Woman Gets FB Message From Old College BF After He Killed His Rapist - This Is Her Response

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Speaker 1 In America, there are approximately these 25 million boxes of secrets. That's basically what they are.
The official terminology would be a safety deposit box. But that's not really what it is, right?

Speaker 1 These are typically hidden away. You walk into a bank vault and you've got hundreds of these tiny metal boxes.

Speaker 1 And yeah, lots of people go there to hide their expensive belongings, like their watches, their jewelry, their cash, like things they don't feel secure keeping in their homes but a lot of the times people open these up to put away their secrets they lock them up a spouse hiding cash from another spouse is it for a good reason or not it's up for debate but that's their secret box a family man hiding documents that might include the existence of a second family That's his box of secrets.

Speaker 1 Things he cannot let his family find in a shoebox at the bottom of his closet, he's putting inside of that safety deposit box.

Speaker 1 Usually, you never really have the chance to open up someone else's secret box because that's the whole point. They're secrets.

Speaker 1 They're jumping through all of these hoops to make sure it stays that way.

Speaker 2 Unless they're dead.

Speaker 1 Then, this is a whole process, depending on what state you live in and your will.

Speaker 1 But let's say if you die under very suspicious circumstances, like if you're killed in your living room by that little boy that you assaulted, only he's not so little anymore, he's a full-grown man with a knife.

Speaker 1 Then, yeah, most likely that safety deposit box is going to be opened under the watchful supervision of authorities and very tense bank employees.

Speaker 1 In Dennis Pegg's safety deposit box, they find letters, just handwritten letter after letter. I mean, none of these letters are particularly insightful.
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 He doesn't spill all of his secrets or confess anything of any value in any of these letters, but they're so creepy.

Speaker 1 First of all, he wrote these letters 10 years before he dies while he's a relatively healthy, middle-aged man.

Speaker 1 Typically, men of that age are not fully estate planning with handwritten letters to everyone they deem special in their lives.

Speaker 1 And the letters themselves, the content, they all contain variations of the strange phrases, pray for me if you can, which, if they're reading this letter, he's already dead. Forgive me for my faults.

Speaker 1 I've forgiven you for all of yours. And something along the lines of, you were always like a special son or little brother to me.
It's just letter after letter like that in a safety deposit box.

Speaker 1 What is the purpose of the letter? Authorities believe that these were most likely written for his victims.

Speaker 1 Victims who, after their abuser is dead, will be delivered handwritten letters asking them to pray for their abuser.

Speaker 1 In part one, we went over the night of Dennis Pegg's death, where Clark, after 33 years of not doing anything about Dennis Pegg, his abuser when he was 12, he decides it's finally time someone puts a stop to Dennis.

Speaker 1 He goes to Dennis's house after decades. Dennis sees him holding a hunting knife that, ironically, he taught Clark how to sharpen.
And all Dennis says to him is, hey, how are you?

Speaker 1 Clark slashes at him, slits his throat, stabs him countless times, and then finally spits on his bed before walking out.

Speaker 1 Clark's mom tries to help him get away with murder, wanting to go on the run with him, but he decides he's going to stay. And that's when the police come for him.

Speaker 1 They arrest him, and now he's going to prison where he will be placed in cells with the same types of people that he hates most. One of them, who he's already killed, child predators.

Speaker 1 Part two, we're going to go over Clark's time in prison, how he survived, all the strange details about what it means, like when your fellow cellmate keeps flushing his head down the toilet, how Clark is now a free man, and we also go in depth about what happened to his brother, another victim of Dennis Pegg's, who actually ends up being killed by Dennis.

Speaker 1 And what even happened in those 33 years between Dennis Pegg abusing Clark and Clark killing Dennis for what he's done? Why did, in the span of 33 years, did the FBI call Clark?

Speaker 1 Why did Homeland Security call Clark? Why did the IRS Criminal Division call Clark? How does he get involved with the mob?

Speaker 1 Also, the fact that Dennis Pegg has likely close to 100 victims, including his own grandnephew, that is all going to be covered in this part.

Speaker 1 And somehow, through all of this, there's this one person that Clark cannot stop thinking about. And it's a woman named Lisa.
What role does Lisa play in all of this?

Speaker 1 This is in part two, the final part of our interview with Clark Federicks.

Speaker 1 All of those questions will be answered in this part of the episode, but there are still so many details and stories that Clark has to share that you can find in his memoirs, Scarred, or by following him on his social media accounts, by checking out his podcast.

Speaker 1 And with that being said, let's get into part two.

Speaker 1 You've been reached out by the IRS, the FBI, and Homeland Security.

Speaker 2 That's correct.

Speaker 1 Were Were you counting cards?

Speaker 2 I studied counting cards, but I found it to get a little distracting. This is going to sound weird.
Okay. You know,

Speaker 2 I would go to the casinos and I would walk the casino floor and I would get a vibe for a table. I'd be like, this is the table.
I'd just get a feeling for it. And

Speaker 2 I would gamble and I would get a feeling like, all right, it's time to up your bet.

Speaker 2 And I had an unbelievable like four or five year run in the casinos that was just astronomical. I'm working in the tire automotive field making $700 a week.

Speaker 2 And I'm down in Atlantic City winning tens of thousands of dollars left and right.

Speaker 1 And you're just putting cash in your closet?

Speaker 2 In my briefcase, in my closet.

Speaker 1 This goes on for how many years?

Speaker 2 This was a distraction from my pain. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, and it's not like I

Speaker 2 it's not like I consciously said,

Speaker 2 I have trauma from being abused as a child. I need to gamble to distract myself.
It was just, I'm uncomfortable. I feel uncomfortable.
It's my trauma in there making me feel uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 I feel uncomfortable and I need something to distract me from that uncomfortable feeling. I need

Speaker 2 pleasure. I became a pleasure seeker.
Don't address anything. Don't ever go inside.
Let's just seek pleasure our whole life, whether it's drugs, gambling, whatever it may be. Seek pleasure.

Speaker 2 So that's what I was doing with gambling.

Speaker 1 Like, what is the most you've lost?

Speaker 2 Most I lost was 75,000.

Speaker 1 And do you feel it in that moment? Like, I just lost 75,000? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you can't sleep. It's just...

Speaker 2 Acid is a wash in your stomach. But again,

Speaker 2 the high you get from from losing is just, it distracts you from everything, just like the high from winning.

Speaker 1 You start by reading books about gambling and then somehow you end up being very superstitious.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I went down there just on a whim, like bored with life and won 1700. Went back, won 2,200, but I was getting yelled at.

Speaker 2 at the blackjack table because I didn't know what I was doing, but I was still winning. So I'm like, I'm not going to go back until I know what the hell I'm doing.

Speaker 2 And I would always hear all this screaming at the craps table. It sounded like a blast.
So I had no idea what, how to play craps. So I took like six months.
I got five deck of cards.

Speaker 2 I read all these books on blackjack. I read books on craps.
I would throw dice in my room. I would play all the hands of blackjack.

Speaker 2 I'd pick which one I am and see how it would affect things my decisions and and i did that for six months until i felt comfortable to go back down and then just like boom you know like 17 000 28 000 30 000 it just it just went boom boom boom boom boom is it true that like if you win or lose you could blame it on the fact that you stepped on a crack like is that like what genuinely what starts happening or those little quirks didn't start right away but as you start winning more more and more and more,

Speaker 2 you start thinking, I, all right, what, what did I do? Like, all right, I better not step on any cracks. Like, I don't even know where it came from.
Like, it was just like, boom, like, all right,

Speaker 2 what did I do in the days leading up to going to the casino? Like, oh, when I went up the stairs, I jumped that second stair and then

Speaker 2 that,

Speaker 2 you know, like, I skipped two stairs there. So, like, then I would have to go up the stairs a certain way.
And then I couldn't step on any cracks on pavement.

Speaker 2 Like, and then, you know, like where they paint the blue handicapped spots with the wheelchair, I'm like, that's bad luck. Don't ever step on that.

Speaker 2 And then when I would get to the casino, there was a whole other ritual like for rolling the dice. It would,

Speaker 2 I would have to tap it a certain number of times. And in my knee, I would have to hit the table with my knee a certain number of times before I could roll the dice.

Speaker 2 And it was like it just started getting more and more and more and more insane.

Speaker 1 You start at the casinos, but then you get involved with the mob.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, another brilliant, you know, a brilliant decision.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you get involved with the mob. How much do you owe the mob?

Speaker 2 It was because I needed action every day of the week to distract myself from

Speaker 2 feeling uncomfortable. so like I couldn't wait to the weekends to go gamble.
I needed something. What am I going to do Monday through Friday? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it came about that I could, through a bar, I could start sports betting every day of the week. And I was given a no-limit bet.
So like I could bet as much as I wanted, as often as I wanted.

Speaker 2 In six months, I was

Speaker 2 broke, like lost everything.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 in that last week, I was down 20,000 and I didn't have it.

Speaker 2 Now, you would think,

Speaker 2 all right, it's time to walk away, Clark. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I'm going to get that 20,000 back if I can, plus some. So I

Speaker 2 called the number that I called to place my bets and I said, hey, I got to move some money around.

Speaker 2 Can you let me carry that 20,000 over for another week? And they're like, for you? Anything. I'm like, okay.

Speaker 2 So I go into that next week, 20 in the hole.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, I got to get that 20 back. Plus, I want to keep gambling.
So

Speaker 2 I need to win on top. So I just start making really stupid bets.
And when the week ended, I was $77,000 in the hole to the mob.

Speaker 4 So when you were gambling in casinos, you were making money.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 How much were you making? Oh, hundreds. I mean, my largest win was $153,000.

Speaker 2 And that was after losing three times on the craps table where I had 20 to 30,000 at a clip up there. Wow.
So I was well over a quarter million just for that one time.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I mean, 50,000, 70,000. My host put me into a blackjack tournament for 75,000 winner take-all.
And he's like,

Speaker 2 I think you got this, bro.

Speaker 2 Your luck is unbelievable. I didn't win.
I got knocked out about halfway through it, but I went to a high-stakes blackjack table and I won 80,000. So like I won more than what the prize was.

Speaker 1 So then you were like, okay, I'm going to do this with the mob. And then you're down 77,000.
And now the mob is trying to kill you.

Speaker 2 The mob is threatening me. Threatening my life.

Speaker 2 The mob is telling me the best thing I could do for myself is to go rob a bank. The guy's like, look, if you get caught, you're looking at five to ten years.

Speaker 2 You'd be a hell of a lot better off doing five to ten years than what we're going to do to you. And they're calling me every day.
And this was like a constant, dude, you got to go rob a bank.

Speaker 2 Like, what are you waiting on? Go rob a bank. Maybe you'll get away with it.
You can give us money and hold us off.

Speaker 2 You get caught. You go do five, ten years.
What's the big deal? You know, that was what they were constantly on.

Speaker 1 Did you ever consider robbing a bank?

Speaker 2 No. Oh.
And then they started, they called my family.

Speaker 2 They got my father's phone number.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they said,

Speaker 2 hey, old man, you want to save your son's life? You better pony up some money for him. I had already gone to my family to warn them.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 sure enough, they called my father. Then they called my brother, who I used to be in business with.
And

Speaker 2 they're like,

Speaker 2 your brother's in a lot of trouble. You have the power to save your brother's life.

Speaker 2 You can do that by paying us what he owes us. And I had told everybody to tell them, like, this is

Speaker 2 Clark's responsibility. He'll handle it with you.
And that's what they both said. But

Speaker 2 it scared everybody to death.

Speaker 1 Were you not scared?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah. It was the worst time in my life.
Okay. It was horrible.

