WEBVTT - Michael F. Weisberg: A Second Shot 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.480 This story contains adult content and language, along with references 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:07.640 to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:21.599 This book is about second shots and second chances. Never 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:28.839 give up in life. 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:33.320 I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.120 in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:40.000 podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career, 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:44.000 research for my many audio and book projects has taken 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.320 me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down 0:00:47.360 --> 0:00:52.080 with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers, 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:56.520 and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true 0:00:56.520 --> 0:01:00.320 crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both 0:01:00.360 --> 0:01:03.280 good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:09.920 unpublished details behind their stories. In nineteen seventy one, James 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.479 Tappenhall was gunned down in Maryland as the deputy sheriff 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.440 patrolled the grounds of a country club. The police searched 0:01:16.440 --> 0:01:19.560 for suspects, which included a gang of teens known for 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:22.720 breaking into Coca Cola machines, but the case went cold 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:26.400 for half a century until it finally broke But did 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:29.600 they catch the real killer? Author Michael Weisberg tells me 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:32.920 the story from his book A Second Shot, The Pursuit 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:39.600 of Justice in Maryland's oldest cold case murder. You know, 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:43.759 I've had people bring me cases before about their relatives. 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:47.240 It's a lot of weight on the writer, I think, 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:51.520 because you're telling a very very personal story that you're 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:53.840 invested in but for a finite amount of time, and 0:01:53.920 --> 0:01:55.880 you know you care very much about these people, or 0:01:55.880 --> 0:01:58.920 you grow to care about them. But in Carolyn's case, 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.640 this is, you know, a a massive part of her life. 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.080 So was it difficult for you to wrap your head 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:07.440 around that. Were you intimidated in any way? Because I 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:08.880 get intimidated by stuff like that. 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:13.000 I think I was intimidated by it. Just what you're 0:02:13.040 --> 0:02:17.959 saying is true. But I also found tremendous support from 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:21.359 Carolyn and her husband and their daughter Carrie that they 0:02:21.400 --> 0:02:23.600 wanted this to be done and anything that they could 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:26.600 do to help me. They were there and they wanted 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:28.680 to give me all the information that I needed. They 0:02:28.720 --> 0:02:30.800 wanted to have their family cooperate, They wanted to have 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:34.000 anybody that had anything to do with it. Ow Sweat, 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.480 who was the original investigator on the story fifty two 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.200 years ago, in the case fifty two years before anybody 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:41.280 who had anything to do with it. They wanted them 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.600 to help me, and I felt that, although it was 0:02:44.639 --> 0:02:49.000 something I'd never done before, that initially I got into 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:51.000 it thinking it was going to be open and shut 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:53.359 as I talked about it in the book, But even 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:55.280 as I got further into it and realized that it 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:57.400 was going to take a while and take several years 0:02:57.400 --> 0:02:59.800 to go through and write, I felt like with the 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.600 fa family behind me, I felt more support than I 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:03.400 did intimidation. 0:03:03.960 --> 0:03:07.760 Okay, that's great. Well, where should we start with this story? 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:11.799 Do we want to get into James Tappenhall's background? How 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:12.919 far back do we want to go? 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.480 Okay, well, let's just start with the fact that here's 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.799 a man who was married and had two children and 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.160 doing anything he could to earn a living for the children. 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.440 They'd originally had a home in Silver Spring, Maryland that 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:28.920 they'd been kicked out of because they couldn't pay the bills, 0:03:29.600 --> 0:03:32.240 So he obviously he'd grown up extremely poor. He had 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:35.800 a fifth grade education, and he never wanted something like 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:38.440 that to ever happen again to his family. So he 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:42.000 had a job where he worked on transmissions for buses. 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:44.200 That's for his job. He learned how to do it 0:03:44.240 --> 0:03:47.120 and he was excellent. He became the union steward for 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.640 his company and he was very good at doing that. 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:51.640 But he also was always looking for other ways to 0:03:51.680 --> 0:03:54.440 make money. For example, he bought a store that had 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.200 ice creaming made ice cream, and he would spend hours 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.720 when he wasn't working on the transmissions in that store 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.400 making the ice cream for sale that was called Shirley's 0:04:03.440 --> 0:04:07.240 ice Cream. He decided to work also at the amusement 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:09.880 park that was near where they lived, and his job 0:04:10.000 --> 0:04:12.760 was to put people into the roller coaster and make 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:14.840 sure that their seats were secure and that the things 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:17.000 were over them so that they couldn't fall out of 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:21.400 the roller coaster. They needed more security at this amusement park, 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:23.960 and so they told him, Okay, we're going to make 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:27.440 you security, but you're going to be a deputy sheriff. 0:04:27.600 --> 0:04:29.920 And so that's how he became a deputy sheriff. There 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.279 was no training, no tests to take, nothing. He had 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:35.760 a little bit of background who's in the military short time, 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.200 but then was discharged because they had flat feet. So 0:04:39.279 --> 0:04:42.400 here he is now a deputy sheriff and also as 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.920 part of the deputy sheriff's duties, they were security guards 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:48.920 at the Manor Country Club. This was a beautiful country 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:52.240 club in Rockville, Maryland, and they had a lot of 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.839 breakings and burglaries in that area. They thought mainly commuted 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.000 by teenagers who lived there. They're breaking into the coke 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:01.960 machines of breaking into the houses, and so they felt 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.080 like they needed a security guard to work there. So JT. 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.880 Hall was on the regular shift of working security. On 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:13.359 the night of October twenty third, nineteen seventy one, he 0:05:13.520 --> 0:05:17.240 wasn't supposed to work, his family was over. The ship 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.320 started at seven o'clock pm. He got a call at 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:23.120 six thirty pm and it was a rainy, dark night, 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:26.240 just terrible rainstorm. A man who was supposed to work, 0:05:26.320 --> 0:05:28.600 Jim Young, said he had a family matter come up 0:05:28.640 --> 0:05:32.200 and couldn't work and could JT work for him. JT 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:35.080 said sure, He's always willing to do things to make 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:38.000 extra money to provide for his family, and so he 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.279 drove to the country club and that started to shift 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:42.120 at seven o'clock. 0:05:42.600 --> 0:05:46.039 How many years had JT been a deputy sheriff in 0:05:46.080 --> 0:05:48.360 Maryland before what happens happens. 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.920 He'd been a deputy sheriff for approximately five years before 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:52.719 this had happened. 0:05:52.920 --> 0:05:55.719 Well, we know that he is, you know, somebody who's 0:05:55.839 --> 0:06:00.799 committed to getting security for his family and he's doing 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.720 everything he possibly can. What do you think about him 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.680 as a personality, as a person, you know, I mean, 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:09.440 what does Carolyn say about what her dad was like 0:06:09.760 --> 0:06:10.400 as far as. 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:12.720 His work approach and things like that. He was very 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:16.680 hard working, always dill legent about doing his job, whatever 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.160 type of work he was involved with. But he was 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.960 a very loving family man. He loved to spend time 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.200 with his children and his grandchildren. He would do anything 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.560 he could for them, and he would go out of 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:31.159 his way. Like Carolyn related the story when she was 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:34.120 six years old, her father took her. They were out 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:35.840 and her father took her out on the dance floor 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:37.599 to dance, and she said, I don't know how to dance, 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:39.880 and he just put her feet on top of his 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.440 and moved her around to dance floor. And that's something 0:06:43.440 --> 0:06:46.839 that almost seventy five years later, she still remembered. Well. 