Park Predators - The Friend

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

In the 1990’s one of the most well-known and liked men in West Yellowstone, Montana became one of the most notorious names in western U.S. history. Larry Moore’s crime of murder reveals to authorities a seemingly endless pit of sociopathic mayhem brewing inside this wealthy businessman, who’s hell bent on covering up his crimes and convincing others to kill. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://parkpredators.com/episode-9-the-friend/ Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and for our story today, we're going to the town of West Yellowstone, Montana. This resort town sits in the southern part of the state, and it's considered a gateway to Yellowstone. Each year, millions of people visit this area, and not far from where you enter the park is the iconic Old Faithful Geyser. This geyser was given its name because of its frequent and somewhat predictable eruptions. Rangers can track the time, height, and length of an eruption to predict when another one will happen. But unlike Old Faithful, an eruption of crime in West Yellowstone in November 1990 would be far from predictable, and it would leave authorities searching for answers and uncovering a diabolical mastermind who was living right under their noses. This is Park Predators. On November 9, 1990, Jeremiah Brisbane was headed to P.E. class at his high school in West Yellowstone.

This day was like any other school day for him. It was mid-morning, and he and his friends were ready to head to one of their favorite classes. Jeremiah really likes this class because the teacher is his dad, Brad Brisbane. When the bell rings in the hallway, Jeremiah heads to the class, but he actually runs into his dad on the way. Jeremiah notices his dad putting his coat on, and it looks like he's about to take off and leave the campus. But this is weird because it's the morning on a school day. Brad shouldn't be going anywhere. Seeing his dad about to leave, Jeremiah asks him where he's going. And Brad tells his son that he just got an unexpected phone call from a friend and he has to leave to go help him at a truck stop about an hour away in the town of Belgrade. Brad tells his son

that he'll see him later and he'll be home for dinner, and then he walks out of the school. Jeremiah told producers for Forensic Files that seeing his dad leave to go pick up a friend in the middle of a workday just felt odd, but he trusted his father and after that sort of just let it go. He had no idea that that would be the last time he would see his dad again. A few hours pass and dinner time rolls around and Brad's wife, Rene, notices that her husband hasn't come home and he hasn't called to tell her where he is. The only contact she'd had with him that day was earlier that morning and Brad told her pretty much the same thing he told his son, that a friend had called him and he had to leave work to go help this guy.

Feeling like something is very wrong, Renie calls the Gallatin County Sheriff's Department to report her husband missing. She tells the deputies that her husband had received a phone call from a man named Larry Moore. He asked Brad to meet him at Bear's Truck Stop about an hour away from West Yellowstone near the interstate in Belgrade. Rainey says Larry had called Brad because Larry had sold his pickup truck and camper and he needed a ride back to town. Now to give you some context of just where this truck stop is, it's a very busy spot off of Interstate 90 in Montana. It has a diner inside and lots of parking for truckers and travelers for people to rest if they need a break.

Today the store has been renamed as a Flying J gas station, and millions of people travel by here every year on their way to enter Yellowstone. It's not a remote area. After the sheriff's office gets this call from Rene, they make a drive out to the truck stop to try and locate Brad or Larry. And right when they pull up, they find Brad's car parked in the parking lot of the store. By the time they locate it, though, it's evening, hours after Brad had left the high school that morning. Deputies thought it was weird that Brad hadn't returned to his car by now, and as

more time passed, he never did come back for it. Everything about him being missing felt wrong, both to his family and to law enforcement. Brad was not a lone wolf type person. He was well known and had a lot going on in his life. At only 38 years old, he'd been a former Gallatin County Sheriff's deputy, which is why the department knew him better than most people. Brad and his wife, Renie, owned a little restaurant in the town of West Yellowstone called Silver Spur Cafe. When he wasn't overseeing

things there, he worked part-time as a PE teacher and basketball coach at the high school. Even though he had enjoyed his time in law enforcement for five years, Brad left that life in the late 1970s once he started a family, and he decided his time was best dedicated to being a teacher. So him just vanishing was incredibly out of the norm. Pretty much from the moment they find his car, deputies were playing catch-up because several hours had passed between Brad leaving the high school and being reported missing. The next place they'd go after leaving the truck stop was to talk with Larry Moore at his home in West Yellowstone. They figured since Brad was said to be visiting with him

that morning, they were hopeful Larry would be able to provide them with some sort of information. Larry tells police that he had not called Brad to help him with anything. In fact, Larry said it was Brad who initiated the meeting at all. He said that morning, Brad had met him at the truck stops diner and they'd eaten breakfast together.

