A NEED TO KILL—Mark Pettit

From two-time best-selling author and three-time Emmy-winning investigative reporter Mark Pettit comes the haunting true story of Nebraska serial killer John Joubert—a case that shocked a nation and still echoes across the true-crime world.
It was one of the most terrifying times in Nebraska's history. The year a young Air Force Airman went on a killing spree, leaving two young boys dead and a community gripped by fear. 
TV news anchorman and investigative reporter Mark Pettit managed to interview John Joubert on Death Row. In a series of exclusive, face-to-face interviews with Pettit, Joubert admits to a string of violent crimes and another killing—that sends investigators into a frenzy ending with Joubert being convicted for a third murder and ultimately executed in Nebraska’s electric chair.
Pettit had also been told by Joubert about 'death row drawings' he had created, and that were to be given to Pettit. After a contentious legal battle, a confidential source came forward providing the final piece in the twisted puzzle and a rare glimpse into the mind of a sexual sadist—still fantasizing about murder as he waited to die in the electric chair.
Now 43 years after the murders, Pettit returns with this final, updated edition—A NEED TO KILL: The Life and Crimes of John Joubert, Nebraska's Most Notorious Serial Child Killer—Mark Pettit

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week,
another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,

(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zufanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good evening from two time best selling author and three
time Emmy winning investigative reporter Mark Pettitt comes the haunting
true story of Nebraska serial killer John Jeubert, a case
that shock the nation and still echoes across the true
crime world. It was one of the most terrifying times

(01:01):
in Nebraska's history, the year a young Air Force airman
went on a killing spree, leaving two young boys dead
and a community gripped by fear. TV news anchorman and
investigative reporter Mark Pettitt managed to interview John Jubert on
death row. In a series of exclusive face to face

(01:23):
interviews with Pettitt, Gubert admits to a string of prior
violent crimes and another killing that sends investigators into a frenzy,
ending with Jubert being convicted for a third murder and
ultimately executed in Nebraska's Electric Chair. Pettitt had also been

(01:44):
told by Jubert about death row drawings he had created,
and he agreed to give to Pettit. After a contentious
legal battle over the release of the drawings, a confidential
source came forward, providing the final piece in the twisted
puzzle and a rare glimpse into the mind of a
sexual sadist still fantasizing about murder as he waited to

(02:09):
die in the Electric Chair. Now forty three years after
the murders, Pettitt returns with this final updated edition. The
book that were featuring this evening is A Need to
Kill the Life and Crimes of Nebraska's most notorious serial
child Killer, with my special guest, actor, writer, producer, and

(02:34):
author Mark Pettitt. Welcome back to the program, and thank
you so much for this interview, Mark Pettitt.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's great to be with you, Dan, and thanks for
having me.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Now this new updated edition of A Need to Kill
the Life and Crimes of John Jubert and Nebraska's most
notorious serial child killer. Tell us what this final edition
is you say this is the last word on this
particular case. Tell us what's contained in this final edition?

Speaker 3 (03:07):
I think Dan, at last, I can say case closed
on the Gilbert investigation. I've told people that some reporters
follow a story. This one has followed me for over
forty years. I was twenty one years old when I
was recruited to a TV station in Omaha, Nebraska, and

(03:27):
John Jubert had just been arrested for killing two young
boys out there and had pled guilty. And I was
immediately drawn to the case because I grew up in
a small town outside of Atlanta where Wayne Williams had
been convicted of two of twenty seven murders. And I
just remember the fear in the community and how scared

(03:50):
people were, and they used to start the news at night.
They would say, it's eleven o'clock, do you know where
your children are? So I grew up in that atmosphere,
and when I heard about John J. Gibbert and what
happened in Nebraska, I wanted to get to the bottom
of it. So this case has transpired over forty years,
and it's been remarkable Dan that new evidence has come out.

(04:15):
It seemed like it was every four or five ten
years I would uncover something new in this case. So
I feel now that I finally put all the pieces together.
Thanks to technology and advancements in criminal behavior and behavioral profiling,
I've been able to put the full picture of who

(04:36):
John Jubert really was into this final edition of my book.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Fantastic. You take us back to when you were twenty
one years old. Like you say, you left a small
TV station in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the big leagues and Omaha,
Nebraska and KMTV three as new weekend anchor and investigative reporter.
Your news director asked you right away what got you

(05:03):
interested in investigative reporting?

Speaker 3 (05:06):
We were at the Omaha We were at the Omaha
Press Club Dan one of the most the fanciest restaurants
I'd ever been in at that time, and Carol, the
news director, said to me, what got you interested in
investigative reporting? And I didn't hesitate. I said Wayne Williams.
And she said, oh, that's the killer from Atlanta, right

(05:26):
And I said, yeah, you know, twenty seven missing and
murdered children and they only have fiber evidence to tie
him to the case. And she said what's missing? And
I said me, they need a reporter like me on
the case. And she said, well, that's interesting. We sort
of haven Wayne Williams here in Omaha. Have you ever

(05:49):
heard the name John Jupert? And of course I hadn't.
And the more she told me, you know, us airman
Eagle scouted clean Cut, just had blended into the community
and no one had any idea that a monster was
living among them. So it was Wayne Williams and the

(06:09):
Atlanta Missing and murdered children's case that got me interested
in investigative reporting and what put me on the trail
of John Jeubert.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Now you talk about that trail. What struck you, you
said particularly, was that you were around the same age,
or that you were the same age, and from that
point on you endeavored to want to interview him. But
his execution, his date of execution was pending. So what
did you do in the pursuit of trying to interview Jubert?

