May 6, 2025

Chapter 103: The Crime That Appalachia Forgot-The Nancy Morgan Murder w/ Mark Pinsky

Chapter 103: The Crime That Appalachia Forgot-The Nancy Morgan Murder w/ Mark Pinsky

In Today's episode, I am joined by veteran investigative journalist Mark Pinsky to unpack the decades-old mystery of Nancy Morgan, a young VISTA volunteer found brutally murdered in Madison County, North Carolina in 1970. Mark walks me through the...

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Unsolved CasesInterviews

In Today's episode, I am joined by veteran investigative journalist Mark Pinsky to unpack the decades-old mystery of Nancy Morgan, a young VISTA volunteer found brutally murdered in Madison County, North Carolina in 1970. Mark walks me through the corrupt local politics, suppressed leads, and the lingering questions that keep this cold case unsolved more than 50 years later. He also reflects on his storied career in crime reporting, including his explosive jailhouse interview with serial killer Ted Bundy. This is an interview you don't want to miss.

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Get Met Her On The Mountain: The Murder of Nancy Morgan here

Check out Mark's website and other works here

WEBVTT

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Every story has a beginning, but not everyone has an ending.

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In the shadows of headlines and buried police reports lay

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the voices of the missing, the murdered, and the forgotten,

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waiting to be heard and have their stories told. This

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is The Book of the Dead, a true crime podcast

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where we remember forgotten victims of heinous crimes, reopen cold cases,

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ree visit haunting disappearances, and uncover the truths buried beneath

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the years of silence. I'm your host, Courtney Liso, and

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every week we turn to another chapter, one victim, one mystery,

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one step closer to justice. Brought to you by Dark

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Cast Network indie Podcasts with a Twist. Hello, Hello, Welcome

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to the next chapter in the Book of the Dead.

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With me today I have a very special guest. Mark

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Pinski is a journalist of over fifty years working for

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countless publications and newspapers like The Orlando Sentinel, The New

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York and LA Times, and USA Today, covering everything from religion, politics,

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racial issues, and explosive true crime cases that include Ted Bundy.

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He is also an author, writing six nonfiction books, like

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The Gospel according to the Simpsons and The Gospel according

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to Disney Mark is with me today to discuss the

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case that has followed him for the last fifty years,

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so much so that he wrote the book on it,

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Met Around the Mountain, The Murder of Nancy Morgan's spans

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Mark his own investigation into the murder of twenty four

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year old Vista worker Nancy Morgan, who was found raped

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and murdered in June of nineteen seventy in Madison County,

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North Carolina, hindered by a less than competent investigation, confusion

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on jurisdiction, as well as political corruption. Nancy Morgan's murder

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was a crime that North Carolina tried for decades to forget. Mark,

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Thank you so much for joining me today.

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Thanks for having me, Courtney.

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I want to start at the beginning. What was it

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about Nancy's case that drew you in while you were

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a young journalist at Duke University and what kept you

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so dedicated to that investigation for five decades.

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Well, in nineteen seventy I was working for the Duke

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University Chronicle. I had a column called The Readable Radical.

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I was very much politically involved in what was happening

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in the late sixties and then into the early seventies.

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When I opened the newspaper that day and June and

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saw that Nancy Morgan's body had been discovered up in

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the mountains, it struck me personally. The more I read

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about her, the more I felt she was like me

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in some senses, and many of my friends in other senses.

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She was a federal anti poverty worker working for an

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organization called VISTA, which stood for Volunteers in Service to America,

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and as it happened, not surprisingly, several of my friends,

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maybe half a dozen of them at the time of

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the killing, were already in VISTA. So I took it

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personally as an individual, but I also took it personally

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because my friends were in similar situations doing what she

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was doing, and in some cases somewhat risky. When you

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challenge the status quo, you run a certain risk. Usually

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it's minor, but sometimes it's not mine. In her case,

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it wasn't minor, and so I ripped out the article

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about her body being found, a long takeout on her life,

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and started to file and just said Nancy Morgan on it.

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And I didn't know at that time. I was only,

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you know, a college newspaper guy, and I didn't know

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where it would end, but it just grabbed hold of me.

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And the years that followed, whenever there was a development,

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I would add that to my file. And I hadn't

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reached any status at that point as a journalist, so

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I didn't know where I would take it. And as

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time passed, I got a journalist's degree from Columbia University

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and began stringing from North Carolina for the New York Times.

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I also wrote for political magazines like The Nation and

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The Progressive. On the overlap between criminal cases and political causes.

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You covered other high profile cases like those of Ted

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Bundy and Jeffrey McDonald's. How did your experience with Nancy

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Morgan's case differ from those and what were some of

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the unique challenges you faced while covering it well?

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With Nancy Morgan. I was really learning my way. I

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didn't know anything about criminal justice, trial procedure like that,

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so I was kind of learning as learning by doing.

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I would be sent on cases. The Times would send

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me on a case, and I'd do what I could.

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I worked with a good friend of mine passed away

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now named Wayne King, very celebrated a reporter for the

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New York Times, and he was as he used to

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say at the Times, he was my Rabbi. He told

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me and taught me a lot of what I needed

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to know, And that all accelerated in nineteen seventy three

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when I read an article in the Rawley News and

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Observer but a young black woman who was accused of

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murdering her white jailer and breaking jail, and I knew

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that was that all the elements of a national story.

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So I wrote about it for the New York Times,

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and in those days stringers, which is what we were,

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freelancers didn't get a byline. So my articles appear but

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there was no byline, which was fine because I was

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also freelancing for other publications, and so there was no

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question about, you know, doubling up or making use of

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what I was working on. But in covering the joy

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and Little case from investigation through her murder trial to

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the aftermath, I learned a huge amount. And once I

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learned the ins and out, or began learning the ins

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and out of covering a sensational criminal trial, through about

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the subsequent nineteen seventies, I covered a lot more similar cases,

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almost all involving the allegation of racial injustice. Some became

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famous locally. Some not the Charlotte Three, the Wilmington ten,

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the Dawson five, There were a bunch of them. They

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usually involved young African Americans, mostly males, charged with murder

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of a white person, although in one of the cases

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I covered, the Tarboro Three, these three young black men

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faced the death penalty for a rape charge of a

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white woman and there was no murder. But in those

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years in the South, rape was a capital crime, and

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so each time I covered another case, I learned some

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more about how to do it. Sometimes I was kind

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of isolated because I was stringing for the Times, but

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I wasn't a staff writer for the time. So I

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would hear about a case and I go into by myself,

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into a small Southern town that the civil rights movement

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I had often passed by, and it was exciting but

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also a little scary as well. And in that decade

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I covered enough cases that although my initial involvement was

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political and ideological racial justice, I got so good at

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the job of covering these cases technically. And one of

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my focuses was the disproportioned application of the death penalty

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to black people in the South, and that led me

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to people who were lawyers who were experts on the

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death penalty. And one of them called me one day

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and it's also passed away a wonder lawyer, great lawyer

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named Millard Farmer. And he said, Mark, he had deep southern,

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deep southern Georgia AXI, and he said, would you be

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interested in interviewing Ted Bundy? I said, Millard, you know,

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thanks for calling me. It's really not my kind of case.

