The Killing Season ////// 61 | Forensic Files

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and delicious recipes [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
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all right boys and girls girls that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer that's
enough of the business and let's talk some true [Music] crime two weeks ago Captain was it two
weeks already yeah it was two weeks ago we did our Halloween show and we got to talk about our favorite uh true crime
documentaries there's so many good ones out there yeah if you haven't checked that out go listen to that episode and
also let us know what your favorite documentaries are yeah and one of the perks of doing these shows and hosting
these shows is that I got the opportunity a couple weeks ago to speak with Joshua Zan he is the Creator and
one of the host of the new docu series that's coming out well has just come out called The Killing season which is on
A&E uh highly recommend checking that out I watched the first two episodes over the last weekend and those are
available on A&E's website uh but we also spoke to him a little bit about uh some of the documentaries that were on
our top 10 list uh he did a documentary called cropsy a while back and he also did the uh killer Legends documentary so
we wanted to take this time to talk about the upcoming show ourselves but also give uh you would opportunity to
listen in on Joshua and I's conversation yeah and I checked out the first two parts the first two part of the eight
series The Killing season you got to check that out it's very interesting he does a really good job of making you uh
new little tidbits and then all and then by the end of the episode you're like oh
God I what happens next you know and it was also interesting to see the people that we talked about when we covered the
Long Island spal killer case so um check out this conversation between Nick and Joshua Zeman I think you'll enjoy
[Music] it we will most certainly get into The Killing season and the Long Island
serial killer case but before we do so I wanted to talk to you about your documentary called cropsy what was your
inspiration and how did this come about yeah you know growing up in Staten Island we had always heard about um this
guy cropsy who was uh theoretically an estate mental patient who lived in the tunnels or the basements of the old
willbrook mental institution which was this kind of abandoned somewhat abandoned mental institution in the
center of Staten Island like in the woods and we all knew it was pretty Infamous uh H cuz well especially when
you're a kid all abandoned mental institution are Infamous um but you know from the haraldo footage and you know we
didn't really think anything of it I mean we knew it was a little bit creepy and I think it was used to um keep kids
away from you know having keg parties in the woods H and plus the buildings were
kind of decrepit you know like you can walk upstairs that went nowhere and out into the you know into like some some
stairs that had fallen away but then um a little girl with Down syndrome and Jennifer schweer disappeared from
our neighborhood and they found her body buried on the grounds of that mental institution
so suddenly um that urban legend became real uh the police um actually went in and released to the public that they
had well I should say that the manicu of taking her wasn't an escap meal patient
as the urban legend said but in fact he was a former worker who had been living on a campsite on the grounds and the
police revealed to the public that this guy had been suspected of taking five other kids throughout 30 years but they
could never convict him of the crime because they could never find the body which in police parlance is called
Corpus DTI no body no crime so yeah I mean for the kids living in Staten Island this was an urban legend come
true however and what the film tries to do is to ask the question you know what came first the chicken or the egg was it
you know as we know there are always urban legends about mental institutions that's
been happening for years um so it doesn't matter where you are you're going to have an urban legend
about mental institutions I mean you see them in those tropes play out in Hollywood movies all the time you know
um you know Halloween Jason you know um Mike Myers comes from a mental institution that whole thing um but you
know or was this a case of the police and concerned parents knowing that a pedophile was out there and they
couldn't tell their kids hey don't go in the woods a pedophiles in there it just
you know that's just not a compelling narrative for a kid uh but if you add an escap mental patient with an axe and use
that as your warning that works so you know of this urban legend and as you get older I mean it turns out that this is a
real life person that that there is a real life monster behind this Legend now did you know about Andre Rand before uh
you started the documentary or when you were a child well that's an interesting question you know I would like to say
that the biggest criticism and you know with some of the I guess more of the horror guys we're very upset that that
we we didn't spend more time talking about the urban legend so whenever I do interviews and stuff I have to like talk
a little bit more about the urban legend now the cropsy urban legend actually comes uh from Sleepaway camps in Upstate
New York in the 1950s Jewish Sleepaway camps but it's a little older than that um cropsy is a kind of American
revolutionary around that time it's it's a common name uh and and the urban legend always starts out with a judge or
a doctor somebody of like some high intelligence high power and he is I think typically he's like vacationing or
he's having his honeymoon with his beautiful young wife and some kids Boy Scouts what have you are playing with
matches and they burn down his cabin the wife sometimes is a child he they die uh
this judge cropsy or doct cropsy is always like horribly disfigured and he grabs an Axe and he's maddened with
revenge and he goes after the count he goes after the the campers you know and so it was used in Upstate New you know
that's where it came from from upstate New York and there's a couple like cropsy is a a fairly well-used name in
in h New York you see cropsy Avenue and somehow that urban legend kind of traveled down down to New York
City and it got mixed with the Escape mental patient urban legend and then it was applied to Andre ran now we you know
it's a good question whether or not I we knew Andre Rand some of the older kids did you know he was you know your the
local bu Radley he was you know the kind of guy who lived in the woods who would
um you would see around but he you know who who had like plac some wood but he wasn't really homeless I mean he was
homeless but like he wasn't you know an alcoholic he wasn't like kind of your you know you're you're mentally ill
homeless um so was homelessness an option was this a choice for him it was a choice yeah it was a choice yeah I
mean this was a guy who felt like an outcast this was a guy who who went to live in the woods um he was a sign
painter before that um you know people have ask me is he crazy yes he's definitely crazy um but he's you know
and I think he's schizophrenia U but I don't think he's like the crazy like you might think and so they knew that they
knew Andre ran you know he was the guy who you know they saw in Mike shoplift sometimes or or he was the guy like
