Ep 4: Love One Another

people helped people.

They'll send her a weapon on the side door and I saw some image standing there holding

a piece of paper and he took off running around the corner. What do you look like? Well, he's dressed in purple.

“I think it's possible this person didn't live in Bedford.”

Oh, I think they lived here. Okay. Yeah, I think it was somebody it was from here that was fairly close to the community and had a desire to help people in some way. From Hillyard House Productions, this is Are You Captain Purple, I'm Nick Storm.

We're at episode 4, Love One Another.

When we left off on episode 3, Captain Purple had just been spotted again.

This time at the Times Mail newspaper, where sports journalist Gary Goe should have been working late at night, typing away at his desk when he looked up and spotted the town's notorious superhero standing outside the newsroom. So, I was in there typing up stuff and there's something going through the mail slot that it went over and it was in standing there and he is a purple face mask and he has a cape,

a purple cape.

“It's also like blonde hair sticking out too.”

You know, so that must be Captain Purple, I said, "Well, you know, what's open to door and you know, this all is footprint there and he took off like a shot and he all ran across the streets." So, I ran with him. You know, I didn't want to know what to do really, I was like, "But we're calling him

home and I want to work with him." He ran pretty quick and I do take that actually ran across the street because the Times Mail was on the corner even like H Street in 16th and he ran across the street and there is building over there. One was like a construction building and there was an older building here too and he

ran back in there and I lost it back there. Originally we believed, only Dennis Parsley, the police officer we spoke with an episode one, was the only person to chase Captain Purple. We later found out that at a later date, Gary also chased Captain Purple and what's more bizarre, both chances take place to the same location, the Times Mail.

Gary is one of the fastest guys in town or was before he moved away. We're conducting this interview by phone. Well, as a pretty accomplished distance runner, do you think he knew you could have caught him? Did he say anything was he yelling?

No, he'd say a thing. He was quiet. That's why I couldn't find him. See if he would have been saying something like, "We've found him a little easier or I might have pursued him a little bit better."

He got back there and tried to hide, you know, and I just said I'd go to that point because his dark and wanted to go to that bunch of stuff I couldn't see where I was going. A new Captain Purple is fast, and he must be fast and credibly fast to outpaced Gary, to where I've planned ahead.

We also know from our first episode talking to Petrolman Dennis Parsley, who chased Captain

Purple. He left him as he said, like he was parked. Another thing that Gary mentions is that Captain Purple could be in fight or flight. His adrenaline is definitely a piece of being chased after all. It could be some form of survival mechanism that kicks in, but Derek and I don't think

so.

“I think this guy, Captain Purple, might be a runner himself, or at least, incredibly”

physically fit. He's not besting average people on foot. Gary was interviewed by a Louisville TV station WHAS 11, back on August 1st, 1983. In that interview, when you heard at the very beginning of this episode, he gave a description of what Captain Purple was wearing, but there was one detail he left out.

He said, I like he had blue eyes and he had a cave, of course, which makes it seal. He couldn't be hero well to cave and he could have a cave. And do you have any, how close did you get? Would you be able to say he was, how tall he might have been?

Okay, so not, not a small guy, then he was, yeah, no, he wouldn't, a small, he's a very tall and thin, he wasn't heavy.

“There was another reporter at the Times Mail that night.”

The lead reporter covering Captain Purple stories for the Times Mail by the name of Rosemarie Sylvester.

Rosemarie was right out of college, and not from Bedford, her first story on Captain Purple

hits the wire and goes national. Rosemarie's desk was two desks away from Gary in the newsroom. The time when he came by to the Times Mail and the pain is the footprints on the sidewalk and Gary Goch was there working that night. I was there working that night too.

Rosemarie moved away from town in 1984, took another newspaper job and eventually got married. And we found Rosemarie in part due to one of those semi-private Facebook groups, kind of remembering Lawrence County in the Anapate where the gossip business thick as the Indiana humidity in summertime. There were a few Captain Purple posts on the page and they continued to receive the most

comments. Rosemarie responded to one of those posts a few years ago. When we spoke to her, it was as if a missing piece of a puzzle had just fallen into place. I'm almost missed the whole thing because I was pretty much wrapped up in whatever I was doing.

“I think there had been a city council meeting or something like that that I covered.”

I covered the bed for the council and the bed for parks and bed for everything. I was the place, these reporter, I went to the jail all the time and so I think it was Gary heard like a tapping on the door something and he heard it and looked up and went to investigate it in the meantime I just, he went out the door and started running. Back to Gary and the letter that Captain Purple was leaving, this letter in particular, it's

not a random note. In fact, it was two letters and it came as a transition for Captain Purple at the beginning of August.

