WEBVTT - Secret Garden 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.600 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio, Close 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:12.000 your eyes and count to four, he whispered. I felt 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.239 his breath on my cheek. The barrel of the gun 0:00:15.400 --> 0:00:20.280 was hard and cold against my forehead. I counted, and 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:24.079 when I opened my eyes, he was gone. I sat 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:27.240 up quickly in bed, gasping, my body soaked with sweat. 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:31.280 What the hell was that? It was pitch dark in 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:34.120 the room, not even a sliver of the moon to 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:39.199 offer some light. Damn, another nightmare. I've been having them 0:00:39.240 --> 0:00:42.040 for almost two years, during which they had become more 0:00:42.040 --> 0:00:44.479 and more violent and vivid, and in each I was 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.720 hunted by an anonymous man with a gun or a knife. 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:51.640 I would struggle to recognize him, but he kept his 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:56.360 face turned away from me. Then, just as he fined 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:58.920 my hiding place, I'd wake up with my heart pounding 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.040 and in trentaline horsing through my legs until they ached 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.240 that this nightmare was different. In this dream, I was 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.160 a young girl again, probably nine or ten, in my 0:01:10.280 --> 0:01:16.800 summer pajamas, walking down along hallway hotel hallway. Suddenly the 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:21.240 elusive man blocked my path, backed me up against the wall, 0:01:21.680 --> 0:01:25.320 and pointed a gun at my head. I looked up 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.640 at him, and I finally saw a space. It was 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:31.520 a man I hadn't seen since I was a child 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:40.280 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. That's Liza Rodman, author of The Babysitter 0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:45.440 My Summers with a Serial Killer. Liza's story involves not one, 0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:50.080 but two very disturbed people. One well, one is the 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:54.200 babysitter and the other the other is Liza's own mother. 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:59.760 Liza spent her childhood toggling between two places. Her family's 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:04.000 year around home near hacka Mock Swamp in southeastern Massachusetts 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:08.480 and Provincetown, a village on the extreme tip of Cape Cod. 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:24.639 I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family secrets, the secrets 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.160 that are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others, 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:34.200 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. Tell me about 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.919 the landscape of your childhood, literally the landscape of my childhood. 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.360 It was kind of swampy. We lived in a swamp, 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:46.160 and um, I don't know if you've ever heard about 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:50.839 of the Hackamock Swamp, but my childhood home was right 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:54.040 on the edge of it. Hacka Mack being the Algonquin 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:58.119 name for places where spirits dwell. So that was literally 0:02:58.800 --> 0:03:02.080 the beginning of my life, you know, outside. And you 0:03:02.080 --> 0:03:04.799 know it's interesting too with COVID because I've found that 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:09.680 that that landscape, that being outside, that's the only way 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:12.680 I could comfort myself during COVID. So that remains because 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:14.880 it was the only way I could comfort myself in 0:03:15.040 --> 0:03:18.600 my childhood. So I spent my life outside. You know, 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:22.200 we had a tremendous amount of freedom in nineteen sixty 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:26.399 three four five, and that went for Provincetown too, so 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:30.560 you know, we had no supervision. Just in context, we 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.919 had no supervision and we sort of ran the neighborhood. 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.320 No one was really looking after us much. My parents 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:39.400 were married for the first I think four years of 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:42.760 my life, and after they divorced. You know, my mother 0:03:42.880 --> 0:03:47.680 was young and she was a single mother, and she 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:51.320 didn't get a lot of support from him, financial or otherwise. 