Criminology - Larry Sarvey

Episode Date: November 7, 2021

Larry Sarvey, the general manager of the Atchison Daily Globe newspaper was murdered in 1989. Larry was shot in the head twice with a 12-gauge shotgun inside his Kansas home. But, police had very little to go on besides some screens on the home that had been cut in an apparent effort to gain entry. There was no sign of a struggle inside the house. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious murder of Larry Sarvey. Larry's love interest Sandi was the person who found Larry inside his home just on the other side of the front door. What emerged was a love triangle/square of sorts. Sandi was pregnant with Larry's child, and Sandi's ex-husband Lloyd was eventually linked to Larry's ex-wife. It didn't take police long to arrest Lloyd Heaver for the murder of Larry Sarvey. At Lloyd's trial, a possible hitman emerged but it wasn't Lloyd. The jury had their hands full trying to figure out who murdered Larry Sarvey. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello everyone and welcome to episode 182 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morfer. Morph, what's going on with you, buddy? Not too much. I'm trying to get used to the little bit of cooler temperatures that we're having here after Halloween. And it's a little bit shocking to get the body where the Florida weather is actually

cool because for the first year I was here, I was hot all the time. Well, I can tell you here in Ohio, it's changed dramatically in the last couple of weeks. And it does take a little bit of getting used to. Yeah, they say when you get down here to Florida that your blood sort of adjust. And I didn't think that was a thing. But I literally, the other day, it was 69 degrees at my son's football practice. And I was chilled. And I wish I had brought a jacket with me.

So that Florida adjustment. Poor you. Poor you. So let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. we had Martin, Jeff Kirkuff, Kayla Smith, and Colleen Abbott. So we always appreciate the folks who make the decision to support us on Patreon. Yeah, that's some great support. We can't thank you enough for that.

And anyone else that would like to help support the show can go to patreon.com slash criminology. Don't forget about CrimeCon Vegas. It's coming up. It's officially less than six months out. It all happens on the weekend of April 29th through May 1st, 2022. Now, we've been talking about it more than, you know, six months seems like it still weighs out. But you really don't want to wait if you're planning to go and miss out on tickets. Yeah, we've definitely heard from a bunch of people that are going.

So if you want to make sure to get arrangements in place, get them lined up now and get your tickets purchased before they're gone. and you can save 10% on your standard badge when you head over to crimecon.com to register and use our promo code criminology at checkout. All right. All that is out of the way. It's time to dive into this case. And we're talking about a frustrating one. You know, looking back, a lot of people believe that this case should be solved and successfully

prosecuted. It hasn't been despite some pretty clear motives. We're talking about. a murder of 38-year-old Larry Sarvey, the general manager and publisher of the Atchison Daily Globe, a weekly newspaper in Atchison, Kansas. Atchison is a city in eastern Kansas, just an hour northeast of Kansas City. Their current population is just under 11,000. And looking back, it really hasn't changed that much throughout the years.

In 1990, it was almost the same. In 1859, Acheson was declared the eastern terminus of the new Acheson. Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which would connect Kansas to the southwest. Developers attempted to make Aches in a major railroad hub, but other towns like Kansas City won out for various reasons. Instead, the local steel foundry thrived. This caused a huge population boom, with the 1880 census recording 15,105 residents, up from 7,000 10 years earlier. As time went on and there were more jobs available elsewhere, travel became quicker, and technology advanced. The population of Atchison actually dwindled to the steady numbers we see

today. It may seem odd that such a small town would have its own newspaper, but the Atchison Daily Globe was founded in 1877, just as the population exploded. While many people left the town, the paper stayed, and the community remained tight-knit. Atchison is very loosely linked to a very famous unsolved mystery. It's the town that Amelia Earhart was born in. Lawrence Sarvey or Larry, as he went by, was born to Floyd and Verna Sarvey in Binghamton, New York on February 5th, 1951. He had a brother and two sisters. He went to Broome Community College in Binghamton and then joined the army and went to Vietnam where he served 13 months. Details are sketchy about Larry's life immediately after he got out of the army, but it seems that he had a son named Patrick

with a woman named Barbara in the spring of 1970. The couple would go on to have a second son, Christian. It's not clear whether Larry and Barbara were married, but Patrick died in 1985, and only Barbara and Christian were mentioned as survivors in his obituary. There was no mention of Larry, so we're not quite sure if there was some splintered relationship there or not. We do know that Larry would marry a woman named Kathy, and together they would go on to have four more children, all daughters, Jill, Renee, Sarah, and Veronica. The family made their home in the Binghamton area, and during the 1970s, Larry worked in radio as an account executive for W.EBO AM and W.EBO FM in Owego, New York. Larry was active in a local Vietnam Vets Association, organizing fundraisers. By the 1980s,

