The Last Call Killer (Part 1) | Morbid | Podcast | Forensic Files

Hey weirdos. I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this right here is Morbid. [Music] This is Morbid. And it's morbid in the
morning. It truly is morbid in the morning. It is, [ __ ] I [ __ ] It's like 8:00 a.m. right now, which is like
pretty morningish. But I woke up at 5 cuz I had to feed them cats that I own. Yeah. You got to feed those animals, you
know. Yeah. And then I had to feed myself. And I decided I saw this Tik Tok. I live my life by Tik Tok. And this
woman said if you you know, like it's really good for your circadium rhythm to get some sunlight on your face in the
morning. Um, especially if you have PCOS, which I just got diagnosed with. Super fun. Um, boom. But that's so good
for you. So, I went outside to eat my breakfast this morning and I feel I think it was really good for me. I think
Well, like there's something about fresh air in the morning. No, it's true. Like, I know we say that,
but you know, if you're getting your own fresh air in the morning, it's okay. You
just don't want to do it at night. Uh, like when you're sleeping. But I used to in fact my the butcher and the ren was
mostly written outside in the morning very early in the like before anyone woke up outside on my porch with a glass
of iced coffee. Yes. Or a hot coffee and just getting that fresh air. And I feel
like it did something to me because I could plow through stuff out there in that in the morning and it was outside
that like really did it. like I'm going to start I want to start doing that again because I think it really does
trigger something in the morning. I was but I think it really like that fresh air is like it can wake you up and make
you start the day better I think. Yeah. And I think like just being exposed to the daylight that early like I I'm not
looking to like get tan or anything. I'm so [ __ ] pale. Um but just like getting the light on your face in the
morning is so good for you. I think and I was just read I'm reading um Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by
Grady Hendris. Elena recommended it. It's really good. I just want to tear through it. Yeah, it's I at your
recommendation and that was like for book club, wasn't it? Our audio book club. Uh my best friend's exorcism. I
listened and read at the same time to um My Best Friend's Exorcism and it was so
good. And this uh this one, Southern Book Club, the same is in the same universe, like on the same street. So,
it's interesting. It is. I love that about his stuff. And uh that's a great book. And then I I just posted this on
my on my Instagram, but uh I just read um Widow's Point by Richard Chismar. It It's It's coming out in September. I
think it's September 30th, I want to say. Um it'll I think it's on pre-order right now, though. You can pre-order
like the audio book and all that stuff. I can't recommend this book enough. Yeah, I want to read it. Um, I mentioned
on my on my Instagram that I want to start like recommending books on there. Yeah. And like maybe on my Tik Tok or
something. I'm only going to recommend books that I like. Like I'm not going to like review books I don't like. Um I
just I just don't want to people do that. Yeah. It's like it's like to each their own. That's you know the whatever
you want to do. I I just don't want to do that. Like I'd rather just share books that I really like so that you can
add them to your to read list or not. Like it's totally just because one person doesn't like a book doesn't mean
it's a bad book. Yeah. Like it's it's like a tough line to walk. Like that's the thing like cuz like I I stay out of
reviewer spaces because that's their space like reader spaces or their spaces. You're in the author space and
then author at least when it comes to like my books, I'm like you you do what you got to do. Yeah. Say what you need
to say. Yeah. like whatever you want to do and but I'm going to stay out of those spaces and which I I fully believe
that like as an as authors we should stay out of those let them have their own you know like you can review books
how you want to and but but I was just thinking on my pages I just wanted to like kind of like share what I love to
read because I think I'm I I'm trying like protecting peace is like a v I think a lot of people are really feeling
that lately like we're just protecting our piece and like keeping things positive. Yeah. And that's what I would
like to do is just share positive stuff. Like if I don't like a book, I won't share it. If I like a book, I will share
it. Um but people were like I I was really happy to hear that like people listening that you guys were like,
"Yeah, like share books that you like." So I'll try to do that like once a week.
I'll share a book that I like or something like just And again, if you like it, you like it. If you don't, you
don't. That's fine. Whatever. But I'll just share what I'm reading because I'm trying to keep myself reading for like
leisure. I am too because it makes me so happy. Like it fills my cup in such a such a real way. I'm at a point where
this book where every time I have to close it and go back to like my life, I'm like I want to go back into that
world. That's when you know you're in a good reading slide. And that's I'm in a good reading slide right now where it
also is really good. And I don't know if this will work for everybody, but I found it works for me. Um in curbing
doom scrolling or just like mindless phone [ __ ] every if you if you feel like this will work, this is what I do
is every time I feel like I'm reaching for my phone to open it just to like check Instagram, like do something
stupid, look at my email, like it's just like just that mindless like addictive I'm grabbing my phone to grab it.
Instead of grabbing your phone, just have your book that you're reading with you at all times and read. Yeah. For
even if it's just a page, just read for the amount of time you would have sat there and scrolled. I was just doing
that this morning cuz you were saying that like a couple weeks ago even I was doing it this morning like you went to
the bathroom. I opened my book and read like two pages instead of sitting there doom scrolling for a second. We're
sitting with the girls for a minute and they were just like having a mama moment. So I was like I'm going to read.
Yeah. And that's it. It'll get you like reading more and it'll get you looking at your screen less. it won't like I
don't know if it'll cure it but like I don't think it'll eliminate it but it absolutely has curbed when I get into
that I find myself being like oh yeah you don't need to look at your phone like look at the book I get into and
I've like gone to therapy about it I get into like really bad doom scrolling and
then I just like look deeply into like the darkest corners of what could end the world and then I spiral so I'm
really trying not to do that I'm only going to one person for my news sources right now Aaron Parnes on Tik Tok It's
the same. He gives me my updates. I say, "Thank you so much. Thank you, Aaron." But I also I'll get to an obsessive
place about it and then I realize that and I'm like, "Okay, go read your book." Yeah. Cuz you got to I think right now
especially like you need to be aware of what's going on 100%. Absolutely. But you also need to escape every now and
again. You can't live in that doom. Find what your happy place is. Yes. Because you you still deserve to have a happy
place and you need to retreat to that every once in a while. Like we need to be aware. We need to be taking action
when need to take action. But have a happy place. It's okay to have a happy place. Don't let people feel like you
can't have a happy place. Have your happy place. And if that's reading whatever the [ __ ] you want to read,
whether that be the spiciest of spice, the goriest of gore, or the beachest of beach, the beachiest of beach, read it,
enjoy it, like let it take you away for a little while. Take me away. But it really will. I find it really has curbed
my like grab your phone and just look at it for no [ __ ] reason when you're when you have like a moment cuz I don't
love that like we've reached a point in where also we can't be alone with our own thoughts. Oh, I I don't want to be
alone with this but like we used to be able to like like it has made you feel like you can't be alone with your own
thoughts. Like people feel that way. you can. You just are programmed not to now.
And it's like that's we used to be able to just sit there and look at the clouds
and like think about stuff like cuz there wasn't anything else to do like or you read a book like that's like that's
your choices is like stare around the things around you or read your book. And it's like I don't I want to get a little
bit back to that with my own things cuz I need to be more aware of my own like inside of my head. Yeah, you do. I'm
always in my own thoughts and like alone with them when I'm cooking or when I'm baking. And I think that's why I find
baking and cooking so therapeutic. Like so see it's good to be alone like but you but people have been programmed to
think oh I can't be alone with my own thoughts. No you can. You totally can. You're just like you you think you can
you know and it's like as long as you're doing something that like comforts you like you're saying. Yeah. Baking,
cooking, reading, knitting. Oh crocheting like crocheting. Oh, what was I saw this on Tik Tok and I wanted to
say it because again I live my life by Tik Tok. It's great for some things. No, for some
things it really is. I saw a Tik Tok of this girl and she was like I need a new hobby. Like my hobby is just finding new
hobbies. Like tell me some. And there is a whole um like subgroup of hobbies that
are called like I think they're called like extinct hobbies or something like that or like like they're they're like I