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.440 And she had a best friend who said, hey, my 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.800 husband and I are building a big, gigantic motel on 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.440 the water in Provincetown on a summer job. Because my 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:08.520 mother taught school, and didn't take her but a minute 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.640 to say yes, and off we went. At that time, 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.520 I think it was seven. So in the early years, 0:04:14.560 --> 0:04:16.799 we stayed local. But from the time I was seven 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:19.520 on Yes, we went back and forth and could you 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.640 describe to, you know, people listening to this podcast from 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.880 all over the world. Provincetown is a very specific kind 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:29.560 of place. Provincetown is it's a spit of land that 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.920 runs off the coast and out into a U shape 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:38.120 almost um to the tip of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:43.440 And they say it has the finest light for artists 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:47.440 in the world, and it's always, at least from the 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.800 beginning of the nineteen hundreds, it was an artist community. 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.160 And it has a rich, rich history of um playwrights, 0:04:55.200 --> 0:05:01.080 Eugene O'Neill, poets, fine artists, all congregated there. There was 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.320 a bit of a there was a local flavor of 0:05:04.640 --> 0:05:08.520 Portuguese fishermen, and then there was this these transplants from 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:12.000 New York, the likes of Stanley Kunits, the poet, who 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.480 had a home there and beautiful gardens there, and so 0:05:15.720 --> 0:05:19.120 they these two factions sort of coexisted for many, many, 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.360 many decades and happily so. So it's an artist community. 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:27.479 It's a beach community. It's on a sand dune and 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:29.960 it sort of juts out into the sea. It's some 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.880 of the best beaches you'll ever walk on. Tell me 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:40.080 about your mother from your childhood. She was angry, so 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.680 I put it, and I'm sure there were lots of 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:47.000 reasons for that, but I never knew what they were. 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:51.279 And you know, she died recently and she went to 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:54.000 her grave with whatever had happened to her. We never 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:59.320 did find out. Um, But she was pretty, she was funny, 0:05:59.560 --> 0:06:04.440 she was charismatic, she had a wonderful laugh. People liked her. 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.000 But she had a problem with me. I don't know 0:06:08.000 --> 0:06:09.919 whether I look too much like my father or not 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:12.680 enough like her, or maybe I was too much like her. 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.479 I don't know, but she had a problem with me, 0:06:15.600 --> 0:06:20.400 and and that anger was usually focused on me. But again, 0:06:20.560 --> 0:06:23.839 she was a hard worker. It was such a complicated 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:27.279 relationship to begin with that. But as a child I 0:06:27.320 --> 0:06:29.560 was afraid of her. I spent most of my time 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:32.240 hiding from her. How old was she when you were born? 0:06:33.320 --> 0:06:38.280 Good question, And your sister is younger than you, two 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:42.839 years younger. Her memories. She calls me the rememberer, and 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:45.919 she's the forgetter, and she was quite a bit younger. 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:50.240 She has some some sort of tactile memories and you know, 0:06:50.400 --> 0:06:53.240 over the years, we've had a lot of conversations about it. 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:58.080 Your mother struck me as a complicated figure because she 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:02.960 had this kind of almost you know, she's beautiful, she's lively, 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.200 she'd go up to anyone and talk to them. She 0:07:05.320 --> 0:07:08.280 kind of had this magic about her in a certain way, 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:10.080 the way you would describe her. And she was also 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:13.960 just kind of a disaster as a mother. Mm hmm. 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:19.600 She really was, I mean in terms of in terms 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.560 of warmth, in terms of I'd love you almost never. 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.080 She really didn't want to be inconvenienced. She was really 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.360 looking for her next good time. And I you know, honestly, 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.480 I think if you were to diagnose her, you could 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.440 one of her her favorite things to do or one 0:07:36.440 --> 0:07:39.880 of her addictions, as I now say, was mean to 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:42.880 be mean at someone else's expense. There was always was 0:07:42.880 --> 0:07:46.720 always a joke. She always had a funny name for 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.720 you that was just a little bit on the mean side, 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.679 and you felt it. You know, it wasn't It wasn't 0:07:55.680 --> 0:07:57.760 something where you went, oh, did she mean that or not? 0:07:57.880 --> 0:08:00.680 You knew she meant it. Even when she was young. 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.240 She just to tell me about the way she used 0:08:03.280 --> 0:08:08.400 to tease her brother, and it was just something she 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:11.760 enjoyed it. She used to like to make him cry. 0:08:12.400 --> 0:08:14.400 And what was your father likes? I mean, I know 0:08:14.560 --> 0:08:17.560 they split up when you were really quite small, and 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:21.280 he was kind of not really president, but would show 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:24.200 up every once in a while, right exactly. He was 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:27.640 I think, you know, in a lot of ways, he 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:32.480 was equally unstable. He was a huge personality, and I 0:08:32.520 --> 0:08:35.760 just thought he was carry Grant or you know, uh, 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:38.600 I used to think he was Clark Gable from Gone 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:42.400 with the Wind. He was had this big personality and 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:45.679 very very handsome and funny and grew up in a 0:08:45.760 --> 0:08:49.000 funeral home, so he had all these funny jokes and 0:08:49.080 --> 0:08:52.240 he just found a way to deal with death early on. 