Angie | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

Phoebe Judge: This episode contains descriptions of violence that may be disturbing
to some listeners. Please use discretion. Pat Mangold: It was about eight o'clock at
night and the Fourth of July festivities were on television in our office, and we were pretty much
all just sitting around doing what we call 'doing our backup reports,' typing reports, hoping that
we didn't get a case, because it was Fourth of July, it's a pretty big night in Philadelphia,
and we were all going to go out afterwards. Phoebe Judge: This is Pat Mangold. For more
than 20 years he was a homicide detective in Philadelphia. He's talking about the
Fourth of July in 2002. As he and his fellow officers were watching the clock, hoping they didn't get a call, they did. A dead body had been cut up, put in garbage bags,
and hung from a tree with slipknots. Pat Mangold: We immediately went out to the east bank of the Schuylkill River behind the art museum. We got on a Marine Unit boat.
We drove across the river to the west side. The bags were hanging from a tree with rope.
The Marine Unit sergeant said, "If you feel this bag you'll feel a foot or a hand in this one."
Phoebe Judge: They cut down six bags in total, and inside the bags they found the
dismembered body of a woman in her 50s. They transported the garbage bags to the
medical examiner's office and began the work of trying to figure out who the victim was.
Pat Mangold: You could see by her clothing that she appeared to be a homeless person, so the very
next day I went up to the Parkway, which is a very heavily concentrated area of Philadelphia
homeless people. They sleep on the benches along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. So, I went up there
handing my business card out, asking if anyone had been missing, or they haven't seen a woman
in her 50s, 5'4", Indian, Italian descent. Phoebe Judge: The homeless men and women he
approached were not interested in talking to a police officer. He was shut down left and right.
Pat Mangold: I thought, there's no way I'm going to solve this case. This will be an unsolved murder in Philadelphia. Phoebe Judge: This was rare for Detective Mangold.
In his 23 years as a homicide detective, he says there are only three cases he didn't solve.
But the body in the bags appeared to have been decomposing for months, and no one had reported the victim missing. So, he didn't think he'd ever even learn who she was,
much less who had done this to her. Pat Mangold: And the very next day I walked
into work and in a message box, I received a note that had the name of a caller, Adam Bruckner,
his phone number, and on the note it said, "He may know who your homeless victim is."
Adam Bruckner: I went to the police station right up the road and said, "Hey, I heard
you guys were looking to find some information on Angie," and the guy just froze and he said,
"How do you know her name?" Phoebe Judge: Adam Bruckner. Adam Bruckner: It would be dramatic to say that they were suspicious of me,
but they were definitely alarmed that I knew who it was, and so they got my information,
they sent me over to talk to Detective Pat Mangold over at the homicide unit. Phoebe Judge: Adam Bruckner says he's always been the kind of guy who gives a dollar to homeless
people. When he graduated from college, he decided he wanted to play soccer professionally.
He traveled all over the country by bus to try out for different teams. He'd hitchhike sometimes, and
he ended up meeting a lot of homeless people. Adam Bruckner: And just had this crease in my
heart for these guys once I heard their stories and that they weren't just bums and drunks and
lunatics, and I came out to Philly to play professional soccer and ended up meeting some of the guys on the streets and hearing some of the same stories and
really believing that there was a chance to help these guys get back on their feet.
Phoebe Judge: And in doing this he'd made friends with an older man named Red Colt
and his girlfriend Angie. Adam hadn't seen Angie or Red Colt for a while, and this is what he told the police. Adam Bruckner: I let them know I thought this
lady's name was Angie, and they said, "Thank you, we don't really know who it is," and it seemed
like it was just going to go away at that point. Phoebe Judge: But Adam Bruckner wasn't
going to let it go away. Detective Mangold had no idea who he was dealing with.
Pat Mangold: It was on a daily basis after that first meeting that I spoke to him. He would call
every day. I mean, some of the guys were making fun of him. Not to him, but to me, and they
kept calling him 'junior detective.' They said, "Oh, your junior detective keeps calling here.
Said he has some new information." Phoebe Judge: The thing is, Adam Bruckner did
have new information, good information, and a lot of it. The homeless men and women on the Parkway
trusted him and they were telling him things about Angie that they refused to tell the police.
So, Adam began a murder investigation of his own. He was a soccer player moonlighting as an amateur sleuth, and as it turned out, he was pretty good at it.
