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Police begin to put the pieces together and capture the 19 year old man who shot Zach and Yvette. Detectives make discoveries about what happened in the life of Jorge Benvenuto in the weeks before he bought a gun. Friends and family tell of a depressed, angry young man who’d been a victim of crime himself. Police track him down, in part because he calls and confesses what happened to a friend.

Get more information and photos on our website, theletterpodcast.com.

Researched and reported by Amy Donaldson

Written by Amy Donaldson and Andrea Smardon

Production and sound design by Andrea Smardon

Mixing by Trent Sell

Special thanks to Nina Earnest, Becky Bruce, KellieAnn Halvorsen, Ryan Meeks, Ben Kuebrich, Josh Tilton and Dave Cawley.

Main musical score composed by Allison Leyton Brown.

With KSL Podcasts Executive Producer Sheryl Worsley.

For Lemonada Media, Executive Producers Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs.

And Executive Producers Paul Anderson and Nick Panella with WorkHouse Media.

The Letter is produced by KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media in association with WorkHouse Media.

Surviving a barrage of bullets is just the start of what Yvette Rodier will have to do to reclaim her life. The emotional damage will take far longer to heal than the physical bullet wounds. She gets married, has a child and chooses a career that allows her to use her past to help others.

Despite the looming shadow of the shooting, her life is one of beauty and generosity; of resilience and hope.

Get more information and photos on our website, theletterpodcast.com.

Researched and reported by Amy Donaldson

Written by Amy Donaldson and Andrea Smardon

Production and sound design by Andrea Smardon

Mixing by Trent Sell

Special thanks to Nina Earnest, Becky Bruce, KellieAnn Halvorsen, Ryan Meeks, Ben Kuebrich, Josh Tilton and Dave Cawley.

Main musical score composed by Allison Leyton Brown.

With KSL Podcasts Executive Producer Sheryl Worsley.

For Lemonada Media, Executive Producers Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs.

And Executive Producers Paul Anderson and Nick Panella with WorkHouse Media.

The Letter is produced by KSL Podcasts and Lemonada Media in association with WorkHouse Media.

Sponsors:
The Letter is sponsored by Hunt a Killer, immersive mystery games where you get to be the detective. Get $10 off at huntakiller.com/theletter with code THELETTER.
For a full list of current sponsors and discount codes for this and all other Lemonada series, you can visit lemonadamedia.com/sponsors
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Sy Snarr, Monica, Marc Moffett, Keith Stevens, Amy Donaldson, Andy Slavitt, Adam Conover, Evan, Tom, Jim Potter

Amy Donaldson  01:22

This episode includes descriptions of gun violence and suicide. Please take care when listening.

Amy Donaldson  01:53

Keith Stevens was a homicide detective on duty for the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office when this call came in. It was around 10:20PM, August 28th 1996. He was driving his unmarked patrol car along a road that snakes across the base of the Wasatch Mountains. To the west are the lights of the Salt Lake Valley of community laid out in an orderly grid system. To the east loomed the wild of the Wasatch with Canyon scenes illuminated only by the light of a full moon. It was about a 10 minute drive to little Dale reservoir. As he arrived, he saw in his headlights a grim scene. Paramedics were working on a badly injured young woman. 18 year old Yvette Rodier. He parked on the shoulder of the road and got out of his car. He heard a vet telling rescue workers that her friend had been shot down the hill closer to the water. Detective Stevens made his way past the frantic scene through the dirt parking lot and down the paved path, where he found the lifeless body of Zachary Snarr.

Keith Stevens  03:08

Go down to find an individual that his deceased blood covered with a lot of personal items around a camera, tripod. blanket.

Amy Donaldson  03:27

Echo. That’s the police code for a fatality.

Keith Stevens  03:32

He was already in the throes of being dead for a little while. So he’s very cold very stiff.

Amy Donaldson  03:41

Keith called for the medical examiner while paramedics loaded event into a helicopter. Police attention shifted to the suspect. Their first clues were missing Bronco and an abandoned white truck.

Keith Stevens  04:23

We knew that Zachary’s vehicle was gone and there was a vehicle left there was a vehicle registration there that provided us with a name, address. So immediately people were dispatched from the scene without having any real information other than we have two people that have been shot. So it’s inherent that you better be careful when you’re starting to follow up this information. The individual’s obviously armed and dangerous.

