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0:21

And we're back. Mike. I

0:23

like your shirt.

0:24

Thank you. I almost match you today, kind

0:26

of do what size shirt

0:28

is?

0:28

That?

0:29

It's a large? Which is too big?

0:32

Have you noticed that in

0:34

the last couple of years,

0:36

size large and size medium and

0:38

men's shirts are the most inconsistent

0:40

things on earth? When did that happen?

0:42

I've been a medium my whole life, right or not

0:45

my whole life. I guess when I was little, I didn't wear a

0:47

medium.

0:47

But if

0:49

you came out of the womb, you were wearing the fucking big

0:51

old media.

0:53

Now now, when I if I get a medium, once

0:55

I wash it and dry it is it's

0:57

as small. It's a crap top,

0:59

which I hear it's in now men's

1:01

crop tops show a little tom.

1:04

It can be. It can be not

1:07

my style, but yeah,

1:10

I I'll order a large in a

1:12

medium and they'll be from the same

1:14

brand, different sizes before I

1:16

wash it or dry it, and I

1:18

have to hang dry anything that fits ever because

1:21

it'll never fit again.

1:22

Yeah, these came large. I got two

1:25

of them. They were way big, so I immediately

1:27

washed and dried them, and now they're like decently

1:30

decently fitting, but still a little

1:32

big.

1:33

Are they making the shirts with

1:36

cheaper material now that just shrinks

1:38

in the dryer, because I feel like growing up,

1:41

I didn't have that problem where every single

1:43

shirt would shrink.

1:46

I don't know. Your mom is probably just better at launder

1:48

than you.

1:49

That's very true. I'm like, what's the

1:51

hottest setting and how fast could these be

1:53

ready? Because I have to go in twenty minutes.

1:55

Yeah, I know. When I went from an apartment

1:58

to my house, we inherited with

2:00

this washer and dryer, and the dryer does

2:02

not have like the wetness the

2:04

moisture sensor on it, so it

2:06

just keeps going. And that's

2:09

a shrink factory. Wow.

2:12

Yeah, those old ones get so

2:14

hot too.

2:14

I don't know why there's no automatic sensor

2:16

on it for the dryer, so it'll just keep drying.

2:19

If they're dry, it'll keep going. It'll

2:21

start a fires do a time dry right, Just

2:25

yeah, I just now if

2:27

it shirt's a good size, if it's a medium and it

2:29

fits me, well I just hang dry it.

2:32

Have you tried drying some that are a little

2:34

too big? Just yeah, you can kind of nail

2:36

it.

2:37

That's so I did with this one. Yeah. I've been getting

2:39

large as and just letting them dry and

2:41

shrink and it kind of works.

2:44

Right.

2:45

Yeah, it's like when you wanted to shrink it doesn't. Wow,

2:47

we've gotten way off track here, but

2:50

this is important stuff, guys. Today's guest

2:52

is Gilbert King. He

2:55

is an author, a I

2:57

call him a journalist. He

2:59

has earned a Pulitzer

3:01

Prize. He has an

3:03

amazing true crime podcast called Bone

3:06

Valley, and actually,

3:09

very recently, I think was it just yesterday

3:11

or a couple of days ago, the subject

3:13

of his podcast was in the news.

3:16

Yeah, I think the articles were two days ago. The

3:19

main person involved

3:21

in his podcast he was falsely accused

3:23

of murdering his wife and

3:26

he's been in prison for thirty five years and he

3:28

gets out on parole in a

3:30

little over a week. Bone Valley was a great

3:32

podcast.

3:33

I mean, that's like the holy grail

3:35

of why you know you

3:38

make a true crime podcast like that. If

3:40

you're investigating a cold case and you

3:43

know someone got it wrong

3:45

decades ago, you're hoping that it gets

3:48

enough attention to you know, raise

3:50

some red flags and some new

3:52

action to take place. But that's amazing.

3:55

This guy is a wealth of knowledge.

3:58

We had a really fun time just chatting

4:00

about making true crime podcasts. He's

4:03

a big history buff, knows

4:05

way more about anything that

4:07

happened pre twenty sixteen than I

4:09

do. I think that's where my brain

4:11

stops, Like what

4:13

happened before that? I don't know. Did COVID

4:16

come the next year? I don't remember. We

4:18

had a really fascinating conversation about

4:20

Leo Schofield's case, which

4:22

is the subject of his podcast, Bone Valley,

4:25

corruption in the legal system, true

4:27

crime in general, storytelling, and

4:29

how he puts his stories together and

4:31

how he keeps track of all this different

4:34

information because it's it's hard, it's

4:36

a lot of stuff. I feel like I learned a

4:38

lot. I think you guys will too. So, without further

4:40

ado, today's guest is Gilbert

4:43

King. But

4:54

yeah, thanks again, man. This is super exciting.

4:56

Oh my pleasure.

4:57

I wanted to kind of just kick things off, you

5:00

know, just give me a little bit of your background,

5:02

Like who are you today?

5:04

Yeah, well, I'm a guy that

5:06

really didn't had a podcast by

5:08

accident. I mean, I mostly do write nonfiction

5:11

books, and so the books I do generally

5:14

take like five years to do. They're historical.

5:16

I basically go back and look at

5:19

basically crimes from the pre Civil

5:22

rights era, crimes that basically

5:24

became a big story and then got forgotten. And

5:26

so that's what I was doing for a long time, writing

5:28

about like cases in Florida, Louisiana,

5:32

and then I kind of stumbled into this case.

5:34

I don't won't get into it right now, but I kind

5:36

of stumbled into this and said, well, this isn't really what I work

5:38

on. It's like from the eighties, everyone's alive. I'm

5:41

used to dealing with dead people and documents.

5:42

But why was that? Why

5:45

were you interested in doing that part of it?

5:46

Where was like so long ago?

5:48

You know, I just got really fascinated when

5:51

I started realizing that I didn't really understand

5:53

a lot of American history that took

5:55

place before the Civil Rights movement. So like

5:58

I was familiar with Martin Luther King and the city and

6:00

the protest, but what was

6:02

happening in the forties and fifties, like after World

6:04

War Two. And when I started

6:06

looking at it, I was just like, all these really

6:09

interesting criminal cases that arose

6:12

and nobody knows about them, and I was like,

6:14

God, people should know about this. For example,

6:17

one of the books I wrote was called Devil in the Grove and

6:19

it's about a case that took place in Florida

6:21

in the late nineteen forties. And

6:25

you know, it's every bit as dramatic as the Scottsboro

6:27

Boys case, which everyone's heard of. This one was

6:29

called the Groveland Boys, and nobody had

6:31

ever heard of them, and this was a much

6:33

more violent and aggressive story.

6:36

I mean, the sheriff didn't like

6:38

that, Thurgood Marshall overturned the verdict

6:40

of these young men who got convicted of, you

6:42

know, sexually assaulting a white woman, which

6:44

is like the worst thing you could possibly imagine in

6:47

the Jim Crow South and Marshall

6:49

came in and took it to the US Supreme

6:51

Court and got it reversed. And the

6:53

local powers that be, including this murderous

6:55

sheriff in this county in Florida, just

6:58

said that's fine, I'll just go pick up the

7:00

inmates myself and we'll bring him back for the retrialt

7:02

and then he basically shot them. I'm

7:05

just a pure assassin.

7:06

Basically he did.

7:08

He did shoot them.

7:10

Yeah, no, he basically he shot them.

7:12

Okay, he definitely shot them.

7:14

Wow, that's insane.

7:15

It is crazy. But one of them died

7:17

instantly. The other one is

7:20

kind of like having a cell phone in the nineteen

7:22

forties. He actually got shot three times

7:24

but only pretended to be dead. And

7:26

so he said, I was sitting there watching

7:29

them as they said, we got to make this look like an escape,

7:31

and they're tearing at the sheriff's clothes and they're

7:33

fabricating all this evidence. And then they

7:35

take this photograph from the scene and

7:38

all of a sudden, one of the witnesses is say, hey, that boy just

7:40

moved, And sure enough, he was still

7:42

alive from the gunshots. And he went

7:44

back that night to the hospital and started telling

7:46

the FBI everything.

7:48

That happened, Oh my god.

7:49

And you know it was there was actually forensic evidence

7:51

because his story produced a bullet

7:53

that was lodged in the sand about ten

7:56

inches below the surface. So the FBI

7:58

had this proof that the sheriff and the deputy were like murderers.

8:01

And even still no one's ever not too

8:03

many of this, yeah yet right now, And

8:05

this involve Thurgood Marshall. You

8:07

know, before Brown versus Board, he

8:10

wasn't really he was known as mister civil Rights, but

8:12

he was taking these death penalty cases by himself

8:15

down the South, and I just thought we should

8:17

know about that, as you know, people who could sue.

8:19

Oh yeah, these things happened, like we shouldn't forget

8:21

about them. They were probably swept under

8:23

the rug a little bit, is he like right.

8:25

Oh, definitely, And you know, like what ended up happening

8:27

is like the official narrative of the sheriff kind

8:29

of carried the day. So they you

8:31

know, this is hard to imagine, but back then

8:34

they just hit all the evidence and

8:36

just pushed it all away and said, you know, defend it is

8:38

not allowed to see it. We're still under investigation. And

8:40

so Thurgood Marshall never really knew that

8:42

this guy was really I mean, he

8:44

knew that he was an attempted murder,

8:46

but he didn't have the proof to do anything.

8:48

About it, like hit physical evidence and stuff like that.

8:50

There was a bullet that was clearly from a thirty

8:53

eight caliber and the FBI wrote

8:55

this very powerful memo saying you have to prosecute

8:57

these guys, and they just blew them off. And it was

8:59

just like white supremacy in the South. Yeah,

9:02

there's no like, black people weren't even voting really

9:04

at this point, so they were totally

9:06

disenfranchised.

9:07

So you were curious about what America

9:10

was like before the Civil rights movement

9:13

just kind of in a nutshell here, what have

9:15

you learned?

9:16

Well, I mean, the one thing that it's

9:19

hard to imagine, but like because I was working

9:21

with some screenwriters at one point they were trying to develop

9:23

this and they're like, well, you know what about

9:25

the protests, And no, there was no protests

9:28

in the South in the nineteen forties. That was an illegal

9:30

you know, gathering, so you couldn't protest

9:32

these kind of things. The deputies would just come

9:34

along and just beat you senseless, and that was like

9:37

something they did all the time. So this

9:39

was before the days of protest, and

9:41

there was just these cases that were like really

9:43

preserved really well, especially

9:45

in like Florida is really good with records,

9:48

and I would talk to people from these areas,

9:50

these towns and I'm never heard of that. I didn't know Thurgo

9:53

Marshall came. These were old people too, And

9:55

that's how really the whole narrative just got kind

9:57

of got swept under. And I was finding

9:59

like all sorts of really strange cases

10:01

like this that would like, you know, if you saw

10:03

them today, you go, I cannot believe that's a real case.

10:06

And these things really happened.

10:07

How are you finding them in the first place?

10:09

You know. I was just so really embedded in

10:12

Florida that like people would come up to me all

10:14

the time, kind of like a book talks I was doing.