there's all these stories people tell like he would come into the diner and order a tea and a b
you know that's not something that really like you know kind of like crazy homeless people do you know right so you
know it was a weird Persona you know I think he was more scary than he was anything you know because he was
peculiar you know and so then it plays into that whole bu Radley thing you know but the pedophile portion of his crimes
is that because of his mental illness or is that just some kind of proclivity that he has I think it's a proclivity
that he has um because I yeah I think it's a proclivity that he has I think the question is how does that manifest
itself and so here's what we know about Andre ran right his mother was in a mental institution and his father died
early his mother was in a mental institution called Pilgrim State which is in Long Island it's one of the
largest mental institutions at the time in all of the world it has like its own train station he went to go visit his
mother at an early age when she was in the mental institution and he worked at willbrook he was returning to something
that he knew I think he felt bad for these people I mean imagine going in in the 1950s to visit your mother in a
mental institution every weekend what would that do to you you know what I'm saying it's like the start of the start
of a horror film The the state and the conditions of those mental institutions in the 1950s I mean one could only
imagine horrible horrible you you can only imagine so so I think he you know that was like maybe a way for him to
stay in touch um so he you know decides to get a job in a mental institution and
by the way the design of the mental institution is called the Kirby design uh and so he's he's not only in you know
a mental institution but one that looks very similar and I think for someone who's
Outcast working in mental institution makes you feel normal or good or Superior I'm not quite sure right um but
on the proclivity side I think it was also a place where he could freely molest and it
wouldn't be a problem you know it wouldn't raise any red flags exactly because if one of the patients or one of
the children there complain about what he's doing to them I mean is anybody even going to believe them yeah and and
trust me in the 1970s and 80s you had one attendant for 35 to 40 individ uals which today we is unheard of so and I
think there's a lot of a lot of sexual activity you know going on in those mental institutions with PE you know
people who just didn't even understand what you know that is per it had feelings so I you know it's really hard
to say the but there's a couple more interesting things on top of it um okay he had a
girlfriend and people have since contacted me on Facebook book after the documentary you know Andre ran was sent
to a Menton for uh evaluation um after he had his um his breakdowns and a lot of people in stat out at the time were
like oh these these breakdowns are [ __ ] it's not real he's he's using it to uh get out of the crime I I don't
think so especially if you you see that you know very um iconic photo of him drooling on the per walk you know it's I
I I I you know I don't buy the people who are that good of an actor or that even that smart um and so I was always
trying to Rick really understand what was going on finally somebody emailed me and they gave this whole description and
which basically the end of the description was this is the type of schizophrenia that you actually see on
TV the kind of full mental breakdown schizophrenia where where pressures societal pressures
or like daily pressures becomes so much that somebody basically has to act out and when and and
typically that's an act of control so let's say societal pressures are your your you stressors right you use the
term in serial killer Stu stressors happen stressors happen for a lot of people they don't just happen for serial
killers they happen for pedophiles too so your girlfriend breaks up with you you you know what whatever and you
know it's about power I think and and opportunity and so I think you know when these stressers
would happen on his life he he would go out and molest somebody and then I think
it was so debilitating for him that he ended up abducting and killing the child and rather than just like kind of
letting it go and then you know because when he was faced with the crimes that he did he went into this catatonic State
he had he had done it a couple different times so I really believe that that that is what's going on because you
know as you see in the film we have many conversations with him you know and the
conversation like he's a smart guy but you can also tell like there's some stuff going on as well you know now was
he convicted of her death as well kidnapping kidnapping in the first degree however which carries the same
sentence was he still working at the mental hospital when he abducted this girl well so he had been doing this for
a number of years and in the backstory of our film in 1987 he had no longer been working at willbrook yet he was
still living on the grounds in a campsite he was walking home to his campsite and he he found this mentally
disabled girl who lived in our neighborhood and strucked up a conversation with her and I think that
that's both a crime of opportunity and and you know a familiar crime to him and also again somebody who he connects with
and and so he had not been working in the mental institution at that time however the trial that you see in the
case is for a girl who had been taken six years previous her named Holly Hughes and at the time he was working in
the mental institution but Holly Hughes I think was another crime of opportunity
or it's like opportunity plus Holly was outside at 9:00 at night um her mother uh had some
dependency issues and so I think there was some problems there and you know he always underground
always called himself like a soldier for Christ in some of his letters and I believe he thought he was doing God's
work I believe he felt like the atrocities that he witnessed at willbrook basically kind of gave him
this view of life that he he had to save these children maybe from all the horrors that he
witnessed working in willbrook maybe what happened to his mother and so it was better off to kind of like kill them
vers letting them be unwanted children that was his point of of where the pedopilia comes in to that narrative I'm
not quite sure you spent about 10 years working on cropsy and then afterwards you're going to take a little bit of
downtime before you start your new documentary how long does Josh need until till he starts the new one good
question you know um one thing that really interested me because I was a kid growing up and I
heard the urban legend of cropsy uh and after that was and I think this was new for a lot of people just
the idea of urban legends and looking at them from a true crime standpoint and looking at them from how they evolve you
know and so people like oh you should make another serial killer movie and the last thing I wanted to do is to make
another serial killer movie I I thought that people didn't really understand the
the realities I mean I just spent four years if not more talking to parents whose children have disappeared and
never been found and the you know I even had like family members call me up and say like I'll let you do something on my
child but promise me you will never make a serial killer movie because in in our
