Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake. Thanks for listening to deep Cover.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to work now on season four, and I
Speaker 1: want to remind you that when you sign up for
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus, you'll get access to binge drops of future
Speaker 1: seasons of Deep Cover and exclusive content from other Pushkin
Speaker 1: true crime hits like Death of an Artist, which just
Speaker 1: rapped its first season, as well as Lost Hills, which
Speaker 1: is returning with their third season this June. And of course,
Speaker 1: don't miss early access to Revisionist History and The Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: which are both publishing year round for the first time
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. Check out Pushkin dot fm or
Speaker 1: the Apple Show page for more information. Earlier this month,
Speaker 1: I sat down for a live recorded conversation with my
Speaker 1: friend Emily Basilon. She's a staff writer at The New
Speaker 1: York Times magazine and a co host of Slate's Political Gabfest.
Speaker 1: Emily someone I go to when I'm thinking through a story. Actually,
Speaker 1: this often happens during runs that we take through East
Speaker 1: Rock Park in New Haven, where we both live. We
Speaker 1: kind of nerd out on these runs. We talk about
Speaker 1: the process of recording and the ethical challenges that we
Speaker 1: both face when telling our stories. So we took that
Speaker 1: conversation rum the streets of New Haven to Brooklyn to
Speaker 1: a place called Littlefield, and just so you can picture it,
Speaker 1: it's a really great scene. It's a bar on the
Speaker 1: stage with these two orange leather chairs, microphones, this cool
Speaker 1: lighting display behind us. It was a fun night and
Speaker 1: I'm excited to share that conversation with you here to
Speaker 1: talk about season three, my favorite season. When Jake told
Speaker 1: me about the idea for this season on a run,
Speaker 1: I was immediately sold. I'm going to say this. I
Speaker 1: hope it's true. I think I said this is going
Speaker 1: to be the best season you did, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know whether you're adjut you know, trying to up my confidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was certain because it's just such a good story.
Speaker 1: So why don't we start, because I love these stories
Speaker 1: from you, with your telling us how you found this
Speaker 1: terrific story. Yeah, I mean, and also just say that
Speaker 1: I years ago, an NPR producer said to me that
Speaker 1: a good MPR segment should always feel like one person
Speaker 1: talking to one other person. So in some ways, like
Speaker 1: this run we had, or when I'll pitch the ideas,
Speaker 1: that's how it starts. And so I live in New Haven.
Speaker 1: We both went to Yale, and I've always been kind
Speaker 1: of interested in people that faked their way into universities,
Speaker 1: and there was a guy who faked his way into
Speaker 1: Yale when I had been a student there, and I
Speaker 1: started poking around about maybe there's a story about someone
Speaker 1: who lived some kind of elaborate deception. And it turns
Speaker 1: out I found a piece in the Harvard Crimson about
Speaker 1: a woman named Esther Reid. I mean, this was just
Speaker 1: kind of the tip of the iceberg, and so started
Speaker 1: going down that path of like where else did she
Speaker 1: go and who else was she? And yeah, that kind
Speaker 1: of opened the rabbit's hole, and because of those years ago,
Speaker 1: you had this kind of tantalizing lead. But then there
Speaker 1: was this whole question of like, who is this person
Speaker 1: now and would she talk to you? And why would
Speaker 1: she ever talk to you. I wrote this kind of
Speaker 1: generic letter saying who I was, and then I got
Speaker 1: a callback from Esther And this is a bit of
Speaker 1: a spoiler if you haven't gotten through episode six, but
Speaker 1: she told me that yes, I'm now I go by
Speaker 1: Esther Matthews, and I'm a professor of criminology at Gonzaga University.
Speaker 1: I was like what, And then I just was kind
Speaker 1: of really hooked on all right, this is really unusual woman.
Speaker 1: What is her story? So I flew out to spoken
Speaker 1: where she lives. I rented an airbnb. We set up
Speaker 1: like a little studio in the living room of the airbnb,
Speaker 1: and I just said, okay, like let's start talking. Tell
Speaker 1: me your story. And this is kind of how it began.
