Pod Insights Canadian True Crime Alfred and Rosemary Podgis [2] About this episode [Part 2 of 2] Was Canadian Teenager David Curtis an innocent party who unexpectedly found himself in the middle of a very bad situation? Or was there something more sinister at play? In this episode: the trial.
The intention of this series is to take a look back at a shocking crime sensationalized through headlines across the US and Canada, and explore its impact on relevant communities.
Some names have been changed to respect the privacy of those involved.
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Transcript 10,466 words · 8 speakers
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1:21 Speaker 03 This is part two of a two-part series. Just a reminder that some names have been changed to protect privacy. Where we left off, shy Canadian teenager David Curtis arrived in New Jersey to discover everything his friend had told him was a lie. Scott Franz did not live in a mansion on the Jersey Shore. He lived in a chaotic mess with his mother and a very angry stepfather who was physically violent towards them both. And it only got worse after that. Scott claimed his stepfather shot at him from the main bedroom and missed. The following morning, Alfred shot at him again,
2:06 Speaker 03 and this time Scott fired back, delivering a fatal shot to the 58-year-old's head. But then he heard a gunshot from downstairs and ran down to find David Curtis, his Canadian house guest, standing next to the body of his 56-year-old mother, Rosemary Pogge.
2:26 Speaker 03 After they cleaned up the blood and loaded the bodies into the family's van, Scott and David fled, dumping the bodies in a Pennsylvania state park. Within a week, the police had caught up with the teenage fugitives in Texas. Scott Franz gave a full statement to investigators, saying he shot his stepfather Alfred Pogge in self-defense, and David Curtis reacted and shot his mother Rosemary by accident. But some of the details Scott gave didn't add up, and David Curtis might have been able to help with that, but not until his parents had arranged a lawyer for him.
3:14 Speaker 03 Michael Shotland was reluctant to take on the case. In his early 40s with a young family, he was looking to get out of the high-stakes drama of defending accused murderers in New Jersey. But when a colleague was too busy, Shotland took one for the team. He arrived at Monmouth County Prison in New Jersey to meet his new client, who had just been transferred back to face first-degree murder charges. He found David Curtis to be a pale, thin teenager who seemed to be shutting down psychologically. But David seemed ready to give his side of the story directly to his lawyer. He said that the morning of the shooting,
3:59 Speaker 03 "I was sort of in a daze, half in and half out of sleep, and I heard Scott's mother, Rosemary, talking. Scott said we were going back to Nova Scotia, and she said, 'At least have breakfast before you go.' Scott suggested French toast. Then Scott said, 'I can't take it anymore,' that he had to have a shower because he felt grimy. I remember hearing shots. I grabbed the gun and ran, and Scott's mother was coming around the corner, and it went off." I don't know if I pulled the trigger or if it went off by itself. It was like my emotions were dictating me. It was like fear and not knowing what was going on.
4:41 Speaker 03 I don't know whether when I jumped back, my hand moved too and I pulled the trigger, or if it just went off. It was just a blur. My whole head is ringing, like you become a big black cloud. Scott went over to his mother. He's saying, "She's dead, she's dead. I can't leave her like that." End quote.
5:04 Speaker 03 As for why they didn't just call 911 right then and there, David told his lawyer that Scott wanted to break the news to his sisters before he involved the police. David said it made sense to him at the time. "It just didn't seem like something the police should be involved with right away. They would be told exactly what happened later on. That's how Scott wanted to do it, to work it out within the family, figure out exactly what to do. Scott's big concern was that he couldn't leave his mother lying there like that, so we got them out of the house. And the other thing too was, it was sort of like washing away sins. Because if you replace everything and make it as if nothing had ever happened,
5:49 Speaker 03 then you would return the house to its original state."
5:56 Speaker 03 David told his lawyer that the reason he didn't fight any of the decisions Scott made afterwards, including fleeing and getting rid of the bodies, was because he was in shock and entirely in over his head. He said he never even considered calling his own parents in Nova Scotia because he felt like he was living in some kind of altered reality shaped by Scott.
6:23 Speaker 03 Michael Shottland believed his client. And when the autopsy report came back, it seemed to back up David's story as well. While Alfred Podgis was shot in the head, Rosemary Podgis had been shot in the lower abdomen from an odd angle, the 30 caliber bullet moving across and down to her left hip. It clearly did enough damage to kill the 56-year-old within minutes, but the trajectory didn't exactly scream intentional shooting in cold blood. Still, it wouldn't be an easy case. Michael Shottland advised Alice and Jim Curtis that, in his opinion, the best scenario
7:08 Speaker 03 for their son David was an acquittal, and the worst would be a manslaughter conviction, minimum three years in a US prison.
7:19 Speaker 03 But while Shottland found the 18-year-old to be intelligent and credible, he also thought that he was a very strange young man. Whether David had always been strange or if the trauma of the crime had changed him, he didn't know. But Shottland didn't think the teenager would be able to confidently defend himself in court. To be sure, he hired a psychologist to conduct a proper assessment of David in conjunction with a review of the other evidence up to that point. The doctor backed up David's story, concluding: "In my opinion, David fired the rifle in a startle reaction, and the report of the
8:02 Speaker 03 autopsy and the path of the bullet, as well as the fact that he was not used to firearms, makes me feel that the shooting was certainly unintentional. The flight after the act indicated a panicked reaction. Certainly, the shooting was an additional stressor. I think that David was in a situation where he reacted to his friend's actions as a follower. I feel he was suffering from an adjustment disorder at the time of the shootings, brought on by the foreign environment in which he found himself."
8:40 Speaker 03 After David's first court appearance and arraignment, his parents could finally visit him at Monmouth County Jail. They were shocked to find him gaunt and dazed at an old prison that was clearly overcrowded and teetering on crisis. Alice was deeply worried about her son. She wondered how David was ever going to survive this ordeal, or if they even had enough resources to properly defend him. Things may have seemed dire enough, but the Curtis family had no idea there was more bad news on the horizon.
