Small Town Murder - The Most Interesting Murderer In The World - Springville, California

Episode Date: January 22, 2026

This week, in Springville, California, one of the strangest stories, in the history of murder unfolds. Featuring an escaped convict with an apparent CIA background, who also claims to have invented the character of "Cap'n Crunch", and a model, with an unlikely story of being held captive, that just might true. Mix all this with a murder plot that was supposed be a "Sharon Tate style bloodbath", and you get a wild, expansive & just plain insane story!!   Along the way, we find out that you know you may have to move, when a disease is named after your county, that you shouldn't commit many, many dangerous felonies "just for fun", and that sometimes the most fantastical sounding story can actually be true!!   New episodes, every Wednesday & Friday nights!! Go to shutupandgivememurder.com for all things Small Town Murder, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions!   Follow us on... instagram.com/smalltownmurder facebook.com/smalltownpod   Also, check out James & Jimmie's other shows, Crime In Sports & Your Stupid Opinions on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!!

This week, in Springville, California, one of the strangest stories in the history of murder unfolds, featuring an escaped convict with an apparent CIA background, a model with an unlikely story of being held captive, and even plenty of stolen identities to confuse the detectives. Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay! Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay, indeed.

My name is James Petter Gallo. I'm here with my co-host. I'm Jimmy Wisman. Thank you, folks, so much for joining us today on another absolutely insane edition of Small Town Murder that we have for you today. This is wild stuff from start to finish. I can't wait to get into it. Definitely, before you do that, though, and we'll make an announcement right off the top here before we get to the website and all that. We're on Netflix now.

It's happening. It happened. Yeah, we will be starting on Netflix next week. It's going to be a little confusing. the first episode because it's going to be on Monday, January 26th. This is the only time an episode will be outside of our normal release schedule. We're just doing that again. January 26th, Monday.

What's going on with that? The only time. The only time. How many times? Only one time. What's not on Mondays from now on? Is this mean? No, it's on one episode's going to be on Monday and then it's Wednesdays after that.

So just like normal and Fridays for Express, same thing. So we're very excited. Check us out on Netflix. You can see us doing the show like a live show type deal, except. Oh, it's like you're sitting in here with us. Like, that's it. You're sitting in here. The show will be exactly the same.

It's not like we're going to, you know, do a lot of visual stuff that you won't be able to see on the audio. It's going to be just like you're hanging out in the studio with us. So we're very excited for that. So excited. Thank you for making that possible because it's all of you guys there. Everybody out there who's listening to the show. That's why the show is going to be on Netflix. Thank you so much for doing that.

While you're excited about Netflix, get on here and get some tickets. Tickets for live shows starting out with February 21st in Nashville. Get them right now while they're hot. And then after that, we got Durham in Atlanta, March 6th and 7th. Phoenix is sold out, but the Your Stupid Opinion Show still has some tickets for that. Salt Lake City sold out. Denver has tickets.

Buffalo sold out. Royal Oak, Michigan, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Dallas, San Jose, Sacramento, Terry Town in Boston. Shut up. and give me murder.com is where you get all of that and more. Also, while you're there, well, not while you're there, but there's links you can go there. Go get yourself Patreon as well.

Do it. Patreon.com slash crime in sports is where you get all of the bonus material. Anybody, $5 a month or above, you're getting so much. First of all, hundreds of back bonus episodes you've never heard before immediately upon subscription. Then you get new ones every other week, one crime in sports, one small town murder. This week, which you're going to get for crime and sports, it's the sales. Jimmy, we're doing crazy, old-timey ads, and I can't wait. Those are my favorite shows.

And then for Small Town Murder, it is Dean Coral Part 2. We're going to investigate the John Wayne Gasey connection, and there's a lot to unpack there, man, because we're at this point in the story that we got 27 bodies and a lot of explaining to do. So can't wait to get into that. Patreon.com slash crime in sports. And in addition to that, you get all the shows we put out, crime and sports, your stupid opinion, Small Town Murder, all ad free with your Patreon. And you get a shout out at the end of the show, too, as well.

So that's said. Disclaimer time. This is a comedy show, everybody. This is a comedy show. We are comedians. Murder will happen and jokes will happen as well. That's how this works. You might go, well, how does that work?

Very easily. What you do is, what we do is, we don't make fun of the victims or the victims' families. Why is that, James? Because we're assholes. But we're not scumbags. See how that goes? It's real simple. And it's a really easy way to make it.

There's plenty other stuff to make fun of it. That's what it is. We make fun of a small town because we're all from a small town or somewhere to easily made fun of. Sure, sure. You know, we make fun of a police force that can't solve a murder so a killer goes and murders more people. We make fun of murderers because what else can we do about it?

We're comedians. What are we going to do? We can't do anything. We're not judges. Can't sentence them to more time. We can make fun of them, though, unmercifully. So that's what we do here. If that sounds good to you, you're going to hear a wild,

story. If you think true crime and comedy should never ever go together, I'd give it a shot. You never know. Either way, no complaining later. That's what we say here. That said, I think it's time, everybody, to sit back. Yeah. Let's clear the lungs, what do you

say, and let's all shout. Uh-huh. Shut up. And give me murder. Let's do this, everybody. Yeah. Jimmy was clear in that throat. Yeah.

He was not, he's taking that instruction seriously. I'll send it up for a, that stupid joke about getting city air out of your lungs. Yeah. Well, let's go on a trip. Let's get some city air out of our lungs here and go on a trip right now. This place is pretty rural, I'll tell you. We are going to Springville, California.

Okay. You go, where the hell is that, right? I don't know. That's the first thing. No one's heard of that. It's in Southern California, but like central. like middle of the desert. Okay.

California. It's inland. Yeah. It's wild. Imperial County shit. Yep. Three of all, sort of.

I never even heard of this county before. I know it existed that it's in. It's three hours to L.A. It's about an hour and a half to Fresno. God, damn. Right there.

Yeah, it's up there. And then about three hours and 25 minutes to Olauncha, California. Our last California episode, The Cowboy and the Con Man, which was a really cool episode. They were the same guy, weren't they? I think so.

This is in Tulare County. Tulane with an R. Okay. Area code 559, motto of this town, where the hell am I? Is there anything? All these cowboys. What is happening right now?

Yeah. It's, yeah, a lot of ranches out there and things like that. A little bit of history of this town. The original name of the town was Daunt, D-A-U-N-T after William Daunt. Sure. It was a settler who opened the first. store in the town in 1860.

Named it after just the guy at the store. Yeah. I mean, he's probably the only, like, permanent guy there, so he just called it that. It was changed to Springville in January 1911 in reference to the soda springs found in the area. Oh. It was just, it was seven up was coming out. It was pretty cool. Yeah.

They were excited about it. A big cold of a, it was big red. That was what was so impressive. That was popping out of there. It was cheer wine from North Carolina. What's that? Sundrop? Is that that one?

Sundrop, the one I like from the, what is that? Like Tennessee down there. I think it's Tennessee. That's where we got it in Nashville. Yeah, yeah. That shit's good, man. It's a lot of the regional sodas. I love them.

I love him. Oh, every time we go to places, I'm like, give me your regional sodas. What's your regional bullshit that you can't get anywhere else? Texas, it's the sugar doctor peppers. Yeah. The, yeah, the Dublin Dr. Peppers. Yeah. All right.

Also, there was an infectious disease named after the county. That's a day what you're counting. You got the daunt? Tularema. Tularemia. Tularemia caused by the bacterium, Francisella Tullereneus, named after this county. So they named a bacteria after your county because it's so prevalent there.

You found a bacteria that only, that's your regional soda. That's it. It's also known as rabbit fever. Oh, is that right? Yeah, I don't know. What do they do? It's caused by that bacterium. Symptoms include fever, skin ulcers, and enlarged lymph nodes.

Oh, I don't like that. Those two words together. That sounds awful. Skin ulcers? It is weird, man. What a weird thing. Now, reviews of this town. Let's get into some reviews of this town.

Five stars. There's only a few, and they're all pretty positive. Really? You kind of want to have to want to be here, it feels like. You don't end up here by accident. They got tularemia. Yeah, but that's how you couldn't leave. You got Tullerini and you got to stay.

This is Gateway to the Sequoia National Forest. Tool River passes through town historical points of interest. Is it Tully River? T-U-L-E? T-U-L-E. T-U-L-E. T-U-L-E. Yeah, I don't know.

They've got all that. We've never heard of it before now. That outdoorsy shit that's called T-U-L-E. I don't know. Who the fuck knows? It doesn't matter. This is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, so that would make sense. It affects goddamn nothing.

No. To some people, it's everything. It's all they care about. It's all they're interested in. Here's four stars, small town in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, less than a thousand people, very friendly, beautiful surroundings, near Sequoia National Forest, many recreational activities, one of the lowest crime rates in the entire state.

Oh. We'll be the judge of that because we have stats. And I guess what? You're wrong. So there you go. I think you're probably wrong, maybe. Three stars, small mountain community. that's very friendly and very quiet, surrounded by hills and mountains minutes away.

Yeah. So, and then finally, three stars. It's quiet and peaceful, but not too much to do. Yeah, you're in the middle of the desert. What we expect? Or middle of the mountains. It's the middle of nowhere. Desert mountains.

Desert mountains. It has decent restaurants and an amazing coffee shop. All right. It's not too far from great hiking up in the mountains or fun shopping in Porterville. Ew. Oh, Porterville. is not good. I remember Hunter Thompson talking about Porterville

and the Hells Angels books. In California? Yeah, like a place they were stopping on the way to somewhere else type of joint. That's all it was. People in this town, about 960. But some sources say around 500,

so who knows? So every stat is fucked. It's, yeah, super small. So the stats, I mean, men and women, women are only 44% of the people here. 44.4, men are 55.6. That's way off the national average. Median age is almost exactly the national average.

It's 37 and a half. We got 58.6% of the people here are married. 0.0% are married with children. I don't know how that works. They got to be older people, I assume. Everybody's single with children or just single? Or married with no kids or grown kids. That would be like with them living in the house.

You know what I mean? Nobody's married with kids. Nobody. Everybody who has kids, they're all aged out. They've all left. 7.4% are single with children. So not a lot of kids here, we'll say. But the age is at 37.

It's weird. Race of this town, 83.7% white, 0.0% black, 0.0% Asian. 3.2% Native American, which is way above the national average. And 9.5% of the people here are religious. And the leading one there is Catholic. 24.1% Catholic. As we know, Catholics are the Baptists of the western Sierra Nevada valleys. We all know that.

That rolls right off the tongue. Full of them. Yeah, it rolls right off the tongue. Unemployment here is almost double the national average. Wow. Which it's the middle of goddamn nowhere. So that would make sense. But you've got to have a job, right?

Well, it doesn't seem like everybody does here because this is from the Spurling's best website. that does all the stats of everything. The average income of a Springfield resident is $15,399 a year. Okay. It says the median household income is $0 a year, which I know is a bad stat. It's impossible. 53.7% of the people here make under $15,000 a year. Okay, so this is 900 just incredibly destitute folks?

They're all like Snoopy's brother who lived in the, Mexico. Remember Snoopy's brother would come? No. Like from the desert. You don't remember that? This is all a town full of Snoopy's brothers. Let's put it that way. He was like Snoopy's like desert rat brother who like lived in the middle of New Mexico and would come in. So that is, that's rough.

Cost of living here. Let's hope it's low. It's actually 99.6. 100 is regular or average. So it's average exactly. Housing is the expensive thing though, unfortunately. marginally. Median home cost here, $387,100. Good luck, everybody. Enjoy your trailers for the rest of your life.

You're broken down fifth wheels. It's like you for it. That's horrifying. So if we've convinced you, damn it, you want to make no money, but pay a lot for a house and live in the middle of nowhere and have Snoopy's brother as your dog. We have for you the Springville, California, real estate report. Okay, your average two-bedroom rental here goes for $1,170, which isn't far off the national average. No.

It's a little lower than it. House number one is up at auction. It's a three-bedroom, one bath, 800-square-foot, dumpy little house. It's just a dumpy shitty little. There's no other way to put it at the yard. Everything's dead. It just looks terrible. Not great.

Small lot. Built in 1943. The estimated, what it'll sell for at auction, $1.6. $72,500. Trash. Trash. I also found 2.2 acres of land for $95,000. Okay.

Decent little view. Here's a house, not great. You can see here, it's a little dumpy box, basically. Yeah, little dumpy box, not wonderful. How many square feet is that? It's two-bedroom, one bath, 1154 square feet, 0.27 acres, also built in 1943. That's when they were building shit. Probably everything was.

Yeah, $263,000. That seems steep. That seems real expensive for this dumpy little house, put it that way. And then finally, you want to stretch out a bit here. Four bedroom, three bath, 4,637 square feet on 19.633 acres. It's a big ranch, like a ranch style. It has, like, well, those like metal gates where you put livestock behind them, has like those on the side.

So this is, uh, Yeah, it's got Barnes, but it's got like that, whatever that metal. Yeah, the metal fencing that goes around where the corals are. That's got that. So this is for, you know, a ranch type deal. $1,675,000. Oh, me. Just had a $125,000 price cut.

It's coming down further, I promise. It's a bargain, folks. I think it's coming down. Things to do here. Okay. First of all, the Springville Apple and Archie. Festival, which is about as boring as it sounds. It does sound boring.

It's got an apple run running, I guess, I don't know if you hold apples. The bombing is over. Something. A pie eating contest. I wonder what kind of pies those are. Think they're Apple? It might be Apple. The Springville Chamber of Commerce is now the proud organizer of the Springville Apple

Apple and Arts Festival. Not much different from the old Apple Festival, but there are a few changes. And I don't know what the hell they are. The schedule, we got Apple Run Awards. At the coveted 10.30 a.m. spot, which all bands hanker for, the eights will be playing, whoever that is. The eights. The eights, 12.30 p.m. right after the, if you're the eights, you're opening for the pie eating contest, which happens at 1230. Then at 1.15, the occasional brass will be playing.

Sure. And then at 2.15, Patty, Torrey, and the Irregulars. Just a bunch of Ross shirts, basically. A bunch of ladies that can't poop. A little off. Then there's the hot summer night bull bash. Yeah. Oh, here it goes.

Bash and bowls? I think that's what it is. You bring your best baseball bat in your attack. It says anyone who enjoys watching bronch riding, calf roping, and bull riding may be going through withdrawals by now. It's going to be a long nine-month wait until the next professional rodeo cowboy Association event at the Springville rodeo grounds. On the

other hand, if the idea of ending the summer months with an exciting rodeo event sounds like a good idea, there's a first rate solution available. It's this. As you sip, eat, and visit, there will be the always exciting mutton busting as the kids attempt to ride rapidly

running sheep. Be ready to cheer on these young cowboys and cowgirls as their shoot gate opens and they begin their ride. Depending on how many bull-writers, riders sign up. There may be as many as 30 bulls. Wow.

Wow. There will be a breakaway roping for the young ladies and a comedy act provided by the stock contractor. Very famous on the comedy scene. We know him from, you know, all those nights at the improv opening up for the... You remember his big gag where he walks by every... Walks by every cow and goes, is that your wife? He does that.

It's a big gag. Yeah. It's really hard. because it really depends on people bringing their cow to the show. But someone always does. And he makes sure to say, well, let me tell you something for the misses. The little lady is what he called her. He likes to ask, how she kiss when he points at the pigs?

That's great. Before the evening is over, before the evening is over, there'll be a historic based event, I think you'll find interesting. They're calling it ranch bronc riding. Sounds interesting, doesn't it? That's literally what they said, I suppose. I'm riveted. Yeah. Depending on how late you want to stay out dancing the night away in Springville, the Josh Day Band will provide more than enough opportunities to boot, scoot, and swing your partner. Oh, boy. You had all the chance to say, boogie. Oh, my God. This sounds like my nightmare. A plan on being ready to head home. somewhere around midnight with your little lady.

I got a feeling James has gone much earlier. Wow. James is doing the Clark Griswold at the Grand Canyon go. Yep. Okay, right back to the car. That's enough of that. I smell poop and hear country music. I am fucking going somewhere else.

Those two things I'm not interested in. Now, crime rate in this town, hi. Hi. Is it? It's one of the lowest crime. Nope, it's higher than Los Angeles, the crime rate in this town, by far. Property crime, about 25% above the national average here. Oh, my God.

And violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and, of course, assault, about Rushmore, also high. Very, very high. There's nobody here. More like 10% above the national average, but higher than the national average. It's too much. Yeah. Nothing to brag about. Put it that way. Right.

So, that said, let's talk about some murder here. All right. We're going to go back in time a bit farther than we usually go back for this, but it is so worth it. You have no idea. And it feels modern day, I'm telling you. Fair. We're going to start. Our main stuff here happens in 1973, which to me is such an interesting time anyway.

That's, you know. 73? 73 is, this country was wild stuff going on. You still had the hippie thing happening. You had Watergate is going on at this point. Like, this is a, all the family is the number one. show. It's a very interesting time. This is the start of the muscle car generation

dying, too. It only lasted. Yeah, it's the last couple years. Like six years. Then it was over. Yeah, six probably hardcore. They, Dodge started it. 67 to 73, it was done. But Dodge started at like 64, though, didn't they? They started a little relevant. I mean, they started putting big motors in things, but it didn't really

turn into like a sought-after vehicle until 70. I always think of it's 64 to 74, kind of that era. I suppose, yeah. Yeah, that's about where, like, the beginning of it to the end of it. Yeah, like the very beginning. 74, done. Yeah, done. Yeah, by then, yeah, they were those things were really bad by 70s.