Speaker 2 I had a shotgun in my truck loaded that I drove around with. I had a baseball bat in my office.

Speaker 2 I was constantly on edge. Like, just to leave the house in the morning, I got to go to all the windows of the house and look out in the yard.
behind the shed

Speaker 2 see if anybody's out there you know

Speaker 2 the same thing, leaving my office. Like, I've got to like survey everything.
I was just hyper-vigilant, that's what they call it. And I was hyper-vigilant to the max.

Speaker 1 So, the mob is as scary as they're depicted in movies and books, like, they're intense.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it was, it was just angry, threatening phone calls almost on a daily basis. And I wasn't trying to like get out of, I wasn't trying to weasel out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but I told them the the only way I could make good on this is to set up a payment plan. And what I really could afford was $500 a month at the time because I had,

Speaker 2 you know, I had a lot of debts to casinos, you know, like

Speaker 2 casinos would all let me have you know markers, $20,000 markers in them all. So I had all these markers I owed, and credit cards were maxed out.

Speaker 2 So I'm trying to juggle everybody.

Speaker 2 So I told the guy, you know, like I can do $500 a month. And the guide went absolutely bananas.

Speaker 2 And he's like, $500 a month doesn't even cover the juice on $77,000. Like, you're out of your mind, bro.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it was a horrible time. And then, and then I get a phone call after months of this.

Speaker 2 And it's them.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they don't ask for money. They just say, you're a dead man and click and hang up.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 a couple months goes by after that, where I'm completely like

Speaker 2 on edge, like

Speaker 2 can't sleep. You know, you're always listening for every little sound.
Like, is that somebody out there?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I get a call.

Speaker 2 At this point in time, we had two tire automotive centers. I had one and my brother had one.

Speaker 2 And I happened to be at my brother's store one day and his office manager came in the back room and said, Hey, there's a phone call for you. I'm like, Who the hell's calling me over here?

Speaker 2 Nobody knows I'm here. He goes, I don't know.
They asked for Clark.

Speaker 2 So I answered a phone, and the guy introduces himself as a special agent with the FBI. I need to meet you at your Newton location, the store I had,

Speaker 2 on Thursday at three o'clock. And I'm like, I'm like, well, bro, like, you got to tell me what this is about.
He's like, no, I don't. He goes, I'll see you Thursday at three o'clock.
And he hangs up.

Speaker 2 And then your mind just goes like in a million directions, you know, like

Speaker 2 I couldn't fathom what the FBI is coming to meet me for. You know, like,

Speaker 2 I was doing some

Speaker 2 now and then. And I'm like,

Speaker 2 is the FBI gonna try to try to pinch my dealer by by by putting pressure on me like I'm buying a grandma like when the FBI's getting involved on a grandma

Speaker 2 so I had no idea what it was and then they came the guy came to the store

Speaker 2 and clearly was the FBI guy

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 said they had an informant inside one of the major crime families who told them a hit had been put out on my life for my gambling debt.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 if I didn't think it was real before then, that really, that really made everything real.

Speaker 1 But you still didn't snitch, you didn't cooperate with the FBI.

Speaker 2 You're like, well, I didn't know. No, they wanted me to wear a wire.
And I was like, are you out of your mind? Like,

Speaker 2 my life is hell right now. You want me to wear a wire and make it even worse? I go.

Speaker 2 And I told the FBI guy what I told the mob guy. I go, this this is my problem, and I'm not running from it, and I'm going to deal with it.

Speaker 2 And the guy, the FBI guy, said, well, that's very noble of you, but if things get too heavy for you, here's my card. You can call me.

Speaker 4 Wait, what did the FBI guy offer you at first?

Speaker 2 He say, wear a wire and we will help you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. It's not like, yeah, like, we'll solve your problem by taking these guys down.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, no, this is my problem, and I'm not going to compound it by wearing a wire. Wow.

Speaker 4 Is it because you scare that wearing a wire is more dangerous than that's just not the type of person I was?

Speaker 2 You know, like it's not, it wasn't in my DNA to become a little weasel snitch wearing a wire? Like, interesting. Like, no, it's not.

Speaker 2 Wow. Wow.

Speaker 1 It's all in the book, but

Speaker 1 if you, because I know the FBI, Homeland Security, and IRS Criminal Division reach out, if you had to rank them in intensity, who was the scariest agent?

Speaker 1 Because it's a lot of experience.

Speaker 2 Division of Homeland Security, I'd say, is at the bottom. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 Boy,

Speaker 2 the IRS did a full audit on me. They thought I was money laundering because I was putting in all this cash from the gambling winnings into my bank account.
That was a nightmare doing.

Speaker 1 You didn't just tell them you're that good? They're like, no, we don't. Well,

Speaker 2 that's what I, you know, I eventually got to that point with them, you know, but there's laws for trying to skirt the $10,000 notification rule. You know,

Speaker 2 dummy me, like somebody said, oh, if you put in under $10,000 deposit, it doesn't

Speaker 2 get recorded or notified. So I'm like, oh, cool.
So $9,800, $9,700, $9,600, $9,700, $9,800, $9,200, $9,400, $9,800, like non-stop. And then that sets off all the red flags.
And

Speaker 2 so yeah, that was a nightmare, too.

Speaker 1 So IRS or FBI, who's scarier?

Speaker 2 I think when you're told a hit's been put out on your life in a confidential informant, that's the top of the list.

Speaker 1 That's like in your 30s.

Speaker 1 But it does seem like after everything that Dennis did, there were signs in your childhood where a lot of psychiatrists later say it seemed like you're crying for help, like trying to get help in a way.

Speaker 1 Playing with fire, is that one of them?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was a little, I became a little fire bug.

Speaker 1 What is it about fire? Because I see that a lot in a lot of cases.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it has to do with control.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's an outlet for anger

Speaker 2 from what happened.

Speaker 1 So you're just like lighting matches? Are you lighting things on fire?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I lit lit our house.

Speaker 2 We had this screened in

Speaker 2 patio bar area out back and I lit the corner of that on fire and like guys happened to show up that were going to be painting the house and like the

Speaker 2 screened and porch things on fire like it had been smoldering overnight and caught on fire when they got there and you know we had a huge backyard and raked the leaves into a pile where the swing set was and you'd swing off into the leaves.

Speaker 2 Well, I just took a tan of gas all over the leaves and set it on fire, and this big fire exploded.

Speaker 1 These are big fires, yeah.

Speaker 2 Okay, so yeah, and then and then another sign of uh abuse is uh shoplifting. I got caught up shoplifting, and uh, it's the same thing.
It's uh,

Speaker 2 it's an outlet for anger, uh, and pain, it's uh a control issue. You know, you're, you're.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so those were signs. And

Speaker 2 I started smoking pot right after the abuse. You know, 12 years old.
Started smoking pot. Drank heavily in high school.

Speaker 2 Got suspended for coming in drunk.

Speaker 2 Got caught on a class trip to the Jersey shore drinking on a bench with two other buddies and the chaperone teachers come up behind us and like seriously seriously guys um

Speaker 2 my my principal threatened me that I wouldn't graduate with the class if if at the prom he even had the hint of alcohol on my breath did you ever feel frustrated that these teachers are saying these things to you but they don't they don't like recognize

Speaker 1 what is underlying underneath that behavior. Was there any sort of frustration or anger towards them?

Speaker 2 No, no, I'm, you know,

Speaker 2 there was, there was a thing with the

Speaker 2 essay I wrote,

Speaker 2 which is unbelievable.

Speaker 2 I would, I would hope that times have changed.

Speaker 2 And, you know, your audience, you know, in the book, they'll see this essay I wrote. And I put a lot of stuff in there in this essay that was,

Speaker 2 it just screams, I've been abused, you know, like I need help and I've been abused. And the teacher gave me an A and said, use more paragraphs next time.

Speaker 2 So like, if you see a sudden change in behavior

Speaker 2 in a younger person, there's a reason why, you know, like shoplifting, fire, weed, drinking.

Speaker 2 getting suspended, getting detentions,

Speaker 2 getting caught in class trips, getting threatened by the principal, like

Speaker 2 writing this essay that screamed, I need help.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I don't know if it was a sign of the times,

Speaker 2 but it was all right there. And,

Speaker 2 you know, nobody picked up on it.

Speaker 1 What's interesting about your case is that, because I know there's a lot of cases where maybe victims, family, and parents are not as involved in their lives and they might be missing a lot of the larger signs, but it seems like your dad was picking up on these signs and he asked you multiple times

Speaker 1 and you never told him what happened.

Speaker 2 And I really like, you know,

Speaker 2 I've been asked, you know, if I have regrets in life, you know, like.

Speaker 2 Do I regret owing $77,000 in a mob? Do I regret doing drugs? Do I regret, you you know, like really the only

Speaker 2 and it's tough to have this regret, but I do have this regret, you know, like

Speaker 2 being a young boy and lying to my father when he asked me if Dennis Pegg ever touched me. And I just couldn't.
The shame is,

Speaker 2 the shame is there and the pain is there.

Speaker 2 And my parents viewed me as the golden child for surviving this operation. And I just didn't want to become now the abused

Speaker 2 son who's tortured inside mentally. You know, so I just told my dad, no, he never touched me.

Speaker 1 Around the time that your dad starts asking you if Dennis Pegg ever touched you,

Speaker 1 there were some other kids that were talking about it.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's how it came out.

Speaker 1 And nothing happened.

Speaker 2 All right. Now, now just picture this.

Speaker 2 You have a 260-pound hulking lieutenant at the jail who's waiting out in the parking lot for young male inmates to get released so he can take them home to his house to mentor them. I'm a mentor.

Speaker 2 I'm going to give you a safe environment. You come live with me.
We'll get you back on your feet.

Speaker 2 In the middle of the night, he would pounce on these young male inmates.

Speaker 2 Some ran away.

Speaker 2 Some didn't. Some probably froze like I froze.

Speaker 2 But they would, the ones that ran away in the middle of the night and Stillwater nights. Stillwater is just like a little tiny rural town, and they would hitchhike.

Speaker 2 And when they would get picked up, they would tell the people, like, I just got out of jail, and this guy told me he would give me a safe place to stay, to get my feet back on the ground. And

Speaker 2 in the middle of the night, he's in my bed trying to do stuff with me. And it spread like wildfire around Stillwater.

Speaker 2 And that's where my father sat me down. Said, did Dennis ever touch you? The first time he sat me down was probably a year after the,

Speaker 2 so I was probably 13.

Speaker 2 The second time

Speaker 2 was when a waitress in a

Speaker 2 donut shop told my father over a cup of coffee that her son, who was a classmate of mine, same grade from Stillwater, in the Boy Scouts,

Speaker 2 had been by Dennis.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 my father came home after she said that and this time he said, before you answer me, I just want you to know you'll never have to go to the cops. You'll never have to testify in court.

Speaker 2 I'll take care of Dennis myself. Did he ever touch you? So

Speaker 2 is my father saying,

Speaker 2 I'll kill Dennis?

Speaker 2 That's how I took it. And that's way too much weight to put

Speaker 2 your teenage son under, like, as tempting as it was. Like,

Speaker 2 I was tortured over that for a long time. Like, man, do I tell him? Do I tell him? Do I tell him? I want Dennis dead.

Speaker 2 Yeah, dad could kill him. Dad could kill him.
But then what if it goes wrong? What if dad gets killed in the... in the attack then then it's my fault for telling him what if dad

Speaker 2 goes to prison for the rest of his life and I'm without a father? That's on me because I told him. So no, I can't tell him.
No, I can't. And I didn't tell him.

Speaker 1 Do you think your dad would have?