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Adam Bruckner: So, in February of 2002 I was just making regular runs down and bringing peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches down to the Ben Franklin Parkway, and just trying to get to know the guys and
just asking them, "Hey, what happened? How did you end up in this situation?" Really,
I was just saying, "Why are you homeless?" And I met, first, Red Colt, who was distinct.
He's about 65 years old, African-American. He was pushing a shopping cart, like a laundry cart, that
was lined with garbage bags, and he had no socks on. He had a tarp that was cut out and tied around
his head that was fastened with a shoelace under his chin, and he spoke in a way that's so hard to
describe, but it was just — he was almost poetic in his words, and he seemed like maybe a professor
that had gone bad somewhere along the line. And he had a girlfriend, Angie, who was a
volatile bag lady. And she was kind of what you'd picture: an ornery, heavily clothed woman living
on the streets. And it was a pretty interesting couple, and I was really fascinated by Red Colt.
Phoebe Judge: I mean, what was your first actual interaction with these two? Adam Bruckner: Well, I was first talking to Red Colt, and I had come up and offered him a
sandwich, and I was making these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and he said, "Why, thank you,
Adam, for the sandwich, which contains calcium that will fortify my bones and allow me to sustain
a fall that would cripple another man my age." And that was when Angie came up, and she was
cursing and really yelling about these white mf'ers around, and Red Colt put his hand up like
a stop sign and said, "Why, Angie, if you hadn't noticed, Adam here is a white male, and what
you're saying may be construed as offensive." And so, there I was, trying to work with these guys,
and really, Red Colt was the one working with me, and I just kind of glowed that he had stood
up for me and he had done it so politely. And that was just kind of a buy-in with Angie because she
knew if Red Colt was for me that I must be all right to have around their conversation.
Phoebe Judge: The other homeless people on the Parkway described Angie as a caring grandmother
figure, someone who'd bring them soup and vitamins when they were sick. So, when they heard of her
disappearance, they did want to know what had happened to her, but they wouldn't open up to
the police. Adam was the perfect intermediary. Adam Bruckner: I went back down to the Parkway
and was talking to some of the guys, and I have this little buddy who is a homeless guy,
and he told me that Angie had an apartment, and it totally just blew me away. Phoebe Judge: But Adam did not call Detective Mangold with this. He took it upon himself to
go check it out. He went to the neighborhood and wandered around aimlessly, asking people on the
street if they knew a woman named Angie. So, you have no experience, right? You're
a professional soccer player. Adam Bruckner: Yeah, no, I watched LA Law growing up, and that was about it. Phoebe Judge: But his technique worked — sort of.
Adam recognized a guy in the neighborhood as one of Angie's ex-boyfriends, and this ex-boyfriend
didn't understand what Adam was talking about. Adam Bruckner: And so he took me over to her
apartment. He said, "I swear it's not her. That's her window right there, the window's open."
He said, "I hung that teddy bear curtain right there." He said, "It's the same one. You can see
she's living in there." And from the ground level you could see that it looked lived in; it didn't
look like a place where somebody had gone missing, and so I automatically had this doubt that maybe I
had gotten this wrong. And then I rung some of the doorbells and a neighbor came out and said, "No,
she's not dead, she's alive. She's in New York City. She called the landlord and told him she
was sick and she's paying rent every month." Phoebe Judge: Adam called the landlord
himself from a payphone, who confirmed it. Adam Bruckner: And then it was almost laughable,
and that ended a few minutes later when another neighbor, Sharon, came up, and almost passively she said, "What's going on?" I said, "Ah, we're looking for... " I said,
"I was looking for Angie." And her face just shifted. As soon as I saw her face, I knew that
there was something really wrong, and so I pulled her aside and she told me about the fight she had
heard the day before Good Friday, and she heard a thud and choking and screaming. And it was from
Angie's apartment, and that tipped the scale back to really thinking there was a problem.
Phoebe Judge: In 2002 Good Friday was on March 29th. Angie's body wasn't found until July 4th,
and yet someone had been paying the rent for the apartment and opening and closing the windows.
Adam wanted to get inside and see what he could find, but he wasn't bold enough to break in on
his own. He called Detective Mangold. Pat Mangold: I said I'd have to get a search warrant for this location, and we did, and Adam stayed with us. I said,
"Listen, I don't want you to be in the dark here. You're helping me out here, I want you
