Sidetracked: The Murder of Anna Kithcart

Hi there, I'm KTown and on this edition of Mysterious Radio. The End The End Alright, thank you for joining me tonight for another edition of Mysterious Radio. Hi, I'm your host KTown and tonight we're going to be diving into the murder investigation of Anna Kithart, my special guest Richard T. K. Hill Jr. and his book is called Side Tracked, The Betrayal and Murder of Anna Kithart. As the sun rises over the quiet city of Kingston, New York on July 12, 1988, a local transit discovers the remains of 19-year-old Anna Kithart. Anna Kithart was strangled and beaten to death with the letters KKK carved into her thighs. While her heartbroken family mourns, the police work around the clock to uncover the truth. The investigation is complicated by the entrance of Reverend Al Sharpton, who insists that a racist killer is responsible. This book is available on paperback, audiobook and also Kindle from Amazon. Alright, so let's get into it and welcome my special guest Richard T. K. Hill here to talk about his book called Side Tracked. Alright, tonight my special guest is award-winning author Richard T. K. Hill and he's here to discuss his book is called Side Tracked, The Betrayal and Murder of Anna Kithart. Is that right, Kithart? Correct. That book is now available on Kindle Unlimited, paperback and audiobook and Richard, I want to welcome you. Thanks for having me, it's a pleasure to be here. Why don't we just go ahead and talk about what it was about this case that intrigued you enough to write a book about it? Well, the murder victim, Annie Kithart, was from Kingston, New York, so am I. In fact, she was a year ahead of me in high school. I knew her a little bit, not too much, because she was a cool kid and well, big surprise with me being an author. I was a geek. So, I didn't really know her well, but I knew her. And, you know, it was a case that hit Kingston, hit Kingston hard and eventually because of the racial parts of the crime or what was believed to be at the time, it drew Reverend Al Sharpton and his supporters to come to Kingston. And for about a week before the Kingston police solved the crime, everything was very, very tense. But then, once the person who was eventually apprehended was tried and convicted and sentenced, it disappeared from the public eye. Nobody really talked about it. And with the exception of those who were in on the investigation, nobody really knew what happened. And the next time after the conviction that this, or I should say after the sentencing that this case came back in the media, was just before my book got released, because the person who was convicted was paroled and released, and that's what put it back on. But never was there ever any tribute of any real kind to Annie Kithart. It was as if she hadn't existed. And I thought her story deserved to be told. And so I started the research to find out what really happened as much as I could. There are still some things that only one person on the planet knows, and he has chosen not to talk about it. But that was kind of what inspired me to write it. It was my second book. My first one was about the Lindbergh kidnapping, which was, you know, much more well known and famous. But I felt that this story deserved to be told, and it deserved more than to just be forgotten after all these years. Right, right. I'm wondering, did you try to reach out to him at all in prison? To the defendant? Right. No, I didn't reach out to him at the time. I knew he was up for parole. And if I'd reached out to him, one of two things, either he would have refused to talk up to me, which would have been fine. I want three things, or he would have denied it, which would have hurt his parole chances. Or he would have told me what I wanted to hear to try to get parole. So I didn't feel it was the right time to speak to him about it. And, you know, he's always kept to the same story. He's never varied from it. And so I made the decision not to. And then just before my book came out, I heard he had gotten parole, and I thought to myself, well, I guess he did the right thing because he lives in the area too. Okay. That's, that's, huh, I didn't know that you are actually from this area too. So this is going to be easy for you. So I'm going to ask you if you can give us some background about the area. And I wanted to know, you know, what was this or your hometown? Was it was it prone to violent crimes like this? No, it wasn't in the last couple of years. It's changed a bit. But at that time, no, not at all. There was, you know, there was the occasional, you know, fight or and once in a while, there was a murder, but usually it was, it was the odd occurrence. And if it did happen, you know, often it was some kind of a fight gone wrong where someone died. Accidentally, it was very rare that there was an actual out and out murder in the city. At that time in the 1980s, Kingston, although it was a city was very rural and it's changed tremendously since then. There were parts of Kingston that I mean, for example, where the murder occurred, it was right behind Kingston Hospital. Now today behind Kingston Hospital, although it has another name now, but most people around here still called Kingston Hospital. Now it's called the Health Alliance Broadway Campus, I believe is the official name. Now, what state is this in? Richard, I think you said New York. New York, OK. It's upstate New York. So today behind the hospital is a large cement parking lot and then it's on a hill. So they built these stairs that go down and there's a lower parking lot. But at that time in the 1980s, it was covered in trees and shrubbery. And there was an old railway bed that ran behind the hospital that had not been in operation since 1976, but the tracks were still there. So a lot of people use that area when it was light out to cut through to get to work as a shortcut. At night, there was often, you know, bums and drunks that were back there. During the day, a lot of kids played hooky back there. But it was a very secluded area. And today, of course, that most of those tracks have been ripped up and the whole area has been paved over. But for those who don't know, Kingston is a small city about two hours north of New York City and about an hour south of Albany, which is the capital city of the state. And it has become very urban in recent years, but in those times it was very much a small urban upstate and quiet city. All right. I don't know. I may remember it. I'm not sure because I used to live in upstate New York myself up in Watertown when I was stationed in the military. So Watertown is way up the next day of the Canadian border. How far off 81 is Kingston? A couple of hours. A couple of hours. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. So why don't you go ahead and kind of set us up for the day that, you know, her body was found and things like that. Well, I can't, but if it's all right, what I'd like to do is to give a little background of because something had happened nine months before this that really was the powder keg that went that really set things off in this case. Sure. Your listeners may remember the famous Tawanna Brawley case that took place in Poughkeepsie, which is about a half hour south of Kingston. For those who don't, Tawanna Brawley was a young woman who went missing for several days. And when she turned up, she reported to police that she had been kidnapped, that she had been sexually assaulted, and that it was a series of white men who did it. And she later said that there was an assistant district attorney who was one of them and that police were among them. And this was what originally brought Reverend Al Sharpton into the Hudson Valley, and it became a huge nationwide story. Bill Cosby, and this is a pre-conviction Bill Cosby back when he was very popular, he made comments about it. Mike Tyson, who was the heavyweight champion of the world at that time, he commented about it. It really was a big thing. And so Al Sharpton, Fresh Ruff, what had happened in the famous Crown Heights case, came up into Poughkeepsie. So now you've got all these accusations going back and forth. The attorney general of the state of New York was appointed to be the special prosecutor to investigate that, which infuriated Reverend Sharpton and his supporters. They had one of their attorneys that they wanted to be in charge of it. And just before the murder of Annie Kithker took place, things had just started to turn in the Tawanna Brawley case, because one of Sharpton's supporters went out. I believe it was the old Richard Bay show, if I remember correctly, went out on that show into the media and proclaimed that Tawanna Brawley was not telling the truth and that Reverend Sharpton knew. It was all a farce. So the public is just starting to turn and starting to think, you know, this may not be what it seems to be. And that brings us to July of 1988. On that very morning in Kingston, there was a, well, I don't use a politically incorrect term of bum, who was walking through that back area was described by before his name was Kearnan. Kearnan wasn't a bad guy. He had some mental issues and he often would walk those tracks, which ran to a different set of railroad tracks that are still used today, and he would follow them. And they eventually went by another wooded area where he would sleep out underneath the stars at night. He had his issues. So he was walking back to where he lived and he saw what he thought described was either what he called a love doll or a mannequin. And as he looked closer, he began to realize that it was a dead body. And so he ran along the tracks until he came out on what's known as Fox Hall Avenue, which is right by the corner of Broadway. And it's where the hospital is. He saw two women who were nurses who were on their way to work and he called them over. They went and had a look. And when they looked, they saw a young woman. She was laying on her back. She had been her clothes had been taken off of her. She had been bashed in the head with a heavy object. It was labored determined to be a brick blood all over her face. And they noted that there were something was carved into her stomach and her legs, but they didn't notice what it was at the time. So the police are summoned. When the police get there, they quickly they knew right away who the person was. And they knew it was Annie Kithcart. Annie Kithcart was she had. She was a product of an interracial couple of Caucasian and African and African American. And so she was fairly she was fairly light skin. But most people would have said she was African American. That's how she appeared. So they see a young at what they believe is a young African American woman laying there naked. And they see on her stomach is a mark that looks like a K. And on her thighs, someone has carved in KKK. And I think your listeners know what evil organization those letters stand for. So now they realize that there is very possibly a racial motive here. So the police chief who came on the scene fairly early, the late Jim Riggins basically told his officers, I want you to keep this quiet for now. We don't want those to explode. Let's get as much information as we can. And so the media did report early on that Annie Kithcart had died and was murdered. But it wasn't until a few days later that they reported the believed racial aspect of the killing. And that's when the media really took off at that point. All right. So you said that they knew right away. It was Anna. Was that because, you know, they found ID on her or was she just known to the police or what? Tell me about that. Well, when I say it wasn't that she was known to the police because she had no record, but Kingston was a small city and a lot of people, you know, there's a you know, she was from a family, the Kithcart family was a well known family, and I respected family in the city. And her uncle had been a county legislator. So, you know, so that you know, they knew who she was and I should have been more clear on that. No, that's okay. No, no, no, I'm not trying to make that sound bad. I just want to be clear on that. Okay. All right. I understand that. They knew who she was. And, and, you know, and then of course, as I said, they saw what was done to her and, you know, a kind of a information lockdown started for a few days because they knew once that got out, it was going to be a media frenzy. Okay. Oh, understandably so. I would like to know, was she missing for a few days before her body was found? Can you tell me anything about that? I mean, was, was her family worried about her or, or was this just a time where she went out and then the next morning they found her? Can you tell us about that? It was the latter. What they did, they, for as they would bring any investigation, in addition to, you know, canvassing the area to see who saw what, they also tried to get a timeline on Annie for that the day before. Now, Annie, she was supposed to have