Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. I'm so glad you decided to come
Speaker 1: back for part two of the story of Frank Sweeney.
Speaker 1: If you didn't hear part one, you really need to.
Speaker 1: This isn't the kind of story you can pick up
Speaker 1: midway through. You missed a cop getting shot with a
Speaker 1: machine gun in a New Jersey suburb, the Rhodesian bush War,
Speaker 1: possible CIA involvement in an Australian political crisis, and we're
Speaker 1: just about to pick up with our escaped spy. The
Speaker 1: second forty years of Frank's life are just as weird
Speaker 1: as the first forty. There's a serial killer, a mafia trial,
Speaker 1: two different secret wives, and a lot of misuse of
Speaker 1: the postal service. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird,
Speaker 1: little guys.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Frank was making friends
Speaker 1: in prison. His new friend in nineteen seventy eight was
Speaker 1: Christopher Boyce, who had just been convicted of espionage for
Speaker 1: selling documents he stole from his job as a CIA
Speaker 1: contractor to the Soviets, and then he escaped from prison.
Speaker 1: Whether or not Frank was still in custody on the
Speaker 1: day Christopher boyce escape from prison is surprisingly hard to
Speaker 1: pin down. Several newspaper articles about Frank's role in the
Speaker 1: ensuing manhunt for the missing spy put his release a
Speaker 1: month before the escape, but others put it a month after.
Speaker 1: Seems like this detail would really matter, but no one
Speaker 1: seemed very concerned about it. In nineteen eighty, newspapers that
Speaker 1: appeared to be quoting the same unnamed source from the
Speaker 1: US Marshalls published conflicting stories, with some saying Frank flew
Speaker 1: to South Africa shortly before Boyce's escape, and others putting
Speaker 1: that trip slightly after the escape, although both of these
Speaker 1: articles say it was exactly twenty three days after. But
Speaker 1: in my frustrated search through forty year old newspapers trying
Speaker 1: to figure out which prison Frank was calling home that year,
Speaker 1: I found another surprise, another stabbing. Shortly after Frank was
Speaker 1: transferred to a state prison in Maine in nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: he stabbed another inmate in the chest during an argument
Speaker 1: in the prison library. And again we have this problem
Speaker 1: that keeps coming up in Frank's life. He loves to
Speaker 1: talk to reporters, and he loves to lie. It's the seventies.
Speaker 1: These reporters don't have the Internet. They don't have access
Speaker 1: to electronic court records, so a lot of Frank's lies
Speaker 1: get published. When he files a lawsuit against the prison
Speaker 1: warden in Maine about the conditions in solitary confinement, newspapers
Speaker 1: publish his claim that he was placed in solitary for
Speaker 1: a stabbing he'd been suspected of, but he says the
Speaker 1: investigation cleared him. A local newspaper in bang Or Main, however,
Speaker 1: had a reporter in the courtroom when he entered a
Speaker 1: guilty plea to that stabbing. But regardless of whether he
Speaker 1: got out in December of seventy nine or February of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, we know Frank flew to South Africa soon
Speaker 1: after he got out, and that he stayed there for
Speaker 1: a couple of months. The story of Christopher Boyce's nineteen
Speaker 1: months on the Lamb is long and strange. Sean Penn
Speaker 1: plays Boyce's friend, the cocaine dealer Dalton Lee in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five film adaptation of the book The Falcon
Speaker 1: and the Snowman about the entire affair, I didn't watch it.
Speaker 1: There's only so much I can do. But remember this
Speaker 1: is the Cold War. A missing Soviet spy is a
Speaker 1: pretty big pr problem for the United States government. There
Speaker 1: was speculation that the KGB had helped him escape. Boyce
Speaker 1: himself called a reporter from a payphone a few months
Speaker 1: after the escape and laughed about the idea that he'd
Speaker 1: had foreign assistance. He says, he just climbed the fence
Speaker 1: and walked out. The task force focused on finding boys
Speaker 1: believed all along that he'd never actually left California, and
Speaker 1: they weren't too far off. He was in Idaho the
Speaker 1: whole time, But a lot of resources ended up getting
Speaker 1: expended pursuing a false lead planted by our friend Frank.
Speaker 1: Now I can't prove Frank sent all of these letters himself.
Speaker 1: I can't even find contemporane his reporting where anyone ever
Speaker 1: outright said that they believed Frank sent these letters. And
Speaker 1: he was never charged in connection with his meddling in
Speaker 1: this investigation. But just a few weeks after Boyce went missing,
Speaker 1: the United States ambassador in South Africa got a letter.
Speaker 1: The postmark indicated that had been mailed from within South Africa,
Speaker 1: and the letter said a known mercenary named shell Hammer
Speaker 1: had assisted the convicted American spy, Christopher Boyce in entering
Speaker 1: South Africa by way of a fake passport. Now, who
Speaker 1: do we know with a history of forging passports, of
Speaker 1: mailing anonymous letters to officials in Southern Africa implicating himself
Speaker 1: in crimes and using the pseudonym shell Hammer. And he
Speaker 1: absolutely knew the FEDS would tie him to that alias
Speaker 1: because it was the one he had used in those
Speaker 1: classified ads in nineteen seventy six that put him in
Speaker 1: prison for mail fraud. And Frank was in South Africa
Speaker 1: in February of nineteen eighty when that letter was mailed.
Speaker 1: It seems he wanted the authorities to know he was involved.
Speaker 1: Why else would he write his own pseudonym into the story.
Speaker 1: So FEDS quickly turned their attention to Frank. They placed
Speaker 1: a tracking beacon on his car. They followed him for months,
Speaker 1: and he probably knew he was being followed. They followed
Speaker 1: him from his home in New Jersey all the way
Speaker 1: out to California, and from a California motel, he made
Speaker 1: several phone calls to an apartment in Hermosa Beach and
Speaker 1: when they searched that apartment they found it abandoned, but
Speaker 1: they found several letters that Frank had sent to a
Speaker 1: third man, another friend of theirs, from prison, one of
Speaker 1: which read somehow they discovered that I helped him get
Speaker 1: into South Africa. I suspect an informer has been at work,
Speaker 1: but there was no informer. Frank wanted them to find
Speaker 1: those letters, and Boyce was never in South Africa. The
Speaker 1: only reason anyone thought Boyce might be in South Africa
Speaker 1: is because Frank was planting false clues all over the
Speaker 1: world to point them as far away as possible from
Speaker 1: a little hunting cabin in the mountains of Idaho, US
Speaker 1: Marshalls eventually got frustrated following Frank around. A federal prosecutor
Speaker 1: would actually say an open court that Frank's arrest in
Speaker 1: July of nineteen eighty one was specifically intended to give
Speaker 1: them leverage to make him cooperate in the boy's case.
Speaker 1: It seemed like he knew something and they wanted to
Speaker 1: know what it was. As a felon, Frank wasn't allowed
Speaker 1: to have any guns, and of course Frank had guns.
Speaker 1: Did find one newspaper article that wrapped a sort of
Speaker 1: suspicious sounding hint that they only picked Frank up for
Speaker 1: that gun charge because of an anonymous tip, so maybe
Speaker 1: that was him too. But they picked him up in
Speaker 1: New Jersey at the end of July, and he pretended
Speaker 1: to be very cooperative, telling them that he actually had
Speaker 1: some documents that would leave them straight to boys and
Speaker 1: he would happily show them to them. He voluntarily turned
Speaker 1: over the key to the bank deposit box he was
Speaker 1: keeping them in, and inside they found several letters to
Speaker 1: Frank that had been mailed from South Africa. Sounds like
Speaker 1: more red herrings planted by Frank. He'd flown to South
Speaker 1: Africa several times in the year and a half since
Speaker 1: his release and was probably mailing himself these letters on
Speaker 1: those visits. So now in August of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: it seems like there could be some evidence that Boyce
Speaker 1: really was in South Africa. Frank says he was promised
Speaker 1: placement in the Witness Protection program for his help, and
Speaker 1: maybe they did make that promise if he really could
Speaker 1: help them recover their missing spy, that's a reasonable enough deal.