culture we celebrate that rather than understand the true life reality of that and I was like and so that really
affected me and so after that I I was I found myself focusing more on the urban legends because of the power of urban
legends and so uh we did uh killer Legends as a uh kind of um a pilot for a channel uh where we took looked at these
like urban legends and we looked you know these True Crimes that may have started these urban legends and that's
what's so kind of cool about urban legends is that they you know and this is all kind of new territory like people
hadn't really been talking about urban legends like that you know they knew what urban legends were but they really
weren't looking at them from like a folklorist and a sociology standpoint so I found that really interesting and
that's what's cool about urban legends they need some sort of Truth to breed from they need some sort of Truth to
become sticky and to really like get into your Consciousness and you know they need some kind of True Crime that's
typically like unsolved so that there's some air of mystery about it and then they can add on top of that whatever
cautionary tale they want to and that's the nucleus of all these uh killer Legends or urban legends it's always a a
warning or a cautionary tale do everything that you're supposed to do or bad things will happen to you you you do
something that's wrong and it might Circle back around to you well it and it's really interesting because urban
legends in that warning is typically a much more complicated coded message about social
anxiety um and I had no idea to be honest like looking at it I'm like wow these urban legend stories are really
complex and they're pretty mischievous and they're pretty like subjugating like for example we looked at um the hook
Urban leg Legend right one of the oldest most famous urban legends which is don't
make out in your car or you know a guy with a hook is gonna come get you and of course you know there's a lot of other
kind of interesting little things built in there uh usually the you know like the couples getting hot and heavy in the
car uh the girl um you know that just as they're about to have sex this thing comes over the radio that there's an
escaped mental patient of course uh with a hook for a hand and uh and and he's gonna come get you and the the woman is
really upset and she's scared and she wants to go home the guy of course just wants to continue having sex she says no
he gets pissed jam and this like kind of important he jams on the gas in reverse
and they pull out of the the lookout and they get back home and she opens up the
door and and he goes out to open up her door and on her door is the hook that's been pulled out of
the arm you know what I'm saying so it's it's it's more than just like she doesn't want to have sex like the guy
doesn't get it and then he like gets pissed you know and so in this in this whole thing is it's all
about you know teaching kids teaching kids scaring kids into not having premarital sex or else you're going to
get penetrated by a hook you know and I'm like oh man I was like horrible and and look there's even another one right
the other one about um uh the babysitter you know and which is very famous right
call comes from inside the house it's about babysitters babysitting for the first time and then all of a sudden you
know there's a guy upstairs calls or did you check the children did you check the
children now yeah why is this urban legend because it's an urban legend it's a cautionary tale against women again uh
becoming too successful in the um business world you know like you're not supposed to be babysitting you're not
supposed to be out you need to be and and because in a lot of these times the the girl is like talking to her
boyfriend on the phone and and the guy clicks through you shouldn't be talking to your boyfriend you should be minding
the children you know and I was like damn there's all these like really not just like there's really these horrible
coded messages about subjugating women in these urban legends crazy [Applause] [Music]
yeah and we'll get right back to their conversation right after this quick this show is sponsored by better help do you
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GameChanger beer break all right back from that beer break thanks to our sponsors and let's get back to the
conversation between Nick and uh Josh I'm not on the phone call um you know because I wasn't invited that's very
nice of both of them but let's kick back crack open another cold one and listen to these guys you have about some true
[Applause] [Music] crime Josh we've been seeing in the news all these scary clown incidences where
you have you have people at the park or you know clowns in the woods that are terrifying little kids and this is
everyday news but this relates very much to your documentary what really got me into it was again this these of
Storytelling right and so basically what we found out was in the 1980s there was
these Phantom clown scares that happened all over the United States and internationally um kids were seeing uh
clowns in white Vans roaming their neighborhoods and playgrounds now white van should tell you already that it it's
based upon pedophile fears at the time uh and you know this was a way for kids to kind of like talk about their
pedophilers now it it happened in and we go to Boston where sorry we go to Chicago like inner city Chicago where it
happened and um it was amazing these kids would talk about how it like this was before Stephen King's it before and
before cter guys and pre- internet so what you would have what you had was you had black kids in hardcore urban areas
talking about these clown scares you had I kids in the same you know City doing the same thing and then it would jump it
would go to like Pittsburgh it would go to uh Pittsburgh Boston San Diego Scotland and and again this all happened
pre- internet so this was a hysteria and I was just interested in the idea uh of
clowns becoming creepy like when did that happen you know and I was also interested in the idea of Storytelling
pre inter urban legends pre- internet versus post and I we end the segment you know with
this whole thing about clowns and chaos and that clowns had finally reached this
Pinnacle of evil and that was create there's this term that Urban Legion folklor have called Ascension that's
when you make Something Real by enacting on it and that's what uh that guy James
Holmes did when he dressed up like you know with the orange hair like the Joker and killed all the people in Aurora
Colorado he was basically taking the urban legend and enacting on it making it real by creating chaos you know and
and this the idea of the clown being the agent of chaos the idea of the clown being the other or the idea of the clown
being the other half of us the one that we keep that we don't like to talk about
the one that we don't show the world unless we're wear we're wearing a mask and then we can engage in all the sexual
envir Behavior we it um and right after we did that Al also all these people were like by the way I don't remember to
stay in the clown thing makes no sense and right after we did that some filmmakers in Staten Island um people
thought we did it for a viral campaign we didn't uh people there was some filmmakers in Staten Island had done it
and then it popped over to like a couple other places in England and then it died