graduated a month or two before. She was planning on working on her GED. She had stopped going to high school to, because she had a job and so forth. She had been experimenting with cocaine as a lot of people did, including, you know, kids in the 80s. Well, I shouldn't say kids. She was 19 at the time. So young adults did in the 1980s. But she had, by all accounts, made the decision she was going to, you know, turn things around and she was going to get her GED and so forth. She had been out with one of her friends during the day. They had gone over to a park on the, all the way on the other side of the city. And as a lot of kids, young adults at that time did, they were, they were seen by a police officer having a beer and the officers told them, pour it out and, you know, move on. And they went, they went back to Annie's apartment and by all accounts, she was picked up by two other friends. They went out that night and they went to a convenience store, which was less than a quarter mile where she would eventually be found. And according to the police reports, Annie took a 40 ounce bottle of beer and she was seen by the clerk and the clerk at me started yelling and her two friends kind of abandoned. So she's not with us. And Annie ran off across the street. Thereafter throughout the night, she was seen by different people and all the witnesses basically said she was basically looking for someone to hang out with. She was, she was out that night. She was in and out of a place called the Royal Grill, which is a bar that no longer exists today. It had a bad reputation for, for drugs and for serving people who were underage. And the last time she was seen until the next morning was sometime between two and two thirty in the morning. She asked somebody for a ride home and the person said, just a minute, I'm talking with somebody about selling my car. And she walked away and turned down an alley that ran from what was called, what's still called Broadway back to a street called Jansen Avenue. That's the last she was seen that night until the next morning when the transient dimension before named Kiernan found her on the railroad tracks. Okay. Something I found interesting and I'm hoping you can clarify this for me. I don't know if it's true or not. I just read an article. The man that found her was immediately suspected of molesting her body. I mean, like right away. Is that true? He would not know. He was not suspected of that right away, but he was taken in for questioning. He was the first person to find the body. He was known for having a, having questionable sanity. And so they brought it. They did bring him into question. And during the questioning, he got defensive. And so they thought something wasn't right. He didn't change his story at all, but they just, they sent something was wrong. To give you an idea of what this person was like. Kiernan used to proclaim that he was an undercover member of the CIA, that he was a member of Interpol, you know, delusional things like that. And the police knew him. He had been arrested before, never for anything major. The one time he had something that was more than just a minor thing. They ended up not being able to prosecute him because of his mental status and he was sent to spend some time in an institution. So they knew who he was, but they just sent something wasn't right. And they kept talking with him and talking with him. And eventually they took him down to Middletown, which is a city, well, about an hour and a little over an hour from Kingston, because the state police there had the lie detector machine and they put him on that. And it didn't take them long to determine he was lying about something and they weren't sure, they weren't too sure what it was. And they kept pushing him and pushing him because they thought he knew something about the murder. And that's when he said, no, I don't know who killed her. I don't know. I don't know who killed her. Well, did you move the body? And that's when he got really worked up. And eventually he said, well, I can't tell you, you'll think I'm a ghoul. And they pushed him. What is it? What is it? And that's when he admitted he had, well, let me ask you this. Is your show available to people who are younger? Because I don't want to get too graphic. Go ahead and get graphic is fine. I got mainly it's all adults. So don't worry about it. I just have to say that for my own conscience. He said, he said, okay, you said that you're going to think I'm a ghoul. And he said, well, what happened? I ate her is what his exact words were. He apparently he eventually admitted that he performed oral sex on the corpse. And the officers were, of course, disgusted and they brought him back. And when they brought him back to the holding cell in Kingston, one of the detective lieutenants, real, real good guy. He's actually one of the guys I spoke to about this case. His name is Watska. Watska just asked for the report. And when they told him what he admitted to, he yelled out, Karen, you didn't really do that, did you? And he said, yeah. And then he was just disgusted and he just threw up, geez, what was that like? Not expecting an answer. And Karen replied, that was like cold pizza. And, you know, that was the end of that conversation because they were all quite disgusted. And you could see why I was asking if there were children listening to the show. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's unbelievable, actually. Right. But I will tell you, although I won't say what the answer is, people have to buy the book to learn this. I was able to prove definitively whether Karen did that or not. And it's in the book, but I won't review it. You got to buy the book to find that one out. Okay, let me ask you this. Was that the only thing that he, you know, was done to her body post mortem? Was that the, did he do anything else like? No. No, he did not. When you say it was anything else done post mortem, a court, the doctors who eventually testified said that they could tell that Annie was dying as the cuts I described before were being made. So some were made while she was still alive and others were made shortly after she died because her heart stopped beating so they could tell by the blood patterns and so forth. Okay. So there was, when you say post mortem, yes, there were some things done post mortem as far as cutting the body, but of the nature that I've just described with Karen. No. That's what I mean of the sexual nature. No. Okay, so let's