Speaker 1: This is a story about a young woman who ran
Speaker 1: away from home. At least that's how it all started.
Speaker 1: I think people think that I had this master plan
Speaker 1: and I went out and did it, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: like it's not fun, right, You're constantly scared, you have
Speaker 1: no support, you have no one to talk to, which
Speaker 1: is part of the reason it got so carried away.
Speaker 1: Like if I had just talked to somebody, they would
Speaker 1: have been like this is crazy. Along the way, there
Speaker 1: were plenty of moments where she could have stopped running,
Speaker 1: but she didn't. Sort of like I got on a
Speaker 1: train track. There was clearly the wrong train track, and like,
Speaker 1: my train is running away, and at some point you're
Speaker 1: not thinking crap, how do we get off this train track?
Speaker 1: You're just thinking crap, how do I stop this train
Speaker 1: from like going off the rails. You know, I just
Speaker 1: kept making horrible decision after horrible decision after horrible decision,
Speaker 1: just trying to keep the train from crashing and killing
Speaker 1: me at that point. So there's a lot of reflection
Speaker 1: in Esther's voice, and you can tell that she's still
Speaker 1: wrestling with the emotions she has, and the memories are
Speaker 1: mixed in with how difficult and experience she had in
Speaker 1: this past that you're excavating with her. Why did she
Speaker 1: decide to talk to you? I think so at that point,
Speaker 1: and as I say in the podcast, she was Professor
Speaker 1: Esther Matthews. Almost no one at her university or in
Speaker 1: this town knew that she was also this kind of
Speaker 1: notorious figure from the tabloids, Esther Reid. But she lived
Speaker 1: under this kind of specter of fear that someone was
Speaker 1: going to eventually put the dots together, and that she felt,
Speaker 1: if that was going to happen, why not do it
Speaker 1: on my own terms and just kind of be out
Speaker 1: in front of it, especially because she had had such
Speaker 1: poor treatment in the media before. So I think there
Speaker 1: was kind of a timing thing where she said, I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about doing this. She knew that she knew
Speaker 1: that that John Campbell had visited her LinkedIn page. She
Speaker 1: knew that people would sometimes kind of poke around, and
Speaker 1: so I think she just said, let's do this. We
Speaker 1: had one of these discussions and Emily, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about this all the time on our runs, where
Speaker 1: someone says they'll talk and then they say, oh this
Speaker 1: is off limits and that's off limits and you can't
Speaker 1: call them, and and I was waiting for that, and
Speaker 1: she said, kind of got out in front of it,
Speaker 1: and she said, look, I know you're going to want
Speaker 1: to talk to other people. I'm not going to try
Speaker 1: to control who you talk to. Look, you got to
Speaker 1: do what you have to do. And that gave me
Speaker 1: some confidence that I was going to be dealing with
Speaker 1: someone who understood the process of what would be involved.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's a short answer is timing.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned John Campbell, who's the detective in this story,
Speaker 1: and we made I think, kind of an unusual decision
Speaker 1: to really start the podcast with him. I mean, Esther's
Speaker 1: voice shows up early, but then you really moved to
Speaker 1: his perspective, and he's not originally investigating Esther's disappearance. He's
Speaker 1: investigating the disappearance of another young woman. Right. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: investigating the disappearance of a woman named Brooke Henson who
Speaker 1: disappeared from the small town of Traveler's Rest, and he
Speaker 1: wants to get to the bottom of this. But she
Speaker 1: is vanished, and he hasn't given up on the case,
Speaker 1: but he is the light is dim that he's going
Speaker 1: to get to the answer and then whatever it is.
Speaker 1: Six or seven years later, he gets a call from
Speaker 1: New York saying, I think I found your woman, Brooke Henson.
Speaker 1: She's a student at Columbia University. And of course it's
Speaker 1: not really Brooke, it's Esther. But this leads him on
Speaker 1: this quest to pursue Esther. And I'll just say I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to John. I called him up. He said,
Speaker 1: coming down and chat. And I really wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: to expect when I retire. I can't wait to put
Speaker 1: this in a drawer. I mean, this is a that's
Speaker 1: the thing I banged my elbow on all the time.
