Criminal - The Disappearance of Leslie Arnold

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

In 1967, a 24-year-old named Leslie Arnold escaped from prison. The FBI looked for him for years. And then, in 2022, a U.S. Marshal got a message from his son. How are we doing? Take our survey here. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Well, he was a troubled kid, for sure. Reporter Henry Cordes. I mean, as a very young boy, he was a very typical little kid, somewhat a little high-strung, but his schoolmates would describe him as a very normal kid. In high school, William Leslie Arnold, who went by Leslie, was known as a quiet, somewhat mediocre student. He ran on his school's track team and was involved with ROTC, and he also played the saxophone. Which kind of became his thing in high school, was a talented saxophone player, and played in the numerous bands at his high school, in Omaha Central High School.

And they said he could really, really play. Leslie lived with his parents, Opal and Bill, and a younger brother, Jimmy. He tried to style his hair like Elvis, who'd already had huge hits like Heartbreak Hotel and Love Me Tender. In 1958, Leslie turned 16 and was entering his junior year of high school. He had a girlfriend named Crystal

who went to a different school. And his mother simply did not approve. But his mother was kind of a very domineering personality. And his mother was very arbitrary. He would at times have plans to do something, and then his mother just at the last minute would say, no, you're not going to do that. And his mother, it does appear, was suffering from mental illness at the time. It seems like today they would say that she had kind of a bipolar disorder. And as a result, her emotion, she was capable of emotional swings. And with Leslie being a kid who maybe had a little bit of a temper, it became a bad mix. And psychologists who would later examine Leslie would describe him as, at that point, like a smoldering volcano.

On a Saturday in late September, Leslie asked his parents if he could use the family car to take his girlfriend to the drive-in. At first, they said yes, but then after Leslie and his mother got in an argument about him being on the phone with his girlfriend, Leslie's mother said he couldn't take the car. And he spent the morning kind of feuding with his mother over that, tried everything he could think of to try to convince her otherwise, had the girl tried to call and just was turned away in every effort. And they finally had a really big blow up. Leslie later said that he got a, quote, crazy idea in his head. And he went to his parents' bedroom where there was a.22 caliber rifle that he and his father often used to hunt rabbits. And he walked into the dining room with it. His mother was in the adjoining kitchen. And what he later said is that she kind of mocked him and told him to put the gun away, but he did not put the gun

away. He raised it, and he shot his mother in the chest. As he later described it, he was kind of in a daze. His mother was on the floor in front of him moaning, and he said he didn't really know what to do, but he stood over her and he shot her five more times, each bullet in the chest, until she was dead. Then, according to Leslie, his father Bill walked in the door. And as Leslie put it, he took a wild swing at Leslie, who ducked it and moved to the other side of the room. And as his father came after him, he raised the rifle and fired it. It appears it struck his father in the shoulder. He also went down on the floor, and much like with his mother, he shot him five more times in the chest until he was dead. And suddenly, in a matter of moments, he was standing in the dining room of his home over the bodies of his mother and father.

What does he do next? Well, he said he first went into the joining living room and laid down on the couch and cried. And he thought what to do. He said, how can I ever explain to anybody what happened here? And he said he laid there for about an hour, and then he basically said he hatched a plan. He first had the grisly task of dragging his parents' bodies down to the basement and trying to clean up the blood. There was a lot of blood. He knew his younger brother,

Jimmy, would eventually come home, so Leslie called a family friend and told them a complicated story. He basically said, my grandfather, who's senile, is lost in Wyoming. He wandered off, and my parents hopped a train today to go to Wyoming to help find them. So would it be okay if Jimmy comes to stay with you, his 13-year-old little brother? And the family friend said, yeah, that will be no problem. Do what you need to do. Leslie, when his little brother got home, he proceeded to meet him outdoors with a bag already packed for him and gave the same story about mom and dad

having to run off. And then Leslie took the car, picked up his girlfriend, and went to the movies. They went to see the horror movie, The Undead. Now it would be later interpreted by people that, particularly in the press in days to come, that he just very callously killed his parents and then went and took his girlfriend to the drive-in like this was the goal all along. And he would later describe that night as an awful night. He felt haunted by what he had done, felt at one point like his mother's ghost was following him as he and his girlfriend drove down the road and was completely distracted. He knew, you know, in the back of his head, he knew that this can never last.

