NEW: Ann Rule Bio by Author Cathy Scott

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
My name is Bill Thomas.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am
now trying to use my experience as the brother of
a murder victim to help other victims of violent crime.
I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders,
and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders
Facebook group together with Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 4 (00:26):
My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a researcher,
a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the
social media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway
Murders Facebook page with my partner in crime, Bill Thomas.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
Welcome to Mind Ever Murder.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm Bill Thomas.

Speaker 6 (00:45):
We're joined today by Kathy Scott here to talk to
us about and Rule, everybody's favorite true crime writer.

Speaker 5 (00:54):
Kathy, thank you for joining us today. My pleasure. Thank
you for having me.

Speaker 6 (00:59):
And Rule is an name that is familiar to most
people in the true crime space, and you've joined us
today because you're working on a biography about her. Right now,
start by telling us why you chose and rule.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
As your subject. Well, I never go out and look
for a topic of a book. All my books really
their true crime, mostly about deaths, and they just sort
of come my way. But I got to know Anne
when her attorney, one of her attorneys, contacted me after
she filed a lawsuit against the Seattle Weekly to write

(01:33):
an article because they didn't think coverage was being done.
It wasn't balanced in Seattle, and she was upset about it.
She didn't like an article written by It's a complicated case,
but she didn't like the article. But she especially didn't
like the headline because it said her reporting was sloppy,

(01:54):
and so she sued them for the word sloppy. And
I asked her, I said, you know, this is a
week weekly. It's not getting a lot and it's a
local weekly. It's not getting a lot of coverage outside
of Seattle. And if I write about it, you're going
to be spreading it. You know. Wanted to just let
it go, and she said, no, I have to preserve

(02:15):
my name and they can't get away with it. I
wrote about it, interviewed her attorneys, did a Q and A,
and then I did a separate piece I write for
Psychology Today periodically, and so I did two more articles
on her. So I did three articles before she died.
This was probably about three and a half years before
she died in twenty fifteen. The anniversary, by the way,

(02:38):
was two days ago of her dad. Yeah, and we
became friends. We talked and stuff, and then she wasn't
as conventional of a writer as she appeared to be.
So there were things about her that were quite interesting,
and I looked into different things and she became quite
an interesting study. Plus we were friends. So when Chada

(03:00):
a lot, she always called me her dog loving friend.
But yeah, and I had plans to go and see
her with a mutual friend we had were in touch
with Anne, and we were it was like three weeks
before she died, and we were all set to go,
and then and then she, you know, unfortunately died. But

(03:20):
she's she's as I said, she's an interesting study. She
wrote thirty seven books. Thirty five one was a fiction
and thirty six were true crime, and thirty five were
New York Times bestsellers. And so she's interesting. And there's
a lot that people don't know about her that I

(03:40):
think I'm fleshing out her story and they're going to know,
you know, exactly who she was. She had such an
impact on the true crime genre that it's worthy of
a book.

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Was she successful, by the way, in this lawsuit against
the paper that was saying her work was sloppy?

Speaker 5 (03:59):
She was. She lost and then and they said that
it wasn't that saying sloppy was not defamatory. I think
she sued for libel and she of course appealed it.
She lost again, and then there was another it's complicated,
it's in the book, but there's another suit that she

(04:21):
had filed. Now idn't reconciled yet, there was no decision.
And then after her death, it too was dismissed. That
the suit she filed against the paper were dismissed. The
bad thing, and I you know, my heart goes out
to her because of this. The person who wrote the editor,
he was a freelance editor. What he was writing about

(04:45):
her sloppy reporting, he called it. She wasn't a reporter,
she didn't come from journalism. She came from the tabloids.
But he called it slappy reporting. That's my dog dog
on back breathing in the background. Sorry, but the the
guy who wrote it was about a book Anne had
written about a woman who had killed her husband. He

(05:07):
was her fiance. It was the Oregon case. It was
in the Pacific Northwest, which Anne liked to write about.
He was her fiance, and a month or two after
the story published, he married her. So he was just
reamed and Anne didn't know it at the time, but
of course and the paper did not know that he

(05:28):
had a relationship with the woman who was featuring. And
this was a feature story. I mean, it was a
full length, you know, a magazine size article. She didn't
know it at the time, but it was really in
her favor, but it didn't help her because that was
what the suit was about. The suit was libel.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
So he kind of escaped, if you will, prevailed on
the basis of more of a free speech kind of thing.
In other words, you can say her work was sloppy.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
Freedom of the press exactly.

