Father Kills Family, NH Shooting Rampage, Shooting After Being Attacked

this is things police see firstand accounts with your host Steve gold welcome to the podcast that interviews active and retired police officers about their most intense bizarre and sometimes humorous moments on the job stretching it out there to let the music die I am in fact Steve G old Ginger face hosting this show for you uh like the intro said it’s just U just a collection a wonderful collection of what over 180 episodes now of police officers and men and women of law enforcement telling you the crazy things they deal with totally unedited no hold barred stories so you can get a better appreciation for what it is that these folks are actually doing out there um recently got some emails that were fantastic recent academy uh graduations from people people from show listeners who were uh maybe on the fence or weren’t sure if they were going to take up the mantle of police but did from hearing all the great stories from these men and women that come on and that is I’ve said it before uh probably my favorite email because we need cops we need good cops out there and I’m so happy that this is getting into their ears and uh tickling their brains and uh bring them bringing them over to the light to the good side so that is really cool thank you for all the rating and reviewing that’s going on thank you for the patreon members uh truly incredible if you if you really love the show and you’ve listened to all the free content and you think I want to show Steve some love I W to I want to do something for the show uh you can join patreon there’s two different levels Sergeant or patrolman you get a couple different things uh with each uh you’ll get um with both really you’ll get early release of the YouTube interviews and it’s like a Facebook style feed you’ll get access to you can message me anytime I there’s about I think 59 people in there now which is fantastic and you I’ll also mail you this uh schnazzy things policey podcast 3×3 vinyl sticker which you can display proudly so um so yeah a lot of people love this logo that you see CU it’s like a I wanted like a Retros 80 style logo because I’m like an 80s kid and uh Believe It or Not guy on Fiverr did it for I think couple hundred bucks a Brazilian guy he did a fantastic job and also the video intro I use now on YouTube that was also fivr they’re not a sponsor but I have to say um that video alls I did was I mailed them the image of the of the logo and he extrapolated that out into the video that then combines together with lights and music he did the whole thing 55 bucks guys $55 for that for that incredible production value so um I I just think it’s incredible you can get this stuff online now so uh there’s that useless information for you you’re welcome hope everything’s going well in your world where you are I hope you’re uh in warm temperatures unlike the Northeast where it is a bit frigid to be expected but um today’s guest guys very excited about oh before I intro him uh guys we need more guests and I always forget to mention it at the Top If you want to be a guest if you know somebody who’s got great stories you listen to them and you’re like man this guy has got some stories or this girl uh this is the place for it talk to them about the show I the show somehow is kind of uh it’s kind of plateaued like it’s reached to ceiling like there’s a there’s a great amount of listeners um but it’s kind of leveled off I don’t really um do any ads I don’t have time to to splice together the short videos all the time I’ve done that here and there but I just don’t have the time to keep up with it um but word of mouth I think is the best if you could just share the podcast with somebody and then through through that we’ll get more listeners and hopefully we’ll get more guests that want to come on I know you’re out there in your Cruiser right now I know you’re patrolling and you’re thinking I’ve got some wild stories if you want to come on agencies really have loosened up about this stuff um the whole um you know uh humanized the badge thing or whatever you want to call it that not exactly um hooking on to that train but um you know the idea that people can get a better idea what cops actually do agencies have lightened up they were really strict in the beginning and now they’re kind of loosened up if that’s not the case with your agency I’d run up the flag pole and tell him hey he can blur my face I don’t I can use a um pseudonym you know we won’t identify my agency we’ll just say the state you know we can do all kinds of things to get you on here to tell your stories things.com you go there scroll down be a guest click on it and there you go now you’re coming on the show and sharing and um and importantly also make sure you got some stories you know because sometimes hasn’t happen many times but sometimes um there there isn’t that many like make sure you’ve been a cop for a little bit you know what I mean just you got you got a few in the back pocket that you want to share and that you’re comfortable talking about them so without further Ado Our Guest today uh wealth of knowledge huge career in law enforcement 44 years he’s still active currently the chief of Franklin PD New Hampshire he’s been both Municipal and state level law enforcement he’s uh held the Specialties of uh field training officer undercover narcotics officer homicide crimes against children SWAT polygraph and of admin being a chief um without further Ado let me bring on the great Dave Goldstein Dave good afternoon and thank you for that oh my pleasure brother and I hear you’re you’re a fellow son of Massachusetts I am born and raised in the City of Medford um Boston was my back was my backyard uh went to beu for undergrad work toughs for graduate uh so Massachusetts born and raised and but love living in New Hampshire since been seeing out would be 1979 I moved up here oh God bless you good for you yeah New Hampshire is um a great state and I do notice that um in around here locally recently I’ve noticed that some officers here will do a bunch of time in Mass then go up and take um leadership roles in New Hampshire I think um I think they’re starving for qualified officers up there in that role is it you say that’s true well uh yeah we are but at the same time there’s a good Financial component to that you retire you collect your retirement or your pension and then you come up here and you can get a a really decent job up here and if you’re working full-time up here we have a a really good retirement system anyway so if you’re willing to contribute um as a full-time police officer you can have a second pension um nice so it does what is the what is the retirement New Hampshire like in Mass for instance I’m in the older system grandfathered into it but it’s uh as you know and but just for the listener it’s 32 years 80% at 55 uh here I’m under the old system as well uh mine is 20 um 40 so uh I could go out that way at 50% any year that I stay beyond that is 2 and a half% so after uh 40 years uh you can you get 100% then you can go beyond that a little bit to I think it’s 125% before you you’re maxed out the legislature saw fit a few years ago uh to change that to 45 okay and uh but it still gives your time if you’re interested still gives your time start a second career if you’d like yeah it’s nice to have some options up there I noticed on just from talking to people on the podcast that it’s um some of the southern states don’t have options it’s like uh you go out in 20 you get 50 but then staying doesn’t really pay off either so a lot of guys literally come on Young and then they retire young they don’t have like a minimum retirement age you can just go at like 45 and then you have to have you have to have a whole another career because you have kids in college and all the other stuff right and and there’s actually a a uh there was originally a legitimate component to all of that uh one of the things that I didn’t mention in in my introduction for you is that uh since about 1975 1976 I’ve been involved