9:22 Speaker 03 The police were highly suspicious of Scott France, and behind the scenes, that suspicion extended to David Curtis. They were bewildered by the Canadian teenager and refused to believe Rosemary Pogess's death could have been an accident. But why would this shy, nerdy kid kill his friend's mother? Police had found a backpack outside in the grass, filled with clothes, books, and a personal diary belonging to one David Curtis. Scott had tossed it there after their first failed attempt to escape. The contents of this diary only made the police more suspicious.
10:06 Speaker 03 There was that one entry that seemed particularly dark. David wrote, quote, "I have no mouth and I must scream. I really wish I had been there. I could have saved her. Too late, everybody got to go. Everything we had crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see, swirling into madness, whirling, twisting, to the sight of demons robed in black. Revenge is very necessary. Goodbye, Patricia."
10:40 Speaker 03 As it turned out, Patricia was an old friend from David's previous school. And after he moved to King's Edge Hill Private Boarding School in Grade 11, he was devastated to learn Patricia had died by suicide. David would explain to his lawyer that he was trying to cope with Patricia's death in the best way he knew how: writing. He'd always been an avid writer, filling his notebooks and diaries with dark philosophical poems and short stories in a similar style of his favourite authors, which included Russian literature and the Gothic poems of Edgar Allan Poe.
11:22 Speaker 03 David said he wrote in part to sort out his conflicting feelings about life and death, religion and science, reason and emotion. "He had taken Patricia's suicide hard," he said, "and a lot of his poems and short stories from around that time reflected his unresolved grief and existential angst." But there were other entries in his diary that concerned the police even more. One was a vivid poem dated June 4, 1982, less than a month before his fateful trip to New Jersey. It read in part:
12:02 Speaker 03 "Long to be dead under while worms chew and mutilate my shrunken pale skin. I am nothing but dirt contributing to well-being. Plants grow upon me. Peace exists never, chaos always, throwing us about. Pieces fly off, blood dims our sigh, and we walk like a drunkard stumbling over our dead friends."
12:30 Speaker 03 To investigators, this wasn't the normal poetic musing of a troubled teen trying to cope with the suicide of a close friend. It was potential evidence against David's claim that he shot Rosemary Pogge's by accident. Especially this one. "I am mad, insane as I always wanted to be. I have achieved it. A difference however. I am fully aware of my madness and thoughts. My intellect still reigns supreme. I want power. That way I achieve mortality, something I shall also strive for in the physical sense."
13:15 Speaker 03 The police and the county prosecutors saw this particular entry as pure darkness, the psychopathic ramblings of a clearly disturbed mind.
13:27 Speaker 03 There was another diary entry that included a graphic scene depicting sex between two men. David would tell both his lawyer, and later author David Hayes, that those scenes were copied out of an erotic novel that his late friend Patricia had shared with him. But investigators couldn't help but compare the case to Nathan Leopold and Richard Loweb, two wealthy teens from Chicago who abducted and killed a 14-year-old boy in 1924 just for fun. Leopold and Loweb were believed to have been in a romantic relationship and wanted to get away with a perfect crime. Both were eventually sentenced to life in prison.
14:14 Speaker 03 Even if David's diary entry was proof of some sexual or romantic element to his relationship with Scott Franz, it wasn't proof of intent to murder. But the police were developing a theory that the two 18-year-olds killed Alfred and Rosemary Pogge's just for kicks. They just needed more evidence.
14:40 Speaker 03 Prosecutors sent a couple of New Jersey investigators to Nova Scotia to find out more about David Curtis and Scott Franz, their friendship and their time at King's Edge Hall School, the private boarding school they both attended in Nova Scotia. And they certainly got an earful. They learned Scott was a chronic liar with an exaggerated New Jersey accent. He fancied himself a ladies' man and told countless stories about his wealthy family back in the United States. He often got caught with alcohol. Many of his fellow students thought he was an untrustworthy, streetwise con artist.
15:24 Speaker 03 As for David Curtis, he came across as a weird loner who had an off-putting superiority complex. His own roommate described him as "not normal". Unlike Scott, David seemed to have no interest in the ladies, but there was no evidence of any romantic feelings or sexual relationship between them. But that didn't matter to the New Jersey police. Everything they heard in Nova Scotia merely reinforced their working theory about two misfits who found each other, fueled each other, and inspired each other to commit double murder. And when they heard about those mysterious incidents at King's Edge Hall School,
16:09 Speaker 03 it only convinced them further. That teaching assistant who saw two figures resembling Scott and David fleeing the school lab, and how Scott showed up at parties with a jar of chloroform. There was another incident where a young teacher felt sick after drinking a milkshake Scott bought for her at Dairy Queen. And shortly before grade 12 graduation, two students were hospitalized after drinking sodas they believed had been poisoned by Scott Franz and David Curtis. Neither were ever charged with a crime, but in light of the killings in New Jersey, those incidents became a kind of criminal foreshadowing.
16:53 Speaker 03 Scott and David simply escalated their behaviour from poisonings to murder.
17:00 Speaker 03 The New Jersey investigators left Nova Scotia feeling like they had a very strong case against Scott Franz. But the case against his Canadian friend David Curtis was a little weaker.
17:18 Speaker 03 Back in New Jersey, bail had been set for them both at $250,000. Neither of their families could afford it. While the prosecutors continued to assemble their case, David Curtis's lawyer tried to get his bail reduced. The Curtis family had a counter offer. They would put up $25,000 and their farm, and Alice Curtis would move to New Jersey so she could personally monitor her son while out on bail. The judge denied the request. After all, David fled the first time all the way to Texas. So what was stopping him from running again, this time over an international border?
18:04 Speaker 03 Meanwhile, his defense lawyer, Michael Shotland, was interviewing Scott Franz's siblings and step siblings to find out more about the family dynamic and what went on in that home. They backed up Scott's stories about Alfred Podgis's violence, and each provided their own accounts of Alfred beating them up and threatening to kill them. They all described Rosemary as a passive, hapless mother, then witnessed her being abused and assaulted by Alfred Podgis. Scott's siblings believed his claim that he killed his stepfather in self-defense.
