Latest / Shades of Murder / 59: A Son's Journey into the Dark - The Joseph & Mike Gatto Story

Transcript

59: A Son's Journey into the Dark - The Joseph & Mike Gatto Story · Shades of Murder

• 0:04
  On November 13th, 2013, officers arrived at the residence of an
• 0:09
  elderly man in the prestigious and hip Silver Lake neighborhood
• 0:13
  of Los Angeles, CA. His home was ransacked and on
• 0:17
  the surface it appeared to be a fatal home invasion.
• 0:22
  Who was this innocent victim and was it a stranger who committed
• 0:25
  this crime? Or was it perhaps a monster the
• 0:28
  victim knew who would stage the scene to look like a burglary.
• 1:10
  Hello and welcome to Shades of Murder.
• 1:13
  I am your host Alita Caldwell. In this podcast, I discuss cases
• 1:18
  of murder from around the world and throughout history,
• 1:21
  attempting to unravel the layers of darkness that help make
• 1:25
  humans and to monsters. Please be forewarned that each
• 1:30
  episode contains specific and at times very graphic and
• 1:35
  disturbing details of the case. This show is not intended for
• 1:39
  all audiences and listener discretion is strongly advised.
• 1:44
  In this episode, instead of analyzing the case through the
• 1:48
  various lenses of criminology in the justice system, as I
• 1:51
  frequently do, I sit down with the victim's son, Mike Goddo.
• 1:57
  Please listen to the episode in its entirety so you don't miss a
• 2:00
  moment of this emotional and deeply personal interview.
• 2:05
  Silver Lake, CA on the East Side is one of the most expensive and
• 2:10
  trendiest neighborhoods in all of Los Angeles, neighboring
• 2:14
  Hollywood to the West and slightly north of downtown.
• 2:17
  It's well known for its unique hit and very artistic appeal.
• 2:21
  Several celebrities have called the area their home, including
• 2:24
  actress Chris Pine and Ryan Gosling and the musician Beck.
• 2:27
  The neighborhood is considered to be relatively safe and
• 2:29
  certainly is in comparison to many other sections of Los
• 2:33
  Angeles. It's crime rate is 35% lower
• 2:36
  than the state average and 28% lower than the national average,
• 2:39
  with more property crime than violent crimes occurring there.
• 2:43
  It was on the night of November 12th, 2013, within this
• 2:48
  beautiful and quiet community that her shocking murder would
• 2:51
  take place, ripping away one with beloved older citizens.
• 2:55
  When Mike got her received a call from his youngest sister on
• 2:59
  the evening of November 13th, 2013, her words just didn't make
• 3:02
  any sense to him. She said that she found her
• 3:05
  father slumped over at his desk and he appeared to have a wound.
• 3:09
  He told her to call emergency services right away.
• 3:13
  At some point within the next few hours, he received
• 3:16
  confirmation that his father was dead and he was believed that he
• 3:19
  had been murdered. It seemed impossible that he
• 3:22
  could be gone. 78 year old Joseph Gatto was in many
• 3:26
  respects larger than life. He was extremely healthy and
• 3:30
  fit, especially for his age, and it was expected that he would
• 3:34
  live several more decades. Joseph Gatto, the father of Mike
• 3:37
  Gatto, one of the prominent and powerful figures in California
• 3:40
  politics of the time, was legendary in his own right.
• 3:44
  Born to a father who worked for the coal mines and later steel
• 3:47
  mines in Pennsylvania during the Great Depression, Joseph Gatto
• 3:50
  had made it his mission in life that once he grew up, he and his
• 3:54
  family would never be without. He was the first person in his
• 3:58
  family to graduate from college and he earned multiple master's
• 4:02
  degree. Joseph Gado was passionate about
• 4:04
  higher education and the arts. He helped establish the Los
• 4:08
  Angeles County High School for the Arts and was the founding
• 4:10
  Dean and chairman of its visual arts department.
• 4:13
  While growing up, Mike Gado didn't see his father very much
• 4:17
  as he worked three jobs. Joseph Gado would work his nine
• 4:20
  to five teaching art classes and would briefly go home before
• 4:23
  heading to Dodger Stadium every single night where he ran a food
• 4:27
  stand. Then every Saturday he taught
• 4:29
  classes at a College of design on Sunday.
• 4:32
  That was his one day of rest and the family respected that, so
• 4:36
  they gave him his space and time to breathe.
• 4:39
  Not too long before his death, he was happily spending his
• 4:42
  retirement days in the lively, youthful trend setting
• 4:46
  neighborhood of Silver Lake where the family had grown up.
• 4:49
  At last, Joseph Gatto had the time to breathe, relax and
• 4:53
  pursue his own passion for the arts and create jewelry.
• 4:56
  Since he had been staying at their Sacramento house at the
• 4:59
  time of his father's murder, Mike and his wife Danielle
• 5:02
  packed their bags and drove to Los Angeles the next morning
• 5:05
  once he arrived at his father's Silver Lake residence.
• 5:07
  My God, I was accompanied by local law enforcement to the
• 5:11
  crime scene. This is by the way an extremely
• 5:13
  abnormal procedure, not to mention beyond traumatizing for
• 5:17
  a victims loved ones. Unfortunately, it was deemed a
• 5:20
  horrible necessity to help locate any of his father's
• 5:23
  electronic devices. Mike took in a deep breath and
• 5:26
  walked inside the room where his father had been brutally
• 5:29
  murdered. Several things stood out right
• 5:31
  away as he entered the third floor where his father had been
• 5:34
  killed. Inside his bedroom on the
• 5:35
  counter top lay his large gold ring, an item of great value
• 5:39
  that wasn't taken but was in plain sight.
• 5:41
  Many electronics were still there, as well as art hanging on
• 5:44
  the wall, some of which would have garnered a high price, and
• 5:48
  yet his father's small wooden file cabinet had been pried
• 5:51
  open. Even more compelling, on the
• 5:53
  floor by his desk were handwritten notes indicating a
• 5:56
  change of will. Mike had been previously aware
• 5:59
  of his father discussing this in months past, but he hadn't given
• 6:02
  it much thought until that exact moment.
• 6:05
  A neighbor initially spread speculation that he was killed
• 6:08
  because of his valuable collection of icons.
• 6:10
  Icons are a type of painting on wood with origins in Greek
• 6:14
  Orthodox culture. They were first painted during
• 6:17
  the Byzantine Empire and later in the Russian Empire, which had
• 6:20
  given them the name frequently referred to as Russian icons.
• 6:23
  The art depicts religious scenes of the Christian faith, commonly
• 6:27
  a St. or the Virgin Mary, and they are often overlaid with
• 6:31
  silver or gold. Genuine pieces that are several
• 6:34
  centuries old are highly valuable.
• 6:37
  Joseph Goddard had a rare and vast collection of icons, and he
• 6:40
  was set to present his private pieces at an antiquity show only
• 6:45
  days before he was killed. This neighbor believed he must
• 6:49
  have been murdered by art thieves specifically sent by the
• 6:51
  Russian mob who saw this advertisement for his lecture,
• 6:55
  and yet not one of his precious icons had been stolen from his
• 7:00
  home. In December 2013, the police
• 7:03
  issued A bulletin to newspapers and made direct appeals to pawn
• 7:06
  shops to keep a lookout for any jewelry brought in.
• 7:09
  It was discovered that a few pieces of jewelry have been
• 7:12
  taken from his home. Joseph Gotta was an incredible
• 7:15
  jeweler known for his unique, globally inspired pieces,
• 7:20
  predominantly crafted from silver and sometimes gold.
• 7:22
  He incorporated elements of art into each piece.
• 7:25
  They were not of exceptionally high value though, more in the
• 7:28
  hundreds, not thousands. Joseph Goddard's pieces were
• 7:32
  more valuable than anything because he signed each one of
• 7:35
  them and they were beautiful and one-of-a-kind, but not one piece
• 7:40
  of his jewelry had ever surfaced.
• 7:41
  The only real suspect to emerge at this time was that of a young
• 7:45
  car thief. The following sequence of events
• 7:47
  were portrayed by the LAPD and the media as having happened.
• 7:51
  A young man was reported to have been in the vicinity of Mr.
• 7:54
  Gado's house, approximately 1/4 mile away, sometime after 6:00
• 7:58
  PM on the night of his murder. The young man was described as
• 8:01
  wearing clean but edgy clothes and spotted by two neighbors
• 8:05
  trying to break into a car. He allegedly had a gun and was
• 8:08
  behaving in a threatening manner.
• 8:10
  The neighbors got into one of their vehicles and chased after
• 8:13
  him as he ran down the staircase carved out in the neighborhood,
• 8:17
  which would only be known by someone who lived there or who
• 8:20
  was very familiar with the area. He watched as a helicopter flew
• 8:25
  overhead. He thought it was the LEPD,
• 8:28
  although in fact it was a tourist helicopter taking
• 8:31
  visitors to view the famous Hollywood sign.
• 8:35
  At that exact moment, Joseph got a went back to his vehicle to
• 8:39
  get his printer out of the trunk he had just bought, which he
• 8:42
  could only do if the garage door was open.
• 8:46
  As he walked up the stairs with this heavy, awkward item, the
• 8:49
  young man snuck into the garage to hide.
• 8:52
  After about an hour had passed, the guy began to itch for a fix
• 8:56
  and went inside the home. He confronted Joseph Gotto there
• 9:00
  with the purpose of stealing from him and in the chaos shot
• 9:04
  him, most likely by accident, as he watched the elderly man
• 9:08
  slouch over at his desk bleeding to death.
• 9:11
  The drug addict ransacked the place, attempting unsuccessfully
• 9:15
  to break into his safes with large garden shears and a fire
• 9:19
  poker. But instead he opted to tear
• 9:22
  into his files, grabbed a few pieces of jewellery, maybe some
• 9:25
  cash but not the credit cards from his wallet, and ran off
• 9:28
  into the night. Mind you, the thief would have
• 9:30
  had to run past the 2 1/2 mile track that surrounded the lake
• 9:35
  where literally thousands of joggers in Los Angeles run.
• 9:38
  None of this fit, but the police did their best to convince Mike
• 9:43
  Gatto and the entire public at large to swallow this story as
• 9:47
  the truth. There were unidentified prints
• 9:49
  inside the house, but they didn't match those found on the
• 9:51
  vehicle. The gun cartridge was also left
• 9:54
  behind. As aforementioned, Joseph Gatto
• 9:58
  was known for being very fit and strong for a man of 78 years
• 10:02
  old. It was identified years earlier
• 10:05
  that his family's heritage in Italy how the Centurion gene,
• 10:09
  which was evidenced by one of his aunts who lived until she
• 10:12
  was 110 years old. The factor of this character and
• 10:16
  physical strength is interesting in the scope of how such an
• 10:19
  alert and healthy older man was attacked almost effortlessly in
• 10:23
  his own home, not to mention how his body was found in his
• 10:27
  bedroom on the third level of the residence.
• 10:30
  These elements are bizarre when you think of an intruder that is
• 10:33
  a stranger being his assailant. It's not very logical to think
• 10:38
  that a person seemingly snuck into a man's home without a
• 10:42
  sound being made. Then he was caught in the act of
• 10:46
  burglary and he shot Joseph Gatto in the stomach, who
• 10:49
  slouched over on his desk and died slowly from the wound.
• 10:52
  Under these circumstances, one would believe there were signs
• 10:56
  of a struggle, even possibly defensive wounds that occurred
• 10:59
  during the attack. From everything I have read,
• 11:02
  Joseph Gatto was not someone who would have been intimidated to
• 11:05
  the point of not even attempting to survive.
• 11:08
  Then you add in the strange crime scene where it appears
• 11:10
  someone was rummaging through files in search of something,
• 11:14
  and yet art and jewelry and other items clearly of value
• 11:19
  were not taken. There were endless questions.
• 11:22
  My Gatto began to ponder. If there was a man breaking into
• 11:25
  cars, why would he have a gun? That is not typical behavior for
• 11:28
  a car thief. Because the penalty changes from
• 11:31
  barely any time to serious jail time if armed.
• 11:35
  Then there was the timing. That didn't make any sense.
• 11:38
  Why would someone break into cars when people are arriving
• 11:40
  home after work and even under desperate situations, why choose
• 11:45
  to enter a house where there are three cars?
• 11:48
  It would have been dark by then, so there would have been
• 11:50
  multiple lights on in the residence.
• 11:53
  Not at all an ideal setting for a theft, drug addicted or not,
• 11:58
  to sneak into a home to rob someone.
• 12:01
  Everything also seemed to align the night of the murders.
• 12:04
  That is, for the killer, any possible witnesses, AKA the
• 12:08
  neighbors, were way at various places as they were expected to
• 12:11
  be based on their usual schedules.
• 12:14
  That seemed awfully convenient and highly suspicious, as if the
• 12:18
  murderer knew exactly when the area would be most vacant.
• 12:22
  In 2014, the Los Angeles City Council offered a $50,000 reward
• 12:27
  for information leading to the killer's arrest, which is a
• 12:30
  standard reward. There was definitely no
• 12:33
  favoritism or any extra assistance being provided to the
• 12:37
  important assemblyman and his family to solve this brutal
• 12:40
  murder. During this time around 100
• 12:42
  raids of the residences of individuals on probation, those
• 12:46
  who had violated parole and known burglars in the area were
• 12:50
  performed, but nothing came of them.
• 12:52
  None of these people seemed to have any connection to the
• 12:55
  crime. It was at the same time that it
• 12:57
  was learned by Mike Goddard that the car thief, who allegedly had
• 13:00
  been armed with a gun had only been witnessed by an 8 year old
• 13:04
  boy. This made it much more likely
• 13:05
  that the car thief was simply just that, a young man
• 13:09
  attempting to rob vehicles in a well to do neighborhood, but not
• 13:13
  a brutal, merciless killer of an elderly man.
• 13:16
  In September 2014, my God had decided to talk directly to the
• 13:21
  two people who saw the car thief and chased him off.
• 13:24
  The woman described the man as being of Eastern European
• 13:28
  descent. Specifically, she described him
• 13:30
  as being an Eastern European hitman.
• 13:33
  He was casual in his demeanor and didn't appear at all rushed.
• 13:37
  He didn't seem to be high or drugged out on anything.
• 13:40
  The two times Mike spoke to her, she recalled him saying 2
• 13:44
  distinctly different things each time.
• 13:46
  She couldn't remember if he had said do you want to die tonight
• 13:49
  or he said take another step and it's the end.
• 13:52
  She also described him as dressing like a foreigner in a
• 13:55
  very nice way, but that he didn't have an accent.
• 13:59
  The woman also provided Mike with two slightly different time
• 14:02
  frames as to when she saw him that night.
• 14:05
  When she and the other neighbor drove off in their car to chase
• 14:08
  the suspect, truck just so happened to block their way.
• 14:12
  She believed it had been a decoy.
• 14:14
  Then Mike spoke with the man who helped out in the chase.
• 14:17
  He described the man as being Armenian.
• 14:19
  The suspect was also described by him as being calm, not in any
• 14:23
  rush and he didn't appear to be high on any drugs and he never
• 14:28
  shouted anything. There was also a woman who was
• 14:31
  never identified who passed the suspect running down the stairs.
• 14:35
  Despite Mike Goddess pleas, the woman never came forward.
• 14:39
  The neighbor who helped chase the suspect, her eight-year old
• 14:42
  son who also saw the suspect, said his description of the
• 14:46
  thief didn't match the neighbors at all.
• 14:49
  He told the police sketch artist that he didn't see the man long
• 14:52
  enough or well enough to provide them with the description.
• 14:54
  And yet, the police decided to sketch what the neighbors saw
• 14:58
  versus the neighbor's son. In November of that year, the
• 15:01
  Gatto family held a press conference asking the public to
• 15:04
  please come forward with any information regarding the
• 15:07
  murder. No one ever did.
• 15:09
  Familial DNA was also employed, but as of this recording, there
• 15:13
  have been no hits in the database.
• 15:16
  For those of you not clear about this distinct kind of DNA, it is
• 15:20
  based in California and looks for patterns of the Y chromosome
• 15:24
  that are specific to males in order to find a match.
• 15:27
  As an example, perhaps a cousin of the arbitrator is in the
• 15:30
  database, but nothing ever surfaced.
• 15:32
  In December 2014, the California Court of Appeals struck down
• 15:36
  ADNA law that it existed for the past 11 years.
• 15:40
  This law mandated that anyone arrested for a serious felony
• 15:43
  offense have their DNA taken and submitted into CODIS.
• 15:47
  The challenge to this law was centered around its violation of
• 15:50
  the search and seizure laws protected under the 4th
• 15:53
  Amendment. This undoubtedly would severely
• 15:56
  and adversely impact countless victims of murder and rape,
• 16:00
  essentially eliminating hope that one day they received news
• 16:04
  that a match was found. Such a drastic change in law
• 16:08
  catapulted Mike Gatto in the arena of both victims rights and
• 16:11
  the preservation of DNA testing. What may once have been an issue
• 16:16
  of constitutional rights was now something deeply personal and
• 16:20
  profoundly impacting on his life.
• 16:22
  This law has since been reinstated, but unless the
• 16:26
  individual has been convicted of a felony, there are existing
• 16:29
  expungement laws that get rid of the DNA sample.
• 16:32
  Two years passed since his father's murder and Mike, along
• 16:35
  with his family and an extensive number of community members,
• 16:39
  held a vigil in the Silver Lake neighborhood.
• 16:41
  Holding candles, they walked the straits singing one of his
• 16:44
  father's favorite Catholic songs.
• 16:45
  That fall, Mike Godda regularly spoke with one of the main
• 16:48
  detectives on his father's case and learned some new things, one
• 16:52
  which was particularly hopeful. Several sets of unknown prints
• 16:56
  were collected from his father's house.
• 16:58
  Most of them have been partial, but they were going to be
• 17:00
  subjected to augmentation and advance reconstruction to
• 17:04
  hopefully yield a match. But he was told that this meant
• 17:08
  the person who murdered his father was not someone already
• 17:11
  in the system, whether for an arrest, or someone who was
• 17:14
  undocumented. Their prints had never been
• 17:16
  found at another crime scene, nor was it someone who would
• 17:19
  ever applied for a job with the government.
• 17:21
  These were still hell bent on the theory that his killer was
• 17:25
  the car thief and based on his familiarity of the surroundings
• 17:29
  since he knew to take the carved out staircase, it was likely a
• 17:33
  neighborhood kid. The neighborhood was comprised
• 17:36
  of $1,000,000 houses, so how many 20 somethings were living
• 17:40
  amongst them? The police had constructed this
• 17:42
  theory of how a young man in his early 20s who lived with his
• 17:46
  grandmother at the time, completely lost it after
• 17:49
  accidentally shooting and killing Joseph Garo.
• 17:52
  After realizing her grandson was involved, she then sent him away
• 17:58
  to live with like an extended family member or something in
• 18:00
  Alaska. When Mike Garo inquired as to if
• 18:03
  they had looked into the census of the neighborhood to view
• 18:06
  profiles that may narrow down a suspect within this theory of
• 18:10
  theirs, they never did. When he asked if they had viewed
• 18:14
  the high school yearbooks of the one school that existed in
• 18:17
  Silver Lake to see who may fit the profile of the sketch, they
• 18:21
  also rejected this idea. They insisted it would take far
• 18:25
  too much time and wouldn't yield any valid results.
• 18:29
  In November of 2015, Mike Godda decided to pursue this idea on
• 18:33
  his own. He was hesitant, even nervous,
• 18:36
  to contact the principal regarding such a strange and
• 18:39
  morbid request, but unlike the police, he was more than happy
• 18:43
  to provide five years of yearbooks for Mike to scroll
• 18:47
  through. Mike ended up taking notes on
• 18:49
  who were the strongest possible candidates that the young man in
• 18:52
  the sketch could fit, and even googled a few names to see if
• 18:56
  they fit into a gangster or criminal type of mold.
• 18:59
  The two eyewitnesses also gave their input for several weeks.
• 19:04
  In addition to the many hats and roles he wore, Mike Gado played
• 19:09
  amateur sleuth and delivered a concise report on his findings
• 19:13
  to the LAPD. Once again, they didn't invest
• 19:16
  their time in gathering additional information.
• 19:19
  It was highly unlikely that anyone even read, much less
• 19:23
  followed up with his file. In February 2016, a local paper
• 19:28
  called Los Feliz Leger reported that only a few hours before
• 19:33
  Joseph Gatto was killed, Gatto's sister Nicole and her boyfriend
• 19:37
  got married. No family members have been in
• 19:40
  attendance and no one had been aware of the event.
• 19:45
  In mid 2016, 102 tips and leads had come in than nothing.
• 19:49
  Mike Gada was informed how the back door was unlocked when his
• 19:53
  father was discovered dead. This made sense that the
• 19:55
  perpetrator had gone to the garden to grab garden shears in
• 19:59
  an attempt to unsuccessfully pry open the safe.
• 20:03
  It was also learned that 30 different envelopes of jewelry
• 20:07
  had been opened. Then in mid 2017, it was
• 20:11
  reported that a young man was taken into custody for vehicle
• 20:15
  burglary near his father's home. It wouldn't have been important
• 20:19
  except for the fact that the man's photo strongly resembled
• 20:24
  the sketch made of the auto thief.
• 20:27
  Since he had only been charged with a misdemeanor, though, DNA
• 20:31
  could not be collected. My God, I hoped that the police
• 20:34
  would press him about any known auto theft ring or anything at
• 20:38
  all. He had heard about the murder,
• 20:41
  but once again the police were more caught up with not wanting
• 20:46
  to do what someone else suggested.
• 20:48
  Rather than ask the man questions that could have led to
• 20:52
  answers or at least eliminate him as a potential suspect, the
• 20:57
  police did at last admit that the sketch of the possible
• 21:00
  murder suspect was not being given much credits.
• 21:04
  No one was talking, no one had snitched, no one had re
• 21:08
  offended. They were left with nothing,
• 21:12
  similar to many other victims of missing and murdered loved ones
• 21:16
  who get nowhere. With the police's help, Mike
• 21:19
  Gatto decided to hire a private investigator.
• 21:23
  Immediately, the climate began to change around the
• 21:27
  investigation. It was then learned that the
• 21:30
  police had not interviewed everyone in his neighborhood.
• 21:35
  They had only focused on the immediate neighbors with an easy
• 21:39
  access as it was revealed someone not directly across the
• 21:43
  street heard something of significance.
• 21:48
  It was discovered by the private investigator that in the house
• 21:51
  behind the residence directly across the street from his
• 21:55
  father's home, was a woman who heard a loud sound like a
• 22:00
  firecracker at 6:20 PM when his father would have returned from
• 22:05
  Costco that night and prior to the neighbors interactions with
• 22:08
  the auto thief. When it happened, the woman hit
• 22:11
  her deck and crawled around for a few minutes thinking there
• 22:15
  could be additional fire. Then she contacted one of her
• 22:18
  neighbors and asked if their adolescent childhood set up a
• 22:21
  firecracker or even fired a gun. All of this new information
• 22:26
  seemed as if it should blow the investigation wide open into a
• 22:29
  brand new direction. The police gave the excuse that
• 22:33
  it didn't match up the known timeline as to when Joseph Gatto
• 22:36
  was on his computer, but just because someone was online
• 22:41
  doesn't mean it was the victim. Based on the evidence of what is
• 22:46
  known, it seemed obvious that someone was trying to find
• 22:50
  something amongst his father's belongings.
• 22:53
  It wasn't likely a value in a traditional sense either,
• 22:56
  because the perpetrator had dug through personal files and now
• 23:00
  there was the possibility that someone else had been using his
• 23:03
  father's computer. It would later be revealed by
• 23:05
  the private investigator that the police had failed to check
• 23:09
  off what many would consider to be obvious tactics and
• 23:13
  strategies of a homicide investigation.
• 23:16
  From I messages to who had copies of keys to his father's
• 23:20
  house, to performing polygraphs on everyone from himself to the
• 23:24
  key vendor. And so all of this information
• 23:27
  was compiled and put together in a report and presented to the
• 23:30
  LAPD. They suggested that Mike gotta
• 23:33
  be the first to come in for a polygraph.
• 23:37
  What followed can only be described as harassment, which
• 23:41
  bordered on illegal behaviour by the detectives.
• 23:45
  He wasn't simply asked about his whereabouts or his relationship
• 23:49
  with his father. Mike Gatto was yelled at,
• 23:51
  berated and forced to sit there while these so-called
• 23:55
  investigators skewered him for two hours.