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But if you want me to do it, I'll do it.

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And so I, you know, rushed to all the sources

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I could find to you know, catch up on the

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case which I had not covered. And so he arranged it.

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And Bundy was then in jail in Tallahassee and I said,

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but Millard, how am I going to get in there?

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He said, well, we're a jacket and tie carron at

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Shay case and look white. They'll let you in. They

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won't even ask you who you are. They'll let you

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in with me. So I said, okay. The first time,

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he couldn't be with me, sent me with his assistant

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and they didn't let me in. And I was about

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to give up. Although I had pitched the National magazine

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on the case and they were very interested, and Millard said, no, no, no,

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don't give up. Come back with me and I'll get

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you in. And I made a second trip to Tallahassee,

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and sure enough we walked right in. And there had

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been an escape from that jail the week before. Some

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guys just walked away, and so the sheriff, which is

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a political office in Tallahassee, was very embarrassed by that.

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So Miller took me into Bundy's cell area, not in

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his cell. There was a I was on one side

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and he was on the cell side. And I walked in.

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And until that time, all the cases I covered involved

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people who were different from me. They were poor, they

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were black or brown. Sometimes there were a different gender.

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But I could always dissociate from the horrible stories we

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talked about by saying, oh, they're not like me. So

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I walk into Bundy's cell and softly lit, and he's

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listening to classical music on the public radio station, and

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I think, wait a second, what have I got myself into.

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It's a handsome guy. I knew by that time that

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he was a college graduate, had been to law school,

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was a middle class maybe Laura middle class guy. And

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Millard set the ground rules I couldn't ask him certain specifics,

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but we talked for about an hour, and it's got

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creepier and creepier because you have to understand this. When

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I was talking to this person, my thought was, this

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person could not have done these horrible things. You see

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him in a rational setting, but I knew that he had.

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So I knew somewhere in the folds of his cortex

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was this person being who did murder these thirty some women.

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But he was very cordial to me, and I said

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at the end, I said, Ted, you know, nobody's gonna

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believe that I'm here. And then we had this interview.

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He said, well, hand me your legal path. So I

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handed it through the bars, and at the bottom of

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my last page of notes, he wrote, Mark, thanks for

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interviewing me, Ted Bundy. Now, if I could find that

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eagle pad today, it would be worth something. So what

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happened I left. I wrote my magazine article was a

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big deal because it was the first interview with Bundy,

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so that launched me into a different level. I used

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to say that in the seventies I started out writing

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about defendants who were poor, black and innocent, and I

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got so good at it I was writing about defendants

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who were wealthy, whiting, and guilty, so it was kind of,

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you know, creepy to me. And at the in nineteen

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seventy nine, I was commuting between Bundy's trial in Miami

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and Greenbery doctor Jeffery McDonald's trial in Raleigh. But I

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kept collecting material on the Nancy Morgan case because it

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just wouldn't let me go. It's like, wherever I turned,

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it brought me back to Nancy Morgan. So in the

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early seventies, I couldn't support myself as a journalist, so

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I got other jobs. And one of the jobs I

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got was a researcher for a professor at the University

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of North Carolina Chapel Hill who was doing interviews for

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their oral history project. And these interviews would be with

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political figures and other figures, and the deal was they

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would be very frank and the interviews would not be

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released until after they died. And so my job, I

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was not good enough or didn't have a stature enough

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to actually do the interviews, but I was hired. You

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did the prep notes. And so there's something called the

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Southern Collection in Chapel Hill, and they have at that

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time They had files with clippings for hundreds of people,

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and so I had a list that I went through,

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and as it happened, go figure. I opened one that

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said Zino Ponder and I opened it up and it

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was about these two brothers, one a politician, the other sheriff,

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who had this ironclad political machine in Madison County, North Carolina,

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where they controlled pretty much everything. It said the county

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only had seventeen thousand people. I thought that myself, well, wait,

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if these guys have such a hold on the county

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and the county's only seventeen thousand people, and that's where

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Nancy Morgan was killed, maybe they had something to do

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with it, or at least maybe they knew about what happened,

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because the case was still open and unsolved. And so

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I copied all the clippings in that column and added

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to my Nancy Morgan.

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Thought, what was your process like gathering information on the

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Nancy Morgan case?

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So I continued to collect stuff until I became a

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staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, and I had

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a decent career there was there for about eleven years,

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and at that point, though, I thought I need to

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do something bigger. I was doing sort of the nicol

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and Die murders, which had no larger context, and I thought,

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you know, I'm doing well. I'm making decent money, I'm

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making a career, but it's not why I started this.

229
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And so it was a very helpful full librarian at

230
00:14:01.600 --> 00:14:05.039
the Times, and she helped me gather clips on the

231
00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:09.279
Nancy Morgan case because that was all pre internet. So

232
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she called around to libraries and newspaper morgues they called them,

233
00:14:13.200 --> 00:14:14.919
and she collected a lot of clips from me and

234
00:14:14.960 --> 00:14:17.679
I added that and that gave me much more material,

235
00:14:18.600 --> 00:14:20.200
and I had run out my string. I thought, at

236
00:14:20.200 --> 00:14:22.679
the La Times, I was doing okay, but I wasn't

237
00:14:22.679 --> 00:14:25.399
going to rise any higher. I realized that, and so

238
00:14:26.039 --> 00:14:28.279
I began looking around for another job that would bring

239
00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:32.159
me closer to the scene of the Nancy Morgan murder

240
00:14:32.399 --> 00:14:35.399
and the investigation and the trial. I took a job

241
00:14:35.440 --> 00:14:40.559
with the Orlando Sentinel in Central Florida because I knew

242
00:14:40.559 --> 00:14:43.759
that one of the key players in the murder investigation

243
00:14:44.519 --> 00:14:47.320
was then living in Central Florida, and I reached out

244
00:14:47.320 --> 00:14:49.200
to him, but he was not interested in talking to me.

245
00:14:49.279 --> 00:14:52.240
So I thought, okay, but I needed to move anyway,

246
00:14:52.679 --> 00:14:56.080
and so I took the job with a sentinel, and

247
00:14:56.120 --> 00:14:59.159
then two weeks of every year, a week in the spring,

248
00:14:59.159 --> 00:15:02.720
a week in the fall, I would go up Toton

249
00:15:02.759 --> 00:15:05.799
County with a master list of people I needed to

250
00:15:05.840 --> 00:15:08.480
talk to and a kind of a ven diagram of

251
00:15:08.559 --> 00:15:12.600
the people who posest to what happened, and the people

252
00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:14.600
were oldest because I needed to get to them before

253
00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:18.720
they died or you know, dementia set in. And I

254
00:15:18.759 --> 00:15:20.600
had a friend, a good friend from Duke Days, who

255
00:15:20.679 --> 00:15:23.600
had an inn up there, and that was my headquarters.