Speaker 6 (05:59):
I think it is entirely possible that people could have
read Anne's books but not know about her background as
a Seattle police officer. So can you tell us a
little bit about Anne's background.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
Well, she had an uncle, a grandfather, a cousin, She
had maybe a couple of uncles and aunt who all
were in law enforcement. I think there were five of them,
and that's in the book too. All she wanted to
do since she was five years old was she'd hair
sirens and she wanted to go out and see what,
you know, what was going on. She wanted to be

(06:35):
a cop. So after she graduated from college, she immediately
applied and you know, she moved. She was born in
Michigan and her family moved around a lot, and then
she ended up transferring in finishing her degree at the
University of Washington. Upon graduation, she immediately applied for position,
but it was a woman's position. This was well, she

(06:58):
graduated from high scho going forty nine, so she would
have graduated college what fifty three got out of four years,
so nineteen fifty three. They had a woman's kind of
arm of the police department. They had a badge, no pistol,
no billy club, and they were more social workers than
police officers. After a year and a half, she had

(07:22):
an eye test because she was trying to transfer to
become a real officer and they had very few women
at that time. She was deemed blind, they glind, and
so she couldn't get on. So at that point she
got to know some homicide cops and that sort of
thing at the sale of police department and she started
writing for the tabloids. Well, she started writing. It took

(07:43):
her a long time, took her gosh, three four years
I think before she got anything published. But once she
hit the tabloids, that's where you have a story, as
Annie to describe it, you have part of a story.
She'd go to homicide say hey, what stories are you
working on? What crimes and they tell her whatever murders
were going on, and then she'd add to it and
finished the story herself. And she got all of those

(08:06):
published and she was doing like three articles a week
and she did that for several years. So that's where
she learned to write. But she also had a little
bit of freelance work early on as well, so that
you know. She always said it broke her heart to
leave the police department, but then she got to cover crime,
and I think that really fulfilled her. But it wasn't

(08:27):
by design. She didn't choose to write about crime other
than for the tabloids. She never planned to write a book.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Well then, how does that come about Anne's first book,
and many people think of it as a true crime classic.
I think we both agree is The Stranger Beside Me? Now,
we've talked about Ted Bundy on our podcast Mind Over Murder.
Here we don't want to focus too much on Bundy,
but since he's such an integral part of Anne's story,

(08:55):
do you mind telling us a little bit about how
she met him and how that prompted her to write
The Stranger Beside Me?

Speaker 5 (09:02):
Yeah, Well, her husband became a teacher, and she married,
and she had they had four kids, and the kids
were getting a little bit older, and this was like
nineteen seventy four. I think two kids were already out
of the house by that time. She had four two boys,
two girls. Her brother and she always kind of gives
him credit for her becoming an author. He committed suicide

(09:25):
when he was twenty one and Anna was twenty three.
It was very, very difficult for her, so she decided
she had time, and they had an opening at the
Seattle Suicide Hotline and she decided to volunteer there. And
it was a night shift, well, her partner on the
night shift one night a week, and occasionally she would work.

(09:46):
She'd do Sundays but sometimes she would do tuesdays. So
she worked with him for a year or so, almost
a year and a half, I think, with Ted Bundy,
And so there's time when calls aren't coming in. That
is how she met Ted Bundy. At some point while
she was there, he became a suspect, but she would
never accept that. Yeah, so she thus The Stranger Beside Me.

(10:10):
He was fifteen years older than hers, so she was
more of a big sister or an aunt to him.

Speaker 6 (10:17):
You know, I can't even wrap my head around what
that does to somebody, to realize that you have been
sitting next to a serial killer, working with them, talking
to them, and that they're just seemed like a normal
person when in fact they've been doing the most deviant,
terrible things.

Speaker 5 (10:33):
You can imagine.

Speaker 6 (10:34):
You were telling me off air something quite interesting, which
is that The Stranger Beside Me was not a New
York Times bestseller when it first came out. I assumed
it would have smashed every record there was. But you
said it wasn't.

Speaker 5 (10:46):
Well to a crime, especially a woman, you know, and
Anne was. There were very few women writing true crime
back then, and it was all men. Jack Olsen in Seattle,
she knew him. He was a big true crime author.
He wrote I think thirty one books. They knew each other,
they weren't fond of each other, though, that's a story

(11:06):
in itself. She paved the way for people like me.
You know, my first I was a police reporter for
for a long time, but my first book was The
Killing of Tupac Shakurt. Even that was a big deal
for me to be the one who wrote it, because
you know, I remember remember someone saying, and it was

(11:28):
published that who does she think she is a middle
aged white hoe writing about Tupac Shakora, a black man.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
As if that would disqualify you because you were a
white woman.