Speaker 3 (06:43):
I reviewed every piece of evidence that I could get
my hands on in the case Dan, and this was
an interesting time. I guess in our world that I
went to the shriff, Pat Thomas, and I told him
I was trying to piece all this together, and he
actually let me check the evidence out. I took boxes,

(07:04):
maybe eight cardboard boxes full of evidence to my house
in Omaha, Nebraska. I had the rope, I had the
autopsy photographs, I had the murder weapon, and I had
it all out everywhere in my house, countertops, tabletops, trying
to piece it all together. And I kept in close

(07:26):
contact with Jibert's public defender, saying, let me talk to him.
I think there's more here that he could tell us,
and they refused, and so I just got tired of waiting,
and finally I sat down at my typewriter and I
banged out a letter to Gibert, and I basically said, listen,
I've followed every step in your case for the past
two and a half years. I feel you have quite

(07:49):
a story to tell, and I'd like to give you
that opportunity. I think people need to know who John
Jubert is. And the thing that cracked the case is
included a pre postaged envelope in my letter, and you
can actually see that envelope in my book, A Need

(08:09):
to Kill, where I sent him that letter. And two
weeks later, Dan I got a response. And again, I've
tried to include all of this so people can can
see what I saw as a reporter. And when I
opened that letter and pulled it out, the penmanship was incredible,
and I remember the criminal profilers had said that the

(08:31):
killer would most likely be in his late teens, maybe
early twenties, blue collar, not overly educated. But if you
read that letter from John Jubert, you'll see immediately he
was very intelligent, and he actually asked me questions. He said,
I'm not going to do an interview, but I'd be
willing to let you come here and present your questions.

(08:55):
But I have two questions for you. Don't you think
doing a piece on me he would only amplify the
hurt of the victim's family. And he said, and do
you think people would really come away with a feeling
of who John Jubert really is? Would they rather not? Say?
It's an act to gain our sympathy. So, Dan, seeing

(09:18):
the penmanship, reading the way he structured his sentences, I
knew this guy was super smart. And so the door
was open and I traveled to Lincoln, Nebraska, which is
about an hour from Omaha, and had the very first
sit down interview with Jubert at the Nebraska State Penitentiary,
and it was amazing from the moment he walked in

(09:42):
the door.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
We'll get back to that incredible interview. We have to
take our audience to September eighteenth, nineteen eighty three, and
Danny Joe Everley, he's a little paper boy and it's
five forty am and has brought it also delivers the newspaper. Leonard,
his father's name is Lenny as well, tell us about

(10:06):
the Everlys and Danny Joe Everly.

Speaker 3 (10:11):
And this was another fascinating part of this case, Dan,
is that I was able to spend hours and hours
with the every family learning about Danny Joe. Just a happy,
bright young man. He had a paper route, just like
all of us who had jobs when we were younger,
you know, to go to the fair, to go to

(10:32):
the movies, to buy ice cream, just normal things that
a kid would do. And Danny Joe was up early
that morning and they had family visiting from out of town,
and they were all saying goodbye and that you know,
we'll see you again soon. And Danny gets on his
bicycle to start his paper route. And Judy Eberley, his mother,

(10:54):
told me, she looked back at him and something told
her don't let him go, don't let him go on
that paper route. But she said to herself, don't be silly,
Judy don't be silly, So that poor mother had to
live with what happened to her son. So Danny Joe
is Suddenly they're getting calls at their home that Danny

(11:16):
Joe hasn't delivered the morning paper. And immediately the Everles
knew something was wrong and they started searching for them
for him, couldn't find him, went to the police department,
and that's when the search started for Danny Joe Everly,
and unfortunately, three days later it ended when his body

(11:39):
was found in a wooded field. He had been stabbed
to death and the inside of his thigh had been
bitten by the killer, who apparently tried to mask that
wound by slicing the young boy's leg. And initially police
told me they thought they might have a satanic killer
on the loose, but Jubert had actually tried to disguise

(12:03):
the bite mark by slicing the young boy's leg. So
Danny Joe was just a bright, energetic young man. And
in my book A Need to Kill, all the images
in the latest edition are color. I wanted people to
see his blue eyes, his brownish blonde hair, his shirt
that has color stripes. I wanted people to see him

(12:25):
as a little boy, and not just as a statistic
and a murder victim.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
We haven't mentioned that this crime goes on in Bellevue, Nebraska,
thirty two thousand population, just south of Omaha, Nebraska. You
talk about that, it's also the entire community has ties
to off It Air Force Base. And then you introduce

(12:52):
someone named John Jubert. He's twenty years old, he's in
Barracks four hundred, Room one thirteen, and he doesn't have
to work that day. Tell us about John Jibert.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Just an amazing dichotomy. How can you be an Eagle Scout,
an assistant Scout master working with children in Omaha, and
you know, a US airman. You would think those are
the best of the best young men, right, But Jubert
was hiding a really dark secret. He had these overwhelming

(13:29):
sexual fantasies of killing. And that's how I came up
with the title of the book. When I first interviewed Jewbert,
that was the first question. I said, you didn't know
these little boys, How could you do this? How could
you commit this heinous crime? And he looked at me
and said, all I can tell you is, for as
long as I can remember, I've just had a need

(13:52):
to kill. And this goes all the way back to Portland.
I ultimately was able to put this all together Dan
that the violence became increasingly worse. He stabbed a little
girl with a pencil in the back as she rode
by on a bicycle. He slashed a little boy's throat
with an exacto knife. Then he stabbed a young woman

(14:13):
on her way to school college in the night. And
he confessed to these crimes to me, and he said
something to me, You should go back to Portland, Portland, Maine.
You might find some interesting things back there. So it
was almost like a game of cat and mouse and
of high steaks chest. He was giving me clues Dan

(14:38):
to his background where this all started. And that's when
I went back to Portland, Maine and started putting the
pieces together that brought him to Omaha, Nebraska.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Tell us about those pieces you put together. About his background.
Tell us about that.

Speaker 3 (14:57):
He was one of two children. He had older sister.
His parents were divorced, and you know, you always look
for signs of abuse, you know, stereotypical things you might
hear when it comes to a killer in his upbringing.
But his mother was very strict, didn't let him watch
violent things on television. But he was isolated. He was

(15:19):
a loner. I talked to a number of his friends,
or not necessarily friends, but people he went to school with,
and they said he was always a loner. He was
never at a basketball game, at a dance, anything that
you might see young people, you know, gathering and socializing.
He wasn't like that. And Jubert also told me that

(15:40):
he had been bullied in high school. But when I
went back to Portland and started putting the pieces together,
I found one crime that had remained unsolved, and it
was the murder of a young boy. I believe he
was eleven years old. His name was Ricky Stetson, and
Ricky had gone out for a jog on this area

(16:02):
called Back Cove. It was a really picturesque waterfront area.
And this little boy goes out before dark to go
on a jog and he never comes home. So I
find the police report, and sure enough, the young boy
had been stabbed and bitten on his leg. And just
instantly I knew that Jubert was most likely responsible for

(16:27):
this murder. So during my interviews with Gibert on Nebraska
Death Row, you know, he's confessed to these smaller, you know,
crimes that become more violent. And I just said to him, John,
there's something I have to ask you. Did you kill
Ricky Stetson? And he reached over and paused my tape

(16:49):
recorder and said, listen, I know you I can't lie
to you, but the last time I pled guilty to anything,
I got the death penalty. Dan. That's when this case
really took a turn. Is I had the confession to
the ri Stetson murder in Portland, Maine, and in the

(17:10):
very first edition of my book, I published that quote
in the book. And that's when all hell broke loose.
FBI agents came to the TV station. They wanted my files,
they wanted the recordings, they wanted everything I knew about
Jewbert and that's when the case took this whole new

(17:30):
twist and they pursued him for the murder of Ricky Stetson.

