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- [00:00]
Jeff
Folks, welcome back to another episode today. I've got quite an interesting story here and human being. I want you to meet John McPhee. He's a retired FBI agent and he's going to talk about a story that is, that has never been told out on the Internet before. And I know the reaction from most is going to be why would you want to tell a story that's one of the most gruesome examples of human depravity that the agency's ever seen? Jeff, why, why do you want to show this? Why do you want to tell this story? I like telling this story and my heart's really behind this because the guy that you're going to meet, the perpetrator here that you're going to hear about, can live amongst any one of us right now at any time. It's not that this guy looks so much different or carries a sign around that says, here I am, I'm the bad guy. And I think if, if any one of us listening or watching this can pick up a nugget just enough to say, I thought it was really weird or I think things are really weird with something that this guy's doing or my neighbor or my coach for one of my kids, maybe I am on to something. And that's, that's the heart behind this. So, John, I want to say thank you for taking the time here today. This is going to be a very challenging episode to get to, to get through for most. I got the goosebumps again now because I know the story from the pre interview, but it's too important not to. Not, not to tell and not to share. So, John, thanks again. Let's, let's get right into this. Our good friend, our mutual friend Eddie, who's a retired Secret service agent that I worked with in Secret Service, introduced us. He texted me an article. He said, jeff, this is going to be hard to read, but I want you to read this. I think this guy is going to be great for your show. Here you are, John, front seat.
- [02:01]
John McPhee
Thanks.
- [02:01]
Jeff
The stage is yours. Tell, tell me this story. Tell us.
- [02:08]
John McPhee
So in the FBI back in the day, we would have complaint duty and complaint duty was nothing more than, you know, you had to stay in the office that day. And if you had any walk ins with people who, you know, had a complaint or they wanted to file a case, now it's a lot different. There's a call center for the FBI and you call ins, so the agents aren't really physically taking walk in complaints. So going back to 2003 the normal day. And we had a walk in complaint, and in came this woman with her husband at the time. Her name was Jackie Zudis. Z U D I S Jackie was probably in her early. Early to mid-30s at that point. She very nice person. She lived in the community here in Palm Beach County, Florida. She said that she wanted to provide information about her father or a person that she described as her father. And I explained to her, I'm like, okay, so, you know, what do you want to tell us? And she said, well, a long time ago, she says, back in the 70s, my dad was arrested and charged with molesting some of my girlfriends. We had gone to trial, and he was convicted. So after the conviction, the judge had let him out to take care of matters, basically to take care of her through the fact that she was young at the time. And they disappeared and they traveled across the country and basically vanished. He had gotten a new identity. He had changed his name to George Sego from George England. Do I get a battery? Little battery?
- [04:07]
Jeff
Yeah, sure. Grab whatever you need. Got a grab charger or whatever?
- [04:11]
John McPhee
Yeah, I don't know. It's doing that.
- [04:15]
Jeff
I'm. I'm on the edge of my seat and I know the story. Hang on, let me get.
- [04:19]
John McPhee
Let me just read. Let me just read you this. Hold on.
- [04:21]
Jeff
Yeah, for sure. I texted you the name there. Chris Z U D I S. Okay, all right.
- [04:34]
John McPhee
I got power now. Sorry about that.
- [04:35]
Jeff
Okay, good.
- [04:37]
John McPhee
And she said that, you know, they had traveled in 2003. They were living. They had. They were living here in Palm beach county, and she wanted to turn him in. And I explained to her, I said, you know, sure. I said, what? You know, when did this crime happen? And she said, well, 1977. So I told her, I said, wow. I said, that's a long time. I said, you know, I got to see if he's still wanted, you know, and even if he is still wanted, are they going to want to extradite him back to California? So I took all the information, and she stated that she had been through some therapy and this is the reason why she was coming forward. So at that point, I ran his name in the computer, found out that there was an active warrant. So I contacted the Orange County District Attorney's office in California and got connected with a great investigator named Clint McCall. I think it was Clint McCall. I explained to Clinton what the situation was, and he was like, yeah, let me look into it. So after a few months or so, he got back. He said, yep, you know, what we will, we will extradite him. So in the federal system, for the FBI to get involved in a fugitive investigation, there has to be some type of interstate nexus, which basically means is that the person has had to have traveled outside of the state. So that would be for us to investigate. Well, since Mr. England sego had left California and fled, it would give us the opportunity to open a case and to actively look for him. Otherwise I couldn't do it. So if it was something where, let's say the crime occurred in Florida and he fled, but he stayed in the state, I couldn't actively investigate a fugitive. I would have to turn it over to the sheriff or the police. So I opened up an investigation and started looking for him, did background checks, database searches, went to the last known addresses that Jackie had, Douglas. And he basically disappeared. He wasn't around. She hadn't seen him in a few years. They basically had a falling out. She had gotten remarried and moved on with her life. So I took the information she gave us as the new identity and had given that to the Orange County Sheriff's, Orange County District Attorney's Office. They entered that alias into the national database. So if someone was to run his new name, there would be a hit on the old name and they would have to verify. Well, fast forward about a year and a half and George had gone to the State Department to get a passport. At the time, we had actually checked for passports and we didn't see anything. At least the state was telling us, the State Department was telling us that there was nothing in the new name. But I guess he had gone to apply for a passport and that's when the account got flagged. And lo and behold, they found out there was an active warrant. They asked him to come in. Sure. And they came in and arrested him. Which, you know, at the time, hey, this is great. Excellent. You get this guy off the street, you know, he molesting these girls and, you know, justice was served. So I told Jackie and she was very, very happy. You know, George was, was going to go away. So the State Department charged him with a passport fraud. He pled guilty. I think he was given about 18 months, give or take of time.
- [08:30]
Jeff
Okay.
- [08:31]
John McPhee
So at that point, when he finished his federal sentence, he was going to be extradited back to California. So he goes back to California in 2005 and is set to serve out his sentence, which hadn't been imposed yet because, remember, he had fled before the sentencing to, to work out his arrangements or whatever he was going to do. So the judge sends him to 26 years in prison. Everybody's like, this is great. You know, George was in his almost 60s at this point. I think he was, give or take. And, you know, hey, the guy's off the street. He's not going to hurt anybody. So fast forward about two and a half years, and I get called from. From Clint and says that, hey, we got a problem. I said, what? He goes, george is getting out. And I said, why? He said, well, the judge heard in committing his sentence, because the judge sentenced him on today's standards, not 1977 standards. So the 26 years went from down to three years. Well, George had already spent a year and a half in prison or two and a half years in prison, and he was going to get out. So they wanted us to go back and interview Jackie to see if she would do a audio. Video recording of what George did to her and how horrible of a person he is. Because they wanted to get out into the public and let the public know that this guy was being released because they were upset. They didn't want this guy to be. Get to get. So I called Jackie and. And she willingly came in and she sat down and, you know, we got up the old. It wasn't like this where, you know, you could record it. I mean, we had the old camera set up and, you know, taking the whole time, I'm hoping this records, you know, because.
- [10:28]
Jeff
Right.
- [10:29]
John McPhee
You know, so we sit down, and for about the next hour and a half, she told me a story that to this day, I don't think I've ever heard one that can compare. And I don't think I've ever heard one that was more horrific. I think if you did a movie, people wouldn't believe it. And it's just. It's just downright the worst thing you could ever possibly do to another human being. And we produced the video. I said, senator to Orange County. I told Clint. I'm like, look, I said, this is hard to watch. I mean, I don't know if you want to put this out in the public. I mean, it's really hard to watch. So he was due to get out in about a week. And I had talked to my supervisor about it. He was aware of the case, and. And we both came to agreement, like, look, this guy can't get out, but we have to do something now. You know, the FBI is always known for their investigative skills. And, you know, we investigate a case and then arrest. A lot of times in local law enforcement, they don't have that availability where they can take time to put the investigation together and then make the arrest. Sometimes they're making an arrest right away based on their probable cause at the time, and then they have to go back and start filling in the holes in the case. So it's. It's extremely rare, and I would say probably never happens that you would arrest and then investigate in the FBI. So I went to the U.S. attorney's office and I explained the situation to the duty ausa who would have been a prosecutor, and she agreed with me. And she said, let's do this. And I was shocked. I said, but all we've got right now is Jackie's word against his. And we're talking about crimes that had committed more than 30 years ago, you know, and I mean, how are we going to substantiate or verify what she's saying? And she said, let's do this. So we filed a complaint and we charged him with crimes back in the 70s, basically debauchery and moving a minor across state lines with the intent to commit debauchery, which basically for your viewers is that he was moving her across lines to commit these horrible unmoral acts against a child. It wasn't necessarily sexual battery as to what the verbiage was, but, you know, I didn't. When I heard the statute, I was like, I don't know what this is, you know.
- [13:21]
Jeff
Right, prove this.
- [13:23]
John McPhee
So we filed the complaint and it was an uphill battle at that point because, you know, the U.S. attorney's office, supervisors, I guess, weren't too happy with the prosecutor at the time for doing this without getting the evidence ahead of time and conducting interviews and doing things like that. All we're going on is a 45 minute to hour and a half video of somebody making an accusation about their father. And he was extradited back to Florida. And at that point, you know, you have something called speedy trial where a defendant has the right to be brought before a peer, a jury of their peers, or to be brought before a judge to find sentence or conviction or whatever you know, against him. So we were in a scramble to hurry up. The thing that's most amazing about this case, you know, I don't necessarily call it luck, but there had to be somebody overhead looking down. Because when I went back to Jackie and I told her this is what we were going to do, she was apprehensive. She was afraid that she would have to testify, not because she was afraid of George, but because it was such an emotional trauma that she had been going through. She basically was an alcoholic. You know, she went through her days drinking to combat these horrible, horrible things that happened. So I told her, I said, you know, look, I said, even with his arrest, you know, we have a lot of work to do to prove this case.
- [15:10]
Jeff
And.
- [15:10]
John McPhee
And we have to start with you, because you're my source as to finding out what we needed to do. So step number one, of course, was to find the women or the girls or women now who George had molested in 1977. That was the big thing. But do you want me to go into how this thing even started? Yeah.
- [15:39]
Jeff
Oh, yeah.
- [15:41]
John McPhee
Because that's basically what we started, what we started to do to prove this case. But let's go back to her story. So Jackie was born and raised in Vietnam. She thinks she was born in about 1968, in March, give or take. And the only reason she knows this is because George told her her last thoughts were in her village. And her mother telling her that, you need to go with this man. Who is this man? George England? She just remembers seeing him in the town. From what I learned in the investigation is that George was in the Korean War. He was from Wisconsin. He was not married at that time. And he left the Korean War. He had gone back to the Southeast as a contractor to work, doing, you know, all kinds of things. So about 1972, Jackie was about four years of age, and her last known memory is basically leaving her village with this man waving goodbye to her mother. She had never seen her mother again. We, you know, she left. She remembers basically going in a car, in a boat, you know, in a train. You know, she said she was just started traveling, and her first conscious memory was him molesting her that very first night. And that was in 1972. And these crimes of sexual battery and sexual assault occurred to her from the age of 4 up until 18. They did not stop. She remembers going to India and then somehow showing back up in the United States. She doesn't know why her mother would have left her with the man her feelings were. Maybe she, the mother, felt that Jackie could have had a better life because the economy and everything was so bad there. You know, prostitution was rampant. You know, so maybe this is something that her mom felt, oh, I'm going to give her to this very stable American man who's going to take care of her. And Jackie wasn't her given name. She had a Vietnamese name, and. And George gave her the name of Jackie.
- [18:33]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [18:34]
John McPhee
So they moved to California, and she lived in California with George she went to school. She was a very good student. But the sexual assaults continued, you know, right up until, like I said, until she was 18. So during this time, while she lived in California, they lived in various locations. And George had worked out a perverse pre verse. What's the word I'm looking for? Perverted plan to have Jackie lure her girlfriends over to the house. And then, you know, they would have sleepovers and things like that. And George at the time, he was like coming into their room and. And touching the girls while they were sleeping. Eventually it moved more into him touching them while they were awake or in the bathroom and things like this while. Which is what led to one of the parents contacting law enforcement in 1977, coming in. And George was arrested and there was three girls that he was accused of molesting. He took that to trial. He was convicted in trial of the crime. And like I said, he was released after the trial because he had told the judge that he needs to have someone take his daughter, you know, because it was just him and her. So the judge, sure, you know, come back at a certain date and well, you know, that's the ticket to go. So George went to San Francisco. He found a birth certificate and a death certificate of a. Of a person named George Sego, who was about the same age as him, who had died at birth, basically. And you know, back then, you know, basically most identification was just paper. You know, you didn't have your driver's license and have your picture on it, you know, so if you had your birth certificate, you know, and you try to get another document, you could basically walk in and be. And become that person. And that's what they did. They. They became a different, different person. And. And they fled. They moved cross country to Fort Lauderdale and they moved in to a trailer park development just north of Fort Lauderdale. In the early 70s, again, the sexual assaults had continued. He, he. Jackie, you know, Jackie. And I'll state later, but Jackie only knows this man as her father. I mean, she has no really recollection of anything but that, you know, and so in her mind that this is what you did, this is what you did for your father.
- [21:49]
Jeff
Right?
