Episode 34. The shooting of Ralph Yarl

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having a typical day at 16. Your mother asks you to go pick up your siblings. But when you are told the wrong street by accident, what happens once you ring the doorbell becomes a national outrage. Join me as I examine the case of the shooting of Ralph Yarrow on this episode of True Crimes and Authors.

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Welcome to True Crime and Authors Podcast, where we bring two passions together. The show that gives new meaning to the old adage, truth is stranger than fiction. Here's your host, David McClam. What's going on everybody. Welcome to another episode of True Crime and Authors. Of course, I am your man, David McClam. Hey, if you guys haven't already, make sure you follow us on all of our social media.

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One link to a link tree will get you every link you need to have to the show. All right. Before we begin, let me give a shout out to my network, the deluxe edition network. We have now went to two podcasts of the month and they are history. I like to fill in the blank starts with the nef with Dawn Brody, where she's discussing a lot of history over there.

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and barrel age flicks where they're talking about movies. Also a big shout out to Ragnar who was a part of the barrel age flicks gang. He is the podcaster of the week. All right. So today's case is a heartbreaking one. And of course, unfortunately is going to deal with race. And as always,

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I'm gonna give you my honest opinions of it. You probably already heard about this. It's been all over the news for the last few days. So we're gonna talk about the shooting of Ralph Yarrow. If you don't know who Ralph Yarrow is, you'll find out here in a minute. Now I do want to point out that I am not remiss that around the same time,

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This also happened to another person who was a younger female named Kaylin Gillis. I was considering doing both Kaylin and Ralph's case together today, but I think that they need their own episode because each case is a little different. Each case deserves its own episode because I have my opinions on both. And you may see what the discrepancies are between

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the two. So I'll be bringing you Kaylin Gillis's case in two weeks because next week you get some authors. So in two weeks time you will hear about Kaylin Gillis. All right so let's jump in to this case. There is no Wikipedia for this because it is that new. So I am relying on news articles that I have been reading. This one here would be NBC News.

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I want to remind you guys of this and I say this every time I have to do a case that deals with race solely because I am a black male and The problem is is that everybody assumes I'm gonna jump on the race train just because I'm black So I want to remind you that I take a case I dissect it. I tear it apart I put it back together and I try to remove race in every element

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of the case until it is evident that there is evidence there that I can no longer remove race. So I wanted to put that out there before we start this case. So shout out to NBC News, which is one of the articles I'm using. I'll be going through several different articles and I will put all of the articles I use today in the show notes so you can go and check them out for yourselves. All right. So here is what we know and what happened. A black teenager.

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who was shot by a homeowner after ringing the wrong doorbell, is recovering and charges were filed Monday afternoon against a white man as calls for justice intensified in Kansas City, Missouri. Ralph Paul Yarrow, 16, was shot just before 10pm Thursday when he went to pick up his younger twin brothers from a friend's home, police said.

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instead of 115 terrorists and was shot twice after ringing the doorbell, his family's attorneys, Lee married and Ben Crump said. Now let me point this out. One to 15 street is basically, it looks like it's right across the block. It's very close to 115 terrorists. Well, what I've read his parents or whoever told him to pick up his brothers, mistakenly told him 115 street

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where he should have been at 115 Terrace, which again, like I say, very close on the map. It was like it could be like a block away. Now, whoever was inside took a little longer than he anticipated to respond. And so he just waited at the door.

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Merritt told NBC News on Monday, citing a formal statement that Ralph gave to law enforcement investigators from his hospital bed Friday. He heard rustling around going on in the house and then finally the door was open, the attorney said, and he was confronted by a man who told him, don't come back around here, and then he immediately fired his weapon. The teen was shot in the head.

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which cracked his skull and left him with a critical traumatic brain injury. While the teenager was still on the ground, the homeowner opened fire a second time, striking Ralph in the upper right arm. Ralph went to three houses before someone finally helped him. His aunt Faith Spoonmore wrote on a fundraising page for the teen's medical expenses. Let's talk about that for a minute.

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the race is gonna start coming in here and you're gonna see it. But let me kind of break that down. First of all, it says that he went to three houses before he got help. So for where it looks, the shooter lived in a predominantly white neighborhood. And I hate to say it, but it's true. When you see somebody in this day and age, he was black and he's been shot or injured, some people's first thought is, what crime did he commit?