think it's extinct hobbies. And there was this whole one where it was like this kind of um I forget what it's
called. I'm going to have to look it up and like fill you guys in later, but it's a kind of lace that you make. Oh,
it's cool. So, these are things like like in the pioneer days when they would like chase that hoop around with like
the [ __ ] that like people don't do anymore. No, literally things that are like going to go extinct if people don't
learn them cuz they're going to like die with our field, you know? Yeah. Like that kind of [ __ ] Yeah. I was like, I
might try that. It looks fun. And the there's all different kinds of lace that you can make and it's I love that kind
of [ __ ] Beautiful. I love like like weird weird hobby hobbies. Yeah. Well, if it makes you happy and it's not
hurting you or anyone else, then go look at a [ __ ] list of extensive. Don't Don't make anyone feel like it's
weird or you're like enter a craft fair. Yeah. Do whatever the [ __ ] you want. I'm
going to I might Hell yeah. I just like randomly took up making blankets last year. Hell yeah. Like crocheting
blankets as you should. And then I just stopped. I think that's great. Maybe I'll try again. Yeah. Yeah. Got my
tension a little better. We We need to get back to hobbies. Hobbies, you know. Yeah. Find a hobby. That's the thing.
Every The doom scrolling has taken over and like arguing online and [ __ ] has taken over like fun hobbies that really
like fill your cup. Stop arguing online. You don't know those people. Yeah. I think it's just like I think it it feels
like it's boiling over that whole Yeah. subsect of life. I think people are getting a little little sick of uh the
chronically online pendulum swings the other way. Yeah, it just feels like it's like everybody's like, you know what,
there's worse [ __ ] happening we need to focus on. It's true. Well, speaking of
worse [ __ ] I was going to say and I think we're going to talk about it right now. Actually, we are going to talk
about some pretty terrible stuff. This uh case, so this is the last call killer, which um shout out to Dave for
finding this because this happened like sort of in our backyard almost like a little bit further away, but like some
of it takes place in mass. Wow. Um, and I had never really heard about this case. I have not I don't think I know
this one. No, it's it's deeply upsetting. Like what happened here is deeply upsetting. But I will say um this
is going to be a two-parter. Part one, we're going to focus a lot on the victims. You know, who they were and
what happened to them unfortunately. But then in part two, I will tell you like up at the top, this person does get
apprehended. And the way they go about it and the way this is like a a real case of like good detective work and
really fascinating detective work that makes me happy cuz this is like the it starts in like uh late ' 80s mid and
then goes into like mid '90s all the way into the early as where like that like turn of the century kind of like
forensics was turning from you know it was really going through a evolution. Yeah. and it's really cool and we're
going to talk about some things that I don't think we have before as far as like fingerprint evidence and that kind
of stuff. Yeah. Um so yeah, it's going to be two parts. So let's get into part one right now. Yeah. So on the afternoon
of May 5th, 1991, a turnpike maintenance worker was just emptying the trash barrels at a rest stop. It was along the
highway in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and he made a horrific discovery. Uh this man had been in the
habit of separating out the aluminum cans from the rest of the trash. Mhm. So he had to really get in there and dig
through everything. Obviously it's like pretty messy work. Yeah. But it was just
a matter of pulling the entire bag out of the barrel and just sorting through that garbage. But this time he was
struggling to lift the bag. It seemed like somebody had put something really heavy in the barrel. So he start he
grabbed a large stick and he started poking the garbage bag just kind of like trying to figure out what could be
inside. Mhm. And every time he managed to get the bag open though, he would find another layer of garbage bag
underneath like multiple multiple times. Yeah. So finally, after making his way through eight or nine layers of plastic,
this man discovered what was weighing the barrel down. Years later, he said, "It looked like a loaf of bread, but
then I saw freckles." Oh, yeah. Shocked and absolutely horrified, he dropped the
stick and grabbed his radio to call his supervisors, who notified Pennsylvania State Police about what had been found.
In Rao Township, there was actually no police department. So, all cases were handled by the state police, no matter
what size or significance they were. And in the case of the remains found at this
rest stop, the criminal investigation uh unit was called in, and they arrived a short time later. After removing all the
bags from the barrel, it was clear that what the maintenance worker had discovered was the decomposing body of a
nude, middle-aged white man with visible knife wounds in his chest and back. Holy
[ __ ] Yeah, it only gets worse. So, the criminal investigations unit in Lancaster County obviously had seen
their fair share of homicides over the years and you know, some were more gruesome than others, but this was
unlike anything any of those officers had ever seen before. This man appeared to be emaciated. They said he weighed
maybe around 100 lb and unfortunately demp had already set in. Um, this is heinous, so just get ready for this. Oh
boy. In addition to multiple stab wounds, the victim's penis had also been severed and shoved into his mouth.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. That's so [ __ ] grotesque. It's grotesque. And it's like, holy [ __ ] the
like the whoever killed this man went to the trouble of wrapping him in so many garbage bags but also did that to
probably horrify whoever found him 100%. You know, it's such a weird dichomous way of doing that. Yes, it is. Cuz it's
like in one sense you're hiding what you've done and in another sense you did that so people would find it and like to
shock people, you know, like you you want like the theater of it. Yeah. But you also are trying to hide it. It's
very strange. and we'll run into that a lot more. And like those kind of things,
it's just like what kind of person when you find out how are you a human? When you find out who this guy is, it's just
like what? Like what the it's wild. And when you find out the fact that he was able to get away with what he did for so
long and oh god, he never should have been able to. But back to this day to officer J. Muser, one of the first who
was at the scene, the murder seemed deeply personal and very deliberate. Definitely not the kind of thing that
just happens in the heat of the moment. Obviously, now notably absent from the scene were the man's clothing, any
personal belongings, and identification. It was clear he had been brutalized and
mut and mutilated, but upon an initial evaluation of the body, it was unclear precisely how he had died. There were
obviously those stab marks, but there were also multiple points of levidity indicating that the body had been moved
more than once. Okay. But rigger mortise had not set in yet, which suggested that
he'd only been dead about a day. Yeah, I was going to say like very newly dead. Interesting. So, the autopsy conducted
later that day revealed a lot more than investigators and officers ever would have been able to get from the scene.
That man had been stabbed in the back between the right shoulder and the spine. But the stab wounds to the ab
abdomen were far more serious. In his stomach, there was a large oval-shaped wound created by something very sharp.
And just above that was a stab wound about half an inch in length, and the coroner described it as in an 11 to 5:00
line as one looks at a watch. Damn. Yeah. The wounds to the stomach were deep and had uh perforated the abdominal
cavity. And so the medical examiner listed that as the cause of that for sure. And he also noted that the
severing of the penis had occurred postmortem. Yeah. I mean, thank goodness for that.
But yeah, holy [ __ ] So the medical examiner had been able obviously to tell investigators how and when this man had
died approximately. But what they still had to find out was who he was and how his body had come to be found in the
trash. Yeah. because of his small stature and weight. Initially, detectives theorized that maybe he could
have been a jockey who raced at nearby um Penn National track, but they checked in with Penn National Management and all
of their riders were accounted for. Huh. So, while the medical examiner's office
worked to identify this man, detectives continued working the few tips and very little evidence that they had. A few
drivers had reported seeing a man outside of his car by the rest stop that night, but all the descriptions varied
so much that they were pretty much useless. And several other callers suggested maybe the man was a victim of
a mob hit because the mob was quote known to do something similar to enemies. Oh yeah. I was like I think Are
you Usually it goes a little different than that. Yeah. But I mean I don't know. I guess so. Yeah. I don't know the
Pennsylvania mob. But in the end, the tips really went nowhere and the case unfortunately was quickly growing cold.
But just as investigators were pretty much resigning themselves to the fact that this was probably just going to go
unsolved, a truck driver at a rest stop in nearby Chester County discovered two 50gallon trash barrels with pretty
unusual contents. So the driver called authorities and alerted them to what he discovered. And when they arrived to
