True Crime All The Time - Daniel Eugene Remeta

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

By 1985, Daniel Remeta was a 27-year-old man who had spent the majority of his life incarcerated. He had been jailed numerous times and had done two different stints in prison. He was facing an arraignment for a destruction of property charge when he decided to skip town with his 18-year-old girlfriend and another friend. What transpired was a multi-state crime spree in which Remeta murdered five people.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the life and crimes of Daniel Remeta. He knew he was about ready to go back to prison and that was something he couldn't have. Remeta chose to fund his short time on the run by robbing a number of businesses. The question is why did he choose to kill? Daniel even picked up a hitchhiker while on the run who became embroiled in his crime spree.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 192 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. How are you? Hey man, I'm doing good. How about you? I'm doing great. Thank you very much.

You and I have a lot of things going on kind of in the hopper that we just talked about on our weekly Patreon episode. A lot of people are buying the T-Cat face masks. Yeah. Showing them off on social media. which is awesome. That's cool. I think people are liking them.

Yeah, I think so. We've also been talking about doing some new t-shirts. Yeah. With a separate company, different designs. So kind of stay tuned for that. Obviously, once that website's up and running, we'll let everybody know.

Yeah, it should be good. But they'll be much different than what we offer now. Yeah. We've kind of been working with the designers, less logo-y and more scripty, if that makes sense, with some nice colors and kind of script wording, different sayings. Keep your own time ticking? Yeah, things like that.

Yeah. I think people might enjoy. Good. All right, Gibbs. Let's give our new Patreon supporter shout-outs. All right. We had Terry Adams. Hey, Terry.

Rebecca Maple. What's going on, Rebecca? Todd Jonas jumped out at our highest level. Hey, Jonas Brothers. Chrissy A. Hey, Chrisie. Don Montoya Mason jumped out of our highest level. Montoya Mason.

Ben Smith. Hey, Ben. Tyler Jackson. What's going on, Tyler. Ann Morton. Hey, thanks, Ann. April Moore Robertson. Hey, appreciate April.

Victoria Severinsky. Severinsky. Meredith. Undercoffer. Hey, Meredith. Missy Granger. What's going on, Missy? And then we had a whole bunch of people jump out of our highest level.

We had David Holm. Thanks, David. Allie. Thanks, Allie. Kimberly Harless. Hey, Kimberly. and Jennifer Vaughn. Wow, thanks Jennifer.

So we had Kelly Ann. Hi, Kelly. Then Courtney Monroe jumped out at our highest level. What's going on, Courtney? We had Nadine Azubko. Hey, a Zubko. And then last but not least, Christina Mersenidis jumped out of our highest love. Very good with that Greek name.

Thank you, Christina. Hopefully that's pretty good. Yeah. So big thanks to all the new Patreon support. And if we go back into the vault, This week we selected Robert Sabo. Hey, Sabo. So thank you, Robert.

Been with us a long time. And big thanks to all the people that continue to support us month after month. We had some PayPal support. Louise Valmoria. Valmore. Cynthia Bonifene. Hey, Bonifine. Lance Erickson.

What's going on, Lance? And Lena Carston. Hey, Lena. So thank all of you as well. Yeah. Gibbs right now, we have a brand new episode. out on true crime all the time unsolved. We're talking about the murder of Christine Prince.

Yeah, 1982 up in Toronto. So we're heading north of the border. Yeah. For cases, we can get across the border. I know the border's closed to everything else, but for cases, we can actually cross over. Well, yeah, the research is not restricted, not restricted, but the physical, you know, like I like to fly you into the location. Right.

I like to have you walk around. Exactly. And we just haven't been able to do that. It's been disappointing. But definitely check that episode out. We're working on a new Patreon only episode. It will either be out next week or the week after. I haven't decided yet.

But I'll keep everybody updated. All right, buddy. Are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time? I am. We're talking about Daniel Rometta, who in 1985, went on about, about a three-week crime spree that spanned multiple states. And over just six days of that time, he murdered five people. But Daniel was not a lone killer. He had a couple of teenage accomplices with him. One was his girlfriend. So to me, there's a little bit of a natural born killers type

vibe with this story. It was a good movie. Not all the way around. Do you remember the hub of of Valtap movie though when it came out. I mean for the time it was really seen as just unbelievably graphic yeah and maybe it still is today although we have a lot of graphic movies. I don't know if it would be today like it was but back then man it was it pushed the it pushed the envelope. Yeah I think it I think it ripped it open yeah and then tried to lick it back shut and and and could couldn't do it. It's a very interesting movie. I mean, Oliver Stone to me is a, as a director that likes to push boundaries anyway. Daniel Eugene Rametta was born on January 6th, 1958 in Traverse City, Michigan. And he had what sounds like a pretty tough childhood. Both of his parents were reported

to be pretty severe alcoholics. Daniel was one of five children. And the family had very little money. Not easy, right? Growing up in those circumstances, but like you and I say, how many people have grown up in similar circumstances or worse and or worse and have come out the other side conquered it, overcome it, whatever you want to call it and, you know, have gone on to lead amazing lives. Many, many, many more than have become killers, right? You know, we dwell on killers backgrounds for a reason, but I do think sometimes people kind of take it the wrong way. You know, I want to make sure that everyone knows, hey, we get it. There's a lot of people that really have bad childhoods.

They just figure out how to, you know, overcome it and become a success, you know, in spite of their childhood. But not Daniel, right? We know that's not going to be the case. Pretty early in life, he turned to crime. He began stealing other kids bicycles. He robbed stores. He shoplifted. You know, pretty much anything he could do to get some money or items that he wanted,

he did. He didn't seem to be concerned too much about the consequences because he was caught a bunch of times as a juvenile. Yeah. And arrested. He was sent to reform. school for truancy and I think some of the other things that he was doing. But again, two, like yourself, that's, that's not the end of the world. Never the end of the world. I know you persevered

through your reform school days and came out the other side. It was interesting. I think that's a good euphemism to use. People, people will know what you're, what you're getting at. Yeah. But unlike you, Daniel dropped out of school in the ninth grade. Daniel's mother later told page, that she was told early on he needed professional help. Okay. So you're coming out to a newspaper and saying, yes, I was told as a child, Daniel needed some help. You know what wasn't in any of the articles that I found? What kind of help that was given?