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.600 I think it was through humor. And he was very, 0:08:56.720 --> 0:09:01.040 very extroverted, so you know, you wanted to be around him, 0:09:01.040 --> 0:09:02.839 and he was never around and of course, as a 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:05.800 young girl, you want to be around your dad anyway. 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:09.960 And he just was a puzzle to me despite his 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:14.520 absence and distance. Was he more loving than your mother 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:19.840 in his way? Yes, he was more nurturing. So for instance, 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.679 when I was nineteen, I had a knee surgery and 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:27.680 I had been um at his house, um for you know, 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:29.480 I've been thrown out of my house for one reason 0:09:29.520 --> 0:09:32.360 or another, and so I was at his house recovery 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:34.800 and he was the one to feed the ice chips 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:40.480 and to give the pain medication and to um just 0:09:40.679 --> 0:09:43.080 sort of make sure I was okay. And that was 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:46.440 a really that was a new experience for me, either 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:48.760 one of them. Really. See, your mother never would have 0:09:48.800 --> 0:09:52.600 done that, not in that way. She might have made pasta, 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:55.000 but she would have said, you know what, get up, 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.360 you're fine. And again, you have to contextualize these things, 0:09:59.480 --> 0:10:02.760 right because in that in that day, it was pull 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:07.719 yourself up, dust yourself off, and move because we're not 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:09.960 going to sit around here and talk about what's wrong. 0:10:10.200 --> 0:10:11.840 We're just going to go out and do. And I 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.560 my mother's father was very much like that. So my 0:10:14.640 --> 0:10:17.440 mother was very much like that. So you know, if 0:10:17.440 --> 0:10:22.040 there was, as she said, a nurse I'm not, she wasn't. 0:10:23.080 --> 0:10:25.200 I like the order of that sentence, not i'm not 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:29.120 a nurse, A nurse i'm not Exactly, it's a finer 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:31.760 point than it. You know, something that strikes me often 0:10:32.400 --> 0:10:38.080 on this podcast is that especially when whatever the whatever 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.760 the sort of secrets at hand. Are are sort of 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:45.720 like rooted in childhood that we have a way of 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:51.040 imagining all children do, imagining that all other families are 0:10:51.080 --> 0:10:53.320 like our family. You know, we don't know, we don't 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.720 know anything different. Really, it's not until we grow up 0:10:56.760 --> 0:10:59.400 and get a little bit of a more wide angle 0:10:59.440 --> 0:11:02.360 of view that we that we begin to see that, oh, actually, 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.520 maybe that was really not good, not good or not 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:12.240 the way everybody else was being raised. We'll be right back. 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:25.559 It's the summer of nineteen sixty six and Liza is 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:29.360 seven years old. She's in Provincetown with her mother and sister. 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.959 Her mother needs to work, which means she also needs babysitters, 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:38.000 and she's very good at getting them. She'll ask anyone 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:42.440 to be a babysitter. She doesn't exactly vet them, you know, 0:11:42.880 --> 0:11:46.320 check references. All you need basically is to have a 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.679 pulse and be able to show up. They used to 0:11:49.679 --> 0:11:52.880 call her the babysitter Finder. If you needed one, you 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:56.640 called her. So she had this whole cadre of young women. 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.360 And oh, we had some terrible babysitters at We had 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:04.360 car accidents with babysitters. We had babysitters that would cut 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:08.360 our line us up and cut our nails down to 0:12:08.480 --> 0:12:12.280 the quick until they bled in some cases. And there 0:12:12.360 --> 0:12:15.840 was this little um restaurant next to the hotel and 0:12:15.840 --> 0:12:19.200 they'd send the seven and five year old across to 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.559 get whatever it was, French fries in the vanilla shake, 0:12:22.880 --> 0:12:24.440 and we'd come back with it and they go, we 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:26.640 didn't want this, and they'd throw it out the window. 