The Babysitter: My Summers with a Serial Killer
Tonight, my special guests are Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan who recount the shocking true story of time spent with a young man who was privately taking delight in dismembering women in the 1960's. Get her book The Babysitter on Amazon.
Growing up on Cape Cod in the 1960s, Liza Rodman was a lonely little girl. During the summers, while her mother worked days in a local motel and danced most nights in the Provincetown bars, her babysitter—the kind, handsome handyman at the motel where her mother worked—took her and her sister on adventures in his truck. He bought them popsicles and together, they visited his “secret garden” in the Truro woods. To Liza, he was one of the few kind, understanding, and safe adults in her life.
But there was one thing she didn’t know; their babysitter was a serial killer.
Though Tony Costa’s gruesome case made screaming headlines in 1969 and beyond, Liza never made the connection between her friendly babysitter and the infamous killer of numerous women, including four in Massachusetts, until decades later.
Haunted by nightmares and horrified by what she learned, Liza became obsessed with the case. Now, she and cowriter Jennifer Jordan reveal “a suspenseful portrayal of murderous madness in tandem with a child’s growing loneliness, neglect, and despair, a narrative collision that will haunt” (Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita) you long after you finish it.
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1
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Start your free seven-day trial and unlock this episode plus hundreds more, all ad-free when you become a Mysterian on Patreon. And they were all local, yeah.
2
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Yeah, two of the five were, uh, on a weekend vacation from Providence, Rhode Island. So they were all somewhat local, but three of them lived, you know, either right in P-Town or down the street.
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Yeah, and Christine was a summer resident, so- Right... you know, and she was in and out of Provincetown all the time too. So, I mean, I think they all met him in Provincetown, right, Jen? Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
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Okay, let's talk about your... You said you stumbled. You may have stumbled upon it. Let's talk about that, that scene. How did you- I know. That was interesting wording.
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Yeah, I know what you m- [laughs] I know what you meant. Uh, wow. Please tell us about, you know, how that, how that star- I mean, wh- where was this place in the, in the woods they would take you guys?
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Okay, so the place in the woods is an old- Unlock this episode right now by clicking on the link for your free seven-day trial in the show notes or by visiting mysteriousradio.com.
