Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - HOW TO CATCH A KILLER | INSANE STORIES FROM A RETIRED COP (25 Years)
Episode Date: March 28, 2024HOW TO CATCH A KILLER | INSANE STORIES FROM A RETIRED COP (25 Years) ...
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Most crimes are very solvable.
It's somebody that you know.
Why would somebody want to kill that person?
Okay, greed, revenge.
I thought I had the best job in the world.
It was a blast.
Every night we were in some kind of car chase.
That's before there were dash cameras in cars.
You know, what was the reason behind wanting to be a police officer?
Actually, both my parents are Irish immigrants.
They're from Ireland.
And my mom came over to this country when she,
She was like 12 or 13.
Dad came over when he was 18.
And they both wound up in Chicago.
And my mom and dad got married young.
They were like 18 or 19 when they got married.
But that's what they did back then.
You know, the good Irish Catholics.
You know, it's what you do.
Yeah.
And he wound up being in the dairy business.
So it was an actual working dairy on the south side of Chicago
where farmers would bring their milk in to Chicago.
It was Hawthorne Melody Dairy.
And he wanted to be a cop.
And back then, their recruiting was, oh, look, there's Jimmy O'Donnell.
He's six foot.
He's a pretty big Irish.
And he's Irish because, you know, that was the thing back then.
And, you know, it's like, you're perfect.
So he went for his physical.
and when he was in Ireland, he worked in a slaughterhouse.
He worked in a meatpacking place.
And he sawed like most of his trigger finger off.
Oh, okay.
And, you know, medicine wasn't the best.
There was no ambulance.
There was only like three people that worked there that had a car.
So they drove him like an hour and a half to the nearest hospital.
And they kind of Frankensteined his finger back together.
And, you know, so he failed the physical.
They're like, you can't pull the trick.
trigger on a gun so he was done so you know i always knew that and then you know i was born on
the south side of chicago and we moved to niles which was a northwest suburb when i was a kid
and i'll never forget i was it was probably like eight nine o'clock at night and all these
police vehicles pull up by our house and we're like uh dad did you mom did you something we don't know
about you know it's like it's a rate you know they've got the shield they've got you know m16s
they've got shotguns they've got the helmets the big vests on and we're like what the hell
they're going after our neighbor they're doing a search warrant on our neighbor and I'm a little kid
I'm like 11 12 years old and I'm watching this out the kitchen window and these homes are very
close together you know so I had a front row seat and my mom is like right next to me and she's like
oh my god oh my god yo she's screaming there's guys with automatic weapons in our backyard
you know covering down and they boom they freaking ram the door they're pulling people out
by their hair and i'm just like that's the best job ever i want to do that mom and she's like
are you nuts yeah she's still she's got the irish accent oh what's wrong with you patrick
so you know of course you know i watched all the tv shows you know like adam 12
And, yeah, we're around the same age.
So it's about the same, you know, Beretta, Starsky and Hutch, you know, SWATs, all, you know, they all sounded really cool.
Well, fast forward, I'm going to college.
And I started out as a music major.
I was going to be a band director.
And I always had the police bug, though.
And I'm like, you know what?
Yeah, I think I'll try the police thing.
I did an internship with the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department.
I was like a junior in college.
This is back in, like, 86.
And I thought it was the best job ever.
I couldn't wait to go in.
I'm just like, this is better than TV.
You know, it's just, wow, this is amazing.
So graduated from there with a degree in sociology,
and my minor was criminal justice.
They didn't have a criminal justice major.
So for until 1995, I was selling cars.
I was bartending, I was a restaurant manager, you know, all the stuff that a sociology degree
will do for you until I got into the police academy. I was on their waiting list for four years
for the city of Milwaukee. Right. Yeah, you'd mention that. And didn't you, you had already
written a book? Not back then. No, no. But I thought you wrote a book. Oh, no, no, that's right.
You, okay, I'm sorry. That's right. You, you were a police officer and you were selling cars on the side.
Yeah, I was helping people buy cars, actually.
because I sold cars for four years and, you know, I was helping friends and relatives buy cars.
And then, you know, one person says something to another person.
It's like, hey, can you go with me?
Can you go with me?
And I'm like, hey, I only have so much time here.
It's like, you know, and one person is like, you should write a book about that.
So I did.
So why, why?
But how did that come about like, why are people asking you to go with them?
Because I could get them a really good deal.
Okay.
I know the tactics.
I know the, you know, it's negotiation.
It's the art of negotiation.
Right, but I'm saying what gave you that skill set?
Just selling cars for four years.
I was on the other side of the desk.
Okay.
So I sold cars for four years, you know, and that was back in the days of it was hardcore.
Like the manager would scream at you.
The owner would come in and fire you.
It was almost like a badge of honor.
if you're a we call them sales geeks it's like okay you know if you weren't fired from at least
one dealership you're you're kind of a rookie or kind of a you know yeah my first boss was this
vietnam vet that was just tough as nails his pants had creases on there that you could cut
yourself on i mean the guy was just hardcore you you didn't want to mess around with him i mean
he was like literally scary and you know so you didn't go into a
his office with an offer unless it was like real you there's no mamsie pamsie well he doesn't know
you know blah blah blah he says no he says i want money and i want to sign contract like yes sir
okay and so as a result of that um people are saying hey you can probably get me a good deal
and they're asking you to come with them are you charging any of these people are you saying hey
you got to give me something it was mostly family and friends you know it was be like hey we'll take you out to
eat you know something like that and then I wrote the book and I started a website where I did
charge people this is all before you're even a police officer no no I was a I was a cop I was a
cop for years and years you know this is when self-publishing was kind of in its infancy you know
this is back like in 2010 2011 maybe even before that but what I didn't realize was okay I've got
this business going and I'm coaching people through buying a car. Literally people would be calling me
from a dealership. They're like in the bathroom. We're off to the side. It's like, okay, this is the offer.
What should I do? Right. You know, that kind of thing. And I'd walk him through it, but what I didn't
realize or didn't foresee was, A, I've got people calling me at all different hours of the day.
I've got, you know, I forgot about time zone differences. And I had people who were not.
new to this country who had very thick accents that i literally couldn't understand what they were
saying you know i'm trying to help them but that became a big roadblock too and then finally i'm like
you know what it's not worth of money because i didn't charge a ton you know and i'm like you know what
i'm just scrubbing this but it did give me some business chops and i wrote my first book
you know it wasn't very long it was a really cheesy cover that i just like photoshop some stuff together
what happened was I think I told you this story when you know before we recorded it was called I
never wore plaid insider secrets from a former car sales person right I used a pen name because in order
to do any kind of off-duty employment you have to get approval from the chief you have to write
this long you know like form and I'm like I'm not doing any of that you know I'll just write
under a pen name I'll go under I'll fly under the radar so I'm shopping this around
and a buddy of mine is friends with a gal who is a very well-known published author.
She's got a great agent in New York.
I say, hey, give her my manuscript.
He's like, yeah, sure, no problem.
Because of the manuscript, and she calls me, and she says, I love it.
This is going to sell.
I'm going to show it to my agent.
I'm going to New York tomorrow, or like in a couple of days.
I'm going to show my agent, you know, and I'm thinking myself, holy shit.
I just, I hit the, you know, I just struck gold.
this is amazing yeah i literally went to international autos and i'm looking at the bmws and mercedes and i'm just
like yeah this is this is cool shit man this is going to be great then my buddy calls me literally the
next day and he's like yeah kind of had a little uh fight with you know i forget her name and i'm like
oh okay i said how little are more big are we talking he said i wasn't very good and i'm like all right
so i call her i said hey you know i understand you guys had a little bit of a fall
out is there any way we can you know still maintain a business relationship here and she's like
no f you i already threw your shit in the garbage i don't call me back so in a matter of hours i went
from looking at new BMWs to okay i guess i'm back in my Toyota this um so what so when you
when you first but when you first started as a police officer what were what was your
first like assignment like how did that how does that work um the way it works is that i didn't know
Milwaukee i was living in madison wisconsin i you know i'm from chicago we moved to wisconsin
when i was in high school to a little town i finished up college at u w whitewater
and i moved to madison i was there for like four or five years then i got it on the job in
Milwaukee and i didn't know Milwaukee and back then they assigned you to a district station
and you didn't have a choice you it was
just whatever the needs of the department were.
Okay, we're 10 cops short at District 5.
Guess what?
You're going to District 5.
You know, there was 42 of us in our class.
It was a small class.
It was supposed to be 60.
But some people failed out.
Some people never showed up.
You know, there's always weird stuff and that kind of stuff.
So there was close to 10 of us that wanted to go to District 5.
And this is before, you know, Garmin's or GPS or any of that.
And I've got my map.
Literally, my map is out.
And I'm driving there.
We're there for an orientation with our captain.
And I pull up and I'm like, okay, I'm from Chicago.
I know what a bad neighborhood looks like.
This is really bad.
It looks like Lebanon.
There's boarded up houses.
There's holes in the ground where homes used to be.
I mean, it was bad.
And you're just like, all right, fair enough.
So go inside the district.
it's like, okay, this is where you're going to be, report my first, you go through field
training. It's six weeks with an FTO, field training officer, and I was on late shift,
which was midnight to eight. Then I did early power shift, which was 11 in the morning until
7 p.m. And then after that, I went back to late shift, and I wound up working late shift,
which was midnight to eight for 13 years in different capacities.
Okay. I mean, did you, is that, did you want to stay, you know, in that role? Did you, you didn't, did you want to be a detective or? I love patrol. You know, everybody starts out in patrol. Everybody starts out in a squad car answering calls for service and doing like proactive policing. That's how you learn the job. You go from one strange assignment to the next to the next to the next and hopefully whoever you're with,
that will sink in and it's like okay now you're going to learn the job it takes a good
I think four to five years before you're at the point as a police officer where I can go
at anything and I feel pretty comfortable right doing my job so I was just wondering because
I know Vic you know which I've had on the podcast you know I know he was saying like for the
From day one, that he wanted to be in the auto, you know, auto theft division from day one.
Like he was, that's what he was, he was going for the whole time.
Right.
For me, I was thinking either canines, SWAT, or the motorcycles.
I love motorcycles.
But the cool thing about being in patrol and learning the job is now you see what all that actually is compared to what you
thought it was by watching movies and TV and all that kind of stuff.
And patrol was where it was at.
I mean, most cops stay as cops.
You know, there's two different avenues you can go.
You can go into investigations, and that's what detectives are.
Right.
And some departments, they don't even call them detectives.
They call, you know, it's a lateral, they call them investigators or whatever the case
may be.
And it's a lateral transfer.
you wear a suit we call them suit and tie detectives you know there's two different types of detectives
there's the suit and tie detective that you know like the homicide or the robbery guy or you know like
sensitive crimes dealing with you know child abuse or sexual assault that kind of thing and then there's
the like the detectives that go off to like what vick was doing you know the more proactive you're on
the street like gang cars vice right those types of things you kind of blend in a little more
Everybody knows you're a cop.