to see how this process all works out." He was very interested in seeing how it did work.
Adam Bruckner: I was just standing there, they knocked, no one answered. Someone said,
"Get the city key." And I really thought there was going to be this really technical city key,
and someone pulled out a sledgehammer and just bashed the door in. Phoebe Judge: What happens next? Adam Bruckner: I expected to see a
bloody crime scene, but it was even crazier than that. It was a total mess. She was a hoarder,
and she had not thrown anything away for 40 years. She had collected every piece of mail. Newspapers
were stacked up. I mean, we all just froze. Pat Mangold: And there were thousands of pieces
of mail. I mean, you name it, it was there. It would have taken a year to go through and get different things. Adam Bruckner: She had everything from
a lawnmower up there, even though she didn't have a lawn, to a detailed account of every
phone call she ever made since, like, 1960. Pat Mangold: The apartment was loaded with all
these bottles of ginger and all these different... Not narcotics, but little vitamin supplements,
things like that. And it had a medicinal smell. It was like you walked into an old apothecary,
a drugstore back in the day when you were a little kid. Phoebe Judge: Was there a bed in the apartment? Adam Bruckner: There was a bed. Right when
you walked in the door to the left was a bed, and there were maybe a foot and a half, two feet of newspapers stacked up with a bed sheet
over it. One of the officers even thought that there was a body under there and said, "Oh,
here's your body," and ripped back the sheets, but it was newspapers that were dated very recently.
Phoebe Judge: Adam thought this was a really important clue. Someone was bringing in newspapers on a regular basis and adding them to Angie's existing stacks.
Did you feel kind of like you were a little kid trying to get the police to take you seriously,
saying, "I might not be a homicide detective, but I can put two and two together and I think that
there's something funny that's going on here"? Adam Bruckner: I was trying to stay unnoticed,
but still kind of whispering my opinions. I did not want to leave the apartment, but I definitely
wanted to be heard, and so I would pull someone aside and say, "I think she was killed in here,"
and they'd say, "No, no, it would look different if she had been killed in here. If there was a
struggle it would be a mess." Sooner than later it got too hot to be in there and we all went
outside, and that was when they did not invite me to come back up, but said, "If you can find any
information on Red Colt we would appreciate it." Phoebe Judge: This is the first time that Adam
realized that Red Colt was a prime suspect. He hadn't considered that this could be a possibility. Adam Bruckner: Because I had this
personal relationship with him. I knew that he wasn't capable of something like that.
Phoebe Judge: He set out to find other possible suspects. Angie had restraining orders against
several abusive boyfriends. Adam looked into those men, and he talked with friends on the
Parkway. He studied the place where Angie's body had originally been found in garbage bags by the
river, and he went back to her apartment a lot, without telling the police what he was doing.
Peter Pappas: The things that made him a good soccer player by compulsively working harder
than everybody else, he needed to find the next clue; he needed to figure out what was going on,
and he just sort of wouldn't let himself stop. Phoebe Judge: Here's one of Adam's
teammates, Peter Pappas. Peter Pappas: Just saying, "It's this guy, but it can't be this guy, but if it's this guy, then how come X, Y,
and Z happened?" Or, "How come this guy is here? Why did this person know this?" It was just,
wow, just going around and around, like why couldn't it be this person, but Red Colt,
it can't be Red Colt. I met Red Colt, I love Red Colt. We're like kindred spirits.
It was incredible. I honestly got worried for his life. He was buying information
with sandwiches or packs of cigarettes. Phoebe Judge: Adam completely admits that
he was obsessed. He was calling Detective Mangold constantly. Adam Bruckner: I called way, way, way too much because I would leave information every time
I got it. So, he'd come back in and see this stack of papers, and at some point
I would page him and he'd call me back at the payphone I was at, and I would just blurt everything out that I had found. Phoebe Judge: At this point the police were
certain that Angie had been killed at the river, but Adam was certain that Angie had been killed in
her apartment. He was fixated on what she'd been wearing when her body was found. It was cold in
Philadelphia in March, but Angie had been found wearing a T-shirt, sweatpants, and sandals — not
warm enough to be walking around outside. Adam Bruckner: That made me more and more sure
she was killed in her apartment, which made me more determined to go back in and find something,
and so I just kept digging through this paper in her apartment. And a couple times some of
the neighbors would come in, and this was pretty awkward, but I just kept going.
Phoebe Judge: Wait, I don't understand. Would the neighbors be like, "Who are you,