Larry had moved on to a different media, newspapers, and he became GM of the evening's son in Norwich, New York. By the mid-1980s, Larry looked for opportunities outside of the state of New York. He became the marketing director for Bream Communications in Fort Madison, Iowa. Larry then had an opportunity to become publisher of the Acheson Daily Globe in Kansas. He became the publisher there in 1988 and had been living in Atchison for 18 months when he himself became part of a news headline when he was found dead murdered in cold blood. At around 12.30 p.m. on July 29, 1989, a woman named Sandy Heaver went to Larry Sarvee's home. The two had been having a secret affair for a little over three months, and almost no one knew about it, even though Sandy was pregnant. Sandy went to see Larry because he wasn't answering his phone.

She rang the doorbell, but he didn't come to the door. So she unlocked it with her key and tried to go inside to find Larry. The house was dark, and she couldn't even open the door all the way because something was stopping it from opening. When she forced the door open, she found Larry lying in the other side of it in a pool of his own blood and ran out of the house to a neighbors to get help. detectives arrived on the scene and determined that Larry was likely killed between 2 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. He had been shot in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun at least twice. Investigators found the phone lines leading to the home had been cut and that multiple screens had been cut on both his front and back storm doors. There was also a cut in the screen on the bedroom window.

It appeared as though someone had definitely tried to enter the home through. these windows. There was no sign of a struggle in the home. It looked as though Larry had been walking near the door, maybe even answering it when he was shot in the head. His television was still on. Police questioned neighbors and none of them remembered hearing or seeing anything suspicious overnight or in the early morning before Larry was found dead. So more if there's a lot to break down here, you know, first off, what would it be like to go to someone? To go to someone, one's house and discover that they had been brutally murdered. I mean, obviously, when you're on your way, when you get there, you have no thoughts of that, right?

You're just going to someone's house to see them. You're expecting them to answer the door to be let in. And then you find them lying in a pool of blood. Yeah, I think Sandy let herself in only because he didn't answer the door. I don't think she was expecting him to be there. Maybe she thought he was in the shower. or sleeping or something like that. But to stumble upon that scene,

it's just got to be something that was etched in her mind. And you know, I know from a lot of the cases that we cover and also having knowledge of guns, that two shotgun blast to the head is just going to be massive damage. So I can't even imagine what that looked like when she went in there and how horrible that was.

Yeah, this is much different, right, than walking in on somebody, that let's say has had a heart attack and died or, you know, finding someone who died in their bed and their sleep. This is someone who was shot twice in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun. That is going to be a very gruesome scene. And then, you know, when you break down these clues that detectives have to work with, obviously they're finding the evidence that someone tried to enter the home from the outside. Multiple screens are cut. But to me, it's the no sign of a struggle in the home. And I always feel as though in every case, that's a big clue. You know, Morph. If you were

surprised by someone in your home, more than likely you're going to try to defend yourself. There's going to be a struggle. Things are going to get knocked over. So when detectives find no sign of a What does that mean? To me, it's either that the victim knew their killer or they were so surprised. They were so, you know, caught off guard that they were shot before they had any chance to react. I think police probably had a couple different avenues to go down. On one hand, it did look like someone had tried to break into the house, which might signal a stranger that's trying to break in. the other possibility is that that Larry let this person in and knew them and his guard was just down and he was attacked quickly without a chance to defend himself. So there's a couple different avenues right away that police have to consider. And the one thing that wasn't mentioned

in any of the news reports so we don't know was if anything was missing, if there's any kind of valuables taken, any signs of robbery. Because that could change, you know, is the motive to get something of value or is it just to harm Larry? And then I think you always have to kind of look into the fact that neighbors either heard or didn't hear gunshots. I mean, to me, a 12-gauge shotgun is very distinctive, not to mention the fact that is very loud. So, you know, not having neighbors hear it.