Yeah, that he got any type of help as a teenager and then into adulthood. Daniel seemed as though he was always getting into trouble. You know, this was just a kid that constantly was breaking the law. He spent most of his young adult life in prison. He did a stint for auto theft. Then in September of 1984, he was released from prison after serving three and a half years on a larceny charge. Just a little bit of larcency. Do you mean larceny?

Why can't I get that out? I don't know. but I'm leaving it in. I'm leaving it in there. I won't it come out of my mouth. Hey, sometimes it just won't. It won't.

But I knew what you meant. I think everybody knows what you meant. But when you talk about the background of a subject, right, of one of our cases, there's not a lot here. Well, there's a reason for that. This kid spent a lot of time locked up. You know, most of his late teenage young adult years. were spent in prison or jail or reform school or whatever. But he's out in 1984. He's 27 years old.

He has a record. And you would have to say Gibbs to this point, he's not contributed to society in any meaningful way. Oh, yeah. There's no way he has. The guy's done nothing with his life in the first 27 years. Unfortunately, he's not going to do anything for the rest of his life either. Daniel met an 18-year-old named Lisa Dunn at a party in December 1984. So he's only been out of prison for about three months, goes to a party, meets a girl nine years his junior. The two quickly became an item. And by January, within a month, they were living in 18 years.

Traverse City motel together. I always kind of remember Traverse City as the, the place where you went to do all the outdoor fun stuff, the snowmobiling and the. I think so. I have never actually been, but when I lived in Detroit, it seemed like I always saw signs for Traverse City,

do this, you know, like there were activities to do there. So I think you may be right. I don't know that Daniel Rometta was doing, you know, any skiing or, or a luge or anything like.

that delusion but think about that right gets out of prison in september by December he's got a girlfriend by January they're living together in a motel Daniel remetta's not working no so how's that how's that working out for him well actually for him I guess you would say it's working out pretty good because Lisa Dunn at 18 years old is a waitress she's paying for everything it's not easy man And the thing about Lisa Dunn is that, you know, it was said that she was a pretty good student. Now, she started to get a little wild junior senior year in high school, as many of us did, right? I think if a lot of us were honest with ourselves, junior, senior year is probably when we started to explore, get a little, you know, let our freak flag fly a little. Uh, yeah, you sure did. I know you let yours fly and it actually flew away.

It did. Still trying to chase it down. But I think the important thing about Lisa for me was even though she, yeah, she was doing things that probably a lot of us did. She kept her grades up pretty high. Yeah, she was a good student. So pretty good kid by all accounts. I'm not really sure Gibbs where the attraction came from, right? On the part. of Lisa Dunn for Daniel Rometta. Maybe it was just a little bit of that bad boy, you know, some, some people like that bad boy look. They do. Yeah. Yeah. That's why they like the gibster.

They see you as a bad boy. Yeah. I don't know what else it could have been. I mean, when we post pictures of this guy, you know, he, he's not Brad Pitt. No. He's not what I. I would consider to be a looker. He's got a felony record.

He doesn't have a job. So other than being the George Costanza bad boy, I don't know what else it would be. Yeah, maybe he's just a good smooth talker. Well, that could be too. There were reports that he was abusive to Lisa during their relationship. And this isn't a relationship that's going to last very long. That's the one thing about this case is it all takes place in a. very short amount of time. From the time that Daniel gets out of prison to the time that he

begins and ends his killing spree, not a lot of time goes by. So add that on top of it, he's abusive. It's really kind of hard to see why she would have been attracted to him. Obviously, there's something that was there that we don't know about. Then on January 25th, 1985, Daniel was arrested for destruction of property. And I really believe this was the catalyst for everything that was to come. Because his arraignment was scheduled for the 28th of that month. I don't think Daniel Rometta had any intentions of going to that arraignment. Gibbs, he probably knew, given his record, that the outcome was not going to be good for him.

No, if he didn't enjoy prison the last time, he's not going to enjoy it the second time. or the third or the third because he'd already done two right yeah yeah he'd already done two prison stents so yeah he does not want to go back and when you go in already having some jail time and two prison stents on your record yeah they're going to throw the book at you right if they look at your record and say you're incorrigible yeah we're going to give you whatever the max would be for that kind of like the three strikes and out kind of a deal yeah maybe something like that. But he could also, you know, on his last day out, maybe got a little mouthy with some people, because he thought, I'm never coming back. He said a few things like some people do when they

leave, you know, they, they let their mouth run a little bit because they think they won't ever be back. And talk big and bad because you know you, you're not going to have to face those people. Exactly. Now, the prospect of going back there becomes even more haunting. Well, yeah. If you, if you did run your mouth. You got to answer for those now. So a plan was made and it was for them to leave town. It would be Daniel Rometta, his girlfriend, Lisa Dunn, and an 18-year-old friend named Mark Walter. So on the 27th, the day before his arraignment was scheduled, Daniel robbed a Michigan convenience store using a 357 that Lisa had stolen from her father. And there's a lot out there about this three years.

I think the consensus is that Lisa stole it from her father either gave it to Daniel or Daniel took it from her. There are some stories that she was sexually assaulted and she felt as though she needed to carry this gun. I don't know what's true and what's not true because there are a number of different accounts. I think what we know for sure is that there's a 357. Yeah. And it most likely got into the hands of Rometta by way of Lisa Dunn. Daniel threatened the clerk, 26-year-old Kathy Dinger with the gun. He threatened to blow her head off.

He made her live face down in the back of the store, cleaned out the register of about $300 and left. But he didn't kill her. He didn't hurt her. It was a robbery. I'm sure she was shaken, scared. She's probably going to be more scared Gibbs when she finds out what happens to people later in this very same scenario.

Now, after the robbery, the three headed to Florida and they arrived sometime around the first of February. So again, I don't think he had any intentions of ever going to this arraignment. We're skipping town. We're going to Florida. I mean, that's what you do, right? You get arrested. They say, hey, you have an arraignment coming up.

What are you going to do? And they go, we're going to go to Disney World. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny because there are some reports that they may have gone to Disney World. Yeah. After getting to Florida. I mean, I don't think that's the commercial that Disney wants to make. No.