10:16

At one time, I was down in Groveland, Florida,

10:19

and this old old deputy came up to

10:21

me and he goes, you got

10:23

your book right, because I was on that guy's force and

10:25

he was a killer. But he goes, but there's another

10:27

case nobody wants to write about because

10:29

it involves a rich lady.

10:31

Wow, you're like, tell me more.

10:33

Yeah, It's like one of those moments.

10:35

And then he started telling me. I'm like, there's no

10:37

way this is true. He basically yeah,

10:41

He basically said there

10:43

was a black a young black man who

10:46

had raped a white woman

10:48

in the South which is like the most provocative thing you

10:50

could do, the quickest way to get run out

10:52

of town or lynched. And apparently

10:55

because they were from a high society and they had

10:57

some money, they didn't

10:59

want it known that the wife had

11:01

been sexually assaulted by a black man.

11:03

Wow, what it's strange like on the others end.

11:05

Right, because it didn't happen that often. So

11:08

what ended up happening is the husband

11:11

was the mayor of this town. He was a very powerful

11:13

guy. He got together with the sheriff and the

11:15

prosecutor and they said, can we just switch

11:18

the race of the attackers so it doesn't look like my

11:20

wife was touched by a black man in this way?

11:22

And they switched They framed a

11:24

mentally disabled white teenager.

11:27

What just so that the wife didn't

11:29

carry the stigma it should be a pariah

11:32

in this community if she was known to be sexual assaulted

11:34

by a black man. So they just switched the race

11:36

and framed mentally disabled kid

11:38

and sent him away. And

11:40

like, I couldn't believe he was telling me this, and he goes,

11:42

oh, we framed him. I'll tell you how we did it. I

11:44

mean he was actually talking about complicity

11:47

and so I was like, all right, this is a story,

11:49

and I started filing record requests, and you

11:51

know, everything was checking out. He was telling me the truth.

11:54

And but like, those are the kind of

11:56

really bizarre, like Southern gothic

11:58

stories. Yeah, you know, around a crime narrative

12:01

that I was finding down there for these kind of stories.

12:03

Why do you think it's important that we

12:06

know these stories in twenty twenty four.

12:08

I think one of the things that's really important is

12:10

that I don't think people really understand

12:14

how oppressive white supremacy

12:16

really was. Before the nineteen sixties,

12:18

there were laws on the book that still like boggle

12:21

my mind. Like I'll give you an example. There

12:24

was a fight or worker

12:26

fight laws, and they were on the books in the nineteen

12:28

fifties, and basically they gave a

12:30

sheriff in a town legal

12:33

permission to find like a couple

12:35

of black men gathered on a corner and

12:37

if you had to be working seven

12:39

days a week, or you had to be enlisted in the military.

12:42

These were these worker fight laws.

12:44

Do you think for black people or yeah,

12:46

well, I mean they're for white people.

12:47

But they were only really they were forcing it

12:49

on, right, and so what

12:51

they end up doing is just grabbing these guys off the street

12:53

and throwing them in jail, saying, you know, Sunday, but you

12:56

weren't working. And it became what's

12:58

known as the bailbond racket. So

13:00

these sheriffs would throw these guys in jail and then call

13:02

up the citrus groves and say, yeah, I got nine bodies

13:04

for you. They work for free until they pay off a fine.

13:07

Wow. And this was going on constantly,

13:09

and you could imagine like how oppressive

13:11

that is for a family who all of a sudden

13:13

their bread winner is just thrown in jail for ten

13:15

days.

13:16

Unimaginable.

13:17

Yeah, and this happened all the time, and

13:19

by law, the sheriff actually got to keep the

13:21

fines. So he was just providing free

13:23

labor for the citrus industry in

13:26

Florida, and they got to keep the fines.

13:28

I mean, you couldn't imagine one more corrupt system. And

13:30

yet this was on the books well through the fifties,

13:33

way after World War Two. And so these

13:35

are the kind of things that you were able to do, you

13:37

know, and those are law enforcement

13:40

things, like those are actual laws. But yeah, some

13:42

of the things that were happening, like you know, the blurring

13:44

of the lines between law enforcement and the clan.

13:47

Like I had a couple of these deputies tell me,

13:49

yeah, well, if we couldn't do it by law, we just do it at night

13:51

in the clan. It's a different uniform. And they're

13:53

telling me these things like had to get rid of the suspect

13:56

and couldn't do anything, so we just take care of it.

13:58

At night, geez.

13:59

And so we start to see this white supremacy

14:01

kind of baked into law enforcement in

14:03

the Deep South. I mean, that's when it becomes really

14:06

disturbing. People are

14:08

just absolutely powerless to fight this.

14:10

What do you think society should glean from that

14:12

today?

14:13

Well, I mean, you know, I think sometimes when

14:15

these stories happen, when you see like a Trayvon

14:17

Martin type story, they

14:19

kind of resonate and people I have people

14:21

tell me all the time, like, nothing's changed, this hasn't changed.

14:24

I can't really say that because you

14:26

have no idea how bad it used to be.

14:28

You know, in you know, Trayvon

14:31

Martin's case, at least protests

14:33

took to the streets, the NAACP took to the streets,

14:36

and then they reevalued it. The

14:38

police chief like resigned in shame, and

14:40

they actually tried George Zimmerman.

14:42

I mean you might not like the verdict he was acquitted,

14:44

but you could say, like, at least he got a trial.

14:47

Back in the days, in the forties and fifties, none of

14:49

this would ever happen. Grand juries were just like, no,

14:52

that's not it's a black guy. Our cops are white,

14:54

right right, We're not doing anything.

14:56

So it's like, yeah, maybe it hasn't changed enough.

14:58

Yeah, it hasn't, and you need to kind

15:01

of look back to see how we got here

15:03

to understand where we are today even yeah,

15:06

way right.

15:07

Yeah, because you really wouldn't recognize the criminal

15:09

justice system if you were to watch a trial from like,

15:11

you know, you could this is before the Bill of

15:14

Rights got incorporated, So you could be watching a criminal

15:16

trial and you know, a guy doesn't want to testify,

15:18

and the prosecutor can just stand up and go he

15:20

must be hiding something because he's not willing

15:22

to testify. He must be a guilty conscience, and they could

15:25

use that in court. So there's a lot of protections

15:27

we have now. For instance, coorse

15:29

confessions used to be legal, so you

15:32

could literally beat a guy over the head with a with a

15:34

phone book and say now did you do it? And

15:36

if yes, you're like confession and

15:38

that was accepted.

15:39

They were doing that for real, right, Oh yeah, they

15:41

were.

15:41

Doing it all the time. They did a report.

15:44

President Truman did a Commission on Civil Rights

15:46

report and he said, there are some jails

15:49

that we investigated where they weren't even they

15:51

wouldn't start with questioning. They would start with a beating

15:53

and then they would go to the questions when it involved black

15:55

defendants. Wow, And then they were finding this all

15:58

the time, like it was nobody. There's no one in say society

16:00

that objected to this, and black

16:02

voices just really had no platform. So that's

16:05

the thing you're seeing over and over the brutality

16:07

of it. It's so much worse than I imagined.

16:10

Do you consider yourself an author journalist?

16:14

I mean, do you even hear about the label

16:17

a little bit?

16:17

You know, because when I start thinking about it, like, I

16:20

use journalism, but it's not all that I use.

16:22

Like I do still a lot of history and oral

16:25

history and reporting like that, So you

16:27

know, there's of parts of what I do is journalism,

16:29

But I really do feel like I come from an area of

16:31

narrative nonfiction books, where

16:34

it's just a different form of storytelling

16:36

than typical journalism.

16:38

And I know this because I have a lot of journalists call

16:41

me up saying, hey, can you do that. I'm like, yeah,

16:43

I can do that usually like you withheld

16:45

evidence until later. I'm like, well, that's part of storytelling,

16:48

you know, right.

16:50

Did you get to end of the book? Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like

16:52

keep.

16:52

Going, you're gonna learn more. But I

16:54

think they think, well I knew this going in, Like that's

16:56

okay. Maybe in journalism that you have to lead

16:59

with your strongest points, but I don't have to do that.

17:01

And narrative so like I can reveal things

17:03

later on in the story and you know, it's not

17:06

tricking anyone. It's just deciding how you really

17:08

want to tell a story.

17:09

But also there's a valid

17:11

truth to if the if this crime

17:14

happens. We only know so much today.

17:16

Yeah, and people slowly learned

17:19

things throughout time in

17:21

the first place, just because it happened

17:23

and it's tied in a bow, we know the whole story.

17:26

They didn't start that way for the people who experienced

17:29

it either, right, I think almost

17:31

for me, kind of taking you through how

17:34

this stuff was learned in

17:36

a way is sometimes

17:38

that narrative through line in some

17:41

cases with like maybe you learned that this

17:43

happened. You know, this smoking gun was found two years

17:46

later, but they didn't have that in day one, right,

17:48

right, right right?

17:48

Yeah, you know it's so funny you say. I listened to your

17:51

interview with Mark Smirling, which I thought was really.

17:53

He's I love.

17:54

Yeah, he's great, great. I actually met him

17:56

once a couple of years ago, and I was just absolutely fascinated

17:59

by him. But he you guys

18:01

were talking about the like the Jinx moment, and I was

18:03

like, smoking gun dah thing. I was like, oh,

18:05

I just thought of a story that happened

18:08

when I was researching a book. And

18:10

you know it's I don't really get smoking

18:12

gun documents ever, Like it just doesn't

18:14

happen that. Yeah, you want them

18:16

all the time. But I was going through

18:18

like there was it was misfiled,

18:21

it got it was it started out as an FBI

18:23

report and it ended up in the Florida Department

18:25

of Law Enforcement, which is like the state FBI basically,

18:29

And uh, I took me a long time to get those

18:31

second files. And I'm going through I'm like, shit,

18:33

this is an FBI report. What's it doing in here?

18:35

Yeah, And it was a smoking gun, like

18:37

at that moment that.

18:38

Oh my god, the whole conspiracy when they

18:41

decided to I was telling you this story earlier about

18:43

switching the race of the defendants so

18:45

that the wife didn't carry the stigma

18:47

of having been assaulted by a black man. These

18:50

guys were in a car, all of them powerful

18:53

people, the prosecutor, really powerful

18:55

business people or the mayor. And

18:57

one guy was in there and he was on the board

18:59

of the what it was called, the Lake County

19:02

Mental Retardation Committee, and

19:04

he was, no, it doesn't

19:06

sound good, but back then it even looked bad back

19:08

then.

19:09

Yeah, probably back then, yeah, yeah, yeah.

19:11

But you know, they had different ways of phrasing things

19:13

back there, obviously, And so

19:16

it's just gone through this document. And there was an informant

19:18

in the car who worked for that committee and

19:21

he's like, I find this offensive. I'm gonna I'm

19:23

gonna, like basically be a whistleblower. And he told

19:26

an FBI agent and it's all

19:28

documented in this report and they said, yeah,

19:30

they decided they had to change the race of the attacker

19:32

because he couldn't stand the thought of

19:34

his wife being touched by a black man in

19:36

this way. And it's all right there on the report.

