A SECOND SHOT-Michael F. Weisberg

In 1971, Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff James Tappen Hall was gunned down outside a Maryland country club. The case went cold—no suspect, no answers, no closure. But his daughter never gave up trying to find her father's killer.Fifty years later, cold case detectives finally reopened the investigation and identified a suspect whose shocking confession revealed a detail never released to the public: Hall was shot twice. A Second Shot by Dr. Michael Weisberg is a gripping true crime story of justice delayed but not denied—and a deeply personal tale of second chances for both a grieving family and the author himself. Joining me to discuss, A SECOND SHOT: The Pursuit of Justice in Maryland's Oldest Cold Case Murder—Michael F. Weisberg Follow and comment on Facebook-TRUE MURDER: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History   https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064697978510Check out TRUE MURDER PODCAST @ truemurderpodcast.com 

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 Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK 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 Zupanski, Good Evening.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
In nineteen seventy one, Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff James Tappan
Hall was gunned down outside a Maryland country club. The
case went cold, no suspect, no answers, no closure, but
never gave up trying to find her father's killer. Fifty

(01:05):
years later, cold case detectives finally reopened the investigation and
identified a suspect whose shocking confession revealed a detail never
released to the public. Hall was shot twice. A Second
Shot by doctor Michael Wiseberg is a gripping true crime

(01:29):
story of justice delayed but not denied, and a deeply
personal tale of second chances for both a grieving family
and the author himself. The book that we're featuring this
evening is a Second Shot, The Pursuit of justice in

(01:50):
Maryland's oldest cold case murder. With my special guest author
Michael F. Wisberg. Welcome to the program, and thank you
very much for this interview. Michael F.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Weisberg, Thank you very much, Dan for inviting me.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Thank you so much, and congratulations on your book A
Second Shot.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Now, I understand you are a doctor, a gastro enterologist,
and you have a patient named Anna Hall who was
referred to by a colleague. Tell us about how you
became involved in the author of this book.

Speaker 4 (02:34):
Anna Hall was the only patient ever sent to me
by her doctor. It just happened that she came to
see me as an elderly woman, and when she came,
she came with her daughter, Carolyn Filo. Carolyn decided that
she liked the way I took care of her mother,
so she asked me to be her doctor as well.
I took care of her for over thirty years until

(02:54):
one day in twoenty and twenty two, she came to
me and told me that her father, who had been
murdered in nineteen seventy one, over fifty years before, and
the case had gone cold for fifty years. That the detectives,
three female detectives, had come together and had been able
to figure out by re looking at the case, the

(03:15):
clue that everyone else had missed, they'd been able to
solve the case, obtain a confession, and now she wanted
a book to be written.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
About the case.

Speaker 4 (03:24):
And because she'd enjoyed my two novels that I had
written previously, The Hospitalist, and in the end, she wanted
me to write the book.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
You didn't immediately agree to write this book. What things
did you have to consider before agreeing to write this book?

Speaker 4 (03:41):
I was not a journalist, and it sounded like it
was the kind of book that would be a journalist.
I enjoyed doing fiction for my imagination, this would be
a true story. It would require a lot of research
and a lot of interviews, and I know if I
had these skills to be able to do that. But
finally she convinced me that the story was already there
for me. The murderer had confessed, he had waived extradition,

(04:06):
Everyone would be willing to talk to me, including the
detectives and prosecutors. The case was there and just needed
to be written. So that's what convinced me that I
could go ahead and do it. It was just a matter
of taking the story and put it into a way
that would be appealing to readers.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Now you're right about the first meeting May one, twenty
twenty three. You flew from Dallas to Washington, DC, which
is about you saying put a thirty minute train ride
from Rockville, where this murder happened originally, and you went
to the Pilos and their family and went to meet them.

(04:41):
Caroline and Bob tell us about this meeting and what
happened at that meeting.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Carol and Bob picked me up at the metro station
in Gaithersburg, and they took me to the courthouse where
we were going to meet with the sheriff. Sheriff you
who met with us and talked to us the about
his understanding of the case, what had happened to Carolyn's father,
Captain J. T. Smith, James T. Smith, who was a

(05:09):
deputy sheriff. And then I was going to meet with
the prosecutors and talk to the detectives. The prosecutor came
in be prosecutor. Prosecutor who was prosecuting the case, Donald Fenton,
came into the meeting room, and I introduced myself and
talked to her and told her I was recording things,
and she informed me that I could not record anything,

(05:31):
that the case was now going to be contested, that
the suspect had withdrawn his guilty plead, and that a
private law firm from Washington, d c. Which with my
research I found was one of the top law firms
in the world, Covington and Berling, was going to take
his case. And so since it was now going to

(05:51):
be prosecuted, that no one could give me any information,
and that I would just have to follow along and
write the book as things went along.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
Yeah, things have changed from their original prognosis of this
case exactly. Now, let's get to October twenty third, nineteen
seventy one and the night of the murder.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Okay, So, James T.

Speaker 4 (06:20):
Hall was a gentleman who worked on bus transmissions for
a company called Metro Transit. But he also had a
job as a deputy sheriff. And he got that job
by working security at a amusement park in that area.
And they also had them working security at the Manor
Country Club. There was a beautiful country club where they'd

(06:43):
had in the area quite a few break ins and
different things going on, and so they wanted to have
deputy sheriffs patrolling that area to keep an eye on
things that also had reports and people trying to break
into the coke machines at the country club, people doing vandalism.
He wasn't sup to work that night, he was off,
but he was called thirty minutes before the shift started

(07:04):
by the sheriff who was supposed to work, Sheriff Jim Young,
who asked him to work and said he had a
family mat matter to ten to two, So he left.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
James Hall left his family at the house.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
It was a rainy, dark night, got his raincoat, got
his flashlight, gun pipe which he loved to smoke, got
in his car and drove to the Manor Country Club
where seven o'clock to one o'clock shift where he would
be in charge of patrolling around the parking lot at
the country club.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
And keeping an eye on things and what happens during
the course of the night.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
During the night about four and a half, about three
and a half hours into his shift, at ten point thirty,
he apparently got out of his car and saw something
in the area of the parking lot next to the
golf course. He started walking over there and probably saw
things that were there were household items that were sacked

(08:02):
up in that area, and they included a jack, lantern
and a step stool, as well as other things, and
apparently he saw someone and said what are you doing?

Speaker 3 (08:14):
A shot rang out and hit his flash flight, which
he turned on to be able to see things on
this rainy, dark night, and knocked it ten feet out
of his arms. Behind him.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
He turned, probably to get away, and as he turned
to get away, a shot was fired, the second shot
which hit him in the back of the head, in
the lower part on the left side of his back
of his head, and went all the way through his
head scullen brain to where it lodged behind his right eyebrow.
He fell to the ground and was found there on

(08:46):
the ground, still breathing barely, by a couple who are
coming back from a date, and then by five boys
who were trying to vandalize the coke machines that night
and who had left because they'd heard sirens which turned
out to be fire trucks, but then came back and
found him his body lying there. They went into the

(09:07):
country club and had the operator call for the police
and ambulance to come get him, and they saved with
the body until they.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
Came now you're right about the family. A call to
the family about JT's shooting and requesting a rush to
the hospital.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (09:29):
The children, the grandchildren were staying with the grandmother, Anna Hall,
and the Rob Bob and Carolyn Filo had gone out
on a date and were at their own house. The
call went to Bob Filo, who was a canine officer
and then a police officer, and he and Carolyn called

