April 25, 2019 • 35 mins
Was there a conspiracy to murder Billy in order to keep him quiet? iO's search for an answer leads to a sobering reality.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
One night I came around the corner of Third Avenue
and it was snowing. There was Billy outside, shoveling snow
away from his uh, away from his door, and he
was wearing a pair of boots, like rubber boots because
(00:24):
it was freezing, and he was completely buck naked and
in the middle of the street and shoveling away. He
was very um free. I guess I didn't give a
funk about anybody else or what they thought. He was confrontational, brash,
(00:50):
and he also had a big, really big heart. This
is Robbie Bowman, a musician friend of Billy's and the
guy who went to the morgue with my mom to
identify Billy's body. I went with Billy's very close friend,
Robbie Bowman, to the medical examiner. We took a cab
(01:14):
up to the city Morgue. I've never been there before,
and they brought us down stairs and there was a
window with curtain and they opened the curtains and he
was there, and he had a covering. From his hairline up,
(01:36):
there was some sort of covering and there was a
blanket from his neck down. We were seeing him in profile,
and I remember thinking how hard it is to recognize
somebody without their hair and without seeing them standing up. Yeah,
(01:57):
your mother recognized him, and so I said what I
did too, what's your experience of his shooting and then
eventual death. It was fishing from the start. But I
was told was that the police broke in, there's one
(02:20):
guy right and shoots him. Now why did he shoot him,
I don't know, but it seemed more like an execution
to me. And you know, I don't think anybody bought
the idea that this was a legitimate arrest. And then
(02:42):
he was in the hospital and he started to get better,
which we're all amazed, and uh, you know, the next
thing we heard was that he had died because they
had taken him to exercise, to the exercise room. He
(03:02):
needed exercise. Apparently we knew what that meant, you know,
that he'd been murdered. Robbie thinks that after Billy survived
the shooting, someone came to the hospital to finish the job.
(03:23):
So that scared the ship out of everybody, and scared
the ship out of me at least, and that to me,
that's what happened. They murdered him. It was like, oh shit,
you know, we better like not talk about this out
loud very much. Yeah, it wasn't like, you know, we
(03:43):
better started investigation with the newspaper or something. This is
really scary, you know. If they can do that to
you when you're in the hospital, it's like a clear
message to leave it alone. Today on the show, we
(04:05):
asked was there a conspiracy to murder Billy in order
to keep him quiet? And we do our best to
separate fact from fiction. I'm Io till it right, and
this is the Ballad of Billy Balls. Something has gone wrong.
(04:39):
I got the impression that he had possibly killed somebody.
I don't see him going for a don I'm gonna
see the cops. There was a revenge thing from the cops.
Why did they want to kill him? That's what I
don't have any idea. And that's I No, I don't know.
(05:03):
I don't know. I don't know. Chapter five, those high
powered lawyers. Hello. Hi is this Mark? Yeah? I was
(05:25):
just Hey Mark. My name's Io. I'm Rebecca Wright's kid.
Hey good, how are you actually? I'm a little sick.
This is Mark Pines, an old friend of my mom's.
Mark was the first person she called after she found
out Billy had been shot, so I'm hoping he might
have some answers. I am trying to figure out what
(05:48):
the hell happened to Billy. And you are name that
keeps coming up. Oh yeah, are you around New York
right now? I am. Yeah. It'd be so great to
see you and hang out. Definitely, can you you can
come over. I'll get us some food sent up and
animal sit and we'll talk. And so my producer, Austin
(06:11):
and I go to see Mark at his apartment in
the village because I've got like forty years worth of
archives in storage rooms around the city of everything I
ever shot. In the seventies and eighties, Mark worked as
a video artist. He produced some of the first music
videos for bands like Hall and Oates and Jefferson Starship,
(06:31):
and a lot of commercials. My mom modeled for him
while she was pregnant with me. We used the forward
face of the eighties models, and I used Rebecca and
Rebecca was in I think it was about her seventh
faith and length at the time. Rebecca and I seemed
I think we had an unspoken bond on a level
(06:54):
that we've never tried to explain to each other. But
we've just enjoyed. And of course talking about my mom
leads to talk of Billy and what happened to him
that I want to hear your theories before I tell you. Yeah,
he was from what I could piece together from I mean,
Rebecca called me, you know, she called me right after
it happened. Remember what she said. Primes Show just called
(07:20):
me Pines Pines and Billy had been shot. What she
told me that it was sometime a mistaken identity. They
thought he was a much bigger drug person than he was,
(07:42):
and he went down. I think they got him into kidneys,
and he was in the hospital and he was hurt,
but he was not critically hurt. He was going to
make it. He was going to make it, and they
began to realize that they had the wrong guy, and
(08:03):
somewhere in the hospital one of the attendants turned him
over when he wasn't supposed to, opened up the wounds
and caused a massive hemorrhage and he died. He died
from the secondary situation as I remember, And again this
(08:27):
is filtered through many years after Billy was shot, and
while he was in the hospital, Mark says he did
everything he could to help my Mom, I try to
be there for she was going through all this stuff.
I got them, you know, I pointed them in the
(08:47):
direction of a lawyer. I got Mark Pines on the phone,
and he told me two of the heaviest lawyers in
New York City right off the bath because it was
clear a big civil suit, you know, and some horrible
crime against Billy Balls. The way my mom tells it,
(09:13):
the two heavy lawyers started building a case. Yeah, the
lawyers visited Billy in the hospital, they got a testimony
from him. It was a case was being brewed up.