The next night, Leslie buried his parents in the backyard. Over the next two weeks, Leslie Arnold continued to go to school and to church. He helped run his father's direct sales business, telling the employees the same story about his parents going out of town. But then his grandfather, who Leslie had told everyone was missing, came to town with Leslie's grandmother. They lived three hours away and had been trying to get in touch with Leslie's parents. When they couldn't, they came to town to see what was going on. And Leslie said he was thrown into a panic when he saw that his grandfather

was there. He had to kind of give them a different story. He told them his parents went out of town. But he was just very evasive with them, and the grandparents and other family in Omaha started to become very, very suspicious of Leslie. They were having conversations about what to do and when to do it, and then on October 10th, 1958, Leslie took his girlfriend out again to a football game. And at that point, that's when the family decided to go to the police. And by that Friday night, police knew pretty much who they needed to talk to in the disappearance of Opal and Bill Arnold. So Saturday morning, while Leslie was again off at his dad's workplace kind of helping out, police officers showed up and took him to the police station.

Once he started talking, the whole thing spilled out. He led the police to his parents' bodies, buried beneath a lilac bush in their yard. The officers started digging, and they said it only took a few shovelfuls of dirt before they unearthed a human hand. And there was a huge spectacle in the Arnold's neighborhood as people were gathered around. The next day, the Omaha World-Herald ran a story with the headline, Youth Called Quiet, Polite, School Shocked by Story. It noted that the only time Leslie had gotten in trouble at school was when he didn't wear a belt one day.

An uncle said about Leslie, Leslie always did have a violent temper, but he didn't smoke or drink. A neighbor told a reporter that Leslie's mother had recently told her that she was planning to get rid of the family's gun because she was worried about having it around. Leslie was evaluated by psychiatrists, who all found him to be, quote, sane. One noted that he seemed remorseful.

He wrote a letter to his grandparents. It said, How I ever went so wrong, I'll never know. I've got a lot of making up to do. He was charged with first-degree murder. The prosecutor doesn't seem necessarily believed Leslie when his account of things thought that maybe there could have been some premeditation involved. At first, Leslie pleaded innocent.

But when the charges were reduced to second-degree murder, he changed his plea to guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison at 16 years old. At the time, life meant life. The only way he would be able to be paroled is if the governor and the pardons board voted to commute his life sentence to a number of years. And yes, that would then allow him to be paroled. And that was, frankly, fully the expectation at the time. At the time, it was a much more merciful time. In the 1950s, it was very common for a person to be convicted of murder, maybe serve 15 to 20 years and be paroled. In fact,

the prosecutor told Leslie, it's not going to be for life, Les. His full expectation was that he would serve about 10 years, especially given his youth. And so he went to prison with a life sentence, but knowing that if he behaved himself and used his time well there, that there was a pretty good chance that within 10 years that he would have a chance for parole. And by all accounts, that's the way he lived in prison for the first four or five years. He was a model prisoner. He studied to become a dental technician. and he played in the prison band, which was called the Felonaires. And everyone I spoke to who knew Leslie in prison,

by all accounts, they thought he was well on his way to that parole. But then, in 1967, that all changed. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. We'll be right back. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be.

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a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. In 1965, under a new Nebraska post-conviction law, Leslie Arnold tried to have his case looked at again. He'd been in prison for six years. He wrote that, among other things, he was arrested without a warrant and pressured by the county attorney's office to plead guilty. He submitted it to the court. And it was pretty summarily dismissed.

