True Crime All The Time - Anthony Kirkland
Episode Date: December 3, 2018Anthony Kirkland is a serial killer who murdered at least 5 in and around the Cincinnati Ohio area over a 20 year period. His number of victims would have almost certainly been higher had he ...not spent 16 of those years in prison for his first murder.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Kirkland who operated just 45 minutes south of where the hosts live. Kirkland's MO included strangling and burning the bodies of his victims and he never varied. And even though he spent most of his life in prison, he had so many other brushes with the law where he got off easy. This is one of those cases where you have to question whether the justice system failed to protect the public from this type of vicious predator.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationHelp the show by supporting our sponsors:ExpressVPN - go to expressvpn.com/tcatt to get 3 months free with a 1-year packageBetterHelp - go to betterhelp.com/tcatt and use the promo code tcatt to get 10% off your first monthSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello, everyone and welcome to episode 107 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson,
and with me as always is my partner in True Crime, Mike Gibson, Gibby. How are you?
I'm good, man. How about you? I'm doing good. You sound better. Yeah. I know it's still been a pretty
rough week for you, bronchitis wise. Yeah, just kind of got my voice back today a little bit.
But last week, you didn't, uh, you sounded rough. It didn't sound like you. Yeah, it was rough.
And you didn't, you didn't talk a lot because of it.
Right. We didn't need you as much on TCAT because we had a lot of audio on that bad boy.
Yeah.
We missed you on Unsolved because that's normally Unsolved is where you and I riff.
Yeah, I just didn't have it in me, man.
A little bit more, but I know it took everything you had just to get through the two episodes.
Yeah, it did.
You're a trooper.
I know.
Still hurting, but I'll get through today.
So what else is going on?
It's cold, man.
It is cold.
Took my daughter to the Kentucky Wildcat game.
Yeah.
last night.
Yeah, they win.
They did win, yeah, by a lot.
Okay.
But you had to throw that in there.
A lot.
Sure.
But it was, we had a great time.
You know, it was just the two of us.
The game was at 8.30.
So, you know, a couple hours down.
Yeah.
Games over at 10.30.
A couple hours back.
She slept in the truck.
Yeah.
And then she got up and went to school, but she loved it.
She said she had a great time.
But what was interesting about it, Kentucky's got this thing where if you use the, this hashtag,
We Are UK on Instagram or Twitter, they might put your picture up on the board.
Oh, okay.
So her and I, she wanted to do it.
So I let her take a selfie.
I think the camera adds 30 or 40 pounds, I'm pretty sure.
Is that what it does?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was not flattering.
That's what they say, you know, TV ads, poundage.
Yeah, but I do it for my daughter.
Yeah.
So, but they picked it.
They picked it.
It goes on the big board.
That's cool.
All of a sudden it says true crime all the time.
Yeah.
Because that's the Instagram name.
And I got a kick out of it.
So and people, I think on Instagram got to kick out of because you know I don't post many pictures.
No, you're not a, you're not a selfie guy.
No.
I mean, most of the time, what we use social media for is just to post what's coming out.
Yeah.
So people are actually asking, you know, is that Fergie?
Is that Ghibi?
Who is that?
We don't even know who that is that guy.
We're like, we don't even know.
All right, Gibbs.
You want to do some Patreon shoutouts?
Yeah, let's do it.
All right.
We had Cheyenne Dovel.
Laughton Melmop.
Melmopping.
We've got some cool name so far.
Catherine.
Just Catherine.
Just Catherine.
Yeah.
A net mead jumped out at our highest level.
Well, thanks.
A net mead.
Kathy Earfirth.
Ruf.
I have never seen that last name in my life.
It's very cool.
Hard to say, though.
Urf, earth.
Yeah.
Sounds like a dog barking.
Well, that's because you're just using nothing but F's.
When you're not putting a TH at the end.
You just, it's like a little dog barking.
It's just multiple Ferkrf.
It does.
Sarah Bedard
Badard
Aaron Scott
Hey
Aaron Scott
Sam Marshall
Yeah Sam
Ashley Neal
Ashley and Neil
Thank you both
Megan
Megan
Kartor jumped out of
Highsloffey
Hey Megan
Autumn
Oolson
Autumn I like that name
Heather Kowalski
Oh Kowalski
Mike Kowalski
Viv
Hapakoski
I'm not sure
if I got that right
Sounds like a good time
Hapakoski
But I'm going with that
Yeah. Jamie Greco.
Hey, Greco.
Barry Babb jumped out of our highest level.
B.
And Carrie Huglin.
She's a hugger.
So we appreciate all that new support.
And then if we go back into the Vault Gibbs, this week we selected Ricky Temple.
Hey, Ricky.
Ricky's been a longtime supporter.
We really appreciate that.
We appreciate the new support.
It's awesome.
We appreciate the people that continue to support us month after month, year after year.
And we had some great PayPal support.
as well. Sarah Richmond.
Thanks, Sarah. Kate Massey.
Hey, thanks, Kate. Jennifer Sharp.
Awesome, Jennifer. And Joelle Myers.
Hey, thanks, Joe.
Edith. Gibbs, we had a Patreon merch winner for October.
Oh, did we? Yeah, I'm running a little late this month.
That's all right. But it's Michael Hopkins.
Hey, Michael.
So Michael gets to pick whatever he wants from the T-Cat store and it'll get shipped to him.
That's cool. I'd go for the car.
Yeah. Most people...
Get the T-Cat car.
Don't realize that the car is there.
It's hard to find.
You got to scroll down and then look to the left or is it the right.
It's down there.
It's down there.
Just keep looking until you find it.
There's also a tag Hoyer T-Cat watch that most people don't know about.
Well, that's true.
And there's also that two-week vacation rental.
It's like the price is right.
Yeah.
You just got to find it.
It's out there.
But if not, just get a T-shirt or something like that.
T-shirts are nice.
I already know what he wants.
He's already emailed me.
Okay.
But so unsolved.
Unsolved.
Right now there's an episode of True Crime All Time Unsolved out.
Okay.
We're talking about Marcia Moore.
And there's a lot going on here, Gibbs.
I mean, obviously this is an unsolved murder.
Yeah.
That we're talking about.
But we're also talking about a victim that has a lot of interesting ties.
Yeah.
to wealth and famous people and big corporations and a lot of stuff going on with this one.
Yeah, I think people would be intrigued.
Yeah, that's a good word.
I think it's intriguing.
I have a deep vocabulary.
You do.
Because the rabbit holes go in directions that are highfalutin, I guess is the word.
I like some gopher holes.
Yeah.
That don't.
Not a gopher hole.
Yeah, these are rabbit holes.
These are true rabbit holes.
Yeah.
So check that out.
All right, Gibbs.
you ready to get into this episode?
I am.
That is good because I'm going to do it anyway.
I'll try not the cough.
Hold your finger up if you're going to cough.
Okay.
All right.
We are talking about Anthony Kirkland.
And, you know, this is one that I stumbled on, Gibbs.
We're down in our neck of the woods.
Cincinnati, just south of us.