Speaker 1: And just a few weeks after all of Frank's help,
Speaker 1: Boyce was recaptured, but it wasn't due in any part
Speaker 1: to Frank's information during his year and a half on
Speaker 1: the run. Boyce obviously couldn't get a job, so he
Speaker 1: made money the old fashioned way bank robbery. He kept
Speaker 1: it pretty small time, nothing flashy where you get into
Speaker 1: the vault, just little stick ups a few thousand at
Speaker 1: a time from the teller. He's tied to at least
Speaker 1: seventeen bank robberies in Idaho and Washington State during that time,
Speaker 1: eventually teaming up with a couple of brothers from Idaho.
Speaker 1: And it was one of those men who turned boys
Speaker 1: in for the reward money, no honor among thieves, I guess.
Speaker 1: Boyce was taken back into custody on August twenty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one, and he wasn't in South Africa.
Speaker 3: Nationwide flight ended for Christopher Boyce here at the pit
Speaker 3: stop drive in at Port Angelus, Washington. He was eating
Speaker 3: a cheeseburger and onion rings when eight federal agents jumped him.
Speaker 3: Boyce was apparently living a triple.
Speaker 1: Life, so franklyed obviously he lied pretty egregiously. He falsified documents,
Speaker 1: He led US Marshalls and the CIA on an international
Speaker 1: goose chase, and maybe that's why he never got charged
Speaker 1: for it. That's pretty embarrassing to put on the record,
Speaker 1: but they did still have that uncharged they'd picked him
Speaker 1: up on to use his leverage, so they said a
Speaker 1: sentencing date, but Frank didn't show up. He was trying
Speaker 1: to skip the country again. Remember back in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six he got all the way to South Africa after
Speaker 1: skipping his sentencing date for mail fraud. But this time
Speaker 1: he was picked up just a few days after he
Speaker 1: missed court when a motel clerk in Montvale, New Jersey
Speaker 1: recognized him. When he was finally dragged in for sentencing,
Speaker 1: the government said they hoped Frank was going to be
Speaker 1: able to help them in the boy's case, but nothing
Speaker 1: he said was of any use. Frank said he had
Speaker 1: no choice but to flee the country and start a
Speaker 1: new life on a cattle ranch in Australia with his
Speaker 1: wife because the government had renegged on their deal to
Speaker 1: put him in witness protection. I have to imagine there
Speaker 1: was some bickering back and forth between an indignant Frank
Speaker 1: and an exasperated federal prosecutor, because in the end, Judge H.
Speaker 1: Curtis Mener said, I have neither the time nor the
Speaker 1: inclination to unravel all of the mysteries. In this case, however,
Speaker 1: they'd all ended up in his court room. Whatever the
Speaker 1: convoluted backstory is here, this is a sentencing or illegal
Speaker 1: possession a firearm, and that's really all the judge can
Speaker 1: do that day, so he sentenced Frank to four years.
Speaker 1: Judge Meaner said Frank was an explosive type of individual
Speaker 1: and that he was dangerous and mentally sick, and he
Speaker 1: urged Frank to take advantage of the opportunity to get
Speaker 1: psychiatric help while he was in prison this time. And yes,
Speaker 1: I did say wife. When I first started poking around
Speaker 1: trying to build my biographical backstory, to sort of sketch
Speaker 1: out a skeleton of this man's life, I found a
Speaker 1: new Jersey state record for a marriage in August nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one between a Frank A. Sweeney and aDNA M.
Speaker 1: Madison in Bergen County. There are other men named Frank Sweeney, obviously,
Speaker 1: but it was a middle initial match and it's the
Speaker 1: right county, and it was one of the rare months
Speaker 1: that Frank wasn't in prison. But it didn't seem right,
Speaker 1: so I set it aside. But this offhand mention at
Speaker 1: his sentencing hearing about a wife sent me back to it.
Speaker 1: It is him. After the FEDS picked him up at
Speaker 1: the end of July nineteen eighty one on that gun charge,
Speaker 1: he was released from custody. He was cooperating. He took
Speaker 1: them to the bank to look at his fake evidence.
Speaker 1: All that, and sometime that month he got married. I
Speaker 1: have no idea how they met, or where she came from,
Speaker 1: or what she thought she was going to get out
Speaker 1: of any of this, or if she knew Frank was
Speaker 1: planning on entering witness protection that month, or what on
Speaker 1: earth she saw in this man. But I do know
Speaker 1: how the marriage ended. Frank went back to prison that
Speaker 1: very same year, so they didn't have much time together.
Speaker 1: I don't know where Diana was while Frank was away,
Speaker 1: But by nineteen eighty five, according to a decision by
Speaker 1: the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Dana was living in
Speaker 1: Texas with her new boyfriend, Danny Lee Strong. They couldn't
Speaker 1: have known each other very long before moving in together
Speaker 1: because Strong had only just gotten out of prison again
Speaker 1: for another and a string of pretty run of the
Speaker 1: mill robbery and fraud charges, and they didn't stay together
Speaker 1: long before they were arrested for murdering a man Strong
Speaker 1: said made a pass at Deanna. She was ultimately only
Speaker 1: convicted of stealing the victim's car, which they fled the
Speaker 1: scene in, but Strong got ninety nine years for the
Speaker 1: brutal beating and asphyxiation of Robert Eugene Thomas. Frank doesn't
Speaker 1: really factor into this story. He's in prison in another
Speaker 1: state this whole time, but his name appears in a
Speaker 1: footnote of an appeals court decision upholding Strong's conviction. Strong
Speaker 1: had sent Frank a letter after finding out that Deanna
Speaker 1: was planning to testify against him for the murder. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what you write in a letter to your
Speaker 1: girlfriend's husband about a situation like this. But all that
Speaker 1: to say, Frank really did have a wife that he
Speaker 1: planned to start a new life with in Australia, but
Speaker 1: she ended up watching her boyfriend choke a man to
Speaker 1: death in an apartment in Fort Worth instead. On January ninth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two, the UVA men's basketball team lost to
Speaker 1: the tar Heels in a close game, sixty to sixty
Speaker 1: five at UNC's Carmichael Arena. I'm not a basketball fan,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't born then, but I guess it was
Speaker 1: an exciting game. Unc had knocked Uva out of the
Speaker 1: Final four the year before. But Joseph Paul Franklin, an
Speaker 1: avowed neo Nazi who'd recently been handed his first couple
Speaker 1: of life sentences for two of his many murders, didn't
Speaker 1: care much for basketball. He was in the wreck room
Speaker 1: at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri,
Speaker 1: and he was trying to watch American bandstand. According to
Speaker 1: frank whose time at the Springfield prison overlapped with Franklins
Speaker 1: for a few weeks in nineteen eighty one until Franklin's
Speaker 1: transfer at the end of January nineteen eighty two, the
Speaker 1: serial killer became enraged when a black prison guard changed
Speaker 1: the channel. Later that year, Joseph Paul Franklin was back
Speaker 1: in court. He'd spent years traveling the country, robbing banks
Speaker 1: and murdering young black men in in racial couples, so
Speaker 1: it would take years to sort out what to do
Speaker 1: with him. This time, he was on trial for the
Speaker 1: unsuccessful assassination attempt on civil rights activists Vernon Jordan on
Speaker 1: May twenty ninth, nineteen eighty The Fort Wayne, Indiana chapter
Speaker 1: of the National Urban League was hosting a banquet in
Speaker 1: honor of a visit from National Urban League President Vernin Jordan,
Speaker 1: when a volunteer dropped him off at his hotel. Later
Speaker 1: that evening, a single bullet from a thirty six rifle
Speaker 1: tore through his back. He survived, but it's hard to
Speaker 1: build a case against a drifter sniper. Nobody saw him.