What does that mean? Does it simply mean that it happened, you know, at a time when most neighbors were asleep or, you know, was the house very well insulated? I don't know. Yeah, and I think even having reports of a gunshot at a certain time would help them narrow down when it actually happened. And that might give them some clues and help their investigation. But unfortunately, they just didn't have anyone that could provide that information. Oddly enough, Larry's friend, Lou Sumner told the Kansas City. Star magazine that when he heard about the manner of his death, it seemed as natural as a heart

attack. Apparently, Lou knew Larry better than others and saw things about him that other people didn't. And perhaps he wasn't surprised that Larry would be the victim of a murder, but he didn't expand on it. Just a week before he was killed, Larry told his co-workers, including Sandy, who worked at the Atchison Daily Globe as an advertising rep, that he was going to travel to New York and visit family. He brought back a t-shirt as a souvenir for Gene Buchanan, the managing editor for the Atchison Daily Globe. Police looked into the New York trip and determined that Larry did, in fact, go to New York, but it wasn't for any kind of family reunion.

He had actually completed a job interview there and accepted the new employer's offer in New York. Larry was hoping that he could also make things work with Kathy, his wife of 15 years. Kathy had moved back to upstate New York with their children just two. weeks before Larry's murder. Kathy was granted an emergency divorce that month. It's unclear why an emergency divorce was granted. It's usually done in the matter of domestic violence, child custody, or spousal alienation, but the details just aren't clear.

It's rumored that Kathy became aware of her husband's affair, prompting her to leave him. During their investigation, police realized that Sandy was more than just a co-worker of Larry's, and that she was having an affair with him and was pregnant with his child. Police quickly locked in on one of the oldest motives in many murders. Jealousy. They focused on Sandy's ex-husband, 40-year-old Lloyd Heaver, who had moved to Acheson from St. Cloud, Minnesota in March, 1989, in order to be near Sabrina, the daughter he and Sandy shared.

The two officially divorced in June 1989, just three months later. While in Acheson, Lloyd lived with 29-year-old Richard Gerey. Keith Arndt. Richard was known around town for telling tall towels. He had previously claimed to have killed at least two people, been a hit man for the mob, and also been a drug trafficker, bringing Colombian drugs to Texas. He claimed that he had $200,000 of stolen money buried in Arizona. Most people brushed his stories of a violent and criminal passed off. But when Larry was killed, people suddenly were interested in what Arndt had previously said. Richard Arndt was questioned by investigators, and he told them that Lloyd had talked to him multiple times about killing Larry Sarvey.

Police didn't waste any time. And Lloyd Heaver was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Larry's murder in charge with first-degree murder, criminal solicitation to commit murder, aggravated unlawful use of weapons, burglary, and unlawful possession of a firearm. At Lloyd's preliminary hearing, Richard Arndt testified that Lloyd didn't really like Larry in that he didn't want someone coming between him and his daughter. Richard also talked about how Lloyd was afraid that Larry and Sandy would get married and that they might move to another

state with Sabrina. Lloyd was a long-haul trucker who had already moved to be near Sabrina once. Richard Arndt was grand immunity for testifying and was held as a material witness at the Atchison County Jail. Lloyd Heaver's trial started in November 1st, 1989. Lloyd's attorney claimed that Richard Arn had actually killed Larry Sarvey. The prosecuting attorney Gunner Sunby claimed that Lloyd had killed Larry himself because he was upset that Richard Arn had agreed to kill Larry but didn't go through with it. Sandy Heaver testified that Lloyd had confronted her at work in the parking lot of the Attis and Daily Globe

and told her that he had heard nasty rumors about her and that he knew she was dating. She also stated that he would call her and ask, How can you look at yourself in the mirror? Just two days later on the third day of the trial, November 3rd, prosecutor's sonby dismissed four of the five charges against Lloyd Heaver. The most serious charges were dismissed, and the one that was left was unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon. So to me, more if that's very telling. We don't have all the details about, you know, how the decision to do that was made, but I think you can make the assumption that the prosecutor was not very confident. in his case on those four charges, which turned out to be the most serious ones.

Yeah, it almost makes me question why they brought him to trial in the first place. If the charges were that flimsy that they were just going to dismiss most of them, why he was even in court in the first place, they should have waited until they were more prepared, I think. Well, and it wasn't like this was six months into a trial or a month into a trial. I mean, this was three days in, that, you know, it was realized that, you know, it was realized that they just didn't have enough to, you know, continue with these four charges. So, yeah, I'm kind of with you.