Speaker 2 Yeah, because there's something later on in the book my dad told me on his deathbed, and

Speaker 2 that just confirmed that he would have done it.

Speaker 1 How do you feel that it was you

Speaker 1 that killed Dennis rather than your dad?

Speaker 2 Yeah, nobody's ever asked me that.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 feel better that it was me instead of my dad.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 sending somebody else to do your work to

Speaker 2 like, like look if

Speaker 2 I did it and I

Speaker 2 was either on a suicide mission I was either going to commit suicide after or I was going to do life in prison

Speaker 2 that's on me I don't want to be responsible for sending somebody else to do life in prison to get mortally wounded maybe

Speaker 2 or to commit suicide after they do it I don't want that that on my shoulders.

Speaker 1 It seems by all accounts you were a very smart kid, and you end up at Northeastern.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I never applied myself in high school.
Like, after the abuse, I just,

Speaker 2 everything was lacking, you know, another sign, you know, but I was really smart and I could do no work, get BCs.

Speaker 2 Somehow I got into Northeastern. They weren't as strict back then as they are now.
Like now, it's like

Speaker 2 uber tough to get in, you know. But I got in and I became an excellent student.
I graduate graduated cum laude.

Speaker 1 And there is someone that you meet at Northeastern that's featured in your book?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I, you know, Dennis Pegg did a lot of things that derailed a lot in my life.
And one of the things he derailed was me being able to be intimate

Speaker 2 with a partner. And by intimate, I mean like open.
You know, like s

Speaker 2 is one thing. Intimacy is a completely different thing

Speaker 2 and I met this girl Lisa

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 she was so bubbly and outgoing and

Speaker 2 she approached me I was I was just studying by myself and she came over and plopped down and just she was a whirlwind in my life and

Speaker 2 Shaw signs though even back then like she would say to me, we would be laying together in bed and I would, I would have, like soldiers come back from war and have a thousand mile stare.

Speaker 2 I had that stare.

Speaker 2 And she'd be like, hello, hello. And she'd be like, like in front of my face and I'm still just like,

Speaker 2 like I wouldn't even acknowledge it. And then she'd hit me and I'd be like, what?

Speaker 2 She's like,

Speaker 2 where are you in your mind right now? Like,

Speaker 2 you are not present with me. I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
You know, like, played it off that she was nuts.

Speaker 2 You know, the trauma of this abuse was still really fresh and raw. And I would get lost in thought about it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we had an amazing connection, amazing love between us. I could tell her I loved her, and I did.

Speaker 2 We had passion

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 we dated for six years and she was ready to like

Speaker 2 start our lives together, get married, careers, family, whatever it would entail

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I couldn't do that. Like

Speaker 1 did you ever think about telling her or?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 For a similar reason to my parents. I didn't want to go from the cool,

Speaker 2 sexy,

Speaker 2 party animal, fun-loving boyfriend to the

Speaker 2 wounded, broken wing

Speaker 2 duckling.

Speaker 1 So you guys break up?

Speaker 2 We break up.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like she was?

Speaker 1 I mean, do you believe in soulmates? Is that a crazy question to ask someone your age?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 1 Do you think that she was yours? Yeah.

Speaker 1 How long after college do you guys break up?

Speaker 2 I was a year ahead of her.

Speaker 2 So I graduated and then she graduated a year behind. And then, like, another year after that

Speaker 2 is when she's like, you know,

Speaker 2 what are we doing here? You know, I was, I was just

Speaker 2 jerking her around at that time,

Speaker 2 and uh, she's like,

Speaker 2 you know, you

Speaker 2 she was living in the city, I was living in Jersey, I would go in for a weekend, we'd have an amazing time, but then I'd disappear for a month or two and then show back up, have an amazing time, disappear again.

Speaker 2 And she's like, every time you disappear, you're breaking my heart like what are you doing

Speaker 2 and uh

Speaker 2 I just uh she's like are we gonna get our act together and get going on life together or or not and I go I can't do that like everything is subconscious with it with abuse

Speaker 2 it was just like the thought of

Speaker 2 getting married being tied down

Speaker 2 scares me to death. It makes me feel really uncomfortable because being tied down

Speaker 2 and scared to death is how I was in that guy's house

Speaker 2 and I'm feeling trapped and I felt trapped in that house. So just that trapped feeling, I can't feel trapped.
I don't want to feel trapped. Don't make me feel trapped.

Speaker 2 I'm going to run if you make me feel trapped. You're making me feel trapped.
I got to go. Sorry.
And that's how it was. And that's how it was with careers.
You know, like

Speaker 2 in my 20s, it was like two to three years in a career, and that was it. Like,

Speaker 2 I'm getting really uncomfortable feeling. I'm feeling trapped.
I'm feeling

Speaker 2 like just a lot of pressure. I'm just feeling like I'm just getting pushed down into the ground.

Speaker 2 I gotta run. I gotta go.

Speaker 2 I was a prey caught in his snare. He had me trapped for years, and

Speaker 2 I just never wanted to feel that feeling again.

Speaker 1 Just an interesting observation. You don't have to comment, but it's interesting because you feel that way with relationships and careers.

Speaker 1 But in your book, you don't use this terminology for your careers, but you do with Lisa. You have this tendency to write post-Lisa when describing certain events that happen after the breakup.

Speaker 1 It's very interesting.

Speaker 2 Back in college,

Speaker 2 myself and my two roommates, and Lisa and her two roommates, we all dated. So the six of us were always together.

Speaker 2 Two of the couples didn't make it, Lisa and I being one, but one of the couples did. They got married.

Speaker 1 After college, you guys break up. You're in...

Speaker 1 The FBI is calling you. The mob is after you.

Speaker 1 Everything is kind of everywhere. And then you kill Dennis Pegg.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like in your darkest time you never thought like maybe I should reach out to her?

Speaker 2 Constantly.

Speaker 2 Over the decades constantly.

Speaker 1 What stopped you?

Speaker 2 Just the way I was living,

Speaker 2 the shape I was in, the shape my life was in. Like

Speaker 2 I had so many grandiose

Speaker 2 fantasies about finding Lisa and sweeping her off her feet and riding off into the sunset.

Speaker 2 But I've got the mob wanting to kill me. Like, I'm really going to bring her into that.

Speaker 2 I'm going to go find her, sweep her off her feet, ride off into the sunset.

Speaker 2 But I'm addicted to drugs and alcohol. Really? I'm going to bring her into that.

Speaker 1 So you don't.

Speaker 2 So there was never a good time. I talked myself out of it.
I would talk myself into it, and then I talked myself out of it.

Speaker 1 So you don't not reach out because of you. You don't not reach out for her.

Speaker 1 Like you don't want to bring her into these things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like I don't want to hurt her all over again. Like I knew I hurt her back in the day

Speaker 2 and I cared so much for her. I didn't want to do that again.
Like my life, my life

Speaker 2 from the abuse to the murder,

Speaker 2 it was

Speaker 2 tumultuous to say the least. Like I was

Speaker 2 I was off wandering in the desert for 30 years, like, just going down one bad path after another. And I couldn't bring her into that.

Speaker 1 So now you're in jail. You're facing life in prison after the killing.
You're withdrawing from drugs. You have a hole in your hand.
I mean, what are your options to plead insanity?

Speaker 1 Like, do you have any options at this point? What's going on in your mind the first night in jail?

Speaker 2 Well, they put me in the super cell, which is exactly where I needed to be. Do the lights turn off in there? No.

Speaker 1 I feel like that makes things worse, no?

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 You know, the camera's in there and, you know,

Speaker 2 it's on you. And

Speaker 2 yeah, it was hell.

Speaker 1 I think what's interesting is I was reading through all of the psychiatric reports that were done when you were in jail. Did you feel like a lab run?

Speaker 1 It seems like there's so much debate about your state of mind. Do you feel like you're just being poked and prodded at?

Speaker 2 And yeah, like those psych exams were like nerve-wracking. You know, it was, you know, because you,

Speaker 2 some of the stuff they had you do is just, you know.

Speaker 1 They would show you pictures and try to get you to describe the scenario, the scene.

Speaker 1 It's very nice.

Speaker 2 You know, and then like, I had to do the

Speaker 2 Rorschach test, the ink blots. Yeah.
Like, and you got to come up with what it looks like. And it's just,

Speaker 2 oh my God.

Speaker 2 And I thought, like, one wrong answer, like, they would, like,

Speaker 2 he cannot get out for the rest of his life. Boom.
You know, like, I just thought, like, oh,

Speaker 2 and the pressure you put yourself under to try to answer things right, it just makes it worse. Cause then you get, you're like, oh, it was.
And like, and like 500 multiple choice tests.

Speaker 2 Like, boom, you got take this 500 multiple choice tests like and they ask you the same question in that multiple choice test four different ways

Speaker 2 Seeing if you like they'll reword it, but it's the same question and to see if you answer differently, you know

Speaker 1 It seems like you are honest. I don't know.
This is one. So you were shown a picture that is not provided, but

Speaker 1 you say that it appears to be a man who's pulling away. She's trying to hold him and talk to him.
Maybe he drinks too much and has anger problems. So it feels like you took these tests very seriously.

Speaker 1 Like, it doesn't seem like you were trying to answer how they wanted.

Speaker 2 Almost feels like I'm talking about Lisa and I. Yeah.

Speaker 1 When you get to prison, eventually, you have to carry around a file. So that if someone accuses you of being a pedal, prisoners will show their file.

Speaker 1 Were there a lot of pedophiles getting beaten up in prison?

Speaker 2 There's a lot of fights, but it wasn't necessarily the pedophiles getting beaten up.

Speaker 2 Believe it or not, the prison likes the pedophiles because they're the snitches.

Speaker 2 So, like, they use them

Speaker 2 to be snitches. So, like, they, you know, like they hate what they did, but they use

Speaker 2 that against them to get info out of them. So

Speaker 2 on the unit I was on, I was told by my

Speaker 2 therapist

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 two out of three,

Speaker 2 I was told one out of three, closer to two out of three guys on my unit was there for a crime, mostly involving children. I was like, are you kidding me?

Speaker 2 And I'm like,

Speaker 2 oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I,

Speaker 2 And then, you know, I was told, you know, one of the guards told me, like, oh, yeah, they're our snitches for us. You know, like, they give us

Speaker 2 all the dirt on guys.

Speaker 1 If you hear about a pal that gets beaten up in jail, did you feel anything where you're just like,

Speaker 2 well, in the county jail,

Speaker 2 the tier I was on was not supposed to have any.

Speaker 2 And yet,

Speaker 2 somehow I was told by

Speaker 2 paperwork getting

Speaker 2 mixed up, they kept putting pedophiles on my tier in the county jail.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the guards

Speaker 2 in the county jail hated the pedopiles. The pedopiles in prison, they use them.
In the county jail, they hated them. And they would come up to me and be like,

Speaker 2 a guy just came on. He's a kitty toucher.
So, like, they would be like egging me on

Speaker 2 to like do something.

Speaker 1 But that would have made your life

Speaker 1 exponentially harder

Speaker 2 as well. Yeah, and I

Speaker 2 was cognizant of like

Speaker 2 what will that look like to go to trial, to go to sentencing, and all I've been doing my whole time here is beating up pedophiles. Like,

Speaker 2 how could they possibly release me then?

Speaker 2 But I would tell them, myself and another guy, would go sit down with them.

Speaker 2 And I did this a couple times early on. And then I just let two other guys.

Speaker 2 And we would just say, look, man,

Speaker 2 we got word that you're a kitty toucher.

Speaker 2 You know what they call them in there? I don't even know if I put it in the book.

