Undercover Trooper & ATF Special Agent Jennifer Eskew. Becoming Fire! (Part One)

Welcome everyone, to part one of my interview with retired ATF Special Agent Jennifer Eskew. The conclusion of this interview will air next Sunday!

A little about Jennifer: Jennifer (CLARKE) Eskew is a former Virginia State Trooper, a retired ATF Senior Special Agent, an Author, and subject matter expert in undercover operations, fire and explosion origin and cause determinations, and criminal investigations involving the violent crimes of arson and bombings, armed career criminals, and financial fraud.

Jennifer graduated from the Virginia State Police Academy in 1986, beginning her career as a uniform trooper, then as an undercover trooper. This period of her law enforcement career is the focus of her newly released debut true-crime memoir, BECOMING FIRE: Chasing the Passion to Protect, Serve, and Love. 

Jennifer became a Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in 1990. She worked undercover and investigated criminal cases, eventually joining the ATF National Response Team in 1994, becoming a Certified Explosives Specialist and a Certified Fire Investigator. She was involved in numerous large-scale arson/bombing investigations, including Centennial Park, Sandy Springs double bombings, The Otherside Lounge bombing, and the 9/11 Pentagon terror attack.  She’s currently writing her second true-crime memoir, highlighting her undercover casework with the ATF.

Please enjoy this fascinating conversation as we track Jennifer’s early law enforcement career as she transitioned from trooper to ATF agent. Next week, we focus on her career with the ATF and the dangerous, undercover, and high-profile cases she investigated. 

 In today’s episode, we discuss:

·      The violent incident that happened to her mother and sister that shook her small town and lit the fuse to her wanting to be in law enforcement. 

·      From wanting to save Free Willy to becoming a cop. How did that happen?

·      How a trip to Japan at a young age molded her future. 

·      Going into the Virginia State Police academy and the medical scare that almost prevented her from becoming a trooper.

·      Having a boss tell her class that women and wine will torpedo your career.

·      An unusual first day of field training.

·      The pitfalls of unprofessional FTO / Recruit relationships.

·      Jennifer’s first day of going out solo as a trooper.

·      Becoming an undercover trooper. How she got picked and what cases she worked on.

·      Going undercover to catch a bomber on a college campus.

·      Being bait for a serial killer.

All of this and more on today’s episode of the Cops and Writers podcast.

Please visit Jennifer's website to learn more about her and her book.

Check out my newest book! Police Stories: The Rookie Years - True Crime, Chaos & Life as a Big City Cop!

Head on over to my website! 

What's the craziest thing you saw when you were a cop?

My first week on the job, a guy running at me with a butcher knife. He'd just killed his brother over the last hot dog.

That's chapter 1. There are 33 more.

Police Stories: The Rookie Years just launched - available on Amazon. 

Search 'Police Stories Patrick O'Donnell' or click th

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

The Colonial Parkway murders had started with serial killer. And so what their plan was is to put a male and female undercovers together in these lover's lane parking kind of places. You were serial killer bait.

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome to the Cops and Riders Podcast. Your host, Sergeant Patrick O'Donnell, worked the streets in one of the nation's largest police departments for over 25 years. Ride along with O'Donnell and his expert guests as they help you navigate the oftentimes confusing and misunderstood world of law enforcement. O'Donnell and his guests on this show do not represent any law enforcement agency. The content of this show is not meant to be legal advice.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Hey Cops and Writers, thanks for being here with us today for another episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast. I'm Patrick O'Donnell and it'll be your host for today's show. This show is listener supported, so thanks to all of you who keep the show going. I would especially like to thank those of you who are patrons of the show. Your generosity helps pay for the software, equipment, and my time producing this show. Yes, you too can become a patron for less than a cup of coffee or a pint of Guinness. Just go over on to patreon.com forward slash cops and writers. Welcome everyone to part one of my interview with retired ATF special agent Jennifer Eskew. The conclusion of this interview will air next Sunday. A little bit about Jennifer. Jennifer Clark Eskew is a former Virginia State Trooper, a retired ATF senior special agent, an author, and subject matter expert in undercover operations, fire and explosion origin, and cause determinations, and career investigations involving the violent crimes of arson and bombings, armed career criminals, and financial fraud. Jennifer graduated from the Virginia State Police Academy in 1986, beginning her career as a uniformed trooper, then as an undercover trooper. This time period of her law enforcement career is the focus of her newly released debut true crime memoir, Becoming Fire, Chasing the Passion to Protect, Serve, and Love. Jennifer became a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 1990. She worked undercover and investigated criminal cases, eventually joining the ATF National Response Team in 1994, becoming a certified explosive specialist and certified fire investigator. She was involved in numerous large-scale arsons bombings investigations to include Centennial Park, Sandy Springs double bombings, the other side lounge bombing, and the 911 Pentagon terror attack. She's currently writing her second true crime memoir highlighting her undercover case, her undercover casework with ATF. Please enjoy this fascinating conversation as we track Jennifer's early law enforcement career as she transitioned from trooper to ATF agent. Next week we focus on her career with the ATF and the dangerous undercover and high profile cases she investigated. Jennifer Eskew, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

How you doing? It's good to talk to you, Patrick. Um Mr. Cops and Riders.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Can you tell us about that?

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Yeah, my mom and uh a couple of our neighbor ladies that I I know they've known me since birth, um, and my sister, who was three at the time, they had gone shopping uh in a neighboring city, a little little city called South Hill. And on their way home, they saw a wrecked police car out in a field. And there was a man out there beside it, and he's kind of waving his arms for help or something, and he comes walking up to their car because they pull over, and he comes up and he's toting a shotgun and toting a pistol, and they're still thinking he's law enforcement. This is 1968 in a very rural farming region, yeah. And they're thinking he's a law enforcement person that needs help. They've wrecked his car, and he's saying something, but the our neighbor lady Nettie had not gotten her window down, she couldn't hear him very clearly, and she's older. Um, and he gets frustrated right away. I guess he was wanting her to get out of the car or for them to get out of the car, but they didn't understand that. And suddenly he starts shooting at them.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Holy cow.