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.720 I mean, just crazy people. There are a lot of 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:32.680 crazy people in Provincetown in those days. There was some 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:36.760 nice ones, but you know, the drug scene was already entrenched, 0:12:37.559 --> 0:12:40.320 so we had some interesting and and really we would 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.079 be left with anybody. I want to say too, because 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:45.640 I really do know that that landscape of Provincetown, that 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:50.000 there's something about that town that really feels like it's 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:52.480 sort of at the edge of the world. I mean, 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:55.760 it's surrounded by water, and it's the it's the furthest 0:12:55.800 --> 0:13:00.800 point on Cape Cod, which is already a you know, 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:03.880 increasingly remote place as you go further and further out, 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:08.600 and then there's this real town. You know, this kind 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:13.680 of like ramshackle town, you know, not that small, but 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.800 that is sort of just perched there like there are 0:13:16.800 --> 0:13:19.079 other places in the world like this. Key West is 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:22.000 a little bit like this, where there is that feeling 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:25.920 that you can't go any further than that. Yeah, it was. 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:28.280 It was a definite let it all hang out place. 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:32.640 And that juxtaposition you're talking about about the ramshackle town 0:13:33.360 --> 0:13:38.400 and the tourist trade was a real two competing forces. 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:44.200 The locals had been there for generations and they needed 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:48.080 the summer tourists and they needed the artists. They also 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:50.880 resented the hell out of it, and for good reason. 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.560 So there was always that tension there, and it was 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:59.840 just under the surface. And even as a child, you 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:03.400 wanted to be a local. You wanted to play with 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.760 the local kids. The chef at the restaurant, you know, 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.080 he'd come out to the back door of the restaurant. 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:11.680 He'd come out and he'd feed us food, and we 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:13.520 thought it was wonderful to be able to hang out 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:17.000 with his kids, who would knew where the bike trails were, 0:14:17.040 --> 0:14:19.600 and knew where the dune trails were, and knew where 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.280 the hiding places were, and you know, all of those 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.560 names I still have in my head. He wanted to 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:28.960 be part of it, and in my case, I was 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.880 really not part of anything. So I really deeply wanted 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.160 to be part of Provincetown and of the kids there 0:14:36.200 --> 0:14:38.880 and the people there. There was a warmth to it 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:43.560 in the sort of the full time, the year round residents. 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:49.120 You know. It was transient up against really fixed and warm. 0:14:50.000 --> 0:14:52.200 Frank Gaspar, I don't know if you know who he is, 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:54.720 but he writes a lot about this. He was he 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.080 grew up there, and he writes about what it was 0:14:57.120 --> 0:14:59.720 like to grow up there, and the mother's talking over 0:14:59.720 --> 0:15:03.600 the pens. Everybody knew what everybody else was doing in town, 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.600 and Frank Gaspar, you smoked that cigarette. I'm going to 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:09.200 tell your mother. So it was that kind of a 0:15:10.040 --> 0:15:12.760 sense and a feeling of belonging to something that I 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.360 think the locals still cling to there, And I don't 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.200 blame them. I would to. As you're speaking, I'm thinking 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.880 it's essentially like insiders versus outsiders in a certain way, right, 0:15:22.200 --> 0:15:24.880 And if you already feel like an outsider and you're 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:28.800 a child, you're desperate to belong and get swept up 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:34.640 into into other lives. Yep. So Liza has already had 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.880 quite the parade of babysitters in the summer of sixty six. 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.240 But one of them is a very charismatic young man 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:45.760 named Tony Costa, whose mother, Cecilia, works for Liza's mother 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:52.120 at the motel. I had encountered his mother first. She 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:55.320 was a chambermaid at the motel, so she was my 0:15:55.400 --> 0:16:00.960 first friend, and he was her son, and he was 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:05.160 looking for work, and of course it was a wonderful 0:16:05.200 --> 0:16:08.600 thing for the year round people to have these resorts 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:12.040 open up, because they it promised them lots of work 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.840 and lots of hours. And how old was Tony when 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:20.240 you were seven? He was born in so he would 0:16:20.240 --> 0:16:25.800 have been twenty two. So Tony is hired to babysit you. 0:16:26.840 --> 0:16:30.160 He's hired to take the trash, and he ends up 0:16:30.800 --> 0:16:34.080 befriending all of us. He was like a pied piper, 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:38.120 is how I describe it. And my aunt used to say, 0:16:38.480 --> 0:16:42.600 here comes Tony, and he'd be driving up the long 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.920 driveway to the motel, and we'd scamper out and try 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:48.880 and get in the truck with him and talk to him. 