19:38

And so I was like talking to that

19:41

family of this husband and wife that

19:43

the kids were talking to me, and

19:46

you know, it got to the end and I said, so, where

19:48

are you going with this story? And I had to sort of give him an update,

19:51

and I said, well, I did find a smoking

19:53

gun document and

19:55

they're like, what tell me about it? And then

19:57

they were like I told him. They said who was it? And

20:00

I gave the name of the guy, and I

20:02

could hear him gasp on the phone, and he's

20:04

just like, that was our next door neighbor for

20:07

decades and like, you know, they

20:09

must have been having barbecues together.

20:10

And then you find the person under your

20:12

nose, right yeah.

20:14

And I just thought, oh, that was a horrible thing. I

20:16

wouldn't want to have heard that if I wasn't

20:18

there.

20:19

Right, And the thing is about true crime,

20:21

I feel like, is that there

20:24

is no good answer. Yeah at

20:26

the end, right right, I mean, like there is there's

20:28

justice, But when you find out

20:31

that so and so did a bad thing,

20:33

yeah, that's that's still so and so

20:36

doing a bad thing. Yeah, right, and.

20:38

Even like decades later, like these families

20:40

are you know, like they they want to protect

20:43

you know, the legacy of horror families

20:45

and it's just like you hear that kind of stuff, you

20:48

know. But I mean, they actually were

20:50

very kind to me, and I'm really very

20:52

thankful that they participated. They said, if you're going to

20:54

do the story, and want you to know everything, and they gave

20:57

me a lot of documents. Yeah,

20:59

it was nice. I had to break it to them that way.

21:01

Yeah, but when you find something

21:03

that is that smoking gun or hey, I'm

21:06

the only person who knows this right now. Yeah,

21:08

and I need to tell you this because this is also

21:11

why you're so also why you want me to do

21:13

this right exactly, is in the

21:15

hopes of this.

21:16

Yeah, it's true, you know, and for the most

21:18

part, like everybody else was so happy that I had this

21:20

because you know, they.

21:21

Of course on the other end, but this is

21:23

an exciting news.

21:24

No, it really isn't.

21:25

And I just think something, right, who did you.

21:27

Think if somebody like just said, hey, we're doing

21:29

a story about someone in your family, and like, can

21:31

you be willing to talk to us, maybe share your diary

21:33

at the diary.

21:34

I've thought about that, like if you came to me, but hey man,

21:36

I love you, bro, but no.

21:37

Way, Yeah, I wouldn't want anyone.

21:39

Yeah you want me to do a story on you, podcast

21:42

on you? Yeah, I'm good. I'm good.

21:44

Yeah.

21:45

I mean I like, I don't

21:47

even have like the murder stuff in my head.

21:49

Yeah, we're talking about just some regular every

21:51

day Yeah.

21:52

Right.

21:52

I always suspect, like somebody they probably

21:54

have an indication. I think that this

21:57

family was in particular, like

21:59

they were motivated, like they felt

22:01

that their father was not a racist, and

22:04

so like they were like nervous

22:06

because I do kind of investigate a lot of that stuff.

22:09

But at the end, I think it was like I

22:11

had to tell him, like I didn't find anything racial

22:13

than your father's. In fact, I found a lot of people that

22:15

I talked to that were really grateful because

22:17

he used to give clothes and you know, he had money and

22:19

he was very supportive. And I've

22:21

talked to people said he you know, he paid greater than the

22:23

market rate for us, and so I

22:26

was able to go back to him and said, you know, I never found one

22:28

thing where someone said a bad thing about.

22:30

In a way that was validated for them. Yeah.

22:32

I think they felt better about that than the conspiracy

22:34

to frame, you know for sure, Yeah, for

22:36

some reason, I don't know, but but you know, at

22:38

least I was able to say that in truth. You know, they couldn't

22:40

find.

22:41

Anything as

22:43

someone who does

22:47

narrative nonfiction like yourself, for

22:50

you, why are you interested

22:54

in these darker stories

22:56

about murder?

22:58

Yeah, you know, that's a really good quoestquestion. I asked

23:01

myself that a.

23:01

Lot, and I'm asking as someone who it does

23:03

that as well, So feel

23:05

free to spit it back.

23:07

Yeah, I mean, I guess if you think about

23:09

it, you know, a

23:11

lot of Shakespeare is about true crime, and

23:13

it's just a form of storytelling that

23:15

we all accept and some of the great narratives,

23:17

you know, going back as far as we can remember.

23:21

And so I've always been

23:23

drawn to this, even as a kid. I remember once,

23:26

you know, I was probably twelve years old before

23:29

all your times again, but here we go Son

23:32

of Sam, which everyone's heard of that, right, but you know, I

23:34

grew up here, and so I remember,

23:36

like the buzz in the morning

23:39

when Jimmy Breslin has a new column, he son

23:41

of Sam struck last night, and you know,

23:43

there was no internet, so you're just reading these pages

23:45

and you feel like this is amazing.

23:48

Son of Sam is actually writing to the correspondent

23:50

and he's talking about his next moves and

23:52

what he and I, as a kid, I was just like, oh

23:55

my god, this is unbelievable. Not

23:57

that I couldn't wait for the next murder, but I was really

23:59

in to the serial version of this. It

24:01

was that whole summer, and you know, he was striking

24:04

frequently, and it was always in the newspapers,

24:06

and even on days when he didn't strike, you'd had

24:09

like where are the cops on this? And I

24:11

just remember just being so blown away that I would

24:13

run to the store the next morning to see if I could

24:15

get the newspaper to see if something happened. And

24:18

I just that was such a powerful part of

24:20

my childhood and and just you

24:22

know, ended up really getting into

24:24

true crime with my mother. We would read a lot

24:26

of these kind of books. Yeah, and just follow

24:28

this together. It was a really bonding.

24:29

That's that's pretty cool.

24:31

Yeah, it was. And you know, lo

24:33

and behold, I'm still doing it today. I

24:35

feel like it you do.

24:37

That, Yeah, exactly, Mom, I'm still

24:39

doing it.

24:40

I know some people, well you're doing like civil rights

24:42

like it's crime narrative. I'm sorry to inform

24:44

you that it's a crime narrative. You

24:46

know.

24:46

So for those who don't know, just because I mean wide

24:49

range of audience, Son is Sam, just

24:51

recap what was that all about that summer?

24:54

What was going on?

24:54

Yeah, it was like in the I think seventy seven,

24:56

maybe seventy six or seventy seven, right around

24:59

there, this guy David Berkowitz,

25:01

but like nobody knew who he was. He was

25:03

just seemed like he was evil and he was

25:06

definitely demented and he was you know,

25:08

he was talking about his dog named Sam,

25:10

and Sam was making him strike and

25:13

he was taking orders from the dog, and there

25:15

was just all this weird stuff about it.

25:17

And he was going around killing people.

25:19

Yeah, he was a forty four caliber killer

25:21

was one of his nicknames too. And he would just drive around

25:23

like Brooklyn and Queens and just

25:26

like he often struck in like lover's

25:28

lane situations. Okay, so

25:30

he found a couple in a car, he was just opened fire.

25:32

Yeah almost with that first killing,

25:35

where just a couple in the car and

25:37

yeah, sitting ducks for some psychopath

25:39

to go kill somebody.

25:41

Right, and you can imagine the cumulative effect

25:43

of these was just people were terrified to go

25:45

out on dates. I mean, it really affected

25:47

was the whole summer, and it was just

25:50

you know, one after another. Sometimes

25:52

the person would live, sometimes the boyfriend

25:54

would die, but the girl. You know, but I don't know how many

25:56

he killed. It was probably six or so. But

25:59

it was just absolutely terrifying to a city.

26:02

And ultimately they ended up catching

26:04

him. Like there was a car that was illegally parked

26:06

and they just did a check on it and

26:09

it turned out to be his car, and he had

26:11

some crap in there that was like Son

26:13

of Sam related and they got him, and you know.

26:15

He was just like this technicality, right,

26:17

really just actually backed into it.

26:20

But you know he was like this strange guy that like

26:23

that's the killer. He's like this nerdy guy

26:25

with glasses and says his dog is

26:27

talking to him, and you know, it was

26:29

a weird thing. But you know, it

26:31

just absolutely paralyzed the city at the

26:33

time because people were just terrified to go out,

26:36

and and the

26:38

fact that it lasted all summer long. You

26:41

know, you were just gripped by it like, especially

26:43

as a kid, like did he strike last night? Did he?

26:45

You know, I'm got to run up and get that paper. And

26:47

you know, sure enough, Jimmy Breslin is

26:50

writing about it because Son of Sam is writing him and

26:52

giving him letters and predicting when he's going to strike

26:54

again.

26:55

Yeah.

26:55

I was overwhelmed by it. I ended up meeting Jimmy Breslin

26:58

a few years ago, right before he died, and

27:00

I just said, you don't understand

27:02

what an impact you made of me as a kid, like just

27:05

Georgie tellums. Oh, I said, you know, I

27:07

just there was nothing more thrilling. And not only were you

27:09

covering this and what it was doing to the city, but

27:11

you know, Son of Sam was writing to you, he was targeting

27:14

you. And I asked him questions, did you ever feel

27:16

scared that you know, he might come at you? He's

27:18

nah, not scared of him at.

27:20

All, you know, he was just yeah, of course New York

27:22

are boiled.

27:25

But uh yeah, but those things like really

27:27

they're they're they really form who you are. I felt

27:29

like I have like certain criminal cases

27:31

in my background that I've been aware

27:33

of since I was a real young kid.

27:35

Yeah, and that they've had to have

27:37

informed your writing. Yeah, you're and

27:39

the growth through you getting even better

27:41

and better at your writing. I would assume just the

27:44

things that impacted you, that drove

27:46

your curiosity probably even more.

27:48

I guess, yeah, I think that's a fair way to put it.

27:50

You know. I think if I was, you know, like,

27:52

I would have written a different kind of book

27:54

than I do now, you know, because now my interests

27:56

are a little bit greater. So I do like the legal

27:59

angle a little bit more like I like, you

28:01

know, thinking about laws and strategy

28:05

and then a history of civil rights if I

28:07

can find those kind of things. But you know, to

28:09

be honest with you, like this last story

28:11

I did for the podcast, there

28:13

was no civil rights in it. It was

28:15

a straight up murder case basically.

28:17

Yeah, but you know, there was also something

28:19

about it that really drew me in. There's always

28:22

something a little bit different that I, you

28:24

know, like about.

28:24

These stories covering true crime stories,

28:26

making podcasts about them.

28:29

I get asked, you know, does it ever get

28:31

you know, too emotionally heavy

28:34

and stuff like that. I'm

28:36

curious to you what that

28:39

balance is because I think that for

28:41

me, in order to tell

28:43

a good story and an

28:46

objective story and to

28:48

keep my wits about me and stay in

28:50

the lane here and not lose

28:52

it or just go down some conspiracy

28:55

land valley over here. Yeah,

28:57

right, just to stay straight

29:00

with it. I have to kind of

29:02

check myself and in

29:04

a way be above that

29:07

to look at the facts and

29:11

the story itself without

29:13

letting it tear me down to not

29:15

be able to see that. So, yeah,

29:17

what is it to you? Because it's like, you know, we're

29:20

not soulless robots, right, but

29:22

like, how do you manage the heaviness

29:24

of that or over

29:27

a lifetime of doing it?

