In this episode, we'll peel back the layers of a decades-old murder mystery with author Alan Burton, as he shares his journey penning Fatal Exam: Solving Lubbock's Greatest Murder Mystery with Lubbock criminal defense attorney Chuck Lanehart. It's a true crime saga that continues to haunt Texas Tech University. His narrative weaves through the tale's eerie connections to a university tradition, as well as the intricate process of chronicling a story that's as chilling today as it was in 1967.
Alan Burton & Chuck Lanehart, Fatal Exam: Solving Lubbock's Greatest Murder Mystery (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2023).
TTU Press site: https://www.ttupress.org/9781682831885/fatal-exam/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Exam-Solving-Lubbocks-Greatest/dp/1682831876
In this episode, we'll peel back the layers of a decades-old murder mystery with author Alan Burton, as he shares his journey penning Fatal Exam: Solving Lubbock's Greatest Murder Mystery with Lubbock criminal defense attorney Chuck Lanehart. It's a true crime saga that continues to haunt Texas Tech University. His narrative weaves through the tale's eerie connections to a university tradition, as well as the intricate process of chronicling a story that's as chilling today as it was in 1967.
Alan Burton & Chuck Lanehart, Fatal Exam: Solving Lubbock's Greatest Murder Mystery (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2023).
TTU Press site: https://www.ttupress.org/9781682831885/fatal-exam/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Exam-Solving-Lubbocks-Greatest/dp/1682831876
This podcast is not sponsored by and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It is solely our thoughts and ideas, based upon our professional training and study of the family.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it and with some who've made it and, of course, all of us who live it and love it. Welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Price and I'm Scott Sospin Scott today. A very exciting interview. You know murder mysteries are popular. People love them. You know there's podcasts on them. There's books on them. One of the best books I ever read. I decided I was going to stop reading history. I read in cold blood by Truman Capote and that was fantastic. So we're going to do a couple of shows here on murders in West Texas, and the first one is here with our good friend Alan Burton, and Alan helped write a book, or co-wrote a book, called Fatal Exam and it's about a murder. It Texas tech.
Speaker 1:Which Gene and I, of course, close our hearts. We both have degrees from Tech Tech. I got I have more degrees from Texas Tech than Gene does because he's screwed around at another school, but we won't bring up sore subjects in his case to do that. And the case that we're going to talk with Mr Burton about is, as we were talking before, which went on the air that it's a well-known case. It's an urban legend case that goes on love, I mean, he'll set us straight on the real story. I remember when I was in undergraduate in the 80s at Tech there was all kinds of things that weren't true about that, that murder that took place in the science quadrangle, and that was just grew about at it. But welcome, alan, we're glad you're here. We're glad you talked about the book. Get us started. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about yourself? You know where you're from, how you came, where you worked and then how you came to write this book.
Speaker 3:Okay, Well, it's not the most exciting story in the world, but I grew up in Sherman, texas, which is about an hour north of Dallas and about 10 miles south of Red River and Oklahoma. I actually got my degree at Texas Tech, degree in English. First job was at a newspaper. My hometown newspaper is a sports rider and decided that for a couple of years I needed to get another job so I was going to make a living, and so I went to the PR business and just retired last year after 40 plus years in the school and university PR, and over those years I've been fortunate enough to write nine books now and so enjoying retirement life right now.
Speaker 1:Why don't you tell us some of what we're going to talk about this book? But tell us a little bit about your other books you've written.
Speaker 3:Well, the other books have basically sort of been a lot of what I call collection of sports quote books. Mike Leach, the former Texas Tech coach, actually had written two books, a collection of his quotes called Squid Picket to a Fat Guy, and written a couple of other Texas sports quote books, wrote a Dallas Cowboys sports quote book and then probably two of the more unusual ones. I wrote a book called Texas Hot Shots. It's basically a yearbook of Texas celebrities with yearbook photos where they went to high school, that type thing. And then also probably one of the books I'm most proud of was Go to the Games with Humble. For anybody that grew up listening to the Southwest Conference Football in the 60s, sort of a historical look back at the radio broadcasting and that was a lot of fun, but anyway, that's sort of where we're at right now.
