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Small Town Murder

#485 - Adopting Murder - Cape St Claire, Maryland

This week, in Cape St Claire, Maryland, a couple tries to build a family, by adopting children, who come from rough beginnings, but when they are brutally killed, in their own home, the suspicion falls on the adopted teenage sons. Was it the one who they kicked out of the house, for being combative? Or, was it the quiet one, who never talked back? A truly bizarre & awful killing, that unfolds into a very, very strange story!

Along the way, we find out that everybody loves strawberries, that when you adopt kids, it's not like the trial period for a streaming app, and that you truly can't tell a book by its cover!!

Hosted by James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman

New episodes every Thursday!

Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com

Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!

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Also, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

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Duration:
2h 59m
Broadcast on:
25 Apr 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

This week, in Cape St Claire, Maryland, a couple tries to build a family, by adopting children, who come from rough beginnings, but when they are brutally killed, in their own home, the suspicion falls on the adopted teenage sons. Was it the one who they kicked out of the house, for being combative? Or, was it the quiet one, who never talked back? A truly bizarre & awful killing, that unfolds into a very, very strange story!


Along the way, we find out that everybody loves strawberries, that when you adopt kids, it's not like the trial period for a streaming app, and that you truly can't tell a book by its cover!!


Hosted by James Pietragallo and Jimmie Whisman


New episodes every Thursday!


Donate at: patreon.com/crimeinsports or go to paypal.com and use our email: crimeinsports@gmail.com

Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder & Crime In Sports!


Follow us on...


twitter.com/@murdersmall

facebook.com/smalltownpod

instagram.com/smalltownmurder


Also, check out James & Jimmie's other show, Crime In Sports! On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Wondery, Wondery+, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts!