Ed Mall, Richard Arn't's uncle, had testified, and what he said grabbed Gunner Sunbees' attention. Ed, who lived in Rushville, Missouri, claimed that Richard told him he had been hired to kill someone as a hit, and that Ed agreed to drop Richard off in downtown Atchison, just down the street from Larry Sarvey's house. Ed remembered seeing a gun in Richard's waistband when he got out of the car. So, I mean, I think this testimony seems a bit fishy. Why would Richard need someone from Missouri to drop him off in Atchison when he already lived nearby? Also strange is that while a gun in his waistband would be of interest, it would have had to have been a handgun of some sort. And we know that Larry was killed with a 12-gauge shotgun, which I think as most people know, unless it was

sawed down to an extremely small length would be very hard to stick down your pants. Richard having a handgun near Larry's home in no way proved that Richard killed Larry or that Richard backed out of killing Larry and Lloyd went and did it himself, but it did grab people's attention in the courtroom. Richard Arn himself testified that he didn't know that Larry had been killed until around 3 or 4 p.m. And that he was told this by Heaver's lawyer. But under direct cross-examination, Ed Mall claimed that Richard told him Larry was dead,

specifically from being shot at around 12.30 p.m. on July 29th. If this was true, this means that Richard Arndt and Ed Mal knew that Larry was dead right around the time Sandy found Larry's body. For Ed Mal to know this without Richard being involved, Lloyd would have had to kill Larry, come home, and then tell Richard that he had murdered Larry without his help. And Richard would have had to tell his uncle Ed about the murder, almost exactly as Larry's body was discovered.

It clearly made more sense to the shocked jury, the judge, and prosecutor that Richard Arn't had been involved in the murder of Larry Sarvey. So more if no doubt, I think this sheds light on why the prosecutor dropped the four most egregious charges against Lloyd Heaver. When you look at some of the testimony, it seems to cast a lot of doubt on Lloyd's innocence. It brings in Richard Arndt. You can see how at that point in the trial, the water would be pretty muddy. It almost seems like they thought maybe Richard was involved in it, but perhaps there wasn't

evidence there to implicate him in it. And I think maybe that's why he wasn't charged. and but at the same time these charges against Lloyd were dismissed mostly. Well, at the very least, it's going to create a great deal of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. As a prosecutor, you have to feel as though there's no way you're getting a conviction on those four charges. Lloyd Heaver was released on his own recognizance with only one charge remaining against him. he was later found guilty of one count of unlawful possession of a firearm as a felon. At the time, his attorney said he planned to appeal the weapons charge conviction,

but he also said Lloyd was elated to put the whole thing behind him. After Lloyd was released, on November 3rd, Lloyd Heaver and Kathy Sarvey were seen together at a hotel dancing. So apparently, Larry's ex-wife, Kathy, had returned from New York and was witnessed dancing with the man on trial for her husband's murder. Apparently, there was more of this dance than meets the eye, because Larry Sarveh's ex-wife Kathy and Lloyd, the ex-husband of Sandy, who Larry was having an affair with, got married just eight months later. In a 1990 interview with the Addison Globe, Kathy admitted that they knew there would be talk and speculation, but that it didn't really change her feelings for

each other. What's not known is whether Lloyd and Kathy knew each other before the trial. And if so, was there some sort of relationship? If so, that would make this case look a lot different when you view it with that being a possibility. Yeah, I think there's a lot of ways to look at this. I mean, first of all, to me, it's just very strange that you would go out on a date, you would be seen dancing with the man who was on trial for murdering your husband. That is very odd. I think anybody who views it in the context of everything that had happened was going on at the time would see that as strange.

And then, you know, obviously more of the other thing that it brings up is that could Lloyd have been involved in Larry's murder because of Kathy? I mean, I think that's an obvious leap, an obvious. an obvious assumption to kind of lean into. Well, we talk in a lot of these cases about the person being involved in the murders or someone close to the victims. So it could theoretically be a case where there's some kind of love triangle going on. And I think we have to be clear.