18:44 Speaker 03 They also reported that Scott told them multiple times that his Canadian friend David had shot their mother by accident.
18:57 Speaker 03 Just two weeks before their joint trial was due to begin, Scott Franz was suddenly separated from David Curtis at the Monmouth County Jail. David would later say that was the moment he realized his friend was going to turn on him.
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20:22 Speaker 03 Scott Franz reached a plea deal with the prosecution. He was going to plead guilty to first-degree murder and had agreed to testify against David Curtis. There would no longer be a joint trial or a joint defense. In exchange, prosecutors would recommend a lighter sentence for Scott with earlier parole. This was obviously a devastating turn for David Curtis. So why did Scott Franz suddenly turn on him? It was largely on the advice of his own defense lawyer. Behind the scenes, Scott's lawyer was struggling to put together an airtight defense.
21:07 Speaker 03 The version of events that Scott originally gave to investigators included several key details that were not consistent with the police investigation. There was, of course, that bullet lodged in the bedroom doorjamb that Scott said was the result of Alfred Pogge's shooting at him the day before the killings and missing. He claimed this convinced him that his stepfather was actively trying to kill him, and that's why he and David broke into Alfred's locked mail truck that evening to get two .30 caliber rifles for protection.
21:45 Speaker 03 But the bullet found in the doorjamb came from one of those two rifles, not the 22 caliber rifle Alfred had been holding. This led investigators to wonder if Scott shot the doorjamb himself to set up a claim of self-defense.
22:04 Speaker 03 There was also the fact that just days before the killings, Scott had purchased a box of 30 caliber ammunition. He told investigators that his mother had asked him to buy it for his stepfather, but that seemed unlikely. These pieces of circumstantial evidence suggested planning and intent. And there was more. Scott had told investigators that he shot his stepfather from across the room and that Alfred was sitting up in bed with the pillows behind him. But according to the prosecution, the Philadelphia medical examiner who conducted the autopsies
22:45 Speaker 03 was ready to testify that the rifle's muzzle was in direct contact with Alfred Podgis's head and shot brain, blood, and bone debris down into the pillow. It suggested Alfred was lying down at the time. This was new. Scott's lawyer checked the medical examiner's original autopsy report. It didn't mention anything about a direct contact wound or even an opinion on the possible distance between the rifle and Alfred's head. By this point, it had been more than six months since the killings and the bodies had already been buried.
23:28 Speaker 03 Scott's lawyer requested to have them exhumed for a second autopsy opinion, but it was denied. He realized it was going to be very difficult to prove that his client was acting in self-defense with this new testimony that Alfred Podgis may have been shot when he was asleep. That's the definition of in cold blood. Scott's lawyer was aware that the county prosecutors pretty much decided all evidence pointed to premeditated murder. They were building a case that Scott was the one who planned it and his weird Canadian friend helped him. It would be an uphill battle for the defense.
24:13 Speaker 03 Scott Franz would confirm that he took the deal to plead guilty to first degree murder because his lawyer advised him to. He was still facing jail time, of course, but he might be out on parole in 10 years instead of rotting in prison for the rest of his life. But another factor that motivated Scott was money. His sister Barbara, the one who supervised Alfred and Rosemary Podgis at the post office and called the police when they didn't show up for work, told him she did not have the resources to pay for his defence through a lengthy murder trial. No one else did either.
24:56 Speaker 03 So Scott folded and pleaded guilty to first degree murder. Now, he was going to be the prosecution's star witness against his friend, David Curtis.
25:10 Speaker 03 Because the county prosecutors no longer had to prove that Scott Franz killed his stepfather Alfred Podgis, they could narrow their focus on building the case that David Curtis did not shoot Rosemary Podgis by accident. Top of mind was those stories from King's Edge Hill School in Nova Scotia involving the lab thefts and the alleged poisonings. It was only circumstantial evidence, and both Scott and David denied any involvement at the time. But when prosecutors questioned Scott Franz about it in the lead up to the trial, he suddenly changed his story.
25:52 Speaker 03 Now, he stated that David was the one who stole chemicals from the lab, and it was David's idea to prank a teacher and other students by slipping a noxious substance in their drinks. In this latest version of the story, Scott was just the follower and David the mastermind.
26:14 Speaker 03 The county prosecutors decided the same would go for the murders of Alfred and Rosemary Pogge's. They were confident they could convict David Curtis based on Scott's testimony. They also hoped that David would be put on the stand to testify in his own defence, so they could question him about those diary entries. The prosecution's case would be that David Curtis had a diary of dark thoughts and bad intentions that he brought to the United States and offloaded on the Pogge's house in New Jersey with catastrophic consequences.
26:55 Speaker 03 Right before David Curtis's trial was about to begin, the original judge assigned to the case had to pull out with health problems. Their new judge was the Honourable John P Arnone. His nickname was Never Come Home Again Arnone, and he was known to be as tough on crime as judges get. This was not good news for David Curtis. His defence lawyer, Michael Shotland's, strategy was to paint Scott Franz as a habitual liar who chose a plea bargain to save his own skin, and because Scott's story had changed
27:34 Speaker 03 several times, whatever he was going to testify to on the stand could not be trusted either.
27:43 Speaker 03 And Shotland was worried about his client. All those months in jail had turned David Curtis into a shadow of his former self, paler, even more withdrawn and nervous. And if he put him on the stand, testifying would be difficult enough, but David would also face a tough cross-examination, especially if the prosecutor was able to have those diary entries admitted as evidence. Shotland believed David when he said those entries were written in the shadow of grief, and that he was mirroring the same dark philosophical style as his own favourite authors.
28:24 Speaker 03 But in the context of a murder trial, those entries might be gravely misperceived. The lawyer was keen to keep David Curtis off the stand, although he wouldn't advise the prosecution about this until later.
28:43 Speaker 03 The trial began in March of 1983, eight months after the killings. Every major newspaper in New Jersey followed the crime and the subsequent investigation, and reporters showed up in droves to cover the trial. The Star Ledger, the Daily Patriot, the Asbury Park Press, not to mention all the big Canadian papers and local Nova Scotia papers as well.