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:48.880 She also remembered how much he used to love to 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.039 play croquet and other games with the kids, and how 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.000 he hated to have his son beat him so that 0:06:55.040 --> 0:06:58.000 he would a cheat it croquet by kicking his ball along. 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:01.880 He was a devoted man. He only drank alcohol when 0:07:01.920 --> 0:07:04.240 they would go out to go dancing and things like that. 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:07.039 He was not a religious man in the formal sense, 0:07:07.080 --> 0:07:09.080 but he was certainly a god fearing man in the 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.600 sense that he treated other people the way he would 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:12.400 want to be treated. 0:07:12.720 --> 0:07:15.480 Tell me about the area a little bit more. Montgomery 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.480 County in general in nineteen seventy one put us in 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:21.240 time also with the United States. You know, what is 0:07:21.280 --> 0:07:24.320 the general feeling we have about America in this time, 0:07:24.360 --> 0:07:26.760 and then about this area as far as crime or 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:28.880 politics or anything like that. So we know what we're 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:29.520 dealing with here. 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:33.960 This area is about thirty minutes outside of Washington, d C. 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:37.800 It's a very democratic voting areas, but in that time too, 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:41.520 about seventy seventy five percent in presidential elections. Just to 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.240 give you an idea near that area. And Prince George 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:49.200 Maryland is where George Wallace was shot when he was 0:07:49.280 --> 0:07:53.960 running for president. And as a matter of fact, Frank Hall, 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:57.360 who was the nephew of JT. Hall, served after he 0:07:57.440 --> 0:08:00.080 was shot in the hospital. He was in charge of 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.840 security for George Wallace's wife, So that's in the area. 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:06.400 There was a lot going on in the area, a 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.480 lot of racial things in the sixties and seventies. The 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.880 amusement park that I talked about where JT. Hawd worked, 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.520 was burned down in a riot at that time. So 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:19.520 there was a lot of things going on as far 0:08:19.560 --> 0:08:22.880 as politically in that the Rockville and that whole area 0:08:22.960 --> 0:08:26.960 at all. At the time. JT and his family weren't 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:30.720 involved in politics. His brother was the fire chief for 0:08:30.800 --> 0:08:34.120 the area for Montgomery County, and JT, as I said, 0:08:34.280 --> 0:08:37.200 was just worked as a deputy sheriffs. But mainly what 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:40.320 it was was more of a just a glorified security guard, 0:08:40.880 --> 0:08:44.520 both at the amusement park and at the Manor Country Club. 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:49.760 The Montgomery County is one of the wealthiest counties in Maryland. 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.360 It's now the largest, its largest county. It's now become 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.240 a tech quarter. It wasn't, of course at that time. 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.400 When I think about that time and look back into 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.360 the seventies, I see a lot of youth unrest in 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:06.439 that area. I see a lot of the teenagers getting together, 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:10.800 and there are places churches that had their churches open 0:09:10.880 --> 0:09:13.680 just to keep the kids off the streets, not realizing 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:15.680 that what they were doing in a lot of cases 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:18.920 was allowing these young men to get together, get to 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:23.199 know each other, in form gangs, to perform mischief, robberies, 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:26.520 and things like that. So I think that there was 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:29.439 a lot of unrest, a lot of the teenagers were 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:31.720 out and about on the town. I think it was 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.400 an environment that was ripe for having things like burglary 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:37.760 and other types of criminal activities occur. 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:42.200 So on this night in nineteen seventy one, Jim Young says, 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.520 can you take over this shift for me? And you 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.480 said it was a rainy night, dark night, and now 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.000 let's pick it up from there. What ends up happening? 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:56.600 So he goes to the country club and there's always 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.160 on Saturday nights, high stake poker games going on. That 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:02.920 was another reason to have security there. So he would 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.920 make his way around the parking lot where he parked 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.600 his car, and then go in and out into the 0:10:08.640 --> 0:10:11.280 country club itself and check out and make sure that 0:10:11.320 --> 0:10:14.440 everything was okay there. He used his flashlight because it 0:10:14.480 --> 0:10:17.240 was so dark, and he would make multiple trips around 0:10:17.280 --> 0:10:19.640 the parking lot, which was large to make sure that 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:22.760 everything was okay. The parking lot on one end about 0:10:22.920 --> 0:10:26.480 the country club itself, and then on one side was 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:28.680 the golf course, so you could see from the parking 0:10:28.679 --> 0:10:31.760 lot into the golf course. And on the golf course 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:34.280 were a lot of huge trees, and then on all 0:10:34.280 --> 0:10:37.160 around the golf course were built these mansions that people 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.360 had built with large windows looking out on the golf course. 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.040 He does his shift. He's about four and a half 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:45.319 hours into it, and one of the things he'd loved 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:47.440 to do while he was in his car loaning away 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:49.880 from the house was smoke his pipe. He would smoke 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:52.480 his pipe intermittently. He had just gotten his pipe out 0:10:52.520 --> 0:10:54.559 at ten thirty and all of a sudden, out of 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:56.840 the corner of his eye, he sees something going on 0:10:57.040 --> 0:11:00.000 in the area of the golf course. Some things moved. 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.240 So he gets out of his car and starts walking 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:07.080 over there. It's pouring rain, it's dark, there's almost no 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.080 lighting out in the parking lot. He uses his flashlight 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:12.880 and sees something move and says, what's going on there? 0:11:12.920 --> 0:11:16.400 What are you doing? Flashes this flashlight and he's able 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.760 to see that in the area between the country club 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:22.040 and the parking lot, there's built up almost a pyramid 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:26.880 of household items, things like step stools and jack lanterns 0:11:26.880 --> 0:11:29.280 and sheets and all these things are just in a 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:33.560 big pyramid, big piles right there. And the next thing 0:11:33.800 --> 0:11:36.480 you hear a gun shot, and he's holding his flashlight 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:39.480 and the shot hits the flashlight and knocks it out 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:43.320 of his hand. Everything goes dark. He realizes that he's 0:11:43.559 --> 0:11:46.600 being shot at, so he turns around to get out 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.960 of the way and reaches for his gun. Unfortunately, he 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.880 reached got his pipe out, and at the same moment 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:55.240 that he got his pipe out, he was shot in 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.640 the back of his head. It was one shot that 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:01.320 entered in the lower left hand inside of his head 0:12:02.120 --> 0:12:05.400 and lodged behind his right eye. He fell to the ground, 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:08.920 the pipe went skittering away, ended up near a drain 0:12:09.040 --> 0:12:12.680 pipe here where he was lying, and he was left 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:17.800 there to die. He was found by a couple who 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:21.360 had been out on a date, Robert Tristgrad and his girlfriend, 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:24.800 and they were walking by and they saw him, probably 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:27.200 within about five to ten minutes of it taking place, 0:12:27.679 --> 0:12:30.480 and they went into the country club and had the 0:12:31.160 --> 0:12:35.040 receptionists there call the police and called for an ambulance. 0:12:35.600 --> 0:12:39.200 A few minutes later, a group of boys drove into 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:43.280 the parking lot. These boys, who are now known as 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:46.319 the Coke Machine Gang, at the same time as all 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:49.160 this was going on, had been attempting to break into 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:52.600 the coke machines on the Manor Country Club to steal 0:12:52.640 --> 0:12:55.920 the quarters from the coke machines. They saw what looked 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.520 like a big bag of garbage in the middle of 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.480 the parking lot, but stopped there. They'd come back to 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.480 the parking lot. They had left because they'd heard sirens, 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.520 which had turned out to be were fire engines going elsewhere. 