256
00:15:23.639 --> 00:15:27.960
And so for almost twenty years I would go up

257
00:15:27.960 --> 00:15:29.679
for two weeks a year, and I used to joke

258
00:15:29.759 --> 00:15:32.480
that fifty weeks a year I was Homer Simpson in

259
00:15:32.519 --> 00:15:35.000
the suburbs, and two weeks a year I was Raymond

260
00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:40.240
Chandler doing I remember thinking to myself at times, I thought,

261
00:15:41.279 --> 00:15:43.639
I feel like I'm in a movie. You know. I

262
00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:46.399
see this on TV and read about it and the mysteries,

263
00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:49.519
and this is what I'm doing now. I'm trying to

264
00:15:49.559 --> 00:15:52.240
track down And there was a certain element of I

265
00:15:52.240 --> 00:15:54.759
don't want to be melodraumatic, but certain I'm out of

266
00:15:54.919 --> 00:15:59.279
I would say danger, because no one had been ever

267
00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:03.120
convict of and the people who were responsible theoretically were

268
00:16:03.159 --> 00:16:06.360
still up there. So I took certain precautions, you know,

269
00:16:06.440 --> 00:16:12.080
prudent actions. I never did interviews at night. When I

270
00:16:12.159 --> 00:16:15.240
went out, I would always tell my friend Elmer Hall

271
00:16:15.840 --> 00:16:18.679
that where I was going and when I was expected back,

272
00:16:18.759 --> 00:16:21.320
so there would be no problem with that. And then

273
00:16:21.440 --> 00:16:25.879
I guess, about maybe sixteen years into it, my brother

274
00:16:25.960 --> 00:16:29.799
Paul is a very straight talking brother, and he said,

275
00:16:29.840 --> 00:16:32.720
you know, you've been researching this for a long time.

276
00:16:33.600 --> 00:16:36.240
I think it's time for you to sit down and

277
00:16:36.279 --> 00:16:40.399
write this book. So I did, and I did lucky

278
00:16:40.399 --> 00:16:45.279
into some incredible material, including a partial transcript of the trial.

279
00:16:45.879 --> 00:16:48.559
And when I talk to young journalists who want to

280
00:16:48.559 --> 00:16:51.600
get into this line of work, I tell him you

281
00:16:51.600 --> 00:16:55.759
should think of it as reanimating a body. You begin

282
00:16:55.840 --> 00:17:01.080
with the skeleton, and the skeleton is the paper, the transcripts,

283
00:17:01.080 --> 00:17:07.319
if they exist, autopsy reports, police reports, and that's your skeleton.

284
00:17:08.039 --> 00:17:10.519
And then you if it's an old case and they're not,

285
00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:15.519
everybody's alive. The next stage is to find contemporary news accounts,

286
00:17:16.160 --> 00:17:18.759
people who are in the courtroom who could tell you

287
00:17:19.480 --> 00:17:23.759
what was the atmosphere in the courtroom, unless you can

288
00:17:23.799 --> 00:17:27.559
find people who are there. That's the muscle. Once I

289
00:17:27.599 --> 00:17:31.880
have the skeleton and the muscle, then I seriously begin

290
00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:35.680
my interviews, put the skin over the body and make

291
00:17:35.759 --> 00:17:38.359
it come alive if I can. It's not always possible.

292
00:17:39.119 --> 00:17:42.599
But once I've done my homework, which is the paperwork

293
00:17:43.400 --> 00:17:47.279
and the newspaper work, I find I waste less time

294
00:17:47.319 --> 00:17:49.640
of the people I want to talk to. And the

295
00:17:49.640 --> 00:17:53.559
more I've found they think you know about the case,

296
00:17:54.119 --> 00:17:57.359
the more they're likely to tell you. Now, some people

297
00:17:57.400 --> 00:18:00.160
lie to me. I'm a newspaper man, that's part to

298
00:18:00.200 --> 00:18:03.839
my job description. More often they shade the truth, and

299
00:18:03.880 --> 00:18:06.200
I you know, I'm not a lie detector. But over

300
00:18:06.200 --> 00:18:09.359
a period of time, you get a sense of when

301
00:18:09.359 --> 00:18:13.160
you're being played or attempted to be played. And so

302
00:18:13.279 --> 00:18:15.599
at that time I felt like I had I had

303
00:18:15.680 --> 00:18:16.559
enough to write the book.

304
00:18:17.559 --> 00:18:21.079
So met Her on the Mountain has been finished and published,

305
00:18:21.599 --> 00:18:25.039
But then you had more information to add after the fact.

306
00:18:25.799 --> 00:18:29.160
What was that process like and did people respond to

307
00:18:29.200 --> 00:18:31.000
the book as you'd hoped they would.

308
00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:34.880
Sure, I had a small publisher in North Carolina, very

309
00:18:34.640 --> 00:18:38.279
well respected, not self published. It was the real printing house,

310
00:18:38.720 --> 00:18:43.279
and in twenty thirteen. The book came out very strong reviews.

311
00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:48.079
Publishers Weekly gave it starred two star reviews. And I

312
00:18:48.119 --> 00:18:50.359
was on a bunch of the early podcasts. So this

313
00:18:50.480 --> 00:18:53.480
is twenty thirteen, so you know, podcasts hadn't come into

314
00:18:53.519 --> 00:18:56.519
their own serial hadn't appeared yet. But it didn't take off.

315
00:18:57.000 --> 00:19:00.079
Kind of broke my heart, you know, and I I

316
00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:03.279
kept doing what I was doing, being a journalist and

317
00:19:03.359 --> 00:19:05.839
writing about other things as well. I wrote about those

318
00:19:05.839 --> 00:19:09.960
early those two early books totally different in The Gospel

319
00:19:10.039 --> 00:19:12.400
Queen of the Simpsons, the Gospel Queen to Disney, a

320
00:19:12.559 --> 00:19:16.759
world away from what I was doing. But then when

321
00:19:16.759 --> 00:19:19.680
I was reviewing, just to keep my name out there,

322
00:19:20.400 --> 00:19:24.400
true crime books but also novels based on true crime,

323
00:19:24.640 --> 00:19:26.519
and I noticed a couple of them were coming from

324
00:19:27.039 --> 00:19:31.319
the University of Kentucky Press, and I just I'd reviewed

325
00:19:31.319 --> 00:19:33.640
one or two of their books favorably, and I reached

326
00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:36.720
out to the publisher of WUK Press and I said,

327
00:19:36.720 --> 00:19:38.319
you know, I have this book and I own the

328
00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:40.960
rights to it now and it never came out in paperback,

329
00:19:41.079 --> 00:19:43.079
and there have been some developments it came out, would

330
00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:46.559
you be interested? And the director said yeah, I would.

331
00:19:46.559 --> 00:19:48.000
Why don't you send me the book and I'll have

332
00:19:48.039 --> 00:19:50.160
a look at it. I sent her the book within

333
00:19:50.200 --> 00:19:52.960
a week she said, yes, we want it, and she

334
00:19:53.000 --> 00:19:54.920
said I can't pay much money, which I hear all

335
00:19:54.960 --> 00:19:58.440
the time, but I guarantee you it'll stay in print,

336
00:19:58.599 --> 00:20:01.720
in trade paper. And that was kind of the answer,

337
00:20:01.960 --> 00:20:04.160
a second body of the apple that you don't usually get.