what are you doing in here?" Adam Bruckner: I mean, they knew that something really bizarre had happened and they knew that the reality was that with all the
homicides in Philadelphia, there just is not the time for the police to do this kind of meticulous
investigation. And so, sometimes they would let me in and sometimes the front door would be open,
and I would just come in on my own. And they'd come up and see me on all fours, crawling around
and pulling papers out from underneath the bed. I don't know what they said behind my back,
but they were very nice to my face. Phoebe Judge: Adam says he'd made something
like 20 trips to Angie's apartment before he found the clue he needed. Shortly after Angie's
body had been found he went to the river and looked around. He found a piece of paper that
said something strange about an underground American currency. He didn't pay much attention
to it, except that the handwriting was distinctive: large and blocky. He put the piece of paper in his backpack. Adam Bruckner: And then, when I was in
the apartment, I saw the same handwriting, and it was like this gong went off. And I realized
whoever had written that down by the river had obviously written it in the apartment,
and if I could figure out who had written that, it was like a clear case of who had done it.
Phoebe Judge: So, how did you figure out who had written it? Adam Bruckner: All of a sudden I saw these four words that said, "This is Red Colt."
And all this time I had spent trying to prove that it was not him... It just fell off.
Phoebe Judge: On that same trip to Angie's apartment, Adam found a Rite Aid receipt for
paint tarps and garbage bags. It was dated three days after Good Friday, which is when the neighbor
had heard the horrible screaming fight. Adam Bruckner: It became very clear at that point that Red Colt was the one in her apartment. Red Colt had dismembered her body,
Red Colt had taken her body down the stairs in his cart lined with garbage bags, Red Colt had
kept the body down by the river, hanging over the ledge tied to the tree with the slipknots.
Phoebe Judge: Adam called Detective Mangold and told him what he'd found, but then he also took it upon himself to find Red Colt. He talked to homeless people around
the neighborhood and found out that Red Colt had a new girlfriend, and that the two of them had
breakfast at a certain McDonald's every morning. Adam Bruckner: I let homicide know that he was
going to be there. Homicide called police, they missed him that day. The next day Detective Pat
Mangold went out to get some Chinese food, and from the description that I'd given him from a
photo we were able to get, he recognized him, and the cart with garbage bags lined was the
biggest thing. So, he saw a guy pushing a cart down the road, and he said, "Red Colt," and he
said it looked like Red Colt was going to run, and all the other police pulled up, and Red Colt,
in this poetic voice of his, said, "It was prudent for you to call for backup. This was
a physical battle you would not have won." Pat Mangold: We took him into custody
for questioning, and he had over $7,600 on his person in different denominations and pockets
all over his clothing. I took the shopping cart back into the homicide unit. We did a
search warrant for that, looking for maybe the tool that he would use to cut her up.
In there, I open up, find a TastyKake box, and as soon as I opened it, I could smell that medicinal,
musty smell from her apartment. It was identical. And I looked in the box, and then
I saw there were huge amounts of cash in there. We called the forfeiture unit and they counted it
with a machine. It was over $68,000. Phoebe Judge: That he was walking around in his shopping cart with? Pat Mangold: Yep, and that's when I thought... I
had that 'aha' moment in the homicide unit. I thought, "He killed her for her money."
Phoebe Judge: I mean, I thought Angie was... Who was Angie? Pat Mangold: It turns out — Adam did a little investigating in that,
too. Found out that her grandmother had just passed away, and the family knew that there
was a large sum of money in the house. Because the grandmother sold a couple properties,
didn't believe in banks and kept the money in a safe in the house. So, after the grandmother died they found that all the money went missing and they accused
Angie, Josephine Angelo, of doing it. Phoebe Judge: How critical was Adam Bruckner
in solving the — kind of, the Red Colt murder? Pat Mangold: Oh, huge. I would not have been able
to do it without him. In Philadelphia we have a lot of murder cases. We work hard on all our
cases, especially in the summer. Like, Fourth of July, August, I mean, the murder rates in
these urban cities go up because of the heat and the problems in the neighborhoods. So,
you're working these cases every day. You get a new case every day as you go in and...
It's not like they get put on the back burner, but it was huge. I mean, I couldn't have done it without him. Phoebe Judge: He went out of his way to
thank Adam at press conferences and in interviews, and he even tried to get the city to officially recognize him. Pat Mangold: I put him in for a citizen's