view the contents, they immediately connected them with the dead man found in Lancaster County. Among the trash in
the barrel, crime scene technicians found several pairs of socks, a corduroy hat, two pairs of underwear, a pair of
Brooks Brothers pants, a belt, two t-shirts, and travelers checks and $50 denominations. Okay. There was also a
parking ticket received from the city of Philadelphia, several pieces of Melon Bankank stationery with just various
notes scribbled on them. And finally, a driver's license for the victim who was found to be 54year-old Peter Stikney
Anderson of Philadelphia. 54. Like that's so young. Yeah. And for that to be how it ends. Yeah. So, there wasn't a
lot of information about Peter Anderson for police to find right away, but they did learn that he had previously been an
investment banker, but at the time he was killed, he was unemployed. He was also divorced once and in the midst of a
separation, so he was living alone in an apartment in downtown Philadelphia. To try to get some more information,
detectives contacted a woman whose name was actually on those notes that they had found in the trash. Um, and it
turned out that she was an an associate of Peters who said she last saw him at the Blue Parrot, uh, which was a
Philadelphia piano bar just a few days before he died. Okay. It turned out that the Blue Parrot was one of several gay
bars that Peter was known to have frequented in the handful of years leading up to his death. According to
the staff and patrons there, Peter was one of the regulars who drank pretty heavily and tended to stay pretty late
into the night. like Peter, the clientele of the bar were typically middle-aged, middle-class white men,
which indicated to the detectives that if Peter had been picked up by his killer at the Blue Parrot, then the
killer most likely wasn't a sex worker. Okay, they were thinking like at first they were thinking possibly that could
have been possibly that's the but they were like maybe not. His pension for piano bars was only the first, but
definitely not the most surprising piece of information that detectives would learn in the days following the
identification. It turned out that for a lot of his life, Peter's interest in men
and gay bars had been kept hidden from his friends and acquaintances. He belonged to the Church of the Holy
Trinity, so he was hiding it from people there. And he was hiding it from his ex-wife and his current wife who he was
separated from. Okay. Which is really sad. That that like breaks my heart. It does. It really does. There's going to
be a lot of heartbreaking things in this, especially since like he was hiding it and like obviously like
feeling some kind of like, you know, shame that was put on him for it. And then it ends like this. Yeah. And it's
like without him. I I don't know if he did he was able to, but if he was ever able to like come to terms with it or
like be No, not really. You know, it not really at all. Like what an awful way for that story to end. Yeah. And I the
time where his life ended, it was a really hard time for him. And who knows, maybe he would have gotten like past it
because, you know, as like time went on or stuff like that. But that's sad. He never got that opportunity. But digging
into his past, investigators learned that Peter's true sexual identity, like we were just saying, was something he
very much kept private. And it seemed that he really just wanted to blend in with his peers. His former classmate
from Trinity College said he just wanted to be part of the boys. He was more like
a mascot. Most people who knew him in those days recalled that he was a hard worker, very studious, very responsible,
nothing at all like the other members of his fraternity, which was Sai Upsalon. Hopefully I said that right. While the
other young men were out drinking, partying, casually dating, being frat boys, Peter could just be found in his
bedroom studying or writing. Oh yeah, he sounded adorable. It never actually really occurred to anybody that he
anybody that he was gay, but there was no reason why it should have at that time. A lot of gay people were very
closeted and went well out of their way to hide that and suppress any, you know,
indication of being different, quote unquote. Peter felt, like, you were just saying that he wouldn't be uh he
wouldn't be accepted if he lived openly. So, he chose not to pursue his interest
in politics and the priesthood and instead pursued a career in banking. He very much, I think, wanted to fly under.
That's what I was going to say. Just fly under the radar. Yeah. And when he finally did muster the courage to tell
his mother that he was gay, the confession led to years of a broken relationship between them, that
essentially just confirmed what he assumed. To live as an openly gay man would basically lead to a life of
heartbreak and rejection. That's so devastating. It is. It's awful. Yeah. And it's like if your own mom doesn't
accept you and and you're feeling that, how do you come out to anybody else? Yeah. I don't know how anybody gets
through that either kind of [ __ ] you know. So, in the years that followed, he lived what passed for an ordinary
straight life. He found a job that was really not satisfying, but it paid well enough to support him. A few years
later, he got engaged to a woman that he was casually dating, but he was also carrying on a secret affair with a man
named Anthony Hoy, who he had met in New York. Okay. Hoy later said, "If it had been today, in today's society, we could
have been partners. But in those days, you weren't gay. Gay was not good. Yeah, it's Why does anyone give a [ __ ]
That's the thing. I will never I will never get to a point where I can even slightly understand that way of viewing
it. It doesn't affect you who someone else loves. If it's a consenting adult, I don't give a [ __ ] It doesn't affect
you in any way. I don't give a [ __ ] And I'm happy for you. Exactly. I'm happy.
I'm happy. And I don't get it. I don't get caring. And it should just be that simple. If you're happy, I if if
you're happy, it's a consenting adult and they're happy. I'm [ __ ] happy. Yeah. Why do we make it so much more
complicated? And like what what do people hate about it? I don't get that's what I don't get. Like what why do why
do people hate who somebody else loves? I just let people let consenting adults be. Yeah. You know, like I don't get it.
Live and let life live. I don't get it. Yeah, it's wild. Well, unfortunately, Peter's engagement eventually fell apart
and in 1969, so did his relationship with Anthony Hoy. Um, that ended, too, because Anthony ended up marrying a
woman also to pass. Goodness, you know, most likely. That same year, Peter went to a party where he met a woman named
Edith Sandy Blake. She was from a wealthy family. Her big dream was really just to make it in New York's high
society. And after meeting her, literally just a few days later, Peter proposed. And a few months later, he and
Sandy were married. They moved to Denim, Massachusetts. Oh [ __ ] Just about a half hour outside of Boston. But it was
soon pretty clear to Sandy that Peter was not in love with her. She said he thought of me as his possession, and
that's where it all went wrong. He collected antiques, and I was just one of his antiques. Oh, damn. Which is sad.
Yeah. Yeah. Despite the obvious conflicts in their marriage, Peter and Sandy did stay together for almost a
decade until she met somebody else and decided to end things with Peter. Luckily, things actually seemed to end
amicably enough and they did stay close friends. And it wasn't long before Peter
got married again, this time in 1979 to a woman named Cynthia Reed, um the woman
who he was separated from at the time of his death. By that time, pretty much everyone who knew Peter well assumed
that he was gay, but nobody brought it up ever. A friend said, "You don't talk about who's cheating on their wives."
Whoa. Yeah. I was like, I I do talk about that. I was going to say, I feel like we all talk about that. I think I
actually think everybody talks about that, but Okay. You know, you're a better gal than I. This entire show is
dedicated to that. I don't know. Yeah. Well, the new marriage was followed by a new job, this time with Melon Bank and
uh moved to Philadelphia in the mid 1980s. But by then, the pain and secrecy around so much of his what was his true
identity had started to take a serious toll on Peter. And to cope with that, he started drinking more and more. And soon
enough, his drinking became excessive. And with the heavy drinking came other vices. One day after she had been away
for a few days on a trip to New York, Cynthia came home to find evidence that Peter had a guest for quote sexual
purposes and that it was not a woman. After that, Cynthia started finding evidence about Peter sexuality hidden in
various places around the house. So, by the end of the 1980s, almost everything in Peter's life seemed to have broken
down completely. Oh, man. In 1987, he was charged with drunk driving and ended up losing his license. Then a short time
later, he lost his job at the bank. And finally, by 1990, his marriage to Cynthia had completely unraveled. And
that's when they were separated. Damn. And through all of that, Peter's health was continuing to decline. He was losing
a significant amount of weight. And to everybody who knew him, he looked gaunt. Like he was going through it. By May of
1991, Peter's life was in shambles. He had squandered all but $75,000 of the $400,000 he'd inherited from an aunt who
passed away. Wow. Just a few years earlier, and the rest of his money was running out fast. Most of it basically
on drinks at various gay bars around Philadelphia. However, investigators did learn uh that
Peter actually spent his final days in New York City. They thought possibly Philadelphia, but they found out that