29:28

Yeah, honestly, Like I don't think i've

29:30

really like in the past when I write

29:32

about these things, it's just like really

29:34

not a lot of survivors, and so the family

29:37

connections are not quite as strong. But like in

29:39

this last story that I did, you know, everybody's

29:41

still alive and you're in it.

29:43

I've heard you and Mark talking about this like you're

29:46

they're in it for life with you. I mean, this is

29:48

a connection and it's a commitment and you

29:50

have to understand that and sort of think that

29:53

that's part of the jobs. It's really

29:55

difficult to do because you know, I've definitely

29:57

gotten caught up in this, especially in these wrongful

30:00

things. We're kind of living through them in the real time,

30:03

and the courts are shooting him down and like you

30:05

know better, and like you know,

30:07

you don't know the whole story, and it's like just so frustrating

30:10

to watch the legal community just kind

30:12

of fail him. And that's

30:14

a hard thing, you know. The other thing though, I think,

30:17

I don't know if this is a good answer, but it

30:20

is kind of true. You know, like if

30:22

you're going into surgery, the

30:24

last thing I really want to hear from my surgeon. It's like, oh,

30:26

I love people so much, you know, this really means someone

30:28

like I just want someone to fix something.

30:30

Like be a robot,

30:32

Yeah exactly.

30:33

I don't want you getting weepy over me.

30:35

I want to be soulless with a steady

30:37

hand.

30:38

Yeah. And so there is some of that, like

30:40

to be able to just sort of step back and say, all right,

30:43

there. They might not like what I'm gonna say. They

30:45

came to me with this story, but it's going to be hurtful to them

30:47

in some way, and like where do you draw the

30:49

line, Like, well, this stuff happened, and it's important

30:52

to the story, and you have to understand, like I

30:54

have to be a little soulss here, but that's part of the

30:56

story. You might not like that part, but

30:58

you know, and so learning

31:01

to like keep a little bit of a distance between

31:04

you know, the subjects and things. So

31:06

far, I've had really haven't had a

31:08

problem managing it. You know. It's I end

31:11

up really liking everybody and believing

31:13

in it. So it's like it's not a problem. You know, like

31:15

they're checking in with me, what's the update, when is this show

31:18

coming out? Like of course I'm going to tell them all that

31:20

stuff. You know.

31:20

Yeah, there's a lot of camaraderie in it that way. Yeah,

31:23

I agree, right.

31:24

I agree, you know, like and you know, especially

31:27

like when you're all feeling the same way about the

31:30

case, Like, all right, this is a big thing, coming up to big

31:32

hearing. This is do or die for him,

31:34

this is so important of his life and he's

31:36

going to be coming up for parole or going

31:38

before an evidentiary panel of judges.

31:41

Uh, you know, it's life or death for these people,

31:43

and for me it's like, well, yeah, I guess I could move

31:45

on to another story. But you know, truthfully,

31:47

it's like I'm feeling it too in there, Like I

31:50

just you got to know these people like

31:52

yeah, this means years more in prison

31:54

and it's wrong.

31:55

It's yeah, and you know what you know now

31:57

and now it's bothering you. Yeah.

32:00

Yeah, and like you know, I think I

32:02

think the thing about books is you don't let any

32:04

of that come in. You just stay in the third person. But

32:07

with you know, when you're talking and it's a podcast

32:09

that you know, your your feelings are out there, and

32:12

it's different. It's different for me. I was not

32:14

used to that. I had to really trust producers

32:16

to say, look, this is this is works. You know this

32:19

happened, and yeah you're vulnerable and you look

32:21

kind of stupid here, but it really serves

32:23

the story. And I trusted them.

32:28

So how does one like yourself

32:30

accidentally fall into making a podcast?

32:32

Well, you know, this is interesting because I was

32:35

had no desire to. I wasn't. I was listening to

32:37

them, I you know, I love listening to them, but it didn't

32:39

seem like something I could do.

32:40

Why.

32:41

I just felt like I didn't know anything about audio

32:43

and interviewing on audio, which I mean.

32:45

I had to learn that I don't know if you learned the hard

32:47

way, Like I mean, we all learned the hard way, right,

32:49

Yeah, but yeah, I totally

32:52

get what you're saying, though, Yeah, Like that's not my thing,

32:54

that's someone else's thing, right, right.

32:55

Yeah.

32:56

You know you listen to your tape and every minute you're

32:58

like uh huh yeah uh. I'm like, oh, shut up.

33:00

Yeah, you're like, why do I sound like that?

33:01

Yeah? I know, and so, like I just didn't

33:03

know anything about it. But I

33:05

was doing a book talk down in Florida and a

33:08

judge came up to me and

33:10

he just handed me this business signing books at the

33:12

end of the day, and he gave me a

33:14

card, and he gave me a name of a prisoner

33:16

and he said, not just wrongfully convicted,

33:19

he's an innocent man. And I'm like, a

33:22

judge just gave me this, Like that makes no sense.

33:24

Judge gave me.

33:25

Yeah. I was at a convention for judges, and

33:27

so I showed

33:29

it around to some defense lawyers and they were all like,

33:31

wait, a judge gave you that, Like they're not supposed

33:34

to do that, you know, It's like it violates

33:36

the ethical canons of the job.

33:38

Yeah, And he was like well, yeah, he's saying this

33:40

guy is framed, and you know, like he knows how it

33:42

was done. And I just showed

33:45

it to some defense attorneys and they're like, wow, that's unusual.

33:47

And then it got to one one defense

33:49

attorney who was there as a public defender, and

33:52

I remember he looked at me. He was from that town. He

33:54

goes, I know this case, you should call that guy. Really,

33:57

so he kind of tipped me off there's something wrong

33:59

here, and so, you know, sure enough,

34:01

I went through. I started looking at it and talked

34:03

to the judge and I said, well, look, I'm

34:05

in the middle of a book. It's probably going to be a long time that

34:08

I can get to this, and I can feel like, no,

34:10

dude, this guy's in prison, like, you know years.

34:14

He said, do me favorite just read the transcript,

34:16

and I thought I was kind of saying it to get him off the phone.

34:18

I was like, all right, i'll take you. Yeah,

34:21

which you know, it's two thousand pages and I sort

34:23

of felt obligated. Yeah, and I'm

34:26

reading and I'm like even I could see it, you know,

34:28

like, oh my god, the prosecutor is getting away

34:30

with so much here. I can't believe he's getting away

34:32

with this stuff, and like the evidence didn't

34:34

make sense to me. And I call him back to them. I said, I, I

34:36

ask you some questions because I saw some stuff in here that even

34:39

I could see it. I'm not a lawyer. And

34:41

he goes, yeah, that's exactly right. You know, it was done

34:43

in this real small town, this real small county

34:45

and fun and they could get away with this kind of stuff. And

34:47

then he went on to answer a lot of questions and

34:50

I was like, oh, this is amazing. And

34:52

so a couple months later, I decide,

34:54

all right, maybe I'll just write a feature story

34:56

on it, you know, just leave it at that. I

34:58

went down to the prison and met

35:00

Leo Schofield and just.

35:03

To back up, what was the premise here? What happened?

35:06

Yeah, just so from the start, like what

35:08

was the circumstances.

35:10

Yeah, that's a good question, because when I'm reading the transcripts,

35:13

you sort of get a sense Leo Scofield

35:15

is like this twenty one year old rock and roll or

35:17

lead guitarist for some like crappy

35:20

like band in Lakeland. They're called RHINO, which

35:22

stands for rock your nuts off, and you

35:24

know they're a bunch of young teenagers or you know,

35:26

they're working in rock yeah, exactly,

35:29

and then you know they're trying to get out there, and you

35:31

know, Leo meets a girl. She's seventeen,

35:33

Michelle, and she's a waitress, and

35:36

you know, they're living in a trailer at roommates

35:38

and you know, just have no money, but they're trying

35:40

to live the dream, right, And they're

35:42

only married for six months, like Leo's

35:45

twenty and she's seventeen. They

35:47

get married and she goes

35:49

off to work one day and she's supposed to come

35:51

home and pick him up at band practice.

35:53

She never shows up. And this

35:56

goes on for several days. She just does

35:58

not show up ever, and then

36:00

they find her car, and then on day

36:02

three they find her body in

36:05

the water not too far from the restaurant

36:07

and she was stabbed twenty six times.

36:09

Wow.

36:10

And they don't have any suspects. There's

36:12

no like evidence, and Leo

36:14

himself has been calling police and medium and police.

36:16

He's trying to get them involved, but they're like, looks,

36:19

you know, if she turns up, you know, we'll let her know

36:21

that you're looking for him. But she was eighteen at the time.

36:24

So it's heart too early for the missing persons

36:26

report, but he you know, he's very

36:28

active in that. And then you know, they

36:31

never find a guy who did this, and Leo

36:33

is like, is a suspect, but they don't

36:35

really have any evidence against him. He's got a pretty good alibi.

36:38

But after like a year and a half, this really aggressive

36:40

prosecutor comes in and says, that's the guy.

36:42

The husband go after him, and they do,

36:45

and they basically try him, and you

36:47

know, there's all sorts of volatility

36:50

in this relationship, so you have witnesses

36:52

and friends. Oh, they're always fighting and this kind of stuff.

36:55

Leo gets convicted and sentenced

36:58

to death or a sentence to like in

37:00

prison. He escaped the death penalty. So

37:03

it's been about thirty five years now. He's

37:05

been in prison seventeen years

37:08

into his sentence. And

37:10

this is the remarkable part of the story. He actually

37:12

gets remarried in prison to a social worker

37:15

years later, and she becomes

37:17

obsessed with his case and he says,

37:19

look, I'm just I'm going to tell you I'm innocent,

37:21

but you know, like guys say that all the time, do

37:24

your own investigation. I'm not going to sit here

37:26

and beat you over the head with this.

37:27

Yeah, and she does.

37:29

She starts investigating, she starts getting

37:31

the files, and she finds that there's

37:33

some fingerprints that were found in the car

37:35

that Michelle was driving that were

37:38

never identified, and so

37:40

she says, we got to get these fingerprints, and she

37:42

gives him to a cop friend. The cop friend

37:44

runs them and they basically come

37:46

back to this guy who lived right

37:49

down the street from where

37:51

Michelle disappeared, and he's killed

37:54

a bunch of people and he's in prison, right,

37:58

and so now they're like, oh, well, this is obviously

38:00

the guy. He's killed several people

38:03

in prison, he lived in the area. They

38:06

you know, they open up this reinvestigation, they

38:08

find his girlfriend. They're like, oh, that the

38:10

place where Michelle's body was found. Yeah, that's

38:12

where he used to take us for sex, you know, and so it

38:14

was his spot. Yeah, and he's forensically

38:17

linked to the car she was driving. But

38:20

the guy in charge of this investigation was

38:23

the prosecutor who prosecuted Leo, and

38:25

so now he's like, I'm gonna

38:27

lose that conviction if I so he

38:30

just shuts it down and says it was

38:32

just a coincidence. He was stealing stereos. That's

38:34

how he got his fingerprints there. He's not a killer,

38:36

he's just a thief.

38:37

He just killed all the other women, but not Yeah, that's

38:40

what.

