True Crime All The Time - The Briley Brothers

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

Linwood, James Jr, and Anthony Briley were 3 brothers from the Richmond, VA area that would terrorize that city during a seven month stretch of 1979. They, along with a fourth accomplice Duncan Meekins, committed a serious of brutal crimes. They started off selecting their victims at random which enhanced the level of terror. But selecting victims closer to home is what led to their eventual capture.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the Briley gang and the reign of terror that they inflicted upon the city of Richmond. It is still considered one of that city's most infamous crime sprees. What would make three brothers from what seemed to be a stable family head down such a dark path? Even when you think this case is over, it's not. Two of the brothers make a daring escape from death row and go on the lam.You can support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.comSponsors:Support our sponsor Havenly, the easiest way to decorate a room or space in your home. Go to havenly.com/tcatt to get 25% off your design package!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 78 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 today man man man i'm all right a little little sore a little rough on the edges do you want to tell people why or yeah i got a little i don't know what you want to call that a little double hernia a little a little a little a little a little I was going to say you might be playing it down just a bit. Just a little bit. I mean, you barely could walk into the studio. Yeah, it's a little rough.

I can tell it's rough, man. What I thought was weird about it was, it didn't hurt until the first time I had the pain was when we were coming back from CrimeCon. And then you tried to blame it on the fact of sitting in my truck. Like that gave you a hernia. That did it, man. That hitting those potholes and stuff. I think it was the John Travolta dance. that you did at CrimeCon.

Maybe I shouldn't have did those splits. I know. I think that's what it was. I know. My pants said I shouldn't have done them. I think you ripped something. Yeah, more than the pants. Yeah, clearly.

What a visual. But they, you know, I meet with the doctor and she's like, she looks previous scans and stuff. She's like, yeah, you've had it since 2010. It just finally tore, you tore it enough that now it hurts. I'm like, one, how do you not tell me this from 2010? Yeah. Could you know, that might be good information to know eight years ago. Absolutely.

I'm like, you know what? Maybe I shouldn't be doing those dance moves. Exactly. Yeah. But like we always say, we try to get the episodes out no matter what. No matter what. And we didn't have much choice, right? Because we are working kind of from behind because of CrimeCon.

We're digging out. We were ahead. Yeah. And CrimeCon kind of took that away from us. But Gibby powers through. We're like the Postal Service. We come through. That's right.

rain. I deliver. I deliver. I've heard that. Yeah. I heard you used to deliver a lot. I used to deliver a lot. Not wearing your seatbelt in your skinny Larry Bird brown shorts.

Yeah. Looking good, man. Brown socks. Nut huggers. Yeah. I could use some of those right now. That's a visual right there. All right.

We've got a lot to get into. Yeah. We've got a great case. We've got to talk a little. bit about CrimeCon. But let's start out giving our Patreon shoutouts. We had Kelly Watkins. Hey, Kelly. Anna Stift. Yeah. Kate Massey. Beth Casto. Oh yeah. Sharon Carter. Hey, Sharon. Francine Martinez. Martinez. Jennifer Burnham jumped out at our highest level. That's cool. Richard Armstrong went up to our highest level. Really? Yep. I was already a Patreon member.

Moving on up. So we appreciate that. Sarah Bell. Oh, Sarah, thank you. Stephanie Forrest. Yeah. Tracy Dawes. Jamie DeLo. DeLo. Shelby Trots.

Ellen Haynes. Chaponis? I don't know. She's upon us. She's upon us. She's upon us. She's right there. I don't know.

She jumped out at her highest level. I really feel bad if I messed up her name. Yeah. That's not one that I can say with certainty that I nailed. Yeah. Hence the reason why we said it 15 different ways. Exactly. We had Sue Kelly jumped out at our highest level.

There's my dual name. Sue Kelly? Yeah. You always love it when people have two first names. Yeah, exactly. Carrie McGarry. That is a fun name right there. That's a fun name to say.

We want to hang out with that person for a day. I think all names should rhyme. Yeah. Because they're just much more fun that way. If you're in town, let's hang out. Invild Henriksen. That's glad you said it. Aren't you always?

Yeah, absolutely. I can do it. Hey, Bob. Speaking of that, we've made the decision. Or maybe I made the decision. Probably you. I got Gibbs on board with me. Next episode, Gibby is going to read the Patreon shoutouts.

And I'm going to make the comments. Sorry in advance for the lengthy Patreon segment. So I'm going to say, yeah. Or I'm going to call people old. He goes, hey Bob. No. Marlene Simon. Lisa.

Just Lisa? Just Lisa. That's great. But that's not, that's enough. Glenn Cap. And we know Glenn. We met Glenn at CrimeCon. Love Glenn.

Yep. Her and her husband, Dan, set. Awesome. Drake a beer with us or hung out with us. Yeah, very cool. And then we had Allison Thompson jumped out at our highest level. Yes, there she is. We got to talk about Allison a little bit because we met her at

crime con. She's trouble, man. She's, she's something. She was there with her friend Paula. Oh, double trouble. Allison not only bought me wings and beer. Yes, she did. When we had the meetup, and we'll talk about in a minute, when we had the crime con meet up where we set around with everybody and talk. Yeah. Allison goes to the bar, gets like, I don't know, Gibbs, five, six, seven, eight buckets of beer. Well, let's not go crazy now. Four or five buckets, yeah. Well, four, five, six. I don't know how many. It's making it sound like we're a bunch of alcoholics. there. No, but it was a lot of beer. And you know as well as I, nothing was cheap at the Gaylord Opry. No, and she just jumped right in front and decided to take the tab, you know, I tried to

stop her. So a huge shout out to Allison because... That was awesome. Not only is she a great listener, but she really kind of stepped up not only for me and you, but for all the people there. He said, hey, you know, there's no waitress. I'll go get the beer. And she was really a lot of fun. That was cool. Yeah, they were great. And if we go back into the Vault Gibbs, this week we selected Belkee Garito. Hey, Belkey. Longtime listener. Social media.

One of my favorite names. Love the name. Yeah, Belke. That is such a cool name. So we appreciate the long-term support. We appreciate all the new support. We loved meeting everybody at CrimeCon. Oh, man.

I met so many, so many great people. And repeats, right? So saw a lot of repeats. Yeah. So Kristen and her husband. Yeah. Who were kind of like our first, what, the first people that we really hung out with in Indianapolis last year.

Our first meetup meetup. Yeah. They were there again. We hung out with them. They're great. You know, we had. We had the couple from Utah that came last year. They came this year again.

You know, I think last year they were on their honeymoon. Not honeymoon. Anniversary. Yeah. Anniversary. Yep. that was awesome i mean got to meet you know some some new new new listeners got to meet kara i mean carra was awesome carra was very cool she was nancy ann from tennessee and her husband oh my gosh she's a

laris she's a podcast herself i can't wait for nancy ann if you're listening which you should be leave us a voicemail i want people around the world to hear your accent yeah i literally gips could have sat and listened to it all day absolutely so to get to talk to to people and learn their stories and all of that was awesome. And I feel bad because I'm leaving a lot and I don't want to leave out Melana Slater, who did a lot of work and making sure that the meetup got set. She came all the way from Canada with her mom. She did amazing, amazing job for us. We took her out to dinner just for her help and her work. Yeah, the Lysenko de Mayo. The little Cinco de Mayo. Yeah. And then Annie Furtner.