(09:52):
Anna Hall and then went and picked her up and
they went to the hospital where JT was in the
emergency room. A surgeon, a neurosurgeon, came in dressed in
a tuxedo, examined JT.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
Examined, looked at the.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
X rays that had been done, and pulled Bob to
the side and said he's not going to make it.
There's no brain function. He at that time was on
a ventilator because he couldn't breathe and to protect his airway,
and he eventually ended up saying three days in the
hospital before it was there was still no brain function,
no hope for any recovery, so he was taken off

(10:30):
the ventilator and within a half an hour he died.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
You say there's a funeral October twenty ninth, nineteen seventy one.
But also let's talk about Robert Filo Junior, JT's son
in law now at Rockville. He's offering a reward for
two thousand dollars, but the newspapers refused to publicize it.
Explain who Robert is at that time, where he's working

(10:58):
at that time, and tell us about this reward dispute.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
It was actually working at the same police station from
Montgomery County that the detective who was assigned to the case,
ow Sweat was working, so they fairly quickly moved Robert
out to another station so he could not be around it.
He could not ask questions about the case. What he

(11:26):
did do was he and the family in the funeral
notice in the obituary said that rather than anybody sending flowers,
they wanted people to contribute to a fund to try
to find the killer of James T. Hall. The country
club man or country club also said they would match
with the amount that was raised. A thousand dollars were raised,

(11:47):
was raised, and they contributed a thousand dollars in the
country club, so he had a two thousand dollars reward.
They asked the police chief at that time to publicize that,
but for some reason it was not done. They would
not do an article about it at all, and Bob
became very disillusioned. As he said in an interview about

(12:09):
seven years later when he was practicing law, and he
said they had two dogs that had been murdered around
the same time. They offered a fifty dollars reward for
whoever found who had killed these two dogs. That was
put into the newspaper and publicized. But this reward for JT.
Hall's murder, finding the murder suspect or finding who had

(12:31):
done it was never publicized.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Let's get back to how JT was found and in
what condition, And also we have to mention the reason
for the patrol for the sheriff Department to be hired
at this Manor County country Club was that there was
people breaking into the soda machines and other various theft
and robbery or burglaries in the area. Tell us about

(12:58):
the Soda machine gang and actually who found JT and
reported to police.

Speaker 4 (13:05):
Well, the driver of the car of the soda machine
gang was a man named a young man named Norman
Shoemaker and his father was actually also a policeman with
Montgomery County, but he was known as being someone who
was constantly in trouble with the law. There were other
boys in the car with and one of them was
named Robert Cannaveri, and they had just broken into some

(13:28):
laundry machines at a different location when they decided to
come over and break into the coke machines that night.
So they're breaking into the coke machines when they heard sirens.
They were unsuccessful in breaking in, but they got into
the car drove away, but then we're able to pass
by the sirens, which were coming from fire trucks, so
they came back. When they drove back, they found something

(13:51):
that they thought was just a bunch of garbage in
the middle of the parking lot, and they could have
almost run over it, but they got out of the
car and they realized that it was the deputy sheriff,
dressed in his yellow raincoat.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
His hat was off, his head was bleeding.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
There was blood everywhere, but there was so much rain
it was washing.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
The blood away.

Speaker 4 (14:11):
He was lying with his head at about a forty
five degree angle and barely breathing. The boy, Robert Cannaveri,
stayed with him and held his head to try to
help him breathe, while the other four boys who were
part of this was called the Coke Machine Gang, who
were breaking into the Coke Machine that night, all went
into the country club to tell them to a call

(14:33):
for police and an ambulance. It's happened that they had
been beaten there by a couple who had come across
the body a few seconds before and who were out
on a date, and they had also gone in and
asked the operator to call. He was barely breathing, there
was blood everywhere. The rain was washing everything away, and
they stayed with him until the boys and the couple

(14:55):
stayed with him until the ambulance arrived to take him away.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
So how did police proceed with this case? Before we
talk about it going cool?

Speaker 4 (15:10):
That night, there was Sheriff Boone who was sorry's gonna
be off. Detective Boone who was in charge of this
crime scene, and he tried to rope things off and
keep things as safe as possible. They were able to
find that night a gun, which as it turned out,
belonged to James T.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
Hall, and when they.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
Moved his body they found it underneath him. It was
outside of his jackets. We'd probably reached for it after
the first gun shot. The also were able to find
the flashlight, which had been knocked out of his hand
by a gunshot, about ten to twenty feet away from
the body. And they also found his pipe which he

(15:51):
probably instead of pulling out the gun, pulled out his
pipe which he loved to smoke, and that was in
a water drainage that was about defeat away from the body.
The rain had washed all the way down far away
from the body. Detectives that night were they're called ow Sweat,
who was the lead detective on the case. He was

(16:12):
a gentleman who was considered their top homicide detective. He
had done about forty cases in his career, and when
I talked to him, he told me that he had closed,
which in their parlance means he had solved thirty nine
of them.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
But the one he never closed and he wanted to
close the most was Bob Filo, who was working in
the same district office as him, his father in law, JT. Hall.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
So what he did was he interviewed, he said seventy
five to one hundred people. They did looked at the
crime scene, they looked for any kind of physical evidence,
but there was absolutely no physical evidence they could find.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
There were no fingerprints.

Speaker 4 (16:53):
Anything the possible could have been a fingerprint probably was
washed away. They interviewed everyone there, include the Coke machine boys.
They went and interviewed neighbors, and they could not find
anything that would lead them to a suspect in the
murder case. Ow Sweat said that he went over it,
worked it, and he centered in on Norman Shoemaker as being.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
The likely culprit.

Speaker 4 (17:20):
Why well, first of all, Shoemaker's father, who was a policeman,
told him not to talk to the police. So unlike
the other boys who were willing to give the comments
and remarks about what they saw what they did, Norman
Shoemaker was very reticent and really wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
Cooperate with the police.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
Also, he had a history, as I said, of run
ins with the law, and each time when he's had
these runnings with the law, his father had stepped in
for him, which to keep him from having anything happen
to him. And I think that left a very bad
taste in the mouth of the other police officers. So
in what we could in both medicine and in police work,

(18:00):
they have what's called tunnel vision. You get one thing
once something happens, there's one characteristic one lab test, went
X ray and medicine, or one thing that happens one
suspect in a murder case like this, and you center
in on that to the exclusion of everything else. And
it seems as like what over ws Sweat did. And

(18:20):
because of that, thinking that this was a man who
did it, and not being able to find anything to
really prove it, the case was pursued by him for
a couple of years and then by other people and
it went cold. When a case goes cold, that means
the original investigative team has either left, there's no one
that's still working the case, or has been tried for

(18:41):
at least three years. They've been looking for a suspect
and none has been found. And that's what happened with
this case.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now you talk about this case going cold,
But Caroline follow doesn't let this go. She waits a
couple years for the police to run their course in
terms of the investigation, but after that she is routinely
calling them and asking them for any updates. She wants

(19:10):
this thing to be solved, doesn't she.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
She had an incredibly close relationship with her father.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
She loved him, and she idolized him.

Speaker 4 (19:20):
And she realized at the age of twenty eight that
she was now without this man who'd been such a central.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
Part of her life and how important he'd been for her.