down now it happened again this year but this year it went viral quickly people in it was happening everywhere and it's
not done yet of course obviously and then it jumped and this is important and understanding what what the truth is it
jumped to England pretty quickly and then most recently it jumped to Germany and I just did a interview uh huff post
Germany where literally I'm sitting there talking to this guy about about the clown scares and suddenly he gets a
an email saying that some clown had some real clown like like they firebomb like
nine cars and stab somebody and so it the violence has happened yeah we're already seeing violence with these
incidences but never before and I can't figure out why that is different I don't
have an answer for that why is this different now so I don't quite know either although I have an idea my idea
so one thing that has to happen first and this is kind of what we hit two years ago was that clowns had to become
the ultimate Evil C character and they have you know there's no denying that clowns uh are the ultimate Evil
character that you know and and that culminated with the joker once that became entrenched in our Collective
Consciousness something else happened and and basically you know I I don't politics
whatever but when you have fear so urban legends are um mirrors of our current social anxiety uh society's anxiety it's
always about what's happening right then and there and so I think that this is about politics I think this is about an
election that people are saying is one of the worst they've ever seen I think this is about a lot of fear of the other
um whether that's you know mexic Mexicans uh whether that's uh people from all over uh fear of like thugs fear
of like War fear of drugs fear of guns you know that whole nine yards and then we're also seeing a lot of kind of
taking down of American institutions you know whether it's taxes or whether it's
Russians or all these things so so I think it's about this fear of the other and that is also why um it had jumped to
England so quickly because they're having the same thing with their brexit issues um so that is one of the things
that we're seeing uh a lot of right now um and then uh the other part there's another part of it so before I can tell
you that I don't really think anybody was dressing up like clowns in 1985 nobody's really dressing up as
clowns but now people are actually dressing up as clowns and doing it you know what I'm saying so there really are
people standing on the corner and that's the difference too so that so why are people kind of like doing it and I think
you know right now there are also a lot of people who want to kind of act out uh and and they don't have an an
outlet for that like basically to some people this is the equivalent of pulling the fire alarm at school the the problem
with pulling the fire alarm is that nobody knows it was you you know like you want to take credit for it and so
when you could go dress up as a clown and do it you you get a little bit more recognition you get there's a picture of
you and then you really get to see like the school administration and and what's
even better the police freak out I mean it's like The Simpsons you know you know
when and I can't help but laugh either you know when you go and you see a police officer standing at the podium
saying uh ladies and gentlemen uh we do not believe that there are any clowns here in town you know like you can't
help but Snicker that these guys really had to go out there and you know look at
this and so I think we're also having a very big conversation in our culture right now about the about Community
Police Ing and law enforcement you know and so like I said it's it's like pulling a
fire alarm for the police you know what better slightly harmless thing you can do are we to the point now where if
you're wearing a clown outfit and you're in a park that you can get ticketed or if the captain goes out and stands on a
corner he's dressed as a clown that he's going to be handcuffed and thrown in the
back of a police car you know clowns have become you know there such a polariz in
figure so we in killer Legends right you see like this clown dressed up right and
he drives around a white van I mean we were just having fun back then but it was really interesting because we went
to this um Urban neighborhood and these fullon gangbangers when they saw this guy
dressed up as a clown they suddenly were like yo man that's not funny oh they got weird yeah you know
it's like like these gang bangers suddenly like dropped all pretense were like yo that's not cool that's not funny
yo yo yo and so it's very you know it's very interesting how you know what that does to people
why is that why why seeing a clown suddenly freaks you out it's because of the stories that they grew up
hearing and it it's nobody's eyes ever look right with that makeup it the The Haunting face and the eyes just always
look evil when you pair it with that mask or the makeup so cool thing is you know I mean those exaggerated faces were
done on purpose back in the days of the circus because they needed to be exaggerated because you sat like 200
feet away you know so you needed to see them big but then we took clowns out of the big top and we brought them into our
homes through TV do trials birthday parties but they never changed the makeup right know and and so suddenly it
was like whoa you know but then the other question start to pop up and this is when you know like I said back in the
1980s it was about out pedop the fear was pedophiles now the fear is the other or the fear is the breakdown and Chaos
that is that is slowly gripping us you know um through through through our political situation but back then it was
pedophile so you know it was all about like who's the guy who's the sweaty guy behind the makeup playing with the
children you know um now it's not sweaty guy it's not the sweaty guy anymore you
know what I'm saying it's it's the guy it's the kid with sharp fangs who's you know doing whatever and I always thought
that this stuff was happening because or started because of movies like Stephen King's It Or Poltergeist that that we
developed this clown fear from from movies and scary stories you know that's what that's it's cultural right guys you
know all that stuff was hitting at the same time and what we talked what we talked
about this it was the fact that it was gayy you know it's not just gayy but gayy and in the you know gasy and the
clown outfit really freaked a lot of people out you know people start to make those connections you know and that's
when he started see jayy's paintings and all that other stuff and it could be I mean I really love to know from Stephen
King um you know where he got the idea from Penny Wise from yeah and I love Stephen King and absolutely horrified
and terrified by Penny wise the clown I would love to figure out how he came up with that idea um let's talk about your
new docu series The Killing season which is on A&E I know it's about the Long Island serial killer or maybe it starts
off that way but what what is this case about and and what is the docu series about what do the listeners need to know
going into this adventure right so basically it's an eight uh an eight episode docy series um that looks at the
uh that looks at the unsolved uh that looks at the unsolved U murder of 10 sex workers in Long Island New York
um so basically after cropsy everybody wanted me to do a serial killer story I didn't want to uh I did killer Legends
