Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster d Z Sniper, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Tenderfoot t V. The views and opinions
Speaker 1: expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast
Speaker 1: author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not
Speaker 1: represent those of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot t V, or
Speaker 1: their employees. Listener discretion is advised. Late last month, new
Speaker 1: developments broke in the DC Sniper case. The Supreme Court
Speaker 1: was set to rule on whether Lee Boyd Malvo should
Speaker 1: be resentenced in Virginia. In two past cases, the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court held that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile
Speaker 1: offenders is unconstitutional. In February, before the Supreme Court made
Speaker 1: a ruling, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a new bill
Speaker 1: into law. The law gives parole eligibility to all juvenile
Speaker 1: offenders tried, convicted, and sentenced within the adult justice system
Speaker 1: in Virginia. As a result, Malvo agreed to withdraw his
Speaker 1: appeal and the case has been dismissed by the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: This new law means Malvo can seek parole in Virginia.
Speaker 1: These developments will have lasting implications not just on Malvo's fate,
Speaker 1: but the fates of hundreds of others who committed felony
Speaker 1: crimes as miners in Virginia. For that reason, Monster d
Speaker 1: C Sniper is taking an extra week to conduct further research,
Speaker 1: speak with more experts, and to update the finale of
Speaker 1: this podcast. The main season will resume next week with
Speaker 1: episode twelve with the investigation into the Sniper's killings leading
Speaker 1: up to the DC attacks, including police interviews with Lee
Speaker 1: Boyd Malvo and John Mohammed. In the meantime, we're happy
Speaker 1: to present this recording of Alive behind the scenes event
Speaker 1: from January. The creators of Monster Dacy Sniper were invited
Speaker 1: to speak at the Savannah College of Art and Designs
Speaker 1: Podcast Weekend. The event was hosted by the senior executive
Speaker 1: director at SCAD Film, l Semen. Hi, everybody, my name
Speaker 1: is Lee Semen, and I have the distinct pleasure to
Speaker 1: head up the festivals and events produced by SCAD Film
Speaker 1: with an incredible support team from all of our SCAD family,
Speaker 1: over four campuses around the world, sixteen thousand students, over
Speaker 1: forty thousand alumni, and seventy countries. GOAD Film was created
Speaker 1: so that we could take full advantage of our SCAD
Speaker 1: expertise and pre eminence and match it to the growing
Speaker 1: expertise that industry was bringing to Atlanta, UH and create
Speaker 1: opportunities for a collision of creative minds. And we've been
Speaker 1: able to do that through established festivals like our SCAD
Speaker 1: Savannah Film Festival, which has been in place over twenty years,
Speaker 1: our a TV Fest which will be in its eighth year,
Speaker 1: and this sort of new palette of festivals Animation Fest,
Speaker 1: gaming Fest, and a whole year of events like this
Speaker 1: this one SCAD podcast Weekend. Now, I have a question
Speaker 1: for you, when is the last time that you counted
Speaker 1: to seventy million? Our friends here today counted to seventy
Speaker 1: million in their first season. They counted almost to seventy
Speaker 1: million again, and they're about to count to more than
Speaker 1: seventy million with season three. These guys know what they
Speaker 1: are doing and they are led by Matt Frederick. Please
Speaker 1: join me and welcoming him. Hi, everybody, my name is
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. I am currently a lead executive producer at
Speaker 1: I Heeart Podcasts. We're here in Atlanta were based in
Speaker 1: pont City Market. That's where we make a lot of
Speaker 1: our shows. Back in two thousand six, I got an
Speaker 1: internship at how Stuff Works. It was back on the
Speaker 1: internet when you're on the internet just to read articles.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that time? Does anybody remember a time
Speaker 1: when that happened? Because How Stuff Works the whole time
Speaker 1: it had been a thing made articles. A couple of
Speaker 1: years later, we started making videos. So we tried to
Speaker 1: do is take those articles and put them into video format,
Speaker 1: and it worked really well for a while. We created
Speaker 1: things like brain Stuff and one of the shows I
Speaker 1: created called stuff They Don't want you to Know. It
Speaker 1: was going really well, but there's this other emerging medium
Speaker 1: called podcasts, and nobody knew really what it was. But
Speaker 1: we figured, well, let's try taking those articles and turn
Speaker 1: them into an audio format that you could just listen
Speaker 1: to instead of having to read it. And from those
Speaker 1: little experimentations from back in two thousand and eight two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, we created some of the biggest podcasts that
Speaker 1: exist on this planet today, Stuff you should Know, Stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class, stuff Mom never told you.
