Focus 580; A Cold Case

Good morning and welcome to focus 580. This is our telephone talk program. My name's David Inge. Glad to have you with us this morning. In this first hour of the show we'll be talking with Philip Gourevitch. He's a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. And we'll be talking about a story that he wrote about for the magazine which he has now turned into an expanded version and has been has been published as a book. It's a story of how an investigator for the Manhattan district attorney's office a man who had been a police officer in New York solved a 27 year old murder case. The title of the book is a cold case. It's published by Farrar Straus and Giroux. It's just come out recently. PHILIP. In addition to writing for The New Yorkers a contributing editor to the forward in one thousand ninety eight he published his first book book about the Rwandan genocide that was titled We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families with very powerful book. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award the L.A. Times Book Prize the George

Polk Award for foreign reporting. He has also reported from Africa Asia and Europe for a number of magazines including Granta Harper's and the New York Review of Books and he's talking with us this morning by telephone. And as we talk with Philip Gourevitch questions are welcome. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. That one is good anywhere. You can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Mr. GOUREVITCH Hello. Hello. Thanks for talking with us today. Well it's great to talk to you. The story starts out with an account of this murder that took place in 1970. The killer was a man named Frank Koehler. Right there right and he got the story was basically he got into an argument with two other men. There was a fight and later that night caller shot and killed these other two. That's right.

You want to maybe flush out that story of the murder a little bit for Frankie color was essentially a career hoodlums man who referred to himself as a professional criminal had grown up in the 40s and 50s in the West Side of Manhattan and Hell's Kitchen area. Chelsea along the docks of the west side which were largely controlled then by the Irish and Italian mobs that he had from a very early age being running the streets on his own as a as a lawbreaker burglar. He went to enlist in the Army in World War Two lying about his age and pretending to be 15 but then lost some money in a crap game and went to a wall and got arrested for burglary almost immediately in New York. Then went on an armed robbery spree at a young age got himself into more trouble. He committed his first murder at the age of 16. He'd spent really half of his life in jail and was working really as kind of a strong arm man and

enforcer with various mob racketeers in Manhattan and he went on the night of February 18 1970 to our channel 7 in the West 50s which was a rather upscale he favored kind of a taste for places you know the Copacabana to just to see the fancy acts nightclub act was a big Frank Sinatra fan. And he he went to this place Channel 7 which was very popular with TV and radio broadcasters. He went in for a drink and there he met up with. The owner of the place Peter McGinn a man whom we knew only slightly and another man named Richie Glenn and who was the owner Pete McCann's close friend and with him color had had some dealings with Brennan although he also around the restaurant was it was also a bit of more of an underworld character himself yet he was alone as a loan shark and he was into various things.

And these two men Colin had been carrying on about a public affair with the wife of a man who was in jail. It was a mutual friend of all three affairs and these two men Pete McGinn and Richard Lennon reproached him for this saying this was obviously horrendous conduct. What kind of a person would actually take advantage of a friend being in jail to have an affair with his wife. And words were exchanged it got heated up color basically picked a fight then with Pete began said let's take it outside. They went outside and colors a small man and not much of a fist fight or really a nappy began beat him up. And it was later again went home to his apartment about a block away. Colin went about his business and came back about an hour later to the far found Richie Glen and there said you know let's all go up to Pete McGann's place and talk about this let's put this behind us let's not let any hard feelings remain Let's talk about this like gentleman. They went up to the apartment and within five minutes there were shots fired from the apartment cola ran out. These two men

Pete McGann and Richie Glennon were dead on the floor of the apartment and coler fled into the night and disappeared for 27 years. And the police here it clearly it was the case was they knew perfectly well that Koehler had done it they had a couple of witnesses that that wasn't the issue with the issue was that he simply dropped out of sight. Exactly I mean he was it was this was one of the most of the whodunit stories you could ask for. Are witnesses to the argument the bar the witnesses the fight outside the bar there were witnesses to callers coming to the apartment. There was an uncle in the apartment at the time of Pete McKenzie who actually got a bullet in the hip during the shooting but who obviously had seen the whole thing unfold. He was just wounded and all right. There are a number of witnesses. Richie Glen his girlfriend had had come into the apartment as COLA ran out. She'd seen the bodies with him standing over them. It was never that. But what happened was he went. The police arrived on the scene moments later detectives immediately went looking for color but Cola had fled and he was he was a very successful

