MADMAN—M.F. Gross

A Crime That Shattered Paradise... A Chase That Became Legend.
Crystal Beach, Florida—1949. A peaceful seaside haven where crime was unheard of. Until one early morning, a brutal act of violence changed everything.
John Calvin "Rastus" Russell, a drifter, thug, and small-time car thief, committed an unthinkable crime—the torture and murder of Norman Y. Browne and the near-fatal assault on his wife, Anne. The savage attack sent shockwaves through the tight-knit community, turning everyday citizens into armed vigilantes determined to bring a killer to justice.
But this was no ordinary murder case. Russell's dramatic capture the next day was just the beginning of a story far stranger than fiction. As investigators pursued justice, shocking secrets unraveled—about the victims, their pasts, and a tangled web of deceit that no one saw coming. With a desperate escape, a relentless manhunt, and a hurricane crashing into the chaos, the pursuit of Rastus Russell became a deadly game of cat and mouse, pushing the limits of 1940s rural law enforcement.
For nearly a month, terror gripped Crystal Beach and West Central Florida. The case became national news, a chilling tale whispered for generations. But nothing will prepare readers for the explosive and controversial ending—one that left residents and police stunned. 
"Just like the movies," one headline declared. But this was real. And now, for the first time, the full story of Rastus Russell is told—a tale of crime, deception, and justice that will haunt you long after the last page. MADMAN: The Incredible True Story of John Calvin Russell, the Heinous Crime, and Sensational Manhunt that Terrified Central Florida in 1949—M.F. Gross

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker 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 (00:40):
Good Evening.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
A crime that shattered paradise, A chase that became legend.
Crystal Beach, Florida, nineteen forty nine, a peaceful seaside haven
where crime was unheard of until one early morning, A
brutal act of violence changed everything. John Calvin Rastus Russell,

(01:04):
a drifter, thug and small time carthief, committed an unthinkable crime,
the torture and murder of Norman Brown and the near
fatal assault on his wife Anne. The savage attack sent
shockwaves through the tight knit community, turning everyday citizens into

(01:24):
arm vigilantes determined to bring a killer to justice. But
this was no ordinary murder case. Russell's dramatic capture the
next day was just the beginning of a story far
stranger than fiction. As investigators pursued justice, shocking secrets unraveled
about the victims, their past, and a tangled web of

(01:47):
the seat that no one saw coming. With a desperate escape,
a relentless manhunt, and a hurricane crashing into the chaos,
the pursuit of Rastus Russell became a deadly game of
cat and mouse, pushing the limits of nineteen forty's rural
law enforcement. For nearly a month, terror gripped Crystal Beach

(02:10):
in West central Florida. The case became national news, a
chilling tale whispered for generations, But nothing will prepare readers
for the explosive and controversial ending, one that left residence
and police stunned. Just like the movies. One headline declared,

(02:32):
but this was real, and now, for the first time,
the full story of Rastus Russell is told, a tale
of crime, deception, and justice that will haunt you long
after the last page. The book that we're featuring this
evening is Madman, The incredible true story of John Calvin Russell,

(02:55):
the heinous crime and sensational manhunt that terrified Central Florida
in nineteen forty nine, with my special guest author M. F. Gross.
Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
this interview.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
M F. Gross, thank you very much. Dan, I'm glad
to be here.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Oh, thank you so much. And congratulations on this new book, Madman.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
I appreciate that. Dan, I'm glad we can talk about
it here today.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
You write about a lot in your introduction to explain
the times that we're nineteen forty nine, But tell us
about Crystal Beach, Florida and Penelas County in nineteen forty nine,
and your background in writing and how you came to
want to be the author of mad Man.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Sure. Crystal Beach is a tiny seaside community on the
west coast of Florida. It's just above clear Water, sits
right on the golf used to be golf from Mexico
Gulf of America, but it sits right on a little
inlet called Saint Joseph's Sound, And back in nineteen forty nine,

(04:09):
it was really an little idyllic kind of seaside village.
Everybody knew each other, all the kids played with each other,
and really kind of that mid twentieth century Mayberry type place.
And I had the privilege of moving to Crystal Beach

(04:33):
in twenty or two thousand and seven. It's when I
first moved there, lived there for twelve years, and during
that time it still retained a lot of that character.
It Obviously, new houses had grown up, but it still
maintained a lot of that old Florida flavor. And I
came across a book about Crystal Beach that was entitled

(04:58):
Crystal Beach Shangri La, and it was really just a
collection of stories from old time residents that had lived
there back in the mid twentieth century, people that grew
up in mostly in the forties, fifties, and sixties, and
it talked about that that lifestyle and what it was
like and how they spent a lot of their time

(05:19):
out in the water scalloping and fishing and swimming and
everything else. And there was a lot of really nice
Americana stories in there about picnics and things they used
to do together and that sort of thing. But in
between those stories, I came across this darker memory of

(05:42):
one resident by the name of Linda Henry. And Linda
told the story of a very disturbing, macabre murder that
had happened in Crystal Beach in nineteen forty nine. And
I had never heard this story before. And I read

(06:03):
the story, and the part that got me at the
end was Linda talked about being a six year old girl.
And obviously, the day of the murder, it was big
news in Crystal Beach. All the residents were there and
the police and everything else. But the next day she
walked up there as a little girl, six year old girl,
and she says she still remembers looking in the window,

(06:26):
the bedroom window, and seeing all the blood. And she said,
you know, there was a smell. There was a smell
in the air of that blood, of that blood, and
I still can't walk back there to this day without
smelling that smell. And it just it disturbed her. And
I said, boy, that is a creepy story. You know,

(06:47):
I've got to figure out what happened there. And so
I started researching a little bit, and the more I learned.
First of all, I learned the house was only about
one hundred yards from where my house was. Wow Else
used to stand and I walked by there every day,
and the house wasn't there anymore. But now I started

(07:08):
looking at this in a new light, and the story
just kind of took on a life of its own,
and I decided to write a book about it. That
fascinated me. That much.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
You take us to August seventh, nineteen forty nine, and
the home of Norman and Anne Brown. Tell us a
little bit about Norman Brown. You say seventy four years
old in nineteen forty nine. Tell us a little bit
about Norman Brown, his marriage to Anne, and what happens
on that faithful day.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Sure, Norman Brown was a retiree, worked for an electric
company up in New York. And he has an interesting
backstory which I won't go all into here, but he
was he was married to Anne. They got divorced, Norman remarried,

(08:03):
and they moved to Crystal Beach him and his second wife.
And his second wife died shortly after they moved to
Crystal Beach, and Norman went back to New York and
remarried Anne and brought her back to Crystal Beach. So
that's how they were living here in nineteen forty nine.

(08:25):
His wife, Anne was about ten years younger, and she
was also a retiree. So they're living in Crystal Beach.
They're living out in the secluded edge of Crystal Beach,
down a dusty lane called Rattlesnake Road, and they had
just put their house up for sale. They were supposedly

(08:45):
having some financial difficulties, which may play into some of
the theories later in the story. But they had just
put their house up for sale, and that's where we
find ourselves. On August seventh, nineteen forty nine.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
He said that Anne looks out the window and sees
a black nineteen forty six Ford. But she recognizes the driver,
but you can't remember his name. What does she remember
him from? And what happens once she sees him again
in a few minutes fifteen minutes or.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
So, Sure, and Dan, that's an interesting point because she
claims she didn't remember his name. But the more I
read the book, the more suspicious I got of Anne Brown.
But according to her, when he pulls up, she remembers

(09:41):
him visiting the house a couple of months earlier, where
he had supposedly stopped and asked for water in his car.
Now she changes this story three times. First she says
he stopped for water in his car, Then she says
he stopped to look at the house. Then she says
he was a pump prepair man and he came to

(10:01):
repair the pump at the house. Well, Russell was never
a pump prepairman. He never worked as a pump repairman.
And the stories really don't add up altogether, but according
to her, he stopped ask for water. They went out back,
the pump didn't work, and while they were trying to

(10:23):
get the pump to work, he asked about the house
and if it was you know, what the price was,
and he had some friends he thought might be interested
in it. And she sent him to the neighbors for water,
and that was the end of it. So when she
sees this car pulling up again, she sees his face
and she says, oh, you know, he must I remember