The lawyers had all the ship on paper, and the
paper was evidence. We need that. We need that real
(09:38):
bad right, And I need to know the names of
the lawyers, right, the fucking lawyers. It's another thing that
I just can't fucking remember because my mind has just
put this out, you know. But I am sure that
I can figure it out if I if I talked
(10:00):
to Mark Cohn's, do you remember the lawyers that you
got involved from my mom? Because I have been thinking
about that and be lawyer for people in the village
was a guy named high Shore Hi shure h y
s h o or e. Mark believes that one of
(10:24):
the high powered lawyers my mom was working with was
a guy named high Shore. Thank you, Mark, and thank
you for all of your time and researching and helping me.
And this name thing. I hope that. Oh that opens
up something, you know, Hi, sure lawyer. Back in the studio,
(10:49):
Austin and I searched for any information about high Shore.
Huh high Shore lawyer, state of New York. What the fuck?
There's nothing. I can't find anything about a famous lawyer
named high Shore. I found the name high Shore in
court records as a defendant, as like, you know, not
(11:12):
as a lawyer, as somebody who's being sued. That's the
only time I found his name. So then that's wrong.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Eventually, Austin manages
to track down someone who worked briefly with high Shore.
Hi is this Robert Steinberg. The conversation doesn't reveal much
(11:34):
except one curious detail. We just have to share a
good person. I had a hook on one arm. He
had a hook? Yeah, you didn't have one arm? Oh wow,
he had a device. Um, I do you have any
thoughts about other people who might have worked with him
or known him? No? Allright, we need a little legal assistance,
(12:01):
and luckily we know who to call. He just accused
me of lauger that document. They are the ones that
do that. Ud not off. He's one of the best
known criminal defense and civil rights attorneys in the country.
The message that comes out of this is the government
is saying that it's all right for white people to
(12:21):
go out and pick up guns and shoot black people.
He's famous for defending victims of police brutality, members of
the Hell's Angels, and the so called Gambino crime family.
He even got a shout out in the movie The
Big Lebowski. You don't know shit, Lebowski. What a fucking
lawyer man? I want wrong Kuby Hello, Hey, Io run Kubi, Hey,
(12:53):
how are you good? So? Where is Billy Balls buried? Now?
After the break? Ron Kuby? So how can I help
(13:18):
the project? Well, I where do I even start? Um?
I'm on the phone with civil rights attorney Ron Kuby
telling him the story of Billy Balls and they were like, yeah,
William Heightsman shot five times, Get the funk out of here.
(13:39):
So she then went and called a friend and he
gave her the number of a high powered lawyer but
we haven't been able to locate this lawyer. Um. I
hate it when those high powered lawyers just evaporate. Is
that a thing that happens? Like, No, it's it's it's
not a thing that happens. Yeah, it really isn't. Do
(14:03):
you know his name? Well, the one name we had
was high Shore. Does that ring a bell for you?
High Shore? I mean I knew a lot of the
high powered lawyers in that day. It doesn't ring a bell.
Have you been able to find any reference to him online? Nothing?
(14:24):
With that? Ron gets off the phone, works some magic
and calls me back, hioh Ron, how are you no good?
High Shore is dead? Long live high Shore? High Shore
present a. I had a feeling that has transitioned high
(14:48):
Shore across the Rainbow Bridge. High Shore celebrating his blank
ear in heaven. Oh good one, thank you. One lawyer
who might hold the key to everything is dead. So
I keep digging with Ron, who is very much alive.
(15:11):
So why did Gilly Balls get We're assuming he was
killed by the police, right, I mean that's what it
sounds like. Well, yes, there are a number there are
a number of plausible theories. Um, really, what I'd like
to do is interview you in person. But I think
(15:32):
before we even get that. That's fine, great, yes, um,
but we have dogs here. You're good with that. I
am great with that, very excited about that, really really good.
Hi everybody, Um, this is literally she's an eighteen year
old Vijan Frise. We show up to Ron's office and
(15:54):
are greeted by three dogs, one of which is in
a corner staring at the wall. No, she just can't
see anything. She's just blind. So way to make fun
of her disability. Hey, why don't you make fun of
fucking Jack? He only has three legs. My office is
in the corner there. Ron's tall, with a gray goatee
(16:17):
and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. His office
walls are covered with framed photos, one of which catches
our eyes. This photo is a group of Hell's Angels
looking very mean and intimidating. They don't look mean. They
look as one guy said to me when he was
charged in a federal crime and extortion thing, and his
(16:39):
role was to look scary and breathe heavily. He said,
who do I say, I look scary, I breathe heavily.
I mean, when did that become a chrome. Then we
sit down and start talking about Billy. Thank you for
making time for us and meeting with us. We're now
unpacking the history of who this person is and who
(17:00):
he was and why this would have happened. And there've
been a lot of different theories and the conclusions are multitudinous,
if that's a word. But both of you are nodding.
So I go into the multitudinous theories, starting with how
Billy may have been involved in some illegal activities. Everybody's
(17:24):
doing drugs, everybody's up to like whatever degree of elicit,
And how Billy knew some ship was about to go
down because of Billy saying I want to get in
the wind, like it's time to move something. It's getting hot.