I mean, it's obvious, but it gives you a second or two where they're scratching
their head like, hmm, I'm not really sure.
And then the, then the light bulb, you know, comes on.
But I love patrol.
I love being in uniform because if I rip my pants or my shirt, the city would give me
a brand new pair like the very next day.
And I'm not good at matching.
You know, it's like I needed grannemals as a kid, you know, the blue pants go with
the blue shirt it it's a no-brainer um yeah i was going to say i i mean i've interviewed a few
police officers and i interviewed this one guy who was like to buy to be a drug dealer like
he's he's like they would go and they would find they'd go like this guy worked in the actually
in the jail and he's like they went to him he said because like i was raised in the projects
I was raised in those areas that he's like I could speak like a street guy I grew up with those guys he's like because you know a normal cop they just spots you right away if you're raised middle class you just can't pull it off you know and I interviewed a woman who actually does crime cleanup now and she said she said basically the same thing she said yeah it's real you have to be an actor like you it's really tough to get in there and pretend to be to pull off being.
a drug addict or a drug dealer or a you know they they do they spot you and they look at you and they
now something's something's off something is a miss yes and i mean i had plain clothes i worked
plain clothes assignments and i supervised plain clothes assignments i was in charge i later
promoted a sergeant i went into a supervisory role and i had the we call it the tavern car
It was a licensed premise car.
So I worked seven at night until three in the morning.
And we would go after taverns for whatever violations they would be going on.
Either like overcapacity, health code violations like, you know, just no hot water, no soap.
You know, the bar fruit flies and the, you know, booze, that kind of stuff.
And then we would go after it's like, hey, there was three shootings in the last two months at this bar.
You know, two of them were homicides.
You know, my captain would be like, I want that place close.
closed. It's like, yes, sir, off to the races. So we'd go in and I'd have undercover cops and I would go in undercover as well. And we're just watching what's going on. It's like, then we'd just close the place. We'd announce we'd have a bunch of other cops coming in uniform. You're finding sought off shotguns behind the bar. You know, the convicted felons, you know, doing stuff that they shouldn't be doing. You know, people on probation where their conditions of probation are you can't be in a bar. You can't be around other felons. You can't, you know.
And they're, you know, so after a while, you know, we got pretty good at doing this.
But it's politically motivated, too.
And it's motivated by, it's like, you know, captains at a community meeting.
It's like, hey, this one bar, you know, at bar time, you know, they're noisy and they're loud.
They're staying after bar time.
I'm trying to sleep.
I've got a job I have to wake up for in the morning.
They're waking up my kids, you know, that kind of thing.
And these aren't some, like, really bad neighborhoods.
Right.
So, you know, we would try to take care of those problems for them.
So, yeah, and I had an undercover car or cars for, like, if there was a,
if there was a trend, say, in armed robberies, okay, they're hitting all the Walgreens, you know, in this area.
Okay.
You put in some UCs, you put in some undercovers there, you know, and you kind of go, a lot of times there was trends and there was patterns to these things.
So you're hoping that you get them, you know, that in the, you know, gas.
stations, you know, whatever the case may be.
So, yeah, but the true undercovers that were like deep undercover for a long time,
they look like they were members of a rock band or something.
You know, they had long, greasy hair and the zizi top beards, you know,
and just sometimes it's like, I knew the guys, but I didn't, I couldn't recognize them.
I mean, they just look like dirt bags, but they have to blend.
Yeah, I interviewed a DEA agent, uh, I guess a retired.
he was showing pictures and I mean the whole thing just scruffy long hair yep just looked like a
completely different person absolutely and you know we would also do prostitution sweeps and the
neighborhoods where I worked you know it wasn't very nice and we would have undercover females just you know
wearing jeans in a t-shirt they wouldn't even have to dress up like a prostitute and it would take
five seconds.
I mean, the prostitution trade is just alive and well.
It's just thriving.
Right.
First, we would go after the hookers to get them off the street.
So I'd have our younger guy cops dress up in plain clothes and we'd put them in a beat-up,
you know, like undercover car.
And we would try to clean up that one street of the hookers.
Then we'd put our female officers as hookers.
yeah so you know you're arresting the johns and you're arresting the hookers but that was all
undercover stuff have any of the stories made it into your books oh yeah a lot of them have um
that's where i get a lot of my like stories from you know the the latest the bruce city blues
series is more or less a bunch of stories from when i was a copper you know i was on field training
it was my i don't know second or third night working midnight to eight and we had a real busy
seven o'clock in the morning take the stabbing and we're like all right they give a description of
you know guy who just stabbed his friend so we're about a block away and sure enough here comes
this dude you know there's a blackmail you know five foot eight you know thin wearing a white
t-shirt black jeans blackmail white t-shirt now covered in blood carrying a butcher knife
and he's running towards us so my partner you know my field training office
just stomps on the brakes, I jump out, I draw down on him, and I'm thinking
myself, holy shit, I'm going to have to shoot this guy.
He's literally running right at me.
I've got like three days on the job.
And I'm like, oh, come on.
Well, that was a quick, you know, career.
So, yeah, I'm like, you know, stop, police.
And I think he could sense that I was probably more scared than him.
And I wasn't fooling around.
I'm like, I'm going to send you to Jesus or to, you know, wherever you're going to be going
here in a half a second and he drops the knife he falls on his face and we handcuff him and it was
funny because my field training officer looks at me says usually they're running the other direction
if they see a squad car yeah he just it was a van and i think it just didn't equate to him
because the red and blue lights are like way up high and they didn't have lights in the grill
and it was kind of like dawn you know the sun was
was just coming up it was and he just killed somebody you know so he just he wasn't in his right
mind right so he just cooperated so you know guys in the back of the ambulance that he just stabbed
he stabbed him in the armpit which is where you don't want to get stabbed you that's a horrible
horrible place to get shot or stabbed you're probably going to die there's all kinds of arteries
there there's no bone there's your lung if whatever is long enough there's your heart
I mean, it's bad news.
So what happened was, I'm in the ambulance and he says,
get a dying declaration from this guy.
He don't look good.
So I'm in the back of the ambulance and I'm like,
I think we went through this in the academy.
I'm not 100% sure.
I don't know what a dying declaration is.
You know, I don't like, I think it's,
you're getting the story from some guy and you have to let them know that,
hey, you're probably going to die.
You know, tell me who killed you.
That kind of thing.
so I'm in the back and paramedics have an IV in each arm and they're pumping the bag like crazy and I'm like okay I'm not a doctor but this isn't a good sign and he's just gurgling and I'm like dude and like who killed you he just kind of like looks at me and I'm like yeah you're probably going to die and the paramedics are looking at me like hey asshole you know we're trying to save this guy you're telling him that he's going to die you know it's like so he couldn't say anything he was just like I said he was just like I said he was just
gurgling and we make it to the ER and a trauma room is just such an amazing thing at a
level one trauma room it's just it's almost like it's this team of doctors technicians nurses
and there's one doctor that is like the orchestra conductor he's telling he or she is telling
everybody else what to do or making sure they're doing their jobs right you know there's like
four or five doctors working on this guy.
And, you know, they're working, working, working.
And I go to the main guy and I'm like, hey, is he going to make it?
And he says, you know, if it was you or I, we'd be dead.
But this guy, he'll probably live to 80.
As soon as he says that, the heart rate monitor, boop, flatline.
And he just looks at he rolls his eyes.
So they start working on him.
They bring him back.
He flatlines again.
He flatlined three times.
And on the third time, the second time, the.
same the big doctor this like who is the head of all this stuff grabs a scalpel opens up his chest
breaks his ribs and starts doing open heart massage i mean i and i'm like 10 feet away watching all this
and finally he calls it they worked on him for over an hour and he finally dies and i came home
from work like at I don't know 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning
the ex-wife was you know she was her day off or whatever and she said how's your day
and I'm like you would not believe the shit I saw today oh my god this is so cool
so what what happened with the butcher knife guy oh he got arrested oh yeah
he was gone guilty um I didn't even have to testify I think he took a plea he was drunk
they were playing in poker all night and his buddy was cheating
so it got into it wound up being a scuffle there was a knife you know by the kitchen sink he
grabbed it stabbed him in the armpit that's a good week good first week yeah well i thought
i'm like holy cow if this is my job every day i'm like i've got a lot of stories
Did you? No, no.
Well, nice. Thanks for coming.
Yeah. Hey, we'll see you. Hey, thanks, everybody.
No. So I continue my field training and do a bunch. I mean, we probably had in those six weeks at least 10 to 15 homicides that we responded to.
How bad was this neighborhood?
Oh, it was horrible. I mean, this is 1995. This is the height of the crack epidemic.
or it was kind of the down slope,
but it was still very, very, very prominent.
Right.
So everybody's killing everybody over crack.
I mean, you'd have drug dealers selling drywall instead of, you know, crack cocaine.
That'll get you a bullet in your head.
They'd be selling ivory soap.
That'll get you a bullet in your head.
They'd be selling where they're not supposed to be selling.
That will get you a bullet in your head really quick.
Yeah, so there was a lot of different stuff with that,
But I think in that time frame, we were about 250 homicides a year.
They're about in a city of 600,000 people.
And we had about 15, 1,600 cops total.
So every night, you know, you were doing 20 to 30 assignments you were going to on a, in a radio car, you know, in a squad car.
And then I got switched over to early power, which was 11 in the morning until 7 p.m.
And that's a little bit different crowd where not everybody you're dealing with is a criminal.
You know, when you're working midnight to 8, for the most part, everybody you're dealing with is guilty of something.
You know, what your mom say?
Nothing good happens after midnight, right?
Right.
So now I'm dealing with normal people, but there's still stuff going on.
I remember I was with my new FTO.
It was my second or third day with him.
And the day shift cops called in a subject with a gun.
Some guys shooting rounds off on whatever block.
So what happens is you flood the area with cops.
And you set up containment.
You know, you try to cut off every corner.
And you're just waiting for the either you're going to start making yards,
which means is you start going to start going to.
look for the bad guy or the bad guy is going to pop up you're you can get them so i'm you know i got
my gun out i'm being all vigilant and whatever and i'm waiting for some guy with a gun to you know
come popping out of the weeds and i hear on the radio it's like yeah subjects in custody gun
recovered i'm like oh okay cool i like it so my fTO is telling me you know okay this is what you did
right this is you know this is what you could work on you know blah blah blah and we're walking
back to our car and there's two like 16 year old kids sitting in a Volkswagen jet I'll never forget
it and it was like brand new and they had the thousand miles stare criminals are like little kids
you know it's like if I don't look at you you won't see me kind of thing you know so they're sitting
in here and this is like one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city if not the country and here's
this brand new jetta with these two kids in there and it's like well
okay, which one of these things just don't belong.