Speaker 5 (11:40):
Well, the good thing is so I don't react to
things like that. I try to. You know, as a reporter,
you have to have some thick skin. You guys probably
know that. So afterward, when the book came out, it
was a Los Angeles instant, Los Angeles Times bestseller. Oh sure, yeah,
So it got a lot of kudos, and so they
respected the work because it was it was just I

(12:02):
laid out what happened, and because police weren't solving it's
the only reason I wrote it. And the Biggie Smalls
died and that became the second one and really broke
the ground for us, for US women. So when she
was at the hotline volunteering, she learned that he was
a person who interests became. Before he became the main suspect,

(12:25):
there were a couple of others, but before he became
the main one, she completely denied it, did it, accept it,
and kept in touch with him, and at one point
her deal was as soon as the story started, there
were stories out about missing women and women being murdered
at the University of Washington students and then in the

(12:45):
Pacific Northwest. It spread out, you know, to a few
other states, Utah included, and she pitched a magazine story
and got an assignment. So her deal was she was
going to be writing writing an article about profiling the
women men who were missing and killed, and most of
them at that point were found. Then as it became

(13:06):
more and more murders and an agent contacted her, she
contacted the agent. I haven't been able to nail that down.
The agent's no longer with us either, be Anyway, they
got in touch with each other and she wanted to
do a book, wanted and to write a book. But
you cannot do a book until there's a suspect named.
We need at least a name, not a conviction or

(13:29):
an arrest, just a name. And so she pursued. She
lost track of Ted for two years. So that agent
was very patient and literary agent, and she lost track
of him. And so there's been a little bit of
criticism that she stayed in touch with him because of
the book. But she did stay in touch with him.

(13:52):
She didn't come to terms with you, really really did
it until she saw him on the stand and he
kind of went off on an attorney and that's when
it hit her really hard. And upon his conviction, of course,
and that's how she landed the book deal. And so
as soon as he was named a suspect, she contacted

(14:12):
the editor and she started writing the book. So she
met I think the last time she met with Ted
was for three and a half hours, and the police
had him under surveillance, so they probably heard every word
they said. But she was at a restaurant in Seattle
and just kind of picked his brain and she knew
he was a suspect, you know, and he knew he
was a suspect. She got quite a bit out of him.

(14:35):
There was no love lost in the end, you know,
he was you know, there's a Netflix Stephen Michell and
his writing partner did it, and he wanted to even
say her name on air. So they referred to an
older woman who was a writer, and that's it at once.
So they didn't want to give her any ink, which
I find fascinating. So for whatever reason, he wasn't, probably

(14:58):
because well, you know, out her sharing the book with him.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
No tell us tell us more though, because our listeners
would love to hear this, because we obviously have a
lot of annual fans.

Speaker 5 (15:09):
He wanted to write a book and he wanted to
write it with her, and so she said okay, And
she says that and stranger beside me, but I go
into more detail, but she said okay. So he was,
you know, telling her stuff, and who knows how much
of it was true because the man was crazy, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
An inveterate liar, so it was part of his makeup.

Speaker 5 (15:34):
Yeah, And so she and it was almost like the
two of them were using each other. Yeah yeah, And
I could just say that out loud, but she kept
him going. And then when she told him she'd pay
him a percentage, you know, and number one as journalists
and you know, as writers and books and authors, you know,

(15:56):
you don't pay for interviews. It's called because percept that
they'll spruce it up for you, you know, get better. You cannot,
as call checkbook journalism, even with an author, you can't
do it. But once she had enough for the book,
about three and a half hour interview with him. I
was Barcelona, something that was down. The restaurant was in

(16:18):
downtown Seattle. It's in the book, and the cops were
listening to every word. She had enough, and that's when
she went to her She had enough for a book.
And that's when she went to the agent and said, okay,
I'm done, and she finished the book. And yeah, it
wasn't because she was a woman, I think, and she
wasn't known other than you know, if you read you know,

(16:38):
the tabloids in the in the Pacific Northwest. I don't
think her stories went nationwide. You wanted to have known
who she was. And it was her seventh book that
became a New York Times bestseller. And they did another
edition of The Stranger Beside Me and that became a bestseller.

Speaker 3 (16:55):
Too, as Kristin said, not right out of the chute
the Stranger. Besides, it wasn't an instant hit when it
was first published.

Speaker 5 (17:03):
Right, but it grew, you know, it slowly grew because
she wrote a few books in between, and mostly about
well they were murders, you know, but mostly in the
Pacific Northwest. That's what she was looking for. I don't
look for crimes, you know. She was good at that,
and she looked for it. I don't you know. If
there's a big one it comes up. I may have

(17:24):
an agent or a publisher asked me to do it,
But for the most part, I hear about it, and
I'd become just one with the story. And I have
three and waiting to be done, you know. But yeah,
that's how I come about it. But it's an interesting
traversing how it all happened, and it came together quite

(17:44):
nicely for her.