Speaker 4 (19:28):
And so she said that even as she aged, She
said that if as she aged, she realized she was
still alive, so that the person that had done this
to her father very.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
Easily could still be alive.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
Also, she was also inspired by her husband, who become
a very successful attorney. He decied the police work was
no longer for him, probably at least in some great
part due to his disappointment in the failure of the
police to tholve this case. He'd become an attorney, and
she marveled at how on these different cases he would

(20:00):
find some angle for something to do in order to
win the case. And she thought, his brilliance and winning
these cases, why couldn't someone use brilliance to look at
this whole case of her father and figure out what
had happened and put the pieces together. So she would
call on a regular basis. Her mother, Anahal, who lived

(20:22):
until two thousand and five and who actually remarried later
on and then her second husband died she'd lived in
two thousand and five, was very bitter and very upset
that they never found the murderer of her husband. But
she wasn't as active as Carolyn, who took the lead
for the family.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
You talk about early in this book about a book
you happened to read which was centered in the same
area in Montgomery County. It was from an author named
Mark Bowden and was titled The Last Stone. What did
you garner from reading that book in terms of comparisons
to the case that you were writing about.

Speaker 4 (21:05):
First of all, I had read that book. I've read
it now twice straight through as well as going back.
And it had occurred in the same area Montgomery County
and Maryland, and both occurred in the nineteen seventies. The
murder of James T. Hall occurred in nineteen seventy one.
The case that you're referring to, which is in Bowden's book,

(21:29):
was the abduction of the Lion's sisters, who were ages
ten and twelve in broad daylight from the Wheaton Plaza
Mall in nineteen seventy five. These two young girls were abducted,
They were raped, murdered, their bodies were burned, and they
were never found. They never found any traces of them.

(21:52):
They were thought to have been buried somewhere in Virginia.
Both cases had similarities that were very striking, first of all,
and we'll talk about the suspect and how they found
them in the JT.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Hall's case.

Speaker 4 (22:06):
But first of all, it turns out that both the
suspects in these cases were teenage boys who were living
on the streets, not in houses, but had been thrown
out of houses and were living on the streets. Both
of them had made statements to the police. In the
case of the Lion's Sisters, the man's name was Welch,

(22:29):
and he had gone to the police a week after
the murders and said to them that he had information
that he had seen who had abducted the girls from
the mall.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
The police listened to his what he had.

Speaker 4 (22:43):
To say and decided that although he had some of
the facts right and things like that, that other things
were not true. They also gave him a light detective test,
which he flunked, and so they felt that everything he
said was not factual and was just being used to
try to get through ward money. As I'll we'll talk
about later in this case, does Mike I dig detail

(23:06):
on the second shot the accused had gone to the
police eighteen months after the murder had occurred while he
was a prisoner in jail for other charges, and had
told the police various details about the case in order
to try to gain leniency from his burglary charges and
also from his escaping from jail charges. The cold case

(23:29):
teams in both cases had some of the same members.
Chris Hamrock was the detective who put together the cold
case teams and played an important role, especially in the
first case with the Lion sisters. And then Katie Leggett
was a cold case detective who was very important in
both of these cases.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Okay, so let's fast forward to what happens to initiate
this cold case investigation of this fifty on the fiftieth anniversary.
How does it come together that this case is reopened,
And as you mentioned, Chris Homrock and Katie Legate are
involved as they were involved in this other cold case

(24:13):
successful prosecution.

Speaker 4 (24:17):
It was decided on the fiftieth anniversary that they better
try something now because if not everybody was getting so old,
if there were any witnesses, if there was anything to
be found, they needed to do it now. Plus, as
you said before, Carolyn Filo had been calling on a
regular basis please reopen the case. So Chris Homrock decided
to reopen the case on the fiftieth anniversary of the shooting,

(24:39):
which was in twenty twenty one, and Katie Leggett by
that time had been a cold case officer for ten years.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Unlike what in the nineteen seventies, where you really didn't.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
Have the subdivision of police and did the homicide, robbery,
different divisions, cold case, everybody kind of worked the cases together.
One of the tremendous improvements in police worked is that
we now have these specialists. And she was a specialist
in cold cases and had done an incredible job.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
She had an incredible background.

Speaker 4 (25:06):
She'd worked initially cases of indecency and sexual harassment and
sexual abuse of children. So she came from that background
initially and then worked as a detective, and she learned
she also was a lie detective administrator, and then she
became a cold case detective. It just so happened that
right at that time, a detective named Lisa Killen, who

(25:30):
was a playing close officer, decided that she wanted to
see what cold case work was like and asked to
be transferred to the cold case unit. They immediately accepted her,
and they said to her that your job is going
to be to reopen this case and start looking at
it and see if you find anything that hasn't been found.
The third person who's put on the case was another

(25:52):
woman named Sarah White, who was a homicide detective, and
she The three of them made up the cold case team,
with Lisa Killen being the one who was instructed to
initially go through all the evidence everything that had been
done for the case, which was put in a cardboard
box on her desk.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
In that cardboard box was all the evidence that had
been gathered by police, but also Lisa did some reinterviewing
the Soda Machine Gang, these guys now in their sixties.
But in that box Lisa found a real to reel
tape labeled as an interview with Richard Hobart. Now, who

(26:35):
is Richard Hobart and what does Lisa Killen do As
a result of finding this reel to reel interview.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
Richard Hobart's name and the license plate from his parents'
vehicle were found in a notepad that James T. Hall
had and that he kept with him at all time,
and so there was concern whether or not he might
have been involved. As it happened, he had passed away.
He had died within about ten years of the case,

(27:05):
and it was they had talked to him. He actually
on his own gone in to talk to the police
and was not considered a suspect. He was able to
have an alibi, so he was not considered a suspect
in the case. But Lisa felt that she needed to
listen to what he had to say, and she needed
to find a way to get the tape in a

(27:26):
way that she could listen to it because real Thrill
there was not the technology in twenty twenty one to
be able to listen to it. She went to several sources,
including the police departments, someone who was had a store
that did different types of things with audio, but finally
was able to get the FBI to convert the tape
to digitalize it into a form that she could listen to.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
What did she discover listening to that tape that struck
her in her mind as a break in this case.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
The tape had nothing to do with Richard Hobart. It
was completely mislabeled. What it was was a several hour
interview with a young man named Larry Becker. Larry Becker
had been in jail. He had been convicted for the
burglary of a townhouse, and while in jail and on

(28:18):
a work release program, he had escaped. So not only
was he serving his jail term for being involved in
a burglary, but also.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Had years added on for the escape. So it turned
out he had a.

Speaker 4 (28:32):
Sentence for about eight years. In the tape, he had
decided to ask for leniency by providing the Greek police
officers with information about the murder of Deputy Sheriff Hall.
The tape goes through the interrogation and in this interrogation,

(28:54):
Smith says two very important things that were police holdbacks.
In other words, when the police have a murder or
something happens, a lot of times they will hold back
evidence so that when they confront someone they consider a suspect,
if that person relates that evidence to them that suggests
that they were at the crime scene of the crime
or that they may have been the perpetrator.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Right. The two main things that he said.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
Was one, he said there were two shots that night,
and he said that several times.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
He said that he was an eyewitness.

Speaker 4 (29:24):
He'd come to the Manor country Club after being with
a friend named Rizzo, and he'd come to the Manor
Country Club and he saw these boys trying to break
into the coke machines and then he saw someone come
up and say, hey, what are you doing, And he
said that there had been two shots fired. And the
second thing he said that had not been released was

(29:46):
that the deputy sheriff was holding a flashlight, and that
had not been released, and he had a flashlight.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
And so Lisa listening to those two pieces.

Speaker 4 (29:56):
Of evidence that he said, and also the fact that
he put himself at the scene of the murder, they'd
had no eyewitnesses before, and that was her way into
the portal as to what was happening, what had happened
fifty years before when the murder took place.