But Leslie, who also around that time kind of started to have some problems in prison, he got written up for really minor infractions, but these were the first write-ups he'd ever had. He was working as a cook, and he cooked himself up some food that he wasn't supposed to, and he got fired from his job in the dental office because they thought he had a bad attitude. And he was just not the same person who had first arrived in prison.

And however many years he was supposed to serve in prison, he eventually decided that was too much. Then, Leslie met a fellow prisoner at the Nebraska State Penitentiary named Jim Harding. Jim Harding was eight years older than Leslie and was in prison for murdering a man during an armed robbery. There was an older inmate who knew both of them, and he got them together. And Harding met Leslie, didn't really care for him, thought he was kind of standoffish, but he also could see that he was really smart and really creative. And they made a pact that they would work together to try to break out of prison. They worked with a recently released inmate. And one day, this inmate drove by the prison and tossed a cardboard tube over the fence, which Harding went to retrieve before anyone noticed. And the tube only had two things in it, some saw blades and two rubber masks. And as Harding later described it to me, he said, that's all we needed.

Jim Harding and Leslie Arnold both lived in a prison dorm that was reserved for inmates who had earned special privileges, called trustees. There was a music room in the dorm where Leslie practiced his saxophone. And it was an enclosed room that had a door. Well, that room also had a window on it that was covered with bars. And Harding said both he and Leslie took turns hanging out in the music room when they had free time and started sawing through those bars. And it took a number of days to do it,

but each time they sawed through a bar, they used chewing gum to put the bar back in place. And once they had the bars all sawed through, their potential path to escape was there. On July 5th, 1967, an ad was placed in the Omaha World-Herald classified section. It read, NOF arrives July 14. Investigators later said NOF might have stood for Night of Freedom. It was a message from Leslie and Jim's accomplice on the outside. And so that night rolled around.

At the trustee dorm, it was kind of lights out at 11, and then they would be secured in this room. And so just before 11, Leslie and Harding took those rubber masks, and with additional blankets they had collected, they basically stuffed the masks and formed bodies within their beds to make their beds appear that they were occupied. And then they, just before 11, they slipped out of the room before the lights went out. And they made their way down to the music room. And Harding said it all happened very quickly then. They knocked out the bars, were careful to replace them though, to again provide themselves some cover. Then they still had to escape the prison grounds. There was a fence topped with barbed wire. It was a 14-foot fence. They scaled it and threw a jacket over the top

to cover up the barbed wire, and they both scrambled over the top. And they fled to an adjoining field, and there was their recent parolee friend there waiting in a car. They climbed in, and they were off. It was absolutely a perfect escape, because the night watchman who was coming along every hour and peering into the dorm room where Leslie and Harding were supposed to be staying, never noticed the dummies. The beds appeared occupied. So it wasn't until 7 a.m. the next morning when the headcount was taken that it was noticed that there were two people short. But because of the fact that the night watchman had swore that their beds had been occupied all night, the thought was that they had just escaped that morning. And the reality that they had been gone at that point for more than eight hours.

And so they got a huge head start on the authorities. Leslie Arnold, Jim Harding, and the other recently released inmate drove to Omaha. They went to a bowling alley not far from where Leslie had grown up. Leslie made a phone call to an old friend. And basically told him, hey, you know, I'm here, and I just escaped, and I need your help. And this friend, his name was Jim Child, who I later spoke to, who later admitted his role in all this, basically said, I'll be right there. Jim Child brought Leslie and Jim some clothes and money. He drove them to the bus station and bought them some tickets to Chicago.