Speaker 1: The investigators had some handwriting analysis on a motel registration card,
Speaker 1: testimony from a grocery store clerk who identified Franklin as
Speaker 1: a man he'd had a strange conversation with, and a
Speaker 1: general idea that the crime fit Franklin's pattern, but it
Speaker 1: was a bit thin. And then came frank Oh, frank
Speaker 1: loves to talk, he loves to be helpful. He's still
Speaker 1: in prison on that gun charge, but he told federal
Speaker 1: authorities that in the brief couple of weeks he'd been
Speaker 1: on the same s cell block as Franklin. They chatted
Speaker 1: a few times, and Franklin had confessed to him on
Speaker 1: several occasions about shooting Vernon Jordan. On the stand, frank
Speaker 1: testified about that evening in January when the guard changed
Speaker 1: the channel to the basketball game and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: good detail. Frank was very specific that it was a
Speaker 1: Uva UNC game that we couldn't recall the date. They
Speaker 1: were only on that cell block together for a few weeks,
Speaker 1: and there was in fact a Uva UNC basketball game
Speaker 1: during that time period that would have been on television.
Speaker 1: He testified that Franklin was furious about the incident and
Speaker 1: spent days fuming about it. The two inmates were walking
Speaker 1: together in the exercise area a few days later when
Speaker 1: Franklin spotted that same guard again and turned to frank
Speaker 1: and said, I'd like to blow him away, like I
Speaker 1: shot that and were big wig in Indiana. Frank says.
Speaker 1: He also lamented that Jordan just wouldn't die after being shot,
Speaker 1: and that he was sorry I didn't shoot that white
Speaker 1: slut first, referring to the white woman who'd given Jordan
Speaker 1: a ride that night. Frank was one of three jail
Speaker 1: house informants the government put on during that trial, all
Speaker 1: men who'd been in jail with Franklin, and all of
Speaker 1: whom said Franklin had admitted to various aspects of the
Speaker 1: crime and casual conversation. Josephaul Franklin was actually acquitted at
Speaker 1: that federal trial, jurors said they believed Franklin shot Jordan,
Speaker 1: but they were hung up on the wording of the indictment,
Speaker 1: which specifically charged him with the shooting as a violation
Speaker 1: of Jordan's civil rights. Years later, on death row for
Speaker 1: a variety of other murders, Franklin did confess to shooting
Speaker 1: Vernon Jordan when the trial was over, though jurors who
Speaker 1: spoke to the press said they'd only believed one of
Speaker 1: the three jail house informants who testified frank On cross examination,
Speaker 1: frank Sweeney seemed surprised to learn that the other two
Speaker 1: men had been paid thousands of dollars for their cooperation.
Speaker 1: He wasn't getting paid, but he wasn't upset. He didn't
Speaker 1: need the money. He'd inherited a quarter of million dollars,
Speaker 1: which would be about a million dollars today. When his
Speaker 1: parents died. All he wanted was witness protection, then a
Speaker 1: positive letter to the New Jersey Parole Board. Just like
Speaker 1: in the boy's case, he very conveniently had some information
Speaker 1: the government wanted, and all he wanted in return was
Speaker 1: witness protection. And this time it got it. But he
Speaker 1: didn't get to keep it. In nineteen eighty four, Frank
Speaker 1: filed a lawsuit against the warden of the Alabama prison
Speaker 1: where he was still serving his sentence on that gun charge.
Speaker 1: He said he was not receiving the protection afforded to
Speaker 1: him as a protected witness. The warden's response to the
Speaker 1: suit was that Frank would not stop telling people that
Speaker 1: he was a protected witness, which was causing a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. You're not supposed to do that in court.
Speaker 1: The warden's executive assistant said that the prison was considering
Speaker 1: contacting in the Office of Enforcement Operations, the division of
Speaker 1: the DOJ that administers the Witness Security program, to recommend
Speaker 1: his removal from the program because they believed he was
Speaker 1: intentionally causing problem by talking about this constantly. And it
Speaker 1: seems he was ultimately removed from the Witness Security program
Speaker 1: around this time, and maybe that had something to do
Speaker 1: with his decision to testify on behalf of Anthony Spalotro,
Speaker 1: the hot headed Chicago mobster who handled the family's business
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas. It couldn't have been an attempt to
Speaker 1: get back in the program. He was testifying for the defense,
Speaker 1: but maybe he was just spiite. He wanted to get
Speaker 1: somebody else kicked out of the program. In nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: when he was still in prison and still considered a
Speaker 1: protected witness, he briefly shared a cell with another guy
Speaker 1: in the program. Frank Kulatta was a mobster. He was
Speaker 1: a member of Tony Spilotro's Hole in the Wall gang.
Speaker 1: If you've seen the nineteen ninety five Scorsese movie Casino,
Speaker 1: it's that quite literally. Frank Marino, the character played by
Speaker 1: the guy who played Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, is
Speaker 1: supposed to be Frank Kulatta. Joe Peshi's character, Nikison Toro
Speaker 1: is based on Tony Spilotrow. Just watch the movie. It's
Speaker 1: all very complicated, and our friend Frank Sweeney had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. But in nineteen eighty three, the
Speaker 1: real life Frank Kulata was sharing a cell with Frank
Speaker 1: Sweeney because they had both turned state's witness against very
Speaker 1: dangerous men. Frank Sweeney had just testified against a serial
Speaker 1: killer and Frank Kulatta had turned on Spilotro after the
Speaker 1: FBI played him a recording of his friend talking about
Speaker 1: having him killed. When Anthony Spilotro went on trial, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six, Frank Kulatta was out of prison and
Speaker 1: in the program, and he was the government's star witness
Speaker 1: against Spilotroe. Frank Sweeney was finally out of prison again
Speaker 1: in home in New Jersey when he read in the
Speaker 1: paper that Kulata was going to be testifying. According to Frank,
Speaker 1: he felt compelled to contact Spilotro's defense attorney because when
Speaker 1: they were cell mates, Culata would often brag about committing perjury,
Speaker 1: So the defense flew Frank out to Las Vegas and
Speaker 1: put him on the stand. He claimed that after one
Speaker 1: of Coulada's appearances in court back in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: he came back to their shared cell and bragged, Frankie,
Speaker 1: I'd just put another one away. You've heard of the
Speaker 1: traveling circus. I'm the original traveling perjurer. On cross examination,
Speaker 1: Frank Sweeney admitted that when he'd been in the witness
Speaker 1: protection program, he had on several occasions threatened and even
Speaker 1: faked suicide attempts to get what he wanted out of
Speaker 1: federal prosecutors. I wish I had more information on that.
Speaker 1: That is incredibly strange behavior, and it does actually happen again.
Speaker 1: Later in the end, though his testimony in that mob
Speaker 1: trial is just a strange little footnote his third brush
Speaker 1: with the witness protection program, his testimony didn't matter much.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone believed it, and the case ended
Speaker 1: in a mistrial over allegations of jury tampering, and Anthony
Speaker 1: Spilotro went missing before they could retry the case. The
Speaker 1: mobster and his brother were later found buried in a
Speaker 1: cornfield in Indiana. Frank Kula stayed in the witness Protection
Speaker 1: program for years, and Scorsese hired him as an onset
Speaker 1: adviser when he shot Casino. Klada died of COVID in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, and in nineteen eighty nine, Frank went back
Speaker 1: to prison for mail fraud. Again. The court record is
Speaker 1: too old to get any documents without haggling with an archivist,
Speaker 1: but the docket sheet does say that, in addition to
Speaker 1: another fifty seven months in prison, the judge also banned
Speaker 1: Frank from ever offering anything for sale by mail. So
Speaker 1: at first I assumed he was pulling the same scam
Speaker 1: he ran in nineteen seventy six, where he placed ads
Speaker 1: for guns he didn't actually have and then ghosted would
Speaker 1: be buyers after they sent him the money. But it's
Speaker 1: much weirder than that. I wish it was guns. It
Speaker 1: wasn't guns. This time. He was running what one journalist
Speaker 1: called a cat scam. He'd cut the tails off regular
Speaker 1: housecats and then run ads offering them as exotic purebred
Speaker 1: cats for three hundred dollars. If he really was as
Speaker 1: independently wealthy of his inheritance as he claimed, did he
Speaker 1: really need three hundred dollars for a mutilated cat? Maybe
Speaker 1: he's just addicted to mail fraud. As for the cats,
Speaker 1: one of the earliest mentions I could find of Frank
Speaker 1: in the newspaper archives was a nineteen fifty eight article
Speaker 1: about the embalmed cat he got for his fifteenth birthday.