and then this case popped up and you know I remember it first it was four sex workers that they found in
2010 um and then a couple months later they found the remains of six more sex workers along the same abandoned highway
um I you know we very much live in a CSI Law and Order world where we think that
this thing is going to get solved very quickly there's got to be some physical evidence that's going to solve this case
and then year one no arrests and then year two no arrests and then I started to hear uh stories about uh political
backstabbing and fumbling of the case and um you know arguments about whether it was one serial killer or two and one
of the reasons I cropsy was you know I wanted there was a lot of fiction profound fiction movies coming
out at the time and I wanted to make a movie that showed people that sometimes horror is quite real and if you want to
see something really scary let me show you this footage from an old mental institution because that's really scary
and when this story came up it was a way for me to do that again it was a way for
me to show the world like look there's all these TV shows about serial murder Hannibal the fall the following you know
and and I like them just as much as anybody else but sometimes they were missing the point about how truly
horrifying these cases can be and I went in and started looking at this case um not to really to solve it sure I would
love to solve it who wouldn't want to solve it but it was really more about how serial cases serial murder cases
really play out and it was really more about the horror of what was going on however when I started to do a lot of
digging into the case and started you know talk to some of the sex workers I realized that there was a lot more to
this case and originally it was going to be another feature like cropsy and then
we realized there was so much there we started hearing whisperings of other cases that had been unsolved also
involving sex workers that people thought were connected in Atlantic City in Daytona and then you know we could
step out and look at this horrific tragedy this American Nightmare that's happening all over the country and the
police are powerless to stop it like you would not believe what goes on so this is very much like cropsy an active
investigation very creepy um a lot of the same feel but as cropsy but on a much bigger
scope now I'm a true crime dork watch everything I can possibly find and I read everything I can get my hands on
and if I had to Josh if I had to bet the farm on it you know this is something I've been telling people for years that
if in every major city in the United States there is a serial killer that's out there and it's because they have
access to sex workers and if you have a large enough City with enough people in it there's a guy there that's killing
people and whether they are known to the police at the time of the investig a a lot of times that's not the cas most of
the time they end up finding out afterwards that there is a serial killer on the loose they they catch a guy and
realize that he has killed three or four people I didn't know that I had no idea
like I I I guess you know I don't know why and I it should have been fairly obvious right because of because of Jack
the Ripper like you know like but for some reason I guess we hear about all these other cases and I you know I don't
know but so that's exactly what we found but it's kind of even weirder because like since the
1970s since our lives have become more and more trackable since we don't have hitchhikers uh you know or stranded
motorists as as much in all those cases in an effort not to get caught serial murders are going after sex work
sex workers in record numbers and and the idea is that also sex work has changed it's now a lot of now all the
everything's taking place over the Internet it's no more guys walking the street you know it's no more like girls
walking the streets and guys pulling up in the car these Arrangements these dates are happening over the internet
you would think that would make it safer but in actuality it makes it that much more
Anonymous nobody's tracking IP addresses or any of that crazy stuff you see on TV
in fact you watch TV you have this idea that police are putting all this information in the supercomputers
247 right that is not happening that is not happening at all in fact there are 17 to 20,000 different law enforcement
agencies and none of them are mandated by law to share their murder data with the vi with the FBI's vicap system so
it's not even like well you know you know it's not even like saying like cops don't care they can't even track it they
have no idea what's going on and that's just not that's not just for murder missing persons there's two different
databases they don't talk to each other but so in Canada you have this vicap system the same system that was set up
by the FBI but all their murders are to be sent in to one centralized database and as a result they're able to make
those connections a lot better than we are and that to me is frightening I I I again I thought we were so much better
than this I thought we would put in a name and a face and you know something would pop up but I can't believe it's
not ferally mandated I cannot with the amount of stuff that we have on TV from from everything from you know all these
different shows and the fact that is not at all like that is was just the most shocking thing to me well and the other
part of it is the public perception I believe that we have been led to believe that if there is a serial killer on the
loose that we would be aware of it because the newspapers and the and TV would come out and tell us hey there's
these crimes going on and the police have connected them they've linked them together so be on the lookout because
there's a really bad guy on the loose but in all actuality what we find out is that 50% maybe more than 50% of the time
we're finding out that there was a serial killer on the loose after the fact once he's caught and we we don't
know what's going on until he's apprehended and we're led to believe this because we think that serial crime
is such a unique crime that you know there's going to be books about it and we're going to see this guy's face on TV
but that's just not the case we're just not aware that this type of thing is happening all the time and in most of
our cities here's the other thing I didn't know uh police aren't required to tell you that there's a serial killer so
we have a guy so remember I was just telling you about about that database well there is an an individual a citizen
who has basically put together the most comprehensive database of Murder in the United States a citizen better than the
FBI the NSA and everybody now this guy his name is Tom harrove he's created What's called the murder accountability
project and and the reason that they don't do this is because they don't want you to
know the fact that solve rates of murders have gone down 30% in the past couple decades you know we want to
believe that the police are doing a great job and this isn't NE necessarily their fault uh but regardless uh murder
rates have gone down so you know for a place like Detroit which was never really good at solving murders in the
first place now they're down to like 30% solve rate so if you want to murder somebody do it in Detroit or Baltimore
or Chicago um but so the point that this citizen has compiled this this um database and from this database he's