So he looks at me and I look at him and he goes by the driver's side.
I go by the passenger side.
Before we got close enough, both doors fly open.
Boom, it's off to the races.
They're running.
So I'm like, all right, I'm the new guy.
So I'm the brush beagle.
You know, I'm running after these guys through all these, you know, in a lot of these neighborhoods.
People don't take care of their yards.
I mean, the grass was sometimes up to your knees or up to
your waste.
Right.
You know,
and you're trying to run through all this stuff,
and there's fences in almost every yard.
So you're going over these fences.
Long story short,
we got the two guys in custody.
And it's like, okay.
Well, we run the plate of the car.
Two detectives show up because they heard it over the air.
And it's like,
we've been looking for these little fuckers all night.
And it's like, you have.
What's going on?
The night before,
the guy who owns a Volkswagen jetta
was going to pick up his
girlfriend at 9 o'clock at night. It was like a famous footwear, some shoe store.
She was in college. And it was kind of a tougher neighborhood. So he always drove her.
You didn't want her walking home. So he's waiting in the parking lot. These two sluggos come up with a
pistol. It's like, get out of the car. So he gets out of the car. They beat the shit out of him in the
parking lot. Then they tie him up. Then they take his ATM card. And they put him in the trunk of
his own car and they drive around all over the city taking money out of ATMs until
you know the card is like either you know he was out of funds or they're like there's only so
many you know transactions you can do in X amount of time and they literally beat him so bad he
was almost dead and they just dropped him off on the side of the road so it was like wow we didn't
know that yeah you know so we just saw two kids that shouldn't be in this car
and, you know, they just bolted, you know, we knew they were guilty of something,
but we didn't know was that.
And it was like, wow, that's cool.
But unfortunately, they're both 16-year-olds, so they maybe got a year or two, if that.
Hmm.
Yeah, do you usually find out what happened to the people that you've arrested?
No, I don't care.
You, I just didn't care because the next night there was a new one.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's like some guys would do that and it kind of messed with your head a little bit.
It's like our job is to arrest them.
Our job, you know, detectives, their job is to make a good case on them, you know, and then it's the DA's job to prosecute them.
Right.
Yeah, that's the way that worked.
But after about a year, you know, you're off probation and then they kind of see you as a full-fledged cop.
And back where I worked, you were lucky enough that you would have a partner every night or almost every night.
And I had like a regular partner that I rode with all the time.
Nowadays, it's very, it's getting more and more rare because there's fewer and fewer cops.
You know, it's just, it's just the way it is.
So finally, you know, it's like you're off probation.
It's a big deal.
and my second or third night off probation,
I'm by myself.
I don't have a partner yet.
And I get a call to a hospital
in a nicer part of the district.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
So I get there and there was an unknown trouble with subject.
I'm like, all right.
So I go there.
And there's a security guard that I've had dealings with before.
He was a younger guy and he was a real go-getter.
He wants to be a cop.
And he always did everything right.
He was just really good at his job.
So I get there and I say, hey, you know, I forget his first name.
We're on a first name basis.
And I said, hey, how's your night?
And he says, yeah, I got an interesting one for you.
And I'm like, okay.
He says, we got a dead body out back.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
Dispatcher didn't tell me about that.
Okay.
And the guy that brought her in is in the waiting room.
And I'm like, I mean, usually what happens is they'll dump the body in the driveway.
or by the door and then take off.
They don't want to have anything to do with the police.
But this guy is like this dumpy little white guy that's in his early 60s, mid-60s.
And I'm like, okay, that's weird.
The doctor comes on and he says, hey, you want to see the body?
And I'm like, sure.
So I said, you know, hold on to him for me.
And I called for another car.
And I go in the ER and she's laying on a table and she's buck naked.
and she's got two holes in her chest right by her heart.
And I'm like, oh, so I looked at her, I said, shooting.
So that's what I thought too.
But I did an x-ray and there's no metallic objects in the body.
I'm like, hmm, stabbing?
And he said, those holes are perfect.
He said, I don't think it's a stabbing.
Yeah, he's like, there's no exit wound.
You know, the bullets have to go somewhere.
Right.
And I'm like, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. So we have a little bit of a mystery. So I go back out in the waiting room and I'm like, okay, dude, you know, what's your story? And he said, well, I was at whatever bar it was. It was getting close to closing time. And I was talking to this gal all night and we're getting along really well. And the victim was Native American probably about 30. So significantly younger than him. And she was very attractive.
active. And I'm like, hmm, either a prostitute or something, something's just not
jellate here. He's got his little Ford pickup truck with a little camper on top of it,
you know, there's fishing poles and yelling. I'm like, this is just weird. So he,
they strike up this conversation. Things are going great. And she's like, yeah, I'll go home with
you tonight. But I have to go back to my place, get some toiletries and a change of clothes.
He's like, yeah, fair enough. So, yeah. So,
he's like, I knew it was, I'd had a bad feeling because this neighborhood that she lives in is really bad.
And I'm like, yes, yes, it is. And she goes inside to get her stuff and he's just waiting for next thing he knows, she's tumbling down the stairs head first.
And he's like, he has no idea what happened. And she's just like this pile at the bottom of the stairs.
He scoops her up, puts her in the truck, drives her to the emergency room.
Well, by now homicide detectives are there.
And I tell them the story and they're like, really?
Well, this is different.
You know, I ran him.
He had zero criminal history.
He was, you know, we're like, because most of the time people lie to us.
You know, even people who aren't breaking the law lie of the police.
That's just the way it is.
And I'm like, okay.
And we're all scratching our head.
And it's like, hey, do you remember the house that you took her to?
Yeah, I sure do.
I'll never forget that house.
hey, if we put you in this,
in one of our cars,
you know, we won't park in front. They know, they won't know
it's you. Could you show us? Yeah.
All right, cool. So,
we do the little caravan. It's like
maybe two homicide detectives, a lieutenant and me.
We go to the front door. We walk up the
stairs, you know, go to the front door. I knock.
And this lady opens and she's like,
well, it ain't like I killed the bitch.
And we, the homicide detective and I just looked at you and says,
well actually yes yes you did you know and she's like she had this look of like oh shit what happened
was she was in a relationship with this woman she was a lesbian okay and she wasn't too happy about
her stepping out with some dude so fight ensues and there was a barbecue fork in the kitchen
she stabbed this she stabbed her with the barbecue fork and the barbecue fork was still in the sink
like stick it out and I look and I'm like
matches perfectly
right
and I'm like so
homicides so she stabbed her
and then she stumbled down the stairs
and then fell or she was like trying to leave
and then just it just
was over then just died halfway down the stairs
and just tumbled down the stairs
yeah right is that right
yep that's exactly what happened yes
was she naked when she was going down the stairs
or they took no no stripped her when she got there
When you go to an emergency room like that,
they're going to strip you down to your birthday suit.
Right, right.
Okay, that's what I thought.
Okay.
Yeah.
You're going to be, yeah.
You're leaving this world just like you came in, man.
You're going to be buck naked.
He was so close.
He was.
He went from what he thought would be like the best night ever to the worst night ever
in half a second.
But, you know,
The thing about it is most of the criminals that I dealt with weren't masterminds.
You know, later on, I'm, I have a partner and we have a certain area of the city.
That isn't so great.
And they were doing some urban renewal.
They had some type of grant where they built these really nice homes on Fondelac Avenue.
And they were surrounded by just garbage homes.
I mean, just like crack houses.
you know, whatever.
And the hope was that, you know, these, these new homes are a beacon of hope for,
you know, the ghetto, you know, et cetera, you know, things are going to be great.
And we, a couple of times they got broken into and we had what we called the Varda
alarm where the alarm would go off and it would go straight to communications and we'd have
a car there really quick.
So, you know, it was roll call and.
our sergeants like, hey, just so you know,
the mayor is going to be
at one of these homes and the governor
of the state.
You know, like at 9 o'clock in the morning
or 10 o'clock in the morning.
And, you know, please keep an extra eye out.
Make sure nothing happens to these houses.
Well, of course, we're running our asses off all night.
We had like a homicide.
We had, I wasn't in my area, I think, at all that night.
You know, we're just running and gunning.
And my partner and I look at you just, oh, shit.
those houses the governor's coming and you know the mayor you know blah blah we should probably swing
by and we were on the other side of the district and it's like yeah squad 50 it's like a 50 take the
varta alarm and like oh shit somebody's breaking into like the hope for the ghetto you know so we get there
the door's wide open it's off the hinges everything is just destroyed it is just it's like they
just stripped a car every faucet every fixture I mean
it's like the Grinch came in and stole everything out of that house.
And we're like, oh, shit.
It's like, hey, we, we're 100% covered.
We've been doing police work all night long.
They can't blame us.
So my sergeant gets there and he says, you do realize the governor and the mayor are going
to be here this morning.
I'm like, yeah, but we've been humping all night, man.
He's like, I know, I know.
You've been working.
So we look at the door and there's a perfect bootprint on the door.
whoever kicked in this door he was wearing these pair of boots and it was either spring or fall but
the landscaping hadn't been done yet so it was just mud all over the place so we're like we can't be
this lucky so we look and we're looking around it's like there's the muddy footprints going two
houses down literally and it's like no way so my partner I look at each other's like
we got to try and the muddy footprints go straight to the door and we knock and somebody opens
we didn't think anybody's going to open the door and there's all the shit on the living room floor
and they're just going through it and i'm like Cinderella there's your shoe it's like oh look at
this guy's food it's just caked in mud and i'm like oh my it just you can't make this stuff up
And a guy who was, he and his buddy robbed the, they, they were staying at a hotel and they robbed the same hotel.
And he said, we, we go in and we, he said, because we thought, nobody will ever suspect.
He is, so we go in, we rob the place.
He said, we run out the front door.
We run to our hotel building.
He said, as we're running, I realize it's snowing.
And I, he said, I thought.
oh man this is bad like he's like I turn around as we're entering their there as they're like entering the hotel building that they were staying he said I look back and it's like oh man is it it it just started snowing like you could clearly see and he said so I we run up and he said and I thought you know if they bring the dogs
it's it's because it's even worse he's like it's not like we jumped in a car and left so he said sure enough they brought the dogs it wasn't hard they just followed him straight there straight upstairs straight
The whole thing, he's like, it's knocked on the door.
He was like, it was horrible.
Well, I have another one for you.
You know, it's the same area.
There was a Burger King at 15th and North Avenue.
And seven o'clock in the morning, the holdup alarm goes off.
It's like hold up in progress, Burger King, 15th of North.
All right, let's go.
So I've been in the morning?
Yeah.
Okay.
They're up early.
They were open for breakfast.
So it's seven in the morning.
I'm like, oh, shit.