- [21:49]
John McPhee
I mean, he was basically, you know, she was cooking and cleaning and. And. And performing sex acts with him. I mean, she was his wife. And basically that's what later on, you know, through therapy and things like that, she realized that that's basically what it was. So. Gee, so. So getting to the point of then going back. So the thing that that was impressed me the most about Jackie is her recall. You know, you would think that somebody who's been through this type of abuse would try to the best of their ability to put this in the back of the brain, not think about it, not remember details, you know, not want to think about this. And with Jackie, I was so impressed because her recall and memory was phenomenal. And that actually helped us in the investigation go going back and finding people and finding things that we needed to search to prove the case. So when they were living in the trailer park, George had some type of job and. And Jackie was going to school. She was about 11 or 12 years of age when they got there. And they. George's plan of bringing the girlfriends over with her would be she would get her girlfriends to come over and, you know, it's a single wide trailer. So you had a bathroom or a bedroom in the back, you know, a kitchen area, bathroom area, and a little living room in the front. And so the bathroom would be attached to the bedroom. George had drilled a hole in the shower in the bathroom, looked into the bedroom. So what he would do is Jackie would take the girls, her. Her girlfriends, her age, into the bedroom and they would play. And then Jackie, of course, would then get them to have sex because George wanted to watch. So George would sit in the shower. When he turned the shower on, that was Jackie's cue to then make the advance. And then George would sit and assuming, masturbate in the shower, looking through the peephole. And then when the shower was turned off, Jackie could stop. And this happened numerous times with her girlfriends. You know, the girlfriends had no knowledge. They just thought it was some, you know, romantic. Not romantic, but I mean, at 12 and 13, it's, you know, right. Playing doctor or whatever you're doing, you know, it's. It's something that did, you know, and. And experimenting. Unbeknownst to them, they were basically being lured in by, for George's satisfaction, you know. You know, so. So as you move forward here, about 12 or 13, Jackie said they had never used any protection. And she said that at one point she realized that she might be pregnant because she has stopped getting her period. And I'm not really sure I gave the details, I don't remember, but I think this was the first time. So basically I think it gone like three or four months. And she realized, and I think George realized that she was pregnant. She stated that she stayed in school and basically just started wearing oversized clothing so that nobody would tell that she was getting better. And at the time that she was about to give birth, which was at the age of 13. George took her to the local hospital and they checked in. George gave the hospital the information, but he didn't give their. Their fake name. He started a new fake name at the hospital. He used his first name, she used her first name, but they used a different last name. And they gave birth, and they immediately put the baby up for adoption. She. George had told the hospital that, you know, his daughter, you know, did something stupid, and she got pregnant with a boy. And they're not exactly sure what boy it is, and they just want to, you know, give the baby up for adoption. So Jackie had the opportunity after giving birth to hold the baby. She remembered the name that they were. That he was given. It was a boy. And she said she held him for about 15, 20 minutes, and that was it. And she never saw him again. So they come back to the trailer park. They're living in a trailer park for the next few years. Jackie becomes pregnant numerous times. Each time, George would take her to Planned Parenthood or somewhere and basically give her 200 bucks. He'd wait outside, she'd go in, she'd get the abortion. She said she lost count at about 10 abortions, probably by the age of 15. As time had gone on, George's perverse feelings got worse. In Jackie's word, his re. His. His form of contraception was instead of vaginal anal, so he knew she wouldn't get pregnant. Then he got perverse, as in, they would dog sit a neighbor's dog while the guy went out of town or whatever it was, and he was forcing Jackie to have sex with the dog. And then he didn't like the dog because the dog was too small. So he actually picked somebody else who had a larger dog. And presuming, like Jackie said, that had a larger penis for them, that lasted a few times. Every time the guy would go out of town. You know, George was just probably the most perverse person. I mean, you're thinking about this, it's just amazing. It's amazing that Jackie survived this at that point, right? It's amazing that nobody else knew. You know, they kept this hidden. At around the time of 18, Jackie actually got a boyfriend and they started dating. They had moved up to West Palm Beach. They were living in an apartment. Jackie basically ended up marrying this guy who lived three doors down from them. Well, that didn't stop George. I mean, George basically still continued to have sex with her after the marriage because she was living three doors down. He would have her come Back to the house. She would clean and cook for him. She'd still take care of him. Finally, at some point, she cut him off. She's like, that's it. You know, I'm not doing this anymore. And she. She had a baby with the. With this husband. She had never told the husband about what happened. Of course, they got divorced. Jackie moved out, got out of there. So in the early 2000s, when she came to see us, she had met a man. She got married. She did explain to him everything that had happened and what transpired in her life. He was very supportive, got her to go to therapy. She was going to therapy for, I guess, a year or so before she came and confronted us and told us in 2003. Because you remember, in 2003, she never gave any details. All she was saying is that her dad was accused of molesting this. These girls, not her, not anything about her. And, you know, so finally she. She got away and. And, you know, started living her life, which, you know, I. I don't know how the trauma. I mean, her. Her way to deal was. Was to drink. And, you know, it was. It was pretty bad. And, you know, so now we fast forward to us trying to investigate this. We first went back to find the girls that he had molested in 1977. I found all three of them. I spoke with two on the phone initially and explained to them what was going on, what had happened. Both of them described themselves as being best friends with Jackie. Jackie always said that these two girls, two of the three, were her best friends of all time. She. She. She had a lot of support from them. I explained to them that, you know, he had been charged and, you know, they had been informed when he had come back and got out that, you know, he was. He had been captured. So they were extremely curious as to, you know, whatever happened to Jackie. So we knew we had them on board as testimony. But that doesn't help us in the case with Jackie, because at the time, you know, you're talking about a separate crime. And there's something in the courts where when you charge somebody. So let's say you commit a bank robbery, and every time you use a bank robbery, you put a band aid on your nose. And let's say we catch you once committing a bank robbery with a band aid. Well, when you take that person to trial, you're not permitted to bring up their past criminal activity because it could prejudice the jury. Because if the jury thinks that you're a really bad person, they may say, well, look, you know, he did all these bad things before. He must have did this one. And they. So you can't bring up anyone's criminal history. Well, there is an exception to the rule where if you. If you can show to the judge that this crime is so exact, that this person did these crimes and also these crimes and that you can show that it wouldn't prejudice. Prejudice the jury, that you can use that. So the girls would have been used in this as evidence that, look, Jackie and the girl and her girlfriends in Fort Lauderdale were lured into the house for this. And this is what they did back then. So that was something that was clearly something that would have to be argued at a trial where a judge would have to make a ruling.
- [33:33]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [33:34]
John McPhee
Now, to go back, we wanted to find the trailer park. And so Jackie and I started driving around Fort Lauderdale. She knew almost exactly where the trailer park was. We get there, trailer park is still there. She took us right down to the street and we got to this trailer. And she goes, my trailer was right there. And she goes, but that's not the trailer. I mean, you know, you're talking. We're talking almost 25 years at this point. So we went around, she told me the names of some of her girlfriends, like first names, some of them. She didn't remember the last names. So I went to the trailer park office, not believing that they're going to have any information from 1977. I mean, this is just not possible.
- [34:30]
Jeff
Right.
- [34:32]
John McPhee
In fact, I think it's even more. It was, it was. Yeah, yeah. So 77 to about 2007 or 2008, you know. So you're talking 30 some years.
- [34:44]
Jeff
Yes.
- [34:45]
John McPhee
Stellar park manager who happens to be the owner. And I explained to him that, you know, I'm looking for records. And he goes, hold on a second. And he goes back and he pulls out these index cards. This man has owned the trailer for 41 years. He didn't throw anything out. He had records from 41 years cards. So we just started to describe trailers and where they were. And he went back through and he's pulling them out. And there's a handwritten card. You know, here's Sally's name. This is her mom and dad. You know, this is the information I have. You know, here's this trailer. Oh, here's Susie, here's the names. Here's the mom and dad, here's the brother. Oh, they had a dog. You know, here's Jackie's card with her and George. This is a. I was blown away because there's no way we were going to find these people. It was not going to happen. I mean, you know, start. You know, the database is now, you know, basically, you know, you can find out almost anywhere anybody's living. But 1977, you know, nothing's computerized that you're going to find anything. No records, government age. You know, I'm thinking I'm going to have to go to water utilities and electric, but they're not going to have this stuff. Lo and behold, index cards. And so that led me to find the girls. I contacted them, went and interviewed them. The ironic thing was that one of the girls had told me that just prior to me contacting her within the last month, that she had actually looked on Facebook for Jackie, saying, you know, hey, I haven't, you know, because this is. This is talking 2008, 2009, you know, Facebook's just coming into being. And so she said, well, I wonder if I can find Jackie. And thinking Jackie was on there. And lo and behold, I make a phone call a month after. So the girls were extremely cooperative. They confirmed what Jackie was telling us, that they would go to the house. They knew George, and one of them always thought George was kind of creepy because he was looking at her weird. It never made any advances to them. But they confirmed that they had gone into the bedroom with Jackie. They kissed, made out, you know, some of them got naked, they touched each other. And the one girl had commented that every time that they were in there, the George was in the shower. And she thought that was weird, that it was all times of the day, you know. So the things that Jackie's telling us is, is accurate, you know, I mean, it's, you know, you're, you're, you're verifying what she's saying.
- [37:39]
Jeff
Oh, unbelievable.
- [37:41]
John McPhee
So then we went and found the guy with a dog, which was another strange one. There was a house. She showed us where it was. I went back and pulled some records on the house, and I forget it was. There was something that. I remember what it was. It was something in the records, either the ownership, the property deed, or something that linked us to the guy. She only remembered his first name. The property records end up showing that this guy had owned the property. I found him, told him what happened, explained to him, and Jackie even remembered the name of the dog. And when I talked to him about it, he goes, oh, yeah. He says, yeah, I had that dog. And, and Jackie and George would watch him for me. Which again, you know, what's the odds of that that you're you're going to find somebody.
- [38:39]
Jeff
Wow.
- [38:40]
John McPhee
Yeah. So all that's good because that's what Jackie's saying, but you still don't have the evidence to link George to molesting her and having sex with her all these times, all these years, you needed something more to substantiate her story. And that big question is the baby? What happened to the baby? Because if it is George and Jackie's baby, that will prove that George was having sex with her prior to the age of 18. So Jackie remembered the hospital. She remembered the year and the day and the month, just knew the first name of the child. So we had sent subpoenas to the hospital in Fort Lauderdale. Basically, it was a long wait because almost everything was in microfiche. It was stored away. They really couldn't find anything. They're like, we, you know, we're sorry, you know, And I look, I don't know if they were not looking or were looking or really, you know, really cared. I mean, when you come in, you're asking for, you know, stuff that's from the late 70s, you know, how do we know? So what I did, I got with Department of Vital Statistics, and I figured I'm like, let's backdoor this and say instead of going to the hospital, the birth certificates would have had to have been issued. So I went to Vital Statistics and I wanted all the birth certificates that were issued on this day out of Broward county, which is the county that Fort Lauderdale's in. And lo and behold, they sent me, and I was asking for white males. They sent me six birth certificates of people that were born at this hospital that was listed on the birth certificate. One of them was a black male. I think there was one or two. There might have been one female in there they threw in, but then the rest were males. And what I had learned was that when you give a baby up for adoption, there's two birth certificates. There's a birth certificate for the initial, and then there's a birth certificate that's reissued with the new adopted parents being, quote, unquote, the biological parents. Okay, wow. So I had found one, one baby boy who. His name was David in the new one. And so we went back to the hospital and subpoenaed the records based on him. And again, the hospital's like, we don't have any births on him. And I literally went there with them, and I said, look, this is what's. It says it was born here. You know, let's. Let's go to this date. So I actually found a woman there in the records department that was extremely helpful. She did her due diligence. We went through and lo and behold, we find records with. I think it was. I think they had wrote George Johnson and Jackie Johnson with the baby's name was Christian, which lo and behold, that's the name she had given us as being the birth parents. So when I'd gone back to vital statistics and asked, I said, you know, you didn't send me anything on someone named Christian. And so basically we had to subpoena them to give us the old birth certificate, which was Christian Johnson. I think I'm pretty sure it was Johnson. Christian Johnson. And that's when they informed me. They're like, yes, we basically, these aren't given out to the public because these are the adopted ones. So that linked us now to the baby, who at the time, now is 20 some years old, tracked him down, found out that he. He and his parents were living in Fort Lauderdale. I had gone to the house, I remember, you know, it's. How do you knock on the door, come up with this story, the reason why I want to interview your son? I mean, it's just. It's very difficult. And you know, how. How was the adopted parents going to react? You know, what were they going to say? So I went to the house with another agent and David's mother was there. She came to the door, explained her who I was. I gave her the Reader's Digest version on what we were wanted to do. Ironically, David's father was a police officer. So he had come home and we sat down and talked to them about the case and what we needed to do. They had told us that David was living in California. He. He's in the computer business or something. So we flew out to California. We told the parents not to con. Well, we didn't tell them not to contact him, but they were like on the outs a little bit with him. I guess there was a disagreement, the family or something, and they weren't really talking, which was actually a benefit to us because I didn't want them to preempt him before we even got there, you know, so. So we fly out to California and we go to the business. We asked to speak with David. The owner shows up as a little small tech company and you know, he's all worried. He's like, oh. I'm like, look, you know, he's not any trouble. So we go and sit down. He comes into the room and I thought I saw Jackie walking in because I could See Jackie in his face. It was amazing, absolutely amazing. Sits down and I begin to tell him this story about this little girl taken from Vietnam. I don't get the gory details. I go through almost everything. Halfway through it, he stops me. He goes, that's my mom, isn't it? I go, yeah. He goes, what do you want? I said, I want a DNA swab. And he goes, of course. So we swabbed his mouth, we went back, we sent the, the DNA swab off to be tested, and we got a search warrant to get George's DNA. And of course Jackie provided hers and it was a match. So we had the evidence. We, we know now that George impregnated her when she was 13. And David is the offspring of that. It, you know, we sat with him for a few hours and, and it was very emotional. And you know, he, he always wondered about his mom, where she was, who she was. He, he asked about her. He wanted to know if he could meet her. And I told her, well, not right now. We'll wait and see what happens. I mean, it's, you know, so I called Jackie and told her that we met him. She was very excited, very emotional, and I, and I kidded her. I'm like, I said, you should be happy. I said, he looks just like you. Oh, thank God. That was our first question. Does he look like George? I go, no, he looks like you. She goes, good.
- [46:53]
Jeff
Oh, wow. Oh my gosh.