Yeah, L'Anie. Andy Furtner was our very first Patreon supporter. Old Annie. old Amy. She's actually really young. She's not old at all, but Gibbs calls everybody old. Yeah. Such a treat to meet her and her husband. Yeah.

Because I had seen her picture for a year and a half. Yeah. Like I said, when she pledged Patreon, we had just started the podcast. Nobody, it said zero. She was our very first contributor. Right. And to still be with us today and then to come out to CrimeCon and want to meet. does. I just thought it was awesome. Yeah. It blew me away. You know, you know, again, see Carol and Betty and all

them. Yeah. Just so many. And I'm leaving name. I know we are. We won't be able to get everybody out here. But, uh, your, you know, your criminology table was a hit. Well, let's say it was much bigger than it would have been two weeks prior. Yeah. Yeah. Before the, absolutely. Before the arrest. But, you know, I got to meet some of the, uh, the victim survivors. Yeah. Uh, uh, the, the victim survivors. Yeah. Uh, It was awesome. These are people that that we had interviewed over the phone. I had never met them. Finally, the face with the name.

Yeah. And so to meet them, it was almost like a party atmosphere. Yeah. Because they took a picture with Morf on this, he had made up this big sign where they're flipping off the old composite kind of old spooky drawing of the East Area Rapids. Right. It just shows you, you know, the perseverance and, and. it's almost glee that they've lived with this for so long.

This guy has been caught. Hopefully it's the right guy and the prosecution goes well and all that. But they were on cloud nine and you could tell it. Yeah, it was good. So it was awesome. I have to give a special shout out to Travis Gintz. Travis is big in our true crime all time group. He's always taking Gibby's picture and my picture and putting it on other bodies and, you know, just having fun and sending out memes and things like that.

But I had made a comment on last week's episode, and it was kind of out of nowhere. It was towards the end of the episode while we were talking about voicemails, where I was saying, you know, it's starting to collect these Harley Davidson chips, right? Every Harley Davidson dealer has its own little chip. Right. And what I thought would be cool, they're $1.99 is if anybody around the country or in Canada or, I, a, would especially love some from overseas where they have Harley dealerships. If you want to send me a chip and they're small, you can send them in an envelope. I will send you something cool back.

Well, Travis Gince, he must have jumped on it that night because he had a package ready. I literally got that thing in like two days. Yeah, that was cool. And he sent me, because he must have collected them. He's a writer. And he sent me a whole bunch of them. I just thought that was so cool. So much appreciated Travis.

I got something really cool coming back to your way, some T-Cat merch. Is that why you made me take this off? That shirt? Yeah, that shirt is going in the box. Oh, okay. Yeah. And we're not even going to wash it. Well, sorry, Trav.

And then I got so wrapped up into CrimeCon Gibbs. I forgot to give shoutouts to PayPal. We had Leslie Howitt. Oh, cool. Thank you. Kate Massey. Oh, hey, Kate. Dan Sharber.

Okay. And Mary. Marinen Triana. Really? Yeah, I didn't sound very confident there. Marion, Trian. It's Marinen. Marion?

No, not Marionian. No? Marinen. There's two ends towards the end of it. Yeah, thank goodness you're saying the names. Triana. So we appreciate that support on PayPal as well. We do.

We can't, we just cannot say enough about all the support we get. It blows us away. Now, as this episode is out, we also have an episode on True Crime All Time Unsolved. It's on Robert Wan, the mysterious murder of Robert Wan. And a lot of things going on in this case. You know, people arrested, but not for the murder, arrested for something else. And there's intrigue around that. This is one that has a lot of layers and a lot of twists and turns.

So make sure you check that out. All right. Let's get into the Briley Brothers. When I started researching this case, Gibbs, I did not know a lot about it. I'll be honest. You know, there are cases that before we even get into it, I feel like I have a really good handle on. This was not one of them. And this is why I thought a lot of people would like this case because it is a lesser known, probably across the country and across the world. But in Richmond, Virginia, this is one of the cases. It's big.

And every city, every city like that has their case. case, right? Whether it's, you know, this is something that was so shocking. People 10, 20, 30 years later still remember it. They still talk about it. And this occurred back in 1979. And it's three brothers that we're talking about. Now, we did the Carr brothers. That was a brutal episode. Yes. That was terrible. This is in a similar fashion without maybe some of the graphic sexual aspects to it, although there are some. Yeah. So we have brothers Lynnwood, James Jr., and Anthony or Ray Briley.

And they would go on a seven-month killing spree in their hometown of Richmond, Virginia. And when it's all set and done, when they're finally caught, there's at least 11 people dead. Yeah. But investigators believe it could be as high as 20. So like we like to do, Gibbs, let's start off by talking about. a little bit of background. I don't have a ton of background on this one, but James and Bertha Briley, they were a very hardworking couple living on the northeast side of Richmond, Virginia. Their first child, Linwood, was born in 1955. Their second child, James Briley Jr., who you may

later hear us refer to as J.B. He went by J.B., was born about 18 months later. And then they had their youngest child, Anthony Ray Bradley. So it may say Anthony, may say Ray, just kind of laying out the players in this case. Now, from the outside looking in, this family seemed well adjusted. They seemed happy. They lived in a nice two-story home located on 4th Avenue in downtown Richmond. And this is going to be different, Gibbs, from a lot of killers that we talk about. because they came from an unbroken home.

Both parents were directly involved in their lives growing up as youngsters. Yeah. You know, that's something that we see quite often in some of the killers we talk about. You know, they have a lot of trouble in their early lives with parents and divorce and tragedy and things like that. This is not just an anomaly for killers that we talk about. this is an anomaly for a lot of kids of that age or that time frame, right? There was a lot of divorce back then.

Yeah. When neighbors would come out and talk about the brothers, they said that they were extremely helpful. They were willing to mow lawns. They were willing to, you know, help a neighbor fix a flat tire. Essentially, the three boys had a reputation around the neighborhood of being polite, helpful. just all around good kids. Yeah.

That's not something we talk about a lot either. You know, I think in a lot of cases and a lot of people that we profile, there's people around the neighborhood that pretty early on are saying, hey, watch out for Johnny because there's something going on with him. Yeah. But these three boys didn't have that. Now, some of this was a facade because inside the home, it probably wasn't as perfect as the outside picture may have painted.

And I think that's true in a lot of families, right? How many times do you hear about, you know, so-and-so, they've got everything. They've got a great marriage. They've got great kids. Oh, all the time. You know, they're making great money. And then come to find out that inside, the marriage is kind of a shambles. Yeah.

You know, they're cheating on each other. They're happy or financial issues. Yeah. They've, you know, they've got the nice cars, but they're in debt. but most of what I'm talking about here centers around the boys. So one thing, they collected the deadliest pets they could find. So we're talking about Gibbs boa constrictors, piranhas, tarantulas. These are things that I'd like to stay away from.

You think? I'm not going out actively in trying to buy some of these things and keep them in my house. Now, I know a lot of people do, and nothing. against that. But for me personally, I'm trying to get as far away as possible from anything that can hurt me, take my life, any of those things. But the boys were fascinated by these types of animals. And apparently they took a lot of pleasure in feeding other live animals to these pets. So this was something very big in their lives. And it might be a lot of pleasure. And it might be a little bit of foreshad.

