Casey Sherman, BLOOD IN THE WATER: The Untold Story of a Family Tragedy
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators, whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up, and spend my time curating the best books, so you
[0:29]don't have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests, like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens.
[0:44]Casey Sherman is the author of Blood in the Water, the untold story of a family tragedy.
[0:49]Casey is a New York Times LA Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, number one best-selling
[0:55]author of 19 books, including Patriots Day, now a major motion picture starring Mark
[1:01]Wahlberg, the finest hours, now a major Disney motion picture starring Chris Pine,
[1:06]Helltown, a murder in Hollywood, James Patterson's The Last Days of John Lennon, and more.
[1:11]He is also a contributing writer for The Washington Post, Esquire, The Daily Beast, and Boston
[1:16]Magazine.
[1:17]Casey Sherman has appeared on more than 200 television programs, including The Today Show,
[1:22]CNN, MSNBC, The History Channel, and Even The View.
[1:26]Welcome, Casey.
[1:27]Thank you so much for coming on totally bugged to talk about Blood in the Water.
[1:32]Oh, my gosh.
[1:33]So good.
[1:34]Wow.
[1:35]What a story.
[1:36]Congratulations.
[1:37]I'm very excited to be here, is that anything ever happened to me.
[1:40]Okay.
[1:41]I'm obsessed with this family now.
[1:42]I like can't get enough of Casey and the grandfather with the sex toys and his mistress
[1:48]and the mom and their special needs.
[1:50]Oh, my gosh.
[1:51]There's so many pieces of the story, and it is like completely immersive.
[1:56]Of course, you write in such a compelling way that it's impossible to put down.
[2:00]Tell everybody about this true crime, which, of course, is your genre that you have mastered
[2:05]this story and what happened.
[2:07]Sure.
[2:08]You know what I mean?
[2:09]I think on a high level, the story is about wealth, greed, and murder.
[2:13]Yes.
[2:14]And this is a story that takes place over probably span of about 10 years.
[2:18]I learned about it in 2016 when the young man at the center of the story, Nathan
[2:24]Harmon, took his mother out on a deep sea fishing trip off the coast of Rhode Island.
[2:30]And after a couple of days at sea, he just disappears.
[2:34]And he ends up a castaway on a life raft for what he claims to be seven days.
[2:42]And when he's rescued by a passing cargo ship, they realize that his mother is not with
[2:48]him.
[2:49]So, you know, when it was first announced, it made headlines around not only the country
[2:53]but around the world, and it was considered almost a bittersweet story because it was a miraculous
[2:58]rescue of this young man at sea, but his mother is still missing.
[3:02]And they basically treated Nathan Carmen like the Tom Hanks character on castaway for a few
[3:08]days.
[3:09]And then they bring him back to the Coast Guard station in Boston, and the investigators
[3:14]there begin to peel away the layers of his story.
[3:18]And what he's telling investigators doesn't add up to them because they've spent the last
[3:23]several days scouring 58,000 square miles looking for any sign of Nathan and his mother,
[3:30]and they couldn't find it.
[3:32]So they ultimately didn't believe that he had lost his, what the way he said he did.
[3:37]And they believe that he had murdered his mother on the high seas.
[3:40]Not to mention that when he should have, it did not look like he had been on the seas
[3:44]for seven days, that he wasn't parched and he looked basically like he had just gone out
[3:48]a couple hours prior.
[3:49]Which is such an odd thing.
[3:51]That was something that the medical doctor on the ship picked up right away.
[3:55]He wasn't hypothermic.
[3:57]He wasn't dehydrated.
[3:58]He managed to get up onto the deck of this major freighter find without really any assistance.
[4:06]So if you're on the ocean for seven days or even two days, you lose muscle control.
[4:12]You are hypothermic certainly and dehydrated.
[4:15]He showed him no signs of that when they plucked him out of the ocean.
[4:19]And when they get him to Coast Guard Station and Boston, not only are they discounting
[4:24]his story, but then they uncover the idea that he's also the prime suspect in his
[4:30]grandfather's shotgun murder three years prior, all allegedly to gink control of a $50 million
[4:38]family fortune.
[4:39]Wow.