with mental health issues for police officers uh I help coordinate uh critical instant Stress Management critical instant stress debriefings up here and did in Massachusetts as well and uh have done so around New England but if you think about it and I don’t have to tell you you’ve been on the job uh you come in young and you get chewed up and you’re supposed to go out young um and that gives you the opportunity very similar to the military if you will um but things obviously have changed a little bit yeah absolutely um so you’re still at it you’re going for the two pensions I respect that that happens in massot I had a chief in on Cape Cod who um did Connecticut then came to mass for a nice little 10e stint and got vested and did his thing so um very smart to do that Dave can you take us way back to uh no offense but to not a problem uh a young uh officer Goldstein uh can can you recall the first hot call you went to the first call that really got your blood pumping I can remember the first day if you want um yeah I can certainly do that but uh I’d like to start with just the fact that I wanted to be a cop since I was five so uh for every Halloween after that uh the chief in Medford had given me my first holster my first uniform shirt my first police hat the old eight-point hat nice uh how I went out to every Halloween uh but um and I’d love to share this too before I get into that hey Dave sorry to interrupt you I hear like a weird clicking in the audio oh uh let me see that might be one of the dogs so okay um but anyway um so day one I sat in the cruiser waiting for my first fto I hadn’t even been to the academy yet and I heard the word home and that sounds corny but it’s true day two I sat in the cruiser waiting for my fto and I knew I wanted to be the chief there was no question in my mind so that’s how how quickly it happened but my first couple calls were kind of interesting uh and I made some notes for myself here uh and I’d like to start with a uh with a humorous one if it’s okay absolutely coming from a city and medford’s a real legitimate City uh I always thought that a cow was a silver box that had a big silver knob underneath and a white straw and you lifted up the silver knob and you got milk so here I am uh it’s summertime I’m working midnights like every cop in the world and I get a call from dispatch to go to this particular address in dery which is where I started uh with the dairy Police Department full-time I started with Belmont Mass parttime but um I started Dairy full-time and uh there was a loose cow and I didn’t know what to do quite frankly because I’ve never really other than in picture books seen a real cow yeah they’re big yeah it was big but it was very docile and uh finally somebody came along that helped me uh find out where the cow was from no big deal uh but I asked this individ I said what do I do uh next time that a cow gets loose he said well cows are kind of they’ll follow you if you have food so if you want to keep food in your Cruiser you can do that or sometimes if you just rub them between the eyes and up and down the nose they’ll follow you so okay I’m willing to listen and learn and uh not too long after that I got a second cow call and um here I go to this cow and um I come on bossy let’s go and it’s not moving I don’t have food in the cruiser so I walk up and I start to rub it between its eyes and it butts me onto my butt okay so I get up brush myself off it’s about five o’clock in the morning now and it’s again summertime so it’s the sun is out and I try that a second time and it butts me onto my rear end so now I’m getting a little bit smart and I look underneath and this is not a cow this is a and it’s f to do what bulls do best it starts to snort and growl and jump up and down and uh move its paws and I ran I forgot I had a cruiser I forgot I had a portable I forgot I had a gun I ran to the nearest house I could find banged on the door some very attractive young lady came to the door in nothing but a negl let me in and I called the station from the um from the house so to make it even more ignominious as I’m looking out the window up comes a 12-year-old girl she grabs the car the bull by the horns and says let’s go home and she takes it home yeah so that’s my first if you will real um real bad uh well not bad but yeah but to another story with you that’s a little bit more cop oriented if you will and and some the funny stories are always those um I had been out of the Academy I went to our Academy in those days was only eight weeks long it was Boot Camp style it was a peas Air Force Base uh mine was the 49th Academy I started it in in um March and finished 8 weeks later came back to work and on October of that year I was on patrol again in Derry and uh um noticed there was a uh Chinese restaurant in the downtown my I had the downtown sector and we were all oneperson cars in those days still are pretty much anyway up here and um I noticed there was a parking problem it was a Thursday night and the the cars were flow overflowing into the into the street and my whole intention that night was just to um go in and ask the management to announce over the PA please move your cars we’re going to have to tag and toe all right no big deal I didn’t think it was a big deal as I’m walking to the entrance of the restaurant I see a very attractive blond-headed young lady coming my way but in my less than experienced mind something wasn’t right and when I looked closely I could see the she was bleeding from the nose and the mouth now I’m I’m really uh concerned I’m trying to talk to her she is for lack of a better term hysterical and um she’s not speaking not communicating and I’m really working hard and I’m not keying off I didn’t have the experience and I’ll share this with the young listeners I didn’t have the experience to realize she was looking over my shoulder until the last moment when I turned around and here comes this big 200 plus pound guy and I only in those days I we1 50 160 pounds Here Comes This 100 200 PB guy and he’s got murder in his eyes and what did I walk into but was domestic in the parking lot so being a young cop I thought this uniform was inviable I thought you couldn’t touch it was a suit of armor yeah my arm out to stop this guy and the next thing you know is I’m on the ground and I’m face down and he is kicking me he’s punching me he’s driving my head into the uh into the asphalt of the parking lot and the next thing I know is I feel I’m going for my gun uh in those days we had uh I had a Smith and Wesson model 15 it’s a 38 special um it was my gun that the administration allowed you to have your own as long as it was a 38 uh or carry 38 rounds you could have a 357 but you can only carry the 38 and anyway uh in what was called a Jordan holster it was the old one simple leather strap that went over the hammer and snapped and I can feel and as they say and I learned very early in my career you slow down and my thought process slowed way down and I said to myself if he gets this gun we’re both dead and I then I made the decision if I have control of the gun at least I can do something and I did what I had to do I drew the gun and I fired somehow uh it wasn’t a fatal shot he was able to get up and his girlfriend then did what so many domestic VI vience me people involved in domestic violence that she grabbed him and she took him away and uh later to be found somewhere else uh in the meantime now while I’m on the ground I happen to look up and there was a carload of let’s AR’s finer young people and I’m trying to be kind and I’m I screamed help and I’ll never forget to this day and I think about this every single day for 40 odd years uh they looked down at me smiled and shook their heads no wow after I discharged my firearm uh they poured out there were three or four of them they poured out of the car screaming he shot Joey he shot Joey and I thought maybe I did maybe my round went arai and they encircled me and I had the presence of mind to holster my firearm grab we had the old p24 is a side handle baton uh and I