Last Podcast On The Left - Gathering Dark: An Interview with Candice Fox

Episode Date: November 24, 2021

It's Thanksgiving week in America, so we're taking a break and entering a coma-like state by ingesting nearly-lethal amounts of gravy.Instead of a new episode of Side Stories, we're unlocking one of our many Patreon interviews. On this Patreon interview episode, Ben & Henry sit down with author Candice Fox — New York Times bestseller and frequent James Patterson collaborator — to chat about her chilling face-to-face interview with the Toolbox Killer, how to write crime fiction, writing alongside James Patterson, and much more.

Hey, what's up, everyone? How are you doing? Thank you so much for giving to our Patreon. Without you, we're nothing! I am Ben, joined by Henry. Yeah. And today, we are honored to have with us true crime author. She is fantastic. Candice Fox. Miss Candice Fox. Thanks so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here and very nervous. I was just listening to some of your episodes. I did the baby stomping 9-1-1 episode.

Great. Oh my God. That's from back. That's like from 10 years ago. I know. We were bad boys back then, but now we're amazing gentlemen. Speaking with Candice Fox. We've become tight 36-year-olds. Yeah, I'm almost 40. Candice's latest book, Gone by Midnight.

That was released in 2019. Check that out. And she also doesn't just write books. She also sits down with some of the who more criminally minded of our society, specifically, Laurence Bittaker. She sat down with the toolbox killer. So we'll talk about that because that must have been scary. So crazy.

Can we just start there? Because I'd like to get in the middle of it, because in the meat of it, because we know people and authors that we've not spoken to a lot of them directly, but we use them a lot for reference material for last podcast. Of course. People that have had one-on-one conversations with serial killers. Yes.

And number one, how do you get into that situation? Yeah, is there like a tinder for serial killers called like... How do you get in there? Slicer or something? What do you do in the moment, especially with somebody? I mean, because you're a young woman, the idea of like someone who predominantly murders young women, you have to be around somebody like that.

There wasn't a lot of planning that went into it. You know, I was in LA. I was going to be there for a year doing TV and film stuff for some of my novels. And I said to my husband, you know what, anyone who's dangerous here that I befriend in prison, you know, if they ever get out, they're not going to come to my doorstep in Australia. Like it's a long way. Oh, I've always heard that.

No criminals go to Australia. That's, everyone knows that. Here, we don't need you. And he was not, he was not surprised at all that I wanted to go and speak to a serial killer. You know, we had our honeymoon in the U.S. and all up the east coast of the U.S., you know, we did a driving tour and he said, what do you want to do? I was like, there's so many body dumping sites and real life stories.

I had him like traipsing through the jungle and I was like, this is where they found her buddy right here. He was staring at a patch of dirt. And so he said, you know what? I said, I'm going to go to San Quentin. I'm going to fly up there and I'm going to sit down with one of the most, well, the most horrible serial killer that I can think of. And he said, you have fun.

You're going to love that. That's going to be great. Yeah, you're going to have what a blast. So we are co-producer Marcus Parks, him and his lovely wife, when they went on a vacation, they went to go see all of the touchstones of Jim Jones's life in Indiana. And I don't think of you normally, if you were vacationing from Australia to America, don't go to Indiana because it sucks.

I love Margaritaville. But it's not a fun state. Go to Margaritaville. Oh my goodness. And again, why was it so disturbing to sit down with Lawrence Bittaker? We haven't even covered this dude, I don't think fully, but the toolbox killer, he was convicted of killing five. He's an American serial killer, rapist,

and he has kidnapped and tortured multiple people. Again, it was five teenage girls in Southern California. So I mean, what, yeah, how the hell was that? When you sit in front of this guy, when you sit in front of this guy, like, does it like, do you think he's on his best behavior? Or is it like a thing? Yeah, like, is it one of those where he's trying to be like, you know, kids, like, is he trying to like blow it off?

