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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about Them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good Evening. This episode of True Murder is brought to you by Audible, the world's leading name in digital audio books, Audible podcast, dot Slash True Murder. John Crutchley seemed to be living the American dream. Good looking and blessed with a genius level IQ, he had a prestigious white collar job at a prominent government defense contractor where he held top security, top secret security clearance, and handle projects for
Nassau and the Pentagon. To all outward appearances, he was a hard working, successful family man with a lavish new house, a devoted wife, and a healthy young son. But he concealed a hidden side of his personality, a dark secret tie to a hunger for blood and the overriding need to kill. As one of the most prolific serial killers in American history, Crutchley committed at least twelve murders and
possibly nearly three dozen. His IQ eclipsed ellipsed that of Ted Bundy, and his body count may have as well. While he stalked the streets hunting his unsuspecting victims, the residents of a quiet Florida town slept soundly, oblivious to the dark in their midst unaware of the Vampire next Door. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Vampire next Door, The True Story of the Vampire Rapist, with my special guest, journalist and author JT. Hunter and Detective
Robert Leatherow. Welcome to the program, JT. Hunter and Detective Robert Leatherow.
Thanks Dan, happy to be here. Let me say a quick happy early Thanksgiving to the folks back here at home.
Thanks very much, gentlemen for agreeing to this interview. Congratulations on fantastic book, JT. And congratulations on Robert Leatherrell for being a dedicated police officer who had the guts to be able to follow this thing all the way through. Amazing,
incredible story. And let's get right to that. Robert Leatherell, please tell us your history as a homicide detective or as a detective, and not without giving anything away, just give us your background and so then we can maybe possibly understand a little bit more of your involvement in this case.
Alrighty. I was a police officer altogether for thirty eight years. I have a pachelor's degree in Public safety administration. I'm a graduate of the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and I worked close to I guess rough fifty murders are better in my career.
Well, now, JT, how did you come to write this book? What was tell us how you came to want and feel compelled to write this incredible story the Vampire next Door?
Well, well, then, my.
Father actually lived in the area where where John Crutchley had moved to in Florida, and he had heard the story of of of Crutchley. Uh, And he he told me that story one time and gave me the rough details about it. And when I heard I thought to myself, you know, this is really uh, this is really an interesting story, and I really wanted to follow up with it.
So I started digging into it some more and found some old articles on it and was able to get in touch with, uh, with with Bob who had worked the case extensively.
Uh.
He had been, you know, the main the case agent on on the on the case, and so he was intimately familiar with what had occurred in the case and was able to talk with him extensively about his experience. And the more I learned about it, the more fascinating the story became. And really a lot of a lot of twists to the story that really make it a compelling tale.
That's an understatement. Uh now, let's just get to I love the way you guys, the way you laid out this book, and I really like it because it's important because there's various ways of people finding out information, but it's nice to find out the information just at the right time, and that's what this is. Twists and turns, but really very surprising, very very very surprising and shocking book and very unique. Let's get to nineteen year old
Christina Alma. Tell us a little bit about her and what she was doing in this you know, November of nineteen eighty five. Tell us about Christina Alma.
Okay, Well, she was from California, and she had met a guy who had come over there to California and had developed some romantic attachment to him, and he ended up going back to Florida not too long after that, and she d up deciding she wanted to come over and visit him, and he his name was Carl von Bain and he lived in the Palm Harbor, Florida area,
which is what brought her over to Florida. And she she was nineteen and you know, it's still a young girl, and came over and stayed with Carl von Bain and his mother and there they had a trailer and a mobile home and a h a community there and she, uh, she stayed about a week and near the end of her time there, about a day or so before she was going to return to California. Actually is when she unfortunately happened to cross paths with with John Crutchley.
Now John Crutchley. Before we get into this altered case in give us the background on John Crutchley.
Well, uh, John JB. As he is he liked to be called, came from a you know, certainly a middle class, upper middle class family background in the in West Virginia. His his father was an executive, ended up being an executive for a gas company that he worked for is pretty much his entire career. And his mother was let
a stay at home mom essentially. But JB's family had some some bad circumstances he He had an older sister who died under some very strange circumstances before JB was actually born, and his mother never really recover from that, and she always wanted another daughter to replace the daughter that she had had lost. And actually, for the beginning of of JB's life, he was he was treated as
a girl. He was he was dressed in girl's clothes the first four or five years of his life, and his mother repeatedly reinforced to him that she had wanted a girl, and you know, she she essentially wished that he was a girl.
And I think that.
That impacted him quite a bit psychologically growing up, as you might imagine, and he was a bright kid, he had some some troubles focusing in school because of how smart he was. It was not easy for him to to keep his attention on the matters at hand because it was essentially a little too elementary for him. So surprisingly, he didn't do great in school, even though he had
an extremely high IQ. But he did end up earning some advanced degrees and became an engineer and worked for a large number of computer engineering corporations doing computer programming computer engineering, and eventually ended up working for companies that worked closely with military parts of the government, including the Pentagon, and working in creating communications, computer communications programs and codes for the US Navy, where he was put in contact
with the lot of secret information that he he ended up acquiring as well. And he was a like I said, he was a very smart guy. He was one of the One of the most interesting things I found about him is how he was able to inhabit really two worlds at the same time. He had his his professional side, his white collar side, his his family man sort of facade side, and yet he also had this this darker side that no one really realized.
What was his behavior characterized from the people that did know him growing up, people that worked with him, Was he really noted as an odd person? But or what was his behavior depicted as? What was what? How did people regard him in terms of his behavior?