pulled out my p24 and I felt like Samson with the Jawbone of an ass I just started the swing I took two of them down before my backup got there oh my goodness I had called on the portable um and our designation for the street Supervisor was five my uh um designation was different you know one being administr or supervision five being whatever number he had and dispatch thought I was at I was reporting a fire they kept saying do you have a fire because my my designation was 43 four was Patrol three was my patrol area and uh I said no one I need five because I just discharged my weapon I knew that there was a problem anyway I could hear one of my patrol Partners in the northern part of this the town say I think um 43 has a problem and he showed up and that’s the kind of relationship I know you’re familiar you you learn to read each other and uh you tell by the tone of their voice oh yeah exactly um when I listened to the tape afterwards it was the old real toore tapes that we had when listen to the tape after I thought this was 10 15 20 minutes it was no more than three minutes from start to finish no more than that and the actual incident itself was probably within a minute so that was my first real um difficult situation to deal with this Dave this blows my mind on a a lot of levels I mean Bas the basics of it is you’re young and I think we all feel like that especially if you have a halfway decent upbringing where in you respect police and Authority you kind of um put yourself in other people’s shoes a lot when you’re when you’re knew like well if a cop rais his hand to me I’m stopping like because I’m a good guy and something’s wrong I’m going to stop my evil doing or whatever I’m doing obviously that wasn’t the case here secondly I’ve been to Dairy New Hampshire and it’s it’s a seemingly like it’s like any Town USA you know what I mean um I would never I mean it just it’s it’s a great story that illustrates that cops all over the country it doesn’t matter where you are fall victim to this stuff I mean that’s an incredible story that you were getting beaten that badly that you had to shoot somebody over a parking issue in just in any Town USA you know that and in the time frame of it too if you told me that story happened last week I’d be like yeah but then that makes it even scarier with the whole um with the culture then um was different you know what I mean that that’s really nuts if if if anything it’s taught me and I have a very very dear friend who was former NYPD he retired under because he was at 911 he was there and spent the next three or so months in the pit uh and we talk a lot about some of this stuff and it doesn’t matter where you are I don’t care if you’re a one person or one officer town or you’re 36,000 the stuff happens and it doesn’t matter what color uniform is and let’s be honest people only see us from the neck down that’s all they see because that’s what we wear that’s why we wear that uniform so uh yeah you’re absolutely right Dairy der’s an interesting town uh it’s grown up a lot over the years in those days there was a lot of Industry uh there were a lot of bars there were a lot of bar fights uh my my sergeant had lost all his teeth in a bar fight when he caught a bar stool in the mouth and he taught me that the best best way to respond to a bar fight was when you get there drive around the block then go in let it calm down he went in and caught a bar stool right in the face and um and then basically if you go around the block come in you can get Ems for the people on the floor and you can arrest the people that are still standing so yeah my dad was my dad retired a while ago but he was caught for 32 years and it just seems like and I don’t know why but it seems like there was a heck of a lot more ball bar brawls in the 70s and 80s than there has been in the era of the time I’m policing I don’t know why that is I think maybe I mean they got rid of like happy hour in Massachusetts there’s no more two for ones a lot of places won’t even do shots and they close earlier maybe that’s the factor but my dad has some Wild bar barfight stories from Cap Cod and those establishments still exist and nothing like that happens now yeah you’re right you’re right we don’t see it we don’t see it and in my city um I can’t remember the last time we had a problem like that you might have a problem with someone that’s under the influence but other than that that’s about it it’s bizarre hey side note here uh is Dairy New Hampshire not the place that Stephen King based the book it in kind of yes Stephen King is a New Englander anyway and he picks a lot on New Hampshire uh and Derry Derry New Hampshire if I’m not mistaken is the dairy uh there are just a few in the country maybe three or four or something like that but yes that’s where Stephen King chose his for one of his books yes yeah because I’m I remember watching the the ma for TV movie when I was a kid which by the way my parents never should have let me watch that I don’t think they even knew what it was but I couldn’t sleep for months um but I remember the comedian guy that comes up and he um he says something about derri a or makes he makes some off comment about the town and I was like I think that is a real town because I’ve been now I’ve been there you know yes yes and London der is right next door right okay so yeah the um the big city up there is what Manchester NASA Manchester is the largest uh so Franklin interestingly enough we only have 13 cities all the rest of the 200 odd uh jurisdictions if you will in municipalities are towns uh and it has nothing to do with population it has to do with government so in a town for example here I live in Auburn uh and while we’re speaking they’re doing the town meeting once a year they get together and make these decisions uh with a board of Selectmen or or what have you sure whereas you have a uh a council a mayor a city manager and you can make decisions on the fly if you will so we have monthly meetings or bu you know a couple meetings every month that type of thing so we have the smallest of the cities here in Franklin um and Manchester you’re correct Manchester and N are the two largest interesting yeah like when I was in Cali I noticed that almost every place was a city there wasn’t like small town if it was a small town it was usually unincorporated and didn’t have its own surfaces even if it was 15,000 people it could be unincorporated and like the sheriffs were there um yes which was just just totally different I know on the cape Barn stabl Big Town I mean I think they have 150 guys in their police force um and they have talked about ye for years pressuring or the state was pressuring them or something to become a city have a mayor and all that stuff and they just absolutely will not do it they like having selectboard members and Village Chiefs and all that stuff well if I’m not mistaken Brookline is still a town technically you’re kidding no it always has been that I know of yes that’s a big that’s a big town right outside of Boston yeah yeah absolutely um Dave that story was fantastic by the way um next question for you uh can you describe the strangest or most bizarre thing you’ve dealt with in your career well again uh with this many years uh and I remember one of your former guests saying some something similar to this that there were so many uh it’s hard to pick one so uh I kind of chose uh I’m just cheing my notes Here we had um again uh when I was with State Police I stayed with Derry for three years um and then I went over to State Police where I spent the next 23 years uh retiring as a captain and uh for about 12 or 13 of those years I was with the major crime unit we we uh primarily homicides but then some different types of cases uh and certainly with smaller cities and even towns uh we would go in and help with crime scene uh I was on the crime scene unit so uh I can honestly tell you that given the average number of homicides a year up here I probably worked more than a 100 homicides oh wow in my career I mean so but uh one of the interesting