Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Five Home For the Holidays 17
47 Plays1 hour ago
In Today’s Episode, we put together our Home for the Holiday cases.
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS by slip.fm. The song is “No Scars”.
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Recommended
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.
Podcast Introduction: True Crime XS
00:00:22
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
Interest in 'Home for the Holidays' Cases
00:00:29
Speaker
I like covering the home for the holidays cases for a number of reasons. And I picked this one because in my opinion, this guy has like a ah really, really interesting story.
Overview of Los Angeles County Case
00:00:42
Speaker
And even beyond the um wrongful conviction that gets tied in here. I like his story. I thought he was like one of the most interesting people. He is like one of the older cases from the cases that we've covered for 2024. And it's a Los Angeles
1968 Robbery and Murder Case Details
00:01:01
Speaker
County case. I only had three sources because he's not really talked about that much. You can find
00:01:06
Speaker
like a couple different ah places you can read about him. But the Los Angeles Times is like the main source. There's a book, I have not read the book, called Last Man Standing. And in addition to the Los Angeles Times, there was a little bit of a story from him that came out as a New York Times story. And then we have obviously the National Registry of Exonerations. And we have some court documents for his case that take place at different points in time.
00:01:35
Speaker
I thought that we would stick to the kind of standard format because it's a murder case and it's Los Angeles County, California. It does have robbery and assault as additional convictions. It takes place in 1968 at the holiday time and it ends up resulting in 1972. He's convicted and it results in a sentence of 25 to life.
Santa Monica Incident and Misidentification
00:01:57
Speaker
This is a black male. He's 21 years old. There's no DNA related to this case, but there is some mistaken witness ID. There's perjury or false accusation. And then there's also official misconduct. His case in chief is not super complicated, but then we have his life to talk about. So I figured we would start with like the story of his exoneration, I'll move over to the court documents and then we'll talk about this guy's life. So in December of 1968, a couple playing tennis in Santa Monica, California was robbed at gunpoint by two black men. The woman was shot and killed.
00:02:34
Speaker
and the man survived. There's a guy that is a Black Panther Party member named Julius Butler, and he has not been getting along great with the Black Panther Party in 1968. So he tells police that another man who's a higher ranking member of the Black Panther Party did it. The survivor of the robbery doesn't initially identify anyone from the Black Panther Party.
Elmer Pratt's Background and Black Panther Party
00:02:57
Speaker
but he does later pull him out of a photo array and uses that to bolster identifying him at trial. There was another witness who identifies but the gentleman that we're about to talk about in a photo array as one of the men that they saw at a nearby store on the night of the crime.
00:03:17
Speaker
But neither of these people actually pull him out, even though they get him in the photo array and they confirm it at trial, they don't pull him out of the lineup when they do a police lineup. There was a third witness. They saw two men who had committed this robbery driving away in a car that they describe as basically being this
Impact of FBI's COINTELPRO on Pratt's Case
00:03:38
Speaker
guy's car. For his part, the person who ends up convicted here maintains that he was in Oakland at the time of the murder. The person that we're talking about is a guy named Elmer Pratt. Elmer Pratt was born September 13th, 1947. What's interesting about Elmer Pratt is he goes by Geronimo, by the way.
00:03:59
Speaker
He is born in Morgan City, Louisiana. His father was a guy who worked in the scrap metal business. So Elmer is raised Catholic in Louisiana. He's a star quarterback at Sumter Williams High School. And he served two combat tours as a soldier, reaching the rank of sergeant and during the Vietnam War. He was highly decorated.
00:04:25
Speaker
He had two bronze stars, he had a silver star, and he had two purple hearts. He would later move to Los Angeles. After leaving the army, Elmer Pratt, he studies political science at UCLA using his GI Bill. He becomes politically active, and a couple of guys named Bunchy Carter and John Huggins,
00:04:49
Speaker
they end up recruiting him into the Black Panther Party. When Elmer joined the Black Panthers, his years in the Army proved to be very useful for the organization. He quickly became known as the Deputy Minister of Defense of the local chapter of the Black Panther Organization.
00:05:08
Speaker
Now, Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, they're actually killed in an operation in 1969. Their death was part of what's known as a co-intel, and that was a series of covert and illegal projects that were conducted between 1956 and 1977. COINTELPRO was aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, and discrediting and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI and the Department of Justice procedures threats to national security, but to U.S. citizens, and ah generally were labeled as subversive.
Caroline Olson's Murder and Trial
00:05:50
Speaker
By doing this, they were operating kind of on both sides of like racial parodies at the time. They were doing the KKK, they were hitting the Black Panther Party. They were operating in a way that a lot of people got labeled as domestic terrorism. And the domestic terrorism label stuck with the Black Panther Party for many, many years.
00:06:13
Speaker
Elmer gets the name Geronimo after Geronimo, the prominent Apache chief who was a leader of resistance to US domination. i don't know I don't know if you've ever heard his story before. Geronimo was a military leader and he was actually a medicine man from a band of the Apache people. And from 1850 to 1886,
00:06:37
Speaker
he had joined up with other central Apache bands to carry out numerous raids. He fought against not just the U.S. Army, but also the Mexican Army. And he actually lived to be quite old for a man who had done as much as he did. He ends up passing away in February of 1909 at the age of 79. But his raids and the other combat that he took part in were part of a prolonged period of what would literally be the Apache Wars. And the Apache Wars in the United States, they took place from 1849 to 1886. I don't know if you've ever read up on those, but if you're just looking for something fascinating in terms of American history, reading up on the Apache Wars is fascinating. And not a lot of people cover that in this day and age in terms of media. It's kind of Old West stuff. The murder charges that Elmer Pratt ends up with, or Geronimo Pratt ends up with,
00:07:31
Speaker
In 1968, a woman named Caroline Olson, she's 27 years old, she's an elementary school teacher. She is shot during this robbery we talked him about on the ah tennis court in Santa Monica. Her husband, Kenneth, he's also shot, but he survives. And he's the one who ultimately identifies Pratt as the killer in a photo array.
Trial Focus on Black Panther Affiliations
00:07:54
Speaker
The gentleman we talked about that was a member of the Panther Party that was disgruntled is named Julius Butler. He had been a police informant, and he's gonna be accused at different periods of time as being sort of an infiltrator inside the Black Panther Party. because he does not have a lot of loyalty to what's happening with the Panther Party themselves. And he ends up testifying that Geronimo Pratt had confessed to him and discussed the murder with him on multiple occasions.
