0:00

Hey, it's Erline and Nigel.

0:02

You know, folks are always asking us for

0:04

show recommendations. Yep. And

0:06

listeners, if you're looking for a new podcast

0:09

for your rotation, may we recommend one

0:11

of the first and best ever to do it. The

0:13

Kitchen Sisters present.

0:14

You'll find a beautiful marriage of

0:17

sound rich, deeply layered audio

0:19

and unexpected, compelling stories that

0:21

crisscross the B side of history.

0:23

Learn about rogue librarians,

0:26

why rotisserie chicken is so cheap. Famous

0:29

people like Ray Eames and Linda Ronstadt

0:31

and not so famous people like Susan

0:33

Rogers, the technician who became Prince's sound

0:36

engineer with no training in sound

0:38

engineering.

0:39

Erline, have I told you my favorite episode? Hmm.

0:42

Eel Pie Island. If you're

0:44

into music, you've got to listen. I've

0:46

listened so many times and like all

0:48

of their episodes, it is full of surprises.

0:50

From Radiotopia, The Kitchen

0:53

Sisters present. Listen wherever you get your

0:55

podcasts and at kitchensisters.org.

0:59

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Hey listeners, we're in between seasons.

1:38

We'll have new episodes to share with you in September.

1:40

In the meantime, we wanted to share another podcast

1:43

we think you'll love.

1:44

And I am such a fan of this one.

1:47

It's called Violation produced

1:49

by the Marshall Project and WBUR

1:51

in Boston and hosted by Beth

1:54

Schwartzapfel.

1:55

And revisits a 1986 murder

1:57

case when 16 year old Jake Wideman.

2:00

son of award-winning author John Edgar

2:02

Weidman, fatally stabbed his summer

2:04

camp roommate, Eric Kane.

2:06

I just love this podcast because

2:09

it took such a difficult and

2:11

troubling subject matter and really dissected

2:13

it, made it clear to us because it's all

2:16

told in first-person experience.

2:18

And it takes a deep dive on

2:20

something we're really interested in, parole

2:23

boards. Powerful, secretive,

2:26

largely political bodies that control the

2:28

fates of thousands of people every year. And,

2:30

Earlon, the parole process, in this

2:32

case, takes some stunning turns. So,

2:36

we're gonna share the first episode with you now.

2:38

There are six more, so do yourself a favor,

2:41

listen to this one, then find the rest wherever

2:43

you get your podcasts.

2:45

Here's Violation from WBUR

2:48

and The Marshall Project. WBUR

2:51

Podcasts,

2:52

Boston.

2:58

Would you be willing to read a couple of passages? I brought some of your books

3:00

with me that speak to some of these issues. Depends.

3:07

I don't wanna get into anything that

3:09

even begins to feel like he said, she

3:12

said. Because

3:14

that ain't going nowhere. I have a couple, I flagged

3:17

a couple of passages. Let me see. This

3:20

passage here that I marked with the red pen. I

3:23

don't know if I can read this, particularly

3:26

after looking at that picture of him. This is John Edgar

3:28

Weidman,

3:32

author of more than a dozen books.

3:34

English professor, Rhodes scholar, MacArthur

3:36

genius. I've

3:38

been reading John Weidman's books for

3:40

years, intrigued

3:42

first by his lyrical explorations of the

3:45

criminal justice system, of racism and class and privilege,

3:49

and then, of course, of the criminal justice system. And

3:53

then later, even more intrigued,

3:55

when I learned how these themes played out

3:57

eerily, tragically, in the life span of the criminal

3:59

justice system.

3:59

story of his middle child, Jacob.

4:03

Is this you guys in Wyoming? Yes. That's

4:06

Jake.

4:08

Huh. Look at that. Who

4:10

are you with there?

4:11

When I finally arrived at his Manhattan

4:14

apartment on one of the first blustery

4:16

cold days this winter, it felt

4:18

like I was walking into something intensely

4:21

personal. Something that

4:23

as a journalist I'd been fascinated by

4:25

for at least a decade. But as a human,

4:27

I was mindful, was a painful

4:30

private story. As

4:32

a rule, John doesn't talk publicly about

4:34

Jake, at least not directly. Even

4:37

when he's asked about it by Terry Gross on

4:39

Fresh Air, as he was in 1994. Do

4:43

you think you'll ever write a more

4:45

extensive piece

4:47

about your son, Jake? Or is that something that you

4:50

think you might never care to

4:52

share in detail with the public?