Speaker 2 I don't know. But tree jumper.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 Think of the guy with an overcoat on hiding behind a tree.

Speaker 2 And then a little kid walks by and they jump out and open their overcoat. Tree jumper.

Speaker 2 So, like, that's what they're called here. Like, out west in California, they call them chomos.

Speaker 2 Oh, child molester. Chomos, they call them.
But here in Jersey, New York, they're tree jumpers.

Speaker 2 And sort of, you know, the guards would either say kitty toucher or that's a tree jumper.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we would just be like, like uh sit down with them at a table and be like look bro uh

Speaker 2 we're told you're a tree jumper and uh

Speaker 2 you gotta go you gotta hit the button you could go over there's a button by the door and you press the button and the guards would be like what do you want and

Speaker 2 you say I want to check in means protective custody

Speaker 2 So I did that a couple times. I'm like, look, if we're wrong, I apologize, but it's not safe for you to stay here because that's the word now,

Speaker 2 and somebody's gonna come after you.

Speaker 2 And they'd be like, you know, they'd be like, it's not me, man, I'm not here for that, I'm not here for that. And we'd get up and be like,

Speaker 2 sorry, bro.

Speaker 2 And we'd walk away, and within a minute, they'd go over to the button and be like, I need protective custody.

Speaker 1 So you never

Speaker 1 wanted to maybe punch one?

Speaker 2 No, no, like I just, like,

Speaker 2 I wasn't there. Like, if, and I, I, I, I've said this, like, if I got a life sentence,

Speaker 2 then all bets were off. Right.
You know, but I wasn't, and my therapist told me about how many were on my unit because she didn't want me to do anything stupid.

Speaker 2 She goes, don't tell the guys on your unit what you're here for. Yeah.
Because it's called putting a battery pack on your back and amping you up. So she'd be like,

Speaker 2 if the guys know what you're here for, they're going to put a battery pack on your back and try to get you amped up to go do something stupid.

Speaker 2 I go, nobody's going to make me do anything I don't want to do. I go, they're not putting any battery pack on my back.
I go,

Speaker 2 and in the psych exam, you know,

Speaker 2 they asked me that. Like, how do we know you're not a risk to harm other people? And I'm like,

Speaker 2 unless you were the person who abused me,

Speaker 2 I'm not out to avenge every pedophile out there. I go, just the one that abused me.

Speaker 1 What was worse, the mice or the cockroaches?

Speaker 2 Oof.

Speaker 2 Well, I was on the top bunk, so I didn't have to necessarily deal with the mice.

Speaker 2 To me, the cockroaches were worse because they would like fall on you

Speaker 2 while you're trying to sleep.

Speaker 2 Wow. Do you want to lay down tonight and have a cockroach fall on you? You scream and like, ah!

Speaker 2 that was in a place called craft

Speaker 2 c-r-a-f and that's uh

Speaker 2 when you leave the county jail to go to prison you have to go to this place to get classified which prisons suit you best and it's

Speaker 2 they they purposely have it as a hellhole to like

Speaker 2 frighten you from never wanting to come back into the prison system.

Speaker 2 And the guards are frightening and the mice are frightening and the cockroaches are frightening and everything's disgusting and it's just like you don't want to go back to craft. Kraft was hell.

Speaker 1 I mean how is prison in general? But like how bad is bad? I mean I see people are flushing their heads in toilets for drugs, for smoking marijuana.

Speaker 2 Well those toilet those toilets are like the airplane toilets. You know, it's just like sucks.
So if you want to smoke weed, you put your head in your toilet and blow it and hit the button.

Speaker 2 You can always tell somebody who's smoking weed in their cell because the button goes

Speaker 2 you just hear the suction sound going and going and going and going and going.

Speaker 1 So guards are just walking by and they just see cellmates with their heads in the toilets.

Speaker 2 Well, there's usually only one guard on at a time.

Speaker 2 There's a guard on the floor and then there's

Speaker 2 two guards in a bubble.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they have to do a walkthrough like every so often. So you know when

Speaker 2 they just did their walkthrough like, all right, I got I got two hours now or whatever it is, or an hour till they do another one.

Speaker 2 So you can smoke your weed then.

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Speaker 1 You wrote a good chunk of your book in prison,

Speaker 1 but you used a prison pen. Can you describe what a prison pen is? How

Speaker 2 they call them security pens. Okay.
And they're these

Speaker 2 flexible plastic tubes with a little thing of ink in them. It's just,

Speaker 2 you know, so you can't stab somebody with it. You know, like the they're everything in a prison is: can they make a weapon out of this?

Speaker 1 Are there lots of weapons being made?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Okay.
Like, uh,

Speaker 2 I mean, I mean, one of the main things they liked where I was at was the

Speaker 2 tiles in the shower were coming out. So you could, like, pop a tile off and then carve it down into a point, you know.

Speaker 2 But most of the, I didn't see any stabbings. It was just fights.
It was fist fights.

Speaker 1 Were you ever involved in any?

Speaker 2 No. No.

Speaker 1 That's so interesting how you were able to keep to yourself pretty well.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I didn't have any fights in the county jail.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I had one incident in prison.

Speaker 2 We lined up for the shower.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 this big guy, and he was not mentally all there, which you always have to be cognizant of. He went around everybody to the front of the line.
And everybody started moaning.

Speaker 2 And for whatever reason, they looked at me like,

Speaker 2 say something so I go up to them and I'm like hey bro we're all waiting in line you gotta you gotta wait at the end of the line I'm next

Speaker 2 I go come on man we're all being cool just you know you can't you can't just cut the line I'm next

Speaker 2 so now do I want to fight and go to the hole

Speaker 2 over this guy getting in front of the shower

Speaker 2 So I just said, whatever, bro.

Speaker 2 You know, like, it wasn't, it wasn't worth me getting into a fight or going to the hole over a guy cutting in the line of the shower who has clearly some form of mental illness.

Speaker 1 How bad is the hole?

Speaker 1 Have you been to the hole? Never been in the hole?

Speaker 2 No. No.
You've heard of the hole. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Does it seem bad?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That was a dumb question. Yeah, that was fair.
I mean, I was in a suicide cell for four weeks. That's bad.
Really? That's like the hole. you get nothing, you get no book, you know, you get

Speaker 2 you can't get commissary,

Speaker 2 it's just misery, you don't get out.

Speaker 2 How long did it actually feel to you?

Speaker 2 The suicide one? The four weeks.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was long. Because the suicide cell was right next to the intake.
So people would be coming in like drugged out, off the wall, loud, screaming, wanting to fight the guards.

Speaker 2 There was women that were wanting to fight the guards

Speaker 2 spitting on them

Speaker 2 uh always commotion

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 there's other

Speaker 2 side cells there so you got guys screaming all hours of the night um

Speaker 2 it's cold it's freezing at times it was uh it was just miserable so it did not make you less suicidal

Speaker 2 it made you more okay no suicide cells though but you know but uh it's it's very tough to kill yourself in there so um

Speaker 1 interesting i was in the right spot as miser miserable as it was because early on that's all i could think about while you're there waiting to figure out what happens i mean there's a lot of discourse on whether or not your charge should be dropped to manslaughter.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of back and forth with the prosecutors. But one of the main things that keeps happening is more victims come forward.

Speaker 1 I mean, is that kind of a weird feeling? Because, on one hand, you're happy your legal case is getting stronger, but on the other hand, like it must be very depressing to know that there's more,

Speaker 1 like more people, more trauma.

Speaker 1 Or did you feel, in a sense, like maybe we can, in a sense, get through it together? Maybe this is some closure for people. What was that feeling like?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I mean, early on as a kid, you think you're alone. you think you're the only one um

Speaker 2 later on

Speaker 2 my lawyer is like

Speaker 2 between the state police the prosecutor's office my office we're taking so many calls about victims you know he even said at times it's hard to keep up with uh

Speaker 2 you know that It hurts, but it also

Speaker 2 helps your case, you know, like it corroborates

Speaker 2 what you did wasn't just being,

Speaker 2 you know, drunk looking for a thrill kill, you know, like some idiot said.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's tough to like

Speaker 2 know that you need other people's pain to come forward to help you, you know.

Speaker 2 But hopefully it would help them to like, speak out because that's the only way you can heal is to speak out.

Speaker 1 You said, like some some idiot said.

Speaker 2 I had the article. Oh, idiot.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'm going to read snippets of this article, but I do have questions later because.

Speaker 2 And I don't know if we should use his name. I don't even want to give him.

Speaker 1 He's deceased.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Who? The guy who wrote that? Yeah. Ernest is dead.
Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I know. We did share a little chuckle over that one.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Okay, read away.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow, that's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 I'm not supposed to mourn, am I? Wow, you just blew me away with that.

Speaker 2 Holy smokes, you guys really did your work.

Speaker 2 His article is crazy.

Speaker 2 That? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's a very intense article.

Speaker 1 And did you, I mean, I'm curious to know if you read it while you were in jail, but it reads, Dennis Pegg was the kindest, most considerate, and gentlest man to ever have graced the earth.

Speaker 2 I did read it. You did read it.
Yeah, you get the papers

Speaker 2 in there.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I didn't read it at the time because I was in

Speaker 2 when it was written, but

Speaker 2 it was mailed in to me

Speaker 2 and I read it.

Speaker 1 It is disgusting that certain low lives only now are coming out from under a rock to besmirch the stellar reputation of a man who can no longer defend himself.

Speaker 2 So a victim is a low life.

Speaker 1 Did you have any sort of, like, what was your reaction when you're reading these words? I know it wasn't right away, but.

Speaker 2 It hurt.

Speaker 2 Like to be

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 see

Speaker 2 someone

Speaker 2 speak so highly about a predator. Like, you had

Speaker 2 everybody heard rumors. This guy had to hear rumors too.

Speaker 2 But to discount that and build this guy up as something he wasn't,

Speaker 2 you can't

Speaker 2 little boys

Speaker 2 and do

Speaker 2 something good and just people focus on the good. No,

Speaker 2 you're little boys. Like, any good you do is out the window.
And yet, Ernest wanted to just focus on the good.

Speaker 4 Wait, did we talk about who wrote this article?

Speaker 1 Yes, his name is Ernest, and he was very friendly with Dennis Pegg. Very close friends, and also his attorney.
He also owed Dennis Pegg $12,000.

Speaker 1 I mean, the things you can find on the internet are very strange. I don't know.
But he is since deceased, but I just

Speaker 1 find it like unthinkable because even if I had a friend,

Speaker 1 but all these victims are coming forward, there's no way that you can write these types of words. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, he had to know the rumors, and yet you're going to call me a lowlife coming out from under a rock, and you're going to build Dennis Pegg up as this pillar of society. Like,

Speaker 2 I don't know how you do that.

Speaker 2 I don't know how

Speaker 2 Ernest lived with himself after writing that article.

Speaker 1 Most people,

Speaker 2 they

Speaker 1 support you, but

Speaker 1 are there more earnests out there? Like, do you see people writing stuff like this about you?

Speaker 1 Have people said things like this to you?

Speaker 2 No, just the internet trolls. Like, when I'll do something, you know,

Speaker 2 you can't get away from them. Maybe you don't have them, but.
Oh, there's an escape.

Speaker 2 But I'll get a,

Speaker 2 you know, just,

Speaker 2 and I don't know what joy they get out of it.

Speaker 2 Like, because when I when I do any type of interview, I put my heart and soul in it. Everything can be corroborated.
I'm not lying about anything. People think you're lying.
Yeah, oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, like this, this story is BS. Like, what is BS? It's Google my name.

