Latest / The Path Went Chilly / The Zip Gun Bomber PT. One

Transcript

The Zip Gun Bomber PT. One · The Path Went Chilly

0:27
Speaker 1: Welcome to our next series of episodes from The Path
0:29
Speaker 1: Went Chili. Ashley is doing a book tour right now,
0:32
Speaker 1: so she's traveling and is quite busy, so we figured
0:35
Speaker 1: we give her a couple more weeks off and Jewles
0:37
Speaker 1: and I will record this week's episode alone and we'll
0:40
Speaker 1: follow our standard format where I share details about the
0:43
Speaker 1: case with Jewels and she'll give off her live reaction. So, Jules,
0:47
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of the zip gun bomber?
0:50
Speaker 2: No? I have not.
0:52
Speaker 1: Well, this is an interesting one. I've only ever covered
0:54
Speaker 1: it on a Patreon bonus episode of The Trail Went Cold,
0:57
Speaker 1: so this might be new to a lot of our listeners,
1:00
Speaker 1: and it involves a serial offender who has never been identified.
1:04
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard the term zip gun before, it's
1:06
Speaker 1: a term they often used to describe crude, homemade firearms
1:09
Speaker 1: that are manufactured by people who are not professionals. And
1:13
Speaker 1: what happened is that, over the course of a decade,
1:15
Speaker 1: five different people got mailed packages containing hollow books like cookbooks,
1:20
Speaker 1: and it was booby trapped so that whenever they opened them,
1:23
Speaker 1: a small little pistol would go off and fire bullets
1:26
Speaker 1: towards them. One victim got killed during the nineteen eighties,
1:29
Speaker 1: and it was quiet for another decade, but then four
1:32
Speaker 1: more people over the course of three years would get
1:34
Speaker 1: mail packages containing zip gun bombs, and thankfully, even though
1:38
Speaker 1: bullets were fired, none of these victims were killed. But
1:41
Speaker 1: the whole thing was so bizarre because investigators looked really
1:44
Speaker 1: hard could not find a connection between all these victims.
1:48
Speaker 1: It just appeared that they were picked at random. And
1:50
Speaker 1: to this day, the perpetrator has never been identified and
1:53
Speaker 1: no one can figure out what their motive was.
1:56
Speaker 2: That's wild. There's something about this case. Maybe it's the
2:01
Speaker 2: indiscriminate nature of it and the fact that the perpetrator
2:05
Speaker 2: was never caught that reminds me of the Thailand all murders.
2:09
Speaker 2: But there's also something about it that chain letters and
2:13
Speaker 2: like urban legends are made of, right, or I guess
2:17
Speaker 2: the urban legend of chain letters are made of. It's
2:20
Speaker 2: a really compelling idea that somebody would target these people
2:26
Speaker 2: seemingly at random. You have to wonder if there is
2:29
Speaker 2: a victim that is buried within all of these victims
2:33
Speaker 2: that they're trying to hide their connection to, and perhaps
2:36
Speaker 2: it's just a hidden variable, and investigators have never found
2:39
Speaker 2: that connection.
2:41
Speaker 1: Yes, and we're definitely going to be making a lot
2:43
Speaker 1: of comparisons to the Thailand all murders, and if any
2:46
Speaker 1: of you are not familiar with it, that involved a
2:48
Speaker 1: still unidentified offender who would go and put poisoned tail
2:52
Speaker 1: in all capsules in bottles on the shelf, and then
2:56
Speaker 1: random people would purchase them, take them and then wound
2:58
Speaker 1: up being poisoned. And in that particular case, it just
3:01
Speaker 1: felt like someone who wanted to cause chaos, because there's
3:04
Speaker 1: no way they could have known ahead of time which
3:06
Speaker 1: people would take this poison tile and all and die.
3:09
Speaker 1: But here they had to go to the trouble of
3:11
Speaker 1: selecting someone's name, finding their address, and booby trapping a
3:14
Speaker 1: book to mail to them and hoping that they would
3:17
Speaker 1: open it and be shot and killed. But we still
3:19
Speaker 1: have no idea why he selected these particular victims, and
3:24
Speaker 1: why one of these incidents took place in the eighties
3:27
Speaker 1: and all the rest took place in the nineties. Were
3:29
Speaker 1: they all done by the same person or was it
3:31
Speaker 1: a copycat someone who heard about the original murder from
3:34
Speaker 1: the eighties and then just decided to try it themselves.
3:38
Speaker 2: This is so interesting and it makes you wonder if
3:41
Speaker 2: the original victim was the intended victim, and then the
3:46
Speaker 2: killer was sated and they didn't feel the need to
3:50
Speaker 2: continue killing, and perhaps there was a triggering moment in
3:54
Speaker 2: their life, something stressful happened, a move, maybe the end
3:58
Speaker 2: of a relationship, something to that effect, and it caused
4:01
Speaker 2: them to ramp up again and continue on with what
4:05
Speaker 2: they started. Or perhaps, like you said, it was a copycat.
4:10
Speaker 2: But there's something about this that is so similar to
4:13
Speaker 2: the Thailand Ald murders because it does seem indiscriminate, but
4:16
Speaker 2: it does appear to be calculated in a way that
4:20
Speaker 2: the tailand all murders were so chaotic. You don't know
4:23
Speaker 2: who is going to pick up that bottle of tailanol
4:25
Speaker 2: and purchase it, and so what the end result will
4:28
Speaker 2: be will likely be murder or mayhem, but you don't
4:32
Speaker 2: know who will be the victim, whereas this is very specific.
4:36
Speaker 2: You're targeting specific individuals. And I really wonder how the
4:40
Speaker 2: killer came upon these people to be victims. Did they
4:43
Speaker 2: just meet them in a coffee shop, maybe they were
4:45
Speaker 2: rude to them, They looked up their information in it
4:49
Speaker 2: was the eighties, so I guess a phone book and
4:52
Speaker 2: then decided to send something to their address, or did
4:54
Speaker 2: you just pick these people at random?
4:58
Speaker 1: That could be it. I mean, like you said, this
5:00
Speaker 1: was the pre internet age, so it'd be very difficult
5:03
Speaker 1: to look up someone's name if they did something like
5:05
Speaker 1: was room to you in the coffee shop. But if
5:08
Speaker 1: you're driven enough and you just want to hurt somebody
5:11
Speaker 1: so badly, then there are ways to pull this off.
5:14
Speaker 1: So the first crime took place in Brooklyn in nineteen
5:17
Speaker 1: eighty two. All these crimes we're going to talk about
5:19
Speaker 1: took place in New York City. The first victim seemed
5:22
Speaker 1: like an unlikely target. Her name was Joan Kip. She
5:25
Speaker 1: was a fifty four year old guidance counselor supervisor for
5:28
Speaker 1: the Board of Education in school District number twenty, and
5:32
Speaker 1: she lived a normal life in the Bay Ridge neighborhood
5:34
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn with her fifty seven year old husband, Howard Kip,
5:38
Speaker 1: and the couple also had two adult children who had
5:40
Speaker 1: since moved out, a twenty seven year old son named
5:43
Speaker 1: Craig and a thirty one year old daughter named Doreen.
