Dateline NBC - Talking Dateline: Young Lords of Chaos

Episode Date: August 21, 2024

Keith Morrison and Josh Mankiewicz sit down to talk about Keith’s episode, “Young Lords of Chaos.’’ In 1996, a group of teens dubbed the ‘Lords of Chaos’ went on a crime spree in Fort Myers, Florida, culminating in the murder of their high school band director, Mark Schwebes. Josh and Keith discuss the choices the teens made as they fell under the spell of their charismatic ringleader, and the local reporter who found himself getting a little too close to the case. They’re also joined by the victim’s sister, Pat Schwebes-Dunbar, who shares how her life has been shaped in the 28 years since her brother’s murder.Listen to the full episode of “Young Lords of Chaos” here: https://link.chtbl.com/dl_younglordsofchaosKeith also catches up with Jim Greenhill, the reporter at the center of the story, to see where life has taken him and to learn his thoughts on the Lords of Chaos today. “After the Verdict” is available exclusively to Dateline Premium subscribers: https://dateline.supportingcast.fm/listen/dateline-nbc-premium/after-the-verdict-young-lords-of-chaos

Hi, everybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and we are Talking Dateline, and our guest is Keith Morrison. Hi. Well, hello, Josh. Well, hello, Josh. That was good. That was very good. Thank you. Like you've been working on it almost. I have been. I have been. It took two tries. This episode is pretty interesting. It's about a group of phenomenally amoral teens who go on this crime spree before committing murder. But the real sort of center of this is the reporter who ends up getting so close to the story,

you sort of can't tell whether he's observing it or participating in it or acting as an undercover agent. So if you've not listened to Young Lords of Chaos, it is the episode right below this one on the list of podcasts. So go there and listen to it and then come back here. Now, when you come back, we will be catching up with the victim's sister, Pat Schwebe's Dunbar. It's been 28 years since then, and she has a lot to share with us. So let's talk Dateline. So this is really kind of two stories. I mean, it's Jim Greenhill's story, you know, reporter in what you get the feeling is kind of a, you know, downhill slide. I mean, he's drinking all the time. He doesn't sound like he's doing terribly well in life. And then it's also the story of these kids, you know, weakness of people who couldn't stand

up to somebody or people at that age, uh, so desperate to be included that you sort of leave behind any sense of what right and wrong is. I mean, I got bullied a lot when I was little. I get bullied a lot here at Dateline, but that's a different story. Well, for obvious reasons. Yeah, and you are usually the ringleader of that. But I did get bullied a lot when I was a kid. I went to seven elementary schools. I was always the new kid at school.

I was very small for my age. So I, I, I will certainly say, I know what it was like to be the outcast in school. Like, like a lot of those kids were, and I was always delighted. Well, there are anybody who was, you know, the, the cool kids sort of wanted to talk to me or hang out with me or have lunch with me, but I certainly wasn't out there, uh, committing crimes and, you know, trashing things and doing things that were violent. Yeah. I mean, Kevin Foster is a guy I would have been afraid of.

Oh, sure. And there's a Kevin Foster or somebody like Kevin Foster in almost every school. Not usually that extreme, obviously, but somebody in that position. And as I was reading a piece the other day, which suggested that parenting plays a much smaller role in a person's development than does peer pressure. You know, I mean, I think that if you're a parent, you do say to your kids, you should not smoke. You should not drink.

You should stay in school. You don't think that you have to say to your kids, you should not commit school. You don't think that you have to say to your kids, you should not commit murder. Sure. But you know, it really doesn't always make very much difference what a parent says to a child. They will do what they will do. And there seems to be, especially among young men, but also among groups of young women occasionally, a propensity for performative violence where they want to do things just for the sake of doing them. Then it makes you scratch your head as you say,

