00:04:18.540It's, I guess, kind of come full circle.
00:04:22.060I remember you covering the Peterson case and thought you had a bright future and see
00:04:26.780I could prognosticate things then and now.
00:04:30.680Oh my God, I would have been so honored if I had known that at the time.
00:04:34.320I just watched you and you're such a skilled trial attorney, such confidence, and you're
00:04:39.360at the peak of all these massive cases, a lot of pressure. So that does mean a lot to me. Thank
00:04:44.580you for saying that. It was quite a, it was quite a different time. I'm the, uh, you were just
00:04:49.740starting out. Kimberly Goufoyle was just starting out, uh, then married to the, uh, the mayor and,
00:04:56.060um, Nancy Grace and just kind of blown up, uh, so to speak. And court TV was, uh, was really in
00:05:03.920its heyday at that point true i will tell you i'll tell you though that the um i was thinking
00:05:09.480about a lot of those things yesterday because as you just mentioned scott was just resentenced and
00:05:14.720by the way i think that's a little bit of kabuki theater because the same judge who has this and
00:05:20.860you had mentioned that the uh california supreme court had reversed the death penalty unanimously
00:05:27.400by the way because we had complained in real time the judge was using the absolute wrong standard
00:05:33.520for excusing jurors. If somebody didn't have a kind of a preference for the death penalty or not,
00:05:44.000he was just excusing anybody who was against the death penalty, which is not the standard. I
00:05:49.280was bitterly complaining at the time. Yeah, he should have followed up and said,
00:05:53.520but can you still be fair? Could you still impose it if the facts justified?
00:05:58.320Which, by the way, was the law and it was clear, it was U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
00:06:02.060And the California Supreme Court, not only the poor judge DeLuki is now dead, but not only reversed it, but kind of excoriated the prosecution.
00:06:12.280Why did you allow this to happen? You know, this was basically a year long proceeding.
00:06:16.900And what a waste of time. My position has been, well, if you get kind of pro death penalty jurors, you're getting pro law enforcement jurors.
00:06:26.660And that should have tainted the guilt phase as well.
00:06:31.200What they did instead of going that far, what they did is they issued right after the reversal an OSC, Order to Show Cause, saying to the trial judge, look, there's this woman who was a juror, Strawberry Shortcake is the way she was dubbed by the media.
00:06:47.080And just to jump in, just hold on, Mark, because I just want to make sure that our audience is with us. We're shifting gears a little. He got a new trial instead of a death sentence because the judge shouldn't have been disqualifying jurors who had doubts about the death penalty. So that's why he got a different sentence.
00:07:02.400He got a different sentence sentence, but he wants a new trial. He wants to have a redo on
00:07:09.360the guilt or innocence phase based on something else involving jurors. Yes, but it's a different
00:07:14.760issue. And it revolves around this, as you say, strawberry shortcake. OK, go ahead.
00:07:19.700Exactly. And so what they've done is they had a they issued the Supreme Court issue in order
00:07:26.360to show cause. So now there's they're back in the trial court. The same judge who resentenced him to
00:07:32.720life yesterday has now set a hearing for next year. And the kind of an interesting twist that
00:07:39.180hasn't been reported on. She filed a declaration denying that she had lied or denying that she
00:07:45.760hadn't been truthful. But now she's got a new lawyer and she's invoking the Fifth Amendment.
00:07:51.280Oh, and so wait, wait, wait. So again, let's set it up because people are not as neck deep in it as you are. So this juror, the alleged misconduct is when you guys were going through because you were Scott's lawyer. I mean, I guess we should remind people of that again. You were his trial lawyer. So when you were voidering the jurors and figuring out who you guys wanted on the jury, you and the prosecution had to agree.
00:08:12.740um this woman filled out a form and did not disclose that she had been the victim of domestic
00:08:19.900of abuse while pregnant which of course was the situation being alleged right here might have
00:08:26.520given might have given us pause right yes of course and as a defense lawyer you can either
00:08:31.840bounce somebody for cause saying there's no way this person can be fair or you can use your
00:08:35.640peremptory challenges saying i don't have to tell you why i don't want her i just i don't want her
00:08:38.780um you don't you weren't given that opportunity because you didn't know you didn't know that this
00:08:42.320woman had been abused while pregnant. She kept it a secret orally in writing. I guess it came up a
00:08:48.380couple of times. She never disclosed. And so I'll bounce it back to you on what. So now she's
00:08:53.120pleading the fifth. Yeah, she filed a declaration, presumably at the behest of the prosecution,
00:08:59.180because it was a test. It was attached as an exhibit. And then she gets a new lawyer. Now
00:09:04.440she's now she's asking for immunity, which is shocking to me, which if you read between the
00:09:11.080lines, the prosecutor got her to say something, presumably that she no longer thinks is true or
00:09:17.440didn't think was true at the time. If they don't give her immunity, then, as you know,
00:09:23.740they'll strike the declaration. And Scott's got a better than even chance of getting a new trial.
00:09:29.040What did she say in the declaration? Because she she like, as I understood it, it's his defense
00:09:34.600counsel saying we came to understand that she had this thing and she didn't disclose it.
00:09:39.780therefore were entitled to a new trial because he's entitled to a jury that doesn't have any
00:09:44.860sort of unfair bias against him. Why was she submitting an affidavit or a declaration, the
00:09:49.840juror? Because they were trying to say, the appellate lawyers were saying for Scott that
00:09:57.240she had not disclosed this, that she knew that it was relevant. One of the reasons that this was a
00:10:05.640hot issue. I had caught two other jurors who had lied, prospective jurors who had lied about their
00:10:12.040background and having domestic violence and caught them in real time. And they had fooled me. I mean,
00:10:18.360one juror had gone back. I mean, we're going back 17 years. Back then they had chat rooms and
00:10:24.320somebody had faxed me a chat room conversation that one of these prospective jurors had where
00:10:30.840she had was bragging that she fooled the dumb shit defense lawyer me um and was going to get
00:10:37.100on this jury and fry his client and i confronted her with that after i got that i was a little
00:10:42.920ticked at my pi for not finding it but that was the kind of stuff we were dealing with that's
00:10:49.220where we coined the term stealth jurors jurors who wanted to get on a jury for you know some
00:10:54.900other agenda other than to do justice so what so now this court is uh i guess february 20th i think
00:11:01.740is what the february 25th the hearing on whether he should get a new trial on guilt or innocence
00:11:07.060will begin and i wonder what you think i know what you want but what do you think the odds are
00:11:13.580because i've read a lot of articles on it now and and half of them say legal analysts say it's very
00:11:18.760very unlikely he's going to get it and then half of them say legal analysts say he has a very good
00:11:23.460chance of getting it? Well, we're in the state court. So the California Supreme Court, as I
00:11:31.360indicated, had unanimously referred this back to the state trial court. It's an awful heavy lift
00:11:37.560for a trial court judge in a case like this. Remember, at the time, you probably have a
00:11:43.520pretty good memory of it. I mean, this was the most hated man in America. As soon as Amber Fry
00:11:49.280came on the scene, that was all she wrote in terms of the kind of pretrial prejudice and animosity
00:11:55.980and animus towards Scott. So I hate to be a cynic, but it is a heavy lift. However,
00:12:02.160if Strawberry Shortcake does not get immunity and will not testify, that declaration of hers
00:12:09.980gets struck and they're left with no evidence to rebut, they being the prosecution, to rebut the
00:12:17.000OSC. And so the, presumably the, he would get a reversal. Now, if I, if you're asking me to
00:12:23.440prognosticate, I'm always more confident that that would happen in federal courts and state court,
00:12:28.420but we'll see. It let's go back through it because his sister, Scott's sister, Janie
00:12:35.200has been a tireless sister-in-law has been a tireless advocate for him. I watched a 48 hours
00:12:41.980piece not long ago that got into it in depth with her and um she and his supporters maintain
00:12:48.940he didn't do it it's not just like the prosecution didn't meet its burden that he is innocent of this
00:12:55.660crime and the theory is and just to remind the viewers um what happened was it was december
00:13:02.360it was it was december 24th it was christmas eve right 2002 and i'll let you tell them mark what
00:13:08.020was the the theory of the prosecution was what happened? The prosecution was that he had at least
00:13:13.200in the opening statements, they had taken the position that he killed her on the 23rd, that he
00:13:19.700transported her in the back of a boat up to the bay, that he dumped her on the 24th and then came
00:13:26.640home and had made conflicting statements, golfing or fishing, blah, blah, blah. During the trial and
00:13:33.920by closings, we had, I thought, demonstrably proved that she was alive on the morning of the
00:13:40.30024th. And the way we had done that is they had a forensic computer expert who was on the stand.