Speaker 1: And that was all through the website How Stuff Works,
Speaker 1: which became stuff Media, the podcast arm of that website,
Speaker 1: and it's so weird. We moved to Pont City Market
Speaker 1: we're making all these shows, and we find out there's
Speaker 1: this amazing true crime show unlike anything anybody has ever
Speaker 1: heard before, and it's apparently being produced four floors above
Speaker 1: our office. We had no idea that was happening. It
Speaker 1: was this just a small group of people. They were
Speaker 1: called Tenderfoot TV, and we were so impressed with the content.
Speaker 1: We thought, Okay, let's contact these guys, Donald Lellbright and
Speaker 1: Payne Lindsay, let's see what they're up to. We had
Speaker 1: a quick meeting and just over coffee, we decided we
Speaker 1: want to work together, and if we are going to
Speaker 1: work together, what do we want to tackle? What story
Speaker 1: do we want to tell. Both teams simultaneously wanted to
Speaker 1: tell Atlanta's missing and murdered children's story because it was
Speaker 1: not something that was being talked about. We felt like
Speaker 1: it was a story that had been underserved, and it
Speaker 1: was an underserved community in the first place, and we thought,
Speaker 1: let's at least do our best to tell the stories
Speaker 1: of the people who went through this, who lived through this,
Speaker 1: and we created Atlanta Monster Atlanta, Georgia, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: One by one, kids are going missing with no explanation
Speaker 1: seven of the children have disappeared since March. A black
Speaker 1: thirteen year old boy living in a housing project, good
Speaker 1: in school, a loner working for extra money, and as
Speaker 1: of Thursday night, missing Are you scared? Altogether nine children
Speaker 1: between the ages of seven and fourteen have disappeared in
Speaker 1: the last year. People from outside see this in the
Speaker 1: context of what's happening to black people across the country.
Speaker 1: Missing children have become priority number one at a p D.
Speaker 1: We cannot as a community, as a city, carry on
Speaker 1: business as usual. I want the people of Atlanta and
Speaker 1: the nation to know that this administration is totally color blind.
Speaker 1: When the producers of Up and Vanished in Health Stuff works,
Speaker 1: you present an all new podcast, Atlanta Monster. Officially, according
Speaker 1: to the list, there were twenty three children five adults
Speaker 1: who were killed from nine the picture there is a
Speaker 1: mug shot of Wayne Williams, the man who is still
Speaker 1: in jail right now. He was convicted of killing two adults,
Speaker 1: and we spoke with him extensively for this show. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you guys realized this. There are so
Speaker 1: many people in this city that believe that man killed
Speaker 1: absolutely zero people. It was mind blowing to us to
Speaker 1: know how many people held that as an opinion. We
Speaker 1: thought it was worth talking to him to see what
Speaker 1: he had to say. It premiered in January, and again,
Speaker 1: this is stuff media. At that time, we get acquired
Speaker 1: by I Heart Radio the end of We love the process,
Speaker 1: we love the style, and we wanted to work again
Speaker 1: with tender Foot TV. We're gonna find another time when
Speaker 1: terror was running rampant in this city, when just going
Speaker 1: about your daily life was a problem, and we looked
Speaker 1: to San Francisco. Right at the turn of the Summer
Speaker 1: of Love n nineteen sixty nine, there was what was
Speaker 1: believed to be a man who was killing young people
Speaker 1: in their cars at lovers lanes. This person was writing
Speaker 1: letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. He
Speaker 1: had captured a city, and he had put fear in
Speaker 1: the hearts of everyone living in the entire area from
Speaker 1: Napa Valley to Valleo to San Francisco. In the seventies,
Speaker 1: as it was happening, a lot of us probably thought, Gee,
Speaker 1: there's a lot going on, But looking back at a
Speaker 1: decade of violence, it was just crazy. It was crazy time.
Speaker 1: Most serial killers don't make any effort to involve media
Speaker 1: or investigators. They're very secretive. They don't want attention. They
Speaker 1: almost want their crimes to go unnoticed. But the idea
Speaker 1: of committing a crime and then calling up the police
Speaker 1: and bragging about it, that's a whole nother level of terror.