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.480 And he's loading the trash in the truck and we're 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.360 dancing around with our flip flop, using our towels as capes. 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.720 And um, we just started going with him, and I 0:16:59.720 --> 0:17:03.800 don't remember exactly how we ended up going in the truck, 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:05.600 but we thought it was a blast to go to 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.920 the dump, and so off we would go, and it 0:17:08.960 --> 0:17:14.200 was great for them because we were somewhere else. He 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:18.080 had sort of a kind of Italian darkness to him, 0:17:18.440 --> 0:17:22.200 very dark hair, kind of a big nose, but handsome 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:27.159 and tall, well for me he was. He felt really tall, 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:29.919 but I think he was about six ft And the 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:32.000 guys at the front desk used to say he you know, 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:34.520 he was as strong as a guy as you'd ever 0:17:34.560 --> 0:17:37.040 want or not want to meet in a dark alley. 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:41.280 He wore glasses, as I remember, and he also had 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:45.000 a dark beard, and he was often quite tan. And 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:49.320 I remember his fingers quite well too. M that's interesting, 0:17:49.680 --> 0:17:52.960 what about them, Um, I just remember them. The truck 0:17:53.040 --> 0:17:56.680 that he always drove was the Royal Coachman utility truck 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.520 and it had a shift. And he was a smoker too, 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:03.640 and I was fascinated with that. So I remember him 0:18:03.640 --> 0:18:06.320 smoking with his fingers. And you know what else is 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:10.520 funny to this day, I look at the hands of 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:14.639 people everyone I meet, um, and I'm just making that 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.280 connection now. But anyway, his hand was always on the shift, 0:18:18.320 --> 0:18:20.240 and I was always right there were you know, my 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:22.080 sister and I in the front seat, on the big 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:25.480 front seat, so I was always close to that hand. 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:30.760 So how much time did you spend with Tony over 0:18:30.760 --> 0:18:36.160 the course of that summer? And there were subsequent summers, right, 0:18:36.280 --> 0:18:38.840 I mean he was he became kind of part of 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:42.679 your Provincetown life for a period of time, exactly, he 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.600 and his mother, and so I mean, I have no 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:48.639 idea how many times, but many more more than I 0:18:48.640 --> 0:18:52.320 could count. And you know, every time he was around, 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:55.560 he'd jingle his keys and we'd come running. And plus, 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:57.480 you know, he used to buy a streets he used 0:18:57.520 --> 0:19:00.760 to take us. You know, he just felt like you 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.600 were sort of you know, the music was going, you know. 0:19:05.119 --> 0:19:08.119 I heard an interview with Paul McCartney recently, and the 0:19:08.200 --> 0:19:12.080 interviewer asked him what happens to you when you're driving 0:19:12.080 --> 0:19:18.800 along and you hear Beatles song? And Paul McCartney said 0:19:19.440 --> 0:19:24.720 two things. I start singing along, and you can I 0:19:24.880 --> 0:19:28.080 dropped right into the studio when we're laying down the tracks, 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.399 and I remember everything we did that day. And so 0:19:32.560 --> 0:19:35.600 that's the way it was. The songs of the nineteen 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:39.159 sixties were in the front seat of that truck, and 0:19:39.240 --> 0:19:42.960 so we were always singing, We were always laughing, We 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:46.439 were always you know, up and down that driveway. It 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:48.600 felt like the wind in your hair. I mean, it 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:52.959 was just a wind blown summer in the city, you know, 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:55.679 is what it felt like to me. And so we 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.000 went with him pretty frequently, at least a couple of 0:19:58.000 --> 0:20:00.000 times a week when he was dumping trash, we would 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:04.760 out with this condree of little kids would accompany Tony 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.119 in his truck as he made his rounds to the 0:20:07.160 --> 0:20:11.160 town dumps in p Town and Truro. Tony would take 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.199 them to what he called his secret garden in the 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:19.959 woods and told Liza she could never tell anyone. Imagine 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.000 how special that must have felt to a seven year old. 