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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert here, because it's the holidays. We will

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Speaker 2: be continuing our normally scheduled Behind the Bastards episodes, but

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Speaker 2: every week we're also doing a compilation of one of

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Speaker 2: the other new shows on our network. So aart so now,

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Speaker 2: but this one is It's called Weird Little Guys. It

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Speaker 2: launched this year with one of my friends and favorite researchers,

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Speaker 2: the Great Molly Conger, and you're going to listen to

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Speaker 2: a two part episode which we've cut together for you

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Speaker 2: with a lot less ads than normal, about a guy

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Speaker 2: named Frank Sweeney. So please enjoy and happy holidays.

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Speaker 3: This is a story that begins and ends in bank

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Speaker 3: parking lots, more or less in the way that stories

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Speaker 3: can really begin or end. Our subject today was alive

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Speaker 3: before the story begins, and as I'm writing this, he's

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Speaker 3: still alive. But for the purposes of this telling, we'll

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Speaker 3: start outside the Palisade Trust Company Bank in Englewood, New Jersey,

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Speaker 3: on February twenty third, nineteen sixty two, when an eighteen

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Speaker 3: year old member of the American Nazi Party was arrested

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Speaker 3: after skipping school to try to rob a bank with

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Speaker 3: a toy gun and will mark the beginning of the

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Speaker 3: end of his story in a Wells Fargo parking lot

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Speaker 3: in Garden City, Idaho, on October thirteenth, twenty eighteen, when

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Speaker 3: an elderly ex Cohn was caught on security cam footage

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Speaker 3: getting into an altercation with a couple who didn't move

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Speaker 3: forward quickly enough at the drive up atm In the

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Speaker 3: decades in between, Frank Sweeney went to prison at least

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Speaker 3: half a dozen times, bought as a foreign mercenary, got

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Speaker 3: deported from both Rhodesia and South Africa, helped an escaped

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Speaker 3: spy of ad U s Marshals, turned state's witness against

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Speaker 3: a Hitler worshiping serial killer, tried to help the mob,

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Speaker 3: and waged a three year campaign of terror and harassment

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Speaker 3: against a woman who made a passing comment about how

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Speaker 3: he was parked outside the post office. I'm Molly Conger

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Speaker 3: and this is brune La.

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Speaker 4: Guys, this is a strange one.

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Speaker 3: The first few episodes of this show were stories I

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Speaker 3: already knew and thought you should know too. Kevin Strom

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Speaker 3: was a prominent figure in the white supremacist movement for decades,

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Speaker 3: and it was big local news here in Charlesville. When

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Speaker 3: he was arrested twenty years ago. The Gerald Drake case

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Speaker 3: was something I read about when it happened. The cases

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Speaker 3: against the gun trafficking Nazi paramilitary group was a story

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Speaker 3: I spent years reading, paying ten cents a page, one

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Speaker 3: court filing at a time as it wound its way

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Speaker 3: through the system. But this one, this one is brand

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Speaker 3: new to me, and I think it will be brand

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Speaker 3: new to just about everybody, because for as many times

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Speaker 3: as this man shows up in the newspaper over the

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Speaker 3: last sixty years, I haven't found any one source that's

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Speaker 3: gathered together the threads of his life and tried to

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Speaker 3: make sense of how one man's name could appear in

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Speaker 3: so many other people's stories. Because that's where I found him.

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Speaker 3: In someone else's story. I was reading a biography of

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Speaker 3: a particularly nasty little guy, one we'll definitely get to

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Speaker 3: eventually in another episode when my weird little guy detector

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Speaker 3: went off. Call it a gut feeling, but this passing

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Speaker 3: mention of a side character in the life of a

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Speaker 3: serial killer was enough to get me to put that

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Speaker 3: book down and spend days digging through newspaper archives trying

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Speaker 3: to figure out Frank.

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Speaker 1: And what I found was kind of.

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Speaker 3: A bizarro world forest Gum. One man whose life keeps

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Speaker 3: intersecting with major historical events, just wandering in and out

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Speaker 3: of the lives of gullible reporters, frustrating to the federal

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Speaker 3: agents and the innocent bystanders who accidentally became his targets,

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Speaker 3: just bumbling his way through history, but without any of

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Speaker 3: Tom Hanks's charm. I know we don't really know each

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Speaker 3: other yet. I haven't earned the trust it takes to

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Speaker 3: know you'll believe me when I promise you a two

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Speaker 3: parter is worth the weight in between. But I think

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Speaker 3: you'll agree Frank's story is weird enough for two episodes.

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Speaker 3: Frank Abbott Sweeney Junior was born in August of nineteen

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Speaker 3: forty three in New Jersey, to Frank Abbott Sweeney Senior,

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Speaker 3: a realtor, and Marie Gleeson Sweeney, a homemaker who taught

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Speaker 3: violin lessons and volunteered with the Red Cross. As a

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Speaker 3: lifelong con artist, A lot of what he's told reporters

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Speaker 3: about his own life is self serving fiction, which would

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Speaker 3: sometimes get published without fact checking and then reappear in

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Speaker 3: later accounts as fact.

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Speaker 1: It was in the newspaper after all.

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Speaker 3: So I've taken great pains to verify what i can,

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Speaker 3: debunk what I can, and take note of the things

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Speaker 3: I can only offer you with a grain of salt.

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Speaker 3: Some of Frank's own lies are easily disproved, like the

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Speaker 3: resume he gave a Rhodesian Army recruiter on it. He

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Speaker 3: claimed he graduated from Georgetown University in nineteen sixty five

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Speaker 3: at the degree in psychology, but he couldn't possibly have

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Speaker 3: matriculated at Georgetown in nineteen sixty one. He was a

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Speaker 3: senior at Tenafly High School in nineteen sixty two, when

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Speaker 3: he was sent to the Annandell Reformatory for two and

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Speaker 3: a half years.

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Speaker 1: He never finished high school.

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Speaker 3: His claim that his alias, Francis Shellhammer derives from his

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Speaker 3: mother's maiden name.

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Speaker 1: Also fails to hold up to scrutiny.

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Speaker 3: His mother was born Marie Gleeson to John Gleeson, a fireman,

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Speaker 3: and Lottie Gross Gleason in Chicago. And I was generous here.

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Speaker 3: I wasted a lot of time. I even checked his grandparents.

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Speaker 3: His middle name, Abbott was his paternal grandmother Martha's maiden name.

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Speaker 3: I went as far as to track his family treat

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Speaker 3: all the way back to Ireland, giving him the benefit

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Speaker 3: to the doubt that maybe.

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Speaker 1: There's a shell hammer in there somewhere. I didn't find one.

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Speaker 3: It's possible that I started mixing up my Martha's, Mary's, John's,

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Speaker 3: and Francis's by the time I was cross referencing marriage

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Speaker 3: records from the eighteen seventies.

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Speaker 1: But he probably just made it up. He does a

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Speaker 1: lot of that.

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Speaker 3: And other aspects of Frank's story would require a trip

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Speaker 3: to the National Archive to sift through dusty boxes of

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Speaker 3: ancient court transcripts and an unlikely degree of transparency from

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Speaker 3: the Central Intelligence Agency, or a deathbed confession from a mobster,

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Speaker 3: or a few tell all memoirs from US marshalls to

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Speaker 3: ever hope to sort out. The rest is somewhere in between.

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Speaker 3: But I'll stick with what we do know to be true,

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Speaker 3: And I said, this story begins outside of a bank.

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Speaker 3: On February twenty third, nineteen sixty two, Frank Sweeney skipped school.

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Speaker 3: Shortly after nine am, he walked into a bank in Englewood,

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Speaker 3: New Jersey, approached the teller and slid a plastic toy

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Speaker 3: gun that he'd painted black out of a Manila envelope.

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Speaker 3: I'd like to make a withdrawal, he told the teller

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Speaker 3: as he cocked the toy pistol. I don't know if

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Speaker 3: the teller could tell the gun was fake, or if

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Speaker 3: she just didn't think this gangly, redheaded teenager had it

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Speaker 3: in him to shoot her, or maybe she just was

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Speaker 3: having a bad day and didn't care anymore, because, according

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Speaker 3: to local news reports, she sneered at him, got up

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Speaker 3: and walked away, leaving him standing there alone at the

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Speaker 3: counter with his toy gun and bewildered by the teller's

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Speaker 3: apparent disinterest in being held at gunpoint. He just put

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Speaker 3: the plastic pistol back in his pocket, turned around and

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Speaker 3: walked out the front door, and as he was leaving,

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Speaker 3: an off duty policeman just happened to be walking into

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Speaker 3: the bank. An employee told the officer what had just happened,

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Speaker 3: and he turned right around and caught Frank just outside.

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Speaker 3: He dragged him back inside the bank to be identified

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Speaker 3: by the teller, and as the patrolman is making the arrest,

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Speaker 3: Frank says to him.

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Speaker 1: Well, I guess it didn't work.

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Speaker 3: Later, under interrogation, he would tell the officers that his

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Speaker 3: plan had been to support the movement to use the

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Speaker 3: money from the bank robbery to support the activities of

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Speaker 3: the American Nazi Party under George Lincoln Rockwell. At his arraignment,

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Speaker 3: the judge asked, Frank, aren't you the fellow who's been

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Speaker 3: painting swastikas on synagogues around here. Frank denied this, and

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Speaker 3: he told the judge I never did anything illegal in

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Speaker 3: my life, and then he pleaded guilty to the attempted

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Speaker 3: bank robbery. There's no other mention of Frank in connection

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Speaker 3: with that anti Semitic vandalism the judge mentioned, But I

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Speaker 3: did find several newspaper articles about incidents of that sort

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Speaker 3: from the prior to years when Frank would have still

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Speaker 3: been a minor. In January nineteen sixty three, unnamed teenage

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Speaker 3: boys were accused of painting swastikas on parked cars in Emerson,

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Speaker 3: just eight miles away. In February of nineteen sixty one,

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Speaker 3: one hung a swastika banner over the entrance of the

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Speaker 3: synagogue in Tenafly. Newspaper articles about that banner reference a

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Speaker 3: similar recent incident at the synagogue in nearby Englewood. A

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Speaker 3: few days later, someone painted a swastika over a plaque nearby.

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Speaker 3: In June, two teenage boys respotted fleeing the scene after

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Speaker 3: two trailers belonging to a contract or were broken into

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Speaker 3: and left a swastika painted on the floor inside. In

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Speaker 3: all these incidents, police told the papers of the time

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Speaker 3: that they had referred the cases to the juvenile division.

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Speaker 3: It's not like anti Semitic incidents are so rare that

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Speaker 3: I'm saying that Frank is the only possible suspect here

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Speaker 3: in every nineteen sixties Bergen County news article about a swastika,

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Speaker 3: I found plenty of other newspaper reports during those same

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Speaker 3: two years about a local man flying a swastika flag

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Speaker 3: outside of his home, about attacks on Jewish businesses and

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Speaker 3: synagogues and neighboring cities, and other incidents that just don't

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Speaker 3: fit this particular pattern of teenage Nazi vandalism. And the

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Speaker 3: comment the judge made makes it sound like Frank had

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Speaker 3: been there before. But any appearance he'd made in court

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Speaker 3: as a miner wouldn't have been reported with his name

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Speaker 3: attached to it. And it's hard enough to get any

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Speaker 3: information about a juvenile case in twenty twenty four, So

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Speaker 3: forget figuring out what happened in nineteen sixty one, but

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Speaker 3: it does seem pretty likely he'd at least been a

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Speaker 3: suspect in some of those incidents, because at the hearing

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Speaker 3: where he pled guilty to the attempted bank robbery, Frank

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Speaker 3: did admit that the police had spoken to him on

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Speaker 3: numerous occasions, specifically concerning his involvement in George Lincoln Rockwell's

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Speaker 3: American Nazi Party. For the attempted bank robbery, Frank was

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Speaker 3: sentenced to an indeterminate term at a boy's reformatory, and

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Speaker 3: he was released on October of nineteen sixty four, shortly

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Speaker 3: after his twenty first birthday. After serving about two and

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Speaker 3: a half years. After his first stent in jail, Frank

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Speaker 3: returned to his parents' home in New Jersey. He worked

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Speaker 3: occasionally as a shipping clerk, but it doesn't seem like

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Speaker 3: he was holding down a steady job. After Noon in

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Speaker 3: July of nineteen sixty seven, neighbors reported hearing gunshots in

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Speaker 3: the woods. An officer drove by to check it out

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Speaker 3: and saw a car parked on the side of the road.

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Speaker 3: The car looked empty, so the officer kept driving without

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Speaker 3: stopping to investigate. Suddenly, the car pulled out behind him

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Speaker 3: and tried to run the officer off the road. A

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Speaker 3: brief vehicle chase ensued, with the officer following the vehicle

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Speaker 3: for about a mile before the driver Frank parked outside

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Speaker 3: of his parents' home, got out and walked toward the

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Speaker 3: front door. The officer asked Frank if he'd been shooting

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Speaker 3: guns in the woods, to which Frank replied only no,

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Speaker 3: and then warned the officer that he was on private

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Speaker 3: property for walking away and into the house. But Frank

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Speaker 3: left something on the front seat of the car, unfortunately,

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Speaker 3: and it was a Thompson submachine gun that he'd been

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Speaker 3: firing in the woods. The officer saw the gun and

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Speaker 3: called for backup, and when they arrived, Frank opened fire

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Speaker 3: on them from inside the home, kicking off a seventy

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Speaker 3: five minute gun battle, with more than a dozen cops

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Speaker 3: firing shots at the house as Frank fired at them

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Speaker 3: through the windows. Frank's father and brother pleaded with him

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Speaker 3: to come out, or at least to send the family

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Speaker 3: dog out. After police Captain Peter Zurla was shot in

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Speaker 3: the arm, the officers lobbed four canisters of tear gas

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Speaker 3: through the windows, finally driving Frank out into the front yard,

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Speaker 3: where he was arrested without further incident. And as they

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Speaker 3: put the handcuffs on him, he turned to Captain Zerla,

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Speaker 3: who's still standing there in the front yard bleeding from

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Speaker 3: a gunshot wound, and Frank says, some shot when I

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Speaker 3: got you through the window. Huh. There's no follow up

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Speaker 3: I can find about whether the dog was heard, or

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Speaker 3: how missus Sweeney got the tear gas out of her upholstery.

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Speaker 3: It was the sixties, so maybe her sofa was safely

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Speaker 3: scotch guarded or wrapped up in one of those weird

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Speaker 3: plastic covers that were popular back then. But you have

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Speaker 3: to figure she at least had to replace the curtains.

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Speaker 3: Frank entered a not guilty plea and unsuccessfully try I

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Speaker 3: to suppressed the evidence of the gun found on the

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Speaker 3: front seat of the car, with his attorney arguing that

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Speaker 3: it was discovered in an illegal search because the cop

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Speaker 3: didn't have probable cause to look through the window of

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Speaker 3: the parked car. That's not how that works.

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Speaker 1: A trial.

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Speaker 3: The defense put on three psychiatrists to argue for insanity,

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Speaker 3: and the state put on two of their own who

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Speaker 3: testified that Frank was certainly disturbed but not legally insane.

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Speaker 3: The jury deliberated for just three hours before finding Frank

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Speaker 3: guilty of attempted homicide, assault with the intent to kill,

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Speaker 3: possession of a machine gun, and something called atrocious assault

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Speaker 3: that I've never heard of. We don't have that here

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Speaker 3: in Virginia, but in New Jersey, atrocious assault is an

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Speaker 3: assault in battery, savage and cruel in character which results.

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Speaker 1: In maiming or wounding. So that definitely qualifies. And he

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Speaker 1: was sentenced to six.

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Speaker 3: Years, which, honestly, that's kind of remarkable, right. I'm not

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Speaker 3: going to for the Corsoal state here, far from it.

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Speaker 3: You know more, jail time doesn't really fix anybody, and

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Speaker 3: we'll come to see that jail never comes close to

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Speaker 3: fixing Frank. But reading those sixties news stories about this

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Speaker 3: event was fascinating. This cop who got shot by a

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Speaker 3: Nazi with a Tommy gun is described in every article

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Speaker 3: as quote lightly wounded. I mean, he does seem to

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Speaker 3: have not been seriously injured. He was shot, you know,

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Speaker 3: in the upper arm. I don't think it went through

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Speaker 3: the bone, so it really he was lightly wounded.

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

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Speaker 1: today you know it.

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Speaker 3: And the cops didn't drive a tank through the front

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Speaker 3: of the suburban home or unload their guns into him

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Speaker 3: when he came out. There's been such a massive culture

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Speaker 3: shift over the years and the way we justify aggressive

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Speaker 3: police response and the way that we talk about the

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Speaker 3: risk to police. It's just interesting to see that it

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Speaker 3: wasn't always that way. But there's another unanswered question in

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Speaker 3: the story of this siege in this New York suburb.

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Speaker 1: What was he doing that day?

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Speaker 3: I mean shooting guns in the woods obviously, but why

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Speaker 3: did he panic when that cop drove by, and why

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Speaker 3: those woods in particular. We'll never really know. Even if

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Speaker 3: he told us, we wouldn't know. He's a liar. But

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Speaker 3: the newspaper articles at the time do say that the

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Speaker 3: officer initially saw Frank's car parked at the intersection of

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Speaker 3: East Clinton Avenue and Woodland Street, about a mile from

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Speaker 3: where Frank lived.

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Speaker 1: At the time.

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Speaker 3: They used to put everything in the newspaper. It's so beautiful,

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Speaker 3: every detail, every boring little bit in which they still

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Speaker 3: did that, And I'm eternally curious about details that probably

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Speaker 3: won't end up mattering. But I pulled up a map

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Speaker 3: of Tenafly, New Jersey, and there is a large wooded

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Speaker 3: area you could walk straight into if you parked your

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Speaker 3: car at that intersection, And those woods surround a large

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Speaker 3: building that first opened its doors in nineteen fifty, the

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Speaker 3: Kaplan Jewish Community Center. The clearest account of the next

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Speaker 3: phase of Frank's life comes from an essay written in

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Speaker 3: twenty nineteen by a retired Rhodesian military policeman. Despite being

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Speaker 3: the most likely to be more or less true, it's

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Speaker 3: still riddled with obvious factual inaccuracies, things that just can't

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Speaker 3: be true. Maybe because it was written as a humorous

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Speaker 3: recollection meant to be read by his fellow former Rhodesian soldiers,

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Speaker 3: and maybe his memory has faded a bit in the

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Speaker 3: nearly fifty years since the event in question. But it

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Speaker 3: does at the very least substantiate Frank's own claim about

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Speaker 3: having enlisted in the Rhodesian Light Infantry in the early

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Speaker 3: nineteen seventies. I'll try to walk the tightrope here of

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Speaker 3: providing a little more con text than just Rhodesia was

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Speaker 3: very bad and white supremacist from other countries were obsessed

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Speaker 3: with the idea that they could travel there to kill

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Speaker 3: black people with impunity, while still stopping short of taking

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Speaker 3: us down the long road of the history and consequences

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Speaker 3: of European colonization in Africa. That's far from my area

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Speaker 3: of expertise, and it's not why you're here.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 3: Even if you're coming into this with a completely blank slate.

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Speaker 3: For some reason, you're probably thinking, there's no country called Rhodesia,

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Speaker 3: and you're right, there isn't. There never really was. Rhodesia

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Speaker 3: was never recognized as a sovereign state, but we're calling

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Speaker 3: Rhodesia here as the present day state of Zimbabwe in

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Speaker 3: southern Africa. In the early twentieth century, Rhodesia was a

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Speaker 3: British territory. The legacy of Cecil Roads is British South

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Speaker 3: Africa Company. The area was effectively ruled by the company

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Speaker 3: until the nineteen twenties, when it became a self governing

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Speaker 3: colony of the UK, and by the nineteen fifties, decolonization

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Speaker 3: was happening all across the African continent. These fading European

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Speaker 3: empires couldn't or didn't want to hold on to all

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Speaker 3: the colonies they'd collected during the previous centuries scramble for Africa.

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Speaker 3: In nineteen sixty British Prime Minister Harold macmillan gave his

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Speaker 3: Wind of Change speech in an address to the South

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Speaker 3: African Parliament about the political necessity of moving toward decolonization.

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Speaker 5: The wind of change is blowing through this continent.

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Speaker 2: Whether we like it or not.

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Speaker 5: This growth national consciousness is a political fact, and we

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Speaker 5: was all accepted as a fact. Our national policies must

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Speaker 5: take a contribute.

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Speaker 3: He'd actually given the same speech a few weeks earlier

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Speaker 3: in Ghana, but the press didn't pick it up the

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Speaker 3: first time, and I think the whether we like it

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Speaker 3: or not part of that statement matters a lot.

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Speaker 1: Here.

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Speaker 3: He wasn't advocating for decolonization out of the goodness of

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Speaker 3: his heart. He was reluctantly acknowledging the expensive and bloody

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Speaker 3: political reality of trying to hold on to these colonies

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Speaker 3: at any cost. He could see the Belgians and Congo

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Speaker 3: and the French in Algeria fighting these costly wars with

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Speaker 3: Africans who wanted an end to European colonial rule, and

337
00:19:15,440 --> 00:19:18,639
Speaker 3: as they worked towards extricating themselves from these colonial arrangements,

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00:19:18,640 --> 00:19:22,280
Speaker 3: the British government adopted a policy called no independence before

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Speaker 3: majority rule, meaning they wouldn't hand over sovereignty to a

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Speaker 3: colony still run exclusively by the white colonial minority. Now, obviously,

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Speaker 3: this is an immensely complicated bit of political history that

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Speaker 3: I'm stripping down to the studs and explaining badly so

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Speaker 3: we get through it quickly. So don't think I'm giving

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Speaker 3: the British Empire any kind of credit here. This policy

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Speaker 3: did not arise out of a genuine desire to undo

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Speaker 3: the harms of colonialism and address racism or anything like that.

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Speaker 1: That was not on their minds.

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Speaker 3: But I think they knew what it would look like

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Speaker 3: if their decolonization looked exactly like their colony. And we're

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Speaker 3: not talking about a pr lass here.

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Speaker 1: This is the Cold War.

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Speaker 3: They don't want to give the Soviets an opportunity to

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Speaker 3: come in behind them.

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Speaker 1: But it was this.

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Speaker 3: Policy, or rather defiance of it, that led Rhodesia under

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Speaker 3: Ian Smith, to make the unilateral declaration of independence in

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Speaker 3: nineteen sixty five. White colonists made up just five percent

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Speaker 3: of the population of the territory, but they were unwilling

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Speaker 3: to accept that the UK would only grant Rhodesian independence

360
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Speaker 3: if they shared even a crumb of political power with

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Speaker 3: the other ninety five percent of Rhodesians. And apologies again

362
00:20:34,600 --> 00:20:37,760
Speaker 3: for these digressions. I just love the context. I think

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00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:41,240
Speaker 3: it's so important. But that brings us to where we

364
00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:45,320
Speaker 3: were going. The Rhodesian bush War a fifteen year period

365
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Speaker 3: of civil conflict between the white minority led government and

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Speaker 3: the African nationalist guerrilla forces. The number of foreign mercenaries

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Speaker 3: who actually traveled to Rhodesia during the war remains up

368
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Speaker 3: for debate. Most of the countries the mercenaries came from

369
00:21:00,280 --> 00:21:04,679
Speaker 3: were embarrassed by the whole affair. International sanctions levied against

370
00:21:04,680 --> 00:21:08,080
Speaker 3: the territory after the illegal declaration of independence made it

371
00:21:08,119 --> 00:21:11,480
Speaker 3: illegal for citizens of many countries to participate in the conflict,

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00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:14,600
Speaker 3: even in countries that didn't have their own domestic laws

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Speaker 3: banning mercenary activity. And there was some discomfort within Rhodesia

374
00:21:19,359 --> 00:21:22,200
Speaker 3: too about this perception that they needed foreigners to help

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Speaker 3: with what they saw as their war for independence. So,

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00:21:26,280 --> 00:21:31,360
Speaker 3: for deeply unflattering and regrettable reasons, no one was very

377
00:21:31,440 --> 00:21:34,600
Speaker 3: invested in getting a thorough accounting of the situation. Right,

378
00:21:34,680 --> 00:21:39,359
Speaker 3: Nobody benefits from knowing what happened here. But at the

379
00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:43,200
Speaker 3: high end it was really only a few thousand mercenaries

380
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Speaker 3: over the total course of the conflict, with best estimates

381
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Speaker 3: for the number of them who were Americans being somewhere

382
00:21:49,520 --> 00:21:53,920
Speaker 3: in the low hundreds. So a lot of guys talked

383
00:21:53,960 --> 00:21:57,359
Speaker 3: about it, but not very many of them actually did it.