Amy Donaldson  05:05

From KSL podcasts. I’m Amy Donaldson. And this is THE LETTER, Episode Three, A Gun and a Death Wish. When police check the registration of the pickup truck that was abandoned in the little Dale parking lot, and they learned it belonged to a 19 year old man named Jorge Benvenuto. By 2:20AM, Detective Bob Rasky was talking to his older sister, Monica in her apartment on the west side of Salt Lake City. Monica began by telling police her brother had been staying with her for the last week. She said he planned to move out of state in the next few days and that he had recently purchased a gun. Earlier that night she returned home to find her building manager and police trying to enter her apartment. after reports of a gunshot from inside. She showed detectives a bullet hole in the wall above her sink. Her brother, however, was gone. She had no idea what happened. But buying that handgun she told them, had prompted new and concerning comments from her brother. Why would a 19 year old with no criminal history shoot to people he didn’t know? The answer would prove to be elusive for everyone involved. Even those who knew and loved George Benvenuto. Monica tried to explain to a TV reporter that her brother’s decision to buy a gun was prompted by a theft. Overnight, this became the story. A man who just wanted to see what it felt like to kill someone. Anyone, Journalists quickly labeled it a thrill kill. As police chased every lead in those first few hours, a narrative took shape. And it would shock everyone involved. Months after the shooting, Detective Stephens talked with some of those who knew George, but they could only provide pieces of why he shot to strangers.

Keith Stevens  07:58

Hey, I want to talk to you a little bit about  you have. Towards the end of summer, middle of summer, an individual named George Benvenuto. Do you recognize the name? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Amy Donaldson  08:14

Tom Watson lived in the same apartment complex where George lived earlier that summer.

Keith Stevens  08:20

How did you first become acquainted with Mr. Benvenuto.

Amy Donaldson  08:24

Tom said he and his wife only really got to know George, after his apartment had been burglarized in that last week of July.

Tom  08:31

And he asked us if we had seen anybody that looks suspicious that may have broken his apartment. He said his apartment had been broken to that night. And we told him no. And about an hour later, he came back at the apartment and was telling us what all supposedly had been stolen.

Keith Stevens  08:52

Did you at a time then begin? For lack of a better term a friendly relationship with Mr. Benvenuto? 

Tom  09:00

I would say so. Yes. 

Keith Stevens  09:02

Okay. Describe that for me.

Tom  09:05

He started coming up to our house. We thought it was kind of weird because he never brought a friend or anything with him. But he would sit for three or four or five hours at a time. And I didn’t have friends of his own. My wife even asked him if he had a girlfriend and he said well, he had one in New York, but he didn’t have one here.

Amy Donaldson  09:25

George had only moved to Utah from New York in the fall of 1995. for about nine months, he lived with his brother Pablo in Provo. But once Pablo got married, George moved in with his sister in Salt Lake City. When Monica moved to a new place in mid-July, her brother stayed in the apartment they’d shared for a few weeks after she left. That’s when he befriended Tom.

Tom  09:46

He came to our house quite regular; I would say three to four times a week. This was in a period of a month, and he got to know us pretty well.

Keith Stevens  09:57

During these visits to your home, did you describe how he felt about having someone break into his apartment.

Tom  10:06

Yes, he said he was very angry. He thought that man that lived all the way to the end of the hall where he lived. On the left hand side, he thought that he had broke into his house and he said, if he had had the gun that he ordered at that time, he said, I’d go down and shoot him and he same very stir.

Amy Donaldson  10:30

Monica said her brother was very upset by the break in and his response was centered on buying a gun.

Monica  10:37

Somebody broke into the apartment is told a lot of times this happened, somebody broke in and took all his tools. He had a TV, all this stuff he says, so he was really upset about that.

Amy Donaldson  10:54

At just 19 years old, George was too young to legally buy a gun for himself. But police learned from Monica that he got some help. He had befriended an older coworker at the car dealership where he worked. His name was Evan Smith, and he already owned a pistol and a revolver. That summer, Evan told police he took George shooting with him in the desert, west of Salt Lake City.

Tom  11:17

So we went out to some public land, Southwest desert just went and shot some bottles and cans or whatever was out there. People take out microwaves, barrels and things to shoot out. So we did that, close to the end of July.

Amy Donaldson  11:41

Evan said George had an idea about the kind of gun that he wanted for himself.

Tom  11:45

He had mentioned he was looking at some pistols and how he liked four. And I thought it was just he’d been watching too many Dirty Harry movies or so. You know, as he liked it as big as loud, a big bullet.

