Latest / NO FILTER / Revisit the 1981 murders of 2 Pennsylvania kids and the teen sentenced to death for killing them(MP3_160K)

Transcript

Revisit the 1981 murders of 2 Pennsylvania kids and the teen sentenced to death for killing them(MP3_160K) · NO FILTER

0:00
Speaker 1: A word of warning. This podcast explores graphic and disturbing
0:03
Speaker 1: stories and includes some strong language. It therefore may not
0:07
Speaker 1: be suitable for our young listeners or other folks who
0:11
Speaker 1: may find it disturbing. Hello, and welcome to a special
0:14
Speaker 1: edition of True Crime News the podcast I'm your host
0:17
Speaker 1: Ana Garcia. Everyone in the world of true crime has
0:20
Speaker 1: a story to tell about a case they worked on
0:23
Speaker 1: or they lived through. Some are high profile, some you've
0:26
Speaker 1: never heard of, but they are all fascinating. Today's case
0:30
Speaker 1: is about the murder of two little children in a
0:33
Speaker 1: mining town already beset with sadness and tragedy. The mother
0:37
Speaker 1: said she last saw the children walking away with a
0:41
Speaker 1: trusted fifteen year old neighbor. The teen even helped search
0:45
Speaker 1: for the children. In this case, police used a different
0:49
Speaker 1: approach to track down the killer. They turned to an
0:51
Speaker 1: actual criminal who targeted children to help them build a
0:56
Speaker 1: profile of who they should be looking for. This case
0:59
Speaker 1: is the subject of a new book by Brian Kincaid,
1:03
Speaker 1: Murder in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, The Tragic Death of the
1:07
Speaker 1: Ziemba Children, and Brian is here today with his cousin,
1:13
Speaker 1: your favorite podcaster, Nancy Moscatello. The genius force behind Scamander,
1:18
Speaker 1: the podcast and the TV series. It is a double
1:21
Speaker 1: bonus date news. Brian. Welcome, Nancy, good to see you again.
1:26
Speaker 2: Good to see you, Good to see everybody.
1:28
Speaker 1: So what is this, Nancy? Everyone in your family has
1:30
Speaker 1: something to do with crime.
1:32
Speaker 3: Yes, no, no, it just happens that Brian over the
1:37
Speaker 3: years has talked about this case. He's an attorney and
1:40
Speaker 3: he started looking at this case years ago, and we've
1:43
Speaker 3: talked about it for so many years. I'm so proud
1:47
Speaker 3: to finally have the book out by him and for
1:50
Speaker 3: him to be able to talk about it.
1:52
Speaker 1: Brian, this is great. Nancy told me that you started
1:56
Speaker 1: looking into this case as a law student. HICs.
1:58
Speaker 2: You're looking at this this is a book that took
2:00
Speaker 2: thirty six years to complete. And how that did happen?
2:06
Speaker 2: I was a law student in Columbus, Ohio nineteen eighty
2:09
Speaker 2: eight and we had to do a graduation paper. Everybody
2:13
Speaker 2: had to do a paper to graduate. I don't know
2:15
Speaker 2: if they have that requirement now, but that's what it
2:17
Speaker 2: was then at that law school. So we had an
2:21
Speaker 2: assigned topic and I was assigned the death penalty for
2:24
Speaker 2: juvenile offenders. And my first thought was well, that can't
2:28
Speaker 2: be right. The juveniles can't get the death penalty. It
2:32
Speaker 2: was incorrect. If you look at the history of our
2:34
Speaker 2: country up until the year two thousand, you know, from
2:37
Speaker 2: an inception, over three hundred juveniles had been executed anybody
2:40
Speaker 2: who was under the age of eighteen, ranging from age
2:43
Speaker 2: thirteen when they committed the crime, all the way you know,
2:46
Speaker 2: through seventeen. And there was a case in Ohio from
2:51
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties, a Donald Froner. It was a carjacking
2:55
Speaker 2: that he planned a kidnapping. He had to get a
2:57
Speaker 2: car to who was kidnapping. He was sixteen when he
2:59
Speaker 2: did this, and it was a carjacking murder, and he
3:03
Speaker 2: ended up going to the electric chair in nineteen forty eight.
3:07
Speaker 2: Even in nineteen forty eight, that was something that did
3:11
Speaker 2: shock the conscience, at least of the news media. The
3:13
Speaker 2: newspapers were all over it. His brother was a war hero,
3:17
Speaker 2: tried to save him, but at the end of the
3:19
Speaker 2: day he went to the electric chair, almost like a
3:21
Speaker 2: Jimmy Cagney movie. They dragged him to the electric chair
3:24
Speaker 2: with him screaming how Mary and I thought that would
3:27
Speaker 2: be a very good topic for a book. I had
3:29
Speaker 2: the idea in law school that someday I would like
3:31
Speaker 2: to write a true crime novel. But I thought of
3:35
Speaker 2: it at the time and I said, well, gee, that's
3:36
Speaker 2: forty years off. That's probably going to be hard to
3:40
Speaker 2: get a lot of things on that or witnesses on that.
3:44
Speaker 2: And a friend of mine just mentioned to me he
3:46
Speaker 2: was from the Scranton, Pennsylvania area, and he said, why
3:49
Speaker 2: don't you do the one up by us Joseph Elisio
3:53
Speaker 2: and I had heard of the case. I had heard
3:55
Speaker 2: of the case when I was in college. It was
3:57
Speaker 2: in the New York Times. It was actually very well
3:59
Speaker 2: covered nationwide, not only locally in the Scranton, Pennsylvania area.
4:04
Speaker 2: The murder happened in Old Forge, Pennsylvania, which is basically
4:07
Speaker 2: a suburb of Scranton. So got through, finished law school,
4:12
Speaker 2: came back east, took the bar exam, and after the
4:15
Speaker 2: bar exam, I started going up to Scranton, started going
4:18
Speaker 2: up to Old Forge, started researching the case, and I
4:22
Speaker 2: realized I had a very interesting story here, not only
4:27
Speaker 2: because of the age of the defendant. Joey Olisio killed
4:30
Speaker 2: the Zamba children four and eight when he was fifteen
4:35
Speaker 2: years old, but he was tried as an adult and
4:38
Speaker 2: sentenced to death after a trial. But the courtroom battle
4:44
Speaker 2: it wasn't as though Joey Olizio had a lower level attorney.
4:49
Speaker 2: He had one of the best defense attorneys at the
4:51
Speaker 2: time in Pennsylvania, Jack Bryer, and he had one of
4:55
Speaker 2: the best prosecutors in Pennsylvania at the time, Ernie pri Ate.
5:00
Speaker 2: There was a real legal eagle fight in court.
5:05
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's get to the children disappearing and then
5:09
Speaker 1: the murder, and will work our way back. So it
5:12
Speaker 1: was the evening of July twenty sixth of nineteen eighty one,
5:15
Speaker 1: and Diane, the mom, says that and this is important,
5:18
Speaker 1: I always say, put a pin in this. One says
5:21
Speaker 1: that she saw the children from her kitchen window of
5:25
Speaker 1: the family's second floor apartment walk off four year old Christopher,
5:29
Speaker 1: eight year old Cheryl, and they apparently this is where
5:34
Speaker 1: it gets a little fuzzy for me. There either walking
5:36
Speaker 1: with or toward Joey's home or with Joey. And this
5:41
Speaker 1: will be important, won't it.
5:43
Speaker 2: Brian, Absolutely, I'll get important at trial. But at the time,
5:49
Speaker 2: the children, as lots of children did in the early eighties,
5:54
Speaker 2: you didn't helicopter as much at the time. Can we
5:57
Speaker 2: go out and play? Okay, be back home by five thirty.
6:02
Speaker 2: We're coming for dinner and watch your little brother. And
6:05
Speaker 2: they went to one home in the neighborhood. Their little
6:08
Speaker 2: friend wasn't there, and then fate took them. They walked
6:11
Speaker 2: down the street towards the Elisio house Joey's dad was
6:14
Speaker 2: building up. They lived in a trailer of the Olisio's,
6:17
Speaker 2: a mobile home. The home was being built, was ninety
6:22
Speaker 2: percent done that the children were murdered in and now
6:26
Speaker 2: the children so this is four o'clock, five o'clock, five
6:31
Speaker 2: thirty comes around, children aren't home. Mister Ziamba goes out
6:36
Speaker 2: looking for the children in the neighborhood. Around the same time,
6:42
Speaker 2: the dad, Bob Olizio, Joey's father, is angry because his
6:45
Speaker 2: older brother isn't back from a softball game. And there's
6:48
Speaker 2: this little white Plymouth cricket automobile that Joey drives even
6:52
Speaker 2: though he's fifteen years old and not allowed to that
6:56
Speaker 2: he rebuilt this car, and his father says to him,
7:00
Speaker 2: give me the keys to the cricket. That's the car.