Like, I was expecting like your Hannibal Lecter type, you know, that he would own it, you know, and he'd say, oh, I took them up there and I really enjoyed it and I had a fine wine and all this. But, you know, I, first of all, I didn't expect to be sitting in his presence with him uncuffed, you know, in a, you know, two meter by two meter cage. They put us in. I thought it was going to be like a, you know, there'd be a window and a phone and I get there and I said, who, you know, I'm Candice.

I'm here to see Lawrence. Where do I sit? Which phone booth is mine? And the guard said, no, no, you'll be in that cage there. And I said, okay, where, where will he be? And the guard was like, in there, like you didn't realize. And so I got in there and he came out and they uncuffed him and they locked the door. They put a padlock on it and the guards walked away. And I thought, okay, so this is, this is, this is how I die.

And I thought, this is strangely fitting for my career. This is going to make New York time shortly. Like talk about boosting book sales. Seriously. Did the guards, did they read the story of Hannibal Lecter? Talk about a Jody Foster situation. I know, I know we wouldn't need, our knees were about a foot apart with two plastic chairs. And we were just sitting there facing each other.

And I said, I felt like I was so nervous. I just started speaking. And I said, I'm really surprised that this has happened, you know, with the shark cage and the bulletproof glass type situation. And he said, oh, yeah. Well, I'm not going to do anything. If I tried to do anything, there's a sniper in the roof. There was like this cut out in the roof.

And he said, he'll just shoot me. And I said, okay, I have some problems with that because he's going to have to shoot you through the cage. Like through the bulletproof glass to get you. And I said, I'm not just going to be sitting here. You know, I thought I should say something tough, you know, because I've come all the way to meet this serial killer, you know, and I go in there and I'm so nervous. And I said, if you come at me, I'm going to put you on the ground.

He gave this laugh like women have tried to put me on the ground before. And it hasn't worked out for him. And it was just like an icy, icy laugh. And he said, yeah, he said everything's going to be fine. Let's just talk. And we were in there for five hours. And so I just, I asked him everything I could think of, you know, because I had written him a letter and I said to him, I'm, I really want to come and speak to you.

First of all, I was like, I don't want to be your girlfriend. I imagine you get a lot of letters like that. And he came back and he said, yeah, I have four current girlfriends. Oh, wow. But I, you know, I'm always on the search for more. And I was saying, no, that's not how does he, how does he cheat with them? Does he write one of their names on his right hand before he jerks off and then he erases it and writes another one? He's like, I'm so sorry.

How do you even do that? I don't know. And I don't know what these women want with him either. But I said, it's, it's not that. How, how old was he? Yeah. 77. Shit.

He's a big though, like big, a very tall, like I saw him in a documentary before I went there and I said to myself, oh, he's a little old man. Right. And then I went there and I was like, oh no, he's quite big and big arms and stuff. And, and I thought, you know, this, I have never been in a fight for my life before, but this is like, I'm going to have to, my instincts just said, scratch him. Just scratch his face. But, but that's not what you should do.

It's so interesting. And I want to talk about how that experience has informed your books as well, or maybe made you reflect on your work. I know you also work closely with James Patterson, who was like, I think he has written every book. Every time I see someone reading a book, I'm like, I just assume it's James Patterson's book. Yeah. How was that? I was talking with Travis, our producer before, just about being in the presence of evil. Yeah.

Was it a palpable feeling? Are those things underrated? Like, yeah. Last podcast, we equate serial killers, like we try to demystify the idea of them being evil. Because most of what I think that serial killers, they, well, they come from extreme mediocrity. Like it comes from somebody who's not a skill that anything else in life. Right. Because so it's, they kind of, it's easy to kill people, unfortunately.

Yeah, he wasn't, he wasn't, you know, intelligent and charismatic and anything like this. Basically, he just moaned to me the whole time about how his poor misunderstood creature and it wasn't his fault. You know, his partner Roy talked him into it and, you know, he was crying at some point. Like, and, and, and I was sitting there watching and going, is this real? Like, it's very genuine if it's real. And then he would do these little, little things that would just drop the mask. Like, I said to him, what was your, what was your plan? Like, were you just going to keep killing women? Like, yeah, until you were stopped.