cases and a little bit bizarre for me was in a small town down in what we call straford County which is uh a good siiz County um we get called a field uh for a guy that uh had been on fire and um as I got there uh and was uh took charge of the scene uh it turns out that this gentleman had decided sadly to kill himself to to complete the act of suicide and he um built a Indian style a Native American style funeral py uh laid out on top of it eviscerated himself and so that was a little bit bizarre to say the least uh to um to try to put that back together again um geez the way people kill themselves to me is like don’t there’s pills and guns you know pills and guns they’re they’re they’re pretty quick more less pain less pain you know yep absolutely the the other one and I think I mentioned it in my uh little blurb that I sent to you uh and I don’t mean to take more time than I should no please uh in 1991 again I was in in the major crime unit and um we got a call to go to a house in um conquer which is our capital city as you may know yep uh one of those houses it was an old style house that had been cut in half and made into Mirror Image apartments and um a gentleman by the name of James Colbert um and it’s it’s a good story and it’s one that I’m actually in the the process of putting into book form um James Colbert was uh divorcing his second wife uh he had a previous family um he uh they had a restraining order a mutual restraining order but they violated it on this particular day his soon to be uh second ex-wife called him and asked if he would come by and babysit their three children and they had a 2 and a half-year-old daughter A one and a half-year-old daughter and the 10 we old daughter uh and he said sure uh they were both uh Drinkers and uh Mr Colbert went there saw his ex-wife and they um parted company she went shopping extensively with her mom uh when she got back later that afternoon they decided to have one last roll in the hay if you will I guess the kids say call it breakup sex or something like that right I’m an old guy so this is all new to me even then uh anyway long story short uh after they complete the ACT uh she’s rolling over to go to sleep and says by the way I wasn’t with Mom today I was with Kevin my new boyfriend well you can well imagine so he gets out of bed he’s very upset goes downstairs as I say this is a an old house that’s now divided into two apartments goes downstairs puts a VCR tape and I when I use this in my Academy teaching um I asked my students if they noed VCR tape was and he watches a video of her wedding shower and their wedding he continues to drink and he makes the decision he writes a note to his anybody um that should read it but mostly to his in-laws saying if I can’t have them nobody can he then goes back upstairs jumps on his wife and strangles his wife uh he he then positions the body so it looks like it’s sleeping so when we first got there it very much looked like she was asleep although you could see the um at that point in time lividity was starting Etc he then moved over a few feet to his 10-week old daughter uh and in those days we put our babies on their bellies today we know better from Sid’s research we put them on their backs he went to his 10-week old daughter turned her over pinched her nose put his hand um he was a truck driver big guy put his hand over her mouth and suffocated his 10 week old daughter oh my go her then went into the the nursery where the other two daughters were and starting starting with his um one and a half-year-old daughter he did the same thing to her positioned her body and meanwhile the the eldest daughter two and a half year old is knows that she’s going to die think about this for a moment yeah it was wasn’t a grizzly scene per se from blood guts and all that which I’ve seen many of but it was a scene where how do you reconcile the fact that this two and a half yearold child now knows that the man that helped create her is going to take her life and as she’s looking into his eyes uh he does the same thing and when we uncovered the body and and took it we could see scratch marks on the cheeks um and then he went then he uh got in his car drove to Chelsea Mass uh and on the Tobin Bridge favorite jumping off spot uh parked his carts about 3:00 in the morning now he’s made a call now to his in-laws saying that he’s killed the family uh they sent a conquered police officer patrol officer to check the welfare he saw what he saw and certainly backed out and called uh for assistance of which uh our crime scene unit was part of that assistance in the meantime Colbert drives down to Chelsea goes over the railing uh in the um on the Tobin Bridge and now he uh is standing there and the first car by is a recer operator who sees this calls 911 and says I think there’s a guy about to jump okay find and dandy uh they dispatch a Chelsea officer it’s a female officer he didn’t like her she was too rough and Gruff she was ordering him to do things next off Shan Cen is a m a trooper he liked the trooper he was a male uh and he the trooper said come on give yourself up and he did waved extradition and came home we sub quently convicted him of a four counts of first-degree murder to be served consecutively uh life term of upro and he died in prison of of cancer that is probably the only domestic mass murder that we’ve had in the state that I know of historically it was my case um and I worked that case to the point that when all his appeals were done I went in and interviewed this guy and if you want to talk about weird people uh this is a guy who so I one of the questions I asked him was what is your former family the the one uh that he had divorced originally what does your former family think about you and said well now that I’m in prison I’m their dad I’m not their father anymore I’m now their dad and I’m thinking to myself where did that come from and so I asked him more questions I inter I have a few uh interviews with him and I asked him uh what um what was he thinking and he wouldn’t give it up he would know not give it up no matter how hard I tried so I said well why didn’t you jump and he said I’m afraid of heights and I said okay well why didn’t you’re a truck driver why didn’t you just drive into a bridge of [ __ ] at a high speed he said I never thought about that so this was a guy that was setting up a a Not Guilty by reason of insanity plea and it didn’t it didn’t fly in court so that’s why he got convicted of what he did as I say he subsequently um developed cancer in in prison and opted not to take treatment and let himself go so better for him and Society yeah too bad they just didn’t squeeze the life out of them in the you know whatever device New Hampshire could approve damn Dave that is yep uh very very disturbing story I I cannot um reconcile that in my mind I’ve never met anybody who could jeez what do you do I don’t know if you did anything for yourself then but what do you do for yourself after that I mean because that is we that is Extreme and that’s going to get under even the the most harded investigator skin you know you’re you’re asking a very good question because and and I I really don’t want to sound like I’m this is an ego thing coming through I’ve been doing this work on stress management crisis and Trauma since before he became a cop uh I knew Medford police officers my dad was a physician he took care of the cops and the firefighters um I remember them coming into his office and my mother who was who today would be called an office manager worked for my dad as a secretary uh the office was in the house um and I remember her ordering these guys to drop the gun belts because it added an extra 20 pounds to their weight when they would do that they’d come on duty that type of thing um and so I got involved with this kind of work uh probably about 1975 1976 and I uh that’s where my academic and clinical career went so I have a master’s I bachelor’s Masters and PhD in the subject as well so I’m I’ve had the opportunity to reconcile a lot of this along the way and not that I