Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Steve Fishman, a host of The Burden. Today
Speaker 1: I want to introduce UD's show called deep Cover. It's
Speaker 1: one of our current favorites. A little about the show.
Speaker 1: It all started.
Speaker 2: With a rumor.
Speaker 1: It went like this. Back in nineteen eighty nine, on
Speaker 1: prom night, a teenager boasted that he had just committed murder.
Speaker 1: He showed off a freshly inked tattoo, a badge of
Speaker 1: honor for killing, or so the rumor went. No one
Speaker 1: took it seriously until two thousand and four, when two
Speaker 1: federal agents began looking into it. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Unlike almost every other murder case, in this one, the
Speaker 1: agents had a suspect, but they had no idea who
Speaker 1: the victim was. This is the story of deep Cover
Speaker 1: The Nameless Man, hosted by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jake Halpern.
Speaker 1: It's also the story of a family searching for answers
Speaker 1: about why their brother was killed. These two storylines collide
Speaker 1: in a courtroom in Philadelphia where murder, memory, and morality
Speaker 1: go on trial. Listen to deep Cover The Nameless Man
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts, and please enjoy this preview
Speaker 1: from the show.
Speaker 3: I've been a journalist for twenty five years, and there's
Speaker 3: this little ritual that I do at the end of
Speaker 3: every interview. When it works, it shakes everything up, creates
Speaker 3: a bit of chaos. I call it the hail Mary
Speaker 3: of questions. It's like a last ditch effort to find something,
Speaker 3: anything that I might have missed. I just say, hey,
Speaker 3: what's the question I should have asked you. Most of
Speaker 3: the time, like ninety percent of the time, the answer is,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think we covered it all. But
Speaker 3: every once in a while a person says, well, there
Speaker 3: is one thing we didn't talk about, and then they
Speaker 3: drop a bomb, say something totally unexpected, And at that
Speaker 3: moment I always imagine a door creaking open. That, in
Speaker 3: a nutshell, is what this season is about. It's about
Speaker 3: a guy, two guys actually, who come upon just such
Speaker 3: a door, and on the other side of it is
Speaker 3: a very dark secret. These two guys were federal officers.
Speaker 3: One of them was an FBI agent based in Delaware
Speaker 3: named Scott Duffy, and Scott he has his own version
Speaker 3: of the hail Mary question.
Speaker 4: One of the things that like I will routinely do,
Speaker 4: is is there anything that we should be looking at
Speaker 4: that could be investigated that we're not looking at.
Speaker 3: Back in two thousand and four, Scott posed this very
Speaker 3: question to a woman named Patricia Miller. At the time,
Speaker 3: Scott was visiting Patricia at her home in Delaware to
Speaker 3: learn more about her ex boyfriend, a guy named Tom Guybison.
Speaker 3: There had been some rumors that Tom her ex was
Speaker 3: plotting to go after a local cop, and the FBI
Speaker 3: had asked Scott to look into this to do a
Speaker 3: so called threat assessment. Scott didn't get that much out
Speaker 3: of this interview with Patricia, but before leaving, he tossed
Speaker 3: out his Hail Mary question, and that's when she told
Speaker 3: him about the murder.
Speaker 4: She mentions, well, there is this alleged murder to have
Speaker 4: taken place, that when he was in high school, that
Speaker 4: he had committed a murder for black man in order
Speaker 4: to gain access into this white supremacy group within Delaware.
Speaker 3: Patricia goes on to say that Tom her ex was
Speaker 3: proud of this murder. It happened back when he was younger,
Speaker 3: a teenager, but even years later he bragged about what
Speaker 3: he'd done, how he'd driven into Philadelphia late at night
Speaker 3: and shot a pedestrian a random black man, all allegedly
Speaker 3: so we could earn some street cred as a racist skinhead.
Speaker 3: Scott pressed Patricia for details. Was there any evidence? Did
Speaker 3: she have any proof? According to Scott, she talked about
Speaker 3: a newspaper article from the time about the man's death
Speaker 3: and how it was described as a drug related killing.
Speaker 3: She said that Tom held onto this article for a
Speaker 3: while so we could brag about it, intimating no one knows,
Speaker 3: but I did this this guy. That's what Patricia said. Anyhow,
Speaker 3: all of this got Scott thinking, if this murder really happened,
Speaker 3: maybe it wasn't so random after all. Maybe it was
Speaker 3: predicated on a callous, cynical piece of logic that no
Speaker 3: one would care about this victim, or at least no
Speaker 3: one in a position of power or authority.
Speaker 4: If there's no evidence, and there's no witnesses, no cameras,
Speaker 4: so let's move on, and that's what Tom would be
Speaker 4: banking on, and just be a drug deal gone bad.