Speaker 2 (30:14):
There was problems initially though he had mentioned four boys
that he said by name out of the eight and
mentioned their names, and it checked out they had alibis.

Speaker 4 (30:26):
Exactly there were so many things that he said that
were wrong. For example, as you just said, he named
Greg Schwar as the shooter. Greg Swar was alibied, was
not there. There's no way he could have been the shooter.
And the every other boy he said was there, none
of them were there. They were not part of the
Coke Machine gang. The person that he said that he

(30:48):
was with as he walked to the Manor Country Club
was actually in the Navy at that time in California,
so there's no way that he had been there either.
He said it was a knight that was very calm,
that the weather was beautiful, we could see things, and
we know that it was a terrible stormy, rainy night,
and that everyone was soaking wet. He said that the

(31:11):
person that was shot was wearing a uniform like a
police officer, but no nothing like a raincoat or anything
like that.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
And when JT.

Speaker 4 (31:19):
Hall's body was found, he was found to be wearing
a yellow raincoat which was easily identifiable.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
What does Lisa Killen find out about the conclusions police
made after that interview with Larry Becker.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
Lisa found out that the three officers who interviewed him
and who had had nothing to do with the investigation
up to that point, knew nothing about the police hold
back of the evidence that they concluded that he did
not have eyes on the scene, he was not there,
he was lying just to gain leniency.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
They rejected his plea and they sent him back to jail.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
So Lisa Killen looks at this information at least like
you had said, where she believes that he puts himself well,
he does put himself at the scene of the crime,
so she believes he's either involved or witnessed who was involved,
who was the shooter. So she decides, along with Katie Leggett,
to go interview or to at least try to find

(32:25):
Larry Becker.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
That's correct.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
So she does a deep dive to try to find
him and can't find him. There's no Larry Becker around,
but she knew that he had a brother named Leslie Becker,
so she looks to find Leslie and she finds his obituary,
and in the obituary it says that he is survived
by a brother, Larry Smith, who's living in Little.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Falls, New York.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
And when you go back, she went back and found
out that Larry Smith had been adopted by the Becker
family along with Leslie and two other siblings when he
was seven years old, and so his name had been
changed to Becker. But now in twenty twenty one, he
was living in Little Falls, New York under his original

(33:12):
name Larry Smith.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
another part of this seemingly brilliant strategy is Lisa Kielan says,
why don't I look up John Rizzo? And so she
contacts long John Rizzo. But what does she ask John
Rizzo in regards to helping police.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
They wanted to make sure that Larry Smith was indeed
Larry Becker, and they also wanted to see what he
would do if pressure was put on him by someone
who he had said was at the scene or he
had been with him when he walked to the scene.
So they made what are called controlled calls. They had
Rizzo to two control calls. And in the first call,

(34:05):
first of all, I should say control calls when the
police monitor the call, so they're listening to everything that's
being said and done. In the first call, when Rizzo
called him, Larry Smith denied being Larry Becker. He said
he didn't know Rizzo, he didn't know anything about it,
he'd never lived down there, and that.

Speaker 3 (34:23):
The guy must have gotten it made a mistake.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
Rizzo turned up the heat even in that first call,
saying that the police are coming after him because of
the evidence that Larry Becker Smith had given them in
nineteen seventy three when he'd had that interview, and he'd
said that Rizzo had been there also, and Rizzo needed
an out. He needed Larry to give him an alibi
and needed him to tell him what to say to them.

(34:48):
As mentioned, he just refused to talk to Rizzo that
first call. But interestingly enough, after that a call was
made by Larry Becker to someone named the Raven. His
name was Bobby ray Edwards, nicknamed the Raven, and he
basically left the restage on the Raven's machine, which Raven
later turned over to the police, saying, this is Larry

(35:11):
Becker was calling and I'd want to.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Speak looking for the Raven.

Speaker 4 (35:15):
Raven was someone that he had hung around with a
lot when he was younger and possibly had done different
burglaries and things like that with, but he had called
him afterwards. Before the second control call was made by Rizzo,
two days later, and in this call, Larry Smith admitted
to being Larry Becker, and he talked a lot about

(35:37):
the one burglary that he'd gotten arrested for that townhouse burglary,
and he seemed to think that Rizzo was talking about that,
and he kept saying, no, there was no policemen, there
were no gunshot, nothing like that.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
And Rizzo kept egging him on what should I do?
What should I do?

Speaker 4 (35:54):
They're coming after me, and I'm going to tell them
all about you. And finally he said to him, he said, listen.
He said, I'm not going to tell you what to do.
You're not scaring me. I'm gonna you know, if the
police come after me, that's fine, but I have nothing
to hide. And they hung up the phone and that
was it between the two of them. But they were

(36:15):
convinced after that phone call that indeed this was the
man that they were looking for, that this was Larry Becker.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
So they decided to go visit Larry Becker and they
bang on the door. He answers the door and lets
him in. They go along Katie Levitt Leggett and Lisa
Killen and also two state troopers. So they all are
invited into his home. What does he agree to? Does
he agree to an interview? Does he talk to police?

Speaker 4 (36:46):
He lived in a senior citizen's home that was a
high rise and they had security so that they had
to be let in. And before they went up to
see him, they looked around for a room that was
quiet enough that they can record an interview with him.
They couldn't find anything, so they went up to his door,
knocked on the door or let in, introduced themselves, and

(37:09):
he kind of said he knew they had becoming just
because of the calls that he had gotten from Rizzo, right.
And once they got in there, they explained that they
wanted to just talk to him and get information, and
they couldn't find the room would be quiet enough to
use the recording the devices that they had. Would he
mind going back to the police barracks in Herkimer County,

(37:31):
New York. He agreed to do so, and he went back.
There were two male police officers from Herkimer County. He
drove back with them, and Lisa and Katie followed in
their car.

Speaker 2 (37:45):
So tell us what happens at police headquarters and how
did the interview goes? At first, very much like the
phone calls with Rizzo. There's a little bit of a
warming up process in the questioning, isn't it Yes.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
First of all, the room that they use for interrogation
there is there's no windows, one door, and they put
their seats very close to him, and he was in
the corner. It's very important to mention that many times,
both on the way there or when they were in
the apartment, and then later on they told him he
was not under arrest and he was free to go

(38:25):
at any time he wanted to, so that they did
not have him in custody at that time. That becomes
an important point. Later on they sit down and start
talking to him, and as you said, initially the interview
is just somewhat fact finding and talking back and forth,
and he seems interested in talking about the burglary at

(38:46):
the townhouse, and he thinks that that's what.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
They're asking about.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
Don't forget this is a man now who's fifty one
years later, and he had been through a lot. He
had had a lot of health problems going on, part
to disease, heart failure, just a lot of other things
going on, and he was now being interviewed and he
was talking, answering their questions by what he thought they
wanted to know about the townhouse burglaries. They finally were

(39:14):
able to steer him towards what happened at the country
club that night, although he could never remember during the
entire interview having made a statement to the police in
nineteen seventy three, eighteen months after the murder. But when
they got to the interview part they initially started it
was more friendly and things like that, and then they

(39:35):
let him take They took a break and they let
him go. He wanted to smoke. He was a heavy
smoker at one time. It was a three pack per
day smoker. So he wanted to go outside and smoke.
He couldn't smoke on the police grounds. It was against
the law to do that. So he went across the
street and he was if he'd want or to he
was free to go. But he went across the street smoked,

(39:56):
and then later on came back for the next part
of the interview.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
So they.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Apply some pressure in the last part of this interview,
if you can tell us the gist of how that
putting that pressure on him went and his reaction.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
He The interview lasted three hours and forty five minutes
in this room, and when they came back, the interview
took a turn because they basically with Katie Leggett, who
was a tremendous cold case detective and tremendous interrogator. She
basically used certain types of principles of interrogation. It's in

(40:40):
her own unique style, but she used minimalization, which is
where you take something and make it not seem.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
As serious as it was.