And how after he got shot, he was recovering by
all accounts, was on the mend and was like and
the city was afraid of the civil suits that she
was connected with, where some big time lawyers really thought
(17:46):
that there was going to be a civil suit. Maybe
there's some justification for the fact that, like he was killed,
what can I are you done? I mean, the whole
story is an odd story. So there's there's sort of
(18:09):
two periods of time. Here, there is the period of
time prior to the shooting and the shooting itself. Then
there's the aftermath of the shooting and his death. So
let's take the second part first, because it seems like
that part is fueling a notion that he was murdered
in the hospital, and so let me just try to
(18:30):
address that. The basis of all of this appears to
be the lawyer telling your mom what a great case
this is. So every lawyer in the world who wants
a civil case and wants to get retained says it's
(18:52):
a great case. No lawyer who wants a case ever
says this cases a doc going nowhere, don't waste my time.
He said, yeah, it's a great case. It's fantastic. We'll
make you know, millions or hundreds of thousands. This is outrageous.
They all say that when they want the case. But
(19:17):
maybe high Shore was different. Yeah, I mean I did
a search history on on Mr Shore, and let's just
say that that that high Shore is not going to
topple Mr Justice Cardozo from his lofty perch as an
Anglo American, famous New York jurist. And what kind of
things did you find about high shore. That makes you
(19:39):
think that mostly, uh, he was being sued for not
paying his bills and fighting over legal fees and the
kind of stuff that tends to afflict not terribly good
lawyers when they're on their way down. That's that This
is a revelation to me because the way that my
(19:59):
mom paying and it was that the lawyers that she
was connected with were some big time lawyers who really
thought that there was going to be a civil suit,
and that's why what happened happened. Bron does say that
it isn't always the lawyer talking up the case to
try to get it. Sometimes at first glance, a case
does seem great, Wow, the cops shot this guy to
(20:19):
death for actually no reason, uh, And then you start
to do some investigation and it turns out there was
a reason. I'm not saying this is what happened here.
I'm saying this is what does happen in many cases.
The reason was this guy had a gun, and this
guy pulled a gun on a cop and they opened
(20:40):
up on it. Um, My mom insists that Billy had
gotten all of the guns out of the house, so
there were guns in the house. But your mother insisted
that Billy had already cleaned them all out as preparatory
to him disappearing because of the heat. Exactly, maybe he
got all him out of the house except the one
(21:02):
he kind of kept with him to deal with the
problems that he thought he was facing. I mean, if
if somebody thinks they're being hunted and and about to
be attacked for their activities, legal or illegal, it does
strike me as an odd move that they divest themselves
of all of their firearms. Ron is just getting started.
(21:26):
The fact that he was shot multiple times doesn't set
off alarm bells. The cops are trained to shoot at
the center mass to stop the attacker. The fact that
he was shot in the abdomen um and seemed to
(21:48):
be on the men and then died doesn't strike me
as all that odd. Gut shots are very very difficult
to manage even today. The notion that the police murdered
him in the hospital, just I mean, that strikes me
(22:09):
as far fetched and and really really unlikely. But why
because it's not what the cops did they you know,
it's what people doing fucking movies. I mean, the cops
aren't like doing hits in hospitals. To prevent people from talking.
What was he gonna say? Okay, So Billy wakes up
(22:30):
and he says, I was in my own apartment, minding
my own business and the cops came in. Or I
walked in my apartment and there was some undercover and
a cowboy hat looking around. I con front of him.
You shot me a bunch of times, okay. Or what
if I've been dealing to this cop or buying from
this cop and he's a dealer. Okay, Yeah, I've been
(22:52):
dealing with this comp I've been selling drugs. He's corrupt.
He came in to rob my stash. I caught him
and he shot me. Okay. Wakes up and says that
cops is you're looking crazy. Didn't happen? You know, I
have no prior relationship with this guy, except I knew
he was a drug dealer. He came in, he pulled
a gun, and we shot him. And if we were
(23:12):
trying to kill him, we would have killed him, and
we didn't. We shot him. We recovered the gun to
guns in evidence. Just making up a story, but I mean,
it's a much easier way of dealing with the problem
of Billy than organizing a murderer in a hospital. You
(23:33):
just deny it, You deny everything. And nobody was going
to believe Billy Balls over the n y p D
under those circumstances, especially when they claimed they had a gun.
No cops got prosecuted in the eighties or nineties for
that matter, for bad shootings. I I there there was
(23:53):
nothing to fear. Then murder was on the mind of
a lot of people. Along one Harlem Street this afternoon,
there was a shooting, end of death. As a general rule,
though even in the NYPD did not go around killing
(24:16):
people for no reason on the cops part. And I
just want to clarify this. There were lots of people
who were killed by the police in New York City.
A Brooklyn man dead shot twenty four times by five
police officers. But it was always so called line of duty.
(24:38):
They say self defense, others say no. And it didn't
take a lot to get killed by the cops in
the line of duty. Still, doesn't you know he made
a motion towards his waist. I thought he had a gun.
He pulled out a shiny object that just moved back
and opened fired on. What you saw a lot of
was cops just not giving much of a ship who
(24:59):
they kill and under what circumstances, how many times, but
not sort of a premeditated murder or a murder in
the course of the cop committing some other crime. Theoretically, theoretically, yeah,
(25:22):
you could always posit an outlier. You can always posit
crazy cop, rogue, drunk, drug addicted cop who's totally corrupt,
who you know, is riffling through Billy's apartment to steal drugs.