Speaker 2 And early on, I would try to interact with the internet trolls just to be like,

Speaker 2 and then they vanish. You don't hear from them.
So I just gave up trying to, like, why bother?

Speaker 2 But yeah, as far as like

Speaker 2 people in my community,

Speaker 2 no,

Speaker 2 I don't hear anything from like what Ernest wrote back then.

Speaker 2 I don't see that. But it's, I mean, okay.

Speaker 1 I looked up Dennis Pegg's obituary.

Speaker 2 Oh, isn't that horrific? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I thought, surely it's going to be a sentence ordeal where maybe the family is like okay he's gone we're in mourning he's survived by these people it's like a one and a half two pages it's talking about his time in the boy scouts

Speaker 1 extensively

Speaker 1 has anyone in his family reached out to apologize has have they have they said anything to you no i i've been asked that like because people are like

Speaker 2 did did anybody in the family ever say, I'm sorry, you know, for what happened to you, by our brother, by our uncle, by whoever? And no, nobody ever reached out.

Speaker 2 And they were all interviewed by the prosecutor.

Speaker 2 And not one person made mention of Dennis having a traumatic childhood.

Speaker 2 It's a falsehood that

Speaker 2 those abused become abusers. I had a therapist who worked in a diagnostic center for pet sales.
She said 100%

Speaker 2 coming in the door said, I was abused as a child.

Speaker 2 They would give them all lie detector tests. 75% failed

Speaker 2 when asked, were you abused as a child? So like they all, they all use that to try to garner sympathy for their actions instead of just like

Speaker 2 saying, I'm evil. Yeah.
And I do evil things.

Speaker 1 And so none of his family will really acknowledge it, but wasn't his nephew a victim?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, his great-nephew committed suicide after I was arrested and

Speaker 2 he shot himself

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 everybody I know and I know people really close

Speaker 2 to him

Speaker 2 said what a wonderful kid he was

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 yet he took his life

Speaker 2 after my arrest and they found actual images on Dennis's computer of the nephew.

Speaker 4 Do you believe that has your arrests like trigger something?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean just like it opened my brother's Pandora's box, it probably opened Dylan's Pandora's box as well.

Speaker 1 Ernest writes in the article, that is the definition of a coward. That you guys are only coming out now that Dennis is dead.
That's what they all are. Cowards, plain and simple.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like what you did was cowardly in any way?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 I went there, like I said, basically on a suicide mission. I was ready to give my life that night.
You know, like, he should have had a handgun

Speaker 2 10 different spots in that house. And as soon as I opened that front door, I should have been shot dead.

Speaker 1 It's interesting because a lot of people say that

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 1 worst thing you can do to another person

Speaker 1 is take away their life.

Speaker 1 But is that really true? Because it almost makes it seem like then what you did is worse than his crime.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I've had people say, you know, like,

Speaker 2 you murdered. And I'm like,

Speaker 2 yeah.

Speaker 2 I did. And that's why I'm in the position I am

Speaker 2 to advise every other victim to not follow my path. I did things wrong, I

Speaker 2 led a self-destructive life, I should have healed early on, I should have talked about this early on,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 that's one of the main reasons for me being here on your program is because you have a younger demographic, I feel, and that's the age I want to reach so people

Speaker 2 can hear from me that what I did didn't heal me.

Speaker 2 It just created more problems, more trauma. I was ready to kill myself.
I was ready to do life in prison. And you don't have to forfeit your life because you were abused.

Speaker 2 You know, you can heal from it. And I'm healing now.

Speaker 2 And I want people to see that. And I want them to

Speaker 2 follow my footsteps now versus how I lived earlier.

Speaker 1 But do you feel like Dennis also killed something in all of his victims?

Speaker 2 Oh, of course. I had

Speaker 2 a former lieutenant of a

Speaker 2 police department who was a professor at Seton Hall,

Speaker 2 and he equated

Speaker 2 childhood abuse to soul murder. You murder the soul of that child.

Speaker 2 And I agreed with him a thousand percent on that.

Speaker 1 There is this interesting moment where... Okay, well, first of all, your murder charge, first-degree murder charge, is brought down to manslaughter.

Speaker 1 So at some point, the prosecution, they come around.

Speaker 1 Exactly. It took three years.

Speaker 2 It took three years.

Speaker 2 I had that first-degree murder hanging over my head for three years in the county jail. There is no such thing as a speedy trial when it comes to a murder.
And

Speaker 2 our

Speaker 2 psyche valve from our side

Speaker 2 got delayed

Speaker 2 and it got presented to the prosecutor

Speaker 2 just before that three you know like a couple months before the three-year mark and in that psych evaluation is everything laid out like the abuse the murder it's not like a whodunit anymore

Speaker 2 and between all the victims that came forward and then reading that psych evaluation

Speaker 2 They

Speaker 2 the prosecutor offered me a plea deal of second degree manslaughter. And second-degree manslaughter carries five to ten versus thirty to life for first-degree murder.

Speaker 1 Okay, that is another thing that was so interesting.

Speaker 1 I feel like a lot of cases that we work on, the psych evaluations from the defense and the prosecution, it's like reading two different books from two different planets.

Speaker 1 Years, we had difficulty being like, wait, this is the prosecution's psych evaluation. This is the they're identical.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 what's really crazy is my defense came out of the prosecutor's

Speaker 2 psyche eval.

Speaker 2 He came out and said,

Speaker 2 I feel passion provocation fits Clark perfectly. And he explained why.
And passion provocation had never been used. 30 plus years after the fact.

Speaker 2 Passion provocation is the husband comes home and his wife's in bed with the mailman and he freaks out and kills one of them or both. That's passion provocation.

Speaker 2 This was being used 30 plus years after the initial abuse and

Speaker 2 there's four factors to it and he fit me into all four factors in the present day and how it, how it fit. So like

Speaker 2 their side came up with my defense because we had initially come come up with diminished capacity.

Speaker 1 There is this interesting thing in the book where they do say the problem, though, is that you're a decent human being.

Speaker 1 And so they say that's the problem because now, with the manslaughter charge, they're saying that you will have trouble living with yourself unless you pay a debt to society. Do you

Speaker 1 agree with that?

Speaker 2 Strangely, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I

Speaker 2 because I've said to people, you know, like um, you know, like some of some of the trolls, you know, like, I'm like, I, I paid my debt, like, I did what I was ordered to do.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it gave me time

Speaker 2 to think about life, to redirect my life,

Speaker 2 to think about what I want to do with my life. I needed to be away

Speaker 2 from drugs and alcohol. I needed to

Speaker 2 bring healing. I needed to confront my demons.

Speaker 2 And being locked up,

Speaker 2 even though I was in hell, prison is hell, I was able to do that.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'm so sorry. One thing, though, I will say is I'm going to link it in the description, but you have this insane interview with the prosecutor that was on your case.
I thought it was the most...

Speaker 1 You guys have such interesting interactions. I'm like, how do you interact with someone that was trying to, at least at some point, make you stay in prison for the rest of your life?

Speaker 1 Is it a weird dynamic or you guys are just buds?

Speaker 2 Actually, this morning at the hotel before I came here to meet you, guess who I got a text from?

Speaker 2 The prosecutor saying,

Speaker 2 saying,

Speaker 2 and this is what he said. He goes, I'm sorry I missed your book signing.
I was in the hospital.

Speaker 2 Please save me an autographed book.

Speaker 1 No, because you have some very interesting friendships. I mean, you're friends with...
a lot of the officers that arrested you.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You're friends with the lead prosecutor on your case, yep, you're friends with a lot of like the forensic teams that probably process the crime scene, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 That is

Speaker 2 my biggest supporter, yeah,

Speaker 2 through throughout all of this has been law enforcement.

Speaker 2 That's fascinating, yeah, from the from the very get-go, um, starting with Howie Ryan at the uh actually, it started on my steps of my house when I was arrested.

Speaker 2 The guy who gave me that

Speaker 2 state police shirt, he was there.

Speaker 2 He told his, he was supposed to be getting off. He heard my name mentioned and he told his sergeant, I know that guy, he's a friend of mine.
Let me go to the house in case this goes sideways.

Speaker 2 I want to be able to talk to Clark.

Speaker 2 And when I was arrested on my front steps, he came up to me and he goes, and he said quietly dude don't say a word

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 then it went to howie ryan at the state police station and then in the county jail i thought because dennis pegg worked there yeah

Speaker 2 because we heard the rumors 30 plus years ago about him waiting outside taking inmates home nothing ever happened

Speaker 2 I thought for sure he was protected and I thought for sure I'd get the beating of a lifetime lifetime in there.

Speaker 2 And one by one guards came into the suicide cell and said

Speaker 2 I never worked with the guy. I'm hearing what an animal he was.
Just hang in there.

Speaker 2 Keep your mouth shut. Don't talk to anybody.
And that was like guy after guy after guy would tell me that.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's so

Speaker 1 rare. I mean, you usually see a lot of stories of, I guess, the blue wall of cops protecting cops so this is what i thought was going to happen yeah

Speaker 1 wow

Speaker 1 so you walk into the courtroom to give your statement

Speaker 2 what what is that like oh that was torturous you know like i can sit here with you now and and talk and and people will comment on you know, a few other podcasts I've done.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know how you can talk so easily about such trauma. Well, you want to see my first speech? Go look at my courtroom speech on YouTube.

Speaker 2 It's horrific.

Speaker 2 I'm shrinking down, trying to make myself so small. I'm just wanting to hide.

Speaker 2 I can't get words out. I'm like stuttering.
I'm breaking down crying,

Speaker 2 sniveling.

Speaker 6 From the time that I was eight years old until I was 12 years old,

Speaker 6 I was sexually assaulted and raped by Dennis Peck.

Speaker 6 It started out with him wanting to touch my scar that I had from open heart surgery at the age of six.

Speaker 6 It progressed to wrestling matches

Speaker 6 and eventually led to him raping me.

Speaker 6 At the time, Dennis Pegg was a sheriff's officer.

Speaker 6 Scout master of troop number 83 in Stillwater

Speaker 6 and a close friend of our family.

Speaker 6 Dennis Pegg told me

Speaker 6 that he had sexual relations with a close family relative

Speaker 6 and also my childhood friend Jeff Hall.

Speaker 6 Jeff committed suicide on February 10, 1983

Speaker 6 with a shotgun to his head.

Speaker 6 I was a junior in high school.

Speaker 6 My brother Jay and I ran to Jeff's house.

Speaker 6 I remember standing in the living room of Jeff's house with my brother.

Speaker 6 We got there before the authorities arrived.

Speaker 6 I saw a puddle of blood on his bathroom floor.

Speaker 6 I always believed that Jeff killed himself as a result of Dennis Pegg's abuse.

Speaker 6 As an adult, I visited Jeff's grave at least twice a year.

Speaker 6 Every Christmas Eve, I went to visit him.

Speaker 6 I never told anyone about Dennis Pegg's abuse

Speaker 6 prior to the night of June 12, 2012.

Speaker 2 But that's how confronting your trauma goes early on.

Speaker 2 It's tough the first couple conversations. People avoid it because

Speaker 2 they want to avoid that, but that's how you get past it.

Speaker 2 So I look at that courtroom video as a stepping stone to being able to sit here with you now and talk, you know, fluently about it.

Speaker 1 But when you're on your way out of that courtroom,

Speaker 1 everybody starts clapping.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was pretty amazing.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it wasn't they weren't clapping for me murdering a pedophile.