fugitive. He managed to avoid any contact with any of the people like his family members that would have in any way allowed the police to track him. And he really genuinely disappeared and this was it. I remember in 1970 the murder rate in New York was about two and a half times what it is today. The police were organized very differently without specialization of homicide units and so forth. There were none of the same attitudes towards tracking cases and preventing them from going cold when the trail went cold. And so if you didn't get somebody but if. Basically if they didn't find somebody a few months it became a back burner case. That's what happens. So no then we flash forward to 1997 and you introduce us to Andy Rosenzweig who had been a New York City police officer at the time he was an investigator for the Manhattan D.A. what and this time I think he was he was close to retiring. What was it that made him Now think about this case and decide to take it up close to his retirement and 27

years after these murders and he Rosensweig had grown up. A little bit younger man than Frankie Koehler but had grown up in the in the Bronx in Bronx Park East and he had as a young man he had known Richie Glenn and one of the victims of this double homicide. He had worked at a swimming pool in Inwood in northern Manhattan as a lifeguard where Richard Leonard used to hang out with you Glenn it had been a boxer at the time and a colorful character and somebody who ran with a crowd that Rosenzweig got to know mostly themselves cops. This was before he ever became a cop. When Rosensweig himself became a copy and I don't have a lot less to do with each other because Clinton was often on the other side of the law and they sort of kept their distance and Rosensweig was really one of the straightest arrows that department had ever seen at that point it sounds like. And he in January of 1997 he was never involved in the case. It was just that when he was a young man a young cop. Richie Glenn's murder took place and it was the first person that he had known socially to get killed. He'd known cops on the job to get killed and it

sent a ripple through his his crowd and people were always talking about it like this. This case somebody was going to salt everybody knew who did it. And suddenly twenty seven years later he's driving uptown. Of all things to a stress test at New York hospital and he passes the street corner where Richie Clements restaurant the flower pot had once been. And he has a jolt of memory of the name Frankie Koehler and of the fun. I wonder if they have a cop that guy. I think you know in my world if it caught him I would have heard I can't. And the fact that I haven't heard means I must not have heard. And that's not what happened. And as soon as he was done with the stress test that day he started making phone calls. And it just really irked him to think that Frank Kotler might be out there at large and having got away with murder and he started collecting the case files. And in his capacity as the chief of investigations at the district attorney's office now a pretty important top investigator in New York he decided then on his own he called it a lunch break case. He was going to start digging and figuring this one out.

They should hear at this point introduce Again our guest with this part a focus for anyone who might have just tuned in we're talking with Philip Gourevitch He's a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. And we're talking about the story that he tells in his recently published book a cold case an expanded version of the story that he wrote for the mag. I should add that there is more material in the book than was in the magazine article published more than twice as much. So even if people haven't read the article and I did when I was in the magazine I thought was great story there. There is more here that might interest you and certainly for people who who like true crime. It's a great story published by Farrar Straus euro it's out in bookstores now. What the pearly what happened was when Andy Rosenzweig started kind of checking around trying to find out what anybody knew about this murder. Initially he was told that the case was closed because Frank Koehler was dead. That was the incredible thing that he went and dug up the files and the first page. In these old case files was from 1992 and it said

case closed with exceptional clearance is a technical term which can only be applied to a murder case when the suspect is dead. And first aspect. Dad you're supposed to be able to show an obituary a death certificate some evidence of the fact that the fingerprints from a corpse something that says this guy's dead. So he read on and it turned out they had none of these things what happened instead was that after basically 20 years of looking at this case and staging periodically heated up investigations up higher up at the police department had simply said look if we haven't been able to flush out this man it is clearly a dangerous criminal. It's impossible that he would have stayed out of trouble for so long. How could such a person just go disappear into America and not get himself into a fix that would reveal him to be frank e-collar. So if he doesn't exist and his family keeps telling us they haven't heard from him I don't know why I believe the family but let's say he's dead. And that gives us closure on two homicide cases. And

when when Rosensweig saw that he really I think it I think that his initial impulse was was quite troubled or quintuple or just the sense of you know this is the system I serve the law enforcement system that I serve. But I really hate it when they get sloppy like this. And it's just not right. I want to know if this guy is dead or alive even if all I do is prove that he's dead. That's worth something. But but if he's alive I want to find him. He suspected that in in fact color was was not dead and that he started to as he again started to dig into it came up with some reason to think that in fact he had not. He had not vanished and that for some time after the murders occurred that he continued to live and work in the New York New Jersey area. Yeah there were I mean when you dig into a case by the way that it works is that every time a detective goes out on a call of any kind or makes any kind of an inquiry or comes across any information they fill out a form and they put it in the file and they stack these things up in a sort of file binder