You've just been bailed out of jail. Where are you going to go? I'm going to Disney World. That's right. Disney World. You're not going to see that commercial. No. But Daniel Rometa.

committed his first murder on February 8th. This was at a convenience store in Ocala, Florida. Working inside the convenience store that day was 60-year-old Chet Reader. Remetta walked in, shot Reader four times at close range, and emptied the cash register. Gibbs, they walked away with a whopping $52.52. He took a man's life. Wow. And he didn't hesitate. No. Which is so strange. Yeah, and I think we'll see kind of a pattern as we go through this episode. I believe that Rometta figured it out pretty quickly, that he was willing to kill. And probably because he realized that he couldn't leave any witnesses.

He didn't want to get caught, obviously. And he thought by a limb. illuminating witnesses, that would be his best chance. Because he didn't need to kill this convenience store clerk, right? This is a 60-year-old man. My assumption is that if he had a gun in his face, he would have opened the register. Sure. Given whatever money was in there, they flee.

This man never needs to lose his life. Kathy Dinger didn't lose her life. And they got away with the money. And I'm sure the protocol is, if, If you get robbed, open the cash register, let them take what they want. Yeah, it's pretty much universal, right? If you work in any type of job where money's involved, if somebody walks in and they put a gun in your face, you give them whatever they want. Yeah.

And hopefully they'll leave and, you know, things are insured. Nobody loses their life. That's usually every company's policy. Right. So using that logic, why did Daniel Rometta kill this 60-year-old man? Either A, because he wanted to and he liked to, or B, because he thought he had to eliminate witnesses. Well, I think you're right.

Or a combination of both. I think you're right. It's probably the fact that he just need to eliminate witnesses. Why else would you go in just firing right off the get-go? Because you already knew before you walked in, this is what I have to do here and, and, you know, every place forward. Now, the one thing that I struggled with in this whole case, you know, I don't know if this group had a definite plan other than Rometta getting away from Michigan, but, you know, there's no doubt. They're going to kill a number of people along the way.

And every one of these are just extremely senseless murders. Like we just talked about, this murder of Chet Reader did not have to happen. Two days later, on February 10th, Remeda, Dunn, and Walter walked into a gas station in Wascom, Texas. Gives this is a very small town, less than 2,000 people. Inside the gas station, teenager Camilla Carroll was working alone. At gunpoint, Carol gave the group around $300 in cash from the register. But again, they don't just walk out. they abduct Carol, put her in their car, they drive a little bit down an isolated road.

And then they stopped. Daniel pulled her out of the car and he told her to start walking, assuring her that they're going to let her go. They're not going to hurt her. And then all of a sudden he told her to start running. Yeah. Now, you want to talk about scary. You just think about what's going on in this young, teenager's mind.

Sure, man. So she does what she was told. She starts running. Right. And as she's running, Rametta shot her five times and then they left her for dead, right? The three piled back into the car and they left. So not only all this other stuff he's doing, he's also a coward, right? Because he told her that, oh, we're going to let you go.

Then tells her, oh, you better run. And she's running. He shoots her in the back. Yeah. So now you've gone from, you know, just a senseless murder to now it seems like it's almost sport. Yeah, you're playing playing a game. Like hunting human type sport.

Yeah. Now the thing about Camilla was she was strong. Yeah. She fought for her life. She was able to crawl up the hill and make it to the road and flagged down a passing car. A couple in their car stopped. They helped her. and they took her to a nearby hospital where doctor saved her life.

Which is good for her. Yeah. You know. Now, it's amazing. I probably won't talk a lot about this at trial, but it's not going to be hard, right? Eventually for the authorities to match up all these killings. Right. They were able to pull slugs from her.

She survived. Obviously, they pulled them out. they were able to pull slugs from Chet and these are all going to match. And so ballistically, this is going to be a pretty easy case. But that's down the road, obviously. But again, just to me, it shows how big of a coward he really is. Plus, you know, how amazing what this teenager was able to do really was, right? You get shot five times.

I think she was like 18 or 19 years old, Gibbs. and you could lay down and say, I'm hurt too badly, I give up. But she didn't. She wanted to live and she fought. Yeah. And, you know, that, I don't know what the word is, inspiring. It's just, it's just amazing what people can do in certain circumstances. She definitely was tough.

Yeah. Yeah, there's no doubt about it. Well, and I mentioned ballistics, right? but here you're going to have a person who lives that can easily identify all these people. So again, when I say we're probably not going to dive into all of the specifics of the trials, that's, this is why. But the very next day, the group is in Dyer, Arkansas, where they shot 42-year-old drive-in clerk Linda Marvin 11 times killing her.

So apparently the three pretended to buy something. And then as soon as Linda opened the cash drawer, they shot her. And they got away with about $500 in cash. They fled the store and they made their way to Kansas. But to me, this is where the story starts to get really strange. Because along the way, they picked up a 33-year-old hitchhiker named James Hunter. Hunter was reportedly hitchhiking from Texas back to his home in Amarrett, Missouri. I think he had gone to Texas to look for work, didn't find exactly what he was looking for.

So he was trying to make his way back to Missouri. Now, you and I have talked a lot about the dangers of hitchhiking. Oh, yeah. Many times, right? We've talked about that. Now, normally it's because the person that picks you up intends to do. you harm or may intend to do you harm. Right.

I don't think we've ever encountered a situation where a hitchhiker stumbled into, you know, kind of unknowingly something like this situation. These people weren't looking to hurt him or sexually abuse him or anything like that. But I'm sure when he got in the car, he wasn't thinking, oh, these are murderers on the run from the law. No, no. But there's no doubt James Hunter's going to be in for, you know, kind of a bumpy ride because that is what he stumbled into.

What about that conversation went? You know, you're driving down the road, just got picked up. Yeah, where are you from, buddy, where you had it? Yeah, yeah, we're on the run. Yeah, my assumption is, and obviously we don't have all the details around it, but I'm assuming that that wasn't the first thing that was discussed. Now, he's going to find out very quickly because it's not long after they pick him up that the four of them walked into a Stuckies restaurant near Greenfield, Kansas.