- [46:59]
John McPhee
So, you know, all these things are adding up and it's, it's, it's, you have the pieces of evidence that I think that we can move forward. We, we, we hold the trial in Fort Lauderdale in the early 2010s. We have these girls coming in from California. We have the girls locally coming in. We have the guy that owns the dog, we have David coming in and Jackie, our star witness, because she's the one that's got to tell these stories. And so the first day of trial, we're, we're sitting through the trial and like I explained before, it's called the Williams role, which basically is you're trying to get like type of crimes admitted into trial so not to prejudice the jury. So we were trying to get the US Attorneys were trying to get the permission of the judge to allow us to have the girls from California testify. Well, this ended up being an all day hearing. We were supposed to start on that day. Jackie was being driven down from Palm beach county to Fort Lauderdale for the trial. She gets there, I go out my victim services coordinator who had Brought her down. Said to me, Jackie's. She's. I don't think she's doing well. I'm like, she's upset. And everything goes, yeah, she's just acting kind of weird and stuff. I'm like, well, how. I said, well, said. She just kept taking her medication on the way down. And, you know, she kept, you know, thirsty all the time. She's drinking her water bottle. And I. And I told my victim's corner, I said, she has no medic. What medication are you talking about? Well, come to find out that Jackie's taken Xanax all the way down. Her water bottle was vodka. She was three sheets to the wind. She was incoherent. She. And she's supposed to go on the stand. And I remember going back into the courtroom and telling the prosecutors, I'm like, she can't go on. You cannot put her on. Like, she is gone. And they're like, we're going to start. And their point was to have her start first. Well, thanks to the gods that, you know, the judge went so long with this ruling, which he eventually ruled that we could bring the girls in to inter. To testify. We started the next morning. Well, I had two FBI agents sit with Jackie all night long. They. They monitored what was in the room. They could. She could only eat and drink what they gave her. We searched, you know, we had. We had her two female agents search her to make sure she had nothing, you know, because this was it. I mean, she was the case basically. The other stuff was just going to verify. And she did great. I mean, she came in, you know, juries and I've been in a lot of trials, and you never know what a jury's going to do. You think you have a strong case. You think you have weaknesses, Certain areas where juries may see a weakness somewhere else. You don't know how your witnesses are going to respond. You don't know how your witnesses are going to respond to cross examination. It's difficult, and I think this jury is hard pressed not to believe this, but every one of them had to be affected by this case. And I'll explain at the end what happened too. But I bet you if we end up finding them, this is something that they're never going to forget their whole life.
- [51:02]
Jeff
Ever.
- [51:03]
John McPhee
Never. No, because they heard it in detail from her mouth, you know, so we. We started. Jackie got on the stand. She was on the stand basically for two days. Jackie was probably one of the best witnesses I have ever seen, especially being the victim and being so Traumatized. I mean, she was authentic. She. She cried when she was supposed to cry. She laughed when she should have laughed. She was mad when she should have been mad. She was indecisive when she was indecisive. She was angry when she should have been angry. I mean, she had the. The whole gamut of emotions when they should have been there. And you cannot get witnesses to do that. I mean, it's. It's not something where as many times as you interview them and as many times as you go over the story with them and they go over it with you. You know, it's just like any story, if you keep repeating it enough, it starts to get monotoned, you know, where maybe the emotion is gone. But, you know, we're talking, you know, something that had happened to her for more than half of her life, and she wasn't indifferent, I guess, where the alcohol and everything affected her ability to be emotional. And I think that this helped a lot with the jury, because I'm telling you, there was many times I looked over and I could see tears going down Jura's faces when she's describing, you know, all the sex that she had with him, the incidents, the sex with the dogs, the abortions, the amount of abortions she had, the way he treated her and everything. And we were in trial for, I think, close to five days, something like that. Everybody came in and testified. The girls from California came in, Jackie's girlfriends from Fort Lauderdale, some other people that we had that we found that she made statements about, and we left it up to the jury. And, you know, it's something George didn't. George didn't testify. They basically didn't put up a defense. They tried to argue the DNA, you know, that it wasn't him, but, you know, it was clear and convincing evidence. I mean, how do you. How do you explain anything other than that? So the jury comes back, they have a verdict, and they come in and they start lining up. And I specifically remember there was two women in the. The front closest to us. And as they're walking down, they've got their head down. And, you know, you talk to lawyers and judges, and you always say, well, okay, you know, can you read them as they're coming in? You know, is. You know, are they. Look. Do. Are they not looking at the defendant, you know, because, you know, they found him guilty, or are they looking at the defendant knowing that they just found him innocent? What. What's going on? You know, so they came in and the two women. I remember, you could see that they had been crying. There wasn't tears on their face there, but you could see the puffiness in their eyes. And George had four counts of this debauchery charge. No, I'm sorry, six counts. Each of them consisted of a five year penalty. They found him guilty on all six counts. The emotion that came over all of us was overwhelming. I could see the jury starting to cry. I had tears in my eyes. You know, the prosecutors, it was just, it's overwhelming. And the feeling that you have where you, you take somebody that's done this horrible thing all these lives, all these years and has ruined this life or at least, you know, put this person in. I can't even describe it well, you know, what he's done to her, you know, And Jackie was extremely emotional. And the judge eventually down the line later sentenced him to each count consecutive. So he got 30 years. You know, the judge could have made it five years and made them all concurrent and he would have been out. But the judge made it consecutive. And this was 90 days down the line with sentencing. But I'm getting back to the day of the thing, but, I mean, the viewers know. So we had a surprise for Jackie that day. We had her son there. And it's, you know, it gets, it gets emotional thinking about it. She had not seen David since she held him after she gave birth. And I remember when we came out, it was a. It was a long hallway in the federal courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, and out we came and, and David was there and they were introduced. And it's like, david, Jackie, Jackie, David. And it was such a, a wonderful feeling, just, you know, the ability that you're, you're reuniting them, of course, under a horrible situation, but that, you know, she had the opportunity and she meets him. The kicker to this was I had walked toward the elevator and the jury room was right there. I think I was going down to get a soda or something. And the jury had come out and they were being dismissed. Now, usually in federal court, the judges will not allow the jurors to meet with the victims or talk to them. They kind of just like, okay, you go. If once you're at a building you want to contact, you can. And they just don't want anything. So the two ladies that were sitting in front came up to me and they were like, agent, can we talk to Jackie? Because they'd seen, they see her standing down there. And I said, I said, well, ma'am, I can't authorize that. He said, you're going to find out. And so three or four of them went to the bailiff and said, we want to talk to Jackie. And so the bailiff went in and asked the judge, the judge said yes. It still gets emotional now. They lined up all 12 of them. Each one of them hugged and kissed her. There wasn't a dry eyed house and hugged and kissed her, thanking her for coming forward and being able to do what she did to stop him from ever doing this again. Because I really, truly believe had he gotten out in California back then, he would have been off finding somebody else, he would have left the country, whatever, and, and continue to do this. It's, I've never seen a jury do that ever. And everybody I talk to, I mean, I don't, you know, you just don't see jurors do this, you know, line up. And each one of them hugged and kissed her. Women, the men, there wasn't a dry eye. It was, it was just an amazing, amazing feeling. And you know, Jackie is such a wonderful, wonderful person. She, you know, she had her demons with the alcohol because she was trying to cope with all this stuff. Throughout these years that I had known her, she lived relatively close to me. And so I would actually see her at the supermarket times and things like that. And there was many times she has a new son from the, from that first marriage that he would call me and you know, she would drink herself to unconsciousness. We would, we would take her to the hospital or we get paramedics to take her to the hospital. Jackie would call me saying she wanted to die. You know, this, this was on for years up until the, toward the end of the trial. And I remember one incident that they took her to the hospital and I remember the nurse telling me that her blood alcohol was 0.56. Well, she said, I have never seen someone in here over 0.4 or 5 that wasn't dead. And Jackie was 0.56, which you, you have to consume an unbelievable amount of vodka. And, and Jackie, I mean, she wasn't a little girl. I mean she was probably 56 or 5 7, 160, you know, give or take. But still, the consumption of that much alcohol to get to that is unbelievable. So fast forward about a year and a half after the hearing, the, the trial, I saw Jackie around, she'd still been going to therapy. And I get notified that George died in the, in jail. He had a heart attack. I called Jackie and I, I told her, I said, hey, I have some news. And I told her that George had died and she started crying, and you wonder, well, how, you know, this horrible monster did this stuff to you. How can you cry? I mean, you know, what he did to you. And she stopped herself. And she said to me, you have to understand, he stole my dad. Because she didn't know anything different. Even though the horrible things that happened to her, it was still her only family that she knew, and it was her dad, and he died. And it was traumatic to her. And it's heartbreaking, you know, you think, at least I was thinking that maybe this was closure for her, she could move on. George is gone, and about three weeks later, her son calls me and says they found Jackie dead, basically drank herself to death. They had found a number of vodka bottles empty, and she was dead. And I remember getting that call and thinking, you know, everything that she's been through in her life and this monster is finally gone and she doesn't survive. She dies. And, you know, they say in law enforcement, you shouldn't, you shouldn't take these things personal. But, you know, we're talking been 11 years, I think, since she died. And you can see I'm, it's still emotional to me, yeah, that, you know, I cared about her. She was a friend. She was somebody that I respected for doing what she did and being able to be strong and able to sit in front of, you know, 12 people in a jury box and 20 some people in the audience, judges, attorneys, and tell the most horrific things that could ever happen to somebody, to everybody in an open land, and not think people weren't passing judgment or, or, you know, you know, for years, you know, she always thought, you know, is it something I did or is it something, you know, whatever. I mean, it's, you get those emotions and, you know, it was so hard to hear that she died. I remember, you know, we had talked about taking her back to Vietnam. She knew her village and everything. To go back and see if, you know, maybe she could find a relative, maybe she could find a parent.
- [64:54]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [64:55]
John McPhee
And unfortunately, that never happened. And, you know, she, she just, she was a wonderful person. And I mean, like I said, you know, I, I, we were gonna. I remember at one point she wanted. Dr. Phil had called and wanted to put her on the Dr. Phil Show. And I remember we were getting ready to leave and, and she backed out at the last minute. And I tried to convince her that can't, this can't be an isolated event where somebody had brought somebody from the Southeast into the United States. Like, she can't be the only one, you know, I'm saying, I mean, you know, the big catchphrase today is the human trafficking and people are being brought in across the country all the time for sex and things like that. Yes, well, human trafficking has been going on since the beginning of time. And you can't tell me that there's people in this country, women or even boys too, that weren't brought from the southeast by pedophiles, by people that, that are horrible into this country with that whole intent, you know, they probably kept quiet, they did things. And when we, when Jack and I talked about doing Dr. Phil, you know, one side was he was going to give her a lot of therapy, even though she wasn't therapy. But I explained her, I said, look, you're, you're, you're the promoter of coming out and telling people your story and hoping that other people hear your story and will come forward. Because 30 some 40 some years go by and we still get a prosecution in this case. You know, it's still viable in other cases possibly that, that people can be prosecuted. So it's, you know, and she, eventually, she did not want to do it. She just didn't want to go on the air and do it. And I understood her and I, I totally respect that. But you know, for her, you know, beautiful soul, just a caring person, you know, and somebody that I'll never forget, ever, ever.
- [67:21]
Jeff
What a story. Oh my goodness. Oh, man. This, this has been the first interview I've ever done where my reaction is I need a moment of silence to gather. Yeah, I mean, oh my. So I've got tons of questions and I mean, for, for a jumping off point, like, did you, did you have times going through this case where you hated your job and then what were times where you loved your job?
- [67:56]
John McPhee
No, I, I mean, look, I've never hated my job. I think, I think being an FBI agent is, is one of the best jobs you could ever have, especially in law enforcement. You know, I, I currently am doing cold case homicides for a local police department. And I see the, the, the stop signs, financial and, and, and, and pleasing the council people and all the things that we have to do to get cases prosecuted and to get cases solved and things like that in the FBI. I mean, I never had to worry about that. I mean, the biggest worry I had was, you know, would the U.S. attorney's office think there's enough to move forward? And that's why we would build our cases. You know, it wasn't the exception. This was the exception to the rule. I mean, I Had a prosecutor who put her career out online to okay an affidavit. I wrote a two page probable cause affidavit, two pages of he said, she said, that's it. And you know, the judge signed it and we got a warrant and you know, we scrambled for six months to a year before we went to trial to prove the, to prove it, you know. And I don't think, you know, in any case I've ever had, I mean, I don't ever hate my job. I always felt with Jackie's case that we were doing society justice, but more we were doing Jackie justice. That yeah, needed this to be resolved and you know, like I just said earlier, tearing up. But I mean, you know, as much as you get these cases, there's always personal. You're human. You have to be per. If you can't be upset about what this guy did or you can't be upset or the emotion, you're in the wrong business because then you've got no feeling for people and no empathy. And you know, you have to feel that way. Now I, I perfectly understand in big cities that, you know, detectives are going to homicide after homicide after homicide and they start becoming a, a norm. Yes, your empathy may go down, but I never had that feeling because, you know, I, I had cases that, you know, it wasn't going to sexual assault case after sexual assault case. 3,000 of them, you know. Yeah, I mean, a few that I investigated. But just any other cases, even homicides, you know, where you, you, I think it's being personal. You have some, a little more, I guess, strength to push forward, knowing that you want to put this person in jail who committed this crime and that's what you're doing. And Jackie needed that and George did not need to be doing this. There was one thing, and we had talked about this in the pre interview. I had interviewed Jackie, I had interviewed George's family members. They were all in Wisconsin and they didn't know anything about anything. I mean they knew about Jackie. And George was, was, was unmarried when he got Jackie. The thing that's interesting was I found that George was married prior to getting Jackie and had two boys. And this statement is one of the most bizarre and it also goes toward what George wanted. I had found his wife, his ex wife. They were married in the early 60s prior to getting Jackie. They had two boys. And I, when I interviewed the wife, I told her what we were doing and she made the statement that, you know, George was never around for her kids. Like he just wasn't there, in fact she said that I don't remember if it was the, I think it was the second boy, but he didn't even show up for the birth. And basically she said to me that when the first boy was born he was upset it wasn't a girl. Which now looking back in hindsight, thank God he didn't have a girl, you know, because that statement to me means is that he would have done that to them. And you know, they, they eventually got divorced. They, they weren't together for very long. Basically he didn't have really much contact with the boys. And I interviewed the family, his sisters and stuff, all living up in Wisconsin. And I remember a picture that the one of the sisters sent me and I always referred back to Sesame street and there was always a skit in Sesame Street. One of these things is not like the other. What you know, and they would show you pictures for little kids and one item was different and it's a, it's a small five by seven picture. It's a family picnic for George's family and they'd have these each year. And Jackie remembers going back to these family picnics and how much fun they were and everything. And forgive me for people from Wisconsin, but it was a stereotype. You have these larger people, I would say, who has not seen the sun in a long time standing by a picnic table. They're all set up, there's like maybe 12 to 15 people. You're talking 1970s. So the women's dresses were a little flowery and very large and you know, the hairdos and the rimmed glasses, the horn rimmed glasses, you know, starting from left side of the picture and you're seeing a husband and wife and a kid and a sister and another husband and wife. And it's almost like we're just duplicating. And then you get to the right side and you see George and then you see this brown skinned little girl sitting on his lap. She's the only child in the picture that's sitting on someone's lap. And it's totally doesn't look like it should be like you're looking at this picture going what's wrong with this picture? George is there with his family. How does he explain he just shows up with a four year old daughter from Vietnam out of the blue, with no wife, no nothing. And I remember interviewing one of the sisters and she basically kind of put it off where basically like, well, you know, we just thought he was doing a good thing, that he, you know, he was Helping this family with their daughter. But when you looked at the picture, it was just, you know, everybody's milky white, big Johnson people, and there you have this tiny little darker skinned Asian girl sitting on his lap and you're just thinking to yourself, wow, how. No, nobody questioned this. Like, nobody.