So my partner and I'm like, all right, let's go.
So we go and the whole Calvary comes.
It's like, you know, something in progress like that.
Everybody wants to get the bad guy.
It's like, all, cool.
So we're all tactical.
I've got the shotgun out and, you know,
we're creeping up on this bird king and we bust inside and bad guy's gone.
So I'm like, all right.
So I'm talking to the manager.
I'm like, do you have a description of the subject?
Like, yeah, you know, black male, 18 years of age, you know, blah, hair is like this.
He's wearing these clothes.
And I'm like, oh, okay.
Anything else you can tell me?
Well, do you want his name?
I'm like, what are you talking about?
She said, he was an employee.
I fired him a week ago.
I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.
He didn't even wear a mask?
She said, no.
He stuck a gun in my face and I had to clean out the till.
And I'm like, okay.
I said, you wouldn't happen to have his employee filing back.
Yeah, I do.
it was a block away he lived.
So all I remember was it was cold as hell.
It's Wisconsin.
I don't know how many degrees below zero it was.
We got the house surrounded.
It's like out of a movie,
you know,
it's like,
all right,
come on out with your hands up.
I'm shaking so hard.
I'm just freezing.
And it's like,
I don't know if I could even use my,
I'm holding my gun.
I don't even know if I could use it
because my fingers are so just frozen.
Yeah, it's the sergeant's like,
well,
I might get the SWAT team.
I might, you know, I don't know if we need a warrant.
We're all freezes.
Sarge, kick the door.
We're all chanting.
Kick the door.
Finally, just kick the door.
Got dude, got the gun, got the money.
That's just stupid.
Oh.
Oh, yeah.
I wonder what that guy.
I wonder what those guys are even thinking.
I,
I don't know.
I truly,
truly do not know what they're thinking.
Well,
they're not thinking.
That's part of it.
And like I said,
they're not master criminals.
Most aren't.
You know,
most crimes are very solvable.
Right.
It's somebody that you know.
It's somebody,
you know,
it's an acquaintance.
It's,
you know,
you go after,
it's like,
okay,
why would somebody want to kill that person?
Okay.
Greed,
revenge,
you know,
jealousy,
you know,
just go after.
the what seven sins or whatever you know you go to do that checklist you'll probably find something
you know where you're going to you're going to do that but i thought i had the best job in the
world it was a blast every night we were in some kind of car chase that's before there were dash
cameras in cars right and you know it was and for the most part we were very very good at we didn't
get into crashes. And if we did, they were minor. You know, we didn't have, we didn't have officers
getting hurt on the regular, nothing like that. But that was like one of the biggest parts of the
job that was like the most fun, was just chasing people around all night. Right. Did you ever
serve warrants or anything like that or? Yeah, what happened would be our homicide unit would wait
to like six or seven o'clock in the morning and say, hey, I need a couple of cars.
to meet me at let's go check for a suspect yeah we got a warrant for you know blah blah blah
so yeah sure thing nine out of ten times we never even kicked the door we just knock on it
and somebody would open the door and you know girlfriend mom whoever it would be pretty
uneventful you know it wouldn't be anything like guns of blazing or anything like that it was pretty
boring actually um anything any others you got all anything that stands out yeah a lot actually
you know it's not always um crimes sometimes you know it's people killing themselves you know
we got called to a subject with a knife we didn't know if he was trying to stab somebody if he's
you know whatever and we got there and he's got this huge ass butcher knife up to his chest and we're like
all right so we're all talking to him you know there's probably like four or five cops and a boss
it's like yeah don't do it you know and i was the closest to him high in sight not very tactical of
me you know he could have easily just turned it on me and tried and stab me but you know i started
developing a rapport with them and then we just locked eyes and you just shove that knife in his
chest as far as he could and i'm like and there was that half second of everybody looked at each other
like now what yeah then the guy took off running with this huge knife in his chest i mean he made
it like maybe 15 20 feet and then he just a bloop plop down and they actually saved him you know
we call the fire department and they save them so a year later to the day we get called for a subject
with a knife at an opposite end of the district same got there same dude my partner and i look at
are you effing kidding me he's got this huge ass knife to his chest and he's yeah i'm gonna i'm not fooling around
i'm like hey i know you're not fooling around yeah yep so i said so i came up again not very tactical
not very smart and like i just whispered to i'm like do you remember how much that hurt going in
your chest then you remember all the bullshit at the hospital i'm sure that hurt a lot like do you
really want to do that again? I said, you're not very good at killing yourself. Why don't you just
drop that knife? And boom, he dropped it. Yeah, if I'm going to take myself out, I'm not using a knife
to my chest. Yeah. There's much, there's much better ways of doing it than that. Oh, my God.
Well, and sometimes, you know, what looks like a homicide isn't a homicide or what looks like a suicide
is a homicide.
You know, later on, I'm a sergeant,
and I'm on the south side of the town,
and I'm working latehift, midnight to eight.
This is the busiest night I had as a boss.
One of the other bosses called in sick.
You'd usually have two or three sergeants supervising 20, 25 cops.
And it was a busy district,
not as busy as the one that I came from.
but I it was just me that night and I'm like yeah whatever that's fine I was new er or newish but not like green I wasn't a total rookie sergeant and right off the bad somebody gets like a domestic violence call and I'm still like cleaning up after roll call you do roll call it you know 12 minutes to midnight and just like in TV you know you're just a bunch of admin stuff and yeah I've got paperwork all over my death.
And, you know, I'm monitoring and then, you know,
cop gets me on a side channel.
I said, sorry, I'm going to have to kick the door.
Nobody's answering.
And I'm like, kick the freaking door.
I said, I'll, I'll be there in a little bit because I got to grab a camera
and there's a report I have to file if we do any kind of damage to the property.
So I, I'm strolling to that.
And he kicks the door.
And it was a big nothing.
There was no, it was just bogus.
So I threw him the camera and I'm like, here, take some pictures.
I have to write up this report.
And it's like, yeah, Squad 2, you've got a DOE, which is a dead body, you know, blah, blah, blah, and Mitchell.
I'm like, all right.
And I said, I can't hang out here.
You take care of this, James.
You know, just I'm like, I'm anointing.
I'm giving you a field promotion.
You are now the sergeant, do some sergeant stuff.
So I scoot over to the dead body.
I get there and it's an apartment above a furniture store.
And there's this huge dude laying on his back in the kitchen,
and he's got a huge knife sticking out of his chest.
There's blood everywhere.
It looks like somebody spilled a huge thing of Kool-Aid.
And there's little kids.
There's, you know, his wife, everyone's screaming and going crazy.
And I'm like, all right.
Well, this is very odd.
You know, some people do kill themselves that way, but not a lot.
So I have everybody go into a bedroom away from the body.
And there were all Spanish speakers, and I don't speak Spanish.
So luckily, one of my police officers was fluent in Spanish.
So he's talking to the woman.
And he's like, yeah, sorry.
She said that, you know, he said that, you know, he's had a really bad run of it lately.
He grabbed the knife and he stabbed himself.
And I said, did you look at her very carefully?
And he said, what do you mean?
I said, she's got a little black eye forming.
A couple of fingernails are broken.
And she's got scratch.
is on her hands.
I said, this guy's probably even kicking her ass on the regular.
She had enough.
And she's like, okay, today's the day.
I'm going to take him out.
So he's like, and he was like a younger guy, very idealistic.
And he's like, oh, no, no, no, no.
I said, dude, this is a homicide.
This ain't a suicide.
This ain't a suicide.
This is a homicide unit.
They came out and lie lieutenants like, yeah, this is a homicide.
I'm like, yeah, no shit.
You know, so we're, you know, doing what,
we're doing now detectives are there and CSI people you know processing the scene and I'm looking
for you know a relative to take these two little kids there's like a five year old and a seven year old
you know it's like three o'clock in the morning or four o'clock in the morning I'm like shit you know
it's either that or social services and you know I know they're going to arrest her or at least
take her downtown for questioning you know she volunteers that and then
the dispatcher comes up to say, hey, Sarge, hate to do this to you.
So you know a bag of shit's coming your way.
And I'm like, all right, give it to me.
She said, I got a hostage situation, you know, blah, blah, blah,
address is on the other side of the district.
And I'm like, all right, 10, 4.
So I look out at the Luton, I'm like, you okay without me here?
And he says, yeah, he said, this is really simple.
He kicked her ass.
She grabbed a knife.
She killed him.
I'm like, yeah.
So I scream over to the, to the hostage
situation, there was some early shift cops that were like anti-gang cops that were doing a warrant
that were just leaving whatever they were doing and they heard it over the radio and they
scooted over there because all my cops were taken up. I had no more cops. Right. So they're there and
I take a look inside this house. Here's this like big like biker dude with the big biker boots
and he was probably about six three, six four. He looked like Herman Munster. He was huge. He was huge.
huge. And he's got this huge Rambo knife. And his wife and two kids are on a couch in front of
them just bawling. And he's got a bottle of Jack Daniels, you know, in one hand and the Rambo
knife and the other, he's, I'm going to fucking slice them up, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like,
all right. And he's got both doors barricaded, furniture, carpet, I mean, completely barricaded.
So it won't be an easy end to get into that place.
You know, but we had good, clear fields of vision.
That was the only thing we had going for us.
I could see everything.
And I'm like, all right, this is the first time I'm going to call for the SWAT team.
They've got a lot better equipment, you know, for this type of situation.
But whenever you do that, we call, you know, the circus is going to arrive.
You know, you're going to have negotiators coming.
You're going to have the SWAT.
You're going to be there literally all day because if they can talk to them,
and get them to surrender that's your goal a peaceful resolution to whatever but i you know i told
my cops there and this is before we had patrol rifles we just had shotguns and pistols and i'm like
if he makes one more step towards his family we got to take him out yeah and for on that search
so we're talking we have a dialogue going with this guy's just drunk and crazy and i'm like so i call for
for the SWAT team dispatcher is like you know it's going to be at least an hour i'm like i know
because we don't have a 24 hour swat team right it's like four o'clock in the morning five
o'clock in the morning they're already at home in their swat pajamas you know doing whatever they do you
know that kind of thing and for whatever reason one of the cops just loses his shit he's like
sergey and i'm like what he's like this guy took a pill bottle out and he swallowed the content
of this like prescription pill bottle and washes it down with the jack daniels and i look at him i said
this is perfect i've got an ambulance literally a block away staging in case you know something would
happen maybe a false yeah and he's like you know he's gonna die and i'm like no he's gonna like pass
out first this is perfect so his eyes roll back in his head and he's trying to go through the door
so now he's forcing the hand and i'm like oh fuck now we're gonna have to shoot this guy you know he's
going to freak out because he sees a bunch of cops coming through the door.
But luckily, the timing was such that as he was going through this barricaded door,
he started stumbling and then boom, face down unconscious.