Speaker 1: So it's not about carry a gun. I carry gun
Speaker 1: because we have to. I'd rather be like Andy Griffith
Speaker 1: and just be sharing for that a gun. And he's
Speaker 1: he's just charming in a way that I was. He's disarming,
Speaker 1: he laughs at himself, he's kind of goofy, and he's
Speaker 1: a good detective, and so I immediately sensed, oh wow,
Speaker 1: this guy is going to be an important kind of
Speaker 1: character in the podcast. Why did he care so much
Speaker 1: about this case? I mean, he really gets preoccupied with it.
Speaker 1: I kind of want to use the word obsessed, although
Speaker 1: it's not super respectful, but he's just really intensely driven
Speaker 1: to work on this case. Is there not very much
Speaker 1: interesting crime to solve and Traveler's Rest, well, funny you
Speaker 1: should say that John. I asked John this question. He said, Look,
Speaker 1: Traveler's Rest is like we call it the circle of Wagons.
Speaker 1: It's a few miles across, and our job as constables
Speaker 1: is to push the crime out of the city. And
Speaker 1: that the kind of lawless mountains or what was once
Speaker 1: the lawless Mountains beat a lawless mountains here. This roar
Speaker 1: of a truck would come in and people would pile out,
Speaker 1: and they'd say, we're looking for the law, you know,
Speaker 1: and mountain justice had failed and they had to come
Speaker 1: to into town to find find some law enforcement. And
Speaker 1: so John was basically like within the circle of wagons
Speaker 1: within this town. He felt like that he was a custodianigan,
Speaker 1: someone who was really dependent upon to keep the peace,
Speaker 1: and not a lot did happen, and then this young
Speaker 1: woman vanishes, and I think he feels personally responsible in
Speaker 1: some ways for getting to the bottom of this. And
Speaker 1: you could say it becomes obsessed, but I relate to
Speaker 1: that in a way. It's like you start to get
Speaker 1: a little bit of a mystery and you're not going
Speaker 1: to arrest until you get to it. And so he
Speaker 1: just takes it a lot further than most would, right,
Speaker 1: And so he is trying to solve the mystery of
Speaker 1: Brooke Henson's disappearance and esther appears in his story in
Speaker 1: the end almost by accident, because there are different aliases
Speaker 1: that she's grabbing hold of and Brooke is one of them. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this the thing that's kind of remarkable about the
Speaker 1: story is he gets the call the Brooke Henson is
Speaker 1: actually up in Columbia, right, and he doesn't really it
Speaker 1: doesn't really make sense that she would vanish for seven
Speaker 1: years and then show up at this school, and he
Speaker 1: sends a police officer. The police officer talks to her
Speaker 1: and he presents her with a series of questions that
Speaker 1: only Brooke would know, and she answers most of them successfully,
Speaker 1: and at that point, you know, you would think he
Speaker 1: just lets it go. But this is where his doggedness
Speaker 1: comes in. He says, no, I want DNA, which I
Speaker 1: think I say in the podcast was ballsy, and somehow
Speaker 1: the New York City cop agrees to it, and then
Speaker 1: she runs. So here's what I find fascinating about John. Like,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, it was kind of crazy of
Speaker 1: him to push for DNA. On the other hand, his
Speaker 1: hunch was right that it's possible that this person was
Speaker 1: so adept at being an impostor that she knew these
Speaker 1: kind of unknowable answers. And so that's the weird thing
Speaker 1: about being an obsessive investigator is that if occasionally your unreasonable,
Speaker 1: obsessive hunch is spot on, then you're going to follow
Speaker 1: it at least the next time or maybe the time
Speaker 1: after that, because you have positive confirmation that you are
Speaker 1: right to be obsessed. And so to me, that was
Speaker 1: a part of John that I could relate to and
Speaker 1: that I understood. I think it's just he was on
Speaker 1: his own train, you know. Esther says, she's on her train,
Speaker 1: he's on his train, and it's not so easy to
Speaker 1: get off of that. Yeah. So there are lots of podcasts,