Speaker 2: That bothered me, That bothered me.
Speaker 3: Scott may have been upset about all this, but he
Speaker 3: was also at a loss. How do you investigate a
Speaker 3: murder when you don't even know who the victim is? Eventually,
Speaker 3: Scott and his partner paid a visit to the Free
Speaker 3: Public Library of Philadelphia. They wanted to find that newspaper
Speaker 3: article covering the victim's death. Scott recalled Patricia, saying it
Speaker 3: was in the Philadelphia Inquirer. They felt like if they
Speaker 3: could just somehow get a hold of that article, it
Speaker 3: might answer so many questions.
Speaker 4: In other words, would this give us a name? Would
Speaker 4: this give us a location? Would this give us a date?
Speaker 4: Because we still didn't.
Speaker 2: Have a date.
Speaker 4: But there's got to be countless articles people that were
Speaker 4: just randomly killed in Philadelphia. Not only countless articles, but
Speaker 4: then you realize there are other newspapers. What if she's wrong,
Speaker 4: it's not the Philadelphia Inquiry. It sounds like a fool's
Speaker 4: Errand I'm glad we did it. I'm glad we made
Speaker 4: the trip, but I don't think we found anything.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 3: So game over right. I mean, this murder, if it
Speaker 3: even happened, would have occurred approximately fifteen years prior. It
Speaker 3: was a cold case. And yet Scott and his partner,
Speaker 3: a guy named Terry Mortimer, they had this feeling that
Speaker 3: if they persisted.
Speaker 4: We might un covers something we're destined to uncover. That
Speaker 4: may sound corny, but I felt something. I think Terry
Speaker 4: felt something, and we didn't know quite what and it
Speaker 4: could have been absolutely taken us down another rabbit hole
Speaker 4: of something that's just never could be proven.
Speaker 2: So what do you do with that? Exactly? What do
Speaker 2: you do with that? What do you do with something that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah and not to be cute, but you can't exactly
Speaker 3: go back to your boss and say that me and
Speaker 3: Terry feel a sense of destiny here right now. So
Speaker 3: this was mission creep big time. Plus, it's not like
Speaker 3: there was anyone that they knew of anyhow demanding justice
Speaker 3: for the victim.
Speaker 4: Terry and I could have easily said we're done and
Speaker 4: let's walk away. Nobody's going to be calling us to say, hey,
Speaker 4: Terry and Scott, do you have any updates for us?
Speaker 2: You know we're waiting. We haven't heard back from you
Speaker 2: that was missing.
Speaker 3: But is somewhere in the back of your head, are
Speaker 3: you imagining that, like there is a mother or brother
Speaker 3: who's trying to understand or figure out what may have
Speaker 3: happened to their loved one that was left fore dead.
Speaker 4: I think that that aspect was the driving factor we
Speaker 4: couldn't just leave it alone. Somehow it was making sense
Speaker 4: that Terry and I were put together for this very
Speaker 4: reason of solving this hate crime, this murder that took
Speaker 4: place on the streets of Philadelphia because somebody was black,
Speaker 4: that we've felt like we had a duty to this person,
Speaker 4: and somehow this person was drawing us.
Speaker 3: And that's it. Almost hear it, the door creaking open.
Speaker 3: This is a story about what happens when two guys
Speaker 3: uncover a clue about something terrible, something evil, a crime
Speaker 3: for which there has been no justice, and they have
Speaker 3: nothing to go on. They don't have a victim, don't
Speaker 3: have a body, don't even have a name. I'm Jake
Speaker 3: Halper and this is Deep Cover, Season four, The Nameless Man,
Speaker 3: Episode one. The rumor, so to recap, Scott and Terry's
Speaker 3: investigation did not start off as a quest to solve
Speaker 3: a cold case now or find a murder victim. Originally,
Speaker 3: back in two thousand and four, they were asked to
Speaker 3: do a threat assessment on Tom Gybison. That's why they
Speaker 3: interviewed the ex girlfriend. At the time, Tom Gobison was
Speaker 3: thirty three years old. He was in federal prison on
Speaker 3: gun charges, but he was about to be released, and
Speaker 3: the FEDS had some intel that Tom might be seeking retribution,
Speaker 3: planning to harm the cop who'd put him behind bars.
Speaker 3: This is why the FEDS were called in, and initially
Speaker 3: this was Scott and Terry's top priority to determine if
Speaker 3: this threat was real. But they came up short and
Speaker 3: at some point stopped looking into Tom for the threat assessment.