(10:44):
that guy. He must be coming back to look at
the house. You know, he said he was interested in
the house. So that's what they're thinking when he pulls
up on that early morning.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
What is her description of this person? And you introduced
this person as John Calvin Russell, So what is her
description of this person? And you give the background of
this person now looking much different than previously.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Well, Rastus Russell was a handsome man. And not only
was he handsome, he was very muscular, especially for nineteen
forty nine, where you know today there's a gym on
every corner, but back then that wasn't really the case.
Working out wasn't really a big mainstream thing back then,

(11:38):
and to what extent Russell worked out or not, we
don't know. But he was definitely a muscleman and had
movie star good looks. Supposedly also had a lot of charisma,
so his appearance was very disarming when you first meet him.
When you first see him, so this is the guy

(12:00):
that pulls up in their driveway and and Norman are
not aware of his background, which rastus. Russell is a
well known name in Penellas County and in particularly Palm Harbor,
which is right outside of Crystal Beach. It's kind of

(12:24):
the surrounds Crystal Beach. Russell is for the most part
small time hoodlum, thief, car thief. He has done a
lot of thefts, breaks into stores and steals things. He's
known to local police. Is a local hoodlum. But he

(12:47):
has been away for about seven years because he left
the state. We get into that later. He's been in
and out of prison, He's been in and out of
mental institutions. He has a violet streak. He's by this
time he's already attacked different people. He's arrested after he
leaves the state, He's arrested up in Illinois for car theft,

(13:10):
and he spends some time in prison there. They send
him to a mental institution because he's pleaded insanity a
couple times to different crimes, which depending on who evaluates him,
some determine him and saying Others say no, he's perfectly normal,
and others present an interesting theory which I happen to

(13:32):
subscribe to, that Russell had a jeckyal Hyde personality, which
means he's saying most of the time, but there are
brief periods where he can slip into moments of insanity,
And based on what I've studied about him and how
he behaves, this seems to match up with what his

(13:56):
condition seems to be based on his behavior. But when
he pulls up an Ann and Norman's driveway, they have
no idea this is his background. He's just this handsome
stranger that visited them a few months earlier and seemed
very cordial and polite.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
You're right that he spends quite quite some time at
the home, over three hours, talking about all kinds of things.
He sits there and speaks with him and has coffee,
shares coffee with him, and then you say that in
the area there are deadly rattlesnakes and among other wild
creatures that people defend themselves against with weapons like shotguns.

(14:37):
So Norman has a couple of shotguns and one of
them happens to be in the washroom. After speaking for
a while, you.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Write that.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Rastus goes into the washroom, and when he emerges, what happens.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Rassus goes into the washroom after talking with them for
three and a half hour. And I don't want to
skip over, because I think that's a critical part of
the story. Dan is, if you're showing up at someone's
house to rob them, do you sit at their dining
room table and talk to them for three and a
half hours over coffee and take he took Norman to

(15:18):
get a newspaper and they go back. If one of
you don't know them, and two if you're there with
intention of robbing them, that part never added up to me,
and it sheds a lot of suspicion on the Brown's
former knowledge of him. But and I hope I'm not

(15:41):
over elaborating here, but I do you brought up rattlesnakes.
I want to tell you one quick story about when
I lived there, and this was probably twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. Right,
there's a Rattlesnake Road. Doesn't exist anymore. It's been made
into another more modern road, but it's still traces part
of Rattlesnake Road. And that's how I would drive to

(16:04):
my house to get home. And I'm coming home from
work one day and there I talked about rattlesnakes can
grow six feet down there there's a six foot rattlesnake
in the middle of the road, sprawled out. It had
been run over. Its head was run over, but the
rest of it was still there. It must have just happened,
and it was right in the spot where their house sat.

(16:28):
So that's what almost you know, almost six seventy years later,
there's still rattlesnakes back there. So that's part of the story.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
But to answer your question, Russell, after three and a
half hours, he excuses himself. He goes into Norman Brown's
bathroom and he comes out holding Norman's shotgun which is loaded,
and he points it at Norman's chest and Norman says,
you know what's going on here? What are you doing?

(17:00):
And at this point he is her whole personality shifts,
he changes, He screams, I'm a desperate man. He smashes
the coffee cup out of Norman's hand, and he tells
them this story about how he's he's part of a
drug gang from Chicago and they better do what he
says or his drug friends are going to take care

(17:23):
of it, take care of them, and he wants their money.
It's where's the money now. Keep in mind this is
all according to Anne Brown, and she's the only witness,
so this is her version of what happened. But they
keep saying we don't have any money. Where people are
limited means we don't have any money. Russell doesn't believe them.

(17:46):
He orders he tells him he's going to tie them up.
He asks them where they would prefer to be tied up,
in their bedroom or the garage, and then, without letting
them decide, he marches them out to the garage. He
ties them their bounds, their ankles, their wrists, and then
he puts a rope over the beams out in the garage,

(18:08):
which is called the garage. It's really just a storage shed,
dirt floor, woodn't but he ties them up so their
hands are over their heads hanging from those beams, and
then he goes back in the house and they hear
him tearing through the house, tearing things up, looking supposedly
looking for money, and if for some strange reason, he

(18:31):
gets in his car and leaves. And at this point
they think the ordeal's over. So they're left in their
garage thinking he's gone, but they still have to get
out of these ropes.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop. They hear these messages.
Now they think maybe they're in the clear. They're uninjured.
They think maybe this madman is gone, so they are
trying to untie themselves. What do they do in this pursuit?
And what happens maybe ninety minutes.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
Later, Well, Norman manages to free himself from the ropes
and he unties Ann and he finds a hack saw
in the shed, and Rastus has locked the shed from
the outside, so there's a there's a steel hasp and
he puts a I guess there's a dead bolt around it.

(19:27):
So Norman's sticking that saw through the two barn like
doors on the front of this set, and he's trying
to saw through that hasp, but it's it's given him
a hard time. It's a thick hasp. So as he's
doing this, Erastus has gone about an hour and a
half and they think, well, we got robbed, but we're okay.
We just got to get out of the shed and

(19:47):
call the cups. So Norman's working on this thing. Keep
in mind it's it's summer in Florida, which, if you've
never been summer in Florida, it is brutal. You know,
it's ninety typically ninety to ninety five degrees every day,
skyrocketing humidity. It's like being in a sauna. And they're

(20:08):
locked in this garage. They're older people, you know, seventy five.
That's that can be very taxing. So he's trying to
get out of here, and all of a sudden, they
hear that engine whining back up Rattlesnake Road at that ford,
and ann Brown looks out through the crack and she says,
oh my god, Norman, he's coming back. And you know,

(20:30):
she must be terrified. They both must be terrified if
this guy's coming back. So Norman starts freaking out, and
he starts kicking on his door, trying to break the
door open to get out. So Russell pulls up, pulls
up behind the house. He gets out of the car.
He comes and he sees them. He sees Norman trying
to kick the door open, and this just enrages him.

(20:53):
He flies into a rage. And at this point he
has his own shotgun with him now, which is a
sowd off twelve gage. He brings that gun. He throws
the door open, and so angry, he smashes Norman in
the head with the butt of that sawed off shotgun.
And Norman goes down and he's bleeding. He's holding his

(21:15):
head and Anne Brown starts screaming and again this, according
to her, is another strange part of the story. She
looks at Rastus and says, go inside and get my
medical kit. So he does. He goes inside, he gets
the medical kit and brings it back to Anne, so
she can tend to Norman. You know, just a strange

(21:40):
he's a strange individual, and he shows bits of this
throughout the story. So she tends to Norman. Eventually he
gets them up and he's marching them back in the
house because he still wants this money. He thinks he's
convinced there is money in this house, right, So he

(22:00):
starts marching them back in the house. And this is
where things start to get rough, because at this point
Norman he's not happy. You know, he's he's seventy five,
but he's still a man and he was, you know,
he was a enough rough and tumble kai back in
his day that he doesn't want to put up with this.