What was your plan? And he said, oh, by the time I got to number five, what was her name? And I said, I said Andrea and he's like, whatever name was like this. Like the flip of the hand, like whatever her name was, it's like, you know what? You've been sitting here for 38 years. Could you possibly memorize the five names? Like, what else do you have to do? Yeah. Just memorize the five names, honestly, like, you know, and, and things like that.

And then he would burst into tears and he was just, the way he rationalized it was really fascinating to me as a crime writer, because he said, you know, for 33 years, my life, 32 or 33 years, I was a great guy, lots of friends, law abiding. And then there was this three month period where, you know, and he called it a phase. I went through this phase where I was murdering all of these women and doing these horrible things. And then, you know, 38 years since, same thing again, I'm, I'm, I've lots of friends here in prison. I obey the rules. He said, so if you look at my life as a whole, you know, I'm really not, I'm really not that bad of a person. And I said to him, have you ever heard the expression, you fuck one goat? You're a goat fucker. You know, he takes one.

That is what you will be known for is fucking that goat. Like you will be known as a serial killer. This is what you've done. Like it doesn't matter if you, you know, I was expecting him to have converted like born again Christian and all this stuff as, as you know, the serial killers often do. But I was just like, wow, wow. And so when you're in there, what was your goal? Did you have a, because obviously we do a lot of conversations with a lot of people and we just kind of chit chat and it's not nearly as intense as a confined five hour visit with a serial killer where you're only going to get one chance. Did you have a goal in mind before going to speak with Mr. Baderker? I'll be, I'll be nice enough to call him that. Or was it just like, let's see how this unfurls? I was, I was, I was happy for anything.

But I was looking for a shred of humanity because all I do is, you know, by that time I had written 12 novels and I, so I'd written about 12, at least 12 killers. And I'd never met one before. So I think that the creepiest moments when you're dealing with the villain in crime fiction is when you can relate. So I was looking for something to relate to. But we just clashed on a bunch of stuff. But is that more comfortable than if you guys both found out you were huge Detroit Lions fans? Yeah, you're so glad. And it turns out we're best friends. It's almost better that you clashed all the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were both sitting there like across the five hours I had to go to the bathroom. So they there's this big process where they chain him back up and I get out and all this that lock it back up. And I said, do you want anything from the vending machine? You know, at the same time thinking to myself, should I really be? Is that morally correct to buy them? I said one of the things from and he said, yeah, get me some chips of Hoy. And, and I did and I got some like ruffle chips. I was just eating these ruffle chips every day that was so good.

And I'm sitting there and I kind of relaxed by that time a little bit. You know, just I'm thinking to myself, it's been an hour. I'm not dead yet. So I'm there and I'm eating my chips and he's eating his chips of Hoy. And I said, these are the best chips in America. And he said, they're good. Aren't they? They're really good.

And I'm sitting here eating chips with Lawrence Benica waters going wild. One of our bigger arguments that we had, I rescue animals whenever I can. I all animals, any animals. And my husband and I were living in the Hollywood Hills and we were walking part, you know, going for a walk and we saw this little creature in this driveway just sitting there like, oh man, I guess I'll die now. Like it was sort of sick and I didn't know what it was. So I took it home.

I put it in my hat and we looked it up and it was a gopher, a tiny. Yeah. And I was telling Lawrence about it and saying, oh, I took it home and it was sick and I nursed it back to health and I gave it to a refuge and all this. And he was like, why did you do that? And I said, well, he said, don't you know that Calvin in parasites and there's 900 types of parasites in, in America. And I was like, well, why did you kill all those women?

I said to me, I don't understand you. I said, I don't understand you. Yeah. That's good. I said, I was there. It needed me. It was sitting there. It needed someone.