So by the time that they were even discovered missing, they were already halfway to Chicago by that time. Jim Harding later told reporter Henry Cordes that he and Leslie spent their first night in Chicago at the YMCA. And the next day, they both went out looking for jobs. Soon, Leslie told Jim that he'd gotten a job at a restaurant. It was the last time they ever saw each other. Jim Harding eventually left Chicago and went to Los Angeles. And in 1968, he was arrested. Someone mistook him for James Earl Ray,

another prison escapee who was eventually convicted of assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. The police officers came and interviewed Harding. They saw he was not Ray, but they remained very suspicious of him, and they did their detective work, and looking through FBI-wanted photos, they quickly recognized him as a man who had escaped from prison in Nebraska a year before. The next day, they went and arrested him. Harding didn't put up a fight.

He was extradited to Nebraska. And again, when I talk about it being a more merciful time, so not only had he committed murder, now he had escaped too. By 1976, Harding had done his time, and he got that commutation from the pardons board and was paroled and by all accounts went on to live a fairly law-abiding life for the rest of his life. But the police couldn't find Leslie Arnold. The FBI looked for Leslie very hard for about 10 years. And they pursued every angle. They were very

suspicious of his relatives. They were suspicious of his brother. But frankly, none of them knew anything about what had happened. So they never, ever caught on to Leslie's trail at all. They were always very suspicious of his saxophone playing. One of the theories was that he was probably working as a professional saxophone player somewhere, so they pursued those angles, but it never brought them to Leslie Arnold. Leslie Arnold is the last person to have successfully escaped from the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Eventually, the FBI handed the case over to the Nebraska Department of Corrections, where an investigator named Jeff Britton

started looking into the case. He later said it became his hobby. He even had a license plate made with the name Arnold on it. He looked for Leslie for years. Once he found someone with a similar name and appearance and the same birthday as Leslie, who was living four states away. He also traced searches for Leslie's name and inmate number that had been done on the Nebraska Department of Corrections website.

One seemed to be coming from South America. But he didn't find Leslie. And then, in 2020, Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Westover learned about the case. A friend of mine basically put it on my case log, kind of like a little joke, like as if, you know, nobody's ever going to figure this one out. But when Matt Westover read more about Leslie Arnold's story,

he was intrigued. He reached out to Jeff Britton, who by then had left his job at the Nebraska Department of Corrections. They started to work together on finding Leslie Arnold. How much time are you devoting to the case? Oh, man. Way a lot. That was, it was a lot of hours. Um, most of it, uh, my wife was not happy because a lot of it was at home.

Matt Westover requested access to an old FBI file. Next thing you know, I'm getting CDs and, and, and DVDs worth of, like, thousands of documents. And so I'd spent a good probably two weeks every night, probably five hours at night with a bourbon and just hanging out on the couch while my wife was watching, like, Below Deck, I believe. And I was just in it. He says he and Jeff started tracking down possible aliases that Leslie might have used. And then you go to, like, Ancestry, and you go to, like, different documents, and you try to find these different names and yearbooks of, like, old schools, and we'd find people and we'd like, I think this is it. And then we'd say, well, no, the mole's not there. No, the ears are too big. Or no, there's no way because they have a brother that's X amount of age and it just wouldn't work. So I caught William Leslie

Arnold like 15 times. It just never really was Leslie Arnold until it was. We'll be right back. Are you looking to eat healthier, but you still find yourself occasionally rebounding with junk food and empty calories? You don't need to wait for the new year to start fresh. New year, new me. How about same year, new me? You just need a different approach.

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Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach. Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. Support for this podcast comes from Klaviyo. You know that feeling when your favorite brand at Noom.com. SMS, and more, making every moment count. Over 100,000 brands trust Klaviyo's unified data and marketing platform to build smarter digital relationships with their customers during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Make every moment count with Klaviyo. Learn more at klaviyo dot com slash B-F-C-M. In 2017, an investigator working on finding the so-called Golden State Killer got an idea. He decided to run DNA collected from victims through genealogy databases,

where people had submitted their DNA to learn more about their family's histories. Police were able to find distant relatives of the person they believed was the Golden State Killer, and eventually they constructed a family tree. It led them to a man in his 70s, Joseph James D'Angelo. They followed him and were able to test his DNA from things like a door handle he'd touched and a used tissue. His DNA was a match, and Joseph James D'Angelo eventually pleaded guilty to murdering 13 people and raping more than 50 women. Police have been using what's known as CODIS, which stands for Combined DNA Index System, since the late 90s. It's a centralized DNA database maintained by the FBI.