Speaker 6 (17:46):
We had Caroline Frasier on a couple of weeks ago,
and she was talking about the fact that the Pacific
Northwest is sort of overstuffed with serial killers, and she's
got her theories as to why that might be. I
imagine the Dane Ruhl had quite a bit of material
to choose from how did she ultimately decide this is

(18:06):
the next case I'm writing my book on.

Speaker 5 (18:09):
She would see newspaper clips she would get, you know,
she read the daily newspaper every single morning at local news,
and she would go through and she would clip, and
then her readers as her as her fan base as
she called them, her fan base grew, or they called themselves,
they would send her ideas as well. But mostly she

(18:31):
was looking, and she would she talked about that a lot,
But she was mostly looking for I don't do this.
But she was mostly looking for attractive men, men who
were nice looking, who were killers. She said she didn't
want to write about ugly men, that they weren't appealing,
and so she never went for the ugly ones, which

(18:51):
I really find I find that fascinating.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Did she admit this publicly, Yes.

Speaker 5 (18:57):
She did her. It's in her. She had a tendency.
I got her off off track, I think, thankfully. Well,
she had a tendency to be wrote. So she would
from interview to interview. It's just the same things over
and over. You'd hear the same thing about Ted. You'd
hear the same thing about how I became, How I

(19:18):
did it? My thing was the glean the things that
weren't said five hundred times, and it's easy to do.
I guess when you're being interviewed that she would kind
of go into the same month almost autopilot. Really yeah,
really sincerely, that's what they were. That was interesting when
I first noticed it, and I'm like, didn't she say

(19:39):
that before? And then it would be almost the same words,
literally word for word. But she said that a couple
of times on some TV shows that she she didn't
go for bad looking, she didn't go for ugly killers,
she went for the handsome ones.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Wow, did you ever challenge, as you said you became friends,
did you ever challenge her on this that she was
doing the same thing over and over again?

Speaker 5 (20:06):
No, I don't think at that point. Yeah, I don't
think at that point that I was into the book
that much. I did. I mean, I had written about her,
so I had notes and I'd done interviews on her,
but it wasn't at that point, you know, think, you know,
maybe I'll write a book about her at some point.
It did happen, but she was so interesting. But it

(20:26):
was when I learned some kind of ought to being
path things, you know, that that made her so interesting.
I think this was just I don't know that she
even realized. I think it became easy for her because
you know, interviews are work. You got to get dressed up,
you're underlights, and you've got to get there and your question,

(20:48):
and it's easy to just come out with the same things.
I think it looks easy when that we go there,
But it's a job. I look at all of these
things and this is fun. But I look at all
I'm dressed in sweats and I'm on and a dog
is on my lap, and I've got a lot of
tanis to me, so I'm quite comfortable and I'm own.

(21:11):
But it is part of the job, and it is
you know, you're go under the bright lights. I've done
in a million times, and it is work, and it's
easy to go into. I've tried into the automatic response.
I've tried not to do that because I don't want
to like be boring because I've said the same thing.
I don't think Anna was boring, but I think she

(21:32):
got into the habit of say, you know, the same responses.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
And one of the challenges I think and Kristin and
I have tried to freshen up our approach so that
we're not always asking the same questions. If you're being interviewed,
which we both have been in interview subjects a number
of times, and they're asking the same questions over and
over again, well the answers are going to be somewhat

(21:57):
the same. If the questions are the same question you've
heard dozens of times before.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
Yeah, I mean with Tupac and Biggie Smalls, you know,
with those books. I do, especially Tupac. My gosh, when
there was that recent arrest. In three days, I was
on like I can't even count the number of stations right,
included three shows on CNN, every everything, and a newspapers.
So I try to be fresh, you know, and not

(22:26):
to just have the same in it because I did
so many of them. But also one thing I found
when you are being when you are being and you
guys have probably found this, when you are being interviewed,
something will spark that you've forgotten amounted sand and it
freshens up. I don't intentionally, I don't memorize or think
about what I'm going to say. I mean I do

(22:47):
if they give me questions like you did in advance,
but I don't memorize or say the same thing over
and over. I try to be in the moment. But
I think that you do. You probably do say things
differently and may add something or leave something out when
you're asked the same questions. I imagine you guys do
that too. Let me ask you this.

Speaker 6 (23:07):
You know, Anne was obviously a She was absolutely paving
the way for women in the true crime space as
writers and reporters. How else did she affect the true
crime space? I know that she felt like it was
important to be an advocate for victims of crime. Can
you talk a little bit about, you know, what her

(23:28):
life was like after Seattle PD and in the midst
of this sort of rise to fame as a true
crime author. How important was it to her that she
do some advocacy and make sure that the victims were represented.

