I'm Jon Meacham, author and historian, I'm proud to present a brand new limited podcast, documentary series called It Was Set, where I guide you through ten of the most historic, impactful and timeless speeches in American history.

Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike.

We do not want our freedom gradually, but we want to be free now. The future will always be ours. The America John McCain is generous and welcoming and bold. My I have seen the glory of the. Directed and produced by Peabody nominated Sea 13 original studios in association with history, it was said, is now available for free on Apple podcasts, Spotify, radio, dotcom, and wherever you listen to podcasts. 13 originals. You can see that this was all taped up evidence tape, because the police did have this for a while, but the marshals never came and claimed it.

This is his life, this is all he left. This is his life, everything, everything that ever happened to this man isn't here.

This audio was recorded in 2013, shortly after my father took his own life and the lives of his wife and stepson. I was finally digging into his trunk and I can remember feeling completely overwhelmed with it all.

I had no idea what I would find document after document. I actually have documentation now that I'm on the witness protection program, which I never had before. It was in his plea agreement. So I have all of the legal papers. So I've had trouble in my life actually proving that I was on the program. I have no proof. So now I do. He kept every newspaper article, every letter he ever wrote, every letter he ever received.

This is an old knife, you always had this knife on him. I don't even want to know what went on with this knife.

Looking back, it was surreal going through the trunk for the first time, I felt both sympathy and contempt, nostalgia, but also a weird sense of detachment, like it was my father's life in a box. But really, he was a complete stranger. I don't know how he got all these pictures, I don't know how he saved them all.

It's just, wow, picture after picture after picture.

It's his mama. It's his wife, Vivian. Here's my uncle Heidi who passed away. I was at his funeral. This was the guy who testified against. So these are actually my father's patches. And if they found out that I had them and was trying to sell them on eBay or make a profit off of them, that would definitely cost me my life. You don't do that. I mean, this isn't anything to play around with, especially my dad's patches.

It'd be different if he died while a member. But everything that he did, these are definitely very dangerous to possess. This is fascinating, though, I've gone through this shit beneath a Ziploc bag as patches were in, I noticed a small glass jar.

So these are different pins that they got. They got pins on their inauguration into the ichi's. Here's this five year pin. Special things inside the jar, along with the pens, was a small piece of paper with handwriting on it.

OK, so in this little jar he wrote, I take these off, I take this off without any regrets. To destroy something evil, you have to be very good. All good. November 3rd, nineteen eighty one. Clarence Crouch. That's a trick.

I didn't realize it when I read it, but that was written the day before my father called Bernie Berkovich. I wonder if he truly understood what he was about to get himself into without the.

Or the darkness comes. Oh, through the night. Ms. Adams will run. My friend of the enemy. Sing the jubilee with all the fire we can breathe.

My name is Jackie Taylor and this is relative unknown.

They have the patch on your back is everything. No one's going to touch you, they know if they touch you, everyone's going to come after them. All the other angels, you could commit crimes, there'll be no witnesses. They know that you're an angel. People will come after them for testifying against you. They don't have to do it, but the fact that it's been done in the past everybody knows about it is intimidating. This is Tom Doyle, Doyle is a retired detective who spent thirty nine years with the East Lake Police Department on the outskirts of Cleveland, and he's had plenty of experience with the Hells Angels and their trials here.

He tells a story about one of them when the defense attorney was questioning potential jurors, a process known as voir dire. Try Hells Angels for theft. OK, three or four Hells Angels come in color in the courtroom while the jury is being awarded. The fact that the defendant is an angel is not a negative. The defense attorney, while doing voir dire, says to each of them. The fact that my client is a Hell's Angel, you're not gonna hold that against him, are you?

Of course they're saying no. You're not afraid of Hells Angels, are you? Well, you got a sense that you're not going to say I'm afraid so. They say no. At one point he asked one of the jurors, you're driving along the freeway and Ratto in the summertime and the windows are open. You listen to music outside your room, alongside of you going to be side come this big, long line of motorcycles, Harley-Davidson, these people with all their tattoos and all their rings and you see the Hells Angels colors in the back.

