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50% off at 1800flowers.com/sxm. >> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music]
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[music] [music] [music] >> For our missing paper boy series, we chose to push away much of the noise,
00:02:30
and we focused heavily on telling the story from the perspectives of the experts who worked on these cases, and
00:02:38
later wrote about them in great works of true crime. There were chapters about both the Des
00:02:44
Moines, Iowa cases and Omaha, Nebraska cases in Robert Ressler's book, Whoever Fights Monsters, and Peter Klismet's
00:02:53
book, FBI Diary: Profiles of Evil. We got to know much about Christopher Walden and the Walden family in Harry
00:03:01
Trimbachis' book, My Life as an FBI Special Agent, book two of the Dark Places series.
00:03:10
And we also had the distinct honor of sitting down with Mark Pettit, the man who authored the highly acclaimed A Need
00:03:18
to Kill: The Life and Crimes of John Joubert, Nebraska's most notorious serial child killer, in which
00:03:26
investigative reporter Mark Pettit details how Joubert, a US airman and former Eagle Scout, terrorized
00:03:34
communities in Nebraska and Maine. We learn about Joubert's homicidal fantasies that began when he was very
00:03:42
young. Joubert told Ressler that one of his first fantasies that he remembers is
00:03:48
from when he was just six or seven of coming up behind his babysitter, strangling her, and then eating her
00:03:56
until she disappeared. In 1983, Joubert went on a 116-day killing spree in Omaha, Nebraska,
00:04:05
murdering two young boys, one who was a newspaper carrier. Mark Pettit spent a lot of time with Joubert
00:04:14
and learned things about him that no one else could reveal. Pettit and Joubert held multiple
00:04:20
face-to-face meetings. During these interviews, Joubert confessed to an additional unsolved murder of a boy in
00:04:28
Maine. Pettit's book includes death row drawings made by Joubert while awaiting execution, chilling sketches that reveal
00:04:37
his continued violent fantasies, previously unreleased handwritten letters from Joubert,
00:04:44
new evidence from prison records and details from death row discussions that were not shared publicly for decades.
00:04:53
Before his execution by electric chair on July 17th, 1996 in Nebraska, serial killer John Joubert offered a final
00:05:02
apology, stating, "I just want to say that again, I am sorry for what I have done. I do not know if my death will
00:05:11
change anything or if it will bring anyone any peace. I just ask the families of Danny Eberle,
00:05:19
Christopher Walden, and Richard Stetson to please try to find some peace, and ask the people of Nebraska to
00:05:27
forgive me. That's all." This is True Crime Garage, The Missing Paper Boys, chapter five, A Need to
00:05:36
Kill. >> [music] >> This feels like a long time overdue, but I'm very excited to be joining and
00:06:04
talking with Mark Pettit here in the garage today. Mark Pettit, if that's not a name that you know,
00:06:11
it's a name that you should know because he is an incredible author and reporter.
00:06:16
He has written a book called A Need to Kill, which is on its sixth release. Originally came out in '90 or '91, and
00:06:26
Mark is here to talk to us about this fascinating case. And Mark, first off, congratulations on the success of the
00:06:34
book, and this is release number six, is that correct? >> This is number six, Nick, and thank you
00:06:40
so much for having me on the program. I'm a huge fan, uh and congrats on 10 years. That's uh a
00:06:46
miracle in this world. >> And I was super excited to talk with you because I'm sitting here holding in my
00:06:52
hand right now, I have the uh this is A Need to Kill by Mark Pettit, copyright Mark Pettit 1990,
00:07:00
and this is the one with uh pictures included, 198 pages. The newest version is how many pages?
00:07:08
>> 254 pages, and all color images. The technology has come so far, Nick, uh in publishing. When I first uh you know, if
00:07:19
when I first released the book, I had a publisher, and they printed 2,000 copies
00:07:24
of the book, and you know, that seemed to be a large number at the time. We actually sold out in 2 weeks. I didn't
00:07:31
even have books when I was on a tour, and there were people lined up at the bookstores at the mall, and I was
00:07:39
literally writing out I owe you a book. Uh it just took off, and then Random House called out of the blue and said,
00:07:48
"Hey, we'd like to buy the paperback rights." And the next thing I knew, the book had sold 85,000
00:07:54
copies around the world. And then um uh about 10, 12 years ago, Random House gave me the rights back, and I decided
00:08:03
uh that if I would ever republish, I would do do it myself and work through Amazon. So, that's what happened, and
00:08:10
this is now the final word on the John Joubert case. Well, and this is a case that has fascinated many, so much so
00:08:18
that it is mentioned in many books. Uh a few that I can think of are as follows: FBI Diary: Profiles in
00:08:26
Evil by Peter Klismet. We also have My Life as an FBI Special Agent, book two, by Harry Trimbachis, and we have Whoever
00:08:35
Fights Monsters by the late, great Robert Ressler. And some of these individuals are discussed in your book
00:08:43
as well. And before we get into the investigation, before we get into why this book continues to evolve for 40
00:08:52
years now, because that's the length of the story, and that's how long you've been involved in this story,
00:08:59
and it continues to have purpose and to have reason to update the book. But I mentioned these three great books,
00:09:09
but there is no better book on this case. There is no book that is as thorough on this case, and I love that
00:09:16
you've continued to update it and let it evolve throughout the years, and now we
00:09:22
are getting the final word in this story. So, let's before we get too much in the weeds
00:09:29
here, Mark, let's go all the way back to September of 1983 in Bellevue, Nebraska, a city that is southeast of
00:09:40
Omaha and very near the Nebraska-Iowa state line. Describe the location. Describe that town, that city at that
00:09:50
time. What were your observations? It was a great place to live. I loved Omaha, Nebraska, and Bellevue is just a
00:09:58
a suburb uh near the city, and like you said, not far from Iowa, not far from where Johnny Gosch had disappeared. And
00:10:06
I'm sure Nick you'll remember remember that name as well. And that's another reason I got
00:10:11
interested in this case, but it was 1983 as you said, September 3rd, and that's when 116 days of terror started for the
00:10:22
people of Omaha. And back then you were working for KMTV? Yes. I was recruited to KMTV in 1984 just after the killer
00:10:33
had been arrested and had played guilty to these murders. But I grew up not far from Atlanta, Georgia, and in high
00:10:40
school became sort of obsessed with the Atlanta missing and murdered children's case.
00:10:47
And so that's what got me interested in being an investigative reporter. And when I got recruited to Omaha, I was at
00:10:53
the Omaha Press Club with the news director from KMTV, and she said, "Mark, what got you interested in investigative
00:11:00
reporting?" And I said, "Wayne Williams." And she said, "Oh, that's the killer from Atlanta, right?" And I said,
00:11:06
"Yes." And she said, "Well, we sort of have our own Wayne Williams here. Have you ever heard the name John Joubert?"
00:11:13
And of course I hadn't. But what I learned was he was a US airman. He was an Eagle Scout and an
00:11:20
assistant scoutmaster in Omaha. So, you know, you would think that's the best of the best, right? But as it
00:11:27
turned out, he was a monster living among the people of Nebraska. And Carol said, "Yes,
00:11:34
he he he he he just got convicted or he played guilty to killing two young boys here, and I'd really like you to
00:11:41
get on the case." And I said, "Carol, why do you need me? He's on death row." She said, "Mark, we know what happened.
00:11:48
We don't know why it happened. Take this job, get on this case, tell us why it happened." And that's when it started,
00:11:56
Nick. I was 21 years old. >> Let's go to Sunday, September 18th, 1983. We're at the Eberly household, and
00:12:04
it's just before 6:00 a.m. And the family is saying goodbye. They had relatives in town, so they were up early
00:12:12
to go back to the Dakotas. And Danny's out saying goodbye to his aunt and uncle. And he's got to get off on his
00:12:19
paper route. His little his little brother has already gone on his route. And [snorts] I spent hours
00:12:26
talking to the Eberly family, you know, about what happened, about Danny Joe. And one of the things that still gives
00:12:32
me chills to this day is Judy Eberly, Danny's mother, said, "Something told her to step back from the goodbyes." And
00:12:40
she watched Danny pedal away on his bicycle, and something told her, "Don't let him go. Don't let him go on that
00:12:48
paper route." But she said to herself, "Don't be silly, Judy. Don't be silly." So, Danny Joe goes off on his paper
00:12:55
route, and you know, not long after the phone starts ringing at the at the Eberlys'
00:13:02
home because, you know, back in the day people love their Omaha World-Herald on a Sunday morning, right? So, the phone
00:13:09
starts ringing, and people are saying they didn't get their newspaper. And Danny Joe's mother knew that something
00:13:15
wasn't right. So, after a while of of waiting a little longer, they started they started going out on the paper
00:13:23
route, and three doors in, they found Danny Joe's bicycle and his stack of papers on the ground. And they knew
00:13:32
something terrible had happened to their son. How long are they looking for their
00:13:36
son before, unfortunately, his body is discovered? Three days. They've been searching, you know, all over town, and
00:13:44
they brought in 130 lawmen from across the state. And they they they spread out over a
00:13:51
certain area. And about 20 minutes into the search, John Colterman, a sheriff from a smaller
00:13:59
county in Nebraska, found Danny Joe's body. And it was horrible. He had been stabbed in the back, in the chest. The
00:14:08
back of his neck had been slashed. And then there were three bite marks on the boy's body, two on his upper shoulder
00:14:16
and one on the upper backside of his leg. And initially, Nick, police thought they might be dealing with a serial
00:14:24
killer because it looked like there had been a star cut into the bite mark on Danny Joe's leg. But as it turned out,
00:14:32
the killer was trying to mask the bite mark and used his knife to slice open the little boy's leg to cover the bite
00:14:40
wound. So, it was horrible. Now the city is really in a panic when Danny Joe's body is
00:14:47
found. At the abduction site, they as you said, they find his papers, they find his bicycle.