Maybe just a tad. Maybe a tad. But another thing that should have been some type of red flag is the fact that the boys enjoyed cutting out articles about murders, killings, gang activity. So like a researcher looking up for some information for a podcast? Yeah. Yeah, except I think they were just cutting them out and hanging them on the wall. Like they're, you know, everybody has those momentum things, you know, when you

What's the way they call it? Is that like a momento? What I, no moment? You said motivational. I'm sorry. Oh, okay, motivation. Motivational board. Like the cat that says hang in there?

Hang in there. Are you equating these two? Well, yeah. So if this is say you wanted to get in shape, you'd cut out all these articles about getting in shape. Oh, I got you. Yeah. Posting, putting things up on the wall. Maybe a picture of Gibby.

Or, okay. Sure. You can go over that. These guys are taking articles of terrible things. and they're putting up on their wall. I definitely get what you're saying now. Yeah. Yeah.

So you wake up every morning, you go read your wall. That's what they're doing. Yeah. There was a mass shootout in front of the pigly-wiggly where one gang shot 11 people of another gang. You have to admit that is strange coming from kids to be that interested in that level, that type of violence. Yeah.

Because it's almost as if they're reveling in the violence. that they are seeing being doled out by the press. So we talked about what neighbors thought of the kids, but the opinion of the boys at school was much different. The brothers routinely bullied and harassed classmates. And when they did get in trouble at school, it was almost as if they didn't care. No, they were kind of cocky about it.

They were. Yeah. And so if a teacher or a principal tried to hand out, punishment, they would essentially laugh in their face. Well, because they didn't fear anybody, really, besides, the only person they really feared was their dad. Their dad, yeah, James Sr. And they would come out later and talk about that.

They were not afraid of anyone except for their father. But what's so ironic about that, so the kids are afraid of their father, their father, James senior, he starts to become a little afraid of his sons. Once you let your kids see fear in you, you know, you can't let kids see fear in you. Well, when they get into their teenage years, that's when he starts to sense, right, that something is dark. Something is a little, I don't want to use the word evil. I don't know if he sensed that, but he was a little worried. And it was around this time that the parents split up. And it was said to have been amicable.

But Bertha moved away. She moved to another town, leaving James to raise the three boys on his own. But what I found fascinating, you know, going back to this sense of fear that he's starting to have was that he began sleeping at night with his bedroom door padlocked from the inside. Tells you a lot right there. I think it does. You know? I think he knew deep down there was something just a little bit sinister with the behavior that he was seeing from his sons.

No, the bedroom door lock was not good enough. You know, the little click the button. No, no, no, no. He had to have another hinge with a padlock. Yeah, yeah, to make sure. So on July 28, 1971, Linwood Briley was 16 years old. And again, Linwood is the oldest. he was said to have been the brightest of the brothers.

And many have said, you know, very intelligent. But on this date, that's January 28th, he's home alone. When he spots his neighbor, 57-year-old Orline Christian, outside hanging up her laundry. And Lynn Wood goes to his closet and he gets a rifle. And then he sits down at the second floor window of his bed. room. He aimed the rifle out the window at this neighbor and then he pulled the trigger. And the bullet struck Orline killing her. So you got to wrap your head around this a little bit. Yeah.

This is a 16 year old kid who essentially without any provocation that I'm aware of just bored. Just thought it was a good idea to from his second story window to shoot a 57 year old woman who's trying to hang up her laundry. Yeah, didn't do anything wrong. Just going about her day. And she's a neighbor. And she's a neighbor. Now, she had recently buried her husband. So he had died. And at first, a lot of people thought that she probably died from a heart attack. And you see that a lot, Gibbs. Yeah, broken hearts. Especially with people that have been buried for a long time. When one of the spouses dies, sometimes it's not that much longer when the other one dies as well. Yeah.

They're just so connected. Yeah. You see that time and time again. But this wasn't the case, obviously. We know Lynn Wood shot this woman, but somehow police don't know it. They originally think that she died from a heart attack. Nobody saw the wound, huh? Right.

So during the initial review, no one noticed that she had a gunshot wound. It wasn't until the family viewed the body that someone noticed like a dark red stain on her dress. And they questioned authorities about it. And they asked for the body to be examined again. And when it was, they found that a bullet was lodged in her back. So this quickly went from a natural cause type of death to a homicide. So police begin investigating this crime that they now know. as a homicide. Detectives are tracing the trajectory of the bullet. You know, you go back to some of the

CSIs or Dexter or any of those shows where they're either using dow rods or, you know, whatever they used back in 1979. Yeah. It wasn't very hard for them to figure out that the only place that this shot could have come from was the Briley home. And they're able to. And they're able to search the home. They discover the rifle that turns out to be the murder weapon. So this was not a huge investigation. It didn't take them long to figure out. Pretty much a slam dunk. Yeah. When they questioned Linwood and they laid out all the evidence in front of him, he confessed. He said, yeah, I did it. I sat in the window. I took my rifle and I shot her. And apparently Gibbs, he said this to detectives with absolutely no emotion.

I heard she had heart problems. She would have died soon anyway. This is a 16-year-old kid. Okay. So he devalued her life based off of that. Based off the fact that he thought she was going to die pretty soon anyway. Yeah. It was okay to do what I did.

She was okay to do some target shooting on. It's just, it blows me away from a 16-year-old. So Linwood is sentenced to one year in a juvenile facility. His brother, James Jr., or like I said, we'll probably call him J.B. May go back and forth. He would also get sentenced to serve time in a juvenile facility. And this happened when he was 16 years old, just like his brother. In the next year and a half, he's going to have the same thing happen to him.

Now, he didn't shoot a woman out of his bedroom window. what J.B. did was he was involved in an incident with police in which he pulled a gun and he fired on a police officer. Wow. So these guys are going down a bad path already. Really bad path. And they're 16 years old when a lot of this stuff is happening. Now we have to fast forward to 1979. Because we know this is essentially the year that this whole case takes place in.

This is not one of these episodes. Gibbs that we do that spans 10, 12 years and the police are looking for them, you know, a serial killer all this time. This goes down in 1979 in the span of about seven months. But the Briley gang, as it would become known, starts to take shape. So it consisted of the three brothers, Linwood, J.B., and Anthony, as well as a fourth person by the name of Duncan Meekins. And I guess they just get together one day and say, you know what? We should start committing random burglaries, home invasions, and take what we want? Because what else we're going to do?

Yeah. What else? Why go out and get real jobs? How does that conversation start? I've always wondered that. And somebody's, Lynnwood is the leader of this gang. There's no doubt about that. But someday they're sitting around the four of them.

Where's the conversation starter? Hey, you know what we should do, Gibbs? We should start robbing homes, whether the people are there or not, if they're there, it'll be a home invasion. Yeah. We'll tie them up. We'll take all their stuff and leave. But that's essentially what happened. But there was an additional component to this master plan that they had because they made the decision that under no circumstances would they leave anyone alive.

They were not going to leave a single witness alive that. could identify them. So they determined that during their conversation. Yeah, they determined that up front. So not only are they going to rob, steal, do whatever, they're saying the key to this is to not leave any witnesses a lot. Wow. Okay. So their seventh month reign of terror would begin in March of 79.