- [76:24]
Jeff
What was the story? What was he saying about it? How did he explain it?
- [76:28]
John McPhee
Basically, that, that she was, she had problems and, and something with, you know, helping her and, and he would just give like numerous things of how he came up with her. You know, we, we. The weird thing too is we had never found how she got into the country because we found no state department records. You know, we know she came in sometime around 72 to 74. Jackie really didn't know her birthday. I mean, she was. Her birthday was what he told her.
- [77:02]
Jeff
Right.
- [77:03]
John McPhee
You know, she, she knew her age, but she was never really sure of the month. But, you know, there was never any record coming in. So, I mean, who knows? In 1972, I mean, do you show up at an airport in the United States and you're a grown man with a, an Asian girl and they just wave you through? I mean, I don't know. I mean, what, what, you know, did, was there fake ID or did she get something fake? It's a possibility.
- [77:26]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [77:27]
John McPhee
Just not recorded and stuff. But we did have, we did have records of him coming in, but nothing of her.
- [77:36]
Jeff
So the original birth mom is back in Vietnam. Did she ever show up at all through anything?
- [77:45]
John McPhee
No.
- [77:45]
Jeff
We give away her child to a guy.
- [77:47]
John McPhee
Yes. Right.
- [77:48]
Jeff
And then she's out forever. You never heard from her?
- [77:51]
John McPhee
Never heard from her. I mean, Jackie knew her name. He. She knew the village she lived, they lived in. And really the plan was to go back after the trial. And I had even mentioned it to her during the trial. I'm like, do you want to go find your mom? She's like, yeah, I'd really like to. And I told her, I said, look, I'll go. Like, we'll, we'll hook it up. We'll, we'll get our liaison and we'll, we'll try to find her. I mean, I, you know, it would have been a great ending to the, I mean, it would have been something, you know, who knows if the mom was even alive or. But, you know, she remembers there was. I think she said she had one sibling. I think it was one sibling, but it was a small town. So I mean, I'm assuming we would have went back there and everybody would have known, you know. Oh yeah, we Know this person or we know that person and maybe helpful. But yeah, it never happened, unfortunately.
- [78:45]
Jeff
So you shared where the, where the hospital did not do any kind of DNA testing back when there was. And that's for understood reasons. That was many, many years ago, right. When you went back to look for records. Is that something that's typical in hospitals now?
- [79:04]
John McPhee
I don't know. I mean. Oh, that's a good question. I mean, look, I think if a 13 year old girl walks into a hospital with her father, right. DCS is knocking on the door. Right?
- [79:17]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [79:17]
John McPhee
Back then, Jackie just remembers her dad telling the nurses or whoever it was that, oh, you know, she went to a party, she's not sure who she had sex with. You know, we, we didn't realize. Jackie didn't realize. And she got pregnant and it was too late.
- [79:35]
Jeff
Right.
- [79:36]
John McPhee
And the hospital is like, okay, and the paperwork, everything. And you know, we're going to give the baby up for adoption. And I mean, I don't know if it's, you know, who knows? I mean, whatever their procedures, I mean, you're talking 1978, you know, I hope.
- [79:54]
Jeff
David is his name till it born Christian then became David.
- [79:58]
John McPhee
Yeah.
- [79:59]
Jeff
Still David today. I hope he hears this.
- [80:01]
John McPhee
Oh, yeah.
- [80:02]
Jeff
I hope this gets to him and he sometimes somehow some way travels through Atlanta and I can meet him. I would wanna, Yeah, I want to be like the jurors that gave, you know, that gave her the hug. I want to just give this guy a, you know, a hug. I'd love to grab coffee with him, whatever. But this story is so incredible.
- [80:25]
John McPhee
I, I know. That's why I said it's like, you know, this in a movie. People wouldn't believe it. They're like, what now? Come on, that's, that's not. How do you go that long? You know, I mean, my. And you talk about the hospital not doing DNA tests. What about the, the abortion clinics that she was going into? And I said to her he would specifically move her from abortion clinic to abortion clinic each time. And, and I said, well, was George going in? She was like, no, he gave me the 200 bucks or whatever it was. And she said I'd walk in and I'd have the abortion. And you know, she's 13, 14, 15 years old, no parent, no nothing. And she's having an abortion. She comes back out, they leave and sex starts again.
- [81:14]
Jeff
Grab a donut and a coffee and we're off to life again. I mean, oh my gosh. So why, why, what happened? Is this like his upbringing was so bad. Why does somebody do that?
- [81:28]
John McPhee
I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it's theories.
- [81:31]
Jeff
What are even theories? Why somebody would want it?
- [81:34]
John McPhee
Well, I mean, look, there's predators. There's predators all over the world. And I think that, you know, he was in an era where, you know, the. Whatever transpired between him and the mother to get Jackie, and, you know, was he thinking that he would get a younger girl because then he could groom her, whereas an older girl maybe, you know, a teenager, might not do what he wanted her to do? And. And, you know, so, you know, he. He. Jackie just remembered basically that he was. He was around the area. Like, I think it was something like a con. Electric Contractor. He was some type of contractor. And like I said, she remembers seeing him. She remembers going to lunch with him one time with her mom, and the next thing she knows, mom's saying, you're gonna go with this man. And she said, okay. And they left. And she remembers looking back and waving, and she never saw her mom again.
- [82:39]
Jeff
I mean. Oh, my gosh. The other three girls that you mentioned, are they anonymous? Till today. They test. They. They had to testify at some point.
- [82:55]
John McPhee
Yeah, they did. Yeah. Two of the. Two of the three testified. The one. The one didn't. Yeah. And I don't recall their names, but yeah.
- [83:04]
Jeff
Did they ever cut? Like, were they out in the public, or did they make some kind of request to stay behind the scenes?
- [83:09]
John McPhee
No.
- [83:10]
Jeff
Their names in the case that was online or anything?
- [83:14]
John McPhee
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, no, they. I mean, they use their names on the stand and everything. I mean, the court was open.
- [83:19]
Jeff
Yeah, They're. They're. I mean, I can't imagine at that age. I can't imagine it at all. But at that age, little girls. Here you are. You're dropping your girl off to play with her friends, right? Whatever. Trailer park. Doesn't matter. Right. Not the point. You're dropping your girl off. I mean, did anything you said law enforcement was called once or twice. Like, did anything come out in the community where. Hey, that place over there. Keep your kids away from there. Weird stuff goes on there.
- [83:52]
John McPhee
No, no, like I said, is, you know, they. They. The girls. In California in the 70s, it was basically sleepovers. And, you know, they. They. They arrest them and charge them. But, you know, in Fort Lauderdale, you know, he. He wasn't specifically. He wasn't molesting the girls here. He was basically watching. He was actually getting Jackie to do his work where he would have Jackie have sex with the Girls and he would watch because he knew if I do it then the girls are going to call their parents, I'm going to get arrested. So basically he used her as a pawn for his self gratification.
- [84:32]
Jeff
Oh, I see the difference now then what is the difference in the debauchery and then the actual molestation? How do they differ? What are the sentences on each and all that?
- [84:41]
John McPhee
So the debauchery was sentences back in the 70s and 60s and they were basically, they were captive five years max. Where now, you know, if you're doing this human traffic, I mean, depending on what happens and the extent of it, I mean it could go up to life, you know, you could get life in prison in federal government, the federal charges, you know, but remember, and it goes back to even sentencing times back then where you know, George was sentenced in 2006 or seven to 26 years in prison. And the appeals court comes back in California said, no, no, no, you have to send us some of their guidelines in 1977. Well, the guidelines in 77 was three years. And so he was already, he already did two and a half. And they were like, okay, you're going to get out. And wow. We literally had like a week and a half, two weeks to scramble to get Jackie in to do the recording. And then they were going to be have a big press conference and you know, then we made a determination to file the charges. So, you know, the charge, like I said, the U.S. attorney's office had a hard time trying to figure out what we were going to charge them with. You know, I mean, you can't charge them with a crime that's occurred now or maybe something that's come in through Congress as a new law because it wouldn't be applicable back then. So they had to do some research and came out with these, these charges about debauchery, which basically it's it, it, it's anything against the morals of society. Well, having sex with a child is immorals against society. And we charged them with six counts basically from leaving Vietnam to out of the country to back into the country and then across to the United States. So they, they, I forget how they worked it out that the six counts came in, but it was six counts and each of them had five years. And you know, I remember telling Jackie that, look, you know, he's convicted, I mean, he may only get five years. The judge might group them all together, but the judge, it was Judge Gonzalez in West Palm Beach, I mean in Fort Lauderdale. And judge came back, said, nope, and made him consecutive. So he got 30 years. And I thought, this is great. You know, he's going to be the rest of his life. Because he was in his. I want to say at this point, he was in his early 70s or 70, something like that, give or take. So he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail. And of course he did. I mean, he died a year later.
- [87:15]
Jeff
Yeah. So I want to. I want to get a. An understanding of how your mind works. So you. So I got it at work. I could tell how passionate you're dialed in. You love this. I can feel it through the screen. But after work. So let's just use an example. You go to just a restaurant, whether you're with your family, how does your brain work when you're different? It doesn't shut off. I doubt it shuts off.
- [87:43]
John McPhee
No, I mean, you know, look, I've always. I, I still, I was a policeman before. So, you know, you go to the restaurant and you get the table against the wall or in the corner, you know, you're, you're the. Always. You're the person that's fighting to get to the back, you know, so that you can see everything. You know, I, I've enjoyed my career. I, I enjoyed doing the investigations. I had a great opportunity to work for the bureau. As much as it gets bad press now, you know, that's not the agents on the street, that's not the agents that are working the cases. If society really knew the amount of cases that the FBI investigates and stops from happening, cases that never make it to the public and not because the bureau's hiding it, but the press doesn't. They don't care. You know, it's like, okay, so they stopped the case, you know, but I, I think that, you know, you have a great opportunity to, to work cases. You have the financial backing, you have the resources. The resources are, are plentiful in the Bureau. They're just. Yeah, you know, you. If you can think it up, there's somebody in the bureau that can make it happen. And, you know, that was always the best thing. You know, if it wasn't somebody in your office, there's somebody else in one of the other offices that can do it. There's somebody in the lab that can do it. There's somebody, whatever. And, and you have that availability. And you can, you can not worry about what the locals have to worry about to investigate a crime. And, you know, like, like I said, I think it's 98 conviction rate for the U.S. attorney's office. And that's basically due to the fact that, you know, you bring them the present wrapped up and it's done. And that's why, you know, people plead guilty most of the time in the federal system because we have you. This case, of course, is one of those ones where, you know, I didn't know how it was going to go. I mean, were they going to believe her? Were they not going to believe her? It was a huge uphill battle. You know, you write a probable cause affidavit laying out the facts, but again, it's a he said, she said. And is, is anybody else going to believe this story. Well, Jackie story. And then when you, you bring in the witnesses to verify that these things happened. I don't, you know, I always wondered this is that I. If we never, if she never had the baby enough to convict him. And I always wondered that, you know, is it because we, I tried. I mean, I remember, I remember going to two abortion clinics trying to get records and basically like, there is no records. If we're not, you know, first of all, we're not giving them to you. Second of all, back then, we don't have any, you know, so I don't know if it was either or. But, you know, if we would have been able to prove that. But then again, Jackie knew to go in and use a fake name and she actually even gave me the names. I mean, this is the recall. I mean, you think a traumatic incident of having an abortion not once, not twice, not three times, ten plus times, and you're going to remember the names you used to walk in there. I mean, that's why I said she, you know, she was, she was a star witness. She, her recall. I mean, if it wasn't for her, I would have never been able to find those people. It would have been a lot difficult. And, you know, we might not have had the amount of witnesses we had. It might have just been her and the three girls from California. You know, we might not have ever found the girls that happened in Fort Lauderdale. We might not have found the guy with a dog, you know, might not ever found David. You know, we knew was up for an adoption. I mean, we could have got stymied there and not found him.
- [92:06]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [92:07]
John McPhee
And not proven it. And, you know, they, they may have dismissed the case or it would have went to trial and the jury said no. But I think it, you know, there was somebody overlooking this whole thing saying, okay, this is what we're gonna do.
- [92:20]
Jeff
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. I want to take another bite of the apple of that, that question I asked where? Right after you told the whole story, and I said hate and love. What, what I want to revisit it. What, what I want to know is where is it frustrating? Like when you run up these roadblocks and you're driving home and you're like, this guy's gonna walk the streets again? Where, where is it frustrating? Just use this case for an example. Where is it really frustrating? And then where is it really rewarding?
- [92:55]
John McPhee
Well, the reward is always a condition, you know, that, that you got the right person. I, I, you know, I can honestly say in my career, I never arrested somebody that didn't do what I said they did. Now, wow. It was only one or one case that I, I had a not guilty in my career and even then it was a far fetched defense. But I think that, you know, the roadblocks are always administration. You always have someone that's up above who may have their thoughts or beliefs or your agency may, has their policies or they need approval from somebody else. And I think those are probably the, the main ones. And I see that doing local now with, with the cold cases, you know, before, I mean, I just, you know, I went to my boss and the FBI and said, hey, this is what I need. Okay, let's find it. And we would do it. It's difficult in local law enforcement because, you know, you go to your sergeant or your captain and they're like, oh, we need this. And oh, let me ask the major, major, let me ask the assistant chief, let me ask the chief, let me counsel, let me, let me ask the mayor, let me, you know, let me go ask the town manager, you know, and so, you know, you have a lot of these things in local law enforcement where agencies, they're stymied as to what they can do. You know, it's all funding. I mean, you know, we're doing cases now locally that we have to send all our DNA off to a private lab. And it's not cheap. I mean, one DNA swab is about $3,500 to process. You know, that's a huge hit in somebody's budget. I mean, if you have smaller agencies.
