Murder Most Foul

Provocative title?

In the early morning hours of January 29, 2022, Boston Police Department Officer John O'Keefe was found dead outside the home of fellow Boston Police Officer, Brian Albert, in Canton, Massachusetts. O'Keefe had been dropped off the night before by his girlfriend, Karen Read, to join a party hosted by Brian Albert and Jennifer McCabe. Upon being discovered, he was transported to a local hospital where cause of death was listed as blunt force trauma and hypothermia.

Three days later, Read was arrested and charged with manslaughter, motor vehicle homicide, and leaving the scene of a deadly crash.

But was Karen Read guilty of anything? As defense attorneys will, Read’s "Dream Team" came up with an alternate theory of the crime, that O’Keefe was badly beaten, or maybe attacked by a dog, or both, inside the Fairview Road residence after Read dropped him off, and then he was dumped outside and left to die.

On its face, this might sound preposterous to you, but, Oh, we are just getting started. This strange tale turned the so called “Boyfriend Cop Murder Trial” into a national, nay international sensation. Newspaper accounts, electronic

Join me and Youtuber, Kevin Lenihan, as we navigate the maze that is the Karen Read Case.

Was “What's My Line?” TV Star, media icon, and crack investigative reporter and journalist Dorothy Kilgallen murdered for writing a tell-all book about the JFK assassination? If so, is the main suspect in her death still at large?

These questions and more are answered in former CNN, ESPN, and USA Today legal analyst Mark Shaw in his book, “The Reporter Who Knew Too Much.”

 Shaw unfolds a "whodunit" murder mystery featuring suspects including Frank Sinatra, J. Edgar Hoover, Mafia Don Carlos Marcello and a "Mystery Man" who may have silenced Kilgallen. All the while presenting through Kilgallen's eyes the most compelling evidence about the JFK assassination since the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation in the 1970s.

Author Mark Shaw joins me today on Murder Most Foul.

Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for one another. But they would soon share a connection that none of them could have imagined. When Melissa was found dead, the other three women were on edge but assumed they were safe. Twelve days later, they too were dead and police had detained an unlikely suspect--Juan David Ortiz, a ten-year veteran of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, where he carried a badge, a service revolver, and was entrusted to protect the community in which he eventually killed.

From September 3rd through September 15th, 2018, Ortiz, a husband and doting father to three children, lured his victims into his white Dodge truck and drove them to the outskirts of town where he violently executed them, leaving them dead or dying on the sides of dark, rural roads.

“The Devil Behind the Badge” is a fast-paced, electrifying book by Pulitzer Prize-winning USA TODAY journalist Rick Jervis. It tells the gripping story of the four murders that shook the small border town of Laredo, and the quest to unmask a cold, calculated killer who was hiding in plain sight. “The Devil Behind the Badge” is also a deeply human portrait of the four lives lost and an attempt to uncover what motivated Ortiz's descent into darkness. Along the way, it raises serious questions about the border crisis, the abuse of law enforcement, and the challenges of a federal agency to police its own ranks.

My guest today is the author of “The Devil Behind the Badge,” Rick Jervis.

Who Killed Seth Rich? If you guessed Hilary Clinton, you’d be wrong, but not alone. It’s been said that we all love a good conspiracy story. In the midst, of the political convulsions that surrounded the 2016 Presidential Election, a young man by the name of Seth Rich was gunned down and killed on “W” street in Washington, D.C. He was presumably the victim of a botched robbery attempt.

"A Death on W Street" is a gripping account of, madness, and political chicanery. It tells the story of an idealistic political staffer who became a tragic victim of the age of conspiracy, and how his family fought to defend his name against the likes of Sean Hannity, Alex Jones and others and expose the deceptions surrounding his death.

 My guest today is Andy Kroll, author of “A Death on W Street."

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WARNING: CONTAINS POLITICAL CONTENT!

Can two brilliant minds outsmart the law?  In 1924 Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students, sought to commit the perfect crime simply for the thrill of it.  They meticulously planned the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, a distant relative of Loeb.  Despite their careful plotting, a pair of eyeglasses left at the crime scene linked them to the murder.  Their trial captivated the nation, especially with the famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow arguing against the death penalty.  The chilling lack of remorse and intellectual arrogance displayed by Leopold and Loeb turned this case into one of the most notorious in American history!