Well, during the course of his working, he he tended to be a little bit of a loner at times. He was devoted to his work. In that respect, he he he did have a a social side, if you will. He was charismatic. He was viewed to have some quirks,
some you know, odd mannerisms. Uh well, for example, one thing that was that was talked about was a certain way of walking he had that he seemed to instead of instead of walking like a normal person might walk, he seemed to almost bounce in his step and almost as if he was trying to attract attention to himself.
But he was certainly regarded as a as a smart guy, an intelligent guy, certainly in the world of computer programming, which was, you know, a newer industry back in the seventies and eighties, which is when he was involved in it. It was more of an up and coming technology at the time.
You have some fantastic photos in the book, and I got to congratulate you to it really harkens back to true crime classics and true crime the best of true crime in the past, and that might seem shocking to some people. But seeing skeletons and other photos in your book. But for those that aren't looking at the book right now, tell us what how you could described John Crutchley in terms of his physical appearance and his was he masculine
or was he more effeminate? Tell us what did he really look like physically?
Bob might be able to give you some good get insight on that, dealing dealing up close with him quite a bit, the way the way I was told, and the things I've seen, and the footage I've seen of him, because of course he he he died before I ever got around to writing a book about him, although I would have been very interested to have met him and sat down with him.
But he he wasn't.
He wasn't a big guy.
He was.
He was about average size, I think, but he was. He was a fairly attractive guy. He had he had nice facial features and he I think he he was considered attractive by typical women.
And uh, but he was.
He wasn't. He wasn't a large, intimidating sort of presence. And I think that's part of what aided him in the the darker activities he was involved in. Is he didn't come across as someone threatening. He didn't see like the monster you would imagine. He came across as a normal person, a professional person. But as I said, Bob might be able to comment on that a little bit more.
Sure, So what was going to go ahead?
Impression? Sure, what was your impression when you first saw him?
What was I mean?
Again, we talked about no one could really recognize a monster. But what was your first impression of what he looked like? His stature? Was he imposing guy or not?
No, he was not imposing, very slight built. I think the thing that brought my attention to it was writing the beginning. When I met the victim at the hospital, the usual question going through all you know, all the stuff that we have to go through. I asked her for a description and how old was he? And she sat there and looked at me and she said, I can't tell you. I don't know. If he was twenty years I don't know. And I kept I was a little annoyed at that. I kept asking her, what do
you mean, give me an idea. Is he twenty five? Was he thirty five? And she would not give me an answer. So I don't know. And when we made the arrest that night, the team, the homicide team, I saw what she was saying. He was very slight built, long blonde hair that was all bleached out. He dyed his hair, and I felt a lot of very feminine features about him.
Yeah, that's kind of what I got from the photo, that he was kind of how you describe now talking about some of his darker side before we get into the what with you and all of us would talk about the real dark side. What was his sex life characterized by and what was his history in terms of relationships with women? Was it a good one or a bad one? According to the later research, well, he.
He became sexually active more when he went off to school in college, and he had relationships with a lot of different women, and he ended up going down a line where he became much more experimental with the sexual interests his sexual activities as he went along, and particularly I believe when he moved to the Washington, DC area, he became involved with a group there. I believe that really did a lot of I guess I would say, more kinky sexual activities. And in fact, that's when he
met one of the nurses that he dated. He dated a lot of nurses for some reason that he himself didn't seem like. He quite understood that one of these nurses was well versed in bamphorism for lack of a better word. She introduced him to the practice of withdrawing, taking blood from another person and drinking it, and that became incorporated into his sexual repertoire. So to speak, and that became something that he became heavily involved in and
continued that through his second marriage. He married earlier in his life and his first wife, mad Motes was her name. She told investigators about how he would get violent in their sexual time times together. In particular, he enjoyed choking her and it was something he did repeatedly, and it continued throughout the rest of his wife really until he was caught and put behind bars. But he had a lot of more deviant practices involved in his sexual background.
Now it was the vamporism. Was that confined to people he would he would meet online outside of a relationship or did he in the relationship that he was in because he was promiscuous guy, was he able to was he practicing vamporism in the steady relationship and these other outside relationships as well well.
He claimed that he had been taking blood from his wife, his second wife, and had been doing that. I think he said about one hundred times or hundreds of times.
So there was.
Certainly that was certainly an element of his his legitimate relationships, and it became clear that this was an element that was involved in his criminal activity as well, including with Christina Alma, who we talked about a.
Little bit before. Now with Christina Alma. She goes for a walk. She's looking to see her opt to meet her boyfriend, Bondaine, and she walking outside this mobile park. It's November twenty first, nineteen eighty five. This is an innocent woman. She still hasn't lost her virginity. She as you describe in your book. She's listening to Madonna's Like the Virgin album and she's a small young girl. And she goes out for a walk. Take it from there. Who does she meet and what does the encounter result?
Well, she was walking along the road outside of the community.
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Crutchley. John Crutchley happened to be driving home from work and during I believe it was during his lunch hour, and came across her spot her and this was a apparently this was a way that he came across a lot of his victims. He saw them along the roadsides walking alone or hitchhiking, and he saw her walking and offered her ride. It was there was a little bit of rain, and he offered her a ride. And you know, as I said, he didn't look like a threatening type
of person. He looked like a nice guy. He acted like a nice guy, and she accepted the ride. And that's when the that's really when her nightmare started.
He he.
