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Crime Story Episode 11: David Kushner

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The following episode contains difficult subject matter. Please take care while listening.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm Kathleen Goldhar. This is Crime Story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

SOUNDCLIP

DAVID KUSHNER: As one could imagine, it's just… it's a blur and it's chaos. I had this moment that I remembered, some of which I wasn't really sure whether they'd happened because I was so young. How much of what I remember is real And what does that mean if it's not?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: In 1973, David Kushner was four years old and living with his family in a suburb of Tampa, Florida. David was the youngest of three brothers. One morning, when John the middle brother was jumping on his bike to go for a spin, David asked for a favour. Would John please stop at the local 7-Eleven and pick up some of his favourite candy, Snappy Gator Gum. The store was a quick bike ride through a forest and John had made the journey many times. These were the days before Amber Alerts and locked doors when little kids roamed the streets on their own. John agreed and David watched his big brother cycle off. He didn't know it, but that would be the last time that he would see John alive. Eight days later, John's body was discovered in a shallow grave. He was 11. Decades later, David Kushner would write a memoir about his brother's murder and his family's response. He turned that memoir into a podcast called Alligator Candy.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: David Kushner, welcome and thanks so much for joining us.

DAVID KUSHNER: Sure. Happy to be here.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So there are a lot of people who would run from this, but you write a memoir and then you make a podcast. Why was it so important for you to look back at something so difficult?

DAVID KUSHNER: I mean, it was actually kind of more difficult not to write this story is how I looked at it. I mean, because it was just the central story of my life, you know, what happened with my family, What happened with my brother. It certainly was a big reason that I probably became a writer, which was because this was a story that I needed to figure out for myself and a story I needed to tell. And it just took a long time to get to that point. For me, it wasn't so much a hesitation to tell it because I had lived with it for so long. It was really more about, well, how? How do I do this? Like how can I do this in a way that I can live with and that I can stomach too? And what I mean by that is I didn't want it just to be about me wringing my hands over this thing that had happened. I needed to try to, you know, I'm a journalist. I wanted to think about while this is such a specific and bizarre thing to have happen to family, but how do I relate this to ordinary people? You know, what's this really about? And for me, what I kept coming back to was this question of how did my parents survive? Because that was always the first thing that everybody asked me ever since I was a kid. And then I realized as I became a parent myself, these are questions that became really more and more relevant and more just, you know, on my mind. And so that was… once I had that angle, that's kind of what I had at it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And what is really interesting about the podcast that you've done is there was an evolution to the way your parents coped. So can we just start early on? I don't want to go into the details of his death, but when he went missing, can you tell me about those first few days that John was missing and what were those first few days like with your family?

DAVID KUSHNER: I mean, you know, I'm comfortable talking about what happened, but like he basically… because I was four and he was 11, it was 1973, and he went on a Sunday morning to where a lot of the kids went, which was biking through the woods to a 7-Eleven and then didn't come back. And so, you know, at the time, in the early 70s, these kinds of things just didn't seem to happen. Or if they did, you didn't hear about them as much. It wasn’t the 24 hour news cycle. It wasn't… we weren't in that age where, you know, just pre-milk carton missing kids and all of that. So it was different. And in terms of how the family coped during this just nightmare, one of the things that I discovered or learned about or revisited was the extent to which the community really came out of the woodwork for us. And they just started to show up at our house and offering to help and organizing search parties. And those stories of how the community came together remain so powerful to me. And I've heard a lot of feedback, you know, since the book and the podcast come out from people who were there. But yeah, I mean, one of the things that I learned and that I believe is that there's this almost like reserved tank of support that I think is within a community and within an individual that sometimes you don't know it's even there until you need it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And do you remember sort of the way your parents communicated with you or didn't or your brother or your older brother, like just as a family, what was happening there?

DAVID KUSHNER: I mean, as one could imagine, it's just… it's a blur and it's chaos. But I think for me personally, you know, I had these moments that I remembered, some of which I wasn't really sure whether they'd happened because I was so young. And that also became just part of my own, I guess, personal kind of investigation was to kind of find out what did happen. You know, how much of what I remember is real and what does that mean if it's not? And part of those questions was actually trying to recreate that period of time through talking with other people who were there.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. And you also dive into how seriously the police took his disappearance and sort of the personal way in which they saw what was happening too.