And like I mentioned, it would shake the entire Richmond, Virginia area. All right, Gibbs. Let's take a quick break to talk about our sponsor Havenly. Havenly is an amazing way to design spaces in your home on any budget. You can partner with an interior designer online to create a beautiful design based on your unique style and space. And what's amazing about Havenly is that you can buy what you love, the things that you pick out directly through Havenly's platform. Because you have access to hundreds of retailers and the guaranteed best prices. And I've said it before, but this is my wife's favorite.

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Havenly.com slash T-Cat. On March 12th, they head into Henrico County looking for a random house and they settled on the home of William and Virginia Buecker. The plan was for Lynn Wood to go to the door and pretend that he had car trouble and asked the homeowner if he could use their phone to call AAA. This is once again why I don't like answering the door. I love that new app. What's the app? You can, someone rings your doorbell with that little special doorbell. Oh, the video. The video. Yeah, I got to get me one of those video doorbells where I can talk and just say, go away, go away. Just from my couch. From your couch? Not interested. No thank you. Drop the package right there and step away. Step away from the door. So they knock on the door. William answers.

he must have been a little bit leery about this situation. But again, he probably didn't want to leave somebody stranded, right? You're walking that fine line between having a realization that this is a little hinky, maybe. But also, maybe this person really is in trouble. They're stranded. Their car is broken down. So he makes what sounds like a pretty good compromise. William says, okay, I'm not going to let you in that.

house, but I will call AAA for you. The problem is he needs Linwood's AAA card to make the call. And so he has to open his screen door to get the card. And when he does, that's when all hell breaks loose. Linwood rushes in, forces his way inside, and then the rest of the gang follows in behind. And the four of them quickly subdue the couple. They move them to separate rooms. they tie them up and then the gang sets about going through the house going through each room looking for anything worth stealing but that's not enough for these people because as they're going from room to room they start dousing the house with kerosene you have to remember we talked about it this is a group of people that committed up front to the fact that they are not going

to leave any witnesses behind. Right. So after they had gathered everything they wanted to steal, Linwood poured kerosene onto Mr. Buker, and then he lit a match and he dropped it as the four fled from the house. Wow. So you have to imagine this scene. William and Virginia are tied up in their own home, which is now on fire.

These four people essentially left the couple there to be burned alive. But somehow William Buecker managed to untie himself and he's able to get himself and his wife to safety, which is amazing in its own right. But the Bukers are the only known victims of the Briley gang that survived one of their attacks. Started out on fire. The fire over here and the fire there.

So they left you to die in here? Yeah, they did. Right. but when she said they're gone, I started wiggling my hands, getting them out. This guy, Meekins was the guy that tied me up. I think he was the rookie.

So that was an interview with William. Years later, he's much older at that point when you're hearing him talk. But at the end, he mentions Meekins. And Meekins is a very central part of this story. But you hear him say that Meekins is the one that tied him up. He could tell that Duncan Meekins was, in his words, a rookie, right?

Probably didn't know how to tie somebody up. That's how he was able to free himself. And the gang doesn't wait long to commit their next murder. Because it's just March 21st when they invade the home of Michael McDuffie. They forced themselves into the home. They assault McDuffie, robbed the home, and then they shoot McDuffie killing him. On April 9th, 1979, Mary Gowan was walking home from a babysitting job. She spotted by the Briley gang, and they follow her to her home.

They forced their way into the home. They beat her, they rob her, and they rape her repeatedly. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. And in the end, they end up shooting her. her in the head. This was a 76 year old woman. Disturbing to say the least. Yeah. There's going to be a lot of disturbing things in this case. One of the things that is scary about this case. And especially as it was going on in Richmond,

you know, as these things start to unfold, they're random, right? These are, for the most part, these are random victims. And I, you and I have talked about that before Gibbs, but to me, that is very scary. You know, it's one thing if somebody has a grudge against you, you might have an idea that they have a grudge against you, you might be on your guard. But to just be walking down the street or coming home from work in your everyday life and for somebody or a gang like this to randomly select you, that scares the, you know, what out of me. So I mentioned that Mary Gowan was 76 years old. She managed to survive the attack. A name, But she fell into a coma the next day and she died a few weeks later.

Now, on July 4th, 17-year-old Christopher Phillips was standing around Linwood Briley's car. The three brothers see him and they get it in their head that Christopher is trying to steal the car. So they grab him, they force him into a field, they beat him, they kick him multiple times. but in the end it's Linwood that took a cinder block and you have oh you got to paint this picture as disturbing as it is. Linwood is holding a cinder block over his head. Yeah. While this poor kid is on the ground.

Right. And he brings it down with all of his might and he crushes this kid's head with it. A cinder block. Yeah, that's again. Brutal. Brutal. Yeah. But it just shows.

you. These guys had no value of other people's lives. They just didn't. Plain and simple. Then on September 14th, 1979, there was a popular DJ disc jockey by the name of John Galaher. And he went by Johnny G. And he's actually playing in a band that night at a South Richmond nightclub. Johnny G. Johnny G. It's like me, my old name Mikey G. Did you go by Mikey G? My old rapper name. Was that when you were trying to start that quasi Backstreet Boys Band back in the day? Mikey G and the Five Fab. That's before, was that after my, that was before my country music stint of Rex West? Is that what you went by?

Yeah. I thought you went by Mike Concho. No, that's the other. Oh, that was something else. Sorry. Yeah. I can just imagine you in the Marky Mark roll where your pants are hanging down, you got the boxer briefs. Absolutely, yeah.

That's probably the way you played it. My huskies were hanging low. The huskies were hanging low. Yeah. Yeah. You had your tidy whitties. Tightie. Because this was a little bit before that fashion statement.

Yeah, that's just all you had back to him. You were making your own fashion statement. That's exactly right. Yeah. And the orange crush crew. What was he? He wasn't orange crush. What was he called?

Marky Mark and the funky bun? Is that what it was? Yeah. I thought it was like Orange Crush or something. Marky Mark and the Orange Crush. Is that what you're going with? I don't know. Maybe we ought to get back to the podcast.

All right. This is not good. It's good for me because I get a kick out of it. And I think the listeners get a kick out of it too. Yeah. But getting back to Johnny G. So he's playing in this band. He's playing a gig.

And he takes a break, goes outside. The Briley gang sees him. Because essentially, they're just out looking for victims, random victims. And they see Johnny G. They force him into the trunk of his own Lincoln Continental. They drive it out to an old paper mill out by the James. River. They pull him out of the trunk, take everything he has of any value, and they shoot him in the head at close range. And a few days later, his body is discovered floating in the James River. So again,

no rhyme or reason for this crime. So how are police going to investigate these incidents? There is no connection with these people to the Brileys or Duncan Meekins or anything, right? random crimes very hard to solve. And then on September 30th, they target 62-year-old Mary Wilfong. She worked as a private nurse, and they saw her as she was on her way home. And just as she's about to enter her apartment, they grab her, they assault her, and they beat her to death with a baseball bat. And then they burglarize her apartment, taking anything of value. But again, they didn't know Mary Will Fong. This is just a crime of opportunity. They saw her walking alone. Yeah. They followed her to her apartment. And then they seized on what they viewed as an opportunity. But on October 5th of that year,

on 4th Avenue, and this is not very far from the Briley home, the brothers bludgeoned and assaulted a woman by the name of Blanche Page. She was 79 years old. They killed her. And, And then they beat and stabbed the death a border that she had by the name of Charles Garner. And investigators would come out later and say that the beating and murder of this Charles Garner was one of the most brutal that they had ever seen. Because there was all kinds of weapons used in this attack. They stabbed Garner with knives, scissors. Scissors, man. A fork.

