Robert Hilland: Chasing Evil - podcast episode cover

Robert Hilland: Chasing Evil

Jun 08, 202656 minEp. 96
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Episode description

In 1998, FBI agent Robert Hilland was at a dead end with a cold case, until he got a huge break… from a famous psychic, John Edward. Hilland was a skeptic, but not anymore. He spent twenty-five years solving crimes with Edward. Robert Hilland tells me the story at the center of his book, Chasing Evil: Shocking Crimes, Supernatural Forces, and an FBI Agent’s Search for Hope and Justice. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1

This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2

They take the cars for processing. They go to his workplace, they go to the house in Connecticut. They go through everything, They find nothing.

Speaker 1

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, research for my many audio and book projects has taken me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true

crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the unpublished details behind their stories. In nineteen ninety eight, FBI agent Robert Hilland was at a dead end with a cold case until he got a huge break from a famous psychic named John Edward. Hilland was a skeptic, but he's not anymore. They spent twenty five years solving crimes together.

Robert Hilland tells me the story at the center of his book, Chasing Evil, Shocking Crimes supernatural forces and an FBI agent's search for hope and justice. Tell me a little bit about how you got into the FBI to begin with. Was this a childhood dream of yours?

Speaker 2

Not at all. You know. I'm a guy from Brooklyn, New York, and from Jersey and I became a police officer a good friend of mine and I always wanted to be a cop. And next thing, you know, I became this police officer in a small town in Jersey called West Windsor. I really enjoyed it. I loved being a cop. I was a young guy wearing a uniform. Responding to was exciting. I really really enjoyed it. I

was there, I guess seven years, almost eight years. And during the course of my career there, I had met somebody who was in the FBI, a senior official who knew of me from you know, local stories in the papers, and started talking to me about joining the FBI. And I kind of dismissed it, thinking, yeah, I don't know that I want to do that, And over time I said, hey, why not. You know, I really enjoyed what I did, but it was a small department and I thought that

maybe the FBI could offer me other opportunities. I applied and I went through that process and I joined the FBI in nineteen ninety seven. I went through Quantico, graduated, and my first assignment was the New York Field Office, which was kind of home to me.

Speaker 1

You know, I'm surprised when I talked to FBI former FBI agents, because you're probably the sixth I've talked to, maybe even you know, I've talked to more about their cases. I have always made the assumption that somebody gets recruited for the FBI when they have achieved some dissolving of some mass of case and they get on the radar, or they're in you know, Boston PD or San Francisco in a bigger, you know station. But I didn't realize

they recruit from even really small areas. What does it take to get on their radar?

Speaker 2

You know, the FBI always has to evolve with the newest challenges and threats that the country's facing. Right, So that's going to force the FBI to recruit people that

are equipped to deal with those problem sets. Right. So, you know, back in the day, in you know, pre nine to eleven world, we were still while we were focused on terrorism and counterintelligence crime was the big thing for the FBI, and historically it was always former military law enforcement accountants to that kind of thing, lawyers, That

was kind of the staple for the FBI. It has now grown exponentially where we look for data scientists, We look for people in the IT world, people who can hack systems, people with diverse language skills, people who have an ability to think like the adversaries. We're going up again, So today's FBI is a lot more efficient and effective than we were years ago. You have to evolve, and I'm confident the FBI has and always won't do that.

Speaker 1

So you get to the FBI and give me your first impressions. I know you went through the training in Quantico and everything. Were you just scared to death going through all of this?

Speaker 2

I wasn't scared of death. I think what came to mind when you asked that question. It felt to me like the scene of Willie Walker where they opened up and it was this magical place right. I felt like I was in the major leagues, like you know, like major League Baseball, and now we're dealing with really significant crimes, with significant adversaries and big cases and working with very experienced men and women who had done some crazy phenomenal work.

So I was surrounded by I would argue the best of the best, and I had the ability to kind of be a sponge and soak in from those people their lessons while taking on these new cases. So it was exhilarating. As much as I love being a cop and responding to calls and doing that, when I first joined the FBI felt like I was playing in the super Bowl. It was excited every day. I loved it.

Speaker 1

So when did you become an active agent? When did you get out of out of Quonaco and you're ready to go? Was that ninety seven?

Speaker 2

Yes, so in the ninety seven. I joined the FBI in May of ninety seven, and the training was I don't know, four or five months, and then I respond to I report to New York five months later. Whatever that was.

Speaker 1

Tell me what brings you to the case that's at the center of your book where you will eventually meet John Edward. How far into your career does this case come?

Speaker 2

Yeah? So by you know, I look back and you say, things don't happen by circumstance, right, nothing is by accident. And my first assignment was. I was assigned to a cold case homicide squad, and man, it was exciting. I was working old mob cases. I was working with the NYPD, some very experienced detectives and FBI agents, and those cases were typically organized crime, the mob, criminal enterprise cases, and

those have a different flavor to them. It's I don't want to say there were business, but you know, it's more about power, money control, but exciting. You learn how to work homicide cases and learn how to prosecute cases at the federal level. So I was working at different points over twenty cases at one time, and it was exciting and overwhelming. But to your question, when I was a cop in Jersey back in nineteen ninety one, October fourth, this man came into the police station by the name

of John Smith, and it was a Friday night. He came around ten o'clock. I was getting off shift and another officer was coming on and the guy came in to report that his wife was missing. Her name was Betty frant I had nothing to do with the initial case. I just remember when him coming in, kind of a nerdy looking guy. I saw the officer taking initial report.

As that case unfolded, it became very evident from the detectives you started looking at case, it's something nefarious had likely happened to her.

Speaker 1

First, I guess, tell me about both of these people. What did you all know about John Smith? And then you know how he met Betty and how they got married and.

