Reply All - #65 On the Inside, Part II

Episode Date: May 19, 2016

Blogger Paul Modrowski is in prison for a murder he claims that he didn't commit. This week, producer Sruthi Pinnamaneni looks at Paul's life before his conviction, and the crime that landed him behind bars. On the Inside, Part I Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldberg. This week, the second part of On the Inside, a story by Reply All producer Shruthy Pinminani. If you haven't heard part one, go back to last two weeks' episode and listen to it right now. But here is a quick refresher. In February of last year,

Shruthi found a blog that was written by a man in a maximum security prison in Illinois. His name is Paul Madrowski. Shruthy spoke to Paul on the phone just to sort of understand how he's writing a blog from a maximum security prison. And their conversations turned into a weekly routine. And at a certain point, Shruthy began to wonder about his case. Paul is autistic, and he claims that his autism played a big role in his conviction.

And he says that he's serving a life sentence for a murder that he didn't commit. So Shruthy started to investigate. Here she is. So I started to look into Paul's criminal case this past September, and it has taken me to all these different weird places that I never thought I would go. Maybe the best place to start is in the fall of 1988. Paul was 13, and he was a freshman at a new school, Westmont High. This is in the Chicago suburbs. And Paul was starting this semester with a resolution.

From here on out, everything was going to be. be totally different. Not the way it was in junior high. I tried really hard in junior high to fit in and be popular, but it just wasn't me. I can't do that. I can't, I can't, I just can't be that per school. I just went the opposite way. I was going to do it my way. I was going to be me, regardless of how it affected other people. I had more of a McAvel here than loved. I didn't want everyone to love me and be my friend. He wasn't trying to fit in anymore, but still, Still, Paul just hated every single minute of school. I hated being around all the people.

Did you have a way of dealing with it when you were in high school? Like, what was your coping mechanism? My coping mechanism was to get out of my way. And after a while, I just got used to. Like, actually shove them? Like, use your hands and shove them. Yes, I'd actually shove them out of my way, especially if they bumped into me, then I might punch them. That's crazy. Yeah, I guess I didn't make a lot of friends.

I wondered if Paul was exaggerating when he said this kind of stuff. But then I talked to a woman named Lisa, who actually went to high school with him. And she says, yes, this is true. When Paul would walk the hallway, all the students would just move out of his way. At some point, I asked one of my friends to say, who is that? And she said, oh, that's Satan. And I said, what? She said, no, no, that's what he calls himself.

And what did you think of him calling himself Satan? Does that seem like, I don't know, sort of a high school type act? It felt very clear he wanted to be intimidating. And he was. So Paul didn't like the kids at school. They didn't like him. But that didn't stop him from showing up at the occasional party where he'd basically stand around. And that's how a year later, he finds his crowd.

How did you meet Brian? That's an interest to this party. and Brian happened to be there, and he wagered me for money. And I won the bet, and then he gave me the money, and I gave it back to him because it was just, I felt bad about taking his money. Brian was 19 years old, out of school, worked as a cook at a ribs joint, but on the side, he was a bookie, taking sports bets. Brian liked Paul, so he took him under his wing, and in turn introduced him to this other guy named Bob Farachi.

Remember that name. Because Bob Frotchy is the guy that Paul blames for everything that has gone wrong in his life. Bob was 25, so seven years older than Paul. He'd just come out of jail for selling cocaine. And to Paul, he was everything that Paul was not. People probably think of me as a very serious, boring and but intense person. And Bob is more, he's extroverted, he's saying he's unvoyance, he can be. He's a funny guy.

Remember of Goodfellows were the guys talking about Joe Pesci. He's a funny guy, and Joe Pesci is messing with him about, what do you mean by that funny guy? More about like, I'm a fucking clown. I amused you. He reminds me a lot of Joe Pesci from the movie Goodfellows. I asked the Assistant State's attorney from back then, James McKay, about Bob Fratchie, and he says this guy was just a poser. If you saw Robert Farachi, you understand what Robert Fratchi is all.

about he's a thief. He's a little punk. He's a little pathetic excuse for a man. He's, I don't know, 5'4, 5, 5, 5, maybe in heels. And what about Brian Pallazano? His name is Brian Pallaz. But at the time, he thought he was a wise guy. He was a wannabe wise guy.

and he changed his name to Briante Palazano. But he didn't have a drop of Italian blood in his veins. He was really nothing more than a phony. Paul says pretty soon, instead of going to school, he was hanging out with Bob and Brian. These guys loved mob movies. Goodfellas, Godfather. And Bob and Brian were always fantasizing about living that life.