All the 318 cars and it was just such car. Any, sorry. Yeah, let's get into murder. We can talk about old cars for a while. Or we can get into it because we'll sit here, talk about old cars. After the show, we're going to talk about old cars again. That's fun for us. Tim Allen and Jay Leno come in.

No, that's all right. We're good. Now, quote on this story here, this is from the New York Times in 1981. Yeah. This is a wild quote. Escapeed convict, stolen identity, false journalism cover, Sharon Tate-style hit claim, Stockholm Syndrome, love letters to a killer, fruit of the poison tree. This is one of the strangest cases in the annals of American crime. That's the New York Times.

And somehow, no one's ever heard of this goddamn case. What the hell? Kind of like what we do here. So let's talk about a guy first here. An interesting, interesting, interesting cat. Gerald Daniel Walker. He's born, no, not at all. What?

No, we'll talk about that. But he's born August 10, 1931. He goes by G. Daniel. G. Daniel Walker. Like G. Gordon Liddy type of thing. G. Daniel Walker, but he goes by Daniel. I'd go with G. V. Walker. Yeah, no one could.

God damn Walker. Some bitch. He also goes by Tyler Taylor. Tyler. Might as well. A couple other alias says, and my favorite, the jackal. That's my favorite alias that he has. The Jackal.

And he's very proud of that one of the Jackal. He's born in Toledo, Ohio. He had an, this is the wild part. Stable, boring middle class upbringing. Born in 31, through the Depression. through the Second World War. Think about it. He was 18 and 1949.

Yeah. So, like, that's a boring time. To be a teenager during World War II, boring is shit. Yeah, nothing for you. Yeah, culture has kind of stopped. You know what I mean? Like, even...

Kind of abandon you. Even Joe DiMaggio's fucking overseas. Like, it's boring. And there's no, like, new products because all the, you know, all the resources, there's nothing to be made of metal and shit like that. Mom's over there building refrigerators.

She's taking them apart to give to the scrap run for the metal drive. She's taking apart her beauty queen crown to hand it into the downtown. She's down at the boat yard riveting shit together. Yeah, totally. His father was an antiques dealer, Daniel Walker here. So that's strange. Family was religious. He went to school and church regularly.

You can't get any more standard, fair. Midwest average upbringing than this guy. And his life is so the opposite of that. It's crazy. Maybe that's what it was. He was so bored that he needed to have the craziest life that anyone's ever had ever. His

father, antique dealer, now, he went to, after all this stuff, after school and everything, he went into the army and served in Korea as well. Oh. So that's fine. That's good. He went and served in Korea. But I don't know if this was when he was

in the army still. Because the Korean conflict was like 51, 52 had started. That would have been when he was 20, 21. And then by age 22, he's being arrested for armed robbery in Florida. Wow. And convicted of it, too. Early 50s, armed robbery. He gets sentenced to 10 years in prison.

That's a long time. And he escapes. Is that right? He says, I don't think so. 10 years. I want more time when I get caught. No, he got caught and then they paroled him. Oh.

Well, we can't hold him, so we may have holding him out. Well, at least then we can keep an eye on him, sort of, you know, if he comes to the office. If not, you know, we have no way. Now, in 1958, he's in Ohio, where he's from here, and he's arrested and convicted for another armed robbery. Okay, so this is what he does now. This is kind of what he does. He's sentenced in Ohio to, this is a you, sir may fuck off, 10 to 25 years at the Ohio State Penitentiary. who we that is wow that's a lot of time man you're looking at some serious time 10 to 25 sentences

that could have amounted to 35 years of his life yeah this story could have never happened if yeah it wasn't for some ineptitude by everyone involved as we'll talk about while serving time this is fucking crazy he made close acquaintances with the warden's personal secretary. Okay. Made real close friends with her to the point where they got married while he was an inmate. Yeah.

The warden secretary. The warden allowed that. You fired her, right? Yeah. I mean, I know it was a law. I didn't know it was a law. Yeah. They had a child together while he was in prison.

Yeah. And later on, they'll divorce, obviously. Sure. What are we talking about here? Hey, everybody. just going to take a quick break from the show to tell you a better way to feed your dog with Ollie. Ollie.com.

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Enter code STM to get 60% off your first box. Now back to the show. Now, 1966, he's paroled. Okay. So he only did eight years out of the 10 to 25. But still, eight years is a good chunk. I mean, he was, like, fucking the warden secretary the whole time. So prison was a little different for him than it should have been probably.

Probably flew right on by, too. Yeah. If you're getting laid and hanging out. Oh, God. Yeah. I'm sure he's getting special privileges of some kind. And I'm sure everybody leaves him the fuck alone if he's banging the warden's daughter, not daughter, receptionist. They're in all of him, yeah.

They're like, man, high-fiving him every time. His hands sore because there's just so many high fives going on as he goes by. Which is more raw. His hand or his dick, James. They invented the high five. This is when it was invented in the early 1960s in the Ohio State Penitentiary. So, 1966, it looks like he's getting his life together, actually. He decides that he's not going to be a criminal anymore.

And he is really crafty and really smart, this cat. I mean, extremely. Real like, just a, I want to, call him crafty keeps coming to mind but something with a more criminal bend to it like a fox sly yeah exactly uh but also just kind of brilliant as we'll talk about like a jackal yeah like a jackal is that what a jackal's known for it's aren't they they're a scavenger right yeah i think they just eat shit off the ground don't they yeah i think they got kind of cunning sometimes though i think you're right though because they're like that um there was that uh terrorist guy who was carlos the jackal

Which means that he can hide. You know what I mean? I think. I don't know. And he doesn't care about his diet at all. You wouldn't last long as a terrorist if you weren't good at hiding, I would think. So you wouldn't want less. Eat anything.

Yeah, you weren't loading last long enough to earn a nickname for sure. I'd be fucked. My gut is so precarious. Right. One egg would send Jimmy into the Jekyll Hospital. I'm stuck in India. Well, I can't eat here. We're screwed.

So he starts an advertising company. Okay. No advertising experience. No. He was in the Korean War and then prison in Florida and Ohio. Where are we doing? He starts... I mean, he advertises that dick, well.

That's something. It's called Ad Biz Inc. And he does so well he buys a lake house on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin. Wow. Bies a house. He's making, we're talking, 1966. he's making $45,000 a year. What the fuck.

Which is hundreds of thousands of dollars now. That's, yeah, you can buy two homes with that. The average salary was like $5,500 a year back then. And he's making $45,000 a year. In a year, he could own two homes and four cars. And four brand new giant American cars. Here's an article in 1967. By 1967, the Chicago Tribune is running an article.

about these ad agency people, and he's the star of the article. Wow. In one year. He was just in prison. No shit. Literally last year. The headline is agency dropouts drop in with drive-in. Yeah.

Oh. That's a lot. I can't do it. A collection of seven dropouts, as they prefer to call themselves, from larger advertising agencies, opened their own ad agency, Sharon Walker and Stein this week. So he joined up with a bunch of other people. opened a new agency. Yeah.

Its initial press release, frankly, states the agency has no clients. G. Daniel Walker, one of the principals, says this group picked up its first account yesterday. It was the Henry's Drive-In Inc. business worth about $800,000 in billings. Wow. That's big. Henry's is the third largest chain of drive-in restaurants in the United States. I've never even heard of it.

At one point, that was the third largest, and we've never even heard of it. Henry? Henry's drive-in restaurants. Must be hamburger, huh? I have no idea. I wonder who bought them. With 168 locations across the country and 21 in Chicago. Wow.

Wow. The firm is headquartered here. The firm's employers, employees are dropouts from companies such as Jay Walter Thompson, Batten, Barton, and Dirstine, and Osborne, Young and Rubicam, Campbell, Ewald, and Compton and Compton advertising. They said the agency's offices are in the Ad Age building, 740 North Rush Street. So they're in, that's their Madison Avenue, you know. Yeah.

So, but we'll move to the fifth floor of the Regency Orleans building. It's a, this sounds exactly like Mad Men. I wonder if, I wonder if Mad Men got that whole storyline from here. Because they did the exact same thing. They all left. They started their own firm. They were based in a hotel for a while. Wow.

That's interesting. In its promotion pitched perspective advertising. the agency says, who is Sharon Walker and Stein? So he's got his name on the door. Yeah. They're the big agency dropouts. Were they fired? No, they wanted to do contemporary advertising.

He says, Daniel says, we don't know anyone. All we have is courage and a few gimmicks. He said, one gimmick is an underground telephone, quote, unquote. The agency prepares commercials for new clients and writes the company asking for a phone call to listen to a three and a half minute tape record. That's the pitch I got or no. Now, during this time, you would think, okay, he's going to chill out. He's making good money. He's successful.

Chicago Tribune's talking about him. I'm just going to do this for 30 years and never work again. No, he's really bored. Oh? He can't, this cat cannot just go, he can't just go into an office and sit there and go home at the end of the day. That's boring for him. Yeah.

He just needs more action. So he starts committing a bunch of crimes that aren't even. Even for personal benefit. Just for funzies? The cops call them, quote, quirky crimes. It's literally he says he was bored, and so he was committing crimes just for fun. What are they? Okay.

Well, one is he stole a helicopter, a whole ass helicopter. Just stole it. Just knew how to do that. Yeah. He was in the military, I guess that helped. And there's some other stuff that we'll talk about that he might have been in as well. Stole a helicopter. At one point, he stole a helicopter.

his neighbor's tent. His neighbor at a big giant tent, which doesn't sound like much. But then he pitched it in his own yard to show he stole it. Yeah. Yeah, that's like why. At one point, he said,

as an acquaintance said, that he asked him, why are you committing all these crimes? Because they get weirder. And he said, for a lark. For fun. He's bored.

It's all there is to it. One time, this is fucking crazy. He went into a camera shop with a gun. held up the camera shop but didn't ask for a dime. Oh? Didn't ask for any merchandise.

He held this man at gunpoint while he recited poetry with him to him. Don't move. He literally held the gun up. Guy put his hands up, went for the register, and he said, no, no, no. And whipped out a piece of paper and started reading the man poetry,

held him at gunpoint till he was done reading poetry and then left. Didn't take a dime. No, son. When there's one set of footsteps, it was when I carried you. I got to go. I got it. Now buy.

He, what the, yeah. That's crazy. Now, let me give you some Robert Frost. Hold on a minute here. No, that one was, that one was real annoying. You're watching this. No, no, not for the register. I have some Walt Whitman for you.

What are we talking about? No, no, don't for us. No sale. It's fine. Just listen. Jesus Christ. Who would do that? Just listen.

You don't even need the gun. You could just go in there and it's his shot. He's not going to leave. You can just yell poetry at him until he physically throws you out, I assume, right? Yeah. Or calls the cops, whatever. Yeah, it's so strange. And they said in this, there's a long record of thefts, burglaries, stolen credit cards, all sorts of weird things that he's doing, too.

Wow. None of this makes any sense. Then it gets the weirdest here after this. Well, 1968, he is in court on a second charge of grand theft, which alleges $460. worth of property found in his home was taken from the Geneva Lake home of Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Morissette. He's making huge money and robbing houses.

Walker pleaded not guilty to the charge and to an earlier charge of grand theft in which they alleged that he stole $900 worth of property from a different couple. It just doesn't make any sense. No. Judge John DeVos set the bond at $200

and for the first charge would be allowed to stand for both matters and scheduled a hearing. Both the Hardin and Morissette homes were, quote, stripped of furnishings when the family returned. He took everything. He took the curtains. He took, what kind of a sick bitch takes the ice trays. That's what it is. That's what he's doing. It's crazy.

They said they returned after a week's absence on vacation. The Hardens of Racine have a summer home here. tire marks indicated a truck had been backed up to the rear of the house for loading furniture and appliances. He's taking stoves and shit. Fuck the, yeah, fuck the ice trays. The ice trays are going with

the frith. Yeah, with it all. They said during that, and this happened sometime during their absence. The theft was discovered August 10th. The Morissettes discovered a loss of more than $20,000 worth of antiques from their home on August 12th.

And who knows about it? Antiques, the son of an antique dealer possibly. He knows what's worth money and what is it. That's crazy. The home is on Snake Road north of the shore. Now, the district attorney, Robert Reed, not Mike Brady, different Robert Reed, asked the shoe bomber's brother. Nope, nope.

Ask the court to set more than $200 of a bond for Walker because he already posted it, saying that he has very serious charges against him also in Chicago. This guy's a career criminal. The Walworth County investigation followed the Harden Burglary, following the Harden Burglary, discovered that a gyrocopter, that's a helicopter. Yeah, small helicopter, quote, parked by Walker at the Larry Whiting Airfield near Lake Geneva, matched the description of one reported stolen in Chicago.

He didn't just steal it, take a joyride and brought it back. He stole it and brought it somewhere else. Took it home. Mine now. Mine now. He pirated a fucking helicopter. I like that they call that. Is that what it's called when a helicopter is sitting still? That's parked? I guess, yeah. I mean, if a car is parked. A plane, too. Yeah, you park a plane, so why not?

Chicago authorities charge him with theft of the gyrocopter, and he posted $5,000 this week for a court appearance in that city. So he's on multiple bells for multiple cities. He's in trouble. March of 1969, he pleads innocent to a charge of pointing a gun at somebody. All right. Not the camera shop guy, different guy. He requests a jury trial for that one, as he always does. 1969, he's still not in jail somehow. And he stopped by an Illinois state trooper for what they called a routine license plate check.

He was charming. He was, you know, he's an affable guy. He hands as the officer his business card for ad biz. Yeah, I'm an ad man, blah, blah, blah. Real, did they have a nice five-minute conversation as, nothing to do with the ticket that he's going to get, the license plate check or anything. Just two guys bullshit on the side of the road.

Fair. Then out of nowhere, this is Trooper Sven Lugendgren. L-J-U-N-G-G-R-E-N. Just said L-J? L-J is the first L-Gid. I don't know to do that. No. That's some Swedish shit.

Yeah. In the paper, they even give his goddamn address. The cop's address. I don't like that. That's crazy. Um, out of nowhere, while they're chatting pleasantly and the man's holding his business guard, he takes out a gun and shoots the cop in the head. Shot him in the fucking head.

Just out of nowhere for no reason. Wasn't like the guy was like, no, he survived somehow. Wow. Which is crazy. This was Route 12 there. Following the shooting, he took off, obviously. Uh-huh. The bullet was removed from his jaw at the hospital cop.

He shot him in the goddamn head, which is crazy. They say the suspect who shot him is reported to be Gerald Daniel Walker, who works for an advertising agency in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He's also reported to be driving a stolen car. So that's what it was. He knew the car was coming back stolen, and he didn't want to go back to jail. Right.

So he shot a cop in the head on the side of the road. And he expected him to die. I would think, hey, expected that's enough of that guy. See you later. and now November 3rd, 1969, he has found guilty of attempted murder and aggravated battery of a police officer. I mean, that's bad shit. That seems bad. Seems real bad.

I don't even think they had him with a stolen car. I think they let him go on that. They're like, this is heavy enough. He's going to get out? He has to, because nobody's dead yet. That's what I'm saying. And the story, a lot of it takes place in 73. So you go, how does that happen?

How do you get out in four years from shooting? a cop in the head. Well, let's talk about it. So convicted of aggravated murder, or attempted murder and aggravated battery. Sentenced to, this is on two different charges. You, sir, may fuck off. First charge 16 to 20 years. Okay.

Second charge, aggravated battery, eight to 10 years. Concurrent or consecutive? Either way. I'm not sure. And he's sent to Joliet prison. That's a bad one. Which doesn't seem terrific. That's Indiana, right?

Jolietz, Illinois. Illinois, right, right, right. Yeah, that's the one where spec was at. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's a bad prison. It's, yeah, it's not a good prison, I'll tell you. No, no, no, no. It's high security.

It's rough. It's known as a shit one. Yes. So, now this here, he's at the Illinois state prison, our state there, and they say that At this point, there's a guy named Detective Robert Swalwell. Okay. And he is the Sven's best friend. Oh, yeah?

Yeah. The Cox's best friend. Yeah, he's old Sven's best friend. So this guy takes a special interest in, obviously, the dude who shot his best friend. Sure. So he made it his personal mission to understand him, he said. Oh. Because he's like, this is a guy who is a successful career, but somehow does all this crime.

Right. His background is mild. None of this makes any sense. So this guy, as a cop, is like, I haven't quite seen this animal before and I want to understand it, essentially. So he's looking at him like a zoo animal. He's going to see his migration patterns and, you know, how they mate and eat and shit. So he talked to everyone who knew him, everyone who's ever met him. He went through 30 cardboard boxes of Walker's belongings to see who he is, what kind of guy.

What did he got? He said he found him to be a textbook psychopath, period. Oh. A prison psychiatrist sort of agrees with this, as we'll talk about. Here's a psychiatrist assessment from Walker's prison file. I love that we have all this, by the way. What did he find that he decided that before just like 30 boxes, It's full of a bunch of opened up stretch Armstrongs or something?

He did his whole background. He checked his, he talked to everybody he's ever met, went into his family life, looked at his police record. He did a whole macro overview of the guy, which seems like way, that's a way better way to get. Usually a psychiatrist would love to have all that information. Otherwise, it's only self-reporting that a psychiatrist can tell. So they usually don't get that much. He said a significant aspect of this man's personality. is the ease with which his emotions are stimulated

and the extent to which he acts out his feelings in an impulsive manner, which is exactly the definition of a psychopath. That's what it is. Because of his drive, in addition to a manipulative ability, he has experienced occasional brilliant success in the business world. However, this performance has not been consistent over the years.