See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petrigalo. I'm here with my co-hosts. I'm Jimmy Wissman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of Smalltown Murder. I'm sure you're all still recovering from last week's regular episode. Wow. Because that was one of the... How do you get through it without doing that, though? We've done almost 500 stories, and that's top three wildest thing that's ever awful. Absolutely awful. Too low. It's paraboo. It's up there. It's bad stuff, so check that out if you missed it, by the way. But this week, crazy, crazy story for you. But before we get to that, head over to ShutUpandGiveMeMurder.com, get your tickets for everything. First of all, all the live shows, Durham, May 31. Oh, boy. Get your tickets for that night, Durham, North Carolina. Nashville sold out the next night, never mind getting tickets for that. And you definitely want tickets to the virtual live show. Whether you're listening to this early or later, it's still available. It's still sitting there. At least we did it or going to do it, depending on when you're listening to it. On April 20, it's available for two weeks after that. You're in luck just like a regular live show, but right in your living room, you can smoke all your own weeds, take all your own booze, need all your own food, and be in your pajamas or weirder or less or whatever you're into. So check all that out and do it. Shut up and give me murder.com. And in addition to that, you certainly want Patreon. Patreon.com/crimeandsports is where you get all of the bonus material, anybody $5 a month or above, you're going to get tons of stuff immediately. You can either have a cup of coffee for five bucks that might not even be that great or hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard immediately and new ones every other week. What's the better deal? Come on. What's the better deal? Come on, people. So this week, which you're going to get for bonus for crime and sports, which you'll have access to. We're going to talk about the whole Otani gamble, Scamble. Scamble soup. Scamble soup. And a couple others from back in the day that aren't Pete Rose. There's a bunch of them, Joe Nameth, Len Dawson, Alex Caris, we'll get into a few, we'll touch on all of that stuff, a lot of fun stuff there. Then for small town murder, really fun, we're going to dive down a conspiracy rabbit hole and talk about was Charles Manson, a CIA asset that was put in place to discredit the hippie movement. I believe it. Well, let's check it out. I've been already. A guy ruined his career and spent 20 years writing a book about it. So let's figure out, maybe it's true, patreon.com/crimeandsports, and you get a shout out at the end of the long regular show as well. So you can't beat it. Best five bucks in podcasting. That said, disclaimer time. This is a comedy show. Oh, by the way, first of all, listen to your stupid opinions of crime and sports. You don't have to like sports to listen to crime and sports. It's us being ridiculous and making fun of someone for two hours. You can't beat it. And then your stupid opinions, I think it's the funniest hour in podcasting. Certainly. Challenge them. Get in there. Now, disclaimer time. This is a comedy show. Sure is. We're comedians. We're going to make jokes. People are going to die. Oh, for sure. They absolutely are. What we do, though, is we're tasteful about it is we don't make fun of the victims or the victims family. How is that, James? Because we're assholes. Yeah, but... But we're not scumbags. Yeah. That's it. And there's plenty to make fun of in this. I mean, think about it. We got murderers. We have usually some small town police force that doesn't realize someone's a murder until they kill four more people, a specific investigator, a lot of people to make fun of in this show. So plenty of stuff to go on. We got plenty. That's that. I think it's time. Oh, yeah. Let's do this, everybody, to clear the lungs, arms to the sky. Let's all shout. Shout out and give me murder. All right. Let's do this, everybody. Let's go on a trip. I'd love it. Shall we? Let's get into this, everybody. From Maryland to Cape St. Clair, Maryland. It sounds lovely, doesn't it? Yeah. It's like it's a nice area. It's outside of Annapolis. Sure. And it's kind of... Kind of a... Kind of a plenty. Oh, the crabs here. Yeah. Oh, the crabs. That's chips everywhere. And they're delicious, too. Itchy and delicious in this area. Yeah. It's in Western Maryland. Oh, yeah. 15 minutes to Annapolis. About an hour to Baltimore. Sure. And an hour and 20 to our last Maryland episode, episode 442, the social media loving cannibal. Remember that guy? Yeah. I think we do. That guy was pretty nuts. Yeah. This is in Anne Arundel County, which is what we've talked about before. Anne Arundel. Yeah. It's a lady named Anne Arundel and they named it county. So I always thought it was Anne Arundel, like one word. Yeah. It's two words. It's Anne, A-N-E. Arundel. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, that lady Anne Arundel who owns the... I always thought that Anne Arundel real fast. Yeah, everybody says it. Anne Arundel. So you think it's like, oh, maybe it's a Native American word, you know? Fucking Anne Arundel, no, it's not. Meaning the bay that takes the crabs or some shit. Yeah. No, it's just a lady. Area codes here, 410 and 443, a little bit of history, just a minute here because we've got a deep story, a little bit of history. In the early part of the 20th century, early 1900s, a doctor named Hugh H. Young, who was a doctor on the staff of Johns Hopkins University, he started buying up farmland. He wanted to build a community around here, and his first community was called Permission Point. Oh, Percimen Point. I thought it's a Permission Point, which sounds like we're teenagers go to finger each other. We're going to take her up to Permission Point tonight, I think it's the night, I don't know, man. It is Permission Point, they don't agree to go there, unless they're... What about Seagull's tape, taking her up to Permission Point? Yeah, we're putting on night moves, I'm getting out the Thunderbird, and we're going to get it on. Hell yeah. This didn't really work very well, only a few lots were sold, and then the Great Depression came. Oh no. Put it all on hold. Ruin Percimen Point. Ruin Permission Point, I'm calling it from anybody there that lives there, even though it's not called Percimen anymore, call it Permission Point, because that's hilarious. And it broke the whole community off. Broke it up, well, it just never really took off. The only sold a few lots of the Depression came, so no one was buying, no one was like moving out to the burbs to spread out, they were, you know, terrified and shitting their pants. They had no money. So eventually, though, after the Depression and the war came on and then people started coming here, and it's a suburb. So after a while, people started, you know, moving to the suburbs, and reviews of this town, let's find out what other people think, because what do we know? Most of the reviews are very good here, it's not a lot of bad reviews to find. Here's five stars. Deep St. Clair is actually a wonderful family 70s-like neighborhood. 70s-like, so it's like the Wonder Years later seasons, like, what are we talking about? A bunch of houses that look like a lot of formica, detective tents, tons of green refrigerators, 70s neighborhood, river rock welded in front of a home, not a lot of technology, and fire places to river rock everywhere, sunken living rooms, what are we getting? Observation pits. Yeah, how about it? This is a place where a neighbor looks out for another neighbor. I guess like kids riding bikes and shit, I guess, is like 70s. It coined the phrase, "It takes a village." No, it didn't. No, it didn't. No, it didn't. That's been around for thousands of years. Before America. Thousands of years, I think they came up with that, and it wasn't probably America. This town's stealing that, they're just trying to call out that. There's probably like a Greek philosopher or something. Confucius said that, and now they're trying to take credit for it or something, you know and this is... It coined the term. It coined the term. Fucking jerks. It could say it, you know, epitomizes the term, that would be a way to put it or something of that nature, you know, but not it coined it. Which do you hear about that stitch in time, they've called that too? Every idiom out there, they coined it here. Wow. I would never love anywhere else as much as here. Okay. I refuse to try. I will not try. Five stars. I've been blown away by this town. Is that right? I've been blown away by the town. No, I mean, the people, the people. The people. No. Yeah, that's not good. The people, schools, beaches, and there's beaches though. That's a pretty good town. That's helpful. I never lived in a town with a beach. Beach community sounds so great. It sounds so great. Yeah. Until you get there and then you're like, I don't like these people. The people that live there. Yeah. But I don't like the people that live around me now. I don't like the people that visit the beach community. You like the people that live around you now? No, it's a difference. I got one guy that I like. Outside of that, everybody else there, I was just going to catch on fire and I would not care. Everybody else, you walk out and you're like, nah, squint and go and run. I don't know. I hope this one's not outside now. I'm going to talk to him. I'm so glad my wife and I decided to raise our family here. Five stars. All right. Four stars. I'm not 21. So I'm not into the bar scene yet, but I see bars packed all the time. Oh, they're not quite 21. That's not yet. Just drive bygone man soon looking at their watch. This is just someone who's chomping at the bit to be an alcoholic. Like I'm going to be so drunk soon. Three stars. The community somewhat helps out, but it's not an amazing number of people. If anyone helps out, that's pretty good. That's an amazing number. One is amazing. Yeah. Wow. Some stranger help me. Three stars again. This is the last one. I like that the weather is seasonal and can be both hot and cold. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that. Low bar. Wow. Thank you. Because if we didn't go there, we would have known that sometimes it's hot and sometimes it's cold. Yeah. Yeah. You know, in Maryland in the winter, we've never seen the wire. Yeah. Bodey wears a big parka. Yeah. He's outside. He's cold. So he's going, blowing on his hands. It's cold out. Yeah. It's chilly. And then in the summer, everyone looks real hot. They do. Yeah. That's weird. So people in this town, population 8,762. Tiny. So not a huge town, not a tiny, tiny town. Wow. Each community, that is a, that's nothing. Yeah. It's a little pricey, too. It's a problem. That's why. That's the riffraff. Right. Yeah. And the lots are big. Oh. So it's one of those. A little more female than male. Everything's pretty average. The average age is a little bit older. Meeting ages 42 and a half. A lot of married people. 60% married here, which is well above the average. Race of this town, 89.6% white, 1.1% black, 2.3% Asian, 5% Hispanic here. And about 39% of the people are religious. And most here are Catholics. Yeah, it's going to be there because the, as we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the Mid-Atlantic crab farming regions. So we know, obviously. This is the capital region. Yeah. We know. We know of the Naval Academy region, because that's Annapolis. Unemployment rate here is under 5%. Yeah. And median household income here is median household income, 115,259. So pretty good. Pretty good. It's an arm of 69,000 is the average in the country. So that's, you're doing real well here. And the median home cost, you have to be doing well here. The cost of living actually isn't so far above one. The average 100 is average here, it's 114. And the median home cost here, $445,600. So a little bit pricey. That's one thing. But there's beaches. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're not going to live anywhere decent by a beach and have it go. What a value. Yeah. You know. I got both of it. Such a deal. Yeah. People, why is it so expensive? Because the fucking ocean is here. And there's a limited number of, a limited amount of beach. Right. So that's going to go for a lot. Yeah. It's locked. I can get a place in Kansas. Well, there's plenty of land there. It's not up for, you know, that's why. Only makes so much of the shoreline. That's it. That's all. So if we've convinced you, we have for you the Cape St. Clair, Maryland real estate report. All right. Your first house here. And this is the value quote, unquote home, four bedroom, two baths, 1698 square feet. It is coming soon. So it's time on the market. Yeah. Put your bits in everybody. Yeah. This is you got to get ready. Call the real estate agent was built in the 70s and has the fireplace wall. Does it? Has that rock, that rock fire. That's sharp. The 70s rock fireplace wall. It has. It's awesome. It's been updated, but like, you know, probably in 2006, you know what I mean? So it's kind of kind of not that nothing spectacular about it, but it's decent in a nice area, $489,000 for that. For $1,600 square feet. Yeah. For $1,700 square feet. Next up, three bedroom, four baths. Free bowl for each and every be, whole damn it, 3,000 and nine square feet. It was built in 2020, so it's new. Only three bedrooms, but it's right on the water. Hell yeah. There's your house and like your yard is just goes around and three bedrooms and 3,000 square feet. That's a great room. That's 39. Oh my God. It's big. It's fucking big. So it's beautiful. It's very nice. But $4,795,000, how do you do it? So it costs to live on the beach right on the water, man. Your whole property. It's not one little area, whole properties on the water. Next up, this is the middle house next up is just it's ridiculous. Six bedrooms, 11 baths. You can invite all the neighbors over the shit, and you've got plenty of room. So the biggest Super Bowl party you've ever seen, you can still shit in your own time. Shit everywhere. Shit in multiple toilets. They're all yours 15,7, 137 square feet. That's like fucking five houses, five big houses is what that is. That's a lot. That's on 20 acres and it's ridiculous. It's really nice right by the water. It's gorgeous. It's like one of these like a fake Chateau, basically. It is $14,995,000 to be honest, it's cheaper than I thought it was going to be. Obviously. That's obviously. That's what the fuck can afford that. That's somebody who plays for the wizards. Yeah. That's what I mean. You got it. Or like the Redskins or something. The taxes alone would fucking destroy you. That's destroying you. Who's buying $15,000,000 houses. I don't believe you know some hedge fund ass haul or something. Some lobbyist, maybe a DC lobbyist lawyer dickhead. Things to do in this town. Let's find it out. The Cape St. Clair strawberry festival. Yeah. Another one of those. I love strawberries. That's fantastic. Yeah. There's a lot of festivals around them. If you look up strawberry festival. Oh, I get it. Every county in the country has a strawberry festival. Let's find out what's different at this one here. They say it's an age old event. Tell me how long it's been going on. I've been going on many ages. It's not age old. There hasn't been this for... We've done this for a number of years. I'm going to say at the most 300. So somewhere between zero and 300, age old, they say seems to be more and more popular each year, and if you're a resident, you know that summertime begins with the strawberry festival. Is that right? And it's a day filled with a parade? Music. There's seven bands. Oh. We have the names of them. We'll talk about that. Food games, crafters, contests, petting zoo, canine demos, just making dogs do shit. I guess, like, sometimes they have them do the jumping things and they like the, I don't know, the popsicle. Plant these on there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. See if they can sniff it out. They bring up like an SUV and they say, "We've hidden weed in the passenger side door." See whose dog can fucking sniff it out. A silent auction. I don't know if there's auctioning strawberries or what. Strawberries in many forms. Okay. Costords, pies, cakes. Ah, berries. Berries. Yeah. Parfaits. Shortcake. Shortcakes. Yeah. Cake cakes. I said. Cake cakes. Yeah. Longcakes. Shortcake. Cake cakes. Traditional moon bounces. Okay. An obstacle course. Face painting, a coloring contest. Okay. A dunk booth, a lot of ties for first in that one. Yeah. Like in the lines, you win, I guess, you know. A soca scout, which sounds. That's not good. In Utah. That's not. You can't have that. Yeah. If there's Mormons around, you're not allowed to have that contest, that means you just put it in a boy scout and leave it there. That's not good. Is this a wet boy scout contest? Yeah. I don't like that at all. A wet boy scout uniform contest. Oh, God, a, a, they have pit beef. I don't know what that is. Is it food? I don't know if that's you fighting a pit. Yeah. I got pit beef with that motherfucker right there. Or salt. Yeah. Or if they make beef in a pit, I don't understand. I hope it's the, I hope it's the former. I hope they're fighting like they save it up. Yeah. That'd be great. Bob ain't been trimming his head. Just wait till this year's strawberry. Oh my God. Get him in the pit. I'm going to get Bob in the pit and it's on, baby. Take out a whole year's worth of frustrations on it. That's how it works. Hamburgers hot dogs, snowballs, I guess ice cream like that. Okay. I see things. Yeah. Or the hostess. The squishy one. Oh, the coconut marshmallow. He needs us. I love Kenny coconut. Right. Yeah. If I couldn't love him if I wanted to make my mouth swell up and I can't talk or talk. So that's not good. Strawberry jam jelly contest. So I mean, you can, you can. That's a lot of ties for first two I imagine. You can bring jams and jellies. Yeah, both. Those are different things, man. They should be different categories. Is it a preserved category too? I don't know. That's what I'm saying. No, it doesn't say jam jelly contest decorated bikes, whatever that is. The buriest baby. Oh boy. And of course we're going to see who is who will rule as the strawberry princess, obviously as well. Now, the bands here. Okay. Let's find out what these people have to offer us for bands. Are they headlining somewhere? No. It doesn't say so. I mean, there's just a whole bunch of just a list of names and a lot of them are like just, you'll see. They're just genres or like doesn't sound like a specific band name. This one does. First one is cold brew 42, which sounds like a little coffee place somewhere or even a cold brew 42. Yeah. Yeah. Or it's one of those micro brew shit bags. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It brings that hobby. Cold brew. Yeah. Like some IPA bullshit. The Cape Tree. Okay. That's a band. The Cape Tree. All right. Then a band just called Easy Rock, which is a genre of music. That's that's all like a serious XM station. That's not a band. And it says they play 70s and 80s rock. Yup. Easy rock. They're called. Okay. Oh, spelled out the rock. Easy rock. Easy rock. Yeah. Easy. Listen to rock. Light rock. A lot of like foreigner and stuff. Like late foreigner. Not early. A lot of like air supply in there once in a while, just like some light stuff, you know what I mean? If you need me now and take away just like Chicago, you know, stuff like that. Real light. Really easy 70s stuff. Oh, Jesus Christ, Dirk and the truth will be there. No. He kicked out the lion. The lion. He's like, I brought in the truth. Dirk is going to be there to tell you the truth. Yeah. 24 karat rock. But they play rock will be there. It sounds like they play rock. Yeah. Then a band called Acoustic Cafe, which sounds like the name of a business, not a band acoustic cafe. I don't know. That's going to be very soft. They'll play Bob Marley's song, but they'll also. Oh, yeah. But it'll be a white lady saying it. Yeah. It'll be a 47 year old white woman. We'd be jamming. Yeah. Oh, she's got a flow. He scared on. She's putting the Jeez in a lot of yoga. Yeah. That's the lady who's second for 24 of her acoustic cafe. People showing up being like, where's the menus? What's going on? This isn't it? You said it was a cat, right? You know, I'm bagels. What is it? Shit, Jesus. Also School of Rock, which is the name of a movie. Right. Not a fucking actual. That's that's dumb. That's your back. Jack Black is not here. Yeah. I'm going to revolt. If it's Jack Black and a bunch of children. Great. Call it. Put it that. This is not School of Rock. So there you go. And which is funny because they probably maybe they were School of Rock first and are now angry like the person who's angry at Jelly Roll, which is fucking hilarious. There's a wedding band very angry at Jelly Roll. The area. Jelly Roll because they were a wedding band that no one's ever heard of first and they said now they've lost all their presence on Google. It's like, well, yeah. And they're Jelly Roll one word and he is jelly space capital R role. But also they're so insignificant though that the internet won't acknowledge the difference. It'll just go. You're looking for Jelly Roll. We know you're looking for. I'll bet before he popped on the scene, if I type Jelly Roll into Google, they'd send me to a bakery, a bakery in a cafe to go find it to the acoustic cafe to get a Jelly Roll. That's where you'd be at it. Or a white lady told me you'd be jamming. Yeah. Here's a Jelly Roll for you. We're jamming. You know that's how it is. So those are the bands for that thing. And then of course you have to have the Maryland crab and oyster trail, which I would go to that in a heartbeat. For sure. The aroma of Chesapeake spice permeates the mountains of Maryland too. If you're looking to combine a number of signature Maryland experiences together, head west to the mountains for a scenic driver hike and end your day with a traditional Maryland crab feast. Hell yeah. Yes. And thank you. How do I get there? Yeah. Take me home. Take me home. And now that we've had it, I don't want to crack them ever again. No. I need somebody to do it for me. Now that your friend did that for it. That was one. Here's this cracking, handing us a clumps of meat on a shell just there and we were eating them like sultans. Now try this. Now try this. Oh my God. It was like a sultan. He was dipping it in butter and then putting it up on a shell on a shell for us as a little plate. Thank you. And then whatever that is inside of that's called the mustard. Yeah. Try it with the mustard. Oh yeah. How's that mustard? Well, I don't care. It's delicious. That's amazing. You're going to love it. And it was great. How is it so good? That's the best thing ever. Crime rate in this town. What we're interested in. The property crime. A little low actually. Yeah. The percentage has, I would imagine it would be because they've got money. They don't need to steal it. It's pretty leafy and you know, that kind of thing. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault, not Rushmore of crime is about one quarter below the national average as well. So again, we have low. So it's safe. It's leafy. It's nice. Let's talk about some terrible awful murder. When wasn't it? Brutal shit here. Let's talk first about a couple of people. Let's talk about Robert Lee Swartz first of all here. Swartz. S-W-A-R-T-Z. That's interesting. Swartz. Yeah. It's kind of like the skater we did for crime in Swartz Wolfgang. It was Swartz too. He was Swartz like that too. That's so wild. The rapist figure skating coach. Yeah. He was awful. And figure skater. Remember? He was diddle and everybody that guy. He was terrible. That was years ago. So check that out. Years ago. Swartz. Swartz. Yeah. That's going to get fucked up. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. May the Swartz be with you. I can't tell you a thing. So he's born in 1931 here. He is the middle child of three sons. His father is a college dean. Oh. Mother a teacher, father a dean in McKee's port, Pennsylvania. Very nice. Yeah. So he comes from a very academically rigorous family. And they expect that from him as well. You're going to get your education too. You're going to get your education for sure. He ended up traveling a lot with his dad as, you know, his dad had a bunch of jobs before settling in Pennsylvania and ending up in Maryland. And he also ends up doing a lot too. Oh. He ends up in the Navy. Bob joins the Navy. So he sees the world a little bit then. Sure. It's right after World War II. I think between World War II and Korea. Oh. That little sweet spot. Yeah. Nice time. We don't have to fucking fight anybody right this minute spot. We aren't stealing your kid. Yeah. That was better. Yeah. So he he goes there. He's going to later end up in Maryland. He is a stocky he's about five foot eight stocky balding in his 20s. All right. And I'm talking Homer Simpson. Yeah. Yeah. Not. No, it's a little. Not you like. I'll just shave it. It looks better. You know, it's a little bit thin over here. I'm talking. The stubble is kind of sexy. It looks like I could grow it. I can't. Nothing. He's got nothing. He's got a ring around his head. Double shows age. Oh, yeah. No, no. It doesn't matter. He looks like he's got a Homer Simpson hair. That's no good. From a young age. 20s. In his 20s. It's going fast. So that's tough. He does four years in the Navy and he worked for several years on the distant early warning system in Canada and Alaska. Oh. That's for like nuclear. Missiles. Yeah. Missiles. It's like that. Very smart guy computer engineer. Oh. So that's what he ends up becoming. It's Jim, Mr. Swartz. Good amount of money does things like that. Let's talk about a young lady here, Katherine and Sullivan at the time here. She goes by, well, when she's younger, she goes by Kate and then later on, it's just Kay. Okay. She goes by Kay. She's born. She's about nine years younger than him, ish like that. She is known as tall. She's tall and intense. Oh. She is. She's like five, eleven. Oh. Yeah. So she's tall and she's smart and she's she'll become a teacher. Oh, yeah. Yeah. She'll tell you. She's the youngest of four children. She's from Iowa City, Iowa. Yeah. A whole lot of Iowa going on there. She was the valedictorian of her Catholic high school. How about that? Yeah. So she's an achiever, too. It's not it's one thing to be smart and it's one thing to be rigorous, but certain people are. Be the best smartest. I have to be the valedictorian. That's a certain personality type of I'm going to be the achiever. Right. And valedictorian isn't necessarily always the smartest. They're also the one that's like-- They're just the one with the best grades. --and super into all the community and all that shit, too, right? It's great point average. Is that all it is? I think it's all it is. Just the best one of that. I think it's the best great point average. I don't think it has to do with the rest of the shit. It's not like a voting thing. It's not? No. Oh. I think it's like, you know, just it's like a score. Okay. 4.3, 4.2. You're the valedictorian. There's a matrix. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what it is. Yeah. I don't think because then you'd hear all the time that my kid should have been the valedictorian. Well, yeah. So, you know, they judge their community service or it's just grades. All right. Yeah. I guess that makes more sense. Yeah. Otherwise, parents would be killing each other for that. The lobbying for me. Yeah. That means something to these kids and their parents. Camp painting. Yeah. This is, but that's what they would do. They'd have campaigns and the year books would have like an ad thing. It'd be like Variety magazine and Oscar season. It'd be awful. Nobody wants that. So they need more competition? Yeah. They're getting fucking hundreds of thousands of dollars on campaigns. Another reason for kids to feel bad about them is that. Yeah. Oh man. Now what I have to do. Yeah. This show, Small Town Murder, is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp.com. Absolutely. And maybe your social battery, how's where you're monitoring that right now? You drain down too much socializing from holidays. Not enough. Maybe some people hole up in the winter. Sure. And therapy is the thing. Therapy can help give you some self awareness so you can build a social life that's not going to drain you or leave you wanting more here. So we totally are 100% advocates of therapy here. Yep. It's great for you. There's a million things that can help you with and this is one of them because social stuff is something that we all, it's really hard not to struggle with nowadays especially even social media mixed in the mix. It's difficult. It really is overwhelming. Therapy can help. Thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. We very much recommend it entirely online, designed to be convenient and flexible, suited to your schedule. You fill out this brief questionnaire, they very quickly match you with a licensed therapist and no additional charge you can switch therapists at any time. Which is a big deal because that's, sometimes you're not vibing with somebody and you need to vibe with somebody, no additional charge for that at all. Find your social sweet spot with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/SmallTownMurder today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHELP.com/SmallTownMurder. Now back to the show. And now we have a video about how to make it easier to make it easier to make it easier. And now we have a video about how to make it easier to make it easier to make it easier. And now we have a video about how to make it easier to make it easier to make it easier. And now we have a video about how to make it easier to make it easier to make it easier. 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We'll come pick them up at the station wagon and take them home with us. It's hard curringed off the mountain on the way home from the street. All the kids in the back survived the parents are right through the windshield. Yeah. Some shit like that. So the Maryland's Children Aid and Children's Aid and Family Service Society, they had a family of four brothers that was being offered up for adoption. Yeah, like, you know, when they put puppies up. We have this puppy. Four brothers. This one. Comes with these three. Yeah. They said, we'll take them. Real. We'll take all four of them. And they were even planning where they're going to sleep in the house. It's a three bedroom house. So they were like, okay, two boys and one, two boys and the other. Yeah, blah, blah, blah. So they said, yeah, we could do that. You know what I mean? Wow. He's told his family, Bob said he's just making up for lost time. He's almost 40 already. Great point. I could have four kids anyway. Yeah. And he said, yeah, I'll have twice as many kids as my brother now right away. I went from two went from two nothing to four to like that. No time in the hospital. Awesome. Yeah. I'm fucking great. No, I want to. I'm not awake at two in the morning, James and diapers. So then a social worker called and said, after talking it over, we've had second thoughts about the brothers. The social workers said, yeah, we think four children might be too much for you. You can't do this to children. That's, well, I don't know if the children knew about it yet. Oh, so they hadn't been moved in yet? No, no, no, no, no, they weren't moved in. This is before they were supposed to hook up with them there. And they said, you know, quote, your marriage is going only going on three years, you know, when we're not sure you're ready to take so many kids at once. You have no kids. If you had three kids and you were fine with them, it'd be, but you have no kids from none to four is a lot of kids. And if you've got no kids and you've been married for 15 years, you have to know what you want. Yeah, three. Everything's fine. They're worried about what if these two, what if the pressure of four kids breaks them off. And he said, you know, Kate'll be disappointed. But you know, I guess I understand. So they contacted several adoption agencies, but they learned that the waiting period for infants could be months or years. That's crazy. Yeah, they're months or years. I guess we got to make sure and vet, but that's but infants go quick. Yeah, there's an infant up. And someone will take that thing. Oh, infants are right now immediate. Yeah. Well, before it's like six months. I'll have pre six months. They will swoop them up because they can pretend that's their baby. I don't mean, you know, but they can, they can, you know, can feel like a, not just like they've had somebody's kid dropped off. Sure. Sure. They can, you know, yeah, because yeah, that's all the cattle ever know. So. It's, it's a, it's a whole thing. And it's, it's a, it's a thing too, bro. You want them to know who their parents are. That's me. Yeah. And, and I'm being called dad by a, that's, I'm the only one that kids ever called dad is a specific thing. That helps. Yeah. I think that's what it is. Okay. So they said an un-huge waiting list for newborns forgot about it. Like, you know, because the ones that get pulled right out and handed off, those are like, you got to wait years for those. Tons of those. But you know, six months, that's still months and months. Yeah. So most parents didn't want children over the age of two. That's the cutoff. Real. Two. Yeah. They don't want them to, like, where they were talking already. Wow. They want like a baby. Yeah. And then have the baby develop in their image. It's, it's a human thing, I think. I can see that. But you're, you are taking on the hardest. Yes. Part of child raising. And I think that's it too. Is there like six year old in a second? Well, a six year old though has, are already has psychological imprints for good or bad. Yeah, you're right. So that's the, that's the thing I think that people think is even two year olds, some, you know, they're, they can have a personality developed or ready that they, whatever. I'll take a six year old non bed, wedding, non firestorm. Well, that's, that's the problem. Yeah. Those are the six year olds that are available. That's what you get. So they said it was tough. And they said it was a lot to get people. They said nobody wanted kids that were older than five. That's too bad. It's really hard to sell people on, which is tough. It's just takes us. A certain kind of person. Yeah. So they adopt a young boy here. Okay. They adopt him at the age of six. Okay. They, so he's an easy one to get. I'm right. You're out. Six. Well, yeah. Maybe not. Okay. This is Larry. They adopt Lawrence is his real name. Larry. And they give him the last name right away. Larry Swartz. Yeah. And he had had a tough time. He had been in a bunch of foster homes. K is his sixth mother. Oh, no, one year. That's that what I mean by the time a kid is six and they've been in this system their whole life. Not even their whole life because he's only been in it since his three. He was three. We'll talk about it. He's gotten to a year. Yeah. Jesus. It's not good. It's really. He's had a tough time. The worker told them we do have a boy who really needs a home. His name is Larry. And I met him yesterday. I liked him a lot. He's small and dark skinned and very good looking. He'll be seven in August. We've got to find him a new home as soon as we can. What is his looks after doing it? He's a handsome child. You'll really want him a lesson. Not ugly. It's really great. Very weird. Otis. Okay. Said, well, where is he now? And they said with a family that was going to adopt him, but it just didn't work out. It wasn't his fault. They had their own biological children. I don't think they were able to accept and adopt a child. It's been hard on the boy. He knows he's not wanted and he asked us to find new parents for him. And they said, is he in school? And he said first grade, but he's being held back. He couldn't concentrate. His teacher said he becomes. He comes to school upset a lot, which Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His furious. Your home life is crazy. The world hates him. That's how he feels. He does things like eat other kids lunches in the cafeteria and just come and start swiping food. Does he's fucking starving? He's got a lot of weird food things of not eating and then overeating and he's got a lot of weird food stuff, which is security. Food security is an issue. He doesn't know where his next one's coming from. So they said we all think he needs a massive dose of love and attention and if you guys want to do that, maybe that's what the solution is. Yeah. So they said, you know, we'll take a look at him. Sure. Bring them by. We'll kick the tires and start the fires. We'll do it all, baby. Yeah. The tires on him. Run this motherfucker around the block. Yeah. I mean, yeah. We'll, you know, step on it real hard. Get it up to 60 and slam on the brakes. Zero to 60. See what the time is on that. See how the nose dives and the brakes. Let's see. Yeah. See the body rolls in the terms. It's good. Yeah. Gonna have fucked up shocks. Let's find out. So they said, why don't you and your husband come up to Baltimore? Yeah. And they said, yeah, they said if it works out, you could take him home for good the next weekend. So they want him. He's gonna be seven. Like they'll put it anywhere. Seriously. This kid's about to. He's on the vine. Like he needs to be picked immediately. The milk is curdling. Yeah. Now, the original story they hear is that Larry's parents are from India. Not true. Well, his dad is from India, but his mom is not from India. And they said, yeah, it's just there. They're just India from India. They couldn't crack it in the country with the kid. Not true at all. Turns out his dad is a pimp from India, a New Orleans street pimp, and his mom is a chick that he picked up. So it's rough. Yeah. Apparently, his mother's name, real mother's name is Sheila. And she's a small bleach blonde lady with blue eyes, you know, from California. And she's in New Orleans hanging out here. She's 19 years old. Oh my God. And she gets pregnant. And her boyfriend, his name is Luther Singh. That's his real, Larry's real father. He's described as several years older and incredibly handsome. 50. Not that old, but not 19. I think like 30, 27, something like that. And by the way, this is all from a book. I'll give you the title at the end here, but somebody wrote a book about this in 1989. Wow. So yeah, they weren't going to get married or anything like that. He just knocked her up. And that sort of thing. He was very handsome. She said they met at Mardi Gras the previous year. And he went with a set like that. You're mine. You can really kick the tires of Mardi Gras. She got all his beads. Yeah, all of them. She described him as a dark flashy stranger, whose family was from India. So he wasn't even Indian. You know, yeah, dark flashy stranger. He was exotic and exciting. Like Pimpsar. That's a Pimpsar. Yeah. Yeah. So they started living together by the end of Mardi Gras. So two weeks of Mardi Gras brought them together here. She moved to New Orleans just out of nowhere. She felt like it. She left Chicago in 1965 and went to work as a waitress down there. And yeah, she was just just just turned 18. Yeah. She's like, I know how to wait tables. I can work anywhere. I'm going more. What a time to be a lie. Yeah, just go and go. You just pick a spot in the map and if you got money to get there, you start a new one. You figure it out. You'll make cash by the end of the night. Imagine doing that today. If you could wait tables, you could go anywhere. Yeah. You know, because today, go on. Yeah. You gotta have first and last little dollars to get there. Just to get an apartment. You need a first, last fucking security. You gotta have that. You gotta have the money to get there. You gotta. It's ridiculous. Storage unit now. You leave the house. It's $100. It's everything. So at 10 o'clock on August 24th, this is the day that he was born. Larry was born. He's born a month early. Yeah. And he weighs four pounds. Oh my God. He's very light. What is she doing? He's a month early. Yeah. So who knows what happened? Stress or whatever. Stress drug alcohol. Something. Something Lawrence Joseph calls him Larry. Okay. And there's that. Yeah. But she doesn't really, she uses Luther's last name sometimes, but they're not really married. So there's a, there's a, we don't know exactly what they named him. That's a, that's a tough thing here. So Luther, the father then moved up to North, to Washington, D.C. and she and the baby moved with them. And a social worker later asked Sheila why she continued to live with Luther since he was viciously beating her. And she said, quote, he was so handsome. I guess it was the physical attraction. He's just so cute. He's just so handsome. He's beating the shit out of you. Who cares what he looks like? She's, she sees his eyes sparkle. Well, this is like, why would you put up with this? She's, she's crazy. Have you seen the tits on it? Is it true people? It's, it's. Yeah. We're both we're a horny people. That's what it is. Yeah. But after three years, she described him as just an awful person. She packed up her shit one day and moved into an apartment with a couple of girlfriends in Silver Spring with the baby. And that's how they ended up there. But it's, it doesn't really work out because in the end, she ends up having to turn him into social services. And by the age of three, he already had exhibited emotional problems, chronic bedwetting. He's seen dad beat the shit out of his home. Is that all sorts of issues? They, they, they find, they find him eating food out of garbage cans, getting up in the middle of the night to make sure his foster family was still, he'd wake them up and make sure they were there. Oh, was that you? Okay. Like, that's when he to go to a foster place because he was so worried about who left and where, who's where and he's jumpy. That's, I mean, by six kids have had a lot of stuff going on. Yeah. So he's moved, gets moved from foster home to foster home. Tons of shit, you know, going on and nothing's good. He, during his stay with his first foster home, he appeared to do, to do well. No problems eating or sleeping. And that sort of thing. But the caseworker and foster parents decided that Larry should be moved to a home closer to his mother. So they took him out of a home that he was doing well in to move closer to his mother, who's not doing well. Who's signed away parental rights of him? Like, why move closer? It's fucking insanity. Wow. 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For your words, less paper. It was so you could say it faster. No way. It's to be more iconic. Must be a tech thing. But those aren't quite right. It's because now you can compare up from prices, book a service instantly, and even get your project handled from start to finish. Sounds easy. It is. And it makes us so much more than just a list. Get started at Angie.com. That's A-N-G-I. Or download the app today. It's really crazy, man. So, he ended up going to the home of Harold and Betty Hernan, or Haren, and he went in the house. He met his foster parents here. They seemed happy to have him, although their marriage was falling apart at the time. Fantastic. So, they had other foster-held children there, too, which wasn't helping. She, Sheila, demanded to see him, and the supervisor then drove her to the Haren's house to see the boy. She can't demand that. Yeah. She wrote in the supervisor wrote in her report, "Larry seemed to recognize her a little, but paid not much attention to her." Wow. Because he's been in different high. He's three. Your memory, probably, you know, refreshes a lot. Yeah, your tape rewinds. So, on October 16th, Dr. Julius Lobel, who's a doctor, he examined Larry, found him to be a normal child of small stature. He was barely three years old. He wasn't three feet tall yet. He only weighed 24 pounds. He's very malnourished. Very small kid. Only they said he had weighed one more pound than he'd weighed 15 months before. He gained a pound in a year? A pound in 15 months. His foster mother told the doctor that he was a restless child with a short attention span, short attention span, and he still had toilet accidents. He still would, you know, have problems there. Then Larry went to see another doctor, a psychologist, who administered the intelligence scale test to him and set his social adjustment quotient on the scale, suggested he was functioning at a level about four-fifths the average for three-year-olds. And they said his IQ was about 85, placing him in the, quote, dull normal range, little dull. Yeah, just a little dull. Just give him some time. Give him some time to bud here. He needs to, to bloom. Love him. Water that plant. Yeah. What the fuck? He needs some fertilizer, some something. He's just, they left him. He's grown in a sidewalk crack and it hasn't rained in three months. And they're like, he's looking a little wilted. I don't know. Give him some Oreos for Christ's sake. Let's spoil him a little. Yeah. They said the doctor said it's likely this child has had some tendency toward hyperactivity, and this needs to be further evaluated before a definite statement can be made about the possibility of some central nervous system dysfunction. It was of interest to note that the foster mother probably covertly rejecting the child and has difficulty accepting it. She doesn't know she's rejecting him. Yes. The foster mother is probably, yeah, she's outwardly not, but inside she doesn't want this kid. She's sorry she got him. So another foster home he goes to. Oh my God. They were very excited to have him there, but they were struggling with money. They were the Weaver family and they said, quote, it's still a day-to-day struggle with him. He wets the bed and he hasn't let me through that barrier that he's got around him. He just hasn't become a part of the family like we expected him to. We gotta give him a minute. Yeah. He's so little. Yeah. After two years, they still hadn't signed the adoption decree. They were still like doing a test run on him here. So it's very weird either they or the agency could call off the adoption anytime before that. So they asked them, do you think that you'll ever not do this and call it quits with Larry? And they said, no. And the wife, that's what the man said. And then the wife said, I don't see it now, but two years down the road, if everything's still the same, I don't know how I'll feel. You either have to, a kid can feel that. Yeah. So either have to be in 100% or not, but you can't be like, I don't know, I'll hedge my bets and if the kid's pretty cool, then I guess I'll be his mom. Yeah. Kids are so good at picking out who likes them and who doesn't. They've got that gut feeling that we ignore. Yeah. Exactly. And so at one point, the weavers went to the doctor, took him to the doctor in March 72, and Larry had a broken arm. Oh, yeah. This is some problems with the mom because he couldn't stop bedwetting and she was yelling at him so much. And then she wouldn't talk to him for long stretches of time. And she ended up breaking his arm during she was yanking him around or something. She got really mad one day, snatched his left arm and twisted it behind his back while she was screaming at him. And he tried to squirm and break free and then his bone crack cracked and he had a bone in his upper part of his left arm snapped. Poor little guy. It was in a big cast for weeks and at the hospital in the report, it said twisted and injured left arm and the x-ray revealed the fracture. That's fucking, and they said in the report because he couldn't stop bedwetting. That's fucking horrible. So that's who they get, Larry. Wow. That's who this family, the Swartzes are going to bring in. Bob and Kate are bringing in poor little Larry. Bringing in poor little Larry. Larry's had it tough. And then a few months later, they adopt another young man too. Really? Yep, a little boy named Michael. And Michael, he's six months older than Larry. So they figure, yeah, same age, maybe they'll get along, be brothers. You know what I mean? But that's not even Irish twins. So even if they look close to alike, they're never going to feel like brothers. No, no, but they could be, if they're close enough in an age, they could be. They could feel happy together and not friendly, but they won't ever be brothers. No, but I mean, even if they're best friends, great. Yeah, that's good. You know what I mean? Great. And if they're this age, they grow up together, they'll feel like brothers after a while. That's what I mean. Especially if they're both from shit environments. Michael had been in seven foster homes already. Yeah, he is of Native American descent. Okay. So they're just like, we just want anybody with any kind of Indian animal. I don't, we don't give a shit. Couple of guys that Ben Franklin would confuse for each other. Yeah, so we want people who would, let's put them together and go Chris Columbus, which is which. Let's find out. They're the sign. Yeah, same picture. So he had Michael loved Indian arrowheads and he kept them with them. Oh, really? Yeah, they're like his prized possessions. He's very tall. Michael will be six foot six when he grows up, by the way, tall kid. So, yeah, they pick him up. And yeah, Michael, I guess they said when they came to get him, he was standing like, they had to go into the office and do paperwork and shit. And he was like waiting outside for them holding his back. Let's go. He's got an arrowhead in one hand in his bag. Fuck the paperwork. Let's just go. Yeah, I guess Michael was pissed off because he just wanted to leave. He goes, this guy just showed up and he wants to take me home. Let's go. This place sucks. He seems better. Yeah. He said he hadn't lived with a father since he was three or four either. So it's been hard. He said he didn't like his father at the time. His father, when he was a small child, three years old, used to beat him with a board, a wooden board. So he said he hardly remembered his mother because she just disappeared one day, abandoning him and his sister and his brothers to be with the, you know, wood beating father over here. How do we know she abandoned them and dad didn't just hacksaw Jim Duggan her in the fucking garage? Yeah. Jesus. He's hitting the kids with the board. But this is how Michael is. Yeah. When our guy here, Bob came outside, he found Michael using his arrowhead to scratch the orange paint off the roof of a Datsun truck. Somebody's carved. Yeah, he's scraping the paint off of it. Carving it. So Bob came out and said, "What do you think? What are you doing?" Yeah, it's like, holy shit. That's crazy. That's somebody's property, man. Yeah, he's had a hard time, Michael. I mean, he is, he's stayed on the average less than one year in each foster home. This is his seventh, like we said, not counting his natural family. That would make it eight. Everybody rejected him for one reason or another. One of his parents is dead already, or one of the parents of the foster people. One died, so the other one gave him back. Another couple said he was unmanageable. Another woman accused him of stealing money from the pocketbook of a visitor in the foster home. He was six. Yeah, what's he going to do? You should be able to manage that at six. You should be able to tell them why that is, and then I would structure over time, help them understand that that's not right. Yeah, you can't just steal. Unless your kid is Ted Bundy. Right. You know what I mean? So, it's just scraping pictures. He was just absent-mindedly scraping paint off. So the first weekend with the Schwartz's was billed as a visit, a weekend retreat kind of thing. And he later said I was just there to check it out. And I met Larry, meaning the new kid. He said it was fun. I had a good time. Larry said, "Hey, man, we're going to Disney World next week. If you come with live with us, you can go." So Michael said, "I went. I was like, fuck, I'm with a family that goes to fucking Disneyland. Hold on. I got a brother who's like my own age, and we're going to Disneyland." And we're the same tent. Holy shit. Yeah. This is fucking phenomenal. He was jacked for this shit. That's the thing. I've seen both. They look like brothers. Do they? Yeah. If you saw them and they went where brothers should go, "Okay, one short and one's tall is the only thing." You just assume the taller one's the older brother? That's it. But I mean, I know brothers who are, you know, full grown, one is six, six or one's five, nine. That's just the life. I mean, I don't know. So they were, I guess, the male man was tall. So it was Carl Malone who came in with the actual male man. And the mother was 13 as Carl Malone likes them as we now from the bonus crime and sports. The two boys were immediately tight and they were well-liked in the neighborhood. Larry was a newspaper boy, delivered newspapers. Michael would rake leaves and, you know, mow grass for money. They were industrious and nice and helpful to their parents. And they were like, "Holy shit." And Larry told Michael, "Don't worry. It's not such a bad place once you get used to it. This is pretty, pretty sweet setup we got here." So that's also nice. He had like a guy, you know, doing like some recon for Michael when he came in. This place is much chiller than everywhere else. Yeah. Look, we've both been in a lot of shit. This place is, "I, you're going to like it." Food's on time. Food's on point. No garbage cans. Nobody's beating me with a board yet. So they shared a bedroom, the boys, and the third bedroom was free for guests. And we're going to have another kid later on. We'll talk about strict rules, though, also. And these, for the, you know, age, they are, makes sense. No leaving the neighborhood. One block in all directions. That's fair. Well, tons of mothers have been telling their kids that for 100 years, you know. Stay in the neighborhood, stay within the street and that's free. Around the block is all you get, whichever direction you know. Around people we know. So, you know, less likely to be snagged and taken away. Well, then again, how funny would that be? How, not funny, how ironic would that be at this person that nobody wants? Yeah. And he can't get taken. And he goes outside, he's kidnapped. He's like, "Jesus Christ! Now there's a, now there's a swell of rushing of emotions. People all want me now. What's going on? You'd be so confused." Yeah, and even more confused if they sold you into like the sex trade. Like all these people every day, somebody wants me. What the fuck? Yeah, every, now I'm always wanted. Always in demand. That is gross. So, one block, no television except on weekends, which is rough from the late 70s. Yeah, because kids in the morning is when the, when the shits off. Yeah, no soda or candy. Well, during the week, though, that's school time. You concentrate on school and you do your homework. Well, when you're eight, there's not a lot of homework to do. Well, studying. Before school, there's always kids programming. No, no, no. Put like classical music on the radio. Lights were out at eight o'clock on school nights. Eight o'clock bedtime, which that's just family to family, that varies. They had to help their mother with housework. Michael had to mow the lawn and take out the garbage because that was his thing. They each got an allowance from doing their work, one dollar a piece per week, and they could spend it as they wanted, except for candy and soda. Obviously. And she would give them extra money for like raking the yard or doing everything. So they had like a responsibility thing. The relatives noticed the bond between Larry and his mother at family get-togethers. Larry, the one relative said Larry would hang around Kay and try to do things for her. I would see her for no reason at all go up and hug Larry and hold his hands. Like try to be nice to him. Kay's brother said he liked both boys, but he felt bad for Michael. He said you could tell Michael seemed very awkward and unsure of himself. And they said a lot of that is because he was very tall for his age. He's tall and gangly and doesn't feel like fits into anything. And to any alone in this family. Yeah. And he's like new when he feels like he's going to get cast aside also. So they said that this uncle said that he tried to single Michael out for give him special attention, not in a perverted way, but special attention. And try to be extra nice to him. You know, hey, let's take the kid fishing. You know what I mean? Let's take him out with us for the day. So the boys started bickering as kids the same age would do. Larry couldn't really physically contend with Michael because he was much smaller than him. One time Kay was watching and Larry and Michael were wrestling around in the yard and fell down to the ground. Larry broke away, got up and started running and ran right into a tree. Oh, she turned around and looked to see where Michael was and ran into a fucking tree. Clark Roosevelt. Felt down unconscious. Yeah. Like a cartoon. Yeah. Like a Benny Hill movie. Like a ridiculous pouch. So I'm surprised he didn't step on a rake and have it come up and smack him in the face. After he came to, they diagnosed him with a concussion. So he's got that. Now Kay blamed Michael and was pissed off at him. Really? Yes. So she yelled at him. He got mad and said fucking no way and she slapped him. She slapped Michael. Michael called her a bitch and she told him to go to his room and he did. Then Bob got home and it was wait till your dad gets home because Bob heard that he called Kay a bitch. And he wasn't tolerating that. He yelled at him and basically he hit him four or five times. Punched the child. Hard like punching. Punching a 10 year old. Yeah. Really worked him over. How dare you call my wife a bitch? Like he's at a biker bar or something. You don't say that about my old lady. You don't finger my wife's cut offs. I feel like that's, it was weird. Yeah. So 1979 they adopt another kid. A three year old they figure because it's a, they do a little Natalia Gracie with her. Oh, check some teeth. Well, a three year old orphaned Korean girl named Ann Lee who they call Annie. She was four according to her adoption records and they listed her birth as October 1973. But they said she seemed way too tiny to be four. They suspected that her birth date was probably wrong. So they decided she was three and gave her a new birth date of October 1974 instead of '73. So they figured the extra year would give her more time to break the language barrier before she started school. We'll just pretend she's younger. We'll give her an extra year. We never get an extra year to learn English. So I mean, and at three you pick that shit up quick though. She'll be, she'll be speaking with a valley girl lilt and fucking six months. So you get me? Yeah. And vocal frolic. Oh my God. Like a really, she didn't want to. Yeah. So the kid didn't know how old she was. So she always thought she was a year younger than she actually was because they told her that. On their car, they have a Chevy Chivette. We know that's hot shit with it. Everyone deserves adoption bumper sticker on there. Then seeking the back for all the adoptees. All of them. Come on in kids. Now the boys, education is a big deal for them with these boys. Bob and Kay, no, they're not. But the Bob and Kay are smart and they want the kids to be smart. The boys are very smart. Unfortunately, they're not. Michael was a smart one, actually. Michael was smart, quick learner, did well in school. Larry, not so good in school. Larry's a little stanad. Well, he's seen his mom get the shit punched out of her. Yeah. Let doesn't make you dumber though. I'll give you emotional problems. Doesn't make your IQ drop. Certainly give you less drive than had you not seen it. Right. Yeah, yeah. But the teachers think he's dumb. Really? He doesn't have it. Even the parents. He's just dull, dull, normal, dull. He's just always a little dull. Even if mom hadn't gotten decked, the ability is not there. It's just, yeah, he's not terrific. So Michael though excelled in school and they thought that he was under challenged. So they had him jump from the second to the fourth grade. A two-year jump? Well, they skipped the third grade. They had him skip the third grade. Okay, but not like at the beginning. No, no, no, no. Yeah, he goes from second instead of going to third, he goes to fourth. Got it. So they said, usually kids don't skip those grades. Yeah, those are, yeah, it's rare. So that's a different one. So they said, one social worker said, frankly, I'm surprised the school allowed. I guess no, it was in the middle of the school year, the social worker said. I don't know why I didn't know that from my notes. The middle of the second to the middle of fourth then. Yeah, and they said that was highly unusual. Incredibly. To go to third would have been one thing, but not to skip to go to fourth. They said that was real weird. I guess they just said those kids are about his height. Yeah, literally, like he looks like those kids. And he said the word decimal. Yeah, so we were like, he might be the one. So it doesn't work out. He's smart, but he's emotionally a second grade. Right. Fourth grade is a different emotional wavelength by everybody here. He's immature. His grades dropped disciplinary problems increased because he was frustrated. Because he doesn't include what's happening. He would have impulsive fits of anger. He'd be disobedient. And they said at that point, he didn't understand right from wrong, he seemed like, as he was just out of his element again. So Larry, Larry's different. Michael Smart, but he's, he has these emotional fits. Larry, everything's under the surface. Calm, mild-mannered, follows the rules at school, follows at home. No disciplinary problems, kisses K's ass. Clearly the favorite son. But he's a shit student is the only thing. No matter what he does, he can't do it. He's just not good at it. He's like, I'll kiss ass instead. Where? They had to get two kids with the qualities that they want one kid to have. Yeah. They found out he has some learning disabilities and he was placed in special education classes, which made him do better. I knew what he was, how to teach him a little bit better. 1980 problems with Michael get real bad here. And Larry will confirm this, that Michael gets all of the brunt of all of Dad's anger. In 1978 and 1979, Bob beat Michael according to Larry 20 or 30 times. That's a lot of ass-kicking. That's more than a boxer takes. That's too much. When you open the door to punching, that's crazy. That's not close-fisting children is in. Yep, I said it. Damn it. Close-fisting. It's much more cruel. I've said it before. Fuck my stupid dude. Close-fisting children certainly teaches them a lesson, James. They know to study harder at that point. We better stop whatever is that horrifying. Yeah, don't do that to kids, please. Don't close-fist them. But to get punched, it opens the door in a barrier. It breaks down a wall of like, no matter what I'm going to do, I'm going to get punched for it, so whatever. And Michael ended up having a room downstairs in the basement, and that's where these beatings would take place. They said they would take Annie over to a neighbor's house before he beat him up, like it was a scheduled thing. So it wasn't like I lost and I hit the kid out of God what happened. This is like, I'm kicking his ass. Take the girl. It's Annie vacation time. We got to go. Larry could hear Michael screaming, he said, from these beatings. At first, Larry ran to his mother and said, isn't that a Christ? He's killing him down there. And she said, stay out of it and go to your room. So Larry, after a while during these beatings, he couldn't take it anymore. He said this distress of scaring his brother's scream, and he would run out of the house and go hide in the swamp in the woods behind until he thought it might have been over, until it was enough time. He said he couldn't watch. One time, though, his father threw his mandolin at Michael in the backyard. He plays the mandolin? Yeah, I don't know if it's that or he was slicing potatoes, I'm not sure. And just missed him. And another time he lost his temper and knocked Michael to the ground on the walkway beside the house outside. So Larry said, sometimes I couldn't avoid seeing it. It was just happened. Mike was just the target of all his rage. When he knocked him down, Bob kicked him over and over again. Like he owed a gangster money. So he said he kept kicking and Michael would roll from one railroad tie for the next, crashing down the steps because that's how they're set up these steps. And yeah, he said that for weeks, Michael complained his ribs hurt. He was probably broken. He was being kicked and pushed downstairs. He said Michael started hating his father and he wasn't shy about expressing it. One day he told his mother after one of the beatings, quote, "You know I could kill Dad." Like I could, I'll kill him in a sleep. He's five seven at best. I'll fucking kill this guy. She said what? And he said, "I could kill him if I wanted to. Dad would come home one day and I would be standing behind the door with a knife. He'd open the door and I could kill him because he wouldn't know I was behind the door." He has thought about this a lot. It happens when you beat people. When you beat people intensely over a long period of time, they start fantasizing about how to fucking... Stop that. So Kay was like, "What the fuck?" She didn't think he was serious at all. But she was upset and told Bob about it, which I'm sure earned him a beating. Likely, yeah. So that's very tough. Now Michael keeps getting in trouble. He wouldn't follow the rules. One night he asked him if he could go out and see a few of his friends. They said no, so he snuck out of the house. He got home around 10 o'clock and he was locked out of the house. He knocked. They wouldn't let him in. Yeah, I beat you. Open the door. So he kept... he was knocking and knocking and sorry, started yelling. Let me in. Kay opened up the window and said, "He can't come home anymore. You're not allowed to come home anymore." Any more. And then the next day she reported him as a runaway to a social worker. No. Yeah, because he wasn't there. He was like, "Well, yeah. He was given a choice by the social worker to move into a foster home or to go to juvenile court, which would likely mean he'd be going to a juvenile detention home." He said he'd rather move into a foster home, and the swarches were like, "Well, he's no longer our fucking kid. We don't want him anymore." So Michael's at a top, so he moves in with another foster family about 15 years away, his ninth... 