Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: It turned out that every door I pushed, I walked
Speaker 2: in and there were these ghosts, if you will saying, well,
Speaker 2: what the heck took you so long? We've just been
Speaker 2: sitting here waiting for you to figure out where part
Speaker 2: of the story too.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. A writer's stepfather is a researcher in
Speaker 1: a prison when he meets a prisoner and they'll change
Speaker 1: their lives forever. This is a tragic true crime tale
Speaker 1: about regret, lots of regret. Could one decision have saved
Speaker 1: the life of a police officer. Later on, author Lisa
Speaker 1: Belkin tells us her very personal story from her book
Speaker 1: Genealogy of a Murder. Four Generations, three families, One fateful Night.
Speaker 2: The story began over breakfast. The story began with a story.
Speaker 2: And my stepfather had just read another book of mine
Speaker 2: and had sat down to this breakfast he just made
Speaker 2: in the new kitchen he shared in his new marriage
Speaker 2: with my mother, and he said, you know, your book
Speaker 2: reminds me of a story. And he started to talk
Speaker 2: for a good forty five minutes, telling me a tale
Speaker 2: that it seems he had not told often. It was
Speaker 2: new to my mother about how he was thirty years old.
Speaker 2: He was a fairly newly minted physician. He was in
Speaker 2: the army in the nineteen fifties, late nineteen fifties to
Speaker 2: early nineteen sixty and he was sent not to war,
Speaker 2: not to East Germany, which is where most doctors were
Speaker 2: being sent then, but to a penitentiary, the State of
Speaker 2: penitentiary in Chicago, Illinois, and he was there to run
Speaker 2: experiments on prisoners. I'll tell you I almost interrupted him there,
Speaker 2: you know, the way you do to show him what
Speaker 2: I knew about medical experiments and how that well, that
Speaker 2: wouldn't be permitted today, and instead I kept my mouth shut,
Speaker 2: and he started to tell me about his friendship with
Speaker 2: one particular prisoner and how he recognized himself in this man.
Speaker 2: They their interests, they had deep conversations, and he finished
Speaker 2: telling me this forty five minute story with a lot
Speaker 2: of rabbit holes and detours. And I looked at him
Speaker 2: and I said, well, you know I have to write
Speaker 2: about this, don't you. And he said, well, if you must,
Speaker 2: And that's where this book began, and nine and a
Speaker 2: half years later it came out. But it all began
Speaker 2: with a story, which is interesting because it's a story
Speaker 2: about the importance of stories in a way, and it
Speaker 2: evolved from there.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the names real quick. So the killer
Speaker 1: that we're talking about is Joseph DeSalvo, who was well known,
Speaker 1: is that right by the time this happened.
Speaker 2: By the time this happened, he was well known to authorities.
Speaker 2: After it happened, he was well known to everyone in Stamford, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: I mean, the shooting became a huge, huge deal. And
Speaker 2: then the police officer was David Troy, who was well
Speaker 2: known in Stamford, Connecticut for different reasons. He was the
Speaker 2: friendly beat cop that everyone in the neighborhood knew. And
Speaker 2: then the doctor was Alvin Tarloff, known to me as
Speaker 2: al who ended up marrying my mother many many years later,
Speaker 2: and he became well known after this. He became sort
Speaker 2: of a force in the medical world after this, arguably
Speaker 2: as a result of it. Much of his work was
Speaker 2: what we're talking about, trying to figure out what it
Speaker 2: is that happens to people young that determines who they are,
Speaker 2: social determinants of health, it's called. And because of this event,
Speaker 2: he spent a lifetime trying to figure out what makes
Speaker 2: us who we are and how society can try and
Speaker 2: help early on. So, yes, So, Joe DeSalvo was my shooter,
Speaker 2: David Troy was my cup, al Tarloff was my doctor,
Speaker 2: and I do think of all of them as mine.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's an interesting concept. Why is that just because
Speaker 1: you became so entrenched in their stories, you felt like
Speaker 1: you have some sort of not ownership, but you have
Speaker 1: an investment, and you've done more for these three men
Speaker 1: than anybody else had with biography, right.
Speaker 2: And because I think when you spend this much time
Speaker 2: writing so deeply about people, you feel an obligation to
Speaker 2: get it right. You feel an obligation to write it
Speaker 2: through their eyes, to as much crawl in their head
Speaker 2: as you can, so that you are seeing and reasoning
Speaker 2: the way they did. At the time. I felt the
Speaker 2: added obligation to the families, one of which was theoretically mine,
Speaker 2: I mean my mother married into it, but was now
Speaker 2: mine and the cops kids, who I felt a deep
Speaker 2: responsibility too.
Speaker 1: So where do we start with the story? Is it
Speaker 1: in the penitentiary or where is it?