384
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Speaker 3: This idea of American extremists traveling to Africa to violently

385
00:22:03,240 --> 00:22:07,040
Speaker 3: enforce white rule over black Africans is one that modern

386
00:22:07,080 --> 00:22:11,920
Speaker 3: white supremacists still cherish and celebrate. Dylan Rufe, who was

387
00:22:11,960 --> 00:22:14,480
Speaker 3: welcomed with open arms at an evening Bible study at

388
00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:18,000
Speaker 3: a manual African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, South Carolina,

389
00:22:18,800 --> 00:22:23,080
Speaker 3: registered the domain last Rhodesian dot com a few months

390
00:22:23,080 --> 00:22:25,399
Speaker 3: before he murdered nine of the parishioners who thought he

391
00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:28,719
Speaker 3: was joining them for prayer that night. Rufe made his

392
00:22:28,720 --> 00:22:32,159
Speaker 3: final edit to that site his digital manifesto, just hours

393
00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:36,600
Speaker 3: before carrying out that attack. In twenty fifteen, the cultural

394
00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:39,840
Speaker 3: moment where magazines like Soldier of Fortune ran full page

395
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:43,159
Speaker 3: advertisements for opportunities to be a man among men in

396
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:47,919
Speaker 3: the African bush looms large in our memories, but the

397
00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:51,479
Speaker 3: reality is there weren't many men who actually heeded the call,

398
00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 3: and their role in the conflict was insignificant. But unlike

399
00:22:57,080 --> 00:22:59,680
Speaker 3: many of those Americans who did end up in Rhodesia

400
00:22:59,680 --> 00:23:03,080
Speaker 3: in this seventies, Frank Sweeney didn't see an advertisement and

401
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:06,960
Speaker 3: Soldier of Fortune. That magazine's first issue, bearing a cover

402
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 3: story about American mercenaries in Africa, was published in the

403
00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 3: summer of nineteen seventy five, just as Frank Sweeney was

404
00:23:13,840 --> 00:23:18,399
Speaker 3: already on his way home. According to Frank, which is

405
00:23:18,440 --> 00:23:21,399
Speaker 3: a dangerous way to start an assertion of fact. He

406
00:23:21,480 --> 00:23:24,520
Speaker 3: walked into the Rhodesian Information Center in Washington, d C.

407
00:23:24,800 --> 00:23:27,880
Speaker 3: In nineteen seventy two and asked how to join up.

408
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:33,520
Speaker 3: The information center was not technically a diplomatic office because

409
00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:37,480
Speaker 3: Rhodesia was not technically a country, the fact that would

410
00:23:37,480 --> 00:23:40,439
Speaker 3: get them into some trouble in Australia, but they claimed

411
00:23:40,480 --> 00:23:44,359
Speaker 3: that they were just offering information about tourism. Frank says

412
00:23:44,359 --> 00:23:47,600
Speaker 3: he was offered the contact information for Major Nick Lamprecht,

413
00:23:48,000 --> 00:23:52,359
Speaker 3: the Rhodesian Army's chief recruiter. David Annibl, a reporter for

414
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:55,280
Speaker 3: the Christian Science Monitor, who interviewed Frank in nineteen seventy

415
00:23:55,280 --> 00:23:58,240
Speaker 3: five wrote that he'd spoken to another recent visitor to

416
00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:02,040
Speaker 3: that office. After talking to Frank, this visitor walked into

417
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:04,040
Speaker 3: the office and was given a brochure printed by the

418
00:24:04,080 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 3: Rhodesian Department of Labor about careers in Rhodesia, and after

419
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:12,159
Speaker 3: a thirty minute presentation about Americans already fighting in the

420
00:24:12,200 --> 00:24:15,560
Speaker 3: conflict and the pay and benefits a mercenary could expect,

421
00:24:15,600 --> 00:24:20,120
Speaker 3: including paid airfare, all violations of international sanctions in US

422
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:24,240
Speaker 3: federal law, the visitor was offered Major Lamprek's contact information

423
00:24:25,840 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 3: That recruiter Nick Lamprek worked closely with Soldier of Fortune

424
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:32,159
Speaker 3: founder Robert K. Brown to strategize how the magazine can

425
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:34,760
Speaker 3: be used to convince more Americans to make the trip.

426
00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:38,040
Speaker 3: In the latter years of the conflict, Lampreck himself even

427
00:24:38,040 --> 00:24:41,160
Speaker 3: wrote an article for the magazine promising young American Soldiers

428
00:24:41,160 --> 00:24:43,439
Speaker 3: of Fortune that it would be easy for them to

429
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:48,639
Speaker 3: find a beautiful white Rhodesian wife. I think Lamprek knew

430
00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:50,760
Speaker 3: he was lying about how much fun you could have

431
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 3: fighting in the Bush War. His own son, Vincent, had

432
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 3: already fled to South Africa to avoid military service. In

433
00:24:58,680 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 3: what you maybe sends is a theme here. The details

434
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:05,400
Speaker 3: of frank service in Rhodesia are a little murky.

435
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:06,360
Speaker 1: The details of.

436
00:25:06,480 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 3: A lot of what was going on in Rhodesia during

437
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 3: those years is not totally settled, and Frank's own involvement

438
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:16,200
Speaker 3: far less so. He told reporter David Annibal in that

439
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:19,080
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five interview that as a corporal in the

440
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 3: Rhodesian Light Infantry, his detachment had taken many prisoners, but

441
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:28,080
Speaker 3: when instructed to do so, they just executed people, saying

442
00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,239
Speaker 3: we shot him right there in the bush when we

443
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:34,399
Speaker 3: were told not to take prisoners. He also admitted that

444
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:36,560
Speaker 3: his unit had taken part in raids over the border

445
00:25:36,560 --> 00:25:40,400
Speaker 3: into neighboring Mozambique. He claimed that sometimes these trips over

446
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 3: the border were to assist Portuguese troops, and until late

447
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:47,919
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four, Portuguese troops were in Mozambique fighting to

448
00:25:47,920 --> 00:25:51,600
Speaker 3: put down the Mozambiquan War of Independence, and Frank said

449
00:25:51,640 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 3: sometimes they'd go over the border to raid gorilla camps,

450
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:57,960
Speaker 3: perhaps those belonging to the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army,

451
00:25:58,000 --> 00:26:00,760
Speaker 3: which had strong ties to the group's fight for independence

452
00:26:00,760 --> 00:26:05,280
Speaker 3: In Mozambique. These Rhodesian raids over the border into Mozambique

453
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:08,400
Speaker 3: continued even after that nation gain sovereignty in nineteen seventy five.

454
00:26:08,480 --> 00:26:11,760
Speaker 3: But it's hard to pin down when Frank would have

455
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 3: been doing this, if he even did. I can at

456
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:18,880
Speaker 3: least say that Frank was no longer in Rhodesia. During

457
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 3: one of the war's worst atrocities, a Rhodesian raid on

458
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:26,200
Speaker 3: a refugee camp in Mozambique killed over one thousand civilians.

459
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:30,280
Speaker 3: David Animal published a couple of articles in nineteen seventy

460
00:26:30,320 --> 00:26:33,200
Speaker 3: five in nineteen seventy six about Rhodesia, and he often

461
00:26:33,280 --> 00:26:35,240
Speaker 3: quoted Frank Sweeney about his time there.

462
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 1: After all, there weren't.

463
00:26:36,720 --> 00:26:39,360
Speaker 3: Many Americans who'd been there, and even fewer who were

464
00:26:39,359 --> 00:26:43,280
Speaker 3: easy to find, and Frank was easy to find. He

465
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 3: was very public about his stint as a mercenary. After

466
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:50,040
Speaker 3: returning home in nineteen seventy five, Frank placed ads in

467
00:26:50,080 --> 00:26:53,919
Speaker 3: magazines like Shotgun News and Gun Week that read.

468
00:26:56,000 --> 00:27:00,240
Speaker 6: The Rhodesian Army offers excitement and adventure. I know I've

469
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 6: been there. Young Americans of European ancestry, write to me

470
00:27:03,920 --> 00:27:08,040
Speaker 6: for free. Details pertaining to recruiting. Frank Abbott Sweeney seven

471
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 6: to two Creston Avenue, Tenafly, New Jersey, zero seven six

472
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:12,240
Speaker 6: seven zero.

473
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:16,679
Speaker 3: When speaking with the reporter about his efforts to recruit

474
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:19,400
Speaker 3: others to make the trip, Frank spoke warmly of Major

475
00:27:19,480 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 3: Lamprecht and claimed that it was Lamprecked himself who instructed

476
00:27:22,600 --> 00:27:26,120
Speaker 3: Frank to get in touch with as many white applicants

477
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:31,600
Speaker 3: as possible, which is honestly probably not true, but who knows.

478
00:27:32,520 --> 00:27:35,399
Speaker 3: Frank is described as a fan of Ian Smith, of

479
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:39,919
Speaker 3: white superiority and of the need to defend both, and

480
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 3: is quoted as saying, if I could do anything to

481
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 3: preserve Western civilization in the area, I would do it.

482
00:27:47,960 --> 00:27:50,879
Speaker 3: Frank told Annabel that he'd received hundreds of letters in

483
00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 3: response to his ads and responded to all of them.

484
00:27:54,560 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 3: But then again, he also told Annabel he was a

485
00:27:57,119 --> 00:28:01,199
Speaker 3: college graduate, and you know that's not true. An animal

486
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,360
Speaker 3: claims Frank showed him his discharge papers from the Rhodesian

487
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,199
Speaker 3: Light Infantry, which were quote in order according to the article,

488
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 3: and showed three years of good service and a rank

489
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:16,200
Speaker 3: of corporal, And that's definitely not true. I'm sure Frank

490
00:28:16,240 --> 00:28:19,920
Speaker 3: did show Annimal something. He probably did show him papers

491
00:28:19,920 --> 00:28:22,720
Speaker 3: that indicated as much, and I don't fault him for

492
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:29,400
Speaker 3: reporting it. It turns out Frank was quite skilled at forgery.

493
00:28:29,600 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 3: Frank claims he was in Washington, d c. Getting recruited

494
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 3: into the Rhodesian Army in nineteen seventy two, but he

495
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:38,200
Speaker 3: may have actually still been in prison in nineteen seventy two.

496
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:39,440
Speaker 1: For shooting that cop.

497
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:42,720
Speaker 3: It's hard to pin down exactly when he was released.

498
00:28:43,640 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 3: One newspaper article years later puts his parole date for

499
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:50,440
Speaker 3: that conviction at nineteen seventy four, but I have a

500
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:53,040
Speaker 3: bad feeling that was just a reporter on a deadline

501
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 3: who did the math on a six year sentence and

502
00:28:55,600 --> 00:29:00,200
Speaker 3: assumed Frank served all of it, which probably didn't. When

503
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 3: Frank was later arrested for his role in the escape

504
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 3: of a Soviet spy, an FBI agent puts his date

505
00:29:05,400 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 3: of enlistment at nineteen seventy three, So the truth is

506
00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:09,520
Speaker 3: in there somewhere.

507
00:29:10,920 --> 00:29:11,400
Speaker 1: Either way.

508
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:14,840
Speaker 3: He wasn't in Rhodesia for very long before he really

509
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 3: really wanted to go home. A war as hell for everybody.

510
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:28,600
Speaker 3: And here we have another unreliable narrator, Anthony Hickman, Hickman

511
00:29:28,680 --> 00:29:31,600
Speaker 3: is a retired officer in the British South Africa Police,

512
00:29:31,640 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 3: which no longer exists and confusingly was neither British nor

513
00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 3: South African, and they weren't always really just police, but

514
00:29:40,720 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 3: it bore that name because it grew out of the

515
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:46,600
Speaker 3: paramilitary force run directly by Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa

516
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:51,160
Speaker 3: Company in the nineteenth century. The BSAP was Rhodesia's regular

517
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:54,560
Speaker 3: police force, but the line between regular policing and military

518
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:59,480
Speaker 3: operations was blurry, and during the Bush War there were

519
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,720
Speaker 3: military units made up of BSAP officers and they developed

520
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 3: counterinsurgency and counter terrorism units. They oversaw the intelligence gathering

521
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:13,240
Speaker 3: arm of the infamously brutal Selu Scouts, and they killed

522
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:17,200
Speaker 3: hundreds of people by introducing poisoned food and medicine into

523
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,360
Speaker 3: the supply lines for the insurgent forces. I don't know

524
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 3: exactly what Hickman was doing for most of the war.

525
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:28,000
Speaker 3: Maybe he didn't do any of that, But these days

526
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 3: he's retired in Johannesburg, South Africa and makes detailed models

527
00:30:31,640 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 3: of trains and farmhouses. In the early nineteen seventies, he

528
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:39,880
Speaker 3: was assigned to the Homicide Unit of bsap's Criminal Investigative Division,

529
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,280
Speaker 3: and in twenty nineteen he wrote down his recollections of

530
00:30:43,320 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 3: Frank Sweeney for a newsletter published by his Veterans Association.

531
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 3: Like any account of Frank's life, Hickman's essay can't be

532
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 3: taken as gospel truth between the lies Frank told him

533
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:57,520
Speaker 3: and his own fading memory of the seventies.

534
00:30:58,400 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: It's not perfect.

535
00:31:00,160 --> 00:31:04,000
Speaker 3: Honestly, I almost discarded it without reading past the first page.

536
00:31:04,600 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 3: Who's off to a pretty bad start when the first

537
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:12,120
Speaker 3: paragraph placed these events in September of nineteen seventy seven,

538
00:31:12,520 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 3: which would, of course be entirely impossible. Frank could not

539
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,240
Speaker 3: have been in a Rhodesian Army barracks in September of

540
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:23,520
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven, because according to the US Marshalls.

541
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 1: The FBI, the DOJ, the CIA.

542
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:27,080
Speaker 3: In the New York Times, Frank was hanging out with

543
00:31:27,120 --> 00:31:29,760
Speaker 3: a Soviet spy in the exercise yard at a federal

544
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:33,320
Speaker 3: prison in Los Angeles in September of nineteen seventy seven.

545
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 3: But I'll cut Hickman some slack here on that faltering start,

546
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 3: because there's ample evidence within the story that puts these

547
00:31:41,040 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 3: events somewhere in the springtime of nineteen seventy five, and

548
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,320
Speaker 3: the data side there is enough meat to Hickman's account

549
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 3: and the supporting primary documentation he provided that supports the

550
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 3: idea that the story is.

551
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 1: More or less true.

552
00:31:57,840 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 3: As a homicide detective, Hickman was involved in an investigation

553
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:05,000
Speaker 3: into Frank Sweeney for attempted murder at a Rhodesian military barracks.

554
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 3: One evening sometime in early nineteen seventy five, probably Frank,

555
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 3: went to the bathroom at the barracks he was living in.

556
00:32:15,120 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 3: Inside the shared facilities, two infantrymen who had been drinking

557
00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:23,400
Speaker 3: were laughing and joking around. One was quite drunk, undressed

558
00:32:23,400 --> 00:32:25,400
Speaker 3: and got into the shower to try to sober up

559
00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 3: a little bit. Three men were chatting pleasantly enough, but

560
00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:33,640
Speaker 3: Frank was humorless and sober, and he was outraged when

561
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 3: the drunk man splashed shower.

562
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:36,680
Speaker 1: Water on him.

563
00:32:37,200 --> 00:32:39,520
Speaker 3: The men argued, and one of them called Frank a

564
00:32:39,600 --> 00:32:43,800
Speaker 3: bloody yank. And Frank's not a guy who turns the

565
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 3: other cheek. He takes every insult very personally. So a

566
00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 3: little bit damp and with his pride wounded, he runs

567
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:54,720
Speaker 3: back to his bunk and comes right back with a

568
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:58,800
Speaker 3: seven inch dagger and pulls the shower curtain aside and

569
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 3: stabs this aked drunk man in the lower abdomen. The

570
00:33:04,400 --> 00:33:07,400
Speaker 3: other soldier ran for help and Frank was quickly arrested,

571
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 3: and while he sat in custody, a mysterious letter arrived

572
00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:15,680
Speaker 3: in the mail. The postmark indicated that it had been

573
00:33:15,720 --> 00:33:20,600
Speaker 3: mailed from nearby Salisbury weeks earlier. The anonymous letter writer

574
00:33:20,720 --> 00:33:24,520
Speaker 3: said that a private Fa Sweeney had been convicted of

575
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,040
Speaker 3: the attempted murder of a policeman in the United States.

576
00:33:28,200 --> 00:33:31,040
Speaker 3: It was Hickman, our essayist, who first suspected that Frank

577
00:33:31,160 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 3: may actually have written this letter himself, and when he

578
00:33:35,600 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 3: pressed Frank for a handwriting sample to prove it, he

579
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 3: cracked immediately.

580
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: He'd sent the letter himself, hoping that.

581
00:33:43,240 --> 00:33:45,920
Speaker 3: It would be his ticket home, that they would kick

582
00:33:46,000 --> 00:33:47,960
Speaker 3: him out and deport him when they found out he

583
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 3: lied about not having a criminal history, and that he

584
00:33:50,480 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 3: would get a free flight back to New Jersey without

585
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:54,520
Speaker 3: having to finish his term of service.

586
00:33:55,680 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 1: And if that letter had.

587
00:33:56,640 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 3: Only arrived a few days earlier, they probably would have

588
00:34:01,160 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 3: done just that before anybody had to get stabbed. The story,

589
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:11,839
Speaker 3: Frank then told Hickman has elements of truth, but it's

590
00:34:11,880 --> 00:34:15,719
Speaker 3: not quite right. He told Hickman that the shootout at

591
00:34:15,719 --> 00:34:18,640
Speaker 3: his parents' house had happened just the year prior, and

592
00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:21,600
Speaker 3: that he'd fled the country prior to being sentenced. So

593
00:34:21,640 --> 00:34:24,399
Speaker 3: he's cutting out this six year period that he spent

594
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 3: in prison for the shooting and pretending that he had

595
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,440
Speaker 3: just arrived there in Rhodesia immediately after the events that

596
00:34:30,960 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 3: we know took place in July of nineteen sixty seven.

597
00:34:34,680 --> 00:34:37,400
Speaker 3: And the timeline isn't the only thing that's off in

598
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:40,920
Speaker 3: this version. Frank says the shootout only lasted ten minutes,

599
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:44,120
Speaker 3: not over an hour, and he had decided to end

600
00:34:44,120 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 3: the incident on his own terms when he saw that

601
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 3: his father had arrived, rather than the truth, which was

602
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 3: that he argued with his distraught father for an hour

603
00:34:52,200 --> 00:34:54,320
Speaker 3: while continuing to shoot through the windows until he was

604
00:34:54,320 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 3: smoked out by tear gas. But the inciting incident in

605
00:34:58,160 --> 00:35:01,760
Speaker 3: this version is similar. He told Hickman about shooting guns

606
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:03,880
Speaker 3: in the woods and the neighbors reporting the noise and

607
00:35:03,920 --> 00:35:07,400
Speaker 3: the officer arriving in the car chase, but he claimed

608
00:35:07,400 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 3: the gun he was shooting in the woods was one

609
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 3: he purchased from an advertisement and soldier of Fortune magazine,

610
00:35:12,120 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 3: which is obviously not possible because that magazine didn't exist

611
00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:18,520
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty seven. I don't know, maybe he was

612
00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 3: just updating the story so it would sound more current.

613
00:35:22,680 --> 00:35:25,160
Speaker 3: But Frank said he'd purchased the Tommy gun from the magazine,

614
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 3: but it was missing some parts. It didn't have a

615
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:32,359
Speaker 3: firing pin and something else, so it didn't work. He

616
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 3: manufactured the necessary replacement parts, but he was concerned that

617
00:35:36,120 --> 00:35:39,359
Speaker 3: in his modification of the weapon maybe things weren't one

618
00:35:39,400 --> 00:35:41,680
Speaker 3: hundred percent and he was worried that it would explode

619
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 3: when fired, so he lashed it to a tree and

620
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:46,880
Speaker 3: set it to fully automatic and rigged a string to

621
00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 3: the trigger and hid behind another tree for cover.

622
00:35:50,280 --> 00:35:51,799
Speaker 1: This sounds so Looney.

623
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 3: Tunes to me, like a literal Looney Tunes cartoon, right,

624
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:59,560
Speaker 3: This is this is daffy duck behavior. But he tells

625
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:03,200
Speaker 3: this story to Hickman, and in his essay Hickman writes

626
00:36:04,200 --> 00:36:08,759
Speaker 3: true or false, impossible to believe. Sweeney had the uncanny

627
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 3: ability to sound totally convincing. But it is significant to

628
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:16,200
Speaker 3: note that a search undertaken based on Sweeney's fingerprint, records

629
00:36:16,239 --> 00:36:23,719
Speaker 3: revealed no such incident, which doesn't say much for the

630
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:27,799
Speaker 3: state of Rhodesian intelligence, because, yeah, Frank's taking a little

631
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:31,120
Speaker 3: creative license here. The story he's telling is not one

632
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 3: hundred percent true, but he is admitting to almost all

633
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:38,840
Speaker 3: of the real details for the real crime he really

634
00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:40,000
Speaker 3: did go to prison for.

635
00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 1: So you you probably should.

636
00:36:42,600 --> 00:36:44,600
Speaker 3: Have figured that out before he told you, and you

637
00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 3: definitely should have been able to figure.

638
00:36:46,200 --> 00:36:48,400
Speaker 1: It out after he told you.

639
00:36:49,640 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 3: They could have contacted a police department or a courthouse

640
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 3: in New Jersey and just asked, Hell, they probably could

641
00:36:57,520 --> 00:36:59,720
Speaker 3: have called any resident of ten to fly New Jersey

642
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,520
Speaker 3: at random and just asked, do you remember the teenage

643
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:05,840
Speaker 3: Nazi bank robber who shot a cop in his mom's

644
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,759
Speaker 3: front yard. It's kind of a small town. I bet

645
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:15,080
Speaker 3: everybody remembered. But I guess they didn't do that. They

646
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:17,640
Speaker 3: weren't even a real country, so maybe they didn't have

647
00:37:17,680 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 3: a guy who knew how to do a background check.

648
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:24,439
Speaker 3: The Rhodesian police continued to hold Frank in custody, and

649
00:37:24,560 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 3: while he was waiting to find out if they were

650
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 3: going to try him for attempted murder got some mail

651
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 3: an envelope containing two United States passports and three hundred

652
00:37:33,200 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 3: dollars in cash. Both passports bore Frank's photo in Frank's

653
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,680
Speaker 3: birth date, but only one had Frank's name on it.

654
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:46,560
Speaker 3: The other was for Francis august Schellhammer, a man who

655
00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:49,759
Speaker 3: doesn't exist. He explained to the officers that he was

656
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 3: quite good at making such things, and even offered to

657
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 3: forge a pair of US passports for Hickman and the

658
00:37:55,400 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 3: other detective. Hickman says that they declined the offer. Remarkably,

659
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 3: the Rhodesian government opted to drop the charges and just

660
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,279
Speaker 3: send Frank home. Can you court martial a mercenary?

661
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:08,720
Speaker 1: I don't.