There's the first letter from Captain Purple and it's to the newspaper saying, "You

can believe in me and trust me." The second letter is a copy of a note to Captain Purple plucked from the bulletin board at the Bedford Public Library. In the note, to Captain Purple, there's a need shared to help purchase eyeglasses for a Bedford resident who couldn't afford a pair.

We shared in the last episode that the library had caught onto the act of providing a space for the community to share their needs. Now we see Captain Purple, he's almost seeking the apostles if you will. A season hears the need from that bulletin board letter or letters and rather than fulfilling them, he's allowing the rest of the community to care for their neighbors, acting maybe

as a mediator between churches, the media, and others to care for their neighbors. Through the publicity of his actions at the newspaper and the chase, the need is met in the eyeglasses are purchased by a local church whose congregation donates to the cause. And that's not all. Some of Captain Purple's fans may be following in his footsteps recently and anonymous

woman paid for new tires on the car of a young man who could not afford them. Just they, they're from Mrs. Purple, she said. The legend is not only alive, it's growing. Melissa Forsyth, actually 11 Bedford, Indiana. Town's bought in.

But just in case there's any doubt, the captain has another trick up his sleeve. A few days later, Captain Purple hangs his sign, high up from steal structure that was

actually a mall that was never completed.

It was large and like 16 feet or more off the ground and would have been hard for anyone to cough. The structure was along the main highway leading into Bedford. This sign painted on multiple queen-sized bedsheets that are sewn together and in Purple Paint, it simply says, "Love won another."

There are two purple footprints to the right of the block-painted words. A spoke with Sanford Gentry, a photographer from the Times Mail, who took the picture of the banner for the newspaper. And this was just a, well, those fun stories that beat Carrex and school board meetings, that's for sure.

Brilliant job done. The one thing I wanted to ask is also looking for media.

“You wouldn't still happen to have 40-year-old photographs laying around would you?”

I do don't have anything that I don't know.

I carefully filed a thing away at the Times Mail and as the newspapers just disintegrated

“some like this journal, so yeah, well, they didn't log in decks, negatives, but they”

all just come in and win. According to the newspaper Police Beat, there were some teenagers about a week after the banner was hung. You tried to climb the structure and take it down. They were unsuccessful, the police responded, but the signs still hung on the town superhero.

Well, we'd come full circle. You're not he knows it. The police are protecting his work. I'll give you both guns with posters and ammunition. 20, 80 degrees and a sultry weekend ahead of you.

“13, 40, WBI, W up next, a special request from Captain Purple.”

That's right, the notorious masked man that has a bedford talking left us a letter overnight here at the station that matches a large homemade sign to the shopping mall that's currently under construction along the Indiana 37 bypass. The captain's message he says "is the one action which gives the world hope and is the reason for all that has transpired."

So by request here's David Mies, on behalf of the captain reminding you to love one another. The song is over five minutes long, and to be frank, not really my thing. But 530 in the morning, WBIW employee is found a cassette of the song along with the letter, and the radio station reportedly played the song several times that day. This letter, where the song request came from, it differs from his original letters

of the late spring and early summer.

“It's dog-themed, signed by a puppy purple, who seeking donations for Lawrence County he”

mains a society, and requests that the David Mies song we played once an hour. Astronauts tell you that this is a recreation, the radio DJ Tom Patton. The same DJ mentioned in reports from that day.

However, the originals of these tapes were either never recorded or thrown away.

And personalities from the radio station, including Tom, around four people in total, that we contacted, they have no recollection of being visited by Captain Purple, who have to letter and footprints at the radio station. Those big acts from Captain Purple, the radio station message, a banner, painted and hung along the highway asking for neighbors to love one another,

and matching letters with those who could help, they're the last recorded acts from Captain Purple in 1983. At least what we could find. And of course, there would be voices in the paper and around town arguing about vandalism, over good, and people would write into the paper over the course of the month of August, it could continue to publicly declare him sinner or saying, and it's possible as acts

continue in small ways over the rest of the year, but we're not so sure. It feels like a summer fling, August hits, and Captain Purple's gone to ground. So we know Captain Purple is likely a Christian, out to live in the way of Christ. And now we learn from Gary that Captain Purple has blonde hair and blue eyes, and his average height for a man, somewhere between five eight and six feet tall.