38:40

I you know, couldn't understand. You guys actually prosecuted

38:42

him twice for Murdy. Yeah, right, And

38:45

then he goes through this, you know, they get through

38:47

they go through an evidence you're hearing, and Leo bakesically

38:50

gets denied. And then about

38:52

ten years later, this guy

38:54

Jeremy who's up in prison for another

38:56

murder. He says, I

38:59

might as well come clean, and he starts confessing

39:01

and tells exactly how he killed Michelle.

39:03

He knows details of you know, like how

39:06

he saw her on the pay phone

39:08

when she was calling Leos. He and I'll be right over, and

39:11

she's thought she knew him from the neighborhood and

39:13

said, oh it's raining, can I give you a ride? And

39:15

he just drove her to that Jeremy's

39:18

layer basically, and that's where he stabbed her.

39:21

And he has, you know, all the details

39:23

of this. He's pretty impressive

39:25

that he could recall all this, and

39:28

and yet the courts wouldn't believe. They just said, oh, he's

39:30

he's making things up because he initially denied it,

39:32

and now he's saying he did it well.

39:35

Isn't the guy in prison always denied

39:37

it. Yes, that's the thing, right, they denied

39:39

it. Yeah, this guy denied it and then changed his mind

39:42

that he did it right and tells you a whole story about

39:44

it. Right, Why would he do that if he didn't

39:46

do it right? Exactly in this case, in this scenario,

39:49

right.

39:49

Yeah, And so like you know, it's pretty

39:51

you know when you look at like the evidence that ties

39:53

him. He's not just forensically connected, but

39:55

you look at the way his life was led. It

39:57

was just extraordinarily violent. They were always robberies

40:00

that went bad. He's not like a serial killer

40:02

who sets out to do these. He's got a really

40:04

low IQ. You know, had all sorts

40:06

of damage and foster families and

40:09

and you know, this was just the kid he was, and he would

40:11

just get these. Always needed money. He would go out

40:13

and try and rob someone, and if it went bad, he'd

40:15

kill them. Extraordinarily impulsive.

40:18

And you know, while we were investigating,

40:20

we found another murder that we thought

40:23

was him, and I'm like, well, this one's

40:25

not solved. It's a thirty five year

40:27

old cold case. And then ultimately

40:30

we went into the prison to interview this guy, Jeremy,

40:33

and you know, I remember,

40:35

like, all right, maybe the last question I'm going to ask him him

40:37

is about this taxicab driver that I think he killed.

40:40

And he just brought it up in the middle of the interview. He just

40:42

filled that taxicab.

40:43

You're building up to it, and so how to

40:46

go down?

40:46

He just told exactly how it happened. And

40:48

I mean, he knew everything, and he said, I used

40:50

to live in that town and me and my brother are living there,

40:53

and you know, I just didn't have any money. I

40:55

hailed a caxi up the road, I drove

40:57

him a little past the town, shot him,

40:59

and then I stole the car and crashed the car. All

41:01

that stuff. He had all the details. And

41:04

like again he's got like a seventy

41:06

five IQ, So he's not like a mastermind

41:08

criminal.

41:08

Yeah, he just was bumbling around and getting away

41:10

with stuff.

41:11

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. And it's

41:13

sill. It was just a few weeks after he

41:15

killed Michelle, he was still on this violent rage

41:18

and you know, and so he just admitted

41:20

to it. And you know, later on I stayed in

41:22

touch with him, and you know, I said, he can

41:24

you tell me anything more about this taxi driver killing,

41:27

because I'm, you know, really curious. He

41:29

drew me a map of the streets and how it

41:31

went, like the car went over here, I hit this car,

41:33

I bounced off and hit a powerpole. All of

41:35

it was correct.

41:36

He makes sense to you, and you saw all of it.

41:38

I mean, he was naming witnesses. He

41:40

because like there was a time where he crashed the car.

41:42

People came running out to see him, and

41:44

he thought he'd be recognized, so he kind

41:46

of put his hand over his face and get He said, get away.

41:48

It's gonna blow.

41:49

Oh my god.

41:50

So he was to make people run.

41:51

Cognizant of that, Yeah he was.

41:53

And he said, yeah, this kid I grew up with John, this

41:55

Caribbean kid. I saw him there and sure enough I

41:57

looked at the tree's in there, you know. So he had

42:00

everything right. He knew it all. And

42:02

he said, you know, I ended up just going

42:04

into a basement of a house and just laying

42:06

under the blankets, knowing that the dogs were gonna

42:08

come for me and the cops were gonna get me and they

42:10

never came.

42:12

That's so insane.

42:13

Yeah, so this guy's like getting away with all

42:15

these murders. He's like the luckiest guy in this part

42:17

of Florida. He just never gets caught, you

42:19

know. I mean it took his fourth

42:21

murder when he finally got caught. And

42:23

you know, he's not a master criminal, he's just violent

42:26

and leaves the scene.

42:27

This story lands in your lap

42:30

and you read these transcripts

42:32

two thousand pages and you're saying, oh my god, this

42:35

is there's something here. And

42:37

then eventually you make a podcast

42:39

about this. Yeah, tell me about that.

42:42

Well, you know, I mean at this point, like

42:45

we were like we put so much into

42:48

this, and we were doing it for so long, and one

42:50

of the problems was we ran into COVID, and

42:52

so COVID just kind of shut everything down. We couldn't

42:54

even travel anymore.

42:55

How did it impact you as

42:57

a researcher or storyteller?

43:00

I just was stuck in the library. Basically,

43:02

I was doing an a fellowship

43:05

at the New York Public Library and then they shut

43:07

that down right around March of twenty twenty.

43:09

Yeah, so there was nothing I was.

43:11

Working on I needed to be in that library, and so

43:13

I said, well, I guess we're just gonna have to start

43:16

making phone calls and doing interviews on Zoom and stuff

43:18

like that because I don't want to stop on this.

43:20

And so it actually paid

43:22

off really well because we had like an extra nine

43:24

months to work on this, and

43:27

finally we got to traveling again, so

43:29

we were able to get down there. We spent a lot of time in

43:31

Florida just talking to

43:33

people. We did way more than we needed

43:35

to do because we didn't know what's the right

43:37

amount of tape to come back with.

43:39

Also, where does it stop? Yeah, dude,

43:41

when do I stop? Right?

43:43

Yeah? Exactly. And you know, I think the moment

43:45

I think we sort of figured out was

43:47

like our interview with Jeremy was

43:50

just like it's so far exceeded

43:52

all our expectations.

43:53

Like that's the holy rail of your story.

43:56

It really was, you know, because like all

43:58

the time Leo was just talking about who is

44:00

this? Who did this? You know, it's not it's not me,

44:02

obviously, it's it's got to be some monster.

44:05

And you realize this who it is. It's Jeremy.

44:07

He's not like a monster, He's just kind of this pathetic

44:09

individual. You know, he's not planning

44:11

these things out. He's living day to day on the streets.

44:14

And you know, it wasn't the monster

44:17

that Leo was expecting, and so

44:19

that was really interesting. And part

44:21

of the story I think that's really powerful is

44:23

is Leo himself, you know, the guy who's wrongfully

44:25

convicted. You know, nobody

44:28

cares about Jeremy and this whole story. And

44:30

it turns out Leo's like the only one who has

44:32

any empathy for him, because he says,

44:34

you know, if this guy didn't come forward

44:36

and say this, I you know, nobody would

44:39

know the real story. He goes, I'm just I'm

44:41

saying I'm innocent, but who's gonna believe me? I'm

44:43

in prison the rest of my life. But now you

44:45

have this guy who can tell details about

44:47

how he killed my wife and they're you know,

44:49

they're legitimate. Leo

44:52

just feels like, thank god he did that, you know, because

44:54

otherwise I would not have any chance,

44:57

you know. And Leo's likely going to be paroled in couple

45:00

of months, and he knows that, you know,

45:02

having been rejected from parole constantly

45:05

because he shows no remorse. I

45:07

mean, how can you show remorse? He's like innocence.

45:10

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm trying to imagine

45:12

if if I went to prison for life

45:14

or a murder that I didn't do, and

45:17

I knew that I was going to be in prison for the rest of my

45:19

life, eventually you would

45:21

have to mentally accept that that is your

45:23

fate. And then at some point,

45:26

just the validation of you believing

45:29

me that I didn't really do it

45:32

is almost more, yeah, than

45:34

getting out, because you think that's not even

45:36

an option, which is the thing that you said, Like he's

45:39

the only guy who feels empathy because he's like, thank you, yeah,

45:41

because no one else would listen to me

45:44

if you didn't say that, or or

45:46

they wouldn't be deny it this.

45:48

Right, and you're you're absolutely right about that. And like one

45:50

of the things like that's really important

45:52

to him is like, you know, having this innocence claim

45:54

and just you know, finally being believed. But

45:57

the other thing that's really important is like you

45:59

know, he went through some really

46:01

dark times like just seeing his case, you

46:04

know, rejected time and time again and just

46:06

realizing like you're in for life, you're not getting

46:08

out, And at some point

46:11

he started to recognize that you know, all this bitterness

46:13

is going to kill me. And he's

46:15

a very spiritual guy. And I've met

46:17

some of these guys who've been exonerated after spending decades

46:20

and like, like they are like Gandhi

46:23

level. I don't know how they do it, like, because

46:25

I would think that something like that would destroy me,

46:27

just knowing that the courts don't believe me.

46:30

There's nothing I can do.

46:30

I just keep in idea to your

46:33

break me too.

46:34

Yeah, And his thing is like he's a very spiritual

46:36

guy. He says, the only thing that can really save me

46:38

is if I just lose all this bitterness and

46:41

I have to learn to forgive that guy for killing my

46:43

wife because that I can't carry that to the grave.

46:45

And so he's the guy that sort of does

46:47

it himself to say I forgive him,

46:50

And you know, I want him to know that that

46:52

I can't. I don't carry this. We're not going to

46:54

be friends, but I'm not going to carry

46:56

this with me, like it'll destroy me.

46:59

That it's hardy to hear him.

47:00

Oh yeah, he's constantly surprising you with

47:02

stuff like that. You know, things that

47:04

he would say that I was like really like he

47:06

said, like the worst part is not being

47:08

denied parole. It's hearing the prosecutor

47:11

get up there and repeat those lies about

47:13

him being a monster and a killer himself.

47:16

And he says that all the people I care about are in there

47:18

listening, and I just for them to have to hear

47:20

that from an official from the state is

47:22

just so triggering to him. And I was like, I

47:24

would never think that, you know, like I think

47:26

that's the guy who's supposed to send me to jail, you know, but

47:29

he's saying it's not true, and those words just really

47:31

burn him, you know, to hear them officially

47:34

said in court. Yeah, I would never.

47:35

Expect lying about you, Yeah, about

47:38

someone you cared about, and you're ruining

47:40

other people's lives, a lot lives

47:42

with your lies. Yeah, that

47:45

would be the most

47:47

hurtful part. I feel like, really, you don't

47:49

consider that when you go into a case like this.

47:51

No, never, I never would have thought about that.

47:54

And he was like apologizing for me to have

47:56

to hear that. I'm like, I totally

47:58

expect.

47:58

No, this is I'm learning from.

