Episode 83 | REPORTER MURDERED ON LIVE TV by Disgruntled Co-Worker

In this podcast we're going to dig into the background on a disturbing murder on live television that took place on the morning of August 26, 2015. News reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward, both employees of CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke, Virginia, were fatally shot while conducting a live television interview. What was most disturbing is the killer live-streamed the shootings on Facebook. He was a former colleague who was hell-bent on getting revenge for what appears to be racism that never actually happened.  ★Enjoy!

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Transcript

It was a balmy August morning in 2016. The warm shades of dawn spread across the early morning sky. It was the perfect backdrop for an early morning interview. But, for Vicki Gardner, as she lay in a growing pool of blood -  her blood, the last thing on her mind was the colors of the sky. A beautiful blue sky with the faint white trail from a passenger jet miles above. Curled up in a fetal position, she waited for the man who had shot her in the back to finish the job. She knew he was still there because he was still shooting. She couldn’t tell if he was shooting at anyone else and she knew she dare not check. Beside her lay two motionless bodies, just a minute ago, they had been interviewing her on a live newscast.

Why had he shot them?

How had he known they would be there? 

Who was he? 

His name was Bryce Williams and though Vicki Gardner didn’t know it, just two years ago, he might have been the very person conducting the interviewing.

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Though the shooter went by Bryce Williams, his real name was Vester Lee Flanagan II; a 41-year old native of Oakland, California. He lived alone in a sparsely decorated 1-bedroom apartment with his two cats in a sprawling Westwind complex in Virginia. It was void of decorations except for headshots from his early years as a small-time model pasted all over his refrigerator. 

On the outside, Flanagan presented the image of a regular guy going about his day-to-day life. However, he was anything but, in his apartment complex, Flanagan was known for getting into arguments with neighbors. And come the next morning, those neighbors would open their doors to find brown smudge caked on it. 

Cat droppings. 

Flanagan was a trebuchet and his weapon of choice was cat poop. His fur babies, provided him with a steady supply of poop to hurl at the doors and balconies of those who crossed him! Neighbors avoided him at all costs.

He had some talent and experience in reporting and seemed to be, hopping from TV station to TV station. But this parade of career mobility hid something else: Flanagan struggled with racism in the places he worked at… or he thought he did. When he first got hired at WDBJ-7 and moved to Virginia in 2012, his new colleague trod carefully whenever Flanagan was around. Allison Parker, then an intern, had remarked about someone ‘swinging by’ and so and so been ‘on the field’ and Flanagan had appeared, frothing at her shoulder, demanding: “What are you saying? Swinging? Cotton fields?? That’s racist!” 

One time he accused a manager of singling him out by, wait for it, bringing watermelons to work for the crew. You heard that right – watermelon. The green fruit that’s red on the inside...  When colleagues told him that the manager brought watermelons all the time, he refused to accept it. “Nope” he would say, “This is for me. You guys are calling me out because I’m black”. He also accused his colleagues of moving the watermelon to places he would notice. Local 7-11s were not left out of being declared racists - because they dared to sell watermelon-flavored Slurpee… What is with this guy and watermelon? 

Just 2 months into his employment at the station, an executive had received three separate reports from different employees alleging various incidents. Flanagan had threatened them. The executive insisted Flanagan had to see the company’s counselor but it was to no avail. After just 10 months, Flanagan was given a 2-week pay severance package and kicked to the curb. But Flanagan could not understand why he would get such a small severance. He flew into a rage, insisting that he was to be paid a 3-months severance! Terrified co-workers stunned by the outburst locked themselves in offices till the police came and escorted him out of the building. As he was being taken, he told the police that one of the co-workers had called him the N-word and left a watermelon in the hallway for a week. Again with the watermelon.

Finally, the door closed on Flanagan and the staff WDBJ-7 let out a collective sigh of relief. But, Flanagan wasn’t done with them yet. 

Citing his racism experiences… watermelons and ‘on the field’… Flanagan filed a civil suit against the station.

This was not Flanagan’s first time badly parting with employers. He was a connoisseur in the game. He had also even taken a network to court. In 2000, he was hired by NBC’s WTWC-TV but, they found the quality of his reporting to be subpar; and he flew into a rage, blaming everyone else when they complained. After just a year, the company cited one too many clashes and he was given the boot. Flanagan, however, came to his conclusions on why he had been fired.  He presented them when he filed a civil lawsuit against them seeking $15, 000 in damages. 

The conclusion? Racism. 

He said they called him ‘monkey’ on numerous occasions and suggested affirmative action was the only reason he had been hired. The case was settled out of court. 

Hmmn… was been a douche, getting fired and suing Flanagan’s cash cow?

Cash cow or not, luck was not on his side this time, and his case against WDJB-7 was dismissed. The network walked away thinking they had heard the last from Flanagan. But, boy, were they mistaken.

A year later, on the balcony of the Bridgewater Plaza in Moneta, Virginia. 24-year old, local news reporter Alison Parker was ready for the day’s itinerary. It was a momentous day for her because it was her last day at WDBJ. She would be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina to start a new job. Her final interview was with Vicki Gardner, a Virginia chamber of commerce official to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the town’s famous tourist attraction: The Smith lake. The interview would be streaming live on the WDBJ morning segment, News7 Mornin’ to their over 40,000 viewers. With her was colleague, 27-year old photojournalist Adam Ward. The three of them thought they were the only ones at the plaza but, they weren’t.

Viewers at home were listening to Gardner reply to a question when she was cut short by 8 loud bangs, followed by Parkers’ screams as she tried to run. The camera tumbles to the ground and picks up a dark figure standing in the shadows before the feed is cut off and swings back to the segments’ anchor. From her shocked, horrified face, it’s easy to tell that this was not the broadcast they had planned for.

The offices of WDBJ were equally confused; nobody quite knew what had just happened. It had sounded like a car backfiring. But why would a car backfiring cause Adam to drop his camera and make Parker scream and run? Plus, who was the last person that had been seen standing?

The staff at the network quickly reviewed the footage and froze it on the darkly-clothed figure. They gasped in shock as they recognized him; It was none other than Flanagan! And in his hand, he held a Glock 9mm pistol! They weren’t sure what had happened but, it was not a car backfire. Immediately, they called the police.

Flanagan had fled the scene in a Chevrolet Sonic he had rented earlier in the month. But he was not trying to hide. At 8.23 am, he faxed a 27-page jumble of thoughts to ABC news under his public name, Bryce Williams. By 10.00 am, he calls them (ABC News) to tell them his name was Vester Lee Flanagan and not Bryce Williams. He also informed them that he had just killed two people. He uploaded a video of the shooting, filmed go-pro style on his Facebook and Twitter accounts. The 52- second footage quickly went viral. He also posted a couple of tweets: ‘I filmed the shooting, see facebook’ reads one, ‘Alison made a racist comment’ reads another, citing the time Parker had mentioned some colleagues were on the field ‘they hired her after that???’, ‘Adam went to HR on me after working me one time!!!’ Read yet another. He then posted pictures of himself with the caption ‘headshots used for getting acting/modeling way back...’ Somewhere between this tirade, he texted someone that he had “done something stupid.” 

Maybe to throw off the cops, Flanagan had left his ford mustang in the parking lot of the local airport. But the police were already tracing his phone. He was driving north and officers in the area were notified to be on the lookout for the vehicle that witnesses had described.

Eventually, a police officer’s license plate reader picked out his car. She turned on her lights but, Flanagan sped off. The chase began, but it soon ended when he crashed off the side of the road. By the time the officer got to his vehicle, she found Flanagan bleeding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. But he was not dead yet! Flanagan was airlifted to a nearby hospital.

Police searched his car and found: The Glock and shot himself and his victims with, 17 stamped letters, a bunch of other letters and notes, a ‘powder’ residue, an umbrella, a to-do list, sunglasses, multiple ammunition, a white iPhone, a shawl, a briefcase with three license plates.

Did Flanagan have a getaway plan? Whatever the answer, Flanagan wasn’t talking, not even if he wanted to. He died at the hospital two hours later.

Police pried into Flanagan’s life and found that, after getting fired, he was never able to get another job in network TV because all his references would warn of his difficult behavior. When he finally got a job at a call center, He was soon reported for harassing a colleague. Three months before the shooting, he had sent a 15-page letter to a local beer and burger. The cause of his disgruntlement was that when patrons were leaving, servers told them “have a nice day”, Instead of “thank you.” What?Just a few weeks before the shooting, he was involved in a road rage incident. A week before the shootings, Flanagan killed his two cats. He then posted on Facebook that he missed the very same cats he had killed! 

Police went to search his apartment. This apartment was just right across from the WDBJ-7 station! It explains the possibility that he had stalked his victims to the scene of the crime. 

Upon searching his apartment produced material that showed that Flanagan identified with people who committed acts of violence and mass killings. This echoed the thoughts he had put down in the fax he sent to ABC news. Police found out he had contacted ABC news two whole weeks before the shooting, telling them that he had a story to pitch which he would fax over. The fax came 2 hours after the shooting. In it, he wrote that he did it because of the nine black parishioners killed in the church shooting in Charleston. “My bullets have the victim’s initials on them….” “… I’ve been a human powder keg for a while… just waiting to boom.” He also wrote with admiration about the Virginia Tech killer and the columbine high school shooters. 

But his attempt to be a champion for racism was blown wide open when police contacted the person Flanagan had called that fateful day. His name was Avent and they had been roommates back in California. He told them he had received a package with letters, photographs, student IDs, and drivers’ licenses from Flanagan before the murders. In the letters he talked about his physical insecurities, fondly reminiscing about his younger years as a male escort when he had once been paid $2000, how he didn’t want to get old because he ‘totally cannot score right now! Avent also told them about the strained relationship Flanagan had with his family, who did not approve of his lifestyle as an escort and ostracized him. So, when he got the job at WDBJ, he was excited to leave all that behind and move to Virginia and start a better life. But the reality was different and Flanagan felt more alone than ever. Throwing cat shit at your neighbors would do that. Avent revealed that Flanagan only became worse when he lost his job. In one of the letters, Flanagan wrote that he had written to his father that he did not want a funeral, just to be cremated, and “that didn’t raise a red flag?” he finished.

On the day of the murders, Avent said he had woken up to a bizarre text from Flanagan that he had done something very bad. When he called him back, Flanagan flippantly told him he had shot and killed two people. When Avent asked him why, he said: “well, you know, I just feel, I didn’t like these people.” 

Not one mention of racism.

Vicki Gardner, the subject of the interview on that fateful day, survived the incident though she lost her kidney and part of her large intestine. her two companions were not so lucky. News reporter Alison Parker and photographer, Adam Ward both died on the scene from multiple gunshots wounds.

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