CHASSON'S RUN-Daniel Zimmerman

On September 6, 1982, convicted murderer Leroy James Chasson made a daring break for freedom from the Massachusetts Correctional Institute-Walpole—one of the most infamous, escape-proof prisons in the country. But this wasn't just any prison break. It was a meticulously planned, five-year effort, made possible by an unlikely accomplice—Kathleen MacDonald, Chasson's former pen-pal turned wife.
True crime author Daniel Zimmerman (SHOTS IN THE DARK) brings the shocking escape to life, detailing how Chasson, wounded and bleeding from self-inflicted wounds was first transferred to a hospital for treatment. Then, using a .45 automatic smuggled to him by his wife who was disguised as a nurse, took hospital guards and staff hostage, before fleeing under a hail of gunfire.
Dubbed the "Bonnie and Clyde" of Massachusetts, the couple’s daring run across the country captivated the nation and they would evade capture for years. Living under assumed identities, they nearly made it—until a tip from America's Most Wanted led to their eventual capture in 1989. Joining me to discuss, CHASSON’S RUN: The Prison Break That Captivated America and the Love Story That Fueled It—Daniel Zimmerman

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 Zufanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Iddy me. On September sixth, nineteen eighty two, convicted murderer
Leroy James Chason made a daring break for freedom from
the Massachusetts Correctional Institute Walpole, one of the most infamous
escape proof prisons in the country. But this wasn't just

(01:00):
any prison break. It was a meticulously planned five year
effort made possible by an unlikely accomplice, Kathleen MacDonald, Chason's
former penpalell turned wife. True crime author Daniel Zimmerman Shots
in the Dark brings the shocking escape to life, detailing

(01:22):
how Chason, wounded and bleeding from self inflicted wounds, was
first transferred to a hospital for treatment, then, using a
forty five automatic smuggled to him by his wife, who
was disguised as a nurse, took hospital guards and staff
hostage before fleeing under a hail of gunfire. Dubbed the

(01:45):
Bonnie and Clyde of Massachusetts, the couple's daring run across
the country captivated the nation, and they would evade capture
for years, living under assumed identities. They nearly made it
until from America's Most Wanted led to their eventual capture
in nineteen eighty nine. The book you were featuring this

(02:08):
evening is Chasin's Run, the prison break that captivated America
and the love story that fueled it. With my special
guest author Daniel Zimmerman. Thank you very much for this
interview and welcome back to the program. Daniel Zimmerman.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Well, I'm glad to have this opportunity to tell my story,
tell the story about Jason's Run, which is my newest
book published by Wild Blue Press, actually my second book,
and it came out it was actually released on May
the twentieth, so it's fairly recent and I'm actually just
getting started in a lot of the promotion work and

(02:48):
getting the word out there. But I have had quite
a few friends and relatives who've already read the book,
and I'm getting some pretty good feedback. I'm getting excellent
feedback on the story on my method of telling it.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Absolutely tell us, just briefly, how you came to be
the author, why you wanted to be the author of
this story. Chasin's run.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Sure, well I have. I've had two distinct careers in
my life. I'm semi retired now, although I do work
four part time jobs to keep busy, and I did
say four my first my first career pretty much after
I got out of high school, I was in an
EMT and emergency medical technician working for a private ambulance

(03:33):
service out of the town of Norwood, Massachusetts, and that
service was responsible for transporting prison inmates from two prisons
in the in the area MCI Walpole. MCI stands for
Massachusetts Correctional Institute, so it was MCI Walpole, which is
a notorious prison and on the East Coast, and then

(03:56):
also MCI Norfolk, which is a medium security kind of
a step down from warpole for inmates. So this ambulance
service that I worked for, I was one of the
nts that was responsible for transporting inmates, whether they're sick
or injured, to nearby hospitals. This story came into play
more or less in the Laby Day weekend of nineteen

(04:17):
eighty two, and I was actually scheduled to work that weekend.
I was on the calendar to be working that weekend,
and I decided that I had a girlfriend at the time.
We eventually married, but we decided we wanted to kind
of go away for the long holiday weekend, and I
reached out to one of my colleague his name is
Bobby's a Meadow and asked him, Bobby, could you work

(04:40):
for me this laby Day weekend and I'll cover fore
you another time, and he was agreeable. He took the shift,
and when I came back to work on Tuesday morning
after the holiday weekend, I walked into the office to
do my thing and get my ambulance ready, and Bobby
comes over to me and he puts both hands around
my neck and starts to choke me, kind of, you know, chokingly.

(05:01):
He wasn't really trying to hurt me in anyway. But
I said to him, I said, Bobby, you know what gives?
What's the matter what he says? He says, because I
worked for you, I had a gun held on me.
It's your fault. I could only I should be dead
right now. And then he told me the story behind
it so needless to say, I was it was supposed
to be me in that ambulance with mister Chas and

(05:22):
not Bobby, but wow, I did feel the impact.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, let's get to late August nineteen seventy seven and
the location is Chelsea, which you say is just a
bridge away from Boston, and you take us to a
character named Brian Rocky Fitzgerald six foot four, twenty four
years old. His family calls him to Protector, tell us

(05:49):
what he's doing late August nineteen seventy seven one night.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
Well, he's actually at a send off party for his girlfriend, Jean.
She was going to college in Texas the next day,
and a lot of their friends had decided to have
a little party for her at a home and Chelsea
a mutual friend, you know, to say goodbye as they
were getting ready to go the next day. And so
he gets he decides he's going to go on a

(06:17):
on a beer run. Yeah, they were running a little
bit low on beer, and he agreed to take take
the car and zip up to the nearby package store
and buy buy some beer for the for the party.
He was approached by Leroy Chasin saying that he wanted
to come along, and you know, he'd helped put the
bill for the beer and so forth. He had other

(06:39):
emotives that he did not share with Fitzgerald at the time.
So they get in the car and they head to
the package store, and in the midst of that a
conversation takes place where mister Chason he wants to take
a ride to Quinsy, Massachusetts, which is about half an
hour south of where they actually were. Wendsay's on the
south side of Boston. Ll he's on the north side

(07:01):
of Boston. That Fitzgerald agrees, but really doesn't want to
do it. It's, first of all, it's not his car
with his girlfriend's car. Second of all, he doesn't really
know this guy Chasing. He had met him once before,
very brief meeting, and he also heard some things about
Chasing that kind of were unsettling. He had done a

(07:22):
lot of time. He was a known criminal, a little
bit of a bragget when it came to that too.
He kind of bragged about his criminal escapades through his
early years. You know, Fitzgerald was kind of a captive audience.
I guess you could say. He's in the car and
even though he's a big guy and could handle himself.
He was nervous about chasing as far as if he said,

(07:45):
note him, if he refused the ride to Quinsy, you
know what, bad things could happen. So he agreed to
do it. So they bought the bear at the package
store and off they went, heading south on what we
call the express Way, which is into State ninety three,
and they took the trip from Chelsea to Quincy relatively quickly.