Speaker 4 (40:49):
For example, she eventually said that he was the sheriff
had been killed, but instead of being killed, she said, well,
maybe it was by accident. She also said told him
what it great guy he'd become, and what a great
person he was. She didn't want to mess up his life,
so I think she put himself on his side. But
she also used minimalization to make what he said make

(41:11):
even the murder itself not seem so bad.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
And I think this was something a technique that she says.

Speaker 4 (41:16):
That she had learned when she did these child sex
abuse cases and things like that. No one wants to
admit to being a pedophile and having sex with the child,
so he have to be able to put it in
a different way. I have to make it not seem
as bad, and I think that's what she did. She
made it seem like this was a good man. He
was a good man. The sheriff had accidentally been shot

(41:36):
while maybe a burglary. While the burglary had occurred, a
house on the other side of the golf course, which
was owned by Roger and Diane Schmidt, that same night
had been burglarized, and those things that were found on the.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Golf course were items from their house.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
So she talked to him and said that, yeah, that
this burglary had occurred.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
He had put himself with the scene of the crime.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Eventually she was able to talk to him, and he
was able to He said that yes, he had been
involved in the burglary. And then finally, as things turned
more and more, as his screws kind of tightened more
and more, he said that he although he was part
of the burglary, he hadn't shot the sheriff, That deputy sheriff,

(42:18):
That the deputy sheriff Hall had been shot by someone
who was with him that night, Raven, and Raven was
committing the burglary with him.

Speaker 3 (42:26):
This was a total change from.

Speaker 4 (42:29):
What was going on the first, say, three hours in
the interview, when he really didn't seem to know anything
about the country clubs said multiple times, I never committed
a burglary at the country club.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
My parents lived there. That's where he had lived before
he was thrown out on the streets.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
So why would I do any kind of you know,
damage there where I could easily be found. Well, when
he did decide, he did, you know, admit that he
was part of the team the burglarized, and then he
admitted that Raven was the one who had done it.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Well, Raven, as.

Speaker 4 (42:58):
It turns out, was six feet tall and Larry Becker
was five foot three. And so they asked Larry in
this interrogation, do you know what trajectory means?

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Trajectory means? He knew what it meant. It meant the
path that something had followed. And they said, well, the bullets.

Speaker 4 (43:16):
Started off, hit him the sheriff in the lower part
of the head on the left hand side, and traveled
upward at an angle where it lodged behind his right eyebrow.
Someone of Raven's size couldn't have had that kind of trajectory.
It had to come from someone short like you. As

(43:36):
I said, he was five foot three and so as
they kept talking back and forth, back and forth.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
They made it. He said, yeah, you know this.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
They convinced him that an accident had happened, and he
eventually finally admitted and confessed to accidentally shooting the deputy
sheriff two shots and that he had been the one
who had done it. It's been an accident.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
One of the things that became somewhat a point of
contention was he then asked, am I going to jail?
And they said no, you're You're going home today. And
the police said, we don't lie to people. And they
asked him where the gun was, and he said, I
threw it away. I think because it wasn't I didn't

(44:26):
have it when I went to Maggie's place. But he said,
I don't remember where I threw it exactly.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
No gun was ever recovered.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
He had identified in the interview and nineteen seventy three
that it was a thirty eight caliber gun that was fired.
The bullets that were recovered both from the brain of
w Sheriff Hall, as well as there was a bullet
that had gone through the flashlight and lodged in the
flash flight were BOUTH thirty two caliber bullets. Which, as

(44:57):
it turns out, can be fired from a thirty eight
caliber gun, although the reverse is impossibly can't fire thirty
eight caliber bullets for thirty two caliber gun.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
So that was possible that.

Speaker 4 (45:09):
He had correctly identified the weapon that had been used.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
And then they even had him.

Speaker 4 (45:16):
He said it that during the interview, the interrogation at
the end, that he had had a gun that had
been given to him earlier in the evening, and he
named the person who had given it to him, and
he was wearing it. He had it in his waistband,
and then he pulled it out and used it to
shoot the deputy sheriff.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. So let's get to the first day of
the trial and the defense and the prosecution.

Speaker 4 (45:52):
The first day of the trial came, and of course
they had so much evidence piled up that I didn't
get a look. I couldn't see over to where Larry
Becker Smith was sitting. I was in the gallery listening
to everything. But the opening statements were made and the
defense said, this is someone who has the most important

(46:15):
evidence of all. He has confessed to being the murderer
not once, not twice, but three times, because it turns
out that within a day of confessing to the police, Larry,
on phone calls which were recorded from the jail, had
called his daughter and told her that he had something

(46:40):
he had to get off his chest, and he'd lived
with it for fifty years and he'd never told anyone,
not even her mother, who was still his wife, he'd
never divorced her, but that he had killed someone and
now he's going to go to jail Ford and he
pretty much said the same thing to his son, and
he called him also. So the prosecution said, we don't

(47:05):
have any physical evidence, no DNA evidence, and there were
no eyewitnesses. But what we do have is someone who
in nineteen seventy three put himself at the scene of
the murder and then now has confessed three times, which
is the strongest evidence.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
It's all circumstantial evidence, was strongest evidence.

Speaker 4 (47:26):
And the defense got up and in their opening statement
concentrated on the facts that all these wrong things that
Larry said initially in seventy three that were completely wrong,
which had led the people that were listening to him,
the police, to say he wasn't there, he didn't know
what he was talking about. And also they harped on
the idea that everything that he had said in his

(47:46):
confession had been fed to him by the detectives who
were interrogating him, and that none of it was from
his own mind, that had all just been given to him,
and he'd finally broken and was convinced that did do
this even though he hadn't done it.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
The prosecution, the state's attorney is John McCarthy. The prosecuting
attorney is Donnie Donna Fenton. But there are four defense
attorneys in that courtroom, including Kevin B. Collins. Tell us
a little bit about Covington and Burling, the Washington, d c.
Law firm that takes this case, and why.

Speaker 4 (48:27):
When Larry Becker Smith got to back to Maryland he
changed his mind. He decided he hadn't done this, and
he wanted he withdrew his confession. He said he wanted
to with draw his confession as guilty, plea and pleae
non guilty once he decided to play not guilty. The

(48:47):
public defender who was assigned to his case, that this
is the case involved now close fifty two years of
information evidence. It's too much for a public defender's off
at the handle law firm Covington and.

Speaker 3 (49:01):
Berling, which is a large law firm base. This was
based in Washington, c but they're all over the world.

Speaker 4 (49:06):
They have twelve hundred lawyers from the top thirty of
largest law firms in the world and considered one of
the top law firms. They're also considered the top pro
bono law firm in the country. They've won the award
as being the top pro bono law firm ten times,
so they're considered someone that a firm that will be
very willing to help out in a case like this

(49:28):
because for them, it gives their young attorneys the chance
to examine, cross examine, and come up with strategy in cases.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Some of these people attorneys had ever been in.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
A courtroom before, and the four who were assigned by
three other attorneys who were assigned to help Kevin Collins,
none of them had ever tried a case before. But
they decided, after making sure that there was no conflicts
of interest, yes, indeed they would take this case. It's
thirty minutes a metro ride from Washington to Rockville, Maryland,

(50:03):
and that they would take the case and represent Larry.
Before the case went to trial, they tried to have
it thrown out by saying that his Miranda rights were violated,
that he was in custody, and that they should have
said to him, you were had the right to remain
silent to anything you say and will be used against

(50:23):
you in a court of law. You have the right
to attorney. That was never said before the interrogation took place.
So they attempted to have it thrown out. This was
a hearing that lasted three days, and finally the judge mcaulay,
who was the judge in the case, in favor of
the prosecution and said that he was never really under

(50:44):
in custody. He could have left any time he wanted
to and he was free to go. They were just
interviewing him and therefore his Miranda rights had not been violated,
and that they could he would stand trial. And so
the trial was set to start January eighth, and that's
when I first got my look at the defense team

(51:04):
as well as the prosecutors.