commendation from the mayor's office, and we joke around about that to this day, that he never got
it. I have no reason why that didn't happen. Phoebe Judge: One of the strangest parts of the
story is that even after Adam had solved the case and found the evidence that incriminated Red Colt,
he still didn't want to believe that it could be true. Red Colt was his friend.
Adam Bruckner: In my journal I would just write, "I just wish there was something more
I could do for this guy." It was simple stuff. He was writing this Kennedy assassination book,
and I was going to help him make the photocopies. He was fascinating and he defended me when Angie
came up that first time, and he cared. He was genuine, he made eye contact, he was truly grateful for the advocacy. I don't think that he was faking it. I think that he
just had a much different side than I knew, and I think that people can be good and bad,
and I think that he's one of those people. Phoebe Judge: Red Colt was charged with first
degree homicide, robbery, and abuse of a corpse. He wanted to represent himself, but wasn't allowed. Adam Bruckner: There was a mental health
evaluation where he was found unfit, so that was definitely a part of the puzzle, but
he definitely knew the difference between right and wrong, which was the really deciding factor of
whether or not he would be in a mental institution or in a regular prison. A guy that can clean up an
apartment by taking a body out piece by piece on the third floor surely knew the difference between
right and wrong and was able to cover it up. Phoebe Judge: Red Colt was sentenced to life
in prison. He died of cancer earlier this year. Angie's full name was Josephine Angelo. The money that Red Colt stole from her was given
to her biological son. He grew up in foster care. They had a funeral and her son came.
Detective Mangold is now a special agent for the Pennsylvania attorney general's office.
As for Adam Bruckner, he's retired from soccer and he's put his sleuthing days behind him.
But he's more involved than ever with the homeless community. He's youth director of the Helping Hands Rescue Mission in north Philadelphia.
When you tell this story now, all these years later, do you feel like you were a different person back then? Adam Bruckner: Yeah. It wrecked a little
something in me. So, yes, I think this whole thing changed me. Literally, instead of watching these
horror shows or these homicide investigation tales, I stuck myself in the middle of one of
these accidentally. And it just gives you a little different perspective on people and pain and on
the world. So, I can't really explain that, but I do know that it sat on me really heavily. And
it was so sad, what happened to Angie. She was a lady that brought soup to the homeless guys,
and she was in her apartment one day, and the next day she's, you know... she's just vanished.
[Music.] Phoebe Judge: Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me. Audio engineering help from Rob Byers. Special
thanks to Jenifer Hixson and Viki Merrick. Julienne Alexander draws original illustrations
for each episode. Check them out at thisiscriminal.com. Starting this month, Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
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Philadelphia Homicide Detective Pat Mangold was called to investigate a gruesome murder on the Schuylkill River in July of 2002. The case remained unsolved because Mangold was unable to determine the victim’s identity. Until Adam Bruckner, a professional soccer player, inserted himself into the investigation, and became obsessed with solving the crime.

Music in this episode: “E Você Espera Por Tanto Tempo Que Já Não Lembra Mais o Porquê” by E A Terra Nunca Me Pareceu Tão Distante “Deep Frost” by Remus “Super Chemical” by Remus “My Third Glance” by Rhys Ziemba “Night Owl” by Broke for Free “Summer Days” by Kai Engel

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 26 originally published 9/10/2015 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-26-angie-9-11-2015

Brief Summary

A former soccer player helps solve the murder of a homeless woman in Philadelphia, uncovering shocking truths about her life and death.

Key points

A Gruesome Discovery. Detective Pat Mangold discovers a dismembered body in garbage bags on July 4th.
An Unexpected Lead. Adam Bruckner provides crucial information about the victim, Angie, to the police.
The Search for Answers. Adam Bruckner becomes an amateur sleuth, gathering information from the homeless community.
A Shocking Revelation. Adam finds a receipt linking Red Colt to Angie's disappearance and murder.
Red Colt's Sentencing. Red Colt was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes. He died of cancer earlier this year.
Angie's Legacy. Angie's son received the money stolen from her, and he attended her funeral.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I thought, there's no way I'm going to solve this case.

Pat Mangold reflects on the difficulty of the case.

1:54WatchNov 3, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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