338
00:20:05.039 --> 00:20:08.640
So in twenty twenty three, ten years later, it came

339
00:20:08.680 --> 00:20:13.640
out and Audible picked it up, which I thought was

340
00:20:13.720 --> 00:20:16.039
very nice. And we had an addendum of come up

341
00:20:16.119 --> 00:20:19.480
since then, like the emergence of genetic genealogy, and the

342
00:20:20.319 --> 00:20:25.440
investigators the state said they had DNA material that they

343
00:20:25.440 --> 00:20:28.079
took at the time very crude, so they couldn't do

344
00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:33.039
much with it at that time. And the investigators, who

345
00:20:33.039 --> 00:20:36.119
I grew to mistrust, told me that they ran the

346
00:20:36.200 --> 00:20:39.839
test and they didn't come up with the same people

347
00:20:39.880 --> 00:20:44.039
who I named in my book. And I said, well,

348
00:20:44.759 --> 00:20:48.359
why don't you try genetic genealogy, Because these cases were

349
00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:50.680
dropping like crazy all over the country. You may recall

350
00:20:51.200 --> 00:20:53.920
they were house fleeting. There was every case they had,

351
00:20:53.920 --> 00:20:56.200
they hung it like it was on a Christmas tree.

352
00:20:57.119 --> 00:20:59.599
It's a fairly cheap and easy way to clear the

353
00:20:59.599 --> 00:21:02.599
books these cases, but I could never get a straight

354
00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:04.559
answer out of them from the local people, from the

355
00:21:04.599 --> 00:21:07.680
state people, and so I thought, Okay, I'm going to

356
00:21:07.720 --> 00:21:09.640
stick it to them in the book, in the new book,

357
00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:13.720
and so that's what I did in an epilogue, an update.

358
00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:18.559
And they still won't tell me. And my sense is

359
00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:22.799
finally that either they lost the sample or it had

360
00:21:22.839 --> 00:21:25.960
degenerated to the point where it was not usable, but

361
00:21:26.039 --> 00:21:28.400
they didn't want to coalk to it. They owned that store,

362
00:21:28.440 --> 00:21:29.839
so I couldn't do much more about it.

363
00:21:31.519 --> 00:21:34.519
So how did when Nancy's body was found? How did

364
00:21:34.519 --> 00:21:37.559
the community react? Do you think that they said or

365
00:21:37.599 --> 00:21:41.200
did anything that negatively impacted the police's investigation.

366
00:21:41.720 --> 00:21:44.119
This is what I came to believe. There were two

367
00:21:44.160 --> 00:21:47.920
theories of the rape, murteran kidnap and the local people.

368
00:21:47.960 --> 00:21:50.359
It's a very insular community. It's you know, it's this

369
00:21:50.440 --> 00:21:54.119
is Appalachia, you know, up in the mountains. The local

370
00:21:54.119 --> 00:21:57.079
people said, nobody of our people could possibly do such

371
00:21:57.079 --> 00:21:59.960
a horrible thing. It had to be an outsider either

372
00:22:00.079 --> 00:22:03.400
or someone passing through or another fellow Vista volumet. Whereas

373
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:06.839
others who knew Nancy Morgan, who I got to talk to,

374
00:22:07.119 --> 00:22:10.480
was really great, said somebody here did it, and so

375
00:22:10.640 --> 00:22:14.160
it became almost a political division in the counting of

376
00:22:14.279 --> 00:22:17.720
the people who thought an outsider did it, and that

377
00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:20.240
water was carried by the one of the two Ponder

378
00:22:20.240 --> 00:22:23.480
brothers who was the sheriff, and he I believe, basically

379
00:22:23.519 --> 00:22:26.920
framed a fellow Vista volunteer. But the frame was so

380
00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:32.279
transparent that after a week long trial, a local jury

381
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:35.400
came back with a not guilty verdict within forty five

382
00:22:35.559 --> 00:22:40.119
So that's how badly put together the frame was. That

383
00:22:40.240 --> 00:22:43.519
was and that remains, i should say today, even fifty

384
00:22:43.599 --> 00:22:46.440
years later, more than fifty four, there's still a division

385
00:22:46.440 --> 00:22:49.480
on that point in the county that people who were

386
00:22:49.519 --> 00:22:54.519
Ponder brother supporters were convinced that this Vista volunteer did it,

387
00:22:54.599 --> 00:22:59.480
regardless of what their jury said, and others who said, no,

388
00:23:00.119 --> 00:23:06.799
this this has the fingerprints metaphorically of local people. So

389
00:23:06.880 --> 00:23:08.559
that's kind of where we are now. And you know,

390
00:23:08.599 --> 00:23:10.960
I gave it my best shot, and I did get

391
00:23:11.000 --> 00:23:14.519
a confession from someone and the names of four other people,

392
00:23:15.160 --> 00:23:17.960
which I never would have done because those people are

393
00:23:18.000 --> 00:23:22.200
still alive. So you're you have reliable. If you're if

394
00:23:22.240 --> 00:23:25.680
use somebody of murdered, that's pretty serious. But no one

395
00:23:25.720 --> 00:23:29.880
has ever come forward to threaten me with legal action,

396
00:23:30.559 --> 00:23:32.880
and so I did the best I could. I thought

397
00:23:33.039 --> 00:23:37.400
beat the drum for both local and state people to

398
00:23:37.480 --> 00:23:41.519
do genetic genealogy. And at some point you have to say,

399
00:23:41.640 --> 00:23:46.480
I've done what I can and the only possible change

400
00:23:46.640 --> 00:23:49.799
might happen if there was some sort of a deathbed.

401
00:23:50.160 --> 00:23:51.680
You know that for me, that would be great, but

402
00:23:52.920 --> 00:23:55.960
you can't really count on that. And you know, I waited,

403
00:23:56.200 --> 00:24:00.319
you know, went from nineteen seventy to twenty thirteen to

404
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:02.559
write the book the first time. So we're up to

405
00:24:02.599 --> 00:24:04.119
close to fifty five years.

406
00:24:05.039 --> 00:24:08.079
Regarding the DNA evidence that you were viewed in two

407
00:24:08.119 --> 00:24:13.400
thousand and nine that suggested multiple perpetrators, how did you

408
00:24:14.039 --> 00:24:16.200
reconcile it with your theory of the crime.

409
00:24:16.559 --> 00:24:20.200
Initially I had this Now back we're back in the

410
00:24:20.240 --> 00:24:23.400
seventies now in that mindset, and I, in my view,

411
00:24:23.920 --> 00:24:27.680
my sort of conspiratorial view, the Vistas threatened the political

412
00:24:27.680 --> 00:24:31.480
and economic control that the Ponder brothers had and that

413
00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:34.319
caused her death. That's the way I wanted the story

414
00:24:34.319 --> 00:24:37.559
to read. But you know, you go where the evidence

415
00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:40.000
takes you, and the evidence took me away from that

416
00:24:41.279 --> 00:24:45.319
to a theory that there were five young near do

417
00:24:45.480 --> 00:24:49.799
Will men from the county who were just sitting around

418
00:24:50.759 --> 00:24:56.720
drinking and they saw Nancy Morgan drive up to a

419
00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:01.319
friend fellow Vistas house for dinner and then late that

420
00:25:01.440 --> 00:25:05.440
night came back. And they knew who she was. They

421
00:25:05.480 --> 00:25:09.279
had assumed certain things about her because she was a