There is an underlying element of rage and anger within the inmate which occasionally surfaces and results in an impulsive and aggressive overt behavior. This individual is considered to be potentially very aggressive and perhaps homicidal. He shot a cop in the head. Yeah, I would say that's homicidal. You were looking for it. The detective, Swalwell, the guy who was trying to figure him out,

he has a lot shorter, more concise assessment of the man. He's a piece of shit. Quote, an evil man. Uh-huh. Yeah, a man who could shoot you, then sit down and have lunch beside your body. Is that what he did? That's just who he is, I think. Yeah.

He drove away, I'm sure, when he left the cop on the side of the road. So January 1963, obviously he's still an inmate. He is in the hospital. No. Now, this is insane what he did to get into the hospital. This is a plan. It's not a cold? No, a lot of inmates who want to escape.

they try to get to the hospital, and especially back in the day because the hospitals were way less secure. They just don't have the security. Yeah, they don't have the facility. No, the actual like a hospital. The prison infirmary can take care of so much. Oh, and that's on site. The hospital's offsite. If you have something really wrong with you, then you have to go to a hospital, which obviously the hospitals doesn't have bars and razor wire. So there's just a few people to get past and you're out. Yeah, right. Yeah. So January 73, he's brought to a hospital in Chicago, where, you're just a few people. he's admitted for, quote, internal bleeding. Oh.

But the blood was in his urine. Okay. What he was doing, he was drawing blood from his own arm with a needle and syringe and putting it in his urine samples. So there was no blood inside him at all. No blood in his urine at all. He was getting blood out and squirting a little in his urine. So it looked like he had blood, blood in his piss. And then he had to go to the hospital.

So the prison let him do this apparently. He was in the bathroom just doing it. Wow. At the hospital, he doesn't wear prison clothes. He wears his own silk pajamas and an expensive robe. He walks around like you Hefner in this fucking place. With a pipe, too. He's got a pipe too.

Yeah, I'm pissing blood. Pissing blood. He smokes a big Sherlock Holmes pipe too. Really? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. He's got one of those with a silk robe walking around the hospital.

Like the guy that wanders around the streets complimenting people. Yep. He offered the nurses vodka and orange juice that he somehow had gotten there. Why does he have that? Don't know.

Guards who are supposed to be watching him were found sleeping in the TV lounge. Nobody cared. Oh, my God. Because he doesn't seem like a guy you got to keep an eye on. He's in an expensive robe. Where's he going?

Where's he going? He's trustworthy. This guy tried to kill a cop, you guys. Oh, that's okay. He's feeling much better now. What's he going to do with blood in his urine. Nothing. Guy has, guys, blood is

piss is full of blood. What's he going to do? So, yeah, this is what he's up to now. Now, this gets even weirder. Okay, January 31, 1973, he says he's going to take a shower on another floor. Of the hospital? Yes. And they don't say, well,

I'll come with you and watch you, you know, because you're a prisoner and all. They go, all right. And he just never came back. he just walked away. He just left. I could have escaped from this place. This is crazy.

You just have to go, I'm going to go do that, and they go, all right, and then you just walk out the door. Nobody cares. I'm going to be down to the vending machines. Yeah, fine. Go ahead. I'm going to be down getting some vodka. Different floor. Different floor.

Why not? His hospital roommate went home a few days later and found his house had been fucking ransacked and robbed and his credit cards were made. missing. He scabbed at it. He extracted from his hospital roommate where he lived and all that shit and went home and stole all his shit. Oh my God. Clothes everything. Just wipe the guy clean. This locker is a refrigerator? Ice trays? I think his ice trays were intact still. Within hours, the credit cards are being used at gourmet

food shops, clothing stores all over Chicago, basically. He's just running up bills. So it's crazy. I guess the way it happened, he had, leading up to this, he had been in multiple hospitals. They put him in three different hospitals. He would often invite women to his room. He used it like a hotel suite, his hospital. And he even left twice to attend Chicago Bears football games. He went to the Bears game twice from the hospital.

came back and they didn't notice. Yeah, I'd escape too. If I went to... I mean, if I'm going to Bears games. He comes back with Kilbasa on his breath. What are we talking about here? Came back with the portillo's under his arm, for Christ's sake. There's a problem here.

Yeah. So he said he thought the prison had forgotten about him. So he just walked off. Yeah. He said, quote, I paid my hospital bill, mailed back my prison issue underwear to the warden. He mailed his underwear back to the warden. You could have these. Holy shit, filed a change of address card with the post office, then went to a U.S.

Marshals office to ask if there was any arrest warrants out for me. He said there weren't, so I thought I was free. He thought if you just walk away and they don't come find you, then that must be the end of your sentence. Unofficial parole. So your sentence to 25 to 60 years, unless you walk away. Get out of here. Yeah. And the problem, he's not wrong.

That's the fucked up part. The prison tried to get him back, but then an Illinois grand jury failed to return an escape indictment against him. How? I guess because they just let him out. I guess if you leave the front door of the prison open and all the gates open and everybody turns their back, it's not really an escape. You just kind of let them out at that point, didn't you? All right. I guess.

That's what they said. A federal judge ruled the prison, quote, officially abandoned him. He didn't escape. They abandoned him in the hospital. I just forgot about him. There's a demonstration in escape and being let go. That's the craziest shit I've ever heard of my life. Yeah, I mean, if you're...

Abandoned by a prison. If you have a fish on the hook, James, and the hook snaps, that's on you. No, no, you abandoned that fish. He didn't escape. You abandoned it. That's how it works. But if he wiggles off the hook, then it's on the fish. Then it's escaped.

Right. Yeah. You had him, but I mean, if it broke, then you abandoned him. Yeah, you got the wrong test. You're an idiot. You're a dummy. Go for the 12-pound, stupid. What do you do?

Should have known. Jesus, there's bass in here. It's not just trout. You've got to have the 12th-pound. So he ends up heading west. And what he does is he leaves a trail of shit, stolen credit cards being used all over the place. He writes his own lawyer taunting letters for some reason. This guy is fun.

He's a party at this point. What's he say to him? Well, one letter detailed his dinner the previous evening. Nah. He just writes his letter just to mock him. Hey, look, I'm free. Look at that. Quote, a series of martinis, oysters on the half shell, turtle soup and sherry, steak beaten with pepper on both sides, and cooked to medium rare with mushrooms and four Irish coffees.

Four. He was four Irish coffees, a series of martinis and sherry. He must be hammered. Wow. that is that's hammered. Another letter ended with quote, one might suspect I am happy.

I am not. This carries a price tag, one you never get to see until it's too late. Oh, what's hard? This being on the run shit is tough. It's hard.

So February 9th, 1973, less than two weeks since he's escaped from the hospital. He checks into a Marriott in Ann Arbor, Michigan for some reason, also staying

at the hotel was a jewelry salesman named Taylor Wright. This is a legitimate businessman who sells jewelry. He's in town to make sales and go to a conference or go to a whatever the fucking expo or something. Some jewelry. Now Walker, very good guy, golden tongue

son of a bitchous guy. He befriends this Taylor Wright at a party at the hotel lobby. They're drinking, conversation. This is before anybody had a phone in their hands. So the only thing to do was to talk to that guy. Otherwise, the guy next to you.

Yeah. So sometime around 10 p.m. Walker, Wright said, I'm going to head up now. Walker said, you know what, good idea. Me too. I'm going to head up too. So they go up. Oh, you're on this floor, me too. Hey, look at this.

We really are alike. While Wright is going to his room, Walker comes up behind him, smashes him on the head and drags him inside his room. Uh-huh. Now, you'd think that's enough. He's got jewelry. He's going to steal it. Yeah.

No, he's not satisfied with that. He spends the next four hours torturing this man. Torturing him? Oh, yeah. I'm talking beaten, bound with tape, stripped down to his underwear, gun in his mouth. Oh, boy. You name it. I mean, the next morning, this guy is all beaten to shit, still partially tied up.

He drags himself out of the hotel room and finds a maid down the hallway who helps him. Oh, boy. Walker stole all of this man's clothing, his shaving kit, his wallet, his American Express card, his driver's license, and even a graduation bracelet with the man's name on it. Oh, wow. Everything this guy had. So the newspaper article from here says Taylor O. Wright, the 3rd, 41 of Benton Harbor, was held for four hours in his room at the Marriott Inn, 3,600 Plymouth Road, by two men and a woman. So apparently he had other people came in Who beat him in an attempt to learn where he kept his jewelry

Which he had for sale Probably came in and put in a safety deposit box or something That I would think he wouldn't carry around Maybe he's got it in the safe in the room Or maybe the hotel as a safe too A lot of times they would hotel would have a main safe They'd keep shit in back in the day Especially if you're kind of high rolling kind of a person like that

He also took his wallet containing $75 officer said the three bandits left rights car which contained a large amount of jewelry in the parking lot. So they got everything but his car and that's where the jewelry was. This guy was dumb enough to leave his jewelry in a fucking car in a hotel parking lot. And he got to keep it. And they tortured him for four hours and didn't think of that. Wow. Wow.

So for the next two weeks, G. Daniel Walker is now Taylor Wright. He's got a bracelet that says it and everything. Who's going to question him? He rented cars with dude's credit card. He stayed at nice hotels. And he makes his way to Southern California as well. Wow. February 21st, 1973, Walker checks in to the Beverly Hilton using Taylor Wright's American Express card in Beverly Hills.

He rented a brand new White Lincoln Continental and started just, I'm going to be in California now. Just having it. Yeah. All right. Now, let's talk about a young lady. at this point who enters the story. This is Hope Nivens. Later on, she'll be Hope Masters and a couple other names, too.

She's 31 in 1973. She's a little younger than him, 10 years or so. She's born about 1940, or 42, I mean. Apparently her original name was, she had a middle name at first, Hope Elise Nivens, and her mother later went down to the City Hall and deleted the Elise from her birth certificate. Huh. I don't know why. I don't know if it was named after somebody who she doesn't like anymore.

Yeah. Whatever. Now, her parents divorced when she was two, which is a big deal in 1945. That's huge. I mean, divorce was disgrace. I mean, holy shit. Even to get a divorce, like, there wasn't no fault divorce back then. You couldn't just go, yeah, we're not getting along or getting a divorce.

There had to be like someone, you had to say there was adultery or, you know, violence or something like that to get a divorce. Or she's in a wheelchair and she's useless to me. She's useless to me. Ass not as good as it used to be. I think they'd probably grant a man a divorce for that in 1941. You know what, her ass is looking a little wide. Yeah. Gravity, Your Honor.

Yeah, he's right. A couple of kids have sagged her out, good, Your Honor. And he goes, oh, my goodness, you're right. Son, divorced. Fucking gaveled, banging. So divorced when she's two. Her mother is also named Hope. Her mother goes by,

Honey. That's her nickname. All right. Honey and Hope. She said her mother was too busy dating, playing tennis, and traveling to raise her daughter. Her mom's a socialite. Being honey. Yeah. That's it.

Yeah. She's like a socialite. She's out doing like the party scene over here in California and doesn't really take care of her. Her father, James Stagliano, was a professional French horn player. Oh, they've got those. How many of those do you hear? about. I guess you only need two, right?

A couple. You think you need one with every symphony. Yeah, but you need one and then another one that guy's busy. Yeah, I think... These two gigs come up. You can't be busy. You're the regional French horn player. I don't think you're allowed to be busy. It's like if you're a doctor in a small town. If someone comes knocking on your door at 3 a.m., you've got

to fix their dog bite. That's all there is to it. Yeah. So, this guy, she called him her quote wild Italian father. Yeah. And he moved back east to play with the Boston Symphony when she was a little girl. Oh, shit. So he's a very good French horn player.

So she was raised basically by her grandmother in a huge Spanish-style mansion in Beverly Hills. Oh. It's her and her grandmother in a giant house in Beverly Hills. So this is a real different story than we normally tell here. This isn't, you know, in the trailer. and stepdad came and felt her up. In LA are very common. They're beautiful.

Oh, yeah. This is one of those big old-time Beverly Hills mansions. I mean, it's fucking cool. So her grandmother would tell her when she was a kid that, you know, your mother needs to be taken care of and you should learn how to do that, which is probably the worst thing you could tell a kid is take care of your parents. That's not good for them at all. When they're a kid, yeah.

Not at all. Yeah. Yeah. When they're 80. Yeah, if you're an adult. But you can't tell an 8-year-old, you've got to take care of your parents. It's awful for them. You want to make a codependent forever?

There you go. Enjoy. So that's a little weird. When Hope was 11, her grandmother died. And her mother basically is trying to find a way to not have to watch her and continue to live her life. Yeah. So she's apparently sending her at all these different private schools.

She hates the private schools. school. Yeah. Doesn't like it. She loves the public school she said to, though. Likes that. She wants to be, I don't think she enjoys the hoity-to-y-to-y. Yeah, the lifestyle.

The dickheads with money. They're no fun to be around. They're no fun, probably, yeah. So her mother would kept putting her back in, like, elite private schools, and she hated it because she's going to girls school. These are all, back then, these are not co-ed private schools. Right. There's no guys there.

There's no boys. Probably not a party. If you're 16 and you like boys, that kind of sucks. Same thing if you're a guy, you're going to an all-girls school. If you were going to an all-girls school, you'd be thriving if you were a boy. It'd be great. So she had a blue uniform at this one Westlake, blue uniform with white ankle socks, and she cried every day because nobody liked her.

And she, by the way, is hot. Yeah, that's why they don't like her. She's blonde and all this. And yeah, she just doesn't get along with the other rich kids for some reason. For her 16th birthday, her dad flew her to New York and took her to the Stork Club. What is that? It's a nightclub in New York. Oh.

I think, though, that it used to be like a jazz club back in the day. And I don't know what it was in 19, because this would be 1958, so it would still be like a jazz club, I would think. One of those nightclub, Copacabana, that type of thing. So they were thrown out of the club. Yeah. I've never heard this for quote, fancy dancing. Oh, their swing dancing.

I don't know what that is. I don't know what fancy dancing is. I hope it's not dirty dancing. I'm creeped out if it is, but they got tossed out for fancy dancing. I don't have any of that stuff. So Hope here decides that she doesn't like any of these schools. She doesn't like any of this shit.

She actually had like a debutante ball. thing. Really? She made her debut. That's how rich they are. Rich people make their debuts and their daughters go to a ball to introduce to the rich fuck coronation. Yeah.

Oh, that's like an old, you know, they did it with all the old English people and shit and they brought it over here. When do they do that? What age? Is it like a sweet 16 thing? It means you're available. No, it's like 18, 17, 18. It means come a courtin.

Yeah. That's what that means. She's corking. Yeah. That's it. So this is the Los Madrinus ball. And she also said that her mother's telling her you're going to Stanford. Oh, and you're going to do this.

You're going to Stanford. You're coming out. You're making your debut. Instead, she hooks up with the boy next door and drives to Mexico and gets married. She's fun. You can put tight reins on your kids, but at some point, they're going to do something you're going to hate. Yeah. She was only 16 when this happened.

That's illegal. That's, well, in Mexico, it's fine. Yeah, but it's illegal to go across borders, right? Probably. He was 19. Yeah. So that seems illegal. He didn't tell, they didn't tell their parents because she was afraid that the parents would annul the marriage.

So they came back from Mexico and pretended like they weren't married. And they pretended like they just saw each other basically until she got to be 18 and then they wouldn't, then the parents couldn't do anything about it. That's what the problem is here. Now, she's really smart. This, I don't know, this isn't a newspaper article, but I can't imagine this is true. Now, she enrolled at USC before finishing high school somehow. I don't know how they let her do that. Dual enrollment, yeah.

They said her IQ, this is why they let her in, because her IQ was 183. Okay. Which is like top 20 of all time here. human beings that have been recorded. Like, literally. That's, they usually go off GPA, but okay. We'll go with IQ. So apparently, um,

183 though is, I think, I think Einstein was like 180. I don't know. She's going to split the fucking Adam this broad. Like, what's going on? I rarely take IQ as like genuine anymore. I don't know. Is there something about it that, that seems like there's a stigma to it, that it's bullshit?

I don't know. All the, all the, I mean, I'm not a whatever, but. I imagine, yeah, I imagine back when all these geniuses were around, they did their IQ and it was outstanding. And I do mine and it's ridiculous. It's embarrassing. But it seems like the people with the high IQs are really smart. Yeah, yeah.

They seem to be able to figure shit out. Is there a study recently? I feel like, I feel like IQs have just been like, I don't know. I mean, it's been, it's almost been like politicized a little bit, but I mean, it's still, I don't know, in my head. People with low IQs can be very successful. People with high IQs can be crazy and have no success and not be able to get out of bed in the morning. Right. I don't think it about, but you have a greater ability to.

Actitude for it. Yeah. I don't think someone with an 86 IQ is going to understand physics if you told them about it, probably. Yeah. They don't have the capacity. That's what I'm saying. It's just a smaller bandwidth, I believe. Yeah, the number probably correlates to ability.

for sure. Potential ability. Doesn't mean that you have. Whether or not you use it. Right. Yeah. How big is your VAT essentially for shit? Okay.

Yeah. That makes more sense. Kind of a deal. That's the way I would look at it. Yeah. I'm making... Yeah. I'm boiling water in a in a macaroni pot to try to make, you know, a family-size helping

a spaghetti, whereas somebody else is very capable of. Some people, it's just a ketchup ramekin from a lobster, you know? So it's tough. You never know. It's to everybody's different. Yeah, and I'm using the microwave to do it. So at 20 years old, she has two kids already. Two kids.