But law enforcement investigators uploading DNA from crime scenes to public databases or direct-to-consumer companies like Family Tree DNA, Ancestry, or MyHeritage, was something new. It's called forensic genetic genealogy, and it's raised some ethical and privacy concerns. Someone could unknowingly link a relative to a crime without that relative consenting to a DNA test. In the past few years, a few states like Maryland, Montana, and Utah have passed laws that limit how police can use these databases. And some private companies, like Ancestry and 23andMe, now say they don't allow law enforcement to use their services for investigations without a court order. But the Golden State case inspired a lot of investigators to try forensic genealogy, including Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Westover and Jeff Britton.

Jeff had put me into talks with an individual that was on the Golden State killer case, and so kind of told him what I was trying to do. And this guy knew a lot about DNA and how it works and what we need. And so I kind of threw a couple examples at him of what I was looking for and what's my best case. And being that Leslie only had one brother, he said, you're the brother. That's who you want. Leslie's younger brother was That's who you want. Leslie's younger brother was now in his 70s. Matt tracked him down and asked if he could use his DNA.

The only thing he asked for was he'd like to see the results. And so I had some paperwork they signed off on, agreeing that I could essentially run the profile as him, and I would provide him with any of the DNA results. He submitted a saliva sample, and in late 2020, Matt Westover sent the DNA sample off. When the initial results came back, lots of Leslie and his brother's relatives popped up, but none that led to anything. Matt could tell how closely the matches were related to Leslie's brother by the amount of shared DNA, measured in something called centimorgans. I got matches, but nothing that was too high, as much as I wanted it to be. The numbers never made sense, and talking to the DNA expert, he was like, this is the number that you're looking

for. And this is the type of match that you're looking for. And none of those numbers or matches were high enough. Did you think there was really any possibility that Leslie could still be alive? I did. I definitely thought there was. And I remember, like, at the beginning of it, that's kind of like what I wanted. I wanted that glory to take him into justice, to arrest him, to put handcuffs on him and bring him to jail. And if they let him go because he's already, you know, spent his time, then I was good with that. About a year and a half went by without any promising leads. I remember I was at home and I was like, you know what, I haven't checked to see if I've gotten anything lately. And I'd noticed I'd gotten a message. And so then I log on and the first thing I see is the match, like the number and like the closeness of the match. And it was way more than anything we had had before. I checked the message and the message is like, hey, you know, I'm looking to find out more information about my dad. He's an orphan from Chicago.

Did you know immediately when it said orphan from Chicago? Oh, 100 percent, because I knew that the Chicago, that was the last known, known place. When I saw that message, I was like just boom. I hit, you know, I hit the lottery. Were you were you thinking, what's my next move? You know, how do I respond to this message? Yeah, 100%. The good thing was that I was reading the message two days after he sent it. So I felt good about that because I know me and I'm like, I can't wait to respond. And so that kind of helped. Didn't make me seem like I was so excited. You know, I got this kid who's trying to find out more about his dad, but I've got to find, you know, I've got an open case.

So I can't be like, oh, hey, your dad's this guy. And, you know, where is he, by the way? And like, so I don't even know if he's still alive yet, dead. I just know I've got a hell of a lead right now. The man had written in his message, I just got my DNA test results back, and yours came up as the nearest match. He had no idea he was writing to a deputy U.S. marshal. Matt wrote back and started asking questions.

