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Killer Thriller Docu: Buried Secrets: The Father Who Made His Daughter Help Dispose of Bodies · Legally Brunette

0:13
Speaker 1: Hi you guys. So welcome back to Killer Thriller DOCU edition.
0:18
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jennifer Fessler. So today we are talking
0:21
Speaker 1: to filmmaker and director Angus James. So, he's the director
0:25
Speaker 1: behind the haunting true crime docuseries My Killer Father The
0:29
Speaker 1: Green Hollow Murders. Guys, this one is creepyaf I mean,
0:35
Speaker 1: it's a lot. The series explores the shocking allegation surrounding
0:40
Speaker 1: Donald Dean Stuteley, who is an Iowaman accused by several
0:44
Speaker 1: of his children of abuse, violence, possibly multiple murders, connected
0:49
Speaker 1: to a remote property known as Green Hollow. So for years,
0:52
Speaker 1: family members claim victims were buried in abandoned wells on
0:56
Speaker 1: the land, and there were allegations that led investigators to
0:59
Speaker 1: conduct excavations decades after the crimes were said to have happened.
1:05
Speaker 1: So this is a crazy, whacked out story about murders
1:11
Speaker 1: that happened years ago and discovering the truths and this
1:17
Speaker 1: family that just has been through so much. And I
1:22
Speaker 1: will tell you that something comes out in the course
1:25
Speaker 1: of our interview. There is some news that you will
1:29
Speaker 1: not want to miss, some news that really just kind
1:35
Speaker 1: of turned the whole story around. But anyway, I'm not
1:38
Speaker 1: going to keep teasing you. Let's bring in Angus James. Hi.
1:42
Speaker 2: Angus Hi, thanks for having me.
1:44
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us. Really really appreciate it.
1:47
Speaker 1: Your work is fascinating, This documentary is fascinating. And I
1:54
Speaker 1: always kind of ask directors producers, like, how you doing
1:59
Speaker 1: you okay after all this, because it seems like it
2:01
Speaker 1: would have been quite the ride.
2:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was really intense. I mean it
2:06
Speaker 2: was especially intense because you know, you have especially like
2:10
Speaker 2: an obligation to find out if it's true, but you're
2:14
Speaker 2: also dealing with somebody who I think for years has
2:17
Speaker 2: been no one's believed her. So there's sort of this
2:19
Speaker 2: real sort of emotional and I think psychological responsibility to
2:25
Speaker 2: her to give her a voice. But I was also
2:27
Speaker 2: struggling between that and you know, when you can go
2:31
Speaker 2: and take this out to market and tell people, hey,
2:34
Speaker 2: I really have something that I believe in here. So, yeah,
2:36
Speaker 2: it was. It was a lot. The hardest part of
2:38
Speaker 2: it was sort of through that part where we were
2:40
Speaker 2: self financing it and trying to figure out, you know,
2:43
Speaker 2: was there or there there, But once we sort of
2:47
Speaker 2: started to come up with some real investigative discoveries on
2:50
Speaker 2: our own. That's when things got easier for sure.
2:53
Speaker 1: How'd it come to you?
2:55
Speaker 2: We saw it on CNN. We saw it on Anderson
2:57
Speaker 2: Cooper was covering it. It was interviewing the journal one of
3:00
Speaker 2: the journalists who broke the story. And we reached out
3:02
Speaker 2: to Lucy, and you know, you call as like, our
3:05
Speaker 2: job is to basically track down these things, and you
3:07
Speaker 2: lose a lot of them because there's a lot of
3:09
Speaker 2: other production companies chasing them and morning shows and everything else.
3:13
Speaker 2: But yeah, she she You know, I think we really
3:17
Speaker 2: connected with her, and particularly Paul Limo's producing partner of mine.
3:21
Speaker 2: His father was murdered, you know, in a in a
3:25
Speaker 2: sort of a crazy story, so he has this sort
3:27
Speaker 2: of personal connection to the sort of true crime, and
3:30
Speaker 2: I think that they really connected.
3:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was your impression of Lucy when you met her?
3:36
Speaker 2: She'd been through a lot, traumatized, desperate for someone to
3:42
Speaker 2: sort of desperate for someone to investigate what she believed
3:47
Speaker 2: to have been true.
3:48
Speaker 1: It was palpable her you know, desperation and her need
3:56
Speaker 1: to be heard and just heartbreaking really, And I felt
4:01
Speaker 1: that just throughout the entirety of the documentary. Right, it's
4:07
Speaker 1: it's it's a scary story. It's a tragic story, and
4:12
Speaker 1: it's also just such a sad story, right for all involved,
4:17
Speaker 1: but particularly I just the frustration that I, you know,
4:24
Speaker 1: I felt I couldn't imagine having this carrying this wheat, right,
4:29
Speaker 1: like your whole life, you've been abused, You've had to
4:33
Speaker 1: carry bodies for your father and no one will listen.
4:37
Speaker 1: That's always like the shit that just freaks me out.
4:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean she went in you know, at one
4:43
Speaker 2: point she tells a story about when she was a
4:45
Speaker 2: little girl and she had the courage to tell her
4:50
Speaker 2: her teacher, right, yeah, and you know the way she
4:54
Speaker 2: tells it afterwards, she was beaten the whole way home.
4:56
Speaker 2: There's a scene, you know, much less later in our filming.
5:01
Speaker 2: This is probably three years after us filming this where
5:05
Speaker 2: she describes the time she was beaten so bad and
5:09
Speaker 2: being choked and she said it to her sister. She's like,
5:14
Speaker 2: this is what was happening to me, And her sister
5:16
Speaker 2: said something to the effect of, well, if I remember right,
5:19
Speaker 2: you were screaming like a freight train, as if there
5:21
Speaker 2: was some sort of justification for the abuse she received.