00:14:54
It seems with this one that it was rather obvious that we're talking about an abduction that or at least that
00:15:02
police were working with that theory right away. Is that correct? >> That's correct. And again, as I'd
00:15:09
mentioned previously, the the Johnny Gosch case, another boy kidnapped in Iowa, already had FBI and police in this area
00:15:19
on alert. So, when Danny Joe goes missing and it appears to be a kidnapping, I think things kicked into
00:15:25
really high gear, Nick. That they were worried that this could be something very very serious. Go through those
00:15:31
injuries again because they are very specific and and unique, some of them unique to this case. Also, the killer
00:15:41
takes Danny Joe. He has his hands and feet bound. There is tape on his mouth, and the young boy is taken into this
00:15:49
grassy area. Made to strip down to his underwear. The killer had untied him initially. Made him take off his shirt
00:15:57
and his pants and retied him up. So, this is of interest that we'll get to later. And the boy is stabbed four or
00:16:05
five times in the back and then stabbed, I think, four more times. He's flipped over and just brutally stabbed in the
00:16:11
chest four or five more times. Then the killer slices his neck, and as we'll get
00:16:17
into the psychology here, the the killer was just consumed with rage and excitement, and that's when he began to
00:16:24
bite the boy's body, twice on his shoulder and once on the backside of his leg. There's no so cannibalistic nature.
00:16:33
>> And about how far from the abduction site do they find Danny Joe Eberly's body? I think it was
00:16:39
less than a couple of miles, not far at all. And I think the killer, you know, at least was somewhat familiar with the
00:16:47
area, at least enough to find what he thought was an area slightly out of the way
00:16:52
where he wouldn't be caught. And it was so early in the morning, Nick, that you know, nobody was really out and about at
00:17:00
5:45 in the morning. >> The bite marks that you had referenced, take us into the psychology of that. We
00:17:07
may and if you don't know, I mean, it's understandable. We may not know, but what do you think that the killer was
00:17:13
attempting to do with cutting up those bite marks? Was it was it something he was ashamed of? Was it something that
00:17:20
the killer was trying to conceal from police? It almost seems like the bites were regrettable injuries that he
00:17:29
inflicted on the victim and probably after the fact wished that he had not done that for any number of reasons.
00:17:36
>> I think it's all of the above, Nick. And this is again what's so fascinating about this case is is we'll leap forward
00:17:44
in about 30 years to where criminal psychology and behavior has advanced to today that tells us a lot about what
00:17:53
happened that morning. But I think that the killer was overly excited, driven by
00:17:59
sexual fantasies, and it just it became too much excitement for him. So, I think
00:18:05
these were regrettable injuries that he caused on the victim's body, and he was trying to hide his tracks by
00:18:13
slicing around the bite wound to try to cover it up. So, I think a regrettable injury is a really good way of putting
00:18:21
it. And then as you said, the town, of course, is on high alert. That's an understatement. But then you compound
00:18:30
that with the fact that we have a similar abduction for to Johnny Gosch that had happened just months prior to
00:18:37
Danny Joe Eberly. And in the Johnny Gosch case, we know that his body is still to this
00:18:44
day, we've never found Johnny Gosch. So, we're on high alert here, but we don't get too much time that passes. We get
00:18:55
what? Less than 3 months, and now we have another boy who disappears. Yep, this is horrible. A second boy goes
00:19:04
missing. His name is Christopher Walden. It was December 2nd, 1983. He was kidnapped and murdered on his way
00:19:13
to school that morning, and it had, you know, started snowing. He had his little
00:19:17
boots on, and he was walking to school. Again, snatched from his route. Similarly to Danny Joe Eberly, the young
00:19:25
boy was made to strip down to his underwear, bound, gagged, sadly also stabbed to death and left to die
00:19:34
in the snow that was starting to fall that morning. And just it's just tragic, some of the
00:19:40
the evidence that came out, Nick. And I know that as a writer, you've done a lot
00:19:44
of investigating yourself. But in Christopher's pocket, they found two shiny dimes. And later, when I talked to
00:19:53
his mom and dad, Sue Walden told me that was money he had planned to use for extra milk that that day at school. So,
00:20:02
it just brings home how tragic this is, how that could have been anybody's kid, anybody's little brother. And just it
00:20:10
wasn't robbery. I mean, police knew instantly that was not what this was about. And now here they are in Omaha,
00:20:17
Nebraska in the span of you know, 100 days, they have two little boys brutally murdered in that city. And you can just
00:20:26
imagine the fear that is now sweeping that community. And prosecutor Mike Wellman said something very interesting
00:20:33
to me. He said, "I have never seen fear like that in my life, and I hope I never see fear like
00:20:41
that again. It was just awful for the people uh living in Omaha, Nebraska." >> Now, I know that the first abduction
00:20:48
takes place very early in the morning, not a lot of people out, but we do have with the Christopher Walden case, he
00:20:56
goes missing as he's walking to school. Do we have a witness or any witnesses in
00:21:04
either of these abductions? Actually, we have two in the case of Christopher Walton. And you'll read about it in the
00:21:11
book. Uh there's a woman named Cheryl Baumgartner who who thought she saw something happen. She thought she saw
00:21:19
the vehicle following Christopher Walton that morning. And through hypnosis, they
00:21:25
were able to get a couple of things out of Cheryl. A partial tag number, and she told me she saw this tree. There
00:21:33
was something that stuck in her mind, this green pine tree. And so, when you read A Need to Kill,
00:21:41
you'll read the full therapy session where they hypnotized Cheryl. And she she's able to give them the
00:21:48
partial tag number. And enough of a description, she and the other lady that the police are able to put a sketch out
00:21:56
into the marketplace. Uh and it does eerily look like the killer that's ultimately caught. But Cheryl later, you
00:22:05
know, and it took a while for her to deal with the trauma of witnessing the abduction and not being able to do
00:22:11
anything about it. But you know, she goes back to the scene of the crime, you know, months and months later. And she
00:22:18
sees the sign that marks a nature trail. And she sees that green tree on the sign. And that's when she knew that she
00:22:27
wasn't crazy, that she had seen something that morning. And that's what really kicked the case into even higher
00:22:34
gear is when they had the sketch. And then they have the behavioral analysis, Bob Ressler who you mentioned earlier,
00:22:41
fantastic, you know, FBI agent, a pioneer in criminal profiling. He was brought into this case. Bob's profile
00:22:49
was in my book, but he said that it would be most likely a a white male, late teens, early 20s at the latest, not
00:22:59
overly educated, and most likely a blue collar job. And that turned out to be very close
00:23:06
to the description of the killer that we'll get into, I'm sure, in just a moment. And the witness, at least in one
00:23:12
of the cases, says that they believe that they saw a tan car being driven by a white male. With both of these cases
00:23:21
now, bodies found, what kind of evidence are the detectives and now the FBI working with in these cases? They're
00:23:31
working with one important piece of evidence that they have not told the public about. And that was a piece of
00:23:37
rope that when found uh and cut opened, it had these colored fibers. And it mystified police. They were
00:23:47
looking everywhere for this really unique strand of rope that had these frayed colors. And I have photos of the
00:23:54
book, which I uh now I'm happy to to say are in color, so you can see for yourself why police were so drawn to it.