no, he was in New York City. Oh, okay. He had attended a fundraiser in the city on May 3rd, and he was last seen leaving
the Townhouse Bar, which is a Manhattan piano bar that catered almost exclusively to a gay clientele. In the
first week of the investigation, they really did end up learning a great deal about Peter and had even arrived at a
theory as to how he met his end, but none of that information led them closer to their killer. It was clear that the
rest stop was not where Peter had been murdered, and because of that, there wasn't a lot of evidence to collect
there. Yeah. So, crime scene technicians ended up finding 28 fingerprints and three palm prints on the bags uh that
Peter had been wrapped in, but they weren't a match to anybody in a local database, and a nationwide search would
eventually turn up nothing either. So, in miday, Lieutenant Charles Stevens told reporters, "We don't have any
suspects and no motive." And unfortunately, that's how things would stay for several years to come. Oh,
[ __ ] A year passed and Peter Anderson's case was shelved as a cold case when on
July 10th in Burlington, New Jersey, the scene appeared to be repeating itself. That morning, New Jersey Department of
Transportation workers Wayne Lucer and Theodore Doyle were just going about their daily cleaning of the rest areas
along Route 70 and Route 72. When at the Butler Place rest area, Lucer noticed that some of the bags in the barrel were
not New Jersey DOT issued. Okay. So he pulled one of the bags out of the trash to inspect it and noticed that it was
unusually heavy and quote felt like it had a pumpkin in it. Oh. Underneath there were several more bags and some of
them appeared to be leaking what looked like blood. At the time the men didn't find this unusual, which like at first I
was like, "What?" But it was because it was common for fishermen to dispose of fish parts on their way home from like a
fishing trip. So they gathered up the remaining bags and just threw them in the truck. Okay. Once they were back at
the sorting plant, Lucer and Doyle started, you know, removing the garbage from the truck, throwing it into larger
receptacles for processing. But curiosity was at, you know, poking at Lucer. Yeah. So, he opened the bag that
felt like it had a pumpkin in it and discovered that it was obviously not a pumpkin, but the decapitated head of a
middle-aged white man. Holy [ __ ] I can't imagine just going about my job and finding that.
Finding a decapitated head. Yeah. Well, there's nothing that could ever prepare you for something like that. No. And
imagine if his curiosity hadn't been poking at him. Yeah. He would have just thrown like that. That man could have
never been found and it would have been exactly what the killer was hoping for. Yeah. That somebody would have just
tossed it away. Or maybe not at the same time. He's a strange guy. Yeah. So, as they were emptying the contents of their
truck at the plant, another sanitation worker cleaning the Stafford Forest Rest area about 15 miles away also made a
similarly horrifying discovery. When Leon Valentino was unable to lift the entire trash bag out of the full barrel,
he started pulling smaller bags out one at a time. And at one point, one of those bags ripped open and revealed the
contents to be a human leg. Damn. Now, this is again, this is 15 miles away. So, New Jersey State Police detectives
Yeah, they he did. New Jersey State Police detectives split up between the two sites and started processing the
scenes. At the first site, investigators inventoried the contents of the trash bags and discovered three triple bagged
trash bags with handles containing the man's head. Two double bagged white trash bags containing the left and right
arms, each individually bagged. Two double bagged and double knotted brown plastic trash bags containing a man's
upper torso. and a New York Daily News paper dated July 3rd, 1992. They also found two double bagged and
double knotted brown tra plastic trash bags containing the man's lower torso and another newspaper uh dated July 3rd,
1992, a white plastic bag containing the man's intestines and stomach contents. And then they also found two
right-handed seven uh size seven surgical gloves, a shower curtain, one fitted sheet, a torn latex glove, a pair
of man's tennis shoes, um sorry, men's to tennis shoes, one master compass saw with a blade, one master compass saw
package with an extra blade and a pergam's price sticker, two more latex gloves, and an Abraham and Strauss paper
bag with handles. Oh my god. It's the stomach contents and intestines in a white plastic bag in one bag. Yeah. Just
alone. Like for some reason that's like so visceral. Uh it sure is. Like holy [ __ ] Intestines and stomach contents.
That's a lot. Holy [ __ ] And that was just at one site. Remember there's two sites. God. Meanwhile, at the Stafford
Forest Rest Area, the other site, technicians sorting through the contents of the barrels discovered several um of
the same brand of garbage bags used at the other site. And they also found uh the man's left and right legs in those
bags. Also discovered in the trash bags were more latex gloves, a pair of cloth gloves, a disposable razor, another copy
of the New York Post dated July 7th, 1992. And the bags also contained a man's briefcase, which is how they found the
identification for their victim, 57year-old Thomas Mkei. A again, so young. According to the driver's
license, Thomas Mkei lived in Sudbury, Massachusetts, which is wild. This It's so weird to hear all these places. It
always weird. It's always weird to hear these places, but it's so weird when you've never heard of the case and it
was like right there. Which like makes me angry that we've never heard of this case cuz I'm like what the [ __ ] do you
mean I didn't know about this? That's exactly how I felt. Like I'm actually like annoyed. No, same. Yeah. Um and
just for anybody who doesn't know, Smaria is like another suburb about 30 miles from Boston and Thomas Milke as a
technology consultant. Upon further investigation, detectives learned that he was a married father of four
children. Yeah. Are you kidding me? Yeah. So, the first call placed after the body was discovered was obviously to
Mahhee's wife, Margaret. According to Margaret, Thomas had been in New York City for a business conference and he
was supposed to return home the previous day, July 9th. They had talked 2 days earlier and he said he was still
planning on coming home. And when he hadn't returned as was planned, she called the hotel and asked the staff the
staff to check his room where they found his clothing and that was it. The next day, she called the NYPD, but she was
told that she would need to file a missing person's report with the local police in Sudbury, which really doesn't
make a lot of sense. She did as she was instructed, but the Sudbury police told her it would be wise to wait a few days
before filing the report just in case her husband just returned. Yeah. But it's like, no, I'm going to file the
report. I think like air on the side of caution. Yeah. I don't Yeah, that would absolutely be me. But also, she's like,
"Okay, I guess I'll just do what the police tell me because they seems like they don't want to file this report."
But later in court, she said, "I couldn't understand why I had to wait." Yeah. I wouldn't understand that either.
I'd be pissed. She absolutely was, and I would be, too. Back in Newark, the medical examiner started the autopsy of
Thomas Mke laying out the disarticulated parts on the table to form a whole human. The first thing the examiner
noticed was a patch of missing skin on the neck, which had been crudely removed. Oh, the patch ended up being
found in one of the other bags and there was an obvious bite mark in this patch of skin. Holy [ __ ] Brutal. And that
they removed the patch of skin cuz they knew they had Yeah. but then left it in the bag. It
weird. Awful. And like you said, it's so dichomous. Like Yeah. That's I can't cuz
it's like did you throw it away because it had a bite mark in it or did you throw it like I just like why did you
cut that off and throw it away? It's a very disorganized way of thinking. It is like you can't figure out this person
can't think what they want out of this, you know, like what the point of it all is to them. I don't know if maybe they
thought one set of what they had thrown away was not going to be discovered for some reason because of where they threw
it away and then the other one would be found because of where they put it or if
they just wanted both to be found. Yeah, cuz I feel like they wanted both to be found. Does it feel that way? I And
maybe they just thought it would I mean I guess they were right because they were It sounds like it took a while to
find them. Maybe they just thought they would have this exciting goose chase where they would find something over
here and they wouldn't be able to connect it here. And yeah, because it's like if not, you would have just
destroyed that piece. This is very grotesque, but you would have destroyed that piece of flesh. You wouldn't have
left it whole to be able to see a bite mark. That's the thing. That would have been pretty easy to destroy. Exactly.
Instead of just leaving it. It's just Yeah, this person's mind is wild. Yeah. Well, they ended up determining that the
cause of death was a penetrating stab wound about 4 in deep which penetrated the heart which had obviously killed
Thomas instantly. There were three additional stab wounds in the abdomen and the chest. And they also found
ligature marks around the wrists which had caused hemorrhaging on one arm indicating that Thomas had been alive
when he was bound. Oh wow. Yeah. Most interesting to the medical examiner was not the death itself, but the
disarticulation. We've obvious we've said this a lot during other cases. A lot of times when