Larry said he was disturbed by Brad's behavior at the diner because it appeared that his friend had been drinking and was very distraught. After they ate their food, Larry says he paid the bill and then he looked around and saw Brad outside climbing into a red car on the interstate. He said that car was being driven by a woman, but it wasn't Brad's wife. After hearing this story, deputies were even more confused, but they put out a request for more information from the public. After they did this, it wasn't hard to get people to come forward with information. Brad was a pretty well-known guy in the town, and there was only about a thousand residents. Everybody knew everybody there, so

when he disappeared, this story was big news. People wanted to know what happened. Two people come forward and they tell deputies that they saw Brad driving up to the Gallatin Canyon area toward the truck stop that morning. But they never saw him drive back down. Now, I couldn't find a lot of other information about these witnesses and where they were and when. But either they saw him leave the high school and head towards Belgrade or were somewhere on that drive along the interstate and they were able to see him pass by leaving town but not returning. After these two witnesses come forward, even more people contact the police to let them know they'd seen Larry on November 9th and he was driving his pickup truck and camper

into town, headed away from the truck stop back towards West Yellowstone. As they're piecing all of this information together, the investigators learn that Brad and 43-year-old Larry were hunting partners and fellow businessmen and friends. Both men were known around town, Larry especially, because he'd worked in the area most of his life and built from nothing his waste disposal and excavation company. Larry had made a name for himself by growing his construction teams and buying up properties to turn into gravel pits. That kind of business in rural mountainous Montana was very lucrative. But despite all of his successes and notoriety,

by November of 1990, Larry's marriage to his wife Shelly was deteriorating, and the two had separated. Brad and Rene, on the other hand, had a very good marriage and overall happy family life. Deputies start talking to more and more people as they start looking into the backgrounds of these men. One of Larry's employees at his construction shop told investigators that he remembered around 1 o'clock in the afternoon Brad disappeared, he got a call from Larry asking him to start up a piece of excavation equipment. And the employee did what his boss asked. He pulled the backhoe around to the front of the shop and left it there for Larry. This worker said that Larry came to the construction shop shortly after 1 o'clock and then left the area with the backhoe 30 minutes later.

A few hours after that, around 3 o'clock in the afternoon, this employee saw the backhoe parked back in the parking lot of the shop. Larry wasn't seen again at the shop until 5 o'clock that evening. The worker didn't know what to make of the events, but felt that detectives should know about it. Based on this and other circumstances, law enforcement's investigation started to closely focus on Larry. He was believed to be the last person to see Brad. Investigators looking into the two men's lives learned that Larry had recently been hospitalized after suffering a nervous breakdown. When they asked his family and friends why he had had this mental collapse, they told detectives because he

believed that his estranged wife Shelly and Brad were having an affair. Shelly Moore, who was currently separated from Larry, was the coach of the girls' basketball team at the high school, and Brad coached the men's teams. And according to the Forensic Files episode, when investigators questioned Brad's wife, Rene, about a possible affair between Shelly and Brad. She said she didn't think one was even possible or going on at all. Shelly also denied any inappropriate involvement with Brad, but indicated that Larry had been talking for months that there was. Shelly said she ultimately had to separate from Larry because of his delusional accusations and problems with domestic

abuse. Shelly and Larry had separated just two days before Brad went missing, and she told detectives outright that they needed to press Larry for more information. She said he might know what happened to Brad, and he could have even done something to him. As detectives kept after Larry, they kept getting the same story from him, that he hadn't seen Brad. So they brought him in for a formal interview at the sheriff's office. At this point, it's November 23rd, two weeks after Brad disappeared. During this interview with Larry, he's alone without a lawyer. After they read him his Miranda rights, the officers start by telling him that they had a search warrant for his camper. Right away, Larry asks for his attorney and attempts to shut down the interview,

but authorities continue to press him with questions. Larry again refuses to answer their questions and asks for an attorney, but the officers still didn't comply. Feeling the pressure and realizing he wasn't getting the lawyer he was asking for, for some reason, Larry still decides to talk. He tells the officers that in his camper recently, he had shot a rat and said that they would find bullet holes and possibly bullet fragments when and if they searched the camper. He even offered to give authorities the pistol he used to shoot this rat. After providing this information, Larry again asks for an attorney, and the interview finally ends. After that, a police officer from West Yellowstone drives Larry home