Kathy was back in New York when the actual murder happened. So nothing to suggest that she pulled the trigger. but could she have been involved? I think in a case like this, that's something that's got to be considered. Well, everyone knows, right? From all the true crime that they read about, the documentaries they see,

the podcast they listen to, the spouses looked at, and for good reason, a lot of murders are committed by spouses or are set up by spouses. And I think that's kind of what you were getting at there. We know that Cassidy, he didn't pull the trigger. She was halfway across the country, but could she have been the catalyst?

Could she have been involved? You know, obviously that's something to look into. Police have never revealed any alternate suspects in the murder of Larry Sarvey, and they appear to believe that the charges against Lloyd Heaver should have never been dropped. I get the sense more that authorities believe that they had the right guy all along. So that that's, raises the question. Could Lloyd Heaver have been impatient enough to go and murder Larry, even though it seems as though he had clearly wanted someone else to do it? Also, if Lloyd was in some sort of relationship with Larry's ex-wife, Kathy, prior to Larry being murdered, that could have given Lloyd even more of a motive, right? He could have been worried that Larry was going to

reunite with Kathy, wrecking that relationship. And, still have been upset with Larry over the relationship with Sandy. In March 2009, Lloyd Heaver died at age 60 in Minnesota. Richard Arndt was sentenced to life in prison for aggravated sexual assault in Texas. Larry's siblings believe that Richard Arant played some role in Larry's murder, and had he been in prison for it, that his victim in the sexual assault case would never been attacked. Just a month after Lloyd Heaver died, his ex-wife Sandy, who was now Sandy Burge, became a grandmother to a little girl.

Going by Larry's obitcher in the birth announcement for her granddaughter and the birth announcement for Sandy's granddaughter, it looks like the child Sandy was pregnant with when Larry was murdered ended up being born a little girl, and she went on to grow up to have a child of her own. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency.

We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case, remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, Blood and Water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything

from heist to whodontes, where you're a go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation investigated Larry's murder thoroughly and revealed information about his death to his family that his sister, Cheryl, said publicly, she couldn't share. It seems that the family believes that there were three people involved in Larry's murder, one who was dead, another who was in jail, leaving one to walk free. Cheryl Butler's information seems to point to Lloyd Heaver.

He's deceased and Richard Arndt, who was in jail, but who is the third person walking around free? There are a few people you could easily conclude Cheryl was talking about. Kathy had apparently found out that Larry was having an affair with Sandy, and at some point she and Lloyd became an item. Was it before or after Larry's murder that their relationship started? Both of their exes being in a relationship with each other seems to have set up a classic love triangle,

or maybe a love square in this case. The ex-husband of the new mistress and the scorned and betrayed ex-wife of a murdered man. Of course all eyes would look in their direction, so any involvement by them would be looked at closely. Well, and then there's Sandy who found Larry's body. She was dating Larry and pregnant with his child. Lloyd and Sandy had just divorced and they had a daughter together. She was also the girlfriend or more technically the pregnant mistress.

If Larry did plan to get back together at any point with Kathy for the sake of his marriage or their children, where would that leave Sandy and their child that she was expecting? Larry could probably hide Sandy's pregnancy from Kathy long enough for them to reconcile, but how could Sandy reconcile with Lloyd if she was pregnant with another man's child? So I think, you know, again, adding to the love triangle, the love square, whatever you want to call it, there's a lot of questions here more. Was Larry murdered at the hands of one or more of these people? Or could Richard aren't? the self-proclaimed hitman have had something to do with Larry being gunned down.

Even if that was the case, you would think that he was doing it at the behest of someone involved in this whole Love Square, Pentagon, triangle, whatever you want to call it. And I think generally, as far back as police work goes, that crimes of passion or murders, which this seems to be, come. down to jealousy, someone who's been scorned, and that's why they look closest at people that are connected to the victim. So it seems like a logical path to go down in this case. Well, because you have a lot of people in some way connected to Larry Sarby, ex-wife, current girlfriend, boyfriend of ex-wife, and also ex-husband of current girlfriend. It's actually

kind of hard to keep straight. If you think about it, there's so much going on here. There's one very different theory online that's not connected to the Love Square. It's a simple comment on a blog about unsolved crimes. Larry's murder isn't even included on the list of murders on the blog, but one comment are posted saying that she wanted Larry's case reopened. This person claims that she and her spouse had been to Larry Sarvey's home. It's part of an event.