5:25
Speaker 2: They disagreed on the context of why she was beaten,
5:29
Speaker 2: But I think the thing that really struck me fairly
5:32
Speaker 2: early on was the amount of people that we would
5:38
Speaker 2: talk about the abuse they saw, the physical abuse that
5:40
Speaker 2: they saw the indoor right.
5:43
Speaker 1: Interestingly, I felt sympathy for both of them, right, So
5:51
Speaker 1: I think it could have been set up right that
5:54
Speaker 1: there was a protagonist an antagonist and in terms of
5:58
Speaker 1: these two sisters, right, And I did kind of feel
6:02
Speaker 1: it a little bit. I was like, I felt so
6:05
Speaker 1: badly for Lucy and Susan. I didn't believe Susan, but
6:11
Speaker 1: yet there was the human side of her. I feel
6:15
Speaker 1: like that you guys were able to show and to
6:19
Speaker 1: I could feel her pain as well. You know, it's
6:23
Speaker 1: and like she really, for whatever reason, believes that her
6:29
Speaker 1: father is innocent, and so, you know, it sound always
6:36
Speaker 1: easy to get the human out of it out of everyone,
6:39
Speaker 1: at least that's been my experience. Like in these documentaries
6:42
Speaker 1: and these true crime documentaries, it's very easy for me
6:45
Speaker 1: to go, oh, I fucking hate her, She's the worst,
6:47
Speaker 1: you know, and I kind of wanted to do that
6:51
Speaker 1: with Susan. But I could also kind of get feel
6:55
Speaker 1: her humanity and feel bad for her.
6:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have, you know, I mean, for those who
6:59
Speaker 2: don't know, it's a story. You know, there's sort of
7:02
Speaker 2: five sisters at the central, you know that I think
7:06
Speaker 2: of sort of the main characters in the story. There's
7:08
Speaker 2: two biological sisters, and then there are three stepsisters. And
7:11
Speaker 2: the three stepsisters have always believed that the father of
7:15
Speaker 2: these two biological sisters, who was married to their mom,
7:19
Speaker 2: that he always killed, that he had killed her mom,
7:21
Speaker 2: their mom. But the core of it is with these
7:24
Speaker 2: two sisters, Lucy and then Susan, who have vastly different
7:29
Speaker 2: versions of their childhood. One says their father was a
7:32
Speaker 2: murder and beat them, and the other one was like,
7:34
Speaker 2: he was a wonderful dad and he never even hit us.
7:37
Speaker 2: It was pretty early on that I knew that the
7:40
Speaker 2: abuse was true. I had substantiated that. They're multiple sources,
7:43
Speaker 2: and so I knew that, you know, Lucy's sister Susan
7:47
Speaker 2: wasn't being honest with us about that, or wasn't able
7:50
Speaker 2: to be honest, you know, you know, but it made
7:55
Speaker 2: me think a lot, and I talked to my siblings
7:56
Speaker 2: about this. You know, there's four of us. I have
7:59
Speaker 2: three disiblings, and we have wildly different memories sometimes, you know,
8:05
Speaker 2: like a memory that we believe happened in the snow,
8:08
Speaker 2: or that took place years later in the summer, of
8:11
Speaker 2: some memories that people say that and so it was,
8:17
Speaker 2: And trauma actually, you know, makes memory much less reliable.
8:22
Speaker 2: And so that's that's the hardest part about this, and
8:24
Speaker 2: I think also the most interesting part about it is
8:25
Speaker 2: it's a psychological thriller in a lot of ways, because
8:29
Speaker 2: the two people who are present for the most of
8:31
Speaker 2: it were deeply traumatized, and therefore there may at times
8:36
Speaker 2: be you know, a conscious effort to lie and conceal
8:42
Speaker 2: something or for whatever reason, for attention or to defend
8:45
Speaker 2: their father, or to get people to pay attention to this.
8:49
Speaker 2: But more often than not, what I really found was,
8:54
Speaker 2: you know, a reality that was wildly distorted from the
8:59
Speaker 2: trauma that they experience. So there was no way of
9:01
Speaker 2: oftentimes discerning what the truth was.
9:05
Speaker 1: How'd you get Susan to agree to do it? I
9:08
Speaker 1: would have thought that that would have been feat.
9:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was really really resistant for a while, you know, persistence,
9:17
Speaker 2: We talked to people, I mean, my main thing, and
9:19
Speaker 2: she's watched it, and she you know, the feedback we've
9:21
Speaker 2: gotten was mostly really positive. I really don't like making
9:28
Speaker 2: things that are like gotcha things. I try to get
9:31
Speaker 2: to people's essence and who they really are, and you
9:34
Speaker 2: don't always get it, and some people don't like who
9:37
Speaker 2: they are, so they'll see something and not feel happy
9:40
Speaker 2: about it. But overwhelmingly in my career, I'm really proud
9:43
Speaker 2: of the fact that I tackle some really tough subjects
9:47
Speaker 2: and someone watches it and they're like, yeah, that's a
9:49
Speaker 2: fair representation of it. And overwhelmingly, actually, there's not a
9:53
Speaker 2: single person who's watched it who are including the sisters
9:56
Speaker 2: and other people who have said yeah, that's that's a
10:00
Speaker 2: fair representation of me. I mean, Susan knows that she's
10:03
Speaker 2: the lone voice. She knows she's the only one left
10:06
Speaker 2: standing for her father, and I think I don't want
10:09
Speaker 2: to speak for her, but my certainly, you know, I've
10:12
Speaker 2: had conversations who were both on camera and off right,
10:16
Speaker 2: and I left with it, you know, with a very
10:21
Speaker 2: clear feeling that she's changed in the course of making this. Yeah,
10:26
Speaker 2: I think she's gone from being someone who wasn't able
10:30
Speaker 2: to explore this at all or even entertain the idea.
10:33
Speaker 2: Both from a desire to I think both from a
10:39
Speaker 2: conscious unconscious desire, like I'm going to defend my father.
10:42
Speaker 2: He'd be proud of me if I defended him. I
10:43
Speaker 2: think that's conscious. The unconscious part is that I don't
10:49
Speaker 2: know if she has access to it, to most of it,
10:51
Speaker 2: you know, But throughout the course of this it changed
10:56
Speaker 2: into a place of like, yeah, this as possible. It's possible,
11:02
Speaker 2: and wow, and it could have happened, and you know,
11:05
Speaker 2: obviously admittance towards the end is sort of at just
11:09
Speaker 2: a recognition that she thinks that she knows where her
11:12
Speaker 2: father would have hit bodies if he was a killer.
11:15
Speaker 1: Have they been in therapy?
11:18
Speaker 2: No, Lucy, did you know this hypnotherapy which helped her
11:23
Speaker 2: a lot? Yeah, we recorded, like, you know, a number
11:25
Speaker 2: of those sessions.
11:26
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I remember that, Yeah, but not Yeah, but that.
11:29
Speaker 2: Was that's that's the extent of it that I know of.
11:31
Speaker 1: Wow. I also I'm wondering with both of these women
11:36
Speaker 1: because there wasn't that much in terms of like where
11:39
Speaker 1: they're at in life right now? Do they have do
11:41
Speaker 1: they have families that are supportive of them, that were
11:44
Speaker 1: around I didn't see much of that.
11:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, Lucy's son was one of the most interesting people
11:49
Speaker 2: to talk to, and he's obviously the one, right, but
11:53
Speaker 2: it's all good season. But Lucy's son, I mean, you know,
11:57
Speaker 2: he's been this witness to his mom just like totally
12:01
Speaker 2: bankrupting them by every once in a while, you know,
12:04
Speaker 2: go every several years going on this mission to prove this.
12:08
Speaker 2: So he's sort of interesting, right because he's sort of
12:10
Speaker 2: looking at his mom and he's just like, there's no
12:12
Speaker 2: way anyone would do this if they were if they
12:14
Speaker 2: were telling the truth. But I certainly know there's things
12:17
Speaker 2: that Lucy has lied to me about. So there's things
12:19
Speaker 2: that she's and I believe some of that is consciously lying,
12:24
Speaker 2: although I don't I don't. I don't know that that's true.
12:26
Speaker 2: It's just what I believe. With Susan, she has she
12:31
Speaker 2: has family, I think, you know, mostly estranged. I think
12:37
Speaker 2: this has been this has been really tough on her.
12:40
Speaker 2: I don't know if you can see in the course
12:41
Speaker 2: of the documentary, like the interviews, like you you know,
12:44
Speaker 2: she she she the last interview I did, I was
12:47
Speaker 2: worried about her. I didn't she didn't look super well.
12:51
Speaker 2: I don't know if you picked up on that.
12:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did you know you were with these women
13:09
Speaker 1: for three years? I wonder how personally, you know, you
13:15
Speaker 1: have to become emotionally attached to them, have feelings for them,
13:21
Speaker 1: whether or not they are always warm feelings or suspicious feelings,
13:27
Speaker 1: but still you know you're involved with these people, and
13:31
Speaker 1: how did that affect you emotionally?
13:34
Speaker 2: I mean, with with respect of the studies, you know,
13:39
Speaker 2: I would say the relationship I had, I was in
13:42
Speaker 2: an abusive relationship. You know, this is like we were
13:45
Speaker 2: berated and and and yelled at and screamed at, and
13:51
Speaker 2: we really think of it Luci's place that we're helping her.
13:54
Speaker 2: You know, we're the ones that are listening to her
13:55
Speaker 2: more than anyone else. But she I mean it was, Yeah,
13:59
Speaker 2: it was. It was really hard at times.
14:01
Speaker 1: You know, some times you're maybe against her doesn't trust you.
14:03
Speaker 2: I'm guessing it's it's no rhyme or reason. There's deep
14:08
Speaker 2: trauma there. There's a lot of violence in the past,
14:10
Speaker 2: and I found her to be anix extremely violent person,
14:15
Speaker 2: thankfully just verbally in our experience, but there was a
14:18
Speaker 2: lot of verbal violence.
14:20
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean, did you ever consider, you know, throwing
14:26
Speaker 1: it away?
14:27
Speaker 2: No, I'm kind of a junkie for this stuff. You know.
14:30
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, look, I think it's I love what
14:33
Speaker 2: I do. I was a kid, I you know, thought
14:36
Speaker 2: of like gonzo journalism and I just thought, Wow, if
14:40
Speaker 2: I could do something like that one day. So I'm
14:42
Speaker 2: I feel so privileged to do what I do, and
14:44
Speaker 2: even you know, when you're in these difficult situations, like
14:47
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, I mean, I will say,
14:50
Speaker 2: like with this, what I expected to happen didn't happen.
14:53
Speaker 2: I thought I was well after the news footage came out,
14:55
Speaker 2: I thought I was walking into something that was going
14:56
Speaker 2: to be an active investigation. And what happened here that
14:59
Speaker 2: was much harder is that we realized fairly early on
15:02
Speaker 2: that we were the investigators, and that that was a
15:07
Speaker 2: bit out of our element. Like we've got a lot
15:09
Speaker 2: of supportive investigation, but the idea that we're the ones
15:14
Speaker 2: driving the investigation forward. That's the thing that made me
15:17
Speaker 2: think sometimes of stopping because it's like, you know, honestly,
15:21
Speaker 2: it's not really what I'm I kind of consider myself
15:24
Speaker 2: qualified to do. It's not that I haven't been around
15:27
Speaker 2: a lot of these types of stories, and you know,
15:29
Speaker 2: hours and hours.
15:30
Speaker 1: You're not trained private investigator, yeah, you know.
15:34
Speaker 2: And I would have liked law enforcement to be more involved,
15:36
Speaker 2: but we couldn't get them. So we we brought in,
15:39
Speaker 2: you know, forensic analysis on autopsies. We brought in people
15:43
Speaker 2: behind the scenes and on camera. We brought these medical
15:45
Speaker 2: examiners and also former FBI agent Stewart Fillmore, who you know,
15:49
Speaker 2: was super helpful to have him.
15:51
Speaker 1: He was fascinating. You paid to have Lucy's stepmom's body zoomed, right, Yeah.
16:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we crossed every line of like sort
16:03
Speaker 2: of like what you know, you would think of as
16:05
Speaker 2: sort of journalism. But I think journalisms also really changed.
16:08
Speaker 2: Like Newsweek had actually paid for the cadaver dogs to
16:11
Speaker 2: come and search the property, and so that's that's Newsweek,
16:13
Speaker 2: you know, That's that's where we sort of came into
16:15
Speaker 2: the story. But there was absolutely no way for us
16:19
Speaker 2: to substantiate these claims without exooming the body of one
16:23
Speaker 2: of the wives, right, So that was a big part
16:25
Speaker 2: of us We did that. I paid for that out
16:27
Speaker 2: of my own pocket. Serious, Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I
16:31
Speaker 2: didn't feel like I could go to Paramount or any
16:34
Speaker 2: of the streamers who I do business with all the time,
16:37
Speaker 2: right instead of them, Hey, I have this great story
16:39
Speaker 2: you should invest in. I didn't know if it was true.
16:42
Speaker 1: You paid for that out of your own pocket, So
16:44
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is an inappropriate question. I
16:46
Speaker 1: ask a lot of inappropriate question. So, but like, what
16:49
Speaker 1: does that cost?
16:50
Speaker 2: That was like twenty five thousand up front?
16:53
Speaker 1: Serious, you're committed, dude.
16:55
Speaker 2: Wow, I was in way more than that. I had
16:58
Speaker 2: paid for all the film. This was the farther I
17:00
Speaker 2: had gone down the rabbit hole by a long shot.
17:02
Speaker 2: And that was that was really scary because I was
17:04
Speaker 2: financially extended as well as you know, and also when
17:09
Speaker 2: once you're committed financially like you sort of feel you
17:12
Speaker 2: need for them to be an outcome back then you know,
17:15
Speaker 2: and if they're not. But then also there's you know,
17:18
Speaker 2: you know, the ethical aspect of it. I mean, I'm
17:21
Speaker 2: very thankful that there's a lot of people that I
17:24
Speaker 2: talked to that didn't make it in the cup for
17:26
Speaker 2: various reasons. Some didn't want to be on camera. In particular,
17:29
Speaker 2: Don Stewdey's previous wives and the children his children of
17:34
Speaker 2: previous Two of them are alive, and one of them
17:39
Speaker 2: is like a baby mom and not a wife, but
17:41
Speaker 2: you know, had a child with and the other's a
17:43
Speaker 2: wife and then those children and those stories to hear
17:48
Speaker 2: two of his previous one wife, one woman he had
17:52
Speaker 2: a child would saying, hey, he tried to kill me too,
17:55
Speaker 2: and I got away. And there's an escalation that happens,
17:58
Speaker 2: you know usually with people like this where they had,
18:01
Speaker 2: you know, try to kill someone, don't go as far,
18:04
Speaker 2: but then once they start, they don't go back. It
18:06
Speaker 2: was those sorts of testimony ammonies along with you know,
18:10
Speaker 2: Robert Massen, who is this guy who wasn't going to
18:13
Speaker 2: agree on camera for a long time, but who came
18:15
Speaker 2: forward and said, hey, I helped carry the body of
18:17
Speaker 2: a young woman into the woods and don stid he
18:19
Speaker 2: paid me. Yeah, those things, you know, started to give
18:22
Speaker 2: us a lot of confidence that we should we had
18:25
Speaker 2: to keep going.
18:25
Speaker 1: Really yeah, that was that was such an interesting scene
18:29
Speaker 1: that when he just got so obviously freaked out. Who
18:33
Speaker 1: wouldn't have and you could just even in his talking
18:36
Speaker 1: about it, see like the terror on his face, you know,
18:40
Speaker 1: and he was carrying he was carrying the if I
18:43
Speaker 1: remember correctly, the torso right.
18:46
Speaker 2: That's what he remembered. Yeah, he was pretty high at
18:48
Speaker 2: the time, but he brought us right to the spot.
18:50
Speaker 2: I mean, he noticed the picture from from from the newspaper.
18:55
Speaker 2: He brought us right to the place. And that path
18:57
Speaker 2: where he brought us to the body. Right up that
18:59
Speaker 2: path is where Lucy about you. One hundred and fifty
19:02
Speaker 2: yards up that hill is where the first well site
19:04
Speaker 2: that Lucy brought us to. I do have some news
19:07
Speaker 2: to break today if you're interested.
19:09
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, all right.
19:11
Speaker 2: Well, recently Lucy broke onto the property and she's taken
19:17
Speaker 2: some photos and we've sent that over to doctor Belcher, who's,
19:20
Speaker 2: you know, the the anthropologist from University of Nebraska, and
19:25
Speaker 2: they believe she's found the well.
19:30
Speaker 1: You're wait a second, hold on, hold on, you're announcing that.
19:33
Speaker 1: Am I the first person to hear this?
19:34
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I got photos of it and everything.
19:37
Speaker 1: Damn. Really yeah, what are you gonna do now?
19:42
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out. I
19:43
Speaker 2: don't know, you know, I've spent three years of my life.
19:46
Speaker 2: What are you telling a friend? Like? I'm happy for
19:48
Speaker 2: it to be over because it was very intense, But
19:51
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like I got to go
19:52
Speaker 2: figure that out, you know. Well yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:56
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm happy for you or I'm
19:59
Speaker 1: devastating for you.
20:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's so basically what happens. There's a ravine,
20:04
Speaker 2: Like where we go the side of the first well,
20:06
Speaker 2: there's a ravine just beyond that, and there was a
20:08
Speaker 2: lot of erosion. You know, since Lucy was a girl,
20:12
Speaker 2: she went up the ravine instead of going from the top,
20:14
Speaker 2: and in it she found the shaft in the in
20:17
Speaker 2: the thing, took all the photos of it with her.
20:19
Speaker 2: We sent those photos to doctor Belcher. He said, yep,
20:22
Speaker 2: that's a well shaft, so it's probably another you know,
20:25
Speaker 2: anywhere to sixty to eighty feet down from there is
20:28
Speaker 2: where the bottom of that well would be. So that's
20:30
Speaker 2: what has to be tested to see if there are
20:32
Speaker 2: human remains there.
20:34
Speaker 1: And are you I don't know if these questions are
20:37
Speaker 1: that relevant, but like you have to take this on
20:39
Speaker 1: just you. Is there is there a law enforcement going
20:41
Speaker 1: to jump in now? Or is this going to all
20:42
Speaker 1: fall on you?
20:44
Speaker 2: We continue to send everything we find to law enforcement.
20:48
Speaker 2: We were trying to get this, you know, six hundred
20:50
Speaker 2: and twelve page FBI report on Don Stewarty released. It's
20:54
Speaker 2: like a backlog. It says ten years to get that release.
20:57
Speaker 2: So I think we have six and a little bit
20:59
Speaker 2: to go, but we're still pushing for that. We send
21:02
Speaker 2: everything we can to the local coroner's office. We just
21:05
Speaker 2: got word that the coroner who had really blown us
21:07
Speaker 2: off for a long time, and more importantly blown off
21:11
Speaker 2: Charlotte Study's three daughters. Right, so Charlotte's and they live
21:15
Speaker 2: in Omaha, they pay taxes in Omaha. And it's been
21:18
Speaker 2: really frustrating because for some reason, the coroner, despite this
21:22
Speaker 2: overwhelming evidence, to say, Okay, well, nobody who's looked at
21:26
Speaker 2: us says that's a suicide. One medical examiner said, I
21:29
Speaker 2: can't determine, but that moves off suicide is a big move.
21:33
Speaker 2: And another one who's really a renowned expert in suicides
21:37
Speaker 2: across all of America, said this is definitively a homicide.
21:41
Speaker 2: Despite that, despite the report from FBI agent Stewart from
21:44
Speaker 2: refree agent Stewart, Fillmore saying this from all the documents
21:48
Speaker 2: he's seen is this is a stage crime scene. And
21:51
Speaker 2: he would say that the police investigation was either in
21:55
Speaker 2: competence or corrupt. Right, that's his announcis, despite that, we
22:00
Speaker 2: got crickets out of them. And then anytime Donrie and
22:04
Speaker 2: Charlotte contacted the corner, he said, we're standing by our decision.
22:08
Speaker 2: That was it. But I think given the airing of
22:11
Speaker 2: the show and this preponderance of evidence, we keep putting
22:14
Speaker 2: towards them. Finally that said they're taking another look at it,
22:17
Speaker 2: So that's another thing. Really happy girls.
22:20
Speaker 1: Do you think that they may have any financial recourse?
22:23
Speaker 2: The whole it was really really smart what happened, which
22:26
Speaker 2: I didn't get I wasn't able to get this much
22:29
Speaker 2: into the three part series, but basically what the reason
22:33
Speaker 2: they were able to get the initial police report released,
22:36
Speaker 2: So there was this full police report. There's the short
22:39
Speaker 2: one that is public record, but there's the full re
22:41
Speaker 2: police report of what happened to their mom. And as
22:44
Speaker 2: you remember, when I'm interviewing one of the officers to
22:48
Speaker 2: ask why can't we have that police report, he says
22:50
Speaker 2: it's sealed. It's all MAHA policy, which was really distressing
22:54
Speaker 2: to us, but also especially to her daughter, saying, if
22:57
Speaker 2: you believe this is a suicide, why can't you show
22:59
Speaker 2: us the full We can't, We can't We can't. What
23:03
Speaker 2: they did was they filed a case in court with
23:05
Speaker 2: an attorney as a probate case, because they said, this
23:08
Speaker 2: is a documentary being made on our mom and probate
23:12
Speaker 2: is about about an estate, the value of a state.
23:14
Speaker 2: So by the attorney saying this is a probate case,
23:18
Speaker 2: this potentially could be worth money. That's their inheritance. That's
23:21
Speaker 2: the only way they got Omaha to release the police
23:25
Speaker 2: report out of you know, using this probate loss was
23:28
Speaker 2: very crafty by the attorney. Wow who filed the case.
23:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's smart. Do you think they will
23:34
Speaker 1: go for damages?
23:36
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't. I never got the
23:39
Speaker 2: sense that that's what this is about.
23:41
Speaker 1: Isn't it eventually always about that? I don't know. I
23:43
Speaker 1: mean that's just my.