5:46
Speaker 1: Joan finished off work on the afternoon Friday, May the seventh,
5:49
Speaker 1: and because the following weekend was Mother's Day. She was
5:53
Speaker 1: planning to leave on a weekend outing with her husband
5:55
Speaker 1: in order to spend the Mother's Day at the family
5:58
Speaker 1: summer home in Connecticut. So when she got home, her husband, Howard,
6:02
Speaker 1: had not arrived yet, but Joan came across a package
6:05
Speaker 1: which was addressed to her and it had been delivered
6:07
Speaker 1: earlier that day and was postmarked from Staten Island. And
6:11
Speaker 1: when Joan opened the package, she discovered a series gourmet
6:14
Speaker 1: cookbook inside and just assumed it was a Mother's Day
6:17
Speaker 1: gift from someone. But when she opened the book, she
6:19
Speaker 1: was taken by complete surprise when a series of bullets
6:22
Speaker 1: were fired off at her and two of them wound
6:25
Speaker 1: up striking the left side of her chest. Afterwards, they
6:28
Speaker 1: looked into this whole package and they found out that
6:31
Speaker 1: the cookbook was hollowed out and had been rigged as
6:34
Speaker 1: a booby trap with a crewde homemade zip gun which
6:37
Speaker 1: was assembled with a pair of six volt D batteries,
6:41
Speaker 1: a metal plate with copper wiring from a brake line,
6:44
Speaker 1: green stainless steel tubes, and a screw from a ballpoint
6:48
Speaker 1: pan spring which was used as a trigger mechanism, and
6:52
Speaker 1: three twenty two caliber cartridges were inside the steel tubes
6:55
Speaker 1: and their bases had all been removed to expose the gunpowder.
6:59
Speaker 1: The firing pins at all have been removed, and the
7:01
Speaker 1: filament of a light bulb was stuck into the gunpowder
7:04
Speaker 1: and connected to the wires from the battery, and the
7:07
Speaker 1: device was rigged to go off when the book was opened,
7:09
Speaker 1: causing the wires to spark the gunpowder and discharge the
7:12
Speaker 1: three bullets in three different directions, and unfortunately two of
7:16
Speaker 1: them wound up striking Joan.
7:18
Speaker 2: This sounds pretty complex, and given that this was the
7:22
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties, the individual that made this wouldn't have access
7:26
Speaker 2: to the Internet or any of the dark web forums
7:30
Speaker 2: that would give you the know how to build a
7:32
Speaker 2: zip gun. But in this case, it would lend itself
7:36
Speaker 2: to the idea that this individual either had some kind
7:41
Speaker 2: of sophisticated knowledge about engineering or maybe potentially about firearms,
7:47
Speaker 2: or I'm not sure, maybe they would have to have
7:49
Speaker 2: knowledge about both, because this sounds as the way that
7:53
Speaker 2: you've described it as it was pretty intricate.
7:56
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah, like this is pretty much the only
7:59
Speaker 1: documented case I know of where someone has sent a
8:01
Speaker 1: package through the mail that has been rigged in this
8:04
Speaker 1: specific fashion, and that's why this case stands out. I
8:08
Speaker 1: don't know if any other zip gun bombers or any
8:10
Speaker 1: other copycats who have rigged a device in this fashion.
8:13
Speaker 1: And you're right, this is the pre internet world, so
8:15
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have been that easy to dig up this
8:17
Speaker 1: information about how to assemble something like this, which is
8:20
Speaker 1: why it's easy to assume that this was someone with
8:23
Speaker 1: a lot of mechanical knowledge, who had a lot of
8:25
Speaker 1: experience with firearms and knew the proper way to rig
8:28
Speaker 1: up a booby trap.
8:30
Speaker 2: This is truly the stuff of nightmares. I can't imagine
8:34
Speaker 2: what Joan must have experienced. She opens up this cookbook,
8:38
Speaker 2: she thinks it's an early mother's ey gift from her children.
8:41
Speaker 2: What a sweet gesture, and then she opens it, opens
8:45
Speaker 2: up the cover, the zip gun gives two shots to
8:49
Speaker 2: Joan's chest. She must have been so terrified and just
8:55
Speaker 2: questioning who could do this? I mean, who knows what
8:59
Speaker 2: goes through one's mind at that time, but to be
9:02
Speaker 2: shot twice and to be all alone at home, it
9:06
Speaker 2: would be so terrifying.
9:08
Speaker 1: And unfortunately she did not survive. She did live long
9:12
Speaker 1: enough that she managed to the phone and called for
9:13
Speaker 1: medical assistance, and almost immediately thereafter, her husband, Howard, finally
9:18
Speaker 1: came home and actually said that he heard the loud
9:21
Speaker 1: noise of the guns firing while he was outside the
9:23
Speaker 1: door and then ran inside. So Joan was still conscious
9:26
Speaker 1: at this point and he heard her say quote there
9:29
Speaker 1: may be others And while waiting for the ambulance to arrive,
9:32
Speaker 1: Joan also told her husband to contact the school district's
9:35
Speaker 1: superintendent so that she could warnant all the other educators
9:39
Speaker 1: and school employees in the area about what happened. And
9:42
Speaker 1: there's been some question about this. Did Joan have some
9:44
Speaker 1: suspicions about who may have done this? Did she think
9:46
Speaker 1: there was a specific individual who might be targeting guidance
9:50
Speaker 1: counselors or educators in the area. But unfortunately she didn't
9:53
Speaker 1: get an opportunity to be questioned because after she was
9:56
Speaker 1: rushed to the hospital, she passed away three and a
9:59
Speaker 1: half hours later.
10:00
Speaker 2: That is such a curious statement to be made by
10:04
Speaker 2: Joan in that moment where she's thinking who could have
10:08
Speaker 2: done this? The first thing that comes to her mind,
10:10
Speaker 2: it seems, is that there could be an individual or
10:13
Speaker 2: group of individuals that could be targeting educators, And it
10:18
Speaker 2: makes me wonder if she'd received some type of threat
10:21
Speaker 2: in the past from somebody, or maybe it was recent
10:26
Speaker 2: and she just hadn't shared her concerns because she just
10:28
Speaker 2: brushed it off, and that's why she automatically jumped to
10:32
Speaker 2: thinking that it was educators that could be under threat.
10:36
Speaker 2: Did you think that, Joan, meant that there could potentially
10:39
Speaker 2: be more victims out there, like there could have been
10:42
Speaker 2: victims in the past, or there could be future potential victims.
10:46
Speaker 2: Is that how you took it?
10:48
Speaker 1: I kind of did. Yeah. I mean, they did not
10:50
Speaker 1: have any more packages that were mailed out, no other
10:52
Speaker 1: educators in the area were targeted. But just the fact
10:55
Speaker 1: that she's probably in complete shock and she still has
10:58
Speaker 1: the wherewithal to say this to her husband and while
11:00
Speaker 1: she's waiting for the ambulance to arrive, does give me
11:03
Speaker 1: the impression that she might have had suspicions about somebody
11:07
Speaker 1: and maybe thought that there was a plot a foot
11:09
Speaker 1: to target educators. But like I said, unfortunately she passed
11:13
Speaker 1: away before she could be questioned. But I know that's
11:16
Speaker 1: always going to haunt her family, because obviously, if you
11:19
Speaker 1: find a cookbook in a package, that sent you that's
11:21
Speaker 1: rigged a fire off a gun, something that's completely unprecedent.