(25:42):
Billy comes in, confronts him, The cops shoots him multiple times.
For whatever reason, the cop can't finish off the final shot.
He gets taken to the hospital. The cop is so
uber paranoid he's gonna tell the story and people are
going to believe him because the cop, after all, it's
(26:04):
crazy and since crazy people do crazy things, we doesn't
have to make any logical sense. And then the cop
engineers things to murder Billy in the hospital when he
seems like I'm men, sure, sure, And our proof of
(26:25):
any of that is, as I understand things, you have
not a single sheet of paper referencing any of this.
Is that correct? Okay? I mean, if we're making ship
up based on no evidence, we can make up any
(26:49):
ship we want, and it's all consistent with the no
evidence that we have, and there are answers that are attainable.
At least if your claim is this was an unjustified
police shooting, then one thing you would look to are
the autopsy reports, that is, was he shot in the
(27:10):
front or the back? Just kind of basic things. After
meeting with Ron, it's clear that we have a lot
of work to do, and it's also clear that there
may not have been a crime committed against Billy. So
before we leave, I asked Ron a bigger question I've
been wrestling with knowing that the truth is very complicated.
(27:35):
I think about my mom and the story that I've
heard my whole life, and I wonder what your opinion
is on the best way to protect someone like my
mother in this situation, if you think that the truth
is actually a weapon against someone who has lived thirty
(27:56):
seven years in grief, in the best way is not
to do this project. Let sleeping dogs lie, let the
dead be dead, Let people continue to live out their
grief in the narrative that they're attached to. UM. I mean,
(28:16):
there's sometimes the truth is incredibly important, UM, but that
doesn't mean it's always important, or people always need the truth,
or people want the truth. And it doesn't sound like
your mother particularly wants the truth. Um, and so I
(28:40):
wouldn't have done this, but now we are. I don't
have a better answer. Can we come back to see
you once we have some more pieces of papor? Sure,
trying some paper and then we'll see what we what
we can make of the pieces of paper without pieces
of It's very all right, thank you, Ron. Okay, what
(29:13):
are you thinking? Um? I'm thinking that it would be
very easy to be deflated by that, But I feel
like now I feel all the more determined to get
the actual evidence whatever we can get our hands on,
(29:37):
because as unlikely as it may be, as outlier as
it may be, the fact is that, like sometimes crazy
ship did happen. So I guess I'm a little bit
like I want to think about it like a lawyer,
where I just want to see the evidence. Now, Hi, there,
(30:06):
I'm trying to find out about so I called the
Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York. The more
I'm trying to have some of his records released, and
I wonder what kind of documentation we would need to
do that. Do you have to the certificate. No, you
don't have nothing. We're trying to find Okay, what is
(30:29):
your your relationship? He was my mother's long term boyfriend,
so it's not related to do you not by blood
to me? No? But she was his partner. No, we're not.
You cannot sorry. On the families. On the close family
(30:52):
they can request okay, thank you, you welcompany. Only Billy's
blood relatives can request his records, and as we understand it,
his mother, his father, and his older brother are all dead.
(31:14):
But there's someone else, someone that could change everything. I
do remember vaguely a kid at one point. Yeah, yeah,
(31:37):
she was a sweet old girl. Whatever happened to her mom?
Was there a daughter around then? She was the daughter
of Linton and Billy's the legal father. The daughter was
two and a half when she was sent to Linta's
(32:01):
mother in Washington State. Did they tell you her name
when they first told you about it? Amanda? In the
next chapter of the Ballad of Billie Balls, Amanda Crimetown
(32:30):
is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of
Billie Balls is hosted by me Io till It Right
and made in partnership with Cadence thirteen. You can find
me on the Internet and Io loves you on Everything
and if you want to know more about my story,
pick up my memoir Darling Days. We also want to
hear from you. We have a voicemail set up for
(32:52):
you to call us Old School. Here's Mia, who had
something really nice to say. I just wanted to say
that it's the most enthrawling, incredible story I've ever heard,
and it makes me think about my own mom and
how she lost the love of her life, my father,
not because he backed away, but for a mental illness.
(33:15):
And I would do the same thing for my mom.
I would want to help her heal and I would
want to understand what happened in her life before I
came along. If there's somebody Billy reminds you of, or
you have a theory on what could have happened, or
you just want to tell us your feelings, call us
and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh three
(33:37):
nine to h You can also get into our discussion
forum on our website, The Ballad of Billy Balls dot com.
The show is produced by me, Kevin Shepard, and Ryan Swigert,
our senior producer is Austin Mitchell, editing by Zach Stewart
(33:57):
Pontier and Mark Smirling. Fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This
episode was mixed and sound designed by Sam Bear. Music
by Kenny qcack. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Light Asylum. Thank You, Shannon. Archival research by Brennan Reese.