Amy Donaldson  12:08

Next weekend, they went together to a retail shop where you could try out guns in the basement. They chose the kind of revolver that George was interested in and shot 50 rounds.

Tom  12:19

And he just fell in love with that right there.

Amy Donaldson  12:23

On that trip, George decided he wanted a cold Anaconda 44 Magnum with a six inch barrel. But since he was under 21, he needed help acquiring it.

Tom  12:34

So we talked about it for a while and he finally convinced me to buy the gun for him.

Amy Donaldson  12:41

Evan said he put the gun on layaway, but George made the payments. Unlike other forms of credit, layaway doesn’t allow a person to take possession of the items until it’s completely paid off. Evan said George paid the 450 owed in just a couple of weeks. The informal agreement was that they share the gun.

Tom  13:01

And I don’t know if you know I was just the gullible one. You know the one person that he found that would actually do it for him or what but I guess at the time, it seemed like an okay thing to do. And I think about it is pretty stupid.

Amy Donaldson  13:22

Evan said George seemed pretty responsible when they went out shooting together. He tried to teach him some gun safety.

Tom  13:29

Don’t seem like you’d ever shot a gun.

Amy Donaldson  13:32

They picked up the gun on a Saturday and immediately took it out target shooting.

Keith Stevens  13:36

Would there be a location out there or a specific item that you shot? That if we went out there with recover a slug? Do you think that’d be possible.

Tom  13:47

Actually, believe it or not, I have a stump of wood in my garage that has a slug. That particular pistol.

Amy Donaldson  13:57

Evan explained that they were testing the power of the Magnum with the Hydra shock bullets. That’s the type of ammunition commonly used in self-defense because it’s designed for deeper penetration and expansion when fired. In other words, hydrogen bullets were popular because they neutralized in a threat. They found a lien to structure and George tried to shoot a piece of wood off of it.

Tom  14:21

We got a piece of it off and in the piece of wood that we got off was one of the slugs.

Amy Donaldson  14:27

Evans said they threw the piece of wood in the back of the truck and took it home because George wanted to show it to people.

Keith Stevens  14:37

Do you ever express while you were out there blowing things up that he wanted to see what it would be like shoot someone, human being, that ever come out? Or you know, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth but similar to wonder what this would do.

Amy Donaldson  14:56

Everyone remember the moment when George attempted to fire the gun at a rock at close range, something he felt was reckless.

Tom  15:02

I turned around and there he is two feet away from this rock, pulling the trigger. So I thought it was gonna, you know, came up. Well, it didn’t do anything and it pretty much shattered the rock. And he came back and says, Wow, what was cool, this is stupid, crunchy and a rock like that. That’s […] You said, do that to rock I wonder what to […].

Amy Donaldson  15:31

Evan can’t quite remember exactly what he said in response to this question. But Keith asks, you’re pretty sure you had that conversation. And Evan confirms.

Tom  15:43

Well, yeah, he says, he said, kind of that, you know, I wonder what this would do to a person? And I says, Well, I don’t want to wrap it find out or something like that, you know, I honestly never really thought he would use it to shoot a person. I don’t think anybody was the type of person to do that. You know, maybe that’s a serious character misjudgment on my part.

Amy Donaldson  16:24

One of the first people George showed the gun to was his neighbor, Tom Watson. Tom, remember George bringing it to his apartment the same day, he first took a target shooting.

Tom  16:34

It was fully loaded at the time, we didn’t know. And he was playing with it’s been in the chamber with just like he was obsessed with it. He couldn’t keep his hands off. 

Keith Stevens  16:43

Where did he keep the gun? 

Tom  16:45

In his waistband of his pants and carried it with him religiously?

Keith Stevens  16:51

Did you have conversation or speak to him the week of this incident, the August 28 incident where we’re investigating him for the shooting of the two kids at the canyon.

Tom  17:04

Yes. Monday, the 26th of August, he came to our apartment, he was at approximately two hours. And during that time, he told us, he patted his side. And he said you know what? He said, I’m gonna have to take this guy. And I’m gonna have to go out and shoot somebody. He says I really want to see what it’ll do to him. And he said, shoot targets is not fun anymore. And this was on a Monday.

Keith Stevens  17:36

Okay, when he was talking about that, did you have any realization that he was serious about what he was talking about? 

Tom  17:44

We thought it was all a joke. We just told him we shouldn’t go out and shoot somebody and you spend the rest of your life in jail. He says, Oh, I’m not worried about that. They’ll never take me alive anyway.

