#594 - Family Murder Spree - Chugiak, Alaska

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder Express.

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I'm Jimmy Wistman.

Thank you, folks, so much for joining us all aboard the murder train, pulling away from the station.

We got some crazy stuff for you this week.

It's up in Alaska and

people move there to hide out and apparently murder each other.

So we'll find out all about that.

It's pretty wild stuff.

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That said, I think it's time, everybody.

Let's do this.

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murder.

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Okay.

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

Let's go on a long trip.

We're going up to Alaska this week.

Yeah.

This is, ooh, Chugiak.

I looked it up and I've heard three different pronunciations.

I've heard Chuggiak.

I've heard Chugiak.

C-H-U-G-I-A-K, Alaska.

That's a very thirsty yak.

Yeah, I tried.

I really did.

I looked it up.

I really tried to get it, but it's people, it's apparently a disputed pronunciation.

This is down in southern Alaska.

It's a kind of a suburb of Anchorage, basically.

It's about a half hour to Anchorage, about six and a half hours to our last Alaska episode, McCarthy, Alaska, which was episode 533, Mountain Massacre.

And it was a wild one because all the Alaska ones are crazy.

They're all nuts.

Population of this town, 6,563.

So pretty small town, but for Alaska, I think it's about the fourth largest city in the whole state, probably for Alaska.

There's not a lot going on there.

Median household income up here, and it's usually about 69 grand in the rest of the country, $143,312.

Wow.

Yeah, that's.

Oh, my God.

What are they doing?

They're people that, this is a suburb.

This is like the, you know, nicer outside of Alaska.

Plus, there's a lot of large estates, like large land

things out here.

If you buy a house, it has 30 acres with it.

It's not just a,

it's not a little quarter, you know, acre plot or something in a neighborhood.

Median home price here, and it reflects it, $417,563.

So

it's a little pricey.

And everything is, yeah, and everything is expensive in Alaska, except for salmon and bear pelts, probably.

I assume everything else is

going to be brought in.

Yeah, that's plenty.

You get plenty of those.

Halibut is just dirt cheap.

Sell it out of buckets on the sidewalk, but whole fillets.

History of this town.

The settlement along the Palmer Highway in an area that had begun, I guess, had been home to the

I am going to absolutely destroy this, the tribe that was here before.

Daniya Ina

Athabascans.

Athabascans.

Yeah.

Athabascans.

Wow.

Are there apostrophes in there?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

This is not an easy one.

It's a tough language.

Holy.

I don't get it.

It's tough for thousands of years and was named Chuggiak or Chugiak in 1947 by, you know, people who came here, non-native people here that came here.

It is said to have come from a native word meaning place of many places.

Right.

Wow.

Why would you have a word for that?

For some shit that makes no sense.

And Chuggiak means also mushroom trip, as a matter of fact, also, because that makes me feel like I'm on one.

Chuggiak was first really heavily settled in the 1950s,

mainly from former military personnel who were stationed in Alaska during World War II.

They just stayed up there.

Oh, yeah.

They were like, oh, this is nice up here.

So, yeah, this is a kind of suburban expansion of Anchorage, is basically what this is.

Here are some reviews of this town.

Here we go.

Five stars.

Chuggiak is a small-town neighborhood, a close community that bands together when the need arises.

Everyone knows everyone, and they look out for each other, whether it's through community prayer or just pulling over when one of their own is having car problems.

Well, yeah, you have to do that, otherwise, he'll be eaten by a bear on the side of the road.

I better pull over before a grizzly comes out of the woods and takes him.

It's a great community to be a part of.

Here's four stars.

There are both positives and negatives about living in a small town, but there are many activities to keep the community involved.

My favorite is the top-notch community band

available to anyone and everyone.

What does that mean?

I don't know.

I don't know.

You call them up and they come over and play a song.

I don't understand.

Available to anyone and everyone?

This picture

a bunch of guys sitting in a shed with their instruments awaiting the call.

You're allowed to listen.

You're allowed to listen.

Four stars again.

Chuggiak is a suburb outside of Anchorage.

It is surrounded by ocean and mountains, which offer lots of opportunities for skiing, snowboarding, hiking, kayaking, fishing, hunting, and much more.

It's a safe town with a lot of parks for sports.

There isn't much nightlife here, but you can find that in downtown Anchorage, which is only 20 minutes away.

There it is.

All that hot Anchorage nightlife that you're always hearing about.

You hear about, you know, you hear certain spots, you know what I mean?

Hollywood's got some cool shit.

New York, Miami.

You heard of Vegas, Nashville,

Chuggiak.

You know, it's all

pretty relative, I think.

Things to do here.

The Bear Paw Festival.

Bear Paw.

um the whole festival yeah the chuggiak eagle river chamber of commerce presents the annual bear paw paw festival the whole town turns out for a weekend filled with fun for all ages sometimes unexpected but always a good time events run the gamut the slippery salmon olympics are perhaps the best known event slippery salmon yeah i think we know what that is grab it by the hand yeah grab it with your hands uh teams of two race against the clock and each other with real salmon as the critical item to take along while tackling all the obstacles.

So you have to run like an obstacle course while carrying salmon.

Carrot.

Yeah.

Like a football.

Grease it up.

Probably.

Greased up salmon.

The running.

Greased up.

Salmon from a Diddy Party.

Yeah, that's all it is.

It's got a lot of lotion on it.

A lot of sanitizer.

A lot of baby oil.

A lot of baby oil.

Would I say sanitizer?

I meant to say baby oil, and sanitizer came out.

I don't think you want to use that as lube.

That would be.

Let me use both.

This is making my ass hurt even worse than it should.

Jesus Christ.

Why are you using the ball?

Now it's got alcohol in it.

How?

Ow.

Also, the running of the bears.

Yeah.

Which would be way worse than the running of the bulls, I would imagine.

Yeah.

That's a sharp.

It's got claws.

A 300-yard fun run.

Races alongside costumed animal mascots for many logos.

Who cares?

That's stupid.

Just some guy trying not to fall over because his head is

too much weight for him.

That's all it is.

They probably chug beer or something and then do it.

You can't do that in sober.

That's dumb.

That would be not fun at all.

You can at least be stoned for that.

And also, human foosball takes the popular rec room game and replaces the plastic men with real-life players.

That's called soccer, everybody.

Are they connected to a giant pole over their heads?

If not, that's soccer, what you just described.

Not fucking foosball.

yeah are you are you kebabbing these people if not this I don't get it

other popular events include the teddy bear picnic I assume that's for children

I hope up there though I think teddy bears would have a different connotation because bears are scary there they're not like eating cuddly it's holy shit watch out they're a real they're a real problem um a classic car show a parade carnival rides and the I did a duck race which who can come inside a duck fastest?

Is what that is.

Which end?

Either way, whatever, whatever, float your duck boat.

Whatever you're not sure.

Which is a rubber duck regatta, actually.

Which made it sounds not like that at all.

It sounds gross.

That said, let's talk about some murder here that took place because this is some twisted shit, man.

This is one of those that maybe could have been a full-length episode.

So we're going to hit the high points here.

Okay.

