>> Teri Sierra: Good afternoon and thank you for being here, joining us today. I know some of you know me. But some of you don't. So, I'm Teri Sierra. I'm the chief of serial and government publications division. And today we're very fortunate to have Mr. Richard Serrano with us. I've learned a few things about Mr. Serrano in the last several days. For one thing he is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. And he started his career in his native Kansas city as a 17-year-old copy boy for "The Kansas City Star." By 1987, as a young reporter, he went to "The Los Angeles Times" where he covered federal law enforcement and terrorism until 2015. All told, he has spent 45 years covering the Pentagon, the wars in Haiti and the Middle East, the US Justice Department, the FBI, and the war on terror. All fun subjects. In addition to his latest book, "Summoned at Midnight, A Story of Race and the Last Military Executions at Fort Leavenworth" I didn't even know there were military executions, but I'm sure he's going to explain it. He's also the author of four other books. "One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and The Oklahoma Bombing." "The Last of The Blue and Grey Old Men: Stolen Glory, and the Mystery That Outlived the Civil War." "American Endurance: Buffalo Bill" the great cowboy race of 1893 and the vanishing wild west. And finally, "My Grandfather's Prison A Story of Death and Deceit in 1940s Kansas City." Mr. Serrano has been coming to the library to conduct research, and we just talked about that, for the last 25 years or so. He is a regular at our reading room, newspapers, and current periodical reading room. And he has a degree in English from the University of Missouri, Kansas City. So, having said that, please help me welcome Mr. Serrano to the podium. [ Applause ] >> Richard A. Serrano: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's true, I have been coming here a long time, probably 25 years. And I recognize many of the faces here in this room, and as I was coming across the street and in fact this morning, I was working the periodical room in the law library and when we're done here, I've got to go upstairs and then I've got to go back to the periodic room. I just love being here. I just love to the research. And when I'm working on a book, I have a tendency to over research and interview people because I'm afraid I'm going to miss something. And then you hate to go back. But that's really because I'm a little bit afraid of the blank screen when I start to write. And so, when I make the change, then I'm kind of done with the research and I feel good about that. But this new book that came out in February is called "Summoned at Midnight" and it's about the military's death row. The Army's death row at Fort Leavenworth Kansas. And the last time they executed anyone was in the late 50s. And these were Army soldiers. So, what we do if a soldier committed a capital murder case, he would be court martialed and sent to Fort Leavenworth. And I first heard about that 40 years ago, when I was a very young cub reporter in Kansas City. And I've been carrying with me for a long, long time on what to do with it because it really kind of haunted me. And I used to, as a young reporter, I would work the Sunday shift. And they give you Sundays because there's not a lot of news on Sunday. You would come in and there might be an overnight fire, there might be a speech, something that a young kid could handle, that I could handle. And there was an editor there by the name of Jim Fisher. And Fisher had already been a reporter for 20 years maybe, and had covered the; well, he'd covered the riots after the Kennedy assassination, and some of the other big events of his time, and he said, you know one time; he said, he started telling me how he had one night gone out to Fort Leavenworth because they executed a soldier. And I said, really? And he said, yeah you know, if you want to make it in this business, that's a rite of passage that you have to witness an execution. It's just kind of a thing that you could say you know that you've done. And I was just stunned, but I was just really intrigued by that. And I always thought about it and always thought about it. And then 10 years went by and I became the city editor at the paper. And I was, [inaudible] got kind of bored being in management, and so I decided to start driving out to Fort Leavenworth and see if I could find anybody that would remember these soldiers. And the Army has not executed anybody since then. So, it's almost you know, what 60 years have gone y and they've got five guys on death row today, but because of appeals and stuff, they just don't do it anymore. So, anyway, so I would go out at night. I'd work a day shift and I would go out at night and this is about 1987. And I would find a guard. And these were old retirees. And I'd go to his house and I'd spend two or three hours and I would interview him. And these were death row guards. And he would give me the name of another guy. And I'd wait a couple days, another night I'd go back out. And I'd interview him. And I got to where I'd interviewed maybe 40 people. In their homes, and these were death row guards. These were a couple commandants, attorneys, chaplains, psychiatrists, and just all the Army type people. And I didn't really know what I was going to do with all this. I was too young to write a book. I really didn't know how to write a book. And as I accumulated all of this, and then also found four of the inmates who were not executed. And interviewed them. So, about mid '87, I took a job at "The LA Times" and kind of forgot about it. But on the way driving from Kansas City to California, I stopped in Waco because I interviewed one of the Chaplains. And I stopped in New Mexico because I interviewed two more guards. So, it was always in the back of my mind what to do with this thing. And I kept thinking, what I've got to do some day, as Fisher told me, someday you have to witness an execution. So, anyway I'm at "The LA Times" and I'm really busy trying to start my new career there. And in a couple years they send me here. And I was covering the FBI, the war on terrorism, and that kind of stuff. And as you said, all the fun stuff. Anyway, one of the things I was really deep into was the Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. And I spent two years in Oklahoma and Denver. Covering that bombing and the trial. And I got to know McVeigh pretty well. And I would go out to the prison and interview him. And so, that became my first book. Timothy McVeigh. And then I went out to his execution. And he was executed in; now, he wasn't a military, this was not a military case, this was a federal criminal case. So, he was at the federal death row then, and today is in Terre Haute, Indiana. So, I went out hoping to get in to see him for the execution, but there were 1000 reporters there. I mean this was a big deal. And it was the first federal execution since 1962. So, it had a lot of news value. And there was a lottery, and I you know probably came in last. I didn't even get picked. And so, I missed it. I missed that one. And two years later, there was another man who was set to be executed. And this guy had sort of a lot of similarities of what happened at Fort Leavenworth. He was a longtime career Army soldier. He was a hero. He parachute under live fire in Grenada, and he was in the Persian Gulf War. And then he got first retirement, because of his age. And he had a real hard time with that. And he went into the post in Texas and abducted a young female recruit and killed her. And it was horrible what he did. But then you kind of go forward 10 years or so, and he's on death's door and George W. Bush is the president and George W. Bush when he was governor was hanging everybody, so there wasn't going to be a lot of sympathy for him. But even though his lawyers were trying to argue that there was PTSD from all his Army psychosis and what he'd been through. And that he just wigged out and made him do this. So, I wrote a long story about that. And Bush gave him the thumbs down. And so I went to Terre Haute, this time I got invited in to see an execution. And Terre Haute is along the Wabash River, a beautiful river and it runs along by the river, by the prison and so there were about 10 of us that were taken there that night. And we were in these rooms, and they opened the curtain and the guy was strapped in and they asked him; well the press is in one room, and his family is in another and then the government and the victim's family is on the other side. And they asked him if he had any last words. And as a reporter, of course I'm ready to write it all down and he just started singing. He started singing "Old Spiritual." You know, I'm coming home Jesus, I'm crossing the Jordan, I'm coming home. And he just kept singing. He was very calm and very peaceful. And just kept singing, he wouldn't stop singing. And the warden kind of shrugged and gave the signal and then he died. I mean he died like that. And I looked at my notebook, and there wasn't; I didn't write anything. But I wrote the story, and so I thought well, you know I finally had my execution, my rite of passage as they say. Particularly for somebody like me was a crime reporter and was covering you know issues like terrorism and capital punishment and these kind of things. So, then, I retired from "The LA Times," January 1, 2016 because I wanted to spend more focus on books. I had already done two books and I wanted to do some more. I wrote a book about the Civil War and a book about the Wild West. And I kept thinking about that old thing for Leavenworth. And I came here one day, and I went up to the law library and they have all the court martial reports; all of them. And there were 17 guys on death row back then. And I mean they brought in cart after cart. They were these big bound volumes. And they had everything about every case. They had all the particulars of the crime itself, backgrounds on all the individuals. They had the appeals, and the decisions, and the Eisenhower's involvement in those cases and all. And so, I started reading through them and I probably spent three weeks doing that. It was also the time to my great fortune, when you guys were switching from the old copy system to the new. And during that period it was free copying. And I kind of went less the copy machine [laughter]. Anyway so and it would have taken me. I'd still be copying in the new system, but anyway. That's neither here nor there. But anyway, so I probably spent three weeks doing that and I had, I remember I had big legal pads and I'd write how this guy had, well some of the guys had political influence to get off. And some of the guys had money from their families to get off. And some of the guys had the press were involved. One guy had both the house and the senate voted unanimously to break him down to a life sentence. And this is really interesting. Then, some of them had nothing. They had no money, no resources. They'd give you a letter from the poor mother, usually from the south saying, you know, this is my only son, you know, please Mr. President, you know. And it's semi-illiterate and quite sad. And but really some of them. And then I had a big legal paper and I drew a line down. And then I said, well let's see, yeah because I was doing ages and geographic areas. And I said wait a minute what race are these people. And I found out that of the 17, 8 were white, and 9 were black. And all the whites were commuted. And not only were they commuted either by the President or by the courts, but they also eventually made parole. And they eventually went home to their families. And many of their crimes were much, much worse than what the black offenders had done. And they only hung the black prisoners. And when I realized that, I thought man I've really got a nice story here. I've got a really important story to tell about the racial, you know, divide in our country to decide whether a person lives or dies. And I was just stunned by that, really stunned by that. And the last guy on death row, he was a young African American who came out of Virginia, just down near what's that? You know, down near the border. All the way south, Southern Virginia. And he had gone to Austria and he was accused of raping a white girl. Which in the 50s, well in the military was a capital punishment either way. You could be sentenced to death for that. And that's what, he was on death row. And his case lasted past Eisenhower. He ended up being the last fellow on death row, of all the 17 he was the last guy there. And his case rolled into John Kennedy, he was the new president. And they really thought they had a shot with Kennedy, because Kennedy was young, and Catholic, and democrat and a liberal. And new to all this. And at least he would you know revoke it down to life with no parole, or life with parole, or something and spare this man. Well, I'm not going to tell you what happens, but that's kind of how it broke out. And I was just, I was just horrified really that our country was you know so divided that even in the death house, there's this kind of going on and it really bothered me. And so, I took from that, was able to write a book not just about the death penalty, not just about the Army, and not just about the last time they executed anybody, about the whole race quotient end of that. And how race had played such a thing. And I called the book "Summoned at Midnight" because they would take these prisoners out at midnight to hang them. That was the method. They built gallows, wooden gallows, the soldiers did. And they had it inside the prison. And the death row back then, was partially underground, where they kept the men. Now, on the death row itself it was not segregated. The guys were all mixed in together. But when it came to who lived and who died, it was a whole different story. And so, I went out to Fort Leavenworth and they gave me a tour of the, well there's a new prison now, but they gave me a tour of the old prison back then, and they also, since I was in Kansas, I drove out to the Eisenhower Library. And he has, President Eisenhower had a lot of the letters he got from both sides. And on the white side the files were like this thick, and they were full of Congressmen and columnists and wealthy benefactors and just different people saying, well you really shouldn't execute him, you know. And when you pull the black files, they were like this thick. And generally it was just a letter from; like I said earlier from a poor mother or grandmother saying, you know this is my son and you know please, I need him, you know. And they were all from the American south, and there was no big push at all to help these guys. And the biggest irony of it all was that the white soldiers committed much more heinous crimes. I mean one guy drown an 8-year-old girl. Another guy, I'm not going to get into all of it, but terribly murdered another young girl. I mean these were terrible crimes they did. Yet, so much for the system. And so, getting with what I had from the law library, oh and also, then also from here I went to the periodical room and I knew the dates and places where all these cases happen. And so, I pulled the local papers. You know, if it would have been in Chattanooga, say I would get the Chattanooga paper and I would go through all that. And when I got to the whites, it was full of stories. You know both you know, let's have John Doe, you know and Congressman working with the John Doe not be executed, it's just full of stories. And then, when you go to the other sides, the black ones, it was like, the editorial was like he must swing, why is it taking so long to execute him. And it was just unbelievable. I just couldn't believe how unbelievable it was. So, anyway, I went out to Eisenhower Library and then did those records and came back. And then I talked to my agent. Sometimes, my first book and my last book I used an agent. The middle three books I did it on my own and I kind of figured it out. But I think it was helpful to do it the other way around. And I was going to also tell you one thing about McVeigh, he was executed on June 11, 2001, which is exactly three months before 9/11. Almost to the minute because he was executed at 9 in the morning. And I knew Tim, and I knew we used to write a lot. Well, I would meet with him in prison, but then he would write a lot. He would always write on the back, not for publication. But once, there's a newspaper rule that once you're dead the not for publication doesn't count anymore, then, you know you're fair game. So, I had a stack of letter. But I went out to; I didn't get in to see that one, but knowing him, he would have been so upset about 9/11. Not because it happened, but because his record was obliterated so bad. I mean he killed 168. Mohamad Atta killed 3000, you know. So, he would be so enraged that his fine record was you know absolved so quickly. That's kind of his mind. Let's see, what else can I tell you? Well, that's kind of, I think that's it. But anyway, you guys, this library has been tremendously helpful to me, tremendously helpful. I can't thank you enough. The material you guys have and I just love coming up here and it's just beautiful and I think; but I want to read a couple of short little passages from the new book, I wanted to give you kind of a flavor about the white side, and a little flavor about the black side, and then Amber is going to open up to questions I hope. This isn't very long, so just bear with me please. This is about white death row. The Army was good to them. Despite all that they had done, the horrific homicides, the dereliction of duty, the shame they brought upon the US Armed Forces. That much was certain. Even after these white soldiers were slotted away in narrowed cramped cells on death row, they still enjoyed friends in high places In Army speak, they could still pull rank. Army review boards and appellate judges will find ways to knock a death sentence down to life. A federal court might consider something in a white soldier's file that suggested some mental illness. Hometown boosters lobby for their release. Newspapers rallied around them as well. Their mothers pleas frequently graced the front pages. Photographer snapped their pictures, delicately framing the women with tears in their eyes. Washington Congressman from back home would pressure the White House. President Eisenhower's staff would weaken in time. Eventually a new recommendation was carried into the Oval Office as short as one page, or as long as two dozen. He would suggest mercy. The former World War II General signed his name, a slanting cursive crawl tilting to the right, Dwight D. Eisenhower. The system worked for them, they lived. So, that's the white death row. And now bear with me here. It's a tad longer, but I think it's important. Black death row. Shortly before midnight on March 1, 1955 the first of three military convoys rolled out the castle at Fort Leavenworth. Seven Army vehicles carried high ranking Army officers, official witnesses, and one condemned soldier. They followed the old river road high on the bluffs, to Eisenhower Road and then a warehouse at the penitentiary. A 20-minute drive into the lantern moon. At 11:55 p.m., they escorted their first man, 25-year-old private Chastine Beverly of Balty, Virginia into the storehouse on prison grounds. The high ceiling stone structure been leased that night under a federal, state contract between the Army and the state, because the Army had not yet built a new hanging platform. The Army would deliver the soldier, the state would hang them. Beverly dressed in a regulation Army uniform without decoration or insignia stood silent as guards removed his handcuffs. They wrapped a leather and chain hanging harness over his shoulders and a strap across his legs. Then led him a few paces to the foot of the gallows. Colonel James W. Davis Commandant of the military prison asked for any final words. Anything left to say after 3.5 years on death row? Beverly looked square into the eyes of the Colonel. He moistened his lips with his tongue seeming to hold back his tears. Nothing at all sir, he managed. A Kansas prison deputy warden led him to the 13 steps. On the high platform, Kansas prison guard lowered a black hood over his head and swung a heavy noose around his neck. Fashioned from a new M cord, they yanked it tight behind his left ear, following the Army execution guidelines. Major Milton E. Berg a Protestant Army Chaplain recited from the prayer book. God, take away the sin of the world, he said. Few caught his word, but all jolted at 2 minutes after midnight with the slap of the heavy metal trapdoor. Medical officer slit open the front of Beverly's shirt. Armed with stethoscopes, they searched for a baiting heartbeat. At 12:14 AM, an Army Captain approached Colonel Davis and saluted. He is dead the captain reported. [Inaudible] removed the harness, rope and straps and cut the body down. A guard reached for a portable phone and radioed back to post headquarters at Fort Leavenworth. Bring the next one, he said. So, it went twice more that night. The three men hanged in alphabetical order. James L Riggins, 26 of Birmingham, Alabama was said to be the ring-leader of the Army trio that beat a taxi driver to death in a robbery in rural Missouri. He had been a boxer at one time and was regarded by many as the bad boy of the outfit. The second summoned to the warehouse, Riggins stood composed but angry. No, he barked at Colonel Davis, he had nothing to say. So, the chaplain completed his benediction. Riggins took longer to die. The fall did not break his neck. For 18 minutes and 40 seconds the former Army private, 6'2" tall, 205 pounds slowly suffocated. He raised his legs up to the twisting torso. He was the soldier's thought a final show of indignation. The last to die that night was Louis M. Suttles, 26 of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He merely shook his head. What more was there to say? From atop the scaffold his eyes darted around the room, finally fixing on someone in the crowd standing with the others at parade rest below. Then came the hood, and the prayer, and the trap door. He was dead in 3.5 minutes, so. >> Teri Sierra: Well, thank you Mr. Serrano, and we would like to open the presentation up to questions if you have any from the audience? [ Inaudible Audience Question ] >> Richard A. Serrano: In Haiti I did. Yes. Yes. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] I don't remember here. Combat coverage has changed so much. I mean during World War II, guys like Ernie Pyle were famous reporters. But reporters would ride in with the soldiers. Then, that changed with Korea and Vietnam, particularly Vietnam. Because it was going so badly. And then, with the first Gulf War, they started embedding reporters. So, you would be assigned a platoon, or a certain group and you were given flak jackets and you had everything but a gun. And you were with them. And the soldier would be kind of with you to be your bodyguard. But you saw it firsthand. It was the perfect way to cover a war. And that's how I did it in Haiti. And usually like for the LA times you would want a platoon, or a group of soldiers who were from your reading area so you could write about them at the time. But I mean you wouldn't have a sense of how the war was going, the whole thing, but you would have on the ground, I mean micro understanding, macro understanding about your guys. So, it really changed the way that we cover that. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] Yeah, no. There wasn't a lot of; I did look at some of the African American, "Amsterdam" and some of those papers and there wasn't a lot of outrage. There was a case during World War II, that I write include in this book about a black soldier from St. Louis who was accused of raping a white girl, white woman in England right before D-Day. And this was the big run up to the invasion. This was in late to May. I mean like four days before D-Day. And England, Britain did not have capital punishment. Still doesn't. But anyway they court martialed him and sentenced him to death. And the English people were horrified and really upset. And they start petitioning Eisenhower. And Eisenhower really need the goodwill of the, I mean they were, you know they were guests of England to make this invasion, they really needed the support of the English people. I mean there was; I went to the military personnel record Center in St. Louis. And they just had stacks of these telegrams and letters on this guy's behalf. And it was really questionable whether this was a rape anyway. And after the invasion, after they got a foothold into France, then Eisenhower commuted it and actually released him. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] The African-Americans were all young, by and large. All enlistees, privates, had only been in a short time. One of them had been a hero in Korea and stayed a while. Some of the whites were of rank. One was a master sergeant, and some of them were making a career in the service before they were arrested, yeah. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] Well both, I mean, at that time in the 50s it was still during the occupation in Europe and in Japan and in the pacific because that went on for about 10 years after the end of World War II. So, a lot of those guys were based overseas. And some of those were foreign nationals who were killed, who were victims of those cases. And as in the case of the lats guy I was telling you about, this was in Austria. I will tell you that Kennedy was really undecided what to do with this last one. And it was three months within his presidency. And the date of death was April 13, 1961, which is kind of a famous, it happened to be a famous day. That was the day that Kennedy gave the go head on the Bay of Pigs, which was a huge blunder. And it was also that morning Juergen Garin went up in space, the first man to fly in space. It was a big embarrassment for the United States that the Russians had beat us to loft. But, they decided, the Kennedy White House decided well if we could find the victim and find her family, maybe and see what they say. And so, they did. It was this mad dash in Austria to send a Colonel out from Salzburg and they found her. And these telegrams came over the transit at the last minute begging not to kill him. Saying that you know what he did was horrible but they never wanted him in Austria again, but no life was taken here and so no life should be taken there. And in Austria, there was no death penalty, like England. But they court martialed him. Even though the crime did not happen on base. So, because it happened on Austrian soil, they wanted Austrian justice and rape then was 20 years. And they demanded that the Army turn him over. And the Army refused, because again, this was still during the occupation, they didn't want the Army to look like they were like the Gestapo, which they just gone through. So there was all those dynamics working, and then Kennedy had to make the final decision on it. Come on, I'm more nervous than you guys [laughter]. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] It is. There's a big section in there about the segregation during World War II. I mean it was, you know up until through World War II it was an honor to be in combat, for a white man to give his life or to be wounded. It was an honor. And that honor wasn't bestowed on black soldiers. They were digging ditches, building bridges, you know they were support, the mess hall. And then after that war, Truman desegregated the Armed Forces, in 1950. And demanded that they be, you know equal in that. But in Korea and, I mean I found, they did some big studies and there was so much resistance, the white soldiers they didn't want to be with blacks, and they didn't trust them in their units. And they just didn't want them fighting alongside them. It took a long time. Really Vietnam changed that. And Vietnam in many perspectives was a black war more than it was a white war. [ Inaudible Audience Question ] I'm working on a book about the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kansas City. As I said I was born and raised in Kansas City and I was a young reporter in 1981. There were two sky walks in this lobby. It was a brand-new hotel. And the sky walks were connected like this. And they were made to look like they were floating on air, very thin rods from the ceiling. And they'd have these very popular tea dances. And big band music on Friday nights. And so many people in there. And on July 17, 1981 there were 1500 people in the lobby when these sky walks, and I'm talking about tons and tons of steel and concrete. This one hit that one, and that one came down. And killed 114 people. And injured 200 and it's the worst structural failure in the history United States. Like I said, I covered it and then for a year and a half basically. But then, here in October, one of the plaintiff attorneys who I had sourced real well. I mean I knew him really well and when the chief plaintiff attorneys had died and his son had all his records. And so they've been made available to me. And it's 180 boxes of documents. So, I go out to Kansas City about every month for a couple weeks ago through these documents. And these are in these big boxes. And they're full of mold and dust. And you open them up and all this stuff comes out and I have to wear a mask and everything. But there never was a trial. The hotel was owned by the Hallmark cards company. And then I was the Hyatt Regency. And the last thing they wanted was one trial nonetheless 114. I covered the Boston Marathon Bombing and then I covered that trial and that was one trial. And there wasn't a dry eye in that courtroom. I mean you had people coming in on crutches and missing a leg, and parents who, their child had died. I mean I was sobbing; the jury was sobbing; the judge was sobbing. It's just you know and so if you have that, if you have that kind of thing with Hallmark and Hyatt, it could ruin the brand. I mean these are companies that run posh hotels and companies that make greeting cards. And so, anyway, within a year and a half basically everything was settled. There never was a trial. So, because I have all these documents, I'm in a position to tell what we would have learned had there been; what we would have learned about the hotel and why and how this happened. But I can't just let the documents alone. So, I'll be doing interviews. So, I've done 182 interviews so far. With people who were first responders and people who were witnesses, or injured, or the families of the dead, and those, so. But I'm close to finishing that. And I'm already having that white screen syndrome thing. But I'm close to that. Probably in September I'll try to make the change. But that's a new one. Maybe the last one, I don't know. And I've done some work here on that too because I went through all the old papers, even my paper, "The Kansas City Star" and I spent probably three weeks up in your room and doing the microfilm and getting the what we covered and how we did things, so yeah, you guys have been really very helpful too. Yeah. Okay, very good. Thank you [applause].