haven’t asked for assistance or talk to people about it but I feel comfortable with this stuff and and if you don’t mind a little backstory to that um uh in Somerville dad there was an hospital called Central Hospital in Somerville it was a small community hospital dad was young he was working his way up through the hierarchy of medicine uh which is not all that dissimilar to police work by the way um and um he was chief of staff at this hospital today I don’t even know if it’s still there but it it went from becoming a community hospital to a rehabilitation hospital after he left and took a position at Boston what was in Boston City Hospital um but I remember I’ve always been kind of a a different person and I say that a little bit tongue and- cheek I’ve kind of I’ve kind of made my own path and I’m going to share some of that with you later when you ask about what advice I might have for young officers um so I needed an After High School job I I needed to do something and he got me a job working in The Clinical Laboratory washing glasswar basically I was just a you know bottle and and what have you a washer but I got very very interested in what was going on around me as I watched people working and certainly dad being a doctor uh I um I was very interested anyway uh and every day when I come into work through the back door there was always this room that was closed and locked and said authorized personnel only or something to that effect and I was curious excuse me so one day I asked my my boss in the lab I said ‘what’s that room he said’ that’s the morg and I said okay can I go in he says no I was 15 at the time by the way and he said no and I said why not he said you’re too young you don’t need to see what’s in there said okay fine so I have sometimes been known as a pain in the ass I kept asking him and finally said look go ask your father he’s in charge go ask your father so I asked my dad he said no and I said why and he said you don’t need to see what’s in there and again now he has to live with me so I kept asking and finally says okay go ahead so my boss brought me in one day and they would uh posting or conducting an autopsy on an elderly woman who had passed during the night nothing specific you know it’s just a medical exam postmortem exam and um at one point of course the sites the sounds and smells if you’ve been to a notop know and I’m standing against the wall I mean I’m hugging the wall at that point because I don’t understand and next thing I know is I can hear the pathologist saying would you move so I can finish my work and I had stuck my head inside the body cavity looking around um so I went home from that and um couldn’t sleep for a couple nights and my father who was my best friend by the way uh throughout my life uh um he was a very wise man and he let me stew for a couple days and he took me aside out of earshot of my mother and my sister and he said are you upset are you bothered and he said a little bit I said a little bit and he said why and I you know older woman he said he looked at me and he said she was not your grandmother and that’s at the stage yeah I put it in perspective that at that young age so uh that’s kind of what I do uh but I I also spent more time than I’ve been a cop quite frankly working with cops and now First Responders in general and Ed Personnel emergency department personnel on managing stress crisis and Trauma yeah so yeah that makes a lot of sense to me because um you know there’s a lot of flying stuff flying around about in for police work how to make cops Kinder and gentler and be more understanding of people and be more relatable and I always found that for a while there they were talking about empathy lot like just have empathy when empathy is a powerful tool especially if you’re investigating something to put yourself in someone else’s shoes but I find that uh sympathy is good uh over empathizing with situations is bad for you because like you said that’s not your grandma that’s not your your brother that dead kid isn’t your sibling you know what I mean like if you if you spend your police career over empathizing you’re going to you got to have some separation to do your job you can’t be feeling these feelings everybody’s feeling all the time you know and and I maybe it’s just they’re trying to be too kind and too gentle about it but that’s how I look at it exactly and and it’s very clinical and people have asked me over the years how can you do it and I don’t bother telling them that story because it’s a little bit too long and they wouldn’t necessarily understand uh but you have to be somewhat clinical and when I started in the homicide investigation part of my career um one of my uh bosses who had been in the business at that point for well over 20 years came to me and said it’s difficult and a homicide investigation has no conscience you have to do things that nobody else will do you have to ask questions that nobody else will ask and I learned very quickly that was in fact the case um so yeah did some of them did some of them stay with me absolutely sure no question but I also know that I became their voice and if I had to testify in court I became their voice and at the same time I gave them full stroke of the pump I gave them 247 365 my longest day was 56 hours without sleep in order to work a crime scene so uh I don’t recommend that for anybody and we stopped it right after that uh because we always um we always pushed our way through these things in those days uh but um yeah you and and after the fact sure uh do I feel absolutely but I also keep it in perspective Ive and I’ve I’ve had that ability and part of it starts when I was 15 years old yeah I love that your father absolutely sounds like a very wise man um Dave I don’t know if we’ve covered this but you can you tell us your most intense or terrifying call yeah that one uh I I put on my notes one word dragga and I don’t know if you recall that the case um I don’t Carl Dr we have obviously small towns uh up north uh in one of those small towns is the town of coldbrook oh is this the um is this the case with the game warden that got shot well more than a game W Wayne Saunders because he was on the podcast yes uh Wayne and I know each other cool and uh I was uh again major crime but I was also on the SWAT team at the same time so I’m at headquarters I’m probably doing what most cops do when they’re not working is doing paperwork and uh next thing I I get is okay everybody mustard we’re going up to C Brook we’ve got what today I think we would call an active shooter uh and okay fine so I’m I had an unmarked at the time and I’m on my way up to um cobbrook um about half and I’m going as crime scene and about halfway up I get radio call and again these are days before uh cell phones I we we had pagers and when I mention that today people look at you funny um so uh I’m on my way up to co about halfway up I get a call and say no switch over to swat it’s still ongoing fine dy I pull out it’s the only time in my career I changed in public so I’m taking off my crime scene if you will uniform and putting on my my cammies and stuff like that and my vest and all and I continue up there um I don’t know how deep into it Wayne might have gotten but I’ll tell you how from my point of view what happened was yeah please um so Carl Drager was at odds with the the town uh he had it had something to do with he wanted to change the course of a river behind his house um and that’s uh you know you need environmental impact statements and all this kind of stuff and of course he kept going into court or going into the town hall and he just bullied people tried to bully the judge Etc and they just said no and what they have a reasonable expectation of is that if I say no what part of that word don’t you understand I have the authority to say no it’s no so anyway on this one particular day decided that he’d had enough and um at the same time used to drive this rickety pickup truck and it was not roadworthy and there was a warrant for him and two of the Troopers in the area Les Lord and