Speaker 2 (17:36):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Now.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
In this book, you talk about the we fast forwarded,
and you talk about the early part of the investigation
and the FBI getting involved. An agent named John Evans.
What did the first body of Danny Joe Everley. What

(18:03):
did they make of the condition of the body once
it was found and how was the FBI involved.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Well, they found one very important piece of evidence when
Danny Joe Everly's body was found. His hands and his
feet were bound together with this rope. And it was
a very unique piece of rope that when you look
at the edges, they were frayed and they were colored
pieces of fiber. And I was later able to find

(18:33):
out that these fibers were made to make this rope stronger.
It was meant to be lightweight so it could be
carried by members of the military, but those fibers made
it extra durable and strong. The police and the FBI
searched everywhere for this rope, even going to Scotland Yard

(18:57):
looking for where this rope could have come from. And
so that was the very first key piece of evidence
that they initially withheld from the public because they knew
if they could find that rope, they would most likely
find the killer. But Dandy Joe, as I mentioned earlier,
had been stabbed, the back of his neck slashed, but

(19:19):
hands and feet bound behind him, so just a terrible situation.
His body was found three days after he disappeared, and
that's when the fear set in. I talked to the
prosecutor in this case and he said it was fear
like he had never seen before, and like he never
hopes he sees again. And if you think back, Dan,

(19:40):
this was forty two years ago, this very time period
that this killer was on the loose for a total
of one hundred nineteen days. So Danny Joe every disappears
in September and then the unthinkable happens in early December
when they find a second boy.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
You talk about the panic that it created after Chris
Walden disappears, but we haven't mentioned a very special person,
Special Agent Robert K. Wrestler gets involved from the very beginning,
trying to create a criminal profile to assist police in
their investigation.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Bob was a brilliant agent and one of the early
pioneers in behavioral science and their shows like Mindhunter that
are based on people like Bob Wrestler. So Bob has
called to OMAHAF to try to put together a profile
of who this killer is, and he did a remarkable job.
He was able to determine that the killer would most

(20:43):
likely be a young white man late teens to early twenties,
you know, a loner in a most likely blue collar,
not high profile job. And he did a really, you know,
great job of honing in on Jubert himself. So that

(21:05):
was the first real break, is that they thought they
were looking for a young white male, not overly educated,
but who would most likely kill again.

Speaker 2 (21:17):
What did you make of the issue of homosexuality with Jubert?

Speaker 3 (21:22):
This always fascinated me, and you know, because when I
interviewed Jubert, he told me he never had a girlfriend,
never was really attracted to women growing up, but wanted
to kill like his babysitter when he was six years old.
And I found this fascinating. But as the profiles and

(21:43):
later psychiatric interviews confirmed, Jubert had repressed homosexual feelings. And
I was, you know, years later able to determine that
he was classified as a sadistic pedophile. And so this
was a person whose fantasies are based on prebubescent children,

(22:06):
usually of the same sex. So later the profilers did
determine that Jubert most likely was homosexual, had feelings that
he did not know how to deal with, and then
fantasized and ultimately carried out his fantasies by killing young boys.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
There was also the issue of the condition of the body.
There were bite marks and tell us about the bitemarks
and what that seemed to indicate.

Speaker 3 (22:34):
Another very fascinating part of this case is that you
think back, this is the early eighties and they're just
starting to use dental forensics as a way to connect
killers to crimes. And that's ultimately how they were able
to connect Ricky Stetson's murder in Portland, Maine to Danny

(22:55):
Joe Eberley's murder in Omaha, Nebraska, was the dental marks.
They were able to do an implant imprint of Jubert's
teeth that matched the bat the bite marks on Danny
Joe Everley and Ricky Stetson. So it's just amazing how,
you know, behavioral science was just coming into its heyday

(23:19):
and then they were using techniques like dental records to
help connect killers to their crimes.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Let's get to your back to your interview with Jiwbert
in prison and the evidence regarding Ricky Stetson and and
the prosecution therein.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
So let's step back and I want to tell you
what my first meeting with Jubert was like. So I
go to the prison in Lincoln, Nebraska, and I'm going
through security and they're checking my briefcase and so forth,
and one of the guards says to me, are you nervous?
And I said, you know, yes, a little, and he says,
it'll be okay once you get past his eye. Once

(24:01):
Jubert walked into the conference room where he and I
first had our first meeting, I knew immediately what he
was talking about. He had these eyes that were a
gray dark and I described them as shark like eyes.
And now I knew exactly what the guard was talking about.
And there were times that I would ask Jubert during

(24:23):
the interviews about the murders and he would become robotic,
and I described this as like a poem he never
wanted to memorize. And then there were times, believe it
or not, he had a good sense of humor, and
I often felt guilty that he would say something funny
and I would laugh. I'll give you an example of that.

