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Season Six: Any Route Out of Florida
159 Plays2 days ago
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction & Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Focus on True Crime News & Updates
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:59
Speaker
Man, there was there's a lot of true crime news, so I can see us having like one of those episodes soon where we just talk about like five or six of the the big updates and and true crime news cases.
00:01:11
Speaker
and Do you follow when they find missing people different places? places I do when you send them to me. like There's been a couple of those recently where there was one little boy that was found. He was a parental abduction.
00:01:24
Speaker
and then there was another big parental abduction. I think it was from 25 years ago. That one, they they found a little girl, I think. Well, she was a little girl. Now she's like in her 30s.
00:01:35
Speaker
So I follow those.
Case Studies & Legal Updates
00:01:37
Speaker
And i saw that South Carolina, i think it was South Carolina, executed somebody by firing squad.
00:01:46
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that happen. And then there was an update in the Glossop case that we covered back. I think that was part of was that part of Home for the Holidays or did we do that separate? had a couple did separately. think was separate, but it might have been. actually don't know. Everything's starting to run together. In fact, I had to do a double take on Glossop because it similar. Did you realize who was? Yeah. Well, it was similar to a different case.
00:02:14
Speaker
Robertson. Sometimes I get cases crossed in my mind that have similar attributes to them. Yeah. right so So they've sent him back for a new trial, right? Correct. which So that was the motel case that we covered where somebody was clearly guilty of the murder and the word lithium had been mentioned in some of the discovery notes and that was considered to be Brady.
00:02:37
Speaker
So they're going to go back. This is the guy that was kind of the manager and and the person who committed the murder was the handyman and it was in a little motel. But that case is going to come back around for a new trial on the manager who, in my opinion,
00:02:52
Speaker
And this is just my opinion. Probably didn't have anything to do with that murder. Well, right. I remember us talking about it and like the story that was told was insane. Really? Yeah. it didn't, it didn't make a lot of sense.
00:03:04
Speaker
It was more like the guy that was guilty was just trying to sort of absolve himself of all the guilt or something. Yeah. And then i woke up this morning and I guess I can't really give a lot of this away, but You and I have worked on these missing persons.
00:03:24
Speaker
I'm going to say couple, but the truth is like some of the stuff we did work-wise was like more twosomes than couples. and Just people that might be related because of the time and location that they go missing.
Podcast Evolution & Season Reflections
00:03:38
Speaker
And I woke up this morning and i had sent in kind of a comprehensive tip on a case that we covered, but it was like, I think it was 2020 when we covered it. And then sent the tip in sometime in 2021 and you and I had done a lot of pretty informed research on it.
00:03:59
Speaker
And had, been talking to family members. And we definitely had some episodes that went on the air about that case. But I woke up and a fugitive task force had emailed True Crime XS and asked, did we still have our notes? And and like do we still have anything on that? And I was like, that's so long ago.
00:04:22
Speaker
But i was like in my head calculating backwards. And I was like, but we weren't doing the podcast. So I probably do have notes somewhere. um That was kind of strange. I think that may be one of the strangest things that's happened.
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. Honestly. I immediately was like, I had to send that one over to you because I was like, that's weird. so And, of course, I called and talked to him. And I did go hunt up, like, what notes I can find and if I can and help there. I will definitely be helpful because that's case – that's a case in an area that I've always had an interest in that I hope will eventually be solved.
00:04:57
Speaker
um And unfortunately, I feel like i I shouldn't say much more than that right now. I just thought it was interesting that they were looking for him. Aren't you amazed at how many things that like we've done over the past?
00:05:09
Speaker
ah This is season six, right? Yep. So aren't you amazed at like how we've gone through the motion of six seasons of like never ending cases and all of a sudden like several things have come up from cases like from like four or five years ago?
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah, you and have been in a position for a while where there have been updates and some of the things that we covered because of the way we covered our very first season. And i do get a little confused tracking them all. Like, so it's easy to track what we covered because you just go back and listen to the episode.
00:05:45
Speaker
But it's not always easy to track, like, what didn't make it on air and, like, to track all of the updates. And that was, like, we've held off on a couple of updates in what I think are some of the bigger cases because,
00:05:58
Speaker
I think it's, I sometimes think it's premature to do that, but I am, I do sit in the background and kind of marvel at the fact that like, we've covered it as many different things as we have.
00:06:09
Speaker
And like, it's been long enough that I can say like something I covered four or five years ago, just as like getting progress. It's not even an update yet. It's just like progress.
00:06:20
Speaker
um That's interesting. It is interesting. and we have had quite a few cases that we've gotten to sort of see them progress. yeah We've had situations where we've been wrong. We've had situations where we've been right.
00:06:35
Speaker
yeah ah We don't change any of our old episodes, obviously. And we're we're pretty straightforward as far as like... yeah we use the information we have at the time we're talking, right?
00:06:47
Speaker
Yeah. It is what it is at that point. That doesn't mean that, you know, there's not some flexibility as things morph. and But we haven't really gone back to too many things um because it's almost like too redundant. It would be too quick to cover something again in the span of, you know, five or six years, right?
Exploring Serial Killer Cases
00:07:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
00:07:09
Speaker
Yeah, it would be. But, at you know, at some point there are some things I'd like to go back and touch on. um But for for this season, a a lot of the cases that i I pulled, which I kind of described in the and the episodes as as we're leading up to it, I'm trying to cover things that aren't covered elsewhere.
00:07:26
Speaker
um And so a lot of what people see this season is these serial killers with the plus symbol that I talk about where if they're on like one of the wikis like the literal Wikipedia or one of the serial killer wikis or murderpedia or whatever.
00:07:40
Speaker
They have a plus symbol next to their name because people don't know like how many they killed but they may have like a number. And then like there's a suspected number and sometimes it's just a big range.
00:07:53
Speaker
Um, and the one that I sent you to for today is a big range. Um, I think these are a little frustrating, but at the same time, they interest me because they have questions attached to them. And I feel like it's important to talk about things that are unresolved because you never know who's going to listen.
00:08:11
Speaker
I've had two different people contact me this week about listening that it it genuinely sort of shocked me that they were listening at all um in terms of like who they are and what they do. Pretty sure nothing's ever going to shock me again. I'm just saying. I mean i may need to move into that mode where I'm just not shocked by anything. No, I got there. There's been several things that have happened. And it's so funny because when it happens...
00:08:38
Speaker
like obviously we're looking back on something, right? And so when it happens, I realized in the moment I said the thing that I said that is now getting attention years later, i realized that it was possible it might get attention years later or I didn't know how long it would take. It could have been immediate.
00:08:56
Speaker
But I, so I also, i i constantly have it in my mind, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, so today's case is one of those kind of cases that I've actually looked at this three separate times for three very different reasons.
00:09:13
Speaker
And, when I look at it, I still don't know what to make of it, like in terms of, of what the reality of the case is.
00:09:24
Speaker
Um, but it is fascinating. And so the first time that I ever looked at it, I was looking at sort of the truck driving killer idea.
00:09:35
Speaker
and it was, this was, this would be prior to, um, the highway serial killer initiative that I looked at this case. Uh, and I kind of wrote it off because this guy was not a truck driver forever or anything like that.
00:09:49
Speaker
In fact, he like actually, um might answer another question that I hear a lot from people, which is, like, why are there no serial killers today?
00:10:00
Speaker
Which is sort of an odd question, but I think when people are asking that, they're like, well, why isn't there Dahmer or a Bundy or a Gacy or a Henley or Gane?
00:10:14
Speaker
Because of doorbell cameras. that's That's probably a lot of the reasons. There's a lot more technology that tracks things now. Yeah, it gets it gets the the serial rapist who would become the specific type of serial killer that people think of when they're asking that question.
00:10:36
Speaker
It gets them at a different point in their career, so to speak. And I would also argue a little bit that structured and
00:10:47
Speaker
mandatory minimum sentencing for certain types of crimes. I gotta tell you, you're not wrong there because I've had some of the most shocking things I've seen with regard to the difference between then being any object time in the past and now is the fact that people used to actually get out of jail. Yeah, people used to get out of jail for things like multiple rapes and sometimes murder.
00:11:16
Speaker
like Exactly. And so now, like, we've we've had a lot of reform. Some of it is really good. Some of it's overkill. I think they're kind of working on fixing that at this point. But, you know, when somebody has committed a violent crime...
00:11:31
Speaker
and it resulted in assaulting our the death of someone, the answer is they're going to be in prison for the rest of their lives most of the time now, right? And that just wasn't always the case.
00:11:43
Speaker
and Yeah, sometimes there'd be pleas for manslaughter and things like that that made it where they could get out and they could potentially do pretty much the same thing again. And sometimes there'd be like they were found guilty, and I don't know what it used to be, but I i know for sure. I've read about stories about perpetrators that committed murder were found guilty of murder, no plea.
00:12:05
Speaker
And then they got out in their 10 years and they committed, you know, murder again. Yeah. yeah And so that is the craziest thing to me, but at least it has been shored up at this point, the reoffending it the reason that you don't have the recidivism of the seventies or whatever is because they don't get the chance to, i would say.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, I would kind of kind of go that way. and the The ones that are like sort of erotomanic serial killers, like they're also rapists earlier in their career.
00:12:41
Speaker
I think those are the ones that get choked the most by structured sentencing and mandatory minimums. like The ones that that kind of come out of nowhere are even more rare, so that's why we don't see them as much. But the people that were like...
00:12:55
Speaker
i I guess I should explain like why I think that. The the people that to a point committed serial rape and burglary and the things related to that and then would be imprisoned for the serial rape and burglary and get out in shorter periods of time and they became aware of the fact that they needed to not leave witnesses. So they wanted to keep committing the
Edward Surratt's Background
00:13:18
Speaker
serial rape and burglary, but then they started to dispose of the witnesses. And like, if they didn't get caught right away, then, you know, they would just keep doing what they were doing and we would find out about them much later. Right.
00:13:32
Speaker
Right. And to that end, now we have DNA. So even if they kill the witness, unless they have somehow, you know, not left their DNA behind, which is virtually impossible at this point, they realize that it does no good.
00:13:45
Speaker
Right. right And one of the interesting things, like you were saying, know, Ted Bundy had never been arrested in his life until he was arrested. And then he was. Um, then he escaped twice and then he was finally caught and put to death.
00:14:00
Speaker
But John Wayne Gacy, he had been arrested, right? Yeah. For, um, some sort of, i guess it was, it was assault on a younger, i can't remember if it was an underage or just a younger, male. I think the charge was a sodomy charge.
00:14:18
Speaker
Right. It was something that it wasn't surprising, ah under the circumstances, Right. right And so, you know, it's sort of hit or miss as far as the big named serial killers go, whether they've been arrested before or not. Yeah. um And, you know, to what extent they could have possibly been stopped. Ted Bundy, clearly, um he was, he was, he had never been caught. And then once he was caught, he just wasn't under enough
00:14:54
Speaker
security because of him getting out and you know that led to a lot of his crimes happened after he had escaped right yeah and they were very violent and bad crimes however you know a lot of security measures went into place i believe because of Ted Bundy escaping like he did.
00:15:18
Speaker
And I'm talking about like nationwide, right? Yeah. Because now ah it seems to me, and I could be wrong, but it seems to me like there's a lot fewer escape attempts and they don't make it very far anymore. Yeah. And one of the things about... um you know, the doorbell cams now, because if you put it in perspective and you think about, like, John Wayne Gacy, for example, one it would just take one of his neighbors having had a doorbell cam, right, to catch the fact that he was constantly bringing, know, young men over to his house and the young men never left.
00:15:58
Speaker
And he would have no control over the fact that, you you know, one of the commercial doorbell suppliers has that footage in the cloud. Right. Yeah.
00:16:10
Speaker
And so he couldn't destroy it. It would be available. and that's actually, it's actually a really interesting concept because they don't even have to get the neighbor's permission. They can literally get a ah subpoena for the ring footage.
00:16:27
Speaker
Right. Particular area. Right. That's interesting. that So when Gacy convinced his first like serious assault, it's like 1967. And Gacy, weirdly, was born around the same time as the guy we're goingnna talk about today. So that would make Gacy 25 old.
00:16:46
Speaker
twenty five years old And when he does that, that's going to be the, I always get his name wrong um if I don't look it up while we're talking about it. But it's the kid with the same last name as the killer from Friday 13th.
00:17:01
Speaker
um Kruger? No, no, no. That's Nightmare on Elm Street. Voorhees. Oh, yeah, Vorky's. Jason Vorky's, well, actually, technically, Jason Vorky's mother is the killer, in case you haven't watched that movie.
00:17:20
Speaker
50 years ago. Spoiler alert. I got my own real crime happening. So so ah Jason Bordes, the kid that Gacy assaulted was a kid named Donald Bordes. He assaults him summer of 67 and he's indicted the next year.
00:17:35
Speaker
He actually would have got away with that because he had a pretty credible story that was a little racy but credible. But the problem was I think he lured the kid to the park and... and like try to intimidate him.
00:17:48
Speaker
And he ends up getting indicted in May of 68. That's all I remember about it. But it's it's another interesting, that's another interesting thing because Gacy would be 25 and that kid was 15 or 16. So that's another interesting element to all of this.
00:18:04
Speaker
um So the guy, so Gacy was born in March of 42. forty two so six months earlier, The guy that we're talking about today, he was born in August of 1941 up in Pennsylvania.
00:18:19
Speaker
His dad was actually very successful. According to like random notions I've seen in Florida court records, this guy was in an abusive environment when he was younger.
00:18:36
Speaker
But it didn't spill over to his like childhood until high school. So he goes to middle school, elementary school. He's like a straight-A kid.
00:18:48
Speaker
He's got a really positive outlook of life. ah When I was going through newspapers.com for him, his pictures were... ah When he's finally apprehended, he's still smiling. He's got this big beard. The people that ah talk about him when he's apprehended say that like he was really likable.
00:19:08
Speaker
And he always seemed like he was about to get up to something like that was going to be positive and he was going to be very successful at it. Somewhere around the ninth grade, though, he got a little disinterested in going to be in school every day.
00:19:24
Speaker
So he starts getting arrested. ah he's born 41. He starts getting arrested in the 1950s. By 1959, he had almost gone to jail a couple of times. He had been arrested for disturbing the peace, but ultimately the judges in that area knew who his dad was. And because his dad had been successful, they would give him fines and community service and send him on his way.
00:19:50
Speaker
But he does get kicked out of school before he graduates because he hadn't been coming to school at all. He's written up in the court records as having poor performance in school. But the truth is, if you miss 75 or 80% of your classes, it's not you have poor performance, it's that you had no performance.
00:20:10
Speaker
So his parents get upset with this, and in 1960, they sort of force him to go back through his senior year to graduate, and he does it. He gets out of school, and he starts getting arrested again.
00:20:23
Speaker
ah a cop accosts him in a circumstance that he describes as being kind of a racial issue, and he punches the cop in the face, and he's arrested for ah disturbing the peace.
00:20:40
Speaker
They upgrade this to a felony assault. And he ends up having to do 14 months at SCI Camp Hill Range up in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.
00:20:53
Speaker
So he gets out after he does 10 months of his sentence. And once he's released, his parents are supporting him. They get him into Youngstown University up in Ohio.
00:21:05
Speaker
So because it's a different state, they move him over there. They set him up. He goes to classes. he He seems like he's going to do okay. But pretty quickly, he gets more interested in and doing his own thing.
00:21:19
Speaker
They don't specify if it's girls or if he's running around or doing drugs. But Youngstown expels him in 1963. He goes back home to live with his parents again. And he he just can't find his way in life. so he's roughly 22 years old at this time. I don't know that all 22-year-old people know what they want to do with their life.
00:21:44
Speaker
I would say most of them don't. Yeah, even if they think they do, like they might not. He bums around doing odd jobs. He's not great at even doing the odd jobs.
00:21:56
Speaker
So he kind of focuses on like low skill requirements. Think like bagger and like an assistant for folks who are doing a skilled trade.
00:22:07
Speaker
So you're not even like most people would get into that position. Like if you're working with a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter because you're trying to learn that job. So that's why you become their assistant.
00:22:18
Speaker
But he didn't know what he wanted to do at all. There are some indications in here that he started getting into more criminal activity, but he doesn't have a lot of run-ins with law enforcement during this time.
00:22:32
Speaker
March of 1964 rolls around. he is turning in Army. so this is like twenty two and a halfishsh he gets drafted into the united states army So he goes up and he does his time in the army at Fort Dix, which is up in New Jersey.
00:22:52
Speaker
He has at least two write-ups for disciplinary actions. In one of those actions, he gets into a fight with another soldier.
00:23:04
Speaker
And it's not for the fight itself. It's the fact that he pulls out a metal pipe in the middle of the fight. And he assaults. one soldier with a pipe, but the way that it's actually written up, it reads like he miss swung and hit someone who wasn't involved in the fight with the pipe. And that's what they get him for.
00:23:27
Speaker
Also write him up as having abandoned his post. So in the military at this time, One of the things that can happen to you if you're getting disciplinary measures is you could end up on KP or you could end up on extra guard duty at like really dumb times in the middle of the night having to do midnight till 6 a.m. or midnight till noon.
00:23:47
Speaker
And that's what was happening with him. He bails on ah Fort Dix altogether. He ends up being arrested by a local police in New Jersey for dangerous driving charges and illegal weapons possession, which appears to be a rifle in the backseat of his car.
00:24:07
Speaker
In August of 1965, just after he turns 24, the Army says, you know what, we're kind of, we're done with this. and they send him on his way.
00:24:21
Speaker
He returns to Pennsylvania. His father had been sick, and in June of 1965, so two months before he was kicked out of the Army, his dad had died.
00:24:33
Speaker
And this guy inherits his dad's business, and he decides this is the moment that he's going to turn his life around. And what he's going to focus on is making his dad's business even more successful than it had been with his dad.
00:24:53
Speaker
The person that we're talking about, since I haven't mentioned him yet, I'm going to ahead and mention him now. His name is Edward Surratt. So this 24-year-old kid has a successful business in front of him and no business experience whatsoever.
00:25:12
Speaker
What do you think happens? A dumpster fire. Yeah, it becomes a dumpster fire. um He bankrupts his business pretty quickly.
00:25:22
Speaker
And over the course of the next year, not only like does it show through that he doesn't understand how to run a business, he doesn't even know how to close a business.
00:25:34
Speaker
And he gets in a lot of trouble with customers, vendors, and services coming after him to collect on debts that had accrued as part of what was happening with the business.
00:25:46
Speaker
So there probably was a way out of this by declaring actual bankruptcy and and kind of focusing on things if that was the mindset you were of.
00:25:58
Speaker
But that was not his mindset. And he decides that he's going to enlist in the United States Marines. So in October of 1966, Edward Surratt becomes a United States Marine.
Surratt's Alleged Crimes & Captivity
00:26:12
Speaker
In the spring of 1967, he is done with his advanced training courses and is almost immediately sent to serve in Vietnam.
00:26:24
Speaker
So he, for the next two years is going to serve with a tank battalion, ah during the Tet offensive against the Viet Cong. I don't, are you very familiar with Vietnam?
00:26:38
Speaker
Um, no, not really. So the Tet offensive was a major escalation in the campaigns of the ah Vietnam conflict.
00:26:49
Speaker
So the Vietnam, uh, The Army of Vietnam, or the North Vietnamese People's Army, the Pavan, and the the VC, the Viet Cong, they launched a surprise attack on January 30th, 1968, against South Vietnam, which we were on the side of South Vietnam.
00:27:09
Speaker
And so were our our allies. But this set off like an ongoing series of surprise attacks and ambushes that...
00:27:20
Speaker
really drug this war out for a significant period of time. And we had a lot of people there um in terms of like, like who was fighting who we were there with South Vietnam.
00:27:36
Speaker
We were supporting them. Like we were supposed to be a support role, but we had South Korea with us, Australia, New Zealand, and Thailand when this Tet offensive happens. And it's going to basically take place in three major phases.
00:27:51
Speaker
So in the very first phase, like dozens of thousands, I think it's around 60,000 people are either killed, wounded, or go missing.
00:28:04
Speaker
The official total that I've seen is something like 45,000 or 46,000, but that does not account for the fact that you're still missing people like to this day from that time period.
00:28:18
Speaker
It takes out tons of aircraft. We have a lot of damaged infrastructure that that had a lot of time had been spent trying to ah set up like for a positive end to this conflict.
00:28:35
Speaker
Now, phase two, phase three, they stopped releasing numbers. So we don't have firm numbers on what happened to U.S. or their allies during that time.
00:28:49
Speaker
But the Tet Offensive goes on for a very long period of time. It technically won't end until September of 1968.
00:29:00
Speaker
And Edward Surratt is right in the middle of it. The following year in 1969, during a skirmish, he is wounded in the chest and he is close enough to an explosion that he gets a concussion and potentially a TBI.
00:29:19
Speaker
and he has one of his eardrums ruptured. He is sent to a military hospital, and he ends up being released from there in the summer of 1970. In September of 1970, he is demobilized and he is sent home.
00:29:38
Speaker
He took part in what is believed to be 12 military operations between 1967 and he is awarded the Purple Heart, and he has awarded the purple heart And the Gallantry Cross.
00:29:51
Speaker
And the galaxy Gallantry Cross was a military award from the government of South Vietnam. It had been created to be an award that sort of crossed the boundaries of the militaries being parts of different country.
00:30:10
Speaker
So when he gets home, he decides he's going to get married. And Surratt moves to North Carolina. And this is where he came on my radar. In 1971, he's working as a truck driver.
00:30:27
Speaker
During this period of time, he begins to exhibit what is later described in court documents as antisocial behavior and signs of not just PTSD, but also that something to do with his concussion and potential TBI is severely affecting his mental health.
00:30:51
Speaker
In 1973, he ends up being arrested in Virginia Beach, Virginia, on charges that he had attempted to rape a 13-year-old boy. March 74 rolls around, he has a trial, he's found guilty, and he's convicted.
00:31:09
Speaker
He ends up serving less than four years in prison, and he is paroled and released from prison altogether in January of 1977. At this point in time, he goes back to where he had grown up in Pennsylvania.
00:31:26
Speaker
Edward Surratt comes on the police radar in April of 1978. He had been working as a truck driver for a firm that was based out of Charlotte, North Carolina.
00:31:40
Speaker
He had been visiting cities in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. And investigators had started to piece together that over the last two years, there were 27 unsolved murders that had been causing some issues in the public's, in how the public felt about what the local police were doing in those areas.
00:32:06
Speaker
He gets arrested He gets interviewed for these 27 unsolved murders, but he says he didn't have anything to do with these crimes that are pointed out in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
00:32:25
Speaker
He's released. He's briefly surveilled. And on June 1978,
00:32:32
Speaker
He is spotted in his hometown up in Pennsylvania in a car that belongs to a man named Luther Langford.
00:32:44
Speaker
On June 1st in Western Columbia, South Carolina, Luther Langford had been killed in his home by several blows to the head with a baseball bat.
00:32:57
Speaker
His wife had also been beaten, but she had survived. So Edward Surratt is arrested and he fights off seven police officers during the arrest.
00:33:15
Speaker
He bolts from the area and the police start to conduct a massive manhunt for him.
00:33:23
Speaker
This search operation ends with Edward Surratt being put on a wanted list. While examining the interior of Luther Langford's car, police find a baseball bat.
00:33:39
Speaker
with Edward Surratt's fingerprints. And they find a number of items that belong to a 30-year-old disabled Vietnam War veteran named Joseph Weinman and his wife, 29-year-old Catherine Weinman.
00:33:53
Speaker
They had been beaten to death on September 30, 1977 in Marshall Township, Pennsylvania. They were subject to a home invasion.
00:34:04
Speaker
Okay. I'm to pause here for a second. We've got a guy who goes to war. He joins the army, doesn't work out. He goes to war as a Marine after he fails at his dad's businesses, and he ends up being pretty severely injured while fighting for his country.
00:34:20
Speaker
He comes back, and he's a truck driver.
00:34:25
Speaker
We can track him here based on some of the dates I just put out there. That's September 30th, 1977.
00:34:34
Speaker
Going to June 6, 1978. And I think that's a really good like spot to kind of talk about this guy. you think these are anger murders?
00:34:47
Speaker
I'm not really sure. i um
00:34:51
Speaker
and feel like this guy may have had ah some mental health problems.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, he definitely, vs he definitely, if he didn't have them when he went to war, he definitely has them when he gets back. Well, but you have to take into consideration the fact that he chose to not face his financial issues.
00:35:15
Speaker
Right. And the option he chose in order to not do that, which by the way, they're still waiting on him when he gets back, I'm sure, that he decides to go to war.
00:35:28
Speaker
yeah Okay, so right there, you've got something going on mentally, right? Yeah, it's not clicking. Yeah. Right, okay. And so one of the things about this, um you you said like a whole lot in that little bit there. um I don't know if it's been elaborated on how he came to be suspicious ah for this spree of 27 unsolved murders that was stirring a moral panic.
00:35:57
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I found that. Are you reading from the wiki or the article that came off the wiki? Yeah, the reason remembered it was because of the satanic panic thing. Yeah, yeah.
00:36:11
Speaker
I don't know how accurate that is, but it was alarming, right? So that, okay, that report is, if I remember correctly, that's going to be from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And it actually takes place like 10 years after the murders.
00:36:27
Speaker
Like when they call it that, a more a moral panic. Right. But, I mean, it's concerning because they've had 27 unsolved murders. And somehow or another, he's arrested and interrogated.
00:36:39
Speaker
and he denies the responsibility. Yeah. And they let him go. and then he's seen driving in a murder victim's vehicle. From them out of state, no less.
00:36:55
Speaker
And... In his own hometown, though, right? Right. Yeah, that's I'm saying. Okay, so he's driving a vehicle that belongs to a murder victim, which okay. So case sir that's like that's really good evidence that he needs to ah be interviewed about this situation, right? Correct. Maybe to find out why he has this car. But not only that, they find a baseball bat with Surratt's fingerprints on it.
00:37:22
Speaker
Yep. And... That's how the victims were killed. And things that belong to the victims that were beaten to death in the car, right? So this is covering several different murders, right? With like real concrete evidence. However, i have to say the fact that he was driving around in the car that belonged to one of the murder victims in his hometown with evidence from another victim.
00:37:52
Speaker
I think there were two people killed, beaten. I think it was a man and his wife beaten to death. And he's got stuff that he stole in the process of that, those murders, right? Correct. Okay. ah So, again, he's a little off his rocker.
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, he's definitely, so so those crimes, the way that that starts, like the the Luther Langford is killed in South Carolina, and he's nine and a half hours away from where his car turns up with Surratt driving it.
00:38:31
Speaker
Right, but that wasn't that, um hold on, is they were beaten to death on September 30th, right? Well, Luther Langford was beaten to death. His wife had also been beaten, but she survives.
00:38:44
Speaker
That's the one from June 6th of 1978. Does that mean, so, they he, okay. I see, yeah, okay, I'm sorry. I said it wrong, June 1st of 1978. Now, what, okay he's driving around in that car five days later.
00:39:01
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I was thinking that he had had it since September of the previous year, but that's a different couple. That's who the stuff in the car belonged to. Correct, and they're actually from Marshall Township. marshall so I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but the place that they are looking at his car is called Aliquippa.
00:39:22
Speaker
And then Marshall Township is where we have ah Vietnam vet and his wife are killed. And that's the stuff that's found in the car. And that's closer to Aliquippa, right? Yeah. So that's... If I'm thinking of the right places, it's actually about four hours away. But yes, it's closer than like going down to South Carolina. Yeah.
00:39:46
Speaker
South Carolina, yeah. Yeah. So then we We get into the crimes getting closer and closer to home, which I think is probably decompensation, maybe.
00:40:00
Speaker
And that's a theory I have that I don't i don't know like how well it all works. But I will note that during this time 77 and he's going to years old and then turning years old.
00:40:14
Speaker
And I have always been like of the mindset that serial killers in their thirty s start to take more and more risks. And like that's when they kind of peak. And it's also when they come unraveled.
00:40:26
Speaker
Well, right. They don't know what to do with themselves is how I look at it. Yeah. So him having the car that belongs to Luther Langford in June of 1978 is what leads the police examining the car. They try to arrest him.
00:40:42
Speaker
He gets away from them. And that's when they find the evidence of the murders of Joseph Weinman and Catherine Weinman, who are from Marshall Township. And that's the September 30th, 1977 murder.
00:40:57
Speaker
Now, he becomes a suspect in here of the murder of 28-year-old Frank Ziegler. So Frank Ziegler is killed with a.38 caliber revolver on September 27th, about feet from where Joseph and Catherine Weinman lived.
00:41:19
Speaker
now i'm going to go with that makes sense to me. Yeah. um Now, closer to home, December 4th of 1977, couple, Richard Hyde and his wife Donna Hyde, are shot with shotgun and killed.
00:41:38
Speaker
And that's in a place called Moon Township. It's about 20 minutes from Alquipham. So this ends up leading to the November 20th, 1977 murders of William Adams and his wife, Nancy, in Fauston, Pennsylvania.
00:41:58
Speaker
Now, that's the first time we have sort of a weird situation. And i say that because I say weird situation because it's four hours away.
00:42:09
Speaker
So he's driving kind of all over Pennsylvania at one point. But what's what's weird about William Adams and Nancy Adams is that to this day, Nancy Adams is still missing.
00:42:22
Speaker
But William Adams, he was 29 years old. His body was found.
00:42:28
Speaker
On New Year's Eve of 1977, so we're now moving from 1977 into 1978, Surratt was place Breezewood. in the nineteen seventy eight
00:42:38
Speaker
sarat was in a place called breezewood So Breezewood is in East Providence Township. It is about three hours away from where he lives. So it's not 100% of the time.
00:42:51
Speaker
But 64-year-old Guy Mills and then his wife, Laura, 36-year-old man named Joel Kruger, they are all killed by a man with a shotgun.
00:43:06
Speaker
He is also found to have been ah in Boardman, Ohio. And there's another murder that I have never seen the names on linked to him there.
00:43:19
Speaker
I believe that murder takes place in 1978.
Legal Proceedings & Confessions Analysis
00:43:27
Speaker
So he gets, like, we don't know what he does between early 1978 June of 1978 when the cops try to arrest him. He then gets away.
00:43:40
Speaker
In late 1978, though, he is traveling down to Florida. He stops in a place called the Lano Beach. A couple things about Volano Beach.
00:43:52
Speaker
The first thing is, most of the descriptions you'll read about it is that it's a rural beach, which was kind of a misnomer for me at first. It's 14 hours away from Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, so he was on a hike.
00:44:06
Speaker
When you go and look at Volano Beach, it's on the eastern side of Florida. According to what I've been able to find about Edward Surratt, he breaks into a house there July the first He attacks a family of three that are living there.
00:44:23
Speaker
He beats the adults. ah He threatens them. And he sexually assaults their 15-year-old daughter.
00:44:33
Speaker
For some reason, he does not run away, and he also does not kill them. He gets drunk. It says he uses drugs. And he falls asleep in the bedroom.
00:44:45
Speaker
The father in this family of three is able to get out of the rudimentary bonds Edward Surratt has ah tied him up in.
00:44:59
Speaker
He flees the home and he's able to get the police there. The police show up and Surratt's still asleep. So they arrest him.
00:45:10
Speaker
And they start investigating him at this point in time. So this guy has basically been committing murders for almost a solid year. Okay? Yes. Did you do a little math on that to see how many were up to at this point?
00:45:25
Speaker
I didn't do math on it. Not at this point, but I could if you want. So Luther Langdon is one. Joseph Weidman and his wife Catherine are two and three.
00:45:35
Speaker
Luther Langdon's wife is an assault, so we won't count her as a murder here. frank uh ziegler makes four and then that's the person who was shot close to the wineman's homes and then we have uh richard hyde and his wife donna make six we have william adams and his wife dancy they make eight We have Guy Mills, his wife, Laura, and Joel Kruger.
00:46:03
Speaker
So that's going to be 9, 10, and 11. And then there's a similar double homicide in Boardman, Ohio. That's going to be 13.
00:46:13
Speaker
um nobody dies in the Nobody dies in this Florida attack, so we're not going to count them yet. They hold him, and they start investigating him, and they compare to himself with Pennsylvania,
00:46:26
Speaker
And they start to believe that he may have committed 18 murders. They're able to link these murders by this home invasion terrorizing modus operandi.
00:46:43
Speaker
And they're able to do that because of the family in Volano Beach being able to identify what he did. Does that make sense? yes it makes sense.
00:46:54
Speaker
So... I think it's safe to say that your assumption that something might be seriously wrong with this gentleman that ran away and then got worse with the TBI, concussions, etc., I think that you're probably in the right ballpark.
00:47:09
Speaker
Don't you think? I do. i i mean, obviously, just from this, you know, one incident where we have slightly more information because um of the victims, he beat and terrorized the adults, ah violated the 15-year-old daughter, and then, you know, proceeds to drink and do drugs and pass out and allow himself to be caught, essentially, right?
00:47:32
Speaker
Yeah. that's ah That's an interesting concept. That person has issues, right? Yeah. Yeah, he definitely is... um he's He's sort of becoming a bit of a um ah like almost ah a stereotype of like a Vietnam War veteran coming home.
00:47:52
Speaker
I will say one of the reasons I'm fascinated with Surratt is Surratt's African-American. And people don't talk that much about African-American serial killers.
00:48:05
Speaker
And I want to point that out here just from the perspective that the FBI at the time, this is all going down. They were heavily invested in the 30 something white male profile.
00:48:18
Speaker
So that might be how he gets away with it, but he doesn't get away with it for that long. Right. But the reason he's caught is because he falls asleep after he has attacked a family and
00:48:37
Speaker
Don't get me wrong. I feel like... um I guess I'm having... So, he went down to Florida after he had escaped being arrested, right? Correct. Like, he's just running again. Remember how he ran to the Marines once he screwed up the business?
00:48:54
Speaker
And, you know, in that situation, there's several things that are undeniable, like the being the driver of the car of the victim, right?
00:49:06
Speaker
And then... his fingerprints on a baseball bat, which, and accompanying that, I keep wanting to say merchandise. It's not merchandise, but it's stuff from another set of victims' house, right? Stolen property from another victim's home. Right, exactly. and And so some of those things are undeniable. Right. But there's something about this that seems off to me.
00:49:33
Speaker
what do you mean? Well, they so They linked him primarily because of the the most operandi, right? Yeah.
00:49:45
Speaker
Okay, well, that's not actual evidence, right? No, it's just how they're linking him at this time. Right, and so i i guess this probably really won't make sense, but like the cohesiveness of the narrative of his crime spree, it doesn't quite register with me, and that's the real that's the root reason why I'm like, there's something off here.
00:50:11
Speaker
I agree with you, and I have questions about that. My questions, like, they go even further, like, do you trust this spree killer, serial killer, doing these home invasions from the perspective of, like, his words and what you perceive to be his actions, when the person, if the if it's a person doing all those things, it seems awfully interesting to keep committing similar acts when he's clearly as deranged as that would make him look.
00:50:46
Speaker
Right, exactly. and and he seems to, like, how is it that and again, this may maybe there's a simple explanation, but why is he fighting off seven law enforcement officers but Why is he able to?
00:51:05
Speaker
But then falls asleep in the bed. but then falls asleep, like, after he's committed another crime, and he falls asleep at the victim's house.
00:51:17
Speaker
And he doesn't get to kill them. It makes no sense, right? But it could be that, like, the father getting free is the change in variable there we don't understand. He might have woke up in four hours. I assume it's drug use.
00:51:32
Speaker
And that's kind of what that's probably I was thinking he was probably on like PCP or something. I was picturing PCP for the seven cops that he fought off or whatever. I don't know how big this dude is, but now let's see.
00:51:46
Speaker
Does it have his height? No, it doesn't. I haven't. I haven't seen it. I could probably pull it from the Florida prison. But it's just a weird thing, right? Oh, it's 100% a weird thing. that's like i I told you, I'm not putting people on the radar here that like are normal.
00:52:04
Speaker
i like i I didn't want to keep covering the same cases over and over again. So he comes up on the radar for a number of reasons. One is, this is a lot of crimes to dump on one guy, which you and I don't like when that happens.
00:52:19
Speaker
We don't. and And like I said, there's some very, very straight lines here that point right to him and its evidence, right? Right.
00:52:30
Speaker
There are other things that get lumped in because the murderous operandi of the crime matches him and it goes along with an investigator getting a crime closed.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. He also, again, I don't know what the change in him was, except perhaps he came down off the PCP and gave up.
00:53:01
Speaker
Perhaps. I mean, that's what it sounds like happened. He couldn't get any more. um And we get him being taken into custody and ah it said that during the course of the investigation...
00:53:20
Speaker
Which that I'm talking about the the family that he fell asleep, right? Yeah. Okay, so during the he was arrested at the scene without any further ah incident once the father called the authorities. And during the course of that investigation, on the basis of material evidence, Edward Surratt was checked for involvement in at least 18 murders in which the offender had a similar similar modus operandi.
00:53:46
Speaker
to him and the attack in Volano Beach. So because they had live witnesses, right? Yeah. They were able to get um sort of a, something to go off of, I guess, would be a good way to put that.
00:54:01
Speaker
Because up until that point, I don't know how many live victims he had. And so he goes on to trial, right? Yeah. So fall of 1978, he goes on trial in Volusia County. This is for the attempted case.
00:54:15
Speaker
home invasion plus the attempted, i guess it's home invasion, kidnapping, terrorizing, sexual assault, and potentially attempted murder or threatening with murder.
00:54:26
Speaker
um On September 20th, the jury comes back in that case and they find him guilty of burglary. They find him guilty of assault, including rape, and they find him guilty of threatening with murder.
00:54:39
Speaker
On October 27th, he's sentenced to two life imprisonment terms and an additional 200 years for what's happening here. So they felt like this was serious enough that I personally think they're kind of punishing for some of the other stuff just in case it doesn't work out.
00:54:56
Speaker
But he has he has gone to prison before for a violent act ah on a 13-year-old boy. so that's sort of where we land here. After this trial, they're going to extradite him to Lexington County, South Carolina.
00:55:10
Speaker
And there, he's going to be tried for ah the Langford murders and the attempted murder of Langford's wife. So this is the car he was driving around in in his hometown. And in the summer of 1979, he ends up being found guilty there, and they give him two additional life imprisonment terms.
00:55:30
Speaker
While he was on trial down in Florida, he confesses to another murder. That's the murder of 56-year-old John Shelkins. He was shot with a shotgun in his home in Baden, Pennsylvania on January 7, 1978.
00:55:47
Speaker
His wife, Catherine Selkins, had also been severely beaten and assaulted, but she lived. Those prosecutors hearing, like, sort of the confession, but also seeing these long sentences, they don't ever formally charge Edward Surratt, and they sort of treat it as a refusal to prosecute.
00:56:11
Speaker
Where's Edward Surratt today? First of all, he's still alive. I thought that was interesting. That was one of the reasons he came up on the radar. He's 83 years old, but he's alive. He's in Marion Correctional Institution down in Ocala, Florida.
00:56:27
Speaker
He has done some weird stuff. Now, if you go looking for him on any of the wikis that we talked about, there are several articles in the New York Times about The Pittsburgh Tribune Review and the Post-Gazette up in Pittsburgh, they cover him in detail.
00:56:45
Speaker
ah The state police have had tons of archived reports. ah Press reports about him. um The Pittsburgh Press covers him. The Latrobe Bulletin covers him. The Greenville Record.
00:56:58
Speaker
um There was at least one other odd paper that I pulled from. ah know it's the Pittsburgh Press. um So those are the sources for this. And if you go read about it, he is the shotgun slayer, even though some of his crimes were done with baseball bats and some were done with handguns.
00:57:19
Speaker
um He's 83 years old. He seems to be thriving in close custody in a Florida prison. He does try to escape at one point. um So for the rest of his life, he's going to be bumped around Florida prisons. That's going to be what happens to to today when he's 83. He'll turn 84 in August if he lives that long.
00:57:40
Speaker
Go ahead. so Am I missing where he was chart where he was convicted of all those other murders? No, i'm I'm getting to that now.
00:57:50
Speaker
ah Okay, okay. Sorry. yeah No, you're fine. May 8th, 1993, there's a transfer from one prison to another prison. And he's in Polk County down in Florida. He attempts to escape by attacking a police officer and seizing his vehicle.
00:58:07
Speaker
But the cop regains control of the situation. He is charged with attempted escape in May of 1994, year later, he's convicted of this and he gets an additional two years and six months. In 2007, Edward Surratt starts confessing.
00:58:24
Speaker
The first thing he confesses to is the murders of David and Linda Hamilton. This is a September 20th, 1977 murder in Beaver Township, Ohio.
00:58:36
Speaker
He also says that in November, 1977, He had murdered 63-year-old John Davis and his wife, Mary. They were killed with a shotgun.
00:58:48
Speaker
At this time, Surratt also claims that he killed 17-year-old John Feeney, who was known to have been shot to death October 22nd of 1977 in Finley Township, Pennsylvania. yeah The story there was that John Feeney was meeting up with his 16-year-old fiancé, Renee Greger.
00:59:09
Speaker
Feeney's body has been found, and Renee Greger is still missing in Pennsylvania. According to Surratt, he kills 17-year-old John.
00:59:21
Speaker
He takes Renee with him, takes her to a wooded area, and depending on which version of the story you believe, he threatened to rape her, but ended up just shooting her in the mouth and burying her body.
00:59:36
Speaker
Surratt agrees that he will, on a map, he will mark up where Rene Greger is, and then he will mark up where Linda Hamilton, I believe she is still missing.
00:59:51
Speaker
ah So he will give them the location of their bodies, and that he will testify to several other murders, but he has a condition. Guess what that condition is?
01:00:03
Speaker
He wants to be transferred. Yep. He wants to be transferred. He specifically wants to be transferred somewhere in South Carolina to serve that sentence instead because he's heard that the prison conditions are much more lenient and that the overall environment in South Carolina prisons is better than Florida prisons.
01:00:24
Speaker
So I'm guessing that has something to do with the heat. I don't know how much it would change between those states, but probably would be a big deal. But authorities are never able to hammer out a finalized agreement. So in 2021, he's in Rayford, Florida. Specifically, he's in Florida State Prison.
01:00:42
Speaker
lot of people have come through Florida State Prison. He starts confessing again. The Pennsylvania State Police come down. And he ends up confessing, but these are not as exciting.
01:00:55
Speaker
These are murders that we already knew he was sort of suspected of. He confesses to the murders of William and Nancy Adams. He confesses to the murders of Guy and Laura Mills.
01:01:07
Speaker
He confesses to the murder of Joel Kruger and John Shalcombs. So he was suspected in some of these, Now, what he gets, sort of, in exchange for these confessions, is that the district attorneys in the counties where these murders occurred, they agree not to prosecute him if he'll confess in full.
01:01:31
Speaker
As to what they found to be completely believable about this, I could not tell you. I can only tell you that the Pennsylvania State Police believe him. They put out a big, fat press release on PA.gov about him at the time. I don't know if it's still there.
01:01:47
Speaker
And there are a couple of articles that they sat down and did interviews for in Pennsylvania. And I think the Orlando Sentinel was the big article that they gave comments for. But I didn't get back to it ah for this particular recording because they were...
01:02:06
Speaker
behind a paywall. But I had read as of October 2015 that Pennsylvania and Ohio authorities were still reviewing the routes that he took when he worked for the Charlotte, North Carolina company.
01:02:20
Speaker
So couple of questions for you. One, you think he did all of that? Or is this a situation where he's trying to get things for confessing the stuff he's read about over the years or that investigators have asked him about over the years?
01:02:35
Speaker
Well, something's happening because in any event, he's not going to be able to name off his victims, right? Right. Right, he's got to at least be given some kind of scenario. Why would he know the name of a complete stranger that he randomly killed?
01:02:54
Speaker
I don't think that he would. He wouldn't. And and so the can the condensed version that we get here, where it's just basically names and dates, or months even, it's not even a date in some cases,
01:03:09
Speaker
clearly that is I'm not saying that he's not responsible for the crimes, but like there's been some amount of research that's been happening, right?
01:03:20
Speaker
Because otherwise, how's he putting it together? And so that leads me to wonder, you know, is he, I feel like when he was trying to get to South Carolina, more than likely it was because he was trying to escape Just right off the top of my head, that's what I think was probably happening there.
01:03:44
Speaker
Because it's lenient, it's more lenient there, right? yeah Yeah, he thinks he can still escape at that point, yeah. And so, I think that those, I don't know how credible they are, because it does seem to be that he had a prerogative in in mind when he made those confessions, right?
01:04:03
Speaker
um Or when he was going to give the bodies. Yeah. Yeah. that it's actually kind of odd that they didn't... I don't know if they just didn't take him seriously or what. i think it would have to be a scenario where he's got to give me something so I know he's serious. We've got to find at least one person like but take him seriously. like Well, maybe. And I don't know, like, are all of these... Because, okay, he was only convicted of...
01:04:34
Speaker
One murder. One murder. Okay. So he's, he, which murder was that? The guy whose car he was driving around. He was convicted of his murder. Yeah, yeah. So he he's convicted of all the attempts down in Florida related to the family that he jumps.
01:04:49
Speaker
But Luther Langford is the victim in June of 1978. He's driving his car around his hometown. This was a 66-year-old man who was with his wife and they had been beaten with baseball bats.
01:05:03
Speaker
Right, and so they didn't even attempt to ah charge him with the other with the no stolen property people linked to, right? Pennsylvania hass never tried him for anything.
01:05:18
Speaker
Okay, but that's why he ended up in Florida to begin with. though It was because they were trying to arrest him, right? Correct. Okay, and it I'm going to go out on a limb here and say...
01:05:32
Speaker
The reason they were able to get him convicted of the one murder was because of the car. yeah And the reason, obviously, he got all those attempted and, like, that was, you know, lots of life imprisonment and extra years on top of it. Correct. Thank goodness that that happened because, um you know, the victims lived, right? Yeah. And they testified to what happened. However...
01:05:59
Speaker
My guess is there was not evidence enough to tie him to any of these other crimes. And that's always suspect, right?
01:06:11
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think they're going off. There might be similar weapons. I can tell you right now it's very difficult to match shotguns. Well, sure, right. Just because of the nature of the ammunition.
01:06:24
Speaker
It's weird that he, it is possible that he legitimately did all this, right? I mean, I guess it's possible. he This man seems like he's he's genuinely has a mental issue, right? Yeah, oh yeah.
01:06:40
Speaker
I'm shocked that he survived this long in prison. Well, you know, it's almost like he's, he's, too mean to die.
01:06:51
Speaker
It could be something like that. He's so incredibly mean that like he's yeah he'll live forever. um i don't know that that's true, but obviously he has committed horrendous crimes. I would say at this point he's probably too old to... um Well, that's probably what the 2007 confessions are about.
01:07:10
Speaker
like He knows... So at that time he would have been 65 so, 64, 65. Yeah.
01:07:17
Speaker
so I imagine he's sitting there going, like, how much longer can I possibly live, right? Well, I was thinking he would know that, like, life on the run is hard and I won't be able to get out.
01:07:29
Speaker
Once I'm past this age, I won't be able to do anything. I'm stuck. I won't be able to escape. Oh, yeah, maybe. Because, yeah, i think that I think that you could be right. I think he could have had a goal in mind.
01:07:44
Speaker
And then the other thing is we don't have a lot of insight onto what led to the 2021 sort of... Cops. Cops did that. Well, that's what I'm thinking. Like, brand new investigators come on and they've got to get some of these cases closed, right?
01:08:02
Speaker
And so they go back to the drawing board, and the only thing that they... This actually illustrates a very good point. The only thing they can do is get a confession. Or DNA. There is no evidence. Well, i don't I don't know that that was an option at this point.
01:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, but if you've got unsolved homicides with clothing articles or whatever from the scene, you would think that somewhere in here... Well, in that case, I would say you you need to use that instead of having somebody confess to it because the DNA is more reliable. This man's got nothing to lose, okay?
01:08:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, theoretically, what we really know he did is he beat somebody to death with a baseball bat and then he started a home invasion where he fell asleep. And he assaulted a 15-year-old there as well.
01:08:52
Speaker
Right, right, yeah. I'm saying, like, he definitely has committed some crimes, but we don't have him as being the actual shotgun slayer unless these guys know something we don't.
01:09:03
Speaker
And they need to release that information. And like you said, they need to try them if they're going to close up all those cases because that's a big stack of cases. Well, right, and think about, like, the relief you get in solving them, right? Right.
01:09:18
Speaker
And it they're going off of a confession. Yeah. Which to me, obviously, he got information from somewhere. I mean, did he just describe the crimes? Maybe so. Right.
01:09:31
Speaker
But I know for a fact he didn't know all these people's names. Right. Yeah. that doesn't really make a lot of sense. And so it makes me wonder like what goes into these confessions for all we know, he's just nodding. Yes. At some point, I do agree that if there was DNA and the DNA could link him to it, because the one murder conviction they got was the man that he was driving his car. Right. That is, that's strong evidence. I mean, it's not necessarily evidence that he killed him, but under the circumstances, it kind of worked out that way.
01:10:03
Speaker
yeah And, um, The other part of that is if he is looking, you know, people who have mental ah illness or they have mental challenges, they do weird things, right? I mean, beyond just, you know, all these weird murders and stuff.
01:10:25
Speaker
But we don't necessarily know what his prerogative might have been at any point in time. Yeah. It seems to me like, ah try, i you know, i can't really fault the Pennsylvania State Police for going to him in 2021 and saying, hey, let's talk, right?
01:10:52
Speaker
There's nothing wrong with that because honestly, the cases do need to be closed and at some point in time, there was enough for them, for him to be arrested, at least for the the one murder, right? Right.
01:11:04
Speaker
Because that's why he ended up in Florida to begin with. And so it seems like that would be the right thing to do. i just, you know, i don't know that that's the best way to go about it. There's some of these things, it seems like they could have had their own, they could be independent cases, Right.
01:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, especially when you get into the guns and the fact that, like, we don't really link him to a shotgun in here, like, directly. And we have this other.38 caliber revolver. They just happen to take place geographically close.
01:11:37
Speaker
Right. exactly Well, exactly. And that makes me wonder a little bit because... I mean, that's a different crime, right? It really is a very different crime. And then, you know, we don't know. It does seem like several of the different couples where the man is found and a woman isn't.
01:11:56
Speaker
Yeah. Right. But that's also like sort of a weird type of situation. kind of focused in on the young couple, the 16 year old and the 17 year old.
01:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, that was a weird one for me with the missing body, too. To me, it seems like I feel like that could have its own, that's its own thing. Yeah. um And it's odd that.
01:12:29
Speaker
But he was getting into, like, younger people being victims of his crime at a couple different times. Right, that's true, but you've got to keep in mind the way that it's told, at least where I've seen it, is that the boy was waiting for... The girl.
01:12:49
Speaker
The girl. And he killed the boy, and then the girl arrived and he took her. So he would have he would not have had any idea that there was going to be a girl.
01:13:00
Speaker
Unless... Unless maybe... You might be on to something with the girl... like not knowing if the girl is going to be there unless he somehow knew that couple.
01:13:10
Speaker
Well, what I was going to say is I think that there's a stark contrast here. The men that were shot, right? Because there's several there's at least another one that was like a thousand feet from the couple that was beaten to death or whatever.
01:13:24
Speaker
there's There's several things happening here. And I feel like those would have been like straight up like um robberies probably. Like give me all the money you have. And, you know, he then kills somebody for like, you know, the 20 bucks that they had in their wallet or whatever. Yeah.
01:13:37
Speaker
Because that's what people with mental problems do, right?
Victims' Families & Case Reflections
01:13:41
Speaker
Yeah. And then it it follows like sort of an erratic drug, crazy, rage type.
01:13:51
Speaker
I can imagine that being the cause of it, right? Because people do erratic things going on and off of drugs, especially like drugs that let you fight seven police officers off when they're trying to arrest you, that which is like the craziest thing to me.
01:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, if you've never seen, I've noticed you you went to PCP. like if people if you If you look up PCP videos online, I know that it has to be a thing on YouTube now. I've not looked for this, so I don't know that it actually exists. I'm speculating.
01:14:19
Speaker
It is one of the wildest superhuman things you will ever see. Right. that's why I went to that is because people can do like all kinds of like just impossible things when they're on that drug because like it tricks the brain into believing it can, right? Or something. yeah And so that's what I went to about it. And I can see somebody...
01:14:40
Speaker
craving, uh, you know, and addiction to something and, and thinking like, it's a great idea to kill somebody and the spur of the moment to take all the money that they have in their possession. Right. yeah Uh, it's not, but that's just their way of thinking. And,
01:14:59
Speaker
They're truly senseless, tragic crimes, right? I mean, there's nothing more tragic than some of the things that we've gone through just with this guy, right? yeah Like, what is his, what is he doing? And honestly, he's literally illustrating what a very mentally unstable person does.
01:15:24
Speaker
They don't. Yeah, i this is we've been talking about this for a while. I think it's safe to say that I personally find i don't want to say like I find this completely unbelievable because that's like the wrong way to go with it. But like my gut instinct when I hear all of this strung together in 12 paragraphs or, you know, an hour podcast or something is bullshit.
01:15:46
Speaker
No way. There's no way this guy in that short a period of time, because I pointed that out early in the episode. All of this is taking place in a year.
01:16:01
Speaker
And I think that differentiates him from serial killers that we talk about into something different. it ah It is. And, you know, we've we've sort of we've faced this before with a variety of different ah perpetrators that have been caught and the speculation that goes into, like, you know, what are all the crimes that they've committed?
01:16:26
Speaker
And it's not. It's not that it doesn't not happen, right? yeah Yeah. and the list of people get checked off. I realize that.
01:16:38
Speaker
I mean, some of these have probably stronger cases than others. He may be absolutely responsible for every single one of these. And the investigators may have seen the evidence at the time they were closing. I assume they were closing these cases.
01:16:51
Speaker
See, that's the other part of this. These aren't adjudicated cases, right? Yeah. It's just, they're hanging out there. no one's looking at them.
01:17:02
Speaker
And somewhere in terms of like a file folder or a digital file folder or whatever, they are essentially marked closed. Right, and nobody's ever going to do any more investigating and investigation on them because nobody's willing to prosecute this guy for any of them. And it's just a really interesting concept.
01:17:25
Speaker
I have to say that this kind of gives you and some insight into, i would assume at this point, none of these victims have anybody pushing for them.
01:17:35
Speaker
Well, I wanted to talk about that, but I kind of want to use that to conclude the episode because I pulled one piece that kind of made me feel weird, guess.
01:17:48
Speaker
um Okay, so do you have a lot more on this? Yeah, go ahead Okay, so I pulled this piece from the Pittsburgh Press. This is from Sunday, October 22, 1978. It's kind of lengthy, but I thought it kind of illustrates how I feel about all this stuff.
01:18:05
Speaker
it's ah A guy named Rich Giegler wrote it. It's page two. So it's not headlined, but it's on A2, so it's up front. It says, a year later, questions haunt John Feeney's parents.
01:18:19
Speaker
It was one year ago this afternoon that two plainclothes detectives and two uniformed policemen stepped onto the front porch of the home of James and Rita Feeney to tell them their son, John, was dead.
01:18:31
Speaker
First, they told the Feeneys that their family van had been found in the woods in Finley Township near Greater Pittsburgh Airport. Being sensitive and gentle, as Rita Feeney remembers, they talked with both parents ah about the van and John very generally for a time.
01:18:50
Speaker
And then they took the father off to one side and they told him a body has been found in the van. Of course, Feeney was then asked to go downtown to the county morgue to identify the body.
01:19:02
Speaker
And, of course, it was John, says the dad in his brother recollection. As if it was yesterday, he takes a deep breath, he blinks a few times, he sighs, and he adds, it was John, all right.
01:19:15
Speaker
That ended, but in the worst way possible. About 18 hours of typical parental worry for the Feeneys. Their 17-year-old son had not wrecked the van or blown a tire.
01:19:27
Speaker
He was not out on a bender or running off somewhere. He was dead. He had been murdered with a shotgun blast to the neck and chest, and his date on that night one year ago, 15-year-old Rene Greger, was, and still is, missing.
01:19:45
Speaker
The van was found on a back road in the woods of Finley Township, and John's body was lying in the back. Rene's jacket and purse were found in the van. but no other trace of her was ever uncovered.
01:19:57
Speaker
Feeney's death and Miss Gregor's disappearance, along with several similar attacks on unsuspecting couples, caused the formation of a special countywide homicide task force to solve the crimes.
01:20:11
Speaker
The task force recently was disbanded, and its leaders blamed the death of Feeney and several others on Edward Surratt, formerly of Alquipa, convicted on multiple rape charges in Florida, and charged with murders in two other states.
01:20:28
Speaker
This was no answer to the Feeneys. It brings an end to a year of sorrow and wondering about the death of their son. The task force itself was too little, too late, says Jim Feeney, even though it was formed a week after his son's death.
01:20:42
Speaker
Feeney said, I think Surratt would confess to the crucifixion of Christ if it might get him out of Florida. quickly adding that the detectives who investigated his son's murder busted their humps, really, to to do the best job they could.
01:20:57
Speaker
But too many unanswered questions still haunt the parents. On the night of October 21st, 1977, John Feeney was set to take Rene Greger out on a special date.
01:21:09
Speaker
Feeney had just cashed his $65 paycheck from his first week's work as a diner busboy. He and Renee were supposed to go out to dinner at Beaver Valley Mall, the Feeneys remembered.
01:21:21
Speaker
And it's not known how he how the van came to be found in Finley Township, but the young couple were due home at their curfew at 10 p.m. I'm convinced if they could have, it would have been possible for them to be home by 10 o'clock as promised.
01:21:37
Speaker
They would have been home by 10 o'clock, says Rita Feeney, setting the anniversary of her son's death as yesterday. Not today, as the coroner report states.
01:21:48
Speaker
Like her husband, Mrs. Feeney dismisses the task force charges against the rat. The only significant proof they have, the father says, would be if they could locate one of the women.
01:22:00
Speaker
Renee or Mrs. Adams. Nancy Adams of Beaver County is also missing. Even then, his conviction here would bring the Feeneys no comfort.
01:22:11
Speaker
We've tried desperately not to be vengeful because it wouldn't do any good, said Mrs. Feeney. It's not going to bring John back, her husband added. Even if they'd bring Surratt back here for a trial and convict him, that isn't going to bring John back either.
01:22:25
Speaker
For the Feeneys, there is no end to their mourning. Everything from now on will be tainted, said John's mother. Losing a child is always a terrible tragedy, she continued. But if your child is ill, at least you have the chance to take care of him.
01:22:39
Speaker
Do whatever you can for him before he dies. And at least you have a chance to say goodbye. We were robbed of this. Never had a chance even to say, i love you.
01:22:50
Speaker
Despite the comfort of having five other children, the Feeney say from now on they'll feel incomplete. Without the help of their neighbors, the greatest people in the world, according to Jim Feeney, he doesn't know how they would have stood up to all the shock.
01:23:04
Speaker
Still, you... The father adds and trails off. He and his wife wonder, somewhere out there, is the perpetrator of this one-year-old murder still lurking?
01:23:17
Speaker
I wonder if he's out there. Could he look me in the eye, knowing when he's done, Mrs. Feeney says. And they wonder, where's Renee?
01:23:30
Speaker
I don't think I could sum up all of this any better. And I know that's only one of the families related to the victims and what we just talked about for an hour and a half. Well, i'm I'm sort of glad to hear that. I didn't actually get that perspective at any point um when I was looking, but I'm glad to hear that like I wasn't the only one that was kind of like, yeah, right, he didn't do that, right?
01:23:49
Speaker
Yeah, and so this confession from him comes in 2007. I bring this little chunk of an article up because it's from 1978. and fed and fed and interviewed and fed information and fed information.
01:24:07
Speaker
over time and has never been able to give us Renee Greger's body. And I think that is one of the the biggest things for me. So we have missing bodies in here. Linda Hamilton is missing.
01:24:21
Speaker
Renee Greger still missing today. If he really wanted to get out of Florida, giving up one of those bodies would have been the ticket.
01:24:33
Speaker
Right, and I feel like I don't know why it fell through, but my guess is he was not able to do that. Yeah. He either didn't know or is doing one of those things where he's trying to say something they want to say to get something he wants to get, but he just can't make the connection because he really isn't the guy.
01:25:00
Speaker
Right, and I honestly, I don't feel like he is the guy in this case. I think this has would have a standalone motive. um I think we could probably peel off a couple of these crimes as unrelated to him. I've tried to map them out in a way that makes sense. I mean, when you're dealing with this many states, which you and I have done before, it gets complicated pretty fast, both to like kind of lump things together and also to split things apart.
01:25:29
Speaker
Right, but, I mean, are there any unsolved cases in any of the areas? I mean, because to me, they just lumped them all together and said, okay, we we're going to need you to, you know, be culpable for all of these, basically.
01:25:45
Speaker
I mean, he ultimately, like, he confesses to 12 additional murders. 12 extra murders. Now...
01:25:57
Speaker
I think we've gotten pretty good on like three murders and a couple of attempted murders. And that's based on driving around with the stolen property in the vehicle. Right. But even, i mean, here we have, you know, John Feeney's parents a year later saying, yeah, the task force, ah they decided it was this guy and we don't think it is. And that's that.
01:26:21
Speaker
yeah And that bothers me. Like, he's one of those people. He's sort Like, I get fascinated by serial killers who kill themselves and keep their secrets. That's one of the big things for me.
01:26:32
Speaker
But the ones that live forever is even weirder. Well, I'm not so sure that this guy wouldn't tell somebody. I think he would. I mean, ah like, I think if he had any of this information, it then becomes kind of the question for me is...
01:26:48
Speaker
Can he just not tell him because he doesn't remember or because he it? don't think he ever had it to begin with. Yeah. that's kind I feel like he would have given it up, especially the last round of confessions that happened in 21.
01:27:03
Speaker
he would have given him everything he had because i it said it almost seemed like he was i like it was like a come to Jesus type moment, you know? and Like preparing for the end of life?
01:27:15
Speaker
Possibly, but like that most of those were just the cases that he was initially going to be arrested for when he fought off the seven officers and then went to Florida or whatever.
01:27:27
Speaker
weren't Weren't they? What do you mean? they were they He was already suspected in those cases. He didn't give them new information. i don't think so. I think they gave him information.
01:27:39
Speaker
It's possible. And my point being that if he knew where Rene Greger's body was, he would have told them. And he doesn't know. yeah. yeah Okay, yeah, yeah. That's kind of what I'm saying, too.
01:27:51
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know why he doesn't know. Like, if he was really high it doesn't remember. Or if he never knew in the first place. I don't think he ever knew in the first place. um It's a weird... It's a really weird predicament. But, you know,
01:28:05
Speaker
i It is what it is at this point. I don't see anything about that changing. yeah i this is one of those cases where I look at it and like there are certain aspects of it that are such a disaster.
01:28:18
Speaker
like Why would we make a monster out of this guy rather than doing the work on the other cases? Is it somehow easier? don't think they have anything to go off of at this point besides that.
01:28:31
Speaker
Because you would think with a van being found like that, that there would be some kind of evidence if you got a happy crazy person. You know what i mean? There'd be evidence of whoever did it. Fingerprint, blood, something.
01:28:42
Speaker
Absolutely, there would be. And that the issue is... the task force went a certain way. Yeah. And it was the wrong way. Yeah. This one bothers me. And like, it it bothers me in a different way than like the, the Lucas and tools stuff. This is like a set of open homicides that have now been linked in a way that,
01:29:05
Speaker
If you did find evidence and you found that somebody had kept something with some DNA on it or fingerprints, they got automatic reasonable doubt because of this task force and the way they've gone after Edward Surratt.
Investigation Challenges & Podcast Closing
01:29:20
Speaker
Right. And it's, it essentially, it is what it is. It's never going to be anything else. Yeah. Yeah. i don't I don't have a lot more on this one. this case like this is like a type of This is a type of case when I think about it too much, which it comes up, like I said, it's it's come up different times. I go on kind of a rabbit hole hunt for for information on it.
01:29:40
Speaker
When I do that, it keeps me up at night. because i Well, let's not do that then. You got anything else on this one? not that.
01:29:52
Speaker
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01:31:16
Speaker
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