And they're actually doing a lot of the things they're seeing in those movies. Things like gambling, burglaries, a thousand little scams. I tried every which way to reach Brian and Bob for this story. I sent letters, emails, and I never heard back. So everything here is based off of police statements, records, and interviews with people who knew them back then. And from all of that, here's what I think that Bob and Brian saw in Paul. He's a serious guy, straight edge. He doesn't drink or do drugs.

He's young, but he's six foot three and muscular. And they liked having him around during business deals. He'd sit in the corner and look all intimidating. And sometimes they would send him out to collect debts from gamblers. Would you go with a gun or did you just go? No, actually, I don't think I ever used a gun. Sometimes though I would have like some numtucks. or a nightstick.

Numbchucks. Numbchucks. I like numchucks. I guess what? Sometimes I listen to your stories and I myself forget what's normal. Like, you know, you're in high school. Most of the people your age

have jobs helping out at their dad's lawnmower business or something. And you're like going around with numchucks and trying to get people to pay up gambling debts. Did it ever seem like weird to you? Probably unlike a lot of other 15-year-olds. I had been fighting throughout most of my childhood.

I've been in fights with other kids, and then I've been beating them up all throughout school. And when Brian was like, hey, why don't you do this for money? Why do you get in all these fights and you even get paid? He's like, and so every now and then, I would collect for people that that owed money. The way Paul talks about this whole period of his life with Bob and Brian, there's a nostalgia to it.

It's as if it's the first time anyone really appreciated him, but not for the reasons you might expect. They couldn't trust each other because they're a bunch of con artists, so that give me all the money to hold. So I'd have thousands of dollars on me, and they knew that they could always depend on me, never could blow the money on myself or give the money to anyone else. I remember Bob Farage, he would even trust himself with his own gambling. He'd call me on the phone and say, Paul, come over here right away. I'm up like $5,000 and I don't want to blow it. And I'd go over there to the racetrack and I'd hold down to his winnings. You tell me beforehand, now, don't get me any of my winnings back, no matter how much I plead for it.

I'd say, all right, you're not getting him back. You've got to work on what you got left. So Paul, Bob, and Brian, that's the crew. That's Paul's inner circle. But there's one other guy I've got to tell you about. His name is Dean Fawcett. He was kind of like a mild-mannered meek, a young man. That's state's attorney McKay again.

No altar boy, mind you, okay, but clearly not a leader and was led astray by stronger personalities. I've seen photos of Dean from back then. He's this guy in his early 20s, baby-faced, big smile, and glasses. Paul didn't really care much for him. I never actually wanted to hang out with being. I don't. I didn't like being that much. I don't.

He's kind of like a stoner kite. And I just, I was pretty much only around him when he was with Brian. Bosset got from hanging around with us. Well, he thought we were the greatest things in the world. Because at that point, this crew, They were tough guys. They carried guns. They beat up people.

And Dean, he'd been arrested a couple times, but just for minor stuff. His thing was stealing checks from people and then trying to buy stuff. It almost seemed like a compulsion for Dean. In fact, one day when Paul was 17, he brought Dean and Brian over to his parents' house. They hung out for a bit. And then Paul's friends took off. Later that day, Paul's mother was paying bills, and she noticed something weird. I realized, and they had checks

right away. And they told me that Dean had bought almost $2,600 worth of stuff. He'd even tried to buy a car with one of our checks. Right away, she called Paul. He couldn't believe it.

How did you feel about the fact that Dean had stolen the checks? He possessed. That's not what I felt. Stealing, that's disrespectful. He goes into my parent's study and steals checks. That's like stealing for me. The cops arrested.

to Dean and then he turned around and blamed Paul. He said Paul had given him those checks. So soon enough, the cops came for Paul. Linda decided she didn't want to get her son into trouble. So she dropped all the charges against Dean and Paul. Now, in a lot of groups of friends, these two probably would never have spoken again. But these were not normal friends. Paul says Brian steps in and he ends up acting as a peacemate.

He gets Dean to give Paul some money to patch things up, and they forget all about it. That's what Paul says. But this little question, whether Paul actually forgave Dean, ends up mattering in a big, big way, two years later. So, flash forward, two years. It's December 1992. It's right after Paul's 18th birthday. Paul gets into a huge fight with his dad over the fact that he's coming home late every night, and he ends up just walking out of his parents' house.