(22:24):
So this guy's walking him back in, and for some
reason he looks the other way and Norman takes off running.
Takes off running, but he's little woozy from being hitting
the head, and instead of running out towards the driveway
into the road, he runs into his yard, which is
fenced and it's a barbedire fence. He runs up against

(22:45):
his barbedire fence. Erastus sees this and he's just, you know,
he loses it. He goes storming out after him, and
he just goes into a profanity that profanity laced tirade
and starts beating and kicking Norman and ashing and what's
the shotgun? And he's really really don't damage. So by

(23:05):
this point Norman is, you know, he's pretty beat up.
So rassues grabs him, starts dragging him back to the
house and that's that's when they stain into the bedroom.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
You're right that he gets some cords, some from a radio,
some from a clothes line, and first he ties Rome
Norman spread eagled on the bed, and then and as well,
spread eagled and tied to their couple's twin beds in
the bedroom.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
That's right. Yeah, it's a really uh, it's a nightmare
like scenario when you see. You know, back in nineteen
forty nine, they they took pictures and murder scenes and
put them in a newspaper, so it's not like today
where they tried to edit it from the public. And
when you see those pictures, which I do have some
of them featured in the book, it is it's just chilling.

(23:55):
It's it's so disturbing to see see the tied up
and helpless like that. But yeah, he ties and both
spread eagle to the bed, and then he starts demanding
money again, and when they still won't give it up,
that's when it starts to get a little bit ugly.
And Rastus goes out into the kitchen and he gets

(24:17):
a butcher knife and he comes back in and he says, now,
you tell me where the money is.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
Yeah, and he also just is fed up and stabs Norman.
He had prone sheets over them, and then Norman says,
he's cutting my wrists, So first he slashes his wrists,
Norman's wrists, and then plunges a knife into his chest.
You introduce a couple characters that around the same time

(24:50):
have plans to meet up with the family with and
and Norman tell us about the Thelma and Miles Crumb.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
Sure, Thelma and Miles Crumb run the local I don't
want to call it a grocery store. It was kind
of a sundry store, but they had a little soda
bar there in Crystal Beach where they also sold various supplies.
The small amount of groceries. It was a big gathering

(25:23):
place for Crystal Beach and they had ice cream, sodas.
A lot of the kids hung out there. It's kind
of a central point of Crystal Beach. So Miles and
Thelma Crumb know everyone in town and they are good
friends with the Browns. In fact, Miles and Thelma are

(25:44):
on their way to the Browns that afternoon to drop
off their little daughter, Judy Crumb, who at this time
just a baby. She's eight months old, and they're dropping
them off so Missus Brown can baby sit while they
go swimming at the beach. That Sundays are one day

(26:04):
off from the store and they like to go swimming,
so they're on their way up. And just to back
up a minute, Russell didn't just stab Norman. I mean
he kept them in there for an hour and a half.
Gradually he would give Norman a shot with the knife
every time. He wouldn't tell them where something was. So

(26:27):
Norman's got all these little stab wounds all over his
legs and arms and stomach, but none of them were
fatal yet. And when he finally gets fed up with
Norman when he can't find it, he's looking. This goes
on for an hour and a half where they're tied up.
That's when he again that pattern of losing his temper

(26:48):
and he loses his temper and just yeah, he goes
berserk on Norman with the knife and that's when that happens.
But by the time the crumbs pull up, Rastus is
sitting out on the front porch. He's got the sod
Off shotgun in his lap. He's killed Norman. He hasn't
killed ann He's cut her up and he's hit her

(27:11):
with the gun, but for some reason he let her live,
and I speculate on that later in the book as well.
But when the Crumbs pull up to drop off Judy,
Rastus is sitting out on the front porch, it's a
screened in front porch with a sawed off shotgun in
his lap.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
They see this man. They see that he looks Latin
or of Greek descent, very thick muscular, but he has
blood on his shirt and a menacing look on his face.
And as you say, he's holding a shot of sawd
off shotgun.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
And what does he do from there? Well, he's sitting there.
So the Crumbs pull up and they're driving a jeep
and they have the baby and they get out, you know,
they're walking to the front poor to drop the baby
off with the Browns, and Miles Crumb immediately sees Russell

(28:08):
on the porch. So there's this stranger with a sod
off shotgun and there's blood on him, and Miles immediately
knows something isn't right here. Now. Miles is no pushover himself.
Miles uh serve time in the military. He's he was
discharged a couple of years earlier. That's when he started
the store off of Gilne. And he's young. He's young,

(28:34):
He's three years younger than Rastus. Rastus is thirty four,
Miles is thirty one. So Miles goes up on the porch.
Here's this stranger on his friend's porch with a shotgun,
bloody shirt. He says, what's what's going on here? And
Russell points a shotgun at his head and says, get
in the house. And he's standing right in front of him.

(28:59):
So Miles and initially acts like he's going to comply,
and then as this is a brave thing, and if
you put yourself in a situation, I don't know if
I would have done this, But Miles got a family
to protect. His friends are obviously been injured. He grabs

(29:20):
a shotgun and pushes it away, and him and Russell
fall to the ground and they're fighting over this shotgun,
and he says himself, I almost got it away from him,
almost got it away from him. If he would have
done that, the rest of this story probably wouldn't even
have happened. But as they're struggling, Rastus gets the upper hand.

(29:43):
He pulls a shotgun away and Miles steps back, and
as he does, Russell drops to one knee and he
fires the sawd off shotgun and he hits Miles right
in the gun, and Miles stumbles backwards, back off the
porch and collapses out into the yard, and Thelma crumbs

(30:04):
there and she just starts screaming, runs over to his side.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yes, you say, He points the gun at her face
and then pulls the trigger.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, that's right. He then approaches Thelma now she's still
holding the baby, and he points the gun at Thelma's face,
and as he does, she drops instinctively pushes the baby
away because she doesn't want the baby to get shot.
So her account is she dropped the baby. The newspaper

(30:42):
says she gently rolled the baby. When I interviewed a
friend of Miles Crumb for this book, Miles passed away
twenty five years ago, but this gentleman actually lived with
the Crumbs for a while as sort of an adopted son.
He told me Miles told him one night, as they

(31:05):
were having a late night conversation on the porch, that
Thelma threw the baby up in the air out of fear,
and she never was able to forgive herself for that
lived with that the rest of her life. But Thelma

(31:26):
throws the baby, drops the baby wherever you want to
call it. Russell points the shotgun at her face and
pulls the trigger and nothing happens. There's a click, and
either the gun jammed or there was only one shell
in it. Either way. Russell then takes the shotgun, grabs
it by the stock, and smashes thelm over the head

(31:51):
with it with the barrel. She collapses. She's out cold,
she's unconscious. So Miles, he has managed to crawl back
to the deep. His entire abdomen's ripped open. His intestines
are coming out of his belly, so he's he's pushing
them back in with his hand as he crawls up

(32:11):
in the jeep. He starts the jeep up and it
turns over and he's trying to slam it into gear
with his one good hand while he's holding his testines
in with the other. He gets it into gear, he
hits the gas. What he does not realize dan is

(32:32):
that Thelma has dropped the baby right in front of
the jeep's right tire, right front tire, and Miles slams
on the gas because Russell's now standing right in front
of the jeep. So Miles is thinking to how I'm
gonna get this guy now? You know, he's gonna slam

(32:53):
on that gas and run over Russell. Instead, he's accidentally
in his wounded stack eight. Fortunately for the baby, slammed
it into reverse instead, and when he hits a gas
that the jeeps goes skidding into reverse, back plows into
Norman's fence, and then he manages to shift it back

(33:15):
into gear and he drives off down the road. So
he leaves, and that's one of the points of the
story too. Is a lot of people ask, well, boy,
he left his wife and baby there, why did he
do that? I don't know. I speculate on it in
the book. It could just be he was, you know,

(33:35):
in shock. You got shot in the gut with a shotgun,
you're probably going to be in shock. And maybe he's
just reacting at that point. He says later he thought
they were dead. Who knows. Who knows, But he does
leave in the jeep and goes driving down the road.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now, a person named Robert Cotton, He and
his wife live two blocks west. He hears a blast,
here's a woman screaming, and then he sees his friend
Miles Crumb with his intestines hanging out of his body.

(34:16):
Tell us about what James Cotton sees and does as
a result.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Robert Cotton is cutting fish in his backyard and he
hears the shotgun blast, so he's not sure what it is.
And then he hears a woman screaming, Oh my god,
oh my god. So he's already on alert. He's looking around,
and a couple of minutes later, here comes his friend
Miles Crumb, wheeling into his front yard in his jeep

(34:49):
holding his gut. And Cotton goes out and there's Crumb
in the jeep and he's saying, call the police, call
an ambulance. Is the guy shot the Brown's you know,
he's giving them all the details. And then he passes out,
and that's when Cotton notices, you know, his entire fronts
covered in blood. Guts are coming out. So Cotton tells

(35:13):
his wife and kids to go upstairs. They do call ambulance.
They call police back then there's no nine one one,
so you've got to call direct the operator and get
the direct number to the police and hope somebody picks up.
But they do. An ambulance is on the way, and
while they're waiting for that, here up through the woods,

(35:37):
comes out of the woods and into Cotton's yard comes
Thelma and she's holding the babies. You know, she's covered
in blood. Her head's covered in blood. She been hit
on the head, covered in sweat. She just ran through
about what the equivalent of two city blocks of Florida woods,

(35:59):
which in the summertime, it's undergrowth, it's wet, there's mosquitoes everywhere,
it's hotter than hell, and the snakes and everything else
are living in here. She's just run through that, through
that thicket, and she's arriving and she's hysterical, and missus
Cotton comes out. They take Thelma inside, the baby inside,

(36:23):
and fortunately shortly after that, the first ambulance arrives on scene.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
I introduce from Tarpon Springs, a constable for Panelas County
District four. Walter Carey gets involved in this story and
this case. What does he know about the suspect? John
Calvin Russell.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Walter Carrey is probably one of my, if not my
favorite character in this book. He is an old school lawman.
He is described as low key, very fair. He's very
popular amongst the community, but he's also not to be

(37:14):
trifled with. Carrie has seen his share of rough play.
He's been in the military, He's seen his share of gunplay.
Some of the stories his I interviewed his grandson for
the book, and some of the stories his grandson told
me made me think I could write a book just
about Walter Carey. But Carrie has an interesting history with

(37:40):
Rastus Russell in that one. He probably knows him just
through his reputation in Palm Harbor. Carrie's the head lawman
for this part of the county, so certainly probably knows
Rastus Russell given all the times he's been arrested. Interestingly,

(38:02):
about eight years before this, Carrie wasn't constable yet. His
brother Rufus was the constable at that point. And Rufus
responds to a call one night where somebody is assaulting
an eighty two year old man in Palm Harbor. Well,
he shows up and it's Rastus Russell who has attacked

(38:25):
this eighty two year old man with a bottle, probably
trying to rob him. And Rufus shows up on scene.
Rufus is a big, tall guy as well, and he
goes to arrest Russell and Russell decides he's going to
fight him and ends up in this brutal brawl where

(38:47):
somehow they get up fall down a whole flight of steps,
fighting and beating each other. Eventually, Rufus gets the better
of Russell and he arrests him, but he's, you know,
he's pretty banged up. And Russell goes you know, into
the system after that. But Rufous interesting and he dies

(39:10):
six months later. He has tuberculosis and he has this
episode in a car while he's driving a suspect to jail,
and he bleeds to death through the mouth. He just
starts coughing and he hemorrhages and dies right there in
the car. So Walter, who was a fisherman's sponger before this,
that's how he gets into law enforcement. He takes Rufus's

(39:32):
place as constable, so he knows very well who Rastus
Russell is. Now. He does not know Russell's the killer.
All as he knows is there's a there's been a
shooting in Crystal Beach and the Sunday afternoon it's pretty quiet.
He's at his home relaxing in tarp And Springs, and
so he starts heading down to Crystal Beach to find

(39:55):
out what's going on. And that's kind of where at
this point.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
He grabs a state patrolman, Carr Castles, and also Special
Deputy Dewey Adair and his son Harold and another person
named Leonard Rodgers, and they head to the Browns and
they storm through the front door.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
What do they find? Well, when they get to the
brown The only reason he knows this is because he
catches up to Miles Chrome as they're pulling him into
the tarp And Springs hospital and Chrome tells him there's
a killer Crystal Beach, you know. He gives him the
address the Brown's house. So yes, at that point, Carrie knows, Wow,
this is for real. He grabs a couple of the

(40:40):
Special Deputies picks him up along the way and they
get to the Brown's house with Castle, and they don't
know what's waiting for them inside all as they know
there's been a shooting and from what Miles Chrome tells them.
So he positions a couple of the deputies outside and
him and Castles, who is a highway patrolman Castles is

(41:04):
in uniform. He's got a you know what we know
is a regular police car, and he's got a regular uniform.
Carrie works in playing clothes cars his own, so none
of these other guys have police uniforms on Castle does.
They storm through the front door, and at first they
don't see anything. They're running. The thing they notice is

(41:25):
the house is ransacked, stuff laying everywhere. They run upstairs,
they don't see anything up there. They come back down
and they notice a blood trail on the floor and
they follow it. It's into the first floor bedroom, and
that's where they find Norman and Ann still tied to
the bed, and they're just even for see seasoned lawmen.

(41:46):
They're taken aback. It's just a sickening scene. There's blood everywhere,
tied to the bed, it's like a scene out of
a horror movie. And they at that point think both
of them are dead and they're getting ready to investigate
two bodies, and all of a sudden, Anne moves, she groans,
and they realize Anne's still alive. Wow, And that's where

(42:09):
they cut Anne loose at that point and start getting
the story.

Speaker 3 (42:15):
Now what is the story? She tells them, but he
has a bombshell that she tells him regarding the license
plate number.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Yes, through the ordeal, when they were in the garage,
Anne had the clear clearness of mind she saw the
license plate on Russell's car as he was taking him
into the garage, and she scrawled that license plate on
the wood inside the shed where they were tied up,

(42:48):
and she tells that to Carrie, and by the time
the rest of law enforcement gets there, Carrie has a
license plate, so they have something to go on. At
that point, you.

Speaker 3 (43:00):
Say that Carry the lead investigator teams up with Panela's
county share of Todd Tucker, and their next move is
to Tucker orders roadblocks. And what's very, very interesting is
the posse that forms.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Yes, that's one of my favorite parts of the story is,
you know we described Crystal Beach earlier. It's a very
small community in Palm Harbor itself is a small community.
So as this news starts getting around, I mean, this
is just horrific, unheard of news in this type of

(43:37):
little village. Nothing like this. You know. The biggest thing
that ever happens is maybe somebody has a little too
much to drink on a Friday night or somebody's cat
gets stuck in a tree. That's about it. So something
this intense happens, it just goes through the community like wildfire.
So you have not only people from Crystal Beach showing up,

(43:59):
but people from Palm Harbor showing up. And they're two things.
One they're frightened and two they're angry. So they want
to find this person that did this. And this is
just after World War Two. A lot of these guys
have been in the military. A lot of these guys
have seen combat, so they are not intimidated in the least,

(44:21):
and they're very comfortable with weapons. Most of them own weapons, rifle, shotguns, pistols,
So they're showing up with their own guns and they're
ready to hunt this guy down. And some of it's
organized by the police where they're directing the more to search.
Others of these they're just forming on their own and

(44:43):
they're going off on their own looking through the woods.
Most of the big part of Panels County at that
point is orange groves, so they're going row bi row
through orange groves looking for tracks, looking for anything they
can find. Some of them don't have guns. There's boys
showing up, there's teenagers, but ones that don't have guns.

(45:06):
The law enforcement is passing out guns, some of them
Thompson's submachine guns. They're handing to just members of the
public to go want this guy. So there's hundreds of
people now combing the woods in the area around Crystal Beach.
This is the night and day after the murder looking

(45:26):
for the murderer, who they still don't know who he
is yet.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
You say, based on the initial investigations and interviews with
Ann Brown and Miles Crumb, police contemplayed a Chicago link
with these drug gang that he spoke of. You talk
about that nineteen forty nine, the theory of a drug
crazed lunatic does not need much embellishment, and you write

(45:53):
about the nineteen thirty three Lakata murders at his home
residents where this person, Victor Locata, was deemed mentally ill
and one night he went on a rampage and killed
his entire family with an axe, and they attributed the
rampage to marijuana use. And you say that based on

(46:14):
the initial interviews with Anne Brown, the media took that
as that and there was a rumor that a marijuana
joint or a half smoke joint was found at the
crime scene. You say that took the media into a
narrative that included the dangers and the horrors of marijuana.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Exactly right, Dan Well. In nineteen thirty three, they pounced
on the Lakata story, which I'm not I don't want
to give away or plug my second book, but Victor
Locatta is a very interesting story in and of itself,
but we'll save that for another time. But the media

(46:55):
pounced on that story like a frenzy. And as it
turns out out, you know, the cottum may not have
even smoked marijuana at all that night, so it's hard
to say, but the media is always looking for a
story like that, and that had become such a sensation.
The movie Re for Madness came out partially as a

(47:16):
result of that case, which really started to turn the
public tide against marijuana. So nineteen forty nine, that's still
fresh in their mind. And as soon as you say
drug gang, once the media gets ahold of that, they
just go with it like wildfire. And that was the
initial theory which Walter Carey seemed convinced of initially, and

(47:39):
then the next day he abruptly reverses himself and says, no,
that's not the case. So, no, there was no marijuana
found that the scene. It's even suspect whether Russell even
drank anything. He probably was stone cold sober when this happened.
Don't know for sure, but based on everything I read,

(48:00):
that's probably the case.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
So this Todd Tucker Sheriff Todd Tucker becomes a central
figure in this story, as well as Walter Carrey. How
do they plan the police to proceed with this? How
do they proceed with this investigation?

Speaker 2 (48:20):
The first thing they do, as you said, they put
up roadblocks everywhere because they think that'll Penell's County is
a peninsula, and so they figure they can seal off
the peninsula. Yeah, they'll steal off the bridges, they'll seal
off the exits that they'll keep them in, and then
eventually he'll surface. So while they're doing that, Carrie starts

(48:46):
getting on this license plate trying to find out who
the owner of the license plate is. You have to
keep in mind in nineteen forty nine, they don't have
computer system where they can just sit down and pull
it up on a screen. A lot of this stuff
has to be done through phone calls and looking through
paper files and looking up old court records in a

(49:06):
basement somewhere. So there's the law enforcement is a lot
less efficient than it is today. A lot of things
takes a lot of elbow grease. So Carrie is known
as a top detective as well as being the constable.
So he starts doing his thing and studying. Tucker is
heading up the search. So Tucker's taking control of the

(49:30):
law enforcement that are looking for this guy, and he
seals off the county and he thinks they're eventually going
to find him that way through these search parties. So
that's how the investigation begins.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Now you introduced some important characters. Sam Crane a forty
one year old citrus plant worker two miles outside of
Palm Harbor, White Flora and three sons and three daughters,

(50:08):
including Dorothy Jean tell us about the Crane family and
a relationship to Rastus Russell Well the Cranes.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
He has a large family, their family of seven at
the time, and Crane's oldest son is often the military
Sam Crane, but he lives just outside of Palm Harbor,
and yes, he's a citrus plant worker. That's the biggest
employer in the county at that point. As I said,

(50:42):
it's mostly orange groves and citrus groves, so the main
industry there is one picking them and two working in
the plants where they're processing him and putting them in
boxes and shipping them and all that. So that's what
Crane does. That's where his sons is two oldest or
two of his three oldest sons work with him. They're
in a citrus plant so they're also they work hard,

(51:06):
honest guys, but at the same time they're known as
they like to go out and raise a little hell
on the weekends as well, and the bars and that
sort of thing. So there, you know, there are no
angels themselves, but there's nothing to suggest they're criminals. But
somehow the three of them are at least the two
sons meet Rastus Russell in Palm Harbor and they become friends,

(51:32):
and Russell starts coming to their house this summer of
forty nine, actually in the spring of forty nine when
he starts coming to the house, and they all work
on cars, so they work on cars, get to know
each other. That way, probably hang out at the bars,
that sort of thing. And through this, Russell's older than them,

(51:55):
he's thirty four. And the oldest son of Sam is oh,
you stump me, Dan. I believe he's twenty one, but
his name's Ferrel. And through visiting them, Rastus Russells gets
to know their sixteen year old sister, Dorothy Jean. And

(52:18):
you know, Dorothy Jean's a pretty girl and Rastus is
a handsome man, and a little flirtation starts to develop. Eventually,
according to Sam Crane, Russell just shows up one day
and takes Dorothy and they leave. Now that's Sam Crane's story. However,

(52:42):
everything after that suggests Dorothy left with him willingly, and
they're gone. They're gone for two months, nobody knows where
they are. Sam Crane calls the police says she's been kidnapped,
and they put out a warrant Russell, who they don't know.
His name is John Calvin Russell. He uses an alias

(53:04):
with them, so they they He tells him his name's
Jim Sullivan, so they think his name's Jim Sullivan, so
they put out a warrant on Jim Sullivan. Well that's
not a real guy, so it doesn't really hold much.
They're gone. They show up two months later, this is
in June of forty nine, and for some reason, they're

(53:26):
just welcomed back into the Crane home. They have dinner,
Good to see you, Dorothy, and then they leave again
and go over to stay with Russell and his aunt
in Tampa. So that doesn't sound like a kidnapping to me.
So Dorothy is a very interesting character in this story.
Theories about her reigns from she was in on his

(53:49):
crimes to a Bonnie and Clyde type deal to she
was completely innocent and was being held against her will,
which she claimed. I think the truth is, I don't
think Dorothy was involved in any of his crimes. I
definitely don't think she was involved in the murders. But

(54:09):
she may have known some of the things he did.
But what's she gonna do. She's sixteen years old, is
the thirty four year old man? So Dorothy's girl. That
sounds like she might have just got in a little
bit over her head and sixteen year old girls. He's
looking for adventure and excitement and bit off a little
bit more than she could chew.

Speaker 3 (54:29):
Before we get to Miles Crumb and Thelma and Judy
and their condition at hospital and them eventually being a
questioned when they can by police. You spoke about Maud McCord,
Russell's aunt in Tampa. Tell us about her and where

(54:49):
this black forward vehicle had come from.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Yeah, Maud McCord was the sister of Russell's mother, which
was Maud Baker McCord, and Maud took Russell in when
Russell came back from Illinois. His mother had died in
forty two and he was very close to his mother,

(55:16):
so Maud took him in. Maud was a widow herself,
had just lost her husband six months earlier. For whatever reason,
she lets Russell stay at his house. Well, while Russell's
staying at his house, he's doing odd jobs as a mechanic,
picking oranges, things like that, but he's also doing crimes
on the side, so he's a very experienced car thief.

(55:41):
And on the night before the murders, Russell steals the
nineteenth He steals the black Ford from a grocery store
in Tampa. The parking lot of a grocery store. He
steals the black Ford, and Russell preferred seems to prefer

(56:04):
the Fords for the big engines. The same reason. Clyde
Barrow like the Fords, they have the big V eight engines.
He can typically outrun police cars, and his car theft
patterns seem to show he prefers the Ford with a
big engine.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Tell us about the condition of Miles and Thelma and
Judy and the questioning about their attacker.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
Well, Miles, they don't think he's going to live. They
only give him a ten percent chance of living when
they brought him in, and they were just trying to
make him comfortable until he passed. And Miles surprised everyone
by making it through the night, and he starts to
improve a little bit, and they you know, he had

(56:54):
to go through several surgeries and had to eat through
a tube for a while. Thelma, they think she just
has a concussion, but they don't know, so they're keeping
her for observation. But she's you know, she's still incapacitated.
She is still having a hard time. I mean she's

(57:14):
still been shocked, still kind of hysterical. Judy, they initially thinks,
all right, a little baby. They put her in the
crib and think she just got bruised. There would eventually
be shown wrong about that, but that's the initial condition. Miles.
Actually he's still fighting even in his state. Is able

(57:35):
to give a statement to police, and he says he
can identify him if they find him. So Telma, she
can't talk at all. She's just hysterical at this point.

Speaker 3 (57:52):
Now back at the Cranes, there is the story that
hits the front page headline. Story tell us about Sam
Crane and his reaction to reading that story.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Well, at this point in time, Russell and Dorothy have
been moving back and forth. They stay at Sam Crane's
house sometime, and in some of the time they stay
with his aunt maud over in Tampa. So they kind
of happened shifting back and forth between where they're living.