15 years away? Or 15 miles away. Yeah, it was his ninth home in 13 years. He's a long ride. It's a long time. Then a month later, after he's in this home, he and his friends break into a house. Michael. He's like 15. Yeah. And stole a radio and two log splitters, then went into another house and did $2,000 worth of property damage. Wow. And an unoccupied house. They broke windows, ripped out wiring, and bashed the plumbing. Split a bunch of bombs. They just fucked a vacant house up. They broke into another house the next morning and tried to steal a bunch of shit. And the owner's grandson drove by and noticed a front window pane was broken. So he went inside and caught Michael in the act of putting a camera in his pocket. Uh-oh. Cops came, arrested him, obviously arrested all of them. They were felony breaking and entering theft, malicious destruction of property, all this type of shit. He's moved into the Palmer family boys' home, which is a state-licensed emergency shelter. Yeah. It's rough, man. There's nothing going right for him at all. Nothing going right for him at all. Later on, the Swartzes are described as a well-meaning but peculiarly ill-equipped family to deal with these boys' problems. Now, that's -- they talk about also that people find out that he's been beaten repeatedly. And he said that one of the social workers said Michael told me he was abused physically, and Larry would be there hovering in the corner, like trying, "Oh, God, Jesus." Like, all freaked out. That's wild. And Michael used to run away after the beatings, and that kind of thing, too. So it's really hard for him. Now, the courts say that delinquency was one of the only three charges minors could face in the Maryland juvenile court, and the other ones were being a child in need of supervision and assistance. So you can't really charge a -- yeah, that was the time -- at the time how it worked. So after he left the Swartz home, obviously, they declared him a child in need of assistance because Michael's parents are unwilling or unable to give him proper care and attention. To wit Michael's behavioral problems in school and at home have made it impossible for his parents to deal with his problems. So, yeah, a few weeks after his 14th birthday, that's when they declared him a child in need of assistance, and he was placed in a state-licensed juvenile center. So, over there. So that's not great. In May of 1980, a few months after he moved into the youth center, he wrote a letter to the Swartz's, "What did he say?" This is fucking sad. "Dear Ann Larry K. Bob, hello, I imagine you all are all mad at me, but I would still like to keep in touch. I've graduated from high school and I'm going to Frostburg College because he went and took something. I'm going to have a lot of fun there. How is Ann and you all? How is Ann? He says it twice. How is Ann and you all? How is Ann? I have a broken arm and wrist. I hope you all are having a good time. I am. I am independent living where we live with no supervision. Michael Swartz, you're still using their names. That's his legal name. He's got a broken arm in hand? Yeah, who knows what he did. He said P.S. right back in a picture of the family and one of Ann. Both the boys love Ann, by the way. They're both real protective over her and real, I mean, they've been her, I think, is the thing. Yeah, and she's got it much easier than they did and they want to make sure that it stays that way. Yeah, Larry is horrified that his parents did this. He's like, I thought we had a family going on. Yeah, I didn't know we could just, I'm just a side we don't like someone anymore. Punch people. I'll tell them out. This freaks him out because he's like, oh fuck. What about me? Exactly. He said they made him feel very insecure. Yeah, he was scared that one day they just throw him out if he did something wrong the same way they did with Michael. And Dad doesn't have Michael the punch anymore. No. What if it's me now? He never beats Larry either. Really? That's the other thing. Larry said never beats him. I don't know if it's because he's small or because he's not, he doesn't fight back. I think there's some psychological inferiority feeling of Bob beneath a taller, bigger kid. He's gonna make him feel like he's in charge. Possible or that's a possibility or I think Larry is just so if you yell at Larry he'll go, okay, he won't say you bitch. Yeah. Whereas Michael will be like, fuck you. That's not right. And then he'll get beat up. Where's Larry? He'll go, okay, that's fine. I'll just go to my room now. That's the way he does it. So he's not really, it's hard to get that angry at Larry to beat him because he won't like, won't escalate it with you. So at this point, Larry's relationship with his mother starts deteriorating. She would scream at him twice as much now. What? And he would try to figure out a way to get back into her good graces, but she couldn't figure it out. So he seemed, Larry said he at the time he thought the only people in the world who doesn't don't like him or his parents. In school, he's very popular. That's the thing. Yeah, in school, he's popular. He's known to his teachers and he's not smart, but he's known as polite, good looking. Easy going. It's good looking. He's funny. Yeah. Well, that's his pop. He's also a two sport athlete. He's co-captain of the soccer team. Yeah. You know what I mean? He's doing okay in that regard, but he goes home and they hate him. What the fuck? So they said his friendly nature made it, you know, I guess that's the only way he survived here. So they would talk, he'd still talk to Michael on the phone all the time. They stayed in touch like their brothers all the time, which is very interesting. Tensions start to increase, though. Larry has more arguments with his parents, become a very regular occurrence. They fought over his sports because they thought that being co-captain of the junior varsity soccer team took away from his studies. You know, student athletes, student is the first word. So you shouldn't play sports, but also that's, it's also good for you. It's also his identity and it's what's keeping him afloat because that's not good at school. And yes, this is where he's accepted. Well, if he's decent at soccer too, maybe that and a C average will get him into a half half-assed junior college or something rather than just nothing. But an academic C average, he's middle of the road. He's co-captain, meaning he's one of the two favorites on the team. Yeah, they at least like him. So respect him. I think it's good for your kids. It's great confidence to be good at something like that. Absolutely. So he often would get grounded to where he was only permitted to go to school church and attend his wrestling matches and soccer events. Jesus. Socializing with his friends was kind of out. When he managed to be able to go on a date, they always hated the girls that he asked of. Of course. They wouldn't like it. So his schoolwork got worse and worse. They said he wanted to be his parents' favorite, but it didn't quite work. At one point, he told them he wanted to be a priest. I'll be a priest. He thought that's what they wanted. So they were thrilled and they sent him to a seminary to be begin his first year of high school. And that didn't work because his grades sucked and they recommended that he not return after failing to maintain a necessary grade point average. And they were very upset with him. So he went from having five Ds and a couple of Cs and then gets worse and worse. Just Ds basically. My parents would have been like, "You passed. Good job. Thank you." That report card right there is a Wissman report card. Yeah. Mine too. Just enough to get by. That's it. And he said once Michael left, he said this was like, Michael's like a sponge for their lightning rod. And now that he's gone, now they're concentrating on Larry. And he's like, "Fuck Anne's too young. She can't do anything." So they said when they left, when he left, Michael, they started yelling at me for low grades. I never understood why there was such a change. It was the same grades I was getting. Lightning rod for criticism now. Yeah. But going into high school, they get lower and lower and lower. His father wanted him to go to the Naval Academy. Bob wanted him to go there, but his grades, you have to have good grades to get in there. Bob said, "Don't you understand how important this is? You'll never get anywhere. If you don't do better, we know you can do better. If you don't pull yourself together, you're going to turn out just like your brother." They tell him. Oh, no. Kick that out of the house is what he thought of. Yeah. Somewhere else. Somewhere else. Now, later on too, they'll retest him. His IQ is 87. It is low. He's just not that smart of a guy. That's it. He's just not that bright. That's fine. But I mean, he's not going to go to the Naval Academy. No matter how hard he tries, he's not going to learn trigonometry. It's not going to happen. This is not going to happen. Yeah. This is not well anyway. So by 1983, K is teaching English at Broadneck High School while he is a general engineer for General Electric Company in Lando. Wow. Doing very well for themselves. She had taught a semester somewhere else and then at two different schools and now she's at Broadneck. So is Larry. He goes to Broadneck High. So they changed their will at this point. And in the wills, they leave their worldly belongings to the other spouse if one died. And the event that the other spouse also dies, the will names Larry and Annie as the co-heirs. This is a key change because they took out Michael. They even put in a clause, "I direct that no portion of my estate should go to Michael Swartz, a child whom I adopted but who has since returned to foster care and the guardians name below for Lawrence and Anne are not responsible for Michael's care or support." They don't want anything to do with him. Fuck him. Yeah, that's rough. November 1983, Michael's having a tough time doing his thing, but Larry's trying to get his footing under him. Sure. Larry, Anne comes up to Annie. Little Annie comes up to her mom with pink pills and said, "I found these in Larry's jacket." What? Okay. Said, "Well, I knew it wasn't, you know, Advil." So no, it's an oblong tablet covered with brown and red spots. One of the, on one side, it was stamped "PKS" and on the other side was 20/20. So she, Larry came home, she said, "What are these?" And he said, "Ah, they're not mine. They're a friend of mine." She said, "Well, why are they in your coat? Why are they in your coat?" He said, "I was carrying for them for my friend. He asked me to give them to someone at school." So she said, "You're not that stupid, Larry. Well, turns out he is, but you're not that stupid. What are they?" And finally, he said, "Okay, fine. They're speed. I don't use speed." But he said, "My friend was giving him to another guy and I was going to be in his class." So he said, "Well, you give these to them." And turns out, he actually did take some speed, but he didn't feel anything. From it, because he's hyperactive. So it actually calmed him down. It chilled him out. Yeah, it was like Ritalin. So he was like, "He couldn't figure out why he wasn't buzzing like everybody else." "He didn't do anything for me. Well, that's, there's an explanation." So they yelled at him, told him never to bring drugs home again and all that kind of thing. They ended up taking it in and asking a pharmacist, "Can you tell him what it is?" So they tested it and turns out that it was nothing. It was some shit that somebody made to look like something to sell the kids to steal their money, burn bags, basically. So that's pretty fucking funny. There's another time when he's hanging out with his friends and they go to Denny's. And Kay is convinced they were drinking. Denny's? They weren't just at Denny's. They went out drinking and they used that as an excuse. So the one kid, the friend, told his mother, "We weren't drinking mom. Neither of us were." She believed her son, but Kay said no. They were drinking. Larry's lying. And she yelled, "This is in front of the two moms and the two boys are there. This is happening." And she's telling Larry in front of these people that he's ruined her life. She said, "You're never going to amount to anything. You won't be able to go to college because no college will ever accept you. Just wait and see." John, his friend who she was hanging out with, "He'll go off to college and leave you in his dust. You finally pulled John down to your level." And the other mother was like, "Dude, don't you remember college? There are plenty of drinking going on." Yeah, this is fucking crazy. So then she brought him home and Bob freaked out. Bob said, "You should have been thrown in jail and vomited on and urinated on and given hard labor. Then you would learn what life's about like I did. What you need is labor, physical labor, backbreaking labor. Then you wouldn't be going out at night like this because you wouldn't have the energy. You'd be tired. You'd vomit on your face and piss on your chest. Oh my God. So the mother's still standing there for all the other kids' mother and the kids. She's like, "What?" They just wished vomit and piss on him. The mother went down to talk to Kay and said, "I'd be glad to help you take care of Larry. I'll do anything you need to help." And Kay said, "I just don't know what we can do about him. He's beyond help. He went to Denny's. The kid went to Denny's and he gets seized beyond help. You're an aide on him." The poor kid had bad curly fries in him. Hard labor. You want him pissed on. Holy shit. They said, "Kay, if things are that bad, why don't you have him do his next semester over on the eastern shore and he can live with us?" They'll take off some of the pressure. Very nice. And she said, "No. No, we'll piss on him." No, we'll keep him here. So shortly before Christmas, Michael is confined at the Crownsville to a criminal mental place for evaluation after he drew a knife and threatened a counselor at the Fellowship of Lights, an emergency shelter for homeless and runaway kids in Baltimore. At the shelter he drew a knife on a shelter worker, a counselor, and threatened him. That's where he's at at this point. He's in a fucking homeless shelter in Baltimore. He's got a blade and he's not afraid to pull it out. What have you done to me? He's surviving. I mean, that's what he's doing. Larry, though, everybody in the outside says it looks like he's the model son, popular, nice star athlete doing all this shit, but they're not happy with him at all. Obviously here. They would criticize him in front of friends and all that kind of thing. Everybody said, "No matter what, one person said universally, people said Larry would say nothing except, "Are you finished? May I go to my room?" He'd take all the shit, wouldn't say anything and go, "Is that it? Okay, I'm going to go to my room now." You done yelling at me? We wouldn't talk back, though. Another time he's hanging out with a friend here. And she, okay. Wow. There was a school, I guess there was supposed to be a big snowstorm that night, and school's not going to happen. It's one of those, we're getting two feet of snow. We know that tomorrow is a snow day. So Larry called home to spend, asked permission to spend the night at a friend of his with a group of friends who were hanging out at a friend's house, and the parents knew when it was there, letting the kids stay over. They planned to watch Superman 2 on VHS that they rented that night. Is that the one with the ice caves? I think so. Yes, the fortress of solitude. Yeah, yeah, that's that one. That's not the Richard Pryor one. That's a bad one. It's the middle one. Yeah, it's cheese. It's all cheese. I mean, it's that era of, I watched it a hundred times when I was a kid, but it was always, yeah, it was always crappy. The Russian are weird guys. Because there was three is getting mixed up in there, too, I'm not sure. So all the kids called, their parents got permission. Larry calls last and K was not having it. The mother could hear K shouting over the phone. And Larry saying, I'm not lying. She asked me to stay. The mother said I could say I'm not lying. So K demanded to speak with the mother. So his mother, Susan, gets on the phone and K says, what's going on? What are the boys doing tonight? And she said, well, they're going to go out sledding for a while and then come in and watch a movie, which seems fine. She said, K said, Larry's not to be trusted. I don't want him spending the night there. What is going on? She said, they'll be supervised. Don't worry. All the other boys have permission. It's totally fine. She said, you know, we were going out sledding. We came in. We rented Superman, too. And K said, Superman, too. Absolutely not now. I didn't know that you were watching that movie. You're watching sacrilegious stuff, too. And she said it was about the, because he sacrificed his superhuman powers for the earthly pleasures of Lois Lane's love. For all that Lois Lane pussy. Yeah. She said, I would assume that you would think that was as inappropriate for kids as I would. It's Superman. Who's it for? It's a comic book movie, lady. Jesus. She said that movie shows Lois Lane in bed with Superman. Oh, come on. Look at her, though. They don't have sex in the movie, but she said this, quote, everyone knows they just had sex and the movie doesn't say one word about preventing pregnancy. The last thing this world needs is another abortion or unwanted baby. Don't worry. The movie right through her. Wow. The movie doesn't, but yeah, right out of her back. There's no way she's going to accept that. Like a 44 slug. It'll blow her back. Yeah. Forget about it. The movie doesn't bother showing that when a baby's born, it may be adopted one day and some fool will have to take care of it. That's what she told. Everything she could. Superman too can be taken back to this. It's crazy. It's Adrian for Christ sake. Yeah. The least fuckable woman on the planet. Don't worry about it. It's yeah, as she says, the mother said, but it's rated PG and the kids. The kids are 16 and 17 years old. They're not four. Right. And that PG is today's like fucking further than G. It's fine. Cartoon movies. They still allow a lot. They still have a lot back then. They still do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah, and goonies. All the kids were smoking and cursing. Yeah, I mean, it was fine. That was PG. So she just said that she, the mother's, the friend's mother said she felt embarrassed for Larry because all the other kids were looking around like, dude, your mom's crazy. She said, there's no nudity anywhere in it. There's not even a mention of sex. Like it's fine. And she said, nope. Meanwhile, Michael's in and out of hospitals. He got a job at a Popeyes chicken in Annapolis, but overslept one morning and they fired him. Yeah. The chickens got to be made. It's got to be made. No sandwiches already. People will riot. That's the problem. We've learned that we've learned it. People will kill each other over a sandwich. Yeah, it's fucking delicious. I'll kill you for chicken. It's delicious. So less than two weeks later, he was sent to the Crownsville Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He's found to have no mental illness, but he also has no home, so they just keep him there for a while. Larry also got a job at a fast food restaurant before Christmas. He was hired at the Chesapeake Sub Shop, mixed sandwiches. He was only there a few weeks. The assistant manager said he just didn't work out. Food is not his line of work. Too dumb to make sandwiches. Oh, my God. When the food service industry is not your line of work. He just shrugs it off. His friend's one of his friends said he was never one with big problems. If there was anything on his mind, he would have talked to me about it because we shared problems. Even family problems. I think he's kind of quiet in his own way. But with people he knows he's very caring. He's always there to listen. I've talked to him many times. So if you're nice to him, he'll be nice to you. At Amiga Insurance, we know it's more than just a house. It's your home, the place that's filled with memories. The early days of figuring it out to the later years of still figuring it out. For the place you've put down roots, trust Amiga home insurance. Amiga. Empathy is our best policy. Delve into the shadows of the mind with sleeping dogs. A gripping murder mystery, starring Academy Award winner Russell Crow. Now available on digital. Crow portrays an ex-homicide detective unraveling a brutal murder he can't recall. Uncovering secrets from his past, he learns a chilling truth. It's best to let sleeping dogs lie. Visit sleepingdogsmovie.com/wondery to watch Sleeping Dogs. Now on digital. That's sleepingdogsmovie.com/wondery. January 16, 1984. Seems normal. Things seem average here. Kay and Larry have a little disagreement about a girl that Larry had taken out on a date. She did not approve of her and did not want Larry to go out with her again. Hussy, apparently. So this argument ended and then Bob yelled at Larry for messing with his computer and destroying some work he had completed. Bob was really pissed off and this got really bad yelling, screaming, all sorts of shit like that. When this got over, when he said there you finish, can I go to my room, Larry went up to his room and drank some rum that he had hidden up there. To take the edge off. They got this kid drinking like a stockbroker after work. He was like Jesus, tough day, margin calls. One more left. Put it up. Let's go. Slam and drinks down. Throw in papers in my face saying sell, sell, sell, give me a bourbon. Holy shit. So then 7 a.m. the next morning, Larry calls 911 and he says my parents are dead. You might want to send someone over here and they said and what do you think is wrong with them? Do you think I need to send an ambulance? What do you think is wrong with them? And he said I have no idea. I just saw him lying down there. My mom is outside. And they said on the ground outside and he said yes. They said okay, I'll send an ambulance here. They said that the woman in the 911 call said that the caller had extraordinary composure. And he sounded grown up, not childlike. He was just like very businesslike. His tone was matter of fact. They said it was like he was talking about what he had for breakfast, just normal. She said do you want to stay on the line with me for a few minutes? And he said all right, sure, what's going on here? So yeah, they arrive and when they arrive they find Larry holding Annie and Annie and Larry are by the front door. Annie's holding hands with Larry. He said Larry's very composed. He calmly leads them into the house. They said where are your parents? He said downstairs. And you know she's right there down the little girls right there. And hanging out with them. She's eight at this point nine. We don't know eight or nine. It could be thirty five nine I think. They said she seemed right. By there's a newspaper article that said quote her narrow eyes looked frightened. Why? Why include that? Did we tell you she's Korean? Why not just say her she was frightened? She appeared frightened obviously as a small child. Her narrow eyes look right even through even through her chingy chong ching chong eyes. I could see even inside her soulless Asian eyes. I could see something. That's squinty shit exuded. I could see it through her godless communist slanty eyes. I could see it all. It's like so fucking crazy. I could see the reflection of a mushroom cloud. I could see it like Nagasaki coming to pay its respects. Then the next sentence is even fucking better. She wore her hair dark hair pulled back and had a cute face like an oriental Barbie doll. We get it. She's fucking Korean. It's just funny. They don't mean anything bad by it. It's just hilarious. Oh, it's amazing. What year is this fucking 1985? Is this taking place? It's fucking a layer of narrow eyes. Looks frightened. Jimmy's eyes are narrow right now too. Is there clothes with tears coming out there? Her narrow slanty godless communist eyes. I could see it. That's awesome. Jesus, I am so funny. So he asked Larry, "What happened?" He said, "I don't know." I just came in and found them downstairs. He beats the shit out of me. He told the neighbor that he spotted his mother's body in the yard when he looked out