So I'm like, everybody breathes a sigh of relief.
It's like, okay, cancel the SWAT team.
Dude's in custody.
Everybody's fine.
You know, dude's going to go to jail.
And then I'm like, oh, shit, I've got a homicide I have to go back to it.
So I forgot about that.
So I go back to the, to that scene.
The detectives had already taken her downtown.
Now, one trope that you see like in movies and TV is like,
we're going to take you down for questioning.
There's no such thing.
You can volunteer to do that.
Right.
Or you could get arrested.
She volunteered.
They grilled her for over eight hours.
And she would not give it up.
And they're like, you know,
they call the DA and it's like, yeah, we don't have enough.
I was like, okay.
So the detective that was interrogating her for eight hours drove her home,
let her out of the car and she looked and he said, yeah, I did it.
I killed him.
So he's like, shit, I wish you would have told me that earlier.
So puts the handcuffs on her, puts it in the back of the car again,
back to downtown they go.
So the story is for years, he was kicking her ass.
He was just beating her up.
He'd get drunk and stupid.
and beat her and just she had enough so the rightfully so the DA did not issue any charges against
her yeah I was going to say like even if she didn't like I'm not sure how how much of a
confession I would be trying to get out of her it to me I'd be like look you know you don't want
to admit it that's fine sounds you like I think you she's already got an out yeah but I mean
you want to know what happened and you wrote in the DA's lap and you hope that
DA does the right thing right you know they want to clear that crime they want to you have to do your
best okay you have to so so that was an event so that is that's not an average night that wasn't an
average night but I mean that was as a sergeant but going back to district five where I work
probably one of the most brutal nights was I was I was
with an arrest with, uh, not my regular partner. You know, sometimes, you know, partners, you know,
are sick or have babies or, you know, whatever the case may be, or on vacation or take off. And I'm
with, I'm the new person. So you war horse, you go around with, you work with different cops. So I'm
working with this one cop. She had maybe two years more on than I did two or three years. So
she was considered a vet. And I wasn't brand new either.
And we're having our first assignment, you know, we call it out of the barn, you know, first assignment of the night.
We got a, uh, whatever arrest.
It was an easy warrant arrest.
We're inside and then in, and we're in the district station.
We hear the clerk at the front counter screaming.
We hear this blood-curdling scream.
We're like, okay.
So we run from the assembly.
We go up there.
There's a bunch of people.
There was a running gun battle on the freeway.
this and this gal was driving her boyfriend got one to the noodle he gets shot in the head
and she drives him to the district station and drags them into the district station
and it's like why do you take him to a hospital what are we going to do for him you know we're not
doctors so you know he's dead and he's like way dead and you know our lieutenant's like hey
could you uh look for a scene and like on the fray
way it's like sure she's like I know it's a long shop and see if there's any casings like sure
as soon as we get out there it is snowing like a banshee it is nasty you know this is
wisconsin yeah and we get off the onto the freeway and there's a plow truck in front of us
so it's like if there were casings those are long gone man and it's like yeah we tried
so we go back to lieutenant's like yeah we sorry couldn't uh find anything she's
like, all right, you tried. And I'm like, yep. So they're taking care of that. We don't have
anything to do with it. We hear a call on the air for a shooting at a tavern. And it's like,
okay. And we had a tavern car, like what I told you I was in charge of when I was a sergeant.
They had the district that I was working at. And every now and then I'd work it too. And a couple
of cars backed them up. So there's updates. And it's like,
like, well, something's going on at this bar.
And then you hear a squad, there's a copper that was also a Marine.
And he had, I never saw him excited or down.
He was always middle of the road.
Nothing got this guy excited.
So he gets on the air and he's like, squad 53.
It's like, yeah, they're shooting at us.
Send us more cars.
Just like he's ordering a pizza.
And I'm like, really?
We just look at each other like, oh, shit.
And then another cop gets on the air and is just screaming,
we need more help, we need more help.
And it's like, oh, okay.
So we hop in our squad.
We get there.
What was going on, what we didn't see was there was there was four cops going up a gangway.
But they didn't realize there was four dead bodies, one on the street and three inside the bar.
And one of the guys that was involved in this shooting was going down the alley.
he they see half of his body and it's like let me see your hands let me see your hands
and he had a 357 in his hand that they didn't see it was hidden behind you know the building
so he's like yeah sure so he puts one hand up then he raises the gun and just starts blast him at
the cops misses one cop's head by an inch they return fire they miss another cop sees them going
up a fence, grabs them, jackhammers them down on the ground, breaks his collarbone. And the gun
plops out of his waistband. As this is going on, you know, we get there. This is all happening
at the same time. And I literally almost trip on the dead body on the sidewalk in front of the bar.
We get in there. There's two cops by the dartboard. And it's like Charlie's Angels,
they're back to back with their guns up. And they're like, we don't know, you know, they were like in
shock there was the bartender was dead behind the bar and there was two patrons dead one guy still
had his can of budwiser in his hand i'll never forget it he was shot behind the ear and he was these
were all just like regular joes that lived in a shitty neighborhood and the guy with the budwiser
he just got off of work in a factory he just wanted to go go have a drink before he went home right
These assholes came in.
What happened was they were all like 20, 18 to 20 years old and the bartender wouldn't serve them.
And they're like, all right, fucker.
So they go back and they had oozy's and Mac 10s.
They just lit that bar up.
I've never seen that many casings at a seat ever.
So like I said, we're literally just stepping over dead bodies and casings.
And we cleared the bar ourselves, which means, you know, there's the upstairs dance floor.
Then downstairs, they had another bar in a dance floor.
And it's like out of a movie, just like little twinkling lights and stuff.
You're trying to find the light switches.
And it's, yeah, that was crazy.
Hmm.
Yeah, I was going to say the, you know, the Pulse, um, at the Pulse nightclub.
oh yeah yeah yeah like you know there those people are trapped in a you're trapped in a room with
the you know how are you how do you know even if you're you know you realize what's going on
and you start trying to get out like there's only a couple exits oh yeah it's problem
it's pandemonium you know it's craziness but to end the story you know the dead body is
still in the lobby they're investigating it and they we have a you
yearly competition with seven districts for the crime prevention display and ours was a coffin
like they got a coffin from a local funeral home and like flowers and stuff it was like an
anti-drunk driving thing this is what's going to happen if you're drunk driving and there's
blood all over the place and yellow tape around it from where the dead body was the captain came in
in the morning he's like man these are getting more and more realistic every year he's like
job guys and it's like no there actually was a homicide and you know the casket is literally right above
this dead body it's like yeah we could have saved him some time plop them up in there hmm um
um so how long were you um on the police force there 25 years 25 years and you retired at 25
years just I did so I'm good I'm good I you know when I first started I'm like you know what
I can tell this is a young man's game you know I when I started I was 30 I'm like okay yeah
30 40 50 yeah yeah I don't want to do this much longer you know it's like okay this is this is a
young person's game this is not a young this is not an old guy game I don't want to be 59
years old, you know, wrestling with people at 2 o'clock in the morning.
Right.
So I knew I was going to retire at that time.
Did you go on to anything else?
Yeah, you know, I'm a big fan of dig the well before you're thirsty.
Right.
What happened was, you know, I saw my retirement looming on the horizon and I had a long list
of stuff that I didn't want to do.
And I'm like, okay, well, now why?
And, you know, one of the biggest mistakes that retirees do is just sitting around drinking beer and, you know, watching TV.
That's, that'll kill you.
That will kill you.
You have to have a purpose.
You have to have a mission.
So, you know, it's like, okay, I wrote that one book about how to buy a car.
And I wanted to learn more about self-publishing.
You know, I learned that you could publish this yourself, you know, put it up on Amazon and do it yourself.
And there's some money to be made doing this.
And I'm like, okay.
this this is attractive to me you know what could I write about well I like most cops you know
I was going through a pretty brutal divorce towards the end of my career and I wrote a book about
that it's like a divorce dad kids are forever wives are not and it was kind of a help book
for guys going through divorce from the male point of view right because there was lots of
from the female point of view, but not a lot for guys. So I'm like, you know what? And it was
kind of therapeutic, really. You know, it was a shitty divorce. It took over two years. Yeah, I was
broke. It was horrible. I don't recommend it for anybody. It was terrible. But that's life.
You know, I went through it and I survived it and I'm just fine now. But what happened was I wrote
that one also under a pen name and I started going to conferences, you know, author conference.
Right. And inevitably, people would come up to me and they're like, hey, you're that police guy, right? And I'm like, I'm not wearing a t-shirt and I don't have a sign. You know, people always know you're a cop. Always. Right. And I'm like, yeah. And it would be authors asking me, hey, you know what, I'm writing this story. Does this make sense? Would you do this in this situation, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. Be more than happy to.
to help you. So there was some writers there that I befriended me. I'm a big, I'm a big believer in mentors and,
you know, trying to be around people that know more than you and are smarter than you in that
business. And they're like, you should really, this is what you should be writing. You should write a
couple, you should write a book about, you know, like police procedure for writers. I'm like, right.
Hmm. Okay. So I started writing this book. And,
I this is like a couple years before I retired so I started writing the books and it was a very large book
and again somebody a lot smarter than me is like hey cut that and make that two books you'll make
twice as much money I'm like hmm so I did make sense right they started a Facebook group called
cops and writers those were the names of the books and the Facebook group and the Facebook group
was my editor and a couple of buddies now there's like 6,600.
people in it. I've got cops literally from all over the world in this Facebook group helping
out writers. And I then from there, thank you. I started the podcast cops and writers to try and
sell more books. I'm like, yeah, I'll do the podcast because I started going on podcast to promote my books
and promote me and, you know, in the Facebook group, et cetera.
And I was doing consulting and I will for the right price tag,
but what I found out is it takes up a ton of time and the return isn't so great.
And a lot of these are independent authors that don't have a lot of money and I didn't
want to charge them a bunch.
Right.
So I do it, but very sparsely.
I don't do a ton of it anymore.
so yeah one thing snowballed into another and i had a guest on my podcast that owns a publishing
company that i've known for years and he's like hey i'm i want to have some crime fiction in here
are you interested in i'm like sure so i signed a six book deal with him so my last
the last four out of nine books that i wrote are with uh his publishing company
and that's the Bruce City Blues books.
Those are more or less like Hill Street Blues,
but set in Milwaukee in modern times.
And those are a lot of stories from like what you just heard more.
Right.
Have you tried to like are you guys,
does he work on trying to get them that turned into a series
or anything like that?
Or is it just?
It is a series.
Trying to get it.
You mean like a television series or a movie?
Yeah, that's tough.
That's a very tough not to.
I know.
I mean, it's in the contract, but.
Right.
And nobody's really working on it.
Yeah, it doesn't, even if, you know, even if somebody's working actively working on it, it's tough.
Oh, you know, I was a co-host for another podcast for about a year.