Let's start out on the evening of October 19th, 1990.

All right.

Now,

on this night,

there's a car driving down the highway.

All right.

And this is

got some people in it.

It has a

young man named Douglas Gustafson, who's 18 years old.

It's his car.

It's a copper-colored AMC Eagle.

Hell yeah.

Hot shit.

That's a fun car.

If only there was some wood paneling on the side, it'd be perfect.

So it's his car, and in the car is George Kerr, who's a friend of his.

And driving the car, even though it's not his car, and it's Gustafson's car, is a guy named Raymond Cheely Jr.

And R.D., he goes by.

R.D.

Cheely Jr.

And he's 18 also.

So three 18-year-old kids in the car.

George Kerr in the back seat.

Douglas Gustafson, whose car it is in the passenger seat, R.D.

Cheely doing the driving here for some reason.

A lot of folks, Jesus.

Some oddy.

About three guys in a car, three 18-year-olds.

In an eagle?

In an eagle.

It's not a two-seater an eagle.

No.

No, it's just a piece of shit.

It's just a shitbox.

Well, I've stuffed like six in an escort, so it's not a problem.

Teenagers, we used to put people in the trunk for fuck's sake.

It's just

hang on the roof.

It's not that far.

That escort hatchback had people in the trunk.

Oh, for sure.

Absolutely.

Like, okay, so now Doug Gustafson, he comes from an interesting family, to say the least here.

We'll talk about his family a little here as a little background.

Now, first of all, they're Jehovah's Witnesses, this family.

Okay.

Now,

he has two siblings.

He's got Peggy is his sister.

She's older.

She's about nine years older than him.

A little bit about Peggy because she's a wild card here.

She apparently they're from Michigan, this family.

I don't know if they moved here to knock on doors in Alaska or spread the word of Jehovah or whatever they're doing, but

they're from Michigan.

They moved here.

She has moved around a little bit because she was married and stuff.

At this point in 1990, she's a dental assistant.

And her boss says she's a very good dental assistant who meets the public well and seems concerned and caring with her patients.

So that's nice.

She spent her teen years caring for her younger brothers.

She described it like one of my own children.

She said she got her driver's license as soon as she could so she could do the family shopping and errands and stuff like that so she could help take care of the brothers.

Because there's another younger brother named Craig also.

There's

two brothers and a sister here.

Now,

apparently

she said that there's a lot missing from her memory as a child.

There's been abuse in this family as well

that we know of.

And when we hear what they do, you go, yeah, this doesn't come.

Normal families don't have everyone in the family do this.

So now, Peggy got married in 1980.

She, when she was 18 years old, 17 maybe.

She married a guy named Craig Behrens in Washington State.

And they had a daughter named Amanda a couple of years later.

Apparently, Amanda had some problems.

A friend of hers said Peggy put a lot of money into her daughter.

which sounds weird.

You put a lot of money into like an old car or into like a house you're flipping.

Yeah, generally to improve it or fix it.

Yeah.

You just say you're taking care of your child.

I don't say, I'm putting a lot of money into this kid.

I should do that every time my daughter smiles.

Put a lot of money in that face right there.

That's a lot of

braces and everything else all fixed up now.

So she said she put a lot of money into her daughter.

She was born with a cleft palate and needed a lot of hospital care.

Peggy did all of that.

So

the Barons ended up moving to her and her husband, the Barons, as a couple, moved to Miami, Florida.

Sure.

Which you can't get further like

climate or geography

geographically than Alaska and Miami.

It's across the entire whole country.

Holy shit.

Where they were divorced in 1987.

She's got a new husband as of 1990, but she's also had some run-ins with the law.

She was convicted twice in 1990 for shoplifting.

Oh.

Peggy was.

Yeah, that's, she's like a, what, a 27-year-old lady.

You're too old to shoplift at this point.

If you were born with a cleft and had it fixed, you can't break the law.

No, no, that's her daughter.

Oh, remember,

Peggy put a lot of money into her daughter.

Remember?

Got it.

Yeah.

With the cleft palette.

You can't be.

No, no, yeah, you might be

noticeable.

Yeah, you might be noticeable.

So she's convicted of shoplifting twice for trying to take perfume from Lamont's, some store, and for taking about $110 in merchandise from the Cars Quality Center on Diamond Boulevard.

A

Cars employee, a guy named Anthony Rice, tried to stop her when she was shoplifting, and she bit him.

She bit the security guard for trying to stop him.

Stop her.

She was sentenced to about 22 days in jail, and

that's about it.

She never served her sentence.

She never showed up to report.

So she has a warrant for her the whole time for all of this.

She's also charged with theft in January of 1990 after prosecutors say she took more than $50 in coats from Lamans also.

So Lamans is her spot.

Now, in recently here, because we were starting out in October 1990, over the summer and in recent months, she was accepted as a pre-major in the three-year dental hygienist program at the University of

Alaska Anchorage.

And she just had another son and all, and she just got married.

And so she's trying to turn it all around here.

And I don't know if she was just a single mom with a couple of kids and medical problems and just decided to shoplift.

I'm not sure what's going on there.

But

anyway, there's also Craig Gustafson.

He's the middle child here.

He is in between Peggy and

Doug.

He's born in 1967.

And then Douglas Gustafson is the one in the car who owns the Eagle here.

Now,

Doug works the evening shift at South Central Air and South Central Air and is a baggage handler.

So at the airport.

All these guys work at the airport, by the way.

Everybody here?

Now,

like I said, he's got the friends in the car, George Kerr in the back seat, R.D.

Cheely driving his car for some reason.

Gustafson's in the passenger seat, Doug.

And Doug Gustafson is holding an HK rifle, HK-91.

Okay.

He had just bought it that day.

Just bought it.

He's just holding it.

He's going to wander around around with it.

Yeah.

In the passenger seat sitting on his lap.

There's other guns in the car, as we'll, as we'll find out, but

because they just went target shooting earlier.

And in Alaska, to have high-powered weaponry with you all the time is extremely common, apparently, up there.

From what I've seen, at any point, a gigantic monster, deadly animal can attack you, and you need to have like a high-powered weapon with you at all times or else you'll be eaten.

It's not, you know,

it's not a civilized dairy.

It's not forgiving, yeah.

No.

It's unforgiving climate.

No, it's not.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

And if you're out in a rural area, you are in bear country and in who the fuck knows what else is up there.

The moose are dangerous, for Christ's sake.

They'll attack you.

Caribou, wolves.

There's all kinds of crap.

All sorts of shit up there.

So they were headed for a big night of partying, boy.

Three 18-year-olds out on the town.

They were headed to the Big Timber Motel on Fifth Avenue where they planned to, listen to this get down this tonight.

They're going to party.

They're going to rent a room, quote, watch MTV and party.

That sounds great.

That sounds.

How would you like to go in a time machine to 1990 and make yourself 18 years old and you're going to go party in a room and watch some fucking MTV?

That sounds awesome, right?

Smoke weed and drink beer.

Watch MTV.

Kurt Loader and Taps.

Top of the Soren.

Soren.

Tap of the Soren.

That's it.

Yeah.

Shit, that sounds awesome.