(08:06):
It was in the evening. They end up at Pageant Field,
which is a huge complex in Quincy which with baseball
fields and other facilities for the Quincy youth. And while
they're there, there's a party going on, which is almost
a nightly type thing with these kids, they're all twenty somethings.
The Quinsy police really don't mind them hanging out there

(08:29):
and having a beer or two, is, you know, because
they're keeping out of trouble and they're not bothering anybody.
And on arrival at Pageant Field, mister Chasin approaches a
gentleman by the name of Kevin Rossett. Kevin was a
former drug dealer who had done some wrong to one

(08:50):
of Lee Roy Chasin's friend in prison. As far as
not sending in the full order or overcharging him and
so forth. There was some money involved. And Chason actually
the reason he was going to pageant Field to encounter
this gentleman, mister Rossett, was because a a cellmate at

(09:12):
MCI Conquered had asked him to do that. Basically, his
name was Mark Bray and he wanted to get his
money back or the drugs that were owe to him.
He couldn't go to Quincy himself because he had also
he had escaped from prison and he was kind of
on the run and he didn't want to show his face.

(09:34):
So he asked mister Chason, who was out free he
had been paroled, would you mind running this errand for me.
So off he goes, and he gets into an accounter
of this verbal kind of exchange between them. It's kind
of heated and Chason basically just slugs Rossett knocks him
to the ground and as a result, Rossett's friends who

(09:58):
were nearby, launched themselves at lee Roy Chason to protect
their friend who was lying on the ground that assault.
During that assault, Chason pull pull out a knife and
he started randomly stabbing people. He stabbed two, one fatally.

(10:20):
He soon left the passiont Field with Fitzgerald, who drove
him out of there. When the police later asked him,
you know, you knew, you knew he'd stab people, you
knew he was assaulting people with knives, you know, more
or less white, Why did you drive him out of there?
And Fitzgerald's reasoning was that Jason was still kind of

(10:40):
in that groove where he might have hurt more people,
and he felt it was his responsibility to get to
get him out of there, and he did. He drove,
He drove the alleged killer out of Passion Field and
back to Chelsea, back to the party house.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
You right that back at the party house. Is he
his girlfriend Jean wondering what took so long? He left
for hours when he was only supposed to be gone
for a few minutes. And as you write, the people
at the party had already heard that their friend Paul
Melody was stabbed and killed. So tell us about who

(11:19):
was at the party, including Mark Bray and sort of
the event at the party wants Jason is there, and
Mark Bray and Brian Fitzgerald comes back to the party
as well.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Well. He came back to the party basically to get
back to his girlfriend Jean and get rid of Chason
in some way. He again, he was hesitant to drive
him anywhere after the scene at Pageant Field, but he
felt he had no choice. He felt a threat. Obviously,
Chason had a knife. He didn't know if he disposed

(11:56):
of it, so he thought that he could be the
next victim. Even even while he's driving him on the highway.
He get back to the car, mister Fitzgerald actually calls
his mother. They had stopped at the mother's house briefly
he wanted to wash up. He was covered with blood
and Jason was with him. Not much said between the

(12:18):
mother and Chason, but she did witness the bloody shirt
and her son, Brian Fitzgerald basically said, we got to fight.
We got in a fight. He excused it as a fight.
The police later visited with her and determined it was
far more than just a simple fight. When he got
back to the party, he did call his mother and

(12:38):
she confirmed after being visited by the police, she confirmed
that yes, in fact, Paul Melody had perished and that
was shared around the party. Mark Bray, who was there.
Mark Bray was the trigger of this entire event because
he's the one that sent Jason on this mission. Kind
of I guess you could say. He ducked his head
in shame and eventually left that house after everybody had

(13:03):
learned what took place. He left that house. Chason went
into the went into one of the bathrooms to you know,
try to rinse off the shirt from the blood that
he was covered with blood. And he tried to rinse
the shirt, and then he teamed up with Mark Bray
who went with him and the third gentleman, and the
three of them made their way out of the party.

(13:24):
They did not stay long long enough for a lot
of accusatory stairs. There was a very tense time at
the house, but Chason left and then he went to
his apartment in nearby Somerville. The three of them drove
to the apartment. Now at this apartment was his girlfriend, Linnell,

(13:44):
Jason's girlfriend, Linnell Travers, and her roommate, and a three
year old by the name of Derek Travers. Derek was
according to Leroy and everybody else Leroy Leroy, Chase and son.
So he was a living boyfriend with Linel and they

(14:04):
had a son, and he was three at the time
of this event. That's important and later on in the book,
because things are revealed after later on in life to
Derek the toddler. So anyways, Leroy goes to his apartment
in Somerville. He's there to get a fresh shirt and
his guns. He's going on the run. He's going to

(14:26):
go on the lamb and he needs his weapons, so
he retrieves guns out of a bureau draw that he
had stashed. He and Mark Bray leave Somerville in the
stolen car. The third man who was with them, he
stayed behind to face the music. He wasn't going on
the run with them. He wasn't involved in the actual

(14:46):
murder of Paul Melody, and he knew that, and he
figured he could he could dance dance out of it
and just face charges for perhaps a stolen car or
aiding in a betting an escape future in this case.
So he stayed behind and off Chason and Bray went
in the car. They eventually made their way to Rhode Island,

(15:11):
spent one night in a motel to kind of collect
their thoughts and make their plans, and then after that
night they made their way back to Boston. Mark Bray
had a room that he had rented at a nearby
hotel kind of off the beaten path in Boston, a
place called the Milner, And because he was an escapee

(15:33):
from prison, he figured that the best thing to do
was to stay at a place where he with the
police likely wanted check for him, like we want to
look for him. He was wrong about that. Actually, they
did eventually go to the Milner to see if he
if he was there, but he and Leroy had long
since made their way out of there with a third party.

(15:57):
Somebody had joined them in the midst of this escape.
Her name was Kathleen MacDonald and her story is hugely interesting.
She had arranged to meet up with Chason in Boston.
Leroy had sent Mark Bray to retrieve her and bring
her back to meet him where they were. He was

(16:18):
holding up it. He was sitting at the in the
Boston Common waiting for her. And the story behind Kathleen
Chasin is that she was a married woman with six
children living in the Weymouth area, which is a town
adjacent to Quinsy ironically, and she met Leroy by way

(16:40):
of a you could call it a pen palce situation.
Leroy Chason was in jail. He was incocerated for on
robbery at the time, and he was seeking an appeal
and he needed five hundred dollars. The lawyer wanted five
hundred dollars, so he put a chase and put an
ad in the Boston Phoenix newspaper, which is a local

(17:02):
paper that runs kind of kind of strange ads, I guess,
you could say, And he wanted five hundred people to
send him one dollar so he could accumulate that money.
And Kathleen had read the ad and she felt for
him and sent him one dollar in a greeting card.
And she actually within that card left her a return
address and Lee where I wrote back to her, wrote

(17:24):
a letter and they started a correspondence and in simple terms,
they fell in love with each other. She left her husband,
she left her children, and she became his prison prison girlfriend.
They eventually got married in the prison and that's how
that's how they get together. By way of being a

(17:45):
simple pen pal. Mark Bray was was best of friends.
They were He and Chason were pretty tight. And Mark
Bray had no idea that he had this woman, this girlfriend,
Kathleen Chasin, that he had been corresponding with and seeing
on a regular basis because she was visiting Chason in prison.
But Mark Bray, you know, he was willing to help

(18:07):
his friend. They were both on the run together, they
were doing what they had to do. So the three
of them teamed up in Boston and eventually made their
way north. The proposed destination brought on by Chason was Montreal, Canada.
That's where he wanted to hide out. He never gave
his colleague any indication as to why Mark Bray wanted