00:13:46.300And during cross-examination, I got him to admit that it appeared that the activity on the morning
00:13:52.040of the 24th was consistent with the websites that Lacey would go to, that she had logged in and
00:13:57.740had all the signatures of Lacey. And we had shown in the hamper that the clothes that were there
00:14:04.160would have been the dirty clothes that she had worn on the 23rd. The prosecutor, Rick DeStasso,
00:14:10.220who's now a judge, by the way, got up in closing rebuttal and said, well, it really doesn't matter.
00:14:16.740Yeah, we may have been wrong. We don't know when she was dead. We don't know how she's dead.
00:14:20.660we don't know where, but the fact is his alibi was in the Bay. That's where she was found four
00:14:27.340or so months later. So therefore you, you must convict a couple of the jurors in real time back
00:14:34.260then said, but for her being found in the Bay, um, they never would have convicted. Um, I always
00:14:41.680thought, and I publicly before I took the case said, you know, there's guys in, in state prison
00:14:47.720on a lot less evidence that the body washes up in the same location where your alibi was. But
00:14:54.240the problem was, it was a four-month hiatus. Everybody in the world knew where he had been,
00:15:00.340and so that kind of takes away, if you will, the causal connection. And number two,
00:15:07.460that area where the Bay was searched repeatedly by four or five different agencies, and they found
00:15:15.320nothing until after this huge storm. And that's when they found Lacey's body and Conor's body as
00:15:22.980well. Because Lacey was eight months pregnant with their son, Conor. And the theory of the
00:15:28.640prosecution was that he killed her because he was having an affair with Amber Frye and he didn't
00:15:34.100want a child and he didn't want to be with Lacey anymore. He wanted to be with Amber Frye,
00:15:39.260very beautiful blonde who, you know, it was the Gloria Allred moment, you know, that we see in
00:15:44.440virtually every case. And that was the bombshell because when Lacey was missing, the whole country
00:15:49.360was saying, where is she? Where is she? Is this beautiful eight-month pregnant woman,
00:15:53.780adoring mother, Sharon Rocha, you used to see her everywhere. Scott Peterson's a good-looking guy.
00:15:59.500It's like, oh, they seem like this all-American couple. My God, it's Christmas Eve. What happened
00:16:03.780to Lacey and Connor, the unborn baby? And then things turned when Amber Fry came forward. Amber
00:16:11.880had been told by Scott, and this is one of the things that led people to hate him and believe
00:16:15.660he did it, that his wife was dead. She only met Scott Peterson on 1120, November 20.
00:16:22.100And he said, my wife's dead. This will be my first Christmas without her, which of course,
00:16:26.460you know, the prosecution was like, that's foreshadowing by him. And then Sharon turned
00:16:31.940on him. Lacey's family turned on him. And then you tell me, Mark, because I know you don't like
00:16:36.720it when your clients give interviews to the press. I've listened to you for years and I know you'll
00:16:41.540dump a client for that. But he sat down with Diane Sawyer and spewed a bunch of nonsense that we all
00:16:49.320knew wasn't true. We actually pulled a clip because I wanted to ask you about how you, the lawyer,
00:16:53.320felt about this. But here he is 17 plus years ago talking to Diane Sawyer on GMA.
00:16:59.260Did your wife find out about it? I told my wife.
00:21:09.060look i've represented over the almost 40 years probably i don't know 500 uh homicide cases over
00:21:17.380the 40 years maybe maybe less but i i know when somebody's good for something i know when they're
00:21:23.940capable of it i've figured that out i can tell i know when somebody's a sociopath i know when
00:21:28.980they're i mean i can just read it just by going through it this guy doesn't have the capability
00:21:33.820I mean, that's just my spending that amount of time with him.
00:21:38.460And I'll tell you, based on the evidence, the evidence, I know that people say, well, circumstantial, he didn't act right.
00:21:45.800You know, the tapes you mentioned always are thrown back in my face.
00:21:50.740And I said, yeah, but the problem is nobody can explain where this happened, how this happened, how this guy who gets on an interview and does not acquit himself well, was able to not leave a forensic trace anywhere, anyhow, of this crime.
00:22:10.600Why couldn't he have smothered her or strangled her, which wouldn't lead to blood evidence?
00:22:16.440Her DNA would already be all over the house.
00:22:18.940And then he got her body out of the house.
00:22:20.740Yeah, but there wasn't anything that was consistent with that. I mean, they went through if you saw kinds of the and we went extensively over the forensic, they couldn't even find anything. There would be excretions. There would be evidence or telltale signs, trace evidence that would have got another one for you. I got another one. Why wouldn't why wouldn't he take a polygraph? And the night cops came over the first day she was reported missing. And they said, we take a polygraph and he refused.
00:22:47.380only because it's not admissible in california no but this is at the point where she's missing
00:22:52.740he's supposed to be the grieving terrified husband where is she oh my god right like if i go missing
00:22:57.660for a day and they say doug will you take a polygraph doug says yes of course whatever
00:23:00.960whatever you need but he didn't well it depends i don't know if doug was playing around on the side
00:23:06.440but you know so he did not what do you know what no i don't want to i don't want to i don't want
00:23:14.160to ruin what appears to be a very happy marriage. So you never know. But look, I always advise
00:23:21.680clients, if you want to take a polygraph, I'm going to do it with my guy first. I mean,
00:23:26.100polygraphs are notoriously slipshod. There's a reason there's a code section that doesn't
00:23:32.960allow them in. And there's people who know how to pass them and people who would never pass them,
00:23:38.240even if you are telling the truth. So to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I still come
00:23:43.020back to or circle back there is no evidence there's absolutely no evidence of anything that
00:23:49.180shows where how or when well he the evidence was all circumstantial about his affair about him
00:23:55.400saying she was dead about him on christmas eve weirdly going fishing in his boat he couldn't
00:24:02.180remember what bait he used when the cops asked him he went fishing in the very same place her
00:24:06.820body and connor's body washed up four months later he was researching the currents um like
00:24:12.660that was basically the case they never were able to say how he allegedly killed her or even as you
00:24:17.960point out when exactly when and by the way we did a um a demonstration in that boat of trying to
00:24:23.940toss a body over you would have capsized every every time the judge would not allow that
00:24:29.820demonstration to be admitted into evidence which i thought was outrageous because he allowed it a
00:24:35.260prosecution demonstration that did not replicate it also on the fishing on christmas eve it came
00:24:41.720out in trial i never knew this that um lacy's uh stepfather was fishing on new on christmas eve as
00:24:49.120well he had never disclosed that even though people were saying who goes fishing on christmas
00:24:54.040eve um so you know there's a lot of things you can always weave together things that don't look
00:24:59.340right but at the end of the day the this is not this is a guy who's got absolutely nothing a
00:25:05.720complete pristine background and if you think he just committed cold-blooded murder especially of
00:25:11.160his unborn son, which nobody will tell you that he wasn't excited about having a son.
00:25:16.820And I think that's what he wanted to say yesterday in the sentencing hearing, but the judge wouldn't
00:25:38.720But we recently had on Amanda Knox and she was talking about, you know, obviously she was wrongly prosecuted by this crazy Italian prosecutor.
00:25:48.480And she her affect, too, was a little off seeming at the time.
00:25:52.640And it was used against her in a very unfair way.
00:25:55.680You really can't go by that, as it turns out.
00:25:58.760And then the other thing is what the theory seems to be from Janie and others is that there were robbers, there were burglars in their Modesto, California neighborhood that they were seen, that previously we were told that the robbery or the burglary they committed was on the 26th, but they have evidence that it actually happened on the 24th and that Lacey may have been walking her dog, may have seen them and may have been kidnapped by them.
00:26:22.340the dog was later found by itself with its leash still on. Some believe Scott did that to make it
00:26:28.700look like somebody grabbed her and others, you know, his side will say that the burglars got
00:26:33.080her. So we'll watch all of it play out. I think it's fascinating if he actually does get a new
00:26:38.560trial, it will be the new trial of the century. It's going to like, no one will be able to peel
00:26:44.560their eyes away. It's just got too many salacious, interesting elements. Okay. So much more with
00:26:50.040Mark Garagos. He's represented everybody, everybody, including Jussie Smollett, including
00:26:54.340Michael Jackson. You're going to ask him about Kim Potter, Ghislaine Maxwell, and much, much
00:30:59.380Do they have to prove she was aware that she was holding a firearm?
00:31:03.840The defense is their position is that you cannot be engaged in reckless conduct that
00:31:07.760you do not know you are engaged in, right?
00:31:10.000Like you don't you don't know you're firing a gun.
00:31:12.860And the judge hasn't hasn't instructed the jury and it hasn't and she hasn't given either
00:31:18.020side guidance on how this is going to come down.
00:31:20.060And I kind of wonder, like, it all comes down to which way she wrote, how she informs on recklessness.