It was J.D. Barker's podcast.
And he's a very high-speed author.
You know, he writes with James Patterson, you know, he, yeah, he's one of very, very, very top
tier authors. And he's got movie deals, but he said most of these are never going to come to
fruition. He said, they'll buy the rights. You know, you'll strike a deal for X amount of money.
Okay, now, you know, say Apple or, you know, Amazon Prime, okay, they've got the rights to the story,
you know, blah, blah, blah. He said, we had one where we were on the sound set. We had the actors,
everything in the morning of the first you think that's a slam dunk right yeah you think by that
point it's done deal nope some network producer came in he says yeah we don't like it anymore go home
we're done just like that so you can't get your hopes up with that if it happens it happens
yeah yeah that's been my i mean that's been my experience so far because i've been on numerous
you know meeting after meeting after meeting and you know the whole and then it just it just
in the end it just doesn't happen i mean um and you're saying so you've got a your buddy who's the
producer i'm sorry who owns the production uh publishing company yeah so so he's doing all the
publicity well he's he's doing the advertising for your your books right is that correct yeah he runs
he runs the ads but you know i i've been on a bunch of podcasts i've done book signings right you know
unless you're james patterson or you know like one of the very top tier authors you got to do
your own work even if you get picked up by like one of the big you know publishing houses you still
have to do all the work they might advertise it for a month or two and then after that the new
shiny thing comes along and you're pushed to the side
Plus, it's selling like hotcakes.
Prior to that, when you were doing your self-publishing, were you doing like Google ads or just doing podcasts?
I always have Amazon ads going on.
I have Amazon ads, the podcast itself, the Facebook group, you know, that's all visibility and it's all content.
Right.
You know, people get to know who you are and then they find, hey, he's got these books that help out.
writers so it's evergreen and that will always give me returns always yeah yeah there's just not
it's it's funny there's just not a ton of money in writing but but it's funny i mean unless you're
like a big time you know you're doing you're you're like a bestseller or up there but you know
it's funny go ahead no as far as making money with writing it's kind of like the lottery but you know
if you don't play you're not going to win
Right. Well, you know, what's funny for me is that like the books that I wrote while I was locked up while I was had all the time in the world, you know, so I wrote these books and then I got out and then I self-published those books. I didn't even try and get a literary agent. Right. And I just, I self-publish them. You know, it's not a lot of money, but it's like it's just showing up, you know. You get 800 bucks, $1,000 a month that pops into your.
account and it's you know and so you think okay well yeah there's not a lot of money well no not in the
short term but it's nice that five six seven years after you i wrote a book every month it's making
each book is making you know what for the most part my book's really making the bulk of it but i i do
need to i just recently started running um amazon uh doing an amazon ad campaign and i need to do that
for every single book i have that's a tough not to crack because
you're dealing with the Amazon algorithms.
Right.
And you're trying to guess all that.
And there's there's different courses that teach that if you want to put in the time or you could hire somebody to do it for you.
But even at that, I mean, there's no guarantees with that at all.
Yeah.
Well, you know, and I've been playing with it.
Like I ran one ad where I did, I picked all the keywords myself.
Sure.
And so literally.
it spent $40 or $50 within whatever, a week.
And I tell me,
and then I had another one where I, I, I clicked,
I ran the ad and I just said,
let let it pick its own, you know, do it,
do the ad placement itself where you let Amazon's,
it's own, the algorithm take care of it for you.
Sold like five or six books.
Yeah.
With very, very little money spent.
The authors that I know that are making money,
most of them it's not in nonfiction it's a sales funnel for okay i've got this course
or you know i'm selling a product of some type right you know that kind of thing or if you're
writing fiction what i've seen the most success is people that are writing like four or five
six books a year easily i've known that i've sold that have written more and it just begins like a snowball
effect. And they start making money, but you, it's kind of like a hamster wheel that you're
running on. You know, it is tough to write, you know, it's tough to write one or two books a year,
let alone like 10 or 12. I know guys that write even more than that. And it's, you know,
it's hard work. And you're not guaranteed to return, but you try to pick a genre that is
popular, but not so popular. It's saturated.
And from there, you're trying to get people hooked into your series.
Usually a series runs a little bit better than a standalone.
They want to see what happens next.
Right.
So you just keep going and going and going and going.
Well, you know, I'm lucky because my channel is constantly,
basically it's like a big ad campaign for the books.
people will see me. They'll hear that I've written books. They'll they'll check. They'll see,
oh, look, he's written like seven books. They'll buy one book. And then because they like it.
And they're like, wow, I, I like that. Oh, he's got another one that's similar to that.
They buy another one. You know, so I mean, because if it was just, if I just put them up on Amazon and
kick back and hope they would sell, I'd sell. I'd sell. I'd sell, if I even told five or 10,
I'd be lucky to sell 10, five or 10 a month. Not even.
certainly would be still in what yeah i was going to say if that right um yeah you have to actively
put yourself out there there's i mean and when it comes to publishing and self-publishing
there's no one-size fits all there really isn't you know some people you know it's the rapid
release program where they're releasing a new book every month i mean there's pros and concept
then there's others that are only doing like three or four books a year and they're doing really
well but they're very good with advertising they've got a following i'm a huge fan of pat flynn i don't know
if you know who he is no he wrote a book i think it was called superfans he said i'd much rather have
a thousand super fans oh yeah that will buy whatever i write whatever course i have whatever i write
you know et cetera et cetera then trying to wrangle 10 000 fans that are like come see come saw
Yeah, I was going to say the 1,000, the super fan rule is something that I've heard many,
I didn't know it was a book, but yeah, I've heard that over and over again.
What you need is a thousand super fans.
That's what you need to be successful at YouTube and have a product.
Yes.
You know, it just it's that mindset of, hey, you know what?
I really like this Matt guy.
You know, whatever he, he's got a great story.
I, he puts out a new book.
I'm buying it.
what is it four bucks five bucks you know that's a no-brainer yeah it's twenty two dollars but that's
fine um but you know it's you know uh i actually have some books that are 17 i think 17
bucks something like that and then i've got um uh you know audible and then you know ebooks there's
not they're like nine bucks they're not they're cheap right exactly but it's funny i sell a lot
more physical copies.
I remember when e-books came out
and I remember reading all these articles
and thinking, yeah, people are just not going to
they were predicting in all these articles
that there's just nobody will be printing books anymore.
They just won't.
And they were like five years from now,
there will be no bookstores.
There will be no.
And that didn't happen.
No.
And I mean, for me personally,
I love audiobooks.
And I'm listening to your audio books.
right now.
Oh, cool.
And we have one thing in common, I'm also dyslexic.
Oh, okay.
And school was very, very difficult for me.
I was like a hair's breath away from being in like the special classes.
Because I, they, you know, I was a Catholic grammar school, you know, nuns and civilians as well.
And they didn't know what the hell was wrong with me.
They just thought I was stupid.
Yeah, you're the same age as me back then.
That's what it was.
you were something's wrong they would talk to me and they're like he's got a great vocabulary
he's you know he's articulate like he he speaks well he like right we understand like what's
he can barely read and write what's going on yeah so i'm not a fast reader so i love audiobooks
and if there's an audio book that i really like especially a nonfiction
then i'll just buy the paperback for a reference right
yeah luckily i do i do sell i mean the bulk i'd say 80% of the sales is physical books though
that's great because that's where you make all your money you know it's funny i have a friend
who's a truck driver i every time i talk to him i yell at him he he's he's actually he's almost
70 years old so i'm always yelling i'm always yelling i'm like why because he's always talking telling
me about yeah i remember i was driving through you know i don't know or you know in the middle of
And I was listening to Pink Floyd.
And I'm like, why do you listen to music when you drive?
Why aren't you listening to audio books?
I don't want to do that.
I, I, I'd rather read it.
Yeah, but they'll read it to you.
You'll get, it's hard to follow.
I mean, you'll get used to it.
Like, he just, I would, to me, I used to love driving and, and I would put in an
audio book and listen to it.
You know, I think that's why I like podcasts so much.
I love podcasts.
That's one of the reasons I got into it, because,
I was getting interviewed on podcasts.
You know, I was pushing the book, the books.
I'm getting interviewed on podcast.
I was thinking myself, I could do this.
Yeah.
You know, I don't think it's that tough.
And I found a bunch of tutorials on YouTube that were free.
And then boom, almost two years later, you know, I'm just chugging along with that.
It's great.
And I think there's also something almost like soothing or comforting about somebody
reading you a story.
Yeah. I think it just affects that one part of your brain. You kind of remember when your mom would like read a story to you or something. And it's like, oh, okay. Somebody's going to read me a story today. Cool. I'm down. It's funny. John, is it Stanford? I think, anyway, he's a writer. And I remember reading, I was, when I got locked up, I read one of his books and it was about a hit woman. And I remember.
her name was Clara Rinker and I read this book I read and I loved it loved it and it had a detective
in it I read must have read 10 more of his books just never once that never were any of the
other books as good as that first book oh wow okay but I read at least at least 10 like if you
told me no it's 15 you it may have been like I had I ordered every single book I could get from him
but it was just that one book was so good yeah um yeah so it's it's so definitely like the series
are are great you know is a great idea unfortunately i i don't have the ability to write a series
because all my stuff is true crime right but you could also you know you can set up your own little
universe and do a fiction series based off of your experiences and the people that you've known i mean
yeah it's as far as your imagination is going to lead you well it's funny i have a guy named
uh that i wrote about named frank amadeo and what a character this guy is but you know his
the character of frank amadeo i've all i've thought about like if you had to take
someone and turn it into a series what a great series he would make okay it would be kind of like
the the house of cards oh okay yeah
know we've got the but instead of this this character being the president of the united states he would
be the president of a company but he would be doing all this you know kind of crooked stuff and
manipulation and things of that nature and uh on the side and and i always thought he'd be a great
character to take and fictionalize and run with yeah there you go but you know he'd probably sue
me uh anyway so yeah so
How do you feel, anything else you want to go over or?
Well, let's see here.
But yeah, you know, as far as like post-police, you know, career, you know, I got the books going.
I'm writing a new series.
I got approached by a production company.
Yeah, I think it was October.
They wanted me to narrate a true crime documentary on TV.
Okay.
So what's that about?
What's that about that?
documentary now. It's about a wife killing a husband. Not too original, but it's a true crime
story where this woman killed her husband and she walked around for five years without getting
charged. And they knew he was dead? Oh yeah. I mean, they, they respond to the crime scene. It was a
stage crime scene. She did it. You know, she was saying a stranger came in and killed her husband. But it was
just a really bad job it was in a small town where i think they had one homicide before that
that was like 50 years ago so okay the cops they were ill they were very much so the d a wasn't
didn't do the best of jobs with it and finally they had state investigators come in and they made a
good enough case where it went to trial and this one
woman, and I can't talk too much about it because, you know, I signed an NDA and all that kind of stuff.