7:03
Speaker 2: I want to go get your brother and Joey says
7:06
Speaker 2: he can't do it. Dad oil pants busted. Meanwhile, more
7:11
Speaker 2: members of the Ziamba family are coming around the neighborhood
7:15
Speaker 2: looking for the kids. A friend of Joey's comes over.
7:19
Speaker 2: Because Joey and his brother and his dad were always
7:22
Speaker 2: rebuilding cars, had tons of automobile parts, tools came over tomorrow.
7:28
Speaker 2: A tool walks up to the front of the garage door,
7:31
Speaker 2: sees Joey in the garage, shirt off all Sweaty is Joey,
7:36
Speaker 2: do you have a tool? And Joey looks startled and
7:38
Speaker 2: he says, okay, I'll try to find it for you.
7:41
Speaker 2: And his friend looks down on the driveway and sees
7:43
Speaker 2: a pool of blood. Says Joey, who got cut and
7:47
Speaker 2: it was like I did. Another friend comes over sees
7:50
Speaker 2: the same thing. So now there's blood on the ground.
7:53
Speaker 2: Two clues that we're insignificant at the time, that we're
7:57
Speaker 2: all going to come together lead to a convey So
8:01
Speaker 2: at this point now you have the police involved. The
8:06
Speaker 2: dad actually gets Joey's brother Bobby to help him. Look.
8:10
Speaker 2: They're looking around the neighborhood. They said, let's walk over
8:13
Speaker 2: to the police station. Firehouse is right next to the
8:16
Speaker 2: police station. Police call the fireman over said we have
8:20
Speaker 2: lost children down off Drake's Lane. Fire department comes and
8:25
Speaker 2: as more and more commotion develops because the town so
8:29
Speaker 2: tight knit, people saw and they said, hey, children are disappeared,
8:32
Speaker 2: disappeared down by Drake's Lane. Let's go look for him.
8:36
Speaker 3: I think Brian does a great job in the book
8:38
Speaker 3: describing how many people came out and how this community
8:44
Speaker 3: came together for the next day day to just combing
8:48
Speaker 3: every area in and out of homes, right knocking on doors.
8:52
Speaker 2: It's I think it's like.
8:54
Speaker 3: A place where everyone hopes to live or wants that
8:58
Speaker 3: community feel.
8:59
Speaker 2: And so you had probably five hundred to seven hundred
9:04
Speaker 2: people that Sunday night looking out for the kids, and
9:08
Speaker 2: a group of firemen went up on the mountain where
9:11
Speaker 2: the Old Strip mining pits are, but it was too
9:12
Speaker 2: dark to really see anything. Well, one of them described
9:15
Speaker 2: to me you could see literally hundreds of flashlights down
9:20
Speaker 2: in the valley at Old Forge, almost looked like fireflies,
9:24
Speaker 2: all people with flashlights out looking for these children. And
9:28
Speaker 2: it continued. The search finally called off at four thirty
9:31
Speaker 2: in the morning. They set up a command post at
9:33
Speaker 2: one of the firehouses and said, you know what, we're
9:36
Speaker 2: going to start again at seven o'clock in the morning.
9:39
Speaker 2: Everybody meet there, and now you're getting close to dawn.
9:43
Speaker 2: And there was a husband and wife who had been
9:45
Speaker 2: searching and they couldn't go back to sleep. They said,
9:47
Speaker 2: you know what, let's go out and look in the neighborhood.
9:50
Speaker 2: A little before we joined the other searcher, see what
9:53
Speaker 2: we could find. And it's now at six thirty in
9:56
Speaker 2: the morning. They climb up this little wooded hill. All
10:00
Speaker 2: around the neighborhood is something called cullum, which is coal waste.
10:04
Speaker 2: It was the waste from the coal mines. It was
10:06
Speaker 2: thrown there in piles by the coal companies back in
10:09
Speaker 2: the day, and eventually trees grew out of it. And
10:12
Speaker 2: this one hill of coal waste, it's called Corey Slope,
10:16
Speaker 2: right near the Ziemba house, almost next to the Olisio house.
10:20
Speaker 2: And they look and they see a piece of carpet
10:24
Speaker 2: and they say, well, maybe the kids are hiding under
10:25
Speaker 2: that because they'd been raining on it off here in
10:27
Speaker 2: the night. And they pick up the carpet and they
10:30
Speaker 2: see strands of hair, They see what looks like little
10:34
Speaker 2: bone fragments, and they see this fleshy material. Husband sends
10:40
Speaker 2: the wife down to run over for the police. Police
10:44
Speaker 2: courting off the area, get the fired apartment to court
10:47
Speaker 2: and off the area. Volunteer searchers are all over the place.
10:52
Speaker 2: They want to coordinate them, and at this point it
10:55
Speaker 2: becomes a major k crime investigation. The Pennsylvania State Police
10:58
Speaker 2: are pulled in and Major Jordan, who runs the major
11:04
Speaker 2: Crime unit at the Dunmore Barracks, comes over with his
11:07
Speaker 2: team and they look at it and they say, yeah,
11:10
Speaker 2: this is human remains. So now they know something happened
11:13
Speaker 2: to the children, but they have no idea who are where.
11:19
Speaker 2: So more searchers are coming into the neighborhood. They're ordering
11:23
Speaker 2: the district attorney or any pre eight comes down. He
11:26
Speaker 2: orders everything shut down in town, garbage collection, orders the
11:31
Speaker 2: sores to be searched. And they're certain that the children
11:35
Speaker 2: something whatever happened to them, happened down in town. And
11:40
Speaker 2: they're looking all over the place, and people that day
11:43
Speaker 2: start having encounters with Joey Olisio. He's working on the
11:48
Speaker 2: oil pan of the car because the oil pan's broken.
11:51
Speaker 2: People say, what happened to the oil pan? Oh, somebody
11:55
Speaker 2: came up during the night and hit it with a sledgehammer.
11:57
Speaker 1: Well, who does that? I mean, that's a short.
12:01
Speaker 3: I want to interrupt this sect too, because I know,
12:03
Speaker 3: in you know, going through the book and knowing the
12:05
Speaker 3: area and stuff, it's that that coal mining strip area
12:10
Speaker 3: and stuff like this is it's not where people go.
12:12
Speaker 3: So it wasn't they searched it, but it wasn't a
12:17
Speaker 3: super easy area to search or to look through. And
12:21
Speaker 3: it was, you know, very local place if you knew
12:25
Speaker 3: your way around those areas. And I think it's talked
12:28
Speaker 3: about in the book. How I think Joey would you know,
12:31
Speaker 3: drive his car in the area or you know, up
12:33
Speaker 3: and down those hills or it wasn't a main thoroughfare
12:38
Speaker 3: that people were going through it. It was quite a
12:42
Speaker 3: hidden type of place, I think.
12:44
Speaker 1: Brian, may I ask you a question about the condition
12:46
Speaker 1: of the bodies. Did what was found there? Was it
12:53
Speaker 1: both children or was it just parts of the children?
12:56
Speaker 2: And it was ultimately the hair that was bound and
13:01
Speaker 2: there was a reason for this was Cheryl Ziemba's hair.
13:04
Speaker 2: Strands of her hair. There was fragments of skull, There
13:10
Speaker 2: was a shotgun wadding, the plastic pieces that holds the
13:15
Speaker 2: pellets together in a shotgun shell in with that, and
13:19
Speaker 2: there was brain material ultimately ultimately determined, so they knew
13:23
Speaker 2: something had happened to the children.
13:25
Speaker 1: And did they ever find the rest of the children.
13:27
Speaker 2: Yes, they did.
13:28
Speaker 1: I'll get oh, okay, yeah, I know. It's like I
13:30
Speaker 1: can't help myself. Okay, yeah, all right, I'll sit back
13:33
Speaker 1: and be quiet.
13:33
Speaker 3: And they also found some shoes. Maybe was that, and
13:37
Speaker 3: that's they.
