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Season Six: Holiday Episode 16 (2025)
46 Plays50 minutes ago
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Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
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Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
True Crime XS and Hostage Focus
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:59
Speaker
I did end up, like, putting a few in here. Strange way to start an episode, but it's it's fine. i I try to stick to American cases, and I know some of the ones we've done aren't.
00:01:12
Speaker
But it's interesting to me how weird hostage takings can be in America.
00:01:24
Speaker
Like we had the cat case. We had a couple of different cases that we put up. And i think when, and this is not always true, but when hostage takings take place in the rest of the world, there's usually some kind of political or financial motive. That's really obvious, right? Well, that would be the logical thing, it,
00:01:46
Speaker
it It seems like the mileage varies. It does. But some of them, you ever just look at something and go I don't, know what happened i would say to a certain extent most hostage situations and it's completely illogical don't get me wrong are by accident or some way to garner attention yeah so that's what i've kind of come to the conclusion of and this is like a ah weird way to look at it i guess you're doing something that's something for whatever reason doesn't go well
00:02:23
Speaker
And suddenly you now have these people with you that you have to deal with. Well, right. And those are the unexpected hostage situation. Spontaneous hostages, I guess. Kind of a little bit. Like spontaneous is not the worst idea well and see in some cases you've got people who are like okay i need to say something to somebody that won't otherwise listen to me and the way i'm gonna do that is put these like innocent lives on the line unless they listen to me right right that's sort of the only real
00:02:59
Speaker
I mean, not the only. it That is what oh the behavior that comes out when you're like, I'm going to take somebody hostage. So that means you're going to go to a place where they're at, and you're going to be there with them, and you're going to barricade them off from escaping, leaving, or being in contact with others. That's a hostage situation, which is different than a kidnapping, right? Yeah.
00:03:22
Speaker
And so i think that ah they end up spontaneously being hostages, the very first time a demand goes wrong in a situation that was otherwise not going to be a hostage situation. Yeah. So yeah, I look at some of them and I wonder what's happening. this is one of the weirder ones for me.
00:03:48
Speaker
it takes place in a weird place.
Salt Lake City Public Library Case Introduction
00:03:50
Speaker
The hostages are strange people. did you spend a lot of time in the library when you were a kid
00:04:02
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I guess I did. i grew up in a different time and place. And so, yeah, I was in the public library to get books. I remember going like from about the third grade to probably the ninth grade or so.
00:04:20
Speaker
I spent a ton of time at my local library. I even had, so my mom would take me. There were times when I had this really close friend that I was in youth group with, and and we did lots of stuff together. His mom would take us.
00:04:35
Speaker
I got lots of Stephen King books, which it was weird because I kind of peppered Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary and Stephen King together with, like, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown. So I was, I had this, like, sort of menagerie of different types of books I like to listen to. i like to read during that time. And then I graduated to listening to books.
00:05:02
Speaker
um sometime in the next couple of years. And at first, when you listen to books, they used to be literally on tape, like books on tape. And then they became CDs. And now you can like stream them. And like even the library is kind of relegated at this point to... Kindle is almost its own library. and like all the time, you send me things and you're like, you can get it here, here, or here online. And it's its entire book. And usually, every time you do something like that,
00:05:29
Speaker
like When you're sending me something to read, i find this whole group of things I've never thought of. Right. Exactly. yeah no, it's really come a long way. Yeah.
00:05:40
Speaker
So the place that we're talking about today is in Salt Lake City, but it's the public library. And... The version of this that we have, like in terms of like the history of it, this building is housed, like there's a period of time where it's housed in the Salt Lake City and County building. That starts back 1898. So it's the Salt Lake City Public Library.
00:06:05
Speaker
But they get a donation of land and money. And John Packard in 1900 arranges for this new library to be built in downtown Salt Lake City. That building is on the National Register of Historic Places.
00:06:20
Speaker
It remains in use until the 1960s, and they move to a new home like across from the city and county building, which they they build up on its own. And it is it's dedicated in October of 1964. It's the day before Halloween.
00:06:37
Speaker
ah In 1965, that library is renovated into what's now known as the Hanson Planetarium. And ultimately, we end up with this old main branch building, and that's where we're sort of sitting today.
00:06:51
Speaker
There's a a number of things that happened in these different buildings. In early 1998, they had this big $84 million dollars library bond that was done. It's the 100th anniversary of the Salt Lake City Library, and they relocated to a new building, which is half a block north.
00:07:10
Speaker
And they have a very famous architectural firm come in. ah They... build this into, I think the Leonardo is where it ends up being.
00:07:23
Speaker
Over the years, there's been interesting things that have happened in these different locations. um In July of 2005, a woman jumped from the roof of the second, the newer building.
00:07:33
Speaker
March of 2011, a woman jumped from the fourth floor inside the building. They both died. These are very public buildings. ah deaths that are occurring a woman had jumped from the third floor balcony inside one of the library buildings and and heart and killed herself um in april 2012 a man jumped from one of those so inside balconies to their death on june 10th of 2013 man jumped from the roof and the library was shut down for the whole day
00:08:06
Speaker
in ah november 2013 man who's about the same age and it's around the same time of day he was witness jumping off the roof of the building but he survives again they close the library down for the day all of that is so incredibly alarming it is it is it is alarming and so there's this weird incident that happened it's not in the building that we're going to be talking about none of these are real these are part of the system and the branch of the library we're talking about. But they have this weird incident in September of 2016 where a bomb explodes on the third floor of the main building.
00:08:42
Speaker
Nobody ends up being hurt. um The only damage to the building was some some burning on a broken window. But they ended up evacuating the building and having they had close down the traffic on South Street and East Street in downtown Salt Lake City.
00:08:58
Speaker
um and I say all of this because I'm kind of giving a little history of the library. It's had some weirder things happen along the way, and that's where we land today, basically, is an incident that occurs at the Salt Lake City Public Library on one of the old main branches. This happens March 5th of 1994. Yeah.
Clifford Lynn Draper's Hostage Situation
00:09:24
Speaker
ninety four So the building that this happens in is now the building that houses the Leonardo, which was very interesting to me. I'm like, i know we're doing hostage taking, but i wanted to talk a little bit about this. This is a massive science and art museum. This building is now, and ultimately they opened the doors on the our arts and science museum, October 8th of 2011, but it was inspired by Leonardo da Vinci.
00:09:52
Speaker
And the idea was they wanted people to learn from his willingness to follow his own curiosity and his general belief, if you follow Da Vinci, that ultimately the arts and sciences are sort of parts of the same adventure or journey or enterprise.
00:10:13
Speaker
So it's it's founded on the idea that in today's thing, I mean, that's even more relevant to And it's you know it's becoming increasingly difficult to synthesize the amount of information available to us. like That's why I mentioned like the library from the perspective of like did you go and read, which I did, but I also would do like different activities in the library. Very early on ah we would have a Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts meetings for different places.
00:10:46
Speaker
At one point, I remember going to... a church for Cub Scouts. And I think I was in Boy Scouts at two different churches over time. I was always involved in youth group. I did a lot of um little theater and little theater would frequently be either in the library or in one of the local churches.
00:11:06
Speaker
While what we're talking about is happening here in the Salt Lake City library, it's affected by something a little strange. ah There is a, essentially a, a Toastmasters,
00:11:20
Speaker
group meeting you know what that is i know what toastmasters is yep so i don't i did not know much about it but apparently toastmasters is like 120 years old or something like maybe 100 years old the idea coming out of something ralph smedley did do you know the history of this whole i don't really know the history what i know is it's a club a group of people who get together and they ah enhance their public speaking of the ability. Yeah, that's so fascinating to me that they do that. But ultimately, they run these programs called Pathways, which do different things.
00:11:56
Speaker
It has a little public speaking, but it's really about communication, management, leadership, and confidence. But then they do this whole other thing called Speechcraft. And speech craft is exactly what you said.
00:12:07
Speaker
It's like, how do you, you know, interact with with the public or give essentially speeches or talks ah in public? And i I find all of this so interesting. I um personally enjoyed public speaking I enjoyed debate.
00:12:27
Speaker
I never felt like it was a thing I was really scared of. I would get nervous. I get a little stage fright, but I can just do it anyways. It's kind of power through it. And in my house now, ah it's just my wife and I, and we both have...
00:12:43
Speaker
day-to-day positions where we're required to present things in public frequently. um She does a lot of interactions with like large groups of people, and I do interactions with mainly smaller groups of people.
00:12:56
Speaker
um But we have always done that. And I bring all that up because that's what's going on. We have a a group of about eight people in a room having ah a Toastmasters group.
00:13:11
Speaker
And... We have someone who's going to become kind of the focal point of all of this because my sources today are the desert.com, two different articles with two very different sort of rundowns. One of them is right after this incident. incident ah the article takes place 7, 1994. The other is march fifth twenty sixteen so it's kind of the anniversary ah the twentieth anniversary twenty second anniversary of what happened
00:13:42
Speaker
and I do not understand this hostage taking. So according to what we know about a man who is a veteran, than Clifford Lynn Draper, he is going to sort of take hostages during what's called a Tibetan sand painting ceremony.
00:14:09
Speaker
So a group of people, they have come to see a demonstration of a ceremony and clifford then draper is going to jump up on a service desk where you would like check books out and stuff in the fiction section he has a 1911 pistol which is a army issue pistol typically colt m1911 he claims he's got a bomb and And he starts ordering people that are taking place in the ceremony to move over into a nearby conference room.
00:14:44
Speaker
And that conference room is occupied by the eight people from the Toastmasters group. Inside are six everyday people that are part of Toastmasters, a librarian named Gwen Page, and a Salt Lake County Sheriff's deputy named Lloyd Prescott.
00:15:02
Speaker
Now, Lloyd Prescott is in plain clothes. He had come into the conference room and offered to change places with someone who had entered like last into this conference room.
00:15:13
Speaker
So, Gwen Page is standing as Clifford Lynn Draper forces people from this other area of the library into the Toastmasters conference room, the group of people that are there. She starts counting the hostages.
00:15:33
Speaker
And she's told by Clifford Lynn Draper to have them line up against the wall. And and Draper's kind of ranting while he's doing this. And...
00:15:45
Speaker
one of the Toastmasters manages to open a second door to the to conference room and slide people out. But Gwen Page, she chooses to stay in the room because Clifford Lynn Draper is saying, I'm going to shoot people as like people are exiting.
00:16:04
Speaker
Now, the library staff responds to all of this when when Draper starts talking. acting a fool here. They call 911, they evacuate the rest of this massive building. If you go online and look at pictures of it, it's five or six stories tall.
00:16:20
Speaker
And in less than five minutes, they get everybody out of the building. by pulling the fire alarm, which is brilliant. Some of the staff stay on site mainly to provide the police that are coming in with floor plans of the building and kind of the lay of the land. They also are there to help the SWAT teams deal with like some of the essential things on site, including the power to the different floors, operating the telephone, and using the security system.
00:16:52
Speaker
One librarian, her name is Ginny Wright, she's going to hide a group of eight children and their parents, which is on the second floor. And it's pretty close to what's happening here. This is all taking place on the second floor in this building.
00:17:05
Speaker
And she's going to move them into another conference room. And when she does this, Clifford Draper is going to kind of ignore them because he's satisfied with the number of hostages that he has. And he closes the door to this room.
00:17:20
Speaker
and lowers the blinds over the the room's wall. So what I'm picturing here, and I have not seen a specific picture of this conference room, but I'm picturing that some of the walls are interior walls where if you're standing outside, you could see in and kind of watch what's going on. Like it's a big glass cube. Yeah.
00:17:41
Speaker
So another librarian comes up as Draper is lowering the blinds and she's able to get Jenny Wright and this group of people, the eight kids and their parents, out of the building.
00:17:54
Speaker
At this point, Draper, being in this room, he places what he claims is a bomb on the table in the center of this conference room.
Tense Moments and Lieutenant Prescott's Role
00:18:03
Speaker
It's equipped with a dead man's switch, he says, which would cause it to detonate if Draper releases the button he's holding onto.
00:18:13
Speaker
So, we're going to spend a few hours with this guy. and he's gonna start making some interesting demand. One of the first things he says is that he wants back pay for his prior military service, and he wants cash, but he also wants gold and platinum bullion.
00:18:32
Speaker
So bullion is when a metal has been refined to essentially elemental purity and sort of made available in bulk. He also wants a full presidential pardon,
00:18:45
Speaker
So the pardon he would be getting would be from President Bill Clinton at the time. And at one point, he has one of the hostages put more duct tape on this homemade bomb that's sitting in the center of the room because he's worried that he's screwed up in building it and that two of the contact points for the detonator were would potentially spontaneously close.
00:19:12
Speaker
So that makes me think it's real. Well, does everyone ah know that? We don't know. Does everyone know that that's happening? Because that would be the most alarming thing to me. Yeah,
00:19:24
Speaker
yeah i you mean you're already with this crazy person, right? Right. And then they're like, oh, let me get out my duct tape here and fix this problem I just noticed, right? Right. And you're like, what? You know, a lot of situations, if somebody's going to take it upon themselves to hold you hostage, and you're like, well, you know, if I can get out of this once they get what they want, whatever, right? I mean, I don't think that that's the readily...
00:19:56
Speaker
That's not what we think when we're in like normal situations, but in high stress situations, you'd be like, well, I'm just going to do whatever they want to a certain extent until they're placated. Right. yeah But then he's like, let me fix these contacts so they don't touch and accidentally blow up. And you're like, oh, it doesn't matter if I do whatever he wants because he literally has no ability to control what he's doing. Right. Right. Right.
00:20:22
Speaker
I actually had to end the looking up this device to kind of understand what was happening because of how all this goes down. i was curious, like, whether it looked real, was real, all of those things, which we're going to find out here in a minute. But that, like, changes the tone of everything for me, like whether or not the device is real.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I think it's really fortunate that we end up with Lloyd Prescott in the room. like He's the sheriff's deputy who's a lieutenant for the Salt Lake County Sheriff.
00:20:54
Speaker
Now, the way that I see that playing out is he was trying to get a certain number of people, and so he's ushering them in and as people were leaving, he's like ushering more people in. is that Am I right?
00:21:11
Speaker
You mean the hostage taker? Yeah. Yeah, so some people are sneaking out, and like he's probably yelling and waving his gun, trying to get enough people in this room that he's taken seriously to get his billions of dollars and his presidential pardon.
00:21:28
Speaker
Right. and But that's how they Lloyd Prescott ends up, because he's like, oh, you know i because he's in plainclothes, right? Yeah, he's here for the Toastmasters meeting. Okay. And so he, you know, he goes in, right?
00:21:42
Speaker
Correct. He stays in the room. Other people are sneaking out. My guess is he was trying to figure out like if there's something he could do to help. I, I'm going to read some from an article in a minute.
00:21:54
Speaker
He ends up in the position of like displaying a significant amount of heroism. And sometimes I wonder like, is that really heroism? More dumb luck? Like what's going on? And, and like,
00:22:06
Speaker
I am not judging Lloyd Prescott because i do think he thought, i have to help keep these people safe. The rest of it is interesting. Well, it would be a shame if you heard that its Salt Lake County Sheriff's lieutenant that was there ran away.
00:22:26
Speaker
yeah And, like, I think that over the years we've seen even more weird stories where Cops don't do what we expect them to do. I have largely held that certain types of police agencies sort of operate from the perspective of cleanup duty, which is partly true that that is part of their job. But, like, there's some interesting stuff that happens here.
00:22:53
Speaker
So Lloyd Draper, he's got a hostage putting duct tape on this bomb that's on this table in the middle of the room because he's worried that the bomb's going to go off accidentally before he like wants it to.
00:23:09
Speaker
And after he does this, which I think if I were a police officer standing there watching that happen, I would want to know what is going on, that he's making this hostage duct tape on this bizarre contraption.
00:23:22
Speaker
and Yeah. He then doubles down, which I don't think he does this on purpose, Draper. right yeah He announces that everyone... needs to draw straws.
00:23:35
Speaker
And the timing of it with that moment of putting duct tape on this contraption, i think would make it really tense in the room because the reason they're drawing straws is because he needs to determine the order in which they would be shot until its demands were met.
00:23:53
Speaker
So well what do you think about that? That's terrible. Like we're we're we're now moving into complete random chance. He's definitely not going to have anybody in this room having Stockholm syndrome. That's for sure.
00:24:05
Speaker
Well, see, my reaction to that would be like, and this would this would get me shot. I would say, you idiot, just shoot us in the order that we're standing here. right oh yeah you would you would end up shot in this of course i would but like let's draw straws like oh you're gonna make this a fair process you took us hostage yeah i don't know how he was justifying that in his mind but somehow it would just be like your bad luck that you drew the short straw right yeah
00:24:38
Speaker
Because that, you know, drawing straws is is only, which unless I just don't know, but like you can have somebody draw like a shorter or a longer straw, but that's just one order in a sequence, right? Yeah.
00:24:55
Speaker
Unless they're varying lengths, maybe? Well, so... Line up with your straws, shortest to longest. It's interesting that he goes that way with like sort of a game of chance, because it makes me think he didn't show up with like the comprehension to do that. But I guess he did maybe bring the straws. We don't know exactly how he does that.
00:25:17
Speaker
He's prepped in some weird ways. As I previously mentioned, he wanted the presidential pardon back pay from his time in the military. He wants, you know, all the gold and platinum bullion. He is added to his his list of demands that he wants a getaway jet to take him to a foreign country.
00:25:34
Speaker
So by all accounts, this thing sitting on the table is like the size of a large toaster oven, microwave oven, that kind of thing. He's tied his handgun to his wrist with a suicide strap, meaning the gun will go off. He's got the dead man's switch On the other hand, he apparently had sewn razor blades into his pants in case someone tried to grab him.
00:25:59
Speaker
It would cut them. And this is going to be five hours that these people are in the room with this ball of duct tape the size of a microwave sitting on this huge oak table in the library. He...
00:26:12
Speaker
turns down all the offers of the negotiators who arrive on site from the police. He ends up having the hostages sit in a semi-circle around this bomb.
00:26:25
Speaker
And he has them draw straws, which according to one account, it was just links of cord that he had with them. And
00:26:37
Speaker
From what I can tell, we have 10 hostages, and we're sitting in here with one of these hostages being plainclothes police officer, a lieutenant, which means he's not brand new.
00:26:52
Speaker
You know i'm saying? He's been there long enough to get a little rank. I don't know what kind of cop that's going to make him. But he does have a gun. Right. he does. So... so He ends up in this conference room with 10 people. He gives a letter to a guy named Carl Robinson. Now, Carl Robinson had been one of the people helping with the Tibetan sand painting ceremony that was going on.
00:27:18
Speaker
But for some reason, he tells Carl Robinson to mail this letter to William James Mortimer, who is the editor of the Deseret News, just for the record, because I've got this from thedeseret.com. He's handed this letter over and he takes these hostages into the room and we've got like a really weird situation because from what I can tell Prescott, Lloyd Prescott, he's dressed in a members only jacket. He's got like khakis on, but he has a service revolver on him.
00:27:56
Speaker
Now, somebody from the library had ran to the sheriff's office And that's how we end up with with Prescott in here, allegedly. Now, I looked at it and I was trying to see, was Prescott in the room, which is the way it's accounted for previously.
00:28:17
Speaker
And then this account that the Deseret puts out is that Prescott was actually across the street at the sheriff's office and comes over and joins the group.
00:28:31
Speaker
So whichever way is true, I do not know. we have a massive bomb on a table. So ever how Prescott ends up here, whether he's ah originally a part of the Toastmasters or he makes his way across, he kind of ends up in a situation where like he's deliberately putting himself in harm's way. And sometimes when I hear stories about that, i kind of think super cop.
00:28:58
Speaker
And this guy ends up sort of being a super cop. Either way, this was not planned. Yeah. For the police officer, right? Or for the sheriff's deputy.
00:29:09
Speaker
Yeah. So the deputy ends up in this situation. other the He's a lieutenant, by the way. The the sheriff's deputy is a lieutenant.
00:29:19
Speaker
He ends up in here. He tries to talk to Draper, he gets this letter. He shows the letter that he's supposed to be mailing to the desert to Draper, and says, what is this for?
00:29:33
Speaker
And Draper tell the same thing that he told Robinson. And Lloyd Prescott says, I don't know what's going on here, but you're scaring me with that gun. What do you want me to do? According to Lloyd Prescott's account many years later, Draper tells him to come in and sit down.
00:29:46
Speaker
So he's walking into the room, And he sits down in this version. He sees that Draper has a a gun and there's a bomb. According to a quote from Lloyd Prescott, he says, one of the rules of law enforcement is don't create a greater hazard than the hazard you're trying to overcome.
00:30:02
Speaker
And he said, I couldn't do anything here to shoot without endangering innocent people. So he chooses a chair and he sits down. Now, the title of this article is Remembering a Textbook Case of Courage and Heroism.
00:30:17
Speaker
And Prescott's quote here to the author many, many years later, the author here is Lee Benson, by the way, who he write usually writes slice of life columns for the desert. I find that to be interesting.
00:30:31
Speaker
He says, this is a textbook scenario for a situation like this involving an irrational, likely paranoid schizophrenic. It's for a police trained police negotiator to talk him down, get him off the ledge, as it were.
00:30:44
Speaker
I knew I had to sit there and let the negotiator bond with him, do the work, and talk him out. Nobody gets hurt. Everybody walks out. It's all a happy ending, and I'll be the insurance policy.
00:30:55
Speaker
So for the next five hours, Lieutenant Prescott poses as a garden variety hostage. When Draper asks him what he does for a living, he says, a bookkeeper.
00:31:09
Speaker
Draper makes everybody take off their coats and And Lloyd Prescott realizes he's in trouble. His coat is hiding his gun. So Prescott says, I'm really cold. Can I please leave my coat on?
00:31:22
Speaker
And this outrages Draper, who says under no circumstances is he allowed to keep his coat on. So he takes his jacket off and he pulls his shirt out of his pants so that he can basically tuck the tail over his gun. Guess what Draper does at this point?
00:31:40
Speaker
i don't know. The hostage taker calls the local radio station. and he We had that happen before. Yep. He starts requesting songs, though. He's not telling them about the situation. So at this point, while Draper is busy making phone calls to the local radio station,
00:31:57
Speaker
Lloyd Prescott takes the opportunity to look around him. He sees Earl Dillon, who has his eyes closed. Prescott's comment later was, I thought he might be asleep, but I realized he was praying.
00:32:10
Speaker
He sees a woman from Orem named Dela Cruz is reading a book. And Draper had told her she could read, so she did. And in Prescott's opinion, she had just divorced herself from the reality of the situation altogether.
00:32:26
Speaker
Nathan Black, a student from BYU, cracked jokes. Gwynn Page did everything that draker that Draper asked of her. That was the librarian, right? That's the librarian.
00:32:39
Speaker
But one of the hostages is Sue Allison. Sue Allison is a diabetic who doesn't have her insulin, and she is obviously in some level of distress. Now there's another woman there named Virginia Savage who is doing her best to comfort Sue Allison as Sue Allison goes into a little bit of diabetic shock. So Lloyd focuses on this crazy device that we've been talking about.
Resolution and Draper's Background
00:33:02
Speaker
So he could see parts of the device and he knew that black powder from his own days as a hunter would be a low level explosive. He figures that it won't be strong enough to penetrate through the table that it's sitting on.
00:33:17
Speaker
So the table that it's on is this massive oak table. And he starts like talking to himself, trying to get himself ready to do it. And the best thing he can think of is if he gets everyone below the table level, like so everybody's low, that the bomb won't be able to get through it. So that's how Prescott thinks he's going to like – deal with this situation.
00:33:46
Speaker
He's going to buy himself enough time that by the time they start drawing straws and and seeing who's going to draw the shortest length of cord and be shot, because he's going to try and convince the authorities that he's serious. Prescott's looking at it and he's like, okay, that's my limit. That's my line.
00:34:06
Speaker
So in Prescott's opinion, he's got to stop him from killing it He can do something. So Gwen Page and him lean down. Draper, the hostage taker, is going to get his knife out of his bag for Gwen to do the straws. And Prescott sees that as the moment he has to do something.
00:34:22
Speaker
So he's watching out of the corner of his eye. And the way that he talks about this, Prescott describes it as like seeing it from the perspective of kind of being out of body.
00:34:35
Speaker
He says he stood up and as loud as he could yell, he yelled, sheriff's office hit the floor. And all the people are bailing back from the table in the chairs.
00:34:46
Speaker
He sees Draper turn on him and he's thinking, okay, I'm This guy's gonna take me down. He's got his hand on his gun, his fingers on the trigger, and he says, I have no idea why he's not shooting, but he doesn't shoot.
00:35:01
Speaker
And ultimately, Draper doesn't get off a single shot. But Lloyd Prescott fires five shots. Center mass, every one of them hits Draper. Prescott then joins everybody on the floor and wonders why the bomb hasn't gone off.
00:35:18
Speaker
All he can hear... is absolute silence. And then the SWAT team busting through the walls, like the glass walls. It turns out that Draper had not wired the Deadman's switch properly.
00:35:34
Speaker
So when his hand let go of the device, no connection was made. Now the bomb squad is going to come up, and they're not going to dare to move this device.
00:35:45
Speaker
They set it off right where it was. And guess what? It went off. It doesn't penetrate the table. Oh, just like he said. Yep, it does explode. So according to what I've read about this, this bomb was some kind of like anti-personnel claymore mine rig. So it would look like something like a... ah Have you ever seen like the claymores?
00:36:12
Speaker
Like the that they go in the ground on kind of on two sticks and then you roll a detonation device off of it? So essentially, we use them in Vietnam. They would be used for like either perimeter or for pushing out. And when they blow up, they get everybody on one side of it. So I'm pretty sure they said, like, face toward enemy on one side.
00:36:37
Speaker
yeah That's the kind of thing that this guy has essentially brought into this library to kill people with. That's wild, right? I mean...
00:36:49
Speaker
It's unnecessary for sure. ah i have a really hard time imagining this because it's so... Absurd? antiquated, ah barbarian, like it's just ridiculous, right? Yes.
00:37:06
Speaker
It is ridiculous. And it you know it feels like it took place forever ago. It took place 31 years ago for people doing math at home. This is so interesting to me, like six, I'm doing math again, plus 25. Yeah, 31 years ago. I got that right.
00:37:22
Speaker
This is so interesting to me that this is the way this guy essentially chose to die. I went hunting for information about Clifford Lynn Draper and all of this, by the way. Also, Deseret News from March 7th, 1994. But this time from Nicole Bonham, who's a staff writer there.
00:37:38
Speaker
I found an article and it says this. It says, Fatal standoff in Salt Lake stuns gunman's family in Arkansas. As they await the return of his body to Arkansas, relatives of Clifford Lynn Draper say they're shocked by news that he was shot down Saturday while holding Salt Lake Library patrons hostage.
00:37:57
Speaker
So the bomb doesn't blow up, but he's got five bullets on him. And as they take him over to the Latter-day Saints Hospital, he's pronounced dead on arrival. Clifford Draper is.
00:38:09
Speaker
Now, according to this, Salt Lake City's sheriff, Lloyd Prescott, had infiltrated the circle of hostages. So again, we're back to that. He's not there for the Toastmasters. He joins the Toastmasters. He eventually shoots Draper when he sensed the situation had turned deadly.
00:38:26
Speaker
Draper, dressed in fatigued, threatened to detonate a homemade bomb and also suggested the group would have to draw the straws of cord to determine who would die. In Newport, Arkansas, Clifford Draper's father learned of the incident from a television news report.
00:38:40
Speaker
The elder Draper had been ill in recent weeks and said the news left him shaken. When contacted Monday, Clifford Draper Sr. said he talked to Salt Lake investigators and he had nothing more to say about his son's role in the library siege.
00:38:53
Speaker
But according to Evelyn Draper, who is his aunt, she said his father's been ill, is still ill. They said they don't think he's going to make it through. His dad saw his picture on television, which I think Find a Grave has a picture of Clifford Draper up that you guys can check out.
00:39:10
Speaker
The last time the woman said she talked to Clifford Lynn Draper was when he was a teenager. He was my husband's nephew, but I haven't seen much of him since his teens. At that time, he was a sweet, bright boy. Evelyn Draper said she didn't know how he had changed into a man who had threatened the lives of 18 total hostages and like in Salt Lake City.
00:39:28
Speaker
So I know we've got 10 in the room with Prescott, nine or 10. I think they're thinking of the group of eight that kind of sneak out in a way or the eight with the parents and kids. Either way, this number doesn't totally jive with what police have reported, but it's close ah depending on which group they count as being other hostages.
00:39:51
Speaker
So Clifford Lynn Draper was one of four children. He was raised by his dad and a stepmom after his mom died when he was very young. He had been placed in rehabilitation, but he had walked away at least once. So he's in rehab for something.
00:40:06
Speaker
He worked in Utah as a bell ringer for the Salvation Army for three weeks during the Christmas season. He had been hired after responding to job notices, placed at posts along the valley and in shelters. That's according to Jeff Shoup, who at the time was the director of human resources for the Salvation Army.
00:40:25
Speaker
He was first stationed at a Smith's Food and Drug Center in Murray, Utah, but he was relocated after store personnel complained that he behaved bizarrely.