422
00:25:09.319 --> 00:25:15.160
kind of a sixties person. She smoke, she drank somewhat,

423
00:25:15.599 --> 00:25:17.640
and she had a boyfriend who visited her, so they

424
00:25:17.839 --> 00:25:23.440
made certain assumptions about her availability, and they forced her

425
00:25:23.480 --> 00:25:26.240
off the road, kidnapped her, took her up on a

426
00:25:26.319 --> 00:25:31.599
ridge where there was a barn, and raped her, and

427
00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:38.000
then they hogg tied her just so she wouldn't get away,

428
00:25:39.519 --> 00:25:42.720
but she struggled, and as she struggled, she strangled herself

429
00:25:43.319 --> 00:25:45.680
being hog tied. And I don't think it was an

430
00:25:45.680 --> 00:25:48.119
intentional murder. I don't think it was premeditated in a case,

431
00:25:48.200 --> 00:25:50.599
I think they were hoping to let her go, and

432
00:25:50.640 --> 00:25:53.240
that they had done things like this over the years

433
00:25:53.279 --> 00:25:56.400
they never gotten caught before, usually because of the low

434
00:25:56.480 --> 00:25:59.880
social status of the local women and hikers. Apple Action

435
00:26:00.039 --> 00:26:04.039
trail hikers that they did this too, and things got

436
00:26:04.079 --> 00:26:07.240
away from them and they quickly dumped the body where

437
00:26:07.240 --> 00:26:10.640
it was found in her car. The fact that the

438
00:26:10.720 --> 00:26:15.680
damp as initially suggested multiple sperm donors coincided with the

439
00:26:15.720 --> 00:26:18.279
story that I was told, not in every particular, but

440
00:26:19.000 --> 00:26:23.000
basically that was it that they that conformed with it,

441
00:26:23.079 --> 00:26:26.799
and not to the theory the sheriff had there was

442
00:26:27.359 --> 00:26:30.279
one fellow of Vista volunteer who she had had dinner

443
00:26:30.319 --> 00:26:33.480
with before, because it was just one person that just

444
00:26:33.519 --> 00:26:36.640
should be one sperm donor family in her body. So

445
00:26:36.799 --> 00:26:39.519
everything circumstantially pointed to the fact that I was right.

446
00:26:40.160 --> 00:26:44.119
The initial investigation had been so bungled by the state

447
00:26:44.160 --> 00:26:49.920
peer of investigation that when I began bugging them, they said, well, okay,

448
00:26:49.920 --> 00:26:51.880
we'll reopen the case, and they came down to see

449
00:26:51.920 --> 00:26:55.880
me and went through my files, and then should have

450
00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:59.359
known this showed me nothing in return for my efforts.

451
00:27:00.240 --> 00:27:03.839
They were most concerned with validating the guilt of the

452
00:27:03.839 --> 00:27:07.680
guy who was acquitted. They showed no interest in my

453
00:27:07.839 --> 00:27:14.039
theory of the five local people. And I initially was

454
00:27:14.039 --> 00:27:16.839
tipped to that because my friend Elmer Hall, whose place

455
00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:20.440
I stayed at was a poll watcher up there, and

456
00:27:20.559 --> 00:27:24.599
sometimes people aren't voting and people chat, and Elmer mentioned

457
00:27:24.599 --> 00:27:26.920
that I was looking into the Nancy Morgan murder. And

458
00:27:26.960 --> 00:27:30.240
this one woman sitting next to us at oh, that

459
00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:34.359
was Richard Johnson and his friends. They did it like boom, not.

460
00:27:34.480 --> 00:27:36.559
I can't tell you not it's a secret, just boom.

461
00:27:36.759 --> 00:27:40.079
You know everybody knows that. So that kind of pointed

462
00:27:40.119 --> 00:27:42.440
me in that direction. And then I went to speak

463
00:27:42.440 --> 00:27:47.160
with Richard Johnson three times in prison, and he admitted

464
00:27:47.160 --> 00:27:51.000
his role in it to some degree. He wouldn't say

465
00:27:51.039 --> 00:27:55.799
exactly what he did, but his description was pretty accurate

466
00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:00.400
from what we know. So I felt that I I

467
00:28:00.519 --> 00:28:04.160
was right, and I kept pursuing that. And just like

468
00:28:04.359 --> 00:28:07.119
in the beginning, if the evidence had taken me elsewhere,

469
00:28:07.279 --> 00:28:09.440
I would have gone elsewhere. I mean, my job is

470
00:28:09.480 --> 00:28:14.000
not to prove someone's innocent or guilt. My job is

471
00:28:14.039 --> 00:28:14.680
to find out what.

472
00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:18.519
The truth is with Richard Johnson. His I know, his

473
00:28:18.599 --> 00:28:21.519
son is writing his own book about his father, the

474
00:28:21.519 --> 00:28:25.079
poisoning of his sister that Richard Johnson serving time for.

475
00:28:25.880 --> 00:28:31.480
Do you think that with this new book that supports

476
00:28:31.480 --> 00:28:33.799
so much of what you say in yours. Do you

477
00:28:33.920 --> 00:28:37.319
think that that would potentially add some pressure onto the

478
00:28:37.440 --> 00:28:41.640
SBI to do something, you know, if they can test

479
00:28:41.680 --> 00:28:45.839
the sample, if it's not degraded, you know, would that

480
00:28:46.039 --> 00:28:48.920
possibly do you think would lead them to take some

481
00:28:49.000 --> 00:28:49.640
more action.

482
00:28:50.279 --> 00:28:53.079
I don't think so. For this reason, Chris Johnson's book

483
00:28:53.160 --> 00:28:56.440
is kind of a personal tale, and I don't think

484
00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:00.519
it's going to get published unless he publishes himself. He doesn't.

485
00:29:00.960 --> 00:29:05.440
From from our discussions in my interviews with him, he

486
00:29:05.519 --> 00:29:10.160
was ever able to offer me no new specific details

487
00:29:10.200 --> 00:29:13.880
that I did not know already about the case and

488
00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:17.880
about his father's poisoning of his his little little sister.

489
00:29:19.039 --> 00:29:23.759
So no, I don't you always hope. Of course, of

490
00:29:23.839 --> 00:29:26.799
course that's the you know, the the you know, the

491
00:29:26.839 --> 00:29:30.759
hope is usually the death bet confession. But someone else

492
00:29:30.799 --> 00:29:33.440
apart from Richard, who's confessed already and it's not the

493
00:29:33.559 --> 00:29:38.799
SBI doesn't think he's credible. But if someone oh two

494
00:29:38.839 --> 00:29:41.759
of the two of the five are dead, one committed suicide,

495
00:29:43.079 --> 00:29:46.599
but there's still several others out there and their families,

496
00:29:47.480 --> 00:29:51.880
that's the most realistic hope I have about definitively breaking

497
00:29:51.880 --> 00:29:59.640
the case, or if technology advances even the degraded sample

498
00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:04.759
of the DNA might be helpful. I mean, no one

499
00:30:05.079 --> 00:30:08.519
that I knew expected genetic genealogy to come along and

500
00:30:08.599 --> 00:30:13.119
make it so easy to do that. So theoretically there

501
00:30:13.160 --> 00:30:15.720
could be more technical advances. And if again, if they

502
00:30:15.720 --> 00:30:18.559
didn't lose it, they lost it, then it's lost. But

503
00:30:18.599 --> 00:30:20.920
if they have it but it's in a degraded condition,

504
00:30:21.880 --> 00:30:22.759
who knows.