Speaker 3: But they still have this rumor, this side story that
Speaker 3: some fifteen years prior, back in the nineteen eighties, when
Speaker 3: Tom was still in high school, that he may have
Speaker 3: killed a black man in Philadelphia. Who this man might be.
Speaker 3: They had no idea, but they kept poking around. They
Speaker 3: wanted to see what they could learn about Tom Guybison
Speaker 3: and if he had any connections to white supremacist gangs.
Speaker 3: And this is where Terry Mortimer, Scott's partner, really came
Speaker 3: into play.
Speaker 5: And this is thing about gangs is there are gangs,
Speaker 5: and there's like, you know, not real gangs that people
Speaker 5: say they're part of a gang, but they aren't. Kind
Speaker 5: of thing.
Speaker 3: Terry was a special agent with the ATF, the Bureau
Speaker 3: of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He worked in intelligence
Speaker 3: and he focused heavily on guns and gangs. So Terry
Speaker 3: wants to know what was Tom's deal.
Speaker 5: I knew he of course was imprisoned obviously for gun charges.
Speaker 5: You know, spent a good stint in prison federally he
Speaker 5: had there, I guess prior contact with the law.
Speaker 3: Terry learned that Tom was first arrested at the age
Speaker 3: of fourteen on a deadly weapons charge. A few years later,
Speaker 3: when he was nineteen, he was convicted of reckless endangerment
Speaker 3: after he shot a gun at a moving car full
Speaker 3: of people. At the time, a local newspaper in Wilmington,
Speaker 3: Delaware ran an article on Tom. It described him as
Speaker 3: a hulking weightlifter with a number of tattoos, including a
Speaker 3: clenched fist on the top of his scalp and the
Speaker 3: words born in the USA on the back of his neck.
Speaker 3: In the article, Guy Bison says at one time he
Speaker 3: was a blue collar skinhead. Tom defined this as quote
Speaker 3: buying American, not doing drugs, and not drinking. To be clear,
Speaker 3: there are different types of skinheads, not all are racists,
Speaker 3: but in the late eighties and early nineties, skinheads were
Speaker 3: emerging as the face of violent right wing nationalism. In
Speaker 3: the US, their notoriety seemed to really pique at that time.
Speaker 3: One headline from eighty nine and the New York Times read,
Speaker 3: violent racism attracts new breed skinheads. So the possibility that
Speaker 3: a racist skinhead might have orchestrated murder it was plausible,
Speaker 3: but that alone wasn't a whole lot to go on.
Speaker 3: Scott and Terry decided to focus on what Patricia, the
Speaker 3: ex girlfriend, had told them. They honed in on two
Speaker 3: clues in particular. The first clue involved a tattoo. Patricia
Speaker 3: mentioned that Tom had a tattoo of a spider web
Speaker 3: on his elbow with a teardrop in it, and that
Speaker 3: he liked to brag that he'd gotten it essentially as
Speaker 3: a badge of honor for killing a black man in Philadelphia.
Speaker 5: I know enough about gang members is sometimes things aren't
Speaker 5: what they say they are that they though I get
Speaker 5: a tattoo and purported to be something that really isn't true,
Speaker 5: or just kind of build their rep a little bit.
Speaker 3: Terry was skeptical that Tom had killed someone just to
Speaker 3: join this skinhead gang. Maybe Tom was just posing building
Speaker 3: up his rep. Is a really violent dude, I mean Honestly,
Speaker 3: maybe this whole thing was bullshit, right.
Speaker 5: I couldn't really establish, you know, intelligence wise, if Tommy
Speaker 5: was part of a skinhead gang.
Speaker 2: I didn't think he was.
Speaker 5: I think he was kind of more self described skinhead.
Speaker 3: And this raised the question what a self described skinhead
Speaker 3: acting on his own, really murder someone for what? So
Speaker 3: he could give himself a tattoo, and all of this
Speaker 3: while he was still in high school seemed like a stretch. Okay,
Speaker 3: here's the second clue. He's a promising one. According to
Speaker 3: the ex girlfriend Patricia, Tom had bragged about having an accomplice,
Speaker 3: a guy named Craig Peterson. Allegedly they orchestrated this murder
Speaker 3: together and both of them got those same spider web tattoos. Now,
Speaker 3: if this was true, and if they could find Craig
Speaker 3: and if he would talk, well that'd be huge. But
Speaker 3: that was a lot of ifs. So they started combing
Speaker 3: through public records asking around about this Craig guy, the
Speaker 3: supposed accomplice, and here's what they found. Craig was an
Speaker 3: old buddy from Tom's high school days. He also identified
Speaker 3: specifically as a blue collar skinhead. Craig had grown up
Speaker 3: in Delaware, but as far as anyone could tell, he
Speaker 3: wasn't living there anymore. Seemed like he kind of disappeared.