Chatted with her pleasantly for a while and said, Hey, I need to stop by my house because I need to pick up a notebook I left that I needed for work. And she said, oh, okay, you know that's fine, and they stopped at the house. He got out to go proportally to go find the notebook to go inside. Just before he went in the house, he asked her if she wanted to come in, you know, offered her a drink or something, and she declined.
She said, no.
You know, basically I need to I need to go get to where I was going. You know, my friends are going to be worried about me, that sort of thing. And he went in the house and came back out a little while later and said he couldn't find it.
It must be in the car. So he walks over to the car, which she's still she's still sitting in the passenger seat at this point, and he gets behind her in the car and just all of a sudden, he pushes the seat forward that she's sitting in with such force that she goes flying forward and hits her head in the dashboard essentially, and he ends up with a rope around her neck and chokes her out, drags her into the house, and the next thing she knows she wakes up, she's tied down on a on a
countertop table with a rope and he's standing next to her, naked except for a necklace with a pendant on it.
And that's when.
That's when the really really bad stuff again.
Now I want to ask you, Roberts, at this point, yes, in nineteen eighty five, did John Crutchley ever come to the attention of your office or any police agency, And if so, what were those charges?
No, we hadn't, weren't even where he was in our area. Nothing in the state of Florida. It's all I know is as we go along, you'll probably get into it. He had a problem with the Virginia authorities and after later on, that's when we contacted Virginia once we made the arrest and everything. If that answers your question properly, yes.
It does, Thank you. Now you were talking about what was next in store for Christina Alma. What is really in store which makes it unique? And we talk about the vampire what what did she discover when she woke up? And was he in that position to blood let at that time or tell us tell us about that component of this unique torturous behavior.
Well, she was held there captive in his house for I'm gonna say around twenty hours or so approximately, and during that throughout that time, she was raped a number on a number of occasions. And as a part of that sexual assault process, he also drained her blood several times throughout that time period and drank it in front of her.
And he used.
Presumably he used the method that he was taught by his his nurse acquaintance from the Easy area and he used used surgical eels and tubing to drain the blood out of her different parts of her body, both of her arms and also I believe her legs, and essentially drained it into a glass container like a beaker and drink it. And when she asked him what he was doing, he told her that he was drinking her blood and that he was a vampire.
Now, what was the result in terms of her health immediately from taking a certain amount of blood and how much blood did he actually take at that time?
But during the course of the entire ordeal, he ended up draining one of her body's blood volume, I believe, and it was such a such a large volume of blood that had she not received medical attention when she did, she would have she would have died very soon. And she was fortunate to get that medical attention because she did. She did ultimately escape from his house where he was where he was keeping her through some very fortuitous circumstances.
But he did drain a large volume of her blood, and it turned out that he had become quite familiar with the amount of blood that could be withdrawn from from a human. You know, she getting to the point where it became life threatening. So he knew what he was doing, He knew how much he could take her take from a person, did he did.
They have conversations in this twenty hours where she was lucid enough to understand and had some I guess significant questions for him. What was the exchange like in many of those hours, What kind of facts were gained by her or what was said?
Well, you know, she was, as you can imagine, she was terrified, and she asked him what he was doing at times, and you know, why he was doing it to her. And she noticed that he had a video camera set up and it was recording what was going on, and she asked him about that, why he was doing that, and he made some comment to the extent that, you know, it's not nothing you need to worry about. This is
just something for my own personal youth. You know, I do this for for everyone that's in your situation, implying that he had done this with with other women.
As well, other girls as well.
And there was.
There was a you know, as you as you might imagine, there was a there was some some superficial sort of banter back and forth just to try to get him to see her as not just some victim to do what he wanted to do, but you know, as a person. And he at one point said that he wasn't supposed to do this, but he was getting.
Attached to her.
It was something he wasn't supposed to be doing because his his mo was to treat his victims as really as objects, not as people. And you know, associated with that was a lack of any sort of empathy or emotional attachment to them. But apparently in this case, for whatever reason, he had mentioned that he felt like he was becoming attached to her.
Now, what kind of changes are happening in that twenty hours in terms of her health? Like you had alluded that he understood how much blood he could take out of someone, but he also knew how much blood he could take out of someone, and the purpose of that was to immobilize them. So what happened in this regard she's young, she's healthy. What happens is she less susceptible, she's stronger. What happens here, that's a little different.
Yeah, as best I could tell that it was a combination of her youth and being a particularly healthy young girl that she was able to still function at a level to that enabled her to ultimately escape. He ended up after draining her blood several times, after having raped her a number of times, he had put her in a bathtub and she was handcuffed, she had shackles on, and he left her there.
He had to get why a basstub though, why a bathtub?
Well, it seems like it would be serve several purposes, one of which would be easily disposable of the body after she.
Expired.
Which seemed to be the way he went about doing this was he would have the the victim, the girl, at such a point where she was on her way out, close to death, and would have him in the bathtub, and then once they were dead, it would make disposal much easier as far as dismemberment of the body. The
blood easily drained down down the bathtub drain. So he had her in there and she was fortunately able to get her get herself up out of the bathtub and get out of the bathroom through a bathroom window that it just happened to have a malfunctioning lock on it. There were two locks on the window. It was one of those type of windows where you have to push in the the two lock pieces on each end of the window at the same time, and one of them
was not working rather than was broken. And that's how she was able to get out of the out of the bathroom. Otherwise she never would have got out of there because she was handcuffed, And if she had had to do both of those pieces at the same time, she would not have been able to do that with the handcuffs, and she never would have got out of there. And we want to be talking about the story today because that's the only reason the story ever came to light is because she was able to escape.
Now what was her state? Was she clothed, the half clothed, the half half? Was she stark, raving mad? And where did she run to? And who was a rescuer?
