I recently caught up with Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer Bill Lee at the West Newton Theatre in West Newton, Mass., where he promoted the independent baseball film, Eephus, in which he stars as himself.

    Lee, a left-handed pitcher, is famous for developing the Leephus pitch, a variety of the Eephus pitch.  He used the Leephus pitch in the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, which many consider the best match-up ever.

    Lee was on the roster for ten years with the Red Sox and later with the Montreal Expos.  It was clear to me he never tires of the game.  He still plays on various teams, including the lively exhibition team, the Savannah Bananas.

  Although Bill Lee IS baseball, he is so much more.  He makes maple syrup and logs wood on his New England farm, which is manufactured into professional baseball bats in a factory in Massachusetts.
    I found him witty, engaging, and relentlessly kind.  He told me he regularly goes around Vermont picking up trash off the ground.  He is one with Mother Earth.

    Meeting with Lee was a fun way to spend a lazy Sunday morning.  I am honored to present to you this conversation with Bill Lee.

I caught up recently with Carson Lund, the director and co-writer of the independent film Eephus, and a New England native who grew up in New Hampshire.  Carson, a cinematographer and film editor, holds a BA in Film Production from Emerson College in Boston.  In an impromptu chat at the Dedham Community Theatre in Dedham, Massachusetts, I quickly learned that an “eephus” is a pitch rarely used in baseball but carries a significant metaphorical meaning in the 98-minute film.  Eephus is Lund’s first major film project; it premiered in 2024 at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, a testament to its high-quality emotional impact.  The film was released in the United States on March 7th, 2025.
Set in the 1990s, Eephus is a comedy-drama about an amateur New England baseball league in a small town in central Massachusetts (it was filmed at Soldier Field in Douglas, MA).  The Adler’s Paint baseball team faces the Riverdogs in one last game before their ballfield is demolished to make room for a new school.  The film stars Keith William Richards (“Phil” in the 2019’s Uncut Gems) in his first lead role.  Boston Red Sox pitching legend Bill “Spaceman” Lee appears as Lee.
Eephus has garnered rave reviews:  100% on Rotten Tomatoes, 83 on Metacritic, and 7.9 on IMDB.com.  You don’t need to be a baseball fan to love this cinematic gem, as the real star of the film is the nostalgic and humorous portrayal of an essential part of small-town life in bygone New England.

Sam LaGrassa’s Deli, situated just off the Freedom Trail, is an excellent spot to refuel during your walking tour of Boston.  Since 1968, this family-operated sandwich mecca has been piling the meats high.  Hats off to the Rumanian pastrami & Swiss on light rye.  Honorable mention to the pickles.  Sure, LaGrassa’s swarms with locals at lunchtime so you know it’s good, but don’t be put off – the line moves quickly.
Each sandwich can easily feed to adult appetites.  Leave room for the 7-layer bar for dessert.  Vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options are available.  It’s pricey but worth it!  Open Monday through Friday, 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Closed on weekends.  Parking:  Forget about it.
 

Creative podcasters welcome the chance to spread their wings and try something new. After a very successful series of “true crime” podcasts, Diane Godfrey is now pursuing her passion for sharing stories about the people, places and things she loves about her fair City of Boston. We talk about the adventure Diane is about to begin which will have her out and about at local restaurants, cultural landmarks and interviewing fascinating people, including celebrities, who make Boston what it is, “The Hub of the Universe.” You’re invited to come along for the ride!

We’re going “off road” to talk again with the writer Joseph P. O’Donnell. He is the author of the successful 2022 memoir of E. Steven Sachs, “Living On the Fringe of the Mob”, which we talked about on February 5, 2023. Joseph’s latest project was to put down on paper the gripping true story told to him by Daniel Kolmann, a gifted young athlete born in 1948 in Communist-occupied Czechoslovakia. Daniel was removed from his family at age twelve and forced to live in a Russian-controlled sports camp where he was trained for six hours a day, seven days a week to be a soccer star, and allowed to see his parents only once a month. As Daniel grew up, his yearning for freedom led to a nail-biting, death-defying escape. Daniel told his exciting life story to Joseph, who captured it in “ Run for My Life”, published this past February. We will talk with Joseph about his craft and about the crimes of the Communist regime that trampled over human rights with impunity.

The fascinating and fearless best-selling author Jillian Lauren joins me to discuss her upcoming true-crime book, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer (due out July 18, 2023). Before Samuel Little died in 2020, he confessed to having murdered 93 people, mostly women, between 1970 and 2005. Jillian was determined to give a voice many of his victims and so fostered a personal relationship with him to get material for this book.
She is a candid and engaging guest. I first encountered Jillian by viewing her 2014 TEDx talk on adoption and was immediately hooked. Jillian is also the author of Everything You Ever Wanted, Pretty, and my personal favorite, Some Girls: My Life Inside a Harem, where she recounts her time in a harem as the girlfriend of the brother of the Sultan of Brunei. Jillian is married to Weezer bassist Scott Shriner. They live in Los Angeles with two adopted sons, one from Ethiopia and one from a foster-to-adopt program.
F-Bomb Warning: this episode contains expletives but we decided to keep them in the final cut as they are true to Jillian’s expressive delivery.

Meet Bill Powers, the Retired Massachusetts State Police commander of the Detective Unit for Middlesex District Attorney’s Office. Bill guides us through every step of a truly bizarre murder investigation he recounts in his book, When the Smoke Cleared, A Murder Mystery in Malden Massachusetts. Powers and his colleagues knew someone had been murdered, but who? Where was the body? Who are the suspects? What was the motive? And where was the murder weapon? Against all odds, Powers and his team put the puzzle together to bring justice for the July, 2000, brutal murder of teenage runaway Kelly Hancock and her family in Malden, MA.

Bonanno. Gambino. Colombo. Anyone familiar with the New York Mafia from the 1960s until the early 2000s will instantly recognize those notorious names.
E. Steven Sachs was the lone Jewish kid growing up in a rough-and-tumble Brooklyn neighborhood in the 1960s among neighbors and playmates who would become members of the NY organized crime families. Steve gives us the reality, not the romanticized Hollywood version, of being an outsider who nonetheless was intimately acquainted with and forged lifelong friendships with many New York mobsters.
The bedrock principles of these friendships were loyalty and trust, principles which Steve never broke. He was never asked to do anything illegal, nor did he ever commit any crime. He flourished in the meat packing industry for many years and at 82 years old decided to recount his riveting true story. He reached out to Joe O’Donnell, a writer whose book Deadly Codes was the basis for the star character, Gallagher, in the 2018 movie “Bent”. The result of their collaboration is the 2022 book, “Living on the Fringe of the Mob.”
Listen in as Joe and Steve tell us how they got together to create this sensational mob tell-all and what it was really like to live on the periphery of the mob.

The Power of Crowds: Bob Ruff’s Truth & Justice Podcast
Bob Ruff hosts Truth & Justice, the popular crowd-sourced podcast now in its twelfth season, where he and his followers seek truth and justice for the wrongly convicted.
Each season Bob asks his listeners to help him work on a new case of a potential wrongful conviction. They comb through the details in real time, hoping to discover a new angle or to re-interpret piece of evidence that the initial investigation may have missed or got wrong. Bob is adept at bringing to light new facts that just don’t add up.
Although Bob has no formal law enforcement training, he’s all in. He’s a former fire chief and arson investigator who quit his job to devote all his working hours to this podcast and to Crime Binge, a second podcast where he interviews up-and-coming true crime podcasters. Bob created Crime Binge because he believes there’s plenty of room at the table for everybody in the competitive genre of true crime podcasts and isn’t seeking to hog the limelight.
In 2018 he appeared on ABC’s award-winning newsmagazine “20/20” to discuss Sandy Melgar’s controversial conviction in Texas for killing her husband. He also appeared in 2020 in a four-part docuseries on the Oxygen channel entitled “The Forgotten West Memphis Three” which addressed a notorious cold case, the 1993 murders of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.
Listen in as Bob explains to Diane and Jordan how he conducts these investigations and what drove him to enter the world of true-crime podcasts.

The Honorable Thomas A. Connors was appointed to the Massachusetts District Court by Governor William Weld in 1995. In 2004 he was appointed to the Superior Court Bench of Massachusetts by Governor Mitt Romney. As an attorney, he had built an impressive career in a solo practice that handled everything from real estate closings to murder cases. Judge Connors shares what prompted him to attend Boston College Law School and why he ultimately gravitated to the criminal side of law. His intellect, humor, and candor shine as he discusses the judiciary and some of the “hottest” topics in the courthouse, for example, why there is no WiFi and why (per feedback from many disgruntled jurors) the vending machines offer only “junk”. Judge Connors retired in 2020 after serving for many years as the Regional Administrative Justice in Norfolk County. He has kept busy by continuing to serve the community: in 2021 he was named to the Board of Directors for The English High School Alumni Association in Jamaica Plain, his alma mater, and to the Advisory Panel of the Technical Pathways Program, one of the Boston Public Schools’ most exciting programs to prepare students to be leaders. Judge Connors also serves on the Medfield Historical Society.

A 50-year-old East Boston woman was the mastermind behind a human trafficking operation that forced women into prostitution in Massachusetts. Ramona Hernandez and her husband, Rafael Henriquez, earned the dubious distinction of being the first individuals charged under the state’s new anti-trafficking law. The couple lured women into their net and then shipped them to Massachusetts to be victimized as prostitutes. Law enforcement likened the sex ring to a pizza delivery business: Rafael would deliver the women to customers’ homes in the greater Boston area and wait outside in his green Toyota Corolla while the 15-minute “house call” took place. Their victims were forced to service as many as 15 customers a day. Their scheme came crashing down when multiple law agencies cooperated in fielding “Operation Persistent Rain”, a months-long investigation that resulted in arrests in March 2012.

With all the grimness that occurs in a courthouse, it’s no wonder that sometimes comic relief is on the docket. Diane reveals to Jordan the lighter side of working in the halls of justice, including antics by court officers, a rogue lawyer’s “gymnastics”, odd encounters, and how a bit of levity can help employees cope with the gravity of their work.

On February 5, 2015, a bitterly cold morning in the seaside town of Bourne, Massachusetts, a murder-suicide plan was set in motion. A 31-year old Coast Guard Petty Officer, Adrian Loya, armed with an assault rifle, a pistol, and a shotgun, had driven from Virginia to shoot his way into the condominium of a colleague, Coast Guard Petty Officer Lisa Trubnikova, and her wife, Anna. Neighbors heard the sharp reports of multiple gunshots at 2 AM. First responders would be hampered by Loya’s vehicle which was set ablaze and was blocking the neighborhood’s entrance. A boombox blared movie themes from Batman and Bond movies. Hoax bombs were exploded and shook nearby buildings. Anna Trubnikova, bleeding from four wounds, desperately called for help. Her 911 call lasted over an hour as she lay on the floor next to her dead wife and Loya engaged in his elaborately staged stand-off with police.
The motive? Revenge. Loya had had a sexual encounter with Lisa two years before, an encounter he later described to a forensic psychologist as “a rape of the mind”. The full extent of Loya’s twisted mental state would soon emerge.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the USA Today bestselling author of 13 psychological thrillers, winning the most prestigious awards in the genre: five Agathas, four Anthonys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She is also the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV, with 37 EMMYs and dozens more journalism honors. Book critics call her “a master of suspense,” “a superb and gifted storyteller”; she’s the only author to have won the Agatha in four categories: Best First, Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Non-Fiction. Her newest is HER PERFECT LIFE, a chilling psychological standalone about fame, family, and revenge. It received starred reviews from both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, calling it “a superlative thriller.” B.A. Paris says, “Shocking, suspenseful… kept me guessing until the end.” and Julie Clark says, “You will read this in one sitting!” It is now nominated for the Agatha Award for Best Contemporary Novel. Her next is THE HOUSE GUEST, coming January 2023. Hank is a founder of MWA University, host of CRIME TIME on A Mighty Blaze, and co-host of First Chapter Fun and The Back Room. She is a past president of National Sisters in Crime. Visit Hank at HankPhillippiRyan.com, Twitter @HankPRyan, Instagram @hankpryan and Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthor.

Someone commits a crime but is found “not guilty by reason of insanity”. It doesn’t happen just on TV – it’s a real defense entered by a defendant in a criminal trial. The defendant claims that they were so mentally disturbed or incapacitated at the time of the offense that they did not have the required intention to commit the crime and is therefore not guilty – even though they committed the crime. But as Elliot Levine, a noted criminal defense lawyer in Massachusetts, will explain, this rarely used defense strategy can be difficult for the defense team.
In this episode, Levine and a former client, Pat, will discuss Levine’s successful defense using the insanity defense when Pat was tried for robbery. Pat is an Army veteran who held up a convenience store upon returning to the US after serving on the front lines in the Vietnam War. Levine argued that Pat was suffering from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) from his combat experiences. Levine will also share another instance in which he successfully used the insanity defense in a murder trial in front of a jury.

When Mark Putnam graduated from the FBI Academy in 1986, he seemed to have it all: the new career he’d dreamed about his entire life, darkly handsome good looks, an attractive wife from a rich family, a new baby daughter and another child on the way. His first big assignment took them to the podunk town of Pikeville KY, Hatfield and McCoy country, where Mark’s productive record of arrests seemed to make him a model agent. But his secret sexual entanglement with FBI paid informant Susan Smith (an attractive, loose-lipped, high-school dropout, drug user and sometimes prostitute) began a dark spiral downward. When Susan went missing in June 1989, not one bit of evidence led to her whereabouts. Then Mark did something that startled his colleagues and led to his becoming the first FBI agent in history to be charged with and convicted of murder. Was Susan murdered to cover up the affair after she threatened to tell his wife and the FBI she was carrying Mark’s unborn child?

Ring in the Year of the Tiger with Diane and Jordan as they look back at the best of their 2021 podcasts and give you a taste of what’s coming up in 2022.
Many listeners have been asking about the everyday work of the court reporter, the nuts and bolts of the job, from the important grunt work of transcription to the ins and outs of trial assignments and courtroom sessions. Jordan will cross-examine Diane on the nitty-gritty of her profession and she doesn’t hold back.
And they want to hear from YOU, the listeners, what YOU’D like to hear in the year ahead, what your favorite parts of the podcasts are, and how All Rise with Diane Godfrey has become part of your social media life. Share your ideas and feedback at allrisediane@gmail.com.

J.W. “Jay” Carney, a prominent Boston-based criminal defense lawyer, rose to national fame when he defended James “Whitey” Bulger, the infamous South Boston crime boss. Jay is known for taking on the gruesome or difficult cases, such as that of Tarek Mehanna, the pharmacist from Sudbury, MA who was convicted in 2012 for providing support to Al Qaeda, and of John Salvi, who in 1994 killed two people and wounded five others at two Brookline, MA abortion clinics. He has been spotlighted in media outlets such as CNN, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal for his work. Boston Magazine named Jay one of The Five Best Private Criminal Defense Attorneys in Massachusetts. Join us as Jay recounts his first encounter with Mr. Bulger and what it was like to represent one of the most notorious criminals in Boston – and US – history.

Clemente “Shorty” Aguirre thought he had finally found a place beyond the reach of death. He had fled threats and violence in his home country, Honduras, after refusing to join a gang. When he saw his best friend’s body dumped in front of his house, he got the message to join or be killed as well. A grueling journey through Nicaragua and Mexico, then across the Rio Grande, got him to his sister’s house in Florida. He got a job, found a place to stay in a trailer park, and looked forward to a chance at a new life. That all came crashing down when went over to his friend Samantha’s place to cadge a beer and found a gruesome scene inside: Sam’s mother and grandmother lay slaughtered, stabbed multiple times in a trailer now spattered (the forensic term is blood spatter, not blood splatter) with blood. Were they still alive? He checked the bodies, getting smeared in blood, then heard a noise. In his panic, Clemente picked up the murder weapon, a knife on the floor, thinking the killer was still inside. Then he ran back home, tossed the knife away onto the grass, and tried to hide his bloody clothes. An illegal immigrant would never be believed, he thought. Those misjudgments were enough to help convict him and ultimately send him to Death Row. But then The Innocence Project got involved, and discovered that over 150 blood samples were collected at the scene, but not one had ever been analyzed for DNA. When that evidence was finally properly examined, a very difference picture of the crime emerged. Clemente would be exonerated, and is now able to share his experiences.

“She still stays in St. Joseph’s Cemetery. Nobody overturns that verdict.”
Joanne Arruda knew something was terribly wrong. It was late afternoon on Friday, September 8th, 1978: two days after her daughter’s 15th birthday. But Mary Lou still wasn’t home. She had been out riding her bike in her Raynham, MA neighborhood, about 32 miles south of Boston. The orange ten-speed bike turned up on a dirt road near her home, but Mary Lou would not be found for two months. On November 11th, kids riding dirt-bikes came across her standing body tied to a tree 18 miles away from the Arruda home, in Freetown State Forest. Her possessions had been arranged in a semi-circle in front of her, and most gruesomely: her head was near them. She had been strangled and abandoned.
James Kater, a 31-year-old who worked in a Brockton MA doughnut shop, soon emerged as a suspect. He had been released from prison in January 1976 for a shockingly similar crime. In that case, the 13-year-old girl had survived the strangulation, and after Kater left her was able to untie herself. His lime green car had been seen in Mary Lou’s neighborhood, physical evidence was found, and his alibi soon fell apart. Kater’s sentence for kidnapping and murder sent him to prison for the rest of his life, but he continued to fight the verdict.
Her bitter comment about her daughter buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery came after she heard of the third retrial having been ordered. I worked on the fourth and final Kater trial and will discuss the case, conviction, appeals, and retrials.