Again, a lot of serial killers in Ohio.
per cold weather per capita just the cold weather i think the cold weather has something to do with it because
it's cold right now not that i feel like killing somebody killing anyone but uh the cold does
something to your brain i think but this guy operated just south of us like i said Cincinnati he
murdered five women at least over a 20 year period but it really the only reason that
the period is so long is because he spent the majority of
of it in prison, which we'll get into. He was a strangler, but he also liked to burn the bodies of
his victims. Okay. Different twist. Yeah, his MO was very set in stone. He strangled. There was
normally some sexual assault, but he burned his victims. Now, later on in the story,
we'll get into why that might be. And it's probably not surprising that,
Anthony Kirkland has a different version of why he did that than prosecutors have.
But to think about the killers, some of the killers we've profiled that have been within what,
Gibbs, 45 mile radius of us.
Yeah.
It's pretty scary.
Yeah.
To think about the number of really, really bad people.
Kind of heavy with that population.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Never know who's sitting next to you at the, uh,
cafe man no you don't you should look at him right now and well you shouldn't if you do look at him
don't give him the stink eye is it safe to say if there's 12 of you in there right now that one of you
has or will be killing somebody you're saying one out of 12 oh that's my mathematical
calculations one out of 12 we'll kill somebody how about this at some point i can probably feel
pretty good about this fact when you were in that arena last night with how many people
it's usually 22 to 24,000.
That's a good chance that you were sitting in there with a killer.
I'm sure.
So.
Yeah.
Now that's much different than one out of 12.
It's Kentucky though.
They're more calm.
Much more calm.
There was some character.
Let's just say there was some characters there last night.
Yeah.
I'm sure there was.
My daughter saw more ass crack than she needed to see.
That's not good.
It's not good.
No, I hate to see a bunch of ass crack.
There's a lot of plumber crack going on.
Yeah.
Let's get into Anthony.
Kenny Kirkland, the one thing I want to say up from, we don't know or we don't have a lot on his
background. And that's, that's weird for us. You know, we usually spend a lot of time on killers
backgrounds and their childhoods. There's just very little information out there. And believe me,
I looked everywhere on his early life. We know that he was born on September 13th,
1968, but really gives we know very little else about his childhood and his upbringing.
Now, Kirkland would later say that his mother hated him when he was young and growing up.
Now, he also say that he hated himself.
So he does give a little bit of insight, you know, later on.
He's also said that everyone around him thought he was bad.
from really as far back as he could remember.
And he's called himself pure evil.
So, you know, take that for what it's worth.
Kirkland has said that he was neglected.
Yeah.
As a child, he has said that he suffered some abuse.
And he has alluded to several brain injuries that he suffered,
some as a child.
And one that he suffered later as an adult.
in a bicycle accident.
That'll come up at trial.
We'll talk about it a little bit then.
So again,
we don't have the,
the usual background on the killer
that we normally do.
But what we do have is an individual
in Anthony Kirkland that spent the majority of his life
in and out of jails and prison.
Gibbs, this guy had so many run-ins with police
that when it came to the end of the
story to finding out who he was.
Not a single police officer was shocked.
They knew him.
Oh, okay.
So it was almost like they were looking at themselves trying to figure out why they didn't
crack it sooner.
Why they didn't realize.
Yeah.
And they're going to look back at all the things that he went through in his life and
wonder, you know, this is one of those stories, right?
Right.
Where I know it infuriates you, but we're going to.
going to see in Kirkland someone who was able to work the system, got off altogether on a number of
things, and then lighter than he probably should have on others. Now, it's strange to say,
because the guy spent 16 years in prison. Yeah. He spent more of his life in prison than he did,
than he did on the outside. But even still, he got away with a ton of stuff. So we're going to
pick up this story in 1987. Anthony Kirkland is.
is 18, 19 years old.
He shows up one day at his uncle's house to find 28-year-old Laola Douglas in the house alone.
And Douglas was dating Anthony's uncle at the time.
And apparently the two got into some type of heated argument and Anthony Kirkland ended up choking Laola to death.
Oh, wow.
And then I guess he panicked because he picked up some.
lighter fluid and he doused this woman in lighter fluid set her on fire.
So obviously he takes off.
Firefighters show up.
When they do, they find the body of Laola Douglas.
It's still on fire burning in the stairwell of the house.
But they figured out who it was.
And they arrested and questioned Anthony Kirkland.
And pretty quickly he admitted that he killed.
and they charged him with murder.
But it seems Gibbs as though prosecutors were worried about getting a conviction because they
gave Kirkland a plea deal.
And the plea deal knocked the murder charge down to voluntary manslaughter.
He was sentenced to seven to 25 years for this, which, I mean, come on, Gibbs, you know,
it would have been much more.
Could have been life, potentially.
had the charge not been pled down.
I mean, how do you get voluntary manslaughter out of choking someone to death and then
intentionally setting their body on fire?
Yeah, I don't get that.
And I will say, this is 1987.
Later on, when his later crimes occur, I think the prosecutors are going to look back at that and really
question, you know, the current prosecutors at the time, we're going to look back and they're even
going to question it. Why did their counterparts do that? You know, obviously they were for some
reason worried about being able to get a conviction. But you and I talk about it, right? What happens
if it's not pled down? What happens if he does life, if he gets life sentence? He doesn't go on
to kill four more people that we're getting ready to talk about.
No, at that point, you know, you got them away where you can't do any harm.
Right.
Now, he ended up serving 16 years of this seven to 25 year sentence.
But in 2003, the Ohio Parole Board set him free.
This was despite the fact that over the years, prosecutors, and these were some of the newer
prosecutors, right, not the ones that handled the case.
They sent letters to the parole board urging them to,
not let this guy out, to keep Anthony Kirkland locked up. One of the letters, they even put in
bold letters because of the brutal nature of his attack. This guy should never be let out.
Now, obviously he was going to be let out. Yeah. Most likely, at least after 25 years,
that's what his sentence was. But he got out early. In large part, I think the parole board let him out early
because by 2003, when they, when they paroled him, in Ohio, the law only called for a 10-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter.
Okay.
So they're saying, if he did it today, it would be 10 years.
He's already done 16.
Now, they also took into account that Kirkland had participated in some programs in prison, one to deal with his violence, you know, and some other special.
anger management class.
Now, I'll tell you what, Gibbs.
I never enjoyed going to class very much in school.
I know you did.
That's how you got into, you know, the fancy college.
It's how you got into the Mentsa Club.
You were a top-notch academic.
Absolutely.
I didn't like to go.
But I will tell you this.
If it was going to get me out of prison,
nine years earlier, I'll be there.
I'm in the front row.
Yeah.
I don't know.
know front row, but I'd be eat there. Oh, I'm in the front row. I might even bring an apple every day for
the teacher. Yeah, well, do you get, do you get apples in prison? Well, if you do, you don't want to eat it.
Maybe it's a fruit cup, pudding cup, whatever it is. Your cellmate might take your fruit cup from you.
I'm bringing it to the teacher. Yeah. So Kirkland is released from prison on September 3rd,
2003. He goes back to Cincinnati. Of course. And by October of 2004, he was completely released from parole.
totally free.
Doesn't have to check in with anyone.
Okay.
He's on his own.
You can do what he won't.
Well, and he did.
Unfortunately, that's going to be the problem.
Just a few months after his release from parole,
he'd been out of prison for a while,
but a couple of months after he was technically off parole,
he was accused of raping his 52-year-old neighbor at knife point.
This was a woman who, along with her husband,
had served dinner to Anthony Kirkland.
Oh, wow.
So they befriended him and turned around and did that, that's terrible.
I mean, as a neighbor, they invited him over to their house.