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:26.959 An adult was asking her to keep a secret. Liza, 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:29.960 of course didn't know this, but Tony and a bunch 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.720 of his friends were burglarizing pharmacies and doctors offices, making 0:20:33.720 --> 0:20:36.640 trips to Boston where they were buying drugs and stashing 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:40.439 them in the woods. There was all kinds of ways 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:44.280 that they stashed the drugs in those woods and Tony 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:46.920 and his whole crew of friends and people all knew 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:51.320 those drugs were out there, and they also evidently stashed 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:54.720 them at the Provincetown dump so that when somebody wanted something, 0:20:54.760 --> 0:20:58.280 that's where they went to get it. And they had 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:00.560 some kind of crazy system of you pay me and 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:02.919 I'll pay you, and I mean, I don't know, and 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:05.560 I wasn't privy to it, but I've read about it later, 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:11.159 but at the time as a child, he made it 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:14.439 feel special to you that he was showing you something 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:16.760 that was a secret and that and that you mustn't 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:22.080 tell anyone exactly. But that was See, we were talking 0:21:22.119 --> 0:21:24.800 about a garden in the We had talked a lot 0:21:24.800 --> 0:21:27.240 about a garden because I lived next door to my 0:21:27.320 --> 0:21:31.320 grandfather and my grandfather had this amazing garden. And so 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.280 when Tony said he had a garden, I thought, I 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.600 can relate to this. Here's this grown up boy, and 0:21:37.640 --> 0:21:40.600 I'm going to impress him with my knowledge. And so 0:21:41.160 --> 0:21:44.440 I started talking gardening with him, and I think that's 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:46.679 how it happened. He said, I'll show you my garden. 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.199 I have a garden, and I was like, I'm in 0:21:49.280 --> 0:21:53.959 my wheelhouse now because I can impress this guy. And 0:21:54.000 --> 0:21:57.119 I think that's how it happened. And he said, I 0:21:57.160 --> 0:21:58.800 bet you've got to keep it a secret. You can't 0:21:58.840 --> 0:22:00.480 tell anybody. But but the other of thing is this, 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.520 he took everybody and anybody out to that garden. And 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:06.520 as far as I know, he took his own kids. 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.360 That has no basis in fact. But he took everybody 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.760 out there. And the other weird thing was and and 0:22:14.840 --> 0:22:17.280 this is part of the whole illness, part of what 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.800 was going on. He was quite afraid to go out there, 0:22:22.359 --> 0:22:24.840 and he talked a lot about it after the fact 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.320 in all of the research I did about how he 0:22:27.400 --> 0:22:32.119 was afraid because it's adjacent to a cemetery, and that 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:35.240 would also make sense as to why he would wait 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:38.320 till there was someone in the truck to go out there. 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:42.600 So I think it was quite convoluted and quite I 0:22:42.640 --> 0:22:44.879 don't think his mind was working right, you know. I 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:48.119 think he was kind of spinning all the time. He 0:22:48.240 --> 0:22:53.200 had young kids. We had three young kids, so things 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:56.080 were about to take a very dark turn here. Just 0:22:56.200 --> 0:23:00.920 in case you didn't suspect Tony Costa father three de 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:06.240 facto babysitter of several more, is well let's just wait 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:11.720 for what comes next. When you're ten, you say that, 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:15.160 as clear as a bell. You hear his name as 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:20.600 somehow associated with something very bad that's happened, whatever was 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:24.200 going on down there, the place was crawling with cops. Yeah, 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:26.400 I mean, one of the things I find so interesting 0:23:26.480 --> 0:23:29.119 is what we remember and what we don't. And you know, 0:23:29.200 --> 0:23:32.520 sort of like what we bury, and you know, what 0:23:32.640 --> 0:23:36.280 only comes out years later, and so like you realize 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:42.879 that something big has happened, and you overhear these little 0:23:42.920 --> 0:23:46.439 snatches of dialogue, you know, that come back to you. 0:23:47.000 --> 0:23:52.040 You overhear the phrase the murdered girls and all cut up. 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:57.240 But there's nothing in you at that point that's associating 0:23:57.320 --> 0:24:02.640 that with Tony Costa. No, and that look so shocking. 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:09.760 Never in a million years did I make that association. This, 0:24:10.200 --> 0:24:13.199 what I'm about to recount is going to be pretty 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:17.800 hard to hear. Tony Costa, though Liza as a child 0:24:17.840 --> 0:24:21.159 doesn't know that it's him, is accused and convicted of 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:24.600 at least two horrific murders of young women, and is 0:24:24.600 --> 0:24:28.040 a suspect and more. He would become involved with them 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:32.120 in a romantic way, and then he would kill them. 0:24:32.160 --> 0:24:34.840 He cut up their bodies and did horrific things to 0:24:34.880 --> 0:24:38.959 those bodies. I won't get into. A neuroscientist who studies 0:24:39.000 --> 0:24:42.840 the brains of serial killers told Liza years later that 0:24:42.920 --> 0:24:46.480 these guys are so rare and hard to study because 0:24:46.560 --> 0:24:50.479 usually they kill themselves. Their brains are gone before they 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:55.320 can figure out what happened. So when you're, you know, 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:58.800 ten eleven years old and he's disappeared, do you have 0:24:58.840 --> 0:25:00.800