(34:21):
Thanks to Daniella Aria, Rachel Lee Wright, Emily Wiedemann, Green
Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, or In
Rosenbaum and the team at Caden's thirteen, and Slim Slam
for keeping me on my toes, and of course, my mom,
(34:41):
without whom none of this would be possible, ye, she
(35:05):
La
One night I came around the corner of Third Avenue
and it was snowing. There was Billy outside, shoveling snow
away from his uh, away from his door, and he
was wearing a pair of boots, like rubber boots because
(00:24):
it was freezing, and he was completely buck naked and
in the middle of the street and shoveling away. He
was very um free. I guess I didn't give a
funk about anybody else or what they thought. He was confrontational, brash,
(00:50):
and he also had a big, really big heart. This
is Robbie Bowman, a musician friend of Billy's and the
guy who went to the morgue with my mom to
identify Billy's body. I went with Billy's very close friend,
Robbie Bowman, to the medical examiner. We took a cab
(01:14):
up to the city Morgue. I've never been there before,
and they brought us down stairs and there was a
window with curtain and they opened the curtains and he
was there, and he had a covering. From his hairline up,
(01:36):
there was some sort of covering and there was a
blanket from his neck down. We were seeing him in profile,
and I remember thinking how hard it is to recognize
somebody without their hair and without seeing them standing up. Yeah,
(01:57):
your mother recognized him, and so I said what I
did too, what's your experience of his shooting and then
eventual death. It was fishing from the start. But I
was told was that the police broke in, there's one
(02:20):
guy right and shoots him. Now why did he shoot him,
I don't know, but it seemed more like an execution
to me. And you know, I don't think anybody bought
the idea that this was a legitimate arrest. And then
(02:42):
he was in the hospital and he started to get better,
which we're all amazed, and uh, you know, the next
thing we heard was that he had died because they
had taken him to exercise, to the exercise room. He
(03:02):
needed exercise. Apparently we knew what that meant, you know,
that he'd been murdered. Robbie thinks that after Billy survived
the shooting, someone came to the hospital to finish the job.
(03:23):
So that scared the ship out of everybody, and scared
the ship out of me at least, and that to me,
that's what happened. They murdered him. It was like, oh shit,
you know, we better like not talk about this out
loud very much. Yeah, it wasn't like, you know, we
(03:43):
better started investigation with the newspaper or something. This is
really scary, you know. If they can do that to
you when you're in the hospital, it's like a clear
message to leave it alone. Today on the show, we
(04:05):
asked was there a conspiracy to murder Billy in order
to keep him quiet? And we do our best to
separate fact from fiction. I'm Io till it right, and
this is the Ballad of Billy Balls. Something has gone wrong.
(04:39):
I got the impression that he had possibly killed somebody.
I don't see him going for a don I'm gonna
see the cops. There was a revenge thing from the cops.
Why did they want to kill him? That's what I
don't have any idea. And that's I No, I don't know.
(05:03):
I don't know. I don't know. Chapter five, those high
powered lawyers. Hello. Hi is this Mark? Yeah? I was
(05:25):
just Hey Mark. My name's Io. I'm Rebecca Wright's kid.
Hey good, how are you actually? I'm a little sick.
This is Mark Pines, an old friend of my mom's.
Mark was the first person she called after she found
out Billy had been shot, so I'm hoping he might
have some answers. I am trying to figure out what
(05:48):
the hell happened to Billy. And you are name that
keeps coming up. Oh yeah, are you around New York
right now? I am. Yeah. It'd be so great to
see you and hang out. Definitely, can you you can
come over. I'll get us some food sent up and
animal sit and we'll talk. And so my producer, Austin
(06:11):
and I go to see Mark at his apartment in
the village because I've got like forty years worth of
archives in storage rooms around the city of everything I
ever shot. In the seventies and eighties, Mark worked as
a video artist. He produced some of the first music
videos for bands like Hall and Oates and Jefferson Starship,
(06:31):
and a lot of commercials. My mom modeled for him
while she was pregnant with me. We used the forward
face of the eighties models, and I used Rebecca and
Rebecca was in I think it was about her seventh
faith and length at the time. Rebecca and I seemed
I think we had an unspoken bond on a level
(06:54):
that we've never tried to explain to each other. But
we've just enjoyed. And of course talking about my mom
leads to talk of Billy and what happened to him
that I want to hear your theories before I tell you. Yeah,
he was from what I could piece together from I mean,
Rebecca called me, you know, she called me right after
it happened. Remember what she said. Primes Show just called
(07:20):
me Pines Pines and Billy had been shot. What she
told me that it was sometime a mistaken identity. They
thought he was a much bigger drug person than he was,
(07:42):
and he went down. I think they got him into kidneys,
and he was in the hospital and he was hurt,
but he was not critically hurt. He was going to
make it. He was going to make it, and they
began to realize that they had the wrong guy, and
(08:03):
somewhere in the hospital one of the attendants turned him
over when he wasn't supposed to, opened up the wounds
and caused a massive hemorrhage and he died. He died
from the secondary situation as I remember, And again this
(08:27):
is filtered through many years after Billy was shot, and
while he was in the hospital, Mark says he did
everything he could to help my Mom, I try to
be there for she was going through all this stuff.
I got them, you know, I pointed them in the
(08:47):
direction of a lawyer. I got Mark Pines on the phone,
and he told me two of the heaviest lawyers in
New York City right off the bath because it was
clear a big civil suit, you know, and some horrible
crime against Billy Balls. The way my mom tells it,
(09:13):
the two heavy lawyers started building a case. Yeah, the
lawyers visited Billy in the hospital, they got a testimony
from him. It was a case was being brewed up.