Speaker 2: Do you think the story of the murder starts in
Speaker 2: the stay Field Penitentiary, where Joseph DeSalvo had been imprisoned
Speaker 2: and al Tarloff was then stationed as a doctor, where
Speaker 2: the Army was running experiments on prisoners. There was something
Speaker 2: called the US Army Malaria drug trials that were conducted
Speaker 2: not exclusively, but quite largely at the Stafold Penitentiary in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and the Army was desperate for a treatment for malaria
Speaker 2: because malaria was decimating their troops. It had been a
Speaker 2: problem during World War One, it had been a problem
Speaker 2: during Korea, and now in nineteen fifty eight, by the
Speaker 2: time my stepfather got there, it was still a problem
Speaker 2: and the experiments were still ongoing, and now they were
Speaker 2: facing Vietnam. The goal was to find something that would
Speaker 2: keep their troops on their feet rather than hospitalized with malaria.
Speaker 2: And prisons are really good places to do experiments on
Speaker 2: people because you can control for all the factors, what
Speaker 2: they eat, what the climate is, make sure they show up.
Speaker 2: And so Al ran these experiments. They would later be
Speaker 2: declared unethical, unconscionable, and illegal and stopped by Congress. But
Speaker 2: at the time my stepfather, who was very interested in
Speaker 2: doing the right thing at all times and studied it carefully,
Speaker 2: really believed and I think the prisoners did too, that
Speaker 2: they were doing something patriotic for the nation and for
Speaker 2: its troops. So prisoners were the subjects of the experiment.
Speaker 2: They were given malaria, and then they were given drugs
Speaker 2: to treat the malaria. They also were training as lab techs,
Speaker 2: as nurses in various professions that they could take with
Speaker 2: them out of the penitentiary. And Joseph DeSalvo was both
Speaker 2: a subject of the experiments and a lab trainee, and
Speaker 2: so he and Al worked side by side, got to
Speaker 2: know each other, Well, can you get to know somebody
Speaker 2: well when one of you is a prisoner and the
Speaker 2: other goes home to their family every night. But it
Speaker 2: felt like a friendship, It felt like intellectual conversation. And
Speaker 2: Joe asked Al for help with the parole board. And
Speaker 2: Al not only wrote a letter, which would be the easiest,
Speaker 2: simplest thing to do, but also, being the man I
Speaker 2: came to know as my stepfather, he researched everything about it.
Speaker 2: He learned that then, as now, the things that make
Speaker 2: you succeed on parole are not just wanting to be better,
Speaker 2: but having a job when you got out, a place
Speaker 2: to live, and getting out of the water you swam in.
Speaker 2: So Al found him that job, found him that place
Speaker 2: to live, and found all of those things in Connecticut,
Speaker 2: which is where Al grew up and which was far
Speaker 2: away from Chicago, which is where Joe committed all his crimes.
Speaker 2: And Joe went off to Norwalk, Connecticut and did incredibly well.
Speaker 2: And then, for reasons that are intricate I find fascinating
Speaker 2: and well into the story, he began to falter. He
Speaker 2: reached out to my stepfather for help. It was at
Speaker 2: a moment where Al could not help him, and Joe
Speaker 2: and Adam bought a gun and held up a tavern.
Speaker 2: And a police officer who's by this point in the
Speaker 2: reading you've come to know fairly well as well, happened
Speaker 2: to be on duty that night when he should have
Speaker 2: been off, happened to take this call when he had
Speaker 2: been assigned another one, happened to do a series of
Speaker 2: things that ended up with the two of them facing
Speaker 2: off in a dark alley.
Speaker 1: Tell me why Joseph DeSalvo was there to begin with?
Speaker 1: I know you said he has a long rap sheet,
Speaker 1: lots of crime in the Chicago area.
Speaker 2: Why is it because he was a twin and he
Speaker 2: was the second born, and he was always treated as
Speaker 2: second and always trying to prove that that he, you know,
Speaker 2: with a lot of bluster, was worthy. Was it because
Speaker 2: his father, he was a motorcycle racing star in nineteen
Speaker 2: oh eight who got clunked on the head during a race,
Speaker 2: And the write up includes the fact that you could
Speaker 2: hear the clonk in the top part of the stands
Speaker 2: and his family describes his whole personality as changing. So
Speaker 2: he was a lousy father, probably because he had a
Speaker 2: traumatic brain injury. We would know that today and tortured
Speaker 2: his son in many ways. So the kid was, you know,
Speaker 2: stealing from other children at school by the time he
Speaker 2: was eight, or was it because he fell in with
Speaker 2: a group of friends when he was a teenager and
Speaker 2: started holding up bars, whatever it was. His raps sheet
Speaker 2: said it was because he had a sort of lifelong
Speaker 2: habit of taking things that weren't his starting with grade school,
Speaker 2: you know, lunch money, and ending up with cars at gunpoint.
Speaker 2: He was not the kind of guy you want to
Speaker 2: meet in the dark. And yet you listen to his
Speaker 2: talk with psychiatrists in prison and his talks with Al
Speaker 2: side by side in a lab at the penitentiary, and
Speaker 2: he was smart as could be, well read, quoted poetry,
Speaker 2: quoted philosophy, huge fan of history. And so why was
Speaker 2: Joe there? He was there because he was an armed robber.
Speaker 2: But it was, as always, much more complicated than that.
Speaker 1: Were there violent crimes in this go round when he
Speaker 1: was in the penitentiary, when Al knew him.
Speaker 2: There was armed robbery, There was no physical injury to anyone.