I was walking past. I was there. And he's like, yeah, I guess, you know, he was like, you're a freak. So he was just, he was disgusted with you. Yeah. It's like, yeah, you raped and killed five women. With these guys, we're always like, unless podcast, I am obsessed about the serial killers time in jail because it seems that's when they set their narrative.

Right. See, that's when we find out anything about like, you know, unfortunately, like, or we don't, like how Samuel Little, the newest, most prolific serial killer of all time, like he wasn't saying, he's not saying shit. He doesn't want anybody to know anything. He's taken it all to the grave as far as he's concerned. Dennis Raider as well. BCK.

He won't speak to people. No, you have to follow. I guess you have to go through procedure with him. Like you have to fill out an application to speak with him and he can go fuck himself. But like when he, when these guys are like in this type of jail, like they're all kind of being like, there's something with the way you said about the idea that like there's like a big fuss, right? Like, so anytime you wanted to leave, they have to come chain up, chain them up.

Like, like, do you think that they kind of get off on that too? Or like now they are this predator that they, that must be like, and do you, did he wheel that? Like, do you feel like that he knows like how they say like famous people know that like they're famous. So they have to, they have to like be like, hi, I'm Bobby when they're Robert De Niro, you know, and you have to go like, hi, hello, Bobby. Like, is it that kind of shit?

I, you know what I think would be the biggest ego boost to him in there at the time. He had this murder ability broker who would come and collect things from him. Like, oh, what have you got? You know, what have you got this month? Oh, I've got some fingernail clippings. I've got some hair. He was selling locks of his hair through this, this guy on the internet for $50 a lock. And, and, and stuff like that.

He said, I'll smuggle out whatever I can. Like he had an asthma puffer and that would go for 15 bucks, you know, and, and people just goes into his account that like just goes into his commissary and, and so you can buy like, you really like red velvet cupcakes. So he could buy those from commissary. So it's, it's, it's things like that that make will probably make him think, you know, I'm almost supernatural. People want my body and stuff.

And for me, it's just seemed like a miserable, miserable existence. Here's his cell. He went like this. He made like a bow and arrow shape. And he said, from my elbow to my hand, that's how wide my cell is. And it's 11 foot long. And at the front is just mesh, like steel mesh. She can't see through it because one of the other inmates lured, they used to have bars

and he lured a guard over and speared him in the chest with a bit of wood. So they just wish. So you used to be able to see out. And now, now you're just in a box and it's 23 hours a day. And he, yeah, he, he was getting really depressed. He said he was being treated for depression. And I would assume. We are speaking, we are speaking with Candice Fox, an unbelievable author.

She mentioned how many books she already has. And just to clarify, her first book, she won the Ned Kelly Award for the best first novel. That was for Hades. That was in 2014. So I'm just going to, how do you have hands after writing that many books in seven years? It's unbelievable how much work you have done. When it comes to speaking with someone like that monster, not even to say his name anymore. How does, how has that informed your writing and, and sort of knowing the true crime world in a real sense.

But then obviously you write fiction. But these things I think are often, you know, the truth is often stranger than fiction. Yeah. For me, I'm working on my 16th novel now. And it's, it's, you get faster. How long does, how long does it take to, to write a novel? Just so we can shame our partner. Yeah.

The fastest I've ever done it. I did three in a year. That was the year before I had my baby. I have a daughter, Violet. She's, she's almost two. Oh my gosh. Can I just say a lot? I want to share this with you.

Yesterday she had a pencil and she went up to her dad and she went stab, stab, stab. She has a hundred words, about a hundred words, I reckon. And in murder, bullet and stab. Wow. And I knew it. I did not teach her those. You are raising a true crime author. Good work.

I know. She was running around at Christmas going murder, murder, murder. Oh, that's my child. But anyway, I'm so sorry to, to sidetrack it once again. But yeah, how does, how does, how does the true information go? How does the true information inform the fictional writing? Look, it's, it's, it's those little details. It's like the flick of the hand, you know, that you see and you think that is just so

perfect. I'm going to take that or just rationalizing, rationalizing what he has done and sort of saying, well, it's a quantity versus quality thing. You know, unless he's spoken to someone like that, you can't, you can't think to yourself, how would I live with what I have done? Or how does the psychopathic mind work? And, and I just felt like as a writer, you need, if you're writing about cops, you should speak to some cops.