of his second floor bedroom as he was getting ready for school. He saw his mom out in the yard. In the yard. In the yard. And he was in another second floor bedroom. He went and got her. So the emergency team goes down. They find Bob first, actually. Bob is dead. He is lying inside a small basement office, covered in blood, several gas marks on his chest and arms. Covered in blood. And he's fully clothed, but his legs are like wide open in a weird way. So they walk through the dining room in the kitchen and they find a stairwell descending into a landing that opened into the large basement recreation room. They found a ping-pong table, a bar, upright piano, a quarter-ice sofa, your typical basement. Black vinyl arm chairs, but no people. Then they had toward the sliding glass door, opened the door, and that's when they said they saw feet. They said they were spread unnaturally far apart. And this is where Bob is in the small room. And they said they had to enter the tiny room. It's an office off the stairway landing and turn right. A stocky man lay sprawled on his back between an ironing board and an overturned typing stand. One arm was twisted back underneath his hip. He looked as if someone had dumped a bucket of blood on him. Just blood fucking puddle. With an arm behind his back. Like here, like you fell on it. They said that there were big red blotches all over his shirt. He had a big wide stupid, you know, air-80s tie. They said his tie was laid. It was loosened and was a skew kind of in his armpit. Blood streaked his bald head and face. And he just looked terrible. They said everything was in disarray around the body. There was a lamp that was sideways on the carpet. Books and papers were scattered everywhere. He had a brown buckle loafer on his right shoe, but his left foot was missing a shoe. Yeah, they said it was very strange. The shoe was balanced oddly on its toe, leaning up against a shelf across the room. Like he got tossed over there. They said they checked his pulse and they noticed that he had holes all over him. They figured it was gunshot wounds. This guy has been shot a bunch of times. They saw a pair of blood smeared glasses and a gold and pearl type in there. No pulse. And then they hear, "I found one out here." Okay, they go to K. She's in the backyard. She is nude, except for one sock. Really? One sock. And they said it appeared. She looked like she was partially scalped. Oh, wow. The way her hair or the way the skin was taken off her head and her neck had several deep lacerations. Now, completely against police protocol, one of the paramedics felt bad because she was not only killed and naked, but she was also legs were spread very wide as well. So he covered her up with a blanket, which is not crime scene etiquette at all here. We need fucking... Preserve everything. You need trace evidence, physical stuff, and he just put hairs... Fucking fibers. Let me fuck all that up for you there. That's... Here's a tarp of different shit and just lay it on her. Just lay it on her hand. Whatever's been in my trunk, my stuff, all my shit on there. Who knows? So they said they described her as stripped and stretched into an unnaturally spread eagle position in the snow behind the family home. It was out in the snow, which is wild. And the father was in a similar position in the basement. So, yeah, they're looking. They see basically outside in the snow. It looks like a red slush outside the door, blood in the snow. And that's when they see her naked, her body, they said, described it as her skin appeared as sickly gray against the snow. One green knee sock pushed down around her ankle. They said her arms were pulled up to her ears and her legs were pushed far apart like her husband's. And they suspected that she'd been raped as well here, at this time, based on what they saw. There was a white eye patch hung over her left eye. They said across her neck were a series of bloody gashes. And on the ground of her head was a gaping moon matted with hair and blood. Big fucking thing. They said they've seen a lot before. These are firemen that responded to this kind of thing, but this shit was wild. They said, yeah, this is disturbing. They said it looks like somebody put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger and blew the top of her head off. That's what they were considering. They figure happened. So they surveyed the backyard, a tan moccasin upside down in a dog food bowl. A green tart pulled over a small oval swimming pool, blue flannel pajama suit, red stained and rumpled in the snow, probably what she was wearing. The house, they said it sat halfway down an incline with a carport and a main living quarters upstairs facing the street in a large recreation room downstairs, opening into a fence rear yard. They said, and then there was woods behind that where the swamp is, where Larry would hide. So they said they went back in and they're looking at Bob. And at one point, somebody said, you know, someone could still be in the house. Great point. You should probably check the rest of the fucking house's children here. So that's good. So they, but they're firemen. They're like fucking art. See if the police radio in? Where the hell are the cops? They're not there yet. Wow. No cops here yet. These are just the firemen paramedics. They said the paramedics. All right, we'll send the paramedics. Yeah, cops will be there eventually. They'll make the call if we need cops. Yeah. So Larry's sitting up there with Annie sitting on his lap and they said, where were you last night if you weren't here? Because he said, I just came in. Yeah. And he said, I was here, Larry said. So they said, I thought you said you came in and found your parents. He said, I woke up and I couldn't find him. Then I went in downstairs. I came in the basement. And they said that. And he said, so you mean you were here all night and you didn't hear the shooting? And he said, no. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, they, they, you know, asked him that. They're like, OK. So Larry spoke with this officer. He, you know, he's telling them, I know I woke up at 7, 15 minutes after my sister. And she told him that I can't find mom and dad. So he said, I went looking for him and I looked out the window. I saw it through the out the back window and that's like all the cops. So yeah, they said it seemed like he was in a days. They let him outside to the carport, figuring a little privacy might help. And at one point, he said in a low voice, their dead, aren't they? And they said he had no emotion behind it. Just their dead, aren't they? And he said, yes, they are. And they were like, oh, they were checking him. They thought he was in shock because of the way he was acting like he must be in shock. They were checking him out medically to make sure he was not in shock. They said, well, why don't you cry some of it and make you feel better? You know, things like this are hard for anyone to take. And they said he just kind of leaned against this tree there. And he said, it all seems like a dream like it never happened. Just real weird, real fucking weird. So they were like waiting for him to fly because people do that and they break down, but there's never happened. No emotion at all. I mean, he had, but a kid like this, he might be like a Dexter by now. We're like, you don't really have the emotion to give at this. He's got a lot of crying. All right, he's all cried out. He may have cried his last year. So it's a lot. The, I guess there was a, the county dog catcher was trying to catch two dogs in the snow too. The smaller one went to Larry. Larry picked them up and carried him to the dog catcher's truck. It's their dog. The larger one ran after somebody else. And Larry said, hear her. Come here. It's his dog with the dog growled and then kind of wouldn't come near calm down. Then Larry can he put a leash on him. The police officer had pulled his gun on the dog earlier. Now they were asking Larry, what should we do with the dogs? Like, who do we take them to? And he said, he shrugged and said, put him to sleep, I guess. What? Which is a crazy thing for a 17 year old to say. How do you get Larry? The guy, he's the cops. He just stared at him and was like, what the fuck is wrong with this kid? That's not right. Yeah. So he was like, well, we won't do that. Let's, we'll put the dogs aside and give them to somebody. And then he told Larry to go sit in his cruiser. And then the guy, one cop went over to the, to a detective and said, you've got a bad one here. There's a nude woman out back and a dead man in the basement. Before you go down, take a look at that boy. He's the one who reported it. I'm no homicide detective, but there's something wrong with that kid. He's too calm. Yeah. And he's telling us to mark the dogs. Jesus said, fuck him. I don't care. What's going on? They also noticed a spot on his hand, like a little wound. And they said, what's that spot on your hand? And he said, what? Oh, nothing. Just something I got in the kitchen the other day. And they said, how long have you lived here? Since I was six. He describes, you know, all that shit. They said your sister's adopted too. No, no, she's not. They're real. They were actually Korean. You just couldn't tell. You fucking idiot. Yeah, she's adopted. It's amazing when you are part everything. Sometimes kids just pop out. It's so weird. Sometimes they're Korean. It's real, like super Korean. Yeah. Like, they've been rolling the dice trying to get a black boy like a, like an oriental Barbie doll. You never know. Jesus Christ. Tell from her thin eyes. So they also said, you got another brother too. We heard Michael. What's up with him? And he said, well, Michael's been placed in the state mental hospital. They said, what kind of trouble did he get into? And Mike and Larry said, I don't know. He broke into homes. He's pretty heavy into drugs. Lately, he's been worse doing PCP and stuff like that. I heard his friends smuggle it into him in Crownsville. And they said, who are his friends? And he said, I don't know. They said, you don't know the names of the guys smuggling stuff to him. And he said, no, he just told me my friends bring it to me. I don't fucking know. So they said, why don't you tell us everything that happened? And he said, well, and he said, you know, it's exams. He said he went over to his friend's house, played chess for a while, went sledding. Shortly after five, he came home, studied in his bedroom, eight at seven. They said any arguments last night. He said, Dad got mad because I messed up one of his computer disks. I'd been fooling around with a friend and we must have messed it up. Wasn't a big deal. He said, Michael's been calling a lot lately, though. He said that Michael hates mom and dad and mom told me she was afraid Michael would come one day and kill her and dad. He's like, I don't know if maybe that's something you should look into. He said his parents had no idea that he talks to his brother on the phone and would not have approved of it. And his brother had made threats against his parents on the phone to me. He said, he said, Michael is emotionally disturbed. And he said, when his sister woke him up last night because she heard screaming, he said, his sister woke him up at 11 to 11.30. And said, I hear screaming. And I told her, you're dreaming, go back to sleep. And then she came in and slept in my room. And he said, she does that a lot. If she gets scared, she'll come in and sleep in my room. So whatever. So they said, you slept in the same room. He said, yes. He said, OK, what happened this morning? So they woke up and he told me she couldn't find them because they're going over at it with him a couple of times. She said, he said, I grabbed Annie and covered her eyes, which didn't take very much at all. According to the story, I brushed my teeth, put the dental floss over. Yeah, I was blind. Andrew Diesclay joke. And there you go. So he said, I told some, my mom through the window. Well, I'm surprised I didn't put that in there at the time. It's fucking hilarious. They said, did you go downstairs at all? And he said, no, you didn't go into the backyard to check on your mom? He said, no, Annie and I stayed upstairs and got dressed while we were waiting for you guys. So they arrived to test his hands for gunshot residue, which he has none. So they do that. He said, last night, other than Annie, it said what she heard, did you hear any noises? He said, only our dogs barking up back, but they do that a lot. He said, you know, I don't know. He said, the dogs had been in the backyard when he went to bed running around. He said, but the small dog didn't bite, but the big dog occasionally bit strangers. He said, Michael could get around him, though, because he knows Michael. So they said, has anybody in your family been arguing? He said, no, everyone's been getting along with. There's been some big arguments. Dad gets irritable. And he said, me and dad don't get along very well. He's always yelling at me. And the cops said, okay. And I said, thanks for helping me to talk to your sister. They talked to the sister. And she said, she heard her dad making strange noises, crying, help help at 11 30 last night. Mandarin or Cantonese? That's what I mean. Yeah, you never know. What language is that? We talking Korean here? They said, are you sure it was 11 30? She said, I looked at my watch. She said it was 11 34 when I woke up. So she knows exactly what time it was. She's very efficient. And you really never want to be on Saturday Night Live, do you? I'm making fun of them. Everybody takes any other way. Kiss my dick. I don't fucking care. Sorry. Don't tell me you fucking laugh first. Shut up. His fucking brain. So you get a surprise. They don't add that to the as an efficient girl. Very good with math. You know, ridiculous. So they said, what a clever girl. What'd you do then? I built an abacus. That's what I did. I built a Samsung. So they don't catch on fire. So she said, I ran outside to the carport. There was a guy in the backyard walking away. He had a shovel over his shoulder and it was dripping blood. She is so young to have seen that. Holy shit. She's eight or nine. We don't know. And she would like bury her head and Larry's shoulder while she said stuff because it was a lot. And they said, what did this guy look like? And she said, he had black hair curly on top. It came down to his shoulders and he was humming like he was glad or happy. Like, like fucking did it. So weird thing to hum while you do that. So now they look at Larry. He's got curly black hair long and bushy came down to almost his shoulders. So they said, well, what did his face look like? She said she hadn't seen his face, but she noticed he wore blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a broad neck printed on the back like the high school. So they said, was it like the gray sweatshirt that Michael has? And she said, I don't know. And he said, well, how tall was the guy? That's a good thing. Because Larry's only like five nine. So you can tell whether it's one. And she was, Annie looked at bar confusion pinching her round face. Every time bar who is six feet rises up and walks over to the ping pong table and says as tall as I am. And Annie said, taller. And Larry's only five nine. So, and then Larry looks at the cop and says, Michael's real tall. Like, and he's got the same hair as me too. He said, he's six, four, six, six, something like that. And they said, was he as tall as Michael and Annie said, aha, he looked like my brother. Michael, that's not good. They said, you mean Michael? And she said, yes. Anyway, and Larry, then Larry says, Michael does lots of drugs. They said, you told us your brother's at the Crownsville Hospital. If he's in there, he can't get out, can he? I mean, he's locked up. And Larry said, oh, he can get out. Yeah. He said he recently left the hospital and came by the neighborhood for a visit. He was around. And he said that detective said that, you know, he's been able to get drugs in and out of the hospital. They don't really keep him in there. So they trace a trail of bloody footprints. Apparently, Kay had run nearly a mile through the streets yards and woods this night to run away from the nude with one sock on, ran through the whole fucking neighborhood screaming bloody murder. And then came back and ended up circling back to her own yard. Oh my God. And well, I guess at some point she was caught up to and she was dragged back to her house, but she was on her way back there anyway. So they're, they have footprints that they're trying to figure out. They track the footprints readily identifiable because one foot was bare and passed more than she went more past more than two dozen houses in a circular path. Thirty houses almost back to some woods behind her house. So that's what she did. And they believe she was attacked in the woods and then walked back or dragged back to her fenced yard and was killed beside the swimming pool. So they think that she was injured before she fled because there's blood along the streets of blood trail in the snow and on the streets. And they believe she was naked as she fled because her pajamas were found near the house along with one sock left behind. Right. So the cops go door to door for clues. H. James Ferguson says, that's a bizarre tragedy to have next door. There's always the thought in your mind that there's somebody out there and they might come back. On the other hand, there's the thought that this might be the safest place in the world with all this going on who'd come here and do something like that. On the other hand, you just slept through something horrific as someone right next door ran through your front yard for sure. He said he heard voices outside when he got home shortly after 10 p.m. and his own dog barked briefly about an hour later, which is when she would have been running by. She said that another woman, their other neighbor said she heard one of the Swartz's dogs bark at about 11 p.m. And she said, "I'm afraid it's going to be a sleepless night for me tonight." And one of the neighbors said she took Annie into her house while the crowd gathered and the crime scene was on after they talked to her. And the neighbor said, "I don't think this has touched Annie yet. She seems to think her parents are okay. She doesn't get it, like what's going on here, which is possible." Another, the Reverend Kevin Milton from the church said it's a complete mystery and a tragedy. Bob was certainly one of the top leaders in our parish. They said it's another neighbor said it's really the most shocking occurrence. It's a nice middle-class community. Nothing like this happens here. It didn't occur to me to be frightened until everyone asked, "Are you scared?" And he would think about it before that. So, all the neighbors said, one neighbor said, "All of us who live on these two streets ask ourselves, were we up that night? We ask ourselves, why didn't we look out the window? Had we looked out the window, none of us are the type who would have walked away from the window. We would have helped. You would have had to stop going over in your mind the "what ifs." Yeah, if you got a dog that barks at strange shit, maybe check out why have the dog. If isn't usually the dog, they're like a part of a security force. Security force, yeah, you would imagine that they would keep people away. Hey, what's going on? No, people just go, "Don't just fuck off!" He's screaming in his face, "Shut your fucking mouth!" Fucking dog! Why'd you get it? Someone comes in and stabs the shit out of him. Perfect. And a lot of times these murderers avoid places with dogs. I remember Richard Ramirez was like, "A dog, I'm out." I leave. I don't need to fucking that kind of trouble. That's a man that loves murder. He smells like a goat and loves murder. And he's like, "I'm not fucking with dogs, they bite you." Goat smelling murder lovers. Yeah, they bite and they alert others. I want quiet and murder. Oh, yeah. So, January 21, 1984, and Larry are sent to live with neighbors here. Just a couple of neighbors across the street. They're sent to live with them. Because they can't stay in a crime scene, basically. They said these were the Swartz's closest personal friends they go to live with. Now, Michael's the main subject of suspect here. They asked, "Did you remember seeing Michael here?" They go to the hospital and ask the people in charge there. "Do you remember seeing Michael here last Monday night?" And they said, "Yeah." One guy said he worked the shift ending at 11 o'clock that night. And I remember I said, "Good night" to him when I left around 11-15. Okay. That's no way he could have been there. The exact time this is going on. So, they're like, "Huh." And he said, "If that was correct, then the Annie states about the neighbors and everybody." Everything happened at about 11-30. It's looking like it doesn't seem like he could have got over there. And then the supervisor volunteered that another nurse had seen Michael on the ward too. That nurse was off duty at the moment and had mentioned to the supervisor after the murders made the news. That she's Michael was there. So, the cops asked the supervisor to lock them in Michael's ward and leave them alone. They wanted to see if it was secure. They said it was an open large room with long rows of beds. So, it seemed like a Marine Corps barracks. The long guy said he was in the Marines. They checked the windows. Each had a locked heavy metal screen. They saw that the bed was visible from the nurse's station at the end of the hallway. Also, Michael's bed. Unless he escaped through a window, he would have had to sneak past the attendant who was right outside the room and passed several more locked doors down the corridor. They said, "No fucking way Michael did this." He was here. Period. Done. Yeah, you're locked away. You're not doing it. So, they said they have no suspects. None. Yep. They said, "As far as the children go, they have just about totally ruled them out." The one cops said. It's not the fucking nine-year-old Korean girl. Right. Probably. So, they said, "Any arrests coming?" And they said, "We don't know. Everything will work itself out. The police are double and triple checking everything." Turns out they'd had way more than they said and they were just sandbagging. Really? Yeah, they talked to Annie again and they talked to her and she talked about the broad neck sweatshirt and all kinds of things like that. And they asked her a bunch of times and they said, "Tell me again." And she said, "My brother told me to come back in so I came back in and called Sandy." That's one of the small dogs. She said, "Did you tell your brother anything then?" She said, "Yeah. I told my brother that daddy was lying outside in the snow and he told me that I was dreaming." So, now