Speaker 2: There was debate among him and the others who held
Speaker 2: up the last tavern about who fired the gun into
Speaker 2: the mirror over the bar, so it could have been Jie,
Speaker 2: but I don't know. He had never he was not
Speaker 2: in and he fights in prison. He was never accused
Speaker 2: of hurting anyone, at least physically. And interestingly, Al did
Speaker 2: not know his complete history when he vouched for him,
Speaker 2: and effectively, that's what you do when you write a
Speaker 2: letter to the parole board. I mean, technically. Al's letter
Speaker 2: to the parole board said I have trained him as
Speaker 2: a lab tech, and he is skilled, and he is
Speaker 2: among the best that I've seen, and I am confident
Speaker 2: that he is prepared to go do this job in
Speaker 2: the real world. Those were the parameters of his letter.
Speaker 2: But the effect of writing that letter says, I vouch
Speaker 2: for this man. But the way it worked, or at
Speaker 2: least the way Al thought it worked, was you don't
Speaker 2: ask the details of someone's rap sheet because you are saying,
Speaker 2: this is the man that I see now. You parole
Speaker 2: board need to figure out the rest. All I can
Speaker 2: tell you is who I see now, and who Al
Speaker 2: saw at the moment that he stepped forward and said, yes,
Speaker 2: I think he can go successfully do this job was
Speaker 2: a man who frankly made him think of himself so no,
Speaker 2: Al did not know the details of what Joe had done.
Speaker 2: Was somewhat appalled, but I never got a straight answer
Speaker 2: out of him, never thought to ask, felt he wasn't
Speaker 2: supposed to ask, felt that that wasn't the point. The
Speaker 2: point was who are you now? Maybe a little of
Speaker 2: all those things.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the time span we're talking about, is
Speaker 1: this years? Is this month? And also tell me about
Speaker 1: the process of training and inmate in a skill like this,
Speaker 1: a specialized skill like being a laptech.
Speaker 2: Al met Joe in nineteen fifty eight summer of fifty eight,
Speaker 2: and Joe was released in May of sixty, so they
Speaker 2: had at least an acquaintance of several years. They spent
Speaker 2: every day together, because you know, weekends don't exist in
Speaker 2: a penitentiary. Al came into the office at least once
Speaker 2: a day, including weekends. He was in the army. This
Speaker 2: isn't your typical job. And they were side by side
Speaker 2: in a small laboratory that had been a jail cell.
Speaker 2: It had been a prison cell, so that's how big
Speaker 2: a space we're talking. So side by side is really
Speaker 2: side by side. And when they weren't talking about the science,
Speaker 2: they were talking about what they were reading about local sports.
Speaker 2: They talked about everything but Al's family and Joe's history.
Speaker 2: Those things were I don't think explicitly but simply understood
Speaker 2: as non starters. So they talked NonStop for a good
Speaker 2: part of almost every day for two years. And Joe
Speaker 2: was an autodidact. He taught himself jazz, he taught him
Speaker 2: self poetry, he taught him self philosophy. He took all
Speaker 2: these books out of the prison library and discussed them
Speaker 2: with Al. Al felt himself to also be kind of
Speaker 2: a plant through the asphalt, if you will. He came
Speaker 2: from a family that wasn't interested in in academics, or
Speaker 2: at least his immediate family had an uncle who was
Speaker 2: his mentor, but he didn't fit in with his own family,
Speaker 2: where they kind of brawled and ran businesses and did sports.
Speaker 2: And all Al wanted to do was read and think
Speaker 2: deeply and solve problems. So Al kind of saw little
Speaker 2: of himself and him so how well did he know
Speaker 2: him versus how much was he projecting? I can't parse that,
Speaker 2: but it was a complicated thread.
Speaker 1: Well, when you were describing their conversations and then your
Speaker 1: stepfather's background, I was thinking, I wonder if Al felt
Speaker 1: like this was a case of one wrong turn in
Speaker 1: his own you could have landed him in the same
Speaker 1: situations as Joseph DeSalvo. So you know, this is somebody
Speaker 1: who deserved a certain amount of respect as he got
Speaker 1: to know him. Do you think that that kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense to him? Maybe they had a very similar
Speaker 1: feel growing up in some ways.
Speaker 2: In today's language, Al's background was one of a lot
Speaker 2: of privilege. His parents didn't go to college, but they
Speaker 2: were educated. They lived a middle class life. They owned
Speaker 2: a restaurant that did extremely well. Joe arguably didn't have
Speaker 2: a chance from the start. His father just couldn't hold
Speaker 2: a job, was clearly damaged physically by things he'd done
Speaker 2: in his youth, emotionally and physically abused his mother, and
Speaker 2: Joe watched that. So in that way, they were very different.
Speaker 2: But Al viewed his own childhood as one where he
Speaker 2: was somewhat neglected. His view of himself was that his
Speaker 2: father and mother were so invested in this restaurant, which
Speaker 2: they were at twenty four hours a day, seven days
Speaker 2: a week, by Al's account, and his mother was never home.
Speaker 2: When she was home, he overheard her crying in the
Speaker 2: other room because this isn't the way she wanted to
Speaker 2: raise her children. She didn't want, you know, for her
Speaker 2: husband's demands go off to work every day. The father
Speaker 2: was not as his graduation, The father was not present
Speaker 2: for family events, and they ate all their meals at
Speaker 2: the restaurant. He doesn't remember any family conversations that weren't
Speaker 2: about the restaurant. That was Al's view of his own childhood.