00:31:27.000Well, one of the problems is, and we've been arguing this in California state court for years, the difference between the state of mind for what's called an implied malice murder, the difference in homicide between murder and manslaughter is whether there's malice.
00:31:45.180Well, there's also what's called implied malice.
00:31:48.460If you act in such a way, the law will imply that you had the malice for murder.
00:31:54.560I've often argued, and I'm not alone here, that sometimes the state of mind when the jury gets the instruction on one of these manslaughter charges is very misleading.
00:32:08.500And a jury doesn't know what to do with it.
00:32:11.180And here you've got I can understand why the judge is not giving guidance, so to speak, because they have what are called pattern instructions.
00:32:19.480They've got instructions that have been either affirmed or blessed, if you will, by the appellate courts.
00:32:27.500But she probably in this case wants to hear how the evidence comes out and then tailor it to that and tailor the instruction of that.
00:32:34.080But it's a horrific job for jurors, for laypeople to have to kind of parse through the language, which never is very clear.
00:32:42.500And then put that in context of what am I going to do with a police officer who didn't go out there with the intention to do the killing?
00:32:51.660And so that's a, you know, God forbid that you're one of those jurors.
00:32:56.100It's interesting because the defense seems to be hedging its bets.
00:32:58.920They're going to argue that she didn't have a state of mind at all intending to kill anybody.
00:33:04.080Obviously, she didn't intend to fire her her gun. I think we can all give her that based on what we've seen, although some people aren't. But they also seem to be kind of hedging by saying, even if she did intend to fire the gun, she had cause because the guy, Dante Wright, was was driving away with an officer in the car, half in the car.
00:33:25.740Here is so what the prosecution did was they put on Officer Lucky, who was a three year officer who she she Kim Potter was supposed to be training that day.
00:33:36.760And he was a prosecution witness sort of talking about his experience and what he saw.
00:33:41.640And then the defense attorney got up there and in like 20 minutes, seamless little boom, boom, boom, boom, cross examination, got out the following testimony.
00:34:59.100So he's just basically trying to set up it was a proper stop.
00:35:02.440You were following order and that this was an area that was known for problematic crimes and criminals and so on.
00:35:10.360And, you know, you also get out the fact that the one officer was half in the car when he tried to take off.
00:35:16.040it's a technique that was used by the defense lawyer that he's probably been gored by that
00:35:23.960countless times by prosecutors who go through that same litany when they're trying to convict
00:35:29.440one of his clients. I've heard that kind of, this is a high crime area. This is why you had an
00:35:35.220intuition. This is why you did it, blah, blah, blah. That's normally what the prosecutor would
00:35:41.380do here because you have a cop who's on trial they the other cop is going to support your theory
00:35:47.980you're being the defense lawyer and is going to give you what you want which is exactly what he
00:35:53.140just did right there and by the way you're absolutely correct because what this does is
00:35:58.860even if you think that she that she isn't being truthful when she says she had a gun
00:36:05.320that even with a gun, there is the, you know, she had a reasonable doubt as to what was happening
00:36:13.320there and whether or not she could use the force that she used. What do you think? I mean, if you
00:36:18.120had to place a bet, and I realize the trial's in the middle, but like, what would you guess a jury
00:36:22.260would do with this? Because I realized the prosecution is like, it was irresponsible.
00:36:26.300You know, a man's dead. She needs to be held accountable. But it's like, you watch this
00:36:29.840distraught woman. She's been on the force 26 years. She's not like chauvin. She doesn't have
00:36:35.000a litany of complaints against her. She's a mom. You can hear her distress. They're really going
00:36:39.540to throw this woman in jail for upwards of 15 years that Keith Ellison there wants to jack up
00:36:44.580the sentencing guidelines on her. He wants them to throw the book at this woman. Well, I'll tell
00:36:49.560you during, I'll give you an example during the Rittenhouse trial. One of the reasons I was kind
00:36:54.460of leery of predicting, even though I thought that it looked to me like it was a self-defense
00:37:01.360was you can't look or I can't see the jurors. I mean, the jury selection, I've said this for
00:37:06.660years, is everything. Most cases are over by the time you've sworn the panel because you understand
00:37:13.080I don't care how good you are as a lawyer, you're never going to change people's view or their
00:37:18.620prism for what they look through and who they are. So you have to basically pick a jury or
00:37:26.140deselect a jury that'll give you your best shot. So I haven't seen their jury, but I will tell you
00:37:31.780that so far, the way the evidence is unfolding, it sure is a compelling argument for a not guilty.
00:37:38.860And that, I think, is probably where it's headed. Like I said, I'll circle back to what I told you
00:37:45.760before. Cops get a presumption of innocence that a lot of other people don't get.
00:37:50.540That's true. And they don't always deserve it. But I feel like in this case, come on,
00:37:55.220The woman did it. She made a terrible mistake. She didn't have a history of negligence on the force. You can show this is like a hothead or she's she never had any business having the badge.
00:38:04.060Not only did she resign right after this happened, but the chief of police was forced out. It was like, OK, by the way, the New York Times is reporting that there was a lawsuit against Dante Wright's family, raising questions about whether Dante Wright in May of 2019.
00:38:20.900The woman filing a lawsuit claims that Daunte Wright shot her son in the head in Minneapolis, leaving him severely disabled.
00:38:28.880I mean, I don't know that the jury is going to hear anything about that.
00:38:31.580But, you know, it's the cops walk up to these defendants not knowing what they're dealing with.
00:38:37.160But they always have to presume the guy's got a gun and is willing to use it.
00:38:42.100Well, I saw that today, and most probably that will not come into evidence, because unless the cop knew or had some indication that they knew about that incident, the judge would probably rule that that's inadmissible.
00:38:57.060But having seen that, it certainly, I think, would give pause to a prosecutor if they knew about that when they were filing the case and what charges they were filing.
00:39:06.200I mean, that's that's when you get back to prosecutorial discretion. And part of the argument you've kind of implicitly made here, Megan, is why? Why are they exercising their discretion in this way on this case? What is the motivation for that? Is it because they want to seek justice or are they pandering?
00:39:27.040So that's Keith Ellison. He's a he's a political hack. I mean, he is he's a political hack and he's the AG there and he's the one who insisted on jacking up the charges. And now he wants to push for a jacked up sentence if she's found guilty. It happened in the wake of George Floyd and it was in Minnesota.
00:39:45.360so all the you know temperatures are already up and the nation is stressed and that was
00:39:52.280reflected i think in her reaction to what she did but we still need to you know the law is the law
00:39:57.480and uh not everything's a crime just because it's awful and she and the city will be sued i think
00:40:02.840they already sued um and they'll get millions of dollars that's to me the remedy here civil lawsuit
00:40:08.040uh which is going to go the way of the family um more with mark garagos we're going to pick up
00:40:12.820Jussie Smollett right after this break, who is represented by his firm.
00:40:40.340And just FYI, the racial makeup of the jury is, let's see, they're white, the majority white, middle-aged, one black man, one black woman is an alternate.
00:40:52.580And they are now kicking around whether they believe Jussie Smollett was the victim of a hate crime or made the whole thing up for favorable publicity.
00:41:01.740So I didn't realize until preparing for this that your firm had a role in this case.
00:41:05.260Well, I handled the case originally the first time it was dismissed and had I violated one of my standard rules, which is I generally will not do a state court case, criminal case out of state, out of California.
00:41:23.000I just I think I'll do federal anywhere, but state court criminal, I always think is kind of a weird creature, so to speak.
00:41:32.640But we did it there, got it dismissed. I thought that was the end of it. And then lo and behold, the case was once again resurrected. And I am kind of dancing on the head of a pin here because my New York partner, Tina, is trying it with local counsel Nenye.
00:41:53.220And I was hoping, actually, that there would have been a resolution before this because the judge has kind of indicated that he's issued an informal gag order.
00:42:03.860And even though I'm not on the trial team this time around, my partner is, so I'm trying to dance around that.
00:42:09.880I will tell you that I thought it was resolved fairly last time.
00:42:16.660I have my own theories as to what's going on right now.
00:42:21.540But since there's an informal gag order, I'm gagging myself.
00:42:34.560You mean with the lengthy deliberation or with the fact that charges are ultimately filed?
00:42:38.860Why this was resurrected, why the case was resurrected and kind of the players involved in everything that has transpired.
00:42:46.940I think I think, frankly, it's outrageous that he's on trial again for the very same thing that it was already resolved on.
00:42:57.500What punishment did he face the first time around?
00:42:59.860Well, the punishment was he was the case was dismissed.