(58:29):
But on this night, Russell is there at Sam's house.
Him and Dorothy stayed there that night, and Russell has
his own room there, his own bedroom. He tells authorities
that he rented the room to Russell, which may or

(58:50):
may not be true. But anyways, that morning, Sam is
down in his breakfast table and he's eating bread and
he's reading the morning paper and he's reading about this
horrible murder right up the street from him in Crystal Beach,
which just a couple miles up the road, and you know,
like everyone else, he's just shocked that this could happen

(59:12):
in their community. And when he starts reading the details,
he starts putting things together. One Russell had returned home
yet yesterday on Sunday in the afternoon, and he walked
up to the porch and he had a bloody hand
and Sam was sitting on the porch with his sons

(59:36):
and he said, well, happen to your hand? He said, oh,
I slammed it in a car door. So he remembers that.
But last night Russell asked him to take him over
to Tampa to drop off a car he had borrowed
from a friend. So Sam Crane follows him all the
way to Tampa and Russell just leaves this car in
the parking lot of the grocery store where he stole it,

(59:59):
and he starts loading all this stuff out of the
car into Sam Crane's car. He's loading groceries, he's loading
bags of flour, and then he loads two shotguns. Apparently
Sam Crane wasn't suspicious that Russell's carrying around a sod
Off shotgun and another shotgun along with all these all

(01:00:21):
this stuff in this car that he apparently borrowed from
a friend, and he just leaves the car in the
parking lot, right, So that part is suspicious too. I
don't know if there's anybody in this story that's totally clean,
but it's hard to prove any of the stuff. So
the next day Sam reads the paper and he reads
about his murder and he remembers these shotguns and the

(01:00:42):
guy got shot with a shotgun that's in the paper,
and he's putting two and two together. He's got a
bloody hand. He's loading these two shotguns into his room
and the shotguns are still up in Russell's bedroom. So
he calls his friend he works with at the plant,
the guy by the name of Oscar good One, and
they he tells him what he thinks, and they start

(01:01:04):
comparing notes and they say, well. He says, I don't
want to call the police right now. My wife's pregnant.
If the police do a raid on this house, there's
going to be people here, there's gonna be media here,
the CoP's going to be here. They could upset my wife,
something could happen to the baby. So Oscar says, well,
you know, let's let's do this first. Let's make sure.

(01:01:24):
Let's go up and search his room. And he said, well,
Russell's here. You know, the guy's here at the house.
So they devised this plan that they're measuring the rooms
because they're going to be doing some home improvements. So
him and Oscar are going through the house with their
pencils and measuring tape, and Russell's there, but he doesn't
really paying attention to them. So they go in his

(01:01:45):
room and act like they're measuring it, and they find
these bags of flour, They find these groceries that he
he stole from the Browns. But then they find the
two shotguns there. But then what they also find is
a pile of bloody in the corner. So Russell doesn't
even bother to throw these away or burn them, or

(01:02:07):
he leaves them in a corner in his bedroom. They're
still bloody. So they're convinced at this point, Wow, this
guy's the murder and he's living under your roof, Sam.
So Sam might have known some things about Russell, but
he probably didn't know he was a killer. And at
this point, you know, he knows it is enough. I'll

(01:02:28):
put up with some of this, but you know, I'm
not putting up with a killer. So they devise his
plan because he doesn't want the police coming to his house,
and that plan is what eventually proves the undoing of Russell.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yes, you say, now.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
There is a man hunt, and so police employ bloodhounds
search dogs. This you introduce dogs name Flip and Flop.
Tell us how they proceed with this manhunt.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Well, as they're looking for Russell that day. Yes, Flip
and Flop are kind of comic relief in the story.
I found is I researched the story, people seem to
get a smile on their face when they talked about
the dogs, and so I kind of introduced them that

(01:03:28):
way in the book and talk about them that way.
But they're tracking dogs there now I forget the name,
it's on the tip of my tongue. But they don't
bark there. They're quiet. They sniff and they point. But
they're not like on TV where you hear the bloodhounds,
you know, or over through the through the yard. That's

(01:03:49):
not what it is. They're very specialized dogs. They track
sense and they have to come all the way from
Plant City, which is the other side of Tampa. But
by now the dogs are not going through the woods
around Crystal Beach trying to find a scent for Russell
and all these This whole search is going on all

(01:04:09):
day while Sam Crane is coming to his revelation here
that the killer might actually be in his house.

Speaker 3 (01:04:19):
And so with that in mind, the police go to
the home and of course he's gone. So now they
proceed with You talk about a huge law enforcement response
along with all kinds of spectators and aposseus for him.
So tell us about them catching up with him eventually.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
What does he do?

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
How does he get away for a time?

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Well, he's while they're looking for him. He's most likely
at Sam Crane's house. Now, how he gets to Tampa
and all the way back the night of the murders
when there's supposedly roadblocks everywhere. I have no idea. Maybe

(01:05:11):
I had no idea how he did that, the sheriff says,
all he knows all the back roads. Okay, maybe, but
it just seems strange that he was able to avoid
all the roadblocks. There's not that many roads leading off
Panels County at that time, but he's at the Crane's house.

(01:05:31):
So that's why they're not finding him because he's not
out in the woods. He's in a house. He's back
where he lives, so that's why they're not finding him.
The law enforcement. You have to remember at the time, Yeah,
there was murder, and you know Tampa Bay at that point,
it's like other big city, but this is a little

(01:05:52):
small town out on the edge. And the media response
to this because of the viscera parts of it, the
pictures of the guy tied to the bed, but the
gag in his mouth, I mean, the horrificness of it,
it's like the Manson murders. It generates that type of
media response. So there's media from Ollwarre, the state, and

(01:06:14):
eventually it gets picked up on the AP wire and
it's going worldwide. And so this was big news in
nineteen forty nine and the public is demanding find this guy.
They're all in the woods looking. So when Sam Crane
finally calls police as I got to kill her, I

(01:06:35):
know where he is. They come from everywhere. They come
from as far away as Tampa. You have Tampa Sheriffs
or Tampa police. You have Hillsboro County. You have Panellis County,
you have tarp and springs, clear water Downeed and they
all have their own little police forces and they all
kind of work together. So they're all swarming here to

(01:06:56):
Palm Harbor to where Sam Crane tells them that killer
is and he's lured Rastus into a trap using his
daughters and sons.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Yes this is these take them on a scalloping journey
and then police are watching. They see them through binoculars.
There's two teams of three people in each group. And
then finally they zero in on Rastus and he is
on the run.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
Yeah. They Sam Crane gets his children to Dorothy and
his two sons to take Rastus scalloping out in what's
called the Dunedin Flats, and it's this shallow area of
the bay. There's it's just at the time. You can
wait out there. It's a very popular thing to do.
You take a tub and you pick up scallops. And

(01:07:53):
Rastus thinks nothing of it, so he goes out with them,
and Sam Crane calls the police and says, this is
your guy. I think I got him scalloping down there
in the flats. He won't be able to get away
because he can't run through water, and they just swarm
around the flats. So there's over one hundred law enforcement

(01:08:18):
people there, not to mention the media, not to mention
the public, who has also shown up armed. So they're
all standing around this bay looking out and they can
see figures out there. Carrie finally shows up on the
scene and he leads a couple of deputies out into

(01:08:40):
the water, and the first three comes to the cranes,
the two oldest crane boys and Dorothy, and he waves
them in, you'll get into the shore. So there's three
more out there. Now. We still don't know who the
other people are, but Rastus is out there scalloping with
two other people. They may have just been random people
that we're out there scalloping on their own. But Carrie's

(01:09:05):
yelling at him, get in, come on in. We got
you surrounded, and Russell takes off swimming. He's an expert swimmer.
He dives into the water and he starts swimming offshore.
There's an island offshore called Honeymoon Island. It's still there today,
very popular for weddings and everything else. Beautiful place. Rastus

(01:09:29):
takes off and he's swimming towards it somehow, thinking he's
going to get away. Well, Carrie isn't about to dive
in and start swimming after him, so he waves the
shore and says, we need a boat. So Tucker's back
on shore. Tucker grabs some deputies, They run down, they
get a boat. They go to tearing out through the

(01:09:50):
bay after Russell. When they see him as he starts swimming,
somebody starts shooting at him. We don't know where the
shots came from. Probably it was one of Walter Carey's deputies.
Whether Carrie ordered him to shoot or he just started
acting on his own, who knows. But he misses him,