And that after Larry had been drinking that evening, he told the couple that he had been receiving death threats because someone knew that he was going to blow the whistle on a local drug ring that involved two local judges, a doctor, and a rock quarry owner. So this theory sounds interesting, but it's important to note that another poster pointed out glaring errors that this commenter who claimed to have been told this secret by Larry posted online, this commenter who claimed to know Larry was very wrong in how Larry was murdered. They stated that he was killed as he slept in a rocking chair,

but in reality, he was very clearly awake and standing when he was shot. The poster also stated that the man who was arrested for his murder had relocated to Colorado. But that was not true. He didn't. Another poster, someone claiming to be Larry's second oldest daughter, replied and said that this person was way off. Yet another poster commented claiming to be Larry's daughter. and from the name she used to post with, it appears that it's not one of the Sarvee children, it's Larry's daughter with Sandy Heaver.

This person didn't give any opinion about the murder, but instead just asked the person who wrote the comment about how and why Larry's case should be reopened to message her because Larry was her dad. And to me more, if this is an interesting part of any case, like this, you know, when you go out and you start to do research and you're looking at some of these blogs and, and some of the posts, you can really find quite a bit of interesting stuff. Now, I think sometimes it's hard to figure out what's true, what's not true, who is posting as the person that they're saying they are. Are they really that person? Because we know a lot of

people say things that aren't true online, but at the very least, it's interesting stuff. Yeah, if the person really is who they claim to be and they're connected to the case, then you sort of get some insight from their perspective and the things they're posting or asking about, you know, you pay a little bit of attention to that. But at the end of the day, like you mentioned, how do we really know they're, who they say they are? Although we may not be able to determine who killed Larry Sarvey, when reviewing the clues, it's pretty clear that someone planned out his murder and took steps not to be caught.

First, the phone line to his home was severed. They didn't want Larry to be able to call out for help. With regard to the window screens being cut, it seems like someone had tried to gain entry to the home without simply knocking on the door and hoping Larry would let them in. Perhaps this is a clue that Larry didn't know the killer, or wouldn't let them in if they simply knocked on the door. I think the other way that you could possibly look at it morph is that the killer thought

that by cutting the screens and making it appear as though, you know, they were trying to gain entry that way, it had to have been someone unknown to Laird. So I guess what I'm saying is it's possible that this was done in an attempt to throw police off. Yeah, that would be a really good diversion to get police looking at the stranger aspect when it was really someone that perhaps Larry opened the door to. And the one thing we mentioned earlier is there wasn't anything really reported about anything being stolen, but that would be another great way to make police think that it was something other than a personal attack, is if the person that killed Larry had taken some stuff from the homes and valuables or whatever,

but we just don't know if that happened. We also, pointed out that there were no signs of a struggle or a break-in, and if the killer left through the front door, they locked it behind them. Because Sandy said that when she entered the home, she had to unlock the door after Larry didn't answer the doorbell. In the end, the murder of Larry Sarvey is an enigma and really barring any kind of new evidence or some type of deathbed confession, the details of who murdered him and why may never be known. But it's definitely not unheard of for journalists and publishers to be murdered. According to the committee to protect journalists, 61 journalists whose job included the title

of publisher have been murdered since 1992. There are many more media workers in journalist deaths, but a lot of them involve international reporting are very deep cover assignments in dangerous locations. Journalism can be a dangerous job. Most recently and very famously, Jamal Khashaghi, a columnist for the Washington Post and Saudi Arabian dissident, was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Jamal wasn't just a local journalist. He spoke out against regimes and had been referred to by Time Magazine as the guardian

of the truth. More often, we hear about rumors of a journalist's involvement. in something someone didn't want let out to the public. In April 1996, 37-year-old English journalist, Jill Dando, was shot and killed in southwest London. She had reported for a program called Crime Watch, leading many to believe that her murder was a hired hit, ordered by the IRA. She had also presented an appeal on BBC on behalf of Kosovan, Albanian, refugee. refugees who had been driven from their homes.

And in 2012, the widow of a well-known Serbian journalist claimed that Jill was targeted for this appeal by Serbian warlords. Two years later, a former coworker claimed that Jill was preparing to expose a large pedophile ring made up of very important and powerful people in the entertainment and media industry. On June 27, 1995, 27-year-old Jody Hoosentrute, an American news anchor working from Mason City, Iowa's CBS affiliate, disappeared, apparently abducted in the early morning hours, as she left her home to head for work. Three months before her disappearance, Jody's close friend, Billy Pruin, had been found dead in his home from what was ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Billy had been speaking out about a methamphetamine problem in Mason City. Many people believe that Jody knew something about Billy's murder, probably ordered by drug traffickers, and that she was silent before she could blow the whistle.