- [94:48]
Jeff
Wow.
- [94:49]
John McPhee
That are trying to process stuff, if you're sending them off. And I don't mean like, you know, we're talking about cold case things, like, you know, a lot of the police agencies now, you know, if you have a case, you submit it to the local lab and they do process it, but they're all backed up I mean, there's only a few private agencies or private companies in the country that, that process this DNA above and beyond the. The municipality and sheriffs and state police and things like that that have their labs. You know, I'm not saying every single case is that, but when you're going back to older cases, a lot of these labs, these law enforcement labs, don't have the. Either funding to help you, or they don't have the manpower, or they're just backlogged. And I mean, I remember a few years back where there was a grant and I remember reading this in the city of Detroit to do their sexual assault kits. And they had 11,000 sexual assault kits that were never processed. I mean, that number is astronomical. And they started with a grant getting these done. And, you know, they ended up finding it was some like 125 people who were already in custody. You know, they had committed these other acts, and had they been found out by DNA testing, then, you know, basically they might have been caught. But, you know, you know, DNA is, is, is, Is great. I mean, it's, it's. It was probably the biggest step up for law enforcement to help solve crimes. I believe the cell phone has overtaken that because everybody has a cell phone, and everybody has everything on a cell phone. And bad guys take cell phones to crimes. I don't know why, but they do. You know, that's the biggest thing now. I mean, I look back at the Ida, you know, in the Ford college kids that got killed in Moscow. I mean, why did he take a cell phone? There's no reason to take your cell phone. I mean, you leave it at home, but gotta take my cell phone, you know, just in case somebody texts me on the way to the murder. You know, I mean, it's just, it's. It's amazing, you know, but, you know, in the DNA, I mean, you know, you. You have these labs and, you know, there is grants. I mean, this one case that in our local law enforcement here, we just solved a 1995 murder of an elderly woman through DNA. And we got a grant. We, we paid for a lot of it. The city did. But I found a grant for, and I'll throw their name out. It's called Season of Justice, and it's a company out of Texas that's established, and, you know, you. It's basically an online portal, and you, you fill out the information and you give them the facts, and they have a board of directors and, and they make a determination to give you the money. And we were fortunate in the Riviera Beach Police department to get $18,000 from them to do this advanced testing, which actually that advanced testing led us to the suspect and eventually, you know, an indictment and arrest. And so, you know, you hope. And I guess you talk about frustration money wise, you know, you know, as much as people get charged with their taxes and police agencies are looking for budgets and they're trying to move their budgets up all the time. And, you know, majority of all budgets are salaried. You know, these type of things, you know, it's not going to get any cheaper, you know, and these, and these labs know that they're the last resort. And, you know, look, there's no, you know, it's not like, hey, I can go to the supermarket here and go the other one there. They're competing in prices. They have a monopoly as to what they're going to charge you. And, you know, it's difficult for agencies to go forward financially. And, you know, the good thing about the FBI is, you know, we, we have our own lab and, and we, we would process stuff. Now, you know, it took long because you think of the amount of evidence that's coming into that lab. But, you know, they're professional and they're, they're at the highest level. And, you know, you, you, you get frustrated on cases where you, you know, you know, the guy did it or girl did it and, you know, you're trying to put that evidence together and it's just not coming back. Yeah, I have a 92 case on a rape murder in Riviera beach where, you know, we, we thought we had the suspect and we did the DNA test and it wasn't him. And now we don't know who it is. And we put it into the computer to see if there's any hits, and we haven't got any hits yet. So now it's a scramble to find who did it. You know, and those are frustrating times where it's like, who do you do, you know, you know, this is, you know, you hear cases sometimes in England and stuff where they've had a murder and they go through and they just DNA test everybody in town. You know, they just walk around, everybody gives it up. I couldn't even imagine the United States knocking on doors saying, hey, can I please have a swab from all the males in the house? I mean, good God. I mean, it would be, there'd be lawsuits, there would be screaming, you'd have reporters. But I, you know, I, I think with the DNA testing and I know there's there's agencies now and, and laws that are going to affect now where people that are getting arrested, not only convicted or giving swabs, but one, they're arrested. And I think, honestly, I mean, I think if you're arrested for anything, you know, I think you should be able to give a swab up on the, you know, if anything, it's a deterrent. Like, well, now they've got my DNA and I don't want to do, you know, let's stop. I don't want to do a crime. I mean, they may catch me. You know, there's people, of course, that are against that and civil liberties and things like that. But, you know, those, you know, we have 330 million people in this country and there's maybe 1% of that is in the computer. I mean, you think of the amount of crimes that go unsolved and the amount of crimes, cold case crimes that go unsolved in this country is mind boggling. I mean, when you look at the Golden State murder, I mean, you know, had they not saved evidence and that's the big thing, it's like you had these cold cases and agencies have stuff in a locker somewhere that may have never been tested because back then they didn't do that or they were on the cusp of doing DNA, but nobody did it because they didn't send it out, they didn't know where to send it to. You know, and again, I go back to Jackie's case. You know, if this guy had not kept every record from the trailer park for 41 years, I mean, who keeps 41 years of record cards? That trailer has been long gone. And then, you know, he'll pull up. I remember one of the trailers he pulled up, there was like six cards of people that had lived there for over 30 years. Different times. Okay, well, new person, I put a new card. All the other ones I throw out, but he kept everything. And we were able to find, you know, from Jackie's recall of going from door to door, okay, was on this lot. Here he goes, oh, yeah, that's lot number what, 16. Okay, here it is. Oh, here's the people. And you'd go through them. I'm like, oh, there's Sally. Oh. And it was funny because like the kids were just like the name, like, it was like, you know, John and Bill, John and Joan Smith. And it would be like, Sally, Stevie, mark, you know, 7, 8, 4. And that was it with a phone number and oh my God, like, you know, we kept all that stuff I.
- [102:42]
Jeff
Want to get you into the moment when David met Jackie.
- [102:50]
John McPhee
You want me to cry again?
- [102:53]
Jeff
I got it. That there's emotion on their part. I totally, yeah. What was the gamut for you? The gamut of emotions.
- [103:05]
John McPhee
Tears, joy, you know, the feeling that we were able to reunite them where this wasn't something that, you know, Jackie wasn't a, you know, 20 something mother or 20 something who was making an adult decision to put their child up for adoption or, you know, whatever the reason was, she had no choice. You know, she was put into a situation that it wasn't her choice and then she was put into a situation where she gives birth. And I don't know how a 13 year old feels about that. I mean, it's got. Emotions got to be overwhelming with the hormones and everything. And to be able to hold your baby knowing that you've been carrying it. Look, she was going to school every day with bigger and bigger clothes, putting weight on. People were commenting on how fat she was getting and just, and she had to hide it. You know, she hid it from everybody. And then she walks into a hospital and adults and nurses and doctors and nobody's got a concept like, okay, well, she had sex with a whole bunch of boys in the, in the, in a party or something. You know, I'm pretty sure Department of Children Family Services was available back then, but, you know, what did they do? You know, did they contact? I mean, you know, who knows? But, but seeing the ability to put them two together where neither of them asked for this, you know, you know, neither amass to be in this situation and to feel that you're hopefully making someone a little bit happy that they've now found the person. I know that Jackie communicated with him frequently, I think up until the time she died, but I still think it was very traumatic to her. You know, you don't know this person. I think he was, he was 20 something. I forget what his age was, but he was in his mid-20s when we did the read, when we, when they met. I want to say it was 20, 28 maybe, or 27, I think he was. So he's an adult. I mean, he, he only knows the two people that raised him in Florida. And you know, it was, it was traumatic. I mean, but I, I think it's the feeling that it's almost like the end goal. Like, okay, you know, we've done through all this horrible things, the trial and everything, and then here's the one happy moment that you get to see that person who you loved and Cared. And like she said, it was emotional to her holding the baby and then some lady coming and taking her and taking them and gone. And you never see him again. Wondering what happened.
- [106:26]
Jeff
Right. Wondering what happened. Do you. Do you have any contact with his. With his parents at all or. Or him?
- [106:35]
John McPhee
No, not. Not since I. I retired. I mean, I did reach out to him a couple times. I did. I contacted him when Jackie died, and I didn't contact his parents, I don't think. And then I did stay in touch with her other son, but in the last few years since I retired, I have not.
- [106:57]
Jeff
Right. And then there's two. Two sons that. I get this. Right, Two sons that he had from a former marriage, correct?
- [107:06]
John McPhee
Yes. Yeah. And they would be. I mean, they're probably older than me. I mean, they'd be in their 60s now, so.
- [107:12]
Jeff
Okay. But they were out of the picture or did they ever.
- [107:14]
John McPhee
Oh, yeah, yeah. He had no con. I mean, I remember talking to the wife and there was no contact. I mean, he. He was off on his own. I mean, he didn't want anything to do with the kids. I mean, I remember, like, I. I remember talking to her and her saying that, you know, he didn't even show up for the second birth. He came late or something. And then his first question was, is it a girl? And they were like, no. And he goes, oh, oh, man, that's.
- [107:41]
Jeff
Special kind of person there. All right, let's. Let's talk about your. Your career. So you. You started off as a cop. Tell us about that. And then what was the transfer? The bridge, or did you get recruited to go to the FBI? And I want to know. I want to know why, ultimately, what you loved about the FBI.
- [108:00]
John McPhee
Yeah. So I started out as a policeman in Jupiter, Florida. It was a relatively smaller department Then back 1988, I stayed there for seven years. I was row patrol for about three or four, and then I did undercover narcotics for a few years. I had a friend in another agency whose brother was an FBI agent, and he used to come down to Florida and I take him golfing. And he's like, oh, you know, you'd be great for an FBI this and that. And I told him, I said, well, I don't have my accounting degree. And back then in the 80s, you had to either have an accounting degree or a law degree or foreign language. I had minored in accounting in college, but I didn't get a degree in it. And so I went back to Florida Atlantic University and figured, I'll. I'll try to get my accounting degree. And in 1994, when Louis Free came in as a director, he had told Janet Reno, who was the attorney general at the time, like, look, we need to hire. And they were planning on hiring about 4,000 agents in three years. And director Free knew of the. Because he used to be an agent, he was an attorney. But he knew that the, the, the makeup of the bureau had to change. You know, you can't just have it accountants and lawyers. And you needed to diversify. And basically that's what they did. They added a category of diversified, which was four year degree with three years of full time work experience. So my friend's brother told me this and, and I applied in November of 94 and got hired in October 95 and left there and went to the academy for four months. And I was slated to go to the Miami. The FBI is 56 divisions across the country. And the running joke is in the second week you have to prioritize all 56 offices from 1 to 56 where you want to go. So you know, if you don't want to go to New York or you don't want to go to Chicago, you better put 56.
- [110:02]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [110:02]
John McPhee
And put your list in. And back then, since they were hiring so many people, a lot of the classes which had 50 people in a class were getting their top five choices. They were going somewhere. And I think they still do this to this day. But everybody would put five bucks in and the person that got the lowest one got the money because it was people that were. There was two people in my class I'll never forget. I'm Chris Lee. Love the guy to death. Chris. Chris got number 52 out of 56 on his list. You know, he wanted to go on the west coast and they, and they end up sending them to D.C. i think it was. And so they, you know, so I got Miami and I was happy with that. And I was living in Palm beach county and it was gonna be a little long ride and I was gonna figure out where I was gonna move to down there because it's about an hour and a half away. And then before I graduated, they told me I was going to West Palm Beach Resident Agency. So basically I, I came back to where I started and I started working in 90s. February 96, I was assigned to the violent crimes squad and we did bank robberies, extortions, kidnappings, drug cases, murders. You know, back in the 90s and early 2000s, you know, we were averaging about 70 bank robberies a year, give or take. Which was a lot because there was probably three quarters of the states in this country weren't even getting 70. You know, I mean, so we had one county. And you know, I learned a lot. I mean, I, I, I've always felt like I was good at self, initiating things and, and trying to figure out. I've always been intrigued over the who done it. And you know, I enjoyed investigations. I enjoy putting the things together, being able to get to that point. You can prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. And the FBI gave me that opportunity. And again, you know, we, we were, we weren't stuck behind a desk. You know, we went out, we did interviews and we put cases together and we tried things and you know, some were successful, some weren't. And you know, you keep moving on and trying the next thing and learning from those. And you know, I always remember it was funny because I, when I came into the bureau and we talk about computers and things where they're talking now, you know, with Doge and Elon saying that, you know, the computer systems are antiquated, things like that. I remember I came in in 1996 and we were being training and we had this DOS system to reports. And I remember the instructor saying, look, if you don't get this, don't worry, we're going to have a new computer system in the next couple of that was in 1996. The Bureau got a new computer system in 2014. Okay. You know, so they tried after 2001 to a system that they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on. And they had so many glitches they couldn't do it. And it wasn't until about it, probably a little before Maybe it was 2011, give or take, that's when we got the computer system. But, you know, up until then, you know, we were, you know, you were writing reports and, and I, and I always remembered I would hand my reports into the boss, and unfortunately my boss was an English major. That's the last person you want going over.
- [113:41]
Jeff
That's awesome.