00:43:03.620he forfeited ten thousand dollars which was the basically the ten percent of the bail and had
00:43:10.500performed some community service so that those were all the things i i that's nothing he deserves
00:43:17.340i don't think he belongs in jail for a long time but he deserves to be punished he made this whole
00:43:21.840thing up he undermined legitimate claims of racial attacks he did more to damage you know black people
00:43:27.520who genuinely get attacked by racists than anybody's done in a long long time and he should
00:43:31.360face trial and be punished okay so you and i can agree to disagree and when i like it when you can't
00:43:37.560argue yeah i was just going to say when i'm not muzzled i'm happy to respond to all of that
00:43:42.540including the fact that he's maintained his innocence testified that it didn't happen and
00:43:47.800the only so does oj yeah well the uh oj i always say the jury got it right in both cases in oj
00:43:55.240I understand that. I understand that the proof argument in the O.J. case, but that man killed his wife and her friend, Ron Goldman. And there's absolutely zero doubt in my mind.
00:47:56.600I tried against the Office of Independent Counsel for an obstruction of justice.
00:48:00.800We wanted Little Rock against Ken Starr.
00:48:03.040And all the arguments that we used to make and that the Democrats used to make in the 90s about an office of independent counsel and a prosecutor who had political motives.
00:48:16.700Well, now you see that those are the same arguments that President Trump was.
00:54:31.140That tape you played earlier of the officer who shot Dante, that, to me, is real, authentic remorse and immediate angst.
00:54:42.760Yeah. So, Alec, he didn't have to do this.
00:54:46.960He's been speaking with the police. Right.
00:54:48.400And so in trying to stave off legal charges, that's the avenue.
00:54:51.540Talk to the sheriff. Have your lawyer there.
00:54:53.420Make sure you're giving them all the information.
00:54:55.800He appears to have ticked off the sheriff with that Stephanopoulos interview, because let me play the soundbite that Alec said that that seems to be getting him in hot water because the sheriff has now responded publicly, which is not what you want.
00:55:09.860Here's Baldwin on whether he actually fired the gun.
00:55:13.520So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I'm not going to pull the trigger.
00:55:17.420I said, do you see that you will just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.
00:55:20.720And I cocked the gun. Can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that?
00:55:23.900and she says and then i let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off
00:55:26.920i let go of the hammer of the gun the gun goes off at the moment that was the moment the gun
00:55:33.080went off yeah that was the moment the gun went off it wasn't in the script for the trigger to
00:55:37.440be pulled well the trigger wasn't pulled i didn't pull the trigger so you never pulled the trigger
00:55:41.720no no no no i would never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them never
00:55:45.200right because that really will get me sued well now the santa fe sheriff has responded saying and
00:55:51.660I quote, guns don't just go off. So whatever needs to happen to manipulate the firearm,
00:55:57.320he did that. And it was in his hands. What would you have thought if you if you saw that as Alex
00:56:03.940lawyer? I would have said I told you so. And I would have, you know, probably pulled a Harlan
00:56:10.200Braun and resigned like he did in Robert Blake's case. I mean, you can't go out there. This is not
00:56:16.560a public relations issue. This is a criminal investigation. You can't go out there and then
00:56:23.420inflame the very person who is investigating you. You, as you said, you cooperate. You try to show
00:56:30.560that you are anything but trying to provoke them. But he's repeatedly done everything that he
00:56:40.560shouldn't do. It's almost a textbook case of what you shouldn't do when you're in harm's way.
00:56:45.560Yeah, it's he's not campaigning for an Oscar. He's trying to keep himself out of jail and out of bankruptcy court.
00:56:52.440Well, you know, he said the other day, I don't know if you saw it or if you've got the clip.
00:56:56.740He said somebody told me basically I'm not in harm's way.
00:57:00.540I don't know who that somebody was unless they're baiting you into being stupid.
00:57:04.600So it's mind boggling to me. If somebody's telling you that, I hope it isn't your lawyer.
00:57:11.120Yeah, we haven't heard that from the sheriff.
00:57:12.600Jeff. OK, so let's talk about speaking of famous clients with huge egos who believe they know
00:57:18.320better when it comes to dealing with the press and how to handle law enforcement.
00:57:21.860Michael Jackson, while you were dealing with the Scott Peterson case, you were representing
00:57:27.740Michael Jackson on the child molestation criminal case. And I realized that ended because you had
00:57:34.260to focus on Scott Peterson. And Michael was like, only one person can represent me.
00:57:37.360Um, but that was crazy. You were everywhere. I'll give you a backstory there. The, um,
00:57:44.440originally before that case was filed, I had had repeated conversations with the DA and, uh,
00:57:51.040his name was Tom Sneddon, I believe. And I kept telling him this case is a loser. I don't know
00:57:56.880what you're doing. Uh, this family, this Arvizo family I've investigated, I have figured out,
00:58:02.980And I did it in real time for Michael because I'd represented Michael for years at that point.
00:58:07.880And I knew that this was not a family that was going to end well for Michael.
00:58:15.280And so I advised them, the Jackson team, they needed to kind of extricate themselves from this.
00:58:51.160I won't reveal the attorney client, but that's a pretty good synopsis. And so then what happened was, is the Santa Barbara DA ended up indicting him so that they wouldn't go to a probable cause preliminary hearing.
00:59:07.620In California, almost all criminal felony cases are prosecuted by way of a preliminary hearing. They didn't want the witnesses on the stand because they knew what we would do to them. So they didn't end run. They indicted.
00:59:20.820Well, when they indicted, they indicted him on a conspiracy.
01:00:14.400And like I say, I didn't testify just once in front of Judge Melville in the jury.
01:00:18.680I testified twice, and I'll never forget the second time saying something which that jury found to be very humorous.
01:00:26.560I think I was mocking the prosecutor, and I turned to Pat Harris, who was then with me, and I said, this jury's never going to convict him.
01:00:36.360This is a laughing jury is an acquitting jury.
01:07:43.340Do you think that there is his situation and what happened to him personally was analogous
01:07:47.780to what happened to Elvis, you know, like that level of fame, attention, grifters?
01:07:53.560I think it's, I think that's exactly it.
01:07:55.660I see this play out, you know, one of the I represented Chris Brown for about 10 years and Chris, I was always worried that would happen to him and it did not.
01:08:08.200I mean, he kind of pulled himself out of all of that that he had been involved in.
01:08:13.500And you worry when when somebody reaches fame so early and on such a magnitude that what it does to you.
01:08:22.860And so, you know, they I think that I think that's a an apt comparison by you.
01:08:28.900And I think that it's interesting that he had that relationship with Elvis's daughter as well.
01:13:58.360So as a client, I mean, he had a DV case and I represented him and I've known him for a number of months.
01:14:05.760And then the cases you mentioned happened in New York. CNN, in their infinite wisdom, decided to cut and run. In fact, I think I famously called them the cut and run.
01:14:20.640But they were already kind of descending into this polemic that they've decided the path they've decided to go down.
01:14:29.780I think there was some kind of irony that you would see Anderson sitting with Toobin next to him as they're announcing that Cuomo would be suspended.
01:14:42.480And now I'm seeing where Mr. Zucker is being pilloried for his handling of the situation.
01:14:49.700And I think the writing's on the wall.
01:14:55.280And the largest stockholder in their merger there has already said they need to get back to what they used to do, which is Malone of the Discovery Channel.
01:15:04.080So I think within the next six weeks, you'll see a reboot there.
01:15:07.920Given what's happened over there and the ratings and everything else, they're not long for this world in their present kind of composition.
01:15:47.180I wonder, having come from the belly of the beast, what you think when you watch it?
01:15:50.640Well, I often used to say I thought there was some kind of I hate to psychoanalyze them.
01:15:56.040But, you know, Zucker, as people tend to forget, was at NBC when Donald Trump was kind of anointed with The Apprentice series.
01:16:07.160And I think that there was something going on where he just decided to go all in on the anti-Trump network and turn it into that.
01:16:18.060And, you know, at this point, like you, I have to go search for BBC, sometimes Al Jazeera, to try to get any kind of a factual or what's going on in the world.
01:16:31.040You just can't find what it used to be 20 years ago.
01:16:34.700I mean, it used to be that you had Larry King on there for many years, and I always thought that was a fascinating show, which is why I did it, because it was long form.
01:16:46.100People would talk kind of like what you're doing now, and you would get to at least hear things that weren't just like a Twitter bite of 140 characters.
01:17:55.380Well, so he got he wound up getting charged criminally.
01:17:58.280I mean, he had many legal problems. This is just one of them. But it's funny because he just got a mistrial. He went pro per or pro se federal court in Orange County and got a mistrial based upon prosecutorial misconduct. It's actually up in front of the Ninth Circuit now as to whether that's once in jeopardy, because normally if you get a mistrial and you request it as a defendant, you don't get a once in jeopardy, meaning that you can't be tried again.
01:18:26.120But there is a kind of a sliver of the law that says if you're goaded into asking for a mistrial by the prosecution, that can be the one instance where the prosecution can't try you again.