so that you're reading them in reverse chronological order with the latest news first and then you flip back to a case file like that there are all sorts of leads and threads and tips and of course some of them a fast leads and some of them a bum information and some of them are probably even deliberate misinformation by people on the street. But but Rosenzweig attitude was we've got to follow up on all of these and and some of that lead to you know him committing some pretty serious mistakes and blunders and going down some debt and himself. You know what he had back he became convinced that Koehler was still living in the area and using the alias Frank Fitzgerald when he barely became so convinced that Frank Fitzgerald was in fact Frank Koehler that he got some men together and went to Mr. Fitzgerald's house to arrest him. And after having sitting down and talking with a guy for a little while he became convinced that in fact no he had made a mistake and that he got at that point he had the wrong guy.

This is one of the things that really drew me to the story when I first started talking to Andy Rosensweig a few years ago and talking to him about his life as an investigator and realizing how are numerous so much of it is and how. A really successful case is usually dealt out of an enormous amount of tedious frustrating midsts mis often misleading or mistaken leads wandering off in every direction just so that when you go to bed at night you don't think well maybe if I had looked that way it would have been helpful because you haven't looked that way so you look at everything you try everything you turn it over You're relentless and I was fascinated by the way that an entire career of work as a competent investigator really had come to focus on this this case where somebody had vanished without a trace. And and there are in some ways adamantly got its man I think that's implicit from the fact that I was even writing about it but that the suspense was in the problem of even looking for him and the tedium of it and where the temptation to hang it up where the police

department hung it up and just said Let's call the guy dead. You know Chris is the. Being a fugitive could ever hope for. Well and he and clearly other people were bothered by this case because one of the things that Andy Rosenzweig did was that he looked up the detective who had originally been on this case a guy named Tom Hallinan and when Rosensweig called and said he wanted to talk about an old case immediately Halla knew which case it was because it was the only thing that he had been on that never got solved and all those years later it bugged him too. That's right and that's part of what makes That's a very interesting point which is Tom how a man who would be the detective would literally walk through the door on the night of the murders when as he put it he said it reminded him of the police firing range because the smell of gun smoke was still so heavy in the air. And Tom Holland was a great detective he had it all messed up. Packable record throughout his career and really this week with as was the only case he had not solved in a career that

spanned more than 20 years as a detective in the New York PD and. And it bothered him and it had remained with them and I think part of what's interesting is how it would be sort of simpler or easier to say Rob this case went closer than this guy never got found before because there were shoddy detectives who did sort of black jobs and and ultimately just didn't pursue it. Tom how in the end it's not a valid kind of guy and he had had some adventures just like any resins right that he went off on some fast leads in this direction the way that Frank Frank Fitzgerald had caught resin slags I a man in Queens had once caught Tom Harran And and when Tom Allen and arrested him he realized it wasn't Frankie color but he actually did write it out so he caught a hit man for a drug cartel. And who was very much wanted men so mistakes can also be fruitful. Yeah well one thing that Helena told Rosensweig it turned out he turned out to be very prescient. Will you know maybe as we continue to follow the story along we'll realize why. But

what he said to Helen and said Rosensweig said look what you need to make sure you tell anybody who goes after this guy that when you find him he's going to be armed and that he's a dangerous man and don't don't forget that. He said he was so he described I mean I when when I talked to Tom Holland he told me about that moment he was caught sort of a little haunted he said whoever gets him is going to be armed. Please tell your mom. He really was convinced of this and this was very much the reputation that Koehler had and as we realized that time had cultivated he wanted to be thought of as a man of tremendous menace and a man who could be counted on to. Imperil your life. Well I think certainly what makes the story compelling not only is it a great story the way that unfolds what makes it compelling interesting is the characters of these two men Frank Koehler and Andy Rosenzweig. You talk a little bit about Rosensweig