Speaker 1:I think you know, alan. I'm pretty sure I read that book and I guess I didn't connect it with you. I think that's exactly. I remember reading that book and it's a very good one. Yes, I loved it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you On this podcast. We want to talk about this book you wrote with Chuck Lanehart and it just came out from Texas Tech University Press. The title's Fatal Exam Solving Lubbock's Greatest Murder Mystery, great title. I'm going to ask you a question Are there other murder mysteries in the Lubbock area?
Speaker 3:You know there are, and during the course, I might add, this book was 20 years in the making. I first started it back in 2004. So it's been an off and on process, as you might can tell. Just a tremendous amount of research involved A lot of trips to Lubbock, a lot of just research. And during the course of that research, yes, we uncovered. You know there were some, you know, murders over the years and leather, but in my mind, nothing equal to this particular case. As far as this, the bizarre things that happened, the ironies, the twists and turns, there was nothing quite like this particular case.
Speaker 2:We just had Carol of Lights attack a couple of months ago. It's every December, right, and actually I was supposed to go with Scott. Both of our families were up in Lubbock for Carol of Lights. Scott went and I didn't.
Speaker 1:So we made the hey, the Centennial celebration. If you didn't see, it was one of the most elaborate fantastic productions I've ever seen. I've been I've been to Carol of Lights in almost 30 years and this was. It was unbelievable, it was absolutely unbelievable. You know what I went away saying? We both work at universities. Texas Tech has a whole lot more money than they used to have when we were there. They could put something like this on.
Speaker 2:So tell us about the Carol of Lights. Why is that such a big deal?
Speaker 3:That's interesting because I happened to be there this last year too. Chuck and I did a book signing that day at Barnes and Noble, so I went that night. It's just a fantastic celebration. But I think the Carol of Lights dates back to like 1959. And it's what it is is basically a holiday celebration on the middle of the Science Quadrant on the Tech campus and it's really a community wide thing and, as he was saying, it's grown so much over the years. When I was out there, you know it was nice, but not to the extent. I mean this is a full-fledged event. This last one I went to with music and the lights and just I mean it was a. I think there was probably 20,000 plus people there. So it really is a signature event for Tech and Lubbock just to sort of kick off the holiday season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was 20,000 people. I don't know we may be, that'd be a low estimate, but I know this. It took me an hour and a half to get off this Tech campus and the thing was over with this. Yeah, the crowds or something else. Well, the Carol of Lights, of course, figures in greatly, because the story of this book it's kind of, you know, it's kind of a, a, a tent pole we can say for this book, because of course, the night before the 1967 Carol of Lights the custodians at the Science Building there in the quadrangle made a terrible discovery and that's kind of where this whole murder mystery starts. So why don't you just kind of set the scene for our readers and listeners, I mean potential readers? Can you describe what it was that the custodians found?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was a Monday night, like you said. There actually did not. Before the Carol of Lights in in the sort of the middle of the I don't know if people are familiar with the campus in the Science Quadrangle, there's the Science Building, which is a three-story building, and on that Monday night they had classes on the bottom two floors and on the top floor the third floor are like professor offices and labs and that type thing Well, a custodian, sarah Alice Morgan, which is making her cleaning rounds that evening, and she walked into a research lab on the third floor and there was someone in there that wasn't supposed to be in there, and what eventually happened is this individual knocked her out and then brutally murdered her, used a scalpel and a saw that was there in the lab, and all this was all this happened, I can say, on the third floor, as classes were being conducted on the second floor and the first floor that night.
Speaker 3:Well, about 30 minutes after this happened, a couple of graduate assistants came up to this research lab. They were supposed to get some chemicals for their professor and couldn't get in. The door was locked and so they went back downstairs and told their professor. So in the meantime the rest of the custodians were gathering for dinner and Sarah Morgan didn't show up for dinner. So one of her coworkers just went looking for her. So she knew she was supposed to be on the third floor. So she just unlocked the door, walked in and found Mrs Morgan lying on the floor.
Speaker 1:And this is horrendous. I mean, tell us a little bit about the victims, about Ms Morgana, little bit about her again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Ms Morgan. She was from Arkansas originally and her and her husband actually both were custodians at Tech and I think Ms Morgan had only worked there for about a year, I think. Just all reports just card working individual and they had two daughters and so I mean it was just a horrific, horrific thing.