Speaker 1: especially movies, books in the genre of true crime. Right
Speaker 1: it's sort of a national pastime right now to follow
Speaker 1: some of these cases. There are different choices. You get
Speaker 1: kind of hooked on a narrative. I find that podcasts
Speaker 1: are an especially like engrossing way to enter stories and
Speaker 1: become absorbed in them. Are there any ethical issues that
Speaker 1: arise in this area of reporting? I mean, you're really
Speaker 1: digging into people's lives. These are things that happened a
Speaker 1: long time ago to real people. How do you think
Speaker 1: about that with the story like this? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I think that you have to ask yourself at some
Speaker 1: level what justifies doing this? Is it? Because if the
Speaker 1: answer is strictly entertainment, then I don't think you can
Speaker 1: do it. And so there were a few things that
Speaker 1: I grappled with. One was I talked to this guy,
Speaker 1: ben Ford, who is the chief of police, the current
Speaker 1: chief of police down and Traveler's Rest, who is doing,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, a very hard and
Speaker 1: earnest job of still trying to find out what happened
Speaker 1: to Brooke And this is a weird thing. This is
Speaker 1: the only time that's ever happened to me. I interviewed
Speaker 1: John Campbell and or I was about I hadn't even
Speaker 1: interviewed I hadn't even gone to Traveler's Rest yet. And
Speaker 1: I got a message, Jake, this is Ben Ford of
Speaker 1: the Traveler's Rest Police Department. I would like to talk
Speaker 1: to you. And that was because he knew you were
Speaker 1: trying to get in touch with John Gimpbell. He got
Speaker 1: word that I might be doing a story related to
Speaker 1: Brooke Henson say. So I was like, this is weird.
Speaker 1: Like usually on any kind of active investigation with law enforcement,
Speaker 1: as you know, it's like they generally very leery of
Speaker 1: the press. And so I called him and he said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm running an active investigation. If you can get the
Speaker 1: word out about the facts about what we know when
Speaker 1: don't know, I'd be very appreciative. I will share with
Speaker 1: you whatever I've got. So that was encouraging to me
Speaker 1: because I felt like, oh, maybe there's a public service here.
Speaker 1: And then I got in touch with a woman that
Speaker 1: looked for missing people, and then she put me in
Speaker 1: touch with Brook's cousins, and I just asked them straight up.
Speaker 1: I was like, is this something you're comfortable with? And
Speaker 1: they basically said, look, we still want to find her remains,
Speaker 1: we're hopeful that maybe this will help, and we're also
Speaker 1: just that she's not forgotten. And we had that conversation
Speaker 1: and we revisited that in the fact checking part. I
Speaker 1: ran back overall with every aspect of it with them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was thinking a lot about that and
Speaker 1: the second part and we'll get to this is Esther's
Speaker 1: treatment in the medium and revisiting that, and I felt
Speaker 1: like there's a place where we can do a good,
Speaker 1: hard look at the way this was played out, and
Speaker 1: by taking a second look at it, there may be
Speaker 1: some good that served from this. So it was as
Speaker 1: I was grappling with this kind of looking at those
Speaker 1: other things, that said, you know what, I think there
Speaker 1: is value here in kind of telling the story well.
Speaker 1: And some of this comes down again to timing, right,
Speaker 1: we were talking about that earlier. But when you have
Speaker 1: a cold case like this and a family that is
Speaker 1: still wants to know answers, interest from reporters, podcasters can
Speaker 1: be welcome in a way that it might well not
Speaker 1: have been in the moment, right, this isn't a new story,
Speaker 1: worry anymore. It was a big news story. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you're coming in at a different time. Yeah, the dust
Speaker 1: is settled a bit. I mean, Esther is able to
Speaker 1: talk about this. I mean there's good and bad from that.
