In the first half, actor, comedian, and wrestler Hank Garrett talked about his decades-long career in show business and wrestling. He detailed his tough childhood being a street gang member in Harlem and carrying a gun at age 11. His career as a professional wrestler was cut short after a drastic car accident, though he was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He met Sammy Davis Jr., who was performing in Harlem, and he offered him advice about getting away from crime and life in the street gangs. Garrett had developed a reputation as being funny, and Davis helped him get booked doing comedy routines in the Catskills. Eventually, he was signed by the William Morris agency, and ended up as the opening act for Tony Bennett.
Garrett recalled his acting career-- one of his biggest breaks was playing Officer Ed Nicholson in the classic NBC sitcom, "Car 54 Where Are You?" which aired from 1961-1963. Perhaps he is best known for his fight scene playing the Killer Mailman in "Three Days of the Condor" (1975) with Robert Redford (view clip). He shared anecdotes of various celebrities he befriended or worked with over the years, including Frank Sinatra, Angie Dickinson, Elvis Presley, Killer Kowalski, Fred Gwynne, and Don Rickles. He also spoke about his work for "Hankster's Kids," trying to reach out to at-risk children to help them turn their lives around as he did.
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Paranormal expert Richard Estep first got involved with paranormal research in 1995 in the UK after attending an investigation at the infamous St. Botolph's church. In the latter half, he shared ghostly accounts from haunted sites across the US, as well as delved into his research on serial killers. Estep recently plotted out a 4,000-mile road trip across America, in which he stopped to spend the night at various haunted locations along the way. At one haunted place in Indiana-- the unoccupied Monroe House, unidentified human remains are buried in the crawl space underneath the home. Estep and a colleague stayed overnight upstairs. In the early morning hours, his colleague heard the sound of the keyboard, and thought Estep was typing, but when she looked in, he was fast asleep.
Estep considers Gettysburg to be the most haunted town in America. His team spent three days investigating sites there, such as the Orphanage, which housed children that had lost their parents during the Civil War. The home was known to be run by a cruel matron, who shackled some of the kids in the basement. Visitors to the site have reported being pushed or shoved by invisible forces, and hearing disembodied voices, he detailed. He also visited the home of Jennie Wade, the only civilian known to have died in the Battle of Gettysburg. Her body was temporarily interred in the cellar, and over the years, people have reported ghostly phenomena at the house. Among the serial killers Estep discussed were Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Dennis Rader, and the UK's Dr. Harold Shipman, thought to be one of the world's most prolific killers. Injecting his patients with fatal overdoses of morphine, Shipman may have murdered more than 200+ people.
News segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates