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Introducing - My Friend the Serial Killer: Local Man

Published Jun 18, 2024, 7:00 AM

What would you do if someone you knew turned out to be a serial killer? In the 1970s, Steve Fishman was an intern at his local newspaper. One day, he hitched a ride back home from Boston with a kind stranger who graciously picked him up and dropped him off at his destination. What Steve didn’t know however, was that this stranger was hiding a dark secret: by the time he picked up Steve, he had already killed three people - all hitchhikers. But this fateful ride was just the beginning of Steve’s story. While this may have been the first time Steve met the man he’d come to know as Red, it wouldn’t be the last… Featuring exclusive interviews and never-before-heard tapes, join Steve as he tells his chilling story for the first time and unravels the lingering questions surrounding this wild chapter of his life. Why did Steve get spared by the killer during their first meeting? And what could have possibly driven Steve back to the same killer he had just escaped? Find out on Smoke Screen: My Friend, the Serial Killer - available now wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes right now, completely ad-free.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/the-binge/id6442475215

Hello, Burden followers and fans. This is Steve Fishman and I'm really excited to introduce you to another great true crime listen Smoke Screen My Friend the serial Killer. This isn't just any story. This is a story of my real life, first hand experience, and it's as terrifying as it is fascinating. It begins with a simple car ride. It's the seventies. I'm a young journalist hitchhiking and I get picked up by a friendly, soft spoken stranger with a charming Southern accent. But behind that charm hides a dark, chilling secret. What I wouldn't find out until later was that this stranger was a serial killer, hunting for his next victim among hitchhikers. Smoke Screen My Friend the serial Killer is available now wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're a subscriber to The Binge, you can enjoy all episodes ad free today. Here's a sneak peek a quick warning before we start. This show contains descriptions of sexual violence and murder. Listener discretion is advised.

Tell me about your first big break as a journalist.

Okay, well, it's nineteen seventy five. I'm a college dropout. My dad has recently kicked me out of the house, and I'm an intern at this small newspaper in Connecticut, which means I get the pizza and the coffee. I work weekends and do anything I can to get my byline in the newspaper. Now, I love being in the newsroom. It's full of life. I mean typewriters, police scanners, people shouting, and in the back of the newsroom there's a kind of closet with these newswire machines, and all day and all night they found out breaking news stories. And when there's an important story, bells ring one or two for a minorly important story, to maybe a dozen bells for say the invasion of a country or for big local news. So one day I'm in the newsroom and the bells start ringing like crazy. I rush over and watch as the machine prints out this story. A man has just confessed to the cops that he committed a series of rapes and murders, crimes they didn't even know existed. And he's a local man, the serial killer next door. Then it prints the guy's name. Wait a second, I know this guy, and it makes me realize I came close to being a victim myself.

I was looking for a hit child, potential red victor.

This is my friend, the serial killer. I'm Steve Fishman. Since starting out at the Norwich Bulletin, that small Connecticut paper, I've had a long journalism career. One Awards covered a lot of big, dark stories. The serial killer, son of Sam opened up to me. So did the guy behind the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, Bernie Madoff. But this story about the serial killer I knew, the serial killer I became friendly with, was different. It was personal, and in a sense, it's where journalism began for me. This story has haunted me for years, for decades, really, which is why for a long time I resisted it. I didn't want to revisit this territory. I didn't want to think about the horror of the serial killer's crimes. But there was another reason I resisted. I'm afraid my younger self got this story wrong, and I haven't wanted to revisit that either until now. Episode one. Local Man.

All right, so take me back to the very beginning where this story.

Starts, well, probably in my parents' basement in suburban New Jersey. I just dropped out of car all those discussions about enlightenment poetry, and you know, whatever had stopped feeling exciting to me certainly stopped feeling important. And anyway, dropping out was kind of a thing in the seventies find yourself, remember, So at first where I found myself was in my parents' house, diligently trying to be a writer. My parents had this basement kind of had small windows, so it was always kind of gloomy, and they had this wet bar that they never used. It had like a blue for micah countertop, and that's where I set up my office. Every day. I write these short stories out by long hand ardent accounts. You know, I don't know teenage romance in the style of who was then my favorite writer, Hemingway. Listen, my parents were not enthusiastic about my current lifestyle choice. My father in particular, had no idea what the hell I was doing. He wore a suit every day he worked in the city. He commuted to a skyscraper, and every now and then he would thump down these stairs and he'd say to me, so, when are you going to be done? When are you going to be published these short stories. It was as if he was asking me, like, what the hell are you doing. I think he kind of thought I was pulling a stunt to him. You know, I was avoiding being an adult, and then one day he cracks.