4:54

Well, the advantage of being a writer is you

4:56

talk about things in your own way. Right.

4:59

And sometimes people

5:01

can look at your biography and make guesses

5:04

about what in fact you're writing about and thinking

5:06

about. But other times they can't.

5:09

And it's a complicated way of taking the

5:11

fifth, if you will. Years

5:14

after he sidestepped Terry's

5:16

questions, John is finally

5:18

letting someone in to ask him about

5:21

his middle child. And he has

5:23

a specific reason. He'd like

5:25

to see Jake get out of prison. This

5:28

is not my reason

5:29

for talking with John. It's

5:31

my job to tell you everything I can find

5:33

out about what really happened and

5:36

why.

5:37

Everyone talking to me for the story has

5:39

their own reasons. Everyone

5:42

has their own version of the truth, too. John

5:44

Weidman can relate to that.

5:47

I'm a fiction writer and

5:49

a novelist. I also write nonfiction.

5:53

In my view, it's very hard to distinguish,

5:55

often, among those genre.

5:58

And sometimes it's impossible to find the truth. possible, and

6:01

maybe they're all the same.

6:03

As a longtime fan of John Wideman's

6:05

writing, I can tell you that much of

6:07

it is animated by this idea that

6:09

good stories contain some essential

6:12

truth, regardless of whether they're actually

6:14

true, or that in some situations,

6:17

true accounts may in fact be less true

6:19

than fiction.

6:20

One of the people who I'm hoping will

6:22

help me understand what's real and what's false

6:25

is John's son, Jake Wideman.

6:28

I talk to people in prison all the time.

6:33

I'm used to the noise, the terrible sound

6:35

quality, the robot lady constantly

6:38

interrupting to warn you that you're talking to

6:40

a prisoner, and it's

6:44

costing a small fortune, and your calls

6:49

are being recorded, and you'd better

6:50

hurry up. But

6:55

ever since we started talking, in

6:57

phone conversations I could record, and

6:59

at in-person visits the state of Arizona

7:01

wouldn't let me record,

7:03

I've tuned all that out to focus

7:05

on Jake, on the details he

7:07

unspooled over weeks and months.

7:10

Jake and I spent more than a dozen hours

7:13

on the phone in 15-minute increments,

7:16

and I visited him twice for three

7:18

or four hours each time.

7:20

He's a big guy, 6'1", 195 pounds, and like all the other

7:22

prisoners, he wore an orange jumpsuit

7:28

with the letters A-D-C for

7:31

Arizona Department of Corrections in

7:33

big black letters stenciled on his back

7:35

and leg. His head is shaved

7:38

bald, and in the midst of a COVID surge,

7:40

he wore a janky face mask homemade

7:43

from old t-shirts. Jake

7:45

seemed to have earned a certain amount of respect

7:48

and affection from the other prisoners. During

7:51

my first visit, people kept walking by and

7:53

handing him things from the vending machine, snack

7:55

cakes and a little microwaved hot dog

7:57

and a bottle of water.

8:00

Jake Wideman was sentenced to 25 years

8:02

to life.

8:04

He spent 30 years in prison

8:07

before being released on parole.

8:09

Then, less than nine months after

8:12

he was back out in the world, Jake

8:14

was yanked back into prison. And

8:16

now, nobody knows if Jake

8:19

will ever get out again. There's

8:21

no end in sight. The

8:23

details of that part of Jake's story,

8:26

the parole violation that landed him back

8:28

behind bars, well, for now,

8:31

we'll just say they were very unusual.

8:34

Much about Jake's case is very

8:37

unusual, but much about it is

8:39

also all too common. In looking

8:41

at this case, there's a lot we can learn

8:44

about how the system works and doesn't

8:46

for everyone. In

8:48

spending all this time with him, his

8:50

family, lawyers, and others involved

8:52

in his case, I've been trying to figure

8:54

out what happened.