And Daniel Rometta shot the manager, 27-year-old Larry McFarland. And then all four walked out of the restaurant with about $170 in cash. And all the reports that I read Gibbs have this manager, Larry McFarland, McFarland working alone in the Stuckies, which I kind of found odd. Stuckies doesn't seem to be the type of restaurant that would normally be manned by just one person. Yeah, I wouldn't think so either. It's a pretty popular roadside kind of an eatery.

But it's not like a little one-man shack type operation. No. You would think you'd have maybe three or four people in that. Yeah, I mean, cook, manager, waitresses. That's kind of what I was thinking. But what do I know? I've never worked at a Stuckies. Maybe there was some type of emergency.

Maybe somebody called off and then somebody had to leave. Stuckies would never take you as an employee. Never. Never. I would never pass the background check. But right after this murder occurred, a customer walked in. And it was as these four individuals were leaving in their car, the customer found Larry McFarland dead.

But they also got to look at the car. And so they were able to call the authorities, say, number one, you need to get out here because, you know, somebody's been shot. But number two, here's the people that just left and here's the make and model of their car. So all that information went out over the radio. Thomas County undersheriff Ben Albright was driving around in his car. And he saw a car that matched the description. speeding down interstate 70.

So he tried to pull this car over. And that's when all hell broke loose because someone from the car started shooting at Albright. And he was hit twice. Then everyone got back into the car and they sped off. Well, you know, our meta is not going to go down easy. No, because he has no reason to give up, right? He's going to fight to the end. Yeah, because now, I mean, if he gets caught, his situation is about as extreme as you can be at this point.

Yeah. It's much more extreme than it was when he was in Michigan facing arraignment on destruction of property charges. Now he's a murderer. So he's past the point of no return in his mind. But Albright was able to get back to his car, get on the police radio. and tell his fellow officers which direction the car was headed. Now, the question of who shot Albright would be debated. Albright would later say it was James Hunter, the hitchhiker that shot him.

Yeah. At trial, it was argued that it was Remetta who shot Albright. Hunter did have a gun, but later said that he was trying to shoot Remeta because he didn't like what was going on. The problem is the gun accidentally went off and he shot Lisa Dunn in the leg. So again, Gibbs, you have a hitchhiker, James Hunter, who in the span of probably less than an hour has been involved in the murder of a restaurant manager. Yeah. And the shooting of a sheriff. And shooting somebody in their own group in the lake. Yeah. accidentally. Yeah. So, I mean, that's a that's a pretty eventful hour that's a ride you want to get off as soon as you can like

i gotta get out of here thank you i'm at my stop now yes and i think according to hunter if you believe him right his thought was yes i got to get out of here the only way for me to get out of here is to shoot daniel remetta yeah because and some more of this will come out reasons why it will come out later. So the four driving in the car, they get off the interstate and they pull into the lot of a like a grain elevator. This is a very small community of Levant, Kansas. Basically, Rometta is looking to ditch the car that they've been driving and he spots a pickup truck in the parking lot of this where this grain elevator is. There's two guys there. One of them is the owner of the pickup truck. And he forced both of these workers, 29 year old Rick Schroeder and 55

year old Glenn Moore into the cab of the truck. But he also saw that there was a trailer, you know, kind of one of those trailers that serves as an office. Right. For construction sites and little, you know, little things. And he noticed that there was someone inside moving around. Couldn't just leave it be, could he? No. No, because again, I think. think he was at the point where he felt that he could leave no witnesses. Right. So he and Hunter busted into the trailer. Now, again, James Hunter is the hitchhiker.

So all of this is strange. Yeah, because you would think at that point, Hunter would have another chance to take him out, but that's really what he wanted to do. But he's going along. His argument is going to be he thought Rometta was going to kill. him. Now, that could be a valid argument. We'll have to wait and see. But they bust into this trailer and Daniel shot the manager Maurice Christie. The pair went back out. They got into the truck, left Christy for dead. But he didn't die because apparently there was another employee in the trailer

that Daniel and Hunter didn't see. This guy was hiding and he was able to, you know, call police. So if you think about it, you have six people in this truck. And at some point, Rametta made the decision that, right, he doesn't need these guys as hostages. And he can't have them as witnesses. So they stopped the truck. He forced the pair out and ordered them to lay on the ground. Then he proceeded to shoot both of them in the back of the head. Brutal. Very brutal. But the authorities had already been alerted and they were after the group. They actually found these two men dead not long after they were shot. So they weren't very far behind. So following the group was a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper named Mark Convoy, followed by two Colby police cars. And everything came to a head when the group

in the pickup truck spotted a roadblock in front of them. So they turned off the road and they pulled into this abandoned farmhouse. The occupants in the pickup truck got out, as did the authorities who had pulled up behind them. And bullets started flying. Yeah. I mean, this was a shootout. Wow. Well, last shootout, man. Yeah. 18 year old Mark Walter, who we've really not talked much about, right? He's been with the group this entire time. Right. He started firing at Mark Convoy. There's a mistake. That's not good. Convoy. Convoy. was firing back. One of the Colby police officers had a shotgun.

The other had a semi-automatic rifle. And the guy that had the rifle aimed it at Mark Walter. When Walter turned toward the police officers with his gun, the man with the rifle shot him directly in the forehead, killing him instantly. Yeah. Well, when you're in a shootout and you point a gun at a police officer with a rifle. It's going to happen. more than likely you're going to get shot.

Yeah. Both Daniel Rometta and Lisa Dunn were hit during the shootout. And at one point, they just stopped firing and they laid down on the ground. And it was reported that as the officers closed in on them, they began professing their love for each other. I love you, baby. Yeah. I love you too, baby, you know. A little kind of like pulp fictiony or something.

Yeah. But the reason why I think it's important is because of everything that does come out later at some of the trials, the three surviving members of the group were arrested, including James Hunter, again, the hitchhiker, but who was holding a gun. Yeah. When officers approached him. I mean, his gun should have been on the ground from right from the get go. Yeah. And he's been laying on the ground with his, you know, hands over his head. And I don't know. There wasn't a lot of information other than about Mark Walter because he was killed. But, you know, the other three, how many shots they fired. If Lisa fired any shots. If James fired any shots. I didn't really see that information. But he definitely had a gun in his hand. And apparently he told the police, hey, man, I'm just a hitchhiker. I don't even. know these people. You know, they just picked me up and, you know, I'm not involved in all this.