(24:44):
I came in to interview him on a Saturday, and
I had not come the saturday before to interview him,
and he said, Hey, what did you do last weekend?
And I said, well, I played golf with a couple
of my friends and he said, well, isn't that spacial
like the church late on Saturday Night Live? And it
just was crazy. And then another time he said to me, Hey,

(25:06):
did you see People magazine this week? Charlie Sheen is
on the cover And I said no, and he said, well,
Charlie Sheen said he would rather be in a killing
scene than a love making scene. I'm in prison for that.
So it was just really interesting some of the things
that he would talk about, and he would light up

(25:26):
at times when we were talking about things that were
not related to, you know, the murders or the murder investigation.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
You write in this book about. Again, I asked about
homosexuality and that issue regarding Jubert, but also that it
had an effect early in his school career in his background,
but also that later when he made it to the army,
which he seemed to be comfortable with and he would
seem to be good at that that rumor of homosexuality

(25:59):
ruined a relationship ship that he had that it was coveted.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
Yeah, there were two relationships Jubert when he joined the
Air Force was he did make a friend, a male
friend in the Air Force, but rumors got out that
he and Jubert were gay, and the friend abandoned Jubert
and that really damaged him at that time, and so
he had lost his good friend, and rumors were now

(26:23):
rampant that Jubert himself was homosexual. And as you know,
in the in the military, this was you know, not
cool back then. But also Jubert had a young friend
and in the book, I've used his name as Jeremy Culver,
and this was a young boy that Jubert befriended in
his Eagle Scout I've bean sorry, in his scout troop

(26:46):
in in Nebraska, and it was really shocking some of
the stuff. The little boy was confused about the murders.
He couldn't understand why Danny Joe and why Christopher Walden
hadn't fought back against the killer. And he actually had
a piece of rope that during one of their boy

(27:06):
scout meetings, he asked Jubert to tie him up so
that he could experience what those boys were going through.
And this was really troubling for Jubert because he was
trying to do what the young boy wanted and be
his scout leader. But this was also exciting Gibert that

(27:29):
here he was about to tie up another young boy
who was the same age as the victims. And finally
he came to his senses, and I write in the
book that he screamed at the little boy, I told
you this was never going to happen. It would not
happen to you. You're safe, and took the rope away
from the young boy's hands. But police say they feel

(27:52):
that young boy might have been one of Gibert's next
victims had he not been apprehended.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Tell us about Chris Walden's disappearance.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
This is really sad as well. Chris was walking to
school that morning, and there's debate on whether Jubert had
followed the young boys before he actually kidnapped them. You know,
there's debate back and forth on that. But young Christopher
Walden is walking to school. It's December second, nineteen eighty three,

(28:27):
and suddenly he's confronted by this stranger who kidnaps him,
puts him in the floorboard of his vehicle, tells him
not to scream, not to do anything, as he takes
him to where Christopher Walden would ultimately be murdered. And
the little boy is begging Jubert to let him go.
And Gilbert told me that he thought about letting Christopher

(28:51):
Walden go. He felt really bad, you know, how he
was feeling, how the boy was feeling. But he just
knew if he let Christopher Walden go, he would go
to the police and he would describe his kidnapper and
they would catch Jubert. So he takes the young boy
out into the woods again, makes him strip to his underwear,

(29:12):
and stabs the young boy to death. And this is
just so tragic. Police later told me when they found
the crime scene and they're looking through the evidence, that
they found two shiny dimes in Chris Walden's pocket. And
I interviewed his mother and I said, they found two
dimes in his pocket, what was that money for? And

(29:35):
she said that was for extra milk at school. And
so that level of detail just brings it home to
this could be any parent, This could be any child
just going to school with twenty cents in his pocket
for extra milk. So police knew this wasn't about robbery,
this was about something far more sinister.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
You're right that this time there were witnesses. This is
in fact Cheryl Baumgartner at eight thirty three, I am.
She's a cashier at a local baker supermarket at a
four way stop. She sees something right across the street
from where she is tell us what she in retrospect
realizes once this case is reported.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
She got a partial tag number and also she saw
some sign. I believe it was a green tree on it.
The FBI actually took Cheryl and a couple of other
people in for hypnosis, and Cheryl told me this was
really traumatizing for her and traumatizing for years after the fact,

(30:42):
where they take her back to that morning, they try
to get out of her. What did she see, what
was the car, what was the tag number? And so
eventually she's able to provide enough information and that's when
they put together the sketch of the killer. And I

(31:02):
have that sketch in my book A Need to Kill,
and you'll see how close it looks to John Jubert.
So Cheryl was a big break in this case, but
was traumatized for years. And later she would go back
to the scene and she saw the sign with that
green tree. It was like a nature route. And I

(31:27):
write in the book that at that moment she knew
she wasn't crazy. She had seen something and it was
John Jubert.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
It's incredible to the other witness, Rebecca Trupani, and again
she was underwent hypnosis and had seen part of the
license plate. But it is a fascinating account on how
they used this hypnosis and how they coaxed the answers
from these two women that had seen something very serious
that evening.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
Absolutely, and Dan, this is what's partially fascinating to me
about this case for all these years is the criminal psychology,
the way the police and the FBI operate trying to
get to the bottom of these things. And I also,
you know, talk about this pervert list that they put together,
and they were, you know, they were going after any

(32:17):
and all suspects. There were hundreds of leads being called
into the FBI hotline and and the you know, the
law enforcement command center that they had to follow up
on all these leads, and then sometimes they would be
taken down the wrong path. The medical examiner said they
had found a pebble in Danny Joe's mouth that sent

(32:40):
you know, police down this trail, that trail, and then
he realized that that information had been put into the
wrong file. There was no pebble in Danny Joe Everley's mouth.
So you can imagine the disappointment and the heartache sending
police down that path and then realizing there was nothing

(33:00):
to it.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
You're right that the a composite sketches released, and again
it looks like they're following up every single lead, and
maybe the news is tightening on Jubert, but he is
convinced that he's invincible. And you take us to January eleventh,
nineteen eighty four, and Juwbert's car was in the shop

(33:24):
and he desperately needed cash. He wrote, what happens?