[4:40]And then you tell us all about that murder and how basically like his grandfather's
[4:45]head was half shot off and that it looked like there were two shots to the head and
[4:51]one to the stomach and it looked like it was from the foot of the bed and you know, Nathan
[4:56]had been with his grandfather before and then he had left to talk to his girlfriend
[5:02]or whatever and then his aunt at the funeral was like, no, this must have been Nathan.
[5:08]And anyway, when did how did this all happen like, and why was he like, oh, it said the
[5:13]search warrant was issued, but then it was not there wasn't enough evidence or something
[5:19]so they couldn't arrest him.
[5:22]So we have to go all the way back to 2013 when the grandfather John Chocolus was murdered
[5:27]in his bed.
[5:28]Now, John was a multi-million dollar real estate developer in New England.
[5:33]He was at that time 87 years old and he was the proud patriarch of a large Greek American
[5:39]family and it's very Shakespearean the way that this whole story unfolds because on one
[5:44]side he is this benevolent person that does a lot for his community, but he's also got
[5:49]a dark side.
[5:50]John Chocolus.
[5:51]He, you know, all of his four daughters are always vying for his loyalty and, you know,
[5:57]and he's paying for his loyalty and many respects because he's going out allowances
[6:02]to them without allowing them to, you know, really, you know, get jobs on their own for
[6:07]the most part.
[6:08]But within this large family, there's this multi-million dollar business and John Chocolus
[6:13]at 87 years old is now grooming young Nathan Carmen who is on the autism spectrum.
[6:19]He is, you know, kind of a fledgling college student, but the grandfather wants Nathan
[6:25]to be his heir apparent and run the family company because he's doting on his first born
[6:30]male ranch out.
[6:32]And I think there are people around John Chocolus and even people within family that
[6:35]didn't want that to happen.
[6:37]Well, it's so fascinating.
[6:39]And then how everything gets linked up later and all the suspicion and then that he died
[6:46]in prison.
[6:47]I mean, this whole thing like just keeps, which is the mysteries continue to unravel.
[6:52]You know, the interesting thing about this story is when I first took it on, I've read
[6:57]all the newspaper reports about the magazine profiles.
[7:00]And I thought there was a clear direction between the allegations against Nathan Carmen
[7:05]and his guilt in both crimes.
[7:08]And when I had to gung through this case, and by that meaning really putting on my investigative
[7:13]reporter hat and interviewing well over 30 witnesses, you know, the case became much
[7:17]more complex and more potential suspects began to emerge here beyond Nathan Carmen.
[7:26]Oh, my gosh.
[7:27]Well, we won't give anything away, but it's so interesting.
[7:30]And there's so much attention, rent, not randomly.
[7:32]I guess maybe the time it takes to investigate, but now there's a Netflix documentary
[7:37]in the works about this.
[7:38]There's another book from like one of his prosecutors coming out like this is the prosecutor
[7:42]is writing kind of a self published book, which we'll come out in a couple of years.
[7:46]Netflix is doing their thing.
[7:48]I'm developing a feature based on blood and water with Leo DiCaprio's company, Appian
[7:55]Wade.
[7:56]So we're in the process of, you know, telling this story, hopefully on the big screen
[8:00]as well.
[8:01]there's a lot of attention surrounding this story.
[8:04]I think it's the Netflix case in my book that have really, you know, triggered a lot of
[8:08]renewed interest in the story because Nathan data a couple of years ago in his jail cell.
[8:13]And it's a very mysterious death.
[8:16]The jail officials claim that it was suicide members of his family and his legal team certainly
[8:22]don't think that was the case.
[8:24]Initially there was a rumor that suicide note was left behind, but it wasn't it was actually
[8:29]a note for that Nathan had written to his legal team.
[8:32]Nathan was incredibly active in his defense.
[8:35]And now writing this book, I will say that I'm not sure that prosecutors would have won
[8:42]a conviction against Nathan Harmon.
[8:45]There's too much other circumstantial evidence surrounding this that point to other directions.
[8:51]And I think the defense would have had a field day with the prosecution.
[8:54]Therefore, there was no real reason for Nathan to kill himself behind bars.
[8:59]Well, well, this is amazing.