DAVID KUSHNER: Yeah. I mean, and it was just an interesting kind of massive upheaval because my father was an anthropologist who was teaching at the local university in the early 70s. I mean, that was a lot of long haired hippie types. And then you had these central Florida police officers who not long before were, you know, there was a big Vietnam protest and they were maybe standing on the other side of the street from these protesters, and now they're all walking arms looking for my brother, you know, in the woods. And that was just profound. And there is a story I tell about one guy who was in our synagogue named Stan Rosenberg, who'd always wanted to be a cop, but his wife was more comfortable with him being like a real estate agent. But he befriended this sheriff and he really kind of was taken in under this officer’s wing. And at one point, Stan went to this local biker bar, which, you know, Tampa was really notorious for during this era in the early 70s. And, you know, I think there were a lot of like, you know, somewhat nerdy Jewish guys in glasses hanging out in this place. And he walked in and everyone kind of looked at him. You know, it's like the needle scratching. And then he explained what was going on in that, you know, my brother was missing and had disappeared in this patch of woods and they needed people to search. So, you know, and as he told it, the bartender kind of took a baseball bat out and slammed it on the counter and then told the bikers what was needed. And then the bikers just followed Stan out the door in a procession. And my father later in life had an affinity for bikers that I never really totally understood what was behind it because he wasn't a biker himself. And then he once told me a story about how he opened the door and, you know, there was one of these bikers who was there who was covered in mud. And they asked my dad for rougher ground to search. So those kinds of experiences, you know, you may feel very different from your neighbours, but man, they can really be there for you in ways you never can imagine. So all of that was kind of part of that experience in that week.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And in the end, the police actually figure out who killed John before they find his body. So how did that all unfold?

DAVID KUSHNER: I mean, it was basically, you know, this search had been going on for about eight days, seven or eight days. And my father had been going on the news asking for information. But, you know, had my dad not gone to the media, I don't know that we would have ever found out what happened because he finally did and a woman saw him on the news. And what ended up happening is that her husband made a drunken confession that he and this other kind of drifter had been out, you know, essentially hunting children and had been in this spot before by 7/11. And my brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then he was kidnapped and murdered. And fortunately, he really wasn't aware of what was happening. So he was spared that suffering, which I was always able to take solace in. But, you know, it was a nightmarish situation of what had happened. And the wife ultimately turned her husband in and the other guy. And they were found guilty and one was sentenced to death and the other is still serving life in prison. That was the resolution of it. But then that kind of just starts a whole other chapter, which is just how do you live?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How did you guys live with it after the resolution, as you say? Do you guys talk about it? Did you want to talk about it? Like how did that happen over those years?

DAVID KUSHNER: I think the grief, I mean, it's just everyone grieves in their own way, you know? And I think I wrote somewhere in the story that we were all cast out into our own orbit. You know, I just think it's so personal and idiosyncratic and depends on your age and your background and all of that. So, you know, I think each of us was just trying to do the best that we could. My parents, I think another one of the answers that I found as to how they lived was by kind of channeling their experience into what I would call social activism in the community. You know, my parents had been activists. My father had been in sit ins. You know, my mother was one of the first childbirth educators in the country, you know, really fighting for women's rights. So that was who they were anyway. And at the time my brother died, this was in an era where the breaking of the taboo around death and dying was really happening. It was sort of part of all of these counterculture movements. And you had Elie Wiesel writing Night. You had Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, who wrote this famous book, On Death and Dying, you know, about the stages of grief. This was all kind of circulating in the culture. And so my parents, you know, really out of just… it really started with my mom saying, bring me another mother. I got to talk to a mother. And then that led to a support group which they brought to Tampa called Compassionate Friends, which was for parents who had lost children. And that starts in our living room and that spreads from there. And so then they started having conferences and bringing in Elizabeth Kübler-Ross or bringing in Elie Wiesel and all of that. And, you know, I was just reading actually yesterday in The New York Times about depression among teenagers and just how helpful it is just to talk, how quantifiably positive it is for them to talk about their feelings, which like isn't rocket science. But people tend, you know, at least in this country, in the States, I don’t know how it is in Canada, but, you know, it's just kind of like, well, you got your two weeks or a week or so and people ask you how you're doing and then it’s kind of on to the next thing. So having a forum where this could be discussed and feelings could actually be talked about and shared and that it's not so stigmatized was, you know, I think helping others was a way of helping themselves. You know, my brother Andy went on to go to college and actually studied with Elie Wiesel. That was a way for him to explore some of that. And for me as the younger guy at the time, you know, I just kind of grew up with a lot of questions that I was… didn't want to ask because I didn't want to upset people by asking them. So that was problematic. But then ultimately, you know, what I kind of guess was like my first real act of journalism, I went to the library at the University of Tampa when I was about 13 or so and then started to look up the old newspapers and really for the first time just reading the story as it unfolded, because I only knew it through whatever memories I had or, you know, also through a lot of rumours. You know, there was a lot of chatter around town as to what happened, and I didn't necessarily know what was real.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I really loved hearing from your mom and your brother, but I really took a lot from your mom. I mean, I'm a mom. I have a boy. I was actually quite scared to listen to your podcast. I have a young… I have a son. And but hearing your mom talk about what a relief or sort of that connection you have to another mom who'd gone through the same thing was so poignant to me. Like, of course, like you said, you know that intellectually. But something about the way she spoke, something about her spirit, of how she said it really connected with me about, of course, that's what you need. Nobody else can understand it. To connect with someone like that is so important.

DAVID KUSHNER: Yeah. I mean, my mother, who had been teaching childbirth education at the time, before this happened and after, I would come home from school and see a living room full of pregnant women and my mother coaching them about how to have a prepared childbirth and how to have techniques and ways of breathing and keeping yourself calm. So I think all of that just sort of incredibly fed into her work around death and dying. So she went from kind of birth to death and dying, but it was similar in the sense of like bringing the community, working together, supporting each other to get through these experiences.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And maybe I'm wrong, David, but it felt like even though your mom was doing all this work for others, that you weren't able to talk to her and unburden yourself. Or were you? Did I… Did I… I felt like that took you a little bit longer and you had to go elsewhere to figure that out.

DAVID KUSHNER: That was really pretty much about me because it was really more of me being a kid. And I know exactly what I was thinking at the time, which is I didn't want to upset anybody. You know, I'd seen enough in my house that I didn't want to create that pain. And so, you know, look, in hindsight, you know, maybe I could have asked questions, but, you know, you do what you can. And so it was never a feeling that I wasn't allowed to or it was bad. It was just more my own, my own hang up. And also, you know, I think when you're a boy and you're 12 or 13, you don’t really talk to your parents about much of anything. So yeah. And, you know, my friends, we were also kids, you know, setting off fireworks and getting in trouble. So it's like it's not like we're talking about this either. So I guess that's why I was just like, I guess I'll go to the library. You know, there are answers there. And that's what really began for me unravelling what happened.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the places that you and your brother intersect is this podcast. You know, you interview him a lot. I enjoyed listening to the loving relationship that you guys have and hearing about how that developed over the years and how you supported each other. How did the experience of writing the memoir, but then I guess even more actively the podcast, affect your friendship with your brother?

DAVID KUSHNER: We've always been extremely close. And I think that it was just like, you know, we've been in this just hell together and got out of it. And, you know, we also just happened to get along really well. But we had different experiences. You know, we had very different experiences. I mean, my brother was 13, I was four, very radically different experiences. And you kind of realize like, you know, although we all grew up in the same family, it was a different family and a different, different reality. So that was… that took some reckoning. And there were always times that, you know, maybe I experienced something differently. But the other motivation that I had, aside from trying to understand how my parents survived, I think probably the biggest motivation I had was just to try to bring my brother back to life, because I think that I always felt kind of cheated because I was so young and I could count the memories I had on my hand. And in fact, I did that. And I went through them and I kind of wrote them down in the book and talked about it in the podcast. But then I kind of realized that, well, wait a minute, all of these other people have their own experiences of this person. And so I could go around and if I were to talk with them, they would be able to kind of give me a little piece of my brother and I could kind of put him back together like that. And so that was intense to really feel that. And so I did start doing that as a kid. I wasn't doing it with any real purpose other than trying to, you know, I just try to hear stories. But then for the book and for the podcast, that became a big part of it. And talking with my brother Andy, of course, opened up a whole dimension of just also what it was like to be brothers, you know, because I never stopped feeling like a brother, you know, even after my brother died. And even now, I think a big payoff of the podcast and all this is that I do have a much, much, much more vivid sense of who this person was. Actually, I work with this group here called Good Grief, which is in Jersey and works as grief support for kids and their families who've had loss. And they have this incredible program where they bring the kids in, and this is fresh after they've lost a parent or sibling or whatever, and they create these memory boxes about the person. And I was just like, man, that is such a great thing to do because that stuff is just invaluable. And I’ve kind of worked with kids to also just how can they write about the person, really just because I felt like I had to work so hard later to do that.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the key memories you go back to is the whole title, is the alligator candy, because your whole life, you have a memory of him going to get it. And then at one point, you're really questioning that because of a conversation with your dad, right? So can you sort of walk me through that a little bit?

DAVID KUSHNER: Yeah. I mean, I think that is another line of like inquiry in the book is memory, you know, and especially the memory of a child. Like what does… I know it was me, but I did kind of approach it also as a journalist too. Like what does a child remember? Because I think a lot of times, and I've seen this in my own life and other people, that sometimes, people will think their kid isn't aware of whatever it is that's happening. Oh, they don't know. They're out, you know, playing a video game. But in my own personal reporting from being a kid who was going through this at the time, like this was this question of how much of this memory. I had a memory of like being on the sidewalk with my brother and asking him for this very specific kind of candy that was Snappy Gator Gum, which was like the alligator head with candy inside of it. And I had all the dialogue, everything. I could just replay it at any moment. Only to find out from my dad later as a teenager that according to him, that hadn't happened at all because he had a different memory, which kind of threw me for a loop. And ultimately, I did come to find out specifically through talking with the police, that not only had I remembered it correctly, but I had given a deposition, which I later read. So that was pretty wild to read a statement that I'd given at four, which was just exactly what I remembered. So that was, you know, that was a big part of it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: But your dad tells you that that was wrong. Do you think he was trying to protect you or do you think his memory was off?

DAVID KUSHNER: No, I don't think he… my dad, I mean, my dad was a protector because he was my dad, but he wouldn't spare me of truth. I mean, he never was like that person. I think what it was is that he just didn't know. And all his life, he thought he… because maybe he… I know maybe he just didn't know that I had run outside and had that conversation. You know, that would make sense. He was sitting… he was doing other things, watching football or whatever on a Sunday. But at the time when he said it, it definitely confused me. And it would be years and years, if not decades, before I really found out that I was right.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And you really hear details. Like in the podcast, you speak to somebody who worked at the courts, but she was reading you some of the details, and the details are very hard to listen to. You warn us ahead of time. And but I can't imagine what it would be like for you. Like did you sometimes think, this is too much? I need to like walk away from this?

DAVID KUSHNER: No, because the things that I heard on the schoolyard were 15 times worse. And so I grew up in a kind of a horror that I was always being told about. And I'm not saying that like in a self-pitying way. I'm just honestly kind of reporting like that as a kid in that situation, when you go to school, you have other kids who run up to you and say all kinds of crazy shit because they don't know and they don't know what to believe. And so no, I mean, it was like really, it was a relief. I mean, of course, it was awful and brutal. It wasn't like far afield from what I did know. But for me, and I guess that's kind of how I've been as a journalist, I suppose, like I just kind of want to just barrel toward figuring out what happened. And whatever it is, like once I know that, that to me is preferable than not knowing.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And armed with that information, you hear that the man who was not executed, who was supposed to have been in jail his whole life, was up for parole. And you and your brother worked pretty hard to get that denied. Can you tell me that part of the story?

DAVID KUSHNER: Yeah. I mean, it was many years later. I was close to 30 or so or late 20s. And when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there's a letter from the Florida Parole Commission that this guy is up for parole, you know, And then we were faced with the decision of, well, we were invited to go down and say something. But who wanted to? Did we want to? What will we say? You know, for my parents, it was just too painful and too much, but Andy and I both wanted to go on our own accord. And then that began this process of now, I was already now a journalist. I'd been thinking my entire life about the story, about how to write about it maybe one day, but I hadn't been pursuing it and I just still had so many questions of my own that were unanswered, like did this memory exist, it was an opportunity to really do it. And so my brother and I both agreed that we wanted to hear a case file. Like we wanted to hear what the police reported and not rely on anyone else just to hear that side of it. So yeah. So then we called her and she read it to us, and that was intense. But, you know, knowing was kind of a relief because I didn't have to ask questions. I didn't have to imagine. Like, you know, and then to find out that, oh, my memory was… not only was my memory correct, but the thing that I remembered actually became a key piece of evidence. This thing, you know, this candy came into the story in a really impactful way that I didn't… I wasn't aware of.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: What do you mean by that, the candy piece?

DAVID KUSHNER: One of the perpetrators gave this candy to his own son.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The candy that you asked your brother to get you, right, The alligator candy.

DAVID KUSHNER: Yeah. You know, it's those kind of moments… You know, I think the thing is in these like life experiences that are so insane, sometimes, those tiny details that have nothing to do with the crime, you know, they're just almost banal in a way, like a father gives a son candy, but can carry so much weight. And that was certainly one of those moments for me. And then to just be going back to like my parents and all of that and the power of just speaking up or out to go to that hearing and to make a statement. We were really encouraged to talk about our personal pain, which was very uncomfortable. But like I, you know, we were on a mission. So I was like, okay, you want me to whatever, I'll do it, you know? So that's what we did. And it was heavy. It was emotional. I mean, not only was it emotional for us, but I will never forget looking at the parole commission and seeing one of them take his glasses off and wipes his… wiping tears from his eyes. I mean, it was just… this was one of those kind of stories. And another moment from the hearing which I'll never forget was when it ended and this giant Florida cop starts walking over to me. And I had been a teenager long enough in Florida to generally fear that kind of moment. But he came up to me. His eyes were red, and he was telling me that he does the same thing for his brother, you know, every few years. And so I think that the empathy, you can't help to just… you develop so much empathy, at least I did, just because realizing how so many people are dealing with this kind of thing and also just how everybody is dealing with loss and grief all the time. So that was, you know, that experience was very empowering. And in that, you know, answered a lot of questions that I had had.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And he was denied parole.

DAVID KUSHNER: Mm hmm.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I don't know how to ask this question because I think it's kind of a tough question, but it is something that popped into my mind. And you've probably been asked this before. So you as a journalist and but as the brother of somebody who was murdered have one man who's responsible, is executed. And you tell us that story without sort of any kind of conversation around the ethics of a state sponsored killing. And then there's a guy who has served a lot of time in prison, and maybe you've done stories on people who have. It's the conversation about the other side is like how long does somebody stay in prison for before they've served their time? Do you think that there's any way for you being the specific person you are to be able to sort of handle or think about those questions?

DAVID KUSHNER: Probably not. But I do think that in this situation, you had individuals who were still perceived as a threat to society. And I think that's the main thing that was going through the judicial system in just how they decided what to do. And just to be honest, like it's so… it almost feels like it's just beyond me. I think it's just… and I think it's because of, yeah, I'm too deep inside of this kind of thing, because I have been asked that and it's a difficult thing. But I think ultimately, the one thing I do believe and the one thing I guess I haven't like belaboured this in my own mind is that like, you know, listen, if people are a threat and somebody else… these guys were… had been out in this spot, there were other people who could have been victims. In fact, I ended up meeting one of them. You know, after my book came out, I got a letter from a woman, now a woman who was a girl who had encountered those same guys in the woods a couple of weeks before my brother. And it was true because I read her deposition prior to speaking with her. It was just absolutely bizarre. But, you know, only confirmed the fact that unfortunately, there are predatory people in the world who pose a risk to kids and pose them over a period of time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: The moment that I really remember about your father, it was a moment that I found so poignant, is when you tell us about the moment that the other killer was executed. It's just you and him sitting together and he looks at his watch and he tells you that it's done.

DAVID KUSHNER: I just think that there's a level of pain where you just… it's just too much. You know, it's just done. What are you going to say, you know, at that point? There's nothing to say. But that was… that experience did enable me to kind of move to a different part of processing, I guess, of this experience.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: So you mentioned earlier that you're a father now. What do you tell them about John?

DAVID KUSHNER: I mean, and this is… I think this is an important question. And, you know, I feel like even whatever hesitation I ever have around talking about all of this, I do, I guess out of a public service, honestly, like going back to what my parents did, I feel… I do feel a responsibility to address topics like this because there's this question about how much do you tell a kid? And it's so personal. And it's like it's really interesting because when I was a kid, my struggle was that I didn't know enough. You know, and I think that was out of a gent… like people were trying to spare me. But actually, I was the type of kid who needed to know and wanted to know. For me, I had to find that place with my own kids. You know, I had to find… like I was determined to never lie, but I was also sensitive to how and when do you unspool a narrative because it's a story that is too much at a certain age. So I think you just have to find that. But what I've… what I believe is to at least always be honest about it and then just think about it as a story that's going to evolve over time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That's great. Thank you. Well, I do feel like you did such a lovely job showing that evolution of the story with you and your family. So I appreciate the work. Thank you.

DAVID KUSHNER: No problem. Thanks for having me.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You've been listening to Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. We drop a new episode every Monday. You can get our next episode a week early on CBC Podcast's YouTube channel or by subscribing to the CBC Podcast’s true crime channel on Apple Podcasts. In addition to early access, subscribers to our true crime channel also listen ad free. Crime Story is written and hosted by me. Our producers are Alexis Green and Sarah Claydon. Sound Design by Graham MacDonald. Our senior producer is Geof Turner. Our video producer is Evan Aagard. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Executive producers are Cesil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is CBC Podcast’s senior manager, and Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts.

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Transcript: Crime Story, Episode 11

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