11:24
Speaker 1: At that point, you're not immediately going to be thinking
11:26
Speaker 1: who did this to me because it is such a
11:28
Speaker 1: specific thing. So did she know someone who actually had
11:32
Speaker 1: knowledge of building booby traps with guns? And that popped
11:35
Speaker 1: into her head, but she just never got the opportunity
11:37
Speaker 1: to say this person's name.
11:40
Speaker 2: That is a terrifying thought. Given what Jona had experienced,
11:44
Speaker 2: you'd think in that moment that she would be in
11:46
Speaker 2: a state of shock, and maybe the coming up with
11:50
Speaker 2: the fact that it could be somebody who is targeting
11:53
Speaker 2: educators could be a result of shock. But I don't
11:56
Speaker 2: want to write off what her gut feeling was or
11:59
Speaker 2: what the thing that came to her mind was. And
12:02
Speaker 2: it's just it's really hard not to think that Joan
12:06
Speaker 2: knew something, or that she knew more. And it's just
12:09
Speaker 2: so unfortunate that she passed away for a multitude of reasons,
12:13
Speaker 2: but one of them being maybe she had a lead
12:17
Speaker 2: as to who the killer was.
12:19
Speaker 1: And what's also interesting is that they would find a
12:22
Speaker 1: hastily scribbled note on the inside cover of the cookbook,
12:25
Speaker 1: though it's unclear if Joan had the opportunity to read
12:28
Speaker 1: it before she was shot. But even though the package
12:31
Speaker 1: was specifically addressed to Joan, the message was addressed to
12:34
Speaker 1: Howard and it said, quote Howard, You're dead first Joan,
12:38
Speaker 1: then Craig and Doreen end quote, and the name Joan
12:42
Speaker 1: was specifically crossed out. So this gave off the impression
12:45
Speaker 1: that someone had a personal grudge against Howard and was
12:48
Speaker 1: going to wipe out his family one by one. But
12:51
Speaker 1: Craig and Doreen and Howard never received any more packages,
12:54
Speaker 1: and Howard always maintains that he has no idea who
12:57
Speaker 1: would have wanted to do that, to send a booby
12:59
Speaker 1: travel book and have such a personal grudge that they
13:02
Speaker 1: would want to murder his entire family.
13:05
Speaker 2: I truly feel for Howard and the whole family here.
13:09
Speaker 2: I can't imagine how scared he must have been. But
13:13
Speaker 2: this note makes me wonder a couple of things. Was
13:17
Speaker 2: Howard the primary target or is this a red herring?
13:21
Speaker 2: Are we trying to point away from Howard. If it
13:24
Speaker 2: was Joan and there was a connection to Joan, it
13:27
Speaker 2: might be advantageous for the killer to try to make
13:30
Speaker 2: it look like Howard was the primary target and everybody
13:34
Speaker 2: else was just collateral damage. But it's also giving a
13:38
Speaker 2: Long Island serial killer vibe rex Huerman in the way
13:42
Speaker 2: that he tortured the family members of the victims after
13:46
Speaker 2: they were deceased. He did so with Shannon Gilbert's sister,
13:50
Speaker 2: and I think he might have called other family members
13:53
Speaker 2: of other victims as well. I'm not one hundred percent sure,
13:57
Speaker 2: but there's just something so nefarious about that. A killer
14:02
Speaker 2: that seems to get off on knowing that you're piling
14:06
Speaker 2: on grief and trauma on top of the grief and
14:09
Speaker 2: trauma that you've already caused.
14:11
Speaker 1: That would make sense that maybe this person had no
14:14
Speaker 1: intention of ever killing Howard or his children, but just
14:17
Speaker 1: the idea that they would have to live in constant fear,
14:20
Speaker 1: thinking that anytime they receive a package it's going to
14:22
Speaker 1: be booby trapped. That could have been something that added
14:25
Speaker 1: to the enjoyment for the perpetrator. And I don't know
14:28
Speaker 1: if the perpetrator intended for this to happen, but it
14:31
Speaker 1: also kind of made the police suspicious of Howard, wondering
14:35
Speaker 1: if he orchestrated the whole thing and wrote the note
14:38
Speaker 1: to make it look like he was being targeted because
14:40
Speaker 1: they thought it was a bit convenient at first that
14:42
Speaker 1: he just happened to arrive at home at the moment
14:45
Speaker 1: that the gun went off so that he could discover
14:47
Speaker 1: his wife's body. They think maybe he orchestrated this in
14:50
Speaker 1: order to fabricate an alibi for himself. They never found
14:54
Speaker 1: any evidence against him, and as far as anyone can tell,
14:56
Speaker 1: there were no problems in their marriage, no motive he
14:59
Speaker 1: would have had to murder his wife. Howard was described
15:03
Speaker 1: as being very cooperative with investigators, but he began to
15:05
Speaker 1: lose his temper, and his breaking point is when they
15:09
Speaker 1: decided that they were going to take his daughter, Doreen
15:12
Speaker 1: in for questioning on the same day as Joan's funeral,
15:16
Speaker 1: As they literally showed up in the cemetery to pick
15:18
Speaker 1: her up and bring her to the station for questioning
15:21
Speaker 1: right after the funeral ended, and that really rubbed power
15:24
Speaker 1: the wrong way.
15:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, the way that the family retreated, especially to children,
15:29
Speaker 2: and the timing of all this is yucky, But given
15:32
Speaker 2: the time period, I don't think the way that law
15:36
Speaker 2: enforcement was trained to deal with the children of murder
15:39
Speaker 2: victims or families in general, is what it is today.
15:43
Speaker 2: So when we're looking through the lens of twenty twenty five,
15:46
Speaker 2: we're going to look back at the eighties and be
15:49
Speaker 2: absolutely shocked at the insensitivity. And I know law enforcement
15:53
Speaker 2: has come a long way since then, there's obviously still
15:57
Speaker 2: room for improvement, and it varies so much between different
16:01
Speaker 2: police departments or sheriff's departments. But I can kind of
16:05
Speaker 2: understand what investigators were working with here in that Statistically speaking,
16:11
Speaker 2: we all know that if someone is murdered, they're likely
16:14
Speaker 2: murdered by somebody close to them, So it would make
16:17
Speaker 2: sense that they would zero in on Howard early on,
16:20
Speaker 2: especially in the absence of other leads. But I really
16:25
Speaker 2: can't help but wonder with this killer. My gut keeps
16:29
Speaker 2: telling me that there has to be one genuine victim.
16:33
Speaker 2: Was this just subterfuge with pointing to Howard? And was
16:37
Speaker 2: Joan really the victim? I mean, obviously Joan was the victim,
16:41
Speaker 2: But when I say victim, I mean the one target
16:45
Speaker 2: of the killer. Amidst all the victims and then these
16:48
Speaker 2: other people later on are just kind of buried, and
16:52
Speaker 2: that it was like, let's just have a whole bunch
16:56
Speaker 2: of victims. They're not going to be able to connect me,
16:58
Speaker 2: especially if I go look over there and over there
17:02
Speaker 2: is Howard rather than looking at Joan, and then law
17:05
Speaker 2: enforcement focuses on Howard. And another possibility is that the
17:10
Speaker 2: whole family. Howard joaned the kids. They weren't the targets
17:15
Speaker 2: at all, and he didn't have a grudge against the family.