Speaker 1: He was looking forward to dissecting it and adding it
Speaker 1: to his collection of oddities that already included a cat skeleton.
Speaker 1: So I hope all his fraudulent cats found happy homes,
Speaker 1: even if their buyers were unhappy about losing three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: But it's in an appeals court decision related to a
Speaker 1: parole violation in this second mail fraud case, where we
Speaker 1: find the details of a campaign of terror against his
Speaker 1: neighbors that foreshadows the events at the end of this long,
Speaker 1: strange tale. He was paroled in nineteen ninety two after
Speaker 1: serving about half of this sentence, and he was on
Speaker 1: probation for three years. Just days before that three year
Speaker 1: period ran out, he was charged with a probation violation.
Speaker 1: He'd been convicted in New Jersey of sending obscene materials
Speaker 1: through the mail to a minor. I know, I know,
Speaker 1: this show is starting to feel like a tour of
Speaker 1: America's weirdest sex crime guys. But to be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't think there was anything sexual in his motivation for
Speaker 1: sending pornomags to a nine year old. I know that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound possible. Bear with me. But after he got
Speaker 1: out of prison, he's living in an apartment back in
Speaker 1: his hometown of Tenafly, New Jersey. A family of Russian
Speaker 1: immigrants moves into the apartment next door. They have children.
Speaker 1: Children are noisy. Frank says he asked them to keep
Speaker 1: it down, but the noise continued. In what these Second
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals would later call a rather bizarre
Speaker 1: set of circumstances, he decided to get back at these
Speaker 1: noisy children by engaging in a lengthy harassment campaign against
Speaker 1: the entire family. At least twice, he shut off their electricity.
Speaker 1: On multiple occasions, he filled the lock on their front
Speaker 1: door with staples, making it impossible to open. He had
Speaker 1: the family's mail forwarded to des Moines, Iowa. The father
Speaker 1: of these noisy children was a doctor. One of his
Speaker 1: colleagues received a letter purporting to be from an aid's
Speaker 1: charity informing the recipient that the doctor, the father of
Speaker 1: those noisy children, had tested positive for HIV. And along
Speaker 1: that same line of thinking, he also sent a letter
Speaker 1: to the children's school informing them that the nine year
Speaker 1: old boy had been exposed to HIV by his father.
Speaker 1: And he sent letters to the Jewish community center where
Speaker 1: the family remembers, informing them that the entire family had
Speaker 1: been exposed to the virus. Remember this is nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: Telling people that this doctor has HIV could ruin his career.
Speaker 1: The school could call social services, and they probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be welcome in the sauna at the community center if
Speaker 1: people believed this. And in what would be his ultimate downfall,
Speaker 1: here signed their nine year old son up for catalogs
Speaker 1: that sold pornographic materials. It seems like he believed that
Speaker 1: the child's father would get the mail, which apparently wasn't
Speaker 1: going to Iowa anymore see the catalog, believe his son
Speaker 1: had signed up for it and would punish the boy,
Speaker 1: and if the boy was grounded, he wouldn't be so noisy.
Speaker 1: But it backfired and Frank was discovered as the culprit.
Speaker 1: Police searched his apartment and found the typewriter he'd used
Speaker 1: to write all the letters, and he quickly confessed. He
Speaker 1: got four months in jail in New Jersey for sending
Speaker 1: him scene materials to a child, but the parole violation
Speaker 1: landed him back in federal prison for another year. And
Speaker 1: maybe this trip back to prison gave him a chance
Speaker 1: to test out his own advice. You see, between getting
Speaker 1: out in nineteen ninety two and going back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, Frank was profiled in The New York Times.
Speaker 1: The journalist Charles Strumm actually used to write for The
Speaker 1: Bergen Record, the local paper Frank used to end up
Speaker 1: in every time he got arrested in the sixties, but
Speaker 1: Strum didn't come home from college and started the Record
Speaker 1: until after Frank's arms stand off in the front yard
Speaker 1: and they weren't talking about their shared hometown. They were
Speaker 1: talking about Frank's new consulting business. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: Frank put a classified ad in USA Today that read.
Speaker 2: Go into federal prison for the first time, we will
Speaker 2: tell you what to expect and how to survive. All
Speaker 2: consultants are graduates of the federal prison system. Frank aysweeneyan Associates,
Speaker 2: Box fifteen Demarest, New Jersey zero seven six two seven.
Speaker 1: Frank told Strum that the idea came to him while
Speaker 1: he was reading the paper one morning in September nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three. Lawrence Powell, one of the LA police officers
Speaker 1: convicted for his role in the beating of Rodney King,
Speaker 1: was quoted in the paper as being terrified at the
Speaker 1: prospect of going to prison. Strum rights that Frank told him.
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, my god, there's probably a lot
Speaker 2: of people go into prison who has never been in
Speaker 2: jail before, only white collic criminals, and they're probably terrified too,
Speaker 2: that just as frightened as he is. So I thought
Speaker 2: maybe I could use my misfortune to help people and
Speaker 2: maybe make a profit doing it.
Speaker 1: The article says Frank claims to have twenty seven clients
Speaker 1: after just a few months of running his new consulting business,
Speaker 1: though the author also prints without question Frank's claim that
Speaker 1: he left high school in the eleventh grade because he
Speaker 1: was bored with it, not because he was in a
Speaker 1: youth correctional facility for bank robbery. In the article, Strum
Speaker 1: writes out all of Frank's crimes and convictions, but that
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two bank robbery is missing. But again, they
Speaker 1: didn't have the Internet then. Of his criminal record, Frank
Speaker 1: told the reporter, I remember it was Nietzsche who wrote
Speaker 1: the crime is not in the act, but in the
Speaker 1: stupidity of being caught. I was caught and stupid, and
Speaker 1: he'd get caught a few more times in the coming years,
Speaker 1: but he stays humble. That Nietzsche quote is still his
Speaker 1: favorite to this day. According to his Facebook profile, he
Speaker 1: had to take a break from his new consulting career
Speaker 1: when he went away for a year in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: but he picked right back up when he got out.
Speaker 1: A nineteen ninety seven Newsweek article about his business claims
Speaker 1: he was up to eighty seven clients now, with white
Speaker 1: collar criminals paying Frank one thousand dollars for assistance and
Speaker 1: getting favorable placement. So not only did Frank promise that
Speaker 1: he could advise you about the differences in food facilities
Speaker 1: and culture at different federal prisons, he claimed he had
Speaker 1: connections and could influence your placement. A Bureau of Prison
Speaker 1: spokesman denied Frank had any ability to arrange transfers or
Speaker 1: promise placements at specific facilities, but at least one client
Speaker 1: told the reporter that prison officials had denied his request
Speaker 1: for a transfer during a five year sentence for embezzlement,
Speaker 1: but after he wrote Frank and included a check for
Speaker 1: one thousand dollars, his transfer came through. Now, promising these
Speaker 1: transfers seems like it would put Frank back in mail
Speaker 1: fraud territory. But if he had stopped short of fraud,
Speaker 1: this isn't actually a terrible way for a guy like
Speaker 1: Frank to make a living. He really had been in
Speaker 1: a significant number of our nation's federal prisons. He'd been
Speaker 1: in facilities all over the country spanning decades. He's in
Speaker 1: a great position to offer advice about how to get
Speaker 1: through your sentence as smoothly as possible. So if he'd
Speaker 1: stuck to lifestyle advice for the incarcerated. I might say
Speaker 1: that this could have been a success story for Frank.