00:40:38
Speaker
They went to the store. Employees and the store director or manager refused to comment about Clifford Draper. Initially, quote, he got a bit defensive, really denied the allegations by the store, according to Shoup. Shoup said, I didn't know it was that bizarre, adding he had warned the man after this complaint and decided to relocate him to another store.
00:40:59
Speaker
But then Draper got tired of the whole thing. And that's all in quotes, by the way. And quit the job. Clifford Draper's troubled life ended after nearly five and a half hours into a hostage situation in a conference room in the Salt Lake City Library. At this point, they say Lloyd Prescott fired three shots at Draper, striking him in the chest.
00:41:20
Speaker
I've read three and I've read five. I don't know which one is accurate. Both are in narratives and both are in news reports. So Lloyd Prescott is being hailed as a hero, and he's been sought out for national exposure the very next day.
00:41:34
Speaker
It was requested that he appear on the Today Show, but several other news organizations had followed up. with the Today Show inviting him out, and Lloyd Prescott declined to appear on any of them.
00:41:47
Speaker
According to the sheriff's spokesman, Jim Potter, he's humble in that respect. As far as he's concerned, he was just doing his job. The Salt Lake City Attorney's Office had instructed Lloyd Prescott not to speak to the press at this time.
00:42:00
Speaker
So I don't know if he's completely humble or if he's just not wanting to really be involved in this. I think it would be a little wild, in March 1994, to find yourself in a situation where you're standing in a room with a bunch of hostages and this massive bomb and a crazy guy with a gun. Because it's by all accounts, this guy has something very wrong with him. i see the rehab stuff, and I don't know if it's for mental health or for drug abuse of some kind, but if he's wanting a pardon from Bill Clinton and all his back pay, my guess is maybe something happened in the military.
00:42:37
Speaker
that make sense to you? I mean, unless the pardon was like for what he was doing right then. Right, but i mean he wants the military back pay. I'm guessing he was booted.
00:42:48
Speaker
Is there ever a situation where the military doesn't pay them somebody money that they're actually heard? yeah so Yeah, because it operates under the UCMJ. One of the punishments you can get during either an Article 15 hearing, which would be...
00:43:05
Speaker
like a captain's mast in the Navy. I don't know exactly what it would be called, but it's shy of a court martial, but you could essentially be stripped of a rank and stripped of a certain amount of pay.
00:43:17
Speaker
You can be discharged at a courts martial. You could also be stripped of rank held in detention. um But having been stripped of pay, that wouldn't be money you're legitimately owed.
00:43:29
Speaker
I don't disagree with that statement. No. Okay. That's what I mean. Like if he was, if he was genuinely owed back pay, right? Yes. Uh, there would be a different route for him to take to get it.
00:43:43
Speaker
Yeah. As opposed to holding people hostage. Yeah. I think that even the most unhealthy mental state
00:43:58
Speaker
could fathom the very real possibility that having taken an explosive device into a library, public library where people are, along with a gun, right?
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah. That he probably would not be coming out alive. I would agree with that, yeah. And so this is like a really long route to suicide.
00:44:23
Speaker
Oh, you think this is just suicide by police? Yeah. Well, I don't know. i definitely don't think that he thought a police officer would be in there with him. No, and I wonder how differently this would have gone if if Prescott didn't go in there.
00:44:37
Speaker
Well, like, he's the one who who basically ended it, right? Correct. mean, because he shot him. Without him in there, he could have legitimately been going to blow up the device and, be like, kill himself and everybody else, right? Yes. And so, you know, to me, if he if he had died by... i mean, that he did end up sort of dying, like, suicide by cop, sort of. Correct. But if he had pulled...
00:45:06
Speaker
the dead man switch or if the dead man switch had ignited the bomb, like that's suicide, right? Yes. Cause he brought the, he brought it in and he's the one who ignited it. And so I'm just saying like, to me, it's like taking a really absurd, selfish second to like air your grievances right before you die. yeah That's what it seems like to me anyway. I just, I don't see how he thought, you know,
00:45:35
Speaker
It was going to go differently. so you're thinking there's no way like he legitimately thought anybody was going to be able to get him a pardon or get him a plane or get him a bunch of gold or back pay? Well, see, and again, I'm not exactly sure because we don't know exactly what was wrong with him. If it was chemically induced, it would be maybe slightly different than if it was like an actual mental health crisis. right But I would say that anybody who is got their list of demands. I would say that they know that it's unlikely they're going to get them and that they're just ready to die. yeah
00:46:16
Speaker
That's so where I land with this one it's kind of my final thoughts on it, but you can talk as much as you want. I will respond on this one where I land with this is I don't think this guy was like walking around on the same planet with us.
00:46:31
Speaker
Like, I think something had affected him in a a mental illness or potentially drug-fueled psychosis, I suppose, that had unfortunately left him unable to perceive, like, any concept of reality. And I say that mainly because of how extreme his demands were and how ridiculous they were and how he, like, came into a library essentially pushing along a bomb.