505
00:30:23.160 --> 00:30:26.119
If you could go back and change one thing about

506
00:30:26.119 --> 00:30:29.200
how you approached the Nancy mork And investigation, what would

507
00:30:29.240 --> 00:30:29.960
it be and why?

508
00:30:31.480 --> 00:30:35.599
Well, I guess I wouldn't My initial investigation wouldn't have

509
00:30:35.640 --> 00:30:39.200
been so colored by my politics of the time. Now,

510
00:30:39.279 --> 00:30:43.039
I didn't disregard anything, but that was my working theory

511
00:30:43.079 --> 00:30:45.240
that the ponders had something to do with them with

512
00:30:45.319 --> 00:30:49.559
the murder. And in my book I don't say that

513
00:30:49.599 --> 00:30:52.680
they had something to do with the murder, but they

514
00:30:52.799 --> 00:30:55.119
knew much more than they told at the time, So

515
00:30:55.359 --> 00:30:59.480
I might have saved some time disabusing myself of my

516
00:30:59.599 --> 00:31:01.599
conspiration theory at the beginning.

517
00:31:01.960 --> 00:31:05.480
Other than that, No, now that all of the updates

518
00:31:05.519 --> 00:31:08.920
that can be talked about regarding Nancy's case have been addressed,

519
00:31:09.039 --> 00:31:13.480
and the wait for a definitive resolution is primarily all

520
00:31:13.519 --> 00:31:16.519
that can be done for now, what is your next

521
00:31:16.519 --> 00:31:19.200
project in this?

522
00:31:19.359 --> 00:31:24.240
In the same way that I became the obsessed actor

523
00:31:24.279 --> 00:31:29.079
in the Nancy Morgan drama, someone came to me very serendipitously.

524
00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:31.920
I work out at the Duke Fitness Center here in Durham,

525
00:31:32.599 --> 00:31:36.119
and I have a trainer and one day I was

526
00:31:36.160 --> 00:31:38.079
finishing up and he said, you know, there's John Martin.

527
00:31:38.119 --> 00:31:40.839
He's up out on the on the indoor track and

528
00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:43.279
he says, a pretty interesting guy. Maybe you should introduce yourself.

529
00:31:43.319 --> 00:31:46.200
So I said, okay, So I finished and I went

530
00:31:46.279 --> 00:31:48.960
up to the Hi, John, my name is Mark Pinsky.

531
00:31:50.079 --> 00:31:51.839
Chris said we might have some things in common. I

532
00:31:51.839 --> 00:31:53.359
said what do you do? He said, well, I'm a

533
00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:57.720
history professor to medieval history. I said, well, first thing,

534
00:31:57.880 --> 00:32:00.759
that's an inside jokes. I said, first, the Jews didn't

535
00:32:00.759 --> 00:32:02.880
poison the wells. That's the first thing you need to know.

536
00:32:03.559 --> 00:32:05.960
And he just laughed, actually didn't left. He didn't get

537
00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:08.359
the joke anyway, and he said, well what do you do?

538
00:32:08.440 --> 00:32:11.519
And I said, well, I wrote about racial injustice and

539
00:32:11.559 --> 00:32:14.720
true crime. He said, well, I may have a story

540
00:32:14.759 --> 00:32:15.039
for you.

541
00:32:15.640 --> 00:32:15.920
Now.

542
00:32:16.039 --> 00:32:19.799
Over the years must have heard that fifty times. It

543
00:32:19.880 --> 00:32:24.559
never works out. It never works out. I said, okay,

544
00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:27.119
tell me the story. So we walked around the track

545
00:32:28.079 --> 00:32:31.440
and he said, well, my father was a rector at

546
00:32:31.519 --> 00:32:34.960
Christ Church on Saint Simon's Island off the Georgia coast,

547
00:32:35.920 --> 00:32:38.680
and he said he told me that there had been

548
00:32:38.720 --> 00:32:41.039
a murder in the house that we, my brother and

549
00:32:41.079 --> 00:32:44.240
I grew up in. And when he wrote a parish history,

550
00:32:44.279 --> 00:32:48.279
his father, the rector, wrote of parish history, he devoted

551
00:32:48.279 --> 00:32:52.240
a chapter to this murder of a previous rector who'd

552
00:32:52.240 --> 00:32:55.759
been shot while preparing a sermon in nineteen thirty eight.

553
00:32:55.880 --> 00:32:58.960
Someone in the yard fired through the window, shot him

554
00:32:58.960 --> 00:33:01.319
in the head and killed him. And the case was

555
00:33:01.359 --> 00:33:05.559
never solved, although they initially charged two white brothers on

556
00:33:05.599 --> 00:33:07.839
the island who were said to control the rackets on

557
00:33:07.880 --> 00:33:12.759
Saint Simon's and a semi literate black janitor who had

558
00:33:12.799 --> 00:33:17.759
worked for them. And again this is southern Georgia in

559
00:33:17.799 --> 00:33:20.839
the nineteen thirties. So the first red flag that went

560
00:33:20.920 --> 00:33:24.359
up was when John told me that he wasn't lynched.

561
00:33:24.359 --> 00:33:27.000
The black guy wasn't lynched. And then, as it happened,

562
00:33:27.599 --> 00:33:30.079
the black guy was the only guy charged for the murder.

563
00:33:31.160 --> 00:33:33.160
He was convicted of first to be murder of a

564
00:33:33.200 --> 00:33:39.000
prominent white episcopal minister, second cousin to Robert E. Lee,

565
00:33:40.039 --> 00:33:43.000
and he was found guilty by an all white jurjury,

566
00:33:43.759 --> 00:33:46.720
but they recommended mercy, and that just didn't happen in

567
00:33:46.759 --> 00:33:49.960
those days. There's something behind the curtain that I knew

568
00:33:49.960 --> 00:33:52.920
for sure. And he said, the guy who told me

569
00:33:53.000 --> 00:33:54.880
most of this is a guy whose wife was in

570
00:33:54.920 --> 00:33:58.480
the congregation for twenty years. He's just an amateur. He's

571
00:33:58.480 --> 00:34:02.880
a true crime buff. He did a serious investigation, collected

572
00:34:02.960 --> 00:34:06.720
all this material, but he seriously ill with cancer and

573
00:34:06.720 --> 00:34:09.280
he's afraid he's going to die before he can interest

574
00:34:09.320 --> 00:34:12.119
someone in doing the book. He tried two other authors

575
00:34:12.159 --> 00:34:15.639
and they had said, well, you write it. He couldn't

576
00:34:15.639 --> 00:34:18.400
write it. And I said, well, how about this. I

577
00:34:18.440 --> 00:34:22.159
have a friend from Duke Days who's also co written

578
00:34:22.159 --> 00:34:24.559
a book, a historical book about a true crime praise.