talk a little bit more about the state of her body. What was she, what was the cause of death? You said she was, you know, she was beaten with a brick. I believe that's what you said it was. Yeah. Well, so was that, what was it injury trauma to the head or what? Well, that's actually a more difficult question than usually cause that's simple, but here it wasn't the official cause of death was a mixture of blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation. The question was and still remains, what was the order of it? Because it's one thing if the person choked her, she went unconscious and she was unconscious but still alive and then he took the brick and pounder. That's horrible and it's murder, but it is even worse if the person pounded her with the brick had her all bloody and busted up and then scooped her up and choked her and and and finished her off. To me, that's even more gruesome because you'd have to really be a sadistic human being to take that other step. There were two doctors that testified. One said she was choked first and bludgeoned second. The other doctor said she was bludgeoned first and choked second. I believe that the choking came first. That's my belief based on overall, but it is not something you can prove definitively. The technology and the forensics at the time were not like they are today. And so you're limited by the technology of 1988 and 1989. Right, right. Okay, let's let's talk about again where her body was found. Found was did authorities immediately think that she was killed there or was she was she dumped there? They were absolutely certain that she was killed there. There were some signs of a struggle. Some of the grassy area was flattened a bit. There was blood in different areas there on some of the leaves and so forth. There was a plastic basin of the type like you would use in a hospital that was there that was cracked and had blood on it. They were quite certain she had been killed there. All right, what about witnesses? I mean, you said that area, well, I guess was frequented by, you know, people walking through that area and such. I mean, did anybody say they saw or heard anything that night? To this day, there are no known witnesses other than the murderer himself of the actual killer. Right, right. And there were no witnesses that actually saw her and the defendant Jeff Dawson together that night. Well, there is a report. It's interesting. There is a report that talks about her meeting Jeff Dawson. I thought, oh, here it is. But there were two Jeff Dawson's actually who were related to each other. They were cousins and it was not the defendant that she was seen with in that statement. So I thought I had something pretty good at the time. But there's, you know, there was nobody that actually saw them together and no witnesses to the actual murder itself. Who immediately, if anyone popped up on their list of suspects, I mean, were they able to come up with a list of people that may have wanted to murder her? Or did it take some time? There was nobody that they thought would have killed her. Annie was very popular. She was a very nice, sweet person. There was nobody that they thought of what had an axe to grind with her. There were rumors going around. There were phone calls that were made of people making suggestions. There was one that they tried to follow up and that said she was killed by a couple of local drug dealers. And in fact, the two people who were being rumored actually went to a local attorney and the attorney ranged an interview with the police and they quickly determined that they weren't involved. But it was this type of rumor actually that led them to their suspect. The detectives started hearing, you know, rumblings from people around town, their sources, snitches and so forth, that somebody had bragged about doing it. And so they went around and they tried tracing it back. Oh, yeah, you heard this? Well, who did you hear it from? And so forth and so on. And they eventually came to a woman who lived on Janssen Avenue, which was just down the street from the entrance to the wooded area where the body was found. And she said, yeah, I know who said they heard this, but I have to make a phone call to get permission to release their names. Who she went to. I nobody knows, but she came back and she said, yeah, it was Todd Schleed and his girlfriend. So the police went out and they picked up Todd Schleed and the girlfriend. The girlfriend didn't know very much, a little, but not too much. But Todd, when they questioned him for a while, he broke down and he gave them an interesting story. Now, Todd said that he was driving on Broadway the morning that the police were summoned to look at and investigate the murder. And he saw Jeff Dawson walking on Broadway. Now, the Kingston Hospital, I've told you it's behind Kingston Hospital, wherever she was. Kingston Hospital, a front entrance, faces Broadway. She was around behind it in the wooded area. So he sees Jeff Dawson, Jeff signals to him, he gets in the back of the car and they start driving on Broadway and they're just talking. Schleed turns his car to the left and goes down Fox Hall Avenue, which, as I said before, is where the entrance is. You know, basically past the hospital in turn. And the police were all there and the area was roped off. Schleed and his girlfriend both said that as soon as they turned and they saw the police, Dawson slid down in the back seat so he couldn't be seen from the outside. And after they passed by the police, he sat back up. And so when they got to where they were going, as he's getting out of the car, he said something to the effect of the police making him go. And some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because some was sad because to him, well, who was it? And he says, do you know that bitch, Annie Kithkart? Yes, that's who it was. And according to Schleed Dawson said that she fell that he had that he she fell in his head. And he also said that he had put her in a choke lock, although he didn't give any further details or the order of it. So now the police have a possible admission. But the problem is Schleed had his own hat was not a reliable witness because he had a criminal record. He also had a felon. He was he was on parole and so forth. So any good defense attorney is going to rip him apart. So what they did is they got him to agree to wear a wire and they brought him out. And he went to Jeff Dawson's home over on Brewster Street in Kingston and, you