a body is dismembered, it's not done well. It's usually just because the killer needs to dispose of the remains
more easily. Yeah. But this case showed considerable evidence of skill. The body
had been carefully and methodically taken apart at the joints, which takes a long time. Yeah, I was going to say.
Yeah. So, this suggested that not only did the killer have the time and the space to perform such a laborintensive
task, but they also had considerable knowledge of human anatomy that allowed them to remove a limb like a surgeon
would. Yeah. And it also indicated that the killer was probably a man since proper disarticulation of that type took
a decent amount of upper body strength. Yeah, I could see that. You know, so finally, there was something ritualistic
about the disarticulation itself. The body parts had all been carefully removed, washed, and placed in
individual bags, then double bagged and tied tightly, which definitely shows you
a very particular pathology. I would think this Yeah, this wasn't just like a means to an end, just somebody trying to
simply get rid of a body. It was a large part of a long process engaged in by the
killer. And whoever had done this to Thomas Milke had really left nothing behind. Taken together, all of this told
the investigators that this killer was confident and most alarmingly, he had probably done this before and was
definitely going to strike again. Yeah. The kind of person who does this isn't just going to stop. No. You know, this
isn't like, "Wow, okay, I satisfied that." Right. Right. The obviously the news hit the Mahi family and friends
very hard. Reverend Brian Manning said he died a very tragic, very violent death. It was very unsettling and the
level of violence indicated a personal relationship between Mulah and his killer, but neither Margaret or anybody
else could imagine someone who would want Thomas dead and who would go to these lengths. A former coworker said he
had a view of life that everything was great. The classic forward-thinking American. He would always say nice
things about people. Oh, yeah. That just makes me sad. I know. They So, detectives poured over Thomas's business
cards and credit card just trying to retrace his moments in the days leading up to his death. And that's when they
came across something unexpected. Among the charges that you would you would find during a business trip was a
charge from the townhouse bar. I don't know if that sounds familiar to you. It does. So, the news didn't really come to
Margaret as much of a shock. They had been married for more than three decades at that point, but in recent years,
Thomas had actually been open uh with her about his bisexuality. He was bisexual. Good for him. Yeah, I know.
I'm happy that he felt like he could be open. It And good for her, I hope, for allowing him to feel that way. Yeah. I
think it obviously was tough because of course you're married when it changes. Yeah. Or like when it comes out like it
could probably be like, "Oh, okay." Yeah. They they struggled. But but obviously she made him feel safe enough
to bring it up which is beautiful. So in fact it was actually and it did become a
regular practice that when Thomas went out of town for business trips usually he would add on a day or two to his trip
to explore the local gay scenes and visit the bars. Okay. His daughter Tracy said he got to live the part of his life
that he wasn't able to live publicly. Wow. So like when he went to New York he kind of got to be in touch with that
part of himself and really be who he was. Yeah. Like I and it seems like he was just like a multiaceted human being.
Yeah. Exactly. And I'm glad he had people around him who were supportive of that. Him looking at all those parts.
Yeah. So, initially obviously the revelation that her husband also had a sexual and romantic interest in men did
come as a shock to Margaret. Yeah, of course. But after months of going to therapy together and having very open,
honest communication, Margaret did accept Thomas for who he was and they did reach a compromise. Wow. That's like
that's big cuz remember especially what time period is this is this is the it's 1991 I want to say I mean it was
probably like the mid to late 80s when this happened. Yeah. So that I mean that's that's like a really like healthy
way to approach that kind of like cuz cuz obviously you went into this marriage thinking one thing and when
things change no matter what it is it's okay for somebody to be like a little shocked and have to like kind of work
through it. Absolutely. And the fact that they worked through it together and had like open honest conversations is
like and especially at that time period. Yeah. Is like really like impressive. It
is of them as humans all of them. It is. And you know things seemed to go okay for a while. Thomas seemed relieved that
he had you know shared that part of himself. Yeah. And he seemed happy. But at a later period Margaret started to
wonder whether he was as happy as she assumed he had been. For the last several years, it seemed that his
drinking had been increasing to the point where she actually even confronted him about maybe possibly being an
alcoholic. And years later, their children would recall attention in the house toward the end of their father's
life. But at that time, they obviously didn't know why. Tracy said it seemed like she made him feel like [ __ ] but
you didn't know what was the what was the reasoning behind it. Yeah. So, to them, it seemed like one thing, but
obviously it was much more layered than they ever made. I was going to say it's a that sounds like a very complicated
situation. Yeah. So, aside from his mostly closeted sexuality, Thomas Milkey's background didn't shed much
light onto how he would have ended up killed. Instead, investigators turned to his whereabouts in the days before his
death. According to his wife, Thomas had traveled to the offices of I think it's
uh Deote and Touch on the morning of July 8th where he gave a presentation to about 25 staff members at their offices
in the World Trade Center. Afterward, he went out to a long lunch with some associates where they each drank quote
unquote more than a half a dozen beers each, which would have accounted for his blood alcohol being nearly two and a
half times the legal limit when he died. Wow. Yeah. He had a good time. Yeah. After lunch, the men went their separate
ways, and Thomas ended up going on to the townhouse bar where he stayed and continued drinking for several more
hours. At the townhouse bar, detectives interviewed a man named Douglas Gibson. He was one of the patrons who had been
in the bar the night that Thomas was there. Gibson said that he had been introduced to Thomas that night by
another townhouse regular and he just sat down beside him at the bar. He was interested in Thomas. Yeah. But despite
his obvious interest, Thomas seemed distracted and pretty disinterested. Gibson said he kept looking across the
bar at a man sitting by the piano on the other side of the room. At a certain point, Gibson got up to go to the
restroom, and when he came back, Thomas and the man at the other end of the bar were both gone. Okay. So, Gibson
described the man to the detectives as best he could, but he was seated on the opposite side of a crowded room, so the
description was pretty vague. Yeah. And it sounds like he was more interested in
who he was talking to, so he wasn't probably looking very much. Exactly. So, it really didn't come of any use to the
detectives. So, with no fingerprints, very little evidence, and not a single suspect, the case looked like it was
going nowhere. Just like Peter Anderson's case, the only thing investigators had to work with were the
various items found inside the garbage bags and the bags themselves. Inside one of the bags, technicians discovered the
saw likely used in the disarticulation alongside an additional saw blade, which still had that price tag from the
Perams, which is a regional home improvement store. Okay. So using the price tag to guide them, detectives
traced the saw back to a store located on Staten Island where they confirmed that the saw had been purchased. So
they're doing like straight up detective work here. Similarly, the rubber gloves
and bags appeared to have been purchased at a CVS store which was also located in
Staten Island next to that permanence location. Okay. To investigators on the case, the point of purchase for the saw,
the gloves, and the garbage bags was significant. It indicated that the killer was at least comfortable with
that area of Staten Island enough so that he could move about casually. So that indicated to them that Staten
Island was most likely his home base. But the range of distance from Staten Island out to New Jersey where Milhey's
body had been discovered was massive and canvasing every neighborhood just would
have been impossible. I do love real oldfashioned detective work when they're able to like, you know, follow these
little like trails, right? And come up with like things based on very purchases like something you might think is
innocuous, but it's not. Mhm. And even though it took years to finally get there, at least they had those little
things along the way that somebody like a new detective could then follow back up on. Yeah. And like put all the pieces
together, right? You had they had the puzzle pieces. It wasn't like they were just letting this go. Yeah. But after
about 2 weeks on the case, the results um of a previously completed VCAP, which is the violent criminal apprehension
program. It's a small unit of the FBI. They analyze like serial violent sexual crimes. So the VCAP search came back and
it indicated that Thomas Mkey's murder definitely bore certain similarities to the murder of Peter Anderson the
previous year. When they looked into the Anderson case, the similarities were striking. Both men lived mostly closeted