[9:02]It will be an incredible movie, but it's already an incredible book.
[9:07]It's like, why do we have to watch?
[9:08]You know, the talented Mr. Ripley meets the Murdoch case, you know, that's really, you
[9:12]know, Nathan is such an enigma, you know, on one side, he's incredibly volatile.
[9:17]He's got a very difficult relationship with his mother.
[9:21]And then on this other side of him, he's also, you know, kind and, you know, certainly
[9:27]a loner because of, you know, he's struggling with this disorder and Nathan certainly
[9:32]felt that because he was on the autism spectrum disorder, that police immediately put
[9:36]a target on his back and didn't look at any other potential suspects.
[9:41]And I think to a degree, you know, that's true.
[9:43]When you go back to his grandfather's murder in 2013, the murder allegedly happened around
[9:49]two o'clock in the morning, and that's when his next-door neighbor heard a loud
[9:53]back coming from the home.
[9:56]Therefore, gunshot must have happened, and then there was the sound of a squeal of
[10:00]tires leaving the neighborhood.
[10:01]And they lived in a very safe neighborhood
[10:04]called a sack in Connecticut.
[10:05]Things like that usually don't happen.
[10:07]But at the same time, Nathan is in his apartment
[10:11]several miles away, surveillance cameras,
[10:13]at his apartment complex,
[10:15]pick him up only leaving the apartment at 2.57 a.m.
[10:19]That morning.
[10:20]Almost an hour after his grandfather was shut down.
[10:24]And they also pick him up later at a convenience store
[10:28]getting ice cream.
[10:29]So, you know, Nathan has got somewhat of an alibi
[10:31]where he can be tracked on surveillance video.
[10:35]But why investigators focused on him,
[10:38]Zib, is that there was a missing rifle,
[10:41]a sick sour that they believed was used
[10:44]to shoot John Chocolates, the grandfather three times.
[10:47]Like you said, the first time went to his torso,
[10:50]up to his chest area that would have killed him.
[10:53]And then the two other shots, I think,
[10:56]were either done out of mercy or done out of pure eight
[10:59]right to the skull.
[11:01]But also, didn't you say that he had changed his laptop
[11:06]and phones that you couldn't track him before
[11:08]or was that for?
[11:09]Well, that's your absolute right.
[11:10]So he not only changed, you know,
[11:13]he kind of got rid of his laptop.
[11:14]He also took his, he turned his phone off later that morning
[11:17]when Nathan allegedly was supposed to meet his mother
[11:20]to rendezvous for a fishing trip.
[11:22]So, investigators could not track where he was
[11:26]during those critical hours.
[11:27]So there's a lot of question about why Nathan would do that.
[11:32]And so, you know, every day I wake up and I wrote the book.
[11:36]And one day I'm gonna wake up and I think this guy
[11:39]is a criminal mastermind.
[11:40]He murdered his grandfather, he murdered his mother.
[11:43]Then the next day I wake up and I think there's no way
[11:47]this kid could have pulled it off.
[11:48]His brain just didn't work that way.
[11:51]So, you know, I think that this,
[11:53]what this book allows for are those parlor dams, right?
[11:56]Those great debates between readers.
[11:58]One side is gonna say he's guilty,
[12:00]the other side is gonna say he's innocent.
[12:02]And, you know, maybe the truth is somewhere there in the middle.
[12:05]Wow.
[12:07]So, you have this ability to not only get all
[12:11]of these interesting facts,
[12:12]but tell uncover stories and tell them in a new way
[12:15]that makes them feel like so propulsive
[12:17]and like you have to like stop everything in your life
[12:20]to focus on these particular stories.
[12:22]And when I first met you in person at the bookstore,
[12:25]you were talking about a colder case of a Hollywood murder,
[12:28]which now has, by the way, it's like everywhere.
[12:31]And I'm like, that's like from the bookstore,
[12:32]that's the same talk.
[12:33]Like I hear about it all the time and I hadn't.
[12:35]Why don't you talk about that?
[12:37]And then how you've had so much success
[12:40]adapting all of your stories from Patriot's day
[12:44]to like there's just so many,
[12:46]and now you have a play in the works,
[12:47]like talk about the adaptations and also the Hollywood murder
[12:51]and how you find all these stories.