8:56

I'm Beth Schwartzapfel.

9:01

From

9:03

the Marshall Project and WBUR,

9:06

this is Violation, a

9:08

story about second chances,

9:11

parole boards, and who pulls

9:13

the levers of power

9:14

in the justice system. There was

9:16

no motive, just murder. In fact,

9:18

at the time the judge- This is part one, two

9:21

sons lost.

9:27

Jake's case takes all the dynamics

9:29

at play in

9:33

a typical murder case and cranks the volume way, way

9:37

up. Victims' rights, political influence,

9:39

race, privilege, mental

9:42

health, senseless violence, how

9:45

mass incarceration has morphed into mass supervision

9:47

with all the same pitfalls and politics.

9:50

And that's why we're here today. We're

9:52

here today to talk about mass supervision with

9:54

all the same pitfalls and politics.

9:57

Jake's family did not relish-

9:59

their personal lives up for public consumption.

10:03

But with some prodding from Jake, his sister

10:05

and brother and father each spent time

10:08

answering my many questions, including

10:11

why agree to talk to me? This definitely

10:13

is both, I think, for the love of Jake, but

10:16

also for the love of justice.

10:22

That's his brother, Daniel. For

10:24

Jake, talking to me was a leap

10:27

of faith. I mean, he has

10:29

a famous writer for a father. It

10:31

would have been much safer to let John tell it. John

10:34

would, without question, see things from

10:36

Jake's point of view. But Jake

10:38

was clear. He wanted a reporter

10:40

to look at what happened.

10:42

It's time for the truth

10:44

to come out, and I want to stand

10:47

on the facts. I don't want

10:49

anybody to feel sorry for

10:51

me. I don't want anybody to take

10:54

my side out of sympathy or

10:56

say anything like, well, you

10:59

know, he's been in since he was 16 and 36

11:02

years and a poor guy. And

11:05

I want people to have

11:07

a conviction that justice needs

11:09

to be done because of the

11:12

injustice that has been done so far.

11:18

I'm a reporter, so

11:19

I believe in facts. I

11:22

believe that if you talk to enough people and

11:24

do enough research, you can get to the bottom

11:26

of something.

11:27

I'm also aware that some facts

11:30

are unknowable or what passes

11:32

for a fact is just a matter of opinion, that

11:35

you can stack up all the facts and still

11:37

disagree about what they mean.

11:39

In this case, here's what we know.

11:42

Jake Weidman killed a boy when

11:45

he was a boy.

11:47

There are mysteries in the story,

11:49

but the victim and who committed the murder

11:52

are not among them. In 1986,

11:54

as a teen at summer camp,

11:56

Jacob Weidman murdered fellow camper

11:58

Eric Kane.

11:59

Eric slept, Weidman stabbed him twice

12:02

in the chest. The crime devastated

12:04

two families. Two fathers have

12:06

lost their sons and don't know why.

12:09

This is reporter Ted Bartimas. I

12:11

was a news reporter for the Arizona Daily Sun back

12:14

in the 1980s. I asked

12:16

him to read from an article he wrote in October

12:19

of 1988. Sanford Kane lost

12:21

his son to murder in 1986 and noted

12:23

black writer John Edgar Weidman lost his son,

12:25

Wednesday, to life imprisonment for

12:27

the same murder.

12:29

Now, recordings of court and

12:31

parole hearings are often comically

12:33

bad to the point of being almost unintelligible.

12:37

What

12:37

confidence can society have that why- And

12:39

you may be shocked to learn that recordings of

12:41

police interviews from 40 years ago are

12:43

also not exactly high quality or

12:46

captured with audio journalism in mind.

12:48

You seem like a pretty normal

12:50

guy.

12:51

So in this podcast, you're

12:53

going to hear bits of these recordings, but you'll

12:55

often hear me repeating what's being said. And

12:58

in some cases where a recording is not available,

13:01

you might hear a colleague reading what was said.

13:03

With Jake, you'll hear our phone conversations

13:06

more than anything else because while I can

13:08

record phone calls, Arizona wouldn't

13:10

let me record inside the prison. I

13:13

needed special permission just to bring a pen.