and and we mention the fact that he had been a New York City police officer and had the reputation for being someone who was very dedicated very conscientious hardworking serious and very honest about the straightest arrow kind of guy you could have. Oddly that you could think of and what maybe tell us a little bit more about him and the kind of person he was that helps understand why it is that he would decide as we said sort of close to retirement to pick up this case that so many other people had just decided that it could it could sleep well in many ways. When you ask Rosensweig Well why did you pick this up because well I always wondered that myself why. But in some ways he picked it up because he felt that was the right thing to do. It was that simple. Instead of sitting around and thinking well I could neglect this like everybody else he thought this can't be neglected. I've got to do something about this. And one of the lines that he like to quote is a line that was once said to him by a homicide

detective who had worked with him at the DA's office who said who speaks for the dead nobody unless we do most of the time nobody does and by we he meant cops and investigators and he really meant people have been killed the lives have been taken somebody's gotten away with murder. This is not a high profile case. There isn't pressure from public interest groups or powerful families or moneyed interests there. This is a case where what matters is that a known killer is at large and two men have died in cold blood in this fashion. And I think to residents like you just felt you now. I don't like I don't want to live with that. And interestingly he was very obsessed or influenced early on in life by the movie High knew a remarkable great movie which stars Gary Cooper as a sheriff in a small Western town who finds himself on the day of his wedding and at the moment of his retirement in fact confronted by the return to

town of a bad gang who are about to menace the town and he tries to raise a posse nobody in the town wants anything to do with it they all want to accommodate they all want to hide they all want to lay low. They all want not to get into a quadrille and he ends up taking the stand to defend the town that even by then he's given up on he's almost disgusted by it and I think to Rosensweig it's that Gary Cooper line where he says why do I do it. I've got to. That's all there is to it. I think for Andy Rosenzweig There was also that same feeling if you compromise and if you cut corners it's dishonest slippery slope and then you've just got disorder. And what we're here to do I mean in some ways I'm. Make them tough and make some humor less as I say it's quite unglamorous. He's he's a gruff guy but he's determined and he feels like look we can't take the attitude that these criminals aren't stupid or easy to catch. They're canny we've got to be a lot Candy

here. Yeah well what I think he's appealing because precisely because he almost seems to be a character of a novel and you can almost maybe he what maybe is not quite colorful enough for Elmore Leonard But you know you can sort of almost imagine him in a noir ish kind of detective story. Yeah well I think that he came from a from the streets of the Bronx as where he got his education he was a patrolman as a young cop. He was formed in the sort of one precinct which was then Fort Apache in the late 60s in the Bronx as a foot patrol and he looked to get a sense of who Andy Rosenzweig is. He's a man who in the late 60s early 70s when they started to introduce air conditioning and to patrol cars in New York City he opposed it. You opposed it because he said it insulates us too much from the streets because. And we roll up our windows and we're only on radios and we don't hear and listen to literally what's wafting in the windows. Sure it's more comfortable. Sure lots better. So you don't feel like

taking a nap as often but it's not. We're not in contact it's one more thing that removes us from the actual intimate reality of policing that he'd grown up with. That's very much where he comes from. Well again we're getting closer to our mid point I should mention that our guest is Philip Gourevitch. He's a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. His new book is a cold case published by Farrar Straus. She wrote the story of this is how a 27 year old murder was solved. He wrote about it for the magazine and this is an expanded version of that story. His first book we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families stories from Rwanda was published in. He ate and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and questions certainly are welcome or you can just sit back and listen to the story. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well what Rosenzweig did he tried to do pursue some of the angles that the detectives at the time of the murder had done and that was to talk with and try to keep an eye on Frank call his

family members thinking that maybe somehow that that would provide a link to his whereabouts. For example they watched his brother thinking that well maybe Frankie might just come for a visit one day and they would get him that way. That didn't pan out but then they started getting interested in fact that he had some relatives living in California and they thought well maybe again that might be some way to get a line on Frank's whereabouts. And this turned out to be successful. Yes well what happened was that they really thought that that scratched all the way to the bottom of the barrel and were feeling pretty frustrated it was working their way through all of the connections they could find in New York and of course you have to remember this was a case where because one of the few advantages that you have in a case this old is the I. The other thing I suspect and those around him might think that you have not you're not paying attention anymore. They have reason to know that they haven't heard from the cops in a long time and so you have to