So earlier in the day, Gustafson, Doug, had purchased the HK rifle from a local dealer and had it in the car with him.

Apparently, at that point, it was selling for about $1,000 in the gun catalogs.

Really?

In the 1990s.

Very expensive gun.

Yeah,

not a cheapy.

Apparently they had stopped making it is why.

So it's expensive.

They stopped making it in like the late 70s or something.

So apparently it's a pretty badass gun.

It sounds like it.

Yeah.

What caliber is it?

Do you know?

It's a 308.

Oh, yeah.

That's a that's a lot of weapon.

That's not to fire them out that fast.

Yeah.

Now there's two other guns in the car, too: a.223 caliber rifle and a shotgun because they spent the day target shooting at the gravel pits in Uklunta or Uklutna.

Aklunta.

I don't know what the fuck.

All right.

As they're driving.

Sure.

Yeah.

They're drive.

I mean, they're headed for this is a big night on the town for these kids.

And

as they're driving, a red Toyota MR2 with dark tinted windows passes them.

Now,

if anybody remembers a Toyota MR2, basically, I could pick it up and carry it with me in a place.

It's like

somehow a smaller Fiero.

It's insane.

I knew a kid that had one, and he was like five foot three.

Like, it fit him perfect.

And he gave me a ride home from school one time, and it was hilarious.

I was like, this car is ridiculous, dude.

I can't fit in this fucking thing.

He had to like help me get out of the thing.

It's so tiny.

Real tiny little car.

It looks like a toy.

It doesn't even look real.

It looks like something a rich person would buy for their 12-year-old to drive around the yard.

Doesn't it?

It doesn't look real.

So Cheely, R.D.

Cheely, the driver of

the car, thought the Toyota had tried to cut him off

and also came a little bit too close to the side of his car, he thought.

This is an eagle.

It is.

It's a priceless vehicle.

It's an heirloom.

So I'm going to hand this down to my grandkids.

What are we talking about here?

So he thought he was trying to maybe rub up against the car type of thing.

James Race and Jackson.

Yeah, Dale Earnhardt passed him on the left and trying to push him off.

So Chili gets really pissed off.

This isn't even his car, by the way, as we know.

He's driving someone else's.

And said, hey, let's get those guys.

Okay.

And in a response, Gustafson in the passenger seat, Doug, said, hey, I'm going to shoot that car.

They didn't give him the finger as they passed.

They just passed them.

That's all they did.

There's no reason for this whatsoever.

So

then

Cheely and Gustafson are talking about shooting the Toyota.

Should we shoot it or not?

And apparently they said, well, Cheely said, these guys are fucking with us.

And Gustafson said, all right, I'm going to shoot the car.

And Cheely said, let's get them.

They're not going to push us around.

Let's show these assholes.

Okay.

Okay.

They're hyping each other up.

Yep.

And the two in the car didn't even notice them.

They were just driving.

They didn't even care.

They were doing their own thing.

They had another big night ahead of them here.

The Toyota, inside the Toyota, are two people.

Robert Chamberlain is the driver, and his passenger is Jeffrey Kane.

They're both 20 years old.

C-A-I-N Kane.

Now,

they're about to exit the highway at the Muldoon Avenue exit.

The Toyota is.

By the way, Jeffrey Kane is a computer operator at Fort Richardson, and he was just closing on a two-bedroom house near his parents' house as well.

So he was doing well for himself at 20.

He was staying temporarily with his parents while his house closed, and he had a date with his girlfriend later that night.

Oh.

He was hooking it up.

Rather than, you know, having a circle jerk while watching MTV in a motel room, he was going to hook up with an actual female here.

So he told his dad, I'll catch you later when he left.

And this is about 9.30 that night.

Now they're driving.

Their plan is to get off on the Muldoon Avenue exit and go to the Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Not for chicken to pick up Kane's car.

He had parked it there earlier in the day.

So that's how it happens.

The Toyota's in the far left lane doing the passing.

They see this Toyota MR2.

This is Gustafsson and Cheely and Kerr in the other, in the Eagle here.

The Eagle sees the MR2 about 100 yards ahead.

So Cheely hits the gas and gets up to about 80 miles an hour.

Doug rolls down the passenger window and rests the HK.

By the way, it's like an assault rifle, if you don't know.

So it's got one of those.

So he rests the HK on the ledge, the barrel on it, ready to shoot.

As Cheely approaches the Toyota, he slows down.

So Doug can have a better shot, more steady thing here.

So as Chamberlain slowed down to go to the ramp, that's when Doug fired the rifle at the car.

So it's going like that.

So

the bullet went through the rear window, hit Jeffrey Kane in the back of the head, killed him instantly.

Dang.

One shot

back of the skull.

Oh, boy.

Dead.

So Chamberlain, holy shit, what the fuck?

He's driving.

He raced to the KFC and called for help because the KFC is right off the highway.

So he calls for help.

Now, it's fucked up.

Jeffrey's mom,

Teresa, said he's a nice kid who didn't deserve what he got.

And said, you know, the last thing that she said was while he was heading out, she asked him if he needed any money, and he told her, no, he's fine.

And she said,

the mom said, he looked at me and said, mom, I really love you.

And then left.

The dad said it's a stupid and needless death.

And, you know, basically, this is ridiculous.

It's stupid.

Now, a local gunsmith, kind of the local gun guy here named Will Fowler, he said that the shot described with both cars moving is a very difficult shot, even for a very good, for an expert marksman.

That's not an easy shot.

You might seem like it is, but the way things are moving and the way physics work, it's not easy at all.

Hitting a moving target in the first place is tough.

And then when you're moving also, it just

adds to the problem.

And anybody slows down or speeds up a half a mile an hour, the whole thing's off.

And they said also the Toyota had heavily tinted windows.

so

damn good shot.

They said the average person shooting in that situation would be lucky to even hit the car.

Never mind, get through the window and hit someone in the head.

So, um,

this is, and then they drive off in the Eagle, and that's how this goes.

Now, this isn't the first time that Kerr and the Gustafson boys and Cheely have had some

dumb shit.

Um, let's talk a little bit more about them.

Summer of 1989, so the previous summer, summer, year before, they got into some bombs then.

Like, boom, explosives.

But, like, got into some bombs, like, found them or like

got into it like you get into a flock of seagulls.

Yeah, they get, get into it like it's like it's something cool.

Get into, like, sniffing glue, basically.

Got into glue for a little bit.

Got into glue.

There's a neighbor named Roy Kennedy.

He lives near the Kerr household where George Kerr, the guy in the back seat of the Eagle, lives.

Yeah.

And basically, at one point, this Roy Kennedy caught R.D.

Cheely and somebody else vandalizing his mailbox and shot out the back window of Cheely's truck in the summer of 1989.

That's the response in Alaska: shoot first and figure other out shit later, apparently.

So, Cheely,

Doug Gustafson, and George Kerr, the three from the car, put a pipe bomb

with a fucking timer delay circuit.

Yeah, this is like Bombed somebody.

They put it on the motorhome's gas tank, the guy who shot at them.

He shot at them because they were vandalizing his mailbox, and now they're so mad about that, they're going to blow up his house.