Right.
But this, this woman wanted the judge instead of the jury.
You know, you can choose a bench trial if you want.
And it's like, that made no sense to me whatsoever.
I mean, at least you'd have some.
The jury has, it has to be unanimous.
Yeah.
You know, like, and there was extenuating circumstances where she totally could have claimed
mental defect.
there was all kinds of crazy stuff going on where she was abused as a child and well i'll go over
some of it she was sexually assaulted by her father as a child and he went to prison for that you
know the mom left him obviously you know after this all came to light and it was going on for a long
time she gets married and at the homicide scene they find a 14 page
sex manifesto
where they have a master slave agreement
between her and her husband
and he has to call her daughter
and she has to call him father.
So weird.
Now with the weird.
Dude. I'm like,
what the hell? I'm reading these police reports
that I'm just like, are you kidding me?
Oh my God.
So yeah, I,
you just, I mean, I've got a great
story. I mean, you never, just when you think you've seen it all, you haven't. You know, I was on
late power, which was seven at night till three in the morning as a sergeant. And I was lucky enough to
have another sergeant as a partner in the car with me. That doesn't happen very often. But I was
lucky enough that night. And we hear a call for a DOE, dead body in this warehouse where they have
limousines, classic cars, you know, it's like a big storage facility for these cars.
And I didn't even realize it was there.
I just thought it was, you know, this is very industrial part of town.
I thought it was just another factory or something.
So we started heading to it.
And one of my cops gets me on the line on a side channel.
I was like, hey, sorry, do you come in?
I'm like, yeah, I have to come.
You know, there's a dead body.
I have to go to that.
Right.
You're not going to believe this shit.
You're not going to believe.
I'm like, all right.
All right.
I get there.
And my cops are as giddy as like two-year-old schoolgirls.
They're just bouncing off the walls.
You're not going to believe this shit, surge.
And I'm like, all right.
So they walked me to this van.
And it had the double doors and back.
And this storage facility didn't have electricity.
So this is all flashlights.
So they're like, are you ready?
Are you ready?
I'm like, you guys are acting like it's the price is.
right enough already for fuck sakes so they open the side doors and all i see is this guy's ass up
in the air and i'm like what the hell and there's something sticking out of his ass and i'm like okay
he's dead rigumortis had already set in he was on all fours in the back of this van his pants and
underwear down to his ankles and he's got what looks like a bottle
shoved up his ass with a plastic grocery store bag with like strings like it looked like
a parachute connected to it and I'm like okay this is a new one for me and he's like super dead
he's like really he's DRT dead right there better than Elvis and he he's he's he's just there and
his adult son found him
like this. He'd been missing for like three days.
He was a heroin addict. And he was like
in his 60s. He just decided to start taking
heroin. He thought it would be cool
or whatever. What's with the
bottle? Is he doing
stuff to himself?
What happens? He hires a prostitute.
We got the story.
He hires a hooker
to shove a bottle
is either jolly good, which makes it funny.
Soda up his ass
and they had like this parachute thing
And in case it got stuck, they could pull it out.
That's how he got his rocks off.
And at the same time, he was shooting up heroin and he overdosed.
So the investigator from the Ami's office comes and she's like, yeah, it's a new one.
Yeah, sure is, Jenny.
And we're looking at each other.
I was like, okay.
So, you know, his wife is out front.
You know, the son calls us, I want to see him.
And I'm like, no, no, no, no.
You're not going to see him like this.
This isn't going to be your last memory of your, you know, dearly departed.
So I, we clean up and, you know, bodies, we call them the body snatchers, you know, detectives come.
Then the guys that come and take the body, they take the body, you know, blah, blah, blah.
You don't take anything out of the body.
You just leave it the way it is.
So I see the same investigator from the medical examiner's office at a different homicide couple days later.
And, you know, we all get to know each other.
I'm like, hey, Jenny, how are you?
I love Jenny.
She always had a cigarette sticking out and I was, hey, how's it going, Sarge?
You know, it's like, going good.
And she's like, you remember that guy with a bottle up his ass?
And I'm like, how could I forget?
Yeah, and she's like, yeah, they did the autopsy.
You'll never guess what they found.
And I'm like, no.
There was another bottle of hot sauce.
they used the bottle of soda to jam the bottle of hot sauce up his ass.
Wow.
And I said, was it open?
She said, oh, yeah, there's hot sauce everywhere.
Oh, God.
What's going on with what's wrong with people?
I came home that night and I'm just like, all right.
Feel so normal compared to that, dude.
Well, you know, I had one auto or,
Medica affixation.
Kind of like the lead singer from NXS, what was the name, James Hutchinson or James, I forget.
But what happens is you'll have guys cut their airway as they're either masturbating or having sex.
It heightens the orgasm.
Okay.
So sometimes that goes awry.
So one of my partners gets called.
This is during the day.
It's a four-family apartment unit.
And a Vietnam vet is.
the lower unit and he calls and he says i think there's something dead upstairs it's like okay he says
hey i know the smell of death and he said that's death so we get there sure enough there's flies
i mean just covered in the windows and they're like ugh okay this is definitely a dead guy up
there you'll never forget that smell so we go we boot the door it's like oh my god here's this guy
he's on the floor sitting up
and he's got a portable DVD player on
in his lap, like lower in his lap.
He's got headphones connected to the DVD player.
His pants and his underwear down to his ankles.
And he's got a noose around his neck with like a pulley.
And to top it all off, he had nipple clamps attached to a 9-volt battery,
one of those big, like lantern batteries.
He's into it.
Oh, he's, he's totally into it.
And, you know, so he was like way dead.
He was turning green.
He was like, oh.
And he was just watching pornoes and whacking off.
And he had his nipple clamps going.
He had electricity.
So Jenny came again.
I'm like, Jenny, heart attack or what are we got here?
She said, either he didn't do the rope thing right.
and he like hung himself or he had a heart attack during the process of she said we won't know
until we do the autopsy but that's the first time i see that i was just like wow like you said
i'm boring man i like my boring life i don't know what any part yeah yeah that's uh that's a
that's a little over the top i know what what's wrong with i don't know i don't know um yeah i'm
pretty traditional.
Well, yeah, I almost hate to say, do you have anything else?
I do, actually.
What else is going on?
Yeah, we get sent to a house fire, and I'm like, okay, you know, it's like another house fire.
We do crowd control, unless there's a dead body in there, you know, there'll be fire and
an arson investigator will do their thing to make sure it wasn't arson most of the time it's not but you know
every now and then and in older kind of crappier neighborhoods there are very old homes and you know
the building material was very flammable that they used back then yeah they got the old tube and knob
fucking that tube and knob stuff in them and they'll it'll go up like a you know what so there's a mom
and three kids like next to a fire truck and I'm like oh thank God they got out okay you
know, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Fire chief comes up and he's just laughing.
He's like, you might want to put up more yellow tape.
And I'm like, come on.
He said, yeah, you got a crispy critter in the basement.
And I'm like, all right, that's a dead body.
Yeah, that's burned up.
And the family only spoke Spanish, but I was lucky that I had an interpreter with me.
And he's like, you're not going to believe this shit, serge.
I'm like, what?
He's like, he's like,
This guy, they came from Mexico.
He's married.
He's got three kids.
He decides he likes dudes more than his wife.
She feels bad for him somehow, and him and his boyfriend are living in the basement in the laundry room.
That's where she put him.
Well, he had a fight with his boyfriend as they were, like, doing the deed.
And the boyfriend doused him in gasoline and set him on fire.
and then that set the rest of the house on fire right and like oh okay and everybody wants to see
this body and it's like yeah the rubber's still on his dick i'm like shut up it's literally burnt
odd so everybody had like cops are the worst and are like no way we got to see this and they're
like oh my god so yeah that's where was the boyfriend oh he he beat feet he was gone oh okay he was
gone but we knew who he was you know it didn't take long to snatch him up but yeah we're waiting
is one of those instances where the state fire marshal came that didn't happen often but this
was kind of a unique situation to say the least and we're waiting and waiting and my cops
you know we've been there for like six hours or a little bit more and it's like everybody's hungry
so I gave one of my cops you know like 40 bucks or whatever it's like go to McDonald's start
these guys need to eat
So we're eating dinner on our squad cars and all these birds like came out of nowhere.
They smell the flesh, the burnt flesh.
They want to go in there and eat.
And yeah, we're munching away on burgers and stuff.
People are like, it doesn't bother you?
I'm like, no, not at all.
I've seen burnt up bodies before.
I mean, we had one where there was, we call them bum camps where homeless people have tents.
Yeah.
It's like, oh, that's a bump camp.
and we got called for a fire.
What happened was there was a guy inside his tent.
He was really drunk on vodka and he had a portable heater.
The propane, not propane, but not gasoline, carousine,
spilt on his sleeping bag and he got set up like a Roman candle.
You know, he burnt up inside his tent.
And the fire department got there and they're hosing them down.
And I'm like,
it's literally like maybe one or two degrees cold-ass wisconsin night and now by the time the medical examiner
and it was jenny again i mean there is more than one but i always like it was always jenny and she comes
and we look at each other and i'm like hey look at that we got a bumsicle this guy was like a frozen block
and i'm like way to go sparky and i'm looking at the firefighters i'm like now we can't do shit
this guy is like in a frozen block he was so we're like yeah he's a bumsicle
yeah practically peel them off the ground
probably glued the ground to the ice
oh yeah that was just nasty um
yeah i was going to say i had a uh
i had a guy on here who was talking about the homeless encampments
you know and he was talking about how they're like
they'll like beat each other to death and they'll oh hell yeah
it's it's horrific he's like they're the little
these little governments within the little
that run the camp and they have like a they typically have like a little mayor that is the main guy that just that um that works out disputes and issues punishments and he was like it's it's insane like a whole little uh it's like laura the flies we had another guy this is different i was working day shift in a fairly nice neighborhood and we were across the street from a hospital nurse comes out for a smoke break
And by the way, a lot of nurses and doctors smoke a lot.
And she's by this like little park across from the hospital.
And she notices this like foot sticking out underneath a bridge.
It's like, what the hell?
So she goes down there and sure shit, there's a dead body burnt up.
So we get called and we're across the street.
Shit, I can just walk over.
This is great.
So we go over there.
It was my buddy scene.
he was in charge of it.
I was just helping him out.
And this guy was under the bridge, obviously homeless.
And the front part of his head was just caved in.
So what happened was there was a dispute over his spot.
And other homeless dude just takes a rock and just caves in his head with this big
ass rock, kills him, then sets him on fire.
Right.
Yeah.
So, and, you know,
all these homicide detectives that showed up and all the brass that shows up,
we've all seen burnt up bodies before.
But this one was like the most ghoulish looking where we literally people are like,
every time they saw them, they like jumped for the first time.