0:13:08.160 --> 0:13:10.360 Then they'd come back because they realized that they'd left 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.280 one of the tools that they'd used to break into 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.360 the coke machines on the Coke Machines. So they came 0:13:15.400 --> 0:13:17.480 back and saw this big piece of garbage bag in 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:20.200 the middle of the parking lot, got out and realized 0:13:20.240 --> 0:13:23.160 that it was a Deputy Sheriff JT. Hall. One of them, 0:13:23.240 --> 0:13:25.680 Robert Canavery, turned his head to the side so he 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.439 could breathe, and the rest went in and also contacted 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:33.560 the receptionist, and they waited until the ambulance came to 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:37.040 take him to the hospital. He was still breathing but unresponsive. 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:42.360 Nice gang of petty criminals. I guess, well, that's risky 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:42.760 for them. 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:46.160 These were boys fifteen to sixteen years old, the leader 0:13:46.160 --> 0:13:51.440 of whom his father was a police officer. His name 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.560 was Shoemaker. He had been in trouble with the law 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:58.920 multiple times, and he was actually his father had told 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.640 him afterwards not to talk to the police, and as 0:14:02.679 --> 0:14:06.000 it turns out, he turned out to be the suspect 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:11.440 that the detectives initially centered on and felt for years 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:13.800 that he was the one who had shot the deputy sheriff. 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:17.160 The Coke Machine boys had been driving around. The Coke 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:21.160 Machine gang had been driving around that night smoking marijuana, 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:24.760 and previously they'd gone into a laundry place where there 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:28.720 was laundry machines and they'd broken into those installed the 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:32.280 quarters from those. Norman Shoemaker was their leader, and he 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:34.960 drove them over. He was sixteen, so he drove the car. 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.720 He drove them over to the country club and then, 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.040 like I said, they saw the deputy sheriff lying there 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.640 and they called in and one of them, Robert Cannaveri, 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:47.800 stayed behind to help him breathe. 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:50.920 Now, remind me who is the son of the cop? 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:52.720 Which one of those boys, the. 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.960 Son of the cop is Norman Shoemaker. Okay, he'd been 0:14:56.000 --> 0:15:00.640 involved in other activities, criminal activities in the past, but 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:04.040 the law states said, you cannot interview a juvenile unless 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:06.760 they're caught in the act of committing a crime or 0:15:07.120 --> 0:15:11.400 their parent gives consent. And his father would never give consent. 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.200 So he had a very bad reputation among law enforcement 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:21.840 in Montgomery County. And with this episode, he was initially interviewed, 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:24.120 but when his father found out what was going on, 0:15:24.600 --> 0:15:27.680 he refused to be interviewed anymore, and so he became 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:28.680 the prime suspect. 0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:34.840 So you know, at this moment, you've got the Coke 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:38.160 Machine Gang who were waiting for the ambulance, and you've 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.600 got JT. Who is still alive and Robert turned his 0:15:41.640 --> 0:15:44.520 head so he could breathe. What else does the Coke 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:48.360 Machine gang say about this situation, I mean from their 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:49.120 point of view? 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.400 Interestingly enough, after JT. Hall was taken to the hospital 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.200 and then had to be intubated right away because he 0:15:56.240 --> 0:16:00.600 had agonal respirations and he had a neuros urgent come 0:16:00.600 --> 0:16:03.360 in to see him, examined him, looked at the X 0:16:03.480 --> 0:16:06.880 rays that had been dying, told Robert Filo in Melvin 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:10.440 Hall that there was no hope for him. After he died. 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:12.840 On the twenty six, they went back and reinterviewed the 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:16.120 Coke Machine Boys and the only one who admitted to 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:20.280 breaking into the Coke machines was Robert Cannavery and he's 0:16:20.320 --> 0:16:24.080 actually the only one that served time in jail for that. 0:16:24.880 --> 0:16:27.560 The rest of them went off scott free. They never 0:16:27.640 --> 0:16:30.120 admitted that they had been there doing that also, so 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:35.200 Robert Cannavery was put in jail. Shoemaker refused to talk 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:38.600 any further to the police officers, and the rest of 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:43.040 the Coke Machine Boys alibied each other out so that 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:46.560 the police interviewed them multiple times but did not feel 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:48.560 that they were involved with the murder. 0:16:48.760 --> 0:16:51.960 So Robert Cannavery was he in jail for the break 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:53.400 in of the Coke Machine correct? 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:56.360 Okay, it's a short period of time for you know, 0:16:56.440 --> 0:16:59.800 trespassing and for vandalism. But he's the only one that 0:16:59.840 --> 0:17:02.960 had anything come from that episode. 0:17:03.080 --> 0:17:05.919 I know you're not a neurosurgeon, but I'm just curious. 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:11.200 Did you read through the notes from the neurosurgeon who 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:14.440 looked at JT. I mean, could he have been saved today? 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:15.920 I always wonder about stuff like that. 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:19.080 I think that today there's much more advanced technology to 0:17:19.200 --> 0:17:24.080 determine exactly what's going on, including MRIs machines, CT scans. 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:26.439 When they said an X ray was done, then it 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.119 was probably just a plain the brain of the head 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.320 skull that showed where the bullet had gone. He probably 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:35.320 had an exam. You know, I can't tell you for sure, 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:37.439 because no, I did not have the notes. I actually 0:17:37.520 --> 0:17:40.680 went to the hospital now the Montgomery General Hospital. Now 0:17:41.440 --> 0:17:44.919 it's another iteration from the hospital then that was in 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.960 Actually it's two iterations. There was another hospital that took 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:51.760 its place in the early two thousands, and now there's 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.840 another hospital, much newer, that's been there for about the 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:57.000 last seven years. And I went there and I called 0:17:57.000 --> 0:17:59.840 the medical records department and I explained to them what 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:01.800 I wanted, because no one I first tried to get 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.679 into medical records, no one will let me in. Finally 0:18:04.680 --> 0:18:07.399 got the number there, and the man who answered listened 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:10.840 to me talking what I wanted, and he says, we 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:13.000 don't know anything about that, and don't you ever call 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:17.040 this line again? Black click? So I did not have 0:18:17.080 --> 0:18:19.440 any records to look at. You know, there are certain 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:21.440 things that when you look at certain like for instance, 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.040 someone has a blown pupil, you know, midline shift in 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:25.960 the brain. There's certain things that you can look at 0:18:26.440 --> 0:18:29.600 just on exam to tell whether or not someone's gonna 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.560 make it or not if they've already had herdiation of 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.240 the brain. I don't know what was done at that time, 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:37.639 but you do wonder if something like that happened now 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:40.439 with what we have now. For example, my hospital that 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:42.800 I work in is a Level one trauma center and 0:18:42.840 --> 0:18:46.720 we have ninety two neuro intensive carrying of beds. We're 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:50.399 the largest one in the country. This is in Plano, Texas, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:54.240 and they have twenty four hour on site neurosurgeons as 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:59.760 well as neurological radiologists, and they specialize in things like 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:02.560 this and taking care of patients like this, and they're 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:05.119 brought from a two hundred mile radius to our hospital 0:19:05.400 --> 0:19:08.520 to take care of So with modern technology, I wonder 0:19:08.560 --> 0:19:10.200 if he could have been saved, if something could have 0:19:10.200 --> 0:19:10.719 been done. 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.199 So is he declared brain dead or how does his 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:15.280 life actually end? 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:18.560 At the hospital, he's declared brain dead. He's on the 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.720 ventilator for three days, and then they basically say there's 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:26.000 no hope. So Melvin Hall, who's his son, who's also 0:19:26.040 --> 0:19:29.520 a police officer and later works for the CIA, and 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:33.320 actually the night that his dad was shot, Melvin was 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.680 the chief officer for the CIA headquarters at that time. 