13:16

But I promise that whenever I can,

13:18

I'll play you the words of people in their

13:20

own voice.

13:22

Now, in 1988 in Arizona, life

13:25

imprisonment actually meant 25 years to life, which

13:28

meant that after 25 years, Jake was

13:30

eligible for parole. In 2011, at 41

13:32

years old, he

13:35

could go before a board and try to prove that

13:37

he deserved to be free.

13:38

I first connected with Jake after

13:40

he'd been before the board more than half a

13:43

dozen times. Good morning, Mr. Weidman.

13:45

Good morning, ma'am. We

13:47

are now in session. The Arizona

13:49

Board of Executive Clemency is about to

13:52

commence. Jake told the board he had

13:54

spent years in therapy, earned

13:56

multiple degrees,

13:57

that he worked for decades to make himself...

13:59

a model prisoner and a good man.

14:02

That's something causing him anguish

14:04

and suffering when unidentified and

14:06

untreated for decades of his childhood and

14:08

young adulthood

14:10

until he had already spent years in prison.

14:13

We'll talk more about that later.

14:14

Follow the work that I have done

14:16

over these years to understand why I

14:18

did what I did and to heal from my

14:20

mental health struggles. What done

14:22

to become the best man that I can be and

14:25

to ensure that I never commit another

14:27

act of violence in my life.

14:30

The parents of Jake's victim, Eric

14:32

Kane, still shattered by

14:34

their son's murder, looked at the same

14:37

set of facts and told the parole board

14:39

they saw only danger. All

14:42

those words, the sign of a master

14:44

manipulator, Jake's accomplishments

14:46

be lying a killer who could not

14:48

be trusted to walk among us. This

14:51

is Eric's mother, Louise

14:53

Kane. This year,

14:55

the murderer has been packaged by professionals.

14:59

How can one tell what is the

15:01

real truth, what is his,

15:04

and what belongs to the lawyer? If

15:06

wide men can do well in jail,

15:09

then so much the better, but that is

15:11

where you

15:11

belong. Whose

15:17

version of the story is the right one? To

15:20

some, justice is and will only

15:22

ever be served when people who

15:25

kill or harm other people go

15:27

away and never come back, or

15:30

at least don't come back until we can be absolutely

15:33

certain they will never harm anyone

15:35

again,

15:36

which is, you know, never. This

15:39

is Brian Shea, a deputy

15:41

county attorney in the office that prosecuted

15:44

Jake

15:44

at a parole board hearing. What

15:47

will it take for wide men to have paid his debt to

15:49

Eric and Eric's family and to society

15:51

as a whole? What amount of prison

15:53

time is enough for this terrible, senseless murder?

15:57

I've been covering parole boards for years.

15:59

And answering these unanswerable

16:02

questions in tens of thousands of

16:04

cases each year is their very reason

16:07

for being. And lots

16:09

of people have plenty to say about

16:11

how good or not good they

16:14

are at doing that. When

16:16

I published my first big investigation into

16:18

parole boards in the Washington Post

16:20

in 2015, this dark,

16:23

often secretive corner of the criminal justice

16:25

system was largely unknown

16:27

and unexamined. But it's become

16:29

increasingly clear, as states grapple

16:32

with ballooning prison populations, that

16:34

these unelected bodies of mostly

16:37

political appointees with little or no

16:39

legal training have in some

16:41

states more power over how much time

16:43

people serve in prison than judges or

16:46

juries do.

16:48

But before Jake Weidman ever

16:50

faced a parole board, before

16:52

Eric Cain was dead and buried and

16:55

Jake was a grown man trying to tell

16:57

his version of his story, they

16:59

were two boys on an adventure.

17:02

It was the summer of 1986.

17:07

Matlock had recently premiered on

17:09

NBC. Matlock's a winner this

17:12

fall. President Reagan was in his

17:14

second term. My fellow Americans, I

17:16

hope you're relaxed and in a cool place. The

17:18

fashion of the day included teased hair and

17:21

giant shoulder pads. The new perm from

17:23

Tony that gives your hair lots of volume

17:25

you can do anything with. Jake

17:28

Weidman and Eric Cain had just

17:30

finished their sophomore years in high school. Jake

17:33

in Laramie, Wyoming, where his dad was

17:35

a professor at the University of Wyoming,

17:38

and Eric in the suburbs north of New York

17:40

City, where his dad was an executive

17:42

at IBM.