Dorothy Kilgallan, a journalist and TV reporter who wrote about gossip, politics, and organized crime, was found dead in her apartment in 1965 from an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. Her death was ruled a suicide, but a book published in 2016, explored the idea that Dorothy was murdered for writing a tell-all book about John F. Kennedy's assassination. This theory probably got legs due to the popular conspiracy theory that Marilyn Monroe did not overdose on barbiturates on her own, but that she was killed because she had affairs with both John F. Kennedy and his younger brother Robert. It's been well explained by medical professionals with access to Maryland's autopsy records that she deliberately took the medication she did and that it could not have been an assassination.

But the conspiracy theory is still very popular. So more if we just mentioned three or four cases, some of them very well-known cases that I'm sure will do on criminology at some point in the future. But very interesting in the respect that they all involve journalists. So they do in some way kind of tie back to this case of Larry Sarvey. Yeah, and I think while some of these murders of people in the press we've mentioned are interesting, they differ in a lot of ways from the case of Larry Sarvey.

Larry, unlike probably most of the others we mentioned, was involved in some kind of love triangle or Love Square, as we put it. And his murder may come down to jealousy. That's always a very popular motive in a murder. One thing that does stick out here, though, why would Larry's friend, Lou Sumner, tell Kansas City Star magazine that he had come to believe that Larry would one day die violently? He said that he had witnessed the side of Sarvee, unknown to most people. After over a decade of friendship, did he know something about Larry's life that most people didn't?

Yeah, I mean, we talked about this earlier more, but now I think is the point in the story to kind of dive into it a little bit deeper. I thought that this was very interesting from the standpoint of how it was almost a premonition, or was a premonition, really, of Larry's death. But why? What was it that Lou Sumner knew about Larry? What was Larry doing? What was going on in Larry's life that would have made one of his really good friends, Lou Sumner to believe that there was a chance he would be murdered. I mean, I think about all the

friends in my life. I can't think of one of them that I would say, oh, yeah, I believe that there's a possibility he could get murdered. He or she. I just found it very odd. I think the problem is, you know, without him expanding on what made him think that, we just don't really know, right? saying he had witnessed the side of Sarvee unknown to most people. It's vague. We don't know the details around it. Yeah, and that's the kind of instance where I would hope that the magazine or the reporter would press him on that and ask for more details about that. But unfortunately, we just, we just don't have them. So we're left to wonder what he was talking about. I would imagine the reporter probably did. Any good reporter would. Maybe he just didn't want

to give the exact details, but, you know, it's very mysterious. What was this other side to Larry Sarvey? What could he have been into? And the other question that I have morph is how much digging did the police do? We don't know. It wasn't really reported on. Did they talk to Lou Sumner? Did they find out what he meant by that statement?

From everything that's publicly available that we can glean from Larry's life, it didn't seem like he was involved in any shady operations, any kind of crime. You know, he was active in a couple different things that we talked about. He worked with Vietnam vets. Well, we know he was having an affair. Maybe it was as simple as that, as far as what Lou was referring to. And maybe he was thinking, hey, when you're in. involved with someone's spouse and they find out it's a good way to get yourself hurt.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Richard Keith Arndt was sentenced to life in prison on July 8, 1995. He is currently 62 years old and still incarcerated at Bill Clements Prison in Amarillo, Texas. He was charged only with the sexual assault he was found guilty of and never charged in connection with Larry Sarvee's death. There's not a ton of information out there on Larry Sarby's case.

For whatever reason, you know, his murder has kind of ended up on the back burner, even though the case was officially labeled unsolved and open when the charges against Lloyd Heaver were dropped. As we mentioned, police really were disappointed to see charges against Lloyd Heaver drop because it appears as though they felt that they had the right guy. perhaps they just didn't have any good direction to go in besides Lloyd or as does happen. We know this happens. You know, they get tunnel vision.