Speaker 1: The hard part is it time has passed, so sometimes
Speaker 1: it's hard to get people to remember what they were
Speaker 1: thinking and feeling at the time. Another hard part is
Speaker 1: if they were burned by the media, they don't want
Speaker 1: to talk to you, and you have to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time explaining this is not going to be
Speaker 1: a tabloid treatment of this. But yeah, it's nice to
Speaker 1: be like talking about the Secret Service. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: tried to do with the Secret Service before. The Secret
Speaker 1: Service never talks in my experience, and I got don
Speaker 1: long and basically as at she was like, it's like
Speaker 1: years ago, I'll talk to you, you know, And so yeah,
Speaker 1: there were some definite benefits as well. How did the
Speaker 1: media cover Ester's disappearance once they knew she was missing? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny because when I first saw the
Speaker 1: media coverage that this story got back in the day,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, how this is you kind of
Speaker 1: think like this or story has been poured it out
Speaker 1: like I'm late to the party, right, And so but
Speaker 1: then I started taking a look a closer look at
Speaker 1: the way it was reported out, and it was basically
Speaker 1: like you know, fem fatale, It was, you know, very
Speaker 1: much not what you're hearing her say in the opening,
Speaker 1: that she kind of embarked on this path in which
Speaker 1: she kind of was making incrementally bad decisions and was
Speaker 1: we learned in the podcast was dealing with mental health
Speaker 1: and all this that you know, she's portrayed as like
Speaker 1: almost like a Bond villain, you know, as someone who's
Speaker 1: seducing People's a kind of female version of Catch me
Speaker 1: if you can. In fact, that was the play on
Speaker 1: the forty eight Hours version of this. And so the
Speaker 1: thinking is, Okay, is there a way to re examine
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean you let her off the hook. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you give her a pass for the laws
Speaker 1: that she broke, But can you look at this and
Speaker 1: see maybe there's a more nuanced portrayal of a real
Speaker 1: human being here and not just the kind of cardboard cutout.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: Welcome back. After we grab some drinks and mingled with
Speaker 1: the crowd, I turned the tables on Emily asked her
Speaker 1: some questions because we do similar work. She often reports
Speaker 1: on criminal justice for the New York Times magazine and
Speaker 1: finds her way into all kinds of interesting and convoluted
Speaker 1: true crime stories. And there's one in particular that I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to her about, a story that Emily
Speaker 1: spent years reporting on. It involves a young woman named
Speaker 1: Nora Jackson. Nora was convicted as a teenager of killing
Speaker 1: her own mother. She spent several years in prison, and
Speaker 1: then one day her conviction was overturned. Emily became interested
Speaker 1: in how someone like this happens and the role of
Speaker 1: the prosecutor, a woman named Amy Wyrick. Emily wrote about
Speaker 1: Norah's case for the New York Times magazine. Her story
Speaker 1: also appeared in Emily's book Charged. You should check them out.
Speaker 1: We've included links to both in our show notes. Okay,
Speaker 1: back to our conversation, and I'm wondering whether Emily, you
Speaker 1: can just kind of turn back the clock and help
Speaker 1: remind me and us how did you get drawn to
Speaker 1: this story? What did you know initially, and what made
Speaker 1: you think that this was a story you wanted to write.
Speaker 1: So you are a story person who starts with like
Speaker 1: a good sizzly concept of people who faked their ideas
Speaker 1: to go to college. I often, to my detriment, are
Speaker 1: more of an ideas person. And I was interested several
Speaker 1: years ago in prosecutors who had a pattern of breaking
Speaker 1: the rules in a way that harmed the people who
Speaker 1: they were charged with. Prosecuting prosecutors obviously prosecute cases, but
Speaker 1: they're also supposed to be a kind of arbiter of
Speaker 1: justice in their own way. They represent the people. They
Speaker 1: also have responsibilities to uphold all the laws and rules
Speaker 1: in the justice system. And I was interested in the
Speaker 1: prosecutors who cut corners. So there was a prosecutor I
Speaker 1: did a little research. I was like looking around the
Speaker 1: country for a kind of rose gallery of prosecutors. Frankly,
Speaker 1: and at the time, the district attorney in Memphis, which
Speaker 1: is Shelby County, her name was Amy Wyrick, and she
Speaker 1: had a real pattern of failing to disclose evidence in
Speaker 1: cases in which she'd gotten, you know, big convictions, and
Speaker 1: Nora Jackson's case. Once I was like in that world
Speaker 1: jumped out at me, you know, for some similar reasons
Speaker 1: to why you were interested in esther. So, when Nora
Speaker 1: was eighteen, her mother was brutally stabbed death in her home.
