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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hey everyone, Molly here. Sorry about the rerun.

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Speaker 1: The good news is it does tie into the story

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Speaker 1: we're in the middle of right now. Last week, when

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Speaker 1: I was getting started on the story of Josephaul Franklin,

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Speaker 1: I told you I tried to write it a year

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Speaker 1: and a half ago, but I got completely distracted by

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Speaker 1: something I read just a few pages into the biography

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Speaker 1: I picked up. So instead of writing about that Nazi

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Speaker 1: serial killer, I ended up writing about the serial con

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Speaker 1: man he met briefly in prison in nineteen eighty one.

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Speaker 1: This was one of the earliest episodes of the show,

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Speaker 1: and it was the first time I ever asked you

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Speaker 1: to just trust me enough to come back in a

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Speaker 1: week for the second half of a two parter. That

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Speaker 1: sounds funny now, So if you were wondering last week

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Speaker 1: what I was talking about when I said this guy

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Speaker 1: frank was weird enough to pull me away from a

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Speaker 1: story about a serial killer, here's that two parter from

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Speaker 1: the fall of twenty twenty four. Oh and about the snakes.

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Speaker 1: One quick correction. There are rattlesnakes in Idaho, but the

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Speaker 1: ones in this story were not native to the area,

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Speaker 1: So the Idaho Department of Fision game wouldn't take them,

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Speaker 1: and they ended up with a private collector. So don't

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Speaker 1: email me about the snakes. This is a story that

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Speaker 1: begins and ends in bank parking lots, more or less

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Speaker 1: in the way that stories can really begin or end.

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Speaker 2: Our subject today was alive.

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Speaker 1: Before the story begins, and as I'm writing this, he's

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Speaker 1: still alive. But for the purposes of this telling, we'll

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Speaker 1: start outside the Palisade Trust Company Bank in Englewood, New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: on February twenty third, nineteen sixty two, when an eighteen

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Speaker 1: year old member of the American Nazi Party was arrested

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Speaker 1: after skipping school to try to rob a bank with

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Speaker 1: a toy gun, and will mark the beginning of the

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Speaker 1: end of his story in a Wells Fargo parking lot

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Speaker 1: in Garden City, Idaho, on October thirteenth, twenty eighteen, when

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Speaker 1: an elderly ex KHN was caught on security cam footage

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Speaker 1: getting into an altercation with a couple who didn't move

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Speaker 1: forward quickly enough at the drive up atm.

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Speaker 2: In the decades in.

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Speaker 1: Between, Frank Sweeney went to prison at least half a

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Speaker 1: dozen times, bought as a foreign mercenary got deported from

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Speaker 1: both Rhodesia and South Africa, helped an escaped spy of

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Speaker 1: ad U s Marshals, turned state's witness against a Hitler

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Speaker 1: worshiping serial killer, tried to help the mob, and waged

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Speaker 1: a three year campaign of terror and harassment against a

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Speaker 1: woman who made a passing comment about how he was

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Speaker 1: parked outside the post office. I'm Molly Konger, and this

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Speaker 1: is brue. Little guys, this.

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Speaker 2: Is a strange one.

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Speaker 1: The first few episodes of this show were stories I

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Speaker 1: already knew and thought you should know too. Kevin Strom

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Speaker 1: was a prominent figure in the white supremacist movement for decades,

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Speaker 1: and it was big local news here in Charlettsville when

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Speaker 1: he was arrested twenty years ago. That Gerald Drake case

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Speaker 1: was something I read about when it happened. The cases

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Speaker 1: against the gun trafficking Nazi paramilitary group was a story

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Speaker 1: I spent years reading, paying ten cents a page, one

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Speaker 1: court filing at a time as it wound its way

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Speaker 1: through the system. But this one, this one is brand

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Speaker 1: new to me, and I think it will be brand

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Speaker 1: new to just about everybody, because for as many times

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Speaker 1: as this man shows up in the newspaper over the

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Speaker 1: last sixty years. I haven't found any one source that

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Speaker 1: gathered together the threads of his life and tried to

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Speaker 1: make sense of how one man's name could appear in

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Speaker 1: so many other people's stories, because that's where I found him,

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Speaker 1: in someone else's story. I was reading a biography of

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Speaker 1: a particularly nasty little guy, one we'll definitely get to

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Speaker 1: eventually in another episode when my weird little guide detector

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Speaker 1: went off. Call it a gut feeling, but this passing

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Speaker 1: mention of a side character in the life of a

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Speaker 1: serial killer was enough to get me to put that

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Speaker 1: book down and spend days digging through newspaper archives trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out Frank. And what I found was kind

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Speaker 1: of a bizarro world Forest Gump, one man whose life

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Speaker 1: keeps intersecting with major historical events, just wandering in and

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Speaker 1: out of the lives of gullible reporters, frustrated federal agents,

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Speaker 1: and and the innocent bystanders who accidentally became his targets,

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Speaker 1: just bumbling his way through history, but without any of

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Speaker 1: Tom Hanks's charm. I know we don't really know each

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Speaker 1: other yet, I haven't earned the trust it takes to

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Speaker 1: know you'll believe me when I promise you a two

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Speaker 1: parter is worth the weight in between. But I think

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Speaker 1: you'll agree Frank's story is weird enough for two episodes.

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Speaker 1: Frank Abbot Sweeney Junior was born in August of nineteen

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Speaker 1: forty three in New Jersey, to Frank Abbott Sweeney Senior,

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Speaker 1: a realtor, and Marie Gleeson Sweeney, a homemaker who taught

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Speaker 1: violin lessons and volunteered with the Red Cross. As a

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Speaker 1: lifelong con artist, a lot of what he's told reporters

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Speaker 1: about his own life is self serving fiction, which would

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Speaker 1: sometimes get published without fact checking and then reappear in

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Speaker 1: later accounts as fact. It was in the newspaper after all.

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Speaker 1: So I've taken great pains to verify what I can,

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Speaker 1: debunk what I can, and take note of the things

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Speaker 1: I can only offer you with a grain of salt.

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Speaker 1: Some of Frank's own lies are easily disproved, like the

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Speaker 1: resume he gave a Rhodesian Army recruiter on it. He

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Speaker 1: claimed he graduated from Georgetown University in nineteen sixty five

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Speaker 1: at the degree in psychology, but he couldn't possibly have

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Speaker 1: matriculated at Georgetown in nineteen sixty one. He was a

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Speaker 1: senior at Tenafly High School in nineteen sixty two, when

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Speaker 1: he was sent to the Annandell Reformatory for two and

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Speaker 1: a half years.

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Speaker 2: He never finished high school.

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Speaker 1: His claim that as alias Francis Shellhammer derives from his

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Speaker 1: mother's maiden.

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Speaker 2: Name also fails to hold up to scrutiny.

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Speaker 1: His mother was born Marie Gleeson to John Gleeson, a fireman,

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Speaker 1: and Lottie Gross Gleason in Chicago, and I was generous here.

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Speaker 1: I wasted a lot of time. I even checked his grandparents.

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Speaker 1: His middle name, Abbott was his paternal grandmother, Martha's maiden name.

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Speaker 1: I went as far as to track his family tree

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Speaker 1: all the way back to Ireland, giving him the benefit

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Speaker 1: of the doubt that there's a shell Hammer in there somewhere.

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Speaker 2: I didn't find one.

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Speaker 1: It's possible that I started mixing up my Martha's, Mary's,

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Speaker 1: John's and Francis's by the time I was cross referencing

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Speaker 1: marriage records from the eighteen seventies.

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Speaker 2: But he probably just made it up.

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Speaker 1: He does a lot of that and other aspects of

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Speaker 1: Frank's story would require a trip to the National Archive

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Speaker 1: to sift through dusty boxes of ancient court transcripts and

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Speaker 1: an unlikely degree of transparency from the Central Intelligence Agency,

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Speaker 1: or a deathbed confession from a mobster, or a few

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Speaker 1: tell all memoirs from US marshalls to ever hope to

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Speaker 1: sort out. The rest is somewhere in between. But I'll

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Speaker 1: stick with what we do know to be true. And

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Speaker 1: I said, this story begins outside of a bank. On

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Speaker 1: February twenty third, nineteen sixty two, Frank Sweeney skipped school.

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Speaker 1: Shortly after nine am, he walked into a bank in Englewood,

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Speaker 1: New Jersey, approached the teller and slid a plastic toy

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Speaker 1: cun that he'd painted black out of a Manila envelope.

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Speaker 1: I'd like to make a withdrawal, he told the teller

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Speaker 1: as he cocked the toy pistol. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: the teller could tell the gun was fake, or if

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Speaker 1: she just didn't think this gangly, redheaded teenager had it

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Speaker 1: in him to shoot her, or maybe she just was

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Speaker 1: having a bad day and didn't care anymore, because according

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Speaker 1: to local news reports, she sneered at him, got up

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Speaker 1: and walked away, leaving him standing there alone at the

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Speaker 1: counter with his toy gun, and bewildered by the teller's

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Speaker 1: apparent disinterest in being held at gunpoint, he just put

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Speaker 1: the plastic pistol back in his pocket, turned around and

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Speaker 1: walked out the front door, and as he was leaving,

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Speaker 1: an off duty policeman just happened to be walking into

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Speaker 1: the bank. An employee told the officer what had just happened,

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Speaker 1: and he turned right around and caught Frank just outside.

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Speaker 1: He dragged him back inside the bank to be identified

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Speaker 1: by the teller, and as the patrolman is making the arrest,

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Speaker 1: Frank says to him, well.

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Speaker 2: I guess it didn't work.

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Speaker 1: Later, under interrogation, he would tell the officers that his

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Speaker 1: plan had been to support the movement to use the

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Speaker 1: money from the bank robbery to support the activities of

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Speaker 1: the American Nazi Party under George Lincoln Rockwell. At his arraignment,

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Speaker 1: the judge asked, Frank, aren't you the fellow who's been

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Speaker 1: painting swastikas on synagogues around here.

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Speaker 2: Frank denied this, and.

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Speaker 1: He told the judge I never did anything illegal in

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Speaker 1: my life, and then he pleaded guilty to the attempted

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Speaker 1: bank robbery. There's no other mention of Frank in connection

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Speaker 1: with that anti Semitic vandalism the judge mentioned. But I

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Speaker 1: did find several newspaper articles about incidents of that sort

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Speaker 1: from the prior to years when Frank would have still

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Speaker 1: been a minor. In January nineteen sixty three, unnamed teenage

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Speaker 1: boys were accused of painting swastikas on parked cars in Emerson,

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Speaker 1: just eight miles away. In February of nineteen sixty one,

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Speaker 1: someone hung a swastika banner over the entrance of the

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Speaker 1: synagogue in Tenafly. Newspaper articles about that banner reference a

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Speaker 1: similar recent incident at the synagogue in nearby Englewood. A

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Speaker 1: few days later, someone painted a swastika over a plaque nearby.

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Speaker 1: In June, two teenage boys respotted fleeing the scene after

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Speaker 1: two trailers belonging to a contract or were broken into

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Speaker 1: and left a swastika painted on the floor inside.

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Speaker 2: In all these incidents, police told.

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Speaker 1: The papers at the time that they had referred the

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Speaker 1: cases to the juvenile Division. It's not like anti Semitic

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Speaker 1: incidents are so rare that I'm saying that Frank is

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Speaker 1: the only possible suspect here. In every nineteen sixties Bergen

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Speaker 1: County News article about a swastika. I found plenty of

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Speaker 1: other newspaper reports during those same two years about a

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Speaker 1: local man flying a swastika flag outside of his home,

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Speaker 1: about attacks on Jewish businesses and synagogues and neighboring cities,

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Speaker 1: and other incidents that just don't fit this particular pattern

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Speaker 1: of teenage Nazi vandalism. And the comment the judge made

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Speaker 1: makes it sound like Frank had been there before. But

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Speaker 1: any appearance he'd made in court as a miner wouldn't

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Speaker 1: have been reported with his name attached to it.

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Speaker 2: And it's hard.

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Speaker 1: Enough to get any information about a juvenile case in

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, so forget figuring out what how about

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty one. But it does seem pretty likely

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Speaker 1: he'd at least been a suspect in some of those incidents,

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Speaker 1: because at the hearing where he pled guilty to the

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Speaker 1: attempted bank robbery, Frank did admit that the police had

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Speaker 1: spoken to him on numerous occasions, specifically concerning his involvement

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Speaker 1: in George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party. For the attempted

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Speaker 1: bank robbery, Frank was sentenced to an indeterminate term at

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Speaker 1: a boy's reformatory, and he was released on October of

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four, shortly after his twenty first birthday, after

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Speaker 1: serving about two and a half years. After his first

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Speaker 1: stent in jail, Frank returned to his parents' home in

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Speaker 1: New Jersey. He worked occasionally as a shipping clerk, but

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Speaker 1: it doesn't seem like he was holding down a steady job.

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Speaker 1: One afternoon in July of nineteen sixty seven, neighbors reported

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Speaker 1: hearing gunshots in the woods. An officer drove by to

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Speaker 1: check it out and saw a car parked on the

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Speaker 1: side of the road. The car looked empty, so the

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Speaker 1: officer kept driving without stopping to investigate. Suddenly, the car

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Speaker 1: pulled out behind him and tried to run the officer

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Speaker 1: off the road. A brief vehicle chase ensued, with the

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Speaker 1: officer following the vehicle for about a mile before the driver.

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Speaker 1: Frank parked outside of his parents home, got out and

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Speaker 1: walked toward the front door. The officer asked Frank if

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Speaker 1: he'd been shooting guns in the woods, to which Frank

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Speaker 1: replied only no, and then warned the officer that he

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Speaker 1: was on private property for walking away and into the house,

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Speaker 1: but Frank left something on the front seat of the car, unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: and it was a Thompson submachine gun that he'd been

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Speaker 1: firing in the woods. The officer saw the gun and

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Speaker 1: called for backup, and when they arrived, Frank opened fire

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Speaker 1: on them from inside the home, kicking off a seventy

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Speaker 1: five five minute gun battle, with more than a dozen

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Speaker 1: cops firing shots at the house. As Frank fired at

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Speaker 1: them through the windows, Frank's father and brother pleaded with

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Speaker 1: him to come out, or at least to send the

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Speaker 1: family dog out. After police Captain Peter Zurla was shot

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Speaker 1: in the arm, the officers lobbed four canisters of tear

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Speaker 1: gas through the windows, finally driving Frank out into the

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Speaker 1: front yard, where he was arrested without further incident. And

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Speaker 1: as they put the handcuffs on him, he turned to

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Speaker 1: Captain Zerla, who's still standing there in the front yard

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Speaker 1: bleeding from a gunshot wound, and Frank says, some shot

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Speaker 1: when I got you through the window. Huh. There's no

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Speaker 1: follow up I can find about whether the dog was heard,

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Speaker 1: or how missus Sweeney got the tear gas out of

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Speaker 1: her upholstery. It was the sixties, so maybe her sofa

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Speaker 1: was safely scotch guarded or wrapped up in one of

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Speaker 1: those weird plastic covers that were popular back then, but

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Speaker 1: you have to figure she at least had to replace

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Speaker 1: the curtains. Frank entered a not guilty plea and unsuccessfully

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Speaker 1: tried to suppress the evidence of the gun found on

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Speaker 1: the front seat of the car, with his attorney arguing

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Speaker 1: that it was discovered in an illegal search because the

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Speaker 1: cop didn't have probable cause to look through the window

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Speaker 1: of the parked car. That's not how that works.

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Speaker 2: A trial.

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Speaker 1: The defense put on three psychiatrists to argue for insanity,

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Speaker 1: and the state put on two of their own, who

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Speaker 1: testified that Frank was certainly disturbed, but not legally insane.

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Speaker 1: The jury deliberated for just three hours before finding Frank

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Speaker 1: guilty of attempted homicide, assault with the intent to kill,

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Speaker 1: possession of a machine gun, and something called atrocious assault

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Speaker 1: that I've never heard of. We don't have that here

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Speaker 1: in Virginia, but in New Jersey, atrocious assault is an

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Speaker 1: assault in battery, savage and cruel in character which results

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Speaker 1: in maiming or wounding. So that definitely qualifies and it

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Speaker 1: was sentenced to six years, which, honestly, that's kind of remarkable, right.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to bat for the corsoral state here,

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Speaker 1: far from it. You know more, jail time doesn't really

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Speaker 1: fix anybody, and we'll come to see that jail never

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Speaker 1: comes close to fixing Frank. But reading those sixties news

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Speaker 1: stories about this event was fascinating. This cop who got

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Speaker 1: shot by a Nazi with a Tommy gun is described

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Speaker 1: in every article as quote lightly wounded. I mean, he

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Speaker 1: does seem to have not been seriously injured. He was shot,

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Speaker 1: you know, in the upper arm. I don't think it

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Speaker 1: went through the bone, so it really he was lightly wounded.

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Speaker 1: But that's not what they would put in the newspaper today,

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Speaker 1: you know it. And the cops didn't drive a tank

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Speaker 1: through the front of the suburban home or unload their

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Speaker 1: guns into him when he came out. There's been such

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Speaker 1: a massive culture shift over the years and the way

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Speaker 1: we justify aggressive police response and the way that we

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Speaker 1: talk about the risk to police. It's just interesting to

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Speaker 1: see that it wasn't always that way. But there's another

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Speaker 1: unanswered question in the story of this sea in this

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Speaker 1: New York suburb. What was he doing that day? I

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Speaker 1: mean shooting guns in the woods, obviously, but why did

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Speaker 1: he panic when that cop drove by, and why those

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Speaker 1: woods in particular. We'll never really know. Even if he

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Speaker 1: told us, we wouldn't know. He's a liar. But the

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Speaker 1: newspaper articles at the time do say that the officer

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Speaker 1: initially saw Frank's car parked at the intersection of East

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Speaker 1: Clinton Avenue and Woodland Street, about a mile from where

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Speaker 1: Frank lived. At the time, they used to put everything

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Speaker 1: in the newspaper is so beautiful, every detail, boring little bit.

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Speaker 1: I wish they still did that, and I'm eternally curious

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Speaker 1: about details that probably won't end up mattering. But I

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Speaker 1: pulled up a map of ten to Fly, New Jersey,

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Speaker 1: and there is a large wooded area you could walk

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Speaker 1: straight into if you parked your car at that intersection,

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Speaker 1: And those woods surround a large building that first opened

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Speaker 1: its doors in nineteen fifty Jewish Community Center. The clearest

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Speaker 1: account of the next phase of Frank's life comes from

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Speaker 1: an essay written in twenty nineteen by a retired Rhodesian

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Speaker 1: military policeman. Despite being the most likely to be more

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Speaker 1: or less true, it's still riddled with obvious factual inaccuracies,

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Speaker 1: things that just can't be true. Maybe because it was

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Speaker 1: written as a humorous recollection meant to be read by

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Speaker 1: his fellow former Rhodesian soldiers, and maybe his memory has

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Speaker 1: faded a bit in the nearly fifty years since the

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Speaker 1: event in question. But it does at the very least

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Speaker 1: substantiate Frank's own claim about having enlisted in the Rhodesian

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Speaker 1: Light Infantry in the early nineteen seventies. I'll try to

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Speaker 1: walk the tightrope here of providing a little more context

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Speaker 1: than just Rhodesia was very bad and white supremacists from

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Speaker 1: other countries were obsessed with the idea that they could

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Speaker 1: travel there to kill black people with impunity, while still

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Speaker 1: stopping short of taking us down the long road of

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Speaker 1: the history and consequences of European colonization in Africa. That's

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Speaker 1: far from my area of expertise. And it's not why

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Speaker 1: you're here.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Even if you're coming into this with a completely blank slate.

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Speaker 1: For some reason, you're probably thinking there's no country called Rhodesia,

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Speaker 1: and you're right, there isn't There never really was. Rhodesia

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Speaker 1: was never recognized as a sovereign state, but we're calling

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Speaker 1: Rhodesia here as the present day state of Zimbabwe in

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Speaker 1: Southern Africa. In the early twentieth century, Rhodesia was a

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Speaker 1: British territory. The legacy of Cecil Roads is British South

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Speaker 1: Africa Company. The area was effectively ruled by the company

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Speaker 1: until the nineteen twenties, when it became a self governing

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Speaker 1: colony of the UK, and by the nineteen fifties decolonization

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Speaker 1: was happening all across the African continent. These fading European

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Speaker 1: empires couldn't or didn't want to hold on to all

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Speaker 1: the colonies they'd collected during the previous centuries scramble for Africa.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave his

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Speaker 1: Wind of Change speech in an address to the South

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Speaker 1: African Parliament about the political necessity of moving toward decolonization.

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Speaker 3: The wind of change is blowing through this continent, whether

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Speaker 3: we like it or not. This growth national consciousness is

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Speaker 3: a political fact, and we was all accepted as a fact.

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Speaker 3: Our national policies must take a contribute.

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Speaker 1: He'd actually given the same speech a few weeks earlier

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Speaker 1: in Ghana, but the press didn't pick it up the

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Speaker 1: first time, And I think the whether we like it

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Speaker 1: or not part of that statement matters a lot.

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Speaker 2: Here.

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Speaker 1: He wasn't advocating for decolonization out of the goodness of

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Speaker 1: his heart. He was reluctantly acknowledging the expense and bloody

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Speaker 1: political reality of trying to hold on to these colonies

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Speaker 1: at any cost. He could see the Belgians and Congo,

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Speaker 1: and the French in Algeria fighting these costly wars with

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Speaker 1: Africans who wanted an end to European colonial rule, and

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Speaker 1: as they worked towards extricating themselves from these colonial arrangements,

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Speaker 1: the British government adopted a policy called no independence before

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Speaker 1: majority rule, meaning they wouldn't hand over sovereignty to a

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Speaker 1: colony still run exclusively by the white colonial minority. Now, obviously,

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Speaker 1: this is an immensely complicated bit of political history that

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Speaker 1: I'm stripping down to the studs and explaining badly so

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Speaker 1: we get through it quickly. So don't think I'm giving

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Speaker 1: the British Empire any kind of credit here. This policy

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00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:45,640
Speaker 1: did not arise out of a genuine desire to undo

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Speaker 1: the harms of colonialism and address racism or anything like that.

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Speaker 1: That was not on their minds. But I think they

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Speaker 1: knew what it would look like if their decolonization looked

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Speaker 1: exactly like their colony. And we're not talking about a

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Speaker 1: pr laws here.

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Speaker 2: This is the Cold War.

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Speaker 1: They don't want to give the Soviets an opportunity to

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Speaker 1: come in behind them. But it was this policy, or

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Speaker 1: rather defiance of it, that led Rhodesia under Ian Smith,

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Speaker 1: to make the unilateral declaration of independence in nineteen sixty five.

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Speaker 1: White colonists made up just five percent of the population

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Speaker 1: of the territory, but they were unwilling to accept that

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Speaker 1: the UK would only grant Rhodesian independence if they shared

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Speaker 1: even a crumb of political power with the other ninety

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Speaker 1: five percent of Rhodesians. And apologies again for these digressions.

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Speaker 1: I just love the context. I think it's so important.

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Speaker 1: But that brings us to where we were going. The

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Speaker 1: Rhodesian Bush War a fifteen year period of civil conflict

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Speaker 1: between the white minority led government and the African nationalist

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Speaker 1: guerrilla forces. The number of foreign mercenaries who actually traveled

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Speaker 1: to Rhodesia during the war remains up for debate. Most

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Speaker 1: of the countries the mercenaries came from were by the

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Speaker 1: whole affair. International sanctions levied against the territory after the

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Speaker 1: illegal declaration of independence made it illegal for citizens of

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Speaker 1: many countries to participate in the conflict, even in countries

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Speaker 1: that didn't have their own domestic laws banning mercenary activity,

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Speaker 1: And there was some discomfort within Rhodesia too about the

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Speaker 1: perception that they needed foreigners to help with what they

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Speaker 1: saw as their war for independence. So, for deeply unflattering

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Speaker 1: and regrettable reasons, no one was very invested in getting

386
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Speaker 1: a thorough accounting of the situation, right, nobody benefits from

387
00:22:34,760 --> 00:22:38,959
Speaker 1: knowing what happened here. But at the high end, it

388
00:22:39,040 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 1: was really only a few thousand mercenaries over the total

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Speaker 1: course of the conflict, with best estimates for the number

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Speaker 1: of them who were Americans being somewhere in the low hundreds.