A fork. you would think knives would be enough to stab someone and kill them. That's just, you're just playing at that point. I think it goes to show their mindset, right? I mean, it has to. Are they experimenting? Are they getting joy? I mean, what possible reason do you have to stab somebody with a fork or scissors

when you have multiple knives? That just doesn't make any sense. And when they found Charles Garner, the scissors and the fork were still in his back. So they just stabbed him with those two and left them there. It's horrific. But the one thing to make out of this is that they are starting to target people closer to their home. And I think it's going to lead to their downfall.

So then we talk about a man by the name of Harvey Wilkerson. He had a 23-year-old pregnant wife named Judy Barton. and a five-year-old son, and they too lived just around the corner from the Briley's home. So this is why I kind of make a big deal about the fact that, you know, all of a sudden, they're starting to hit close to home, and it's going to lead to their downfall. Because it's not just the fact that they lived around the corner from the Briley home. They knew these people. So this is no longer a random attack.

They'd known these folks for years. They were friends, essentially, because Harvey Wilkerson owned pet snakes, just like the Briley brothers did. And this was a subject that they talked about a lot. But it's on October 19th that the brothers are hanging out on 4th Avenue. They're drinking. They're smoking pot. And as it starts to get later, they start talking about finding another victim. And for whatever reason, they decide on Harvey.

Wilkerson. Now, there's theories about the reason that maybe they thought he was a drug dealer, they thought he had money or, you know, combination of money and drugs in the house. But Wilkerson sees the group outside and 16 year old Duncan Meekins is with them. He sees them walking towards his house. And I think he starts to get nervous. He goes inside, he locks the door. but eventually the four get to his house, they knock on the door, and Wilkerson, after some deliberation, he opens the door. Because I think he thought, you know, this isn't good, but he also thought in his head that, okay, it's not going to be good if I don't open the door either. They know I'm home. They saw me. What happens if I snub them and I don't open the door? But it doesn't turn out well because as soon as he opens the door, they rush inside.

They begin attacking the couple. They bind them with duct tape. They gagged them. Linwood Briley rapes Judy, the 23-year-old pregnant wife, in front of both her husband and her five-year-old son. Absolutely terrible, man. It's sickening. But as bad as that is, when Linwood is,

finished. Duncan Meekins sexually assaults this woman, sodomizes this woman again. A horrific scene. I can't imagine what these people went through. The gang is going through the house. They're looking for things that they're going to take with them, steal when they leave. And at one point, Linwood leaves the house. And he has these stolen goods and he takes them out of the house. And he puts his brother, J.B. in charge. And J.B. has his brother Anthony and Duncan Meekins cover the couple with sheets. At this point, the five-year-old is on the couch. And J.B. orders Duncan Meekins to shoot Harvey Wilkerson. And allegedly, what he told Meekins was that, quote, you've got to get one. Meaning up to this point, he had not killed anyone.

And J.B. thought it was time for him to do that. So Duncan Meekins grabs a pillow. and he shoots through the pillow multiple times killing Harvey Wilkerson. J.B. would shoot the wife, Judy, not only killing her Gibbs, but killing her unborn child as well. Yeah, what a bastard, man. That's a good word for it.

But if it could get worse, it probably does. Because they also shoot the five-year-old boy as well and kill him. They slaughtered everyone in this house. So, oh, it's terrible. And I can see somebody pointing a gun at the dad and pulling the trigger, right? I mean, it's terrible, but I can see that happening. How do you pull the trigger on a woman that you just raped laying on the ground, knowing that she's visibly pregnant?

That's tough. That's tough. I mean, that's a whole other level that you sink to, right? And to know that you killed the unborn baby as well. Like I said, sick bastard. But now you turn your gun to a five-year-old color. up on the couch and fear. Completely defenseless.

What's a five-year-old going to do? Yeah, five-year-old. I mean, really? And you're going to go ahead and shoot a five-year-old. You're just, that's just... Pathetic. Evil, man. Yeah.

It's evil. It's pathetic. It goes back to the decision that they made from the outset that they were not going to leave any witnesses alive. I mean, even the cartel today, most of the cartel, They won't even, they won't kill a five-year-old, you know? Yeah, some of the most ruthless gangs and outfits out there, even they have some rules.

Rules and ethics around the killing of children. You know? As bad as they are. Now, it's officially classified that it was J.B. who pulled the trigger and killed the five-year-old boy. But there is some speculation that it could have been Anthony, his younger brother. Yeah. Doesn't matter. They're all in the same. No, it doesn't matter. I mean, it's J.B. that's ultimately going to pay the price for that murder. I just wanted to throw it out there. There is some speculation. There's some stuff online about the fact that some people believe that it could have actually been Anthony.

Now, what the Breilies didn't know at the time that they were committing this heinous act was that the police had the area under surveillance and that police were aware that the. gang had gone into the Wilkerson's house or apartment. And police actually hear the gunshots as they go off. But apparently they couldn't tell exactly where they were coming from. There's a little bit of a maybe, I don't know if Keystone Cops is the right word, but there's a little bit of confusion about this. Because not only did they see the four go in, they spot Mekins and the two younger Briley brothers leaving the scene of the crime.

But at that point, they're not sure if they're connected to it because they don't know that the gunshots came from that house. It was a very strange kind of part of this story. Because it's not until three days later that police even realize that Harvey and Judy and the kids are dead because they go to do a welfare check as they get up to to the apartment, they find that the front doors is open. So they enter and imagine this scene that they find. It was said that even the most seasoned police officers were shaken.

As an aside, before they left the crime scene, the brothers let all of the pet snakes lose. So not only do you have this kind of macabre murder scene, but you got a bunch of snakes running around as well that you have to deal with. Also left inside were two little Doberman puppies that had had to fin for themselves for about three days. Luckily, the puppy survived. The reason why I bring it up is because the forensic team can't even get inside to start their work until they can get animal control to come out, get the dogs, and round up all these snakes. So once that's done and they get into the crime scene, they find out that

the crime scene is badly compromised because you have to realize these two puppies had been running around for three days. You know, defecating and peeing all over the house. Oh, yes. Tracking. Tracking. Paul prints. Yeah.

Yeah. Blood and whatever. I guess it really compromised the crime scene and a lot of the evidence that they were able to collect really wasn't usable. But they had some. seen the Briley gang leave the crime scene and they go back to that. Right now they know these people are dead. They know they saw these people leave and they become the prime suspects and the murders.