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And we don't want nothing to do with this. Three houses where he's been shot in the head once, shot in the arm, bleeding everywhere. And I think it was the third house that told him to get on the ground and throw his arms up in the air.

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You can take that information and use it for what you like, but you see a man, a child, a woman, I don't care who it is, I don't care what color he or she is, if you don't see no present danger, ain't nobody running behind with a gun, I'm going out to help this person. You can clearly see the person is injured, which means that even if he did commit some crime, he's not in any state to do anything to you because he's bleeding from a bullet wound in his head and his arm.

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And maybe you want to help him out because you want the police to come and arrest him and put him in jail for whatever it is you think that he may have done.

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Now because of this, protests were held in Kansas City over the weekend with some saying the teens race played a role in his shooting. We'll come back to that because it gets more interesting. Police Chief Stacey Graves-Sunday said that while shooting did not appear to be racially motivated, she did recognize the racial components of this case. I want everyone to know that I am listening and I understand the concern we are receiving from the community. She added.

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Late Monday afternoon, Andrew Lester, 85, who is white, was charged with two felony counts in the shooting and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Let me fill in the parts that this news article does not tell you. There's another news article that breaks this down. I can't find out where it is, but let me fill in the blanks.

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who automatically comes out and goes, I don't think that the shooting was racially motivated. Again, this is something else that separates the racists because if the shoe was on the other foot, I guarantee you, they would have said that the black man shot the white dude because of some race or some other issue. But let's get into this. What if I was to tell you that when Ralph rung the doorbell,

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This 85 year old man immediately reached for his gun.

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Why are we reaching for guns under a bed, pillow, whatever, when somebody rings the doorbell? Don't you get packages at your house? Don't people just come by and ring to sell you some Girl Scout cookies? Not safe to ring people's doorbells apparently, but he grabbed his gun when he heard his doorbell ring. Let's further complicate this. There was three doors.

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or at least two doors, because I can't remember if there was a screen door or not, so we're just going to say for the sake of argument, there was two doors between Ralph and the shooter whose name is Lester.

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Lester comes to the door. He's 85, comes to the door, and he sees a black male standing outside. I'm gonna repeat myself, there's two doors, glass doors. At least there's glass in the frame of the door that separates Lester and Ralph. Lester decides to open the first door.

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and proceeds to shoot Ralph directly in the head.

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While Ralph is down bleeding from the gun room to his head, he proceeds to open the second door. And according to Ralph says, don't come around here no more. And he shoots him a second time. I can't make this up. Now I don't think it covers him in this article because I didn't see it, but let's go back to what Mr. Lester tried to tell the police of why he shot Ralph.

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Lester told the police that he just walked out of his bedroom, saw a black male who was trying to break into his house. He was shaking the screen door. He was in fear for his life, so he had no option but to shoot him. Let me point out what's wrong with that story. Now he says he rung the doorbell.

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but he was shaking the door handle as if he was trying to get in. People that I should be shooting everybody that comes in my door. I got FedEx people that comes up here, they ring the doorbell two, three times, and they pound on the door before they leave, and I know everybody else has experienced that. They come locking like they the police. Now, if I was Lester, that means I'm afraid of my life, and I'm gonna come to my door with a gun, and I'm gonna shoot you because I feel

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My door hint.

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Now from all reports, including some I think eyewitnesses other people, that is not true. Ralph himself, who is very much still alive by the grace of God, woke up and told the police, I never even touched the door handle. I just rung the doorbell and I stood there waiting for whoever is supposed to come to the door to give me my siblings. I didn't shake the door handle. I didn't try to get in. I posed no threat to.

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anybody that was behind those doors.

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The first problem here gang, regardless of color, is why are you grabbing for a gun in the first place when somebody's just ringing your doorbell? This should be the most alarming thing. My daughter doesn't do it anymore, but she was a Girl Scout until she aged out at 18, now 20, getting ready to go to college, but she went all the way around. They went boothin' and we walk around the neighborhood down here and she would knock on doors or ring bells to sell her Girl Scout cookies. Now we run into somebody like Lester,

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who just happens to be off his rocker that day, he can't deal with the fact that everyday people's gonna ring his doorbell from time to time. So he hears it, he grabs a gun, he comes out. Even our Girl Scouts ain't safe because they could have got shot up underneath what he's trying to say.