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Speaker 2: So a lot of guys.

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Speaker 1: Talked about it, but not very many of them actually

393
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Speaker 1: did it. This idea of American extremely traveling to Africa

394
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Speaker 1: to violently enforce white rule over black Africans is one

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Speaker 1: that modern white supremacists still cherish and celebrate. Dylan Rufe,

396
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Speaker 1: who was welcomed with open arms at an evening Bible

397
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Speaker 1: study at a manual African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston,

398
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Speaker 1: South Carolina, registered the domain last Rhodesian dot com a

399
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Speaker 1: few months before he murdered nine of the parishioners who

400
00:23:23,920 --> 00:23:27,200
Speaker 1: thought he was joining them for prayer that night. Rufe

401
00:23:27,200 --> 00:23:30,280
Speaker 1: made his final edit to that site his digital manifesto,

402
00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:33,160
Speaker 1: just hours before carrying out that attack. In twenty fifteen,

403
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Speaker 1: the cultural moment where magazines like Soldier of Fortune ran

404
00:23:38,080 --> 00:23:41,480
Speaker 1: full page advertisements for opportunities to be a man among

405
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Speaker 1: men in the African bush looms large in our memories,

406
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Speaker 1: but the reality is there weren't many men who actually

407
00:23:49,320 --> 00:23:53,680
Speaker 1: heeded the call, and their role in the conflict was insignificant.

408
00:23:55,320 --> 00:23:57,959
Speaker 1: But unlike many of those Americans who did end up

409
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Speaker 1: in Rhodesia in the seventies, Bak Sweeney didn't see an

410
00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:05,399
Speaker 1: advertisement and Soldier of Fortune, that magazine's first issue, bearing

411
00:24:05,400 --> 00:24:08,960
Speaker 1: a cover story about American mercenaries in Africa, was published

412
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Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen seventy five, just as Frank

413
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:16,280
Speaker 1: Sweeney was already on his way home. According to Frank,

414
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Speaker 1: which is a dangerous way to start an assertion of fact.

415
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Speaker 1: He walked into the Rhodesian Information Center in Washington, d C.

416
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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy two and asked how to join up.

417
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Speaker 1: The information center was not technically a diplomatic office because

418
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:36,240
Speaker 1: Rhodesia was not technically a country, the fact that would

419
00:24:36,280 --> 00:24:39,240
Speaker 1: get them into some trouble in Australia, but they claimed

420
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Speaker 1: that they were just offering information about tourism. Frank says

421
00:24:43,160 --> 00:24:46,360
Speaker 1: he was offered the contact information for Major Nick Lamprecht,

422
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:51,119
Speaker 1: the Rhodesian Army's chief recruiter. David Annibl, a reporter for

423
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Speaker 1: the Christian Science Monitor who interviewed Frank in nineteen seventy five,

424
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Speaker 1: wrote that he'd spoken to another recent visitor to that office.

425
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Speaker 1: After talking to Frank, visitor walked into the office and

426
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: was given a brochure printed by the Rhodesian Department of

427
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: Labor about careers in Rhodesia, And after a thirty minute

428
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: presentation about Americans already fighting in the conflict and the

429
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:15,720
Speaker 1: pay and benefits a mercenary could expect, including paid airfare,

430
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 1: all violations of international sanctions in US federal law, the

431
00:25:20,400 --> 00:25:25,640
Speaker 1: visitor was offered Major Lamprek's contact information that recruiter Nick

432
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:28,800
Speaker 1: Lampreckt worked closely with Soldier of Fortune founder Robert K.

433
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:31,439
Speaker 1: Brown to strategize how the magazine can be used to

434
00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:34,040
Speaker 1: convince more Americans to make the trip. In the latter

435
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 1: years of the conflict, lampreck himself even wrote an article

436
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:40,480
Speaker 1: for the magazine promising young American soldiers of Fortune that

437
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: it would be easy for them to find a beautiful

438
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:48,080
Speaker 1: white Rhodesian wife. I think Lamprek knew he was lying

439
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:50,119
Speaker 1: about how much fun you could have fighting in the

440
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:53,439
Speaker 1: Bush War. His own son, Vincent, had already fled to

441
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:58,280
Speaker 1: South Africa to avoid military service. In what you may

442
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,960
Speaker 1: be sensing as a theme here, the details of Frank's

443
00:26:00,960 --> 00:26:04,159
Speaker 1: service in Rhodesia are a little murky.

444
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:05,120
Speaker 2: The details of.

445
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:07,600
Speaker 1: A lot of what was going on in Rhodesia during

446
00:26:07,640 --> 00:26:11,280
Speaker 1: those years is not totally settled, and Frank's own involvement

447
00:26:11,359 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: far less so. He told reporter David Annibal in that

448
00:26:15,080 --> 00:26:17,879
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five interview that as a corporal in the

449
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:22,000
Speaker 1: Rhodesian Light Infantry, his detachment had taken many prisoners, but

450
00:26:22,040 --> 00:26:26,840
Speaker 1: when instructed to do so, they just executed people, saying

451
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: We shot them right there in the bush when we

452
00:26:29,040 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 1: were told not to take prisoners.

453
00:26:32,320 --> 00:26:33,880
Speaker 2: He also admitted that his unit had.

454
00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:36,800
Speaker 1: Taken part in raids over the border into neighboring Mozambique.

455
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:39,000
Speaker 2: He claimed that sometimes.

456
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:41,199
Speaker 1: These trips over the border were to assist Portuguese troops,

457
00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:45,119
Speaker 1: and until late nineteen seventy four, Portuguese troops were in

458
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:48,800
Speaker 1: Mozambique fighting to put down the Mozambican War of Independence,

459
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:51,800
Speaker 1: and Frank said sometimes they'd go over the border to

460
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:55,600
Speaker 1: raid gorilla camps, perhaps those belonging to the Zimbabwe African

461
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,560
Speaker 1: National Liberation Army, which had strong ties to the group's

462
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:02,879
Speaker 1: fighting for independence in Mozambia. These Rhodesian raids over the

463
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:06,200
Speaker 1: border into Mozambique continued even after that nation gained sovereignty

464
00:27:06,200 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. But it's hard to pin down

465
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: when Frank would have been doing this, if he even did,

466
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: I can at least say that Frank was no longer

467
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 1: in Rhodesia. During one of the war's worst atrocities, a

468
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: Rhodesian raid on a refugee camp in Mozambique killed over

469
00:27:23,080 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: a thousand civilians. David Animal published a couple of articles

470
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five in nineteen seventy six about Rhodesia,

471
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:33,360
Speaker 1: and he often quoted Frank Sweeney.

472
00:27:33,040 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 2: About his time there.

473
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:37,120
Speaker 1: After all, there weren't many Americans who'd been there, and

474
00:27:37,200 --> 00:27:40,359
Speaker 1: even fewer who were easy to find, and Frank was

475
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:43,920
Speaker 1: easy to find. He was very public about his stint

476
00:27:43,960 --> 00:27:47,640
Speaker 1: as a mercenary. After returning home in nineteen seventy five,

477
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 1: Frank placed ads in magazines like Shotgun News and Gun

478
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:52,679
Speaker 1: Week that read.

479
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 4: The Rhodesian Army offers excitement and adventure. I know I've

480
00:27:59,040 --> 00:28:02,480
Speaker 4: been there on the Americans of European ancestry write to

481
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:06,240
Speaker 4: me for free. Details pertaining to recruiting Frank Abbott Sweeney

482
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:09,920
Speaker 4: seven to two Creston Avenue, Tenafly, New Jersey, zero seven

483
00:28:10,040 --> 00:28:10,920
Speaker 4: six seven zero.

484
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:13,840
Speaker 2: When speaking with.

485
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:15,959
Speaker 1: The reporter about his efforts to recruit others to make

486
00:28:16,000 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: the trip, Frank spoke warmly of Major Lampreckt and claimed

487
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 1: that it was Lamprecked himself who instructed Frank to get

488
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:26,640
Speaker 1: in touch with as many white applicants as possible, which

489
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: is honestly probably not true, but who knows. Frank is

490
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 1: described as a fan of Ian Smith of white superiority

491
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:39,280
Speaker 1: and of the need to defend both, and is quoted

492
00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 1: as saying, if I could do anything to preserve Western

493
00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:47,240
Speaker 1: civilization in the area, I would do it. Frank told

494
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: Annibal that he'd received hundreds of letters in response to

495
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:54,360
Speaker 1: his ads and responded to all of them. But then again,

496
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: he also told Annibal he was a college graduate, and

497
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 1: we know that's not true. Claims Frank showed him his

498
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:04,840
Speaker 1: discharge papers from the Rhodesian Light Infantry, which were quote

499
00:29:05,080 --> 00:29:08,600
Speaker 1: in order according to the article, and showed three years

500
00:29:08,600 --> 00:29:11,640
Speaker 1: of good service and a rank of corporal, And that's

501
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: definitely not true. I'm sure Frank did show Animal something.

502
00:29:17,080 --> 00:29:19,720
Speaker 1: He probably did show him papers that indicated as much,

503
00:29:20,600 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: and I don't fault him for reporting it. It turns

504
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:29,120
Speaker 1: out Frank was quite skilled at forgery. Frank claims he

505
00:29:29,200 --> 00:29:31,800
Speaker 1: was in Washington, d c. Getting recruited into the Rhodesian

506
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:34,640
Speaker 1: Army in nineteen seventy two, but he may have actually

507
00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:37,600
Speaker 1: still been in prison in nineteen seventy two for shooting

508
00:29:37,680 --> 00:29:40,760
Speaker 1: that cop. It's hard to pin down exactly when he

509
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 1: was released. One newspaper article years later puts his parole

510
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: date for that conviction at nineteen seventy four, But I

511
00:29:48,920 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 1: have a bad feeling that was just a reporter on

512
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: a deadline who did the math on a six year

513
00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:58,120
Speaker 1: sentence and assumed Frank served all of it, which probably didn't.

514
00:29:58,760 --> 00:30:00,800
Speaker 1: When Frank was later arrested for his role in the

515
00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:03,920
Speaker 1: escape of a Soviet spy, an FBI agent puts his

516
00:30:04,000 --> 00:30:07,360
Speaker 1: date of enlistment at nineteen seventy three, So the truth

517
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:11,720
Speaker 1: is in there somewhere either way. He wasn't in Rhodesia

518
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: for very long before he really really wanted to go home.

519
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 1: A war as hell for everybody. And here we have

520
00:30:22,080 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 1: another unreliable narrator, Anthony Hickman. Hickman is a retired officer

521
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 1: in the British South Africa Police, which no longer exists,

522
00:30:32,120 --> 00:30:36,800
Speaker 1: and confusingly was neither British nor South African, and they

523
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: weren't always really just police, but it bore that name

524
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,960
Speaker 1: because it grew out of the paramilitary force run directly

525
00:30:43,000 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 1: by Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company in the nineteenth century.

526
00:30:47,760 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: The BSAP was Rhodesia's regular police force, but the line

527
00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: between regular policing and military operations was blurry, and during

528
00:30:57,200 --> 00:30:59,840
Speaker 1: the Bush war, there were military units made up of

529
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,959
Speaker 1: SAP officers and they developed counterinsurgency and counter terrorism units.

530
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:08,920
Speaker 1: They oversaw the intelligence gathering arm of the infamously brutal

531
00:31:09,000 --> 00:31:14,200
Speaker 1: Selu scouts, and they killed hundreds of people by introducing

532
00:31:14,240 --> 00:31:17,200
Speaker 1: poisoned food and medicine into the supply lines for the

533
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 1: insurgent forces. I don't know exactly what Hickman was doing

534
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:24,760
Speaker 1: for most of the war. Maybe he didn't do any

535
00:31:24,800 --> 00:31:28,400
Speaker 1: of that. But these days he's retired in Johannesburg, South

536
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:33,240
Speaker 1: Africa and makes detailed models of trains and farmhouses. In

537
00:31:33,280 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 1: the early nineteen seventies, he was assigned to the homicide

538
00:31:35,840 --> 00:31:40,520
Speaker 1: unit of bsap's Criminal Investigative Division, and in twenty nineteen

539
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 1: he wrote down his recollections of Frank Sweeney for a

540
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 1: newsletter published by his Veterans Association. Like any account of

541
00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 1: Frank's life, Hickman's essay can't be taken as gospel truth

542
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: between the lies Frank told him and his own fading

543
00:31:55,200 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: memory of the seventies.

544
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 2: It's not perfect.

545
00:31:58,920 --> 00:32:02,760
Speaker 1: Honestly, I almost carded it without reading past the first page.

546
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: Who's off to a pretty bad start When the first

547
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 1: paragraph placed these events in September of nineteen seventy seven,

548
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:15,600
Speaker 1: which would, of course be entirely impossible. Frank could not

549
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:18,040
Speaker 1: have been in a Rhodesian Army barracks in September of

550
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:22,320
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven, because according to the US Marshals, the FBI,

551
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:25,200
Speaker 1: the DOJ, the CIA, in the New York Times, Frank

552
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:27,680
Speaker 1: was hanging out with a Soviet spy in the exercise

553
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: yard at a federal prison in Los Angeles in September

554
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:34,800
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy seven. But I'll cut Hickman some slack

555
00:32:34,840 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 1: here on that faltering start, because there's ample evidence within

556
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,800
Speaker 1: the story that puts these events somewhere in the springtime

557
00:32:41,840 --> 00:32:45,600
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy five, and the data side, there is

558
00:32:45,720 --> 00:32:48,920
Speaker 1: enough meat to Hickman's account and the supporting primary documentation

559
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: he provided that supports the idea that this story is

560
00:32:53,600 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: more or less true. As a homicide detective, Hickman was

561
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,960
Speaker 1: involved in an investigation into Frank Sweeney for attempted murder

562
00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:07,440
Speaker 1: at a Rhodesian military barracks. One evening sometime in early

563
00:33:07,520 --> 00:33:11,719
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, probably Frank went to the bathroom at

564
00:33:11,720 --> 00:33:15,160
Speaker 1: the barracks he was living in. Inside the shared facilities.

565
00:33:15,200 --> 00:33:18,720
Speaker 1: Two infantrymen who'd been drinking were laughing and joking around.

566
00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: One was quite drunk undressed and got into the shower

567
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 1: to try to sober up a little bit. Three men

568
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:30,240
Speaker 1: were chatting pleasantly enough, but Frank was humorless and sober,

569
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:34,160
Speaker 1: and he was outraged when the drunk man splashed shower

570
00:33:34,200 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 1: water on him. The men argued, and one of them

571
00:33:37,600 --> 00:33:42,000
Speaker 1: called Frank a bloody yank. And Frank's not a guy

572
00:33:42,040 --> 00:33:42,720
Speaker 1: who turns.

573
00:33:42,520 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 2: The other cheek.

574
00:33:44,040 --> 00:33:48,560
Speaker 1: He takes every insult very personally. So a little bit

575
00:33:48,680 --> 00:33:51,680
Speaker 1: damp and with his pride wounded, he runs back to

576
00:33:51,720 --> 00:33:54,320
Speaker 1: his bunk and comes right back with a seven inch

577
00:33:54,600 --> 00:33:58,479
Speaker 1: dagger and pulls the shower curtain aside and stabs this

578
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 1: naked drunk man in the lower abdomen. The other soldier

579
00:34:03,840 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 1: ran for help, and Frank was quickly arrested, and while

580
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,919
Speaker 1: he sat in custody, a mysterious letter arrived in the mail.

581
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,360
Speaker 1: The postmark indicated that it had been mailed from nearby

582
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: Salisbury weeks earlier. The anonymous letter writer said that a

583
00:34:20,200 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: private Fa Sweeney had been convicted of the attempted murder

584
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:28,400
Speaker 1: of policemen in the United States. It was Hickman, our essayist,

585
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:31,080
Speaker 1: who first suspected that Frank may actually have written this

586
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:35,640
Speaker 1: letter himself, and when he pressed Frank for a handwriting

587
00:34:35,680 --> 00:34:40,759
Speaker 1: sample to prove it, he cracked immediately. He'd sent the

588
00:34:40,800 --> 00:34:43,440
Speaker 1: letter himself, hoping that it would be his ticket home,

589
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: that they would kick him out and deport him when

590
00:34:46,120 --> 00:34:48,480
Speaker 1: they found out he lied about not having a criminal history,

591
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 1: and then he would get a free flight back to

592
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:53,320
Speaker 1: New Jersey without having to finish his term of service.

593
00:34:54,440 --> 00:34:55,560
Speaker 2: And if that letter had.

594
00:34:55,400 --> 00:34:59,840
Speaker 1: Only arrived a few days earlier, they probably would have

595
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: done just that before anybody had to get stabbed. The

596
00:35:05,719 --> 00:35:10,400
Speaker 1: story Frank then told Hickman has elements of truth, but

597
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 1: it's not quite right. He told Hickman that the shootout

598
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: at his parents' house had happened just the year prior,

599
00:35:17,320 --> 00:35:19,880
Speaker 1: and that he'd fled the country prior to being sentenced.

600
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:22,840
Speaker 1: So he's cutting out this six year period that he

601
00:35:22,920 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: spent in prison for the shooting and pretending that he

602
00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:29,120
Speaker 1: had just arrived there in Rhodesia immediately after the events

603
00:35:29,120 --> 00:35:32,360
Speaker 1: that we know took place in July of nineteen sixty seven.

604
00:35:33,480 --> 00:35:36,160
Speaker 1: And the timeline isn't the only thing that's off in

605
00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: this version, Frank says the shootout only lasted ten minutes,

606
00:35:40,040 --> 00:35:42,880
Speaker 1: not over an hour, and he had decided to end

607
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:45,279
Speaker 1: the incident on his own terms when he saw that

608
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:48,400
Speaker 1: his father had arrived, rather than the truth, which was

609
00:35:48,440 --> 00:35:50,920
Speaker 1: that he argued with his distraught father for an hour

610
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:53,080
Speaker 1: while continuing to shoot through the windows until he was

611
00:35:53,120 --> 00:35:56,920
Speaker 1: smoked out by tear gas. But the inciting incident in

612
00:35:56,960 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: this version is similar. He told Hahikman about shooting guns

613
00:36:00,560 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 1: in the woods and the neighbors reporting the noise and

614
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:06,160
Speaker 1: the officer arriving in the car chase, but he claimed

615
00:36:06,200 --> 00:36:07,719
Speaker 1: the gun he was shooting in the woods was one

616
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 1: he purchased from an advertisement and soldier of Fortune magazine,

617
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:15,080
Speaker 1: which is obviously not possible because that magazine didn't exist.

618
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:16,880
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty seven. I don't know.

619
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:19,480
Speaker 1: Maybe he was just updating the story so it would

620
00:36:19,560 --> 00:36:23,000
Speaker 1: sound more current, but Frank said he'd purchased the Tommy

621
00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:25,480
Speaker 1: gun from the magazine, but it was missing some parts.

622
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: It didn't have a firing pin in something else, so

623
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:33,320
Speaker 1: it didn't work. He manufactured the necessary replacement parts, but

624
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: he was concerned that in his modification of the weapon.

625
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:39,520
Speaker 1: Maybe things weren't one hundred percent and he was worried

626
00:36:39,520 --> 00:36:42,520
Speaker 1: that it would explode when fired, so he lashed it

627
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 1: to a tree and set it to fully automatic and

628
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:47,880
Speaker 1: rigged a string to the trigger and hid behind another

629
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:48,919
Speaker 1: tree for cover.

630
00:36:49,080 --> 00:36:50,920
Speaker 2: This sounds so Looney Tunes to me.

631
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:55,040
Speaker 1: Like a literal Looney Tunes cartoon, right, this is this

632
00:36:55,120 --> 00:36:59,320
Speaker 1: is daffy duck behavior. But he tells this story to Hickman,

633
00:37:00,120 --> 00:37:04,759
Speaker 1: and in his essay, Hickman writes true or false, impossible

634
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 1: to believe. Sweeney had the uncanny ability to sound totally convincing.

635
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:12,800
Speaker 1: But it is significant to note that a search undertaken

636
00:37:12,840 --> 00:37:20,120
Speaker 1: based on Sweeney's fingerprint records revealed no such incident, which

637
00:37:20,920 --> 00:37:25,600
Speaker 1: doesn't say much for the state of Rhodesian intelligence. Because, yeah,

638
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:28,640
Speaker 1: Frank's taking a little creative license here. The story he's

639
00:37:28,640 --> 00:37:32,200
Speaker 1: telling is not one hundred percent true, but he is

640
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:35,880
Speaker 1: admitting to you almost all of the real details for

641
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,759
Speaker 1: the real crime he really did go to prison for.

642
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:41,600
Speaker 2: So you you probably should.

643
00:37:41,400 --> 00:37:43,400
Speaker 1: Have figured that out before he told you, and you

644
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:46,200
Speaker 1: definitely should have been able to figure it out after

645
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: he told you. They could have contacted a police department

646
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: or a courthouse in New Jersey and just asked, hell,

647
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:57,959
Speaker 1: they probably could have called any resident of ten Offly,

648
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:01,880
Speaker 1: New Jersey at random and asked, do you remember the

649
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:04,239
Speaker 1: teenage Nazi bank robber who shot a cop in his

650
00:38:04,280 --> 00:38:05,680
Speaker 1: mom's front yard.

651
00:38:06,280 --> 00:38:09,440
Speaker 2: It's kind of a small town. I bet everybody remembered.

652
00:38:10,760 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 2: But I guess they didn't do that.

653
00:38:13,680 --> 00:38:16,320
Speaker 1: They weren't even a real country, so maybe they didn't

654
00:38:16,360 --> 00:38:18,319
Speaker 1: have a guy who knew how to do a background check.

655
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:23,239
Speaker 1: The Rhodesian police continued to hold Frank in custody, and

656
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: while he was waiting to find out if they were

657
00:38:24,960 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: going to try him for attempted murder, got some mail

658
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 1: an envelope containing two United States passports and three hundred

659
00:38:31,960 --> 00:38:37,240
Speaker 1: dollars in cash. Both passports bore Frank's photo in Frank's birthdate,

660
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:41,759
Speaker 1: but only one had Frank's name on it. The other

661
00:38:41,960 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: was for Francis August Schellhammer, a man who doesn't exist.

662
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:49,160
Speaker 1: He explained to the officers that he was quite good

663
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:51,800
Speaker 1: at making such things and even offered to forge a

664
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 1: pair of US passports. Were Hickman and the other detective.

665
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: Hickman says that they declined the offer.

666
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:00,520
Speaker 2: Remarkably.

667
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:03,680
Speaker 1: The Rhodesian government opted to drop the charges and just

668
00:39:03,719 --> 00:39:07,080
Speaker 1: send Frank home. Can you court martial a mercenary?

669
00:39:07,160 --> 00:39:07,479
Speaker 2: I don't.

670
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:09,840
Speaker 1: That's not something I've ever needed to wonder about. I

671
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 1: don't know really what the options were here, but it

672
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:16,120
Speaker 1: wasn't worth it to them. They sent him home. So

673
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,480
Speaker 1: sometime in the summer of nineteen seventy five, Frank Sweeney

674
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:22,600
Speaker 1: was kicked out at the Rhodesian Light Infantry and deported

675
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 1: from Rhodesia. He got his free flight home after all,

676
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:44,960
Speaker 1: and was permanently banned from a country that never existed.

677
00:39:45,200 --> 00:39:47,919
Speaker 1: Shortly after he got home to New Jersey, he wrote

678
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:51,359
Speaker 1: a letter to Higman. Frank's mother had mailed him some

679
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:53,840
Speaker 1: more cash before all this trouble got started, and it

680
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:56,759
Speaker 1: arrived in Rhodesia after he was already gone, and he

681
00:39:56,800 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: wanted Hickman to put it back in the mail for him.

682
00:40:00,080 --> 00:40:02,719
Speaker 1: His letter, which Hickman has actually held on to all

683
00:40:02,719 --> 00:40:06,680
Speaker 1: these years, is dated August twenty second, nineteen seventy five.

684
00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:09,920
Speaker 1: So if he's already home and realizing his mail is

685
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 1: missing and writing a letter in August of seventy five,

686
00:40:12,239 --> 00:40:15,920
Speaker 1: that all the events before that happened earlier in nineteen

687
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:20,280
Speaker 1: seventy five, you get it. In addition to asking Hickman

688
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:22,879
Speaker 1: to mail back the money from his mother, Frank tells

689
00:40:22,880 --> 00:40:27,840
Speaker 1: the investigator that life in America is loathsome compared to

690
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:30,480
Speaker 1: the time he spent in Rhodesia.

691
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,840
Speaker 4: It's one big racial cessful where the worst element is

692
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 4: looked on and held in high esteem. With my RLI

693
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,400
Speaker 4: training to back me up, I have seriously thought of

694
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,359
Speaker 4: forming my own anti terrorism unit here in the land

695
00:40:43,400 --> 00:40:46,239
Speaker 4: of the Red, White, and Blue. The real problem is

696
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,359
Speaker 4: finding enough devoted men to form a small cadre. If

697
00:40:49,400 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 4: you ever do visit America, I would genuinely enjoy meeting

698
00:40:52,400 --> 00:40:54,759
Speaker 4: with you again, and I'm sure my family would like

699
00:40:54,800 --> 00:40:57,200
Speaker 4: to meet you too. Even though my service in the

700
00:40:57,200 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 4: military was cut short, my loyalty to Rodija that means

701
00:41:00,320 --> 00:41:01,600
Speaker 4: as strong as ever.

702
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:06,560
Speaker 1: So now he's back in the United States, and this

703
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:09,000
Speaker 1: is during the same time period that he's placing those

704
00:41:09,040 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: ads in gun magazines to recruit other Rhodesian mercenaries. He's

705
00:41:14,160 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 1: also placing some other classified ads. So he's engaging in

706
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:23,120
Speaker 1: this federal crime of recruiting foreign mercenaries using his own

707
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:26,480
Speaker 1: legal name and his parents' address. That's not a problem.

708
00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:30,320
Speaker 1: The United States government had no real appetite for enforcing

709
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,840
Speaker 1: the statute prohibiting him from recruiting people into.

710
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 2: A foreign army. But when he.

711
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:40,920
Speaker 1: Placed ads offering four MP forty Schmeiser submachine guns for sale,

712
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:44,279
Speaker 1: he didn't use his own name. He used the name

713
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:49,480
Speaker 1: Francis August Shellhammer, the name from the forged passport, and

714
00:41:49,520 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 1: he listed a commercial address in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

715
00:41:53,239 --> 00:41:57,400
Speaker 1: It seems Frank never actually had these Nazi submachine guns,

716
00:41:57,400 --> 00:41:59,960
Speaker 1: but he did collect the money sent by many interesting

717
00:42:00,160 --> 00:42:04,520
Speaker 1: collectors who thought they were buying these imaginary guns. It

718
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:06,719
Speaker 1: seems like a great hack to make free money, but

719
00:42:06,920 --> 00:42:08,680
Speaker 1: unfortunately for Frank, that.

720
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:09,960
Speaker 2: Is mail fraud.

721
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:14,160
Speaker 1: So in March of nineteen seventy six, he's being interviewed

722
00:42:14,160 --> 00:42:16,760
Speaker 1: by a reporter from the La Times and he's telling

723
00:42:16,800 --> 00:42:19,759
Speaker 1: this reporter he's enjoyed his time in Rhodesia so much

724
00:42:19,800 --> 00:42:22,600
Speaker 1: that he's actually planning to move back to South Africa

725
00:42:22,640 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 1: in just a few weeks. Notice he's moving to South Africa,

726
00:42:25,440 --> 00:42:29,759
Speaker 1: not Rhodesia, because he is not allowed in Rhodesia. But

727
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:32,400
Speaker 1: he's planning this big move. He's telling this reporter about it.

728
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:36,120
Speaker 1: He's bragging about his time in Rhodesia, but at the

729
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,160
Speaker 1: same time, in March of nineteen seventy six, he's also

730
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:42,400
Speaker 1: entering a guilty plead to that federal mail fraud charge.

731
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: The La Times article, which doesn't make any mention of

732
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 1: his former or current criminal charges, does say that Frank

733
00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:53,360
Speaker 1: said that he'd recently been visited by the FBI, and

734
00:42:53,400 --> 00:42:55,239
Speaker 1: Frank says they came to his house to try to

735
00:42:55,280 --> 00:42:59,720
Speaker 1: pressure him to provide information about other mercenaries. It seems

736
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 1: a little more likely that he's a compulsive liar who

737
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:05,440
Speaker 1: got a thrill out of working in this kernel of

738
00:43:05,520 --> 00:43:09,360
Speaker 1: truth because the FBI had just been to his house,

739
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:13,880
Speaker 1: that part's true, but they were there to arrest him

740
00:43:14,160 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 1: for mail fraud, but he wasn't lying about his plans

741
00:43:18,480 --> 00:43:21,719
Speaker 1: for an upcoming move. After pleading guilty to the mail

742
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 1: fraud charge, he skipped out on his sentencing hearing. He

743
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 1: packed his bags and he caught a flight to Johannesburg,

744
00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:31,360
Speaker 1: but South Africa sent him right back and he was

745
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:33,640
Speaker 1: arrested by US marshals as he was getting off the

746
00:43:33,640 --> 00:43:37,840
Speaker 1: plane at JFK in June of nineteen seventy six, and

747
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:40,799
Speaker 1: while marshalls were arresting him. His suitcase was loaded off

748
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,520
Speaker 1: the plane and it went through customs without him. Customs

749
00:43:44,560 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 1: officials seized a nine millimeters lugar pistol because he lacked

750
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,399
Speaker 1: the proper paperwork to bring the firearm into the US

751
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:55,640
Speaker 1: from a foreign country, and inexplicably there were no additional

752
00:43:55,719 --> 00:44:00,360
Speaker 1: charges brought for any of that. He wasn't so supposed

753
00:44:00,360 --> 00:44:02,439
Speaker 1: to have a gun at all, and he certainly wasn't

754
00:44:02,480 --> 00:44:05,160
Speaker 1: supposed to try to flee the continent while awaiting sentencing

755
00:44:05,160 --> 00:44:07,799
Speaker 1: for a federal crime. I know the seventies were a

756
00:44:07,840 --> 00:44:09,879
Speaker 1: different time and it wasn't a big deal to bring

757
00:44:09,880 --> 00:44:12,680
Speaker 1: a gun to the airport, but fleeing the country to

758
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: avoid going to prison is always been illegal, I'm pretty.

759
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:16,879
Speaker 2: Sure of it.

760
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:20,799
Speaker 1: I found a couple of cheeky little articles written a

761
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:23,600
Speaker 1: few years later about how the government ended up accidentally

762
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 1: giving him that gun back. It was seized by customs

763
00:44:27,440 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: and put into storage while he was in prison, and

764
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: when he got out of prison, he wrote to the

765
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:33,640
Speaker 1: Customs office in New York to inquire about it, and

766
00:44:34,280 --> 00:44:36,879
Speaker 1: they told him they'd return his property if he paid

767
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:37,719
Speaker 1: a two hundred.

768
00:44:37,480 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 2: And forty four dollars storage fee. I don't know what

769
00:44:40,200 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 2: that comes out to.

770
00:44:40,960 --> 00:44:42,720
Speaker 1: Per month for the four years he was in prison,

771
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: but that seems steep, and so Frank claims he walked

772
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: right into the Customs office inside the World Trade Center

773
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:53,520
Speaker 1: in May of nineteen eighty, paid the fee, failed out

774
00:44:53,520 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: a form, and they gave him back his gun. A

775
00:44:57,160 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 1: spokesman for the US Customs Service said they had no

776
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:03,600
Speaker 1: way of knowing he was a felon. Frank said it

777
00:45:03,640 --> 00:45:06,000
Speaker 1: was all just a half hearted joke telling a reporter.

778
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 1: All I really wanted to do was test the gun

779
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:10,920
Speaker 1: laws to show there really is a need for federal

780
00:45:10,920 --> 00:45:14,160
Speaker 1: gun legislation. The Feds are giving criminals like me our

781
00:45:14,200 --> 00:45:15,680
Speaker 1: guns back in New York City.

782
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:16,360
Speaker 2: Just for the asking.

783
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 1: Federal gun laws are versical. You know, he's not a

784
00:45:22,920 --> 00:45:25,600
Speaker 1: great guy, but he does have some quips. You know,

785
00:45:26,600 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: he's just out there doing bits. And he ended up

786
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:32,000
Speaker 1: handing the gun back over to the ATF without incident

787
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:35,600
Speaker 1: a few months later. But back to the mail fraud.

788
00:45:36,760 --> 00:45:38,400
Speaker 1: He got the four years for the mail fraud and

789
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: was sent to federal prison. And it was in prison

790
00:45:41,719 --> 00:45:45,680
Speaker 1: this time around that Frank would meet Christopher Boyce, a

791
00:45:45,680 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 1: young defense contractor who'd recently been convicted of espionage. In

792
00:45:50,960 --> 00:45:53,840
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, a twenty one year old college dropout

793
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 1: in Christopher Boyce got a job at TRW, an aerospace

794
00:45:58,160 --> 00:46:02,399
Speaker 1: company with a lot of government con He wasn't really

795
00:46:02,480 --> 00:46:05,280
Speaker 1: qualified for the role, having never worked in an office before,

796
00:46:05,320 --> 00:46:08,800
Speaker 1: but he started as a low level clerk. It helped

797
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:11,120
Speaker 1: that his retired FBI agent father was the head of

798
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 1: security at McDonald Douglas, another aerospace and defense contracting company,

799
00:46:14,840 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: and he had connections at TRW. But TRW didn't just

800
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: make satellites and jet engines. In his own later testimony

801
00:46:25,160 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: before a Congressional committee, Boyce described the company as a

802
00:46:28,239 --> 00:46:32,840
Speaker 1: CIA contractor, something he'd had no idea about before his

803
00:46:32,920 --> 00:46:36,759
Speaker 1: promotion to a highly sensitive position. Working on special projects

804
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:40,839
Speaker 1: from inside the company's black vault and with a top

805
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:45,120
Speaker 1: secret CIA clearance, Boyce had access to the company's encrypted

806
00:46:45,320 --> 00:46:49,880
Speaker 1: teletype connection with Langley. On at least a dozen occasions,

807
00:46:49,920 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 1: he removed documents from the vault and photographed them. On

808
00:46:53,320 --> 00:46:57,000
Speaker 1: at least six occasions he photographed documents inside the vault,

809
00:46:58,560 --> 00:47:03,040
Speaker 1: He later told Congress. Obviously, neither the government's clearance procedures

810
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:09,839
Speaker 1: nor the company's security procedures worked very well, I'll say.

811
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:15,760
Speaker 1: In his new position inside the vault, Boyce monitored satellite

812
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:21,000
Speaker 1: communications between the CIA, his employer TRW, and other CIA

813
00:47:21,080 --> 00:47:25,759
Speaker 1: contacts around the world. In his congressional testimony, Boyce describes

814
00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:31,760
Speaker 1: a shockingly lax approach to security for this allegedly super

815
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 1: secure black vault. He would come back to work late

816
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:38,440
Speaker 1: at night to return the documents he'd stolen, and no

817
00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: one questioned why a junior employee was opening the vault

818
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:45,680
Speaker 1: at four am. He made deliveries to secure CIA sites

819
00:47:45,680 --> 00:47:48,440
Speaker 1: without having the proper clearance to enter them, and on

820
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,640
Speaker 1: one occasion, he wandered into a CIA code room, picked

821
00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 1: up a clipboard and was flipping through the pages before

822
00:47:55,080 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 1: someone politely asked him to leave. Employees in the vault

823
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 1: were supposed to destroy the code cards used in the

824
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:06,239
Speaker 1: teletype machine at the end of each workday. Boyce says

825
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 1: they just tossed the cards in a canvas bag in

826
00:48:08,560 --> 00:48:12,000
Speaker 1: the corner, and they used the document destruction blender to

827
00:48:12,040 --> 00:48:14,720
Speaker 1: make my ties with the Bacardi that they kept hidden

828
00:48:14,800 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: behind the cryptography machines. He claims it was common for

829
00:48:19,080 --> 00:48:22,240
Speaker 1: the vault to receive transmissions from Langley that weren't actually

830
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:27,359
Speaker 1: meant for them, misdirected communications, these CIA cables that had

831
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:30,240
Speaker 1: nothing to do with TRW or their work with the agency,

832
00:48:30,280 --> 00:48:34,360
Speaker 1: but no one really cared, and there was no clear

833
00:48:34,400 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 1: accountability process for ensuring that these top secret CIA documents

834
00:48:38,920 --> 00:48:43,120
Speaker 1: that had been sent to them by mistake were actually destroyed.

835
00:48:44,640 --> 00:48:48,920
Speaker 1: And these are the documents that Boyce stole. Okay, I

836
00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 1: know Frank's not even in this part, but I have

837
00:48:51,880 --> 00:48:54,240
Speaker 1: to tell you just a little bit about the nineteen

838
00:48:54,320 --> 00:48:56,920
Speaker 1: seventy five constitutional crisis in Australia.

839
00:48:57,440 --> 00:48:59,120
Speaker 2: I know, I know this is an even.

840
00:48:58,920 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 1: More egregious digs Russian than the history of Rhodesia. But

841
00:49:02,440 --> 00:49:04,680
Speaker 1: look at the show art. It's not just cool to

842
00:49:04,719 --> 00:49:07,400
Speaker 1: look at. We are living on my red string board

843
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,440
Speaker 1: and I've got to put this pushpin in somewhere.

844
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:11,800
Speaker 2: Now.

845
00:49:12,320 --> 00:49:14,600
Speaker 1: I know even less about Australia that I know about

846
00:49:14,600 --> 00:49:18,120
Speaker 1: the decolonization of Africa in the twentieth century, which is

847
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 1: to say, like not very much. I think they still

848
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:25,840
Speaker 1: have the Queen. I guess it's the king.

849
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 2: Now.

850
00:49:27,239 --> 00:49:29,520
Speaker 1: Did they have to print new money after the queen died?

851
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:34,279
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter, But I was delighted

852
00:49:34,320 --> 00:49:38,600
Speaker 1: to discover that CIA meddling in an Australian political crisis

853
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:40,320
Speaker 1: was even a possibility.

854
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:42,880
Speaker 2: How intriguing, you know.

855
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:44,920
Speaker 1: I know they like to keep it south of the equator,

856
00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:47,640
Speaker 1: but I thought that was just a Western Hemisphere thing.

857
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:48,960
Speaker 2: Now.

858
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:52,600
Speaker 1: Of course, of course, the United States government maintains that

859
00:49:52,640 --> 00:49:56,759
Speaker 1: the CIA had no role in pushing Prime Minister GoF

860
00:49:56,760 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: Whitlam out office in nineteen seventy five. Stiffer Boyce went

861
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:05,640
Speaker 1: to prison claiming otherwise. In the seventies, GoF Whitlam was

862
00:50:05,680 --> 00:50:08,359
Speaker 1: the head of the Australian Labor Party and his administration

863
00:50:08,480 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 1: was fairly socially progressive.

864
00:50:10,920 --> 00:50:12,239
Speaker 2: He was also.

865
00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:17,000
Speaker 1: Considering closing Pine Gap, a US signals intelligence surveillance base

866
00:50:17,080 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 1: in central Australia run by the CIA. In nineteen seventy five,

867
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:25,280
Speaker 1: the opposition party, which controlled the Senate deferred the passage

868
00:50:25,280 --> 00:50:29,640
Speaker 1: of an appropriations bill. I don't know and am not

869
00:50:29,680 --> 00:50:33,239
Speaker 1: going to find out how the Australian government functions, but

870
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,640
Speaker 1: this sounds like the silly little crisis we seem to

871
00:50:35,640 --> 00:50:38,319
Speaker 1: have every year, where someone refuses to pass the bill

872
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:41,400
Speaker 1: that keeps the lights on at the government and Australia's

873
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:44,000
Speaker 1: Governor General John Kerr used the fallout of this crisis

874
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:47,960
Speaker 1: as a justification to dismiss Whitlam as Prime Minister, which

875
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:51,040
Speaker 1: is apparently the thing he had the power to do.

876
00:50:51,120 --> 00:50:53,320
Speaker 1: It's like they have a guy that can fire the president.

877
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:54,279
Speaker 2: I don't know.

878
00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:57,759
Speaker 1: I just not my business what happens in Australia. And

879
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,680
Speaker 1: at the time, Whitlam dismissed allegations of CIA involvement, saying

880
00:51:02,360 --> 00:51:06,080
Speaker 1: Kerr didn't need any encouragement from anybody to fire him,

881
00:51:06,560 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 1: But in his memoirs published decades later, he wrote that

882
00:51:09,680 --> 00:51:13,120
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy seven, President Jimmy Carter sent Warren Christopher,

883
00:51:13,200 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: the Deputy Secretary of State, to Australia to meet.

884
00:51:16,000 --> 00:51:18,479
Speaker 2: With Whitlam, and Christopher told.

885
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:24,040
Speaker 1: Whitlam that the United States quote would never again interfere

886
00:51:24,480 --> 00:51:34,880
Speaker 1: with Australia's democratic processes, never again, never again. And Whitlam's

887
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:37,360
Speaker 1: personal secretary backs up this recollection of the use of

888
00:51:37,400 --> 00:51:42,279
Speaker 1: the word again. But I'll reiterate. The CIA says they

889
00:51:42,280 --> 00:51:46,879
Speaker 1: were not involved. They said they didn't do it. All

890
00:51:46,880 --> 00:51:51,520
Speaker 1: that to say, though, our pot smoking, disaffected college dropout

891
00:51:51,520 --> 00:51:53,759
Speaker 1: who was getting drunk at lunch most days and making

892
00:51:53,800 --> 00:51:58,000
Speaker 1: paper airplanes out of CIA encryption code cards. Probably didn't

893
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:01,839
Speaker 1: know anything about the Australian Senate blocking an appropriations bill,

894
00:52:03,080 --> 00:52:07,520
Speaker 1: but by his account he did sometimes read those misdirected

895
00:52:07,520 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 1: CIA cables that he was supposed to destroy, and some

896
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:14,120
Speaker 1: of those messages were about a growing desire within the

897
00:52:14,160 --> 00:52:18,320
Speaker 1: CIA to have Whitlam removed from office, referring to the

898
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 1: Australian Governor General as our manker. So he stole them,

899
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:27,880
Speaker 1: and instead of going to the press, he and his

900
00:52:28,000 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 1: childhood friend, a cocaine dealer named Dalton Lee, decided to

901
00:52:32,000 --> 00:52:35,520
Speaker 1: sell the documents to the Soviets. Lee would take the

902
00:52:35,520 --> 00:52:37,920
Speaker 1: documents down to Mexico and deliver them to the Soviet

903
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 1: embassy and return with cash which they split. And maybe

904
00:52:42,640 --> 00:52:46,080
Speaker 1: it would have worked, maybe not forever, but would have

905
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:50,360
Speaker 1: worked for a while if not for a little mistake,

906
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: a tiny careless act. In an absolutely absurd turn of history,

907
00:52:55,560 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: Dalton Lee was arrested in nineteen seventy seven outside the

908
00:52:58,320 --> 00:52:59,480
Speaker 1: Soviet Embassy.

909
00:52:59,120 --> 00:53:00,520
Speaker 2: In Mexico City.

910
00:53:00,640 --> 00:53:05,399
Speaker 1: He wasn't arrested for espionage or drug trafficking, two things

911
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:09,600
Speaker 1: he was definitely doing. He was arrested by Mexican police

912
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:15,520
Speaker 1: for littering, but under interrogation about the drugs and documents

913
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:20,520
Speaker 1: they subsequently found on him, he admitted everything. Christopher Boyce

914
00:53:20,560 --> 00:53:23,200
Speaker 1: was arrested by authorities in the US just ten days later,

915
00:53:24,120 --> 00:53:26,440
Speaker 1: and accounts vary as to whether or not Dalton Lee

916
00:53:26,560 --> 00:53:29,560
Speaker 1: gave Boys up. In that initial interview, he says he

917
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:33,600
Speaker 1: didn't and he probably didn't need to. The authorities would

918
00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:35,600
Speaker 1: have arrived at the conclusion that it was boys who

919
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: had stolen those documents, whether Dalton Lee gave him up

920
00:53:38,120 --> 00:53:43,720
Speaker 1: or not. So you know, we'll never know. But this

921
00:53:43,760 --> 00:53:46,440
Speaker 1: is where Frank comes back. This is where Frank reappears

922
00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:50,439
Speaker 1: in his own story. I haven't forgotten him because while

923
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: all this CIA skullduggery and Cold War espionage is going on,

924
00:53:55,480 --> 00:53:57,880
Speaker 1: Frank is sitting in a jail cell on Terminal Island,

925
00:53:58,040 --> 00:54:02,040
Speaker 1: a low security federal corrections facility in Los Angeles. I

926
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:04,520
Speaker 1: can't find a good reason for why he would have

927
00:54:04,560 --> 00:54:07,400
Speaker 1: been transported to a prison in California after being arrested

928
00:54:07,440 --> 00:54:11,759
Speaker 1: in New York, but government inefficiency is as likely an

929
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:16,680
Speaker 1: explanation as anything else. Christopher Boyce was ultimately convicted of

930
00:54:16,719 --> 00:54:19,360
Speaker 1: eight counts of espionage in nineteen seventy seven and sentenced

931
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:23,000
Speaker 1: to forty years in prison, and for several months in

932
00:54:23,239 --> 00:54:26,640
Speaker 1: late seventy seven to early seventy eight, the two men

933
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:29,879
Speaker 1: were on the same cell block at Terminal Island. Much

934
00:54:29,920 --> 00:54:32,879
Speaker 1: has been made of the apparent incongruity of Frank, a

935
00:54:32,920 --> 00:54:37,080
Speaker 1: man who fought as a mercenary against Communist gorillas, befriending Boyce,

936
00:54:37,239 --> 00:54:40,920
Speaker 1: a man convicted of aiding the Soviet Union. But I

937
00:54:40,960 --> 00:54:43,360
Speaker 1: don't think either of them had a fully formed set

938
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:48,040
Speaker 1: of political beliefs at the time. Boyce's mother would later

939
00:54:48,120 --> 00:54:50,440
Speaker 1: say that the two became quite close in those months.

940
00:54:52,280 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: Frank was for reasons I spent way too long unsuccessfully

941
00:54:56,200 --> 00:54:59,080
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, transferred to a prison in Maine

942
00:54:59,120 --> 00:55:02,799
Speaker 1: sometime in early nineteen seventy eight. Boyce would eventually be

943
00:55:02,840 --> 00:55:05,360
Speaker 1: transferred to Lompoc of Prison, a few hours north of

944
00:55:05,400 --> 00:55:10,360
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and in January of nineteen eighty, Christopher Boyce

945
00:55:11,320 --> 00:55:16,399
Speaker 1: escaped from prison. The ensuing manhunt for the missing spy

946
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:20,120
Speaker 1: would last nearly two years, in part because Frank was

947
00:55:20,160 --> 00:55:24,439
Speaker 1: planting false clues from Cape Town to California to lead

948
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:25,359
Speaker 1: investigators in.