how could people be this way? Is it something about growing up, about being a teenager, about needing the approval of the alpha male in the group? And you'll do whatever that alpha male demands you do. In this case, Kevin Foster, who was very much the bully and the leader of the alpha male in the group, and you'll do whatever that alpha male demands you do. In this case, Kevin Foster, who was very much the bully and the leader of the group, and they were the accolades and the followers who wanted to impress themselves as people worthy of being in Kevin Foster's presence. Even when they were doing things that they knew, if they were caught, they would pay a huge penalty. Maybe they weren't thinking about that. In the jail interview with them, you know, one gets the sense that the gravity of what

these kids were facing and what a fork in the road their association with Kevin Foster had been sort of hadn't really hit them at that point. It hadn't. You know, is it remorse or is it just regret that we got caught i don't know who knows yeah and what does life become there is a kind of life in prison i guess but certainly not the life you'd have outside well i mean you know one of them was an artist one was one new computers one was in the band i mean these kids were all kinds of you know right heading for like you for lots of fun, interesting experiences. And instead, they're looking at cinder block walls for the rest of their lives.

Sure. But this poor guy, Mark Schwebes, the school's music teacher, by all accounts, a very caring, nice fellow. I mean, everything you said about Mark Schwebes makes me think he was like exactly the kind of teacher you want teaching your kids in school. Like he was looking out for them. He was trying to keep them out of trouble. And he also probably was a good teacher and they enjoyed being in his classes. Yeah, exactly. fully chose the one who was taking the music teacher's classes to go up and knock on the door because the music teacher would come to the door and then

get blasted in the face. But to, to agree to do that, knowing that that's what the outcome was quite possibly going to be. I don't know how you would ever get a night's sleep after doing that. Nice kid who liked his teacher. Yeah. I mean, you know, go figure.

Kevin says to Derek, somebody has to nine to nine. If it's not him, it's going to be you. Right. Yeah. And so that's sort of used as why I had to keep going. Right. I'm not a hundred percent sure. I believe that. I was never particularly sure. I believed it either. You know, you can say what you want to say, but he was certainly in the thrall of this guy Foster. And then, you know, that's backed up when you see that Jim Greenhill equally kind of falls under the spell of this guy too. So, you know, clearly, as he admitted himself, he was not in a good place in his life. He was abusing alcohol. He says he was living off caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. That's pretty much it.

Which, over the years, has described a lot of reporters that I've known and probably that you've known and worked with. But one senses that this is less romantic and more frightening. Exactly. And I think he got involved in covering this story. And he became fascinated with the same issues. Why would a group of young men do this sort of thing? But he found himself drawn increasingly, like these other boys in the group were, to the leader of the group, Kevin Foster. I think it sounds like everything he does is what a good reporter would do. Like you try to make contact with the people in the story.

You try to gain their trust. You try to get them to talk to you. You try to figure out what makes them tick. But then clearly something starts to change. Yeah. It was a strange thing. And he confesses that it was a strange thing, but he wanted to spend time with them and know more about him. He became so enamored is the wrong word, but allowed himself to get so in that orbit that he even, you know, willingly wore Kevin's black jacket, black leather jacket, that he sent pictures of himself to Kevin.

It's like some kind of bromance. It truly, as you say, was kind of like a bromance. They write letters back and forth. I guess you have to do that if you're in prison. There's no other way to communicate really but right but all those the act of writing letters is a kind of a is a sort of a romantic thing i can't remember a story of a reporter being drawn in by a killer like that the the this was this was a very interesting i mean i I looked up the famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, which is when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

There you go. I mean, that's, you know, if you're if you're hunting monsters, make sure you don't become a monster. And that's true. It feels to me like gazing into the abyss, the abyss gazing back is kind of what happened with Jim Greenhill. It was either that or it was so important to him to get Kevin to admit that he actually killed Mark Sweeby. That was really important to Jim in writing this book. And he did eventually. But it just did seem like there was a lot more involved. And it took Kevin telling Jim he wanted to kill the boys who testified against him before he finally went to see the police. When we come back, we will be joined by Mark's sister, the victim's sister, Pat Schwebe's Dunbar.