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Okay.

So, Kennedy, the guy who lives there, said he had decided to teach a lesson to the vandals who had destroyed 15 to 20 of his mailboxes over a six-month period.

Dude,

I would just get decoy mailboxes at that point that were just 14 feet in the ground and solid steel.

So, you hit it with your car or a bat, you're going to feel that shit.

No box, nothing's in there.

It's just a solid steel box.

The defense would just be, every column would be a mailbox.

All me.

Who knows which one it is?

Yeah, take a guess.

So this guy said, I was armed, needless to say, and I punched about six holes through the back of the pickup truck with my rifle.

The next night, I was gone about 30 minutes, and my motor home blew up.

They blew his house up.

Wow, man.

He said the bomb did not ignite the gasoline when it ruptured the tank, though, thankfully.

So it was

less of an explosion.

This guy reported the incident to police, but nothing ever happened after that, even though he said this is who did it.

Now, back to October 19th and the shooting day.

Now, after they shoot Jeffrey Kane and, you know, that car, the MR2, goes off the highway and the Eagle keeps going.

Apparently, according to George Kerr, the guy in the back seat, Doug Gustafson didn't know that he had hit anybody at the time.

There's really

no way to know if you hit anybody.

I mean, the car didn't go out of control like Grand Theft Auto when you shoot somebody, so they figured he didn't hit the driver.

but either way, the guy in the back seat, Kerr, was very upset and asked to be let out of the car so he could take a cab home.

He didn't want to go partying.

MTV was ruined for the night,

just ruined, you know.

So, um, Gustafson and Cheely, though, they continued on to the big timber motel where they continued their plans for the night.

Yeah, MTV and I don't know, fingering each other.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, right.

So, the next day, October 20th, 1990, the guilt of of all this must be getting to george kerr yeah which is funny because he didn't feel guilty about blowing a man's house up at all but this

he feels guilty about

um apparently that gustafson and cheely were trying to hide evidence and kerr was deciding whether or not to tell on them

So he talked to his boss at JD's Bar BQ

in, that's how it's spelled, Bar BQ, one of those, in Eagle River about the shooting.

So he tells his boss about the shooting.

This is what happened last night.

Yeah.

Well, you know, the assistant manager.

The assistant manager at a barbecue joint, that's like a lawyer or a priest.

You can tell them anything, really, right?

I think.

It's like a therapist, really.

Really, a counselor, a therapist, a psychiatrist.

It's similar.

Similar.

So, except he gives you pulled pork afterwards, which is way better than anything you've ever gotten at church, admitted.

That'll cure what ails you, for sure.

Yeah, that'll do it.

So his boss put him together with a lawyer he knew, and George Kerr and the lawyer head to the police station at 4.30 the next day.

Oh, we're going to turn him in.

George is not fucking around.

Now, Kerr called his father from work and explained to him that he's helping, he's going to help the police in their investigation of the shooting.

Kerr told his father he intended to engage Gustafson in a conversation that would be recorded by the police.

So he's like, I'm going to wear a wire and talk to this guy.

So Kerr doesn't know, though, that R.D.

Cheely is in Kerr's father's house while this this call is taking place.

Right now.

Right fucking now.

So the dad is talking to him, saying, I'm going to turn these guys in.

And one of them is standing next to his dad right there.

So dad's got to turn into quite the actor here.

He does.

And Kerr's father said that

when the phone conversation ended, Cheely asked him about the conversation.

And the dad suspected Cheely might be involved also.

So he lies to Cheely and tells him that, oh, yeah, no, George said he's in Anchorage with his girlfriend.

That's what the call was about.

Okay.

So Cheely, though, after he, then Cheely left, so Kerr's father called back to tell the police he thought Cheely knew or suspected that Kerr was helping with the authorities.

So protect my son, essentially.

Now, they do just that, too.

They wire up George Kerr and they send him out to hang out with Doug Gustafson to try to get a recorded conversation.

So

they fit him with the transmitter.

They send him off.

They drove around in the AMC Eagle, of course.

So this is on an early Sunday morning.

And Gustafson made some incriminating statements before dropping George off.

Now, they agreed that apparently there was a burglary that took place that we'll talk about of a place called Mike's Meets that George was involved in.

And the prosecutors agree that they won't charge Kerr as an accessory or for the burglary he'd taken part in that night if he got the confession from Gustafson.

So you get the goods and you're off the hook.

At one point in the two different conversations, Kerr asked Gustafsson why he killed the man, and Gustafson replied that he didn't mean to.

I was just shooting.

I was like pot shots at a guy.

Yeah.

Just shooting at a moving vehicle with people in it.

You know, like you do when they pass you, because that's annoying.

So

an article in the Anchorage Daily News recounted Kerr's description of the shooting.

The article reported that when Kerr was asked to explain why Cheely Cheely had been driving Gustafsson's car, Kerr stated that Gustafson viewed Cheely as an authority figure, even though they're the same age.

Right.

It's like his husband, like, you know, he's going to drive and then they're going to go to a motel room together.

It's weird.

Strange, like an old-time couple or some shit.

So the article also noted that a source described Cheely and Gustafson as trouble.

Yeah, they blew up a guy's house for Christ's sake.

That's trouble.

They love improvised explosives, man.

That's the definition of trouble.

That's trouble.

So they said that on the recording, Gustafson gave a really crude description of the area where he had hidden the rifle.

He just said an open area with trees in the vicinity of the Big Timber Motel.

Police scoured the area, but didn't turn up the murder weapon.

Doesn't know anything about it.

They can't find it.

So also, Gustafson said on the recording that he's a pilot.

He's an 18-year-old pilot.

I don't think so.

And And talked on the wire about having access to a plane if the police got onto him and he had to flee.

He's going to go fly away somewhere.

Fly out of here.

Sure.

But you know what?

All those people up in Alaska, they fly everywhere.

They do.

They have water.

They have groceries.

Ones that land on water.

Everybody has them.

It's crazy.

It's wild up there.

A lot of these towns are only accessible by air.

Right.

So that's what they do.

Everybody's got a lot of people.

They all got a fucking plane somehow.

So strange.

So they chose to follow Augustafson, Gustafson, even though they had all the evidence they need because they thought maybe he would lead them to the murder weapon.

But apparently he spotted them and started trying to like drive evasively.

So they just called ahead and had cops block a road and took him into custody.

Now, a colleague of his at South Central Air, the airport Gustafson works at, or the airline, said he was shocked to hear of this charge.

He said he was very quiet and withdrawn.

That's a pilot named Bob Edison.

He said, yeah, he was very, another guy said, yeah, real quiet and easy going.

He's planning murders, that's why.

So

an article in the Chugiak Eagle River Star newspaper quoted a teacher from high school who described Cheely and Gustafson as, quote, gun nuts.

And the article mentioned that Gustafson may have been involved in the

Mike's Meets burglary that we'll talk about.

But the article didn't tie Cheely to that incident, but he was involved.

Now, that same day, Cheely Cheely goes to another friend's house, apparently who he had talked to, and made death threats to the friends, telling them, I'll fucking kill you if you say anything about anything I've done.

It was like,

I'm not going to say shit.

He said he would get revenge

on anyone who provided information leading to his arrest for anything.

There you go.

So, anyway, so Doug Gustafson's arrested here.

R.D.

Cheely is finally arrested on November 2nd, 1990.

And yeah, they said that

they're quoting, this is the lieutenant, police lieutenant from Anchorage said, quote, they charge him with murder in the second degree.

And they say, murder in the second degree is when you commit an act that's so outrageous you would have to assume it endangers life.

Cheely was driving the car.

He was slowing down, maneuvering the car in such a way that Gustafson could get a shot off.

We're going to get them both, Gustafson on first degree murder and Cheely on second.

Oh, we're going to get them.

The article further states that Cheely had also been indicted for tampering with evidence and for interfering with official proceedings for

second-degree theft and second-degree burglary in connection with the break-in at Mike's Meets, which is a grocery store, and for second-degree assault and for threatening a couple who knew about his involvement in the burglary because they told on him, too.

What did he take from Mike's?

They took a bunch of money.

They got a bunch of money.

Oh.

Yeah, a lot of money.

They must have busted the safe or something because they got thousands of dollars.

$19,000 were stolen from Mike's Meets.

Mike's Meets has 19 grand?

It was probably three months worth of take, basically, they took or some shit.

Who knows?

But the,

yeah, that's, that's wild.

And they think that the, well, basically they stole that money, and then that same day he went and purchased the rifle and then shot a kid with it.

So big day.

And then watched MTV.

Big day.

Mike's meets money to get a lot of money.

Mike's meets money.

Jeffrey Kane's dad said, I feel better knowing that somebody who is responsible or allegedly responsible, I feel better that they were apprehended apprehended and I can go on with my life.

Now, Chile wants a change of venue because this is big news up there.

Big news.

They presents the Superior Court with a compilation of newspaper articles about the case and argues that the publicity makes it impossible to receive a fair trial.

March 1991, Doug Gustafson goes on trial for this murder, and they try him for first-degree murder, but he is convicted of second-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence.

Okay.

He is sentenced to, you, sir, may fuck off 65 years for the murder and two years for tampering with evidence.

See,

life's over.

And it's not even close to over in his court proceedings because he's there's all there's there is another major thing that's about to happen here.

This is nowhere near the end of the story.

So Chili

keeps trying to get them to change venues.

He brings in all these articles and

all the articles describe what happened.

So he's like, you know, people know about this shit.

But the judge ruled that they would deny the motion because they basically did the juror selection.

And it's like, well, if we can't find a jury, then yeah, we'll move it.

But let's try to find a jury first.

So April 1991 is Cheely's trial.

There's a jail tape, a tape of him talking to people because he talks to people on the phone and it's all recorded.

Okay, so it's on the phone.

Yeah.

On the phone or in person.

Cheely's comments about the shooting are clearly discernible in this tape.

In these tape conversations, they contain Cheely's suggestions to

other inmates that, because other inmates wear wires for him, that George Kerr fired the shot, not Gustafsson, and that Cheely had told Kerr to use his own gun, but that Kerr had used Gustafson's gun, and that Kerr had intended all along to frame Gustafson, and that Gustafson had hidden the gun the next day.

And the prosecution will call the inmate to the stand and talk about the tape conversations.

And the prosecutor, you know, is going over all this.

And so you have these jail conversations, and he's got the transcripts on an overhead projector and all the whole deal.

So not looking good.

The jury here, they deliberate, and apparently the judge convened the court and read aloud a note from the jury.

And they said, quote, last night one of the jurors drove out the Glen Highway and Muldoon Road interchange and drove back and forth between the Fort Rich interchange and the Boniface interchange twice.

This juror has not expressed her findings or opinions of what she saw or believed, etc., as we stopped her the minute she told us that she had done it.

We would like to know if this trip was permissible or not.

If it was, may she discuss her findings with the jury.

The judges tell the jury,

you're not allowed to do any of your own investigation.

That's not allowed.

So this is absolutely well outside the scope of what a juror is supposed to do.

Why would they do that?

That's crazy.

The judge,

you know, said, the judge talked to the juror, and she said she was trying to get it straight in my mind, I guess.

She added that the drive that during her drive, she wasn't really looking for anything because I didn't think there would be anything to look for.

I was just thinking, and I drove it twice, and I went home.

She said she didn't stop.

She didn't look around for evidence.

She didn't make any time, didn't time anything or take any notes or pictures.

She said she observed nothing different from what she had heard, what she had earlier observed when the entire jury was taken to view the spot.

Okay.

So,

yeah, they ended up saying that this didn't really matter is how it was.

So they deny a mistrial because the defense wants a mistrial for that.

So instead, they convict him guilty of murder in the second degree.

Okay.

So during sentencing, the judge, who he gives it to this fucking cheely good in court, man,

he says that it's one of the worst second degree murders murders he could think of.

He said, quote, it's difficult to talk about one murder being worse than another murder, but indeed one can categorize them.

And considering the aspects which I've already reviewed here, it's clear to me that this murder, totally unprovoked, of an unsuspecting person and committed in a way that, in a very real sense, threatened us all by its very random nature, is among the very worst that could be possibly done as a second-degree murder.

That's not a good start for Chili.

No,

maybe for me, not for him.

Not for him.

That's not what you want to hear.

He said there was plenty of time to think about what was going on.

I'm convinced from the trial testimony that I heard and observed that Raymond Chaley Jr.

not only incited this thing, but he created the whole incident out of whole cloth.

The other car did nothing wrong.

It was Ray Chaley Jr.

that invented an incident out of whole cloth, and then he incited Gustafson to take part in the scheme of events that came about.

And then Ray Chaley Jr.

sped up to catch the other car.

And I'm absolutely convinced that when they got near the Muldoon overpass, that he synchronized the speed of his vehicle with the speed of the victim's vehicle.

Counsel can argue to me all year long that Mr.

Cheely did not pull the trigger.

Indeed, he did not, but he played a very direct role in the commission of this murder.

He's as fully culpable as Gustafson.

You, sir, may fuck off 60 years in prison.

Okay, just as much almost.

Just as much.

Yeah.

Really showed very little discerning between the two.

Now, Peggy is concerned about her reputation, the sister of Doug.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Her friend said she used that expression that maybe people didn't like her now because of her brother, and she was afraid she wasn't going to be hired anywhere.

I always thought that was real strange.

I wanted to say, no, Peggy, nobody cares.

How can anyone know that's your brother unless you tell them?

You know, because she's married.

She can use it.

She has a different last name.

Everybody in town that knows her knows.

Yeah, yeah, but like she doesn't have to work in a small town.

You know what I mean?

Like nobody knows who the fuck she is.

They're separated by years.

They're not like they're seen out together or anything.

So summer of 1991, everybody's in prison.

And Peggy and her two brothers, Douglas and Craig, and R.D.

Chaley, who's in prison.

So Douglas and R.D.

are in prison.

And Peggy is out.

And so is Craig, who's the other Gustafson brother.

Apparently, they come up with a little little plan to get even.

Okay.

Together.

They cook up a plan to get even with George Kerr for telling on them.

Okay.

Okay.

So September 17th, 1991.

David Kerr, who's George's dad,

he's at home with his wife, Michelle Kerr, who's 34 years old,

not George's mom, but stepmom.

They receive a package in the mail.

No.

They receive a package.

David Kerr opens it.

It fucking explodes.

A major explosion, immediately killing David and absolutely mangling Michelle.

Wow.

Suffered massive facial, chest, and neck injuries in the blast.

Michelle had to undergo nearly a dozen surgeries to her face, torso, eyes, and ears.

It took surgeons three days to sew up her face, half of which was completely blown off in the blast.

She has to have plastic surgery to straighten out her face, basically.

Her eyes were cut by tiny pieces of glass that still work their way out and send her back to the hospital every once in a while.

She's got glass in her eyes.

The deafening blast shattered her eardrums.

Doctors repaired one eardrum, but they will not know for several weeks if it'll work or not.

Yeah.

This is crazy.

She also lost her sense of smell and taste and blew all her teeth out of her mouth.

Yeah.

This woman is destroyed.

Just destroyed.

Poor lady.

For a few days, she was unable to walk or

talk at all.

She passed notes to her sister and brother at the hospital telling them that she remembered the explosion.

She later said, I asked them if Dave was dead, and they said yes, but I was pretty certain of that.

Still, it took four days to sink in that my husband was gone.

Sure, yeah.

So after the explosion, the next day,

remember Roy Kennedy, the guy whose motorhome got blew up there back in the day?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, he.

Did he get a package too?

No, no, no.

But

he heard about it and he said, that's interesting.

He said, it seems a bit, you know, coincidental.

He said that, quote, I live probably three or four miles from Thunderbird Heights.

That's the neighborhood where the Kurs lived.

And I don't know how many people know how to make bombs.

It seems like kind of a rare talent to be able to make a good bomb like that.

And so he said, Thunderbird Heights is kind of close quarters to have two bombs go off in the same general

vicinity.

So I called the postal inspector and he took note of it.

Oh.

That puts in, that sets the ball rolling now.

Okay.

Because he says, listen, blah, blah, blah.

The day after the bombing, one of Cheely's cellmates told the police that Cheely had a list of people he wanted to kill.

Well, that guy better be careful with.

This guy wants to send packages to people, and he's already been, he just sent it to somebody that ratted on him.

He just killed you from prison.

He killed somebody.

So, I mean, if you're in the cell with him, watch out the list included the district attorney police uh even the mafia doesn't kill the district attorney

district the district attorney police officers all of the jurors who found him guilty yeah and the judge who presided over the trial that is 14 people

wow that's a lot That's yeah, at least the well, all of the police too.

So

the list was handwritten on the back of some legal documents in Shelly's and Chile's cell.

The document, they said, Cheely told the informant that the people he wanted to kill, he would blow up either them or their houses,

and the persons he wanted to suffer, he would wait till he got out of jail, then he would dig a pit under his house so he could starve and torture them to death.

Now he's Buffalo Bill.

He's turned into angry.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, this Chili.

If you pass him on the highway, he wants to murder you.

Like, this guy is nuts.

So they do an investigation here.

This is the postal inspectors, the Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, and Firearms,

you name it, the fucking FBI.

Everybody's involved in this when you're sending mailbombs.

That could affect anybody.

Ask Ted Kaczynski.

They take that shit seriously.

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So, they focused on Cheely and Gustafson, who had a history of bullying witnesses, they said.

They got an affidavit and they piece this all together.

They figure out that Peggy, remember Peggy, older sister,

while pregnant,

at the direction of her imprisoned brother, built the bomb herself.

Peggy's a bombsmith?

Pregnant Peggy built a bomb.

God damn.

She sat there in maternity clothes putting a bomb together.

That's wild.

Is that

dangerous, man?

Then a third sibling, Craig, the middle child, helped put the finishing touches on the device and package it for delivery.

The whole family's involved here.

Yeah.

I'd rather have them knock on my door and talk about Jehovah's Witness shit.

And that's saying something because I don't want to hear that shit.

So Cheely and Gustafson vowed to get even.

They were housed in different parts of the prison at the Spring Creek Correctional Facility at Seward.

That's where Gustafson was.

And then Cheely was at the Cook Inlet Pretrial Facility.

They communicated through notes notes passed by a third party.

Investigators said they interviewed an informant who, aided by his girlfriend, who knew Cheely, passed notes to Gustafsson during prison church services.

So she'd go get the note, then visit and take it over here.

Corrections officials said the bomb components allegedly smuggled into the Cook Intel pretrial facility to be inspected by Gustafson before the bomb was made.

They said the parts were so small that metal detectors and routine searches wouldn't have detected them.

They They missed them.

Yeah.

So they said that the director of institutions said security measures at the jail were sufficient to keep contraband from being smuggled in, but tiny plastic components about the size of a computer chip were not contraband they were really looking for.

Okay.

They were looking for knives, guns, drugs,

things that they can escape with.

Prison stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But apparently it was Peggy who produced the bomb, constantly consulting with her incarcerated brother on how to hook the device up.

Conversations between the two that were recorded by the jail were, they basically pretended to be discussing car repairs.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

They said that

Peggy.

You got to get the pause.

Yeah.

Right.

It's got to be the power of the paper.

I got quotes from that exactly.

Oh.

Investigators said Gustafson, Peggy, told her brother she burned up batteries trying to build the device.

The document said that Peggy managed to smuggle parts of the bomb into jail so her brother could show her how to assemble the device.

Here's a quote from the affidavit: Here, Doug and Peggy reminded each other to remember that they were discussing something to fix Peggy's car.

Doug told Peggy that she should wire the two batteries, quote, hook them both positive together and both negative, but not crossing over.

They also discussed how Peggy and Craig stalked George Kerr.

They called him Gorgeous, by the way.

That was their nickname for him, was Gorgeous.

She was trying to find out when he was joining the Navy because he had joined the Navy.

They said they'd spotted him at work and driven by his house to see what he drove now.

In a recorded conversation with Doug, Peggy described a graphic dream of vengeance where

she had seen Gorges hitchhiking and ran him over.

Quote, I sent that puppy flying over my car and I looked back and he moved and I went back and he was still alive.

And Douglas said, so you backed over it?

No, she replied.

I let him know exactly who I was and then I broke his neck.

And then

Doug and Peggy laughed.

And then Doug said, I hope you took the car to the car wash afterwards.

Ha ha ha.

Holy shit.

So then Craig, enter Craig Gustafson.

He's the one who's going to put the finishing touches on.

And he's the one who'd been stalking George Kerr also to find out where he was and everything.

They knew Kerr had enlisted in the Navy, but didn't know when he was leaving.

The The bomb got completed on September 13th.

It was described as a gray substance that filled half of a small white box in which

were red and yellow wires and a battery.

They said,

yeah, they said that Craig asked at first Peggy what was in the box and her answer was, quote, it's justice.

I'm carrying around some justice.

This is some crazy shit here.

These are bad people, man.

It sounds like it's the 1880s right now.