Speaker 5 (23:40):
I don't think that happened in the beginning, only because
there's been a lot of stuff said about it. You know,
the Bundy book she focuses on, I mean, she originally
started doing profiles on the women, but she you know,
Ted is the focus of that book. Sure, and then
her second book and the third book, And I think
as she went along and there is something that happened.

(24:03):
I'm not going to share it, but there is something
that happened along that path that after that, she really
started focusing on the victims and not the killers. And
I think it was it's I think a natural transition,
but it was a transition because she was new to
the world of books and new to really journalism writing,

(24:26):
because she wrote for the tabloids where half of it
was made up, and she says herself, she's filled in
the blank. So you can't do that in books. If
it's true crime, it's true crime. You don't make up,
you know, don't fill in the blank. So I think
for her she was still learning the process. I mean,
I've always said the first book teaches you how to
write the second one. You guys have written at least

(24:49):
one of you have written a book, or both of
you have written books.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Well, we both have books in development.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Well, let's put it that way.

Speaker 5 (24:56):
Everybody's got a book in them. That's great, it feels
like it. Yeah, this book does teach you how to
write the second one. Although I came from journalism, so
my first book there it was out. It's now out
in third edition, The Killing of Tupaksha Cord. It was
very journalistic and I kind of had to jump and
get out of the box and be more introspective and

(25:16):
that sort of thing and diagnostic and whatever and sort
of analyze it. I'm so much better and I'm such
a better writer now than not bragging, but I am.
You know, you get better.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
It's it's a skill.

Speaker 5 (25:30):
And writing writing is a skill, no doubt about it.
You know, the more you do it, the better you get.
You know. Now, of course it's quite different for me.
I get into the sociology and psychology in my books
as well. And Anne it's not out of that. She's
in that too, so but I think it's important, you know,
as you know, when we're interviewing people, and especially someone

(25:52):
who's a big name. You know, she became I alsold word,
you know, and she's got millions of followers, and she's
she's not just some writer out there who wrote wrote
thirty six books. She became quite thirty seven. She became
quite an author, and you know, paved the path, as
I said, for the rest of us women. I'm here

(26:13):
as a true crime author. I believe because of her.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
You're listening to Mind Over Murder. We'll be right back.
After this word from our sponsors, We're back here at
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Speaker 5 (26:25):
Edna Buchanan wrote the if you get a chance, read it,
and she's My understanding is Edna is in and is
in hospice care. Now. She got to know Ann. She
was a Miami police reporter. She is the reason I
became a police reporter. I read the corpse had a
familiar face that you have to read it one of

(26:46):
the best books I've ever written. She goes to a
crime scene, she knows the dead guy, and yeah, the
corps had a familiar face. She asked a nating writer,
and it's interesting. She and Anne got to know each other.
And poor Edna is in auspice and I think she's
got She might be ninety, but she and I emailed
back and forth early in my career. Reached out to her.

(27:09):
I also reached out to I reached out to Edna
when I became a reporter. I reached out to Anne
in nineteen ninety six when I was writing ninety seven.
Tupac was killed in ninety six, so ninety seven when
I got the contract, I reached out to Anne. So
that was my first contact. I think it was an
AOL chat room.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
She was old school, yeah.

Speaker 5 (27:34):
Back in the day, and she didn't remember me, but
she you know, I you know, she had so many
people in that chat room, and you know, she still
has diehard fans and they're they're dying too, They're dying
to read the book. I'm not the only one, you know,
who's writing a book. I think mine will be the
definitive one.

Speaker 3 (27:54):
But oh, we hope.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
So her friend, a friend of hers, Anne another Anne,
and wrote book. She self published something, but it was
also was biographical, but it was also autobiographical. She wrote
about herself quite a bit and probably a third of
it in the book. And that was self published and
it came out a few months ago. One of Anne's

(28:16):
daughters is writing a biography of her mother and that
is due out. I think mid year, mid mid year.
Mima would be after hers, because she's ahead of me,
I believe in the process.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Was Anne aware of the fact that you were also
working on this biography.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
No, I hadn't started the biography when I interviewed her
for the articles, right, So I wrote three articles about her,
and I did say to myself. You know, at some point,
maybe I'll write a book. I was in the middle
of other projects, so maybe I'll write a biography of her,
because I typically write about murders. But I have written two.

Speaker 3 (28:55):
Dog books in the middle there.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
Yeah, Well, went down to hurricane country in a real
popuarns of Katrina with a rescue group. I went for
two weeks, two and a half ways and stay for
four and a half months. So you know, I love
New Orleans and I love the people, and I love
their pets. And took home my first long hair Chiuola
from Hurricane Katrina. And then a photographer I worked down

(29:18):
with during Hurricane Katrina because we were all over the
streets during the floods and it was quite quite something.
And I was rescuing as well because there I was
in the boats and on the clay toxic land, you know.
And a photographer was a former marine and he wanted
to do a book about marines and their service dogs.