Speaker 3 (33:29):
This is another interesting turning point in this case. The
sheriff Pat Thomas, you know, is the lead investigator on
this case. And if your listeners have seen the movie
Walking Tall and the Tennessee sheriff named Bufford Pusser, Yeah,
Pat Thomas reminded me of Beauford Pusser. He was like
six five, three hundred pounds. But what people didn't know

(33:51):
is that Pat came from a teaching background. He taught
sixth grade students, so he loved kids. In this case
really bothered Pat as it was happening and put a
lot of stress on him. But Pat did something that
was amazing. He started talking to the killer through the media.
He told me I knew he was watching, and if

(34:12):
I could get him to make a mistake, maybe we
would catch him. And so what he did he baited
the killer. He said, look, it's easy to pick on
little kids. Anybody can kill little kids. If you're a man,
you'll pick on someone your own size. So I went
back and I was watching these videotapes of Pat Thomas
talking to the media, and one of those interviews when

(34:35):
he made that comment pick on someone your own size,
he looked directly into the camera, passed the reporter directly
into the camera, and I said, Pat, did you do
that on purpose? And he said, oh yeah, I knew
he was watching. And later, during my interviews with John
Jubert on death row at the Nebraska State Penitentiary, I said,
were you watching the news and he said, oh yeah,

(34:57):
I knew they didn't have anything on me. And I said,
were you watching when Pat Thomas told the killer to
pick on someone his own size? And he said, yeah,
that really upset me. So what Jubert did that morning
of January eleventh, he made the decision to go to
Aldersgate United Methodist Church, where Barbara Weaver was the director

(35:17):
of a preschool. And again it's just amazing the coincidences
in this case. Barbara told me that she and her
two young children every morning would pray for Danny, Joe Everley,
and Christopher Walden and their families. And Barbara told me
on the morning of January eleventh, she said an extra
prayer that morning. She said, God, use me. If there's

(35:42):
anything I can do to help in this nightmare, use me.
And at ten o'clock that morning, she saw Jubert's car
circling the church, and then she saw him park his
car in the driveway and he walked up to the
door at the church and knocked on the door, and
Barbara Weaver says she cracked the door just enough and

(36:03):
as soon as she saw him she knew it was
the killer. And Gibert asked if he could use the phone,
that he was having car trouble, and she told him
she lied, She said they didn't have a phone. And
at that moment, John Jebert tried to push the door open,
and somehow Barbara Weaver shoved herself between him and the
door and was able to slam the door lock the door,

(36:26):
and then she got the children into a safe area
and she looked out the window and she saw the
license plate, and she started repeating the license plate numbers
to herself as she ran for the pastor's office, and
that's what put this whole thing into motion. Police get
the tag number, they trace the vehicle to Offit Air

(36:47):
Force Base, and they go in and that's where they
find John Jubert in his barracks. That's when the arrest happened.
In the case took the twist of this is our guy,
and how do we now prosecute him.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. So they have him, and you have a
dramatic and vivid scene about that arrest. They bang on
the door, they have to wake him up, and the
questioning begins. Who in particular questions him, who's selected to
question him? And what do they ask him and what

(37:27):
are his responses.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
Lieutenant Jim Sanderson of the Sarpe County Sheriff's Office is
selected to be the lead interrogator on this case. And
Jim was a young father and he told me that
during the search for Jubert, he was just miserable. He
couldn't sleep, and he would go into his young baby's
room and look at that baby in the crib, and

(37:50):
he thought to himself, how can I ever protect my daughter.
We've got a killer on the loose, I can't find him.
How can I protect my own child? So you see
the level of personalization in this case is these people
are human, they are parents, and they're doing everything they
can to end this nightmare in their community. So Jim

(38:14):
has to be very careful and he's he's trying to
show empathy toward Gibert and just says, you know, hey,
let's let's talk about this. And you know, cat and mouse,
They're they're trying to be they're trying to treat Jubert
humanely and leave. Polakoff, who was the chief deputy at

(38:35):
that time and is now the sarpy county attorney, told
me that he took it upon himself that they had
to protect Jubert at this moment, that there were people
who wanted to kill him in that community. But they
knew they had to get a fair trial for him.
So they were very careful with the with the way
they interrogated Gibert and finally said was able to get

(39:01):
Jubert to confess to the two murders in Nebraska, and
it was just the break that they had all been
waiting for. And the buzz just went throughout the command
center where Jubert was being questioned and he finally confessed
to both murders. In Nebraska.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Thematic scene, we mentioned this Jeremy Culver. He was about
to confess and he said, I need to talk to
Jeremy Culver first, and he wanted to do it in private,
you right, but they said no. What did authorities learn
from this very interesting confrontation with his friend.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Well, that's when they learned that he had been tied
up himself, and that's when they felt, wow, he could
have been one of you know, he could have been
the next victim. But Jubert felt a duty to that
young boy to tell him the truth and he wanted
to hear. He wanted that boy to hear from him
that this was all true, that he was sorry, and

(40:01):
he wanted Jeremy to know that he was never in danger,
although police will tell you that's not the case.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Again, let's talk about the importance of this rope. And
they confront him with this rope and say this, look,
we've been looking for this rope all over the world
and is very rare. He says, no, Gilbert says, no,
it's not very rare. Tell us about this actually rare
piece of rope.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
Well, when they found the piece of they found two
pieces of rope, one in Jubert's barracks and one in
his vehicle. And once they saw those freyed INDs with
the colored fibers, they knew they had their man. And
just this past week, I was in Nebraska doing a
series of college lectures and ironically, one of the guards

(40:47):
who was on duty the night Jubert was executed told
me about the rope. He said it was a navy
rope used in training of people in the Navy typically,
and that the rope was meant to be lightweight. And
as I mentioned earlier, those fibers were designed to make
the rope stronger. So again, Jubert may not have known this,

(41:11):
but it was a very rare piece of rope, and
once investigators found it on the victim, Danny Joe Everley specifically,
and then in Jubert's barracks and in the car, they
knew they had their man. And I have pictures of
that rope in my book A Need to Kill and Dan.
This is another important part of this final version of

(41:35):
my book. All the images in the book are color
and you know, in previous editions we didn't have the
technology to put color images into the book like we
do today. So you see that rope vivid bright, and
why investigators were so determined to find it.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Let's talk about your testimony at court regarding Ricky stee.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
This was horrible for a reporter. The only thing we
have is reporters is our word. And I never told
Jubert that the interviews were off the record. They were
all on the record. They were all recorded, except for
that one moment when he stopped the tape recorder and
told me that he couldn't lie to me, that he

(42:22):
couldn't say he didn't kill Ricky Stetson. But the last
time he played guilty to anything, he got the death penalty.
So I was able to hire an attorney who kept
the FBI from confiscating my records, the recordings of the
Gewbert interviews. But there was no way for me to
get out of testifying in the case. And Dan, you yourself,

(42:44):
as a reporter, have been down this road. So I
had to go to Portland, Maine. I was the star
witness against Jubert, but I only had to testify to
that one quote from my book, but the defense tried
to paint me as an FBI agent, that I was
working for the police, and my attorney said he wasn't

(43:04):
working for the police, he was a reporter doing his job,
and that Jubert confessed to the murder and it was
really no contest. It was over after the first day.
Jubert was convicted for Ricky Stetson's murder and sentenced to
another life term. But again, it put me in a

(43:25):
really bad position with Gibert. And we're walking out of
the courthouse, I see him, he sees me. He's in
handcuffs and they're pushing his head down and putting him
in the back seat of the car. And in the book,
I write that I walked up to his attorney and
told him, look, I hate that this happened like this.
I'd like to talk to John again. And he was furious,

(43:48):
and he looked at me and said, you can talk
to John Gibert after the State of Nebraska executes him.
And he slammed down the trunk of his car. And
that was the last time I ever saw on Jewbert
in person. But I know that he was furious that
I had to testify, but I was torn between the
truth and Gilbert, and I had to go with the truth.