Now she didn't she was completely unclothed. She grabbed a towel in the bathroom on her way out.
She had to.
Force herself through the window. It was you know, it
wasn't a large window. She had to squeeze herself through it and had grabbed a towel on the way and dropped out the window onto the ground outside and stumbled through the through the yard at the house there and made her way up through a swale, very over an overgrown swale, and made her way eventually onto one of the one of the roads, one of the dirt roads near the house there, and was making her way as best she could, considering her her state and the fact
that she was handcuffed and had shackles on her leg. She was making her way down the road the best she could, stumbling down the road essentially, and she had had the tiel draped around her, and that was really it. And one truck approached her and kept going apparently had to two women in it, and they kind of looked at her and just kept going going for whatever reason. And eventually another truck came and it had a guy in it that lived in the area, not too far away,
a few houses down. And at first he wasn't going to stop either. He thought that she was just some kid playing some sort of strange game or maybe doing some kind of prank, so he wasn't going to stop at first either. But something about her made him stop. Something something in her face, the look in her face made him stop, and he stopped and you know, asked her, you know what's going on? He's playing around, and she told him no. She told him that she had been
held captives and that what was going on. So he helped her in the in the truck and took her to his house and called to call the authorities. And on the way to his house, when she was in the car, as he started driving, she pointed at at the house she had managed to escape from and said, remember that house, Remember that house, and that's how that's how he was found ultimately found.
Now, Detective Robert Leatherow, tell us take it from here in terms of the contact with police and when you actually came in contact with this woman and this case, and tell us you're just tell us take the police information from here. How did the police respond and the search warrant and John Crutchley and the home, and proceed from here, please, Okay, Well it started.
I was out all night on another case and I had just left at the hospital and I got back home and my pager went off to respond back to the hospital, and my supervisor at that time informed that this party had lost a lot of blood and he needed me to respond to the hospital. I responded up to Holmes Hospital and upon getting there, I was surrounded by the nurses and one of the doctors doctor's stern. They were glad to see me. I walked in and wasn't sure what was going on, and they told me
about this basic real quick. The girl is almost going to die from loss of blood from exposure, and I had her put into a private room. There was a girl there, a lady Audrey mcgregan from Cassa. She's the one who called our department. Our people got there first, and the victim she really didn't want to say anything. She was kind of nervous upset, and the lady against rape got there and demanded that we send somebody there,
and that's what I got sent In there. I started to interview the girl, and the hospital staff had cut the ackles and handcuffs after and the towel they was laying in the corner. I think within fifteen minutes, I put my tape recorder on and started talking to her, swore her in and within ten minutes I stopped the tape and I knew what was going on. I excused myself for momentarily. I called my supervisors and advised them, and from there we set people to the house to watch.
The house.
People went to the party had picked them Up's house to interview mister Harper. I spent a few hours at the hospital interviewing the victim, then the doctors to see what the chances were, and at that time they weren't sure she was going to make it through the night. They were concerned such a great loss of blood that she might expire during the night. And from there, within about four or five hours, I responded to our precinct and I wrote the search warrant and the affidavit for
the search warn't we were assisted with. Of course, the state attorney came down to assist me with my affidavit, and that evening I responded to Judge Johnson's house probably about midnight to get the search once signed, and approximately two thirty seven on the twenty third, the homicide team with our road patrol surround the house and made the arrest of mister Crutchley at that time and then we from then on we sat down in his kitchen and we did an interview with him, and he was very
outgoing with us. He wanted to explain everything to us of what was going on, and he couldn't understand. He kept saying that this girl was a willing participant in the whole thing, which we knew was not correct. But we took statements from him, sworn statements, and we removed our crime scene people, took a lot of evidence out of the house, and we removed him from his house probably the following morning, and he was taken to our county jail and placed under arrest by myself in the team.
And what were the.
What were you?
What were all the charges involved with kidnapping abduction? Tell us the various charges he was he was he had?
Yeah, well, we had kidnapping, sexual battery, and numosexual battery. We even did charge him with the taking of the human blood, theft of blood, and uh, we found some different narcotics in the house and we charged them with that. Uh. The theft of blood, of course, was gone away with later on before he pled guilty to the all of the charges.
Now for JT. How does the media respond to this, the knowledge about this blood letting, this vampire and or how does the media portray this story? And are the interested in it?
Oh?
Yeah, it was certainly took on a life of its own in the media. He came to be known as the vampire rapist, and the blood taking became a big popular topic in the media. It was it was picked up not just locally but statewide when national ended up in even international coverage, and was was was followed very very closely and crutchly like like is not uncommon with these.
Sort of.
Criminals. Became very enamored with his own fame in the media. He he followed the stories about himself and he enjoyed it, and it was it was something that that he he liked. He even jokingly referred to himself as Count Malibaruh he lived in Malibar, Florida, so he called himself Counting Alibar. And he he really, he really enjoyed the media coverage.
It was the the narcissistic side of himself coming out, which and something a trait he shared with some some of the more famous serial killers, like like like Bundy.
Now we're getting a little head, so we'll get back to Robert Leatherow and and how police proceed when they when they have him and they have the description of this crime, Robert, what did the police do in terms of the possibility he may have been tied to other rapes and so what's how does that investigation go in terms of past crimes potential.
Well, as I said, you know, we took numerous amount of evidence out of the house, a lot of different female driver's licenses, are ID cards, a lot of necklaces and chains. And then that was in November. Now, in January he was indicted by our grand jury and at that time I could not write a search one for
the Harris Corporation where he worked. And in January, once the indictment came down, I was allowed to go into the building with my partner with security and we went into his office and that's when we came upon a lot of stuff. The security people were emptying out his desk and everything because he was being relieved from working there.