It was like, holy shit.
And what are they, what, why was he, why did he set him a fire?
He thought it was going to destroy the evidence or something.
Yes.
Yep.
That's usually, if they set a car on fire, set people on fire, it's to destroy evidence.
Yeah.
it's funny because like you know i i was heard that they'll somebody will kill someone then set the
house on fire it's like okay well they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna know the guy didn't
die in the fire like they're gonna right right right be certain his lungs they're not gonna be
there's all kind you know his whatever is uh um throat there's not gonna be any sit like
they're gonna very quickly realize okay this guy was strangled you know these bones were broken
or whatever like well yeah like this guy had his head his head was caved in you know or
you know he's got 15 stab wounds or he's got
you know the gunshot wound or whatever the case may be we always find that out always yeah we had
another one this guy i shouldn't laugh he was a hoarder and he had national geographics and all
these different magazines literally to the ceiling and he had just little paths going to the kitchen
the bathroom and he would sleep in his recliner in the living room because he couldn't even get
into the bedroom right and he was a very obese man he's probably 400 400
450 and somehow the house caught fire and the fire department couldn't put it out because it was
just nothing by kindling right this guy went upstairs he made his way upstairs to the bathroom
that was upstairs that he rarely used and he went inside this you know porcelain tub it literally
went up like cooking him because the the tub heated up from the flames so he's so huge and
he's all burnt up the fire department is like we don't even
know how to get this guy out of here.
You know, so the fire department being the fire department,
well, let's damage more shit.
So they cut a hole in the wall where the bathroom is.
And it's like, all right, fair enough.
We'll tie him up and lower him down with a rope.
It's like, all right, that's good thinking.
So they tie his hands, his wrist together,
and they lower this guy that's just a charred, just mess,
down onto the ground.
It wasn't Jenny.
It was a newer gal from the medical examiner's office that came out.
And she's looking at just like, oh, my God, this man was tied up.
Is this a kidnapping?
Do we have a kidnapping?
It's like, yeah, yeah, the fire department kidnapped this guy and tied him up.
Oh, okay.
That's why he's tied up.
All right.
Well.
where can everybody find your books i'm on amazon exclusively right now okay uh even the ones that
are with with your buddy he also he's also yeah it's all amazon uh just look under patrick o'donnell
i am not the civil war or world war two author there's a patrick o'donnell that's you know that does
that cops and writers podcast cops and writers facebook group copse and writers yeah i noticed you don't you don't
I didn't see the cops and writers on YouTube.
Yeah.
Or is it on you?
It's on YouTube.
I just started that channel.
Very.
I was going to say.
Yeah.
I just started the YouTube channel.
I was just doing YouTube shorts because people are obsessed right now with short.
You know, like little TikTok reels.
Yeah, yeah.
Instagram reels.
That's what people are watching right now.
So there's, you could do YouTube shorts.
And that's, you know, more or less just advertising the podcast.
It's not the podcast itself.
It's just like a 30 second clip.
And you haven't thought about putting the podcast on YouTube also?
I have.
It's just one more thing that I have to learn how to do and, you know, and edit and all that kind of good stuff.
So I'm a one-man band right now.
I mean, I do have a virtual assistant.
Right.
It takes care of a lot of my admin stuff and my newsletter and all that kind of stuff.
but the the production and all of that for my podcast,
I'm doing myself.
Oh, okay.
All right.
Yeah, you should definitely, definitely,
I don't think about it,
especially if you're running the shorts.
Like the shorts are going to drive traffic to the YouTube channel.
Yes, yes.
So that's the plan.
That's the plan.
We'll see where it goes.
All right.
Well, listen, I appreciate it.
I'm going to go ahead and I think we should wrap this up
and you want to hear the part of the reason otherwise I'd let you just keep going on and on
but it just so happens that this morning my probation officer sent me sent me a text saying hey
you're going to be home today and I was like yeah and she said okay well I'm going to be in the
area and I need to stop by and I was like okay and I at home visit yeah and I and I said uh I said okay
well I have a podcast at one she's well when will it be over I said it'll probably by three
and she said okay well then I'll be there at three so it's it's coming close I was like I probably should have said 3 30 um but uh yeah so it you know it's so funny like I don't do anything wrong I do I report everything and I have a very strict probation you know my the because I had a financial crime so I and I owe I owe like six million in restitution so I every single month well and the other problem is
is I don't have a traditional job.
So I can't say, here's my two pay stubs.
You know, I have to say, hey, I made, you know, so much money from Amazon this month.
I made this much from YouTube.
I made this much from, so I have to tell them all these different places that I get my money.
I have to write up a whole report.
It's a whole issue.
And then they also order like a financial on me every year.
They also pull my credit.
they like there's all oh it's it's intensive and the first year i was getting like i don't even
have a drug charge but i was getting urine tested oh sure yep you know like and i don't have a
like why like i don't have a drug charge oh it doesn't matter you got to come in it was random
but now it's been four and a half years so now she stops by you know once a month or once every
other month um but what's so funny is and i so like i don't do anything wrong and yet if you get that
text.
Immediately my heart rate goes, oh, my gosh, I need to come by.
Why?
You know?
Right.
He's like, I just got to come by, go over your finance, your last annual financial
statement.
She goes in, and I have some, I have travel that's coming up.
She said, I wanted to talk to you about your travel.
I had a travel request.
So, well, it's funny you should mention that because I interviewed a guy named Frank
Shamrock, who was one of the first UFC champions.
you know, just a great story where, you know, he had a horrible childhood.
He had 20 felonies under his belt by the time he was like 19 or 20 years old.
And, you know, he was on probation.
He did prison time.
Then he's on probation, but he started training like a madman.
And he was in UFC when it first started.
And he had a fight like in Japan.
So he had to tell his, you know, probation officer is like, hey, I'm going to be doing some traveling.
She's like, what are you talking about?
I'm going to Japan the hell you are and it's like hey there's a condition in my probation for I can travel for my job this is my job this is how I make money and she's like I'll get back to you then she comes back he's like yeah it's in the agreement you can go well you know it's funny um I had to go to um Amsterdam about a couple years ago yeah and I went to my probation officer and I said hey listen I have a request but I
It's an, I got to go to Amsterdam.
And she went, I can't let you go to Amsterdam.
So no, it's for work.
And she goes, it doesn't matter.
She said, first of all, she goes, you can't get a passport.
Like two of my charges are use of a fraudulent passport and passport fraud.
She's like, you can't get a passport.
And I said, well, who can okay that?
And she goes, I mean, it would have to be the judge.
So we put in to the judge, the judge came back and said, yeah, I'll let him get his passport.
So he can, he can go.
you know it's for work this is how he's making his living he's been super you know he's
he's met all those his obligations so um so yeah i went for four for i got actually i think
one i was it was five or six days i went to amsterdam came back and on my way back in
they pull me out of line like you know you're going through a welcome back to the united states
yeah yeah i say in my passport and the cop looks at looks at my passport looks at me looks at the
screen, looks at me, puts my passport over here. Oh, geez. And starts reading. Like the six people in
front of me, welcome back. You know, they're going right through scan, go through, go through, go through
me. Yeah. And he read and read and read and I go, how bad is it? And he goes, well, you're definitely
going to have to talk to somebody. But yeah, I talked to somebody and they, you know, the guy was
like, do you have something you want to show me? And I was like, oh, I have a travel permit from my judge.
Like, when we started with that, you know, I was, I was thinking to myself, like, they're going to let me back in, right?
I mean, you know, but it was, it was just very, it was funny because I was laughing about it the whole time.
Because I knew, like, you know, come on.
Yeah, you're not doing anything wrong.
It's just, yeah.
Yeah, I know what's coming up on.
You know, I know there was like a some kind of a notice or something to arrest me.
And he even said that, yeah, there's a something, something notice.
And I went, well, that should have.
I said, that shouldn't even be on there.
And he was, well, it's expired.
And I went, well, it's expired.
And he was still.
I was like, listen, I got out of jail.
That was way, that was the old me.
That was the old me.
And it was funny, but I ended up making my plane and it was fine.
But yeah, it is a pain.
Anytime you have to leave.
And that's what she wants to talk to me about is I, I got picked to be on some kind of a,
like a I want to say it's not a game show it's kind of like a big brother type show kind of like
survivor meets big brother kind of thing oh and it's going to be in europe and they want me to go
for like three weeks and I made a request to her so she's now coming to talk to me but the truth is
I'm probably not even going to go I don't even want to go at this point it's like it's three weeks
I'm married yeah you know it's it's it's a long time yeah yeah they're barely paying me all then
you know, they're not really, you know, they're going to, they kind of reimburse you for what you're currently doing, for what you're currently making.
So it's like three weeks away from my wife, making what I'm making here anyway.
Right.
Where's the insane?
And of course, there's like a $100,000 prize, but the idea that I'm going to win $100,000, you know, that you can't hold out a prize when there's going to be 12 other people.
Like that, that's, okay, that's not going to happen.
Well, so the only thing that would, that would be good for exposure.
you know, you're hoping that somebody else sees you and it's like you have a very interesting
story, you know, et cetera, you know, that would give you, that might kickstart something else.
You know, that's like I agree.
You know, it's like people would know about you unless you were doing the podcast.
Right.
I agree, but I've already been on multiple TV shows.
Okay.
And in the end, you know, what they always try and sell you is like, you know, when you're,
you're negotiating some kind of a fee, they always end up like, well, the exposure, you're going to sell a lot
more books. The truth is, I've been on, I've been on a bunch of shows. I didn't notice any more
books being sold. Right. If anything, I, that's hard. Yeah. Right. If anything, maybe I sold an extra
20, 50. Like, it wasn't so much that I could clearly see like, oh, wow, there was a huge spike. There
wasn't. Right. And it's not, it's not like it's been once. I've been on several TV shows and that
didn't really happen. So that, you know, when they do those things, like my only thing would be exposure, but the
You know, the truth is, three weeks without my wife, and this is the other thing, they're going to sequester me.
So I can't have my cell phone.
I can't communicate with her.
So it's three weeks.
Without your wife, with no contact.
I would not like that at all.
Right.
And so I'm in a very real way.
I'm hoping she just shows up here and says, yeah, we thought about it.
We're just not going to let you do it.
And I've really already kind of told them like, look, I just, I just can't do this.
Like, you know, they came back and offered me more money.
And to me, it's like, no, like, it's, it's still not enough.
Right.
So, you know, and then, of course, well, you may win the 100,000.
Stop it.
Right.
I'm not winning 100,000.
That's not, you know, there's 12 other people.
So I got a one and 12 chance.
No thanks.
Sure.
I'll stay here.
Yep.
Listen, I appreciate you coming on.
Thank you.
Hey, I appreciate you guys watching the podcast.
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Hit the subscribe button.
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