know, pounded on the door and yelled until finally Jeff came down. And they started talking. Well, the conversation was almost ruined because they had undercover police all over the area listing and just ready to jump in and arrest well, apparently didn't make it clear to everybody in the department because a black and white or a patrol car, if you want to use the other term comes riding by and it's regular patrol. And that of course set Dawson off and he was cursing and, you know, why they after me and blah, blah, blah. So Schleed just kept trying to get him to make an admission. And he basically he did get him to make an admission, although to use the legal parlance, he was leading the witness. You know, he said, so you killed that girl last night. Uh-huh. You know, and but he never actually got him to say, yes, I killed her. He got admissions like that. But he couldn't. Uh, he couldn't really get him to say much. Now, by this point, the police had gotten the statement from Karen before, but and he had been arrested and charged with sexual contact with the body for the disgusting thing I described before. And so they asked Schleed, asked Dawson, you know, did you have sex with the body? And he said, no, I didn't do that. That was the white guy referring to Kiernan. But that was about the extent of what he said on the tape and the police came in and they arrested him and they brought him downtown. But that's how they got their suspect. It was old fashioned police work following up on the rumor mill and until they got a semi sort of confession through the, uh, the wire before they actually zeroed in on these guys and then Al Sharpton somehow got involved. How did he get involved anyway? Who called him or how did he, how did his supporters insert themselves in this? So sure when they were so sure it was race related? Well, as soon as it came out that, uh, the, uh, it came out, the way it came out was there was another person who had seen the body that morning, uh, who had been cutting through the work and he went to the media and told him, well, I saw the body too. And I saw there was KKK on the body. Well, the media kept trying to get the police, you know, over the first 24 to 40 hours to admit it and they wouldn't respond. Finally, they said, well, we're going to go to media, go to press with this. You better tell us. And they admitted and then they held a press conference and said, yes, this had happened. So now they released this and they, and, uh, as to who called Sharpton, there's different stories of that. Some, some Sharpton claimed that the, uh, Annie's family called him. Uh, they never, Annie's family never talked to the media, ever, not one single time. Um, her, uh, one of the, actually that's not true. One family member did and, but he didn't say very much. Uh, the rest of them refused to talk and, uh, they kept very quiet and the kids have always been a very private family as well. They're well known and well respected, but private. And so they wouldn't speak about it. Um, but somebody called Sharpton, we don't, to this day, know exactly who Sharpton reported different people at different times who called him, but he came to Kingston because he said it, you know, because he had been saying all along in the Toronto Broly case that there was a racist cult that was operating and, and so forth. And that members of the police were part of it and so forth. So now, uh, he, he comes into Kingston and the first thing he does is he tries to say that, uh, Kiernan is being, is being made into a scapegoat that they don't really want to investigate. Uh, uh, at one point there was a statement made where they, um, made a claim that, uh, the police had been looking for Annie that night and they had chased her. The police never chased her that night. They never saw her that night. What he was talking about was the, I mentioned before about how Annie had swiped a, a 40 ounce bottle of beer, whether the police were called, she was gone by then. But they had gotten a name, but they weren't out looking for her for stealing a bottle of beer. They had got to it eventually, but it wasn't high priority. Uh, and they certainly weren't chasing her, but they got that report and they went with it from there. So eventually, um, uh, uh, Mr. Mason, uh, and Mr. Maddox got involved and one of them ended up representing Kiernan for a while, uh, on his case, uh, the, you know, his misdemeanor case about, uh, desecrating the body. But they were screaming and yelling and making comments about, you know, we're going to be investigating this, the police are corrupt and so forth. Uh, so it was, you know, even before they caught Jeff Dawson, that was all over the news. And you know, everybody in Kingston was kind of walking on, on eggshells because the average citizen, all the average citizen knew was that Annie Kithcart was dead and that she had had a despicable, uh, racial, uh, uh, slur on her body, you know, KKK. Uh, that's all the public really knew and had sharpened, you know, screaming and they knew they had seen everything that happened in Poughkeepsie and the protests and everything else. And people were very nervous that this was going to explode, really explode into city to the level it did in Poughkeepsie. So I mean, that's kind of what's going on here at this point. Uh, most of what I've been telling you about is with the police, only the police and the district attorney's office knew the details that I'm giving you. The public didn't know any of this until much, much later. Okay. Now, uh, before they actually zeroed in on these guys, again, I have to ask you, did they ever appeal to the public for any information or tips or anything like that about her? Well, yeah, they, they had the general, you know, when they were talking about the case, if anybody knows anything, please come forward as they always do. And they did get some tips of people calling in, oh, I hear, you know, cause some people who knew Annie knew that she had been experimenting with cocaine. She wasn't an addict by any stretch, but she was, she was kind of at that point as a lot of young kids are where they have to make a decision, am I going to, you know, keep partying and potentially becoming an addict or am I going to straighten myself out? A lot of, you know, of kids go through that. That's where she was. But there were some people who knew that and knew she had been involved with some drugs. So they called it, oh, it could have been a drug hit and so forth. And, uh, there