00:24:02
They went all the way to Scotland Yard trying to find this piece of rope. So, they have the behavioral analysis, they
00:24:10
have the rope, and they think they know what the guy looks like, right? Slight build, dark hair, olive complexion. But
00:24:20
that could have been hundreds of thousands of people and men in that area. And this is another thing that
00:24:26
people don't know until they read the book is that police had had cultivated what they called the
00:24:32
perv squad. They had hundreds, if not thousands, of leads coming into the command center. And a lot of those leads
00:24:40
were about sexual predators who might have been preying on uh specifically young boys in the area. So, they had
00:24:47
this list compiled, and they actually went down the wrong road on several of these guys to the point of almost
00:24:54
charging one of the guys. But that was just a wild goose chase. You know, they were tracking every lead they could, but
00:25:03
they weren't on the right trail just yet. This is something that is so common, especially in these types of
00:25:09
investigations, and pardon the lewd terminology here that we use in the garage, but we call this the old pervert
00:25:18
roundup because that's absolutely what they do. They And And today, their law enforcement is even more equipped to do
00:25:27
the old pervert roundup because everybody is in a database somewhere, and you can go and you can go and talk
00:25:34
to, interview, check out each one of these guys. You can do a quick sweep of their home if you feel that it's
00:25:40
necessary when they're under you talk with their PO and search their vehicle. It's It's a very quick way to
00:25:48
hit the ground running and get your investigation going and looking at the people that are that in some form or
00:25:58
fashion fit the profile of a person being capable of similar crimes because we do know with when it comes to child
00:26:05
sex crimes, the recidivism rates, unfortunately, are quite high. And then, as you said, they get real close on
00:26:14
somebody because it sounds to me like they they get this guy. They know he's already been molesting young boys, boys
00:26:22
that are about the same ages as our our victims here. He fails a polygraph test.
00:26:28
He has no alibi. Do you remember what moved them off of this guy? Because I sit here looking at
00:26:35
this guy, false alibi, fails the poly, similar crimes. He would have been so easy to charge for this. I think it was
00:26:43
Pat Thomas. He said, "I knew it wasn't him. I had a gut feeling." And Nick, I know that you're into the uh the way
00:26:50
lawmen work and investigative techniques. Pat Thomas was the sheriff of Sarpy County, so he was the lead guy
00:26:58
uh on this case. And if you've watched the movie Walking Tall, I've described Pat as Buford Pusser. Uh big, burly guy,
00:27:07
6'5", 300 lb, but a teddy bear on the inside. And what a lot of people don't know is that Pat was a elementary school
00:27:15
teacher before he got into law enforcement. So, kids were very important to him. And he just had a gut
00:27:22
feeling that the guy you're speaking about wasn't the right person, wasn't the right suspect. And as it turned out,
00:27:29
he wasn't. But Pat Thomas was also doing something that I think was brilliant at
00:27:34
the time. He was talking to the killer through the media. And as I said, I spent 2 years before I even spoke to the
00:27:43
killer. I've seen every piece of evidence. I've watched all the interviews with law enforcement. Uh Pat
00:27:50
Thomas actually let me check out the evidence. So, Nick, I want you to imagine in this day and age, a
00:28:01
out the evidence in the case. Now, the killer is in prison on death row, but Pat believed in me. He thought I was
00:28:09
honest and trying to put, you know, all the pieces together. I had the rope. I had the murder weapon. I had the crime
00:28:17
scene photos. I had the autopsy photos. Everything at my fingertips to investigate this. But Pat did something.
00:28:25
He was talking to a reporter, and he said, "You know what? It's easy to kill little kids. This guy's a coward.
00:28:32
If he uh is a man, he'll pick on someone his own size." And as he said that, he looked past the reporter directly into
00:28:41
the camera and said, "He'll pick on someone his own size." And guess what? The killer was watching, was listening.
00:28:50
And that's what's going to lead us to the big break coming up in just a minute [music] when I tell you what happened.
00:29:04
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>> [music] [music] >> You're right. [music] This This guy that looks as good as he did or as good as
00:35:48
any for one if not both of these murders, they move off of that suspect. Partly, as you said, gut feeling, but
00:35:58
things start to not line up so well for him being the best suspect. One of those
00:36:03
and FBI would should not, and I hope that they do not, move off of someone because
00:36:09
they don't fit the profile. But that is what is said about that particular suspect that they they didn't fit the
00:36:15
profile. What we would later learn is the real true suspect does fit the profile
00:36:21
very nice and neatly. We talked a little bit about the evidence that they were working with. If we could track down
00:36:28
that rope, if we could figure out where it came from, if it is in fact unique enough, then we should know when we have
00:36:37
our guy because our guy may be in the possession of additional rope that is is somewhat hard to find. Correct. So
00:36:46
that was the missing part. If they could find that rope, they could find the killer. That was the theory. So they're
00:36:52
going all over town and all over the state and I believe they they went nationwide looking for similar rope.
00:37:01
Where Where was it manufactured from? Where was it purchased from? How did our killer
00:37:06
get to be in possession of this rope? It's still partly a mystery of where he got it, but uh and this is so ironic. I
00:37:14
was back in Nebraska last week doing a college tour talking to journalism students and criminal justice students
00:37:21
about this. And as it turns out, one of the professors of criminal justice was actually a prison guard assigned to uh
00:37:30
Joubert uh on on death row. And they figured out that it was a Navy man's rope. And that the rope uh the reason it
00:37:38
had those color fibers, it needed to be lightweight so the service members could
00:37:43
carry it, but it needed to be really strong if they ever had to use it. So he was able to give me that piece of
00:37:49
evidence that it was a Navy man's rope and those brightly colored fibers were to make the rope stronger. So see what
00:37:58
I'm saying, Nick? It's just that uh all this time later, little pieces of evidence are coming
00:38:05
together to put the full picture together. It's just It's just amazing. >> Was there any thought or I'm sure there
00:38:11
was thought placed to it, but was there any proof that the cuz the way that these crimes
00:38:19
look, like that it was a snatch and grab. Some Some poor random boy is on the street and there's a predator out
00:38:26
there prowling looking for a victim and that might be how the killer found and procured his victim was just simply came
00:38:35
across them. One boy out on his paper route, another boy walking to school. Was there any thought though or anything
00:38:43
to that was suggestive that maybe these boys had been watched or seen by the killer before? I believe that they were.
00:38:52
I believe um and having talked to the killer, you know, multiple times on death row, he told me he had gone out
00:38:59
scouting for victims. Um he'd actually looked at snatching a little girl, he told me. Uh but I really
00:39:07
didn't believe that the more that I talked with him and and learned of uh you know, what attracted him to the
00:39:13
victims, it was young boys. Uh but I believe that he also uh as we'll talk about a a little bit later, uh there's a
00:39:21
third murder that I am able to solve uh after talking to the killer and similarly, he had stalked the young boy
00:39:29
at least for a few hours if not a couple of days ahead of that. And I have to believe that it might have been by
00:39:38
instruction of the way of the FBI to the police. And we have a a few different agencies working this case at the time
00:39:47
and we can get into those. I do want to get into those different agencies and and you to tell us a little bit about
00:39:53
them. But one thing that I've seen time and time again, when you have, as you say, here that fear, right? This This is
00:40:02
a fear that is almost paralyzing the city and it's something that everybody in Bellevue is aware of and and even the
00:40:11
big brother sister of Omaha, everybody there at this time in the fall of '83 and the winter of '83, they are aware of
00:40:21
what's going on, right? There's no mistake about that. >> Oh, there's no mistake about it. And the
00:40:27
first thing that the FBI will tell the local authorities to do is we need a super
00:40:34
cop. We need somebody that we can put in front of our bad guy that can that can set that can aggravate him
00:40:44
that can move him off his mark, that can agitate him, that he somebody that he can see and identify as a worthy
00:40:52
adversary, right? We know we're looking for the face of evil. Let's present a face of good and champion one of our
00:40:59
cops or detectives or police chief or a sheriff and give this guy something something to to hate, something to fight
00:41:08
against almost because we're all fighting against him. And you said you said that that's exactly what they did.
00:41:14
That super cop was Pat Thomas. And again, he is a lawman's lawman. He looks the part, he sounds the part, and he was
00:41:23
super smart. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew the killer was watching.