48:00

Yeah, I mean it really is. And you

48:02

do end up learning a lot from these guys because

48:04

they look at their cases in ways that you

48:07

know, they know it better than anybody, you know. I mean

48:09

that was the one thing we found. Like he knows his case

48:11

like inside out. It's really

48:13

disturbing because he'll point to things like,

48:15

look at this, I don't know why that person lie, but that

48:18

never happened that way, And

48:20

I was like, that's not even a big thing, but to him

48:22

it means something because it's a lie in court and

48:24

it's about him.

48:25

Yeah, it's his everything, right,

48:27

his existence.

48:28

It's just so triggering and I just never would have expected

48:31

that. I think this guy's hardened and hurt at

48:33

all, but like he's still triggered by the most basic

48:35

things like somebody said something hurtful

48:37

about me in public.

48:38

You know, you get very very deep into

48:40

this case and eventually

48:42

you make a podcast and

48:45

as a as a creator, as a writer,

48:48

author, What was that jump

48:50

like for you from going to you

48:53

know, writing pages in a book that you, like

48:56

you said earlier, spent five years on,

48:58

which is also impressive than

49:00

a different, probably timeline than

49:03

most podcasts out What

49:06

was that like? Was that vulnerable for you

49:08

to be leading a story

49:11

through your vocal piece?

49:13

Yeah, I mean it was all new to me and like,

49:15

I think one of the things that's really interesting. Like I

49:17

said with COVID, I had time on my hands, so I'm

49:19

like.

49:19

All right, let me anyway.

49:21

Yeah, I'm like, all right, let

49:23

me start writing the script because there's nothing else to do.

49:26

And I started writing these scripts about how I thought

49:28

it go like ended up when we ended

49:30

up getting with the producers there, looked at him like

49:32

this kind of sucks.

49:34

Like and I'm like, to you,

49:36

they said yeah, yeah, yeah, like it's politely,

49:39

it's not good.

49:41

And then they basically explained to me we write

49:43

around the tape, like there's no way around that. You've

49:45

got to have good tape first. And I was

49:47

like, I didn't know that, you know, I just didn't. I

49:49

just felt like the tape was accompanying

49:51

the stuff that I was writing.

49:52

That's interesting. Yeah, that's

49:54

that's how I work it, too, But I

49:56

can't. I think maybe just accidentally learned

49:58

that through my own experience.

50:01

But Mark would tell you that too, like

50:03

he piggybacks off of the tape.

50:05

Right.

50:06

I want to build a podcast story that

50:08

if you were to play it and take me out

50:11

of it entirely, you kind of know what happened,

50:13

right, right right. So what I'm what I'm saying

50:15

is only adding to it or

50:17

expanding it or giving

50:19

it more context or direction. But

50:23

they're telling the story in a way which is got

50:25

to be one pint eighty different from

50:28

what you came from.

50:29

Totally true, But you know, I felt like, here's

50:32

the thing that saved me. And you probably could

50:34

agree with this. I feel like I was around

50:36

these really young, talented people who knew

50:38

how to tell stories with audio,

50:40

and I didn't know that, and so they

50:43

kind of just put me through the education process

50:45

and like showed it to me and they said, you know,

50:47

look at this and see how this sounds. We're getting the same

50:49

points across, but we're using tape instead

50:51

of your boring writing.

50:53

No offense, you

50:55

know, if you're boring, ass out stuff

50:57

in there. Yeah, And so like I

51:00

just.

51:00

Said, look, I'm not in this for my feelings.

51:02

I don't care.

51:03

I like to be good good man.

51:04

Yeah, that's all I mean. And I really didn't have an

51:06

ego about it. And it's just like trusting

51:09

these young people. I feel like every time I thought

51:11

something, there's here's an example. So we

51:14

go into the evidence room and we're gonna look at the autopsy

51:16

photos. And I'm there with a young researcher

51:19

who's like twenty two years old. This is like

51:21

our first job, Kelsey, and

51:23

I didn't really prepare her for that, Like I've seen

51:26

a million, but she hasn't. And

51:28

so we're in there and all of a sudden, the autopsy photos

51:30

come out, and you

51:32

know, they're they're pretty awful. You know, I'm sure

51:35

woman's been stabbed twenty six times and we're seeing

51:37

all this, and so, you know, because

51:40

we didn't really know what we were doing. We were recording everything.

51:42

Even just walking to the car, we just keep

51:44

the thing up. I think, yeah, I think so

51:46

now, you know. And we get back to the car,

51:48

we're gonna debrief, and she just starts crying and

51:51

it's just like just hit her all that

51:53

stuff. He's, you know, kind of the same age as

51:55

the victim, and I ever seen that, Yeah,

51:57

And I'm just like, take your time,

52:00

it's all right. And we get back and

52:02

the producers heard that and I said, this is great,

52:04

this is really powerful, and I

52:06

was like, no, I think it's really manipulative.

52:09

It's like we're going to be manipulating the audience. And I just

52:11

don't. I don't want to show her crying.

52:13

Why do you feel like that was manipulative to use

52:15

that to For me, it just felt like I was exploiting

52:17

everybody how to feel because here she's

52:20

like you should feel its way too.

52:22

Yeah, And I just didn't know, and I my instincts

52:24

just said no, don't, don't do that. And

52:26

they said, it's this really works, you

52:28

know, instead of you writing the poignant thing about

52:31

you know, the feelings about Michelle being dead

52:33

and going back in time, like Kelsey

52:36

crying said at all.

52:37

Right there in a way that scene and

52:39

capsulates, encapsulates like kind of what you

52:41

would probably want to say in a way.

52:43

Yeah, And we didn't need the words, you know, like it just

52:45

it just and I just trusted them on that and they were absolutely

52:47

right because everybody said the same thing. But

52:49

my instincts initially, like from the journalism

52:52

side, like no, don't manipulate them when I'm not going

52:54

to take like I'm not going to do tricks like

52:56

that. They were like, it's not a trick. This really

52:58

happened, and you know, we're acknowledging

53:00

it. And I totally believe it now, but I didn't

53:02

see it at the time.

53:03

That makes complete sense. Yeah, And it's

53:06

one of those things where I think sometimes when you're

53:08

I mean, you were there in the car with her. Yeah, Yeah,

53:10

it's different when you were there in the tape.

53:13

And I'll even find myself if I

53:15

go on any podcast like

53:17

Up in Vanish or Atlanta Monster that I've done, and

53:20

maybe i recorded some tape two months ago

53:22

and I'm just now listening to it again, I

53:25

remember and see and hear things

53:28

differently in that moment, almost

53:30

as an objective viewer

53:33

listener, and I'm like, holy

53:35

shit, that this moment

53:38

is actually unique. Yeah, because

53:40

I can tell that I'm either like learning

53:42

something here or this person was really feeling

53:45

that way. But in the moment, it

53:47

didn't seem like that to me, right.

53:49

That that happened all the time, all the time, right, you

53:51

know. But thank God to have people that know what they're doing

53:53

and they can say, no, this, that's

53:55

why it works. You're listening. Oh, you're

53:57

right.

53:57

I do like that checks and bounce this thing a little

53:59

bit to where it's like you need you

54:02

know, I need it too. If I'm neck

54:04

deep in a story, someone tell me

54:06

if I'm losing it over here, like this sounded

54:09

okay, right, Like right, Mike, It's like,

54:11

you know, you need to like be checked

54:13

a little bit.

54:14

Yeah, totally. You have to trust that too.

54:16

Because trust also gotta trust that. Yeah,

54:18

so scary.

54:19

Yeah, because I you know, I've done this, like

54:21

just go down these rabbit holes. I think it's the most fascinating

54:24

thing in the world, this connection. It's like sometimes

54:26

like in my books, they're like four pages and

54:28

the editor go, don't need this,

54:31

Like that was three months of my life.

54:33

Yeah, You're like, I work so hard on that.

54:35

Yeah, and they're like it's just not helping,

54:37

and like sort of like all right, I trust this

54:39

person. They will tell me. But you know

54:41

again, I'm like I could have done a whole hour on

54:43

that stuff.

54:44

You know.

54:44

If we're doing a podcast like this is absolutely

54:46

fascinating and nobody else believes me, it's

54:50

like, all right, you did a great job, but it's not important.

54:52

You know, the phrase killing your darlings, Yeah,

54:55

that's that's like one of the things that I

54:58

had to learn early on. And I I

55:00

think for honestly creators

55:03

of anything, I think, but especially stories

55:06

like this, whether it's podcast

55:08

form or book form. You

55:10

know, it can't be everything all

55:12

the time. Yeah, something's gotta

55:15

go, Something has to be the focus. You

55:18

might be personally in love with this little

55:20

aspect of it, but you got to kill

55:22

your darlings because one something's gotta go.

55:25

Yeah, it's really impossible, and it.

55:26

Still hurts every time, but like you

55:29

get, you know, stronger

55:31

with it. But I always hate having to

55:33

let something go that I thought was

55:35

going to be this. It isn't anymore else.

55:37

I put working time into that. Oh yeah, I had a whole

55:41

headspace where I was going to go over here.

55:43

But now now we're not.

55:44

Yeah, and I'm not really comfortable. Like I spent

55:47

Like there was one detective in Florida that I interviewed

55:49

like six or seven times.

55:50

Oh wow.

55:51

It went out fishing with him and was keeping the keep

55:53

it, reporting it. It was great and he was like

55:55

this salty like you know New York detective

55:57

who's working out here's always smoking and it's also

56:00

great character and yeah, like it's

56:02

almost like we had so much of him that we couldn't

56:04

just use him in parts, so we ended up having to

56:06

take him out completely.

56:08

Wow, it's like it's like the opposite. Yeah,

56:10

yeah, it's amazing how that works.

56:11

Yeah, And I'm like, I can't believe he lost this guy. He was

56:13

like one of our best guys. But like I totally understood,

56:16

like he opened up too many other doors

56:18

that we'd have to resolve if we went with

56:20

it.

56:20

Yeh, did you ever use them at all?

56:22

No?

56:22

Not even like a moment, not.

56:24

Even a minute. I mean, it's strange. I've thought about

56:26

doing like bonus episodes with him.

56:28

Yeah, it made his way to do that probably.

56:29

I think there's probably something because his stuff

56:32

was really great and he was really essential to the case.

56:34

He was the cold case detective who first

56:36

went to see Jeremy and and confronted him

56:38

on this, and he had all these thoughts and yea,

56:40

but everywhere it led to something that we had

56:42

to do more. And it's just like it was.

56:44

Like, yeah, it's sometime, Yeah, I mean it' It's funny

56:46

that you say that because recently and

56:49

the next season of Up and Vanish, there's

56:51

there's an interview that we did about

56:53

a month ago with this guy who he sounds

56:55

really good. He's he's very convicted,

56:58

and he's enthusiastic and just

57:00

has so many good things to say. But also

57:03

all these different tangents that are very

57:05

hard to navigate into. Trying

57:07

to trying to fit that into some

57:09

larger narrative was just becoming

57:12

an impossibility or maybe just a fruitless

57:15

like mission to go on. And so

57:17

it we kind of consciously, actually you and I did

57:20

decided, you know what, like this, let's

57:22

just go ahead and just determine that

57:24

this isn't going to be like what we would want it

57:26

to be. But instead we sort

57:28

of used, like in

57:30

the beginning of episode one, an

57:32

interaction with this person that kind of jump

57:35

starts all these other things

57:37

because because it did sound so good

57:39

and it was so authentic, he'll just pill

57:41

to help us get here. Yeah he doesn't

57:43

have to come back though, but no, but

57:45

i'd like him too. But like in our story, that's

57:48

not how it's gonna work, because it can't. I wanted

57:50

to find a way to fit them in there. Right,

57:53

It's kind.