lives. Both men had been married to women, seemed to have drinking problems, and had both also spent their at least a
few of their last hours at the townhouse bar. Yeah. And of course, they had both
been mutilated and left in garbage bags alongside the highway where they were almost certain to be found quickly.
Detective Matthew Khan said, "At that point, you're looking at a potential serial killer." Yeah. So, by the end of
July 1992, the investigation into Thomas Mkey's death had unfortunately gone cold. And after a few more months of
dead ends, the case was shelved and marked inactive. Then on May 10th, 1993, a man driving along a dirt road in
Manchester Township, New Jersey, inadvertently revived the Malkee investigation when he spotted something
laying in the road and pulled over to investigate. When Donald Giberson pulled off to the side of the road, he couldn't
quite tell what he was looking at, but it seemed worth investigating. As he got closer to the object, he was horrified
to discover that what he had stumbled upon was a man's arm with a piece of clothes line attached to it. Oh my god.
Yeah. And that was sticking out of a white trash bag. So he looked closer into the bushes just beyond where the
arm was, thinking that he might find whoever it belonged to. But instead, he found six heavy duty dark green trash
bags. Holy [ __ ] So he immediately found the nearest phone and called the police.
Good on him. After searching the scene thoroughly, investigators ended up finding a total
of seven garbage bags containing seven seven different body parts. The legs, upper torso, and lower torso were each
triple wrapped in heavy green garbage bags. And the arms were each wrapped in white trash bags and then placed in a
heavy green bag. Okay. The head on the other hand was in a similar shopping bag with the word uh words president's
choice on one side and made with pride by Bob H and Jerry H on the other. Like these were just commercial shopping
bags. Investigators theorized that the bags had all been placed in the same location by the killer, but the arm that
had been discovered in the road was probably uncovered by animals. Yeah. Unfortunately, unlike the previous
victims, there wasn't any wallet or belongings found on or near the body to help identify this man. Before the
remains were uh removed, a crime scene technician took fingerprints and examined the body. And from what the
technician could tell, the parts had all been washed, and there was very little blood in these bags. He also took
photographs, including one of a tattoo between the index finger and thumb of the right hand, which said Linda. A few
hours later, the fingerprints and the tattoo were entered into the automated fingerprint identification system, but
nothing came back on a local search. But luckily, when the prints were sent to Philadelphia and New York for comparison
to their database, they ended up with a hit. Okay. Their victim was a known sex worker in New York who went by the name
Eddie Ramos. About an hour later, another hit came back, this time from Philadelphia, where the victim was known
to police by his real name, Anthony Morero. Anthony Morero had been born in Puerto
Rico on May 2nd, 1949. But detectives quickly learned that even to those who knew him, he hadn't shared a lot of
information about his past. H They knew that he lived in Philadelphia from 1969 to 1983 and that he then moved to
Manhattan. When it came to any other information though, like friends and family and you know, particularly
friends who also performed sex work weren't very forthcoming or eager to cooperate with the police. Yeah. Um,
even even now, author Elon Green notes it's pretty hard to find information on Anthony Morero. He did have an arrest
record for solicitation and just other like petty crimes. Uh, and that contains some biographical information, but
otherwise his past was remaining a mystery. At the medical examiner's office, the
autopsy strongly indicated what already investigators assumed, that Anthony Morero was killed by the same man who
had killed Peter Anderson and Thomas McKahhee. Yeah. Like the other victims, his body was disarticulated. Rather than
crudely dismembered, it had also been done postmortem. Time of death was estimated to be somewhere between 3 and
5 days earlier. So decomp was already well underway. But still, the cause of death was very easily identifiable and
listed as multiple stab wounds to the chest and back just like the other cases. That's so brutal when you think
about that cause of death because you bleed out. Yeah. And it's just a brutal way to kill someone. Yeah. That's a lot.
Otherwise, there was no sign of physical trauma and there was no indication that
Anthony had been sexually assaulted or drugged at the time of death. From what uh detectives were able to learn about
Morero, they knew that he worked uh a lot at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan. And one of the terminal
agents told them that when he wasn't working at the bus station, Anthony would cruise what he called the basic
bars, meaning the area's upper u upper middle class skate bars. Oh, okay. Yeah. Assuming the case was connected to the
other murders, the detectives went straight to the townhouse bar, but nobody remembered having seen Anthony
there before. Okay. But somebody did remember seeing him working a lot in an area just down the street. So, while
they couldn't place him in the townhouse where Thomas Mohei and Peter Anderson had been, they still felt pretty
confident that his connection to the area was a good indication that they were looking for their same killer. For
sure. Within a week, detectives had exhausted all the New York leads and turned to their peers in Philadelphia,
but those leads also dried up quickly and really went nowhere. According to his family, Anthony would sometimes make
his way back to Philadelphia, but he never stayed very long and they never knew when he was coming back. By the
80s, they had learned how Anthony was making his living, and they had come to accept that his life was pretty
dangerous and likely could have ended the way that it did. That's so sad. But they said there was little they could do
to persuade him to stop. Which is really sad. Yeah. Several months later though,
a reporter from the New York Times would uncover more about Anony's life. And what he learned only seemed to
strengthen his connection to the other victims. According to his brother Lewis, Anthony struggled with addiction since
the breakup of his marriage in 1980. Uh which Lewis did attribute to his wife finding out that Anthony had an interest
in men. Okay. Ever since then, Lou said Anthony kind of just bounced around from
place to place, casually dating both men and women and earning money however he could or borrowing it from family
members. In the interview, he did recount a story though about how his brother always dreamed of becoming a
pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies. And actually, one year he was even invited to try out for them. Oh [ __ ] In
the end, he wasn't asked back for a second try out, but that's that's like big dreams. That's a lot too to actually
be personally invited by them. I mean, when you think of like the the stats of how many people could even make it to
that point, right? It's very low. It is. Yeah. And to be asked back for a second
try try out is like Yeah, that's that would have been major. So, the fact that he was even asked for one is crazy. That
means he was really good. It does. And Lewis said he even showed me the invitation to try out. He was very proud
of that invitation as he should be. Yeah. In the absence of new leads, though, investigators turned back to the
small amount of evidence that had been collected at the crime scene. Crime scene technicians had discovered two
fingerprints and a palm print on the plastic garbage bags, but unfortunately, they didn't match anything on file in
New Jersey, New York, or Pennsylvania. So, that only left them to work with the distinctive bag where Anony's head was
found. From the information printed on the bag, they learned that made with pride bags were custom printed for
promotional use and distributed pretty locally. But unfortunately to Acme Security, the company that produced
them, locally meant a very long list of cities and towns across a tri-state area. I was hoping locally would narrow
that down a little. Not so much. No. So, the list provided to them wasn't completely useful to investigators, but
one location did stand out to them. Staten Island, New York. So, we keep coming back to Staten
Island. I was gonna say we keep touching upon Staten Island. Yep. Unfortunately though, like the other cases, the trail
did quickly go cold and after a few days, detectives had moved on to what they considered to be more pressing
cases. Then on July 31st, 1993, the case was unexpectedly revived, unfortunately,
with the discovery of yet another body. Yeah. Cuz I'm sitting here like more pressing cases. You have a serial
killer. Yeah, but everybody they're targeting gay women victim profiles and it's a very different time. It's just so
frustrating. It's like this is a literal serial killer. It's a serial killer in the gay community is at a risk. Brutal
serial killer. Yeah. Not just like I mean any serial killer is brutal, but this is this is just like he could re
like this is very very dangerous. Yeah. But that was back at a time where they considered being gay and at risk
lifestyle. Less dead. Yeah. So that's awesome. On the afternoon of July 30th, uh Ronald
Kandria packed up his truck at the Route 9W overlook in Havstaw, New York, and he
placed all the trash in large barrels to be picked up by the sanitation workers later that day. When he came back the
next day, though, he was surprised to find that his barrels hadn't been emptied. But when he looked closer, he