Scott Phillips were looking for him and they found him and he um was in an IGA which is a supermarket up here parking lot um um uh Scott um confronted him and uh he was armed with an AR style uh rifle and he started to shoot Scott uh he disabled his right hand uh and his arm we had 45s at the time Smith and Weston 45s uh and he backed Scot up to uh a grassy area bordering the parking lot and Scott is as you might expect uh begging for all intens purpose I have a family of kids and drga put his final round into Scott’s head uh because Scott’s right hand was disabled and he couldn’t transition to his left hand and he’d gone to lock back on the semi-auto um that was the end of of Scott at the same time uh Les was pulling into the uh driveway of the parking lot and drga turned around and Les never even got to clear leather he um he put the rounds to the windshield and the driver’s door and and killed Less in his Cruiser oh we know this we know a lot of this because there was a young boy who would his mom had gone into the IG to sleep at to shop and he had stayed in the car to nap or do what kids were doing I used to do it as a kid when my mom would shop you know stay in the back seat take a nap or whatever and he saw it uh drga then stole uh a campaign hat for Troopers and I know masses the same way that came campaign had is very specific and he actually uh also stole a cruiser and took off and now the chase was on and he encountered Wayne Uh at one point shot him uh and what a lot of people don’t know is there were other uh law enforcement that were wounded as well what drga did is he went to the uh then he went to find uh Vicky bunnel who is the judge up there in the cobbrook district court uh and he wanted to kill her uh he found her and he was in the process of doing that I’m kind of truncating a lot of the stuff he he found her and he started to uh stalk her to kill her and Edward Jews uh who was the newspaper editor up there intervened and um drag Was Heard to say this is what you get for getting in the way and shot Jews with his AR and then shot and killed Vicky bunnel so now we’ve got four dead uh he then went to the uh home of the Board of Select chairman of the board of selectman broke in kicked the door in with all intention of killing him but he and his wife had gone out for the evening uh he did encounter Wayne shot him but Wayne was fortunate enough that and I’m not sure what he told you I didn’t I haven’t listened to that podcast yet but his badge helped save his life yeah yeah go from there now he goes over to Vermont now if you can as you can well imagine we’re putting everybody in the world in the small town oh yeah yeah we had 90 state police cruisers within a couple hours in that town we had three minor accidents or collisions on the way each person that the trooper had a collision with when they heard what the trooper was doing said go just go we’ll take care of it later uh we had Vermont State Police there we had Sheriff’s departments here we had local departments here we had Mass state police was there um and then we my SWAT team was there there were 20 of us on team at the time the swad team leader um divided Us in half because we knew that he’d gone into Vermont so we went into Vermont uh along with um other officers and we didn’t know where he was what he had done is he had parked the cruiser in such a way in the wooded area that if you were a police officer You Came Upon a state police cruiser what would you do wave wave or you’d go check it out that was a t that set up a Target because then he has secreted himself I see like a decoy yeah wearing the campaign hat so if you see a silhouette of an individual with a campaign hat what do you think right Trooper it’s a brother or a sister in this case a brother so again it opens you up to becoming his next Target he uh shot uh one of the SWAT members in um the groin uh and he shot a second uh police officer shot in the heel uh canine Officer I believe one of the border patrol agents who uh responded was also wounded uh and subsequently when he stepped out from a tree one of troop F is our northernmost troop a troop a troop F Troopers uh shot him with a rifle slug in the vet he by the way had also taken a vest shot him in the top of the vest so as he reared back from the impact but but it didn’t penetrate the vest a border patrol agent put a 308 through his head and now while a lot of this is going on I’m with the half of the team that’s looking for him and I’ve never done this in my life before or since I would not recommend it we stopped a freight train oh geez thought he had might he we thought he’ gotten on this train was standing on the track now imagine if you will especially in today’s day and age you got a bunch of with ar or M we had M16s actually at the time M16s in camouflage fatigues with B clav is on and we’re stopping a freight train crazy and when the guy realized who when the engineer realized who we were we searched the train didn’t find them so that was kind of a interesting aside to the whole thing but that that was probably the most bizarre and and I will tell you uh thank God we have not experienced anything like that since uh but that was a tough day to say then if you really want to add some stress to it uh I kind of Switched hats again went back to Major crime quickly did the crime scene at the um uh select chairman of the board of selectman’s house uh and then my job was to escort the two Troopers back to the morg in police fashion um I followed uh I excuse me I led the Hees blue lights no siren blue lights down 93 uh from C Brook to conquer uh and got them into the morg we had made arrangements at that time because we’ve been through this with with deceased police officers especially Troopers in the past we’ made arrangements with the FBI that should we ever suffer the loss of one of our own they would come in and do the autopsies so that we didn’t have to go through that it’s funny how there’s always a perfect storm about everything so The Perfect Storm was our medical examiners were not available they had contracted with this medical examiner out of Baltimore County to do the any autopsies that we forensic autopsies that we needed and I know this I’m sorry this is so long no not at all and this guy and I won’t identify him I’ll never forget his face was an animal this guy should not have practiced medicine this guy should not have practiced garbage pickup quite frankly but anyway was an animal and I tried to explain to him that these two Troopers uh the FBI was on their way and they would assist him with the forensic uh autopsy no we’re going to start now so I had to stand there and watch them open the body bags and look at my colleagues wearing the same uniform I wear with the damage that those uh 223 rounds or those five5 six rounds had incurred on them and start the autopsies until the the FBI got there so that is a stress or that I’ve carried with me my entire career that very few people know about I didn’t bother telling the boss or anything like that because my job was to guarantee that my colleagues that my brothers uh would be treated correctly uh and so again I went home with that one and it’s always interesting to go home at the end of one of those days and with all do um with love and respect my my second wife uh whom we’ve been married for 43 years so this one might work by the way um um you know it’s like okay dear would you take out the garbage please right and I’m not you don’t know you come home from a day like that and it’s like but she comes from a police family dad was a trooper and and she understood when I told her the story so that was probably that answers that particular question perhaps Dave thank you for sharing all those details that was uh incredible and terrible um wow and I’m sorry that uh you had to stand through that start that autopsy that is brutal yeah yeah it’s it’s hard our uniforms as you well know are very distinctive and the look grass buttons the the cross straps the leather gear the the badge which we’re all very proud of irrespective of what