Speaker 2 (51:07):
Right, you write a very dramatic scene. We go back
a bit where Caroline Folo receives the call when she's
socializing about the arrest of Larry Larry Smith. But now
this case is taken to trial and that enthusiasm or

(51:27):
confidences has been damaged somewhat, but she still has very
much confidence in the prosecution. And Donna Fenton doesn't.

Speaker 4 (51:35):
She she really does. She has tremendous confidence in her.
She loves Lisa Killing, the lead detective. She calls her
her second daughter. Kerry Krutcher is her other daughter, who
her real daughter. I got to know very welder in
this case, who was incredible to talk to him hear
her insights. But she was very comfortable with the team,

(51:59):
and they had had over a year before the case
went to trial of build up of thinking that this
was going to be the resolution for their family. And
here she was now eighty years old, and she wanted
this to be resolved and have a knowledge of who
had done this to her father. And so she and

(52:20):
Bob Filo were there attending everything from the miranda hearings
to the first day of the trial to the entire trial.
And I flew up and I was there also.

Speaker 2 (52:33):
Tell us what the charges were that were laid the
various counts in this trial.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
In this trial, the accounts were a first degree murder,
which is premeditated murder, and that's something that was on
the books in nineteen seventy one in Maryland when the
murder had occurred, So they felt it was important that
that that was a murder charge that was allowed to
that time. But they also had another charge, which was

(53:05):
felony murder, and that's murder that's submitted while in the
conducting or doing a felony such as burglary. Right, that
was first degree felony murder. And then the final charge
was second degree felony murder. So there were three charges
at that time, all related to the murder of JT.

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Hall.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Now let's get to this trial and some of the
main the main characters. Lisa Killen takes the stand, Katie
Leggett takes the stand. Tell us about the central figures
that take the stand and what they impart to the
jurors in their testimony.

Speaker 4 (53:45):
I think that both of them were excellent witnesses and
they what they broke it down to was that here
was a man who had within eighteen months of this occurring,
this murder occurring, had identified himself as being a witness
to the murder. He just come across the Manor country
Club when it happened. And although he'd gotten a lot

(54:08):
of the facts wrong. They said it well, the way
it was phrased by the prosecution was that he was lying,
on the one hand, keep himself from being a suspect
and the murder, but telling enough at that time to
try to get himself leniency. And I think that with
Lisa killing they used her to go back through the

(54:29):
entire process of what it was like, all the places
they went across the country, interviewing different suspects, people that
could have been involved, and then finally how she had
found the real, real tape and had it changed into
a form digitalized that she could use. And I thought
you did a very good job of taking you through.
She took you through these control calls that had been

(54:51):
made by Rizzo, and then she took us through the interrogation, interrogation,
and then actually Lisa Killen was on the stand and
when the tape was played from the interrogation where Becker confessed.
Now I should say that it was I kind of
felt that the flow of the trial this was a

(55:11):
little bit more for the prosecution, but it was because
they had to present witnesses when they could get them.
So Lisa Killen's testimony was interrupted several times by other witnesses.
For example, they had the son and daughter of Becker testify,
and they were going to be up there for a
certain day, so they kind of were put in when

(55:34):
they could be when they were willing to testify, and
they were not cooperative witnesses. They did not say this.
The recording showed that in what his daughter had said
to one of the police officers after her talking to
her father, they did not say in the court itself

(55:54):
that he had confessed to the murders, but only said
that he had talked about robbery. And the prosecution even
went back to these written statements and recorded statements, said
do you remember this and all?

Speaker 3 (56:06):
And they said no.

Speaker 4 (56:08):
The other people that had to be brought into interrupt
Lisa were the police officers from Herkimer County, New York.
Hald flown down and could only be used for a day,
and so Lisa's testimony was kind of piecemealed through. But
eventually they had her do the entire interrogation tape and
that was done over a couple of days in front

(56:29):
of the jury.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
One question I had was how did Lisa or Kate Leggett,
but maybe Lisa, how did she explain all of the
inconsistencies that David Smith had originally when he came forward
to try to get the deal to reduce his prison
escape sentence. Is there any anyone asked why he would

(56:55):
lie so blatantly but at the same time be trying
to gain favor with police to try to reduce his sentence.
How would he rationalize lying so much that the police
didn't believe his statements? Anyway?

Speaker 4 (57:13):
I don't think that that was ever well explained. I
think that it was they made it out that almost
he was, on the one hand, very savvy and very
smart and able to make up this whole story and
all these other things that weren't true, but also includes
enough details you know, that were true to show that
he was there. But when you looked at him, he

(57:35):
was a man who at that time had an IQ
of eighty seven.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
He was not a very smart man.

Speaker 4 (57:40):
He had a IQ testing done when he was twelve,
he had been sent away to a place for wayward boys,
and he'd been tested in his IQ was eighty seven,
and then at the time when they did the interrogation
and arrested him, his IQ had dropped. Later on with
psychological testing that he showed his IQ was eighty three.
So it was a little bit hard to understand how

(58:02):
someone that wasn't didn't seem to be that smart, could
both give you details that were so accurate to details
and then have everything else mixed up and all so
that they said it was because of his trying to
get leniency but not wanting to be part of you know,
arrested or part of the suspect.

Speaker 3 (58:25):
It was a little bit hard looking back on it
to believe.

Speaker 2 (58:30):
Now, this person, Bobby ray Edwards, this person that is
accused of the murderer or accused of being with the murderer,
testifies that trial. Tell us how effective or not effective
his testimony was in the trial.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
He was actually brought in as a witness for the
prosecution as you know, someone that he had that they
were talking about.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
But I think that.

Speaker 4 (58:57):
He basically gave a to the defense because he was
the only one of the boys who had maintained contact.

Speaker 3 (59:06):
With Larry Becker Smith both before when he went.

Speaker 4 (59:10):
To jail, while during he was in jail, and then
afterwards when Larry had moved to New York, and he
said that he had not been involved in any burglary
or murder that occurred at the Manor Country Club, and
that he knew of nothing to suggest that Larry Becker
had been involved either, and he was.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Really as close as friend.

Speaker 4 (59:33):
So in my opinion, his testimony was waged more for
the defense.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
Just reading this trial as an observer and other people
as well, Caroline Filo most importantly and Bob as well.
What was their mood at the conclusion of this trial
before the jury went to deliberations, What did they think
the outcome of this trial would be.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
They thought he would be a convicted of fel any
murder first degree. They did not feel that it was
a premeditated murder. They felt that he and whoever he
said was with him, Raven another man named Mark Jensen,
had burglarized the home, were carrying objects across the golf

(01:00:21):
course to take with them, some of which would be
good for someone who is living on the streets like
Larry was, including sheets and things for beds, things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
So they did not They felt.