And then, and of course, fast. After we talked to Gary, Derek and I recorded our thoughts on who fits this latest profile. There are two people that have come up that fit the description. Maurice Raxdale is blonde hair and blue eyes. His hair is curly. Okay. A bit curly, so not a straight. Cotton Duncan has straight hair, blonde hair blue eyes.

He sure was being coiled with us that day outside of his house. He was dangling a carrot, and I will say this, and Dave Gerard nailed it. There is no one who wired his cleanly as Cotton Duncan. Like,

whatever he says is real, it's honest. That's a person that would never want this out,

but never want credit for it, but never want anything negative about it, and would do it completely selflessly, the entire thing. So, he gave us Don's name. He did. So, I do feel like he wanted us to get an idea. And I think we're at the point now, but we don't want to shut down Don's interview.

Now that we talk to a couple of people.

“Or we talked to Don and he's sort of back to Cotton.”

Ash, we just can't get away from the police suspects, and to be honest, it's kind of where we're at. With a cotton, who we talked to by his mower and his dead jeans and shoes, or Don Taylor, who might as well be suspect number one, there's some amalgamation of different police under the direction of the mayor. It's all possible and frustrating to try and crack four decades later. I could tell you Cotton could fit, but thinking back to that moment,

Cotton says one of the most real things I've heard.

I could have done it. If I thought about it, I would have. I don't know.

And of course, Detective Dave Gerard says, and even Mayor Sam Craig alludes to,

“if it was Cotton, the whole town would have known. Cotton does enjoy talking in the best way.”

Talking with Gary Goesh, the sports reporter, we share our theory and mentioned that missing police files. It makes me think the police were involved in it, and it could have been, it could have been a team of people, actually teaming up the Beek after purple. Yeah, we could say that as well. Because it could be because one person did one night, somebody else did another, and it was over several months, too. One month thing is over several months. On Monday, if he did it in the, and Wednesday,

it showed up again. There's different things around town that wouldn't just, at the times, so it could have been a team of people that did it, and the police could have been part of it, too, because that's why there's no police fall because they're part of it. They want anybody to ever find out who is them. They wanted to just die. So for us, we're back to Don, or the police as a whole. We can run this blonde theory to ground

through a process of elimination. I mentioned in the last episode that we found an old church director, and of course, it's in black and white. We found Don's picture, and it's hard to tell. It looks like his hair is dark, and maybe we could give him a sandy blonde hair, but we just don't know. We can't check every box, and we really need to talk to him. So behind the scenes, Derek and I are constantly going back and forth. We have a good idea of where an Iowa

dawn lives, and we're debating calling versus showing up. We either need to eliminate it, or prove it as a possible culprit, and we've got a major clue that could help us. We've

been waiting to reveal it, and it will give us some critical insight into who is Captain Purple.

I have something to tell you that I've never told anybody before, a big reveal. But I don't know who it is. I have no idea who it is. But I moved away from Bedford in April of 1984. I got a job at the Johnson County Daily Journal. So I, my first day at my new job was April 30, 1984. And right before I moved away, a guy called me at my home, never went to Bedford with so little audience. And he claimed that he was Captain Purple. And I

talked to him for a really long time, but I never did anything with the nose and never wrote a story because I was going to be leaving town. That's fascinating. I'm completely interested. And I looked at my nose right before you called. That's Rosemary. The main reporter on Captain Purple stories with the newspaper, back in '83, to say we're shocked. It's an understatement. It's not very often in a story this old. You get to break news. We are definitely breaking news here.

Rosemary took notes in a phone address book. That was a college graduation gift from a cousin.

“I mean, that's how those notes lasted so long. And it was late at night. I can't remember,”

you know exactly what time it was. It seemed like it was between 10 and 11 o'clock. I don't know. But this was for some reason. This was nearby. And I picked it up and just started writing in it. Because that was the only thing I had. Wow. Wow. Captain Purple. And we've reason to believe it really was Captain Purple. Because of the specific details he offers Rosemary. He tells her about that night, being chased by

Gary outside of the Times male newsroom. He said, Gary, I'm trying to find the exact quote because I had your Gary almost caught him. He said, he doesn't know how close he came to catching me.

But Gary was quite a challenge. He came closer than he knows. He said,

“obviously there's a higher person power involved. I really can't run that fast.”

I've come in time when they'll find out who I am. But he said, he's not interested in my duty as reporter and interested in your feeling of like a brother or a sister, whatever that means. Throughout this interview, I mentally pinched myself. I feel confirmed. Derek and I have developed an accurate profile. This thing from Captain Purple, it's a pilgrimage, spiritual awakening or journey at a town level. One man walking in the way.