00:47:04
Speaker
Like, that's so strange to me. Why would you blow up a library? Like, was just talking about, like, my memories of libraries. That would be the last place I would want to do anything like that. I don't think that he had, he didn't care he was blowing up the library. was the, the intention was to, like, do this or I'm going to hurt people. Yeah.
00:47:25
Speaker
yeah It wasn't that I'm going to like blow up the library. But it it is all it all falls short, right? Because none of it makes sense. like You happen to have a situation where however he ended up getting in there, a law enforcement officer got in there.
00:47:41
Speaker
right And you know if he would if he came from across the street that quickly, he didn't think about what he was doing, right? Right, right.
00:47:51
Speaker
And so to me, as soon as you're deadpanned in a room with strangers that you just, what's the word? You heard it in there, right From a hostage taker's perspective? From the the hostage taker has like herded these hostages into the room. And then he's like, okay, now I'm going have you all draw straws for the order in which you're going to be shot. Right? Yeah.
00:48:20
Speaker
Okay. And then, of course, like everybody's like, yeah, we're not doing that. but that person clearly is not on the same planet we are. Anybody that does that. Anybody who says, okay, pick the order you're going to die in. Yeah, i you know what? This is like the wildest thing because I, first of all, I have a lot of admiration for Lloyd Prescott for getting in the room and saving these people.
Reflection and Closing Remarks
00:48:44
Speaker
And I have a lot of empathy for Clifford Draper.
00:48:48
Speaker
Something was wrong and somehow his world had gotten to the point that like he could not, bring himself back to reality. And this is the way he went out. And i think, I'm not faulting Prescott either, because i I do believe, of all the things we've talked about, this is one of the deadliest and most dangerous hostage takings I think we've talked about.
00:49:14
Speaker
Well, the bomb, I mean, the dead man's search didn't ignite the bomb, right? Right. But they definitely said that the explosive would have worked, at least to some degree. and it's in a glass room.
00:49:28
Speaker
They ended up blowing it up, right? Right. So the dead man's switch didn't activate it. And that was a gamble he took, right? Because he said, i figured if they got under the the oak table, they would be protected from the blast. It was a calculated determination, right? Yep. just so happened it didn't go off. But then when the bomb squad came in after that would be after everybody's out of the room, you know they did they ended up blowing it up and it did protect so so he was right right yeah yeah i would have been worried about the concussion like breaking the glass windows personally but i understand what he's saying about the force not being able to so the the way the bomb was set up there was a lot of shrapnel inside and the idea was the shrapnel would just be forced immediately into the table and it wouldn't have the distance
00:50:20
Speaker
or the the percussion, so to speak, to travel and to harm anyone else. Well, right. because and But the trick was they couldn't just be close to the table. They needed to be under underneath it. Yeah, under it from the perspective of the table providing them shelter, perspective, shielding from the explosion.
00:50:41
Speaker
Right. And so it was a calculated risk. He was correct. yeah The dead man switch didn't work anyway, so it didn't end up mattering. And ah I have a little bit, I don't know that I actually have empathy for Draper. I feel, i don't know what causes that.
00:50:59
Speaker
I just think it's just, now granted, this is in 94. Correct. correct And so maybe things have changed since then. And that's why I feel this way. But like, everybody's got problems. Deal with them.
00:51:14
Speaker
Don't take other people hostage, right? Right. Yeah, i'm I'm torn by like how far in the psychosis he was because he clearly is acting out like some terrible things here. I do not know. like He's had a break from reality, but like he's clearly also able to take hostages and have a weapon in the room.
00:51:35
Speaker
Well, he built that bomb. That's what So, like, where is he? Like, in in time and space, like, where is this guy and what do you do with him? That's all I was coming from in terms of having empathy. Oh, well, he would just need, like, it let's say, like, if, well, and I don't know.
00:51:54
Speaker
I don't know what he looked like without the bomb, right? Yeah. That's literally the driving factor. If he didn't have the bomb, he didn't have a gun, and he just asked people like politely to come into the conference room. Right. I mean, i guess he might have had a few takers, but as soon as he started talking all that nonsense, they would have left, right? Yep. And so that was like the real...
00:52:16
Speaker
That's the whole point, right? That's the whole reason you have those types of weapons is like you force people to listen to you because otherwise they're going to do something terrible, right? Yeah.
00:52:27
Speaker
and i I don't know where he was sort of on that. I really do feel like this was just his last hurrah before he knew he'd be taken out of his misery. But if we saw him on the streets, no weapons, no anything that would harm somebody else, I mean, the answer would be like he needs to go to be evaluated psychologically, right? Yeah, that's all right. Well, I included this one. it was It's definitely one of the more interesting hostage-taking situations that I've come across. There's not a lot of like additional materials in the this. It's kind of treated sensationally and like stuck into like Rescue 911 and... I Survived some of those like shows. So you can see episodes of that. A lot of those are available on Hulu and on YouTube. I did watch a couple of them. They were not much more insightful as to like what was actually going on beyond what we talked about here today. But I did i found this to be a really interesting hostage taking. And I wanted to include it because we were doing hostage taking for
00:53:42
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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00:56:16
Speaker
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