57:53

Of what I was. It's one of your doclaries I could tell.

57:55

I'm like, does this work now?

57:57

Yeah? Yeah, yeah, that's pretty funny.

58:00

Yeah, So I totally get it what you're saying.

58:02

Yeah, And there's like a lot of things, like you

58:04

know, you end up doing a lot of research on something that you think

58:06

is going to be important, and you know it's like

58:08

one or two lines.

58:09

You know, I got to get better at that.

58:13

And I think that it's been you spend probably a

58:15

lot of time deciding

58:18

what to focus on. Yeah, which

58:20

is a strange thought.

58:22

Yeah, it really is. You know one of

58:24

the things I really wanted to do with this podcast. There

58:26

was no way to do it. I had to learn this, but I

58:29

want to do like a parallel narrative, like

58:31

I don't know if there's a there's a book called It's

58:34

by Eric Larson, A Devil in.

58:36

The White City, Okay, and I know that

58:38

title.

58:38

Yeah. It takes place in Chicago in the eighteen nineties

58:41

during the World Fair, and you have the architect who's trying

58:43

to build this yeah, and it's a spectacular

58:46

city that they temporary city that they've built

58:48

in Chicago. And at the same time, you have

58:50

this serial killer who's in Chicago and

58:52

all the young women who are coming to get

58:55

work at the World's Fair he's killing them. And

58:57

it's just like you go bouncing back and forth

58:59

between the architect the killer, and I thought

59:01

this would be really cool to do this with Leo the wrongfully

59:03

convicted guy and Jeremy the actual killer.

59:06

But there was just no way to do it because

59:09

the way he's introduced comes

59:11

in halfway through the story.

59:12

Yeah, it's just like, yeah, it wouldn't necessarily

59:14

work that way, but yeah, I do like

59:16

those parallel narratives though. And if

59:19

I mean, obviously you're still that's

59:21

on your checklist of I mean, so

59:24

you did a podcast also, Yeah, I listened

59:26

to it. I enjoyed the hell out of

59:28

its very successful too. I mean it's

59:31

also for your first podcast.

59:33

That's like you got people who've made

59:35

a dozen and they've never come close to the way you

59:38

you did, and I think that it really shows.

59:40

And I've had peers

59:42

of mind that I respect say go

59:44

listen to this. Wow, And I'm like, okay,

59:47

fine, because I rarely listen to podcasts

59:49

and that you don't have the head. But

59:51

I'm like, all right, if you're saying that, I

59:53

will, yeah, right, But no, you did

59:55

a great job. Would you do it again you want?

59:57

Yeah? I definitely, I really love this. I mean I

59:59

loved everything about it, especially like for someone

1:00:01

who's like used to just going off for myself

1:00:04

for five years and just working by myself.

1:00:06

It's yeah, it's it's it's not good.

1:00:08

You know, I really you can lose yourself a little bit in that.

1:00:10

But yeah, it was nice to have some teammates

1:00:12

every now and then, but I really.

1:00:13

Do And it's like, you know, they were just young people who really

1:00:15

care about this stuff. I can learn as much

1:00:18

from them as they can learn from me. So

1:00:20

I just really love that, the the collaboration

1:00:23

and working with the team, and especially

1:00:25

Kelsey, who's like, you know, she started out as my researcher

1:00:28

and then you know, we're trying to do this and it's like, well,

1:00:30

Kelsey, looks like you're gonna have to learn audio equipment,

1:00:32

and she like taught herself all that, and

1:00:34

then I come back to New York and she's like turns

1:00:37

out to be a really good editor, and I was like,

1:00:39

oh, I just got you on as a researcher, but

1:00:41

you know, all.

1:00:41

These other things keeps building here r yeah.

1:00:43

Yeah, and then she she becomes on like she's

1:00:46

on tape now like basically the co host with me, and

1:00:48

like like it's so great to see that arc

1:00:50

and she's just it's just together, we just have a really

1:00:52

good way of working together, like her

1:00:55

her strengths sort of compliment mine and that, and

1:00:57

vice versa, so we can sort of go off

1:00:59

in our own little direction a little bit. It's really nice.

1:01:04

How do you feel about the genre of true crime

1:01:06

today? Because there's clearly been

1:01:08

a major surge

1:01:10

in the past six seven years.

1:01:13

To me, like the Landmark

1:01:15

moment was cereal. Yeah,

1:01:18

you know, the Jinks is making a murderer,

1:01:20

These big, splashy zeitgeist

1:01:23

moments that I

1:01:25

guess in a way maybe grabbed even more people's

1:01:27

attention into true crime

1:01:30

stories. And it's just

1:01:32

just snowballs since then. You've

1:01:34

been doing this stuff for a long time. How

1:01:37

do you feel about true crime

1:01:40

is a genre and the stuff people

1:01:42

are putting out good, bad, ugly just

1:01:44

in general?

1:01:45

Yeah, I mean I really I still love

1:01:47

it. I mean I really do if they're really

1:01:49

well done, especially kind of like you like, somebody

1:01:52

will say you got to listen to this, you know. Atlanta

1:01:55

Monster is one I found on my own, and I was like telling everybody.

1:01:57

I was the person out there.

1:01:58

Going, OK, yeah, that's awesome,

1:02:00

thank you.

1:02:01

Yeah, no, I thought, because it's like those are kind of rare sometimes

1:02:03

going into you know, Atlanta and doing

1:02:05

basically a story where all the victims are black.

1:02:08

I was terrified of that.

1:02:09

Yeah, and it's like, who am I to be telling

1:02:11

this story all that?

1:02:12

SAND was like why is it me? And and yeah and

1:02:14

then or why? Then? I was like, ok, am I getting

1:02:17

in my own way by not telling this story because

1:02:19

I'm thinking that? And you know,

1:02:21

thankfully I my business partner, Donald is

1:02:23

black, and I was able to tell vulnerably

1:02:25

tell him these things right, and he's like, hey man,

1:02:28

look and he was able to tell me what

1:02:30

was, validate what I was thinking

1:02:32

and saying, and kind of be my guide a little

1:02:34

bit, so I didn't feel like I was entering

1:02:37

a territory that I shouldn't but also respectfully

1:02:39

letting everyone else tell their story.

1:02:41

Actually, yeah, you know.

1:02:43

That's really interesting that you say that, because I that

1:02:45

that happens to me a lot. Like people

1:02:47

quite like, well, gives you the right to tell this story? You know,

1:02:49

Like I'm like, you know, all the black people

1:02:51

idea, it is like they're the ones that are helping me. They're

1:02:54

like do this, you gotta do this.

1:02:55

You know, they'd be like shut the fuck up's

1:02:57

really do it?

1:02:59

Like I'm never gonna resistance from black people.

1:03:01

They're like, go ahead, we'll tell you.

1:03:02

What someone's doing it. Yeah, another white story.

1:03:05

It's like right, But then there's like the other

1:03:07

side of it where it's you know, like I find it

1:03:09

like sometimes in academic you'll get questioned

1:03:11

about that, like are you appropriating these voices?

1:03:13

I'm like, yeah, I like my answer

1:03:16

to that, like is like I'm actually, for

1:03:18

the most part in my books, I'm investigating white supremacy.

1:03:21

That's what I'm doing, and I'm finding all the documentation.

1:03:24

Yeah, it's just you know what that

1:03:27

is.

1:03:27

Yeah, And so it's like if I was, I mean, the

1:03:29

problem is you can't write about criminal justice

1:03:31

in America without talking about race. And

1:03:34

so like you go back and look at these stories,

1:03:36

it like race is a big part of it. But

1:03:39

I'm not like trying to take the lives

1:03:41

of these young men and appropriate them and tell their stories.

1:03:43

That's not what the work is about. So

1:03:46

once I sort of explain that her, once people like read

1:03:48

it, they go, oh, I get it. Now, I get what you're doing. So,

1:03:51

you know, and I think with that with true crime

1:03:53

too, like you know, there's there's cases

1:03:55

out there that just when I hear about them, and I hear

1:03:57

the way they're executed, they just blow me away, you

1:04:00

know, like just like wow. And most of those,

1:04:02

for my part, are like wrongfully convicted

1:04:05

stories, you know, stories about wrongful convictions,

1:04:07

because there's some real urgency in it about somebody.

1:04:09

Who's story is on death

1:04:11

row. Right, Yeah,

1:04:14

if they didn't do it now is

1:04:16

when we do something about it, right,

1:04:18

That's that's some real urgency right there.

1:04:20

Yeah, And so it feels like, you know, like

1:04:22

those kind of stories, like I just feel like when you

1:04:24

could feel that urgency and you you know,

1:04:27

you know how important this is to to

1:04:29

everybody, it gives you a little more

1:04:31

more gravitas and a little bit more passion

1:04:33

I think to like try to do something.

1:04:36

But you know, I definitely struggle with it, you know, like

1:04:38

like the journalistic side of it, Like should I be that

1:04:41

close? And I realized I have

1:04:43

to be because I get done all my investigation.

1:04:45

I know the truth now. I mean as far as I can

1:04:48

know, I believe this, and like I'm

1:04:50

not going to just like stand.

1:04:51

Back and not be Yeah, that would be the wrong thing

1:04:53

to do. It's yeah, being close is almost

1:04:56

just part of the deal. And then

1:04:58

you it's up for you to figure out out

1:05:00

how close is too close really

1:05:02

for the protection of others, Yeah,

1:05:05

even more than yourself sometimes, you

1:05:07

know, knowing too much or saying too much

1:05:09

too soon, being considerate of

1:05:12

what this might look and sound like to everyone else

1:05:14

around. Who is a bigger part of this

1:05:16

real story, real life than you are?

1:05:19

Right? Yeah, And you know, I also

1:05:21

look back, like at you know, you look at the history of

1:05:23

journalism, and like Ida

1:05:25

Tarbell one hundred years ago, she did

1:05:28

the stories that really brought down Standard

1:05:30

oil so this is an illegal monopoly

1:05:32

and went after John D. Rockefeller

1:05:34

for you know, destroying and she did

1:05:36

an amazing job. She wrote this multi serious

1:05:39

thing that just really it broke up Standard

1:05:41

Oil. That's because the public And

1:05:43

like you think, well, was she biased, Yeah, she really

1:05:46

was. Her her father was.

1:05:47

She had a mission and she did it. Yeah. But also

1:05:49

it was just facts, Yeah.

1:05:51

It was it was she was telling it factually. But like she got

1:05:53

involved because Rockefeller ruined her father's

1:05:55

business. Yeah, and she's like this is wrong and

1:05:58

she knew it and she went out and investigated. But

1:06:00

like she's biased, and like I

1:06:02

know that, like you know, Ida B. Wells when she was

1:06:04

investigating lynchings, she thought lynchings

1:06:06

were wrong. She took a side on that, you know, like,

1:06:08

right, I feel like it's okay to take a side in

1:06:11

journalism exactly.