(18:28):
to go to Florida, somewhere warm, and he had connections
in Florida. But Jason was kind of a stubborn guy
and he really didn't say no to him. Throughout the book,
throughout the story, very few people had the nerve to
say no to le Roy Chason in any respect, any
respect at all. So everything he insisted upon Marc Bray

(18:48):
accommodated him. So the three of them off they go.
They end up in western Maine, near the New Hampshire border,
and the destination is a antique store. Chasin had gotten
wind that there was an antique store that had these
very expensive clocks that if he stole them, he had

(19:10):
a fence lined up that he would be able to
sell the clocks and have some seed money to help
them be on the lamb and continue their escape. Unfortunately
worded trickle Down. Unfortunately for Chasing. I should say word
to trickle Down that this may happen. The local law
enforcement there set up a kind of a sting to

(19:34):
wait for them at this clock store. They had actually
visited it once they were seen, and then they took off,
but then they came back and the law enforcement, the
sheriff set up a sting and they eventually apprehended Marc
Bray coming out of the store, Kathleen who was sitting
in the car waiting, and were handcuffing them in front

(19:57):
of the store when Leroy Chasing came out of the
building with a hostage, and that was the owner of
the store, the hostage. There was a little bit of
a tense moment where Jason was holding a gun on
the sheriff and they were pointing basically pointing guns at
each other. But Jason got better of it and then

(20:18):
his hostage escaped his grasp. He happened to be the
owner of the store. He ran into the store and disappeared,
and Chason took off back into the store, found his
way to the back of the building and an open
window and jumped out and he took off through some
open fields to safety. It took four hours to apprehend him.

(20:43):
They set up a police dragnet. There were state police
from New Hampshire, from Maine, local officers, and one officer
who happened to own a small plane. He got up
in his plane and spotted Chason on the other skirts
of the woods, and they zeroed in on him and

(21:03):
arrested him, took him into custody.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now you talk about the arrest of Leroy
Chasin and Kathleen MacDonald by state troopers. Is that who
eventually arrested him.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yes, it was a group of state troopers combined effort
between New Hampshire and Maine. The store and the location,
the antique store in the location was right on the
border of those two states. So it was a team
effort between the two states along with the local law
enforcement that zeroed in mister Jason and eventually arrested and

(21:45):
brought him into custody. He was arraigned in a court
room in Maine and eventually he was picked up by
the Quinsy Police. They sent a contingent of officers along
state troopers from Massachusetts to be able to bring him
back to Quincy to face questioning and be officially charged

(22:07):
for the crime of murder and I'm robbery now because
of the antique store. So they were brought back to Quincy.
They were all questioned the sequence. In the meantime, there
were a lot of interviews going on. As you see
in the book, there were interviews going on between the
Quincy police detectives, a lot of the witnesses that were
at Pageant Field and night of the murder. They kind

(22:27):
of went through them one by one. A lot of
resistance on the part of these kids. When I read
over the documents provided by the Quincy police, it was
a four hundred page report book length itself, just on
the questioning of these individuals, and there was a lot
of resistance on the part of the witnesses because many
of them had done time. They were there's a lot

(22:51):
of a lot of drug activity in the late seventies
and Quinsy and basically everywhere else but Quincy was known
in Eastern Massachusetts Greater Boss scenario as being a kind
of a hotbed for drug activity, and so a lot
of these kids had spent time in jail and there
was that kind of built in resistance to any anything

(23:13):
the police would do. That and the fact there were
a couple of them that that didn't want to talk
because they didn't want to be what they what they
called rats and kind of spell out their own their
own friends. Even though Leroy Chason wasn't a friend of
any of theirs, they still felt that, you know, they
just didn't want to share the story and be described

(23:34):
as a rat in this crime. So the police had there,
they were cut off with them as far as interviewing
these folks. And then when when Lee Roy and Kathleen
and Mark Bray were apprehended, those interviews as well. Then
it go quite as they had hoped, but they did
get enough evidence. The murder weapon was eventually turned up.

(23:56):
There was a quite the search for that, and it
turned up it was actually thrown by mister Chason as
he's escaping the antique store. He kept the gun he
had on him, but he threw the knife into a
fireplace and the business owner eventually found that knife and
turned it over to the police, and that became a
piece of evidence when the trial came up in nineteen
seventy eight, the actual murder weapon.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
What about Brian Rocky Fitzgerald, Because he had driven Leebroy
Chason to Pageant Field and then taken him from Pageant Field,
police had a lot of questions for him, and as
you say, he was known to police, he had a
police record. But how did they treat him and in
the end, were there any charges? How did they treat

(24:44):
him as a witness or a suspect in this? How
was he treated well.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
As far as the witness goes. He made a couple
of mistakes during his during the questioning, he he press
he lied to the police. He had told the police
and tried to tell the police that he dropped mister
Chasing off at a train station nearby the MBTA, which
is the Massachusetts Transportation Authority. There's a train line that
runs right through Quincy, and he told the police that

(25:10):
he brought him there, dropped him off, and it was
obvious that he didn't. And Chasing at the time was
covered in blood. He wasn't getting on a train at
least not being without being noticed. So I mean, the
police basically knew he was lying, and he just he
eventually told the truth. He eventually came clean with the

(25:31):
police detective that was interviewing Lieutenant Neil McDonald, and he
came clean. And the charges were according to his sister,
who I spoke with when I was working on the book,
there were minimal charges. It was just kind of a
slap on the hand because there were so many moving
parts in this case and they just did not eventually
just did not go after some of the lesser participants.

(25:57):
And even though Fitzgerald played a substantial a role because
he brought brought leehre Chase, a two pageant field to
commit this crime and then brought him back to a
place I guess you could say of safety. It was
always at the at the threat of being harmed himself,
and that was his That was his defense as far

(26:18):
as any any type of reprimand was that he felt
at any moment he could be stabbed, killed, shot again.
Because he was a huge guy. He had a reputation
for protecting people and coming to people's aid in those situations.
But I think that the police extended because they had
the killer and the killer's accomplice in Marc Bray, they

(26:42):
kind of were lenient with mister Fitzgerald and some of
the other participants. He eventually the time he was in
his twenties at the time of this event, his father
had passed away and he became the father of the family.
And I think there was some sympathies because of that
situation in the Fitzgerald family. And he eventually the pressure

(27:04):
of you know, being being a stand in father for
his siblings and kind of running the household, a lot
of things caught up with him and he committed suicide
in his forties. Yeah, it was kind of it was
kind of a tough situation. The sister said he never
got over the killing of Full Melody. It really depressed

(27:25):
him and kind of set the tone for the next
couple of decades when he finally ended his life.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
It's very interesting in this book you have Jason's response
after the murder with Mark Bray. He's looking through a
newspaper and is disappointed that he's not on the front
page of the Boston Globe. He's on page four, but
there's conversations between he and Mark Bray to just indicate

(27:56):
his psychopathic nature and his need for or infamy from
this crime. He was very proud of what he had done.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Well, I mean, he's a huge egomaniac. It's pretty clear
that he's he's totally in love with himself, and he
does like the notoriety, even when when it's a it's
a crime. If you remember from early on in the book,
when he's first meeting with first introducing himself to Fitzgerald,
there's some discussion. There's also further discussion on the way

(28:27):
back to Chelsea after the killing about how he how
much time he spent in prison, and that he that
he killed a couple of inmates in Walpole during his
stay there. He was just a pure, pure violence and braggart.
He liked to talk about his crimes, you know. And
I can see that, and I understand that because as