Amy Donaldson  18:04

That was the last time that Tom saw George in person. After the break, George disappears with the gun.

Andy Slavitt  18:15

George’s coworker Evan said that the weekend of target shooting would be the last time they would spend together. George had been talking about moving to Las Vegas. So Evan wasn’t surprised when George came in the Monday before the shooting and quit his job. He said he’d be leaving by the end of the week. But the next morning, Evan had George fired.

Evan  19:34

I came back to the command counter and his stuff was gone. And he was caught. And I guess it was destruction of property that broken or destroyed some property. And I guess it was the final straw or so.

Amy Donaldson  19:53

Evan didn’t know exactly why George was fired. He told police in an interview that George occasionally did irresponsible thing. It’s like driving the dealership cars too fast. But overall, he seemed like a good worker. 

Adam Conover  20:06

[…] As an employee because he was. He was quick. He was a hard worker. And he was smart. He knew how to get things done. You seem to know how the parts work really well, right off the bat, are kind of sorry to see him go. 

Keith Stevens  20:20

Did he seem to be mentally ill? In your opinion?

Evan  20:24

George told Evan, that his parents had problems and had been through a divorce. George confided that he wasn’t getting along well with his sister. But Evan admitted he didn’t really know the details.

Evan  21:04

I never knew the full story on anything that I really didn’t ask. Personally, but there was nothing that really alarmed you. Nothing that really stood out to me. No red flags, just kind of the average guy. You know? 

Keith Stevens  21:26

Anything else you can think of? About your relationship with George, I haven’t asked you. 

Evan  21:33

Well, the last week or so, there before he left. He seemed to be finalizing everything. He closed his bank account. He closed out his apartment.

Amy Donaldson  21:50

Evan said George begins selling or giving away all of his things. 

Evan  21:54

He was selling all this stuff, gave everything that he had to his sister and tried to sell his truck. 

Keith Stevens  22:04

Did he expressed to you an ideation to kill himself. 

Evan  22:12

Never seemed like he was suicidal. I mean, he showed some of the traits we don’t get rid of everything we have. 

Keith Stevens  22:26

Did he seem to be depressed a lot? 

Evan  22:30

Seem to be angry a lot. It’s kind of worried me because I just got up and gotten and then all of a sudden he’s angry all the time. He just felt that there was some time that he just kind of had a different personality. And kind of were you for a while there because not only because now he was our but because he was leaving. And he was a kind of had it set in his mind that he was gone. And he was going to burn all his bridges to the ground before he left.

Amy Donaldson  23:20

Tom and his wife were in bed watching the news. The night of August 28 1996. The phone rang, but they let their answering machine pick it up. Then they heard George’s voice.

Tom  23:32

We picked up on the call because he said it was very important that he had done something.

Keith Stevens  23:38

So you’re in your house, the telephone rings, you just let the machine pick it up. And you can hear the caller’s voice on the other end of the phone asking you to pick up the phone. 

Tom  23:50

Yes. And my wife picked up the call.

Amy Donaldson  23:52

But once George started talking, she handed the phone to Tom.

Tom  23:57

Tom, he said I’ve really done something stupid. That’s it. What do you mean? He said, I’ve killed two people. At the time he thought both two people were dead. And I said, what do you mean you kill two people? And it really shocked me. My wife said all the color green out of my face and everything. And I said George, you did what? He said. Well, you’ll see it on the news shortly. He said if you’re watching the news, he said he’ll definitely be on the news. He says I killed him up at Dell reservoir.

Amy Donaldson  24:28

George asked Tom to meet him near the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. He gave an address about 16 miles south of Georgia Department just off the freeway. Tom told George he couldn’t meet him until 9AM Because he had company,

Tom  24:42

And he says I think you’re falling […] so I’m gonna hang up out, he just hung up.