- [113:43]
John McPhee
The, the running joke with law enforcement is, is that they write, I came, I saw, I conquered, and that's what I did. And I wrote those. And he would come back and there was so many red lines on my paper that I basically had to start over. And so the running, I got to be funny because I would submit my reports and I would tape a red pen to them and hand them in. But, you know, look, he, he helped me and his name's Reed Robertson. Reed. You know, I give the utmost respect too, because he taught me how to write. And I think that's extremely, extremely important to write and document. And the Bureau clearly is the agency that, you know, we documented everything we did because you needed to show everything. And, you know, going back doing these cold cases, now you see things years ago that they didn't document everything, or if they did, you know, you know, they were missing things or. You know, the one thing I always argue when you talk about frustration is it seems that in local law enforcement, they don't document the negative. And what I mean by that is if. If I said, you know, I read through a report and. And it's got, oh, you know, interview John Doe, and there's nothing in there about John Doe, you know, and you find out that you go and interview John Doe and. And they're like, oh, yeah, the police already came and interviewed me about this. And you're like, oh, now, you know, waste of my time. And so they don't interview. They don't do the negative. And that's important because on both sides, that helps the prosecution and the defense, because now they don't have questions, and the prosecution doesn't have questions. Because I know if I'm reading a report and I see, oh, hey, here's John Doe. I don't see a report on John Doe about what happened or what he saw. And then you find out that he didn't see anything. Well, nobody documented that, you know, and, you know, we were always pumped into our heads in Quantico. Document, document, document everything. And, you know, that's. That's. That's great. And it's. It's able to. It helps both, you know, the prosecution and defense as you're going into trials and things like that. So.
- [116:03]
Jeff
Yeah. Were there times throughout your career where somebody asked what you did and you. You were like, yeah, I work in tech. Or. Did you. Were you always able to say, I'm an FBI agent?
- [116:14]
John McPhee
No, I always said I was an FBI agent. I mean, it was, you know, I never did any undercover stuff. I didn't do any of that. It wasn't that big of a deal. You know, I did when I was. When I. When I worked at the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office for. In a task force for three years when I was a policeman. You know, we did undercover stuff. But even then, it, you know, you didn't. It wasn't deep undercover. I mean, it's, you know, it's not the Donnie Brasco's of the world where, you know, they're going undercover in the Mob. You know, there is, you know, there's guys, you know in the bureau that. That are, you know, deep undercover. And, you know, they may not come out for a long time. You may not know it. I mean, it was really funny. I remember we had a guy that used to come into our office all the time, and. And he did all kinds of undercover fraud stuff. And he had another job, like he worked at a. Somewhere, I don't know, some mortgage company or whatever it was. But he would come in late in the afternoon to do his reports, and he would disappear, and nobody knew what he was doing. We had no idea. But that's what he would do. He would go. That was his job. He would get hired by these companies, and then he ended up prosecuting them. You know, but that's what I said. There's so many availability. I mean, it's a. You know, people out there listening. I mean, it's one of the best jobs in the world. I mean, you can do anything. You can travel, you can go anywhere in the world. You know, if you want to fly planes, they'll teach you how to fly planes. Crime scene, the lab, undercover terrorism cases, you know, whatever. And, you know, I stayed as an agent because I wanted to work the cases. You know, I didn't. I didn't move up to be a supervisor because I. I wanted the availability to keep doing the cases. And that's what I like doing. And that's why after I retired, I started doing private investigations, basically working with all the defense attorneys that I went against for all those years. And. And going through their cases. And now working the police department that I'm at now, Riviera beach hired my company to do the cold cases. And so, you know, that was a task, too, because you're going back with a computer system that started in 2013, so anything prior to that was paper. And, you know, it took us months upon months to go through everything to figure out what we had, because it was. You know, they didn't know what was open, what was closed, what was. It was just a folder in a cabinet, you know, research and everything. I figure that out. So it's. It. You know, it's a whodunit, right? And, yeah, majority of the people, look, they love the. The crime shows, they love the documentaries. I mean, Forensic Files has been for, what, 30 years now or something crazy. And I still watch them. I mean, I. I remember getting, you know, you look at them, you're like, oh, yeah, I remember seeing this episode. And then you stay with it. Because you want to figure out, you know, what they did and how they did it. And. Yeah, you know, it's. It's enjoyable, and I. I don't regret anything. It's excellent.
- [119:10]
Jeff
Yeah. So do you have your own business now? You're a private investigator?
- [119:15]
John McPhee
Yeah, so I have a company called JJM Investigations, which is my. And I do private investigations. I mean, I. I help lawyers in criminal defense cases where, you know, I. I get the discovery on a defendant. And, you know, I. I looked at it going into this, thinking, do I have a moral issue here? Like, can I defend some guy that killed somebody? And. And one of my lawyers I work for, you know, basically laid it out. He says, look, you're not here to get him off or to find an acquittal. You're a finder of fact, and you're being hired to be that finder of fact. And, you know, I'll get discovery in cases, and I'll go through it to see, you know, what did the police do? What didn't they do? What should they have done? What could they have done? Who did they miss? You know, was the negative not done? You know, like, you know, hey, you know, Billy Bob and Joe were at the scene, but there's no report of them being interviewed. And then you go interview them and find out, and all of a sudden you find out that one of them knew something, you know, and then you present that, and like this attorney said, he goes, you come to me with a finder of fact, and then I made the decision as to, you know, myself, my client, make the decision. What are we going to do? We move forward to trial? Do we fight this? Do we, you know, whatever. And I think that was easier for me because you're. You're helping them to get a fair trial. Because if it wasn't, then our system would be broken. If you didn't give people fair trials, I mean, look, I know a lot of people out there think that's not true and that, you know, everything's rigged and things like that. But, you know, it takes a lot to get a conspiracy together, to rig something, know, and there's just too many people that talk. And I think that, you know, we, as investigators, we put our cases together. We. We feel good about those cases. As a defense investigator, the same thing You, You. You put the case back together. And, I mean, there's a lot of times that I go to the attorneys going, he did it or she did it. You know, I don't know what you're going to do. I mean, there's no. They. They dotted their eyes and crossed their T's. You know, I don't see anything else. And so, you know, so I enjoyed doing that. And then I got the opportunity to work at Rivera Beach Police Department as a contractor and, you know, go back through. And I think, you know, we're in a city who is. It's. It's about 80% minority, and then the 20% is in an area that's extremely, extremely wealthy. And I think those people, for a long time in the. In the minority area didn't get a lot of justice. And I think it's because. Not anything the police really did, but it was so hard to investigate cases. When you get to a scene, there's 50 people there in a shooting and nobody will talk to you. Right, because they're too afraid. They don't want the bad guy coming after them. They don't want to testify, you know, and, you know, they were going from case to case a lot of times in homicides and then just in shootings. And, you know, there's only so much you can do. You know, you can't run with 100 cases. You know, things are going to fall through the cracks. And it was difficult. And, you know, we've got more than 100 or so unsolved. And, you know, a lot of those, they'll never be solved because you. There's no witnesses, you know, zero. I mean, nobody saw anything, nobody did anything. There's no crime scene. You might have a couple shell casings and that's it, you know, and then you move on. And. But there is a lot of cases that, you know, I think it's. They. They can be prosecuted and charged. And I have. We've done two so far, and I think I've got about 10 more that I really believe with some due diligence and work, that we can at least present them to see if we can prosecute it. Because I think people in those type of communities, they need justice and they need to have faith in their police department. And it's a shame that we. We live in an environment where you can't come forward and tell what you know and then not feel that you're going to be threatened or harmed or your family's going to be harmed. You know, so.
- [123:47]
Jeff
Right. Going back to the Bureau, I've always wondered this. I've never got a straight answer. Maybe there's just not one. But I. And I shared this with you. I worked for Secret Service for a number of years. I did not retire. I didn't work a full career. But where are the lines? Where are they clear? And where is it like an invisible line where the bureau takes over versus the DEA versus the atf? Or is it.
- [124:17]
John McPhee
Yeah. And look, I, I, you know, I, I always had issues with locals based on when the FBI, we were doing bank robberies because that's a, it's a federal nexus. Even though the crimes committed in a town or community within a state, there's really no, you know, the person doesn't cross state lines, but is just a federal crime. And so a lot of times, you know, local law enforcement would come in and, and do the investigation and then we would come in and do the investigation and help and then we would end up taking the case. And you know, it's always, you know, it's always the, the movie joke where the locals don't like the FBI guys, they're stealing their case, they're doing this. And I was fortunate because I had a good working relationship with a lot of the local agencies because I worked here in this county and I got to know him and, and they knew I was straight laced. And like, look, I'm going to help you. You're going to help me. You know, maybe I'll take some cases off your back, whatever. But you're right, it, you know, you have three agencies. Because you got to remember is when, when Hoover started the FBI, you know, this was, they were going after moonshiners, right? I mean, before he was around. And, and then when Hoover comes in, you know, they're doing all these cases and doing things. But Hoover never did drug cases, refused. He would not let the bureau do drug cases, which lo and behold, started dea.
- [125:49]
Jeff
I didn't know that.
- [125:51]
John McPhee
Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, his, his thing was, you know, we're going to do these white collar crimes and, and the agents, you know, white shirt and tie. And the old, is funny because some of the old veteran guys, when I got in the office were in during Hoover and they told me stories, they, they said that in, in D.C. hoover had a group. Hoover believed that if you drank coffee on the job, you weren't working. So he would send agents out to coffee shops in D.C. looking for agents to report them. And there's a running joke that this new agent gets assigned this, he goes out, he goes to coffee shop in the back. There's four agents sitting there. Clearly they know they're FBI agents sitting. And he comes over, he's like, I'm special agent such and such. You guys are all drinking coffee. You better write your names down here. You're all getting reported. So they all write their name down. He goes back to Hoover, gives him the card. Sir, I caught four guys at the coffee shop. And Hoover looks down and says, yeah, you caught Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Daffy, and, you know, Minnie Mouse. And, you know, it's a joke. And, you know. So, you know, Hoover was, you know, he was extreme, eccentric person. There was another story. One of the agents told me one time that there was a memo that came out about illegal immigrants crossing the borders. And Hoover wrote on the memo, please have the agents watch the borders. Well, this agent friend of mine was. He was up in New York, and he says, we went to the border and we sat there three weeks. We're sitting there. I don't know what we're looking for. You know, every. This is all across the country. So I guess they came back and reported these. The main guy, the SACs in the Canada are calling back, said, go. You know, we're. And Hoover's like, why are we getting these reports about people sitting on the border? What are they looking for? And he says, well, sir, Director, I mean, that was your idea. That wasn't my idea, because. Yeah, yeah, here's the memo. He's right here. You wrote this. Watch the borders. He goes, no, I meant their format on the paper. Watch the borders. They're too far over the lines. No way. Yeah. So for three weeks, 100, 200 agents are sitting on the border when all Hoover meant was, watch your margins. Like the DEA and atf. I mean, look, I. I think, you know, ATF and DEA are doing what the FBI is doing. FBI is doing what ATF and DEA are doing. I've. I actually thought in my career that ATF would probably be consumed by the FBI because basically they were doing the same thing. You know, it was a smaller. They have 3, 300 employees, I think. I mean, I don't know how many agents there are, but, you know, you're. You're doing the work of the same thing where they could be combined. You know, our computer system. And as much as, you know, after 9, 11, everybody was supposed to share things. It's still not what everybody thinks it is. And, you know, I think if you. If you put those agencies together, granted, you're making a huge agency, but I think it might be more uniform and controlled and the resources can be put there and you have more opportunities to then move people around. I know just recently that Director Patel said something about taking the ATF guys and bringing them in and cross certifying them or something. I mean, I think if you're. If you're looking at it as a financial thing, it's a great idea because they're, you know, look, these guys in ATF and D are brilliant. They're great investigators. You know, I. When I was applying, I actually applied to both DEA and FBI, and I was hired by the DEA prior to the Bureau, and I basically decided the bureau because of the opportunity to work more crimes, whereas in the dea, I knew I was going to be pigeonholed just in dope cases and drugs and, you know, so I think. I don't know if it's our lifetime, but I think eventually you're going to see some type of merger to reduce, you know, facilities to, you know, assets and things like that where you can bring those guys in. And I think it would be helpful for them because then they're not just doing, you know, look, ATF isn't doing alcohol and tobacco anymore. Right. It's just, you know, they're not chasing moonshiners. They're not.
- [130:49]
Jeff
Right.
- [130:50]
John McPhee
I mean, the agency is Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and I'm pretty sure the alcohol, tobacco is at the low end of the list. You know, so basically, they're doing firearms cases. Well, move them into the FBI. Let them do other things. Let's put them together and use their data and their sources and their informants. They may have informants that may help and, you know, in cases.
- [131:09]
Jeff
So, yeah, if Secret Service breaks off like they've been talking about. They've been talking about this for years, though. Who should take that and who should take the investigative role over? Just. In your opinion, what Secret Service. Yeah. They're talking about, like, divide the agency and they should only.
- [131:27]
John McPhee
Yeah. I mean, again, I mean, the Bureau's doing.
- [131:31]
Jeff
Roll it up kind of.
- [131:32]
John McPhee
Yeah. Because, you know, I know the agents that were assigned in West Palm, you know, they were doing like, credit card fraud and. And some other cases. And. And I think, to me it was more of. That was probably something to fill time, you know, that they probably said, hey, you know, throw us a bone here. You know, not every Asian is protecting somebody. I mean, you know, prior to Trump coming to Palm beach county, you know, the agents in my office, they probably never maybe saw a dignitary once in a. In a career. Right. You know, so what are they doing all day? You know, and. And I think maybe that was something years ago where they said, well, hey, we'll. We'll pull this out and let them Handle these type of crimes. It'll keep them busy or whatever. You know, Secret Service was designed to protect people. And in today's world, it's, it's, it's crazy that we need this and it's crazy that we need more people protected. You know, with, with the threats and people's ideology I got and ideas about how things should work.
- [132:39]
Jeff
Yeah. Does the beer? Has the bureau ever issued the. The number of personnel?
- [132:47]
John McPhee
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [132:49]
Jeff
Okay. They do. What is it?