662
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,120
Speaker 3: That's not something I've ever needed to wonder about. I

663
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 3: don't know really what the options were here, but it

664
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,360
Speaker 3: wasn't worth it to them. They sent him home, So

665
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:20,680
Speaker 3: sometime in the summer of nineteen seventy five, Frank Sweeney

666
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:23,800
Speaker 3: was kicked out at the Rhodesian Light Infantry and deported

667
00:38:23,840 --> 00:38:27,839
Speaker 3: from Rhodesia. He got his free flight home after all,

668
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 3: and was permanently banned from a country that never existed.

669
00:38:46,400 --> 00:38:49,120
Speaker 3: Shortly after he got home to New Jersey, he wrote

670
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:52,560
Speaker 3: a letter to Hickman. Frank's mother had mailed him some

671
00:38:52,640 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 3: more cash before all this trouble got started, and it

672
00:38:55,160 --> 00:38:58,000
Speaker 3: arrived in Rhodesia after he was already gone, and he

673
00:38:58,000 --> 00:39:01,120
Speaker 3: wanted Hickman to put it back in the mail for him.

674
00:39:01,239 --> 00:39:03,920
Speaker 3: His letter, which Hickman has actually held on to all

675
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 3: these years, is dated August twenty second.

676
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:07,879
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy five.

677
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:11,440
Speaker 3: So if he's already home and realizing his mail is missing,

678
00:39:11,440 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 3: and writing the letter in August of seventy five, that

679
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,759
Speaker 3: all the events before that happened earlier in nineteen seventy five,

680
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:21,839
Speaker 3: you get it. In addition to asking Hickman to mail

681
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:24,919
Speaker 3: back the money from his mother, Frank tells the investigator

682
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:29,399
Speaker 3: that life in America is loathsome compared to the time

683
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:31,760
Speaker 3: he spent in Rhodesia.

684
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 6: It's one big racial cessfool where the worst element is

685
00:39:36,080 --> 00:39:39,280
Speaker 6: looked on and held in high esteem. With my RLI

686
00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:41,600
Speaker 6: training to back me up, I have seriously thought of

687
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 6: forming my own anti terrorism unit here in the land

688
00:39:44,600 --> 00:39:47,480
Speaker 6: of the Red, White, and Blue. The real problem is

689
00:39:47,520 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 6: finding enough devoted men to form a small cadre. If

690
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:53,640
Speaker 6: you ever do visit America, I would genuinely enjoy meeting

691
00:39:53,640 --> 00:39:55,960
Speaker 6: with you again, and I'm sure my family would like

692
00:39:56,000 --> 00:39:58,400
Speaker 6: to meet you too. Even though my service in the

693
00:39:58,400 --> 00:40:02,120
Speaker 6: military was cut short, loyalty to Rhodesa remains as strong

694
00:40:02,280 --> 00:40:02,840
Speaker 6: as ever.

695
00:40:05,800 --> 00:40:07,799
Speaker 3: So now he's back in the United States, and this

696
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 3: is during the same time period that he's placing those

697
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:15,359
Speaker 3: ads in gun magazines to recruit other Rhodesian mercenaries. He's

698
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:20,200
Speaker 3: also placing some other classified ads. So he's engaging in

699
00:40:20,239 --> 00:40:24,319
Speaker 3: this federal crime of recruiting foreign mercenaries using his own

700
00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:27,880
Speaker 3: legal name and his parents' address. That's not a problem.

701
00:40:28,320 --> 00:40:31,520
Speaker 3: The United States government had no real appetite for enforcing

702
00:40:31,600 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 3: the statute prohibiting him from recruiting people into a foreign army.

703
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:40,400
Speaker 3: But when he placed ads offering four MP forty Schmeiser

704
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,879
Speaker 3: submachine guns for sale, he didn't use his own name.

705
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,239
Speaker 3: He used the name Francis August Shellhammer, the name from

706
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:52,160
Speaker 3: the forged passport, and he listed a commercial address in

707
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:56,880
Speaker 3: Fort Lee, New Jersey. It seems Frank never actually had

708
00:40:57,080 --> 00:40:59,839
Speaker 3: these Nazi submachine guns, but he did collect the money

709
00:41:00,239 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 3: by many interested collectors who thought they were buying these

710
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 3: imaginary guns. It seems like a great hack to make

711
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 3: free money, but unfortunately for Frank, that is mail fraud.

712
00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,360
Speaker 3: So in March of nineteen seventy six, he's being interviewed

713
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,000
Speaker 3: by a reporter from the La Times, and he's telling

714
00:41:18,000 --> 00:41:20,959
Speaker 3: this reporter he's enjoyed his time in Rhodesia so much

715
00:41:21,040 --> 00:41:24,240
Speaker 3: that he's actually planning to move back to South Africa.

716
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:25,560
Speaker 1: In just a few weeks. Notice.

717
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:27,799
Speaker 3: He's moving to South Africa, not Rhodesia because he is

718
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:32,160
Speaker 3: not allowed in Rhodesia, but he's planning this big move.

719
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 3: He's telling this reporter about it. He's bragging about his

720
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:38,839
Speaker 3: time in Rhodesia. But at the same time, in March

721
00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:41,680
Speaker 3: of nineteen seventy six, he's also entering a guilty plead

722
00:41:41,719 --> 00:41:45,680
Speaker 3: to that federal mail fraud charge. The La Times article,

723
00:41:45,719 --> 00:41:48,400
Speaker 3: which doesn't make any mention of his former or current

724
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 3: criminal charges, does say that Frank said that he'd recently

725
00:41:52,440 --> 00:41:55,520
Speaker 3: been visited by the FBI, and Frank says they came

726
00:41:55,560 --> 00:41:57,560
Speaker 3: to his house to try to pressure him to provide

727
00:41:57,560 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 3: information about other mercenaries. It seems a little more likely

728
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:05,319
Speaker 3: that he's a compulsive liar who got a thrill out

729
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:08,720
Speaker 3: of working in this kernel of truth because the FBI

730
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 3: had just been to his house, that part's true, but

731
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:17,600
Speaker 3: they were there to arrest him for mail fraud, but

732
00:42:17,680 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 3: he wasn't lying about his plans for an upcoming move.

733
00:42:21,560 --> 00:42:24,640
Speaker 3: After pleading guilty to the mail fraud charge, he skipped

734
00:42:24,680 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 3: out on his sentencing hearing. He packed his bags and

735
00:42:27,360 --> 00:42:30,680
Speaker 3: he caught a flight to Johannesburg, but South Africa sent

736
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 3: him right back and he was arrested by US marshals

737
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:36,000
Speaker 3: as he was getting off the plane at JFK in

738
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:40,640
Speaker 3: June of nineteen seventy six. And while marshals were arresting him,

739
00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:42,799
Speaker 3: his suitcase was loaded off the plane and it went

740
00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:47,320
Speaker 3: through customs without him. Customs officials seized a nine millimeters

741
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 3: Luguar pistol because he lacked the proper paperwork to bring

742
00:42:50,480 --> 00:42:54,880
Speaker 3: the firearm into the US from a foreign country, and inexplicably,

743
00:42:54,960 --> 00:42:59,319
Speaker 3: there were no additional charges brought for any of that.

744
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 3: He wasn't supposed to have a gun at all, and

745
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:05,240
Speaker 3: he certainly wasn't supposed to try to flee the continent

746
00:43:05,320 --> 00:43:08,160
Speaker 3: while awaiting sentencing for a federal crime. I know the

747
00:43:08,200 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 3: seventies were a different time, and it wasn't a big deal.

748
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: To bring a gun to.

749
00:43:11,480 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 3: The airport, but fleeing the country to avoid going to

750
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:16,680
Speaker 3: prison is always been illegal.

751
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:18,120
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure of it.

752
00:43:19,400 --> 00:43:21,960
Speaker 3: I found a couple of cheeky little articles written a

753
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,839
Speaker 3: few years later about how the government ended up accidentally

754
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 3: giving him that gun back. It was seized by customs

755
00:43:28,640 --> 00:43:30,759
Speaker 3: and put into storage while he was in prison, and

756
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:32,560
Speaker 3: when he got out of prison, he wrote to the

757
00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,280
Speaker 3: Customs office in New York to inquire about it, and

758
00:43:35,520 --> 00:43:38,120
Speaker 3: they told him they'd return his property if he paid

759
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:40,960
Speaker 3: a two hundred and forty four dollars storage fee. I

760
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:42,680
Speaker 3: don't know what that comes out to per month for

761
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:44,800
Speaker 3: the four years he was in prison, but that seems steep,

762
00:43:46,360 --> 00:43:49,320
Speaker 3: and so Frank claims he walked right into the Customs

763
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 3: office inside the World Trade Center in May of nineteen eighty,

764
00:43:53,080 --> 00:43:56,239
Speaker 3: paid the fee, failed out a form, and they gave

765
00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 3: him back his gun. A spokesman for the US Customs

766
00:43:59,719 --> 00:44:02,400
Speaker 3: Service said they had no way of knowing he was

767
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:05,719
Speaker 3: a felon. Frank said it was all just a half

768
00:44:05,719 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 3: hearted joke, telling a reporter all I really wanted to

769
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:10,919
Speaker 3: do was test the gun laws to show there really

770
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:14,239
Speaker 3: is a need for federal gun legislation. The Feds are

771
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 3: giving criminals like me are guns back in New York

772
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:20,440
Speaker 3: City just for the asking. Federal gun laws are versical.

773
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:25,160
Speaker 3: You know, he's not a great guy, but he does

774
00:44:25,200 --> 00:44:29,120
Speaker 3: have some quips. You know, he's just out there doing bits.

775
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:32,000
Speaker 3: And he ended up handing the gun back over to

776
00:44:32,000 --> 00:44:36,000
Speaker 3: the ATF without incident. A few months later, but back

777
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 3: to the mail fraud. He got the four years for

778
00:44:38,960 --> 00:44:41,799
Speaker 3: the mail fraud and was sent to federal prison. And

779
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:44,480
Speaker 3: it was in prison this time around that Frank would

780
00:44:44,480 --> 00:44:48,839
Speaker 3: meet Christopher Boyce, a young defense contractor who'd recently been

781
00:44:48,880 --> 00:44:53,839
Speaker 3: convicted of espionage in nineteen seventy four. A twenty one

782
00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:56,879
Speaker 3: year old college dropout, and Christopher Boyce got a job

783
00:44:56,920 --> 00:45:01,640
Speaker 3: at TRW, an aerospace company with a lot of government contracts.

784
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 3: He wasn't really qualified for the role, having never worked

785
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:07,399
Speaker 3: in an office before, but he.

786
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:08,720
Speaker 1: Started as a low level clerk.

787
00:45:09,560 --> 00:45:12,080
Speaker 3: It helped that his retired FBI agent father was the

788
00:45:12,080 --> 00:45:15,160
Speaker 3: head of security at McDonald Douglas, another aerospace and defense

789
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:20,399
Speaker 3: contracting company, and he had connections at TRW. But TRW

790
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 3: didn't just make satellites and jet engines. In his own

791
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 3: later testimony before a Congressional committee, Boyce described the company

792
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:33,640
Speaker 3: as a CIA contractor, something he'd had no idea about

793
00:45:33,680 --> 00:45:36,560
Speaker 3: before his promotion to a highly sensitive position working on

794
00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:41,719
Speaker 3: special projects from inside the company's black vault and with

795
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:45,319
Speaker 3: a top secret CIA clearance, Boyce had access to the

796
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:50,239
Speaker 3: company's encrypted teletype connection with Langley. On at least a

797
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:53,880
Speaker 3: dozen occasions, he removed documents from the vault and photographed them.

798
00:45:54,400 --> 00:45:57,759
Speaker 3: On at least six occasions, he photographed documents inside the

799
00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:04,560
Speaker 3: VAULTA told Congress. Obviously, neither the government's clearance procedures nor

800
00:46:04,600 --> 00:46:13,239
Speaker 3: the company's security procedures worked very well, I'll say. In

801
00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:17,840
Speaker 3: his new position inside the vault, Boyce monitored satellite communications

802
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:22,760
Speaker 3: between the CIA, his employer TRW, and other CIA contacts

803
00:46:22,800 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 3: around the world. In his congressional testimony, Boyce describes a

804
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:33,440
Speaker 3: shockingly lax approach to security for this allegedly super secure

805
00:46:33,480 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 3: black vault. He would come back to work late at

806
00:46:37,120 --> 00:46:39,879
Speaker 3: night to return the documents he'd stolen, and no one

807
00:46:40,000 --> 00:46:42,880
Speaker 3: questioned why a junior employee was opening the vault at

808
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:47,160
Speaker 3: four am. He made deliveries to secure CIA sites without

809
00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:50,240
Speaker 3: having the proper clearance to enter them, and on one occasion,

810
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:53,080
Speaker 3: he wandered into a CIA code room, picked up a

811
00:46:53,080 --> 00:46:57,080
Speaker 3: clipboard and was flipping through the pages before someone politely

812
00:46:57,120 --> 00:47:01,760
Speaker 3: asked him to leave. Employees in the vault were supposed

813
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,760
Speaker 3: to destroy the code cards used in the teletype machine

814
00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:07,880
Speaker 3: at the end of each workday. Boyce says they just

815
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:10,240
Speaker 3: tossed the cards in a canvas bag in the corner,

816
00:47:10,280 --> 00:47:13,640
Speaker 3: and they used the document destruction blender to make my

817
00:47:13,840 --> 00:47:16,440
Speaker 3: ties with the Bacardi that they kept hidden behind the

818
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:17,760
Speaker 3: cryptography machines.

819
00:47:19,160 --> 00:47:20,480
Speaker 1: He claims it was common.

820
00:47:20,200 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 3: For the vault to receive transmissions from Langley that weren't

821
00:47:23,080 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 3: actually meant for them, misdirected communications, these CIA cables that

822
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:30,840
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with TRW or their work with

823
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:34,279
Speaker 3: the agency, but no one really cared, and there was

824
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:39,200
Speaker 3: no clear accountability process for ensuring that these top secret

825
00:47:39,239 --> 00:47:41,760
Speaker 3: CIA documents that had been sent to them by mistake

826
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:50,000
Speaker 3: were actually destroyed. And these are the documents that Boyce stole. Okay,

827
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:52,680
Speaker 3: I know Frank's not even in this part, but I

828
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:55,040
Speaker 3: have to tell you just a little bit about the

829
00:47:55,120 --> 00:47:59,279
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five constitutional crisis in Australia. I know, I know,

830
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 3: this is an even more egregious digression than the history

831
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:05,319
Speaker 3: of Rhodesia. But look at the show art. It's not

832
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:07,400
Speaker 3: just cool to look at. We are living on my

833
00:48:07,560 --> 00:48:10,840
Speaker 3: red string board, and I've got to put this pushpin

834
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:11,680
Speaker 3: in somewhere.

835
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:13,000
Speaker 4: Now.

836
00:48:13,560 --> 00:48:15,839
Speaker 3: I know even less about Australia that I know about

837
00:48:15,840 --> 00:48:19,319
Speaker 3: the decolonization of Africa in the twentieth century, which is

838
00:48:19,360 --> 00:48:23,839
Speaker 3: to say, like not very much. I think they still

839
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:27,040
Speaker 3: have the Queen. I guess it's the king.

840
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:27,760
Speaker 1: Now.

841
00:48:28,440 --> 00:48:30,759
Speaker 3: Did they have to print new money after the queen died?

842
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:33,440
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter, It doesn't matter.

843
00:48:34,239 --> 00:48:34,839
Speaker 1: But I was.

844
00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:39,240
Speaker 3: Delighted to discover that CIA meddling in an Australian political

845
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:44,239
Speaker 3: crisis was even a possibility. How intriguing, you know. I

846
00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:46,160
Speaker 3: know they like to keep it south of the equator,

847
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:48,879
Speaker 3: but I thought that was just a Western Hemisphere thing.

848
00:48:49,960 --> 00:48:50,240
Speaker 1: Now.

849
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:53,799
Speaker 3: Of course, of course, the United States government maintains that

850
00:48:53,880 --> 00:48:57,960
Speaker 3: the CIA had no role in pushing Prime Minister GoF

851
00:48:58,000 --> 00:49:01,480
Speaker 3: Whitlam out of office in nineteen seventy five, but Christopher

852
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 3: Boyce went to prison claiming otherwise. In the seventies, GoF

853
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:08,719
Speaker 3: Whitlam was the head of the Australian Labor Party and

854
00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:13,920
Speaker 3: his administration was fairly socially progressive. He was also considering

855
00:49:14,040 --> 00:49:18,360
Speaker 3: closing Pine Gap, a US signals intelligence surveillance base in

856
00:49:18,400 --> 00:49:23,359
Speaker 3: central Australia run by the CIA. In nineteen seventy five,

857
00:49:23,440 --> 00:49:26,520
Speaker 3: the opposition party, which controlled the Senate deferred the passage

858
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:27,799
Speaker 3: of an appropriations bill.

859
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:30,080
Speaker 1: I don't know.

860
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:32,640
Speaker 3: And am not going to find out how the Australian

861
00:49:32,680 --> 00:49:36,320
Speaker 3: government functions. But this sounds like the silly little crisis

862
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:38,920
Speaker 3: we seem to have every year where someone refuses to

863
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:41,240
Speaker 3: pass the bill that keeps the lights on at the government.

864
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:44,640
Speaker 3: And Australia's Governor General, John Kerr used the fallout of

865
00:49:44,640 --> 00:49:48,080
Speaker 3: this crisis as a justification to dismiss Whitlam as Prime Minister,

866
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:52,239
Speaker 3: which is apparently the thing he had the power to do.

867
00:49:52,360 --> 00:49:54,560
Speaker 3: It's like they have a guy that can fire the president.

868
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:55,480
Speaker 1: I don't know.

869
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:59,000
Speaker 3: I just not my business what happens in Australia, and

870
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:03,759
Speaker 3: at the time dismissed allegations of CIA involvement, saying Kerr

871
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,880
Speaker 3: didn't need any encouragement from anybody to fire him. But

872
00:50:07,920 --> 00:50:10,960
Speaker 3: in his memoirs published decades later, he wrote that in

873
00:50:11,040 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven, President Jimmy Carter sent Warren Christopher, the

874
00:50:14,520 --> 00:50:18,440
Speaker 3: Deputy Secretary of State to Australia, to meet with Whitlam,

875
00:50:18,840 --> 00:50:22,760
Speaker 3: and Christopher told Whitlam that the United States quote would

876
00:50:22,800 --> 00:50:34,080
Speaker 3: never again interfere with Australia's democratic processes, never again, never again.

877
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:38,239
Speaker 3: And Whitlam's personal secretary backs up this recollection of the

878
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:39,600
Speaker 3: use of the word again.

879
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:41,480
Speaker 1: But I'll reiterate.

880
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:44,320
Speaker 3: The CIA says they were not involved.

881
00:50:44,960 --> 00:50:46,040
Speaker 1: They said they didn't do it.

882
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 3: All that to say, though, our pot smoking, disaffected college

883
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:54,719
Speaker 3: dropout who was getting drunk at lunch most days and

884
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,920
Speaker 3: making paper airplanes out of CIA encryption code cards, probably

885
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:03,040
Speaker 3: didn't know anything about the Australian Senate blocking an appropriations bill.

886
00:51:04,320 --> 00:51:08,719
Speaker 3: But by his account, he did sometimes read those misdirected

887
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:12,560
Speaker 3: CIA cables that he was supposed to destroy, and some

888
00:51:12,640 --> 00:51:15,359
Speaker 3: of those messages were about a growing desire within the

889
00:51:15,400 --> 00:51:19,560
Speaker 3: CIA to have Whitlam removed from office, referring to the

890
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:27,040
Speaker 3: Australian Governor General as our manker. So he stole them,

891
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 3: and instead of going to the press, he and his

892
00:51:29,239 --> 00:51:33,160
Speaker 3: childhood friend, a cocaine dealer named Dalton Lee, decided to

893
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:36,719
Speaker 3: sell the documents to the Soviets. Lee would take the

894
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:39,120
Speaker 3: documents down to Mexico and deliver them to the Soviet

895
00:51:39,160 --> 00:51:41,560
Speaker 3: embassy and return with cash which they split.

896
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:44,720
Speaker 1: And maybe it would have worked.

897
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:48,000
Speaker 3: Maybe not forever, but would have worked for a while

898
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:53,239
Speaker 3: if not for a little mistake, a tiny careless act.

899
00:51:53,920 --> 00:51:57,480
Speaker 3: In an absolutely absurd turn of history. Dalton Lee was

900
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:00,400
Speaker 3: arrested in nineteen seventy seven outside the Soviet ms in

901
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 3: Mexico City. He wasn't arrested for espionage or drug trafficking,

902
00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 3: two things he was definitely doing. He was arrested by

903
00:52:09,960 --> 00:52:16,040
Speaker 3: Mexican police for littering, but under interrogation about the drugs

904
00:52:16,040 --> 00:52:19,600
Speaker 3: and documents they subsequently found on him, he admitted everything.

905
00:52:21,040 --> 00:52:23,600
Speaker 3: Christopher Boyce was arrested by authorities in the US just

906
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:26,880
Speaker 3: ten days later, and accounts vary as to whether or

907
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:29,720
Speaker 3: not Dalton Lee gave boys up. In that initial interview,

908
00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:33,520
Speaker 3: he says he didn't and he probably didn't need to.

909
00:52:33,719 --> 00:52:36,279
Speaker 3: The authorities would have arrived at the conclusion that it

910
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:38,719
Speaker 3: was boys who had stolen those documents, whether Dalton Lee

911
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:42,319
Speaker 3: gave him up or not, so you know, we'll never know.

912
00:52:43,600 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 3: But this is where Frank comes back. This is where

913
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,760
Speaker 3: Frank reappears in his own story. I haven't forgotten him

914
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:55,160
Speaker 3: because while all this CIA's skullduggery and Cold War espionage

915
00:52:55,239 --> 00:52:58,120
Speaker 3: is going on, Frank is sitting in a jail cell

916
00:52:58,160 --> 00:53:01,480
Speaker 3: on Terminal Island, a low security federal corrections facility in

917
00:53:01,520 --> 00:53:05,359
Speaker 3: Los Angeles. I can't find a good reason for why

918
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:07,719
Speaker 3: he would have been transported to a prison in California

919
00:53:07,719 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 3: after being arrested in New York, but government inefficiency is

920
00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:16,840
Speaker 3: as likely an explanation as anything else. Christopher Boyce was

921
00:53:16,920 --> 00:53:19,800
Speaker 3: ultimately convicted of eight counts of espionage in nineteen seventy

922
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:23,399
Speaker 3: seven and sentenced to forty years in prison, and for

923
00:53:23,520 --> 00:53:26,919
Speaker 3: several months in late seventy seven to early seventy eight,

924
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:29,120
Speaker 3: the two men were on the same cell block at

925
00:53:29,160 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 3: Terminal Island. Much has been made of the apparent incongruity

926
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:35,840
Speaker 3: of Frank, a man who fought as a mercenary against

927
00:53:35,840 --> 00:53:40,360
Speaker 3: communist gorillas, befriending Boyce, a man convicted of aiding the

928
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 3: Soviet Union, But I don't think either of them had

929
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:46,920
Speaker 3: a fully formed set of political beliefs at the time.

930
00:53:48,080 --> 00:53:50,600
Speaker 3: Boyce's mother would later say that the two became quite

931
00:53:50,600 --> 00:53:55,719
Speaker 3: close in those months. Frank was for reasons I spent

932
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:59,279
Speaker 3: way too long unsuccessfully trying to figure out transferred to

933
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:03,320
Speaker 3: a prison in sometime in early nineteen seventy eight. Boyce

934
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:06,000
Speaker 3: would eventually be transferred to Lompoc, a prison a few

935
00:54:06,000 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 3: hours north of Los Angeles, and in January of nineteen eighty,

936
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:17,120
Speaker 3: Christopher Boyce escaped from prison. The ensuing manhunt for the

937
00:54:17,120 --> 00:54:20,800
Speaker 3: missing spy would last nearly two years, in part because

938
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:25,200
Speaker 3: Frank was planting false clues from Cape Town to California

939
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:27,120
Speaker 3: to lead investigators.