• 24:02
  He left disgusted and with little faith left in law
• 24:07
  enforcement, yet unlike the LAPD, my God, I remained
• 24:13
  respectful and tactful and never once did he badmouth the police
• 24:18
  for their incompetent investigation, much less their
• 24:21
  bullying behavior toward him. He also never once used his own
• 24:27
  political power and influence to change the direction of the
• 24:30
  investigation. This conveys everything about
• 24:32
  his character because most people, including myself, if
• 24:36
  they had the resources and connections he had, would have
• 24:40
  used them to affect the investigation.
• 24:42
  A few months later, there was some semblance of justice when
• 24:46
  the two detectives were removed from his case.
• 24:49
  Finally, in 2019, after these incompetent detectives were
• 24:53
  released from Mike Goto's father's case, he received 2 new
• 24:58
  ones. Mike Goto received 2 new ones.
• 25:02
  These homicide investigators were committed, compassionate,
• 25:06
  and viewed the case through fresh and much broader vision.
• 25:10
  They were finally doing what he had requested and hoped would be
• 25:14
  done on his father's case years before the detectives actively
• 25:18
  collaborated with him. A genetic genealogist who had
• 25:21
  solved over 100 cases. And maybe most importantly,
• 25:25
  we're looking at the crime from all angles.
• 25:28
  The deputy District Attorney was also working on expanding DNA
• 25:32
  testing. But then the investigation hit
• 25:36
  yet another roadblock. Hope of finding a leak to the
• 25:39
  perpetrator through DNA was not likely going to happen.
• 25:43
  It was confirmed that the sample was too fragmented and too small
• 25:47
  to yield any voluble results. Then the great pandemic arrived
• 25:52
  and pretty much shut down any advancements in the case for a
• 25:55
  couple of years. In 2022, when Mike was finally
• 25:59
  permitted to have face to face meetings with the detectives on
• 26:03
  his case again, he learned of something very significant, a
• 26:07
  fact that no one had ever revealed.
• 26:11
  His father had gunshot residue on his hands and arms.
• 26:16
  What does this indicate? Well, one of two things.
• 26:19
  This means either indicates that the gun used in the homicide was
• 26:23
  Joseph Gatos and his perpetrator struggled with him successfully
• 26:28
  getting possession of the weapon, or his father had fought
• 26:33
  back. But this only led to more
• 26:35
  possible theories and scenarios, none which neatly fit.
• 26:39
  And this is where the investigation sits today.
• 26:43
  Joseph Gato's case, to this day, remains unsolved.
• 26:46
  It is one of over 100,000 cold cases in the United States, of
• 26:52
  which only 1% are ever solved. However, thanks to major
• 26:58
  evolutions in DNA and other areas of technology, cold cases
• 27:03
  are being solved. The oldest case ever solved in
• 27:06
  the United States was cold for over 50 years.
• 27:11
  There are also breaks in cases from people confessing on their
• 27:14
  deathbeds or others that just finally want to speak the truth.
• 27:20
  The question remains, was Joseph Goddard's death an unplanned
• 27:24
  homicide that occurred during a home invasion, or was it
• 27:29
  carefully staged by someone he knew to appear as one?
• 27:38
  In lieu of a deep dive and analysis of very elements of
• 27:41
  this case, I have a very special guest with me today.
• 27:45
  First of all, is it Mike Gatto or Gatto?
• 27:49
  That's right. We we say Mike Gatto and I, as I
• 27:52
  always said when I was in the legislature, as long as you're
• 27:53
  not calling me a jerk, I'm OK with it.
• 27:56
  OK, so it. Is Mike Gatto.
• 27:58
  Mike Gatto, Joseph Gatto's son, is here to discuss the case and
• 28:02
  how his father's murder has profoundly affected his life.
• 28:06
  Welcome to Shades of Murder. Mike, I appreciate your reaching
• 28:09
  out to me and wanting to be on my little show.
• 28:11
  I was going to say you. Know I, we believe or I believe
• 28:15
  that podcasts are the greatest form of democratized
• 28:18
  entertainment and information. And in many cases they're doing
• 28:21
  better work than the networks. And so for families of unsolved
• 28:25
  murder victims, you know, we are deeply into the true crime genre
• 28:29
  and we know that the assistance that you provide in getting our
• 28:33
  stories out is extremely valuable.
• 28:35
  I appreciate. Hearing that so much, you know,
• 28:37
  a lot of times true crime shows are perceived as only being
• 28:41
  sensationalist. And with my show and as I you
• 28:45
  have acknowledged, I really try to put a focus on the
• 28:48
  educational elements, whether it's from a criminological point
• 28:52
  of view or victim's point of view.
• 28:55
  I try to enlighten in some small way.
• 28:58
  So that means a lot to hear. Thank you.
• 29:00
  Of course, let. Me first extend my.
• 29:02
  Sincerest condolences to you and your family for the loss of your
• 29:04
  father. For those listeners who may not
• 29:07
  be familiar with you, you are a former California Assemblyman
• 29:11
  who served the State of California between 2010 and
• 29:14
  2016. In your own words, why were you
• 29:18
  drawn into politics? I.
• 29:20
  Was running into politics because I was tired of waking up
• 29:26
  in the morning and reading the newspaper and saying, you know,
• 29:29
  someone's got to do better. Someone's got to got to do
• 29:31
  better than those folks in the capital.
• 29:34
  And then at some point, I realized that maybe that someone
• 29:36
  was me. You know, it's one thing to
• 29:38
  criticize government from the outside, and then it's another
• 29:40
  thing to give up your life and become part of government.
• 29:43
  And at some point, I chose, I challenged myself to do the
• 29:46
  latter. And I really liked having my
• 29:48
  hands on the wheel. I really liked the feeling that
• 29:50
  I could wake up any given day and make a difference in the
• 29:52
  lives of 40 million Californians.
• 29:54
  That's amazing. Will you make me proud to be a
• 29:57
  natural Californian, so to speak?
• 30:00
  Native Californian? Before your career in politics,
• 30:02
  you practice law at Los Angeles, oldest and most distinguished
• 30:06
  law firm. You also served as Congressional
• 30:08
  Chief of staff and worked in the administration under three
• 30:11
  different mayors. Today, you're a managing partner
• 30:14
  at business law firm Actium. I believe that's right.
• 30:19
  So, Needless to say, you are impressive and a highly
• 30:22
  accomplished individual. But today the focus is on your
• 30:25
  father and your quest for truth and justice.
• 30:29
  You wrote a book called Noir by Necessity, How My Father's
• 30:32
  Unsolved Murder Took Me to Dark Places, which describes in raw,
• 30:37
  captivating detail the many, many emotions, processes, and
• 30:41
  experiences you have endured since finding out that your
• 30:44
  father was killed. What inspired you to write this
• 30:49
  about your experience losing your father more than a decade
• 30:52
  after his death? Yeah, so.
• 30:55
  It was, it was really two things.
• 30:57
  The first one was that, as you noted, I am very fortunate to
• 31:00
  have a platform. I have a big following on
• 31:03
  Twitter now called X. I'm on TV, national TV 2-3 times
• 31:08
  a week. And you know, I can, I can get
• 31:11
  the attention of newspapers if I want.
• 31:13
  But you know, in California, between 40 and 50% of murders go
• 31:18
  unsolved. And most of the victims families
• 31:22
  do not have a platform. Their stories go untold.
• 31:26
  The families toil for justice in silence and nobody covers their
• 31:32
  family's case. And I got to meet so many
• 31:35
  families like that over the the time that my dad's case is
• 31:38
  stretched that, you know, I just wanted to draw some attention to
• 31:41
  the experience for people who we're not familiar with what
• 31:45
  it's like, you know, and, and obviously, God forbid that
• 31:48
  anybody out there ever goes through this, but I wanted to
• 31:50
  give people just a little bit of a window into what it's like for
• 31:53
  all the murder victims and bring attention to their case.
• 31:56
  And then the second thing is, you know, we live in a world
• 31:59
  where a lot of these cases are being solved by, you know, sort
• 32:03
  of amateur sleuths and, and people who are devotees to the
• 32:07
  true crime genre. You know, I was hoping that, you
• 32:11
  know, I could get the details out of my father's case again
• 32:14
  and that maybe somebody would pick up the book and maybe
• 32:17
  somebody would either really work hard to solve it or they
• 32:20
  knew somebody or they knew something and they would step
• 32:23
  forward. And while that hasn't happened
• 32:24
  yet, you know, I still hope that people will read the book.
• 32:27
  And people in the Los Angeles area will, you know, keep their
• 32:31
  ears to the ground and maybe this will jaw jog some memories
• 32:34
  and maybe, you know, at some point someone will step forward.
• 32:36
  Yeah. And you never know.
• 32:37
  I. Mean cold cases are being solved
• 32:39
  every day in so many different ways.
• 32:41
  So there there is always hope. Yeah, other had go ahead.
• 32:45
  No, I, I, I was. Just going to say we still have
• 32:47
  hope now your father had. A very strong impact on many
• 32:50
  people's lives. He was one of the founders of
• 32:52
  the Los Angeles County School of Arts, a published author of
• 32:55
  several textbooks, and a teacher to hundreds of students.
• 32:58
  He will always be remembered for his passion and encouragement of
• 33:02
  the arts, but at the end of the day, he was your dad.
• 33:07
  Can you share what he meant to you?
• 33:09
  Yeah. So the thing to know about my
• 33:12
  dad, I guess, first and foremost is that he was two things.
• 33:15
  Number 1, he was a very hard worker when I was a kid.
• 33:18
  He had three jobs. And he did that because, you
• 33:24
  know, everybody sort of rebels against the previous generation.
• 33:26
  And his father was a very hard worker, too, But his father
• 33:29
  always struggled to put food on the table.
• 33:31
  His dad was a was a coal miner and then a steel worker and, you
• 33:36
  know, a general laborer. And, you know, the family grew
• 33:39
  up very poor. So my dad was determined not to
• 33:41
  do that for us. So he worked three jobs and just
• 33:44
  just a tremendous hard worker. The second thing to know about
• 33:48
  my dad is that, you know, he was a Renaissance man.
• 33:52
  He was the type of guy who could, you know, take apart an
• 33:56
  engine and, you know, restore an old antiques chair and then
• 34:03
  spend an hour, you know, pruning his fruit trees.
• 34:07
  Yeah. And then write a book.
• 34:09
  I mean, you know, like, I'm not sure that they make guys like
• 34:12
  that anymore. I mean, he, he knew so much.
• 34:15
  His, his breadth of knowledge was so varied.
• 34:17
  And. And I think that is a tremendous
• 34:21
  value in a world like we live in right now.
• 34:24
  Yeah, he sounds like he was such a fascinating man and like you
• 34:27
  said, really just kind of a Jack of all trades, so to speak.
• 34:30
  He he had his hands kind of in everything and he could do
• 34:33
  almost anything. Yeah, that is.
• 34:35
  Absolutely right. Now, how did your father's
• 34:39
  murder change the trajectory of your career?
• 34:43
  Did it impact your priorities as a politician in any way?
• 34:47
  Yeah, so. It changed my career a number of
• 34:48
  ways. I mean, the, the first way was
• 34:50
  that, you know, I think it derailed my political career for
• 34:54
  a while there. And to some degree it still has,
• 34:57
  you know, what this was like. You know, I mean, it it, it
• 35:00
  obviously turned up and turned our lives upside down.
• 35:02
  And I think for a while I was probably obsessed with the case,
• 35:05
  you know, for the first six months after something like
• 35:08
  that, you're not even really sleeping, you know, much less,
• 35:12
  you know, working at full capacity.
• 35:13
  Look, I still work my butt off to be the best legislator, the
• 35:17
  best provider of constituent services, everything like that.
• 35:21
  But but I recognize that, you know, this, this was something
• 35:24
  that that's, you know, certainly filled a lot of my time.
• 35:27
  And then the second thing is, you know, there's a part of me
• 35:29
  that would like this case to be solved before I return to
• 35:33
  politics. You know, it feels like just a
• 35:36
  gaping hole or an open wound. It just feels like it's
• 35:39
  unfinished business. And it would be very nice to, to
• 35:42
  have some resolution there and have some closure before I
• 35:44
  return to politics. I don't know if that's going to
• 35:46
  happen. I mean, politics is a calling.