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:40.280 He actually worked at the White House under five different presidents. Also, 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:43.639 this is JT's son. Don't forget. JT only had a 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.520 fifth grade education and his son went on to get 0:19:47.560 --> 0:19:50.320 his college education and work for the policeman and then 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:55.119 for the CIA. But Melvin Hall and Robert Filo, the 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:57.800 son in law, popped the doctor and came in and 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:00.600 said there's no hope. The doctor suggest we take them 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.040 off the bed. Later they did so, and thirty minutes 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:05.680 later he stopped breathing and was dead. 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.720 Tell me a little bit more about I don't know 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.520 much about his wife. I won't even ask what her 0:20:11.600 --> 0:20:13.960 reaction was. I know what her reaction was. I'm sure 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:17.840 it was just devastating for her. But did you get 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.520 a sense from Carolyn what the stages of grief were, 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:24.280 because I know they can be very different from when 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:28.800 you've lost somebody in a violent way to an unknown assailant. 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:30.680 What was it like for this family? 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:33.600 I think that for Anna, they had been married for 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.760 about thirty three thirty four years, and who was worked 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.639 for the NIH Nationalis Suits of Health as a technician 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:44.439 and was educated, very smart woman. I think that she 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:49.000 never got beyond the stage of anger because she couldn't 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:53.760 understand why Moore wasn't done to find out who killed 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:58.600 her husband. There was one incident in nineteen seventy eight, 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:03.800 proxibly years after the murder where since the very beginning 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:07.600 of the Filo family, instead of taking any money or 0:21:07.640 --> 0:21:11.840 any contributions for flowers and things like that, they'd ask 0:21:11.960 --> 0:21:14.239 people to just donate to a fund to try to 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:17.680 find the killer. They raised one thousand dollars by doing that, 0:21:18.080 --> 0:21:20.440 and it was matched by a thousand dollars raised by 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.080 the man Or Country Club two thousand dollars. They asked 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:27.840 the chief of police at that time to advertise that 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.600 there was a reward being offered, but it was never done, 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.720 It was never publicized, it was never done, and about 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:36.960 two or three weeks later, two dogs were found poisoned 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:39.600 and murdered in the Potomac River, and the Police of 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:42.280 Chief said okay, and there was a fifty dollars reward 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:46.120 being offered, and that was widely publicized. So nineteen seventy 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:48.959 eight there was a really incredible newspaper front page article 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.119 in the Montgomery County paper where they interviewed Robert Filo. 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:56.919 He basically said how he was now an attorney and 0:21:56.960 --> 0:21:59.200 one of the things that had really upset him about 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:03.360 police war about what had happened was that they valued dogs' 0:22:03.400 --> 0:22:07.600 lives over human life. Anna had tremendous anger towards what 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.159 had happened. I will say that later in life that 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:14.439 she did later remarry, and then when he died, she 0:22:14.560 --> 0:22:18.639 moved to Texas to be with Carolyn and Bob living 0:22:18.680 --> 0:22:21.280 with them. She was always a big baseball fan. She 0:22:21.320 --> 0:22:24.600 became a Texas Rangers fan, and she fell in love 0:22:24.640 --> 0:22:28.000 with Pud Rodriguez, the catcher for the Rangers, and had 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:30.800 a life sized poster of him and the closet the 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:35.680 door to her closet. So I think she resigned herself somewhat, 0:22:35.760 --> 0:22:38.440 but I think when it came to her husband to 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:42.160 j T, she never got over the anger what had happened. 0:22:42.800 --> 0:22:47.400 What is the explanation for the lack of action from 0:22:47.440 --> 0:22:50.360 Montgomery County. Is it because he was just some low 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.800 level you had said, you know, a security guard, not 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:56.440 really what we would think of as a deputy sheriff. 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:57.440 What do you think happened. 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:00.639 I don't think that's what it was. No. I think 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:04.959 that a couple of things happened. First of all, I 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:09.040 think that they assigned the case to their top detective. 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:12.720 His name was O. W. Sweat. I actually interviewed him. 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:15.520 Of course, this is fifty some years after the crime, 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:19.359 and he really was a lot of confused about a 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:23.280 lot of details that came out. But talking to him, 0:23:23.960 --> 0:23:27.600 he had handled between forty and fifty murder cases in 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:30.879 his career. He was a go to guy, and this 0:23:31.080 --> 0:23:33.360 was the only one that he didn't. What they call 0:23:33.560 --> 0:23:37.040 clothes close means that you have a resolution, and it 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:40.960 bothered him tremendously because he worked in the same station 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:45.000 as Robert Filo, Bob Filo, the son in law, and 0:23:45.640 --> 0:23:48.639 he felt that if any case could have been he 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:50.840 wanted to close. He did everything he could to get 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:54.879 this one closed. Now, I think that having said that, 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:56.960 I think he made the mistake of what we call 0:23:57.040 --> 0:23:59.639 tunnel vision. It has referred to in my book in 0:23:59.680 --> 0:24:03.479 a couple instances, but basically, I let one of the 0:24:03.520 --> 0:24:08.359 nephews of JT. Hall, Frank Hall Junior, whose father was 0:24:08.400 --> 0:24:13.119 a fire chief. He basically talks about policemen will find 0:24:13.240 --> 0:24:16.239 one suspect that they think has got to be the 0:24:16.240 --> 0:24:19.680 one who did it, though narrow they're focus on that 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:23.439 one suspect and kind of exclude the other things that 0:24:23.480 --> 0:24:27.560 are going on. In this case, the suspect was Norman Shoemaker, 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:30.600 the young man who was there that night, who was 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:33.960 driving the car, and who the police felt was just 0:24:34.000 --> 0:24:37.480 a bad apple, And so I think he focused on 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:40.200 him to the exclusion of other people. When I talked 0:24:40.200 --> 0:24:42.479 to him, he said he interviewed over one hundred people 0:24:42.520 --> 0:24:45.639 involved living in the area, this and that, But I 0:24:45.680 --> 0:24:50.080 think that he never got beyond that initial impression, and 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:54.520 there was never any physical evidence because of the rain 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:56.960 and things like that. And also at that time they 0:24:57.000 --> 0:24:59.439 closed off the area where the murder occurred, but they 0:24:59.520 --> 0:25:02.000 really didn't most of the collecting of evidence till the 0:25:02.040 --> 0:25:04.760 next day. The next morning, so a lot of the 0:25:04.760 --> 0:25:08.080 things had washed away. I mean, they found the pipe, 0:25:08.119 --> 0:25:12.120 they found the bullet, that had gone through the flashlight flashlight, 0:25:12.600 --> 0:25:14.880 but they didn't really start to collection until the next day. 0:25:14.920 --> 0:25:16.800 They did an aerial view of the whole area the 0:25:16.840 --> 0:25:19.480 next day with the plane flying over taking pictures that 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:22.440 they showed at the trial. But I think the fact 0:25:22.440 --> 0:25:26.280 that there was absolutely no physical evidence, no eyewitnesses, which 0:25:26.600 --> 0:25:28.520 it kind of blows your mind. You think about this 0:25:28.520 --> 0:25:31.760 a busy country club, all these poker games going on, 0:25:32.600 --> 0:25:36.119 boys breaking into the soda machines, and no one hears 0:25:36.240 --> 0:25:40.600 or sees anything, no eyewitnesses, no physical evidence. And then 0:25:40.680 --> 0:25:44.080 even later when DNA evidence came, which is the main 0:25:44.080 --> 0:25:47.720 way that cold cases are solved now is with DNA evidence, 0:25:48.119 --> 0:25:51.680 there was absolutely no DNA evidence to look at. So 0:25:51.760 --> 0:25:53.720 I think that the same thing that we have in 0:25:53.800 --> 0:25:57.719 medicine tunnel vision, where you initially you get called by 0:25:57.760 --> 0:26:00.240 the emergency room. We've got one lab abnormal. This is 0:26:00.280 --> 0:26:02.919 what the patient has, ay pancread titis, and you, as 0:26:02.960 --> 0:26:05.760 a physician go in and treat them for pancreaditis, when 0:26:05.800 --> 0:26:07.440 actually when you talk to them and find out more 0:26:07.480 --> 0:26:10.080 about them, they're complaining of this incredible headache and it 0:26:10.119 --> 0:26:12.000 turns out they're having a bleed into their brain. That 0:26:12.000 --> 0:26:14.639 all they had was just one abnormal blood tests. So 0:26:14.680 --> 0:26:16.359 what I'm saying to you is that it happens in 0:26:16.440 --> 0:26:19.840 all different fields. Yeah, you can't just center in on 0:26:19.840 --> 0:26:23.359 one diagnosis on one suspect, and I think that's what 0:26:23.440 --> 0:26:24.040 happened here. 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:26.720 Well, let's talk about the evidence again. Now you had 0:26:26.800 --> 0:26:29.520 said that JT would have seen. Was it like a 0:26:29.560 --> 0:26:32.280 pile of stuff? You said it was Halloween decorations? Was 0:26:32.320 --> 0:26:35.200 that part of a theft? Is that what the suspect 0:26:35.320 --> 0:26:35.720 was doing? 0:26:35.760 --> 0:26:36.760 We think yes. 0:26:37.040 --> 0:26:39.239 Did they find out where those were stolen from? I mean, 0:26:39.280 --> 0:26:40.360 were they able to go into the house. 0:26:40.480 --> 0:26:43.240 Absolutely? And I actually spent the day with that couple. 0:26:43.920 --> 0:26:47.320 Roger and Diane Schmidt had just moved into a house 0:26:47.520 --> 0:26:51.240 on Manor Country Club one month before the murder took place. 0:26:51.760 --> 0:26:55.040 That day, they'd gone to the mountains. They had a 0:26:55.040 --> 0:26:58.240 newborn daughter, and when they came back, they realized their 0:26:58.280 --> 0:27:01.600 garage open. It didn't work, but she'd left the window 0:27:01.680 --> 0:27:03.840 to the second floor of her daughter's bedroom open because 0:27:03.840 --> 0:27:06.920 she'd painted it that day. So she borrowed the lighters. 