940
00:54:26,440 --> 00:54:29,600
Speaker 1: In the long direction. And that's where I have to

941
00:54:29,680 --> 00:54:31,080
Speaker 1: leave you today.

942
00:54:31,360 --> 00:54:33,040
Speaker 3: I do hope you'll come back next week for the

943
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:36,719
Speaker 3: second half of Frank's story. There's a serial killer, a

944
00:54:36,760 --> 00:54:40,560
Speaker 3: mob boss, a jailhouse letter from his wife's boyfriend. Frank

945
00:54:40,600 --> 00:54:44,880
Speaker 3: stabs another guy, and for reasons I'm still not a

946
00:54:45,280 --> 00:54:52,360
Speaker 3: hundred percent clear run there were a bunch of snakes.

947
00:54:53,480 --> 00:54:55,880
Speaker 1: Weird little guys. The production of cool Zone Media.

948
00:54:56,120 --> 00:54:57,400
Speaker 6: For more from cool Zone.

949
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 7: Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us

950
00:55:01,040 --> 00:55:13,359
Speaker 7: out in the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

951
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:17,759
Speaker 3: I'm so glad you decided to come back for part

952
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:20,799
Speaker 3: two of the story of Frank Sweeney. If you didn't

953
00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:24,120
Speaker 3: hear part one? You really need to. This isn't the

954
00:55:24,200 --> 00:55:27,319
Speaker 3: kind of story you can pick up midway through. You

955
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:29,759
Speaker 3: missed a cop getting shot with a machine gun in

956
00:55:29,800 --> 00:55:34,000
Speaker 3: a New Jersey suburb, the Rhodesian bush War, possible CIA

957
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:37,720
Speaker 3: involvement in an Australian political crisis, and we're just about

958
00:55:37,719 --> 00:55:38,319
Speaker 3: to pick up with.

959
00:55:38,280 --> 00:55:39,960
Speaker 1: Our escaped spy.

960
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:43,359
Speaker 3: The second forty years of Frank's life are just as

961
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:46,279
Speaker 3: weird as the first forty. There's a serial killer, a

962
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:50,200
Speaker 3: mafia trial, two different secret wives, and a lot of

963
00:55:50,239 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 3: misuse of the postal service. I'm Molly Conger, and this

964
00:55:56,800 --> 00:56:12,280
Speaker 3: is weird, little guys.

965
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:13,440
Speaker 7: Now.

966
00:56:13,440 --> 00:56:16,040
Speaker 3: When we left off last week, Frank was making friends

967
00:56:16,040 --> 00:56:19,120
Speaker 3: in prison. His new friend in nineteen seventy eight was

968
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:21,840
Speaker 3: Christopher Boyce, who had just been convicted of espionage for

969
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 3: selling documents he stole from his job as a CIA

970
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:27,880
Speaker 3: contractor to the Soviets, and then he escaped from prison.

971
00:56:29,400 --> 00:56:31,239
Speaker 3: Whether or not Frank was still in custody on the

972
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:34,719
Speaker 3: day Christopher boyce escape from prison is surprisingly hard to

973
00:56:34,719 --> 00:56:38,239
Speaker 3: pin down. Several newspaper articles about Frank's role in the

974
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 3: ensuing manhunt for the missing spy put his release a

975
00:56:40,680 --> 00:56:44,120
Speaker 3: month before the escape, but others put it a month after.

976
00:56:45,120 --> 00:56:48,239
Speaker 3: Seems like this detail would really matter, but no one

977
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:52,080
Speaker 3: seemed very concerned about it. In nineteen eighty, newspapers that

978
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:54,360
Speaker 3: appeared to be quoting the same unnamed source from the

979
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:57,799
Speaker 3: US Marshalls published conflicting stories, with some saying Frank flew

980
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:01,480
Speaker 3: to South Africa shortly before Boyce's escape, and others putting

981
00:57:01,480 --> 00:57:05,239
Speaker 3: that trip slightly after the escape, although both of these

982
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:09,040
Speaker 3: articles say it was exactly twenty three days before or after.

983
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 3: But in my frustrated search through forty year old newspapers

984
00:57:13,120 --> 00:57:15,319
Speaker 3: trying to figure out which prison Frank was calling home

985
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:21,360
Speaker 3: that year, I found another surprise, another stabbing. Shortly after

986
00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 3: Frank was transferred to a state prison in Maine in

987
00:57:23,440 --> 00:57:25,919
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight, he stabbed another inmate in the chest

988
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:29,440
Speaker 3: during an argument in the prison library. And again we

989
00:57:29,520 --> 00:57:31,720
Speaker 3: have this problem that keeps coming up in Frank's life.

990
00:57:32,240 --> 00:57:35,320
Speaker 3: He loves to talk to reporters and he loves to lie.

991
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:39,200
Speaker 3: It's the seventies. These reporters don't have the Internet, they

992
00:57:39,200 --> 00:57:42,160
Speaker 3: don't have access to electronic court records, so a lot

993
00:57:42,160 --> 00:57:45,200
Speaker 3: of Frank's lies get published when he files a lawsuit

994
00:57:45,200 --> 00:57:47,360
Speaker 3: against the prison warden in Maine about the conditions in

995
00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 3: solitary confinement. Newspapers publish his claim that he was placed

996
00:57:50,840 --> 00:57:54,080
Speaker 3: in solitary for a stabbing he'd been suspected of, but

997
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 3: he says the investigation cleared him. A local newspaper in

998
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:01,480
Speaker 3: Bangor Main, however, had a report in the courtroom when

999
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:02,760
Speaker 3: he entered a guilty.

1000
00:58:02,400 --> 00:58:03,520
Speaker 1: Plea to that stabbing.

1001
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:07,440
Speaker 3: But regardless of whether he got out in December of

1002
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:11,200
Speaker 3: seventy nine or February of nineteen eighty, we know Frank

1003
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:14,000
Speaker 3: flew to South Africa soon after he got out, and

1004
00:58:14,040 --> 00:58:18,120
Speaker 3: that he stayed there for a couple of months. The

1005
00:58:18,160 --> 00:58:20,760
Speaker 3: story of Christopher Boyce's nineteen months on the Lamb is

1006
00:58:21,200 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 3: long and strange. Sean Penn plays Boyce's friend, the cocaine

1007
00:58:25,800 --> 00:58:28,560
Speaker 3: dealer Dalton Lee in the nineteen eighty five film adaptation

1008
00:58:28,600 --> 00:58:30,400
Speaker 3: of the book The Falcon and the Snowman about the

1009
00:58:30,600 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 3: entire affair, I didn't watch it. There's only so much

1010
00:58:34,080 --> 00:58:36,919
Speaker 3: I can do. But remember, this is the Cold War.

1011
00:58:37,360 --> 00:58:40,600
Speaker 3: A missing Soviet spy is a pretty big pr problem

1012
00:58:40,600 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 3: for the United States government. There was speculation that the

1013
00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:47,480
Speaker 3: KGB had helped him escape. Boyce himself called a reporter

1014
00:58:47,520 --> 00:58:49,440
Speaker 3: from a payphone a few months after the escape and

1015
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 3: laughed about the idea that he'd had foreign assistance. He says,

1016
00:58:53,160 --> 00:58:56,520
Speaker 3: he just climbed the fence and walked out. The task

1017
00:58:56,560 --> 00:58:59,400
Speaker 3: force focused on finding boys believed all along that he'd

1018
00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:02,959
Speaker 3: never Actually they left California, and they weren't too far off.

1019
00:59:03,120 --> 00:59:06,439
Speaker 3: He was in Idaho the whole time. But a lot

1020
00:59:06,440 --> 00:59:09,520
Speaker 3: of resources ended up getting expended pursuing a false lead

1021
00:59:10,160 --> 00:59:13,840
Speaker 3: planted by our friend Frank. Now I can't prove Frank

1022
00:59:13,880 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 3: sent all of these letters himself. I can't even find

1023
00:59:17,640 --> 00:59:21,120
Speaker 3: contemporane his reporting where anyone ever outright said that they

1024
00:59:21,160 --> 00:59:24,800
Speaker 3: believed Frank sent these letters. And he was never charged

1025
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:28,200
Speaker 3: in connection with his meddling in this investigation. But just

1026
00:59:28,240 --> 00:59:30,520
Speaker 3: a few weeks after Boyce went missing, the United States

1027
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:35,520
Speaker 3: Ambassador in South Africa got a letter the postmark indicated

1028
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:38,480
Speaker 3: that had been mailed from within South Africa, and the

1029
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 3: letter said a known mercenary named Shellhammer had assisted the

1030
00:59:42,520 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 3: convicted American spy Christopher Boyce in entering South Africa by

1031
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:50,960
Speaker 3: way of a fake passport. Now, who do we know

1032
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:54,720
Speaker 3: with a history of forging passports of mailing anonymous letters

1033
00:59:54,760 --> 00:59:58,280
Speaker 3: to officials in Southern Africa implicating himself and crimes and

1034
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:03,040
Speaker 3: using the pseudonyme shell Hammer. And he absolutely knew the

1035
01:00:03,040 --> 01:00:04,800
Speaker 3: FEDS would tie him to that alias because it was

1036
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:06,640
Speaker 3: the one he had used in those classified ads in

1037
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:09,120
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy six that put him in prison for mail fraud.

1038
01:00:10,200 --> 01:00:13,000
Speaker 3: And Frank was in South Africa in February of nineteen

1039
01:00:13,040 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 3: eighty when that letter was mailed. It seems he wanted

1040
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:19,600
Speaker 3: the authorities to know he was involved. Why else would

1041
01:00:19,600 --> 01:00:22,960
Speaker 3: he write his own pseudonym into the story. So FEDS

1042
01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 3: quickly turned their attention to Frank. They placed a tracking

1043
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,240
Speaker 3: beacon on his car. They followed him for months, and

1044
01:00:30,320 --> 01:00:31,640
Speaker 3: he probably knew he.

1045
01:00:31,600 --> 01:00:32,360
Speaker 1: Was being followed.

1046
01:00:33,560 --> 01:00:35,360
Speaker 3: They followed him from his home in New Jersey all

1047
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:38,360
Speaker 3: the way out to California, and from a California motel,

1048
01:00:38,440 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 3: he made several phone calls to an apartment in Hermosa Beach,

1049
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:44,560
Speaker 3: and when they searched that apartment they found it abandoned.

1050
01:00:44,880 --> 01:00:47,720
Speaker 3: But they found several letters that Frank had sent to

1051
01:00:47,760 --> 01:00:50,960
Speaker 3: a third man, another friend of theirs, from prison, one

1052
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:54,080
Speaker 3: of which read somehow They discovered that I helped him

1053
01:00:54,080 --> 01:00:57,480
Speaker 3: get into South Africa. I suspect an informer has been

1054
01:00:57,520 --> 01:01:02,640
Speaker 3: at work, but there was no informer. Frank wanted them

1055
01:01:02,680 --> 01:01:05,200
Speaker 3: to find those letters, and Boyce was never in South Africa.

1056
01:01:05,720 --> 01:01:07,880
Speaker 3: The only reason anyone thought Boyce might be in South

1057
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:10,720
Speaker 3: Africa is because Frank was planting false clues all over

1058
01:01:10,760 --> 01:01:11,520
Speaker 3: the world.

1059
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:13,480
Speaker 1: To point them as far away.

1060
01:01:13,160 --> 01:01:16,440
Speaker 3: As possible from a little hunting cabin in the mountains

1061
01:01:16,440 --> 01:01:21,720
Speaker 3: of Idaho. US Marshalls eventually got frustrated following Frank around.

1062
01:01:22,120 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 3: A federal prosecutor would actually say an open court that

1063
01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:27,920
Speaker 3: Frank's arrest in July of nineteen eighty one was specifically

1064
01:01:28,000 --> 01:01:30,680
Speaker 3: intended to give them leverage to make him cooperate in

1065
01:01:30,720 --> 01:01:33,440
Speaker 3: the boy's case. It seemed like he knew something and

1066
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:36,680
Speaker 3: they wanted to know what it was. As a felon,

1067
01:01:36,840 --> 01:01:40,840
Speaker 3: Frank wasn't allowed to have any guns, and of course

1068
01:01:41,040 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 3: Frank had guns. Did find one newspaper article that wrapped

1069
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:48,959
Speaker 3: a sort of suspicious sounding hint that they only picked

1070
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:52,320
Speaker 3: Frank up for that gun charge because of an anonymous tip,

1071
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:53,680
Speaker 3: so maybe that.

1072
01:01:53,680 --> 01:01:55,000
Speaker 1: Was him too.

1073
01:01:55,200 --> 01:01:56,640
Speaker 3: But they picked him up in New Jersey at the

1074
01:01:56,680 --> 01:02:00,400
Speaker 3: end of July, and he pretended to be very co operative,

1075
01:02:00,800 --> 01:02:02,840
Speaker 3: telling them that he actually had some documents that would

1076
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:05,280
Speaker 3: leave them straight to boys and he would happily show

1077
01:02:05,280 --> 01:02:08,440
Speaker 3: them to them. He voluntarily turned over the key to

1078
01:02:08,480 --> 01:02:11,160
Speaker 3: the bank deposit box he was keeping them in, and

1079
01:02:11,240 --> 01:02:14,280
Speaker 3: inside they found several letters to Frank that had been

1080
01:02:14,320 --> 01:02:18,400
Speaker 3: mailed from South Africa. Sounds like more red herrings planted

1081
01:02:18,440 --> 01:02:21,320
Speaker 3: by Frank. He'd flown to South Africa several times in

1082
01:02:21,360 --> 01:02:23,320
Speaker 3: the year and a half since his release and was

1083
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:28,160
Speaker 3: probably mailing himself these letters on those visits. So now

1084
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 3: in August of nineteen eighty one, it seems like there

1085
01:02:30,520 --> 01:02:34,960
Speaker 3: could be some evidence that Boyce really was in South Africa.

1086
01:02:35,360 --> 01:02:37,760
Speaker 3: Frank says he was promised placement in the Witness Protection

1087
01:02:37,840 --> 01:02:40,720
Speaker 3: program for his help, and maybe they did make that

1088
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:44,000
Speaker 3: promise if he really could help them recover their missing spy,

1089
01:02:44,160 --> 01:02:48,280
Speaker 3: that's a reasonable enough deal. And just a few weeks

1090
01:02:48,280 --> 01:02:53,240
Speaker 3: after all of Frank's help, Boyce was recaptured, but it

1091
01:02:53,320 --> 01:02:57,200
Speaker 3: wasn't due in any part to Frank's information. During his

1092
01:02:57,280 --> 01:02:59,400
Speaker 3: year and a half on the run, Boyce obviously couldn't

1093
01:02:59,400 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 3: get a job, so he made money the old fashioned

1094
01:03:02,320 --> 01:03:06,640
Speaker 3: way bank robbery. He kept it pretty small time, nothing

1095
01:03:06,680 --> 01:03:09,160
Speaker 3: flashy where you get into the vault. Just little stick

1096
01:03:09,240 --> 01:03:11,160
Speaker 3: ups a few thousand at a time. From the teller.

1097
01:03:12,240 --> 01:03:14,600
Speaker 3: He's tied to at least seventeen bank robberies in Idaho

1098
01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:17,080
Speaker 3: and Washington State during that time, eventually teaming up with

1099
01:03:17,120 --> 01:03:20,080
Speaker 3: a couple of brothers from Idaho, and it was one

1100
01:03:20,120 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 3: of those men who turned Boys in for the reward

1101
01:03:22,880 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 3: money no honor among thieves.

1102
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:25,920
Speaker 1: I guess.

1103
01:03:26,840 --> 01:03:29,560
Speaker 3: Boyce was taken back into custody on August twenty first,

1104
01:03:30,120 --> 01:03:34,400
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty one, and he wasn't in South Africa.

1105
01:03:34,600 --> 01:03:37,400
Speaker 5: Nationwide flight ended for Christopher Boyce here at the pit

1106
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:40,440
Speaker 5: stop drive in at Port Angelus, Washington. He was eating

1107
01:03:40,440 --> 01:03:43,840
Speaker 5: a cheeseburger and onion rings when eight federal agents jumped him.

1108
01:03:44,160 --> 01:03:47,480
Speaker 5: Boys was apparently living a triple life.

1109
01:03:48,000 --> 01:03:49,959
Speaker 1: So Frank lied.

1110
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:56,600
Speaker 3: Obviously, he lied pretty egregiously. He falsified documents. He led

1111
01:03:56,680 --> 01:03:59,560
Speaker 3: US marshals and the CIA on an international goose chase,

1112
01:04:00,400 --> 01:04:03,120
Speaker 3: and maybe that's why he never got charged for it.

1113
01:04:03,840 --> 01:04:07,640
Speaker 3: That's pretty embarrassing to put on the record. But they

1114
01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:09,920
Speaker 3: did still have that gun charge they'd picked him up

1115
01:04:09,920 --> 01:04:13,160
Speaker 3: on to use his leverage, so they said a sentencing date,

1116
01:04:13,200 --> 01:04:14,800
Speaker 3: but Frank didn't show up.

1117
01:04:15,760 --> 01:04:17,920
Speaker 1: He was trying to skip the country again.

1118
01:04:18,640 --> 01:04:20,520
Speaker 3: Remember back in nineteen seventy six he got all the

1119
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:22,800
Speaker 3: way to South Africa after skipping his sentencing date for

1120
01:04:22,880 --> 01:04:25,960
Speaker 3: mail fraud. But this time he was picked up just

1121
01:04:26,000 --> 01:04:27,920
Speaker 3: a few days after he missed court when a motel

1122
01:04:27,960 --> 01:04:31,720
Speaker 3: clerk in Montvale, New Jersey recognized him. When he was

1123
01:04:31,720 --> 01:04:34,439
Speaker 3: finally dragged in for sentencing, the government said they hoped

1124
01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:35,920
Speaker 3: Frank was going to be able to help them in

1125
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 3: the boy's case, but nothing he said was of any use.

1126
01:04:39,920 --> 01:04:41,640
Speaker 3: Frank said he had no choice but to flee the

1127
01:04:41,640 --> 01:04:43,600
Speaker 3: country and start a new life on a cattle ranch

1128
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:46,480
Speaker 3: in Australia with his wife because the government had renegged

1129
01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:49,400
Speaker 3: on their deal to put him in witness protection. I

1130
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:51,640
Speaker 3: have to imagine there was some bickering back and forth

1131
01:04:51,680 --> 01:04:54,840
Speaker 3: between an indignant Frank and an exasperated federal prosecutor, because

1132
01:04:54,880 --> 01:04:57,880
Speaker 3: in the end, Judge H. Curtis Mener said, I have

1133
01:04:58,000 --> 01:05:00,920
Speaker 3: neither the time nor the inclination to unravel all of

1134
01:05:00,960 --> 01:05:04,080
Speaker 3: the mysteries in this case. However, they'd all ended up

1135
01:05:04,080 --> 01:05:06,680
Speaker 3: in his courtroom. Whatever the convoluted backstory is here, this

1136
01:05:06,720 --> 01:05:09,840
Speaker 3: is a sentencing or illegal possession of a firearm, and

1137
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:12,400
Speaker 3: that's really all the judge can do that day, so

1138
01:05:12,680 --> 01:05:16,920
Speaker 3: he sentenced Frank to four years. Judge Meaner said Frank

1139
01:05:17,080 --> 01:05:20,240
Speaker 3: was an explosive type of individual and that he was

1140
01:05:20,680 --> 01:05:24,280
Speaker 3: dangerous and mentally sick, and he urged Frank to take

1141
01:05:24,280 --> 01:05:26,840
Speaker 3: advantage of the opportunity to get psychiatric help while he

1142
01:05:26,880 --> 01:05:31,800
Speaker 3: was in prison this time. And yes, I did say wife.

1143
01:05:33,040 --> 01:05:35,560
Speaker 3: When I first started poking around trying to build my

1144
01:05:35,640 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 3: biographical backstory, to sort of sketch out a skeleton of

1145
01:05:39,040 --> 01:05:42,240
Speaker 3: this man's life, I found a new Jersey state record

1146
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:44,720
Speaker 3: for a marriage in August nineteen eighty one between a

1147
01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:49,000
Speaker 3: Frank A. Sweeney and aDNA M. Madison in Bergen County.

1148
01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:53,720
Speaker 3: There are other men named Frank Sweeney, obviously, but it

1149
01:05:53,760 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 3: was a middle initial match and it's the right county,

1150
01:05:56,440 --> 01:05:58,360
Speaker 3: and it was one of the rare months that Frank

1151
01:05:58,480 --> 01:06:02,520
Speaker 3: wasn't in prison. But it didn't seem right, so I

1152
01:06:02,520 --> 01:06:06,240
Speaker 3: set it aside. But this offhand mention at his sentencing

1153
01:06:06,280 --> 01:06:09,120
Speaker 3: hearing about a wife, sent me back to it.

1154
01:06:09,120 --> 01:06:10,320
Speaker 1: It is him.