949
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:28,640
Speaker 2: The long direction and that's where I have to leave

950
00:55:28,680 --> 00:55:29,240
Speaker 2: you today.

951
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:31,800
Speaker 1: I do hope you'll come back next week for the

952
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:35,480
Speaker 1: second half of Frank's story. There's a serial killer, a

953
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:39,360
Speaker 1: mob boss, a jailhouse letter from his wife's boyfriend. Frank

954
00:55:39,400 --> 00:55:43,680
Speaker 1: stabs another guy, and for reasons I'm still not a

955
00:55:44,040 --> 00:56:02,480
Speaker 1: hundred percent clear on, there were a bunch of snakes.

956
00:56:05,320 --> 00:56:07,680
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you decided to come back for part

957
00:56:07,719 --> 00:56:10,719
Speaker 1: two of the story of Frank Sweeney. If you didn't

958
00:56:10,760 --> 00:56:14,040
Speaker 1: hear part one, you really need to. This isn't the

959
00:56:14,120 --> 00:56:17,239
Speaker 1: kind of story you can pick up midway through. You

960
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:19,640
Speaker 1: missed a cop getting shot with a machine gun, and

961
00:56:19,680 --> 00:56:23,920
Speaker 1: a new Jersey suburb, the Rhodesian bush War, possible CIA

962
00:56:24,040 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: involvement in an Australian political crisis, and we're just about

963
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:29,880
Speaker 1: to pick up with our escaped spy.

964
00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:31,440
Speaker 2: The second forty.

965
00:56:31,280 --> 00:56:33,759
Speaker 1: Years of Frank's life are just as weird as the

966
00:56:33,760 --> 00:56:37,560
Speaker 1: first forty. There's a serial killer, a mafia trial, two

967
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:40,799
Speaker 1: different secret wives, and a lot of misuse of the

968
00:56:40,800 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 1: postal service. I'm Molly Conger and this is weird, little guys.

969
00:57:03,640 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 3: Now.

970
00:57:03,760 --> 00:57:06,320
Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Frank was making friends

971
00:57:06,320 --> 00:57:09,440
Speaker 1: in prison. His new friend in nineteen seventy eight was

972
00:57:09,480 --> 00:57:12,120
Speaker 1: Christopher Boyce, who had just been convicted of espionage for

973
00:57:12,160 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 1: selling documents he stole from his job as a CIA

974
00:57:14,480 --> 00:57:18,200
Speaker 1: contractor to the Soviets, and then he escaped from prison.

975
00:57:19,720 --> 00:57:21,560
Speaker 1: Whether or not Frank was still in custody on the

976
00:57:21,640 --> 00:57:25,000
Speaker 1: day Christopher boyce escape from prison is surprisingly hard to

977
00:57:25,040 --> 00:57:28,560
Speaker 1: pin down. Several newspaper articles about Frank's role in the

978
00:57:28,640 --> 00:57:30,960
Speaker 1: ensuing manhunt for the missing spy put his release a

979
00:57:30,960 --> 00:57:34,440
Speaker 1: month before the escape, but others put it a month after.

980
00:57:35,440 --> 00:57:38,560
Speaker 1: Seems like this detail would really matter, but no one

981
00:57:38,560 --> 00:57:42,400
Speaker 1: seemed very concerned about it. In nineteen eighty, newspapers that

982
00:57:42,400 --> 00:57:44,720
Speaker 1: appeared to be quoting the same unnamed source from the

983
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,120
Speaker 1: US Marshals published conflicting stories, with some saying Frank flew

984
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 1: to South Africa shortly before Boyce's escape, and others putting

985
00:57:51,800 --> 00:57:55,560
Speaker 1: that trip slightly after the escape, although both of these

986
00:57:55,640 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 1: articles say it was exactly twenty three days before or after.

987
00:58:00,800 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 1: But in my frustrated search through forty year old newspapers

988
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 1: trying to figure out which prison Frank was calling home

989
00:58:05,680 --> 00:58:11,640
Speaker 1: that year, I found another surprise, another stabbing shortly after

990
00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:13,680
Speaker 1: Frank was transferred to a state prison in Maine in

991
00:58:13,760 --> 00:58:16,200
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight, he stabbed another inmate in the chest

992
00:58:16,280 --> 00:58:19,720
Speaker 1: during an argument in the prison library. And again we

993
00:58:19,800 --> 00:58:22,040
Speaker 1: have this problem that keeps coming up in Frank's life.

994
00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:25,640
Speaker 1: He loves to talk to reporters and he loves to lie.

995
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:29,520
Speaker 1: It's the seventies. These reporters don't have the Internet, they

996
00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:32,440
Speaker 1: don't have access to electronic court records. So a lot

997
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:35,440
Speaker 1: of Frank's lies get published. When he files a lawsuit

998
00:58:35,480 --> 00:58:37,680
Speaker 1: against the prison warden in Maine about the conditions in

999
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,120
Speaker 1: solitary confinement, newspapers publish his claim that he was placed

1000
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:44,400
Speaker 1: in solitary for a stabbing he'd been suspected of, but

1001
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:49,800
Speaker 1: he says the investigation cleared him. A local newspaper in Bangor, Maine, however,

1002
00:58:49,880 --> 00:58:52,280
Speaker 1: had a reporter in the courtroom when he entered a

1003
00:58:52,280 --> 00:58:56,480
Speaker 1: guilty plea to that stabbing. But regardless of whether he

1004
00:58:56,520 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: got out in December of seventy nine or February of

1005
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, we know Frank flew to South Africa soon

1006
00:59:02,920 --> 00:59:05,640
Speaker 1: after he got out, and that he stayed there for

1007
00:59:05,680 --> 00:59:10,160
Speaker 1: a couple of months. The story of Christopher Boyce's nineteen

1008
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:14,360
Speaker 1: months on The Lamb is long and strange. Sean Penn

1009
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:17,320
Speaker 1: plays Boyce's friend, the cocaine dealer Dalton Lee in the

1010
00:59:17,400 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five film adaptation of the book The Falcon

1011
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:23,280
Speaker 1: and the Snowman about the entire affair. I didn't watch it.

1012
00:59:23,560 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 1: There's only so much I can do. But remember, this

1013
00:59:26,440 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 1: is the Cold War. A missing Soviet spy is a

1014
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 1: pretty big pr problem for the United States government. There

1015
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:36,720
Speaker 1: was speculation that the KGB had helped him escape. Boyce

1016
00:59:36,800 --> 00:59:38,880
Speaker 1: himself called a reporter from a payphone a few months

1017
00:59:38,920 --> 00:59:41,200
Speaker 1: after the escape and laughed about the idea that he'd

1018
00:59:41,200 --> 00:59:44,400
Speaker 1: had foreign assistance. He says, he just climbed the fence

1019
00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:48,280
Speaker 1: and walked out. The task force focused on finding boys

1020
00:59:48,480 --> 00:59:52,160
Speaker 1: believed all along that he'd never actually left California, and

1021
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:54,760
Speaker 1: they weren't too far off. He was in Idaho the

1022
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:58,040
Speaker 1: whole time, but a lot of resources ended up getting

1023
00:59:58,080 --> 01:00:01,760
Speaker 1: expended pursuing a false lead planted by our friend Frank.

1024
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: Now I can't prove Frank sent all of these letters himself.

1025
01:00:07,000 --> 01:00:09,680
Speaker 1: I can't even find contemporane his reporting where anyone ever

1026
01:00:09,720 --> 01:00:14,080
Speaker 1: outright said that they believed Frank sent these letters, and

1027
01:00:14,160 --> 01:00:16,360
Speaker 1: he was never charged in connection with his meddling in

1028
01:00:16,400 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: this investigation. But just a few weeks after Boyce went missing,

1029
01:00:20,120 --> 01:00:23,840
Speaker 1: the United States ambassador in South Africa got a letter

1030
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:28,000
Speaker 1: the postmark indicated that had been mailed from within South Africa,

1031
01:00:28,600 --> 01:00:31,800
Speaker 1: and the letter said a known mercenary named shell Hammer

1032
01:00:32,080 --> 01:00:35,720
Speaker 1: had assisted the convicted American spy Christopher Boyce in entering

1033
01:00:35,760 --> 01:00:37,640
Speaker 1: South Africa by way of.

1034
01:00:37,640 --> 01:00:38,840
Speaker 2: A fake passport.

1035
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:43,400
Speaker 1: Now who do we know with a history of forging passports,

1036
01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:47,320
Speaker 1: of mailing anonymous letters to officials in Southern Africa implicating

1037
01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:51,400
Speaker 1: himself in crimes and using the pseudonym shell Hammer.

1038
01:00:52,320 --> 01:00:53,440
Speaker 2: And he absolutely knew.

1039
01:00:53,280 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 1: The FEDS would tie him to that alias because it

1040
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:56,880
Speaker 1: was the one he had used in those classified ads

1041
01:00:56,920 --> 01:00:58,760
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six that put him in prison for

1042
01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:02,840
Speaker 1: mail fraud. And Frank was in South Africa in February

1043
01:01:02,880 --> 01:01:06,080
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty when that letter was mailed. It seems

1044
01:01:06,080 --> 01:01:09,520
Speaker 1: he wanted the authorities to know he was involved. Why

1045
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 1: else would he write his own pseudonym into the story.

1046
01:01:12,840 --> 01:01:16,120
Speaker 1: So Feds quickly turned their attention to Frank. They placed

1047
01:01:16,120 --> 01:01:19,640
Speaker 1: a tracking beacon on his car, They followed him for months,

1048
01:01:20,360 --> 01:01:24,280
Speaker 1: and he probably knew he was being followed. They followed

1049
01:01:24,360 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 1: him from his home in New Jersey all the way

1050
01:01:25,880 --> 01:01:29,040
Speaker 1: out to California, and from a California hotel, he made

1051
01:01:29,040 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 1: several phone calls to an apartment in Hermosa Beach, and

1052
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:35,280
Speaker 1: when they searched that apartment they found it abandoned. But

1053
01:01:35,320 --> 01:01:38,160
Speaker 1: they found several letters that Frank had sent to a

1054
01:01:38,200 --> 01:01:41,360
Speaker 1: third man, another friend of theirs, from prison, one of

1055
01:01:41,360 --> 01:01:44,560
Speaker 1: which read, somehow they discovered that I helped him get

1056
01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:48,200
Speaker 1: into South Africa. I suspect an informer has been at work,

1057
01:01:49,480 --> 01:01:53,280
Speaker 1: but there was no informer. Frank wanted them to find

1058
01:01:53,280 --> 01:01:56,080
Speaker 1: those letters, and Boyce was never in South Africa. The

1059
01:01:56,120 --> 01:01:58,560
Speaker 1: only reason anyone thought Boyce might be in South Africa

1060
01:01:58,640 --> 01:02:01,080
Speaker 1: is because Frank was planting false clues all over the

1061
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:04,760
Speaker 1: world to point them as far away as possible from

1062
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:09,439
Speaker 1: a little hunting cabin in the mountains of Idaho. US

1063
01:02:09,480 --> 01:02:13,360
Speaker 1: Marshalls eventually got frustrated following Frank around. A federal prosecutor

1064
01:02:13,400 --> 01:02:16,240
Speaker 1: would actually say an open court that Frank's arrest in

1065
01:02:16,320 --> 01:02:19,000
Speaker 1: July of nineteen eighty one was specifically intended to give

1066
01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:21,720
Speaker 1: them leverage to make him cooperate in the Boy's case.

1067
01:02:22,240 --> 01:02:24,520
Speaker 1: It seemed like he knew something and they wanted to

1068
01:02:24,520 --> 01:02:28,280
Speaker 1: know what it was. As a felon, Frank wasn't allowed

1069
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:32,760
Speaker 1: to have any guns, and of course Frank had guns.

1070
01:02:33,120 --> 01:02:36,000
Speaker 1: He did find one newspaper article that wrapped a sort

1071
01:02:36,040 --> 01:02:39,760
Speaker 1: of suspicious sounding hint that they only picked Frank up

1072
01:02:39,880 --> 01:02:43,480
Speaker 1: for that gun charge because of an anonymous tip, so

1073
01:02:43,560 --> 01:02:46,240
Speaker 1: maybe that was him too. But they picked him up

1074
01:02:46,240 --> 01:02:48,600
Speaker 1: in New Jersey at the end of July, and he

1075
01:02:48,720 --> 01:02:52,040
Speaker 1: pretended to be very cooperative, telling them that he actually

1076
01:02:52,080 --> 01:02:54,200
Speaker 1: had some documents that would leave them straight to boys

1077
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:57,920
Speaker 1: and he would happily show them to them. He voluntarily

1078
01:02:57,920 --> 01:03:00,400
Speaker 1: turned over the key to the bank deposit box keeping

1079
01:03:00,400 --> 01:03:03,840
Speaker 1: them in, and inside they found several letters to Frank

1080
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:07,640
Speaker 1: that had been mailed from South Africa. Sounds like more

1081
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:10,960
Speaker 1: red herrings planted by Frank. He'd flown to South Africa

1082
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:12,520
Speaker 1: several times in the year and a half since his

1083
01:03:12,640 --> 01:03:16,920
Speaker 1: release and was probably mailing himself these letters on those visits.

1084
01:03:18,120 --> 01:03:20,200
Speaker 1: So now in August of nineteen eighty one, it seems

1085
01:03:20,240 --> 01:03:23,200
Speaker 1: like there could be some evidence that Boyce really was

1086
01:03:23,240 --> 01:03:27,240
Speaker 1: in South Africa. Frank says he was promised placement in

1087
01:03:27,280 --> 01:03:30,520
Speaker 1: the Witness Protection Program for his help. And maybe they

1088
01:03:30,560 --> 01:03:33,200
Speaker 1: did make that promise if he really could help them

1089
01:03:33,240 --> 01:03:37,600
Speaker 1: recover their missing spy, that's a reasonable enough deal. And

1090
01:03:37,880 --> 01:03:41,240
Speaker 1: just a few weeks after all of Frank's help, Boyce

1091
01:03:41,360 --> 01:03:45,040
Speaker 1: was recaptured, but it wasn't due in any part to

1092
01:03:45,120 --> 01:03:48,439
Speaker 1: Frank's information. During his year and a half on the run,

1093
01:03:48,560 --> 01:03:51,880
Speaker 1: Boyce obviously couldn't get a job, so he made money

1094
01:03:51,960 --> 01:03:52,440
Speaker 1: the old.

1095
01:03:52,240 --> 01:03:55,800
Speaker 2: Fashioned way bank robbery. He kept it.

1096
01:03:55,760 --> 01:03:58,440
Speaker 1: Pretty small time, nothing flashy where you get into the vault,

1097
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:01,000
Speaker 1: just little stick up two thousand at a time from

1098
01:04:01,040 --> 01:04:04,480
Speaker 1: the teller. He's tied to at least seventeen bank robberies

1099
01:04:04,480 --> 01:04:07,160
Speaker 1: in Idaho and Washington State during that time, eventually teaming

1100
01:04:07,240 --> 01:04:10,040
Speaker 1: up with a couple of brothers from Idaho. And it

1101
01:04:10,120 --> 01:04:12,640
Speaker 1: was one of those men who turned boys in for

1102
01:04:12,680 --> 01:04:17,400
Speaker 1: the reward money no honor among thieves, I guess. Voyce

1103
01:04:17,520 --> 01:04:20,760
Speaker 1: was taken back into custody on August twenty first, nineteen

1104
01:04:20,800 --> 01:04:24,680
Speaker 1: eighty one, and he wasn't in South Africa.

1105
01:04:24,880 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 5: Nationwide flight ended for Christopher Boys here at the pit

1106
01:04:27,800 --> 01:04:29,960
Speaker 5: stop drive in at Port Angelus, Washington.

1107
01:04:30,200 --> 01:04:32,680
Speaker 3: He was eating a cheeseburger and onion rings when eight

1108
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 3: federal agents jumped him. Voice was apparently living a triple.

1109
01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:45,160
Speaker 1: Life, so Frank lyed. Obviously, he lied pretty egregiously. He

1110
01:04:45,400 --> 01:04:48,480
Speaker 1: falsified documents, He led US Marshalls and the CIA on

1111
01:04:48,520 --> 01:04:52,520
Speaker 1: an international goose chase, and maybe that's why he never

1112
01:04:52,600 --> 01:04:53,440
Speaker 1: got charged for it.

1113
01:04:54,120 --> 01:04:57,960
Speaker 2: That's pretty embarrassing to put on the record. But they

1114
01:04:57,960 --> 01:04:59,479
Speaker 2: did still have that gun charge.

1115
01:04:59,480 --> 01:05:02,240
Speaker 1: They picked him up on to use his leverage, so

1116
01:05:02,360 --> 01:05:05,120
Speaker 1: they said a sentencing date, but Frank didn't show up.

1117
01:05:06,080 --> 01:05:09,440
Speaker 1: He was trying to skip the country again. Remember back

1118
01:05:09,440 --> 01:05:11,080
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six he got all the way to

1119
01:05:11,120 --> 01:05:13,680
Speaker 1: South Africa after skipping his sentencing date for mail fraud.

1120
01:05:14,760 --> 01:05:16,560
Speaker 1: But this time he was picked up just a few

1121
01:05:16,600 --> 01:05:19,160
Speaker 1: days after he missed court when a motel clerk in Montvale,

1122
01:05:19,160 --> 01:05:22,760
Speaker 1: New Jersey recognized him. When he was finally dragged in

1123
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 1: for sentencing, the government said they hoped Frank was going

1124
01:05:25,360 --> 01:05:26,840
Speaker 1: to be able to help them in the boy's case,

1125
01:05:26,840 --> 01:05:30,720
Speaker 1: but nothing he said was of any use. Frank said

1126
01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:32,360
Speaker 1: he had no choice but to flee the country and

1127
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:34,520
Speaker 1: start a new life on a cattle ranch in Australia

1128
01:05:34,560 --> 01:05:37,000
Speaker 1: with his wife because the government had renegged on their

1129
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:39,920
Speaker 1: deal to put him in witness protection. I have to

1130
01:05:39,960 --> 01:05:42,360
Speaker 1: imagine there was some bickering back and forth between an

1131
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:45,600
Speaker 1: indignant Frank and an exasperated federal prosecutor, because in the end,

1132
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:49,040
Speaker 1: Judge H. Curtis Mener said, I have neither the time

1133
01:05:49,360 --> 01:05:51,800
Speaker 1: nor the inclination to unravel all of the mysteries in

1134
01:05:51,840 --> 01:05:54,960
Speaker 1: this case. However, they'd all ended up in his courtroom.

1135
01:05:55,000 --> 01:05:57,760
Speaker 1: Whatever the convoluted backstory is here, this is a sentencing

1136
01:05:58,120 --> 01:06:00,720
Speaker 1: or illegal possession of a firearm, and that's really all

1137
01:06:00,720 --> 01:06:03,800
Speaker 1: the judge can do that day, so he sentenced Frank

1138
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:08,760
Speaker 1: to four years. Judge Meaner said Frank was an explosive

1139
01:06:08,880 --> 01:06:12,720
Speaker 1: type of individual and that he was dangerous and mentally sick,

1140
01:06:13,480 --> 01:06:15,800
Speaker 1: and he urged Frank to take advantage of the opportunity

1141
01:06:15,800 --> 01:06:18,160
Speaker 1: to get psychiatric help while he was in prison this time.

1142
01:06:19,560 --> 01:06:24,040
Speaker 1: And yes, I did say wife. When I first started

1143
01:06:24,040 --> 01:06:27,560
Speaker 1: poking around trying to build my biographical backstory, to sort

1144
01:06:27,560 --> 01:06:31,000
Speaker 1: of sketch out a skeleton of this man's life, I

1145
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:33,360
Speaker 1: found a new Jersey state record for a marriage in

1146
01:06:33,400 --> 01:06:36,680
Speaker 1: August nineteen eighty one between A Frank A. Sweeney and

1147
01:06:36,760 --> 01:06:41,280
Speaker 1: Adina M. Madison in Bergen, county. There are other men

1148
01:06:41,360 --> 01:06:44,920
Speaker 1: named Frank Sweeney, obviously, but it was a middle initial

1149
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:47,400
Speaker 1: match and it's the right county, and it was one

1150
01:06:47,440 --> 01:06:50,840
Speaker 1: of the rare months that Frank wasn't in prison. But

1151
01:06:50,920 --> 01:06:55,000
Speaker 1: it didn't seem right, so I set it aside. But

1152
01:06:55,080 --> 01:06:57,480
Speaker 1: this offhand mention at his sentencing hearing about a wife,

1153
01:06:57,640 --> 01:06:58,040
Speaker 1: sent me.

1154
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:00,920
Speaker 2: Back to it. It is him.

1155
01:07:01,320 --> 01:07:02,880
Speaker 1: After the FEDS picked him up at the end of

1156
01:07:02,960 --> 01:07:05,120
Speaker 1: July nineteen eighty one on that gun charge, he was

1157
01:07:05,200 --> 01:07:07,840
Speaker 1: released from custody. He was cooperating. He took them to

1158
01:07:07,840 --> 01:07:09,600
Speaker 1: the bank to look at his fake evidence. All that,

1159
01:07:10,760 --> 01:07:15,520
Speaker 1: and sometime that month he got married. I have no

1160
01:07:15,600 --> 01:07:18,000
Speaker 1: idea how they met, or where she came from, or

1161
01:07:18,040 --> 01:07:19,600
Speaker 1: what she thought she was going to get out of

1162
01:07:19,600 --> 01:07:21,880
Speaker 1: any of this, or if she knew Frank was planning

1163
01:07:21,920 --> 01:07:25,360
Speaker 1: on entering witness protection that month, or what on earth

1164
01:07:25,480 --> 01:07:28,640
Speaker 1: she saw in this man. But I do know how

1165
01:07:28,680 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 1: the marriage ended. Frank went back to prison that very

1166
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:35,920
Speaker 1: same year, so they didn't have much time together. I

1167
01:07:36,000 --> 01:07:38,320
Speaker 1: don't know where Diana was while Frank was away, But

1168
01:07:38,720 --> 01:07:41,320
Speaker 1: by nineteen eighty five, according to a decision by the

1169
01:07:41,360 --> 01:07:44,560
Speaker 1: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Dana was living in Texas

1170
01:07:44,560 --> 01:07:47,960
Speaker 1: with her new boyfriend, Danny Lee Strong. They couldn't have

1171
01:07:47,960 --> 01:07:50,240
Speaker 1: known each other very long before moving in together, because

1172
01:07:50,600 --> 01:07:52,760
Speaker 1: Strong had only just gotten out of prison again for

1173
01:07:52,840 --> 01:07:54,800
Speaker 1: another and a string of pretty run of the mill

1174
01:07:54,920 --> 01:07:58,960
Speaker 1: robbery and fraud charges, and they didn't stay together long

1175
01:07:59,080 --> 01:08:01,760
Speaker 1: before they were arrested for murdering a man Strong said

1176
01:08:01,800 --> 01:08:05,600
Speaker 1: made a pass at Deanna. She was ultimately only convicted

1177
01:08:05,600 --> 01:08:08,000
Speaker 1: of stealing the victim's car, which they fled the scene in,

1178
01:08:08,080 --> 01:08:10,560
Speaker 1: but Strong got ninety nine years for the brutal beating

1179
01:08:10,600 --> 01:08:15,240
Speaker 1: and asphyxiation of Robert Eugene Thomas. Frank doesn't really factor

1180
01:08:15,280 --> 01:08:17,760
Speaker 1: into this story. He's in prison in another state this

1181
01:08:17,800 --> 01:08:20,360
Speaker 1: whole time, but his name appears in a footnote of

1182
01:08:20,360 --> 01:08:24,880
Speaker 1: an appeals court decision upholding Strong's conviction. Strong had sent

1183
01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:27,400
Speaker 1: Frank a letter after finding out that Deanna was planning

1184
01:08:27,400 --> 01:08:31,160
Speaker 1: to testify against him for the murder. I can't imagine

1185
01:08:31,160 --> 01:08:33,519
Speaker 1: what you write in a letter to your girlfriend's husband

1186
01:08:33,560 --> 01:08:36,400
Speaker 1: about a situation like this. But all that to say,

1187
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:39,479
Speaker 1: Frank really did have a wife that he planned to

1188
01:08:39,479 --> 01:08:42,320
Speaker 1: start a new life with in Australia, but she ended

1189
01:08:42,400 --> 01:08:44,400
Speaker 1: up watching her boyfriend choke Aman to death in an

1190
01:08:44,439 --> 01:08:53,639
Speaker 1: apartment in Fort Worth Instead. On January ninth, nineteen eighty two,

1191
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:56,639
Speaker 1: the UVA men's basketball team lost to the tar Heels

1192
01:08:56,640 --> 01:08:59,839
Speaker 1: in a close game, sixty to sixty five at UNC's

1193
01:08:59,880 --> 01:09:03,320
Speaker 1: car our. Michael Arena, I'm not a basketball fan, and

1194
01:09:03,800 --> 01:09:06,439
Speaker 1: I wasn't born then, but I guess it was an

1195
01:09:06,439 --> 01:09:09,200
Speaker 1: exciting game. U and C had knocked UVA out of

1196
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:09,920
Speaker 1: the Final.