Now, he did go to trial, but a jury acquitted him of this act.
So he got out of it.
He got out of it despite the fact that this woman, the neighbor, testified at his trial.
So she's raped.
She testified.
She's brave enough to go up there and say,
Yeah.
This happened to me.
She said that Kirkland showed up at her house wearing gloves and holding a kitchen knife.
Okay.
With a crazed look in his eyes.
Okay.
It's not who you want to see at your front doorstep.
Never.
She told the jury that he held the knife to her neck, forced her down on the floor, and raped her.
Apparently, police even had photographs of this woman showing that, you know,
she had, she was covered in bruises.
She had bruises on her arms, her wrists, her hands.
Now, during the trial, Kirkland denied the fact that he attacked this woman at knife point.
And he said that the sex was consensual.
And he added that this woman only accused him because he threatened to tell her husband about their affair.
So a little bit of a head scratcher.
Yeah, it makes you wonder, you know, what?
what people heard differently or what people, I don't know, I think it's, I don't know. I mean,
I guess you could see what he was saying, but. Well, you and I never like to criticize juries.
Right. Because number one, we weren't there. We didn't hear everything they heard. We didn't see
everything they saw. But on the surface, this is a tough one. My assumption is it came down to mostly
their words against each other.
Yeah.
Right?
She said this happened.
He said this happened.
Well, that's always rough to put somebody away for a lengthy period of time if you can't.
Yeah.
And I'm not sure.
Besides.
I'm not sure that they believed him.
But maybe the jury just didn't think there was enough evidence.
That's all I can think.
They didn't feel comfortable enough sending somebody, sending somebody away for a long period
of time based off of that, which, you know, I understand.
It's just sad, too.
because I think if something like that happens to you,
you're brave enough to stand up and talk about it.
Unless for some reason this woman got on the stand
and lied about it.
Yeah.
I mean, hindsight,
knowing how bad this guy was,
she was probably correct in everything she said.
Oh,
I guarantee you after we talk about everything that he's going to do.
You know,
until you're sitting there and there's seat,
like you said,
we don't know.
We don't know what information they were given
and we don't know how it was presented from both sides.
So now later that same year, Kirkland and his girlfriend, they have a baby boy.
Later on, he's going to be questioned at one point in 2006 about a couple of homicides that involved women who had been murdered and burned in the Avondale area of Cincinnati.
14-year-old Cassania Crawford was found on May 11, 2006,
and 45-year-old Mary Joe Newton was found a month later on June 16th.
All right.
So you've got two women in the span of a month that are murdered and burned.
Yeah.
I would think Gibbs that detectives would naturally look at Kirkland.
I think the computer would spit his name out pretty fast.
Yeah, something would spit out anytime a woman is killed and then burned.
But they didn't have any evidence against him.
They couldn't do anything.
But they were right to look in Kirkland's direction because he had killed both Crawford and Newton.
So let's first talk about Cassania Crawford.
Okay.
I mentioned she was only 14 years old.
Yeah, young one.
And in some of the articles that I read, it talked about, you know, she was.
I think staying with her grandmother at the time and she had put on her sponge bob pajamas that night.
Yeah.
And acted like she had gone to bed.
But she snuck out of the house.
Okay.
To go visit a friend.
And apparently her grandmother, I think it was her grandmother, came out and said that she had done this before.
She didn't like it, obviously.
Right.
Nobody wants their kids sneaking out of the house.
But she had done it before.
But unfortunately, this time she didn't come back.
This is why you don't sneak out, kids.
Well, that's for sure.
Because at some point that night, she encountered Anthony Kirkland somewhere along the way.
Yeah.
He sexually assaulted her, strangled her, and burned her body.
And then a month later, he murdered Mary Jo Newton by strangulation as well, sexually assaulted her and burned her body.
Newton's body was found just a few blocks from where Cassania's body was.
found. So they asked him about these two murders. Obviously, Gibbs, he's going to say,
I don't know anything about it. Police don't have anything to go on. He had already murdered
another victim that they didn't even, they weren't even asking him about. Number one, because the
body was not found until June of 2008, but he murdered 25 year old mother of two, Kimia Rollison
in December of 2006. So in, in the span of,
of what six months, give or take, six seven months. He murdered two women and a 14 year old girl in
2006. And he killed Rolson in much the same way that he did his other victims. The one difference in
this murder was that he stabbed Kimia in the neck and the stab wound severed her jugular.
And apparently the two were sitting in a van and they got into some big time argument.
And that's when he stabbed her.
Kirkland would later tell police that he sat inside that van and watched her bleed out.
Just sat there and watched it.
He also called the stab wound, quote, a lucky shot.
Really?
A lucky shot.
A lucky shot.
I got lucky.
I mean, that's what you say in a basketball game.
Yeah.
That's what you say playing golf.
You don't say that when you've stabbed somebody with a knife.
No.
and just happened to hit their jugular.
He burned her body.
Yeah.
And like I said,
it wouldn't be found for about a year and a half.
Oh, man.
And the way it was found was a family's lab.
Right.
So the Labrador Retriever.
Labrador Retriever in the woods.
All of a sudden comes out with a femur in its mouth.
Can you imagine a dog bringing up a human bone to you?
No.
No, no, because now there, for me, there's a lot of bones I think that I would look at and I wouldn't know what they were.
But I think when you see a human femur, I think you know what that is.
Yeah.
Right?
I would think.
I don't know that you're mistaking that for too many animals.
But obviously the family called the police that led to, you know, them doing some more searching and, and that led to this woman's remains.
So we jumped forward to 2007.
In April, Kirkland was charged with criminal damage that occurred at his child's mother's home.
The next month in May, police were called another domestic dispute between Kirkland and his girlfriend.
But this time Gibbs, he grabbed his son away from his girlfriend.
And he held what was described as some type of like a three-pronged,
grilling skewer.
You know, something you would maybe flip meat with or, you know, something very sharp.
Right.
Those prongs are extremely sharp.
Sure.
Yeah.
Held that to his own infant son's throat.
Oh, wow.
So the police get there.
A standoff between Kirkland and the police ensued lasted about 30 minutes.
Right.
Until eventually he just gave up.
So obviously he got into it with his girlfriend about some.
something, which happens.
What should not happen is you pick up your infant child and threaten to kill him with a
grilling utensil.
That's not normal.
People don't handle these confrontations, these, uh, these fights with their significant others
very well.
That's a strange reaction.
Yeah.
They have weird ways to settling, uh, finding resolution with their conflict.
We need better.
Conflict resolution. That's what we need.
You should teach a class, Gibbs.
I did before.
I didn't do it again.
Maybe you should do a podcast on conflict resolution.
People just call in to you with their problems.
They can be conflicting.
And their conflicts.
Yeah.
And you'll be conflicted about the information that you're giving them.
Yeah.
But I'll resolve it.
We'll just call it conflicted.
Oh, there you go.
I get the name and everything.
Conflict it with Gibby.
Or just Gibby's conflicted.
Yes.
with an apostrophe.
That's the way I would do it.
But that's a bad scene.
One of the detectives said to the media that Anthony Kirkland was nonchalant about the whole thing.
And apparently he said from the back of the squad car, prison don't bother me.
I've been there before.
Well, you can say that when you've been there for as long as he had.
Yeah, he had done 16 years.
It's like going home.