and retrieves the pistol he shot the rat with, and then the officer leaves. That same night, Larry returns to the police station, looking for some of his personal items that he'd left in a patrol car. While inside the station, the Gallatin County Sheriff started questioning him again about the rat shooting story. He asked Larry to draw a diagram of how he shot the rat, where he was in the camper, and where the rat was. Basically, a crime scene chart for what happened. Larry reluctantly made the drawing for the Sheriff and then left. Right after this, police receive a letter at the station, a letter that was sent from Brad. Police are sort of dumbfounded by this letter initially, and as they read it, it says it's from

Brad, and he assures them that he's alive and well and living in Washington state. The weird thing was, though, was that this letter had a lot of misspelled words in it, and it referenced people in position with the sheriff's office who were given the wrong titles. For example, the letter writer wrote a congratulations to the sheriff for his appointed position, but at that time, the sheriff in Gallatin County was an elected position. position. But at that time, the sheriff in Gallatin County was an elected position. These kinds of red flags made investigators suspect that the letter was a fake, but they couldn't prove it yet. Their suspicions were mounting that something bad had actually happened to Brad, and he wasn't just off in Washington State living a new life.

Deputies made a move, and they executed their search warrant for Larry's pickup truck and his camper. When they opened up his truck, they found the inside was extremely clean, like it had been recently detailed. But when they looked inside the camper, they found a trove of suspicious evidence. For starters, there were three bullet holes under the interior step of the camper where someone had fired a gun. They also found a piece of what they believed to be human tissue on a curtain inside. Next, they recovered a bullet fragment with blood on it, and they found bloodstains throughout the camper. These stains looked like someone had attempted to remove or destroy them.

Detectives thought back to the story Larry had told them about trying to kill that rat, Detectives thought back to the story Larry had told them about trying to kill that rat, but they felt like the scene they were looking at was overkill for some sort of duel with a rodent. They were sure that they were looking at a crime scene. As police are about to confront Larry with this evidence, they received another letter sent from Washington State, and the writer again claimed to be Brad. In the second letter, Brad apologized for being a strain on everyone he knew. He claimed he disappeared because he was starting a new life and needed to make a clean break from anyone and everything in order to start fresh. He claimed it was the only

way out for him and he was thankful that he had a new wonderful woman in his life to help him start over. Immediately following the second letter sent to police, Larry reported that he'd gotten a letter from Brad too. In this letter, Brad wrote to ask him to make sure Rene was taken care of. Larry's letter read that Brad wrote that he wanted Rene to have all of their personal property and that he was starting a new life with a new person. Just like in the first letter sent to police, authorities noticed odd red flags in the alleged letter Brad had written to Larry. For example, Rene's name was misspelled as Renee. This was a huge mistake to investigators. If Brad

was the actual author of this letter to Larry, there was no way he would have misspelled his own wife's name. They got all of the letters together and tested them with chemicals to try and find fingerprints, but they didn't find any. None for Brad and none for Larry. But that didn't stop the investigators from suspecting Larry had written these mystery letters. They turned to a forensic document examiner for help, and when this guy looked at the letters, he noticed that they were both typed with the same typewriter. The only thing handwritten on the documents was Brad's signature. The analyst determined that the handwriting was done by someone who was writing

very slowly and whose hand wasn't moving a lot. The expert compared the signatures on the letters to some documents and greeting cards that they knew Brad had actually signed prior to his disappearance. And wouldn't you know it, the handwriting didn't match. The expert noted that Brad typically connected a lot of his letters in the same way with larger block print letters, including his own signature. The letters that they were testing were signed in cursive, but a sort of rehearsed cursive. The handwriting expert told investigators that the signatures looked more like drawing or art than a genuine cursive signature. So on December 1st, 1990, the authorities brought Larry back in for more questioning, but this time he had retained an attorney, and heeding the advice of his lawyer, Larry admitted that he lied about shooting the rat