29:12 Speaker 03 In his opening remarks, David Curtis's defence lawyer, Michael Shotland, described his client as an unassuming, small-town Canadian kid who grew up on a farm in placid rural Nova Scotia. The filth and chaos of the Pogge's home in New Jersey had been completely disorienting to him. David had never experienced that kind of environment before. Shotland described it as a house of violence.
29:43 Speaker 03 The court would hear testimony from multiple witnesses corroborating the stories of regular arguments and violence at the Pogge's household, how they heard screaming regularly, and the sounds of physical fighting a few times a month. Neighbours would testify they saw the two teenagers, terrified, hiding in the bushes next to the house that same week as they were trying to avoid Alfred. Michael Shotland reminded the jury that they would be relying on the testimony of Scott Franz, who agreed to plead guilty and discredit his own friend in exchange for the promise of a lighter sentence. He described Scott as a liar.
30:28 Speaker 03 Quote, "He has never told the truth and he is not telling the truth now because he doesn't know the difference between what is true and what is not true. All he is doing is trying to save his own neck."
30:43 Speaker 03 The prosecution's case was that Rosemary Pogge's was not shot by accident. Paul Cheyette, first assistant prosecutor for Monmouth County, suggested that David Curtis was resentful of the treatment he'd witnessed and experienced during his stay at the Pogge's home that week. David was described as being “filled with red revenge” when he shot Rosemary Pogge's. His actions afterwards were described as “cold and calculated”.
31:17 Speaker 03 On day two of the trial, police officers testified and the jury was shown graphic photos of the bodies of Alfred and Rosemary Pogge's and distressing videotape of the crime scene, including blood-spattered walls. Although Scott France had already pleaded guilty to shooting Alfred Pogge's in the head, the prosecutor arranged for the jury to also see close-up photos of Alfred's shattered face. David Curtis's lawyer, Michael Shotland, repeatedly objected. His client had nothing to do with Alfred's murder. This trial was about Rosemary Pogge's and whether David Curtis shot her in the lower
32:01 Speaker 03 abdomen intentionally or by accident. But it was to no avail. Jar Jar Non denied his objections.
32:12 Speaker 03 On day three of the trial, a ballistics expert took the stand. He demonstrated how the 30-caliber rifle that killed Rosemary Pogge's had a tricky safety lever. At one point, when the lever was moved during the demonstration, the gun accidentally fired in the courtroom. It obviously wasn't loaded, but the misfire was entered as evidence of an accidental firing. David Curtis's defense lawyer could not have scripted a better moment.
32:47 Speaker 03 When the prosecution's star witness, Scott Franz, took to the stand the next day, the courtroom was full, the upstairs gallery at capacity. As he entered the courtroom, he avoided eye contact with his former friend, David Curtis. In fact, Scott barely raised his head or his voice while reiterating the litany of abuse he and David had experienced that week. How Alfred Pogge's yelled at him when David's plane was late, and how it only got worse from there. Scott testified that the abuse escalated all week, leading up to his claim that Alfred took a shot at him from the bedroom in a fit of rage.
33:32 Speaker 03 But then, Scott's testimony took a sharp detour from his original statement to police. He'd originally said that when he and David broke into Alfred Pogge's mail truck to get the two 30-caliber rifles, he had taken some ammunition out of one and loaded it into the other, because David had no clue how to load a rifle. But now, on the stand, Scott Franz claimed he had nothing to do with any of it. He testified that a few days earlier, David was the one who took the two rifles and hid them under a mattress in the guest room.
34:12 Speaker 03 Alfred Pogge's found them, and that's why he locked them up in the mail truck. Scott Franz claimed that David Curtis was the mastermind behind the murder of his mother and stepfather. And while in his original police statement, Scott said it was his idea to get rid of the bodies, now it was his testimony that it was David's idea, that it was David who didn't want to call the police, and that it was David's idea to scrub the crime scene and flee. Scott also claimed that David was enjoying himself during the cleanup, and was actually grinning at one stage, as he reportedly played with Alfred Pogge's congealed blood like it
34:57 Speaker 03 was jello. Scott also testified that David joked about a piece of gum possibly being Alfred's pituitary gland. To all of this, David furiously scribbled "not true" on his lawyer's legal pad.
35:15 Speaker 03 Scott was asked about a part of his police statement where he said that he warned David that morning, that “if you have to go out of the house shooting, go ahead”. He clarified that the warning was not meant as encouragement to shoot his mother, he was referring to his stepfather Alfred. And when he ran downstairs and saw that his mother was dead, he almost shot David himself, but “I just couldn’t kill a person for no reason”. This was the defence’s in during his cross-examination. If Scott believed that the act of shooting and killing his own mother was no reason to
36:00 Speaker 03 kill David Curtis, didn’t that mean he also believed it was an accident all along? Michael Shotland reminded Scott that that’s what he originally told investigators in Texas, and that’s what he told his own siblings again and again, that David shot their mother by accident. He put it to Scott again, “Isn’t it a fact that the reason you didn’t shoot David Curtis right there, was that you were satisfied from his attitude, from his mental condition, from his emotional condition, and from the physical facts, that he had accidentally shot your mother?”
36:43 Speaker 03 Scott replied, “I believe so.” Scott Franz had backed himself into a corner. This was good news for David Curtis and his defence. The last witness for the prosecution was Dr Halbert Philinger, the medical examiner from Philadelphia who performed to the autopsies on Alfred and Rosemary Podgis. He testified that Rosemary had been shot from a distance of about 2 to 3 feet. The 30 caliber bullet had entered her lower abdomen from the right, and travelled down
37:24 Speaker 03 and across her body at an odd angle, lodging in her left hip. It was not the kind of wound made by someone who intended murder.