13:38
Speaker 2: Found they found the children. The day before the murders,
13:42
Speaker 2: the children took a trip to New York with their
13:44
Speaker 2: mom and their aunt, and for them it was first
13:48
Speaker 2: time in New York. Nothing like Old Forge, nothing like
13:51
Speaker 2: Sprant and nothing like they ever saw before. And little
13:54
Speaker 2: Cheryl's so proud because their ant water, big girl leather sandals.
13:59
Speaker 2: And Christopher's overjoyed because he loves Superman and his aunt
14:03
Speaker 2: bottom Superman shirt. And when they got back that Sunday night,
14:08
Speaker 2: and they'd stopped at Church Fair and then the kids
14:10
Speaker 2: were playing. They wanted to keep playing in the yard.
14:12
Speaker 2: It's getting dark, and their aunt told them, you're going
14:16
Speaker 2: to have all day tomorrow to play. You're going to
14:18
Speaker 2: have the rest of your lives to play. And really,
14:21
Speaker 2: you know what, the aunt didn't realize was the children
14:24
Speaker 2: were snake bitten too, because they had they had hours
14:27
Speaker 2: to live at that point. So one digression I'll give
14:32
Speaker 2: you is during the night that Sunday night of the search,
14:35
Speaker 2: Joey Olizio joined it on that search and at one
14:38
Speaker 2: point loaded up into a pickup truck full of searches
14:41
Speaker 2: because he knew the roads up by the Strip Monning pits,
14:44
Speaker 2: and it's pitch black up there. They're driving through and
14:48
Speaker 2: he's yelling the wrong way, You're going to drive into
14:50
Speaker 2: a pit. And everybody's yelling for the children except Joey.
14:56
Speaker 2: So you get that Monday, they know something happened to
14:59
Speaker 2: the children that they can't They're looking all over town.
15:02
Speaker 2: They can't find any more evidence. And that car that
15:08
Speaker 2: Joey drove that he was fixing the oil pan. He
15:11
Speaker 2: was very proud of that. He did a lot of
15:13
Speaker 2: work to that. And one of the things he did,
15:15
Speaker 2: and this is going to come in on Tuesday, he
15:17
Speaker 2: had put a piece of white shod carpeting on that
15:20
Speaker 2: dashboard and the glueden holds so that any threw it
15:23
Speaker 2: in the garage. So then you get into Tuesday and
15:27
Speaker 2: I just.
15:27
Speaker 1: Want to say. For you know, I always like to
15:30
Speaker 1: give people perspectives. We have to remember this as nineteen
15:33
Speaker 1: eighty one. Nancy and I were talking yesterday. Nancy actually
15:36
Speaker 1: stopped by the house yesterday to give me your book. Okay,
15:39
Speaker 1: I'll digress slightly here. For those of you who are
15:41
Speaker 1: watching and those of you who are listening, look at
15:44
Speaker 1: the little bookmarks that Nancy used. They're like little dog
15:47
Speaker 1: post its. They look like little Docson's. Is that the
15:49
Speaker 1: cutest thing you've ever seen? And there's your book, because
15:52
Speaker 1: that's Nancy, because we're good friends. But when Nancy said
15:57
Speaker 1: to me, and we were talking literally in the podcast studio,
16:01
Speaker 1: talking about this case, and we're talking about the carpeting
16:04
Speaker 1: on the dash, I said, Nancy, that's so nineteen eighties.
16:08
Speaker 1: You know, people may think, what what are you talking about?
16:12
Speaker 1: Carpeting on the dash? That was it was a thing.
16:15
Speaker 1: It was a thing.
16:17
Speaker 3: He was the dice or something hanging with the carpets.
16:21
Speaker 2: The dice, a pepper or horn hanging off, the hanging
16:27
Speaker 2: off the oh, the mirror, the miria. And people worked
16:31
Speaker 2: on their own cars a lot more back then and
16:33
Speaker 2: customized their own cars.
16:35
Speaker 3: That well, yeah, this was a kid building and fixing
16:40
Speaker 3: what would be his first car, right or you know,
16:44
Speaker 3: there's there's something sweet about that. That's something that would
16:48
Speaker 3: that went on a lot, that the kids would work
16:49
Speaker 3: on it, and and uh yeah, I mean that's so
16:53
Speaker 3: you put that carpet was really quite key later on.
16:57
Speaker 1: Right, the carpet on the dash evct of that vehicle.
16:59
Speaker 1: I just I wanted to point that out for people
17:02
Speaker 1: who are listening and are like, why is their carpeting
17:05
Speaker 1: on the dash? It really was an accessory.
17:07
Speaker 2: It was a thing. I'm a child of the seventies
17:10
Speaker 2: and eighties. That's what people did with their cars, things
17:12
Speaker 2: like that.
17:13
Speaker 1: Okay, so okay take it from there. So the carpeting
17:17
Speaker 1: on the dash.
17:18
Speaker 2: So the carpeting on the dash, and he knows the
17:21
Speaker 2: roads up by the strip mining pits. These are very
17:24
Speaker 2: deep pits. It's heavily wooded. It's a very rocky road
17:28
Speaker 2: going up there, and in some place, unless you knew
17:32
Speaker 2: what you were doing up there, no one would ever
17:34
Speaker 2: go to. A stranger would never go up there. You
17:37
Speaker 2: wouldn't even know there was a road because it looks
17:40
Speaker 2: like it falls off into the woods. So you know
17:45
Speaker 2: they're up there. They get into the second day of
17:48
Speaker 2: the search, and there's five firefighters from Old Forge, including
17:52
Speaker 2: a seventeen year old junior firefighter, and they say to
17:56
Speaker 2: the state police, we're going to go search up at
17:58
Speaker 2: the Strip mining pits. We looked up there Sunday night,
18:01
Speaker 2: but we couldn't see anything because it was so dark.
18:03
Speaker 2: And the state troopers said, you know what, you could
18:05
Speaker 2: do what you want, but you're not going to find
18:08
Speaker 2: anything up there. I can't stop you go ahead. Well,
18:11
Speaker 2: they go up to the Strip mining pits and first
18:14
Speaker 2: pit they find nothing. Second pit, the seventeen year old
18:19
Speaker 2: junior firefighter walks over to the side of the edge
18:23
Speaker 2: and starts screaming. There are the children about thirty feet
18:27
Speaker 2: down from the pit. They didn't fall all the way
18:29
Speaker 2: down because a tree caught them. They rolled against a tree.
18:34
Speaker 2: They could see, they could see the children, you know,
18:36
Speaker 2: children's legs under these pieces of carbon. And what the
18:42
Speaker 2: state police found because they can't they send somebody down,
18:46
Speaker 2: get the state police. What they found was horrific. Cheryl's yamba.
18:51
Speaker 2: The top of her skull was blown off completely from
18:56
Speaker 2: the back of the skull, and this becomes important a
18:58
Speaker 2: trial and becomes important on showing intention to kill from
19:03
Speaker 2: the back to the front, and little Christopher shot at
19:08
Speaker 2: such close range in his chest that the shotgun wadding
19:12
Speaker 2: is lodged in his heart. They're found up there, dumped
19:17
Speaker 2: like garbage. But the most important clue of the case
19:20
Speaker 2: is found at that point because this white shag carpet
19:24
Speaker 2: cut in the shape of a dashboard is found. And
19:28
Speaker 2: it was Lieutenant Jordan at the time, later Major Jordan.
19:31
Speaker 2: The State Police looked at it and said, whoever did
19:34
Speaker 2: this made his mistake. We've got whoever did this eventually,
19:38
Speaker 2: so they sent that over. There's a huge autorecer yard
19:42
Speaker 2: in scrant and you could still see to this day
19:44
Speaker 2: to Naples. It's been in the news constantly because of
19:49
Speaker 2: environmental concerns and everything else. But there was less. So
19:52
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty one state police went over there and
19:55
Speaker 2: they'd made a template and they said what car will
19:59
Speaker 2: this fit? Model of car will is fit? And they
20:01
Speaker 2: say eventually that day nineteen seventy one Plymouth cricket. They're
20:07
Speaker 2: sitting in the Olusio driveway.
20:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, and a Plymouth cricket. I mean it wasn't honestly,
20:16
Speaker 3: it's not one. I think a lot. I mean thankfully
20:19
Speaker 3: it was. I'm not saying that was easy by any means,
20:21
Speaker 3: but at least they were able to from the cut
20:25
Speaker 3: in the shape of it, you know, have something to
20:29
Speaker 3: go on.
20:30
Speaker 1: Because this is pre Google everyone, you have to understand,
20:33
Speaker 1: no cell phones, it's no GPS data, you know, no
20:37
Speaker 1: DNA forensics. This is a different way of investigating a murder.
20:43
Speaker 2: Well.
20:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also before before they even i think got
20:50
Speaker 3: to that point to find it, you brought up in
20:52
Speaker 3: the introduction about that, you know, they using investigative tools
20:58
Speaker 3: of the day and what what what else could they do?
21:02
Speaker 3: They went and interviewed a child killer that was from
21:08
Speaker 3: again killed in the area at one point in prison
21:12
Speaker 3: to kind of get a profile. And I think Brian
21:16
Speaker 3: can explain how dead Annie was.
21:19
Speaker 2: It was buried dead on. There were murders in nineteen
21:23
Speaker 2: seventy three right in the area, not too far away
21:26
Speaker 2: a section of Scranton called Manuka. Two boys thirteen twelve.
21:30
Speaker 2: It was called the freech Keene murders after their last names.
21:34
Speaker 2: They were walking home, so November nineteen seventy three, they
21:38
Speaker 2: were walking home from school and they just disappeared gone.
21:43
Speaker 2: Four days later they were found dumped a campground dumb site,
21:51
Speaker 2: and pieces of carpet were found over them. So the press,
21:55
Speaker 2: of course freech Keene was on everybody's mind during this investigation,
22:01
Speaker 2: during the days the Zemba children were missing, and William
22:05
Speaker 2: Wright was eventually convicted. He was a worker for the
22:09
Speaker 2: city of Scranton with the pest control you know, they
22:12
Speaker 2: wrote in controlled department. And he had bored these kids,
22:16
Speaker 2: took him in a van, molested him and killed them.
22:20
Speaker 2: And he had done other murders before, he had been
22:22
Speaker 2: out on parole, and here he goes he murders again,
22:26
Speaker 2: which was common in the sixties and seventies that the
22:28
Speaker 2: people were out for murder after a very short period
22:32
Speaker 2: of time. So he was at the state penitentiary all
22:36
Speaker 2: the way out in Pittsburgh because they couldn't put him
22:38
Speaker 2: anywhere near Scranton because of his notoriety. He would be
22:41
Speaker 2: killed in prison. They sent a state trooper out there
22:44
Speaker 2: to interview him, and they brought a small file what
22:48
Speaker 2: they had so far, and he looked at it. He said, well,
22:54
Speaker 2: the Wooded Hill is not known to anybody except somebody
22:58
Speaker 2: in that neighborhood where they found the chap where they
23:01
Speaker 2: found the sandals, where they found the rugs, so that's
23:06
Speaker 2: not known to anybody, so it's going to be somebody
23:09
Speaker 2: from the neighborhood. And looking at it a little more,
23:11
Speaker 2: he said, you know what, don't just look at it adults.
23:16
Speaker 2: This is most likely going to be a teenage boy.
23:21
Speaker 2: And he was right on the money.
23:25
Speaker 3: It's interesting that they and smart that they said, okay,
23:29
Speaker 3: let's let's go and talk to someone that maybe understands
23:34
Speaker 3: the mind of someone like this, right that who would
23:36
Speaker 3: do this. And I think they it helped shape how
23:42
Speaker 3: they were looking and where they were looking. Then they
23:44
Speaker 3: find the carpet and it all starts to come together for.
23:46
Speaker 2: Them, and it started coming together for people in the neighborhood.
23:50
Speaker 2: His one friend, the friend who came over on Sunday
23:54
Speaker 2: night to borrow the tool, comes back on Tuesday and
24:00
Speaker 2: asks him for another tool, and they're in the garage
24:05
Speaker 2: and the friend was remembering that Joey Olisio had killed
24:09
Speaker 2: animals in front of him. There was one time when
24:12
Speaker 2: he found a baby possum. He put a mighty firecracker
24:16
Speaker 2: in the cage with it and blew up the possum
24:18
Speaker 2: and laughed hysterically. And the one friend haven't seen the
24:23
Speaker 2: blood on the driveway, and this was a brave thing
24:26
Speaker 2: to say, because he was alone in the garage with
24:28
Speaker 2: Joey just turns to him and says, I think you
24:31
Speaker 2: did it. And other people were beginning to get an idea.
24:36
Speaker 2: The father was beginning to get an idea, Bob Olizia,
24:40
Speaker 2: he was getting more and more agitated the more police
24:44
Speaker 2: were in the neighborhood, and he was you know, his
24:48
Speaker 2: older son Bobby was at that softball game and he
24:52
Speaker 2: must have been thinking, why was that oil pan broken
24:54
Speaker 2: on the car? And I think he had probably seen
24:59
Speaker 2: Joey tried to clean up the mess in the house,
25:02
Speaker 2: or wasn't completely successful. He tried cleaning it up with gasoline.
25:06
Speaker 2: That's what he's That's what the theory is. Or he
25:08
Speaker 2: could have been. If he had burned down that house
25:10
Speaker 2: and they didn't find that piece of carpet, this would
25:12
Speaker 2: have been a maybe an unsolved case. So the father
25:17
Speaker 2: was beginning to suspect him, and the father and father's
25:20
Speaker 2: girlfriend and the two boys go out for dinner and
25:24
Speaker 2: the father it's all nervous, and Joey splurts it out.
25:28
Speaker 2: He says, you think I killed them, didn't you? That
25:31
Speaker 2: friend said, I think you killed him. So people in
25:34
Speaker 2: the neighborhood were beginning to come to a conclusion.
25:37
Speaker 1: Had the police interviewed Joey yet.
25:40
Speaker 2: They had run ins with Joey?
25:43
Speaker 1: They were this case the missing children.
25:46
Speaker 2: The missing children?
25:46
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, okay, they had gone on.
25:49
Speaker 2: The property because they were looking at all the properties
25:51
Speaker 2: in the neighborhood. As soon as the troopers stepped foot
25:54
Speaker 2: on the property, joe Ilizzio came running out, what are
25:58
Speaker 2: you doing on my property? And you don't need to
26:02
Speaker 2: look in the house. The house has been searched, We searched,
26:04
Speaker 2: the kids aren't up there.
26:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, because remember he was, he was actively searching with
26:10
Speaker 3: all of them, and I'm sure you felt, maybe felt
26:14
Speaker 3: everything closing in at some point. But he was pretty
26:17
Speaker 3: brazen for a kid, you know, to say these things
26:24
Speaker 3: to his parents and say it's a little unraveling.
26:27
Speaker 1: I would imagine and say it's to the cops. I mean,
26:29
Speaker 1: I don't think as a fifteen year old i'd have
26:31
Speaker 1: the wherewithal to say get out of here.
26:34
Speaker 2: He was very bold because that friend who well, who
26:39
Speaker 2: voiced it to him, I thought you did it. That
26:41
Speaker 2: friend came looking for a carburetor. And you got to remember,
26:44
Speaker 2: the whole neighborhood is crawling with state police, local police,
26:48
Speaker 2: and Joey says, you know what, if we can't find
26:51
Speaker 2: a carburetor in here, I'll steal one from that station
26:53
Speaker 2: wagon down the street. This is with all the police
26:56
Speaker 2: are out, this.
26:57
Speaker 3: Is during the search. It was just like go, go,
27:00
Speaker 3: go for him. It's strange.
27:02
Speaker 2: And even when he was trying to fix that oil pan,
27:04
Speaker 2: a volunteer firefighter came on the property and he said,
27:08
Speaker 2: get off my property, and the firefighter said something back
27:11
Speaker 2: to him. He actually picked up a chisel and threatened
27:14
Speaker 2: the firefighter get off my property or I'll bust your head. Weird,
27:19
Speaker 2: So he wasn't making himself inconspicuous, let's put it that way.
27:23
Speaker 1: So, Nancy, weren't there some witnesses that placed Joey near
27:30
Speaker 1: or at the scene where the children's bodies were found?
27:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, So what had happened? One time during when they
27:38
Speaker 3: were all searching, there was a car, a couple I believe,
27:41
Speaker 3: that went up into that area. It was you know,
27:44
Speaker 3: dusk or getting dark. And again this wasn't an easy
27:47
Speaker 3: area to navigate, but they had seen a car coming
27:51
Speaker 3: at them with someone driving it. And at the time
27:53
Speaker 3: I don't think they recognized, you know, oh this if
27:56
Speaker 3: they knew Joey or not at that time, but they
27:59
Speaker 3: were able to. When everyone starts questioning about the carpet
28:02
Speaker 3: and what they're finding, they said, you know, we saw
28:06
Speaker 3: once the bodies were found, we did see a car
28:08
Speaker 3: up there. I guess they were able to identify the
28:10
Speaker 3: type of car. And then they did and the lineup
28:15
Speaker 3: that they did for this, these folks to pick out, like, gee,
28:19
Speaker 3: who did you see in the car?
28:21
Speaker 1: So they pick out Joey and then what happens.
28:24
Speaker 2: Well, they also because they saw the car up there,
28:27
Speaker 2: they brought him into the barracks garage and the state
28:31
Speaker 2: troopers pointed to a car and said, this is the
28:33
Speaker 2: car that was up on the mountain. And they look
28:36
Speaker 2: and they look down their ways a bit and say, well,
28:40
Speaker 2: that may be the car you found, but that's the
28:42
Speaker 2: car we saw. They purposely showed them the wrong car
28:45
Speaker 2: and they picked the right car up because it was
28:48
Speaker 2: such a unique car. It wasn't a very common car
28:51
Speaker 2: even in its day.
28:53
Speaker 1: So then what happens with Joey.
28:56
Speaker 2: So by that point, when they have done the lineup,
28:58
Speaker 2: Joey's already been a red because they came in the
29:03
Speaker 2: nine of July twenty ninth, eighty one with search warrants
29:08
Speaker 2: for the Elisio property and to question the Elisios, and
29:12
Speaker 2: word got out somehow an Old Forge. When they went
29:15
Speaker 2: in in the surrounding streets, there might have been one
29:18
Speaker 2: thousand to two thousand people in the street.
29:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this is this was Yeah, they lining
29:27
Speaker 3: the streets. I mean, there's pictures throughout the book that
29:30
Speaker 3: just you get this feel for what this had done
29:33
Speaker 3: to this community.
29:34
Speaker 2: And remember this is nineteen eighty one. This is the
29:38
Speaker 2: age of three channels on TV. All the three major
29:41
Speaker 2: network channels out of Scranton were covering this live. So
29:45
Speaker 2: everybody saw this something's going on down there. They all
29:48
Speaker 2: flocked down to Old Forge. So you know, maybe for
29:51
Speaker 2: a mile they were driving through crowds of people. After
29:55
Speaker 2: they took them into custody.
29:57
Speaker 1: Was there any more evidence found in the house.
30:00
Speaker 2: There was when they went through the house. There is
30:04
Speaker 2: a picture in the book from the district attorney file.
30:09
Speaker 2: There is a fragment of skull that he didn't clear
30:12
Speaker 2: up on the stairs going upstairs. He killed one child
30:15
Speaker 2: in the downstairs. The theory is based on his testimony
30:20
Speaker 2: later on in twenty nineteen, every sentencing hearing. He killed
30:24
Speaker 2: the little brother first, the little girl ran, put herself
30:29
Speaker 2: in a closet like a child may do in a fire,
30:32
Speaker 2: and then he hunted her. He had a reload. It
30:34
Speaker 2: was a single shot shotgun. Twelve Gage opens the closet
30:38
Speaker 2: door and blows her head off and she fell and
30:41
Speaker 2: there was Christmas ornaments because when they found the bodies,
30:44
Speaker 2: they found little fragments of glass, blue and green glass
30:48
Speaker 2: that was from Christmas ornaments she fell on. He tried
30:51
Speaker 2: to clean up, but the blood had see behind the
30:55
Speaker 2: baseboard of the closet, and the state troopers went in.
30:59
Speaker 2: The evidence collection team went in and they immediately smelled
31:03
Speaker 2: putrefied blood in the closet and they pulled off that
31:07
Speaker 2: molding on the floor and they found the blood behind there.
31:10
Speaker 2: They found some hairstrands and all this added up to
31:14
Speaker 2: additional evidence. So that was they found really a terrible
31:20
Speaker 2: scene still, even though he had spent considerable time cleaning
31:23
Speaker 2: it up.
31:24
Speaker 1: So what was the trial like?
31:27
Speaker 2: Well, the trial it was two legal titans, Ernie priate
31:31
Speaker 2: versus as the district attorney versus Jack Brier, one of
31:34
Speaker 2: the best defense attorneys. They brought a jury in from
31:37
Speaker 2: Bucks County, Pennsylvania, well far away down by Philadelphia, and
31:43
Speaker 2: you know, they called them, I think they called themselves
31:45
Speaker 2: the Scranton twelve because they were sequestered. They were in hotels,
31:48
Speaker 2: and the judge even decided to have Saturday trial sessions
31:52
Speaker 2: to try to keep it from these people are out
31:56
Speaker 2: of their homes in Bucks County, they're sequestered, they can't
31:58
Speaker 2: read newspapers, can't watch television. Let's get this trial moving.
32:03
Speaker 2: And even then it was a meticulous trial. Four weeks
32:06
Speaker 2: of trial in the guilt face, including Saturday sessions, one
32:11
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty nine pieces of evidence. And he didn't
32:13
Speaker 2: have DNA. You didn't have cameras all over the place.
32:18
Speaker 2: So you had those men who saw him on the mountain.
32:21
Speaker 2: You had the state police. You had the forensics comparing
32:24
Speaker 2: the carpet which was found, the white piece of carpet
32:28
Speaker 2: that had the shape of the dashboard, and they found
32:31
Speaker 2: strands of Cheryl's hair that had all the characteristics. He
32:35
Speaker 2: didn't have DNA, so the againistics they could say same
32:39
Speaker 2: blooded antigens as Cheryl. But they couldn't say DNA at
32:44
Speaker 2: the time. And during the trial he Joey was not behaved.
32:52
Speaker 2: Jack Bryer must have got add a heck of a
32:53
Speaker 2: time with him, because at one point Ernie pried. The
32:58
Speaker 2: DA goes up to give his closing statement and in
33:01
Speaker 2: front of the jury, Joey looked, yells out in the
33:03
Speaker 2: courtroom to him, you scumback not helping, not helping himself,
33:09
Speaker 2: not helping. And then you know, you have a jury
33:12
Speaker 2: that's trying. You have to convince a jury that a
33:14
Speaker 2: fifteen year old did such a glacious crime. But all
33:18
Speaker 2: the evidence pointed to it, and the district attorney did
33:21
Speaker 2: a brilliant job. I think it was a three hour
33:24
Speaker 2: summation closing statement, and they come back with the guilty
33:28
Speaker 2: verdict and the first thing Joey Olisio does is puts
33:31
Speaker 2: his fist up in the air and yells its party time.
33:35
Speaker 1: What's wrong with him? Was he? Did they ever determine
33:38
Speaker 1: whether he was, you know, suffering from any form of
33:42
Speaker 1: mental illness or what was going on here?
33:45
Speaker 2: He had two forensic psychiatrists for the defense testify and
33:51
Speaker 2: had you know, done reports. They had one for the
33:56
Speaker 2: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and he had anti social ties traits,
34:00
Speaker 2: but he was not insane. You could be a sociopath,
34:03
Speaker 2: you're not insane.
34:05
Speaker 1: So and so whose decision was it when it came
34:08
Speaker 1: to the death penalty. Part of this was this at
34:11
Speaker 1: the time, was that the jury that would decide whether
34:13
Speaker 1: he would be given death or with the judge decide.
34:15
Speaker 2: That the jury. So now you have to convince twelve
34:19
Speaker 2: jurors to send a fifteen year old when he's sixteen
34:24
Speaker 2: by the time of the trial, to the electric chair.
34:28
Speaker 2: That takes a lot because you have to weigh the
34:31
Speaker 2: aggravating factors versus the mitigating factors. Aggravating factors of kidnapping,
34:36
Speaker 2: aggravating factor multiple murders against that the kids fifteen years old.
34:42
Speaker 2: You know that there had been the divorce in the family.