17:19
Speaker 2: There's just so many possibilities here because we don't have
17:22
Speaker 2: the answers and these cases are still unsolved.
17:26
Speaker 1: That is a possibility that maybe there wasn't a grudge
17:29
Speaker 1: against anyone at the family, but this family was selected
17:32
Speaker 1: at random. The perpetrator did his research to find out
17:35
Speaker 1: who the children were, and just felt that I'm going
17:38
Speaker 1: to kill one of the victims and I'm going to
17:39
Speaker 1: torment the rest by making them think that I'm going
17:42
Speaker 1: to come back and harm the others. And also I
17:45
Speaker 1: don't know if this was planned, But now Howard and
17:48
Speaker 1: his family have come under suspicion and the police are
17:50
Speaker 1: extensively interrogating them thinking that they're involved, and that's only
17:54
Speaker 1: going to add to their trauma. Well, this exact thing
17:58
Speaker 1: what happened to the Sun Craig, because he lived fairly
18:02
Speaker 1: close in New York with his own wife just down
18:04
Speaker 1: the street, and they started wondering if he orchestrated the
18:07
Speaker 1: whole thing, because it turned out that Howard owned a
18:10
Speaker 1: marine engineering business and Craig had been one of his employees,
18:14
Speaker 1: but he apparently had difficulty adjusting to the work there,
18:17
Speaker 1: and they ultimately made the mutual decision that the job
18:20
Speaker 1: just wasn't for him, and Craig decided to move on.
18:24
Speaker 1: So investigators started wondering if this could have given Craig
18:27
Speaker 1: a potential motive for the crime, that he wanted to
18:30
Speaker 1: get revenge on his father for causing him to lose
18:33
Speaker 1: his job by orchestrating this elaborate scheme to kill his
18:37
Speaker 1: mother in order to frame his father and cause him
18:40
Speaker 1: a lot of trauma. But Howard did not believe this
18:42
Speaker 1: for a second, maintaining that it was Craig who ultimately
18:45
Speaker 1: made the decision to quit the job and that he
18:47
Speaker 1: was not actually fired, and that it was pretty much mutual.
18:51
Speaker 1: And he also said Craig is very devoted to his mother,
18:54
Speaker 1: He had no hatred animasi, and even if he was
18:57
Speaker 1: angry at me, I don't think he would murder his
18:59
Speaker 1: own mother just to get back at me. But one
19:02
Speaker 1: of the reasons that the police were suspicious to Craig
19:05
Speaker 1: is that one of the traits of the business is
19:07
Speaker 1: that they would install electrical lines into the boiler rooms
19:11
Speaker 1: of ships, and investigators wondered if this might have given
19:14
Speaker 1: Craig the necessary knowledge to assemble this booby trap device
19:18
Speaker 1: which killed his mother. But Howard thought that was ridiculous,
19:21
Speaker 1: because he said, one of the reasons we decided that
19:23
Speaker 1: the job wasn't working out is because Craig just did
19:26
Speaker 1: not adapt well to it. He did not have a
19:28
Speaker 1: good time handling the technical side of it. It wasn't
19:31
Speaker 1: really his thing. He wasn't a barely master of physics,
19:34
Speaker 1: so they really thought that he would not even even
19:37
Speaker 1: have the mechanical wherewithal to assemble a booby trap like
19:40
Speaker 1: this successfully, let alone him not having a real motive
19:43
Speaker 1: to kill his own mother.
19:46
Speaker 2: So this is really interesting. But I always find the
19:49
Speaker 2: testimony of parents on whether their child could or couldn't
19:53
Speaker 2: have committed a crime not to be the most compelling.
19:58
Speaker 2: I know that they know them very well, but parents
20:00
Speaker 2: always want to see the best in their child, And
20:04
Speaker 2: I don't know if Craig was a master of physics
20:07
Speaker 2: like you said, or how much engineering know how would
20:10
Speaker 2: have been available, but that my son isn't smart enough
20:13
Speaker 2: to do this type of a defense. It doesn't really
20:16
Speaker 2: land he worked there. I feel like he could have
20:20
Speaker 2: had some knowledge. I'm not saying he did it, but
20:22
Speaker 2: I'm just saying that Howard saying that he didn't do
20:25
Speaker 2: it is giving me kind of Christopher Porko's mom kind
20:30
Speaker 2: of a vibe where he attacked his mother and father
20:34
Speaker 2: with an axe and the mother ended up surviving. She
20:38
Speaker 2: was horribly disfigured. I believe she lost them of her
20:41
Speaker 2: vision from the attack, but she said that she didn't
20:44
Speaker 2: remember anything. She denied that Christopher had anything to do
20:47
Speaker 2: with it. And so I think that a parent's love
20:50
Speaker 2: for their child can supersede almost anything. They can believe
20:55
Speaker 2: almost anything about their child, or I think convinced themselves
20:59
Speaker 2: of a certain narrative. And I'm not saying at all
21:02
Speaker 2: that's what's happening here, just that we don't know for
21:06
Speaker 2: sure whether or not Craig would be capable.
21:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do remember the Christopher Porco case, how his
21:13
Speaker 1: mother was literally disfigured with an axe, and even though
21:16
Speaker 1: her face was all messed up, she was still defending
21:18
Speaker 1: her son and saying, I have no memory of what happened,
21:21
Speaker 1: so I can't say that he's the man who a
21:23
Speaker 1: guy who attacked me. But I know he's not capable
21:25
Speaker 1: of this, even though the evidence against him was overwhelming.
21:28
Speaker 1: But yeah, you're right, children do have blind spots towards
21:31
Speaker 1: their kids. But this is one where I don't really
21:34
Speaker 1: see much in the way of evidence against Craig. It's
21:36
Speaker 1: almost like the police had no other angles to go on,
21:39
Speaker 1: no other leads, so they just started focusing on the family.
21:42
Speaker 1: But once you learn the circumstances of how Craig got arrested,
21:46
Speaker 1: you're kind of going to roll your eyes. I think
21:48
Speaker 1: it would be in August of that year, three months
21:50
Speaker 1: before the incident, when the New York Police Department and
21:54
Speaker 1: the United States Postal Inspection Service had done a three
21:57
Speaker 1: month investigation and Craig was finally arrested on the federal
22:01
Speaker 1: charge of quote unquote mailing injurious articles, which is a
22:04
Speaker 1: crime which carried a penalty of life imprisonment if it
22:08
Speaker 1: led to someone being killed. But the evidence against him
22:11
Speaker 1: was pretty weak. It might have seen impressive at the time,
22:14
Speaker 1: but nowadays we note that this has led to a
22:16
Speaker 1: number of wrongful convictions. A handwriting analyst concluded that the
22:20
Speaker 1: writing on the threatening note inside the cookbook was similar
22:23
Speaker 1: to Craig's handwriting, and the other piece of evidence was
22:26
Speaker 1: that a police sniffer dog took Craig's scent after sniffing
22:29
Speaker 1: one of his socks and subsequently detected the same scent
22:32
Speaker 1: on the internal mechanism of the zip gun. I mean,
22:36
Speaker 1: if there was additional corroborating evidence, then this might seem
22:39
Speaker 1: like a strong case. But now we know, after forty
22:42
Speaker 1: years of perspective, that handwriting analysts and sniffer dogs are
22:46
Speaker 1: not exactly the most reliable evidence.