37:35 Speaker 03 Defence lawyer Michael Shotland would argue that this evidence, combined with the testimony of the ballistics expert, and of course his examination of Scott Franz, was consistent with an accidental shooting. It was evidence that supported David's defence. But then, at the prosecution's urging, Dr Philinger also pulled the jurors deep into the bloody murder scene upstairs, involving Scott Franz and Alfred Pogge. It had nothing to do with David Curtis and the shooting death of Rosemary Pogge, the crime he was on trial for, but there was certainly a strategy behind it.
38:19 Speaker 03 As expected, Dr Philinger testified that it was his conclusion that Alfred Pogge died of a contact wound, and the muzzle of the rifle was likely placed directly against his head before the trigger was pulled. Dr Philinger said he reached this conclusion because of the nature of the wound to Alfred's head and the way it shattered most of the bones in his skull. He said a contact wound was the only way to account for the extent of Alfred's injuries.
38:52 Speaker 03 On cross-examination, David's defence lawyer, Michael Shotland, argued with the medical examiner on this part of his testimony, and why there was no mention of it in his original report. Dr Philinger said that the autopsy report was just observations, what he saw, not how he interpreted it. The cross-examination did not go well, and at certain points it veered into ridiculous territory, with the defence lawyer bringing up John F Kennedy's extensive wounds on the day he was assassinated. The former president clearly wasn't shot at close range, so how was the doctor able to conclude that Alfred Pogge had been?
39:36 Speaker 03 Dr Philinger didn't back down, and the two sparred for a while. But according to author David Hayes in his book Blood Not, the only possible outcome from this would have been a very confused jury. In closing arguments, Michael Shotland would remind them that this trial had nothing to do with Alfred Pogge's. And the reason the prosecutor seemed to be pushing the narrative that Scott Franz had killed his stepfather in cold blood as he was sleeping was very simple. "The county prosecutor wants you to believe that it is an assassination upstairs, therefore it's an assassination downstairs."
40:19 Speaker 03 That was the last of the prosecution's witnesses. It was time for the defence. Michael Shotland called his own expert forensic witness to counter the medical examiner's opinion on the autopsy. Dr Dominic De Mayo was the former chief medical examiner for the city of New York and a highly respected forensic pathologist. He confirmed he'd read Dr Philinger's observations as outlined in his autopsy report, and testified that in his opinion, it did not show that Alfred Pogge's died of a direct contact wound. In fact, the opposite.
41:01 Speaker 03 Dr De Mayo testified there was no evidence of soot, powder and burning, which would be present if it was a contact wound. And when shown an autopsy photo of that head wound, he testified that the shape of it was "more typical of a distant shot. This is not a contact wound." It was more positive testimony for David Curtis's case. The bad news was once again on the horizon.
41:34 Speaker 03 County prosecutor Paul Chayet had hoped David Curtis would take the stand in his own defence, so he could question him about those diary entries. The prosecutor felt strongly that if the jurors could hear testimony from this weird Canadian outsider, they too would be convinced that he was the mastermind of the killings. But it was only after he'd rested his case, that prosecutor Chayet learned the defence would not be calling David to testify. That meant there was no one to question about his diary entries.
42:13 Speaker 03 Chayet realised he made a mistake. So the following morning, he made the unusual decision to ask the judge if he could reopen it, so he could call his star witness Scott Franz back to the stand. Prosecutor Chayet argued that according to Scott, he and David had discussed those diary entries when they were in prison together, before they were separated, and he had a right to ask Scott about that conversation. But really, his goal was for the jury to hear about David's disturbing diary entries. The questioning didn't much matter. Of course, David's lawyer objected.
42:57 Speaker 03 What did Scott's interpretation of what David may have told him about his diary entries have to do with the matter at trial? The judge decided to hold a voir dire, a trial within a trial, to test the potential evidence without the jury present, before deciding if they should hear it or not. Scott Franz was put back on the stand, and prosecutor Chayet asked him to read a passage from David's private diary. So Scott read the following passage. "I am mad, insane as I always wanted to be. I want power. I do not want to die.
43:39 Speaker 03 I want to do it, but the thought becomes more frightening by the hour. However, it makes sense. Freedom, money, a start on my life. I must carry it through."
43:54 Speaker 03 Scott Franz was also asked to read other entries with cryptic references to school pranks and more dark thoughts after David's friend's suicide, which included references to getting sweet revenge. Later, David Curtis would tell author David Hayes that these and other writings were his attempt to imitate the stark nihilism of one of his own favourite writers, Franz Kafka. But in the absence of the jury, when Scott Franz was asked what he thought David meant by that diary entry, he offered up the darkest interpretation possible. He said it meant David wanted total control
44:37 Speaker 03 and he wanted to kill everyone on earth, including his own parents.
44:44 Speaker 03 David frantically scribbled on the legal pad, “He’s lying, this is totally ludicrous.” His lawyer, Michael Shotland, pressed the judge to discard the diary evidence, arguing that Scott Franz was a convicted murderer who was not present when David wrote those entries. He moved for an absolute acquittal, arguing that the prosecution hadn’t produced any evidence proving that David Curtis had shot Rosemary Pogge with intent. “There was no case against his client,” he said. “This was outrageous.” The judge denied the request to acquit David, but he did agree that the jury would not be allowed
45:28 Speaker 03 to hear about the diary entries or Scott Franz’s opinion of them. David Curtis and his family were, of course, greatly relieved about this, but that relief would last exactly one day, because this wasn’t Canada with its publication bans, it was the United States and a hungry media were preparing to go to press.
46:02 Speaker 03 During the voir dire, where the judge decided David Curtis’s diary entries would not be admitted into evidence, it’s important to note that the jurors may have been dismissed, but the press and the public were not. And if the trial were in Canada, a publication ban would have been imposed to prevent the media from reporting on what happened with the diary entries, because it could obviously influence the jury before they decide on a verdict. But in the US, the media are allowed to report on voir dire proceedings. In addition, juries in New Jersey are rarely sequestered. This particular jury went home every night.