Two of my passions are True Crime and the stage. In this segment of Murder Most Foul, I have been able to combine them into one podcast. Lizzie Borden can boast numerous plays, an Opera and a Ballet choreographed by the legendary Agnes DeMille inspired by her crimes. My guest today, Stephen Dolginoff, turned the story of thrill-killers Leopold and Loeb into theatrical musical, entitled appropriately “Thrill Me,” which is still thrilling audiences today. He also recently wrote a fascinating book on the 30-year odyssey of taking his vision from first draft to the stage and beyond.

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The musical interludes throughout the podcast are from the Original Cast Recording starring Stephen Dolginoff as Leopold and Doug Kreeger as Loeb.

Teach me to kill. That’s exactly what Media Instructor, Pamela Smart, did for 3 of her teenage students in 1990, in Derry, New Hampshire. Smart seduced and slept with Billy Flynn, the trigger man, and encouraged his friends to participate in the plot that she created, to kill her husband, Greg.

After 34 years, Pam, serving life without the possibility of parole, wants out of prison. Although she admits to the affair, she maintains that she had no knowledge of the murder plot.

Join me today, as I speak with Stephen Sawicki, who

Steve DeMocker was a narcissist, a philander and all-around cad, but was he a cold-blooded killer? In 2008, in Prescott, Carol Kennedy, his newly minted ex-wife, was found bludgeoned to death in her home. It wasn’t long until the police focused on Steve as the main suspect. One might suppose this became a run-of-the mill murder case. Au contraire, mon frere! Returning Murder Most Foul guest author, Caitlin Rother, found that writing her book, THEN NO ONE CAN HAVE HER about the investigation and trial was truly a challenge.

In the forward to her book Ms. Rother writes: the ethical allegations flying in every direction, the voice in the vent, the insurance money transfers, the judge with the brain tumor and the judge from the “sweat lodge” case, the Docugate scandal and the bombshell e-mail that got thrown out on this roller coaster ride to justice, suffice it to say I came to empathize with the attorneys in this case because there was so much information it became a challenge to decide what to include and what to leave out.

Join me today as we try to untangle this mess with our guide author Caitlin Rother.

On September 13, 2016, Shawn Grate was arrested in the small city of Ashland, Ohio for the abduction and rape of a young woman. Miraculously the victim actually guided her rescuers to her location using the perp’s cell phone as he slept.

But her rescue was only the beginning! Police Detective, Kim Mager – a cross between Clarice Starling from “Silence of the Lambs” and Olivia Benson from Law & Order, SVU – was assigned to question Grate. It wasn’t long before she suspected that this event wasn’t a “one-off.” After almost 30 hours of interrogation, she got Grate to confess to multiple assaults, 5 homicides and led her to 3 bodies.

Go inside that interrogation room with Detective Mager and take a seat as she recounts, minute by minute, her experience, including more than one moment where her life was at risk bringing a serial killer to justice. The book is HUNGER TO KILL, and my guest is Retired Detective Kim Mager.

MISSISSIPPI BURNING is the name of a motion picture, released in 1988, starring Gene Hackman and Willem DaFoe, loosely based on the murders of 3 Civil Rights workers in Mississippi, during the “Freedom Summer” of 1964.  James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were lured to Philadelphia, Mississippi, and executed by the Ku Klux Klan. No one was ever convicted of their murders, until over 40 years later when Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter with The Charion-Ledger, in Jackson, Mississippi, convinced authorities to reopen more than one cold murder case from the Civil Rights Era, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's "Simon Wiesenthal."  In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.

Author John Grisham wrote of Mr. Mitchell: “For almost two decades, investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell doggedly pursued the Klansmen responsible for some of the most notorious murders of the civil rights movement. His book, “Race Against Time,” is his amazing story. Thanks to him, and to courageous prosecutors, witnesses, and FBI agents, justice finally prevailed.”

It is my honor to welcome Jerry Mitchell to Murder Most Foul today.

On New Year’s Eve 1989, 11-year-old Collier Landry

All his family has no doubts that she ran away after a fight with her husband. But Collier knows that his mom would never leave him behind. As Dr John Boyle refuses to discuss his wife’s disappearance, Detective David Messmore builds a secret bond with Collier who insists his mom was murdered.

Together, they discover Dr. Boyle’s hidden girlfriend

Many years later, Collier Landry helped produce a documentary chronicling his ordeal as a child of parental murder, entitled MURDER IN MANSFIELD. Collier joins me now to talk about the case and confronting his father in prison, which is depicted in the film.