So after he says that, apparently he dozed off in the back of the cop car took himself a little
nappy nap, you know, which you would do after that type of altercation.
Sure.
You'd just, you know, take a siesta.
Yeah, take a little quick one.
He was indicted by a grand jury on felony charges that he held a dangerous weapon to the throat
of his 18-month-old son.
That's not the exact charges.
I made that.
But, you know, some charge endangerment of a child or, you know, something like that.
But there was no jury trial in this case.
This was just a, like a big.
bench trial, judge trial.
Judge would ultimately convict Kirkland of unlawful restraint, gave him a sentence
that amounted to the number of days that he'd already been locked up in jail,
which was 115 days.
Okay.
That's it.
115 days.
All right.
And then they let him walk out the door.
So it's shy of four months, huh?
Because he'd already, he'd already been there.
So time served, essentially is what he said.
115 days for number one threatening to kill your 18 month old son and then number two you have a
standoff with police yeah which is you know not good 115 days yeah i can't believe that's all we got
didn't you get longer one time for defecating on one of your enemy's cars oh yeah when am i thinking of
that correctly yeah yeah watch out i wasn't sure if that was you or somebody else but
If it wasn't me, I'll take credit for it.
You know, in all seriousness,
115 days just don't seem like much.
No.
Let's not forget, he already had a murder on his record.
Well, that's what I'm saying.
This is not a squeaky, clean guy.
I know he's out of parole, but man, come on.
I mean, you look at that and you're like, hmm, something's not stable there.
He's not a clean record guy that, you know, had an episode, and you're saying,
okay, he's got a clean slate.
he's probably not a danger.
This is a guy that killed a woman and did 16 years.
Yeah.
I found that very odd.
I find it odd as myself.
Now, in October of 2007,
Kirkland was charged with exposing himself to
and soliciting sex from a 13-year-old girl.
I was getting ready to say,
well, I know you've been down that row
exposing yourself, Frank the tank,
but that's where it stops.
In a much different way.
It stops there.
In a much different way.
Yeah.
So the charge,
was importuning.
Okay.
Which I had to look up.
I've heard of it,
but I really didn't know
what the real definition was.
So now you know.
And it means the action
of approaching someone
and requesting or offering sexual services.
So essentially you've importuned
every day of your life.
Some people have?
No, you have.
You're always offering something, aren't you?
Or requesting.
What?
What are you trying to do that to me for?
I'm just messing.
Impertunin.
I don't know why we still use words like that.
I mean, can't we come up with a better word?
What do you think?
Impertunin.
Let's go out.
Empertunin.
Which is essentially what a Friday night at a bar.
A lot of impertunin going on?
For a lot of guys is, you're just walking around trying to hook up requesting,
I don't know if you're outright requesting sexual services.
Well, I don't know what bars you go to.
Yeah.
Well, I don't go to any bars.
Oh, either.
I don't think that's
I don't think that's what happens
Oh maybe not
It's been a long time
Who knows?
Who knows?
Maybe it's just to the point now
Maybe it's like, hey, you want to?
So what's Tinder then?
You're telling me tender is not importuning?
Is that the one you swipe left, swiped?
Don't act like you don't know what it is.
Swipe this way, swip that way?
I'm not saying you're on it,
but I know for a fact you know what it is.
It's on TV shows.
Everybody talks about.
I don't remember which one it's called.
Is it tender swiping?
I think so.
But what are you doing essentially?
if not saying, hey, let's hook up.
Well, sure.
I mean, it's all visual.
Isn't that what it is?
Just a hookup app.
It's all visual.
So you're not trying to get to know the person at that point.
You're saying,
does she or does he look good enough for me to be alone with for, you know, for you,
five minutes?
For me, two hours, you know, but, you know, does he or does she?
All right.
Stop importuning me.
All right, Gibbs.
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But let's get, let's get back to being serious because exposing yourself and soliciting sex
from a 13-year-old girl.
Yeah, this is gross.
To me is a very serious offense.
I would think so.
Right?
Extremely serious.
Sure.
You would do some major damage to someone did that to your daughter.
Oh my gosh.
Let alone your youngest one, which is about 13.
Yeah, she is 13.
I would go nuts.
Yeah.
So he was convicted.
This judge convicted him in March 2008 of importuning, gave him a whopping one-year prison sentence.
Of course.
It's, you know.
So you're telling me, Gibbs, well, you're not telling me.
I'm telling you in the state of Ohio, not sure about other states, but in the state of Ohio
in 2007, 2008, you get one year as a grown-ass man who exposed himself to and solicited sex
from a 13-year-old girl.
Yeah.
Probably if it was somebody who didn't have a.
criminal past they probably would have got off for like six months of probation or something maybe i i just
i assumed and i know i get in trouble when i assume that that would be a much more serious crime
and it should be a much more serious crime than that i don't think i'm putting too much on the crime
maybe i'm thinking that the sentence is harsher than what it really is for something like that
I'm shocked, I guess.
I mean, I guess when the law was written, they said, well, if this person exposes his stuff to an underage person, how much time should they do?
Well, okay, that's one thing.
That's not good, right?
The exposing, but the soliciting of sex, that's a different thing.
Yeah, I mean, if he's 13 years old.
Of course, the defendant would say, I didn't know she was 13.
She didn't look 13.
She looked like a woman to me.
So I took it out, waved it out her and said, hey, how much to do this or that?
My bad.
I'm sorry.
I didn't know.
That's what a defendant's going to say.
Probably.
They're always, they're going to, you know, it could be a kid in a stroller.
They're going to still say, I thought that was an 18-year-old.
He's just sitting in a kid's stroller.
I don't get it.
I just, I think, you know, this is a 39, 40-year-old man trying to get a 13-year-old.
year old to have sex with him.
Yeah, he knew what he's doing. And again, let's not forget the fact that he killed a woman.
He has a record. All of that to me in my head, and I guess I'm wrong, but it seems like it
should add up to more than a year. Should, but I don't think they can use, you serve the time,
you did the time for what you did. You did the parole. Maybe. So can they really use that against
you? I think it should be used to define your character, you know.
Now, he does get five years parole on top of the year.
Well, that's good.
And what the judge did require him to do, which this is a good thing, required him to
register as a sex offender and ensure that the authorities knew his address at all times.
Now, big shocker, Gibbs, he's not going to be real great at keeping up with notifying the authorities.
Most of them are, you know, because it's a self-serve kind of, uh,
program, right? You know, you self-monitor. You say, okay, I'll let you know when I move. You know,
there's not like a big task force out there hunting down all the sex offenders to see if they actually
are living where they're supposed to be living and have they contacted them. Well, but I will say this.
If you're a person that breaks the law habitually anyway, the hell do you care? Well, they don't care.
He doesn't care about going back to prison. He already said. Take me back. Well, I had a warm bed and
TV and warm food. I'll go back. So he does his one year stint in Chilli
coffee and he gets released. He ends up in a halfway house, gets kicked out of there in
February of 2009 for fighting. But it's interesting what happened here, right? He gets kicked out
of this halfway house, but they don't notify his parole officer for several days that they kicked him out.
So essentially, they think he's living there and he's not. Right.
And it's after this point in time that he went on his final crime spree.
So a few days after leaving the halfway house, Kirkland breaks into a house, hides in the bathroom.
And then he jumps out and he attacks this man with a pair of scissors.