And at that time I found a lot of evidence of females and pictures of females, and a lot of heavy bondage ropes and chains three five file course, about seventy of them with ladies, females, names and addresses, their sexual preferences, their stores. And in the desk I found an opaque envelope that security pulled it out. It was a picture of one of my victims and a couple of her children, Patty Velanski, and we have never found
her body. Yet to this day. And at that time we found a calling card from a Fairfax County a detective Detective fed Fife and beat in police work for so long, it's unusual to get hold of somebody right away. I asked to use the phone. They put me to another room and I called Fairfax County detective, asked for the homicide squad, asked for Detective Fife, and I got on the phone with Detective Fife and told him what I had and what I was doing, and he knew
John Crutch the right a way. He was a suspect in a homicide up in Fairfax, Virginia with a secretary that worked for John. Found about a year later. The sculptor remained out of the wooded area and detective Wife and I conversed back and forth. He flew down with another detective from Fairfax, Virginia, came down to a few our crime scene and vice versa. We went up there and as I said, they had one victim up there.
There was a few other ones that were possible when John was living there, but one was his secretary at work and they were dating or going out together, and he was the last person to see her. She disappeared. He wasn't home when the detectives went to the house when her grandmother reported her missing, and a few days later John showed back up at his trailer. Fairfax County was there to interview him, and he denied everything, and unknown to him that they had asked him to take
a polygraph test at that time. He said yes, and then he got real nervous about taking it, but he did take it eventually a couple weeks later, and he wasn't aware of it, but he failed the polygraph test recording the w Fitch John. So we had a connection with Fairfax County, and there was a lot of other females in that area that we're missing, and the only one that we could put him together was with w. Fitch John because she had worked with him. I hope that answers your question.
Yes, it does. Now with the impending trial with Christina Alma, how does that proceed in terms of does he does he have the means to get a really good lawyer or is it a public defender? And how does it what's their sort of defense? Tell us a little bit about at least the beginning of the trial.
You're asking me that or you want to yes, JT to answer that no, Robert, Yeah, well, okay, he hired an attorney. They had the means. They hired an attorney from our aria here that represent him, and the beginning of the trial didn't last too long. I Robert Wrestler from the FBI was who I was mentored by, was down on our trial assisted us. I had gone to behavioral Science to show them in this case file and
they were assisting us on the case. And when if trial first started, he had his attorney and our district attorney, Norm Wolfinger had handled the case and probably the first couple hours of the case and they came in with a guilty plead. John decided to plead guilty, and he was sentenced to twenty five years in prison and he got out in ten years with good behavior.
Yeah, I could if I could kind of kind of add on there. Yeah, the kind of the reasoning for why Crutchley decided to lead guilty, he was he was confronted with the evidence that the investigators said had put together on him. There was a number of bodies that had been skeletal remains that had been recovered in the in the Bervard County area. And he was confronted with evidence of those crimes and also.
Of the.
Case with Christina Alma, obviously, and he decided that he might be in jeopardy, and so he wanted to avoid facing a death sentence. So he wanted to plead guilty to try to avoid some of those other crimes being further investigated or further developed and further linked to him. So I think that's a big reason why he decided to plead guilty in that Christina alm the Cave.
What I found fascinating about the book too, JT, is that and Robert Leatherhow's involvement with Robert K. Wrestler, the famous Robert K. Wrestler, That Wrestler had a real strategy and he really did work hand in hand with him
to come up with a strategy. And so tell us a little bit about the the bones in the box and the and the names on the cabinet and the whole thing with the low lighting that was staged, if you like, Robert or JT, could you tell us about that scenario that was advised by Wrestler and what did he suggest, And tell us a little bit about that scene.
You want me to do? Okay, I'll give it my best shot. As I said, I had gone through the FBI National Academy, and Robert Wrestler was He was one of our instructors at the class, and John Douglas and
him himself became very involved with us. And when we got onto the case and our training there was we talked about how to interview suspects, and when this case came up, and when Robert Wrestler came down to assist us on the case, he recommended that we and I've done this in other murder cases, we bring him into a very nondescript room, file cabinets with names of the victims on it, boxes with the crime scene bones in him. And I wasn't there. I was in Quantico at the
time when this came on. We brought him over. The other agents brought him over from the jail to the homicide office. And usually with the low lighting you get them in a room like that, they get very very nervous when they see it, well the fact, well the information we had sitting there, and they as JT said, he want to avoid the death penalty, which they all do, and he got real nervous and he wouldn't even go
into the room. He starts screaming, yelling that the room was evil and he didn't want to be in there whatsoever, and they had to take him back. But that was part of the training. I've done that in other murder cases, where we bring people into a nondescript room and sit there and have file cabinets and maps and pin maps where the bodies are, and it works. I hope that answer your question, sir.
Yes, well, in the book it's and from the information you've given him, is that betrayal of that scene and what it does to crutch Lee and then a wrestler coming in and saying, listen, I think we should do it and do it this way and say these things to him. So it's brilliant and it's amazing that the axis that you have gives us this unique window to be able to see this. Now, maybe you can tell
us Robert too. And then I thought this was the most disappointing situation in this entire book, the ability to find out information about loved ones that were other victims that were killed, tell us about what happened to this potential prelea agreement that even his lawyer, Joe Mitchell that Krutchley's layer, Joe Mitchell, was trying to facilitate on behalf apparently according to him, for John Crutchley to be able to admit the twelve murders. Tell us about this plea agreement?
What happened to kywash this thing?
Well, sir, it's a very touchy question.
Wow.
If I answer it probably won't go overwrite JT. You want to handle that please?
Sure?
Yeah? Dan.
What had happened with that is there was there was an individual in charge of the homicide there, and he was he had a certain way he liked to handle cases, and he wasn't big on degree into deals in these sort of circumstances, and he decided that he would rather have his men, have his detectives work the case, work the case up, find the evidence themselves, and then be
able to go after Crutchley. However, they wanted to, you know, give him any the full extent of the law, bring the full extent of the law to bear on him
if he will. And so it was this individual decided that they would not deal with him, that they would not accept any sort of plea, and he voiced that strongly to the state attorney, and it was decided that they would not enter into this deal with even though he was willing to give up a large number of his victims, including leading investigators to the burial sites, which would have provided a lot of closure for a lot
of the families of these victims. But it was decided at the time that that was not the way to go, that they would build up the case on their own, and that was the decision that was made. And whether it was the right decision or not hindsight, you know, you can play money money Monday morning quarterback, of course, but it certainly if the deal had been made, there would have been a.
Lot more.
A lot more closure for a lot more people.
Robert, in cases like this, often, well maybe is it is it often prosecutors will go to the to some of the family or consult some victims on this kind of agreement being done or not done.
Yes, that happens a lot. Don't forget I'm trying to avoid something here, Dan. The whole thing was was a real hot thing right then and there, and a lot of the people, a lot of even the supervisors. It was a very hot item right now in our county. Here we had uncovered about four bodies prior to mister Crutchley's arrest. Skeleton remains in a wooded area. So this was pretty hot in our press here. The news media was on it, real heavy, hot and heavy, and things
were just handled wrong. I'm trying to avoid telling you just how I feel.
Sure, I get I get what you're saying. No, no problem, I understand.
Now.
What's interesting too, is that I come from super liberal Canada, where nobody does life sentence. There's no such thing in reality, but a twenty five year sentence, how does it really get down to ten years? And realizing that he gets the ten he's out in ten years, it's very interesting to see the concerted effort to try to keep him in prison. So, and that's very important part of this story. So tell us how on earth you can get from twenty five years to ten years without a parole? Is that?
How does that work?
Back then? Our laws were a lot differently back in eighty five compared to what they are now. And yeah, he was a little over ten years that he got there. I just don't know how that all worked. I was taken back on it, but it worked for the best. I guess it was meant to be he come out, as you know in the book there, he came out. He was out one day and he failed the urine test the smoke of marijuana. He admitted to it, and we went back to court on that. He went back
to prison. I hope that answer your question.
Sure, JT. Elaborate on that, because this is a fascinating, incredible and I mean really movie esque tell us about this. He's going to get parole. And let's see, we were skimming over a fair amount of this too. John Crutchley is what kind of criminal our pardon me, what kind of inmate in prison he's going to get he's released after ten years. And then we'll again, JT. I'll get you to give us the evidence of the fellow inmates that testify, and so tell us about that fascinating parole violation,
a parole a breach of parole hearing. But first tell us about a little bit about John Crutchley in prison for that ten years.
Well, he was a.
Really close to a model inmate. He didn't get into a lot of trouble in prison. He had very few instances of any sort of administrative punishments. He was he was a he was a good inmate. He was put in charge of some of the programs in the prisons there for the other inmates, and he he helped with the computer systems, as you might imagine based on his background there in the in the prisons.
And so he had a he had a a.
You know, close to an exemplary record in prison, I guess you could say.
And he did.
He came up for his parole, he earned a lot of gain time. The laws back at that time we were structured to enable that to happen, frankly, because the prisons were overcrowded, so the system needed to be able to make room for other prisoners that needed to be there. It was the bottom line. So he gained a lot. He got a lot of gain time, which reduced his sentence significantly and was able to get out in about ten years time instead of the twenty five that he
was sentenced to. And he did come up for his release, and the night before his release, and keep in mind this is after he's had a very good history in the prison there. But the night before his release, somehow or another, he ends up being exposed to marijuana smoke. Whether it was a voluntary or involuntary exposure is a little bit murky, but he did end up ingesting this
marijuana smoke and tested for it. After being released, he was taken to a parole facility in the Orlando area, and as Bob mentioned, he was given the standard test there and it showed up, and so it was discovered that he had ingested this marijuana.
And he was.
Promptly arrested for violating the terms of his parole based on that. And it was very interesting circumstances, as you alluded to there, because of so much pressure, the fact that he was coming up, that the dreaded vampire was coming up for release from prison. It made a lot of people in the communities in Florida up in arms. There was a big uproar about it, and there was a lot of pressure brought to bear in the form of media coverage and in the form of political pressure
to do something about that. Nobody wanted him to be released in their area, Nobody wanted him in their community. And lo and behold, he he violates the terms of his probation, even though he certainly had to know that he was about to be set free, so you would think he would be on pretty good behavior there but yeah, he did. He did get this violation of probation charge and that ended up putting back in prison for life.
So he went from being he went from being a free man for a day to being back in prison for a life.