• 35:48
  I might come back at some point sooner rather than later.
• 35:51
  But, you know, it, it just the, you know, it's something like
• 35:55
  this really. I, I guess the best way to
• 35:57
  describe it is, of course, nobody ever plans for anything
• 35:59
  like this. And it just makes your life go
• 36:02
  down a path that you never expect.
• 36:04
  Yeah, yeah. Exactly, just like as you
• 36:06
  described in the novel. And it took you in so many
• 36:09
  different directions, emotionally, psychologically,
• 36:12
  everything. Now, if you're right with it, I
• 36:16
  would like to return to the moment your sister called you
• 36:18
  the night your father died. Now, when you first received the
• 36:22
  phone call about your father, it was your sister who said she
• 36:25
  found him slouched over his desk and she couldn't tell exactly,
• 36:28
  but she thought he might have a wound and he was cold to the
• 36:31
  touch. Now you of course told her to
• 36:33
  immediately call 911. We all know that people respond
• 36:37
  in different ways to stressful situations, so this is not to
• 36:41
  place any blame or suspicion upon her.
• 36:44
  But it wasn't a typical response.
• 36:46
  Or was it? Did you find that strange or was
• 36:49
  that something that she would do, was kind of reach out to you
• 36:51
  for advice? Yeah.
• 36:54
  Hard to know, right? I'm, so I should, I should
• 36:56
  stress, I have two sisters and there's the older one that,
• 37:01
  that, you know, I, there's some detail in the book about, you
• 37:05
  know, some of her, you know, biography, biography and things
• 37:09
  like that. And then, then I have a younger
• 37:11
  1 and it was the younger sister who discovered my dad's body and
• 37:15
  called me the night of his murder.
• 37:18
  I, I frankly don't know if she called someone else before.
• 37:21
  It's totally possible that, you know, she, she called, you know,
• 37:26
  somebody else, possibly the police.
• 37:28
  I don't know. But but I think, you know, she
• 37:31
  just freaked out. And I think that, you know, I, I
• 37:35
  just remember when I, you know, I expressed disbelief because my
• 37:39
  dad was in such good health. None of us credibly thought that
• 37:41
  he would have just had a sudden heart attack or anything like
• 37:43
  that because he was just in great health, right?
• 37:45
  And so, so, you know, I just remember telling her, like, Are
• 37:49
  you sure he's dead? And she's like, well, you know,
• 37:51
  this body's cold, right? And and so I can kind of
• 37:54
  understand why she wouldn't call an ambulance if that was, you
• 37:58
  know, something that she could see and feel.
• 38:01
  But you know, that that whole night was surreal.
• 38:03
  I mean, it just the whole night was surreal because, you know,
• 38:07
  we had so little information and it came in and bits and pieces
• 38:11
  over the course of the evening. Yeah, it must have just.
• 38:13
  Felt like, like you said, just so surreal, just kind of in a
• 38:15
  dreamscape at that point. Now, as mentioned in the case,
• 38:20
  the police walked you into an active crime scene, which I was
• 38:24
  under the impression was completely against protocol for
• 38:27
  multiple reasons. Not only is it unnecessarily
• 38:30
  traumatic for a loved one, but it also jeopardizes evidence
• 38:34
  through having no possible contamination.
• 38:36
  Now you feel did did you feel pressured to go or did you want
• 38:40
  to go? Oh, I.
• 38:42
  Wanted to go so, so you know, the, the events unfolded this
• 38:45
  way and I, I, I kind of, you know, the book is laid out at
• 38:48
  where I'm learning things, where the audience learns things in
• 38:51
  the order that I did so, but I'm going to, you know, kind of skip
• 38:54
  around and give people the timeline.
• 38:56
  So my father was killed on November 12, 2013, 11/12/13.
• 39:01
  His body was discovered the next day, November 13 of 2013.
• 39:05
  And then I want to say N14, my family and I, my wife and our
• 39:12
  then two daughters, we drove down from Sacramento.
• 39:16
  We had gotten a call very late the night before.
• 39:18
  There are no flights running. And then, you know, with two
• 39:20
  young kids, we just decided to drive down.
• 39:22
  And so we drove down on the 14th.
• 39:25
  The police had already been at the crime scene for 36 hours by
• 39:29
  the time we got there, and we showed up.
• 39:32
  And so, you know, I think they had really processed everything
• 39:34
  that they needed to, but they really wanted the family's help
• 39:37
  at that point to try to, you know, kind of piece things
• 39:42
  together. My father was a collector.
• 39:44
  His house was very disorganized. And, you know, they just wanted
• 39:47
  our input and, and things like that.
• 39:49
  And I also was, you know, I really wanted to see what things
• 39:52
  look like now. They had taken a lot of evidence
• 39:55
  away, obviously. And so this, you know, again,
• 39:57
  this was 36 hours later of round the Clockwork.
• 40:00
  But the crime scene was, you know, it was still surreal to be
• 40:03
  in my childhood home and it being a crime scene when it was.
• 40:06
  Your childhood home? OK.
• 40:08
  I wasn't sure about that. I wasn't sure if it was the home
• 40:10
  you grew up in or if it was a a different residence he was
• 40:13
  living in there. So based upon the scene that you
• 40:17
  saw, did you initially believe that it was an unplanned
• 40:21
  homicide that occurred during a home invasion or did it appear
• 40:25
  to be staged as one we initially?
• 40:29
  Had so many different leads and theories and they all they all
• 40:34
  had major faults. So the first theory that was
• 40:38
  circulated was that my dad was killed by the Russian mafia and
• 40:41
  that was based on one neighbor who my dad had a collection.
• 40:47
  Yeah, it, it was but. But I mean, you know, to in
• 40:49
  fairness to to her, she, she had a basis for it.
• 40:52
  So my dad had a collection of paintings called icons.
• 40:55
  They are old paintings made on wood with like, gold leaf and
• 40:59
  some paint. And they were made in Greece and
• 41:02
  Russia and basically Eastern Orthodox lands.
• 41:05
  Now, I should stress, these are not Van Gogh's.
• 41:07
  These are not paintings that are worth $20 million.
• 41:09
  They're worth maybe, you know, $5000, right?
• 41:12
  But my dad had, you know, 20 of them, right?
• 41:15
  And, but there had been an advertisement that had gone out
• 41:18
  just a couple days before that said Joe Gatto is going to come
• 41:22
  speak On this date, you know, it's like November 14th or
• 41:24
  something. And he's going to bring some of
• 41:27
  his collection of, you know, really rare Russian icons,
• 41:30
  right? And so, you know, her theory
• 41:33
  was, wow, the, you know, these paintings were in storage and my
• 41:38
  dad probably went and got them and somebody was like possibly
• 41:42
  tracking him and they knew he was going to speak and they
• 41:44
  probably figured, well, the paintings are going to be with
• 41:46
  him. And so, you know, let's go steal
• 41:47
  on. Now.
• 41:49
  We knew that that right when we went to the crime scene and
• 41:52
  talked with the police, you know, and with our eyes, we knew
• 41:54
  that that theory was not true because there were these
• 41:56
  paintings were always at my dad's house.
• 41:57
  They were hanging on the wall. Whoever killed my dad walked
• 41:59
  right past several of them and they were not taken.
• 42:02
  So we we quickly eliminated that.
• 42:04
  Now, the next theory that we had, or that I had at least, was
• 42:07
  that this was somehow political. You cannot be in public office
• 42:11
  these days without breaking some eggs and making some enemies.
• 42:14
  And, you know, I started to question, was some gosh, was
• 42:16
  somebody trying to send me a message?
• 42:18
  Was somebody trying to do something to threaten me or, or
• 42:21
  was somebody pissed at my dad for some reason because of me?
• 42:23
  And, you know, I mentioned that to the police and I mentioned
• 42:26
  some of the groups that had been doing some very weird things and
• 42:29
  protesting me and everything like that.
• 42:31
  And the police just laughed and they said, you look, you know,
• 42:34
  you're, you're a very public guy.
• 42:36
  You know, you give 7 speeches a day.
• 42:39
  Your Sacramento house is listed, your Los Angeles residence is
• 42:42
  close by and everybody knows where it is.
• 42:44
  If they wanted to to mess with you, they would have killed you,
• 42:47
  Mike. And that was hard to hear.
• 42:49
  But but, you know, I couldn't argue with that logic.
• 42:53
  And then came the theory that, you know, dominated the media
• 42:57
  for about 6 years. And that was the theory of the
• 43:00
  random Carver. Yeah.
• 43:01
  And I I definitely. Would like to go into that, but
• 43:04
  we are all familiar with the concept of tunnel vision in
• 43:06
  which law enforcement focuses on one suspect and they use the
• 43:10
  evidence they have to fit the narrative.
• 43:13
  So considering the police seem to be sold on this theory of
• 43:16
  this home invasion facilitated by the car thief in the
• 43:19
  neighborhood that night, they didn't seem to take other
• 43:22
  possible suspects very seriously.
• 43:25
  Now I wanted to address, go, go ahead.
• 43:27
  No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.
• 43:29
  I was going to say I. Wanted to address some
• 43:31
  interesting statistics on elderly victims of homicide and
• 43:34
  home invasion because I found them to be quite interesting and
• 43:37
  relevant to your father's case if you'd like to hear them.
• 43:40
  Yeah, absolutely. So.
• 43:42
  Victims of homicide who are 64 years and older are extremely
• 43:46
  rare. On average, they comprise only
• 43:48
  5.5% of all homicide victims. Now there are approximately 2 to
• 43:52
  3,000,000 households every year that are broken into and the
• 43:57
  majority of these crimes as you would expect happen when the
• 44:01
  house is unoccupied. Violent events are reported to
• 44:04
  have taken place in somewhere between 6:00 to 7% of home
• 44:07
  invasions with simple assault and aggravated assault being the
• 44:11
  most common type of offense. OK, so the data nevertheless
• 44:16
  shows that it is extremely rare it homicide occurs in
• 44:21
  approximately .0004% of home burglaries, so way, way under
• 44:30
  half a percent. But when it does happen, the
• 44:33
  elderly and the disabled are more prone to be victims.
• 44:37
  In general, elderly victims of homicide are more likely to be
• 44:40
  killed inside their home over any other victim demographic.
• 44:43
  Of course, this makes sense because most of them are
• 44:45
  housebound or vulnerable in some way.
• 44:48
  Now, do you think this type of crime data may have influenced
• 44:52
  law enforcement's perception of who the likely perpetrator was
• 44:56
  and in turn contributed to this tunnel vision?
• 45:00
  Well, I was contacted. By another stat guy at some
• 45:03
  point, and I, I forget if I mentioned this in the book or
• 45:05
  not, but you know, so he reviewed the, the stats like you
• 45:09
  gave, which is, you know, it's very rare that home invasions
• 45:12
  happen when someone's home, very rare that the burglar kills
• 45:15
  somebody. But the statistic that he told
• 45:18
  me that that was different, rather than looking at it from
• 45:21
  the perspective of home invasions or burglaries, he said
• 45:24
  when an elderly person is murdered, the killer is somebody
• 45:29
  the elderly person knew, 95%. Oh yeah, I have that.
• 45:34
  I have those statistics on the different part, yeah.
• 45:37
  And. And so that to me was chilling
• 45:39
  because, you know, we, we started a minute ago to talk
• 45:42
  about the, the dominant theory and the tunnel vision and, and
• 45:46
  is one of the police officers said, you know, well, when
• 45:49
  there's a horse running through the neighborhood, I don't go
• 45:51
  looking for no Unicorn. And it's like, OK, well, great,
• 45:54
  but we should talk about this theory that that came out next.
• 45:59
  So there was a woman in the neighborhood coming home from
• 46:03
  karate with her son right around 6:00 on the 12th of November.
• 46:10
  And she drove on her St. and she found a young man who was
• 46:16
  breaking into a car and kind of weird, right?
• 46:19
  I mean, it's the time that everyone's at home at dinner,
• 46:22
  coming home from school, coming home from work.
• 46:24
  Very weird to have a guy breaking in the car.
• 46:28
  Yeah. And so she said like, hey, hey,
• 46:32
  what are you doing? And then she, like, called for a
• 46:35
  male neighbor and he came out too.
• 46:38
  And they kind of confronted this guy and.
• 46:40
  And, you know, he ran away now, allegedly when he ran away, he
• 46:45
  said something like follow me and die or something like that.