created algorithm and he types in you know strangled women in you know you know in a certain like range in a
certain time period and this guy comes up with all these like cases of all these clusters of murdered women that
look suspiciously similar and you know and then he's what he's got to do is he's got to take that data and kind of
go through and like and like then pull up the names and look at them and like really see if they're connected but he's
found certain cases where where like he's called up some Police Department and he's like I think you have a Serial
murder on their hands on your hands and they're like no we don't and then it's revealed that they then subsequently
like a few weeks later reveal to the public that they have a Serial murder but not before somebody called them out
on it and now he's featured on your show but you also worked with the author Ro Robert kker as well right now kolker's
book Lost Girls is to me one of the best true crime books in the past 10 years yeah we recommended Lost Girls on our
show and one thing that was truly great about it you know Robert culer he was an
author well he worked for magazines before and he wrote a lot of articles on the Long Island serial killer case and I
read all of them so I wasn't really that excited to read his book however I did so and I found it was the exact opposite
you know that he there was so much more in the book now one thing that I've always wanted to know because Lost Girls
he doesn't present his own theory on who the Killer is or how this all went down
I would love to ask him what his personal theory is he only he only suggest Nate you know stories from the
neighborhood or from what people in the neighborhood would tell you what was Robert kolker's Theory well listen you
know just backing up just a tad if it wasn't for Bob cker I wouldn't have done the documentary okay because Bob cker
showed us first of all he did a wonderful job of humanizing these women which I think think was the best part of
it my only criticism of Bob Ker's book is that it's too short and so I what I wanted to do was I
wanted to create a series that could literally pick up where Bob's book left off and because like I wanted to know
more and so literally that's what I tried to do I said to myself this is for all the people who loved Lost Girls as
much as I did now let's go even further and a lot of that had to do with with the suspects you know what I'm saying
and so um I you know it's hard for me I think what Bob and I share is the fact that when the police stopped speaking to
the public as they did in this case and you have an active serial killer who's murdering people on a place like Long
Island people are going to speculate and that is just what happened here you had
an explosion of speculation I had not seen since the Joan B Ramsey case and that's because the police are not
providing updates but in the internet age you can't you just can't not do that you
can't allow people to speculate this is not people sitting down at the coffee shop or the diner saying well you know I
I so I felt like this and this this is people online trolling saying things that they would never say in PRI in in
public you know face to face because that's what the internet allows us to do calling each other the killer the whole
nine yards and so a lot of what I think we try to do is to go in and kind of eliminate the speculation take out all
that trolling and and and help people to concentrate on the real issues at hand and one of the real issues at hand is
the fact there are five individuals who have yet to be identified so people are like can this case be solved of course
this case can be solved you've got five people out there who are missing and unidentified over 50% of the victims to
not know who those people are I mean we should be doing everything we can to be finding out who those victims are are
and that's why we started working with the webs Community because the police seem to be at a standstill but I know
that there's a ton of great people on web who love to match unidentified faes people
now my the book also looked a lot at Shannon Gilbert Shannon Gilbert is extremely interesting trust me oh yeah
however however and it's also created one of the the craziest conundrums in all of True Crime how can Shannon
Gilbert not be connected and you know what I believe she's not I believe that it is one of
the craziest cases of coincidence I've ever seen but I don't think it's connected I do think it's connected in
the fact that we're talking about violence against sex workers but I don't believe it's connected in that that Lis
good the same guy killed her and and and all those whole nine yards but the problem is is that without releasing the
911 tape the police create additional speculation on Shannon Gilbert unfortunately taking away the focus from
the 10 other victims who are lying there along Ocean Parkway five of whom are unidentified so if the amount of time
and effort went in to you know of figuring out what happened to Shannon versus figuring out who these five
identified missing victims are we may be able to solve this case and that's my problem there's so much speculation on
Shannon Bob did not really give me um who he felt it was but I think he at least at the time felt
Shannon somebody was chasing Shannon felt she wasn't some kind of trouble I don't know if he still believes that um
remember and I don't know if you know this but Mary Gilbert's Mary Gilbert's Shannon's mom yeah tragically she was
killed by her other daughter earlier this year um and Mary goes all over our series um we talked to the daughter and
you know I don't I don't know if this is fair or not to say but it does show that there's
some history of mental illness in the family and when you then go back and look at Shannon to decide whether she
had a freak out or not that adds a little bit more Credence and that's the hardest part about this
case you know when somebody asks you who do you think is the Long Island serial killer well then you have to throw a
question back at them and that question is well do you mean who do I think did this if Shannon Gilbert is part of the
crime if she's connected or who do you think who do I think did this if she's not connected to these other murders and
what I find time and time again is that so many people can't get over that first
question was Shannon connected or not and that that stops them from looking at any of the other facts in this case they
that's a huge speed bump in this case now one thing when we covered this case so many well quite some time ago uh one
thing that our listeners wanted to know was why can't the police just Trace IP addresses and because these girls are
using the internet for sex work why can't they just use the computers and and in email addresses and IP addresses
to figure out where these girls are going or where their last appointment was everybody believes that somehow
these women these women are soliciting online I suggest your readers to go on back page and Craigslist and see how
these women solicit they type in telephone numbers and by the way you can't even put in like number numeral
numbers you have to put like spell out8 five four you know what I'm saying girl else they don't want to get caught by
law enforcement that is the only record and these women put up these ads 10 20 30 times a day like advertising so the
John looks at the woman he then calls her probably if he's a killer he's using a burner cell phone and chances are