also proceed with great caution not to tip anybody off that you're looking into this. So you have to do it from a distance it's about Rosensweig often described it as sort of concentric circles but staying always on the periphery looking in looking at phone records trying to find out where this guy is. They turn to for California almost out of frustration. And there were a couple of nephews out there named McMullan two McMullan brothers living in a town called Venetia California in the East Bay and they were both career criminals have been arrested dozens of times each and they thought well look let's look at one of these guys in jail maybe we can tap his jail phone calls. So they they had a jailhouse investigator in California look into him and they couldn't get anything definitive but they got the feeling that there was reference to to a Frankie an uncle somebody in their orbit who might fit the description of color might in some way be the influence. And they did. And Reza so I decided to send two of his men out and he picked the date he picked Frankie called his birthday thinking if there's any time that the family might move around in such a way that would lead us to

him it might be on Frankie colas birthday. He sent these two young men out. These two young investigators who looked up with an FBI agent out there and they started knocking on doors and ultimately got the hunch that maybe the man they were looking for was him going by an alias called Frank O'Grady and well not to give too much away but when they when they looked into that a little more they became almost 100 percent convinced that that was the case. And they also realized in the process they had in fact blown their cover and that this man named Frank O'Grady who was probably Frankie Koehler was now once again on the run and not coming home to Venetia. Yeah well we won't give the punch line on that it's too good. It will save that for people who read the book. But what happened was obviously the family understood full well. What was going on who these people were that they were after Frank and they they tipped him and then they then the investigators once they once they knew OK our cover is blown then they just went flat out and just started talking to people

anybody asking everybody you know what's the deal on this guy what do you know about him. And that's when they found out that he had that Frank had decided to go back to New York that they he got on the train and they actually knew what train it was and knew what time he would be arriving in Penn Station. So they went down to meet the train. Yes they did I mean it was still a 100 percent certainty that it was him but it was like 99 percent they were told that. They expected that he was on a train that was coming into Penn Station Rosensweig had about 15 minutes warning about this because that's how the investigation was paced out in California that it caught up. He raced down there with some of this man and the key thing here is nobody had any image of Frank you call him none of these men had ever seen Frankie color in their lives and all they had the latest picture they had of him was a 1962 35 year old in other words in 1997 1966 to prep for. The graph from when he was released from Green Haven prison on an armed robbery that he had

been serving there. And if you don't know what their day five years is going to do to a face. And so they really weren't sure what they were looking for exactly. They had their hunches they had these images memorized. And then suddenly train doors open and a flood of people moved on to a couple of escalators and off into New York City. And this was their chance to try and grab their man. Ultimately again one of one of residents like investigators had a hunch and a hunch turned out to be correct. And Frankie color was once again a prisoner there was it sounds as if that was there was some luck involved here because it could he could very well have slip by them. Yeah bad luck for him good luck for the gators and a very shrewd eye on the part of the investigator Tommy upon who. Who read some physical characteristics about him but also some of the ways that he was behaving. One of the things that struck him was that the slightly suspicious looking older guy who

in some ways he thought that his picture of color as Colin might have aged was behaving differently while all the other passengers rode up on the escalator. You know looking straight ahead with their bag by their side fixed on getting somewhere. This man kept looking around kept eyeballing everybody and was looking around in a way that you know that also rang a bell for Tommy upon the investigator and he said you know something about this guy. And when their eyes locked there was a sense of mutual recognition. You're the guy I'm looking for. You're the guy who's looking for me. Yeah and go back to what Tom Hallinan had told any role the spy get turned out in. The fact that Frankie caller was he was carrying a gun. He certainly was getting a gun he wasn't carrying it in his pocket he had put it in a suitcase before he got off the train but he had come into town carrying a loaded 380 pistol loaded up with dum dum bullets and he had a kind of fantasy in his mind throughout much of the train ride it turned out by shooting it out with whoever came to get him if anybody did come to get

him going out in a hail of bullets. He claims that in the course of the train ride as he puts it I got into religion by talking to people on the train and watching them and thinking Geez I don't want to go out with other people getting hurt and in the way he then fantasized that he had given himself up yet surrendered. He had chosen not to. He had chosen not to put up a fight and in some ways he felt he ought to be rewarded for his. His reformed behavior. Yeah. And Rosensweig wasn't he he was somewhere place else at the time and he was sitting there and he watched the people come off the train and and eventually trickle out and had heard nothing and he was thinking Well either they were wrong or they got by him when one of the guys came in and said we got him. And so they took him into the room where Frank Koehler was was sitting there and he Rosensweig came into the room and it says in the text in the book that nobody had met. This name you know nobody had said Frank call or so was Andy Rosen so I could look at this guy and he was the one who