17:44

The two boys had for years attended

17:46

Camp Takahou,

17:47

a sports camp for boys in Southwestern

17:49

Maine.

17:51

It was a high-end camp with all the things,

17:53

swimming, boating, overnight

17:56

trips, arts and crafts, woodworking.

17:59

It was pricey.

17:59

and very exclusive. The

18:02

camp's owner, Morty Goldman, didn't

18:04

advertise and filled the 400 some

18:06

odd spots on word of mouth alone.

18:09

Jake had been spending summers there since he

18:11

was a toddler because he was Morty Goldman's

18:14

grandson.

18:16

Later, as police and lawyers tried

18:18

to piece together what had happened, they interviewed

18:20

people at the camp.

18:22

Here's fellow camper Todd Miller and

18:25

counselor Bill Hammond describing

18:27

Jake

18:27

and the other campers. I think basically

18:30

Jake and maybe uh one

18:32

or two other kids were black.

18:35

These kids came from the background of the private

18:37

schools.

18:38

This tape is hard to hear but Todd

18:41

Miller says that only Jake and a few other

18:43

kids at the camp were black and counselor

18:45

Bill Hammond says these kids came from

18:47

backgrounds with private schools. It

18:50

was an annual tradition at Tackahoe that the oldest

18:53

campers got to go on a tour of National Parks

18:55

in the west at the end of the summer. Early

18:58

that August, Jake, Eric, two

19:00

other boys, and counselor Bill had

19:02

flown into

19:03

Salt Lake City, rented a Blue Oldsmobile,

19:06

and launched on an epic road trip to

19:08

Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and

19:10

Bryce Canyon.

19:12

About two weeks in, a mix-up in their itinerary

19:15

en route to the Grand Canyon unexpectedly

19:17

landed them about 80 miles southeast

19:20

in Flagstaff, Arizona. A

19:22

small college town in the mountains, 7,000

19:25

feet above the valley where Phoenix sprawls.

19:28

Because of its elevation, the weather in Flagstaff

19:30

resembles New England more than it does the hot

19:33

desert climate that people associate with Arizona.

19:36

There are pine trees and crisp fall days

19:38

and in the winter,

19:39

snarl. Ted

19:41

Bartimas, the Arizona Daily Sun reporter,

19:44

lived

19:44

there for years. Flagstaff tends

19:46

to be kind of a time warp community. A lot

19:48

of dead heads, you had a lot of cowboys, a

19:51

lot of lumberjacks. You could walk

19:53

in certain parts of the community

19:56

and it was like, like I said,

19:57

time warp. You could go back to the 60s.

19:59

Because of its location on historic Route 66,

20:02

the town was something of a crossroads. Like

20:05

the group from Camp Takahou, people often pass

20:07

through Flagstaff on their way to somewhere

20:09

else.

20:10

Millions of people are going through there all the

20:12

time, and a lot of them

20:14

are fine people, but

20:17

some of them aren't so fine.

20:19

This is John Verkamp, who was at

20:21

the time the county attorney in Coconino County,

20:23

where Flagstaff is located. So

20:27

we do have more than our share of

20:30

strange incidents, and

20:33

this was kind of an example.

20:35

To Jake's family,

20:37

to his teachers and coaches and

20:39

friends and Laramie,

20:40

this incident was more than strange.

20:42

It was shocking. Jake murdered

20:45

someone?

20:47

Jake was the second of his family's three

20:49

children. Tall, athletic,

20:51

a talented basketball player.

20:53

His complexion reflected his family's

20:55

mashup of heritages,

20:57

black on his dad's side, part Jewish

20:59

and part wasp on his mom's.

21:02

His hair was improbably blond as a kid,

21:04

his skin a pale tan. This

21:07

is John describing him in an essay

21:09

he wrote years later.