01:18:40.000Well, whatever it is, he's a bad man, but you're not.
01:18:44.140And CNN did cut in big just because you were in a meeting with him.
01:18:47.340That's the end of your relationship after, what, a decade?
01:18:50.620They've been making money closer to closer to 20 years.
01:18:54.340I mean, I will tell you, it was really and I had always resisted being a contributor because I always felt that being a contributor meant that I would have an issue with kind of advocating for clients because some clients do not belong on CNN in years past.
01:19:12.920I would want them either on a morning show or I would want them somewhere else in terms of where I thought they were best.
01:19:19.060But finally, they were kind of relentless. And I did I did take a contributorship with the caveat that I was able to do other things. And if it was client related, they had no input whatsoever. And they just cut and run like nobody's business, I think, because they felt that they you know, there was a lot of people who were second guessing themselves about Michael when that happened.
01:19:45.280I and well, that was smart of them to do because they expressed no skepticism about him and his ridiculous claims about Trump and so on.
01:19:54.780I mean, I was at NBC at the time and I had him on and he was expecting to get the same treatment from me that he got from the mainstream media.
01:20:02.340And I really felt like a simple Google search would have served him very well in misunderstanding me and getting over his misunderstanding of me.
01:20:09.920And I gave it to him pretty tough and it's fine.
01:20:12.860I gave it to the other guy who was on the opposite side of him.
01:20:17.860But it was very clear that he was this is not an honest lawyer.
01:20:20.760And what he did to Kavanaugh was unforgivable.
01:20:22.980But but I think the fact that CNN promoted him and so on, they felt so guilty.
01:20:28.740They didn't need to take it on you just because it was your client.
01:20:31.160You were in this one meeting with him.
01:20:32.500And to me, they now it's like they won't cut, cut, you know, ties with masturbator on the air, Jeffrey Toobin.
01:20:42.860How much did Chris Cuomo have to do? Don Lemon, credibly accused by a guy of Don allegedly fondling his own genitals and then rubbing his hands all over this poor guy's face in a bar.
01:20:53.580I had him on the show. There's an eyewitness. And I feel like what what is the moral handbook that they are following over there?
01:21:01.200Like I say, I think that everything that I've been hearing, I still have friends there that that I've known, like I say, for decades.
01:21:09.540And everything that I'm hearing is, is that Zucker's not long for the job and that people are not happy with what's happened to it.
01:21:19.360And, you know, it's not exactly unpredictable.
01:21:23.300They kind of went all in on the Trump mania.
01:21:27.460And obviously, once Trump was gone, what are you going to do?
01:22:37.340But the demo numbers are embarrassing when you take a look at the absolute terms.
01:22:42.320I mean, Fox's demo numbers, meaning under 25 to 54-year-olds, are higher than CNN's overall number, the number of overall households in the nation that are watching on many hours.
01:22:55.240So, yeah, they're going in the wrong direction.
01:22:57.020And I hope it's true that they're going to get back to news because we need a channel that's a little bit more centrist.
01:23:02.640I agree. I think people are crying out for that. People want that. People want that kind of that.
01:23:09.380Just give me the news. Let me go. You know, we're 20 minutes. I can watch and understand what's
01:23:15.300happening in the world. And by the way, not everything is America centric. I'd like something
01:23:19.600in the context of the world. Well, forget it. You're not going to get that on cable news.
01:23:24.920Foreign news doesn't rate, which is why you rarely see it. Okay. I want to ask you about
01:23:29.620another avenue of cases that you've been filing when it comes to these COVID restrictions.
01:23:34.500You're in the People's Republic of California, where the restrictions have been, I mean,
01:23:40.580I don't know how you're dealing. And so in addition to being a lawyer, you're a restaurateur.
01:23:45.860And tell us about what you've been trying to do and how it's been going in the courts.
01:23:49.300Well, it's frustrating because we won a victory at the trial court level in Los Angeles. We got
01:23:56.540a judge back when back I want to say in November when we have an unelected county health officer
01:24:04.200named Barbara Flar without any evidence whatsoever without any data whatsoever we're talking a year
01:24:10.340ago she shut down outdoor dining now mind you I can sustain it as a restaurant but most
01:24:16.840restaurateurs can't I mean there's 30,000 some odd restaurants in LA County and they a number
01:24:23.500of them went out of business due to the COVID shutdowns. Well, then we went to, and we moved
01:24:28.980to the outdoor dining, and that was working, and it was working well. People were able to survive,
01:24:33.960not the least of which because of some of the funding that took place, but then she just
01:24:40.160decreed there was going to be no more outdoor dining, and we sued, and sure enough, we got a
01:24:45.700judge in the writ court who ruled after basically issuing three orders to show cause, and the county
01:24:53.040could not respond. They couldn't point to a single piece of data, a single study that showed
01:24:58.560that COVID was being transmitted outdoors by dining. So he enjoined them. Well, we ended up
01:25:05.020going with, they got to stay at the court of appeal. That was reversed. I've been up at the
01:25:09.960U S Supreme court and just within the last five days, they denied the U S Supreme court denied
01:25:15.760the petition. But one of the things that's happened is Justice Gorsuch has basically
01:25:22.940called out this case, this 100-year-old, 120-year-old case named Jacobson, and said that
01:25:28.560it's been given a towering presence, and I couldn't agree more. And that's the fight that
01:25:33.300we've been fighting, that basically unelected bureaucrats from health departments are decreeing
01:25:41.400what what people can do or not do, and that all of that is predicated on this state of emergency
01:25:49.820that our governor has announced, I think, going on 20 months ago. We're still in a state of
01:25:55.820emergency in California, which is the only basis upon which the county health directors can do
01:26:01.120what they do. It's it's so crazy because you're out there in California up until recently. I've
01:26:07.840been living in New York for 20 years almost. And, you know, the mayor of New York just on his own
01:26:13.140decided that five to 11 year olds must have mandatory vaccinations in order to eat inside
01:26:17.960any restaurant there. You have to double jab your five year old to eat in a restaurant, to go see
01:26:22.560the Rockettes, to go to a movie theater, to go to the gym, whatever, go see the Knicks. It's
01:26:28.520ridiculous. They've been going. They've been going to all of these events and the rates didn't spike.
01:26:33.420the spikes coming to the northeast now because it's winter right that's the way it goes um
01:26:39.120but the children are not to blame the children aren't a major factor in any of this so we have
01:26:43.560these local legislators who are drunk on their own power like no dining outside that's think
01:26:52.000about that you just kind of it's like no that's insane that's insane it's not spread outside in
01:26:56.780And by the way, the only thing I mean, if you saw the stacks of paper that that we file back and forth in the briefing, the only thing that was ever cited by the county in defense of this outdoor dining ban was a what I would characterize as an anecdotal example of a person in Wuhan who had said he got it and he thought he got it outside.
01:33:37.960Keys had no victim type, no geographic pattern, and an M.O. the FBI described to be as, quote, unique as a fingerprint.
01:33:48.440Our very own Maureen Callahan, host of The Nerve, spent years uncovering how Keys operated.
01:33:56.620Her investigation led her to write the bestselling book, American Predator, the hunt for the most meticulous serial killer of the 21st century.
01:34:07.960Maureen also appears in the ABC true crime documentary, Wild Crime, 11 Skulls on Hulu, which traces the disappearance of Samantha Koenig, the crime that finally exposed Keyes' double life.
01:35:03.260Why is his name so, like, not on the list of all the big serial killers?
01:35:07.320It's really wild, isn't it? Isn't it? Yeah. I mean, my theory about it is that, you know, not long after Keyes was apprehended, I'm going to say about nine months in, I don't want to spoil how this sort of ends for anybody.
01:35:22.420The FBI announced that they had this guy in custody.
01:38:28.140and then this individual just jumped straight into the coffee hut
01:38:37.180That moment, Maureen, she saw the face of evil and she knew it.
01:38:41.240I'll tell you, when I was working on the book, I think I watched that tape, the abduction tape.
01:38:47.720I mean, I watched it many, many, many times, but I would go through it frame by frame, partly because the initial working theory, Samantha was 18 at the time.
01:51:09.200And even, even the search of his car was like a,
01:51:12.120it was a multi-state mess because he's up there worried that if,
01:51:16.340if they go into that car without the proper um i mean what's the word for warrant thank you
01:51:24.860or they have probable cause then everything they find even if samantha's body is in there
01:51:29.960is thrown out like it can't can't get in yeah but deb says to steve down here in texas we have
01:51:37.000a much looser interpretation of this and if we've got a bad guy good old texas and we think he's got
01:51:42.840bad shit going on in his car, we can go into his car. Here we have some of this. This is from the
01:51:47.600ABC doc, Wild Crime, and it's dash cam footage from the moment that investigators decided to
01:51:53.060do a warrantless search on Keyes' car. Here it is. When we opened the trunk and the ranger started
01:52:01.000going through things in the trunk of the car. There you go. Hey. Gray hoodie with glasses in
01:52:12.120the pocket and a mask we found a gray hoodie that appeared to be the same hoodie that the
01:52:22.400perpetrator had been wearing in the atm videos and in the pocket of that was this gray piece
01:52:29.520of cloth that looked like a mask we also found the amber shooting glasses
01:52:35.860After he was put under arrest, he was transported to the Lufkin Police Department.