00:08:22
Speaker
Now, in 1971, so this is after the murder, but it's actually before the arrest comes about for Geronimo. His wife, Sandra, she's killed when she's eight months pregnant and her body is left in ah in a ditch. Her murder is attributed to a split that was happening in the Black Panther Party at the time between people who supported a man named Huey Newton and people who supported Eldridge Cleaver.
00:08:53
Speaker
So Geronimo and Sondra, they belong to the side of the Panthers that were sort of going with Eldredge Clean. Later on, Geronimo comes to think that what happened to Sondra was a lie that had been made up by either informants or possibly by members of the Department of Justice itself. He believed that Sondra's murder was unrelated to anything to do with the Black Panther Party. But By the time all this is happening, the Los Angeles FBI office had gotten permission from the national headquarters to run operations or counterintelligence efforts. They had gotten permission from FBI in Washington to run
00:09:39
Speaker
ah counterintelligence operations in an effort designed to, quote, challenge the legitimacy of the authority exercised by local Black Panthers, including Geronimo Pratt.
Unsuccessful Appeals and Trial Fairness
00:09:51
Speaker
There are FBI memos related to this, and if you aren't into going down the Apache wars rabbit hole,
00:09:59
Speaker
Co-Intel Pro and the late 60s into the early 70s related to the Black Panther Party on the West Coast is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down. One of those memos, which is dated five months into 1970, I believe the memo had a date of May 18th, 1970. It noted that the FBI was considering how counterintelligence measures might be used to essentially neutralize this deputy minister of defense in Geronimo Pratt as how he functioned within the Black Panther Party and how he helped them advance. In the middle of all this, after Butler has essentially turned on Geronimo,
00:10:49
Speaker
The FBI gives enough information to local police that they end up arresting and charging Elmer Pratt with murder and with kidnapping. Have you ever heard of this guy or any of this stuff happening, by the way? I've never heard this story. Okay. Geronimo Pratt does what any smart young man who's been charged with murder would do, and he hires an attorney. It just happens that his attorney is a young guy in Los Angeles. Well, actually, let me phrase it this way. Guess who his attorney is. Well, I know who it is. It's Johnny Cochran. It is Johnny Cochran. And I don't know time space wise. So Johnny Cochran passed the bar in 1964. Okay. And this is in 1970 and 71. Okay. So he, he probably wasn't as well known. No, not yet.
00:11:44
Speaker
So i'm pretty sure that didn't happen until the 90s Yeah, I mean he gets to be locally and regionally known for like earlier, but yeah, you're right. He's becomes huge in the 90s So johnny cochran immediately started arguing on behalf of germanimo pratt that the charges should be dropped He claims that he can prove that germanimo had been 350 miles away The night that caroline and kenneth. Olson were shot on the santa monica tennis court A year later, after he makes this argument, Geronimo Pratt is convicted.
Review of Trial Evidence and Testimonies
00:12:17
Speaker
Here's how that kind of goes from the perspective of the court records. And I'm picking up on like a couple of different things here in the court record. So it may sound kind of out of order, but I think it's easier to tell it this way. It says on December 18th, 1968, at about eight o'clock in the evening, Kenneth Olson and his wife, Caroline Olson, a school teacher, they had gone to the Lincoln Park tennis courts in Santa Monica to play tennis.
00:12:41
Speaker
After they had put their money into the light meter, so this was so that they could have lights while they played, it and turned the lights on, they were accosted by two armed black males who ordered them to lie down face down on the pavement. They were relieved of their valuables, which were on a nearby bench, and the gunman turned and from a distance of eight to ten feet opened fire on the Olson's as they lay face down on the tennis court pavement helpless.
00:13:07
Speaker
Caroline Olson subsequently died as as a result of two gunshot wounds that she received. Kenneth Olson was hit five times, and he bled profusely, but he survived. Three expended .45 caliber automatic pistol shell casings and three lead slugs, one found underneath Ms. Olson, were found at the scene of the crime by Officer Richard Plas of the Santa Monica Police Department, and they were marked and booked into evidence.
00:13:34
Speaker
A slug that was removed from Caroline's body in the emergency room of the hospital was also booked into evidence. On January 17th, 1969, at about two o'clock in the afternoon, this is roughly a month after the murder, Al Prentice Carter, and that's the guy that we talked about recruiting Geronimo Pratt into the Black Panthers party. He went by bunchy.
00:13:59
Speaker
and John Huggins, who were considered to be officers in the Black Panther Party, were shot to death in the cafeteria at Campbell Hall on the UCLA campus. The killings occurred during a joint meeting of about 400 members of the Black Student Union and members of the Black Panther Party. There was also another rival Black militant group present called the U.S. Incorporated or the United Slaves Incorporated. it There was quite a bit of friction between the Black Panthers and the United Slaves to take over the Black Student Union at UCLA. So the assassinations of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins, they were attributed to the United Slaves.
00:14:43
Speaker
James F. Navo, he was a state police officer who was assigned to the UCLA campus with a job of penetrating subversive militant groups on campus, and he had infiltrated and become a member of a group called the SDS, or the Students for a Democratic Society. He was also a member of an alliance group called the Friends of the Black Panther Party.
00:15:06
Speaker
Officer Navo testified at a subsequent defense motion to suppress, as evidence, the .45 caliber automatic pistol that had been determined to be the murder weapon in the Olson murder case. He said there was a lot of friction between the Panthers and the United Slaves to take over the Black Student Union.
00:15:25
Speaker
Officer Navajo had gone to Campbell Hall when he heard of the killings. He met a man named Joe Brown, who said, they just blew up two of my brothers. When asked who, Joe Brown said, United Slaves. Joe Brown also told Officer Navajo that other Panthers had split to go to John Huggins' pad to get the shit.
00:15:46
Speaker
And according to Officer Navo, the shit meant weapons or explosives. He said a lot of United Slaves people and a lot of LAPD pigs were going to get blown up that night. Officer Navo knew that John Huggins' address was 806th Century Boulevard in Los Angeles. He immediately communicated this information to his immediate supervisor.