was able to say your frank caller must have been quite a moment for him. I think it was for both of you. Well yeah for both guys yeah. Brandi Rosensweig Yes it was this sense that a case that had spanned really all of his life that when he was a young man he had been friends with one of the victims. And throughout his career he had been sort of vaguely aware in a periodic way that the killer had never been caught. And here with this here by sheer dint of unexpected the tactics work it flushed this guy out and not only flushed him out but flushed him into his own arms in New York and to see him there and to thank you now. We got the guy. We got him here he is. He was I think he was very excited and. And moved and. And of course there's no room for all of that at the moment what you have to think about is OK now how do we how are we going to figure out what kind of a guy he is if he's going to cooperate with us. Will he tell it Will he acknowledge who he is and what he's done and that became the next step which was the phase of a kind of

interrogation which led to Frankie caller delivering a pretty remarkable confession on video. Yeah because they knew that it was an old case. At that point this point they only now had one living witness the one of them with the girlfriend of one of the guys the only sort of direct so witness and so they knew that it would be if it went actually had to go to trial and if he had had a good lawyer and he pleaded not guilty that this might have been difficult for them to get a conviction so what they were hoping was that they wouldn't have to go through that. I think that's right I think that immediately makes for a very tough case and that's and that's so there's a kind of you know there's a kind of suspense that immediately arises from the fact that the guy's cock and yet he could still walk. That's how our legal system works. One there what you had been able to do then kind of after. They they had the guy you had a chance. Frank caller you had a chance to talk with him. You went and you talked with

his his both his wife an ex-wife to try to get some kind of picture of who this guy was and that's the other part of another part of this I think makes the whole story compelling is getting some insight into this guy's character and how it is that he became the person that he was what sort of things do you think you learned about Frank Koehler that would help provide some answers to that that question. Well I think Frank Toler was a person who thought of himself as a murderer. There are people who kill here and there. And you say oh I'm you know I'm really a nice guy and I never would do such a thing. And there are people who kill in the heat of passion or so he's a man who thought of himself as a criminal who figured himself from an early age. As a student of other criminals he wanted to be in the crowd with the bigger guys in the New York racket. And he cultivated an idea of himself as a dangerous and menacing guy and a guy who was very at home with himself as a taker of life and that

makes him interesting because he doesn't on the other hand he's a man of some charm and and not surprisingly as is often the case with violent or cruel people. There's also a side of him that can be quite. Amiable warm loving the style dick even a little bit of a softy on the surface. And this was the side that he exhibited primarily to the people he lived without in Venetia California during those 20 plus years that he lived there was a fugitive. He was a beloved figure in that town he he never had a driver's license he walked everywhere that was part of his not wanting to identify himself to the world. And it's a small town he walked up and down the Main Street First Street. He would hang out at the coffee shops they call them the mayor of downtown in New York Frankie because you know he would do a kindness is to get help out of ladies across the street with like a Boy Scout that they tell and and sometimes they tell the stories out there is if and if if exonerated and they say you know he couldn't have been such a bad guy or he must have reformed as

if it was impossible that these two seemingly contradictory sides the benign. Do you go around the community and ruthless bloody murder couldn't have the same skin and you know it actually I've been reminded recently by this case out of Philadelphia. The guy that's always called the hippie fugitive the murderer. EINHORN Yeah right was just arrested in France for murdering his girlfriend and stuffing her in a trunk in 1969 and he was a successful fugitive for all these years. And they find him in this little town in Bordeaux. And I want to extradite him to the United States finally they are extraditing him and he skipped out during trial and everybody in the town says Well I would be happy to keep him here because we just don't believe that he could be a murderer he's just such a nice neighbor. And as if that somehow exonerated him as if it was up to individuals to go ahead and say well if I don't kill again I guess it's ok that I killed 100.