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So he further goes on that he had no choice but to shoot Ralph because of the fact that he was in fear for his life.

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I want to point this out again. There was two doors separating Lester and Ralph. If Lester is telling you the truth and he feared for his life,

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he could have stood his ground and he could have waited until somebody came in the house and then popped him. But at the same time, he could have went to the phone, called 911 and been like, hey, there's somebody outside my door and somebody trying to break in the house. I do have my gun. If they get through here, I'm gonna go ahead and shoot them, send somebody. Cause see in Missouri, they have stand your ground and they also have the castle law. Now,

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Just in layman's terms, the Castle Law, it covers a homeowner or anyone inside of a dwelling if a crime takes place in a house. So somebody breaks in, somebody comes and tries to shoot you in your house, whatever it is, if you're in fear for your life, you can shoot them under the Missouri Castle Law.

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It is the same as the stand your ground. The only difference is stand your ground covers you outside of your home and the castle law covers you inside of the home. Now I know this is not everywhere. I think Missouri probably adopted that law because there has been several different lawsuits that has been filed by people who's committed crimes. There's actually broken in people's houses, they got shot, they turned around, sued the homeowner and won the case.

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But you broke in their house, they had the right to shoot you. So I think that's one reason why Missouri has the Castle Law. So again, if Lester felt like his life was in danger, he had time to call the police. There's two doors in between him and this young man outside. I'm sure his phone was somewhere on there, one on his pocket. He could have called the police, said exactly what I said. Somebody trying to break in my house, come out here right now, I have my gun. If they make entry, I'm gonna shoot and I'm gonna sight.

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the Missouri Castle law that I have the right to do this because I'm in fear of my life. There was no fear. Zero. I have to take in consideration this man's age. And some of y'all may disagree with what I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna tell you what I'm about to say. I've lived this myself within family.

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Sometimes when you get a certain age, it's hard to change those spots. He's 85. I mean, he's lived through civil rights movement. That means he's at least born sometime in the 30s where black people had no rights at all back then or any other color. And we were pretty much imbeciles and we were the N words. And nobody in that era really associated with anybody outside of the white people.

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So you have to consider the age on this too as well before the question gets answered, was he or is he racist? According to Ralph Yarrow, yeah. Because he told him, don't come around here as he proceeded to shoot him a second time.

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However, don't believe me.

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His own grandson, even though he won't fully admit that it was a racial shooting, says that his grandfather's in the wrong and that he stopped hanging out with him because his grandfather started to change over time with right-wing ideology. Let me read you a little bit of this article that comes from NBC News. It's entitled, Grandson of Man Who Shot Ralph Yarrow Says, Fear and Conspiracies

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consume him. While family members of Andrew Lester do not believe he was explicitly motivated by race in the shooting of Yarrow, a black teenager, they say he must be held accountable. One of the grandchildren of Andrew Lester, the Kansas City homeowner who shot Ralph Yarrow after the black teenager had mistakenly gone to the wrong home, believes police should have acted sooner to arrest his grandfather.

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who he said has been overtaken by conspiracy theories in recent years.

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I am deeply saddened by what happened. It's a tragedy, and I believe the responsible party must be held accountable," Lester's grandson Clint Ludwig said Thursday in a text message. I blame KCPD for failing to act the day of, he said of the Kansas City Police Department, and am glad that the backlash to their inaction has led to charges. It is not easy to see someone I was close with make such a terrible mistake.

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but I will apply my convictions evenly and denounce what he's done in the strongest terms. Lukewick 28, a former public safety officer who lives in suburban Kansas City, said he grew up knowing that his grandfather was great and would spend time at his grandparents' home exploring their quiet, kid-friendly neighborhood, streets he himself found to be very familiar.

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He also went to say that he never really knew what his grandfather's social and political views were when he was younger, but said Lester had become consumed with watching conservative news outlets and following conspiracy theories built on misinformation. I'm gonna give you one of those conspiracy theories right now about black people. It's been around for ages. I'm 50 years old and I still have to live this one down because it's not true.