22:49
Speaker 2: No, you're absolutely correct. I think given the time period,
22:54
Speaker 2: we put a lot of faith into these types of pseudoscience,
22:58
Speaker 2: whether it be bitemark evidence, is blood spatter evidence, sniffer
23:02
Speaker 2: dog evidence. It was kind of the era of forensic files,
23:06
Speaker 2: and with the rise of DNA, we saw the rise
23:09
Speaker 2: of things like handwriting analysis. And one of the scariest
23:14
Speaker 2: things is that, I think, as a public who weren't
23:17
Speaker 2: as educated on true crime and the science behind it
23:20
Speaker 2: as we are today, we just assumed that guilt was
23:23
Speaker 2: a foregone conclusion. When we saw this evidence show up
23:26
Speaker 2: or one of these experts testify at a trial. And
23:29
Speaker 2: that's not to say that all bitemark evidence, sniffer dog evidence,
23:33
Speaker 2: handwriting analysis, anything that you can kind of put into
23:36
Speaker 2: that bin is wrong all of the time. I think
23:39
Speaker 2: it really depends upon who is the one who is
23:42
Speaker 2: analyzing and interpreting. But when we have a human being
23:46
Speaker 2: analyzing and interpreting, there's room for error, and especially when
23:51
Speaker 2: we don't have standardized practices across different states, like I
23:54
Speaker 2: know we don't with sniffer dogs. I'm sure that there
23:57
Speaker 2: isn't with things like handwriting in analysis. I think there's
24:00
Speaker 2: different schools of thought, so it leaves a lot of
24:04
Speaker 2: room for error. The difference with DNA, which is considered
24:07
Speaker 2: a hard science is it's pretty objectively obvious. It either
24:11
Speaker 2: is or it isn't. There isn't room for interpretation in
24:15
Speaker 2: the same type of a way.
24:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much. And this was before DNA testing, And
24:20
Speaker 1: now that you mention that, I don't know if any
24:22
Speaker 1: DNA testing has ever been done on the box or
24:24
Speaker 1: any of the evidence from this case. I'd be interested
24:27
Speaker 1: to see if investigators could revisit it to see if
24:29
Speaker 1: they could get any DNA off it today, but obviously
24:33
Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty two they wouldn't be thinking of that.
24:36
Speaker 1: But following his arrest, Craig was immediately released on a
24:39
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars bail, which was put up by
24:41
Speaker 1: his father, who continued to maintain that his son had
24:44
Speaker 1: nothing to do with his mother's murder. But he would
24:48
Speaker 1: be out for nearly a year, but in June of
24:50
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three, the charges against him were finally dropped,
24:54
Speaker 1: and a surprise, surprise, it turned out that the credibility
24:57
Speaker 1: of the sniffer dogs handler have been called into question,
25:00
Speaker 1: and they also did some subsequent analysis from other handwriting
25:03
Speaker 1: experts and they couldn't say with absolute certainty that Craig's
25:07
Speaker 1: handwriting and the note from the cookbook where a definitive match.
25:11
Speaker 1: So the police continue to maintain that, yes, we believe
25:13
Speaker 1: Craig is guilty, but we did not feel that the
25:15
Speaker 1: evidence was sufficient enough to bring him to trial and
25:18
Speaker 1: secure a conviction. So that's why they decided to drop
25:21
Speaker 1: the charges. But they did say that they had not
25:25
Speaker 1: cleared out Craig as a suspect, but he subsequently moved
25:28
Speaker 1: to Connecticut. Howard also got remarried and moved out of
25:31
Speaker 1: the state as well, and the case pretty much faded
25:34
Speaker 1: from the spotlight, and the police pretty much had the
25:36
Speaker 1: mentality that, yes, we think Craig did this, but without
25:39
Speaker 1: any additional evidence, there's nothing else we can do.
25:43
Speaker 2: I guess they just didn't have any other good suspects
25:46
Speaker 2: and this was the first crime. This was the first murder.
25:50
Speaker 2: I don't know what ends up happening until you share
25:52
Speaker 2: those details, but investigators are looking at it, and it's
25:56
Speaker 2: pretty easy to look within the family and super east
26:00
Speaker 2: to get tunnel vision. When there's no other good suspects around,
26:04
Speaker 2: then I think investigators will definitely focus on the family.
26:07
Speaker 2: And I think now when investigators are trained, they're likely
26:11
Speaker 2: taught not to do these things, because we're looking back
26:15
Speaker 2: in retrospect at cases from the eighties and earlier than that,
26:19
Speaker 2: and we see these egregious errors, and we have the
26:22
Speaker 2: benefit of having the perspective of time, and so I'm
26:25
Speaker 2: not criticizing police work at the time. They did the
26:29
Speaker 2: best with what they had, but it just didn't always
26:33
Speaker 2: go the way that it should by our current perspective.
26:37
Speaker 2: But I can also see why investigators did focus on Craig.
26:41
Speaker 2: He had some things in his background, and it looked
26:44
Speaker 2: like he might have the engineering know how. And it
26:47
Speaker 2: seems clear that they saw the snufferdog evidence as being
26:51
Speaker 2: really solid evidence given the time period. And like I
26:55
Speaker 2: mentioned before, it's one of those things where it really
26:59
Speaker 2: depends upon the handler, and it depends upon the training
27:02
Speaker 2: of the dog, and so it just isn't enough to
27:07
Speaker 2: have it be the main thing that you're looking at
27:10
Speaker 2: as evidence, and to bring an actual case to trial
27:14
Speaker 2: with sniffer dog evidence. Now from where we're sitting, it
27:19
Speaker 2: just seems so wild to me.
27:21
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly like we've seen countless wrongful conviction cases where
27:25
Speaker 1: people have been sent to prison on stuff like bitemark evidence,
27:28
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis, and sniffer dog evidence, and it seemed pretty
27:32
Speaker 1: solid at the time back in the seventies or eighties,
27:35
Speaker 1: but then years after the fact they do something stronger
27:38
Speaker 1: like DNA profiling and find out that it doesn't match
27:40
Speaker 1: the defendant and he winds up getting his conviction overturned
27:43
Speaker 1: and released from prison. And I have a feeling that
27:46
Speaker 1: if Craig had gone to trial and been convicted on
27:48
Speaker 1: this evidence, it may not have held up in the
27:50
Speaker 1: long run, and he may have had his conviction overturned
27:53
Speaker 1: at a later date. So yeah, I can see why
27:56
Speaker 1: at the time Craig would have seen like the prime
27:58
Speaker 1: suspect in the police eyes. But when you realize that
28:02
Speaker 1: this was the only evidence they had, you realize that
28:04
Speaker 1: they're just asn't much there, and they don't even have
28:06
Speaker 1: a real compelling motive other than the fact that ooh,
28:09
Speaker 1: maybe he wanted to kill his mother as revenge against
28:11
Speaker 1: his father for them making a mutual decision for him
28:14
Speaker 1: to leave his job.