Speaker 2: And he used to go to other people's houses for dinner.
Speaker 2: He was invited to classmates houses for dinner, and he
Speaker 2: went almost as an anthropologist, to see how other families
Speaker 2: did it. And other families, in his view, did it better.
Speaker 2: They paid more attention to their children. So yeah, Al
Speaker 2: was gambling after school in vacant lots, and Al felt
Speaker 2: he had nobody looking out for him. So I think,
Speaker 2: even though he was wrong on the facts, I think
Speaker 2: Al's experience of his life was that he could have
Speaker 2: become Joe. He could have taken a wrong turn and
Speaker 2: become Joe, And really isn't Now what matters is our
Speaker 2: own perspective on our lives.
Speaker 1: Let's turn to David Troy for a moment. Who's the
Speaker 1: police officer who we will really become involved with in
Speaker 1: a little bit as we approach talking about how Joseph
Speaker 1: DeSalvo is released and what happens. Who is David Troy.
Speaker 2: David Troy is the youngest son of ten children. His
Speaker 2: father died young, and you know, talk about fate and
Speaker 2: nature versus nurture. His father died of what the family
Speaker 2: would gradually in an age of genetics, come to realize
Speaker 2: was a faulty gene and all the men in the
Speaker 2: family died young until they developed a test for hypochlesteroemia
Speaker 2: and could put them up powerful drugs, so that family
Speaker 2: legacy started early. And his father died at the wheel
Speaker 2: of the car driving his sister, David's sister to the dentist.
Speaker 2: And so that's one of Dave's first memories is a
Speaker 2: knock on the door and his mother completely falling apart.
Speaker 2: And he was her favorite son, so he was the
Speaker 2: one that she depended on, and he went through his
Speaker 2: life basically trying to make his mother happy and his
Speaker 2: mother not cry. He ended up breaking her heart in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways by marrying a lovely Italian girl,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't Irish, and this was his mother's dream
Speaker 2: for him was a nice Irish girl, and he made
Speaker 2: it up to her by taking a safer job. He
Speaker 2: had been working in a gas station, but that was
Speaker 2: with cars, and cars killed his father. So he took
Speaker 2: a safer job and joined the police force where his
Speaker 2: hours would be better. And it was Stamford. Police officers
Speaker 2: didn't get hurt in Stamford, and in fact, David Troy's
Speaker 2: death was the first death of a police officer in
Speaker 2: the line of duty in Stamford, Connecticut. So he was
Speaker 2: by description just a happy, kind, friendly, sunshiny man with
Speaker 2: a good singing voice. And he was like my stepfather,
Speaker 2: only trying to do the right thing most of the time.
Speaker 2: And it was the figuring out what the right thing
Speaker 2: was that sometimes got challenging.
Speaker 1: So Joseph DeSalvo and your stepfather have been working together
Speaker 1: in this lab for two years and he's approaching his
Speaker 1: parole meeting, right, Does anyone else vouch for Joseph or
Speaker 1: is it just Al?
Speaker 2: It's not just Al. In nineteen twenty four, Nathan Leopold
Speaker 2: and Richard Loebe became infamous, and you know, not aver
Speaker 2: audience knows who they are. But I'm betting yours. Does
Speaker 2: even those who don't recognize the name anymore recognize the
Speaker 2: two University of Chicago students who, thinking they are so
Speaker 2: brilliant that they can literally get away with murder, pick
Speaker 2: a fourteen year old boy off the streets, essentially at random,
Speaker 2: murder him and become the first crime of the century
Speaker 2: when the local papers go crazy. Spoiler alert, They did
Speaker 2: not get away with murder. They ended up at the
Speaker 2: State fell Penitentiary in Chicago, Illinois, and they were bored.
Speaker 2: They had ninety nine years to life to fill. And
Speaker 2: so what they began to do is take bets every
Speaker 2: time one of their own, one another prisoner was released
Speaker 2: on parole. Parole was fairly new in nineteen twenties. Every
Speaker 2: time someone was released on parole, they would take a
Speaker 2: bet as to whether or not that person would come
Speaker 2: back or make good. And they discovered that they had
Speaker 2: a remarkable success rate. They're betting on recidivism, and they're
Speaker 2: effectively inventing parole prediction. Because sociology was brand new again
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties, and there were sociologists at the
Speaker 2: University of Chicago who were studying this, and they came
Speaker 2: to know these men and they first both of them together. Then,
Speaker 2: after Lobe's death, Leopold, with far more rigor and determination,
Speaker 2: they published results under pseudonyms. They created a parole prediction
Speaker 2: instrument that their problem with the existing science, if you will,
Speaker 2: or academics, was it only asked questions that measured who
Speaker 2: a man was, and these were all men were talking
Speaker 2: about who a man was when they came into prison.
Speaker 2: They didn't account for how that man may have changed
Speaker 2: well in prison. So they recreated the questionnaire that prisoners
Speaker 2: asking for parole took that predicted their chances of success.