(28:49):
an e MT with Norfolk Personal Ambulance, I spent countless
hours basically in the back of the ambulance with men
who had committed murders and rap and assorted other crimes.
And nine out of ten times during the trip to
the hospital, if they were able, they'd want to tell
you their stories with detail. And you know, I recall

(29:14):
a discussion I had with a gentleman who would rape somebody,
and he wanted to describe the rape to me, and
I asked him, I said, please, I'd rather not hear that.
He says, well, you're going to hear it anyways, He said,
you can. You've got me chained up, like, you know,
chained up like with all these chains and handcuffs and
ankle bracelets and everything else. He says, but you can't.
You can't cover my mouth. So I'm going to tell

(29:36):
you the story. So what I did is I struck
up a conversation with the corrections officer who was riding
with us, tried to blot it out as best I
could to know that my subject lee where Chason often
bragged about his crimes, assorted crimes. I fully understood that
I knew where that was coming from because I had

(29:58):
experienced it for many year.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
It's very interesting that this Brian Fitzgerald was frightened by
this Chason despite him being much bigger. But he knew
that this chasin was a dangerous person, but he couldn't
help himself. Brian and he later after the stabbings, said
why'd you stab those people? How could you stab those people?
And Jason replied, you know unabashedly that it was over

(30:27):
fifty dollars, and Fitzgeral was incredulous that he would stab
somebody over fifty dollars debt.

Speaker 3 (30:35):
Actually, pretty much everybody involved in including the police, was
stunned by that amount. That it wasn't substantially more that
somebody would lose their life over fifty dollars In this point,
I don't know if we'll never know actually, if Mark
Bray had intended for somebody to be killed, all he
wanted was his money or his drugs, one or the other,

(30:59):
and Chas took it to another level by killing these people.
His defense, though th Rabo, was that the knife wasn't
his right, that it was dropped during the during the fight,
during the melee in that park, and that he just
picked it up and wielded it as as as a
defense mechanism, that he was stabbing out people because they

(31:22):
were all attacking him. But obviously, as the attorney, the
prosecuting attorney for the Colmwealth Massachusetts easily disproved that theory
and the autopsy did as well, that Jason brought the
knife with him and then he did. You know, it's
kind of in hindsight Fitzgerald was right. As they're driving

(31:42):
in that car, Jason still had the knife. It was
hidden on his body and at any point he could
have reached you know, if if Fitzgerald had challenged him
in some way, Jason still had the means to do
some harm. So he was right by I guess you
could say was right by accommodating Chasin at that point

(32:04):
because it could it could have gone pretty bad for him.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
You illustrate his danger by when he is on the
run chasing. There was an earlier altercation much before the
Freiburg antique store, where they're stopped by a state trooper
or a policeman, and he has his gun ready to
be able to shoot this police officer if necessary, and

(32:29):
fortunately for everyone it was not necessary.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Correct They were actually sleeping in a restop because they
had run low on funds and they were in arrest
stop the night before the robbery of the antique store,
and they were basically parking illegally in this restop in
the New Hampshire trooper approached them and did a few
checks just to make sure there were no warrants. They
intentionally had Kathleen to the driving because she did not

(32:55):
have a record, But had the trooper asked for IDs
from either Chasin or Mark Bray, things could have gone
darkly more, you know, things could have got out of hand.
Basically as far as the shooting episode in that park,
you know earlier on I'm sure you read it. Le
Roy did have a shooting episode as a youth. He

(33:16):
was in an apartment in Somerville on the second floor.
He was high. I spent the day drinking and sniffing paint,
is what he did in those days when he didn't
have actual drugs. He would sniff paint. He saw outside
his window a bunch of kids just kind of hanging out,
having a good time, and he invited them up to

(33:36):
the apartment for a party, and they gave him a
bad time. They laughed at him and gave him, gave
him a few words, and so we went and got
his gun and started shooting out the window at these kids,
and he actually hit a girl in the face. I
wasn't a fatal wound, but it left her scarred for life.
And the Somerville police came along and they arrested Chason

(33:58):
brought him off to jail. He did a little bit
of time, but he was still young and the Admittedly,
the legal system in Massachusetts can be questionable some of
the things that have taken place over the years, and
he was eventually released even though he shot a young
girl in the face. It wouldn't it have been his

(34:18):
first shooting at the New Hampshire restop had he done that.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now you take us to the murder trial
in May nineteen seventy eight. The Norfolk County Assistant da
is Robert Banks. As you mentioned the defense for Chason,
he says self defense. I didn't bring the weapon. I

(34:46):
didn't bring the knife to this fight, and he decides
to take the stand as well, which would not be
advised by his attorney. Just tell us if there was
anything note were they during that testimony?

Speaker 3 (35:04):
Well, I mean he stuck to the self defense angle
against his attorney's best judgment. It was the Lee Roy
Chasin show. I would have been surprised had he not
taken the stand. He really thought that the self defense
that Yet, I picked up this random knife that was
dropped to the ground by one of the attackers and

(35:25):
used it against them in my to protect myself. But
just the fact that he continued to attack others in
the park and pageant field, swinging that knife in a
threatening way and trying to hurt others, told the prosecutor
in the jury that he wasn't, in fact trying to
get away. He was actually perpetrating his own attack of

(35:50):
these people. Self defense just didn't play into his case,
even though he tried that top to bottom. The tire
entire tritle was on his part. On the defense part
was self defense. I was only trying to protect myself.
They were just beating on me relentlessly, and I used
the knife in such a way to try to get away.

(36:10):
But he didn't. He didn't speed awave, you know what
I mean. He didn't he didn't run for safety. He
stayed and continued to be on the attack. One of
the things that Fitzgerald had said as he got him
in the car and got him out of there, was
that these were still his friends and he did not
want to see any anybody else get hurt. Had he

(36:31):
left either on foot, which he could have done, or
in the car and left behind Chason no idea how
many more people could have been either hurt or killed
in that situation, so he felt it was his responsibility
to get him out of there, and he did. Yeah,
the trial didn't go very well for Chason. Oddly enough,
that court room I mentioned it in the book was

(36:54):
the scene of the old Saco and Vinzetti trial some
decades before. Basically the same courtroom where this this trial
took place. And even more ironic, if you've heard of
I'm sure you've heard of Karen Reid. Yes, that trial
is going on as we speak. In fact, my my
wife is upstairs watching it with with white eyes, same

(37:15):
same courtroom, same same courthouse, same courtrooms where all these
famous trials took place.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Mm. He talked about this self defense, and one salient
point that was made by the DA was that he
had no scratches or bruises after this fight in self defense.
So just dismissing the notion that was any type of
self defense whatsoever.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, exactly. I mean the kids did jump on him,
there was some pounching and so forth, but once the
once he wielded the knife and actually drew blood, most
of them just backed right off, realizing that their their
lives were at stake. So the the attack on mister
Chasin that triggered his murder rampage really wasn't as bad

(38:05):
an attack as he claimed it was. He really had
no defense in my opinion, and the and the district attorney,
according to descriptions I received from folks who had attended,
was very animated in some of his during his closing,
where he would actually take the knife and drive it
forward a couple of times, really emphasize the action of