(44:11):
I'm a reporter. My job was to get to the
bottom of this. And also something happened last week that
was very interesting in Nebraska. I was doing an interview
with Bill Kelly on Nebraska Public Media and he asked
me to read Jubert's final words before he was executed,
and Dan, I can't remember if I had seen these

(44:31):
words before or if I had just forgotten over the years,
but he was executed on July seventeenth, nineteen ninety six.
I was outside the prison doing commentary for KMTV, so
I wasn't in the room when Jubert read his last words,
and basically he said, I'm sorry for the pain I've
caused the families of Danny, Joe Everley, Christopher Walden, and

(44:56):
Richard Stetson. So eventually he does admit to killing Ricky Stetson.
I felt vindicated finally that I had done my job
and told the truth and that Jubert had confessed to
the third murder. So that was touching for me to
read the killer's last words where he admitted to killing

(45:17):
Ricky Stetson.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
Yes, now you titled this chapter the Quest for the
death row drawings. We have mentioned the death row drawings,
but we haven't talked about what they entailed, what the
assessment and analysis that you had, and by who the
authorities that did that analysis for you tell us about

(45:39):
the drawings themselves, how did you hear about them at first?
And tell us about your quest for the death row drawings.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
I interviewed John Jubert seven times on death row at
the Nebraska Penitentiary, and I think it was the sixth
interview where he confessed to me that he was still
having fantasies of killing more kids. And excuse my French,
but I said, John, this is fed up. I mean,
you're on death row, you're going to be executed, and
you're fantasizing about killing more kids. And then earlier in

(46:13):
another interview, he told me he thought he was going
to get out of jail, that he thought his conviction
would be overturned. And Pat Thomas, the sheriff, said to me,
if he is ever released from prison, he's going to
kill again. So Jubert tells me that he's thinking about
you know, he's having more fantasies about killing kids. And
he says, you know, I'm drawing them out and I

(46:35):
said what He said, Yeah, I've been drawing them on
pieces of paper, and the prison confiscated two of the
drawings a couple of weeks ago, and I said, John,
this is important. You need to let me get those drawings.
I'll take them to the FBI. I'll take them to
a psychiatrist and have them analyzed, and maybe this will
give you some insight to what's wrong with you. So

(46:57):
he reaches across and grabs my yellow legal pad and
he writes a letter to the wardens, like three paragraphs,
basically telling Warden Harold Clark that he wants the prison
to release these two drawings that were confiscated from his
cell so that I can have them analyzed. And he
says in the letter that you'll read in my book

(47:18):
that at this time there's no agreement for these drawings
to be used in the book that mister Pettitt is writing,
but that could change at a later date. So I
took the letter to the warden and I said, I
know you have these drawings. I think they hold some
significant evidence. I want you to release the drawings to
me so I can get them analyzed. And the prison refused.

(47:42):
They stood behind inmate confidentiality and would not release the drawings.
So this had bothered me for all these years, even
after Jubert was executed and we were coming up on
the thirtieth anniversary of the murders, and I thought to myself,
I wonder if they still have those drawings. So I

(48:02):
call the prison and I get the General counsel of
the prison on the phone and he says, yes, we
have the drawings. I have them in front of me
and I said, described could you describe the drawings. He
told me there are two and he has a kid.
He's stabbing one of the kids. I had that in
my notes. And he said, Mark, the drawings are horrible.

(48:26):
And one of them he has a young victim on
his knees, bound with rope and is stabbing him in
the stomach. And I said, yes, that's what he told me.
And he said the other is horrible. It looks like
the victim is floating in space, bound and gagged. And
I said, that's exactly what I have in my notes.
You have to release these drawings, and they wouldn't do it.

(48:49):
So I go back to the prosecutor in Nebraska, Dan
Lee Polakov, and I said, Lee, what do I do.
They've got these drawings. There's got to be significance and
evidence here that maybe could be used to stop other criminals.
This has been thirty years, look how far technology has come.
And he said, I tell you what you should do.

(49:10):
You should sue the state of Nebraska. You should sue
for those drawings to be released. So Lee helped me
find a lawyer in Lincoln, Nebraska, Bob Krieger, who took
on my case. And again, I'm not backed by a
media conglomerate. This is me covering this case out of
my own pocket. Over all these years. We filed suit

(49:32):
against the State of Nebraska, and believe it or not,
we won and the judge ordered the drawings to be released.
They were supposed to be released on a certain day,
and like the day before, there was a new Attorney
general in the state of Nebraska who filed an appeal
to the Nebraska Supreme Court. They granted a hearing, so

(49:54):
we had to go. You know this was going to happen.
And during this time before the Supreme Court hearing, I
get a call on a Saturday night at my home
and I see four two pop up on my collar
ID and that's the area code for Omaha, and I
thought it was one of my friends calling. And the
man said, is this Mark Pettit And I said yes,

(50:16):
the one that wrote the book on John Jubert. And
I said yes, the one that's trying to get those drawings.
And I said yes. He said, I have the drawings
and I'm going to give them to you. And my
heart started pounding. I could not believe it. I said,
do you have a scanner? Could you scan these drawings?
Where did you get them? And he tells me that

(50:36):
he was a guard at the prison who was on
the team that shook down Jubert's cell the day they
found the two drawings, and he said they were so disturbing.
I ran to the copy machine and made copies of
them because I couldn't believe it. But at that time
they could only make black and white copies. So he