(29:39):
So we did unconditional honor wounded warriors and their dogs.
So those are my two offbeat books. Yeah, the truth problem.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
But your dog Lover creeps through there in a big way.

Speaker 5 (29:51):
Does I still? You know, I rescued fourteen cats across
caught them across my road because there would have been
three hundred if I hadn't done it. So you know,
I sell them in involved in rescuing it hopefully small
ways in the future, but if something comes along I do,
I do jump in.

Speaker 6 (30:06):
One of the things that I admire about and role
is that, you know, she became an author in true
crime in a genre that is still very largely even today,
populated by men. In what specific ways did Anne, as
a female writer make her mark on the true crime genre.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
Well, she made a mark in a lot of ways
by ultimately painting the picture of the victim higher profile
in her books, and we talked about that than the
killers and mostly mail out, though she did write about
a couple of killer women. I think she made her
mark also because she became so big and she made
herself available. She spoke before the Senate in what year

(30:55):
was at eighty nine? I think I just was finishing
that chapter a couple of weeks ago. And she also
was on a House committee for Victims of violent crimes.
But she spoke before the Senate and it was a
serial killer task force. She became part of that was

(31:15):
to get into the mind of a serial killer, and
so they interviewed her quite a length of me. She
went to Washington, d c. For that. That was quite
a moment for her. So I think she put herself
out there, she made herself available and with law enforcement
and her you know, everybody thinks she was a cop
for a long time. She wasn't. It was a very
short time. But she came from a family of police

(31:36):
officers and her grandfather was a sheriff in Montcombe County, Michigan,
and Anne would stay summers with her grandparents and she
lived in the jail and she slept in one.

Speaker 6 (31:50):
What a weird thing to do.

Speaker 5 (31:53):
I slept in the female sales because there were two
beds and two cells. They were right next to the kitchen.
So what Anne would do, she would help. Her grandmother
started doing this when she was a little kid, and
just her brother didn't go with her. She would spend
summers with her grandparents and every day she would feed
the inmates. She would carry the trays and stick them
in the slot, and she got to know the inmates.

(32:15):
And one gallon there have been you know, the book
that's out has the same thing in it. I already
had that in my book as well, But her name
was Viola. I can't find a Viola anywhere and all
the things I've gone through, so I don't know if
her name was different. I've looked at women during that
era who stayed in that Montan County jail, and guess

(32:37):
what magazine her grandfather like, True Detective, True Detectives. Well
started reading True Detective. How it's a child, so it's not,
you know. So that tells me that's what led her
to crime. This is and so the biggest thing I
should say it, but I'm going to the biggest takeaway
I get from it. She was not afraid of criminals

(32:58):
because she talked to them every day, and she thought
they were nice people in white Grandpa, Are they in jail?
What did they do? They seem so nice? And I
think that that is the moment that sort of set
her course in either law enforcement or writing. But reading
The True Detective is quite fascinating.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Do you think she was trying to separate the crime
from the criminal in some way?

Speaker 5 (33:22):
I think she did that with Ted. I think she separated.
She had a very hard time wrapping her brain around
the fact that Ted was you know, she was the killer.
She knew it. She really didn't want to accept it.
And I don't know why. I mean, I've got my
own suspicions. But she needed him, he needed her in
a lot of ways. She became which is really unusual

(33:45):
for a writer. She became the conduit between him and
the homicide cops. She didn't want to be interviewed. They
wanted to interview him, and so he'd say, he'd call
her up and say, can you ask the cops this question?
And she'd go and ask him, and she would give
him the answers, which is an unusual position to be in. Yeah. Well,

(34:05):
well she be gained part of the story and they
of course he was afraid, you know. And then she
was still neeting well, she lost track of him and
she and she called a homicide cop and asked him
to look it up, and I'll give you his last
name if you look it up for me. And so
she provided them with tip. But she was nothing. She

(34:26):
thought she was the only one, but she wasn't. She
may have gone to her deathbed thinking she was the
only one. She wasn't. There were three or four other people,
including his wife, who called police and turned him in.
She thought for years he had ignored they had ignored
her tip. They didn't because they already had his last name.
And then she said, you know, he didn't drive a
DW so she didn't think it was him, and they said, well, absolutely,

(34:48):
I let him up. He does drive it. She was
friendly with the homicide because they were used to seeing her,
because she would go in for stories for a true
detective and so they all knew her. She hung out
with them. She'll had a crush on one of them.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
So that's what I do.

Speaker 5 (35:05):
I look up details, you know, I get into I
get everything.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Here we are with the handsome men thing again.