SPEAKER_04 4:34

Like really quick. You know, happened so fast. Yeah. Well, Helen was driving, she took off. Good. Um, the the glass throughout the vehicle is just shattering, breaking all over the place, and it's just all over the ladies. My mom and uh Helen's sister, Trudy, are in the back seat, and my sister, my sister Katrina, she's seated in the middle, and they're all this, you know. My mom like gets them all down to the floorboard. Yeah, Helen speeds off, and she starts driving back to our hometown. And Nettie has slumped over on her because she has actually been shot. Wow. She was shot through um the under the shoulder through her um sternum here into the chest, and the bullet had traveled through her chest. And so the lungs, that sort of thing, you know, everything's being hit. Um, at the time it was like a 38. What had happened is that guy had um escaped from the local uh town's police. He had stolen their car and stolen their gun. That he'd stolen the 38. That's how he got free. He then stole the car, had their shotgun, and he was trying to make his escape. He wrecked his car. And nobody's chasing him at this point because you know this all just happened within moments, and along come my family and friends, and they're trying to offer help. Uh, they do get uh to the town, the town doctor that we had, um, Dr. Ball, he was able to get uh Nettie, I guess you'd call it stable enough at that point in time to get her on an ambulance uh from our town to Richmond. So that's a long drive. I don't care how you make that drive. Even by ambulance, you're a good um good hour to the medical college in Virginia in Richmond. Uh she survived it. She was in the hospital a few weeks. I'm six years old. I'm not there. I am at school. It's December. I'm a first grader. Uh and everything changes because my grandmother, my mom's mom, uh, she picks me up at school that day. That's a total never has happened. And then we go to my other grandmother, my my dad's mom's house. Now I've never seen my two grandmothers at one of their houses. That's just not a thing, you know. They live like nine miles apart. They just you know, they got too many things going on, they're not hanging out together. Yeah. So that's all new. So eventually my mom has to explain to me what took place, and she did a really good job of it. I remember that.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

And you're only six years old. I mean, there's only so much you can comprehend from this.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

You can't. And the biggest thing you comprehend, and I got telling my sister the thing of the you know, of the story, I said, it's your story from being where you were.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:10

I said, but it's my story from how I took it in. And as a six-year-old, it's the grown-ups trying to talk in whispers and trying to talk in rooms and have conversations about everything that's gone on and what's going to be going on and how bad it is with Nettie and her husband Harry. You know, everything has just happened to them. They're a dairy farmers, you know, small dairy farm. And everything is just it like a shock to the community because they don't have this in my community. We didn't have homicides, we didn't have these things. Right. So it's like, wow. And they're trying to do it without a six-year-old being present or a six-year-old hearing, you know, and it's like you can't send me outside all the time. It's December. You can't leave me out there for four hours.

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Yeah, that ain't gonna work.

SPEAKER_04 7:57

Yeah, and I'm gonna ask questions. And my mom has got band-aids all over her, my sister's got band-aids, all especially down their legs and stuff, because their coats and all protected them, but their legs had like pantyhose and like stockings to the glass. Sure. So, yeah, that's my memory of the things, and then just being mad, mad that I wasn't there to protect them. Because you see, I had learned how to shoot a gun, and I would go hunting with my dad. So I knew that bad men, you had to stop them. You somebody had to catch them, you know. That was in my brain. Now, how I thought I would manage that at six, you know. You know, throw on throw on my Wonder Woman costume or Batman costume and then fix the day.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

So you grew up in Virginia in a small town, about how big?

SPEAKER_04 8:48

Oh, back then, a few hundred people, and then you come. We lived out in the county. We were five miles from town. Um, I don't know that the county had, but just a few thousand. In fact, they wouldn't be over 10,000 people in the county right now if they're there, if it wasn't for a prison being built there about 25 years ago. Oh, okay. That that bumped the prison they count the prison population into the population.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 9:13

Bumped the numbers, yeah. There's no McDonald's there. There's no um, there's nothing of that nature there. There's you know, we had a little movie theater when I was a little kid, but that that went away.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

What'd your uh mom and dad do for a living?

SPEAKER_04 9:28

My dad worked for the railroad, um and he was with them like 38 years, and my mom had a home beauty shop, uh, and then we gardened and and well we raised tobacco on the farm as well, and then we had some critters like chickens and pigs, a couple of calves.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

So you had a like an idealistic youth, you know, kind of Mayberry-ish. You know, I I tease my wife because she's from Radford, Virginia.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

Oh, okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

And it's still Mayberry. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 9:58

Well, drift down into Southside, Virginia, and you get to the little town of Cambridge in Victoria, and it's very much really Mayberry. Everybody knows everybody.

SPEAKER_01 10:07

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:08

Who's in the hospital, who fell on the ice this past week? Any of those things that have happened. In fact, I have found out a friend last night. She's fallen on the ice, and they have uh they were going to do an emergency, put a pen in her hip, but they hoped that was gonna take care of it. You know, it you learn these things, it's tragic. The the newspaper used to get published once a week. They don't even do that anymore. They have to get the the town, the the county over, get their town newspaper.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

So, what was the name of the city that you grew up in?

SPEAKER_04 10:35

Kenbridge. Um, K-E-N-B-R-I-D-G-E. It was named for the Kennedys and the Bridgeforth, but those were farmers and community people leaders from back in the turn of the century, 1900. Oh, whatever, 1908's when they named the um officially named the town Ken Bridge.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah, that's interesting. So you have you have this uh youth, you know, this growing up, but it's kind of you know, the innocence is kind of shattered with oh my god, mom and little sister almost died in a gunfight. I mean, that doesn't happen every day.

SPEAKER_04 11:09

Something clicks, yeah. Something clicks like a little reality thing, because I don't think I remember another crime happening until I was um high school years. Uh, there was a brutal homicide that took place in the town. Um and well, it took place at the woman's home uh by somebody who was a severe drug addict that had been in and out of um prisons and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Also, it was a stranger homicide.

SPEAKER_04 11:35

Or did she knew the lady lived there at that house, and he figured I guess money or something? Oh, that's true. No idea. She opened the door to him because she knew his family, you know. Oh, okay, sure. And and he comes and then that happens. And so that was the big talk for well, until he was executed like 10 years later. I mean, it was we they just it didn't happen back then, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Right, yeah, absolutely not. And if it did, uh usually it'd be like some kind of domestic thing, yeah. Yeah, you know, a jilted lover or you know, a very angry ex, you know, something like that. That's I don't care where you live. That's gonna, you know, that's they do those homicides happen.

SPEAKER_04 12:15

It's that other it's like, ooh, this is and you know, and you just go so many decades without it, and then it happens. Um, and it's it's scary. It's scary for the community, it's scary for the kids that are learning about it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

So, how would you describe your high school years?

SPEAKER_04 12:32

Um, I was an outdoor kid, uh, as a tomboy. I I I probably am still very much a tomboy, so I'm just in the grown-up version of it. Uh I uh I hunted, I fished because in our county there wasn't a whole lot of other things to do. Uh, we had Girl Scouts, and so I had been backpacking with my Girl Scout troops through all the the mountains, the Blue Ridge, and you know, Skyline Drive and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

That is beautiful. It really is.