Speaker 2: And that was the instrument that was used when Joe
Speaker 2: DeSalvo applied for parole, and it said that he had
Speaker 2: far better than even odds of succeeding. And my stepfather
Speaker 2: went and read all of Leopold and Loeb's work that
Speaker 2: convinced him that this was an effective document. So it
Speaker 2: convinced my stepfather to support him. And the warden supported
Speaker 2: parole for this man for all the same reasons. The
Speaker 2: way the state of Illinois determines parole is this particular instrument.
Speaker 1: And look, he passed, so he's released in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: is that right?
Speaker 2: He was released in May of nineteen sixty.
Speaker 1: Oh man, this happens quickly, just two months.
Speaker 2: It goes downhill, very very quickly. So he just went
Speaker 2: off on the bus from Chicago to Norwalk, Connecticut. Al
Speaker 2: does not even remember saying goodbye. It was he just left.
Speaker 2: He went to Norwalk because that's where Al during medical
Speaker 2: school volunteered in a lab, in a research lab. It's
Speaker 2: where Al got his love of research, was in a
Speaker 2: lab in Norwalk, Connecticut. And he is working for a
Speaker 2: man named Norman Boaz, who Al kind of found from
Speaker 2: friends of friends of friends, you know. He wrote to
Speaker 2: the people he knew at the hospital saying, I have
Speaker 2: this man he's trained to do this sort of lab work.
Speaker 2: And he hears back from this man named Norman Boaz, who,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, is you know again, I like
Speaker 2: rabbit holes, the grandson of a man named Ernest Boaz,
Speaker 2: who is essentially he's been labeled the father of anthropology.
Speaker 2: Norman sees himself as interested in the essence of people
Speaker 2: and what makes them tick and how people can change.
Speaker 2: And he kind of came to this in a way
Speaker 2: like Al, like I am going to help people be better,
Speaker 2: and here is a person being presented to me, so
Speaker 2: he accepted Joe into his lab. In that spirit. Where
Speaker 2: Joe was living, was a postcard that he found tacked
Speaker 2: on the wall of the hospital from a woman who
Speaker 2: rented out the house over her garage and sent her
Speaker 2: postcard saying there was this house available to places where
Speaker 2: she thought trustworthy people might work, so she sent it
Speaker 2: to the hospital. They put it on the board, and
Speaker 2: then there was Joe bringing her doorbell and became her tenant.
Speaker 2: Had a tidy life for a period of time. There
Speaker 2: are hints that he was dating a nurse that he
Speaker 2: met and learning that his modest salary in the real
Speaker 2: world didn't go as far as it needed to go
Speaker 2: to properly entertain a young woman. There were subtler hints,
Speaker 2: but looking back, my interpretation is that Joe began to
Speaker 2: miss the scaffolding of prison, so he reached out to
Speaker 2: Al in only fourth over July fourth weekend, where he'd
Speaker 2: been out for two months and al was on vacation
Speaker 2: at the time, back in Norwalk, where his family still lived.
Speaker 2: He had come east from Chicago to see his parents
Speaker 2: and very importantly to get his wife to the beach
Speaker 2: because their third child had been born, and she was
Speaker 2: having severe postpartum depression and what they would eventually recognize
Speaker 2: was the first signs of the schizophrenia that would lead
Speaker 2: her to die on the streets many years later. All
Speaker 2: he knew, not all those details, but he knew she
Speaker 2: was in trouble, and so he came with their three
Speaker 2: young children under the age of three, left those children
Speaker 2: with his parents, and Al's only concern was to get
Speaker 2: her some rest time by the beach. So when Joe
Speaker 2: called his house the night before we were supposed to
Speaker 2: leave and said, I need to see you, I think
Speaker 2: Joe was looking for the structure and security and reminder
Speaker 2: of who he could be, and Al, well, recognizing that
Speaker 2: there was a note of something dire in Joe's voice,
Speaker 2: said I can't see you now. I'll see you when
Speaker 2: I get back. And that's when Joe went out and
Speaker 2: bought a gun. And it was while Al was at
Speaker 2: the beach that Joe, you know, looked for a tavern
Speaker 2: to hold up, which was his you know, that's what
Speaker 2: he did before. And he found the one he found
Speaker 2: and things unraveled as they did.
Speaker 1: So describe what that scene is like. This isn't Stamford
Speaker 1: Fourth of July weekend. How far is that from where
Speaker 1: he's staying at this house.
Speaker 2: It's about I guess a fifteen or twenty minute drive
Speaker 2: on roads as they existed then, probably, And he tried
Speaker 2: a few towns first. He acted in a way that
Speaker 2: shows some hesitance, right, It was not purposeful. He didn't
Speaker 2: march out of his house and you know, find the
Speaker 2: first available place. He went from place to place, he
Speaker 2: found reasons not to stay. There. Seemed to be a
Speaker 2: reluctance in his pattern, if you want to read something
Speaker 2: into it. He left the house at about four or
Speaker 2: five in the afternoon. He did not arrive at this
Speaker 2: tavern until ten thirty ish at night, and he put
Speaker 2: tape on his face as some sort of disguise, and
Speaker 2: put a newspaper over his gun and walked up to
Speaker 2: the bartender and said, give me everything in the cash register.