46:45 Speaker 03 The judge gave them strict orders to ignore the press and not read any articles about the case until after the verdict, but they would have found it very difficult to avoid the merciless headlines the next morning. One, from the Asbury Park Press, read: "Diary Tales of Accused Slayer Thinking of Killing His Own Parents." New Jersey's Daily Register read: "Killer Diary: I Am Mad." It was devastating, and not just for David's defence. David himself was distraught over the idea that his own parents might believe he wanted to kill them. He asked for permission to phone them at the hotel where they'd stayed throughout
47:30 Speaker 03 the trial, a request that was commonly denied, but this time permitted. David's aunt Lorraine would tell author David Hayes that, quote: "By some miracle, David's call was put through to our room. Each of us was able to reassure him we didn't believe a word Scott said, least of all that David would ever have thought of killing his parents. We told him we loved him." In his closing arguments, county prosecutor Paul Cheyette reiterated his argument that David Curtis purposely and knowingly shot Mrs. Podgis to get revenge for the way he'd
48:14 Speaker 03 been treated that week as Scott's guest. And regardless of the reason, the prosecutor argued there was no doubt that David Curtis brought a loaded gun into that house, and no doubt he pulled the trigger. That, he said, is the definition of murder.
48:33 Speaker 03 Shaiet added, quote, "This was no panic, the scrubbing of the walls, the dark blue trunk, and then they go to Pennsylvania and dump these bodies. David Curtis should be found guilty of murder. Because of the evidence in this case, David Curtis is guilty of murder."
48:54 Speaker 03 David's lawyer, Michael Shotland, closed by stating there was no reason for David to kill Rosemary Pogge. She was nice and everyone liked her. He had no motive whatsoever. And the nature of the bullet wound in her lower abdomen, the way it travelled down and across her body, was in line with a faulty gun going off in a panicky collision. Shotland reminded the jurors that the rifle even went off again in court. They were there. As for why the two teenagers fled, Shotland referred to the concept of "fight or flight", and urged the jury not to jump to the conclusion that running from something in a panic equals
49:39 Speaker 03 a guilty conscience. He reminded them that Scott's police statement and his testimony specified the reason they drove to Texas. Scott wanted to tell his sister Rosie everything before going to the police. Shotland added, quote, "Maybe David is stupid or negligent, but that is the extent of his culpability. What has the state proven? They haven't proven that Mrs. Pogge died from a rifle wound inflicted under circumstances that you don't know about, and that a couple of stupid kids, or at least one stupid kid and one kid who says he committed murder, put the bodies in a van and left the scene.
50:22 Speaker 03 They made a bad judgement there, left the body somewhere in Pennsylvania and went scooting around the country, ending up in Texas hoping to get to the sisters. That's what the prosecutors proved."
50:36 Speaker 03 Michael Shotland asked the jury to acquit David Curtis and, quote, "send him back to Canada from whence he came."
50:47 Speaker 03 Before the jury retired to deliberate, the judge reminded them of three guilty verdicts they could consider. They could find David Curtis guilty of first degree murder, which required planning and intent but needed no motive. If that verdict went too far, the judge gave the jury two other options. They could find David guilty of reckless manslaughter if they believed he knew there was a risk he could kill Rosemary Podgis and took that risk anyway when he carried that loaded gun in the house. Or, they could find him guilty of the more serious crime of aggravated manslaughter, which carries a harsher penalty
51:32 Speaker 03 because it also includes extreme indifference to human life. The judge reminded the jury that although Scott Franz agreed to testify against David Curtis in exchange for promises of a reduced sentence, they still had a right to convict David on Scott's testimony alone if they believed it to be credible. The only thing they had to make sure of was that they were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt of David's guilt.
52:05 Speaker 03 After the judge dismissed the jury, David's lawyer, Michael Shotland, asked him to consider making a clearer distinction between reckless and aggravated manslaughter. He also asked that the jury be offered one more verdict option, accidental homicide, which would effectively result in David's acquittal. But, tough on crime, Judge Arnone denied all these requests.
52:34 Speaker 03 Hours later, just as Shotland suspected, the jury asked for clarification on the difference between reckless and aggravated manslaughter. Judge Arnone explained that both included the same level of recklessness, but aggravated manslaughter is more serious because it also includes extreme indifference to human life. A few hours later, the jury asked, "What does extreme indifference to human life mean?"
53:04 Speaker 03 The judge gave them an example. Imagine a man pushing a piano off a building onto Times Square just to see what would happen. He might not have had intent to cause grievous harm to anyone on the ground below, but he simply didn't care if he did. That is extreme indifference to human life. Michael Shotlin wondered if these questions were an indication that the jury was wrestling with the possibility that David was not a stone-cold murderer. He certainly hoped so.
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55:56 Speaker 03 After deliberating for almost 12 hours over two days, the jury found David Curtis not guilty of the first-degree murder of Rosemary Pogge. But once again, for the Curtis family, their relief was short-lived because David was found guilty of aggravated manslaughter, the harshest of the two manslaughter options. His shoulders visibly sagged. This meant the jury believed that he didn't intend on killing Rosemary Pogge when he carried a loaded gun into the house, but he knew there was a risk and simply didn't care.
56:38 Speaker 03 David Curtis's parents sat gutted. They weren't allowed to talk to David, who was soon taken away in handcuffs. After thanking lawyer Michael Shotland for defending their son and calling the rest of the family to deliver the bad news, Jim and Alice Curtis left New Jersey in their station wagon. In the back was an unused sleeping bag they had thought their son might need in case he got tired on the long drive back to Nova Scotia. They were, of course, devastated to instead be leaving without him.
57:21 Speaker 03 There was no way to know if the jurors saw those headlines about David Curtis’s diary entries. But amidst the drama of the trial, it was easy to forget that David was a Canadian teenager caught in the American court system. After the verdict, his lawyer wrote a furious letter to the New Jersey Court Administrator, describing the media’s reporting on the diary entries as a shocking disregard of his client’s rights. But it was too late, the damage had been done. The Curtis family felt steamrolled by the American justice system, but they also felt they had been ill-served by the Canadian government.
58:06 Speaker 03 It was reported that after David’s arrest in Texas, no one from the Canadian consulate ever contacted him. And even though his father, Jim Curtis, had spoken to consulate officials in New Jersey, no one contacted them after David’s arraignment either. One of the chief purposes of a consulate is to help citizens who have been detained outside of Canada, yet David was ignored. And his family’s anger only increased weeks later, when the judge sentenced David Curtis to the maximum for aggravated manslaughter—20 years in prison, with no chance of parole for 10.
58:50 Speaker 03 It was expected for the judge known as “never come home again” R. Noone. With that, he could then sentence Scott Franz for pleading guilty to first-degree murder. Scott’s defence lawyer had argued that, quote, “If David Curtis faces a maximum of 20 years with a minimum parole of 10, then certainly the less influential of the two, the less evil of the two, the one who came under the spell of David Curtis, the one who saved the state the time and expense of a trial, the one who cooperated in the presentation of the case against the co-defendant, shouldn’t get the same numbers.”
59:32 Speaker 03 Jar Jar known sentenced Scott Franz to 20 years in prison with no chance of parole for 10. It appeared to be the exact same sentence as he'd given David Curtis, but there was a big difference. David had received the maximum for aggravated manslaughter, yet Scott, who pleaded guilty to the much more serious crime of first degree murder, received the minimum sentence. It was his reward for testifying against his friend. In addition, Scott was sent to a youth detention centre in New Jersey to serve his sentence,
1:00:12 Speaker 03 a modern facility where he was given a clerical job and was allowed to have a stereo in his cell. But David remained at the overcrowded Monmouth County Jail, where he continued to sleep on a mat on a corridor floor and shared quarters with about 40 other inmates. David's Aunt Lorraine had come from Canada to support the family through the trial and told the Toronto Star that the injustice done to her nephew was shocking. Quote, "How is it that a Canadian youth can be invited into an American home where he is terrorised half out of his mind and then gets slapped with a 20-year sentence?"
1:00:56 Speaker 03 She added, quote, "We as a family are wondering why Scott invited David into that home." Always an avid writer, David had continued to write short stories, poems and letters to family members while he was in prison. Aunt Lorraine was one of the recipients. In one letter to her, he provided an update about how he was feeling. He wrote, quote, Perhaps you in Canada have been wondering about my emotional health with the trial, conviction and sentencing. Actually, I've been quite fine and not affected too deeply. About a week before the trial, I was overwrought.
1:01:39 Speaker 03 But one night, while I was sleeping in the isolation cell, I resolved several things. That if I got time, I would use it to advance my mind and not waste away or feel excessively depressed or do nothing. That when I emerged, I would have gained something. This whole experience has seemed unreal. Only once during the trial, when Scott testified, did it feel like I was personally involved and not simply an observer. I still have not accepted the reality and probably never will, though I continue to function within the context of the unreality. It is an extended dream that will one day end.
1:02:20 Speaker 03 And my life, so incredibly different from that of the dream, will resume.
1:02:27 Speaker 03 A few months after the trial, David was transferred to Borden Town Youth Correctional Centre in New Jersey, an older institution that used to be a prison farm, before becoming a medium-security reformatory. It was better than the Monmouth County Jail, but not by much.
1:02:49 Speaker 03 A flurry of appeals followed David Curtis's sentencing. The Curtis family began inundating the Canadian government with pleas to intervene in his case, or at least help get David transferred to a prison in Canada. It was difficult for them to visit him in New Jersey, and by some accounts, they drained their retirement savings to help David, spending more than $100,000. Soon, the story of David Curtis began to go the equivalent of viral for the 1980s. Every major newspaper in Canada began to take a closer look at the story, and investigative TV shows soon followed.
1:03:35 Speaker 03 In 1984, the local CBC Current Affairs show out of Halifax called Inquirer did a feature documentary on the story. Soon after, the local chapter of Amnesty International got involved and began to advise the Curtis family. CBC's The Fifth Estate and The Journal devoted segments to the case, focusing on the unfairness of the trial and how it was loaded against David Curtis, the shady plea bargain, and how Scott Franz had changed his story to presumably get a lesser prison sentence. Many of the stories examined the circumstances leading up to the crime
1:04:17 Speaker 03 and questioned why local police had ever allowed Alfred Pogge's to acquire all those guns in the first place, in light of the dozens and dozens of visits they made to that home to break up domestic disputes.
1:04:34 Speaker 03 David Curtis also finally began to speak for himself from prison, but only briefly. In a feature article by Michael Hanlon for the Toronto Star's Saturday Magazine, he was quoted saying: "I made the biggest mistake of my life. I got in over my head in that weird, violent house. And when it got as bad as it did, I should have come home immediately."
1:05:02 Speaker 03 David received an outpouring of letters and support from Canada. Hundreds of Canadians wrote letters to the New Jersey government. Fundraisers and candlelight vigils were held across the country. People wore special T-shirts that read "Free David Curtis." The first appeal was based on the judge's errors in instructing the jury and his failure to outline other verdict options. That appeal failed. So Jim and Alice Curtis took their case all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court with a new lawyer who put together a fresh argument. It was chiefly focused on the fact that the grisly murder of Alfred Pogge's
1:05:46 Speaker 03 should never have been brought up at David's trial in the first place, because it only further conflated the two crimes and prejudiced the jury. They were effectively left with the impression that if Scott was a murderer, then surely David was as well. Once again, the appeal failed. The New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
1:06:13 Speaker 03 And the Canadian government wasn't much help either. The newly-elected Conservative Party led by Brian Mulroney didn't think it was their place to intervene. After all the public uproar, External Affairs Minister Joe Clark had to give a statement to the media about it in February of 1985. He said, quote, "It is the view of this government that those court proceedings fully followed American law. It would be inappropriate for us to interfere in the judicial proceedings, as it would be for Canada to accept interference by the United States."
1:06:56 Speaker 03 The Curtis family turned again to the governor of New Jersey, begging for clemency. Again, they were denied. Their only hope now was a new state law that allowed for the international transfer of foreign prisoners.