If you're writing about killers, you should speak to some killers. You know, you should speak to some people who had a family member murdered and you get those little details that are just real. And from your first book in 2014 to where we are today, have you evolved? Have you changed in your philosophy and your thinking as to what triggers a serial killer? Why do they kill this, that and the other thing? I think, I think there are two types of killers. There are people who make mistakes and then, you know, and then they kill their wife or

something or they just snap and you hear that all the time. And then there are people who have his, like his brain doesn't work properly. There, there is something going on there. He just doesn't think of people as people. Speaking to him, it's like if I said to you, you know, I was talking to him about his other victims, like, because clearly five women in a three month period and they were very well developed murders, like he didn't ramp up. I said to him, he remembers each one.

He remembers, I know that you must replay that in his head to this day. Yeah. And I said to him, oh, you know, there was this girl who went missing in 1968. And it's like I said to him in 1968, you killed a mosquito. And I think that, I think that you did that because I know that you were in the same area as the mosquito and the mosquitoes family is really upset and it had dreams. He's like, it's a mosquito. Really?

Are we still talking about this? You know, he was like that. He was like, it's almost 40 years later, we all need to get over it. And it's like, he's like, I do so many other things in here. I write books and I talk to people and he's like, it's like he didn't understand a big deal. And hey, genuinely, like that's not acting that he genuinely doesn't understand. Was that a surprise to you? Was that something that was a bit of a shock?

I think I expected him at least to get the magnitude. I was trying to explain it to him and I'm saying it's not only the girls that you killed, but it's their family and it's the cops. One of the cops committed suicide and mentioned the case in the suicide letter and it's everyone who went to the trial and blah, blah, blah and all this and he's like, yeah, yeah. If you were to fully deal with it, maybe he can't. There's a block where there's just absolutely no way for him to fully absorb what happened and the influence that it had, because I think that's what it is.

It seems to be what's triggering and he won't deal with is the influence of his actions. Yeah, it's also the fact that I think that sitting there with him for five hours, I think every 10 seconds he is just drawn all the way back to himself. Like in the bulletproof glass, I could see he was doing his hair the whole time and looking over my shoulder at his own reflection and he made like a pass, a kind of an attempted pass at me. He said, what does your husband do? I said he's a journalist and he said, oh, is that why the diamond on your engagement ring is so small?

Oh my goodness. I was like, well, you know what? I'm going to tell you they grab, I'm going to tell the guards if you try to touch me and they're going to beat the fucking shit out of me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of the first things he said, when I walked in, he said, you know, blah, blah, blah. He said, we can touch each other if you want and he put his hand out to shake my hand and I was like, oh, do I shake his hand or not?

I don't want to get killed, like I'm 30 seconds in and so I shook his hand and it was ice cold and I thought, oh, that's so cliche. Yeah. Although I'll tell you one thing, you got to use that as leverage on your husband to get you a bigger ruck. Because you got to let him know. Are you aware of, one question, are you aware of the family murders in Australia? Yes, I am. I think that is very, very interesting.

I don't know if you know any other sources or anything else can go into it because the family murders, we started learning about it in Australia, Kissel, because I had never heard of it in the States. And when we went over there, the idea that essentially it's like a group of cops were killing people and allowing cops, like it's a level of, it's like one of those massive Franklin cover-up style murder sequences. That kid that went missing, Jamie Gosh or something. I think that sounds correct.

Yes. And he went missing and then the mom said he turned up 20 years later and said, I can't come home. Is it Jamie Gosh? I know it's who took, what's the name of it? It's who took Johnny, I believe it's Johnny Gosh. Johnny Gosh. It's Johnny Gosh.