Speaker 1: There was another article about his consulting business in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, but then he kind of disappears. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what he was up to. He pops up briefly
Speaker 1: in a couple of articles in two thousand and two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, an old prison friend of his called
Speaker 1: him from a jail in Reno to ask for help
Speaker 1: exposing an alleged smuggling ring run by one of the
Speaker 1: guards out there in Nevada, David Wayne is described as
Speaker 1: one of the most dangerous inmates in a state prison
Speaker 1: system after a variety of escape attempts and prison riots
Speaker 1: involving Wayne holding hostages, and in two thousand he wanted
Speaker 1: Frank's help leveraging this information about a corrupt guard to
Speaker 1: get a better placement. So friend or client hard to say,
Speaker 1: but the guard did end up charged with smuggling a
Speaker 1: handcuff key to an inmate, and Frank spent about a
Speaker 1: year advocating for Wayne's transfer, considering he had once held
Speaker 1: two prison nurses hostage for twelve hours by rigging up
Speaker 1: a rube Goldberg style contraption that would stab the women's
Speaker 1: eyes out with scalpels if anyone opened the door and
Speaker 1: had successfully escaped. At least once, a low security placement
Speaker 1: for David Wayne was out of the question. But then
Speaker 1: quiet Frank moved out to Idaho and stayed out of
Speaker 1: the paper. He's not a very good driver, so I
Speaker 1: know he moved to Ada County, Idaho around two thousand
Speaker 1: and one, because that's when he started getting a lot
Speaker 1: of traffic tickets there. In two thousand and eight, he
Speaker 1: was charged with battery and convicted, but he only served
Speaker 1: five days in jail and successfully completed his court ordered
Speaker 1: anger management class. The docket indicates the victim, woman who
Speaker 1: appears to be a nursing assistant in the Boise area,
Speaker 1: got a restraining order. But the Frank Sweeney, who tried
Speaker 1: to drop a bank and fought in the Bush War
Speaker 1: and had a mob boss fly him to Vegas and
Speaker 1: bragged about being able to influence prison officials, that Frank
Speaker 1: seems to be gone. He's just an old man living
Speaker 1: in Boise until twenty fifteen. In December of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Frank went to the post office near his home in
Speaker 1: Garden City, Idaho. He parked his truck in one of
Speaker 1: the accessible parking spots out front. A woman saw him
Speaker 1: get out of his car, which did not have a
Speaker 1: placard indicating he was supposed to be parked there, and
Speaker 1: said something to him. We don't know exactly what she said. Now,
Speaker 1: me personally, I probably wouldn't have said anything. For the
Speaker 1: most part, it's not worth it. It's not your business.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of people who are not visibly disabled
Speaker 1: who really do need those parking spots. And Frank was
Speaker 1: in his seventies at this point, so even if he
Speaker 1: didn't have a state issued parking placard, he's old. Just
Speaker 1: leave him alone. But she made a comment about it,
Speaker 1: and the situation escalated pretty seriously. Court documents only say
Speaker 1: that they had a verbal altercation, so at least she
Speaker 1: didn't get stabbed, which he's done at least twice to
Speaker 1: people who offended him. But whatever she said, and for
Speaker 1: whatever reasons she chose to say it, she didn't deserve
Speaker 1: what happened next. The victims in this case are referred
Speaker 1: to only by their initials in the court record for
Speaker 1: obvious reasons, but it can be tricky to keep track
Speaker 1: of people with just a letter. So I've given them
Speaker 1: all fake names just to make this a little easier.
Speaker 1: We'll call the women from the parking lot Ellen, her
Speaker 1: husband will be Sam, and their adult daughters will be
Speaker 1: Kayla and Lucy. Again, it is possible to figure out
Speaker 1: who these people are, but please don't. They've been through enough.
Speaker 1: Two weeks after that heated exchange in the post office
Speaker 1: parking lot, the postcard started. The probation office in Boise
Speaker 1: got the first one. Ellen's adult daughter, Kayla, was at
Speaker 1: the time on probation for a misdemeanor dui charge. The
Speaker 1: letter writer claimed that he had just the night before
Speaker 1: been in the car with Kayla and she was so
Speaker 1: drunk that he had to jump out at a red
Speaker 1: light for his own safety. Ellen's husband, Sam, received a
Speaker 1: postcard at his dental office the same day informing him
Speaker 1: that his wife had been in the post office the
Speaker 1: week before and she was so drunk that she was
Speaker 1: falling down. The letter, though very brief, contained a lot
Speaker 1: of really specific personal information, the fact that the couple
Speaker 1: had very recently purchased a new home, including the name
Speaker 1: of the suburb where they now lived, the city where
Speaker 1: their other adult daughter lived, the names of both of
Speaker 1: their daughters, and information about Kayla's arrest that year. Ellen
Speaker 1: received a third postcard that week, addressed to her at home.
Speaker 1: This one contained her social Security number and an allegation
Speaker 1: that her daughter Lucy, was engaged in acts of prostitution
Speaker 1: at her place of work, which was named after the
Speaker 1: family received the first postcards. In December of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: they met with detectives at the Aida County Sheriff's office
Speaker 1: in Boise, and despite investigator's best efforts, the family would
Speaker 1: continue to receive increasingly bizarre and frightening postcards for three
Speaker 1: full years. Their neighbors and nearby schools received postcards that
Speaker 1: appeared to be from the State Sex Offender Registry, informing
Speaker 1: them that Sam was a sex offender, specifically that he
Speaker 1: had sodomized a nine year old boy in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: It probably goes without saying, but I will say it anyway.
Speaker 1: That is not true. But it does kind of remind
Speaker 1: you of what Frank did to that doctor in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, doesn't it, adding to the victim's distress. Sam
Speaker 1: passed away unexpectedly in January of twenty seve sixteen, just
Speaker 1: a few weeks after all this started, and obviously Frank
Speaker 1: knew one of his victims was dead. Some of the
Speaker 1: letters sent to the man's daughters taunted and blamed them
Speaker 1: for driving their father into an early grave, but oddly
Speaker 1: some of the letters pretended otherwise. While most of the
Speaker 1: postcards were signed Carson Wells, the name of Woody Harrelson's
Speaker 1: character in the movie No Country for Old Men, some
Speaker 1: were signed with the names of her own children. Ellen
Speaker 1: received one of those just two months after her husband's death,
Speaker 1: purporting to be from her daughter Lucy, who lived out
Speaker 1: of state. It said, dear Mommy, my blood test just
Speaker 1: came back and yes I am HIV positive. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I was infected by one of the two crips with
Speaker 1: whom I was having an affair with. Regrettably, I will
Speaker 1: never be able to give you and Daddy the grandchildren
Speaker 1: you so desired. But we know now that Daddy is
Speaker 1: a pedophile. He may have harmed the grandkids. Has he
Speaker 1: been released from jail. And again, this is a woman
Speaker 1: who just lost her husband. She knows this postcard isn't
Speaker 1: from her adult daughter, even if she hadn't already gotten
Speaker 1: a dozen other bizarre postcards. She would know that no
Speaker 1: one's writing their mother a postcard on a typewriter. It's
Speaker 1: not nineteen thirty two. And again, the recently deceased man
Speaker 1: was not a pedophile, nor was he in jail. He
Speaker 1: had just been buried by his family. Ellen and both
Speaker 1: of her daughters continued getting postcards even after Ellen moved,
Speaker 1: and Frank was also sending the postcards to other people
Speaker 1: pretending to be members of the family. The Idaho Black
Speaker 1: History Museum received one signed with Ellen's name, address, and
Speaker 1: phone number that was so laden with racial slurs that
Speaker 1: you can barely tell what it's supposed to be trying
Speaker 1: to say. Lucy's boss received one advising him that his
Speaker 1: employee was having rectal intercourse with black men, although Frank
Speaker 1: described that in more vivid terms. Now, for as strange
Speaker 1: as this man's life has been, you'd be forgiven if
Speaker 1: you forgot where we started. Frank is a Nazi. He
Speaker 1: was a member of the American Nazi Party, and he
Speaker 1: fought as a Rhodesian mercenary. He's not just a guy
Speaker 1: who loves doing mail fraud and hates his neighbors. He's
Speaker 1: very racist and a lot of these postcards fixated on
Speaker 1: the idea that Ellen's daughters were engaged in interracial relationships,
Speaker 1: very graphically and racistly describing specific sex acts that they were,
Speaker 1: in his mind having with black partners. And he was
Speaker 1: particularly upset that Ellen, a Latina, had married a white man.