1155
01:06:11,040 --> 01:06:12,600
Speaker 3: After the FEDS picked him up at the end of

1156
01:06:12,640 --> 01:06:14,800
Speaker 3: July nineteen eighty one on that gun charge. He was

1157
01:06:14,880 --> 01:06:17,520
Speaker 3: released from custody. He was cooperating. He took them to

1158
01:06:17,560 --> 01:06:19,240
Speaker 3: the bank to look at his fake evidence. All that,

1159
01:06:20,440 --> 01:06:25,200
Speaker 3: and sometime that month he got married. I have no

1160
01:06:25,320 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 3: idea how they met, or where she came from, or

1161
01:06:27,760 --> 01:06:29,280
Speaker 3: what she thought she was going to get out of

1162
01:06:29,280 --> 01:06:31,600
Speaker 3: any of this, or if she knew Frank was planning

1163
01:06:31,600 --> 01:06:35,040
Speaker 3: on entering witness protection that month, or what on earth

1164
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:38,400
Speaker 3: she saw in this man. But I do know how

1165
01:06:38,400 --> 01:06:42,000
Speaker 3: the marriage ended. Frank went back to prison that very

1166
01:06:42,000 --> 01:06:45,600
Speaker 3: same year, so they didn't have much time together. I

1167
01:06:45,680 --> 01:06:48,040
Speaker 3: don't know where Diana was while Frank was away. But

1168
01:06:48,400 --> 01:06:51,000
Speaker 3: by nineteen eighty five, according to a decision by the

1169
01:06:51,040 --> 01:06:54,200
Speaker 3: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Dana was living in Texas

1170
01:06:54,280 --> 01:06:57,600
Speaker 3: with her new boyfriend, Danny Lee Strong. They couldn't have

1171
01:06:57,680 --> 01:06:59,920
Speaker 3: known each other very long before moving in together, because

1172
01:07:00,280 --> 01:07:02,440
Speaker 3: Strong had only just gotten out of prison again for

1173
01:07:02,520 --> 01:07:04,480
Speaker 3: another and a string of pretty run of the mill

1174
01:07:04,600 --> 01:07:08,720
Speaker 3: robbery and fraud charges, and they didn't stay together long

1175
01:07:08,760 --> 01:07:11,480
Speaker 3: before they were arrested for murdering a man Strong said

1176
01:07:11,480 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 3: made a pass at Deanna. She was ultimately only convicted

1177
01:07:15,320 --> 01:07:17,560
Speaker 3: of stealing the victim's car. Which they fled the scene

1178
01:07:17,560 --> 01:07:20,000
Speaker 3: in but Strong got ninety nine years for the brutal

1179
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:24,560
Speaker 3: beating and asphyxiation of Robert Eugene Thomas. Frank doesn't really

1180
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:27,240
Speaker 3: factor into this story. He's in prison in another state

1181
01:07:27,360 --> 01:07:30,000
Speaker 3: this whole time, but his name appears in a footnote

1182
01:07:30,000 --> 01:07:34,400
Speaker 3: of an appeals court decision upholding Strong's conviction. Strong had

1183
01:07:34,400 --> 01:07:36,760
Speaker 3: sent Frank a letter after finding out that Deanna was

1184
01:07:36,800 --> 01:07:40,320
Speaker 3: planning to testify against him for the murder. I can't

1185
01:07:40,360 --> 01:07:42,880
Speaker 3: imagine what you write in a letter to your girlfriend's

1186
01:07:42,920 --> 01:07:46,120
Speaker 3: husband about a situation like this. But all that to say,

1187
01:07:46,720 --> 01:07:49,160
Speaker 3: Frank really did have a wife that he planned to

1188
01:07:49,160 --> 01:07:52,040
Speaker 3: start a new life with in Australia, but she ended

1189
01:07:52,080 --> 01:07:54,000
Speaker 3: up watching her boyfriend choke a man to death in

1190
01:07:54,000 --> 01:08:11,440
Speaker 3: an apartment in fort Worth instead. On January ninth, nineteen

1191
01:08:11,480 --> 01:08:14,560
Speaker 3: eighty two, the UVA men's basketball team lost to the

1192
01:08:14,600 --> 01:08:17,200
Speaker 3: tar Heels in a close game, sixty to sixty five

1193
01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:21,800
Speaker 3: at UNC's Carmichael Arena. I'm not a basketball fan, and

1194
01:08:22,320 --> 01:08:24,920
Speaker 3: I wasn't born then, but I guess it was an

1195
01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:28,080
Speaker 3: exciting game. UNC had knocked Uva out of the Final

1196
01:08:28,120 --> 01:08:31,479
Speaker 3: Four the year before, but Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed

1197
01:08:31,479 --> 01:08:33,760
Speaker 3: neo Nazi who'd recently been handed his first couple of

1198
01:08:33,800 --> 01:08:37,639
Speaker 3: life sentences for two of his many murders, didn't care

1199
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:40,760
Speaker 3: much for basketball. He was in the wreck room at

1200
01:08:40,800 --> 01:08:43,680
Speaker 3: the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, and

1201
01:08:43,720 --> 01:08:47,679
Speaker 3: he was trying to watch American bandstand. According to frank

1202
01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:50,240
Speaker 3: whose time at the Springfield prison overlapped with Franklins for

1203
01:08:50,280 --> 01:08:52,880
Speaker 3: a few weeks in nineteen eighty one until Franklin's transfer

1204
01:08:52,960 --> 01:08:55,920
Speaker 3: at the end of January nineteen eighty two, the serial

1205
01:08:56,000 --> 01:08:59,880
Speaker 3: killer became enraged when a black prison guard changed the channel.

1206
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:03,800
Speaker 3: Later that year, Joseph Paul Franklin was back in court.

1207
01:09:04,600 --> 01:09:07,799
Speaker 3: He'd spent years traveling the country, robbing banks and murdering

1208
01:09:07,840 --> 01:09:10,320
Speaker 3: young black men and interracial couples, so it would take

1209
01:09:10,400 --> 01:09:11,400
Speaker 3: years to sort out what.

1210
01:09:11,400 --> 01:09:12,600
Speaker 1: To do with him.

1211
01:09:13,000 --> 01:09:15,800
Speaker 3: This time, he was on trial for the unsuccessful assassination

1212
01:09:15,840 --> 01:09:19,840
Speaker 3: attempt on civil rights activist Vernon Jordan. On May twenty ninth,

1213
01:09:19,880 --> 01:09:22,360
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty the Fort Wayne, Indiana chapter of the National

1214
01:09:22,479 --> 01:09:24,439
Speaker 3: Urban League was hosting a banquet in honor of a

1215
01:09:24,560 --> 01:09:27,960
Speaker 3: visit from National Urban League President Vernin Jordan. When a

1216
01:09:28,040 --> 01:09:30,439
Speaker 3: volunteer dropped him off at his hotel. Later that evening,

1217
01:09:30,880 --> 01:09:33,439
Speaker 3: a single bullet from a thirty six rifle tore through

1218
01:09:33,479 --> 01:09:38,040
Speaker 3: his back. He survived, but it's hard to build a

1219
01:09:38,080 --> 01:09:43,480
Speaker 3: case against a drifter sniper. Nobody saw him. The investigators

1220
01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:47,680
Speaker 3: had some handwriting analysis on a motel registration card, testimony

1221
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:50,040
Speaker 3: from a grocery store clerk who identified Franklin as a

1222
01:09:50,040 --> 01:09:52,920
Speaker 3: man he'd had a strange conversation with, and a general

1223
01:09:52,960 --> 01:09:55,800
Speaker 3: idea that the crime fit Franklin's pattern, but it was

1224
01:09:55,840 --> 01:09:56,479
Speaker 3: a bit thin.

1225
01:09:57,960 --> 01:10:01,479
Speaker 1: And then came frank Ohank loves to talk, he loves

1226
01:10:01,520 --> 01:10:02,240
Speaker 1: to be helpful.

1227
01:10:03,120 --> 01:10:05,479
Speaker 3: He's still in prison on that gun charge, but he

1228
01:10:05,560 --> 01:10:07,960
Speaker 3: told federal authorities that in the brief couple of weeks

1229
01:10:07,960 --> 01:10:10,200
Speaker 3: he'd been on the same cell block as Franklin. They

1230
01:10:10,320 --> 01:10:12,920
Speaker 3: chatted a few times, and Franklin had confessed to him

1231
01:10:12,960 --> 01:10:18,400
Speaker 3: on several occasions about shooting Vernon Jordan. On the stand,

1232
01:10:18,439 --> 01:10:20,880
Speaker 3: frank testified about that evening in January when the guard

1233
01:10:20,920 --> 01:10:23,920
Speaker 3: changed the channel to the basketball game, and it's a

1234
01:10:23,960 --> 01:10:26,680
Speaker 3: pretty good detail. Frank was very specific that it was

1235
01:10:26,720 --> 01:10:29,559
Speaker 3: a uva unc game that he couldn't recall the date

1236
01:10:30,479 --> 01:10:32,320
Speaker 3: they were only on that cell block together for a

1237
01:10:32,360 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 3: few weeks, and there was in fact a Uva unc

1238
01:10:35,400 --> 01:10:38,040
Speaker 3: basketball game during that time period that would have.

1239
01:10:38,000 --> 01:10:38,800
Speaker 1: Been on television.

1240
01:10:39,880 --> 01:10:42,439
Speaker 3: He testified that Franklin was furious about the incident and

1241
01:10:42,479 --> 01:10:45,800
Speaker 3: spent days fuming about it. The two inmates were walking

1242
01:10:45,840 --> 01:10:48,000
Speaker 3: together in the exercise area a few days later when

1243
01:10:48,280 --> 01:10:51,040
Speaker 3: Franklin spotted that same guard again and turned to frank

1244
01:10:51,080 --> 01:10:53,559
Speaker 3: and said, I'd like to blow him away, like I

1245
01:10:53,640 --> 01:10:58,400
Speaker 3: shot that and were big wig in Indiana. Frank says

1246
01:10:58,400 --> 01:11:02,000
Speaker 3: he also lamented that Jordan just wouldn't die after being shot,

1247
01:11:02,040 --> 01:11:04,679
Speaker 3: and that he was sorry I didn't shoot that white

1248
01:11:04,720 --> 01:11:07,719
Speaker 3: slut first, referring to the white woman who'd given Jordan

1249
01:11:07,760 --> 01:11:11,479
Speaker 3: a ride that night. Frank was one of three jail

1250
01:11:11,520 --> 01:11:14,320
Speaker 3: house informants the government put on during that trial, all

1251
01:11:14,360 --> 01:11:16,439
Speaker 3: men who'd been in jail with Franklin, and all of

1252
01:11:16,439 --> 01:11:18,840
Speaker 3: whom said Franklin had admitted to various aspects of the

1253
01:11:18,840 --> 01:11:23,920
Speaker 3: crime and casual conversation. Josephaul Franklin was actually acquitted at

1254
01:11:23,920 --> 01:11:27,759
Speaker 3: that federal trial. Jurors said they believed Franklin shot Jordan,

1255
01:11:28,200 --> 01:11:30,200
Speaker 3: but they were hung up on the wording of the indictment,

1256
01:11:30,240 --> 01:11:32,759
Speaker 3: which specifically charged him with the shooting as a violation

1257
01:11:32,800 --> 01:11:36,400
Speaker 3: of Jordan's civil rights. Years later, on death row for

1258
01:11:36,479 --> 01:11:39,559
Speaker 3: a variety of other murders, Franklin did confess to shooting

1259
01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:43,320
Speaker 3: Vernon Jordan when the trial was over, though jurors who

1260
01:11:43,360 --> 01:11:45,880
Speaker 3: spoke to the press said they'd only believed one of

1261
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:51,800
Speaker 3: the three jailhouse informants who testified frank On cross examination,

1262
01:11:51,880 --> 01:11:54,200
Speaker 3: frank Sweeney seemed surprised to learn that the other two

1263
01:11:54,240 --> 01:11:56,840
Speaker 3: men had been paid thousands of dollars for their cooperation.

1264
01:11:57,800 --> 01:12:01,400
Speaker 3: He wasn't getting paid, but he was upset. He didn't

1265
01:12:01,400 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 3: need the money. He'd inherited a quarter a million dollars,

1266
01:12:04,600 --> 01:12:07,080
Speaker 3: which would be about a million dollars today when his

1267
01:12:07,160 --> 01:12:12,680
Speaker 3: parents died. All he wanted was witness protection, then a

1268
01:12:12,720 --> 01:12:16,720
Speaker 3: positive letter to the New Jersey Parole Board. Just like

1269
01:12:16,720 --> 01:12:19,639
Speaker 3: in the boy's case, he very conveniently had some information

1270
01:12:19,720 --> 01:12:22,320
Speaker 3: the government wanted, and all he wanted in return was

1271
01:12:22,840 --> 01:12:29,200
Speaker 3: witness protection. And this time he got it, but he

1272
01:12:29,200 --> 01:12:32,479
Speaker 3: didn't get to keep it. In nineteen eighty four, frank

1273
01:12:32,520 --> 01:12:34,880
Speaker 3: filed a lawsuit against the warden of the Alabama prison

1274
01:12:34,920 --> 01:12:38,120
Speaker 3: where he was still serving his sentence on that gun charge.

1275
01:12:38,200 --> 01:12:40,360
Speaker 3: He said he was not receiving the protection afforded to

1276
01:12:40,439 --> 01:12:44,040
Speaker 3: him as a protected witness. The warden's response to the

1277
01:12:44,040 --> 01:12:47,559
Speaker 3: suit was that Frank would not stop telling people that

1278
01:12:47,600 --> 01:12:49,920
Speaker 3: he was a protected witness, which was causing a lot

1279
01:12:49,920 --> 01:12:54,679
Speaker 3: of problems. You're not supposed to do that in court.

1280
01:12:54,720 --> 01:12:57,559
Speaker 3: The warden's executive assistant said that the prison was considering

1281
01:12:57,600 --> 01:13:00,800
Speaker 3: contacting in the Office of Enforcement Operations, the division of

1282
01:13:00,840 --> 01:13:04,519
Speaker 3: the DOJ that administers the Witness Security program, to recommend

1283
01:13:04,560 --> 01:13:07,200
Speaker 3: his removal from the program because they believed he was

1284
01:13:07,240 --> 01:13:11,559
Speaker 3: intentionally causing problems by talking about this constantly. And it

1285
01:13:11,560 --> 01:13:14,320
Speaker 3: seems he was ultimately removed from the Witness Security program

1286
01:13:14,360 --> 01:13:18,040
Speaker 3: around this time, and maybe that had something to do

1287
01:13:18,120 --> 01:13:21,320
Speaker 3: with his decision to testify on behalf of Anthony Spalotro,

1288
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:25,280
Speaker 3: the hot headed Chicago mobster who handled the family's business.

1289
01:13:24,920 --> 01:13:25,839
Speaker 1: In Las Vegas.

1290
01:13:26,960 --> 01:13:29,320
Speaker 3: It couldn't have been an attempt to get back in

1291
01:13:29,360 --> 01:13:32,800
Speaker 3: the program. He was testifying for the defense, but maybe

1292
01:13:32,800 --> 01:13:35,759
Speaker 3: he was just spiite. He wanted to get somebody else

1293
01:13:36,240 --> 01:13:41,200
Speaker 3: kicked out of the program. In nineteen eighty three, when

1294
01:13:41,240 --> 01:13:44,040
Speaker 3: he was still in prison and still considered a protected witness.

1295
01:13:44,520 --> 01:13:47,519
Speaker 3: He briefly shared a cell with another guy in the program.

1296
01:13:48,080 --> 01:13:51,760
Speaker 3: Frank Kulatta was a mobster. He was a member of

1297
01:13:51,800 --> 01:13:55,240
Speaker 3: Tony Spalotro's Hole in the Wall gang. If you've seen

1298
01:13:55,280 --> 01:14:00,000
Speaker 3: the nineteen ninety five Scorsese movie Casino, it's that quite literally.

1299
01:14:00,560 --> 01:14:03,160
Speaker 3: Frank Marino, the character played by the guy who played

1300
01:14:03,200 --> 01:14:06,439
Speaker 3: Phil Leotardo on The Sopranos, is supposed to be Frank Kulatta.

1301
01:14:07,200 --> 01:14:10,519
Speaker 3: Joe Peshi's character, Nikki Sentorro, is based on Tony Spilotro.

1302
01:14:11,200 --> 01:14:14,240
Speaker 3: Just watch the movie. It's all very complicated, and our

1303
01:14:14,280 --> 01:14:17,320
Speaker 3: friend Frank Sweeney had nothing to do with it. But

1304
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:20,320
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty three, the real life Frank Kulata was

1305
01:14:20,360 --> 01:14:23,000
Speaker 3: sharing a cell with Frank Sweeney because they had both

1306
01:14:23,000 --> 01:14:26,760
Speaker 3: turned state's witness against very dangerous men. Frank Sweeney had

1307
01:14:26,760 --> 01:14:29,760
Speaker 3: just testified against a serial killer and Frank Kulatta had

1308
01:14:29,760 --> 01:14:32,439
Speaker 3: turned on Spilotro after the FBI played him a recording

1309
01:14:32,479 --> 01:14:37,080
Speaker 3: of his friend talking about having him killed. When Anthony

1310
01:14:37,080 --> 01:14:40,040
Speaker 3: Spilotro went on trial in nineteen eighty six, Frank Kulatta

1311
01:14:40,120 --> 01:14:42,880
Speaker 3: was out of prison and in the program, and he

1312
01:14:42,960 --> 01:14:47,559
Speaker 3: was the government's star witness against Spilotro. Frank Sweeney was

1313
01:14:47,600 --> 01:14:49,679
Speaker 3: finally out of prison again in home in New Jersey

1314
01:14:49,680 --> 01:14:51,599
Speaker 3: when he read in the paper that Kulata was going

1315
01:14:51,600 --> 01:14:55,600
Speaker 3: to be testifying. According to Frank, he felt compelled to

1316
01:14:55,640 --> 01:14:58,760
Speaker 3: contact Spilotro's defense attorney because when they were cell mates,

1317
01:14:59,240 --> 01:15:04,000
Speaker 3: Kulata would af in brag about committing perjury. So the

1318
01:15:04,040 --> 01:15:06,680
Speaker 3: defense flew Frank out to Las Vegas and put him

1319
01:15:06,680 --> 01:15:10,160
Speaker 3: on the stand. He claimed that after one of Colada's

1320
01:15:10,160 --> 01:15:12,519
Speaker 3: appearances in court back in nineteen eighty three, he came

1321
01:15:12,560 --> 01:15:15,400
Speaker 3: back to their shared cell and bragged, Frankie, I just

1322
01:15:15,439 --> 01:15:18,200
Speaker 3: put another one away. You've heard of the traveling circus.

1323
01:15:18,680 --> 01:15:24,439
Speaker 3: I'm the original traveling perjurer. On cross examination, Frank Sweeney

1324
01:15:24,520 --> 01:15:27,080
Speaker 3: admitted that when he'd been in the witness protection program,

1325
01:15:27,479 --> 01:15:31,480
Speaker 3: he had on several occasions threatened and even faked suicide

1326
01:15:31,520 --> 01:15:35,280
Speaker 3: attempts to get what he wanted out of federal prosecutors.

1327
01:15:35,840 --> 01:15:37,920
Speaker 3: I wish I had more information on that. That is

1328
01:15:38,200 --> 01:15:41,599
Speaker 3: incredibly strange behavior, and it does actually happen again later

1329
01:15:43,520 --> 01:15:45,679
Speaker 3: in the end, though his testimony in that mob trial

1330
01:15:45,800 --> 01:15:48,880
Speaker 3: is just a strange little footnote. His third brush with

1331
01:15:48,920 --> 01:15:53,200
Speaker 3: the witness protection program. His testimony didn't matter much. I

1332
01:15:53,240 --> 01:15:56,160
Speaker 3: don't think anyone believed it, and the case ended in

1333
01:15:56,160 --> 01:15:59,879
Speaker 3: a mistrial over allegations of jury tampering, and Anthony Spilotro

1334
01:16:00,200 --> 01:16:03,839
Speaker 3: went missing before they could retry the case. The mobster

1335
01:16:03,920 --> 01:16:06,120
Speaker 3: and his brother were later found buried in a cornfield

1336
01:16:06,120 --> 01:16:10,280
Speaker 3: in Indiana. Frank Kulatta stayed in the witness protection program

1337
01:16:10,320 --> 01:16:13,000
Speaker 3: for years, and Scorsese hired him as an onset adviser

1338
01:16:13,000 --> 01:16:16,799
Speaker 3: when he shot Casino. Klata died of COVID in twenty twenty,

1339
01:16:18,360 --> 01:16:21,400
Speaker 3: and in nineteen eighty nine, Frank went back to prison

1340
01:16:21,479 --> 01:16:22,280
Speaker 3: for mail fraud.

1341
01:16:22,960 --> 01:16:26,599
Speaker 1: Again. The court record is too old.

1342
01:16:26,400 --> 01:16:28,720
Speaker 3: To get any documents without haggling with an archivist, but

1343
01:16:29,280 --> 01:16:31,719
Speaker 3: the docket sheet does say that, in addition to another

1344
01:16:31,760 --> 01:16:34,840
Speaker 3: fifty seven months in prison, the judge also banned Frank

1345
01:16:34,880 --> 01:16:39,240
Speaker 3: from ever offering anything for sale by mail. So at

1346
01:16:39,240 --> 01:16:41,519
Speaker 3: first I assumed he was pulling the same scam he

1347
01:16:41,600 --> 01:16:44,360
Speaker 3: ran in nineteen seventy six, where he placed ads for

1348
01:16:44,400 --> 01:16:46,760
Speaker 3: guns he didn't actually have and then ghosted would be

1349
01:16:46,760 --> 01:16:50,559
Speaker 3: buyers after they sent him the money. But it's much

1350
01:16:50,600 --> 01:16:53,880
Speaker 3: weirder than that. I wish it was guns. It wasn't guns.

1351
01:16:53,880 --> 01:16:57,640
Speaker 3: This time, he was running what one journalist called.

1352
01:16:57,479 --> 01:16:59,800
Speaker 4: A cat scam.

1353
01:17:00,400 --> 01:17:03,640
Speaker 3: He'd cut the tails off regular house cats and then

1354
01:17:03,760 --> 01:17:07,920
Speaker 3: run ads offering them as exotic purebred cats for three

1355
01:17:08,040 --> 01:17:12,120
Speaker 3: hundred dollars. If he really was as independently wealthy off

1356
01:17:12,160 --> 01:17:15,320
Speaker 3: his inheritance as he claimed, did he really need three

1357
01:17:15,400 --> 01:17:19,200
Speaker 3: hundred dollars for a mutilated cat? Maybe he's just addicted

1358
01:17:19,200 --> 01:17:23,599
Speaker 3: to mail fraud. As for the cats, one of the

1359
01:17:23,640 --> 01:17:26,200
Speaker 3: earliest mentions I could find of Frank in the newspaper

1360
01:17:26,280 --> 01:17:30,520
Speaker 3: archives was a nineteen fifty eight article about the embalmed

1361
01:17:30,640 --> 01:17:34,479
Speaker 3: cat he got for his fifteenth birthday. He was looking

1362
01:17:34,520 --> 01:17:37,280
Speaker 3: forward to dissecting it and adding it to his collection

1363
01:17:37,320 --> 01:17:41,599
Speaker 3: of oddities that already included a cat skeleton. So I

1364
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:44,840
Speaker 3: hope all his fraudulent cats found happy homes, even if

1365
01:17:44,840 --> 01:17:49,120
Speaker 3: their buyers were unhappy about losing three hundred dollars. But

1366
01:17:49,160 --> 01:17:51,400
Speaker 3: it's in an appeals court decision related to a parole

1367
01:17:51,520 --> 01:17:53,960
Speaker 3: violation in this second mail fraud case where we find

1368
01:17:54,000 --> 01:17:57,360
Speaker 3: the details of a campaign of terror against his neighbors

1369
01:17:57,360 --> 01:18:00,400
Speaker 3: that foreshadows the events at the end of this long,

1370
01:18:00,520 --> 01:18:04,720
Speaker 3: strange tale. He was paroled in nineteen ninety two after

1371
01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:07,080
Speaker 3: serving about half of this sentence, and he was on

1372
01:18:07,160 --> 01:18:11,479
Speaker 3: probation for three years. Just days before that three year

1373
01:18:11,520 --> 01:18:14,400
Speaker 3: period ran out, he was charged with a probation violation.

1374
01:18:15,720 --> 01:18:18,920
Speaker 3: He'd been convicted in New Jersey of sending obscene materials

1375
01:18:18,920 --> 01:18:22,160
Speaker 3: through the mail to a minor. I know, I know,

1376
01:18:22,280 --> 01:18:23,920
Speaker 3: this show is starting to feel like a tour of

1377
01:18:23,920 --> 01:18:27,960
Speaker 3: America's weirdest sex crime guys. But to be honest, I

1378
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:31,840
Speaker 3: don't think there was anything sexual in his motivation for

1379
01:18:31,920 --> 01:18:35,160
Speaker 3: sending pornomags to a nine year old. I know that

1380
01:18:35,160 --> 01:18:39,200
Speaker 3: doesn't sound possible. Bear with me, But after he got

1381
01:18:39,200 --> 01:18:41,040
Speaker 3: out of prison, he's living in an apartment back in

1382
01:18:41,040 --> 01:18:44,479
Speaker 3: his hometown of Tenafly, New Jersey. A family of Russian

1383
01:18:44,479 --> 01:18:48,200
Speaker 3: immigrants moves into the apartment next door. They have children.

1384
01:18:48,680 --> 01:18:52,280
Speaker 3: Children are noisy. Frank says he asked them to keep

1385
01:18:52,320 --> 01:18:56,200
Speaker 3: it down, but the noise continued. In what these Second

1386
01:18:56,200 --> 01:18:59,280
Speaker 3: Circuit Court of Appeals would later call a rather bizarre

1387
01:18:59,320 --> 01:19:02,519
Speaker 3: set of circum stances, he decided to get back at

1388
01:19:02,520 --> 01:19:05,799
Speaker 3: these noisy children by engaging in a lengthy harassment campaign

1389
01:19:05,840 --> 01:19:10,000
Speaker 3: against the entire family. At least twice, he shut off

1390
01:19:10,040 --> 01:19:14,200
Speaker 3: their electricity on multiple occasions, he filled the lock on

1391
01:19:14,240 --> 01:19:17,000
Speaker 3: their front door with staples, making it impossible to open.

1392
01:19:18,280 --> 01:19:21,080
Speaker 3: He had the family's mail forwarded to des Moines, Iowa.

