This is True Crime Garage and this is part 3 of when a killer calls.

Always very excited to have Mr. John Douglas here with us in the garage. This is the third time that you've come and graced us with your presence and we are excited as we always are to chat with you.

Today we're talking about your new book when a killer calls. This is a fascinating story from the mid 80s that took place in South Carolina with a very horrific case and tragic case but one that's really not only will appeal to our listeners and appeals to me as kind of a case study.

But the criminal Larry Jean Bell just fascinating and absolutely bizarre his crimes that he committed and the way that he not just committed these crimes but also emotionally tortured his victims and their families.

Mr. Douglas one thing that I found incredibly fascinating about the details of your new book it really.

The one thing that I found really interesting about Larry Jean Bell is the crime that he did and some killers communicate with the media some with law enforcement from your experience why do you think some choose to communicate with the media and others choose to communicate with law enforcement.

I've had cases I interviewed a Dennis Raider the BTK Strangler and it was just a they're all looking for power all these crimes are a sense of power and control and something like a Dennis Raider or the zodiac it's they want more than just local attention they want the national national you know attention in the case of that that I just wrote about when a killer calls I never really had a case.

You know like this before because this this signature the that's an aspect of the case does not necessarily to perpetrate the case was the need that the subject has and his need was to

statistically torture the families of a sheriff a Smith there were two victims involved a sheriff a Smith giving him initially false hope that that their daughter was still alive and then having the victim right a last will and testament that he would mail to the family and sheriff a Smith is now saying goodbye to her family.

It was just an unbelievable family the religious and faith you know that they had I mean it was emotionally draining for me and everyone else involved you know in the in the case.

But this guy this guy then after the last one and testament he sets up these communications initially he's disguising his voice and we send the tapes of the FBI lab and they say he has some type of a monitoring.

The monitoring device on the phone which began to tell us something about his background is profile his intelligence so he was changing his voice as a case went on after a period of time he stopped using that that device because he was gaining confidence you just felt that he was not you know not catchable no one would ever identify him.

But when this case kept evolving and kept going on and on and then I'm working with the families I'm working with sister her sister named dawn to use as a bait really to get this guy to keep communicating with us because the more he communicates the more we begin to learn about him but it was very difficult in the 80s because we had to keep him on the phone for such a long period of time up to 15.

15 minutes before we can put a traps and trace and he was well aware of that so I had work with the with the sister of sheriff Smith and basically kind of given like kind of like cost of negotiating skills and that is like paraphrase and restate the content that he's trying to whatever's telling you just keep like confirming that you understand what he's saying but he was too sharp at that time he would you would bail on us.

But one of the worst things about this I mean it was it was horrific was that the mother received some of the calls as well as the sister dawn and then the mother asked him the mother says that my daughter knows she was going to die and Bell says yes she did and I gave her choice as she could pick a drug overdose gunshot or suffocation and your daughter selected suffocation and so what he did

he proceeded to use duct tape while she was alive and duct taped her her head and then he waits he waits days with a body to decompose before he tells us the tells the family through now dawn the other sister where we can find find sheriff Smith and the reason that that tells you something about him to because he doesn't want to leave anything for us to determine like the cause of death

locate any kind of hair and fiber evidence but we could see is that and we know about the duct tape just by the evidence as she her hair after he duct taped her head he removed the duct tape because he didn't want to leave a thing of prints on the duct tape and he would end up cutting some of the hair on her head to totally remove the duct tape before

the premise so it was just it was just an unbelievable case and and to set up he stopped communicating with us that's that was a problem when I finally went down there stop communicating with with the police with the family I had to get him to talk I had to get him to get back on the phone so I sat down with the investigative reporter and totally

investigative reporter that I wanted her to come up with a story where sheriff a is is buried we want to have a memorial service and I'm not going to write it for you I can't do that it's an agent but I want to make it poetic and we're going to set up at the the grave site

we're going to put a kind of a lectern a white lectern with the sheriff's picture on it and when I was at the house I asked to see sheriff's bedroom and dawn her sister showed me the bedroom and in the bedroom were dozens upon dozens of of of koala bears and I started thinking my brain what can I what can I do here what can I do and I saw a small koala bear that was hanging from a string and it took that you pinch the shoulders and it opens up and I'm thinking without

telling anyone I'm going to use this at the grave site I'm going to have dawn who now he was targeting dawn the other sister placed that at the at the grave site on a flower and the hope is Nick is that he will we will peak his curiosity because we do know from the research I conducted a my colleagues

they like to collect souvenirs momentos relative to the to the crime so did all it did all those things unfortunately from a investigative perspective had no control over this but she was very very very close to the road

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