Speaker 1: And her mother was a forty year old white stockbroker,
Speaker 1: so it was like an unusual murder and the kind
Speaker 1: of murder that is destab realizing to you know, white
Speaker 1: middle class residence. There was no obvious suspect, and about
Speaker 1: three months after the murder, Amy Wireck charged Nora, the
Speaker 1: eighteen year old daughter, with her mother's killing. Nora didn't
Speaker 1: have a criminal history, but she was known as a
Speaker 1: kind of wild child, and the charges were brought and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of publicity, and then a few
Speaker 1: months later the DNA results came back from the crime scene.
Speaker 1: You know, her mother's blood was everywhere, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of evidence to test, and in fact, Nora
Speaker 1: was excluded as someone who was part of that crime
Speaker 1: scene in any way, and there were other DNA profiles. However,
Speaker 1: Wyreck prosecuted her anyway, and for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 1: including what was later deemed misconduct on Wyreck's part, Nora
Speaker 1: was convicted and then later the Tennessee Supreme Court actually
Speaker 1: overturned her conviction, and I think we have a little
Speaker 1: clip of Nora talking about finding out about that ruling.
Speaker 1: Three years ago, in a woman's prison outside Memphis, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: Nora Jackson was sitting in her cell watching television en mute.
Speaker 1: You know, they'd have three one three two and three
Speaker 1: three and three dash two is just like a repeat
Speaker 1: of the news in the weather. Her roommate was in
Speaker 1: the cafeteria and Nora wanted to get some privacy. And
Speaker 1: I just was sitting there going to the bathroom and
Speaker 1: just like watching it, and I saw my name come
Speaker 1: across the bottom of the screen and then I was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit. So she turns on the volume. The Tennessee
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has granted Norah Jackson a new trial, and
Speaker 1: she just, honestly, for a few minutes, couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Nora Jackson is now awaiting a new trial. And even
Speaker 1: though Nora had just won her appeal, something that rarely
Speaker 1: happens in the state of Tennessee. This is after she
Speaker 1: has spent nine years in prison. Emily Basilon has been
Speaker 1: covering the case and like nobody was there because everybody
Speaker 1: that dinner so I'm like screaming to get out because
Speaker 1: I'm like wanting to get to the phone and nobody's
Speaker 1: there missing. Is something going to eat them? Right? And
Speaker 1: why was Norah in prison in the first place. Nora
Speaker 1: was in prison because she was convicted of murdering her
Speaker 1: mother Jennifer Jackson. Wow, that's an episode of The Daily
Speaker 1: and that was I think Mike Barbarrow somehow like sounds
Speaker 1: different now to me anyway, So go ahead, I want
Speaker 1: to ask you a question as you're telling the stories.
Speaker 1: So she charges Amy Rick, charges Norah with the murder
Speaker 1: of her mother, and then you said, some period of
Speaker 1: time later it comes out that the DNA was excluded.