Speaker 2

All of that. So she went by her name was Betty Fran, but she went by he re named Fran a friend. Was ten years older than John. They had met a year earlier in Florida. John was working as an engineer and a company that produced commercial aircraft engines. She was an admin, secretary receptionist. Her personality she was very extroverted. Friendly. People were drawn to her because of her positiveness and she just she exuded that. And she

meets John. John is the opposite of her. He's a quite introvert, doesn't have much in the way of friends or social like you would say. He was an awkward kind of guy. They meet, he asked her on a date, and believe or not, within the month of them going on that first date, they get married. John was her fifth husband, although she married one of her husbands twice or really her fourth husband, and John told her that he had never been married that he was a bachelor.

He had never been previously married. So life was good when they first got married. They're living in Florida. They bought a modest home. It was a new home which literally next door to her elderly mother. Fran's life was good. She had her social friends, she had her workplace friends. Life was great for her. And she's got this new husband and she really enjoyed everything. And then ultimately John his contract expires and now he's looking for a job.

He's out of work. Fast forward, he's offered a job by one of his former bosses who's now up in New Jersey, a place called Keyesby, New Jersey, working at a industrial plant that made concrete products. So now John uproots and takes Fran all their new furnitures. She had bought all of her belongings put in storage, and now they moved to New Jersey, a place that she's never been and doesn't know anybody.

Speaker 1

Away from her elderly mother too, right away from her support system.

Speaker 2

She's very close with her daughter named Dee Dee Deanna who at the time was living in Houston, Texas, half sister in Indiana named Sherry, and that they were kind of her support systems. So now here is Fran up in New Jersey trying to establish herself, and she's having a hard time. She's gotten no no system up there. She's struggling to find a good job. Meanwhile, John, he's one of those guys that he goes to work early

in the morning, comes home late at night. And then add to it, he told her that he owned the house in Milford, Connecticut, and he had tenants living up there, and every weekend he'd go up to this house because allegedly the house was in disrepair. So now here is this poor lady Fran with this new man, and she's got nothing going on. He's never at home, so she's growing more and more frustrated around there. One year anniversary, Fran is very frustrated with the circumstance. Nothing seems to

make sense to her. He's rarely at home, and he's sensing that she's not happy, so he says, listen, let's go on. We never really had a kind of a honeymoon, so let's go on vacation. So he takes her away to the Pocones, which is in Pennsylvania, a couple hours from where they lived, and while they're there. On the first day, Fran suffers a fall, legitimate fall. She fell coming out of the tub and she broke her hip,

all legitimate. But now she goes to a hospital, she has surgery, and now she's transported back to that condo in New Jersey. She can't walk. She's just had major surgery, and she's droning and meanwhile nothing has changed. She's lying in bed and pain, can't walk. He's gone all day. On weekends, he's going up to this house in Milford, Connecticut. Nothing makes sense. She's living in a furniture home with none of her belongings. The only thing she has is

the clothing and her personal effects. But she's more and more frustrated, and she's expressing these frustrations with her family. Her daughter says, hey, Mom, I'll come pick you up, come out and live with us in Texas. You know, don't worry about this her. In those conversations with a sister, her sister says, we listen, if you're not happy, maybe you should make the list of things that you want to talk to him about and confront him with these

with these issues. And Fran does that, so you know the list consisted of things like, Hey, I want to go see the place you work. I've ever been there. I want to go to your house in Milford, Connecticut. I want to go to the storage and see all my furniture that's in storage. I want to be a part of the financial the bank. I need these things. And she persisted on that. And the last time she was seen alive was Saturday, September twenty eighth, nineteen ninety one.

And what was significant about that day was it had been I don't know a month or more since her accident, and she was getting cabin fever. She wanted to get out, and she spoke on the phone with her daughter, and she said she was excited because John was going to take her to a Toys r Us if she ruarned the Toys r Us stores. They were going to buy a gift for Franz's grandson, Deanna's son. And so she's talking to her daughter saying, I can't wait to get out.

It's going to be great. And John walks through the door and says, I just went shopping and he comes in with a gift. He had no intention of taking her. So there's some kind of disagreement that happens, and Franz says, Tona, I'll talk to you later, I love you, and hangs up, and that's the last time anybody heard from her. The last time she has seen is that same day. She has seen leaving the condo using crutches, and there was another couple walking into the building as she is leaving

with John. One of the people that saw her was a paramedic and he described her face is red and blotchy and soul and almost like she had been hit or was crying or something. And that's the last time anybody ever saw of her. Now you have to understand her family was in daily contact with her, giving her encouraging words of support and conversation. After September twenty eighth, their calling and the phone's not being picked up day after day after day after day. Finally, I think it's

Wednesday or the following week. The daughter calls John at work and he answers the phone and she says, John, where's my mother? And he offers some hesitation, and then he says, I thought she was with you, and said, what do you mean she's with me? She couldn't walk, she couldn't drive a car. What are you talking about. None of this makes sense, And she says, John, something's wrong her. You need to go to the police. And John says, you know your mother wouldn't want the police

to get involved. You know she'll show up. I'm sure she was homesick and either went down to Florida or went somewhere. But nothing is adding up. And to the credit of the daughter and the sister, they basically called him on that Friday and said, look, if you don't go to the police today and report mom missing, we're flying to New Jersey and we're going to report her missing. We're telling they need to talk to you. So that's

how the investigation ensued or started. As it unfolded, it was determined that that house up in Milford, Connecticut, he had a common law wife up there that he was hiding from her. All of her stuff that was in storage was not in storage, but he gave it to that of the wife. So all of his lies started to unravel. They did a consensual phone call in which

the woman up in Connecticut, her name was Sheila. Sheila pleased with him on the phone and says, John, look, I love you, I'll stay with you, but we got to work this out. I've got an affidavity if the search for and says you were married to another woman named Janice Hartman. Who is she? She's confronting him and she pleased with him. She says, let's do the right thing. Let's help the police find Fran and find Janice. And he says it's too late to help them. Now, it's

too late for that. He admits that he's applied to the police. He made a lot of incriminating statements, but nothing that rose to the level where they can bring a case against him, but certainly suspicious. And then as the police spoke with the family members of Fran, John had represented to them that he had never previously been married. But when John spoke to the investigators, he reported he was married to woman named Janis Hartman years ago in Ohio.