Stabbed this guy 10 times with a pair of scissors.
That seems like a brutal thing to get stabbed with.
Especially if they're like the scissors you get in kindergarten first grade.
The safety ones.
Safety and the round.
round. Yeah, where you have to really put pressure? No, I'm sure they were good old scissors that
nobody would want to ever be stabbed. No, 10 times. Luckily, this guy survived, but remember,
Kirkland's parole officer is still looking for him. And they figure out that it's him doing the
stabbing. And so an arrest warrant is issued for him. Because I think it had something to do with
his girlfriend. I got a little confused about whether the house, I don't,
know if this guy was living with his ex-girlfriend. His girlfriend was involved somehow.
And apparently, like I talked about, he and his girlfriend didn't seem to get along too well.
That's why she had another boyfriend. And he may not have taken kindly to the fact that after a year of him being
gone, she was moved on. Moved on. It's always rough when people move on, you know?
It can't be. It depends on who it is. Yeah, who does the moving on first? Sometimes I like it when
people move on. You're like, thank you for moving on. I appreciate that.
Yeah. Why didn't you do that sooner, right?
So he's got a warrant out for his arrest.
But again, he don't care.
No.
Anthony Kirkland don't give a shit about a warrant.
He don't care about having to register as a sex offender.
He just don't care.
He's out hunting for his next victim.
And it would be 13-year-old Esme McKinney.
She left her parents home on March 7th to go for a jog.
And this is something that she did quite often.
she jogged.
But there's no way Gibbs that she could have known that a man like Anthony Kirkland was
watching her from the woods.
So as she jogged by,
as she got close to him,
Kirkland jumped out of the woods and he grabbed her,
threatened her with a knife.
Then he dragged her back into the woods.
And he sexually assaulted this girl.
He strangled her to death.
And then he set her on fire.
Like I said,
his MO really didn't change.
No.
I don't know going back to the 1987, his, what was reportedly his first murder, you know,
how he came up with the idea of setting that woman on fire, but he sure carried it on.
I'm guessing he felt that it somehow wiped off all the DNA.
Yeah.
And I mentioned it's going to come up at trial.
And you're exactly right.
That's what the prosecution is going to say.
but we're going to hear from Anthony in a little bit.
He's got a different reasoning for burning his victims.
Now, when she didn't come home after 30 minutes, didn't take very long, right?
Her parents got concerned pretty quickly.
She just went out for a jog.
This is a 13 year old girl.
She's supposed to be jogging.
Her parents probably know how long it takes and when she should be back.
They go out and look for her.
But Gibbs police theorized that she was already dead.
This happened pretty close to her house.
And police believed that he grabbed her not far at all into the run.
So we've talked about quite a number of charges, right, that Anthony Kirkland racked up over the years from 2004 until he was ultimately caught in 2009.
He had a total of 12 charges in the criminal system against him.
six of the 12 came in March of 2009.
This is the month that he committed his last murder.
Now, just two days before he killed Kenny, he forced his way into the car again of his
son's mother, put a knife to her throat.
That's bad.
But what makes it even worse was his three-year-old son, he's now three years old at the time,
was in the car witnessing his dad.
put a knife to his mother's throat.
So he was charged with abduction, aggravated menacing, domestic violence.
Like I said, that was just two days before he abducted, killed Esme McKinney a day before
they issued another warrant for his arrest, this time for failure to register as a sex offender.
So this guy's all over the radar.
Right.
Right.
They know who he is.
They're on the lookout for him.
but at this point in time, they're not looking for him for murder.
But he's not going to skate this time.
He's not going to get away.
He was captured the very same day that he killed Esmey Kenny.
And apparently Gibbs, he had gone to sleep up against the tree about 100 yards from
Esme's body.
So he just walked over, found a tree and took again, took a nap.
and that's where police found him.
Just hanging out that close to the crime scene.
Yeah.
Okay.
And when they found him, he had her iPod on him.
He also had her wristwatch.
So he was arrested in charge with murder.
Well,
not too hard to figure that out.
No.
I mean,
that evidence.
And I wouldn't think it'd be too much longer before they would find her body then
if they were in that general area.
It did.
About three hours later,
I guess he had hidden it under some brush.
But again, like I said, you know, this happened pretty much across the street from where she lived in like a wooded area.
It was after 3 o'clock yesterday when Esmey Kenny did not return home from her jog.
Police began searching the route her parents said she usually runs.
That search brought police to this wooded area along Winton Road late last night.
In the area, they found a man who told police enough to make them consider him a person of interest in the case.
Around 1130, 1145 last night, they came across this person of interest because of what we learned from that person.
We had the helicopter came out from the county.
We called traditional officers.
We called for our canine units.
We began searching the heavily wooded area here, 5900 Winton Road.
And around a little after 3 o'clock, one of the canine units discovered a body.
Police expected to be on the scene until early this evening.
We don't expect to get done during the daylight.
It's a heavily wooded air.
area. We've got to take our time. Make sure we do a complete thorough search at this point.
As police searched for answers at the scene, they hope to get as much or more from the man they found
near the body. He was in this wooded area on the edge of the wooded area. So he was very close to where
the body was found. And again, I just don't get that. Why would you, you know, first of all, we say
it, but why would you murder somebody at all? But if you were going to murder someone, why would you
hang out and take a nap a hundred or so yards from where you just burned a body.
It's a good point.
It doesn't make any sense.
I mean, again, unless you just didn't care about getting caught.
I'm not sure this guy cared about a whole lot, to be honest with you.
So they have him in custody.
They're grilling him.
And, you know, he cracked eventually, confessed to murdering Esmey.
But that wasn't all.
He also confessed to the murders of Cassania Crawford, Mary Joe Newton, and Kimia Rollsson.
In all, it was said Gibbs, they had about eight hours of recorded statements made by Anthony Kirkland over a couple of days.
They said, you know, he was eager to talk.
One detective said it was almost like there was some type of burning need for him to tell all of the details of these horrible things he had done.
And I guess at one point, it was that there was a detective talking to him in the room and the detective was done.
He was going to get up and leave.
And Kirkland apparently begged him to come back.
He didn't want to be alone.
And he also just wanted to continue to talk and tell him what he had done.
Really?
It was, it was stressed how, how eager he was to just share the information.
Share information.
I can't control me.
It's like a proper burial.
So we were trying to give her a proper burial.
It was a proper burial.
And even to like, even with the lights,
and like everything on, like they were doing what they say with like the Vikings.
God, that I'm saying that it's hurtful.
I'm not saying that it's hurt for because it was,
it was never her fault.
I'm not saying that.
And I'm not trying to give you that impression
or that that's what I believe.
but the only reason I did have sex with her is when she said that she would do whatever I wanted.
So I know that's just snippets, but I wanted everybody to hear Kirkland talking during his confession.
The problem is, I'm not sure exactly, I think he's talking about Esme McKinney there at the end.
But the important part is to talk about what he called a proper burial.
Yeah.
And this is where we said, you know, he's going to talk about.
why he burned the bodies.
And he talks about like a Viking funeral.
Viking.
Yeah.
And another part, he also says that he thought that the fire would purify his victims.
Or he'd just like to torture him.
Well, they were already dead.
But again, I go back to your point.
Your point was very valid.
What does fire do?
It helps destroy evidence.
We know it does.
prosecutors are going to make that claim.
But I wanted everybody to, you know, to hear him talking about why he said he,
he burned the victims.