1393
01:19:22,600 --> 01:19:25,599
Speaker 3: The father of these noisy children was a doctor. One

1394
01:19:25,640 --> 01:19:27,840
Speaker 3: of his colleagues received a letter purporting to be from

1395
01:19:27,880 --> 01:19:31,040
Speaker 3: an aid's charity informing the recipient that the doctor, the

1396
01:19:31,080 --> 01:19:34,280
Speaker 3: father of those noisy children, had tested positive for HIV.

1397
01:19:35,240 --> 01:19:37,439
Speaker 3: And along that same line of thinking, he also sent

1398
01:19:37,520 --> 01:19:39,560
Speaker 3: a letter to the children's school informing them that the

1399
01:19:39,640 --> 01:19:42,120
Speaker 3: nine year old boy had been exposed to HIV by

1400
01:19:42,200 --> 01:19:45,240
Speaker 3: his father. And he sent letters to the Jewish community

1401
01:19:45,240 --> 01:19:48,120
Speaker 3: center where the family remembers, informing them that the entire

1402
01:19:48,160 --> 01:19:51,760
Speaker 3: family had been exposed to the virus. Remember this is

1403
01:19:51,840 --> 01:19:55,360
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety three. Telling people that this doctor has HIV

1404
01:19:55,479 --> 01:19:58,960
Speaker 3: could ruin his career. The school could call social services

1405
01:19:58,960 --> 01:20:01,760
Speaker 3: in the probably wouldn't be welcome in the sauna at

1406
01:20:01,760 --> 01:20:06,240
Speaker 3: the community center if people believed this. And in what

1407
01:20:06,280 --> 01:20:09,280
Speaker 3: would be his ultimate downfall here, he signed their nine

1408
01:20:09,320 --> 01:20:12,720
Speaker 3: year old son up for catalogs that sold pornographic materials.

1409
01:20:13,840 --> 01:20:16,240
Speaker 1: It seems like he believed that the.

1410
01:20:16,240 --> 01:20:19,320
Speaker 3: Child's father would get the mail, which apparently wasn't going

1411
01:20:19,320 --> 01:20:23,240
Speaker 3: to Iowa anymore see the catalog believe his son had

1412
01:20:23,280 --> 01:20:26,880
Speaker 3: signed up for it and would punish the boy, and

1413
01:20:26,920 --> 01:20:30,000
Speaker 3: if the boy was grounded, he wouldn't be so noisy.

1414
01:20:31,240 --> 01:20:33,919
Speaker 3: But it backfired and Frank was discovered as the culprit.

1415
01:20:34,479 --> 01:20:37,200
Speaker 3: Police searched his apartment and found the typewriter he'd used

1416
01:20:37,200 --> 01:20:40,280
Speaker 3: to write all the letters, and he quickly confessed. He

1417
01:20:40,320 --> 01:20:42,360
Speaker 3: got four months in jail in New Jersey for sending

1418
01:20:42,439 --> 01:20:45,320
Speaker 3: him scene materials to a child, but the parole violation

1419
01:20:45,439 --> 01:20:49,160
Speaker 3: landed him back in federal prison for another year. And

1420
01:20:49,240 --> 01:20:51,120
Speaker 3: maybe this trip back to prison gave him a chance

1421
01:20:51,160 --> 01:20:54,880
Speaker 3: to test out his own advice. You see, between getting

1422
01:20:54,880 --> 01:20:56,880
Speaker 3: out in nineteen ninety two and going back in nineteen

1423
01:20:56,920 --> 01:20:59,920
Speaker 3: ninety five, Frank was profiled in the New York Time.

1424
01:21:01,080 --> 01:21:03,800
Speaker 3: The journalist Charles Strum actually used to write for The

1425
01:21:03,800 --> 01:21:06,280
Speaker 3: Bergen Record, the local paper Frank used to end up

1426
01:21:06,280 --> 01:21:08,040
Speaker 3: in every time he got arrested in the sixties. But

1427
01:21:08,600 --> 01:21:10,800
Speaker 3: Strum didn't come home from college and started the Record

1428
01:21:10,880 --> 01:21:13,800
Speaker 3: until after Frank's arms stand off in the front yard,

1429
01:21:14,600 --> 01:21:18,080
Speaker 3: and they weren't talking about their shared hometown. They were

1430
01:21:18,080 --> 01:21:23,120
Speaker 3: talking about Frank's new consulting business in nineteen ninety four,

1431
01:21:23,160 --> 01:21:25,919
Speaker 3: Frank put a classified ad in USA Today that read.

1432
01:21:27,560 --> 01:21:30,000
Speaker 8: Go into federal prison for the first time, we will

1433
01:21:30,040 --> 01:21:32,680
Speaker 8: tell you what to expect and how to survive. All

1434
01:21:32,720 --> 01:21:37,360
Speaker 8: consultants are graduates of the federal prison system. Frank aysweeneyan Associates,

1435
01:21:37,560 --> 01:21:41,559
Speaker 8: Box fifteen Demarest, New Jersey zero seven six two seven.

1436
01:21:44,160 --> 01:21:46,240
Speaker 3: Frank told Strum that the idea came to him while

1437
01:21:46,240 --> 01:21:48,360
Speaker 3: he was reading the paper one morning in September nineteen

1438
01:21:48,400 --> 01:21:51,799
Speaker 3: ninety three. Lawrence Powell, one of the LA police officers

1439
01:21:51,800 --> 01:21:53,920
Speaker 3: convicted for his role in the beating of Rodney King,

1440
01:21:54,680 --> 01:21:57,800
Speaker 3: was quoted in the paper as being terrified at the

1441
01:21:57,840 --> 01:22:03,519
Speaker 3: prospect of going to prison. Strum rights that Frank told him.

1442
01:22:02,840 --> 01:22:05,599
Speaker 9: I thought to myself, my god, there's probably a lot

1443
01:22:05,600 --> 01:22:07,920
Speaker 9: of people go into prison who's never been in jail before,

1444
01:22:08,320 --> 01:22:12,240
Speaker 9: primarily white collar criminals, and they're probably terrified too, that

1445
01:22:12,479 --> 01:22:15,080
Speaker 9: just as frightened as he is. So I thought maybe

1446
01:22:15,120 --> 01:22:18,080
Speaker 9: I could use my misfortune to help people and maybe

1447
01:22:18,080 --> 01:22:19,080
Speaker 9: make a profit doing it.

1448
01:22:20,800 --> 01:22:23,479
Speaker 3: The article says Frank claims to have twenty seven clients

1449
01:22:23,520 --> 01:22:25,920
Speaker 3: after just a few months of running his new consulting business,

1450
01:22:26,479 --> 01:22:29,160
Speaker 3: though the author also prints without question Frank's claim that

1451
01:22:29,160 --> 01:22:31,120
Speaker 3: he left high school in the eleventh grade because he

1452
01:22:31,240 --> 01:22:34,320
Speaker 3: was bored with it, not because he was in a

1453
01:22:34,360 --> 01:22:38,400
Speaker 3: youth correctional facility for bank robbery. In the article, Strum

1454
01:22:38,400 --> 01:22:41,000
Speaker 3: writes out all of Frank's crimes and convictions, but that

1455
01:22:41,080 --> 01:22:44,760
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty two bank robbery is missing. But again, they

1456
01:22:44,760 --> 01:22:48,840
Speaker 3: didn't have the Internet then. Of his criminal record, Frank

1457
01:22:48,880 --> 01:22:52,160
Speaker 3: told the reporter, I remember it was Nietzsche who wrote

1458
01:22:52,320 --> 01:22:53,840
Speaker 3: the crime is not in the act, but in the

1459
01:22:53,840 --> 01:22:59,040
Speaker 3: stupidity of being caught. I was caught and stupid, and

1460
01:22:59,120 --> 01:23:01,599
Speaker 3: he'd get caught a few more times in the coming years,

1461
01:23:01,640 --> 01:23:05,120
Speaker 3: but he stays humble. That Nietzsche quote is still his

1462
01:23:05,120 --> 01:23:09,400
Speaker 3: favorite to this day. According to his Facebook profile, he

1463
01:23:09,479 --> 01:23:11,439
Speaker 3: had to take a break from his new consulting career

1464
01:23:11,479 --> 01:23:13,400
Speaker 3: when he went away for a year in nineteen ninety five,

1465
01:23:13,439 --> 01:23:15,400
Speaker 3: but he picked right back up when he got out.

1466
01:23:16,000 --> 01:23:18,679
Speaker 3: A nineteen ninety seven Newsweek article about his business claims

1467
01:23:18,720 --> 01:23:21,040
Speaker 3: he was up to eighty seven clients, now with white

1468
01:23:21,040 --> 01:23:23,920
Speaker 3: collar criminals paying Frank one thousand dollars for assistance and

1469
01:23:23,960 --> 01:23:27,519
Speaker 3: getting favorable placement. So not only did Frank promise that

1470
01:23:27,560 --> 01:23:30,880
Speaker 3: he could advise you about the differences in food facilities

1471
01:23:30,920 --> 01:23:34,200
Speaker 3: and culture at different federal prisons. He claimed he had

1472
01:23:34,240 --> 01:23:39,320
Speaker 3: connections and could influence your placement. A Bureau of Prison

1473
01:23:39,400 --> 01:23:42,519
Speaker 3: spokesman denied Frank had any ability to arrange transfers or

1474
01:23:42,560 --> 01:23:46,240
Speaker 3: promise placements at specific facilities, but at least one client

1475
01:23:46,280 --> 01:23:49,040
Speaker 3: told the reporter that prison officials had denied his request

1476
01:23:49,080 --> 01:23:51,640
Speaker 3: for a transfer during a five year sentence for embezzlement,

1477
01:23:52,280 --> 01:23:55,040
Speaker 3: but after he wrote Frank and included a check for

1478
01:23:55,080 --> 01:24:00,760
Speaker 3: one thousand dollars, his transfer came through. Now, promising these

1479
01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:04,000
Speaker 3: transfers seems like it would put Frank back in mail

1480
01:24:04,040 --> 01:24:07,519
Speaker 3: fraud territory. But if he had stopped short of fraud,

1481
01:24:08,200 --> 01:24:10,280
Speaker 3: this isn't actually a terrible way for a guy like

1482
01:24:10,320 --> 01:24:13,479
Speaker 3: Frank to make a living. He really had been in

1483
01:24:13,479 --> 01:24:16,600
Speaker 3: a significant number of our nation's federal prisons. He'd been

1484
01:24:16,640 --> 01:24:20,160
Speaker 3: in facilities all over the country spanning decades. He's in

1485
01:24:20,200 --> 01:24:22,400
Speaker 3: a great position to offer advice about how to get

1486
01:24:22,439 --> 01:24:25,639
Speaker 3: through your sentence as smoothly as possible. So if he'd

1487
01:24:25,680 --> 01:24:29,800
Speaker 3: stuck to lifestyle advice for the incarcerated, I might say

1488
01:24:29,800 --> 01:24:31,960
Speaker 3: that this could have been a success story for Frank.

1489
01:24:33,720 --> 01:24:36,920
Speaker 3: There was another article about his consulting business in nineteen

1490
01:24:37,000 --> 01:24:39,440
Speaker 3: ninety eight, but then he kind of disappears.

1491
01:24:40,000 --> 01:24:41,519
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what he was up to.

1492
01:24:42,720 --> 01:24:44,600
Speaker 3: He pops up briefly in a couple of articles in

1493
01:24:44,600 --> 01:24:47,280
Speaker 3: two thousand and two thousand and one, an old prison

1494
01:24:47,360 --> 01:24:49,360
Speaker 3: friend of his called him from a jail in Reno

1495
01:24:49,479 --> 01:24:52,160
Speaker 3: to ask for help exposing an alleged smuggling ring run

1496
01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:55,200
Speaker 3: by one of the guards out there. In Nevada, David

1497
01:24:55,200 --> 01:24:58,160
Speaker 3: Wayne is described as one of the most dangerous inmates

1498
01:24:58,160 --> 01:25:00,840
Speaker 3: in a state prison system after a variety of escape

1499
01:25:00,840 --> 01:25:05,120
Speaker 3: attempts and prison riots involving Wayne holding hostages, and in

1500
01:25:05,120 --> 01:25:08,320
Speaker 3: two thousand he wanted Frank's help leveraging this information about

1501
01:25:08,320 --> 01:25:12,519
Speaker 3: a corrupt guard to get a better placement. So friend

1502
01:25:12,600 --> 01:25:15,400
Speaker 3: or client hard to say, but the guard did end

1503
01:25:15,439 --> 01:25:17,960
Speaker 3: up charged with smuggling a handcuff key to an inmate,

1504
01:25:18,040 --> 01:25:21,360
Speaker 3: and Frank spent about a year advocating for Wayne's transfer,

1505
01:25:22,479 --> 01:25:25,720
Speaker 3: considering he had once held two prison nurses hostage for

1506
01:25:25,800 --> 01:25:29,840
Speaker 3: twelve hours by rigging up a Rube Goldberg style contraption

1507
01:25:30,000 --> 01:25:32,479
Speaker 3: that would stab the women's eyes out with scalpels if

1508
01:25:32,479 --> 01:25:35,960
Speaker 3: anyone opened the door and had successfully escaped at least once.

1509
01:25:36,640 --> 01:25:39,960
Speaker 3: A low security placement for David Wayne was out of

1510
01:25:39,960 --> 01:25:47,320
Speaker 3: the question, But then quiet Frank moved out to Idaho.

1511
01:25:47,000 --> 01:25:48,160
Speaker 1: And stayed out of the paper.

1512
01:25:49,439 --> 01:25:52,080
Speaker 3: He's not a very good driver, so I know he

1513
01:25:52,120 --> 01:25:54,920
Speaker 3: moved to Ada County, Idaho around two thousand and one,

1514
01:25:54,960 --> 01:25:56,759
Speaker 3: because that's when he started getting a lot of traffic

1515
01:25:56,760 --> 01:25:59,920
Speaker 3: tickets there. In two thousand and eight, he was charged

1516
01:26:00,040 --> 01:26:02,479
Speaker 3: with battery and convicted, but he only served five days

1517
01:26:02,479 --> 01:26:05,960
Speaker 3: in jail and successfully completed his court ordered anger management class.

1518
01:26:07,200 --> 01:26:09,400
Speaker 3: The docket indicates the victim, a woman who appears to

1519
01:26:09,400 --> 01:26:11,640
Speaker 3: be a nursing assistant in the Boise area, got a

1520
01:26:11,640 --> 01:26:15,800
Speaker 3: restraining order. But the Frank Sweeney, who tried to drop

1521
01:26:15,800 --> 01:26:17,720
Speaker 3: a bank and fought in the Bush War and had

1522
01:26:17,760 --> 01:26:20,360
Speaker 3: a mob boss fly him to Vegas and bragged about

1523
01:26:20,400 --> 01:26:24,000
Speaker 3: being able to influence prison officials, that Frank seems to

1524
01:26:24,040 --> 01:26:27,360
Speaker 3: be gone. He's just an old man living in Boise

1525
01:26:29,160 --> 01:26:47,320
Speaker 3: until twenty fifteen. In December of twenty fifteen, Frank went

1526
01:26:47,320 --> 01:26:49,759
Speaker 3: to the post office near his home in Garden City, Idaho.

1527
01:26:50,840 --> 01:26:52,840
Speaker 3: He parked his truck in one of the accessible parking

1528
01:26:52,840 --> 01:26:55,600
Speaker 3: spots out front. A woman saw him get out of

1529
01:26:55,640 --> 01:26:57,960
Speaker 3: his car, which did not have a placard indicating he

1530
01:26:58,000 --> 01:27:01,200
Speaker 3: was supposed to be parked there, said something to him.

1531
01:27:02,040 --> 01:27:05,439
Speaker 3: We don't know exactly what she said. Now, me personally,

1532
01:27:05,479 --> 01:27:08,400
Speaker 3: I probably wouldn't have said anything. For the most part,

1533
01:27:08,439 --> 01:27:10,840
Speaker 3: it's not worth it. It's not your business. There are

1534
01:27:10,840 --> 01:27:13,320
Speaker 3: plenty of people who are not visibly disabled who really

1535
01:27:13,320 --> 01:27:13,760
Speaker 3: do need.

1536
01:27:13,640 --> 01:27:14,479
Speaker 1: Those parking spots.

1537
01:27:14,520 --> 01:27:17,120
Speaker 3: And Frank was in his seventies at this point, so

1538
01:27:17,360 --> 01:27:20,160
Speaker 3: even if he didn't have a state issued parking placard,

1539
01:27:20,600 --> 01:27:21,120
Speaker 3: he's old.

1540
01:27:21,680 --> 01:27:23,200
Speaker 1: Just leave him alone.

1541
01:27:23,360 --> 01:27:26,320
Speaker 3: But she made a comment about it, and the situation

1542
01:27:26,479 --> 01:27:32,040
Speaker 3: escalated pretty seriously. Court documents only say that they had

1543
01:27:32,040 --> 01:27:35,400
Speaker 3: a verbal altercation, so at least she didn't get stabbed,

1544
01:27:35,400 --> 01:27:38,960
Speaker 3: which he's done at least twice to people who offended him.

1545
01:27:39,479 --> 01:27:42,519
Speaker 3: But whatever she said, and for whatever reasons she chose

1546
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:47,240
Speaker 3: to say it, she didn't deserve what happened next. The

1547
01:27:47,320 --> 01:27:49,519
Speaker 3: victims in this case are referred to only by their

1548
01:27:49,520 --> 01:27:53,080
Speaker 3: initials in the court record for obvious reasons. But it

1549
01:27:53,120 --> 01:27:54,840
Speaker 3: can be tricky to keep track of people with just

1550
01:27:54,880 --> 01:27:56,840
Speaker 3: a letter, so I've given them all fake names just

1551
01:27:56,880 --> 01:27:59,559
Speaker 3: to make this a little easier. We'll call the woman

1552
01:27:59,560 --> 01:28:03,280
Speaker 3: from the park Ellen, her husband will be Sam, and

1553
01:28:03,320 --> 01:28:07,360
Speaker 3: their adult daughters will be Kayla and Lucy. Again, it

1554
01:28:07,439 --> 01:28:10,120
Speaker 3: is possible to figure out who these people are, but

1555
01:28:10,840 --> 01:28:11,479
Speaker 3: please don't.

1556
01:28:11,800 --> 01:28:12,719
Speaker 1: They've been through enough.

1557
01:28:14,479 --> 01:28:16,800
Speaker 3: Two weeks after that heated exchange in the post office

1558
01:28:16,840 --> 01:28:21,920
Speaker 3: parking lot, the postcard started. The probation office in Boise

1559
01:28:22,040 --> 01:28:25,280
Speaker 3: got the first one. Ellen's adult daughter, Kayla, was at

1560
01:28:25,280 --> 01:28:29,240
Speaker 3: the time on probation for a misdemeanor dui charge. The

1561
01:28:29,320 --> 01:28:31,479
Speaker 3: letter writer claimed that he had just the night before

1562
01:28:31,560 --> 01:28:33,280
Speaker 3: been in the car with Kayla and she was so

1563
01:28:33,439 --> 01:28:35,360
Speaker 3: drunk that he had to jump out at a red

1564
01:28:35,439 --> 01:28:39,360
Speaker 3: light for his own safety. Ellen's husband, Sam, received a

1565
01:28:39,400 --> 01:28:42,000
Speaker 3: postcard at his dental office the same day informing him

1566
01:28:42,000 --> 01:28:43,600
Speaker 3: that his wife had been in the post office the

1567
01:28:43,600 --> 01:28:45,519
Speaker 3: week before and she was so drunk that she was

1568
01:28:45,560 --> 01:28:50,240
Speaker 3: falling down. The letter, though very brief, contained a lot

1569
01:28:50,280 --> 01:28:54,920
Speaker 3: of really specific personal information, the fact that the couple

1570
01:28:54,960 --> 01:28:57,599
Speaker 3: had very recently purchased a new home, including the name

1571
01:28:57,640 --> 01:29:00,639
Speaker 3: of the suburb where they now lived, the city where

1572
01:29:00,640 --> 01:29:03,200
Speaker 3: their other adult daughter lived, the names of both of

1573
01:29:03,280 --> 01:29:07,719
Speaker 3: their daughters, and information about Kayla's arrest. That year, Ellen

1574
01:29:07,760 --> 01:29:10,160
Speaker 3: received a third postcard that week addressed to her at home.

1575
01:29:11,080 --> 01:29:14,320
Speaker 3: This one contained her social Security number and an allegation

1576
01:29:14,439 --> 01:29:17,520
Speaker 3: that her daughter Lucy, was engaged in acts of prostitution

1577
01:29:17,840 --> 01:29:21,960
Speaker 3: at her place of work, which was named after the

1578
01:29:21,960 --> 01:29:24,799
Speaker 3: family received the first postcards. In December of twenty fifteen,

1579
01:29:24,880 --> 01:29:27,160
Speaker 3: they met with detectives at the Aida County Sheriff's office

1580
01:29:27,160 --> 01:29:31,719
Speaker 3: in Boise, and despite investigator's best efforts, the family would

1581
01:29:31,720 --> 01:29:36,560
Speaker 3: continue to receive increasingly bizarre and frightening postcards for three

1582
01:29:36,840 --> 01:29:42,439
Speaker 3: full years. Their neighbors and nearby schools received postcards that

1583
01:29:42,520 --> 01:29:45,280
Speaker 3: appeared to be from the State Sex Offender Registry informing

1584
01:29:45,320 --> 01:29:48,320
Speaker 3: them that Sam was a sex offender, specifically that he

1585
01:29:48,360 --> 01:29:51,559
Speaker 3: had sodomized a nine year old boy in nineteen seventy eight.

1586
01:29:52,600 --> 01:29:55,280
Speaker 3: It probably goes without saying, but I will say it anyway.

1587
01:29:55,920 --> 01:29:56,880
Speaker 1: That is not true.

1588
01:29:58,160 --> 01:30:00,320
Speaker 3: But it does kind of remind you of what Frank

1589
01:30:00,360 --> 01:30:03,120
Speaker 3: died to that doctor in nineteen ninety three, doesn't it,

1590
01:30:04,560 --> 01:30:07,800
Speaker 3: adding to the victim's distress. Sam passed away unexpectedly in

1591
01:30:07,920 --> 01:30:10,200
Speaker 3: January of twenty sixteen, just a few weeks after all

1592
01:30:10,240 --> 01:30:14,320
Speaker 3: this started, and obviously Frank knew one of his victims

1593
01:30:14,360 --> 01:30:16,759
Speaker 3: was dead. Some of the letters sent to the man's

1594
01:30:16,840 --> 01:30:19,680
Speaker 3: daughters taunted and blamed them for driving their father into

1595
01:30:19,720 --> 01:30:23,680
Speaker 3: an early grave, But oddly, some of the letters pretended otherwise.

1596
01:30:25,000 --> 01:30:27,920
Speaker 3: While most of the postcards were signed Carson Wells, the

1597
01:30:28,000 --> 01:30:30,479
Speaker 3: name of Woody Harrelson's character in the movie No Country

1598
01:30:30,479 --> 01:30:33,200
Speaker 3: for Old Men, some were signed with the names of

1599
01:30:33,240 --> 01:30:36,880
Speaker 3: her own children. Ellen received one of those just two

1600
01:30:36,920 --> 01:30:39,920
Speaker 3: months after her husband's death, purporting to be from her

1601
01:30:39,960 --> 01:30:43,360
Speaker 3: daughter Lucy, who lived out of state. It said, dear Mommy,

1602
01:30:43,680 --> 01:30:45,640
Speaker 3: my blood test just came back and yes, I am

1603
01:30:45,760 --> 01:30:48,840
Speaker 3: HIV positive. I'm sure I was infected by one of

1604
01:30:48,880 --> 01:30:52,440
Speaker 3: the two crips with whom I was having an affair with. Regrettably,

1605
01:30:52,479 --> 01:30:54,080
Speaker 3: I will never be able to give you and Daddy

1606
01:30:54,120 --> 01:30:57,519
Speaker 3: the grandchildren you so desired. But we know now that

1607
01:30:57,560 --> 01:31:00,200
Speaker 3: Daddy is a pedophile. He may have harmed the grand

1608
01:31:00,800 --> 01:31:04,280
Speaker 3: has he been released from jail. And again, this is

1609
01:31:04,320 --> 01:31:07,840
Speaker 3: a woman who just lost her husband. She knows this

1610
01:31:07,880 --> 01:31:11,040
Speaker 3: postcard isn't from her adult daughter. Even if she hadn't

1611
01:31:11,040 --> 01:31:14,320
Speaker 3: already gotten a dozen other bizarre postcards, she would know

1612
01:31:14,439 --> 01:31:17,679
Speaker 3: that no one's writing their mother a postcard on a typewriter.