Speaker 2 They were clapping for me confronting my trauma finally.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I actually got a standing ovation, you know, which

Speaker 2 was pretty amazing. And

Speaker 2 the guards that took me back out of the courtroom into the holding cell,

Speaker 2 they said to me,

Speaker 2 wow, that was a first. And I'm like, what's that? And they're like, Never have I seen somebody admit to murdering somebody and get a standing ovation for it.
So I was like,

Speaker 2 and they're like, that was some speech you gave. Good job.

Speaker 1 Did it make you feel less lonely when people were clapping? Like, what is the feeling? Did you, did you feel, is that them showing support? Did you feel less lonely?

Speaker 2 I think they could all tell how painful it was to get through what I got through.

Speaker 1 And when it comes to sentencing, I mean, it seems like the judge is in a kind of a tricky situation because

Speaker 1 it seems like there's a lot of debate about what's justice in your case.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, typically justice looks like X amount of years,

Speaker 1 but that doesn't really feel right in this case.

Speaker 1 But was there some sort of concern that if they didn't give you enough time, that other people would start going out and taking justice into their own hands?

Speaker 2 Was that like a huge well, that was one of the things, yeah, that was mentioned.

Speaker 2 And my lawyer had me brace myself for the high end of the sentencing which was 10 years correct yeah he he goes he goes i i really can't see anything less than eight years he goes you know i i'd be just brace yourself for eight to ten years he had put in a motion to sentence me to three to five years because if you have never been arrested Even though I had all those run-ins with those three letter agencies, I was never arrested.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he put in a motion to have me sentenced to a third degree crime. And I had enough time in where had the judge gone with that, I would have been released.
But the,

Speaker 2 you know, so he goes, you know,

Speaker 2 all this motion that I'm putting in gives a wider sentencing range.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the judge,

Speaker 2 you know, he took a lot of deliberation and he said a lot of things that that got me like really excited. And

Speaker 2 I'm thinking of liberating Mr. Fredericks at this moment.
And I know Mr. Fredericks only did what he did because of what was done to him.

Speaker 2 And then in the end, he said,

Speaker 2 I'm not going to go.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to acknowledge the motion for third-degree crime. I am going to sentence you to the minimum five years.
and I apologize for having to send you to prison for a single day.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 The judge gives me the minimum and apologizes for giving me the minimum.

Speaker 1 That's such a weird feeling. I mean, it's the same thing with Howard Ryan apologizing to you.
I mean, I'm...

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's kind of, I wonder if it's a confusing feeling.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's why I say everybody, I think everybody in law enforcement, like, look, you know,

Speaker 2 a judge isn't isn't supposed to have ex-communication, you know, ex-communicado communications outside of the courtroom with anybody.

Speaker 2 They're human, you know, so he's going to probably hear rumors about Dennis Pegg as well. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the prosecutor ran a dual investigation on what I did and what Dennis Pegg had been up to for his whole life.

Speaker 2 And it was obvious what Dennis was doing. Everybody knew.
And it it got uncovered.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, they don't want to justify what I did.

Speaker 2 They still wanted to punish me.

Speaker 2 And I, you know, at the end of the day, I still had to do five years. It's no walk in the park.
It's still five years.

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 I had like the perfect storm.

Speaker 2 I'm in a little small town, a little small county

Speaker 2 with a monster who had a 45-year reign of of terror, who everybody heard something eventually,

Speaker 2 except maybe Ernest Hemshaw, who had his ears plugged. Everybody heard something about Dennis Pegg.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 at the end of the day, I got the minimum. I don't think that's going to happen to anybody else.

Speaker 2 You're not going to get this type of perfect storm if you go do what I did. And that's why, and you do not want to try to heal from abuse in prison.
Prison is hell.

Speaker 2 I am the rarity. I was able to do it.
I was able to start my healing, you know, getting locked up. But, man,

Speaker 2 don't think you're going to follow my footsteps. Start healing now instead of following me to prison like I did.
Ugh, you don't want to do that.

Speaker 1 What was the first thing you did when you got out of prison?

Speaker 2 Very first thing, my niece picked me up. I'm very close with my niece, Kim,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 she insisted on picking me up, and we went right to a diner.

Speaker 1 What'd you order?

Speaker 2 Oh my God, I had eggs, sausage, bacon, pancakes,

Speaker 2 everything, you know, and just.

Speaker 1 Wait, do you not get, okay, what was like your prison, like, what do,

Speaker 2 what do you eat in prison?

Speaker 2 Sorry. This is what, in prison, the food was.

Speaker 2 Food was tough.

Speaker 2 I ate six nights a week, I had ramen noodles and mackerel with hot sauce and honey. That's an interesting combination.
And that was six nights a week. On Sunday nights, they gave you real chicken.

Speaker 2 They gave you a chicken leg.

Speaker 2 So I would eat the chicken.

Speaker 2 But the other six nights, I had ramen noodles and mackerel.

Speaker 1 Wow. So you go to a diner and you order everything.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And what I, you know, everything

Speaker 2 from jail to prison is gluten. And I didn't, I was in agony my whole five years, like doubled over,

Speaker 2 in pain, agonizing pain, because I had celiac. I didn't know it.
And

Speaker 2 I lived on mailocks and tums for five years. And

Speaker 2 so getting out and just going to a diner and getting real food,

Speaker 2 you know, just, that was great.

Speaker 1 But after you get out,

Speaker 1 what happens with your brother?

Speaker 2 Yeah, nobody wanted me. I needed a place to live.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 my lawyer didn't want me going to my mother's. My mother didn't want me coming to my mother's.
My niece, my sister, nobody wanted me going to my mother's because my brother was there.

Speaker 2 He got divorced when I was locked up. He lost his business when I was locked up.
He lost his 33-acre

Speaker 2 horse farm when I was locked up. And

Speaker 2 nobody wanted me to uh come home because he was in such bad shape but i had it was either that or a uh homeless shelter so i just said let me just get out of here and we'll figure things out afterwards so i went home with my brother and mother but you guys still never i mean you suspect that he was a victim of dennis peg he knows you were but you guys never even when you get out of prison you don't talk about it no no

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 My brother didn't want to confront anything, didn't want to talk about anything. And it's quite often the case, you know, like members of family won't talk about what happened.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I thought when I was in prison, sitting in my prison cell, I would have these amazing conversations with my brother when I got out. And then when I got out, and

Speaker 2 the shape he was in, the path he was on,

Speaker 2 it was difficult.

Speaker 1 Do you think he felt felt guilty that he didn't protect you from his?

Speaker 2 I'm sure that's part of it also. He said numerous times, I should have been the one that killed Dennis.

Speaker 2 He said that over and over to me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 When did you find him?

Speaker 2 It was two years ago this past February.

Speaker 2 He was

Speaker 2 spiraling.

Speaker 2 He had gotten sober for nine months,

Speaker 2 but he was like a dry brush ready to catch fire. He wasn't doing anything spiritually,

Speaker 2 therapy-wise.

Speaker 2 I finally got him to go to the gym, start working out.

Speaker 2 So he eventually started drinking again. And even on his last day of life, I went to the gym.

Speaker 2 And I said to the gym owner, was my brother in today? He goes, yeah. He goes, he wasn't feeling that swift, but he was here.

Speaker 2 I said, Okay, that's a good sign. And I went home, and his truck was in the driveway.
And I went upstairs, and there he was on the kitchen floor.

Speaker 2 I thought he had killed himself. I thought he had

Speaker 2 shot himself, and I started screaming at him.

Speaker 2 How could you?

Speaker 2 And then I got closer, and then

Speaker 2 there was no

Speaker 2 gunshot wound.

Speaker 2 I called 911. I started CPR

Speaker 2 and I did CPR until the ambulance got there.

Speaker 2 CPR is exhausting and it was

Speaker 2 it took every ounce of me to keep going until they arrived and then they worked on him for an hour but he was long he was long gone by the time I found him.

Speaker 1 Do you think Dennis Pegg killed your brother? Yes.

Speaker 1 Yep.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 there's been times where I wish I could resurrect Dennis

Speaker 2 after my brother's death. Why?

Speaker 2 To do it all over again.

Speaker 2 My next-door neighbor Jeff, who was like a brother to me, put a shotgun in his mouth at age 23 and blew his head off. And my brother and I found him in his house.

Speaker 2 So not only do I find Jeff,

Speaker 2 then I have to find my brother

Speaker 2 and I blame Dennis for both of their deaths.

Speaker 1 I do too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Since prison, since you killed Dennis, have you drank?

Speaker 2 Have you done drugs?

Speaker 2 Nope, this past June I celebrated 13 years sober.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 1 Was it hard?

Speaker 2 The first two years were in jail.

Speaker 2 And a therapist will tell you 18 to 30 months it takes for your brain to rewire itself from the pleasure chemicals of drugs and alcohol. And during those first two years,

Speaker 2 here I'm facing life in prison.

Speaker 2 And I'm saying to myself,

Speaker 2 I cannot wait to see if I get out from under this life sentence so I can have a glass of red wine and a line of cocaine because they went perfect together.

Speaker 2 And I would say that to guys on a tier that I was friends with. I'd be like, man, I can't wait to do a line of Coke with a glass of red wine.
And then sometime after that second year,

Speaker 2 it just like, like a light just like hit me.

Speaker 2 Like a meteorite came into my being. And I was like, Are you out of your mind? Like, you can never go back to that.

Speaker 2 I can never go back to living like the animal I was. That died that night with Dennis living that way.
And I snapped out of it. That was it.
Wow.

Speaker 1 And no gambling, nothing.

Speaker 2 No.

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Speaker 1 Instead, it seems like you've been very busy changing laws.

Speaker 1 What happened in New Jersey? What's going on there?

Speaker 2 There were advocates working for 15 to 20 years to get a new statute of limitations law.

Speaker 2 What statute of limitations law allows is for victims of sexual abuse to sue their abuser or the organization that harbored their abuser. We had the worst law in the country.

Speaker 2 Our law stated in New Jersey that at age 18, when you officially became an adult, you had two years to file a lawsuit.

Speaker 2 So if you got sexually abused at 8, 10, 12, 15, you're going to come forward at 18 to file a lawsuit? It basically was a dead law.

Speaker 2 Like nobody's going to do that.

Speaker 2 So our statistics said that people don't talk about their abuse until age 48 to 52 is the norm.

Speaker 2 So we championed a law that took the age up to 55.

Speaker 2 And what was really holding it up is we wanted a two-year open window

Speaker 2 where where when the law went into effect, a two-year clock started ticking where anyone, no matter what age, the law went up to 55, but in that two-year window, you could be 85, 75, 65, and come forward and file a lawsuit.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the Catholic Church were the ones fighting that law. At every hearing, Their lawyers were there opposing the law, saying it would bankrupt the Catholic Church.

Speaker 2 They literally said, your sons and daughters' parochial school will go out of business if this law is passed.

Speaker 2 The Catholic Church really gets me wound up.

Speaker 2 And it's not to do with your faith. It's to do with the hierarchy and the way it's run and what they've allowed.
And they've harbored their priests to keep them from facing justice.

Speaker 2 And they're sending their lawyers. to stop a law to help victims.
And yet they come out and say, we're all for victims. No, you're not.

Speaker 2 You're not.

Speaker 1 And so you spearhead that. What is it in New Jersey now?

Speaker 2 The law, we got it passed finally, unanimously. I worked for two years as an advocate.

Speaker 2 I had a lawyer say, you know, your story is so over the top, maybe you can use it to sway some of the senators that are holding up the law. And that's what we did.
We started meeting with senators.

Speaker 2 And two years later, it went up for vote and it passed unanimously. And we went from the worst law in the country to the strongest law.
So, you know, victims have up until age 55 to come forward.