What do you think at this point? The guy's looking around. He goes, I'm thinking, I hope my horn doesn't get stuck right now. He understands they better understands the intimidation value. You don't have to say we're intimidating you, we just have to understand human nature. In that case, the person who complained doesn't come to court, he won't come as a witness now saying I've been the victim of a crime. Finally, we get a warrant and arrest him as a material witness, bring him to court as we're coming down the hallway.

I'm walking home, Detective. We're walking him in and he goes, I have to take a piss. So he walks in the men's room. So we walk in and there stands the guy at the urinal with his penis in his hand. And in each shoulder is a Hells Angels standing three feet away. And now we stand there behind them. We put up our security badges and guns. I go now, squeeze a drop out. Go ahead, you know.

You know, he can't. He can't. He's just got his eyes about this big. And then he gets on the stand and testifies, I was drinking that whole year and I don't remember anything. There's an intimidated by. They don't have to say it, it's implied everybody knows it and they act in a way that is hard to describe. But when you see it, you know, intimidation. Which had spent about nine months with us and Billing's before he began serving his 10 to 40 year sentence, but the deal that he'd cut meant that, of course, one day the time would come for him to begin testifying not just in front of the U.S. Senate, but in court face to face with his former Hells Angels Brothers.

And as the first trial approached almost a year after he'd written that note in the jar, the media was all over it. One Ohio newspaper ran a story with the headline Hells Angel informant described as important.

It read testimony by a former member of the Hells Angels against fellow members of the motorcycle club could have national importance, federal officials say, in the coming months. Clarence Crouch, 42, of Cleveland, could, due to the Hells Angels what Jimmy the Weasel, Freddy A.. Did to organized crime in recent trials around the nation Friday. And his testimony helped put a dozen Mafia leaders in jail. Crouch said he decided to quit the Hells Angels because he became fed up with the killings while I thought he was off on a fishing boat.

My father was sitting in prison waiting to be called to testify, and it was during this time that he began to write so many letters he made at least two copies of each one send and one to save this one, which gives some insight into his decision to flip was written to a detective from the Cleveland Police Department as these trials were gearing up. I was completely dedicated to the club for many years and it took many things to break my back of dedication.

But as I said, at my mother's house in Louisiana, trying to make up my mind to call Bernie a seen on television where two members had been killed in South Carolina, and I knew from what I'd heard that they had been killed by other members. I sat down for the first time. I started listing all the deaths that I knew the Hells Angels were responsible for, since this was something I never even let myself think about, meaning that when something like a small child reminded me of the bombing that killed a two year old and its mother in Cleveland, I would chase it from my mind.

My intentions were to stop the killings long enough to think about what we had become. It wasn't who had the best bike or who could party. The best was a good member. It had become a thing of whoever killed the most was the best member. As an older member, brothers began to come to me and asked me what had happened to us. Was this what we had worked so hard to be? What members that put their lives on the line for?

So I sat down and started making this list, which just kept growing and growing, and I couldn't believe it. So after spending many years trying to change things in vain, I did the only thing I felt I could do, which was to tell everything I knew and let everyone judge for themselves. Several Cleveland angels had been indicted for murder, and Jack Gentry would be the first in court that my father would testify against. Gentry stood accused of shooting a member of the outlaws to death named Ralph Tanner in Toledo, Ohio, in November of 1980.

Sonny Barger and several other angels traveled to Ohio for the trial. One of Gentry's defense attorneys is a man named Ralph Buss, and Buss remembers the wild scene outside the courthouse. Before the trial started, the Outlaws, maybe 50 or more bikes were circling the courthouse on their bikes. The sheriffs were hiding behind a stairway behind bushes. They thought something really bad would happen. And Sonny Barger was there with two of his assistants from Oakland. And he was watching all of this.