Speaker 5 (35:12):
Yeah, well I got to know a lot of cops myself.
You know, you get you're on the beat. You can't
have relationships with with the people you write about, but
you do become you know, they call you, they become sources.
They call you, and you side a sources telling you something.
And I have lots of sources within all the police
departments I covered, and that's part of the job. And

(35:34):
she they were her sources as well.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
There's an intimacy there between a writer and a source,
and you know, a lot of times things are shared
off the record, which means essentially, we're keeping secrets here.

Speaker 2 (35:47):
Do you think that was part of this thing?

Speaker 3 (35:50):
You know, she was very sympathetic to police and law
enforcement because she grew up in a law enforcement family.
That intimacy. It almost sounds like, even though there might
not be a romantic or actual component to it, it's
not a dating relationship, that there was something to that.

Speaker 5 (36:04):
I hoped it would be, but it wasn't.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
He was married, But go ahead, well, it's interesting that
she hoped it would be and it would have been.

Speaker 5 (36:16):
When you're when you're write in a book and you're
covering it, you cannot cross that line. You cannot, and
it's it's a fair boating, and you know it is
just absolutely not. You'll lose your job over it. And
you can't because then you become you can't you become
sympathetic to the person or something. You can't. You have

(36:36):
to keep your distance. You become friendly, and you joke
a lot. They tell dirty jokes, by the way, a lot,
But I mean, I mean I was standing with a
standing with a homicide cop once at a crime scene
and he'd been murdered. Somebody said, his trailer on fire,
was out in the desert near Lake Mead, and I
was standing next to the homicide cop is as they

(36:57):
rolled his body out right next to us, and he
was charred, and the cop just burst out laughing. This
is this was a homicide sergeant. He burst out laughing
because the big toe was sticking out, it wasn't covered,
and you looked at it. And my thing is I
didn't look at that as insensitive. I looked at that

(37:18):
as this is a human being who was murdered and
burnt to death. And that's how they keep their sanity
if they can. If you cry over every single one,
you know, I think it would get to you. But
to me, I looked at him as it wasn't rude
or anything. The guy's dead, but I think that's his
way of coping with what they deal with every day, right,

(37:40):
you know. And you see those you see those things,
you're there, and I had a lot of those guys,
I mean, Tupac Shakur. I got to call it, you know,
midnight or well, it happened eleven thirty, so it's about
one am, middle of the night. Hey, go down to
the Las Vegas Strip. It was a homicide comp Go
down the last biggat strip, big wrapper by the name
of Tupac Shaker. They couldn't even stay his name, just

(38:03):
got shot. So I just threw my clothes and grabbed
my notebook and my scanner and headed down. I had
a scanner at home, I had a scanner in my
car and in the newsroom at my desk. But so
I was. I was at the scene. I was the
only only reporter at the scene. And then I was
at the hospital when he died. The TV station was there,

(38:23):
but no other print media. I wrote the story in
my notebook when I was waiting, there's a picture of
me as Shug Night was walking by. Because people say,
you weren't there. There's a photo of me. It's a
TV station and somebody took a still of it at
some point and posted it. So I waited for the
doctor to come out and give it. You know, we
all knew, but we didn't. I didn't have it. I

(38:46):
mean his family that I was with, his wrappers who
rapped with him on stage. It was just the saddest atmosphere.
And I wrote in my notebook I called it in
on the radio, you know, before cell phones. I called
it in on the radio, and we broke news at
the newspaper afternoon paper, you know, they held the deadline
and we broke news that Tubakshi Kor had died. It

(39:09):
was such a sad moment being there, and I didn't
approach some of the people. I saw his rappers crying
and stuff. I approached him the next day, but I
didn't do it that day because because his mom came in,
they were still in town. They kind of held tons
of people, went to coroner's office, you know, and they
got him gone pretty fast out of Las Vegas because

(39:33):
he was so high profile. So it's sad when you're
doing it, but you can't. I mean I tear up
sometimes I tear up talking about it. But you can't
become a part of the story. You have to dislocate
yourself from it. You have to separate yourself from it
because you have to be objective in it. But you
do learn a lot, you know, from your sources.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
It almost sounds like you don't tap into the emotion
of it until sometimes.

Speaker 5 (40:00):
True I do. I mean I interview, you know, I
knock on doors, I go interview victims, families, victims who
are alive. I've done that. You know that's part of
the beat, you know, and telephone them and catch them
off guard. I do go after kind of the emotional
side of it too, but I don't become a part

(40:21):
of the story myself. But I do try to give
the victim voice as well as the families and that
sort of thing. Some of them don't want to talk,
but then they'll pick up the phone. I said, when
here's my number, they'll pick up the phone and call
me back or show up in the newsroom because they do.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
You know.