What do you mean he cracks?

Well, it must have been a weekend. I remember he sat me down at our breakfast table. He's backly by the sun, so he's got this kind of fuzzy halo effect on him, and he tells me I have to leave the house. I have to leave home. And then he starts to cry.

Wait, so he is telling you to leave the house, but that he's crying.

Yeah, it's confusing. It was confusing. Then it confuses me. Now I have this reaction like he's crying, so I got to comfort him. It's all right, dad, I understand. I'll go pack a few things. I think the idea for him of tossing me out of my childhood home must have seemed sadistic, which in a way it was. But he had this idea that at nineteen years old, I should be on my way to taking on responsibilities. So my dad hustles me into the car and drives me. I think it was like fifteen minutes away and says basically, all right, here you are and dumps me on the sidewalk. And in my memory, he just leaves me on the sidewalk to hitchhike. And the truth is, you know, I was okay with that. Frankly, I hated being in that basement. I knew I had to get out of that dungeon. I had needed to leave college, and now I needed to leave the suburbs. I mean, if I was going to write anything, I needed to find something to write about. So there I am on the side of that road. I stick out my thumb. You have to remember that back then, it's like nineteen seventy five, it's just not such a big deal to hitchhike. It's a way to get around, especially if you don't have a car, which I didn't. I start getting rides and soon I land that internship at that daily newspaper in Norwich, Connecticut, and you know, I figured Emmingway had been a journalist too, And at that newspaper is where the course of my directionless life changes forever. I mean, I will never forget the first time I walked into this newspaper. It's like eight o'clock at night. The town is totally dead. But I walk into the paper's office, which is on the second floor, and the place is lit up like a ballpark. So remember this is back before everyone is on the internet. People still trust journalists. Newspapers are booming. I mean I could hear it all the clatter of typing and yelling. It was really vibrant. It was really alive. And then I sit down with the managing editor in his little office. Oh, by the way, seemed really old to me at the time though he was twenty eight. And the managing editor seems confused. I'm not really sure he knew that the paper had an internship program, so he kind of ignores me. He sits across the desk, goes about his business, and gets on the phone with one of his cop buddies, because I think this guy really wanted to be a cop more than a journalist. And as I'm sitting there, he's got this cop on the line and he's holding forth and they're having a grand old time. And then I overhear the cop who's on the other end of the line revealed the name of a dead person so that the paper can include it. Before deadline. And now this editor, my future boss, stands up and yells across the newsroom to the reporter who's covering homicides do you have the name of that dead guy yet? And then he turns to me and his face breaks into a wicked smile. As I would later find out, the boss loved trauma. He loved competition, he loved journalism, and he loved journalism prizes. I took it all in. This did not feel like college. It felt like there were steaks, there were deadlines, there were dead bodies, and so I'm thinking this is going to be fun. So now I fall into the routine of the newspaper, and also I keep hit jriking. Sometimes the rides are great. You would get these mothers who would have their children in the back seat, or you know, young hippies and mini buses who would offer me drugs, and also you know dreams of changing my life, like buying a van and painting it purple and driving across America. And then there were other kinds of rides. One time, a couple of guys took me to the end of a dirt road and right before they steal my backpack, one of them says to me, don't you know you shouldn't hitchhike. Maybe I'm willfully oblivious, but I figure I've been lucky enough. I'm gonna keep hitch shaking. One weekend, it must have been around the fall of nineteen seventy five, I just turned twenty and I need to get back to Norwich from Boston, where i'd been visiting friend. So here I am again on the side of the road, thumb out and waiting for a ride.

Do you remember the moment when the car picked you up?

So I was on the side of the road and there's a saber. The car, in my memory is kind of a green, you know, a sedan, like a nice enough car pulled up and I was just really happy. But there's this guy, like nice enough. He had a kind of like a bit of a drawl. He seemed to be kind of my size, kind of red orange hair. He probably was ten fifteen years older than me at the time. I tell him I'm going to Norwich and I'm lucky. He says he's from Norwich and he knows a shortcut. Nice guy tells me his nickname is red like his hair. So he seemed like a little bit like a stranger, but not like strange, but a stranger. And we kind of fell into conversation about like, so where are you from what do you do? And he says, well, I'm kind of an electrician, but you know, I'm trying to get on my feet. I said, yeah, it's not easy always. He said, well that's you know, I just him out of prison. So that's both like a conversation stopper. And now I'm thinking, wow, this could be a story, you know, like feature a guy just coming out of prison reintegration into society. Now I'm trying to draw him out about it, and would you be open to doing a story about it? And he says sure, Yeah, sure. I mean he's a guy who's articulate, he's friendly, he's open. Fifteen twenty minutes go by, and we're getting to my destination. I jock down his contact information. The car stops. I reach for the door handle and it doesn't open. The handle just doesn't work. I turned quickly see what the hell's going on, and I feel panic taking over. We're going to come back to that ride, but first I need to introduce you to a guy in Miami.