One. What her life was. She was supposed to go to Stanford and have all the success. Instead, she has two kids. 183. She knows how that works. Apparently. She later said she divorced her first husband because, quote, he was a boring stay at home.

Oh. Not exciting enough for her. exciting when she was 16 and not out of the house. Sure. That was when it was exciting. But then, you know, by the time she's 20, she's going, hold on a second, that's not exciting anymore. He's just the guy next door. Yeah.

You know, so she gets married again. This is to a guy named Tom Masters. That's where she gets her name Hope Masters. Now, he is a public relations guy. Yeah. He, they have a third child together. In the 60s? In the 70s.

In the 70s. Or no, this is the 60s. She's 20. So this is early 60s. They have a third child. And then that marriage falls apart. Oh, no. She says because Tom was, quote, too much of a playboy.

Okay. So she's really Goldilocks in the fuck out of marriage here. Yeah. He's too boring. He's too exciting. Let's find somebody just lukewarm enough. Yeah, yeah. So now she's young.

At this point, well, we'll catch her up with her at 31. Age 31. So this is, you know, 19772, 73. She's divorced with three children living in Beverly Hills on $435 a month that she's getting. You can't do that even then, right? This is from child support from two ex-husbands and a small allowance from her mother as well. What the fuck hope? One week she said her and her kids survived on nothing but potatoes and milk.

That's all they had the money for. She had no health insurance. I mean, still, you could go into the hospital back day. and get five surgeries, they'd send me a bill for $600. You know what I mean? So that's not that bad. It makes some potatoes and milk for us. We'll be all right.

It's fine. I remember my grandmother telling me what her first, having her first child cost her. She had to have a surgery when she first got to the United States and, like, they had to go to the hospital. And they said, like, they had to save for it for two months to be able to afford it. You know what I mean? And I'm like, a surgery, now you could save for 30 years and you would be able to afford it. So that's pretty funny. Just the drugs for the surgery is 30 grand.

I mean, that was like 1949, we're talking about. Yeah. So anyway, no health insurance, no credit card here. She is in the Blue Book Social Register, which is like the hoity-toity people who have, you know, deba-totante balls. But her children get free school lunches because she's so broke. Okay. So it's a real weird dichotomy with her. Now, there's a woman named Joan Barthel who wrote a book on this case.

I suggest you read it if you're interested in this case. She did a great job. She described her thusly, quote, just over five feet and weighed 90 pounds. Ooh. Hope, yeah. She had smoky green eyes and a small-boned oval face, champagne-colored hair streamed past her shoulders,

and she looked more like a sultry teenager than a mother of three children. A smoke show. Smoke show. No, she's, you look at her, you go, oh, Jesus, she's gorgeous, especially for back then, like, bam. The Sharon Tate reference. reference is not far off. No?

No. She's also, I like to call her a gatherer of lost puppies. Oh, yeah. That doesn't mean just puppies, obviously. She's a collector of broken people. She's real soft. She's real nice. She takes in dozens of stray cats over the years.

Even runaway children she'll take in, which sounds illegal. And I don't know if you shouldn't do that, probably. You can't be the Underground Railroad for children. No, shit. With her former, not even her maid at the time, a former maid from when she was young. Yeah. Or with her other husband or something turned up pregnant. Hope took her in and even attended the birth, signing forms claiming to be family so she could be in the delivery room with her.

Oh. A friend called Hope's house, quote, an early crash pad. Okay. Yeah. Before crash pads became a real popular thing. She had one, basically. So, 1971, she finds William T. Ashlock, A-S-H-L-O-C-K. He is born in 1933 here, so he's in his late 30s, goes by Bill.

They met at a Christmas party in December of 72. And she felt right away that he was the room temperature porridge. This is the one. I found my porridge, man. He's an advertising executive in Los Angeles, which that's good. He's an eligible bachelor. He's 40 years old. He looks 25.

Everybody says. That's great. And he's obsessed with fitness. And this is in the early 70s. So there's no, you know, he's not watching YouTube videos that are filling his head full of bullshit. And he's not flipping a tractor tire down the road. He's actually doing some actual healthy shit, huh? He jogged three miles every day.

He ate yogurt or cottage cheese for lunch. that kind of thing. This was at the time still, if you know, like I said, again, Mad Men, if you know anything about ad executives,

this is, they come, every lunch, they come back shitfaced from five martinis and take a nap until their afternoon meeting. And he doesn't do that at all.

He has hot on cheese for lunch. Yeah, he would run laps and eat granola during the day. So, I mean, different kind of guy. He worked at Daley and Associates,

which is a very good back then advertising agency on Will Sherbrough, Boulevard in L.A. Yeah. So legit as fuck this guy. And he's cool, this cat, man. He's a cool guy.

He has a cool sports car back then. So like a probably, you know, a little like a 63 vet with a split window and shit. I'm picturing him. In the 60s, either that or one of those poor speedsters or. Some cool. Yeah. He has a pilot's license. Yeah.

Yeah. He has a pilot's license. Fun. He's a cool guy. He's doing it. Yeah. Interesting. He's handsome and successful.

He's also in the middle of his second divorce, just like she is, which is interesting. Helpful. Yeah, we could commiserate. He's described as quiet but not boring, successful, but not flashy. Uh-huh. So, yeah. And they start hooking up and kind of plan in a little future. They're talking about marriage and everything like that.

Things are looking wonderful. Every morning Bill woke up at 6 a.m. to exercise while watching educational programs on TV with the kids. He's learning while he sweats? With the kids. Oh, okay. He's making, I'm watching TV with the kids. And then, yeah. Yeah. And then he'd make breakfast. Um, he, he bought granola by like the 20 pound burlap sack. Yeah. He's got that. Um, he was nothing, they called him attentive, attentive, present, responsible. This is, this is the, the, the perfectly warmed porridge right here. This is exactly what she was looking for. Okay.

February 23rd through February 27, 1973, let's talk about. By the way, someone who has kind of hopes passed, how often do they actually enjoy the person who they should like? Yeah, it's very rare. Very rare that that happens. You always find somebody who settles or they find the fucking damage that they did this to them. And also, too, not to get too psychological, but dad left, took off, wasn't around, she, for her to find somebody stable and want to be there, that's a sign of a lot

of growth because she should hate this and want to be treated badly and want to be left places. That's in the back of her mind. That's what happens a lot unless you get a bunch of therapy or figure out. And whether or not she wants it versus what she actually gets is two different things also. You know what I mean? You just, you just gravitate to it because it's home. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what feels right. And you're like, this doesn't feel right. He's being nice to me and things are okay and I'm not struggling and I'm not scrambling. Yeah. It's just, I have the same thing with moving. Yeah.

Soon as I'm comfortable somewhere, I'm like, well, where you should move now, right? Like, because I grew up. I lived in like 30 places in 10, in eight years when I was a kid. So I'm like, I don't get comfortable anywhere. This is the longest in my house right now where we are. This is the longest I've ever lived anywhere in my entire life. It's like ever. It's been five years, the longest I ever lived anywhere. So 10.30 a.m. February 23rd, Hope's made Martha Padilla, I assume that's the pregnant one that she hung out with there, knocked on her bedroom door and said Bill is calling. It's earlier than he usually calls. Oh, he usually calls at lunch, I think.

And Hope picks up and Bill says, listen to this. You want to have the biggest laugh for your life? I do. I'm in. For some crazy reason, I'm going to be interviewed. A guy called me and said he's doing a story for the L.A. Times on the 10 most eligible bachelors in town, and he wants to interview me. What? And Hope said, well, tell him you're not a bachelor.

Yeah, tell him you're not eligible. But they're not, he's not married. He's divorced now. So technically, he's a bachelor, but, you know, he thinks this will just be good for business. So he's like, I'm not trying to get troll for chicks here. She's like, yeah, this is going to get a rainfall of panties. Stop it. Yeah.

This is going to be. fucking women chasing you with flowers and shit, some weird Beatles fucking thing. So at 11.50 a.m., a well-dressed man carrying a carved pipe walks into Daly and Associates. He tells the receptionist that his name is Taylor Wright from Los Angeles. I remember him, yeah.

Remember that name, Taylor Wright? He said he has a lunch appointment with Bill Ashlock. Sure. The lunch lasted four hours. Wow, that's a lunch. Yes, which is really fucking weird. But they just talked, they hit it off. And by the time they finished, Bill was all of his meetings were fucked up.

It's a mess. But they talked for like a long time. Four hours. They're going to have a hell of an article on this guy, boy. So by around 3 o'clock, Bill returns to the office, very excited. He tells his boss about the interview. And the boss is surprised. He's like, this isn't like you to be excited about public.

publicity, but he said that Bill seemed flattered by it, just the attention. He thought it was pretty cool. You know, he thought it was Los Angeles Times. They want to talk to me about what a handsome, dashing guy I am, you know? I'm so fuckable. Look at me. Who wouldn't want to fuck me? So, 5.30 p.m. Taylor Wright calls Hope's House.

Okay. Because Bill had told him he was going to be over there. So Bill answers the phone, and they make arrangements for Taylor Wright to come. to the ranch the next day to take pictures for the article. I need more. There's a ranch out in Springville. Hope didn't like that.

Hope was pissed because this was supposed to be their weekend to hang out. And now you're doing work stuff. And we have to go out there and take pictures. This is bullshit, basically. So that same evening, Hope and Bill drive the three hours to River Valley Ranch in Springville.

Right. And this is a 500 acres of mountains in the Sierra Nevada foothills. That's there, this ranch. Natural geysers of fucking. I'm sure. Soda. Yeah. It's popping out everywhere.

I love it. You can scoop the mountain dew from the streams, Jimmy. It's wild. It's crystal clear. Crystal clear mountain dew. Hope's mother, honey, and her stepfather owned a quarter interest in this property. Oh. That's how she ended up being able to use it for this photo shoot because there's the horses.

It's a cool, like, buggy. Western setting. It looks cool. Fuck yeah. Put some boots on the guy. I'll take my shirt off and get on a fucking horse. So they stay in the guest cottage. Yeah.

They made a fire. They drank wine. They stayed up all night. Yeah. Bill and Hope. And they talked about their past and their future. They talked about marriage. They talked about this is it right here.

We're both finally happy. Yeah. Our futures are just going to be wonderful. Yeah. Saturday afternoon here, February 24th, 73. early afternoon, here comes Taylor Wright, pulls up in a big white Lincoln Continental. Hell yeah.

Oh, yeah, as we've heard about before. A guy steps out. He's a tall, tanned man wearing dark slacks, a red turtleneck with a white shirt over it and a leather jacket. 1973. Wow. The worst fashion.

Jesus. He's carrying a carved pipe. Uh-huh. He says, and Bill says to Hope, Hopi, this is Taylor Wright. Yeah. And he said, she says to Taylor Wright, hi, Taylor, where'd you get that terrific tan? Yeah. And he said, I'm in fucking California.

It's in Southern California. I don't know. I went outside for a while. Look around, dickhead. Yeah. That's where I want. There's this place with a bunch of sand near the ocean that people tend to go. Pretty cool.

Yeah. He said, I've been skiing, which, okay. Hold. So you're wind burned? Yeah. You don't get tan from skiing. You get sunburned usually from what I've seen. Just on the face because everything else is covered the fuck up.

Yeah, totally. With something very insulated. Lots of layers of it, as a matter of fact. So they sat in the living room. Bill is on the sofa by the window. Looking handsome, I'm sure. Taylor here is in a rocking chair near the fireplace. Hope serves wine and cheese.

and Hope is talking. Hope yip yaps a lot, as we'll find out from something later on. She is a talker, boy. Oh, man, never shuts up. Oh, James, he was joking. He was trying to be affable when he said, I've been skiing.

It's a joke. I've been skiing. I get. I get it now. That's possible. Yeah. Well, it's such a, such a... Such a stupid thing to say.

A joke that two comedians couldn't figure out it's a joke. So I'd say back to the right. room on that one. That's what he's doing. He's joking. Jesus Christ. So she talks about her life. She talks about her mother and her stepfather. She called them stiff and unbending as

the American Eagle, quote unquote. She called her mother. She talked about her kids and her just talks about everything that you would tell like a good friend who said, tell me what's on your mind. Not a stranger you just met who came to take pictures of your husband for the newspaper or your boyfriend.

calling her mom stiff and her dad unbending. He's unbending. That's a rigid-ass couple. That is rigid. So Taylor Wright is listening. He's listening. She says, how did you happen to pick Bill as a distinguished bachelor? Right.

And Taylor Wright says, well, he drives a sports car. He's got a pilot's license. And he points to her, he dates attractive women. Oh. What more do you want for an eligible bachelor? So late afternoon, when the sun is just right. Get that golden time. They go down to the river to take pictures. All right. Hope slips on the damp grass and almost falls down, but Taylor Wright saves her.

Oh. Caught her around the waist and held her and held her and picked her back up as they climbed back up the bank. I'm sure both hands on the ass cheeks as he pushed. No, no, I got you here. No. Let me push. Yeah. So she said, you didn't tell me your birthday, but I know exactly what you are. a Leo, the lion. Oh. Which sounds slurdy. Yeah. And he actually is a Leo, which is a strange part.

Is that? August 10th. It's weird. I don't want to do it. Nope. I hate it so much. I know. And in the 70s, that was a real big shit.

I mean, it is now, but in the 70s, that was people's whole personalities for a while there. Oh, man. Hope was impressed by how he handled himself. He's so confident and commanding. And, you know, he's tall. And he even was directing the ranch foreman with easy authority. He's just a man's man. She's impressed.

So by dinner time, Hope was basically ready for a nap here. She was dizzy and tired. They drank wine, and she takes pain pills for her chronic back problem. So she's mixing wine and pills at this point. I don't know what those pills are, but any pain pills, unless they're ibuprofen mixed with alcohol, is going to make you feel a little sleepy. It's probably going to be a perk back then. Who knows? I'm sure they had muscle relaxers back then too. But a pain pill was likely like something strong.

Yeah. Could have been anything. Something we wanted to be drinking wine or something. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. She said, I have to go to bed right now. I'll see you tomorrow. Which is what you would say when you're on pills and wine.

I literally have 13 seconds got to run. My legs are about to be useless. Let me know if I wander out in the desert in the night. Wake me up, please. So, quote, Taylor Wright is still there. He's still in the rocking chair. She says, I have to go to bed. I'll see it tomorrow.

Bill follows her down into the bedroom. She told him she was just taking a nap and to wake her up when Taylor Wright leaves. You know. Then she fell into a deep sleep immediately. She had to go to bed. You bet. Bill goes back to the living room, to the sofa. He's drinking his drink.

He's hanging out with Taylor Wright in the rocking chair. And this next bit. comes from specifically Hope's account of everything. Okay. This is from interviews with the author, Joan Barthel, and from a lot of other things. So some of this is from Hope's book called, Hopes, whatever, from her book.

Oh, no, that's from Joan's book. I'm sorry. Okay, this is from Jones book. Now, okay. Hope said she was yanked out of a deep sleep by something cold and metallic. being shoved into her mouth. A gun, obviously.

The room is pitch black, and she said she just sees a shape looming over her and can feel metal in her mouth and can tell it's a gun. So this is from the book here. Hope jerked her head away from the cold heart object in her mouth, rolled across the bed, then across another twin bed. She ran out of the bedroom and threw the hall door into the living room. Bill, she screamed. Bill, help me. Okay. living room was dark, but there's a little bit of glow of the fire, because that's dying down.

So in the coals, you can still see something. She could still see Bill sitting in his usual place at the end of the sofa nearest the fireplace. His feet are stretched up on the coffee table. He's holding a drink in his left hand and resting it on the arm of the sofa. His eyes are closed. Looks like he fell asleep with his drink. That's a great way to fall asleep, by the way. By the fire.

As she runs across the room and sees the... the rocking chair is empty. So she said, okay, Taylor Wright is gone. Yeah. So then she said, oh, my God, a maniac must have come in the room. Now, there's a man who just had a gun in her mouth in the bedroom. That's a maniac. Yeah, where, and most maniacs, when they put a gun in your mouth, they just don't let you roll out of it and run away.

Yeah. That's why they put a gun in your mouth to keep you. Right. Yeah. Keep you right there. Yeah. Yeah. So she is, you know, she's screaming.

Bill, help me. Bill help me. she got to the sofa and grabbed Bill by the shoulders and shook him, and his head wobbled and fell backward against the sofa. So she said, Bill, Bill, wake up, help me. So then a voice came from behind the sofa from the darkness in the dining area, and it said, quote, he can't help you. He's dead.

So she kept shaking Bill, though, and screaming, help me, wake up, help me. Not, are you okay? Help me. Which is telling. Then the voice, the way she described it in a very calm, flat monotone, and she didn't recognize the voice, she said. Again, he can't help you. He's dead. She said, then someone approached her from behind and grabbed her by the hair and pulled her away from the sofa.

He wrapped her arms around her back and spun her around facing the fireplace. Then when she let go of Bill's shoulders at that moment, she said she heard a heavy thud. She said the man holding her arms thrust them out in front of her and said, look at all the blood. See all that blood? He's dead. He's dead. And showing her hands. He put her hands out so she could see it in the light of the fire that you have blood all over your hands from shaking it. Yeah.