1197
01:09:09,640 --> 01:09:10,519
Speaker 2: Four the year before.

1198
01:09:11,400 --> 01:09:14,080
Speaker 1: But Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed neo Nazi who'd recently

1199
01:09:14,120 --> 01:09:16,599
Speaker 1: been handed his first couple of life sentences for two

1200
01:09:16,680 --> 01:09:21,360
Speaker 1: of his many murders, didn't care much for basketball. He

1201
01:09:21,479 --> 01:09:23,160
Speaker 1: was in the wreck room at the Medical Center for

1202
01:09:23,200 --> 01:09:26,040
Speaker 1: Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, and he was trying to

1203
01:09:26,040 --> 01:09:29,840
Speaker 1: watch American bandstand. According to frank whose time at the

1204
01:09:29,840 --> 01:09:32,360
Speaker 1: Springfield prison overlapped with Franklins for a few weeks in

1205
01:09:32,439 --> 01:09:34,880
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one until Franklin's transfer at the end of

1206
01:09:34,920 --> 01:09:39,200
Speaker 1: January nineteen eighty two, the serial killer became enraged when

1207
01:09:39,240 --> 01:09:43,599
Speaker 1: a black prison guard changed the channel. Later that year,

1208
01:09:43,680 --> 01:09:47,160
Speaker 1: Joseph Paul Franklin was back in court. He'd spent years

1209
01:09:47,200 --> 01:09:49,960
Speaker 1: traveling the country robbing banks and murdering young black men

1210
01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:52,920
Speaker 1: and interracial couples, so it would take years to sort out.

1211
01:09:52,760 --> 01:09:54,000
Speaker 2: What to do with him.

1212
01:09:54,520 --> 01:09:57,280
Speaker 1: This time, he was on trial for the unsuccessful assassination

1213
01:09:57,320 --> 01:10:00,840
Speaker 1: attempt on civil rights activist s Vernon Jordan. On May

1214
01:10:00,840 --> 01:10:03,400
Speaker 1: twenty ninth, nineteen eighty, the Fort Wayne, Indiana chapter of

1215
01:10:03,439 --> 01:10:05,840
Speaker 1: the National Urban League was hosting a banquet in honor

1216
01:10:05,840 --> 01:10:08,280
Speaker 1: of a visit from National Urban League President Vernon Jordan

1217
01:10:09,280 --> 01:10:11,439
Speaker 1: when a volunteer dropped him off at his hotel later

1218
01:10:11,479 --> 01:10:14,479
Speaker 1: that evening, a single bullet from a thirty six rifle

1219
01:10:14,520 --> 01:10:19,160
Speaker 1: tore through his back. He survived, but it's hard to

1220
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:21,200
Speaker 1: build a case against a drifter sniper.

1221
01:10:21,640 --> 01:10:23,599
Speaker 2: Nobody saw him.

1222
01:10:24,120 --> 01:10:28,240
Speaker 1: The investigators had some handwriting analysis on a motel registration card,

1223
01:10:28,640 --> 01:10:31,439
Speaker 1: testimony from a grocery store clerk who identified Franklin as

1224
01:10:31,479 --> 01:10:34,040
Speaker 1: a man he'd had a strange conversation with, and a

1225
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:37,200
Speaker 1: general idea that the crime fit Franklin's pattern, but it

1226
01:10:37,240 --> 01:10:41,639
Speaker 1: was a bit thin, and then came frank Oh, frank

1227
01:10:41,720 --> 01:10:45,000
Speaker 1: loves to talk, he loves to be helpful. He's still

1228
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:47,639
Speaker 1: in prison on that gun charge, but he told federal

1229
01:10:47,680 --> 01:10:49,760
Speaker 1: authorities that in the brief couple of weeks he'd been

1230
01:10:49,760 --> 01:10:52,160
Speaker 1: on the same cell block as Franklin. They chatted a

1231
01:10:52,200 --> 01:10:55,000
Speaker 1: few times, and Franklin had confessed to him on several

1232
01:10:55,000 --> 01:11:00,679
Speaker 1: occasions about shooting Vernon Jordan. On the stand, frank testified

1233
01:11:00,720 --> 01:11:02,760
Speaker 1: about that evening in January when the guard changed the

1234
01:11:02,800 --> 01:11:06,439
Speaker 1: channel to the basketball game, and it's a pretty good detail.

1235
01:11:06,520 --> 01:11:09,759
Speaker 1: Frank was very specific that it was a Uva UNC game,

1236
01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:12,640
Speaker 1: though he couldn't recall the date. They were only on

1237
01:11:12,680 --> 01:11:15,160
Speaker 1: that cell block together for a few weeks, and there

1238
01:11:15,280 --> 01:11:18,000
Speaker 1: was in fact a Uva UNC basketball game during that

1239
01:11:18,040 --> 01:11:22,000
Speaker 1: time period that would have been on television. He testified

1240
01:11:22,000 --> 01:11:24,719
Speaker 1: that Franklin was furious about the incident and spent days

1241
01:11:24,760 --> 01:11:27,680
Speaker 1: fuming about it. The two inmates were walking together in

1242
01:11:27,720 --> 01:11:30,599
Speaker 1: the exercise area a few days later when Franklin spotted

1243
01:11:30,640 --> 01:11:32,960
Speaker 1: that same guard again and turned to frank and said,

1244
01:11:33,560 --> 01:11:35,519
Speaker 1: I'd like to blow him away, like I shot that

1245
01:11:35,880 --> 01:11:37,720
Speaker 1: and were big wig in Indiana.

1246
01:11:39,360 --> 01:11:39,880
Speaker 2: Frank says.

1247
01:11:39,920 --> 01:11:43,519
Speaker 1: He also lamented that Jordan just wouldn't die after being shot,

1248
01:11:43,560 --> 01:11:46,200
Speaker 1: and that he was sorry I didn't shoot that white

1249
01:11:46,240 --> 01:11:49,240
Speaker 1: slut first, referring to the white woman who'd given Jordan

1250
01:11:49,240 --> 01:11:53,000
Speaker 1: a ride that night. Frank was one of three jail

1251
01:11:53,000 --> 01:11:55,800
Speaker 1: house informants the government put on during that trial, all

1252
01:11:55,840 --> 01:11:57,960
Speaker 1: men who'd been in jail with Franklin, and all of

1253
01:11:57,960 --> 01:12:00,320
Speaker 1: whom said Franklin had admitted to various aspect of the

1254
01:12:00,360 --> 01:12:05,360
Speaker 1: crime and casual conversation. Josephaul Franklin was actually acquitted at

1255
01:12:05,439 --> 01:12:09,240
Speaker 1: that federal trial. Jurors said they believed Franklin shot Jordan,

1256
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:11,680
Speaker 1: but they were hung up on the wording of the indictment,

1257
01:12:11,720 --> 01:12:14,240
Speaker 1: which specifically charged him with the shooting as a violation

1258
01:12:14,320 --> 01:12:17,920
Speaker 1: of Jordan's civil rights. Years later, on death row for

1259
01:12:17,960 --> 01:12:21,080
Speaker 1: a variety of other murders, Franklin did confess to shooting

1260
01:12:21,160 --> 01:12:24,840
Speaker 1: Vernon Jordan when the trial was over, though jurors who

1261
01:12:24,840 --> 01:12:27,360
Speaker 1: spoke to the press said they'd only believed one of

1262
01:12:27,400 --> 01:12:33,280
Speaker 1: the three jailhouse informants who testified frank On cross examination,

1263
01:12:33,400 --> 01:12:35,720
Speaker 1: frank Sweeney seemed surprised to learn that the other two

1264
01:12:35,720 --> 01:12:38,320
Speaker 1: men had been paid thousands of dollars for their cooperation.

1265
01:12:39,280 --> 01:12:42,920
Speaker 1: He wasn't getting paid, but he wasn't upset. He didn't

1266
01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:45,879
Speaker 1: need the money. He'd inherited a quarter a million dollars,

1267
01:12:46,120 --> 01:12:48,559
Speaker 1: which would be about a million dollars today. When his

1268
01:12:48,640 --> 01:12:54,200
Speaker 1: parents died, all he wanted was witness protection, then a

1269
01:12:54,200 --> 01:12:58,200
Speaker 1: positive letter to the New Jersey Parole Board. Just like

1270
01:12:58,240 --> 01:13:01,160
Speaker 1: in the boy's case, he very convenient had some information

1271
01:13:01,200 --> 01:13:03,840
Speaker 1: the government wanted and all he wanted in return was

1272
01:13:04,360 --> 01:13:10,680
Speaker 1: witness protection. And this time he got it, but he

1273
01:13:10,720 --> 01:13:14,000
Speaker 1: didn't get to keep it. In nineteen eighty four, Frank

1274
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:16,360
Speaker 1: filed a lawsuit against the warden of the Alabama prison

1275
01:13:16,400 --> 01:13:19,599
Speaker 1: where he was still serving his sentence on that gun charge.

1276
01:13:19,720 --> 01:13:21,880
Speaker 1: He said he was not receiving the protection afforded to

1277
01:13:21,920 --> 01:13:25,519
Speaker 1: him as a protected witness. The warden's response to the

1278
01:13:25,560 --> 01:13:29,040
Speaker 1: suit was that Frank would not stop telling people that

1279
01:13:29,120 --> 01:13:31,400
Speaker 1: he was a protected witness, which was causing a lot

1280
01:13:31,439 --> 01:13:36,200
Speaker 1: of problems. You're not supposed to do that. In court,

1281
01:13:36,240 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 1: the warden's executive assistant said that the prison was considering

1282
01:13:39,120 --> 01:13:42,280
Speaker 1: contacting in the Office of Enforcement Operations, the division of

1283
01:13:42,320 --> 01:13:46,040
Speaker 1: the DOJ that administers the witness Security program, to recommend

1284
01:13:46,080 --> 01:13:48,720
Speaker 1: his removal from the program because they believed he was

1285
01:13:48,720 --> 01:13:53,040
Speaker 1: intentionally causing problems by talking about this constantly. And it

1286
01:13:53,080 --> 01:13:55,759
Speaker 1: seems he was ultimately removed from the witness Security program

1287
01:13:55,840 --> 01:13:59,479
Speaker 1: around this time and maybe that had something to do

1288
01:13:59,560 --> 01:14:02,800
Speaker 1: with his decision to testify on behalf of Anthony Spalotro,

1289
01:14:03,400 --> 01:14:06,400
Speaker 1: the hot headed Chicago mobster who handled the family's business

1290
01:14:06,439 --> 01:14:09,920
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. It couldn't have been an attempt to

1291
01:14:09,920 --> 01:14:12,839
Speaker 1: get back in the program. He was testifying for the defense,

1292
01:14:13,880 --> 01:14:16,439
Speaker 1: But maybe he was just Spike. He wanted to get

1293
01:14:16,439 --> 01:14:22,519
Speaker 1: somebody else kicked out of the program. In nineteen eighty three,

1294
01:14:22,560 --> 01:14:24,720
Speaker 1: when he was still in prison and still considered a

1295
01:14:24,720 --> 01:14:27,720
Speaker 1: protected witness, he briefly shared a cell with another guy

1296
01:14:27,760 --> 01:14:32,800
Speaker 1: in the program. Frank Kulatta was a mobster. He was

1297
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:34,639
Speaker 1: a member of Tony Spilotro's Hole.

1298
01:14:34,439 --> 01:14:35,240
Speaker 2: In the Wall gang.

1299
01:14:36,080 --> 01:14:39,160
Speaker 1: If you've seen the nineteen ninety five Scorsese movie Casino,

1300
01:14:39,760 --> 01:14:43,800
Speaker 1: it's that quite literally. Frank Marino, the character played by

1301
01:14:43,960 --> 01:14:46,640
Speaker 1: the guy who played Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, is

1302
01:14:46,640 --> 01:14:50,519
Speaker 1: supposed to be Frank Kulatta. Joe Peshi's character, Nikki Santorro,

1303
01:14:50,720 --> 01:14:53,960
Speaker 1: is based on Tony Spilotro. Just watch the movie. It's

1304
01:14:53,960 --> 01:14:57,000
Speaker 1: all very complicated, and our friend Frank Sweeney had nothing

1305
01:14:57,040 --> 01:15:00,280
Speaker 1: to do with it. But in nineteen eighty three, the

1306
01:15:00,400 --> 01:15:02,920
Speaker 1: real life Frank Kulatta was sharing a cell with Frank

1307
01:15:02,920 --> 01:15:05,960
Speaker 1: Sweeney because they had both turned state's witness against very

1308
01:15:06,040 --> 01:15:09,840
Speaker 1: dangerous men. Frank Sweeney had just testified against a serial killer,

1309
01:15:09,880 --> 01:15:12,880
Speaker 1: and Frank Kulatta had turned on Spilotro after the FBI

1310
01:15:13,000 --> 01:15:15,479
Speaker 1: played him a recording of his friend talking about having

1311
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:20,080
Speaker 1: him killed. When Anthony Spilotrow went on trial in nineteen

1312
01:15:20,120 --> 01:15:22,760
Speaker 1: eighty six, Frank Kulatta was out of prison and in

1313
01:15:22,800 --> 01:15:27,160
Speaker 1: the program, and he was the government's star witness against Spilotro.

1314
01:15:28,240 --> 01:15:30,559
Speaker 1: Frank Sweeney was finally out of prison again in home

1315
01:15:30,600 --> 01:15:32,200
Speaker 1: in New Jersey when he read in the paper that

1316
01:15:32,320 --> 01:15:36,120
Speaker 1: Kulatta was going to be testifying. According to Frank, he

1317
01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:39,599
Speaker 1: felt compelled to contact Spilotro's defense attorney because when they

1318
01:15:39,600 --> 01:15:44,400
Speaker 1: were cell mates, Culotta would often brag about committing perjury.

1319
01:15:45,280 --> 01:15:47,439
Speaker 1: So the defense flew Frank out to Las Vegas and

1320
01:15:47,800 --> 01:15:51,080
Speaker 1: put him on the stand. He claimed that after one

1321
01:15:51,120 --> 01:15:53,639
Speaker 1: of Kolata's appearances in court back in nineteen eighty three,

1322
01:15:53,720 --> 01:15:56,519
Speaker 1: he came back to their shared cell and bragged, Frankie,

1323
01:15:56,560 --> 01:15:58,720
Speaker 1: I'd just put another one away. You've heard of the

1324
01:15:58,760 --> 01:16:05,280
Speaker 1: traveling circus. I'm the original traveling perjurer. On cross examination,

1325
01:16:05,400 --> 01:16:07,639
Speaker 1: Frank Sweeney admitted that when he'd been in the witness

1326
01:16:07,680 --> 01:16:11,759
Speaker 1: Protection program, he had on several occasions threatened and even

1327
01:16:11,880 --> 01:16:15,160
Speaker 1: faked suicide attempts to get what he wanted out of

1328
01:16:15,160 --> 01:16:19,200
Speaker 1: federal prosecutors. I wish I had more information on that.

1329
01:16:19,200 --> 01:16:22,559
Speaker 1: That is incredibly strange behavior, and it does actually happen

1330
01:16:22,560 --> 01:16:26,640
Speaker 1: again later in the end, though his testimony in that

1331
01:16:26,640 --> 01:16:29,960
Speaker 1: mob trial is just a strange little footnote, his third

1332
01:16:29,960 --> 01:16:33,960
Speaker 1: brush with the witness protection program. His testimony didn't matter much.

1333
01:16:34,640 --> 01:16:37,559
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone believed it, and the case ended

1334
01:16:37,600 --> 01:16:41,000
Speaker 1: in a mistrial over allegations of jury tampering, and Anthony

1335
01:16:41,000 --> 01:16:44,960
Speaker 1: Spilotro went missing before they could retry the case. The

1336
01:16:44,960 --> 01:16:47,000
Speaker 1: mobster and his brother were later found buried in a

1337
01:16:47,040 --> 01:16:51,360
Speaker 1: cornfield in Indiana. Frank Kulatta stayed in the witness Protection

1338
01:16:51,439 --> 01:16:54,080
Speaker 1: program for years, and Scorsese hired him as an onset

1339
01:16:54,120 --> 01:16:57,640
Speaker 1: adviser when he shot Casino. Culotta died of COVID in

1340
01:16:57,640 --> 01:17:02,519
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. In nineteen eighty nine, Frank went back to

1341
01:17:02,560 --> 01:17:07,599
Speaker 1: prison for mail fraud again. The court record is too

1342
01:17:07,640 --> 01:17:10,120
Speaker 1: old to get any documents without haggling with an archivist,

1343
01:17:10,160 --> 01:17:12,840
Speaker 1: but the docket sheet does say that. In addition to

1344
01:17:12,920 --> 01:17:16,040
Speaker 1: another fifty seven months in prison, the judge also banned

1345
01:17:16,080 --> 01:17:20,400
Speaker 1: Frank from ever offering anything for sale by mail. So

1346
01:17:20,600 --> 01:17:22,960
Speaker 1: at first I assumed he was pulling the same scam

1347
01:17:23,000 --> 01:17:25,759
Speaker 1: he ran in nineteen seventy six, where he placed ads

1348
01:17:25,760 --> 01:17:28,120
Speaker 1: for guns he didn't actually have and then ghosted would

1349
01:17:28,160 --> 01:17:31,120
Speaker 1: be buyers after they sent him the money. But it's

1350
01:17:31,840 --> 01:17:32,720
Speaker 1: much weirder than that.

1351
01:17:33,560 --> 01:17:35,840
Speaker 2: I wish it was guns. It wasn't guns. This time.

1352
01:17:37,120 --> 01:17:39,160
Speaker 2: He was running what one journalist called.

1353
01:17:39,000 --> 01:17:44,000
Speaker 1: A cat scam. He'd cut the tails off regular house

1354
01:17:44,040 --> 01:17:48,280
Speaker 1: cats and then run ads offering them as exotic purebred

1355
01:17:48,400 --> 01:17:52,519
Speaker 1: cats for three hundred dollars. If he really was as

1356
01:17:52,560 --> 01:17:55,840
Speaker 1: independently wealthy off his inheritance as he claimed, did he

1357
01:17:55,920 --> 01:17:59,880
Speaker 1: really need three hundred dollars for a mutilated cat? Maybe

1358
01:17:59,880 --> 01:18:03,879
Speaker 1: he was just addicted to mail fraud. As for the cats,

1359
01:18:04,720 --> 01:18:07,040
Speaker 1: one of the earliest mentions I could find of Frank

1360
01:18:07,080 --> 01:18:10,320
Speaker 1: in the newspaper archives was a nineteen fifty eight article

1361
01:18:10,840 --> 01:18:14,680
Speaker 1: about the embalmed cat he got for his fifteenth birthday.

1362
01:18:15,479 --> 01:18:18,120
Speaker 1: He was looking forward to dissecting it and adding it

1363
01:18:18,120 --> 01:18:21,160
Speaker 1: to his collection of oddities that already included a cat skeleton.

1364
01:18:22,280 --> 01:18:26,000
Speaker 1: So I hope all his fraudulent cats found happy homes,

1365
01:18:26,040 --> 01:18:28,960
Speaker 1: even if their buyers were unhappy about losing three hundred dollars.

1366
01:18:30,520 --> 01:18:32,519
Speaker 1: But as in an appeals court decision related to a

1367
01:18:32,520 --> 01:18:35,200
Speaker 1: parole violation in this second mail fraud case, where we

1368
01:18:35,240 --> 01:18:38,839
Speaker 1: find the details of a campaign of terror against his neighbors,

1369
01:18:38,840 --> 01:18:41,880
Speaker 1: that foreshadows the events at the end of this long,

1370
01:18:42,040 --> 01:18:46,240
Speaker 1: strange tale. He was paroled in nineteen ninety two after

1371
01:18:46,240 --> 01:18:48,559
Speaker 1: serving about half of this sentence, and he was on

1372
01:18:48,680 --> 01:18:53,000
Speaker 1: probation for three years. Just days before that three year

1373
01:18:53,040 --> 01:18:55,919
Speaker 1: period ran out, he was charged with a probation violation.

1374
01:18:57,200 --> 01:18:59,960
Speaker 1: He'd been convicted in New Jersey of sending obscene materi

1375
01:19:00,040 --> 01:19:03,680
Speaker 1: curials through the mail to a minor. I know, I know,

1376
01:19:03,760 --> 01:19:05,400
Speaker 1: this show is starting to feel like a tour of

1377
01:19:05,439 --> 01:19:09,439
Speaker 1: America's weirdest sex crime guys. But to be honest, I

1378
01:19:09,720 --> 01:19:13,360
Speaker 1: don't think there is anything sexual in his motivation for

1379
01:19:13,439 --> 01:19:16,519
Speaker 1: sending porno maags to a nine year old. I know

1380
01:19:16,560 --> 01:19:20,519
Speaker 1: that doesn't sound possible, Bear with me, But after he

1381
01:19:20,560 --> 01:19:22,439
Speaker 1: got out of prison, he's living in an apartment back

1382
01:19:22,479 --> 01:19:25,600
Speaker 1: in his hometown of Tenafly, New Jersey. A family of

1383
01:19:25,640 --> 01:19:29,679
Speaker 1: Russian immigrants moves into the apartment next door. They have children.

1384
01:19:30,200 --> 01:19:33,800
Speaker 1: Children are noisy, Frank says. He asked them to keep

1385
01:19:33,800 --> 01:19:35,680
Speaker 1: it down, but the noise continued.

1386
01:19:36,840 --> 01:19:38,000
Speaker 2: In what these Second.

1387
01:19:37,720 --> 01:19:40,799
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals would later call a rather bizarre

1388
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:44,200
Speaker 1: set of circumstances, he decided to get back at these

1389
01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:47,639
Speaker 1: noisy children by engaging in a lengthy harassment campaign against

1390
01:19:47,640 --> 01:19:52,360
Speaker 1: the entire family. At least twice, he shut off their electricity.