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Since like since I was like nine years old, our Girl Scout leader was always getting us out there and showing us that we could do anything, so it's like, oh, this is great. And um so I I was kind of more absorbed in that. Um, I hung out with my friends, uh, but and you know everybody, because I went to high school, half these people were in some way kin to me. They were either a cousin or a cousin's cousin, uh okay. Or or they I grew up with them and I've known them since um first grade, or we had a kindergarten, even though it wasn't an official kindergarten. Um, or I've known them since church. I mean, sure. So you just you know everybody. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

My my mother-in-law still lives in Radford, and everybody, you know, it's like if there's any situation or whatever, we got text messages, you know, it's like, hey, you know, Nancy is doing this, and yeah, blah, blah. So, you know, she's getting up there in years, so it is so nice to have people that you know, sometimes there's some nosy nullies, but for the most part, you know, it's it's just nice that you have that support.

SPEAKER_04 13:54

You know what the internet really is? I mean, for a small town. Back in the day when I was little, uh, the telephone system, we had party lines, and so other people had the phone. And so literally, it's just basically a party telephone, and now you can just text it to everybody versus everybody just getting on the phone and spreading the word through the party line.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah, young people are not gonna know what a party line is at all. But you know, look it up. Yep, look it up, look it up on the interwebs, and you'll find it, kids. Yeah, so you're in high school. What did you want to do for a living like when you were in your high school years? What where did you marine?

SPEAKER_04 14:30

I was gonna be a marine biologist. Uh uh, Eugenie Clark, she studied sharks, and then there was another lady, um cannot remember her name off the top of my head, Susan, and I can't remember her last name, but I had seen National Geographic, and I had actually ordered a magazine um from them. Like it was almost a huge book, beautiful color pictures of the ocean. And I I lived in a rural farm community. The ocean was a good two and a half hours to the east of us, and the mountains were two hours to the west of us, and so you know, we were in flat farmland, and I wanted to be in those beautiful blue oceans and the green, lush palm trees and things, and the islands and the sands, and I thought that would be just the greatest. And I was gonna swim with sharks and dolphins because dolphins were it, you know, and uh I I really saw that as something, and I kept looking like how can I get into you know that field and how long is it gonna take? And of course, it looks like it was gonna take forever, education-wise, but I was like, ah, no big deal, I can do that. And it didn't work out at college at all. That first year of college is not a problem. The second year of college, it's like, oh no, you need invertebrate zoology, and you're gonna need like four chemistry classes, and you're gonna need all these math classes. And I was like, How much math are we talking here?

SPEAKER_01 15:50

Yeah, I love college algebra so much, I took it twice. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 15:55

I I I I took it for four weeks. You know what? If I drop out now, I just I just drop out withdrawal. If I wait, it's gonna be dropout failed. Let's go with the withdrawal, the big W.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

So from wanting to save free willy to becoming a cop, how the heck did that happen? That's a big jump.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

I do remember at 18 thinking, and it's probably because of watching TV and stuff, uh, about wanting to go into law enforcement and kind of there. And then when I was at the end of my college days, I happened to be over in the City of Norfolk building there, and I was on the elevator with all people. Apparently, it was the chief of police of Norfolk, and he asked me, uh, because I had an ODU shirt on, um, you know, you got an old minion, and I said, uh, yes, sir, I'm getting ready to graduate. Oh, have you thought about entering law enforcement? We could use young people like yourself working undercover, you know, and he throws this out there in the in an elevator conversation in an elevator.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 17:25

I don't know who this guy is. It's not that tall of a building, it's a very short conversation. And I don't know what I was there for. I I think I had to get, I think I was in the wrong place trying to find where I needed to pick up a paper or something. And um I I thought I hadn't thought about it. And I now it was like in my head, I'm like a month away from graduating, and it's like that wow. And then it kept going, going, going. I didn't I didn't chase that right then. I was like, no, I can't do that. Yeah. But it was it was an interesting thing for somebody to throw that out to me, just a stranger. I don't know if they were just in a big recruiting mode or how that was going for them.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah. So you now you did travel to Japan, which uh I absolutely love. Was obviously was were you in college when this happened?

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Or I was I was in college and I actually ended up going twice, but the first time I went was for 30 days with my martial arts group. Wow. Um and my dojo. That's it. And our sensei, my sensei was he is Japanese and he came from Japan to the U.S. to to study and get his education, uh, doing all of that in the late 60s, 70s. Then he became um uh professor both at Old Dominion University and at William and Mary. So he set up dojos in both places, but he'd already been working and training people since he arrived. Uh small dojos, just wherever they could find a place to work out.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

What type of karate?

SPEAKER_04 18:55

Uh well, Busin Khan Dojo and uh Sherra Khan, uh it gets very lengthy and long, but um he is a 24th generation samurai. Uh his father his father was actually uh a samurai um recognized uh with um uh Emperor Hirohito uh or whatever they call it, I can't remember all the names, but anyhow.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah, it was Hirohito was the Emperor, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:20

Yeah, and all of those things during uh during World War II and prior, like during the wars with China and uh those times. He was there all of those times, and his actual was that he was a professional flutist and flute maker. Okay, so that was like his trade, but he was also highly skilled and trained. And we're talking there's 16 recognized martial arts for Japan, and my sensei is trained in all of them, but he has uh excelled in like eight or nine of them over the years, so it was just a major thing, and um uh it it was um that you know for for him, and that's of course it was his father, and he was the uh oldest of three sons, so he started his training in the um early 1940s, and you know, literally raised in one of the temples doing all of those things.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Now, yeah, I have I love, love, love martial arts when I was in college and after. And you know, I think it trains you in so many different ways. Yes, but going to Japan, that would be like it on steroids, you know. That's like every that's like every martial artist dream come true. It's like, oh my god, I get to go to Japan. This is so cool. What was how did that shape your future, do you think?

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Oh, I I think it helped out a lot. We had 22 uh of us in the class or that went to Japan, uh, various ranks. I was one of the brown belts that went, uh, but there was you know, my friends' brown belts, green belts, yellow belts, whoever. We went and we um were there the 30 days. We had 28 days in which we were doing katas and also doing um uh sparring. Yeah. And um, so there's a lot, uh, a few injuries. We had a couple of people that ended up with concussions and in the hospital for a couple of days while they were there. The rest of us we're touring the country. Uh, we're getting beat up at 5 o'clock in the morning by our sensei, and then we're showing up, we're going on a tour, we're on a tour bus, we're seeing things, we're having meals that were just unbelievable. We're being treated like we were royalty. And then at say one o'clock in the afternoon, we're at a dojo someplace, and we're about to get our butts absolutely whipped. The whole thing was never give up. Get up, get up. I remember my friend Sandy, who's my best friend, she's uh there, and uh she's fighting a guy who's probably you know 20 years older than her, who's been studying martial arts for 30 years, and you know, because this is who they had, this is who we were fighting. They're all they're all black belts, they've all been in it for decades. And I remember seeing her hit the ground over and over and over. But what I saw at the end was she always got up, and at the very end, she's standing up, she's still up, and he turns, he bows to her, he turns and goes back and sits down. Because what he's found is she's not gonna quit. That's awesome. She is not gonna give up, she's not gonna quit, and that's how we were supposed to be that you don't you don't quit. Keep fighting, whatever you do. And so I think it was there. It it it may have been a spark inside of me to do that, you know, just from my raising, you know, because my parents didn't let you quit on things. Right. You know, or you know, you're gonna do it, do it. But at the same time, I think this reiterated it the years with sensei and the dojo, uh, the same thing. Don't quit. You know, don't give up and just keep keep going. What part of Japan were you in? We traveled most of it. So we saw everything from Mount Fuji to Tokyo, uh uh Osaka, Kobe. We we traveled. We we were on planes, we were on the bullet train, we you know, we got out, we stayed with home stays, we stayed in youth hostels, we actually stayed in a couple of hotels, not not too often on that. Um, we traveled a lot. I stayed with a family in uh Kitamura Katakan, which means mouse of the mountain. Uh, once they picked me up, we drove like two and a half hours to get to where we were staying, and I was in this little tiny mountain village, and the whole village showed up to meet me.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Well, they've probably never seen an American before.

