Sam Anderson
Appearances
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
To be clear, investigators do not typically show evidence to civilians, but they need Warren's cooperation.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
So they show Warren the video they found at Mark's house.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
On this tape, Mark has spliced porn into a normal movie.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
But that's not really what concerns investigators.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
So inside the normal movie is pornography. And inside the pornography, Mark has edited in a home video that's not pornographic in any way. In the video, Mark is holding the camera and he's filming someone Warren is close to, who I'm not going to name. It's the kind of home video that on its own would probably seem innocuous. but spliced into porn, it's suddenly very wrong.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
It suggests something sinister about Mark, a side of him that's extremely upsetting to Warren, who just spent weeks defending his character.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
When I ask Warren about this moment, he struggles to remember this part of the story. He doesn't deny that it happened, but it's almost as if he's blocked out the details.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Rob and Trent admit they feel guilty about the position they've put Warren in. We kind of felt like villains. But from their perspective, the ends justify the means.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
I haven't seen the video myself, but the investigators described it to me in detail. It's shocking and upsetting. I can understand Warren's reaction. all this sexual stuff is hard to wrap my head around. Is it related to the arsons? Or just some kind of twisted sideshow? For Warren, after all the pressure he's been under, this is the final straw. He agreed to help us.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
From that point forward, he worked with us as diligently as he could. It's worth noting that even at this moment, Warren is still wrestling with feelings of loyalty to his friend Mark. He tells the investigators that'll help them to find out whether Mark is truly the arsonist. But he's hoping they'll leave the porn and home videos out of the case.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Over the next couple weeks, Warren meets with Mark several times, often going for walks in the preserve. Mark doesn't know it, but from this point forward, he's secretly being recorded.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
After each hike, Warren delivers the audio back to Rob and Trent. All throughout the spring, it goes on like this. Mark and Warren meet up. Out there in the desert, surrounded by cactus and the rippling orange-brown rocks, Mark and Warren hike. And they talk. And they circle each other. Like the vultures overhead, circling Carrion.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
What did he seem like to you?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Every time it seems like Mark might be on the verge of telling Warren the truth, their hike comes to an end.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The task force want Mark to feel like he can really trust Warren. They know that Mark is a marketing professional, but he's struggling to find a stable job. So they give Warren some money to hire Mark at the small startup he owns, developing software for nursing homes.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The folks whose houses burned down learn about the arrest from the news.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Mark now has a job, or he thinks he does. But for Warren, his full-time job is now hanging out with Mark Sands.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Six weeks go by since Mark's arrest at the fake construction site. By June 2001, Warren realizes that if he's going to get a confession out of Mark, he'll need to shake things up.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren knew that hiking the Grand Canyon was always on Mark's bucket list. So he tells the task force he has an idea.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
That's Danielle Sink, the woman whose house was torched right around Christmastime, leaving behind nothing but a tiny Santa Claus figurine.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The plan is to hike the South Rim Trail, which goes all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. And they want to do it by the light of the full moon, which means they'll be setting off that evening at sunset.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
the task force rushes to prepare. This operation is gonna be expensive, but the police and the FBI bigwigs are anxious to finally nail this arsonist. Rob heads into his boss's office.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
They get around 15 undercover officers on board.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Rob even calls in air support.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Yeah, I mean, it kind of sounds like overkill almost. Do you think it was like too much?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren is given a set of glow sticks to attach to his bag to use as a signal. Green for safe, red for danger.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Undercover cops dressed as hikers will be ready to intervene, by force if necessary, at the first sign of trouble. Then there's the recording device. They sew one into his backpack and another into his water bottle holder. But it's a rush job.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
While the task force is focused on the technical side of things, Warren is preparing mentally for what he's about to do.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
And Lee Benson, the owner of the house that burned twice, he feels vindicated. I remember just thinking, oh, so it is somebody in the neighborhood. Lee believed from the jump that CSP was one of his neighbors. But for Mark's closest friends, their reaction is total disbelief.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
For his entire life, Warren Jeroms has stayed on the straight and narrow path. He has a good job, two kids, goes to church every weekend. Never in his worst nightmares did he think he would find himself in this position. Working as an undercover agent for the state, wired up and ready to convince his best friend to confess to serial arson.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren knows what the task force wants, but what does he want the outcome to be? On the one hand, he's holding out hope that Mark is innocent. On the other hand, he's now seen a side of Mark that he never thought was possible.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
With all these feelings boiling up inside him, Warren pulls up to the Sands house in his Jeep Cherokee. His buddy Mark hops in the passenger seat. They drive north out of Phoenix. As urban sprawl fades into desert, the highway unfolds in front of them, revealing the big open sky of the American West. Behind them and in front of them is an undercover motorcade, the task force.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Rob watches from a distance as Mark and Warren exit the Jeep and approach the lip of the canyon, lit up by the last rays of the sinking sun. Warren's head is swirling with the questions he needs to ask Mark.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
As the sky turns from blue to orange to a deep amethyst purple, Warren takes in the view.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
By his side is the one man who he's always felt relaxed with, until now.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Painfully aware of the microphone sewn into his backpack, Warren falls in next to Mark as they begin the eight-mile descent into the most famous canyon in the country.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
What you're hearing is the actual audio recorded from Warren's hidden microphone. They can't see it quite yet, but a full moon is beginning to climb into the sky. Slowly but steadily, they make their way down, deeper and deeper into the canyon, passing other hikers on the trail.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren wonders, are they undercover cops? For a brief instant, possibly for the first time in months, Mark and Warren are distracted from the investigation, fully immersed in the beauty of the moment. The swirling rocks embrace them, illuminated by the light of the moon, which has now risen over the lip of the canyon. But the spell is quickly broken by the shadow hanging over both of them.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Mark can't help but bring up the investigation.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Just like on their hikes in the mountain preserve, they begin to circle each other, getting closer and closer to Warren's burning questions.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
This is Vicki Deworth. I tracked her down to get a sense of the reaction in Mark's inner circle. She'd known him for years before the arrest.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren says he believes Mark was only acting as CSP, essentially doing the marketing, not actually lighting the fires.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Almost like I knew I would. Almost like I knew I would, Mark says.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Now, Mark has a question for Warren. Who's doing the arsons then? He asks, who's doing the arsons then?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren is clinging to the possibility that, yes, Mark was involved in both writing on the sign and even sending those letters to the newspapers. But he wasn't the person who set the fires. If what you say is true, why would I have gotten involved?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren tells Mark that his wife, Mia, also thinks the letters and the interview in the paper sound like Mark's words, too. Mark starts to sound kind of smug, almost like he's delighted by the idea that someone saw him in those words.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
They keep hiking deeper and deeper into the canyon. Swirling around Warren's mind are those four questions he's yet to ask. Up on the rim of the canyon, Lieutenant Rob is waiting in his car.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
They're even part of the same Bible study group. When Mark is arrested, at first, Vicki just cannot accept the fact that her close friend could be behind all those fires, evading the police for a whole year. So instead, she goes into support mode.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
It's 2001, so technology is not advanced enough to be listening to the hike live. Undercover cops dressed as hikers occasionally get a visual of Mark and Warren. But Rob and the others have no idea whether Warren has accomplished his mission. They'll just have to wait. Hours go by. The full moon rises to the middle of the sky, then sinks towards the horizon.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
It's been nearly 12 hours since the hike began. Finally, as the sun begins to rise, two men emerge over the lip of the canyon.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren and Mark begin their long drive home. Mark crashes out in the passenger seat. As he rests, Warren is weeping silently behind the wheel. A few hours later, and they're back in Phoenix. Warren drops Mark off at his house. Then he heads to a local grocery store.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Back at the police station, the task force is crowded around a cassette player, listening intently. Warren says, This is it, the moment they've been waiting for. At the base of the Grand Canyon, with the sound of the Colorado River rushing before them, Warren has finally worked up the courage to ask Mark the fateful questions he's been carrying with him since they left Phoenix.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren tells Mark, I don't want you to say anything, because if anyone ever asks me, I don't want to be able to tell them Mark said no or yes.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
He says, I'm going to ask you four questions.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Throw the rock away. If the answer to the question is yes, throw the rock away.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
If the answer to the question is no, hold on to it. Hey, what are your questions? Okay, what are your questions?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
A rock hits the ground.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren skips the third question and goes straight to the heart of the matter.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Did you start any fires? Do you really want to go there? Do you really want to go there? Mark asks. Warren gathers his courage and tries again, asking both of the remaining questions. Are you acting alone? And did you set the fires? Yeah, two rocks, two questions. Mark says, two rocks, two questions. Did you hear that? The faint sound of two rocks hitting the ground. And then... laughter.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The answer to both questions is yes. They keep hiking. A few minutes later, Mark starts talking. Really talking.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Their Bible study group flocks to his side to lend prayer and guidance. But in the group's first meetup, just a couple days after Mark's release from custody, he seems more interested in debating them than receiving guidance.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Back at the police station, the tape player clicks off. There's a moment of silence in the room as Rob and his team absorb what they've just heard. Way out in the wilderness, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Mark Sands confessed to starting the fires.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The confession is the rock-solid evidence Rob and his team have been chasing this whole time. Mark Sands did set the fires. He lied to his family, to Warren, to his whole community, pretending to be a concerned neighbor while, all along, he was the arsonist. And not only that, the confession tape confirms what the task force had begun to suspect. Mark acted alone.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
There was no coalition to save the preserves. All those hundreds of hours spent hunting for a connection to a national eco-terror network, and Mark turns out to be a lone wolf. One question remains. Why did he do it? Next time, in the final episode of The Arsonist Next Door, I go looking for the real Mark Sands.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
And I find something I never expected. Mark Sands was not just lighting fires.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Unlock all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
That's all episodes all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Arsonist Next Door is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. This series was written and reported by me, Sam Anderson. It was produced and reported by Leona Hamid.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. Research by Zayana Youssef. Additional production from Tom Wright and G. Stiles. Our editor is Dave Anderson. Additional story editing from Max O'Brien. From Novel, our executive producers are Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Our original theme song was composed and performed by Nicholas Alexander. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact Checking by Dania Suleiman. Story Development by Nell Gray Andrews. Novels Director of Development is Selena Mehta.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
And Willard Foxton is Novels Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Jen Fifield, Libby Goff, Bob Kahn, Xander Adams, Anthony Wallace, Steve Ackerman, Carolyn Sher-Levin and the team at Reviewed and Cleared, Mario Cacciatolo, Isaac Fisher, Kevin Lee Carras, Jess Swinburne, Sonny Marr, Carly Frankel, and the team at WME.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, I'm Sam Anderson. You're listening to The Arsonist Next Door. Episode 5, The Confession Back on the night of Mark's arrest, while he's sitting cuffed in the back of a squad car, Sergeant Trent Crump steps onto the front porch of Mark's home. It's one in the morning. Mark's wife, Peggy, and their 11-year-old daughter are asleep inside.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The Binge. It's the morning of April 20th, 2001. Mark Sands has been arrested for writing on a sign that the cops staged as part of a fake construction site. And the community of Heritage Heights is waking up to flashing lights spilling in through the cracks between their curtains. The quiet suburban enclave is filled with police cars.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Turns out, Peggy doesn't even know Mark isn't home. It will take investigators a few hours to get a search warrant. By the time the sun is rising over the preserve, Mark is still in custody. Lieutenant Rob Handy and FBI case lead Terry Kearns lead a group of officers to Mark's house to conduct a search.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
After Special Agent Ken Williams finishes interviewing Mark at the police station, he heads over to the house too.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The evidence they found doesn't directly link Mark to the fires. But there is something they find in Mark Sand's house that strikes the task force as potentially important. Something impossible to ignore.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Pornography. A lot of it.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Of course, there's nothing criminal about viewing pornography. But Rob suspects there might be something more serious tied up in Mark's porn obsession.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
A connection between the arson spree and the pornography.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
It's not unheard of that arson attacks might have a sexual component. And judging by the fact that Mark was in his underpants on the night of the arrest, it's not much of a stretch for investigators to suspect that this might be part of the story too. On top of that, Mark has an extensive VHS collection, including a bunch of home movies.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The investigators think maybe they contain something related to the fires. Could he have filmed his targets beforehand? Or taken trophy footage of the burned homes? They confiscate every single tape and bring them back to the station. Trent Crump assigns a couple of investigators a new task.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
At this point, investigators feel sure that Mark Sands is their guy, and he's either acting alone or with others. But they still need to prove it. They already questioned Mark, but he didn't give them anything. Now, he's lawyered up and denying any involvement beyond writing on the sign.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
In the weeks after Mark's arrest, Agent Ken Williams and the rest of the task force begin to surveil him and his family. And they are not being subtle about it. unmarked cop cars are posted up outside their house. Each week, his trash bins are passed over by the regular trucks, and a special garbage truck arrives to pick up just Mark's trash, no one else's.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Now we're on him. It's not just the task force that's come down hard on Mark. The media is there too, camped out in news trucks, pestering them for interviews every time they leave the house. Meanwhile, saliva found on the envelope of a letter sent by the supposed arsonist to the Phoenix New Times is positively ID'd as Mark Sands. While all of this may sound like a smoking gun, it's not.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Anyone can graffiti a sign, and anyone can write a letter claiming to be an arsonist. It doesn't prove you are one.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The task force is after something concrete. And so we swoop in on Warren Jerram's. Warren Jeroms, Mark's running buddy, his best friend.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren is about to embark on one of the most difficult chapters of his life.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
It didn't take long for the investigators to figure out that Warren is Mark's closest friend. Now, they're hoping he will give them the information they need. But Warren has his own ideas about Mark's character.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Mark's daughter and Warren's daughter are close friends. They hang out together, sing in the church choir together.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren tells the investigators that he doesn't believe his friend set those fires. He answers all their questions as best he can.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
But this won't be the last time Warren hears from the task force. They keep trying to reach out to him. They speak to his wife, Mia. And even though Warren still believes that Mark is innocent, Mark is growing distrustful of Warren. At one point, he confronts Warren.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
She thought he was guilty at that time?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Mia would prompt Warren to think carefully about his memories of Mark.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
He thinks back to that time when he sat in a church pew next to Mark. While their daughters sang prayerful choir songs, Mark was ignoring the music, pouring over the Phoenix New Times and that interview with the arsonist. Slowly but surely, the doubts are building up in Warren's mind.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
He's lying awake at night, agonizing over whether his good Christian friend could really be the one burning down these houses, putting lives at risk, not caring who's affected. Warren is forced to ask himself, if Mark is really responsible for all this, what could possibly drive him to do something so extreme? It's the same question that drew me to this story in the first place.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Is Mark really an eco-terrorist? A religious extremist? A lunatic with a fire fetish? As Warren turns over these questions in his mind, the task force continues to pressure him. You can help us, they tell him. All you need to do is cooperate. But despite his growing doubts, Warren tells the task force it's not Mark. It can't be. So they switch tactics.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
By help us out, Rob has something pretty specific in mind. They want Warren to wear a wire. He told us, no, I'm not going to wear this wire. I'm not going to do it. Usually, when an informant wears a wire, it's because they themselves are a criminal, and the cops have some kind of evidence they can hold against the informant as a bargaining chip.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
You help us out, and maybe we go easy on you when it comes to sentencing. But Warren, he's no criminal, just an ordinary guy who happens to be Mark's friend. So for the cops, there is no bargaining chip. All they can do is plead. Because at this point, the task force is getting kind of desperate. Mark isn't gonna volunteer a confession or even talk to them again without his lawyer.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
But if the task force can convince Warren, a trusted friend, to wear a wire and ask their questions for them, then maybe they can finally nail down the case.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Warren refuses to play ball. Just when they're giving up hope of convincing Warren, they find something that just might change his mind. One of the officers Sergeant Trent Crump asked to watch all those VHS tapes they took from Mark's house comes back with an update. Hey, boss, you wanna see this?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
A VHS tape confiscated from Mark's personal collection on the day of the house search might just change everything. Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free today and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The neighborhood thought the arson spree was the work of CSP, the Coalition to Save the Preserves, a group of radical eco-terrorists. Now, Mark Sands has been arrested and questioned by the police. Could their friendly neighbor be a serial arsonist?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
Search for The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today. The task force found some game-changing evidence on one of Mark Sand's VHS tapes, but it's not evidence of arson. The tape in front of them contains something related to Mark's pornography obsession.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 5: The Confession
The task force has decided it's time for Warren to learn more about his friend. The man behind that harmless, church-going facade.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door
You never want to think your next-door neighbor is the serial killer, but he lives next to somebody.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door
I called everybody in the office and I just said, how many more ways can we fuck this thing up?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
Introducing: The Arsonist Next Door
I had several dreams about that house behind me. Or dreams about setting it on fire. One night I did.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Soon after Lieutenant Rob Handy accepts the help of the FBI, a huge joint task force is assembled.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Among the dozens of agents told to join the task force is Ken Williams, the local man we met earlier who left his grill to run to the fire. Because Ken Williams is more than just a neighbor of Danielle Sink. He's also a special agent with the FBI. And now his bosses want him to investigate the case unfolding in his very own neighborhood.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
At first, Ken is resistant to the idea of joining the arson task force because he already has his hands full with another case.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken has a source who's a member of a terrorist group. And he's paying this source for information.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The source has just given Ken a new lead.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Prescott is a town about two hours north of Phoenix.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Recruiting them into terrorist organizations.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken trusts his source. His gut tells him to follow this lead and look into these two guys who may be recruiting young Muslim men to become terrorists. And that's why he's trying to avoid getting pulled onto the arson case. But it's not long before one of his bosses beckons him over with a certain look in his eye.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
We're on the way to the scene of a fire that changed the course of Ken's life.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
His boss tells him, we need you on the Phoenix case. Though we did try, we weren't able to reach his former boss for an interview. Ken recognizes that the eco-terror case is important, but pushes back. After all, he's an international terror expert, and this is a domestic case.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
his boss is unmoved. And while it might sound crazy to prioritize a local arson over possible Islamic terrorists, remember, this is before the war on terror. In the Y2K era, lefty groups and eco-terrorists are one of the FBI's top priorities. Ken is fighting a losing battle.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
He joins the FBI's arson team, led by Special Agent Terry Kearns, who you met last episode. And for Rob Handy and Terry Kearns, this is their lucky day. Because Ken Williams really is one of the best. And they need backup.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
This is a bigger case than either of them have ever led before. They now have huge resources at their disposal. Heavily armed SWAT teams and a hostage rescue team have joined surveillance efforts in the preserves.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
All this surveillance was costing them up to $40,000 a week. But even with all these resources, they still have no one to point their guns at. They don't have any strong leads. And apart from the notes left behind by CSP, there's not much evidence either.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Gazing up at those mountains as we drive, I'm struck by the immense beauty of this place. It's way greener than I thought it would be, and the preserves are teeming with life. Cactuses are everywhere, short ones, tall ones, fat ones, skinny ones, long, dangly, ridiculous ones that look straight out of a Dr. Seuss book.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The one thing they do have is that sketch of the suspect reported at the scene of the latest fire. It's a detailed depiction of a white, middle-aged man with glasses. When Ken, a white, middle-aged man with glasses, arrives at the task force HQ, he sits down for the daily briefing. Copies of the sketch are passed around.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
That's right. The sketch depicts not the arsonist, but one of their own agents.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
After having a good laugh, or possibly a cry, the team decides to refocus on one of their last remaining sources of information.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
And the Phoenix community is all over that tip line.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Imagine the paranoia that must have been running through the community by this point. Reading through some of the leads that got called in through the tip line, so many of them were just complete shots in the dark. A park ranger called in to report some graffiti he found in the preserve. Someone spray-painted, quote, Civic Legacy Andromeda Success.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
It's not CSB, but it does have a C, and there's also a S. And then there's a young guy spotted with a painting in the back of his car window. It says, you build it, we burn it. The same tagline used by the Earth Liberation Front and CSP. They tail this kid to the coffee shop where he works, drag him out back, and give him the shakedown. He's a journalism student.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
He swears that he just thinks it's a cool phrase, nothing more. Sounds pretty suspicious, right? But it turns out he's telling the truth. He's just a kid with a subversive taste in art. And here's the thing. All of us do things that can look kind of suspicious in the right context.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
At night, coyotes and javelinas, which are like little wild piggies, will appear in your backyard, and you can hear a chorus of insects and owls hooting. But you'll also hear the constant hum of traffic rumbling down huge six-lane roads. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the U.S. These beautiful mountains we're driving past, they almost got transformed into urban sprawl.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Veteran investigator Ken Williams has some advice for his young teammates. Start diving down a few of the most promising rabbit holes to see if any of the little bunnies who live there hate mansions and love fire. Rabbit hole number one.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
A firefighter suspected of arson.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Everyone knows about the thin blue line. And I'm guessing that goes for the guys in the red suits, too. The law enforcement crowd rarely rats each other out, even when they commit serious crimes. So when they do break ranks, it catches Ken's attention. And there's actually a well-documented connection between firefighters and arson. Could this woman be part of CSP?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
An eco-radical working from inside the system?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Her colleagues also have some less concrete evidence.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
She was a mountain biker? Oh, yeah. But it's not just super vague personality profiling. Whoever is lighting these fires, they are always one step ahead. Maybe that does point to an inside job.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Agent Terry Kearns again.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
With all this in mind, Ken leaps into action and investigates the female firefighter. He brings her in for questioning.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
But it turns out her alibis, they're solid. She was not at the scene of the fires. So we ruled her out. I do wonder whether the fact that she was a woman working in a pretty male-dominated field might just have a little something to do with the huge amount of scrutiny she received from her colleagues. Ken is at home, lying in bed next to his wife. Kids are asleep when the phone rings.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken stumbles out to the landline. It's headquarters. A tip has come in from a security guard who spotted a suspicious man inside a construction site on the edge of the preserve.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
— When he gets there, the officer on duty briefs him about this new suspect they just arrested at a construction site. He's a local man with a complicated past, once accused of murder.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Could this local guy be setting fires for sexual gratification? Because, believe it or not, that sort of thing is well documented. Some convicted arsonists have set fires because it turns them on.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Rabbit hole number two. Ken starts digging into who this guy really is. We were going strong after him. Ken grills the man on where he was during each of the fires. He gives Ken alibis for all of them. Then he throws himself on Ken's mercy. Yes, he masturbates in construction sites, but he's not an arsonist. He can explain.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
I like to think of myself as a pretty open-minded guy, and I definitely don't want to kink-shame anybody. But the smell of freshly cut wood? That's a new one for me. Ken isn't satisfied. He tracks down the man's friends and interviews his current wife.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Back in the 70s, local activists fought hard to protect the mountains from development. But where those environmentalists wrote petitions, made a float for the Phoenix rodeo parade, and even took lawmakers on horseback rides through the mountains, CSP is using arson. And the homes they're burning aren't even in the preserve.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken methodically checks out each of the man's alibis. And just like the firefighter, they're solid.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
I think about what this process must have been like for these two suspects to find themselves in the crosshairs of a major FBI investigation.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The guy jerking off in the construction site, he kind of had it coming. But the firefighter? The FBI might have ruled her out, but she still had to go to work the next day with the same colleagues who said she had a goofy reputation and therefore might be an arsonist. The firefighter and that local guy are just two of the many leads the team chases down. All of them end up in dead ends.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Even with all of Ken's experience, the investigators are still struggling to find the needle in that haystack of tips. But they're not just relying on tips. Investigators take more proactive measures, too. Rabbit hole number three. They target the small but mighty cohort of environmental activists in Phoenix. And not all of them appreciate the attention.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Want more true crime? Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free today and get instant access to over 50 other jaw-dropping true crime stories. Plus, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series on the first of every month. Search for The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or head to getthebinge.com to subscribe today. The Binge
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
This is Scott Meyer. He's tall, a bit more put together than you'd expect from a lifetime activist. And he has a sort of permanently bemused expression on his face.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The office in his house is full of anti-capitalist memes, printed out and stuck on the walls.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
— He's been an environmental activist in Phoenix for decades. His specialty is taking polluters to court. And he's really good at it.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Scott lives with his longtime collaborator, Steve. They run a group called Don't Waste Arizona, and they're both frustrated at the narrative springing up in the news. About environmentalists being eco-terrorists, which is just pure bullshit. Next thing he knows, Scott hears a knock at the door. He cracks it open, and his dog goes crazy in the hallway. Outside are two serious-looking dudes.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
But driving past this peaceful oasis, I can start to understand why any development might feel threatening, and why some people might be driven to take extreme action against it. My daydream is interrupted when Ken begins to tell me a story.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
It's the FBI. The agents introduce themselves and come inside. Scott drags his dog out of the room to protect that gorgeous suit from dog hair. Once they've settled down, the interrogation begins.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
— Scott and Steve live in the south of Phoenix, which is completely on the other side of town from where the fires are taking place. one FBI agent's attention is drawn to the wall of Scott's house. There's a big map of Phoenix covered with colored pins, like something straight out of a true crime show. They were studying that and looking at that, and they just didn't know what to think, you know?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Scott told me the map actually shows the location of pollution sites for lawsuits they're working on. There's the copper smelter releasing toxic emissions into the air, a toxic waste incinerator that they're trying to stop from being built. There's low-income communities affected by a poisonous chemical fire, which is being completely ignored by the EPA.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Honestly, shout out to Scott Meyer and Don't Waste Arizona. I was really impressed with their work. But most of it focused on polluters. Developers building on the preserve in the wealthy Phoenix suburbs couldn't be lower on Scott's list of concerns.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Scott explains all of this to the magenta suit and his colleague.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Scott isn't surprised the FBI is at his door. He's surprised the FBI doesn't already know he's not the arsonist from all the phone tapping and surveillance he says they're doing on him.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The agents question them for about half an hour and get nowhere.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
But what about CSP, the Coalition to Save the Preserves?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Scott says no one in his circle has heard of this new radical group, the Coalition to Save the Preserves.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Scott's theory is that it's not a group of people. It's just one guy taking advantage of the FBI and the media obsession with eco-terrorism. He sends the agents packing with some free advice.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
In the year 2000, Ken is at home in his yard.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
As the new year approaches, 2001, the pressure to catch CSP is starting to take its toll on the investigators and their families.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
It seems like nowhere is safe. Ken goes to church one Sunday and is distracted from the sermon. He glances suspiciously at his fellow worshipers.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Special Agent Terry Kearns is feeling the squeeze too.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Immediately, Terry gets her boss on speakerphone.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
And while the investigators flounder, the media spotlight is getting brighter and brighter.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
And then, just at that moment of maximum stress, the investigative team is dealt another blow.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
— Next time on The Arsonists Next Door, a 28-year-old journalist gets a mind-blowing scoop.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Unlock all episodes of The Arsonist Next Door ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts, all ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
That's all episodes all at once. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Arsonist Next Door is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment and Novel. This series was written and reported by me, Sam Anderson. It was produced and reported by Leona Hamid.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Our assistant producer is Madeline Parr. Research by Zayana Youssef. Additional production from Tom Wright and G. Stiles. Our editor is Dave Anderson. Additional story editing from Max O'Brien. From Novel, our executive producers are Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Sound design, mixing, and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Our original theme song was composed and performed by Nicholas Alexander. Production management from Cherie Houston, Joe Savage, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact Checking by Dania Suleiman. Story Development by Nell Gray Andrews.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken hands over the barbecue tongs to his wife because he knows immediately this fire must be part of the arson spree. That was 25 years ago. Now I want to see the place for myself. From the backseat of the car, Ken directs us to the scene of the fire.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Novels Director of Development is Selina Mehta, and Willard Foxton is Novels Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Jen Fifield, Libby Goff, Bob Kahn, Xander Adams, Anthony Wallace, Steve Ackerman, Carolyn Sher-Levin and the team at Reviewed and Cleared, Mario Cacciatolo, Isaac Fisher, Kevin Lee Carras, Jess Swinburne, Sonny Marr, Carly Frankel, and the team at WME.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken heads toward the glowing light in the distance.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
We're driving into a cul-de-sac full of big houses. The location triggers a rush of memories from Ken.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken is getting closer and closer to the fire.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
There, at the end of the cul-de-sac, is another large house under construction. The timber frame is engulfed in flames.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Around the same time Ken was running up the hill towards the flames, Lieutenant Rob Handy gets a phone call. CSP's seventh attack. Immediately, he thinks of his prime suspect, the anti-development hermit. They've been watching him for weeks, lying in wait to catch him if he sets off to start a fire. Rob calls the surveillance team.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Their main suspect is right there in his house, nowhere near the fire.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Rob's best lead has gone up in smoke. It was a low point, for sure. But then, the stroke of luck. One of the neighbors saw a suspicious man at the scene of the latest fire. He was watching calmly from the sidewalk as the house burned. A guy they hadn't seen around the neighborhood before. The man was white, middle-aged, with glasses. And the witness said he was acting kind of shady.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
A sketch artist is called in to create a detailed likeness of the suspicious character. Finally, they have something solid to go on. Someone must know who this man is. There's no time to waste.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
From Sony Music Entertainment and Novel, I'm Sam Anderson. This is The Arsonist Next Door. Episode 2, Smoke and Mirrors. By December of 2000, everyone building houses near the preserve is well aware of the arson spree, including Danielle Sink.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
On the same evening that Ken Williams was working the barbecue, Danielle and her family were enjoying black beans and jade chicken from Chino Bandito. It's a local restaurant with a menu that's Chinese and Mexican.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Danielle is tall with long, striking white hair. She speaks gently and distinctly. I find myself leaning forward slightly to listen when she talks. At the time of the fires, Danielle is a doctor at a local hospital, teaching medical students and residents. She and her husband have three kids, two boys under 10, and a daughter just two months old.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
So the whole family is crowded around the dinner table. The baby is in a high chair.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
By December, their new home is finally coming into focus. Danielle fantasizes about the views she's going to enjoy as she sips her coffee in the morning.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
For Danielle and her family, the house is more than just a place to live.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
But as the family chows down on the Chinese-Mexican-Jamaican takey-outy, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
For Danielle, as a doctor, the fear runs deep.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
And it's not just the most horrific possibilities. There's also the more mundane concerns that are grinding people down.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The preserves mean a lot to Danielle, and she understands why people would want to protect them. But she has no sympathy for CSP's methods.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Danielle and her husband installed a couple extra security measures and tried to put aside their fears. Up until now, they've continued to build with no sign of trouble. Danielle likes to take her kids to visit the new house and celebrate the progress. The boys even put up Christmas decorations in the fresh timber frame.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
As the family finishes off the last scraps of their Chino Banditos, they're feeling festive. It's Christmas, after all. And they're excited to move into their new home. And just at that moment, they notice a rhythmic thumping sound in the distance.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Danielle pulls the baby out of the high chair and rushes toward the front door.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The streets are suddenly filled with traffic.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Fire trucks are trying to get to the scene while a crowd of curious neighbors heads towards the glowing fire on the mountain. They want to see who's been hit this time. Danielle's husband already knows.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The new house is only a couple of blocks from the old one. Standing in the street, Danielle can see the flames getting higher and higher, fueled by the desert wind. She's worried for their neighbor, Tom.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Over the next several hours, firefighters put out the blaze. Neighbor Tom's house lives to see another day. When the dawn comes, it's bright and clear. Just four days until Christmas. Danielle drives to the site of the fire to assess the damage. The scene is swarming with people. Law enforcement, fire investigators, journalists, and neighbors are milling around.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
The only thing that's still standing is an outdoor fireplace.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
A police officer approaches Danielle.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
He wasn't born in Phoenix. He moved here as a young man from the beautiful state of New Jersey, same place I'm from.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Danielle takes the tiny Santa and closes her fingers around it, thinking about how she's going to explain all this to her kids.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Was there anything else you recovered from the home?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Lieutenant Rob Handy of the Phoenix Police Department has arrived at the scene of the fire. He's still reeling from the loss of his main suspect, the anti-development hermit who was safely under surveillance last night as Danielle's house burned.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Basements are a firefighter's worst nightmare.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
If the floorboards collapse, they'll be trapped in the suffocating heat of a fiery pit with no escape. This kind of accident happens often enough that firefighters have a word for it. They call it a widowmaker. As the risk to human life continues to grow with each new fire, Rob is under serious pressure to solve this case. And frankly, he's overwhelmed.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
This latest fire at Danielle's place is, once again, outside the area that police have been surveilling.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Do my ears deceive me? Or is the proudly independent lieutenant finally ready to ask for help? So far, Rob's been resistant to accepting assistance from the FBI. But now, it's obvious even to Rob that it's time to call in the cavalry. So when he gets a call from an FBI boss, Rob says, okay, come on down to the scene. Let's talk.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
He now has the full might of the FBI behind him. What Rob once described as a neighborhood problem has officially blown up. And it won't be long before they're on the trail of some very juicy new leads.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 2: Smoke and Mirrors
Ken is an older man with a square jaw, bright blue eyes, and the demeanor of a kind uncle. He's directing me and my producer Leona from the backseat of our cute red Mini Cooper, which he barely fits in. We're driving through the suburban sprawl of North Phoenix towards the striking mountain ranges that encircle the valley.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 6: Behind the Facade
Oh, my God. That looks like a second plane.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 6: Behind the Facade
Episode 6, Behind the Facade.
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn
Do you remember what it felt like reading that note?
The Binge Crimes: Finding Mom's Killer
The Arsonist Next Door | 1: You Build We Burn
Hi. Hello. My name's Sam Anderson. Hi. I'm a journalist. We're actually making a podcast.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I tapped into the knowledge of other old Leatherman obsessives, a scattered group of amateur enthusiasts who've been stockpiling data points for 150 years. I spoke with Steve Grant, a journalist who walked the old Leatherman's loop for the Hartford Courant in 1993. Grant told me with a real sense of loss that most of his maps are gone.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Years ago, some other old Leathermanophile borrowed them and never gave them back. I pored over an online cave guide compiled by Lee Stewart Evans, an outdoorsy Englishman transplanted to Connecticut. And I basically wore out my copy of Dan W. DeLuca's heroically thorough book, The Old Leatherman, Historical Accounts of a Connecticut and New York Legend.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Eventually, I cobbled together what I thought was a reasonable outline of the loop. It was a bizarre travel itinerary, as if someone closed their eyes and drew with a shaky hand the most random possible cross-section of small northeastern towns.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
There are once-bustling river ports like Ossining and Old Saybrook, and former manufacturing centers, Bristol, Terryville, Plymouth, and destination antique shopping towns like Woodbury. You could live 1,000 very full lives and never think about any of these places. But that was also its appeal. There's nothing obvious about this route.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The old Leatherman was giving me an excuse to step outside my own life, to look at old American places firsthand, slowly, to think about how they had changed, to walk around like a weirdo, knocking randomly on doors, talking to people who I had no business talking to. I just needed the right inspiration to start. I started walking on November 6th, 2024.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
There was such a generosity from people and genuine curiosity and empathy for him that I found really touching. And I think I really related to this guy, as strange as it sounds. Like a lot of people, I think I feel sometimes alienated and strange or like I want to drop out of society. And here was someone who had done it in a totally fascinating way.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
For months, I realized I'd been living inside of screens, vibrating on poisonous frequencies. And now the inside of my skull was itchy and all human language felt like packing peanuts in my mouth. I had a very strong impulse to move. So I grabbed a backpack and drove down to the old leather man's grave.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The cemetery is just off the Hudson River in Austin, New York, on a street called Revolutionary Road. It is, by American standards, ancient. The headstones are thin with fancy font and odd spellings and little carved pictures full of feeling. The memorial to the old leather man is a big rock with a plaque.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
My plan was to start here at the end of his journey and move clockwise, unspooling the story of his life. I stood there for a good, long, meditative while. And then, like the old leather man, I walked. I walked north toward downtown Ossining. The day was strangely warm, 80 degrees. People's yards were full of leftover Halloween decorations. Giant skeletons, the Grim Reaper, demon pumpkins.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
It was leaf season, so I tromped next to and sometimes on top of huge piles of crispy golden brown leaves. All the green life of the year, dead, heaped up on the side of the road. I passed a historic tavern where George Washington might have slept. I found a $10 bill on the sidewalk.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In people's yards, I saw a Gadsden flag, don't tread on me, and a United States flag so tattered it looked like it had been through the Civil War. For the next several months, off and on, I walked. Day by day, I would load my backpack with hard-boiled eggs and gas station snacks, then trudge up roads toward the points of interest on my map.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
From Ossining, I went to Briarcliff Manor, where one of the old Leatherman's caves still sits tucked into the middle of a neighborhood near a dead-end sign. Then to Chappaqua, where the Clintons live. In Lewisboro, I walked past a house where the old leatherman used to knock on the drainpipe so the owner would give him coffee and sandwiches. I knocked. No one was home.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I passed a house where the old leatherman felt so comfortable that he used to go inside to eat when the weather was bad. Until one calamitous day, the family brought out a watermelon and set it on the table, and the old leatherman stood up and walked out and never stopped at their house again. I walked 13 miles one day, 15 miles another day, 18 miles, 20 miles.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In Woodbury, I walked to the site of Alexander Gordon Sr. 's tannery, where the old leatherman used to stop to collect leather scraps and drink from the water trough, and where he once allowed Gordon to oil up his suit. It's now a liquor store. Very slowly, clockwise, I crawled around the loop on my big giant map. I have to say, right away, walking made me feel better.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Every morning when I stepped onto the road, I got a little less angry. It's easy to hate the world when it's just an abstraction that lives in your phone. It's harder when you're out there in it, really looking, interacting. Tiny moments felt hugely healing. On the edge of Austin-ing, a woman at a gas station called out, asking if I would help her with something.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And I was sure it was going to be some kind of scam. But it turned out she just couldn't figure out how to get her gas cap back on. And I helped her. And she said, thank you for your kindness. I felt relieved to be living in reality again, following the small rhythm of my legs over the big rhythm of the landscape, noticing the world, the houses under the clouds.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Block by block, mile by mile, I felt my soul begin to unclench, like one of those mattresses that get shipped super compressed in a tiny box. Stepping into the world opened the box. Step by step, as the days and weeks passed, I felt my crushed soul stretching out to find its dimensions, expanding to fill the huge space of the whole expanding universe.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
So I would always fantasize about following in his footsteps. Sometimes my wife asks me, what are you thinking about? And I hesitate to answer because it's just the old leather man. Years passed, and at one point an editor asked me, do you have any weird stories that you've never been allowed to write for the magazine?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I marveled again and again at the way the past and present sit on top of each other. I walked past 18th century mansions with electric gates and private basketball courts. I saw decrepit houses that looked held together more by air than by wood. I ate a Ben and Jerry's ice cream cone while sitting on a rock where George Washington once allegedly ate his dinner.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
One day I stood staring fascinated at a decrepit brick house built in 1790, its windows broken in a way that made it look somehow like the embodiment of the fall of the American empire. And as I stood there, a cyber truck drove by. On some days, the walking was heartbreakingly lovely. The names of certain roads still make me sigh. Wood Road, Gage Road, Spring Lake Road, Judds Bridge Road.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Huge territories felt like outdoor museums. Curated collections of old stone walls, curving gently and rising with the land. the wide, quiet beauty of old New England. I spent many hours alone with birds.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I watched a giant woodpecker perched on a thin, rotten tree, pecking so hard that the whole tree shook and swayed, pumping its red head until giant chunks of bark flew off, and it looked like the woodpecker was about to peck the whole thing apart and go plunging to the ground. Hawks screamed at me for invading their space, or they glided silently over my head, staring down.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I startled probably 10,000 squirrels, and as they shot off through the dry leaves, they were so disproportionately loud that sometimes I thought they were bears. I had plenty of bad times, too.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
There were days so cold my hands stung, even in gloves, inside my coat pockets, and the wind whipped up tornadoes of snow, and I could feel my mustache hairs freezing and crunching in the steam from my nose. Other days, just as cold, I was sweating so hard I had to take off my coat and hat. I was reminded over and over that the modern world is not made for walking.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I spent many miles trudging, on high alert, up traffic-y highways without shoulders. Cars came screaming around corners. I found myself tightrope walking along the tops of cliffs, clinging like a goat to the sides of hills, teetering on old stone walls.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I stepped over all kinds of roadkill, a freshly pressed groundhog, a pancaked hawk, a pickup truck speeding past so close that I felt a rush of wind. And at the last second, a German shepherd shot its head out the window, barking and snapping, actually trying to bite me. One car whipped around a blind turn so suddenly that I went leaping over a guardrail, bashing my shin.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
It left a swollen knot that's still there. That same day, fighting my way through roadside trees, clinging to a different guardrail for balance, I sliced the heel of my hand open on a nasty piece of metal. It became clear to me very quickly that despite my fascination and my fantasies, I am not the old leather man. I never slept in a cave. In fact, it turns out that I'm afraid of caves.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
So for this week's Sunday read, I was able to fulfill my destiny and finally go walking in the footsteps of the old leather man on his loop. I loaded up my backpack and I just, for many, many, many days, just walked. And I wrote all about it. So here's my story. Our audio producer today is Adrian Hurst. The original music you'll hear was written and performed by Aaron Esposito.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Every time I found one, I would stand outside it for a few minutes, trying to peer in from a distance, and then I'd throw in rocks and sticks to scare out any wild animals. And only then, cautiously, holding my breath, would I creep inside. Instead, I slept in hotels. Or I just went home.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I'd walk all day and then, exhausted, order an Uber back to wherever I'd started, usually a shopping center where I'd parked my car. The ride was always humiliating. In 10 or 15 minutes, it rewound the walk that had taken me all day. It turned out that I was much more a creature of society than I like to admit. I'd walk for a couple of days and then have to go home for a dentist appointment.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Things wouldn't stop coming up. I took breaks from the loop because my daughter was visiting for Christmas. Because I got a nasty head cold. Because my beloved wiener dog, Walnut, suddenly lost the use of his back legs, and we thought he was about to die. He got better.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
One evening, at the end of a particularly grueling 20-mile walk, my wife picked me up in front of a public library, and we went out for Thai food. She liked to call me the old pleather man. Yet, over many weeks, after maybe 100 miles of walking, my domestication started to wear off.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
One night I came home after a few days on the road, after not changing my clothes, and everyone in the house stiffened. My smell was like I'd brought a whole other person home with me, someone none of us had met before. One Tuesday in mid-January, I reached a man-made lake the old Leatherman never would have seen.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In his time, it was a river winding through a town, until they dammed it two years after his death to provide drinking water for New York City. Today, it is the East Branch Reservoir. When its surface is low, you can still see the old foundations of flooded buildings. I walked on its shore over honeycombs of dried mud. The water was frozen.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Way out in the distance, on the surface, I noticed tiny shapes moving. Ice fishermen. I stepped out, cautiously, arms spread, and stood watching a man drill a fresh hole in the ice with a bright orange auger. When he was done, I asked him if he'd ever heard of the old Leatherman. Of course, he said. Everyone knew about the old leather man. Used to walk around, sleep in caves.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Back in those days, the man said, that kind of lifestyle wasn't so unusual. People were more comfortable outside. In fact, he told me, even when he was young, growing up right near this reservoir, there were people who lived like that. One of them slept in the woods near his family's house. An alcoholic, friendly and harmless. He remembers going out as a kid to give the man bacon.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
On my walks, this kind of conversation was surprisingly common. I would ask people about the old leather man, and they would end up telling me about some other figure who once lived on the fringes of society. One woman told me about a guy named Footsie who used to walk around Watertown, Connecticut back in her father's time.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Several people mentioned the tragic life of Sarah Bishop, a young American who was kidnapped during the Revolutionary War by British pirates, only to escape and live the rest of her life alone in a mountain cave. I heard about mythic figures, the Witch of Good Hill, the Green Lady of Burlington, some of whom still haunt the places where they died.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Haunting, I think, is a nice metaphor for the social dynamics here. An in-group is haunted, more or less permanently, by the people it chooses to exclude. They hang around like obtrusive thoughts. And in the old Leatherman's time, New England was a deeply haunted place.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
After the Civil War, especially during the Depression of the 1870s, there was a widespread public panic about so-called tramps, unemployed men roaming by the thousands, begging, hopping trains, looking for work. The rhetoric in the newspapers about, quote, robbery, incendiarism, intimidation, rape and murder will sound familiar to modern readers.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In Bristol, a writer declared that the solution was vigilante violence, a trusty weapon in every house, they wrote, and a disposition to use it on very slight provocation. Eventually, Connecticut passed a strict anti-tramp law mandating the appointment of special constables to hunt vagrants down, promising $5 bounties for warrantless arrests resulting in conviction.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In this atmosphere, even the old leather man was suspect. Early in his wanderings, people locked their doors when he passed. Mothers used him as a kind of boogeyman to make their children behave. But although he looked terrifying, people quickly came to understand that he was harmless. He never stole, never created chaos, never accosted anyone.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Even when he was actively harassed, when a group of children surrounded him in the street shouting insults, or when two rowdy men bullied him, forcing him to drink alcohol, the old Leatherman didn't fight back. He just got away as quickly as he could. He was quiet and inoffensive, said a man who saw him regularly near Waterbury.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Sometime in the 1850s or 60s, at a terrible moment in U.S. history, a strange man seemed to sprout out of nowhere into the rocky landscape between New York City and Hartford. The word strange hardly captures his strangeness. He was rough and hairy, and he wandered around on back roads sleeping in caves. Above all, he refused to explain himself.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And when a person came along driving a lively horse, he would get out of the way so that his odd appearance might not frighten the horse. Soon, all across old Leatherman territory, a communal instinct kicked in. Residents didn't just tolerate him. They protected him. They took pride in his visits. They made special food to prepare for his arrival.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Mothers scolded children for staring at him in the street. One boy, out for a hike, found an old Leatherman cave unoccupied and used the wood inside to make a fire. When he got home, his mother made him go back in the dark to replenish the wood. She didn't want the old Leatherman to get cold.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The townspeople regarded the old Leatherman with a mix of closeness and distance, familiarity and alienation. He was the insider's outsider. He didn't belong, but he was accepted. Wherever he went, he created a circle of civility. His loop tied together otherwise disparate communities, like beads on a string. The tramp laws, curiously, didn't seem to apply to him.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
By tramping so openly, he seemed to transcend the category. He was his own special category. He was the Old Leather Man. Maybe my favorite incident in the Old Leather Man story happened in a small town called Shrub Oak. He had multiple admirers there. One family, the Ireland's, kept a special bowl and spoon just to feed him.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Down the street at Darrow's grocery store, the owner kept notes in his account book about the old Leatherman's trips through town. In February 1885, when the old Leatherman didn't show up on schedule, the people of Shrub Oak were worried. The weather had been terrible. Weeks of sub-freezing temperatures. Brutal rain. A group went out to check his cave in the woods near the ruins of a sawmill.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
It was empty. So it was a relief when on Thursday, February 19th, Darrow, standing in his store, saw the old leather man clomping up the street. He was several days late and seemed to be in a hurry, trying to make up for lost time. Darrow called out. He motioned to the old leatherman to come inside, and against all odds, for reasons no one could fathom, the old leatherman did.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He sat down next to the fire. Mr. Darrow gave him some cheese and crackers, and as he watched the old leatherman eat, he decided to try something. He took out a pencil and a piece of paper. I am old, Darrow said, and he wrote down his age. Then he passed the paper and pencil to the old leather man. How old are you? he asked.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
People had been trying and failing for many years to pry information out of the old leather man. Sometimes he grunted or muttered a few words in what some people claimed was French. Mostly, he just turned and walked away. But this time, according to the shopkeeper, he didn't. The old leatherman took the pencil and pressed it to the paper. In large, crooked strokes, he wrote a string of numbers.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
One, five, three, four, two. A few days later, the peak skill blade printed a facsimile of this odd answer, just as the old leatherman wrote it. What did it mean? There were debates. Some thought the old Leatherman must have been writing his birthday in the European style, 15-3-42, or March 15, 1842. This would have made him 42 years old.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Some, drunk on the mythology of the old Leatherman, took it at face value as evidence that he was 15,342 years old. Decades later, the researcher Allison Albee offered this speculation. One guess being as good as another, perhaps the Leatherman, understanding neither the question nor the meaning of Mr. Darrow's figures, showed his own peculiar method of writing 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Or maybe it was some kind of inscrutable code. This to me is the perfect old Leatherman story, an absurdly specific data point with no clear explanation. We know plenty of facts about him, his height, roughly five foot seven, the weight of his suit, 60 pounds, the length of his homemade hatchet blade, nine and a quarter inches.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
As one newspaper put it, he is a mystery and a very greasy and ill-odored one. Other papers referred to him as the animal or just throwing up their hands, this uncouth and unkempt, what is it? But the strangest thing about the stranger was his suit. In summer and in winter, in every possible kind of weather, the man wore from head to toe an outrageous outfit he seems to have made himself.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And yet the man himself was, is, and probably always will be a mystery. This is what I love, what keeps me circling back to him over and over. The Old Leather Man is an engine of infinite interpretations, a story about stories. He gave us so little, and in doing so, he gave us so much. In the 19th century, he was a perfect blank screen onto which society could project its fears and fantasies.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And he remains so today. This is the real old Leatherman's loop. The one that we all walk, every second, on every level, eternally. The loop between reality and meaning. What we know and what we imagine. The old Leatherman's last loop came in March 1889. For months, it had been clear that something was wrong. The old Leatherman was sick. In the later photos, you can see it.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
His bottom lip is swollen, marred by what one writer described as a raw sore. This was almost definitely mouth cancer, almost definitely from the tobacco that he liked to either chew or to smoke in his homemade pipe. The old leather man would often stoop down in front of post offices and general stores to pick up cigarette butts that people had thrown in the dirt.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
When he ate, he covered the sore with a special patch of leather. One house he stopped at for breakfast belonged to a doctor, and the old leather man allowed him to examine his lip. The doctor gave him some ointment. But things got worse. The sore deepened into a hole that eventually ate away half of the old leather man's jaw. He could hardly eat. He had to soak his food in coffee, then drink it.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And some of it would come pouring right through his face. His walking got slower and slower. He began to lose weight. Still, he kept going. Finally, people along his loop decided to try something drastic. In Middletown, Connecticut, residents set up a sort of sting operation.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
When the old Leatherman stopped for a meal, as he always did at the house of Amy Guy, she sent a messenger two miles up the road to his next stop, the Fisher House. When the old Leatherman showed up there, he encountered a group of strangers. The police chief, the town physician, some representatives of the Connecticut Humane Society.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
They basically arrested him, benevolently, and got him into a carriage. According to one of the fishers, he went with no reluctance and seemed to understand why, though the conversation was carried on by signs, mostly. The old Leatherman was driven to the Hartford Hospital. Maybe the doctors there could save his life, or at least ease his suffering. But he refused to stay.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Soon after he was dropped off, the old leather man walked out. He went right back to his loop. A week later, in very bad shape, he showed up for dinner at the Barnard House in North Haven, 30 miles from Hartford. He was muddy and wet. They managed to coax him inside, next to the fire. They offered him an apple, but he just pointed to his lip and shook his head.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Instead, he drank six large bowls of coffee-soaked food, bread, cake, pie. He was told to sit and warm himself as long as he liked, the Hartford Times reported later. He simply pointed up the road and, with an expressive gesture, indicated that he must go. That was in December. In mid-March, the old Leatherman was seen heading in the direction of Ossining.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He was so weak by this point that he had to sit and rest every couple hundred feet. Eventually, he disappeared into the woods, in the direction of one of his caves. Some days later, on March 24th, a carpenter took his wife to see something interesting, a rock shelter on a local farm. Inside, face down, they found the old Leatherman. His coat was off. He was only wearing one boot.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
They thought at first he was sleeping. He was dead. In Ossining, the old Leatherman's body was put into a pine box and buried in an unmarked grave in a cemetery outside town. His famous suit, meanwhile, went on to live a life of its own. It was made to sit upright in a chair and displayed in the window of a cigar shop downtown. Crowds came to stand in the street and stare.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Rough leather patches stitched together with long leather strips, like a quilt. It was stiff, awkward, stinky, and brutally heavy. It looked like knight's armor made out of baseball gloves. To anyone encountering him on a quiet country lane, he must have seemed almost unreal, a huge slab of brown, twice as wide as a normal man, his suit creaking and squeaking with every step.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Eventually, it traveled to New York City, where it was displayed in at least two different museums. Around his loop, in the days after his death, people searched the old Leatherman's caves and dug holes in the woods, inspired by rumors of buried treasure. No one reported finding any.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The old Leatherman left behind a leather backpack, a leather pouch, one leather glove, some homemade pipes, a few simple tools, and according to the coroner, two books made of brown paper and full of figures and hieroglyphics, which could not be deciphered. No one knows what these were, journals or maps, and they don't seem to have survived.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
His suit, people think, was most likely destroyed in a fire on Coney Island. When the old Leatherman died, the answers to his mystery died with him. The world moved on. Years later, someone stuck a metal pipe in the grass to mark what they thought was the spot of his grave. In the 1950s, that pipe was replaced with a formal headstone, identifying him falsely as Jules Bourglet.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
At the ceremony, a young American girl dressed in period costume stood next to a French flag. In 2011, the old Leatherman was finally given a proper memorial, the stone with the plaque where I started my loop. During this process, the gravesite was moved deeper into the cemetery, away from the road, which gave archaeologists one more crack at the mystery.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The plan was to exhume the old Leatherman's body and perform DNA analysis, a plan that went on despite community protests, including a website called Leave the Leatherman Alone. In the end, the protest wasn't necessary, because the archaeologists found the perfect thing. The old leather man was gone. It's possible that he and his coffin had already decomposed.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Or that because the grave was originally unmarked, the headstone had been put in the wrong place. Thematically, it's tempting to think that his body is still there, somewhere, just eternally out of reach. That he's even maybe buried under the road. Someone once asked me what I would say to the old leather man if I could meet him. I thought about it for a minute. Nothing, I said.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
That still feels like the right answer. I would just stand there with him, silently, in alienated communion. That's what I felt whenever I sat inside one of the old Leatherman's caves. I was an intruder, but also at home. My body was filling the same pocket of rock that he once filled. And the very fact that I was there meant that the old leather man was not. My presence guaranteed his absence.
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The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I was like a hermit crab moving into another crab's shell. But it also seemed like he was still there, faintly, just vibrating on a different frequency. Like we were sitting in each other's laps across a distance of 150 years. We were alone, together. Sort of like two patches of leather woven into different parts of the same suit.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
This paradox is one of the things that fascinates me most about the old Leatherman. It is the black hole, you could say, at the center of his loop. He removed himself from society, obviously and dramatically. In doing so, he opted out of all the normal things. He never gossiped, never ate in a restaurant, never mailed a letter, never blew out birthday candles. But he also never fully left.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He didn't become a true hermit and disappear forever into the deep woods. Day after day, the old Leatherman put himself right in the middle of all the things he refused to engage in. He walked main roads, passed by schools and shops and town halls.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And so he remained this bizarre in-between thing, an ever-present absence, a visible invisibility, a speck of isolation injected into the heart of society. I felt this paradox most strongly in one of the earliest caves I visited, in the town of Bedford Hills, New York.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The cave sits directly behind a combination gas station Dunkin' Donuts near the intersection of two major traffic arteries, Interstate 684 and the Sawmill River Parkway. If you know where to look, you can see its opening from the parking lot, a gash of black halfway up the hill. To get to it, you have to look like a weirdo for about 10 seconds.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In the years following the Civil War, the wandering stranger became an object of curiosity, then a frequent subject of the newspapers. People gave him a name, the Old Leather Man. I suppose that many of the readers of your valuable paper have heard of the Old Leather Man, wrote someone from Rye, New York, in 1870.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Walk past the parked cars, hop on top of a retaining wall, and squeeze between some decorative shrubs. But then you are all alone. You have entered the old Leatherman's world.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
No one will see you fighting your way up the steep slope, which is covered in dead leaves and thorny vines and rotting logs, and which is so steep that I lost my footing multiple times and once actually fell and skidded down so hard that my pants filled up with dirt and I lost my cell phone. I found it later perfectly wedged into the crook of a tree.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The cave, after all that struggle, felt like a refuge. Its inside was cool and damp. Crickets lived on the ceiling. Although it was deep enough to disappear into, with a slight right turn at the back, I found myself drawn most powerfully to its opening, that switch point between worlds where the light stops and the darkness begins. I sat on a rock at the mouth of the cave,
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
and looked at the world outside. Commuters were streaming by at high speeds, north and south. Down below, the gas station looked like a theater set. I watched people coming and going, performing the mundane little dramas of everyday life. A man walked out double fisting coffee cups. A woman in exercise gear walked her dog. I saw a fender bender and I watched the drivers argue.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Eventually a policeman came. His arms were covered with tattoos. The driver of a beige station wagon methodically squeegeed his windshield. It started raining lightly and people hurried into the store looking for shelter. From the cave, I watched for well over an hour. And what struck me was no one had any idea I was there. No one ever looked up. Why would they?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I might as well have been sitting in the middle of the 19th century. I was gone. Finally, as the sun slid down the sky, I slid back down the hill. And covered with dirt, with rocks in my pockets, I walked off.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He's a sort of legendary folk hero from the 19th century who used to walk in this giant circle 365 miles around through New York and Connecticut over and over and over again for decades at such regular intervals that people said you could set your clocks by it. He wore this big, funky leather suit that he stitched together himself. And no one knew where he came from or why he was doing this.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Hearing the reports about this singular recluse, I, in company with others, paid his haunts a visit. The Old Leather Man was a sort of real-life Northeastern Sasquatch. Curious citizens went plunging into the woods to investigate. What they found surprised them. The old Leatherman's caves were orderly, complete with primitive fireplaces, sleeping areas, and stores of food, meat, and hickory nuts.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Under one slab of rock, he had dug out an apple cellar. In some forests, he kept well-tended gardens. Month after month, people watched the old Leatherman clomp past their farms and through their woods and right up the main streets of their tiny towns. At mealtimes, he would stop at sympathetic households, the same ones over and over, to ask with a grunt for food.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He rarely spoke, and when he did, his words were clipped, strange. In the silence, rumors grew. People speculated that the old Leatherman was French, or French-Canadian, or Portuguese. They said that he couldn't speak at all, or that he just couldn't speak English, or that he spoke English perfectly, but pretended not to. They said he came from a family in Hartford named Brown.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
They said he was immune to rattlesnake bites. The more he walked, the more fascinated people became. Year after year, the old Leatherman was like a song stuck in the whole region's head. As residents compared notes, as newspaper coverage snowballed, some actual facts became clear. For one thing, it turned out that the old Leatherman was traveling great distances.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
His network of caves spanned at least 100 miles. Also, his wanderings weren't random. They were regular and repetitive. In an effort to map his route, people set up sting operations in the woods. They tailed him from town to town. Finally, in the mid-1880s, people realized something astonishing. The old Leatherman was walking in a giant loop, roughly 365 miles around.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
It stretched from the Hudson River in the west to the Connecticut River in the east, from mountains in the north to beaches in the south. Along the way, it passed through something like 50 towns. One full circuit usually took him 34 days. His coming can be calculated with almost as much certainty as that of an eclipse, one newspaper wrote.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Another said, So regular are his habits that it is often said that he is the only sure thing that farmers can depend upon in this age of uncertainty. Soon, the old Leatherman became a full-blown media phenomenon. The Hartford Globe published a front-page article complete with a timetable of his travels. In small towns, people lined the streets to watch him pass.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
School teachers let their students out of class to give him treats. A shop offered promotional old Leatherman postcards. Artists produced woodcuts and paintings. Photographers hid cameras in doorways or behind hanging laundry to capture his image. The old Leatherman never sought the attention. If anything, he avoided it.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He went out of his way to skirt the region's big cities, Hartford, Bridgeport, New Haven, and if a homeowner got too inquisitive, he would walk away and never come back. Once in Woodbury, Connecticut, someone presented the old Leatherman with some recent articles about him. He grunted over them, the newspaper account read, but showed no enthusiasm at finding himself famous. Who was he?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Why was he doing this? People were obsessed. But try as they might, no one could figure it out. One of the most noted philologists in the state spoke to him in a half dozen different languages, the New York Times reported in 1884. He could get no reply but a guttural sound which meant nothing and which was more animal than human in its character.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In the absence of real information, people were happy to invent things. Theories emerged. The old leather man, one man claimed, was disguising himself to evade police. He was, quote, a fugitive from justice and a Negro. Or he was a wealthy businessman brought low by a fire, mourning the death of his fiancée. In the end, one origin story conquered all the rest.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He was a total mystery to the people who lived along his route. Newspapers published basically like fan fiction about the old Leatherman, origin stories that people just made up about him. I think he was kind of a perfect vehicle for people to express their own anxieties and fantasies, just all kinds of trauma, tragedy, people projected onto this mysterious guy.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
It appeared in 1884 in the Waterbury Daily American under the headline, The Mystery Solved. Although it was fiction, it spread so far, so fast, that it came to be accepted as truth. In this version, the old Leatherman was a Frenchman named Jules Bourglet. As a young man, he fell in love with the daughter of a wealthy leather merchant.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
But the merchant disapproved of the match, and so he issued a test. Jules could marry his daughter only if he joined the company, and over the course of one year, proved himself. Things went great until near the end, Jules made a big investment right before the market crashed. The company was ruined. The marriage was forbidden.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
And Jules, driven mad by grief, moved to America, where he stitched himself this suit of leather scraps and walked alone in circles for the rest of his life. It was a real potboiler, a simmering stew of classic 19th century anxieties, class, economic bubbles, madness, immigration. And yet, people believed it. Eventually, the name Jules Bourglet would appear on the old leatherman's gravestone.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
In the meantime, year after year, namelessly trailing this ever-expanding cloud of stories, the old leatherman continued to walk. Today, the old leatherman is one of those stories that you either really deeply know or have never heard of at all. I discovered it by accident 14 years ago.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
My name is Sam Anderson. I am a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine. I kind of write about everything. I think my beat is subjects that I get totally obsessed with and then force my editors to let me write about. And a subject I've been obsessed with for so many years now is the old Leatherman.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I was having a perfectly normal day, minding my own business, reading a book about local caves, when suddenly this absolute molten chunk of American lore leaped out of the pages and installed himself in my brain. The old leather man hit me with an almost religious force. He was a perfect little parable about something both universal and, to me, very personal.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The tension between alienation and belonging. Rejection and rejecting. Who gets to belong to a group? What are the smallest possible triggers for inclusion or exclusion? And what happens when someone flips that dynamic, when the individual is the one rejecting the group, rejecting, in fact, the whole society, but also refusing to go away?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
To the people in my life, friends, family, editors, my infatuation with the old leather man quickly became a running joke. More than once, my wife has banned me from discussing him in our house. I've had out-of-body experiences where I've watched myself droning on, unable to stop, making acquaintances late for trains. But what was I supposed to do?
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He struck me as a perfect existentialist hero, someone who spurned the false comforts of society, who stood by choice out in the cold, harsh wind of reality, taking it full blast in the face. The old Leatherman was like Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, except that he refused to even say, I would prefer not to. This guy, I thought, had it all figured out.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He managed to remain a part of things while holding himself apart. In my private fantasy of myself, I was a spiritual descendant of the old Leatherman. I too felt alienated from society. The world annoyed me, enraged me in 10 million different ways. I spent my childhood pinging between Oregon and California, between apartments and houses, between step-parents.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I've always been odd, anxious, introverted. I sometimes burst into tears at strange moments. Lately, I've found myself thinking more and more of the old Leatherman. The 21st century, unfortunately, turns out to be the perfect moment to be obsessed with his story. America keeps spasming with increasing violence in many of the same ways it spasmed in the 1800s.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
The old Leatherman looped his loops during an era of assassination, insurrection, civil war, impeachment, economic collapse, and racial terror. He walked during the rise of Reconstruction and the crimes of so-called redemption. All around him, the landscape was being transformed. Forests fell, church spires climbed, downtowns burned and rose again.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
I stumbled across the old Leatherman while I was researching something else, and for whatever reason, it hit me like a bolt of lightning. I think what got to me was, number one, it's a great mystery, but number two, there was something really moving about this man and his relationship to the towns that he walked through.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
He watched farms die and railroads boom and aqueducts stretch between cities. We have no idea what the old Leatherman thought of any of this, or if he thought of it at all. And that is exactly the point. All we know is that he kept walking.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
Every morning, as I struggled to metabolize the daily news, I found myself dreaming of dropping out of society, following in his footsteps, knocking on the doors he knocked on, sitting in the caves he sat in. In the same way other people fantasized about moving to Canada, I fantasized about walking the old Leatherman's loop. But how? As a practical itinerary, the loop turned out to be tricky.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
It was regular, but also elusive. A network of highways, country lanes, backwoods trails, and railroad tracks that could shift subtly on his tiniest whim. Once, when one of his regular households got a pet dog, the old Leatherman never stopped there again.
The Daily
The Sunday Read: ‘What I Found on the 365-Mile Trail of a Lost Folk Hero’
As one of the great old Leatherman researchers, Allison Albee, has put it, all effort to tie directions he is said to have followed into a single contiguous pattern seems utterly futile. Nevertheless, I tried. I visited research archives, made long lists, studied hand-drawn maps.