Speaker 1: A man who wore a medieval style executioner's hood, who
Speaker 1: has baffled the police and baffled the media. He seems
Speaker 1: to crave publicity. He sent letters and cryptograms to newspapers
Speaker 1: and the police. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
Speaker 1: no a double murder. I did it here. We are
Speaker 1: fifty years after the first Zodiac killing. In today's world
Speaker 1: of forensics, old cases are being solved. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the most famous cold case in the last century or
Speaker 1: so in terms of it's drama and being unsolved. Who
Speaker 1: doesn't want to know how it turns out, Dear editor,
Speaker 1: this is the Zodiac speaking. If you do not print
Speaker 1: the cipher by the afternoon of Friday, first of August,
Speaker 1: I will go on to kill rampage Friday night. I
Speaker 1: will cruise around all weekend, killing loan people in the night,
Speaker 1: then move on to kill again. The best part of
Speaker 1: it is that when I die, I'll be reborn in
Speaker 1: paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves.
Speaker 1: From My Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 1: this is Monster the Zodiac Killer. That impression of the
Speaker 1: Zodiac Killer. That was an actual letter that was sent
Speaker 1: to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearing it in that way,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it has the same effect on you.
Speaker 1: I hope it does. That's kind of the point of it.
Speaker 1: But it really is spine tingling to me to know
Speaker 1: that someone actually wrote that and felt that I wanted
Speaker 1: everybody else to feel that way. It kind of just
Speaker 1: fits that title, doesn't it. Monster whoever that was. So
Speaker 1: here's the deal. We are back with the third iteration
Speaker 1: of the Monster series. We went from one all the
Speaker 1: way back to sixty nine. This year we're going to
Speaker 1: two thousand two, to a time right after nine eleven,
Speaker 1: to a time when the country was in fear already
Speaker 1: and someone came along and struck fear in the hearts
Speaker 1: of all of us. Again. We're gonna tell you all
Speaker 1: about it tonight, because tonight we have the creators of
Speaker 1: the third iteration. It is called Monster d C Sniper.
Speaker 1: Tonight we have the host, Tony Harris, and we have
Speaker 1: two of the producers, Trevor Young and Benjamin Kiebrick. And guys,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to join me on stage, come on up.
Speaker 1: We've got Trevor Young, this is Ben Keebrick. These guys
Speaker 1: are the writers and really the backbone the creators of
Speaker 1: the show. So, Ben, I want to pose this to you.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us kind of a basic overview of
Speaker 1: the case and how you came to learn all the
Speaker 1: information about it? So one thing just to start, So
Speaker 1: I actually I grew up in northern Virginia, so I
Speaker 1: was a high school student when all this stuff was
Speaker 1: going on. But then starting to research it, I realized,
Speaker 1: even though I was there at the time and like
Speaker 1: getting all that local news and stuff, I realized there
Speaker 1: is so much about this case that either I never
Speaker 1: knew or completely forgot about um. And that was one
Speaker 1: of the reasons I wanted to tell this story, as
Speaker 1: I felt like, well, if I don't know any of
Speaker 1: this stuff, then I don't think many people do. So
Speaker 1: October second, two thousand two, one person was shot. The
Speaker 1: next day five people are shot. They're just going about
Speaker 1: their everyday lives. A guy mowing a lawn, people filling
Speaker 1: up their cars with gas, things like that. They seem
Speaker 1: to have no connection to one another, but when they
Speaker 1: analyzed the bullets, they realized that they're all coming from
Speaker 1: the same rifle. There's someone out there kind of shooting
Speaker 1: people and discriminately, and it's kind of like, now, what
Speaker 1: do you do? No one knows is it terrorists, is
Speaker 1: it a serial killer? What's going on. It's a very
Speaker 1: suburban area. Immediately everyone was worried about their kids. A
Speaker 1: couple of days later, there's a shooting at a middle school.
Speaker 1: Outside that middle school, they find a terror card with
Speaker 1: a cryptic note written on it, and kind of the
Speaker 1: story just gets crazier and crazier. When I was doing
Speaker 1: the research, one of the things is it seems like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of misinformation out there. There are some
Speaker 1: good books written about it that kind of cover narrow angles,
Speaker 1: some kind of made for TV documentaries, but it felt
Speaker 1: like no one had really put everything in one place
Speaker 1: where it tried to to really give a feel of
Speaker 1: what it was like to live through that. And that's
Speaker 1: that's the thing that Monster does really well, is putting
Speaker 1: people into a time and a place and kind of
Speaker 1: trying to make our listeners feel what it must have
Speaker 1: been like to go through that. So, Trevor, you tracked
Speaker 1: down so many people and talked with them, tell us
Speaker 1: the different perspectives that we're actually hearing from the show.
Speaker 1: So off the bat, you can expect to hear anywhere
Speaker 1: from forty to fifty people in this podcast. We've over
Speaker 1: the last six to nine months interview just an insane
Speaker 1: amount of people. But I think this was such a
Speaker 1: big story that affected so many people that really that's
Speaker 1: only a tiny fraction of the people we could interview. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: Dr Caroline Namro was a pediatrician. She was just um
Speaker 1: going about her day. She was dropping her kids off
Speaker 1: at school. Uh, and she stopped to get gas on
Speaker 1: October three, and she made eye contact with a man
Speaker 1: and didn't really think anything of it. Then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, she hears a pop and the man goes
Speaker 1: down on her car, bleeding and says, call the cops.
Speaker 1: So she tries to resuscitate this man. She's calling the police.
Speaker 1: She you heard her on the nine one one call
Speaker 1: on that teaser, and she's doing I think what all
Speaker 1: of us would do. She's just kind of reacting. She's
Speaker 1: frankly kind of freaking out. I don't know how I
Speaker 1: would react. I don't even know if I could call
Speaker 1: nine one one. She told us her medical training kick
Speaker 1: dan and she was able to go into gear and
Speaker 1: really try and help this person. And it's a phenomenal
Speaker 1: story to hear her tell it, and it's one of
Speaker 1: the first things you hear in the podcast. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of incredible stories like that, and I think what
Speaker 1: we really want to do is really tell them to
Speaker 1: their like full extent, to really let you know the
Speaker 1: full story of what happened with each and every one
Speaker 1: of these people from every perspective. So we're speaking with witnesses,
Speaker 1: we're speaking with victims, families, were speaking with the law
Speaker 1: enforcement officials from all of the varying organizations that were
Speaker 1: a part of this massive manhunt. And one of the
Speaker 1: people that was there at that time was this award
Speaker 1: winning journalist named Tony Harris. You have been in television
Speaker 1: for a long time, my friend, stop right there. When
Speaker 1: when is the first time? Am I not allowed to know?
Speaker 1: Was what was first TV gig? For real? My first
Speaker 1: TV gig was eight two eight two. The first time
Speaker 1: you're yeah, and you have been working consistently this whole time.
Speaker 1: Knock would Yeah, I just want to know, why are
Speaker 1: you taking all of your TV talents and putting them
Speaker 1: into a pott Oh that's easy. Look, when you sign
Speaker 1: up for this role as a journalist, you know what
Speaker 1: you're saying to anyone who will listen to you is
Speaker 1: that you want to tell amazing stories. You want to
Speaker 1: dig deep, and you want to share those stories. You
Speaker 1: want to investigate, you want to uncover, and you want
Speaker 1: to report. That's what you sign up for when you
Speaker 1: say you want to be a journalist, and that's what
Speaker 1: I did forever ago. And once you do that, you
Speaker 1: want to find as many venues as possible to tell
Speaker 1: amazing stories. So sure, I've I've done that work at CNN,
Speaker 1: I did that work for Al Jazeera in Dohan and
Speaker 1: then again in New York. I have been really fortunate
Speaker 1: to cover amazing stories, everything from the Southeast Asia tsunami
Speaker 1: to Katrina to the Arab spring. And this is an
Speaker 1: opportunity that I think it's really special now. This world
Speaker 1: that you guys have created gives journalists like me an
Speaker 1: opportunity to dig, to do the deep dive this is
Speaker 1: a really deep dive, and I mean, I think that's important.
Speaker 1: That's an important point to make here. So it's not
Speaker 1: a situation that you see a lot in television news
Speaker 1: where you got a fifteen seconds sound bite from someone.
Speaker 1: You get an opportunity to actually hear someone explain not
Speaker 1: just the moment, but what they were feeling and what
Speaker 1: they were going through emotionally in that moment. That's why
Speaker 1: I feel blessed to have this opportunity to tell this
Speaker 1: story that I have kind of intimate knowledge of. You
Speaker 1: remember this story, right, I mean you remember this. I
Speaker 1: just need to feel some energy back from from the audience.