Speaker 2 So it gives them plenty of time to heal. And that two-year window did happen.
It went into effect. And, you know, it's something

Speaker 2 like if you told me back when I have a mob hit on me, you know, that I'm going to work as an advocate

Speaker 2 and change laws. I'd be like, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, you think so?

Speaker 2 I think you're delusional lost stuff.

Speaker 2 But that's exactly what happened. And myself and every other advocate that worked on that law can go to their grave, you know, like knowing we accomplished something great.

Speaker 1 Have you been to Dennis Pegg's grave?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Okay. No.

Speaker 2 I know a

Speaker 2 couple people who reached out to me and sent me private messages on Facebook saying they visited it.

Speaker 1 Oh, we had half a mind to go and spin on it.

Speaker 2 They did something a little worse.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 No, okay, so you're like, they did it.

Speaker 2 They got it covered for all of us.

Speaker 1 I see, I see.

Speaker 2 And people, you know, everybody's listening and be like, oh, you're talking bad. He really did that to somebody.

Speaker 2 The guy was a monster. He wasn't a human.
I've said that over. I can't stress enough.

Speaker 2 A literal devil. The devil.

Speaker 2 What more could you

Speaker 2 stereotype the devil as than what this guy was?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's no salvation for someone like that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You

Speaker 1 did something interesting in prison.

Speaker 2 Where are you going with this, Dev? I don't even know.

Speaker 2 You helped someone write a love letter I helped a Spanish guy who was facing 10 years and he had an English girlfriend and he did not have command of the English language and he asked me would I write a love letter to his girlfriend about you know how much he loved her and please wait for him and he'll be back and did it work

Speaker 2 I don't know. He got shipped off to prison and that's the last I ever saw of him.

Speaker 1 In my mind it works

Speaker 2 so no I wrote letters for guys to their lawyers to their public defenders to the judge and to their family members you know I felt I needed to do

Speaker 2 stuff for other people to make myself feel better in that situation just like I needed to do good things because I was in such a dark spot when I was locked up. So I constantly did that.

Speaker 1 So you never wrote a letter to like a

Speaker 1 college sweetheart?

Speaker 1 Nope. Did you think about it?

Speaker 2 I did. And I thought, I'll never get to see Lisa again.

Speaker 2 I'll never get that chance, you know, to ride off into the sunset, swoop her up off her feet, especially early on when I was facing life for those three years.

Speaker 1 I mean, how often did you think about your college sweetheart?

Speaker 2 I thought about her my whole life. Like she was inside my skull skull scratching.
Like literally like tormenting me. Clarky, why, Clarky? Why? Why could you not commit to me?

Speaker 2 And just the shame of that. You know, like victims love to just shame themselves.
So that would add shame to my shame. And then doing drugs would add shame to my shame.
And

Speaker 2 getting involved with the mob would add shame to my shame. And not being able to tell my father would add shame to my shame.

Speaker 2 So like we're just constantly shaming ourselves and uh so lisa was just another source of uh shame

Speaker 2 i thought i thought i missed my uh chance

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 after that law passed that the law took up a lot of time i'm working i was working full-time i was speaking you know i started motivational speaking and then when the law passed i'm like what now

Speaker 2 and i was working as a chef, assistant chef at a busy restaurant. I'm driving home late at night one night and i'm like

Speaker 2 i either want to get a pit bull or a girlfriend

Speaker 1 i mean this is a crazy multiple choice

Speaker 2 yes

Speaker 2 so pit bull girlfriend pit bull i'm like

Speaker 2 it's not fair to any girl i get involved with if i'm still

Speaker 2 thinking about Lisa.

Speaker 1 So you never stopped thinking about Lisa?

Speaker 2 I never did.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, to get into any relationship, I've got to confront Lisa.

Speaker 2 And I found her on Facebook. I drafted up a long Facebook message and I deleted it.
And I drafted up another message. And my thumb hung over the send button.

Speaker 2 And I debated, is it better to keep the fantasy?

Speaker 2 Maybe I'm just making it up in my mind how amazing our love was and how passionate we were for each other. Maybe time has made me delusional and it wasn't really all it was all I think it is.

Speaker 1 Because you hadn't seen her since you were 20.

Speaker 2 I was probably 23 and she was 22.

Speaker 1 And how old are you at this point?

Speaker 2 When I got released, I'm 50 years old. And then I worked on the law for a couple years.

Speaker 2 So now I'm like 52,

Speaker 2 53.

Speaker 1 Wow. Okay.
And now you're like, I don't know,

Speaker 1 but you send it. Right?

Speaker 2 So do you, do you keep the fantasy alive and not send it? Or you pull up your big boy pants and say, let's see what the hell's going to happen here. And you send it.
You got to send it, Steph.

Speaker 2 You got to take chances. So I sent it out.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I was literally like a crackhead waiting for his dealer to call him back. Like, I checked my phone.
Check my phone. I'm at work.
I had to check my phone a hundred times. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh, I knew I shouldn't have sent it.

Speaker 2 And then she replied.

Speaker 2 And then I replied. And then she replied.
And I replied.

Speaker 1 And she replied. Was it awkward?

Speaker 2 Was it... No, it instantly started to flow.
Early on, it was

Speaker 2 she thought

Speaker 2 I couldn't commit to her all those years ago because I didn't love her.

Speaker 2 And that wasn't the case. I explained that to her.
And I explained it was because of all the pain I was harboring inside and I just couldn't be intimate with somebody.

Speaker 4 Has she heard about what happened at all?

Speaker 2 Yeah, like I said, my one roommate and her one roommate ended up married. Oh, yeah.
And her roommate reached out to her and filled her in.

Speaker 2 She had written me three letters, I believe, when I was locked up, and she ended up ripping them up because she just wasn't ready to open that door again.

Speaker 2 Plus, I was facing life. She's like,

Speaker 2 she just couldn't let herself feel vulnerable at that moment.

Speaker 2 Now that I was released,

Speaker 2 she allowed herself to be vulnerable and opened up.

Speaker 2 And I said, why don't we meet for coffee? She was in New York. I was in New Jersey.
Again, she's still thinking I didn't love her. I'm telling her I did.

Speaker 2 She's not really believing me. So I brought ammunition with me to that first coffee meeting to prove to her that I did in fact love her.

Speaker 2 She had written me a lot of love letters and cards back in the day, and I had saved them.

Speaker 2 And over the years, whenever I would start lamenting her, I would get out these love letters and reread them and feel connected. Whenever

Speaker 2 I would feel

Speaker 2 a gap between us forming. I would get her love letters out and reread them and get that bond back together.

Speaker 2 I brought a briefcase with me to the coffee shop and she said, do you always bring a briefcase with you when you have coffee? And I said,

Speaker 2 there's something inside there I want you to see that will show you that I loved you.

Speaker 2 And I opened it up and I took out all the love letters from when she was 21 years old and 20 years old and 22 years old. And

Speaker 2 we sat there rereading them and

Speaker 2 that sort of sealed the deal. And I told her, this is how I stayed connected with you over those 30 plus years.

Speaker 1 And you didn't really talk to her during those 30 years?

Speaker 2 No, there was not one word.

Speaker 2 nothing between us.

Speaker 1 You just read these letters. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Wow. And stayed connected that way with her.

Speaker 1 Did it feel weird? I mean, I'm sure you guys look different from when you're 20. Or did it feel like nothing changed?

Speaker 2 She kept saying to me, We've led two totally different lives. We're two totally different people.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 we're not the same we were back then.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Just let's go have a coffee.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 by the end of that coffee,

Speaker 2 it was back on.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you have a few letters. You're saying some of them are too risque

Speaker 1 for us to read out loud, right?

Speaker 2 I don't want to embarrass you. Yeah, but there's one.

Speaker 1 There's one that we can read.

Speaker 2 I think this one from

Speaker 2 July of 1989. Can you believe that?

Speaker 2 Should we bring out the author of this letter? Yes!

Speaker 2 Come on, come here, author. Lisa, Reetha!

Speaker 1 I read about their love story in the book.

Speaker 2 And I'm the number one fan.

Speaker 1 I call you guys Lark, which is the ship name, which is when you combine Lisa and Clark.

Speaker 1 Hello, Lisa.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 1 I mean, you have to tell me, what was it like seeing him at that coffee shop and the briefcase? What did you think was in the briefcase?

Speaker 3 I didn't know it was in the briefcase. I mean, first of all, seeing him after like three decades,

Speaker 3 it was unbelievable. The two weeks that we were in communication with each other, it was, we were kind of getting to know each other again.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, we always would banter back and forth and

Speaker 3 tease each other. And we always had a very playful relationship.
So it was kind of, we got back into that rhythm. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And we met for coffee. And I was so nervous.
I remember I was like, okay, I don't want to seem too anxious or too interested or whatever. I didn't know what was going to happen.

Speaker 3 He had led this crazy life. So there was a part of me that was a little nervous, like, who is this person? Is he the same person I remember from college years?

Speaker 3 But I just felt this burning desire. to explore it and to see him.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I was so impressed with what he was doing with his life from where he was and

Speaker 3 where he is now that day when we were meeting and all the good things he was doing, helping to change the statute of limitations law in New Jersey, being an advocate, speaking out, getting other people to speak out.

Speaker 3 I was truly inspired by him. So I said, I have to at least meet him for coffee.

Speaker 3 Even if we just have a friendship, like I just felt like this was something I just needed to do at this point in my life.

Speaker 1 Did you think about him as often as he thought about you?

Speaker 3 Probably not.

Speaker 2 Sorry.

Speaker 3 I was so busy living my life, you know.

Speaker 3 I was growing a business. I had children.
I was married to somebody else for 20 years.

Speaker 3 The marriage was deteriorating.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, I did think about him because I felt like he was that one person.

Speaker 3 I think everyone has that one person that their first love and that person that there was never any sort of closure with Clark.

Speaker 3 When the relationship ended, I still loved him and I didn't understand why we didn't work. And the connection was definitely unlike any other connection I'd had, even you know, my marriage.

Speaker 3 So I just felt like

Speaker 3 I just, I had to do it. I just didn't want to spend my life regretting not seeing him, not talking to him.

Speaker 4 So, Stephanie read the book and was telling me about how Clark was saying that you're this

Speaker 4 force of nature when you guys met

Speaker 4 me.

Speaker 5 First time, first,

Speaker 4 yes. The first time you guys met, it was in the library and then you just plopped down and started to get out of the way.

Speaker 2 Right, right.

Speaker 3 It was the L Center, which was the student center at Northeastern.

Speaker 4 So, can you tell us your point of view?

Speaker 2 Oh, my God, Chris.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 when I walked in, I mean, first of all, I was a freshman. He was a sophomore.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 I grew up in a house. I'm one of three girls.
I was the middle daughter, and I was more of the rebellious person. And my parents were like, just always,

Speaker 3 I had all these rules, you know, that I had to follow. And when I went away to college, it was like, I felt like I was just being let out of a cage.
You know, my parents were very strict.

Speaker 3 So I just felt like when I was in college, and that was actually, I met Clark, I think it was the first semester that I was there. So it was the fall.

Speaker 3 And I just felt free.

Speaker 3 And I just walked into the Ell Center and I saw this young guy sitting, and he looked so lonely because he was sitting at like, there was like a round table and four chairs, and he was like alone, except there was just, he was in one chair and there were three empty chairs.

Speaker 3 And I was like, all right, maybe I'll just sit down and say hello. And I just was, I just did.
And he looked at me and like his eyes, his blue eyes just captivated me immediately.

Speaker 3 But he was really quiet. And I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Just talking all about myself. And I don't think he really knew what to say.