00:16:08
Speaker
on the campus police force, Captain Lynn, and to Sergeant Davis of the Los Angeles Police Department's Intelligence Division, as well as Jim Clark of the state CII. Officer Lloyd Lucy of the LAPD, according to his testimony at the hearing in the defendant's pretrial motion to suppress this .45 caliber weapon,
00:16:30
Speaker
He testified that after he had received the information from Officer Navajo, he and other LAPD officers, in order to prevent the bloodshed, they proceeded to John Huggins' residence at 806 West Century Boulevard, where they observed Melvin Carl Smith and Luanna Campbell emerge carrying a rifle and a metal-type military ammunition box to a car. The car was stopped by police shortly after it departed the area.
00:16:57
Speaker
Moana Campbell had a loaded .45 caliber automatic pistol in the waste brand of her brief hands. There was a .30 caliber rifle, ammunition, camping gear, gas mask, and medical supplies found in
Informant Julio's Letter and Its Legitimacy
00:17:09
Speaker
the car. The defendant, Elmer Pratt, was arrested while while crouching behind a station wagon parked in the driveway outside of this building.
00:17:20
Speaker
Elmer Pratt was unarmed. However, a large arsenal of weapons was found inside the location, including an M1 Garand rifle, a Browning automatic shotgun, a J.C. Higgins shotgun, a 7.65mm pistol, three .45 caliber automatic pistols, three knives, and a bayonet.
00:17:42
Speaker
One loaded .45 caliber automatic pistol found by Officer Jim Finn on a table adjacent to a second floor window overlooking the front of the premises was later determined by a ballistic report to be the weapon used in the tennis court murder of Caroline Olson and the attack on Kenneth Olson on December 18, 1968.
00:18:02
Speaker
On August 10th, 1969, about seven months and three weeks after the tennis court murders, Julius Carl Butler, also known as Julio, met with Sergeant Duane Rice, a black officer of the 77th Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, whom he knew socially and trusted as a friend. Julio handed Rice a sealed envelope. And when this envelope was handed over to Sergeant Rice,
00:18:30
Speaker
Julio told Rice that he felt there was a contract out on his life that he may be killed and that if anything happened to him, he should read it and give it to his mother. The envelope on the outside had written on it, Sergeant Rice, only to be opened in the event of my death.
00:18:46
Speaker
There's a reference here that there are other motions made regarding the circumstances surrounding writing, sealing, and delivering this envelope to Sergeant Rice. We don't get to it at this point in time. Sergeant Rice holds onto this envelope in his possession. According to him, it was unopened for five or six months.
00:19:03
Speaker
When he felt like he might also be killed, he gave the sealed envelope to his commander, Captain Henry, who was from the 77th Division of the LAPD, who took it home and he kept it in his safe, unopened. On October 20th of 1970, this is 14 months after Julio has handed this letter to Rice,
00:19:24
Speaker
and 22 months after the murder of Caroline Olson. The sealed letter, which Butler gave to Sergeant Rice on August 10, 1969, was opened for the first time. In this letter that has been sealed away all this time, Julio states that the defendant, Elmer Pratt,
00:19:42
Speaker
had confessed to him and bragged about being the quote, tennis court murderer. The information contained in the letter inside of the envelope was what caused law enforcement investigators for the very first time to focus on Geronimo Pratt as being involved in the December 18th, 1968 murder of Caroline Olson.
00:19:59
Speaker
Now, the letter itself was not submitted to the trial jury as evidence, but the circumstances surrounding the delivery, safekeeping, and then the opening of the letter were explained to the jury. Julio Butler, who wrote the letter, testified before the grand jury and at trial. He was also cross-examined at length by defense counsel during the trial concerning Elmer Pratt's confession to him.
00:20:21
Speaker
So, the letter itself is a part of the record of the proceedings related to the conviction of Geronimo Pratt. Just getting all of that out there. You following me so far? This is a lie. I'm following you. One thing I'm a little confused about, I just want to make sure. So the letters given to one person, and it says, like, in the event of my death, open and read this. It's not open and read, but the person that it has been given to feels like their life is in danger. So they give it to somebody else who is their commander, and they take it and put it in a safe. Now, did anybody in that line die?
00:20:59
Speaker
No, they're all having testified before the grand jury and at the trial as far as I can tell so far.
Character Focus in Trial Over Crime Evidence
00:21:04
Speaker
so Okay. The letter itself, the opening does come up, but it essentially is because my understanding is because everybody in the chain thinks they may die. Is why they open it? Yep. Okay. And is that, ah do you have any idea? Is that all the letter said? That's all that they give us here at this point in time is that the lines about Geronimo confessing and bragging about being the tennis court murder. Okay, that opens so many things for me, but we don't have to get into it. It's already like a lot going on, but to me, it's interesting to- Oh, I mean, i'm I'm glad to talk about it, yeah. It's interesting to consider the circumstances under which you would implicate someone in a murder in the event of, only in the event of your death. Right.
00:21:53
Speaker
Because that's what it boils down to, right? Well, the letter, it honestly, this part is the most interesting part to me of this whole case. Only in the event of my death am I going to tell on this person.
00:22:06
Speaker
and then The person, the intermediary person, not knowing, I assume, not knowing what the letter says, passes it along. Now here's my question. It's a big dramatic moment when somebody has left a message from beyond the grave almost, right? Right. Except the guy's not dead. So what did it matter? I understand that.
00:22:34
Speaker
Look, man. I'm just saying, like, to me, it it wouldn't matter. He can testify just as easily. Correct. Right. So what was the... Well, the point of the letter is that the letter having been opened is what sets off an actual investigation into all these events. Right. But my my point is... It honestly feels like a way for him to be a snitch without being a snitch, if you ask me. OK, I can I can sort of get behind that. I guess, you know, if I know somebody has killed somebody and I'm going to turn them in, it's not going to depend upon my death. ah So you know how dry these appellate documents can get. I mean, you know, like how this can play out. And like we use them a lot of times to determine like what factually happened. But I would say more often than not, you and I look at it and we want to go looking for other things that like don't seem to fit the picture in the puzzle.
00:23:28
Speaker
I'm just interested to know like, cause to me, this makes a big deal. Like what difference would it have made? I don't think Julio is a reliable informant at this point. No kidding. So with him not being a reliable informant, that letter seems like something that they're using as an end run around him being an unreliable informant. Well, if he was dead, maybe. but I understand that. But I'm just saying like, okay, this could all be bullshit. This is much to do about nothing, right? Kind of. Yeah.