So Kirkland was charged with the deaths of Crawford, Newton, Rollison, and Kenny.
Along with murder, he got charged with abuse of a corpse in each instance as well.
None of the other crimes he committed were prosecuted.
And that was on purpose.
they wanted to focus on the murders.
And at a certain point, they really wanted to focus on the death penalty.
The prosecutor even came out and said, no deals would be made.
Even if he offered to lead us to other bodies, this guy said he just wasn't going to make
the same type of mistake that he felt had been made in the past.
And he wasn't shy about it.
He talked about it quite a bit.
He felt like in other instances with Kirkland,
the prosecutors had not gone after him as,
as hard as they,
they should have.
It's kind of what you and I talk about,
Gibbs.
Yeah.
You know,
you can play the what if game all day,
but there's some basis for this what if game.
It's not just pie in the sky,
what if it's,
you know,
if this would have happened what in a way that a lot of people think was
correctly,
then this guy would have gotten much more time.
Yeah.
Maybe he never gets out to.
Possibility.
Kill these four other people.
You don't know that.
Right.
It's a question that you ask and it's something that I think has talked about a lot.
So Kirkland initially pleaded not guilty to all of the murders.
Even though on tape, he admitted to killing everyone.
Right.
We see that time and time again.
But just before his trial was scheduled to start, he pleaded,
guilty to two of the murders.
And that was the murder of
Mary Joe Newton and the
murder of Kimia Rollison.
And he was sentenced to 70 years to life
for those two murders.
Now that's a real sentence.
That is.
You know, to me, 16 years for
killing a woman and then setting her
on fire, I just don't consider
that to be a just sentence.
I really don't.
70 years to life is a real big boy
sentence. Yeah.
For taking someone.
one's like. It's saying you're never coming out. You're never coming out. Yep. At his, at his age,
he's never coming out. What this did was so, so they got him, right? They know he's never getting out,
but they're still going to put him on trial for the murders of Cassania Crawford and Esmey Kinney.
And it really would be Kenny that prosecutors would focus on because at this point, all they're going after is the death penalty.
But yeah, they want to get him convicted.
but it's so they can give him the death penalty.
He's already has 70 years to life.
And they felt like the Esme McKinney case was the stronger of the two.
For one, her body had not been burned as badly as the other victims.
You know, he had taken off her clothes, had used her clothing to start the fire.
And it had burned a large part of her body.
Don't get me wrong.
but nowhere near as badly as the others.
So they were able to see some of the marks, you know, on her neck and her head,
even in her eyes that showed evidence that she had been strangled.
They couldn't tell with, you know, the other bodies.
Really what they knew about the other bodies came from his confessions for the most part.
So his trial finally began in March of 2010.
And I just talked about Gibbs, how they didn't.
want to prosecute him for all of these other crimes.
And the reason given for this was they just had so much evidence against him in,
in these murders, they didn't want to muddy the waters.
Yeah.
And you and I have talked about this from time to time.
There is a problem can be with adding too much, right, into a trial.
Right.
So you've said it.
Pick your best stuff and go with that.
And that's what they did in this case.
To that point, they didn't even present evidence of his 1987 conviction for murder to the jury.
Didn't even talk about it.
Didn't even bring it up because they felt like they didn't need to.
Yeah, they're like why even do it?
Why open ourselves up to having that go badly when we don't need it?
Yeah, we don't, yeah.
That's how confident they were in the evidence that they had against him.
so prosecutors played about five hours worth of his confession tapes at trial for the for the jury and this
gives us slam dunk type stuff right obviously he admitted to the murders but he also provided in
those taped interviews details that only he and the police could have known right or only the killer
and the police could have known and really there was only two things that the defense could really do
Number one, they tried hard, but unsuccessfully to get those tapes kicked out, right, to bar the jury from hearing those tapes.
Right.
That didn't work.
So once that was decided, essentially the trial was basically over.
Yeah.
You know, the prosecution did have witnesses and testimony and evidence.
You know, they brought forth the officer that found Kirkland against the tree.
And she testified that when she found him,
he had several knives in one of his pockets.
But in the other pocket, he had her iPod and he had her purple wristwatch.
But on the back of the iPod was etched the words, property of Esme McKinney.
It's not going to look good, Gibbs.
No.
To the jury, when you're sitting 50 to 100 yards away from this girl's body.
Holding her iPod.
And you've got her iPod.
Yeah.
And it's pretty tough to say that's somebody else's iPod.
No, I didn't get it from her.
When her name is etched into the back of it.
No, that's not hers.
I don't know why that says her name on back of that.
I didn't get it from her.
Again, I don't think a lot of trials are slam dunks, but I think this one was.
And that's obviously why we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the trial.
The defense told jurors up front that Anthony Kirkland admitted to the killings and that they
wouldn't even contest much of the evidence against him right from the beginning told that to the jury
i think gibbs you know after the tapes were admitted their only goal was to try to spare him from the
death penalty you know in that front they talked about you know how he did cooperate with police
and and that if he hadn't cooperated they probably would have never solved the other murders
yeah i think that's true right they they didn't know they had talked to
to him about two of them didn't have any evidence against him years earlier.
I'm not sure he would have been linked to those murders had he not opened his mouth.
Yeah.
And the defense did bring on a psychiatrist that they hired that testified about Kirkland's
childhood abuse, the neglect that we talked about and specifically talked about the
traumatic brain injuries that he suffered, that this.
psychiatrist felt may have contributed to his violent behavior.
It's a doctor named Joseph Wu that testified.
And apparently he's,
he had testified in a number of criminal cases about these type of brain injuries,
pet scans,
MRIs, things like that.
And he examined Anthony Kirkland scans and the injuries that he suffered to his head.
And he made that conclusion.
A lot of it was based on.
the fact that his examination revealed what he called abnormalities in Kirkland's brain that he thought
were caused by these head injuries. We briefly talked about a bicycle accident. Kirkland had, and this was in
2004, and apparently in this bicycle accident, he hit his head very hard. And some people that that knew
him over the years said that from that point forward, he was different person. Now, he did kill a woman
in 1987.
Right.
So not that different of a person.
Not that different of a person.
But, you know, 2004 was the year after he was released from prison.
And it's really when the majority of his crime started, right?
The sexual assault and his neighbor, all of the things that we listed started in 2004.
So I think that's, you know, one of the things that the psychiatrist is taking a look
at and he's making that connection. And we talked about this in an episode not too long ago.
You know, the doctor said that on the scan, it showed damage to the frontal lobe of Kirkland's
brain. And that's the part that controls behavior and impulsivity. And on the stand, Dr. Wu,
he made this comparison of Anthony Kirkland's ability to control his impulses to driving a car with no
breaks. That's that's the comparison that he's making between the two things. So essentially he said when
you put all these factors together, right, the head trauma, the neglect, the abuse. And I mean,
we're talking about this Gibbs in every episode we do just about. Yeah, we do. But he's saying,
he's saying you put this all together. It creates a perfect storm where the person is unable to
regulate their behavior. Now, again, I think there's something to this. We're talking about it too
much for it to be a coincidence. Now, is every person that we talk about, every killer because they,
you know, had a head injury, it made them a killer? I don't, I don't know about that. I'm not saying
that, but I think there's something to this frontal lobe damage and this inability to control your
impulses, right? Maybe without the damage, maybe you have the impulses. Right. The sexual impulses. And maybe
even violent.