1613
01:31:17,760 --> 01:31:22,240
Speaker 3: It's not nineteen thirty two, and again the recently deceased

1614
01:31:22,240 --> 01:31:26,000
Speaker 3: man was not a pedophile, nor was he in jail.

1615
01:31:27,240 --> 01:31:31,720
Speaker 3: He had just been buried by his family. Ellen and

1616
01:31:31,720 --> 01:31:35,760
Speaker 3: both of her daughters continued getting postcards even after Ellen moved,

1617
01:31:36,439 --> 01:31:38,799
Speaker 3: and Frank was also sending the postcards to other people

1618
01:31:38,880 --> 01:31:42,240
Speaker 3: pretending to be members of the family. The Idaho Black

1619
01:31:42,280 --> 01:31:45,040
Speaker 3: History Museum received one signed with Ellen's name, address, and

1620
01:31:45,080 --> 01:31:48,280
Speaker 3: phone number that was so laden with racial slurs that

1621
01:31:48,320 --> 01:31:50,840
Speaker 3: you can barely tell what it's supposed to be trying

1622
01:31:50,840 --> 01:31:55,000
Speaker 3: to say. Lucy's boss received one advising him that his

1623
01:31:55,040 --> 01:32:01,080
Speaker 3: employee was having rectal intercourse with black men, although described

1624
01:32:01,080 --> 01:32:06,080
Speaker 3: that in more vivid terms. Now, for as strange as

1625
01:32:06,080 --> 01:32:08,400
Speaker 3: this man's life has been, you'd be forgiven if he

1626
01:32:08,479 --> 01:32:12,240
Speaker 3: forgot where we started. Frank is a Nazi. He was

1627
01:32:12,280 --> 01:32:14,559
Speaker 3: a member of the American Nazi Party, and he fought

1628
01:32:14,560 --> 01:32:17,760
Speaker 3: as a Rhodesian mercenary. He's not just a guy who

1629
01:32:17,840 --> 01:32:21,280
Speaker 3: loves doing mail fraud and hates his neighbors. He's very racist,

1630
01:32:22,240 --> 01:32:24,880
Speaker 3: and a lot of these postcards fixated on the idea

1631
01:32:24,960 --> 01:32:29,520
Speaker 3: that Ellen's daughters were engaged in interracial relationships, very graphically

1632
01:32:29,560 --> 01:32:33,400
Speaker 3: and racistly describing specific sex acts that they were, in

1633
01:32:33,479 --> 01:32:38,000
Speaker 3: his mind having with black partners, and he was particularly

1634
01:32:38,120 --> 01:32:40,760
Speaker 3: upset that Ellen, a Latina, had married a white man.

1635
01:32:41,880 --> 01:32:44,519
Speaker 3: He called her racial slurs and wrote to her daughters

1636
01:32:44,560 --> 01:32:48,920
Speaker 3: calling them mongrels. It seems the only time he wasn't

1637
01:32:48,920 --> 01:32:50,960
Speaker 3: sending postcards was when he was out of the country.

1638
01:32:51,840 --> 01:32:56,360
Speaker 3: You see, he might have another wife. It's not entirely clear,

1639
01:32:57,400 --> 01:32:59,719
Speaker 3: but several times a year Frank would travel to Effort,

1640
01:33:00,080 --> 01:33:02,719
Speaker 3: the capital of the German state of Taringia in central Germany,

1641
01:33:03,280 --> 01:33:05,559
Speaker 3: to visit a woman he's known for a very long time,

1642
01:33:07,080 --> 01:33:10,160
Speaker 3: Uta Schernig, who performs semi professionally as a belly dancer

1643
01:33:10,200 --> 01:33:14,000
Speaker 3: under the name Madame Chamila, has on several occasions referred

1644
01:33:14,040 --> 01:33:17,800
Speaker 3: to Frank as her husband. This may be literal, it

1645
01:33:17,800 --> 01:33:21,400
Speaker 3: may be a cheeky little joke. My German is not

1646
01:33:21,600 --> 01:33:25,600
Speaker 3: good enough to really read tone, and it may just

1647
01:33:25,640 --> 01:33:27,479
Speaker 3: be that they've been in a relationship for so long

1648
01:33:27,520 --> 01:33:31,000
Speaker 3: that they think of each other this way. My research

1649
01:33:31,040 --> 01:33:34,479
Speaker 3: game is strong, but a potentially non existent German marriage

1650
01:33:34,479 --> 01:33:38,599
Speaker 3: certificate evades my grasp. Nevertheless, he does own a home

1651
01:33:38,640 --> 01:33:42,040
Speaker 3: in Effort, and she lives in it. She refers to

1652
01:33:42,080 --> 01:33:46,000
Speaker 3: him occasionally as her house Positzer, which you could translate

1653
01:33:46,040 --> 01:33:49,360
Speaker 3: as landlord, but you wouldn't really, you'd call the person

1654
01:33:49,400 --> 01:33:52,920
Speaker 3: you rent your home from your fermeter house Positzer just

1655
01:33:53,000 --> 01:33:57,879
Speaker 3: means he owns her house, and he occasionally calls her Liebchen,

1656
01:33:58,160 --> 01:34:02,760
Speaker 3: my love, and she calls Frankie when he visited in

1657
01:34:02,800 --> 01:34:04,680
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen and they went to see her mother in

1658
01:34:04,720 --> 01:34:08,160
Speaker 3: the nursing home together. Her photocaptions are about Frank's visit

1659
01:34:08,240 --> 01:34:11,439
Speaker 3: to his mother in law. As with so much in

1660
01:34:11,479 --> 01:34:14,760
Speaker 3: Frank's life, it's hard to pin this down. I have

1661
01:34:14,800 --> 01:34:16,640
Speaker 3: a handful of photos of Frank with this woman that

1662
01:34:16,680 --> 01:34:19,120
Speaker 3: appeared to be from the eighties or early nineties based

1663
01:34:19,160 --> 01:34:22,960
Speaker 3: on the photo quality, Frank's apparent age, and to be honest,

1664
01:34:23,200 --> 01:34:28,040
Speaker 3: her hair. But we're talking about Germany, so dating by

1665
01:34:28,080 --> 01:34:31,120
Speaker 3: the fashion could put us off by a decade or more.

1666
01:34:31,800 --> 01:34:35,280
Speaker 3: No offense, you know, it's true, But at least in

1667
01:34:35,400 --> 01:34:38,599
Speaker 3: the present era of his life, he's visiting Germany every

1668
01:34:38,640 --> 01:34:42,920
Speaker 3: now and again. She breeds and shows Mexican and Peruvian

1669
01:34:42,960 --> 01:34:45,920
Speaker 3: hairless dogs, some of which have been quite successful internationally.

1670
01:34:46,840 --> 01:34:49,000
Speaker 3: Some of her show dogs list Frank Sweeney as a

1671
01:34:49,000 --> 01:34:53,120
Speaker 3: co owner in September of twenty sixteen. His victims had

1672
01:34:53,160 --> 01:34:56,000
Speaker 3: a brief reprieve from his letters because he was in

1673
01:34:56,040 --> 01:35:00,559
Speaker 3: Germany attending a seminar on dog genetics with Ute. These

1674
01:35:00,760 --> 01:35:03,519
Speaker 3: rare breed dogs are very prone to genetic problems and

1675
01:35:03,640 --> 01:35:06,160
Speaker 3: in breeding, so I'm glad they're staying on top of

1676
01:35:06,160 --> 01:35:09,479
Speaker 3: best practices, I guess. But when he was at home

1677
01:35:09,520 --> 01:35:14,360
Speaker 3: in Idaho, the campaign of harassment was relentless. He even

1678
01:35:14,360 --> 01:35:18,000
Speaker 3: found a way to outsource the terror. Frank sent postcards

1679
01:35:18,040 --> 01:35:21,639
Speaker 3: to inmates in prisons all over the country. He signed

1680
01:35:21,640 --> 01:35:24,760
Speaker 3: them with Ellen's name and address, and requested that the

1681
01:35:24,800 --> 01:35:29,799
Speaker 3: men write her back. She received at least seventy five letters,

1682
01:35:29,840 --> 01:35:33,880
Speaker 3: all addressed to her at home from murderers and as

1683
01:35:33,920 --> 01:35:36,519
Speaker 3: if she might not get it, like maybe she didn't

1684
01:35:36,520 --> 01:35:38,400
Speaker 3: put two and two together here, Like maybe she thought

1685
01:35:38,400 --> 01:35:42,479
Speaker 3: this was some totally separate, unrelated new problem she just

1686
01:35:42,560 --> 01:35:45,640
Speaker 3: happens to be having. Frank made sure she understood that

1687
01:35:46,000 --> 01:35:50,200
Speaker 3: he did this. He sent her numerous postcards explaining the situation.

1688
01:35:52,520 --> 01:35:56,120
Speaker 9: Every creep, every social degenerate who has written to you,

1689
01:35:56,240 --> 01:35:59,960
Speaker 9: has your address, social Security number, and date of birth.

1690
01:36:00,439 --> 01:36:01,679
Speaker 8: Likewise for Lucy too.

1691
01:36:02,200 --> 01:36:04,640
Speaker 9: Some of these freaks have already passed this information on

1692
01:36:04,800 --> 01:36:08,559
Speaker 9: to their criminal friends outside of prison. Last month, I've

1693
01:36:08,640 --> 01:36:11,160
Speaker 9: visited your house twice in the early morning hours while

1694
01:36:11,160 --> 01:36:14,960
Speaker 9: you slept naturally, I've removed my license plates so that

1695
01:36:15,040 --> 01:36:18,439
Speaker 9: street cameras could not identify my car, and I still

1696
01:36:18,479 --> 01:36:21,960
Speaker 9: patrol the post office daily in an effort to spot you.

1697
01:36:21,960 --> 01:36:24,040
Speaker 8: You only have your big mouth to blame for all

1698
01:36:24,080 --> 01:36:24,400
Speaker 8: of this.

1699
01:36:27,080 --> 01:36:29,719
Speaker 3: In December of twenty sixteen, after the first full year,

1700
01:36:30,400 --> 01:36:33,759
Speaker 3: he wrote to her, saying it was their anniversary, telling

1701
01:36:33,800 --> 01:36:37,880
Speaker 3: her I intend to be with you her life. The

1702
01:36:37,960 --> 01:36:40,000
Speaker 3: letter has just kept coming, reminding her that he was

1703
01:36:40,040 --> 01:36:42,559
Speaker 3: watching her outside her home, that he waited for her

1704
01:36:42,560 --> 01:36:45,240
Speaker 3: at the post office almost every day, and sending her

1705
01:36:45,280 --> 01:36:48,960
Speaker 3: postcards containing her own personal information like her license plate

1706
01:36:49,080 --> 01:36:52,280
Speaker 3: number and information about her family, just.

1707
01:36:52,240 --> 01:36:53,599
Speaker 1: So she knew he had it too.

1708
01:36:54,960 --> 01:36:57,000
Speaker 3: He continued writing to Ellen and both of her daughters,

1709
01:36:57,040 --> 01:37:00,519
Speaker 3: calling the racial slurs, slots whores, threatening to report them

1710
01:37:00,520 --> 01:37:04,240
Speaker 3: for assorted imaginary crimes like tax fraud and drug dealing,

1711
01:37:04,280 --> 01:37:09,680
Speaker 3: and always remembering to write them on their birthdays. Investigators

1712
01:37:09,680 --> 01:37:12,680
Speaker 3: were stumped. They knew the letter writer was the man

1713
01:37:12,720 --> 01:37:14,960
Speaker 3: from the post office parking lot. He said as much

1714
01:37:15,000 --> 01:37:15,599
Speaker 3: in his letters.

1715
01:37:15,640 --> 01:37:19,240
Speaker 1: But Ellen didn't recognize him. She had only a.

1716
01:37:19,280 --> 01:37:21,840
Speaker 3: Vague description of his vehicle, and she didn't get the

1717
01:37:21,880 --> 01:37:24,760
Speaker 3: license plate. Why would she have thought she needed to.

1718
01:37:26,400 --> 01:37:29,720
Speaker 3: Postcards were always wiped clean of prints. They were perfectly

1719
01:37:29,760 --> 01:37:33,160
Speaker 3: generic United States Postal Service issued materials that he always

1720
01:37:33,160 --> 01:37:37,679
Speaker 3: bought in small quantities and paid cash. He may truly

1721
01:37:37,800 --> 01:37:40,120
Speaker 3: have tormented this woman until one of them died if

1722
01:37:40,160 --> 01:37:46,400
Speaker 3: he hadn't done what he's always done, more crime. And

1723
01:37:46,479 --> 01:37:49,960
Speaker 3: here's that beginning of the end. It's not the end.

1724
01:37:50,000 --> 01:37:51,880
Speaker 3: But I told you this story that began outside of

1725
01:37:51,920 --> 01:37:54,040
Speaker 3: a bank in New Jersey in nineteen sixty two would

1726
01:37:54,040 --> 01:37:56,599
Speaker 3: start its final chapter outside of a bank in.

1727
01:37:56,560 --> 01:37:58,320
Speaker 1: Idaho fifty six years later.

1728
01:38:00,160 --> 01:38:04,639
Speaker 3: On October thirteenth, twenty eighteen, Frank got into another argument

1729
01:38:04,680 --> 01:38:08,280
Speaker 3: in a parking lot. These victims, too, are only identified

1730
01:38:08,280 --> 01:38:10,360
Speaker 3: by their initials in the court records. So I'm going

1731
01:38:10,400 --> 01:38:13,720
Speaker 3: to call them Liam and Denise. They were in their

1732
01:38:13,720 --> 01:38:17,880
Speaker 3: car outside the Wells Fargo in Garden City, Idaho. Frank

1733
01:38:17,880 --> 01:38:21,840
Speaker 3: conked at them. There was again some kind of verbal altercation.

1734
01:38:22,280 --> 01:38:24,920
Speaker 3: Maybe they gave him the finger or shouted, who knows,

1735
01:38:25,000 --> 01:38:26,880
Speaker 3: you know, this is the kind of thing that happens

1736
01:38:26,920 --> 01:38:29,000
Speaker 3: every day. You know, you don't pull forward fast enough.

1737
01:38:29,040 --> 01:38:31,400
Speaker 3: The guy behind you honks. You tell him to fuck off.

1738
01:38:31,479 --> 01:38:36,479
Speaker 3: Nobody's being their best selves, but life goes on, but

1739
01:38:36,560 --> 01:38:40,240
Speaker 3: not for Frank. Frank can't take it. He stabbed a

1740
01:38:40,280 --> 01:38:43,040
Speaker 3: guy in the guts for splashing him in nineteen seventy five.

1741
01:38:44,479 --> 01:38:47,559
Speaker 3: So two weeks after Liam and Denise experienced this angry

1742
01:38:47,640 --> 01:38:53,040
Speaker 3: driver at the bank, they start getting postcards. Like Ellen

1743
01:38:53,040 --> 01:38:56,320
Speaker 3: and her family, this family, too, starts hearing that their

1744
01:38:56,680 --> 01:38:59,680
Speaker 3: neighbors and nearby schools are getting postcards that pretend to

1745
01:38:59,720 --> 01:39:02,920
Speaker 3: be from the state Sex Offender Registry, alerting people that

1746
01:39:02,960 --> 01:39:08,320
Speaker 3: Liam is a pedophile. He's not, And specifically, the postcards

1747
01:39:08,320 --> 01:39:12,040
Speaker 3: say that he sodomized a nine year old boy. That

1748
01:39:12,200 --> 01:39:16,959
Speaker 3: is a very specific and very gross detail to recycle

1749
01:39:16,960 --> 01:39:19,519
Speaker 3: from one victim to the next, right like that, that

1750
01:39:19,600 --> 01:39:23,439
Speaker 3: has to mean something, but I can't figure it out,

1751
01:39:23,479 --> 01:39:27,360
Speaker 3: and maybe that's for the best. These postcards, too, are

1752
01:39:27,479 --> 01:39:30,759
Speaker 3: generic ones from the post office, typed on a manual typewriter.

1753
01:39:31,160 --> 01:39:34,240
Speaker 3: And again, some of the postcards are signed Carson Wells,

1754
01:39:34,840 --> 01:39:38,680
Speaker 3: and sometimes they're signed with the name of Liam's adult son.

1755
01:39:38,880 --> 01:39:42,080
Speaker 3: And again there were letters to the family from murderers

1756
01:39:42,560 --> 01:39:46,960
Speaker 3: answering requests for pen pals. But you know what, the

1757
01:39:47,000 --> 01:39:52,559
Speaker 3: bank has a lot of security cameras, and unbeknownst to Frank,

1758
01:39:52,760 --> 01:39:56,439
Speaker 3: shortly before he started terrorizing his second set of victims,

1759
01:39:57,240 --> 01:40:01,320
Speaker 3: his case wasn't just a local matter anymore. In September

1760
01:40:01,320 --> 01:40:05,599
Speaker 3: of twenty eighteen, the United States Postal Inspector Service started

1761
01:40:05,600 --> 01:40:10,760
Speaker 3: looking into the postcards. That's right, the Mail Police. That

1762
01:40:10,880 --> 01:40:14,360
Speaker 3: is a very real federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction

1763
01:40:14,479 --> 01:40:18,799
Speaker 3: over mail crimes. According to their most recent annual report,

1764
01:40:18,880 --> 01:40:22,960
Speaker 3: the USPIS initiated more than fifty six hundred investigations in

1765
01:40:23,000 --> 01:40:26,439
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three, and during that year, forty one hundred

1766
01:40:26,479 --> 01:40:30,400
Speaker 3: cases related to their investigations ended in convictions. Most of

1767
01:40:30,439 --> 01:40:35,800
Speaker 3: those numbers are things like mail theft and people mailing drugs. Also,

1768
01:40:35,920 --> 01:40:39,520
Speaker 3: though a couple hundred people a year are assaulting postal employees,

1769
01:40:40,240 --> 01:40:41,000
Speaker 3: knock that off.

1770
01:40:41,320 --> 01:40:41,880
Speaker 1: Don't do that.

1771
01:40:42,200 --> 01:40:45,760
Speaker 3: Be nice to your mail carrier. So now we have

1772
01:40:45,800 --> 01:40:48,519
Speaker 3: the Mail Police on the case, and as soon as

1773
01:40:48,560 --> 01:40:50,960
Speaker 3: they start trying to figure out what's going on here. Again,

1774
01:40:51,000 --> 01:40:53,800
Speaker 3: this is September of twenty eighteen, they're just looking at

1775
01:40:53,800 --> 01:40:56,559
Speaker 3: the postcards to Ellen and her family, But within a

1776
01:40:56,560 --> 01:40:59,280
Speaker 3: few weeks of them opening the investigation, the Idaho State

1777
01:40:59,320 --> 01:41:03,120
Speaker 3: Police let them know that someone is sending postcards pretending

1778
01:41:03,160 --> 01:41:06,240
Speaker 3: to be from their office. And these are these postcards

1779
01:41:06,280 --> 01:41:09,320
Speaker 3: about how Liam is a pedophile that are being sent

1780
01:41:09,360 --> 01:41:13,280
Speaker 3: to schools and neighbors. And because these postcards are made

1781
01:41:13,320 --> 01:41:15,599
Speaker 3: to look as though they are coming from the State

1782
01:41:15,640 --> 01:41:18,599
Speaker 3: Sex Offender Registry, which is run by the state police,

1783
01:41:19,240 --> 01:41:22,080
Speaker 3: people are contacting the state police about them. And now

1784
01:41:22,120 --> 01:41:24,960
Speaker 3: the state police are talking to the mail police, and

1785
01:41:25,000 --> 01:41:28,000
Speaker 3: now the mail cops see that there are more victims,

1786
01:41:28,720 --> 01:41:30,760
Speaker 3: and all of these postcards seem to be from the

1787
01:41:30,760 --> 01:41:35,120
Speaker 3: same person. When postal investigators speak to both families and

1788
01:41:35,160 --> 01:41:38,479
Speaker 3: compare the letters, it's clear they're all from the same person.

1789
01:41:39,600 --> 01:41:42,040
Speaker 3: All of the victims say they know who is sending

1790
01:41:42,120 --> 01:41:45,240
Speaker 3: them these postcards, they just don't know who he is.

1791
01:41:46,080 --> 01:41:48,360
Speaker 3: Ellen knows it's the guy from the post office. Liam

1792
01:41:48,439 --> 01:41:49,360
Speaker 3: knows it's the guy.

1793
01:41:49,200 --> 01:41:49,800
Speaker 1: From the bank.

1794
01:41:50,280 --> 01:41:53,720
Speaker 3: And they both describe some kind of older truck and

1795
01:41:53,800 --> 01:41:57,000
Speaker 3: an older man who's thin with a stiff gait and

1796
01:41:57,080 --> 01:42:03,160
Speaker 3: a very terrible distinctive skull on his face. They're describing

1797
01:42:03,160 --> 01:42:06,760
Speaker 3: the same man, and surely a bank teller or a

1798
01:42:06,800 --> 01:42:11,719
Speaker 3: postal service clerk would recognize a description like that. Local

1799
01:42:11,720 --> 01:42:15,200
Speaker 3: cops had shown Ellen photo lineups on multiple occasions over

1800
01:42:15,240 --> 01:42:18,160
Speaker 3: the last three years as they're investigating this, but Frank

1801
01:42:18,240 --> 01:42:20,680
Speaker 3: was never a suspect, so he was never in any

1802
01:42:20,760 --> 01:42:23,400
Speaker 3: of the photo arrays. So each time they showed her

1803
01:42:23,439 --> 01:42:27,759
Speaker 3: photos of potential suspects, she said, he's not here because

1804
01:42:27,800 --> 01:42:30,960
Speaker 3: he wasn't and so she never picked out any other

1805
01:42:31,439 --> 01:42:35,000
Speaker 3: possible suspect. But once the postal investigator zeroed in on

1806
01:42:35,040 --> 01:42:37,599
Speaker 3: the man in the bank security footage, both Ellen and

1807
01:42:37,680 --> 01:42:42,480
Speaker 3: Liam separately identified him in photo lineups, and bank employees

1808
01:42:42,520 --> 01:42:46,120
Speaker 3: did know who he was, so by Christmas of twenty eighteen,

1809
01:42:46,160 --> 01:42:50,320
Speaker 3: the male police have Frank's bank records. He's been paying

1810
01:42:50,320 --> 01:42:54,280
Speaker 3: a private investigator. That's how he knew so much personal

1811
01:42:54,320 --> 01:42:57,680
Speaker 3: information about all of his victims, information about their real

1812
01:42:57,800 --> 01:43:00,719
Speaker 3: estate transactions, what kinds of cars they drove, where they worked,

1813
01:43:00,720 --> 01:43:03,519
Speaker 3: where their adult children lived in different cities and states.

1814
01:43:04,400 --> 01:43:05,680
Speaker 1: Is paying a PI.