Yes. It's, in that case, it's crazy. Like the little clues and things that got covered up and phone calls deleted and all of this. Do you look for specific cases as inspiration for books or you just kind of like pepper around and sort of what kind of, I guess, lead up or what kind of, where does inspiration strike for a true crime fictional character or writer? Usually, I think to myself, why am I so disturbed by this? Because I am very difficult to disturb.

I grew up in a really weird household. My mom had four kids and then she adopted two and then she fostered 155 kids. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so we were hearing all of those crazy disturbing stories. Oh, yeah. These kids when I, I'm only very young and my dad worked in a prison as well. So he would come home and say, oh, you know, we were going to release this inmate today,

but he didn't want to go. So he slid his throat with the lid of a tuna can. Oh, my. And then that was a lot of paperwork. And I'm like sitting there. Absorbing. Absorbing. What does that even mean? Yeah.

And so I think to myself, why, if I start Googling and following and Wikipedia diving, I'm thinking to myself, why am I obsessed with this? What is the theme? Like at the moment for me, I'm obsessed with con men and, and, and how do you sleep next to someone every night that you're basically thinking, I'm going to take all of her money, possibly kill her and move on. How do you, how do you lie there next to them at night sleeping? So that's fascinating.

And then I get, I get over it. And then I, I, I, I go on to the next, the next thing. I'm, I'm very interested in mass shooters. Yes. And so I did a Steven Paddock deep dive. Really? That's fascinating. What were some, cause we want to cover Steven Paddock as well, but it's tough to find a,

a real narrative. This is a little bit of a drop, the one that I'm trying to get us to do vaguely soon as Anders Brevik. Did you read the book, the big, thick, one of us? It sits. Oh my God. It sits. Let me, let me run a little bit of it for you.

Yes, please. One detail about Anders Brevik that I think is just so fascinating is when he was making the bombs, um, he had to use this type of fertilizer, but he had to blend it in a like a, a blender, like a smoothie blender to make it the right consistency for the bomb. And he used so much of it that he bought like 10 blenders and he was blending, blending, blending, blending, and then the blenders broke. So he bought new blenders and he's there every day, eight hours a day blending this fertilizer. And I just think the amount of time and effort and what a fucking loser.

I'm blending my fertilizer again. All right. For the next part of this interview, Henry had to leave so it'll just be Candice Fox and Ben Kissel. Once again, Miss Fox sits down with a sociopath. So Candice, yeah, what are some of the similarities between, or some of the differences between somebody who would go into mass shooting and someone who would be a serial killer? Because obviously the, the final situation is the same mass death, but the way it happens is much different.

It does mention Steven Paddock. I find that that particular case to be really, really different in terms of spree killers and shooters, because it's always so up close and personal. And you think about Eric Harris and Dylan Clebold, the Columbine shooters and in their preparation, they were saying, I'm going to be face to face. I'm going to blow their heads off. I'm going to see this person. I'm going to say this and it's very personal on hand to hand.

And Steven Paddock is like up in a tower is shooting into the dark and he doesn't even know who he's hitting or if he's hitting anyone or, you know, it was really impersonal. And he had even planned, he had planned to hit a different concert a couple of weeks earlier, I believe, and he had everything set up. He had everything in the hotel room and then he didn't do it and we don't know why. So it's like you didn't even target a particular concert and there's no manifesto, no reasoning behind it. Do you think that requires more sociopathy or less to just people to shoot into the darkness,

know you're causing mayhem, but not even seeing what you're doing? Like what is even crazier? I think it's scarier the idea of a, you know, ever since the DC sniper here in the States. And obviously we have guns and gun violence in a way that is extremely unique to America. And the idea of just being sniped randomly is so freaking scary. Yes, because you go around in life sort of thinking to yourself, well, if I just do the right thing and I'm nice to everyone, maybe that won't happen to me. You know, and you tell your kids, you know, don't bully people because this and that has

happened. And, and I don't know, it's just no one is safe because even if you got in a situation with him, you couldn't talk your way out of it because he's like, anyone can do, I'll shoot anyone. Yeah. So that is a lot scarier. That is a lot scarier. Yeah.