00:41:28
He wanted, as you said Nick, to get him off his mark. He knew that if they could
00:41:33
get him away from kids to try to get him to go after an adult, someone closer to
00:41:38
his own age, that he might make a mistake. And that's exactly what happened. Not that they're trying to
00:41:45
encourage the criminal to go out and commit another crime, especially a violent act, but it's not again to the
00:41:52
psychology of it. They are working with a couple of things inside of their tool belt right here where they're going,
00:41:58
"Okay, this guy is is selecting boys for a reason." And it's got to be some type
00:42:04
of sexual proclivity, but also it has to do with his thinking of well, I I don't
00:42:12
want to be overpowered. I I I need a victim that I can easily control, that I can gain power control of and overpower
00:42:20
myself and and yeah, you're right. It's if they if he pushes buttons and get him to pick
00:42:28
on someone his own size, as they said. And if he does that either physically he's not going to be able to
00:42:36
carry out that attack or emotionally and mentally unable to to carry out that attack as well. What what does this
00:42:45
does this push the killer into doing anything? It does. On January 11th John Joubert goes out hunting for
00:42:54
another victim. But there was also some problems. He needed money. His car was in the shop. He was He had a rental car
00:43:02
at this time. So he made the decision that he was going to go to this preschool and rob the teacher. He had He
00:43:10
had driven past the school several times. And that teacher was a woman named Barbara Weaver. And it's so
00:43:17
interesting having talked to her. She She had two small children at the time. And she said, like everybody else, they
00:43:24
were in fear of what was happening in their community. And each morning they would say a prayer for Danny Joe
00:43:30
Eberle's family and for Christopher Walden's family. And that morning Barbara Weaver said she said an extra
00:43:37
prayer. She said, "God, please use me in any way you need to bring this nightmare
00:43:44
to an end." And guess what? At 8:15 John Joubert comes calling to the Aldersgate United
00:43:52
Methodist Church where Barbara Weaver is a preschool teacher. Her assistant isn't
00:43:57
there yet. The kids aren't there yet. Barbara is getting ready for her her kids to come to class and she sees this
00:44:05
car circle the church like two to three times. And then her heart starts racing as it
00:44:11
pulls into the driveway and a young man steps out. And she thinks she recognizes
00:44:17
him. So he comes to the door. There's a knock at the door. She felt like she had to
00:44:24
answer and so she cracks the door open. And there he stands. And she told me at that moment she knew exactly who it was.
00:44:32
She was trying to look at him to get a description in case she needed it. And he said, "I need to use your phone. Can
00:44:39
I use your phone?" And she lied to him and told him there wasn't a phone. And he told her at that moment, "Get
00:44:47
back inside or I'm going to kill you." And Barbara said she just instinctively fought back. She pushed the door. She
00:44:55
pushed it open. She ran past the the guy at the door and she looked back and she
00:45:01
saw the tag number. And she started repeating the tag number as she started as she continued to run. She slips and
00:45:09
falls, hits her knuckles on the pavement. It's cold, but she remembers that tag number. And she gets to the
00:45:16
pastor's house and she says, "It's him. It's the killer. He tried to kill me." So they calm her down. They call the
00:45:25
police who immediately come rushing to the scene. And Barbara Weaver gives them the piece of evidence that they've been
00:45:33
looking for. It's the tag number for that rental car. >> And obviously that leads them to the
00:45:39
rental car and then through the paperwork they're going to find who it was rented to.
00:45:44
And that leads them to John Joubert who who is a rather young man himself at the time. Describe John for the
00:45:55
listeners and what is going on in his other than being a monster, what is going on in his life at this time? So
00:46:03
John Joubert was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1963. So this would put him in the age bracket of 20 years old
00:46:11
when this was happening. He was an airman at Offutt Air Force Base which is right there
00:46:18
in the suburb of of Omaha. Ironically, Danny Joe Eberle's home, the fence along their property line, you could jump over
00:46:27
that fence and you'd be on Offutt Air Force Base. That's how close John Joubert was to the Eberle family. So
00:46:35
Joubert worked at a He was a maintenance man working on a radar for the Air Force Base. So it's
00:46:44
building 400, room 113. Police and the FBI rush to Offutt. They go to his room. They beat on the door and they have to
00:46:55
wake him up. He's come back and he's he's gone to sleep. The agents told me that
00:47:00
his room was an absolute mess. There was stuff everywhere. Shoes, detective magazines just strewn about
00:47:09
the room. And guess what they found in his duffel bag. They go in, they're searching and they
00:47:16
find the rope. They find the piece of rope that had been used to tie up Danny Joe Eberle and and bam! They think
00:47:24
they've got their guy. And again, you talk about the super cop. There were two other law enforcement
00:47:31
people who played a very important part here. One is a guy named Lee Polikoff. Lee was the chief deputy to Pat Thomas.
00:47:40
Lee told me he took it upon himself to be the protector of Joubert from this moment forward. He knew there were
00:47:46
people were people in the community that wanted to kill the killer once they caught him.
00:47:52
He also knew that they had to be very careful not to trample on his rights. So Lee became the champion of protecting
00:48:00
the suspect. And another young lieutenant Jim Sanderson became the lead interrogator. And Jim had a a newborn
00:48:10
daughter at this time and we talked about this a lot of how scared he was, you know, for people in his community.
00:48:17
And what a wreck he was not being able to sleep at night. He would just go when he finally got a few hours off the
00:48:25
search, he would come home and just look at his little baby in that crib and he thought, "How can I protect her if I
00:48:32
can't find him?" So all these, you know, personalities, they're you know, so dedicated to the community.
00:48:40
And now they have the suspect and it's John Joubert. This part of the story is told very well in your book, but
00:48:49
just taking a look here on the surface, it's a bit confusing cuz it looks like for a period of time Joubert was
00:48:57
considering fighting the charges in court, but he ultimately ends up confessing to the murders. Is that
00:49:05
correct? That's correct. He was being interviewed by Jim Sanderson. And Jim basically did the good cop, bad cop
00:49:13
thing. But he said he he switched it to Joubert, you know, I'm sure there's a good John in there, but I think there's
00:49:21
a bad John who might have done this, who might have killed these boys. And you know, I think the good John wants to
00:49:28
help the bad John in some way or wants to keep him off the street. So I'm calling on the good John to help us get
00:49:37
to the bad John. And I think just after a while, Nick, he realized it was over and he confessed to killing both Danny
00:49:45
Joe Eberle and Christopher Walden. He doesn't get any leniency for his confession, for pleading guilty,
00:49:53
does he? Absolutely not. And this also surprised me. I've never heard of a killer pleading
00:50:00
guilty when they're facing the death penalty without some sort of deal. Have you? No.
00:50:06
I didn't quite understand that, why there wasn't some sort of deal cut with his public defender to say, "Okay, he's
00:50:12
going to plead guilty, take the death penalty off off the table. You've got your guy, right?" But I think at the
00:50:20
time these crimes were so heinous, the fear in that community was so overwhelming
00:50:26
that the judges felt they had no no choice. There was a three-judge panel. Uh the parents of the victims wrote
00:50:34
letters asking for Joubert to be executed. His mother wrote a letter asking the judges to spare him because
00:50:42
she felt like there had to be some good in her son. But as I write in the book, the the the judges say, "While the
00:50:50
letters were cathartic, they played no decision in they played no role in their ultimate decision." And that was
00:50:57
unanimously to sentence Joubert to die in Nebraska's electric chair. So, I was with you. I was like, "How did
00:51:06
this happen?" There was absolutely no leniency, no deal, and he gets the death penalty.
00:51:13
Well, and I kind of think that that has maybe a lot to do with what's going on in our country at the time. And
00:51:22
when you take and consider all of the child killers in the '70s, and you know, you referenced
00:51:31
uh the Atlanta child killings, then you have things like Adam Walsh who disappears down in Hollywood, Florida.
00:51:38
Keep in mind, you know, 1983, that's when the Adam Walsh movie comes out nationally, made-for-TV movie, and
00:51:46
really is I I think that this just shows Omaha, it shows Nebraska, and it shows the the
00:51:55
nation just how fed up we were with these types of offenders. People taking our kids off of the streets and doing
00:52:03
horrible things to them. I mean, with at least one of these two poor boys, they had the wounds were suggestive that
00:52:10
there was torture prior to the to the killing. If there ever were a case where you think that somebody could plead
00:52:18
guilty and get it reduced to a life sentence, I would have thought it would have been
00:52:24
here, really just because of the optics of it. When you look at pictures of John
00:52:30
Joubert at the time of his arrest, he looks like a boy himself. Exactly. You know, Eagle Scout. You'll see the
00:52:38
picture of of him in my book. Uh you know, smiling. He he looks like the kid next door, right? So, I think
00:52:46
you're right. You you would you'd think there might be some sympathy. Just he's meek, he's small, you know, um
00:52:53
but there was no mercy for him. 5'6" and and to me in those photos, he looks 16 years old. And when I first, many years
00:53:04
ago when I first looked into this case, I thought after having seen those pictures,
00:53:11
I just kind of made the assumption that maybe the boys got into the vehicle willingly because they thought they were
00:53:17
getting in the vehicle with a peer, not an adult. You know, just oh, here's some
00:53:21
boy that's a few years older than me. But but everything we know today says no. John Joubert approached both of
00:53:30
these boys with a knife and the the the threat was there immediately to to make the abductions
00:53:40
successful. And you look at the size of the boys. Danny Joe Eberle was 5'2", 100
00:53:45
100 lbs. But his father said the same thing. He could not believe as scrappy as Danny was, they would wrestle from
00:53:53
time to time, he could not to save his life figure out why Danny Joe didn't fight back. But I think they were just
00:54:01
they were just caught off guard, Nick, in that moment. A guy pulls a knife and puts it to your throat and he says, "Get
00:54:08
in the car." You know, and I think they thought that maybe he would let them go, right? He
00:54:14
definitely picked people who were smaller than him that he could handle. I think if it got
00:54:21
in if there were were a struggle. And then after he's arrested and after the guilty plea, along comes Mark Pettit.