Which, you know, depending on how you look at it could either be true. There's some truth to it for sure. What role he actually played is going to be very hotly debated. Sure. I mean, he's got that other officer that was shot. He walked into the Stuckey's restaurant when the manager was killed. He's holding a gun during the police shoot. out, you know. Daniel Rametta, Lisa Dunn, and James Hunter were all charged with the same offenses. Two counts of first degree murder, two counts of aggravated battery, two counts of aggravated kidnapping, and one count of aggravated robbery. Their bonds were set at $5 million. So obviously the judge felt as though they were a serious flight risk. Well, no doubt. If he had a chance to do it again, he was going to fly. Yeah, if he's going to run on a destruction of property charge,

he sure is hell going to run when he's facing multiple murder counts and, you know, things that are going to net him a life sentence or multiple life sentences. Yeah. Yeah, he's going to run the first chance he got. He'd be out of there. This guy was kind of a character. Gibbs. He had a lot to say while he was sitting in jail. He told reporters that he was, he was responsible for everything. He's like, yeah, I did all that. But he also told them that he wanted to be executed. You know, not something that you hear from a lot of people sitting in jail.

Number one, yeah, I did everything. I did everything I've been charged with. And number two, I'd like to get the death sentence. He really just didn't want to go back to prison, did he? He really didn't. And he did make statements later on that said, saying that he didn't want to want to die in prison. Like he didn't want to spend all those years just kind of rotting away existing and then die in prison. Because he's still a pretty young guy, right? 27, 28 years old.

But I think it shocked everyone, Gibbs, including his attorney, when at a routine hearing in May of 1985, this is just a couple months, right? After they were arrested, Daniel Rometta pleaded guilty to all charges. Now, Kansas didn't have the death penalty, so Daniel was later given five life sentences. But if he wanted to be killed, right? If he wanted the death penalty, why didn't he just stay standing up and point the gun at the cops during the shootout and allowed him to shoot and kill him right then? You know, I don't know. No, it's a very valid question to, you know, death by cop, right? is what you would, is what people would call it. Maybe he wasn't thinking about it at the time, or, and we may find this out, maybe he didn't really want to die. Yeah, I think he was a big talker.

But, I mean, if he wanted to die, why not do suicide by cop or death by cop? But you know that the other states were going to come after him. You know, and some of the things that he told papers after he was sentenced was that he wanted to get these charges out of the way so that he could get to one of the states where he could be given the death penalty. Again, kind of going along with this, I don't want a rot in prison. I want to, you know, I want to die. Lisa Dunn and James Hunter went on trial in June of that year. That's the other thing that kind of jumped out at me. All of this happened very quickly. Now, their attorneys painted them both as victims of Dan. Daniel Rametta. Ben Albright, the state trooper, testified that he believed it was James Hunter

that shot him, but Remeda, Dunn, and Hunter told a very different story. Lisa Dunn and James Hunter said that they were both terrified of Daniel Rametta. They wanted to leave, but felt that they couldn't because they feared that Daniel would kill them. Believable, possibly. Yeah, but I, but I really feel like for Hunter, he had several opportunities to walk away or runaway. Yeah, I think there are people that will look at it that way. There will probably also be people that will look at it as, okay, maybe he did, but he was so scared that something would go wrong that Daniel would kill him, because that's his stance. Yeah, but he did have a gun on him as well. He did. And he tried. And he tried to use it and it kind of backfired. He ended up shooting Lisa with it. Right.

Instead of Daniel. Now, Dunn said that she was the victim of verbal, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of Daniel Rometta. She testified that he once put a loaded gun in her mouth and threatened to blow her head off. He probably did. And Hunter testified that Rometta had threatened him repeatedly while in the car at one point telling him he had killed a number of people, including one hitchhiker already. So, you know, all of this testimony from them kind of backing up the point that they're making, hey, we were scared, there was nothing else we could do. We couldn't get away from this guy. We were just too fearful.

But also it was a little bit conflicting, right? Because when they get arrested, Lisa's laying on the ground, looking at him. Saying I love you. I love you. You know, professing, you know, I mean, that's the opportunity for her to say, screw you, buddy, you're a piece of whatever, blah, blah, blah, you know, start saying, saying thanks to the police officer for, you know, saving me. And that's why, you know, this is a case where I think people can look at certain things

a couple of different ways. Now, Rometta did take the stand in their trial and he basically took credit for all of it. He said he committed all of the abductions and murders and that it was him that shot Albright, not Hunter. And he admitted that he had threatened Lisa Dunn every day they were together. He also admitted that he threatened James Hunter as well. And he backed up the story that Hunter accidentally shot Lisa Dunn and never shot at Albright.

So here you have this guy that is saying, yeah, I did all the bad stuff. that you've thought I did. So there's no way that you can convict, you know, these kids because it was me. I can see, you know, with a day in and day out terror from him onto Lisa could get in her head, right? Yeah, she's 18 years old. Yeah. Let's not forget that. Exactly.

But I still find it weird when you're laying on the ground that you, you know, profess your love. But then again, it does happen. It happens. Some people get that Stockholm syndrome. You just never know. There are parts of this story that are hard to completely figure out, right? What's real? What's not?

What is said to try to save your own ass? I mean, some of it's hard. But when you have the killer, Rametta kind of backing up everyone's story, you would think, all right, the jury's probably going to believe. him. Now the prosecutor told the jury that Dunn and Hunter were just as guilty as Daniel Rometta because they aided him in the crimes. And Gibbs, it turned out that that's exactly how the jury saw it. After 12 hours of deliberations, the jury found both Dunn and Hunter guilty on all charges. They were each later given four life sentences. So I just want to reiterate, you're a

hitchhiker. You get picked up by these people. You spend what amounts to a few hours with them. And the next thing you know, you've got four life sentences. But again, could he have walked away at any moment and not be involved? I think the way that you're seeing it is most likely the way that the jury saw it, right? Obviously, because they convicted him. Sure. But these guilty verdicts, they would be appealed by both of their lawyers, but you know how long the appeal process takes. It takes a while. It wasn't until 1987 that the Kansas Supreme Court overturned Hunter's conviction. He was tried again in 1988, and this time a jury acquitted him of all charges. So here's a guy that went from having four life sentences to being found not guilty. Now you're a free man, you can go.