(01:10:14):
but there's bullets landing all around Russell as he's swimming. Eventually,
Tucker and his deputies catch up to him in the boat.
They pull up to him the boat. They got guns
drawn on him, and Russell knows they got him, and
he stands up on a sandbar and puts his hands up,
so they drag him in the boat. They drive him

(01:10:35):
back to shore, and that's where they get him off
the at the dock there that duned in flats, and
that's where they take a kind of a famous picture
of him. That goes national That picture featured in the book,
but it's a picture of them unload him off the
boat on the dock and dun Eden.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
Yes, very dramatic photo you include in the book as well,
and national media and local media of course. Frenzy, you
talk about that some of the Crane family, the Cranes
are still in custody as material witnesses.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
That's right. Yes, they take Dorothy and her two brothers,
Ferrel and Alan, and they're holding them as material witnesses.
They eventually they release Alan that night. He's the younger
of the two brothers. They keep Ferrell, Furrel, and Dorothy
as material witnesses. Now they're saying that, but at the time,

(01:11:40):
from the comments Tucker makes, Tucker has a suspicion that
their relationship with Russell might run deeper, and he wants
to make sure that they are not involved in this
or any other of Russell's crimes before he lets them loose. Eventually,

(01:12:02):
he does let Furrel after about nine days. He releases
Furl after they've interviewed them several times. He keeps Dorothy,
and I think Tucker still has his suspicion of how
much Dorothy was involved with Russell and the months leading
up to this. But he says he's keeping her as

(01:12:27):
a material witness because he's afraid if he lets her loose.
You know, the Cranes are terrified of Russell. Now they
probably might not want to testify. Who knows. Tucker doesn't
want to take the chance that he lets Dorothy free
and the Cranes take off and leave town. They don't
own their home. Their homes provided by the orange packing plant,

(01:12:50):
so they can really pick up and leave whenever they want.
They have no roots to hold them here, and Tucker
doesn't want to take that chance. So that's his reasoning
for keeping Dorothy as a material witness.

Speaker 3 (01:13:03):
Now, what's the situation at the jail, And you say
the sheriff Tucker warns the jailers to be very wary
of their prisoner. So what does how does Rastus respond
in jail and what was his behavior there like and

(01:13:24):
what was he planning?

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Well, Russell was a charmer when he wants to be.
As I said, he is known to be very charismatic.
He's popular with the other prisoners. He shares a cell
with three other accused murderers and they have their own
little group there, but he's also during the daytime, they

(01:13:50):
have a common area where all the prisoners are let
out on that cell block and mingle, and he's in
there with about twenty other prisoners. He's popular with the
other prisoners, he's popular with the guards, chats them all up,
and you know, at times they even take him to
help out with chores around the jail. He's help helps

(01:14:12):
move boxes from the basement and stuff like that. So
by all accounts, he's a well behaved model prisoner. They
you know, the media is constantly asking about him, what
you know, because he's this is big news now. They
want to know every detail. They say he eats like
a horse. He eats more than three prisoners combined. And

(01:14:34):
but they say he's you know, submissive as a kitten.
He's been the model prisoner.

Speaker 3 (01:14:41):
So what happens one Sunday night when Russell has assessed
who might be the best guard to be able to
pull off this escape with his new team devote and partner.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
Yeah, Russell, unbeknownst to everybody, he's bodying his time. He's
not the fun, harmless guy they you know, the charming,
cool guy they think he is. While he's been making
friends with these guards. He has been sizing them up,
which one's weakest, what their habits are, He gets their schedules,

(01:15:23):
and Tucker tells them repeatedly, don't trust this guy. This
guy's an escape artist. We looked up his past. He's
escaped mental institutions, He's escaped prison in Illinois. He knows
how to escape. Don't trust him. Oh, okay, okay, okay. Well,
on that Sunday night, there just happens to be a

(01:15:49):
hurricane that has blown through Panelas County from the east.
It's not as powerful as being head on with it,
but nonetheless it's knocked out a lot of the power.
It's knocked out a lot of the phone lines, and
the deputies are busy responding to things. Normally, there are
at least two jailers who double his deputies at the

(01:16:13):
jail most of the time. On this night, the head
jailer is on vacation. He's out. The guy that usually
works nights, he doesn't work Sundays, he doesn't work on
the Sabbath, so he's at home. So the only guy

(01:16:34):
that is there to work the jail is a new
guy by the name of Brian Curry. He's been on
the job six weeks, he's still kind of learning the ropes,
and they figure, well, he'll be there with another deputy,
he'll be okay. Well, this hurricane has just blown through,
so the other deputy is out answering calls for whatever
the power is out, you know, whatever is going on,

(01:16:55):
and he leaves this new guy at the jail by himself.
Figures so you know, Sunday night is quiet. You know,
none of these guys are going to be a problem.
So he's just getting ready to wind down the night. Well,
Russell knows all this. Russell knows who's on vacation, he
knows what night it is, he knows who doesn't work,
and more than anything, he knows there's just been a

(01:17:16):
hurricane and the powers out. So he knows this is
his chance. He's befriended a younger inmate, a sixteen year
old kid named Ray McClory, and he's he's been a
influence on this kid, just like he was on Dorothy.
Jean tells him these stories how they're going to escape
and they're gonna get out in the Midwest, and he'll

(01:17:38):
show him how to do all these things, and he
paints his big idyllic picture for him. So McClory signs
on and says, okay, you know what do you want
me to do? So on this night, a prisoner calls
up for an aspirn Curry, who's a new guard. He
comes up the steps. He violates every single protocol is

(01:18:00):
he leaves the gate unlocked behind him. Instead of opening
the little past the past the aspirin in, he forgets
the key downstairs. So he says, well, it's you know,
it's almost bedtime. I'll just open the door, you know,
and throw the aspirin in. Somehow Russell has seen him
do this before. So Russell is waiting behind the door

(01:18:24):
with a it's called a blackjack and it's a it's
a piece of rebar wrapped in pape for a handle.
And how Russell gets that big mystery as well. But
Russell's waiting back there, McClory's with him with two bars
of soap inside a sock and they're waiting inside the
door for Curry to open the door.

Speaker 3 (01:18:45):
That Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Needless to say, they escape this prison and there is
a man hunt called and makes the other men hunt.
The previous man hunt look small. Now there is a

(01:19:05):
definite panic and terror. Tell us the police response and
the public response and the media response.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
Yeah, this is and this is even bigger than the
initial one because now they know who he is, so
they know not only is he a murderer knife murder,
but he's got his background of escape and violence and
mental institution, all this stuff. And now he's escaped. Now
he's on the loose, and he has sworn apparently inside prison,

(01:19:39):
he's sworn vengeance against the Cranes for what he sees
is betraying him. So and he's also sworn vengeance against
the law enforcement officers that arrested him and everything else.
So everybody's terrified. You know, the Cranes pack up their
stuff as soon as they find out he's escaped jail,

(01:20:00):
and they go to a friend's house because they you know,
they don't know if he's coming for them or not.
And now he's not in little Crystal Beach. He's in
downtown Clearwater, which is a you know, it's not big
like it is now, but it's still a bigger town.
And he's on the loose. He's running through the town
and you've got law enforcement from around the state that

(01:20:23):
shows up. Tucker calls out the National Guard. The National
Guard shows up. They're shooting light up star starburst flares
into the sky. So it's it's bursting like you ever
see the movie Titanic where they're shooting up the flares
and lighting up the whole sky. That's what it's like.
So it's got this surreal feel to it. There's cops

(01:20:47):
going through the streets, there's citizens going through the streets
with rifles. People are standing out on their curbs because
they're terrified to be inside. You know, they're huddling in groups.
And this goes on all night. This goes all on
all night in downtown Clearwater. You know that in itself
is a major dramatic event to the whole story.

Speaker 3 (01:21:10):
You write that, meanwhile, what we haven't spoken about is
the desperate attempt by prosecutor McMullen to have this case
go to a grand jury, to be able to get
an indictment in a preliminary hearing and get this case
in front of a jury, because this is a death
penalty case and can aid in anybody's political ambitions. But

(01:21:36):
also that the public is clamoring for justice with this case.
At the same time that there's this serious manhunt, Sheriff
Tucker and Prosecutor McMullen are at the courthouse dealing with
the grand jury and that response legally to what Russell

(01:21:59):
has done so.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Far, well, yeah, that comes. That's later when they finally
get to the grand jury. But at this point mullin
is he's under the gun because this is a high
profile case and he got to make sure it sticks.
He's got to send Russell to the electric chair. Nothing
else is going to do. And he's got a lot

(01:22:22):
of hoops to jump through to do that. First of all,
he's got to get in front of a grand jury.
With the grand jury is just broke for break and
they're not scheduled to reconvene until December. Well, he wants
him now. Yeah, he wants to get this done now.
He wants to get this in front of a grand jury,
get an indictment, get this thing to trial, and put

(01:22:46):
Russell in the electric chair. McMullen has political ambition and one,
you know, putting this guy in the electric chair is
going to be a big feather in his cap, not
only for name recogniz but you know, establishing him as
a crime fighter, but also there's public outcry, so he's

(01:23:08):
he's under a lot of pressure to make this stick.
So yeah, he's he's been working behind the scenes. So
Russell's escaped now puts that in jeopardy. And it also
makes Sheriff Tucker look look bad because it's his jail
Russell escaped from. So Russell has just made two guys,
two very powerful guys, look very bad and very stupid,

(01:23:29):
and they don't like that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:32):
You take us to this very dramatic scene in Thano, Tusasa,
where Russell had grown up, and you've described this as
this extreme wilderness area and he is a desperate man,
a haggard looking man on the run and knows some
residents from this area from when he was a kid.

(01:23:54):
Tell us what happens as law enforcement closes in and
this desperate man becomes even more desperate.

Speaker 2 (01:24:03):
Right, Well, yeah, Russell eventually after several days on the run,
which is an interesting story as well, but he ends
up in Fanota, Sassa, which is a tiny town about
sixteen miles outside of Tampa, very small, very rural, beautiful place,
but it's very sparsely populated. Russell spent the first ten

(01:24:28):
years of his life here with his grandparents, so this
is home for him. His mother's buried here. He likely
visits his mother's grave, he says that's a reason one
of the reasons for going back there. But he takes
refutes in an orange grove there where he feels safe.
He's isolated. He's out in the middle of nowhere. He
knows this country. So Russell sets up a little camp there.

(01:24:51):
He's got his car parked, he's got a little clothes
line up, he's got swimming trunks. He's got the lake
so he can bathe. He has drinks king water. Now
he's managed to steal some supplies from some stores from
his run on the way over here, and Russell's getting
ready to make a run for the state line. So

(01:25:11):
he's got the car, he's got food. He's just biding
his time. He's getting a little more supplies and then
he's going to make a run for the state line
because once he gets out side the state of Florida
law enforcement isn't as coordinated as is today. There's a
lot lower chance they're going to find him. So he
thinks he's comfortable there. What happens is just by chance.

(01:25:34):
There happens to be an Orange grove worker that's driving
through checking the status of the trees after the hurricane,
and he sees this strange car parked out in the
middle of the grove with a camp around it, and
he calls Hillsborough County Sheriffs and he's whether he knows

(01:25:54):
it might be Russell or not, or he's just reporting
a suspicious vehicle. By the time the sheriff show up,
they already have an apb out on the car. They
have an ap b out on Russell on the car
he's stolen, and they know immediately this is the car.
So as soon as they know, the word goes out.

(01:26:16):
And again you have officers from around the state, you know,
flooding in for this search. So there's and Tucker and
McMullin are in the grand jury this day, so they
can't leave. But Tucker dispatches a big bunch of his
deputies and they head over there. Hillsboro deputies are there,

(01:26:36):
Tampa PD's there, and they're all in this big search party.
They're combing the woods well out of this Hillsborough County
Sheriff Hugh Calbreath calls in his best detective. So Spooner
is this larger than life character six'. Four he's got
A John wayne, Voice John wayne, personality and that's how

(01:26:59):
he enforces a. Lot Like John, Wayne he's that type of.
Character he Is callbreast's best. Deputy he's a rising star
in The Hillsborough County Sheriff's. Office and, he Like, russell
has grown up in the woods Of Theanota. Sassa So
russell may think he has an advantage in the orange

(01:27:21):
groves and, swamps But spooner has grown up in these
woods as, Well So spooner knows the woods every bit
as well as rast As. Russell so they send In.
Spooner they send In Officer Harvey fraser Of Plant City,
police And fraser is the one that has the dogs
flip and. Flop So spooner And fraser start following the.

(01:27:46):
Woods the rest of these they're following the dog's. Trail
the dog picks up a scent Of russell and they're
tracking him through this orange. Growth the rest of the
officers that are dozens on scene now they're combing the.
Groves they're home in the swamp looking for. Him spooner
And fraser are following a. Dog so the dogs go
tearing off through the. Woods actually just have one, Dog

(01:28:07):
they just have flip and flips flips on the Scind
so they track him for about an hour and the
trail keeps doubling, back doubling. Back russell's trying to lose the.
Dog by doubling, Back russell knows the dog's on his.
Trail they finally track him to this big tree and

(01:28:29):
the dog's going crazy And fraser's trying to hold it.
Back and by this time the dog is barking because
he sees, him and he's straining and he's flips trying
to get to the, tree And fraser's holding him back
makes him heal and they see a figure peek from
behind the, tree and they Immediately fraser draws his. Weapon

(01:28:50):
spooner has a twelve gage. Shotgun he levels a shotgun
and he, says come out from behind a tree or
we're going to kill. You And russell's looking a. Cigarette
he steps out from behind a, tree doesn't put his hands,
up but he doesn't charge. Either, well they're under orders
to shoot to, kill So spooner fires his thirty eight

(01:29:13):
three times right Into. Russell you, Know, russell you asks
him to. Surrender he didn't, Surrender he stood. There fraser shoots,
him hits him a couple times with the thirty. Eight
russell becomes, enraged pulls out a switchblade knife and charges.
Them well as he, Does spooner fires three blasts from

(01:29:36):
his shotgun and virtually just cuts him in, half And
russell goes. Down they go running up to, him and
as he's, Dying russell, says You fellas killed, me And
i'm glad you, did and that's directly From spooner And
fraser is to his last, words and then he dies
and he's. Yeah the place becomes like a media, frenzy you,

(01:30:01):
know they've Killed Rastus, russell and people come from all
over the place and they're taking, pictures taking pictures with the,
body taking, souvenirs taking pieces of, dirt just like when
they Killed bonnie And.

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Clyde and a very interesting scene as well is That
Todd tucker at that time at the courthouse gets a
message That Rastus russell is.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Dead, exactly And russell announces to the grand jury and
they break out into. Applause everybody's happy because this guy's a.
MONSTER i, mean he's considered a. Monster they're chasing a,
viperous horrible, monster and the fact that he's dead is
just such a relief to. Everyone even the grand, jury you,

(01:30:46):
know is happy to hear. It tucker disappointed he wasn't
the one there to get, him he spent so much,
time but he's got to be pleased that they did
get him and he's not going to have to live
with this story of this guy escaping his jails his legacy.

Speaker 3 (01:31:05):
Absolutely in the, afterword you write that this book became
more of an examination of human nature, itself with everyone
and everything being called into, question nothing or no one
being one hundred percent good or, bad and a hell
of a lot of unanswered. QUESTIONS i want to thank

(01:31:26):
you so much for coming on and talking about this incredible,
book and there is so much more to discover with
this book story than we could got into in this ninety.
Minutes BUT i want to ask you for people that
might want to find out more about this story and your,
book can you refer them to a website or any
social media you do.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
Sure my website is mfgross dot. Com you can also
email me at author at mfgross dot. Com we are
are working on a screenplay right, now AND i have
already talked to some line producers about a possible indie,
Film so if you have any interest in, that feel
free to email me as. Well BUT i really appreciate

(01:32:07):
having me on, Today Dan, well thank you so.

Speaker 3 (01:32:10):
MUCH i really appreciate this. Interview thank you so much For,
madman the incredible true story Of John Calvin Rastus, russell
the heinous crime and sensational manhunt the Terrified Central florida
in nineteen forty. Nine thank you so, Much michael for this,
interview and you have a great evening and good.

Speaker 2 (01:32:30):
Night