28:16
Speaker 2: So I'm going to go out on a limb here
28:18
Speaker 2: and make an assumption. I'm going to guess given the
28:23
Speaker 2: time period, even though there was limited media, there wasn't
28:26
Speaker 2: the Internet, I would still think that there would be
28:29
Speaker 2: a level of public involvement that would rarely be seen.
28:33
Speaker 2: Just because the nature of the crime is so unique,
28:37
Speaker 2: and because a lot of the elements of the crime
28:39
Speaker 2: are very unique. It would make for front page news,
28:43
Speaker 2: and so I would think that the police would be
28:44
Speaker 2: feeling a large degree of pressure from the public, as
28:49
Speaker 2: would the district attorney, that they would want to have
28:51
Speaker 2: somebody pay for this.
28:53
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, especially since it's a crime where anyone could
28:56
Speaker 1: be harmed, where if other people start receiving packages or
29:00
Speaker 1: going to be a lot of stress there saying if
29:01
Speaker 1: I open something, is there going to be a booby
29:03
Speaker 1: trapped gun that fires at me. And they had that
29:06
Speaker 1: same pressure with the tailand all murders which took place
29:08
Speaker 1: around the same time period where they actually had to
29:11
Speaker 1: recall Thailand all from the shelf everywhere because everyone was
29:15
Speaker 1: paranoid that they would get poisoned if they purchased the
29:18
Speaker 1: wrong pills. So yeah, I'm sure there was immense pressure
29:21
Speaker 1: to solve this, and they thought that Craig seemed like
29:23
Speaker 1: the most logical suspect and felt like we have to
29:26
Speaker 1: get a conviction on it to make this go away.
29:30
Speaker 1: But here's where it gets really weird, because it would
29:32
Speaker 1: be an entire decade later in nineteen ninety three when
29:35
Speaker 1: the zip gun bomber struck again, and this time the
29:39
Speaker 1: victim was a retired sixty eight year old sanitation worker
29:43
Speaker 1: named Anthony Lenza and his sixty seven year old wife,
29:46
Speaker 1: Connie Lenza. On October the fifteenth in nineteen ninety three,
29:50
Speaker 1: they decided to leave the residence in Staten Island in
29:53
Speaker 1: order to go stay at their vacation home in Shehola, Pennsylvania,
29:57
Speaker 1: and a couple days later, the couple's killed and grandchildren
30:00
Speaker 1: decided to pay them a visit, and they had picked
30:03
Speaker 1: up Anthony and Connie's mail from the residence in New
30:06
Speaker 1: York and brought it with them. And one of these
30:09
Speaker 1: pieces of males was a package that Anthony opened and
30:12
Speaker 1: he found a blue velvet coin box with a commemorative
30:15
Speaker 1: medallion inside. But when Anthony opened the box, it turned
30:19
Speaker 1: out to be booby trapped with the homemade zip gun
30:21
Speaker 1: device which went off and fired three bullets, and this
30:24
Speaker 1: time that one of them struck Anthony, Connie, and their
30:27
Speaker 1: eleven year old granddaughter, Liza, and while they were all
30:30
Speaker 1: left with minor injuries, thankfully none of the wounds were
30:32
Speaker 1: fatal and they wound up surviving. But the moment they
30:35
Speaker 1: looked at this device, they realized, Wow, this is exactly
30:38
Speaker 1: the same as the zip gun booby trap that was
30:40
Speaker 1: used to kill Joan Kip eleven years earlier.
30:44
Speaker 2: I guess you could look at it two ways that
30:46
Speaker 2: either they're incredibly lucky that not everybody that received this
30:52
Speaker 2: ended up dying, or you could look at it as
30:54
Speaker 2: they're unlucky that they ended up being the victims of
30:57
Speaker 2: this crime, and in the case of Joan, obviously it
31:02
Speaker 2: ended her life, which is so incredibly unfortunate. But one
31:06
Speaker 2: thing that I'm really curious about is if there was
31:09
Speaker 2: any type of signature in this zip gun slash bomb.
31:13
Speaker 2: I know they're calling it a bomb, but it's not
31:15
Speaker 2: really a bomb. It's just a rigged gun. But was
31:18
Speaker 2: there some kind of signature in the process of making
31:21
Speaker 2: it that would tie it back to the same individual
31:25
Speaker 2: pretty much?
31:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like they said that they were very specific and
31:28
Speaker 1: there were no other documented cases of anyone receiving a
31:32
Speaker 1: zipgun device like this through the mail, so they said
31:35
Speaker 1: they were absolutely certain that this was the same person
31:38
Speaker 1: who had sent these two packages. But of course that
31:41
Speaker 1: really complicated things because by this point Craig Kip had
31:44
Speaker 1: moved on to another state, was living a new life,
31:47
Speaker 1: and I can understand him maybe deciding to send a
31:49
Speaker 1: copycat if he wanted to take suspicion off himself to
31:52
Speaker 1: make it look like there was some other Matt bomber
31:55
Speaker 1: out there sending off these devices to people. But this
31:57
Speaker 1: was eleven years after the fact, and Craig didn't seem
32:01
Speaker 1: to be any danger of being charged with the crime,
32:03
Speaker 1: and he was living in another state, so it makes
32:05
Speaker 1: no sense for him to send off another copycat device
32:07
Speaker 1: to a random person in order to make himself look
32:10
Speaker 1: more innocent. They looked into potential connections between the lens
32:14
Speaker 1: Of family and the Kit family, but they found nothing.
32:17
Speaker 1: It was just two completely random, unrelated victims.
32:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one's going to be able to convince me
32:23
Speaker 2: in this situation that Craig somehow he just lay in
32:28
Speaker 2: wait for what eleven years in order to do this
32:32
Speaker 2: to what prove his innocence, and nobody's putting a finger
32:35
Speaker 2: at him anymore. He's moved on with his life. What
32:38
Speaker 2: would be his motivation in doing this If it was
32:41
Speaker 2: like three years after the fact, I could believe that
32:44
Speaker 2: it would be fresh enough that maybe he would want
32:47
Speaker 2: to misdirect. But I just don't believe that Craig had
32:50
Speaker 2: anything to do with it, and that this eleven year
32:53
Speaker 2: mark would be the time where he would go, oh,
32:55
Speaker 2: let's point the finger at somebody else. It just doesn't
32:58
Speaker 2: add up. So if it isn't Craig, we're left with
33:01
Speaker 2: a few options. Either the killer killed once and Joan
33:07
Speaker 2: was his primary target, and maybe something stressful happened in
33:10
Speaker 2: his life, you know, the end of a relationship, death
33:14
Speaker 2: of a loved one, A moved something to that effect
33:17
Speaker 2: and it caused him to ramp up again. Or perhaps
33:21
Speaker 2: the individual was in a partnership to begin with with
33:24
Speaker 2: somebody else it was done together, or perhaps they taught
33:28
Speaker 2: somebody how to do it along the way, and then
33:31
Speaker 2: that person continued on their legacy. And then there's the
33:34
Speaker 2: final option where it could be a complete copycat, but
33:37
Speaker 2: that seems less likely because of the precision needed to
33:40
Speaker 2: make this type of a weapon, the zip gun bomb,
33:44
Speaker 2: which wouldn't have been readily available in the nineteen eighties.
33:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, exactly, because even though the murder of Joan
33:51
Speaker 1: Kip got extensive media coverage back at eighty two and
33:54
Speaker 1: eighty three, it had been out at the spotlight for
33:57
Speaker 1: a long long time. And it's not like you could
33:59
Speaker 1: just go online and look up other crimes about zip
34:02
Speaker 1: gun bombs. You would have to do extensive research. There
34:06
Speaker 1: are documented cases of people doing like copycat crimes to
34:09
Speaker 1: further their own agenda. I know that in the late
34:12
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties there was a woman named Stella Nicol who
34:15
Speaker 1: decided to kill her husband for the insurance money, and
34:18
Speaker 1: because the Thailand all murders had been in the news
34:21
Speaker 1: for a while, she decided to do her own copycat
34:24
Speaker 1: where she gave her husband a poisoned tail in all
34:27
Speaker 1: capsule or sorry etcan capsule, and then she decided to
34:31
Speaker 1: put some tainted capsules on the shelf so that another
34:34
Speaker 1: random woman bought it, took the etc. And died of
34:36
Speaker 1: poisoning as well. So the police initially thought that it
34:40
Speaker 1: was the tailand all murderer. It was a copycat, but
34:42
Speaker 1: they didn't realize that. They eventually realized that Stella Nicol
34:46
Speaker 1: just tried to kill an innocent person to create a
34:48
Speaker 1: diversion to cover up the fact that she had murdered
34:51
Speaker 1: her own husband for the insurance money. So I could
34:54
Speaker 1: see someone doing that, but once again, like a copycat,
34:57
Speaker 1: seems unlikely because it's been eleven years, the originals zip
35:01
Speaker 1: gun bombing hasn't been in the news for quite some time,
35:04
Speaker 1: and like you said, it's such a specific device that
35:06
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult for a copycat to do
35:09
Speaker 1: it unless they had the blueprints of the original device.
35:12
Speaker 1: And of course there was nothing about Anthony Lenza or
35:15
Speaker 1: his wife that stuck out. They didn't seem to have
35:18
Speaker 1: any known enemies, So if someone wanted to do a
35:20
Speaker 1: copycat crime, why did they target this harmless, elderly couple.
35:24
Speaker 2: So I always wonder, and not the stereotype, but maybe
35:28
Speaker 2: it's from watching The Sopranos that when I hear retired
35:31
Speaker 2: sanitation worker in the context of a murder, not a
35:36
Speaker 2: murder specifically in this case, but a murder in a
35:39
Speaker 2: general sense of the pattern, and we tie it back
35:41
Speaker 2: to Joan Kiff's murder, it makes me wonder if there's
35:45
Speaker 2: any mob connection.
35:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I wondered that myself. Hmm, was this just
35:49
Speaker 1: a cover? Did Anthony Lenza have some enemies in his
35:53
Speaker 1: background he wanted to do this? But I don't think
35:55
Speaker 1: the mob would have the wherewithal to send a booby
35:58
Speaker 1: trap package containing a zip gun.
36:01
Speaker 2: I don't really think bringing a zip gun device and
36:04
Speaker 2: sending it to an individual is the mo of the mob.
36:07
Speaker 2: If they're going to send a message, it seems to
36:09
Speaker 2: be to a particular person and not to the public
36:13
Speaker 2: at large, which this very much did, which would bring
36:17
Speaker 2: heat to the mob. So it just doesn't really strike
36:20
Speaker 2: me as mob related.
36:22
Speaker 1: No, definitely not so. The next incident took place several
36:26
Speaker 1: months later, on April fifth, nineteen ninety four, and this
36:29
Speaker 1: time the victim was Alice Caswell, a seventy five year
36:32
Speaker 1: old widow living in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn.
36:36
Speaker 1: She received a package which was postmarked from Brooklyn and
36:39
Speaker 1: also contained a blue velvet coin box with a medallion
36:43
Speaker 1: out of it, and once again the box was booby
36:45
Speaker 1: trapped with the homemade zipgun device, and when Alice opened it,
36:49
Speaker 1: the device fired off some more bullets and she was
36:52
Speaker 1: struck in the abdomen and left critically injured, but she
36:55
Speaker 1: was able to make it to a neighbors in order
36:56
Speaker 1: to summon medical attention, and she wound up getting help
37:00
Speaker 1: and surviving the ordeal. But the weird thing about this
37:03
Speaker 1: crime is that the package had actually been addressed to
37:05
Speaker 1: Alice's sixty one year old brother, Richard McGarrell, who was
37:09
Speaker 1: a retired US Customs agent who worked at Newark Airport.
37:13
Speaker 1: But while Richard had previously lived at the same address
37:16
Speaker 1: with Alice, he had actually moved out fifteen years earlier
37:19
Speaker 1: and was now living in a retirement home. And once
37:22
Speaker 1: again they couldn't find anyone in Alice or Richard's background
37:26
Speaker 1: who would have had a motive to do something like this.
37:29
Speaker 1: They didn't seem to have any known enemies, and the
37:31
Speaker 1: fact that it was addressed to someone who hadn't lived
37:33
Speaker 1: it at that address to fifteen years makes me wonder
37:36
Speaker 1: was this person accessing public records and just got some
37:39
Speaker 1: very outdated information and as a result, they sent a
37:43
Speaker 1: package to someone who no longer resided there.
37:46
Speaker 2: I love that Alice is just going right in and
37:49
Speaker 2: opening up her brother's mail. It makes me like her.
37:52
Speaker 2: I'm not suggesting anybody go and commit felonies, but there's
37:55
Speaker 2: likely something to it. Maybe she has power of attorney
37:58
Speaker 2: because he's sixty one years old in a retirement facility,
38:01
Speaker 2: so that may speak to an illness or some type
38:04
Speaker 2: of cognitive decline, and she is the responsible party who's
38:08
Speaker 2: taking care of his affairs while he's in that facility.
38:12
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but it's just unfortunate for Alice that
38:16
Speaker 2: she opened that up. It was addressed to her brother
38:18
Speaker 2: and this happened, but really fortunate that she ended up
38:21
Speaker 2: escaping with her life.
38:23
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't know any specific details, but I have
38:25
Speaker 1: the feeling that he probably couldn't take care of himself
38:28
Speaker 1: and that she probably would be handling his mail no
38:30
Speaker 1: matter what. So it was shortly after this when they
38:34
Speaker 1: launched a new investigation, which involved the New York City
38:37
Speaker 1: Police Department, the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the
38:40
Speaker 1: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. They put together a
38:44
Speaker 1: task force, and one month after the incident with Alice Caswell,
38:48
Speaker 1: they actually found someone who seemed like a promising suspect.
38:50
Speaker 1: He was a fifty four year old US customs officer
38:54
Speaker 1: named Louis Sapola, and the reason he popped up on
38:57
Speaker 1: the radar is because of an incident where he decided
38:59
Speaker 1: to go to the village of Verplank and throw a
39:02
Speaker 1: hand grenade at a residence belonging to a newspaper publisher
39:06
Speaker 1: that Sepola had once worked for, but thankfully, no one
39:10
Speaker 1: was harmed when the grenade went off. But when they
39:12
Speaker 1: checked Sepola's residence, they turned up a workshop containing bomb
39:15
Speaker 1: making equipment, as well as a number of newspaper clippings
39:18
Speaker 1: about the attack on Alice Caswell. So they started wondering
39:22
Speaker 1: could this guy be the zipgun bomber? Because he also
39:25
Speaker 1: happened to work as a customs officer. Like Richard McGarrell,
39:29
Speaker 1: he had once worked at Newark Airport, though they never
39:31
Speaker 1: found any evidence that Richard and Sepola knew each other.