SPEAKER_04 23:38

Oh, most had not. Yeah. And had never actually heard English spoken, you know, yeah. Uh well in in any form, uh, you know, American English, whatever. And I'm thinking, well, here we are, good old southerner.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

They're talking over really does everyone speak like that?

SPEAKER_04 23:52

But they brought a person from the village who knew English, some and he had traveled places and stuff, so they brought him as my interpreter, okay, and they brought food. Everybody brought food. So the house, the little house was full. When I say full, you've never seen so many people. I I I guarantee you, 70 to 80 people show up, and they have all brought immense amounts of food. So there's probably a hundred dishes or more of food there. Uh platter dishes. Wow. There's no place to really sit. We're standing, we've got food everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

You know, when I got out of college, you know, I had a degree in sociology, my minor was criminal justice, so I was qualified to sell cars and be a restaurant manager, you know, do that kind of stuff. There was the age.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

And I worked with a gal that went to Japan and she did like her junior year abroad in Japan when she was in college.

SPEAKER_04 24:51

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

And she was six foot blonde, and she had like Cleopatra eyes. That's how she did her like makeup. Wow. And she said they were incredibly respectful, but everybody wanted to touch her hair because they had never seen a blonde person before. Wow, let alone a woman.

SPEAKER_04 25:10

They were into that, and they really kept asking us back then about uh California Hollywood, California Hollywood. That was their big thing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Uh yeah, they thought she was a movie star.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

And you know, yeah, she would stick out. You know, she's six foot tall, you know, very good-looking gal, you know, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and they're like, we've never seen this before.

SPEAKER_04 25:32

Well, I loved it. I loved the trip. And of course, through Sensei, we made a lot of friends. And uh I had a good friend, she had come from Japan to go to college and do martial arts with us, Asiko. So I ended up going back in 1988 when I was a trooper uh for a week with another friend, Anne, and we went to her wedding in uh Japan and stuff. So really, really enjoyed that. And on that trip, I got to see Jet uh uh uh Tokyo Disneyland, which was oh wow. Nobody beat me up on that.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Very cool. Yeah. So you go through college. What was your major in college?

SPEAKER_04 26:08

I ended up uh just getting out of the uh marine biology uh field there after a couple of years, and I moved into uh therapeutic recreation, and so it was a matter of working in uh nursing homes uh for the most part at that time, uh getting people involved in recreation and activities, rehabilitation centers, things of that nature. Um, the only other thing I could have been was Julie McCoy on the Love Boat, you know, as the cruise director, fun cruise director person, and that wasn't uh that wasn't gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Okay, so you graduated from college, you you started working in nursing homes, correct? Using your degree. Yeah, yeah. I remember that from the book. Yeah. And what was the segue from doing that to getting into the Virginia State Police Academy?

SPEAKER_04 26:56

It was really eating at me. I told you about that conversation when I was getting ready to graduate there in uh 84 with the uh Norfolk chief, and it kept spinning through my head. And by the time I came home to visit my parents in uh December, my dad and I were out hunting, and uh I kind of ran the idea by him. I sort of vol I sort of told, sort of asked him about it, looking for his response. I was expecting like a no, that's not no, I don't want you doing that, or something like that. That's not what he did. He spent two minutes thinking about what I said, so it's this super quiet two-minute walk through the woods of this like and I'm thinking, well, he must be really mad or something. He this is yeah, you don't know what to think here because everything, and he just stops and he's like, You need to do the state police. And I didn't think they hired women. I was like, they don't hire women, and I'm laughing, and he's like, Yes, they do. You need to learn more about what it is you're planning on doing. If this is what you want, then you go get the information and you learn and find out what it is that you need and what all the process is. And there was no internet, you had to go and get the application and fill it all out and do. So I looked at the city of Richmond, Norfolk, and Virginia State Police, and in the end, I never sent the Richmond application off like I should have. I just didn't. I didn't um take the test for Norfolk when I got called up. There was a reason for that. But the state police, I I sent the stuff in, and I was like, that's what my dad said to do, so I guess that's where I'm gonna give it a try. I have me being a state. I had only seen old men that were state troopers, and in my mind, an old man was anybody that was 30s and 40s, like 40s, 50s, 60s, you know. So these, you know, anybody that had any kind of touch of gray, you know, right, you know, and these people were revered in a small community like I was in, because you would see a state trooper, and it was just like, ooh, you almost felt like you had to stand up at attention and salute because it just that was the appearance they gave off.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

It was, you know, oh yeah, it's it's very it's very military, it's a very squared-away uniform. They got the campaign covers, the I mean that's yeah, that's pretty high speed, you know. That that does command some respect.

SPEAKER_04 29:06

I think and in the rural areas, they responded to everything. They everything, you know, it wasn't just oh, they're just working the interstate. Oh no, they're working everything with the state police, and the and the rural trooper, he's he's coming to everything, and maybe you get a county deputy too because they come to everything. Right. And it's up to them until somebody that's more trained can come out to work something if it's a bad crime.

SPEAKER_01 29:30

Right. So, you know, you did the application, your dad said go for it. What did your mom think?

SPEAKER_04 29:39

You know, my mom never really expressed any um hesitation or issues with it. It was more like if this is what my daughter wants to do, then I'm all for her. And she was always that way. Um, you know, she didn't sit there and question that or say, I don't really want you to do that or anything. She didn't push it that way. Um, and I do wonder if my dad, in that two-minute hesitation, was thinking I better discuss this with Jerry. That's my mom's name. All Aubrey thinking I better not say anything until Jerry and I go over this. Right. But instead, they he didn't, he gave me an honest answer or what he believed. And my mom took it in not just stride, but she took it as yeah, this is what she wants to do, and we're gonna encourage her all the way because you know, we've never told her there was something that she couldn't do. Um years later, I would get that back from my mom over the phone. Um, it was getting ready to go to Iraq in 05, and my um mom, whatever, and I and I called to tell them, tell, you know, hey, I've been asked, and this was like 03, I think was the conversation actually, but anyway, um, and I said they've asked and they want us to go to Setting Il and all. So my mom tells me later on that my conversation with my dad who's sitting on the couch was why'd she call us? If they land a rocket ship in our front yard, you know she's getting on it. So well, why does she want to know if we're okay with it?