Well it does this provide does provide sort of an interesting answer to that question that everybody even going back to the to the investigation original investigation sort of in the years around the murder this question well how does somebody just disappear particularly somebody who is like this who had been in trouble all of his life and everybody expected that sooner or later he would do something that would bring him to the attention of the police. But apparently then he actually did. He was successful in staying out of trouble. He he left the area he went to a small town. He never had. A full time job he didn't have a social security number he didn't have a driver's license. He laid low and he behaved himself and that's I guess the answer to the question how is it that a wanted man just seems to disappear anything out of touch with the people who might be under be the links to him. What did did his family the family that he had back in New York. Did they know where he was. My guess is that they're probably good some of them. I have the feeling that a lot of people ultimately knew in one way or another where he was

or pieces of it or that there were ways that the trail could have been. But as the FBI put God put it there held their mud. And and they say weather and he put it very astutely you said whether this was because they feared him or because they loved him a little bit of both. Who knows. But people did not give up a rat out because you've got to figure that Frank you call or you stay connected he made it very clear that he stayed connected to some of his underworld connections in New York. Some of those people would have got in trouble over the years. When people get in trouble the police say What else have you got. How could you help us out. How could you help yourself out by helping us out a prisoner in that circumstance might say you know there's a bum Frank you know living out in California who's wanted for double homicide. I'll trade you that for my freedom. Nobody ever ratted him out. Probably not that many people knew exactly where he was. And those who did how they're not. It was interesting when I met him in prison. I said So what do you do you know how did how did

you become such a good fugitive he said you want to be did you want to know how to go on the lam. It was as if I would you know raise my hand in a class. I said Sure tell me how to go on the lam he said. You stay in doors you don't go out. And he had friends as he puts it who helped him. Immediately after the murders he went to Boston and from there they flew him off to Washington state. And in Washington state he was put in. They took him to a safe house in the little town where basically stayed indoors for six seven eight months. He would go out tonight. He said You know I I would go out and I get a little air. Go back inside. Stay in the house. That's all. And then he went to San Francisco. Where he had some family connections but he kept a pretty strong distance from them and wound up in this town been issue which which had the advantage especially 20 years ago was really off the beaten path. And he had the good fortune not to get into trouble again. Well 10 minutes left in this part of focus We're talking with Philip Gourevitch. He's a staff writer

for The New Yorker. The story we tell and more is in his new book A cold case. So what you might want to take a look at. Questions are also welcome three three three W I L L toll free 800 1:58 W-well. Once they had him at the end of the story and he told the story of these murders clearly he even twenty seven years later was there was no remorse about having killed these two guys. He talked about how he had done and one of the things that sort of intrigues me is given that fact why it is that when he was seen by the girlfriend. And he knew that she could identify him to the police. He didn't shoot her too. Well that's a bit of a mystery he says well he says in his confession video as one of my going to Wacken I'm not going to whack or I'm not mad at her. And that's often his line I don't you know I don't kill for nothing. Which is actually not quite true. You kill for very small reasons but mostly his reasons are that he's he's enraged he's

upset he feels slighted he feels insulted he wants somebody's dead and that's what he says very clearly I wanted these guys dead that's why they are dead with the girlfriend he claims you know I wasn't mad at her. I told him to shut up. And I got out of there. It may also be that he actually ran out of bullets by then that night. So there's no way of knowing because the gun was never recovered. But it's it's there's something about Frank color that just I found to be very much of a fascination which has to do it was something that I saw also in Killers in Rwanda which is a cause. Out of deep self-deception there is the idea in him he that he lives by a gangsters code that he kills for on earth he kills for reasons of self-defense or to defend those around him. In fact he always kills out of rage and infuriated and sort of passionate sense of insult which isn't really have anything to do with honor and and yet he he also

imagines at times he talks about people he says. You know I could have killed them and I didn't. And he almost feels that he should get credit for this you have a God like sense of his own power to not just take life but to spare it as if we were all walking around these days because frankly cholera chosen to let us live out of the bigness of his heart. And it really does in some way tell you something about the mind of a murderer of the sort. When you think well you know what. I don't go around killing people either. And at the same time I don't really think that I should get a lot of credit for not killing people. You know that was the story he told when they caught him and he had the gun and he said well you know at one point I was thinking that maybe what I would do is just take a few you guys out and then shoot myself and then I sort of thought I'm not going to do that maybe these guys have families and it was that same sort of thing that he initially thought well I'm going to kill some people and then he said he decided out of the goodness of his heart not to. And then it. Spec that a pat on the back for having made that

decision. Yeah he in that one point the interrogator says to him. Good thing nothing went down at the at Penn Station today referring to him getting off the train with a loaded gun he says. My choice OK. The language that he speaks and you know he was a man obsessed with Jimmy Cagney even to this day. He he looks back on the characters of the gangsters the Jimmy Cagney played in those movies from the 40s and 50s. It's kind of strutting smart mouth. Never go yell a guy as his model and he talks like he has the same rhythms of speech he comes from health kitchen he he speaks a kind of New York speech that at this point seems almost archaic and caricaturist because nobody talks like that no more you know what I mean. Yeah like that exactly. Yeah. Believable in all of his gestures with his fingers pointed to get a guy like that and some of the music of that speech and the idiom of that speech which came from him it also came from the policeman of his generation and from investigators Rosenzweig talked a little differently he had a more