Speaker 3: And then they got a lead.
Speaker 5: We found out he's in He's in Vermont, like a
Speaker 5: remote part of Vermont. And I remember, I said, this
Speaker 5: dude's hiding. Man, he's hiding. I said, that cat from Wilmington,
Speaker 5: Delaware living in Vermont. Man, I said, dude, it gets
Speaker 5: cold up there. Man, I mean, that's a cold place.
Speaker 4: Bro.
Speaker 3: So they put on their winter coats and headed north.
Speaker 3: It was now December of two thousand and four. It
Speaker 3: had been about a month since they first heard the rumor,
Speaker 3: and now here they were in the car, driving into
Speaker 3: the chill of a Vermont winter. Temperature was hovering around
Speaker 3: freezing that night, and as they sped along through the
Speaker 3: green mountains, past the darkened forests of evergreens, they had
Speaker 3: no idea what to expect, Like, what are you hoping
Speaker 3: to find out?
Speaker 2: Hey?
Speaker 5: At this point, we're like, man, whatever he's got, he's
Speaker 5: got to give us something, man, because we're again we're
Speaker 5: spinning our wheels. It felt like, man, if this has
Speaker 5: come through, I think we're I think, honestly, I think
Speaker 5: we're done.
Speaker 3: Terry recalls on that drive up to Vermont, they talked
Speaker 3: a lot about why they couldn't or shouldn't give up
Speaker 3: on the case.
Speaker 5: So we had great discussions, and that's when I really
Speaker 5: we both realized, Wow, wait a minute, this is not
Speaker 5: an accident that he and I are team together. This
Speaker 5: was like, literally, we didn't do this, we couldn't plan.
Speaker 3: This, and there was a reason for this feeling. Turns
Speaker 3: out there was a strange symmetry to their lives that
Speaker 3: dated back before they ever met. So we're gonna leave
Speaker 3: Scott and Terry in the car heading up to Vermont
Speaker 3: and turn back the clock. For Scott, it all started
Speaker 3: when he graduated high school. He wanted to be a cop,
Speaker 3: but by his own estimation at the time, he was
Speaker 3: too small, too skinny. He weighed just ninety three pounds,
Speaker 3: so instead he opted to become a priest. He was
Speaker 3: just seventeen years old when he decided to join the seminary,
Speaker 3: but right away when he put on that priest's color,
Speaker 3: it was transformative, both for him and also for the
Speaker 3: way that other people looked at him.
Speaker 4: I would be sitting in a pew, maybe praying in
Speaker 4: a church, somebody would come by and start confessing, and
Speaker 4: people just started pouring their souls out to me.
Speaker 3: In these moments, Scott was learning how to listen, how
Speaker 3: to suspend judgment, how to be patient as people grappled
Speaker 3: with some burdensome secret, inching their way towards the precipice
Speaker 3: of truth. He spent five years training to become a priest,
Speaker 3: but dreams are stubborn things, and his didn't go away.
Speaker 3: He left the seminary to become a cop and then
Speaker 3: an FBI agent.
Speaker 4: It is harder to leave than it is to go in.
Speaker 4: And that's ultimately because I think now you have ventured
Speaker 4: this relationship with God, and now you're afraid of pissing
Speaker 4: him off.
Speaker 3: For Scott, this shifting careers seemed like a natural progression
Speaker 3: for him. The seminary prepared him for this work, prepared
Speaker 3: him to listen and see his way through a messy
Speaker 3: world fraught with moral dilemmas. But when he'd tell people
Speaker 3: about his past, how he'd almost become a priest, they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: my gosh, I can never imagine. The two are totally
Speaker 3: opposed to each other. And I never understood that. But
Speaker 3: there was at least one person who got it completely.
Speaker 2: Terry.
Speaker 5: I went to college at a very small Bible College
Speaker 5: and was preparing for ministry.
Speaker 3: From a young age. Terry felt destined for the ministry,
Speaker 3: but later on, when he was in Bible College, he
Speaker 3: had second thoughts. As graduation approached, a friend asked him,
Speaker 3: you ever considered becoming a cop. The short answer was no.
Speaker 3: But on a whim, Terry applied and met with a recruiter.
Speaker 5: And this guy, he was a hardcore dude. I mean
Speaker 5: he looked at me. I was back then, I was skinny.
Speaker 5: He looked at me and said, you're from where and
Speaker 5: you want to do what? Like you're from Bible College. Man,
Speaker 5: you have any idea what you're applying for, what you're
Speaker 5: trying to do. I said, no, sir, I have no idea.