realized it wasn't the trash he had put in the barrels the day before. Somebody else had come along in the middle of the
night, it seemed, and dumped more garbage. So, he was like, "What the [ __ ] What the fuck?" So, he's obviously
curious about what somebody would have wanted to dispose of in someone else's trash. He's like, "What the hell?" I'd
be [ __ ] pissed. Yeah. So, he untied the knot on the heavy duty green bag sitting on top of the pile and that was
when he discovered what he believed to be a human head. Holy [ __ ] Later, he told a reporter he had to be dumped
overnight. It was still fresh and there were no flies. Oh my god. And also it's like to know that this person came by
and just dumped a severed head in your garbage. I in the middle of the night cannot imagine. How do you ever sleep
again? Also, you're I mean you're you have a list of thoughts running through your head when you open garbage of what
could possibly be in there. A decapitated head would never be one of them. That would not be the thing that
would be no forefront of my mind. No. Like what the [ __ ] I can't I cannot. So by that point, most law enforcement a
agencies in the area had heard about the murders of Peter Anderson, Thomas Malahhei, and Anthony Morero. So this
crime scene had an eerie familiarity. Yeah. The body had been disarticulated. Uh but the barrel contained only the
head and arms of the adult man. Each had been wrapped in heavy duty green garbage
bags. Same thing, just like just like before. Mhm. Later that day, at a rest stop a few miles down the road, the rest
of the body was discovered in identical garbage bags. That same day, a man collecting bottles and cans along the
Hud Hudson River found a briefcase and a bag of men's clothes, which he brought to the local police station. And inside
the briefcase were several several documents that identified their victim as 56-year-old Michael Sakura.
According to the medical examiner, Michael's cause of death was blunt force trauma to the skull. So, that's
different this time. I was going to say that's change that's a change up. It is a change up. It caused quote multiple uh
communuted fractures. Holy [ __ ] Yeah. As well as lacerations to the front and back of his head and swelling and trauma
in his brain. My god. There were also stab wounds to the chest and back similar to what had been seen with the
other victims. But what interested detectives in this case was that unlike the arms and the head which had been
expertly disarticulated for the first time in this series of cases, the legs had been crudely dismembered from the
body, which indicated to them that the killer had to have been in some kind of rush for whatever reason toward the end.
Interesting. Otherwise, there wasn't a lot to go on from the autopsy. If investigators wanted to learn who killed
Michael Sakura, it seemed that they were going to be more likely to find that out
by learning about his life rather than his death. Yeah. So, they found that Michael Sakura lived in New York's West
End in a studio apartment that he'd been in since 1964. From the door man, detectives learned
that until a few months ago, he had actually been in a relationship. But the door man hadn't seen the partner in a
while, so he figured they broke up. Okay. When detectives got into contact with Michael's sister Marilyn, that's
when they learned a great deal more about their victim. Michael Sakura was born and had been raised in Ohio as the
oldest of two children born to Michael Senior and Mary Jane Sakura. Sadly, according to Maryland, their parents
weren't really educated. They worked blue collar jobs and their father, who they called Big Mike, had served a few
years in jail after a robbery conviction in his early 20s. Oh, man. And both parents participated in domestic
violence, quote unquote. Oh boy. Uh Marilyn said, which was often directed at her and her brother. Oh, that's
awful. Yeah, they had a rough childhood. Marilyn did though seem to remember their mother more more fondly than their
father. Okay. And indicated that their father was not only viciously homophobic, but racist to boot. Wow. He
sounds like a gem. He does. Uh Marilyn lovingly referred to Michael as a quote unquote nerd who quote wanted to know
everything about everything and would read whatever he could get his hands on. She said he loved music and theater and
he had dreams of making a name for himself on Broadway. In high school, she said he casually dated girls, but
according to Marilyn, some members of the family did sense that he may have been gay, even if they didn't know
exactly what it meant at all. He was obviously not going to even bring that up in front of his racist homophobic
father. Nope. Like the other victims, Michael very much understood that his sexuality would be unacceptable to his
family and his friends and his neighbors. So he kept his interests and attractions to himself and as soon as he
graduated from high school, he joined the army and got the hell out of Ohio. After three years in the army, Michael
was discharged in May of 1958 with a quote uh undesirable discharge. Oh. Now, it's unclear exactly what this meant,
and I didn't actually realize this, but in the 1950s, the federal government actually considered gay men to be a risk
to national security. I'm going to say that again for the people in the back. The federal [ __ ]
government considered gay men to be a risk to national security. Is that shocking now though? It's not. But but
it is. That's not shocking at this time. At this point in time in in the year 2025,
I'm like, "Yeah, that makes sense that they would think that." I'm like, "You guys are worried about gay men? Look
who's in the [ __ ] White House. Sorry. the dumb just just doesn't even get a grip. It's shocking in the most horrific
way, but it's not surprising. It's awful. Yeah. And this was either because of their associations or their risk of
being blackmailed, they said. So, it is possible that that uh discharge was related to his sexuality. Wow. Which is
just [ __ ] That's wild. Yeah. I've never heard of an undesirable dis. I've only heard of like a dishonorable. Same.
You know, undesirable is almost worse. Yeah, it sound Yeah, it doesn't sound great. And according to Elon Green, the
discharge was humiliating and prompted Michael to come out to his family, who were obviously less than supportive. So
rather than go back home to Ohio, Michael moved to Arizona for a few years and then finally got settled in New
York's West End in 1961. From that point on, he was finally able to grow into really who he wanted to be. Good for
Michael. He was comfortable with himself. He found community among New York's gay community and he just really
didn't go back to Ohio much. He would go back on holidays or, you know, family milestones, but otherwise the city was
his true home. Good. And he had I'm glad he found it. Probably more true family there. Yeah. In a lot of ways, the
details of his life bore similarities to the lives of the other victims, other than the fact that he was the first
victim who was comfortably and openly gay. But unfortunately, while the statements from friends and families
told a lot about who Michael was when he was alive, it didn't do much to indicate
how he had come to be murdered. Yeah. There was, however, one piece of information that did prove to be
helpful. According to his sister, Marilyn, Michael was a regular at the Five Oaks Tavern, which was a popular
piano bar in Midtown Manhattan. Ah, that sounds familiar. Yeah. Not the same as um the Townhouse Bar, but a piano bar,
but a piano bar. Yes. So, the news of Michael's death was a shock to everyone at the Five Oaks, where he spent a lot
of his nights just drinking, chatting with the staff and the patrons until last call. He had started going to the
Five Oaks almost 20 years earlier when he and the other gay staff members at the New York Law Journal started
stopping by the bar every day after work just to kind of like shoot the breeze. Yeah. Since then, he was kind of a
fixture at the bar. According to one of the bartenders at the Five Oaks, he had been at the bar late the night that he
was killed. And the piano player remembered seeing him sitting with a man at the bar whom Michael introduced as a
nurse that worked at Saint Vincent Hospital and just introduced him with some generic men's name that
unfortunately the pianist couldn't recall. He said that the two of them spent hours, several hours, drinking and
chatting and then that and that they left the bar together around 3:00 a.m. and that was the last time anyone saw
Michael Sakura alive. And that is where we are going to end for part one. Oh, damn. This is brutal. It's brutal. It's
really sad. And it just breaks my heart that a lot of these men didn't get to live comfortably. Yeah. And like never.
And then in Michael's case, like you're happy that he got to live com comfortably, but you're like a lot of
your life was spent like in an abusive place and then you were like abused in the end and it's like that's so sad.
Yeah, this is a gut-wrenching case. And again, I can't believe that we had never
heard of this. No, it's gross. It is that we have never heard of this. It's really sad. Um, in part two though,
we're going to get a lot more into the background of who this killer is. Don't worry, he was found apprehended. Um, and
there's some surprising details in part two that you're going to be like, "How is he still on the streets for this to
happen?" Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. So, with that being said, we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep it
weird, but not so weird that um you're a hateful [ __ ] Yeah. Yeah. Not that weird. Don't be that weird. Not so weird
that you suck. You guys rule, though. Yeah, of course. [Music] [Music] [Music]