01:52:54.140The ranger and I do a thorough search of Israel's wallet, and we found Samantha's ATM card.
01:53:01.700i mean that's just devastating from a criminal standpoint that's everything you need you've got
01:53:14.440the victim's cell phone you've got her license and you've got his disguise that he was wearing
01:53:19.180all the times when he was making the withdrawals with her atm card really strong very strong but
01:53:25.040they don't have a body and they don't know whether she's dead and they don't even know whether she's
01:53:29.840dead or alive so they need a confession from him he is taken to lufkin pd down in texas again small
01:53:39.260town these small towns he's operating in and um they they try to talk to him and he says i'm sorry
01:53:44.780i can't help you so then they call up to alaska and jeff bell and his partner his then partner on
01:53:51.460this case mickey doll who was this sort of very glamorous young beautiful uh detective who had
01:53:58.020just joined homicide she spent like 10 years doing drugs um as a police officer oh sorry
01:54:04.400yeah yeah undercover uh on uh on narcotics but um so they jump on a plane and they go down there
01:54:12.820and they're they're so wired and they're so like dying to talk to this guy and they get in there
01:54:17.780and keys kind of lights up a bit because now he's got the attentions of this beautiful young
01:54:22.160detective and it's it becomes this sort of almost like a i talk about it in the book it's like a
01:54:28.540clarice starling hannibal lecter kind of dynamic you know um but he won't talk to them either and
01:54:35.040so they have to extradite him up to alaska um and this this is all like the the tiktok is really
01:54:41.980it's so pressing because at a place like lufkin as would prove true even in anchorage they they
01:54:49.000did not have the wherewithal to really contain this guy like this guy was such a predator and
01:54:54.780so dangerous such a genius completely self-taught this guy did not have formal schooling at all at
01:55:00.980all um and he taught himself how to hunt and kill and so they get him back up to alaska and that's
01:55:06.940when it really starts clicking in because they know samantha's dead they've gone to the house
01:55:11.480he shares with his living girlfriend a travel nurse and his 10 year old daughter by all accounts
01:55:16.320he's an incredible father it's crazy um and they toss the house and they're looking they're looking
01:55:21.920for samantha they can't find her there's a shed on the property this is before or after he's
01:55:26.660confessed he hasn't confessed to anything hasn't okay so they're just doing a search of his property
01:55:31.120because he's under arrest and there's a there are two sheds on his property and they they
01:55:35.760physically remove a shed from the property and they bring it to the fbi field office
01:55:40.140where they they leave it and then um so the the fight begins now as to who's going to lead this
01:55:46.100interrogation because they all know this is a big big case and this this is a career maker
01:55:52.140this is a star maker if you have your eyes on becoming like a legal analyst on cnn or like you
01:55:58.080know they're going to make a movie out of this case who's going to play you the egos start coming
01:56:02.260into play and steve and jeff or steve pain and jeff beller are the most experienced and they're
01:56:08.500gaming out how they're going to talk to this guy. They have zero, they really don't have much
01:56:12.240evidence. They don't have that footage of him. He's unrecognizable in that surveillance clip of
01:56:21.320him abducting Samantha. Sure. A couple of items are in his car, but he says she gave them to me.
01:56:26.480I was her dealer. She owed me money. Prove it. Prove I took her. You don't have anything.
01:56:32.280He was an expert at leaving no physical evidence behind. So you have to have very experienced
01:56:37.880detectives go in there or agents go in there who can say like steve's favorite tactic
01:56:43.480was to like he would say some people like to go in with like boxes full of paper it's all blank
01:56:49.460paper oh we have all this shit on you we've got all these photos and you may as well just give
01:56:54.000it to us now before we like really you know throw you away forever and steve his whole thing was
01:56:59.020like less is more like one photo that's that's just the tip of what we've got on you you know
01:57:04.880it's a whole mind game and the federal prosecutor on this case comes in and he sees what this case
01:57:11.040could be and he says to them i'm leading this investigation now i'm questioning this suspect
01:57:16.920that's so rare i'm in charge he's white collar megan he's never dealt with more do they usually
01:57:23.120have the investigator be the prosecutor you can't right because if this goes to trial now the
01:57:28.960prosecutor is also a witness because now he's going to testify yeah it can't happen but this is this
01:57:33.960is how wild it is up there it's it's so funny the twin poles of this case are alaska and texas like
01:57:38.880two states with this psyche which is like don't tell me what to do do it my way you know fine to
01:57:44.340a point not when you've got like what will become the most high value like suspect in federal custody
01:57:53.900like only jeffrey epstein exceeds this guy in terms of like the threat he posed even behind bars
01:58:02.440Oh, so he does confess. We have video of it. So we've only titled it FBI interview. So I don't know which interrogators these are, but you'll tell us after we watch that 53 in which he does admit to killing Samantha Koenig. Here it is.
01:58:20.720He directed us north out of Anchorage, towards the Matanuska Valley.
01:58:27.260How many yards off the shoreline or feet off?
02:16:04.160And he said he took Lorraine downstairs and Bill's obviously deceased on the floor.
02:16:08.900He describes killing her and then using contractor bags to put their bodies in in the basement of that house.
02:16:20.520The bodies were completely covered and they were underneath a lot of debris that I piled on top of them, like wood and trash.
02:16:32.200I mean, just like the callousness is shocking.
02:16:34.920Not that you expect a killer to, like, respectfully dispose of the remains, but in garbage bags underneath a bunch of garbage left for the animals.
02:20:45.000I just think at this point, I kind of feel like I'm in a position where I'm giving you a certain amount of information.
02:20:56.980None of it has, or I shouldn't say none of it, about half of what I thought we had an understanding on from the very beginning hasn't worked out in my favor.
02:21:13.400Granted, you know, some things haven't worked out in your favor, but I just think at this point, I just don't see what incentive I have to tell you anything else.
02:21:29.220What does he mean it hasn't worked out in my favor?
02:21:32.400He wanted the death penalty and he wanted it really fast.
02:21:35.620How long was this series of interviews?
02:21:43.400april and they went till about he's he really began shutting down i'm gonna say
02:21:49.660right around there july july august he um he tried to kill himself in prison and it wasn't
02:21:58.760successful and so there's so much secrecy surrounding this case and i have theories as
02:22:03.760to why it's not just about a federal prosecutor who's too big for his britches it's not that um
02:22:09.100But Jeff Bell, Jeff Bell, when he would go over every day to the prison, the jail rather to see they didn't have any anything remotely secure enough for a guy like this.
02:34:30.360He had a stepson, by the way, who killed himself.
02:34:32.520That's been omitted completely from the FBI narrative.
02:34:35.540Killed himself after Keyes was caught.
02:34:36.920So what happens? Because now they're starting to get what they think is a toll, a number, and then it all comes to an end one day.
02:34:49.360It all comes to an end one day. Jeff Bell is getting ready to barge into a house and make some arrests and he gets a phone call. It's very early in the morning that Israel Keyes has successfully committed suicide in his cell.
02:35:06.920And he has left in blood drawings of 11 skulls with the words, we are one.
02:35:16.720What the FBI did not make public was that he also wrote on the wall of his cell.
02:45:28.880It was, I mean, the whole case is dark, but fascinating.
02:45:32.380You know, it's like sometimes the serial killer stuff is too much for me.
02:45:35.380Like I can't take any torture stories.
02:45:37.680But we think we did a good job today of skimming over some of the more disturbing parts of this guy because you can go deep and you can go way darker on him even than we did.
02:48:26.240and a month from now, this Hollywood big shot's going to give you what you want.
02:48:30.460It's too late. They start shooting in a week.
02:48:33.860I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse.
02:48:38.920At about that same time, Gravano, a kid who grew up without mob connections in his family,
02:48:44.940slowly eased into La Cosa Nostra and made his first kill.
02:48:50.820Over the course of the next two decades,
02:48:52.440sammy the bull would rise up the ranks of new york's notorious gambino crime family raking in
02:48:58.400millions upon millions of dollars and repeatedly killing he has admitted to 19 murders in all
02:49:04.980including his own brother-in-law his best friend and the gambino family mob boss paul castellano
02:49:12.300in 1985 deadly messages from organized crime to organized crime and the rest of society
02:49:18.440The murder of Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano yesterday, or the 1979 assassination of Cosa Nostradon, Carmine Galenti, unsolved very public executions by an underworld that plays by their own rules and their own code of justice.