she's using a burner cell phone they make an arrangement to me of course serial killer is not going to be soup
enough to to ask the woman to meet him at his home in case she's her boyfriend is somewhere or driver it's going to be
at hotel or something like that and that's like one of the problems that I was saying before it used to be in the
olden in the olden days it used to be before that you a woman a sex worker could always have that kind of like a
couple seconds to make that Split Second decision about whether she was going to
get in the car with a guy usually a lot of that decision was based upon personal
hygiene what did the guy look like is he like you know you know maybe he has a a
baby seat in the back of the car perfect you know that's the things that they want to see clean cut clean car baby
seat in the back guy wearing expensive coat a briefcase a nice car you know what I'm saying that says that this
guy's going to be okay and but when you make that deal over the phone you there is none there's not that moment for you
to say hm so cuz what happens is they then go to the hotel room where they're supposed
to meet the girl knocks on the door the door opens and she steps through the threshold the deal is done it's very
hard to turn back and to step back out of the room when the door's closed and you're she you know they're then looking
at each other kind of face to face so that's the problem so you know usually it's probably a car date it's probably
meeting her in a parking lot somewhere you know and get in a c date and then he you know spits splits a taxer but
there's no IP address there's nobody you know there's nobody like you know emailing back sounds great you know meet
me at my house you know it's not happening you know the internet gives people the idea that it
is safer and we've only learned that is in fact at just another level of anonymity that we never even realized
and you spent a lot of time on this case right 4 years years I mean look what's happened did the police chief had the
police chief been arrested when you guys looked at the case the current police chief uh no we when we covered it we
talked more about Dormer who had uh he had retired so Dormer retired right and of course that was about politics and
then they brought in an interim police chief and then the da basically kind of this Commissioner versus Chief right
uh they brought in a different Police Commissioner and then the case was handled by a chief chief Burke who was
put in by the da uh basically while we were out filming Burke gets arrested for um
basically beating up a prisoner who had sto beating up a guy who had stolen a duffel bag out of his car inside the
duffel bag was porn apparently some kind of very nasty porn and he's arrested for
beating up this guy uh and suddenly it comes out that this guy not just beating up guys because they're you know kind of
revealing his porn to the world he has been um potic he's been surveilling people he's putting wire Taps on his own
detectives who are working with the feds he's been surveilling political opponents and then it's revealed through
a memo that the police detectives in the Gilgo Beach case had asked the police chief and da to please bring in the FBI
additionally because they needed more help and that request squashed and the reason it was squashed was because the
police chief and the da or at least the police chief didn't want the FBI snooping around his feem because he was
doing all this illegal activity and he was worried they might find out so basically they were deliberately
dragging their heels in this Gilgo Beach investigation and on top of it it had been common common knowledge uh that
this police chief had been investigated by internal affairs twice for having relations with a pro with a sex worker
which really in my mind isn't that much of a problem she was convicted sex worker who had a crack addiction and he
kept leaving his gun at her house to me that's a conflict of interest by the way
and so all this stuff comes out and at some point you have literally the day that we were trying to lock picture on
the last episode somebody calls me goes You' got to turn on the TV I turn on the
TV and there is Steve balone who is the highest ranking official in Long Island holding up a piece of paper demanding
the resignation of the district attorney in part for dragging his heels in the Gilgo Beach investigation now some
people may say that that's a politically motivated stunt but it doesn't matter where that's politically motivated you
have this guy demanding the resignation of The Da or else he's going to call in the governor's office this is crazy
stuff you know so now now interestingly enough November 2nd this uh this police this police chief is going to be
sentenced and now everybody's wondering whether or not the district attorney is going to be uh indicted by Loretta Lynch
as well that's fascinating to know that there's still so much going on with this
case now your show The Killing season is On A and E not to be confused with the Discovery ID channel correct so so
here's another issue right there's two shows so Discovery ID of course wanting to um the Discovery ID uh decided to
when they heard we were making our show decided to preempt it and and ended up doing a real Hatchet job uh rehashing
the same old same old stories um and and they did like a on hour or two hour thing um that starts tomorrow I think
I'm not sure I'm not sure when that when that Premier is the seventh our show premieres on the 12th um okay and our
show is a very serious um deep dive into these cases your show The Killing season
starts November 12th and it's on A and E right now they're going to show episodes
yeah it's an eight part series but they're showing the first two episodes back to back and then the next week the
second two episodes and then the third week the next two episodes so it's only over over the course of four
weeks and and then every Wednesday we're going to be um appearing on webs.com well I'm really excited to check it out
and I'm hoping that this brings up some new leads and some new information and if so we might be diving back into the
Gilgo case here in the garage yeah I mean if you guys want to relook at it feel free to do so and then we can
definitely do an interview with ra and I and myself we have no problems we'd love
to do it the more people that know about this case the more chances of it it getting solved it can be solved by
someone in the general public that's the whole thing that makes it so exciting awesome well thank you for your time
here tonight Josh and we look forward to recommending The Killing season to our [Applause]
listeners so we've had a chance to watch the first two episodes and I thought they were good because here's what I'm
looking for well first of all a big thank you to talking with Josh right oh yeah uh but then but also we didn't have
his partner in crime Rachel Mills Rachel Mills on the show which she does a great
job and all the documentaries as well and we look forward hopefully we get a talk to them again later on in the
season maybe well I'm only going to do so if the show is awesome okay but the show so far is amazing really they
started it started off really good the first two episodes were great and the thing that I'm looking for here is you
know when we this has been such an interesting case and this is one that we've followed and obviously covered
before you can go find it on iTunes um but when you're looking at these cases these unsolved cases what you want you