(50:57):
says he doesn't have a scanner, and I said, can
I know? And he said, let me put my wife
on the phone and she's talking to me and I said, ma'am,
do you have a scanner where you could scan these drawings?
And she said no, And then it hit me. I
was like, do you have a camera on your phone,
and she said, yes, I do. And I said, okay,
I want you to lay the drawings out, take individual photographs,

(51:19):
and text the photos to me. And I gave her
my cell phone number and she says, okay, I think
I can do that. I'll talk to you in a
little while. So Dan, I grabbed my pad and my
pencil and I'm writing notes about could this finally be it?
After thirty years? Am I going to see these drawings
that Jubert told me about? And so I hear the

(51:40):
ding on my cell phone and I reach up and
I touched the phone. I touched the screen and there
are two attachments and I touch on the first one
and it's the killer standing over this young boy in
a wooded scene, stabbing him in the stomach. I click
on the second drawing and it's like a victim is

(52:01):
floating in space, bound gagged, no hands, and no feat
So I knew right then and there these were the
drawings that Jubert had told me about. But keep in mind,
this is several months before the Supreme Court hearing is
supposed to happen. And the man and his wife said,
we just don't think this is right, that the state

(52:22):
is fighting you to keep these from being seen by
the public. We want you to have them. So flash
forward a few months. We're going to the Supreme Court hearing.
Bob is going to make our case before the justices,
and I have the drawings in my briefcase sitting right
next to me, and it was surreal. I was like

(52:42):
watching this and having an out of body experience. It
was like, whatever happens. I have the drawings, but I
want to see the color versions. So the hearing goes, well,
we think we're going to win, but we don't. The
Supreme Court rules again against us and refuses to release

(53:02):
the drawings. I held on to the drawings that I
had in black and white for more than a year
and it was just eating me up inside. And I
called Bob and I said, Bob, this is not right.
These drawings should be made public. This was proof he
was going to kill again. And he says, Mark, you're
the reporter. Tell the story. Let the story tell itself.

(53:27):
So we decided to publish one version before this last
version of the book. The drawings come out and it's
huge news in Nebraska. But again I didn't have them
in color. So flash forward now to this year and
I've become over the past year pretty familiar with AI technology,

(53:50):
and I had this idea. I was like, I wonder
if AI technology could bring these drawings back to their
original state. So I found these two programs and Dan
I was able to input prompts like, these are the
drawings of a serial killer. He told me this. He
told me that he told me they were in pastel pencil.

(54:10):
Can you help me bring these drawings back to their
original state? And within thirty seconds, the programs worked and
spit out the drawings in the way that John Jubert
had intentionally drawn them. So I just knew that I
had to show this. I had to show the public

(54:31):
the drawings. And I had taken the sketches that I
had been given in black and white to a profiler
named Keith Howard here in Georgia who analyzed these the
drawings and was able to qualify and say that John
Jubert was a sadistic pedophile and his final judgment was

(54:53):
there was no lingering doubt if John Jubert had been
released from prison, he would have killed again. So this
was just I knew that I had to do one
last version of this book, and I had to make
those drawings available to people in color and the way
Jubert had drawn them, and finally put this case to rest.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now, very interesting. You took these drawings, you
say to Keith Howard. He's from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation,
trained by the FBI. He agreed to the analysis in
conjunction with several colleagues from the International Criminal Investigative Analysis Fellowship.

(55:41):
Sorry and a lot of words, right, yeah. And so
they broke it up into victimology and opinion, and there
was an autopsy in medical report. So they assessed and
analyzed what those drawings meant and what their recommendation was
in terms of likelihood to kill again if ever released,

(56:03):
and his continuing danger as a criminal.

Speaker 3 (56:09):
It was amazing to read the psychological reports from you know,
right after Jubert was arrested to now flash forward forty
years and the learnings that police and behavioral scientists have
gained over those years, and some things really stick out

(56:29):
in the drawings. And now that you can see them
in color, Dan, you'll see that the killer is standing
over the victim in the wooded area, and he has
his hand on his shoulder, and that was, Keith Howard
told me, indicative of the killer having control over his victim.
But a few things stood out to me. The detail

(56:51):
in the belt down to that the killer is wearing.
And again, now all these years later, I'm doing this
college lecture and the prison guard is now the professor
of these kids, okay at the University of Nebraska, Omaha,
and he says, Oh, I can tell you about that belt.
That's his prison uniform he's wearing in that drawing, because

(57:12):
those are special belts that are woven that the inmates
can't use to harm themselves. So here we are now
putting the pieces still together. And there was something shocking
in the drawing that stood out to me. The little
bull the victim has a gag around his mouth, but
there is no blindfold on the child. And I said

(57:34):
to Keith Howard, Keith, what does this mean? He said, Mark,
that is the evidence of a sadistic killer. He wants
the victim. He wants to see the fear in that
victim's eyes until the second he kills him. That's what
drives him. These are overwhelming sexual fantasies, and that's what

(57:55):
he wants the victim to see him commit the crime.
And if you look at both victims, they're both bound
and gagged, nothing on their eyes. The killer wanted them
to see him. And if you also look at the
detail now that they're in color, you see the rope,
you see the detail. And that's what Keith Howard told me,

(58:16):
is that Jubert was obsessed with detail, and that's why
he would plan these out these in his mind and
draw it to the level of detail that you saw
in the belt he was wearing, and the rope and
the frayed fibers. But also something struck me as there
were no hands and no feet on the victim that

(58:37):
is floating, and Keith said that was dissociation. He didn't
see these victims as human, and he just left off
those details because they weren't important to him. It was
more important for him to see the rope fibers tied
around the victim's hands and feet. So again being able
to bring this now to life and color and have

(59:00):
the analysis and the luck of thirty forty years later
of what investigators know now when it comes to behavioral
science versus what they knew when Jubert was first arrested.
I feel it was sort of a gift and another
piece of evidence that I was able to bring to
the table to bring closure to the families, the victims,

(59:24):
and the prosecutors and policemen involved in this case.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
You write about the continual sexual fantasies evident in his
drawings and also his account to you that that's what
he was continuing to do. But it's strange, or maybe
you can talk about the there was no actual sexual assault,
but still in the analysis he was considered a pedophile

(59:52):
or engaging in pedophilia. Eleven, twelve, and thirteen year old
boys were his victims. Can you explain this that?