23:44
Speaker 2: I think if it was a cover up, you know,
23:46
Speaker 2: if this was and that, I don't know how easy
23:49
Speaker 2: that will be to prove. But you know, I think
23:52
Speaker 2: if it's you know, I think it depends what, Yeah,
23:56
Speaker 2: what comes up if look, if this is all a
23:59
Speaker 2: willful and liberate attempt to right day to still conceal
24:04
Speaker 2: something happened a while ago, I mean, that's horrifl I.
24:07
Speaker 1: Would like to see that for them, right, I mean.
24:09
Speaker 2: I have to believe I'm not a conspiracy theorist that
24:12
Speaker 2: there was a cover up back then. And today it's
24:15
Speaker 2: more of like, let's not look too much as egg
24:18
Speaker 2: on the face. We don't want to deal with it.
24:19
Speaker 2: We have other things, and they also have other things
24:21
Speaker 2: going on that are about active, you know, investigations of
24:25
Speaker 2: a current murder. But I don't know, it's very strange.
24:29
Speaker 2: It's certainly very strange.
24:44
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the sister. She was quite the character,
24:49
Speaker 1: the Marilyn Monroe of it all. What an interesting woman,
24:53
Speaker 1: just I mean just in terms of like I would think,
24:56
Speaker 1: I mean, a filmmaker's perspective, right, just to her demeanor.
25:03
Speaker 1: She had just been out of prison. This is her
25:06
Speaker 1: you know, this is her dying wish is to uncover
25:09
Speaker 1: the truth. Then the fact that she died, what is
25:11
Speaker 1: it two months after?
25:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, two months after she gives those interviews she died.
25:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did she die? I'm just curious.
25:19
Speaker 2: She had she had a long thing. I mean, she
25:22
Speaker 2: was left in prison because you know, because of her
25:26
Speaker 2: failing health. So she was let out knowing she was,
25:29
Speaker 2: you know, she was going to die. Soon. We didn't
25:31
Speaker 2: think it'd be that soon, but yeah, it was. It
25:33
Speaker 2: was surprising for us.
25:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's Yeah. So when she admitted that, when she
25:39
Speaker 1: said that she truly believed that he killed one hundred
25:43
Speaker 1: at least one hundred people, that was quite a moment, right,
25:49
Speaker 1: And the way she said it so sort of matter
25:52
Speaker 1: of factly, it freaked me out. Right. So much of
25:56
Speaker 1: this is like I'm watching it and you know, you're
26:02
Speaker 1: listening to Lucy and you're listening to the stories of
26:05
Speaker 1: the mothers and the girlfriends and then one hundred people.
26:10
Speaker 1: So how was this guy? You know, how did he
26:15
Speaker 1: get away with this? Because it's one thing if it's
26:18
Speaker 1: so incestuous, it's another now we're talking about and I
26:20
Speaker 1: don't know if it actually was one hundred people. Do
26:22
Speaker 1: you believe that it was?
26:23
Speaker 2: Maybe that there's no way for me to know that,
26:25
Speaker 2: but I know that she told me. And like, for
26:28
Speaker 2: a while when we interviewed her, I was like, maybe
26:30
Speaker 2: she's just our main character. You know, it's this sort
26:33
Speaker 2: of this person that gets out of prison. She she
26:35
Speaker 2: was in prison for, you know, attempted murder, for bludgeoning
26:38
Speaker 2: her boyfriend, and it runs into this is an incredibly
26:40
Speaker 2: violent family, you know, very very strange childhood. You know,
26:46
Speaker 2: their mom, Donna and Marilyn's mom was a prostitute. She
26:50
Speaker 2: was a couple of decades younger than her father. Father
26:52
Speaker 2: was terribly abusive. They fit all the prototype of Don,
26:55
Speaker 2: fits the prototype of this sort of you know, serial killer.
26:58
Speaker 2: So there's all these sort of strange things. There's all
27:01
Speaker 2: these stories of childhood. And anyway, she watched Don dissolve
27:05
Speaker 2: a body into a vat of acid one time that
27:08
Speaker 2: she told us about, right, and then and then she
27:10
Speaker 2: she watched Don kill her rapist. She was raped by
27:14
Speaker 2: this guy when she was younger. And I think she
27:19
Speaker 2: genuinely was pleased when John Don killed her rapist.
27:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that felt very apparent, and that she was
27:29
Speaker 1: not only pleased but really proud. And you know, you
27:32
Speaker 1: guys didn't delve too much into the story of the rape.
27:36
Speaker 1: But she said, you know, you sure that's him? Yeah,
27:41
Speaker 1: And she said, yes, I'm sure. And he went in
27:44
Speaker 1: there and then he took the money from the cash register.
27:47
Speaker 1: But like there's all of this stuff right still hanging
27:50
Speaker 1: like okay, so let's go with he was the rapist.
27:54
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, that's not part of this story, right,
27:57
Speaker 1: But what if he wasn't? But okay, let's say he was.
28:01
Speaker 1: Where are the cops? How did that not get traced?
28:07
Speaker 1: I don't get it. It's not that long ago.
28:10
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And also you know it's the same is true
28:13
Speaker 2: with this story that Lucy says that her father beat
28:18
Speaker 2: I mean, we investigated that thoroughly, and we couldn't find
28:22
Speaker 2: anybody who was murdered at that place around that time.
28:25
Speaker 2: We never found any evidence of that. However, what I
28:28
Speaker 2: will tell you is multiple people, including people we couldn't
28:33
Speaker 2: include in this because they wouldn't agree on camera, all
28:37
Speaker 2: had first accounced that Don was a hitman for the mob.