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Yeah, you know, but yes, I get it. So you go through all the rigorot to get into the Virginia State Police Academy. Yeah, the backgrounds, I'm sure, are pretty arguous. You know, can you tell us a little bit about how that the process was?

SPEAKER_04 31:21

Well, um, they they have you show up for a test. The test is a written test. I think there's something psychological built into it. I I couldn't have told you if it was or not. Um and uh I'm in a big uh gym, big gymnasium there at the um academy, and there's probably, I don't know, 70 or 80 people that are in there taking this test. You finish that, uh, they've got this physical uh fitness part of this thing that you're doing. It's a variety of little stuff that you do. Um it's all of it seemed easy to me for the most part. It's just like, okay, this isn't tough at all. I'm thinking, huh. And everything. And then, you know, you get through that, then they get back with you. Because whoever doesn't pass, I guess doesn't get contacted. And they'd say, next thing we're gonna do with you is uh um you're gonna do a background investigation on you. There's gonna be a drug test, there's gonna be um uh your physical, you're medical. You gotta make sure you're you're medically sound, and of course, everything was great. I've just turned 23. I think I took the test at 22. I just turned 23. Everything is going through it's the all of a sudden there. I'm like on a roll. This guy's doing a serious background. He's been like six weeks talking to every friend, neighbor, church, school, whoever, teacher, my friends. You know, all of that's going great. I go down to the academy um uh to for this meeting right after Christmas. The old lieutenant there's letting me know that I'm too fat because I didn't I I apparently I'm four pounds overweight on the doctor scale. I end up over at the nurses, the state police nurse office, and I'm now under I'm underweight or like not over the limit. And then she does the caliper and she goes, No, you're all muscled. It's like this weird it's like a stressful day. It's too stressful for it. And it's already stressful because I'm dressed up and everybody that's there is dressed up, and I'm being separated from the herd immediately.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Well, how many females were there like through this process? Probably not too many.

SPEAKER_04 33:22

Well, I didn't see any females until I actually got to the academy on day one, our swearing in day, January the 16th, and there was a female sitting right next to me. Uh great gal. She had a great career with them. Um, and that was it. But I hadn't, I'd only seen one other female, and it was the recruiter I saw at the state fair after I had seen her at the day that we were doing that uh physical fitness thing. So, you know, it was like, oh well, how did that make you feel?

SPEAKER_01 33:51

How did that make you feel? To to see them or just the the absence thereof, I mean, being like one of the only females there.

SPEAKER_04 34:00

You know what? I don't guess I was smart enough to know that that was like a like a thing, like, you know, hey, this is gonna be tough. I just was like, okay, no big deal. I they got them. I I guess it's okay. I get they hire women, I'm good. And I never it never occurred to me that they're not going to want you in this atmosphere, that they're not, that there will be people who do not want you present. I never saw life that way, and I never um I didn't know that there were maybe it's naive, maybe it's because I just had never really encountered it, but I was not expecting people to say, okay, we don't want you here because you're female, you don't belong. And eventually you do wor realize that there are a handful of people that are like that. Sure. Um, but it's not the majority, and nobody should believe it's the majority. I was treated great by some of these guys that you would have thought that would have never given me the time of day, especially Vietnam veterans. I thought they were just the nicest gentlemen in the world.

SPEAKER_01 35:04

You know what? I'll stop you there because I was lucky enough I got on the job in '95. And there was Vietnam vets on day shift, and they were some of the nicest, like helpful guys I'd ever met in my law enforcement career. They were, you know, unfortunately, we had a horrible pension when I first started. And these guys were just like hanging on, they're in their 60s, and they're still just ground pounders, yeah, the worst neighborhood in the city. And I'm like, I don't want to be you. You know, they're all drinking from white styrofoam cups with their black coffee and a cigarette in their hand. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 35:44

You saw him in chapter nine, did you?

SPEAKER_01 35:47

I had uh there was a bunch of them that I worked with, but uh sorry to interrupt, but you know, I just had this flashback of some of the younger cops, and by younger guys that had like four or five years on the job treated us like shit. When you were a recruit, when you're brand new coming to the district, nobody would talk to you, everybody made your life miserable, you know, intentionally. But these Vietnam vet guys were just like, Yeah, come over here, kid. Yeah, oh, you got a question? Sure, I'll help you. Or, you know, and we're like, wow, where's this coming from?

SPEAKER_04 36:19

Yeah, there just it was, it was. There were there were people who were um, I'm just gonna say they were raised better. Yeah, they were not raised to treat anybody differently, and it didn't matter being female, um, being black, being anybody, whoever you were, they weren't treating you differently. That's what I saw, and you were fine. So you didn't see that, and the handful, the little small handful that you saw that were like that, you know, you just had to figure a way around them and kind of do the best you could. And for the most part, if they were just like you, trooper or or cop, whatever you want to call it, fine, just don't eat with me. I don't give a damn. But if you are um a supervisor, it's a different thing because then they can use little things to mess with you. A few people tried that with me. Um, eventually, I guess they saw I was really stubborn and I was gonna stand my ground one way or the other. Um, or maybe I just screw on them.

SPEAKER_01 37:16

I mean who knows? But I liked one part of your book. You know, you had you had a boss tell you and other recruits, yeah, the whining women will torpedo your career.

SPEAKER_04 37:27

That was a that was a very old grizzled uh lieutenant. Um I'm sure he was a World War II vet because he he was much older even then. Uh um and he was he was at the headquarters. He's the one that told me I was fad. And uh then he was the one that told me that my hair was too long. No matter how many times I cut it, it was always too long. And so that very first day one speech, when he gets up there at that little podium and we're is we're there in the little room, and I happen to be sitting right across the aisle from the other female, and everybody else is a male, um and he pops out and gives that speech, you know. The only thing that can ruin your career, whether it's wine and women, and what are you gonna do? Because he's looking straight at me and straight at her.

SPEAKER_01 38:12

There's like well, I had a flashback. We have a lot in common, Jen, because my first day at the district station when we graduated on a Friday evening, so Friday afternoon, you got your assignment where you're gonna be working. And for my class, there's like 10 of us that got sent to district five. You know, you get your locker, the desk sergeant shows you around, you know, blob the lay of the land, yeah, and you they they put you in this conference room, and then the captain will talk to you. So the captain comes in, is uh he was a Vietnam vet, he was a marine, so as squared away as you can imagine, you know, you could cut yourself on the creases of his uniform, yes, and he had a marine corps coffee mug that he always and a cigarette in his hand, always. And you know, he's like so. He comes in and we all snap to attention, he's like, sit down. It's like, all right, what's gonna fuck your careers? And we're all like, uh writing the wrong report. Um, you know, wrecking the car. Yeah, exactly. He says, Wrong, wrong, wrong, booze and brads. And you know, there was probably three females that were in my class that were you know with us, and he looked at this and says, or whatever your persuasion is, yeah. And he's like, but it was so true. He said, You know what? When you're here, if your heart's in the right place, we will. I got your back. He says, You are gonna screw up, you're brand new, you don't know anything yet, and you are gonna make mistakes. I got you, but once you walk out that door, I don't have you. He's like, you know, what you do off duty is what torpedoes careers. He's like, you know, booze and broads, love and alcohol or drugs or whatever, and that's stuck in my head. And to until I retired, I was a sergeant for like 18 years. Whenever there's a new crop of recruits, I would give the booze and broads speech, and their eyes would be like this big, like, and then I'd be like, and social media. Yeah, I will include social media because guys have gotten fired over their oh yeah, it has because they have just and it's like, what's wrong?

SPEAKER_04 40:27

Don't do that. Oh, well, you would watch it, you see it every day, you see it in the news every day. So wipes out their career, their future, yep, their anonymity, they're never going to be anonymous ever again when they go to try to get a job, and you're seeing them right now, they're gonna lose their career field. It's like good luck to you. I hope you got a lot of money because this is not gonna work for you.

SPEAKER_01 40:51

Yeah, you know, it's like, okay, post pictures of your dog or your cat or you know, your cute kids, or you know, what I was on vacation.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

Food picks will save you every day.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Yeah, food picks. Yeah, hey, look at me grilling. I got a blackstone. This thing's cool as hell. Look at this, you know. But yeah, that's when I saw that in your book. I literally started. I I was listening, I'm just laughing my butt off.

SPEAKER_03 41:15

They give that speech everywhere, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 41:17

But like I said, when you did it, it was just like you you sit and you take it in, and it's like there's probably an insult in there somewhere, but I don't, you know, at this point, I am here, I'm in this seat, I am right here. Yeah, they just swore me in like 15 minutes ago. I you know, I'm not even sure what I said after I raised my right hand. Did I say yes? I do. I'm not really, I swear, I have no idea what I actually responded. Uh yeah, whatever. You know, no idea.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 41:46

And now I'm over here in this little building and you're giving us this lecture. And it's like, it's a it doesn't matter. I'm here.

SPEAKER_01 41:52

Yep, exactly. So tell us about you know, you field training, you know, your first day, what was that like?

SPEAKER_04 42:02

You get on the field training part, and of course the state police did it two two two ways. Um, back in the day, they would actually you would go to the academy for about a week to get your uniforms, make sure you knew how to drive a car, fill out all the paperwork, um, and uh make sure you knew how to shoot a gun. Uh that was a thing. Then they sent you out with an FTO pre-academy and pre-academy for five or six weeks ago. It was a thing. I think what they were finding is they were people that actually eliminated themselves in that process before they ever got to the academy because they just they they got scared, they couldn't handle it, whatever it might be. Oh, okay. And I think it was an awful lot of responsibility to throw on an FTO, um, but they were great FTOs, and so we had that process. Well, I had that about because it took longer than usual to process us because the uniform problem, I don't know, anyway, issue was weird. I had about five and a half, six weeks total out there, and then we came back for the official academy, like get started March 3rd. And so from January 16th, thing, then you get the month of February and all. But then we graduated that July, got out, and then you go to your actual place that you are assigned, where you're gonna be. So I went to Division V, Area 32, which is Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth. And that's where you get your FTO, your next FTO. But this FTO, it's after you've had the training. You know the laws of arrest, you've learned how to put handcuffs on people and how to take control of somebody physically. You know, uh, you've been through the shooting, all the driving courses, all you lots of them now. Sure. Um, you have seen crime scene stuff, although some of that stuff was old back in the day, what we got to see, but you've gotten to work on some of those things. You understand all the traffic laws because they were really, really big on that. You know how to work by accident because that's what they're really big on, too. They're making sure you know when it turns into a crime scene, don't be poking things with a stick, and at the same time, make sure you're getting the people out there who are trained with the state police to deal with that. Um, all these things have gone on. So you've had that to the academy, um, plus all the physical fitness. So that very first day we get there, there's eight of us from my class, seven men and myself show up for division. 5 area 32, and I get assigned to uh a female trooper. She's the only one in that div, she was the only one in the office until I showed up. Now I'm number two. Um, and she becomes my FTO. And of course, the guy's got the seven men FTOs. Now, we could say that was a coincidence, but I don't think so. It probably is. Meanwhile, meanwhile, and I get what they were doing. I I her and I just kind of smirked about it and let it go. You don't talk about it. It's like it is what it is. Hey, she'd been there five years on her own. There was no other females, nobody else looked around. So she came on even sooner than I did back when there were even fewer female troopers. Because at this point, there's probably only 20 some in the whole state, including me and the other two that graduated my class. Wow. Um, so it's just a small number. And they never would give us an honest number when we ask. They there was some cute ways of fudging the numbers.

SPEAKER_01 45:21

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 45:22

So I'm with my FTO. We go out, and she has this um a warrant that we're going to serve on somebody, and it's nothing big deal. It's not criminal. It's somebody who was suspended or didn't have a driver's license or something like that, and she's obtained this magistrate warrant to go down and just serve it and do. And we go to this kind of a little rough neighborhood, not too bad, I don't guess. Um, they got a lot of cars up on blocks in the front yard and around the side yard, and motorcycles and stuff, and they got a lot of furniture, and they got a couple of pieces of furniture on the front porch there, you know, chair, uh couches that no longer were good for the inside but better for the outside things and all. And um, I mean, you know, I I'd been in blue-collar neighborhoods, I understood, you know.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 46:06

It was no big deal. But I saw something and I reacted to it, and I didn't use my trooper voice because I hadn't quite adapted into all of those things yet. And um, we didn't have a lot of this on the use of force continuum, however they want to look at that these days. There wasn't a lot of other things in between, or just basically your presence, your voice, your gun. So that was our unless you got out the slapjack that they didn't issue, but we did have a pocket for. Um other people would give it to you. I I sort of cleared leather with my weapon that day.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 46:41

And and it was like a needle scratching across an album. You could see everything just came to the slow grinding halt and listening and whatever. And of course, by now the trooper voice is coming out, and then the whole look of everybody, and it turned out not to be a gun like I thought I saw. And we worked it all out. I was able to articulate it, but of course, that's day one. Okay, so put this giant X up here. But she was great. I worked with her for four weeks and really learned an awful lot of things, and um the way her composure and the way she handled herself with people was excellent. And I never encountered anybody in my office that ever said they had a complaint with her. Um you know, people people really liked the way she handled herself and what she did, and she kept her personal life to herself, and and she did a great job as far as I saw, or anybody else did.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Cool. Now, your first FTO was a guy, and you went to go meet his wife on the first day. Tell us about that. I I just chuckled at that one.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

Okay, okay. That FTO was uh uh Jerry, good good guy, and uh so uh I am freezing to death outside, waiting for him in my little uniform, all ready to go. He's gonna pick me up at the house I'm staying at, which is one of the sergeants with him and his wife, because they have a little bedroom there that they kind of rent out to me to stay. And and I'm out on the front porch waiting for him, freezing, just absolutely freezing. The uniform is just not warm enough for this weather. And he picks me up and basically introduces himself and then immediately gives me the lay of the land, the whole rules, things, or whatever, what to expect. And he is letting me know that I am going to meet his wife and also making it very clear to me that we were gonna have a professional relationship, to which in my brain I I I had never considered anything less than a professional relationship. Right. I had never thought about a personal, it never occurred to me at 23, whatever that anybody would have these grown men were gonna be thinking, yeah, this is a personal relationship. I wasn't thinking there, I was just thinking, I'm just trying to learn this job. But he's squaring that up with me, and that those that's not what this is about. So he was being professional, he was letting me know straight off the bat, you know, this is what we're about here. We're going to be professional, we're gonna do this the right way. But I'm going to meet his wife first. White, wife, kid, whatever. We're gonna go over to the house. And sure enough, we go straight from where he picks me up, straight over to his house. I meet her, lovely person, lovely home, great folks, whatever. I you know, I don't have any place I can disappear to, so I've got to meet these people. Sure. And meet, of course, in the back of your mind, you're starting to think of like a lot of things going, I hope this isn't an issue. Hope it could please don't be an issue. And it wasn't. It was never any issue, but it was just that whole thing of he was very he was going to make sure that we laid down a professional footing right from the get-go. There was not going to be any rumors or innuendos. Right. And if there were, that was going to get put to a halt immediately. There was not going to be the speculation and stuff and little because people, you know, you know cops gossip worse than anybody.

SPEAKER_01 50:07

Oh my god, they're like teenage girls. I mean, they're terrible.

SPEAKER_04 50:10

They're worse than nurses at a hospital.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Yes. I mean, oh my god. It's it is terrible. But I will say, more than one female recruit has wrecked a marriage that I've seen.

SPEAKER_04 50:22

All of a sudden now they're FTO and then like a female recruit, or is it the male fake dog? Because it's a it's a consensual mutual thing. It is, and it's really, really messy. And it's and yes, those things do happen.

SPEAKER_01 50:36

And it's uh the FTO should know better, though. I mean, it's like you know, it's like the same thing with male instructors at the academy. Right. More than one has you know, is like, oh, that female recruit, you know, she's having a hard time, you know, there's the knock on the instructor's door, you know, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then before you know it, he's out on his ear because yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 51:00

And it happens, and you see in it and stuff, and I get there's relationships, and some of those relationships last forever.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

I mean, they do, not often, but they do.

SPEAKER_04 51:09

It's a train wreck from the get-go, they just never see it. And I think for um that particular FTO, he was laying the groundwork. He was saying right here. And I like that. I I I may not have been able to express it in my words right at that particular point in my career, uh, because young, naive, and just happy to be there, sure, and and glad to be in a warm car, not freezing anymore. Um, and and I had major questions going on in my head going, Can we wear Long Johns? Because I didn't know that was allowed. Can I get thicker socks? I mean, whatever it might be. But but it was um, it was that. And he he wanted to make sure. And I think it's imperative of all people in the training atmosphere, particularly, um, when you're gonna get this close relationship with somebody because you're with them so many hours of the day and all or night or however it is, that you establish that from the get-go that no, we're not, this is not, you know, this is not what this is about. You know, we are going to be doing this.

SPEAKER_01 52:10

That and the recruit is vulnerable, and that's super icky and wrong for somebody to take advantage of somebody that is in that state. You know, it's just it like you said, a lot of it's a plane crash, train, train wreck.

SPEAKER_04 52:27

I want to I'm gonna add to this, okay. We're we're talking relationships, the whole sex and cracking, you know, all that sort of stuff, and breakups and marriages and stuff. It's the same thing, though, as if the FTO or whoever the training person is or whatever, drags along the recruit to the bars and the bar scenes and the hopping out and drinking. And the next thing you know, you have created this bond and this relationship, but you're also now out drinking when they he needs to be studying or getting ready for his next day. Absolutely. The last thing he needs to be learning is to get trashed, yeah, you know, and go to work the next day.

SPEAKER_01 53:03

They're not your party buddy. You're absolutely right. They're not your party buddy, they are your recruit, you know. And you don't treat them poorly, obviously, but there is a professional you know air about this that if you stick to being a professional, you're on high ground and it should go well.

SPEAKER_04 53:20

I mean, if you want to do like uh the last night of your FTO thing or whatever, or the or the night after they finish the FTO when they graduate, if you want to do a hey, we're gonna have a get together over at the FOP or wherever it is as everybody gets together. I'm just throwing that out.

SPEAKER_02 53:34

Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:35

That's fine because then everybody doesn't feel like, yeah, I gotta go with my, I gotta go with them. You know, what uh what he invited me. Okay, well, yeah, they invited me. Um that that can be wrong. And I'm not saying you don't go over to the backyard barbecue, you know, if you're off and you feel like you want to go, but you just it's that same thing, you know. So relationship or on on any level, you have to watch that as the as the person who's in charge.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

Yeah, I was a sergeant for 18 years, so yeah, what I did learn was you know, people would invite you to the party, and an older sergeant, when I was a new sergeant, told you it's like, yeah, they want you there, but they don't want you there. Arrive early and leave really early. Let them have their fun. You know what? Make your appearance, say hi, and get the hell out of there.

SPEAKER_04 54:24

Yeah, long before the drinking gets crazy, before the words get unfriendly or just whatever.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

Yeah, before stupid stuff starts happening, you know what? Then possible deniability, you weren't there.

SPEAKER_04 54:37

You weren't there, yeah. You did not see so-and-so's wife slap the other one's wife.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

Oh, I've seen a whole lot worse than that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:47

Oh, no, that's that's that's mild. That's a tame thing.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

Oh, it sure is. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_04 54:52

But and you know, alcohol brings out personalities. It's I mean, we see it every time we arrest somebody that's alcohol or drug influenced. You know, it's a complete change. Somebody is a complete 180, and you're going, had no clue.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

So you get through field training, obviously, you're out there on the road, and there's this thing of becoming an undercover trooper. How did how did that get how did you get picked for that? And what cases did you work?