00:24:01
Speaker
Okay, because they're making like this big dramatic thing out of it. They're all afraid they're gonna die. So they finally open the letter. The letter leads to this arrest. And somehow it's presented to bolster credibility. Correct. Somehow. Yes. Except, and and I get that, except like when you think about like the meat and potatoes of the situation, it's all irrelevant.
00:24:28
Speaker
Right. I'm using it here. ah It's an interesting MacGuffin because you're right. In the end, it doesn't matter as much. But I have to tell this kind of dry timeline of how these four years would unfold. And I thought the letter being in this. No, I.
00:24:45
Speaker
I feel like this is fascinating. I just am not quite sure. Like, is that what you do when you have nothing? Like, I guess it might be a little bit like it know it does feel like do we feel like this process actually happened?
Failed Appeals and Alleged Trial Unfairness
00:24:59
Speaker
Or this was just like an afterthought? No, I don't. I don't. That's why I'm calling it a MacGuffin. I think this letter i I've come at it two ways, and I haven't decided like what I really think about it. I've come at it from the perspective of the letter really wasn't what they said it was, and everybody's lying. Or one degree, you could just basically say, oh, Leo's lying. And whatever he put in there may be the second.
00:25:26
Speaker
like the person who opens it is going along with it. Or this is how they bolster his credibility from whole cloth. Right, except that it would seem to make him less reliable because he didn't tell anybody and it was only with regard to a his untimely death that it was to be exposed. I'm with you.
00:25:51
Speaker
It's crazy. It is a little crazy, but it's part it's part of the story. Was he? Okay, so I'm just curious. Do you think he's implicating him at his own desk and with how it lines up? Yeah, I think the idea, if you believe the story, I think the idea is he's died. Elmer Pratt did this because I knew about he was a tennis court murderer thing and he thinks I ratted on it. Okay, but if He's actually giving a motive for his own death, but it just happens to tie back to this tennis court robbery. Yeah, but if he was already dead, why would he kill him for ratting on him? You see what I'm saying? What do you mean? Well, because he, if he... No, no, no, no. Like, if he's dead, if he's killed, like, it's one more F.U. from beyond.
00:26:39
Speaker
that, like, he probably got killed by Pratt is what he's saying. Yeah, because he because Pratt had bragged to him about being a murderer in the Caroline Olsen murder. I feel like this entire thing is nothing but a MacGuffin. I think you're right. It could be. So December 4th, 1970, there's like a huge amount of investigation that goes on.
00:27:00
Speaker
According to the detectives, they get an indictment by the Grand Jury of Los Angeles that charges Geronimo Pratt with one count of murder, one count of assault to commit murder, and two counts of robbery. So basically, it took them two years, December 18, 1968 to December 4, 1970, and somehow they get an indictment on Geronimo Pratt. He gets arraigned April 8, 1971.
00:27:29
Speaker
Geronimo is, when he's arraigned, he pleads not guilty. And another year is going to pass. June 11th, 1972, Geronimo goes on trial for this murder, and it takes them until July 28th of 1972 to get a verdict. This is a hotly contested jury trial. It runs the whole time in Superior Court in front of Judge Kathleen Parker. You have Geronimo Pratt represented there by Johnny Cochran and Charles Holopetter.
00:27:56
Speaker
He ends up being found guilty on all cows and the degree was determined to be first degree murder and first degree aggravated robbery. So,
00:28:08
Speaker
August 28th, the defendant has appealed and his motion for a new trial is denied. Is there any additional evidence or was it just that whole letter debacle? It is honestly, it is about six and a half weeks of nothing but Black Panther talk. And is that? It's almost like he's on trial for being affiliated with the Black Panthers instead of actually for the murder. And so is there some sort of allegation of a connection there? What I'm pulling from with all this information that I've given you so far and all these parties, they were all part of the trial because this is the appellate document where he's trying to get a new trial. Yeah, but I mean, like, was it some sort of, was there anything about the Olson's that would suggest his role as a Black Panther would make them targets?
00:28:51
Speaker
Oh, no, no, I'm not suggesting that's real. I'm telling you what's happening at trial. At trial, the people they bring on are all these undercover operatives from different agencies. OK, that's what I mean. Are they are they alleging that? No, but they're using it to bolster. Yeah, he's definitely a murderer. Look at him. He's a guy from the Black Panther Party. They're making it's a character. It's a character. Yeah, it's a character assassination. Yeah. OK, I gotcha. OK.
00:29:18
Speaker
In July, they convict him. August 28th, the defendant's motion for a new trial is denied. So he is sentenced to basically life in prison for the murder count. On the other three counts, they run them all at the same time as his life sentence. So it doesn't really matter what you send it to there. That day when his new trial is denied and he's sentenced, he files a timely notice of appeal from the judgment of conviction.
00:29:41
Speaker
It takes almost two years. February 1, 1974, the 2nd Appellate District, they hear part of this and they file an unpublished opinion, which unanimously affirms the judgment of
COINTELPRO Revelations and Public Perception
00:29:54
Speaker
conviction. They dump that in here so that we can see it. But the gist is, they said everything was right, trial was good. and They all agreed, acting presiding judge Edwin Jefferson, Justice Gerald Dunn and Justice Robert Kingsley, they all agree with what the trial court did and they say that this is good to go. April 17th, 1974, the case makes its way to the California Supreme Court and it's denied in a petition for hearing. So November 4th, 1974, just a few months later, the United States Supreme Court, they addressed the defendant's petition for a writ of satoria and they deny it.
00:30:30
Speaker
Two years ago, i April 23, 1976, the final report of the Select Committee to study governmental operations with respect to intelligence activities is delivered to the United States Senate. Senator Frank Church, who's the chairman, this is known as the Church Committee Report, and this is about the FBI's activities with COINTELPRO.
00:30:55
Speaker
The Church Committee report was published describing the purposes and methods used by the FBI in this counterintelligence program. It describes the counterintelligence program's activities as covert action programs initiated for the purpose of protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order by disrupting and neutralizing groups and individuals perceived as threats.
00:31:20
Speaker
What they don't tell you here is what they're really trying to do is sort of counteract the result of the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and all of these other things that had happened along the way in terms of political activities. Does that make sense?
00:31:40
Speaker
yeah Okay, so JFK is assassinated, and then you lose Martin Luther King in April 1968, and you lose Bobby Kennedy in 1968, so April and then June. It's a huge deal for the United States presidential candidate to be assassinated.
