January 27, 2025 • 46 mins
Police cold-case units have broken some of the country’s most notorious murder cases. Today we're talking to writer Michael Arntfield about Nashville’s cold case Murder Squad and how its lead investigator tracked down the serial killers who terrorized the city in the 80s and 90s. The stories unfold in his book, Monster City: Murder, Music, and Mayhem in Nashville's Dark Age.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If you're prepared to slaughter for people who offer no resistance,
that's why you're there. This is robbery gone according to plan,
not gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:52):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. Police cold case units have
broken some of the country's most notorious murder cases, and
(01:13):
today we're talking to writer Michael Arntfield about Nashville's cold
Case Murder Squad and how it's lead investigator tracked down
the serial killers who terrorized the city in the eighties
and nineties. The story's unfold in his book, Monster City, Murder,
Music and Mayhem in Nashville's Dark Age. Tell me about
(01:36):
your main character. Start with how to pronounce his last name,
so I don't butcher it too much through this whole show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So, yeah, pat posted Glione, who's a New York guy
who ends up going to Nashville on vacation and falls
in love with the place and ends up then dedicating
his life to being a police officer there and just
happens to be the tip of the spear when it
comes to investigating this orient of serial sexual homicide that
just enveloped the place. And I mean his methods in
(02:05):
terms of linking crimes, in terms of prioritizing cold cases,
which at the time wasn't even really like a term,
but he put together a team that that was their mission,
and really this became the exemplar of what now would
be like a fully functional, dedicated cold case score.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Okay, tell me how you intersect with this story, How
did you find it? Why are you interested in it?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So after essentially retiring early as a police officer to
accept a tenured position at a university near Toronto, Western
University here in Canada, I then was fortunate enough to
be designated was known as a full Bright Stallar by
the US State Department. So this is a program that
it brings in foreign experts to guest lecture at American University.
(02:53):
So I got paired with Vanderbilt in Nashville, and as
I'm making preparations basically to move there for six months
or so, I was part of an online group of
current and former law enforcement who would be like basically
a list ser like a chat group. So someone would
have a tricky case and they'd put it out to
the group. There's about one hundred of us in the
group and say, yeah, has anybody ever encountered you know
(03:15):
this tool mark for instance, like a reddit basically like
a restricted reddit of law enforcement of forensic professionals. And
I remember there was a guy on there who was
a Nashville detective pat post at Gulian and who specialized
in cold cases, which I was doing at the time
as well. I had to think tank at the university
essentially where we I'd pull in people from various disciplines
(03:38):
and get their take on how to reapproach unsolved homicides.
And I said, Hey, I'm going to be in Nashville
for a while do you want to meet up? And
we met up, and I just thought it was going
to be a friendly conversation, and he starts talking about
these cases that I had never heard of. It's like
really twisted cases of tremendous criminological importance, because I mean
(03:58):
there was offender behavior years and patterns that I hadn't
really encountered before. So he was telling me this story,
and I realized right there and then that this is
And I had already written several books by then, but
I immediately realized this has to be the next book
in a series of books I was creating about extraordinary
(04:18):
criminal phenomenon in everyday cities, and that became Monster City,
Murdered Music in Mayhem, and Nashville's Dark Age, and so
all the cases in our actual cases, A lot of
it is secondary research I conducted or other interviews have done,
but it's largely Pat story.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well, let's start with Pat's story. Where does he get
started here? I know that you said he came from
New York to Nashville, fell in love with the city.
What do you think was appealing to him about Nashville?
And when did he arrive?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So he arrived there, you know, he was working for
an HVAC business in New York can actually helped build
the World Trade Complex. You can believe that he comes
to Nashville and on vacation and something just about it
was just sort of a Goldilock city. It was just
like the right fit at that time. I mean, this
is before it's the massive, you know, tourist draw that
(05:09):
it is now. I mean, if you talk about the weather,
if you talk sort of about the geography, the culture,
and what was going on with New Country at the
time as well, it was just an interesting place to be.
And he thought, you know, I'm in the layd down
roots here and applies to the Metro Nashville Police Department
and works his way up to being homicide detectives. So
(05:30):
that puts us really sort of in the early eighties
at this point, and this is really when things get interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Now, tell me about crime in the United States in
the early eighties, I mean, specifically in Nashville, what are
we seeing. Are we in the middle of a crime
wave or are we relatively low in this time period.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Nashville, like a lot of US cities at the time,
was going through some pretty significant changes in terms of crime.
I actually just edited a book or reviewed a book
that will be coming out soon that makes the argument
the nineteen seventy eight was actually the most significant year
in crime in American history. And I don't want to
spoiler or get into that, but I completely agreed with
(06:09):
that thesis in terms of when you look at new
types of offending, domestic terrorism, serial murder. I mean, this
really is when the concept of serial murder comes to
the forefront. So crime overall is up, but I think
it's it's the recognition that people just don't commit these
random crimes. It was improved understanding. I think of offender psychology.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
What is the public talking about in this time period
as far as the serial killer, because this is the
decade not many years after when the FBI coins the
phrase serial killer. This is Ted Bundy time, right, So
is this really what people are starting to focus on, is, oh,
my god, there are people who who kill people at random,
you know, and for particular type of pleasure.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah. So, I mean serial murder actually was coined in
Germany in the nineteen twenties, and they had done tremendous
research and had methods in identifying serial killers that were
decades ahead. Actually the FBI, and all those records are
obviously lost after World War two or during World War two,
but then the FBI sort of re establishes it in
(07:14):
the seventies. And yet by the eighties, this is a
law enforcement in the public at large woke up to
the fact that these people have always existed. Now we
have like a nomenclature, like we have terminology to describe them,
we understand how they work better. I mean, it's not
as though there was a sudden increase in them. I
mean you could say that by the early seventies that
(07:35):
was sort of when they were really proliferating, but certainly
by the eighties they weren't getting away with it as
much anymore. That's why you have a glut of people
caught in the eighties like Ted Bundy and Gaycy and
some of the better known names. That makes people think
that was sort of the quote unquote golden age of
the serial killer, when in fact it is just that
we were getting better at catching them.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I can't tell you, I mean, I primarily were in
the eighteen hundreds, and I can't tell you how many
books I've seen naming different people or different groups of
people as America's first serial killers, which is all bullshit.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I mean, we have no idea that people have.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Been killing multiple people for sexual sadism, or whatever, the
motivation is, whatever you want to say.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
That typical serial killer prototype is.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Forever and at thousands of years, and so every time
I see that, I just think that's not true. And
I almost always know someone who's done it earlier than
they have, So I think you're right. You know, you're
looking at a time period in the eighties where it's
really especially with Bundy, people are really going, oh my gosh.
You know that not everyone looks like an Edmund Kemper,
who is a serial killer who you feel like you
(08:42):
can spot from far away. You have this man who
could be dating your daughter or live next door to you.
So that always felt like a turning point for me.
What is Pat as a detective and he's in Nashville,
When does he establish this cold case department? And you
know what is sort of the church actory of his
career there.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
So it actually began sort of as a side project,
if you will, like again, during this inflection point that
you've described where people realize, look, listen, we've got to
figure this out. So he sort of puts together a
team and there's no official standing, but he's sort of
in the term in law enforcement is you start working
cold cases off the corner of your desk, so you've
(09:24):
got all these other files, but then you've got this
little figuratively and literally area of your workspace etched out
for as time permits. I'm going to work on this
as well, because I've got active cases, but I'm particularly interested.
It's not even necessarily assigned to him, but it's there
for the taking for those who are motivated. And that's
(09:44):
what always frustrated me. And the point in common that
we had is do you not have the intellectual curiosity?
And I know you're busy, but do you not, if
you're in this role, want to know who was waiting
inside that apartment after a precision break and that left
no sign of forced entry. Who's waiting for this girl
to come home and raped and killed her?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Like?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Do you not want to know who could operate that stealthily?
And do you not want to stop him before he
strikes again? And unfortunately there's a lot of investigators they're
just like, Okay, that's somebody else's problem. Well, no, it's
you signed up for this, and so you work it
off the corner of your desk until the resources are
allotted to these cases where you can actually start a
designated so they go by different names. Cold case squad
(10:28):
or Historical Crimes Unit is the language typically used now.
But this started out as something on the side until
it crystallized, and now they have a designated squad and
he's way in front of at least municipal police department.