Speaker 3: Terry was undeterred. He became a cop and then an
Speaker 3: agent with the ATF. And this was not a consolation
Speaker 3: job for Terry. He's very clear about this. He feels
Speaker 3: that God had a purpose for him in law enforcement.
Speaker 3: And that's the thing you got to understand about both
Speaker 3: Terry and Scott. These are not men who look at
Speaker 3: the world and see coincidences what they see is much
Speaker 3: closer to fate or God's will, And when they became partners,
Speaker 3: it all seemed meant to be. Here were two guys
Speaker 3: who early on looked too skinny and earnest to be cops,
Speaker 3: guys who intended to become men of God. Different in
Speaker 3: their own ways. Terry grew up in a gritty river
Speaker 3: town in Pennsylvania, and he kind of feels like a dude.
Speaker 3: You'd play around a mini golf with grab a Burger,
Speaker 3: have a laugh, and then realize only belatedly, that you
Speaker 3: told him more than you intended to. Scott, Well, he's
Speaker 3: more formal. He's from Connecticut, a really Yankee, a man
Speaker 3: who chooses his words carefully, a patient priest who knows
Speaker 3: how to nurse a long pregnant pause. The two of
Speaker 3: them worked well together, complimented one another, the Pennsylvania pastor
Speaker 3: and the New England priest, and I've been calling them partners,
Speaker 3: but they only ever worked together on this one investigation.
Speaker 3: It was an unusual collaboration between the FBI and the ATF,
Speaker 3: and they didn't choose one another. They were kind of
Speaker 3: paired randomly, though neither of them would say it was random.
Speaker 5: You know, as I realized, wait a minute, we're we're
Speaker 5: on a mission from God.
Speaker 3: But yep, just like the Blues Brothers.
Speaker 5: We didn't really say that, I'm just making it up,
Speaker 5: but that was the feeling was like, hey, no, but
Speaker 5: it was like no joke, Like this is a real deal.
Speaker 5: Like it's almost like we're walking through almost like a dream,
Speaker 5: Like what is going on here?
Speaker 3: So yeah, even though all they had was a rumor
Speaker 3: of a long forgotten crime that might not have even happened,
Speaker 3: these two almost ministers, the God Squad as it were,
Speaker 3: still felt certain that they were here in this car
Speaker 3: heading north into Vermont for a reason, and they were
Speaker 3: convinced that something important was waiting for them. That's when
Speaker 3: we get back. Both Scott and Terry had this hunch
Speaker 3: that there was a reason Craig, the alleged accomplice, was
Speaker 3: up in Vermont, up in the mountains, that he was hiding.
Speaker 3: But if so, who is he hiding from and why?
Speaker 3: In any case, they knew they had to be careful.
Speaker 3: They'd learned from police reports that in the past Craig
Speaker 3: had helped Tom clean and store a whole arsenal of weapons.
Speaker 2: Why did he do this?
Speaker 3: Well, Tom had a felony on his record, which meant
Speaker 3: he wasn't supposed to have any guns, so his buddy
Speaker 3: Craig helped him out. This suggested two things to the agents.
Speaker 3: One Craig was loyal. He ended up going to prison
Speaker 3: for strowing those weapons, and two, Craig was probably handy
Speaker 3: with a gun. The God Squad was still hatching their
Speaker 3: plan as they rolled into town.
Speaker 2: It was late.
Speaker 4: I feel like we were closing in on midnight, and
Speaker 4: we didn't want to put it off.
Speaker 2: We were just so full of energy.
Speaker 3: It was late for a door knock, very late, but
Speaker 3: their excitement eclipsed their caution, so instead of waiting until morning,
Speaker 3: they drove right to his house. Their plan was to
Speaker 3: say hello, introduce themselves, and arrange to have a formal
Speaker 3: sit down the following day.
Speaker 5: And when we finally found where he lives, he lives
Speaker 5: literally on top of like if it's on a mountain,
Speaker 5: it's a very very tall hill. It's very tall and
Speaker 5: very steep.
Speaker 4: I remember being very very dark, like I don't think
Speaker 4: I could see my hand in front of me. And
Speaker 4: as soon as we got out of our cars, I
Speaker 4: think we got out a few feet and then floodlights.
Speaker 4: I just remember floodlights like we were in a stadium,
Speaker 4: just shined upon us.
Speaker 5: I mean it was like bright as day. He had
Speaker 5: hooked up these spotlights and trees illuminating the whole area,
Speaker 5: and we can see his house dimly up the top
Speaker 5: of the hill. I think I may have made a
Speaker 5: comment to Scott. I said, man, if he had any
Speaker 5: ill intent, he we'd be dead men right now.