1:07:13 Speaker 03 In 1986, New Jersey became a signatory to a treaty between the US and Canada that allowed for prisoner exchanges. But the prosecutors in Monmouth County, New Jersey vowed to fight any requests for David's transfer. They still saw him as the murderous mastermind behind the killings. And they knew that once he was back in Canada, he'd be eligible for parole much sooner than he would have been in the US. The sticking point for the prosecutors was always the fact that after Scott shot Alfred Pogge and David shot Rosemary, the teenagers fled the state together, dumped the bodies, and ran.
1:07:58 Speaker 03 Fight, flight, or freeze was one thing, but David's own supporters couldn't quite understand his actions either. In April of 1988, five years into his prison term, David Curtis gave another, brief prison interview to a Canadian reporter for "SOUTHAM NEWS", where he finally explained what he and Scott had been thinking when they took all this action.
1:08:26 Speaker 03 By this point, twenty-four years old, David described that day as a very traumatic situation. He was out of his depth and didn't know how to react. Quote, "We were trying in some way to make things the way they were, to put the bodies away and make things right in the house. We were trying to put it in our minds that it didn't happen. It's just that it didn't seem like flight. What I thought we were doing is that I was upset his mother was lying on the floor and Scott wanted to remove her. I liked her, she was a pleasant woman." When David was asked about the prosecution's case that he was the leader and meticulously
1:09:09 Speaker 03 planned out the events of that day, he scoffed, quote, "Some mastermind. It wasn't really well planned out, the way it turned out." He was asked to comment on speculation that Scott Franz had an alternative motive for inviting him to New Jersey to stay, that Scott effectively used him as part of his plan to rid himself of a family problem. David said he didn't buy it, and he also didn't blame Scott for turning against him and taking that plea deal, because, quote, "He was in a very difficult situation. He was facing thirty years and by doing what he did, he got ten years. He made a realistic choice.
1:09:54 Speaker 03 I don't see any point in saying I've been done wrong." David said he was still bothered about what happened that day. He believed he deserved to go to prison for it, although he felt he was only guilty of reckless manslaughter, not aggravated. Quote, "I'm going to eventually get out of jail, but Mrs. Pogge is dead. What happened to her is much more horrible than what has happened and can happen to me."
1:10:27 Speaker 03 In May of 1988, one month after that interview, the governor of New Jersey finally approved David Curtis's prison transfer. He was sent back to Canada, to a medium-security prison in Nova Scotia, where he'd be closer to his parents.
1:10:47 Speaker 03 By fall of 1989, the following year, he was out on full parole after spending almost seven years in prison. He was now 25 years old.
1:11:00 Speaker 03 At the time, David told The Toronto Star he'd been the victim of a vindictive state justice system and his own stupid mistakes. But in prison, he realised what was important in life and held no bitterness. He'd made good on the promises he'd made to his aunt Lorraine in that letter. When he was in prison in both the US and Canada, he had taken courses in psychology, philosophy and English literature, and he was now studying for a degree at a major university, majoring in physics.
1:11:40 Speaker 03 Two years after David Curtis was released from prison, a TV drama was broadcast about the case called Deadly Betrayal. Filmed in Halifax by a Canadian production company, the story was told from the perspective of the Curtis family, of David being invited to the Poggers home to stay and finding himself in the middle of an American horror story. The prosecutors and defence lawyers involved with the case in New Jersey described the movie as a great piece of entertainment that wasn't rooted in fact, and many complained about the way they had been portrayed in it.
1:12:21 Speaker 03 As for Scott Franz, he hit the headlines in spring of 1992, almost 10 years after the killings. Scott had escaped from prison, although “escape” wasn’t really the right way to describe it. By that point, the 28-year-old was living in a halfway house in New Jersey, very close to being released on full parole. But for some inexplicable reason, he and a fellow resident of the halfway house, a convicted burglar, walked off one day, and they didn’t come back. Two weeks later, an anonymous tip placed them all the way across the country in California,
1:13:04 Speaker 03 where, once again, Scott Franz was captured in a hotel room. There were never any answers about why Scott would take a risk like that when he was so close to having his freedom back. But a spokesperson with the correctional system insisted the two men would be returned to a secure facility, “someplace with walls or a fence”. They would also be facing escape charges with the possibility of additional years being added to their sentences.
1:13:38 Speaker 03 After that, there were only two more public updates about Scott Franz. According to one article, Scott was released on full parole four years later, in 1996. And it appears he was dead within a year, aged 33 years old. His cause of death is unknown, and there is no obituary to be found in the news archives, just a lone entry on ancestry.com.
1:14:11 Speaker 03 After David Curtis graduated from university, he went on to become a scientific researcher in academia. By all accounts, he faded away into a normal life, away from the headlines and the cameras.
1:14:28 Speaker 03 It appears that the last time he was quoted in the media was in 2002. By that point, it was 20 years after the horrific incident in New Jersey that set his life on a new course. David Curtis told the reporter that he'd moved on. Quote, "I just prefer to remain off the radar."
1:15:00 Speaker 03 Thanks for listening. As a reminder, some names have been changed. And if you happen to know or know of anyone involved with this story, please respect their privacy. This series was pieced together from extensive news archives from both Canada and the US, a court document, and the book titled Blood Not by journalist David Hayes, originally published in Canada under the title No Easy Answers. For the full list of resources and anything you want to know about the podcast, visit canadiantruecrime.ca. As always, we'll be posting some of the clippings and photos mentioned in this series on the Canadian True Crime Facebook and Instagram pages.
1:15:45 Speaker 03 Canadian True Crime donates monthly to those facing injustice. This month, we have donated to the Canadian Mental Health Association, who advocates and provides resources for the one in five people in Canada who have a mental illness. For more info, visit cmha.ca. Lisa Gabriel researched and wrote this episode. Additional research and writing was by me. Audio editing was by Crosby Audio and Eric Crosby voiced the disclaimer. Our senior producer is Lindsay Eldridge and Carol Weinberg is our script consultant. Narration and sound design was by me and the theme song was composed by We Talk of Dreams.
1:16:29 Speaker 03 I'll be back soon with another Canadian True Crime episode. See you then.
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