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that black people, especially men, is scary. We up to no good. Whenever you see us, you should run into your house because we may attack you. We're violent. We can't solve anything without violence. We either gotta shoot somebody, stab somebody, beat somebody down.

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These are theories, conspiracy otherwise, that has been around about us, the black male for years. And this is exactly what he tried to use further down. Because you say he just saw this big black dude at his door and he was afraid for his life. In the article, there's a picture of young Ralph Yarrow. Now my wife called me and read me this. I was like,

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Do you see a picture of the kid? And when I looked at the article, I'm like, this boy cannot be six foot. There's a picture of him standing in between his two siblings, his twin brothers that he went to pick up. That was probably taken on a different day. He looks like all about five foot. I'll give him eight, nine. Looks like he barely weighs a good 150 pounds. I mean, he's a very skinny kid.

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Now you may have somebody believe that if I showed up at your dough. Six foot four and a half. 320.

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This is not what Ralph Yarrow was. So what's going on now with that investigation and I'll tell you what he's picked up on and I'll tell you the other part of why Kansas City is in an uproar.

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So the status of investigation is as late Monday afternoon, Clay County, Missouri prosecutors filed two, two felony counts against the white homeowner, Andrew Lester, 85 assault in the first degree in armed criminal action. A warrant was issued for Lester's arrest for prosecuting attorney, Zachary Thompson, said Lester was not in custody. Thompson said there was a racial component to the shooting, but he didn't elaborate.

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I hope you heard that with your own ears. Prosecuting attorney Zachary Thompson, who is white, admitted that there was a racial component but he would not elaborate on it. Lester faces a maximum punishment of life in prison and the assault charge in three to 15 years for the alleged gun crime. Now, there has been updated charges since then. So let's hop over to the Kansas City Star.

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And I get a little bit of this article. It's titled, 84-year-old charged with now four felonies days after shooting of Kansas City teen Ralph Yarrow. An 84-year-old man has been charged in the shooting of 16-year-old Ralph Yarrow. Clay County Prosecutor Zachary Thompson announced late Monday afternoon, Andrew D. Lester faces charges of first degree assault and armed criminal action in the shooting Thursday in a Northland neighborhood. A warrant for his arrest issued Monday calls for him to be held on a 200-

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Thompson noted that the assault charge is a class A felony. If found guilty, Lester faces no less than 10 years and up to 30 years of life imprisonment. The teen was shot after knocking on the wrong door where he had been sent to pick up his younger twin brothers, his family has said, and the shooting has stoked national outrage with Vice President Kamala Harris as well as several celebrities weighing in.

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Now it sounds like the same ones, but according to this article, he was charged with four felonies. So even if they give him 10 years, he's 84. If he survived it, that's 94. About any sentence they give him would be probably a life sentence. He is a frail little man. He walked into court with the help of a cane and he appeared to be hunched over. However, the question has been stemmed around and he is really that hunched over

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How did he manage to stand straight up and shoot young Ralph directly in the head? Let's go a little bit down here before I tell you why I think Grace is playing another part of this. Kansas City police were through the weekend to build a solid case for prosecutors, Graves said Sunday. She said then that a formal statement from Yarle is forthcoming.

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as he recovers, but that investigators have recovered a firearm from the scene that is being held as evidence. Authorities also will consider whether the suspect was protected by Missouri's Stand or Ground law, the chief said. The law says a would-be shooter defending life or property does not have to retreat before taking violent action. As demands for accountability build, Mayor Quentin Lucas

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has promised a thorough investigation and appropriate action. We will make sure we do all we can to be fair, to make sure we're as expeditious as possible, and more than anything to make sure that everyone, no matter their background, knows that justice can be obtained here in Kansas City," he said.

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So I can tell you right now that the stand your ground law will not apply to him. I've been watching news updates about this all week and they had three different prosecutors. All of them was white, all of them outraged by this. And they said that the stand your ground and the castle law does not apply here because he was not defending his life or his property.