02:49:34.280The Castellano murder, particularly brazen and defiant, since Castellano was gunned down a day before, he was to resume standing trial for auto theft and murder.
02:49:43.560Organized crime had served up its own sentence.
02:49:48.440By the late 1980s, the new Don, John Gotti, had named Sammy the Bull his right-hand man.
02:49:56.100Gotti himself was a ruthless mobster and media darling who dressed in expensive suits and enjoyed the finer things in life, earning him the nickname the Dapper Don.
02:50:07.040He also repeatedly escaped conviction with, as it would turn out, Sammy's help, which we'll get to, earning him another nickname, the Teflon Don.
02:50:16.980Remember how they use that about Donald Trump? Well, it was first about John Gotti.
02:50:21.880But in 1991, everything changed. John Gotti and Sammy the Bull were behind bars facing a slew of
02:50:28.060charges when Sammy decided to flip and do the unthinkable, cooperate with the feds. At the time,
02:50:36.180he was the highest ranking gangster to break his blood oath, earning him the ire of mob
02:55:06.140And I got arrested again in 2000, February of 2000, and it didn't get done.
02:55:20.080When I got arrested, I had in my apartment, I had five guns, four guns planted in different places, in my kitchen, in my bathroom, my living room.
02:58:12.740And I start, that's how I started a year after that or whatever.
02:58:17.940Maybe a little bit more than a year, two years after that, my son put me on Facebook a little while after that.
02:58:26.360He put me on YouTube, unbeknownst to me.
02:58:31.720I didn't even know it. My phone. I was getting all kinds of calls.
02:58:35.580And my son left one day and said, I put you on Facebook.
02:58:38.880I put you on YouTube. And that's what the calls were about.
02:58:41.500so i just stayed on that and i continued the podcast on that and it grew to big numbers i'm
02:58:50.980almost at a half a million uh subscribers and i got 77 78 million uh views and now i'm doing a
02:59:00.720whole bunch of other things and a lot of um i was reading and preparing for this a lot of men and
02:59:07.440women in law enforcement, in particular FBI agents, watch and listen to the podcast and the YouTube
02:59:13.780show because they say it's fascinating. They've never been able to get this sort of an insight
02:59:18.920into a real life mobster's thinking. And you talk openly about the crimes that were committed by
02:59:25.660yourself, by others. A lot of these guys who were covering you or on you back then are listening,
02:59:30.240thinking, oh, my God, this is helping me put things together. So it's just the all around.
02:59:35.460I mean, obviously you have immunity now for those crimes, given the deal you struck with the government.
02:59:39.320But it's a fascinating thing to think about the FBI agents who once tracked you and guys you worked with now listening to you and are fans of the show.
02:59:50.560So let me let me pause you there and let's go back.
02:59:52.680Let's start with you as a kid, because as I mentioned in the intro, you were not raised in a family where your dad was in the mob and your granddad was in the mob.
03:00:02.720This was not foretold. As I understand it, your dad was fairly successful. You had a nice family
03:00:08.780and you had some difficulties as a child, but it wasn't related to anything in terms of crime or
03:00:15.840the mob. No, my mother and father were totally legitimate. My mother was a seamstress. My father
03:00:23.400was a painter. Back then they used to use lead in paint, got lead poisoning, had to stay away
03:00:29.280from painting my mother got an offer from a jewish contractor she would go and make the clothes
03:00:35.760women's clothes and uh the guy told her katie you're great open up a little factory and i'll
03:00:44.280get you work if you could produce you know the quality of work that you do uh we'll give you our
03:00:52.920work and that's exactly what she did my father jumped in with her to help her and they worked
03:01:00.140together they had a dress factory and uh that's what they did i had two sisters um neither one of
03:01:07.700them had anything to do with the mafia boyfriends or anything one of my brother-in-laws was an
03:01:13.560engineer uh the other brother-in-law was uh a plumbing contractor later on he came in the mafia
03:01:20.900with me and he became a made member. But before that, before I was in the mafia, I had no relation
03:01:28.140to the mafia whatsoever. But in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, it was saturated with the mafia. So
03:01:34.440it was on every street corner. It was around. As a kid growing up, I was dyslexic. I didn't do good
03:01:41.200in school. I got left back in the fourth grade, the seventh grade. I had nothing but problems in
03:01:46.500school. I got thrown out. I never got past the eighth grade and I was in a gang and we stayed
03:01:55.100away from the mafia. We knew who they were. We knew they were dangerous. So we stayed away from
03:01:59.560them. It was us against the world and we didn't want nothing to do with the mafia. And at 19 years
03:02:08.880old, I got drafted and I went into the military during the Vietnam War. I spent two years there
03:02:15.360and uh yeah when you were drafted you got two years if you join you had to do three
03:02:22.100i did two i came out and went right back into a gang and the guys why why because i would think
03:02:30.440i would like to think that a couple years in the army would instill a moral code in you that would
03:02:36.460give you some pause about going back into a life of crime well it wasn't into a life of crime it
03:02:44.060was back into being in the gang I mean that's what I knew the only thing I knew I was taught
03:02:49.320how to kill and how to do things in the military and uh I would have killed people to protect the
03:02:56.040country they was gave us that bullshit that it was communism was coming here they're going to
03:03:00.740rape your mother your sisters and so I was brainwashed a little bit by the government
03:03:05.440I mean I never met a bad Vietnamese person the only people I know who Vietnamese uh do my nails
03:03:13.580or my toenails and they just seem to be nice people. I've never met Vietnamese people in
03:03:19.000prison, so maybe they're good crooks. So I think the whole thing was bullshit. So I went right back
03:03:25.900into a gang. But unbeknownst to me, while the two years I was gone, most of my friends hooked up
03:03:35.020with different mafia families and they were hooked up with somebody. One of my friends,
03:03:40.020Tommy Spiro said, my uncle wants to talk to you. His name was Shorty Spiro. He was in a notorious
03:03:47.240crew, Carmine Persico. There was a war going on at that time between the Gallows and the Profaci.
03:03:57.560And there was different sides. The war stopped for a while. So when I got hooked up with them,
03:04:05.480There was no war going on. I knew sooner or later they kill people that I would be called.
03:04:12.320That's where I did my first murder. That's it's a long story.
03:04:17.740I would tell you if you want to hear it. But I did my first piece of work there.
03:04:23.140And then Shorty at that after that had told me, Sammy, go get your clothes.
03:04:29.320Joe Gallo had come out of crazy. Joe Gallo came out of prison.
03:07:14.920The story, I heard the story, what it was, I thought I was being bullshitted a little
03:07:21.220bit you know that the guy wanted to kill me I couldn't understand why he wanted to kill me
03:07:26.140I had nothing to do with his wife and an affair but he had this stupid little plot like I just
03:07:32.740said and when they gave me the order they said who do you want to come with you and I said
03:07:39.500your nephew Tommy Spiro he created this monster and then I wanted the guy Frankie because I
03:07:47.440couldn't understand why he didn't tell me and I wanted to be able to talk to him about that
03:07:51.200So they put those two people on the hip with me. And, you know, I watched a movie one time and it's a person who was about to kill and he was sweating and scared and all of this stuff.
03:08:07.600I thought that's what happens to you before you commit this kind of a crime, because I never thought about killing people.
03:14:51.600And then I'll talk to you about what I do.
03:14:53.380So I don't believe in religion. I believe in God. But I think religion is bullshit. I think it's they it's all about money. It's all about different things. They commit evil things to good people. So I, you know, I'm away from religions. I respected the Indian religion, the Wicca religion. It stunned me.
03:15:19.740It's the only religion that they put a woman above God, the goddess of the moon, the water and the earth.
03:15:29.080God is the God of the forest and the mountains.
03:15:31.900Why do they put, I asked, a woman above God?
03:15:40.960She needs a man's seed, but she in her womb takes care of life and then gives birth.
03:15:49.740and creates life i understand that i'm somebody with common sense if you make sense to me in a
03:15:56.760certain way i understand it so i understood that religion now a lot of people will not be happy
03:16:04.100with me saying this but they of course it's a it's a they call it a pagan religion they call
03:16:09.760it all kinds of things it was before the christianity even and um i understand that part
03:16:16.740about a woman giving birth and creating life well i mean i've i've i've read that unlike some
03:16:25.560i uh in the mob you you were very you were a family man in the midst of all this you
03:16:32.340went home and had dinner with your wife and your two kids each night your daughter karen has talked
03:16:37.880about that publicly many times and so there has been this respect for your family members for
03:16:44.420your wife for your daughter in a way that even the people who were in the mob said you know for
03:16:49.260example john gotty would go out carousing with other women after hours and you would go home to
03:16:53.040your family that piece of that piece of your commitment of your life you know you honored
03:16:59.320despite what was happening on the other front and i know that you you don't see these as as real
03:17:04.560as murders you know in the same way a soldier doesn't commit a murder when he kills somebody
03:17:09.740This is how an FBI agent explained it in one public interview that a soldier would not be murdering.
03:17:15.700You don't see your kills as murders because there was a code behind them, because you say the people you killed had sort of agreed to live by this code and die by this code.
03:17:26.340And on that on that note, that heavy note, let me pause it, OK, because I want to get into that next.
03:17:33.140And that's that's a whole other chapter for us.
03:17:35.420So stand by. Let me squeeze in a commercial break and much, much more with Sammy the Bull Gravano as he stays with us for the whole show.
03:20:09.940And it was he was a guy who had 50 hits under his belt.
03:20:15.600and me and him were going to go at each other and it was explained to me that we were like two
03:20:24.520samurais now i understand a samurai is a different thing than us they're actually more violent than
03:20:30.960us but i really felt that way that we were two samurais who met on the battlefield
03:20:40.540what about can i let me ask you a couple follow-ups on that so obviously when we when we
03:20:46.520dropped the bomb at the end of world war ii they estimated that we saved somewhere upwards of 25
03:20:52.10030 million lives by by putting an end to world war ii when the japanese would not surrender
03:20:58.320and and so you know i'm not defending the the killing of 100 000 people exactly but
03:21:05.060in a way i am because it was the right decision it saved far more lives than it actually cost
03:21:09.800But in the in the mafia and I can get it if the guy let me let me answer your question let me answer that question the people who say that it saved 25 to 30 million lives was who the government of course they're going to say that I mean independent analysts to take a look at who have taken a look at this ad nauseum since the end of World War Two will tell you that the the lives saved far far outnumbered the lives cost doesn't make it not controversial.
03:21:39.800But you can't talk about it without adding that perspective.
03:21:43.300But I mean, the thing about the mafia, and I can understand if a guy was going to kill
03:21:46.660you, I mean, even the law recognizes maybe not exactly the way that he would do it, but
03:21:52.400what recognizes a right to self-defense.
03:21:55.220But, you know, it seems like it was a whole criminal justice system that you guys agreed
03:21:59.840to where, you know, you you sleep with the guy's wife, you could get whacked, you you
03:22:04.120interfere with my business, you could get whacked.
03:22:05.800It basically is just whatever the head of the crime family wants.
03:22:10.600And the guy doesn't show up like a samurai face to face in a meeting where you fight it out to the death.
03:24:57.600The the law recognizes some some killings as justified.
03:25:02.640It would not recognize any of the ones that you're talking about is justified.
03:25:06.520And I think you know that it's just what you're saying is that in the mafia, you live by a different code of justice.
03:25:13.360And it's as I understand it, your position is that you wouldn't run around killing what you call legitimate people.
03:25:20.720It's you know, if somebody pissed you off in your social life, he wouldn't be at risk of getting whacked.
03:25:27.580You only for the most part, and we'll get to one of the exceptions I know about, but it sounds like it may have been an accident.
03:25:34.860But for the most part, you only went after people who were part of your world and who had agreed to live and die by this code.
03:25:42.740Right, exactly. I never killed a woman or a child and I never killed even a legitimate guy who I didn't get along with or whatever. I mean, I had fights, but that's as far as that would go. I'm not going to kill somebody because I don't like what he said or something like that.
03:26:02.620We're not complete lunatics. Some of us became lunatics, but I never I never went to that degree.
03:26:10.700I live by this code. And I would willing to die by the code.
03:26:16.880I told my family when I cooperated, we talked about cooperating.
03:26:20.500When I cooperated, I said, if somebody comes down and kills me, don't don't don't even be mad.
03:26:25.360Don't say nothing. Don't do anything. Don't be mad. I broke the code.
03:26:29.740I understood that I could die for what I was doing.
03:26:32.620If I could understand it, you understand it, leave it alone.
03:26:37.180So I believe in that code, just like I believe in God, but I don't believe in certain religions, probably most religions.
03:51:30.660He says, Sammy, I made $400,000 this year.
03:51:32.740all right the first hundred thousand is yours the other three hundred thousand
03:51:37.580the allegation the allegation against you by your critics is that nobody should have accepted this
03:51:45.160kind of an offer from you because if they wanted to renegotiate or if they wanted a bigger piece
03:51:50.720of the pie you would kill them no it's not true that is not true i've never killed a partner
03:51:57.300And listen, what we're talking about happened 40, 50 years ago.
03:52:03.380And if you came to my office, I'll show you 14, 15 different letters of people who were partners with me and knew me back then are sending me love letters.
03:52:20.300What would happen to the guys for whom it wasn't great?
03:52:23.160What about what would happen to the guys who said, I don't like the deal and I actually want to break up?
03:52:31.100I didn't care. The guy with the container business after a couple of years when I grew and I was making so much money, I gave him the business back.
03:52:39.080I didn't charge him a penny. I walked away. This is yours.
03:52:42.500I did it with a guy named Joe Madonia with the Ace Partition.
03:52:46.520We had 200 carpenters. When I grew in status, I said, Joe, I love you.
03:52:51.600I made a ton of money with you. It's yours. It's all yours now.
03:52:55.580And if anybody bothers you, get in touch with me.
03:52:57.760And if I could get you some big work, give me a piece.
03:53:01.600And I got a letter from him in my office.
03:53:03.860Now a letter from him loving, loving the partnership,
03:53:11.180what would happen if a guy was wanting to take advantage of me in some way
03:53:16.980or throw me out or push me out or do something on his own.
03:53:20.940he wouldn't be happy with it he wouldn't get killed it's not a killing in my eyes it's not
03:53:25.820a killing offense but i was powerful with unions and everything i could be a tremendous pain in the
03:53:31.680ass and that's what i would be if he's going for job if he would go for jobs i would tell him don't
03:53:39.260give him no work yeah i imagine if sammy the bull tells you don't give this guy any work you don't
03:53:43.500give the guy any work because there's a lot of power behind that name at that time especially
03:53:47.480So that leads me to Donald Trump, because there were there was speculation in the press when he was running for president that he had mob ties.
03:53:56.740No one could ever get him on it. Like, you know, the press tried to get him on everything.
03:54:00.560None of that was ever proven. But it reminded me of this this one exchange he had with David Letterman.
03:54:05.860This is before he ran for president back in 2013, where he was asked, because this is a guy in New York City real estate.
03:54:12.640You know, he has to deal with construction and some of the industries that you just mentioned, unions all the time.
03:54:18.820And here's how that went. This is Sada Levin.
03:54:21.360Have you ever knowingly done business with what I like to call organized crime?
04:16:33.500Sorry, I'm condensed in my time, so I just want to get in the last thing.
04:16:37.160So you go back to your real name and your life, and we talked earlier about whether that was scary in terms of, like, people are going to come get me, and sure enough, some tried.
04:16:46.860And you wind up, like, to me, it's just so, like, you know, I get it because if you're in a life of crime, maybe it's hard to get out.
04:16:53.000But you wind up dealing drugs and going back to prison for 20 years, almost 20 years.
04:20:10.440Now, I'm going to say this here, but I'm not even supposed to be saying these things.
04:20:15.660But what happens is, is that these FBI guys got money from the mob and they gave this serial killer, my wife and kids address, and he was supposed to go kill them.
04:20:34.520So they get the money, they break the link and they got me.
04:20:41.500Sounds a little confusing, but me going after him.
04:20:44.260no i get it it's a it's sort of a real life crime drama um so this is going to come out on sammy
04:20:50.800on his youtube channel so if you're not subscribed you can see it there uh by doing so uh in the in
04:20:57.340the minute we have left rounding back to the discussion we had on faith and god at the top
04:21:02.460of the show what do you make of it a lot of a lot of folks and they get to be 77 years old start
04:21:06.880thinking about the afterlife and what what possibly awaits and forgiveness and all of that
04:21:12.780So how do you see what's next for you? You know, meeting a maker, making amends, asking for grace, for forgiveness. Is any of that important to you?
04:21:25.480um it's important to you know what's going to happen i mean i i really don't believe that you
04:21:34.440go anywhere i'll be honest with you i don't think you go anywhere but if i'm gonna go anywhere i'm
04:21:40.100a negotiator i'll talk to him and i'll talk to uh i'm not gonna ask for forgiveness if you made me
04:21:47.340then you made me you could have stopped me anytime you want i'm not gonna you made me what i am i'm
04:21:53.620lying. You may be that. So if you wanted to stop me, you could
04:21:57.540stop me anytime you want. I'm not going to ask for forgiveness. I did
04:22:01.720what I did in an honorable way, if you