00:54:31
Tell So, tell us how you said how you first became aware of the story, but what is your first
00:54:38
boots-on-the-ground action in this story? Now, you're working it. You're working it now. Carol, my news
00:54:45
director, comes to me with a thick folder of information. She goes, "Here's everything you're going to need to get
00:54:51
started." And it was initial police reports, copies of stories that their reporters
00:54:58
had done, transcripts from the court case. She took me to we we had a file library, you know, back in this time
00:55:06
period of TV news, there were tapes that we would keep stacked and encoded and you know, logged where we could go back
00:55:14
and you would see on the news file footage, right? Well, that was what it was. There was a file room. Tape room.
00:55:21
hours Tape room. I spent hours and hours going through the reports, going through
00:55:28
watching the interviews, and trying, you know, to to understand the case the best
00:55:34
that I could. And as I said, I I I went to meet Sheriff Thomas. I met Jim Sanderson. I met Lee Polikoff. I met all
00:55:43
the players. I talked to Bob Ressler. So, all this goes on for 2 years, Nick. And I I finally say to his
00:55:52
court-appointed attorney, "Listen, they're going to execute him before I talk to him. Why don't you let me talk
00:55:59
to him? We wanted to why this happened." And he just refused. He said, "It's not I can't
00:56:05
let you do it. It's going to jeopardize his his appeals." And so, I just got tired of waiting. So, I sat down at my
00:56:11
typewriter and I banged out a letter to John Joubert that you will see in my book, A Need to Kill.
00:56:18
And I did something that cracked the case wide open. I put a pre-postage-paid envelope into my letter where he could
00:56:28
write me back. And that envelope is is is in my book. You'll see what came back. I walked into the newsroom. It was
00:56:36
about 2 weeks after I had sent the letter to Joubert. And, you know, didn't hear anything back. So, I thought he's
00:56:42
not going to respond. And we had these mailboxes made out of wood and, you know, slats. And mine said Pettit. And
00:56:50
occasionally my mom would send me a a card or a letter. And I look into my slot and there's nothing there. But then
00:56:56
something a piece of paper catches my eye. And as it turns out, the envelope was flush against my mailbox. So, I
00:57:03
reach in and I slide it out. And I was I say to myself, "Wait a second. That's the envelope I sent to Joubert."
00:57:12
And sure enough, it was the return envelope with my name, KMTV's address, and in the left-hand corner, he had
00:57:19
scratched out our address for the TV station and written in John Joubert, inmate number, Lincoln, Nebraska. And my
00:57:29
heart was pounding. When I took that letter to my desk, I, you know, tore it open and I pulled
00:57:36
out the letter. And from the second I started reading the letter, I was amazed. I could not
00:57:40
believe, A, the penmanship. Just so well written, beautiful penmanship. And then
00:57:48
I started reading the letter and I thought to myself, "Wait a second. The criminal profile is not quite correct
00:57:55
here. This guy is really smart." And you'll read the full letter in in in the book. But he basically says, "I'm not
00:58:03
going to do an interview, but I would not be opposed to you coming down here to Lincoln to present your questions
00:58:10
with the understanding that I'm under no obligation to do an interview. Should you choose not to come, I have two
00:58:17
questions for you. There is no need to respond. Do you think airing a piece on me
00:58:23
would only amplify the hurt of the victim's family? And do you honestly believe that people
00:58:29
could come away watching such a piece and understand who John Joubert really is? Would they not say rather, 'It's
00:58:38
only an act to gain our sympathy.' There is no need to respond." So, Nick, it was he was asking me
00:58:45
questions and I'm the reporter. But if you heard those that that sentence, "I would not be opposed to you coming here
00:58:53
to present your questions." So, I go immediately to my boss and I said, "Good news, bad news.
00:58:59
Joubert wrote me back. He's not going to do the interview, but he said I could come and meet with him." She said, "Go.
00:59:06
Schedule it. Get it Get it on the books." And so, like that Thursday, I was able to go down and that was the
00:59:12
first of seven face-to-face death row interviews with John Joubert. Um and it was the start of of a case
00:59:24
that, you know, typically a reporter follows a case. This case has followed me for 40 years. And it started with
00:59:31
that one interview. >> What was it like going there and meeting Joubert for the first time?
00:59:37
Nerve-racking. I had worried over how do I address him? I despised what he had done. You know,
00:59:44
but I I just felt like if I had gone in hostile, he wasn't going to to respond to that. So, I decided to just neither
00:59:52
condone nor condemn. I was just going to try to talk to him. So, I get there and
00:59:57
I'm going through security. They're putting my briefcase through machine and the guard looks at me and says, "Are you
01:00:04
nervous?" And I said, "To be honest, yes." And he said, "It's okay once you get past his eyes." So, I knew
01:00:11
immediately when John Joubert walked into that conference room where they had me waiting for him and I saw those eyes,
01:00:18
they were the eyes of a shark. Just dark, gray, uncaring. And I stood up and extended my hand and
01:00:26
said, "I'm Mark Pettit." And he said, "I'm John Joubert." And they left us alone. So, that first interview, you
01:00:33
know, it starts off I'm just trying to break the ice with him and it turns into about a 2 and 1/2 hour
01:00:40
conversation. And he starts to warm up in certain parts of it and then I would try to press him on details of the
01:00:47
killings and he would become robotic. And I write in the book and it was like he was reciting a poem he never wanted
01:00:55
to memorize. So, we get through the first interview and I say, "Look, I think you've got a
01:01:01
lot to tell. I I would really like to do an interview on camera so that you could
01:01:06
speak directly to the people of Nebraska." And that's when he said, "I'll think about it." So, I leave, I
01:01:12
come back and it's about another 2 weeks and then I get the letter saying that he
01:01:18
is not going to do the interview. But he said, "I wouldn't mind continuing our discussions. We continue having our
01:01:26
discussions for 7 more months approximately. And during this time it becomes a really interesting game of cat
01:01:34
and mouse. He would say, "Well, did you look at this piece of evidence? Did you think about this?" And he said,
01:01:40
"Well, I think maybe you should go back to Portland, Maine where I came from. You might find some interesting things
01:01:46
back there." And I said, "What What do you mean by interesting things, John?" And he said,
01:01:52
"Well, there are some unsolved crimes back there." And he goes on to tell me that as a young boy he had stabbed a
01:02:00
young girl in the back with a pencil as she rode by him on a bicycle. And he tells me he had started having fantasies
01:02:06
about killing his own babysitter. And he's 6 and 7 years old. So, it progresses to he stabs the little girl
01:02:13
in the back with a pencil. He said, "Then I slashed this little boy's throat with my X-Acto knife."
01:02:21
And I said, "Okay." And then he said, "And then I stabbed a woman on her way to school. She She's She was going to be
01:02:27
a teacher. I stabbed her on her way to college." And he said, "As I said, you should go
01:02:33
to Portland. You might find some interesting things back there." So, I do You know, I'm doing the news at the
01:02:39
station on the weekend. I'm trying to further my investigation of the case and I buy a
01:02:45
ticket and I go back to Portland, Maine and guess what? I go to the police station and I go to the newspaper
01:02:53
office. I find the police report about the little girl stabbed with a pencil. I find the newspaper clipping. I find the
01:03:00
the police report about the little boy's throat slashed. I find the newspaper clipping. Then the teacher stabbed on
01:03:08
her way to school. Everything that Joubert told me was true and he had committed these crimes and the police
01:03:14
had no clue that he was the person responsible. And then I found a police report and an
01:03:21
unsolved case and that was the murder of Ricky Stetson. And that's when things took a whole new twist.
01:03:28
>> Before we get to the murder of Ricky Stetson, the the crimes that he was telling you about
01:03:35
victims' names excluded, but he was a boy. He was a teenager committing these crimes, correct? Exactly. And he
01:03:44
told me it started at 6 years old. And you know, and that's how I got the name of the book. One of the very first
01:03:50
questions I asked Joubert, I said, "Why did you do this? You didn't know these little boys." And he said, "Mark, for as
01:03:58
long as I can remember, I've just had a need to kill." Still gives me goosebumps to say those
01:04:04
words. But he said, "Yeah, it started when I was 6 years old. I hated my babysitter. I wanted to kill her. And it
01:04:10
would be like a light switch. I would turn it off and she would be gone." But I said, "Did it progress?" And that's
01:04:17
when he said, "Yes. Then I started acting out more." And that is when he told me about, you know, the pencil and
01:04:25
the X-Acto knife. It just became became progressively more violent. Did he talk to you in depth about the
01:04:35
Nebraska victims? Yes. He did. And so, was it nothing off-limits for your conversations? No.