And it's just, what is it? Numbers. He wants big numbers. He just doesn't. But he didn't even see, I don't even want to say it, but he didn't see the fruits of his labor in a Stephen Paddock sense. He just took his own life. Oh man.

And that is a whole nother thing. You'll have to come back and talk about, you know, that. I find that really fascinating. And again, we're speaking with Candace Fox. Is that something you would like to focus on in the future? Just because it's tough to write a true crime story, I would assume about a spreek or about a spree sniper, I guess, because it's tough to find that narrative with a killer. You have a sexual motivation.

You have a series of different things. But with a, with a mass shooter, it's maybe a little bit more difficult. I went into it in one of my novels with James. So a diary is found like a planning diary and they, you know, the police are like, okay, so someone in this tiny weenie town in the middle of the Australian outback is planning to kill everyone. Can we find them before, you know, before they do it? So I went into it a little bit, but the thing about mass shootings is you don't have to

wait that long until there's another one, not only just sort of in America, but, but they're there. There's something that I don't think has been treated properly. So they're going to keep going. And yeah, it's, it's What about the copycat effect? Yeah. Because, you know, I was, I graduated high school in 2000.

So for 2019 99, I was a junior in high school and it changed everything for 21. When we all went back to school, it was just different, you know, security was much tighter. A lot of my friends got expelled because we like to have fun. We weren't violent, but we were goofballs. And that was taken much more seriously. And then from 1999, it just seems like, whoa, every five would like, what, is there anything in your mind like, how did that start as a society where mass shooting just became so common where it's almost passe, which is so sad to say.

Yeah. A lot of people who have referred to Columbine in their shootings, you know, in their manifestos and whatever have talked about like the glory and revenge aspect and certainly Dylan and Eric are held up as these sort of heroes by that time, that type of person. And I think there are attempts to counteract that because the parkland, some of the victims of the parkland or the survivors, they were trying to get a movement up where they had like a card you could put in your wallet and it says, if I'm killed in a mass shooting, please publicize pictures of my body on the internet so that to counteract all that glory

and war, going to war and it's all beautiful and this kind of thing with a picture of a body like this is what you're talking about. This is actually, this is the reality of that. And of course, the media dropped the ball so horribly starting with Dylan and Eric talking about how they were bullied and they took revenge when in reality they were the bullies doing what they did in a more extreme way. Yeah. And just the fascination going in and you can, I mean, you can read their diaries online,

you can see photographs, you can talk to their friends. There are so many books about it trying to pick it apart as a phenomenon. How did this actually happen? Yeah, it's just, it's a puzzle. I think writers love puzzles because what you do for 90,000 words as an author is you give someone a puzzle and you say, okay, I'm not going to solve it for you for this amount of time. That's awesome. A mass shooting is just a puzzle and you sit there and you go, how can I, how can I solve

this? How can I stop this happening? And that's what I, the same thing I was doing with Lawrence is I was saying, what happened to you and how could we fix someone like you and so that, so that it doesn't happen again. But he had just no insight to offer really in, he's just a sad, sad, pathetic, really pathetic old man. That's sad. As far as finding those answers, and again, thank you so much for being here, Candace

Fox. And my last question in a second will be, how did you meet James Patterson? Yeah, sure. But, but is that, that's the reward. Is that one of your goals to solve? Why do you become Andrews Brevick? Why do you become, you know, somebody like Hillside Strangler, whatever it is. And the more you research, have the questions become more and the answers become less?

Or have you actually found some answers that you can maybe use to, to deter one of these acts of violence? I think the questions have become more, which is great for me as a writer because that's what I'm posing. I'm trying to make people think the worst thing that you can do is write a book and everything is all nicely sewn up at the end because the reader doesn't think about it anymore. But if you leave them just like a little like door open, just a crack, they'll, they'll talk about it, you know, and they'll think about it and they'll, they'll turn it over in their

own minds. I just try to do that. I try to get the reader arguing about who is the best person in this novel and who is the worst person. And I find that, interestingly, a lot of people will write to me and say, ah, this is my favorite character. He has the highest body count like he has been killing his whole life. He's the worst person in this book.