Speaker 4 (01:00:32):
That the trial had gone very well and they felt
that he was going to be convicted. They felt that
the defense had done a good job and they were
doing all this pro bono free. All the work and all,
but they felt that the jury would come back with
a guilty verdict.

Speaker 2 (01:00:53):
Now, for the jurors, they were instructed. And I've read
many judges instructions to juries, and I marvel at the
length that the statements are made by the judge. And
then I find it confusing myself. If just the instructions
on you could make the decision, It's not anything I say. However,

(01:01:17):
there seems to be a lot of instructions that seem
somewhat confusing, but tell us about the the unanimous nature
of their decision being integral to these to this case
and to this verdict.

Speaker 4 (01:01:33):
The jury from this trial kay Was after three days
came back to the judge and said that they were deadlocked,
and they talked about it, and it turned out that
they also had felt they had voted unanimously that he
was not guilty of premeditated murder or the first way murder.

(01:01:54):
But they were deadlocked with regards to the charges of peony,
first refoundy murder, her and secondary phony murder. And interestingly enough,
they were deadlocked we found out later ten two or
eleven one in favor of him being guilty, but they
could not convince the one or two people that he
was guilty. The defense wanted the judge to say that

(01:02:18):
because of the innocence, that they should announce a verdict
as being innocent on the one count they couldn't reach
a verdict on the other accounts, But the judge said no,
she was labeling it all a mistrial. She had been
planning on retiring, but she felt that she should be
the one because this has been such an incredible case
with so many twists and turns, that she should be

(01:02:40):
the one to be.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
In charge of this next trial.

Speaker 4 (01:02:44):
So she brought both of the defense and the prosecution
to her chambers. After they decided they labeled the trial
a mistrial and a hung jury to set a date
to have a retrial.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yeah, it was interesting. I'm glad you made that point
that the jurors could not separate these counts in terms
of guilt in their decision. They had to be all
put together. The judge sided, I think it's very important.

Speaker 3 (01:03:10):
Yes, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
So now right away there's another trial, and of course
the prosecution gets set. But there is a distinct disadvantage
for them in this retrial and an advantage for the
prosecutor for the defense in another trial, tell us what
that advantage and disadvantage would be.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
One of the charges in the second trial that the
was in June of twenty twenty four, so approximately six
months at the first trial concluded, was that they made
Raven Bobby Ray Edwards an unindicted co conspirator. So what
that did was that made it so that Raven, they

(01:03:57):
said that they were investigating further to see the felt
that he could be part of the team that burglarized
the Schmid home and killed the deputy sheriff. Because of that,
Ravens hired an attorney who advised him to invoke his
Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify at the second trial.

(01:04:18):
And the defense, of course would want him to testify
because if he was an underdoted co conspirator and he
had said that if he had been involved in it,
he said that their client Larry Smith, had had nothing
to do with it at the previous trial, they would
want to put him on the stand again to say that.
But because he was put as an unindicted co conspirator,

(01:04:39):
it took him away as a witness for defense. He
basically took the Fifth Amendment on every charge, and so
he was. He did not testify at the second trial.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
what else did the defense learn from the first trial
and change in their strategy. We'll say in terms of
their focus in this second trial.

Speaker 4 (01:05:08):
The defense learned about false confessions, which I found an
incredibly interesting topic who read about and learn about. What
we don't realize is that jurors and judges will use
confessions as evidence above almost anything else. But there are circumstances,

(01:05:30):
and there's now a science based on it that there
are things reasons why people make false confessions that they
didn't really do something, but they end up saying that
they did. As a matter of fact, there's a statistic
that twenty four percent of cases that are overturned by
DNA evidence that is irrefutable. In twenty four percent of

(01:05:53):
those cases, part of the reason why the defendant hadden
Fould guilty was by a confession. So the evidence showed
that they didn't do it, but because of certain factors,
they had confessed to doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
And as the defense.

Speaker 4 (01:06:08):
Learned more and more, they learned that someone like Larry
who was someone who had a low IQ, wasn't best smart,
who had medical issues, who wanted to do it, was
somewhat of a compulsive liar, someone that wanted to please people,
who wanted you if you kept asking him, asking him,
he wanted to get a story that would please you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:28):
Maybe a lie, but it would please you. As they
dug more and more.

Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
Into this, they decided that they wanted to introduce these
two false confession experts to testify at the second trial,
and they even had a briefing done for the defense
where the briefing was done by someone who was also
an attorney and who was an expert in false confessions,

(01:06:54):
and they in that briefing said that they should definitely
allow in the second trial these two experts to testify
and show that this confession had been given to that
the words what the What Kevin told me later on,
Kevin Collins, the lead attorney, was that rather than saying

(01:07:15):
concentrating on what Larry said and things like that, what
they concentrated on after talking with these false confession experts
was where did the information come during the confession during
the interrogation that Larry said When they fighted it back
and listened to it, they felt that most of the
things are everything that he said tying him to the
murder had been fed to him by the interrogating detectives.

Speaker 2 (01:07:40):
Wow, there was one answer that the prosecution tried to
say was quite profound after all of this, Why confess
to murder to your own children?

Speaker 4 (01:07:55):
Yes, that's exactly right, And that's something that's when I
talked to one of the jurors from the first trial.
They said, I said, what made you you know it
was ten too guilty?

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
What made you think he was guilty? And she said
three confessions, she.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
Said, the first confession, but then when you within the
next day he confessed to your two children, then that's
why I felt he was guilty. So something they felt
that even though he'd said that to his children, it
had been put into his mind and he was now
saying a false set of fact. He was relaying a

(01:08:32):
false set of facts, and that's everything that all three
of his confessions were false.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
So this trial goes different than the first trial. The
defense learns has a completely different strategy and employs a
couple expert witnesses to explain the phenomena of false confessions
and how it applies to this case.

Speaker 3 (01:08:56):
No, the would not.

Speaker 4 (01:08:57):
The judge decided that she would not allow these false
confession experts to testify I see, and she also before
the case went to second trial, the defense had also
asked that they removed the tag of unindicted co conspirator
of Raven Bobby ray Edwards in order that he could

(01:09:19):
be a witness, and the judge also sided with the
prosecution on that. So even though they did not have
these experts on false confessions, they basically based their case
on that and showed how this was a man that
was easily persuadable. It had been so many years, different memories.
Although he was only arrested for one burglary, he at

(01:09:41):
one time said he and his colleagues committed daytime burglaries,
so he probably was involved in other ones, and that
he had just gotten all the facts confused, and that
when this new set of information had been presented to him,
he eventually bought into it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
The base basically though, the defense had a term for
his mental state, but essentially you right, that was dementia.
So was the jury convinced that he was suffering from dementia?

Speaker 4 (01:10:14):
No, they had a psychologist evaluate him for the defense
and he felt, as you said, that he was suffering
from dementia and also from depression, and the prosecution brought
on a psychiatrist, an MD instead of a PhD. And
what she said was that she did not feel the
or any signs of dementia, that his IQ had dropped

(01:10:38):
four points, which was very reasonable considering the year fifty
two years had passed, and that he showed no signs
of depression more than someone that was in jail would show.

Speaker 3 (01:10:49):
So I think that the prosecution.

Speaker 4 (01:10:53):
Was able to in a good way refute and just
talking to the jurors to refute that argument, and that
I don't think that the jury felt that this was
a man who was cemented or depressed. I think this
was they felt, you know, the consideration was whether or
not they would come to the conclusion that he had
poor memory, that he could be fed information and then

(01:11:14):
to please the interrogators to get him off his back,
to stop the situation that he eventually confessed to do
with the murder.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
So let's talk about the jurors and the reaction and
the verdict, and after we'll talk about Carolyn follow and
her family's reaction.