Unfortunately, four days after the acquittal, James Hunter died of a heart attack at the age of 36. Lisa Dunn didn't get a new trial until 1992, but she too was acquitted by a new jury. Now, there was a lot in, you know, some of the research about the fact that the new trials that both Lisa and James got were in different locales. So the thought was we're able to move these trials away from where the crimes happened. And many people thought that's why they had a better chance the second time around. Yeah. The problem that Lisa had was that Arkansas was waiting in the wings to charge her with the death of Linda Marvin.

So she was extradited to Arkansas to face those murder charges. She ultimately struck a deal where she pleaded. guilty to a charge of hindering the arrest of Daniel Rometta. She was given a sentence of 20 years. Not a light sentence. It's not a light sentence. She got credit for the eight years that she had already served and they suspended the rest of the sentence.

So she was technically free, not quite free, free, but she was able to go back home to Michigan and start her life over. So it was on a record, basically. Yeah. the conviction for hindering arrest, I guess. But not for the murders. No. But I'm sure she took some pretty good hits through the media for a while.

Oh, there's no doubt. And let's not forget, she served eight years. And if you think about it, you get a 20 year sentence. She most likely probably would have been paroled after eight years anyway, give her take. Yeah, yeah, roughly around that number. So you could say she served her time. Yeah, you could. But now we have to get back to Daniel.

You know, I said that Florida and Arkansas were going to come after him. And they did. Florida got their hands on him first. In 1986, a Florida jury found Rometta guilty for the murder of 60-year-old Chet Reader and he was sentenced to death. Then he went on trial in Arkansas and was found guilty for the murder of Linda Marvin, a judge followed the jury's suggestion there and sentenced him to death again. Daniel wrote the judge a note that said, Your Honor, to procrastinate this execution would also

be quite difficult to comprehend. I'm prepared to accept the punishment, which would save the taxpayers and the courts years of problems. So again, he's basically saying, okay, you gave me the death sentence, now carry it out. Yeah, just get this over with now. The thing is, everybody knows with capital punishment, it doesn't work that way, right? At one point, both Arkansas and Florida had scheduled execution dates for this guy. And you see it all the time, right? After a guilty verdict and a sentence of death, there will be a scheduled execution date like months later. It just never happens because of all the appeals and everything that, you know, come along with a, with a capital punishment. There was also some fighting between the states of Kansas, Arkansas,

and Florida. I mentioned it. Kansas didn't have the death penalty and they wanted Remeda to finish out his life sentences in Kansas. Now, obviously, both Arkansas and Florida wanted to execute him. Now, in the beginning, Remeda seemed very eager to be put to death. I've kind of already mentioned it a little bit. He gave interviews saying he wasn't afraid of death. In fact, he was ready for it. When reporters asked him why he committed his murders, he said, you know what, I just like to kill people. He also tried to drop all of his appeals, but Gibbs something changed as the years went by, as it often does, right? With some of these people. As they get closer and closer to death, their thinking tends to change a little bit. Yeah.

This prison is not that bad. Well, I think it's easy when you're young to say, yeah, go ahead and kill me. Right. When you know it's not going to happen right away. Yeah, some years tick by and then you think, okay, they could actually do this. A lot of people start to change their way of thinking. Now, he also got married in prison. That could have had something to do with it.

Could have. He began asking his attorneys to find ways to appeal his death sentence. He also started to change his tune, saying that it was actually Lisa Dunn, who had directed all of the killing. He started telling reporters from death row that he hadn't killed anyone. So now he's just fabricating lies. He said, you know what? I only confess to the murders to save Lisa.

But none of this worked. His execution date was set for March 31st, 1998 in Florida's electric chair. And that's the day that it was carried out. One article said Gibbs, he was the fourth person executed in nine days in Florida. Yeah. That seems like a lot. It's a busy two weeks there. Now, I think some of that frequency.

had to do with the fact that Florida had temporarily stopped using the electric chair. Because I guess the year before, they had an execution. Yeah. And flame shot out the top of this guy's head. It's like the green mile show or whatever. Yeah. So during the electrocution, like literally flames flying out of the cap or the hood or whatever. So what you had was the cruel.

an unusual punishment question and it worked its way through the courts. It was ultimately ruled that it was not cruel and unusual punishment. So I'm thinking that after the ruling, the state was trying to make up for that period of time where they weren't able to carry out executions. But still, four and nine days is a lot. To me, that's just a lot on the mental health of the people that have to carry this stuff out. Yeah, it really is. To put four people to death in nine days and all of the work that goes into it and and kind of the, you know, what does it do to your psyche to be the person that the execution

of the lever and it'd be rough. So when it comes to last meals, I read that his last meal consisted of two 44 ounce icies. I love icies. I love icies too. Coke icies are. my favorite. I'm more of a blueberry. You look like you'd be a cherry guy. Yeah. Yeah. What are you? 12? Sometimes. Now, that's a new one, right? We've never talked about anybody that just had two big iceys for their last meal. I don't know. Maybe he was trying to fill up his bladder for one big last FU. Yeah, big cleanup on aisle right here. Yeah. I don't know. Or maybe the guy just, liked icies. They're good, man. They're good, but is that the last thing that you want? No, I would

want it with. Right. To get a steak, get this, get that, and then wash it down with some iceings. Exactly. But that's 88 ounces of liquid. That's, that's, that liquid's going to go somewhere. I'm just saying the other day, yesterday, I got one of those big, uh, smoothies from tropical smoothie. Mm-hmm. You know, you've seen, there's, they're huge, man. Yeah. They're like twice that size. This is good pod because you're pointing at something that's on the desk. Yeah, exactly. Nobody can see. That nobody can see.