Maybe.
But you never act on them.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It seems like what our research and what we find in these cases, it's what it's
leading me to believe that there's obviously some connection there.
But I think another part of it is because it's known, maybe just almost every defendant
tries to or every defense team tries to bring it up.
Well, of course.
That's what I was going to say.
I mean, it's, you know, especially if you're trying to get somebody out of a life,
I mean, I have a death sentence.
Sure.
You know, you can say, well, it did have the head trauma.
They did have.
He fell out of an apple tree when he was seven and bedwetter.
And he was vicious to, you know, I mean, they bring up all those things just to try to get the mercy, you know, poor, poor him did bad things.
But does he really deserve to die?
Because he couldn't control it.
Right.
Instead, we could just keep him in prison for life.
No, I think you're exactly right.
But so again, I'm trying to balance this.
I know there's some connection there with almost like a chicken and the egg type thing.
Well, I mean, how many times were you dropped on your head?
Well, quite a bit.
I figured.
Yeah.
But, I mean, I did my thing.
That's what I'm afraid of.
I just don't get caught.
Because you're so smart.
Well, it's the vocabulary.
So I got to talk about this.
So the trial is going on for Anthony Kirkland.
Yeah.
This guy walks into the Hamilton County Courthouse.
and apparently asked officers in the courthouse,
what would happen if he hurt Anthony Kirkland?
I don't know who this guy was.
Yeah.
I never got his name.
I never saw that.
I guess they swarmed right away.
Yeah, they escorted him out of the courthouse.
But come on.
If you're a family member,
I'm assuming this guy was either a family member
or related friend somehow.
Yeah.
He was mad at Anthony Kirkland for, you know,
murdering either his family or his friend or loved one.
But if you're really serious about it,
don't think you're going to walk into the courthouse and ask about it.
I'm just going to go up and do my thing, man.
Again, with you doing your thing.
Yeah.
I just found that as a strange tidbit that the guy walks in and says,
you know, what, I mean, what do you think happens?
Exactly.
That's just saying you want to like, hey.
I want to do it.
I'm going to do something.
You watch this.
Right.
By the way, hey, if I do this, what's going to happen to me?
See, I was going to do it, but they're taking me away, man.
So that's like me on the playground when, you know, you used to fight as kids.
When you say, hold me back.
Yeah.
But you really want like your buddy to hold, literally hold you back.
Hold me back.
But you want to say, hold me back because I'm going to go get this guy.
I'm going to explode, man, if you don't hold me back.
Hold me back.
So the trial wraps up.
And the jury convicts Kirkland.
Deliberation doesn't take that long.
Like I said, this was pretty much a no-brainer.
And they recommended death.
and the judge sentences him to death.
We as a people, believers in the rule of law and justice
are going to have the death penalty
and pose on the worst of the worst.
Then if not you, Anthony Kirkland, who?
Now, really short clip, but I like it.
To a point.
He's saying, we should be putting the death sentence
on the worst of the worst.
And if not you, Anthony Kirkland, then who?
He's essentially saying Anthony Kirkland is the worst
of the worst. So this is what this law is gear for. So we're going to use it on you.
And then you have to hear the prosecutor talk about Kirkland. He needs to be executed, period.
I hate to be so cold and callous about it, but he needs to be executed. And as far as I'm
concerned, it can't happen soon enough. I've tried four serial killers in my life. He is the
worst of the worst and he cannot be he cannot be killed by the state of Ohio soon enough for me
well that says a lot right there that this prosecutor tried four serial killers and his term as a
prosecutor in Ohio it tells you how I guess bad it was at one point yeah I like to know the other three
we could probably figure him out yeah um but again you hear him say he doesn't hold anything back
in that clip.
I mean, to say that out of the four,
again, we don't know who the four is,
but out of the four,
this dude was the worst.
That's pretty big statement.
But to go on camera and say,
the state of Ohio cannot kill this man
or execute this man soon enough.
Yeah.
Clearly, I mean, he was just such a violent individual.
Well, and you think the prosecutor,
who knows more, right,
about what this guy actually did
every single detail than the prosecutor.
Well, yeah.
He saw it all.
They've seen the pictures.
You're trying really hard there, won't you?
I've seen that.
All the reports and everything.
Probably some of the things that they couldn't bring up a trial, you know,
that they were not allowed to talk about it.
So, yeah, I'm sure he's seen a lot.
And he was probably like, man, this dude,
this dude is just pure evil, pure evil.
Now, normally this would be the end of our episode.
We would be wrapping up.
Sure.
But it wasn't quite the end of the story for Anthony Kirkland because in 2016, the state of Ohio ordered a new sentencing hearing for Kirkland.
So essentially they removed his death sentence.
Okay.
So he has life at this point, but he's going to be resentenced.
So, you know, again, I didn't see all the details of why, but something procedural, something, whatever it is.
but the key is he's going to have another sentencing hearing in front of a new judge.
And at this hearing, Kirkland makes a statement.
Okay.
My name is Anthony Kirkland.
Anthony, Governor, I just want a statement you'd like to read.
Yes, sir.
Please read it to the jurors.
What statement begins to saying is, I know that my words mean nothing.
And I am responsible for the death of those four years.
young ladies.
I do not
even know why I did it.
I get so angry
and cannot stop
myself.
I know it's no excuse.
I hope I am locked away
forever.
I should never get out and I want.
I have heard so many people
with these four murders.
I do not ask for
nor expect
any forgiveness for it. I don't deserve forgiveness. My attorneys have done everything to try to help me.
I wish to try to, I wish to thank them for this, but they cannot change what I did. I cannot
believe how horrible I am. I will never forget or rest or be at peace, nor should I.
I told the police about what I did, even though I was a confession.
I wanted it to stop.
I didn't want to hurt anyone anymore.
I could not stop the rage and the anger and make the bad Anthony go away.
I could not tell the police why I did it, because I don't know why.
Why?
They say I am not evil.
They say I am evil and a monster.
They're right.
Even since I was little, everyone said I was bad.
Even my mom hated me, but I don't blame her.
I even hated me.
I do not blame you if you kill me.
I don't deserve to live, but please spare my life.
All right, so a pretty long clip for us, but I thought it was an important clip
because I want to talk about this.
Let's start with the very end.
I don't deserve to live, but I hope you spare my life.
Yeah, that's a weird plea.
It is.
So you would think you would say just spare my life.
You know, I don't think I'd go out there with I don't deserve to live, but don't do it.
That part seemed a little strange.
But I guess my question to you and what I kept going through my head the whole time I was
hearing that was how much of that was real and how much of that was put on in an attempt to
get out from under the death penalty. That's that's that's that's every that's what I just kept
thinking about. You know, he's saying, yeah, I did it. I don't know why I did it. I couldn't tell
the police why I did it. He already knows he's never getting out of prison. Right. And so he's saying,
I should never get out of prison.
Well, you're never getting out anyway.
Never going to happen.
That's not what this resentencing is about.
I just, I don't know.
I mean, I felt like he was, but what else?
I mean, I think that's what he was there to do.
His attorney pre.
Yeah.
I hadn't write something at head time.
They talked about it and said, here, give it a shot.
Yeah, I don't know.
I liked it.
I wanted to play the whole thing, even though it was long.