He moves in with Bob Frazzi and Bob's wife, Rose. And then the whole group, they go on a little crime spree. I let Assistant State's Attorney McKay explain. Paul Medrowski, Robert Farachi, Robert Farachie's wife, Dean Fawcett, and two other individuals, one of whom was a young lady, were involved together in going to various retail stores around the Chicagoland area and buying items with bogus checks, checks they had stolen from a number of people. It was Christmas time, and we went shopping, and we all received some gifts from Dean Fawcett.

Like, for example, we were at a mall one time, and he bought me some. Are you into Terminator glasses? Are you like a Schwarzenegger fan? I was a Schwarzenegger fan when I was a kid. I just liked his attitude. He made a number of really good movies in the beginning. And when I was a child, I kind of looked up to them. So they bought all kinds of jewelry and all kinds of retail items from some high-end stores, writing bad checks for all of them. By the end of the week, Dean and his crew had stolen $13,000 worth of stuff, silverware, sunglasses, and necklaces and teddy bears for this girl, Nadine, that Dean was trying to impress, a leather trench coat for Paul.

And how did you feel when you guys were doing this? Like, was it fun? Was it fun shopping? I hate shopping. Right, but, you know, you knew the checks were bad, right? It's just Dean Fawcett being Dean Fawcett, writing bad checks. Okay, he's bouncing checks off as a cop. What's new?

Dean wanted to celebrate this successful spree they'd been on. So he rented an enormous suite at the Ramada Inn. And this, this would be the last time. they'd all be together. So you guys go back to the hotel room and then what? I can't really, you ask me these questions like I should know and that I'm being dishonest by by hesitating, but this is so long ago. I've asked Paul many, many times to recount for me the details of that evening.

And he always says everyone was hanging out. Things seemed normal. Here's what Paul says he remembers. The guys, they were all hanging out in the room. and Paul, he goes downstairs where there's an Olympic-sized pool. It's empty, it's Christmas time, and he remembers just swimming, lap after lap, after lap. He goes back to the room, stays there that night.

Brian and I woke up early, and we're getting ready to leave. And we asked Dean, Dean's laying in bed. He stayed up all night. This is your last chance. You want to leave? You want to ride? And he's like, no, no. So we leave.

That brings us to the second week of January 1993. I mentioned this in part one of our story. This is the week of the most horrific murders the Chicago area has seen in decades. The first is a mass shooting at a chicken restaurant in the suburb of Palatine. Police are still searching for clues in this weekend's bizarre mass murder. A door to the restaurant was open. The victims were mostly high school students who worked there at night. Somebody went into a fried chicken restaurant, shot the seven people who worked there, and put their bodies in a freezer.

No clues. All the blood in the restaurant had been meticulously mopped up. And nobody had any idea why somebody would do this. The overwhelming emotion in Palestine is still fear because the killer or killers have not been caught. And then 10 days later, a mother and daughter in the neighboring suburb of Barrington, they're taking a walk along the rail. railroad tracks, and they come across what looks like a dead animal. And then they realize it's a human body. The body has no head, no left arm, and no right hand.

The medical examiner says that they look as though they've been sawed off by a steady hand. An FBI task force swoops in to investigate, and there, on the body, they find a single clue. Welcome back to the show. We're looking at the case of prison blogger Paul Medrowski. Here's Shruthi. Earlier last month, I went to Chicago to meet Jennifer Blag. Motherfucker, I didn't bring my badge. She's Paul's current attorney.

Oh, it's okay. Oh, okay. We'll just have to go through security. And we went to the courthouse where they keep all the evidence from that body that was found by the train tracks in Barrington. Like, I assume you should know where you're going. So we enter the court. courthouse. We go upstairs to the evidence room where we give the evidence impound manager a form. And he hands us a box. Inside are just folders and folders of legal documents. Some of them tied

together with ribbons. We start flipping through the photos. So this is a, this is when the body was found. It's a snowy view of railroad tracks. And there's a circle in the picture with an arrow, which I'm not sure why I have a feeling. That's where the body. Either the body was or the walker, the person who found the body, probably was saying I was walking here. Continuing to show the direction. There's the body. It's like the ribs. See?

In the picture, there's a body that's half covered in snow. The skin is gone, and it's clearly been out there for a while. How did they find that piece of paper in there? I think it's in the part that's under the snow. Jennifer says the cops end up. up digging the body out of the snow. And then in the pocket of the jeans, they find a slip of paper. It's hotel stationary, and someone has written out in words 100, 100, 1,000.