Amy Donaldson  24:48

After George hung up, Tom called police. At this point, detectives were spread out working many different leads in the case. Some were still up at little Dale some waited at his apartment, while others talked with his sister. Dispatch put up the word that Tom had talked to George. At this point, dispatchers alerted all law enforcement agencies in the valley, who they were looking for, and what they thought he was driving. An hour later 1:10AM, officers found the abandoned Bronco in the parking lot of a car dealership in the area where George asked Tom to meet him. An officer felt the hood of the vehicle and realized it was still warm, indicating it hadn’t been parked very long. canine units were sent to the area where they tried to track down George. But they found nothing. The next day at 9am police went to the location where Tom had told George they’d meet. They waited an hour, no one showed up. About 10PM, that night, August 29. George called Tom again. He told him that he’d walked to a gas station in American Fork, a city another 16 miles south from where the Bronco was found, and that he needed money. Meanwhile, someone called police to report a suspicious person outside the gas station. And local police responded to question the man once they learned who he was the notified Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office. It was Keith’s boss Sergeant Jerry Townson, who drove to the police station, where he found a thin young man wearing shorts his legs covered in dust from his long walk. Townsend put George Benvenuto in handcuffs and led him to an unmarked police car. After the break, the police questioned George. From the passenger seat of Townsend’s unmarked police car, George asked how long did it take you guys to find the people I shot. The sergeant who passed away in 2018 detailed the conversation they had during the 30 minute car ride in a police report. Townsend said he told George that Yvette had climbed to the road and summon help almost right away. You mean the girl isn’t dead? George asked. And when told that she was in the hospital, George responded with shock. I can’t believe she’s not dead. He reportedly said, I wish she would have died, so she didn’t have to suffer. Then George asked if he thought he’d get the death penalty for what he’d done. George said he wanted to die, and that he’d wanted to die for quite some time, but that he didn’t have the guts to do it. Sergeant Townsend took George to an office at the Salt Lake County Justice Center, where Keith Stevens and another detective Chris […] waited for him. dressed in a white t shirt and blue basketball shorts. George sat at a table facing a camera that recorded the 15 minute interview. The shirt is large and hangs on his thin frame and his hands are cuffed to a chain that in circles his waist. It causes him to lean forward slightly. Behind him is a large blank whiteboard with erasers. It looks more like a small classroom than a place where one might interrogate a murder suspect. Detective Keith Stevens started by telling him that this would be his only opportunity to speak for himself. George mumbled he didn’t care what other people thought. Detective Stevens acknowledged that, but then said he had to read something to him. It was his Miranda rights. He quickly let George know that he had the right to remain silent. That anything he said could be used against him and that he had the right to an attorney. But almost before detective Stevens can finish, George started confessing. Sometimes it’s hard to understand what George is saying in this audio. So I’ll try to clarify it. In these first few minutes. He repeats it he had never had the desire to kill anybody but himself. 

Keith Stevens  29:50

It’s just something boiled up inside of you? […]

Amy Donaldson  30:07

When asked what it is that he’d been feeling that led to him wanting to end his own life. He said, I’m basically just tired of living.

Keith Stevens  30:15

When you were up there, will you actually look up for somebody that they just come across to you? And then that’s what triggered you to do this?

Amy Donaldson  30:23

I wasn’t looking for anybody, George said. I was driving around listening to the radio, saying, I could muster enough nerve to do me and so that. And when detective Stevens asked if murder was a way he could get the state and his life, he basically said.

Keith Stevens  30:50

You figured that this would be a mechanism that would help you. So you wouldn’t have to?

Amy Donaldson  31:01

In a way. Maybe I’m just too chicken to do it myself.

Keith Stevens  31:07

Do you remember shooting those two people?

Amy Donaldson  31:11

I remember George said, I stood there and watched and said, okay, wait a minute. Can we rewind and do it a little bit differently? Detective Stevens interrupts him.

Keith Stevens  31:23

You didn’t like it the way it turned out. […]

Amy Donaldson  31:30

It’s going to sound stupid to say I didn’t mean to pump eight rounds into a couple of kids taking pictures. That’s what he tells detective Stevens. And then he adds, I didn’t really mean to do it. But it happened. You know? I don’t know what came over me. This girl must be going through hell. He said. That’s why he reloaded to end her suffering.

Keith Stevens  32:08

Did she at one point, stop screaming?

Amy Donaldson  32:11

And then he tells the tech to Stevens. He doesn’t want to spend his life behind bars. He wants the death penalty. George repeatedly asked for the death penalty. I deserve it. He said. He looked at the two detectives in the room. You both know I deserve it. If I had to do over again, I wouldn’t do it like that. George said. I’d leave them alone, let them live their life and just take mine. Detective Stevens got his confession, but he didn’t get any satisfying answers as to why George shot to strangers instead of himself. When Sergeant Jim Potter the spokesman for the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office addressed reporters the day after the arrest. He didn’t share any of the details from the police interview.

Jim Potter  33:14

He says he was there he says that he did this, and he showed no remorse for that.