So she could see then that her arms and hands were covered in blood. And she said she began to vomit immediately. Right. She ran for the bathroom and the man ran after her. Herring at her clothes, she said. The blouse she had on button when she laid down came off as she ran. She said in the bathroom, she fell to her knees and groped in the darkness for the toilet bowl so she could vomit. The man said, go into the bedroom.

She said, leave me alone. I'm going to choke to death. She said she felt heavy arms around her. She grabbed a towel and jammed it up against her mouth as the man half dragged, half carried her into the bedroom, bumping into wall. along the way. Remember, she's 90 pounds. You pick her up under one arm. He threw her onto the bed nearest the window, the bed that she had been sleeping in, and he said, I don't need a gun to kill you. I could crack your neck with one hand, and he put his hand around her neck. She heard a thunking sound. I never heard that

word before. Thunking? You know what it is, but I just never heard it before. And she felt his body pressing on hers. He was wearing some kind of sweater and nothing else. That's a good outfit. Dick hanging out in a sweater. One of the blue little chilly. He's going to say just dress like Fawsey there. That's nice. Fucking crazy. Very chilly Fuzzy. Very chilly Fuzzy bear.

But he's got jokes. So it's okay. Went skiing. Oh my God. Yeah. He went skiing. That's about the level of Fossey as a joke. Yeah. Waka Waka.

Oh, God. Speaking of Waka, this gets worse. Oh, no. She felt his body pressing on hers. He was wearing. wearing some kind of sweater or nothing else. She said she laid perfectly still and passive, and he raped her.

Oh, boy. She said she was thinking the whole time, Bill isn't dead. Bill isn't dead. He's just unconscious. And when this man is done doing this, he'll leave and then I can help Bill. That's what she said her thought process was. She said the man was kissing her violently all over her, her neck and hair and breasts and all over her body,

rubbing her, grabbing her all over. She said as though he had a hundred hands. And he said to her, if you make this fun enough for me, maybe I won't kill you. Yeah. He kept kissing her at the same time. And then suddenly he got up and she could hear him thrashing around the room in the darkness. And he said to her, I heard you're a real party girl, a real swinger.

I heard you can do all kinds of interesting things and that oral is your specialty. Where to hear that? Wow, around the criminal fucking Winnie the Pooh graveyard. Yeah. Didn't hear that in Christopher Robbins for it. I'll tell you that much. Jesus Christ. No, no, no.

She said, leave me alone. I can't do anything. Leave me alone. And then he got on top of her again. It was rubbing all over. And he said, and I can do anything. What would you like me to do? Do you like oral sex, anal sex?

Oh, boy. No, no, no, hope said. I don't want to do anything. I can't do anything. Leave me alone. And then she said he raped her again. She said, you're hurting me. But he said this time it was more ferocious, she said.

She felt as though she were in a cage with a gorilla. So then he laid still heavy against her body. And she said she felt colder than she ever felt in her life. It was very cold in the room. She said it flashed across her mind that evil brings a feeling of intense cold. Okay. All right. It's enough with the Leo and then this is evil.

They're a spiritual gal. Yeah. The temperature is irrelevant here. This is evil. All right. Yeah. So he raised his head slightly and said, I can't leave you alive. You could identify me.

And she said, I don't know how even who you are. Right. He said, you know, I'm about six feet tall and about 20 pounds overweight. And you know that my hair is beginning to thin in the back. My name's Taylor. I was going to say, any other details you want to give? You know my license plate number. She said, I don't know what you're talking about.

There's millions of people who could fit that description. I don't know who you are. I'd never be able to identify you. please go away take my car and go away and this is a ranch in the middle of nowhere we think he walked up here he's got a fucking vehicle so he got up and she lay motionless she said she heard the sound of tape being ripped

and then was being rolled over on her side he pulled her hands behind her and her feet up toward her hands and he hogtied her with an abusive tape he said don't scream if you have any ideas about screaming for the foreman I'll just kill him and you too. And then he covered her up with blankets.

He tucked them in around her neck and bent over and put his face against her cheek and said, I love you. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Then she heard the door close. She said, no sound anywhere, stillness for a while. She said she hoped, she felt like she was hallucinating and that none of this was happening and none of it was real. And when you're on pills and wine too and it's dark, you've got to feel like this is some sort of alternate reality.

Right. So her heart, she said, is pounding. She can feel it. She's, you know, she's a big nerve ending at this point. She said after a long time, she heard a sound. Someone was there again. Sounding agitated, but not wild and violent. She said it didn't sound like the wild animal man who had been there earlier.

He pulled the blankets back and felt her hands. Oh, very clever, he said in a normal tone of voice. You've unwrapped your hands. she managed to squeeze her hands out of the tape at one point. Very clever. Very clever. She said it was hurting so much. I'm not going to try to do anything.

Is Bill dead? Oh, please tell me Bill isn't dead. Please go see if Bill is really dead. The man said, I've seen him and he's dead. So she said she began to moan and say, oh, my God, oh my God. Why, Bill? So she said pain is surging through her head. Now she's got a bad headache too.

And she said, you know, just fucking all these images of Bill and Bill holding her and kissing her gently and everything like that. And she says, did you know, did he suffer? And he said, no, he never saw the gun. She said, oh, why, why, why, Bill? And this man said, quote, because he was with you. Oh. Yeah.

And she said, with me? You mean he's dead because of me? And he said, that's right. Uh-huh. And she said, why me? But why me? And he said, because someone wants you dead. Oh, oh.

This is getting crazy. Yeah. Yeah. She was like, what the fuck? She said, why me? Why would anybody want me dead? I've never heard anyone in my life. Why me?

And the guy said, because you're going to court next week. And Hope said, oh, my God, oh, my God. That's only a couple hundred dollars a month. Uh-huh. She's going to court about child support next week. So then when the man spoke, She said he sounded confused. He said, well, I don't know.

Then there must be something else. And she heard him pacing around the room at the foot of the bed and said, I didn't want to get involved in any of this. This isn't my job. I got involved at this at the very last minute, he says. I'm a, you know, they pick me up at the 11th hour. This is crazy. Yeah, I was just on deck. I'm a waiver wire pickup.

Yeah. Sign me to a 10-day because somebody tweak their knee a little bit. Somebody else had the cases first. That's crazy. So he would pace for a while and stop and stand still, sometimes talking in a normal voice, sometimes muttering, sometimes talking loudly. Sometimes he would leave the room for a while. Sometimes when he would return, he would rub her body up and down. Then he said sometimes she said sometimes he rubbed her with the gun too.

Once when he came back in, he pushed her face to one side of the pillow and said, don't move. And a flashbulb popped. Oh, like a light. he turned her face to the other side and there was another flash. Taking pictures, yeah. Then he took a third flash picture full face. So he did like a mugshot deal, left, right, center. She said, if I decide to let you live, which I haven't decided, and the day ever comes when you do anything to send the authorities after me, the organization will have your picture and you will be killed.

The organization. The organization. Yeah. He said, I'm going to let you keep your hands unbound. Okay. So at some point during this night, she said she had no idea of the time of any of this. She said that his eyes became more, her eyes became more accustomed to the darkness. And she knew that the man she was talking to was Taylor Wright, which at this point we know is G. Daniel Walker, obviously.

Yeah, we know it's on his name. Right. So he has really escalated his shit. Yeah, no shit. Stolen cars and jewelry and shit like that. This is a murder and a terrible. And more. Yeah, terrible treatment of a woman and rape.

At least that's what it seems like. And we'll talk about that. So anyway, she didn't call him Taylor and she didn't say she knew it was Taylor. He seemed to assume she knew. So because part of the conversation referred to Saturday afternoon. So she's like, okay. Hope said, okay, why did I let you come here? I didn't want you to come.

I didn't invite you. but Bill invited you to come. I could never say no to Bill. Right. And he said, it doesn't matter. I would have come anyway. There's a contract out on you. Hope said a contract.

I don't know. And then Walker said, well, I've been misled. You were supposed to be about 45 years old with grown-up children, and you were supposed to be a drug addict and an alcoholic, and you were giving your children drugs and making them sex perverts and ruining them. Oh. And Hope said the children. What if I had brought the children?

children. And then he said the children were supposed to come and the two older children were supposed to be killed. But the youngest one was to be removed. Oh, kidnapped, huh? Think about that. Yeah. She just said removed. Now, the two married, the two older kids come from her first marriage. Right. The other ones come from Tom, Masters. So he said, I would rather not kill you, but now I have to because of the contract. It's my hands are tied. I got to make the money, lady. He said, I should have killed you when you were asleep.

If I leave you alive, I'll get into trouble. You know, again, I'm going to have a meeting. They're going to bring me an HR. You know how it goes, man. It's going to be a huge pain in the dick. So she heard him pacing near the window. And he said, quote, this is not my job. I don't like it.

I've only killed one woman, but she was 45 years old and she was a spy in the Arab-Israeli war. Oh. Pardon? How did he get there? Whoa. but you're a good person and you're a good mother. Anybody who would pick up an ugly child with a runny nose that isn't even hers must be a good mother.

He knows that she takes kids in. Ugly ones. Ugly ones. Shitty kids and aren't even hers. He said, I would rather die than go back to jail. Why the hell he didn't just get you last week after you left the restaurant? I cannot figure out. I'm pissed off about that.

They're really screwing me here. That's the problem. This is crazy. Sure, your fiancé's been killed and you've been raped repeatedly. But, you know, this is inconvenient for me. Wow. I'm a little inconvenient. So Hope was saying restaurant, a restaurant?

And he said when you and Bill were at a restaurant last weekend, he was supposed to follow you when you left the restaurant and get you then when you went home. The restaurant was the Brown Derby, which was a very famous restaurant in L.A. That's no longer there. She and Bill had gone back to his apartment instead of. back to her house. She remembered thinking it would be all right to leave one of the, the youngest kid with Martha overnight because he'd be asleep by then.

So it'd be fine. So Walker keeps talking, telling her things, asking her things. He seems to know a shitload about Bill, but he asks whether Bill lived with her or someplace else. He knew a lot about her, too. He knew her address, where her mother lived, about the burglar alarm system on her mother's house. Wow.

He talked about her stepfather. father's heart condition. This is real specific shit. She was like, what the fuck? How does this work? How do you know all this? There's no way over the course of you guys having a fireside chat. You've gleaned all this info, which he could.

We know this. He's good at pulling info out of people, enough to rob their house when he leaves the hospital. Yeah, and he hangs on to the information and doesn't let go of it until he uses it. Yeah, it's interesting. So Hope then said, who wants me killed? And he said, you're husband. husband. She said, which husband? I have had two husbands. Yeah. And he said, you have two husbands? And he said,

well, I don't know. I don't know which husband, but your husband wants you dead. One of them. Which one is more likely to want you dead, I would think, you know? Got a name? And she said, he sounded confused and angry and said, I didn't want this job, but the guy that was supposed to do it got burned, and now I'm here and I'm supposed to do it. I didn't even want this. I wasn't supposed to be. He's clerksing it totally. I'm not even supposed to be here today. It's ridiculous. Somebody put fucking gum in the locks. Yeah. A bunch of savages out there.

So in bits and pieces, he tells a story about the contract. He tells hope that her husband had been involved with a man in the, quote, organization, who had loaned him $42,000. Wow. Walker calls this family money. All right. I don't know if that means like mafia or if that means like his family. I'm not sure. So her and her husband had taken out a very large insurance policy.

out on her so that when Hope was dead, he'll collect on the policy and he could repay this money. Oh. So Hope thought that Walker said the policy was for $200,000 and that he was being paid $3,600 to carry out this contract, which is a pretty cheap murder. Very. I mean, it is the 70s, inflation and all, but. $3,600. Yeah, that is a whole car.

I bet that be 30 grand today. Probably. 25 grand or something. That could be good. Not that much because 73, by 73's inflation had come in. Okay. It wasn't quite the same. It was mid-70s.

We're all inflation. He had, but maybe, you know what? 73, I'm not sure, dude. That's a close one. Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. He related that he had met her husband at the Beverly Hilton and that her husband had given explicit details.

He wanted a bloodbath. He said, a Sharon Tate kind of massacre. Really? With butchered bodies and blood. Blood splashed all over the room because it would be good publicity for his business. Does he do like crime scene clean up or what here? Do carpet? What does he do?

Yeah. He's selling the best vacuum you're ever going to find, Jimmy. It takes anything out of the carpet. It's amazing. And if it doesn't, we give you free flooring. Yeah. Jesus. They come to your house.

They don't dump like mud on your floor with some coffee. Yeah. They butcher a woman and then clean it all up. You're not impressed. they're still going to prison. So that's what they want. With butchered bodies, blood splashed all over the room, good publicity. So did hit men need publicity?

Or can you just say, that's what you do? I mean, you could just say, did you see the news last week? That was me. Then he says, did you ever have anal sex with your husband? Oh, boy. She said no. And he said, well, did you talk about it much? And she said, no.

Why in God's name are you asking me that? Oh, boy. And he said, well, because he said to take a piece of wood from the Tinder box and, quote, stick it up you. Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. He said, but I never liked that plan. I like a nice, clean killing. Your husband told me that you take a great deal of medication, and I would rather have taken you to a party and exchanged your pills for something else.

Or I could have made it look like a stroke or a heart attack with a needle in your eye or an ice pick in your ear. You know, how you do. he wanted me to rape you with a piece of log? In the ass, yes. Ainally rape you with a piece of log. He said, you know, when I was in the kitchen after dinner, I laid out two ice picks I could have used

at a party or in a crowd. You can stick someone in the ribs and then get away easily because it takes a person a minute or two to slump over and then because the wound is so small, nobody notices it and assumes the person's having a heart attack. Right. So Hope's like, what the fuck?

She can't believe either of her husbands would do this. She said, well, where did you meet my husband? And he said at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. And she said, well, did he just say I want a bloodbath, a Sharon Tate kind of thing? And in 73, that was still the biggest story in the world. And he said, oh, no, he discussed in detail what he wanted done. And she said, my God, how long did this conversation last? And he said, about 20 minutes.

He gave me a lot of details because he said that he said to, to have you die in a spectacular way that would make the papers and the publicity would be valuable for his business because it would be the husband, you know, the wife of this guy and his name would be all over the papers. Which I've never thought of that as a way to promote the podcast. And we should just start murdering people. Yeah.

You know, yeah. Yeah, we should just start murdering people. That'd be the biggest story in the world. Murder ourselves. Murder people? Of course, the podcast would be over. It's terrible publicity. But it would be number one for a minute.

For a minute, yeah. The worst idea ever, basically, for publicity this guy had. I'll kill my wife and then I'll get, just hire a PR company. It's cheaper, probably too. So they said that the story started to make sense to hope because she remembered her surprise when Tom or ex-husband had said he was going to meet someone at the Beverly Hilton. She knew he hated the Hilton, and she remembered asking him why the Hilton. She said, you know it takes forever to park there. and she also said she remembers her husband's obsession with the Sharon Tate murders.

Yeah. He was, which everyone in L.A. was obsessed with that. Yeah, who isn't? Yeah. She had seen Tom reading a book, and Tom almost never read books about the killings. She could not accept it. Everybody on Earth, Red Helter Skelter in 1972. Everybody.

So she managed to ask, well, how did he look? And he said, I didn't like the way he looked. like him at all. He's greasy. Okay. She thought, that's weird. Tom doesn't have a greasy look. He's real neat and well-groom, but he had, she said he washed his face five times a day. And in the morning, his face would be shiny because his skin was so oily. She thought, oh, my God, it must be Tom, because maybe he just didn't wash his face and he got all oily.

She said, oh, my God. And if, it must be him, because if he didn't meet Tom, how would he know that Tom has oily skin? Yeah. How would he know that Tom was interested in the Tate, murders. But if it is Tom, he must have lost his mind and the children need to be protected, especially the youngest. So she said, the children, I have to get back to the children. The baby needs me. And he said, oh, Tom will have the baby on Sunday. Okay. She said, no, no, Tom's never had the baby on Sunday. No matter how many times I've asked him, I've been sick. I've had a hundred thousand problems. He's never taken the baby on a Sunday. And Walker said, I don't care. He'll take

the baby this Sunday. Okay. So she thought about her young child. She thought about, you know, all of this shit. She said, oh, my God, he'll never know. He'll never remember me. If I die now, my baby, he'll never remember me. This is crazy. So he began yelling at her.

Stop it. Shut up. Stop it. He's kneeling on the bed, shaking her and saying, I can't stand it when a woman cries. I get all emotional. It's awful. I can't watch this. This is hard on me.

Don't you understand? And deciding whether to kill you or not. So then she said she burrowed her face into a pillow and he calmed down. He moved away from the bed and started talking in a normal tone. And he said, quote, Bill was too dull for you anyway. You need someone more exciting. Oh. And she said he was not too dull.

He had one of the most fantastic minds in the world. Just because he's quiet, you think he's dull. but you don't know what he's doing when he's quiet. He could be composing a song or he could be thinking of some fabulous thing that he's going to shoot on film. He has very creative ideas and he just doesn't talk about them.

And besides that, Bill's a very good person and he loves the children and I depend on him for everything. And then he cuts her off and he says, I don't want to hear any more about Bill. Fuck Bill. I said he was boring. Who cares? We're moving on.

So she tried to lighten the tone, she said. And you're wrong. I don't need someone more exciting. I've had someone more exciting. Thinking of her first husband, or another guy. And she said, and I can't take it. It wears me out. That was the real exciting guy.

So then he said, quote, but you were flexing your pelvis at me all day. What? I've heard shaking your ass, popping your tits. Flexing your pelvis. A million different ways of a guy saying a chick is, you know, trying to get his attention. I've never heard flexing your pelvis in my life. He played hound dog all day. I know what you were doing.