They're going to blow up a stagecoach because somebody told on them for...

They're going to blow up the train and tie a woman to it.

Yeah, on the tracks.

Yeah.

So apparently they bring Craig in and talk to him.

And Craig told authorities that two weeks ago, the whole scheme started when his brother and Sheili stole a large amount of explosives before their arrest.

Wow.

Don't know where they got that from.

Craig became first aware of the plan to send the bomb when Peggy approached him weeks before the explosion.

She asked her brother for help with the device and he drew her a simple diagram.

Does everyone in this family know how to build a fucking bomb?

This is crazy.

Do you know how to build a bomb like that that goes off when you open a package?

I don't.

I only know one bomb.

Yeah, yeah, we know that.

That's the only one.

Yeah, or there's other ones, but they're simple.

They're not this.

Yeah, they're not this.

There's no wires and batteries.

No, it's shit that you make when you're 13.

Yeah.

You'll take my cap and throw it.

Exactly.

That's it.

Get the fuck away.

Get the fuck away.

Oh, man.

I guess the box, it was a white box, about eight inches by eight inches by eight inches, one of those.

When he asked what it was, she said it's Justice.

He also told investigators that he saw two mailing labels, one with George Kerr's name on it and address, and the other said state of Alaska on it.

That was the return address.

It just had typed out thing that said state of Alaska.

Like the state sent it to him.

So anyway, Peggy brought the bomb to Craig's house, fearing her husband would find it if she kept it at her home.

Craig took the suitcase with the bomb inside, stored it in his truck until it was mailed.

It was placed in a brown box addressed to George Kerr and sent to the house.

And that is when David Kerr picked it up from the post office, took it home, and he opened it up to determine if it was something that needed to be forwarded to George because it said state of Alaska.

That's why he opened it.

Otherwise, he would have just saved it for George.

He stood near his wife, and

yeah, the package exploded with such force, killed him instantly, and blew out the kitchen wall.

God dang.

Decent bomb.

That's force, yeah.

So Peggy gets arrested on April 1st, 1992.

She's arrested without incident at her home.

And in the interval between arrest and arraignment, she confesses to everything.

Well, yeah, what is she going to do?

She'll later say that she wants it thrown out because they arrested her.

She asked for a lawyer.

And then a couple days later, she talked to them again without the lawyer, waived her Miranda rights and talked.

But she said that they shouldn't have talked to her without the lawyer later on.

But they say, no, no, no.

You asked to talk.

So everyone's arrested.

Doug's arrested again.

Chili's arrested, even though they're in prison.

Peggy's arrested.

And Craig is arrested as well.

Oh.

And there's another guy, Ryan, his last name.

He'll be arrested also for helping deliver the materials to Peggy.

Okay.

So the four could face the death penalty if convicted on federal charges of mail bombing.

So

murder and mailbombing.

The mail part makes it way worse.

Yeah, it makes it terrorism.

That's what that's crazy.

Craig remains at large.

Oh.

There is a $10,000 reward offered for his capture.

And the other guys, the ones that were in prison, were transferred to a federal facility at that point.

So

they're searching for Craig.

He's 25 years old and described as suicidal.

They're looking for him.

He hadn't been seen since Sunday.

He is a maintenance worker at Northern Air Cargo.

They search his house and they find two letters in a drawer addressed to mom and dad and to Barb, who's his girlfriend.

Oh, okay.

Both signed by Craig.

The

letter to his parents read, I am sure that the cops will talk to you.

Listen to them.

What they say is true.

It's not a government conspiracy.

Because in Alaska, you have to, back then, now it's everybody, but back then, the conspiracy people moved to the middle of fucking nowhere.

They moved to like the upper peninsula, Michigan or fucking Alaska.

So he said, things got out of control, and I didn't have enough smarts to know when to say something like, stop.

It's all true.

I know.

And he says, well, time to get.

I love you both and see you again someday.

He quit his job after the interrogation that he went under, walked away from his rented home that he shared with his girlfriend and left two notes.

That was it.

He told his, the one he left for his girlfriend just said he was going out for a beer.

Didn't explain anything else to her.

He's arrested on April 17th, 1992, in Hollywood, California.

That's where he went.

He went to Hollywood.

That's pretty fucking funny.

He blended in for sure.

Yeah, you could be a weirdo.

No one cares.

So July 15th, 1992, Craig is going to plead guilty to this.

He feels bad about it, and he doesn't seem like as big a scumbag as the rest of the family, if I'm being honest.

Seems like, yeah, I don't know.

Well, he at least has remorse.

Nobody else does.

Everyone else is pissed off.

They got caught.

He agrees to testify against the others, too.

That's big.

That's big.

And the judge even said, I do believe that Mr.

Craig Gustafson is not a danger to the community, at least not to the level of the others.

Right.

A pregnant lady is building ponds for Craig Gafs.

Yeah.

He is sentenced to, you, sir, may fuck off 21 years and 10 months in prison.

That's a pretty good stretch, though.

Jesus.

Followed by five years of probation.

Okay.

February 4th, 1993, Peggy pleads guilty.

They have her dead to rights.

I mean, it's

everything.

She pleads guilty in a Los Angeles federal court here.

And

she, during her sentencing, by the way, Douglas is also going to plead guilty.

We'll talk about him in a second.

During her sentencing, she said that she first started helping Doug with his bomb plot because she thought it was George Kerr who had done the highway shooting.

She said, I was misled.

She said, I never thought Doug was capable of what the press said he did and what the court said he did.

I thought my brother was innocent.

Wouldn't you stop thinking that once he said, let's make a bomb to murder these people?

Oh, man, he was capable of anything.

She said that her brother became obsessed with getting back at George Kerr and she tried to just keep him going until the appeal could come through.

She said she never intended to hurt anyone with the bomb.

She said she became more and more upset as her pregnancy progressed and her brother seemed to be suffering in prison.

Then, shortly before she was to mail the bomb, she said she was told that Douglas had been gang raped in prison.

So now she's really mad.

She said,

yeah, she said she never took the plot seriously until she saw news of David Kerr's death shortly after the birth of her son.

She gave a bomb to somebody to finish off and mail.

What are you talking about?

She fucking typed out the mailing labels and everything.

How does she feel anything?

She said, I was shocked, mortified.

I had hoped this didn't have anything to do with what I had put in the mail.

Are you stupid?

Wow.

I I was hoping someone else sent this family a bomb and it killed them, not the one I made.

Right.

She said I was praying against all odds.

She said she feels worse every day about it.

She said, if I could give my life to bring David Kerr back and fix Mrs.

Kerr, I would.

Fix her.

Fix her fucked up face.

Put it all together.

I'm so sorry.

If I could humpty-dumpty her ass, I would.

I'm so sorry.

You don't know how much I hate myself.

If there's anything I can do to fix this, just tell me what it is and I will do it.

I bet the judge is going to have a couple ideas.

You You'd probably go to jail for a long time.

She then said, it doesn't matter if I go to prison or I go home.

I get harder on myself every day.

Well,

I'll tell you one place you're not going.

Yeah, that's home.

She said that during the final days of planning, she became out of touch with reality.