Speaker 2: That told me a lot that.
Speaker 4: Wow, you know what is inside this person that he
Speaker 4: has this going on where he wants to be made
Speaker 4: well aware of anybody arriving.
Speaker 5: I'm thinking, man, he does not want to he doesn't
Speaker 5: want to be found.
Speaker 3: Scott and Terry start trudging up the icy, snow covered hill.
Speaker 3: They can hear dogs barking from within the house. Eventually
Speaker 3: they get up to the front porch and Craig walks out.
Speaker 3: He's medium height and stocky with a closely cropped haircut.
Speaker 3: Scott calls out to.
Speaker 4: Him, Craig Peterson, you don't know us, but we're here.
Speaker 4: I'm going to talk to you. Federal agents. Can we
Speaker 4: approach you? Can we come up to your house and
Speaker 4: within ten seconds just a very friendly inviting demeanor, come on.
Speaker 2: Up and come into my house.
Speaker 4: Is a sigh of relief of that, but definitely a
Speaker 4: side of release. First and foremost, we've achieved our first
Speaker 4: goal is finding him, achieved our second goal of being
Speaker 4: able to be face to face with him. Our third
Speaker 4: goal was to get him to come and speak with
Speaker 4: us at a different location. We weren't going to talk
Speaker 4: to him at his house.
Speaker 3: Craig invites them inside, he introduces them to his fiance.
Speaker 3: It's all very normal and Craig he seems unfazed.
Speaker 5: He was very relaxed, very gracious. I mean, just almost
Speaker 5: opposite of what I was expecting.
Speaker 3: Scott and Terry explain that they just have a few
Speaker 3: questions for him about an old matter from the past.
Speaker 3: They keep it deliberately vague, and they ask if he'd
Speaker 3: be willing to meet with them the following day down
Speaker 3: at the barracks where the Vermont State Police are stationed.
Speaker 3: Craig's like, sure, I'll meet you tomorrow after I'm done
Speaker 3: with work. All the while, Terry is studying both Craig
Speaker 3: and his fiancee, trying to get a read on them.
Speaker 5: His fiance was way more concerned than he was, like
Speaker 5: she was like, what's going on?
Speaker 2: What's this about?
Speaker 5: He's not stressed at all, Like there's no stress with
Speaker 5: this dat like there's nothing. I'm like, this is unbelievable.
Speaker 3: The next day, Scott and Terry are down at the
Speaker 3: barracks of the Vermont State Police and they're just hoping
Speaker 3: Craig actually shows up.
Speaker 5: He ain't gonna show up, Like, what's the odds he's
Speaker 5: gonna show up, Like I was like fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But he shows up, affects it early, and after
Speaker 3: a little chit chat, they all sit down and get
Speaker 3: to business. Scott explains that they're here about Tom Guybison.
Speaker 4: Craig, We've made a long trip and we've been investigating
Speaker 4: Tom for a possible threat, and during the course of
Speaker 4: that investigation, we've learned that a story was told.
Speaker 3: This is the story they'd heard from Patricia, Tom's ex girlfriend,
Speaker 3: that some fifteen years prior, Craig and Tom had been skinheads,
Speaker 3: that they'd killed a black man in Philadelphia and then
Speaker 3: gotten tattoos to commemorate what they'd done. And Craig just
Speaker 3: looked at us shocked, almost a sense of I can't
Speaker 3: believe that this is coming back, and then he sat
Speaker 3: back in his chair and said, I don't know what
Speaker 3: you're talking about. Scott keeps pressing gently, very much playing
Speaker 3: the role of the New England priest, that he almost
Speaker 3: was concealing any signs of judgment, just patiently probing.
Speaker 4: Well, at the very least, would you admit you have
Speaker 4: the tattoo?
Speaker 2: Why would they lie about the story? Would they?
Speaker 4: Would they also lie about the tattoo? So would you
Speaker 4: raise your would you raise your sleeve? And so begrudgingly
Speaker 4: he did. He showed us his tattoo.
Speaker 3: A gothic looking spider web in black ink, with the
Speaker 3: elbow directly at the center, similar to what Patricia had described.
Speaker 3: Craig admitted that he and Tom both had tattoos like this,
Speaker 3: that they'd gotten them together back in high school, and
Speaker 3: Greg admitted that back in his youth, yeah, he'd been
Speaker 3: his skinhead, but it had just been a phase.
Speaker 5: He said, Man, that was a long time ago. I
Speaker 5: was a young knucklehead, and I don't believe that stuff anymore,
Speaker 5: you know, man, I'm up here. I'm working hard, man, guys.