was a lot of stuff like that. But, um, they, they did make the generic, you know, any, if you have anything, but, you know, they withheld quite a bit because they knew that once the, uh, the existence of the KKK markings on her became public, that they were going to get inundated with phone calls. Uh, you know, the way chief Riggins worded it, he said, every nut in the city is going to come out as the way he worded it. So, uh, you know, and of course they were accused of covering it up and you know, what have you. The guy you did mention that he called, he said, you know, he murdered someone last night and he called her a bitch or whatever. What, what was the motive? I mean, did he have something against her? Did he know her or? He knew her. Okay. He knew her. There's no evidence that, even at the trial, the district attorney said, we don't know what the, what the motive was. Um, I don't think he intended to kill her. Uh, I, I don't think it was, he didn't certainly didn't go out and say, I'm going to go kill somebody tonight. Jeff Dawson wasn't a tremendously violent guy. If you messed with him, he could drop you and knock you out in a heartbeat, but he wasn't a guy that went around looking for fights. He was a thief. He was involved. He would steal, he would steal things. He had been in and out of jail, but it was always theft. Uh, it was, you know, he had one case where he did punch somebody. Uh, there was an indication that he punched a police officer and nothing ever, ever really happened with it. There was some problem with the case, but uh, he wasn't a violent guy. And that was what they couldn't figure out. Uh, they questioned him and he talked at length. And what he said was he said he had been, uh, he'd been out in and out of the, uh, royal grill and that he was leaving the royal grow and walking down Broadway when Annie Kithgard came up to him and said, Hey, Jeff, let's do something. And, uh, he didn't want to. Jeff was considerably older than Annie. Uh, and so he probably, you know, he wouldn't have been, wouldn't have been hanging out with her. Uh, and he claimed that she was, that she was drunk, that she was following him and he walked away from her and went into the, uh, down the tracks just to, you know, because he was going to go uptown because there was a carnival that night uptown. In fact, that's where Annie was supposed to, was supposed to be that night before the whole thing happened with the beer. Uh, but, uh, he said Annie followed her and kept saying, come on. And he said, he eventually got annoyed and he pushed her away and said, get away from me. And he said, she got, she came at him again, said, Oh, come on, come on, do something. And he said, he pushed her again and he said, she fell and hit her head and he said, he leaned down and he said, there was blood on the back of her head and back of her head. He panicked and he walked away. He claimed that he went out the other side and then up the hill to what is now city hall. At that time it was old city hall, uh, a gigantic building that had been abandoned for many years and it was just sitting there. And he said, he sat in front of that building for a good 45 minutes. And then he said, he went back. And when he went back, he said, she had been moved and, uh, she had been stripped and, and killed and, and cut, uh, which the police didn't believe it for a second. Um, but he insisted on that story and he stayed with it all the time. Uh, so by his own admission, he admitted being there with her, he put himself at the scene of the crime with her and alone with her. So although interestingly enough, the prosecutor never used that tape or that conf, that statement at trial. I think he was withholding it in case Jeff testified though he never did. But, uh, that, at that point, they knew they had the guy. It was just a question of trying to find out why. And they never really did find out why it was a true senseless, pointless murder. Um, you know, uh, my belief is that, and this is, this is my conclusion based on the evidence and knowing both people as I did, there was no question Annie had been drinking that night. She had a blood alcohol content that, uh, showed she had been drinking. Uh, I think she followed him in. I think they, whatever they were talking about, they got into an argument and he's always stayed with the story that he pushed her away. I think he did push her and she got mad. I mean, Annie was a nice person, but if she didn't have a temper, if you got her angry, she wasn't going to back down. And, uh, I think she got arguing with him. And I think he grabbed her in a choke lock, not to kill her, but I think he grabbed, just grabbed hold of her, uh, to, you know, to hate to be so blunt, to shut her up, uh, not to kill her. And, uh, Jeff had been doing cocaine earlier that day. And I think Jeff was a very physically strong man. And I believe when he caught her in the choke lock, as strong as he was, and with the adrenaline pumping, he hit it just right. And if you hit a choke, just right on the carotid artery, a person can go out almost immediately. It's not like you see in T with, with a grab hold and they fight and they fight, you know, that's if they grab across the windpipe. If you catch it right on the carotid artery, a person can go out very quickly in some cases, almost instantaneously. And with his strength, I think he caught her and he got it just right. And she dropped. And he said in a statement that when she went down, he thought she was playing, you know, when he said he pushed her and she fell down. I think he panicked at that point. I think he panicked. He was on parole. I think he figured no one was going to believe him. You know, people knew Annie, they liked her. He was known as a thief and he was on parole. And I think he panicked. And I think he tried to make it look like a crazy person did it. Or, you know, and I think he put the KKK on her legs to throw suspicion on him. Who would ever suspect an African American man of putting KKK on an African American female? And I know she was, she was both African American and Caucasian, but, you know, every, whenever the media reported it, they always reported her as being, in those days, they said black female, but, you know, today, African American female. And so there'll be no reason for, you know, for a black man to do that. So, but except to throw suspicion off. And I think that's what happened. I don't think Jeff intended to kill her. He did. But I don't think he intended to. I think it was, you know, more accidental. And the sad thing is if I'm right in what happened, and I'm fairly confident that I am, that means when he choked and she went unconscious, she was still alive. But remember where I said this took place, right? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Behind the hospital. If he had, if instead of panicking, he had picked her up and carried her into the emergency room. She might have lived, but he panicked. And to me, that's what makes it murder, because in New York, even if you don't intend to kill, if you engage in conduct that shows a reckless disregard for human life, that can be murder. And here, he thought she, he thought that she was dead when he hit her with, this is my supposition. I believe he think he thought she was dead when he was hitting her with the brick. And he was just trying to make it look like a crazy person did it. But in fact, she, I think she was still alive, albeit unconscious. And which is, you know, that's the, to me, that's the ultimate tragedy, you know, a young person lost her life, not only unintentionally, but then she was still alive. And this guy, if he had brought her in, he, he would have had his parole violated. He'd have gone back, he'd have been out in a couple of years and he would have lived his life. Instead, he spent the next 30 years in prison. Yeah, he didn't want to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Now, okay, so I know this is like pre all the, all the technology that's available now and in forensics and things like that. But I didn't hear you say it, but did they find any like spatters of blood and everything? I'm just imagining someone, you know, just pummeling someone with a brick. Yeah, they would have blood spatter everywhere. Well, that Annie's clothes, along with a white t-shirt that is believed to belong to Dawson, were found, but not at the scene. The only clothes found at the scene were one of Annie's shoes. The rest of them were found in the same alley that I told you earlier that Annie walked down before the, when she was last seen, they were found in that alley. The belief is that Jeff took the clothes with him and he admitted that he took her clothes. He never gave a good explanation why. And he dumped them in that alley. Then he went and he went down Brewster Street and he jumped into a neighbor's pool to wash the blood off. They went to that neighbor's pool and tried to do tests, but there was insufficient forensics in those days to get anything. They found a pair of jeans in Jeff Dawson's apartment, but the only thing that was found on there was one, basically one dot of blood, which they were only, the only thing they were able to do was get a blood type on the different blood that they found. They weren't able to do DNA at that time. They could, but it was brand new. And it wasn't like today where you can get a drop and get all this DNA. It wasn't like that. You had to have quite a bit in those days. It was brand new technology. So they brought that into evidence. To my knowledge, they never did any testing to see if there was more blood. I mean, now, even when you clean blood, they have chemicals they could spray on and it'll light up like a Christmas tree, but they didn't do that. And that was, it was done in those days, but it wasn't that common. But there wasn't a lot of forensic evidence. The one piece of forensic evidence they did have, there was a bruise that was found on Annie that they believed was a bite mark. And they brought in a forensic dentist who testified that it was Jeff Dawson's bite mark. Now, I am not a big believer in forensic dentistry when it comes to bite marks. I believe you can identify a body using dentistry. That's solid science. But I am very skeptical of saying, of being able to connect the bite mark, except in rare circumstances. And the testimony of the forensic dentist was weak. He said, well, yeah, I didn't think it was a match initially, but it does match if you presume that he was biting and then he reshifted it in a bit again. Well, that's a heck of a presumption. And maybe it was his bite, but I wasn't overly convinced by that evidence. And frankly, I think if he had better defense, he might have, he would have had a shot of actually being acquitted if he had better, better defense, because the evidence just wasn't that good. They could have got him by playing the tape. But for whatever reason, the prosecutor didn't do it. I presume he was holding it because everybody thought Jeff Dawson was going to testify. And it would have been great to rebut his testimony, but he never presented it. But there wasn't a lot of forensics, but it just wasn't something that was very common then. I mean, dentistry was the big thing right then because they just acquitted, what's his name, and I acquitted convicted, I should say, Bundy. They just, I believe it was, and they convicted him based on bites. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And so that was like the big thing then, you know, and it was, so they used that, but, and, you know, the jury was out quite a while, but they eventually came back and, and convicted him. You know, you kept saying that you didn't believe that he actually meant to kill her. So did they charge him with second degree murder? They charged him, they charged him with two counts of first degree murder. They charged him with he intended to kill and the reckless dangerous, reckless disregard of human life theory. The defense asked for the lesser included of a lower level of murder and of manslaughter. And yet Jeff never testified. Jeff did not get along well with any of his attorneys, except for the first one. First one, Jerry Flattery, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year. Jerry Flattery was a damn good defense attorney and a good guy. And I'm an attorney myself, so I know a lot of the attorneys in the area, and Jerry was, was a good one. Jerry had to withdraw from the case. He never said why. He just said it was a conflict. And, you know, he would never confirm it because Jerry valued his ethics. But my belief is he had to withdraw because Todd Schleed, I told you, had a record before. Well, not long before all this happened, a guy was arrested and he was charged with, with a robbery. And he said, I can, I can give you some other people that have been doing these robbies because there have been a bunch of robbies of a local Stuart store, which is local stores here in the Northeast, their milk