21:11

You were blond then, huge

21:13

brown eyes, hair on your

21:15

head of many kinds, a

21:17

storm, a multi-culture

21:20

of textures, kinky,

21:23

dead straight, curly frizzy, ringlets,

21:26

hair thick in places, sparse

21:28

in others. All your people

21:31

on both sides of the family ecumenically

21:35

represented in the golden crown

21:38

atop your head.

21:40

His family was part of a close-knit

21:42

group of families of professors at the University

21:44

of Wyoming and Laramie. And as a young

21:46

kid and later a teenager, Jake was

21:48

known among them as unassuming, bright

21:51

and polite. There was this tall,

21:53

gangly kid, very leggy,

21:57

again just a very sweet.

21:59

A gentle, smiling

22:03

kid. This is Janice

22:05

Harris, an English professor and a good

22:07

friend of the Weidmans, some years later in

22:09

an interview with attorneys. A very

22:11

sweet child, a very curious child.

22:15

Always interested in things I can remember in particular

22:18

a way he had, if we would

22:20

be doing field trips. Always

22:23

asking, what if this, what if that, what if this?

22:26

As a teenager, Jake was friendly and well-liked.

22:29

Camper Todd Miller again.

22:30

He seemed like a pretty normal guy. If

22:33

you went on his bunk, he seemed

22:35

like a pretty normal guy. Todd

22:37

says, if you were not in his

22:40

bunk, he seemed just like a regular

22:42

kid. He was a good basketball player.

22:45

A nice guy. But

22:48

Jake says many of those relationships were

22:50

superficial. He had very few close

22:52

friends.

22:53

That's because he felt he had a lot to hide.

22:55

Since I was in his bunk, two years.

22:59

Since I was in his bunk for two years, Todd

23:01

said, when you're in his bunk and you've

23:03

lived with him for a while, he would act

23:05

strange sometimes for no reason. Just

23:08

bizarre behavior. Just be hyper,

23:11

very hyper, like he was almost possessed.

23:13

In

23:16

his own mind, Jake thought of these episodes

23:18

as adrenaline rushes. He

23:21

thought he was hiding them, fooling everyone

23:23

about the turmoil inside his head. But

23:25

it would be years too late before he told anyone

23:28

about them, and many more years before

23:30

he understood what they were.

23:34

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

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We've talked a lot about Jake, but

25:46

the other boy we're here to talk about is

25:48

Eric Cain.

25:51

He had a mop of dark curls and a

25:53

warm smile. He was

25:55

the youngest of three children.

25:58

As kids, his older brother.

25:59

brother and sister never needed dolls,

26:02

their mom said, because they had Eric.

26:04

At a

26:06

sports camp like Takahou, Eric

26:08

Keene stood out for being not

26:11

very sporty. He had

26:13

a medical condition as a kid that left

26:15

him sort of uncoordinated and clumsy.

26:18

He would dictate his schoolwork to his dad

26:20

because he found it hard to type. Even 30

26:24

years after his death, there's still

26:27

a lot of information in the public record

26:29

about the kind of boy Eric was,

26:31

the kind of young man he might have

26:33

grown up to be. That's because

26:35

his parents have made sure of that, gathered

26:39

thousands of letters from family

26:41

and friends, spoke about him at every

26:43

public hearing. And

26:45

that's important.

26:48

I don't want Eric to be a sort of black

26:50

hole in this story, an

26:52

absence instead of a presence. Obviously,

26:56

Eric's not here to tell me about himself.

26:59

And unfortunately, the Keene's

27:01

have declined to talk with me.

27:02

I can understand why

27:05

judging from their testimony over the years,

27:08

their grief is still real and

27:10

raw. They sent their son

27:12

off to summer camp and he never came

27:14

home. As a parent,

27:17

how do you ever get over that?

27:23

I've done my best to assemble some details

27:26

from the letters and decades of testimony

27:28

and public statements by his family.

27:31

When he was small, Eric

27:33

wanted to be a knight. He

27:36

played piano and guitar. He

27:39

loved science and dolphins and

27:41

drawing. He had a poodle

27:43

named Butterscotch.

27:46

Eric loved to read, his mom

27:48

said.