1391
01:19:53,439 --> 01:19:56,120
Speaker 1: On multiple occasions, he filled the lock on their front

1392
01:19:56,160 --> 01:20:00,599
Speaker 1: door with staples, making it impossible to open. The family's

1393
01:20:00,640 --> 01:20:04,800
Speaker 1: mail forwarded to des Moines, Iowa. The father of these

1394
01:20:04,800 --> 01:20:08,200
Speaker 1: noisy children was a doctor. One of his colleagues received

1395
01:20:08,200 --> 01:20:11,120
Speaker 1: a letter purporting to be from an AIDS charity informing

1396
01:20:11,120 --> 01:20:13,799
Speaker 1: the recipient that the doctor, the father of those noisy children,

1397
01:20:14,240 --> 01:20:18,040
Speaker 1: had tested positive for HIV, And along that same line

1398
01:20:18,040 --> 01:20:20,000
Speaker 1: of thinking, he also sent a letter to the children's

1399
01:20:20,000 --> 01:20:22,040
Speaker 1: school informing them that the nine year old boy had

1400
01:20:22,040 --> 01:20:25,439
Speaker 1: been exposed to HIV by his father. And he sent

1401
01:20:25,520 --> 01:20:28,120
Speaker 1: letters to the Jewish community center where the family remembers,

1402
01:20:28,200 --> 01:20:30,880
Speaker 1: informing them that the entire family had been exposed to

1403
01:20:30,920 --> 01:20:35,599
Speaker 1: the virus. Remember this is nineteen ninety three. Telling people

1404
01:20:35,600 --> 01:20:38,640
Speaker 1: that this doctor has HIV could ruin his career. The

1405
01:20:38,640 --> 01:20:42,240
Speaker 1: school could call social services and they probably wouldn't be

1406
01:20:42,280 --> 01:20:44,639
Speaker 1: welcome in the sauna at the community center if people

1407
01:20:44,720 --> 01:20:49,679
Speaker 1: believed this. And in what would be his ultimate downfall here,

1408
01:20:49,880 --> 01:20:52,520
Speaker 1: he signed their nine year old son up for catalogs

1409
01:20:52,520 --> 01:20:54,200
Speaker 1: that sold pornographic materials.

1410
01:20:55,320 --> 01:20:57,719
Speaker 2: It seems like he believed that.

1411
01:20:57,600 --> 01:21:00,639
Speaker 1: The child's father would get the mail, which apparently wasn't

1412
01:21:00,640 --> 01:21:04,559
Speaker 1: going to Iowa anymore see the catalog believe his son

1413
01:21:04,600 --> 01:21:07,320
Speaker 1: had signed up for it and would punish the boy,

1414
01:21:08,280 --> 01:21:11,519
Speaker 1: and if the boy was grounded, he wouldn't be so noisy.

1415
01:21:12,760 --> 01:21:15,439
Speaker 1: But it backfired and Frank was discovered as the culprit.

1416
01:21:16,000 --> 01:21:18,680
Speaker 1: Police searched his apartment and found the typewriter he'd used

1417
01:21:18,680 --> 01:21:21,760
Speaker 1: to write all the letters, and he quickly confessed. He

1418
01:21:21,840 --> 01:21:23,880
Speaker 1: got four months in jail in New Jersey for sending

1419
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:26,799
Speaker 1: him scene materials to a child, but the parole violation

1420
01:21:26,920 --> 01:21:30,640
Speaker 1: landed him back in federal prison for another year. And

1421
01:21:30,720 --> 01:21:32,599
Speaker 1: maybe this trip back to prison gave him a chance

1422
01:21:32,640 --> 01:21:36,360
Speaker 1: to test out his own advice. You see, between getting

1423
01:21:36,400 --> 01:21:38,360
Speaker 1: out in nineteen ninety two and going back in nineteen

1424
01:21:38,439 --> 01:21:41,599
Speaker 1: ninety five, Frank was profiled in the New York Times.

1425
01:21:42,560 --> 01:21:45,280
Speaker 1: The journalist Charles Strum actually used to write for The

1426
01:21:45,320 --> 01:21:47,760
Speaker 1: Bergen Record, the local paper Frank used to end up

1427
01:21:47,800 --> 01:21:49,519
Speaker 1: in every time he got arrested in the sixties. But

1428
01:21:50,120 --> 01:21:52,320
Speaker 1: Strum didn't come home from college and started the Record

1429
01:21:52,360 --> 01:21:55,320
Speaker 1: until after Frank's arms stand off in the front yard,

1430
01:21:56,120 --> 01:21:59,519
Speaker 1: and they weren't talking about their shared hometown. They were

1431
01:21:59,520 --> 01:22:04,599
Speaker 1: talking about Frank's new consulting business. In nineteen ninety four,

1432
01:22:04,640 --> 01:22:09,360
Speaker 1: Frank put a classified ad in USA Today that read, go.

1433
01:22:09,240 --> 01:22:11,720
Speaker 5: Into federal prison for the first time. We will tell

1434
01:22:11,720 --> 01:22:14,880
Speaker 5: you what to expect and how to survive. Our consultants

1435
01:22:14,920 --> 01:22:18,880
Speaker 5: are graduates of the federal prison system. Frank aysweeneyan Associates,

1436
01:22:19,080 --> 01:22:23,120
Speaker 5: Box fifteen, Demarest, New Jersey, zero seven six two seven.

1437
01:22:25,680 --> 01:22:27,720
Speaker 1: Frank told Strum that the idea came to him while

1438
01:22:27,760 --> 01:22:29,840
Speaker 1: he was reading the paper one morning. In September nineteen

1439
01:22:29,920 --> 01:22:33,280
Speaker 1: ninety three. Lawrence Powell, one of the LA police officers

1440
01:22:33,320 --> 01:22:35,439
Speaker 1: convicted for his role in the beating of Rodney King,

1441
01:22:36,160 --> 01:22:39,320
Speaker 1: was quoted in the paper as being terrified at the

1442
01:22:39,320 --> 01:22:45,080
Speaker 1: prospect of going to prison. Strum rights that Frank told him.

1443
01:22:44,360 --> 01:22:47,040
Speaker 5: I thought to myself. My god, there's probably a lot

1444
01:22:47,120 --> 01:22:49,439
Speaker 5: of people go into prison was never been in jail before,

1445
01:22:49,840 --> 01:22:53,760
Speaker 5: primarily white collar criminals, and they're probably terrified too that

1446
01:22:54,000 --> 01:22:54,960
Speaker 5: just as frightened.

1447
01:22:54,640 --> 01:22:55,120
Speaker 3: As he is.

1448
01:22:55,680 --> 01:22:58,360
Speaker 5: So I thought maybe I could use my misfortune to

1449
01:22:58,400 --> 01:23:00,599
Speaker 5: help people and maybe make a profit doing it.

1450
01:23:02,320 --> 01:23:05,000
Speaker 1: The article says Frank claims to have twenty seven clients

1451
01:23:05,000 --> 01:23:07,400
Speaker 1: after just a few months of running his new consulting business,

1452
01:23:07,960 --> 01:23:10,640
Speaker 1: though the author also prints without question Frank's claimed that

1453
01:23:10,680 --> 01:23:12,640
Speaker 1: he left high school in the eleventh grade because he

1454
01:23:12,760 --> 01:23:15,840
Speaker 1: was bored with it, not because he was in a

1455
01:23:15,880 --> 01:23:19,880
Speaker 1: youth correctional facility for bank robbery. In the article, Strum

1456
01:23:19,880 --> 01:23:22,479
Speaker 1: writes out all of Frank's crimes and convictions, but that

1457
01:23:22,560 --> 01:23:26,240
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two bank robbery is missing. But again, they

1458
01:23:26,280 --> 01:23:30,360
Speaker 1: didn't have the Internet then. Of his criminal record, Frank

1459
01:23:30,400 --> 01:23:33,599
Speaker 1: told the reporter, I remember it was Nietzsche who wrote

1460
01:23:33,840 --> 01:23:35,320
Speaker 1: the crime is not in the act, but in the

1461
01:23:35,360 --> 01:23:40,559
Speaker 1: stupidity of being caught. I was caught and stupid, and

1462
01:23:40,640 --> 01:23:43,080
Speaker 1: he'd get caught a few more times in the coming years.

1463
01:23:43,120 --> 01:23:46,600
Speaker 1: But he stays humble. That Nietzsche quote is still his

1464
01:23:46,640 --> 01:23:50,920
Speaker 1: favorite to this day. According to his Facebook profile. He

1465
01:23:50,960 --> 01:23:52,920
Speaker 1: had to take a break from his new consulting career

1466
01:23:52,960 --> 01:23:54,880
Speaker 1: when he went away for a year in nineteen ninety five,

1467
01:23:54,920 --> 01:23:56,880
Speaker 1: but he picked right back up when he got out

1468
01:23:57,479 --> 01:24:00,240
Speaker 1: a nineteen ninety seven Newsweek article about his business, as

1469
01:24:00,240 --> 01:24:02,559
Speaker 1: he was up to eighty seven clients now with white

1470
01:24:02,560 --> 01:24:05,439
Speaker 1: collar criminals paying Frank one thousand dollars for assistance and

1471
01:24:05,479 --> 01:24:08,960
Speaker 1: getting favorable placement. So not only did Frank promise that

1472
01:24:09,040 --> 01:24:12,400
Speaker 1: he could advise you about the differences in food facilities

1473
01:24:12,439 --> 01:24:15,720
Speaker 1: and culture at different federal prisons, he claimed he had

1474
01:24:15,760 --> 01:24:20,840
Speaker 1: connections and could influence your placement. A Bureau of Prison

1475
01:24:20,880 --> 01:24:24,000
Speaker 1: spokesman denied Frank had any ability to arrange transfers or

1476
01:24:24,080 --> 01:24:27,759
Speaker 1: promise placements at specific facilities, but at least one client

1477
01:24:27,760 --> 01:24:30,559
Speaker 1: told the reporter that prison officials had denied his request

1478
01:24:30,600 --> 01:24:33,160
Speaker 1: for a transfer during a five year sentence for embezzlement,

1479
01:24:33,800 --> 01:24:36,559
Speaker 1: but after he wrote Frank and included a check for

1480
01:24:36,560 --> 01:24:42,240
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars, his transfer came through. Now, promising these

1481
01:24:42,360 --> 01:24:45,479
Speaker 1: transfers seems like it would put Frank back in mail

1482
01:24:45,520 --> 01:24:49,000
Speaker 1: fraud territory, But if he had stopped short of fraud,

1483
01:24:49,680 --> 01:24:51,800
Speaker 1: this isn't actually a terrible way for a guy like

1484
01:24:51,840 --> 01:24:54,960
Speaker 1: Frank to make a living. He really had been in

1485
01:24:55,000 --> 01:24:58,120
Speaker 1: a significant number of our nation's federal prisons. He'd been

1486
01:24:58,160 --> 01:25:01,559
Speaker 1: in facilities all over the country, spanning decks gates. He's

1487
01:25:01,600 --> 01:25:03,720
Speaker 1: in a great position to offer advice about how to

1488
01:25:03,760 --> 01:25:06,920
Speaker 1: get through your sentence as smoothly as possible. So if

1489
01:25:06,960 --> 01:25:11,000
Speaker 1: he'd stuck to lifestyle advice for the incarcerated, I might

1490
01:25:11,080 --> 01:25:13,439
Speaker 1: say that this could have been a success story for Frank.

1491
01:25:15,240 --> 01:25:18,400
Speaker 1: There was another article about his consulting business in nineteen

1492
01:25:18,479 --> 01:25:20,920
Speaker 1: ninety eight, but then he kind of disappears.

1493
01:25:21,520 --> 01:25:24,840
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what he was up to. He pops up.

1494
01:25:24,800 --> 01:25:26,720
Speaker 1: Briefly in a couple of articles in two thousand and

1495
01:25:26,720 --> 01:25:29,320
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, an old prison friend of his

1496
01:25:29,479 --> 01:25:31,439
Speaker 1: called him from a jail in Reno to ask for

1497
01:25:31,479 --> 01:25:34,000
Speaker 1: help exposing an alleged smuggling ring run by one of

1498
01:25:34,000 --> 01:25:37,639
Speaker 1: the guards out there. In Nevada, David Wayne is described

1499
01:25:37,680 --> 01:25:40,120
Speaker 1: as one of the most dangerous inmates in a state

1500
01:25:40,160 --> 01:25:43,240
Speaker 1: prison system after a variety of escape attempts and prison

1501
01:25:43,320 --> 01:25:47,320
Speaker 1: riots involving Wayne holding hostages, and in two thousand, he

1502
01:25:47,360 --> 01:25:50,599
Speaker 1: wanted Frank's help leveraging this information about a corrupt guard

1503
01:25:51,080 --> 01:25:54,920
Speaker 1: to get a better placement, so friend or client hard

1504
01:25:54,920 --> 01:25:57,559
Speaker 1: to say, but the guard did end up charged with

1505
01:25:57,600 --> 01:26:00,639
Speaker 1: smuggling a handcuff key to an inmate, and Frank spent

1506
01:26:00,680 --> 01:26:04,800
Speaker 1: about a year advocating for Wayne's transfer, considering he had

1507
01:26:04,840 --> 01:26:08,080
Speaker 1: once held two prison nurses hostage for twelve hours by

1508
01:26:08,120 --> 01:26:12,120
Speaker 1: rigging up a Rube Goldberg style contraption that would stab

1509
01:26:12,160 --> 01:26:14,760
Speaker 1: the women's eyes out with scalpels if anyone opened the

1510
01:26:14,800 --> 01:26:18,479
Speaker 1: door and had successfully escaped at least once, a low

1511
01:26:18,520 --> 01:26:21,920
Speaker 1: security placement for David Wayne was out of the question,

1512
01:26:23,760 --> 01:26:29,040
Speaker 1: But then Quiet Frank moved out to Idaho and stayed

1513
01:26:29,040 --> 01:26:32,080
Speaker 1: out of the paper. He's not a very good driver,

1514
01:26:32,960 --> 01:26:35,599
Speaker 1: so I know he moved to Ada County, Idaho around

1515
01:26:35,600 --> 01:26:37,639
Speaker 1: two thousand and one because that's when he started getting

1516
01:26:37,640 --> 01:26:40,920
Speaker 1: a lot of traffic tickets there. In two thousand and eight,

1517
01:26:40,960 --> 01:26:43,240
Speaker 1: he was charged with battery and convicted, but he only

1518
01:26:43,240 --> 01:26:46,040
Speaker 1: served five days in jail and successfully completed his court

1519
01:26:46,120 --> 01:26:50,120
Speaker 1: ordered anger management class. The docket indicates the victim, a

1520
01:26:50,120 --> 01:26:52,000
Speaker 1: woman who appears to be a nursing assistant in the

1521
01:26:52,000 --> 01:26:56,280
Speaker 1: Boise area, got a restraining order, but the Frank Sweeney

1522
01:26:56,280 --> 01:26:58,400
Speaker 1: who tried to rob a bank and fought in the

1523
01:26:58,400 --> 01:27:00,240
Speaker 1: Bush War and had a mob boss flow I Am

1524
01:27:00,240 --> 01:27:03,679
Speaker 1: to Vegas and bragged about being able to influence prison officials.

1525
01:27:04,680 --> 01:27:07,920
Speaker 1: That Frank seems to be gone. He's just an old

1526
01:27:07,960 --> 01:27:18,640
Speaker 1: man living in Boise until twenty fifteen. In December of

1527
01:27:18,640 --> 01:27:21,200
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Frank went to the post office near his

1528
01:27:21,240 --> 01:27:24,519
Speaker 1: home in Garden City, Idaho. He parked his truck in

1529
01:27:24,560 --> 01:27:27,720
Speaker 1: one of the accessible parking spots out front. A woman

1530
01:27:27,720 --> 01:27:29,360
Speaker 1: saw him get out of his car, which did not

1531
01:27:29,479 --> 01:27:31,920
Speaker 1: have a placard indicating he was supposed to be parked there,

1532
01:27:32,640 --> 01:27:35,800
Speaker 1: and said something to him. We don't know exactly what

1533
01:27:35,840 --> 01:27:39,960
Speaker 1: she said. Now, me personally, I probably wouldn't have said anything.

1534
01:27:40,560 --> 01:27:42,680
Speaker 1: For the most part, it's not worth it. It's not

1535
01:27:42,720 --> 01:27:44,640
Speaker 1: your business. There are plenty of people who are not

1536
01:27:44,760 --> 01:27:48,120
Speaker 1: visibly disabled who really do need those parking spots. And

1537
01:27:48,200 --> 01:27:50,400
Speaker 1: Frank was in his seventies at this point, so even

1538
01:27:50,439 --> 01:27:53,960
Speaker 1: if he didn't have a state issued parking placard, he's old.

1539
01:27:54,520 --> 01:27:58,240
Speaker 1: Just leave him alone. But she made a comment about it,

1540
01:27:58,280 --> 01:28:04,400
Speaker 1: and the situation escalated pretty seriously. Court documents only say

1541
01:28:04,439 --> 01:28:07,400
Speaker 1: that they had a verbal altercation, so at least she

1542
01:28:07,400 --> 01:28:10,000
Speaker 1: didn't get stabbed, which he's done at least twice to

1543
01:28:10,000 --> 01:28:11,800
Speaker 1: people who offended him.

1544
01:28:12,280 --> 01:28:14,880
Speaker 2: But whatever she said, and for whatever.

1545
01:28:14,560 --> 01:28:17,519
Speaker 1: Reasons she chose to say it, she didn't deserve what

1546
01:28:17,560 --> 01:28:21,599
Speaker 1: happened next. The victims in this case are referred to

1547
01:28:21,720 --> 01:28:25,120
Speaker 1: only by their initials in the court record for obvious reasons.

1548
01:28:25,720 --> 01:28:27,160
Speaker 2: But it can be tricky to keep track of.

1549
01:28:27,080 --> 01:28:28,880
Speaker 1: People with just a letter, so I've given them all

1550
01:28:28,920 --> 01:28:31,920
Speaker 1: fake names just to make this a little easier. We'll

1551
01:28:31,920 --> 01:28:34,759
Speaker 1: call the woman from the parking lot Ellen, Her husband

1552
01:28:34,800 --> 01:28:37,960
Speaker 1: will be Sam, and their adult daughters will be Kayla

1553
01:28:38,120 --> 01:28:42,160
Speaker 1: and Lucy. Again, it is possible to figure out who

1554
01:28:42,160 --> 01:28:44,320
Speaker 1: these people are, but please don't.

1555
01:28:44,640 --> 01:28:45,559
Speaker 2: They've been through enough.

1556
01:28:47,320 --> 01:28:49,639
Speaker 1: Two weeks after that heated exchange in the post office

1557
01:28:49,680 --> 01:28:54,719
Speaker 1: parking lot, the postcards started. The probation office in Boise

1558
01:28:54,840 --> 01:28:58,120
Speaker 1: got the first one. Ellen's adult daughter, Kayla, was at

1559
01:28:58,120 --> 01:29:02,040
Speaker 1: the time on probation for a misdemeanor dui charge. The

1560
01:29:02,120 --> 01:29:04,320
Speaker 1: letter writer claimed that he had just the night before

1561
01:29:04,360 --> 01:29:06,160
Speaker 1: been in the car with Kayla and she was so

1562
01:29:06,280 --> 01:29:08,200
Speaker 1: drunk that he had to jump out at a red

1563
01:29:08,240 --> 01:29:12,200
Speaker 1: light for his own safety. Ellen's husband Sam, received a

1564
01:29:12,200 --> 01:29:14,800
Speaker 1: postcard at his dental office. The same day, informing him

1565
01:29:14,840 --> 01:29:16,400
Speaker 1: that his wife had been in the post office the

1566
01:29:16,400 --> 01:29:18,360
Speaker 1: week before and she was so drunk that she was

1567
01:29:18,400 --> 01:29:23,080
Speaker 1: falling down. The letter, though very brief, contained a lot

1568
01:29:23,120 --> 01:29:27,760
Speaker 1: of really specific personal information, the fact that the couple

1569
01:29:27,800 --> 01:29:30,400
Speaker 1: had very recently purchased a new home, including the name

1570
01:29:30,439 --> 01:29:33,479
Speaker 1: of the suburb where they now lived, the city where

1571
01:29:33,479 --> 01:29:36,080
Speaker 1: their other adult daughter lived, the names of both of

1572
01:29:36,080 --> 01:29:40,559
Speaker 1: their daughters, and information about Kayla's arrest that year. Ellen

1573
01:29:40,600 --> 01:29:43,000
Speaker 1: received a third postcard that week, addressed to her at home.

1574
01:29:43,920 --> 01:29:47,160
Speaker 1: This one contained her Social Security number and an allegation

1575
01:29:47,240 --> 01:29:50,360
Speaker 1: that her daughter Lucy, was engaged in acts of prostitution

1576
01:29:50,640 --> 01:29:54,760
Speaker 1: at her place of work, which was named after the

1577
01:29:54,800 --> 01:29:57,599
Speaker 1: family received the first postcards. In December of twenty fifteen,

1578
01:29:57,720 --> 01:29:59,880
Speaker 1: they met with detectives at the Aida County Sheriff's office

1579
01:29:59,880 --> 01:30:04,559
Speaker 1: in Boise, and despite investigator's best efforts, the family would

1580
01:30:04,560 --> 01:30:08,840
Speaker 1: continue to receive increasingly bizarre and frightening postcards for three

1581
01:30:09,680 --> 01:30:15,240
Speaker 1: full years. Their neighbors in nearby schools received postcards that

1582
01:30:15,360 --> 01:30:18,120
Speaker 1: appeared to be from the state Sex Offender Registry informing

1583
01:30:18,120 --> 01:30:21,160
Speaker 1: them that Sam was a sex offender, specifically that he

1584
01:30:21,200 --> 01:30:24,400
Speaker 1: had sodomized a nine year old boy in nineteen seventy eight.

1585
01:30:25,439 --> 01:30:28,080
Speaker 1: It probably goes without saying, but I will say it anyway.

1586
01:30:28,760 --> 01:30:29,679
Speaker 2: That is not true.

1587
01:30:31,000 --> 01:30:33,160
Speaker 1: But it does kind of remind you of what Frank

1588
01:30:33,240 --> 01:30:35,960
Speaker 1: did to that doctor in nineteen ninety three, doesn't it,

1589
01:30:37,360 --> 01:30:40,640
Speaker 1: adding to the victim's distress. Sam passed away unexpectedly in

1590
01:30:40,720 --> 01:30:43,040
Speaker 1: January of twenty sixteen, just a few weeks after all

1591
01:30:43,040 --> 01:30:47,160
Speaker 1: this started, and obviously Frank knew one of his victims

1592
01:30:47,200 --> 01:30:49,599
Speaker 1: was dead. Some of the letters sent to the man's

1593
01:30:49,640 --> 01:30:52,479
Speaker 1: daughters taunted and blamed them for driving their father into

1594
01:30:52,520 --> 01:30:56,480
Speaker 1: an early grave, but oddly some of the letters pretended otherwise.

1595
01:30:57,840 --> 01:31:00,720
Speaker 1: While most of the postcards were signed Carson Wells, the

1596
01:31:00,800 --> 01:31:03,280
Speaker 1: name of Woody Harrelson's character in the movie No Country

1597
01:31:03,280 --> 01:31:06,040
Speaker 1: for Old Men, some were signed with the names of

1598
01:31:06,040 --> 01:31:09,720
Speaker 1: her own children. Ellen received one of those just two

1599
01:31:09,720 --> 01:31:12,720
Speaker 1: months after her husband's death, purporting to be from her

1600
01:31:12,800 --> 01:31:16,160
Speaker 1: daughter Lucy, who lived out of state. It said, Dear Mommy,

1601
01:31:16,520 --> 01:31:18,479
Speaker 1: my blood test just came back and yes I am

1602
01:31:18,600 --> 01:31:21,680
Speaker 1: HIV positive. I'm sure I was infected by one of

1603
01:31:21,680 --> 01:31:25,280
Speaker 1: the two crips with whom I was having an affair with. Regrettably,

1604
01:31:25,320 --> 01:31:26,920
Speaker 1: I will never be able to give you and Daddy

1605
01:31:26,960 --> 01:31:30,320
Speaker 1: the grandchildren you so desired. But we know now that

1606
01:31:30,400 --> 01:31:33,120
Speaker 1: Daddy is a pedophile. He may have harmed the grandkids.

1607
01:31:33,640 --> 01:31:37,120
Speaker 1: Has he been released from jail. And again, this is

1608
01:31:37,160 --> 01:31:40,680
Speaker 1: a woman who just lost her husband. She knows this

1609
01:31:40,720 --> 01:31:43,840
Speaker 1: postcard isn't from her adult daughter. Even if she hadn't

1610
01:31:43,880 --> 01:31:47,120
Speaker 1: already gotten a dozen other bizarre postcards, she would know

1611
01:31:47,280 --> 01:31:50,519
Speaker 1: that no one's writing their mother a postcard on a typewriter.