And then there's two scribbled names, maybe Dean. And on the other side, there's a phone number and a hotel room number. So, yeah, it was Ramada in, room 34. It's like straight out of a bed. cop movie. Yeah, it really is. I mean, it has the room number. You know? Seriously. And they spell 100 wrong. It's classic. The police contact the hotel. They ask who was staying in room 34 on those dates. And they find out it's a woman named Nadine. This is the very same Nadine that Dean Fawcett had been wooing with teddy bears and necklaces. By this point, police had

looked through missing people's reports. And they had a photo of Dean Fawcett, and when they showed it to Nadine, she said, yeah, yeah, that's my friend Dean, and I haven't seen him since December. Nobody has. The cops called Dean's mother, and they do a DNA test, which confirms it. The body by the tracks is Dean Fawcett. And let me just remind you, the cops and FBI, they suspect that the same crazy person who's behind the murders at the chicken restaurant

might be linked to the murder of Dean Fawcett because these two incidents happened so close together in the same time span and so the police, they just pile resources onto the case of Dean Fawcett, more than 100 cops, and

they've got FBI informants looking everywhere for leads. Around that time, Bob Frotchy's wife, Rose, she reaches out to a friend, supposedly a guy with mob connections. She's very, very upset. And she tells him, my husband came home one night, covered in blood. And I think he knows something about that chicken restaurant thing in Palatine. What Rose doesn't realize is that her friend is one of those FBI informants. He tells the FBI,

and days later, the cops arrest Bob Farachi. This is the biggest news across Illinois. It was just everywhere. It was on every channel. Bob Farachi killed being called. And he apparently was connected to the Palatine Massacre in some fashion or he had information about the Palatine Massacre. I just remember it being repeated on every station and seeing him being let out in handcuffs and trying to fight himself. The cops questioned Bob Farachi. And he seems to know everything about that body by the train tracks. And he's willing to show them how the whole thing went down. In that evidence box back at the courthouse, I saw a photo from that day.

It's a police photo. Bob Farachi is standing in a wide open field. He's short, has big, dark eyes. He's wearing a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, sweatpants, and he's pointing out of the frame of the picture, as if to say, over there. Bob leads the cops to the exact spot where Dean's body was found. And then, just nearby, he points them to another place where they feel. find a shovel and a saw. A week after Bob's arrest, Paul is out driving his car, a blue Mustang. He's on the corner of Cicero and Archer, and suddenly, he says, he's ambushed by what

looks like a SWAT team. I had little red dots all over my body. They pulled me out of the car. They shoved me on the ground. I was like, I want attorney immediately. And of course, I was tossed into another car. I was taking to the police station. I was just going to the police station. like, I want an attorney. And they're like, you're never going to see an attorney. And they kept on badgering me about information. And I was like, I'm not talking to you. Not talking to you. I'm not talking to you. I want an attorney. Quickly, cops make clear that they think Paul killed Dean. Not only that, they think he's also behind the chicken restaurant massacre. They question him for two days straight. And the police don't seem to have a motive linking

Paul to the chicken restaurant. But the media runs with it anyway. His psychological profile according to police, that of a brutal killer, whom one detective says is capable of lining up seven people and executing them. A loner, weird, Satan. The name is used to describe the suspect Paul Medrowski by those who knew him. Paul swears up and down. He didn't kill Dean. The Dean was just a guy he barely paid attention to.

But the cops, they say they have a motive for why Paul would have killed Dean. They say that Dean had gotten scared about all. all those bad checks he'd written over Christmas, and that he was going to go to the cops and rat out his friends. And so, the cops say, Paul killed Dean. Go to the cops, this scam. He's the one that write a check. You're not criminally liable for the check.

It's the... Right, but if I could be the cop for a second, right? And I'm... I find, like, Dean, it's like he shows up his dead body with his head and his arms sawed off. I find out that he's been running this check-cashing scheme with you and with Bob Vrachi, and he has this history where he ratted you out before. I don't think it's that crazy to think that you would be involved in his death.

Killing somebody and bidding someone else. You might think of me as maybe a brute, maybe even a violent person at times, but maybe beating up some people is there is no way I would do that with Dean Fawcett. Maybe I didn't like him that much, but killing him. So Paul says that what went through his mind was these cops have nothing but this ridiculous motive that just won't hold up. So he stuck with his line. I want a lawyer. I'm not talking.