Speaker 2:You mentioned that these people came up while this crime was being committed, while this horrible murder, I mean she was decapitated. One of those students eventually becomes the Texas Tech University president, right David Schmidley.
Speaker 3:Did you get a?
Speaker 2:chance to talk to him about this.
Speaker 3:I did. When he was president. Later in Oklahoma State I happened to meet him at a reception and this did with him just briefly and of course he remembered it very vividly and I think he said it says in the book you know they probably would have walked in on the murder, except the door was locked. But he said you know, it just scared everybody to death out there. He said he had to work in that building all hours of the day and he said of course they wouldn't let you take a gun. I took a ball of paint hammer up there like that was going to protect myself from whatever he said. It was just a very fearful atmosphere.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, we're seeing all the stuff on TV about things happening at universities and university students and schools and teachers and students being scared. So I, you know this. It was true in 1967, just like it is today. I mean, it really created a sense of terror on campus, a sense of fear. Imagine people walking around with the hair on the back of their neck, sticking up all the time Anytime they heard something and text a big walking campus. It's a huge campus and I, you know, when I was there, I remember, just you know, walking across and at night and not thinking anything of it, being in the library, you know, late at night and going back to my car and stuff, and I can't imagine what it was like to be a young student back in those days when that happened.
Speaker 1:I started at Tech in 1980 as a freshman and it was a. I mean you said we walk all over and do these things, but the cause of that murder and we'd heard about it there was a thing you don't go in the science building late at night because the place is haunted because of this murder. That was a well-known urban legend all over the campus. So, alan, why don't you tell us the beginning stages? I mean we don't want to give away from the book because everybody needs to go and buy this book, but in beginning stages of the investigation the Lubbock police were. They were at a loss. You know who did this, why were they there and it took them a little while. So kind of, maybe walk us through a little bit of the investigation and how they finally settled on the suspect. Is it Benjamin? How do you say his name? Is it Locke? Is that how you say his last name, benjamin?
Speaker 3:Locke. Yes, Well, you have to remember back during that time period the police didn't have sophisticated DNA evidence and those types of things and so they were pretty limited and, like you said, they were sort of a loss, didn't really have a lot of leads. They appealed to the public, they had rewards in the community and I know from talking to people there at that time, like I say, there was just fear across campus. They locked all the dorms at night. They had students walking the female students to their cars at night. So it was just an atmosphere of fear.
Speaker 3:And again, what's sort of interesting, ironic deal, what broke the case is there was a biology professor who taught in the science building there and he had a student who was making very poor grades and then all of a sudden he started making aids and everything. And in the meantime the professor also noticed that someone had been coming in his office in temperance stealing tests. So he thought, okay, that's, that's sort of weird. And he knew from the public reports of the murder that really the only thing taken from Mrs Morgan were her keys to the building. So he sort of put two into the ghetto, thought one of this could be a connection. So then he contacted the police to let them know.
Speaker 3:And then the professor planned a big exam during a week and knowing that this guy might come back and try to steal the exam, so the police actually spent the night staked out his office and sure enough, this individual walked up in the about seven o'clock in the morning with the keys to open up and steal the test. But again it's almost like the keys don't pop. He saw the police, he took off running and escaped that went down the stairs, went out the building, stole a car and took off driving all over love it. And again this sort of strange. So a call came in, I think, to the police haters a stolen vehicle and a guy driving through love it, radically not knowing the police, not knowing this was the guy that they were chasing for the murder. So after this long police chase, he crashed action to the cemetery, rest haven cemetery and that's where he was actually apprehended.
Speaker 2:So I mean he stops and gets gas too. I thought that was unbelievable. It seemed like it was kind of a very naive investigation, a naive time for police work and the criminals as well. Criminals aren't like they are on TV. They make a lot of dumb mistakes. What was the timeline between the crime when it was committed, right before the Carolites, to the time that they actually stopped him after he wrecked his car in the cemetery by the mausoleum?
Speaker 3:The crime happened in early December of 67 and I believe the arrest happened in early March. Now, during that time, like I say, the investigation was ongoing and I think a few weeks before they actually arrested him, he had come up on their radar and they had actually called him for questioning and given him some polygraph examination. So I mean, they had an idea, but they didn't have enough to hold him on. They even gave him what back then sodium and pentheol, to try to true serve. It's all kind of stuff. That's how they were just reaching for any and everything to try to find someone.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, one of the things that I thought was I couldn't believe it, and you've got a lot of sidebars in the book and other discussions going on. One of them that stuck out to me was the police in Lubbock decided to try something new and that was called silver. I always heard of it as silver mind control. It was a way of concentrating your thinking and getting in touch with a higher spiritual lane. Maybe it was real popular back in the 70s and 80s. I heard about it. I was talking to Scott. Scott hadn't heard about it. I don't think.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I had not heard about that at all.
Speaker 2:How did this even become a technique that the police thought might be useful?
Speaker 3:I was sort of baffled when I saw that I had to go back and do a lot of research on that. But, like you said, apparently that was a very popular whatever back during that time period and Jose Silva traveled around I guess Texas in the area putting on seminars. It's almost like you hear all that used to hear about the Elvin Woods speed reading courses. It was that type of thing, except, I guess, for sort of mind reading or ESP or super, whatever you want to call it and, like I said, the police. I think we're just so desperate for anything that they contacted Silva and asked them hey, would you help us? And I think it sort of goes in detail in the book that they said well, you know we can't do that, but we will train you if somebody I just want to learn how to use the method. But they didn't have time and so it never did. Really, you know, play every age. Well, it was a weird conversation that they had. It was, yeah, it really was.
Speaker 2:You mentioned earlier Keystone cops and I hate to put the police in that light, but you know, I mean, you know, maybe we're talking 2024, something that happened in 1967. So I'm sure that you know 3040, 50 years from now, they're going to think things we're doing are ridiculous. But that was just. I thought that was a real interesting little sidebar you had in the book.
Speaker 1:You know you were talking about that lock and about him. Why don't you tell us a little bit about him? I mean, he's not somebody that we would have been on the right. I mean he wasn't a career criminal, but obviously there were some how shall we say it Personality quirks about him. I guess a little bit. So maybe tell people a little bit about law.
Speaker 3:Sure, he at the time of the murder he was like 23 year old, student there at Tech and he and his family actually had immigrated from Poland to the United States. I think, like in 1958. They immigrated to Tennessee and then from Tennessee, moved up to the Boston area and he, I think, has a degree from a school in the Boston area. But he went to Tech. He was trying to get more credit. His goal was actually to be a medical doctor, and so that was what his career path was, and from everyone I talked to, they really think that, you know, he was a good guy, bright guy, but he felt so much pressure to succeed from his family or whatever, and when he started failing classes, that was when the problem started and he, just he had to succeed. He had this just overriding desire to be successful and do anything, you know, to reach that end or whatever. And that was sort of the crux of what the psychiatrist all said.
Speaker 3:Again, we talked about all the strange and bizarre things back in that era when he was arrested in Texas and the common thing was is, instead of sending someone to trial right away on a crime like this, they would send them to the state hospital. And sure enough, they ruled him unfit to stand trial. So they sent him to the rest state hospital for a year. And so he went down there, got treatment supposedly, and then was certified as saying and came back to Lubbock to stand trial. But in the meantime, just in a couple of years another bizarre thing there were three psychiatrists in Lubbock who had examined him on all grade. He needed to get treatment. Well, in the meantime, when he came back from the state hospital, one of those Lubbock psychiatrists had been stabbed to death by his wife and love it. I mean again, if you wrote that no one would believe it. So it's just this bizarre stuff like that.
Speaker 1:And when he was in prison I guess, because you have a little bit about him in prison, and particularly when he came up for parole and things like this there was the tone I got. There's kind of this campaign of you know this, he'll never do this again. It's kind of one off thing and there's some campaigns to give him parole. So maybe, maybe, let people know a little bit about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he was. The trial has actually moved a change of venue from Lubbock to Fort Worth and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison and, by all accounts, as a model prisoner, he earned, I think, two or three college degrees in prison. He received an outstanding JC award, which created some controversy throughout the state, and everyone I talked to said yeah, he was just a model prisoner, he was the editor of the prison newspaper. So anyway, you know, back back in that era this is what he, I think he went to prison in 70, by about 1980. There was a movement, you know, for him to receive parole and there had been some new laws passed that granted prisoners good time credit if they had college credit, that type thing, and so he ended up qualifying for that. He was actually paroled in 1983. So he started about 13 years and went back up to the Boston area and from all accounts he lived a seemingly normal life and never been in trouble again.
Speaker 1:Did you hear anything from him, alan, have you heard anything?
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, the vote came out, or anything like that no.
Speaker 2:And so how did Sarah Morgan's murder change Texas Tech in Lubbock?
Speaker 3:You know I've talked to some people at Tech who were there back in that time and they don't think there was any long term In fact they think they're worse in short term impacts. They felt like it, you know, obviously raised some concerns around the state. You know. You know we're sending our kids off to Texas Tech. Is it safe there? I mean, is there pressure on students to succeed academically? I mean, what's going on out there?
Speaker 3:And some people said they thought there might have been some short term impacts on recruiting. But but again, even though that was an unusual crime for back then, 1967, if during the course of our research we discovered there were other murders at Texas colleges, obviously the most famous was the UT sniper shooting in 1966. But there are also, just pretty close to the time of the Sarah Morgan murder, there was a murder of a Baylor student and then the same year, or 1966 again, there are a couple of or three coeds murdered at University of Texas. So it wasn't like this was the first time there had been a murder on a Texas college campus. It just was unusual for West Texas and Texas Tech I think.
Speaker 1:Do you think, alan, that it was part of the era of being 67, 68,? You have, you know, college campuses or even tech really wasn't hotbeds of anti war protests, and we have the whole you know 60s culture. You think that was part of this whole idea. Oh, look what's finally coming home. I think it's a little lullaby, that kind of started, this kind of I don't know what you'd say paranoia about sending your kids off to school and yeah, I don't know you might call it, you know, for just sort of maybe a loss of innocence.
Speaker 3:Nothing really that bad had probably happened on the tech campus before that and it's sort of a wake up call that, hey, this is the real world, is kind of thinking happened anywhere. You know another thing that I think people forget back in 1967, you didn't have 24 hour cable news, you didn't have the internet, you didn't have social media. So really I mean it got news covers but it was pretty much Lubbock Avalanche Journal local TV, and I would be remiss if I didn't say the Avalanche Journal was critical. They did a tremendous job of covering that case. In fact one of the reports was instrumental in breaking the case. He just covered it like crazy and they did a tremendous job of covering that case.
Speaker 2:You know I think Scott asked a really good question. You know this is the flower power generation and 1967 was right in the heart of that movement and especially on college campuses. You talk about Texas Tech being kind of unusual. It's not your typical college campus of the 1960s. You know we've got professors that used to tell us that there may have been one protest and it was quickly broken up there, but it wasn't, like, you know, berkeley or any of those other big universities that get a lot of attention because of what happened during the 60s. It was kind of a very down home, family oriented campus, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that's what appealed a lot of students and parents in Texas. They just felt comfortable and again, that's probably why it was so shocking that it happened there, because it was just so much out of the ordinary for sort of a calm, tranquil campus like that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, it's like I always say. Is that one of the things that people always say after every tragedy? I never thought it would happen here. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alan, tell us a little bit about your co-author, Chuck Lanehart, about how you and he got together on this and kind of what he provided and some of the background on him.
Speaker 3:Yeah, chuck's just a great guy, very well respected attorney there in Lubbock. And he sort of came in on the back end of the project but helped me really see it through to the finish line and make sure it got done. He provided obviously a lot of legal expertise and he actually knew a lot of the attorneys and law enforcement people that were involved in the case, and so he was very helpful to give me that perspective. So I can't say enough good things about Chuck.
Speaker 1:What is it? So you finished this one and it's come out. Everybody. It's fatal exam, solving Lubbock's greatest murder mystery. Texas Tech Press is who published it. You can buy it on their website or Amazon and all those kind of good things. The press would like you to go on their website and buy it. I know that it's stood up Amazon, but authors, we know that too. We don't care where you get it, we just want you to get something when you do this. But you're now an established I mean established writer and you've got a genre. I guess you kind of moved out of sports and moved into now a murder mystery. Is that what's next on your radar for a project, or what do you have with the project coming up?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not sure. I am looking at a couple of true crimes. One of them is I mentioned at the University of Texas. That was part of the appeal of this book. It was sort of a challenge. I had never done almost any true crime. I wanted to sort of see if I could do that sort of challenge myself, to see if I could do it, and so I enjoyed it. I love the research part of it. That's my favorite thing. For me, writing is the research, because you invariably stumble across things like we talked about. You had no idea. So that's the part I enjoy and so you know I may continue in that vein with the next book.
Speaker 2:What's a great book. Lots of illustrations, lots of primary sources. I mean, you really kind of bring back some of the newspaper articles of the Avalanche published on it. You have a bunch of photographs in here. It really helps set the scene and for people maybe not familiar with tech or West Texas, I think it does a great job of also blending that into the story.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it does. You know, as you read it, as someone I grew up in West Texas, texas Tech was my university I was pointed towards for almost an entire month just a young person and it was to me one of the and this is what a good writer does. Alan, I'll give you great kudos for this. It sets a great scene of what Lubbock and Texas Tech were like in the 1960s and you kind of get this good picture of what it is to do. This. That's right, it's a really great book and how you do this. But maybe that's a good question. You know, maybe we've talked a little bit about, but tell us even more about Lubbock. We talked about Tech. What about Lubbock in 1967? We think of it today as this you know 300,000 plus places, big and sprawled out. That wasn't really the case in the 1960s. Lubbock was still kind of a small town.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think that was certainly appealed to, I think, a lot of students and I've always felt, like you know Lubbock, the people were just super friendly and just very down on home and and and that was part of the appeal of Lubbock, like I say, and I think something like this happening was just such a shock in that community. But it was just to me, lubbock's always it's got. You know, lubbock sort of takes a knock. But I mean, I think Lubbock has a lot going for it. You know it's, it's a, it's a fun place to go and visit and, like I say, the people are just very sincere and welcoming. And so, you know, it sure has grown over the years, but I still think that it maintains some of that small town atmosphere that you don't find a lot of other places.
Speaker 1:Which is certainly why this was so shocking, and I guess I don't know, I guess there's nothing else that's really happened. I remember I don't even remember the young lady's name about the time I maybe it's a good thing for a new project for you about the time I was leaving to come to move here and take the job of Stephen F Austin that there was a case of a. There was a young woman and she had met with some young man at a and they'd gone to a hotel and he killed her and then put her in a suitcase and they found her at the love landfill and stuff and that you know. And when that happened there were some people who compared it, started comparing it to the 1967 murder and things. So yeah, things like that don't happen in love with very often.
Speaker 2:Normally, we ask people what do you know? I wanted to ask you if someone wants to be a writer, what advice do you give them?
Speaker 3:Be prepared to really work hard. It's it's not an easy task and I've learned a lot over the years, really just research, research, research. And I'll tell you what I thought about this before coming on here today. I couldn't have written any of these nine books, especially this newest one, without newspapers. And think about go back in time how newspapers really really were history for us. I mean, 90% of the information that I was able to put together on this book came from the Lubbock Avalanche Journal. Like I said, they did a tremendous job of covering that story and newspapers in general. And that's one thing I missed today is is just the impact newspapers had back 40s, 50s, 60s, because virtually all books that I've written went to newspaper archives and it was just unbelievable. The wealth of information is out there.
Speaker 3:But, to be like to your question, I think it's just you really got to want to be a writer, understand how it worked, that you've got to be dedicated and spend the time and then you've got to have some breaks. You know I've been fortunate in meeting some people who opened some doors for me and allowed me to sort of get my foot in the door, and then I've sort of pursued it after that and again, I had no false illusions of being John Grisham. I always wanted to. I wrote because I enjoyed it and then even when I was working, it was good therapy for me. I'd come home after work and sit down and do some internet research or ride a little bit, spent the weekends, but it was like a hobby Some people play golf. I researched and wrote books.
Speaker 1:Alan, this has been a fantastic conversation. Unfortunately, 30 minutes comes very quickly. Gene, we met up our podcast longer. Sometimes Our readers our listeners revolt and stop listening because they don't want to listen to that long. But, folks, it's like I said, it's fatal exam, solving love, it's greatest murder mystery, fantastic read, you know. I mean, that's one thing about it. The narrative is great and Alan and Chuck did a fantastic job. Alan, it's got to be a fine writer, alan, thanks for being with us today. We really have enjoyed this great book.
Speaker 3:Well, thanks for having me on You're very welcome Thanks. You're welcome Thanks.