Speaker 1: So what is the sequence of events? Does she have
Speaker 1: that DNA evidence when she makes the charge. No, Wyrick
Speaker 1: didn't have the DNA results from the crime lab. You
Speaker 1: might wonder why she didn't wait for them to come back. Yes,
Speaker 1: I am wondering, Yes she didn't, but they were available,
Speaker 1: They were part of the record. They were part of
Speaker 1: the evidence that the jury heard, and the jury convicted
Speaker 1: Nora anyway, And I think there are a few explanations
Speaker 1: for that. One was the kind of failed strategy of
Speaker 1: her defense lawyer and that didn't go very well. And
Speaker 1: also the judge in the case admitted people saying all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff about Nora, like, for example, that you know,
Speaker 1: her boyfriend had crawled in the window just you know,
Speaker 1: one night to have sex with her a couple months
Speaker 1: after her mother was killed. Just all of this irrelevant
Speaker 1: but kind of scurrilous character assassination evidence, and perhaps that
Speaker 1: had an effect on the jury. As you're talking about
Speaker 1: the chargers being placed before the DNA evidence comes back,
Speaker 1: it almost makes me think of a version of the
Speaker 1: media getting out in front of the story that you
Speaker 1: have an idea that this is who this person is,
Speaker 1: they've done this, and then what happens when you find
Speaker 1: evidence that might or ought to give you pause about
Speaker 1: the theories that you've postulated prior to having that evidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, one way to think about this
Speaker 1: is tunnel vision for prosecutors that once they've chosen someone,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of impetus, confirmation bias, professional reasons to
Speaker 1: kind of stick with that person as the suspect. And
Speaker 1: that is in fact what happened to Nora. So after
Speaker 1: the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned her conviction. She had a
Speaker 1: kind of second round of like a prolonged kind of
Speaker 1: face off with Amy Wyrick because Wireck was threatening to
Speaker 1: prosecute her again and in order to get a plea bargain,
Speaker 1: and Norah ended up accepting a plea bargain to manslaughter
Speaker 1: because she thought she was going to get out of prison.
Speaker 1: But then it turned out that her lawyers had made
Speaker 1: a mistake in calculating her time and that she actually
Speaker 1: had to remain in prison for fourteen months. So that
Speaker 1: was completely horrible because first of all, she had she'd
Speaker 1: already been in prison I think at that point for
Speaker 1: nine years, and also it was socially for her, really horrible.
Speaker 1: Her world were people in prison who saw her as
Speaker 1: kind of heroic for standing up to Amy Wyrick. You know,
Speaker 1: all these women in prison, so rare to have, especially
Speaker 1: in Tennessee, to have your sentence, your conviction overturned. But
Speaker 1: then she had taken this plea, she'd kind of given
Speaker 1: in in their eyes, and she was back among them,
Speaker 1: so she hadn't even gotten what she thought she was
Speaker 1: going to get. So that happened to be the point
Speaker 1: when I kind of stumbled on this story and I
Speaker 1: wrote Nora a letter in prison. I wrote her a
Speaker 1: bunch of letters, and she wrote back to me a
Speaker 1: couple of times, but I wasn't really sure whether she
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to me, and it actually took me
Speaker 1: ten months to persuade her to meet with me. How
Speaker 1: did you do that? I called her on the phone
Speaker 1: and talked to her a couple of times. It was
Speaker 1: very in and out, like she was responsive, then she wasn't,
Speaker 1: And she had all kinds of reasons to mistrust the
Speaker 1: media because by then she'd been the subject of I
Speaker 1: think a twenty twenty special or maybe forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: I think both, and neither of them had been helpful
Speaker 1: to her at all, and in both cases she had
Speaker 1: kind of been led along, or she said she felt
Speaker 1: like she'd been misled, and then it turned into a
Speaker 1: kind of tabloid you know, very who done it and
Speaker 1: kind of implicating her. I mean, in these situations, there's always,
Speaker 1: I always feel like an unspoken kind of agreement that's made,
Speaker 1: Like you have your interest, which is writing the story,
Speaker 1: and she has her own set of interests. Why she
Speaker 1: ultimately decided she wants to speak with you, she's hoping
Speaker 1: that your story will do something for her. What do
Speaker 1: you think that she hoped your story would do and
Speaker 1: did you feel that your story would in fact do that? Well?