01:04:44
Never did I tell him the discussion was off the record. He told me everything. And just some
01:04:50
heartbreaking things like little Christopher Walden, he had him in the floorboard in the front of the car
01:04:56
and the boy is crying. He's begging Joubert to let him go and Joubert said, "I actually thought about just stopping
01:05:04
the car and pushing him out into the street because he felt sorry for Christopher as
01:05:10
well." And then he said, "No, he's seen my face. I can't let him go." And that's
01:05:16
when he kept driving and took him to the to the grassy area where he made the Christopher walk into the to the weeds
01:05:25
and strip off his clothes and it was really starting to get cold and that's when the snow came a couple days later.
01:05:32
It's I mean, an unbelievable shame that the if there was any good in John Joubert,
01:05:40
it didn't come out after he had abducted those two boys and had the opportunity to let them go. The The flip of that is
01:05:48
he had to have had You know, he's a Scouts assistant. He's He's around boys of this same age.
01:05:55
He had to have some kind of even if it's short-run, but meaningful relationship with with boys of the same age. He did.
01:06:04
And in the book there's a young boy that I refer to as Jeremy Culver. Jeremy was
01:06:09
a member of Joubert's Scout troop in Nebraska. And Jeremy was along the same age as Danny Joe and Christopher and it
01:06:17
really bothered him. He couldn't understand why they didn't fight back. And he actually brought a piece of rope to
01:06:24
Joubert to one of their their Scout meetings that said, "I don't understand it. Why didn't those boys fight back? I
01:06:31
want you to tie me up. I want I want to see if I could escape." So, if you can imagine Joubert
01:06:40
this is his friend, a young boy that he has a relationship with and he is being asked to tie the boy up
01:06:48
like he tied up Danny Joe Eberle, like he tied up Christopher Walden. So, there were all these thoughts. Joubert said,
01:06:55
"It was It was driving me crazy because I wanted to do what Jeremy was asking me
01:07:01
to do, but it was also exciting me. And I was starting to have those feelings that I felt when I took Danny Joe and
01:07:08
when I took Christopher." And this is what Pat Thomas told me. He said, "Jeremy Culver would have been his next
01:07:15
victim." That little boy was on his way to getting murdered and he's lucky that it didn't happen. So, Joubert ties
01:07:23
Jeremy up and he's squirming around and Joubert comes to his senses and says, "Stop it. Stop it.
01:07:30
>> [snorts] >> I told you this wouldn't happen. It would never happen to you." So, just really interesting how close
01:07:39
that boy came uh to possibly being a victim. But the way he pushed Joubert to, you know, from a friendship to
01:07:48
feeling those same thoughts of killing another young boy. This youngster has no idea that he's asking
01:07:56
the actual killer to reenact this on him to say, you know, why didn't these guys Why didn't these other boys
01:08:04
put up a fight? Why didn't they try to get away? It's just he's This young boy's trying to figure out get in the
01:08:11
minds of the victims, I guess, in the the news stories that are on the news every night and in the paper every day
01:08:19
that he's become so familiar with during this time while they're looking for the
01:08:24
guy who did it. Meanwhile, the the his Scout assistant that he's asking to tie him up is the is that guy. And then
01:08:34
with Joubert, so what was it about the when you find the Stetson case, what was it about that case that told you, "Okay,
01:08:44
this is probably John Joubert, another John Joubert victim?" Ricky Stetson had gone out for
01:08:51
a jog around this area called Back Bay and it was a a beautiful picturesque back cove in Portland, Maine. He told
01:08:59
his mom that he'd be back just in a little while. He wanted to run around the water. And Ricky was a a small kid,
01:09:06
too. Like 11 years old. Very very slight build, red-headed. So, he never comes home. And then, you
01:09:16
know, the police the next day they find his little body. He, too, had been stabbed to death.
01:09:23
And they found something very interesting. And that was a bite mark on the boy's body.
01:09:29
So, when I found the police report and I realized it was another young boy stabbed to death, and then when I saw
01:09:38
the bite mark, I brought that back to the penitentiary and I said, "John, you were right about
01:09:45
Portland. There were There were a lot of things back there that I I I needed to know, and you told me the truth about
01:09:53
the the stabbings and the slashings, but there's one crime that has not been solved. I need you to tell me, did you
01:09:59
kill Ricky Stetson?" And everything The world stops, and he reaches across the table. I had recorded all of our
01:10:06
conversations, and he stops my tape recorder. And he says, "Listen, I know you. I can't lie to you, but the
01:10:15
last time I played guilty to anything, I got the death penalty." So, boom. Basically, he's confessed to killing
01:10:23
Rick Ricky Stetson. And by this time, this is our I think our seventh uh or maybe even the eighth interview that
01:10:30
I did with him on death row, and I was I told him, "I think I'm going to write a book about the case." And that's when
01:10:36
I really had to make a decision. Do I include that quote in this book? So, I struggled with it because as I
01:10:45
said, everything was on the record, but as a reporter and as an investigative reporter, Nick, you know this from your
01:10:52
work, your word is what you have when you're dealing with with people uh who are giving you information they
01:10:59
aren't giving other people. But, I struggled, and I just decided I'm a reporter, I have to tell the truth. I
01:11:07
did not go to the police in advance, I did not go to the FBI, but I put the book out, the very first
01:11:13
edition, which you have a copy of, and I put the quote in there that I just gave you. I can't tell you that I didn't
01:11:20
do it, but the last time I played guilty to anything, I got the death penalty. So, the book comes out, and the case
01:11:27
blows up, and the next thing I know, the FBI is at the TV station where I'm working in Atlanta,
01:11:34
and the receptionist says, "You have two vi- visitors, and they're from the FBI."
01:11:38
So, I come out, and they said, "Hey, Mark, uh Agent So-and-so, Agent So-and-so, we read your book, and that's
01:11:46
why we're here. We're going to need all your records on John Joubert. We're going to need all the audio files. We're
01:11:53
going to need everything." And I somehow had the presence of mind to say, "You're
01:11:58
going to have to talk to my lawyer." I didn't have a lawyer. >> [laughter] >> Um you know, I had funded all this on my
01:12:04
own, all this investigation, I did in my spare time. I'm working for a new TV station in Atlanta. They have no vested
01:12:12
interest, but I called my agent, I said, "Listen, the FBI just showed up. Uh they're they're after my records." And
01:12:18
she said, "Don't do it. That's You're an investigative reporter. Don't give them
01:12:22
your files." She said, "Let me make some calls." And she actually found an attorney in the Washington area who
01:12:29
agreed to help me basically for free, and we cut a deal that it would with the federal government and the the
01:12:36
prosecutors in Portland, Maine, that I would not give them anything. No writings, no recordings, nothing. I
01:12:44
would just testify to that one quote in the book. So, they bring me back to Portland. Joubert is on trial for the
01:12:51
murder of Ricky Stetson. I'm the star witness. His attorney tries to paint me as a law enforcement officer, an agent
01:12:59
of the FBI, and my lawyer says, "He's a reporter doing his job. Joubert confessed. He killed Ricky Stetson."
01:13:09
And it was over in less than a day. And once they the judge found Joubert guilty, he sentenced
01:13:16
him to another life term in prison, and I remember we're leaving the courthouse,
01:13:21
and I look across the courtyard, and Joubert is in handcuffs. He sees me, I see him.
01:13:29
The sun is in my eyes, but I can still see him. They push his head down in the back of
01:13:33
the car, shut the door, and they they drive away. And I walk over to Joubert's attorney, and I said, "Listen, I didn't
01:13:41
want it to end like this. I had to to testify. I'd really like to talk to John again."
01:13:49
And he looked at me and said, "You can talk to John Joubert after the state of Nebraska executes him." And he slammed
01:13:56
the trunk of his car, and that was that. I never spoke to Joubert again, but that wasn't the last
01:14:03
time our paths would cross. When did they cross again? During the last interview, Joubert told me um and
01:14:10
he had told me previously that I I said, "How do you wake up every day? What What
01:14:15
do you have to look forward to?" And he said, "Getting out. They're going to overturn my case. I'm
01:14:20
going to walk free." He actually believed that. And then not shortly thereafter, in the same interview, he
01:14:27
says, "You know, I'm still having these fantasies." And I said, "What fantasies?" "About killing more
01:14:33
kids." And excuse my French, but I said, "John, that's effed up, okay? Something
01:14:38
is seriously wrong with you." And he said, "I You know, I'm drawing them out now." And I said, "Drawing them out?" He
01:14:45
said, "Yeah, they confiscated two of the drawings from my jail cell just a couple
01:14:49
of weeks ago." And I said, "Wait a second. You're drawing out your fantasies of killing
01:14:54
more kids?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Listen, give me permission to get those drawings
01:15:01
from the prison. I will take them to the FBI. I will take them to a psychiatrist.