He's way ahead of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I know that we talk about do we want to
get these people off the street, And of course you know,
I'm sure, and you know that there's so much pressure
to take care of these cases.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
They're clear and present dangers.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The one that they're making the headlines and the priority
might not be cases that are twenty or thirty or
forty yearsyears old, even ten years old. But what do
you think the value is in solving a case. We're
seeing a lot now with genetic genealogy, these cases that
are eighty years old, we're clearly the characters, people involved
with the story, you're all dead. Do you think there
(11:14):
is as much value providing closure to families, survivors or
whoever it is as it is solving current cases that
could be threats to the public.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Also.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, so investigative genetic genealogy is I've said, the most
significant development in criminal investigation since the fingerprint, because unlike
other forms of forensic evidence, you can get a partial match,
so you may never get a full fingerprint, but it's
a starting point. It allows you to narrow the haystack
of possible offenders. That's how genetic genealogy works. I mean most, yeah,
(11:46):
sexual serial murders aren't uploading their ancestry results to ged
match or to family Tree DNA, but you know, a
fourth cousin they've never met may have done that. And
now we're into your bloodline and it's about a case
a week, and some yeah are like fifty sixty years
old and everybody's dead. But the communities and certainly the
police department still I have tremendous benefit from that. And
(12:09):
we're seeing a lot of people now also arrested. And
there's a case here in Toronto, two women again break
in sexual assault murders. This guy's name was never in
the thought. And this is saying in cold case investigations
usually the name is in the file. They've just misjudged
their role in the case. They're not a witness, they're
not sort of someone who's just a family friend. They
may actually be the main person of interest. So this
(12:31):
guy was never even on police radar. He would have
never been caught were it not for this method. And
that leads to the next question is what's he been doing?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Since?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I mean, you successfully break into two women's apartments, sexually
assault them in ritualistic fashion, I should say, and then
murder them brutally. You don't just stop. So he's been
on the land for almost forty years, what's he been
up to? And then the secondary investigation starts. What other
cases can weeld into him?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Now?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There is tremendous value to it, so much so that
I've suggested that we're solving cases that it's being used
in more and more cases that are only a couple
of years old. Could we get to a point where,
you know, in the next generation, could actually retire the
term cold case because it wouldn't get to the point
where cases are with using this method.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So where does it make sense for us to start
in this sort of list of serial killers knowing we're
not going to make it through all of them, but
you know, kind of doing a good chronological dive into
that case, which one do we start with?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I think we start in part five of the book,
which is chapters twenty nine through thirty six, and work
our way backwards, and that's the fast food murders, which
very disturbing. These are the crimes of someone eventually identified
by pattis Paul Dennis Reid, who is actually a mass
murder or serial killer. So the definition of a serial
killer is someone who commits two or more murders at
(13:54):
separate times and places. That's it. But imagine if during
each of these murders there's multiple victims. And it's for
that reason that I've got calls from retired law enforcement
saying that, you know, we had a very similar kind
of still unsolved, you know, in for instance, in Indiana
and in the early eighties. Do you think he could
have been near Speedway, Indiana in the eighties because the
(14:15):
moo is bang on, and we know he was nomadic,
and I mean, how many people really were doing this?
I mean essentially his what he would do is he
would con his way into various fast food places, ice
cream parlors, McDonald's, other regional chains and typically near closing
time or at opening time, and would murder everybody there.
(14:38):
There were some indications that these were robberies, but he's
taking pocket change essentially, like a few hundred dollars and
shooting four teenage kids in the head and doing that.
It was never about the money. Originally from Texas, his
first known crime was a violent takeover robbery of a
steakhouse in Houston, Sies, so he his AMO was established
(15:03):
early on. He cases eateries, he doesn't care who's there,
and he's prepared to, you know, use tremendous violence. A
few years later, a bunch of kids again are murdered
at a bowling alley, again in Texas. It has all
the makings of what would later become his crimes in Nashville,
and another guy ended up going to death row for
those for those crimes, and Pat you know, was very
(15:24):
vocal saying you've got the wrong guy. And the guy
ended up dying on death row. He was never executed.
But we're looking at that as being connected to Paul's
industry as well. So when you ask what were people
talking about, certainly people were talking about those crimes whereby
any place could be struck next and you're going to
let your teenage son or daughter, you know, close up
a fast food place. And when this guy's on the loose,
(15:46):
it was very a very frightening time and a tremendous
pressure obviously on Pad and the police to find this
guy before he could strike again.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
What years had he been in Texas and then went
to Nashville?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Do you know, we're not entirely sure when he arrived
in Nashville. And again his movements and the late eighties
early nineties are largely speculative. The Texas crimes were in
the eighties. Again, I've been contacted by a retired law
enforcement to think that he was responsible for possibly responsible
for what are known as the Burger Chef murders, which
were another mass murder that fit his mo o and
(16:17):
speedway Indiana. And then his crimes in Nashville has known
crimes for which he was eventually prosecuted are all in
early nineteen ninety seven, and he had chosen to come
to Nashville. It would seem based on things police found
once they identified him to be a country star, he
had never picked up an instrument in his life. They
(16:38):
found all kinds of creepy photos of him just posing
like he was going to be like an album cover.
He had taken a photograph of everywhere he had ever
been to photo document his time in Nashville, like he
would take a photograph of of a toilet that he used,
he would take a photograph of a car that he bought,
and the just photographs of everything. Surprisingly not his crime.
(17:00):
So he kills the manager of a Captain D's, which
is a regional restaurant in the South. He murders a
number of teenagers Adam McDonald's, and then his final crimes
involve the kidnap of two female employees of a Baskin Robinson.
He takes them actually to a remote location and rates
and murders them. And this is really where he begins
to make mistakes, and obviously the forensic evidence leads the
(17:23):
police to Paul Dennis Reid. And then that's where the
second investigation in all these cases starts with where else
has this guy been?
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I assume they looked at him in connection with the
yogurt chop murders in ninety one in Austin, Texas. Sounds
so similar.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's another one. He's one of maybe two strong people
of interest and again in Texas. So I mean, you've
got this glut of restaurant mass murders in Texas when
he's known to be living there. Yeah, one of them
is somebody else is wrongfully convicted in my view, which
leaves him free then to roam the country. Whether it's
(17:58):
or not he's in Indiana, that's unanswerable question at this point.
But then he ends up in Nashville because he wants
to get in on a new country fad, and obviously
that doesn't work, so he goes back to what he knows,
which is murdering kids.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I had seen a documentary series about the Speedway murders,
which was actually, I will say this is an aside, one
of the more interesting true crime documentary series I've ever seen.
But it was the Burger Chef murders where they had
actors portraying the victims and they have a discussion about
what's about to happen to them, and they start like
(18:32):
theorizing who all these you know, who the killer could be,
because in that case there seemed to be so many suspects.
Witnesses were seeing different things and you know, and I'm
sure he's mentioned I don't remember. In this countless list
of suspects that they go through. It was one of
the most I don't know if it was the best,
but it was one of the most creative interpretations of
a true crime story. So that's the only reason I
(18:53):
know that is you know, and that so that when
you were starting to talk about murders and fast food,
I was thinking, I wonder if speedways and there's somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, So tired Indiana State Police detective actually contacted me
about that, and he had worked that case for years
and did not know the case of Paul dnis Street.
So it's interesting these I mean, as recently as the
twenty twenties, You've got this information out there and just
no one's really put it all together that someone who
knows the Bergerschef murders case intimately had no idea of
(19:20):
the Captain D's or the McDonald's in Nashville twenty years later.
We got to look at him for that. We got
to look at him. Obviously, he is the lead person
of interest in the Austin yogurt shop murders, which are
very very similar to his final crimes in Nashville at
the Boston Robbins.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I just got chills when you were explaining all of
the different scenarios thinking about yogurt Chop, which is I
would say one of the most traumatizing stories, you know
murders that have happened in Austin history for sure, and
we had Kenneth Allen McDuff.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So that's really saying something.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
What did Pats see in this case in Reid that
other people didn't see? Was he making connections or tell
me what his involvement when the cold case part of
this came in.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Well, the cold case part is, I guess what are
the crimes? Was irresponsible for these? These all happened in
relatively quick succession. So pass working again these other cold
cases off the corner of his desk, and you've got
all of a sudden, this monster who comes to town
and just goes on an absolute rampage. So I mean
he's making mistakes at each one. Obviously, they're connecting these
(20:19):
crimes together very quickly. The mos identical, they're all very
specifically targeted locations, similar caliber firearm used in all of
the execution style murders. I mean, eventually they get on
to read and nobody's really discussed is what were his motivations.
Ostensibly it's robbery. I can't stand it when people use
(20:40):
the term robbery gone bad. If you're prepared to slaughter
four people working there who offer no resistance, that's why
you're there. That's why you're there. There's a robbery gone
according to Plant, not gone wrong. So the same thing
with burglars. We now recognize that there's five subtypes of
sexually motivated home burglaries where they're helping somebody's inside and
(21:02):
maybe things get taken in, maybe they don't, but they're
taken typically as an afterthought, or they're taken as souvenirs
for the sex crime that occurs in there, not because
they want to fence the stuff or because it's worth money.
Richard Ermirez was a really good example of that, where
he would target homes he knew were occupied to rape
and murder whoever was in there, and then he would
take stuff and then discard it because just either to
(21:22):
throw off police or just because it was initially taken
as a souvenir of his crime, and then he realized
it could maybe implicate him, so he discarded it. So
those were never about robber. They were about serial murder
and pulled dentistrate is the same and this guy's There's
not a single sort of label that you can put
on this guy. But at the end of the day,
he's a sadist. He derives great pleasure from the suffering
(21:43):
and terror of others. And that was really a hallmark
of the Bowling Alley crime in Texas, where he was
basically whispering things in people's ears before he murdered them
to taunt them.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
How many people, how many murders have been connected definitive him?