00:31:58
Speaker
All of these programs essentially come from that. So they get carte blanche to run these programs. But a few years after all of this, in 1976, the programs have been running for a while, and the the United States Senate realizes that these programs had been running prior to these assassinations and didn't stop them, and now they want answers.
00:32:18
Speaker
so This counterintelligence program's activities were described as running for an operational period of 15 years. They had run from 1956 to 1971. That was the time that they looked at it and tried to figure out like what was happening during that 15-year operational period.
00:32:39
Speaker
A chapter in this church committee report entitled the f fa The FBI's Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party comes forward. its It states, August 1967, the FBI initiated a covert action program in COINTELPRO to disrupt and neutralize organizations which the Bureau characterized as black nationalist hate groups. Black Panther Party was not among the original black nationalist targets, but in September of 1968,
00:33:09
Speaker
J. Edgar Hoover described the Panthers as the greatest threat to the internal security of the country. So that September of 1968, just a couple of months before the Olson murder, okay? Yes. By July 1969, the Black Panthers had become the primary focus of this program. So they had swapped out all the other Black nationalist groups that were honing in on the Black Panther Party.
00:33:33
Speaker
Ultimately, they were the target of 233 of the total 295 authorized program actions related to Black nationalist groups.
00:33:45
Speaker
The Church Committee report goes on to say that the FBI's efforts to neutralize and disrupt the Panthers' effectiveness with various counterintelligence program techniques were used for the purpose of discrediting Black Panther Party members. This created rifts and factions within the party itself, and it set up rival groups inside the Panthers, and it set up rival groups that were outside the Panthers by undermining the support of the party and destroying the public image because the FBI had started to perceive and portray the Black Panther Party to be a heavily armed, violence-prone organization. Now, do you understand why the Black Panther stuff is important in this Los Angeles trial? I understand why it's being presented that way. Okay.
00:34:29
Speaker
November 20, 1979, Geronimo Pratt's attorneys, relying on this church committee report and a bunch of FBI documents that were obtained related to a FOIA, Freedom of Information Act request, they file a petition for w rid of habeas corpus in the Los Angeles Superior Court that gets heard by Judge Kathleen Parker.
00:34:52
Speaker
Now Judge Kathleen Parker, seven years earlier in 1972, she had presided over trial of Geronimo Pratt for the murder of Caroline Olson. The basis for the relief here that the defendants attorneys were seeking was that part of what had happened to Geronimo Pratt, which he was framed by the FBI and certain state agencies as part of the counterintelligence program.
Denial of Habeas Corpus and Trial Fairness
00:35:15
Speaker
On January 18, 1980, Judge Parker has wrapped up a 40 hearing. She denies the defendant's motion for summary judgment. She denies his petition for habeas corpus relief, and she denies his request for an evidentiary hearing
00:35:32
Speaker
And she says that she doesn't think that a defendant by wishful thinking can step from one point to another by speculation. She says at that time that an evidentiary hearing would not serve any useful purpose. She doesn't see sufficient evidence that Geronimo Pratt has been framed and she does not see any evidence that he did not have a fair trial, which of course she wouldn't because it was a trial she held. So on April 10th of 1980,
00:36:01
Speaker
His attorneys file an instant petition for writ of habeas corpus to the court of appeal. And that's the document we're reading from today. They state he does not seek review of the superior court's denial of relief, but rather he seeks review by way of an original proceeding in this court. Does that make sense? Yes.
00:36:20
Speaker
All right, so we're in the California Court of Appeals. It's 1980. They pull up the prosecutions case, and they say there was eyewitness identification of Geronimo Pratt. They point out that Kenneth Olson, who had survived five gunshot wounds, had on two separate occasions made positive in-court identifications of Pratt. The first in-court positive identification of the defendant was made during a pretrial hearing on the defendant's motion to suppress Mr. Olson's identification testimony.
00:36:46
Speaker
The second in court positive identification was made during the jury trial. Then we have witness Barbara Reed. So with her husband, Fred Reed, they operated Lincoln Hobby Center in the Santa Monica area about four blocks from the tennis court. She testified December 18th, 1968, just a few minutes before the tennis court murder, two black males entered her shop. While she was alone in the shop, she was addressing Christmas cards to mail out. She was waiting for her husband to come home too.
00:37:16
Speaker
One of the men was the defendant Pratt, who was the shorter of the two black males, and that the defendant had looked down into the office and the taller of the two had proceeded along with him to the back of the store and looked into two different cases.
00:37:31
Speaker
Barbara Reed said that she asked them if she might help them, and the de defendant inquired if they had merchandise to build a dollhouse for his wife. She replied they did not have the material at the time to build a dollhouse since they were just opening the shop, and the defendant said, you act as if you don't want to sell us anything. Barbara Reed said, sir, you have to realize we're just moving up into this store. We don't have much merchandise in here at the moment, and each night my husband brings a carload up on the way home.
00:37:57
Speaker
The two men then left the store, and Barbara Reed, feeling suspicious, locked the door, turning the sign from open to closed. Shortly thereafter, she heard male voices, looked through the window of the door, and saw the same two men walking back and talking to each other. She saw that both men standing in the doorway had a gun protruding, and there was a gun protruding from the right hand of the taller man, while the defendant shook the doorknob, saying, let us in.
00:38:22
Speaker
Mrs. Reed immediately went to the telephone to call the police and the two men left. So we also get Frederick's testimony from the trial. He testifies he was driving to the hobby shop at about 8 p.m. on December 18th. When he approached the store, he saw two black individuals jimmying the front door trying to get in. He circled back around and he saw the same two black men, one of whom was wearing a safari jacket, and they hurried away on Lincoln Boulevard. They disappeared between two parked cars.
00:38:53
Speaker
Now at the pretrial hearing of the defendant's motion to suppress Mrs. Reed's identification of him, the motion was denied by the court, by the way. Barbara Reed made a positive in court identification of Pratt being the shorter of the two black men who on December 18th, 1968 at about 8 p.m. shortly before the tennis court murder were in her hobby shop and who then later returned and tried to get into the locked front door.
00:39:17
Speaker
At the jury trial, Mrs. Reed again positively identified Pratt as one of the two gunmen. She remembered his face thoroughly and that one predominant feature was a round scar between his eyes on the lower part of the forehead above the eyebrows.
00:39:31
Speaker
There's a photo they talk about here where the defendant Pratt has a small round shaped scar or indentation on his lower forehead, which is similar to what Barbara redescribed. She testified that at the time ah Pratt was wearing a safari jacket hanging open with a black or navy blue type tank, with a black or navy blue tank type shirt or sweater underneath with ground trousers, tan shoes and no hat.
00:40:00
Speaker
So we have, they're at the scene according to the testimony. Now we have, go ahead. Okay. I just want to, i'm I'm not entirely sure how that's linked to the murder. It's happening four blocks from the time. It's just putting them in the vicinity. Okay. And then is it like around the same time? Yeah, it's like, so the murder happened 16 minutes later. Okay. That's what I wanted to know. Thank you.
00:40:28
Speaker
So as for the murder weapon, they bring on a chief forensic chemist for the LAPD, a guy named Dwayne Wolfer. He testifies that a barrel for a .45 caliber automatic pistol is removable, but that the marks left on the expended shell from the breech face, the firing pen, and ejector are positive means of firearm identification. I bring this up, and this has come up in another case recently, by the way.
Brady Violation and Conviction Vacated
00:40:52
Speaker
He positively identified by use of a comparison microscope that the three expended cartridge casings recovered at the scene of the tennis court murder of Caroline Olsen were fired from the .45 caliber automatic pistol found in the second floor living room next to the window overlooking the front of the premises at 806 West Century Boulevard, January 17, 1969.
00:41:16
Speaker
He was unable to identify the slugs for recovered as matching the same .45 caliber automatic pistol, but surmised the barrel had been changed or that excessive firing of the weapon had precluded identification. The failure to match the slugs of the barrel is consistent with other testimony that the defendant had told Julio ah So Pratt had told Julio that he had changed out the barrel on the murder weapon. That came up in another place in time. It's not right here. But the the testimony of the ballistics expert, Dwayne Wolfer, it goes uncontradicted by the defense. And at the defense counsel's request, the court had appointed a ballistics expert of the defense's choosing, a man named M.L. Miller.
00:41:57
Speaker
Mr. Miller examined the same evidence and made an independent microscopic comparison in the presence of Dwayne Wolfer, but was not called as a witness by the defense to contradict office Wolfer's testimony. Dwayne Wolfer's testimony. Does that make sense? It does. um I wonder if.
00:42:17
Speaker
I wonder why. I have a feeling that came to the same conclusions. Right, but the defense must have thought that it didn't matter. possibly it could be that it could be that like they thought that since we don't have matching slugs it doesn't matter that we can't do anything with us yeah maybe okay they go on to say that there were multiple people who had reported a getaway car including a man named Mitchell Lochman. He was parked in a van next to Lincoln Park at about 8 p.m. on December 18, 1968. He testified at the trial that he heard shots and saw two black men run very fast from the tennis courts and get into a red, shiny polished, according to him, car with a white canvas convertible top and speed away.
00:43:03
Speaker
He did not get the license number, but he saw that the license plate had a white background with dark numerals. At the trial, he identified a 1968 North Carolina license plate design as having a color consistent with the color of the plate on the getaway car.
00:43:19
Speaker
He further identified a photograph of a car which was once red, but had been repainted blue as having the same body design as the getaway car, and the red under a right front chrome headlight frame which had not been repainted blue, he said was similar to the color of the car he saw speed away from the scene.
00:43:37
Speaker
John Lawrence Higgins of the LAPD, he testifies that on April 12, 1969, at about 11.30 p.m. at 28th and Westview, he stopped the 1967 Pontiac convertible, white over red in color, with a California license number YEC997.
00:43:54
Speaker
that had been driven by defendant Pratt with a man named Roger Lewis as a passenger. He made a report that the identification number of the vehicle was 242677P239094,
00:44:06
Speaker
and he further testified that the strip of red under the headlight room of the car was the color of the car he had stopped on April 12, 1969. They go back and forth here between prosecution and the defense, and they end up with some stipulations. A stipulation means we're just going to call it a fact and not argue about it. So the court asks, essentially with assistance from different experts, at this time may it be stipulated between the defense and the prosecution that the following information was obtained from the Department of Motor Vehicle Records from the state of North Carolina and the and the state of California.
00:44:42
Speaker
And that is that on October 3, 1967, the defendant, Elmer Pratt, had purchased a 1967 Pontiac convertible red body white top in North Carolina. It bore an identification number that matches what John Lawrence Higgins described and had been assigned a North Carolina license number.
00:45:02
Speaker
This vehicle entered California on September 6, 1968, and the first application made for the California registration was February 3, 1967 for the 1967 Pontiac convertible, same identification number with a North Carolina license. On March 27, 1969, so this is these all these dates are important here for a couple reasons, but the Department of California motor ah Motor vehicles issues ah California license plate for this car, and it's three months after the murders. August 22nd, 1969, Elmer Pratt makes application for a new license plate. On September 4th, 1969, the new license plate is issued. And on April 8th, 1970, the defendant sells the car to a local automotive dealer.
00:45:57
Speaker
Then Julio testifies. We've already talked about what happened there. There is one incident they bring up they call the Ollie Taylor incident. he tested ah Julio testifies that in April of 1969, there was a 17 year old Black Panther named Ollie Taylor, someone he didn't know. He was brought in and the Panthers interrogated him for being affiliated with the United Slaves.
00:46:23
Speaker
This comes out of trial that during the interrogation, ah one of the Black Panthers struck Taylor in the mouth with a gun and that the group had moved into a back room where the interrogation continued and that up Geronimo Pratt had cocked a hammer on a pistol and ordered Julio to interrogate Taylor. Julio said he was frightened of Geronimo and he ended up striking ah this kid, Ollie Taylor, but he hit him with his hand instead of the um the butt of the gun.
00:46:57
Speaker
So then they bring on Ollie Taylor and he testifies to a similar incident. It's not a lot not a lot different, but it's not very helpful. The defense brings on ah Geronimo for his testimony. He essentially testifies in his own defense and denies ever having been in the hobby shop or near the tennis court.
00:47:17
Speaker
He says he didn't make a statement to Julio at any time about that murder. He further denied the Ollie Taylor incident. He denied discussing with anyone these various things that have come up with the courts with a testimony acting like he might have been a part of the tennis court murders. He does talk about the car. He admits that he brought it into California with North Carolina plates. He stated that the Black Panther Party had taken over the payments in the car and that the car had been used by multiple Panthers.
00:47:48
Speaker
He says the weapon that was used in the killing of Caroline Olson was not his. He had never been in possession of it. On cross-examination, he admitted he was familiar with weapons like it because of army training, and that he could field strip, assemble, disassemble, and knew that the barrel could be replaced.
00:48:05
Speaker
There was a question about whether or not he had facial hair at different periods of time. He stated that when he came to California in September 1968, he had a mustache and like some fuzz on his chin. He had the same hair growth on his December 18th, but he may not have had, he may have had the same mustache, but not the same fuzz on his chin. He recalled at some point in time after Bunchy Carter's funeral in January 1969, that he had shaved off his facial hair.
00:48:33
Speaker
He said he did not own a safari or a bush jacket, as described ah with relationship to the Ollie Taylor incident. He said that was a misunderstanding and what Julio testified to wasn't true. They bring on a couple more ah witnesses for the defense. Ultimately, it's not enough to do anything but effectively have him be convicted. When we get to these FBI reports, they start repeating all the information that, like I talked to you about, they get deep into the guns. They bring on FBI agents and they talk about all these different guns and all this different contact that has gone on. But this really has absolutely nothing to do with Caroline Olsen's murder. We're just deep into
00:49:19
Speaker
the Black Panther Party. Does that make sense? It's all bad character. Yeah, it makes sense. All right. So the end result of this is that, again, in 1980, they deny any kind of relief for Geronimo Pratt. So what are you thinking at this point with this case? Well,
00:49:41
Speaker
I think that he is the guy taking the fall for something that's happened within this group of people, and he may not have done it. It takes a long time for him to get back into court. ah the the The conviction is not vacated until June 10th of 1997.
Pratt's Release and Subsequent Activism
00:49:57
Speaker
The only way that it actually gets vacated is on a Brady violation. It's on the grounds that the prosecution had concealed some evidence that showed that the police had, quote, secret wiretaps 400 miles away from the murder at the time of the murder on December 18th, 1968, because they were listening in on him at a Black Panther Party in Oakland, California, not Los Angeles. The prosecution had not disclosed this. They had also not disclosed how much Julio had been working for the COINTELPRO program, the the counterintelligence program. They had not disclosed how much ah Julio was known good and bad within the Los Angeles Police Department. Now, in 1997, even though the conviction is vacated, the state appeals the decision and appeals court rules that everything that has been done related to these Brady violations are favorable to the defendant and suppressed by law enforcement. They do matter. So they uphold the decision to vacate the conviction and they free him.
00:50:58
Speaker
On July 24th, 1997, Geronimo Pratt returns to his home in Louisiana. He sees his mom. He is not seen in 23 years. His mom rode a bus to visit him at Folsom Prison while he was incarcerated. And in 1998, Geronimo Pratt's long-term friend and attorney, Johnny Cochran, he filed a federal civil lawsuit against the FBI and the l LAPD, accusing them of Melissa's prosecution and Folsom Prison.
00:51:26
Speaker
With the help of a man named Brian Dunn, who had started to work at the Cochrane firm after the O.J. Simpson trial, the suit ended up being settled for $4.5 million. A federal judge approves the settlement of the civil suit. The city of Los Angeles ended up paying Geronimo $2.75 million dollars of the settlement, and the DOJ paid the remaining $1.75 million.
00:51:47
Speaker
Geronimo continues to work until his death on behalf of men and women who are wrongfully convicted, but he still also participated in supporting civil rights movements and black activism in the US. Fun fact, he was also the godfather of Tupac Shakur. On June 3, 2011, while he was taking a trip to Tanzania, which is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region, Geronimo Pratt died of a heart attack.
00:52:16
Speaker
so What's interesting about Geronimo is he could not have been there the night that it happened. And the FBI knew it all along. The LAPD knew it all along. The Oakland police knew it all along. So that was firmly established then? Yeah, yeah, like he was speaking. He was speaking and recruiting other members.
00:52:35
Speaker
And he has ah he had a very distinctive voice and a very distinctive speaking style. Because it was related to all this stuff that they dance around in his trial and his co-intel pro-operation, they kept it secret until 1994. And then it comes out in 1997. It becomes the reason that he gets out of prison.
00:52:56
Speaker
Could he have been affiliated with who did this? Absolutely. But did he do it? No. Right, but that's not really the reason he gets out of prison, right? It's more the Brady violation. The Brady violation is the reason he gets out of prison, because they held back that they had these wiretaps oh okay that established his alibi. Right, and there was also, um along with that,
00:53:20
Speaker
There were other accounts in the course of the event investigation that pointed elsewhere that they didn't bother sharing with the defense or that is correct elaborating on further or anything else. Now also, which I'm not sure if you mentioned this or not, but Butler, i will i I don't know if he lied or it just wasn't brought up, but he wasn't forthcoming about being an informant. That's correct. He admitted to having had work with LAPD. He omitted having been an FBI informant. And he got, like there was a quid pro quo deal that relieved him of at least one felony charge, like having to do with his testimony.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, he he was in a precarious situation where he's a multi-time felon at the time of the trial, trying not to get more felonies. I guess the point would just be that like he had incentive to make a case, right? Correct. Yes, he did. That's interesting. It does seem like they've established his actual innocence. And I would say even if that wasn't the case, this went through the process. And they can't withhold information like that, right?
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that comes from James McCloskey. I think we mentioned him elsewhere in this Home for the Holiday series. He's the person who was behind Centurion Ministries. He gets wind of this case in 1992 from a letter from Geronimo Pratt, and he starts digging into it. And so by then, the COINTELPRO stuff is largely public.
00:54:53
Speaker
And they figure out that he's actually listed as like being affiliated with some counterintelligence program information at the same time, roughly. like So it basically said he you know that he was a newcomer to California and that he had been at the December meeting in Oakland.
00:55:10
Speaker
Well, when they realized that Centurion Ministries from 1992 to 1994, they're the ones who tracked down all the information to confirm that it's not just happenstance where they're generally placing them in the room. And it turns out that, you know, in these wiretaps that they had, that they failed to turn over as part of this massive discovery that was done for the trial. And then later ah FOIA activities, it turns out that like they actually had recordings of him there.
00:55:40
Speaker
That was the turning point. And that's why Centurion Ministry, if you read about it, it says that from 1992 to 1997, Jim McCloskey traveled 120,000 miles investigating this case. so I don't know if they use that as like sensationalism. That's a lot of work. I agree. But ultimately,
00:56:02
Speaker
This was, you know, he was it was all dismissed and he was released. um I find it sad that he passed away. I find him to be a very interesting human being. And like, he's one of those people that like, I am sure he was into some shit.
Historical Significance and Government Misconduct
00:56:16
Speaker
But this particular thing that happened, in my opinion, was the worst thing you can do to another human being where for political means or ever how you want to phrase that you You put a person that's innocent, that you know is innocent, that you can prove is innocent as a prosecutor or as a law enforcement agent behind bars and don't think twice about it.
00:56:44
Speaker
I have to say, I agree. I mean, I agree. It's wrong, and it seems like they went to a lot of trouble. This was a very confusing case to follow as far as... Well, I tried to narrow it down as much as I could so that people would know. No, no, you did a good job, but I'm just saying, of all the things, it's very sad that a woman died, right? And this may be a dumb question, but the couple was white, right?
00:57:13
Speaker
um You mean Caroline Olson and Ken Olson? The victims, right. And that's why all the racism comes in. That's why it becomes this whole thing. The images I've always seen of Ken ol and Olson, he's white. okay That area at the time would have been a predominantly white area. I assume that they are both white.
00:57:38
Speaker
Okay, well, I mean, and again, it's not really a big deal. It actually, it's not surprising to me that I didn't really see that. and I gotcha. Obviously, it's clear that Geronimo is black, right? Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't think that that probably did play into this. I didn't think to mention that part. I assumed with the Black Panther part that people would realize it. But you're right. I actually don't actually know. Like it my presumption is because of the way it played out, all the stuff that's happening presumed that that's how the buildup like starts is because they're white. But I actually don't know. Yes.
00:58:17
Speaker
They are. well I liked this story. I wanted to share it as part of the Home for the Holidays series. It is a confusing story. Believe it or not, there's a lot that you can read about this and a lot of the court records, because they're related to COINTELPRO are out there. like And I was saying, Apache wars are a great like rabbit hole if you're into that type of history. The COINTELPRO stuff is a great rabbit hole to go down. and If you like that kind of history, where it's like the early ah black activism movements and the early civil rights movement. um This would have been middle civil rights movement, but it's still there. I would also say that like this case itself, like i at one point in time, like scrolling through trying to find something in just one of the Justias of this, it was like C page 8112 for reference. And I was like, how many pages are here?
00:59:10
Speaker
That's always kind of nerve-wracking, isn't it? yeah there's yeah like Yeah. I was like, what does what does that even mean? Why would they put the foot? Because I was on page 435 when it said that, and I was like, that is an astronomical amount of paper. like I was trying to picture it, how it would look like sitting on a desk or in bankers' boxes. But it's one of those cases. There's a lot of materials here. I like sharing cases like this that have, in my opinion, historical significance.
00:59:37
Speaker
um Yeah, um I like this one, this is one of the the better ones for me for Home for the Holidays, even though you're right, it's confusing, it's very complicated. Because it goes from like,
00:59:50
Speaker
it It just has a lot of bureau bureaucratic red tape elements to it, it seems like, when it's really a murder. Yeah, this is a murder, and it's wrapped up in both what like is essentially an espionage conspiracy, but it just happens to be domestic and not international. And it's wrapped up in a time where That's what I was going to say. it's It's unlike the timing. It's unlike anything I think that we could even imagine today. Yeah, this would be almost an impossible case to bring to trial today because of the amount of federal information that's attached to it. Everything here that like comes up in the course of the trial, which you can read and you can read transcripts of online, would be rubber stamp national security interest at this point. There would be no way that was And also, I would say, like, we've come a long way, like, because this, you know, all of that stuff happening has to do with the civil rights movement, right? Yeah, I would. So I would stop short of saying nothing like this could happen today. But I would definitely say we have come far enough along that this type of extremist counterintelligence operation would not be focused on groups based on
01:01:04
Speaker
racial differences. Yes, i that's what I mean, exactly. um it we've We've gone beyond that. So, while we, you know, I'm sure have a long way to go, it's interesting to look at it from that perspective because when I was going through this, it was it's crazy to think that. Yeah, yeah it really is crazy.
01:01:27
Speaker
I don't have anything else on this one like this is one of those that like like I've looked at counterintelligence pro before like could it be like a series in the future and like the way that you and I work people don't don't know like it plays in time I'm kind of giving something away here but whatever the Delphi trial like jury selection is going on while we're recording all of these things And so that puts it in like October when we're doing our home for the holiday series that we edit as we go and then we kind of put it together and publish it in December, which is when people listen to it. But like we're all like probably right now while we're doing this, you and I already have to June planned out whether we realize it or not on the calendar by using
01:02:10
Speaker
like the the season six template that we put together. And I had always thought about working counterintelligence programming by the FBI into a series. The thing is, it's not as much true crime. It's more like interesting national security espionage stuff. But our government's kind of dumb. And like at some point in time, I think I would like to do a podcast about how dumb our government has been. And like some of the stuff that they've done that like,
01:02:40
Speaker
like looking back on it with the hindsight being 20-20, you and I can go, why did they spend those millions of dollars on all those people that got killed on absolutely nothing? It makes no sense.
01:02:52
Speaker
so That's all I got on this for now, but that could come up in the future.
Podcast Production and Future Content Suggestions
01:02:57
Speaker
What do you think? i Yeah, I could totally go for that. um It'd be a whole different ballgame, right?
01:03:10
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabratiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating. It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS.
01:05:17
Speaker
One day it will be my baby and me
01:06:10
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through patreon.com or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at truecrimeaccess.com. Thank you for joining us.
01:06:38
Speaker
This is just a reminder that we are part of the Zincaster Creator Network. And I've put a link in the show notes if you guys want to check it out for your own podcasting needs. um I've always enjoyed using Zincaster. Their quality is great. And we we were able to join their Creator Network at kind of a key time in in their history. um I have enjoyed it. you know I've considered a lot of other ah places to record and a lot of other ways to put together and host and distribute our podcasts. But I've stuck with Zincaster the longest. We've been with them for hundreds of episodes now. And I'm putting a link in the show notes where you can check out ah what they have to offer and see if it's something you would want to use.