So there's a huge inconsistency. The investigation continues and they identified Janice Hartman as his first wife, who disappeared in nineteen seventy four in Ohio under almost identical circumstances, never to have been seen again. So now that got a guy married to two women, both who disappeared, no bodies, no physical evidence, and it's very frustrating.

Speaker 1

Well, I have a lot of questions, I guess to start with. You know, obviously John is very, very controlling, and he's isolated her and coerced her into staying and she's pretty well trapped. Is there a money motivation? Also? I don't know if I remember, did Fran have money?

Speaker 2

There was not money involved. There was not a financial motive in this case. It was no insurance policy, nothing of that nature. I think if you had ask me, John always lived separate lives. He compartmentalized, like he led a life where this was the life he showed publicly, but then he always had a secret life, and the secret life involved mistresses, all kinds of crazy, and he kept those worlds apart. And when those worlds come together,

that's going to be a problem. And I think what happened in these women's cases, they started bringing those worlds together and he had to control that.

Speaker 1

Tell me what you know about Janice. Did you go missing in seventy four or they were married in seventy four?

Speaker 2

Maybe they got married in seventy four, forgive me, it's been a while now, but in the seventies.

Speaker 1

A good ten years though, right, yeah.

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, And much like fran You know, because I through the investigation, I interviewed so so many people. Janis was this vibrant, extroverted personality. Everybody loved her. When I would say, Hey, tell me about Janis, they would light up, they would smile, and they would say, Janis was the life of the party, the one that everybody gravitated to.

The similarities between the women or were remarkable. You could see it, and I think that people would say, I know, people would say, I never quite understood why this beautiful, attractive woman would hook up with this guy. They were opposites,

you know. So, but John had this thing, and the best way I can describe it, he had this ability to whether it was it the workplace or social situation, he could kind of survey the people around him, with the women particularly, and he could kind of figure out the one that was kind of off to herself, or he would identify, I don't want to say a higher riskpectum, but in effact that's what they were, and speaking with them, he would identify the things in their life that was missing,

that was lacking. So for some women through the years, it was financial, for some, it was religion. For someone was love, for some of it was sex. He became those things because when I talked to all these women over the years who knew him, were my relationships with him? They would say, Asian Hill, And you don't understand. When I met John Smith, it was like God had heard my prayers and send him to me. He's a chameleon. He's that guy that can just He's adept at playing people.

He's very good at that.

Speaker 1

What were the red flags that corresponded between Janesis family and Fran's family. You must have seen an overlap of people's impressions of him, you know, who were outside of the marriage and could see without these rose colored glasses that the women had.

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think in both cases it's fair to say that the family members the friends question how were they with him? It didn't make sense to them. They were attractive women, they weren't they weren't dumb. A term that kept coming up was they wondered if the women felt sorry for him, because he could come off like this guy that you would want to feel sorry for. He had like this mousey kind of thing. So they wondered,

you know, is out why they were with him? But outsiders looking at them, who know both women said, you know my mom or Janie. They had everything going for them. They had this energy about them, and the connection between them and John didn't seem to make sense.

Speaker 1

Was he friendly with the families or did he have any kind of coreer Did anybody like him in the family other than the women?

Speaker 2

No, no, no. I think the family members and friends saw that he was a con He was a con man. He had this over exaggerated sense of self. He would tell these stories that just never added up about the things he had done in his life through the years. When I would ask people tell me about John Smith, it was like they were talking about one hundred different John Smith. And I would say, what did John do for a living? Here's some of the things I heard. Well.

John worked as an engineer. He built aircraft engines. He was an undercover FBI agent. He worked for the CIA. He worked for a company that interpreted the Dead Sea scrolls. He was an archaeologist. There was one story that he claimed that he installed the turbo charger at the Indy five hundred race where some guy named Andy granat Telly

won in the sixties. John would have been like ten years old when this happened, but he told these elaborate stories to make himself look and feel important, and I think I think some people believed him and thought, Wow, this guy's amazing, and a lot of people said, this guy's this guy's not honest.

Speaker 1

Yeah. Well, now I want to know about what you all know about John Smith? Is that his real name.

Speaker 2

First of all, his name is John David Smith. Yes, that's his true name.

Speaker 1

Tell me about him. What did you all figure out about the way he grew up and all of that.

Speaker 2

So he was born and raised in Ohio. His mother was Grace. She's passed now. John's father's name was Carl. When John was I think less than two years old, his mother became pregnant with Michael, which would be John's brother and the father, Carl realized that he could not live with Grace. I hate to sound so crass about it, but Grace had some issues. I don't know if there

are mental health issues, emotional issues. I think she had experienced some trauma early in her life, and her personality as far as living in these grandios life with these stories was much like John. So when she was pregnant with Michael, father Carl enlists I think it was during the Korean War or something or Vietnam, and to get away from her and divorced.

Speaker 1

He enlisted in the army.

Speaker 2

Yes, well, okay, so Michael was born. John's grandparents, which would be Grace's parents, really raised the kids with Grace. I would say they were poor. They lived in this It was like Maybury, very small town. They kind of grew their own crops. They ran a small gas station, go over pile, kind of two pump gas station with a little garage there. They struggled, but they got by. I think my thoughts on the matter now, Grace was

always motivated by material things and financial game. I think Grace was looking for a man in her life, and I think she started dating men and ultimately she remarried. And she married a man named Sam sam Mull who just by circumstance, he was a survivor of the concentration camps as a young boy. Sam was Sam was a very successful businessman in Ohio. He developed real estate, townhomes,

apartment complexes. He was very successful. So Grace marries him and over she goes from Povery to drive a Mercedes Benz. John up until that point was always kind of like the man of the house. He did have a strange relationship with his mother, nothing to suggest it was sexual and nothing of that nature, but it was kind of like this Anthony Perkins thing where he would refer to his mother and she spoke to him like he was an adult. So I think it was that dynamic going on.

Poor Michael. Michael was never treated very well by the family. He was really kind of taking advantage of and really never taken seriously. And then ultimately Sam and Grace have another child named Steven, who was born years later. So that's John's upbringing. He graduates high school. He ran track in high school. He was a good student, very smart, kind of nerdy. He went to college for one semester Ohio State, and it's unclear if he dropped out or

failed out, but he never completed college. He worked as a handyman. He worked all these different jobs. But John was a con So John would create resumes where he had an engineering degree from Ohio State in aeronautics. So his whole resume, his whole background when he on his resume was a lie. Everything about his experience was a lie. But he could pull it off. He had this ability he was a very smart guy in some ways. You know, his bosses that I talked to would say, hey, he

was a great worker. He had the ability to kind of look at a machine or something that was working and kind of take it apart and then put it back together better than it was. So he had that kind of ability, and he had the ability to sell himself as more than he was. And then so when I pick it up, I've got to go through twenty five years of investigative efforts and now try to shake out new opportunities, which wasn't easy. So that was quite an undertaking.

Speaker 1

Now between the time that you picked up the case, when you were at the FBI and when John first stepped in to the police station and said, Frans missing, what is that time period?

Speaker 2

So he reports her October fourth of nineteen ninety one, I get involved in nineteen ninety eight.

Speaker 1

Okay, so seven years is he still with the common law wife or no?

Speaker 2

No, When everything unfolded, she said I'm out of here. She left, but worse yet, and it's a great question. He disappeared. The investigators had no idea where he was. He was last known to be in Ohio, I think in nineteen ninety five. I think he was selling these cars. He had something to do with his family's business. Sam had died, but he was in the wind. Nobody knew where he was. They lost touch with him. So now I've got a case a guy named John Smith. There's

no bodies nobody knows what this guy is. And if you don't already know this, John Smith is the most common name in the United States. And this is before the days of technology, where those searches were more manual than they are today, more paper driven. So finding him was quite a task.

Speaker 1

Let me ask you about the error is happening here. So the era one that we're talking about is, you know, the seventies, to find Janice, and because he could have just said, listen, we got into a fight, she took off. She's not dead. I don't know where she is. How would you be able to figured that out? What would be You know, now we know if somebody's not using their cell phone, if they're not using their bank cards, there are keys that say this person's probably not coming back.

What would those keys be in the seventies other than she would never leave her children or her mother's dying, and she would never not call her mother kind of thing.

Speaker 2

You hit it on the head. I mean the problem with the first investigation. And please, I'm not trying to be critical of any of the investigators. They all did a good job. But Janie was a girl in her early twenties who was a product of the seventies and you know, like most young people at that time, they were living their lives and having fun and doing their things.

Janis was one of I think seven kids. You know, her parents were divorced, and she kind of, I don't want to say raise herself, but she was kind of on her own from the early age, and she would hang out with their friends. I will tell you that the evidence does show in the case, in the timeline that John was starting to abuse her physically and otherwise, and she was the one that initiated divorce, that petitioned for the divorce, and even though what had become finalized,

he started stalking her. There's testimony to the specifics of what he was doing and stalking her, but ultimately not that she didn't have a family that loved her. Of course, they were all concerned about her. But the irony is when she disappeared. It was I think seven days after the divorce became final. John Smith was the one that reported her missing, and he said, my wife was missing.

I'll just say this, without trying to sound too critical, I think the initial county Sheriff's office of Wayne County, I don't think they took this very seriously. I think they probably perceived it this is a young girl who just took off, a runaway. She's a young girl. Yeah, and so I don't know that a lot of effort was put into it on the front end, which made him getting away with it even easier.

Speaker 1

Did they dig enough do you think in that initial investigation to learn that she was the one that filed and to learn that he had been, according two friends or coworkers or whoever, had been abusing her, or was it simply ugging her and she took off?

Speaker 2

So leave it alone, guy, I'll just say there were a lot of missed opportunities the initial investigation that should have been done that were to include the things you just raised. One of the things that was very important. Janie didn't have much, but she had just bought herself a brand new car. It was a Ford Mustang and she'd loved this car. She was proud of. It was

the first thing she ever owned. After John reported her missing, one of the sheriff's officers drove past a trailer where John was living and saw the car in his driveway after she had been reported missing. But I just think there were a lot of missed opportunities initial case, and

I think that was realized. Fast forward to nineteen ninety one when Fran went missing and the detectives from Jersey contact at Ohio and they started looking at the similarities and they went, oh, man, there's problem.

Speaker 1

Okay, So now take me to ninety one when Fran is missing. What is John saying. Is he saying we got into a fight and she took off or what is his narrative?

Speaker 2

No, So you know, the first thing that the investigator and Jersey did they looked in the calls for service and there was no history of domestic violence. There was no issues. The only issue was when she had come back from the Pocono was there was a call for service to help her get back up to the condo because she was immobile. There was no history there. So John said, listen, she's been here a year with me. She's terribly homesick, She's having a hard time selling here.

She's got family in Florida, Texas, and Indiana. She's talked to me repeatedly. She wasn't happy, and I strongly suspect she she took off to go see one of them. And then his story started changing. He started describing she left them a note, but then there really wasn't a note. And of course, in ninety one, before the cell phones are what they are today, where everybody has one, what did they do? The investigators looked at all means of transportation, planes, trains,

and automobiles. Did she buy a ticket anywhere? Did she get a taxi anywhere? Her cars were still there. When they went to the condo to search the condo, all of her effects were there, all of her clothing. Friends, she always wanted to look good, so all of her cosmetics, all of her perfume was there. Her toothbrush was there, her eyeglasses were there. Everything that a person would need

was still there. So it just didn't add up. And then, of course, when they found out that John has this other relationship with another woman in Connecticut, it just added to the mystery and the deception. His stories just kept falling apart. And when a story would fall apart, he would get confronted with it, he would come up with another story. He would keep changing the story. And I will give credit to Fran's family, the sister and the daughter.

In the ninety one they were dogged. They traveled on their own expense to New Jersey, spent time with him, got flyers, tried to find clues for the police. They I think their efforts drew more intention by the investigators that something was wrong.

Speaker 1

I assume they get a warrant and they get into wherever he's staying. Are there any physical clues in ninety one, Yeah.

Speaker 2

So they initially did a consent search and they didn't find anything. And then so she disappears. Like I said, September twenty eighth, I think it's April of the following year. They execute simultaneous search forts at the condo in Jersey, they take the cars for processing, They go to his workplace, they go to the house in Connecticut. They go through

everything and nothing they find nothing. Wow, you look at the timeline, and I argue that if a jury were to be presented with the timeline and the facts, you know, they would see what took place here? But there was no body, and as you know, prosecutors very reluctant to move forward out a body, so that's what happened.

Speaker 1

I think that they seem to be more motivated. Now, why do you think, because there's so much more digital evidence to just say this woman's dead, she's dead. There's no way all of these things have not been used.

Speaker 2

I think the advent of technology plays a huge piece in that. In cell phones and text messages and travel records and financial records, they're able to paint a clearer picture today than existed back in the nineties that did not exist back then. And I would suspect or I suspect that had those things that existed back then, probably would have come together, but it just didn't exist at that time because.

Speaker 1

We were just a few years out in ninety one from email. I remember my first year in college was ninety three, and I think I just had really gotten email at that point.

Speaker 2

Right, there's a digital trail. Everybody has a digital footprint, there's evidence.

Speaker 1

Right, Did you have fran or Janice's voices at all, as in letters or anything other than hearsay? I guess from what the family was saying, what Fran there.

Speaker 2

Was and at some point in the case, I remember, I think a family member of Janice's gaming an old cassette where I could hear Janis's voice, which was kind of interesting because you know, you worked you know, I'll tell you it's funny about this case. I had worked so many cases they didn't feel personal for some reason. I mean, they were intriguing, they were challenging. This one felt different, like you kind of felt they were personalized for me, right, they became real people. Not that the

other victims in the mob cases weren't victims. They were, but it was different.

Speaker 1

So his common law, it sounds like, seven years later, is safe. So he never well safe? Does he abuse her too before she ends up leaving?

Speaker 2

No, she must have had a guardian or guardian angels. He asked her on several occasions to marry him, and something told her not to do that, so that never happened. And I think at some point where that relationship may have been genuine in its inception, and it was the same m she worked at the place he worked, much like Fran and the others, and that was one of his mos. But I think that relationship quickly became cold and it became almost like a platonic relationship, and it

was a relationship of convenience for her. They were sharing a house, they had a couple of dogs together. It was a convenient relationship for her that they were sharing expenses. I think it wasn't necessarily a romantic relationship for a woman in Connecticut.

Speaker 1

But why was he fixated on Janice and on Fran but not on she Is there a possessiveness that he had on those first two women that he didn't have on Sila, because maybe they had kind of grown platonic.

Speaker 2

No, I would submit that. I think the difference is in Janice's case, in Fran's case, they were taking control away from him, Okay, right, they were taking control from him, where that dynamic didn't exist with Sheila. She was just going along to get along. She wasn't questioning him or challenging him or confronting him. She was just going along with it, where if you look at Fran and Janie, they were calling him out and saying, I don't want to be a part of this anymore.

Speaker 1

I assume when he's with Shila he can sleep with other women or do whatever he wants, and she's not really him and a haunt about it.

Speaker 2

Yeah. I think Sheila suspect. She even said I suspected he had another wife. I suspected he had other stuff going on. Yeah. I don't think she was broken hearted about it.

Speaker 1

Okay, So Sheila is safe in ninety eight and you're looking at the case and you can't find him. He is in the wind somewhere. Where do you start? I know the priority was obviously finding John Smith, but also I know you have in your head where are his two wives? And how do you find them? So you've got kind of three different things that you're trying to deal with at the same time.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Well, step one is to find him, right, find them and let's figure out his pattern of life. What is he doing now? Where is he easy married again? Which would be a problem. The challenge, and again this is before nine to eleven. The process was I feel

old when I tell the story. There was a form we would fill out when you were trying to find out some information on somebody, and you would fedexit to Butte Montana, which was the FBI's repository of all their stuff, and they would based upon the name and date of birth, they would search their records and they would get hits

and they would send you a box of records. The problem the name here was John Smith, and in an overabundance of caution, what the FBI would do is they would send people with similar names or similar data base of birth. So I'm not joking. Were one day I'm in my office and is knocking my door and there's like four or five guys in the hallway with hand trucks with boxes. So John Smith is one of thousands of these files. It was a needle in a haystack

trying and it was overwhelming. So I was trying to go through that, but I was always also trying to figure out other ways to figure it out, and eventually I did.

Speaker 1

How do you end up ultimately finding him?

Speaker 2

One of the first pieces was in going through the files, I learned of a woman who was a sex worker who at one point was living with him, and I found her. She was incarcerat at the time when I interviewed her, and I learned a lot of information from

her about him and their life together. But the key and how I found him was at some point in I think it was nineteen ninety five, John was arrested in Ohio on a silly charge of driving with a suspended license, And when they brought him in and questioned him, in his possession he had a little wallet sized photo of an unidentified a woman. So when the cops asked who was this woman, he said, it's my girlfriend from New Hampshire, and he wouldn't reveal her identity. So now

years later, I've got this photograph. When I looked at the bottom of the photograph, it had that little trademark said Glamour Shots, and I blew it up. You know, I knew it was New Hampshire or girlfriend. I sent it to the studios up there, and through a lot of work, I identified that woman. She cooperated and ultimately she identified where he was. And unfortunately, at that point

he had been remarried. He remarried it again to a woman in California, re established himself out there like a chameleon. I had this whole new life, and now we're very concerned. There is a you know, there's a sense of urgency. Now is this woman in harm's way? So that's how we found him.

Speaker 1

Well, that's incredible. So what happens with John and his new wife at what stage in their marriage. Were you introduced into this?

Speaker 2

They had just been married a few months by the time I learned this.

Speaker 1

They were just married, so she was safe at least.

Speaker 2

At that time. I couldn't answer that. All I know is they had just been married. I didn't know, but I had to figure that out.

Speaker 1

So you find him, But do you have additional evidence that you know he murdered and then hid the bodies of his first and his second wife.

Speaker 2

No, I have nothing in the way of new evidence. I just had a different strategy. And the strategy very simply was. You know, in talking to all the investigators from the previous years, they would tell similar stories where Smith would come in to be interviewed for hours at a time, seemingly pretend to cooperate, but ultimately wouldn't reveal anything. But then when he was done, he would go to his closest friend and families and warned them, Hey, if

the cops come talk to you, this is nonsense. Don't talk to them, don't answer their questions, and lo and behold when the cops would go No, nothing was gleaned. So what I decided to do was in May on May fifth of nineteen ninety nine. By this point. I had surveillance on John and I knew his pattern of life. I knew everything about what he was doing. I knew he came to work very early. So one day when he arrives at work, I intercepted him and I took

him to a hotel room. The room was stage and set up, and there were cameras in next door or two profiles from Quantico. But what I did differently was I had identified all the people in his life through all the years, from the seventies to present time, who

I felt had a piece of this. And once I had John Smith in that room, around the United States, fbis and detectives interviewed everybody in his life the same day and the same time, and as those interviews revealed information, it would be funneled next door to the profiles, who would then pass it to me. So I spent I don't know, from seven in the morning till about three thirty in the afternoon interrogating Smith. That's a whole story and

of itself. There was a time when he nearly broke and he got emotional, and he almost you could see it. He started making very incremating statements. I feel responsible what tappening to these women. My life is a nightmare. I don't know how the nightmare. I don't know how to make this nightmare end. He started talking like this, and then he caught himself, and then ultimately he faked a heart attack to get out of the interview. But as a result of that, the following week, John's younger brother,

Michael Smith came forward. Michael cooperated and Michael told us that back in the seventies, when Janice had disappeared, so this would have been nineteen seventy four when Janie had disappeared, it was around Thanksgiving and they were celebrating things to give me. The grandparents' house, there was a little like farmhouse and next to it was this little gas station

that was closed for the holiday. Michael was watching the football game and walked out and saw that the garage the doors were opened, and Michael walked in and saw John building a box. And he walked in. There's plywood, and he says, what are you doing. John says, well, I'm building a box. Mike says, why are you building a box? John says, well, Janie took off and she left them over belongings behind. So I was building a box to put her stuff in, and Michael says, that

doesn't make sense. Why we just get some cardboard boxes? And John says, just leaving me alone. Michael walks away. About an hour or more later, he looks outside, and now the garage doors are closed, and Michael walks over, and there were glass panes in the garage door. Michael pressed his face against the door the glass, I should say, and he saw what appeared to be a fully constructed plywood box, you know, four foot long, two foot wide

or so. And he sees John picking up clothing that belonged to Janice, and he's rolling him up and he's putting him inside this box, and John is reportedly crying. Michael doesn't confront him, doesn't say anything. That box allegedly stays in that garage. A week later, Mike sees the box nailed shut in the garage. It's sitting on the floor there. It stayed in there from November of nineteen

seventy four until May of nineteen seventy nine. And at nineteen seventy nine, John is now relocated to Indiana, which was eight hours away by car. The grandfather finds the box, summons Michael, and they discover that Janice had been dismembered in her body's in that box. Instead of contacting the authorities, they call John. John comes and retrieves a box and drives off of it. So now we have to find

this box. Through a lot of effort and a lot of searching, I was searching everywhere you can imagine, it was found that what John did was he drove back to Indianapolis nearly eight hours with this box with his wife's membered body in it, and he stopped along a rural road and threw the box down a hill like a ravine. The following spring, which was spring of nineteen eighty, a road crew was fixing potholes, found this box, opened it and found the remains. She was buried as a

Jane Doe. So once we put all the pieces together, we exhumed the body, did some DNA analysis confirmed it was her. So with Michael's testimony and everything, we went to trial. He was convicted for Jenesi's murder and that's why he's in jail today.

Speaker 1

First of all, that's amazing, don't get that out of the way, But how did you figure out where he had dumped the body, because I can't imagine that that's the first crew to have found a Jane Doe. Just remember Jane Doe. Maybe it is, but what matched up. That's five years.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So we had Michael's story, and I'll be honest, I didn't believe it. A lot of it didn't make sense. I had more questions than anything. But I started doing excavations. I dug up properties and houses looking for this unsuccessfully. Law enforcement has a teletype system back then. It was this loud printer thing, and I would on a monthly base put out alert saying the FBI is in receipt of information, we're looking for an alleged box and all this,

and I got nothing. One of the detective sergeants I was working with, by the name of Brian Potts in Ohio, he wrote letters and mailed them to all of the medical examiners and sheriff's office in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, and by I say, divine intervention, one of the letters landed on a sheriff's desk in Indiana who was a young deputy was called by the road crew saying, hey, we just found a box on the side of the roads.

When he got the letter, he said, oh my god, I think this is the box from twenty years ago. And then he contacted us. That's how it was made.

Speaker 1

I'm just curious about this. When you have a situation, when you are with a person like Michael Smith, who did nothing for so many years, knowing something bad was happening, but then he does this really brave thing, you must have mixed feelings. Are you surprised one way or the other when either family turns against each other or they keep a secret for decay and decades for somebody who's truly horrible and they know it.

Speaker 2

I think that's a great question. The answer is, I'm never surprised by anything anymore. I will tell you that that this traumatized Michael. I don't want to say it destroyed him, but he'd lived with this, and then you can imagine his guilty years later when he's contacted again in the nineties by cops from Jersey saying Franz disappeared, and in his mind he's going, oh, my god, had

I done the right thing years ago? But in his defense, the grandfather was a very strong figure, and Michael said, hey, Grandpa, we gotta contact the Sheriff's office, and grandfather said, no, the only person we're calling is your brother John. That's it.

Speaker 1

What about Grace his mom?

Speaker 2

Kate. I've interviewed a lot of people in my career. I can't imagine how many. She had this chilling nature about her. She was a small woman, but she had I don't know if you want to say energy about her, but there was something about that woman that didn't sit well.

Speaker 1

Well, let's get to you clearly running into a brick wall at some point on Fran's case, because you had a sad but satisfying conclusion in Janii's case. So now you're on Fran's case, which I'm sure you've been working the whole time too. At what point do you have to throw this hail? Mary?

Speaker 2

Well, that's kind of a funny story. So early on the case, when I just started it, you have to understand, I am overwhelmed with twenty five years of investigative boxes and boxes of police reports. I'm trying to make sense of all the facts and details. On top of working twenty other cases. I was working Manhattan, commuting from Jersey, and there was a very popular radio station. Everybody listened to this WPLJ. And you have to understand, I'm a

very cynical guy. That's my nature. I am a skeptical guy. And this guy came in the radio, and when I heard him, I shut the radio off because it was so silly. And the guy who was invited guests. His name was John Edward. He claimed to be psychic, and his thing was he claimed that he if he took a call from you, he would have the ability to connect to your past level one, so he callers would call in. He started doing this thing and saying, oh, I got your mother or father, And I said, how

stupid could people be? And I would shut the radio wall for change the station. A couple of weeks later, I'd hear him again and again, and finally about the third or fourth time, it really bothered me. There was something about this, How could people be so silly? I called his office and I told them that I was an FBI New York and I was working unsolid murder cases,

missing person cases. And I heard him on the radio, and I wanted to meet with him because the way I saw it, I could put him on the phone with Fran's family, and I didn't tell them or him the name of friend. I just said the victim's family, he could do his thing and maybe help me figure out, you know, where she is. And they were very reluctant, and to me, that just confirmed to me that he was a con. But a week later or so, I get a call from his assistant who says, John is

willing to meet with you. Would you want to come in tomorrow? I did. The only thing they asked me to bring were artifacture items connected to the person I was looking for. And I said, like what they said, it could be jewelry, it could be anything, Okay. So I called the detective in Jersey, Mike, and I said him, Mike, go evidence to get some of the fans stuff. We're going to see this alleged psychic. And the day we went to see him, before we left, I went around

my office to four different women. I would say, Hey, Kate, let me borrow your earrings, Say Susie, let me borrow your watch. I took four items from four other women and I put him in the bag with these other items, And just to expedite the story we went to see him, I'm for sure going to reveal in my mind that he's not who he says he is, and he basically in no one's certain terms, said, hey, listen, when I get started here, I'm going to get a lot of information,

a lot of things I'm going to say. You're going to resonate with. I don't want you to respond. I don't want you to give me anything. I just want you to be quiet, he said. But I may also say things that you don't that's not familiar with you. It's important to write these things down as well. So I put these nine objects in front of them, and if I put them before, you couldn't discern one from

the other. Nothing stood out about any of them. And he looked across these things, and he started pulling some things together, and he put his hands and he pushed them. These things away. He says, I don't know what these things are, but they have nothing to do with why you're here. They were the four items of the women that I brought. And then Kate. He picked up a pair of eyeglasses that belonged to fran and the information

he provided was impossible for him to know. He called her by her name, he described her in detail, told us physical attributes that were He said, she has mail in her hip, like a pin or a screw or a rod pins. He described her physically. He described she was missing a toe, and he described that she had breast implants. He described how many kids she had, and he said, she's dead. The person who caused her death is either a husband or boyfriend. It's a Jay name

and I'm pretty short John. And that was the very first meeting. And he starts getting more and more information and says, whose name is Michael. Michael, of course, is John's brother. He says, Michael knows everything you need to get to Michael, and he starts giving us information about Michael and the case in facts that were mind blowing. And then somewhere in that initial meeting, he says, wait a minute, why are you really here. He almost became indignant,

and he says, you already have this this victim. He says, I see a box on the side of a road. It's a plywood box and it's Dana Ravine. I see the line the police cars, he says, I see the newspaper article woman in the Box or girl in the Box. And at this point in the case, Kate the detective, and I have no idea what he's talking about. Turns out all the things he said turned to be true.

So that's how I met John Edward and I formed a relationship with him, and that relationship lasted twenty five years till actually today thirty years, and that one case led to many others, and he was instrumental in assisting me in many cases.

Speaker 1

So he was helpful in the case of France. Is that right?

Speaker 2

One hundred percent? Wow?

Speaker 1

So you went from a skeptic of you know, psychics, mediums, clairvoyancy and all of that stuff to specifically believing in John Edward or are you open minded about the whole field?

Speaker 2

Yeah, well that's a great question. I don't have a crystal ball or Oluigi board, and I'm not like pursuing this in any other realm. The answer is because he proved himself to me in that case, I trusted him. I'm not an expert on psychics or mediumship, but I can tell you from my personal experience with John's Edward he is who he says he is. He has this incredible ability and the information that he has provided over

these twenty five years is undeniable. In other cases, he led me at midnight to the location of a missing five year old boy another case, he led me to another or another. I mean, it's undeniable what he helped me with. And I had to keep this relationship secret for all these years. So that's what prompted us to write this book. I retired and I wrote the book.