34:45
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day the jury came
34:49
Speaker 2: back twelve unanimous verdict death and the electric chair. And
34:53
Speaker 2: even then he's being let out of the courtroom. The
35:00
Speaker 2: Ziamba family, the husband and wife for hugging, the mom
35:03
Speaker 2: and dad are hugging Ernie pre ate the da. He
35:07
Speaker 2: turns them as he's being let out of the courtrooms,
35:09
Speaker 2: yells out, aren't you gonna hug me.
35:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, hends off here well, and you know, he
35:19
Speaker 3: maintained his innocence for a very very very long time
35:23
Speaker 3: as Brian and I would talk about it. Brian's while it,
35:26
Speaker 3: while it suited him. He you know, nothing changed over
35:33
Speaker 3: the years.
35:34
Speaker 1: So ultimately he's not put to death.
35:36
Speaker 2: Right there's yeah eighty seven, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court three
35:41
Speaker 2: four vote reverses the death penalty, and at the time
35:45
Speaker 2: you couldn't bring him back for a new sentencing hearing,
35:49
Speaker 2: so they brought back and he was sentenced to life
35:51
Speaker 2: without parole. Then you get to two thousand and all
35:55
Speaker 2: this time he's denying it, at least to the to
35:58
Speaker 2: the public. He had a religious advisor he had admitted
36:03
Speaker 2: to as early as ninety two. Then comes twenty twelve,
36:09
Speaker 2: US Supreme Court comes down with a decision that life
36:13
Speaker 2: imprisonment without parole is unconstitutional for juveniles. Now it's convenient
36:18
Speaker 2: for him to admit to it, because he has to
36:21
Speaker 2: start saying something when he has a resentencing hearing that's
36:25
Speaker 2: going to convince a judge to let him go to
36:28
Speaker 2: make him eligible for parole. So the story changes and
36:33
Speaker 2: he came up for a resentencing hearing in twenty nineteen
36:36
Speaker 2: in December. I testified at that because I had started
36:41
Speaker 2: working on this book early nineties in earnest and I
36:46
Speaker 2: was around Old Forge. I was asking questions, I was
36:50
Speaker 2: meeting people. I met his father, and he eventually somehow
36:54
Speaker 2: from prison. And this is remember we talked about pre forensics.
36:58
Speaker 2: There wasn't DNA. There was We're talking about early nineties.
37:01
Speaker 2: There was no Internet to speak of, like it is,
37:05
Speaker 2: not in prison, not in prison. Somehow he found my
37:08
Speaker 2: home address and I have a copy of the letter
37:10
Speaker 2: in the book. He sent me a death threat letter
37:12
Speaker 2: talking about the movie Caped Fear.
37:16
Speaker 3: Is the he's out of state, He's he's not in
37:21
Speaker 3: scrant and proper at all.
37:23
Speaker 2: He tracked me down in New Jersey.
37:25
Speaker 1: Oh so shut out to him. And this was a response,
37:28
Speaker 1: he just found you and wrote to you.
37:31
Speaker 2: Yeah.
37:33
Speaker 1: Interesting.
37:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's how I ended up getting subpoena for
37:39
Speaker 2: resentencing hearing because he wrote to you, Because he wrote
37:43
Speaker 2: to me that letter, which was a threat to me.
37:47
Speaker 2: So he's resenting hearing. He's trying to show how he's
37:51
Speaker 2: rehabilitated himself. Now, I had stopped working on the book
37:56
Speaker 2: around nineteen ninety eight because I got too busy as
38:01
Speaker 2: an attorney, volunteer firefighter, and then I was I ran
38:05
Speaker 2: for a local election elected office in Morris County, New Jersey,
38:09
Speaker 2: never thinking i'd win, and I was the dog who
38:11
Speaker 2: caught the car. I won over here, so too busy
38:16
Speaker 2: to do it, put it aside, thought well, gee, that
38:19
Speaker 2: was a good idea. But you know it's a good story,
38:21
Speaker 2: but nothing's ever going to come of it. In summer
38:24
Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen, I almost threw away all the materials.
38:26
Speaker 2: I had four or five boxes of materials, and I
38:30
Speaker 2: didn't for one reason or another, said all right, I'll
38:33
Speaker 2: hold on to it. Mid December twenty nineteen, I get
38:36
Speaker 2: a call from one of the firemen who found the
38:38
Speaker 2: bodies an old forge of the Zamba children way back when,
38:43
Speaker 2: and said, do you still have that death threat letter
38:45
Speaker 2: he sent you? And I found it. We faxed it
38:49
Speaker 2: up to the District Attorney's office up in Scranton that
38:53
Speaker 2: Monday from my office, and that night I had subpoena.
38:56
Speaker 2: So I went to testify against.
38:58
Speaker 1: Them, and so, what what's your testimony? What was your
39:01
Speaker 1: testimony supposed to show that he's not rehabilitating that he's
39:04
Speaker 1: a danger to society.
39:05
Speaker 2: Danger to society. And it was interesting because there were
39:08
Speaker 2: a number of prison guards who testified, and the testimony
39:13
Speaker 2: was all the same that he got a dispute with
39:16
Speaker 2: one of the guards. He would make motions of a
39:19
Speaker 2: shotgun and say, I'm going to kill your children when
39:21
Speaker 2: I get out. There was a prisoner who testified right
39:25
Speaker 2: before me. He got a dispute with This prisoner was
39:29
Speaker 2: one of his few friends in jail, and he said
39:32
Speaker 2: that I'm going to kill your children. The counselors at
39:36
Speaker 2: the prison testified and he had run ins with all
39:41
Speaker 2: of them, and for years he had said, Oh, if
39:45
Speaker 2: I deny it, they can't hold it against me. I
39:48
Speaker 2: have a plan to get out someday.
39:49
Speaker 3: I remember when Brian got subpoena and he was telling me,
39:53
Speaker 3: but yeah, you're talking twenty nineteen. It's many years, decades later.
39:59
Speaker 3: And I remember Brian and telling me when that when
40:00
Speaker 3: he went into the courtroom, how packed it was, and
40:04
Speaker 3: how many people were there for this hearing. You know,
40:08
Speaker 3: sometimes people you know, they don't pay attention for decades
40:11
Speaker 3: and decades, but that's how how much you know, how
40:14
Speaker 3: big a grip the story had on the community and
40:18
Speaker 3: everyone because he's the coverage of it was was substantial.
40:22
Speaker 2: I literally had I literally got the last seat in
40:24
Speaker 2: the courtroom when I came in, and I saw me
40:29
Speaker 2: in the suit and tie, so they figured, okay, he's
40:30
Speaker 2: the attorney coming to testify. The young DA came, young
40:34
Speaker 2: assistant DA came up to me, and then there was
40:36
Speaker 2: a fellow talking to me the whole time, a little
40:39
Speaker 2: by little in the courtroom, you know, making small talk
40:42
Speaker 2: with me. It was his brother packed brothers.
40:46
Speaker 3: Wow, the family stood by him for many years and
40:49
Speaker 3: paid for attorneys and the appeals, and I think they were,
40:53
Speaker 3: you know, active, and I guess in the hopes of
40:57
Speaker 3: of that he didn't do this.
40:59
Speaker 2: But they had convinced a local businessman up there to
41:03
Speaker 2: finance the appeal. They had different contracts with Italian and
41:09
Speaker 2: French television stations and newspapers. Look how terrible this is
41:13
Speaker 2: what they're doing to this young boy. And it was
41:18
Speaker 2: all when we had that resentsing hearing, you found out
41:21
Speaker 2: what a facade it was. That you know, he testified
41:24
Speaker 2: that he had told his parents years before, in the nineties,
41:28
Speaker 2: whereas they were trained to the world he was innocent.
41:31
Speaker 2: He had told him. He did it. He told his
41:32
Speaker 2: religious advisor, who had come to testify at that resentencing
41:36
Speaker 2: hearing as early as ninety two, a year before he
41:39
Speaker 2: sent me the letter, that he did it.
41:42
Speaker 1: So that's resentencing. He takes the stand, Joey takes the stand,
41:46
Speaker 1: and he takes the sue, and he admits to his crimes.
41:49
Speaker 1: Does he explain why he did this?