0:27:07.200 --> 0:27:10.320 Dark now after ten o'clock at night, and she borrowed 0:27:10.320 --> 0:27:12.720 a lighter from a neighbor and climbed in through the 0:27:12.760 --> 0:27:16.359 second floor window and found that the entire house had 0:27:16.400 --> 0:27:20.600 been ransacked. Drawers opened things on the floor, so they 0:27:20.640 --> 0:27:23.440 realized that their house had been broken into, and they 0:27:23.520 --> 0:27:27.720 called the police department immediately, and this was approximately ten 0:27:27.920 --> 0:27:30.600 forty for about five to ten minutes after the murder 0:27:30.600 --> 0:27:34.840 had taken place, and the Montgomery County Police Department said, 0:27:35.040 --> 0:27:37.840 we'd love to come out there, but we can't do 0:27:37.920 --> 0:27:40.159 it now. We've got a murder going on. We've got 0:27:40.160 --> 0:27:41.960 someone that was shot, and we've got to go take 0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:45.200 care of that first. So maybe a while within five minutes, 0:27:45.280 --> 0:27:48.800 five patrol cars showed up in their driveway. Because they 0:27:48.840 --> 0:27:51.280 realized there could be a connection between what was found 0:27:51.359 --> 0:27:54.040 all these items and stuff, they took the Schmid's in 0:27:54.040 --> 0:27:56.359 one of the patrol cars over to where the golf 0:27:56.359 --> 0:28:00.399 course met the parking lot, and all the eye that 0:28:00.440 --> 0:28:03.480 were found there this huge pile were from their house. 0:28:04.000 --> 0:28:07.399 Missing was her wedding ring, which was never recovered. Her 0:28:07.400 --> 0:28:11.560 engagement ring was never recovered. However, they did recover most 0:28:11.600 --> 0:28:15.320 of their other things, including their Stirling silver and as 0:28:15.320 --> 0:28:18.200 I said, Jack, a ceramic jack lantern which they still 0:28:18.200 --> 0:28:20.080 have in which they showed me when I spent time 0:28:20.119 --> 0:28:23.159 with them, the steps to which they still have a 0:28:23.200 --> 0:28:26.760 break in had occurred that same night. They were moving 0:28:27.280 --> 0:28:30.840 the different things from the break in across the golf 0:28:30.880 --> 0:28:34.439 course which was dark a tree covered to an area 0:28:34.520 --> 0:28:36.440 where a parking lot was where they had a car 0:28:36.600 --> 0:28:38.280 parked so they could put in the car and take 0:28:38.320 --> 0:28:41.920 it away. And appears as though Sheriff Hall w Sheriff 0:28:41.960 --> 0:28:44.600 Hall came upon this at the wrong time. 0:28:45.040 --> 0:28:48.000 So at the moment you know JT has died, you 0:28:48.080 --> 0:28:51.960 have the you know ow Sweat, that's his name, right, correct. 0:28:52.480 --> 0:28:52.760 O W. 0:28:53.000 --> 0:28:56.040 Sweat was lieutenant. The man in charge of the crime 0:28:56.040 --> 0:28:59.280 scene was named Jerry Boone, but O. W. Sweat was 0:28:59.240 --> 0:29:01.080 the one who was at a to who was given to. 0:29:04.640 --> 0:29:07.120 So Sweat is on the case. And I know Jerry 0:29:07.160 --> 0:29:11.320 Boone also. And they think that Norman Shoemaker, because he's 0:29:11.360 --> 0:29:14.840 a bad seed essentially and was there of course, should 0:29:14.840 --> 0:29:18.920 be their main suspect. Tell me how the investigation goes 0:29:19.000 --> 0:29:21.720 until it stops going, because it does at some point. 0:29:22.040 --> 0:29:24.000 Yeah, it sounds like it was actually worked for at 0:29:24.040 --> 0:29:27.160 least six months. But another thing that happens in police 0:29:27.160 --> 0:29:30.240 work is that these police officers get promoted, to get 0:29:30.280 --> 0:29:33.400 moved to different places, things like that. And that's another 0:29:33.480 --> 0:29:36.120 definition of a cold case is when the case is 0:29:36.160 --> 0:29:38.440 no longer being worked by the people that are familiar 0:29:38.480 --> 0:29:40.920 with it and that know what's going on. And so 0:29:41.360 --> 0:29:43.920 within the next two years he was moved to a 0:29:43.920 --> 0:29:47.880 different position, and so he was no longer working that case. 0:29:48.680 --> 0:29:52.040 Other people that were working the case really couldn't find 0:29:52.240 --> 0:29:57.360 anything out. Again, interviews talking, they have this burglary, they 0:29:57.400 --> 0:30:00.160 have this coke machine breaking, but other than that, they 0:30:00.160 --> 0:30:03.240 can't put anything together. No one saw anything, They have 0:30:03.320 --> 0:30:06.760 no other evidence. A couple of theories start making the rounds. 0:30:07.040 --> 0:30:09.880 One is that it was a mafia hit gone bad. 0:30:10.480 --> 0:30:13.680 Possibly someone was trying to hit the man who was 0:30:13.720 --> 0:30:17.760 supposed to be working that night, Jim Young, Apparently his 0:30:17.920 --> 0:30:22.120 son had been involved in some malfeasans mafia hit theory 0:30:22.280 --> 0:30:25.840 was first. One of the relatives of the Philo Hall 0:30:25.960 --> 0:30:29.080 family had been told that and been told that they 0:30:29.160 --> 0:30:31.760 were there was actually something gone wrong. The hit man 0:30:31.920 --> 0:30:35.440 was going to kill Deputy Sheriff Young ended up killing 0:30:35.800 --> 0:30:40.000 j T. And because, interestingly enough, there was a mafia 0:30:40.160 --> 0:30:43.000 member who was in the Hall Filo family. His name 0:30:43.040 --> 0:30:46.680 was tutsy because there was a hall Filo family member 0:30:47.320 --> 0:30:50.040 who was in the mafia. It was said that the 0:30:50.360 --> 0:30:53.920 killer was actually murdered himself and his body dumped at 0:30:53.920 --> 0:30:56.800 the bottom of a bridge, so the whole thing had 0:30:56.920 --> 0:30:59.600 ended there. So that was one theory that had gone around. 0:30:59.640 --> 0:31:02.040 The other thing was theory that gone around was he 0:31:02.120 --> 0:31:04.760 had all these incredibly wealthy people living in that area, 0:31:04.840 --> 0:31:07.720 the Manor country Club area, who had all these teenagers, 0:31:08.160 --> 0:31:10.520 a lot of whom were involved in mishift and in 0:31:10.640 --> 0:31:13.280 crimes and things like that. And so the other theory 0:31:13.480 --> 0:31:15.440 was that the murder had been done by one of 0:31:15.480 --> 0:31:18.600 these teenagers we don't know who what, and that their 0:31:18.640 --> 0:31:21.800 parents had paid for there to be silence, that nothing 0:31:21.920 --> 0:31:25.880 further was done, that the investigation basically round to a halt. 0:31:26.240 --> 0:31:29.680 Both of those seemed far fetched to me, but those 0:31:29.720 --> 0:31:32.680 were the two other theories, alternative theories that were going 0:31:32.720 --> 0:31:35.960 on as to why a murder of this caliber. And 0:31:36.040 --> 0:31:38.560 you said before by the Deputy sheriff, believe me, after 0:31:38.600 --> 0:31:44.320 going to several of these yearly Montgomery County Memorial weeks 0:31:44.320 --> 0:31:47.480 that they have and going to the ceremonies, the candlelying ceremonies, 0:31:47.480 --> 0:31:50.000 I have the way they honor each of these men 0:31:50.080 --> 0:31:52.120 and women that were killed in the line of duty. 0:31:52.480 --> 0:31:56.320 It's of utmost importance that they solved this. They considered 0:31:56.400 --> 0:31:58.880 these people anyone that's died in the line of duty. 0:31:59.560 --> 0:32:02.240 It's just been a terrible tragedy and there has to 0:32:02.280 --> 0:32:02.920 be resolution. 0:32:03.360 --> 0:32:06.200 But you know, Sweat and Boone run into a brick wall. 0:32:06.240 --> 0:32:10.360 They can't make a case against Norman Shoemaker, and you know, 0:32:10.400 --> 0:32:12.520 after six months, it goes cold, it just gets put 0:32:12.560 --> 0:32:16.280 away in a file. And that is that for fifty years. 0:32:16.520 --> 0:32:18.480 Well, I'm not going to say for fifty years, because 0:32:18.480 --> 0:32:22.720 what I'm going to say is that in nineteen seventy 0:32:22.760 --> 0:32:27.560 five was the other major case of Montgomery County that's 0:32:27.560 --> 0:32:33.880 known for the abduction, rape, and murder of the Lion's Sisters, 0:32:34.160 --> 0:32:37.800 Lyo and Sisters. Yeah, these were two girls ten or 0:32:37.880 --> 0:32:41.920 twelve years old who were went to the Wheaton Plaza Mall, 0:32:42.160 --> 0:32:46.040 which was a open mall at that time in Montgomery County, 0:32:46.240 --> 0:32:49.200 and both of them were seen there. It was Sheila 0:32:49.240 --> 0:32:53.560 and Kate Lyon. They were abducted, apparently in plain sight, 0:32:54.240 --> 0:33:01.560 and they were then raped repeatedly, apparently murdered Audies burned 0:33:01.760 --> 0:33:04.680 and thought to have been taken and buried in Virginia 0:33:04.760 --> 0:33:07.640 in that case had been called for forty years, but 0:33:07.720 --> 0:33:12.000 in twenty twelve that case was reopened and it's the 0:33:12.040 --> 0:33:15.400 subject of the book by Mark Bowden, who also wrote 0:33:15.440 --> 0:33:18.880 Black Hawk Down. He wrote a book about this entitled 0:33:18.920 --> 0:33:23.360 The Last Stone, and in Balden's excellent book, he talks 0:33:23.400 --> 0:33:27.640 about how this group of cold case detectives is put 0:33:27.680 --> 0:33:31.120 together to solve this case. It was done by a 0:33:31.160 --> 0:33:35.680 man named Chris Homrock HM Rck and home Rock, and 0:33:35.720 --> 0:33:40.479 these detectives are basically go back through the case figure 0:33:40.480 --> 0:33:43.760 out the things that had been missed and were able 0:33:43.800 --> 0:33:47.400 to after a couple of years of working, were able 0:33:47.400 --> 0:33:50.320 to get a confession from the man who has tried 0:33:50.360 --> 0:33:54.160 and convicted of the rape and murder of these two girls. 0:33:54.840 --> 0:33:58.080 So I think that was on the fortieth anniversary twenty fifteen. 0:33:58.720 --> 0:34:01.320 So I think because of that there was some impetus 0:34:01.360 --> 0:34:05.640 when the fiftieth anniversary of this case came up to say, hey, 0:34:06.080 --> 0:34:07.920 if we're going to find anything, we got to do 0:34:07.960 --> 0:34:11.400 it now before everybody who's involved in the case is dead. 0:34:12.440 --> 0:34:15.360 And so they turned again to Chris Homrock to form 0:34:15.480 --> 0:34:19.040 a Cold Case Team and on the original team that 0:34:19.080 --> 0:34:23.960 sawved the Lion murder case. Blincester's murder case was Katie Leggett, 0:34:24.200 --> 0:34:28.200 and Katie had been in the Child Primes program. That's 0:34:28.200 --> 0:34:31.359 where she made her bones, was dealing with people who 0:34:31.360 --> 0:34:34.440 had abuse children, sexual abuse and things like that. And 0:34:34.520 --> 0:34:36.880 for the next ten years that's all she did was 0:34:36.960 --> 0:34:39.279 she was on the cold case detective team. So she 0:34:39.480 --> 0:34:42.080 was selected to be part of the cold case team 0:34:42.560 --> 0:34:45.319 to try to solve this case. At the time that 0:34:45.400 --> 0:34:47.040 this was going on, there were a lot of active 0:34:47.120 --> 0:34:52.040 murder investigations that were shorthanded. But a patrol officer who 0:34:52.120 --> 0:34:57.040 had been doing plain clothes patrol, Lisa Killing, had asked 0:34:57.080 --> 0:35:00.360 for transfer to cold case team because she was interested 0:35:00.440 --> 0:35:02.800 in knowing what it was like to work a cold case. 0:35:03.120 --> 0:35:06.240 So they put her. She was an excellent outstanding officer 0:35:06.239 --> 0:35:08.440 in the outstanding record. They put her on this case. 0:35:08.640 --> 0:35:11.280 And then they picked a woman from the Homicide Division, 0:35:11.440 --> 0:35:14.520 Sarah White, and she made out that three of them 0:35:14.560 --> 0:35:17.200 made the cold case team to solve this and so 0:35:17.280 --> 0:35:20.160 that was in twenty twenty one and they got to. 0:35:20.080 --> 0:35:23.000 Work what do they have to work with? Because didn't 0:35:23.000 --> 0:35:26.200 you say the things they collected didn't have DNA, that's correct. 0:35:26.520 --> 0:35:29.000 Everything they had to work with was in one cardboard 0:35:29.080 --> 0:35:33.160 box and that cardboard box was plunked down on Lisa's 0:35:33.360 --> 0:35:36.680 Lisa Killen's desk, and she was told by Katy Leggett, 0:35:37.000 --> 0:35:39.080 go through it. Put it into a way that you 0:35:39.120 --> 0:35:41.400 can interpret it and you can work with it. And 0:35:41.480 --> 0:35:45.040 so she went started going through all the evidence particulously 0:35:45.600 --> 0:35:48.399 and really nothing was showing up. There are some things 0:35:48.480 --> 0:35:51.560 that they investigated, but nothing was shown up until she 0:35:51.640 --> 0:35:54.680 came to a real to real tape that was labeled 0:35:54.719 --> 0:35:58.719 interview with Richard Hobart hoba Rt. Richard had been a 0:35:58.760 --> 0:36:02.120 young man who also had involved in some different things 0:36:02.360 --> 0:36:06.160 around that area. And it was interesting because his name 0:36:06.719 --> 0:36:10.440 and the license plate number of his parents' car was 0:36:10.520 --> 0:36:13.600 found in the notebook that JT. Hall always carried with 0:36:13.680 --> 0:36:14.760 him when he was on patrol. 