in his camper. He told officers that on the morning of November 9th, he had actually found Brad inside of his camper that was parked near the truck stop, and Brad was armed with a pistol. He said Brad was in a suicidal state and had been drinking. Larry tells detectives that Brad was waving the gun around, and in an attempt to help his friend calm down, Larry reached for the gun. But that's when the two of them wrestled for it, and it discharged. Larry said the bullet that came out grazed Brad's head and wounded him, but it wasn't a deadly shot. Larry says after this shot goes off, Brad made him promise not to tell anyone what had happened. Larry says he left the camper

to go to the truck stop and get something to help Brad clean up. But when he came back, Brad had left. Larry said he turned around to look down the road and that's when he saw Brad on the on-ramp of the interstate getting into that red car with the woman behind the wheel. Now, police didn't believe everything Larry was telling them because his story had significantly changed than from the first time they talked to him. So two weeks later, the district attorney announces that they're charging Larry with Brad's murder. And shortly after that, they added on two more charges for tampering with and fabricating evidence. But the big problem with getting these charges to stick was finding Brad's body and proving that he was in fact dead and had been murdered by Larry. While prosecutors are building their case, Larry's attorneys get him out on bond

and argued that law enforcement should not have any access to his personal or business properties. The judge didn't agree, though, and granted authorities search warrants to look at the land that Larry owned, including dozens of gravel pits in Gallatin County and West Yellowstone. Over a period of a few weeks, authorities began extensive searches for Brad, specifically focusing on those gravel pits that Larry owned as part of his excavation company. They ran into some serious problems, though. That winter, massive amounts of snow and ice fell in southern Montana, and there were several times they had to call off the searches due to bad weather. They would often pick them back up, but only get a single day of work in before they had

to call it off again. They were dealing with sub-zero temperatures, with wind chill temps at times being 30 degrees below zero. That's really cold. The Billings Gazette reported that Gallatin County Sheriff Lieutenant Bob Pearson told reporters they closely wanted to inspect one of Larry's gravel pits, seven miles north of West Yellowstone. This property was called Bozeman Sand and Gravel, and they believed that Larry had accessed his company's backhoe, and at that site, he could have dug a hole up to 18 feet deep if he wanted to. As Pearson and his team worked against the bad weather days, they scraped up that location one foot of dirt at a time. They concentrated on a flat area because they knew if Larry had been on a backhoe, he would have had to been operating it on fairly level

ground. Every time they would unearth a single layer, they would stop and let cadaver dogs down into the dirt to see if they could pick up a scent. As many as five dogs from the Yellowstone National Park Search and Rescue Canine Unit were used in this search. But as they got further and further into the pit, some of the dogs had to be sent elsewhere in the country for searches, and the team looking for Brad was left with just one dog. Day after day, weather conditions worsened and eventually 20 mile per hour winds and the sub-zero temperatures made it impossible to use the dog anymore. The canine handler said the frigid temperatures actually would keep a body from decomposing and deteriorating, which prevents the dog from picking up on a cadaver's scent. The constant winds also

quickly whisked away any sort of decomposition scent that remains would leave behind. Lieutenant Pearson told local reporters that the work was hard, and after several failed attempts to get results, the sheriff's office decided to just wait until the spring and thaw before they could look anymore. He said the task to find Brad's body was emotional because Brad had been a deputy. He would often help Pearson do similar searches with dogs, and the irony of it all just brought him to tears. While all these searches are going on,

Brad's wife, Rainey, filed a wrongful death suit seeking damages from Larry. That suit claimed that Larry had wrongfully caused the death of Brad, but Larry's attorney dismissed the suit, saying he had no idea what she was doing because they couldn't prove Brad was even dead. To make things even more complicated, Larry's attorneys filed motions for a change of venue in the trial, somewhere outside of Gallatin County. They also requested a gag order prohibiting the release of any information regarding the pending trial, which the judge agreed to. These lawyers felt the small population of West Yellowstone and the law enforcement officers who worked there would hurt Larry's chances of getting a fair trial.