Speaker 4 (01:11:36):
The a jurors went out to deliberate on a Wednesday,
and they deliberated all that Wednesday, Thursday, and then Friday.
The judge was getting about five o'clock in the afternoon.
Judge was going to send them home for the weekend,
and they said, please just give us a little bit

(01:11:57):
more time.

Speaker 3 (01:11:58):
We think we're close to a verdict. So they gave him.

Speaker 4 (01:12:02):
More time, and then the jury came back into the
room and the verdict was not guilty on all charges.

Speaker 3 (01:12:12):
Now it was not only first to be felonily.

Speaker 5 (01:12:15):
Murder, first degree murder, second degree murder, a conspiracy to
commit murder with a conspiracy with raven to commit murder,
and also burglary.

Speaker 3 (01:12:27):
Charged on all these charges, he was found and not guilty.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
You what was your reaction, but more importantly, what was
Caroline Folo's reaction and the family's reaction.

Speaker 4 (01:12:42):
First of all, I'm going to say that the family
was extremely upset and immediately went back to their hotel
and left the city. They felt that justice was not
served and were very upset about what had happened in
the trial. I had found out a couple of pieces
of additional information during the trial. This second trial. They

(01:13:03):
were not brought out in the first trial at all.
No one could tell me why it wasn't brought out.
But going into the first trial and hearing all the
others and things like that, I kind of thought it
was a wash. I thought there was a good chance
it could be a hung jury. Although this three confession idea,
especially after talking to Katie Leggett, who was an expert

(01:13:25):
at this and who had said she'd never heard an
innocent person confess.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
I was leaning towards fact that he could be guilty.
But during the second.

Speaker 4 (01:13:33):
Trial it came out that in that nineteen seventy three investigation,
they had recorded several hours of it with those three
police officers. But later on the next day they had
taken him, taken Larry Beckersmith to the country club parking lot,
and lo and behold who was there to walk at

(01:13:54):
the area with him and listen to the entire story.
But ow Sweat, Yeah, w Sweat, who had done forty
murder cases and solved thirty nine of them. Ow Sweat,
who was considered their top detective. Ow Sweat went through
everything with him. He at all everything he had to say,

(01:14:15):
including these pieces of evidence that the detectives Lisa Kill
and Katie Leggott later seized on.

Speaker 3 (01:14:22):
But he also heard about the fact that it was
a clear night.

Speaker 4 (01:14:27):
What the sheriff had been wearing where he showed him
the o W Sweat where the body had been found
was completely different from where the body actually had been found.
Ow Sweat listened to everything that Larry had to say,
and he concluded that he didn't have eyes on this.
So when I heard that, up till that point, like

(01:14:52):
I said, I was kind of iffy one way or
the other. But when I heard, and of course I
wanted a closure for the Philo family.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
For Carolyn Folow, I'd known.

Speaker 4 (01:15:01):
Her for over thirty years right and over this last
year she said that she'd become like my mother, although
she'd have to be very young to have had me
to be my mother.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
But I had tremendous empathy for them, and I wanted
them to have closure.

Speaker 4 (01:15:14):
But when I thought back through it, and I said, oh,
this is the man. He wanted to close this more
than anyone. He had a perfect record. You know, it'd
be like having a one thousand batting average and then
this is your one time you didn't make it. And
he said, this man does not have did not have
eyes eyeballs on the crime. He was not there, and

(01:15:36):
that to me was the way the piece of evidence
that threw it towards Yeah, I agree with the jury.

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):
I think he wasn't guilty.

Speaker 4 (01:15:46):
I don't know why, and no one could tell me,
to my satisfaction, including Kevin Collins why I interviewed.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
No one could tell me why that hadn't come.

Speaker 4 (01:15:53):
Out at the first trial, but it did come out
to the second trial. Interestingly enough, Bob Filo had a
different take on it. He was angry at ow Sweat
because he said, well, if he had heard him with
that time, and it's just eighteen months after the murder,
why didn't he jump in on the two pieces of
evidence that he did say right that there'd been two

(01:16:15):
shots and that there had been a flashlight and say
that he was and have him go to trial. Then,
like I said, I came to a different conclusion, and
I think that the jury did also. I'm not saying
that was the main thing that swayed them when you talked,
when they talked to the jury, when we talked to
the jury, they said the main thing that swayed them
was the way the defense had gone back and shown

(01:16:36):
how the detectives had said certain certain things in their interrogation,
and that Larry Becker Smith had not mentioned those previously,
but later on he took those as part of what
he had to say.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
And putting that all together, you say that Kevin Collins
really opened your eyes as well as with what he
had to say, but also especially ow sweat and what
he had said. So putting this all together, you conclude
that it's likely he was innocent.

Speaker 4 (01:17:08):
Exactly although I felt after I said that, and after
I wrote the book, I sent a copy to the
Filos and they didn't that. They weren't happy with it,
and you know, they felt it was that this was
man that had done it, and this was the enclosure

(01:17:29):
for them that fifty years of working to get the
murderer caught who Carolyn's and murdered Carolyn's father, Bob, father
in law, they were incredibly close. That's you know, how
could I have come to such a conclusion, And so
I had, you know, looked at everything myself, and I

(01:17:49):
wasn't going to change my mind. But at the end
of the book, I let Bob Filo write his thoughts
about the case, and that's how the book you know,
at the very end of the bok So it shows
my opinion what I think. Also, I have Bob Filow
writing what he thought.

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Well, it's understandable. I think once they have the first
trial mistrial, then they have the second trial and it
completely exonerates Larry Smith. You can't be happy after that,
no matter what you wrote.

Speaker 4 (01:18:20):
Basically, yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
But it was such an important thing to them, to
the Filos, that he be found guilty because they felt
that he was. They had been fed that, they'd been
feeling this for a couple of years. They've been involved
from the first time. Carolyn got the phone call saying

(01:18:40):
while she was playing Bunko, saying that we found the murderer.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
He's confessed and where he's waived extradition, he's.

Speaker 4 (01:18:46):
Coming back to Maryland to stand trial, and everything's all
set up. They were convinced that this was the closure,
this was what had happened. That's as I said, I
was talking to them, and until I really saw what
happened in the second case and relooked at things and
relooked at what are false confessions they actually do happen,

(01:19:10):
you know, So after looking at things and re looking
at it, and then finding out only in the.

Speaker 3 (01:19:15):
Second trial that ow Sweat had had the chance.

Speaker 4 (01:19:18):
Interestingly enough, when ow Sweat in nineteen seventy three had
interviewed him and talked to him, only his interview was
not recorded and they did not have any tape of that.
Only the first day was recorded with the three police officers.
So you wonder if the second day had been recorded
if this would have gone to trial.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
But it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
Yes, very very interesting. I want to thank you very much,
Michael F. Weisberg for coming on and talking about your
extraordinary A second shot the pursuit of justice in Maryland's
oldest cold case murder. For those that would like to
check out more about this story, do have a website
or do any social media?

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
Absolutely my website, my literary website is Michael F. As
in Franklin Weisberg dot com. And the book is available
on Amazon and at all bookstores. So if anyone wants

(01:20:21):
to see anything about my previous two books, any other writing,
short stories and things like that I've done, they can
go to my website and it also has a link
that'll take them to buy the book as well.

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
That's fantastic second shot. The pursuit of justice in Maryland's
oldest cold case murder. Michael F. Weisberg, thank you so
much for this interview, and you have a great evening
and good night, right Dan, thank you, thank you,