Speaker 1: He called her racial slurs and wrote to her daughters
Speaker 1: calling them mongrels. It seems the only time he wasn't
Speaker 1: sending postcards was when he was out of the country.
Speaker 1: You see, he might have another wife. It's not entirely clear,
Speaker 1: but several times a year Frank would travel to Effert,
Speaker 1: the capital of the German state of Turingia and Central Germany,
Speaker 1: to visit a woman he's known for a very long time,
Speaker 1: Uta Schernig, who performs professionally as a belly dancer under
Speaker 1: the name Madame Chamila, has on several occasions referred to
Speaker 1: Frank as her husband. This may be literal, it may
Speaker 1: be a cheeky little joke. My German is not good
Speaker 1: enough to really read tone, and it may just be
Speaker 1: that they've been in a relationship for so long that
Speaker 1: they think of each other this way. My research game
Speaker 1: is strong, but a potentially non existent German marriage certificate
Speaker 1: evades my grasp. Nevertheless, he does own a home in effort,
Speaker 1: and she lives in it. She refers to him occasionally
Speaker 1: as her house Positzer, which you could translate as landlord,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't really, you'd call the person you rent
Speaker 1: your home from, your permeter house Positzer just means he
Speaker 1: owns her house. And he occasionally calls her Liebchen my love,
Speaker 1: and she calls him Frankie when he visited in twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen and they went to see her mother in the
Speaker 1: nursing home together. Her photo captions are about Frank's visit
Speaker 1: to his mother in law. As with so much in
Speaker 1: Frank's life, it's hard to pin this down. I have
Speaker 1: a handful of photos of Frank with this woman that
Speaker 1: appeared to be from the eighties or early nineties based
Speaker 1: on the photo quality, Frank's apparent age and to be honest,
Speaker 1: per hair. But we're talking about Germany, so dating by
Speaker 1: the fashion could put us off by a decade or more.
Speaker 1: No offense, you know, it's true, But at least in
Speaker 1: the present era of his life, he's visiting Germany every
Speaker 1: now and again. She breeds and shows Mexican and Peruvian
Speaker 1: hairless dog, some of which have been quite successful internationally.
Speaker 1: Some of her show dogs list Frank Sweeney as a
Speaker 1: co owner. In September of twenty sixteen, his victims had
Speaker 1: a brief reprieve from his letters because he was in
Speaker 1: Germany attending a seminar on dog genetics with Ute. These
Speaker 1: rare breed dogs are very prone to genetic problems and
Speaker 1: in breeding, so I'm glad they're staying on top of
Speaker 1: best practices, I guess. But when he was at home
Speaker 1: in Idaho, the campaign of harassment was relentless. He even
Speaker 1: found a way to outsource the terror. Frank sent postcards
Speaker 1: to inmates in prisons all over the country. He signed
Speaker 1: them with Ellen's name and address, and requested that the
Speaker 1: men write her back. She received at least seventy five letters,
Speaker 1: all addressed to her at home from murderers and as
Speaker 1: if she might not get it, like maybe she didn't
Speaker 1: put two and two together here, Like maybe she thought
Speaker 1: this was some totally separate, unrelated new problem she just
Speaker 1: happens to be having. Frank made sure she understood that
Speaker 1: he did this. He sent her numerous postcards explaining the situation.
Speaker 2: Every creep every social degenerate who has written to you
Speaker 2: has your address, social Security number, and date of birth.
Speaker 2: Likewise for Lucy two. Some of these freaks have already
Speaker 2: passed this information on to their criminal friends outside of prison.
Speaker 2: Last month, I've I did to your house twice in
Speaker 2: the early morning hours while you slept. Naturally, I've removed
Speaker 2: my license plates so that street cameras could not identify
Speaker 2: my car, and I still patrol the post office daily
Speaker 2: in an effort to spot you. You only have your
Speaker 2: big mouth to blame for all of this.
Speaker 1: In December of twenty sixteen, after the first full year,
Speaker 1: he wrote to her, saying it was their anniversary, telling
Speaker 1: her I intend to be with you her life. The
Speaker 1: letter has just kept coming, reminding her that he was
Speaker 1: watching her outside her home, that he waited for her
Speaker 1: at the post office almost every day, and sending her
Speaker 1: postcards containing her own personal information like her license plate
Speaker 1: number and information about her family, just so she knew
Speaker 1: he had it too. He continued writing to Ellen and
Speaker 1: both of her daughters, calling them racial slurs, slots whores,
Speaker 1: threatening to report them for I sorted imaginary crimes like
Speaker 1: tax fraud and drug dealing, and always remembering to write
Speaker 1: them on their birthdays. Investigators were stumped. They knew the
Speaker 1: letter writer was the man from the post office parking lot.
Speaker 1: He said as much in his letters, but Ellen didn't
Speaker 1: recognize him. She had only a vague description of his vehicle,
Speaker 1: and she didn't get the license plate. Why would she
Speaker 1: have thought she needed to? Postcards were always wiped clean
Speaker 1: of prints. They were perfectly generic United States Postal Service
Speaker 1: issued materials that he always bought in small quantities and
Speaker 1: paid cash. He may truly have tormented this woman until
Speaker 1: one of them died if he hadn't done what he's
Speaker 1: always done, more crime. And here's that beginning of the end.
Speaker 1: It's not the end. But I told you this story
Speaker 1: that began outside of a bank in New Jersey in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, would start its final chapter outside of
Speaker 1: a bank in Idaho fifty six years later. On October thirteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, Frank got into another argument in a parking lot.
Speaker 1: These victims, too, are only identified by their inn in
Speaker 1: the court records, So I'm going to call them Liam
Speaker 1: and Denise. They were in their car outside the Wells
Speaker 1: Fargo in Garden City, Idaho. Frank conked at them. There
Speaker 1: was again some kind of verbal altercation. Maybe they gave
Speaker 1: him the finger or shouted, who knows. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that happens every day. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't pull forward fast enough, the guy behind you honks,
Speaker 1: You tell him to fuck off. Nobody's being their best selves.
Speaker 1: But life goes on, but not for Frank. Frank can't
Speaker 1: take it. He stabbed a guy in the guts for
Speaker 1: splashing him in nineteen seventy five. So two weeks after
Speaker 1: Liam and Denise experienced this angry driver at the bank,
Speaker 1: they start getting postcards. Like Ellen and her family, this family, too,
Speaker 1: starts hearing that their neighbors and nearby schools are getting
Speaker 1: postcards that pretend to be from the state Sex Offender Registry,
Speaker 1: alerting people that Liam is a pedophile. He's not, and specifically,
Speaker 1: the postcards say that he sodomized a nine year old boy.