• 46:48
  Or, you know, do you want to die tonight?
• 46:50
  Like just then keep messing with me.
• 46:51
  But they did chase him. They, they, they did chase him.
• 46:54
  He ran down a walk St. It's a little, you know,
• 46:58
  pedestrian only St. that, that is in the Silver Lake
• 47:00
  neighborhood where my dad lived. And they drove around sort of
• 47:03
  like a hairpin to confront him at the bottom of the walk St.
• 47:07
  And at that moment, her son, who's very young, I forget if he
• 47:10
  was 6 or 7 or 8, but he told the police later that he saw the guy
• 47:15
  brandish a gun. Could they make out his face?
• 47:17
  Not really. They put out a sketch, but the
• 47:19
  sketch could look like literally anybody, any young man, right?
• 47:23
  It's not a great sketch. Then, you know, my dad was
• 47:26
  killed roughly an hour and a half later.
• 47:29
  They think, you know, the this quickly became the dominant
• 47:33
  theory. The mother put a put a sent an
• 47:36
  e-mail to some friends and it got forward to the media and
• 47:38
  everybody started focusing on this.
• 47:40
  Now I'll tell you like, what would have had to happen for
• 47:42
  this theory to come into play. So first of all, the the police,
• 47:46
  you know, I said, well, give me a profile of this guy.
• 47:48
  Give me a profile. They said, OK, well, you know,
• 47:50
  he's a young guy high on drugs looking at his fix.
• 47:54
  So he's breaking into cars. And I'm immediately thinking
• 47:57
  with a gun, like if you have a gun, there's, there's a million
• 48:02
  places you can go to in Los Angeles, including some of just
• 48:04
  a couple blocks away where, you know, they're quiet and people
• 48:07
  are walking with handbags and wallets.
• 48:09
  And you can just, you know, say, stick them up and you can get
• 48:12
  your fix very fast. Yeah, secondly, breaking into a
• 48:15
  car with a gun turns, you know, a misdemeanor slap on the wrist,
• 48:18
  a day in jail to to. A felony, yeah.
• 48:21
  So it's kind of weird. Thirdly, the, and I'm jumping
• 48:24
  ahead a little bit, but when I interviewed the people who, you
• 48:28
  know, the neighbors who saw this guy, they said he was dressed
• 48:31
  very nicely. He did not appear to be on
• 48:34
  drugs. And they said he looked like an
• 48:36
  Eastern European hitman. That's what they said.
• 48:39
  And but anyway, to continue with the theory that when the cops, I
• 48:42
  said give me a profile, they said, well, you know, he's
• 48:44
  fleeing down these people. You know, right-handed people
• 48:46
  tend to turn right. So let's assume he's
• 48:48
  right-handed. Then he ran towards your dad's
• 48:50
  street and he assumed that it was an alley.
• 48:52
  My dad's street was very small. He goes down your dad's street
• 48:55
  thinking he can get some shelter from the people chasing him.
• 48:58
  And right at that moment, there was a tour helicopter dispatched
• 49:02
  to go to the Hollywood sign. My dad lived fairly close to the
• 49:04
  Hollywood sign, and he thought it was a police helicopter.
• 49:08
  So he said, my gosh, I got to get inside somewhere.
• 49:11
  And right at that exact moment, your dad had bought a printer at
• 49:15
  Costco. That night when, you know, we
• 49:16
  saw him on security video, we found the receipts.
• 49:19
  So, you know, he came down to get the printer.
• 49:22
  And, you know, to your dad's bad luck, he could not get the
• 49:25
  printer out from the side of his, you know, from his car,
• 49:28
  from the side, from the doors. He had to get it out from the
• 49:30
  hatchback in the back. So he had to open the garage
• 49:33
  door again. And right at that moment, you
• 49:36
  know, as your dad's walking the printer in, this guy happened to
• 49:40
  be right there by your dad's garage door.
• 49:42
  And without your dad noticing, he ducked in the garage.
• 49:46
  That explains why there's no forced entry, no signs of forced
• 49:49
  entry at your dad's home. And then your dad went upstairs
• 49:53
  and set up the printer. This is the police again telling
• 49:55
  me the stuff. And we know that, you know, we
• 49:57
  know he's trying to set up the printer 'cause it was on the
• 49:58
  floor. And you know, we think he was on
• 50:00
  his website tweaking a few things 'cause there's activity
• 50:03
  at 7:37 PM. And while this is happening, the
• 50:07
  young man is sitting in his garage and he doesn't take
• 50:10
  anything. He doesn't, he doesn't take any
• 50:13
  of the tools, the valuable tools.
• 50:14
  He doesn't take anything from your dad's cars.
• 50:17
  As a matter of fact, he sits in an occupied garage where he
• 50:20
  knows somebody is and there are three cars present.
• 50:24
  And he doesn't know if your dad lives with the Ukrainian
• 50:27
  wrestling team. He doesn't know if your dad is
• 50:29
  in a multi generational household.
• 50:31
  He just sits in the garage and at roughly 740 he walks upstairs
• 50:35
  and kills your dad. And I'm thinking like this makes
• 50:38
  no sense. Like oh and by the way.
• 50:41
  And and for this theory to work, this young man would have had to
• 50:45
  shoot my dad and sit there and watch him die and then ransack
• 50:48
  his room. Yeah, ransack his.
• 50:50
  Room and and you know just all these things right.
• 50:55
  It just never sat well with me because, you know, you fire a
• 50:57
  gun in an occupied dwelling and your adrenaline's already at
• 50:59
  because, you know, people saw you with a gun and they were
• 51:01
  chasing you. You don't stick around.
• 51:04
  I mean, you just don't the the perspective of someone like
• 51:08
  that. You know, gunfire is loud and
• 51:10
  you know you, you. I think most people assume that
• 51:12
  everybody heard it and the cops are on the way.
• 51:15
  I just, you know, it, it just never stuck well with me.
• 51:18
  And then to sit there and watch my dad die and and then, like,
• 51:21
  rummage through the room and it just didn't make sense.
• 51:24
  Yeah, It didn't make. Sense to me at all, either by
• 51:27
  everything you discussed in the book, it appeared to me as if
• 51:30
  the perpetrator was looking for something specific.
• 51:32
  They ignored all kinds of items in the house that would have
• 51:35
  held great financial return for them, like as you mentioned, the
• 51:38
  icons and they focus their attention on Prime through a lot
• 51:42
  of his personal files. Yeah, that.
• 51:44
  That part was also kind of difficult because, you know,
• 51:49
  the, the, the, the crime scene again, like, you know, and I've
• 51:54
  had this conversation with the police so many times.
• 51:57
  It's either it doesn't make sense for a million reasons
• 52:00
  because, you know, again, this was a junkie high on drugs, or
• 52:04
  it was something vastly more complicated and it was staged or
• 52:07
  it was something more right? Because you really, there's,
• 52:10
  there's no middle ground. Whoever killed my dad didn't
• 52:14
  take a variety of electronics, you know, things like iPads and
• 52:17
  things like that, that you could sell pretty quickly.
• 52:20
  I remember seeing like some of my dad's personal jewelry, like,
• 52:24
  you know, there in the room and I just walked by it and, you
• 52:28
  know, didn't take it. At the same time, there was a
• 52:31
  file cabinet that was broken into, a wooden file cabinet that
• 52:34
  was broken into, which was kind of strange.
• 52:37
  And then the the burglar made a big show of trying or tried to
• 52:41
  get into my dad's safes. And that part was very strange
• 52:44
  because whoever did this tried to get into safes with a pair of
• 52:48
  garden chairs. And again, you know, like these
• 52:52
  were like those Old West Wells Fargo safes that are about half
• 52:55
  the size of a human and half walls, you know, 6 inches thick.
• 52:59
  You don't need to be a brain surgeon to realize you're not
• 53:02
  going to get into him with a glorified pair of scissors,
• 53:04
  Right. And so it either struck me like,
• 53:07
  Gee, this person was putting on a show, or this person was
• 53:10
  really stupid. And again, that's there's a lot
• 53:13
  of themes like that in my dad's case.
• 53:15
  Yeah, just like you said. Just none of the evidence added
• 53:18
  up. Now I did want to return to what
• 53:19
  you mentioned about how most homicide victims know they're
• 53:25
  offenders now, and this is not just true for older victims.
• 53:29
  Based on 2023 data provided by the Bureau of Justice
• 53:33
  Statistics, the most common victim offender relationship is
• 53:37
  someone known to the victim but outside the family.
• 53:41
  And this is across all age groups that 39% of homicides are
• 53:45
  committed by someone known to the victim, such as a friend, Co
• 53:49
  worker or acquaintance. And specifically for victims who
• 53:54
  were 65 years or older, 32% were killed by a category of what is
• 53:59
  known as other family member. So do you believe that his
• 54:03
  murder was personal and that whoever committed it or who was
• 54:06
  behind its Commission was trying to maybe locate something that
• 54:10
  night as you mentioned? Yeah, it's a great.
• 54:13
  Question. I mean, the, you know, I go into
• 54:17
  in the book and there, there were definitely some newspapers
• 54:21
  who explored this theory very closely because, you know, I
• 54:25
  mean, my dad had been updating his estate plan before he got
• 54:28
  killed and he was changing some things pretty vastly.
• 54:32
  And so, you know, newspapers got wind of that from public
• 54:37
  documents and they reported on that.
• 54:40
  You know, the police have also said, we know, is it possible
• 54:44
  this could have been, you know, an old guy like your dad who got
• 54:47
  into some dispute and maybe had dementia or something and, you
• 54:50
  know, and the dispute turned violent and they they raised
• 54:52
  that specter as well. It's just so hard to know,
• 54:57
  right? I mean, it's just, again, you
• 54:59
  know, if you have a very uneducated criminal who's high
• 55:02
  on drugs and doesn't recognize what true valuables are, walks
• 55:05
  past the valuable paintings and says, oh, these are too hard to
• 55:08
  fence, OK, then, you know, I guess that makes sense.
• 55:11
  Or, you know, you have something that was very targeted where
• 55:13
  somebody was, you know, appeared to be looking for something and,
• 55:16
  you know, maybe maybe or maybe not found it or, or what have
• 55:20
  you. I mean, it, it just, it's one of
• 55:21
  the many, many things in my dad's case that doesn't make
• 55:25
  sense. Yeah.
• 55:26
  It it really. Doesn't.
• 55:26
  And OK, so in your book, you discuss the the waning interest
• 55:30
  and coverage of your father's case in the media over the
• 55:33
  years, noting the high number of homicides that, you know, in
• 55:37
  addition to other news and things that are going on,
• 55:40
  especially in Hollywood that hold people's attention.
• 55:43
  Now, I have observed that cases involving the elderly are not
• 55:47
  frequently covered in true crime, whether the person is the
• 55:51
  victim or the offender. Now, I personally have done
• 55:55
  several cases, but I find it odd and a bit disturbing that
• 55:58
  there's a lack of interest there.
• 56:00
  There seems to be almost a disconnection, which is weird
• 56:04
  because everyone has a parent or a grandparent or even an older
• 56:08
  neighbor that they enjoy talking to every day.
• 56:11
  So it seems to me like, to some extent, society thinks like,
• 56:15
  well, they at least had a very long, fulfilling life.
• 56:18
  But in many respects, it seems more horrible to be killed at
• 56:22
  the end of your life when you are the most vulnerable.
• 56:25
  Do you think his being an older victim impacted the coverage and
• 56:28
  interest in this case at all? Yeah.
• 56:31
  You know I mean. It's interesting because, you
• 56:33
  know, if you look at the murders that have captured people's
• 56:36
  attention over the years, it is often someone young and
• 56:40
  glamorous, right? Nicole Brown Simpson, the Black
• 56:42
  Dahlia, you know, these are these are the murders that have
• 56:45
  made their way into Los Angeles lore.
• 56:47
  You know, even some of the Manson Family victims, of
• 56:50
  course, were young and beautiful and the Manson killers were
• 56:52
  young and beautiful in many cases.
• 56:54
  And so, yeah, there there's of course there's a, you know, just
• 56:57
  like, just like the media, you know, prefers to cover, you
• 57:00
  know, the exploits of younger stars and starlets, then older
• 57:05
  ones. Then I definitely think there is
• 57:07
  something to that. You know, but I, I also like to
• 57:10
  think that in this case, people know that my dad was, you know,
• 57:14
  he was a good guy. He was a pillar of the
• 57:16
  community. And he was somebody that, as you
• 57:19
  said, you know, it just when you, whenever you take
• 57:23
  somebody's life like that and, and whenever you know, it's,
• 57:27
  it's that sudden, it's just so hard on the family, right?