Speaker 5 (40:40):
I always tell people, you know, this is going to
you know, this is going to tell people who your
family member was. And it's a way of also keeping
them their spirit a lot and the same thing with
the same thing with Anne, you know, I hope I
do goodbye her. You know, chadon Foibles everybody does. God forbidding,
Buddy of writes about me. So now none of us

(41:03):
live in glasshouses.

Speaker 6 (41:05):
If you had to ultimately put into words what you
think Anne's legacy is in the true crime space, what
would you say is her legacy?

Speaker 5 (41:14):
Well, I think two things, Like I said before, paving
the way for women writers, also for being so prolific
and writing book after book, and she never tired from it.
That was her job and she was so, you know,
just dedicated to it. The job came before everything else.

(41:35):
So you have to give that to her, that she
was a hard worker. Her body of work speaks for itself.
And also giving the victim voice, which as I said,
wasn't immediate, but eventually it was. She brought the women
and men who were murdered to life, and more about
them than about the victims. But that was a bit
of a you know, it took her a little bit

(41:56):
to get there.

Speaker 6 (41:57):
Kathy, tell us when the book is going to be out,
when can pre order it and all sorts, and then
what else are.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
You working on right now?

Speaker 5 (42:05):
Or is the ann Rule book the big focus? Well,
the Aneral book right now is the big focus. My
agent is it's a matter of going to I do
have a publisher, a senior editor who is with the
Big Five, one of the Big five publishers has asked
to see it. So we're waiting on that and I'm
waiting for the agent. She was on vacation and she

(42:29):
has a proposal which has three chapters and it's forty
pages long, so that in the meantime I'm writing, trying
to finish the chapters because it's twenty nine chapters. Because
when I land the publisher, I'm going to be getting
a contract that will give me a timeline and it
could be six months, which you know, I could be

(42:52):
three months, could be longer, but I think they're going
to want to get it out in a hurry. So
that's why I'm sort of manically writing right now. I
did cover the crime that I did cover the mob
when I was in Las Vegas. I love writing about
the mob and real hated she said, you would never
write about the mob. Oh, you know, it's fascinating. And

(43:13):
I hung out with monsters, you know, one who jumped
out and is now in hiding. But he you know,
I'm very good friends with him and his wife. After
the fact, you know, he would he started calling me,
you got that wrong, You got that wrong.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
This is what Here's what really happened.

Speaker 5 (43:29):
Yeah, well he was there at all these meetings. So
fat Herbie Blitztein was Tony Spilatro, who was you know
in Casino that story. Fat Herby Blitztein was his right
hand man, and he was he was hitt man as well.
And I was at Herbie Blitztein's murder scene, the only
reporter there with a fellow reporter from the Las Vegas

(43:49):
Sun where I was writing. So that is one of
my next books. I love writing about the mob and
you learn so much about it, you know, especially the
Las Vegas mob, which is gone now. His murder shut down.
The FBI went after he was killed by the Buffalo
and Los Angeles mafia. They call them Mickey Mouse mafia.

(44:10):
That's what I named the Mickey Mouse Mafia. The LA
Mob is gone, and that is a result of the
task force. They stopped everything they were doing, focused on
La and Buffalo because they worked together to get his rackets.
Fatter be Blitztein and he was working out in Las Vegas,
and his murders shut down those two mob entities. So

(44:34):
I'm quite proud of the book and amidst the proposals,
all set to go, lots of chapters, the books almost done,
and then there were two awful murder murders and Laoya
Tory pines of two teenagers one and you may have
seen them one in eighty four, I think the other
three years later. And I do have a proposal ready

(44:56):
to go on that too. I interviewed family. A lot
of them are gone. I know who did it, and
I would will be revealing it in the book. They
did not name a killer and they interviewed him. But
all evidence points to this one person, and I've got
that one ready to go to if I I'd love

(45:18):
to have a two book deal. But we'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Are you going to name a living suspect?

Speaker 5 (45:23):
No, he's quite dead.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Ah okay.

Speaker 2 (45:25):
I was thinking to myself, he was alive.

Speaker 5 (45:28):
He was alive. I hanged himself. He was alive when
I first started covering the crime.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Fascinating.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Well, you've got some incredible projects coming up.

Speaker 5 (45:40):
Thank you. Well, I'll be on again and talk about
one of those. Yeah, we would love to have you back.
We've loved to hear about the mob for sure.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
That sounds like a lot of fun.

Speaker 5 (45:48):
Kathy, thank you for joining us today. We really appreciate
it and we will look forward to the.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Book coming out.

Speaker 5 (45:53):
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 6 (45:55):
That is going to do it for this episode of
mind Ever Murder, Thank you so much for listening. Well,
see you next time.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
another Dog Productions.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
Our Executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.

Speaker 3 (46:37):
And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.

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