And then he and they walk out maybe 100 yards toward a street is and he stops all the bikes and he says, You think you guys are on this town? I got news for you. You're just rounding it. Beat it. But of course, the outlaws were messing with our store. We had rented a house and the FBI came over and said that you guys are going to be going to Mars tonight unless you get out, because we have information that the house is going to be dynamited.

Want all you to go to a hotel? So so that's that's what we did.

When the trial finally began in October of 1982, headlines Red X tells Angel to testify on gang witness testifies murder planned and Hells Angel describes death ritual. The Cincinnati Enquirer Red.

After Tanner was killed, Crouch said the fact that Gentry had made his bones was announced during an angel's meeting. He said the club president displayed a newspaper clipping that described Tanner shooting a scene at clipping on it.

Yeah, the clipping was passed around a church. OK, that was Jack rolling his bones.

OK, after Gentry's new status was announced, Crouch said the Angels present hugged him. They shook his hand and congratulated him. He said Gentry told him Tanner was hard to get because the automatic rifle jumped around in his hands.

Here's former Cleveland angel Matt Santos, GA. Now, it was the time to strategize with people on how we're going to fight this evil that is in front of us. Fight it. I mean, in court. We've got to sit down now and bring about any traits that he had that were negative. In addition to Ralph Buss, Jack Gentry had another defense attorney on his side named Allen Kaplan, and Kaplan came prepared for his cross-examination of my father, a Toledo Blade article read in a bid to challenge Crouch's credibility, Kaplan elicited from Crouch information about his past.

Crouch said that he worked only sporadically and was supported by money that he made selling drugs and motorcycle parts and by loans given to him by his club brothers and by women with whom he lived. Rouche also told the jury that he shot a girlfriend in the leg and stuck another foot to the floor with a knife. He also said that statements that he made the Berkovich about patterning himself after Jimmy the Weasel and writing a book about his experiences were made while he was, quote, on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

When asked about my father's testimony, Allan Kaplan said this to the Toledo Blade People won't believe in the quality of a bought and paid for witness. The article then notes inconsistencies in my father's testimony. It says In November, during a discussion with federal agents, Crouch said the weapon was a 45 caliber revolver equipped with a silencer.

He hit him with a 45 in the driveway with a silencer. That was Jack. All right. Is that good enough?

But during this week's trial, the article continues. He said the weapon was a special 22 are for automatic rifle. Finally, Kaplan said this of the prosecution. They want to rest their case on one thing, the totally uncorroborated testimony of Clarence Eddie Crouch. The defense rested its case without calling any witnesses. And after a four day trial, Gentry was acquitted. Here's defense attorney Ralph Busse again.

Gentry got off because they liked Kaplan and they like Sunny and all the people that came with him. But the jurors didn't want to talk to us because some of their pets were poisoned and and that type of stuff. And so there was some some hostility over that.

The Toledo Blade article from the Gentry trial was in my father's trunk, the one that said he shot a woman and stuck another woman's foot to the floor with a knife. I was revolted by reading it, but I also found it hard to believe. And then I came across this passage in hate and discontent. One night I went to church at the clubhouse, and when I returned to the apartment, I found a note from my old girl, Hillbilly, saying that she had left and was going to Florida to take care of this old man who owned this dirty bookstore downtown.

I wouldn't have been so mad, but she took all the cash that I had and all the bills were overdue. She had taken fourteen hundred dollars and didn't leave a dime. I didn't say anything at first and didn't want the word to get out that I was hard at her because I knew she would never come back around if she thought I was mad. After Marijan moved in and was there for a couple of months, I heard that hillbilly was back in town and out of this bar, I went out there and at first she got all uptight and was about to run out the door.

But I just played it cool and she came creeping up to the table. I was sitting there feeling me out.

Before long. She was all at ease and we were drinking and dancing. And later we left and went back to the apartment. Mary was working on the night shift at the hospital and as soon as we got in the apartment, I told Hillbilly to take off her clothes. She was laughing and asking if I wanted to look over her body to see if there was any changes in it and climbed up on the couch where she started turning all around and saying, See, everything is still tight and in good working order, Daddy.

I pulled out a pistol and started saying, You fucking bitch. You think I just forgot all about the fucking money you took off for the way you left me with all those bills? She started getting all uptight and I washed her eyes as she was staring at me.

I fired one shot that went right by her leg and she jumped and got all wide eyed as it powder burned her, then as she looked down and seeing that it didn't hit her. I could read it in her eyes that she was thinking, oh, he's just going to scare me a little. And as she looked back at me, I shook my head real slow and said, no, I'm not. But she understood right away. I shot her in that leg and she turned to full flip on that couch.

She started screaming as the blood started flowing.

Tommy came running and screaming for me not to kill her. I got hot and told him to get the fuck out of my house and take the bitch with him if he wanted. But he didn't want to go. She wanted to stay till she was sure that I had finished with her. I told her it was all over and the only thing I wanted back was the money and that was it. They took her to the hospital and the bullet had went through her leg about six inches above her knee and all the way through without hitting anything.

In fact, she was walking without a limp or anything.

Two days later, when I picked her up at this bar and took her to a motel for the night. Just the thought that he would bring a woman back to their apartment that they shared and this particular incident shooting her in the leg, terrorizing her, and this is all while my mother is at work. And that's it's just I can't even imagine I mean, I just can't even I can't fathom that that just it's just disgusting. I can't even believe it.

When I read this, I. I actually felt a little pity for my mother. This is the person that she tried so hard to love and tried so hard to help. And throughout my teen years when I was dating here and there, and she she always would get the vibe from a guy if he was bad or not. And she would always tell me, you can't love the hate out of him. He's not going to change. I tried to do that with your father and it didn't work.

Look what happened. That was the hardest thing about all of this. Finding out who my father was is just I had no idea what kind of a monster he was back then.

But the thing that really blew my mind is that there were other articles that said he'd testified that he had fathered at least 13 other children that he knew of and he bragged about it. That really was a bombshell to me. Imagine reading in an article that you have 13 brothers and sisters out there. I'm sure it was devastating to my mother. My father wrote this letter on April 29th, 1983. Dear Mary, well, I tried to call and the line was busy when I called this morning, there was no answer.

So that's the end of my allowance for phone calls this week. There is a collect phone, but I wouldn't feel right calling you that way on your birthday. Sure would like to get a letter from you. I still look each day hoping that there's something. Then once or twice a week, I'll write a letter begging you to write and tear it up, thinking that I have to be strong and not put any more burdens on you. God knows that I put so much on you now that I don't know how you've been able to shoulder it all.

All I've been thinking is to get money together, so at least you can get rid of that burden, then we could work out any problem that we've got going. But I stay depressed all the time now and can't seem to get the needles out of my eyes. I sit staring at you in the children's picture each day, trying to justify what I've done, but the loss of you just ain't worth it. And I'm not sure what to do anymore.

All the moral reasons that I had were stabbed to death a long time ago by these so-called law enforcement people. They don't care how many people are killed, all of this I can take and keep fighting, but to lose you, I can't take that. It's just too much to pay as long as I felt that you were in my corner waiting. I could take all this and whatever else they throw at me. I love and miss you very much, Mary Love, see?

Shortly after this letter, my mother filed for divorce when we found out that my mother had filed for divorce from my father was right around the time that we found out that my father was in prison for murder. And when she filed for divorce, it was just another thing that other children had to deal with by ourselves. My mother really wasn't comforting about this. She wanted to put it behind her. She never wanted to talk about him again. That was it.

That was done. That was a done deal. And as for my father, he made his bed and now he had to lie in it alone and the next trial was right around the corner. Since 1993, thousands of women have been murdered or disappeared along the border in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. My name is Lydia Cacho and I am here to tell you the true story of the femicide. Sing Juarez, listen and subscribe to the red note right now on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, you can also listen in Spanish.

Just search for Lanata Aroha in the same podcast app you are listening in now. We were told that there was an informant who would be the primary witness and we were told that his name was Butch Crouch, and we developed a little bit of background. We wanted to know about Butch Crouch and trying to evaluate whether to take this case, whether or not to take this case, whether to present it, whether or not to present it.

This is Rick Dobens. Back in 1983, Dobbins was a young prosecutor in Akron, Ohio. Dobbins and another prosecutor, Roger Davidson, who you heard last episode, were assigned to a murder case being brought against Hells Angel, Andrew Sition, which was going to testify that Shashemene had stolen the car that was used when my father shot 17 year old Darnell Della Sera to death.

My father had pled guilty to that crime and now she's shown was being tried for murder. Earlier that year, Sition had been tried. In another murder case, he stood accused of pulling up in a van on East Seventy seven in Cleveland alongside an outlaw named Buddy Sun. Back in 1975, Sun was shot off his motorcycle and died. My father testified in that trial as the prosecution's only witness.

And just like in the Gentry trial, defense attorney Alan Kaplan tore apart his testimony. The case was dismissed for lack of evidence, and Shashemene was acquitted. Now, in October of 1983, Sition would be back on trial again, with my father testifying against him again. And so what we learned about Butch Crouch was not good news as far as being a good witness. So we read about Butch Crouch, but you have to know and see a person face to face.

So just prior to this Jahshan trial, Rick Dobens and Roger Davidson traveled to New York, where Butch was being held to interview him about the case. Here's Davidson on his initial impression. I thought Butch Crouch was one predatory motherfucker. Call it a sociopath, call it whatever you want. He was the evil, as far as I'm concerned. And he was nasty. He was telling something to us, Rick and myself, that I knew it was going to be an awful hard sell to a jury if his word was all we had to go on, because from where I was sitting, he sure wasn't looking very believable to me.

I didn't like the guy, I didn't trust the guy, I wasn't sure the jury was going to hear any of the truth. It was obvious that he felt that he could manipulate us because of his, quote, unquote, knowledge about the crime and his willingness to testify and probably say anything we'd want them to if we'd ask them to convict, Andrews has shown. He was positive in his own mind that what he had to say was so important.

That's just the way that he just gave the air that he was interested not in doing the right thing, but he was interested in what value he could accrue from doing the right thing.

I felt personally that I didn't believe 50 percent of what Clarence Crouch told me about this homicide. That causes you problems in your in your stomach and in your heart. Anyway, later on, while the trial is going on right before Bush trial, is to take the stand, myself and Rick Dobbins, we go back in this little room where he's being kept separate from everybody else and talk to him and ask him if he's ready and if he's prepared.

And and that's when he told us that we had to do better. Before taking the stand against has shown again, my father tried to leverage his testimony and he gave Dobens and Davidson an ultimatum when Bush said, I want two more years off, we decided that we're not ever going to ask. He didn't deserve two more years off his sentence. And we had a sense that the case was not going well. He was playing us for what he could get out of us.

He was playing the ATF for what he could get out of them. He was playing the Hells Angels for what he could get out of them. His whole life was what other people can do for me, not what he can do for anybody else. And if it wasn't good for Butch Crouch, it was not going to happen. And we decided we have done everything we can do.

This will not assist the jury to hear his story again, to try to refute the obvious, which thought he had us in a situation where we would have to do anything that he asked us in order to go ahead with this trial. He thought that in his mind that us convicting Andrew Rishard was much more important than what happened to him for what he did in a crime. And he thought once the trial started that he had and myself by the short hairs, he actually was probably smiling inside himself saying, now these guys are going to have to do what I'm asking them.

I'm in control. And Rick Dobens just told them to go buff's nuts.

Dobbins and Davidson never even called my father to the stand. When the jury came out, the judge asked him if you reached a verdict.

They said, yes, we have for me, would you hand the verdict to the judge, read that we find the defendant not guilty?

I didn't feel disappointed. What I felt was I think the jury made the right decision based on the evidence that was presented. I don't certainly wasn't going to fault them there being a couple of juries I could have faulted, but not that one.

