Lucky Break

[00:00:00] Speaker A: There's an old saying, sometimes it's better to be lucky than smart. It is, of course, an inverted version of a more popular saying which puts smart in the lead position. We won't quibble here. It's not for us to quibble, except to point out that two months after Muriel's murder, authorities got the biggest break in the case so far. It seemed to come from an unexpected place. Not Anchorage, not Fairbanks, where another vehicle explosion caught the eye of investigators. No, Seattle. Seattle, Washington, nearly 1500 air miles to the southwest of Anchorage. Some of you, many of you may be asking, why Seattle? It's so far away. But it's actually the closest major city to Alaska and, of course, to anchorage. Anyway, on November 19, 1976, the Seattle Times broke a front page story under the subhead Travel Agent Killed. The headline read, Suspect quizzed and Bombing. This was the first break worth writing about. It brought with it a sense of cautious optimism. The details were tantalizing, as the Seattle Times story noted. A Marine Corps fugitive arrest here last week for suspicion of burglary is being questioned by Alaska authorities in connection with with the fatal car bombing of an anchorage travel agent Sept. 30, the Times has learned. The Marine, 18, has said he was paid $5,000 to plant a bomb which killed Muriel File 41, the owner of Anchorage's professional Travel services at the time of the bombing. Alaska authorities told the Times the murder could have been part of a nationwide effort by organized crime to gain control of of travel agencies. The agency is one of Alaska's most successful. The Marine arrested by Seattle police Saturday is being held without bail in the county jail. There is a lot to unpack in these three short paragraphs. The first tantalizing clue is, of course, the fact that the fugitive was in the U.S. marine Corps. That for two reasons. First, it seemed to support the notion that whoever placed the bomb knew what he was doing. Indeed, as the Seattle Times story noted, county sources said the Marine's account includes planting the bomb, witnessing the blast, and then collecting the money in Anchorage. There was also a more distant clue embedded there. Neil McKay was himself a Marine Corps veteran. Had he maintained ties with his fellow Marines beyond being a frequent visitor to VA hospitals in both California and Alaska. Third, and highly relevant, was that the Marine's confession pointed to the murder as a hit job. The Times has learned that Trooper Lauren Thomas, who is based here, has been told by the Marine that he was approached by an unidentified man in an Anchorage bar and offered $5,000 to place a bomb under the hood of Mrs. SP's station wagon. And that, apparently was exactly what he did. According to his confession, he picked up the bomb at a storage locker, planted it in bureau files, car. And after the bomb detonated, Lee said he was paid at another bar. And if you've been listening all along, remember our story of the two men exchanging $15,000 cash at that Anchorage bar. The ones who got away. That's the thing. The $5,000 payday seemed realistic, especially as compared to the $100 bargain basement rates cited by Donnie Wayne pits. In cases such as these. However, especially unsolicited confessions, the devil is in the details. And another such detail lent more than a little credibility to the guy's confession. And in fact, there was another detail that lent more than a little credibility to the guy's confession. He told officers he'd stolen $1,500 from an Anchorage amusement center where he previously worked. That ambition was confirmed by his former employer, who added new details. According to Mario Tomasi, owner of turf news on Anchorage's Fourth Avenue, Lee allegedly took more than $4,000 and jewelry from his business. He noted that Lee was employed there at the time of the theft. By the way, just a side note, the Turf News. A dirty bookstore. Okay, Honest. Other details, however, proved more vexing. First of all, if you have nine grand and change, I'm combining the two, you know, thefts and payoff for the bomb. Why were you arrested for questioning in a Seattle burglary? And why were you staying at the first Avenue service center? That's a place you go when you need a bed and you don't have the money. And maybe this is just me, but why would anyone in there write when I take on a hit job from a completely unknown person, you might consider that you're being set up. And at any rate, just like Donnie Wayne pits, the details started to betray David Lee. He wrongly identified the color of mural files. Volvo was bright orange. You can hardly mistake that color, unless, of course, you're colorblind, which Lee said he was. Then the name of his hip job contact turned out to be fictitious, protecting his identity. Baby can't find the storage locker where he allegedly picked up the bomb. Okay, that's just now working at the Seattle police. Sources were not particularly troubled by these discrepancies. It said, quote, that is account seems to be checking out. Checking out. That is, until it wasn't. Once Alaska trooper Lauren Thomas was joined by an Anchorage police investigator. Suspect David Lee consented to a polycraft. By then, they knew that David Brian Lee was an escapee from the psychiatric ward at Camp Pendleton. And not only did he fail the exam, he agreed that, yes, I'll admit I fabricated the story to get attention. It gets a little nutier. When he was interviewed by investigator Joe Acton, Anish police, Lee revealed that he was really two persons, David Lee and Crazy Bob. Investigator Acton concluded that David Lee did not commit the bombing, but that Crazy Bob might have. Equally bizarre. David Lee added that he wanted to die or to be sent to prison for life. He said he got the idea from newspaper accounts of a guy named Gary Gilmore, who was a prison inmate in Utah scheduled to be executed at the hands of a firing squad. He'd committed two separate murders in