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Ralph wasn't tearing nothing up. Ralph didn't have a baseball bat going to the pillars and taking out the brick. Ralph didn't try to break into the door. Ralph never saw the dude until he came to the door and he had no way of putting his hands on him. All of those things, at least some of them has to be present for staying your ground or the council law to take effect. And I think that they're saying more of the stand your ground because

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Technically, Ralph was outside of the house. He got shot on the porch and somehow, I think he ended up in the yard after he got shot. Here is why everybody is really screaming Ray. So besides all of that, besides the guy trying to lie to say that Ralph tried to break in his house, which he didn't, besides answering the questions of why did he have a gun in the first place, according to Ralph, he says, don't come around here. He could not get help by anybody in the neighborhood and was told to throw himself on the ground.

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and throw his hands up while he's bleeding and dying.

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Here's the other reason why people's yelling race. Now, even though we're going to do her case at the beginning, I told you about a girl named Kaylin Gillis. Kaylin also sadly got shot when her and a group of her friends turned into the wrong driveway. Here's where the difference between those two, and I won't go too deep in the case, I'm gonna give you the whole case in two weeks, but the guy accused of shooting.

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Kaelin Gillis is in jail right now.

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The judge denied him bail and he's in jail right now where Lester who shot an innocent black boy on his porch has been released out of jail on a $200,000 bond.

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Now I know, let me go over all the reasons why possibly they let Lester get out. Cause believe me, people have been playing devils advocate with me on this, and I still don't buy it. Well, let me give you theories. Well, maybe they let Lester out because Ralph didn't die.

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Nobody knew the condition that Ralph was in, I think for a couple of days, he was hit and miss. He could have died, he could have lived. He did live, thank God. But in Kaylin Gillis' case, she died. So people say, well, maybe they let Lester out because they charged a dude that did this to Kaylin with murder now. So yeah, he ain't getting out. I won't buy it.

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the judge up until they found out. Cause I'm not sure, I'm still digging into it. I'm not sure if Kaylin died on the scene, died right away, or the dude was in jail when she died. But in any case, that judge also.

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have the right to let Kaelin's murderer go away on bail as well. But he said, no, sir, you just shot an innocent girl. Your butt is going to jail and you're gonna sit there until it's time for us to do your trial. The second reason I've heard why they probably let him out is because of his age.

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I really don't care how old he is. I mean, I understand he's not a serial killer, nothing like that. But have you seen Joseph James D'Angelo Jr., better known to the world as the Golden State Killer? He was all hunched over and sitting in a chair and looked like he needed to be on ventilators, and he's 77. Yeah, his butt right now, right now is sitting in jail.

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Don't care how old you are, if you did the crime, you should be able to do the time. So then the question I ask you guys is this, and this is what you really have to think about. If the shoes was reversed, if a white male went up to this same door, except for the house now was owned by a black man, does the same thing as Ralph, just rings the doorbell,

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and he sits there and waits. Why for whatever unknown reason, the black dude decides my doorbell went off so it was a good idea to go ahead and grab my gun. Black man walks to the door. Two doors, separates him and the young white man outside. But he decides to open glass door number one, say don't come around here no more, pop him in the head.

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Then he opens glass door number two, shot him dead in the arm. Now does this black dude go to jail and stay there or does he get out on $200,000 bond?

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I'll tell you that he would never see the light of day. He would be hung in jail. Prosecutors would have been swarming all over this. There'd have been 50 different reasons why this man is so violent that he could never be released into society again, even at 85 or 84. I hate to say it, but yes, this case would have been very, very, very much different if this would have been a black shooter

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and a white teenager. Kudos goes out to the judge that put Kailin Gillis's murderer in jail and kept him there. That's where he should be. This is not time for privilege. If you did this crime, you need to pay, regardless of your color. But unfortunately, this stuff just keeps happening and keeps happening and keeps happening.

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And we keep having to talk about it because it is something that is very much going on in the world. You have all these groups running around here talking about that they are getting murdered every day and they fear for their lives. Everybody from the LGBTQ plus community over the song, white people that lives in black neighborhoods. But I am here to tell you there is nobody dying more and at more alarming rates than those of us who wears.

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the skin of being a black person. We can't even go to somebody's house, make a mistake and go to the wrong house, ring the doorbell without getting shot.

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Now let me tell you a couple of things about young Ralph Yarrow because I want to go ahead and debunk this before anybody starts saying anything. Because when I did my one on George Floyd, oh my gosh, people came out of the world where he was a bad human being and he did drugs and he did all of this. And why are we talking about him? Because he's such a bad person. So what are you trying to tell me then? That every white drug addict, every Hispanic drug addict, every Asian drug addict, every Mexican drug addict?