(38:29):
killing Paul Melody and how it took place. The jury
jury definitely reacted in such a way that mister Chason
was not going to win this this trial.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
You're right that the jury deliberated only for four hours
or unanimous verdict.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah, I sense that the four hours was probably probably
a little more extensive than it actually needed to be.
I think they probably had him in the first hour,
But you know how juries are, they want to make
it seem like they put legitimate time and effort into
the you know, going over the notes and going over
the decisions. It was a pretty cut and dry case.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
So he was he was convicted. He was pronounced guilty
murder of Paul Melody, life without the possibility of parole,
and then the concurrence sentence seven to ten year attack
seven year, seven to ten years for the attack on
Bob Hayward.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
Correct. He had actually in the course of after he
had stabbed Paul Melody and he went down, he actually
stabbed mister Hayward in the back, suffered some sustained some
kidney wounds, but he fully recovered. They did some they
did surger around him very quickly, and he saw a
full recovery. He was ferried off to MCI Wallpole Prison

(39:51):
for what was expected to be a life term, and it.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Wasn't you talk about MCI Walpole and all. So Chason's
experience at MCI Walpole and other Massachusetts institutes. Tell us
about a little bit of his illustrious pass and experience
at Walpole before we talk about his stay there.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Well, Walpole was one of those type of places as
an inmate, you just didn't want to go there. It
was one of a very, very tough prison. I had
been in and there a number of times, and the
inmates who were kept there were all maximum type inmates.
They were killers, they were rapists, they were armed robbers.
Two miles to the northwest of Walpole was MCI Norfolk,

(40:36):
which was a minimum prison with some of your lesser crimes.
I used to call at the house of executive crimes.
People who would who would bezzle from their companies and still,
you know, do an unarmed bank robbery where they pretend
to have a gun. Those guys would end up in minimum.
But Walpole was was the was the place you didn't

(40:57):
want to go. It was it was competed at times
too who sing Sing in New York and Levenworth out
in the in the Midwest. It was just one of
those really tough prisons. An example would be what a
block it was called ten block, and ten block at
Walpole Prison was where the worst of the worst were housed.
These guys would not only be potentially violent to citizens

(41:20):
on the outside, they were dangerous to each other. And
it was so secure and such a segregated type prison
block that they were there outside time one hour per
day was in a cage. Each of the Each of
the cells was connected to an exterior wired cage and
the door. The door would open from their cell to

(41:42):
the to the outside. They would walk out into the
fresh air, but they would be caged in where they
couldn't have contact with any other inmate or any any
human being and I say after actually when we went
there to pick up in the end of this, when
we went to pick up inmates who were injured or sick,
we'd have to drive into the prison. We would have
to enter through the vehicle trap. Then we would have

(42:03):
to go through a series of gates, and each time
the Correction's office that was riding with us would unlock
a gate, we'd drive forward, he lock it behind us,
and we had to do that several times. And the
third time before we would reach the infirmary was right
in front of ten Bloc. So the inmates, it was
a certain time of day, they would be out outside
in their casias. And I'll leave it to your imagination

(42:26):
as to some of the some of the visuals that
we would see in the ambulance as we're going by.
We had people's shooting imaginary guns at us. Certain gestures
were given to us. They were yelling cat calling to us.
I'm not going to say that we, as E and
T's in a stressful situation, didn't retaliate in some way.

(42:50):
And we were often asked by the corrections offices not
to do that because it just provokes the inmates to
further further attacks. I guess you could say. So it
was a really tough place. LeRoy's Leroy Jason's time there
was riddled with violence, violent acts against corrections officers, other inmates.

(43:14):
He had actually got into a situation where he attacked
several corrections officers who insisted that he undressed after a
family visit so they could do a skin search. It
was protocol, it's what they did when they came back
in after having personal contact with wives, girlfriends, and others.

(43:35):
They had to have a skin search to make sure
that there was no contraband no drugs, nothing else being
ferried into the prison. He refused, and it got into
a fistfight with these offices, three of them, and they
couldn't control them. It actually a fourth entered the fight.
A couple of them were hurt and during the battle

(43:55):
with mister Jason. Eventually they got him under control, but
not before the officers were wounded, and he was wounded
himself during the course of this fight. So you know
that was his He tried to bribe offices to bring
him drugs. He set fires in the prison. There was
just a lot of bad tidings on the pot of

(44:16):
chasing at Walpole, but it was the nature of the house.
That kind of stuff went on all the time. One
story I talk about in the book is a gentleman
that I transported to the hospital. He was playing basketball.
It was a warm summer's day and he was playing basketball,
and I guess he was a ringer. He was doing
really well, and the opposition team didn't appreciate that. So

(44:40):
three of them scooped him up, two of them on
his upper body, one on his legs, and they ran
him full speed across the basketball stanchion right across his
thighs and shattered both his femur bones. And that was
because he was playing a good game of basketball. So
those are the kind of things that went on quite
a bit at mc A. Whoopole.

Speaker 2 (45:03):
You take us to May nineteen eighty two, and let
me ask this question for you to explain the Walpole
prison had an infirmary. Now you write that there was
a lot of self inflicted injuries that were common. Explain
why inmates might fake or have self inflicted injuries, and

(45:27):
what made the prison infirmary not the end location for
people that were injured in the prison. What would take
them from the infirmary to an outside prison? Outside hospital
like Norwood Hospital.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
I actually have that discussion with somebody this morning. We
were talking about some of the history. Somebody who knew
former corrections off sorry, spoke with these guys. Especially the lifers,
would do just about anything to get out of prison,
even for a few days up to an include hurting
themselves in some pretty serious, pretty serious methods. The most

(46:05):
often used one was swallowing some type of a shop instrument,
such as they get the hands on a razor blade.
What they would do is they would tape it up
with the electrical tape or masking tape whatever they had
their hands on, and swallow it so that the blade
would not cut them internally on the way down there
to the stomach. And then they would get to the

(46:26):
hospital after swallowing these blades and X rays would reveal
it was there and they would require surgery to have
it removed before it did any other damage. Once the Uh,
once the stomach acids, I guess you could say, uh,
got rid of the tape. Now you've got a free
floating razor blade. That was one method I had a

(46:46):
patient once, transporting them for chewing and eating a light bulb.
Some of them were just trying to get to the hospital.
Like I said, for a few days of freedom, a
few days around nurses people something outside of those prison walls.
Others were more serious about their not wanting to be

(47:07):
lifers anymore, and they would they would take their own lives.
A lot of hangings that was fairly common. Less common
would be an inmate that I had who actually covered
himself with his bed sheets and lit them on fire,
and it took a little while for the corrections offices
to get to the cell and get it opened, and

(47:27):
by then he had perished. So there was a lot
of desperation in the prison from these guys, and the
self inflicted wounds were very common to get a ride
to the hospital. The infirmary, as you mentioned, not the
most skilled medical people, as you might guess, sure kind
of the set. I called him the second tier of

(47:47):
the medical profession. And in the case of Chasin, that
was exactly what led to his ability to do what
he did in that nineteen eighty two It was the
infirm redoct his decisions that you know, not a purpose obviously,
but he did aid Leroy chasing in his eventual escape.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Well, let's explain that doctor Ira Cohen said initially that
he wasn't going to make it. He said to the
other EMTs, he just said he ain't going to make it.
But then he had another assessment when he looked a
little bit closer. So tell us the kind of assessment
he made based on the wounds that this person had.