• 57:30
  Because I think, you know, if you talk with the average
• 57:33
  elderly person, they would say, you know, I know that my time is
• 57:36
  going to come at some point. And I, gosh, God, God forbid
• 57:39
  I'll get cancer at some point, but that'll give me, you know, a
• 57:42
  two or three-year period to say my goodbyes and get my affairs
• 57:45
  in order and tell my kids everything I always wanted to
• 57:47
  tell them. And, you know, if you talk to an
• 57:49
  adult child, they would say, look, I know my, my parents are
• 57:52
  going to go at some point, but I have a list of things I want to
• 57:55
  ask them. And I'm going to make sure that
• 57:57
  they get to spend time with their grandchildren and all all
• 57:59
  that stuff, right. And anytime you kill anybody,
• 58:01
  all right, you robbed them of, of experiences in life.
• 58:04
  And I, I am just very sad that my kids got robbed of a doting
• 58:11
  grandparent. You know, my dad was a terrific
• 58:18
  grandparent. He was probably a better
• 58:19
  grandfather than a father in many ways, 'cause I mean, you
• 58:22
  know, he wasn't working right. So yeah, I was gonna say,
• 58:24
  'cause. He had the time and energy, so
• 58:25
  he just was, you know, so doting.
• 58:26
  And stuff and so it just yeah, it it's something that I.
• 58:32
  I'm very sad about. To this day.
• 58:34
  I am so so sorry for that. I, I, I got emotional myself
• 58:39
  reading your book several times. I, I really felt I felt your
• 58:43
  loss. Thank you.
• 58:46
  Now. In your book, you describe the,
• 58:50
  you know, the lack of answers in this case sets off this domino
• 58:54
  effect of psychological and emotional effects on you.
• 58:58
  You know, trauma and loss effects all in unique ways.
• 59:01
  But just as you're saying, when you lose your loved 1 to a
• 59:04
  homicide or really any son death, but especially something
• 59:08
  that remains unanswered, how do you deal with that kind of
• 59:12
  tragedy in your day-to-day existence?
• 59:14
  I mean, how that effects your personal interactions with
• 59:18
  others, Well, you know, so. It's tough, right?
• 59:20
  I mean, you know, there's a period of grieving and I, I
• 59:24
  never wanted to, you know, be somebody who's perpetually
• 59:28
  grieving, even though obviously anytime you lose somebody too
• 59:31
  early, it's a big hole. And I also tried to to, like I
• 59:35
  said, you know, think about all the other people out there
• 59:37
  who've gone through something like this and try to understand
• 59:40
  how they got through it and try to help them.
• 59:43
  You know, that being said, there were a few things about my dad's
• 59:45
  case that I think, you know, we're a little bit unique.
• 59:47
  The police were their theory. You know, when I asked them for
• 59:50
  the profile, they thought that the young man was somebody who
• 59:52
  lived in the neighborhood. And they based that on the fact
• 59:55
  that he knew where this there's this really tiny walk St. that
• 59:59
  he fled down that kind of looks like someone's own house
• 1:00:02
  staircase. Yeah, actually I looked.
• 1:00:04
  That up, yeah. And so their theory was like,
• 1:00:06
  well, he, he knew these little obscure paths in neighborhood.
• 1:00:09
  He probably was from the neighborhood.
• 1:00:10
  Now, mind you, my Los Angeles home was not far away from that.
• 1:00:14
  And so, you know, this thought that the person who killed my
• 1:00:17
  dad could be walking among us. Well, I mean, you know, person
• 1:00:22
  still not caught. So in theory could be walking
• 1:00:24
  somewhere, somewhere on in the United States among us.
• 1:00:26
  But but the thought that this person could be in the
• 1:00:28
  neighborhood to, you know, that would just was kind of chilling
• 1:00:32
  to me. Like, you know, I I could be
• 1:00:34
  going to the grocery store with my kids and, you know, that my
• 1:00:38
  dad's killer could be anybody there, Right.
• 1:00:40
  And that that to me was just surreal.
• 1:00:43
  And, you know, it's Los Angeles is a very big city.
• 1:00:48
  And, you know, it's entirely possible that whoever did this
• 1:00:49
  is long gone. But that thought was very odd
• 1:00:54
  and very hard to process for a long time.
• 1:00:55
  Yeah, again, I just. Things just don't add up.
• 1:00:58
  Now. You speak openly in the book
• 1:01:01
  about the very hostile and dismissive treatment that you
• 1:01:05
  received by the LAPD. They often treated you and your
• 1:01:09
  invested interest in your father's murder like it was a
• 1:01:12
  burden to them. And this is a prime example of
• 1:01:16
  how you know many people in society, in particular loved
• 1:01:19
  ones of victims, they feel disregarded and neglected by law
• 1:01:23
  enforcement. Now, many people probably assume
• 1:01:27
  that given your status in the California government,
• 1:01:29
  especially at the time, you may have been given high priority or
• 1:01:33
  even special treatment, but you were given anything but.
• 1:01:37
  It almost felt as if they were resentful towards you for being
• 1:01:40
  more successful and influential than they are.
• 1:01:43
  Did it feel as if the detectives were projecting their own
• 1:01:47
  feelings towards you and possibly your politics?
• 1:01:51
  Yeah, in a, in a, in, in, in one word, yes.
• 1:01:55
  Thank you for asking this. So I, I, I want to stress, and
• 1:02:00
  I'll start by saying that I know that the LAPD is like any other
• 1:02:04
  big organization. It's like the Army, it's like
• 1:02:07
  the federal government, whatever you want to say, whether there's
• 1:02:10
  some very, very, very good people and then there's some bad
• 1:02:14
  apples and there's people who are very, very, very hard
• 1:02:17
  working. And then there's some people who
• 1:02:19
  are, you know, kind of just dialing it in and waiting to
• 1:02:21
  retire. I know that that the team on my
• 1:02:25
  dad's case right now is terrific.
• 1:02:27
  And I know that the team that was assigned for the first day
• 1:02:29
  was terrific because when I talked with him, you know, I, I
• 1:02:31
  could see the exhaust in their eyes and I could see how they've
• 1:02:34
  been up for like 24 hours working on the case and
• 1:02:38
  gathering every piece of evidence, everything like that.
• 1:02:39
  But you know, as I went into the book, you know, the the team
• 1:02:42
  that got assigned, the detectives you got assigned to
• 1:02:46
  my dad's case from like, you know, the the few days after
• 1:02:50
  through, you know, many years for whatever reason, just, you
• 1:02:54
  know, did not give me a very, very good experience.
• 1:02:56
  And you know, I based on a couple things.
• 1:02:58
  First of all, you know, after I toured the crime scene and I
• 1:03:02
  have been up for like, you know, long time myself, I'd driven
• 1:03:05
  down from Sacramento you. Know the grief.
• 1:03:08
  In my nuclear family, you know, and, and non-stop media
• 1:03:14
  attention and just being mobbed. When I got there, I can only
• 1:03:18
  imagine they sat me down and gave me a political lecture and
• 1:03:21
  it was like, well, this is number one, I'm I should, I'm
• 1:03:24
  not your target audience. Like I've been very, very, I
• 1:03:30
  would say informed voter when entering the legislature on
• 1:03:34
  criminal justice. So like, you know, give it to
• 1:03:37
  give this lecture to someone else.
• 1:03:38
  Secondly, like this is not the time.
• 1:03:42
  It's just not the time. And I thought that was very
• 1:03:45
  inappropriate. And that was like strike one.
• 1:03:47
  And then strike two was, I mean, maybe a week later, you know,
• 1:03:51
  they got my dad's call logs and they were like, God, you know,
• 1:03:55
  he called a lot his, you know, they didn't know this, but I
• 1:03:59
  mean, they called a lot his first cousin who's this elderly
• 1:04:02
  lady who has a fairly unique Italian last name.
• 1:04:06
  They're like, well, you know, she called, they called this
• 1:04:07
  lady a lot like, who's that? I'm like, oh, it's his first
• 1:04:09
  cousin. And, you know, she's 80
• 1:04:10
  something years old. She's now 97.
• 1:04:13
  And and then one of the, one of the detectors piped up, well,
• 1:04:16
  that's a really unique last name.
• 1:04:17
  Like, like, are you related to blah, blah, blah with that last
• 1:04:20
  name? And I said, yeah, that's, that's
• 1:04:21
  my second cousin, my dad's second cousin once removed.
• 1:04:25
  And the guy's like, oh, he's just such a went on an expletive
• 1:04:29
  riddled tirade. I can't repeat this in a podcast
• 1:04:32
  what he said. And I'm thinking like, OK, well,
• 1:04:36
  like, I'm like, well, how do you know him?
• 1:04:37
  He's like, oh, we went to high school together.
• 1:04:38
  How many years ago? It's like, you know, 3540 years
• 1:04:42
  ago. And he's on this rant about
• 1:04:46
  something my cousin did at age 16.
• 1:04:48
  And I'm thinking like my cousin's 50 something now.
• 1:04:51
  Like, I mean, you know, like it was so strange to to do like
• 1:04:55
  that was just the most bizarre thing in the world.
• 1:04:57
  Like, and remember, this is my second cousin.
• 1:04:59
  It's not me. It's not, it's not my brother.
• 1:05:02
  I mean, you know, it's just that was strike two and then so
• 1:05:06
  juvenile. Yeah.
• 1:05:07
  And then? And then the, the, the third
• 1:05:09
  strike or whatever is, was just the way they handled the case.
• 1:05:13
  And I just don't think they understood how things would go
• 1:05:16
  down because, look, I would go to, like, a groundbreaking.
• 1:05:21
  Let's say I went to a groundbreaking of, you know, a
• 1:05:24
  new playground by the LA River. And I would give a speech.
• 1:05:27
  It's my district. I would give a speech, and I
• 1:05:29
  would be seated where the people giving the speeches were.
• 1:05:32
  And right next to me would be the mayor of Los Angeles.
• 1:05:34
  And the mayor of Los Angeles, of course, is their boss's boss's
• 1:05:37
  boss's boss, right? It goes detective, chief of
• 1:05:39
  detectives, police chief, mayor, right?
• 1:05:41
  And he would say to me, Mike, I mean, he was a friend of mine.
• 1:05:44
  And he'd say to me, Mike, how's the investigation going?
• 1:05:47
  And I would say, good. You know, there's no lead yet.
• 1:05:50
  We're exploring this. I don't think this theory makes
• 1:05:52
  sense. And we're doing this.
• 1:05:54
  And of course, then, you know, he would call the chief, who
• 1:05:56
  would call the chief of detectives, who would call their
• 1:05:58
  supervisor, who would tell them, hey, blah, blah, blah.
• 1:06:00
  And I think they took it as like me criticizing them.
• 1:06:03
  I think they took it as like me going above their head.
• 1:06:06
  But truly, it wasn't like, like, you know, I don't know what they
• 1:06:09
  expected me to do when you're sitting there waiting for
• 1:06:12
  speeches when the mayor says, how's your dad's case going?
• 1:06:14
  Should I have lied? Should I have said, well, it's
• 1:06:16
  salt? It's not Should I have said
• 1:06:18
  everything's going great? It's not.
• 1:06:20
  I didn't criticize them by name. I didn't say anything.
• 1:06:23
  I didn't call them out. I didn't seek the mayor his
• 1:06:24
  attention, but, you know, I mean, he was asking for an
• 1:06:26
  update on my dad's case. And I'm not going to lie to the
• 1:06:28
  mayor of the city of Los Angeles.
• 1:06:29
  So it it just like, and they would get so upset with me,
• 1:06:33
  like, oh, you talk to the mayor again.
• 1:06:34
  It was like, well, yeah, he's a friend of mine.
• 1:06:36
  I've known him for 20 years, you know, and he asked about my
• 1:06:39
  dad's case. What do you want me to say?
• 1:06:41
  You know, so it, it just things like that were very, very hard
• 1:06:46
  and, you know, And so. Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  And then look, you know, I talk about this in the book.