Speaker 2: It was not much, As with so many armed robberies
Speaker 2: where there's a cash register involved, nobody can agree on
Speaker 2: how much money there was, but it was, you know,
Speaker 2: double digits at best. And he got his money and
Speaker 2: then he ran. And David Troy had had the kind
Speaker 2: of night where he answered some you know, drunks who
Speaker 2: can't stand up, and a woman who was hit slightly
Speaker 2: by a car while crossing the street, and sort of
Speaker 2: minor little events, and he ended up taking the call
Speaker 2: at the tavern when others also said they would take it,
Speaker 2: but then backed off because Dave was already there, and
Speaker 2: you know, he got there and people were saying he
Speaker 2: went that away. So they ran in back into a
Speaker 2: sort of alley behind this tavern, and shots were fired,
Speaker 2: and David Troy was hit several times. The shot that
Speaker 2: killed him was in his heart. He led out in
Speaker 2: an alleyway. Testifying later, Joe would insist that David shot first,
Speaker 2: and in a book full of a lot of upsetting things,
Speaker 2: that is the one thing that his children couldn't let stand.
Speaker 2: When they read the draft, they said there is nothing
Speaker 2: about the man they know that is consistent with him
Speaker 2: shooting first.
Speaker 1: Can that be proven? I don't think it can, right, No.
Speaker 2: And so what I did is I created an end
Speaker 2: note that said, the children object to this. Right all,
Speaker 2: we have the only description we have of what happened
Speaker 2: in that alley. There were two people there, and one's
Speaker 2: dead and the other testify against his lawyer's advice at
Speaker 2: trial and says that the cop shot first, and I
Speaker 2: quoted their daughter as saying, shouldn't somebody challenge that he
Speaker 2: was a known liar? And I basically wrote in the
Speaker 2: end note, yes somebody should. So you know, take this
Speaker 2: at face value or not. But I don't know who
Speaker 2: shot first. I don't think we will ever know who
Speaker 2: shot first.
Speaker 1: So David dies in this alleyway and Joe is in
Speaker 1: the wind, how do they identify him if he is
Speaker 1: a twenty minute drive away from where this tavern was?
Speaker 2: In part because of Al Tarlov. He is sitting on
Speaker 2: a beach that morning in Madison, Connecticut, and there are
Speaker 2: a group of men at the blanket next to them
Speaker 2: reading a newspaper and Al sees the headline that a
Speaker 2: police officer is dead in Stamford, and he borrows the
Speaker 2: newspaper and gets sees the police sketch that looks a
Speaker 2: little too much like this man that he knows, the
Speaker 2: same man who was desperate to see him a day
Speaker 2: or so ago. And this was the original story that
Speaker 2: he told me. This was where I came into the
Speaker 2: story in the first place. Was Al told me about
Speaker 2: sitting on this blanket and seeing this newspaper article, and
Speaker 2: then the decision he made absolutely boggled my mind. He
Speaker 2: decided that if it's possible for this man who he
Speaker 2: knows to be a cop killer, well he's going to
Speaker 2: go find out. So he went. First thing he did
Speaker 2: is he called Joe the lab where Joe should have
Speaker 2: been working, and he wasn't there that day, and so
Speaker 2: then he called the landlady's house and the landlady said,
Speaker 2: you know, he's out. So he got in his car
Speaker 2: and he drove back to Norwalk and he knocked on
Speaker 2: the door to find him, and the landlady there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of comings and goings at that house by then,
Speaker 2: because Joe had come home, he'd been shot in the leg.
Speaker 2: He couldn't go to work, which is what he wasn't
Speaker 2: at work when Al called him. His coworkers came to
Speaker 2: check on him because he said he wasn't feeling well.
Speaker 2: And so the landlady kind of exasperated because now here
Speaker 2: was this other guy at the front door, said he's
Speaker 2: you know, he's not here. He went to the airport.
Speaker 2: Doctor boas his boss at the lab, drove him and Al,
Speaker 2: already somewhat suspicious, said he went to the airport and
Speaker 2: the woman said, yes, his brother was killed last night
Speaker 2: in a motorcycle accident and he had to go to
Speaker 2: the funeral. And Al, who had not called the police
Speaker 2: to report him when he recognized the police sketch because
Speaker 2: he wasn't sure and had not called to report him
Speaker 2: when this man didn't show up for work and then
Speaker 2: you know, wasn't at the house he was renting. But
Speaker 2: the idea that his brother was killed the night before
Speaker 2: was just a coincidence to app This was the one
Speaker 2: thing he just couldn't believe. That was ridiculous. Of course
Speaker 2: that's not true. He's fleeing town, and Al called the cops. Wow,
Speaker 2: the irony being that his brother was in fact killed
Speaker 2: in a motorcycle accident. Oh wow, night before the cop
Speaker 2: was shot and he was going to his brother's funeral,
Speaker 2: and that's where they caught him. They caught him in
Speaker 2: Chicago at his brother's funeral.
Speaker 1: This must have just made Al sick to his stomach
Speaker 1: as it starts to unfold. He must have just felt like,
Speaker 1: what did I do?