01:15:06
I'll get them analyzed and give you the report. Something is wrong with you. Maybe this will help you in some
01:15:13
fashion." So, he reaches across the table, and he grabs my notepad, and he writes a letter to the warden
01:15:20
instructing him to give me the copies of the drawings. So, I take that letter to
01:15:26
the to the warden, and based on inmate confidentiality, they refused to give me the drawings.
01:15:34
So, flash forward, it's the 30th anniversary of the case, and I'm just going through my notes. I'm looking
01:15:39
back, and I find my notes about the death row drawings. And I just wondered, do they still have
01:15:46
those drawings? Because it's always bothered me that I couldn't put those in my book, show people what
01:15:52
he told me. I called the prison. The general counsel calls me back and says, "Yes, we still have the drawings.
01:16:00
I have them in front of me." I have my notes in front of me, and I said, "Okay." He told me there were two
01:16:06
drawings. One of them, he's stabbing a boy. He said, "The boy is on his knees. It looks like they're in the woods.
01:16:15
He's stabbing him in the stomach." And I said, "Okay, there was a second drawing.
01:16:20
What does it look like?" And he said, "It looks like another boy floating in space." And I said, "Is he bound?" He
01:16:28
said, "Yes. Rope around his feet and arms, but there are no feet, and there are no hands."
01:16:35
And I said, "You've got to give those drawings to me. There's no telling what the FBI can tell us now about a killer
01:16:43
from 30 years ago." And they refused to give me the drawings. So, I called Lee Polikoff, who I had stayed in touch with
01:16:51
all these years. Lee is now the Sarpy County attorney, and I said, "Lee, what do I do? They have these drawings." He
01:16:57
said, "Sue the state. Force them to turn over the drawings." So, he helped me find a lawyer in
01:17:05
Lincoln. His name is Bob Krieger. Bob basically took me on for free, and we sued the state of Nebraska, and guess
01:17:13
what? We won. And we were about 3 days from the state having to turn the drawings over,
01:17:19
and there was a new attorney general in Nebraska. He filed an emergency appeal to the Nebraska
01:17:26
Supreme Court to keep them from releasing the So, I was about to get the drawings, and
01:17:34
then it was put on hold, and it was going to be months now before the Supreme Court hearing.
01:17:39
Then, that weekend, on a Saturday night, I'm at home, and my home phone rings, and I was at
01:17:47
home I wasn't out with friends and and doing anything, and I see the area code pop up on my my TV screen, and it's
01:17:55
Nebraska. So, I answer, and I said, "Hello." And the guy says, "Is this Mark Pettit?" And I said, "Yes." "The one
01:18:02
that's trying to get the coverage out The one that wrote the book about John Joubert?" And I said, "Yes."
01:18:07
"The one that's trying to get those drawings that they're fighting you about?" And I said, "Yes."
01:18:13
He said, "I have the drawings, and I'm going to give them to you." So, this is 30 years after the fact. He
01:18:20
says, "I was a guard on duty the morning we did the shake down on Joubert's cell.
01:18:27
We found the drawings. They were so disturbing, I took them and made copies of them. I've held them for all these
01:18:33
years. I'm going to give you the drawings." So, I go into detail about how I was
01:18:39
able to get the drawings texted to me, and it was exactly as Joubert had told me, only in
01:18:47
black and white. So, I was able to take those drawings to an FBI-trained criminal profiler. Now, 30 years later,
01:18:57
and the full report is in the book of what it told us about John Joubert then that we know now. Mhm. The big question
01:19:06
would be, was he drawing from fantasy or from memory? The criminal profiler said
01:19:11
that he was convinced that these were sexual fantasies. They were not about additional murders that he had
01:19:18
committed. They were about sexual fantasies that he was having about committing more crimes. And that's
01:19:26
what it always bothered me is Joubert telling me on one hand that he was going to get out and then someone like Pat
01:19:33
Thomas telling me if he ever gets out he'll kill again. So I asked the criminal profiler Keith Howard. I said,
01:19:41
"Keith, that is the one question. Do these drawings prove that John Joubert would have killed again?" And he
01:19:48
wrote me back, "There is no lingering doubt. If John Joubert had ever been released from prison, he would have
01:19:55
killed again." So boom. I had it. I put it into my book, the the fifth edition. Again, the story blows up and
01:20:05
luckily the state did not come after me. I was not arrested for putting the drawings out there. And that'll bring us
01:20:13
to why I've written the last version of the book, Nick. >> With the Ricky Stetson case
01:20:20
we talked about the other victims, at least Danny Joe Eberle, being bind or tied up. Was there any evidence
01:20:30
that that Joubert used a similar I mean, because we know a lot about the the Danny Joe Eberle case, we know a lot
01:20:38
about the Christopher Walden case as far as how they likely were abducted, what happened to them after word. But with
01:20:47
the Ricky Stetson case, how much of that I know we talked about the bite mark, but how much of that mirrored what we
01:20:54
saw with the other two victims? I think what you'll you'll view in the Ricky Stetson case that this was um
01:21:02
quick. It wasn't necessarily pre-planned. I don't think Joubert had thought it through far enough um to to
01:21:10
to find the rope to do those type things. I think this was just him being his fantasies reaching a
01:21:16
boiling point where he he acted out but he didn't plan it out. So I think he would be classified as an unorganized
01:21:25
killer at that moment. This was more of a spur of the moment crime of sexual passion uh that I would later learn uh
01:21:34
that he killed Ricky Stetson but not in an organized manner. >> And the biting seems to be more of a
01:21:42
signature, something that he he just seems to have to do at the with the victim. Well, the one of the
01:21:49
psychiatrist wrote in his report that Joubert was confused over sex and violence. They both meant the same thing
01:21:57
to him. So if you can imagine sexual aggression, he used the bite marks, I think the biting was a form of sexual
01:22:07
aggression toward the victims. And keep in mind, this is the early days of criminal behavior and profiling. They
01:22:14
really hadn't done a lot with dental imprints and matching dental records to crime scene victims. But this was one of
01:22:22
the the early cases where they were able to take Joubert's teeth prints and connect him to Danny Joe's body and
01:22:30
to Ricky Stetson's body. You much you know, after the fact with the the crime scene photos and such that they believed
01:22:38
that they were able to match Joubert's teeth to both victims' bite marks. Well, and with
01:22:45
Joubert, no doubt he's a sexual sadist. With him, and this is what is necessary for the drawings I think for him. What
01:22:56
gives him a sexual thrill is the terror in his victim's voice. It's the the the look of fear in his
01:23:04
victim's eyes and the look of terror on his victim's face when he's either inflicting pain or holding them against
01:23:14
their will and them slowly thinking maybe he's not going to let me go and and maybe this is it for me. That has to
01:23:25
be some part of the psychology for our for our monster here. >> That's exactly it. Keith Howard pointed
01:23:33
out some facts to me that and I'll tell you more how these came into more clear focus
01:23:39
in this new edition of A Need to Kill. He pointed out that the in the the photo of of the drawing where
01:23:46
Joubert is in this wooded area and he has the victim on his knees, the young the victim is bound with rope
01:23:54
and the killer has his hand on his shoulder. And I said, "Keith, what's that about?" And he said, "That's him
01:24:00
expressing control over the victim but in a a gentle control." And he said, "Notice the boy's mouth is
01:24:08
gagged or the victim's mouth is gagged in the drawing but there's no blindfold on his eyes." And he said, "That is for
01:24:15
a reason. This is a sexual sadist who wants this victim to experience fear to see him up until the moment that he
01:24:25
takes his life. He said, "That's what drives a sexual sadist. He wants that victim not to be able to scream where he
01:24:33
can be caught but he wants that victim to watch what is about to happen to him." And when I realized these details,
01:24:40
it just it made things even more horrific in my mind to learn those kinds of details. And at no time did he even
01:24:50
try to sell you on the idea that oh, I was comforting to the victims or I tried to tell them cuz a lot of times we've
01:24:57
seen these serial types where they will use lies and a ruse to try to calm and control the victim saying, you know, I'm
01:25:06
all I'm going to do is rob you or I don't worry if you if you do as I say, I'm going to let you go.