There's no passing of the play, no Sunday mass, but brothers and sisters. This is the church beyond the empire. It was a lot of spiritual aspect to it. He said that he didn't want to be like Santa Claus. He didn't want to be like a kind of Santa Claus. It was a much broader scope than he was after. It was a spiritual need that makes us part of a hole. He wanted to see everyone pull together, see the community pulls together. That's sort of thing. He hoped that he

wasn't too radical and that he used the vandalism aspect as a tool to get people's attention or

something like that. He talked about the Holy Spirit and Christ and Christ was the first one.

He wasn't the involved and the all type of thing. He said he, a lot of letters ask for things that he can't provide, but every little bit someone gets. It's helps to knock a chunk out of the problem. And Captain Purple comes back to the Bible again, driving home as motive. It just says, it doesn't say really why he stopped, but he's talking about the Holy Spirit is everywhere and watching all the time. I don't have time to watch. It did get people's attention

didn't it, but it got them to thinking, maybe they know me, maybe I'm thinking of other people.

So I don't know, maybe he felt like maybe they were getting closer something. I don't know.

Yeah, maybe the mission is done. He seeded it and there's not and we're longer. And he said the Bible says not to let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. But the feeling I get when I when I help something, that's all I need. I'm not rich, but I have enough to help someone else. God gives me more than enough to give to others. I feel I will continue to give as long as I can.

There's also another offered glimpse into this person, just a little confusing. And it could be due to 40-year-old notes or it could be a hint at who he is, both tantalizingly close and yet so far away. And then he said, I don't, I hope I don't seem psychotic. I decided the police weren't that interested in catching me because it wouldn't be that easy.

“Maybe he said it would have been that easy, but that's what that's when I wrote down.”

And as we as fellow human beings need to go out of our way and be encouraging and reach out to other people. I mean, come on. Is that misdirection? Where's he saying he's not the police? Where that he is, the police, and that's why it would be easy. One word here makes a difference. He didn't ask, but I'll tell you. Captain Purple does not in so many words reveal himself to Rose Marie. She doesn't know who the real Captain Purple is either. It's still a mystery.

But I can feel in my bones we're getting closer. Rose Marie's opened us. We decided to be open back and share our theory about the police. But you know that would make sense because I was a police beat reporter and knew a lot of those cops. But I didn't recognize his voice. You know what I mean? I recorded on the bedford police department

“in the Lawrence County department. Okay. Did he say why you called you?”

He's somehow he knew that I was going to be living away soon. Huh, that's interesting. So he definitely shows that he's got some some knowledge. He knows that you're going to be moving off the beat relatively soon. So maybe you're safe to talk to and maybe after, you know, being the main person who's cataloging his good deeds, you know, maybe

maybe with you, right? That, that, that. Yeah. He said he considered

“cessation of the footprints and he said, um, I believe very strongly that you won't”

help others work against me. But I have worked hard. So I guess he felt like, you know, I wouldn't expose who he was. Sure. And he says, I realized I've made a few mistakes and then he

broke out. I don't remember this, but they said first time I was sighted, it was intentional.

It adds up right. I mean, got checked time. The police are awfully suspicious. The suspicions

“even within the current police department and X cops on the force at the time all trend towards”

Donna's the guy. And then there's the need and who and how all they know who needs things. At least before the library. And Derek and I, we've looked at a bunch of theories and right now,

we like Donna best. So here we finally are at the place to talk with Donna and we land on an approach.

We decide to pick up the phone and call. See if we can get him talking on the phone and go from there. Love is good. Yep. Okay, I'm going to calm down. Don Taylor. On the next, are you Captain Purple? What do you want to tell me? What would you like to ask me? I'm sorry about anything too.

“If I got your thoughts all the way, it might never talk again. What? Is there anything you want to ask me?”

Here's Lose Coast with Testify. We'll Donna Taylor testifies to be in Captain Purple. You'll have to tune in to find that. What do you think when people say, hey, today's Captain Purple, there there he is. It's Don Taylor. I mean, there's a number one suspect. Until next time, for truth, justice in the American way, I'm an extorn.

Are you Captain Purple is a hillyard house production. It's reported and produced by Derek Ingersol and Me, an extorn. It's edited by Hillyard house studios, sound mixing by Derek Ingersol and Owen Beverly. Mastered by Owen Beverly. Original music in this episode by Owen Beverly. If you have a hometown mystery, you want us to look into emails on our website, Captain Purple.com. Who knows? Your town. Sip it down.

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