Speaker 1: You do remember the story, right. This is two thousand two,
Speaker 1: and I, um wow. I was working in Baltimore as
Speaker 1: a news anchor for the Fox affiliate there and on
Speaker 1: the second I remember us getting a call in our
Speaker 1: newsroom about our shooting in Montgomery County, which was odd
Speaker 1: and weird because you know, as was mentioned, Montgomery County
Speaker 1: is kind of this pristine community high net Worth County
Speaker 1: in Maryland. That would have led our newscast that night,
Speaker 1: and the next day all all hell broke lose um
Speaker 1: five people killed on the third and at that point
Speaker 1: as my news brain was working at the time, I
Speaker 1: knew we had a massive story and not enough people.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking resources to cover the story. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: how do we get the information to people. We weren't
Speaker 1: getting anything from police. Everyone was afraid that that it
Speaker 1: was terrorism, and we just didn't have enough resources to
Speaker 1: cover the story. And I don't know it. At some
Speaker 1: point during the twenty three days of panic and Hell,
Speaker 1: I can remember sort of wait a minute, You're you're
Speaker 1: trying to figure out because as an anchor, you're getting
Speaker 1: people on who are telling the story. And I think
Speaker 1: in many cases we might have been part of the
Speaker 1: problem and telling the story because we became as fixated
Speaker 1: as anyone with the idea of the white van. You
Speaker 1: remember the white panel truck. Remember that, how that sort
Speaker 1: of dominated the story. And then the next thing was
Speaker 1: all of the leaks that we were reporting on, and
Speaker 1: how some of those leaks were coming from investigators close
Speaker 1: to the case. So you're just conflicted, and you're wondering
Speaker 1: if if you're doing a service to the public. But
Speaker 1: we have people viewers who were clamoring to know everything
Speaker 1: there is to know about this case, and so you're
Speaker 1: feeling conflicted in everything else, and and I'm still thinking
Speaker 1: as an anchor, as a reporter trying to get information.
Speaker 1: At some point, and I don't know when, At some point,
Speaker 1: um I started to think like a human being, and
Speaker 1: I started to think about the people who had been killed,
Speaker 1: their lives, their families. And then I it must have
Speaker 1: been around the time when Iron Brown, thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: he had a Tasker Middle School shot. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: that's right at Tasker Middle School. And I think it
Speaker 1: was shortly or certainly in that moment, I began to
Speaker 1: stop thinking about this purely as a story, with all
Speaker 1: the adrenaline that goes along with being, you know, a
Speaker 1: reporter or anchor on a huge story with national and
Speaker 1: international interest, and I started to think about myself as
Speaker 1: a father or two young children, and the story kind
Speaker 1: of changes for me at that point. So there are
Speaker 1: two routes I want to go with that, Steve Antoni.
Speaker 1: The first one is how making a show like this
Speaker 1: affects you when you are speaking to somebody like this,
Speaker 1: then you're perhaps in an editing bay and listening to
Speaker 1: it over and over again and really trying to pull
Speaker 1: out the truth and the emotion in something horrific that
Speaker 1: you're listening to. How has that affected you, guys, Has
Speaker 1: it affected you guys at all? Or how do you
Speaker 1: think about it? Well, I think all are most of
Speaker 1: us here come from a journalism background, and I think
Speaker 1: when you work in journalism for so many years, um,
Speaker 1: you kind of in a way learn how to harden
Speaker 1: yourself when you're talking and hearing and dealing with these stories.
Speaker 1: So you know, when you go into this, when you're
Speaker 1: in the moment you're talking to this person, you're doing
Speaker 1: two things. You're you're one trying to get the story,
Speaker 1: get the information really like talk with this person, empathize
Speaker 1: with them, But you know, at the end of the
Speaker 1: day also you are trying to connect with them on
Speaker 1: an emotional level. And I think in the podcasting world,
Speaker 1: we're trying to do that more over longer periods of time,
Speaker 1: and it's harder to not let that affect you. It's
Speaker 1: hard not to feel more emotionally invest in these people
Speaker 1: when you were talking with them on multiple occasions, sometimes
Speaker 1: for hours at a time. You know, these are not
Speaker 1: like TV interviews that you see on a talk show.
Speaker 1: These are people that when you leave the room with them,
Speaker 1: or you get off the phone with them. You feel
Speaker 1: like you know each other and there's a piece of
Speaker 1: each other that you've shared that you are probably gonna
Speaker 1: remember forever and you can't take back. And I personally
Speaker 1: have walked away from a lot of interviews I don't
Speaker 1: want to say shaken, but feeling like I had experienced
Speaker 1: something myself that somebody had explained to me because they
Speaker 1: you know, we're so open with me, because they went
Speaker 1: to so much detail, because they gave me something so vivid,
Speaker 1: I almost felt like I'd been there. And it's good
Speaker 1: for us to hear that stuff because then we know
Speaker 1: we have something powerful. One of the major purposes of
Speaker 1: these shows is to learn something from the experience of
Speaker 1: all of the people that have gone through all of
Speaker 1: these things. People who have, you know, been on the
Speaker 1: side of the law, chasing somebody down, or on on
Speaker 1: the wrong side of a gun. It's basic storytelling stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's also very important to us when we're making
Speaker 1: a show like this, looking at the big picture and
Speaker 1: thinking about ourselves. Then I want to jump to you
Speaker 1: really quickly because one of the ways we do that
Speaker 1: is to kind of time travel. In these shows, and
Speaker 1: play archival footage from news organizations. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: how we're using archival footage in this and how that's
Speaker 1: helping to shape the story. But it's also telling us
Speaker 1: some things about what was going on between law enforcement
Speaker 1: and the media. So this is kind of an interesting
Speaker 1: case from an archival perspective because it turned into a
Speaker 1: national news story. I mean, you have George W. Bush
Speaker 1: talking about it. You know, it's covered by all the stations,
Speaker 1: and and there are kind of these massive trials that
Speaker 1: happened afterwards where things like the nine one one calls
Speaker 1: got entered into that that public records. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of primary documents of kind of what
Speaker 1: was going on at that time, how people thought about it,
Speaker 1: you know, people calling in to call in radio shows
Speaker 1: to breasts, their their fears and their concerns. So we
Speaker 1: really had a ton of stuff to work with and
Speaker 1: and try to incorporate that kind of whenever we could.
Speaker 1: Um and one of our recent episodes there is kind
Speaker 1: of a particularly harrowing one call that we had a
Speaker 1: big internal debate about, you know, whether to use and
Speaker 1: how much to use, and there's kind of this balance
Speaker 1: of you know, you want to respect the people that
Speaker 1: went through these things, but it's also it's something that
Speaker 1: really happened, and so kind of to accurately present what
Speaker 1: was going on, do you want to kind of show
Speaker 1: that in its kind of most dark and brutal fashion
Speaker 1: there was tension occurring between the media and law enforcement
Speaker 1: about what information should be put out into the public.
Speaker 1: This is what I want to learn from you, Tony,
Speaker 1: So from the newsperson's the journalist perspective, what do you
Speaker 1: think about if information gets lead to you that is
Speaker 1: really important for people's understanding about this case, even though
Speaker 1: you know it's important to the case. Look, are you
Speaker 1: going to hinder the investigation? Obvious at CNN when Jazira
Speaker 1: got the Alqaeda tapes and you know, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of back and forth and ringing of hands and
Speaker 1: a lot of criticism from inside our own building of
Speaker 1: Jazeera for going with those those tapes. When the reality
Speaker 1: is if if we had gotten the tapes, we would
Speaker 1: have we would have run those tapes, right. And so
Speaker 1: if you get information like that that you know is
Speaker 1: really hot and really provocative, what do you do with it? Well,
Speaker 1: there's an editorial process. We all know that you just
Speaker 1: described an editorial process, and I think you've got a way.
Speaker 1: It's all that that's the old question of the public's
Speaker 1: right to know, right, and the extent to which sharing
Speaker 1: that information might hinder an investigation. I think there are
Speaker 1: their circumstances where during that case we got it wrong.
Speaker 1: Channel nine and the Washington Post should not have gone
Speaker 1: with the information, in my opinion, on the Tarot card.
Speaker 1: The reason they did is the fact that the writing
Speaker 1: on the Tarot card essentially eliminated the thought that this
Speaker 1: was foreign terrorism, right, was the reason I believe those
Speaker 1: news organizations decided to go with that. I think it's
Speaker 1: always the sort of balancing act, and there are serious
Speaker 1: editorial meetings about this, and I think there are some
Speaker 1: cases where we absolutely got it wrong. We didn't challenge
Speaker 1: in the way that we should have, the whole idea
Speaker 1: of the white panel truck. So, because you've been here
Speaker 1: today and you've been hearing us talk about this, when
Speaker 1: you go outside today and head home, all you're gonna
Speaker 1: see our white panel trucks, that's all you're gonna see.
Speaker 1: And so I suppose that's that's the way I feel
Speaker 1: about it. We got we got a lot of things wrong. Um,
Speaker 1: we should have questioned more closely. Uh, we should have
Speaker 1: pushed back a lot more aggressively, but we were We
Speaker 1: were operating at a moment when this nation was scared shipless.
Speaker 1: Can I say that I just did? We just got
Speaker 1: a note? He said, absolutely not, Tony, Tony, you have
Speaker 1: to leave now. They're they're coming to get you too.
Speaker 1: Could I add something to that? Yeah, police, So there
Speaker 1: was another interesting element the way the media and the
Speaker 1: investigation was interacting. And then maybe you can help me
Speaker 1: with this. The snipers, the tarot card was one of
Speaker 1: their kind of communications, but there were all these other
Speaker 1: communications as well, all these demands for money, all these
Speaker 1: demands for police to say certain things publicly. So both
Speaker 1: the snipers and the investigation ended up using the media
Speaker 1: to kind of, you know, as their own kind of megaphones.
Speaker 1: They were kind of talking through the media at each
Speaker 1: other because they weren't interacting directly, the investigators and the
Speaker 1: snipers for the most part. There were a few phone calls,
Speaker 1: but for the most part in the in a big sense,
Speaker 1: they were really using press conferences and newscasts to get
Speaker 1: information on both sides. And that kind of goes into
Speaker 1: the archival things. So then you have actually these press
Speaker 1: conferences of the chief of police for Montgomery County communicating
Speaker 1: to the snipers and kind of, you know, none of
Speaker 1: the reporters or the public at home really knows what's
Speaker 1: going on. Is kind of these coded, cryptic messages that
Speaker 1: are responding to the messages from the snipers, and it
Speaker 1: it really was just kind of this very bizarre scenario
Speaker 1: or it's kind of hard for the media to know
Speaker 1: how to cover it, how much to cover it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then that doesn't and you're not making this point,
Speaker 1: but I will. It doesn't. It doesn't explain away the
Speaker 1: irresponsibility in my opinion of local television stations, national networks
Speaker 1: putting every Tom Dick and Harry On who claims to
Speaker 1: be a law enforcement expert just doing rank speculation. And
Speaker 1: that continues today. So that's kind of a pet peeve
Speaker 1: of mine. Folks who are not a part of the investigation.
Speaker 1: We're going to take some questions. Is anybody out there
Speaker 1: have any questions, because if you don't, I'll keep asking them.
Speaker 1: I have a question about your video trailers. So as
Speaker 1: a podcast, you know it's strictly audio, um, but you've
Speaker 1: created these incredible video trailers. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the benefit of that and why that's a
Speaker 1: great question. I want to hear this answer. Okay, you
Speaker 1: want me to just keep answering these okay, cool um.
Speaker 1: Video trailers I think are very, very beneficial for any podcast,
Speaker 1: and I think it's mostly what we use it for
Speaker 1: social That's one of the major aspects is just being
Speaker 1: able to put something on say Instagram or some other
Speaker 1: platform that you can watch and get people excited about,
Speaker 1: especially if you're telling a story that's already exciting just inherently,
Speaker 1: but if you can show something that's exciting, that can
Speaker 1: only make your show better and make your audience more interested. Uh.
Speaker 1: In our case, we're working with Tenderfoot TV, guys who
Speaker 1: came from video production. I have a video production degree, like,
Speaker 1: so we we would get together and make these pretty,
Speaker 1: I think, pretty great little video trailers. The other reason
Speaker 1: that you want a video trailer, I think, especially if
Speaker 1: you think your story is good enough to translate into
Speaker 1: other mediums. One of the big things is happening with
Speaker 1: podcasts now is that TV is very interested. TV producers
Speaker 1: across the planet are interested in taking your podcast and
Speaker 1: trying to turn it into a television show. You've done
Speaker 1: all the work exactly. You've got the story, you've got
Speaker 1: the pre production, you've got everything. You've got interviews, you've
Speaker 1: got all the people that you want to get on camera.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's laid out for you. If and as
Speaker 1: a TV executive that's not me, but as some TV
Speaker 1: executive out there, I can imagine it being very great
Speaker 1: if you walk in with essentially a sizzle reel, so
Speaker 1: you will hear this podcast and and I guarantee you
Speaker 1: you will think, Wow, that could be on television today.
Speaker 1: And this is what I wanted to get into before
Speaker 1: we switched over. It's it's exactly that. The way that
Speaker 1: you guys use music, and the editing style and the
Speaker 1: way you cut to and from a commercial, and the
Speaker 1: cliffhangers and all of that. It gets me so pumped
Speaker 1: and excited and scared and sad. Episode two of the show,
Speaker 1: I love it. I cry every time I listened to
Speaker 1: that episode. It moves me in the way a really
Speaker 1: great HBO show or or some other television show does.