And arrest warrant is issued for the three brothers and for Duncan Meekins. But as they try to serve the warrants, Linwood, Duncan Meekins and the dad, they take off and they lead police on a high speed chase. And I'm just picturing it in my head, Gibbs, one of those, you know, those old shows where they used to show the police chases. I can't think of the name of the shows, but it would always have, you know, either in-dash camera or they'd have the helicopter footage. And so Linwood's driving this car. The police are chasing him. They're starting to get concerned about the safety of the public, right? This guy's driving very fast through, through area, congested areas. Finally, they decided. to probably do the pit maneuver or something similar,

and they force the car into a pole. Linwood jumps out. He tries to make a run for it, but they capture him. They get Duncan Meekins. Now, the two youngest Briley brothers are not with them, but it turns out that they had already turned themselves into police. But at this point in time,

police have really only connected them with these latest murders. And we talked about how bad the evidence was that they collected. They knew the only way or their best shot probably at getting a conviction was to get one of them to turn on the others. And that's going to be Duncan Meekins. You know, at the time, this kid's only 16 years old. He didn't have the background of what you would think of as a cold-blooded killer. This kid still lived at home, right? He's only 16.

he has his parents, he has a nice home. Apparently he was a good student. He went to church. And it would be his parents that stepped forward. And they tell him, you have to be honest. You need to take a plea deal. Now, this plea deal is rough. I mean, it involves a life sentence.

But what it does is it gives him the possibility of parole. In exchange for him telling everything he knows, talking about all the details of the crimes. And the investigators tell him up front, right? If you keep out of trouble in prison, you're probably looking at around 12 to 15 years. You're 16 years old. So you could essentially get out around 28, 30 years old. So he starts talking and quickly police realize that this is much more than just the Wilkerson murders.

He starts to give details about other unsolved murders that had gone. on during this seven-month crime spree. And at the time, it was described as the worst crime spree that had ever hit Richmond. It was a big deal. But what's so important about Duncan Meekins is that prior to him talking, police had never connected all of these other acts with the Briley gang. And they thought they were one-off crimes. And it's really Duncan that is able to submit.

cement things and put them all together. And it really doesn't surprise me, Gibbs, that they couldn't connect them. We talked about this up front. These were random victims. They happened in different areas of the city, the races, the ages, the sex of the victims. All of it seemed to be random. The only thing that really connects all of the crimes is how brutal and vicious they were. So they had Duncan Meekins and they start interrogating the Bailey brothers. And that didn't go very well. Much like they did back in their school days, they were defiant against authority. They were arrogant.

When they were questioning Linwood about the murder of Johnny G. It was said that he essentially mocked them saying that they would never be able to convict him because they had no evidence linking him to the crime. And at one point, the investigators brought in. a retired detective, a good interrogator to talk to Lynn Wood Riley. And this detective just happened to be a friend, a longtime friend of Johnny G., the man that, the disc jockey that was killed. And as he starts the interview, this retired detective notices that Lynn Wood is wearing a turquoise ring. And the detective knows that this ring belonged to Johnny G.

Because he had actually been with him when he bought it. So how dumb is that? You're sitting there mocking investigators saying, you know, you'll never, you'll never connect me with this. But for some reason, you thought it was a good idea to wear a ring that you took from the victim? Idiot. And this is the smart one.

Yeah, well. Out of all the brothers, Linwood was said to have been. very, very intelligent. Still dumb ass to me. Well, yeah. But everybody's a dumb ass to you. Not everybody, but. Well, your level, it's your Mensa level.

Jackasses like this are. Well, this guy's a jackass, dumbass for other reasons. I'm just talking about pure intelligence level. The Mensa. I mean, you essentially have to view everybody's a dumb ass, don't you? High score like that. Nobody can compete with your intellectual level. I'm amazed at how well you are able to.

to get along with what you probably view as the commoners, the peons, the... I step it down? Yeah. Is that what you think? I think you step it down. Yeah. So, which is a good thing because... I de-articulate?

You're not flaunting your intelligence. Do I de-articulate? Maybe. Yeah. On purpose. On purpose. I appreciate that about you. Me de-articulating helps you out.

I'm glad. You're not lording your intelligence. intelligence over everybody else. I'm just sitting here kind of in a pensive mood. Pensive is the word of the episode, for sure. So they have that evidence. They have the Duncan Meekin evidence. You know, all this slowly starts to get uncovered.

And the Bailey brothers are charged with various crimes, burglaries, home invasions, and some of the murders. Now, Anthony Breiley, he received a single life sentence due. to what was thought to have been pretty limited involvement in the murders. He was part of the gang. He was involved in some of the things that happened. They just couldn't put him really onto any of the murders, but he still got a life sentence. Linwood Bailey was found guilty.

He got multiple life sentences. And he also got the death penalty for the murder of Galaher, Johnny G. J.B. got multiple life sentences. along with two death penalty sentences for the murders of the pregnant wife, Judy Barton, and her five-year-old son. And the Richmond judge that presided over the trials, he summed up this case after the verdict, saying, quote,

this was the vilest rampage of rape, murder, and robbery that the court has seen in 30 years. So this is a guy that probably sees some pretty violent cases. and he is saying that this is one of the worst he's ever seen. It's definitely pretty messed up. It is. It is. But it's, you know, and normally this, we would be winding down the episode.

But there are some twists and turns to come in this case. Because Lynn Wood and J.B. Briley, they're sent off to death row at Mecklenburg Correctional Center. And they're not there very long before they set up what has been described as basically a drug ring. I think drugs and weapons. So they're making money inside the jail dealing drugs and weapons. And somehow they're doing all of this while they're on death row, which I found fascinating. Sure. Because you always think of death row as being like the most secure. You would think. You would hope. I thought death row inmates had the the least amount of interaction with other inmates. So the fact that they were able to do this, it kind of blew me away. Now, a lot would come out about Linwood Briley and his time in prison.

And there were a lot of people that said that, you know, he had a certain way about him. He was able to, he was very engaging. Like I said, he was intelligent. He had a way of drawing people in. He developed very good relationships with other prisoners and especially the prison guards. But Linwood had a motive for this because he spent years taking in how everything worked at the prison. You know, he listened when guards talked. He took in the phrases that they used with each other in making requests. He kept track of which guards were attentive and which guards were not. He also developed a sense of which guards were friendly towards other inmates.

It's like that movie with Sylvester Stallone. You know, he's like the expert on how to break out of prisons. He writes a books on it. The prisons hire him to go in and try to escape. Is it prison breakout or escape plan or something like that? Remember he's on this prison boat with Arnold Schwarzenegger? Is that lockup? No?

Lockdown, lockup. Escape plan. I know which one you're talking about. He's sent in to as a job, but he kind of gets stuck in there. Yeah, the last one he gets stuck in there. And he really does have to escape. Yeah. Yeah, kind of like that.

In that one, he reads the guards, every motion, everything they do, how they interact, and that's how it helps him, you know, leverage his escape. And I think that's a great analogy. This is essentially what Linwood does as well, right? He's got years to take all of this in. You know, Sylvester only had an hour and a half probably, but... Yeah, it's true. Movie times, move fast.

You got to compress it in movie time. But it's on May 31st, 1984, that Lynn Wood is able to get a guard to keep the door of the control room open. Just long enough for another inmate to rush in and unlock all the doors on death row to all the cells. So this would have been horrifying, you would think, to staff, all of a sudden, all the death row inmates are out. And there's enough of them Gibbs to overpower 14 guards that are assigned to that block. They order the guards to strip. They take their uniforms, put them on. So this is Linwood, J.B., and four other inmates.

They're actually, the plan was that there was a lot more involved, but a bunch of them chickened out. So what is left is six inmates to carry this out. And they do. So now they're dressed in. in guard uniforms. And what came out later was that as this was all taking place, the Brileys were talking about killing the officers. Wasn't enough for them to get away.

They wanted to kill the officers that they had taken hostage. And apparently they doused some of the guards with lighter fluid and they were going to light them on fire. Another death row inmate by the name of Willie Lloyd Turner, he actually steps in and he says, no, you're not going to do that. And then another death row inmate, this guy was actually a cop killer. His name was Wilbert Evans. He stopped Linwood from raping a female nurse at the prison because she had been taken hostage while she was on her way delivering medications to different cells. So I just found that unbelievable. You know, here are some ruthless guys in their own right on death row, one for killing a cop.

they are saying to Linwood and J.B., hey, man, what you're doing's wrong, and we're not going to let you do it. So this is kind of jacked up, right? I mean, here's these guys that did these insanely terrible things to get to where they're at now. And now all of a sudden they're going to be the prison police and kind of tell these guys they shouldn't be doing what they're doing?

I mean, does that make sense? Well, jacked up's a word, you know, amazing is an, is a word because if you think about it, what do these guys have to lose? Right? I mean, other than, other than all of a sudden now they have a sense of morality and they, they know it's wrong and they don't want it to happen. They don't want this young nurse to be raped. They don't want the prison guards to be killed. It's just, I don't know. I don't even know what the word is because they're in there themselves for doing these type of things, right? killing and I just found it very fascinating and I wanted to talk about it.

But they are able to stop Lynn Wood and J.B. from killing the guards and raping this woman. And then what happens next is so bizarre, you would probably only see it in a movie, Gibbs, that you couldn't remember. You have some faint recollection of who's in it, no clue of the title, general sense of the direction. That's about it. So you have six death row inmates. Each one of these guys is a stone cold killer. They're dressed in the prison guards riot gear.

They get a hold of a stretcher and they have a sheet draped over something that is on the stretcher. So you can't see what it is, but they're yelling to everybody that it's a bomb. And apparently two of the guys are using fire extinguishers to hose it off because they're trying to cool it down. Now, it turns out that this bomb is a television set that they had taken from death row, but they're playing it off as a bomb. They get out into the prison yard. They actually get into a van. They're able to load this bomb, and I'm using my air quotes, into the van, and the guards open the gate for them because they think they have a bomb. Now, where in the hell would these guys get a bomb from? Yeah. So you have Linwood and

And J.B. Briley, you have a guy by the name of Clanton, Peterson, Tuggle, and a guy that was also from Richmond by the name of Willie Leroy Jones. And they're free. They are on the run driving in this van. Six murderers headed towards North Carolina. They've got $758 in cash that they stole from the guards. They took a lot of clothes. And apparently hundreds of joints. Hundreds. Hundreds. It was said they had hundreds of joints. Okay. There was just joints everywhere up in this place. It was rolling on left and right. Now, two of the people, Peterson and Clanton, they're captured pretty quickly just across the North Carolina border. And I guess they weren't too worried about getting away too quickly because they're sitting inside a coin operated laundromat, sipping wine that they had bought from the liquor store. The problem is they didn't change. change their prison issue shoes. And that gave them away pretty quickly. Idiots. And the police are called and they come get them. So the original plan was to drive to Canada.

But when they got to Philadelphia, they split up. The Briley brothers split from the other two, Tuggle and Leroy Jones because the Briley Brothers had an uncle that had made arrangements for them set up a place for them to stay in Philadelphia. So Tuggle and Willie Leroy Jones, they make it to Vermont. Tuggle's arrested after robbing a store at Knife Point. And this is on June 8th. So he was out for a little while. I mean, this was a big manhunt, right?

You have death row inmates that have escaped. And apparently after Tuggle was caught, he gave up the whole plan. He told authorities that the Brileys stopped in Philadelphia. And the same day, June 8th, police arrested Willie Leroy Jones, also in Vermont. He was just a few miles from making it to the Canadian border. So they've got four of the six. This only leaves Linwood and J.B. And the brothers were able to, you know, stay on the lamb until June 19th.

So essentially 19 days, they were on the run. But police got information from a wiretap that had been placed on their uncle's phone, and that led them to where they were staying. Convicted murderers James Briley and his brother Linwood had been on the run for nearly three weeks. FBI agents arrested the Briley's outside this North Philadelphia auto-customizing shop. The Briley's uncle, Johnny Lee Counsel, he'll be charged with harboring fugitives. So they get returned to prison, and it's just months after getting back to prison, that the execution dates for both Linwood and J.B. Briley are set.

They've exhausted all their appeals, and it's Linwood that is the first to be executed. And there's a lot of versions of how this went down. So depending on which one is correct, he either walked to the electric chair on his own, or they had to sedate him and actually drag him to the chair. I like the second one better. But I mentioned that he had exhausted all of his appeals. His case had been heard by around 40 different judges since back in 1979. That's a lot of people to examine his case.

It's a lot of people, man. But I like that because they were sure that he did it, right? Oh, yeah. I don't think there's any doubt with that many people looking at the case. And it was actually the Supreme Court rejected his final appeal on October. 11th, 1984, and just the very next night, he died in the electric chair. And his execution was just the second one to take place in Virginia since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. And we don't always get last meal information, but we like it when we do. He didn't want some

fancy last meal. He actually requested that he be given exactly what the other inmates were eating that day. But prison officials didn't honor this request. They actually gave him steak instead of the fried chicken that was being served to everybody else. The order of the circuit court of the city of Richmond has been carried out. Linwood Riley was placed in the execution chamber at 11 o'clock. Then you get to J.B.

And J.B. had kind of always followed in Linwood's past. And this is just another instance of him doing that because he's electrocuted in the same chair that his brother died in on April 18, 1985. I didn't commit any murders. I was not out robbing people. I was not this animal that the press had made me out to be. Most hardcore criminals never admit that they actually did. It was always to have been framed or they don't have the evidence or you didn't prove it. So I wanted to play that. It was a clip of James talking about how he didn't do it. And maybe we hear that a lot, right?

How many people actually say, yeah, I did it. Yeah, exactly. But I did want to talk about something that happened before James was executed. He actually got married. About three weeks before his execution date. He married a 44-year-old woman from North Carolina. there was no honeymoon. Virginia doesn't allow conjugal visits. But this woman would come out and say that she was ecstatic to marry this man that's about to die in three weeks who had committed some of the most heinous crimes. And I'm always shocked by this. Yeah, I don't get that. I really don't. Now, we've talked about people that marry individuals that have like life sentences. And the thought is, you know, they know where this person's going to be. They're going to be. They're going to be shouts. with letters and affection and all this.

This guy set to be killed in three weeks. And she would go on to say, you know, we got to touch through the bars. They even got to kiss a couple times. It was about a 10-minute ceremony that occurred within view of the electric chair. Oh, that's, wow. Okay. So ultra-romantic. She wore a white linen suit.

He wore fresh prison denims. Fresh. Fresh. Let's get them some fresh prism dynums. Let's press them. Press them out. They look really nice. Yeah, good photo op.

You press your jeans? No, I don't press my jeans. You look like you would press your jeans. No, I don't look like a person that would press my jeans. So apparently this woman started riding to J.B. After Linwood was executed. She was the one that proposed the marriage. They had a total of four non-contact visits before the wedding.