My name's Ed O'Donnell.

I'm an attorney now. It's June nineteen seventy six. Ed O'Donnell is a prosecutor in Miami, Florida, where something strange is about to happen in the courtroom.

The case started as a rape case. He got basically caught in the air.

So the alleged rapist is awaiting his bond hearing to see if he'll get bail. Before the hearing starts, the suspect motions to an officer in the courtroom, and the officer in uniform walks over, clearly annoyed. Is this important, he says. The suspect replies, is important.

He started wanting to talk to the uniform guy about murders. And you know, the uniform guys are just that they don't take statements. They contacted homicide.

The suspect is brought from the bond hearing to a couple of homicide detectives.

And they came to me and told me that this guy wants to confess to these murders. And I said, well, what you know, let them confess. You know, you never know people confess the things they didn't do. But let's find out.

The detectives give the guy a notepad. On it, he writes four names of people, two boys, a girl, and a young woman. The detectives don't recognize any of these names. The suspect tells the cops to go check missing persons. One of these detectives, this guy named Charlie's Atra Palak, heads over to the missing person's desk. He starts with the two boys the suspect mentioned.

I said, well, I'm looking for two kids.

They're together.

And I said, you got anything like that, I mean, whether the detectives had to be sitting there. He goes, yeah, he's got a case like that.

He said, we thought they ran away that, so I don't think they did.

Okay, consider this scene for a moment. Here is a suspect caught in the act of rape who now wants to voluntarily confess to being a serial killer. The murders he wants to claim are not active cases. They're not even cold cases. No one knew these were murders to solve until he starts talking.

Following interviews being videotaped at to Day County Public Safety Departments located at thirteen to twenty Northwest fourteenth Street, Miami Dade, County, Florida, Room five eighteen on June seventeen, if I think seventy six, starting at approximately eight pm.

They've brought the suspect to a kind of TV studio they have at the police station. It's typically used to record training sessions, but they've decided to use it to film these confessions. They will be one of the first ever videotape murdered confessions in US history, and much of this tape has never been heard before. The suspect goes willingly without his lawyer.

And sir, would you identify yourself by name? Is prov.

On the video. The two homicide detectives face the suspect, Robert F. Carr, the third. They're just a couple of feet apart. Remember it's the seventies. One cop looks mod with a mustache and bangs kind of Beatles style. The suspect is smoking. There's a clock on the wall showing the time and dated the recording. Behind the suspect is a blackboard, as if it's a classroom. The two detectives called the suspect by his first name, Bob, like their pals.

Should you talk to me anything, what you say, Ken, and we'll be introduced into everything court against you. You understand that, Bob, if you want an attorney to represent you at this time or anytime, if you're in questioning, you're intalitled to such constant.

You understand that.

That's so.

You know, he was obviously advised of his rights and told that no promises could be made to him. You know anything he told us, and we made it real explicit. You know, we're gonna we're gonna find out whether all this is true. Boy, he unloaded. I'll tell you that they'd asked the questions, he'd answer them, and then he'd go he you missed this, or he'd give you more. I've never seen anything like it. And forty years later, whatever it is, I've never seen anything like it since. And I've done a lot of homicide work.

On the tape. One detective asks Bob a question.

Well, Corn your attention to March nineteen seventy six. Do you have an occasion of being the Daye County area.

Yes, as there as I can figure. I arrived in the Dade County area in Miami on March twenty fifth from Connecticut, and on arriving in Miami, I perceived because certain fighting said, I considered to be necessary in the crime that I'm planned to commit. What kind of clime? When did you play like many? When you came down althoad kidnappen Right. I knew that I was going to take a trip. I knew that I was going to Mississippi on this trip.

Uh.

I proceeded to make a list of what items I thought I would need in order to make this trip. And every time I thought of something, I was guided on a piece of paper.

He's making a shopping list.

I knew the night that was that was that the sight of it would writing somebody.

It had to be chrome so that it would show it and them life. Uh.