[12:53]That was like 100 questions, but.
[12:54]Yeah, no, but I can kind of go way back a little bit
[12:57]because I call myself the accidental author, Zibi.
[13:00]I never believed I'd be writing books one day,
[13:03]but that is until I was thrust in the spotlight
[13:05]because of my work on one case.
[13:07]One of the biggest cases in the history of American crime,
[13:10]the case of the Boston Strangler.
[13:12]Now, for those of you in your audience that don't know,
[13:14]my aunt 19-year-old Mary Sullivan
[13:16]was the youngest and final victim
[13:18]of that notorious 1960s murder spree.
[13:21]So I, you know, the questions around that case
[13:24]led me to journalism school in the late 1980s
[13:27]and led me to really where I am today,
[13:29]always looking to uncover something new about a story
[13:33]that really either has been overlooked
[13:35]or not even touched.
[13:36]And you mentioned a murder in Hollywood,
[13:38]which is how we met a year ago at your wonderful books store.
[13:42]This is a story from 1958 involving
[13:45]a Hollywood superstar named Lana Turner.
[13:47]And Lana Turner was basically Marilyn Monroe
[13:50]before Marilyn.
[13:50]She was the icon of the silver screen
[13:53]in the 1940s and early 1950s.
[13:56]And in 1958, she's dating someone
[13:59]who turns out to be a really bad guy,
[14:01]a gangster named Johnny Stompinado.
[14:03]And Johnny is very violent.
[14:06]Johnny beats her regularly.
[14:08]Now, Lana in 1958 can't go to the police.
[14:10]There's no such thing as a restraining order
[14:13]at that time, Zippy.
[14:14]So Lana just takes the beatings,
[14:16]hoping that Johnny will one day go away.
[14:19]But Johnny doesn't.
[14:20]Instead, he really leans in on the violence.
[14:23]And one day, Johnny makes a mistake and says,
[14:25]Lana, if you ever leave me, I'm going to kill you
[14:28]and I'm going to kill your 14-year-old daughter too.
[14:32]Now, her 14-year-old daughter is Cheryl Crane
[14:34]and she becomes very involved in the story.
[14:37]So I think we're parents, right?
[14:38]So I think Lana had the epiphany that moment.
[14:42]What do I do to protect my child?
[14:44]Not to protect me, but to protect her at all costs.
[14:47]A few weeks go by, Lana rents a beautiful mansion
[14:51]at North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills.
[14:54]The first thing she buys is a set of cutlery,
[14:57]which I always thought was odd
[14:58]because Lana didn't even know where her kitchen was.
[15:01]She didn't cook, she always ordered out or had somebody.
[15:03]No judgment, no judgment, it's all good.
[15:06]I'm the same one.
[15:08]But I think Lana needed a weapon
[15:11]because Johnny was going to get violent again
[15:13]and certainly Johnny did.
[15:14]And Johnny ends up dead in the bedroom
[15:18]of her Beverly Hills mansion.
[15:20]And in the public's mind and what history will claim is that
[15:24]Lana's 14-year-old daughter, Cheryl,
[15:26]heard the violence, heard the fight, grabbed a knife
[15:29]and broke up the fight between her mother and Johnny
[15:32]and stabbed Johnny in the stock.
[15:34]And that's what history would lead you to believe.
[15:37]But my story is a little different.
[15:38]I put the knife in Lana's hands.
[15:42]And I do so not to make her a villain.
[15:45]To me, she's a feminist icon.
[15:47]She's somebody who had to survive the studio system,
[15:50]somebody who had to survive multiple abusive relationships
[15:54]until she had to take action for herself.
[15:58]And that's what she did.
[16:00]It's interesting.
[16:01]I show people all the crime scene photos of the murder scene.
[16:04]And they're all available on the internet.
[16:07]And Johnny is left on a white carpet in the bedroom.
[16:10]And he looks like a Hollywood prop.
[16:13]And there is one thing that's curious.
[16:14]There's no blood.
[16:16]No blood anywhere in the bedroom.
[16:18]Because all of the blood had been cleaned up before police
[16:20]arrived.