I just, again, I don't get it. I'll never understand why somebody would want to do that. So Anthony Breyley is still in jail. All of his paroles have been denied up to this point. And then he talked about Duncan Meekins. He's in jail too. You know, and this is going on almost 40 years. And if you remember, he got a life sentence with the possibility of parole.

And a lot of people in the case thought that because of his cooperation, he would probably do no more than 15 years in prison. But he's been turned down every single time that he's come up for parole. Well, there's always a reason. And he's come up a lot. Yeah. And this is in light of some of the investigators actually going to bat for him. Really?

And being on his side at some of these parole hearings. It just doesn't pay to do bad shit. People don't do bad stuff. No, don't do bad things. But it's one of those situations where, even the investigators involved in the case believe that this guy deserves to get out. And the other thing that you read in some of the research is actually investigators saying, you know, I don't want to say they feel bad for this guy because that wouldn't be right.

But it's almost as if what incentive did this guy have to actually cooperate because he's been in there almost 40 years. Well, but he did the right thing towards the end. Oh, he did. I mean, he cooperated and he did some bad things. Don't get me wrong. But you also don't know how his tenure has been inside prison. I don't. I don't actually have that information.

And that makes a huge bearing on your parole. It does. Real quick, I want to talk about a little bit of aftermath. So when Linwood was arrested, he had a son by the name of Norman. When Linwood was executed, Norman was 10 years old. And I guess Norman paid regular visits to his father, but he really didn't know why his dad was in jail or on death row. You know, the family had shielded him from the true facts of his dad's crimes, which you can imagine. This kid's very, very young.

But he didn't even know that his dad was going to be executed until the day it actually happened. And the only reason that I bring it up is because he started down his own. life of crime. His life would be filled with crime. He's been in and out of jail for drugs and robbery. He was actually charged in a capital murder case. Wow. Would have sent him to death road just like his father, but that got thrown out. He struggled with addiction to drugs. He was shot 24 times, Gibbs. Really? In a single attack and lived 24 times. That's a very lucky guy. He lost a leg. I mean, this guy has had a very rough life.

So he loses a leg. He gets confined to a wheelchair. He starts committing crimes from a wheelchair. He attempted to rob a bank. And you can only imagine that this probably didn't go very well. Because for some reason, the plan that he made with his accomplices was for him to go into the bank in his wheelchair while the accomplices waited outside in the car. So he rolled up to the counter in his wheelchair.

He handed a letter to the teller that said he had a gun and was demanding money. He got about $1,400 left the bank. As he gets outside, the die pack explodes. Love when that happens. In the parking lot. Yeah, that's great. And when this happens, his accomplices took off and left him. He makes it across the street to a restaurant.

He takes one of the bills covered and die. He buys a sandwich and he sits there with his sandwich and waits for the police to come. I don't know. I just thought it was an interesting kind of aftermath type situation of, you know, what happened to this kid of Linwood Briley? Yeah. That's it. That is the case of the Briley brothers, Richmond, Virginia.

Bad stuff. Terrible stuff. Terrible people. All right, Gibbs. We've got voicemails. You want to do that? Yeah, we can do that. Hello, Givian Mike.

Cindy Calh. again. When you're talking about Michael Swango, I'm listening to your podcast now. One other thing that in the book, Blind Eye, I think it was James Stewart, I can't remember the name, but one thing that he did in medical school was when he had the cadaver that

he had to dissect, he botched the procedure, in the project or whatever. And that was kind of weird. And then he would look through, he did this presentation. Instead of doing that, he used the textbook to do the procedure instead of the real thing. I just thought I'd just shared

some light on that. Thank you. I appreciate that, Cindy. Cindy's great. We've been emailing back and forth a lot. She's giving me a lot of case ideas. And as she's catching up on the episodes, you can tell us she was back on Swango. Hey, Mike. Hey, Gibby. It's Gareth Collins from Cape Breton and Canada. I just want to say I listen to your podcast all the time on table diets, go around fixing people's table and climbing telephone poles and listening to true crime. So thanks for what you do.

I like it a lot. The clock ears clicking. Have a good one. Bye. All right. Love it. Out there climbing those poles. The cable guy, man. Pole climber. Pole climber. Fixing people's cable. It's important.

Dude, when somebody's cable goes down... Well, it's a nightmare, man. That's the end of the world. Because around here... Well, between that and the internet. Well, around here, cable is the internet and the... Well, that's true. So it's everything.

That's true. For a lot of people, if your cable goes down, your internet goes down, you're like in the Stone Age, man. That gets people upset. You're like a superhero then at that point. Okay, this is Lisa, again, the 911 dispatcher from Illinois. Notice givey, no noise in Illinois. Get it. Any case, the last message I left was really lame.

I kind of got distracted by a couple of things going on around here. Any case, just want to let you know, Sunday was a bear at work. It was crazy. And coming home, really, I was thrilled to see the new podcasts. Always enjoy them. Appreciate all the work you guys put into. who it was thinking about true crime unsolved. And we had a case here in Springfield that was the Lauderback Axe murders.

In fact, they just tore down the hardware store slash house that they occurred in just this week. So it might be something worth looking into. Have a great week. Can't wait to hear next week. Thanks. Bye. All right. Great voicemail from Lisa as always.

And I think I've said it gives, but I have a lot of respect for 911 operators. Yeah, we sure do. That cannot be an easy job. I mean, when you get home at the end of the day, you have to be frazzled. I mean, I'm sure some days are harder and some days are easier. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, you have the right temperament for it. Very intense.

Yeah, you've got to control the situation. Hi, guys. This is Alice from Lexington, Kentucky. Love the podcast. Listen to it every Monday at work. Can't wait for a new episode to come out. I wanted to let you know that I recently read a really interesting book called Fear Came to Town. It's about the Santa Claus Georgia murders.

Fascinating story. The book just engrossed me. If you guys want to look it up and see if it's something you all want to cover, I think it would make a great podcast. Gotta say that I'm Team Givy. Have a great day, guys, and keep your own time ticking. All right. Love calls from Lexington. Go UK.

Yeah, love Team Ghibi. Love Team Ghibi. That's the case we'll need to look into, Gibbs. It's not something I'm familiar with. No, that should be one that I know you probably just put it on the list just now. I will as soon as we're done here. Hey, hello. My name is Matt from Ventura, California.

Hey, listen, I have been listening to your podcast and find it intriguing. I have kind of a personal interest in, serial killers because I used to work with one back in the 1989, 1989, unbeknownst to be, obviously, a gentleman by the name of Robert Joseph Silvera, also known as the Boxcar Killer. But I worked with this guy for about three or four months back in those days, and I think you might find him to be an interesting case, because he's a little unique in that his crimes were not sexual. motivated. He almost, I think in his own twisted way, felt like he was a Robin Hood of sorts. One of the situations that I was in with Robert that I was very fortunate to have come out alive.

And I actually firmly believe that the man was kind of playing and killing me that day. And just through my own calm demeanor, I was able to escape that. Thank you. Enjoy your show. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye. All right. Great voicemail from Matt. Yeah, interesting story. Yeah, we'll have to look into that. And, you know, I'm always fascinated by these people that have run-ins, brushes with these killers. We hear about them all the time.

We do. We really do. 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.