I got to say that, it's like anybody that reads it's just got to, you know, shake their head. Versus twenty five, it turns into ten. It's amazing that even got twenty five because the sentencing guidelines were about eighteen. So thank god he got twenty five. Otherwise he'd been out in about six. And then nobody wants him. And but here's the thing. He really does have a hearing that he provides some evidence. He gets a lawyer, his mom gets this great lawyer, and he's got a pretty
good case. He's got witnesses, not that they're that credible, but he really has a story that's credible. But in the end, just like they when they took that sentencing, guideline said no, no, this guy would have killed this woman. And so I applaud them that they, you know, they weren't constrained by that so much. And they call it the way it really was. This guy's a unique villainous creature,
and so that little bit of marijuana. It was interesting at this hearing that he has the witness say, oh, yeah, he was a non smoker. He had probably lung problems or something. But he was placed into this smoking cell and then these big black guys came into his cell and blue marijuana smoke into his lungs, and they go, well, too bad, too bad, just spend the rest of your life in prison. I went there, you go, that's now, that's a little bit of a happy ending if nothing else.
Yeah, it worked out for the best there ultimately. But yeah, it was interesting because he had been for most of his confinement he had been in a you know, a non smoking building essentially, but shortly before his release date came up, he was put in this building where it was notorious for being a smoking smoking area where a lot of the inmates who did marijuana and other drugs were housed there. But it was the timing of it was interesting to say the least.
Yeah, just just another truly astonishing aspect of this story. If you think you can cut out of this book early, it's no way. There's stuff going on every single page. It's amazing. The photos are incredible, and just the access to information thanks to people like Robert Leatherout, we have this incredible, incredible story. Robert, what was the tell us about the demise of John Crutchley and any What happened to John Crutchley and when did that happen?
Well, as you, as you said, his demise was in prison. He was found in the very stranger besiegure what erotic death?
Do you know what that is?
Their?
Sure?
Sure it was a bag it yes, very good, yeah, bag overhead and some other little things. And he was a pleasure to himself and his fail safe system. Very unusual for his age at that time. He was I think forty nine or almost fifty. What eerotic usually happens with younger males in the teenage years. But he died from autoerotic death.
Here's some irony there, perhaps, yeah, fitting fitting ending, I would think, you know, It's another aspect that I really thought was very fascinating to Robert, is is the is the idea how much you employed uh jail house snitches to try to gain information and how how forthcoming these guys, some of these guys were you. So if you could tell us just a little bit about your involvement in any of that, and and your thoughts, well.
Well, when John was in an arguing with that, correct me if I start getting carried away here. Now, John was a bisexual, and he became very familiar with a lot of the different guys were in prison with him, in jail with him, and uh, interviewing all them. H he took us a lot, a lot of time to interview them and learn a lot about John Qutchley and what he was planning. And at one point he'd ask one of the inmates to go down and take care
of his wife. He fell in love with somebody else and he wanted one of his inmates friends to go down and take take care of his wife and raise his child for him. I don't know you read that part in the book. I assume you did.
Yeah, yeah, And of course what what one of them? Patrick Dantell became very close to Krutchley while he was in the jail there and and Dantell kept a very detailed diary during his time in the prison, and there's there's a lot of very interesting entries in there which are sided pretty extensively in the book and revealed a lot of a lot of information that really makes sure your your hair stand up on the back of your neck and you read it.
Absolutely, he did have a well, I want to say credibility, but a lot of the stuff could be proven uh truthful anyway, in terms of the information that he did provide.
Don tel Right, Yeah, he was. He was all lined up to testify, but he skipped down and they weren't able to get him to actually testify a trial against Crutchley because a lot of his testimony would have been very very damning.
And then he uh, he ended up.
Dying not too long after that, so his his testimony was lost forever. But fortunately he had kept this very detailed diary which which I was able to access with
with Bob's help. And as I said, there's a lot of very very interesting information about Crutchley's background and the the things he had been doing before he ever even moved to Florida, So he had only been in Florida a couple of years before he was arrested, but he had been he had a history of these these these encounters going all the way back to his college days, and of course the Virginia victim that he was so closely tied to Debbie FitzJohn, whose story is covered in
extensively in the book, thanks to the information Bob got from from Fred Fife at the Fairfax County Police Department, as well as as a lot of information that I got speaking directly with a private investigator that Debbie Fitzjohn's family had hired to look into her disappearance, James Wilt. He was very accommodating and gave me access to all of his materials that he had on the case and talked to me extensively about his investigation as well.
Now, Robert, with the police, it's always, I mean, you don't have to have all the evidence. But they speculated that he had killed in other places other than Florida. What was the really reasonable tally on how many victims he likely had and in how many states he had killed in And finally, you know, just tell us really what they thought he had done with those victims in terms of disposal.
I guess, well, my figures come up that he won in Virginia that we can put to him, as I told you earlier, and I believe I had four or five here in Florida. I believe he did six that I can put to him. And not assume something. But as you're well aware of, we never got close enough his computer. We never really got into the computer. We made a mistake and not apprehending or not apprehending taking in evidence the computer the night of the arrest. That would have been a real big plus for us, and
I believe it the skelter remains. Just prior to John's arrest, about a year or two, we started finding skelter remains down here in Florida in a general Vicinity two by the Hiris Corporation, another plant that do we have off a US one. We found a couple of skeleter remains out there and that just kind of coincided as I
see it with Virginia Debbie Fish. John's skelter remain was found about a year later out in the dirt bike path by power lines, and our skeleter remains down here were basically found inlf of the power lines dirt bike paths where motorcyclists would ride through, but everybody was a skeleton remains. And my belief is that John I could put him to six possibly.
Yeah, Bob was talking about directly, you know, having having clear evidence to bring a case against him at the time that krutch Lee was willing to plead this plea deal that he offered.
Uh, he was.