1:06:12

Yeah, And I think that with journalism, those

1:06:14

lines more than ever, I think have

1:06:17

been blurred and blurred. And I

1:06:19

mean there's places that you can go to get

1:06:21

maybe the most objective, or there's people who

1:06:24

strive to be that. But I mean,

1:06:26

shit, if you're talking about the media and stuff,

1:06:28

yeah, it's like what do you mean? It's like where

1:06:31

did you hear that story? Because everyone's

1:06:34

telling you kind of what they want to tell you, right,

1:06:36

being real, right, yeah,

1:06:38

yeah, and then.

1:06:38

You know you're just up against a lot of a lot of that. But

1:06:41

like, you know, the thing is

1:06:43

like when you when you start working on these

1:06:45

different years and you start figuring it out, and you feel

1:06:47

like you know as much as anybody, and you're like, obviously

1:06:50

this is where the story lies. You

1:06:52

know, I'm not going to risk my career by going,

1:06:54

you know, putting my you know self out

1:06:56

there for somebody. I think it did it. Yeah,

1:06:59

So like I sometimes those arguments just kind

1:07:01

of wash off me.

1:07:02

You have like just let them reloriously. Yeah, it's like clearly,

1:07:04

I mean, I'm not making this up because that

1:07:06

would be very dumb of me. Right,

1:07:09

and I'm finally convicted. I believe this, and

1:07:11

you know, yeah.

1:07:12

That's another thing that I often think about,

1:07:14

like, you know, like the difference between

1:07:16

a writer or a podcast or any anybody

1:07:19

who's doing these kind of stories. You

1:07:21

know, if you make a mistake

1:07:23

and you like, let's just say, like you're

1:07:25

writing a story about some case

1:07:28

and you come across a document and go, oh, this

1:07:30

makes them look really guilty. I'm going to

1:07:32

hide this and not let anyone see this because this really

1:07:34

ruins my story, you

1:07:36

know, like your books will be pulled from the shelves.

1:07:38

You'll probably get called out on this, right,

1:07:41

And I look at this when prosecutors are doing

1:07:43

that and nothing ever happens to them, Like

1:07:45

they don't have the kind of accountability I would. My name

1:07:47

would be destroyed if I did something

1:07:49

like that. But these guys will well on to the next

1:07:52

case because there's just no accountability

1:07:54

for that kind of stuff. And that's what I was seeing,

1:07:56

like and a lot of these investigations, like these

1:07:59

prosecutors did this. The worst thing

1:08:01

that ever happens to them, is they get their name mentioned

1:08:03

in a higher courts brief. You

1:08:05

know, in the opinion they'll say the prosecutor

1:08:07

aired in withholding

1:08:09

evidence that would have benefited the defendant.

1:08:12

Like that's the worst thing that can happen to you, is

1:08:14

like getting named in opinion. You don't lose your job

1:08:16

for that, like you ruin somebody's life.

1:08:19

And so like sometimes this whole argument

1:08:21

like about like, well, you know, I

1:08:23

don't. We don't try our cases in public opinion.

1:08:25

We do it in the court where there's gravitas. I'm

1:08:28

like, that's where things are happening that are really

1:08:30

shitty are happening.

1:08:32

That's one of those broken things that we

1:08:34

we're still working on, right right, Yeah, And

1:08:36

you.

1:08:36

Know, like I feel like I have accountability

1:08:38

if I if I started withholding documents someone

1:08:41

found them, Like my reputation

1:08:43

is trash exactly, which is probably as

1:08:45

it should be. But why isn't the prosecutor

1:08:48

who actually did real harm by sending innocent

1:08:50

man to prison? Why does he just get

1:08:52

to go on to the next case. That doesn't make any sense

1:08:54

to me.

1:08:54

It was the level of like, if you're the prosecutor who's trying

1:08:56

to put this person behind bars. The

1:08:58

first thing you wave to the jury is that

1:09:00

thing. Right, if you're the defense, you

1:09:03

don't wave that first. You wave the

1:09:05

other thing that makes them look better first,

1:09:08

and then you talk about what

1:09:10

you acknowledge that bad thing, whatever

1:09:13

explanation that you have. It's it's like

1:09:15

the same thing, right. It's very strange,

1:09:18

Yeah, it is.

1:09:19

And you see that constantly reports, you know, like

1:09:21

you know, prosecutors and just like

1:09:23

things that are happening, they just kind of snowball and

1:09:26

it's almost like the judges are

1:09:28

from that and a lot of them are from the same prosecutor's

1:09:30

office. Yeah, so they kind of know that language

1:09:32

and they're like, okay, we'll just let this slide.

1:09:35

We know, let's not name him publicly. That's

1:09:37

that's the thing they do. It's got to get really bad if they

1:09:39

name you. Instead of saying the prosecutor,

1:09:41

they say John Smith. You know.

1:09:43

Yeah.

1:09:43

But usually, like you know, the

1:09:46

withholding evidence Brady violations, they're

1:09:48

just the prosecutor aired in doing

1:09:50

this, or you know, the police the policeman

1:09:52

misspoke.

1:09:53

Like oh he lied on this note, he didn't he

1:09:56

bolt faced lie?

1:09:57

Yeah yeah, yeah,

1:09:59

And so I find this like a lot of the stuff I'm dealing

1:10:01

with, like, you know, the Sheriff's

1:10:03

office, Like in one of the cases that

1:10:06

we were investigating, the

1:10:08

guy got acquitted because it was the wrong guy. You

1:10:10

tried the wrong guy. And what happened was one of

1:10:12

the main witnesses stood up in court and

1:10:14

said, I can't do this anymore. I'm lying. I lied

1:10:17

in the first trial. They're making me say this. It's

1:10:19

all bullshit.

1:10:20

Wow.

1:10:20

And the trial grinds to a halt and the guy's

1:10:22

acquitted. And then I asked the sheriff

1:10:24

like about this, and they said, well, he got off on

1:10:27

a technicality, like technicality,

1:10:29

it was a it was an acquittal. That's

1:10:31

not a technicality.

1:10:32

You got into the constitution.

1:10:34

Yeah. So, like I don't know how

1:10:36

Like they're always like, well, you have to respect the juries

1:10:38

to say you only say that when they're when they convict, but

1:10:40

when they're innocent, you're out there saying, well, we got the right

1:10:42

guy.

1:10:42

It's just because again when they don't get what you want,

1:10:45

yeah, exactly.

1:10:45

And so like there's those kind of things

1:10:48

that are happening in the courtroom. They're like, oh man,

1:10:50

that's that that doesn't seem legit to me.

1:10:53

On the Bone Valley podcast,

1:10:56

you know, what's the future of you and

1:10:59

other podcasts? New seasons.

1:11:01

Yeah, we're you know, looking into a second

1:11:03

season. And you know, it's always hard because

1:11:06

you know, the impulse is to just find a

1:11:08

completely new case. We had something

1:11:10

happen within this case because we obviously

1:11:13

never stopped investigating after the podcast

1:11:15

case. It never thought little things were coming up. I'm

1:11:17

like, oh, and so yeah, we're going We're diving back

1:11:19

into it. We're gonna go back. I love the same area.

1:11:22

It's just like kind of an offshoot from what we were doing

1:11:25

before.

1:11:25

But that's smart. You already have a base

1:11:27

there too, and you have resources and

1:11:29

keep picking away if there's something

1:11:32

there.

1:11:32

Yeah, there is, Like there's some there's a new angle that it

1:11:34

took and it's really interesting and and uh so

1:11:37

we're just starting to really develop it and get into

1:11:39

it. But I'm pretty sure it's going to happen.

1:11:40

So that's exciting.

1:11:41

Yeah, and then I'm writing a book about this Bone

1:11:44

Valley case, which I never wanted to do, Like

1:11:46

I was why not.

1:11:47

I mean that that's what you're that's what you're you

1:11:49

would think right, I've been the best at forever. So

1:11:52

now you're like, no, I want to do podcasts only yeah.

1:11:54

Because everyone's like, what are you gonna write them? Because there's a lot

1:11:56

of stuff we had to leave out of the podcast. It

1:11:58

just goes down these you know, rabbit

1:12:00

holes, and uh, finally I

1:12:02

just said, you know what, I just I have to do this. There's

1:12:05

we left out a lot, and there's so much more

1:12:07

to say, and and I've already done all the research,

1:12:09

so now it's just a matter of writing it again. But it's

1:12:12

it's it's nice because we can add

1:12:14

a lot to it that listeners have never heard

1:12:16

before. Oh yeah, you know, we had hundreds

1:12:18

of hours of tape and stuff that we didn't go

1:12:20

in those directions, and it really needs to go in some

1:12:22

of those directions. So I'm gonna be busy with

1:12:24

this for the next year.

1:12:26

Oh absolutely, And please bring in

1:12:28

the guy who you went fishing with, dude, Oh

1:12:30

yeah, because that guy he is

1:12:32

great. Yeah, and invite me next time

1:12:34

you're out there too.

1:12:35

Go oh yeah, he's got his own boat and we go out with

1:12:38

these other cops and it's just, you know, there's nothing

1:12:40

better than fishing. With cops and just hearing the stories

1:12:43

from them, you know, just yeah, the ones that got

1:12:45

away, the ones that did you know, everything, true

1:12:48

characters.

1:12:49

Really well,

1:12:51

thank you man. This has been an absolute blast.

1:12:53

Oh it was a pleasure.

1:12:54

And I really I'll look up to you too, and you're

1:12:56

you're talented individual and you know, I'm glad

1:12:58

that we're in the same space together, and you

1:13:01

know, I would be flat

1:13:03

out of one day our passed across on some sort

1:13:05

of project, and you know, I.

1:13:06

Would love that. I've been listening to the show and like

1:13:09

I just it's really you guys are really good together,

1:13:11

like you and Mark. That was a really great Thank

1:13:13

you man.

1:13:14

I appreciate that.

1:13:14

Yeah, so I want to be listening more so.

1:13:16

Awesome, Thank you, Payne, thank you so much. I appreciate man.

1:13:18

Yeah, nice meeting you too.

1:13:20

Likewise, Talking

1:13:23

to Death is a production of Tenorfoot TV

1:13:25

and iHeart Podcasts, created and

1:13:28

hosted by Payne Lindsay. For Tenderfoot

1:13:30

TV, executive producers are Payne

1:13:32

Lindsay and Donald Albright. Co

1:13:34

executive producer is Mike Rooney.

1:13:37

For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers

1:13:39

are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with

1:13:41

original music by Makeup and Vanity

1:13:44

Set. Additional production by Mike

1:13:46

Rooney, Dylan Harrington, Sean Nurney,

1:13:48

Dayton Cole, and Gustav Wilde

1:13:50

for Coohedo. Production support

1:13:53

by Tracy Kaplan, Mara Davis,

1:13:55

and Trevor Young. Mixing and mastering

1:13:57

by Cooper Skinner and Dayton Cole. Our

1:14:00

cover art was created by Rob Sheridan.

1:14:03

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1:14:06

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1:14:12

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1:14:14

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1:14:16

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