The lawyers had all the ship on paper, and the
paper was evidence. We need that. We need that real
(09:38):
bad right, And I need to know the names of
the lawyers, right, the fucking lawyers. It's another thing that
I just can't fucking remember because my mind has just
put this out, you know. But I am sure that
I can figure it out if I if I talked
(10:00):
to Mark Cohn's, do you remember the lawyers that you
got involved from my mom? Because I have been thinking
about that and be lawyer for people in the village
was a guy named high Shore Hi shure h y
s h o or e. Mark believes that one of
(10:24):
the high powered lawyers my mom was working with was
a guy named high Shore. Thank you, Mark, and thank
you for all of your time and researching and helping me.
And this name thing. I hope that. Oh that opens
up something, you know, Hi, sure lawyer. Back in the studio,
(10:49):
Austin and I searched for any information about high Shore.
Huh high Shore lawyer, state of New York. What the fuck?
There's nothing. I can't find anything about a famous lawyer
named high Shore. I found the name high Shore in
court records as a defendant, as like, you know, not
(11:12):
as a lawyer, as somebody who's being sued. That's the
only time I found his name. So then that's wrong.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Eventually, Austin manages
to track down someone who worked briefly with high Shore.
Hi is this Robert Steinberg. The conversation doesn't reveal much
(11:34):
except one curious detail. We just have to share a
good person. I had a hook on one arm. He
had a hook? Yeah, you didn't have one arm? Oh wow,
he had a device. Um, I do you have any
thoughts about other people who might have worked with him
or known him? No? Allright, we need a little legal assistance,
(12:01):
and luckily we know who to call. He just accused
me of lauger that document. They are the ones that
do that. Ud not off. He's one of the best
known criminal defense and civil rights attorneys in the country.
The message that comes out of this is the government
is saying that it's all right for white people to
(12:21):
go out and pick up guns and shoot black people.
He's famous for defending victims of police brutality, members of
the Hell's Angels, and the so called Gambino crime family.
He even got a shout out in the movie The
Big Lebowski. You don't know shit, Lebowski. What a fucking
lawyer man? I want wrong Kuby Hello, Hey, Io run Kubi, Hey,
(12:53):
how are you good? So? Where is Billy Balls buried? Now?
After the break? Ron Kuby? So how can I help
(13:18):
the project? Well, I where do I even start? Um?
I'm on the phone with civil rights attorney Ron Kuby
telling him the story of Billy Balls and they were like, yeah,
William Heightsman shot five times, Get the funk out of here.
(13:39):
So she then went and called a friend and he
gave her the number of a high powered lawyer but
we haven't been able to locate this lawyer. Um. I
hate it when those high powered lawyers just evaporate. Is
that a thing that happens? Like, No, it's it's it's
not a thing that happens. Yeah, it really isn't. Do
(14:03):
you know his name? Well, the one name we had
was high Shore. Does that ring a bell for you?
High Shore? I mean I knew a lot of the
high powered lawyers in that day. It doesn't ring a bell.
Have you been able to find any reference to him online? Nothing?
(14:24):
With that? Ron gets off the phone, works some magic
and calls me back, hioh Ron, how are you no good?
High Shore is dead? Long live high Shore? High Shore
present a. I had a feeling that has transitioned high
(14:48):
Shore across the Rainbow Bridge. High Shore celebrating his blank
ear in heaven. Oh good one, thank you. One lawyer
who might hold the key to everything is dead. So
I keep digging with Ron, who is very much alive.
(15:11):
So why did Gilly Balls get We're assuming he was
killed by the police, right, I mean that's what it
sounds like. Well, yes, there are a number there are
a number of plausible theories. Um, really, what I'd like
to do is interview you in person. But I think
(15:32):
before we even get that. That's fine, great, yes, um,
but we have dogs here. You're good with that. I
am great with that, very excited about that, really really good.
Hi everybody, Um, this is literally she's an eighteen year
old Vijan Frise. We show up to Ron's office and
(15:54):
are greeted by three dogs, one of which is in
a corner staring at the wall. No, she just can't
see anything. She's just blind. So way to make fun
of her disability. Hey, why don't you make fun of
fucking Jack? He only has three legs. My office is
in the corner there. Ron's tall, with a gray goatee
(16:17):
and long hair pulled back in a ponytail. His office
walls are covered with framed photos, one of which catches
our eyes. This photo is a group of Hell's Angels
looking very mean and intimidating. They don't look mean. They
look as one guy said to me when he was
charged in a federal crime and extortion thing, and his
(16:39):
role was to look scary and breathe heavily. He said,
who do I say, I look scary, I breathe heavily.
I mean, when did that become a chrome. Then we
sit down and start talking about Billy. Thank you for
making time for us and meeting with us. We're now
unpacking the history of who this person is and who
(17:00):
he was and why this would have happened. And there've
been a lot of different theories and the conclusions are multitudinous,
if that's a word. But both of you are nodding.
So I go into the multitudinous theories, starting with how
Billy may have been involved in some illegal activities. Everybody's
(17:24):
doing drugs, everybody's up to like whatever degree of elicit,
And how Billy knew some ship was about to go
down because of Billy saying I want to get in
the wind, like it's time to move something. It's getting hot.