They center in on a suspect as they did with Lloyd to the exclusion of others. I do think this is pretty common morph, you know, even when a suspect has the charges dropped or is found not guilty in a court of law. a lot of times the police don't change their stance in how they feel about that person. A lot of times they maintain that they had the right person all along. It just didn't work out. But I want to get back to Richard Arndt for a second. He's still alive. And, you know, in my kind of way of thinking, he probably more than anyone else may be able to shed light on,

you know, what really happened in the murder of Larry Sarvey? Lloyd can because he's no longer alive, but Richard probably could. Now, why would he want to? Right. He's sentenced to life in prison. What would be the, I guess, motivation for him to now come out at this point and tell all that he knows if he actually does know anything? Well, it's important to remember that he's never been charged in relation to Larry's murder. So technically, they could charge him with it and bring him to trial for the murder. So I doubt he would want to say anything at this point. Yeah, he could actually maybe get to death penalty. Technically, I don't know, depending on when the murder took place and what the status of the death penalty was at that time.

But I think that goes back to my point, right? What would be the good that would come out of? now revealing all that he knew or knows, there would really probably only be downside. Larry's sister, Cheryl Butler, traveled to Acheson from New York with Kathy for the trial, and they stayed in the same motel together. While Cheryl stated she can't give away what she knows about Larry's murder, she's publicly said that his death is related to revenge and greed. Sadly, Cheryl died in 2016 in Frankfurt, Germany, without ever seeing justice for her brother.

Part of Larry Sarvey's legacy is the newspaper that he ran at the time of his death, the Atchison Daily Globe, which still exists today. They have a website with articles, videos, and advertisements, as well as a weekly printed edition of the paper. Perhaps one day the Atchison Daily Globe will get to print a headline proclaiming that their former publisher's cases saw. But morph to me as we wrap up this episode, I think the chance of it's of that are on the low end. And I say that because some of the people that many think were involved

in Larry's murder or now deceased. We just talked about Richard Arndt, who may or may not have been involved. But if he was, there seems to be no reason at this point in time for him to come out and tell all. I just don't see it. And really, what reason is there normally? for anybody involved in a murder to come out and say, okay, yes, I did this or this was my part in it. It's kind of a big hurdle, right? When you're talking about a lot of these unsolved cases is that there's not much in the way of motivation for people involved to come out and give their side of the story. When it implicates them in a murder, it's really the opposite. There's a lot of motivation. There's a lot of motivation for people to stay quiet because only bad things can come from opening up and

talking about it. And I think police in this case really had their hands full because in a lot of cases, police don't have any good suspects or any good motives. And here with this supposed love triangle or love square, whatever you want to call it, there's plenty of people with motive. And jealousy, you've got an ex-wife who was granted an emergency divorce, you have a pregnant mistress, you know, you have a jealous, perhaps a jealous husband. And then that jealous husband goes on to marry Larry's widow. It's almost like something out of a work of fiction, the stuff that's going on here and the police have to sort through all of this.

So in a lot of cases where they don't have much to work with, here it seems like they almost have too much. Well, and in my view, that was probably the biggest detriment in the case against Lloyd Heaver, right? There were other suspects as well. So, you know, how can you pin the murder solely on Lloyd Heaver when you have people coming out and saying that, you know, I saw this person with a gun, this person said that they were hired to kill Larry. What's a jury supposed to think? I mean, at the very least, you're opening up a tremendous amount of reasonable doubt. And I really truly believe that's what

happened in the trial of Lloyd Heaver. I don't know whether he was, you know, innocent, guilty or whatever, but pretty hard to convict one person when it comes out that it could have been this person. It could have been another person. That's a lot of reasonable doubt. Yeah, it is. And the one thing that we really haven't talked about is what if this crime was some kind of random home invasion gone wrong or a burglary gone wrong? And the person that killed him really was a stranger. Or if it was somehow connected to his work as one person suggested that he was going to blow the lid off something. And it's related to that and not at all to this love triangle or love square.

Well, I think those are all things that a good defense attorney would bring up at trial, right? You know, how can you pin it on my client? You know, how do you know it wasn't this? How do you know it wasn't that? Again, just more things to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. You know, the jurors have a really tough task in some of these trials. Thanks goes out to Sunny Landon for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love this show, but you haven't done so yet, go out, take a minute, give us a rating.

Keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. That word of mouth really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for our case on the murder of Larry Sarvey. But we'll be back with everyone, Morp, next Saturday night,

with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike. And Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.