Because sometimes things like that, they just, there's something that sticks in my head
and I find I think it will be interesting to to the listeners.
But after hearing everything, that plea included, the judge resentenced Kirkland to death.
And he's currently sitting on death row and will likely be there for a long time, Gibbs.
As his appeals wind their way through the process, we've seen how long it can take.
Yeah, it's a good chance he'll die in prison, natural causes first.
Maybe.
Yeah.
Yeah, because a lot of times it does.
does take so long to get through the process.
But that's it.
That is the story of Anthony Kirkland.
We got some voicemails, Gibbs.
Hey, let's hear some voicemails.
Let's hear them.
Hi, guys.
My name is Tamara from Montgomery, Texas.
Hey, I've been listening to you the podcast for probably a couple months now, but I thought
a really good one would be Charlie Brandt.
He actually, when he was really young, he had tried to kill his whole, his parents.
he actually shot his pregnant mother and shot his dad.
Dad lived and then he ended up, everybody hit the whole story and he ended up going to like a boys school or something like that.
And then he got out and ended up getting married and killing his wife.
And he had a fascination with his adult niece who he ended up killing and then he hung himself in the garage.
But it's pretty fascinating.
The last name is Brandt, B-R-A-N-D-T.
Anyway, thanks guys.
it's a really good podcast.
It's really interesting.
It keeps me awake at night.
Take care.
Bye.
All right.
Great voicemail.
I just checked the list.
Gibbs.
I don't have that one on there.
So you added it on.
I'm adding it on,
although I feel like she gave some of the parts away.
And she didn't say spoiler alert.
She should have said spoiler alert.
No,
just messing with you.
I'm sure there's a lot to that story.
But it does sound very like it could make a for a very good episode.
Hi guys, this is Kuddy Seth from Milford, Connecticut.
I was just calling to say that I was really sorry to hear that you got laid off.
However, I would consider this to be an opportunity to make podcasting your full-time vocation
because I think you've got a real talent for it and good things happen to good people.
So I have faith in that.
And I also wanted to say that I think that the effort that you guys have been putting
forth lately is really wonderful.
There is so much about to love you and who watch,
um,
who watched diligently for every time a new project comes out.
So we're really, really excited.
And, um, keep the face, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
All right.
That was a great voicemail.
And obviously a lot of that was directed at me.
But I am, I am feeling like that, right, Gibbs?
You've been around me lately.
I've been very positive about.
what the potential is with this extra time that I'm about to have.
Yeah, yeah, you've been pretty excited.
And I'm looking forward to it because I know whatever you do is going to be good.
Yeah.
And it's going to include you.
So there's going to be more work for both of us.
That's always good, too.
It's always good.
Hi, Mike and Gibby.
My name is Suzanne, and I'm calling from Los Angeles, California.
I'm calling just to send you guys love.
I am obsessed with your podcast.
I got my mom into it and my dad enjoys it too.
We are definitely a true crime family.
On Mother's Day, my mom and I love watching Snap,
a little thing that we've been doing for the past few years.
So it's great to see other people out there that love true crime as much as my family does.
And thanks so much for always putting a smile on my face,
but also giving a lot of support to those that were victims.
And thanks for making my two-hour commute every day, so entertaining.
and keep your own time ticking.
And, yeah, Team Ghibi from my family.
Thanks so much, guys.
The family.
You got the whole fam family.
The family.
The family.
You're trying to do a godfather family?
Yeah. The family.
It's not just her as Team Givis.
It's the whole family.
The whole boardersport.
Yeah.
We appreciate that.
I do.
Thank you.
That was very nice.
Hi, my thing, Gibby.
This is Grace's mom, Andrea, from Seattle, Washington.
just wanted to call on thank you for giving us yet another reason to bond and also quickly a shout
up to grace love you and i just wanted to tell you that we find your podcast compelling and entertaining
and it's just great recently we took a trip from whistler to seattle and i made my husband listen to your
two partner and geoffrey gommer and it was awesome and i think he's hooked too so we sure look forward
to more episodes and keep doing what you're doing and thanks take care bye-bye
All right.
Man,
Whistler.
That's Grace's mom.
That's Whistler, man.
That's big time skiing.
That's big time snow skiing.
If you're going to Seattle to Whistler, or was it Whistler to Seattle?
I think she said Whistler to Seattle, but I can't remember.
Well, if she lives in Whistler, then there's snowboarders and snow skiers for sure.
That's a beautiful place, man.
So I think we said when Grace left her voicemail, I think we asked the question, why didn't she give her mom the actual say her name?
Yeah.
So I liked it the way she did that.
And then she said her name.
She did good.
Thank you.
All right, Gibbs, we got mailbag.
We do.
And we've probably had mailbag for a couple of weeks.
Yeah.
But I changed phone carriers and have not been getting the text to say I have things.
So the mail room has been full and people are like, why aren't they come and getting their stuff?
Yep.
So Heather Wilson sent in some Harley chips for me from Australia.
Ooh, Australia.
Yeah, they're very cool.
Now, Gibbs, somebody sent me some chips from Sweden.
Oh, okay.
Which is amazing.
Yeah.
But in their letter, they specifically requested that you try to say their name.
Okay.
Marco.
Polo.
That's not even close.
The Marco you got.
Polo.
Let's see.
Last name.
And for the listeners, I'm going to spell it.
P-U-R-G-A-J.
Per-G-A-J.
Per-G-A.
You know what?
Marco Per-Ga.
That's not actually half bad.
I'm not sure what you do with that J at the end.
Maybe it's silent.
Maybe it's one of your silent Jay.
Silent Jay and Bob.
Yeah.
But anyway, I got a kick out of it because Marco definitely wanted you to try to pronounce the name.
And then we had Jennifer Autry, an amazing supporter of the show.
Yes.
Send us a whole bunch of stuff, Gibbs.
Send us some beef jerky from Texas.
A box of what I thought was women's hair product.
Which you could always use.
Which I actually thought.
thought, okay, what the hell?
Volumizer? What do I have to lose?
You could use some volumin, volumizer.
Volumeizer? Yeah.
How are you, why are you getting an end in there?
Volumeizer, volumeizer.
Volumizer. Does it matter? Either one you would take.
Either one, I'll take volumizer or volumizer. Yes. If it will volumize you.
Volumize my hair. But it wasn't women's hair product. Inside, there were some Harley
Tokens. Cool.
And she even sent two of the bigger Harley, what they call metal challenge coins.
Okay.
They're like the tokens, but they're bigger and they're metal.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, they're really cool.
They're fancy.
Okay.
And then-based.
Yeah, they're not that big.
Okay.
And then Sandra Hauser sent us a whole bunch of stuff to.
Bacon-flavored pickles.
What?
Yeah.
Where are those at?
They're right here.
What?
Bacon-flavored pickles.
Beef jerky.
Oh, more beef of turkey.
A bunch of beef jerky.
Yes.
Harley Chip from Hawaii.
Well, that's cool.
And then she sent you some goodies from the USS Arizona.
I've seen that.
Memorial.
Yes, thank you.
At Pearl Harbor.
Yeah.
It seemed like some of the stuff might have been from Texas or something.
So I don't know, Texas, Hawaii.
She's a world traveler.
She's all over the place.
Yeah.
She gets around.
But we appreciate that very much.
Thank you so much.
All right.
That is it for another episode of True Crime all the time.
So for Mike and Gabby.
Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