I'm sure there are many others that they're working on,
but what is the final number?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And is he still alive?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
He died in custody not too long ago, actually, But
the ones definitively linked to him are the Captain D's,
the McDonald's, and the thirty one Flavor slash Basket Robbins
in Nashville. The other earlier crimes for which he was
convicted were violent takeover robberies of similar institutions, but he
didn't murder anybody. The ones that he's suspected of murdering
(22:25):
people are still officially unsolved or have been wrongfully linked
to somebody else.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Tell me the things right now before we get to
another case of pats. Tell me the things right now
that help make the connections like in Israel, keys who
just traversed the country Alaska to Texas. Essentially, how do
we make those connections. I could see in the eighties
and maybe even the nineties a lack of computer connections,
(22:55):
you know, between all of these jurisdictions. I assume that's changed,
and you can plug in an m and some other
basic data and start making almost like a map of
where these cases might be similar.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
So the system you're talking about, the Violent Criminal Apprehension
Program or VIACAP run out of the Justice Department. I
mean that in theory, that would be a good way
of tracking MOS or fender characteristics between you know, vastly
separated jurisdictions. But it's a voluntary program. You don't have
to fill out that questionnaire. So a lot of people
wants the case is solved, they move on, and they
(23:29):
don't submit afy CAP form. So there's tons of blind spots,
so you can't necessarily rely on that. So for years
that was a huge hindrance because people weren't submitting it,
or you get false positives or what have you, So
a guy like Read could roam the country and do
this despite the fact that you know, these crimes obviously
have a very specific signature to them. But you mentioned
(23:50):
is real keys. That's I talk about him at length
of my last book, How to Solve a Cold Case.
I mean that guy was the ultimate sort of like Read,
a sadist who turned murder into a hub. And that's
maybe a good after we lead into we can talk
about another case from the book, Michael Scott Magliolo. And
there's another weird fast food connection here as well, because
(24:12):
this guy was a McDonald's manager who on his days
off would act as what was known as a lumper.
So Nashville is a big trucking hub longhle trucking. So
a lumper is somebody at the time who would essentially
offer themselves out as a hand for a trucker in
exchange for a ride, so basically a hitchhiker who then
(24:35):
will help the trucker at the destination either offload or
load up whatever they're picking up or dropping off. So
he would hitch rides to random places where he had
no connection. He was just a stranger in town for
the day and murder random people and then hitch a
ride back doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
So how many people is he connected to? And what
a Pat what was his so far about that case?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
So the span of Magliola's crimes are pretty long. Were
not entirely sure how many people he killed for certain,
because again his movements couldn't be tracked and he wasn't
very cooperatve. But I mean, we know for sure between
nineteen seventy seven. So you mentioned the book starts in
nineteen seventy five, which is officially before Pat starts working
in these cases, but then we introduced him as a
character further on in the book, so he's active for
(25:23):
sure between seventy seven and ninety one. We know of
at least two, more likely ten women that he raped
and murdered across six states between that time. So he
received fifty years in prison in Tennessee and then fifteen
years to life for seven murders in Ohio and nineteen
ninety three, So he sentenced in nineteen ninety three, with
(25:45):
the murders obviously date back before that. So this is
one of the first real cold cases that Pat starts
looking into, and he's solving obviously because these crimes sort
of pre date his detective work. So he starts working
the Magliolo what would later be the Magliola murders off
the corner of his desk, as we say, and then
eventually it's really weird how he gets caught. They had
(26:08):
a partial fingerprint at one of the hot Nashville scenes,
and he would basically just intermittently run it through the
database and there will not be any hits until Magneol
got sloppy and he got picked up joy writing with
a bunch of girls in the car, and we don't
know what he had intended for them, but it gets
stopped by the cops joy Writing and it gets pinched
(26:28):
for a duy. So he gets printed and put into
the system. Pat checks again. So this is a lesson
in tenacity, right, so he knows this guy's going to
screw up, keeps checking the print, keeps checking the print,
and lo and behold, Magluold's processed into the system now
in ninety one, and they get the hit and then
the case gets put together from that. So I mentioned
earlier investigated genetic genealogy is like a fingerprint, and then
(26:52):
you can have a partial match and it just takes
time to get the full match. And that's exactly how
this case came to be closed.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So what was Pat's insane with this particular case with
this offender because he had just this partial print from
one crime scene. Was he thinking this is not somebody
who just stopped at this one scene. Was that his
sort of gut feeling about it?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, I mean his gut feeling. So he understood, particularly
cold case sexual homicides, that they will not stop. It
is repetitive, episodic behavior. He knew that even if he
didn't link him to another scene, So like a scene
to scene match what you can either have through fingerprints
or you can have typically by DNA, that he would
be caught for something else because people who engage in
(27:35):
this behavior it's antisocial. I mean he was an actual psychopath,
but who engage in this type of conduct are involved
in all spectra of criminality. So and he was right,
So the hit is not on another murder, it's on
a dui h. And so I mean, what an interesting
way into now solving the case just from and had
(27:55):
he not gotten sloppy, I mean you shut it a
thin company using that in oh what we call a
commuter killer, somebody who murders outside of where they like,
far away from where they live, like in Israel, keys,
knowing that they're not going to be on the local
list of sex offenders or local persons of interest, and
they're going to be long gone and back home by
the time and even the body's found. So he could
(28:19):
have gone on for years using this ruse, and because
he got sloppy, pat was all over.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
I know that there is a hope among some law
enforcement that AI is only going to be able to
help with genetic genealogy, being able to call everything and
pull it together faster than these genealogists who have to
look through thousands and thousands of trees, and I can
only hope that that's going to be the case.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
So yeah, I have talked to some genealogies who work
for police departments who have said that that that would
be that would speed up their work exponentially because they
had takes. Particularly if you're dealing with a suspect who
is from a remote community, or there's something called endogamy involved,
and that is typically seen where you have these closed
(28:59):
community where people are having children who there's not a
lot of genetic deviation, so you get a lot of
feedback loops sort of because you know you've got a
lot of cousins marrying each other for instance, and becomes confusing.
So yeah, ai would would sort that out pretty quickly.
I'm part of a group as well that uses sort
of an early version of ai AD is its a
(29:21):
computer algorithm to basically, we've created our own violent criminal
Apprehension program, and your listeners can go to a murder
data dot org where their Murder Accountability Project based out
of Metro DC, and every murder that's occurred really since
nineteen seventy four is in there. Then you can find
(29:43):
you can search by a year, you can search by
a police department, you can search by a murder weapon,
you can search by age of the victim. There's hundreds
of different search parameters. And what we've done is we
trained software to look for patterns in cities and counties
according to similar mo. That's the difference between the Murder
Cannability Project and ViCAP in that ViCAP only has about
(30:05):
forty percent of unsolved murders in there. We've got all
of them since nineteen seventy four. So we've found our
software has already found a couple of matches, and we've
alerted law enforcement to those links. One is an active
investigation in Chicago now fifty one connected strangulations that was
the subject of an ID series called The Hunt for
(30:25):
the Chicago Strangler that's ongoing. We found a match in
Cleveland that suspect was later arrested. We found a match
in Gary, Indiana, and he ended up being Darren dion Van,
a serial killer who admitted to the murders in Gary
that our software first linked to him before police did so.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I have a teacher true crime podcast course at the
University of Texas. I have them listen to a podcast
called Black Girl Gone, and the host did a two
parter on between two thousand and one and twenty eighteen,
fifty one women were found either strangled or aphixiated. That's it, right,
Tell me again, just because I know my class will
want to know, and probably our listeners.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Will want to know.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
So were you saying that your database is making connections
between those fifty one because my understanding was, at least
from that podcast, which is still a couple of years old,
was that police were sort of refusing to believe that
these were all connected, and they were sort of dismissed,
many of them because they were black women or some
more sex workers.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah, So we sent the chief of detectives a letter.
By twenty seventeen, when we our software determined that pattern
and I'm quoting, there is no active unidentified serial killer
in the city of Chicago. That was their response. And
then there was I think Vice Media did a story
you can probably still find online, and more and more
(31:46):
people were sort of talking. We sent further correspondence. They
brought in a new Chief of Detectives who then you
acknowledged that there was no denying that, and he then
also appears in that series, which is sort of the
first real investigative documentary into how that happened. So there
is there are some people of interest, and I can
tell you it's no longer a secret. Darren deon Van,
(32:06):
who I just mentioned, has admitted to being in Chicago
at times that correspond with those murders, And the thought
is is he responsible? Here's the weirdest thing of fifty
one No DNA, so we can't necessarily say they're all
one offender. So is he responsible for the black women?
Are we looking at a separate offender for the Latina victims.
(32:29):
There does not tend to be typically a lot of
variability with it in terms of age or ethnicity among
serial killers who tend to have a preferred victim type
and they don't deviate from that. So it could be
talking to two separate offenders, one of which may very
well be Darren deon Van. He's admitted also to killing
many other people and paraphrasing, but has numerous other victims
(32:50):
in Illinois.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
He said, wow, okay, well let's get back to one
of Pat's cases. Well, this is probably going to be
our last one, and we want to talk about the
Restop murders, So tell me about that case.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
So the rest stop murders were a series of trucking
related crimes at or near trucker rest stops in metro Nashville,
but as well as other areas suspected to be in Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Because again we're dealing with
a nomadic commuter style killer. His name was Bruce Mendenhall,
(33:25):
and this was a real cat and mouse game that
he and Pat played, and in fact, after he was arrested,
he basically began plotting Pat's murder from prison. He tried
to get a hitman on the headside to take him out.
That's how unrelenting this guy was.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Well, tell me about what these cases were like, so
and tell me about Mendenholl and what we know about him,
and kind of what you know unfolds with these cases,
and then what gets Pat involved? What are the clues
that lead him to this being a serial killer?
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Pat gets involved much like Michael Scott Magliolo because then
I was foolish enough to dump a body in his jurisdiction,
and then that puts him on the Pat's radar, and
then these other cases start coming into focus all over
the place. He's convicted of only two murders, but he's
suspected at least nine others. And basically his AMMO is
(34:16):
not unlike unfortunately, some other or at least four hundred
that we know because the FBI has created profiles for
them as part of what's known as the Highway Serial
Killing Initiative. At least four hundred other truckers have employed
a similar MO, where basically they lure women, often sex
trade workers, who are strolling rest stops, which is why
(34:36):
he's known as as the rest stop Killer, into the
truck and then murders them, drives into other locations and
dumps them, and his AMMO became increasingly sort of brutal.