refined and precise speech by the OP but also very New York. Tom Howland and had a kind of Irish New York. The music and rhythms of that were the music and rhythms of the story that were just a pleasure to write with because because they they conveyed so vividly not just in their words but in the in the flavor of the words and the flavor of the world that they came from the mindset that had formed these men. You talked about we talked about the fact that there probably were some people who knew where he was but that nobody said anything perhaps because they knew that Frankie continued to be well-connected and that there could be lethal consequences of saying anything. Now those connections also manifest again when it came time to him having representation he ended up being represented by one of New York City's most expensive criminal lawyers to marry rich men. Don't worry memory you know because he's pretty good at getting people off or going. Very heavily reduced sentences regardless of their guilt or innocence. And he he's up in

the Bronx he's a lawyer who has represented a whole lot of mob guys and when I asked him how did you how did Frank Koehler relatively panelists relative nonentity in crime at this point wind up in your hands he said to a friend of ours a great old friend of mine a mob guy send him over here and said you know when when when Toler got to New York I got in trouble he contacted this mutual friend also a guy who'd been in jail for murder which is where Cullen had met him as a young man. And anybody that I'm in touch with me and Mary Richman is himself an incredible colorful character and a sort of you know a true American original. We talked about the difficulties of the case the prosecutors knowing that they might have a hard time making the case and getting a conviction. So in part because of that the prosecution the defense made an agreement and. Frank was convicted on or pled

guilty to the two murders and also a gun charge. And basically he got six to 12. So that would mean he would be eligible first first eligible for parole in about two years. 2003 eligible for parole in about two years which is an extremely reduced sentence I mean the families of the victims who were there at the trial and spoke passionately and eloquently about the agony of this case for them made it very clear that this was just and to them an outrageous sentence. On the other hand if Frankie caller had been caught and convicted at the time of the murders he would have been in jail until now almost certainly anyway. Instead he managed by being a successful fugitive to have 27 years free. He complained when I visit him in prison. Oh they make it sound like a light sentence six and after 13 it's a death sentence. I'm seven. I'm 70 years old which he now is 71 I guess 72 and he.

So he's like I would die in jeopardy sure my health is terrible he's a bit of a hypochondriac and he exaggerates he's not in great health but he he was he was prone to looking for self-pity wherever he could find it. My feeling was he did very well. My feeling is also that he's not necessarily a great candidate for parole. Having gotten away for so long with that and if he himself wrote in a letter to Mary Richmond after I interviewed him he said probably tact talking to that journalist bomb didn't do it. So I understand that they're going to war they're talking about making a movie out of this. That's right. It was optioned by Universal Pictures for Tom Hanks who was interested in playing Andy resins life. And the script is being written at this point I believe by John Sayles. And you never know about these things until you're watching them on the screen. Whether they'll come to come to be but I'm told that it's very much in the works. Yeah well I think you could you could if you're going to have a movie made out of this you could do a lot worse than have John Sayles be the director. At least you get in a movie that would be interesting and sort

of off the beaten path. Well I was thrilled I mean I think that you know one of the John Sayles has a real sense of New York so I couldn't I couldn't ask for for sort of a more thoughtful and tasteful group of movie people to be doing it. Yeah. So do you think chances are maybe Frank Koehler will die in jail. Well I mean he's 72 years old and he's not in great health and jail is not good for your health in general he smokes like a chimney he wants just you know trying to smoke myself to death. He loves to talk about sort of being suicidal or you know if only I could just take my own life or put an end to it. But I think he likes himself a bit too much for that. But he's not in great health and I mean he's 72. He could be there for as little as two more years then he could see the streets again. It might be that he's there for another dozen years in which case it's quite possible that he would leave it to the graveyard.

Yeah well it's a great story and I really appreciate you taking some time to talk about it with us. Well thanks for taking the time with me it's been a pleasure. Our guest Philip Gray that she is a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine if you'd like to read it. And there is indeed more to the story you haven't heard. There's more to the story in the book a cold case. It's just recently out it's published by Farrar Straus.