41:53
Speaker 2: Somewhat, but he tried to explain it to make it
41:56
Speaker 2: look to his advantage. He said, I'm playing Cops Robbers
42:00
Speaker 2: with the kids in the house. I happened to see
42:02
Speaker 2: a shotgun there leaning against the wall, and I thought
42:06
Speaker 2: it was unloaded. And the little girl's jumping in front
42:09
Speaker 2: of me, and I say, hands up, and I pulled
42:12
Speaker 2: the trigger and it went off and shoots her in
42:14
Speaker 2: the front of the head. But if you remember the forensics,
42:17
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. She was in a closet in the
42:19
Speaker 2: back of her head. And then, more importantly, the shotgun
42:23
Speaker 2: was a single shot shotgun. He had to reload. Yeah,
42:27
Speaker 2: he could have run out. Let's say, if it was
42:30
Speaker 2: an accident, he could have ran out of the house.
42:31
Speaker 2: At that point, Oh my god, I shot Christopher. It
42:34
Speaker 2: was an accident. He wouldn't have even been tried as
42:37
Speaker 2: an adult. Yeah, so he reloaded.
42:42
Speaker 1: But okay, so his best answer, which was obviously a lie,
42:46
Speaker 1: was that it was an accident.
42:48
Speaker 2: The first murder was an accident, and the second murder
42:52
Speaker 2: he just kept saying at the hearing, I was in denial.
42:55
Speaker 2: He must have heard that phrase in prison. I was
42:58
Speaker 2: in denial, So I just went and shot the other
43:02
Speaker 2: one because I was in denial. I was panicking.
43:05
Speaker 1: But of course none of this ends up giving any
43:09
Speaker 1: helping him get any mercy on his sentence at all.
43:12
Speaker 1: It just solidifies that this guy's never gotten out.
43:16
Speaker 2: That's what it did with the judge. The judge. You know,
43:20
Speaker 2: the judge was interesting because he was a former public defender,
43:25
Speaker 2: so you would think that the judge might go a
43:27
Speaker 2: little easy. And the judge said, you know, there's no
43:30
Speaker 2: volume discount for murder. I don't see a shred of
43:33
Speaker 2: remorse here. So he sentenced them to thirty to life
43:36
Speaker 2: for the one murder, thirty to life to run consecutively
43:40
Speaker 2: for the other murder, so sixty years without parole. He
43:43
Speaker 2: won't be eligible for parole until twenty forty one, when
43:46
Speaker 2: he's seventy five.
43:48
Speaker 1: Now I do have a question about his appeals. After
43:50
Speaker 1: this happens, then he changes his mind. He says, oh,
43:54
Speaker 1: I didn't do it. I'm innocent. He goes back to
43:56
Speaker 1: the I'm innocent. And something that came up in one
43:59
Speaker 1: of the appeals that I read that I found really
44:00
Speaker 1: fascinating was he claimed that the mother of the two children,
44:06
Speaker 1: the one who said she saw the children walk in
44:08
Speaker 1: the direction of Joey's home, either with Joey or towards Joey.
44:15
Speaker 1: Something came up, he claims in his appeals. In his
44:21
Speaker 1: defense that when the defense looked at her window where
44:25
Speaker 1: the mother says she saw this, the defense was able
44:28
Speaker 1: to prove that the mother could not see what she
44:32
Speaker 1: says she saw because of the angle of the window.
44:38
Speaker 1: How did that end up affecting his case?
44:43
Speaker 2: It didn't, because there was testimony at the trial he
44:50
Speaker 2: had hired a photographer and they made pictures going out
44:53
Speaker 2: the window. In fact, that even that became courtroom drama
44:57
Speaker 2: because Jack Brian Ernie pre hated each other and he
45:03
Speaker 2: saw Ernie might have put a pencil in his pocket,
45:05
Speaker 2: and he screamed in front of the jury, you just
45:07
Speaker 2: put those pictures in your pocket. I mean that's kind
45:09
Speaker 2: of courtroom tension there was. But going back to it,
45:12
Speaker 2: he you could sit in that window and depending on
45:17
Speaker 2: how you put your head out, you might be able
45:20
Speaker 2: to see that door or you might not be able to.
45:23
Speaker 2: So it's not a question of black and white. It
45:26
Speaker 2: was a question of gray area. And ultimately that testimony
45:31
Speaker 2: actually worked for his benefit when it got to the
45:33
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania Supreme Court because they the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said, well,
45:38
Speaker 2: she could see them walking in the house with Joey,
45:41
Speaker 2: and she didn't object. She can't say it was a kidnapping.
45:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what does that mean then what happened as
45:50
Speaker 1: a result of.
45:50
Speaker 2: That, Well that that's what got them off the death
45:53
Speaker 2: penalty because they knocked the aggravating factor in stinks.
46:01
Speaker 1: Wow. Wow. So years later, that very testimony about the
46:06
Speaker 1: mom claiming that she saw him and him saying she
46:09
Speaker 1: couldn't have seen it ultimately ends up helping him dropping
46:13
Speaker 1: one of those charges. Wow.
46:14
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, that's right.
46:17
Speaker 3: But also, you know, it is interesting when you think
46:21
Speaker 3: about it, because if if she if she did see
46:24
Speaker 3: them walking off, maybe that would have been the first
46:27
Speaker 3: place she searched. Or I think you're I think there's
46:30
Speaker 3: a lot of things in the chaos and everything that's
46:32
Speaker 3: going on, you know, your mind fills in blanks and
46:35
Speaker 3: maybe what you saw, what you did. I think there's
46:37
Speaker 3: a lot of things that could have been going on,
46:39
Speaker 3: just the trauma that she was going through at the
46:40
Speaker 3: time too.
46:42
Speaker 2: But this was this was so traumatic Diane and Chester.
46:47
Speaker 2: It really just and this is one of the things
46:52
Speaker 2: that we forget. Everybody's interested in Joey, but you're just
46:55
Speaker 2: the victims. It really destroyed that family. Diane was in.
46:59
Speaker 2: The judge noted it in the twenty nineteen hearing. Even
47:03
Speaker 2: to that point Diane couldn't come to the courtroom. It's
47:06
Speaker 2: still that traumatic for her. They had another child and
47:10
Speaker 2: he a letter of his was read from the Armies
47:14
Speaker 2: in the service born after the you know, siblings were murdered,
47:20
Speaker 2: and he's talked about, you know, the childhood he had
47:24
Speaker 2: and how overprotective his parents were of him, and that
47:27
Speaker 2: really caused problems for him as a kid. Chester Ziyamba
47:31
Speaker 2: died very young. He died in two thousand and one
47:34
Speaker 2: and most people, you know, they say snake bit and
47:37
Speaker 2: he died of a broken heart. He never recovered from this,
47:40
Speaker 2: never and then to add to the problem, you know,
47:45
Speaker 2: it was probably one of his friends from the neighborhood,
47:49
Speaker 2: but the Zambas were harassed after the conviction. People would
47:52
Speaker 2: call up the house, little kid's boys, says Chrissy home.
47:56
Speaker 1: Why would people do that.
47:57
Speaker 2: That's sick because us they these the Elisios ut up
48:06
Speaker 2: this front that Joey was innocent, that this was all
48:11
Speaker 2: this The horrible Ziamba family and the horrible district attorney
48:15
Speaker 2: and all these people just had it out for Joey
48:18
Speaker 2: because they couldn't solve the crime.
48:21
Speaker 3: And I mean, it's a you know, distraction. It's just
48:25
Speaker 3: people have nothing better.
48:27
Speaker 2: I never cruel that.
48:28
Speaker 3: It's cruel. I just I just don't understand.
48:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really cruel. So Brian, I'm curious. You know,
48:35
Speaker 1: you you've shared with us from the very beginning, how
48:38
Speaker 1: you ended up having an interest in this, how far
48:40
Speaker 1: you went you drop it. It's back now you're part
48:43
Speaker 1: of the case, right, which you would have never dreamed
48:46
Speaker 1: when you were in law school. Somehow you'd be part
48:49
Speaker 1: of a case like this testifying about the threats made
48:53
Speaker 1: against you. So you finally plowed through and you wrote
48:59
Speaker 1: the book. I'm curious looking at it now after this
49:04
Speaker 1: whole process, is there anything that you know sticks with
49:08
Speaker 1: you or you're still puzzled by or or whatever.
