Heroes Live Forever Podcast

McLean, VA (December 17, 2024) - It was just a week before Christmas and Black Hawk County, Iowa, Deputy W. Fay Dilworth still had not found time to purchase and decorate the tree that he knew his six-year-old daughter, Betty, wanted so much. So, he began his work that Friday by going to a Christmas tree lot and picking out a particularly handsome tree and left instructions to have it delivered to...

McLean, VA (December 10, 2024) - Boston Patrolman James O’Leary was working a security detail at the local theater when he heard the loud cries for help from a liquor store owner who had just been beaten and robbed at gunpoint. The 16-year police veteran leaped into action. He commandeered a passing car and order the driver to chase down the fleeing robber. When he got close, Patrolman O’Leary jum...

McLean, VA (December 3, 2024) - On September 24, 1970, Boston Police Officer Walter Schroeder died a day after taking a .45 slug through his back trying to stop a bank robbery. The crime was committed by a strange mix of ex-convicts and student radicals who thought robbing banks might somehow put an end to the war in Vietnam. One of his killers was Katherine Ann Power, a high school valedictorian...

McLean, VA (November 26, 2024) - Before dawn on Thanksgiving morning, 1990, Prince William County (VA) Police Officer Philip “Mike” Pennington and other members of his SWAT team were summoned to make a dangerous arrest. The suspect, Mark Arban, had shot a sheriff’s deputy the night before. When they arrived at the suspect’s house, they encountered Arban, who was holding a pistol. Officer Penningto...

McLean, VA (November 19, 2024) - By all accounts, Sergeant George Sullivan, 43, was one of the most respected and likeable persons working at the University of Nevada, Reno Police Department. But his life ended tragically. Just after midnight on January 13, 1998, he made a traffic stop and 30 minutes later his body was found next to his patrol car, just inside the south end of the campus. Sergeant...

McLean, VA (November 12, 2024) - There are 487 female officers honored on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. One of the first to make the ultimate sacrifice was Mary T. Davis, 67, a police matron with the Wilmington (DE) Police Department. Matron Davis joined the department in 1910, after her four kids were fully grown and several years after her husband was killed in an accident. On...

McLean, VA (November 5, 2024) - It was one of the darkest days in Baltimore police history. The funeral for Baltimore City Police Officer Harold Carey was being held on November 4, 1998. Known as the “gentle giant,” Officer Carey was killed a few days earlier when two police vehicles crashed into one another while responding to an officer’s call for help. As Officer Carey’s funeral was coming to a...

McLean, VA (October 29, 2024) - On April 23, 2005, Pittsburg (CA) Police Officer Larry E. Lasater, Jr., 36, was shot and fatally injured while pursuing two bank robbery suspects. He died two days later, leaving behind a wife, JoAnn, who was seven months pregnant with the couple’s first child, Cody. Officer Lasater’s father was murdered when he was a young boy and his mother believes that helped to...

McLean, VA (October 22, 2024) - On the evening of February 7, 2008, a man with a history of disrupting city council meetings in Kirkwood, Missouri, made his final visit to City Hall. He left a note for his brother, saying, “The truth will win in the end.” Armed with a large-caliber revolver, he confronted a 20-year police veteran, William K. Biggs Jr., outside of City Hall and opened fire. After k...

McLean, VA (October 15, 2024) - The deadliest year for correctional officers was 1971, when 17 were killed in the line of duty, including seven during the infamous Attica, New York prison riot. It began on Thursday, September 9, 1971, at approximately 8:50 a.m. Inmates gained control of the facility in a well-planned, violent attack against prison employees. The prisoners took 50 correctional offi...

McLean, VA (October 8, 2024) - Every year in May, hundreds of officers, survivors of the fallen and citizen supporters gather in Tallahassee, Florida, to honor and remember those across the state who have died in law enforcement service. In 2010, then National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund Chairman and CEO Craig Floyd spoke at that memorial service. He told the stories of several Florida...

McLean, VA (October 1, 2024) - On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded by an assassin in Dallas, Texas at approximately 12:30 p.m. It was less than an hour later when Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit spotted a suspicious man who fit the description of the assassin. After some brief discussion with the suspect through the passenger side window of his patrol ve...

McLean, VA (September 24, 2024) - Around 5 p.m. on January 30, 2007, Mellie McDaniel was talking on her mobile phone with her husband, Jackson County (FL) Sheriff John P. McDaniel, when she pulled into her driveway after shopping for groceries. She suddenly became concerned when another car pulled in behind her. She told her husband about the suspicious activity and then let out a long scream. She...

McLean, VA (September 17, 2024) - Jayme Lee Biendl was a hard working star athlete who became a correctional officer with the Washington State Department of Corrections in 2003. On January 29, 2011, Correctional Officer Biendl was strangled to death with a microphone cord in the chapel of the Washington State Reformatory by an inmate who was serving a life sentence without parole for a series of v...

McLean, VA (September 10, 2024) - The three deadliest shootouts in law enforcement history claimed the lives of 16 law enforcement officers. The first occurred on December 15, 1890, when federal officers from the Bureau of Indian Affairs attempted to arrest the legendary Sioux Indian leader, Sitting Bull. Six officers were killed. On January 2, 1932, Greene County (MO) Sheriff Marcell Hendrix took...

McLean, VA (September 3, 2024) - Wesley Brown grew up in a tough Maryland neighborhood. During his teenage years, he was stabbed in one incident and shot in another. He could have succumbed to the evil elements that surrounded him. But thanks to a loving family, Wesley did not let that happen. At the age of 20 he became a Maryland State Trooper. That same year, 2007, Wesley also launched a mentors...

McLean, VA (August 27, 2024) - The United States Capitol Police (USCP) held a ceremony this past Saturday to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the line of duty death of USCP Sgt. Christopher Eney. By all accounts Sgt. Eney was an exemplary officer and “one of the best supervisors on the department,” according to a colleague. On August 24, 1984, he was shot and killed inadvertently by a fellow of...

McLean, VA (August 20, 2024) - For the last four years of his distinguished career as a correctional officer with the Fairfax County (VA) Sheriff’s Office, Frederick H. “Butch” Cameron Jr. was assigned to the Facilities Services Section. And during the height of the pandemic he led the response team that sanitized and sterilized high use and Covid-infected areas for the protection of inmates and s...

McLean, VA (August 13, 2024) - On June 18, 1985, Saugus (MA) Police Officer Harold L. Vitale attempted to arrest an 18-year-old driver with outstanding warrants. The suspect rolled the car window up trapping Officer Vitale’s arm and took off, dragging the 14-year police veteran at speeds up to 40 miles per hour. As the other occupants in the car screamed for the driver to stop, Officer Vitale was...

McLean, VA (August 6, 2024) - On March 22, 1989, a hostage-taker high on drugs shot two Alexandria (VA) police officers. Corporal Charlie Hill, a highly respected 13-year police veteran, was killed. His partner, Officer Andy Chelchowski was severely injured. Officer Chelchowski returned to the job he loved, but he never fully recovered from the physical and emotional pain that resulted from the sh...

McLean, VA (July 29, 2024) - Nearly 30 years ago, on November 22, 1994, a street-tough named Bennie Lee Lawson walked into the cold case squad office at Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police headquarters and, without saying a word, opened fire. More than 40 shots were exchanged between Lawson and the four officers in the room. FBI Special Agents Martha Dixon Martinez and Mike Miller, and a no nonse...

McLean, VA (July 16, 2024) - The date was March 27, 1985. Patrolman Thomas Strunk of the Billerica (MA) Police Department was off duty and running some errands with his wife, Nancy, and their three young sons. They were on their way home when Tom spotted a car ahead of them swerving all over the road. Suspecting that the driver was drunk and posed a serious threat to others on the roadway, Tom pul...

McLean, VA (July 17, 2024) - On February 7, 1985, the unthinkable happened. After leaving the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) Guadalajara Resident Office in Mexico to meet his wife for lunch, DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was kidnapped, tortured and brutally murdered. The heinous criminals behind his death were the same Mexican drug lords he was tenaciously working to identify...

McLean, VA (July 9, 2024) - October 23, 2002, was supposed to be Virginia State Trooper Mark Cosslett’s day off. But two serial snipers had been terrorizing the Washington, DC area. They had already killed 10 innocent people and seriously wounded three others. They had issued a chilling threat, saying, “Your children are not safe anywhere at any time.” Trooper Cosslett, the father of two young chi...

McLean, VA (July 2, 2024) - In 1789, President George Washington appointed Robert Forsyth to be one of our nation’s original 13 U.S. Marshals. Marshal Forsyth, a Revolutionary War hero, was put in charge of what was then the Republic of Georgia. On January 11, 1794, while serving court papers in a civil suit, he was shot and killed. His killer, Beverly Allen, escaped twice after being convicted of...