Okay, so now we're being joined by Pat Schwewebe's dunbar mark schwebe's sister thank you thanks for coming on here you're welcome let me ask you sort of what was going on in your life and in mark's life at the time that this happened um what was going on with me is i had three kids um you know raising those kids keeping active as far as with the school, the church, the kids' activities, and the family. And Mark was very active, obviously, with the school as far as being a band director. What did Mark say about teaching? Maybe not about these kids specifically, but what did he say about his time at that school and teaching those kids and others? Oh, he loved it.

He knew it was his calling. Those kids were his kids. Well, he got pretty deeply involved in it, too. I mean, he was totally committed in the relationship he had, even with the kids who wound up killing him or participating in his death. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, one of them, he had written a letter of recommendation for college. You know, kids were in his jazz band, you know, in his classes. So when I say he was involved, those, as far as he was concerned, you know, he didn't have biological children, but those were his kids.

When you found out when police told you what had happened here, what was your thought? What did you think? I got a phone call from my father. Actually, the phone rang and I was supposed to be working that day. And I just kind of rolled over and said, oh, you know, I'm not answering the phone at 530 in the morning. And then my husband, he answered the phone and he came up to me and he said, you need to take this call. And it was my dad and my dad was crying. And my first response was, oh, my gosh, something happened to mom.

And I asked him, is mom okay? And he said, yeah. And I said, what happened to Bob? That's my brother who's 15 months younger than me. And he said, no, it's Mark. He's been murdered. And yeah, I was going to say, according to my kids, um, they just heard mom screaming and I honestly don't remember that at all. You know, after that, I just kind of blanked out. I initially honestly thought that it might've been like a jealous boyfriend, you know, of possibly the person he had been dating. So I didn't initially think that they were correct. I mean, I could not, and still in my head, to think that kids, you know, students would do that was- It's incomprehensible.

Pretty much inconsiderate. Yeah, yeah. It's like, you don't think of that. And the question then is, this is 28 years ago now, but as you continue to try to live your life, because you got to get up every day and do your thing, how did you learn to accept what had happened? What did it do to your life? It changed my life significantly.

There's life before and there's life after. How do you do to your life? It changed my life significantly. There's life before and there's life after. How do you get on with life? I don't really see that you have a choice, Keith. No, you don't. I mean, to me, it's like one of the things I try to explain to people is that I am a murder survivor. You can make the choice that I'm going to still get up, and I'm still going to enjoy my life, and I'm still going to have a productive life, and I'm not in any way, shape, or form going to let those young men who murdered my brother also murder me. Is Mark's death why you're no longer teaching? No, no. My kids graduated high school, moved along, and I just kind of started having this

sense of there was something else I'm supposed to do and teaching wasn't it. And I actually went and I became a pastor. That's a switch. That was a big switch, let me tell you. At one point, you started volunteering at a youth detention center. Yeah, I did that for... I got to believe that has something to do with what you went through with Mark. I think it probably did. You know, and it was probably part of why I went into ministry. But what I always thought was weird about going into the youth detention

centers was that as a woman, they did not allow women to go in with the young men due to the possibility of additional violence. So yet every time I went in, I never went in with the young women. I always went in with the young men. And not by my choice, but by the head chaplain's decision that, yeah, you can handle it and they need to hear from you. That might be.

When we come back, we're going to have more from Mark's sister, Pat. How do you feel about Jim Greenhill's book? How have you felt about it over the years? I embrace that Jim wrote the book. I definitely embrace it. The only thing that I have challenges with the book, and he and I have talked, so I'm not going to surprise anybody with this one, is that so much of it is the focus on the perpetrators as opposed to the victim. Yeah. But I feel like that is the majority of what happens in telling these kinds of stories. It's rare that we really talk about the victim and the victim's life and the impact of the victim's death on the families, etc. You're quite right. The person at the heart of this is the person who suffered, who was killed, and the family.