The man said he lived in Australia, and he wanted to learn more about his father's side of the family. All he knew was that he was an orphan from Chicago. He said his father's name was John Damon, and he said he had died in 2010. I remember going, well, okay, you got this guy, he's sly. I mean, he's been on the run since 67 and never got caught. And, like, how do I know this isn't him? Like, how do I know, like, he's not trying to check himself, you know? Like, maybe his son knows, and he's putting his DNA out there to try to see if, you know, the police are after him.

And my chief was big on that, and he was like, we need confirmation before you do anything. Matt Westover told The Sun that he was acting as a representative for his uncle, James Arnold. He gave The Sun an email address under the name Tommy Anderson. The Sun kept asking him for information about his father, but instead of telling him what he knew, Matt kept asking questions. They exchanged lots of emails back and forth. confident where I'm at in the investigation that I could tell him. I was waiting for a death certificate. That was what I wanted him to show me. But I woke up and I was just like, you know what? Today's the day. So before I had to work, it was like five in the morning or something. And so I messaged him and I'm like, hey, are you available? And he said, yeah, I'm available. And so then I said, is your wife home? And he's like, yeah, she's home.

We're sitting on the couch. And I forget what time it was there. I think it was late at night or something. Matt asked if he could get on a video call. And when they got on, he told the son that he worked for the U.S. government. I kind of showed him my ID, showed him my badge, and said, well, I'd like to give you some information, but I really want to see that death certificate first. I said, I'm not recording this. You can see I just showed him a law enforcement officer.

I'm not going to record it or anything. And so he scans in and shows me the death certificate and all the information of his dad. And so then I said, well, I'm actually looking for your father. I said, there's been a lot of people looking for your father. Matter of fact, we've been looking for your father since 1967. And I said, your dad escaped prison, and he's never been seen again. Matt told him his father's real name, Leslie Arnold. And the son asked Matt why his father had been in prison in the first place.

It was a very emotional phone call, especially for him, obviously. It wasn't easy on my end, but it was for him. I could tell how much he was thrown back, surprised. And in learning more about his father eventually, I could see why. You know, you got this dad who's nothing like that, and yet he did what he did. Eventually, Matt Westover flew to Australia to meet with the son and his family. He took a photo of Leslie Arnold's grave, which said John Vincent Damon, and he got an official DNA sample from Leslie's son. He officially closed the case in 2023.

We spoke with Leslie's son about the details of the story, but he didn't want to be interviewed on tape or have his name shared publicly. Leslie's son also spoke with Henry Cordes. Henry had written a series for the Omaha World-Herald about the disappearance of Leslie Arnold in 2017 and knew more about Leslie's story than almost anyone else. He's, you know, had this awful truth revealed to him. And I'm a reporter, so my hope is to talk to him and learn more about his father and his life. But I can tell you that that first conversation we had, it lasted

more than four hours, and I did almost all the talking. I told him everything I knew about his father. Over time, Henry was able to piece together what had become of Leslie Arnold after he escaped from prison in 1967 and hid in Chicago with Jim Harding. Leslie told him, hey, I've got a job in a restaurant in a Polish neighborhood, and I've got a girl, and I don't need you anymore.

So I've got mine, you get yours. And Harding said he never saw him again. And working through the son, I was able to learn where that restaurant was and who that girl was. Her name was Jean Bouvier, and she was a 34-year-old divorcee with four daughters. Within several months, they were married.

He'd already started using the name his son always knew, John Damon. Not clear where he came up with that name, but he was able to produce a forged birth certificate under that name. And I've seen images of it. It's a very real-looking birth certificate under that name. And I've seen images of it. It's a very real-looking birth certificate. And then once he married Jean Bouvier, he just in a matter of months went from Leslie Arnold, 24-year-old escaped Nebraska killer, to John Damon, married father of four girls. It was absolutely perfect cover for him. And he was never, ever suspected of being who he actually was.