Speaker 2: The idea of L's responsibility again was a lot of
Speaker 2: what started my interest in this story. How responsible are
Speaker 2: you for somebody you vouched for, it's for somebody you
Speaker 2: believe it. Where where does your responsibility lie? Al called
Speaker 2: the warden and called his mentor, who had overseen his
Speaker 2: work at Staatefhill for the arm research projects, and both
Speaker 2: of them basically said, be quiet, let us do the talking.
Speaker 2: They probably said it in nineteen sixties version, but that's
Speaker 2: what they said. And so Al directed all questions to
Speaker 2: the Wharton. He directed it all back to the people
Speaker 2: in charge. And interestingly, while Al was talked about in
Speaker 2: the newspapers, he was never mentioned. So there was almost
Speaker 2: no one in his life who knew what he'd done
Speaker 2: the part he played in this. At the trial, Joe
Speaker 2: talks about a doctor who he met at the penitentiary
Speaker 2: who found him this job, but nobody ever mentioned who
Speaker 2: Al was. So this was a private, internal thing. It
Speaker 2: was not a public flagellation. It was internal. How did
Speaker 2: Al carry that through the rest of his life? He
Speaker 2: became an expert in the social determinants of health. He
Speaker 2: became an expert in what can we do to intervene
Speaker 2: early in life that is non medical and will give
Speaker 2: people better lifelong outcomes. And this was spurred by his
Speaker 2: experience with Joe. I brought him to meet the Coups
Speaker 2: kids wow, which was one of the most profound experiences
Speaker 2: I've ever had. And we met at one of the
Speaker 2: Coup's children's houses and it was all three children, their
Speaker 2: partners and all of their children, so David Troy's in
Speaker 2: law's children and grandchildren. Interesting it was the children who
Speaker 2: had the most questions, David's grandchildren, but the youngest generation
Speaker 2: in the room who had the most questioned and wanted
Speaker 2: to know the most about their grandfather, who, of course
Speaker 2: Al had never met. He had changed the lives of
Speaker 2: everybody in this room, but he had never met anyone,
Speaker 2: alive or dead, that was a member of the Troy family.
Speaker 2: And they talked for a good hour and a half
Speaker 2: about what Al did and why he did it, and
Speaker 2: what it was about Joe that made Al vouch for him.
Speaker 2: And at the very end, one of the grandkids just said,
Speaker 2: you know, thank you so much for coming. This must
Speaker 2: have been hard. Is there anything else you want to
Speaker 2: make sure to tell us? And Al said, I just
Speaker 2: wanted to say I'm sorry, not because I wrote that letter.
Speaker 2: Given all the information I had, I made the best
Speaker 2: decision I could have at the time, and I would
Speaker 2: do that again. What I would change is when Joe
Speaker 2: called and needed to see me, I would find a
Speaker 2: way to see him. And one of the kids said,
Speaker 2: would that have you know changed anything? Wasn't he basically
Speaker 2: a train wreck? And Al said, I think eventually he
Speaker 2: would have bought a gun, and eventually he probably might
Speaker 2: even have killed someone, But it wouldn't have been that day, right,
Speaker 2: and it wouldn't have been your father, And for that
Speaker 2: I am sorry.
Speaker 1: The theme that you had touched on, which I think
Speaker 1: is so important, is that there is a reason why
Speaker 1: he ended up in prison to begin with, and when
Speaker 1: he came out it wasn't solved. No amount of compassion
Speaker 1: from Al, no amount of whatever training he had in prison,
Speaker 1: or any of that fixed what needed to be fixed.
Speaker 1: I think the question I have for you is do
Speaker 1: you or did Al think that had it not been
Speaker 1: for that one letter, he would have still been in prison.
Speaker 1: Was it really down to Al's letter? Given the Leopold
Speaker 1: and Lobe stuff and all the other thing, he was
Speaker 1: a model prisoner, It sounded like.
Speaker 2: I think no one knows. Yeah, I think he probably
Speaker 2: would have been released on parole at some point, if
Speaker 2: not at that hearing, then at the next hearing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it's never one thing. I think it's a
Speaker 2: confluence of various events that if you change one of them,
Speaker 2: then you can arguably change everything.
Speaker 1: It's like meeting your future spouse at a cafe. What
Speaker 1: if I didn't go to the cafe.
Speaker 2: That's the one everyone goes to.
Speaker 1: You would have met someone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one we all come up with and
Speaker 2: you go on couple dates. Right. The dinner conversation, at
Speaker 2: least in my experience, almost always so how'd you guys meet?
Speaker 2: And they how did you guys meet? So often involves
Speaker 2: some huge coincidence that changed everything, as if there's this
Speaker 2: these other lives that we didn't lead, these other tracks.
Speaker 2: There are a lot of train analogies in this book,
Speaker 2: but the other tracks that you didn't travel on. And again,
Speaker 2: in a way this is deeply profound. In another way,
Speaker 2: it's just everything everyone knows all the time. And what
Speaker 2: I did is I took a decade and I sketched
Speaker 2: the particular sets of facts and coincidences and choices and
Speaker 2: decisions that led to this one result. I could write
Speaker 2: this book about us. How did you and I end?
Speaker 2: Up having this conversation at this particular.