0:36:15.120 --> 0:36:17.960 Oh, so he saw the car, so he saw. 0:36:17.760 --> 0:36:20.600 The So he saw a car and had that in him. 0:36:20.640 --> 0:36:24.120 So Lisa Killen decided she needed to get that first. 0:36:24.120 --> 0:36:25.960 She didn't even know what a real real tape was, 0:36:26.000 --> 0:36:28.680 but when she finally got figured it out, she needed 0:36:28.680 --> 0:36:31.000 to get it digitalized into a form that she and 0:36:31.080 --> 0:36:33.959 her co detectives could look at and so they spent 0:36:34.040 --> 0:36:36.480 quite a time doing that, and then finally it had 0:36:36.520 --> 0:36:38.839 to be done by the FBI. They were the only 0:36:38.840 --> 0:36:41.399 ones that had the technology to do that. And when 0:36:41.400 --> 0:36:43.960 they got the tape and sat and listened down listened 0:36:43.960 --> 0:36:47.239 to it, it was about a three hour interview with 0:36:47.360 --> 0:36:51.640 a man named Larry Becker. And Larry Becker in that 0:36:51.840 --> 0:36:55.759 interview had been put in jail in nineteen seventy two 0:36:56.280 --> 0:37:01.400 for robbie a townhouse in Glenmont, which is a community 0:37:01.520 --> 0:37:05.640 near Rockville, Maryland. And he had been put in jail 0:37:05.640 --> 0:37:09.560 in seventy two and then, while serving time in kind 0:37:09.560 --> 0:37:12.719 of a lower level prison, had escaped from jail, and 0:37:12.760 --> 0:37:15.120 then when he was caught and brought back, they added 0:37:15.160 --> 0:37:18.719 extra time to a sentence. So he came in in 0:37:18.800 --> 0:37:22.360 nineteen seventy two and said, Okay, I have information about 0:37:22.400 --> 0:37:27.239 the murder that occurred of Deputy Sheriff JT. Hall, and 0:37:27.280 --> 0:37:31.200 I'm willing to give you that information exchange for leniency 0:37:31.400 --> 0:37:32.800 or reduction in my sentences. 0:37:33.160 --> 0:37:35.720 That's interesting, Okay, keep going. 0:37:35.880 --> 0:37:39.480 Yeah, he just showed up and said that. So he 0:37:39.600 --> 0:37:43.279 shows up and they interviewed him for three hours and 0:37:43.320 --> 0:37:45.799 the men that interview him had nothing to do with 0:37:45.840 --> 0:37:48.000 the original case and really didn't have a really good 0:37:48.040 --> 0:37:51.160 idea of what had happened. But what he did in 0:37:51.160 --> 0:37:53.759 that interview, he said that he was an eyewitness to 0:37:53.800 --> 0:37:55.680 what had happened. He was the first person that was 0:37:55.719 --> 0:37:59.120 a witness, and he said he had seen seven to 0:37:59.160 --> 0:38:02.799 eight boys on the coke machines and they were trying 0:38:02.800 --> 0:38:05.719 to break into the coke machines. He had identified the 0:38:05.760 --> 0:38:08.239 four of them that he knew, and he said that 0:38:08.560 --> 0:38:12.040 it was a clear, beautiful night. Visibility was great, but 0:38:12.120 --> 0:38:13.879 he was in an area where they couldn't see him, 0:38:13.880 --> 0:38:16.880 but he could see them. And then he saw someone 0:38:16.960 --> 0:38:22.120 come out who was dressed in normal sheriff's clothing, not 0:38:22.400 --> 0:38:26.640 the yellow raincoat that JT. Hall was wearing that night 0:38:26.640 --> 0:38:28.520 in which he was founding. When he was found down 0:38:28.719 --> 0:38:31.879 on the park lot, bat Man said to the boys, hey, 0:38:31.880 --> 0:38:34.880 what are you doing. One of the boys, who identified 0:38:34.920 --> 0:38:39.800 as someone named Greg schwar crouched down and shot twice. 0:38:40.200 --> 0:38:43.319 There were two shots, and he also said that the 0:38:43.320 --> 0:38:47.600 policeman had shined a flashlight directly at them, and so 0:38:47.640 --> 0:38:51.320 he identified both there being a flashlight and the fact 0:38:51.360 --> 0:38:54.040 that there were two shots. He then said after the 0:38:54.040 --> 0:38:56.680 shots were fired, he ran away. He ran to a 0:38:56.719 --> 0:38:59.840 place called Maggie's, which was the Church of Mary Magdalene, 0:39:00.640 --> 0:39:02.600 which is where they had a youth center for these 0:39:02.640 --> 0:39:05.759 teenage boys and girls to gather, and that later on 0:39:05.920 --> 0:39:10.120 the murderer, Greg Swar had shown up there. Also, Larry 0:39:10.160 --> 0:39:13.000 said that he hadn't come forward sooner because he was 0:39:13.040 --> 0:39:16.160 afraid of the consequences of it, because everybody would know 0:39:16.239 --> 0:39:18.879 that he was a snitch and that some of these 0:39:18.920 --> 0:39:23.719 boys had older brothers that would get him and could 0:39:23.760 --> 0:39:26.920 possibly hurt him. But now he felt like he was 0:39:27.040 --> 0:39:30.279 going to serve his time in jail, leave Maryland and 0:39:30.360 --> 0:39:34.000 never come back to Maryland again. So he was willing 0:39:34.040 --> 0:39:36.760 to talk to them and lay out the whole scene 0:39:36.800 --> 0:39:37.359 that night. 0:39:37.920 --> 0:39:40.480 And so, I mean, I was just looking down. I 0:39:40.520 --> 0:39:42.799 don't have a note about Greg. Out of all of 0:39:42.800 --> 0:39:45.880 these boys you were talking about, I mean, I see Robert, 0:39:45.960 --> 0:39:49.279 I see Norman, I see a couple of other folks. 0:39:49.640 --> 0:39:53.160 What are the cold case detectives thinking about that when 0:39:53.200 --> 0:39:55.400 they hear that reel to reel? Are they're now looking 0:39:55.520 --> 0:40:00.000 for Greg's information? I'm assuming so Greg was very easily. 0:40:00.000 --> 0:40:03.560 He quickly alibied out, Oh okay, so he was not 0:40:03.719 --> 0:40:06.919 there that night, had nothing, and he had alibi the show. 0:40:06.960 --> 0:40:08.839 And none of the four boys that he mentioned out 0:40:08.840 --> 0:40:10.440 of the seven or eight that he said were there, 0:40:10.840 --> 0:40:12.719 were there. They were all alibied out. 0:40:13.160 --> 0:40:15.600 How old was Larry when this happened? I just am 0:40:15.600 --> 0:40:16.560 trying to set. 0:40:16.360 --> 0:40:19.600 That Larry at this time was in his early twenties. 0:40:19.880 --> 0:40:22.200 He was twenty when the deputy sheriff of shots, and 0:40:22.239 --> 0:40:25.319 we would have been about twenty one twenty two. He 0:40:25.480 --> 0:40:29.280 was thirty when he left finished his sentence, because the 0:40:29.400 --> 0:40:33.919 three policemen talked to him, looked at the evidence, looked 0:40:33.920 --> 0:40:36.440 at where he said the body was, where he was shot, 0:40:36.480 --> 0:40:39.640 where the confrontation had taken place, looked at the weather 0:40:39.760 --> 0:40:41.960 that night which was different from what he said, looked 0:40:41.960 --> 0:40:43.680 at what the policeman was wearing, which was when he 0:40:43.719 --> 0:40:48.640 said yeah. And they basically said, this gentleman is lying 0:40:48.800 --> 0:40:52.839 to try to gain reduction of a sentence. They disregarded it. 0:40:53.120 --> 0:40:56.200 They kept the tape, mislabeled the tape and put it 0:40:56.239 --> 0:40:56.960 back in the box. 0:40:57.600 --> 0:41:01.719 Now you've got this group of cold case detectives and 0:41:01.760 --> 0:41:05.759 they're listening to that interview, and I'm wondering if they 0:41:05.840 --> 0:41:09.240 pick up on anything that had a grain of truth, 0:41:09.760 --> 0:41:11.960 or why they would even be interested in Larry if 0:41:12.000 --> 0:41:12.920 he was a big liar. 0:41:13.400 --> 0:41:17.000 In police work, with these cases, there's very often the 0:41:17.120 --> 0:41:21.560 hold back. In the Lion's Sister murder case, the hold 0:41:21.600 --> 0:41:24.360 back was to clothes the girls were wearing. It was 0:41:24.440 --> 0:41:27.480 never identify what they were wearing. And when they finally 0:41:27.560 --> 0:41:30.360 got Lloyd Welch to talk, he was able to identify 0:41:30.400 --> 0:41:33.759 exactly what they were wearing. The hole back in the 0:41:33.760 --> 0:41:37.360 Deputy Sheriff JT. Hall case, there were two whole backs. 0:41:37.400 --> 0:41:40.000 One no one ever said what the number of shots were, 0:41:40.680 --> 0:41:42.880 and there were two shots that were fired, and he 0:41:43.080 --> 0:41:46.359 identified two shots. And then number two, no one ever 0:41:46.360 --> 0:41:49.880 said anything about a flashlight, and he identified the flashlight 0:41:50.000 --> 0:41:53.640 as being there and being shot so by table shot 0:41:53.640 --> 0:41:55.759 out of his hands, but did identify that the flashlight 0:41:55.840 --> 0:41:59.759 was there. So that by saying those two things, and 0:41:59.800 --> 0:42:02.960 he actually put himself at the scene of the murder, 0:42:03.400 --> 0:42:06.680 the detectives felt that he was someone worthwhile pursuing. 0:42:06.880 --> 0:42:09.880 Well, and I mean, and he's fingering a boy who 0:42:10.320 --> 0:42:13.480 you say has a very clear alibi. So somebody's lying, 0:42:13.520 --> 0:42:16.160 it's obviously him if he's saying the kid's there, and 0:42:16.200 --> 0:42:17.839 the police can prove that he wasn't there. 0:42:18.320 --> 0:42:22.000 The two things he said were right, but he got wrong. 0:42:22.600 --> 0:42:25.440 So many things he got wrong. What the policeman was wearing, 0:42:25.440 --> 0:42:29.040 what the weather was that night, where the policeman was found. 0:42:29.480 --> 0:42:32.120 He said that he'd been shot twice from the front. Well, 0:42:32.160 --> 0:42:34.799 he had this gunshot wound was in the back of 0:42:34.920 --> 0:42:37.080 the head. The kill shot was from the back of 0:42:37.120 --> 0:42:39.600 the head. And he said he was facing Greg's squire 0:42:39.640 --> 0:42:43.600 when he was shot. So he'd gotten so many things 0:42:43.640 --> 0:42:47.680 wrong that they did not feel he was there, and 0:42:47.719 --> 0:42:49.799 they did. They disregarded sets money, and they made him 0:42:49.800 --> 0:42:51.360 sort of his entire eight years. 0:42:51.640 --> 0:42:55.160 Okay, Well, what happens when you know, we flashed forward 0:42:55.840 --> 0:42:59.080 and this group of women, these cold case detectives, realize 0:42:59.280 --> 0:43:02.200 that he got a couple things right, and that whoever 0:43:02.239 --> 0:43:05.280 initially interviewed him had dismissed him far too quickly. 0:43:05.520 --> 0:43:08.360 They couldn't find him. He was gone, he was lost. 0:43:08.640 --> 0:43:12.200 They looked everywhere for Larry Becker, nowhere. So he had 0:43:12.239 --> 0:43:15.680 a brother named Leslie Becker, And they looked back and 0:43:15.719 --> 0:43:19.480 they saw that back in nineteen seventy two that Leslie 0:43:19.480 --> 0:43:22.480 Becker had made a statement of the police saying that 0:43:22.560 --> 0:43:25.440 his brother Larry might know something about the murder of 0:43:25.480 --> 0:43:28.799 the deputy sheriff. So they decided. Lisa decided to look 0:43:28.800 --> 0:43:32.120 for Leslie Becker, but he was dead, but in his 0:43:32.200 --> 0:43:37.000 obituary it said that he had a surviving brother, Larry Smith, 0:43:37.400 --> 0:43:40.320 and so she went on a deep dive into Larry Smith. 0:43:40.760 --> 0:43:45.880 Larry Becker was originally born Larry Smith, as was Leslie Becker. 