• 1:06:51
  They later got some of them got fired, one of them in Partur got
• 1:06:54
  fired. And I learned that there was a
• 1:06:56
  lot of other accusations of malfeasance and other cases.
• 1:06:59
  And and so it just there's usually a pattern.
• 1:07:02
  Yeah, exactly. Now and you.
• 1:07:05
  Did mention in the book that the police, they pretty much
• 1:07:08
  neglected to thoroughly interview anyone within your
• 1:07:11
  father's inner circle, including family members, friends,
• 1:07:14
  acquaintances. And that should be typical
• 1:07:16
  protocol for an investigation, especially for a homicide.
• 1:07:20
  And when you bring up these facts to the homicide
• 1:07:22
  investigators on your case, they end up turning their negative
• 1:07:26
  attention towards you instead. And they asked you to come in
• 1:07:29
  for a polygraph, which you of course happily obliged,
• 1:07:33
  believing that hopefully it would be the start of a new
• 1:07:35
  direction, but instead they just brought you in.
• 1:07:39
  If you feel comfortable in doing so, can you please share with
• 1:07:42
  the audience what these socalled law enforcement officers put you
• 1:07:46
  through? Yeah, that was probably the most
• 1:07:48
  surreal experience of the case and one of the most surreal
• 1:07:51
  experiences of my life. So I bet the context was that I
• 1:07:55
  got a little bit upset because I hired a private investigator and
• 1:07:59
  the private investigator did the gumshoe shoe leather work.
• 1:08:03
  That is vanishing from modern policing, right?
• 1:08:05
  Modern policing suffers from something called CSI effect and
• 1:08:09
  that's where both the public, right, the public and the
• 1:08:13
  detectives expect there to be like some technological thing
• 1:08:17
  like, oh, there was DNA or like the suspect cell phone picking
• 1:08:19
  the satellites and we've pinned their location and, you know,
• 1:08:22
  and everything's tied up in a bow in an hour due to
• 1:08:24
  technology. CSI effect, right.
• 1:08:26
  And so I was kind of like, well, wow, they, you know, they, they
• 1:08:32
  doesn't seem like they've interviewed lots of people in my
• 1:08:34
  dad's orbit, even neighbors. So I hired a private detective
• 1:08:38
  and he went around the neighborhood and like knocked on
• 1:08:41
  doors and we found that there was a woman who lived.
• 1:08:44
  She lived maybe 100 feet from my dad, maybe 50 feet from my dad.
• 1:08:48
  It was like his cross the streets neighbor, neighbor, if
• 1:08:50
  that makes sense. And you know, she was, she told
• 1:08:53
  the private detective adamantly that she had heard a gunshot
• 1:08:57
  during a time that just did not fit with the timeline.
• 1:08:59
  And I called her, you know, after he gave me the interview
• 1:09:02
  notes and I called her myself. And I was like, I was skeptical.
• 1:09:05
  How do you how do you how Are you sure that this happened at
• 1:09:08
  this time? And she's like, well, I took my
• 1:09:12
  son to a class in Sherman Oaks every night at precisely this
• 1:09:15
  time. It took precisely 25 minutes to
• 1:09:18
  get there in traffic. And we left at precisely this
• 1:09:20
  time. And so I know for a fact that it
• 1:09:21
  happened at this. And I was like, wow, OK, I'm
• 1:09:23
  very impressed. Then I was like, well, how do
• 1:09:25
  you know it was a gunshot? And she's like, Mr. Gatto, I
• 1:09:29
  docked and covered and I refused to get up off the floor of my
• 1:09:33
  house. And I was dressed in nice
• 1:09:35
  clothes and like, and so I was thinking like, yeah, you know,
• 1:09:38
  like, OK, like, you know, you don't like, jump on the floor of
• 1:09:41
  your house if you're wearing nice clothes, if you think it's
• 1:09:44
  a backfire, right? So that to me, like, threw a
• 1:09:47
  whole loop in the timeline. And that would blow all sorts.
• 1:09:50
  You know, it would blow the the car burglar theory out of the
• 1:09:52
  water. And so I was, I was angry.
• 1:09:54
  I was really angry that the police hadn't talked to this
• 1:09:56
  woman. And so I sent them an e-mail.
• 1:09:58
  I was like, why haven't you interviewed everybody?
• 1:10:00
  Why haven't you polygraphed the people in a circle?
• 1:10:04
  You know, why haven't you done all these things?
• 1:10:06
  And they wrote back and they're like, you know, basically like,
• 1:10:08
  oh, all right, like, you want polygraphs, Why don't you start?
• 1:10:11
  And I was like, sure, no problem, you know, no problem.
• 1:10:15
  Like, as long as this leads to you doing this with everybody
• 1:10:17
  else. I volunteer.
• 1:10:19
  Where do you want me to show up? So, you know, I, I showed up to
• 1:10:22
  the place where they administer them and you know, like, you
• 1:10:26
  know, it's all voluntary, right? You can come or go as you want.
• 1:10:28
  You can stay, you can leave. I think there's a part of me
• 1:10:31
  that was just curious, like, what is this like, you know,
• 1:10:33
  and, and what are they going to do?
• 1:10:35
  But I mean, they basically yelled at me for like an hour
• 1:10:38
  and a half, two hours. And they came at me with some
• 1:10:41
  really crazy theories, which I believe is, you know, that's how
• 1:10:43
  they test polygraphs, right? Is like, you know, they, they
• 1:10:46
  said, they said, well, you know, is it possible that this was one
• 1:10:49
  of your friends who came to your dad for a campaign contribution?
• 1:10:53
  And, and you know, your dad didn't give one.
• 1:10:56
  And, and, and I'm thinking like, wow, like I have $2,000,000 in
• 1:11:01
  my campaign bank account. I guarantee none of my friends
• 1:11:04
  would have gone to my dad for a campaign contribution and and to
• 1:11:07
  shake him down. Yeah, like I.
• 1:11:09
  It, it, it, it was like it, it was so absurd.
• 1:11:12
  It was really a surreal experience.
• 1:11:13
  But but you know what, it wasn't too long after that that the
• 1:11:18
  detectives are reassigned. And I think it's because the
• 1:11:20
  word got out in the department and somebody said you did what
• 1:11:24
  this guy asked you some questions about, like, have you
• 1:11:27
  talked with a neighbor who heard a gunshot and you polygraphed
• 1:11:31
  him? Like I, I think they, you know,
• 1:11:34
  I think there was a shake up in the department because of the
• 1:11:37
  way they can port themselves. And I think that was strike 5.
• 1:11:41
  And and I'm very, very grateful to have a new team on the case.
• 1:11:44
  Yeah, I I did want to. Mention it was, It was funny
• 1:11:45
  because literally the night before I finished reading your
• 1:11:48
  book and was reading about this in particular, the woman that
• 1:11:52
  heard the gunshot, I was literally thinking to myself
• 1:11:55
  now, if his father had been shot, someone in the
• 1:11:57
  neighborhood must have heard the gun.
• 1:11:59
  And then it was like, well, there you go.
• 1:12:03
  Yeah, it's just absolutely despicable the way that they
• 1:12:08
  treated you, and I'm so glad that someone finally
• 1:12:10
  acknowledged that their behavior was completely unacceptable.
• 1:12:16
  Yeah, Thank you. No, I was.
• 1:12:19
  Curious, were you ever assigned A victim advocate at any point
• 1:12:22
  by the department or were the LAPD not involved in doing
• 1:12:25
  anything like that at the time? No, you know, it's, it's
• 1:12:29
  interesting because there, there really is this, there's a whole
• 1:12:31
  group of support that's baked in our system where, you know,
• 1:12:36
  there are grief counselors who can come on the site and they
• 1:12:40
  can help you with the grief. There are victims advocates.
• 1:12:43
  There are, we have a thing in California called Marcy's Law,
• 1:12:45
  which is ability of victims to make statements at various times
• 1:12:49
  in the case. And none of it feels like none
• 1:12:52
  of that really ever happened. I mean, there's, there's also
• 1:12:54
  this tiny pot of money like to help victims with funeral
• 1:12:57
  expenses. I do think they sent us like a
• 1:12:59
  check for like 2000 bucks, which was, which was kind of kind of
• 1:13:02
  interesting, but none of the other stuff happened.
• 1:13:05
  But I also think, you know, they knew that that my family was,
• 1:13:11
  you know, like, I mean, that we have resources available to us.
• 1:13:14
  And so I'm OK with those going to other people, I guess is how
• 1:13:17
  I would put it, of course. But.
• 1:13:19
  From a just a a support point of view, that's really terrible
• 1:13:22
  that they didn't have a victim advocate assigned to you and
• 1:13:25
  your family. Yeah.
• 1:13:27
  Now. If you were still an assemblyman
• 1:13:29
  in California, what kind of legislation would you author or
• 1:13:33
  promote it help change the way victims and their loved ones are
• 1:13:36
  treated? Great question.
• 1:13:38
  So I have a long list of things that that I would do.
• 1:13:43
  And it's interesting because when I was still in office,
• 1:13:45
  there was a proposed change in the DNA laws.
• 1:13:48
  And I won't get into the great detail, but I ran legislation to
• 1:13:52
  try to preserve the DNA laws because, you know, I think
• 1:13:56
  that's could be critical in solving my dad's case.
• 1:13:59
  And that was a emotional roller coaster and I really crazy
• 1:14:02
  experience. We also had, you know, it look,
• 1:14:07
  they, they say it, they say that you should never let your
• 1:14:09
  personal experiences cloud your political or your governmental
• 1:14:12
  judgement. And I tried to I tried to follow
• 1:14:14
  that, but it's also hard not to notice what could be done better
• 1:14:17
  when you know you're you're yourself with a family member
• 1:14:20
  was, was a was a crime victim. I think generally speaking, the
• 1:14:26
  law does not do a good job with some very, very giant issues.
• 1:14:30
  I don't think our prison system has a good way of truly
• 1:14:34
  discerning whether somebody is rehabilitated.
• 1:14:37
  And for those people who, you know, made a mistake as a kid
• 1:14:41
  and, you know, they're, they're serving big, big, big sentence
• 1:14:44
  for, for something that they, you know, have grown out of and
• 1:14:48
  they, they've, they've repented and they've changed.
• 1:14:51
  You know, I, I think we don't do a good job in reintegrating that
• 1:14:54
  person back into society. At the same time, I also think
• 1:14:57
  there's a lot of people who do really, really bad things like
• 1:15:00
  murder and rape. And we don't do a good enough
• 1:15:03
  job of finding them, catching them, and then making sure that
• 1:15:07
  they don't get out on bail prematurely and making sure that
• 1:15:10
  they, you know, serve as their sentence.
• 1:15:12
  And so, I mean, the criminal justice system is very, very
• 1:15:15
  imperfect. But for me, I would be curious
• 1:15:18
  into somehow drilling down why is it that the closure rate, the
• 1:15:23
  number of crime, the number of murders that are solved has gone
• 1:15:25
  down in the area of DNA? How is that possible?
• 1:15:28
  I know. And, you know, what could we do
• 1:15:32
  to give the department's the mandates and the resources to
• 1:15:35
  solve more of those cases? That would be what I would focus
• 1:15:39
  on. Well, and like you.
• 1:15:40
  Mentioned the CSI effects so many people including
• 1:15:43
  investigators now are so dependent upon finding that
• 1:15:48
  technical thing, whether it's like you said, the cell phone or
• 1:15:51
  actual DNA. And they neglect those instincts
• 1:15:56
  and those basic protocols and basic strategies and tactics of
• 1:16:01
  investigating. Yeah, and that's.
• 1:16:03
  That's what's just so frustrating, right?
• 1:16:06
  I mean, I think like, you know, if you if you could imagine
• 1:16:08
  someone running a piece of legislation right now to help
• 1:16:10
  cold cases, probably the immediate thing they would do is
• 1:16:12
  say, well, let's give departments more money to like
• 1:16:15
  rerun the the you know, the crime victims clothes from 1960s
• 1:16:20
  through Adna thing. And you know, OK, well, that's
• 1:16:22
  great. I mean, that's more CSI effect.
• 1:16:23
  It's more technology and and that's great.
• 1:16:25
  It would probably solve some cases, right?
• 1:16:27
  But, and sometimes it does. But yeah, but but.