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Yeah, I was kind of confused over that as well.
But Keith Howard told me that not all molesters are pedophiles,
which I thought was interesting. A pedophile is a person
who is fantasizing about boys pre pubacity, usually our children
their same sexual identity. That's what Keith how He explained

(01:00:22):
it to me. But the fact that Jubert made the
boys stripped down to their underwear but not remove their
underwear was indicative of a pedophile. He was still attracted
to the youth, the flesh, the touching of the victims
and the biting of the boys on the you know,
inner thigh, that was all a sign of pedophilia. So

(01:00:47):
again I didn't understand this until I had the drawings analyzed,
But he said the way he made the victims watch
him kill them in these drawings, that is a say
who was driven by sexual desire that he could not control.
So that was another thing that I felt was a

(01:01:08):
missing link, is that Jubert thought he was going to
get out of prison but was making these drawings. And
Keith Howard said that just proves no lingering doubt he
would have killed Again, what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
Do you make of the impact of the rumor when
he was young and the subsequent taunting regarding rumors about homosexuality.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
I don't know what to make of it, Dan, because
as far as I know, Jubert never acted out on
his homosexual tendencies other than the closeness to the other
US airmen his friendship with Jeremy Culver. To my knowledge,
he never acted out on his sexual identity or reference

(01:02:01):
and he repressed it as far as I can tell.
So I think he had a lot going on. I mean,
there's a lot he was trying to deal with feelings
he was trying to suppress feelings he could not suppress,
and just that overwhelming need to kill that drove him
to commit these horrible acts.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
You're right that he pleasured himself after each of these
altercations and these murders, pleasuring himself afterwards. Again no sexual
assault of the victims, but a reliving and again a
sexual fantasy relived afterwards.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
One of the psychiatrists said that he believed Jubert was
confused over sex and violence, and that violence to him
was sexual. So, you know, reliving these murders over and over,
you know, God them off, you know literally, but also
Jubert had no at times, no sense of feeling like

(01:03:08):
he murders. The kid takes off the gloves, you know
that he's worn to commit the crime, and goes to
McDonald's and has a hearty breakfast. It's just crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
Tell us about the book release, and also tell us
about some of the promotion that you've been doing and
who you've been speaking to about this particular case recently.

Speaker 3 (01:03:33):
The book is out now. If your readers want signed copies,
they can visit my website, A Need to Kill dot com.
The book is also available in paperback and ebook on
Amazon dot Com and you can also get the audiobook
my website soon and on Amazon. And I actually narrate

(01:03:54):
the new intro to this book. Narrating a book, Dan,
as you know, is not easy, but I felt that
readers wanted to hear from me. They wanted to know
why I had stayed on this case for forty years,
why I could not let it go. So I decided
to record the new intro, preface and introduction to the book,

(01:04:17):
and then Christopher Lane does the full narration of the book.
He's an award winning audiobook narrator. So the book is
now out worldwide and I have gone back to Nebraska
just recently to do a series of college lectures at
the University of Nebraska Omaha, where I studied journalism and
criminal justice, and the University of Nebraska Lincoln. So I've

(01:04:41):
done a total of five lectures. And the first question
I asked the kids when they're in the room, how
many people have heard the name John Jubert? And not
a hand goes up. So it's amazing, you know, four
decades later, two generations, three generations, and people have forgot
in his name. So I said to them, go home

(01:05:03):
tonight if your parents are over forty years old, ask
them if they know John Gibbert. Then ask your grandparents,
and I guarantee you your parents or your grandparents know
that name. And it's like whenever a disaster happens, like
the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion John F. Kennedy shot and killed,
people remember they remember where they are, They remember or

(01:05:27):
where they were, they remember how they felt, and they
remember the sense of either tragedy, unity or whatever comes
from that event. And I can just tell you from
experience that people remember the fear, the uncertainty, and just
a chilling time in Nebraska's history. And when I finished

(01:05:50):
those lectures, those kids know who John Gibert is. They
stayed over and talked to me about it. They were
fascinated by the case. And I was also honored to
have in a tens the former head of the FBI
in the Omaha office, Lee Polakoff, who was the chief
Deputy who goes on to be the Sarpy County Attorney,

(01:06:10):
who I've stayed in touch with for forty years. My
former producer at KMTV, who helped me put together the
documentary we did on John Jubert that got a seventy
share of the audience. That's how interested people were, and
that's why I wanted to go back and share my
knowledge of this case with the next generation of criminologists

(01:06:34):
of journalists, to say to them, you can do this too.
Look at these prosecutors, look at these investigators. How much
hard work they put into finding this killer. That's on you.
Now you're taking on the duties of criminal justice of
a journalist. Dig In, don't give up. Because I feel

(01:06:54):
journalists especially are under fire these days, and we need journalism.
We need journalists, We need reporters who aren't afraid to
look into the truth and get to the truth. And
I wanted to be that example for these kids and
these these people, young people coming up in criminal justice,
is that we need you, and this case is an

(01:07:17):
example of why what you're doing is so important and
why what we do is journal as journalists is so important.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Yeah, you're right that good journalism isn't just rattling off facts.
What it's all about, in your mind is the why.

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):
And that was the question the very first night I
sat in the Omaha Press Club with Carol Rupple. She said, Mark,
we know the what, we don't know the why. I
want you to take this job. I want you to
figure out why he killed these boys and I did it.
And you know that one question, John, why did you

(01:07:55):
do this? All I can tell you is, for as
long as I can remember, I've just had a need
to kill. So he answered that. Forty years later, I
feel like I've answered the outstanding questions that I had
in this case. And I hope that your listeners will
read this book and realize that this is the definitive

(01:08:16):
account of John Jewbert and the horrific crimes that he committed.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for coming
on and talking about your extraordinary book, A Need to
Kill the Life and crimes of John Jubert, Nebraska's most
notorious serial child killer. Are those people that might want
to find out more about this book? Do you have
a website or any social media you can refer them to?

Speaker 3 (01:08:41):
Yes, please visit my website A need to Kill dot com.
You can order as sign copies of the book. I
signed them and ship them myself and will write a
note to you personally, so that's the way, and you
can also get the ebook, audiobook and paperback on Amazon
dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Thank you so much, Mark Pettitt for a need to kill,
the life and crimes of John Jubert, Nebraska's most notorious
serial child killer. Thank you so much for this interview,
and you have a great evening and good night.