39:34
Speaker 1: He was convicted of various felonies in relation to the
39:37
Speaker 1: hand grenade incident and received a prison sense of eight
39:40
Speaker 1: and a half to twenty five years, but in the
39:42
Speaker 1: end they never found any evidence to conclusively link them
39:45
Speaker 1: to the zip gun incidents. And the problem is that
39:48
Speaker 1: the zip gun incidents would continue after Sepola was already
39:52
Speaker 1: in prisons, so after that he didn't suddenly didn't seem
39:55
Speaker 1: like such a strong suspect.
39:57
Speaker 2: This is absolutely wild, seems like such a good suspect.
40:02
Speaker 2: Investigators must have been like, Okay, this guy's got all
40:05
Speaker 2: these bomb making materials, he's obviously got the engineering know how,
40:09
Speaker 2: and maybe we can't get him on this crime specifically,
40:12
Speaker 2: but we've got him on something else. And so when
40:15
Speaker 2: he's behind bars, one would expect that these attacks would stop.
40:20
Speaker 2: But when they don't, he must have confounded the investigators, going,
40:25
Speaker 2: who is doing this? We thought that we had our guy.
40:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, And at the outset, I thought that Suppola seemed
40:31
Speaker 1: like a promising suspect. But then I heard about the
40:33
Speaker 1: hand grenade incident and how brazen that was, and I'm
40:36
Speaker 1: thinking that doesn't fit the same moo, because the zipgun
40:40
Speaker 1: bomber is this cold calculated guy, this patient guy, who
40:43
Speaker 1: constructs these intricate devices and then mails them to people.
40:46
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, if he really had a grudge against
40:48
Speaker 1: this newspaper publisher, why didn't he just mail him a
40:51
Speaker 1: zip gun? Like why did he just flat out throw
40:53
Speaker 1: a hand grenade, which is not a subtle thing to do.
40:56
Speaker 1: So it might have just been a red herring, the
40:58
Speaker 1: fact that he had these newspaper clings about the previous
41:01
Speaker 1: zip Coome bombings, because maybe he was just interested in them,
41:04
Speaker 1: And other than the fact that he happened to work
41:06
Speaker 1: as a customs officer at the same airport as Richard McGarrell,
41:10
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything to link them with any of the
41:12
Speaker 1: other victims. So in retrospect, it seems unlikely that he
41:16
Speaker 1: was the person responsible.
41:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right. It's obviously Supola couldn't have
41:22
Speaker 2: done it. It's possible that he was part of a
41:24
Speaker 2: partnership or that taught somebody, or somebody taught him later.
41:29
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of different possibilities that make it, I
41:34
Speaker 2: guess plausible that even though we know that he throws
41:38
Speaker 2: a hand grenade and is chaotic with the way that
41:43
Speaker 2: he behaves and disorganized, it doesn't really speak to the cold, methodical,
41:48
Speaker 2: casually cruel nature of the original zip gun bomber who
41:52
Speaker 2: targeted Joan, because that takes somebody who's going to plan
41:57
Speaker 2: and who's going to design and execute something that hasn't
42:02
Speaker 2: been seen in this context before. So there's somebody that
42:05
Speaker 2: wants to innovate and they want to they want maybe
42:09
Speaker 2: the notoriety, but they're willing to be in the sidelines
42:13
Speaker 2: enough so that they don't reveal too much about themselves.
42:16
Speaker 2: But one interesting thing about these cases is Joan was
42:21
Speaker 2: of I think fifty five. Maybe confirmer deny that if
42:26
Speaker 2: I'm wrong, when she was targeted and these victims, although
42:31
Speaker 2: I think ten years has passed, eleven years has passed,
42:34
Speaker 2: and they've got about eleven years older, just give or
42:38
Speaker 2: take you know, five years. So is it because there's
42:42
Speaker 2: a certain demographic that this individual likes, and so as
42:47
Speaker 2: he ages the demographic ages as well. I just find
42:51
Speaker 2: that if it was completely random. The likelihood of it
42:54
Speaker 2: all being people who are fifty five plus seems unlikely.
42:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is true. We know that, like all the
43:00
Speaker 1: packages in this story were addressed to older people. I mean,
43:03
Speaker 1: the youngest person was Joan Kip, who was fifty four
43:05
Speaker 1: years old. And in our next one we're going to
43:07
Speaker 1: talk about, we're going to have a person who opens
43:10
Speaker 1: the package is only eighteen years old. But it's a
43:12
Speaker 1: package that was addressed to an older person. But you
43:15
Speaker 1: look at all the people whose names are on all
43:17
Speaker 1: these labels, they are older person. So it makes you
43:20
Speaker 1: wonder was it just someone that was their mo They
43:22
Speaker 1: had a grudge against elderly people and then just decided
43:25
Speaker 1: to select them, maybe because they knew that elderly people
43:28
Speaker 1: might be more prone to open up strange packages without
43:31
Speaker 1: the foresight to check and thinking, Hm, why am I
43:33
Speaker 1: getting this package from a person? I don't know. But
43:36
Speaker 1: in all the cases it did work because they did
43:38
Speaker 1: open the gun, open the package and caused the gun
43:41
Speaker 1: to go off. But other than that, they've never been
43:43
Speaker 1: able to find any connections between any of these victims.
43:47
Speaker 1: That about brings an end to part one of our
43:49
Speaker 1: series about the zip gun Bombers, so join us next
43:51
Speaker 1: week for part two.
43:53
Speaker 2: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
43:55
Speaker 2: about the trail like cold Patreon?
43:57
Speaker 1: Yes, the Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
43:59
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
44:03
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
44:06
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
44:09
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
44:12
Speaker 1: tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
44:16
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
44:19
Speaker 1: the Trail went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
44:22
Speaker 1: Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier free,
44:25
Speaker 1: the ten dollar tier. One of the features we offer
44:28
Speaker 1: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries,
44:33
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
44:36
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
44:39
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
44:43
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
44:46
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
44:49
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
44:52
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
44:55
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
44:58
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
45:01
Speaker 1: Tier three.
45:02
Speaker 2: So I want to let you know a little bit
45:03
Speaker 2: about the Jules and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
45:06
Speaker 2: free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
45:09
Speaker 2: Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so
45:12
Speaker 2: they're not very mini, but they're just too short to
45:14
Speaker 2: turn into a series and we're really enjoying doing those.
45:17
Speaker 2: So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
45:20
Speaker 2: them in the show notes.
45:21
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you all for listening, and
45:23
Speaker 1: any chance you have to share us on social media
45:26
Speaker 1: with a friend or to rate and review is greatly appreciated.
45:29
Speaker 1: You can email us at The Pathwentchili at gmail dot com.
45:32
Speaker 1: You can reach us on Twitter at the Pathwin. So
45:35
Speaker 1: until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold
45:38
Speaker 1: trails and Chili pass call for warm clothing.
45:40
Speaker 2: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy