“Good for you,” she says, sounding like she means it. “I hope you haven’t signed the contract yet.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I think there’s a much bigger payday in your future.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because Joshua Gallagher wants to talk to you—and only you.”
8
The ground rules are simple. I’m not to take anything into the room with me. No paper or writing instrument, no recording devices of any kind. The interview will be video- and audiotaped by the police, and I will have full access to the unedited footage. In addition to my list of questions, the police will supply me with a handful of their own. I retain all print rights to the interview. The video footage, however, remains the sole property of the Maryland State Police. For the duration of the interview, Joshua Gallagher will remain in leg and arm restraints. An armed guard will remain in the room with us at all times. I have sixty minutes to conduct the interview.
9
Interview Date: Thursday, December 5, 2019
Time: 1:30 p.m.
Location: Maryland Penitentiary, Baltimore, MD
[Joshua Gallagher looks nothing like the quietly confident, athletic teenager with whom I attended high school. The years have not been kind to him. He’s overweight and unshaven. His mild expression remains unchanged as the guards seat him on the other side of the table. Smelling of perspiration and industrial-strength laundry detergent, he appears neither pleased nor displeased to see me. His right eye suffers from a slight tic. He nervously taps his foot on the floor, jiggling the length of chain that binds his ankles. He doesn’t look at all like a man who has admitted to killing seven young women.]
RICHARD CHIZMAR: Why me, Josh? Why am I here?
JOSHUA GALLAGHER: A number of reasons. [clears throat] I’ve followed your career with great interest. You’ve done well. I even rented Road House 2 on Redbox. I’ve also never forgotten that you came to my sister’s funeral.
CHIZMAR: Half the town went to Natasha’s funeral.
GALLAGHER: You were there for all of it. You became part of it.
CHIZMAR: When exactly did I become part of it?
GALLAGHER: When you and your reporter friend began questioning half the town. When you started keeping a scrapbook about the murders.
CHIZMAR: I see you read the book.
GALLAGHER: Of course I did.
CHIZMAR: I assume you’re the one who started calling my apartment and hanging up on me the week the book was published?
GALLAGHER: I wanted to hear your voice.
CHIZMAR: And it was you calling my parents’ house all those times?
GALLAGHER: [nods] Yes.
CHIZMAR: Why?
GALLAGHER: I don’t really know. They became part of it all, I guess.
CHIZMAR: It scared the hell out of my mother.
GALLAGHER: I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve that. But I guess maybe that was the point: it was to scare you.
CHIZMAR: You wanted me to stop?
GALLAGHER: I don’t think so. I don’t know what I really wanted.
CHIZMAR: Did you follow me?
GALLAGHER: When?
CHIZMAR: Back in ’88. Around Edgewood.
GALLAGHER: [nods] Sometimes. A little later, too.
CHIZMAR: After the book came out?
GALLAGHER: [nods]
CHIZMAR: Where?
GALLAGHER: That’s not really important.
CHIZMAR: It is to me.
GALLAGHER: Don’t you have other questions for me?
CHIZMAR: [pause] Anna Garfield. Did all of this start with her?
GALLAGHER: [deep breath] Yes and no.
CHIZMAR: Can you explain what that means?
GALLAGHER: I can try. [long pause; the tapping on the floor grows more rapid] Something inside of me is broken. It always has been, as long as I can remember. Something in my head’s messed up. It’s… it’s wrong.
CHIZMAR: Go on.
GALLAGHER: I don’t know how to explain it better than that. I’ve read the books. I know how clichéd it sounds, but—
CHIZMAR: Books?
GALLAGHER: Books about killers. Mass murderers.
CHIZMAR: Have those books taught you anything about yourself?
GALLAGHER: [pause] That I’m not alone.
CHIZMAR: Was Natasha the first? Or were there others before her?
GALLAGHER: [shakes head] I’d thought about it. A lot. I came close a couple of times.
CHIZMAR: What stopped you?
GALLAGHER: Fear. I was afraid to cross that line. Scared I’d get caught. Scared I’d like it. So, I settled for other things.
CHIZMAR: Animals?
GALLAGHER: [nods]
CHIZMAR: When did you first begin hurting animals?
GALLAGHER: I was probably eight or nine.
CHIZMAR: What kind of animals?
GALLAGHER: Oh, all kinds. Fish. Frogs. Rabbits. Eventually, cats and dogs. A horse in a field, once. I did that one at night. That was really something.
CHIZMAR: And you knew it was wrong?
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CHIZMAR: What did you think was wrong with you?
GALLAGHER: I didn’t know. I just knew there was… something inside of me, this bad thing, and it just needed, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it. I’d try to keep it locked up, behind a door, but sometimes I wasn’t strong enough.
CHIZMAR: Did you enjoy hurting animals?
GALLAGHER: Not in the beginning… but that changed over time. It got easier. And I got better at it.
CHIZMAR: Was there anything in your childhood that might’ve ignited these types of thoughts? A starting point or catalyst of any kind?
GALLAGHER: You mean was I sexually or physically abused? Did my parents beat me or lock me in a closet all day? Did I fall down and suffer a head injury that rewired my brain? [shakes head] No. There was nothing like that.
CHIZMAR: What is your first memory of this “bad thing” inside you?
GALLAGHER: [long pause] I was seven, and I was at a friend’s birthday party. His older sister was on the swing set in the backyard. She looked over at me and smiled, and I remember just standing there with my paper plate and cake, thinking: I’m going to come back tonight and sneak into the house and crush your skull with a brick. It just came to me, fast, like that. Why did I want to hurt her? I don’t know. Why a brick? I—I don’t know.
CHIZMAR: You were popular in high school. I remember seeing you at parties. Hanging out with both guys and girls.
GALLAGHER: [shakes head] That’s because I was good at wrestling. Those people never really knew me, or even wanted to.
CHIZMAR: And all throughout those years—the wrestling matches, the homecomings and proms and graduation—you were fighting back those bad feelings?
GALLAGHER: [nods] Sometimes it went away for a week or two, but it always came back. Always.
CHIZMAR: I want to go back to college and Anna Garfield. Can you tell me what happened?
GALLAGHER: We were in love. We’d made plans to be together in the future. And, just like that, she wanted someone else.
CHIZMAR: And you wanted to hurt her?
GALLAGHER: Not then. I was too depressed. The ground had been stolen out from under me. I just wanted to somehow change her mind. But later… yes. I wanted to hurt her. I hated her for what she did to me, how she made me feel. And I hated myself, too, as a result.
CHIZMAR: You followed her around campus, broke into her car and dorm room, but you never tried to harm her physically?
GALLAGHER: Oh, I did, actually. Two times, that next summer, I drove up to where she lived with her parents, but I chickened out at the last second. Which made me hate myself even more.
CHIZMAR: Anna Garfield recently told a reporter that you had gotten rough with her sexually.
GALLAGHER: Yeah? Well, that’s how she liked it. She’s the one who asked me to tie her up. She’s the one who asked me to choke her. I’d never done any of
those things before her. Ask any of my old girlfriends.
CHIZMAR: The attraction to long hair… it was because of Anna?
GALLAGHER: You know, it’s funny—I didn’t even realize I was doing that until after I read about it later on.
CHIZMAR: [long pause] You know I have to ask you this: Why did you kill Natasha?
GALLAGHER: It was always going to happen at some point. I’d thought about it a lot when we were younger. I almost went through with it once about a year earlier. We were hiking at Loch Raven and I picked up a rock about the size of my fist. I came up behind her and was about this close [he holds his fingers a few inches apart] from doing it.
CHIZMAR: Why did you stop that day?
GALLAGHER: I got scared.
CHIZMAR: So what happened on the night of June 2, 1988? Why then?
GALLAGHER: [sighs] Look, I know you want me to say that something dramatic happened… like I felt some kind of otherworldly power surge go through my body, or I had a dream or heard voices. [Josh’s eyes widen.] Or maybe the devil made me do it. But… no. That’s not how it was. Earlier that day, I was working out at the gym, and afterwards, while I was in the shower, I saw everything so clear in my head—how I’d get her out to the woods, how I’d kill her, how I’d make it look like someone else did it, everything. It was all right there in a flash. I had plans to meet [Frank] Hapney after the gym, so I hung out with him for a few hours, and then instead of going home, I went to my parents’ house in Edgewood.
CHIZMAR: And knocked on her window?
GALLAGHER: [shakes head] No. I was never outside her window. It was after midnight when I got there. I used my key and tiptoed in the front door and down the hall. We snuck out the same way.
CHIZMAR: The screen? The blood on her windowsill?
GALLAGHER: She cut her finger looking for a pair of boots in her closet. It was dark and she couldn’t see what she was doing. I used my shirt to stop the bleeding and purposely left a little smear on the windowsill. Same time I opened up the window all the way and knocked out the screen.
CHIZMAR: Just like you’d pictured earlier in the shower?
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CHIZMAR: What did you tell her that night? How did you get her to go along with you?
GALLAGHER: She was fifteen years old. It didn’t take much. I told her me and Hapney had been drinking at our old spot in the woods and he’d passed out. I needed her help getting him back to the car.
CHIZMAR: And then you led your sister into the woods and killed her?
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CHIZMAR: But not without a struggle. She fought you.
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CHIZMAR: [pause] And the other three girls from Edgewood… why did you choose them?
GALLAGHER: Pretty much the same reason. I saw them, and I knew. Right away. I knew I’d eventually kill them. And exactly how I would do it.
CHIZMAR: The police were unable to make any direct connections between your victims. You didn’t know any of the other girls?
GALLAGHER: [shakes head] No. I saw Kacey Robinson walk out of the library one afternoon. She was by herself, and I was pulling out of Santoni’s parking lot. I followed her home that day and watched her for the next week. The others were the same. I spotted Madeline Wilcox at a traffic light. The Riggs girl was playing hockey in front of the high school. Cassidy Burch was at the Stop and Shop buying a Diet Coke and a bag of potato chips. I was right behind her in line paying for gas.
CHIZMAR: And, besides the long hair, no single physical or personality trait tied any of them together?
GALLAGHER: [pause] The way they looked at me. The way they smiled… like they were making fun of me.
CHIZMAR: Annie Riggs identified the man who attacked her as someone much larger than you.
GALLAGHER: [shrugs] I was never big, but I was always strong and fast. The rest was all in her head. Just like the police sketch—it looked nothing like me.
CHIZMAR: Why did you cut off their ears?
GALLAGHER: Punishment.
CHIZMAR: Punishment for what?
GALLAGHER: For thinking they were better than me.
CHIZMAR: The police were never able to locate the severed ears. There are rumors that you… you ate them.
GALLAGHER: [shakes head] Never happened. I kept them in an old coffee can for a while, but they started to smell, so I dumped them in the Gunpowder. Catfish probably ate them eventually.
CHIZMAR: Posing the bodies became part of your signature. Why did you do that?
GALLAGHER: I wanted to leave them at peace for whoever found them. For the families.
CHIZMAR: The hopscotch grid, missing dog sign, pennies, and pumpkins… what was the significance? And the numerology?
GALLAGHER: [pause] I’m not ready to talk about that yet.
CHIZMAR: Why not?
GALLAGHER: Because it opens the door to something I’m not ready to talk about.
CHIZMAR: When do you think you’ll be ready to talk about it?
GALLAGHER: I don’t know.
CHIZMAR: Why did you bite your victims?
GALLAGHER: I don’t remember biting any of them. I told the police that, but I don’t think they believed me.
CHIZMAR: No recollection at all?
GALLAGHER: [shakes head] None.
CHIZMAR: So, at some point, did evading capture become a game to you? Taunting the police; leaving your mark on the memorials; calling my house and hanging up; creeping around Carly Albright’s home.
GALLAGHER: I never went anywhere near Carly Albright’s house. I never liked her very much. I’m not exactly sure why I did those other things. Maybe to distract myself from what I was really doing.
CHIZMAR: Which was what?
GALLAGHER: Killing those girls.
CHIZMAR: The media came up with a number of nicknames for you. “The Boogeyman” was the one that stuck. Were you pleased with that name or indifferent?
GALLAGHER: I was pleased. [pause] It seemed to fit, and that was the first time I was able to put a name to the bad thing living inside me.
CHIZMAR: You actually began to think of that part of yourself as “The Boogeyman”?
GALLAGHER: I did, yes.
CHIZMAR: What do you mean when you say that name seems to fit?
GALLAGHER: On the nights I hunted, I felt… different. I felt powerful. Bold. Invincible. At one with the night around me. As if I could fly and pass through walls and make myself invisible.
CHIZMAR: You really believed you could do those things?
GALLAGHER: I could. I did. That’s why they never caught me.
CHIZMAR: Do you think you’re clinically insane, like some people have suggested?
GALLAGHER: [pause] You know, sometimes, I wish I were. But no. Something’s wrong with me, but I’m not crazy.
CHIZMAR: How did you manage to remain so careful and not leave behind any evidence?
GALLAGHER: Common sense, mostly. I didn’t want to get caught, so I tried to think everything through first. I wore surgical gloves, two on each hand, that I paid for with cash in Pennsylvania. I wore condoms. And I always bought a new change of clothes to wear on the nights I hunted. Paid for in cash at thrift shops. All basic stuff. Up until that point, the police were always a few steps behind. Honestly, my luck ran out that night at the cemetery. I knew I’d nicked my wrist on the fence, but it wasn’t much more than a scratch. My shirtsleeve wasn’t even torn. Later, when I checked at home, there wasn’t any blood, so I’d figured I was good to go.
CHIZMAR: And the mask?
GALLAGHER: What about it?
CHIZMAR: You could’ve worn a ski mask or any number of other things to hide your face. Why make your own mask? Were you imitating a horror movie, as some people claim?
GALLAGHER: It was the Boogeyman’s mask. It’s what he wanted.
CHIZMAR: [pause] Going back to the night at the cemetery, if you weren’t aware that the police had a sample of your blood in their possession, why did you stop after Ca
ssidy Burch?
GALLAGHER: The same reason I hadn’t killed anyone before all this started. I was able to keep the Boogeyman locked up behind that door. I was tempted after the Burch girl, many times, but I was able to fight it off. I even thought about killing myself a couple of times, but I didn’t have the balls to do it. So I just kept holding that door closed.
CHIZMAR: Until Louise Rutherford in 2001, Colette Bowden in 2006, and Erin Brown in 2018.
GALLAGHER: [nods] Yes.
CHIZMAR: What changed? What was different about those women?
GALLAGHER: It was the same as before. I saw them all and I just knew—and I couldn’t stop it from happening. I wasn’t strong enough anymore. Nothing deeper or more mystical than that.
CHIZMAR: Was there a reason you didn’t cut off their ears this time? Or leave anything behind for the police?
GALLAGHER: I didn’t feel it was necessary.
CHIZMAR: Are there more women, Josh?
GALLAGHER: [long pause]
CHIZMAR: There are, aren’t there?
GALLAGHER: Yes.
CHIZMAR: Will you tell Detective McClernan who they are? Where they are?
GALLAGHER: [long pause]
CHIZMAR: Will you tell me?
GALLAGHER: Not today.
CHIZMAR: Then when?
GALLAGHER: Soon. [pause] Maybe.
CHIZMAR: The families deserve closure. They deserve to know.
GALLAGHER: I said maybe.
CHIZMAR: Have you spoken to your mother since your arrest?
GALLAGHER: No.
CHIZMAR: Why not?
GALLAGHER: I haven’t tried.
CHIZMAR: Do you miss her? Your wife and kids?
GALLAGHER: Yes. Every day.
CHIZMAR: How about Natasha?
GALLAGHER: Yes. I loved her very much.
CHIZMAR: Do you miss your father?
GALLAGHER: [long pause]
CHIZMAR: No?
GALLAGHER: I didn’t say that. Of course I miss him.
CHIZMAR: According to your mother, you and your father spent an evening together a couple days prior to his death. What did the two of you talk about?
GALLAGHER: My mother asked me to try to find out what was bothering him. He wouldn’t talk to her.
CHIZMAR: Besides the fact that his daughter had been murdered.
Chasing the Boogeyman Page 27