Yeah, but after drinking that thing, man, you know, your bladder needs to be empty many times. Now, imagine a whole bunch of volts going through your body. Oh, man. It seemed like some bad things are going to happen. Yeah, exactly. Daniel didn't say anything before he was executed and he reportedly showed no emotion. His religious advisor did read a statement that Daniel, had written, it said, for past actions and events, there is genuine remorse, and even greater sorrow

that none of it can be undone. I would give a thousand lifetimes to undo past deeds. The enormity of my errors has been no light burden. If this death brings comfort to the friends and families of those harmed and initiates real healing, justice is truly served. Tell my story to every year. You youth so that the worst of my life will not be repeated by them. And the trust and honesty I learned too late will save others. I guess Gibbs, as far as last statements go, it's pretty good. It's not bad. I wonder who helped him write it. Yeah, I think it would have been better if he would have said he was sorry for what he had done directly, if he would apologize to the families. I mean, verbally. Right. But I'm not sure that it would have mattered to the families, to be honest with you.

Most of the quotes that I read from family members were along the lines of, you know what, they didn't care what this guy had to say. They didn't really believe anything that came from him, whether it was verbal or in written form. And I get that. You know, if you've taken away a loved one from me, I'm probably not going to be real interested in anything you have to say. There been a few good last statements over the time we started doing these pods. There have been, and I'll be honest with you, there are some that I believe. Yeah. And there are many that I do not.

Yeah, I would say a very small portion, I believe. Mm-hmm. But there are some people that I truly do believe have changed while they were in prison before they were executed. And they're truly sorry for what they did. And if they could take it back, they would. Obviously, they can't. I don't know if Daniel's one of those people. It sounds like it if you just take the words that he wrote at face value. Right. But that could have been driven a little bit by his new wife. It could have been. Or he really could have grown up, um, changed his way of thinking. I don't know. It's hard to say.

I mean, who really knows other than him. Exactly. That's it right there. But he was strapped into the oak chair known as old Sparky. They lowered the hood down over his head. And the executioner wearing a black hood of his own turned on the power. Executioner even had his own hood. Oh, yeah.

It's kind of scary, man, the old black hood. But kind of necessary, right? If you're the guy that is pulling the lever or turning the power, however the power is turned on. Yeah. Do you really want everybody to see your face? Probably not. Do you want people seeing you at the grocery store,

pushing your car, getting your fruit loops, and they go, oh, yeah, there's that guy. He's the guy that kills everybody over at the state prison. Keep him away from the light switches. I mean, I think for the purposes of anonymity, I would want a hood as well. Yeah. You know, you think,

why didn't you just go ahead and wire that to the room right behind it? Just put it right. This is where nobody can see. Exactly. Yeah. You know. But I go back to, you know, what I was talking about before. What does that do mentally to a person?

That takes a special kind of person, right, to be able to do that? Oh, I would think so. Yeah. Yeah. You got to go home and sleep at night and be okay with the fact that your job is to hit the switch that ultimately takes someone's life. Yeah. I mean, you're no different.

than the guy that's pulling the trigger during a firing squad. No different than the medical person doing the lethal injection, right? Somebody has to do this. Yeah, no, they're all doing a job, right? It is part of the execution. But at the end of the day, you're taking someone's life. Yeah, you've got to be able to go home with that and be okay with it. And I mean, I don't think you take that job without knowing that that's how it's going to be. Maybe sometimes it could be a little harder, depend on what they say right before it happens. Well, that's where, that's why I was kind of making a big deal about the four times in nine days. Yeah.

Okay, if you have to do that once a month or something like that, I get it. You have to do that four times in a nine day period. I think that could eat at you a little bit. It's a, it's going to be a little, hey, honey, how was your day at the office? It's going to be a little difficult to, you know, to reply to those. Yeah, I don't think that's something you talk about sitting around. eating salisbury steak and mashed potatoes. No.

You got to find some other topic of conversation. Exactly. But the descriptions of people that die in the electric chair, you know, to me pretty different than those that die by lethal injection and maybe, you know, good, probably the big reason why the electric chair is not used hardly, if at all. I don't even know if anybody still uses it. I would rather be hung.

I'm sure you would. Right. I understood what you were saying. But the descriptions of Rometta, you know, so the power gets turned on, all of a sudden it's like, ooh, arching back, hands balled up into fists. It took about five minutes. And then when the power was shut off, he just kind of slumped back down in the chair. Yeah.

You know, when, when you hear the description. most of the descriptions of the lethal injection. Now, some have gone a little haywire. Right. But most of the time, it's more of a breathing slows, almost like somebody is falling asleep and they die. Dead Man Walking. Sean Penn.

That's how he died in that movie. The electric chair to me is just a little more violent. But in the end, it's the same. Yeah, the outcome is the same. The outcome is the same. You know, I don't feel too bad for anybody that gets or has had the electric chair because they're sitting there because they did a horrific crime to somebody else. Yeah, assuming they did the crime, I'm right with it.

Yeah, I don't assume they were too concerned about the pain that their victims went through. No, no, I'm sure they weren't. Or they wouldn't have done what they did. Exactly. So to me, Gibbs, a lesser known case, but I did find it very fascinating. It had some aspects that, you know, you just don't see a lot. Very fast moving.

Yeah. I mean, from beginning to end, this case went very quickly. Yeah. As far as the chronology and the timeline and all of that, you've got a 27-year-old guy who gets an 18-year-old girl to fall in love with him. Maybe they both love each other. I don't know. To the point where she's willing to go with him knowing that he's supposed to go to the

arraignment. I think there are some questions in this case, though. How much did she know about what was ultimately going to happen? Now, he could have just said, hey, I don't want to go to this arraignment. Let's take off. We'll go to Disney World. Not, okay, we're going to kill a bunch people. Right. On the flip side of that, where are you going to get the money to go on the run? Yeah, you've got to finance his run somehow. So I think the question of, what Lisa Dunn knew and when she knew it, that's out there. And then you have this whole interesting aspect of this guy James Hunter who was hitchhiking. Now, the guy did have a record. I didn't really talk about it a whole lot. He had been in some trouble with the law before. I don't know how much

that played into it. You know, my biggest questions with James Hunter are, okay, he gets picked up. obviously there's no way he knew who these people were right at the time that they picked him up very random very random they're driving around very quickly though he sees remetta kill the manager of the stuckies yeah he knows these are bad people you know to your point could he have gotten away is he being truthful when he said you know he wanted to but he was too scared i don't know there's there's a lot of questions. Yeah, and you have to look at the police officer that identified him as a shooter. You would think if someone shot you and you got to look at him, you would know who that person was. Yeah, there has been some back and forth about Albright because he'd been shot twice.