28:41
Speaker 2: What the rumor was that he was in the hole
28:44
Speaker 2: and gambling debts to the mob and he instead of
28:48
Speaker 2: killing him, he basically was like, well, I can kill
28:52
Speaker 2: anyone you want. And so he would get these letters
28:56
Speaker 2: of envelopes that multiple people saw, including his sister Marilyn,
28:59
Speaker 2: would name on them, and that that was why the
29:03
Speaker 2: number was one hundred. That's so she doesn't believe he
29:05
Speaker 2: was sort of one hundred because there was one hundred
29:07
Speaker 2: women he learned there. She believed of one hundred because
29:10
Speaker 2: of his ties to the mob and all the hits
29:14
Speaker 2: that he did on their behalf. And that's what the
29:17
Speaker 2: rumor is that maybe the six hundred and twelve FBI
29:19
Speaker 2: page report that exists.
29:21
Speaker 1: So that's a whole other level of corruption potentially, I
29:26
Speaker 1: would think.
29:27
Speaker 2: Right, that's the only thing for me that explains it. Right,
29:30
Speaker 2: if he was an FBI informant of any kind or
29:35
Speaker 2: an interesting person, then when he gets these charges of
29:38
Speaker 2: these women that are beaten, there's just sort of something
29:42
Speaker 2: in the file or someone that's saying they don't don't
29:46
Speaker 2: worry about him too much, don't look too close, otherwise
29:49
Speaker 2: it doesn't make sense. That's the only thing that ever
29:51
Speaker 2: really to me.
29:52
Speaker 1: They lived in like a trailer from what I remember, Right,
29:56
Speaker 1: did they live in that yellow What was the house?
29:59
Speaker 2: Like? Yeah, it's exact opposite of the story, like making
30:01
Speaker 2: of a murder, making a murder? Right, the guy is poor,
30:05
Speaker 2: and poor people are tend to be disenfranchised by the system.
30:09
Speaker 2: This for this guy to live in the type of
30:13
Speaker 2: place he did to be such a nuisance to local
30:16
Speaker 2: law enforcement.
30:17
Speaker 1: To be in. Because I saw there were just a
30:19
Speaker 1: couple of different houses. I feel like I saw the
30:21
Speaker 1: yea they grew up.
30:22
Speaker 2: In a was it not a trailer home? You know,
30:26
Speaker 2: a trailer home.
30:26
Speaker 1: He's a hit man. Where's all the money?
30:30
Speaker 2: Well, I mean he didn't have a job for years
30:34
Speaker 2: and years and years. So the question is sort of
30:36
Speaker 2: how did he support himself? And you know he he prostituted,
30:40
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't He certainly didn't live a lavish life,
30:46
Speaker 2: but he traveled around a lot. I mean there was
30:49
Speaker 2: several years of his life where he lived on the
30:51
Speaker 2: road for four years you know at a time. So
30:54
Speaker 2: and he was he was known to be like the
30:56
Speaker 2: world's worst gambler, like apparently he just never won as
31:00
Speaker 2: what people want, friends said and stuff. So you know,
31:03
Speaker 2: I think he gambled a lot of it away. Yeah, yeah,
31:06
Speaker 2: but I don't think it was that much. I don't
31:07
Speaker 2: know how much money it was. I think he was
31:09
Speaker 2: sort of this you know, nobody who you know, got
31:13
Speaker 2: scraps off the table for doing whatever he did. Yeah.
31:17
Speaker 1: I have all these questions about whether or not you
31:20
Speaker 1: think that Lucy made up the wells if you know
31:26
Speaker 1: how you didn't sort of give up on it, and
31:27
Speaker 1: now you come to us with this brand new information.
31:31
Speaker 2: Well I can answer that question. I mean, basically the
31:35
Speaker 2: I know that there was twenty three wells on that property.
31:39
Speaker 2: At the turn of the twentieth century, there were these
31:42
Speaker 2: very poor people living in this area, that's you know,
31:47
Speaker 2: and they lived in sort of like caves even and
31:50
Speaker 2: I know this sounds far fetched, but there's articles in
31:52
Speaker 2: the Omaha paper about this, and even in the fifties,
31:55
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, almost like do you want to know how
31:57
Speaker 2: the poor people live? Go up there and you'll see him.
32:00
Speaker 2: And there was it was this article that was sort
32:02
Speaker 2: of written about like the backwoods people. Right, So there's
32:05
Speaker 2: always this like mythical place going back one hundred plus
32:08
Speaker 2: years of people that are in the hills, people lived
32:11
Speaker 2: in caves. So it turned in the twentieth century the
32:13
Speaker 2: government was like, we're going to dig a well which
32:17
Speaker 2: is one hundred feet down to the water about and
32:19
Speaker 2: a cistern which is where they can put their water
32:21
Speaker 2: and build these homes for people who were living off
32:24
Speaker 2: the land and living in caves. That's true, that's documented,
32:27
Speaker 2: and and so we know the wells are there, right,
32:32
Speaker 2: So it wasn't really about whether or not the wells exists.
32:34
Speaker 2: It's like, are there human remains down the well is
32:38
Speaker 2: when Don called the current landowners said, hey, did you
32:41
Speaker 2: ever find any human remains without the well? Is that?
32:43
Speaker 2: Was that him laughing about it instead of or was
32:46
Speaker 2: that him bragging Because there's a lot of people that
32:49
Speaker 2: say Don loved to brag about his you know what,
32:51
Speaker 2: what what he did? What I always believed for the
32:54
Speaker 2: longest time was that Lucy reappropriated her trauma memories of
33:01
Speaker 2: her mom's being murdered, her mother, stepmother, and stepmother into
33:05
Speaker 2: this story of the wells. I thought that it was
33:08
Speaker 2: possible and likely that her father was some version of
33:13
Speaker 2: a hit man, because I've heard that story enough to
33:15
Speaker 2: believe it, and I believe that he's the type of
33:18
Speaker 2: person that killed people. You know, his cousin told us
33:21
Speaker 2: the story he washed him take a brick and just
33:23
Speaker 2: bludgeon someone until they were almost, you know dead. So
33:26
Speaker 2: we had all these stories and accounts of him being
33:28
Speaker 2: incredibly violent. You know, he beat his wife and to
33:31
Speaker 2: the point that she was almost dead and hospitalized, and
33:34
Speaker 2: there's no reason why he wouldn't have killed his wives.