[16:21]And Johnny was basically murdered on a bed.
[16:23]They took all the bed sheets.
[16:25]They sent them up and they burned them.
[16:28]I've investigated 200 homicides in my career,
[16:31]got injuries, especially in a phone.
[16:33]Those are very bloody crimes.
[16:34]And no one questioned it.
[16:36]What is it about the crimes that is so compelling to you?
[16:40]And does it not turn your stomach having
[16:42]to all the gory details and all of that?
[16:46]Sometimes it does.
[16:47]But I try to find humanity in these stories.
[16:50]Because again, my family is experienced deadly violence.
[16:54]And I think I come, my approach is empathy
[16:57]toward the victims.
[16:58]I want to give them agency and a voice
[17:00]I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Helltown.
[17:04]And it's about Kurt Bond, I get Norman Mailer,
[17:06]these two literary icons, investigating
[17:09]a real serial murder case in Provincetown in the 1960s.
[17:14]And that was a case, Zibi, where I had to step away
[17:17]from my computer several times during that journey.
[17:21]Because I was constantly researching and staring
[17:24]at the autopsy photos in the crime scene photos.
[17:26]And they were the worst I've ever seen.
[17:28]This looked like something that Jack the Ripper had done
[17:31]in the 1880s in London.
[17:32]But it was actually a serial killer in Provincetown
[17:35]during the so-called Age of Aquarius.
[17:38]Oh my gosh.
[17:39]How do you feel like walking down the street
[17:42]and living in the world when you spend so much time
[17:47]investigating the darkest moments?
[17:49]I mean, my head's always on a swivel.
[17:51]I'm always prepared for the worst.
[17:54]I've come face to face with gangsters, murderers.
[17:59]And you have to have a thick skin over time.
[18:02]But you're still in the presence of these very dark and evil
[18:07]people.
[18:07]So it takes a lot to get used to.
[18:09]I don't think you ever get used to it.
[18:11]You just do the best you can to write the best story you can
[18:15]and not necessarily glorify the killers in these stories.
[18:18]A lot is a different case.
[18:20]But I want to deconstruct these serial killers
[18:24]because there's so much attention and fascination
[18:26]and celebrity regarding these serial killers.
[18:29]And I know what killers do to families.
[18:32]My aunt was murdered in 1964.
[18:35]That loss has still felt within my family in 2025.
[18:39]So the ripple effects that these crimes take over generations
[18:43]is profound.
[18:45]Oh my gosh.
[18:45]I'm so sorry that that happened to your family.
[18:48]I appreciate that.
[18:49]Can you tell us any more about that?
[18:51]Sure.
[18:51]My aunt was a 19 year old girl who had just moved up to Boston
[18:55]in the winter of 1964.
[18:57]And she moved to an apartment on Beacon Hill,
[19:01]which is if anybody's been to Boston,
[19:03]cobblestone streets, it's every postcard in Boston
[19:06]is basically from that neighborhood.
[19:07]Very safe.
[19:08]But on January 4th, 1964, my aunt was murdered.
[19:12]She was strangled with three ligatures, two scarves,
[19:15]and an nylon stocking wrapped very tightly around her neck.
[19:18]She'd also been sexually salted zibby with a broomstick.
[19:22]Because the crime had happened just after New Year's,
[19:24]the killer showed him a carb sense of humor.
[19:26]He left a happy New Year card placed by her left foot.
[19:30]And growing up in an Irish Catholic household zibby,
[19:33]things like that weren't talked about.
[19:35]So I was a young child.
[19:37]I wasn't even born when my aunt was killed.
[19:39]But I knew the whole that she had left in my family.
[19:42]And I had heard whispers about the Boston strangler
[19:45]and my aunt Mary Sullivan for years until I was a teenager.
[19:49]And I saw the film, the Boston strangler, an old movie,
[19:52]starm Tony Curtis and Henry Fonda.
[19:55]And I thought, OK, well now I know what happened to my aunt.
[19:58]So I approached the subject to my mother.
[20:00]Diane the next day, my mother was 17,
[20:03]when her best friend and sister was taken from her.
[20:05]And I said, Mom, tell me about Mary.