- [132:50]
John McPhee
Yeah, I think when I was in, there was 13,200 agents, I think, and I think there was 25,000 support. And I think, I just read recently, I think they're at 14,000 agents now and probably 25 or 26,000 support. It sounds like a lot, but look, I'm telling you, the people on the support side, you can't do your job without them. Again, it's the same thing where I talked about is the resources are unlimited. You know, people complain the Bureau's budget is $9 billion or something. And, you know, if it wasn't for the support people, the analysts, the people that are putting stuff together, the surveillance groups, everything out there, you know, the Bureau has surveillance teams. Well, there's, there's two kinds. There's a, there's a armed ones and unarmed. And the unarmed are basically civilian agents that just do, you know, low level surveillance and things like that where they, they report on whatever crimes or whatever their surveillance on, but they, they don't, they don't actively arrest. They don't, they would never put those agents in those type of things. You need that. I mean, you don't realize, I mean, you know, how much technology and, and surveillance just down on the ground, boots, following somebody to see what they do. I mean, I get calls now in the PI Business where people, yeah, I want you to follow my husband or something. And you know, you try to explain to them that, you know, I, I need more than one person because, you know, if you ever get a chance, you look at some of these old 70s cop shows and they're following somebody, you know, okay, the bad guy pulls up on the block and you pull up right behind him and stop. And you look like you're in a police car and they don't see you and they go in and you wait there and then you follow them and you're a half a block away. Well, that doesn't happen. You know what I'm saying? I mean, most people like, hey, who's this? I mean, I try to explain to people, you Know, just two people trying to follow somebody's heart. I said, I remember in the Bureau, we had 10. One time following a bank robber, and we lost them. Ten people and we lost them.
- [135:01]
Jeff
Wow.
- [135:01]
John McPhee
Yeah, because you just, you know, if they run a light or they do something and you can't get there, you can't get around, you're stuck, he's gone. And mean, heavy traffic or wherever you. You. Turns into a plaza, you miss them, they're gone. And, you know, people see what they see on tv that they're following and. And easily able to keep up with them. But, you know, the Bureau, it. Those support people, you know, they're. They're excellent. They're excellent at what they do, and they. They make the. They make the ship run.
- [135:31]
Jeff
Yeah. When you went to Quantico, compare what you thought and envisioned it being versus then what it actually was?
- [135:41]
John McPhee
Yeah, I really wasn't sure. I mean, I knew it was like a police academy. I mean, and you got to remember, there's 50 people in my class, 10 of us were prior law enforcement, 10 were military, and the rest came from all walks of life. I mean, we had school teachers, we had. We had a rocket scientist, we had a CIA agent, we had. We had a mat. We had a general manager of a Walmart. We had school teachers. We did. We had some fellow clerks that were FBI clerks that had transferred over to be an agent. You know, so it was. It was like going back to college. You know, for four months, you were in dorms. You know, you got to meet people. You know, you're. You're lifetime friends with them now, and it was fun. I know a lot of the instructors kind of relied on the law enforcement guys when it came to the tactical things and. And things like that to. To let us help the other people. I mean, we had, I think, two or three girls in the class that had never even seen a gun, not only held one, never even saw one in their lives, but, you know, the training is. Is above par. I mean, it. It's excellent. I. I remember. You know, you go into that as a policeman, you're cocky, you think you know everything. You think you're a good shot, you can shoot guns, everything. Well, I had a rude awakening. I went in there, and I remember there was. One of my instructors, was a retired Maryland state trooper, and he used to say to me, mcveigh, who taught you how to shoot? Because this is horrible. And I. When I started looking at what they did, I mean, you know, in local law enforcement, you come back Again, and, you know, local law enforcement, they're more apt to shoot somebody than an FBI agent. Right? And we have I don't even know how many times more training in firearms than local law enforcement. I mean, you know, when I was doing it, you know, we might shoot 100 rounds a year, and that's it. If you didn't go on your own, he didn't do it. But we were shooting, you know, when we came out of Quantico, I think we had shot almost three to 5,000 rounds. And, you know, we were qualifying every two months, where local law enforcement, it's every year or every two years qualify once. And the bureau has since, in my career, limited to four, so they're still qualifying four times a year. And I think that's one of the biggest things is, you know, the. The precision that you learn, because if you do get in that position, you know what you're going to do. And granted, I'm not taking anything away from the local policemen because their job's hard, and I was there. But I look back on it and I'm thinking to myself, God, if I would have gotten a shooting, I probably would have missed, like, or anything further than 3ft or 4ft. I might have missed, you know, And. And my. And I. It's funny because I even remember they changed my whole grip when I got to Quantico. And I. I don't even know how I even used to hold the gun. But, you know, you, you. You look at it, you're thinking yourself, price, I didn't even have the basics of holding the gun correctly.
- [138:55]
Jeff
Right. And you've been a cop for seven years.
- [138:59]
John McPhee
Seven years, right. Yeah. As I said, all cocky thinking, oh, I know you can't teach me anything. Right.
- [139:08]
Jeff
John, what would you say the. The one thing above all else that you're excellent at.
- [139:19]
John McPhee
I think going. Probably my perseverance and me going outside the box. I mean, I think now even older in life. I just went on an interview with a detective yesterday. It was unrelated to my case, but I was having him go on interview for me, and I went on the interview with him, and he's a qualified detective and stuff, but my head, for some reason, starts thinking three to five steps ahead. And he was about done the interview, and I was like, wait a minute, ask this. And I didn't know really much about his case. I'm like, what about this? What about this? What about this? What about this? Because it's just. You learn from experience, and that's all it is. It's not anything that I've had my whole life. It's, it's, it's, it's been learned. And, you know, I think I don't even know how many cases I've probably investigated, you know, more than a thousand. I, I've probably interviewed in excess of 750 people at minimum, probably in every gamut from victim, complaint and witness, suspect, other. And you just learn. And you, you know, and you learn all the, you know, you just, like I said earlier, you take from one case and you go to the next case and you build on that as to, okay, I should have done this or should have done that. I mean, I remember, you know, in the early 90s when I was working drug cases and I started going through phone records. Well, cell phones were just starting then, and I had a marijuana grow house and I started going through the cell records from the house, like who he was contacting and things like that, and started putting those cases together and, you know, not realizing that the cell phone, again, like I said, is probably the one item of evidence that law enforcement, it was a gift because everybody puts everything on their phone, you know, they, Their gps, everything. It shows where they go, all those things. And, you know, I realized back then that, you know, look, you, you take everything you can in a case and present it good and bad, because if you don't, then you're going to, you know, the defense may poke a hole in it. And I think now too, is looking at these cold cases and, and being on the defense side and seeing what they go through. You know, I look at it and I try to believe, okay, if I was a defense attorney, how am I going to combat this? You know, what am I going to do to poke a hole in this story? And, you know, you learn from that. And I think with investigations, I have that capability of doing that and perseverance of investigating the case with every angle. And look, I don't know where it comes from. I just think things up, like, let's do this. And, you know, people like, what? Like, how do you do that? And, you know, there was things that I did in the Bureau on a, on a, on a case that, you know, I would call headquarters and they're like, I don't think we can do that. I'm like, yeah, we can. We can do this. And we would do it. And, you know, sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad, but that's basically what it is.
- [142:43]
Jeff
Yeah. Would you mind sharing your. Let's start with like, your strategy and your thought process. On home security. And then if you don't mind, get in the weeds a little bit, tell us some stuff that you do. Long guns? Not long guns. Any kind of security cameras, any. Anything like that.
- [143:03]
John McPhee
Well, look, I mean, you know, in today's world, you know, it. You can find anybody anywhere. You know, it's. It's. It's really funny. I was watching a show the other day, and somebody. Somebody called information to look somebody up. It was an old show, you know, and our kids don't even know what that means. You know, and, you know, our kids don't know what it means if your phone number is listed or unlisted. Right. You know, anybody can find anybody anywhere. And, you know, it's. And I don't mean just regular people. I mean, I mean celebrities and. And anybody you can find out where they live. And I think you just, you know, look, if law enforcement is good in your area and they're. They're. They're proactive, good community support, you know, you should feel safe in your house. I mean, I'm not an avid believer that everybody should have a gun because probably going back to me when I was a policeman, thinking I knew what I was doing as a cop. Shooting.
- [144:09]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [144:12]
John McPhee
Which homeowner is buying a gun is not shooting it. They're not going out and qualifying. They're not going to the range. They might do it the first couple times, and then that gun sits in the drawer. So that's not always the answer. And then again, where is the gun? Is it locked up? Because you have kids in the house, and if somebody comes in, can you get to it? You know, they've got secret panels and walls. You see that they Facebook and stuff where you can buy these things. But, you know, can you get to it in time? You know, and. And the. The big fear, usually more is your kid's gonna get it, or some kid in your family or some friend comes over and finds it, and lo and behold, you have an accidental discharge. You know, cameras are always good. You know, so many systems out there. You know, before, it used to be extremely expensive. Now, you know, runner, 500 bucks, you can put a camera system in. So it's, you know, it. It helps. It helps law enforcement. You know, when I was doing bank robberies and stuff in the. In the 90s, you know, the only thing we relied on was the. The analog VHS tape inside the bank. And that has been used over and over and over again because they just keep one in there or it's been. Or, you know, I Would find banks that had seven, seven or five VHS tapes. One was from Monday all the way to Friday. And they would regurgitate these things and they would be 5 years old. And you know, the grainy material, you know, now everything's digitized and you're, you're getting stuff. And I remember in the beginning they had the 35 millimeter cameras in the banks. And when the girls would hit the button, this camera would spit off, you know, a thousand pictures for 35 millimeter. It's funny, you go back to FBI stories again, and one of the agents was in West Palm, that was with. In West Palm beach, was in Philadelphia. And he goes to a bank robbery, and they're doing the interviews, and there's witnesses sitting down. And from the teller station to the front door was pretty far. And you actually had to go around like a little island, and there was two girls that would greet you coming in. Well, the 35 millimeter camera was up by the door. And it's extremely loud when you hear it. I mean, it's like a huge box. And when that thing goes off, like, you can hear click. Like if you've heard something click on a camera, make it tenfold. That's how loud it is. Well, the girls were trained that when the camera goes off, you go lock the door so that the bank robber doesn't come back in. You know, God forbid he comes out, the cops are there, and he runs back in. She goes and locks the door. Customers, please sit down. Everybody sit down. They all sit down. And the agent gets there, and he's interviewing the teller, and he's like, can you give me a description of the guy? And she's like, well, why do you want me to do that? Well, we got to know what he looks like and stuff. She's like, what do you mean? She goes, well, we need a description. Like, is that white male, black man? She goes, well, he's sitting right there. He was sitting in the lobby. So when the girl put her hands up and telling everybody sit down, he sat down. So he's sitting there with the money in a bag sitting there, you know, you know, so it's, you know, it's. That was the door. Tell everybody to sit down. Well, the guy sat down. You know, we're smart, but, you know, you know, so, like, security things like, look, I, I'm, I, I'm not going to go on the record and say this is what you should do and shouldn't do. I mean, it's whatever you feel safe, family and you Know, you know, you put cameras up to. For your own protection, but, you know, like, look, law enforcement now relies on that. I mean, you go to scenes now and they're going door to door looking for who's got a camera because it's amazing what stuff's getting picked up. And even the agencies, you know, where I'm working, I mean, they got cameras all over the city. I mean, you. It's almost impossible to drive up and down one street without being videoed. And, and plate readers now where reading license plates and recording the license plates coming and going. And you know, it's. It's. The technology's getting better and better.
- [148:44]
Jeff
And, and yeah, one thing I like to add in here, so Covid hits, everybody goes out and buys a gun. The stats, the numbers are out there, right? You. You couldn't find guns at any of the local shops around. Right. So we have this giant spike which puts all these weapons in the hands of good people with good intent, but they have no idea how to use them because it, it just feels right. I have a gun, therefore I'm safe. Which is. So I love this little practical tip is before you send your kids over to somebody else's home that, you know. Right, right. Know them. So it's not like a stranger. Ask them what their gun safety.
- [149:35]
John McPhee
Yeah.
- [149:36]
Jeff
Standard is in their home.
- [149:38]
John McPhee
Yeah. Oh, yeah, I agree.
- [149:39]
Jeff
And don't be afraid to ask them.
- [149:41]
John McPhee
Right.
- [149:41]
Jeff
Ask them is the weapon. Because what do kids love to do? They're fascinated by it. As soon as they know there's a gun in the house, they want to find it. They'll do anything to get into a safe, a lock. Just ask the parents. And I just love that little.
- [149:54]
John McPhee
Or if they just come upon it, I mean, you know, it's.
- [149:56]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [149:57]
John McPhee
Let's say they go in another room and. And there it is. Or, you know, whatever. I mean. Yeah, you're right. It's something that, you know, the parent will lock it away and then they think, well, heck, if I. If I lock it away, how am I going to get to it if a bad guy comes in and. Or whatever he's going to do. And you know, sometimes it's always the thing that. Do you want to put a gun into a situation that the gun was not needed? You know, let. Look, most burglars, most burglaries occur in the daytime, right? Why? Because nobody's home. Burglars don't want to run into people. You know, the, the. It was always the belief, you know, that the burglar came in the middle of the night and went through your house. Well, 99 of burglars don't want somebody in the house. They. They want an empty house. So they're going to come in the daytime and. And, you know, out the door they go, you know, at night. Yes, there's still people that go in there. There's still people that commit sexual batteries and things like that, but majority of is, it's daytime. So, you know, you. You're not home now. You've got a gun in the house, and the burglar finds it, and guess what? Now the burglar's got a gun, and now the gun's back out on the street. You know, if you don't have it locked up, or let's say you do have it locked, it's. It's got a safety on it. Well, the gun's not hidden or. Or secured. You know, have the. The trigger guard on it locked. Well, he can still put in his pocket and walk off, you know, or. Or now you've. You've got a burglar coming into the house who doesn't realize you're home. You pull the gun on him, and he overpowers you and takes the gun, and now he's got a gun on you. Right. So not always the answer. I mean, you have to be proficient at it, and you've got to, you know, you've got to shoot. You've got to be able to get to it. You got to be able to handle it. Not only shoot, but retention. Look, we were always taught, you know, this. I mean, how many times in defensive tactics about someone grabbing for your gun and what you do. I mean, people don't practice that. Nobody practices that.
- [152:02]
Jeff
No, no, not the average person going.
- [152:04]
John McPhee
To the range and. And someone grabbing for their gun and practicing it. You know, I got people in their house saying, hey, hey, wife, can you come over here and try to grab the gun out of my hands? You know, or can you guide and grab the gun out of my holster? It's not happening. No, never.
- [152:19]
Jeff
Not happening at all.
- [152:21]
John McPhee
Yeah, and that's what. Hey, you know, somebody overpowers you or takes it from you, now they've got the gun.