and bread, little small stuff, our shops and sometimes gasoline. So they set up a sting where Schleed and two other people or Schleed, one of the person was going to commit the robbery. And they were all there waiting for them. And when they, two of them came in, they saw an undercover detective that they knew and they turned and walked away. So they were never able to charge him. Well, Jerry represented one of those guys. And he wanted to use this information to try to point to Todd Schleed because Schleed was the star witness against him. And so of course, common defense tactic charge, you know, charge the star witness because Schleed knew any kids card too. But he couldn't do that because his client wouldn't testify. And without his client testifying to all these things I just said, the only way he knew about it was his client had told him, well, that's privileged. And you can't reveal something that your client tells you in privilege. It's not allowed. And Jerry valued his ethics. So he was in a quandary. He couldn't break his ethics to the other client. And I haven't mentioned the other name of the client because he was never charged. And I'm not going to say his name. In the book, I give a fake name for this person. And I say it's a fake name because I don't believe in putting somebody's name out there if they haven't been charged. But I can tell the story with a fake name and it works just as well. So he couldn't break his ethics to this person. But he had to vigorously defend his client. So this was a conflict. And so he had to withdraw from the case. And thereafter, there were two more defense attorneys, but Jeff never really got along with them. And had he got along with them and worked with them, if they had tried to go on a manslaughter theory, there's a good chance it would have worked. Because as I said, nobody knows exactly what happened. I mean, I've put together as best I can and made reasonable conclusions based on the evidence and based on my knowledge of both people. And even I can't say my conclusion is 100% accurate. I feel confident on it, but I wasn't there. But they could have, they had a lot of things they could have done. They just didn't do it. And, you know, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall to hear the conversations between Jeff and his attorneys. No doubt. No doubt. Very good. This has been a great conversation with you, Richard. I want you to take a moment to tell my listeners where they can find more information about you or anything else you're working on. Well, you can go to my website, www.RichardT, as in Thomas, k-hill, c-a-h-i-l-l-j-r.com. RichardTKhillJr.com. You can find out about all three of my books I have, Side Track, which we've been talking about tonight. And, of course, my original book about the Lindbergh kidnapping, Hauppmann's Ladder. And of course, I have a brand new book that just came out a week ago. It is my first foray into fiction, crime fiction, because crime is what I write about. It's called The Aftermath. It is available in book form or on Kindle form. I'm very pleased how it's actually doing so far. It's already jumped to the top 2,000 of all books in the United States, so I'm very pleased by that. Now, that's Kindle, of course. That's the wave of the future now, all these kids with their devices reading books. I still like having the book in my hand, but I guess I'm a dinosaur. But to me, that's reading. But I understand everybody likes the devices. And if they buy my book, I don't care if they read it in a book or on the device or if somebody reads it to them, I don't care. Just buy the book. But The Aftermath is the very first Connor Feyoan novel. Connor Feyoan is an attorney from Upstate who suffered terrible tragedy. His young wife and unborn child died tragically, and his life fell apart. And as the book begins, he has recently moved back to his hometown of Rockfield, New York, fictional place. It's geographically somewhere in the area of what we would call Green County, New York, but it's a fictional area. And he's just getting a small practice and getting his life back together. And he gets assigned by his old friend who used to be the DA and is now the County Court Judge, John Hardy, assigns him to be special prosecutor of a local guy who's a famous local wild man, knowing for doing all kinds of things. And now he's accused of something of a crime he's never been charged before. He's charged with murder and he's charged with killing a young high school cheerleader named Michelle Coleman. Well, it doesn't take Connor long to figure out that this guy was in the house and committed a burglary, but he's not the murderer. And shortly thereafter, DNA evidence proves his theory that a serial killer who was once known as the Rockfield Strangler has returned after a 20 year hiatus. And it also doesn't take long for the serial killer to realize that special prosecutor Connor Fallon is onto him. And the book basically not only talks about Connor rebuilding his life and the investigation, but it gives you a little insight into his best I could into the mind of the serial killer. And it sets up a battle between the two of them that in the aftermath of both of their tragedies, because this killer turned to murder after a very similar tragedy happened to him. And you get to see how terrible tragedy affects people in different ways. But it sets up in the aftermath a battle between this serial killer and Connor Fallon with a final scene, a final battle scene that I think you're really going to enjoy if you buy it. So yeah, I'm biased because I wrote it, but I think you're really going to enjoy the reviews have been wonderful. And I'm just waiting, just waiting for all these talk shows like yours to keep calling me up so I can talk about it because I'm really excited about it. All right, very good. My special guest is Richard T. K. Hill. And this book is very tragic, but it's a great book and you need to pick it up. It's called Side Tract, The Betrayal and Murder of Anna Kithcart. And that is available on Kindle Unlimited Paperback and Audio Book. And Richard, I want to thank you and many blessings. And I really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking with you. All right, again, the book is called Side Tract, The Betrayal and Murder of Anna Kithart. And that book is available right now on Amazon and Audio Book Paperback and also Kindle. To find out more about our guest and all others, please visit our website at mysteriousradio.com.