Speaker 5: I work every day, hourly wage. I work as electrician.
Speaker 5: I've got a new life. I don't want any part
Speaker 5: of this. He just denied the whole thing. But I
Speaker 5: can't overemphasize. I'm watching this cat. I'm like, he's not
Speaker 5: stressed at all.
Speaker 3: At this point. Despite the fact that Craig had this tattoo,
Speaker 3: which offered some corroboration, Scott and Terry basically have to
Speaker 3: let him go. They say, hey, let's keep in touch.
Speaker 3: If you ever come down to Delaware, please let us know.
Speaker 3: We'd like to keep talking.
Speaker 5: And he said, yeah, if I come down there like Jake,
Speaker 5: no one's ever gonna say yeah, yeah, yeah, I look
Speaker 5: your eyes up. If I'm ever down, Dewlla, We're sure
Speaker 5: like we're gonna have a dinner together. I'm thinking nobody
Speaker 5: does that. Nobody wants to talk to their least favorite
Speaker 5: FBI and ATF agent in the world about a homicide
Speaker 5: they didn't commit.
Speaker 3: In Terry's mind, it was weird how friendly he was,
Speaker 3: and it also seemed difficult to imagine that this guy
Speaker 3: right here, this laid back electrician living in Vermont, could
Speaker 3: be capable of orchestrating a murder.
Speaker 5: If the dude was in the car with the and
Speaker 5: they did a homicide. However went down, whoever pulled the trigger,
Speaker 5: thinking I'm not seeing it. I mean, if it did
Speaker 5: happen and he was in the very car, I see
Speaker 5: nothing nonverbal in this guy. There's no stress, there's no deception.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at his eyes, I'm looking at his whole
Speaker 5: facial I'm looking at everything. I'm thinking this guy's like
Speaker 5: the he liked the best liar ever.
Speaker 3: So they say goodbye to Craig, They thank the Vermont
Speaker 3: State Troopers. They walk out of the barracks, get in
Speaker 3: their car, and head home, all the while trying to
Speaker 3: make sense of what they've just learned.
Speaker 5: And I said, Scott, I don't think it happened, man.
Speaker 5: He gause, what do you mean. I said, there's no
Speaker 5: way that, dude, there's no way. I said, maybe Tommy
Speaker 5: did something. I don't know, but I said he didn't
Speaker 5: do nothing. I'm telling you that dude is way too cool.
Speaker 5: And Scott he.
Speaker 2: Goes, Nah, I kind of think something's there. Man, this happened,
Speaker 2: and we're definitely not stopping.
Speaker 5: I said, Scott, I'm not seeing it, man, I said, Dude,
Speaker 5: I said, I think we're toast.
Speaker 1: Bro.
Speaker 3: After this time passes about a year and a half,
Speaker 3: and during this stretch. Very little happens in this case.
Speaker 3: Craig keeps living his quiet life up in the Vermont Mountains.
Speaker 3: Occasionally the God Squad gives him a call just to
Speaker 3: check in, but Craig never tells him anything new. Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: Tom Godbison finishes serving his time in federal prison. He's released,
Speaker 3: goes back to living in Delaware, where he seems to
Speaker 3: stay out of trouble. Then one day in April of
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, the God Squad gets a phone
Speaker 3: call from Craig.
Speaker 5: Craig says, Hey, basically, I'm coming down to see my mom.
Speaker 5: You know, do you guys want to still talk to me?
Speaker 5: I'm incredulous the dude is volunteering. You know, nothing's happened
Speaker 5: in the year and whatever months it's been. There's no
Speaker 5: subpoenas as though arrest, there's those search warrants.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 5: He's got to think he's Scott free.
Speaker 3: Are you Are you pretty surprised to get this phone call?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean again, I'm like, this is unbelievable, doesn't make
Speaker 5: any sense to me. But I honestly I literally felt like,
Speaker 5: does he want friends? Does he need friends? There's some
Speaker 5: things that are miraculous. They don't look miraculous, but they
Speaker 5: literally are miraculous. So that doesn't happen in the world, man,
Speaker 5: it doesn't happen.
Speaker 3: Terry and Scott are determined to make the most of
Speaker 3: this meeting, and they go for a new strategy. They've
Speaker 3: tried the whole good cop routine and it hasn't worked,
Speaker 3: not really, so time to apply a little pressure. They
Speaker 3: get a subpoena requiring Craig to testify before a grand
Speaker 3: jury about the murder that allegedly took place. This is
Speaker 3: no joke. The subpoena will put Craig on the spot
Speaker 3: because lying before a grand jury is a serious offense.