0:43:46.480 --> 0:43:49.480 They were born in Little Falls, New York, the second 0:43:49.560 --> 0:43:52.160 smallest city in the state of New York. There were 0:43:52.200 --> 0:43:56.759 four children and they had a father who was never 0:43:56.880 --> 0:43:59.920 home he was a truck driver, and a mother who 0:44:00.000 --> 0:44:02.479 he was an alcoholic, so that they were taken from 0:44:02.560 --> 0:44:07.160 that household, four children put into foster homes until when 0:44:07.320 --> 0:44:11.280 Larry was seven, mister Becker came by and his wife. 0:44:11.360 --> 0:44:14.080 They had just adopted a little boy and they wanted 0:44:14.120 --> 0:44:16.239 a sister to go with him. They couldn't have their 0:44:16.239 --> 0:44:20.320 own children. Larry had an older sister and they wanted 0:44:20.320 --> 0:44:23.920 to adopt just the older sister, but Larry's birth mother said, no, 0:44:24.120 --> 0:44:26.080 if you're going to adopt anybody, you have to adopt 0:44:26.080 --> 0:44:29.520 all four kids. So these people, the Beckers, adopted all 0:44:29.560 --> 0:44:34.319 four kids and eventually moved them to Rockville, Maryland, where 0:44:34.360 --> 0:44:37.360 he was working at an excellent job. And so Larry, 0:44:37.560 --> 0:44:40.319 what he had done in the interim was just as 0:44:40.320 --> 0:44:44.960 he'd said. He'd left Maryland after serving his time, changed 0:44:45.000 --> 0:44:48.160 his name back to his original name, Larry Smith, and 0:44:48.280 --> 0:44:51.239 moved to Little Falls, New York, where he started a 0:44:51.280 --> 0:44:53.960 new life. Never been in trouble with the law. He 0:44:54.040 --> 0:44:57.640 got married, he had three children. Interesting enough, he had 0:44:57.640 --> 0:45:02.440 several jobs, including a job as a security guard, which 0:45:02.480 --> 0:45:04.799 was the last job that he held. He had to 0:45:04.800 --> 0:45:07.680 stop working and get on disability in his fifties due 0:45:07.719 --> 0:45:11.200 to medical conditions. At different times in his life. He'd 0:45:11.239 --> 0:45:12.840 smoked up to three packs a day. It was an 0:45:12.840 --> 0:45:17.000 incredibly heavy smoker, had heart disease, had heart attacks, had 0:45:17.080 --> 0:45:22.800 constructive pulmonary disease. But he'd been living quietly in Little Falls, 0:45:23.200 --> 0:45:26.200 New York for forty years. Wow. 0:45:27.280 --> 0:45:30.520 So they finally find him, and you know, this is 0:45:30.600 --> 0:45:33.279 not enough evidence. Obviously, they need to talk to him 0:45:33.320 --> 0:45:35.799 and they need to see what if there's any kind 0:45:35.800 --> 0:45:38.640 of physical evidence or anything that ties him to this. 0:45:38.840 --> 0:45:42.480 So I assume that the cold case detectives approach him 0:45:42.520 --> 0:45:43.719 and say, we need to interview you. 0:45:44.040 --> 0:45:45.920 First of all they did was they made two control 0:45:46.040 --> 0:45:50.680 calls using someone named John Rizzo. When Larry had said 0:45:50.719 --> 0:45:53.560 that night that he was an eye witness, he said 0:45:53.600 --> 0:45:56.759 that he'd originally been with John Rizzo and then he'd 0:45:56.840 --> 0:45:59.800 left John Rizzo and walked down to the country club. 0:46:00.080 --> 0:46:03.080 John Rizzo at the time was in the military in California, 0:46:03.160 --> 0:46:04.839 so there's no way he could have been with him. 0:46:05.360 --> 0:46:08.080 But what they did was they got John Rizzo to 0:46:08.160 --> 0:46:08.800 call him. 0:46:09.000 --> 0:46:10.960 Can I pause for a second. I mean, that's ridiculous. 0:46:11.000 --> 0:46:14.279 He is awful. He's not picking the right you know, alibis, 0:46:14.360 --> 0:46:18.000 he's not picking the right weather. It's just silly mistakes. 0:46:18.440 --> 0:46:21.080 I don't know. I can't never understand criminals sometimes. 0:46:21.320 --> 0:46:23.240 Well, this is a gentleman who when he was tested 0:46:24.080 --> 0:46:27.839 IQ both when he was with the Becker family down 0:46:27.880 --> 0:46:31.440 in Maryland, he was sent away to a boys institute 0:46:31.480 --> 0:46:33.440 placed like almost like a military school to try to 0:46:33.440 --> 0:46:36.080 get him straightened out, and they tested his IQ then 0:46:36.320 --> 0:46:40.240 in IQ of eighty seven. When it was retested later 0:46:40.280 --> 0:46:42.040 on in life, when he was in his seventies, was 0:46:42.080 --> 0:46:46.400 eighty three. He's a street wise person because at the 0:46:46.440 --> 0:46:50.880 age of sixteen, the Becker family, the father threw him 0:46:50.920 --> 0:46:53.600 out of the house onto the streets, and for the 0:46:53.640 --> 0:46:57.080 next four years Larry lived on the streets of Montgomery 0:46:57.160 --> 0:47:00.560 County in Rockville, Maryland. He did not have a home. 0:47:00.920 --> 0:47:04.080 He either slept at Maggie's or there was a pet 0:47:04.280 --> 0:47:07.920 cemetery where people would bury their pets right next to Maggie's, 0:47:08.400 --> 0:47:11.000 which had open places where he could lie down and sleep. 0:47:11.360 --> 0:47:14.440 So that's where this gentleman slept. So I think that 0:47:15.160 --> 0:47:18.960 you're right in some ways. He's not real sharp, but 0:47:19.440 --> 0:47:22.560 like I said, street wise and survival wise, he seems 0:47:22.600 --> 0:47:24.359 to you know, he did a pretty good job. 0:47:24.920 --> 0:47:28.400 Okay. So John Rizzo calls him and what's that? What 0:47:28.440 --> 0:47:29.600 are these control calls? 0:47:29.760 --> 0:47:32.640 Like? So control call means that the police are listening 0:47:32.680 --> 0:47:35.759 in on the entire situation, and John says to him, 0:47:36.040 --> 0:47:38.960 the police are after me because they say that you 0:47:39.120 --> 0:47:42.440 name me. You and I both were there night the 0:47:42.440 --> 0:47:46.480 deputy sheriff was killed. Now they've come after me, saying 0:47:46.520 --> 0:47:48.920 that I'm the killer, and they don't know anything about 0:47:48.920 --> 0:47:50.759 you because he changed your name. It took me so 0:47:50.880 --> 0:47:53.120 long to find you this and that, and he said, 0:47:53.160 --> 0:47:55.120 you better. You need to give me something that I 0:47:55.160 --> 0:47:57.560 can tell the police so that they will get off 0:47:57.560 --> 0:48:00.439 my back and leave me alone. In the first call, 0:48:00.960 --> 0:48:05.960 Larry becker Smith denies being that person, denies ever living there, 0:48:06.040 --> 0:48:10.960 denies knowing this person, and they eventually hangs up on him. 0:48:11.560 --> 0:48:14.480 He then does Larry does things where he gets on 0:48:14.520 --> 0:48:17.240 the internet and does different things to find out about 0:48:17.239 --> 0:48:20.000 what's going on, tries to and he actually makes two 0:48:20.080 --> 0:48:25.120 further calls back to John Rizzo, which John's instructed by 0:48:25.120 --> 0:48:27.799 the police not to answer so that they can do 0:48:27.880 --> 0:48:33.240 another control call. The second control call, Larry becker Smith 0:48:33.400 --> 0:48:36.239 admits that he was that teenager who grew up in 0:48:36.280 --> 0:48:39.920 that area. He denies having anything to do with the 0:48:40.000 --> 0:48:42.239 murder of police officer. Can't even imagine why he's being 0:48:42.239 --> 0:48:44.680 called about it. All he talks about is that he 0:48:44.760 --> 0:48:48.279 was arrested for the burglary that was done in Glenmont 0:48:48.360 --> 0:48:51.440 and the townhouse. And he said that he thinks that 0:48:51.520 --> 0:48:55.080 the police are just pulling Brizil's leg not don't have 0:48:55.120 --> 0:48:57.520 really anything on him, and that he can tell him 0:48:57.560 --> 0:49:00.440 whatever he wants, it's not going to affect him. But 0:49:00.560 --> 0:49:02.480 to just leave him alone, and they kind of leave 0:49:02.520 --> 0:49:05.839 it in an adversarial way, but he at least they 0:49:05.880 --> 0:49:08.640 got him to admit that he had lived in that 0:49:08.719 --> 0:49:12.520 area and that Larry Smith or Larry Becker who they 0:49:12.520 --> 0:49:14.760 were searching for, was now actually Larry Smith. 0:49:15.120 --> 0:49:17.080 Wow, what happens next? 0:49:17.400 --> 0:49:20.719 So the two police main people on the cold case team, 0:49:21.239 --> 0:49:24.960 Katie Leggett and Lisa Killen, go up to that area, 0:49:25.040 --> 0:49:28.080 take a trip up to that area and could do 0:49:28.160 --> 0:49:31.200 some reconnaissance and they find that Larry Smith is now 0:49:31.280 --> 0:49:35.080 living in a home for seniors. He's on the eighth 0:49:35.120 --> 0:49:37.760 floor in this apartment and he has his own apartment, 0:49:38.440 --> 0:49:41.160 and they kind of figure out. They make contact with 0:49:41.239 --> 0:49:43.600 the police force in that area and they tell them, 0:49:43.680 --> 0:49:46.799 you know what's going on, and then they decide a 0:49:46.840 --> 0:49:49.840 couple months later, they've tapped they haven't tapped his phone, 0:49:50.239 --> 0:49:52.000 but they've been able to see on his phone who 0:49:52.080 --> 0:49:54.240 he's called. For instance, they saw he had called back 0:49:54.560 --> 0:49:57.640 to Rizzo that side, make calls to his daughter who 0:49:57.680 --> 0:49:59.920 was taking care of him and who lived in the area. 0:50:00.560 --> 0:50:03.239 And so they go back a couple months later with 0:50:03.360 --> 0:50:06.719 the intention of interviewing him to find out what he 0:50:06.800 --> 0:50:09.360 really knew about the crime. They had no other leads, 0:50:09.520 --> 0:50:12.960 nothing else had turned up. Because he'd identified himself as 0:50:13.000 --> 0:50:15.520 being there that night, and because he'd gotten two of 0:50:15.560 --> 0:50:19.080 the holebacks wrecked, they decided to go up there and 0:50:19.120 --> 0:50:21.800 to interview him. So they go to the police station, 0:50:22.400 --> 0:50:25.520 get two officers with them, go to this place where 0:50:25.520 --> 0:50:29.040 he's living, which has someone sitting there in the entrance 0:50:29.080 --> 0:50:30.840 and has to let you in. They go up to 0:50:30.880 --> 0:50:33.560 his apartment and he basically says, you know, I thought 0:50:33.600 --> 0:50:36.640 you'd becoming because of what he talked to about Rizzo 0:50:36.680 --> 0:50:38.880 and stuff. And they just say, hey, we're here to 0:50:38.920 --> 0:50:42.120 talk to you. We want more information, and he agrees 0:50:42.160 --> 0:50:45.759 to go with them to the police headquarters in great 0:50:45.840 --> 0:50:48.600 Fall and to be interviewed. 0:50:48.880 --> 0:50:51.160 What ends up happening, Does he confess and he goes 0:50:51.160 --> 0:50:51.640 on trial. 0:50:51.920 --> 0:50:54.320 It's the most amazing thing. It's a three and a 0:50:54.360 --> 0:50:58.839 half hour discussion and you see Katie Leggett use her 0:50:59.320 --> 0:51:04.719 incredible interrogation methods minimalization which she learned when she took 0:51:04.800 --> 0:51:07.920 care of when people were child abusing, pedophiles and things 0:51:08.000 --> 0:51:10.799 like that. You have to minimize the crime that they've done. 0:51:11.239 --> 0:51:14.480 So will say, it's really not that bad. She also 0:51:14.520 --> 0:51:16.880 said some things, you know, how built this gentleman up, 0:51:16.920 --> 0:51:18.920 how great he was, how he turned his life around 0:51:18.920 --> 0:51:23.080 this that the bottom line is he ends up confessing wow, 0:51:23.719 --> 0:51:27.440 not only to them, but then within the next two days, 0:51:27.880 --> 0:51:31.160 he calls his daughter and his son, who are separately 0:51:31.719 --> 0:51:34.319 and tells each of them that, you know, he didn't 0:51:34.320 --> 0:51:36.760 want to tell them this, but he'd murdered someone fifty 0:51:36.840 --> 0:51:39.279 years before and he's now going to be going to 0:51:39.320 --> 0:51:39.920 jail for it. 0:51:40.200 --> 0:51:43.239 Oh my gosh, did he say that this is just 0:51:43.280 --> 0:51:46.680 something that he's been thinking about? It was he racked 0:51:46.719 --> 0:51:49.120 with guilt? It sounds like it. If he confessed quickly. 0:51:49.560 --> 0:51:51.920 It was an incredible thing to watch. You have to 0:51:51.920 --> 0:51:54.600 see them, and they're in a tiny room that's closed in, 0:51:54.760 --> 0:51:58.759 no windows, one door, and he's sitting within a couple 0:51:58.800 --> 0:52:01.239 of feet of each of these women detectives, and so 0:52:01.440 --> 0:52:05.120 it's an incredible thing to watch. But they had said 0:52:05.160 --> 0:52:07.200 to him that planted the idea. They had said to 0:52:07.280 --> 0:52:09.000 him that this is you know, you're getting this. You 0:52:09.040 --> 0:52:11.719 feel better now getting this off your chest, And he 0:52:11.719 --> 0:52:14.560 said yes, And he kind of used that same phraseology 0:52:14.560 --> 0:52:15.800 when he talked to his children. 