Speaker 1: That is a very specific and very gross detail to
Speaker 1: recycle from one victim to the next, right like that,
Speaker 1: that has to mean something, but I can't figure it out,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's for the best. These postcards, too, are
Speaker 1: generic ones from the post office, typed on a manual typewriter.
Speaker 1: And again some of the postcards are signed Carson Wells,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're signed with the name of Liam's adult son.
Speaker 1: And again there were letters to the family from murderers
Speaker 1: answering requests for pen pals. But you know what, the
Speaker 1: bank has a lot of security cameras, and unbeknowns to Frank,
Speaker 1: shortly before he started terrorizing his second set of victims,
Speaker 1: his case wasn't just a local matter anymore. In September
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, the United States Postal Inspector Service started
Speaker 1: looking into the postcards. That's right, the Mail Police. That
Speaker 1: is a very real federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction
Speaker 1: over mail crimes. According to their most recent annual report,
Speaker 1: the USPIS initiated more than fifty six hundred investigations in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three, and during that year, forty one hundred
Speaker 1: cases related to their investigations ended in convictions. Most of
Speaker 1: those numbers are things like mail theft and people mailing drugs. Also,
Speaker 1: though a couple hundred people a year are assaulting postal employees,
Speaker 1: knock that off. Don't do that. Be nice to your
Speaker 1: mail carrier. So now we have the Mail Police on
Speaker 1: the case. And as soon as they start trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what's going on here. Again, this is September
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, they're just looking at the postcards to
Speaker 1: Ellen and her family. But within a few weeks of
Speaker 1: them opening the investigation, the Idaho State Police let them
Speaker 1: know that someone is sending postcards pretending to be from
Speaker 1: their office. And these are these postcards about how Liam
Speaker 1: is a pedophile that are being sent to schools and neighbors.
Speaker 1: And because these postcards are made to look as though
Speaker 1: they are coming from the State Sex Offender Registry, which
Speaker 1: is run by the state Police, people are contacting the
Speaker 1: state police about them. And now the state police are
Speaker 1: talking to the mail police, and now the mail cops
Speaker 1: see that there are more victims, and all of these
Speaker 1: postcards seem to be from the same person. When postal
Speaker 1: investigators speak to both families and compare the letters, it's
Speaker 1: clear they're all from the same person. All of the
Speaker 1: victims say they know who is sending them these postcards,
Speaker 1: they just don't know who he is. Ellen knows it's
Speaker 1: the guy from the post office. Liam knows it's the
Speaker 1: guy from the bank. And they both describe some kind
Speaker 1: of older truck and an older man who's thin with
Speaker 1: a stiff gait and a very terrible distinctive scar on
Speaker 1: his face. They're describing the same man, and surely a
Speaker 1: bank teller or a postal service clerk would recognize description
Speaker 1: like that. Local cops had shown Ellen photo lineups on
Speaker 1: multiple occasions over the last three years as they're investigating this,
Speaker 1: But Frank was never a suspect, so he was never
Speaker 1: in any of the photo arrays. So each time they
Speaker 1: showed her photos of potential suspects, she said, he's not
Speaker 1: here because he wasn't and so she never picked out
Speaker 1: any other possible suspect. But once the postal investigator zeroed
Speaker 1: in on the man in the bank security footage, both
Speaker 1: Ellen and Liam separately identified him in photo lineups, and
Speaker 1: bank employees did know who he was, so by Christmas
Speaker 1: of twenty eighteen, the male police have Frank's bank records.
Speaker 1: He's been paying a private investigator. That's how he knew
Speaker 1: so much personal information about all of his victims, information
Speaker 1: about their real estate transactions, what kinds of cars they drove,
Speaker 1: where they worked, where their adult children lived in different
Speaker 1: cities and states. He's paying a PI Idaho is one
Speaker 1: of several states where you don't actually have to have
Speaker 1: a license of any kind to offer your services as
Speaker 1: a PI, so she doesn't have one that can be
Speaker 1: taken away, and she hasn't been charged with anything. Maybe
Speaker 1: she only helped Frank with information that didn't cross a line,
Speaker 1: and maybe she didn't ask enough questions about what he
Speaker 1: was doing with it. It remains unclear how he got
Speaker 1: everyone's Social Security numbers, though, but the PI he was
Speaker 1: paying is a woman in her eighties who seems to
Speaker 1: still be in the business just for the love of
Speaker 1: the game. Barbara Jacobson describes herself on her website as
Speaker 1: a cross between Nancy Drew and Jessica Fletcher with the
Speaker 1: tenacity of Colombo, and credits her success to her Christian
Speaker 1: faith and divine intervention. An article in a twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: issue of Christian Living magazine quotes her as saying, God
Speaker 1: is my business partner now again. This woman has not
Speaker 1: been charged with a crime, but it seems like a
Speaker 1: bad sign that she either didn't know or didn't care
Speaker 1: that the client asking her for a lot of personal
Speaker 1: information on people had a five decade long rap sheet
Speaker 1: that included convictions related to harassment by mail. You're either
Speaker 1: deeply unscrupulous or very bad at your job, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure which is worse either way. This investigation is
Speaker 1: rapidly coming together. The postal investigator has Frank's bank records,
Speaker 1: He's been identified by the victims. They're closing in on him,
Speaker 1: and maybe he knows, maybe he doesn't. He did move
Speaker 1: very suddenly in February twenty nineteen, leaving the house he'd
Speaker 1: been renting for over a decade right as they got
Speaker 1: the warrant to search it, and renting a different house nearby.
Speaker 1: But he's still sending the letters. So if he knows
Speaker 1: they're onto him, why is he still sending the letters.
Speaker 1: On February thirteenth, twenty nineteen, six weeks after they know
Speaker 1: Frank's their guy, right around the time that he's moving
Speaker 1: to his new house, clerk at the post office calls
Speaker 1: the investigator to say that an old man with a
Speaker 1: terrible scar on his face just bought a stack of
Speaker 1: postcards with cash, and the last postcard arrived on February nineteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. It signed Carson Wells, but the writer identifies
Speaker 1: himself as the man who blew his horn at them
Speaker 1: in the parking lot, and then he reminds Liam and
Speaker 1: Denise that all the murderers who'd been writing to them
Speaker 1: had already forwarded their personal information to criminals on the outside,
Speaker 1: but it was already over. Two weeks later, they searched
Speaker 1: Frank's home. They took his typewriter and his list of
Speaker 1: federal inmates, the ones he'd been writing to as his victims,
Speaker 1: and they found portraits of Hitler and Nazi memorabilia and
Speaker 1: white supremacist literature, and two live rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes don't live
Speaker 1: in Idaho. These aren't snakes that he got outside. These
Speaker 1: are snakes that he is breeding. Frank has a lifelong
Speaker 1: interest in reptile breeding. I think he's a member of
Speaker 1: the Idaho Herpetological Society, or at least he was before
Speaker 1: he went to prison, And shortly before his arrest, he
Speaker 1: commented on an online obituary for an old high school classmate,
Speaker 1: reminiscing fondly about how they used to collect snakes in
Speaker 1: the woods together in the fifties. Once he's in custody,
Speaker 1: Frank confessed immediately, telling investigators on the day of his
Speaker 1: arrest that he'd sent the postcards because he felt like
Speaker 1: these people had embarrassed him and it made him feel
Speaker 1: better to know he was causing them emotional distress. Shortly
Speaker 1: after his arrest, he wrote to the judge to ask
Speaker 1: the court to intervene in what he felt was an
Speaker 1: inadequate response by the jail to what he called many
Speaker 1: of the infirmities that affect the elderly, and says he
Speaker 1: has the urge to commit suicide if his demands aren't met.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to sound like I'm brushing this off.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that this couldn't possibly be a valid concern.
Speaker 1: People die in jails and prisons every day because employees
Speaker 1: don't care or don't have the resources to provide adequate care.