October 1976, and he accomplished his wish. David Lee did not. He was sent back to Albany, Oregon, where he faced felony theft charges. So there it was by the one year mark. So we keep going. Miro's murder was still unsolved. The lead investigator, Joe Acton, seemed to agree with the better lucky than smart theory. Interviewed one year after the murder, Acton told reporter Gene Abbott that people think cops are inherently smart. But activist Abby Hoffman once said cops couldn't catch a cold if someone didn't help. And, and he's absolutely right. I think sooner or later we'll find the killer of Mural File, but we're open for any and all assistance. And it wasn't for lack of trying. In the year or so since Mural's murder, Acton had chased a series of dead ends. He'd collected and shipped 81 bags of evidence to crime labs for processing. He'd followed up leads on 15 suspects. Most of them turned out to be cranks in it for the cheap thrills. At least two dozen people have tried to take credit for the crime, Acton noted, but we have nothing solid on anybody. Tips still kept coming in conversations overheard in Anchorage bars, tips from narcotics officers about, quote, heavy dudes in crime circles. At one point, Acton even went to a seance. I've only been to one, he said, and I won't go to another. The guy claimed to have made contact with Mural File, but it all went in circles. Obviously, it was no lead. All he had to show for his work wasn't 18 inch binder. This is not Kojak, Acton added, where the case is solved between commercial breaks. This is a long upward climb. That said, one still wonders why so many people made false confessions or tried to attach themselves to the crime. Not just that AWOL soldier, but so many others. What's. What's wrong with these people? What's wrong with them. David Lee seemed easy enough to figure out. He had a Gary Gilmore complex. Acton concluded he wanted to die. He thought murderers in Alaska were hanged or shot by firing squad. Little did he know that since statehood, Alaska has never had the death penalty. And the other is, it turns out, not surprisingly, there's an extensive academic literature about false confessions. It seems to be bred into the species and it basically. Three categories, Two of them, and these are the ones we're probably most familiar with, arise out of police interrogations. You know, they go after the guy, go after the guy, go after the guy, go after the guy. And hey, eventually they break. Then there's another one called internalized false confessions. This is where somebody who's innocent and denies any involvement put through a series of tactics that again, end up in the same place. But the difference is these people internalize their belief in their own guilt. They come to believe they really committed the crime. Sort of like what implanted memories. Don't you remember? You did that, man? Don't you? Don't you? But what we're seeing in the Mirror File case is actually something else. It's what Casson calls voluntary false confessions. And we're going to hear a little bit from Dr. Saul Casson. And we use this with gratitude. He deserves the credit, not me. I'm not an expert. But let's hear from an expert. [00:14:53] Speaker B: Would you ever confess to a crime you didn't commit? Most people answer that question with a resounding no. Yet according to the innocence project, almost 30% of wrongful conviction cases overturned by DNA testing involved a false conviction confession. So why do people seemingly of sound mind implicate themselves? The answers may surprise you, but they shouldn't. In this episode, we speak with a psychologist about how law enforcement, current policies, and our own sense of justice can lead to false confessions. I'm Andre Hamilton, and this is speaking of psychology. Saul Passon is a distinguished professor of psychology at John J. College of Criminal Justice. He has pioneered the scientific study of false confessions, and his research has been integral in preventing wrongful convictions and understanding why innocent people are targeted for interrogation, why they confess, and the effect of this evidence on judges and juries. Welcome, Dr. Pass right off the bat with the most obvious question I think people have about false confessions. Why would anyone confess to something they didn't do? Do we understand the psychology of why this happens, especially in something like a murder investigation? [00:16:13] Speaker C: Right. You know, it's interesting. That is the most interesting first question, because when I ask people, would that be something you would ever do. The answer unanimously and strongly is no. Nobody imagines they would ever do it, short of having a gun to their head. The very short answer is that everybody has a breaking point, but it's a little bit more complex than that. It turns out there are three types of false confessions and there are three different storylines as to why an individual would confess to something they didn't do. One is there is a category of false confessions known as voluntary false confessions. These are cases, and it often happens in high profile cases that are in the news where people come out of the woodwork and volunteer confessions to crime. The crimes that are in the news that they didn't commit, kind of the poster child instance of that in history is when Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped in 1932. 