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every other person in the world that's done drugs and done bad things and committed robberies, they all deserve to die too? Because that's what I was told about George Floyd, he deserved to die because he was a trash human. Nobody deserves to die, especially not under the circumstances that George Floyd died. So I want to point out first and foremost that Ralph Yarrow was an outstanding 16 year old student.

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He was the leader in his band. I believe he played saxophone in high school. And for those of y'all that's with me, cause I'm a band kid myself, proudly, that means that he was first chair of his section. That means that he was in control of his section. That's the job that you don't get from your band leader unless you are a trustworthy person that can control a whole group of saxophonists. Usually only goes out to the top student in that class that can get it done.

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mild mannered church going young man never gave his parents any problems. Everybody knew around the neighborhood. So young Ralph was a good man. So let's throw that out before anybody says, well, he could have been doing something that was wrong to get shot. This should have never happened ever. So on my quest to remove racism from this and I've tried every way possible. Okay. I've looked at the theories of maybe dude was scared.

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Okay, I've looked at maybe because of his age, he mistakenly thought that somebody was coming through his door and it was an accident. None of that made sense to me after I finished reading the article with there being two doors in between them and the things that he said. You can disagree with me, but from where I'm sitting, this is 100% about race. Just the statement don't come around here makes that known. The lies that he tried to use.

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to cover it up makes that known. The police has come out and said directly that Ralph never touched the door. And before anybody says, well, how do they know? Well, you know, they can do things called running fingerprints on the door handle.

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Ralph was not trying to break into his house that day. He was waiting for him to answer the door to give him his brothers that he thought was there, and they were at the wrong house.

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You have to feel for his parents or whoever told him by accident to go to the wrong location that exactly has the exact same street address, just that one is 115th Street instead of 115th Terrace. 115th Terrace is where Ralph was supposed to be. And if he would have made it to 115th Terrace, he probably would not have been shot.

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We need to start treating each other like we want to be treated. I don't know what more my race has to do to prove that we belong here.

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We've had a black president, which is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime at all. My mother lived to see that. I was very grateful for that. Nonetheless, did I ever think that we would ever see a black vice president that just happens to also be female in my same lifetime?

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America could not get along without African Americans. We built this whole country, including the White House that a Black man was never supposed to live in.

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white women, black women, Mexican women, no matter what woman you are, you could not do your hair if it wasn't for the invention of a black man named George Washington Carver that loved the peanut and found all these thousands of ways to use the peanut and the peanut gel and the shell and everything else, you couldn't do it.

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When does these shootings stop? When does a black person stop being afraid that if they just accidentally knock on the wrong door in the wrong neighborhood, by mistake, they may get shot? If anybody knows me, they already know this about me, I have no qualms about it. I've been married for 20 years. I've been with the same woman for 22 years. Between the two of us, we have six children, seven grandkids.

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And she's white.

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And she has the exact same outrage because of the little tent that my kids have in their skin, we both are still afraid that this happens to them because they are still very much a black person in the world. Nobody calls my kids mix. Nobody tells says your kids is half white. They look at them and they're instantaneously a black person.

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The fear that I have. My son has already gotten to altercations that he didn't start. I have a video to prove that. He's gotten concussions from school because of things of a racial nature. I've had to go off on school boards because of it. We had a school here in the school district several years ago that decided it was funny to bring a noose and send a picture around. This stuff has got to stop. As soon as racism stops.

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you will see everybody living more peacefully. And I say racism as a whole, that is across the board. Because there are some black people that's racist too. We just never hear about the black people just uprising and shooting white people like we do on the reverse side of that. Maybe because they know they were automatically put in jail for life at this point.

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Ralph is recovering. He's at home right now with his family. He is ambulent and he is able to communicate right now. And his family says it is a true miracle that he even survived. Ralph should be dead right now. The bullet to the head should have took him out of here. That just shows that God was not ready for Ralph Yarrow yet. Ralph still has things.

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that he needs to do on this earth before it's time for him to depart this world. He's too young for that. He's 16. He still has his whole life in front of him. All his dreams, all his hopes, hopefully he can still take care of that.

42:09
They set up a goal for me for Ralph. They were asking for $2.5 million. That was the goal. And before everybody says, oh my gosh, they're being greedy and they're trying to profit off of him getting shot. Okay, let me just tell you, you know anything about healthcare, 2.5 million, depending on what he has to go through for the next several years or his whole life, ain't a lot of money.

42:33
If he has to go through physical therapy for his whole life, if he has an issue with his spine, if he got an issue with his head, if he's gotta go to chiropractic to straighten that out, if he has to go to several different specialists, man, we start getting into the hundreds of thousands of dollars real quick.

42:50
Just to further what I was telling you about what people say about Ralph, let me read you this little bit of excerpt that came from his GoFundMe. Says, Ralph Paul Yarle is a fantastic kid. And I'm not just saying this because he is my nephew. He is a member of the Technology Student Association and Science Olympia team in the jazz and competition band. He is a section leader in the marching band, a scholar, and one of the top bass clarinet players in Missouri.

43:21
He recently earned Missouri All-State Band recognition with an honorable mention. He plays multiple instruments in the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra. He is a 2022 Missouri Scholar Academy alumni. Ralph can often be found with a musical instrument. He loves them all. Last summer, Ralph attended Missouri Scholars Academy, where he got a full college life experience.

43:48
His goal is to attend Texas A&M to major in chemical engineering. When asked how he plans to get into this university, he said, well, if they have a scholarship for music or academics, I know I can get it. Ralph's teacher and friends describe him as a kind soul, quiet, friendly, well-mannered, always willing to help, super smart, and a musical genius. There you go. From people that know him.

44:18
Kid smart, I hope he recovers. Because if he don't need all that money, they say whatever money he don't need, they're gonna use that for his tuition at Texas A&M. And I'm gonna tell you how much he got up to, I'm gonna drop a few ducats up in here, because I wanna see this young man succeed. I wanna see him look back at Lester one day and say, you know what, you tried to take me out of here, but here I am standing on my own two feet. I made it to college. I got my degrees.

44:46
You didn't do anything but stop me for a moment, but you didn't stop me forever. 2.5 million is what they asked for. As of this recording, they have $3,446,060 that has been raised for him. And the fund is still going on. It's not over yet. That's out of 92.2 thousand donations. And his top donation was $15,000

45:16
I'm an Ellen Daniels. That's only case one that got me outraged. Two weeks from now, you're hearing me talk about Kaylin Gillis. I'm outraged about that one too. That one should never happened either. Only difference here is that she was white and the guy that shot her was white. Shouldn't matter. But I'm outraged about that one too, because now our teens can't even turn around on a driveway without somebody popping off a gun. If you are as old

45:46
As Lester at 85, it is my belief that nobody that old should have a gun. I'm sorry. My father-in-law lived with us until the time that he died. He even stopped driving by the time he turned about 85 is 86. Cause his vision was starting to go and he couldn't really see at night. So we carted him and drove him everywhere. He needed to go. He didn't have any guns. Only thing he was armed with, with a cell phone. And some days we had to take that because all the people that, that

46:16
love to scam older people, oh, they was hitting them. And we caught him a couple of times, giving out his card and we were like, you can't be doing that because these people are scamming you. That was about as dangerous as my father-in-law was before he passed about two years ago.

46:32
So in closing, I tried guys. I'm very passionate about these cases. Like I'm passionate about all the true crime cases. This is not the case that I was looking to do. The other case that I am looking to do, which I won't tell you what that is. I will just tell you this, that it is also a very controversial one. I will be doing that one here soon. So about a couple of weeks after Kailin McGillis case, then I would be doing the case in which I was going to do this week.

47:01
In closing, everybody, show everybody some love, dude. It should not matter what color that we are. It is still sad that in 2023, after everything that everybody has been through to try to obtain equal rights for everybody from black people, all the way down to some very famous or prominent white people, to the white people that sits on NAACP. I have Mexican friends. I have Asian friends that are all a part of the clergy or all a part of legislature.

47:30
They're calling for the same thing at the end of the day, no matter what color you are, no matter what you say you identify as, no matter what you do to your bodies. If you try to make yourself look lighter or whatever you do, or you try to make yourself look darker, whatever it is you're doing, at the very end of the day, under all of that, there is still one factor.

48:01
that still remains. And that factor is that we are all still human people. All right, guys, I thank you for tuning in with me on this one. I know it was heavy. I know I was very passionate about it. We gotta stop this. We got young kids now getting into this. We've got young girls going out having times with their friends doing this. So we just got to be better as humans all around.

48:30
and put an end to this. So let me tell you some things that's coming up and then I'll tell you who you're gonna look forward to hearing from next week.

48:43
So I have some projects in the works. I cannot tell you where all of them are, but I can share one with you right now. But before I do, I do wanna point out that we are coming to the end of season one, and I wanna let you guys know what that looks like.

49:03
So season one is gonna end at some point in June. I haven't figured out that date yet, but it's coming up. And then we will begin again for season two in the fall in September. So during my time off, I will spend some time with my family and I will be shooting interviews for my next season from authors and whoever else is coming on the show. The one thing you guys should understand is this show is a long production. So if you ever listened to some of the episodes,

49:33
Well, his taglines at the end sound a little bit different. Well, because these people was probably shot in the early stages of the show when I was still trying to hone all that in. So for instance, the show came out in September of 2022. I started shooting at the end of July into August, but just keep in mind, season one will end in June. This would be a great time that if you are missing any episodes, you want to go back and listen to them.

50:02
then you can do that while we on hiatus for a couple of months. All right, so my project that I'm working on, the one that I can tell you about is I'm about to add another tag to my name, that of being an author. I'm in the process right now of writing my first book. My book will be on podcasting. I've done podcasting now for almost five years, and I think that I have built up enough knowledge to write a book on it.

50:32
and let people know how to podcast correctly the first time. I came up with this idea because I got tired of watching YouTube videos and other outlets telling people how to start podcasting and I was cringing because of the way that they were telling people how to start podcasting, but never giving them the truth of if you started on your phone, that file may not be suitable all the way down to how do you actually edit a podcast? Or what is it like to market?

51:01
So I'm gonna talk about all of that in my upcoming book. I don't have a title for it yet, but wish your boy luck, I'm writing it right now, and hopefully it'll be done sometime between the fall and the beginning of 2024, which is what I'm shooting for.

51:23
Alright so next week you're gonna hear from author Dane Cobain. He is the author of a book called Meet. Very interesting book. You want to tune in for that one so you can understand what that book is all about. Then I'm gonna give you a second author. We're gonna talk to Danny R. Smith. He is a retired homicide investigator and he wrote his book Nothing

51:53
which is his memoir. We're gonna talk all about that with him. You definitely don't want to miss that. And then you're gonna hear from an extraordinary person and this person is definitely extraordinary. Her name is Dr. Victoria Kure. If you ever want to see what a courageous woman looked like, she's it. Dr. Kure has penned a book called Who Kicked First?

52:22
You can pretty much figure out what that is about. We're gonna go into deep detail with her about her life, some of the physical abuse that she suffered on that episode. You don't wanna miss that one. If you want a story of being courageous and living your life outside of being abused, you definitely wanna tune in for Dr. Victoria Correa.

52:49
Alright guys, once again, I thank you for tuning in to this one. I'm glad you hung in there with me. If you want to send me your opinions of what you think of this case, truecommentarthas.com always go ahead and just drop me a line there. I read everything there myself. Hit me up on any of the social medias. I will respond. You can also go to our Facebook group, which you get all that stuff right in the show notes and you can post your opinions there. All right. I hope everybody out there is being safe.

53:17
I hope everybody out there is being good to yourself and each other. And always remember, always stay humble. An act of kindness can make someone's day. A little love and compassion goes a long way. And this is the podcast where two passions becomes one. I'll talk to you guys on the next one. Thank you for listening to true crime and authors. Don't forget to rate.

53:46
comment and subscribe. Join us on social media, on Facebook at True Crime and Authors, on Twitter at Authors True, on YouTube and TikTok at True Crime and Authors, and email at truecrimeandauthors at gmail.com. Cover art and logo designed by Dazzling underscore Ray from Fiverr. Sound mixing and editing by David McClam. Intro script by Sophie Wilde from Fiverr. And I'm the voice guy.

54:15
your imaging guy from Fiverr. See you next time on True Crime and Authors.