He was willing to plead to twelve. He was gonna he was going to give up twelve of his victims. And that, Uh, that was through discussions with one of the one of the members of the department there the Sheriff's office, and through his attorney there in Brevard County. He was willing to give up twelve of the victims. And it's believed really by a lot of the people involved, that he had.
He had a.
A history of victims, the account of victims that would go into the dozens, but of course they could never tie him definitively to any of those. A lot of that was just, you know, reasonable surmising based on where his whereabouts and victim people that had gone missing, different places he had been during those time periods and that.
Sort of thing. Robert, how frustrating. I can almost feel the frustration kind of exuding from you in this that you were just there's so much circumstantial evidence without being able to actually charge him for some of these murders, like the little motorcycle he drives a motorcycle and there are along these telephone lines, and I mean, it's just great detective work, great police work. How frustrated were you
with this case? I'm sure this is not the only time you've ever been frustrated, But how was frustration the big thing in this case?
Yes, definitely is definitely right now talking with you, I yet kind of wound up about it, and it really bothers me. I put six to eight years of my life into this case, and we did three times. We investigated three times the original thing. We did that for almost a year trying to put everything together, and then back in eighty eight we did the whole case over, and then in ninety four, I think it was ninety five,
we did the case over again. And you get so close but yet so far, and you could tell by my voice I get kind of worked up on a I was almost there. I want to see him in the electric chair. That's what I wanted, and that was back we had electric chair back in Florida. Then sure that stuff. I could see myself getting wound up just talking to you to night about it.
What was it like to give you a little bit of relief? What was it like to hear that he had, because obviously there's got to be this incredible whole experience where this clown is released after ten years and you can't do anything about it, and people are trying, like yourself, to do something about but just they can't do anything about it. And then the news that he's back in on a violation, what was that like?
Kind of overwhelmed me at first. The night he went he got out, he went down to the halfway house there in Orlando, I went to the city council meeting in Malabar. The people were up into arms because he was going to have to come back into their community, and I went there and apologized to the people there. In the TV stations, I felt I failed my job, not putting in prison forever or at the electric chair.
I was very upset with that. And the next day when we got the notification that he had failed the test over there and we were bringing him back before it was like a birthday press myself and my family.
Yeah, yeah, Bob, Bob was Bob was pretty hard on himself in relationship to the case. I mean, he he had become close to the family of one of the victims, Patty Velanski, there, and it's described in the book a little bit of the relationship. But he had he had, he had promised the family that he would he would find Patty Valanski's body for them to get them some sort of closure. But unfortunately it was never able to
do that. And you know, it's something I think that's still that still eats at him a little bit.
Yes, it does. I just talked to Patty Valanski's mother just last week. She called me about the book, and I had thought that Alta Pratt had passed away. She's in a hospice with cancer right now. And uh my wife answered the phone that day and to hear Alta Pratt on the phone kind of rock me. Well, I failed.
Well, I think the system fails, you know it, you know it does fail. I mean that the person that everybody can see in these true crime books when it's and there's many cases like this where it's a dedicated cop, it's the take the case home that have to go
look at a crime scene. I can't even I was involved in a case, but I can't even fathom having to see a crime scene and then having to try to erase that out of your mind, let alone see that have to see these characters face to face and then have to pretend that you're not just totally disgusted by these creatures, and then have to talk to the families at first and then later I mean a different kind of grief, initial grief and then later grief and
lasting and then So I think that's what everybody finds so fascinating about this That we get the experience of the detective, but as we're hearing, our audience is getting the privilege of hearing how affected you still are from this case. And you were no novice fifty murders under your belt homicide cases. And this is a testament to
this book. I read a lot of books, we cover a lot of books, and this is again taking storytelling up another level with having the great work that you did, Bob and having that access and then convey that to JT. And it's it's captured in this book and it's an amazing, amazing story. So I applaud both of you, gentlemen, for this great work, and I want to thank you very much. I also want to do as go ahead, I just
want to say thank you. I was very apprehensive of about doing this tonight with you if you don't mind me calling you Dan right and no, certainly, I'm very I'm very pleased to talk to you about it. I enjoy talking with you. Thank you for understanding well, thank you very much and for sharing, and thank you JT. I also wanted to mention before we go that Audible has brought this fine episode to our audience this evening and right now it's Audible is having a thirty day
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that Damien Eccles narrates this book. So right now at audiblepodcast dot com, Slash True Murder. That's Audible podcast dot com True Murder. Go to Audible and experience digital audiobooks like Helter Skelter in Cold Blood and Life After Death and or any that you choose and really experience digital audio books. Again, gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for coming on the program tonight and talking about
The Vampire next Door. Thank you very much. Robert Leatherow And are you retired now, Robert from Oh yes, we're yes, seven years now, seven years seven seven.
But it doesn't matter. Our family, my son and my brother roller Coops. My son is a police officer right now. Great, it continues.
Oh thank you JT. For those that would like to contact you get a little bit more information about the book, if you are interested in being contacted by Facebook? How do people go about contacting if they're more If you're interested than learning a little bit more or reaching you personally, well, I am on Facebook JT. Hunter.
You can find my web my page on Facebook under that. There's also a page under the Vampire next Door the True Story of the Vampire Rapists. So either way, they could also email me if they like to email me directly, My email is JT. Hunter eight one four at gmail dot com, and I would welcome hearing from anyone.
Well again, thank you very much gentlemen for a fantastic interview and a great book. JT and I hope to talk to you both again sometime soon. Thank you very much, good night.
Thanks a lot, Dan, my pleasure tonight.
Good night,