Speaker 3: They can land you in prison for years. But remember
Speaker 3: they still have pretty much nothing on Craig at this point,
Speaker 3: so the subpoena, it's kind of a bluff. What's your
Speaker 3: mindset going into that meeting.
Speaker 4: Our mindset is this, we had a subpoena, We're gonna
Speaker 4: give it to him. You always have to hand deliver it.
Speaker 4: There was going to be no more willer room, no
Speaker 4: more postponements. This is now going to be either make
Speaker 4: it or break it.
Speaker 3: So Craig shows up at the FBI's offices in Wilmington, Delaware.
Speaker 3: He's got no idea that there's a subpoena waiting for him.
Speaker 3: What happens next we pieced together from talking to the
Speaker 3: agents and reading their report from that day. Initially, it's
Speaker 3: all smiles. Terry keeps the whole thing really upbeat.
Speaker 5: Hey, we thank you for coming down. This is awesome.
Speaker 5: You know, we really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: They asked Craig again about the rumor of the murder
Speaker 3: down in Philadelphia. They tell him, we don't think you're
Speaker 3: telling us the truth, and this time, instead of denying
Speaker 3: the whole thing outright, Craig concedes that maybe back at
Speaker 3: the time, there'd been some chatter about this.
Speaker 5: I think he said something like, yeah, we heard rumors
Speaker 5: about that that someone said we did a homicide. But
Speaker 5: man's no, that's nothing to it. We didn't do any homicide.
Speaker 5: It's a bunch of junk. Didn't happen. Yeah, maybe maybe
Speaker 5: Tommy said that's going to build our rep a little bit.
Speaker 3: In other words, a bit of bragging, but nothing more
Speaker 3: than that. The agents push Craig tell him, we believe
Speaker 3: a homicide occurred and that you participated in it. Eventually,
Speaker 3: when the meeting is almost over, the hand Craig the
Speaker 3: subpoena and kind of hold their breath.
Speaker 5: And again we're shooting blanks. We have nothing right. Well,
Speaker 5: his whole demeanor changed when he got to subpoena. He's
Speaker 5: like what the stress right? Went from like zero to
Speaker 5: like he's he's hitting about a ten.
Speaker 3: That meeting ends without a breakthrough. Craig didn't admit to anything,
Speaker 3: but a few days later he calls them back says
Speaker 3: he wants to meet again, have another sit down. So
Speaker 3: they reconvene, and at this meeting, right off the bat,
Speaker 3: the mood is tense.
Speaker 4: When he arrived, I could tell he was depleted, shaken.
Speaker 4: His whole body had changed to a defeatist demeanor.
Speaker 5: He was like completely complete hundred degree change, and he
Speaker 5: literally it's hard to describe. It was literally like an
Speaker 5: invisible hand was pushing him down in the chair. He
Speaker 5: physically got smaller. I saw him shrink like like like
Speaker 5: he was like getting deflated. He started sweating, beads of
Speaker 5: sweat were popping out.
Speaker 4: You could feel the tension, but you can also feel like, uh,
Speaker 4: he's about to say something, and then he's.
Speaker 2: He says I'll tell you everything. I'll tell you everything.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you everything, And at this moment it's I'm like, maybe,
Speaker 3: just maybe they've been right all along not to give
Speaker 3: up on this, and that the truth was finally at hand.
Speaker 3: Coming up this season on Deep Cover.
Speaker 4: We have to do our job and we have to
Speaker 4: find out who did they kill.
Speaker 5: Not that any murder isn't disturbing, but this particular murder
Speaker 5: and the reason for it the hate. This was a
Speaker 5: hate crime.
Speaker 2: I believe Tom guy as Soon is innocent.
Speaker 5: They had no physical evidence, they had no gun, they
Speaker 5: had nothing.
Speaker 6: We didn't like the speculation the family, and I thought
Speaker 6: that this would be good if we found at least
Speaker 6: what happened to them. Can't do nothing about it, can't
Speaker 6: bring them back, but at least we'll find out the truth.
Speaker 3: Deep Cover is produced by Amy Gaines McQuaid and Jacob Smith.
Speaker 3: It's edited by Karen SCHAKERJI mastering by Jake Gorsky. Our
Speaker 3: show art was designed by Sean Carney. Original scoring and
Speaker 3: our theme was composed by Luis Gara. Fact checking by
Speaker 3: Arthur Gomberts. Our story consultant was James Foreman Jr. Special
Speaker 3: thanks to Jerry Williams, Sarah Nix, Greta Cone, and Jake Flanagan.
Speaker 3: I'm Jake Albert