Speaker 1

Now, why did you have to keep it a secret? And I know that he does tell you with this initial investigation, do not go to the media. I don't want to be named. I don't want press. Is that why or is it the FBI?

Speaker 2

Well both, I there's no there's no chance I'm going to the media or the FBI saying I guess what, I'm talking to a psychic, because you know, but from my own experience, if one of my colleagues came in and said, Bob, I'm talking to a psychic, I would have said, you're crazy. There's no chance. So I probably for me, I didn't reveal this because I didn't want to embarrassed by it. I didn't want my reputation to suffer that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1

So they no one knew in the FBI except your buddy, the buddy you took with you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, there were It's revealed in a book There are a couple of cases where some of my colleagues were present when John called me on the phone and led me to a location, and when it was over, they would say, Bob, how did you know look there? How did you know to do that? So there were a handful of close colleagues that became aware of my relationship with him, But the big FBI I wasn't aware of.

Speaker 1

Do you when people read the book, do you get skeptics toward you? Like going There's no way, you know, you must have had the information. You're blowing this up, you know, to sell more books. I'm just wondering if there are skeptics out there.

Speaker 2

Yeah, one hundred percent. We get everything right, We get people and listen. I was that guy. But from my experience with John, if somebody wrote a silly book like this, I would have said, this is nonsense. So yeah, we get a lot of that. We get a lot of people who are true believers and people in the middle. But I you know, I did not write the book with the intent of hoping to convince people of John Edward. This was just a book that detailed what took place.

There was no stretching of the truth or elaboration. There were some cases where he didn't provide barely any information but symbols or look for something, but it turned out to be very significant. So I didn't, in any way, shape or form try to make him more than he was. This is what happened.

Speaker 1

Do you think there are other agents in the FBI who utilize not him necessarily, but this sort of a method.

Speaker 2

I don't know. I think if that is happening, it's probably on a case by case, probably similar to my story, where an investigator happened to meet somebody by unusual circumstances who maybe had this thing and perhaps, but the FBI doesn't traditionally and nor should they consult with psychics. I mean the majority of my cases for my career I worked without John's Obama, because I had leads, I had evidence, I had witnesses, I had things I could pursue. I

didn't need John. But some cases go cold for reason, because you've exhausted all of those things and you're a dead ends. And I don't like dead ends. I don't want to be in a dead end.

Speaker 1

Did you ever have families go? How did this happen? How did we come upon? Did you have to tell anybody like the nine year old boy, you know that he helped find.

Speaker 2

It's funny that case raised a lot of questions because I was out there at midnight, and people said, why were we out there at midnight? So that certainly yeah, And sometimes I'd come up with cover stories and things. But there were times, as I said, where some of my colleagues were present when things took place where there was no getting away from the fact I had to give him a good answer, and the good answer is always the truth. But I didn't really have to tell people that didn't need to know.

Speaker 1

Can you give me one or two examples. You don't have to tell me about the specific cases, but one or two examples where he led you in the right direction, just sort of general examples.

Speaker 2

There was a woman who disappeared at Yale University at a young PhD student, and John called me on the phone one night. I'm in the presence of my colleagues, and he's directed me down this labyrinth of hallways and rooms. She was missing for two or three days at that point, and we were working under this theory that she was somewhere in the building where the perpetrator had somehow got her body out and disposed her a landfill or somewhere else.

So we had no idea. John's on the phone saying she's right there, and he's leading me, telling me where to go, and my colleagues around me, and he leads us to this room and he says, she's right there. She's right there. We go in the room and she's not. He says, I'm telling you, she's right there. She's in the pipes. We're looking in the room and there's nothing there. And he says, what's on the right, the other side of the wall. Well, there was a men's room. So

we go, there's nothing. He's I'm Tony, she's right there. So John, she's I'm sorry, pal, she's not there. So the next day or day after, I I'm driving home and I get a call from my friends who's the lead agent on it, says, you're not going to believe this. After you left, we went through there again with Cadwver dogs and dogs got a hit on the men's room.

There was like a they call it a pipe chase and stay in the steel door and they opened it up and the perpetrator had taken her body and shoved her in the wall between the two rooms.

Speaker 1

You would have never found her.

Speaker 2

Well eventually, I mean the body would have decomposed and it would have been found, right, I mean, but it was. That was one the case with Little Boy. The crazy part about that case was the place where John led me at midnight had been searched twice and had been checked off that he's not there. So but for John taking me back there, he would not have been found.

Speaker 1

Does John do this for anybody else?

Speaker 2

Not law enforcement? You know, his work is more helping people through the grieving process and loss, and you know it was. I hope people are interested in to read the book because they're going to feel like they're a part of these cases. They're going to learn a lot about John, a lot about me.

Speaker 1

Did you ever have John give you information about your life or yourself or the people who have passed in your life.

Speaker 2

Yes, accidentally it happened. It happened more than a couple of times. And it was the first time it happened. I went to him on a case and he was getting information, and all of a sudden stuff started coming out about my family, which was very powerful, very powerful.

Speaker 1

So your true believer and we're not talking about the whole lot of them, clairvoyance mediums and all that, but at least in John Edward.

Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely, he is who he says he is is. The things he provided were undeniable. He could not have known the information he did over these twenty five years. And you know when on my first visit with him, it wasn't like, oh my god, I'm all in and I believe this guy. I had to take time in marrying and say, did I do anything that I typically? He knew nothing, zero, nothing nothing.

Speaker 1

If you love historical true crime stories, check out the audio versions of my books The Sinners, All About the Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, And don't forget there are twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already. This has been an exactly right Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode

was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff, and Danielle Kramer follow Wicked Words on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more. And if you know of a historical crime that could use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at info at tenfoldmorewicked dot com. We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked Words

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