Between 1991 and 1993, the dismembered bodies of five gay and bisexual men were discovered in garbage bags along the highway in New York and New Jersey. The cause of the death for each was multiple stab wounds, and each victim had been disarticulated into eight pieces and placed in eight garbage bags before being deposited into trash barrels, where they were quickly discovered by a curious member of the public.

Despite being discovered in different locations in different states, it didn’t take long for investigators to identify the similarities between the victims. They were all older men, single or separated, and all had been seen last around closing time at various New York gay bars. Moreover, the scant evidence found with each bottom appeared to connect the murders back to Staten Island, but told detectives nothing else about the killer. Then, in late 1993, the murders simply stopped and the case went cold.

The case of the man the press dubbed “The Last Call Killer” sat on a shelf for nearly a decade before a team of cold case investigators picked it up again, determined to make progress. In the years that passed, advances in technology had allowed for the collection of previously unseen evidence, and it was thanks to that technology that the case was finally solved.

Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!

References Ben-Ali, Russell, and William Rashbaum. 1993. "Grisly slayings linked?" Newsday, August 3: 4.

—. 1993. "Hunt is on." Newsday, August 5: 6.

Curran, John. 2006. "Ex-UM student given life sentences in slayings." Bangor Daily News, January 28: 25.

Frederick, Henry. 1993. "Body parts found in Haverstraw." Journal News (White Plains, NY), August 1: 1.

Green, Elon. 2021. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York. New York, NY: Celadon Books.

Hoober, John. 1991. "Turnpike murder victim was ex-banker." Lancaster New Era, May 15: 1.

Lueck, Thomas. 2001. "Complicated portrait of a suspect in killings of gay men." New York Times, May 31.

New York Times. 1993. "Thomas Mulcahy: Sales executive, devoted husband." New York Times, August 8: 40.

Peet, Judy. 2000. "Technology revives search for gays' serial killer." Staten Island Advance, April 24: 15.

Rashbaum, William. 1993. "Gay stalker?" Newsday, August 4: 5.

Rosenblatt, Lionel. 1973. "Jury finds student not guilty." Bangor Daily News, November 4: 1.

State of New Jersey v. Richard W. Rogers. 2008. 03-01-00050 (Superior Court of New Jersey, April 16).

Walsh, James. 1993. "Tracking a killer." Journal News (White Plains, NY), October 24: Connect with Wondery http://wondery.com/shows http://facebook.com/WonderyMedia http://twitter.com/WonderyMedia http://instagram.com/WonderyMedia

Brief Summary

The episode details the tragic stories of the Last Call Killer's victims, highlighting societal pressures and struggles with identity.

Key points

The Last Call Killer. A deep dive into a chilling case that spans decades.
The Discovery. A maintenance worker finds a horrifying body in a trash barrel.
Gruesome Details. The victim's body reveals shocking signs of brutality.
Mysterious Discovery at Rest Stop. A truck driver finds unusual trash barrels, leading to a chilling connection to a murder.
Peter Anderson's Hidden Life. Investigators uncover Peter's secret life and struggles with his identity.
Gruesome Finds in New Jersey. Sanitation workers make horrifying discoveries in trash bags, leading to a murder investigation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You can't live in that doom.

Advice on managing stress and anxiety.

7:02WatchJul 7, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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