Do I think the ATF overreached with Butch? Yes, I do. They should not have made Butch Crouch a witness in a murder trial because of the all the baggage that his personality and his background was carrying around. That my dad. You say life is short, brutal and ugly. And it is.

For the second time in less than one year, Andrew Jackson was acquitted of murder. Now, after three trials with no convictions, headlines that were printed earlier that year, like Hells Angel informant described as important, had turned into new headlines like Angels Witness. Turns out a bust. Steve Wells, Cleveland's ATF supervisor and the man who helped develop my father as a witness, was quoted in the newspaper saying, I think he is a credible witness. I think his veracity is yet to be impeached.

We intend to continue using him. Andrew Shoshoni said, quote, It's the second time I've been accused by Clarence Crouch. I just wonder when it's going to stop and when he's going to tell another story. Here's former Cleveland Angel Mattsson Óscar. Well, some of some of his stuff was very exaggerated.

Coming up with a statement said it was people getting killed almost every day.

You know, I've just come on. I mean. I mean, come on. You know, I think he was going after Andy to get a conviction so he could raise his level of prosecutorial credibility because maybe he thought he could cash in on it. And and in turn, it would be a bargaining chip for more money, wouldn't it? Shoshones attorney Ellen Kaplan made a more brief statement about my father when he said this jury's just don't trust that man, but just one month later, my father would be back on the stand to try to help convict those accused of planning the bomb at the residence in 1975, which killed a mother, her two year old son and a family friend, Richard D'Amato and Harry Ceccarelli would stand trial for the crime.

The prosecution had the C4 explosive and the signal flare, which were found both at the crime scene as well as the storage container, which had been searched two years earlier.

And, of course, they had botched crouch as the key witness. Once again, attorney Ralph Buss was part of the defense team. And right away, Buzz noticed something odd about James McKitrick, the judge presiding over the trial.

Hell's Angels were getting so much press that we couldn't get a fair trial. And so we filed for individuals, sequestered jury, voir dire, voir dire. That's French word for speaking to the jury, OK? And so the idea was done in his office. So when we were inside, we noticed that the judge had a Levere bottle with him. It's a bottle about eight inches tall, cobalt blue with white letters. And the cream, well, he was taking a navy a bottle and taking the cap off and drinking out of it.

Libya is a big thing in Europe as a kid, I remember that, and when I saw that, I said he can't be drinking, obviously. There's got to be something else else in it. Yeah, OK. And so it was very nice of the jurors, but at one point they came out of his bathroom with his robe on and he had his underwear around his ankles and tripped and fell right among all of us. OK, so the suspicion was that that intoxicant was going to be used, but we went through all of that successfully and the jury was actually empanelled.

When the trial began, the defense team followed the same playbook as the earlier ones as they attacked the prosecution's main witness. I remember pictures of Clarence Crouch being showed on the large screen and color to the jury, the last one was Crouch was hugging this huge tree that had the hole in it and he was sticking his business in it. And when Judge McKitrick saw that, he says this is going too far and they instructed the jury to wipe that memory out of their minds, but it was impossible.

It got worse. A Cleveland Plain Dealer article was written during the Szekely bombing trial, which had the Title IX Angels Mind vague on talks with USA djent. It read Crouch. Forty three became vague when asked about a telephone call to a federal agent in the tape recorded call on November 3rd. Nineteen eighty one, Crouch's told the agent, I can help you build a whole gang of cases on hearsay. I can help you build a whole gang of cases on just fucking hearsay at this about crowd control.

Defense lawyers, he, quote, didn't know what he meant by that. Despite the memory lapses, Crouch stuck to his story and claiming biker Richard Armato. Thirty four help set the bomb January 7th. Nineteen seventy five as sixty one on one Lansing Avenue. Another angel, Harold Ceccarelli, 40, is awaiting trial. A federal report on the debriefing of Crouched by Agents quotes him as saying, I think Richi was with them, too. Crouch told Carns that debriefing is now, quote, a blur and that it looked unfamiliar.