1612
01:31:50,560 --> 01:31:55,040
Speaker 1: It's not nineteen thirty two. And again, the recently deceased

1613
01:31:55,080 --> 01:31:58,840
Speaker 1: man was not a pedophile, nor was he in jail.

1614
01:32:00,080 --> 01:32:04,519
Speaker 1: He had just been buried by his family. Ellen and

1615
01:32:04,560 --> 01:32:08,560
Speaker 1: both of her daughters continued getting postcards even after Ellen moved,

1616
01:32:09,280 --> 01:32:11,639
Speaker 1: and Frank was also sending the postcards to other people

1617
01:32:11,680 --> 01:32:15,040
Speaker 1: pretending to be members of the family. The Idaho Black

1618
01:32:15,120 --> 01:32:17,880
Speaker 1: History Museum received one signed with Ellen's name, address, and

1619
01:32:17,880 --> 01:32:21,120
Speaker 1: phone number that was so laden with racial slurs that

1620
01:32:21,160 --> 01:32:22,479
Speaker 1: you can barely tell.

1621
01:32:22,320 --> 01:32:24,080
Speaker 2: What it's supposed to be trying to say.

1622
01:32:25,560 --> 01:32:28,559
Speaker 1: Lucy's boss received one advising him that his employee was

1623
01:32:28,600 --> 01:32:34,040
Speaker 1: having rectal intercourse with black men, although Frank described that

1624
01:32:34,560 --> 01:32:39,000
Speaker 1: in more vivid terms now for as strange as this

1625
01:32:39,040 --> 01:32:41,599
Speaker 1: man's life has been You'd be forgiven if you forgot

1626
01:32:41,600 --> 01:32:45,200
Speaker 1: where we started. Frank is a Nazi. He was a

1627
01:32:45,200 --> 01:32:47,519
Speaker 1: member of the American Nazi Party, and he fought as

1628
01:32:47,560 --> 01:32:50,920
Speaker 1: a Rhodesian mercenary. He's not just a guy who loves

1629
01:32:50,920 --> 01:32:54,120
Speaker 1: doing mail fraud and hates his neighbors. He's very racist,

1630
01:32:55,040 --> 01:32:57,719
Speaker 1: and a lot of these postcards fixated on the idea

1631
01:32:57,800 --> 01:33:01,599
Speaker 1: that Ellen's daughters were engaged in inner racial relationships, very

1632
01:33:01,720 --> 01:33:05,880
Speaker 1: graphically and racistly describing specific sex acts that they were,

1633
01:33:05,960 --> 01:33:10,320
Speaker 1: in his mind having with black partners. And he was

1634
01:33:10,360 --> 01:33:13,559
Speaker 1: particularly upset that Ellen, a Latina, had married a white man.

1635
01:33:14,720 --> 01:33:17,360
Speaker 1: He called her racial slurs and wrote to her daughters

1636
01:33:17,400 --> 01:33:21,719
Speaker 1: calling them mongrels. It seems the only time he wasn't

1637
01:33:21,760 --> 01:33:23,799
Speaker 1: sending postcards was when he was out of the country.

1638
01:33:24,680 --> 01:33:29,200
Speaker 1: You see, he might have another wife. It's not entirely clear,

1639
01:33:30,200 --> 01:33:32,559
Speaker 1: but several times a year Frank would travel to Effert,

1640
01:33:32,880 --> 01:33:35,559
Speaker 1: the capital of the German state of Turingia in central Germany,

1641
01:33:36,120 --> 01:33:38,400
Speaker 1: to visit a woman he's known for a very long time,

1642
01:33:39,920 --> 01:33:42,960
Speaker 1: Uta Schernig, who performs semi professionally as a belly dancer

1643
01:33:43,040 --> 01:33:46,839
Speaker 1: under the name Madame Chamila has on several occasions referred

1644
01:33:46,880 --> 01:33:50,600
Speaker 1: to Frank as her husband. This may be literal, it

1645
01:33:50,640 --> 01:33:54,240
Speaker 1: may be a cheeky little joke. My German is not

1646
01:33:54,439 --> 01:33:58,439
Speaker 1: good enough to really read tone, and it may just

1647
01:33:58,479 --> 01:34:00,320
Speaker 1: be that they've been in a relationship for so long

1648
01:34:00,360 --> 01:34:03,799
Speaker 1: that they think of each other this way. My research

1649
01:34:03,840 --> 01:34:07,320
Speaker 1: game is strong, but a potentially non existent German marriage

1650
01:34:07,320 --> 01:34:11,400
Speaker 1: certificate evades my grasp. Nevertheless, he does own a home

1651
01:34:11,439 --> 01:34:14,840
Speaker 1: in effort, and she lives in it. She refers to

1652
01:34:14,920 --> 01:34:18,839
Speaker 1: him occasionally as her house Positzer, which you couldn't translate

1653
01:34:18,840 --> 01:34:22,120
Speaker 1: as landlord, but you wouldn't really, you'd call the person

1654
01:34:22,200 --> 01:34:25,720
Speaker 1: you rent your home from your perimeter house Positzer just

1655
01:34:25,800 --> 01:34:30,160
Speaker 1: means he owns her house, and he occasionally calls her

1656
01:34:30,240 --> 01:34:35,080
Speaker 1: Liebchen my love, and she calls him Frankie when he

1657
01:34:35,160 --> 01:34:37,200
Speaker 1: visited in twenty fifteen and they went to see her

1658
01:34:37,240 --> 01:34:40,320
Speaker 1: mother in the nursing home together. Her photocaptions are about

1659
01:34:40,320 --> 01:34:43,920
Speaker 1: Frank's visit to his mother in law. As with so

1660
01:34:44,000 --> 01:34:46,800
Speaker 1: much in Frank's life, it's hard to pin this down.

1661
01:34:47,400 --> 01:34:49,080
Speaker 1: I have a handful of photos of Frank with this

1662
01:34:49,120 --> 01:34:51,160
Speaker 1: woman that appeared to be from the eighties or early

1663
01:34:51,240 --> 01:34:54,720
Speaker 1: nineties based on the photo quality, Frank's apparent age and

1664
01:34:55,160 --> 01:34:59,799
Speaker 1: to be honest, her hair. But we're talking about Germany,

1665
01:35:00,120 --> 01:35:02,639
Speaker 1: so dating by the fashion could put us off by

1666
01:35:03,040 --> 01:35:06,240
Speaker 1: a decade or more. No offense, you know, it's true,

1667
01:35:07,479 --> 01:35:10,200
Speaker 1: But at least in the present era of his life,

1668
01:35:10,240 --> 01:35:14,080
Speaker 1: he's visiting Germany every now and again. She breeds and

1669
01:35:14,120 --> 01:35:17,040
Speaker 1: shows Mexican and Peruvian hairless dogs, some of which have

1670
01:35:17,120 --> 01:35:20,920
Speaker 1: been quite successful internationally. Some of her show dogs list

1671
01:35:20,960 --> 01:35:25,280
Speaker 1: Frank Sweeney as a co owner. In September of twenty sixteen,

1672
01:35:25,320 --> 01:35:28,479
Speaker 1: his victims had a brief reprieve from his letters because

1673
01:35:28,479 --> 01:35:31,320
Speaker 1: he was in Germany attending a seminar on dog genetics

1674
01:35:31,400 --> 01:35:32,120
Speaker 1: with Ute.

1675
01:35:33,080 --> 01:35:34,680
Speaker 2: These rare breed dogs.

1676
01:35:34,439 --> 01:35:37,200
Speaker 1: Are very prone to genetic problems and in breeding, so

1677
01:35:37,280 --> 01:35:40,440
Speaker 1: I'm glad they're staying on top of best practices, I guess.

1678
01:35:41,439 --> 01:35:43,519
Speaker 1: But when he was at home in Idaho, the campaign

1679
01:35:43,560 --> 01:35:47,760
Speaker 1: of harassment was relentless. He even found a way to

1680
01:35:47,760 --> 01:35:52,120
Speaker 1: outsource the terror. Frank sent postcards to inmates in prisons

1681
01:35:52,200 --> 01:35:55,479
Speaker 1: all over the country. He signed them with Ellen's name

1682
01:35:55,600 --> 01:35:58,559
Speaker 1: and address, and requested that the men write her back.

1683
01:36:00,040 --> 01:36:03,360
Speaker 1: She received at least seventy five letters all addressed to

1684
01:36:03,400 --> 01:36:07,599
Speaker 1: her at home from murderers, and as if she might

1685
01:36:07,680 --> 01:36:09,800
Speaker 1: not get it, like maybe she didn't put two and

1686
01:36:09,840 --> 01:36:11,760
Speaker 1: two together here, Like maybe she thought this was some

1687
01:36:12,240 --> 01:36:15,479
Speaker 1: totally separate, unrelated new problem she just.

1688
01:36:15,400 --> 01:36:16,320
Speaker 2: Happens to be having.

1689
01:36:16,960 --> 01:36:20,280
Speaker 1: Frank made sure she understood that he did this. He

1690
01:36:20,360 --> 01:36:23,040
Speaker 1: sent her numerous postcards explaining the situation.

1691
01:36:25,360 --> 01:36:28,960
Speaker 5: Every creep, every social degenerate who has written to you,

1692
01:36:29,040 --> 01:36:33,639
Speaker 5: has your address, social Security number, and date of birth. Likewise,

1693
01:36:33,680 --> 01:36:36,559
Speaker 5: for Lucy two, some of these freaks have already passed

1694
01:36:36,600 --> 01:36:39,839
Speaker 5: this information on to their criminal friends outside of prison.

1695
01:36:40,439 --> 01:36:43,160
Speaker 5: Last month, I've visited your house twice in the early

1696
01:36:43,200 --> 01:36:47,000
Speaker 5: morning hours while you slept naturally, I've removed my license

1697
01:36:47,040 --> 01:36:50,160
Speaker 5: plates so that street cameras could not identify my car,

1698
01:36:50,680 --> 01:36:53,280
Speaker 5: and I still patrol the post office daily in.

1699
01:36:53,200 --> 01:36:54,800
Speaker 2: An effort to spot you.

1700
01:36:54,800 --> 01:36:56,720
Speaker 5: You only have your big mouth to blame for.

1701
01:36:56,680 --> 01:36:57,240
Speaker 2: All of this.

1702
01:37:00,000 --> 01:37:02,559
Speaker 1: In December of twenty sixteen, after the first full year,

1703
01:37:03,200 --> 01:37:06,599
Speaker 1: he wrote to her saying it was their anniversary, telling

1704
01:37:06,640 --> 01:37:10,720
Speaker 1: her I intend to be with you her life. The

1705
01:37:10,800 --> 01:37:13,160
Speaker 1: letters just kept coming, reminding her that he was watching

1706
01:37:13,200 --> 01:37:15,479
Speaker 1: her outside her home, that he waited for her at

1707
01:37:15,520 --> 01:37:18,640
Speaker 1: the post office, almost every day, and sending her postcards

1708
01:37:18,680 --> 01:37:22,200
Speaker 1: containing her own personal information, like her license plate number

1709
01:37:22,240 --> 01:37:24,320
Speaker 1: and information about her family.

1710
01:37:24,920 --> 01:37:26,439
Speaker 2: Just so she knew he had it too.

1711
01:37:27,800 --> 01:37:29,840
Speaker 1: He continued writing to Ellen and both of her daughters,

1712
01:37:29,840 --> 01:37:33,320
Speaker 1: calling them racial slurs, slots whores, threatening to report them

1713
01:37:33,360 --> 01:37:37,040
Speaker 1: for assorted imaginary crimes like tax fraud and drug dealing,

1714
01:37:37,120 --> 01:37:42,520
Speaker 1: and always remembering to write them on their birthdays. Investigators

1715
01:37:42,520 --> 01:37:45,479
Speaker 1: were stumped. They knew the letter writer was the man

1716
01:37:45,520 --> 01:37:47,800
Speaker 1: from the post office parking lot. He said as much

1717
01:37:47,800 --> 01:37:51,720
Speaker 1: in his letters, but Ellen didn't recognize him. She had

1718
01:37:51,760 --> 01:37:54,439
Speaker 1: only a vague description of his vehicle, and she didn't

1719
01:37:54,439 --> 01:37:57,120
Speaker 1: get the license plate. Why would she have thought she

1720
01:37:57,200 --> 01:38:01,439
Speaker 1: needed to. Postcards were all always wiped clean of prints.

1721
01:38:01,600 --> 01:38:05,400
Speaker 1: They were perfectly generic United States Postal Service issued materials

1722
01:38:05,400 --> 01:38:09,519
Speaker 1: that he always bought in small quantities and paid cash.

1723
01:38:09,720 --> 01:38:12,200
Speaker 1: He may truly have tormented this woman until one of

1724
01:38:12,240 --> 01:38:15,280
Speaker 1: them died if he hadn't done what he's always done,

1725
01:38:16,240 --> 01:38:22,080
Speaker 1: more crime. And here's that beginning of the end. It's

1726
01:38:22,120 --> 01:38:23,920
Speaker 1: not the end, But I told you this story that

1727
01:38:23,960 --> 01:38:26,120
Speaker 1: began outside of a bank in New Jersey in nineteen

1728
01:38:26,160 --> 01:38:29,040
Speaker 1: sixty two would start its final chapter outside of a

1729
01:38:29,040 --> 01:38:34,160
Speaker 1: bank in Idaho. Fifty six years later, on October thirteenth,

1730
01:38:34,360 --> 01:38:38,320
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Frank got into another argument in a parking lot.

1731
01:38:39,400 --> 01:38:41,840
Speaker 1: These victims, too, are only identified by their initials in

1732
01:38:41,880 --> 01:38:44,280
Speaker 1: the court records, So I'm going to call them Liam

1733
01:38:44,320 --> 01:38:47,479
Speaker 1: and Denise. They were in their car outside the Wells

1734
01:38:47,479 --> 01:38:52,320
Speaker 1: Fargo in Garden City, Idaho. Frank conked at them. There

1735
01:38:52,400 --> 01:38:55,760
Speaker 1: was again some kind of verbal altercation. Maybe they gave

1736
01:38:55,840 --> 01:38:58,200
Speaker 1: him the finger or shouted, who knows. You know, this

1737
01:38:58,280 --> 01:39:00,360
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that happens every day. You know,

1738
01:39:00,400 --> 01:39:03,120
Speaker 1: you don't pull forward fast enough, the guy behind you honks,

1739
01:39:03,120 --> 01:39:06,240
Speaker 1: You tell him to fuck off. Nobody's being their best selves.

1740
01:39:06,920 --> 01:39:09,960
Speaker 1: But life goes on, but not for Frank.

1741
01:39:10,920 --> 01:39:11,840
Speaker 2: Frank can't take it.

1742
01:39:12,479 --> 01:39:14,760
Speaker 1: He stabbed a guy in the guts for splashing him

1743
01:39:14,760 --> 01:39:18,800
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. So two weeks after Liam and

1744
01:39:18,800 --> 01:39:22,759
Speaker 1: Denise experience this angry driver at the bank, they start

1745
01:39:22,760 --> 01:39:27,880
Speaker 1: getting postcards. Like Ellen and her family, this family too,

1746
01:39:28,000 --> 01:39:31,439
Speaker 1: starts hearing that their neighbors and nearby schools are getting

1747
01:39:31,439 --> 01:39:34,240
Speaker 1: postcards that pretend to be from the State Sex Offender Registry,

1748
01:39:34,800 --> 01:39:39,720
Speaker 1: alerting people that Liam is a pedophile. He's not and

1749
01:39:39,800 --> 01:39:43,160
Speaker 1: specifically the postcards say that he sodomized a nine year

1750
01:39:43,160 --> 01:39:48,360
Speaker 1: old boy. That is a very specific and very gross

1751
01:39:48,640 --> 01:39:51,240
Speaker 1: detail to recycle from one victim to the next, right.

1752
01:39:51,200 --> 01:39:53,240
Speaker 2: Like that, that has to mean.

1753
01:39:53,080 --> 01:39:56,920
Speaker 1: Something, but I can't figure it out, and maybe that's

1754
01:39:56,920 --> 01:40:01,040
Speaker 1: for the best. These postcards, too, are generic ones from

1755
01:40:01,040 --> 01:40:04,599
Speaker 1: the post office, typed on a manual typewriter. And again,

1756
01:40:04,720 --> 01:40:08,360
Speaker 1: some of the postcards are signed Carson Wells, and sometimes

1757
01:40:08,400 --> 01:40:11,800
Speaker 1: they're signed with the name of Liam's adult son. And

1758
01:40:11,880 --> 01:40:15,799
Speaker 1: again there were letters to the family from murderers, answering

1759
01:40:15,840 --> 01:40:20,040
Speaker 1: requests for pen pals. But you know what, the bank

1760
01:40:20,120 --> 01:40:25,360
Speaker 1: has a lot of security cameras, and unbeknownst to Frank,

1761
01:40:25,600 --> 01:40:29,280
Speaker 1: shortly before he started terrorizing his second set of victims,

1762
01:40:30,080 --> 01:40:34,160
Speaker 1: his case wasn't just a local matter anymore. In September

1763
01:40:34,160 --> 01:40:38,439
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, the United States Postal Inspector Service started

1764
01:40:38,439 --> 01:40:43,600
Speaker 1: looking into the postcards. That's right, the Mail Police. That

1765
01:40:43,720 --> 01:40:47,160
Speaker 1: is a very real federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction

1766
01:40:47,320 --> 01:40:51,639
Speaker 1: over mail crimes. According to their most recent annual report,

1767
01:40:51,720 --> 01:40:55,800
Speaker 1: the uspis initiated more than fifty six hundred investigations in

1768
01:40:55,840 --> 01:40:59,240
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and during that year, forty one hundred

1769
01:40:59,280 --> 01:41:03,240
Speaker 1: cases related to their investigations ended in convictions. Most of

1770
01:41:03,240 --> 01:41:08,639
Speaker 1: those numbers are things like mail theft and people mailing drugs. Also,

1771
01:41:08,720 --> 01:41:12,320
Speaker 1: though a couple hundred people a year are assaulting postal employees,

1772
01:41:13,080 --> 01:41:15,680
Speaker 1: knock that off, don't do that. Be nice to your

1773
01:41:15,680 --> 01:41:19,479
Speaker 1: mail carrier. So now we have the mail police on

1774
01:41:19,520 --> 01:41:22,120
Speaker 1: the case. And as soon as they start trying to

1775
01:41:22,160 --> 01:41:24,800
Speaker 1: figure out what's going on here again this is September

1776
01:41:24,840 --> 01:41:27,280
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, they're just looking at the postcards to

1777
01:41:27,320 --> 01:41:29,840
Speaker 1: Ellen and her family. But within a few weeks of

1778
01:41:29,880 --> 01:41:32,880
Speaker 1: them opening the investigation, the Idaho State Police let them

1779
01:41:32,920 --> 01:41:36,519
Speaker 1: know that someone is sending postcards pretending to be from

1780
01:41:36,560 --> 01:41:40,599
Speaker 1: their office. And these are these postcards about how Liam

1781
01:41:40,760 --> 01:41:43,280
Speaker 1: is a pedophile that are being sent to schools and neighbors.

1782
01:41:44,640 --> 01:41:46,880
Speaker 1: And because these postcards are made to look as though

1783
01:41:46,880 --> 01:41:49,800
Speaker 1: they are coming from the State Sex Offender Registry, which

1784
01:41:49,800 --> 01:41:53,120
Speaker 1: is run by the state police, people are contacting the

1785
01:41:53,120 --> 01:41:55,760
Speaker 1: state police about them. And now the state police are

1786
01:41:55,760 --> 01:41:59,000
Speaker 1: talking to the mail police, and now the mail cops

1787
01:41:59,000 --> 01:42:02,200
Speaker 1: see that there are more victims, and all of these

1788
01:42:02,240 --> 01:42:06,360
Speaker 1: postcards seemed to be from the same person. When postal

1789
01:42:06,360 --> 01:42:09,439
Speaker 1: investigators speak to both families and compare the letters. It's

1790
01:42:09,520 --> 01:42:12,760
Speaker 1: clear they're all from the same person. All of the

1791
01:42:12,840 --> 01:42:15,920
Speaker 1: victims say they know who is sending them these postcards,

1792
01:42:16,560 --> 01:42:19,639
Speaker 1: they just don't know who he is. Ellen knows it's

1793
01:42:19,640 --> 01:42:21,800
Speaker 1: the guy from the post office. Liam knows it's the

1794
01:42:21,800 --> 01:42:24,920
Speaker 1: guy from the bank. And they both describe some kind

1795
01:42:24,960 --> 01:42:28,360
Speaker 1: of older truck and an older man's thin with a

1796
01:42:28,360 --> 01:42:34,240
Speaker 1: stiff gait and a very terrible distinctive scar on his face.

1797
01:42:35,240 --> 01:42:39,320
Speaker 1: They're describing the same man, and surely a bank teller

1798
01:42:39,400 --> 01:42:42,479
Speaker 1: or a postal service clerk would recognize a description like that.

1799
01:42:44,240 --> 01:42:47,800
Speaker 1: Local cops had shown Ellen photo lineups on multiple occasions

1800
01:42:47,880 --> 01:42:50,120
Speaker 1: over the last three years as they're investigating this, but

1801
01:42:50,720 --> 01:42:53,200
Speaker 1: Frank was never a suspect, so he was never in

1802
01:42:53,320 --> 01:42:56,120
Speaker 1: any of the photo arrays. So each time they showed

1803
01:42:56,120 --> 01:42:59,599
Speaker 1: her photos of potential suspects, she said, he's not here

1804
01:43:00,320 --> 01:43:03,479
Speaker 1: because he wasn't and so she never picked out any

1805
01:43:03,560 --> 01:43:07,760
Speaker 1: other possible suspect. But once the postal investigator zeroed in

1806
01:43:07,760 --> 01:43:10,200
Speaker 1: on the man in the bank security footage, both Ellen

1807
01:43:10,280 --> 01:43:14,679
Speaker 1: and Liam separately identified him in photo lineups, and bank

1808
01:43:14,720 --> 01:43:18,320
Speaker 1: employees did know who he was, so by Christmas of

1809
01:43:18,320 --> 01:43:22,559
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, the Male police have Frank's bank records. He's

1810
01:43:22,600 --> 01:43:26,320
Speaker 1: been paying a private investigator. That's how he knew so

1811
01:43:26,400 --> 01:43:30,040
Speaker 1: much personal information about all of his victims, information about

1812
01:43:30,040 --> 01:43:32,880
Speaker 1: their real estate transactions, what kinds of cars they drove,

1813
01:43:32,920 --> 01:43:35,280
Speaker 1: where they worked, where their adult children lived in different

1814
01:43:35,280 --> 01:43:36,360
Speaker 1: cities and states.

1815
01:43:37,240 --> 01:43:38,200
Speaker 2: Is paying a PI?

1816
01:43:40,120 --> 01:43:42,839
Speaker 1: Idaho is one of several states where you don't actually

1817
01:43:42,880 --> 01:43:45,320
Speaker 1: have to have a license of any kind to offer

1818
01:43:45,360 --> 01:43:48,599
Speaker 1: your services as a PI, so she doesn't have one

1819
01:43:48,600 --> 01:43:51,600
Speaker 1: that can be taken away, and she hasn't.

1820
01:43:51,320 --> 01:43:54,760
Speaker 2: Been charged with anything. Maybe she only.