Speaker 1: This is a very real problem, and the urge to
Speaker 1: harm yourself is always very serious. But this isn't Frank's
Speaker 1: first rodeo. Remember, in the eighties he used to threaten
Speaker 1: suicide and would even fake suicide attempts in order to
Speaker 1: manipulate employees of the witness Protection program. So this may
Speaker 1: not be a brand new issue for Frank at any rate.
Speaker 1: Within months of his arrest, he entered into a plea agreement.
Speaker 1: So once the mail cops got on the case, they
Speaker 1: actually sorted it out pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The USPIS got on the case in September of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: and within three months they knew it was Frank. Maybe
Speaker 1: they should have called the guys who solved mail crimes earlier.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but if there had been more communication
Speaker 1: between different law enforcement agencies, the whole situation could have
Speaker 1: been resolved. When he sent a single letter a third victim,
Speaker 1: which he signed with his own name. When a US
Speaker 1: marshall searched Frank's house two years before his eventual arrest,
Speaker 1: I guess they didn't bother to check in with the
Speaker 1: local police, because in April of twenty seventeen, Frank sent
Speaker 1: a single letter to Gerald Shrr, the man who found
Speaker 1: it and for many years ran the witness protection program.
Speaker 1: I can't think of a worse guy to pick if
Speaker 1: you're going to send a threatening letter. Sure was long
Speaker 1: since retired by twenty seventeen. He passed away in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty at the age of eighty six. But is there
Speaker 1: anyone on earth who had more chips to call in
Speaker 1: with the US Marshals? You think a US marshal isn't
Speaker 1: going to come to your house. If you sign your
Speaker 1: full legal name to a threatening letter to the guy
Speaker 1: who invented witness protection, you think you're going to scare
Speaker 1: the guy whose job was protecting mobsters from other mobsters.
Speaker 1: Truly a stupid move, even for Frank.
Speaker 2: You poisonous, licensious, so true. I thought that you would
Speaker 2: have been long dead from cardiovascular disease do to obesity.
Speaker 2: I was very much hoping to sit shiva for you,
Speaker 2: to pray cottage over your fat corpse. You loasome. I
Speaker 2: will remember you, although it's doubtful you will remember from
Speaker 2: WITSEC units in Otisville of San Diego, paraid in with
Speaker 2: your entourage to pray women from the Office of Enforcement Operations.
Speaker 2: In nineteen eighty four, you expelled me from the program,
Speaker 2: leaving me to fend for myself as a known inform
Speaker 2: a rat in the general populations of very dangerous prisons.
Speaker 1: It had been more than thirty years, but Frank never
Speaker 1: got over getting kicked out of the program. He flew
Speaker 1: all over the world helping a spy in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: trying to leverage information on Christopher Boyce to get placement
Speaker 1: in the program, and it didn't work. The information it
Speaker 1: gave was not only not helpful, but by fabricating unhelpful
Speaker 1: information in order to get something from the government, he
Speaker 1: made things worse. And when he finally got what he
Speaker 1: wanted by testifying against a serial killer in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: he couldn't keep his mouth shut about it, and so
Speaker 1: he was removed from the program in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: In his letter to shir he claims that as a
Speaker 1: result of losing his protected status in eighty four, he
Speaker 1: was attacked by another inmate the following year, and he does,
Speaker 1: without a doubt, bear a huge scar all down one
Speaker 1: cheek to this day. Somebody cut Frank's face open pretty bad.
Speaker 1: He takes care to mention in his letter that the
Speaker 1: assailant was black, though he chooses different words to say that,
Speaker 1: and who knows why Frank got cut. I'm not making
Speaker 1: light of the violence that happens inside jails and prisons,
Speaker 1: but you'd have to do some real mental gymnastics here
Speaker 1: to come up with a satisfying explanation for why a
Speaker 1: black man would cut Frank up in retaliation for Frank's
Speaker 1: testimony against a Nazi serial killer who traveled the country
Speaker 1: shooting black men. I just don't think that they would
Speaker 1: be mad about that. But I can think think of
Speaker 1: a variety of reasons why a black man who encountered
Speaker 1: Frank in prison might get into it with him. I
Speaker 1: mean racist hide. Frank's just kind of a hothead, not
Speaker 1: a great guy to hang out with, always getting into
Speaker 1: it with people. But also he loves saying racial slurs.
Speaker 1: So I can think of a variety of reasons why
Speaker 1: this might have happened that had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: him testifying against a serial killer. We can't take Frank
Speaker 1: at his word, and I couldn't find any reporting from
Speaker 1: the time about a prison knife fight in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: So who else? After Shre received the letter, which Frank
Speaker 1: had signed venomously Yours, Frank Abbott Sweeney, a US marshal
Speaker 1: was sent out to Idaho to speak with Frank, and
Speaker 1: Frank admitted that he sent the letter, but he said
Speaker 1: he meant no harm by it, and he allowed the
Speaker 1: marshal to search his home. It seems like if anyone
Speaker 1: had compared notes, Frank could have been identified as the
Speaker 1: Garden City postcard writer far sooner The language in this
Speaker 1: letter was very similar to some of the postcards. If
Speaker 1: they had just showed this letter to the sheriff, maybe
Speaker 1: they would have recognized it, But yes, they didn't because
Speaker 1: he wasn't. The local police in Pennsylvania where the letter
Speaker 1: was received charged Frank with terroristic threats, but that's a
Speaker 1: non extraditable misdemeanor in Pennsylvania, so they couldn't bring him
Speaker 1: back to face the charge. So he's got an open
Speaker 1: warrant in Pennsylvania. If he ever goes there, willingly, but
Speaker 1: he probably won't and was sure now deceased. It doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like that's likely to amount to anything. On December sixteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, Frank Sweeney was sentenced to fifty one months
Speaker 1: for six counts of stalking. A few days later, his
Speaker 1: German wife posted a photo of her Christmas Eve dinner.
Speaker 1: A friend asked her if Frank would be celebrating with
Speaker 1: her that year. She replied that no, Frank has been
Speaker 1: ill for several months and can't fly right now. She
Speaker 1: didn't say that he was back in federal prison for
Speaker 1: at least the fifth time. Frank Sweeney was released from
Speaker 1: prison in December of twenty twenty two. I just noticed,
Speaker 1: as I'm writing this that it's his eighty first birthday today,
Speaker 1: but it won't be by the time you hear this.
Speaker 1: He's still in Idaho, he's still playing the violin, and
Speaker 1: he still co owns a few Mexican hairless dogs on
Speaker 1: the show circuit in Germany. In that nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: New York Times article about his prison consulting business, Frank
Speaker 1: quipped that his favorite quote was the crime is not
Speaker 1: in the act, but in the stupidity of being caught,
Speaker 1: which he attributes to Nietzsche. I think, regardless of your
Speaker 1: stance on the philosophical nature of crime and punishment, though
Speaker 1: there are better quotes from Frank's thousands of appearances in
Speaker 1: the newspaper over his six decades of crime. Maybe Judge H.
Speaker 1: Curtis Meaner had it write in nineteen eighty one when
Speaker 1: he cut off the bickering in the courtroom over exactly
Speaker 1: what the hell happened with Frank's mysterious South African letters
Speaker 1: about the missing spy, saying, I have neither the time
Speaker 1: nor inclination to unravel all the monies in this case,
Speaker 1: because we never really will unravel all the mysteries of
Speaker 1: Frank's past. He played a bit part in so many
Speaker 1: much bigger stories. They've made whole Hollywood films out of
Speaker 1: so many of these little slices of history that Frank
Speaker 1: passed through, from Cold War spy thrillers to Scorsese dramas
Speaker 1: about organized crime. Frank's there, He's not in the movie.
Speaker 1: He's just out of frame while history happens doing something
Speaker 1: really goddamn weird. Weird little guys sit production of cool
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