0:52:16.080 --> 0:52:19.160 Oh okay, So does he take a plea deal while 0:52:19.200 --> 0:52:19.799 not a plea deal. 0:52:20.080 --> 0:52:25.160 What happens, so he's why his extradition. He's guilty, and 0:52:25.239 --> 0:52:27.880 he's taken back to Maryland to stay in trial, and 0:52:27.920 --> 0:52:30.319 then on the way there, once he gets there, he 0:52:30.400 --> 0:52:34.160 changes his mind. He refused to ever talk to me, 0:52:34.400 --> 0:52:36.839 but talking to his lawyers and other people and all, 0:52:36.880 --> 0:52:39.440 he just basically decided that he didn't actually do it. 0:52:39.840 --> 0:52:42.880 He'd been talked into doing it and instead of he 0:52:42.960 --> 0:52:45.480 was initially assigned the public defender, but when they realized 0:52:45.520 --> 0:52:49.120 the resources that would be needed to try this case 0:52:49.120 --> 0:52:52.120 and defend this man, they turned it over to Comington 0:52:52.160 --> 0:52:54.200 and Berlin, which is one of the largest law firms 0:52:54.200 --> 0:52:57.760 in the world and has an incredible reputation. It's top 0:52:58.040 --> 0:53:00.640 for pro bonal work. It's been ten times top law 0:53:00.640 --> 0:53:03.560 firm in the country. And they assigned a lawyer, one 0:53:03.600 --> 0:53:06.480 of their top lawyers, Kevin Collins, and a team of 0:53:06.520 --> 0:53:10.080 three younger lawyers to defend him. I went up for 0:53:10.120 --> 0:53:14.080 the trial. The first trial, it lasted five days. The 0:53:14.239 --> 0:53:16.760 verdict came back that they were able. They were trying 0:53:16.840 --> 0:53:21.319 him for a first murder, which is premeditated murder, and 0:53:21.840 --> 0:53:24.960 the jury came back not guilty on that or they 0:53:24.960 --> 0:53:27.920 said it was not guilty but on the charges of 0:53:28.520 --> 0:53:31.320 felony murder, which is murder while you're committing a felony, 0:53:31.360 --> 0:53:34.280 which would be the robbery, and also in the charges 0:53:34.280 --> 0:53:38.240 of felony burglary. They were deadlocked. It was either eleven 0:53:38.280 --> 0:53:41.359 to one or or tend to two to convict, so 0:53:41.480 --> 0:53:43.120 it was called a hung jury. They said they were 0:53:43.160 --> 0:53:46.360 hopelessly deadlocked. The judge said, We're going to retry this 0:53:46.560 --> 0:53:48.840 case because I'm not happy with this. I feel like 0:53:48.840 --> 0:53:51.400 it has to have a resolution, So they retried it. 0:53:51.760 --> 0:53:55.319 That was in January. They retried it in July. Between then, 0:53:55.480 --> 0:53:57.960 I'd had my heart surgery and all the different things 0:53:58.040 --> 0:54:00.719 were involved with that, so I couldn't go back up 0:54:00.920 --> 0:54:04.640 for the case. I heard everything through the filos, and 0:54:05.160 --> 0:54:09.680 things had changed. The defense now had focused in on 0:54:10.600 --> 0:54:14.040 looking at each part of the confession and whether or 0:54:14.080 --> 0:54:16.320 not it was his own words, or whether or not 0:54:16.360 --> 0:54:20.440 it had been fed to him by the detectives. They 0:54:20.440 --> 0:54:25.120 had wanted to introduce two false confession experts to the trial, 0:54:25.360 --> 0:54:28.840 but the judge just allowed that. They said that twenty 0:54:28.920 --> 0:54:32.160 two percent of people who had been convicted on the 0:54:32.160 --> 0:54:36.440 basis that their confession turned out to have DNA was 0:54:36.480 --> 0:54:38.799 and everything else that exonerated them. But just on the 0:54:38.800 --> 0:54:42.280 basis of their confession, they were convicted. That's how powerful 0:54:42.360 --> 0:54:45.800 confession is. Jurrys hold that even higher than they do evidence. 0:54:46.200 --> 0:54:50.160 So the defense took each part of his confession and 0:54:50.280 --> 0:54:52.960 showed how prior to him saying something, it had been 0:54:52.960 --> 0:54:56.200 fed to him by Katie Leggett, that the things that 0:54:56.280 --> 0:54:59.279 he said were not his original ideas, and that when 0:54:59.280 --> 0:55:02.680 he was talking out during the confession was mainly the 0:55:02.760 --> 0:55:05.000 robbery that a KI had done at Glenmont, where no 0:55:05.080 --> 0:55:08.120 weapons were no one was killed, and they were able 0:55:08.200 --> 0:55:13.080 to convince the jury that he was innocent and that 0:55:13.120 --> 0:55:17.319 had been fed to him. The prosecution changed in that 0:55:17.680 --> 0:55:21.800 they presented things in a more cohesive fashion, and they also, 0:55:21.920 --> 0:55:25.040 instead of just the charges of that I mentioned previously, 0:55:25.120 --> 0:55:29.120 they also introduced the charges of conspiracy murder first degree 0:55:29.200 --> 0:55:32.800 and conspiracy burgerer first degree, saying that there was someone 0:55:32.800 --> 0:55:36.960 else who was nicknamed the Raven, and this was Billy 0:55:37.040 --> 0:55:40.120 Ray Edwards, and this was his best friend, that he 0:55:40.160 --> 0:55:42.520 had also been there that night because in the confession, 0:55:43.000 --> 0:55:45.560 when he had confessed to the detectives up in Little Falls. 0:55:45.600 --> 0:55:47.759 He brought in the name of the raven that he 0:55:47.800 --> 0:55:50.200 had been there also and originally said he had shot him, 0:55:50.440 --> 0:55:52.839 that it wasn't him. But the raven was six feet tall. 0:55:53.320 --> 0:55:56.359 Larry was five foot three, and when they asked him 0:55:56.360 --> 0:55:58.359 about told him about the directory of the bullet, how 0:55:58.400 --> 0:56:01.160 it gone from the back of the head, lodged behind 0:56:01.160 --> 0:56:03.319 the right eye. They said it couldn't have been some 0:56:03.400 --> 0:56:06.080 of the size of the raven, so he took that back. 0:56:06.120 --> 0:56:09.480 But anyway, because of them having those charges against the 0:56:09.600 --> 0:56:12.640 raven at the conspiracy, the raven did not appear as 0:56:12.640 --> 0:56:14.840 a witness in the second trial, and the first trial 0:56:14.880 --> 0:56:16.719 is his best friend, he said he knew Larry, he 0:56:16.800 --> 0:56:19.320 knew nothing about the murder. Larry knew nothing about the murder, 0:56:19.880 --> 0:56:24.120 and so he was taken out of this whole second trial. 0:56:24.960 --> 0:56:28.640 And after the second trial the jury came back not 0:56:28.800 --> 0:56:32.360 guilty on all charges, and Larry Becker Smith was a 0:56:32.360 --> 0:56:32.839 free man. 0:56:33.080 --> 0:56:35.600 Oh my gosh, at what age? How old was he? 0:56:36.280 --> 0:56:40.439 Seventy two? Carolyn Filo was eighty two, Bob's eighty two. 0:56:41.280 --> 0:56:44.239 They were crushed. So when I talked earlier about my 0:56:44.400 --> 0:56:48.160 relationship with them after that, and I, as I said, 0:56:48.280 --> 0:56:49.960 was writing the whole time. I had three hundred and 0:56:50.000 --> 0:56:52.960 thirty pages of this book written before the second trial, 0:56:53.680 --> 0:56:55.799 you know, because I was needed something to do to 0:56:55.840 --> 0:56:58.960 recover and get my mind off my recovery. But when 0:56:59.000 --> 0:57:01.600 I looked at everything and went back, I looked back 0:57:02.200 --> 0:57:04.760 and at the second trial. The one piece of evidence 0:57:04.760 --> 0:57:07.200 that came out that wasn't at the first trial was 0:57:07.520 --> 0:57:09.759 when he went in in nineteen seventy two to try 0:57:09.800 --> 0:57:14.080 to gain a lesser sentence. The second day that he 0:57:14.200 --> 0:57:17.880 was there interviewed with them, they introduced brought to a 0:57:17.880 --> 0:57:22.640 police officer named ow Sweat. This was nowhere introduced nowhere 0:57:22.640 --> 0:57:26.000 in the first trial, but ow Sweat actually took him 0:57:26.000 --> 0:57:29.240 out to the Manor Country Club parking lot and had 0:57:29.320 --> 0:57:32.160 him explain everything that he saw and what had happened. 0:57:32.480 --> 0:57:36.040 And ow Sweat said, this man didn't have eyeballs on it. 0:57:37.000 --> 0:57:38.960 So the man who had the most to gain, who 0:57:39.040 --> 0:57:43.040 had a spotless record of solving murders, and who knew 0:57:43.040 --> 0:57:45.840 the most about the crime. It was within a year, 0:57:46.080 --> 0:57:49.320 about eighteen months after the murder had occurred, didn't come 0:57:49.320 --> 0:57:52.040 out till the second trial that he actually on the 0:57:52.080 --> 0:57:56.160 second day in a not recorded portion, just none of 0:57:56.200 --> 0:57:59.200 that was recorded, but he had actually been there and 0:57:59.240 --> 0:58:01.680 said he did not have eyeballs on that. So when 0:58:01.720 --> 0:58:05.160 I wrote the book and I got that information when 0:58:05.160 --> 0:58:07.880 it came to the very end, rather than leaving everybody 0:58:07.960 --> 0:58:10.800 say well, I don't know what happened to I basically said, 0:58:11.320 --> 0:58:16.040 there's both sides presenting tremendous cases. There's evidence for evidence against. 0:58:16.800 --> 0:58:18.800 But the thing that makes me feel that he was 0:58:18.880 --> 0:58:24.360 innocent was that the original detective ow Sweat did have 0:58:24.400 --> 0:58:28.680 the opportunity to go back with him through everything and 0:58:28.720 --> 0:58:31.959 said he wasn't there. So the Philo Hall family wasn't 0:58:32.000 --> 0:58:34.440 real happy. I think that I'd reached a different conclusion 0:58:35.000 --> 0:58:37.880 for anything even started a trial. We had been talking 0:58:37.920 --> 0:58:40.600 about how this guy had murdered her father and how 0:58:40.640 --> 0:58:42.680 he had confessed, and how the case was now wrapped 0:58:42.760 --> 0:58:46.080 up and the family had resolution and things like that. 0:58:46.480 --> 0:58:50.240 And so I look back and Robert Filo, who's an 0:58:50.240 --> 0:58:53.680 excellent writer, he's in the attorney, he asked me if 0:58:53.680 --> 0:58:56.680 he could write a chapter giving the family's feelings as 0:58:56.720 --> 0:58:59.760 to what had happened and include that in the book, 0:59:00.280 --> 0:59:03.040 and I said yes. He sent me the chapter and 0:59:03.120 --> 0:59:06.240 what he'd written and with his wife and daughter, and 0:59:06.280 --> 0:59:08.720 so I included that as the last chapter in the book. 0:59:08.800 --> 0:59:12.400 And they still feel that Larry was the murderer, and 0:59:12.440 --> 0:59:16.160 they feel that ultimately God will be the one to judge. 0:59:16.480 --> 0:59:17.480 Is Larry still alive. 0:59:17.720 --> 0:59:20.680 Larry is still alive. He's back to living his quiet 0:59:20.720 --> 0:59:23.840 life in Little Falls in New York. The Pilos have 0:59:23.960 --> 0:59:26.680 since moved to Houston to be near their daughter and 0:59:26.720 --> 0:59:30.120 grandchildren and son who all live in Houston. But I've 0:59:30.120 --> 0:59:32.400 seen them since then. I'm still her doctor, and so 0:59:32.400 --> 0:59:35.760 I've seen her and I still talk to them, and 0:59:36.520 --> 0:59:38.919 they're doing well. I think. I think that the fact 0:59:39.200 --> 0:59:41.680 the fact that they've been able to talk to people 0:59:41.760 --> 0:59:44.400 about the book, have neighbors and people come up to 0:59:44.440 --> 0:59:47.880 them and sign the book, and I think that they 0:59:48.040 --> 0:59:50.240 feel I think, does she if you talk to her 0:59:50.280 --> 0:59:51.840 and ask her, I think that she does. She says 0:59:51.880 --> 0:59:54.080 she doesn't really know what you know closure is. You know, 0:59:54.080 --> 0:59:56.360 you want closure for people, You want a family to 0:59:56.360 --> 0:59:58.480 have closure. She doesn't know what closure is, but I 0:59:58.560 --> 1:00:00.000 think she feels like she has closure. 1:00:00.720 --> 1:00:01.760 Is Melvin still alive. 1:00:02.000 --> 1:00:04.800 Melvin is still alive. He's not in good health at all. 1:00:05.320 --> 1:00:08.840 He still lives in Virginia. His son Brian is retired 1:00:08.880 --> 1:00:12.520 police officer from Virginia and he lives close to him. 1:00:12.840 --> 1:00:16.440 His wife Judy is still alive. Incredible life story from 1:00:16.480 --> 1:00:18.520 Melvin and what he's done and what he's accomplished in 1:00:18.560 --> 1:00:29.520 his life. 1:00:30.760 --> 1:00:33.640 If you love historical true crime stories, check out the 1:00:33.680 --> 1:00:36.720 audio versions of my books The Sinners, All About the 1:00:36.760 --> 1:00:39.920 Ghost Club, All that Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and 1:00:40.000 --> 1:00:43.280 Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical true 1:00:43.280 --> 1:00:47.800 crime podcast, tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed, 1:00:48.080 --> 1:00:50.800 scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already. 1:00:51.200 --> 1:00:54.680 This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer 1:00:54.800 --> 1:00:59.200 is Alexis M. Morosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. 1:00:59.520 --> 1:01:03.160 This episodisode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is 1:01:03.200 --> 1:01:08.160 our composer, artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, 1:01:08.360 --> 1:01:12.400 Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram 1:01:12.440 --> 1:01:16.000 and Facebook at tenfold More Wicked and on Twitter at 1:01:16.040 --> 1:01:18.680 tenfold More. And if you know of a historical crime 1:01:18.680 --> 1:01:21.280 that could use some attention from the crew at tenfold 1:01:21.280 --> 1:01:25.960 more Wicked. Email us at info at tenfoldmorewicked dot com. 1:01:26.000 --> 1:01:29.040 We'll also take your suggestions for true crime authors for 1:01:29.160 --> 1:01:30.000 Wicked Words