James Carnes was another member of the defense team, and he said this, My God, Carnes exclaimed, You're charging a man with murder and you're telling this jury it's unfamiliar to you.

Before the case could even be sent to the jury for a verdict, though, Judge McKitrick, the man, Ralph Bussau, drinking out of a hand lotion bottle, dismissed it for lack of evidence. So Richard Omada was acquitted. And because the upcoming trial against Terry Ceccarelli would be using the exact same evidence and testimony, his case was dismissed as well. And my father was now over four in trials that he appeared as a witness. But later, Ralph Bass says he heard that other factors may have been at play.

Karen and I, of course, were elated when the judge granted the motion to dismiss the case at the end of the prosecution's presentation, and we thought that we did such a great job and then we find out afterwards that a bribe supposedly was involved.

Cleveland P.D. Intelligence Unit Sergeant Bob Somyurek and his team had been investigating corruption in the Common Pleas Court during this time and five months after the Richard D'Amato trial, he got a phone call in the middle of the night from ATF supervisor Steve Wells. Wells told Samak he'd run into Judge McKitrick at a bar. Here's Bob Samak. I've often said that a good criminal investigation is just as much dumb luck as it is hard labor. But our buddy Steve Wells, who has been known to enjoy a cold beverage every now and then, stopped at a particular watering hole on the west side of the city.

And he sees Judge McKitrick there. So Steve, being Steve, he sits down not too far from a trick and he makes a flippant remark about what a great job he did for the angels. He tells me, Gastroschisis, we really appreciate what you did for. He says in that case and throwing it out. Well, McKitrick looks over and he kind of thinks he recognizes Steve as being somehow affiliated with the Hells Angels. And McKitrick comes back and says, well, yeah, says but they didn't give me enough money.

I was actually supposed to get another payment and they just had some other dumb conversation. Steve leaves. It's about three thirty in the morning. He calls me at home and he's he's pretty well inebriated and he starts to tell me the story. And I said, Steve, I said, do me a favor, go go to bed, call me in the office in the morning and tell me the story again. And so I hung up on him. And the next morning he calls the office and we discussed what had happened and we tried to figure out what was going to be the best course of action.

So what we decided to do was to have Steve wear a wire and go back to the bar and see if he could engage McKitrick in more conversation and see where that would go.

You'll remember that Steve Wells suffered a major stroke several years ago and his speech became difficult to understand. Here's wells followed by another voice repeating his words.

We make is over time or we would make cases over time.

And judges and bums and mafia guys and everybody go going just by cold call cold contacting them. So. So I just went up to him and said, thank you, thank you. And he says, you guys still have the money. I can get it. He said, OK, OK. And then I went and got the money from Bob Samat, about five thousand dollars to make about five of them.

So Steve was put on a wire and met back up with Judge McKitrick in a bar and recorded their conversation. The following is a reading of the transcript from that meeting and talked to some people about that.

Five thousand you mentioned to me, they asked me to talk to you is a very good chance that can be had but aren't going to talk in here about it.

I'll tell you that right now I have to be re-elected, that's all. I'll tell them to get it up front so I get re-elected. They want to know how the hell you're going to do it. I mean, let's face it, they think the same damn thing is with the motto. It's totally different. They said maybe we're asking for too much. You know, I think you said things have always been straight and no problems. I don't know.

So listen, let me tell you something. The case is set for September and there'll be no problem at all if I get elected and I will see what they can afford for the damn thing to go to the jury.

You know, I've taken it away from the jury. Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what they want to know is if they can be assured that it ain't going that ain't going to the jury and that's all they care about. Well, the other day you had something. There's your five. I'll get the rest of you within the next day or so. I personally arrested the judge and read him his rights and they searched the house and we found the five thousand dollars and it was in an envelope, same envelope that Steve had handed them.