And how after he got shot, he was recovering by
all accounts, was on the mend and was like and
the city was afraid of the civil suits that she
was connected with, where some big time lawyers really thought
(17:46):
that there was going to be a civil suit. Maybe
there's some justification for the fact that, like he was killed,
what can I are you done? I mean, the whole
story is an odd story. So there's there's sort of
(18:09):
two periods of time. Here, there is the period of
time prior to the shooting and the shooting itself. Then
there's the aftermath of the shooting and his death. So
let's take the second part first, because it seems like
that part is fueling a notion that he was murdered
in the hospital, and so let me just try to
(18:30):
address that. The basis of all of this appears to
be the lawyer telling your mom what a great case
this is. So every lawyer in the world who wants
a civil case and wants to get retained says it's
(18:52):
a great case. No lawyer who wants a case ever
says this cases a doc going nowhere, don't waste my time.
He said, yeah, it's a great case. It's fantastic. We'll
make you know, millions or hundreds of thousands. This is outrageous.
They all say that when they want the case. But
(19:17):
maybe high Shore was different. Yeah, I mean I did
a search history on on Mr Shore, and let's just
say that that that high Shore is not going to
topple Mr Justice Cardozo from his lofty perch as an
Anglo American, famous New York jurist. And what kind of
things did you find about high shore. That makes you
(19:39):
think that mostly, uh, he was being sued for not
paying his bills and fighting over legal fees and the
kind of stuff that tends to afflict not terribly good
lawyers when they're on their way down. That's that This
is a revelation to me because the way that my
(19:59):
mom paying and it was that the lawyers that she
was connected with were some big time lawyers who really
thought that there was going to be a civil suit,
and that's why what happened happened. Bron does say that
it isn't always the lawyer talking up the case to
try to get it. Sometimes at first glance, a case
does seem great, Wow, the cops shot this guy to
(20:19):
death for actually no reason, uh, And then you start
to do some investigation and it turns out there was
a reason. I'm not saying this is what happened here.
I'm saying this is what does happen in many cases.
The reason was this guy had a gun, and this
guy pulled a gun on a cop and they opened
(20:40):
up on it. Um, My mom insists that Billy had
gotten all of the guns out of the house, so
there were guns in the house. But your mother insisted
that Billy had already cleaned them all out as preparatory
to him disappearing because of the heat. Exactly, maybe he
got all him out of the house except the one
(21:02):
he kind of kept with him to deal with the
problems that he thought he was facing. I mean, if
if somebody thinks they're being hunted and and about to
be attacked for their activities, legal or illegal, it does
strike me as an odd move that they divest themselves
of all of their firearms. Ron is just getting started.
(21:26):
The fact that he was shot multiple times doesn't set
off alarm bells. The cops are trained to shoot at
the center mass to stop the attacker. The fact that
he was shot in the abdomen um and seemed to
(21:48):
be on the men and then died doesn't strike me
as all that odd. Gut shots are very very difficult
to manage even today. The notion that the police murdered
him in the hospital, just I mean, that strikes me
(22:09):
as far fetched and and really really unlikely. But why
because it's not what the cops did they you know,
it's what people doing fucking movies. I mean, the cops
aren't like doing hits in hospitals. To prevent people from talking.
What was he gonna say? Okay, So Billy wakes up
(22:30):
and he says, I was in my own apartment, minding
my own business and the cops came in. Or I
walked in my apartment and there was some undercover and
a cowboy hat looking around. I con front of him.
You shot me a bunch of times, okay. Or what
if I've been dealing to this cop or buying from
this cop and he's a dealer. Okay, Yeah, I've been
(22:52):
dealing with this comp I've been selling drugs. He's corrupt.
He came in to rob my stash. I caught him
and he shot me. Okay. Wakes up and says that
cops is you're looking crazy. Didn't happen? You know, I
have no prior relationship with this guy, except I knew
he was a drug dealer. He came in, he pulled
a gun, and we shot him. And if we were
(23:12):
trying to kill him, we would have killed him, and
we didn't. We shot him. We recovered the gun to
guns in evidence. Just making up a story, but I mean,
it's a much easier way of dealing with the problem
of Billy than organizing a murderer in a hospital. You
(23:33):
just deny it, You deny everything. And nobody was going
to believe Billy Balls over the n y p D
under those circumstances, especially when they claimed they had a gun.
No cops got prosecuted in the eighties or nineties for
that matter, for bad shootings. I I there there was
(23:53):
nothing to fear. Then murder was on the mind of
a lot of people. Along one Harlem Street this afternoon,
there was a shooting, end of death. As a general rule,
though even in the NYPD did not go around killing
(24:16):
people for no reason on the cops part. And I
just want to clarify this. There were lots of people
who were killed by the police in New York City.
A Brooklyn man dead shot twenty four times by five
police officers. But it was always so called line of duty.
(24:38):
They say self defense, others say no. And it didn't
take a lot to get killed by the cops in
the line of duty. Still, doesn't you know he made
a motion towards his waist. I thought he had a gun.
He pulled out a shiny object that just moved back
and opened fired on. What you saw a lot of
was cops just not giving much of a ship who
(24:59):
they kill and under what circumstances, how many times, but
not sort of a premeditated murder or a murder in
the course of the cop committing some other crime. Theoretically, theoretically, yeah,
(25:22):
you could always posit an outlier. You can always posit
crazy cop, rogue, drunk, drug addicted cop who's totally corrupt,
who you know, is riffling through Billy's apartment to steal drugs.