27:58

curiosity

28:01

as long as I could remember. And

28:03

from the earliest, he would ask questions

28:06

about everything. In

28:08

elementary school, he and another friend

28:10

who quickly outpaced the other kids in reading

28:13

were pulled out of class to have their own little book

28:15

group in the principal's

28:16

office. We not only read books,

28:19

we devoured them. We

28:21

learned to read in the voices of the characters

28:23

in the stories. We discussed

28:25

the books. We wrote.

28:27

And we laughed. He

28:30

was so very sweet

28:32

and so deeply kind

28:35

and so terribly

28:37

bright. On

28:42

the quiet suburban street where they lived, one

28:45

childhood friend recalled, quote, We all

28:47

walked to school together, rode bikes up and

28:49

down the block, and played in the streets until

28:52

our parents called us in for dinner, end

28:54

quote.

28:56

Another friend said Eric embodied the

28:58

feeling of the little town they grew up in. It

29:00

was, and he was,

29:02

kind, caring, simple, and

29:05

sweet.

29:07

On the Camp Tackaho National Parks trip, the

29:09

kids more or less got along. Besides

29:11

for the kind of bickering you might expect when

29:14

you coop four teenage boys up in an Oldsmobile

29:16

for hours at a time. Eric

29:18

in particular came in for a lot of teasing.

29:21

Here's camper Todd Miller speaking to

29:23

detectives later. I think

29:25

it's fair to say probably everybody at some

29:27

point or another.

29:28

It's fair to say probably everybody

29:30

at some point or another just, you know, teased

29:32

him,

29:33

Todd said. Gave him a hard time. Nothing

29:35

that really sticks out in my mind.

29:39

On the night the kids landed in Flagstaff,

29:41

they split up to eat dinner

29:42

at different restaurants. Some of

29:44

them went back to the motel to watch a Billy Crystal

29:46

special on TV.

29:48

Eric went to the movie theater to see Top

29:50

Gun.

29:51

Jake saw ruthless people.

29:52

Meet Mr. Stone.

29:55

He wanted to kill Mrs. Stone. My

29:57

only regret, Carol.

29:59

Jake's movies ended at different times, so

30:02

Jake walked back from the theater by himself.

30:05

Counselor Bill Hammond picked Eric up

30:07

a little later and dropped him back in the motel

30:09

room he was sharing with Jake.

30:11

Bill was staying with the other campers,

30:13

Brian and Todd, in the room next door.

30:16

Much of this information, by the way, comes from

30:18

old and poorly recorded interviews with Bill,

30:21

which we got from the county attorney's office and

30:23

Flagstaff. As bad as

30:25

the recordings are,

30:27

they do help us understand what happened that night.

30:30

Around midnight, Jake knocked on the door

30:32

of Bill's room.

30:34

Could he borrow the car keys, he asked?

30:36

He wanted to sit in the car and listen to his

30:38

tapes. Sure

30:44

Bill says, just bring the keys back

30:46

when you're done.

30:47

I trusted him, Bill said.

30:49

I had no problem trusting him, and I had no

30:51

reason not to trust him.

30:53

Jake can't remember what tapes he was listening to

30:55

that night,

30:56

but he remembers he loved Motown — Smokey

30:59

Robinson, the Supremes, the Temptations.

31:02

Bill said that while they were on the road, Jake

31:05

would put Sitting on the Dock of the Bay by Otis

31:07

Reding on in the car quite often.

31:09

Sitting in the morning sun,

31:12

I'll be sitting

31:15

in the evening car.

31:17

I looked out there 15 or 20

31:20

minutes late and I said, you

31:23

know, Jake, you're far. And

31:26

the car light was off. He had a fold-out

31:28

map, but it was not that.

31:30

Bill says, I

31:31

looked out there 15 or 20 minutes

31:34

later, and I remember seeing Jake

31:36

in the car. And the car light was on,

31:38

and he had the fold-out map in front of him.

31:42

Bill figured he'd get the keys back later.

31:44

It was late, so he got ready for bed.

31:46

It was the end of another long day on the road.

31:49

Except for the aggravation of the inadvertent

31:51

detour, nothing was out of the ordinary.

31:55

Bill couldn't have imagined what would happen in

31:57

the next few hours.