She said, what in God's name do you mean flexing my pelvis? She never heard it either. I'm glad that this is not just me that never heard this. So he tried to describe what he meant, but in the dark, she couldn't see his gestures. So this is turned into a ridiculous game of charades here. You're pop lock and your pussy at me. I've been watching. You know how it works.

She said, she said, do you mean the way I move around a lot when I'm sitting? I'm always readjusting my position, and he said, yes. She said, oh, my God, that's my back. I have to move around to make my back more comfortable. And he said, I didn't know that's what it was. And she thought he actually sounded sorry about his mistake, which she said, oh, this is good. Now I got a little advantage.

She said, look, I don't mind the idea of dying so much. I think there's something going on after we die, so I'm not really afraid to die. In fact, sometimes I've wanted to die. All right. But if Bill is dead, then all my hopes for the future, are pretty much dead too, and I don't care very much. But the thing is, my children really have nobody else,

and they'd be separated because my mother couldn't cope with all three, and being separated will destroy them. All right. So then he says, well, I'm sorry. I don't know. I know what you're saying about your children is true, and every time I go to kill you, I think about you picking that kid in the market,

picking up that kid in the market, and it bothers me. But I've got to kill you because you have to understand that in a contract killing, there's no such thing as a witness left alive. I'm really sorry that I took this contract that I really don't want to kill you. You have cute feet. Huh? What the fuck?

What? I don't want to kill you. You have cute feet. What kind of not sequiturs? Look at these feet. Little seven and a halfs. Who cares? What the fuck are you talking about?

So he's into feet too? What is going on with this guy? Good Lord. So Hope had determined here that her fear and anger enraged him and made him violent and she needed to be calm. So she said, well, before you kill me, can the condemn person have a last cigarette? And he said, no, it's bad for you.

How dare you? She said, you're worried about my health? And he said, gee, I guess I am. I just don't know what to do, he said finally. I really don't know what to do. I don't know if I can trust you. If I leave you alive, you might become vindictive later. And she said, you can trust me and I would not become vindictive.

It's against my religion to become vindictive. And he said, well, I just don't know. I don't know if I can trust you. She said, look, if hating you would bring Bill back, then I would hate you like I've never hated anyone before. But I can't bring Bill back. So there's no point in me hating you and being vindictive. So she sensed him starting to lighten up a bit. So she talked nonstop to him, tried to get him to talk about himself.

He told her that when he was 19, he had killed someone and got off to Europe, but that the organization had held it over his head afterward and forced him to do more jobs for them. And he was getting a little weary of killing people and was finding it hard to keep his motivation up. He said, I want to get out of the killing business. I can't keep doing this forever. I'm getting pretty old. And all it takes is someone just a little bit younger, a little bit faster. Yeah.

You know, it's like playing cornerback in the NFL. It's very similar, except it's a little different. He's Tony Soprano from the Mexican. He's just one more job. I'm going to retire. It's a lot. Yeah, got to get out of here. I'm getting too old for this shit.

Still, he said he liked the sexual aspect of killing. He said having a gun go off is like coming 10 times. Is it? So then she talked more about killing. And she said, look, I don't believe anyone should ever kill anyone else. So you and I are definitely at odds on that. But as far as the fact, as for the fact that you kill outside the law or outside what is socially acceptable, while other people kill because it's socially acceptable.

Huh? Okay. To me, that doesn't make one bit of difference. I don't think you should kill someone because they live in another country or because they have a different kind of skin.

I don't think you should kill someone because they're afraid and they're running. I don't think you should kill for a lot of the reasons that people are killing each other every day. If you were killing socially correctly,

you could be a hero, but you're just killing socially incorrectly, which to me makes you no worse than the other person. You're no worse than some soldier who shoots a woman. You're no worse than a cop. who shoots a kid in the back.

In fact, you're probably better. You're probably better than Lieutenant Callie, which I think was a cop in the paper at the time. The really evil people are the people who know me and yet sent you to kill me. Which I agree with that too. If you're a cop and you kill someone that I don't think you should have killed,

I'm more pissed off because you were trusted, given a gun, and I'm paying your fucking salary. I'm paying for that. At least if this guy's killing people, I don't have to pay for it. You know what I'm saying? I don't have to pay for it when they put them on fucking paid leave after he murders people. That's bullshit.

So I agree with her there. So he said, she said, and I have no particular hatred for you. I have no desire to attack you or get revenge on you or anything like that. I'm opposed to you, but I'm also opposed to half the men in America who've gone out and killed someone for no reason. Wow. In 1973, half the men in America killed someone for no reason. It's a lot. Half.

I would have thought. Half. Wow. Half the country were cold-blooded killing sons of bitches. Murder rate must have been half the charts. She said, I'm even opposed to the people who shoot animals. And now if you have to kill me, I understand your position. And I'm asking you to please understand my position, too. And let me do something to see that my children are taking care of.

Then you can shoot me. But first, let me call my mother. Wow. He said, you can't call your mother. And she said, you can hold a gun. gun to my head the whole time I'm talking. And when I've made it sure that my mother will get the children and keep them safe, then you can shoot me.

Okay. He said, no. She said, well, then just let me make out a will asking that my children be kept together as a group and go to live with my family. I know, rather than being separated, that would be better, then you can shoot me. And he said, how would your family get the will? And she said, you could mail it for me. Okay.

This is getting insane now. I got stamps in the drawer. Now, yeah, do I have to, my own postage? What are we talking about here? She said, I will trust you to mail the will if you will trust me to let me get up and write it. And he didn't say anything back. So she said, or I could just write a note about the children. And in the note, I will say I'm responsible for killing Bill.

And then you don't even have to shoot me. I'll shoot myself with your gun. Oh. So here's how it works. You give me your gun and then everything will be fine. And that over. Let me finish the job for you. Yeah, so he says, Hope, you couldn't handle this gun.

Why would you even, why you wouldn't even be able to keep it in your hand? It would knock you over. It would blow you halfway across the room. No, that wouldn't work. It's fucking crazy. Then at one point, he said, if you ever want to know more about me, read the day of the jackal. I'm the jackal. I'm the jackal, he says.

If you want to know more about me, go to the library. Yeah, if I don't shoot you. If I do, then never mind. He then was talking about code of ethics, about killing a mother with young children, and especially when they have very little money. He said he's got to think about it. You know, at one point he laid the gun down and laid on top of her, put his head on his shoulder and fell asleep.

Really? Hope says she blacked out at that point. From momentary relief and shock combined, she was unconscious, which I don't know if that doesn't sound like a thing that happens. But she laid in the darkness and she was bound and she was wondering if any of this was real. She said later on about the cold, evil brings a feeling of intense cold. In the icy blackness of the room, I felt I was in the presence of true evil. Sunday, February 26th and Monday, February 25th and Monday, February 26th now. So the next morning, Walker tries to kiss her and she stopped him. She said she needed to brush her teeth first.

I got morning breath. You don't want this. You know. Walker alternates between being threatening and having a good time over the course of the day. Yeah. When Hope refused to walk through the living room because of Bill's body, he dragged the corpse into the back bedroom out of sight so she could feel more comfortable out there. He said he wanted to cook her breakfast. I make a great dead brown.

You don't understand. You got any peppers? What are we talking about? Look, I'm Jimmy Dean. I didn't want to tell you. I didn't want to tell you, but that's my real identity. He talked about buying her a white lace dress that Bill had planned to get for her. He took pictures of her up on the mountainside like they were doing a photo shoot.

He put her in the front seat of his Lincoln Continental and drove her back to Beverly Hills, all while saying her children are still in danger from the organization. Police must not be contacted until he's had time to, quote, fix it. Fix it, yeah. So she tried to stay cheerful. At one point, he complained of a back egg. She gave him a back rub. Oh?

For the two days, they just hung out as like a couple, basically. A back rub. He played with her children. Oh, my God. Just brought him home with her. He cooked their meals. He drove the kids to school in the morning, Jimmy. What is going on?

And she just stayed at the house and was cool with that. Didn't call the cops, didn't say surround this car as soon as it leaves the school yard with the SWAT team because he just kidnapped my kids. and dropped them over. None of that shit. He washed dishes at the house. He's doing chores, Jimmy, not just cooking. He's doing chores.

He tucked the kids into bed. He read them stories. What the hell is happening? And she's, what the fuck? They sat that night and made a fire and listened to music and drank wine by the fire after a family day and a family dinner and him tucking them into bed. This is insanity. he then told her, I would like to sit here by the fire with you forever. I would be your protector and take care of you and the children forever.

Put the kids to bed and sit by the fire with you. And then he said, can you ever forgive me? And she said, yes, I forgive you. I do forgive you. And then he talked about getting out of the killing business and becoming an attorney. And he said, if I did that for five years, let's say I got out of the killing business. and I became an attorney and stayed out of trouble. If I did that for five years, will you marry me?

That's my five-year plan. She said, well, I think it would be fine if you became a lawyer, but honestly, I don't know how I'd feel in five years. I can't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how I feel in five. Who knows what goes on in five years? I could be a lesbian by then.

Who knows? I could just, who knows, anything could happen. It doesn't matter. I could be into anything by then. Tuesday, February 27, 1973. Okay, Tuesday afternoon, Hope convinces him that she had to do something. They had to do something. They said, Bill's body's still at the ranch.

Someone's going to find it. Yeah. Can't just leave it there. So he said, all right, we should go to your mother's house nearby. But he said, stick to the story or I'll kill everybody. So her mom, honey, was like, well, you look like shit. You're hollow eyed, unwashed, disheveled, what's going on? You know, so she was trying to make up a cover story.

This is her cover story. An intruder killed Bill. Oh. Then this guy here that I'm with, he arrived Sunday, found the body, moved it, and rescued me. Thank God. No, probably. He rescued you. She said they're all in horrible danger from a contract killing, ordered by Tom, my ex-husband.

There are snipers on the rooftops, and there's probably a bomb under your house. Oh, my God. Imagine your daughter comes in, looking like she's been doing. drugs for three days, which she hasn't, but looking like that and telling you this shit. There's a bomb with some strange guy. You'd be like, I'm calling an ambulance. You're out of your mind. So this is how charming fucking Walker is.

Somehow, even after this story, he charms the shit out of the parents. Oh? Mom and stepdad. Really? Yep. They said that his story didn't make sense. Why hadn't they called the police? But he's a well-spoken guy.

knows what he's talking about. He had an answer for everything. He said, I'm not an American national. Oh, not a citizen. He said he'd tampered with the evidence, too, and he said, that could cause him trouble with his passport. He doesn't want to get kicked out of the country. Hope's stepfather heard the story and reached for the phone immediately.

And he said, I'm 63 years old. I've never broken the law in my life, and I'm not starting now. I'm calling the cops. So Hope slammed the phone down and said, you're not just risking your own life. you're condemning my children. All right.

So Walker stood up and smiled and said, I'll call the police, but not from here. This phone is tapped. Oh. The organization, obviously. I'll use a phone at the Beverly Hills Hotel. And then he walked out. Now, she is now alone with her mother and stepfather in the house,

and he is outside. He's gone. Lock the door. It's over. Okay, call the cops. Lock the door. Shit's over. Anyway, hope scrawls out a will.

and her stepfather brought out guns he kept in the house because they said there's an organization and snipers and bombs. So now the cops end up showing up. At first they don't believe her father's, her stepfather's claim that there was a body at the ranch, which is interesting here. By the way, I think her original last name was Elise and her stepfather's name is Niven. I think that's what I'm thinking. Thinking that's how it works here. So they said there's a body at the ranch, which he partly owns. And Mrs. Masters said at the time, her mom, there's been a murder, murder, murder.

And they said, we're all in danger, send someone here. So they were like, yeah, right, and hung up. And they called back, there's a fucking murder. What are we doing? Yeah. It's like, there is a corpse in the garden. You know what I'm saying? Like funny farm style.

So two plain-closed police officers arrived, and she says that she was standing in front of her parents with a gun. Now she's got a gun, too, because she thought she was the intended victim and the officers might actually be murderers sent to kill her. Oh. That's what she said. So Hope tells them the story. Unknown intruder, contract killing rescued by this Taylor guy. Sure. By 10.30 p.m., Porterville Police find Bill Ashland.

body at the ranch following that call. It's wrapped in a bedspread in the back bedroom, shot in the head and dead for days. Oh, boy. At the same moment, at 10.30 p.m., pretty much, a man is renting a white Chevroi Impala at the Avis desk at the Los Angeles airport, paid with a credit card and signed the slip William T. Ashlock, the dead man. Oh, really? Oh, yeah.

He paid with his credit card, with Ashlock's credit card. Now, Hope is arrested at this point. They don't believe any of this shit. Okay? So Hope is arrested on suspicion of homicide here. They, I guess, everybody's involved. And now the Illinois State Police get involved too. Remember Detective Wallwell who wanted to know about him?

He's back involved. He had been tracking him as a fugitive trying to find him. Hope is going to end up being released on $50,000 bail after two days in jail. She goes back to her mother's house to do that. The phone's ringing. She's getting sympathy cards and all that kind of shit and anything. There's big headlines, the socialite and the killing. And in the paper, she is not cast as a victim.

She is cast as someone who's probably involved in this. Oh. That's what they're saying because the story makes no goddamn sense whatsoever. Yeah. So nobody, she said nobody understands that I'm going through. She said, you know, because it's only the cover story, she told. Someone broke in, we moved the body, and then we called you guys because there's the organization. Right.

She didn't tell them the story that we've talked about before. Then there's some tapes that pop up. Mysterious tape recordings, according to the newspaper here, have given an account of rape and murder, with the pending murder of trial of Beverly Hills Socialite, Hope, Niven, Masters. So sources close to the investigation say that apparently there's a voice on the tape and the recordings are found in her mailbox in Los Angeles, in Honey's mailbox, Hope's moms. Now, the voice repeatedly gives a detailed account of the events leading to Bill Ashlock's death there. The recordings relate finding Mrs. Masters nude and bound at the ranch and said she blurted out the fact that she had been raped, that someone had been hired to kill her and her children. The recording voice identified itself as non-American, an illegal alien in the United States.

He said he had joined Ashlock and Hope in Springville in the pretext of interviewing Ashlock for a story about him being a bachelor. The tape recording, they paralleled what she said earlier. Sources close to this also said that they were aware of the recordings. And the sheriff said, in my opinion, the recordings don't absolve anybody. Right. They could be made by anybody. The Los Angeles reports quoted the recording voices saying, I heard screams. I dashed into the living room.

Ashlock was on the sofa, half on the sofa, half on the coffee table. The sofa had a large amounts of blood splashed all over. The scene, they said, took place after the mystery man had left the ranch for the evening and returned the following morning. On his return, he found, that's when he found hope, naked, hair disheveled, hands and ankles tied with tape. She told the man reporting the incident on the tape that her unknown assailant hadn't been hired, but hadn't killed her because he normally didn't take assignments to kill women. So this is the tape that they're getting here. They said the first to tape arrived by Messenger. It's addressed to Hope.

The stepfather, her stepfather called the attorneys they hired, Tom Breslin and Ned Nelson and a private detective. Gene Tinch. That's almost Tinch. Yeah. Everyone gathered to listen. She said, I do not want any member of your, or they said, I do not want any of your family listening in. I don't want any of your lawyers to listen in. I will stick by you to the bitter end and I'll get you out of this mess.

I won't leave the country. I will not leave the area until I know all the charges against you have been dropped. That's what's said on the tape, the one addressed to her. Said I kept track of the kids. I know they're staying home from school. I'm not far away. I'm going to stay close. I'll see you out of this one.

Mr. Fixit will get you through. And I found a stunning white dress size three. So the tape continued here. with this version of the events saying that, you know, I will answer questions, but only outside of the United States. He also claimed a man recently found dead

in a sunset strip motel was the killer originally hired for the Hope Masters job, but eliminated because he'd taken the money but never carried out the hit. The tape ends romantically. I'd love to come home to you. Give the kids a kiss.

Very weird here. that the attorney described the voice as clearly evil, a caressing voice, romantically nostalgic, brilliantly exploiting Hope's deepest needs, especially her need for a strong man to solve her problems. That's what her lawyer says. Sure. The investigator suspected immediately that Taylor Wright is not this hero that she's talking about. Right. They didn't believe that Hope shot Bill, and they didn't believe her story of a stranger coming in, then this guy's showing up.

And they couldn't understand if this guy did kill her, did kill her husband. husband and why would she be protecting him? And why would she be protecting him? The detective said, she's away from him, she's free from him, why continue to take the rap for him? What's the deal? So the morning after the tapes,

an FBI agent produced a photograph of a mugshot of a long-haired man with a glint in his eye, and mom said, yes, that's the guy, because that's Taylor from the day before, or Walker. And her stepdad said, yes, that's the guy. Now, Hope stares at the picture, and she's looking, and the FBI agents talking, Hope closed her eyes, and she could hear, I can't leave you.

She said in her mind, she could hear Walker saying, I can't leave you alive, you could identify you. And her saying, I don't know if I can trust you, you can trust me. And she said, yes, that's him. Oh, that's that same morning, Detective Swalwell back in Illinois. was reading Walker's latest letter to his attorney. Remember he sends his attorney letters. He's got time to do all this shit. And they said, the letter said,

I'm enclosing a picture of Hopi. Her name is Hope, but it's called, is called Hopi. I took a picture in Hopi's Garden in L.A. And then Walker wrote that Hope elected to go to jail to give me enough time to get away. Oh, boy. Yeah. So then there's the phone calls.

the FBI gave hope instructions. You're the only means we have of catching this guy. It's important that you keep him on the phone if he calls. You got to keep him around. So the phone rang and she answered and said, How are you? And he said he knew she was doing badly, but he would stick around and see her out of this mess.