Speaker 1: And it's because of the music, because of the stories,
Speaker 1: the way you guys are putting it together, and there's
Speaker 1: this voice that keeps talking to you, but it's just
Speaker 1: so smooth and awesome whatever. So the only thing I
Speaker 1: would add to that is that I've been making films
Speaker 1: and I've had a television show on Discovery I D
Speaker 1: so I've been in this true crime space for four
Speaker 1: almost five years now, and what these guys are doing
Speaker 1: in their storytelling rivals anything then I've been connected to
Speaker 1: in true crime. So I don't get an opportunity often
Speaker 1: to say really nice things to about these guys in
Speaker 1: front of a room of people. But they are that
Speaker 1: good at what they do, and if you haven't listened
Speaker 1: to it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when
Speaker 1: you listen. Thank you, And going back to the kind
Speaker 1: of music for a second. I think one of the
Speaker 1: interesting things about Atlanta Monster in the Monster series and
Speaker 1: I guess up and vanished too. It's one of the
Speaker 1: first kind of big podcasts that didn't come out directly
Speaker 1: from public radio, you know, so like Cereal sarracan Ex
Speaker 1: was on This American Life, a lot of people making
Speaker 1: podcast kind of came from that background. Um, I think
Speaker 1: this was one of the first podcast series to kind
Speaker 1: of be made by someone who really had more of
Speaker 1: like a TV aesthetic, and that goes into the way
Speaker 1: you cut things, the way you use music, and we
Speaker 1: try to keep the journalism, We try to keep that
Speaker 1: same rigor, but maybe the way things are timed in
Speaker 1: space and the musical cues a little bit more similar
Speaker 1: to a TV documentary than you know, a standard public
Speaker 1: radio story or something. Well, and they're not here tonight,
Speaker 1: but I think we have a lot of that to
Speaker 1: Tenterfoot TV absolutely frankly invented a lot of that model.
Speaker 1: They came from kind of a documentary producing background. They
Speaker 1: kind of brought that to podcasting with Up and Vanish
Speaker 1: and then Atlanta Monster. Uh So, I mean they have
Speaker 1: taught us a lot how to do that, and we
Speaker 1: talked about music a lot and we should shut out
Speaker 1: maps makeup. In Vanity Set. He does all of the soundtracks,
Speaker 1: and I think he's really another team member, and I
Speaker 1: think that's also kind of a unique thing to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, have one person doing the whole soundtrack, and
Speaker 1: like we go back and forth about what we want
Speaker 1: and he sends us stuff that's super inspiring and that's
Speaker 1: a big part of our process. Those guys, they make
Speaker 1: such exciting content, and really what we're trying to do
Speaker 1: is you hit on the head. We were trying to
Speaker 1: balance the excitement that they bring with this journalism murder,
Speaker 1: and I think that's what we're achieving this season more
Speaker 1: than we have ever before. So we're gonna do something here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna play this quick clip. This is kind of
Speaker 1: an example of the style, really using music, using a
Speaker 1: cliffhanger to get you excited about wanting to listen to
Speaker 1: either the rest of the show or the next episode.
Speaker 1: So here we go next time on Monster d C Sniper,
Speaker 1: I need an ambulance right here. God came out from
Speaker 1: behind the store and uh and shop Paul arupa and uh.
Speaker 1: Leading The pressure of the blood inside me was collapsing
Speaker 1: my lungs. He drove and I shot because I was
Speaker 1: the smallest. And back there later they told me, Oh,
Speaker 1: they found you. John sent Lee to your door pretending
Speaker 1: to be a salesperson. Oh, ma'am, I am buying one
Speaker 1: that was gonna for somebody to me. Have you been
Speaker 1: goot you? He said, So, don't get this twisted. Don't
Speaker 1: believe that tim million dollar madness. He came there to
Speaker 1: kill you, That said Malvo has talked about Mohammed having
Speaker 1: a plan and to go create a utopian society in Canada.
Speaker 1: Here you okay, Thank you guys, Thank you so much. UM.
Speaker 1: Everybody's in the download DC Sniper. If you haven't done
Speaker 1: Zodi at Killer or Atlanta Monster, download that one too.
Speaker 1: Thank you to the guys from my heart, UM, and
Speaker 1: thank you to all of you for making our first
Speaker 1: god podcast weekend. It won't be the last watch out.
Speaker 1: It was a success and we appreciate your contribution to that.
Speaker 1: Scad film dot com has all the information you need
Speaker 1: about upcoming events that we'll be doing. There is a
Speaker 1: newsletter you can sign up for that. You can also
Speaker 1: stop by SCAD dot e du to learn more about
Speaker 1: everything that SCAD produces is here and in Savannah, we
Speaker 1: have a great fashion museum called SCAD Fash. We have
Speaker 1: events throughout the year and we really hope that we'll
Speaker 1: see more of you at them. Thank you and good
Speaker 1: night Monster. DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted
Speaker 1: by Tony Harris and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick,
Speaker 1: and Josh Thain. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
Speaker 1: producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Steadman
Speaker 1: and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, be sure to check out the
Speaker 1: first two seasons at Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster
Speaker 1: at i heeart media dot com, or you can call
Speaker 1: us at one eight three three to eight five six
Speaker 1: six six seven. Thanks for listening.