(48:33):
Let's talk about just we haven't mentioned what Leroy Chasin
does in May nineteen eighty two, what correction officers see
him doing, and the distress he's in. Tell us about
this supposed distress that Leroy Chason is in and guards encounter.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
Well, actually it was September of nineteen eighty to his
Labor Day weekend, and the actual day was Labor Day
was a Monday. The corrections officers who were first involved,
who were first on the scene, were guarding the breakfast,
the morning breakfast at the mess hall, the prison mess hall.
They were overseeing that. And one of the corrections officers,

(49:15):
who was vital to this story and perfectly willing to
share with me, we spent a considerable amount of time
talking about it. He noticed down the end of a
long carda an inmate who seemed to be in some distress,
and so we went to his aid, and it turned
out to be Leroy Chasin, who was bleeding pretty severely

(49:37):
from the abdomen and claiming that he was stabbed by
another inmate. This this corrections office, mister Reynolds got his
partner and the two of them guided Chasen to the infirmary,
bleeding quite a bit. He was also bleeding from the mouth,
and even somebody with a minimum of medical knowledge would

(49:59):
know that bleeding from the mouth after being stabbed typically
indicates internal bleeding of some sort. So they brought him
to the doctor. They gave them, put them on the table,
put them on the stretcher, and doctor Cohen did his exam,
and at first, with all the blood that was involved,
it was quite quite a quite a bit of it.

(50:20):
His first diagnosis was he's not going to make it.
But then he peeled away the shirt, peeled away some
of the clothing and saw that the wounds were three
smaller puncture wounds, and the bleeding had since stopped, and
all of a sudden it wasn't quite as bad as
he first thought, and he adjusted his diagnosis. Chasing was,

(50:43):
I guess you could say, out of danger at that point,
but he decided that he should get further examination at
a hospital equipped with X ray machines and so forth
to make sure there was no internal damage, because he
just didn't know the depth of the wounds. So he
decided to transport Chasing by the ambulance to the Norwood Hospital,

(51:06):
which was the nearest hospital to Wopole Prison. The corrections
officers called for the ambulance. While they're waiting, the corrections officer,
Reynolds is starting to think there's something amiss, and I
believe that's one of the words I use was a mess.
He later kind of deducted that the blood coming from
Chasin's mouth was a what they call a blood capsule,

(51:29):
what a child might use at Halloween when he's a vampire.
You kind of put it into your mouth and it
makes pretend blood that dribbles down your mouth. He thought
that that's something that Chasin did to enhance the injuries.
He moaned and groaned a lot when he was being moved.
But the key to the whole scenario. One of the

(51:50):
protocols at all of Massachusetts prisons requires that when an
inmate leaves the facility, whether he's going out to the
hospital for an appointment or anything, that he is chained
leg irons, a belly chain which wraps around the belly
from the back, comes to the front, and then is handcuffed.
The inmate's handcuffed to that belly chain, so he can't

(52:11):
move his hands up and down. Well, side decide very much,
and that is the protocol. But in this instance, when
the corrections officers ask the doctor, how do you want
us to chain him? The doctor says, well, no abdomen
abdominal chains because that's where his wounds are and we
could exacerbate the wounds and make them worse. He could
stop bleeding again. We don't want that to happen. So

(52:33):
no belly chains, just the leg irons. No handcuffs, just
the leg irons. So it was a huge mistake on
the part of the doctor and some people when they
look back in the aftermath kind of put some of
the blame on him for that decision, and the corrections officers,
including Officer Reynolds, where they were totally stunned by that decision,

(52:58):
but they know they they follow doctor's orders, I guess
you could say. So. The ambulance arrives, they loaded up
the two empt's load up. Mister Jason put him in
the ambulance and they transport him to Norwood Hospital. Now,
typically when you're transporting an inmate, there are two corrections
officers that go with you. One rides in the ambulance.

(53:20):
He is unarmed. They do not want any firearms in
an ambulance with an inmate that close, in such close proximity,
who could but potentially get that take that gun away
and cause havoc. So the armed officer follows behind in
it and what they call the chase car, it's a
state car, and they follow the ambulance to the hospitals.

(53:41):
In this case, they sent three corrections offices because of
Chasin's history, because of his escape history, his ability to
get out of places or keep out of places, and
so they were a little concerns, so they added an
officer to the mix. On arrival at Norwood Hospital, they
put him in into one of the trauma rooms, which

(54:01):
is a private room, so he's not exposed or in
the vicinity of any other civilian patients. And one of
the other pivotal moments it takes place. And I found
it very very interesting that Officer Reynolds admitted this to me,
that he had to use the restroom at that moment,
as soon as they arrived at the hospital. And so

(54:23):
he told his partner, who was going into the room
with Chasin, into the trauma room with Chasin, I'll be
right back. I'm just going to use the restroom, and
off he went. The third officer with the gun happened
to go up to this and walked on this long
card to where there was a bank of phones, and
he was calling the prison to let them know that

(54:43):
they had arrived safely. There was no cell phones in
those days, no other communications other than tracking down a
phone that he could use. Meanwhile, while doctors and nurses
and technicians were buzzing around in the room treating mister Chason,
inserting an IV to his arm for blood loss, examining

(55:05):
the wounds again, adding oxygen, putting leads on his chest
to watch his heart rate, things like that, a woman
walked into the room, a nurse, or so they thought
was a nurse. One of the MT's, Paul Kilroy, had
said to me years later when we were talking about it,
that he thought he knew all the nurses in the hospital.

(55:26):
He thought he could recognize all of them. This woman
did not look familiar to him at all, and it
kind of caught his curiosity. But it was a holiday,
it was labor day, and hospitals, nursing homes and so forth,
they tend to hire temporary staff to fill gaps by
vacations and days off and so forth, so it wasn't

(55:48):
common for them to be a kind of an extra
nurse on the site. She walked in, she was holding
up her arm with a white towel draped over, kind
of like I describe it as if you're in a
fine dining restaurant and the waiters standing there with a
towel over his arm just in case there's a spill. Sure,

(56:09):
And that's how she walked into the room. It wasn't
long before she revealed that the towel was actually covering
a forty five automatic. This was Leroy Chasin's wife, Kathleen,
disguised as the nurse, holding everybody in that room at
Bay and then handing the gun over to Leroyd, who

(56:30):
needless to say, was not handcuffed. Took the gun, jumped
off the stretcher. He's bleeding from his belly again, he's
bleeding from he pulled his IV out of his arm,
so she haked it right out. He's bleeding from that.
Took off all the other tubes and wires and stood
up and as he's pointing the gun at everybody in
the room, doctor nurse, a couple of assistants, two empts,

(56:54):
one corrections officer. His parting words were sorry, folks, but
I got to go. And off they went. As they
leave that room and turn the corner the corrections officer,
mister Reynolds, who had to use the restroom, comes out
of the restroom. He sees them. She points the gun
at him momentarily, but he manages to bolt and get

(57:15):
out of get out of that situation, and he runs
for the visiting the waiting area. We're trying to find
a phone. Obviously, they run out of the hospital. As
soon as they leave, Reynolds yells to his partner down
the hall on the phone, we need the gun. We
need the gun again. There's only one gun between the
three offices. So he comes. He eventually comes, running, goes

(57:39):
out the door after the fleeing suspects, and a gunfight ensues.
Jason fires. He fires. The only thing that got struck
were parked cars, and some of the bullets struck the walls,
concrete walls. There were holes left behind in the walls
that later on became a tourist attraction. People were coming