579
00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:27.599
I've written two books by this time. I said, why

580
00:34:27.599 --> 00:34:31.239
don't you send him our books, let him look at them,

581
00:34:31.400 --> 00:34:34.000
and if he thinks we're the right people, let's go ahead.

582
00:34:35.039 --> 00:34:38.000
And about three weeks later he said, this man Rick

583
00:34:38.079 --> 00:34:41.320
McBride says, you're it. We want what we want you

584
00:34:41.400 --> 00:34:41.599
to do.

585
00:34:41.639 --> 00:34:42.320
It do this.

586
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:45.519
So he began sending me boxes and boxes of material,

587
00:34:46.159 --> 00:34:48.960
which I went through, and the whole process, you'd take notes,

588
00:34:49.000 --> 00:34:51.519
you'd do a timeline, and you try to figure out

589
00:34:51.559 --> 00:34:56.119
what happened exactly. And so then Steve and I went

590
00:34:56.159 --> 00:35:00.039
down to visit him at his home and then we

591
00:35:00.079 --> 00:35:02.559
went with him. He was living in northern Florida at

592
00:35:02.559 --> 00:35:04.960
the time, and we went with him back to Saint

593
00:35:05.039 --> 00:35:11.199
Simon's and did some interviews, did some investigating. Nothing conclusive.

594
00:35:11.679 --> 00:35:13.679
The only thing conclusive we found it was that the

595
00:35:13.719 --> 00:35:17.760
black Jenner could not have done the murder. And it

596
00:35:17.800 --> 00:35:20.599
was a kind of an open wound on Saint Simon's

597
00:35:21.800 --> 00:35:25.320
because you know, the black guy spends twenty three years

598
00:35:25.320 --> 00:35:28.199
on the chain gang and the white guys skate.

599
00:35:28.760 --> 00:35:29.119
And so.

600
00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:33.239
We learned how deeply that was when we went back

601
00:35:33.840 --> 00:35:36.920
to give a talk a panel with Steve, myself and

602
00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:40.480
Rick in this big auditorium on Say Simon's Island, and

603
00:35:40.519 --> 00:35:44.079
it was on a weekday morning, and two hundred people

604
00:35:44.119 --> 00:35:48.719
showed up, which showed the depth of remaining interest. Now

605
00:35:48.760 --> 00:35:51.039
we had hoped that when we shared what we had

606
00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:55.440
we might shake loose some fruit from a low hanging tree.

607
00:35:56.239 --> 00:35:58.679
Hasn't happened yet, but it was worth the effort for us.

608
00:35:58.679 --> 00:36:00.440
I mean, that's how you do these things. You sort

609
00:36:00.440 --> 00:36:03.079
of try to bring them to people's attention, to hope

610
00:36:03.119 --> 00:36:07.039
that somebody who is not on your radar comes forward

611
00:36:07.079 --> 00:36:10.039
and reaches out to you. Still may happen. We're not

612
00:36:10.079 --> 00:36:14.880
done yet, but we have a manuscript and the Atlantic

613
00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:17.360
magazine had said they would give us the first look.

614
00:36:17.599 --> 00:36:20.760
No contract, but they give us the first look. We

615
00:36:20.840 --> 00:36:23.119
now have twenty thousand words, which would be a very

616
00:36:23.159 --> 00:36:26.960
long magazine piece, which once we're finishing editing it, we

617
00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:29.639
will show to the Atlantic and they may say no,

618
00:36:29.719 --> 00:36:31.559
they may say yes. They may say yes, but we

619
00:36:31.599 --> 00:36:35.920
want you to do this. Our problem structurally is that while

620
00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:40.440
I believe we made an excellent case that man George

621
00:36:40.440 --> 00:36:44.440
Clayburn did not do it, we haven't reached the point

622
00:36:44.440 --> 00:36:46.360
where we can say who we think did do it,

623
00:36:46.960 --> 00:36:50.039
which is the third act, and so both injuries and

624
00:36:50.079 --> 00:36:53.360
in true crime you aren't required to, but the reader

625
00:36:53.400 --> 00:36:57.400
really wants to know what you think, and so we're

626
00:36:57.440 --> 00:36:59.960
going to have to deal with I guess if we

627
00:37:00.079 --> 00:37:04.119
earning their trust. In the first twenty thousand words, we're

628
00:37:04.119 --> 00:37:09.559
hoping they'll trust us to make an informed speculation as

629
00:37:09.599 --> 00:37:12.039
to who really was involved. And these involved some very

630
00:37:12.119 --> 00:37:16.519
rich people at that time, very powerful people. So I mean,

631
00:37:16.559 --> 00:37:20.840
everybody's dead, so libel law, your libel rights die when

632
00:37:20.880 --> 00:37:23.440
you do. So we're okay there. There are still some

633
00:37:23.559 --> 00:37:27.559
relatives of threatened. Didn't threaten us directly, but they threaten

634
00:37:27.599 --> 00:37:30.320
anybody wants to write about it, and so well, like

635
00:37:30.400 --> 00:37:34.440
before we had the big meeting in Saint Simon's, a

636
00:37:34.519 --> 00:37:36.920
very nice reporter for the Brunswick Paper did a column

637
00:37:36.920 --> 00:37:38.840
about it, and now I think that gin d up

638
00:37:38.840 --> 00:37:42.400
interest in people coming to us, and we also that

639
00:37:42.440 --> 00:37:43.440
would shake the tree.

640
00:37:43.280 --> 00:37:43.760
A little bit.

641
00:37:44.119 --> 00:37:48.679
So far, not yet, but we'll have to see. And

642
00:37:48.719 --> 00:37:52.800
in a sense, I feel like it brought me back

643
00:37:52.880 --> 00:37:56.280
full circle to why I began writing about true crime.

644
00:37:56.440 --> 00:38:00.920
That there was an injustice done to someone because of

645
00:38:00.960 --> 00:38:04.519
his race, I believe, and so history has its claims.

646
00:38:04.599 --> 00:38:07.599
He's long dead, but his name should be cleared, and

647
00:38:07.679 --> 00:38:09.239
I think we can clear his Nay.

648
00:38:10.519 --> 00:38:16.800
Absolutely, I believe he can clear his name. The last

649
00:38:16.880 --> 00:38:22.440
question I have for you is for anyone out there

650
00:38:22.480 --> 00:38:26.559
working on their own investigation into cases that keep them

651
00:38:26.599 --> 00:38:30.280
up at night. What advice would you give them?

652
00:38:30.840 --> 00:38:35.679
Well, again, collect as much paper as possible, trial transcripts,

653
00:38:35.679 --> 00:38:39.079
police reports, autopsy reports, as much as you can. Then

654
00:38:39.119 --> 00:38:42.920
collect as many contemporaneous news accounts you can, and school

655
00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.679
yourself in as much as we know, and I mean

656
00:38:46.719 --> 00:38:51.599
schooled yourself. Then go talk to people, and talk to people.

657
00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:56.039
If it's a cold case, talk to the oldest people first,

658
00:38:56.360 --> 00:39:00.760
that's important. And you know, people will lie to you

659
00:39:01.960 --> 00:39:04.360
if it's in their interest. People will shade the truth

660
00:39:04.519 --> 00:39:07.880
if it's in their interest. But over time a kind

661
00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:11.920
of consensus will likely form in your mind. But don't

662
00:39:12.119 --> 00:39:16.079
go in if you can avoid it with a thesis

663
00:39:16.159 --> 00:39:19.719
that you want to prove, and then find if your

664
00:39:19.760 --> 00:39:23.400
thesis isn't right, then you quit. I don't think that's

665
00:39:23.400 --> 00:39:27.599
the most honest way to do these things. Follow the evidence,

666
00:39:27.639 --> 00:39:30.960
take the evidence where it takes you. If it's if

667
00:39:31.000 --> 00:39:34.639
it's not where you want it to go, you know,

668
00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:37.159
do your best with that. I mean, the truth is

669
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:41.159
always the most important thing. I mean, the gold standard

670
00:39:41.239 --> 00:39:47.199
for you know, cold cases. The crusading reporter takes up

671
00:39:47.239 --> 00:39:51.280
the case of a minority person already on death row

672
00:39:52.920 --> 00:39:56.840
and clears that person and finds the person who did it.

673
00:39:58.480 --> 00:40:03.320
Those cases don't come along very often. It happens, and

674
00:40:03.400 --> 00:40:05.320
when it happens, you read about it because it's so,

675
00:40:05.599 --> 00:40:08.800
you know, so definitive. And also with genetics genealogy, you

676
00:40:08.920 --> 00:40:12.599
have you do have certainty, and that's important to know.

677
00:40:13.320 --> 00:40:17.320
But go and wanting to know what happened, not necessarily

678
00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:21.199
proving that this person is innocent, because that can shade

679
00:40:21.239 --> 00:40:26.119
your research techniques. But if you're a family member, it's

680
00:40:26.159 --> 00:40:28.920
going to be very hard if you put all your

681
00:40:28.960 --> 00:40:32.480
belief in something like that and it doesn't work out

682
00:40:32.519 --> 00:40:36.599
that way. You know, it's very tough. I go from

683
00:40:36.639 --> 00:40:38.760
case to case. It's not my one and only case.

684
00:40:40.400 --> 00:40:43.320
And this is just I've learned from, you know, and

685
00:40:43.360 --> 00:40:47.559
I've covered a lot more murder cases as news stories.

686
00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:51.079
I've covered a number of other murder cases when I

687
00:40:51.119 --> 00:40:53.559
work for the La Times, one that if I live

688
00:40:53.599 --> 00:40:56.920
long enough, may become another book we'll see, and the

689
00:40:56.960 --> 00:40:59.760
same tools apply. I mean, I've used and developed these

690
00:40:59.760 --> 00:41:04.960
tools in day to day trial coverage for my different clients.

691
00:41:06.360 --> 00:41:09.679
I will say I shouldn't, but I will in these

692
00:41:09.840 --> 00:41:12.239
when these big sensational cases happen, and there's a lot

693
00:41:12.239 --> 00:41:14.599
of reporters from around the country. At the end of

694
00:41:14.679 --> 00:41:20.119
the trial, there's often a pool, a betting pool amongst

695
00:41:20.119 --> 00:41:24.239
the reporters, and you would say what the verdict will

696
00:41:24.239 --> 00:41:26.840
be and how long it will take the jury to

697
00:41:26.880 --> 00:41:29.679
find the verdict. And I won the Bundy pool. I've

698
00:41:29.719 --> 00:41:32.840
been doing this enough. So I was stringing for the

699
00:41:32.880 --> 00:41:35.760
New York Times in the morning. The editors want to

700
00:41:35.760 --> 00:41:37.320
know what's going to happen that day if you can

701
00:41:37.320 --> 00:41:41.440
tell them, And I said, well, another great old newspaper

702
00:41:41.480 --> 00:41:44.039
man passed away. Now Irv Horowitz on the national desk.

703
00:41:44.840 --> 00:41:47.239
I said, well, Irv, I think it's going to be

704
00:41:47.280 --> 00:41:50.800
a guilty verdict around four o'clock and so and so

705
00:41:50.920 --> 00:41:54.159
it was. So it happened to be, and so my

706
00:41:54.239 --> 00:41:58.280
reputation at the desk went sort of sky high, and

707
00:41:58.440 --> 00:42:00.679
my verdict story was on the front page of the

708
00:42:00.679 --> 00:42:04.400
Times with my byline. You know, it's not magic. This

709
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this kind of work is not magic. It's you know,

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hard work and luck. That's what I've learned in fifty

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five years.

712
00:42:13.880 --> 00:42:16.239
Absolutely, it's a lot of hard work and a lot

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of luck. But hopefully with all of that hard work

714
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and all of that luck good results come out of it.

715
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Yes, that's why I still do it.

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Mark, Thank you so much for joining me today. Is

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an absolute pleasure speaking with you.

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This has been fun and I don't have to worry

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about an elbow from my wife for talking too much,

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which at parties I tend to get. Well, I get

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a report card afterwards. She's very good. You didn't talk

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00:42:43.440 --> 00:42:45.599
too much about yourself.

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Well. The last thing I would want is to have

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you get an elbow from your wife. As always, everyone,

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00:42:56.280 --> 00:42:58.719
thank you so much for listening. In the source of

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00:42:58.719 --> 00:43:02.960
sense below you will find link to Mark's book as

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00:43:02.960 --> 00:43:05.639
well as his different social media is. If you check

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00:43:05.719 --> 00:43:10.679
out the website botdpot dot com, you can view attached

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00:43:10.679 --> 00:43:17.280
to this episodex biography with additional links as well. As always,

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I hope you have a wonderful week and I will

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see you in the next chapter of the Book of

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00:43:23.159 --> 00:43:29.239
the Dead. Bye, guys. Another page closed. But the story

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isn't over for the families left behind. The pain doesn't

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end when the headline's fade. And for the victims, we

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00:43:37.400 --> 00:43:41.440
owe them more than silence for our on solved cases.

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If you have any information, please reach out to local

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00:43:44.920 --> 00:43:48.639
authorities or visit our show notes for links and resources.

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Someone out there knows something. Maybe it's you. Thank you

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for listening to the Book of the Dead. If this

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00:43:58.320 --> 00:44:01.239
story moved or spoke to you in some way, talk

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00:44:01.239 --> 00:44:06.840
about it, share it, keep their names alive. Until next time,

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I'm Courtney Liso. Stay safe, stay curious, and stay vigilant,

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and remember the dead may be gone, but their stories

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will not be forgotten.
Mark I. Pinsky

Journalist and author Mark I. Pinsky was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947, and raised in the southern New Jersey suburbs, in a Conservative Jewish home, where he was active in United Synagogue Youth. In 1967 he was a civilian volunteer with the Israel Defense Force in and around El Arish, Sinai, immediately following the Six Day War, where he helped to salvage captured Egyptian army tanks, trucks, and armored personnel carriers from the desert.

Over five decades, Pinsky’s journalism career has been composed of two strands: writing about social justice as a complement to political activism; and straight reporting for traditional, establishment outlets, bringing social justice issues – sometimes diluted – to broader audiences. On occasion, these strands have been integrated and intertwined. At other times they have been strained and in conflict. For him there was – and is again – a time to demonstrate, march, rally, and get arrested. And a time to write