bar comes across. His body. Didn't look like it had been there. Long calls ninety one to one. He's rushed to the hospital. He's still

barely hanging on. He can't really talk at the hospital. He dies. And when I saw this case, I remember reading about it in the in the playing dealer, and the coroner had essentially written it off as a suicide, that he was despondent over these gambling losses and he jumped off the top of the parking garage and killed himself.

But it just didn't sit right with me still. You know, I waited several months before I dove into it, and when I did, you know, it just had this feeling that this was going to be one of those pieses that was there's a little bit more under the surface than you expect. And sure enough. I mean, the first thing with this case is Joe has this identical twin which you know, picture this, you know, you know what the victim looks like, and he's he's six feet under,

he's dead. But you have to interview this man who looks and talks exactly like exactly like it, you know, and knows him better than anybody else. So it was a very surreal experience for me to sit down with this guy that is essentially a you know, a double of of this this this young man he died. And so the article actually opens up with the dream sequence, and it through the mind of John, who to me described these nightmares that he was having where Joe was

still alive and they were playing basketball. I thought that was very interesting, you know that there was still a part of Joe that that was alive inside his head. So you know that you've got that weirdness. And then you look at the particulars of you know, the death,

and there's some weird things. You know, there are these like when they went into the car that Joe had left behind, you know, things were kind of out of place, and they looked at his body and they were like what the corner calls tick marks along his like abdomen and chest, and you know, the coroner suggested that these tick marks were used by a knife and it was Joe considering whether or not to stab himself before he

leapt to his death, which is just it. You know, that one of the weirdest explanations I've ever heard, and that doesn't sit right with me either. So I went and tracked down his coworkers and that's when I discovered that when Joe left Stake and Shake that day, he didn't leave alone. He gave a ride. The reason he went downtown is he was asked to give a ride for this coworker named Brian, and Brian asked him to

take him downtown Cleveland. So Joe was this, you know, he was he was kind of callable and extra nice, and so he left with this kid, Brian, and uh yeah, and then you find out that things are missing from from Joe, possibly a bit of money, and also his cell phone. His cell phone was never found, like if it was a suicide, where's that cell phone, you know? And why is it gone? So I'm like, well, I got to talk to this Brian kid, because he would have been at the very least, he would have been

the last person to be with and see Joe. And then I find out that he's left the state, so you know, red flags start going up, and I find out that he is also in trouble with the law, and he has a warrant for his arrest and all these, you know, and it starts adding up. So I eventually tracked down Brian out of state and leave a message

for him, and he's not calling me back. And about two o'clock in the morning, I'm sleeping, I'm in bed, and I get a call and it's Brian, and I answer it and we talked for a little bit and I've been reporting long enough where I think I've got a pretty good read on people and sense when they're conflicted about something, regardless of the fact of that they're

calling me at two o'clock in the morning. But I could tell he had been drinking a little bit and there was something weighing on him, and he I think he got really close to telling me something very important that night, but he couldn't quite get there. And I told him, I said, I can hear it in your voice. You feel terrible, you know, why don't you just tell me what happened? And and he almost did. You know, He's, well,

you know, I can't get there. I'm not there, So you know, it was a weird conversation and it left me feeling that at the very least, Brian knows more about what happened to Joe that night, and the corner had initially ruled it suicide, but because of these questions, the corner had to go and re assess the situation, and now Joe is technically lifted, as I believe, unknown like they don't. They're not saying it's suicide, they're not

saying it's murder. They just are, you know, And he asked the corner, and he's like, well, for the family's sake, we're just saying it's not suicide. But there's so many questions here. One other little piece of this when I went to Stake and I found Joe's old manager and she was on duty, and I said, hey, I'm doing this story. Do you know anything and she her face kind of went white, just like you know, you read

about it and it really does happen. And her eyes get wide and she says, yes, you know, there's something that you should know that I've that I've wanted to say, there's information that I have that that needs to be out there. And I said, well, great, you know, please share it with me and she said I can't. And I said, well, so why why in the world can't you share something about this, this this kid's death. And she said, well, if I talk to you, I'm going

to lose my job. And you know, I look around and I'm like, you're working at Stake and shake you know, you're you're probably going to be able to get another job managing a restaurant. But you know, it was a flippant thing to say, but you know, at the time, you know, we're talking like when I was writing about it was like two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and the economy was just just at the bottom, especially

in Cleveland, and everybody was fighting for jobs. So you know, in a way, I can't blame her, but in another, you know, in another sense, it's you're weighing this job at stake and shake against possibly giving closure to some kids murder. So it was very frustrating and the case is still unsolved, and I do very much believe it's murder.

arouse suspicion around his suicide? So you know, if he committed suicide, you know why if that was his plan, why go into work at all? You know, with there's some other other pieces here. If you know, Joe was found covered in blood, his body was, but there's no blood on the railing where he would have had to boost himself up. He placed an online bat that night four hundred and fifty dollars on Georgetown to win the NCAA tournament. And this knife that was found in the

car that that supposedly was making tick marks. You know, where did that come from? Because it wasn't from It didn't match any of the knives at Stake and Shake. It wasn't his, you know, so the question is was it Bryan's? Uh? I'm sorry, I got I got a little off track, but you were asking about this de icing material that uh, that has to do with this idea that Joe's body might have been stored in age. His body might have been stored in a big box.

So up in the parking deck you've got these giant blue boxes of like salt, like essentially de icing material that they would use in the winter to remove the ice and snow from the parking deck. And on Joe's close there was this compound that matched the de icing material.

So the theory that the father put forth was that Joe was actually murdered when he drove up to Cleveland with Brian early that day, and then his body was stored in this box of the icing material until nighttime, and then whoever killed him brought him out of the box and tossed his body over the side to make it look like a suicide.

embezzling a lot of money at a prior job. And it's possible that Joe had found out about this and maybe was was going to alert other people at the restaurant, and so, you know, this was he had some knowledge of this guy's criminal behavior. And when I went to question him, this guy's really squirrely and just an odd character, and he had been known to talk to Joe outside

of work too. My hunch is that Joe met up with the wrong person downtown Cleveland, either he gave a ride to this person or met up with him there. And yes, I believe kind of what the father believed is that he was probably killed or you know, he didn't die until the hospital later on, but he was probably beat up pretty bad and during the day and either left in the car beside the car or left

in this box of the icing material. And then the killer thought after he got home, he's like, well, you know, how can I cover this up more? And it makes sense, you know, let's toss his body over the side. So they went back under the cover of night and and tossed it over. And you would think, well, so let's get the security footage right of this parking deck, and the parking decks owned by.

explained through laziness. And unfortunately, I think that's what happened here is you know, the corner, the police, the bank, everybody just wanted it to go away and didn't want to work work and look into it. And you know they were able to push it off their desk and now they don't have that case to work on.

the Cleveland area. And when I'd go to libraries and talk about Amy Mahlivik or Joe Kopchik and all these other cases, at the end of these talks, people would always come up to me and they'd say, Hey, have you ever looked into Beverly Jarros? That's my case, That's that's the case I grew up with. So eventually I had to just just look into this. And so things started to get a little hinky, a little strange for Beverly Jarros in the summer of sixty four, and she

realized that she had a secret admirer. And this person left this gift wrath box from Higbee's, which was this you know, ritzy department store downtown Cleveland, tied up with the blue ribbon, and you know, they had written to BEV on the box, and inside she found a silver bracelet and ring. So this this really creeped and she knew she was being admired, but she didn't know who it was. So she one of the things she did was she got a letter opener and she kept it

by her bed for protection. And she told people that she just had this this feeling that that death was catching up with her, that something was catching up with her.

She had this ex boyfriend, Schultzy, Dan Schultzi, who was kind of like this wild guy in the neighborhood, you know, this this like playboy, you know, greaser type, and she had broken up with him and he took it really poorly, and she was now dating a very clean cut, like the opposite of Dan, this this guy Roger, and you know, he was he was so conservative even at I think he was probably nineteen eighteen, nineteen years old because he

was in college, a little bit older than her. But he was so conservative that he was one of the people that was trying to bring back the old Vatican, you know, because they had just moved to Vatican too, which you know, so they took the old Latin out of the Sunday services so you know, so people could

understand what was being said, you know. Here, so kind of you know, weirdly conservative for a kid, and very you know, he had this this hot temper, and you know, so she had these boys, but she felt that this admirer was somebody else and it really freaked her out. So she took precautions. You know, she didn't she wasn't alone much and she had this this letter opener. Well, flash forward to you know, just after Christmas, December twenty eighth,

nineteen sixty four. She is supposed to meet up with a friend. She's doing some errands that day with her sister. She ends up getting a ride back to her house dropped off, and she goes inside the house and she's alone. And this for this window of like ten minutes between being dropped off and before her friend shows up to pick her up and they were going to go out, and sometime in those ten minutes, somebody gets into her house and Beverly is found stabbed multiple times. But the

stabbings are not what killed her. What killed her was that she was strangled to death by a piece of clothesline. And which which is odd too, because most killers they pick one method of killing. You know, this guy had too. You know, why was he Why was she stabbed and

joked to death? Why not one or the other. So it's it's a weird m My thought was always, did she did this person surprise her when she went up to her room to change and and you know, put this noose around her neck, and she had something waiting to defend herself, and this person got so angry that he snatched it from her and stabbed her with it. That would explain why there's two methods of murder there.

And my first thought was the letter opener, but the sister swears that the better opener was eventually found and was not the murder weapon. So whatever she was stabbed with was never never found. So those are the particulars of what happens at her and then you know, the story after that is you know who did this? And that's that's why we're still wondering to this day now.

on and my hair is still in curlers. So you know, it's a little provocative, and obviously Bruce was hindo her. So yeah, he was one of the people that they really set their sights on. And eventually, you know, they

really honed in on three particular individuals. They're the ex boyfriend Dan Cholti, the current boyfriend Roger, and a third individual named John Pallian, who at the time of the murder was a young man who was out of school and living just a couple of doors down from Bev, and he had admitted to spying on her and watching her sunbathe and all this creepy stuff. And he doesn't really have an alibi for the murder. So at the time that I wrote the article, those were kind of

like the three top suspects. But I have to tell you that I recently talked to the detective involved in this case because we just hit I believe the fiftieth or were coming up on the fiftieth anniversary of this murder, and he tells me that the boyfriend Roger and John Pallian have all but been ruled out. They think it seems as though they have part partial DNA of Beverly's killer, so there's a good chance that eventually this case will be solved. Still, even though it's so old, so they're

still interested in Dan Shultzy. One of the reasons they're so interested is he no longer lives in the country and he sawere is he Well he's he's in Israel. What's interesting about Israel. Well, they don't extradite, so they're still very much interested in them. But I also hear that they have two new suspects, which after all these years kind of blows my mind. And these are two guys that may not even be in my In my story, you.

were you there that they have for murdered. Whenever the is squiggling away at the the police officer, the detective is free to lean in and say, follow this doesn't look good for you. This this uh, I don't like this reaction when you know, essentially they could just it might as well be reading tea leaves, So I wouldn't read too much into these polygraphs. And even if they even if they said back then that some were ruled out or some were inconclusive. You know, there's a reason

why polygraphs aren't aren't allowed in court. But they certainly used them to intimidate some of the suspects. And uh, you know, the papers always love it when they find out that, you know, somebody has been polygraphed, whether or not they they feel they've they've passed or failed. So I always get a little anxious when the subject of polygraphs come out because there's not much. There's not much to them. Did you when reading it?

I mean, they don't have any validity in court. And so as we see now, they they're not used the same way as a tool because they can send the investigation in completely wrong direction, so right, and obviously with this there's not They're not getting any any verification or clarification or any indication from these polygraphs of any value, it seems obviously.

close it after all this time is DNA. And it sounds like they do have a killer's DNA, but again, it's not like CSI where you feed it into a computer and it goes through everybody's image and you know, spits out the killer Sometimes what you have is degraded DNA, which is probably what they have in this case, where you know, they have a snippet of you know, these these genes and you have to find a potential suspects DNA and then actually physically sit there and try and

match them up on you know, like see through paper to see if it matches to a sequence of you know, the suspects DNA. So it might not even be a full strand. And what what I was told is is, you know, they're waiting for technology to catch up and maybe there'll be advancements in DNA in the future that can give them a full strand of DNA or or

match it more completely to a specific suspect. But they have used the DNA to rule out some suspects and I believe that that's why John Tallian and the boyfriend Roger are rolled out. At this point.

And then there was a struggle. They ended up upstairs where she was murdered in this kind of tiny bedroom that she shared with their sister. And then the killer ran out the back door and her friend Barb comes over to pick her up and when she gets there, she knocks on the door, assuming it's the side door, assuming it's locked, and she can hear loud music inside.

And it's believed by the police that the killers actually inside at that time was using the music to mask the assault and may have even escaped out the back door while Barb was sitting on the front stoop.

have this beautiful Catholic schoolgirl, you know, brutally murdered. I mean that ran and sold so many papers back then, and they were trying to outdo themselves with details, and so they'd latch onto things like this that probably had nothing to do with anything. You know, this poor kid's suicide, but he happened to do it within proximity of where

she lived, so Oh my gosh. You know, let's you know, he must be involved in this, and you know the the there was a lot harder back then to sue, you know, for defamation, you know, the loss protecting you know, people that weren't you know, celebrities didn't come around until later.

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and amazing that I cooked at myself at home. Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free at blue apron dot com slash murder. That's blue apron dot com slash murder, Blue Apron a better way to cook. We just spoke about the ongoing search for the killer of Beverly Jarros, and you talk about the media being brutal. And when people talk about comparing the media today to the media in the past, who just did some stories of over one hundred years ago, that

even worse. Let's talk about the unsolved murder of Andrea Flinnery. Yeah you talk about.

girl syndrome. You know, she was beautiful and popular, and so, you know, I took some of the critiques that would come in by readers seriously where they said, well, you know, why are you not paying attention to these murdered women of color on the East Side.

She was also working as a prostitute. So when the story came out, I got a ton of just ugly emails and letters from people saying, you know, why would you waste any sort of time investigating a prostitute's murder or investigating this young, you know, African American woman's murder. So Yeah, it revealed this this ugly racial tension in

Cleveland that I had really not seen before. So I'm very proud of of this story because, you know, shee What I wanted to show was that Andrea, she was still somebody's daughter, and she had still come she still had her own history, and she came from in fact, a small town outside of Youngtown. And in high school she was very popular. He was a cheerleader, she was

a nice kid. And after high school she fell on some really hard times through circumstance, through choices of her own, and she ended up in the wrong part of Akron, living with an abusive some say an abusive boyfriend, and he knew what she was doing, that she was stripping that and he would come to the strip club sometimes and cause problems, and he knew she was she was prostituting.

So she worked at the strip club at Arlington in Exchange, which anybody from Akron and I know that's not that's not a large population of your listeners, I'm sure, but it is. It's the red light district, you know, it's the sedious part of that's the epicenter of all trouble in Akron and there's a strip club there called Lisa's Cabaret, which has now been shuttered, and that's where she worked, and she could show up anytime she wanted. She was

very popular down there. Sometimes after work she would walk down to the corner and stand there until somebody wanted to pick her up. And allegedly that's what she did the night of her murder, and she was found by

fishermen the next morning. Her body was wrapped in chains and she had been dumped in a little tributary of a river in a small community called Coventry, which is how I came to learn about it to begin with, because my wife is a teacher at the high school there, and you from the high school, you can see where

with this girl's body was found. So nobody was covering it, and so I jumped in and looked into it and worked with the detectives, and we quickly came to discover that, oh, there are two other women that fit the motive here that were found either wrapped in chains or wrapped in something and put in rivers, but further south, like around Canton. So there was a serial killer working around town at that time and the murders and he was picking, you know,

just like the Green River killer. He was picking a subset of people who might not be missed or might not be reported on. And there are at least three that seemed to be linked. And this guy is as we know, it's never been caught, or maybe he's sitting in prison for an unrelated crime and that's why they stopped or he moved. But yeah, Andrea met up with She got a ride with the wrong person that night, and we haven't been able to find him yet.

I mean, he you know, he's one of these guys that treats that treats his his girlfriend terribly, but at the same time, you know, she's also the best thing in his life. What was interesting to me is, uh, some of the other places that Andrea had been known to work at. She was working at Lisa's, but she'd also worked at this place called Flash Dance, and that place stood out to me right away because Flash Dance was like one of the last places that this this

young man named Stephen Spade had been seen. And there's this bartender named Lisa Pennix, who attended bar at flash Dance, and she and a couple of her matheatic friends lured Stephen back to him and and killed him. He ended up decapitated and they drove his body out of town set on fire. I mean, it was just a mess. And there's this group of really depraved individuals that did

to Lisa that Andrea. I'm sorry that Andrea would have known that we know for sure are capable of murder, but doesn't really fit them o of you know, being wrapped in chains and put in a river like these other women from camp.

that she had become. Unfortunately.

he was, you know, not the typical story. And this landscape paper is in uh, you know, over on the West Side, and you know he's he's working behind an office building and you know, mowing the grass and he decides to step into the woods to take a leak. And when he does, he looks down and there's this human skull. And that's how they they are able to find this, uh Tony Daniels, who had been missing for a while. And you got to hand it to Arcurie,

who was a detective at the time. And I believe now he believe he's the chief of police up there. Now he's he's he's moved up in the world, and uh, you know, he jumped on this and was avid about trying to find out who who killed Tony Daniels. And his real name, by the way, is he Hugh My And uh so he he jumped into this, was able to figure out who it was based on you know, dental records, and wanted to try and figure out what happened. And just like Andrea Filanori, you know, Tony was he

was with the wrong crowd, you know. He he was with you know, surrounded by you know, criminal types, and you know, I believe he was involved or dating a woman who was who was known to be a prostitute. His friend had you know, been you know, has a criminal history as well. So yeah, he had his work cut out for him trying to figure out what happened to Tony.

you know, who the skull belonged to. And at the same time, you've got Tony's mother, who ever since he's gone missing, has been calling the coroner like every day, every time somebody, every time a body is found in Cuyahoga County. You know, she's on the phone trying to find out if it's her missing son. So, you know, she kind of collides with with r. Curi and they

both start wondering if this, in fact is Tony Daniels. Now, Tony was mugged a few months before he disappeared, and he had been hit in the face with a with a gun, ended up in the hospital and that's when he got an X ray of his of his head. And his mother, you know, she's so so very you know, proactive,

had kept those x rays. And so Artury finds out about this and and calls her up and says, hey, you know you got those X rays still, absolutely, So Artury picks up the X rays and uh, you know, he's he's he's kind of comparing this to the the skull and it it's a match in his mind. So you know, it's it's the it's the foresight of this mother who nobody's really listening to, and and the hunch

of this detective. And if not for if not for that confluence of events, you know, we still might not be able to to know who this this skull belonged to.

this married woman. They checked out around noon. Then Tony rents this U haul and is spending the afternoon moving equipment from his into his new business on Lorraine Avenue in that section of Lorrain is not so nice either. That's actually not far from where Amanda Barry and Gina

DeJesus were abducted. So the suggestion is that Frank found out this affair and tracked and the timing chure works out right, and tracked down Tony and either killed him at this this business of his and and covered it up, or you know elsewhere.

match up fingerprints. And so when Tony went missing in nineteen ninety seven, they fed these fingerprints in and it didn't get a match. So Arcurry when he finds the skull and gets the case. After tony skull is found in his jurisdiction, R. Curry runs the Prince again and this time there's a hit and the Prince mentch This guy.

driving Tony's car. And remember Tony's car was found right near where Sherman Kyle grew up, like right around the corner from his childhood home. So this of course is starting to raise red flags. So you know, Sherman Kyle definitely ends up on Arcurry's radar.

have a website? Or a Facebook page that people might go to to see other work and if they want to contact you about anything in particular.