know these famous cases a new documentary or a new show will come out every few years and a lot of times it's
not really telling us anything new I've only watched the first two episodes and I'm already seeing new information yeah
normally when something new comes out you would expect there to be new leads or new information and like you said
most of the time not the case it was interesting to watch um this uh Series so far because we did we've done three
episodes on this which would be the most that we've done on a Case other than OJ
again like uh I think the update show is free on the website so you can go to True Crime garage.com and get that for
free um the other part one and part two are on iTunes the iTunes Store but it was interesting to see the people that
we actually talked about I mean some of them when you're diving into this case and doing the research you actually
don't see I mean you'll see the the pictures of the victims and stuff but when you see when you talk about mothers
and fathers and things like that they're normally no pictures of those so it was
fascinating to see the people that we we talked about for for so many hours in the garage well just in the first two
episodes alone we see them interview people that they've not interviewed on other shows before um so that was
interesting in itself and there's also being new theories presented in this casee um some that uh might be old
theories but they're actually diving into these theories with a with a lot more um they're very substantial you
know the way they present these theories where before when you would see shows talk about the possibility of two
killers or was Shannon involved you know these different things uh the possibility of two killers they go deep
into that theory and that was that was truly fascinating yeah I definitely recommend for everybody to check it out
the other thing that I think well first of all I mean Josh should be calling me to do his music composition good music
overall but I mean come on just call the guys in the garage to do the music but uh I thought um one of the best things
about it was how human it makes it m you know you're seeing they're not just talking about
you know the the victim they're talking about the other victims you know there is
somebody that lost their life but there's all these other people involved in her life um that lost the person as
well and to me that showed how real this is um and it's not just entertainment and like Josh says this is something
that we should get behind um because maybe somebody watching could uh help solve this case
and the other thing though too is with so many of these shows these typically these magazine shows that have covered
the case a lot of times it's just a it's just a face behind a desk that's answering some questions or telling you
what's going on with with this show they're actually out on the streets they are they're driving around um a girl
who's a who's a sex worker in the area they're getting to know the people of the streets and the people involved in
these neighborhoods uh and that really like you said it it really brings the story to life and it brings makes every
one of them human for us and and able to identify with each of these different uh
people that are involved even if it's just to the point where they live in the area but uh that that was fascinating
that it's not just a a face behind a desk this is two people actually out on the streets doing the work and figuring
out what's going on and the list case is so fascinating to I think both of us so
we'll probably be as the season goes on I'm sure that will bring up talk talking
points and it's a case that we'll have to talk about again on the show so uh hope you guys enjoyed the interview and
this week's recommended reading is well before we get to that do you mind if I just to be real clear for everybody you
know uh the the first two episodes we've seen them they were already on this last
weekend so if you want to see the first two episodes of The Killing season you go to aetv.com and check out those
episodes there that way you can get caught up and you can start watching every Saturday and follow well and a lot
of people have the stuff on theand you know I'm sure A&E on theand has the episodes there as well so this week's
recommended reading is living with the devil a family search for the truth in the face of deception infidelity and
murder and this one is this one's weird this is a very interesting story because
this is written by the stepdaughters of of the the psychopath that they were living with uh that
someone that is suspected of murder so this is a Memoir by Lori and Cindy Hart again that's living with the devil a
family search for the truth in the face of deception infidelity and murder and you can pick that up by going to
truecrime garage.com click on the recommended page and you will see all of our recommended books there just click
on the Amazon banner and Shop away friends it's the it's the buying season right yeah it's uh the Christmas coming
and uh I didn't buy anything this week on Amazon so I don't have any suggestions but next week I'll I'll buy
something I'll let you know what I got fantastic uh like always anything if you want to sign up on the mailing list go
to True Crim garage.com uh we appreciate all the sport we couldn't do it without you guys
and we'll see you again next week right here back in the garage and until then be good be kind and don't
litter [Music] you can live out your Master Chef dreams when you find a professional on Angie to
tackle your dream kitchen remodel connect with skilled professionals to get all your home
projects done well visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie that

The Killing Season ////// 61

TrueCrimeGarage.com

Everyone is talking about the newest True Crime documentary "The Killing Season" and we are too. The Killing Season starts off as a documentary about the still unsolved Long Island Serial Killer case and becomes an investigation that will take documentarians Joshua Zeman and Rachel Mills to many cities and many dark places. The Captain and Nic discuss their thoughts about the first two episodes and what they hope the series will present to viewers. We also hear Nic discuss the real life cases behind Joshua's documentaries. This includes phantom clowns, suspected child serial killer Andre Rand and of course the Long Island Serial killer.

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Brief Summary

Joshua Zeman discusses his docuseries "The Killing Season" and the Long Island serial killer case, emphasizing urban legends and societal fears.

Key points

The Double Champ. Hosts introduce themselves with humor and a nod to their drinking habits.
Urban Legends Explored. Discussion about the Cropsy urban legend and its real-life implications.
Cropsy Documentary Insights. Interview with Joshua Zeman about his documentary and the origins of the Cropsy legend.
The Hook Urban Legend. A cautionary tale about premarital sex, featuring a hook-wielding man.
Clown Scares of the 1980s. Exploring the hysteria of clown sightings linked to societal fears.
The Killing Season Docuseries. An exploration of the unsolved murders of sex workers in Long Island.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You just set yourself up for some strange and weird Snapchats.

Discussion about listener interactions

4:19WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

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