Speaker 3 And I don't know if he'd ever met anyone quite like me. So

Speaker 3 from his little town of Stillwater. Yeah, I was just, I just kind of

Speaker 3 talked, talked, talked, talk, talked. And then I finally paused and said, and do you ever talk?

Speaker 2 He did.

Speaker 2 This is so funny.

Speaker 1 Because in his book, he writes that he was just trying to focus on schoolwork. And he says, like, no, he looked lonely.
So I needed to.

Speaker 3 I feel like I needed to just talk to him. And yeah.

Speaker 3 And that was our first meeting, you know, and

Speaker 3 it was intense right from the start.

Speaker 3 I feel like he invited me to a party he was having that weekend at his apartment and I got there and I was just looking for him and we shared our first kiss that night.

Speaker 3 I was 18 actually when we met. So it was a very long time ago.

Speaker 3 And Northeastern was a co-op program. So we were kind of coming and going.
There were not cell phones at the time. So like

Speaker 3 just connecting and reconnecting with different semesters,

Speaker 3 you know, was interesting, but we always seemed to find each other.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 1 do you guys still have the the same dynamic where you're the one that's like talking his ear off?

Speaker 3 He is now the talker. I don't know if you can sense from the interview.

Speaker 3 No, I love, I absolutely love talking to him.

Speaker 3 I just enjoy talking. And I think that was when we reconnected, it was like getting to know him all over again.
But he was a different person

Speaker 2 now.

Speaker 3 I mean, this was six years ago, but he was a different person person than when I knew him back in college. I mean, he was a free person, free from prison and also free from, you know,

Speaker 3 his secrets.

Speaker 3 And he had healed and he was evolved. And it was like

Speaker 3 our relationship was a million times better because we were both in a different place in our lives. And the timing was right.
for both of us. So that's what made it so incredible.

Speaker 1 You guys have such fascinating, and you're getting shy.

Speaker 2 You guys get

Speaker 2 shy.

Speaker 1 You guys are so fascinating.

Speaker 2 I'm watching

Speaker 2 you.

Speaker 1 I think it's because

Speaker 1 I feel like we have maybe a similar dynamic where I, we call it yapping. Yeah.
So I yap to him, not with him.

Speaker 1 When the cops came to arrest you, they searched your room and they found your love letters.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, when they, when they they come to your house, they like trash it. You know, they dumped every drawer out, tore the bedding apart, the closet, everything was out.

Speaker 2 I had two cedar cabinet desks and you know, just everything is dumped out.

Speaker 2 And my mother went to like try to put everything back together in this room and she came across letters addressed from Lisa Lisa

Speaker 2 and saw the postmark from 1989, 1990, 1991. And she said,

Speaker 2 what has Clark held on to these for so long? These have to be as valuable as gold to him.

Speaker 2 So I got to put these in a safe place. So my mother went through my mess.

Speaker 2 scooped up my love letters and held them for me until I got released. And then she's like,

Speaker 2 I found these straightening out your room. Why have you kept all these letters? And I'm like, that's how I stayed connected with Lisa mom over the over the years.

Speaker 2 And she's like, well, here they are. Put them in a safe place.
So

Speaker 2 that's what I did.

Speaker 1 Do you think your mom knew all along?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I would tell my mom. I would cry to my mom.
You know, not

Speaker 2 every year.

Speaker 2 Maybe it would, you know, like

Speaker 2 maybe after after the mob threatening my life and having the fbi come say there's a hit put on you maybe i

Speaker 2 sat with my mom then and said like man i've really allowed life to get away from me i wish i wish i had never lost lisa you know and and and cried with her over that but her and i had talks over the years about lisa and and

Speaker 2 When Lisa would come and visit, she would get up early and go sit on my parents' bed as they're both still in bed, my father and mother, and have these long talks as they're still lying in bed.

Speaker 2 And they just loved her. So, this letter she got for me, it says, For yesterday's memories, today's love, and tomorrow's dreams, I love you.

Speaker 1 Wait, could you read us a snippet of the letter you wrote him?

Speaker 2 Sure.

Speaker 1 Have you read this since? Like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 3 when he first showed me the letters and I started to read them in the coffee shop, oh my goodness, I started hysterically laughing

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 3 reading a letter that you wrote 30 years ago at that point in your life where you're just all hormones, you know, you're like 18, 19, just discovering love.

Speaker 2 Do we know what parts you can read?

Speaker 2 Oh boy.

Speaker 3 So this was written July 16th, 1989.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And when he had these letters, it just, I realized that this is true.

Speaker 3 You just never could believe someone would be thinking about you for 30 years, but when they take your letters out of a briefcase and show them to you,

Speaker 3 you're like, they really were thinking about me all this time. Like, no one holds on to letters for 30 years unless that person really meant something incredibly deep to them.

Speaker 3 So it made it real for me seeing the letters. So, all right, here we go.

Speaker 3 Dearest Clark,

Speaker 3 we've shared so many memories together, both good and not-so-good ones. I like to remember the good ones because they're the ones that stick out in my mind.

Speaker 3 The time that we drank wine at Ed Burke's was an early memory, but one that for some reason always sticks out in my mind. The next sentence we'll skip.

Speaker 3 I think knowing that you would go to all lengths to satisfy me really intrigued me.

Speaker 3 All right, that's as risque as we're getting.

Speaker 3 I often think about the quiet times we've spent together, just staring into each other's eyes across a dinner table when we were out, or when we were in bed together holding each other.

Speaker 3 I see something so caring and wonderful about the way you look at me that somehow makes me shake.

Speaker 3 During times like that, nothing needs to be said because I know what you're saying to me with your eyes.

Speaker 3 Those romantic times were great,

Speaker 3 but the wild and crazy times were great as well. Skip the next sentence.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 All of these times that we've shared have become cherished thoughts that are embedded in my head and my heart.

Speaker 3 I don't exactly know at what point I actually fell in love with you. I just know that at this point, each day I spend without you is a torment.

Speaker 3 Every time I get off the phone with you, I feel alone again. I get through each day with the thought that one day soon we will be together and I won't have to ever feel lonely again.

Speaker 3 Those are my dreams for our tomorrow. I miss you so much right now that I hurt.
I need you, Lisa.

Speaker 1 So, yeah,

Speaker 1 that's, yeah.

Speaker 3 So imagine reading that letter 30 years later and feeling all those emotions that you felt.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It was incredible and it's still incredible.

Speaker 1 And you kept those letters in pristine condition.

Speaker 3 In their envelopes.

Speaker 3 But this is how we communicated, you know, because we didn't have cell phones. So we wrote, I wrote him lots of letters

Speaker 3 and he kept them all. So.

Speaker 1 So what do do you guys do now for fun together?

Speaker 2 What we really cherish is

Speaker 2 Sundays and Monday mornings we have together to have coffee.

Speaker 3 It's our time together.

Speaker 3 We like going for walks and we just like to explore different places to walk and we cook together, which we love to do. Clark's an incredible cook.
We like listening to podcasts.

Speaker 2 And we watch movies, yes.

Speaker 1 Do you watch all of his podcasts?

Speaker 3 I do. I do.
And I do. And I try to give him constructive criticism

Speaker 3 because I want him. I think his platform is so important.

Speaker 2 No, you do. And I want him to grow.

Speaker 3 And I think he's doing such meaningful work. And he continues to inspire me.
Ever since we reconnected, I'm just, I tell him he's a constant source of inspiration for me.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And Lisa made the comment one time.

Speaker 2 It doesn't matter what we do as long as we're together.

Speaker 2 So the day before we flew down to do your show,

Speaker 2 my mother was in the hospital. So we had to go pick her up from the hospital.
It took a while, you know, to get her discharged. Drove her home,

Speaker 2 got her home.

Speaker 2 And the same thing we just took her from the hospital for happened again.

Speaker 2 And we had to turn around and drive her back to the hospital.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we met my sister there, and we were there a while. And so it was a really long day.
And then eventually we had to leave my mother there.

Speaker 2 And driving home that night,

Speaker 2 I said to her, I go, you know, you made the comment one time,

Speaker 2 it doesn't matter what we're doing as long as we're together. So I hope that holds true for today as well.
And she's like, of course it does.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're so

Speaker 3 a team for sure. And I think that's when you know you're with the right person.

Speaker 3 Because it's not, it doesn't feel like a chore to do that. You just want to be there for them.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 is your mother okay?

Speaker 2 She's home now. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 She's got

Speaker 2 some medical issues.

Speaker 2 We got to get straightened out, but she's home right now.

Speaker 3 And Clark and his sister are such a great team. Like, they come together and they take turns and help.
And she's 96, his mom.

Speaker 3 So she's August 31st, she'll be 96. Yeah, she's turning 96 this month.

Speaker 2 Oh, my. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Is she happy that you two are back together?

Speaker 3 She's one of my biggest fans.

Speaker 3 She calls me Lisa, my love, just like Clark.

Speaker 2 Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 3 I'm so happy you're back in Clark's life. I always knew that you were the one.
You were so special.

Speaker 3 She said, I'm just so happy that you're here.

Speaker 1 I feel like moms know. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Stop. Okay.

Speaker 1 I, Lisa, we need a podcast episode on Clark's podcast of you, which I'm going to link in the description along with his book. And I would be obsessed if you guys filmed TikToks together.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 I just want to know more about your life. I'm obsessed to the point where I genuinely feel like I'm a side character in a rom-com at this point.

Speaker 2 Like,

Speaker 1 you guys have some intense chemistry. I can only imagine those letters.

Speaker 4 Can I ask a final question? Yes.

Speaker 4 Clark, I know you commented that there are seasons to life.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 4 What would you say what season you're in right now?

Speaker 2 I would say,

Speaker 2 you know, and I tell people this because there's so many times I thought of giving up,

Speaker 2 but I always retained a little glimmer of hope.

Speaker 2 And, you know, so there's like cold, dark winters where nothing's going right in your life.

Speaker 2 You got the FBI telling you there's a hit, you've just committed murder, you're a drug addict, you're in prison.

Speaker 2 Those are all cold, dark winters. You're getting sexually assaulted, and animals being beaten in front of you.
Cold, dark winter.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I tell people, don't ever lose hope that

Speaker 2 sunshine

Speaker 2 awaits you and opportunity awaits you.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I would say

Speaker 2 in the spring is when you plant.

Speaker 2 I would say I'm

Speaker 2 just starting to harvest. So I'm in that spring to summer mode.
I'm not in the full

Speaker 2 full-blown summer of harvesting yet. It's been a long road to get to this point.
That book has taken 10 years. I wrote that in prison 10 years ago.

Speaker 2 So for people that want to lose hope, like my book took 10 years. Like

Speaker 2 don't lose hope. And

Speaker 2 opportunity awaits you around the corner. It's not going to be tomorrow sometimes,

Speaker 2 but it definitely awaits. And

Speaker 2 this book will

Speaker 2 instill hope in you and inspiration. That's what I, it wasn't written to be a trauma dump.
It was written to give people hope that anything is possible.

Speaker 2 Like, I'm living proof that literally anything is possible.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you're reunited with.

Speaker 2 And I get the girl back.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like, it should be a movie. Yeah, no, it's not.
My life literally has been a movie. Yeah.
No, they need a movie. I need a movie.

Speaker 1 You guys are incredible. Please keep us updated.
Not even just us, but like our audience on everything you guys are going to do. All right.

Speaker 2 Lisa, please promise me you're gonna keep us up.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna start doing some taking some classes about TikTok videos like tomorrow, maybe on a plane home.

Speaker 2 You never know.

Speaker 1 And I am going to leave all of the links in the description. Thank you guys for joining.

Speaker 3 Thank you so much, Stephanie. Thank you.

Speaker 3 You guys were amazing, amazing to us.

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