33:37
Speaker 2: But I sort of tend to believe that because anytime
33:39
Speaker 2: I asked Lucy about the moms, I'm really depressed. She
33:43
Speaker 2: couldn't stay there for long before she switched to the
33:46
Speaker 2: women in the well. And I just thought it was
33:50
Speaker 2: some sort of like I can't face the fact that
33:53
Speaker 2: he murdered my mom, and this is just what I
33:55
Speaker 2: thought was sort of like, you know, was.
33:59
Speaker 1: That of a background in psychotherapy yourself.
34:03
Speaker 2: No, I did consult someone throughout the throughout the entirety
34:07
Speaker 2: of making this and sort of would play clips and
34:11
Speaker 2: ask their advice and things like that. But now other
34:14
Speaker 2: than having done some but I think, but I think, uh,
34:18
Speaker 2: I think that I just don't know. And it's really
34:22
Speaker 2: I really, you know, I don't think I'm like the
34:27
Speaker 2: best when I'm trying to know things that I don't know.
34:30
Speaker 2: I think I'm at my best when I just focus
34:32
Speaker 2: on what I know. You know, I follow the lead,
34:35
Speaker 2: follow the investigation, and try not to fill in the gaps.
34:38
Speaker 2: Just follow what you know. Otherwise you can get and
34:40
Speaker 2: kind of trouble with these things, because it's really hard
34:45
Speaker 2: work to figure this stuff out, you know, even for
34:48
Speaker 2: someone trained like Stuart Fillmore, who watched footage for us
34:52
Speaker 2: and did everything, you know, it's it's incredibly difficult to.
34:55
Speaker 1: Know, Yeah, better than me, My friend I don't know.
34:59
Speaker 1: I I can't even imagine this journey that you've been
35:01
Speaker 1: on and I can help. So where just in your head?
35:05
Speaker 1: I know this all's news just happened today. What now,
35:08
Speaker 1: are you going to go back to this place?
35:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, if we can get access back to the land, Yeah,
35:14
Speaker 2: we have to go test it. It's not it's not
35:17
Speaker 2: you know, cheap to sort of run those kinds of
35:20
Speaker 2: cordial tests. So I think it would be better off
35:23
Speaker 2: digging it up. So it's just whether or not we
35:26
Speaker 2: can get the access to do that. But you know,
35:28
Speaker 2: certainly i'd be thrilled if local law enforcement took it on, right.
35:32
Speaker 2: I don't need to be the one doing this by any.
35:34
Speaker 1: Means, right, So, in terms of other projects and other documentaries,
35:42
Speaker 1: where does this fall? I'm just curious, Like, I don't know,
35:46
Speaker 1: I don't know what word to use it. Don't if
35:47
Speaker 1: you enjoy obviously you love what you do, but would
35:50
Speaker 1: you use this a satisfying one for you? I would
35:52
Speaker 1: think it would have been one of the less sort
35:55
Speaker 1: of satisfying ones, only because it's there's still so many
35:58
Speaker 1: questions and it seems that it was just so rough.
36:02
Speaker 2: I went into this really being captivated by the story
36:06
Speaker 2: of the family, story about the about the wives, and
36:10
Speaker 2: I left with full satisfaction that that this this man
36:14
Speaker 2: murdered his wives at least at least two.
36:16
Speaker 1: Of them sisters had the closure that they needed.
36:20
Speaker 2: Was Yeah, for me, that was that was really always
36:23
Speaker 2: what it's almost about. But I said, like, for me,
36:26
Speaker 2: what I like, I know, I'm I like a psychological thriller.
36:31
Speaker 2: And I think that what this reminds me of was
36:35
Speaker 2: just like we never will really we never really know
36:37
Speaker 2: a person's mind, you know, and you can you know,
36:41
Speaker 2: for me, to start it off as investigation to find
36:43
Speaker 2: the truth and where it ended up was just a fascinating,
36:48
Speaker 2: you know, step into our psyche, psyche of people who
36:53
Speaker 2: were dramatized. So for me, that was there's so many
36:56
Speaker 2: takeaways in that, right, Like, and I feel like endless
37:00
Speaker 2: empathy for what the studied daughters went through, despite how
37:05
Speaker 2: difficult they were with me, despite ing, you know, how
37:09
Speaker 2: trying I was dealing with them. I mean, these are
37:12
Speaker 2: deeply traumatized women. And yeah, I have I have.
37:17
Speaker 1: I felt that too, I mean, and that's I guess, right,
37:20
Speaker 1: that's your point is to try to get me to
37:22
Speaker 1: feel it as well, and I did so congratulations. I
37:25
Speaker 1: thought the whole thing was absolutely fascinating.
37:29
Speaker 2: Thanks so much. We edit it and like rapid time.
37:32
Speaker 2: I wishing a lot of these things have many more
37:34
Speaker 2: months than us. So it was, you know, it was
37:36
Speaker 2: a race to the finished to get it out in
37:39
Speaker 2: a lower budget. But it's it's it's really cool to see.
37:42
Speaker 2: We just got some you know, sneak into some numbers
37:45
Speaker 2: from our agents and it's it's right up there. It's
37:49
Speaker 2: it's really a lot of people are watching, so it's
37:51
Speaker 2: very cool.
37:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm so glad.
37:53
Speaker 2: Thanks so glad.
37:54
Speaker 1: Keep in touch with us please.
37:56
Speaker 2: Thanks so much. I really appreciate the time by