(58:00):
by to take photos of them. A bullet almost hit
one of the security guards, who happened to all joined
in the chase. The hospital security guard, who was also unarmed,
nearly hit him in the head. They did some measurements
later on and determined that he survived by a whisker.
So Leroy, Chason and Kathleen. She's driving, he's in the
passenger seat. They scream out of the hospital parking lot

(58:24):
and just leave everybody leave the authorities behind. The Norwood Police,
who had been called by Reynolds. They eventually arrived. Reynolds
joins one of the police officers in a search and
they drive around multiple police cruises, driving around town looking
for the vehicle. It was a Chevy and they eventually

(58:45):
found it in a parking lot of a nearby supermarket
about a quarter of a mile from the hospital. But
there was a second car. They had an accomplice, and
the accomplice had brought them an alternate car. In that
car there was money, clothing, and both cutters. Because the

(59:05):
police found that somebody had used a pair of bowl
cutters to cut the ankle bracelets off of mister Jason
and relieve him of that. There were also packages from
gauze bandages, gauze pads that were obviously used to stem
the bleeding from his abdomen in his arm. That was

(59:27):
obviously a Kathleen move, knowing that he might need that,
and she brought some along. They were well, this was
well orchestrated, well executed. The accomplice arranged. I later found
out the accomplished arrange for credentials, they changed their names
and from the hospital they won on an eighteen month

(59:48):
journey across country on the run.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
But tisus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Now you talk about call it chase, since run a
series of greyhound bus trips. How do they evade capture?
You talk about evading capture for seven years. So they

(01:00:12):
have new identities, Kate and James Garrity. So how do
they proceed, how do they evade capture and how does
their lives proceed on the lamb on the run.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Well, it's interesting, you're right about the new identities. They
were accomplicit arrange for that and arrange for paperwork to
match that, as far as credentials under the name of Garrity,
so they had that in their favor. They did not
after they abandoned their first the second grade getaway car
in New Hampshire and continued on their run. It was
all by buses from place to place. They chose not

(01:00:48):
to stay in any city or any area longer than
than necessary, and if they felt pressure, they felt heat,
they would move on immediately without delay. At first they
actually got an apartment. Their first apartment was in Chicago,
and they found that call it paranoia, but they thought
they were seen or recognized, so they eventually abandoned that

(01:01:09):
apartment and moved on and took another Greyhound to the
Seattle area. And then they decided that an apartment didn't
make sense because if they wanted to continue to move
and move quickly, say after a few days, that the
apartment didn't work out. So they started to use motels
and they never stayed at one longer than a few days.

(01:01:31):
So imagine an eighteen month run across country staying no
longer than a few days in any one place. It
was labor of love, but they they actually got work,
and the fact that their skill set. Their working skill
set allowed them not to stay in any place very long.

(01:01:54):
For instance, Chasin would take jobs in small cafes or
mom and restaurants as a dishwasher temporary. You know, we're
only going to be in the area for a week
and I work, and most places would hire them and
pay them in cash. And Kathleen had her nursing nursing
assistant skills, and she took brief temporary jobs caring for

(01:02:17):
the elderly in their homes. There were always ads. She
would find an ad for somebody needing some home assistance,
and she'd do it for a week, maybe two, and
then they'd move on to the next city. The ironic
part ironic part of this this trip was that there
were occasions where they encountered police, some that were very

(01:02:38):
interesting to the fact that I described them as teflon.
It seemed like they got away with a lot of
stuff that you, as a fugitive on the run, you
probably shouldn't get away with. While they were in Chicago,
Kathleen went into a Target department store. Their television in
their in their place was on the fritz, and she

(01:02:59):
stolen put in the carriage and started to wheel it out.
She was captured by the store detectives, and you would
figure at that point the police would be called in,
they'd bring him into the station, they'd identify them, and
back to Massachusetts they would go. But that wasn't the case.
The store detectives find them one hundred dollars and they
were on their way. Crush you one hundred dollars and

(01:03:21):
don't ever come in the store again, and that'll be fine.
We don't need we don't need to involve with the police.
There was some physical altercations on the outside, on the
outskirts of Seattle. Chason was checking them into a motel.
Kathleen was standing outside and two drunk, vague vagrants accosted her,
and when it was pointed out to Chasin by the

(01:03:43):
motel clerk, he ran out there and and and beat
both of them up, left them writhing on the ground.
He was a he was a pretty tough kid. When
the police showed up, they didn't they didn't arrest him.
They were basically saying, well, you know, keep your nose clean.
It looks like this is justified that you beat up
these guys. They assaulted your girlfriend, your wife, whatever, And

(01:04:06):
they let them off the hook. So there were instances
of that that took place pretty much everywhere they went,
and they managed to skate each time without much police involvement.
They eventually landed in Denver, which was ultimately their final destination.
Kathleen's children were living in just outside of Denver, and

(01:04:29):
so she had an added motive to try to get
to Denver and make that her permanent home because that
way she could reunite with her children in such a way.
And so that's why they made their home in Denver. Now,
needless to say, she was on the run. She didn't
spend much time with them. She didn't visit them at
their home. They met at parks and places like that

(01:04:50):
where they couldn't be captured because they were not only
was Kathleen afraid that the police would arrest her if
they were sticking out the house of her children, but
they would arrest the children children's caretakers, as I guess
you could say, aiding and abetting her. So they were
very very careful. She did get to see the children,

(01:05:11):
but infrequently and very carefully while they were in Denver.

Speaker 2 (01:05:17):
You're right that the FBI had tried to track these
fugitives to not much avail to no avail, So they
reached out to America's Most Wanted, which was a program
that hadn't started that long before. Tell us about America's
Most Wanted and John Walsh, but also that the program

(01:05:39):
aired originally in nineteen eighty eight and then was re
aired again.

Speaker 3 (01:05:46):
Correct John Walsh and America's Most Wanted did a feature
story on Lee Roy, Chason and Kathleen in nineteen eighty
eight around the summertime, and it didn't turn up any leads.
Do I have time for a quick side story on this?

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
Okay? So when Americans Most Wanted decided to do this
feature on Chas and they sent a couple of producers
out to Norwood, Massachusetts to visit the office of Norfolk
Personal Ambulance and I happened to be working the day
they came. And we're talking now six years, six years
later after the actual escape, and they came in and

(01:06:23):
explained what they wanted. They wanted to hire an ambulance
and two EMTs to do the reenactment at both Norwood
Hospital and the prison, and Norfolk Personal Ambulance management agreed
and the office manager, his name was Bruce Vallade pointed.
He said to me, he says, hey, Dan, so you
missed the first one six years ago. He wanted to

(01:06:44):
do the second one, and I said to him, you know, Bruce,
I'd rather not be associated with a criminal like Leroy Chase,
So why don't you give it to a couple other people.
I'm sure they'll appreciate it. So they did, and come
to find out, the two EMTs that got the job
also got substantial royalty checks from America's Most Wanted. So
I missed out a second time. Hopefully the third time

(01:07:07):
will be this book. But anyways, yeah, that was my
little America's Most Wanted story. So they showed up at
the office. They did the reenactment, and it broadcast mid
nineteen eighty eight and turned up zero leads to the authorities.
Everything was a dead end, according to the FBI agent
that I spoke with, So that the they decided to