But he has a problem. As you've heard, his friend Bob has been talking. And he's been telling the cops lots of things about Paul. At one point, one of those cops, John Coziel, comes into Paul's interrogation room and puts a statement down in front of Paul. check to say about this. Do you want to comment on this? Why don't you talk to us? Look, Bob Vroche has said all these things about you,

and if you don't talk to us, the state's attorney is going to run with it. And so he has me this statements or these reports. And I start leasing through it, and finally, I read like a paragraph here and a paragraph there, and then finally John Colesiel gets kind of upset, and he says, this is all you've got to look at. And you go through the last page and he points out a signature and it says Robert Farachi. And it's like a scruply Robert Farachi signature.

And I'm like, I have no idea if that's a signature. You could have wrote that signature. I don't believe anything you say. That statement, the one Bob apparently signed, says, yes, I, Bob Farachi was there at the scene of the crime, but only as a helpless witness. And Paul and Brian, they forced me to come along. because we wanted him to witness family and everybody he loves. And for some reason, we chose a spot a few blocks away from where he lived all his life. Paul says that at first he just couldn't believe that his friend had said all these things.

But then after a few days, he just had to admit these were Bob's words. And how did you feel then? I was trying to blame me for everything underneath the sun. And I was, I felt so betrayed. I mean, I've done so many things for him. I looked out for him, and he just wanted to shove me under the bus expedience. I mean, I would have never made up this. If I actually committed a murder, not going to blame it on my friends.

That's something I never would even think of. I would even consider the notion. At certain times, believe it or not, I would have taken a bullet for some of my friends. I would die. Not going to throw him underneath the bus. Why do you think that's so important to you? What's that, loyalty? Yeah.

I don't know. I just, you know, mostly of the world, I think of, I don't feel interconnected with a lot of people, but those people that are in my inner circle, I feel a strong, a stronger bond will.

I mean, other people are so fake, I deal with so many fake people. I just, all these people, they don't, they don't think the same way I do. They don't have the same integrity. They put on different faces when they, When they're whipped like in school, they would put on a different face for their friends or when they have a job, they put on a different face. They got all these faces. I'm the same person all the time, whether it's with you, Bob, or the police or anyone. I'm the same person. But is he, though? I mean, in conversations with me, Paul seems totally relentlessly consistent with his stories. But there is evidence that makes me question all of that. People, others, others,

than Bob came forward to the cops. Brian, Nadine, Bob's wife, Rose. All of them told police Paul was definitely involved. They said things like, I overheard Paul say that he wanted to kill Dean. One of them said, you know, the last time I saw Dean alive, he was getting into a car with Bob and Paul. And there were other things. Like right after Dean's murder, Paul and Bob leave town together. They drove to Clearwater, Florida, where they rented an apartment, did a few odd jobs, and lived for a couple months before coming back to Chicago, before they got arrested. Paul swears that the move that was all Bob's idea, he was just tagging along. But there's this one last thing that looks so suspicious. The map.

Police found a map book of the Chicago suburbs when they searched Paul's bedroom. And on the page that showed Barrington, right where Dean's body was found near those railway tracks, there's a mark, like X marks a spot. So all of this looked really incriminating. And Paul and I have gone over these details many times. And no matter how mightily he tries to explain away all this incriminating stuff, I still don't know. I can't know what actually happened that night. There's only one person who knows for sure. He's the one person who says he was there when Dean was murdered.

Next week, on the inside, part three. Bob Farachi speaks. Reply all is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. Our producers are Shruthy Pinnamennan, Fia Bennan, and Chloe Prasinos. Our executive producer is Tim Howard. Our editor is Peter Clowny. Production assistance from Mervyn Degangos and Tom Cody. We were mixed by Rick Kwan.

Special thanks this week to Ily Shoneil, Lisa Cook, John Carpenter, Alex Rodriguez, Diane Dungey, Joseph Shostrum, and a big thanks to Patrick Brown, the coolest impound evidence manager ever. Matt Lieber is a mouse pad with a kitten in a basket on it. Our theme music is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder, and our ad music is by build buildings. You can find more episodes at iTunes.com slash replyall. Our website is replyall.org. This Saturday, May 21st, as part of New York Magazine's Vulture Festival, I will be having a live conversation on stage with comedian Paul Shear, who you might know from the How Did This Get Made podcast, or a million other amazing things. So, there are still tickets available. You can get them by going to the Vulture Festival website.

Just Google Reply All Vulture Festival. You can find the tickets that way. Come see us. It'll be a lot of fun. Thanks for listening. and we'll see you next week for part three of On the Inside.