And then, and then they're the ones I love the most. They're the ones that are most interesting. You know, there are very few, three and a half million follower podcasts about like really great, heroic, awesome people because there's no mystery there. Yeah, exactly. Well, speaking of great heroic people, of course, yourself, Candace Fox. And then, of course, James Patterson. Yeah.

How did you meet Mr. Patterson? Cause everyone, I mean, he is, he's a big dime name. Yeah. He is, he is such a cool guy. He is so funny and he's like an uncle. Like I call his house. It's like calling my uncle. He's like, what do you want?

Um, uh, but so he, I was always a huge fan of his and I would be in my mom's room and read his stuff very, very young. And, um, when I heard he was coming to Australia, I got an invite, you know, I was recently published for the first time. I got an invite to his party and he was going to be there and I saw him and I thought, this is my moment to go over there and say, hello. Yeah, I just wanted like a celebrity moment. I wanted to go over there.

Oh my God, I love you. Um, and I just went over and I said, uh, oh my God, James, I love your books so much. I read kiss the girls when I was 12 and it just totally changed my life. And he, he said, wow, that's really inappropriate. What are you doing or eating kiss the girls when you're 12? Oh my God. Uh, and I, I just chatted to him and then I sort of ran away and I had said to my publisher, you know, because I'm very ambitious and that's why I write so fast and so much.

And, and I said to my publisher, how, how does a person get to collaborate with him? And she said, don't even think about it. Like we have a list of people and you only just got here on the crime writing scene. And I sort of gave up and then she saw me talking to him at the party and she said, wow, they get on well. And so she gave him a copy of my first one to take home and he read it on the plane. And this was Hades. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey, and he loved it. And he, he called up and he said, how, you know, how would she go writing with me? Does she want to write with me? Like he asked. Does she? Oh, that's awesome.

And I was like, I don't know. I'll check my calendar. I'll see what I'm doing. You know, I'll, I'll pencil you in Mr. Patterson. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I had dinner with him and Bill Clinton in San Jose the same day that I met Lawrence. I, I, because I was going up there to have dinner with Jim and he said, oh, Bill Clinton will come to dinner and I said, ah, to my husband. Oh, I can see Lawrence in the morning and then see them in the evening. And how was hanging out with Bill Clinton? Did you get some good, uh, did you get some good insight into sociopaths? I found him to be really nice. The most entertaining thing about him was his secret service guys because they were

just like all the time, like hovering around us and giving us the evil eye. And Bill Clinton said, um, what's happening in your next book? Cause he reads my books and he said, are they going to figure out the thing with the brother from the last book? And I said, I can't tell you that. Like it's a spoiler. I'm not going to tell you. And he was like, come on.

You just tell me if that's a major crime. And I was like, I'm not, I'm not telling you. And I look over and the secret service guys are like, you know, um, so yeah. Well, that's crazy. And of course Clinton, when it comes to his name and, uh, being in webs of, of, uh, crime stories, he certainly comes up quite a bit in political thrillers and things like that. Candice Fox author extraordinaire. Check out all of her books, her latest book being gone by midnight.

Thank you so much. Candice, you were wonderful. Oh, thank you so much. I'm just so chuffed to have been on your show. I love it so much. This is a highlight for me. A highlight. All right.

There it was our conversation with Candice Fox. Check out all of her books. She is a fricking badass. Awesome. So thank you so much Candice Fox for being on the show and thank you all so much for supporting us again without you or nothing. And don't forget the stream. It's every Tuesday now on Patreon exclusive before it goes to YouTube and they got all

the good content for, because they have weird terms of services. Okay everyone. Thanks for listening. Hang in there. Hail yourselves. Talk to you soon.