01:25:13
Do do we have any of that here as far as what the killer told you? Uh no. And that that was something early
01:25:21
on in the Danny Joe Eberle investigation. Police thought maybe he had been held for a couple of days by
01:25:28
the killer or his body he had maybe been uh killed and then disposed of but that's not what
01:25:34
happened. Joubert told me that he kidnapped the boy, he killed the boy and he left his body you know, within the
01:25:42
same time frame. He didn't hold the boy, he didn't you know, threaten him other than
01:25:49
when he took him into that wooded area or the the grassy area and stabbed him. But
01:25:55
I put the details in the book, Nick. This was a violent attack. With Danny Joe Eberle, you know, when he made him
01:26:01
strip to his underwear, tied him back up and then just started plunging the knife
01:26:05
into his back and then flipped him over on his back and just plunged the knife into his chest
01:26:12
and then starts biting the boy. This was just a fit of rage. But as we now know,
01:26:19
Joubert was a pedophile and I I really didn't understand this and I think you've spoken about this in previous
01:26:26
podcast, Nick, of what a pedophile is. And what Keith Howard told me is not all molesters are pedophiles. And so a
01:26:34
pedophile like Joubert is going to be attracted sexually to prepubescent boys. And that's what what these young kids
01:26:43
were, right? And that's what the drawings were. Um but in the second drawing, what got me were no hands and
01:26:50
no feet. And I asked Keith about that and he said, "Mark, that's dissociation." Joubert didn't see these these victims
01:26:59
as human. He was more obsessed with the detail. Look at the rope." And if you look at the rope in the drawings,
01:27:07
it's frayed. It's exactly the kind of rope he used on Danny Joe Eberle. Right? So um
01:27:16
bringing us closer to today. Over the past year, I've become very familiar with AI and using tools, you know, to
01:27:23
edit photos and so forth. And about 4 months ago, I said to myself, "I wonder if AI could help me
01:27:33
restore these death row drawings to the way that the killer originally made them." So I go back into my notes and I
01:27:41
I find parchment paper, uh pastel pencils. And so um I I I found two programs uh that help
01:27:54
restore images and I put into the prompts parchment paper, pastel pencils. These are the drawings from a serial
01:28:03
killer who told me the following about the drawings. And within 30 seconds, it had restored the drawings to exactly the
01:28:13
way Joubert told me he had intended them. So on parchment paper, pastel pencils, in color,
01:28:22
in the woods, it just all came to life. And that's when I knew I have to tell the rest of the story. I have to put
01:28:30
these drawings out in color. Now I can put all the images in color into this book. I want people
01:28:37
to see Danny Joe Eberle's smile, his bright blonde hair, the blue stripes on his shirt. Um I wanted people to
01:28:46
experience him in life, not just in death. But now that you're able to see these drawings in color and you see the
01:28:55
detail down to the belt that the killer is wearing. And again, there's been just
01:29:00
some ironic things. I'm I'm on the college tour last week and the criminal um justice professor who was on duty with
01:29:10
Joubert on death row says, "That's his prison uniform in that drawing. That's the clothes we give them to wear
01:29:17
uh on death row. That's the belt we give them. It's a special belt that is woven
01:29:23
where they can't use it to harm themselves. So, just bringing those drawings to life now with the help of AI
01:29:31
that has restored them to the way Joubert had drawn them to me is just fantastic.
01:29:38
And I I wanted people to see that and now you can see details that have never before been seen in this case. With the
01:29:48
death row drawings that you were able to secure and then now bring them back into
01:29:55
breathe new life into them so we can examine them as they they were by the the man who created them. You had said
01:30:03
to him, "Hey, I think there's something very wrong with you." Understatement of the year maybe.
01:30:10
There's something very wrong with you but but you're citing that look, you're locked up for this. You're on death row
01:30:16
for this and you're still fantasizing about this sick [ __ ] It did he or do you think
01:30:24
Mark that he wanted that he not only recognized that there was something wrong with him but that he had a desire
01:30:32
to learn what it was that was wrong with him? I do and he told me something during one of the interviews. I walk in
01:30:39
and he said, "Did you see People magazine this week?" And I said, "No, I don't think I caught it yet." He said,
01:30:45
"Charlie Sheen is on the cover." And he says in the article that he would rather
01:30:50
be in a in a killing scene than a lovemaking scene. I'm in prison for that. So, he's thinking,
01:30:59
"What is it in my mind?" But there he sees somebody like Charlie Sheen who's not quite right either. So, I do think
01:31:06
that Joubert was struggling with what had caused all this because as an investigative reporter, you know, I want
01:31:13
to be able to find the smoking gun. Oh, he was molested as a child. Oh, this, oh, that. And it wasn't that.
01:31:21
He came from a broken family, yes, but his mother didn't let him watch violent things on TV so that's not where he got
01:31:28
it. She didn't let him play video games. That's not where he got it, right? He, as he told me, was just born with a
01:31:36
need to kill. And I think it bothered him. I think he wanted to better understand it and that's why he wanted
01:31:43
them to give me those drawings 40 years ago which they should have done. They made me fight, spend my own money, and
01:31:51
thank God for the confidential source who risked his freedom to to give me the drawings because he knew that too. He
01:32:01
knew that maybe there were clues in these drawings that could help police keep this from happening again.
01:32:08
Now, I've seen bloggers, I've seen it on the internet, and I've heard it on other
01:32:13
podcasts and rightfully so. I mean, because between the murder of Ricky Stetson that takes place in Portland,
01:32:22
Maine and then fast forward to the Danny Joe Eberly murder that takes place in Bellevue, Nebraska.
01:32:35
Between these two victims, we have Johnny Gosch who goes missing not just in time frame but also I mean,
01:32:44
it's between if one were to drive from Portland, Maine, you would go through Des Moines, Iowa to get to
01:32:51
Omaha, Nebraska. And while this is something that it seems relatively new or a thought or a theory that has
01:33:01
sprouted up from the internet and podcast, it you open up your 1990 book A Need to Kill talking
01:33:11
in the same chapter about Johnny Gosch and Danny Joe Eberly. I thought there was a connection and
01:33:19
Joubert said, "No, he never met Johnny Gosch. He didn't know Johnny Gosch. He had nothing to do with it." So, I have
01:33:25
to believe that because he didn't lie to me about Ricky Stetson, you know? So, I
01:33:31
think I would have gotten it out of him if if he had killed Johnny Gosch. I think that was somebody else and you
01:33:40
know, I wish we could figure out who did it. I wish we could figure out where Johnny's body is
01:33:47
so his his, you know, remaining family members could have some peace as well. And it's not a new idea as far as law
01:33:56
enforcement's concerned because some of the FBI agents that worked the Johnny Gosch case were
01:34:02
hands-on and working the Danny Joe Eberly case. And I I stayed in contact with a lot of those guys over the years
01:34:09
and it weighed on them. I don't think we quite understand the pressure that these
01:34:15
law enforcement people are under when something like this is happening. You know, they know how fearful the
01:34:21
community is but they have families too and they can't sleep either, you know? So, the pressure and I'm sure it
01:34:29
shortened the lifespans of some of these guys who have to think and look in the face of evil.
01:34:35
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I have to thank you for sticking with it six times now. A Need to Kill has been
01:34:45
released and it keeps getting more thorough and more evolved as we go. And from my understanding,
01:34:55
Mark, there will be an audio book this time, right? For the first time we have an audio book.
01:35:00
>> There is an audio book that will be coming out very soon and I do the upfront narration
01:35:06
of the book. I wanted people to hear from me why I've stayed on this case for 40 years. Why it would not let me go.
01:35:13
Why I could not turn away. And something happened last week that really brought this to a closure for me.
01:35:21
I was on an interview with Nebraska Public Radio. A guy named Bill Kelly who Bill was an
01:35:28
investigative reporter when I was an investigator. >> We want to thank Mark Pettit for joining
01:35:33
me in the garage. Please go get and read his book A Need to Kill available in all
01:35:38
forms including audio. Please join us back here next time for our sixth and final chapter of the series. Until
01:35:47
then, be good, be kind, and don't let them win. outside the prison that night working with KMTV covering the execution
01:35:55
and he asked me to read the final words of John Joubert. And basically what he said is that I hope that my death bring
01:36:03
some sort sense of peace to the families of Danny Joe Eberly, Christopher Walden
01:36:10
and Richard Stetson. So, in the final minutes before he was executed, Joubert finally confessed in public to the
01:36:20
murder of Ricky Stetson and that really touched me and um I I was overcome with emotion because I
01:36:26
said, "I tried to tell the world, you know, in 1991 this was he killed Ricky Stetson." So, now it's all there. You'll
01:36:35
hear from me very soon and Christopher Lane narrates the the majority of the audio book because it's not easy
01:36:44
doing an audio book. So, Christopher does the best part but I I do the intro and the close and I can finally say case
01:36:54
closed. Mark Pettit, thank you for your time today and thank you for joining us here in the garage and congratulations
01:37:01
on the continued success of your book A Need [music] to Kill. Thank you, Nick. >> [music]
01:37:18
[music] >> We want to thank Mark Pettit for joining me in the garage. Please go get and read
01:37:31
his book A Need to Kill available in all forms including audio. Please join us back here next time for our sixth and
01:37:40
final chapter of this series. Until then, [music] be good, be kind and don't let them.
01:37:54
>> [music] [music]