(25:42):
Billy comes in, confronts him, The cops shoots him multiple times.
For whatever reason, the cop can't finish off the final shot.
He gets taken to the hospital. The cop is so
uber paranoid he's gonna tell the story and people are
going to believe him because the cop, after all, it's
(26:04):
crazy and since crazy people do crazy things, we doesn't
have to make any logical sense. And then the cop
engineers things to murder Billy in the hospital when he
seems like I'm men, sure, sure, And our proof of
(26:25):
any of that is, as I understand things, you have
not a single sheet of paper referencing any of this.
Is that correct? Okay? I mean, if we're making ship
up based on no evidence, we can make up any
(26:49):
ship we want, and it's all consistent with the no
evidence that we have, and there are answers that are attainable.
At least if your claim is this was an unjustified
police shooting, then one thing you would look to are
the autopsy reports, that is, was he shot in the
(27:10):
front or the back? Just kind of basic things. After
meeting with Ron, it's clear that we have a lot
of work to do, and it's also clear that there
may not have been a crime committed against Billy. So
before we leave, I asked Ron a bigger question I've
been wrestling with knowing that the truth is very complicated.
(27:35):
I think about my mom and the story that I've
heard my whole life, and I wonder what your opinion
is on the best way to protect someone like my
mother in this situation, if you think that the truth
is actually a weapon against someone who has lived thirty
(27:56):
seven years in grief, in the best way is not
to do this project. Let sleeping dogs lie, let the
dead be dead, Let people continue to live out their
grief in the narrative that they're attached to. UM. I mean,
(28:16):
there's sometimes the truth is incredibly important, UM, but that
doesn't mean it's always important, or people always need the truth,
or people want the truth. And it doesn't sound like
your mother particularly wants the truth. Um, and so I
(28:40):
wouldn't have done this, but now we are. I don't
have a better answer. Can we come back to see
you once we have some more pieces of papor? Sure,
trying some paper and then we'll see what we what
we can make of the pieces of paper without pieces
of It's very all right, thank you, Ron. Okay, what
(29:13):
are you thinking? Um? I'm thinking that it would be
very easy to be deflated by that, But I feel
like now I feel all the more determined to get
the actual evidence whatever we can get our hands on,
(29:37):
because as unlikely as it may be, as outlier as
it may be, the fact is that, like sometimes crazy
ship did happen. So I guess I'm a little bit
like I want to think about it like a lawyer,
where I just want to see the evidence. Now, Hi, there,
(30:06):
I'm trying to find out about so I called the
Office of Chief Medical Examiner in New York. The more
I'm trying to have some of his records released, and
I wonder what kind of documentation we would need to
do that. Do you have to the certificate. No, you
don't have nothing. We're trying to find Okay, what is
(30:29):
your your relationship? He was my mother's long term boyfriend,
so it's not related to do you not by blood
to me? No? But she was his partner. No, we're not.
You cannot sorry. On the families. On the close family
(30:52):
they can request okay, thank you, you welcompany. Only Billy's
blood relatives can request his records, and as we understand it,
his mother, his father, and his older brother are all dead.
(31:14):
But there's someone else, someone that could change everything. I
do remember vaguely a kid at one point. Yeah, yeah,
(31:37):
she was a sweet old girl. Whatever happened to her mom?
Was there a daughter around then? She was the daughter
of Linton and Billy's the legal father. The daughter was
two and a half when she was sent to Linta's
(32:01):
mother in Washington State. Did they tell you her name
when they first told you about it? Amanda? In the
next chapter of the Ballad of Billie Balls, Amanda Crimetown
(32:30):
is Zack Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling. The Ballad of
Billie Balls is hosted by me Io till It Right
and made in partnership with Cadence thirteen. You can find
me on the Internet and Io loves you on Everything
and if you want to know more about my story,
pick up my memoir Darling Days. We also want to
hear from you. We have a voicemail set up for
(32:52):
you to call us Old School. Here's Mia, who had
something really nice to say. I just wanted to say
that it's the most enthrawling, incredible story I've ever heard,
and it makes me think about my own mom and
how she lost the love of her life, my father,
not because he backed away, but for a mental illness.
(33:15):
And I would do the same thing for my mom.
I would want to help her heal and I would
want to understand what happened in her life before I
came along. If there's somebody Billy reminds you of, or
you have a theory on what could have happened, or
you just want to tell us your feelings, call us
and leave us a voicemail at five seven oh three
(33:37):
nine to h You can also get into our discussion
forum on our website, The Ballad of Billy Balls dot com.
The show is produced by me, Kevin Shepard, and Ryan Swigert,
our senior producer is Austin Mitchell, editing by Zach Stewart
(33:57):
Pontier and Mark Smirling. Fact checking by Jennifer Blackman. This
episode was mixed and sound designed by Sam Bear. Music
by Kenny qcack. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Light Asylum. Thank You, Shannon. Archival research by Brennan Reese.
(34:21):
Thanks to Daniella Aria, Rachel Lee Wright, Emily Wiedemann, Green
Card Pictures, Alessandro Sentauro, Bill Clegg, Ben Davis, or In
Rosenbaum and the team at Caden's thirteen, and Slim Slam
for keeping me on my toes, and of course, my mom,
(34:41):
without whom none of this would be possible, ye, she
(35:05):
La
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