Whereby the Nashville victim he had actually post mortem, she
had a tattoo on her body, and he cut it
out to keep it. A lot of people don't necessarily
(34:58):
know this distinction. A souvenir taken from a crime is
typically a personal item, so a piece of jewelry, the
victims driver's license, something to look at later, like as
a twisted trink at. A trophy is a living tissue,
so a lock of hair, an eyeball like Charles Aldridge,
the Dallas eyeball slayer from Texas. Maybe you know that case.
(35:20):
And then in this case he starts taking before he's
caught cutting out flesh containing a tattoo to preserve.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I want to go back. I was a little startled
by something you said. Did you say four hundred different
truck drivers have been suspected or convicted or whatever of
attacking women?
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Four hundreds still out there? So this task force that
the FBI has looked at And there was a book
just published on this that I'm quoted in a fair
bit by a former FBI assistant director called long Haul
and it looks at a lot of these cases. So
there's four hundred plus UNSUBB profile. So there'll be a
group of murders that they can say these victims have
(36:02):
common characteristics, the crime scenes have common characteristics, and this
will be say offender unknown offender A. Then there's another
group of murders, say in another part of the country,
that they believe to be attributed to another offender, will
call that UNSUBB or offender B. And yeah, there's about
four hundred then separate people. They don't know who they are,
but their crimes have been sort of particularized by the
(36:25):
FBI in that fashion.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Where do you think the Israel keys type serial killer,
the long haul trucker type killer or serial killer, where
do they fit in with the theories of geographic profiling.
I mean, you know, these are not people who are
constrained to one area where they feel most comfortable, unless
we say it's a truck. But with keys, he just
(36:48):
I mean he was hiding backpacks and bundles all over
the place. He just seemed to be such an outlier.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, and that's the concern is we don't know what
we don't know. We don't know how many of these
highly nomadic again, commuter killers are out there. So the
term commuter offender is derived from the geographic profiling matrix
of the four types of offenders who navigate their space
according to a certain what we call psychogeography. I mean,
(37:14):
another really interesting one. I don't know if you've read
the book The Man from the Train, it's about the
first Israel piece. So Israel keys is the nomadic killer
and the age of commercial air travel. But Paul Miller,
who's the suspected murderer in this case. I mean, this
was a guy who just rode the rails like a hobo,
and wherever the train stopped, he would go in and
(37:34):
kill entire families with an AX. He's got victims all
over the US, and we're talking like late eighteen hundreds,
so that they had absolutely nothing to work with. And
there's LinkedIn now to murders back in Europe as well,
but that's just information that's sort of come to light now,
I mean one hundreds some years later, So we don't know.
I mean we just hope, like Mendenhall, that they make
(37:57):
a mistake in a jurisdiction where somebody's paying attention and
that they've got the curiosity then go looking for or
like Magliola, you know, he was tenacious about that, kept
checking the print knowing that somewhere sometime this guy would
it up in the system.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Now, what did Pat do with that case? When mendon
Hall and the rest stop was that fingerprinting?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Also there's a combination of techniques, But this is really
the climax of the book in that he drove a
very unique truck, like a canary yellow truck that stood
out and there was some witnesses you could describe the truck.
And Pat is driving down the highway one day outside
Nashville and it passes him, and he turns around and
(38:35):
pulls them over, and it basically finds there's blood in
there and finds what we call like a rape kit
or a kill kit.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Oh my god, you've got to be kidding me. I mean,
you know, I was thinking about this. You're going to
not think this is the perfect analogy, I bet, But
do you feel like you carry on Pat's work? I mean,
it's such a big scale though, with the database that
you all have created where you are trying to make
these connections, and of course you're using different types of
technology really pooling together almost like kind of crowdsourcing. Pat
(39:06):
was doing it at a smaller level, but still in
such an effective way. I mean, it's still working off
instinct too.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Working off instinct understanding that it's a big country. These
people again often defy conventional wisdom about serial killers that
they don't just stick to a certain hunting territory. So
we're seeing through these cases criminal I don't use the
rump criminal profile, the criminal analytics coming of age. Where
these cases reflect are microcosms of an improved understanding of
(39:36):
how what makes these sicicos tick that was occurring at
the same time in other fields, like in the academia
or you know, at the highest levels and at the FBI.
And he's actually out there on the street, you know,
doing this and by the time he catches Mendon Hall
at the wheel and opens up Badgism and gets his
door open, they find three hundred items in there. Rifle, knives, handcuffs, gloves,
(39:58):
you know, black tape, night stick, sex toys, DNA of
five different women and again, we don't necessarily know who
some of those women are. So well, he's been all
over the place with this kill kit, and he gets
them in the truck and they're never seen again.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
The more that I talk to authors like you and
work with you know, Paul Hols, who helped solve the
Golden State killer case, the more I learn about what
I don't know about serial killers.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
And I think a lot of us probably feel like that.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Paul does not believe in the serial killer triad, you know,
bed wedding and fire starting and the harming animals. Now,
he said, the harming animals is a big one, but
then he said maybe some credence in the setting fires,
but he said the bed wedding is like a non
starter for him. I will say this, I had always
believed that when a serial killer stops killing, either he
(40:48):
moved and we haven't made that connection, or he died,
or he's in prison and there was no DNA to
run against it. It never occurred to me until I
read about the Golden State killer case that sometimes these
guys kind of age out, they stop for whatever reason.
And then I talked to an author who said, well,
life changes for them. They'll get married, they have kids,
(41:08):
something happens, and something changes, And I guess I've always
just thought this was an overwhelming sense of I've got
to continue doing this until I die, and that doesn't
seem to be the case for everyone. So it teaches
me a lesson.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, so, first of all, Paul's right. The McDonald triad
as it's known, has been widely discredited. I mean, maybe
bed wedding is correlated with some serial killers, but it's
not causative. And it maybe correlated because the thought actually
is that childhood trauma is what leads to the development
of what are known as paraphilias, which are the disordered
(41:42):
erotic attachments to often violent things. You can think of
some conditions that end in philia that that person may
be pretty dangerous, but they accumulate these over the lifetime
and that's where fire starting comes in. So fire starting
maybe pyrophilics or an arousal from starting fires that then
leads to them exploring other ways of other fetishism that
(42:04):
they end up actually then hurting people, and then it
becomes hurting people is a sex act. But yeah, I mean,
Dennis Rayder summed up the fact that you know this
isn't necessarily a purely linear trajectory, and they don't stop.
He said he would have liked to have kept killing people,
but he just got too busy. Yeah, that his kids
got to an age where he's running them around and
things were busy at work, and so he didn't have
(42:26):
time for his hobby anymore. The same as somebody you
know doesn't get on the bike or get out on
the golf course as much as they used to. Like
it's a stranger comparison, but that's really what this is
to them, and they ultimately can't perform at the pace
that they used to.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
It's pretty incredible learning. All of this tell me the
rest of Pat's story. How long does he run this
cold case squad in Nashville.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
By the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands,
and this is consistent with other police departments across the board.
As soon as DNA becomes a thing, so Cotis the
US goes online in ninety eight. In Canada ninety nine,
this is really where cold case units start to crystallize,
because now they have a tool. Rather than just look
through old boxes and come up with new hunches, now
(43:12):
they have a tool where they can start testing exhibits
against and that's where the salts start coming in at
a new pace. And so by the early two thousands,
much like elsewhere, the Metro cold case unit is up
and running officially, you know, it's sort of been unofficial
under his wing. And then he retires, you know, a
short time later and leaves it in good hands. And
(43:34):
he went on to work for the District Attorney's office
as an investigator, and then he's also now got his
own show on investigation Discovery.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Wow, he must be very proud of this book.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
I'm assuming, yeah, you know what, we lost touch, but
I'd like to think, you know, as a pretty faithful
summation of his life's work and his contributions to cold cases.
And he's the first thing. He's a humble guy, and
he's the first to say, like, you know, he had
a great team, and he did, but you know, every
team needs needs a strong leader, and certainly he was
(44:03):
that well.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
And I think, you know, in a time period where
I certainly think the public questions the integrity of the police,
it's nice to read a story where you have a
person who is not.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Letting cases go.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
They could be decades old and he still thinks about
these cases, and he still sees the value. And you know,
I think you and I both certainly wish that more
investigators either have given the resources where they can investigate
these cases, or you know, really really became passionate about it,
because these stories do matter, even if all the players
are gone.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
You know, the stories do matter.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
The stories do matter. You're right, And I mean to
quote another I think I make the comparisons in the book,
but to quote another legendary albeit fictional, cold case investigator,
Harry Bosh, Michael Connolly's character and his motto is everybody
counts or nobody counts. So you don't get to pick
and choose your cases. These all deserve to be solved.
(44:56):
And like I said, I'm hopeful, with between AI and
investigative genetic genealogy, that the term Col's case will be
obsolete in our lifetime.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. And don't forget There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi. Our associate producer is
Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is
our composer, artwork by Nick Toga.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and
on Facebook at Wicked World Birds Pod
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
If you're prepared to slaughter for people who offer no resistance,
that's why you're there. This is robbery gone according to plan,
not gone wrong.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
(00:52):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished details behind their stories. Police cold case units have
broken some of the country's most notorious murder cases, and
(01:13):
today we're talking to writer Michael Arntfield about Nashville's cold
Case Murder Squad and how it's lead investigator tracked down
the serial killers who terrorized the city in the eighties
and nineties. The story's unfold in his book, Monster City, Murder,
Music and Mayhem in Nashville's Dark Age. Tell me about
(01:36):
your main character. Start with how to pronounce his last name,
so I don't butcher it too much through this whole show.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
So, yeah, pat posted Glione, who's a New York guy
who ends up going to Nashville on vacation and falls
in love with the place and ends up then dedicating
his life to being a police officer there and just
happens to be the tip of the spear when it
comes to investigating this orient of serial sexual homicide that
just enveloped the place. And I mean his methods in
(02:05):
terms of linking crimes, in terms of prioritizing cold cases,
which at the time wasn't even really like a term,
but he put together a team that that was their mission,
and really this became the exemplar of what now would
be like a fully functional, dedicated cold case score.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Okay, tell me how you intersect with this story, How
did you find it? Why are you interested in it?
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So after essentially retiring early as a police officer to
accept a tenured position at a university near Toronto, Western
University here in Canada, I then was fortunate enough to
be designated was known as a full Bright Stallar by
the US State Department. So this is a program that
it brings in foreign experts to guest lecture at American University.
(02:53):
So I got paired with Vanderbilt in Nashville, and as
I'm making preparations basically to move there for six months
or so, I was part of an online group of
current and former law enforcement who would be like basically
a list ser like a chat group. So someone would
have a tricky case and they'd put it out to
the group. There's about one hundred of us in the
group and say, yeah, has anybody ever encountered you know
(03:15):
this tool mark for instance, like a reddit basically like
a restricted reddit of law enforcement of forensic professionals. And
I remember there was a guy on there who was
a Nashville detective pat post at Gulian and who specialized
in cold cases, which I was doing at the time
as well. I had to think tank at the university
essentially where we I'd pull in people from various disciplines
(03:38):
and get their take on how to reapproach unsolved homicides.
And I said, Hey, I'm going to be in Nashville
for a while do you want to meet up? And
we met up, and I just thought it was going
to be a friendly conversation, and he starts talking about
these cases that I had never heard of. It's like
really twisted cases of tremendous criminological importance, because I mean
(03:58):
there was offender behavior years and patterns that I hadn't
really encountered before. So he was telling me this story,
and I realized right there and then that this is
And I had already written several books by then, but
I immediately realized this has to be the next book
in a series of books I was creating about extraordinary
(04:18):
criminal phenomenon in everyday cities, and that became Monster City,
Murdered Music in Mayhem, and Nashville's Dark Age, and so
all the cases in our actual cases, A lot of
it is secondary research I conducted or other interviews have done,
but it's largely Pat story.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Well, let's start with Pat's story. Where does he get
started here? I know that you said he came from
New York to Nashville, fell in love with the city.
What do you think was appealing to him about Nashville?
And when did he arrive?
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So he arrived there, you know, he was working for
an HVAC business in New York can actually helped build
the World Trade Complex. You can believe that he comes
to Nashville and on vacation and something just about it
was just sort of a Goldilock city. It was just
like the right fit at that time. I mean, this
is before it's the massive, you know, tourist draw that
(05:09):
it is now. I mean, if you talk about the weather,
if you talk sort of about the geography, the culture,
and what was going on with New Country at the
time as well, it was just an interesting place to be.
And he thought, you know, I'm in the layd down
roots here and applies to the Metro Nashville Police Department
and works his way up to being homicide detectives. So
(05:30):
that puts us really sort of in the early eighties
at this point, and this is really when things get interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Now, tell me about crime in the United States in
the early eighties, I mean, specifically in Nashville, what are
we seeing. Are we in the middle of a crime
wave or are we relatively low in this time period.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Nashville, like a lot of US cities at the time,
was going through some pretty significant changes in terms of crime.
I actually just edited a book or reviewed a book
that will be coming out soon that makes the argument
the nineteen seventy eight was actually the most significant year
in crime in American history. And I don't want to
spoiler or get into that, but I completely agreed with
(06:09):
that thesis in terms of when you look at new
types of offending, domestic terrorism, serial murder. I mean, this
really is when the concept of serial murder comes to
the forefront. So crime overall is up, but I think
it's it's the recognition that people just don't commit these
random crimes. It was improved understanding. I think of offender psychology.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
What is the public talking about in this time period
as far as the serial killer, because this is the
decade not many years after when the FBI coins the
phrase serial killer. This is Ted Bundy time, right, So
is this really what people are starting to focus on, is, oh,
my god, there are people who who kill people at random,
you know, and for particular type of pleasure.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah. So, I mean serial murder actually was coined in
Germany in the nineteen twenties, and they had done tremendous
research and had methods in identifying serial killers that were
decades ahead. Actually the FBI, and all those records are
obviously lost after World War two or during World War two,
but then the FBI sort of re establishes it in
(07:14):
the seventies. And yet by the eighties, this is a
law enforcement in the public at large woke up to
the fact that these people have always existed. Now we
have like a nomenclature, like we have terminology to describe them,
we understand how they work better. I mean, it's not
as though there was a sudden increase in them. I
mean you could say that by the early seventies that
(07:35):
was sort of when they were really proliferating, but certainly
by the eighties they weren't getting away with it as
much anymore. That's why you have a glut of people
caught in the eighties like Ted Bundy and Gaycy and
some of the better known names. That makes people think
that was sort of the quote unquote golden age of
the serial killer, when in fact it is just that
we were getting better at catching them.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
I can't tell you, I mean, I primarily were in
the eighteen hundreds, and I can't tell you how many
books I've seen naming different people or different groups of
people as America's first serial killers, which is all bullshit.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I mean, we have no idea that people have.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Been killing multiple people for sexual sadism, or whatever, the
motivation is, whatever you want to say.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
That typical serial killer prototype is.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
Forever and at thousands of years, and so every time
I see that, I just think that's not true. And
I almost always know someone who's done it earlier than
they have, So I think you're right. You know, you're
looking at a time period in the eighties where it's
really especially with Bundy, people are really going, oh my gosh.
You know that not everyone looks like an Edmund Kemper,
who is a serial killer who you feel like you
(08:42):
can spot from far away. You have this man who
could be dating your daughter or live next door to you.
So that always felt like a turning point for me.
What is Pat as a detective and he's in Nashville,
When does he establish this cold case department? And you
know what is sort of the church actory of his
career there.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
So it actually began sort of as a side project,
if you will, like again, during this inflection point that
you've described where people realize, look, listen, we've got to
figure this out. So he sort of puts together a
team and there's no official standing, but he's sort of
in the term in law enforcement is you start working
cold cases off the corner of your desk, so you've
(09:24):
got all these other files, but then you've got this
little figuratively and literally area of your workspace etched out
for as time permits. I'm going to work on this
as well, because I've got active cases, but I'm particularly interested.
It's not even necessarily assigned to him, but it's there
for the taking for those who are motivated. And that's
(09:44):
what always frustrated me. And the point in common that
we had is do you not have the intellectual curiosity?
And I know you're busy, but do you not, if
you're in this role, want to know who was waiting
inside that apartment after a precision break and that left
no sign of forced entry. Who's waiting for this girl
to come home and raped and killed her?
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Like?
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Do you not want to know who could operate that stealthily?
And do you not want to stop him before he
strikes again? And unfortunately there's a lot of investigators they're
just like, Okay, that's somebody else's problem. Well, no, it's
you signed up for this, and so you work it
off the corner of your desk until the resources are
allotted to these cases where you can actually start a
designated so they go by different names. Cold case squad
(10:28):
or Historical Crimes Unit is the language typically used now.
But this started out as something on the side until
it crystallized, and now they have a designated squad and
he's way in front of at least municipal police department.
He's way ahead of the game.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I know that we talk about do we want to
get these people off the street, And of course you know,
I'm sure, and you know that there's so much pressure
to take care of these cases.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
They're clear and present dangers.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
The one that they're making the headlines and the priority
might not be cases that are twenty or thirty or
forty yearsyears old, even ten years old. But what do
you think the value is in solving a case. We're
seeing a lot now with genetic genealogy, these cases that
are eighty years old, we're clearly the characters, people involved
with the story, you're all dead. Do you think there
(11:14):
is as much value providing closure to families, survivors or
whoever it is as it is solving current cases that
could be threats to the public.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Also.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Yeah, so investigative genetic genealogy is I've said, the most
significant development in criminal investigation since the fingerprint, because unlike
other forms of forensic evidence, you can get a partial match,
so you may never get a full fingerprint, but it's
a starting point. It allows you to narrow the haystack
of possible offenders. That's how genetic genealogy works. I mean most, yeah,
(11:46):
sexual serial murders aren't uploading their ancestry results to ged
match or to family Tree DNA, but you know, a
fourth cousin they've never met may have done that. And
now we're into your bloodline and it's about a case
a week, and some yeah are like fifty sixty years
old and everybody's dead. But the communities and certainly the
police department still I have tremendous benefit from that. And
(12:09):
we're seeing a lot of people now also arrested. And
there's a case here in Toronto, two women again break
in sexual assault murders. This guy's name was never in
the thought. And this is saying in cold case investigations
usually the name is in the file. They've just misjudged
their role in the case. They're not a witness, they're
not sort of someone who's just a family friend. They
may actually be the main person of interest. So this
(12:31):
guy was never even on police radar. He would have
never been caught were it not for this method. And
that leads to the next question is what's he been doing?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Since?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I mean, you successfully break into two women's apartments, sexually
assault them in ritualistic fashion, I should say, and then
murder them brutally. You don't just stop. So he's been
on the land for almost forty years, what's he been
up to? And then the secondary investigation starts. What other
cases can weeld into him?
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Now?
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There is tremendous value to it, so much so that
I've suggested that we're solving cases that it's being used
in more and more cases that are only a couple
of years old. Could we get to a point where,
you know, in the next generation, could actually retire the
term cold case because it wouldn't get to the point
where cases are with using this method.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
So where does it make sense for us to start
in this sort of list of serial killers knowing we're
not going to make it through all of them, but
you know, kind of doing a good chronological dive into
that case, which one do we start with?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
I think we start in part five of the book,
which is chapters twenty nine through thirty six, and work
our way backwards, and that's the fast food murders, which
very disturbing. These are the crimes of someone eventually identified
by pattis Paul Dennis Reid, who is actually a mass
murder or serial killer. So the definition of a serial
killer is someone who commits two or more murders at
(13:54):
separate times and places. That's it. But imagine if during
each of these murders there's multiple victims. And it's for
that reason that I've got calls from retired law enforcement
saying that, you know, we had a very similar kind
of still unsolved, you know, in for instance, in Indiana
and in the early eighties. Do you think he could
have been near Speedway, Indiana in the eighties because the
(14:15):
moo is bang on, and we know he was nomadic,
and I mean, how many people really were doing this?
I mean essentially his what he would do is he
would con his way into various fast food places, ice
cream parlors, McDonald's, other regional chains and typically near closing
time or at opening time, and would murder everybody there.
(14:38):
There were some indications that these were robberies, but he's
taking pocket change essentially, like a few hundred dollars and
shooting four teenage kids in the head and doing that.
It was never about the money. Originally from Texas, his
first known crime was a violent takeover robbery of a
steakhouse in Houston, Sies, so he his AMO was established
(15:03):
early on. He cases eateries, he doesn't care who's there,
and he's prepared to, you know, use tremendous violence. A
few years later, a bunch of kids again are murdered
at a bowling alley, again in Texas. It has all
the makings of what would later become his crimes in Nashville,
and another guy ended up going to death row for
those for those crimes, and Pat you know, was very
(15:24):
vocal saying you've got the wrong guy. And the guy
ended up dying on death row. He was never executed.
But we're looking at that as being connected to Paul's
industry as well. So when you ask what were people
talking about, certainly people were talking about those crimes whereby
any place could be struck next and you're going to
let your teenage son or daughter, you know, close up
a fast food place. And when this guy's on the loose,
(15:46):
it was very a very frightening time and a tremendous
pressure obviously on Pad and the police to find this
guy before he could strike again.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
What years had he been in Texas and then went
to Nashville?
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Do you know, we're not entirely sure when he arrived
in Nashville. And again his movements and the late eighties
early nineties are largely speculative. The Texas crimes were in
the eighties. Again, I've been contacted by a retired law
enforcement to think that he was responsible for possibly responsible
for what are known as the Burger Chef murders, which
were another mass murder that fit his mo o and
(16:17):
speedway Indiana. And then his crimes in Nashville has known
crimes for which he was eventually prosecuted are all in
early nineteen ninety seven, and he had chosen to come
to Nashville. It would seem based on things police found
once they identified him to be a country star, he
had never picked up an instrument in his life. They
(16:38):
found all kinds of creepy photos of him just posing
like he was going to be like an album cover.
He had taken a photograph of everywhere he had ever
been to photo document his time in Nashville, like he
would take a photograph of of a toilet that he used,
he would take a photograph of a car that he bought,
and the just photographs of everything. Surprisingly not his crime.
(17:00):
So he kills the manager of a Captain D's, which
is a regional restaurant in the South. He murders a
number of teenagers Adam McDonald's, and then his final crimes
involve the kidnap of two female employees of a Baskin Robinson.
He takes them actually to a remote location and rates
and murders them. And this is really where he begins
to make mistakes, and obviously the forensic evidence leads the
(17:23):
police to Paul Dennis Reid. And then that's where the
second investigation in all these cases starts with where else
has this guy been?
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I assume they looked at him in connection with the
yogurt chop murders in ninety one in Austin, Texas. Sounds
so similar.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's another one. He's one of maybe two strong people
of interest and again in Texas. So I mean, you've
got this glut of restaurant mass murders in Texas when
he's known to be living there. Yeah, one of them
is somebody else is wrongfully convicted in my view, which
leaves him free then to roam the country. Whether it's
(17:58):
or not he's in Indiana, that's unanswerable question at this point.
But then he ends up in Nashville because he wants
to get in on a new country fad, and obviously
that doesn't work, so he goes back to what he knows,
which is murdering kids.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I had seen a documentary series about the Speedway murders,
which was actually, I will say this is an aside, one
of the more interesting true crime documentary series I've ever seen.
But it was the Burger Chef murders where they had
actors portraying the victims and they have a discussion about
what's about to happen to them, and they start like
(18:32):
theorizing who all these you know, who the killer could be,
because in that case there seemed to be so many suspects.
Witnesses were seeing different things and you know, and I'm
sure he's mentioned I don't remember. In this countless list
of suspects that they go through. It was one of
the most I don't know if it was the best,
but it was one of the most creative interpretations of
a true crime story. So that's the only reason I
(18:53):
know that is you know, and that so that when
you were starting to talk about murders and fast food,
I was thinking, I wonder if speedways and there's somewhere.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Yeah, So tired Indiana State Police detective actually contacted me
about that, and he had worked that case for years
and did not know the case of Paul dnis Street.
So it's interesting these I mean, as recently as the
twenty twenties, You've got this information out there and just
no one's really put it all together that someone who
knows the Bergerschef murders case intimately had no idea of
(19:20):
the Captain D's or the McDonald's in Nashville twenty years later.
We got to look at him for that. We got
to look at him. Obviously, he is the lead person
of interest in the Austin yogurt shop murders, which are
very very similar to his final crimes in Nashville at
the Boston Robbins.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I just got chills when you were explaining all of
the different scenarios thinking about yogurt Chop, which is I
would say one of the most traumatizing stories, you know
murders that have happened in Austin history for sure, and
we had Kenneth Allen McDuff.
Speaker 3 (19:47):
So that's really saying something.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
What did Pats see in this case in Reid that
other people didn't see? Was he making connections or tell
me what his involvement when the cold case part of
this came in.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Well, the cold case part is, I guess what are
the crimes? Was irresponsible for these? These all happened in
relatively quick succession. So pass working again these other cold
cases off the corner of his desk, and you've got
all of a sudden, this monster who comes to town
and just goes on an absolute rampage. So I mean
he's making mistakes at each one. Obviously, they're connecting these
(20:19):
crimes together very quickly. The mos identical, they're all very
specifically targeted locations, similar caliber firearm used in all of
the execution style murders. I mean, eventually they get on
to read and nobody's really discussed is what were his motivations.
Ostensibly it's robbery. I can't stand it when people use
(20:40):
the term robbery gone bad. If you're prepared to slaughter
four people working there who offer no resistance, that's why
you're there. That's why you're there. There's a robbery gone
according to Plant, not gone wrong. So the same thing
with burglars. We now recognize that there's five subtypes of
sexually motivated home burglaries where they're helping somebody's inside and
(21:02):
maybe things get taken in, maybe they don't, but they're
taken typically as an afterthought, or they're taken as souvenirs
for the sex crime that occurs in there, not because
they want to fence the stuff or because it's worth money.
Richard Ermirez was a really good example of that, where
he would target homes he knew were occupied to rape
and murder whoever was in there, and then he would
take stuff and then discard it because just either to
(21:22):
throw off police or just because it was initially taken
as a souvenir of his crime, and then he realized
it could maybe implicate him, so he discarded it. So
those were never about robber. They were about serial murder
and pulled dentistrate is the same and this guy's There's
not a single sort of label that you can put
on this guy. But at the end of the day,
he's a sadist. He derives great pleasure from the suffering
(21:43):
and terror of others. And that was really a hallmark
of the Bowling Alley crime in Texas, where he was
basically whispering things in people's ears before he murdered them
to taunt them.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
How many people, how many murders have been connected definitive him?
I'm sure there are many others that they're working on,
but what is the final number?
Speaker 3 (22:04):
And is he still alive?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
He died in custody not too long ago, actually, But
the ones definitively linked to him are the Captain D's,
the McDonald's, and the thirty one Flavor slash Basket Robbins
in Nashville. The other earlier crimes for which he was
convicted were violent takeover robberies of similar institutions, but he
didn't murder anybody. The ones that he's suspected of murdering
(22:25):
people are still officially unsolved or have been wrongfully linked
to somebody else.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Tell me the things right now before we get to
another case of pats. Tell me the things right now
that help make the connections like in Israel, keys who
just traversed the country Alaska to Texas. Essentially, how do
we make those connections. I could see in the eighties
and maybe even the nineties a lack of computer connections,
(22:55):
you know, between all of these jurisdictions. I assume that's changed,
and you can plug in an m and some other
basic data and start making almost like a map of
where these cases might be similar.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
So the system you're talking about, the Violent Criminal Apprehension
Program or VIACAP run out of the Justice Department. I
mean that in theory, that would be a good way
of tracking MOS or fender characteristics between you know, vastly
separated jurisdictions. But it's a voluntary program. You don't have
to fill out that questionnaire. So a lot of people
wants the case is solved, they move on, and they
(23:29):
don't submit afy CAP form. So there's tons of blind spots,
so you can't necessarily rely on that. So for years
that was a huge hindrance because people weren't submitting it,
or you get false positives or what have you, So
a guy like Read could roam the country and do
this despite the fact that you know, these crimes obviously
have a very specific signature to them. But you mentioned
(23:50):
is real keys. That's I talk about him at length
of my last book, How to Solve a Cold Case.
I mean that guy was the ultimate sort of like Read,
a sadist who turned murder into a hub. And that's
maybe a good after we lead into we can talk
about another case from the book, Michael Scott Magliolo. And
there's another weird fast food connection here as well, because
(24:12):
this guy was a McDonald's manager who on his days
off would act as what was known as a lumper.
So Nashville is a big trucking hub longhle trucking. So
a lumper is somebody at the time who would essentially
offer themselves out as a hand for a trucker in
exchange for a ride, so basically a hitchhiker who then
(24:35):
will help the trucker at the destination either offload or
load up whatever they're picking up or dropping off. So
he would hitch rides to random places where he had
no connection. He was just a stranger in town for
the day and murder random people and then hitch a
ride back doing the same thing.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
So how many people is he connected to? And what
a Pat what was his so far about that case?
Speaker 2 (25:01):
So the span of Magliola's crimes are pretty long. Were
not entirely sure how many people he killed for certain,
because again his movements couldn't be tracked and he wasn't
very cooperatve. But I mean, we know for sure between
nineteen seventy seven. So you mentioned the book starts in
nineteen seventy five, which is officially before Pat starts working
in these cases, but then we introduced him as a
character further on in the book, so he's active for
(25:23):
sure between seventy seven and ninety one. We know of
at least two, more likely ten women that he raped
and murdered across six states between that time. So he
received fifty years in prison in Tennessee and then fifteen
years to life for seven murders in Ohio and nineteen
ninety three, So he sentenced in nineteen ninety three, with
(25:45):
the murders obviously date back before that. So this is
one of the first real cold cases that Pat starts
looking into, and he's solving obviously because these crimes sort
of pre date his detective work. So he starts working
the Magliolo what would later be the Magliola murders off
the corner of his desk, as we say, and then
eventually it's really weird how he gets caught. They had
(26:08):
a partial fingerprint at one of the hot Nashville scenes,
and he would basically just intermittently run it through the
database and there will not be any hits until Magneol
got sloppy and he got picked up joy writing with
a bunch of girls in the car, and we don't
know what he had intended for them, but it gets
stopped by the cops joy Writing and it gets pinched
(26:28):
for a duy. So he gets printed and put into
the system. Pat checks again. So this is a lesson
in tenacity, right, so he knows this guy's going to
screw up, keeps checking the print, keeps checking the print,
and lo and behold, Magluold's processed into the system now
in ninety one, and they get the hit and then
the case gets put together from that. So I mentioned
earlier investigated genetic genealogy is like a fingerprint, and then
(26:52):
you can have a partial match and it just takes
time to get the full match. And that's exactly how
this case came to be closed.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
So what was Pat's insane with this particular case with
this offender because he had just this partial print from
one crime scene. Was he thinking this is not somebody
who just stopped at this one scene. Was that his
sort of gut feeling about it?
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah, I mean his gut feeling. So he understood, particularly
cold case sexual homicides, that they will not stop. It
is repetitive, episodic behavior. He knew that even if he
didn't link him to another scene, So like a scene
to scene match what you can either have through fingerprints
or you can have typically by DNA, that he would
be caught for something else because people who engage in
(27:35):
this behavior it's antisocial. I mean he was an actual psychopath,
but who engage in this type of conduct are involved
in all spectra of criminality. So and he was right,
So the hit is not on another murder, it's on
a dui h. And so I mean, what an interesting
way into now solving the case just from and had
(27:55):
he not gotten sloppy, I mean you shut it a
thin company using that in oh what we call a
commuter killer, somebody who murders outside of where they like,
far away from where they live, like in Israel, keys,
knowing that they're not going to be on the local
list of sex offenders or local persons of interest, and
they're going to be long gone and back home by
the time and even the body's found. So he could
(28:19):
have gone on for years using this ruse, and because
he got sloppy, pat was all over.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
I know that there is a hope among some law
enforcement that AI is only going to be able to
help with genetic genealogy, being able to call everything and
pull it together faster than these genealogists who have to
look through thousands and thousands of trees, and I can
only hope that that's going to be the case.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
So yeah, I have talked to some genealogies who work
for police departments who have said that that that would
be that would speed up their work exponentially because they
had takes. Particularly if you're dealing with a suspect who
is from a remote community, or there's something called endogamy involved,
and that is typically seen where you have these closed
(28:59):
community where people are having children who there's not a
lot of genetic deviation, so you get a lot of
feedback loops sort of because you know you've got a
lot of cousins marrying each other for instance, and becomes confusing.
So yeah, ai would would sort that out pretty quickly.
I'm part of a group as well that uses sort
of an early version of ai AD is its a
(29:21):
computer algorithm to basically, we've created our own violent criminal
Apprehension program, and your listeners can go to a murder
data dot org where their Murder Accountability Project based out
of Metro DC, and every murder that's occurred really since
nineteen seventy four is in there. Then you can find
(29:43):
you can search by a year, you can search by
a police department, you can search by a murder weapon,
you can search by age of the victim. There's hundreds
of different search parameters. And what we've done is we
trained software to look for patterns in cities and counties
according to similar mo. That's the difference between the Murder
Cannability Project and ViCAP in that ViCAP only has about
(30:05):
forty percent of unsolved murders in there. We've got all
of them since nineteen seventy four. So we've found our
software has already found a couple of matches, and we've
alerted law enforcement to those links. One is an active
investigation in Chicago now fifty one connected strangulations that was
the subject of an ID series called The Hunt for
(30:25):
the Chicago Strangler that's ongoing. We found a match in
Cleveland that suspect was later arrested. We found a match
in Gary, Indiana, and he ended up being Darren dion Van,
a serial killer who admitted to the murders in Gary
that our software first linked to him before police did so.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I have a teacher true crime podcast course at the
University of Texas. I have them listen to a podcast
called Black Girl Gone, and the host did a two
parter on between two thousand and one and twenty eighteen,
fifty one women were found either strangled or aphixiated. That's it, right,
Tell me again, just because I know my class will
want to know, and probably our listeners.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
Will want to know.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
So were you saying that your database is making connections
between those fifty one because my understanding was, at least
from that podcast, which is still a couple of years old,
was that police were sort of refusing to believe that
these were all connected, and they were sort of dismissed,
many of them because they were black women or some
more sex workers.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
Yeah, So we sent the chief of detectives a letter.
By twenty seventeen, when we our software determined that pattern
and I'm quoting, there is no active unidentified serial killer
in the city of Chicago. That was their response. And
then there was I think Vice Media did a story
you can probably still find online, and more and more
(31:46):
people were sort of talking. We sent further correspondence. They
brought in a new Chief of Detectives who then you
acknowledged that there was no denying that, and he then
also appears in that series, which is sort of the
first real investigative documentary into how that happened. So there
is there are some people of interest, and I can
tell you it's no longer a secret. Darren deon Van,
(32:06):
who I just mentioned, has admitted to being in Chicago
at times that correspond with those murders, And the thought
is is he responsible? Here's the weirdest thing of fifty
one No DNA, so we can't necessarily say they're all
one offender. So is he responsible for the black women?
Are we looking at a separate offender for the Latina victims.
(32:29):
There does not tend to be typically a lot of
variability with it in terms of age or ethnicity among
serial killers who tend to have a preferred victim type
and they don't deviate from that. So it could be
talking to two separate offenders, one of which may very
well be Darren deon Van. He's admitted also to killing
many other people and paraphrasing, but has numerous other victims
(32:50):
in Illinois.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
He said, wow, okay, well let's get back to one
of Pat's cases. Well, this is probably going to be
our last one, and we want to talk about the
Restop murders, So tell me about that case.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
So the rest stop murders were a series of trucking
related crimes at or near trucker rest stops in metro Nashville,
but as well as other areas suspected to be in Alabama, Indiana, Georgia, Illinois,
New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Because again we're dealing with
a nomadic commuter style killer. His name was Bruce Mendenhall,
(33:25):
and this was a real cat and mouse game that
he and Pat played, and in fact, after he was arrested,
he basically began plotting Pat's murder from prison. He tried
to get a hitman on the headside to take him out.
That's how unrelenting this guy was.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Well, tell me about what these cases were like, so
and tell me about Mendenholl and what we know about him,
and kind of what you know unfolds with these cases,
and then what gets Pat involved? What are the clues
that lead him to this being a serial killer?
Speaker 2 (33:54):
Pat gets involved much like Michael Scott Magliolo because then
I was foolish enough to dump a body in his jurisdiction,
and then that puts him on the Pat's radar, and
then these other cases start coming into focus all over
the place. He's convicted of only two murders, but he's
suspected at least nine others. And basically his AMMO is
(34:16):
not unlike unfortunately, some other or at least four hundred
that we know because the FBI has created profiles for
them as part of what's known as the Highway Serial
Killing Initiative. At least four hundred other truckers have employed
a similar MO, where basically they lure women, often sex
trade workers, who are strolling rest stops, which is why
(34:36):
he's known as as the rest stop Killer, into the
truck and then murders them, drives into other locations and
dumps them, and his AMMO became increasingly sort of brutal.
Whereby the Nashville victim he had actually post mortem, she
had a tattoo on her body, and he cut it
out to keep it. A lot of people don't necessarily
(34:58):
know this distinction. A souvenir taken from a crime is
typically a personal item, so a piece of jewelry, the
victims driver's license, something to look at later, like as
a twisted trink at. A trophy is a living tissue,
so a lock of hair, an eyeball like Charles Aldridge,
the Dallas eyeball slayer from Texas. Maybe you know that case.
(35:20):
And then in this case he starts taking before he's
caught cutting out flesh containing a tattoo to preserve.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
I want to go back. I was a little startled
by something you said. Did you say four hundred different
truck drivers have been suspected or convicted or whatever of
attacking women?
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
Four hundreds still out there? So this task force that
the FBI has looked at And there was a book
just published on this that I'm quoted in a fair
bit by a former FBI assistant director called long Haul
and it looks at a lot of these cases. So
there's four hundred plus UNSUBB profile. So there'll be a
group of murders that they can say these victims have
(36:02):
common characteristics, the crime scenes have common characteristics, and this
will be say offender unknown offender A. Then there's another
group of murders, say in another part of the country,
that they believe to be attributed to another offender, will
call that UNSUBB or offender B. And yeah, there's about
four hundred then separate people. They don't know who they are,
but their crimes have been sort of particularized by the
(36:25):
FBI in that fashion.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Where do you think the Israel keys type serial killer,
the long haul trucker type killer or serial killer, where
do they fit in with the theories of geographic profiling.
I mean, you know, these are not people who are
constrained to one area where they feel most comfortable, unless
we say it's a truck. But with keys, he just
(36:48):
I mean he was hiding backpacks and bundles all over
the place. He just seemed to be such an outlier.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Yeah, and that's the concern is we don't know what
we don't know. We don't know how many of these
highly nomadic again, commuter killers are out there. So the
term commuter offender is derived from the geographic profiling matrix
of the four types of offenders who navigate their space
according to a certain what we call psychogeography. I mean,
(37:14):
another really interesting one. I don't know if you've read
the book The Man from the Train, it's about the
first Israel piece. So Israel keys is the nomadic killer
and the age of commercial air travel. But Paul Miller,
who's the suspected murderer in this case. I mean, this
was a guy who just rode the rails like a hobo,
and wherever the train stopped, he would go in and
(37:34):
kill entire families with an AX. He's got victims all
over the US, and we're talking like late eighteen hundreds,
so that they had absolutely nothing to work with. And
there's LinkedIn now to murders back in Europe as well,
but that's just information that's sort of come to light now,
I mean one hundreds some years later, So we don't know.
I mean we just hope, like Mendenhall, that they make
(37:57):
a mistake in a jurisdiction where somebody's paying attention and
that they've got the curiosity then go looking for or
like Magliola, you know, he was tenacious about that, kept
checking the print knowing that somewhere sometime this guy would
it up in the system.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Now, what did Pat do with that case? When mendon
Hall and the rest stop was that fingerprinting?
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Also there's a combination of techniques, But this is really
the climax of the book in that he drove a
very unique truck, like a canary yellow truck that stood
out and there was some witnesses you could describe the truck.
And Pat is driving down the highway one day outside
Nashville and it passes him, and he turns around and
(38:35):
pulls them over, and it basically finds there's blood in
there and finds what we call like a rape kit
or a kill kit.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Oh my god, you've got to be kidding me. I mean,
you know, I was thinking about this. You're going to
not think this is the perfect analogy, I bet, But
do you feel like you carry on Pat's work? I mean,
it's such a big scale though, with the database that
you all have created where you are trying to make
these connections, and of course you're using different types of
technology really pooling together almost like kind of crowdsourcing. Pat
(39:06):
was doing it at a smaller level, but still in
such an effective way. I mean, it's still working off
instinct too.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Working off instinct understanding that it's a big country. These
people again often defy conventional wisdom about serial killers that
they don't just stick to a certain hunting territory. So
we're seeing through these cases criminal I don't use the
rump criminal profile, the criminal analytics coming of age. Where
these cases reflect are microcosms of an improved understanding of
(39:36):
how what makes these sicicos tick that was occurring at
the same time in other fields, like in the academia
or you know, at the highest levels and at the FBI.
And he's actually out there on the street, you know,
doing this and by the time he catches Mendon Hall
at the wheel and opens up Badgism and gets his
door open, they find three hundred items in there. Rifle, knives, handcuffs, gloves,
(39:58):
you know, black tape, night stick, sex toys, DNA of
five different women and again, we don't necessarily know who
some of those women are. So well, he's been all
over the place with this kill kit, and he gets
them in the truck and they're never seen again.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
The more that I talk to authors like you and
work with you know, Paul Hols, who helped solve the
Golden State killer case, the more I learn about what
I don't know about serial killers.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
And I think a lot of us probably feel like that.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Paul does not believe in the serial killer triad, you know,
bed wedding and fire starting and the harming animals. Now,
he said, the harming animals is a big one, but
then he said maybe some credence in the setting fires,
but he said the bed wedding is like a non
starter for him. I will say this, I had always
believed that when a serial killer stops killing, either he
(40:48):
moved and we haven't made that connection, or he died,
or he's in prison and there was no DNA to
run against it. It never occurred to me until I
read about the Golden State killer case that sometimes these
guys kind of age out, they stop for whatever reason.
And then I talked to an author who said, well,
life changes for them. They'll get married, they have kids,
(41:08):
something happens, and something changes, And I guess I've always
just thought this was an overwhelming sense of I've got
to continue doing this until I die, and that doesn't
seem to be the case for everyone. So it teaches
me a lesson.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, so, first of all, Paul's right. The McDonald triad
as it's known, has been widely discredited. I mean, maybe
bed wedding is correlated with some serial killers, but it's
not causative. And it maybe correlated because the thought actually
is that childhood trauma is what leads to the development
of what are known as paraphilias, which are the disordered
(41:42):
erotic attachments to often violent things. You can think of
some conditions that end in philia that that person may
be pretty dangerous, but they accumulate these over the lifetime
and that's where fire starting comes in. So fire starting
maybe pyrophilics or an arousal from starting fires that then
leads to them exploring other ways of other fetishism that
(42:04):
they end up actually then hurting people, and then it
becomes hurting people is a sex act. But yeah, I mean,
Dennis Rayder summed up the fact that you know this
isn't necessarily a purely linear trajectory, and they don't stop.
He said he would have liked to have kept killing people,
but he just got too busy. Yeah, that his kids
got to an age where he's running them around and
things were busy at work, and so he didn't have
(42:26):
time for his hobby anymore. The same as somebody you
know doesn't get on the bike or get out on
the golf course as much as they used to. Like
it's a stranger comparison, but that's really what this is
to them, and they ultimately can't perform at the pace
that they used to.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
It's pretty incredible learning. All of this tell me the
rest of Pat's story. How long does he run this
cold case squad in Nashville.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
By the early two thousands, late nineties, early two thousands,
and this is consistent with other police departments across the board.
As soon as DNA becomes a thing, so Cotis the
US goes online in ninety eight. In Canada ninety nine,
this is really where cold case units start to crystallize,
because now they have a tool. Rather than just look
through old boxes and come up with new hunches, now
(43:12):
they have a tool where they can start testing exhibits
against and that's where the salts start coming in at
a new pace. And so by the early two thousands,
much like elsewhere, the Metro cold case unit is up
and running officially, you know, it's sort of been unofficial
under his wing. And then he retires, you know, a
short time later and leaves it in good hands. And
(43:34):
he went on to work for the District Attorney's office
as an investigator, and then he's also now got his
own show on investigation Discovery.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Wow, he must be very proud of this book.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
I'm assuming, yeah, you know what, we lost touch, but
I'd like to think, you know, as a pretty faithful
summation of his life's work and his contributions to cold cases.
And he's the first thing. He's a humble guy, and
he's the first to say, like, you know, he had
a great team, and he did, but you know, every
team needs needs a strong leader, and certainly he was
(44:03):
that well.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
And I think, you know, in a time period where
I certainly think the public questions the integrity of the police,
it's nice to read a story where you have a
person who is not.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Letting cases go.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
They could be decades old and he still thinks about
these cases, and he still sees the value. And you know,
I think you and I both certainly wish that more
investigators either have given the resources where they can investigate
these cases, or you know, really really became passionate about it,
because these stories do matter, even if all the players
are gone.
Speaker 3 (44:34):
You know, the stories do matter.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
The stories do matter. You're right, And I mean to
quote another I think I make the comparisons in the book,
but to quote another legendary albeit fictional, cold case investigator,
Harry Bosh, Michael Connolly's character and his motto is everybody
counts or nobody counts. So you don't get to pick
and choose your cases. These all deserve to be solved.
(44:56):
And like I said, I'm hopeful, with between AI and
investigative genetic genealogy, that the term Col's case will be
obsolete in our lifetime.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. And don't forget There are
twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
give them a listen if you haven't already.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Our senior producer is Alexis Mrosi. Our associate producer is
Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
This episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is
our composer, artwork by Nick Toga.
Speaker 1 (45:49):
Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer.
Follow Wicked Words on Instagram at tenfold More Wicked and
on Facebook at Wicked World Birds Pod
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
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