Snappy Gator Gum

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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David Kushner (0:41)

This is an old recording of my brother, Jon.

Gil Kushner (0:44)

Hello, this is Howard Coster, down in New York City.

David Kushner (0:51)

I only have three memories of him and a few of his things. A flat Stanley book, some comics, his lucky red rabbit's foot.

SPEAKER_6 (0:59)

Hey, you're curling. These are some people that aren't a basketball team, want to challenge you.

SPEAKER_1 (1:04)

Are you going to challenge him?

David Kushner (1:06)

I also have this little black audio cassette of his. He liked to tape himself goofing around, doing impressions of Donald Duck in Underdog.

My most vivid memory of him is from October 28th, 1973 He's 11 years old. I'm four. We're on the sidewalk in front of our house. John's on his bike. He's wiry with wavy red hair and eager to get on his way. I'm standing next to him. A stocky, playful kid with a black bowl haircut. I'm bugging him to buy me candy from the store. I want this specific thing. Snappy Gator gum. It's candy and a toy. The gum is packaged inside the mouth of a little plastic alligator head that opens and closes when you squeeze the neck. I've seen other kids playing with it and I really want one. He promises to get it for me, then grabs his handlebars and pedals quickly down the sidewalk toward the woods. I never saw him again.

I'm David Kushner. I'm a journalist and an author. I've spent decades reporting on other people's lives. I've covered hackers, gamers and criminals, treasure hunters and space tourists, civil rights activists and card counters. But the story I've always been chasing, one way or another, is my brother's.

I keep coming back to the same questions. How do you live knowing that unimaginable things can happen at any time? And how do you go on when they do?

This is Alligator Candy.

I've spent years investigating John's story. Because I was so young when he disappeared, I had to dig through old police files and witness testimonies to get the full picture of what happened. I tracked down people who were there at the time, police officers, neighbors, John's friends and teachers. And I talked with my family about things we'd never discussed before. The story starts in Florida in 1973 We had come from frozen upstate New York to sunny and humid Tampa, joined a local synagogue and settled into a modest newly built ranch house with a red Spanish style roof, right on the edge of Tampa's growing suburbs. It was on the side of a former tree nursery and my parents stopped the builders from taking down the lush little patch of woods in our backyard.

Lorraine Kushner (4:24)

It was a great family house.

David Kushner (4:26)

This is my mom Lorraine. Friends and family call her Rainey.

Lorraine Kushner (4:31)

I love the idea of a new house that we could have input into.

David Kushner (4:36)

We'd make forts in the backyard and play with our pet turtles. My dad built a little fenced in area for them with a small cement pond.

Andy Kushner (4:45)

I imagine we probably had this reputation in town as being the turtle family.

David Kushner (4:49)

This is my oldest brother Andy.

Andy Kushner (4:51)

You know, there would be a knock on the door unexpected and I would answer the door, you know, and there would be some guy, you know, with a gopher turtle in his hands, a big turtle.

And he said, y'all collect turtles here? I'm like, yeah, I grabbed the turtle. And this happened several times.

SPEAKER_6 (5:12)

It did.

David Kushner (5:12)

It did, I'm so happy you mentioned that.

SPEAKER_6 (5:15)

It did.

David Kushner (5:15)

People would just show up, the door would, somebody would ring the doorbell and we'd open it, there'd be someone standing with a turtle.

The kitchen had a large picture window looking out on the backyard. There was flowered wallpaper and a round white table. We each had our own matching wicker chair with an orange vinyl cushion. My dad, then me, then my mom, Andy and Jon.

Andy Kushner (5:44)

Every night we would have dinner together and then on Sundays, my father would make pancakes. I would have this seat at the table that would look out toward the counter and a window that would look out on the backyard. It was over there at the counter by the window, by the sink, where my father, every Sunday, he would be making pancakes.