Yeah, too often we don't tell their stories. What was your sense of his relationship with Kevin Foster? Did you read that portion? Oh yeah. Yeah. I think, and this is based on also talking with Jim since then, that maybe Jim was a little bit lost himself and he saw himself or where he could have gone, I should say, not where he did go, but where he could have gone in Foster. And maybe he had to explore that for himself. We all have those moments in life that we see somebody and we go like, man, is that me? Could that have been me? If I had taken a left turn instead of a right turn, if I had taken that fork in the road, could I have been me? If I had taken a left turn instead of a right turn, if I had taken that fork in the road, could I have gone there? And I think it's a good thing that we explore that.

But again, I mean, this is Jim's book that we're talking about. So therefore it reflects Jim. It doesn't reflect Pat. And I would have done something different, but I would have come from a different perspective. Any of those kids reach out to you over the years? Yeah, only one. Wrote me a letter and asked me to write a letter to the court to ask for leniency and let the court know that I had forgiven him. And maybe they would reduce his sentence. How'd that go? Oh, I've still got the letter.

Did I write the letter? No. No. No. And my feeling on it is that it's two part. One is that this was not Pat versus these individuals. Okay. It was the state of Florida because this was a crime against society.

It just happened to be my brother. And the other part was that, I'm sorry, Derek, but you made a choice. It was not a good choice. You know it wasn't a good choice, but you chose to not only go home after hearing about this, you chose to come back and meet up with the guys. You chose to go with the guys. Yeah. You chose to not tell anybody either before, during, or after. And those were all moments where doing that, standing up for what's right and for your brother and for any other victims that might have come after that, that would have made a huge difference.

That would have made a huge difference. Yep. Peter Magnotti was released last year early. Yeah. How did that sit with you? Not the best. I mean, Derek and Chris both got life without parole. Pete, I wanted him to have life without parole.

We agreed with the state attorney that he would receive 32 years for his testimony. But where's the justice if he didn't have to serve the 32 years? There you are. So, yeah. Have you, I mean, especially given the business that you're in now, in the pastor business, have you had any kind of thoughtful days about whether it's important for you to forgive these young men for what they did? Oh, from a forgiveness perspective, how about we look at it and we say, have I forgotten them? I can forgive them, but I can't forget what they've

done. And we're not ever, from my faith perspective, we're not called to forget. You don't just say, oh, well, hey, yeah, I forgot all about that. It's a question that goes through my head oftentimes. But I don't walk around carrying this burden of hate or seeking vengeance. That destroys a life. And like I said earlier, I won't let them destroy my life. Yeah, that's, you have to let it go. Otherwise, it'll eat you up. And finally, what do you carry around with you now about your brother, your memories of him? I still miss him. He was an integral part of my life. I mean, he was my baby brother. Yeah.

And when you're the oldest and you got that little one, even though he was a good nine inches taller than me, he was still the little one. You know, there's, I miss conversations with him just about life, you know, there's, I miss conversations with him just about life, you know, just about today's plans, tomorrow's plans, whatever. So, you know, I mean, he was just one of those good guys.

He cared about people. Yeah, he seems like a great guy. Yeah. And he wasn't perfect, um he was a good guy what a loss and for and for nothing for nothing yeah exactly that that i think is the biggest biggest challenge for me is that it was like why what was the point i just don't get it i'm not sure any of us ever will the terrible thing is when you happen to be one who's in the middle of one of those terrible things. Exactly.

Thank you for talking to us about this and about your brother. Oh, you're most welcome. Thanks a lot. You're most welcome. Thank you. Thank you for not forgetting him. We do not forget around here. Pat, thanks so much.

Thanks, everybody, for listening. Remember, if you have any questions for us about Dateline or about our stories, about anything else, you can reach out to us on social at Dateline NBC. That's at Dateline NBC. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC. And one more thing. I'm going to be catching up with the reporter at the center of this story, Jim Greenhill, for an all-new episode of our podcast,

After the Verdict. We'll be talking about his relationship with Kevin Foster and where things stand today and the big changes Jim made in his life since we last spoke. That episode will be available on September 5th for Dateline Premium subscribers, wherever you get your podcasts.