Speaker 1: Moment, tell me, because we know what happens with David,
Speaker 1: we know what happens with Al, what happens with Joseph
Speaker 1: de Salvo when he returns to prison.
Speaker 2: Joe, as I mentioned, testified. He took the stand in
Speaker 2: his own defense. It was very much against his lawyer's advice.
Speaker 2: And not only did he testify, he sat on the
Speaker 2: stand and by all description, including the sister of David
Speaker 2: Troy's widow, who I spoke to at length and was
Speaker 2: sitting next to her during this. He testified staring directly
Speaker 2: at the widow the entire time, and her reading of
Speaker 2: it was not creepy, which that sentence can sound like,
Speaker 2: and not threatening, which that sentence can sound like, but
Speaker 2: rather confessional. This is all I can give you, and
Speaker 2: so I am giving it to you answers, answers. It
Speaker 2: is against my own interests, but it's all I have.
Speaker 2: And he testified for the better part of two days
Speaker 2: and told everything, which is an awful lot of how
Speaker 2: I know all about him, and then he went back
Speaker 2: to his prison cell and the next day I don't know,
Speaker 2: because things like this just keep happening in this story,
Speaker 2: there was an epic snowstorm and the entire state of
Speaker 2: Connecticut was locked in, and so nobody could go for
Speaker 2: the final closing arguments the next day and the day
Speaker 2: after that, they plowed through the snow to go get
Speaker 2: Joe to take him to court, and he was dead
Speaker 2: in his cell, and they found a slight slit in
Speaker 2: his mattress where they guess he had hid the fifty
Speaker 2: eight second all that he had gotten during his fifty
Speaker 2: eight nights in prison, because the man was a creature
Speaker 2: of prison, and he knew if you say I can't sleep,
Speaker 2: but they give you a second all.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: He also had been taught by Al how to make
Speaker 2: sure prisoners swallow their medicine, because in a drug trial
Speaker 2: that's very important. And he had also apparently learned how
Speaker 2: to fool guards when they are trying to make sure
Speaker 2: you swallow your medicine. So he saved all of these
Speaker 2: fifty eight second off and took them all at once,
Speaker 2: and he left a note. On one side he quoted
Speaker 2: Emerson because that was the kind of guy he was,
Speaker 2: And on the other side he apologized to Al.
Speaker 1: How did Al feel about all of that? What a
Speaker 1: journey with this one man.
Speaker 2: He didn't tell the story and awful lot until it
Speaker 2: came along fifty years later. So it was not a
Speaker 2: point of pride. It was I think a subject of
Speaker 2: some guilt, and I think it sort of sent his
Speaker 2: career in a different direction. Was going to figure out
Speaker 2: how to figure this out? Because that was just what
Speaker 2: he did.
Speaker 1: Well, what did he figure out ultimately? What is his
Speaker 1: legacy in this field of trying to help people before
Speaker 1: they hurt people?
Speaker 2: I think where he landed is kind of reflected by
Speaker 2: a scene in the book. There is another man. His
Speaker 2: name is Dante. He was the brother of the woman
Speaker 2: who would become David Troy's wife. He too was from
Speaker 2: a family of Italian immigrants. He too had an abusive
Speaker 2: father who was a drunk who disappeared on the family
Speaker 2: after traumatizing them first. He too went a well from
Speaker 2: the army and got into fights and was a nair
Speaker 2: do well and had the police on his heels many times.
Speaker 2: He did not have a police record, but he wasn't
Speaker 2: heading anywhere good and he ended up using the GI
Speaker 2: bill to go to college and a professor there, returned
Speaker 2: his first philosophy paper with glowing reviews and it was
Speaker 2: part of a lesson where the bottom line of this
Speaker 2: lesson was the difference between a kid who does well
Speaker 2: and who falls apart is somebody who cares about them
Speaker 2: before the age of seven, and Dante had those people
Speaker 2: in his life. Al had those people in his life,
Speaker 2: and Joe DeSalvo never did. In a way, I hate
Speaker 2: the moral of my own book, which was this killer
Speaker 2: probably never had a chance because of everything that happened
Speaker 2: to him, some of it before he was born. But
Speaker 2: Al's takeaway was yes, but what is our responsibility as
Speaker 2: a society to see that there were more of those
Speaker 2: people in the lives of more of those children. So
Speaker 2: that's where he landed in his life and in his career,
Speaker 2: and that's what he could live with.
Speaker 1: So was he able to be there? You know when
Speaker 1: you do your first book signings, when the book is launched.
Speaker 2: In all of that, the pub date for this book
Speaker 2: was May of twenty twenty three, and that was the
Speaker 2: day I went to his funeral. The dedication says to
Speaker 2: Alvin Tarlov, thank you for entrusting me with your memories.
Speaker 2: I chose the word intrusting with a lot of thought.
Speaker 2: He didn't just trust me to tell the story. He
Speaker 2: handed over his memories to me for safe keeping, so
Speaker 2: I figure he gave me a story, and he told
Speaker 2: me to tell it, and kind of knew that if
Speaker 2: I didn't, it would disappear. So I went and I
Speaker 2: told his story.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been an exactly
Speaker 1: right production. Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 1: Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow
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