49:16
Speaker 2: Well, what sticks with me, by and large is still
49:24
Speaker 2: the on healed wound in Old Forge. People know about this,
49:32
Speaker 2: they even all these years later. So forty four years
49:36
Speaker 2: since the murder, forty three since the trial, you could
49:40
Speaker 2: go to any of the Italian restaurants in Old Forge
49:44
Speaker 2: at the bar and mentioned the name and you're going
49:46
Speaker 2: to start a conversation. Yeah, So it really just stayed
49:52
Speaker 2: with people, the horror of it, the fact that so
49:56
Speaker 2: many of them are out there opened that they were
49:58
Speaker 2: going to find live standing children. Yeah, and and what
50:03
Speaker 2: was found instead. The five firefighters are still living Old
50:08
Speaker 2: Forte and I confer with some of them, one of
50:11
Speaker 2: them in particular, and that that day that they were
50:15
Speaker 2: up on that mountain, still all these years later, is
50:18
Speaker 2: etched in their mind, just to you know, think that
50:22
Speaker 2: you're doing something so good looking for children, and then
50:28
Speaker 2: the horror that you, you know, unleash upon yourself by
50:32
Speaker 2: seeing all this, and that it stays with you, and
50:36
Speaker 2: it just how it stayed in that area. And you know,
50:40
Speaker 2: I was on a radio show recently in Scranton and
50:46
Speaker 2: the pings they were getting, the emails that were coming
50:49
Speaker 2: in that it's still all these years later on the
50:52
Speaker 2: forefront of people's minds. Even people who were born after it,
50:57
Speaker 2: they know about it.
50:58
Speaker 1: Yeah.
50:59
Speaker 2: I was actually surprised that no one wrote a book
51:03
Speaker 2: about it before me.
51:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible. And here's the book. Where can people
51:09
Speaker 1: buy the book and where can people find you or
51:11
Speaker 1: follow you?
51:13
Speaker 2: Well, it's on It's on Amazon. I think they just
51:16
Speaker 2: had to reorder. The warehouse was sold out. Yayay, same
51:22
Speaker 2: with Barnes and Noble. It's on Barnes and Noble. If
51:25
Speaker 2: you google Murder at Old Forge, you will find it
51:29
Speaker 2: a number of book booksellers. So it's gaining a following
51:33
Speaker 2: its gaining. It came out. It was released on July tenth,
51:39
Speaker 2: and already Barnes and Noble had sold out and they
51:41
Speaker 2: have to order more.
51:43
Speaker 1: Fabulous. So, Brian, I'm curious, are you still a criminal
51:46
Speaker 1: defense attorney?
51:47
Speaker 2: Still sitting in my office? I'm in my Allentown, Pennsylvania
51:50
Speaker 2: office now talking to you, and work in New Jersey
51:53
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania, still doing that. Still a firefighter, so still busy,
52:00
Speaker 2: you know, my life is still busy, and I had
52:02
Speaker 2: said to Nancy I had that hearing, and the then
52:07
Speaker 2: current district attorney in twenty nineteen, Mark Powell said to
52:10
Speaker 2: me after the hearing, why don't you start that book again?
52:14
Speaker 2: I said, Oh, I'm not so sure. And what happened
52:16
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty COVID For the first time in my life,
52:20
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do. God dug out the book.
52:26
Speaker 1: Wow, well this is you know. Of course, this case
52:30
Speaker 1: is horrific and it is heartbreaking, and it has lingering
52:33
Speaker 1: implications for the two families and obviously for the town
52:38
Speaker 1: forever these little children were taken. But you know, it
52:42
Speaker 1: is something to be able to care about something for
52:46
Speaker 1: so long, for so many decades, Brian, and see it
52:50
Speaker 1: through to tell a story. And even though you're a
52:53
Speaker 1: criminal defense attorney, you're obviously it's not just about fairness
52:57
Speaker 1: and the facts, but it's really about the enormity of
53:02
Speaker 1: this crime and the consequences for a greater community.
53:06
Speaker 2: Absolutely, my dedication in the book is to Cheryl Ziemba
53:11
Speaker 2: and Christopher Ziemba. You couldn't You couldn't do it for
53:14
Speaker 2: anybody else, because you know they they weren't play actors here,
53:19
Speaker 2: they were victims. Yeah, and it just their family wasn't
53:24
Speaker 2: play actors. They were victims and the community was victimized.
53:29
Speaker 2: And so if anything, you know, I do say people
53:34
Speaker 2: in Old Forge that you know what it did forty
53:37
Speaker 2: four years ago, and they've done it since. I'm sure
53:40
Speaker 2: you came together as a community. That's your spirit. You
53:44
Speaker 2: came to look for lost children, you came to do
53:46
Speaker 2: something good. Something terrible happened in your town that doesn't
53:51
Speaker 2: make your town terrible.
53:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Nancy, what a pleasure to thank you for
53:57
Speaker 1: bringing your cousin along.
54:01
Speaker 2: The book.
54:02
Speaker 3: It's it's it's a nice read if you really like
54:05
Speaker 3: what goes on in the courtroom and the evidence and
54:08
Speaker 3: the law behind everything, because he really does a great
54:12
Speaker 3: job explaining why different hearings came up and what changed
54:17
Speaker 3: and the death pals. And I think it's it's something
54:20
Speaker 3: that a lot of people think they understand, but I
54:23
Speaker 3: mean there's so many variations and a process that these
54:28
Speaker 3: these killers.
54:29
Speaker 2: Will go through.
54:29
Speaker 3: I think it's an interesting read just to learn about
54:31
Speaker 3: how all that works.
54:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, also with the police work, the police work at
54:36
Speaker 2: the time, because I still think it's fascinating because we
54:40
Speaker 2: live in the age of cameras on just about everybody's houses,
54:43
Speaker 2: ring doorbells, whatnot, and cell phone pings and DNA. And
54:51
Speaker 2: you know, there was one other observation I have. You know,
54:55
Speaker 2: Scranton Old Forge the state police at the time, this
54:59
Speaker 2: was no podunk operation. These investigators major crime. They found
55:07
Speaker 2: the guilty party, they weaved it together with one hundred
55:11
Speaker 2: and thirty nine exhibits a trial. This was really hard,
55:17
Speaker 2: painstaking police work, hard painstaking prosecution. And lastly, even the
55:24
Speaker 2: news coverage. You wouldn't think that a city like Spranton
55:27
Speaker 2: would have first class news coverage. One of the reasons
55:32
Speaker 2: why I thought the book was made easier. It was
55:36
Speaker 2: just the newspaper coverage at the time. That's when newspapers
55:39
Speaker 2: were still a big thing, particularly in scrant and you
55:41
Speaker 2: had a morning and evening edition, and when they were
55:44
Speaker 2: covering this crime when it happened, and then during the trial,
55:48
Speaker 2: there were reporters in that courtroom all day. You knew
55:50
Speaker 2: what happened in that courtroom. I also had the benefit
55:54
Speaker 2: early on when I started doing this, a complete copy
55:57
Speaker 2: of the trial transcript, which was four thousand pages, so
56:00
Speaker 2: that you know, gave you all you have the basis
56:05
Speaker 2: of the case and then you fill it out the book. No,
56:08
Speaker 2: I had good information.
56:10
Speaker 1: Well, Brian and Nancy, thank you. I love that we
56:14
Speaker 1: have made this into a family affair. I always refer
56:18
Speaker 1: to our greater community as the crime family, and Nancy,
56:22
Speaker 1: you've proven me right this time. Okay, so we know
56:26
Speaker 1: where the book can be found. Nancy, I know people
56:28
Speaker 1: are obsessed with everything that you do. Where can people
56:30
Speaker 1: follow you to see what case you're working on?
56:34
Speaker 2: Now?
56:35
Speaker 3: Oh? On Instagram at Nancy Muscatello.
56:38
Speaker 1: Excellent, excellent. You can find me at Anta G News.
56:40
Speaker 1: You can find this podcast, all our podcasts wherever you
56:43
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. If you want to follow us on
56:45
Speaker 1: social media, it's really easy at my True Crime News.
56:48
Speaker 1: Pretty easy there. I'm Ana G News Anna with one N.
56:52
Speaker 1: You can subscribe. I always say that because a lot
56:55
Speaker 1: of people spell Anna with two n's, so I know
56:59
Speaker 1: it's like everyone's got a handle and that one's mine.
57:03
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also
57:07
Speaker 1: subscribe to our newsletter at Truecrimenews dot com. I know,
57:10
Speaker 1: very old school. We have newsletter. Always make fun of it.
57:15
Speaker 1: This has been a special edition of True Crime News
57:17
Speaker 1: to the podcast, I'm your host, Anna Garcia, and as
57:20
Speaker 1: we always say, crime never stops midnight