department you work for that badge means everything uh and to see it covered in blood and whatever yeah oh God bless you brother um Dave Switching gears here a little but um do you have a positive or heartwarming story from your career you know and again um it’s funny because I kept thinking I kept thinking of the definition of heartwarming and I’m trying to think well who really loves me and I’m not sure anybody does other than my family at this point so i’ I’ve got I’ve got um I’ve got two one very quick one uh it’s when I’ve been teaching in our Police Academy since 1981 I’m probably the most senior instructor we have and again my my course of instruction among other things for the recruits is uh stress crisis and Trauma and how we manage it how we deal with it what what’s available to us to do so and to have my wife um had to go to a um massage therapist for some neck and back problems not too long ago and they were talking and this massage therapist said by the way I was a police officer so many years ago and retired and now I do this myself there excuse me and he said and I remember your husband’s lecture and it was the best lecture in the entire Academy so it’s that type of thing that makes me feel like maybe once in a while you make an impression but I will share another kind of a story like that um that has a lot of angst to it as well but does have some positive in addition um I can tell you the exact date excuse me August 3rd 1984 that was my sister’s birthday uh I got a radio call again I’m I’m a slick seve I’m I’m a patrol trooper and I’m I’m on patrols daytime and they got a call for a shooting in one of the small towns uh that uh is at the uh edge of Rockingham County which is where I was patrolling I had Rockingham uh County and um uh couple other uh areas for Troopers patrols are no different than they are in in any city or town it’s just that as you can well imagine it took me 30 minutes to get from one part of my patrol to another sure expansive but anyway uh and I with respect I’m not going to identify some of the folks even though it’s this many years ago uh in the town but it’s a very small town uh pretty much a one horse town if you will and I’m code three uh and I’m about five minutes ahead of the ambulance for the shooting there’s a victim I get to the house I walk in and on the floor is a 10-year-old boy uh who is dying he’s Ash and Gray he’s been shot in the belly by his 10-year-old Playmate um his brother the victim’s brother is standing off to the side certainly crying and everything uh and they had been playing a game of um not Cowboys and Indians or anything like that or cops and robbers but what would you do if a an outlaw bike gang came to town don’t ask me where they got that oh jeez and the shooter had gone into his father and mother’s bedroom where Dad would leave a 350 7 which is what we carried at the time flung over the bed post for Mom’s protection when Dad wasn’t home and it was loaded and it was a single action copy of a CT Single Action Army so it took a little bit of manipulation to to work the gun and he retrieved the gun walked down the hall pulled back uh opened the loading gate made sure it was loaded closed the loading gate cocked the hammer walked in and shot his friend in the belly um this was a 150 AC grain semi jacketed soft point round very similar to what we were carrying we had hollow points oh big time man stopper those rounds absolutely through the through the little boy into the couch that’s where I found the bullet um and even though I wasn’t the detective at the time I knew enough to secure the scene and everything EMS got there certainly took charge of the boy I didn’t uh caught the investigation started it uh the shooter told me um the devil came over honest to goodness he said the devil came over him and that’s what made him do it when I interviewed the victim’s brother he said yeah he had this funny look on his face before he shot my brother wow I take the child into custody uh now 10 years old U there’s not a lot of culpability there right not men’s Ray if you will uh so um but I know I got to do something I can’t just let this kid go Mom and Dad get home I sit them down I’m talking mom is an abused mom I can see it I can see the bruises on her arms I can see the bruises on her legs it was summertime you it was um warm weather uh dad a little guy Napoleonic complex tough guy uh trying to uh take control of everything I wouldn’t let him um long and short of it is uh I learned that the night before Dad and a few of his buddies had been sitting around the kitchen table drinking beer playing with the gun and the little boy was standing at Dad’s elbow watching all of this go on so I charged a little boy with uh negligent homicide only thing I could come up with and my whole point was to get him into help was to get him into counseling sure let the let the social services system work uh charged him with that I went to the Attorney General’s office because it was a homicide they wouldn’t handle it because it was a juvenile went to the county attorney which in New Hampshire is the district attorney and asked them for help they wouldn’t handle it because it was a juvenile so I Pro I investigated and prosecuted this case in court for lack of a better term the judge found the child delinquent and we got him and he knew what I wanted to do the judge and I actually became very very good friends over the years there so much so that we socialized uh and and so on he actually offered me a job in his Law Firm if I would go to law school after this case that’s how happy he was with the but anyway uh enough puffing um so he did he assign he charged he found the child as best he could and the child had to go to counseling until he was 18 um in the meantime I went back and I charged dad with Reckless conduct we didn’t have anything on the books about unsecured weapons or anything like that especially Firearms so I charged D with Reckless conduct convicted him of that prosecuted that case because Troopers used to prosecute their own cases in those days so I used to enjoy that and um the judge same judge from the bench said I’d like to charge you I’d like to put you in jail for a million years I’d like to charge you a million dollar fine best I can do is a $1,000 fine and a year in jail so Dad got convicted of that now is there a nice part to this there is but before I get to that um the father of the child who was killed called me one day and said can I talk to you and I said sure and again being involved in a peer support and all that kind of stuff I thought maybe that was what he was interested he says I’m having trouble reconciling this case this my child’s death and so of course you are he was your son I mean he was murdered by another child how can you put this to bed he says no no he says I bring something extra to the table and I said what’s that and he says I was in Vietnam he said I killed children he said I don’t know how to reconcile this and I didn’t know what I had no I had no words for this guy fortunately they uh I think they stayed together mom and dad the other family broke apart now is there a heartwarming aspect to this perhaps there is I’m in winr is Chief I get a phone call from the shooter and the child from he’s now an adult wow and he said thank you he said I went through all the counseling when I was old enough he said I joined the military did a career with the military retired successfully and honorably turned around and I’m doing the same job as a civilian and I want to thank you wow weren’t expecting that call I’m sure that’s about as good as it gets quite frankly and I know that your audience especially the cops in your audience we don’t get a lot of calls like that no so yeah every once while you need one you know um Dave can you um you touched on a little bit earlier can you give us some advice to people uh just young police officers or people who are on the fence maybe who are just looking at getting into law enforcement yes don’t not Kidd it’s a tough road to home it’s a I love this job uh I know that