Right. So he was in rough shape. James Hunter could have had that 22. Yeah. That ultimately discharged into who Lisa Dunn's leg. Albright could have seen him with it and just said, okay, that's the guy that shot. That's the guy. Yeah. So there's,

there's been some conflicting information about that. But again, I think with a lot of cases, it's impossible to know with 100% certainty, every detail. Right. You can, you can talk about the details that have been reported.

And you can go back and forth with pros and cons or what ifs and, you know, know, and that's, I think that's kind of why oftentimes it's very tough for a jury. I mean, just look at James Hunter. A jury convicted him. Right. A judge sentenced him to four life sentences. Then he got a new trial. That jury looked at whatever evidence was presented and said, you know what? We find him not guilty. Yeah. So, I don't know. One extreme to the other. It's just part of what I found interesting about this case. But that's it. That's it for the case of Daniel Rometta. But we've got some voicemails, Gibbs.

You want to check those out? Yes, sir. Hey, Mike and Gibby. My name's Austin. Just calling, tell you how much I love the show, been listening in a lot lately. I'd like to give a suggestion for a case that's actually fairly close to my family. Heard in 2013 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. And it's actually the murder of my great uncle, my grandpa's brother, Ricky Saxton.

And just recently in 2019, his killer was finally convicted. His name is Johnny Mack Brown. Basically, the reason I want to suggest this case is I don't know a lot of the details of the case. It affected my family pretty hard. Essentially, he was a tow truck driver, went out to meet a guy to collect a payment for an impounded vehicle and was murdered on a back road. But there was a lot of circumstantial evidence, a lot of appeals, and the whole case is really based on a witness testimony from my understanding. where he admitted guilty and was eventually convicted. So I wanted to check out possibly and again, love the show.

Thank you. All right. Thank you for that. And we'll definitely look into that case. See if there's enough out there for a future episode. Thanks, Austin. Hi, I'm Mike and Gibby. This is Aaron again from Sacramento.

Free suggestions, see if you guys that follow through with it. One of them is for T-Cat, Willie, the Woodfetter from St. Helena in Napa County, California. He was thought to have maybe been tied to this. Dodeak, but he committed totally separate crimes at the same time stand. It's pretty interesting. And then also Gordon Northcott, he was responsible for the Wineville Chicken Coot murders in the late 1920s. A very interesting case. There was a book by one of his nephew's sons, and they made a movie about it with

Angelina Jolie, The Changeling. The Changeling, that's a really good case. And then also, the case of Bobby Dunbar from 1912, he was a, I think a five-year-old. he wasn't missing. They thought that he was eating by alligators, but then years later, an imposter came, and it turned out that it wasn't him. So a very intriguing case and mistaken identity. So just a couple of cases I thought would be cool for the podcast.

Anyways, have a good day and keep your own time ticking. Bye, guys. All right. Thank you very much. That chicken coop murder case is one that we get requested quite a bit. I know we'll cover it eventually. Hey, guys. Angie Christie here.

I just finished listening to the case about the Dartmouth professors. I'm actually from just across the river in Vermont and lived for a while in New Hampshire, close to Etna. And that was a very, very big deal when it happened. As you can imagine, in an elite college town like Hanover, there was not a lot of crime. and it really shook the neighborhood. I distinctly remember I was probably about 12 at the time, but it was very scary. I also wanted to say that I was recently driving from New Hampshire to Colorado

and you guys got me company. I made it through all of your Patreon episodes, and I'm probably going to buy Fisher Premium for my return trip so that I can finish catching up on unsolved. But I just wanted to say thank you for keeping me entertained, as always. I hope that Gibby, you have a good birthday, and happy belated birthday to Mike. And I hope you guys, take care. Do you safe and keep your own time ticking, Mike.

Wow. New Hampshire to Colorado. That's a whole of the drive. It is, man. You could really binge on a drive like that. There's a lot of podcasting. That is. Hi, guys.

Okay. I don't know what to say this. I just wanted to let you guys know. I love your podcast. And I'm from Denver. So I really like the one you made about pedonondine. And I love the way you tried to pronounce it. You did good.

And it's just fun to let you know that I've suffered with severe anxiety and depression. And you guys helped me through like a year of that because I listened to your podcast like religiously. So yeah, that's it. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Bye. All right. Thank you. Glad we can help in any way.

Hope you're feeling better. we got to get out there again, Gibbs. We've got to do some more Scandinavian cases, Sweden, Denmark. I've got a couple in mind. The problem that I have is the research methods that I use for cases. Yeah. You know, it's kind of tough when you're trying to look at newspapers that are in a different language. Well, I'll fly up to Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia? Actually, I need to go over to. Yeah. I don't know what the hell you're going to do in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia to catch the plane there. Then I'll go over and I'll be over in Denmark and Sweden and Norway all that. You're not fooling anybody. Everyone knows that you actually thought Nova Scotia was Scandinavian in Scandinavia.

No, no, no, no. Everyone knows. It's the cheapest flights. I go for the cheapest flights every time. Oh, that's too funny. All right, buddy. We did have some mailbag. Oh, yeah?

We haven't had a lot. And then all of a sudden. Things just started flying in. We're good. So our friend Chavon from the Boston coffee cake company sent us our yearly goodies, amazing coffee cakes. Awesome. Thank you.

We appreciate that. Lottie sent me some goodies from my birthday, including a book in Danish that she wants me to figure out how to translate. You'll read it to you? Yeah, you'll have to. Bedtime stories. Rick Shilby sent us some real sweet Ontario maple syrup. Really?

So we got that going for us. There you go. And then Bernius Dignis Daughter. Yeah. Send us a huge box of goodies from Iceland. Big box. The problem is, again, I'm still trying to translate everything to find out what it is. There are cans of liquids that are either orange juice or malt liquor.

And I'm deciding between the thing. I'm going to take my phone and put the Google Translate app over it and scan it and it and will say exactly what's in it. Okay. Is that how that works? It's out sports. Okay. But we appreciate all of that very much. All right, buddy.

We got to get out. All right. That is it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.