She said she was scared and everything's horrible and that police thought she was some sort of sex freak. And he said, that's a bummer. And she doesn't even kiss until she brushes her teeth. And then he laughed. And he said, I got to go. I'll call you later. So he said, take care of yourself.

Give me a kiss. Love you. In the last call, he asked Hope, have they shown you any pictures? She tried to change the subject, but he cut in. Have they shown you any pictures? And he said, no. She said, no. They said, he said, then they don't realize you don't know who I am.

And she blurted out, listen, take care of yourself. I don't want you to get killed on account of me. I don't want anybody to get killed on account of me. and she said, and he said, that's neither here nor there. I must enjoy what I'm doing, you know. You take for so many years and all of a sudden it's your turn to give. Sunday, March 11th, 1973, 1025 a.m., Howard Johnson's motel in North Hollywood. Yeah.

If you don't know anything about California, North Hollywood is nothing to do with Hollywood. No. Other than being north of there. You don't see a single person. No. Ships of Valley, man. That shit is bad. It's not just crap.

No, there's nothing glamorous about it, is what I'm saying. This is just houses. So they end up surrounding Walker here. So Daniel Walker is surrounded. He had a gun on him, too. He's disarmed and he's arrested. He's registered under the name Taylor Wright. Guess who else else is there?

Detective Swalwell is there from fucking it. From Illinois. He came in. 16 armed officers had conducted an all-night stakeout waiting for him to come out. Wow. So they disarm him. FBI is there. He offered no resistance and he carries a 38 caliber pistol.

He was using Bill's credit cards. His car was rented with Bill's Bank Ameri Card. There's 11 pages of inventory from his car alone, including surgical gloves, other men's clothing, credit cards, Bill's W-2 form and multiple sense of keys. Wow. This is crazy. His whole identity. His whole identity.

Yeah. So Hope assumed that this capture would clear her of everything, but it doesn't at all because they think she's full of shit. Right. So in jail, this is wild. While he's in jail awaiting murder charges, there's an article in the Birmingham news that says, G. Daniel Walker, who communicates with Warden Toomey, mainly through the courts, says, The prison years are dead years. Men are frozen in immaturity by being deprived of fundamental liberties.

Our lives are dominated by petty rules which have no valid security purpose but are great tools of harassment. My aim is to drag corrections, scratching, screaming, and kicking into the 20th century. He's a reformer now. Never mind murder. That's insane. Then here comes more charges from different crimes. Uh-oh. Yeah.

The newspaper article says a smooth-talking escaped convict. with a Jekyll and Hyde personality, who is now being held for murder in California, has been linked to the beating of the robbery of the jewelry salesman. So they link him to that as well. His movements have been traced by various police agencies to Denver, Colorado, and later to Los Angeles, California.

April 18, 1973, Hope and Daniel are both charged with first-degree murder. Oh, shit. Hope, too. Absolutely. So the newspapers are going crazy with this. This is rape, murder, mafia, contracts, and, you know, distinguished bachelors and all this shit. It's a lot. So this is everything a reporter could ask for in a murder story.

They've been waiting for this since Sharon Tate died, essentially. Yeah. And they're like, let's get those Watergate hearings going. So we have something else to write about. So her attorney told the court that she's a. Her slender blonde client, a former model, had been raped and threatened after her boyfriend was murdered. One story told during the preliminary hearing in Porterville held that an intruder entered the ranch house, and that's the story that they told. That's her story here.

He told her he was a contract man, paid by her ex-husband. So her lawyer recounted preliminary hearing testimony that she'd stood by her story until one day when she told another version, she said, could mean her life. Her second version of the story, not a man came in, whatever, was that Walker had been the killer all along and that he threatened her into silence. And her lawyer said she was absolutely literally terrified. Okay. Walker is acting as his own co-counsel. Adam boy. He's questioning everybody.

They said he spoke in legal terms as his handcuffs clinked on his wrists. Jesus Christ. Walker contradicted the lawyer's accounts of the preliminary testimony. He noted that a witness in Porterville testified she saw hope massaging his pair back days after the murder. This was at a time when she was allegedly living in fear of him. Walker argued that the people have failed to show in 10 volumes of preliminary hearings that William T. Ashlock is actually dead. Oh. He also argued there's no proof Ashlock was killed.

killed in Tulare County. So there's a jurisdictional issue as well. Okay. Now, he's also running up bills in jail. On a credit card? Yeah. He ran up a $500 bill for telegrams at the county jail. Oh, Lord.

A spokesman for the sheriff's office said that he sent nearly 100 telegrams by calling Western Union from the jail telephone. The matter came to light when the sheriff's office began receiving correspondence from police agencies around the country addressed to Walker. Uh-oh. In one case, a letter was addressed to Sheriff G. Daniel Walker to Lair County. If he wasn't a piece of shit, he's entertaining. So Hope is out on bail.

And he's having fun in county jail, which is crazy. He's having a lark. Yeah, he's having a lark. He's granted the right to be his own co-counsel. He's given two cells, one to live. live in and one for workspace, complete with a picnic table. The women trustees made him a quilt. They said he's immaculately dressed, gesturing with his pipe as he presented a 52-page motion to suppress all evidence against him in court.

His legal argument, they said, was actually pretty brilliant for a guy who's not even a lawyer. The letter to his attorney in Chicago, which police had used to link him to the Ashlock killing, had been illegal. legally intercepted. It can't use it. Right. Therefore, everything that followed that, his identification, his arrest, the seizure of the evidence, his indictment was all called by the judge, fruit of the poison trait. It's all garbage. It's not that it's good. Legal observers were, according to this article, quote, dazzled by his courtroom performance.

Some were baffled. How could a search of a hotel room rented on a stolen credit card be unlawful? But the court was impressed. Motion was. granted, all evidence suppressed. They end up having to drop the charge. A judge dismisses the charges on him, and they have to do it again. They have to recharge him. Yes, it's fucking

insanity, man. They have to recharge him and retry to get all this shit. Also, hope there's some things about her story that don't line up also that they're saying, they're talking about one of her former boyfriends, was

called to testify about a conflict and dates regarding Walker's presence at the Springville Ranch. So there's dates, there's jurisdiction. He is muddy in these fucking waters like crazy. And he's like, you don't even know if that's him. That's Bill Ashland. They said the alleged murder victim in Springville appeared today to be legally questionable in court.

He's not, he said, it might not be him. And the court's like, interesting. The district attorney said, I'm not completely convinced of that. They're saying that identification must be. established is what he says. The district attorney says, I don't think so, basically. He said there need only be a murder victim, not necessarily even identified. We know there's a dead person, who cares who it is, basically. We killed someone. He killed someone. They said, though, they will refile the charges and all of that. So after everything's dismissed, you know, they're pissed off here. Refiled, but now

the prosecution's case is they have no physical evidence now. Everything's been suppressed. Right. The case comes down to Hope Masters, and she's the co-defendant, so she can't be compelled to testify. Can't force her to testify. She's on trial for murder. So the prosecution could either make a choice. They could either let Walker go, drop the charges, or make a deal with Hope. Okay.

What do you do? One of the two. So the prosecutor said, we can't just dismiss. How about guilty to a lesser charge, like not calling the police on Hope, they said. All right. What if we just do that? Her lawyer said, nope, dismissal or we go to trial. Okay.

So the judge stepped in and said, as I see it, the thing that will convict Hope Masters is your proof that she knew Mr. Walker before he came to the ranch. Do you have any evidence of that? And they said, no, we don't. Okay. And the judge said, well, then I don't think you'll get a conviction against her. And I think you're better off getting her cooperation. So they dismiss her case. and she is the star witness now.

Okay. Which, I mean, based on everything, if they had evidence of them having a previous relationship, that would be one thing, but they don't. Yeah, and... What she did could be some weird Stockholm syndrome. Certainly. I mean, Patty Hirsch, Rob the fucking bank, you know what I'm saying?

Like... And the bummer, though, is going to be that that's going to be common knowledge, and she's not going to be able to... During her testimony, the lawyers are going to bring up that she is getting a deal? Yeah, definitely. Are you getting no charges?

Right. But I mean, she can say pure victim. She could, I mean, you know, the more, the likelihood is that she's a victim. Sure. Pure, pure victim here. But everything didn't look quite right. And our limited knowledge of psychology back then also didn't help. And so the trial comes up for Walker.

It's an eight-man, four-woman jury. Trial lasts almost two months. Wow. which is a crazy amount of time for non-OJ trials. Walker acts as his own attorney, of course. 98 witnesses are called. Tom Masters is called. He denied ever-knowing Walker or having anything to do with any plot against Hope.

The real Taylor Wright is called, who was beaten and robbed in Ann Arbor and says, yeah, that guy beat and robbed me and stole my fucking name. They get Hope's 13-year-old son Keith, whose testimony, quote, wrung the hearts of the women in the jury. He made people sob. And 13 and said, Jesus Christ, that kid is in his 60s now, by the way.

Yeah. He's in his late 60s. We're going to talk about it. Walker decides to testify. Oh. Now, there's some drama during the trial here, obviously. A newspaper says there's enough drama in the Tulare County Courthouse these days to open it up at night and charge admission. Oh.

Wow. Being given top billing, of course, is the G. Daniel Walker murder trial. It remains to be seen how long this intriguing mission impossible story will continue to draw daily spectators. He acts as his own attorney. Defendant Walker is how he refers. That is how he refers to himself, which is hilarious. He moves freely about the courtroom, questioning witnesses. They said the only indication that he was not a real lawyer was the clinking of his leg irons,

which were not clearly visible from the audience section. That's good. They said a newcomer coming in, not knowing anything, might have thought it was loose change in his pocket even. It was that kind of thing. They hired a new prosecutor since one was sick and had to bow out of the case, and he's assumed a more subdued role. They said, now the public defender is doing most of the talking, frequently arguing fine legal points and attempting to impeach witnesses. They bring in the tapes that are his voice, by the way, all the tapes going to hers. That looks terrible.

The prosecutor, and he said, well, that's proof I'm innocent. Is, yeah. And the prosecution thinks the whole tape is a fairy tale made up by him. So that's ridiculous. The private investigator, Gene Tinch, who said he interviewed Walker in a Hollywood jail, testified that the voice on the tape is Walker's. Yeah. Duh. I mean, what the fuck are we talking about here?

So now Hope testifies. And they said, were you and Bill Ashlock just plain friends or what? And she said, well, we thought of ourselves as married. We weren't married legally, but we were going to be married soon as soon as my hearing came up. And they talk about they were in love. They talk about the whole day. And, you know, we don't have to go over the rape and all that kind of shit again. But they talk, she basically gives her whole story that she gave earlier of what the fuck happened.

She said at one point, I don't know, but I know that I did know it was Taylor because I said to him, please go see if Bill is really dead. so I sort of had the feeling that someone I knew was there. I felt very confused. And they said at this time, did you recognize the person? And she said, I knew it was Taylor. So there's that. Talks about someone wants you dead, talks about rapes, talks about all this type of shit here, which is a lot for imagine that in court.

I mean, that's a big story to tell in court. So she said, I gave him, I gave the reasons why I should be, left alive, why I was good, why I was useful, why it wouldn't be good to kill me. I promised I'd never testify against him and swore in the lives of my children that I would never testify against him. Imagine if his lawyer was like, so you're a liar then. Is that what you're telling us? That would be awful. So he actually, he's going to question her, by the way. Oh, she's wild. Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. Basically, they talk about all of this shit And they say that Walker, she testified, told her about the organization.

And she said, I was frightened of the organization. And Walker had told her there's no such thing as a half-filled contract. So I'm going to have to do this. And I have to kill your kids and all that kind of shit. So she referred to him as the defendant, you, the visitor, and the intruder all at once. He referred to himself only as defendant Walker. Never identified Walker as the intruder. All right.

She was asked the details of the rape attack, and she referred to him as the person. I'm not sure who was there. And then repeated, I'm not sure who it was. She didn't see Walker kill anyone, she said also. Okay. Now, cross-examination with him as her own attorney. Right. She showed up into the room and she shook him and he was covered in blood.

She didn't see him kill anyone. And they said, did you see defendant Walker kill anyone? Uh-huh. She said no. And he said, well, mic drop on that. Fuck you. A defense doctor comes in here. A physician testified in the murder trial saying that he saw no signs that hope had been raped or beaten, but that she was somewhat emotionally disturbed at the time he examined her.

Well, we would know past the rape, it would be at least three days have gone by. Right. This is a woman who's had three kids. How much more, how much fucking damage do you want done in there in three days? You know what I mean? I'm not saying she's fucking walking around. picking up manhole covers with her crotch or anything. You know, a woman with three kids, you're not going to rip her vagina apart.

You know, fucking three days later, for the most part, I'm sure it happens, but it's less likely, I would say, the more days that go by here. And so that doesn't make any sense. That's just horrible. This guy's an asshole, I think, honestly. So that doctor, anyway. So the doctor, Dr. Wong, said he detected Mark. on Mrs. Masters' left forearm that were possibly from adhesive tape,

but he could not, four days after the incident, confirm whether the woman had been sexually assaulted. So she was bound. They said there was adhesive. So if she was lying, why would he have bound? Right, why did tape her? There'd be no reason to tape her at that point.

So you've got to believe her. Another witness, a policewoman said she was called to the Beverly Hills police station sometime in February to search her, And she found no evidence of marks or bruises when she came into the police department, which again was days later. Okay. Two other witnesses who knew the caretaker of the ranch and who were fishing in the pond there on February 24th,

testified they saw a man and woman through a window at the ranch and a third party, a bearded man leading a horse elsewhere on the ranch. One of them said he couldn't recognize the couple through the window. The other fishermen identified the couple as, Walker and Hope. Oh. Who testified. Yeah, they said that, that, that, that, all of that.

So the judge criticized the defense for taking too long with too many irrelevant questions, which when someone is not a lawyer, they do that constantly. Ask a lot of. Yeah. Oh, God. The Lori Valo thing. Jesus Christ. Literally every fucking five seconds, they'd be like, nope, relevant.

So you've never had my chicken enchiladas. Is that always your story? Is my chili chicken enchiladas? Which her son says are mid, which is the best thing ever. Have you ever seen me conspire? Ever? That's what she would ask people. Have you ever seen me consp?

How do you watch someone conspire? Ever seen me like huddled up with someone, like looking back of us and all that? But she would ask a bunch of dumb questions about and they would say, that's not relevant. Stick to the relevant shape. Your Honor, he hasn't had the enchiladas. This matters. This is huge. It's huge.

Bombshell. He bombshell tonight. Now, he testifies Walker. Okay. I really want him to sit down, then get up and ask himself a question, then sit down again and go, well, you know, thinking about it. Actually. Yeah. I really want him to do that.

So he said the first thing on the stand is that he's known as Daniel N.G. Daniel Walker, but that he's used 90 names in the past 23 years. 90. 90. He said he's a former ad executive. and met Bill in 1965 at an advertising conference. Okay. Because Bill's been in the game for a while, too. He claimed he, Walker claims he worked on Captain Crunch's campaign.

Oh. And the Shindig television advertising accounts. Captain Crunch, God damn it. I love your work. He said he had used Ashlock's apartment to hide out because 31 attorneys representing him on various matters had been ordered to produce him before a Cook County, Illinois, grand jury investigating a matter Walker did not disclose.

Wow. Walker gave an account of dating several women and sometimes meeting with Ashlock and Mrs. Masters at numerous Los Angeles restaurants and lounges. He's saying, I knew the couple well. Yeah. Well, why the fuck would Bill think that he was a Los Angeles Times reporter that's

doing a distinguished bachelor thing and we had lunch with him for four hours? Doesn't know if the guy he knows. Doesn't make sense. He also said that He wasn't around when Ashlock was murdered. But in an account sprinkled with spicy anecdotes, he said he knew the victim and also Hope long before the killing. He said, I did go to the ranch house, but I left that evening while Bill was still alive and didn't return the next morning. It didn't return until the next morning.

When he returned, he said, Hope told me Bill was dead. So that was that. He said that Hope uses drugs and even revealed a secret hiding. place in the main house on the River Valley Ranch in Springville where Hope allegedly had stashed hypodermic needles, pills, and powder drugs as well. Okay. So, also, Hope is denied using drugs other than tranquilizers and a policewoman testified to finding no indication of needle marks on her arms.

So he's going to slander this woman in court. Oh, yeah. That's his strategy? She's actually a huge whore and is in on this with me. And not only that, an evil murdering asshole. So he also said that Hope told him after the murder that she heard the voice of her estranged husband, Tom Masters, at the scene the night of the murder. She's going to say, that's what she told me. I don't know.

According to Walker, Hope heard her estranged husband threatened to burn the ranch house down while she was tied up inside and Bill lay dead. Okay. A second intruder, Walker claimed, told Hope that she was being killed for negligence. her children and engaging in extramarital relationships. He disputed testimony by hope that she didn't know Walker until he arrived at the 24th, posing as a news reporter. Walker said he knew them since 1965. She had spent weekends with him in a hotel before, he said. He said he knew her various surnames, including Mortimer, Staglanano, Niven, and Masters.