SPEAKER_04 55:23

I am uh I get out, I'm doing you know, I'm finally, you know, I'm I've got kind of gotten to where I'm not making mistakes on a on a regular basis, and I'm doing pretty good for the most part. My my evaluations don't really reflect it, but the rest of me is doing okay. And uh I I go through a really bad breakup that kind of messes my head up a lot, and um, and just you get the cynical, everything is just whatever, you know. But I do know that my path, I saw it when I was in the academy. I want to be a criminal investigator, I want to be a special agent. I I didn't know that until I was sitting in a class and I was like, oh my god, this is fascinating. Yeah, this is I I want this. And how that is is um if you know who uh Kay Scarpeta is and the Patricia Cornwell books, we actually have the medical examiner, um uh uh Dr. Fierro comes from Virginia's medical examiner office to do our our big day of medical examiner stuff, and then the next day it's a half a day of um the actual autopsy stuff. And I was just I I was amazed, I was so impressed, and it was really cool. And then just a couple of years later, that you know, Cornwall's books are coming out, and it's it's actually Fierro Scarpetta kind of thing, you know, because it's based on her, and it was really wild. And so I I you just I knew I wanted to be a criminal investigator. Well, there's ways to get there. Your evaluation has to be high. Well, mine was not.

SPEAKER_02 56:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 56:58

You have to do really well on the testing. Well, I wasn't even eligible for the testing yet because of issues, so then um you have to have a great panel interview, which uh you can't get to the panel interview if you can't get past the other two. Right, right. But everybody said if you get a chance to work undercover, that will help you. That'll help you. And I'm like, yes, I'll do it. Well, I got picked for a couple of interesting undercover things as a uniformed trooper that I got to change clothes, come back, go do that for a few days or a few hours, whatever it was.

SPEAKER_01 57:33

What kind of cases?

SPEAKER_04 57:34

Uh, the first one was they were calling in bomb threats to a community college over on the eastern shore. And they had had this off and on for two or three weeks. They were flying a dog in, they were doing all this extra stuff to try to you know figure out. Yeah, there's obviously nothing is there, but somebody's getting a kick out of making these phone calls back in the day. It's pretty much a pay phone or your house phone because there isn't any cell phone. Right. Um, and it's annoying and it's expensive and it's causing a lot of disruption. And uh, so my uh first sergeant um calls me in one morning. I just assume that yeah, I was once again in trouble and gone.

SPEAKER_02 58:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:12

And it was like, because I was right at the very like, you're about to be gone. Okay. And instead he calls me in and he's wanting me to go home and put on my college clothes. And like, what? I don't know what that means, other than don't don't wear that. But put on, you know, dress up to go to community college today.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

Don't wear your campaign cover with your college clothes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 58:35

Leave the trooper at home and go over there in this undercover unmarked car thing and go over and then pretend you're a college kid, and it's right near the end of the semester, but just pretend you're trying to enroll and this and all. So I got over, met the people that wanted me to do it, went into the campus, pretended I was looking to become a student there in the next semester. They were giving me the paperwork, giving me a little tour of the place, because it was small. And then I seated myself in the um, it's like a it's not a library, it's like an open room with a lot of study desk and a gathering, like a student center type thing. But it's where the pay phones are at because they finally figured out that the person's making the call and roughly the hours that they tend to make the call or the time period zone. So watch those phones during that time period, be there, hang out. And I got invited to a party, uh, you know, met a couple of people, things like that. And then there was this young guy that was in there that was just being very um he was drawing attention to himself. He was trying to find somebody to talk to, and he wanted to talk about the the bomb threat caller, and everybody else seemed like they were kind of busy about their own business and had studying to do and stuff. So they didn't really they laugh at what he was saying, but they didn't really get into conversing with him. So he looked like he was wanting somebody to discuss it with. Um, he even finally came up to talk to me for just a few seconds, you know, whatever and all. And I kind of shined him on just like everybody else did, and like I wasn't interested.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:06

And then he went out and he kind of hung around the payphones a little bit and picked them up, but he didn't do anything, and then he leaves. And it's like, who picks up a payphone and does it like what is that? You know, that's kind of weird. You're either gonna use the phone, you're not gonna use the phone. Um, you're gonna get a soda out of the soda machine, or you're not, and that's not gonna stand there and play with the buttons, you know. And so I left at the time I was supposed to. I went back, I told them, and then that's when they told me. They said, Oh, yeah, because I described him, and they're like, We know exactly who you're talking about. He is our our primary suspect. Sweet. That's interesting. He had those conversations, they got him in with um, they actually had a polygraph uh examiner uh talk to him first during the interview, and I don't even think they got around to basically offering the polygraph because in the process of doing that, he starts confessing because I I I don't know, but he gets to confessing, and so they figure out who he was. Uh, but I felt like I contributed there. I felt good, you know. It's like, yeah, that's cool.

unknown 1:01:05

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:06

I did something right, I'm good at undercover. The next one was a little more serious, well, a lot more serious, actually. Um, the Colonial Parkway murders had started uh with serial killer, and so what their plan was is to put a male and female uh undercovers together in these um Lover's Lane parking kind of places, and we would spend a weekend making out, so basically go three nights straight and spend about eight hours um kind of horizontal in the front seat of a car, and you know, try you were serial killer bait. Yeah, but we were trying our best to they were trying to develop intel. So we had a really ragged-out looking surveillance van that fit the area. They had that. We had a uniformed trooper staged a couple of miles away in case something got out of hand that we needed to bring somebody in for, which we actually did, or something not in the parking lot that took place, and then they they went down the road. It was really weird. That was super weird. Um they wanted to gather intel because how many people are like these peeping toms and these people who just drift around these parking lots and checking other people's cars out? Who's cruising through and leaving and then cruising back through? And they wanted to find these people, not the people who are showing up at let this particular one, going down, getting their cooler out, getting their chair out, getting their fishing rod out, or their you know, their crab uh pot, and going down and actually there to crabbing or fishing in the middle of the night. Those people, I mean, yeah, you want to know that they do this, how often are they going? Did they see anything? But they're also looking for, you know, whoever. And oh my lord, that it was amazing how many um I'm gonna try not to be impolite here, but sexually deviant people.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:08

There's a lot of weirdos out there, yes.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:10

They have some weirdo stuff going on, so we did that, and they were on the right trail.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:17

Thanks everyone for joining me and author and retired ATF agent, Jennifer Eskew. We are just getting started with stories of ATF undercover operations and investigations. Please join us next Sunday for the conclusion of my interview with Jennifer. Well, that wraps up another episode of the Cops and Writers Podcast. If you haven't done so yet, you take a minute and rate and review the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. If you have already, thank you. As always, thank you for all of your support, and of course, let's be careful out there.