• 1:16:30
  And that's wonderful, right? But of course, but you also
• 1:16:33
  like, how do you change the culture or how do you mandate a
• 1:16:35
  change in the culture, right? How do you, how do you make it
• 1:16:38
  that, you know, departments do the, the gumshoot work and the,
• 1:16:43
  you know, all that stuff. And I, I don't have an answer to
• 1:16:45
  that. I really don't.
• 1:16:46
  But but you know, it doesn't mean that we can't think about
• 1:16:50
  it and try. Absolutely.
• 1:16:52
  Now, Speaking of rehabilitation, I did want to bring up you spoke
• 1:16:55
  at the state prison with serious offenders and shared your story.
• 1:16:59
  I would love to hear about that experience.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah. I was reached out to by a group
• 1:17:04
  that sends speakers into prison to talk to the people who are, I
• 1:17:11
  guess, 90% rehabilitated. So these are people who, you
• 1:17:15
  know, might have committed a crime at like age 20, and
• 1:17:18
  they're now 40 and they've served 20 years.
• 1:17:21
  And in many cases, they've gotten a college degree in
• 1:17:23
  prison. They've found God.
• 1:17:25
  Some of them have written books. Some of them, you know, are very
• 1:17:29
  close to going, going out. And this group called me and
• 1:17:32
  they said this. And I know this is super awkward
• 1:17:34
  and I know you are in no mood to talk to convicts.
• 1:17:39
  And I know that you've been pretty tough on crime, but would
• 1:17:43
  you come and talk to this group? And I thought about it long and
• 1:17:47
  hard. And I said, my God, can I get
• 1:17:48
  through this? And, and I said yes.
• 1:17:51
  I said yes. And so I drove to this prison.
• 1:17:53
  It was, you know, again, talk about surreal experiences that
• 1:17:56
  you don't, you know, it's like, I never thought I'd be doing
• 1:17:58
  this right, you know, but drive to this prison, go in there and.
• 1:18:04
  And yeah. And then I'm talking with in a
• 1:18:06
  classroom with a group of about 20 guys who have been in prison
• 1:18:11
  for a long, long time. And they're roughly my age.
• 1:18:13
  And I told them about my dad's case.
• 1:18:16
  And it was crazy to see the emotion and their faces, you
• 1:18:20
  know, you, you, so these guys are, you know, I'm sure some of
• 1:18:23
  them are not, you know, I, I guess some of them are not
• 1:18:26
  earnest people if they're criminals, You know, these are,
• 1:18:28
  these are, again, remember, these are the guys who are 90%
• 1:18:30
  rehabbed. And I mean, some of them were
• 1:18:33
  like tearing up when I went through my dad's story.
• 1:18:35
  And many of these guys had committed a crime like, you
• 1:18:39
  know, based on economic need. You know, they had, they had
• 1:18:43
  been growing up in a poor neighborhood and they had, you
• 1:18:45
  know, stolen someone's purse or something and done aggravated
• 1:18:48
  assault or something like that, right.
• 1:18:49
  And some of them had actually been part of murders, but not
• 1:18:52
  the actual trigger man. And some of them were like, man,
• 1:18:55
  I don't know why anybody would do this like that to your dad.
• 1:18:57
  And they were just in disbelief, You know what again, when I told
• 1:19:01
  him also how some of the some of the weird things about the crime
• 1:19:04
  and. And so, yeah, it was
• 1:19:06
  interesting. And one of them actually stayed
• 1:19:08
  in contact with me. He sent me a copy of his book.
• 1:19:10
  And he was somebody that I particularly felt a little bit
• 1:19:15
  bad for. He was a Vietnamese immigrant
• 1:19:19
  who grew up in a bad neighborhood and was, you know,
• 1:19:22
  just continually picked on. And I think one night somebody
• 1:19:25
  got into a fight and they said to him, will you come with us in
• 1:19:31
  order to go get revenge on this guy, to go kick his butt?
• 1:19:33
  It was a group of like five guys, and I want to say he
• 1:19:37
  wasn't even driving the car, but he was like in the car.
• 1:19:40
  But then the guy who confronted the guy killed him.
• 1:19:44
  And as you know, the. Laws the.
• 1:19:46
  Laws are that, you know, anybody who's part of the venture is
• 1:19:48
  essentially part of that murder. And so he got a pretty hefty
• 1:19:51
  sentence, you know, and, and I, I mean, look, I, I don't know if
• 1:19:56
  I'm a good judge of character, but I think I am.
• 1:19:58
  And I really believe that this guy had been rehabilitated in
• 1:20:01
  that. You know, and I put him in the
• 1:20:03
  category of somebody who should probably get out and then, you
• 1:20:06
  know, there's other people who, you know, have done awful things
• 1:20:08
  and they should stay in for the rest of their lives.
• 1:20:10
  Yeah. See I.
• 1:20:12
  I'm, I'm right where you are. I, I tend to fall somewhere in
• 1:20:15
  the middle. I, I believe we are too severe
• 1:20:17
  in our penalties for crimes in this country overall, and we
• 1:20:20
  completely have failed at providing offenders with any
• 1:20:23
  real chance of living, you know, law abiding successful lives
• 1:20:27
  once they rejoin society. But as you said, there's always
• 1:20:30
  exceptions to the rule, whether it's serial offenders or violent
• 1:20:34
  crimes or people that have just not made any steps towards
• 1:20:39
  rehabilitation or progressing themselves on a personal or
• 1:20:43
  spiritual level. While we wait for the truth to
• 1:20:46
  surface and for justice for your father to be found.
• 1:20:49
  Joseph Goddo has been honored in many different ways.
• 1:20:54
  Your father was an insiration to many people in the greater Los
• 1:20:57
  Angeles community. The stretch of Hwy. by the Los
• 1:20:59
  Angeles Art School was named in his honor.
• 1:21:02
  To acknowledge your father's legacy to the arts, you funded a
• 1:21:05
  scholarship in his name. The city of Los Angeles named
• 1:21:08
  the intersection Joseph Gatto Square.
• 1:21:11
  It only sits a few blocks from his once home and across the
• 1:21:14
  street from where you attended kindergarten.
• 1:21:16
  And in 2018, he was honored by the mayor of the town where his
• 1:21:19
  father was born high in the mountains of the Cosenza
• 1:21:22
  province of Italy. You attended the ceremony.
• 1:21:25
  Now of these honors helped in the grieving process at all.
• 1:21:29
  Knowing that your father's legacy is so strong they they
• 1:21:34
  have. The, the, you know, it to me
• 1:21:37
  like it was so touching to have the city and, you know, these
• 1:21:43
  various cities, various jurisdictions honor my dad
• 1:21:47
  because, you know, in many ways he was one of these people that
• 1:21:50
  he wasn't, you know, he had written books and stuff, but he
• 1:21:53
  wasn't famous. He was just somebody who showed
• 1:21:56
  up and did good. He never missed a day of school
• 1:22:02
  in 47 years. Wow.
• 1:22:06
  I want, I want to stress that that's amazing.
• 1:22:08
  He was a teacher. Never missed a day of school in
• 1:22:11
  47 years of teaching. During the last years that he
• 1:22:15
  taught he was working for free. He could have retired at that
• 1:22:19
  point at 100% pension and gotten another job where he would have
• 1:22:23
  doubled his salary, but he kept working literally for free.
• 1:22:28
  I mean, there's nothing, you know, like, and I remember his
• 1:22:32
  neighbors giving him grief for that.
• 1:22:34
  He, he was just, you know, and, and he affected so many people's
• 1:22:38
  lives. And, but I'll tell you, the
• 1:22:41
  biggest legacy for my dad is my daughter Eliana.
• 1:22:48
  She was the only one of my children who got to know him.
• 1:22:52
  And she, you know, when he was killed, her and I were very,
• 1:22:57
  very, very close. And I had to travel a lot for,
• 1:23:02
  for my job in the legislature. And she would miss me terribly.
• 1:23:07
  But when she had my dad around, it was like, oh, here's this guy
• 1:23:10
  who reminds me of my dad and looks like my dad, except, you
• 1:23:15
  know, he's older and, you know, when big difference.
• 1:23:18
  He knows how to do art 'cause I 'cause I, I stink at art, right?
• 1:23:22
  And so, you know, he taught her how to paint and, you know, he
• 1:23:25
  did all these things and I, you know, look in her eyes a lot.
• 1:23:30
  And I, I know that she feels the wound.
• 1:23:35
  But at the same time, she's a terrific artist and she cares
• 1:23:41
  very much about the case getting solved.
• 1:23:44
  And so I like to think that, you know, his biggest legacy is his
• 1:23:49
  grandchildren. So, you know, that's that's
• 1:23:51
  something that is better than any sign on any highway, any
• 1:23:54
  place. And thank you for sharing.
• 1:23:55
  That I I just, yeah, I can't. I can't imagine.
• 1:24:03
  I did want to ask you what is the best communication source or
• 1:24:08
  resources for people to reach out, whether it's to you or
• 1:24:12
  directly to the investigators on the case.
• 1:24:15
  If anyone out there has any kind of information that could help
• 1:24:20
  lead to the truth, thank you for asking that.
• 1:24:22
  So I am still as accessible as I was when I was in office.
• 1:24:27
  People can go to mikeauto.com as long as they spell my name
• 1:24:30
  right. GATTO, they go to mikeauto.com
• 1:24:34
  and they can e-mail me if they have information.
• 1:24:38
  You can also Google to LAP DS. We tip hotline or crime tip
• 1:24:42
  hotline, but you know, things tend to get lost that way.
• 1:24:44
  If you get me the tip, I will make sure it gets to the
• 1:24:47
  detectives. You can also contact them
• 1:24:49
  directly. We do like to think that
• 1:24:51
  somebody might know something. You know it, Let's say it was
• 1:24:54
  this car burger or this young man who lived in the
• 1:24:56
  neighborhood, right? You know, I like to think
• 1:24:59
  there's a neighbor somewhere who was like, you know, huh.
• 1:25:02
  There was a kid who came home that night really late and made
• 1:25:04
  a bunch of noise and seemed like really nervous and was like
• 1:25:07
  dripping with sweat. And, you know, like a week
• 1:25:09
  later, this kid moved, moved to Georgia, you know, moved to
• 1:25:12
  Texas, right? Like that type of thing, you
• 1:25:16
  know, would have value for us. And, you know, so that is, yeah,
• 1:25:20
  we, we welcome any and all tips. I also I want to.
• 1:25:22
  Encourage everyone to read Mike's book.
• 1:25:25
  It's really gives an intimate, heartfelt connection to what
• 1:25:31
  victims experience. And you know, even as a true
• 1:25:34
  crime podcaster, like I get very emotionally connected to cases
• 1:25:38
  and people that I've never spoken to before.
• 1:25:41
  So this was you've had me choked up.
• 1:25:44
  This was a great honor for you to be here with us today.
• 1:25:48
  It was such an honor to. Talk with you.
• 1:25:50
  Your questions were terrific and thank you so much.
• 1:25:52
  I, I, I really, really appreciate all you do.
• 1:25:56
  Well, thank you for. Sharing your heartbreaking story
• 1:25:58
  with me and my audience. Yeah.
• 1:26:01
  Your honesty, your candor, your willingness to share your loss
• 1:26:05
  in your experience I find so admirable.
• 1:26:08
  I have a great amount of respect for you as a former politician,
• 1:26:12
  a father, a son, and really a human being.
• 1:26:16
  So thank you. Thank.
• 1:26:18
  You so much and hopefully we will talk again when the case is
• 1:26:20
  solved. I look forward to it.
• 1:26:25
  Thank you so much for listening to the tragic, heartbreaking
• 1:26:29
  case of Joseph Gatto. The life of this beloved father
• 1:26:34
  and grandfather, who was a mentor to countless students in
• 1:26:38
  a pillar of his community, will never be forgotten.
• 1:26:43
  Yet the truth surrounding his murder is known by someone and
• 1:26:48
  he and his family deserve justice.
• 1:26:53
  If you enjoy the show and would like to support it, please
• 1:26:56
  follow rate, review and share on your platform of choice.
• 1:27:00
  Each and every one of you and your input truly matters.
• 1:27:06
  Thank you so much. Until next time, stay safe and
• 1:27:13
  watch over Shades of Murder happening in the streets next
• 1:27:19
  door, especially inside your own home.
• 1:27:24
  Shades of Murder is created, researched, written and edited
• 1:27:28
  by Alita Caldwell. Original music Stranger composed
• 1:27:33
  by Stereo Code.