32:02

The

32:03

next morning, when he went to wake Jake and

32:05

Eric, he found their door ajar.

32:08

When he pushed it open,

32:09

neither Jake nor Eric was there, but

32:12

the bed closest to the door was

32:15

covered in blood.

32:17

He went to get the other campers. Brian

32:20

from the room next door described the scene

32:22

later to police. Bill

32:27

tried in his mind to rationalize the

32:29

situation to himself.

32:31

Maybe someone had had a nosebleed. Maybe

32:34

one of the boys had gotten sick or injured overnight,

32:37

and the other had driven him to the hospital.

32:40

Jake liked to play basketball. Maybe he

32:42

had gone out to shoot hoops early that morning and

32:44

hurt himself. That would explain

32:46

why the car was gone.

32:47

Again, Bill is

32:49

hard to hear right there.

32:54

He's

32:57

now retired from the Flagstaff Police Department, but

32:59

on that day, in August 1986,

33:14

he

33:26

responded to Bill's 911 call.

33:53

Eric Andrew Kane was 16

33:56

years old, and Jacob

33:59

Edgar Weidman also 16, was missing.

34:08

For a while, police thought that some third

34:11

party might have kidnapped Jake and

34:13

killed Eric. What in the

34:15

world else could explain what had happened?

34:18

But like I said, the mystery of the story

34:21

is not who killed Eric. The

34:24

mystery of the story is why.

34:27

Do we understand? Can we ever

34:29

understand what lived inside

34:31

of Jake that night? To his

34:33

friends, his family, to all

34:36

those who knew Jake, this seemed impossible.

34:39

Totally surprised, totally

34:41

unexpected. Totally unpredictable

34:44

and inconsistent. I think I was just

34:46

in shock.

34:53

Jake says he spent more than a decade

34:56

trying to understand it himself. And

34:59

then another decade trying to explain it

35:01

to the canes and the parole board. Years

35:04

of therapy and treatment.

35:06

He's told me about all of it. And

35:08

I have hundreds of pages of psych evaluations

35:11

and reports. We're going to talk more

35:13

about all of that.

35:15

But none of that matters to the canes.

35:17

To the canes, it's all bullshit.

35:20

None of us know why he brutally

35:22

murdered Eric. Their beautiful son is dead.

35:25

And all they hear is lies and

35:27

excuses.

35:47

What should happen to kids like Jake?

35:50

The Supreme Court has said that kids are different

35:52

from adults.

35:53

Even kids who commit the most serious crimes

35:56

are less culpable than adults. And

35:57

should be treated differently.

37:51

Mix,

38:01

Sound Design, and Original Music Composition

38:03

by Paul Vykes. Fact-checking

38:05

help from Kate Gallagher at The Marshall

38:07

Project. Illustrations for our

38:10

project come from Diego Madjo.

38:12

Special thanks to Victor Hernandez,

38:15

Susan Shira, Margaret Lowe, Mara

38:18

Corbett, Laura Hertzfeld, Ashley

38:20

Dye, Amory Seavardson, Nora

38:22

Sacks, Elon Kidderman Ulandorf,

38:25

Grace Tatter, Samatha Joshi, Marci

38:28

Suela, Kristen Holgerson, Rachel

38:30

Kincaid, Briley Weaver, Dakri

38:33

Brooks, Nicole Funaro, Gabe

38:35

Isman, Ruth Baldwin, Ebony

38:37

Reed, A.J. Flanser, Chilina

38:40

Fang, Bo-Won Kume, Terry

38:42

Troncali, Jennifer Borg, Jason

38:45

Chris, Celine Carlo Gonzalez,

38:48

Ed Claris, Louise Karun,

38:50

Ghazala Urshad, and Ellie Stern.

38:54

I'm Beth Schwartzapfel, your reporter

38:56

and host. I'll talk to you next week.

38:58

Oh,

39:01

so good. I'm here. Find

39:03

violation wherever you get your podcasts

39:05

or check the link in our show notes. And

39:08

listeners, we can't wait for you to hear what

39:10

we have in store for you in our next season. Season 12.

39:13

First episode, September 6th.

39:18

Radio to P.R.X. From

39:22

P.R.X.