it's that. They said, "We'll describe the man you saw." She repeated her earlier description, long sleeve sweatshirt with broad neck printed on the front and back and it resembled one of the ones that her brother, Larry, has, like his wrestling shirts. They said the man, when she said the man was carrying a shovel, they said, "What did it look like?" And she said, "Like our shovel." And they said, "Do you know how to draw? Are you an artist?" And she said, "I guess, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm more of a math girl, but sure." I draw. More engineer. Yeah, yeah. She said, "Could you draw me a picture of the shovel you saw?" And so they grabbed the notebook and she sketches it out. They said most of them, they look like shovels and not wood splitting malls because they find a wood splitting mall in the woods, in the swampy area with blood and K's hair on it. Oh, no. So they're asking that and they're like, "Well, what do you use it for?" And she said, "We used it to put our gate up around our pool and we used it for digging stuff out." They said, "You ever use it on wood?" And she said, "No." They said, "You didn't say anything to your brother outside seeing somebody outside or did you?" And she said, "I totally forgot to say that. No." So they said, "You forgot that. Okay. So what did you do then? You went back to sleep?" And she said, "I don't remember that." They said, "Well, anywhere you went, okay, what'd you do next?" She said, "I think I went back there to bed." And she said, "It was like an hour and a half later, my brother threw up. I woke up and heard him throwing up, Larry." And they said, "Where were you when he threw up?" And she said, "On his beanbag chair because that's where she would go sleep." And she said, "Okay. Was he in bed or in the bathroom when he was throwing up?" And she said, "He was in his bedroom." And she said that he woke up and he told her she was just dreaming. Go back to sleep. "You're just dreaming. I'm not puking." They said, "Did you tell me? Did he tell you to do anything?" And she said, "He just told me to go back to sleep." They said, "When did you ask for your pillow?" She said, "I don't know when." They said, "Did he ask you for your pillow?" And she said, "Aha." And he said, "Why?" She said, "I don't remember." And they said, "Did you get it for him? No, I had it with me." And all this type of shit, the pillow. By the way, they find out she's been stabbed almost 20 times and bashed over the head repeatedly with a large, heavy maul. Wow. And the father has just shitloads of stab wounds all over him, covered in stab wounds. So that's what's happened. He wasn't beaten, just stabbed a fox. The target of the rage is her. And she's naked and obviously displayed in a very specific way. So they go over and they keep asking her questions. And she said that Larry did not go downstairs. They said, "Did you stay with you? Aha." We stick together, she said. And she said, "I want to go home." And they had to end the interview because she didn't want to talk anymore. She was like, "I'm tired of talking about this traumatic shit." So police found a gray sweatshirt, broad neck on the back, in a washing machine at the house. Oh. Sweat still in the washing machine. It had been washed but not dried. They didn't like that. They issue a warrant also on the basis of a fingerprint comparison that linked Larry with the bloody hand print found at the murder scene on the sliding glass door. It was a bloody palm print right on there. They took his fingerprints and took it to the FBI lab and compared his prints with the bloody hand print and it's a match. So that's not good. His hand in blood. In blood on the door. So they were saying, "Did you go down and talk to them or do anything? Did you go down and try to shake them, hey Dad, wake up and then come in and open the door?" He said, "No." He said, "No." They go, "Okay, well then your hand print shouldn't fucking be there." If he said, "I went down and checked on them and then I came in the house." They go, "Fuck, well now what?" But no. So they said, "Okay." Now at this point, Larry is with the friend of the families who's a lawyer and is acting as his lawyer as well and his caretaker at this point. Yeah, this Baradol guy or Baradell. And they talked to him to talk, they want to talk to Larry. And this guy's his guardian, so they have to talk to him first. So they also find a pair of wet, bloody Docsider shoes belonging to Larry in the house as well. Boat shoes. Boat shoes, yes. Another boat shoe person. And also some of the clothing in the washing machine. They also found his footprints in the blood-soaked snow near his mother's body. Larry. Not good. They also said the footprints around the body there match the Docsiders that he wore, bloody fingerprints on the, you know, door. It's not good. The same swamp that he goes and hangs out in. That's where they found the mall tossed in there. And if there wasn't enough evidence, also they're going to arrest him. And when they do, he tells everybody in jail that he killed his family. So that's, and he tells it to psychiatrists as well. Larry. Now, they said they were sandbagging this and holding it back because they said his demeanor was common and seemingly unconcerned. The first paramedic actually said that he was scared for his life because he thought Larry was going to kill him when he was looking at the bodies because he thought he was like lowering him in because he thought he did it because he was real cold. That sign site, he said, who the fuck now is? They said that he gave conflicting reports to police. At one point he said he had arrived home that morning and later he said he'd been home that night before but had been bombed because he drank a bunch of rum. So they said they announced he wasn't a suspect. They did that to protect Annie because they didn't want him to do anything to Annie because she's a witness. So they had to be cool about the whole thing. And his lawyer said, I'm not of the opinion that he is a threat to anyone and especially not to Annie. If I'm convinced of anything, I'm convinced of that. Okay. So they arrest Larry, like I said, and they said nobody else but Larry was involved to one person crime. People fucking are like, what the fuck? This is crazy. Not family. Friends said he's not highly emotional. He's a quiet child. I don't understand this. This is weird. One kid at school who's on the wrestling team with him said, I don't even know if I'll go to school tomorrow. Everyone will come up and say how sorry they are and I don't know if I can take it. He's a good friend to his from the wrestling team. The junior class president who attends church with Larry and his friends with him says that nobody believes he did it. He's like class OJ. He said, no one thinks he did it. It is too horrible for anyone in our school or any of Larry's friends to come to grips with. It's just too big. People flew in, relatives fly in from around the state to see him as well. One of his cousins said he was the model son. He's so mild mannered. All of us trusted him. We can't absorb it, one said. Funeral draws 500 people by the way. Big old funeral. Kay's family comes to town and they treat him like shit. They said, which is weird. They were like, that's strange. Weird. The one cop said, did you see how they treated those kids? They didn't even talk to them. Hey, man, Annie, this was before he was arrested. That's what I knew. He said, I couldn't believe they didn't show more attention or concern for those kids. They're relatives for Christ's sakes. But the lawyer said that they probably think of them as family pets. They probably look at them as Bob and Kay's children, not part of their family. Yeah. So these are what weird shit they're doing. We're not talking to those kids. So they talk again about the marks on Larry on his hand and they said, Bob's not going down without a fight. Bob's, he was the Navy. He's a tough guy. He punches kids, James. He'll knock a kid out. And they asked Larry, what happened to your hand? He said, I burned myself frying hamburgers. They said, okay, that's fine. They said, it looked more like a burn than a scratch. They actually believed him there. And the cousins asked him questions. They said, do you have any idea who did this? And he said, no, I really don't. They said, who would want to kill them? And Larry said, well, my mom had a run-in with a kid at school because he's a teacher. And they said, what, over grades? And he said, yeah, he's kind of a troublemaker. Mom was mad about him, mad at him about something he'd done. And the police are checking on him. They said, do you think Michael did it? He said he could have done it. Who knows? He said, how likely do you think Michael did it? Do you think there's a 50% chance? And he said, I don't know probably more. 60% chance? And he said, maybe 80? 87? 83.4% chance? Or the kid at school? I don't know. Larry's lawyer, though, says, they're saying he did it because he had wet clothes in the washer. The guy said, good Lord, the kid lived there. He had a right to wash his clothes. At least wait till the FBI to determine if there's blood on the clothes. Come on, man. Jesus. And they said, well, what about the fingerprints? And he said, well, all right, let's wait until there's an ID on the prints. Don't jump to conclusions. You've got to make sure, absolutely sure, they're Larry's. Not just here, the FBI's got to see it. You're talking about murder. Remember, that's traumatic. This boy's brain could have been denser than a London fog. This guy's hilarious. He might not have remembered what day it was, much less what window he looked through, because first he said it was his room, and then he said it was the kitchen. He could have run around the house in a panic. Maybe even maybe even run outside. Get in his hands and shoes bloody when he looked at his mother, then blocked it all out. Let's face it, circumstantial. Much of this can be explained away. The detective, detective bars response to that is, quote, give me a break. He said, the boy can't explain everything away. There's too many inconsistencies. He's lying. Larry ends up starting to fill his attorney in on some details. And he starts telling him, you know, you got to start talking to me. You got to start filling me in. I'm your buddy and your lawyer here. So they end up talking to him, and they tell him, look, the police don't believe your story. They think you're lying, and here's why. They go down all the holes in his story. How could he have known his father was dead if he never went downstairs? That's a part of it. How could, did he really expect anyone to believe that he slept through all this when everybody else woke up in the neighborhood that he told Annie she was dreaming? What about that? They said, you know, lawyers often tell juries false exculpatory statements are evidence of guilt. And they said, we got to, you've told police some fucking bad stories. So we got to figure this out here. Let's talk about it. And he said, come clean. He said, this is why the police are going to arrest you, Larry. This is the point you're getting arrested for this. You're not telling us something. You're not telling us anything. And he said, let it go. It's over. We love you. It's not going to change that. You've got to let it go. So, Larry then says, yes, I did it. Why? He screams, yes, I did it, crying and sobbing uncontrollably. Oh my God. The first drop of emotion anyone has seen from this child in 10 years since he's six year old. He's never broken like this. He finally snaps. He dropped his whole body, weeping uncontrollably. And the lawyer said it was like a lifetime of sorrow coming out in one. And all it took was, these are the reasons they don't believe you, Larry. Yeah. All right. Well, fuck. Uncork it. Larry said he wouldn't stop hitting me. He wouldn't stop hitting me. And they said, they didn't ask him, what do you mean? They didn't ask him to explain anything. Because he told the lawyers earlier, he hit Michael, he doesn't hit me. Right. So, they said he was dry heaving and like fucking just, I mean, it was like a full on meltdown. Holy shit. Yeah, dudes having a meltdown. And they said he's not really any questions to answer any condition to answer questions at the moment. At least you get him to a psychiatrist, I think is probably the best. Probably. So, he's Larry explained to the psychiatrist that he had trouble expressing emotion since he was small. He made an effort to hold things inside because he feared the consequences of letting things out. Right. He said, quote, before I came to live with the Swartz, as it seemed every time I gave my opinion or showed any emotion, I got moved to a new home. Yeah. He's like, I'm just going to be cool. This is when police find out about how they handled the different, the children, how they were raised, the, the abuse and things like that. One person said they were strict with their children, but at the same time they were very kind to them. But they also beat the shit out of Michael a lot and punched him. So Larry goes in with two man cell and in a four man cell, his roommates like him, his cell mates. I think he's okay. Decent guy. They say he's, they, he's always on TV on the local news. So they're like, Oh, there it is. Your murder's on TV. You know, they tell him and he's like, Oh yeah. He liked watching himself on TV. They said he thought that was cool. Yeah. They had a black and white set that he could watch there. They said, Larry, you're a TV star now. So they said he was very messy, didn't clean up a shit in jail and all that kind of thing. He wouldn't clean up a shit. They go pick up your shit and he'd go, Oh, stop bitching. You're always bitching at me. So now he's like, you're not my mom. I'm not talking fucking kill you like my mom. So he let his personal appearance slide. He would stop shaving and shit and not combing his hair, just kind of getting lazy, gets tons of letters, chicks are sending him his hot, massive amounts of letters, man. They wrote everybody, people writing the lawyers and the prosecutor writing him. He's innocent. He's too handsome. All is shit. So they want blood from him. They need a blood sample. So they have to go to court to try to get a blood sample from him. They talk about Larry, you're up for the death penalty here. And he said, quote, it never really occurred to me that I could get the death chair. I'm really afraid of the death chair. Yeah, you should be. That's not good. The death chair. Then finally, he says what he did. He says it was my wrestling shirt, my sweatshirt that Annie saw, yeah, she said that's what it was. They analyzed that this for they detected no blood on one shirt, but other clothing items they detected blood on, including a towel, a pillowcase and a blue curtain that was found outside. He said that he didn't know why there was a curtain out there. He doesn't remember why he put a curtain out there. He doesn't know why. No idea of what that is. He also said they tested everything for vomit and found no trace on the pillowcase or anything else found in the woods. So they were like, what's up with that? I thought you threw up. Your sister said you threw up. So they said he couldn't explain why his clothing was scattered into three distinct piles. They said, did you make more than one trip into the woods? And he said, I don't think so. He only remembered going outside once in front of his house to get rid of his clothes. He remembered tossing the mall and the knife in the swamp behind the house and said he was it was earlier in the evening immediately after the murders when he dragged his mother's body outside. He only remembered going outside two times. He said the whole night was a blur though. He doesn't remember. He said shortly before the murders, his parents thought he was studying in his room, but he was really drinking rum that he had hidden in a Pepsi bottle in his dresser. And they said, why were you drinking? And he said, he'd been studying for exams. He said, I didn't want my parents to find the rum. I wanted to get rid of it. So I drank it. They said, that's odd. They said, how much did you drink? And he held up his right hand and did three fingers. I like that much rum. All of it. It's a lot of rum. Plenty of rum for a 16 year old, 17 year old. So he said, I really can't remember a lot of details. He said, he drank the rum in his room, went to the basement laundry room to put his clothes in the washing machine. After he left the laundry room, he passed through the family room where his mother was watching TV. She called out looking for him and said, how do your exams go today? He knew he had failed Spanish and was in danger of failing two more courses. So he said, I think I did pretty, pretty well on one, but I think I flunked Spanish. She said, Oh, Larry, knowing you, you probably failed them both. You'll probably fail them all. Oh my God. She sounds like Livia Soprano. Oh, knowing you, you probably failed both. You'll probably fail them all. Ah, Jesus. So he had two more exams the next day, including driver's ed, and he was mad at his parents for telling him that he couldn't get his driver's license until he passed all his courses. Right. He said he stood a few feet behind the chair where she sat with his back with her back to him, and then he noticed them all. He said in one confession, he said he was on the floor by the sliding glass door and another version that mall was by the hearth. So they said it did they, he couldn't tie that down. He told a state, state psychiatrist that his mother's retort infuriated him. He said she was very sarcastic. I was very mad at her sarcasm. So he said there was a quote, there was a wood splitting mall there. She was sitting and watching TV with her blue pajamas on. I got the mall and I hit her in the back of the head and dropped the mall. She was still sitting there. There was a little table in front of the TV with some silverware and a steak knife on it. She was breathing sharply. I could hear that real loud. I did not care anymore about anything in the world. I picked up the steak knife, stabbed her and got her around the neck. Oh my. Holy shit. When I saw her blood, I felt like good in a sense because I finally did something about them yelling at me. I did not feel good because I don't like blood. I had blood on my hands, not much. Then he said I started growling like a dog dog boy now, what is happening? You better watch out. Your sister doesn't hear that. You'll be fucking in the walk tomorrow. Obviously, I'm kidding, fuck off. What's the worst one I could do with that? Jenny almost died. No, he said, then I saw my father standing there. He was in his computer room in the basement. He was stunned. I was standing right in front of him with a knife in my right hand. I stabbed him in the left chest around his heart. His father was like, yeah, just like what the hell, he started stabbing because he knew what he was going to be best. He screamed and fell back into his room and shut the door. I pushed the door open. He was still standing up. I stabbed him again twice and shut the door. Then I came to my mind and said, oh God, oh God, about 20 times. Then I thought I wanted to get rid of everything, not to be caught. I took my mother's wrist, dragged her out of the room into the snow, took her clothes off because I wanted to get rid of the fingerprints on her clothes. Okay. By the way, the running around was him outside. That's the fingerprint. That's the prints they found. He lost one of his shoes at one point. So she said, oh God, this is so weird. Okay, dragged her out into the snow, took her clothes off because I wanted to get rid of the fingerprints on her clothes. I bent over and fingered her twice. What? Why? What is that? Why did you finger your dead foster mother? What is that? I don't know. And that's a fascinating choice of words. I bent over and fingered her twice. What is that? What is it? Two fingers? I don't understand. That's fucking weird. Just one in and out. I don't know. He said, I was ready to throw up. Thanks. I am. I'm right there with you. Well, that's the only normal response I had so far. That's the one. He said, I backed up, picked up the mall with one hand and a knife in the other hand. It was a revenge feeling. I took the knife and mall and threw them in the swampy area. Then I thought about Anne, my sister. If she wasn't there, there was no reason in the world to go back in that house. I passed by my mother's body, went in, took off my shirt and shorts, and he was there and told me she heard a scream. I told her that she'd been dreaming and she went back to my bed and slept there. I couldn't sleep that night. I wished everything was a dream, but I knew it wasn't. I threw up once on the pillow, then went to the bathroom and took off my shirt and shorts. I wanted to get rid of them. They said, why would he, the one psychiatrist said, why did you put your finger inside your mother after you killed her? He just said, he shrugged and said, I was so mad that I felt I had to do something real bad to her. Wow. That's what he said. He said that, That might be the closest we ever get to the explanation of rape at all. Yeah, I don't know. Or at least this, yeah, in this regard. They said that he said his next memory was seeing them all come down in a slow motion on his mother's head. The lawyer said, then he remembered what he thought was extremely loud breathing, which I think was not the case, but almost like a roar and then seeing the knife on the table and being afraid that his mother's loud breathing would wake up Annie. He didn't want Annie to see this, so he had to stop the noise, which is when he started stabbing. That's what the lawyer says. Then he remembered hearing his father yelling for help. It sounded very distant and they said, you know, that's what happened. So anyway, that's his explanation. Geez, that's what he fucking did, which is insane. That's too much, Larry. Yeah, that is, wow, so it's just a straw that broke the camel's back kind of thing. And he said that he said to him, it seemed like he was viewing himself or somewhere from like up on the ceiling or in the corner in the wall, he was like a surveillance camera watching the whole scene. And psychiatrists say that that's evidence of a bit of a psychotic reaction. Yeah. They said, then he turned around and sensed his father was there and somebody somebody was there. He saw his father standing on with what he called a blank look as if not comprehending anything. Then he heard himself or heard a growl like a wolf or a dog or whatever and realized it was himself. And his lawyer said, I think he remembered stabbing his mother once or twice and stabbing his father maybe one or two times. He sensed himself taking one giant step and his father falling back into the computer