1821
01:43:54,520 --> 01:43:57,880
Speaker 1: Helped Frank with information that didn't cross a line, and

1822
01:43:57,920 --> 01:44:00,559
Speaker 1: maybe she didn't ask enough questions about what he was

1823
01:44:00,600 --> 01:44:04,759
Speaker 1: doing with it. It remains unclear how he got everyone's

1824
01:44:04,800 --> 01:44:09,080
Speaker 1: Social Security numbers, though, but the PI he was paying

1825
01:44:09,120 --> 01:44:11,400
Speaker 1: is a woman in her eighties who seems to still

1826
01:44:11,439 --> 01:44:13,160
Speaker 1: be in the business just for the love of the game.

1827
01:44:14,120 --> 01:44:17,439
Speaker 1: Barbara Jacobson describes herself on her website as a cross

1828
01:44:17,479 --> 01:44:21,200
Speaker 1: between Nancy Drew and Jessica Fletcher with the Tenacity of Colombo,

1829
01:44:21,520 --> 01:44:24,679
Speaker 1: and credits her success to her Christian faith and divine invention.

1830
01:44:26,400 --> 01:44:29,320
Speaker 1: An article in a twenty seventeen issue of Christian Living

1831
01:44:29,360 --> 01:44:33,800
Speaker 1: magazine quotes her as saying, God is my business partner.

1832
01:44:35,080 --> 01:44:37,839
Speaker 2: Now again. This woman has not been charged with a crime,

1833
01:44:38,800 --> 01:44:40,720
Speaker 2: but it seems like a bad.

1834
01:44:40,600 --> 01:44:44,600
Speaker 1: Sign that she either didn't know or didn't care that

1835
01:44:44,680 --> 01:44:47,400
Speaker 1: the client asking her for a lot of personal information

1836
01:44:47,560 --> 01:44:51,000
Speaker 1: on people had a five decade long rap sheet that

1837
01:44:51,120 --> 01:44:56,400
Speaker 1: included convictions related to harassment by mail. You're either deeply

1838
01:44:56,520 --> 01:44:59,680
Speaker 1: unscrupulous or very bad at your job, and I'm not

1839
01:44:59,720 --> 01:45:05,519
Speaker 1: sure which is worse either way, This investigation is rapidly

1840
01:45:05,560 --> 01:45:09,040
Speaker 1: coming together. The postal investigator has Frank's bank records, He's

1841
01:45:09,080 --> 01:45:12,360
Speaker 1: been identified by the victims. They're closing in on him.

1842
01:45:12,640 --> 01:45:16,200
Speaker 1: Then maybe he knows, maybe he doesn't. He did move

1843
01:45:16,439 --> 01:45:19,240
Speaker 1: very suddenly in February twenty nineteen, leaving the house he'd

1844
01:45:19,240 --> 01:45:21,880
Speaker 1: been renting for over a decade right as they got

1845
01:45:21,920 --> 01:45:26,480
Speaker 1: the warrant to search it, and renting a different house nearby.

1846
01:45:26,560 --> 01:45:29,479
Speaker 1: But he's still sending the letters. So if he knows

1847
01:45:29,520 --> 01:45:31,639
Speaker 1: they're onto him, why is he still sending the letters?

1848
01:45:32,840 --> 01:45:36,640
Speaker 1: On February thirteenth, twenty nineteen, six weeks after they know

1849
01:45:36,800 --> 01:45:39,679
Speaker 1: Frank's their guy, right around the time that he's moving

1850
01:45:39,680 --> 01:45:42,559
Speaker 1: to his new house. A clerk at the post office

1851
01:45:42,600 --> 01:45:45,200
Speaker 1: calls the investigator to say that an old man with

1852
01:45:45,280 --> 01:45:48,439
Speaker 1: a terrible scar on his face just bought a stack

1853
01:45:48,479 --> 01:45:52,519
Speaker 1: of postcards with cash, and the last postcard arrived on

1854
01:45:52,560 --> 01:45:57,519
Speaker 1: February nineteenth, twenty nineteen. It signed Carson Wells, but the

1855
01:45:57,520 --> 01:46:00,000
Speaker 1: writer identifies himself as the man who blew his horn

1856
01:46:00,080 --> 01:46:02,479
Speaker 1: at them in the parking lot. And then he reminds

1857
01:46:02,520 --> 01:46:04,679
Speaker 1: Liam and Denise that all the murderers who'd been writing

1858
01:46:04,680 --> 01:46:07,360
Speaker 1: to them had already forwarded their personal information to criminals

1859
01:46:07,400 --> 01:46:11,720
Speaker 1: on the outside, but it was already over. Two weeks later,

1860
01:46:11,760 --> 01:46:15,120
Speaker 1: they searched Frank's home. They took his typewriter and his

1861
01:46:15,200 --> 01:46:17,360
Speaker 1: list of federal inmates, the ones he'd been writing to

1862
01:46:17,479 --> 01:46:21,160
Speaker 1: as his victims, and they found portraits of Hitler and

1863
01:46:21,320 --> 01:46:27,720
Speaker 1: Nazi memorabilia and white supremacist literature, and two live rattlesnakes.

1864
01:46:28,920 --> 01:46:32,600
Speaker 1: Rattlesnakes don't live in Idaho. These aren't snakes that he

1865
01:46:32,640 --> 01:46:38,200
Speaker 1: got outside. These are snakes that he is reading. Frank

1866
01:46:38,280 --> 01:46:41,200
Speaker 1: has a lifelong interest in reptile breeding. I think he's

1867
01:46:41,200 --> 01:46:44,479
Speaker 1: a member of the Idaho Herpetological Society, or at least

1868
01:46:44,479 --> 01:46:47,240
Speaker 1: he was before he went to prison, and shortly before

1869
01:46:47,280 --> 01:46:49,800
Speaker 1: his arrest, he commented on an online obituary for an

1870
01:46:49,800 --> 01:46:53,360
Speaker 1: old high school classmate, reminiscing fondly about how they used

1871
01:46:53,360 --> 01:46:56,400
Speaker 1: to collect snakes in the woods together in the fifties.

1872
01:46:58,360 --> 01:47:03,519
Speaker 1: Once he's in custody, confessed immediately, telling investigators on the

1873
01:47:03,600 --> 01:47:05,920
Speaker 1: day of his arrest that he'd sent the postcards because

1874
01:47:05,920 --> 01:47:08,360
Speaker 1: he felt like these people had embarrassed him and it

1875
01:47:08,360 --> 01:47:10,280
Speaker 1: made him feel better to know he was causing them

1876
01:47:10,280 --> 01:47:14,360
Speaker 1: emotional distress. Shortly after his arrest, he wrote to the

1877
01:47:14,400 --> 01:47:16,280
Speaker 1: judge to ask the court to intervene in what he

1878
01:47:16,320 --> 01:47:19,040
Speaker 1: felt was an inadequate response by the jail to what

1879
01:47:19,080 --> 01:47:22,400
Speaker 1: he called many of the infirmities that affect the elderly,

1880
01:47:23,040 --> 01:47:25,120
Speaker 1: and says he has the urge to commit suicide and

1881
01:47:25,160 --> 01:47:28,320
Speaker 1: his demands aren't met. And I don't want to sound

1882
01:47:28,320 --> 01:47:31,040
Speaker 1: like I'm brushing this off. I'm not saying that this

1883
01:47:31,080 --> 01:47:34,000
Speaker 1: couldn't possibly be a valid concern. People die in jails

1884
01:47:34,040 --> 01:47:38,080
Speaker 1: and prisons every day because employees don't care or don't

1885
01:47:38,080 --> 01:47:41,120
Speaker 1: have the resources to provide adequate care. This is a

1886
01:47:41,280 --> 01:47:44,240
Speaker 1: very real problem, and the urge to harm yourself is

1887
01:47:44,280 --> 01:47:50,400
Speaker 1: always very serious, But this isn't Frank's first rodeo. Remember

1888
01:47:50,439 --> 01:47:53,200
Speaker 1: in the eighties he used to threaten suicide and would

1889
01:47:53,200 --> 01:47:57,720
Speaker 1: even fake suicide attempts in order to manipulate employees of

1890
01:47:57,760 --> 01:48:01,760
Speaker 1: the witness Protection program, So this may not be a

1891
01:48:01,760 --> 01:48:06,040
Speaker 1: brand new issue for Frank at any rate. Within months

1892
01:48:06,080 --> 01:48:10,479
Speaker 1: of his arrest he entered into a plea agreement. So

1893
01:48:10,520 --> 01:48:12,799
Speaker 1: once the mail cops got on the case, they actually

1894
01:48:12,880 --> 01:48:14,880
Speaker 1: sorted it out pretty quickly.

1895
01:48:14,960 --> 01:48:15,120
Speaker 2: Right.

1896
01:48:15,160 --> 01:48:18,120
Speaker 1: The USPIS got on the case in September of twenty eighteen,

1897
01:48:18,160 --> 01:48:22,559
Speaker 1: and within three months they knew it was Frank. Maybe

1898
01:48:22,600 --> 01:48:26,000
Speaker 1: they should have called the guys who solved mail crimes earlier.

1899
01:48:26,800 --> 01:48:29,960
Speaker 1: I don't know, but if there had been more communication

1900
01:48:30,040 --> 01:48:33,000
Speaker 1: between different law enforcement agencies, the whole situation could have

1901
01:48:33,040 --> 01:48:37,960
Speaker 1: been resolved. When he sent a single letter a third victim,

1902
01:48:38,120 --> 01:48:41,760
Speaker 1: which he signed with his own name. But when a

1903
01:48:41,840 --> 01:48:45,360
Speaker 1: US marshal searched Frank's house two years before his eventual arrest,

1904
01:48:46,240 --> 01:48:48,080
Speaker 1: I guess they didn't bother to check in with the

1905
01:48:48,120 --> 01:48:52,479
Speaker 1: local police, because in April of twenty seventeen, Frank sent

1906
01:48:52,560 --> 01:48:56,599
Speaker 1: a single letter to Gerald Shrr. The man who found

1907
01:48:56,640 --> 01:49:00,200
Speaker 1: it in for many years ran the witness Protection program.

1908
01:49:01,280 --> 01:49:03,720
Speaker 1: I can't think of a worse guy to pick if

1909
01:49:03,720 --> 01:49:06,800
Speaker 1: you're going to send a threatening letter. Sure was long

1910
01:49:06,840 --> 01:49:09,759
Speaker 1: since retired by twenty seventeen. He passed away in twenty

1911
01:49:09,800 --> 01:49:12,240
Speaker 1: twenty at the age of eighty six. But is there

1912
01:49:12,280 --> 01:49:14,840
Speaker 1: anyone on earth who had more chips to call in

1913
01:49:14,880 --> 01:49:17,479
Speaker 1: with the US Marshals? You think a US marshal isn't

1914
01:49:17,479 --> 01:49:19,000
Speaker 1: going to come to your house if you sign your

1915
01:49:19,040 --> 01:49:21,000
Speaker 1: full legal name to a threatening letter to the.

1916
01:49:20,920 --> 01:49:23,160
Speaker 2: Guy who invented witness protection.

1917
01:49:23,920 --> 01:49:26,360
Speaker 1: You think you're going to scare the guy whose job

1918
01:49:26,479 --> 01:49:29,920
Speaker 1: was protecting mobsters from other mobsters.

1919
01:49:29,920 --> 01:49:32,160
Speaker 2: Truly a stupid move, even for Frank.

1920
01:49:34,600 --> 01:49:38,920
Speaker 5: You poisonous, licentious, so true. I thought that you would

1921
01:49:38,960 --> 01:49:42,360
Speaker 5: have been long dead from cardiovascular disease due to obesity.

1922
01:49:42,800 --> 01:49:44,920
Speaker 5: I was very much hoping to sit Shiva for you

1923
01:49:45,240 --> 01:49:47,160
Speaker 5: to pray cottage over your fat corpse.

1924
01:49:47,200 --> 01:49:47,639
Speaker 2: You LOASO.

1925
01:49:48,920 --> 01:49:52,080
Speaker 5: I will remember you, although it's doubtful you will remember

1926
01:49:52,240 --> 01:49:55,720
Speaker 5: from witsec units and Otisville as San Diego Paraiden with

1927
01:49:55,760 --> 01:50:00,000
Speaker 5: your uentourage to pray women from the Office of Enforcement Operations.

1928
01:50:00,640 --> 01:50:03,320
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty four, you expelled me from the program,

1929
01:50:03,520 --> 01:50:06,160
Speaker 5: leaving me to fend for myself as a known inform

1930
01:50:06,280 --> 01:50:11,560
Speaker 5: a rat in the general populations of very dangerous prisons.

1931
01:50:13,040 --> 01:50:16,479
Speaker 1: It had been more than thirty years, but Frank never

1932
01:50:16,560 --> 01:50:20,080
Speaker 1: got over getting kicked out of the program. He flew

1933
01:50:20,160 --> 01:50:22,559
Speaker 1: all over the world helping a spy in nineteen eighty

1934
01:50:22,600 --> 01:50:26,000
Speaker 1: trying to leverage information on Christopher Boyce to get placement in.

1935
01:50:25,920 --> 01:50:27,800
Speaker 2: The program, and it didn't work.

1936
01:50:28,160 --> 01:50:30,559
Speaker 1: The information he gave was not only not helpful, but

1937
01:50:30,600 --> 01:50:33,880
Speaker 1: by fabricating unhelpful information in order to get something from

1938
01:50:33,880 --> 01:50:37,840
Speaker 1: the government, he made things worse. And when he finally

1939
01:50:37,880 --> 01:50:40,320
Speaker 1: got what he wanted by testifying against a serial killer

1940
01:50:40,320 --> 01:50:42,840
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two, he couldn't keep his mouth shut

1941
01:50:42,880 --> 01:50:45,160
Speaker 1: about it, and so he was removed from the program

1942
01:50:45,200 --> 01:50:48,680
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty four. In his letter to schr he

1943
01:50:48,720 --> 01:50:51,240
Speaker 1: claims that as a result of losing his protected status

1944
01:50:51,240 --> 01:50:53,680
Speaker 1: in eighty four, he was attacked by another inmate the

1945
01:50:53,720 --> 01:50:58,120
Speaker 1: following year, and he does, without a doubt bear a

1946
01:50:58,240 --> 01:51:01,040
Speaker 1: huge scar all down one t cheek to this day.

1947
01:51:02,479 --> 01:51:06,720
Speaker 1: Somebody cut Frank's face open pretty bad. He takes care

1948
01:51:06,800 --> 01:51:08,960
Speaker 1: to mention in his letter that the assailant was black,

1949
01:51:09,120 --> 01:51:13,320
Speaker 1: though he chooses different words to say that, and who knows.

1950
01:51:13,160 --> 01:51:14,160
Speaker 2: Why Frank got cut.

1951
01:51:14,320 --> 01:51:17,320
Speaker 1: I'm not making light of the violence that happens inside

1952
01:51:17,400 --> 01:51:20,960
Speaker 1: jails and prisons, but you'd have to do some real

1953
01:51:21,040 --> 01:51:24,200
Speaker 1: mental gymnastics here to come up with a satisfying explanation

1954
01:51:24,320 --> 01:51:27,160
Speaker 1: for why a black man would cut Frank up in

1955
01:51:27,280 --> 01:51:32,720
Speaker 1: retaliation for Frank's testimony against a Nazi serial killer who

1956
01:51:32,760 --> 01:51:33,360
Speaker 1: traveled the.

1957
01:51:33,360 --> 01:51:37,800
Speaker 2: Country shooting black men. I just don't think that they

1958
01:51:37,800 --> 01:51:38,720
Speaker 2: would be mad about that.

1959
01:51:40,439 --> 01:51:44,280
Speaker 1: But I can think of a variety of reasons why

1960
01:51:44,479 --> 01:51:47,760
Speaker 1: a black man who encountered Frank in prison might get

1961
01:51:47,760 --> 01:51:50,599
Speaker 1: into it with him. I mean racist hide. Frank's just

1962
01:51:51,160 --> 01:51:53,040
Speaker 1: kind of a hothead, not a great guy to hang

1963
01:51:53,080 --> 01:51:55,320
Speaker 1: out with, always getting into it with people. But also

1964
01:51:56,040 --> 01:51:57,479
Speaker 1: he loves saying racial slurs.

1965
01:51:57,560 --> 01:51:58,559
Speaker 2: So I can think of a.

1966
01:51:58,560 --> 01:52:00,920
Speaker 1: Variety of reasons why this my have happened that had

1967
01:52:00,960 --> 01:52:04,160
Speaker 1: nothing to do with him testifying against a serial killer.

1968
01:52:05,240 --> 01:52:07,360
Speaker 1: We can't take Frank at his word, and I couldn't

1969
01:52:07,360 --> 01:52:09,880
Speaker 1: find any reporting from the time about a prison knife

1970
01:52:09,880 --> 01:52:12,519
Speaker 1: fight in nineteen eighty five, so who knows.

1971
01:52:14,360 --> 01:52:15,360
Speaker 2: After shr received the.

1972
01:52:15,400 --> 01:52:20,600
Speaker 1: Letter, which Frank had signed venomously yours, Frank Abbott Sweeney,

1973
01:52:20,760 --> 01:52:23,599
Speaker 1: a US marshal was sent out to Idaho to speak

1974
01:52:23,600 --> 01:52:27,160
Speaker 1: with Frank, and Frank admitted that he sent the letter,

1975
01:52:27,680 --> 01:52:29,439
Speaker 1: but he said he meant no harm by it, and

1976
01:52:29,479 --> 01:52:33,200
Speaker 1: he allowed the marshal to search his home. It seems

1977
01:52:33,200 --> 01:52:35,640
Speaker 1: like if anyone had compared notes, Frank could have been

1978
01:52:35,640 --> 01:52:39,200
Speaker 1: identified as the Garden City postcard writer far sooner. The

1979
01:52:39,320 --> 01:52:42,000
Speaker 1: language in this letter was very similar to some of

1980
01:52:42,040 --> 01:52:44,760
Speaker 1: the postcards. If they had just showed this letter to

1981
01:52:44,800 --> 01:52:48,800
Speaker 1: the sheriff, maybe they would have recognized it. But yes,

1982
01:52:48,880 --> 01:52:53,520
Speaker 1: they didn't because he wasn't. The local police in Pennsylvania,

1983
01:52:53,560 --> 01:52:57,120
Speaker 1: where the letter was received, charged Frank with terroristic threats,

1984
01:52:57,160 --> 01:53:01,720
Speaker 1: but that's a non extraditable misdemeanor in Pennsylvania, so they

1985
01:53:01,760 --> 01:53:04,200
Speaker 1: couldn't bring him back to face the charge. So he's

1986
01:53:04,200 --> 01:53:07,200
Speaker 1: got an open warrant in Pennsylvania. If he ever goes there, willingly,

1987
01:53:07,640 --> 01:53:11,320
Speaker 1: but he probably won't and was sure now deceased. It

1988
01:53:11,479 --> 01:53:15,640
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like that's likely to amount to anything. On

1989
01:53:15,680 --> 01:53:19,759
Speaker 1: December sixteenth, twenty nineteen, Frank Sweeney was sentenced to fifty

1990
01:53:19,800 --> 01:53:23,760
Speaker 1: one months for six counts of stalking. A few days later,

1991
01:53:23,840 --> 01:53:26,599
Speaker 1: his German wife posted a photo of her Christmas Eve dinner,

1992
01:53:27,400 --> 01:53:29,559
Speaker 1: a friend asked her if Frank would be celebrating with

1993
01:53:29,600 --> 01:53:33,280
Speaker 1: her that year. She replied that, no, Frank has been

1994
01:53:33,320 --> 01:53:36,880
Speaker 1: ill for several months and can't fly right now. She

1995
01:53:36,960 --> 01:53:39,040
Speaker 1: didn't say that he was back in federal prison for

1996
01:53:39,400 --> 01:53:43,680
Speaker 1: at least the fifth time. Frank Sweeney was released from

1997
01:53:43,720 --> 01:53:47,080
Speaker 1: prison in December of twenty twenty two. I just noticed,

1998
01:53:47,080 --> 01:53:49,519
Speaker 1: as I'm writing this that it's his eighty first birthday today,

1999
01:53:49,960 --> 01:53:51,920
Speaker 1: But it won't be by the time you hear this.

2000
01:53:53,360 --> 01:53:57,519
Speaker 1: He's still in Idaho, He's still playing the violin, and

2001
01:53:57,560 --> 01:54:00,280
Speaker 1: he still co owns a few Mexican hairless DAWs on

2002
01:54:00,320 --> 01:54:04,160
Speaker 1: the show circuit in Germany. In that nineteen ninety four

2003
01:54:04,160 --> 01:54:07,000
Speaker 1: New York Times article about his prison consulting business, Frank

2004
01:54:07,080 --> 01:54:10,200
Speaker 1: quipped that his favorite quote was the crime is not

2005
01:54:10,240 --> 01:54:13,120
Speaker 1: in the act, but in the stupidity of being caught,

2006
01:54:13,880 --> 01:54:17,720
Speaker 1: which he attributes to Nietzsche. I think, regardless of your

2007
01:54:17,760 --> 01:54:20,960
Speaker 1: stance on the philosophical nature of crime and punishment, though

2008
01:54:21,360 --> 01:54:24,040
Speaker 1: there are better quotes from Frank's thousands of appearances in

2009
01:54:24,080 --> 01:54:26,160
Speaker 1: the newspaper over his six decades of crime.

2010
01:54:27,600 --> 01:54:28,320
Speaker 2: Maybe Judge H.

2011
01:54:28,360 --> 01:54:30,720
Speaker 1: Curtis Meaner had it write in nineteen eighty one, when

2012
01:54:30,760 --> 01:54:32,920
Speaker 1: he cut off the bickering in the courtroom over exactly

2013
01:54:32,960 --> 01:54:35,680
Speaker 1: what the hell happened with Frank's mysterious South African letters

2014
01:54:35,680 --> 01:54:39,160
Speaker 1: about the missing spy, saying, I have neither the time

2015
01:54:39,280 --> 01:54:42,440
Speaker 1: nor inclination to unravel all the mysteries in this case,

2016
01:54:43,560 --> 01:54:46,360
Speaker 1: because we never really will unravel all the mysteries of

2017
01:54:46,400 --> 01:54:50,160
Speaker 1: Frank's past. He played a bit part in so many

2018
01:54:50,280 --> 01:54:51,360
Speaker 1: much bigger stories.

2019
01:54:52,320 --> 01:54:54,240
Speaker 2: They've made whole Hollywood.

2020
01:54:53,800 --> 01:54:56,880
Speaker 1: Films out of so many of these little slices of

2021
01:54:56,960 --> 01:55:01,440
Speaker 1: history that Frank passed, through old war spy thrillers to

2022
01:55:01,720 --> 01:55:03,720
Speaker 1: Scorsese dramas about organized crime.

2023
01:55:04,560 --> 01:55:07,240
Speaker 2: Frank's there, it's not in the movie.

2024
01:55:07,760 --> 01:55:13,080
Speaker 1: He's just out of frame while history happens doing something

2025
01:55:13,920 --> 01:55:25,280
Speaker 1: really goddamn weird. Weird Little Guys is a production of

2026
01:55:25,320 --> 01:55:29,440
Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded

2027
01:55:29,440 --> 01:55:33,400
Speaker 1: by me Molly Kunger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman

2028
01:55:33,480 --> 01:55:36,800
Speaker 1: and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly

2029
01:55:36,840 --> 01:55:41,080
Speaker 1: talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.

2030
01:55:41,320 --> 01:55:43,880
Speaker 1: You can email me at Weird Little Guys Podcast at

2031
01:55:43,920 --> 01:55:47,280
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I

2032
01:55:47,320 --> 01:55:50,920
Speaker 1: almost certainly will not answer it. It's nothing personal. I

2033
01:55:50,920 --> 01:55:54,240
Speaker 1: don't answer any of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy

2034
01:55:54,240 --> 01:55:56,480
Speaker 1: theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird

2035
01:55:56,480 --> 01:55:59,760
Speaker 1: Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to

2036
01:55:59,800 --> 01:56:09,760
Speaker 1: make you one of my weird Blue Guys.