Prosecutors reluctantly agreed to all of these requests because they felt confident they had a rock-solid forensic case against Larry. Before the gag order went into effect, the district attorney announced it would take several months to complete forensic testing on samples of blood and tissue retrieved from Larry's camper. Those samples would prove that Larry was a killer and that Brad was in fact dead. As their ace in the hole, prosecutors had a piece of tissue that they'd found on the curtain inside of Larry's camper, and they sent that to the Montana State Crime Lab. Technicians there determined that it was human muscle tissue. The lab divided the tissue into three pieces and sent the sections to two outside analysis centers, but they kept one portion for themselves. All of the facilities worked to try and identify the tissue as coming from Brad. They were looking for DNA in the muscle fibers and comparing that to Brad's kids. Because they didn't have Brad's body to compare the tissue samples to, they needed

samples from the next best source, which was his kids. When the results came back, the tissue found in the camper matched with high statistical probability that it was from the biological father of Brad's children. Investigators also looked closely at the bloodstains they'd found on the underside of the camper's step, and the crime lab found another small piece of tissue there, literally the size of a pinhead. The tissue tissue size was a challenge for the forensic techs, but after consulting with a neuropathologist, they determined the tiny sample was actually brain matter. And it wasn't just any kind of brain matter. It was brain tissue that comes from a very specific place in the human body, the cerebellum. The cerebellum controls

the human heart, the cardiovascular system, and the neuromuscular system, and it sits at the base of the skull. DNA from that tissue in the camper came back with the same results as the muscle tissue before. It was a match for Brad. So with this, by the time prosecutors went to trial in November 1992, they had decided to drop some evidence tampering charges and just go after Larry for murder. The state argued Larry's motive for killing Brad was that he suspected Brad was having an affair with his estranged wife, Shelly. I think it's important to note here, too, that the DNA prosecutors had and built their case on was the first time in

Montana's history that DNA evidence was used at trial to try and convict someone of murder. It was also the first murder case in Montana's history to ever be tried without a body. And that was really the hardest part about this case. Despite having good evidence with the DNA results from Larry's camper, the biggest hurdle for the prosecution was that they still didn't know where Brad's body was. They could prove forensically that he likely was dead, but they couldn't produce a body. They were also unable to locate the gun for the.357 Magnum caliber bullets they felt confident had been used in the shooting. So their entire forensic angle of the case hinged on the blood and tissue samples they had found from the camper.

Those samples proved that Brad had been in there and he'd been injured and bleeding. They also presented evidence that Larry had used a typewriter inside of Brad's office in town to write those bogus letters. They also said that he was the one that had forged the signatures on them. But on the other side of this, for the defense, Larry's attorneys argued that Brad was still alive and well. They presented evidence to support that Brad had left his life. They claimed prosecutors were trying to blame their client for Brad's voluntary disappearance. They strongly tried to push the idea that Brad was not dead, and that's why prosecutors couldn't find his body, because there wasn't one. All of this back and forth made for a very high-profile trial,

and during it, Brad's family and many of the spectators in the courtroom dressed in black. They wore black ribbons to signify they believed Brad was dead. Attendees of the trial supporting Brad's family told reporters they were dressed that way to remind Larry that he was a murderer. Larry's attorneys used people's mourning garb as a means to say that jurors were prejudiced against Larry from the start. These attorneys also pointed out a big error on law enforcement's part early on in this case. His lawyer criticized how Gallatin County Sheriff's detectives had overseen Larry's first interrogation. Because remember, Larry asked for legal counsel twice, but he was never given it. And ultimately, the trial judge ruled that Larry's November 23rd interview and everything that he'd

said to investigators about shooting the rat in the camper had to be thrown out. It had to be that way because the cops didn't stop questioning him after he asked for an attorney. So that interview, the pistol they collected from the camper, and the rat shooting diagram were all unusable. But Larry's second interrogation on December 1st was allowed at trial. It was in that meeting that he did have his attorney present, and he willingly offered a new version of events, a story that placed Brad inside of his camper when a gun went off, even if, as Larry claimed, it was an accidental shooting. And in rare form, Larry's defense attorneys made a bold move. They allowed him to take the stand

in his own defense. He said that he met Brad at the truck stop around 10.30 in the morning on November 9th, and Brad was upset, talking about how he wanted to leave his wife and family. Larry says after that conversation, they both rode together in his pickup truck to a hardware store. They picked up batteries and came back to the truck stop. That's when they ate breakfast together, and Larry paid the bill. While he was cashing out, Brad had left and when Larry returned to his camper, he found him inside with the pistol in his hand. Larry said when he walked into his camper, he smelled gunpowder and looked down at a magazine on the seat. He saw that Brad had