[20:08]And she said, Casey, Mary just wasn't my sister.
[20:10]Mary was my best friend.
[20:11]And my mother was getting emotional.
[20:13]Kind of for the first time,
[20:14]because she'd been very protective of her children
[20:17]and not the perennial victim, if you will.
[20:19]But I could see that she was getting a little emotional.
[20:22]And I hugged her like any child would.
[20:24]And I said, Mom, at least they got the guy.
[20:26]And she looked up at me and she said,
[20:27]I don't think they ever did.
[20:29]And it was that she had no facts to base her beliefs on.
[20:32]It was merely a sister's intuition.
[20:34]It was a bond between two sisters that couldn't be broken.
[20:37]That bond led me to journalism school
[20:39]to investigate this case and kind of where I am today.
[20:42]And what I found out, unfortunately,
[20:44]which was a much darker story than the public had
[20:46]done led to belief.
[20:47]There wasn't just one Boston strangler.
[20:49]There were several men committing these crimes
[20:52]under the guise of this jacked-or-ripper-type character,
[20:55]resurrected to stalk the women of Boston.
[20:57]Gosh, I'm terrible.
[20:59]I'm so sorry.
[21:00]That is just horrific.
[21:01]So horrific.
[21:02]It's horrific.
[21:03]And just to show you how close you get in these cases,
[21:07]I had to have my exhumed for DNA testing.
[21:11]And I also had the remains of the so-called killer
[21:15]Albert de Salvo, exhumed.
[21:17]So I've actually held his skull in hand.
[21:19]Oh, my gosh.
[21:21]And what I was thinking, am I holding the skull
[21:24]of one of the most notorious killers in American history?
[21:26]Or am I holding the skull of someone
[21:28]who was a con man, a predator or a thief,
[21:30]and who confessed to these crimes and an effort
[21:33]to make money, which is what I think he did.
[21:35]Really?
[21:35]Oh, my gosh.
[21:37]So you don't think that he was her murder,
[21:39]and that is, do you think your aunt's murder is still
[21:43]at large or is it an aunt's murder or died
[21:45]a couple of years ago, but not before I confronted him?
[21:48]Really?
[21:49]Yes, I had to.
[21:51]I felt I owed him his story.
[21:53]And he was a 19-year-old kid at the time,
[21:56]dating one of my aunt's roommates.
[21:58]And he was looking to find some type of evidence
[22:01]that she was cheating on.
[22:02]She was a 19-year-old kid.
[22:04]So he stole the apartment key from his girlfriend's
[22:07]keychain the night before, slips into 44-year-olds free,
[22:11]doesn't realize that Mary Sullivan, my aunt,
[22:13]is moving in her belongings that day.
[22:15]So she catches him, confronts him.
[22:17]Now, Mary was a tough Irish kid from a tough Irish family.
[22:20]She could give as good as she got, but he
[22:22]was bigger than her.
[22:23]And he was stronger than her, and he killed her.
[22:26]And then he made it look like Boston strangler murder,
[22:30]outcomes of broomstick, outcomes the happy New Year card.
[22:33]Police were smarter.
[22:35]They knew right away he was the prime suspect.
[22:37]They gave him three-light detector test, which he failed.
[22:41]Witness was able to put him at the scene of the crime,
[22:43]looking through the window of my aunt's apartment that morning.
[22:47]But once the police went with Albert to solve a so-called
[22:51]strangler, because he wouldn't just confess to one murder,
[22:54]because he had confessed to all of them.
[22:55]And they never charged him with any of the murders.
[22:57]These murders are still open, according to Boston police.
[23:01]But in the public's mind, the case was solved.
[23:03]And this prime suspect disappeared,
[23:05]until I found him 40 years later.
[23:07]And he was working at this as a golf pro,
[23:11]at a resort in Northern New Hampshire.
[23:13]So what did I do?
[23:15]I booked a golf lesson under an assumed name.
[23:17]And that's how we met at the golf course.
[23:21]And you can imagine it was like the ghost of Christmas
[23:23]past coming back to haunt him so many years afterwards.
[23:27]And at first, he said he wouldn't talk.
[23:29]But then, Zibi, all he could do was talk.
[23:31]And he began to stutter.
[23:33]He had a pronounced stutter, which I thought was revealing
[23:36]because two months after my aunt was murdered,
[23:38]her roommate got a call from a drunken young man,
[23:43]who said he had a pronounced stutter.
[23:45]And he said, I'm going to do to you what I did
[23:47]to that Mary pitch.
[23:48]And here's that stutter coming back 40 years later.
[23:52]Ultimately, I was able to prove that this suspect's
[23:55]alibi was a complete lie, brought this to the attorneys,
[23:59]general and Massachusetts, and all the police departments,
[24:01]and nobody would touch it.
[24:02]Because I think, yeah, and one of the reasons
[24:05]I think that is the case is because so many people within the Boston
[24:09]police department made their careers
[24:11]off saying that they caught the Boston strangler.
[24:14]When I was heavy in this case, Zibi
[24:16]I used to get calls at home saying,
[24:17]we know what route you take to work every day.
[24:20]Stay away from this case.
[24:21]I didn't think those calls were coming from killers.
[24:23]I thought they were coming from somebody
[24:25]within law enforcement who wanted to keep a lid on this case
[24:27]after 40 years.
[24:29]Oh, my gosh.
[24:30]Wait, is this a book?
[24:31]Did you write this?
[24:32]This is my first book.
[24:33]It's called Search for the Strangler.
[24:36]And it's still in print.
[24:38]I wrote it 20 years ago, but people
[24:39]can find it at their local library.
[24:41]I can find it just in the now online.
[24:44]Wow.
[24:45]I did not know that story.
[24:46]Well, good for you for finding him.
[24:48]And I'm sorry.
[24:49]I appreciate that.
[24:50]Thank you.
[24:50]Wow.
[24:51]Did you not want to be a detective?
[24:54]I mean, I feel like, did you have an idea of how to do it?
[24:57]I am in many ways.
[24:59]Law enforcement does its thing.
[25:01]I do mine.
[25:02]Sometimes we collaborate.
[25:05]I always tread over some of the work
[25:08]that they did, whether it's really great work.
[25:10]And a lot of it is, or whether it's sloppy work.
[25:14]Police officers are like any other industry.
[25:16]You get your great cops and detectives.
[25:18]And you get your terrible cops and detectives.
[25:21]And ultimately, some of the holes that I find in these cases
[25:26]are based on sloppy detective work.
[25:31]Wow.
[25:32]Well, all of this explains why your current book, Blood and the Water,
[25:36]is great as it is.
[25:39]There's all this background and experience.
[25:41]And they just keep getting better.
[25:43]It's just amazing.
[25:44]So wow.
[25:45]You're like this, like, quiet resource at large, you know?
[25:51]Yeah, certainly.
[25:52]I'm always consulted.
[25:53]People will call me, whether they're families,
[25:56]looking for justice for their loved ones or investigators,
[26:00]looking for me to review something that they may have missed.
[26:06]I'm working on my 20th book right now,
[26:08]which is a story about Frank Lloyd Wright, the world famous architect.
[26:12]Frank was involved with a mass murder in 1914,
[26:16]which changed the trajectory of his career
[26:19]and how he designed his buildings.
[26:21]It's a horrific, horrific crime.
[26:23]And I'm knee deep in the research right now.
[26:26]Oh, my gosh.
[26:27]Well, I can't wait to read that.
[26:28]Wow.
[26:29]OK.
[26:30]Casey, thank you so much.
[26:31]Thank you for all the work that you do,
[26:33]and essentially a public servant who knows how to write.
[26:36]So it's pretty awesome.
[26:37]And thank you for these stories and for trying
[26:41]to get to the truth, which is really all that we have.
[26:44]So thank you.
[26:45]Amen to that.
[26:45]Toby, thank you for having me on.
[26:46]This has been a great conversation.
[26:48]Thank you.
[26:49]Bye.
[26:49]Good luck.
[26:50]Thank you for everything.
[26:53]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[26:56]formerly, mom's don't have time to read books.
[26:58]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[27:02]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens, and spread the word.
[27:06]Thanks so much.
[27:07]Oh, and bye the books.