200 people volunteered confessions and all of them were false. You see that again in high profile cases. Sometimes people volunteer confessions because they're seeking attention. Sometimes they're looking actually to protect somebody else who is the culprit. And sometimes it reflects some degree of delusion and it reflects on their mental health. Honestly, I don't see the voluntary false confessions, while they happen and happen with some degree of regularity and always have, I don't see them as a particular problem for the criminal justice system. I think it's, it's interesting that when somebody volunteers a confession to police, police typically react with some degree of skepticism. And they ask the question, well, yeah, and so they. And so they say, well, you say you committed this murder, prove it. What do you know about the crime? And if the individual who's offering to admit guilt can't also provide details about the crime that are accurate as known to the police, then the police don't follow that case. And so those voluntary false confessions don't tend to enter the criminal justice system as problematic. The problematic are the next two types. And these are the types of false confessions that arise from police interrogations. These are innocent people who, when asked about the crime, deny any involvement. And then they are subject to a process of interrogation. And it is as a result of that process of interrogation that a confession is produced. So these are categories of police induced false confessions. The way in which the two categories differ is the most common form is you bring a person in who denies involvement, who is now subject to a harrowing and relentless interrogation. Promises may be made, threats may be made, promises, implied threats, implied stress level is increased, they're isolated, they're away from anybody who's familiar, and essentially, to make a long story, Short. Everybody has a breaking point. [00:19:27] Speaker A: I want to pick up on One thing that Dr. Kassin said, which is the police may be skeptical because here's a guy coming off the street charged with burglary and saying, oh, by the way, that murder up in Alaska. Because as he says, they start to check on the facts, right? And if it doesn't match. Okay, dude, I'm sorry, like, [00:19:56] Speaker C: but the [00:19:56] Speaker A: problem here obviously is the people who pick him up are in Seattle. And so they don't actually know all the details of, of the crime. You can see that there's enough to say, I don't know, David, but he had an enough grasp of the details of the crime to make them say it seems to be checking out. And so you really now have this big production. There's a cop who's stationed in state of Washington. He's always an Alaska state trooper, keeping that contact with the lower 48. Again, that's just the relationship between Seattle and Anchorage. Rit large. But they have to bring the Anchorage guys down and it's when they get there that it just. Then everything falls apart. Sorry, David. That burglary charge, you're gonna have to face up. Okay, that's all for now. One of the things Joe Acton addressed, of course, is this whole notion that the television version of crime solving has a format. It's A, it's a 22 minute show or, you know, a 50 minute show. And so. Commercial break. There's progress next commercial break. Maybe a little side trip into. Oh no, they not there. And you know, by the time of the last commercial break, nothing is solved. Because in crime fiction, which is not what I write, there's always a solution. And not only is there always a solution, it's, it's a satisfying solution because the writer or writers have preordained an outcome. And it's, you know, we used to say true crime writers, you know, there's, there's a true crime and then there's the perfect crime. The perfect crime is always fictional. In fact, I have to say, one of the reasons I was intrigued by this story was first of all, the complications. This stretches out over an almost 10 year period. In fact, if you go backwards in history, it's more than a decade as this thing sort of winds its way out. The second thing, I think worth repeating here, and I don't mean to. Well, I sort of do mean to impugn the reputation of, of the Anchorage Police Department, certainly during this period. Period. And, and I say that because my first book set in Alaska was about serial killer Robert Hansen. And it should come as no surprise that Mr. Hansen, who got away with serial murder for more than a decade, was active at this very same period. And the Anchorage police had no luck capturing him either. And there's. There's stories about the Anchorage police during this period. So. So there's that. The. This. The second thing that I think we're up against here that intrigues me is, is I've talked about a little bit before the nature of. Of this crime. You. If you're a police officer in any jurisdiction, except for those where the mafia is active, you just don't see car bombs. You. It's. It's an outlier, if you will, to. To a certain degree. And certainly during this period in Alaska, I mean, all. All. All the means were there. There's plenty of dynamite flying around in. In the state of Alaska because the oil business was going boom busters and dynamite and C3 and C4 explosives, plastic explosives that sort of merged out of the Vietnam War, were also coming in to use. So. And we. We'll talk about those issues later on. Well, no, let's talk about them now, because the. The first analysis was that this was dynamite. This is a. You know, they even, you know, speculated as to how many sticks of dynamite would take two or three. I think I. I'll correct myself later if I'm wrong, but the point being, at the end of the day, you know, once all those bomb materials and everything and the chemical analysis was done by the FBI turned out it was a C3 or C4 plastic explosives. And. And why is that important? Because C3 and C4 are much more stable. And in the Vietnam War, some troops, if they needed a fire, would literally light the plastic explosives on fire and it didn't blow up. You know, you needed an explosion to make it explode, which of course, points to a more sophisticated device. And again, who has that kind of expertise? Well, this big military presence in Alaska still is. Was the time. Still is. And of course, we pointed to people in the oil business, so that's something we need to explore. We will explore. Not now. You know, you got to hold out something, man. Okay, enough of that. Good luck. If you're looking into this on your own, good luck. See you next time.