there’s a cycle to life and my time to leave is coming it’s it’s more than Bittersweet for me and every time I look at young people uh and I see what’s in in store for them I cry because I see what’s happening societally and and what have you but I would never dissuade anybody from doing this I hire people still from my department I talk to the young people I try to give them the best advice I can so what I’m going to do if you don’t mind Steve is I’m gonna I’m going to share what I tell my recruits uh at the end of my presentation and and I try to share that with other people absolutely because I think it’s important and so first uh Ralph Waldo Emerson and I didn’t know this until a few year probably around Co time now we Mark things in in Co I guess I didn’t know this until one day I was I don’t even remember what I was doing I Came Upon a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson that sum summarized my entire life let alone my career and I’m going to read you a quote from that poem which I share and it’s do not go where the path may lead go instead where there is no path and leave a trail and the point I try to make there is you have one of two choices in life you can go down the established path and it’s fine it’s paved it’s smooth yeah there may be a few difficulties maybe a few potholes along the way but for most for all intense and purposes you’ll finish your career and do what you need to do and thank you very much for your service and I appreciate that I sincerely do or go with there no path make your own path because what’s going to happen is you’re going to trip over Roots you’re going to fall into holes you’re going to skin your knees and your elbows you’re going to fail you’re going to succeed and when you come out the other end you’ll be a better person and you will have left a mark on on whatever it is you want to do so that’s where I start but I um the last of my PowerPoint by death slides for my recruit class is something I call some of Dave’s suggestions and if you don’t mind I’d like to share those of course one is learn something new every day sincerely anything just learn something new every day and accomplish one act of kindness every day even if it’s being kind to yourself because sometimes we’re our own worst enemies and I don’t think I have to tell you that be kind to your loved ones because they’re the ones that are behind you quite frankly and and um with that I suggest call home once a shift when I was undercover uh I had a very good friend uh who had been undercover at that point for about 13 years and my undercover career was kind of interesting because again using that quote from em and I made that happen um uh he said call home once a day it oriented you back to being a human being as you can well imagine being especially undercover there were sex drugs and rock and roll everywhere I was I was doing a uh trying to do cold buys one night at a bar in lonia during motorcycle weekend and the next thing you knows I’ve got some lady Hing onto me sticking her tongue down my throat uh and and I could had anything I wanted that night and anything now got a wife home and am I going to do that and um it’s funny because I tried still kept trying to buy drugs from her and she wouldn’t sell me any but I walked out uh to the sidewalk with her she got in her car and I said I can’t go with you I’m married and she said I really respect that so I only ask people to call home uh and be kind to your loved ones uh be kind and respect your brothers and your sisters they’re the ones that that love you as well um and be careful because you never know who you’re talking to be careful what you say uh and the story behind that is that again if you don’t mind um without mentioning it it’s one of the larger courts it was one of the larger courts in the state one of we we’re now in a circuit court system it was a district court and um the the maintenance guy was there and like any maintenance guy you know he wore the maintenance clothing and dirt under his nails and stuff like this and we’re all too cool for this guy the cops are in you you know we’re walking around the lawyers the judges the defend ants the plaintiffs everybody’s too cool for this poor guy uh he would he loved planting flowers around the court um the the juvenile delinquents after they got their sentences would come out and rip the flowers up and Destroy his flower beds and stuff like that nobody ever thought about this guy my wife knew him very well because she worked at the court uh at the time and uh we would give him uh um a nice flannel shirt every Christmas that was his Christmas present for my wife and I and he thanked us very much what people didn’t know about this guy was he was a Purple Heart recipient from Vietnam he had been wounded severely in a combat uh Mission he was left to die because it was more important to uh gather up his gear and put that on the helicopter first and he knew he was going to die fortunately he didn’t now here’s a guy he goes goes to the hospital you know he’s evaced out of there goes to the hospital it’s taken care of and comes home do you think that guy might have had the um had good reason to be angry at his country and at the military oh yeah they didn’t get a very good reception at all in the war in general exactly you know what this guy did after he got home he brought 14 amorian children home to the United States these are children that were the product of a Vietnamese woman and an American serviceman and as know in their society that doesn’t fly and he brought them home to be adopted this was a guy that put this was a hero we talk we use that word a lot this guy was a hero and he was a tunnel rat and people may not even know at that for those of your audience who don’t know these were the guys that would go into the the um North Vietnamese tunnels armed with nothing but a flashlight and a 45 yeah and he like Forest Gump that’s he goes come Chuck the tunnel he’s got a 45 and a flashlight and he goes down exactly this guy paid the ultimate price almost the ultimate price and still he came home and did the right thing so you never know who you’re talking to and finally my one piece of advice for anybody is you go home at the end of the shift you do what you got to do you may have to explain why you did what you did and you better be able to do that but you go home at the end of the sh so that’s the advice that I have words of wisdom I love it good stuff Chief it was an honor to have you on your stories were fantastic and I love even more that they were New England based so good my pleasure my honor my privilege thank you all right sir I’m gonna do the outro real quick can you hang on just for like two minutes sure absolutely I’ll be right with you the great Dave Goldstein guys uh fantastic story so happy to finally get them on uh very fun I know you guys are going to love that one thank thank you to everybody all the listeners all the um all the new listeners all the people who are binging the podcast I appreciate that this is the time in the show where I go ahead and thank the patreon sergeant starting from the longest to the newest I’m talking about the Great and Powerful Andy bigs the great Greg Gad booy Adam miall Chris June Gary Steiner the great Jake pinino John Shoemaker the great Lauren Dimson the handsome Lane Campbell the admirable Seth Wright James Rose the great Tony fee the one and only Ben Peters everybody Jason La Sasha McNab the Great Scott minkler Tammy Walsh holding it down to dispatch William James long that’s Deputy William James long to you thank you very much Shan Clifford Dennis kisk everybody Iceman from motop Chronicles George Tessier see at church Brother Scott Young great Thomas Connell Dan Carlson from Burly boards doing some incredible work with wood check him out Doug and Kelly Newman see at church love you guys the great Dave Elman Elliot Sykes none other than the great Elliot Sykes Richard tolls keep on trucking my man Christian glad to have you thank you sir the great 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