We also found in his house two other envelopes, very similar to that, both containing pretty substantial amounts of cash. We further investigated some of the other funds that we found, and we were able to trace one of the envelopes, the contents of one of the envelopes to a specific bank, to a specific teller, to a specific transaction. And the person that received the cash was a Hells Angel. And we were able to put that Hells Angel in the Common Pleas court building on the same day that Judge McKitrick was in that building.

And we arrested the person we went to trial and we lost the case. Judgment Garchik, however, didn't get off so easy. He received a four year sentence and died in prison. He's, in my knowledge, the only Cuyahoga Common Pleas court judge to ever go to prison for bribery. Up to this point, all of the angels that my father testified against were acquitted, he went back to prison while we were stuck in Billings, Montana, trying to adjust to our new lives and identities.

Here's a letter he sent to a detective who'd worked on one of the cases.

I may not have been the best witness up on the stand. And my ability to express myself verbally has been very hard for me. But I never lost the ability to think and to be aware of all that was going on around me. Every one of these federal agents had one focus on their mind here. I was telling them of wholesale murders that were taking place all across the country, and they just didn't seem to think this was more important than breaking up some million dollar drug ring then to sit there telling them about this member and his involvement something and have to stop and tell them who I was talking about because they weren't taking notes or paying attention to what or who I was talking about would tear me up so bad I would just sit and ask myself.

It was all worth it. McKitrick pled guilty to bribery, but not once did I lose my conviction. But still all seem to believe what Kaplan and the club have said about me, that I did it for some kind of a payment for twelve hundred and forty five dollars a month. First place, the twelve hundred and forty five dollars is only for six months. And it's a very small sum when you consider that we had to completely restock on everything it takes to stock a household of five people.

That money was long gone before the end of the month and each day we begged for the new identities promised us because it would allow us to both go to work and bring in twice as much as we were forced to live on. Even now, after five years, Mary hasn't gotten on the ID she was promised when we turned in our IDs. Then Mary filed for divorce. They removed her from the program, which means that she had to turn in her new identity and was given back her old identity.

Kids were allowed to keep their names, but Mary was put on Front Street by having to live under the name Crouch. So like a rat in a cage, I find myself pacing back and forth, trying to find a solution to all this in a way to save Mary from harm before it's too late. Sorry I got off and do all this, but I wanted to let you see all the things that I had to go through. All I was trying desperately to hold on to whatever sanity I had left while I had to constantly tell myself that I was doing something of worth and making up for all the senseless things I'd done in my life.

My. Anyway, it's something like living on a tightrope and you never know when you're going to be shoved to the side and make room for some other witness coming in with more usefulness. Not once has anyone bothered to place themselves in my shoes and understand what it meant to me to trade, I'd become something I would have died for before becoming a snitch.

To me, this was the worst thing in all my life. It was like trading away my very soul. What goods a man who's lost his soul can't take a stand when these flames go. On the next episode of Relative Unknown, 90 percent of the time, there's no danger involved in that danger is manufactured in a lot of respects to keep people in tow. My family and I were used. It's as simple as that. And as for my father, he still had one last horrifying murder trial to testify.

And this was a cold case before they even had the name cold case. And this one was based on more than just hearsay.

He was giving out details of this crime that only somebody that was there would have known about for episode transcripts and story extras visit a relative unknown outcome, relative unknown as a creation and presentation of C 13 originals, a division of kadence 13 and Roomer Inc executive produced by Chris Corcoran, Zach Levitt, David Beilinson, Michael Golinski and Sooky Holly. Written, produced, directed and edited by Zach Levitt, produced and edited by Perry Croal. Our theme song is Change on the Rise by Avi Kaplan Original Music composed by Joel Goodman, Mixed and Mastered by Bill Schulz.

Production Support by Ian Mont and Lloyd Lockridge Field Recording by Rich Berner, Michael Golinski, Perry Croll and Connor waddingham production, engineering and coordination by Sean Cherry and Terrence Malick on Artwork, Marketing and PR by Kurt Courtney Josephine of Frances and Hilary. Chef, I'm Jackie Taylor and thanks for listening to Relative Unknown.