The True Crime Reporter® Podcast features stories and interviews from the respective careers of investigative reporter Robert Riggs and former U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston.
Listeners have asked how both of them got involved in investigating criminal cases.
In response, the podcast featured an episode with Riggs on July 4, 2022, explaining how he first got involved digging for information during the Watergate scandal case while working for Congressman Wright Patman.
In this episode, we cover the highlights of Bill Johnston’s distinguished law career.
Bill devoted his career as a federal prosecutor to, in effect, protect the sheep from the wolves.
He helped launch the manhunt for notorious serial killer Kenneth Allen McDuff who tortured and murdered countless young women. His role in bringing McDuff to justice and prosecuting the Texas Parole Board Chairman official who released McDuff under a cloud of corruption is featured in the Fox Nation documentary Freed To Kill.
Johnston became the cohost of the True Crime Reporter® podcast with Peabody Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Riggs in 2021.
Johnston secured a guilty verdict in every federal prosecution in hundreds of jury trials during his 14-year career with the U.S. Department of Justice. A noteworthy criminal case includes the Branch Davidian cult members who murdered four ATF agents during a raid on their heavily armed compound outside Waco.
The Texas Rangers, rather than FBI agents, were Johnston’s go-to investigators for complex murder cases. He led a team of Rangers to investigate the crime scene at the Davidian compound after the controversial inferno.
Johnston successfully prosecuted a mail bomber, which was the first case tried under the U.S. Violence Against Women Act. Other firsts include the first jury trial in the United States in which mitochondrial DNA (hair without root) was used in evidence against a violent “car-jacking” defendant who caused the death of an elderly man in Texas. He received a mandatory life sentence without parole.
Robert Riggs
I'm Robert Riggs here with Bill Johnston. Now I'm the reporter part of this equation. Bill is the former federal prosecutor part, and so we bring to you in our true crime podcast kind of two different experiences, but we intersect in lots of places. You've heard my story because of of where I came from, how I got to journalism. Bill interviewed me about it, and and we're always having listeners ask, "How did you get into this? Where did you start? So, it's my turn to talk to Bill about how did he come to the law? How did he, and why did he want to be a prosecutor? So, let's start first, Bill. Your your Texas roots, right? Was born in Dallas, and my mother's family came to Dallas in 1841 and helped found Dallas. And were just a little west of us is Turtle Creek. He named Turtle Creek and had a lot to do with founding
Bill Johnston
Dallas. And so North Texas and Dallas has been in our family for 180 years and so that's all I've known in terms of where I've lived and my family's lived for a long, long time.
Robert Riggs
So just to focus this in, your family came to Texas shortly after it became a republic, an independent republic, right? And before it joined the union,
Bill Johnston
right?
Robert Riggs
It's frontier. Frontier frontier. It was the
Bill Johnston
Kiowa Indians here, and were the indigenous people of this area, and and other other tribes as well. And there were issues with them. In fact, within I think a year of being here, my grandfather's grandfather met Sam Houston, who was the president of Texas, met him south of Dallas and led him to Dallas for a conference with the Native Americans that led to a settling of the problems for for quite a while. Didn't settle the problem with the Comanches. That lasted 35 more years, but it settled the problem with other tribes in trying to get some boundaries for where everybody was supposed to be and and live and not bother each other.
Robert Riggs
Yeah,
Bill Johnston
and it worked pretty well. They had no more killings in the group,
Robert Riggs
and of course the Comanches were feared by all of the other tribes.
Bill Johnston
They were some tough customers, and they they had several branches within the Comanche Nation, and range, you know, from Texas to Kansas and west, and so yeah, they were something else. But in this area of Dallas, it was not so much Comanche territory apparently at that time. But yeah, so my grandfather's grandfather was involved in that, and then they they lived pretty much at peace with them for a while.
Robert Riggs
Do you have a sense then of how that shaped your ancestors' outlook on life and the world, and how it might have affected you?
Bill Johnston
I don't know. Obviously, these were some tough customers that would come down here. They came down the first time. I don't remember it's 1841 or 1840, and were driven out by that tribe. They it's just too dangerous, and so they came back again. But just the the guts it took to come this far west in those days. So I'm sure there's some DNA there that that is like that. Like you, my father volunteered for World War II, wanted to get in it. My dad left law school with six months to go. Even though he had a bachelor's degree and nearly had a doctorate, he enlisted. He was an enlisted man and fought in North Africa, in Sicily, in Italy. So there's definitely some of that. I don't know what you call that grit or something.
Robert Riggs
Well, certainly, you know they call the Greatest Generation. I used to say to my children, "the the best you should be thankful you're not being reared by a World War II veteran family, right? And that you actually get to have a discussion if I say no, why about it? Because that didn't happen with the right World War Two vets,
Bill Johnston
right? For the most part, that's true. Yeah, my my dad had a lot of difficult life experiences, and then when I was seven, my mother died of cancer, and my dad just nearly broke my dad. But my dad was a was very gentle and very sweet and loving. We were probably neglected a little bit just because he didn't know what to do, and we didn't didn't have a lot of money. But he had to go. My dad had been a prosecutor in Dallas County since the 1950s. He left that for a while to work for a company as a lawyer, and then when my mom got really sick with cancer, my dad couldn't travel anymore, so he came went back to the DA's office in Dallas and prosecuted for Henry Wade, who was sort of a famous DA in Dallas. And my dad came back in time to do the legal work on the Jack Ruby case. Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, who killed President Kennedy, and so my dad did a lot of. Legal work on that case and didn't make a lot of money. Was a county employee, so it was not great when we were little as far as money, but it was rich in many other respects. And I absolutely idolized, if not deified, my father. So that's a pattern I followed.
Robert Riggs
So watching him as a prosecutor and hearing the stories, did that kind of get in your DNA? Is that where it starts the law for you?
Bill Johnston
If my father had been a trash truck driver or a painter, well, he was a painter actually, but if he had been a professional painter or a rocket scientist, that's what I would have done. I was the youngest of three kids, my mom died. My sister was 14. My brother was about 10. I was seven, and we were lost. And so I clung to my father and idolized my father. And so, because he was a prosecutor, that's what I was going to end up doing.
Robert Riggs
So you you went to Texas A and M, where I went. Right, I'm unfortunately a lot. There a few years before you, but not
Bill Johnston
many.
Robert Riggs
But what'd you study at A and M? I don't think I've ever asked you that.
Bill Johnston
So started out in accounting because I'd heard that for law school you might want to have an accounting degree, and so I had the first accounting class at 730 in the morning, it lasted until 915, and after about a week of that, I was with 500 other students at Zachary Engineering Building. You remember that large building? Oh yes. And so, after a few sessions of that class, I realized this was not going to be my cup of tea. Not only because I was bad at it, because I was too lazy to listen to accounting for nearly two hours on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, so I switched into something almost as bad economics, but ended up in business management because I need to get my grades up to try to get in law school. So, so and Baylor Law School would allow you in after three years, and so I got my grades up really high my junior year, and applied and got in beta law school after three years, and went straight in. I had no money; had I needed to get done, so I went from high school graduation to law school graduation in about five years because I had to get it done.
Robert Riggs
So I want to I want to back up to A and M now. You flirted with the rodeo while you were at A and M.
Bill Johnston
Well, actually, yes, I did there. I was terrible. I tried every event. I tried, I tried to rope calves. The calf roping horse was would stop, and I would keep going, which was bad. Tried steer roping, and again, the horse was smarter than I was. It would cut after the steer, and I would keep going the other direction. So finally, when I was actually in law school, I found something I could do, which I could fall off a horse. And so when I was actually in law school by that time, another Aggie that went to law school with me, we we looked around the Baylor campus, and there was we didn't see a pair of boots on the campus. We were disgusted, and so we thought we needed to. They would say today, reprint our man card, and so we went down to A and M to Snook, Texas, home of the Snook Blue Jays, and so we rodeo. We did bareback one summer, and that went pretty well until I have a picture somewhere with me. Until the last one, I came off really bad and landed and went straight up in the air. Was kicked by the horse and landed on my head out cold, and and had a really bad concussion. And I had a couple others before, and that was the end of my terrible rodeo career. I was one of the worst rodeo cowboys in history. It should be noted.
Robert Riggs
Well, I'm. I've seen this photo, and I'm going to post it for everybody to come see. It's a. It's a bit blurry and out of focus. It might have been. I was blurry and out of focus. Yeah. It might have been because the person taking it was sort of like rushing to help. But it's like you are levitating right horizontally above the horse as it's bucking, but you're completely separated from the horse. And I looked at it and went, "How is Bill still alive? I was on the way
Bill Johnston
up, so that that picture I got, I came out of the. So more than the audience wants to know about bareback, but bareback, you have a little rig. It's it's like a suitcase handle. It's all you have to hang on to. And I came out of that instead of falling off, which would have been merciful. I didn't fall off. I got back and I got on his rear end, and he catapulted me up and had all the leverage on me. And I went really high and then landed straight down on my head. So
Robert Riggs
well, so you know, some some guys would actually tie their hand into the rig. Yeah, I guess you didn't do that. I
Bill Johnston
wasn't that dumb.
Robert Riggs
Yeah,
Bill Johnston
but I was pretty dumb, and I yeah. But but I that I told this. We have a show about McDuff, the serial killer. You and I, based on your podcast. But I told in there. I don't know if it made the error or not. One of the reasons relevant to this discussion, one of the reasons I rodeoed, I did bareback, is because I wanted to learn courage. Strangely, my mom died when I was little, shook me, maybe kind of scared a little kid. I didn't grow right. I was real small, actually, for a long time. And when I was in high school, I worked at a grocery store, and our store was robbed one night. And I was not right there at the time. I had switched with a guy who was there, and our store was robbed. One of our employees was killed by a horrible speed freak robber. Killed one of our employees and shot another one. The one would have been me, and that scared me, and I didn't like being scared. But I, my father had no fear whatsoever. My father had no fear. You wouldn't know it. He'd been in horrible combat, Sicily and Italy, North Africa, but he quietly had no fear. I wanted that, but I didn't know how to get it. And so the first thing I thought about doing
Robert Riggs
was I'm gonna do something where I probably wouldn't be killed, but I could break my neck. I want to do that, and I want to deal with fear. And so I did that, and then actually it helped me later when I started dealing with really violent, really bad criminals who didn't like the fact that I was prosecuting them, and I ultimately learned to not be afraid, but that was part of the path to not be afraid. And so both of us, we went to Texas A and M University. I got to tell the our listeners that the A before we got there used to stand for agricultural, and the M for mechanical. And actually, when I started, you know, people used to call it Farm Boy A and M, but it was a land grant college started by Lincoln. Lincoln started the land grant colleges, and it was to build military and science. And so, all of these land grant colleges in A and M, and A and M still has a large cadet corps to this day, but it used to be all cadet corps for a number of years. They turned out more commissioned officers in World War II than all of the academies combined. George Patton famously said, "If I want to win a battle, give me a graduate of West Point. If I want to win a war? Give me a few Texas Aggies. So, but we, when I was there, we categorized everybody, and you fell into the category of the of the Cowboys. And because there are lots, you you would see if people were out of uniform and they're wearing cowboy boots and cowboy hats because they're from West Texas and everywhere, but they were fondly called goat ropers. So you were a goat roper, my friend.
Bill Johnston
I was a wannabe goat roper because I was not. I was from Northeast Dallas, so I was from the suburbs. My brother had a horse; it was a good horseback rider. I wasn't, but yeah. So I, I had good friends from all over West Texas, tiny little towns, Matador, Kittyquay-you name a tiny town in Panhandle. I had friends from there, and I and I liked it. I heard Bob Wills,
Robert Riggs
yes,
Bill Johnston
Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and I said, "This will do. This is wonderful. This is Texas. So yeah, that was part of my process,
Robert Riggs
and so you know, my family were a group of horsemen from East Texas, big, big horsemen, and they had the strange, dangerous tradition that they introduced the child to horseback riding by plopping them on the horse at age five and whacking them across the hindquarters, and they wanted to see will the child live. That's crazy on this day. I never do that to my, and we still ride. I never do that to my kids or grandkids. But I had enough sense that I was not going to get on a bucking horse or anything like that. I didn't have that
Bill Johnston
sense. I didn't know any better. Where where along the way do you know you want to be a prosecutor that you want to go after the bad guys? My father had done that. My father was more in the the bookend of that. So my father did ran the appellate section in Dallas, which is the part that does the appeals and the briefs and all that. He ran the grand jury for decades, and he had been involved in regular prosecution before that. But you have to start if you want to prosecute. You better be willing to start at the very lowest level. And so, I, being in Waco, I got a job in Waco, and when I was 23, and started prosecuting ordinary cases. I might prosecute a traffic case in West Texas, up in West Comma Texas, which is in the county, or I might prosecute a murder case because they would allow us to try everything, and so I. I learned about crime. I was very naive, and it was everything was very black and white. I think things are more gray in my mind about crime now. Yes, certain crimes. But at any rate, I was exposed to all that. I tried 35 jury trials in a year and a half, which was what I really wanted because I wanted to understand how to try a case, how to talk to a jury, and then I left that DA's office. It was controversial office, and I had a vision, a dream, kind of a wish-no more than a wish-of being a federal prosecutor. I'd read about that, I'd seen some shows about that, and I knew the power was different and the the level of integrity you were supposed to show was different, and so ultimately, in the Waco, Texas area, there was a need for a U.S. attorney's office. There was no office there at all, and we'd had some issues with the DA there and some others, and a lot of drug crimes and violent crimes, and so some circumstances took place that favored me. I
Robert Riggs
want to take you back as a young state prosecutor, 23. You're trying cases. Did you just kind of ever pinch yourself like, "Wow, with at this young age, I've got this kind of responsibility"
Bill Johnston
I didn't get it. I I didn't really get that I was more. I saw it as a job. You don't make. You don't make very much money, but I saw it as a job where I'm going to be on the right. I'm going to try to be on the right side of every case, the right side of things, and I'm going to try to do a better job on the next one than I just did. And so I was so much in the sort of in the moment of it. I didn't ever step back from it. You know, my dad was still around, and my dad would call me and ask me about cases and how it was going. I tell you something. I remember. I just thought of. I called my dad one time. I was prosecuting felony cases in a one of the district courts there, and I said to my dad foolishly, I said, "Oh, and this judge we're in front of-he's a real prosecution judge. And my dad was quiet on the phone for 10 seconds, and he said, "Well, Bill, you don't want that. You don't deserve that. You want a fair judge. You don't want a pro-prosecution judge. And the judge actually was probably fair. He was just hard sentencer, but I was so immature about things. I was like, "Wouldn't we want everybody's on the same team? Well, the judge isn't on your team. The judge is supposed to be in the middle. But at any rate, I was trying to learn. I was trying to mature in that process, and I handled some really graphic violent crime cases when I was really young. It was probably not smart. It was so naive, but it did expose me to the horrors of violent crime and the real, you know, to getting to know the family members, the victims, and at that, at a young age, it instills in you a duty to that to the victims.
Robert Riggs
So you do get exposed to the the dark side of humanity and the the finding, seeing the worst of the worst in people.
Bill Johnston
Some really bad murder cases, bad you know sexual assault cases that were just horrific involving young people, and again, I can look now at that as the beginning of a long process of I don't know what to call it becoming acclimated maybe to gore and to horror and and I think that when you're doing the job this is true. Sort of about the Branch Davidian case, that when you're in the middle of it, you don't, you know, you're not grasping all of it, and then when you step away from it, or time passes, you know, it's really heavy. Kenneth McDuff case. You and I have talked about the Kenneth McDuff serial killer case.
Robert Riggs
We have that podcast and show about it. You know that was really, really gruesome, and it was sort of you're doing it, you're involved in it, and you're dealing with it. But you know what happened to Colleen Reed, the girl from the car wash in Austin. That's a marker in my mind still. That that was indelible, and it was like a awfully long answer to your your question, but in that process of becoming acclimated, ultimately some things were so bad that you don't get acclimated. You you box it up and and you deal with it later. So you got exposed to violent crime and the impact on people way before I did, you know. I I started as a in Congress straight out of A and M, and it was all white collar crime, and I certainly didn't get my teeth into it early like you did because they're kind of testing you, and you know I was getting the it was a huge staff, and I was getting the worst of the worst of the job. No one else wanted to do and research in the Library of Congress, which you know there was no internet in those days. You had to dig through literally 1000s of pages of records looking for stuff at the Securities and Exchange Commission. And I, I can remember a few moments. I'm in there and I'm thinking, I went to Texas A&M for five years. I got a degree in architecture with engineering and construction, and I'm basically just going to get coffee for people here and digging around. And but then you know it started to change. But it wasn't until I got into reporting years later that then I started to see the impact of violent crime. And boy, it's just like wow, you know, because my stuff is focused more on international bribery scandals and stuff like that. But then you you get to that point too as a federal prosecutor,
Bill Johnston
right? So some people in the Waco area took a liking to me. They wanted it. Felt like we really needed a U.S. attorney's office somewhere between Dallas and Austin. There was none, never been one that was fully staffed. And so a U.S. senator said, "Let's do it. Let's open up an office. They asked him to tell them to put me in it. I was maybe 27 or 28 at that time, and off we went. And I was in the U.S. attorney had a U.S. attorney's office in Waco, Texas, a division of the Western District. I was the only one there. Had didn't even have a secretary right at first, and had a little office in the federal building. And there were hundreds of unprosecuted cases, drug cases from the area, and violent crime cases, just as an example, the Secret Service had a field office in Waco. My really good friend Robert Blossman was the agent, and he had like 70 cases that had been sitting there for months, waiting for someone to prosecute. So that's just one of our agencies. So we immediately prosecuted all these backlog cases, and the cases got more complex and weirder. And when you deal with something when you're young that's really weird, you're looking for the next weird thing or the next difficult thing. And so, part of a U.S. attorney's job is to not just take cases that are given to him, but to actually supervise, Initiate investigations, and so was lucky to be involved in coming up with plans. Let's try to look at this group or that group. You know, go over to the Waco Police Department and say, "Who are the most violent people in Waco? Let's figure out a way to get them. Maybe they've been been caught with a gun in the last year or two. It was never prosecuted. So, anyway, worked our way through that, and ultimately, as you indicated, had some of the largest drug cases in the country, some of the most bizarre murder cases in the country, and cases of international intrigue and murder that you're well aware of.
Robert Riggs
Yeah, it's like Waco being in Central Texas was like some kind of bottomless
Bill Johnston
pit. You know, you like what in the world is going on in Central Texas now? I did find later in doing investigations that the prison system was just dumping out or people on early parole that were some reason being coming to there, and that was part of the problem. And the meth, so methamphetamine was was becoming one of the largest produces of our of our country and illicit, you know, produces, and it was within from Waco go draw a circle about 50 miles around Waco, and that's where a high percentage of the methamphetamine for the Southwest was being made, and some really violent people in those days. The meth was so harsh, and it was done these clandestine laboratories that we would raid, and always they had firearms. Always, if they could have a shootout with the police, they would, and it was just a. It was almost like the cartel in Mexico now that is so anxious for violence. We had that with meth, methamphetamine back in those days, and again, having tried to work through all the fear of it, my job was to put their asses in federal prison, and I intend to put every one of them in federal prison, and I did, and I never lost, and that was that was very satisfying. But I wanted, and we ultimately got here. I wanted every drug dealer, every violent criminal, that I wanted them to know where the borders of the Waco division were, and if they came from Houston, which we did all kinds of stuff, you know, where we would have someone come from Houston to deliver drugs or whatever. But I wanted them to know where we were and to stay out. And if they didn't stay out, I want to put them in federal prison, and for a long time. And we prosecuted hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. And hundreds of those cases successfully, and then, like I said, ultimately led to some stuff like running into you regarding a serial killer, which was none of the federal government's business, but the state wouldn't do it, so it became our business. Which, as you know, the story we use the drug laws to try to. But anyway,
Robert Riggs
well, and I can remember, you know, I made the transition from working in Congress to becoming a television reporter. Started in New York, but I I came to Dallas and early on. I'm covering the the meth kingpins, and they all were using their own drug. And something about the meth created this huge paranoia and violence. That's right, and the violence they were against people, strangers and women. That wow, it was yeah
Bill Johnston
right. It was one of my best friends in law enforcement, Bob Wilkerson, is his name. He was DPS, Texas State Police Narcotics Agent, and we were working on a group that had just been just a terrible group of meth manufacturers, And we were working on the distribution part of it, and then the manufacturing part of it. And the last piece we had was a guy that was supplying the precursor chemicals, phenol acetic acid and other precursor chemicals. And we'd gone three days in a row, and it was like three in the morning. And this agent friend of mine said, "Bill, we are so tired. Can we go home and just pick this up tomorrow afternoon or whatever? I said, "No, we're on a roll. Let's finish. So we finished writing the search warrant. We took it to the judge at daylight, and a few hours later, that agent was shot, and he was shot by a guy near the town of West, north of Waco, Texas, that shot him with a brining high power, with a jacketed hollow point round that went through his shoulder, took out an inch of bone. The jacketed hollow point came off and spun through his nerves. He nearly lost his arm. He didn't. He he for years of recovery and everything. But anyway, my point is, that guy in his system had methamphetamine, amphetamine, heroin. I don't remember all the. It's like five drugs, and you're right. It made them paranoid and violent. They would protect their turf. We had several cases where people had machine guns and sort of shotguns and so forth. It was. I'm glad we don't have. I hate it. I hate it for Mexico, and our southern border, frankly, because that's where a lot of this happens. But there was nothing more dangerous
Robert Riggs
than an Anglo-Saxon meth dealer with a machine gun, and they were everywhere. And that was a lot of what we did every night. I'm going to pause for a moment when we come back. I want to get into how you established a relationship with 2u.S. marshals. Hi, it's Robert Riggs back talking with the co-host of True Crime Reporter, former decorated U.S. prosecutor Bill Johnston. Bill, when we left off, we were talking about the the violence that the meth trade had brought to Central Texas and really East Texas, where I was from. But at some point, you form a partnership and alliance with 2u.S. marshals that are bigger than life. They're a throwback to the lawless frontier of Texas. Tell us about them. I
Bill Johnston
was so lucky where I fell. I fell into that Waco U.S. Attorney's office, and I was a kid and a wannabe cowboy, and I ran into three, as we would say, sure enough cowboys: Parnell McNamara, Mike McNamara, and Robert Blossman, who was our Secret Service agent. All three could ride a horse like a cowboy from you know 100 years ago, could rodeo. Robert Blossman was a bulldogger. In other words, went 30 miles an hour on a horse and voluntarily came off onto the horns of a 700 pound steer and would would knock it down. And so these were real cowboys, and Mike and Parnell were from 100, more than 100 years of of law enforcement. Their daddy had been a deputy U.S. marshal. Their grandfather had been a marshal, and so they had this law enforcement in their blood. But they they were U.S. marshals. They were as far away from being bureaucrats as you could be, these these guys should have been roaming the streets of Tombstone, because all about that was their nature, the directness, the courage. They were both cracks. They would win marshals shooting competitions all the time, but you know they never shot anybody. They were so intimidating, and they were so tough, and they were so nice. They they were so nice. They gained the respect of hardened criminals because they were nice. They started with the marshals when they were teenagers as part time so called guards. They took people to Leavenworth, the federal prison in Lebanon were throwing. They were 16 years old. These were unique guys, and again, here I am. I'm sort of this wannabe cowboy. I know it. I'm trying to learn it, but I'm not one. And so I was enamored, really, with these these guys that what they stood for, what they could do, and that rubs off on you. Courage rubs off, and that personality rubs off on you. If you admire it enough, it really does. And I did. I admired it, and I wanted to be like them. And for some reason, they like me. I don't know why they like me. And so we, on every major case that I had, those every case that involved any substance, those three guys were involved: Mike McNamara, Parnell McNamara, who's now the sheriff in McLean County, Texas, and Robert Blossman, but they, you know, they were just my best friends.
Robert Riggs
So I'm going to interject something about Blossman. So I was a correspondent covering the White House with President Reagan, a big horseman, and when he would go to the ranch to ride, Blossman was the Secret Service agent who would ride with him.
Bill Johnston
So Robert, when Robert was, oh my goodness, Robert came out of Southwest Texas, or what's it called now, Texas State? Yes.
Bill Johnston
On Saturday nights, when he was there, there was a little band that would come downtown the square. Well, it was George Strait when he was starting out, and that was Robert. And when he got out of Southwest Texas at that time it was known as he went straight in the Secret Service. His daddy had been a ranch agent for LBJ. He was raised around that. There's pictures of Robert with LBJ when Robert was like 13 years old, and so he. When you go into the Secret Service, if you have special skills, maybe you're a scuba diver, maybe you're a really good bike rider, maybe whatever, and if the president is interested in that field, they'll flag you. And Robert was first assigned to New Orleans field office. Then he went to Washington field office. Was there when President Reagan was shot? He was at the hospital when they brought him in, and then he was put on the presidential protective division. And Robert was a wrangler. That's what it was flagged as. They called him Boots. That was his name in the service. And he would ride at Camp David, ride English with President Robert. Could ride a donkey backwards if he needed to, but he would ride those big thoroughbreds with President Reagan, or he would ride in California at Santa Barbara on quarter horses, and ride out there with him and with Nancy. And President Reagan adored Robert and properly liked his the. It was the real. He was a real dude, a real cowboy. And President Reagan loved that. And so Robert became my next door neighbor when he came to, when he was in Waco at the Secret Service, and I was with U.S. Attorneys, and became a close friend, and so yeah, those guys and Mike and Parnell and Robert would do police rodeos together. By the way, I mean, not all that many years ago, they would do police rodeos. They'd team rope steers or whatever it may be. They did a wild horse race, or not horse race. They did a wild horse something scramble or something. They would put a horse in an arena. I think it had a halter on. Maybe it had a halter. And this these horses were bucking horses. They were wild horses. You would have three men: Robert, Mike, Parnell would have to somehow corral and catch this horse by hand, just them. Figure out how to hold it, put a saddle on it, get a man on it, and ride it some distance. And they would have Robert get the head. Robert, as a guy from Australia once said about Robert, he he was built like a melly bull, whatever that is in Australia, tough, big upper body strength. Robert would hold the horse, and Mike and Parnell would put the saddle on, and one of them get on it. But that's that's the toughness I'm talking about with these guys, and they were great to work with, and courageous, and gave me good advice. were so helpful to me.
Robert Riggs
Well, all three of them, I remember working. They would, they had the cowboy hat on, Western style shirts, badges, Western style gun belt, jeans, boots. You knew the law was coming for you, the long arm of the Texas law, and it. I always felt like, you know, I'm looking for Bat Masterson and everybody, when you're around these guys,
Bill Johnston
and you know what might be implied with that look you described is a harshness or an or something overbearing. They were the opposite. They were so cool and they were so tough that. They didn't have problems with people, and we never had any use of force issues at all ever. And we had no issues with how they gathered evidence. We were never, we never lost a case. We were never reversed in a case, and never had evidence suppressed. It was, it was a, it was a very clean and tough approach, which frankly we need more of.
Robert Riggs
Well, he they seem to have this aura around them, and they could walk into the roughest honky tonk full of ex-cons, and the kind of place would kind of go quiet. They didn't have to raise their voice or something. They just asked somebody to, "Hey, will you step over here? I want to talk to you a minute. And they'd step over there, and there'd be a whisper somewhere, just out of earshot. It's the McNamara brothers. Yes, shut the blank up. It's the McNamara brothers, and that that reputation helped them. But it was it was actually kindly,
Bill Johnston
and it was proper, and it was dignified, but it was tough. Like you don't see anymore. Yeah,
Robert Riggs
I want to let everybody know that Mike unfortunately passed away a few years ago. We miss him. His brother Parnell hit mandatory retirement, couldn't just stay on the ranch, and ran for the sheriff of McLennan County, and he's now in his second term. His campaign slogan is, which I love. It just fits. Is riding herd on the lawless,
Bill Johnston
right? That fits.
Robert Riggs
And he is beloved in that county. Beloved,
Bill Johnston
he is. He is. He's the real thing, and and still maintains that same aura and presence.
Robert Riggs
Was there a favorite case you did you did with them, or is just are they all?
Bill Johnston
You know, the probably the most one of the most difficult cases that we all all of us worked on besides the McDuff case. That's a separate series of stories about finding those bodies and working on all that case. But the most complex, tricky, and frankly scary case for me as a career that they worked on was a case involving what I alleged in a complaint was foreign travel innate of murder for hire, and it involved two characters who abducted a man from Waco, Texas. He was lured near El Paso, Texas. He was tortured, and he was buried alive, and died, of course. And that was that related to a couple of characters who were who were tied to the ex CIA operatives Turple and Wilson. There's plenty of books and movies about this. That case, I took some risks in getting warrants for these two guys, Yurick and Young, Sam Yurick and Theodore Donald Young. I went out on a limb to get warrants for them because we were very concerned we would that they would eventually find their way where we could never catch them, like Cuba or Libya or someplace, and so I had to have help in trying to catch them and catch them quickly, and to try and find bodies and so forth. And the Marshal Service helped a great deal. Danny Stolt out of Houston that was in our other story, and Robert Blossman allowed us to get Secret Service help overseas. I had no idea what Secret Service could do overseas, but it was tremendous. And caught caught a guy in Honduras with Texas Rangers, and Secret Service went down there, which led us to the body and led us to evidence against the main guy, who was the torturer killer, horrible person, Sammy Levin Yurick. And but that that's that's one that stands out because we were all treading on thin ice how we approached it because we knew we were right, but we were we had to try to get some work done.
Robert Riggs
Well, I don't know that many people really fully understand what the Marshals do, but they are the premier fugitive hunters.
Bill Johnston
People think it's the FBI. It's not. It's absolutely not. FBI works cases, of course, but in terms of tracking fugitives, no, no. They they do they do that. But the agency that tracks for years fugitives is the Marshal Service.
Robert Riggs
Now, most federal prosecutors would always ask for the help of the FBI. You were different in the in the respect that you liked the Rangers. Now I'm presuming the reason you would turn to the Rangers is their their skill is investigating murder. In a lot of your cases, involve murder. That's right. Yeah, I worked many cases with the FBI where they did a great job. FBI was primary in our federal bank robbery cases. I prosecuted a lot of bank robberies, including some very, some really bad bank robberies where people were killed. However, it happened that so many of the cases I worked for the state narcotic service in Texas, DPS Narcotic Service.
Bill Johnston
We would have killings or missing people. The rangers did the work. There are some rangers I was really lucky to work with, including John Acock, Joaquin Jackson out in West Texas, and others, many others, Captain Bobby Prince. That you just wouldn't find a better homicide investigator anywhere. They were fantastic, and it so happened that so many of my cases started as state cases, and so the Texas Rangers were naturals in that. Now this cost them when the Branch Davidian incident happened at the first day, and realized the FBI was not going to work the crime scene. I was was my case, and I was desperate, and I thought, "Oh no, what do we do? And I called ultimately the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety. After calling the Texas Ranger captain, I said, "You know, we have a really big deal up here, and we have to have someone to investigate this. Someone to investigate this. And at that time, there were like 95 rangers in the state of Texas, and they sent about 40 of them to Waco to help on that investigation for much of the next year. But I relied on the rangers really heavily in ordinary cases and also really substantial cases.
Robert Riggs
Well, they and they certainly have that specialty in crime scene investigations. Looking back on it, do you miss it, or after a while, does just take such a toll?
Bill Johnston
No. Well, had I been more mature, had I been a little older and handled things in a more mature fashion, and not let some things get to me, not overreact sometimes as I did. You know, I'd have been a little better off. But what I miss about it was the authority to make a difference. You know, like the cartels. You know, I think that we can take a more aggressive approach on that, and I would love to be part of that, and and other things. So I do miss it. I miss the opportunity to to make a different positive difference. And but I think that for me, it was probably too much, too young, and it's you know it took its there's a penalty.
Robert Riggs
Yeah. So well, you know, fortunately for me, I think I had that same unbridled enthusiasm. But fortunately, I had bosses that had gray hair with a lot of experience, and they kept me in check. And if they hadn't been around, I think I'd have got myself in in trouble by, you know, going over that line or or whatever, just didn't have the the depth of knowledge, and they really wrote hard on me.
Bill Johnston
Yeah, yeah, it's we were pretty autonomous up there, and that worked out really well, mostly, but sometimes not. But yeah, it's uh, it's you know, what is that line from? I think it's from the natural, where Glenn Close says, "I I think we have two lives: the life we live and the life we learn. The life the life we learn from and the life we live after that. And so so often the things you know you gosh I wish I don't I would have understood this or that better, but you can't change it, and and you're living in the wake of what you lived before.
Robert Riggs
Well, I think for our audience and listeners and fans that you know we're about the life after that, and I hope everybody from will learn from us. But because I do believe that one, we're one of the few podcasts where the host have been inside the crime scene tape, and the guests we have on here are seasoned investigators and marshals and FBI agents and homicide detectives. You know, you're going to really hear it.
Bill Johnston
And I think, I think, Robert, what what sets I would like to think us apart in many respects too is that we're not giggling and laughing about something or and and having a couch on the couch discussion of how interesting something was. Real crime, let's just say violent crime, while it is very interesting, it's mostly just tragedy, and but but you can't be down about it all the time either. You can't just be doom and gloom and and act like it's everything's terrible. You don't even want to discuss it. It's worth discussing because people can learn from it, both to not be victims, to learn how to improve their system, how what to demand of the police, what to demand of a prosecutor and so forth, but I think that what we try to do is have a mature discussion. It's fascinating and interesting because we are on the other side of the crime scene tape. We're in the middle of it, but it can be entertaining in a very mature way. About hey, here's here's what happened. You know, you and I tell these stories and it's. Wow, you know we were there, and that's what happened. It tells you about human nature, tells you about
Robert Riggs
sure does your
Bill Johnston
your government and what it can do and what it should do, and I think it might help some people.
Robert Riggs
And you know, even when we look at the headlines today of crimes, and you, I think a lot of people tend to think, "Oh my gosh, what in the world is happening to our society? And all I can tell you that if you dig back into newspaper coverage of crimes in the early '50s or the '30s, you will find the same kind of brutality and senselessness taking place. It's just on a larger scale now, because there's more of us, and it's amplified. That's
Bill Johnston
right. Social media. That's right. So news and social media. Yeah. Everybody thinks, oh my gosh, there's a murderer next door. Well, hopefully there's not, but it seems like there is.
Robert Riggs
So I would just say, keep your wits about you.
Bill Johnston
That's right.
Robert Riggs
All right, Bill. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1
Thank you.