- [152:26]
Jeff
Yeah, this is. This has just opened my own eyes. Who I would be considered close, closer to an expert than the average person with. With firearms. I'm just thinking through it. Yeah, I have a lock. Yeah, I'm safe. But, oh, my gosh, it took this conversation right here to go. But wait, where's the key for my lock?
- [152:51]
John McPhee
Yeah, Right.
- [152:52]
Jeff
And oh, my gosh, wait, my key is by my toothbrush.
- [152:57]
John McPhee
And the kids. Right, right.
- [153:01]
Jeff
I'm on the. More experts, like, yeah, I can only imagine what goes on in the typical household now and then.
- [153:08]
John McPhee
And the burglars looking through stuff. I mean, you're going hide it somewhere. Let's say you don't have a lock box or something. You hide it under clothes. I mean, the burger is going to look. That's where he's looking. Because he knows people hide stuff, jewelry there or money. And then now all of a sudden it's not locked. Now he's got a gun. I mean, look, eventually they're going to find somebody to get that lock off, you know, and use it or sell it or. Now you got a gun on the street.
- [153:30]
Jeff
Yeah. Let me ask you a question about education. So the bureau's great at educating as far as new scams you can go on their site. There's a section on there, you can see all these crazy email scams and texting scams. Right. Like. And they keep it very current.
- [153:49]
John McPhee
Yeah.
- [153:49]
Jeff
You know of any other stuff that, that, that the public can use? The FBI's, like, educational, whether they have, I don't know, Portal, resource center, any of that stuff. Are they really good in other areas, educating the public, I. E. Gun safety or any other that you know of?
- [154:14]
John McPhee
Not offhand recently. I mean, it, you know, there was, there was FBI academy classes, citizen academy classes that were started in the last 10 years, and a lot of these agencies did that. You know, a lot of the, the locals have these citizens academies where you go, you know, once a week for eight weeks and they, they teach you law enforcement things. The bureau has that in a lot of the field offices, there's internships for students. You know, you go to Quantico or headquarters for the summer and you learn about those type of things. I think the Bureau, you know, they're informing the public on what they find. I don't necessarily believe that it's probably an instrument of theirs to then, you know, teach people per se, like what they should and shouldn't do. I mean, look, you put the scam out there and, and I think, you know, you're taking, and remember, you're, you're taking agents off the street to do that. And I think that by them just notifying people and local law enforcement, there's probably more resources locally than there are federally, as in the FBI, as in crime prevention and things like that. Because again, you know, the, the bureau's not dealing a lot of Times with local stuff because it's not their jurisdiction. They don't have any jurisdiction over it. So you know this, I mean I, I remember coming in, I mean we all remember the Nigerian letters that were being mailed to houses, right? And then we, we used to laugh that somebody in Nigeria got a computer and now they're emailing, you know, and that's great, you know, so then they started emailing the letters that, you know, the prince has all this money and you're the heir and please send us. And you know, it's amazing the amount of people and the loss of money that's sent overseas on these scams where, look, we've all heard them. We all know the Nigerian scams, we all know the phone scams, we all know the Amazon scams. And people can, you know, we all know the. I've got a girlfriend. Oh, where is she? She's in Thailand, you know, and I've been sending her money for years. I've never met her, you know, and I, you know, you talk to her on the phone and you're sending money and you know you're being scammed. But the amount of people, and it's not just elderly people, I mean it's everybody, they're all their people are getting taken by it. And you know, you know what Barnaby said, Ringling Brothers and Barnaby guys said, you know, there's, what was it? There's a fool. What was it the saying? He said there's a full born every minute or something like that. And you know, if, if it's hard pressed to believe when you start sending money out that you think you're getting something back, it's too good to be, that's what it's like too good to be true. Right?
- [157:13]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [157:14]
John McPhee
And you know, I think the bureau does inform the public and you know, I, I, I'm always curious, I wonder how many, how many hits they get on their website. I mean I bet it's a lot, but yeah, probably as, as much as people watch the videos on Tick Tock and everything like that that you know, they're not going to websites for law enforcement agencies and you know there a lot of those are moving to Facebook pages and websites and things like that where people can get their information and you know, it's, it's something that if you want to be up to date on what's coming or what's scamming or teach your kids about scams and you know, I think the bureau's done a great service to the country with, with the child porn cases and, and taking down huge, huge operations. I mean, there was, there was an agent that took down one of the biggest operations in the world. He found out whatever computer it was, but yeah, just absolutely brilliant. And you know, he got into this system and found all these people that were producing and supplying this stuff in Europe and they indicted a lot of people. So, you know, it's, I think the bureau's doing what they can, I mean, to, to at least notify the public.
- [158:47]
Jeff
Is it true that you can spot a liar?
- [158:50]
John McPhee
No. You know what's funny is I, I, I, I went to a class one time. You know, we all went to interview classes. Reed and a couple other ones that were big popular ones. And I remember I went to one, it was a, the guy that was running it was from the Israeli Mossad, which is basically their, their CIA. And they taught about eye movements and things like that and how people, you know, don't necessarily lie to you. They just don't tell you what they want you to know. And you know, people, from what he described is you have two things in your brain. You have a truth side and a construction side. And sometimes they believe that just by eye movements on statements, you know, if they're in the construction mode or if they're in the, the truth mode. But I mean, look, I, I've had people, you know, where they're just bad liars, you know, you just know it because the common sense and the facts don't make sense. I never thought in my career I would, I'd have somebody confess to a crime they didn't commit. And it happened and I was shocked. And he confessed to a murder that he didn't commit. And it was, it was at the police department that I'm working at now, a death of a shop owner who there was a federal nexus because he was part of a federal civilian task force committee or something and they thought that his wife was killed because of that. And we got involved and we ended up finding out who the shooter was. And he had gone to this guy's house and we interviewed the guy and the three hour interview, I, you know, we started talking to him because he knew too many facts. And the thing that, that caught me in the interview was, you know, if I go off of this today and I go to one of my friends and say, oh, you know, you know, Jeff interviewed me today and this is what he said. And I used your voice like I try to mimic your voice. It's pretty tell tale that, that I'm listening to what you said, and I'm mimicking what you're saying. And this boy, he was a late teenager, started mimicking the woman, pleading for her life before they shot her. And he was using a woman's voice on what she said. And I'm thinking to myself, like, he was there, like he. Why would you mimic what she was saying? And, you know, three hours into this, he finally confessed that he went with the guy and this is what happened. And his attorneys came back later and they were begging me. They're like, he didn't go. He didn't go. And we ended up interviewing the suspect who eventually confessed. And he's like, no, he never went, because I went back and told him everything that happened. Well, he just thought that if he told us what we wanted to hear, we were going to let him go. And that's what it was. I mean, he ended up getting five years in prison for lying to an FBI agent, you know, because it stymied our, our investigation. And, you know, it was kind of crazy. But I never thought somebody, you know, when you hear that where people say, oh, why would you confess to a murder if you didn't do it? Yeah, that's right. Why would you, you know, and this person confessed. And I. That's the only time it ever happened in my career that I knew somebody confessed to something they didn't do.
- [162:34]
Jeff
But the, but the law or what he broke. What did he. What was the law he broke? He lied to an FDA.
- [162:40]
John McPhee
There's a, there's a, it's Title 18, USC Code 1001, which is basically making a false material fact to a federal agent that was a lie. So like, if he, if he. Hypothetically, I'm trying to think of an example. So in his situation, let's say he, he lied about. And I'm trying, I'm going blank on it, but it's got to be a material fact where not just, you know, hey, we went over there at 10 after 10, and, you know, this is what we did, and that was it. We didn't do anything else. Well, then I find out on a video you were there at 10:25. I can't charge you for that. Even though you lied.
- [163:32]
Jeff
Yeah.
- [163:32]
John McPhee
Again, you just maybe was. You didn't know the time, whatever it was, and use that analogy. But it's got to be material fact. And that's what it was. It was a material fact where he admitted that he went to the crime, committed the crime with this guy, the other guy shot him, they left and Went to his house when none of that happened.
- [163:49]
Jeff
Wow. That. I've never heard that before.
- [163:54]
John McPhee
Yeah.
- [163:54]
Jeff
And he gets five years per.
- [163:56]
John McPhee
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a five year felony. I charge. I charged that a bunch of times. I had. That. I had other times where I've had people, you know, who were suspects in cases and material fact lied, you know, during the interview, and we charged them on top of it.
- [164:12]
Jeff
Oh, my gosh. What was the time? Whether it was bureau before bureau or even your career now after bureau, where it was just an absolute slam dunk. You. You just, you felt really confident. And then the case is either unsolved or went the opposite way. But you had so much confidence that it was gonna, you know, that it was gonna go in your favor. Like, ton. Maybe you had tons of evidence or you had what you considered was absolute proof.
- [164:42]
John McPhee
I mean, I. I don't have any. I don't have any that went the other way. I mean, I have. I had one case where a. A security. Armed security guard had emptied one of the ATM machines and I thought I had enough, and they never prosecuted it. And I always felt that they should have. And then, you know, the one case that I. I still linger to this day was, is the Boca Town Center Mall murders that happened in 2007 that I worked. And, you know, it's. A mother and a daughter got killed. And I mean, that's. We could sit here for three hours again on that case, but it's been. I've done shows and stuff like that on it, so it's easily to look up, but that's one case I'm heartbroken that we didn't solve, you know, because you never get it out of your head seeing the mother and daughter in the back of that car shot. And that's one of those cases that I hope it solves someday before I go and that this guy comes to justice. Because we work so hard on that case. I mean, all of us, between the bureau and the Boca Raton Police Department and the sheriff's office, you know, there's. There's guys still working it. And, you know, you just hope that it does get solved. I mean, because it's. Again, you know, the person shouldn't be out there. I mean, he took three lives and for no reason at all, for 500 bucks out of an ATM machine. It was crazy.
- [166:17]
Jeff
So what did you have? How much stuff did you have? Or did you have nothing on it? Do you just have.
- [166:23]
John McPhee
No, there's a lot of stuff. It's just. We don't you know, there's too many mixtures of DNA, there's a lot of circumstantial stuff, but there's nothing pointing to one person. I mean we had 2,000 leads and a lot of the leads are just look alikes, you know, because the, one of the witnesses, they did a sketch and if you get a chance to look at the Boca Town center, more murders. But it's like I said, it's, that's a three hour. I mean I beat that thing down with interviews and things like that, but it's just, it's something that lingers in my head that should have been solved. I wish it was solved. I wish we had at least a suspect to key in on. We did try a lot of, you know, quote unquote bureau investigative tools that you can't talk about. In that case, thought might work and, and nothing really came out.
- [167:19]
Jeff
Okay, well, I'm going to be starting a, a residency program. I decided where I'm going to take, I'd love to have you on again.
- [167:29]
John McPhee
Okay.
- [167:30]
Jeff
So every, maybe every six to eight weeks, come on and do a deep dive. Not necessarily, whatever, we're at a three hour interview which was, yeah, but deep diving into something. And maybe it would be that case just to bring you on more regularly if you're up for it. Because this, this is just, this is awesome. So I wanna, I mean, I wanna thank you for a couple things, you know, obviously your time. I just, I want to say thanks for just, just your level of honesty, transparency, commitment, openness, all those things to really go through that range of emotions today with us.
- [168:10]
John McPhee
Because, yeah, like I said, you know, look, I, I, I hope, you know, I, I, the last thing I ever wanted to see was her die. And you know, I was gonna, I, I was almost thankful that he did die. And I thought, you know, she's gonna move on and no, she'll get some help and you know, she'll, you know, get to see her grandkids or whatever and you know, it was so hard and you know, you just hope that these stories resonate with other people where they're like, hey, wait a minute, you know, I just, like we said earlier, you know, you know that, that guy with that little girl or they moved in and it's just kind of weird and, and don't just look a blind eye or if you're that person, like, hey, you know, I, I don't know where I came from and I've been with this family and you know, and, or I've Been, you know, I know that I'm from some country and now I'm here and you know, things like that, you just hope, you know, the human trafficking is just, it's crazy and it's, you know, it's, it's hard to believe that there's people out there that would not want this stopped as people coming across the border. And you know, it's an open avenue to bring girls and boys and whatever into the country. And you know, look, they're always going to find somebody to, to sell the person to or, or to sell out for money and you know, it's, you just hope that people come forward. And you know, I'm hoping too that, you know, people are more apt now to go to the local law enforcement, go to their police agencies and say, hey, look, you know, this is, this is what I saw, you know, try to do something. And look, if you don't think anything's being done, you know, go to the chief or you know, go to the state police or go to the FBI, you know, keep going and, or go to your local radio station or TV station and say, look, this is what's going on. You know, nobody's helping me because look there, I know the police agencies are busy and, and they're, but they're there to help you and they're there to stop the crimes. And you just hope that detectives have passion and stuff to go forward and, and investigate these things because that's, that's why we got in this job is to help people. You know, you get in there and you want to help and, and one of the things like I said is to, is to do the investigations and prove or disprove the person did it.
- [170:34]
Jeff
Yeah. On, on episode 10, which is going back now 40 episodes, I had a former CIA guy on who started a minute. Not ministry, not charity, like a nonprofit for. It's called Deliver Fund. But he's using CIA type technology to fight human trafficking. Is, that's his, his sweet spot. So I can't wait to share this today's interview.
- [171:04]
John McPhee
Yeah.
- [171:05]
Jeff
With, with him. I mean, you have an incredible story. I, I mean, I can't say thanks enough. You're welcome.
- [171:12]
John McPhee
Yeah.
- [171:13]
Jeff
This was so special. Thank you again for being, I'm gonna say, vulnerable. Yeah. You are willing to come on and tell the story again.
- [171:23]
John McPhee
And like I said, it is, it is emotional. I mean, there's only a couple cases in my life that'll do it and you know, this was one of them. And you just, you're not human. If they don't get emotion about it. To see what she went through, that she's a person like everybody else and she shouldn't have been exposed to that for decades.
- [171:44]
Jeff
Yeah. That's awesome. All right, you're. We're all set for today. Yeah. Just hit. You could just hit n when you're done and you. Thank you again. And I'll be real soon.
- [171:55]
John McPhee
All right. Thanks, sir. Bye. Bye. Thanks.