Do you think his wife knew anything about his past? Well, it's difficult to say. I've had many conversations with three of those four stepdaughters, and they think it's possible that she knew more than she let on, but they'll never know for sure. They generally believe that she did not know who he was. Leslie went into sales. He sold vending machines, chemicals, even musical instruments. And it eventually caused the family to move. They moved to Cincinnati, and then some years later, the family moved to Miami. Was there any sign that he was worried about the police looking for him over the years? Yes.

You know, the fact that they moved a couple of times, that could be part of it. Now, one of his daughters told a very interesting story that one day an FBI agent came to the house looking for John Damon. I'm fairly convinced it was not because they suspected John Damon was Leslie Arnold. In fact, I can say pretty clearly from the records I've observed that the two names were never linked. So whatever that FBI agent was looking for, it was not because they suspected he was Leslie Arnold. But later, it does appear that he became spooked. By the mid-1970s, Leslie's marriage to Jean Bouvier was falling apart. They officially divorced in 1977, and Leslie moved to California. It was not an amicable divorce. I mean,

Gene did not dispute it, but the story I heard was that Gene eventually sent his saxophone, but before doing so, smashed the heck out of it. So as Gene would later put it, he was a great provider, but he was a terrible husband. Leslie met and married a younger woman. They had two children together, a boy and a girl. And Leslie, to his credit, he maintained a relationship with the other girls, even though they were not his daughters. He continued to stay in contact with them. He'd send birthday cards. But then sometime in the early 1990s, it's very clear something spooked him because several things happened around that time.

He cut off all contact with his previous family. In fact, the girls would report that he individually met with all of them. They were all living in different parts of the country by that time. They said they met with him and they could tell that this was goodbye. And in fact, they never ever heard from him again. And he also reportedly had a mole that was very distinctive removed from his face. And then the third thing was that he told his new family that they needed to move and needed to move overseas. And that's, in fact, what they did. Leslie moved his family to New Zealand, and then Australia. He raised his children with the same love of music. Although, interestingly, his son took up the saxophone. In fact, became a very talented musician. But his son never once

saw his dad, even though he was playing the same instrument, he never once saw his dad, even though he was playing the same instrument, he never once saw his dad pick up his saxophone to play it. And his son also learned to play the piano, and he told me a story about how one time he was struggling to play a jazz riff. Leslie had been a big jazz fan, and his children all loved jazz as a result. And his son was trying to play a jazz riff on the piano and was kind of struggling with it. And he said his father sat down next to him on the piano and just said, why don't you try it this way? And he played the riff perfectly. And he said that's the only time he ever saw his father perform any music at all. Leslie eventually developed problems with blood clots,

and in 2010, he died in Australia at the age of 69. After his death, his son, who was 19 at the time, started trying to learn more about him. He even went to Chicago. He looked all over for this orphanage that his father had supposedly been raised in. He couldn't find any evidence of it. He went to the Vital Records Bureau with that birth certificate and showed it to them. And the person came to him and said, this birth certificate is a

fake. We have no record of a John Damon having been born here in Chicago. Now, he didn't necessarily think there was anything nefarious going on. After all, his father had supposedly grown up in an orphanage, and the thought was, well, maybe he had no birth certificate. So at some point, they had created this birth certificate so that he could establish an identity. But it was very curious, and he came back from his trip to Chicago only more mystified about who his father was. And then, in 2022, Leslie's son decided to take a DNA test, which led him to Deputy U.S. Marshal Matt Westover, reporter Henry Cordes, and the rest of his father's story. You know, it was obviously very difficult when I told him in great detail about what happened in the dining room of that home in Omaha in 1958. But Leslie's story is a very nuanced story. And he told me he had been very happy to hear the story because he told me that,

you know, obviously my father did something very, very bad at a very, very young age, but it doesn't change that he was a very, very good father to me. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nita Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane.

Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was mixed by Emma Munger. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll join our new membership program, Criminal Plus. Once you sign up,

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