She said, I was detached.

I saw myself going through the motions, but it wasn't me.

It was like watching myself on television.

And during cross-examination, though, she conceded that the bombing, she talked about it at length with her brothers.

And she said, but there was a lot of things that were said that I didn't mean.

It was to keep him happy and off my back.

Her attorney urges the judge, said she's a victim of the terrible men that were around her, and urges the judge to give her probation.

Probation?

Are you out of your fucking mind?

Even a judge would say that.

Excuse me,

from a legal standpoint, you're

out of your fucking gourd.

Goodbye.

She said, he said, in reality, the truth we all know from seeing Peggy Barnett pour her heart out on the witness stand is that she did not intend to cause anybody harm.

That's all.

And also that they said she had a hormonal imbalance caused by the last stages of pregnancy that clouded her judgment.

Yeah, that pregnancy, man, that pregnancy brain is a motherfucker.

Yeah, they usually, what you do is you mail four pounds of high explosives to somebody.

That's that's part of it.

Yeah, you got to watch that third trimester.

The doctor warns you,

you will want to build pretty high-powered bombs in the third trimester.

Watch out for that.

So the judge said the defendant herself has stated she conspired to kill George Kerr and knew that the bomb she mailed was designed to do just that.

You, ma'am, may fuck off 24 years and three months in prison.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Michelle Kerr,

with her face all fucked up, said she said that, quote, maybe it's sexist, but I never would have imagined it would have been a woman.

Never thought about it.

It was a little sexist.

it's a little maybe and she's like maybe it's sexist she said she was trying to get people to feel sorry for her she was an eager and willing participant she said that uh peggy was probably only sorry that george kerr wasn't killed in the attack she said i think she deserves more than the 24 years obviously my husband is dead and she did it she should get life

I mean, it's, you know, I don't know how she's like the least responsible considering she made the fucking bomb and like had the communication.

Like, she's the central wheel of this whole, she's the hub of the whole wheel here she got everything yeah it's crazy now there's also a guy named joseph ryan and he pled saying that he had delivered explosives to uh peggy and that it was material that went into a bomb and um so he's going to be on trial too craig is going to testify in this trial And Ryan's lawyer gets Craig Gustafson on the stand and said that Craig had sought to avoid the death penalty and wanted a plea agreement worse than anything.

He said, didn't you continually tell postal inspectors that you wanted a deal to save yourself?

And he said, yes.

Yeah.

And obviously.

Yeah.

Now, they said they portray Craig as someone, the defense attorneys try to tell, portray Craig as someone who's just a constant liar, a prodigious liar.

And they said that Gustafson told, quote, many, many lies to postal inspectors.

Craig acknowledged untruth, saying he wanted wanted to save himself and his brother and his sister at first, but then he spilled it later.

Because they're saying from his first interview, he gave certain details, but didn't really tie him or his family into it.

And then went on the run.

But then, once he came back, he told everything.

Mark Bonner, an assistant U.S.

attorney, asked Craig if he had any reason to name people who weren't involved.

And Craig said, quote, I ain't dragging nobody into this.

Keep it between me and y'all.

I ain't dragging nobody else into this.

He is given, you, sir, may fuck off 40 years for Joseph Ryan, which is more than the person who made the bomb, which is a little crazy.

So many prison sentences and so much crime.

So much crime.

May 7th, 1993, Doug, who pleads guilty here.

Right.

He is sentenced.

Well, yeah, I'm done with this.

He is sentenced to, you, sir.

Hopefully it wasn't by grizzly bears and moose.

That's the danger up there.

You never know what's going to gang rape you.

You, sir, may fuck off life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 30 years consecutive on top of that.

Holy shit.

Eat lots of dicks, Doug.

Gang style.

Gang style, yeah.

So then Cheely going to court now here.

Cheely,

when he first, this is hilarious.

He came to court.

dressed in his prison blues and had a beard and all that kind of shit.

Real cocky asshole.

Like the picture, he's such such a cocky asshole, this guy.

He told the magistrate that he wanted to help represent himself.

He said, quote, I'm the co-counsel.

Me,

an 18-year-old moron who blows shit up.

That's, I'm the co-counsel.

Wow.

And the judge said, we'll consider that next time and see what happens.

So during the trial here, he is convicted, obviously.

I mean, I just gave you all Craig's going to testify.

They get all the affidavits.

He's convicted of this plot.

And he is sentenced to, this is a good one here, you, sir, may fuck off two life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus 85 years consecutive.

I mean, it's just a joke at this point.

It's, yeah, sir, you're never getting out of prison.

Just tell him that.

You are going to die in prison.

If you can knot your bed sheet together, go ahead and sling it over the highest thing you can and get end it because it's not going to go good.

I'm going to do a lot of paperwork.

I don't even need to tell you the numbers.

You're never getting out.

You're never getting out.

Well, tell your lawyer.

He can tell you later.

It's wasting time.

You're fucked.

So 2005, Forensic Files does an episode on this.

It's season 10, episode 25.

Signed, sealed, and delivered is the name of it here.

And yeah, it's pretty fucking

interesting.

They talk about the shooting, and then at the end says the resulting trials don't end the carnage.

No.

No, they don't.

June of 2013, Peggy is released from prison.

She's out there.

She's out.

Don't know what she's doing.

She's out, though, and I believe

I can't find it, but I think Craig should be out by now, too.

Okay.

But everybody else is probably still there.

Less than her, right?

Yeah, I think it was like three.

She got like three years less than him.

So

I would hope that if she's out, that he's out because he was the one that testified against everybody and cooperated more.

So he should probably get out before the lady who tried to.

She's probably.

She's probably back in.

Probably.

Yeah.

Well, she she was all fucked up from everything else.

So now

Raymond Cheely and Doug, as per federal prison records, Doug is currently incarcerated in the U.S.

Penitentiary at Victorville in California.

And Raymond is serving his sentence at the U.S.

Penitentiary in Tucson.

Is that right?

Miserable.

You can go down and say hi to him if you feel like.

It's so warm.

Maybe when we're done recording, we'll take a trip on down to Tucson to say, give a Heidi hoe to old Raymond to

Miserable place to serve time.

Fuck.

Fucking, good lord.

It's a miserable place to be wealthy and have a mansion.

Never mind serving time.

It's a miserable place to be wealthy and free.

If you said you can have $20 million, but you have to live in Tucson and like stay there all the time, no more than a week out of Tucson.

Fuck no.

I'd rather make 60 grand a year and live anywhere else on earth, literally.

I'd rather live in fucking Honduras than there.

I'd probably just use all that $20 million for air conditioning.

That's what I mean.

That's all you're going to do.

Fucking miserable there.

Air conditioning fees to repair it.

What a.

Buy a second unit

to keep on hand in case this one breaks down because it's going to.

Keeping the temperature on 65, they never go off.

You just have a guy on call.

He comes in and replaces them every couple of months or so.

Rotate them out, man.

So anyway, there you go.

That is Alaska.

And that is

fucking Fern Express.

That is 10 pounds of murder in a two-pound bag that explodes when you mail it.

That's pretty goddamn crazy.

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