fired a round into a picture of a deer on the front of the magazine. Larry said Brad told him he, quote, had to do something and that's why he shot the picture. Larry denied killing Brad and claimed that when he entered his camper, his friend was already in a suicidal state. He maintained that Brad pointed the gun at himself, and when they went to struggle for it, it went off, and the bullet struck Brad superficially on the side of his head. Larry said that many times before, Brad had expressed that he was unhappy with his life, with his marriage, and he planned to disappear and escape. Larry said when he returned from the truck stop to get some water to help Brad clean up, he was gone, and with him he'd taken a

camouflage jacket, a gun, and a first aid kit. Larry's testimony on the stand was one of the last that jurors would hear. The case went to them for deliberation, and on November 19, 1992, they came back with a guilty verdict. Larry was facing a maximum sentence of life in prison. Two months after his conviction, Larry's lawyers filed an appeal asking for a new trial. asking for a new trial. His attorney wrote in his motion that the public's display of mourning and all of that black clothing in the courtroom prevented Larry from receiving a fair trial. He said that the public's display biased the jury against his client because it would make them think that Brad was dead. He said that despite everything presented at trial, prosecutors failed to prove that Brad was dead. The appeal also argued that

one of the female jurors on the case had formulated her own opinions of Larry, and she voiced that in deliberations, which is a big no-no. But despite all of this, the judge denied the request, and in June 1993, Larry was sentenced to 60 years in state prison. Obviously, the prosecution wasn't thrilled by this ruling. They had asked the judge that Larry be given 110 years, essentially life in prison. They also wanted him labeled as a dangerous offender, but the judge denied classifying Larry as such and only gave him the 60 years behind bars. Prosecutors had also asked that Larry not be allowed parole, but that too was denied. After the sentencing, prosecutors told reporters that Larry's case was the first time in recent Montana history that a defendant who was convicted of deliberate homicide

wasn't classified as a dangerous criminal. The defense was fine with this sentence because they were able to ensure that Larry would get a shot at parole. This meant that it was possible he could be released on good behavior in as few as 10 to 12 years. But the judge was very clear in his ruling. He wasn't siding with Larry by any means.

He stated that Larry's actions could not be accepted or excused, saying, quote, "'With this single act of violence, the defendant took the life of another and destroyed himself. But the story of Larry Moore is far from over at this point. He was without a doubt a convicted murderer, but Larry was about to face a handful of federal charges, ones that would have nothing to do with the murder of Brad and everything to do with an entirely different side to this diabolical killer that state prosecutors tried to warn everyone about.

In early November 1994, Larry was serving his time at Montana State Prison in a city called Deer Lodge. The warden at that penitentiary, a man named Mickey Gamble, allowed Larry to serve on an inmate advisory council. One of the requirements of this role was that you had to be an offender that admitted to your crime, and you had to promise to have a positive influence on other prisoners. You were supposed to share your story of remorse while you were incarcerated. Well, despite never admitting his guilt and still claiming Brad was alive somewhere and never apologizing for what he'd been convicted of doing, Larry somehow made it onto this inmate committee because Warden Gamble had signed off on it. And it's worth noting here that there might have been something fishy about Gamble. There was an investigation into him that revealed that on many occasions,

he got really close with some of the prisoners he oversaw. According to reports from the Associated Press published in January 1995, Mickey Gamble resigned as prison warden in November of 94 because he was caught taking a murderer and two other inmates from the prison out to dinner. After he stepped down, the inmate advisory council Larry was on was disbanded, and people like Larry went back to being treated just like every other inmate. Just a few weeks after this, staff at the prison uncovered a plan that a group of prisoners had hatched to detonate a prison-made bomb at the

new warden's office. The plan was thwarted and Larry, along with a few others, was found to be the builder and planter of the bomb, which was secured above the new warden's office. After his conviction for this plot, one of Larry's conspirators said he and Larry had decided to make the bomb and place it in the new warden's office so that they could later tip off authorities and become heroes. They both wanted a reward of early release or at least a better stay in their accommodations while in prison. The warden whose life was spared, a man named Mike Mahoney, was quoted as saying, Moore is one of the more sophisticated intellectual sociopaths that I've dealt with in my entire career in the corrections system. According to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, one of the suspected

reasons investigators believed Larry became involved in the bombing plot was because longtime warden Mickey Gamble was forced to step down from his role as warden, and under that warden, Larry had received better treatment and a pretty cushy life behind bars. When Mike Bohoney took the job, Larry was given a different classification in the prison and put in a more restricted area. Larry later told investigators that the bombing was all his cellmate, Greg Carpenter's, idea. He told authorities that their bomb-making materials consisted of an alarm clock, a nine-volt battery, some wiring, and a toothpaste tube stuffed full of match heads. Larry and Carpenter hid the bomb in the liner of the cell's garbage can, but when it was time to execute their plan, it was Greg who had planted it in the ceiling tiles above the warden's office.