I needed rope, gasoline, can goods, UH, paper.

Towels and uh.

First on this list of items was uh the connect the door handle on the right hand side of the car.

The door handle disconnected on purpose.

I was looking for a hitchhi potential.

Right.

There many victims that grabbed the door hand. That seems to be.

Not a reaction for everybody.

That's the first thought.

Grab the ball handle, try to get out.

The minute the ball handle doesn't work, Like was like, I don't know what to doing it.

I didn't know what to do when it was me in that seat. So there I am in Connecticut, hitch shiking, about to get out of that green sedan, and I'm grabbing the door handle, but nothing happens, like it doesn't care hatch and I freeze.

What are you thinking in this moment?

I'm not sure I'm thinking at all. But if I'm thinking, I'm thinking what the hell is going on and what is going to happen? Except that this guy seems nice. We had a nice conversation. He's from the same town where I live, and so for a moment I'm on the edge of panic. But before it escalates, this nice guy interrupts. He's almost apologetic. He says, oh, sorry, there's something wrong with the door handle. I gotta get it fixed. It's warm out and the car window is open. I reach my arm out and open it from outside. I shall goodbye and then hustle along. I push that really weird moment out of my mind and I start thinking, you know, I need a feature story for the week. This guy told me he was in a rehab program for ex cons. He'd gotten a job at a gas station, and I think that might be a story. A local man trying to reintegrate into society after prison. When I get back to the newsroom, I track down the supervisor of this rehab program, and the supervisor gets on the phone and he says, do you know what this guy did to get into jail? And I realize I don't. I hadn't asked him. You know, I'm still an inexperienced journalist. You wouldn't want to know, he says, in other words, no story. Kind of amazing to me now that I didn't push to find out what crime could be so awful that this supervisor would veto an interview. So that was it. And then you know, you had that kind of gray metal desk, and I pulled out a bottom drawer night and I slipped his name and number into a folder and put his name on the tab of the folder, Robert Carr, and kind of forgot about it. Months go by and I start getting assignments everything from high school football games to a highly competitive local easter a hunt. I know how that sounds, but I will tell you that I felt like I was in the thick of it, and I was having a blast, still really looking to make a splash. Back then, as I think about it now. I was pretty full of myself. I'm pretty eager for the rest of the world to see how important I was, or you know, going to be, and that noisy little newsroom felt like the place where I was going to prove myself. Looking back, I realized that I was very ambitious and maybe blinded by my ambition. I think that explains what happens next. The newsflash comes across the wire, the one with the bells ringing like crazy, the one that reports on the local man arrested for a series of rapes and murders. I'm standing in front of the wire machine in my tie. The newspaper had a strict dress code. I can read this story as the teletype is spitting it out, and I start to get more details. It says the man captured his victim's hitchhiking, and then it prints his name, and I shiver, Robert F. Carr, the third. I go back to my filing cabin and then I pull out the contact info I'd stuffed in there months before. It matches, and suddenly I realize I'd taken a ride with a serial killer, A serial killer who got his victim's hitchhiking, who had trapped them with a disconnected door handle. I had sat in that seat, had a friendly conversation with him, and then I had tried to open that door handle, just like his victims must have done. And for a moment, my mind is back there in that car with what I now know to be a serial killer, and I can feel the panic rides in my stomach. But then my thoughts turn elsewhere, because I'm thinking this could be the break that I've been looking for. This could be a big story, and if I landed, it could win awards. And you know what, my dad would understand awards, And so me, ambitious twenty year old me who duck, kidnapping or worse, is thrilled. What a break for my career. I'd met a local man who is a confessed serial killer, and I have his phone number. I dial the number, A woman answers. I tell her I'm calling from the Norwich Bulletin and I say missus Carr. She says yes, and I say I have to come over and see you. That's next time. I'm on My Friend the serial Killer for the full story, search for smokescreen My Friend the Serial Killer. Wherever you get your podcasts to listen now. My Friend the Serial Killer is a production of Orbit Media in association with Ron creator and host That's Me, Steve Fishman. Our senior producer is Dan Bobkoff. Our associate producer and production coordinator is Austin Smith. Editorial consulting by Annie Avilese, fact check Katherine Newhan. Our mixer and sound designer is Scott Somerville from Sony Music Entertainment. Our executive producers are Jonathan Hirsch and Katherine Saint Louis. Additional reporting by Daniel Bates, Ben furderherd Andy Tibau, and Francisco Alvarado. Special thanks to Cassie Epps at Otis Library in Norwich, Connecticut

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