He said, we dated on and off. he said he was on the ranch with Ashlock and Mrs. Masters, partly to photograph pictures for an Occidental Insurance Company advertisement. The ad was to picture Hope with a theme of, what if she dies first, according to Walker. You always think about, I got to take care of my wife, but what if she dies? You get nothing?

So that's the camp of it. Okay. When he returned to the ranch in Springville, the day after the murder, he said he did not believe Hope's story that her fiancee was dead until after she swore at him to stop taking photographs because Bill is dead. She then told him of being forced by an unidentified intruder to engage in perverted sex

acts and hearing Tom Master's voice in the background at times. So he was like organizing it, directing the sex acts. He said when they entered the ranch house where Walker said he moved the body to a rear bedroom out of sight, just because she was freaking out. Hope then made sandwiches and she and Walker drove to Los Angeles. That's what he testifies. she told me I was asleep in the bedroom. She told me she was asleep in the bedroom. I assume she met the night before when she heard a gunshot. She said she looked from the bedroom into the living room and just saw a dark figure in the doorway with a flashlight. He said that she told him that she was knocked unconscious, later awoke, heard two men talking, ran into the living room and found Ashlock with part of his head missing. According to him, Hope identified one of the male voices as Tom Masters. And, um, Walker said that Hope told him that, again, about the voice.

And he said, there was talk about burning the house down and that she was going to be killed for hoaring around and neglecting her children. Wow. She told him that eventually she worked free and left the house. Now, there's a thing where his attorney, Jay Powell, the public defender, is getting a transfer to cover cost overruns after the super long trial of $28,500, which is a shitload of money. It's a lot of money, yeah. Yeah, they said that this murder trials a lot. January 11th, 1974. Okay, here we go.

Verdict comes in, and they find Walker guilty of first-degree murder. Absolutely, guilty. Sentencing comes up, and they say, you, whoever the fuck you are, whatever your name is. One of the 90? You, sir, may fuck off. life in prison with the possibility of parole. Really? You're going to think that's awful,

but then when we hear the rest of the store, you're going to be so happy that judge did that. It is so fucking awesome and hilarious what happened. It's great. It's so great. Okay, here we go. He's in prison, and this is when it gets really fun. Yeah.

As if it hasn't been crazy and insane already, this is when it really gets crazy. October 77, Oakland Tribune newspaper, huge headline, King of the jailhouse lawyers. Who do you think that is? Vakaville. G. Daniel Walker could be the busiest ban

ever put behind bars for murder. He's a jailhouse lawyer who's six by 11 foot cell at the California medical facility here is packed with color TV with a color TV to feed a football fetish, a fancy $900 typewriter, thousands of dollars in law books

and stacks of confidential FBI reports. chronicleing his lifelong cat and mouse game with the law. Wow. This is amazing. Walker spends much of his time writing scripts for television cop and robber shows like police story, Rockford Files, Streets of San Francisco, and Most Wanted. But is he, he's writing them as... He's writing specs.

Like fishing for... Speck scripts. Yeah, yeah. Just send it off to them off to them. You send it off to agents to try to get an agent. Yeah. They'll throw them out if you can't send them to the studios. They throw them right in the garbage.

Right. you send these to agents and hope that an agent has just happened to have a reader. Yeah. Feel like looking through a stack of shit that day because they're bored. Most of the time you're fucked. So, all right. You know, um,

anyway, the rest of his time he uses to troubleshoot the prison system, quote, unquote, and help friends, troubleshoot it like that's his job and help friends. Found a weak spot in the, uh, in the,

uh, security around here. It's a little soft over there. Yeah. At prisons in California and around the country, this article says, Walker has used his legal talent to spring free other inmates, bring about prison reforms, and bail prisoners and guards alike out of every kind of legal tangle from divorce to medical malpractice. He said, I make time to work for me.

He says, but, you know, he said lawyers, by the way, he says he's totally innocent of this murder. Yeah, of course. He said, lawyers on the outside are too busy to handle the cases I do. They take long lunches and after work have two martinis and go home to their wives or mistresses. I'm free. He said, there are no martinis here, and there sure aren't any blondes or redheads.

Yeah. So they said the legal razzle-dazzle is only part of the G. Daniel Walker story. The rest has all the elements of scripts he writes. Sex, wealth, intrigues, suspense, adventure, even Keystone Cops Comedy. Yeah. Okay, this is in the Oakland Tribune, word for word.

Quote, he was a Korean war hero, A hold-up man dubbed the polite bandit because he gave his loot to charity. A clandestinely recruited CIA operative. What? A roguish wheeler dealer with friends in high places. A felon who literally checked himself out of an Illinois state prison and an advertising wizard who dreamed up the kitty serial character, Captain Crunch. He's saying he didn't just do the campaign.

He made up Captain fucking Crunch. Yeah. Who's actually a general or something based on his uniform. Yeah, they give him, well, you know. He got knocked down a couple ranks for being insane about cereal. They were like, you can keep the jacket, but you're a lieutenant now, crazy. Yeah, I think it is lieutenant. You can work your way up to captain if you've worked really hard.

Lieutenant Crunch just didn't sound very well. Doesn't sound great. Who's trusting that man with their kid's cereal? Yeah, you could have gone Colonel Crunch. That would have worked. That sounds better, yeah. I'll listen to him. It sounds almost German though, like Colonel Clinton.

Corporal. That's just, you're just barely out of being a private. It's low rank, but that man knows food. You got to be a captain at least. He's got to be in charge of something. I don't know. He's in charge of the crunch, Jimmy. He's not just.

Corporal's a, that guy's a real. He's not fucking around when it comes to crunch. No, no, no. He'll mess with Corporal Crunch. He is. It takes that shit seriously. An FBI profile describes Walker as a very smooth-talking, big spender, fussy about his grooming and food,

irresistible, to women, violently opposed to drugs, a voracious reader with an IQ of 140. The profile ends this way. That's a FBI profile. He is capable of killing with a smile, is how the profile ends. Whoa. The same report, a chief FBI agent who knows Walker calls him a fine man, a good friend, but has this hang up for doing the unusual just for a lark.

Yeah. These days, Walker works in the Vacaville Prison Law Library and clatters away at night on his typewriter, ringing up hefty bills for pay. paper and postage, churning out legal briefs with as many as 1,100 pages. Dr. Clannin, a psychiatrist at the prison, said he's a very brilliant guy. He's made himself an expert on the prison system from the inside, and sometimes it's a very good idea to listen to what he says. Depending on which dossier is accurate, the FBI's or the CIA's, because he's got a dossier for

both. Right. Walker is either 46 or 56 years old. We don't even know. We know later, we'll find out. Yeah. We definitely know later because I can't wait for the end of the story. Okay, you got to hang on for the end because it's amazing.

I'm only edge of my seat, man. He begs off verifying either report saying with a smile, I prefer to keep the mystery going. And despite his legal exploits, he's no lawyer. He has a law degree from Ohio State University but never took the bar. Really? It was in Ohio, however, that Walker's checkered life of crime began, as he tells it one night on his way to pick up a date for a country club party, he decided to stick up a liquor store for thrills. Hilarious.

I've never been that bored. No. No. He said, after. Somewhere, something to do, right? He said, after there were many robberies in many, many states, the FBI said I was responsible for 78 armed robberies. They called me the polite bandit because I gave the money to charities.

And he said, thrills. That's what attracted me to this. He said, I came from a well-to-do family and my whole life was done. up on thrills. I guess you could say I was a psychological accident waiting to happen. He said that Walker decided a man of my caliber should be able to make $35,000 a year. And that's when he set out on a course that took him to the biggest advertising firms and doing well. Prize accounts landed in his pocket, one of them leading to a brainstorm that produced a swash-buckling, nomish little figure Walker called Captain Crunch. I'm going to look that up.

I don't believe it. I guarantee you, when we're done with this, I guarantee you there's a, because we don't have time now, but there's a way to find out who came up with Captain Crunch. Because all these ad campaigns have all these stories.

They keep track of all the shit. Really? It's all in paperwork. Yeah, they all, everything you do in an ad agency, every idea you write is all filed in the client's file. Well, yeah, it's got to be

because somebody's going to claim it as their fucking copyright. Yeah, well, it'll be the companies. The advertiser makes that for the company, but it'll have all the shit in there. Is it John Mills, I think? Who knows? We'll worry about it later.

We've got to finish the end of the story. But as soon as we stop, hit stop. If it's not a, if it's a serial killer, I'm going to be upset. It's going to be crazy. Around the time, that time, according to an FBI report, President Kennedy, appointed Walker, President Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, appointed Walker to a government post concerning advertising ventures abroad. He said, at that time, the report notes, Walker was recruited by the CIA,

trained and did perform assigned duties without question. The report adds that Walker even today retains top secret clearance and that the murder conviction would not prevent further service with the agency. The report, their report says that. This is real. This is crazy. Walker deftly sidesteps questions about the government service and will not say what those assigned duties were. Characteristically, he's flipping about getting out of prison.

He said, I don't really mind being in jail. I guess I could find more excitement outside, but I seem to find excitement wherever I go. Yeah. Here's some of his accomplishments in jail. For every prisoner whose case Walker has taken, he's at least won a hearing, usually by the Freedom of Information Act, to obtain all official records on the case, then finding a discrepancy substantial enough to persuade a judge that a hearing is warranted. Walker hit paydirt in the case of one prisoner client convicted of selling drugs. Walker's close examination of police reports revealed that the man had been at the scene of the crime, but was mistakenly identified by undercover agents as the drug peddler.

The man was set free. A female guard and an out-of-state prison asked Walker's advice about suing a physician because of complications resulting from an abortion and wound up filing a $200,000 malpractice suit. Walker laid the groundwork from his cell, then turned over the case to her attorney on the outside. Walker won a settlement for one prisoner after lodging a formal complaint with the State Bar of California, charging that the man had been ripped off by a mail-order legal assistance firm. His first day at Vacaville, Walker spotted that arriving inmates failed to receive a copy of House rules and complaint procedures. He went to work and made sure that prison authorities made good on their requirement to supply inmates with that information.

You can't say someone's breaking the rules if you didn't give him a rule book. Okay. That makes sense. Again, through Walker's persistence, officials fortified the Vacaville Law Library by replacing missing legal reference books. A medical assistant there at the prison landed a five-day suspension without pay as a result of a complaint Walker filed accusing the man of discurtesy and sloppy work. the Solano County Grand Jury reviewed and referred to the district attorney, a civil suit, Walker filed against a number of Vacaville authorities from the prison superintendent on down, charging them with bungling his and other inmates' medical treatment. His latest foray into the system, a drive to provide inmates with padlocks to secure personal property and cells. You can't have that. That is the best weapon on earth. You can't have that in a fucking jail. prompted him to fire off sternly worded memos to the prisons director Jerry Echamoto.

Okay. 1960 or 78, what's hope up to? Tell me. How she putting her life back together because if all that is true, she has got to be just mentally. She needs therapy bad. That's a mess. So July 1978 is the first time she goes back to the ranch. Her mother threatened to sell it.

unless she showed some interest in it. So she and her children drove up for a weekend. She swam in the river. She slept in the same corner bedroom. She felt peaceful and content. Then when she got home, she locked herself in her bedroom and cried for four days. She says she cried for herself. She cried for Bill.

Yeah. She cried for Walker. Why? She said. She said she doesn't know. Deps of her fear and anger and grief and guilt. And it's a tangle of emotion she can't explain. It's Stockholm syndrome.

She just got a quick. That's a little like a thing. Then they find out she's been corresponding with him. No. Yes, they corresponded. When he wrote that many prisoners were now allowed to marry, he said, will you marry me? She felt she had to see him to settle things. She visited him in San Quentin, stayed overnight in Fresno, went back a second day, then she went home.

And her daughter clipped something from a magazine that seemed appropriate for, quote, one of the most important signs of maturity is realization and acceptance of the fact that no one will ever fully understand. You're not going to get to the bottom of everything. So Hope accepted that. And when asked why Walker let her live, she gave an answer. She said, everyone thinks Walker let me live for one of two reasons, sex or money. Either we were sexually mad for each other or my parents paid him off. It never seems to occur to anybody that maybe Walker let me live because he thought I was a good person, a useful person.

a useful person, a valuable human being. That doesn't really fit his whole thing here. Or, I don't know, there's a... Here's the thing. Oh, by the way, three months after Hope visited, Walker did get married, but not to her, to a prison dietitian. He just needed to be married. There's one question that we've got to settle at the end of this, but 1981, a book is published. This is Joan Barthel publishing a death in California.

And she, it's so much. She did such a great job. So hats off, tip of the cap, great shit. New York Times made their quote about it being one of the strangest cases in the annals of American crime. 1983, Walker sues the sheriffs in Illinois, which stems from his long history of filing civil lawsuits. He names prison officials and all this shit. This is what he does. He's suing for $62,500 against three Tulare County Sheriff's Office.

and a deputy district attorney. Yeah, he's asking for $12,500 each from a bunch of these people and $25,000 from the district attorney. Wow, that is crazy. 1985, the book is adapted into a two-part ABC miniseries starring, this is crazy, Cheryl Ladd as Hope Masters, and Walker's played by Sam fucking Elliot. Awesome. Sam Elliott played this guy. by Sam Elliott.

Fuck yeah. That's awesome. I want him to tell somebody about beef in my presence. 1985. 85. He's all handsome. This is like two years, three years before Roadhouse. Yeah.

85 Sam Elliott is a smoke show. Great shit. This is cool. They renamed him Jordan Williams for the film. The miniseries received two Emmy nominations. Hope ends up remarrying, changing her name, and withdrawing from public life. she said she cooperated with the author to ensure that the story was told

in her view accurately. She said she wanted to be seen as a victim of trauma, not a criminal. The ranch is still there. That's that. 1989, he starts getting parole hearings. Okay. Oakland Tribune says rare parole hearing for jailhouse lawyer.

In an unprecedented move that has state parole officials in a huff, a judge has ordered a parole board our parole board members to hold a hearing in his courtroom. And it's for G. Daniel Walker, who was 67 at the time. Self-styled king of jailhouse lawyers is suing officials and others throughout the state. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're talking about him being a CIA operative.

Yada, yada, yada. So they're giving him a parole hearing. They didn't spell out why they wanted the parole hearing in the courtroom, but all of Walker's prison files are there now. And the judges said he wants the parole case cleared up before he rules on other legal issues Walker's brought up. So he basically forced them into a parole hearing into this courtroom. His parole hearing, Walker said his last parole hearing in 87 was not conducted properly,

and that's why he didn't get out. Oh. November 3, 1991, his case is featured on a branch off of unsolved mysteries. It's called Diabolical Minds. It's a special. It airs November 3rd, 91, where he does an interview with Robert Ressler, who is one of the top FBI profilerers. forever. And, you know, he's with the mine hunter guys with John Douglas and all that.

He's like two asses, right? Yep. Yeah. He showed many signs of a diabolical mind condition, a theory that postulated that some people are unable to differentiate between right and wrong. He talked about his lengthy rap sheet, boasted about crimes that he had never been charged with. He also talked about escape attempts in his overall prison life.

He also mentioned how there are similarities between the police and the criminals they try to catch with every couple times. I know that. November 4th, 1991, another parole hearing. He is denied again. Now they're saying he's 60 in this parole hearing. So take your age at whatever. He represents himself in the hearing, claiming the parole board has no authority to decide whether he should be released from prison and then left the room. That was his parole hearing. You don't even have the authority. Okay. Shortly after that, by the way, this is after the parole hearing and after his interview with Robert Ressler. He tried to get a, a shipment of poison sent to him while in prison in an attempt to kill a deputy district attorney that had prosecuted him. In what year? What did he order?

In 91. Where did he order that from? I have no idea. Fucking dark web. Commercy. So as of 2024, he has been, he's 93 years old. That's how we know what age he is. He's still alive?

If he was 10 years older, he would be 103. Right. That's not unlikely. He is 93 years old. in 2004, and he goes up for parole for the 15th time at 93. Come on, you know what I mean? He's like, they got to let me out. He was at the California health care facility in Stockton.

At the hearing, the commissioners noted that he recorded a, quote, lack of programming and self-reflection while in custody and they deny him parole. Come back when you're 95 is literally what they said. It's amazing. Three years old. The guy is half dead, sees a skeleton sitting in front of you're like, you could still get into some shit. They wheelchaired him in, right? There's no way that guy walked.

No. The DA said this was Walker's 15th parole hearing. The district attorney's office regularly attends life parole hearings and a supervising deputy district attorney argued against the inmates' release this case. There you go. Wow. There's Springville. That's a crazy fucking story. Is it not?

The story's still in there. 93. Here's my question. Why did he, why did he pick Bill out to do this with? I mean, he picks people out all the time, so maybe something to wrapitizing. I think he was half honest with her. I think he saw her being hot as shit. That's possible. And he just saw this dude in a sports car and was just like, I got an in.

I could say that I'm doing a book. I just want to. You don't know. I just, did he think he could romance her and make her fall in love with him? I don't know if he figured he could pull like a, what's that movie with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basin at the early 90s? The getaway or the fucking, you know what I'm talking about. Indecent proposal? No, no, no, no.

It's the one where like Alec Baldwin's like a criminal and he kidnaps these two and he ends up like with the girl. Like she's like his boyfriend. I mean, they do. That feels like a very common one because the chase was with Charlie Sheen. Same thing. Yeah, with Christy Swanson. Yeah. Same shit.

Yeah, that's how it goes. Oh, it's, you know, I fell in love with him. Yeah. I got this junk. Who knows. He's unsucked. You know how it is. Charlie Sheehan, pocket full of Coke, too.

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