Their plan was for the bomb to go off at two o'clock in the afternoon on January 17, 1995. At that time, the guards would be in a shift change, but Larry said his cellmate noticed one of the ceiling tiles he'd moved didn't go down all the way, so he climbed on top of a piece of furniture to adjust it. And that's when a guard spotted him and called for help. Their plot had been foiled, and federal investigators charged the men for conspiracy, bomb-making, and all sorts of bad things. Once these new federal charges were filed against him, Larry did a complete 180 and confessed to murdering Brad Brisbane. He did this despite claiming innocence throughout his entire 1992 murder trial. this despite claiming innocence throughout his entire 1992 murder trial. In exchange for his confession, federal authorities would dismiss five federal charges against him for his plot in the

prison bomb scheme. The compromise meant Larry had to lead investigators to Brad's body. He agreed, and in August of 1995, led detectives to his company's gravel pit seven miles north of West Yellowstone. This was the same spot that authorities had always suspected was used as Brad's gravesite. The same spot Lieutenant Pearson had spent weeks with cadaver dogs battling frigid temperatures and winds in 1990. The site was excavated and Larry pointed to an area with just a little bit of digging authorities found Brad's body.

It was an intact, full set of skeletal remains buried five feet beneath the ground. This specific spot was just a few hundred yards from where teams with the canine units had extensively searched three years earlier. The remains showed that Brad had been shot multiple times in the head and upper back. Larry also told police where to find that.357 caliber revolver he'd used to shoot his friend. It was buried at the base of a tree in a campground just outside of town in Gallatin Canyon. Larry went on to tell investigators that he'd driven his camper and pickup truck to the gravel pit the night of the murder, and that's when he buried Brad using the backhoe he borrowed from his company's construction yard. As part of this plea deal, state prosecutors who'd put him away for murder

gave up their right to oppose Larry getting parole for his 60-year murder sentence. All of the federal charges against Larry were dismissed, and he was moved to a different prison in Oregon. After this revelation of what really had happened to Brad, Larry's defense attorneys, who had vehemently represented him during trial, told reporters they were absolutely shocked to find out their client had been lying to them. They had defended him for five years based on the fact that Larry told them he had no knowledge that Brad was dead. His lead attorney was quoted by the Billings Gazette as saying,

it's a sad deal. You spend five years busting a gut to defend the guy based on the fact that there's no body, and then he comes forward. Larry's full confession and finding Brad's body brought a lot of sense of healing back to the town of West Yellowstone. Some people there had been split by the trial. Rumors that Brad was possibly out there living a new life swirled for several years, and those who couldn't believe Larry would kill him finally had to face the truth. A lot of residents felt like despite Larry being in prison, the book was never closed on what had happened to Brad. In 2000, the Montana State Parole Board rejected Larry's request to be let out early. The board's reasoning was based on strong opposition

from the Brisbane family and law enforcement. They noted that Larry had failed to ever accept responsibility for what he'd done, and he's never said why he killed Brad, or provided any context of what exactly happened in the camper that day. Larry's second request for parole in 2009 was also rejected. But right around this time, the Montana state legislature passed a law that reduces lengthy prison sentences for offenders who exhibit good behavior. Larry, for some reason, was considered one of those prisoners, according to Montana's Department of Corrections, and his 60-year sentence was reduced in half to just 30 years. Now, I have no idea how or why Larry qualified for this new law, considering he not only denied guilt for so many years, but actually did the very opposite of what good behavior is while in prison. He

attempted to blow up the warden of his prison after just two and a half years incarcerated, and not to mention he roped in other inmates to help him. That does not seem like something a reformed prisoner would do, but Montana's laws are what they are, and Larry got a reduced sentence, meaning he would be released in January of 2023. But in May of 2020, Larry was granted parole. The state of Montana requires him provide information about where he plans to live, where he plans to work, and how he plans to contribute to society. An official date on when he'll walk out of prison hasn't been set. To be continued... Sound design by David Flowers, with production assistance from Alyssa Gastola. You can find all of our source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com. So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?