Amy Donaldson  33:24

The public, including the Snarr’s, and Yvette and her family would never see or hear that interview where George made his confession. Police rarely share recordings of interviews with anyone outside the investigation, except prosecutors and defense attorneys. But that meant they never got to judge his explanation for themselves. And because he never spoke to the media or in court. They never heard from George about why he was wandering in the mountains with a gun. Within a week of his arrest, George was assigned a team from the Salt Lake County legal Defender’s Office to represent him in court. on that team was Marc Moffett. Then a young lawyer. In 1996, Mark represented people who couldn’t afford to hire an attorney on their own. Now, he’s a founding member of his own law firm in a one storey building on a busy street in the northwest end of Salt Lake City. After more than two decades of defense work, representing hundreds of people, George Benvenuto, his case is one that stuck with him. What stands out to him all these years later, is how much he didn’t know about George.

Marc Moffett  34:44

Let me just tell you this. I mean, the passage of time can erode memories and the one thing I remember is how little we knew.

Amy Donaldson  34:52

Mark knew that his client was born in Paraguay, ruled by a repressive authoritarian regime at the time. He had moved to New York when he was eight with his mother, escaping some sort of domestic violence situation. But when Mark tried to talk to George in jail, he shared very little information.

Marc Moffett  35:09

At the time that we represented George, he was very, very young, incredibly depressed, incredibly suspicious, I’m not sure if he trusted us, he was freaked out in a system that he didn’t know, in a system he didn’t trust in a place that was not his own. He was in very, very many ways lost.

Amy Donaldson  35:38

Marc didn’t know the details of George’s life. But even as an overworked public defender, he could tell the story that had taken shape in the public eye, that he was a cold blooded killer, who just wanted to watch someone die. That didn’t square with the distraught young man that he’d been assigned to represent.

Marc Moffett  35:55

People were saying that this was just Mr. Benvenuto, going up to get the thrill of killing somebody. That was never true.

Amy Donaldson  36:03

The family didn’t share a lot of details with George’s attorneys. But clearly, there was some deeply rooted trauma. And it extended all the way back to the earliest years of his childhood. A psychological evaluation confirmed that George was depressed and suicidal, not just at the time of the shooting. But for much of his adolescence, he felt isolated, angry, like an outcast.

Marc Moffett  36:27

When you look at what he then did, when he went up into the mountains, his description of that is kind of chilling, and in many ways, he went there with the intent to kill himself and couldn’t do it. He tried to take his life he had the gun in his mouth, he held the gun to his head, he sort of walked around in this trail system up around the top of immigration Canyon. And then that and Zachary had the misfortune of encountering him, while he was in this, this horrific state where he’s suicidal, he’s angry at himself. He’s angry at the world. He’s been attempting to take his own life, and then he lashes out in this horrific sort of way. This was not a situation where he was going up to use his gun to see what it was like to kill somebody. He had his gun with him because he was going to kill himself.

Amy Donaldson  37:34

Instead, he killed a young man he’d never met, and he nearly killed a young woman, who now faced a long, painful road to recovery.

Amy Donaldson  37:47

Marc still had many questions about his client and what led up to this terrible crime, a mystery that he would attempt to unpack years later. But back then, George was unwilling or unable to provide answers or insight. While Mark didn’t believe it was a thrill kill. That was the way police the public and the victim’s families made sense of it. And even if people agreed with marks view, would it change anything? For a family who’d lost a son and a wounded woman whose life was forever altered by trauma? Did it really matter? Why.

Amy Donaldson  38:33

Many people thought George deserve the death penalty for his crimes. And George was one of them. Marc and the defense team found themselves in a fight. Their client didn’t really want to win. Next time on THE LETTER. 

Sy Snarr  38:57

Kill him. I actually said that, because I thought he deserves to die. I wanted him to die.

CREDITS  39:17

THE LETTER is researched and reported by me, Amy Donaldson. It’s written by myself and Andrea Smardon, who is also responsible for Production and Sound Design. Mixing by Trent Sell. Special thanks to Nina Earnest, Becky Bruce, KellieAnn Halvorsen, Ryan Meeks, Ben Kuebrich, Josh Tilton and Dave Cawley. Main musical score composed by Allison Leyton Brown with KSL Podcasts Executive Producer Sheryl Worsley. For Lemonada Media, Executive Producers Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs And Executive Producers Paul Anderson and Nick Panella with WorkHouse Media. If you’d like our show, please give us a rating and review. It helps people find us follow us at the letterpodcast.com and on social at @theletterpodcast. The letter is produced by KSL podcasts and Lemonada Media in association with Workhouse Media.