room. He stabbed his mother 17 times. Right. That's he's glossing over what he did, but a lot of people even they lose track, they lose track, even like police officers and whatever, they don't know how many shots they fired. They just don't know. They let off two rounds and their guns empty. Well, you didn't. You let off six. Oh shit. Even if they missed and it's not like a trial, like it's just it's just a report and they'll think they only fired off to and they fired off six is just how it is your brain blocks certain. Shout out. That's it. Yeah. So wow. He's they said, what were you thinking? And he said, I wasn't thinking. Right. He said, just impulses were coming to me thoughts were coming into my mind. I mean, being. And then another thought would come into my mind, drag her outside. This is stupid. Then thinking, are there going to be fingerprints on the sleeper? I got to take the sleeper off. No, that's stupid throwing that down. Now I can see that happening. It wasn't like, I was saying, I got to do this. I got to do that. He's just like it was just his brain was in a million different fucking places. So this is a lot. Now they asked about the bear trail of bear footprints and he claimed he had no knowledge of the tracks and couldn't remember what he wore in his feet when he ran outside to hide the evidence, which is the running around the house, but he did recall a couple of things. He said, when I came back on the carport, my feet were burning and the next day I found a gas on the bottom of my foot, I had no idea where it came from. He said, when did you notice the gas? And he said, when I was at the police station, I felt this numbness on my toe, took my sock off and there was a deep gas on my toe and I couldn't remember cutting it. So they said, when he got the cut, he was probably barefoot, didn't remember getting cut, so he was probably repressing the memory of being outside is what the psychologist said. So who knows? Because he had to have done it. It's definitely him. And it matches up too. They said that his shoe size matches the tracks here. So that's because his mother and his feet were only a half inch apart inside, so they confused it. Yeah. Wow. The lawyer said he describes an explosion going off in his mind. Holy shit. So they're going to charge him, obviously, clearly. And they said his attorney says his bizarre confession combined combined with his memory gaps said he must have had a psychotic reaction. You know, we it's in the throes of a psychosis. This is a mental problem, and that's what we should plead is insanity. So yeah, he said he liked to keep all of his emotions wrapped up. He said, Larry couldn't cry because when he had a temper tantrum in his own mind, he'd be moved the next day. That's what it's about. So they were like, okay, but he's still got a, I mean, if you kill two people, you're going to get moved. You're going to get moved somewhere else. Yeah. Especially the two people that pay the bills. Right. So the prosecutor said that he only recently learned of the alleged abuse in the home. So he needs a minute to think about this. The shrink here says that his insanity defense sounds good because he suffered. This one person diagnosed him as chronic, undifferentiated schizophrenia. And they said, it's a mental illness that profoundly distorted the way he perceived thought and felt about the world often appears in adolescence and characterized by things such as hallucinations and delusions and dissociation. So they said he might have experienced an acute psychotic episode caused by that. They do another test. He's got an 87 IQ, like we said. So they said, you know, he's functional and all that kind of thing, but, you know, not the brightest bulb on the shelf, but that's fine. So, yeah, they're trying to, by the way, the family is such a weird reaction. Some of the people are like, well, I mean, he's part of the family and some of the people are like, fuck that kid. And all of them are shocked. They're like, he never even gets mad. I've never seen that kid raise his voice. Like I don't understand it. He's the commas kid. They, the fingerprint reports to command and they revealed that the three prints lifted inside the house didn't match those of Larry or his parents. And the location of at least one of the prints seemed significant on the inside of the doorknob of the computer room where his body was found. It was a partial palm print appeared to be in blood. So they said they couldn't figure out who that matched up to. It was didn't really match anybody. But they said it could have been a paramedic. It could have been somebody and they put a fucking blanket over. They weren't growing by policy there. So he is charged with two counts of second degree murder. Oh boy. They want to take the jurors to the scene to show them everything. Show them what happened. Yeah. They talk about neither lawyers thinks they need a change of venue. It should be fine. Both of them think this place is okay. It's fine. This shouldn't get any publicity or anything. This kid fingered his dead mother in the, in the yard. That's fine. They set a trial date and Larry says, quote, after I read an article in the paper about the trial date, I started shaking all over. If I start thinking about the trial and what could happen if they say I did things I could get two life sentences, it could go a lot of ways. Now we starting to have. That's weird. Right. Strange. They said they're going to take Annie's testimony in writing and not make her testify because she's been through enough. He wants to plead insanity, but the prosecutor won't take the plea. So they're going to go to trial then during jury selection, they come to an agreement on a deal. That's what happened. Yeah. The prosecutor said, I'm not saying Larry Swartz wasn't a very disturbed young man. I'm not saying he didn't have to be or he didn't have cause to be disturbed as a result of conditions that allegedly surrounded his home. He said, but over and beyond anything else, two people were very brutally murdered and I can't let a jury forget that. So there you go. So they come up with a deal, a plea bargain. That says he'll drop the insanity defense, but they're going to put him in a hospital to see if he can be in jail and if not, they're going to put him in a psychiatric facility. Until they can get him well enough to put him in prison. And that's all they can get well enough to put him prison, exactly. The Pawtuxent institution would, no, Pawtuxent, not Pawtuxent, like there, not Rhode Island, Pawtuxent, P-A-T-U-X-E-M-T institution would offer him appropriate treatment that might be able to have him have a normal life someday. Okay. So that's what that's what his lawyer says sentencing, two counts of second degree murder. His lawyer said that, yeah, his attorney said strict parenting, they pushed him to be a model son. He said you had well-meaning and well-intentioned parents who were ill-equipped because of their own personalities to deal with the problems Larry had. They said that Larry turned out to be the kind of child his mother least wanted to adopt. She told social workers that as a teacher, she would have difficulty dealing with a dull normal child because she would have a tendency to think he could have done better. That's before she adopted anybody. And the lawyer said that's exactly what she got. Holy shit. Kids a dipshit. Yeah. Yeah. Larry's cousin said, I think Larry was more in tune to being a drinker and having sex life. And that was basically in conflict with his parents, although there were tensions in the family. He was never mistreated. There's a cousin who lives out of state, by the way, he wanted to get laid at 17. That's what he wanted. Now the judge says the crimes were terrible, but he says from all appearances, you seem to be a normal average every day, 17 year old boy. He said, but psychological evaluations by a series of doctors indicate that under the facade of normalness, there's a great deal that was abnormal. He says that, and the state's attorney said he's obviously a very troubled person. He's sick and needs treatment. That's the prosecutor. So you young man. Oh boy. And on the clock off, he is sentenced to two 20 year terms concurrent though. So same time, 20 years and then suspended eight years in each case. So 12 years in prison. What? The maximum was 30 years for each count. Yeah. He gave him 12 years total. And some of it he gets to spend in a psych ward. Yes. Getting well. Yes. Exactly. This kid's on the street. We'll talk about it. Oh my God. The series attorney said, I think Larry had pent up within him all that he could hold. It just happened to burst out that night. The event wasn't so significant as the fact that it was about to happen. Holy shit. And then the newspaper said, the handsome 18 year old Swartz showed no emotion as he took the stand. Handsome motherfucking amazing. So family members said, I think the defendant lived in a family that aspired for him to be a student and an athlete and he was more interested in drinking drugs and sex. What is going on? I don't know. Michael at the time was at that time was attending night school and working at a restaurant. Oh, he's doing great. He ends up graduating from college. We'll talk about him because then in 1990, oh no, a book is written, Sudden Fury is the name of the book that it's about this whole thing. That's a lot of these quotes came out of it's a sudden fury segull's breaking necks. Michael is supposed to appear on Sally Jesse Raphael show to promote the book, make an appearance to talk about it. But he's not unable to make it because he's arrested for murder. Who did kill Michael at the time, by the way, had recently fathered a child and was paying child support. Then he became unemployed after he broke his both his shoulders in a motorcycle accident. He had odd jobs, including a carpenter, cab driver, gas pumper, fast food place. He had agreed to appear on the publicity show, but then he couldn't the author said he was excited. He had a moment to shine. He started. He's still at square one. Yeah. He hasn't even advanced anywhere in life. He tried to join the army, but didn't have a high school diploma. He had a juvenile record, so they didn't really want to take him. He hooked up with an idiot named Ronald L. Scotz, S-C-O-A-T-S, 31 years old. Swartz here, Michael said that this guy, Scotz, was on parole from a murder sentence he was serving in Florida, and that he had threatened this man, Robert Austin Bell, who was 57, and he had a big thing of change that had $50 of change in it. I guess Scotz told this guy on July 9, 1990 that he'd kill him if he didn't give me all your change. $50 in change. $50 in change. He said Scotz had been drinking heavily when they were both carrying knives. They went into Bell's house. Michael said he was shaking the man's hand when, quote, "Ronnie just started stabbing him for no reason." I reacted to that and just started stabbing too. I guess you're reaction. I guess I'll start stabbing. He was stabbed 48 times his poor man. Oh boy, over $50 worth of change. Yep. So that is fucking horrible. The next door neighbor recognized Scotz after Scotz allegedly walked over to him before the incident and said he had brought some items for Bell. Just let you know, I'm here to see this guy and I'm going to kill him. That's a dumb these fucking people were. The Scotz had lived with Bell until he was tossed out about a month ago. So the neighbor went in and found the guy on the floor. They said, Swartz gave a complete confession and implicated everything. Stop stabbing. I'm going to see the lady with the red glasses. An eight to 10 inch blade knife was killed. Wow. They both had the same knife, like similar knives. Wow. During his bail hearing, Michael, the judge asked, quote, "Do I know this defendant?" and then said, "I might have set Bell for your brother." Yeah, this is the same judge. So in court, Scotz has sentenced to you, sir, may fuck off, life without parole. They had sought the death penalty for him, but they didn't seek it for Michael. Michael is sentenced to you, sir, may fuck off 25 years to life with, or I'm sorry, life in prison with a chance for parole. So yeah, 1993, a movie comes out, TV movie, a family torn apart, starring Doogie Houser and the guy from the Big Bang Theory, the Johnny Gilecki guy, Darlene's boyfriend and Doogie Houser, or in this. Yeah, Neil Patrick Harris stars as Larry, obviously, very Indian man. Yeah, they said, this is the crazy part. The director said, and the writer, the people who made the movie, said, "We did a dramatization based on the case, which was based on the book. We had to change certain things because they would have just seemed too far-fetched. Like just some of the crazy stuff. This story's so crazy." They went, "This became a movie. That's too crazy. Nobody will believe it. Nobody will believe it." So that's what ended up happening. That's that. 1993, Larry is paroled. He received his high school education in two years of college before being paroled. He was released from a work release center, and he served nine of 12 years. That was that. He had been at the house of correction in Jessup before that. He went to Jessup after the psych hospital. They said he does not live in Anne Arundel County. That's all that we'll say. His lawyer, Baradell, said, "I don't think Larry's a threat. You have to understand this was a kid who was never in trouble. I don't think he'll ever be in trouble for the rest of his life. He's not a chronic offender. He had this one horrible incident. It's a pretty fucking bad one. It's a pretty bad incident. Finger rape to dead woman. There's mom, for Christ's sake. 2004, Larry has a heart attack and dies. What? He was 38 dead. What? Yeah, dead. He had an eight year old child, and he was married with an eight year old kid and dropped dead at 38. Thirty eight? Done. Larry's dead. As far as I know, Michael's still in jail. I'm not sure. The poor. Holy shit. There we go. How's Annie? [laughter] She's doing nails. You knew it was going. So. There you go. Yeah. There you go. That is Maryland, everybody. What a town. That's a fucking crazy story. What a story. That's a wild story. You can't believe it. Holy shit. If you like that story, certainly tell us about it. Tell the world about it. Get on whatever app you're on. Then just give us a nice review, five stars. Say something fun. Tell us your favorite flavor of jelly. Or jam. Or preserves. Pick one. Just tell us. It doesn't matter. Do that. Find us on social media. Instagram @smalltownpot on Facebook @murdersmall on Twitter. So check us out there. Definitely you want to listen to crime and sports and you want to listen to your stupid opinions? Yeah. For fucking sure. You want to go to shut up and give me murder.com? You want to get your tickets for live shows? Oh, yeah. Tons of shit coming up. Durham, May 31st. That's our next regular live show. But April 20th is the virtual live show. You're thinking I could listen to this when it comes out. It's already April 20-something. It's still there. You can still get it. It's available for two weeks after the 20th as well. But your tickets, it's going to be so much fun, just like a regular live show, except you're in your goddamn house. Best one, yeah. Awesome shit. So check that out. Shut up and give me murder.com. patreon.com/crimeandsports, bonus material coming out our asses over there. Five dollars a month or above, you get the whole back catalog, hundreds of episodes. New ones every other week. This week, what you're going to get for crime and sports, we're going to talk about what you'll get access to. The Otani gambling debacle and the fact that they were just like, oh, I guess it's just the assistant. Let them go. Okay. It's the interpreter. Come on and play. Nothing to see here. Look at him hit. Nothing to see here. And we'll talk about other gambling scandals that are not Pete Rose from the past and the new one that just happened in the NBA to talk about that. And then for small town murder, we're going to talk about Charles Manson. We're going to talk about down a conspiracy rabbit hole here was Charles Manson really a CIA asset that was put in this situation to do exactly what he did to discredit the hippie movement. We don't know. Let's get into it. A guy spent 20 years ruining his life and writing a book. So we'll talk all about that. That is patreon.com/crimeandsports. So get that right now. Keep hanging out with us. And you know what else? You'll get a goddamn shout out. You know when that happens right now, right fucking now Jimmy hit me with that list. This is the other producers of Jordan Bennett, Haley, wall's Thomas Smith. Happy birthday, Thomas. Happy birthday. Sherry Blythe and Kyle Norweg got himself a mortgage. Good for you. And Denali York. Thank you all so much for everything you do for us. Thank you. You are terrific. Other producers this week are Sophie content content content content. Be careful, Jimmy. Careful with that one. She said it's content, but this is one of our patrons, Jimmy. Let's not. Let's let's keep it. Thank you. So you're terrific. Janice Hill, Rhea Sparks, Tuesday, Mise, Jason, Munchnick, Jamison, Mitch Callerby, Kate Clark, Blake Lehman, Laura Rhodes, Terry with no last name, Helena K. Joe, divine, Denise Bryceford, Mikayla Holtzclaw, Jenasaurus XO, Ray Horner, Shannon Hall, Megan O'Neill, Maxine with no last name, Adam Angeloff, Angloff, I guess maybe Calvin Maddox, David, David Hinds, her sof ship. Okay. I believe her name is Sophie. All right. Okay. Kathryn Damon, Damond, Domorod, Corey Rizzo has two different ones. Thank you, Corey. Darwin Harder, Uncle Kenny, Danik, Danik, Danik, Chaitelain, Michelle McCorkle, Emily with no last name, Michelle Fournier, Jasmine Williams, Lance, Morin Schleger, Kelsey Brown, Clara Bella, Christine Reynolds, Mary and Anne, Anthony Shock, I believe, Annie. Oh boy. What is this? Paul Jeremiah Hayes, Lucy Davies, Julie Lindsay, Ken Allen, Hayden Thorne, Angela Nath Neith, I think, Raquita Parker, male lady, Julie, Jenny, fuck. All right. It's not. Julie. Thank you. Sorry, Julie. Rick Jordan, John Shea, Edgar Palmer, Lloyd with no last name, Hoffi Air with no last name, Julia Foodman, Casey Weederholt, Rebecca Banks Gilbert, Melinda, Melina, Melina Peters, Mold Children, Charities, LLC, Mold Children, are there Mold Children to the help children from the ground? I don't know. Their eyes not open all the way. They may be sick. They have charities. Jonathan Emerson, John Britain, Sarah, Sarah Noah, Sarah, no, Tony, the guitar geek, Art Bandolay, bro, my, my hodge, what Missy, Missy Grenolds, Grenolds, is that a real last name? Is it? Is it Reynolds? And I fucked that up. It's possible. Patrick Gallo before it could be could be a name. You don't know. Andy T's. Kathy with no last name. Mackenzie with no last name, Stacey Argueo, Deak or Dyke or Dick. I'm not sure. One of the three. That's very deep. Probably. Marcy Burger, Aaron Adkins, Stephanie Kite, Puccino, Bellini, Ailey, Ailey with no last name, Ali. It's probably Ali. Woo beat. Pretty, pretty Miller. Marquis. No, it's Marquis. That's a. Well, that's a cool name. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a murderer named Marquis. There's an offensive lineman named Marquis too. Yeah. Yeah. There's a Marquis that there's a investigation discovery and that interrogation. Where's fucking eyes hanging out of his face because they tackled him. Yes. Yes. That guy's named Marquis. Yes. Amy Reeves, Bosefis Ray Ray. I hope it's not that Marquis. Cheyenne with no last name, Irvin, Irvin, Joseph, yeah, you're hope your eyes better. I don't know. Maybe you should have kept that money to make that eye better. Yeah. Unless you've got so much money and so many eyes, Irvin, Joseph, Bergeron, Sonia Montgomery, Kay, Kyla Wilson, Paul, Minati, Aliyah, Taylor, Keith with no last name, Katherine Ramirez, Maja Berlin, Lulu Droppo, Abby Van Roy, Chuck, Gilbreth, Cameron, Greenweight, Greenweight, Greenwald, Joe, Janks, I don't know, Brad, Grinsinger, Blaze and Bob Mandy with no last name. John Lebaff, Cody Crompton, Caroline Bennett, Suzanne Kendall, Derek Baker, Heather Archer, Matthew Sharpe, Sharpe, Mike Mix, Reggie W Knight, Horace, Miranda, Levinides, Jeff Martin, Bill, Jeram, Jeram, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorraine, yep, that's true. Nick Airmen, Rachel with no last name, Wade Carpenter, Genevieve, Rittenhouse, Kara, Trent, event, Jillian, Smith, Tammy Van Oppen, Amy Wetzel, Anna Maria, Abigail Edgar, Joseph Tamboro, Heather with no last name, Dylan Clary, Kristin Allen, shit, is that her first name? All right, that might be two first names. I'm not sure. Kevin Carroll, Billy Snail could be, maybe her last name's Allen even, Laura Barton, Kim Casto Morgan, W. Kahn, Clack City, Crops, Concol, all right, Concol City, Morgan will no last name, Jamie Lefoia, like the lady from ESPN, is it? There you go, Michelle, I hope that's Michelle's family, Zach Menakey, Meenikki, Meenikki, Meenikki, he's got an oil change money, Orlando with no last name, Matthew, no last name, Graciano Johnson, Jake with no last name, Molly Doster, Madison Greco, Sandra Dugan, Titty Laws, Justin Bottles, Lisa B, Julie Brontondo, Rotondo, Darren Kuhn, Amanda Gross, Eileen Warden, Lucas Legault, Josh Mills, Haley Crawl, Orange, 67 RS, I'll bet you that guy drives a Camaro, Jessica Scartha, Cleo Wright, Leticia Hernandez, Thomas Whitcomb, Eric Westfall, Wade, nope, that's made, Davy, Mady Davy, Wesley Ford, X-23, Hester, I believe that's Devin's family. You guys, and all the patrons, obviously every last one of you, you're terrific, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody. Wow. Thank you so much. You're unbelievable. Wonderful bastard. God damn it. We love you. You want to find us on social media. Yes, thank you. Head over to shut up and give me murder dot com, drop down menu, find out links to all that shit come, follow us coming out with us, keep coming back and until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Hey, prime members, you can listen to small town murder early and add free on Amazon. In May of 1980 near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red wound on his arm and seemed unwell. She insisted on driving him to the local hospital to get treatment. While he waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit, but would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder, decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wandary, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and many more. Every week hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence and interviewing those close to the case to try to discover what happened, and with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Generation Y add free right now by joining Wondery Plus. (upbeat music)