1815
01:43:07,320 --> 01:43:10,000
Speaker 3: Idaho is one of several states where you don't actually

1816
01:43:10,040 --> 01:43:12,479
Speaker 3: have to have a license of any kind to offer

1817
01:43:12,520 --> 01:43:15,800
Speaker 3: your services as a PI, so she doesn't have one

1818
01:43:15,800 --> 01:43:18,719
Speaker 3: that can be taken away, and she hasn't been.

1819
01:43:18,640 --> 01:43:19,519
Speaker 1: Charged of anything.

1820
01:43:20,680 --> 01:43:24,040
Speaker 3: Maybe she only helped Frank with information that didn't cross

1821
01:43:24,040 --> 01:43:27,160
Speaker 3: a line, and maybe she didn't ask enough questions about

1822
01:43:27,280 --> 01:43:31,200
Speaker 3: what he was doing with it. It remains unclear how

1823
01:43:31,200 --> 01:43:35,599
Speaker 3: he got everyone's Social Security numbers, though, but the PI

1824
01:43:35,720 --> 01:43:37,799
Speaker 3: he was paying is a woman in her eighties who

1825
01:43:37,840 --> 01:43:39,680
Speaker 3: seems to still be in the business just for the

1826
01:43:39,720 --> 01:43:43,120
Speaker 3: love of the game. Barbara Jacobson describes herself on her

1827
01:43:43,120 --> 01:43:46,599
Speaker 3: website as a cross between Nancy Drew and Jessica Fletcher

1828
01:43:46,640 --> 01:43:49,960
Speaker 3: with the tenacity of Colombo, and credits her success to

1829
01:43:49,960 --> 01:43:54,240
Speaker 3: her Christian faith and divine intervention. An article in a

1830
01:43:54,280 --> 01:43:58,439
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen issue of Christian Living magazine quotes her as saying,

1831
01:43:59,120 --> 01:44:00,599
Speaker 3: God is my business partner.

1832
01:44:02,240 --> 01:44:02,719
Speaker 1: Now again.

1833
01:44:02,760 --> 01:44:06,040
Speaker 3: This woman has not been charged with a crime, but

1834
01:44:06,160 --> 01:44:09,320
Speaker 3: it seems like a bad sign that she either didn't

1835
01:44:09,360 --> 01:44:13,000
Speaker 3: know or didn't care that the client asking her for

1836
01:44:13,080 --> 01:44:16,519
Speaker 3: a lot of personal information on people had a five

1837
01:44:16,600 --> 01:44:21,080
Speaker 3: decade long rap sheet that included convictions related to harassment

1838
01:44:21,120 --> 01:44:25,920
Speaker 3: by mail. You're either deeply unscrupulous or very bad at

1839
01:44:25,920 --> 01:44:30,840
Speaker 3: your job, and I'm not sure which is worse. Either way,

1840
01:44:30,920 --> 01:44:35,000
Speaker 3: this investigation is rapidly coming together. The postal investigator has

1841
01:44:35,040 --> 01:44:38,200
Speaker 3: Frank's bank records, He's been identified by the victims. They're

1842
01:44:38,240 --> 01:44:41,880
Speaker 3: closing in on him, and maybe he knows, maybe he doesn't.

1843
01:44:42,680 --> 01:44:45,920
Speaker 3: He did move very suddenly in February twenty nineteen, leaving

1844
01:44:45,960 --> 01:44:48,479
Speaker 3: the house he'd been renting for over a decade right

1845
01:44:48,520 --> 01:44:51,439
Speaker 3: as they got the warrant to search it, and renting

1846
01:44:51,479 --> 01:44:55,160
Speaker 3: a different house nearby. But he's still sending the letters.

1847
01:44:56,080 --> 01:44:57,680
Speaker 3: So if he knows they're onto him, why is he

1848
01:44:57,760 --> 01:45:02,320
Speaker 3: still sending the letters. On February thirteenth, twenty nineteen, six

1849
01:45:02,360 --> 01:45:05,720
Speaker 3: weeks after they know Frank's their guy, right around the

1850
01:45:05,760 --> 01:45:08,880
Speaker 3: time that he's moving to his new house, a clerk

1851
01:45:08,920 --> 01:45:11,240
Speaker 3: at the post office calls the investigator to say that

1852
01:45:11,280 --> 01:45:14,040
Speaker 3: an old man with a terrible scar on his face

1853
01:45:14,920 --> 01:45:18,320
Speaker 3: just bought a stack of postcards with cash, and the

1854
01:45:18,360 --> 01:45:23,719
Speaker 3: last postcard arrived on February nineteenth, twenty nineteen. It signed

1855
01:45:23,760 --> 01:45:26,400
Speaker 3: Carson Wells, but the writer identifies himself as the man

1856
01:45:26,439 --> 01:45:28,200
Speaker 3: who blew his horn at them in the parking lot.

1857
01:45:28,880 --> 01:45:30,720
Speaker 3: And then he reminds Liam and Denise that all the

1858
01:45:30,800 --> 01:45:33,120
Speaker 3: murderers who'd been writing to them had already forwarded their

1859
01:45:33,120 --> 01:45:36,640
Speaker 3: personal information to criminals on the outside, but it was

1860
01:45:36,680 --> 01:45:40,960
Speaker 3: already over Two weeks later, they searched Frank's home. They

1861
01:45:40,960 --> 01:45:43,640
Speaker 3: took his typewriter and his list of federal inmates, the

1862
01:45:43,640 --> 01:45:46,559
Speaker 3: ones he'd been writing to as his victims, and they

1863
01:45:46,600 --> 01:45:51,200
Speaker 3: found portraits of Hitler and Nazi memorabilia and white supremacist literature,

1864
01:45:52,400 --> 01:45:58,920
Speaker 3: and two live rattlesnakes. Rattlesnakes don't live in Idaho. These

1865
01:45:58,920 --> 01:46:01,640
Speaker 3: aren't snakes that he got outside. These are snakes that

1866
01:46:01,680 --> 01:46:08,000
Speaker 3: he is breeding. Frank has a lifelong interest in reptile breeding.

1867
01:46:08,000 --> 01:46:10,959
Speaker 3: I think he's a member of the Idaho Herpetological Society,

1868
01:46:11,040 --> 01:46:12,920
Speaker 3: or at least he was before he went to prison,

1869
01:46:13,640 --> 01:46:16,160
Speaker 3: and shortly before his arrest, he commented on an online

1870
01:46:16,200 --> 01:46:19,920
Speaker 3: obituary for an old high school classmate, reminiscing fondly about

1871
01:46:19,920 --> 01:46:22,400
Speaker 3: how they used to collect snakes in the woods together

1872
01:46:22,840 --> 01:46:28,840
Speaker 3: in the fifties. Once he's in custody, Frank confessed immediately,

1873
01:46:29,640 --> 01:46:31,960
Speaker 3: telling investigators on the day of his arrest that he'd

1874
01:46:32,000 --> 01:46:34,120
Speaker 3: sent the postcards because he felt like these people had

1875
01:46:34,160 --> 01:46:36,720
Speaker 3: embarrassed him and it made him feel better to know

1876
01:46:36,760 --> 01:46:41,040
Speaker 3: he was causing them emotional distress. Shortly after his arrest,

1877
01:46:41,080 --> 01:46:42,560
Speaker 3: he wrote to the judge to ask the court to

1878
01:46:42,600 --> 01:46:45,559
Speaker 3: intervene in what he felt was an inadequate response by

1879
01:46:45,560 --> 01:46:48,440
Speaker 3: the jail to what he called many of the infirmities

1880
01:46:48,439 --> 01:46:51,400
Speaker 3: that affect the elderly, and says he has the urge

1881
01:46:51,400 --> 01:46:54,479
Speaker 3: to commit suicide if his demands aren't met. And I

1882
01:46:54,600 --> 01:46:57,160
Speaker 3: don't want to sound like I'm brushing this off, I'm

1883
01:46:57,200 --> 01:46:58,920
Speaker 3: not saying that this couldn't.

1884
01:46:58,600 --> 01:46:59,760
Speaker 1: Possibly be a valid concern.

1885
01:46:59,800 --> 01:47:03,960
Speaker 3: People die in jails and prisons every day because employees

1886
01:47:04,240 --> 01:47:07,479
Speaker 3: don't care or don't have the resources to provide adequate care.

1887
01:47:07,560 --> 01:47:10,640
Speaker 3: This is a very real problem, and the urge to

1888
01:47:10,680 --> 01:47:15,599
Speaker 3: harm yourself is always very serious. But this isn't Frank's

1889
01:47:15,600 --> 01:47:19,200
Speaker 3: first rodeo. Remember in the eighties he used to threaten

1890
01:47:19,479 --> 01:47:23,360
Speaker 3: suicide and would even fake suicide attempts in order to

1891
01:47:23,479 --> 01:47:28,519
Speaker 3: manipulate employees of the Witness Protection program. So this may

1892
01:47:28,520 --> 01:47:32,080
Speaker 3: not be a brand new issue for Frank at any rate.

1893
01:47:32,680 --> 01:47:35,799
Speaker 3: Within months of his arrest he entered into a plea agreement.

1894
01:47:37,560 --> 01:47:39,479
Speaker 3: So once the mail cops got on the case, they

1895
01:47:39,560 --> 01:47:43,439
Speaker 3: actually sorted it out pretty quickly. Right the USPIS got

1896
01:47:43,439 --> 01:47:45,679
Speaker 3: on the case, in September of twenty eighteen, and within

1897
01:47:45,760 --> 01:47:50,160
Speaker 3: three months they knew it was Frank. Maybe they should

1898
01:47:50,200 --> 01:47:54,080
Speaker 3: have called the guys who solved Maile crimes earlier. I

1899
01:47:54,120 --> 01:47:57,479
Speaker 3: don't know, but if there had been more communication between

1900
01:47:57,560 --> 01:48:00,839
Speaker 3: different law enforcement agencies, the whole situation would have been resolved.

1901
01:48:01,000 --> 01:48:05,519
Speaker 3: When he sent a single letter a third victim, which

1902
01:48:05,520 --> 01:48:09,200
Speaker 3: he signed with his own name. But when a US

1903
01:48:09,320 --> 01:48:12,519
Speaker 3: Marshall searched Frank's house two years before his eventual arrest,

1904
01:48:13,400 --> 01:48:15,240
Speaker 3: I guess they didn't bother to check in with the

1905
01:48:15,280 --> 01:48:19,639
Speaker 3: local police, because in April of twenty seventeen, Frank sent

1906
01:48:19,720 --> 01:48:23,800
Speaker 3: a single letter to Gerald Shrr, the man who found

1907
01:48:23,840 --> 01:48:27,680
Speaker 3: it and for many years ran the witness protection program.

1908
01:48:28,439 --> 01:48:30,880
Speaker 3: I can't think of a worse guy to pick if

1909
01:48:30,920 --> 01:48:34,000
Speaker 3: you're going to send a threatening letter. Sure was long

1910
01:48:34,040 --> 01:48:36,920
Speaker 3: since retired by twenty seventeen. He passed away in twenty

1911
01:48:36,960 --> 01:48:38,280
Speaker 3: twenty at the age of eighty six.

1912
01:48:38,360 --> 01:48:40,080
Speaker 1: But is there anyone on.

1913
01:48:40,040 --> 01:48:42,240
Speaker 3: Earth who had more chips to call in with the

1914
01:48:42,360 --> 01:48:44,920
Speaker 3: US Marshals? You think a US marshal isn't going to

1915
01:48:44,920 --> 01:48:46,719
Speaker 3: come to your house if you sign your full legal

1916
01:48:46,800 --> 01:48:49,080
Speaker 3: name to a threatening letter to the guy who invented

1917
01:48:49,280 --> 01:48:52,880
Speaker 3: witness protection. You think you're going to scare the guy

1918
01:48:52,920 --> 01:48:57,519
Speaker 3: whose job was protecting mobsters from other mobsters. Truly a

1919
01:48:57,600 --> 01:48:59,360
Speaker 3: stupid move, even for Frank.

1920
01:49:01,760 --> 01:49:06,120
Speaker 9: You poisonous, licentious so jew. I thought that you would

1921
01:49:06,120 --> 01:49:09,520
Speaker 9: have been long dead from cardiovascular disease due to obesity.

1922
01:49:10,000 --> 01:49:12,080
Speaker 9: I was very much hoping to sit shiver for you,

1923
01:49:12,400 --> 01:49:14,360
Speaker 9: to pray cottage over your fat corpse.

1924
01:49:14,400 --> 01:49:14,920
Speaker 8: You loasome.

1925
01:49:16,080 --> 01:49:19,240
Speaker 9: I will remember you, although it's doubtful you will remember

1926
01:49:19,400 --> 01:49:22,720
Speaker 9: from WITSEC units in Otisville of San Diego parade in

1927
01:49:22,800 --> 01:49:25,880
Speaker 9: with your entourage to pray women from the Office of

1928
01:49:25,960 --> 01:49:29,880
Speaker 9: Enforcement Operations. In nineteen eighty four, you expelled me from

1929
01:49:29,920 --> 01:49:32,880
Speaker 9: the program, leaving me defend for myself as a known

1930
01:49:32,920 --> 01:49:38,760
Speaker 9: inform a rat in the general populations of very dangerous prisons.

1931
01:49:40,200 --> 01:49:43,679
Speaker 3: It had been more than thirty years, but Frank never

1932
01:49:43,720 --> 01:49:47,280
Speaker 3: got over getting kicked out of the program. He flew

1933
01:49:47,320 --> 01:49:49,759
Speaker 3: all over the world helping a spy in nineteen eighty

1934
01:49:49,760 --> 01:49:53,000
Speaker 3: trying to leverage information on Christopher Boyce to get placement

1935
01:49:53,040 --> 01:49:56,000
Speaker 3: in the program, and it didn't work. The information it

1936
01:49:56,040 --> 01:49:59,240
Speaker 3: gave was not only not helpful, but by fabricating unhelpful

1937
01:49:59,240 --> 01:50:02,240
Speaker 3: information in or to get something from the government, he

1938
01:50:02,280 --> 01:50:05,400
Speaker 3: made things worse, and when he finally got what he

1939
01:50:05,479 --> 01:50:08,320
Speaker 3: wanted by testifying against a serial killer in nineteen eighty two,

1940
01:50:08,840 --> 01:50:10,680
Speaker 3: he couldn't keep his mouth shut about it, and so

1941
01:50:10,720 --> 01:50:13,320
Speaker 3: he was removed from the program in nineteen eighty four.

1942
01:50:14,800 --> 01:50:16,560
Speaker 3: In his letter to Suir, he claims that as a

1943
01:50:16,640 --> 01:50:19,439
Speaker 3: result of losing his protected status in eighty four, he

1944
01:50:19,520 --> 01:50:23,599
Speaker 3: was attacked by another inmate the following year, and he does,

1945
01:50:23,720 --> 01:50:27,200
Speaker 3: without a doubt, bear a huge scar all down one

1946
01:50:27,280 --> 01:50:32,000
Speaker 3: cheek to this day. Somebody cut Frank's face open pretty bad.

1947
01:50:33,200 --> 01:50:35,080
Speaker 3: He takes care to mention in his letter that the

1948
01:50:35,120 --> 01:50:38,439
Speaker 3: assailant was black, though he chooses different words to say that.

1949
01:50:39,120 --> 01:50:42,679
Speaker 3: And who knows why Frank got cut. I'm not making

1950
01:50:42,760 --> 01:50:45,439
Speaker 3: light of the violence that happens inside jails and prisons,

1951
01:50:46,040 --> 01:50:49,439
Speaker 3: but you'd have to do some real mental gymnastics here

1952
01:50:49,520 --> 01:50:52,000
Speaker 3: to come up with a satisfying explanation for why a

1953
01:50:52,160 --> 01:50:57,240
Speaker 3: black man would cut Frank up in retaliation for Frank's

1954
01:50:57,280 --> 01:51:00,519
Speaker 3: testimony against a Nazi serial killer who try rabbled the

1955
01:51:00,520 --> 01:51:04,960
Speaker 3: country shooting black men. I just don't think that they

1956
01:51:05,000 --> 01:51:09,000
Speaker 3: would be mad about that. But I can think of

1957
01:51:09,880 --> 01:51:13,000
Speaker 3: a variety of reasons why a black man who encountered

1958
01:51:13,000 --> 01:51:15,599
Speaker 3: Frank in prison might get into it with him.

1959
01:51:16,280 --> 01:51:17,240
Speaker 1: I mean racist hide.

1960
01:51:17,240 --> 01:51:19,880
Speaker 3: Frank's just kind of a hotthead, not a great guy

1961
01:51:19,960 --> 01:51:22,040
Speaker 3: to hang out with, always getting into it with people.

1962
01:51:22,080 --> 01:51:24,639
Speaker 1: But also he loves saying racial slurs.

1963
01:51:24,720 --> 01:51:26,880
Speaker 3: So I can think of a variety of reasons why

1964
01:51:26,920 --> 01:51:28,960
Speaker 3: this might have happened that had nothing to do with

1965
01:51:29,080 --> 01:51:33,400
Speaker 3: him testifying against a serial killer. We can't take Frank

1966
01:51:33,439 --> 01:51:35,599
Speaker 3: at his word, and I couldn't find any reporting from

1967
01:51:35,640 --> 01:51:38,160
Speaker 3: the time about a prison knife fight in nineteen eighty five,

1968
01:51:38,320 --> 01:51:43,439
Speaker 3: So who else after sure received the letter, which Frank

1969
01:51:43,479 --> 01:51:48,719
Speaker 3: had signed venomously yours Frank Abbott Sweeney. A US marshal

1970
01:51:48,880 --> 01:51:52,439
Speaker 3: was sent out to Idaho to speak with Frank, and

1971
01:51:52,520 --> 01:51:55,320
Speaker 3: Frank admitted that he sent the letter, but he said

1972
01:51:55,320 --> 01:51:57,200
Speaker 3: he meant no harm by it, and he allowed the

1973
01:51:57,240 --> 01:52:00,960
Speaker 3: marshal to search his home. It seems like if anyone

1974
01:52:00,960 --> 01:52:03,640
Speaker 3: had compared notes, Frank could have been identified as the

1975
01:52:03,640 --> 01:52:07,320
Speaker 3: Garden City postcard writer far sooner. The language in this

1976
01:52:07,479 --> 01:52:09,880
Speaker 3: letter was very similar to some of the postcards.

1977
01:52:09,920 --> 01:52:10,519
Speaker 1: If they had just.

1978
01:52:10,920 --> 01:52:13,439
Speaker 3: Showed this letter to the sheriff, maybe they would have

1979
01:52:13,439 --> 01:52:19,400
Speaker 3: recognized it, but yes they didn't because he wasn't. The

1980
01:52:19,439 --> 01:52:22,439
Speaker 3: local police in Pennsylvania where the letter was received charged

1981
01:52:22,479 --> 01:52:27,160
Speaker 3: Frank with terroristic threats, but that's a non extraditable misdemeanor

1982
01:52:27,200 --> 01:52:30,439
Speaker 3: in Pennsylvania, so they couldn't bring him back to face

1983
01:52:30,479 --> 01:52:33,040
Speaker 3: the charge. So he's got an open warrant in Pennsylvania

1984
01:52:33,080 --> 01:52:36,479
Speaker 3: if he ever goes there, willingly, but he probably won't,

1985
01:52:36,520 --> 01:52:39,719
Speaker 3: and with Sure now deceased, it doesn't seem like that's

1986
01:52:39,880 --> 01:52:44,559
Speaker 3: likely to amount to anything. On December sixteenth, twenty nineteen,

1987
01:52:45,080 --> 01:52:48,200
Speaker 3: Frank Sweeney was sentenced to fifty one months for six

1988
01:52:48,280 --> 01:52:51,880
Speaker 3: counts of stalking. A few days later, his German wife

1989
01:52:51,880 --> 01:52:54,920
Speaker 3: posted a photo of her Christmas Eve dinner. A friend

1990
01:52:55,000 --> 01:52:57,280
Speaker 3: asked her if Frank would be celebrating with her that year.

1991
01:52:58,479 --> 01:53:01,519
Speaker 3: She replied that no, has been ill for several months

1992
01:53:01,560 --> 01:53:02,439
Speaker 3: and can't.

1993
01:53:02,280 --> 01:53:03,720
Speaker 1: Fly right now.

1994
01:53:04,000 --> 01:53:05,960
Speaker 3: She didn't say that he was back in federal prison

1995
01:53:06,040 --> 01:53:10,719
Speaker 3: for at least the fifth time. Frank Sweeney was released

1996
01:53:10,720 --> 01:53:13,840
Speaker 3: from prison in December of twenty twenty two. I just

1997
01:53:13,960 --> 01:53:15,960
Speaker 3: noticed as I'm writing this that it's his eighty first

1998
01:53:15,960 --> 01:53:18,720
Speaker 3: birthday today, but it won't be by the time you

1999
01:53:18,760 --> 01:53:23,559
Speaker 3: hear this. He's still in Idaho, he's still playing the violin,

2000
01:53:24,520 --> 01:53:27,320
Speaker 3: and he still co owns a few Mexican hairless dogs

2001
01:53:27,360 --> 01:53:31,160
Speaker 3: on the show circuit in Germany. In that nineteen ninety

2002
01:53:31,160 --> 01:53:33,839
Speaker 3: four New York Times article about his prison consulting business,

2003
01:53:33,920 --> 01:53:37,240
Speaker 3: Frank quipped that his favorite quote was the crime is

2004
01:53:37,280 --> 01:53:40,280
Speaker 3: not in the act, but in the stupidity of being caught,

2005
01:53:41,040 --> 01:53:44,880
Speaker 3: which he attributes to Nietzsche. I think, regardless of your

2006
01:53:44,920 --> 01:53:48,120
Speaker 3: stance on the philosophical nature of crime and punishment, though

2007
01:53:48,560 --> 01:53:51,200
Speaker 3: there are better quotes from Frank's thousands of appearances in

2008
01:53:51,240 --> 01:53:53,320
Speaker 3: the newspaper over his six decades of crime.

2009
01:53:54,760 --> 01:53:55,439
Speaker 1: Maybe Judge H.

2010
01:53:55,560 --> 01:53:57,920
Speaker 3: Curtis Meaner had it write in nineteen eighty one when

2011
01:53:57,920 --> 01:53:59,599
Speaker 3: he cut off the bickering in the court room over

2012
01:53:59,640 --> 01:54:02,519
Speaker 3: exactly what the hell happened with Frank's mysterious South African

2013
01:54:02,560 --> 01:54:06,000
Speaker 3: letters about the missing spy, saying, I have neither the

2014
01:54:06,040 --> 01:54:09,639
Speaker 3: time nor inclination to unravel all the mysteries in this case,

2015
01:54:10,720 --> 01:54:13,519
Speaker 3: because we never really will unravel all the mysteries of

2016
01:54:13,600 --> 01:54:17,280
Speaker 3: Frank's past. He played a bit part in so many

2017
01:54:17,439 --> 01:54:21,600
Speaker 3: much bigger stories. They've made whole Hollywood films out of

2018
01:54:21,720 --> 01:54:25,040
Speaker 3: so many of these little slices of history that Frank

2019
01:54:25,160 --> 01:54:29,880
Speaker 3: passed through, from Cold War spy thrillers to Scorsese dramas

2020
01:54:29,920 --> 01:54:30,920
Speaker 3: about organized crime.

2021
01:54:31,720 --> 01:54:34,400
Speaker 1: Frank's there, it's not in the movie.

2022
01:54:34,920 --> 01:54:40,280
Speaker 3: He's just out of frame while history happens doing something

2023
01:54:41,080 --> 01:54:42,680
Speaker 3: really goddamn weird.

2024
01:54:47,280 --> 01:54:49,960
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys to production of Cool Zone Media. For

2025
01:54:50,120 --> 01:54:51,000
Speaker 1: more from Cool Zone

2026
01:54:51,040 --> 01:54:54,840
Speaker 7: Media, visit our website toolzonemedia dot com, or check us

2027
01:54:54,840 --> 01:55:06,640
Speaker 7: out on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.