(01:07:27):
rebroadcast the show a year later in nineteen eighty nine,
and this one actually turned up leads. Mister Chasin's neighbors
were watching the show and they recognized him and made
a call to the FBI, and the FBI, needless to say,
they did a little tracking, did a little legwork to
identify chasing, and they were staked out of his apartment

(01:07:54):
in downtown Denver. He had said all through his later
life Kathleen and others who would listen, that there was
no way that he was ever going back to prison.
They would never take him back, and those words obviously
had a double meaning, but Kathleen was aware that he
would not be taken and that was in fact the

(01:08:17):
case once he realized. Once Leroy realized that the FBI
had him surrounded at this apartment, he got a hold
of his gun, which ironically was later identified as the
gun at the hospital seven years earlier, and went outside
his apartment and engaged the FBI agents. He shot first,

(01:08:40):
They shot second, third, fourth, fifth, and took down mister
Jason on a hot, steamy sidewalk of downtown Denver, Colorado.
Kathleen later turned herself in. She learned of her husband's
demise on a television show. She was working at a
nearby neighbor's house taking care of an elderly person. She

(01:09:02):
saw it on the TV. She went to the police,
told them who she was, and they took her into custody,
and eventually she was transported back to Massachusetts to serve
time at our women's prison, which is MCI Framingham, and
she did a few years. They didn't keep her long,
and then she went on to live her life. Passed

(01:09:23):
away at the age of seventy five and in her
house in Maine. Oddly enough, a lot of our children
who had lived in Colorado during the escape phase, they
gradually began to move back east. Some of them settled
in Maine. Her son settled in New Hampshire, and so
they were nearby for her in her later years.

Speaker 2 (01:09:46):
What I found startling was that the original broadcast of
America's Most Wanted The Chasms watched that episode and didn't
move Denver after very interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
Yes, they did. I think they braced themselves for impact.
It was one of those points where they were tired
of running. They had a home, they had I guess
you could say careers. The children went nearby. Her children
were nearby, and they wanted to see them, and I
think they just rolled the dice that they want to
be recognized, and they were right. They were right for
a year. But the rebroadcast is what triggered more interest.

(01:10:24):
I think my conjecture is that nineteen eighty eight was
the first year of a Markers almost wanted. It just
started broadcasts and I don't think they had the viewers.
I think by year one, once they've been on the
air for another year, now you had more viewers, more
interest in the show. It was generating a lot more
view a lot more eyeballs, and eventually somebody did see it.

(01:10:48):
There was a twist in the book. I'm sure you
noticed after Leroy, after Lee Roy was killed by the FBI,
his girlfriend back in Somerville, Massachusetts, Linnell revealed to her son,
who was now in his teens, that Leroy Chasen was
not really his dad and never had been. And it

(01:11:11):
was a stunning moment for him to find out that
the man. Even though the man was a criminal and
he was on the run from everybody, it was still
his father and he thought it was his father, but
it was not his father. His mother Linnell had kept
that secret from Leroy because Leroy was supporting them. He
was paying for the apartment, he was paying for little

(01:11:34):
Derek as far as clothing and so forth, and she
was afraid that if he found out she had kept
up this ruse, that Leroy would would come and do
harm to either her or her son, or take the son.
There was a lot of things going through her mind.
She was unfortunately, she was heavy into drugs. She passed

(01:11:55):
away at a very early age from an overdose in
her early fifties. And Derek the way he found out
besides his mother telling him that, the way he found
out was that he used that system twenty three and
meters and did a search for himself and found that
his found his biological father in New York City, eventually

(01:12:17):
reunited with some of his first cousins there. His biological
father had since passed away. Interesting story for Derek to
find out that all those years that he thought that
Chasen was his dad and come to find out as
a teenager that he was not in fact his dad.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Very interesting too when you talk about by all accounts
when police interviewed neighbors, apparently people called America's most wanted
and reported him, but very much the accounts of the
neighbors that knew him for many years was very much
like when Whitey Bulger went on the run and was

(01:13:00):
in hiding as well, that many people that knew this
couple knew them as salt of the earth. Very very
decent people. You write about some of those accounts of
people that encountered the couple, Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
Well, I mean Lee Roy Chason. It was actually a
very very intelligent man. From what I could gather from
people that I've talked to about him, he was very smart.
So he was also a smart criminal, and he knew
when to keep his teeth is, you know, keep it,
keep it clean, be friendly with the neighbors, be sociable.
You know, cut somebody's grass for them, and they're gonna

(01:13:37):
they'll never think, as you're being the nice guy next
door that you're an escaped ex convict who murdered a
twenty year old and you're on the run from the
FBI and just about everybody else. Just it doesn't cross
people's mind if you're polite and you're courteous and you're friendly.
And so Chason took on that that personality during this

(01:14:02):
during this hideout, I guess you could say, during while
he was on the lamb in Colorado and he had
his name is pretty well fooled throughout that throughout the
course of that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
In this story, the title is Jason's Run, The Prison
Break that Captivated America and the love Story that fueled it.
It really is not admirable, but it is very interesting
to see the bravery that Kathleen exuded when she showed

(01:14:34):
up at that hospital with a gun and all of
the planning for this elaborate and very sophisticated escape from
from prison. It's not like they didn't know he was
a dangerous guy and had some kind of potential, and
like you say, they were prepared for these high risk inmates.
That's what that blue code room was. So her steadfast

(01:14:57):
support of her husband and her bravery that she needed
to pull this crime off were evident of that. That steady,
the steadfast love that she had for this convict Leroy Chasin.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
Yeah, there's a lot of private I mean, there was
a lot of privacy in that family even after the fact.
The fact that the story wasn't told is because Kathleen
Chason didn't want to speak with anybody. She kept a
very very low profile after she was released from prison.
She had six children and some siblings herself, and honestly,

(01:15:34):
when it came time to find somebody to interview and
get information from, it literally took me a year to
convince her spot her son to speak with me and
he was. Even during the discussion, he was evasive, but
then he learned that I was going to do my
very best. When I explained to him, I would do
my very best to respect his mother even though she

(01:15:56):
had committed a criminal act, that she deserved deserve respect
because it was all a lot of love for Leroy.
That's pretty much my story to him, I said I
would take great care and respecting her, and I had
practice in that too, Dan, my first book, Shots in

(01:16:17):
the Dark, I befriended Roco. During the course of my
writing and interviews. I had to respect the victims because
one was my aunt. So throughout I managed to write
true crime stories but in some way respect the participants
as the best way I could.

Speaker 2 (01:16:37):
Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for coming
on and talking about Jason's run, the prison break that
captivated America, and the love story that fueled it. For
those people that might want to find out more about
the story or your other book, can you tell us
about a website or any social media you do.

Speaker 3 (01:16:58):
Yeah, obviously I can be reached on Facebook at you know,
search Daniel Zimmerman, and then you can put the title
in the best way that I've found now that I
have two books instead of one. Is for interested folks
to just search my name in Amazon, but use Daniels,
so it's d A N I E L and then

(01:17:18):
Zimmerman Z I M M E R an Daniel Zimmerman
in Amazon, and the books come right up. Jason's Run
comes up first, and then Shots in the Dark, my
earlier book, comes up second. And they can read the
reviews and look at the the quick bios and captions
on from these two stories, and uh, hopefully they'll read

(01:17:39):
my they'll read my books.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Thank you so much, Daniel Zimmerman for Chasin's Run, the
prison break that captivated America, and the love story the
fuel it. Thank you so much for this interview, and
you have a great evening, and good night,