Speaker 1: When I first went to see her in prison, and
Speaker 1: actually I went to Memphis, and then she almost decided
Speaker 1: not to see me, but then she changed her mind
Speaker 1: at the last minutely and we sat down in this
Speaker 1: little classroom at um sh At that point, she was
Speaker 1: at the jail, and what she really wanted to tell
Speaker 1: me about were the black women she was imprisoned with,
Speaker 1: and how much worse off they were, and how much
Speaker 1: how strange she felt about the attention she was getting,
Speaker 1: given that there were these people around her she thought
Speaker 1: deserved attention. So it was that same feeling of like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, there are all these cases, Why am
Speaker 1: I focusing on this one particular person and not these
Speaker 1: other people? And I was. She was very firm and
Speaker 1: clear that other people were more deserving of being interviewed,
Speaker 1: and that she felt that there was something wrong about that.
Speaker 1: And so even though it only drew her to me,
Speaker 1: drew me to her more, I didn't change course. There
Speaker 1: was something sort of impressive about that, because she might
Speaker 1: have wanted to keep the attention for herself, and for
Speaker 1: a long time, I think she was very ambivalent. It
Speaker 1: really wasn't until she had been released, until I had
Speaker 1: really been pursuing her for a couple of years that
Speaker 1: she started trusting me, which I totally understand. I think
Speaker 1: that eventually the idea that it was the New York Times,
Speaker 1: it was interested that I was going to be able
Speaker 1: to tell her story in a way that really got
Speaker 1: across the legal complexity and the wrongdoing on the part
Speaker 1: of the prosecution. I think that she cared about that,
Speaker 1: and Amy Wyrick was not interested in talking to me, was,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously very clearly resistant to my doing the story.
Speaker 1: And that also, I think kind of endeared me to
Speaker 1: Norah because she could see it was sort of like
Speaker 1: I was. It was like a different kind of press
Speaker 1: was coming in, and she appreciated that. Eventually, you had
Speaker 1: asked me why I thought that John Campbell was so
Speaker 1: vehemently interested obsessed when it was this case and that
Speaker 1: was driving this. So I'm going to flip the question
Speaker 1: on you. Why did Amy Wyrick double down on this
Speaker 1: case and give so much attention to it? What was
Speaker 1: as best as you could tell, what was her motivation. Well,
Speaker 1: Wyreck tried this case when she was a prosecutor working
Speaker 1: for the elected district attorney in Shelby County, and it
Speaker 1: made her famous. She was on TV news. She was
Speaker 1: this young woman being this very strong in her eyes
Speaker 1: advocate for justice, you know, standing in the place of
Speaker 1: Norah's mother and convicting someone. And it was it's very,
Speaker 1: very unusual for children to actually kill their parents, and
Speaker 1: especially for daughters to kill their mothers. But for Wyreck
Speaker 1: that was only kind of part of the way of
Speaker 1: talking about the case that she was despite all of
Speaker 1: those obstacles, that she was doing it anyway because this
Speaker 1: was justice. She was really that was her line, and
Speaker 1: she wound up being elected district Attorney in Shelby County
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen. And I think that Nora's case really
Speaker 1: catapulted her into the kind of front of the community
Speaker 1: in a way that was politically helpful to her. It
Speaker 1: seems that the evidence against Nora was extremely circumstantial, But
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, did you ever have any moments of doubt
Speaker 1: about her innocence? Yeah, I decided that I didn't have
Speaker 1: to know whether she was innocent or not, and I
Speaker 1: kind of set that aside. I mean, Nora would hate
Speaker 1: that if she were here, because it's so deeply important
Speaker 1: to her to be believed, and I completely understand that.
Speaker 1: But I just decided there was so much wrong with
Speaker 1: this case legally speaking, that it was okay that I
Speaker 1: was not standing there arguing for her innocence as her lawyer,
Speaker 1: even as a journalist. I was just telling you the
Speaker 1: story of what had happened to her. And my story
Speaker 1: in the magazine is really about prosecutors hiding evidence, and
Speaker 1: I think that really was sort of how the story
Speaker 1: unfolded in my book as well. Tell us about where
Speaker 1: Nora is now, I mean, give us the quick update.
Speaker 1: So for a while Nora was living in Brooklyn. She
Speaker 1: got out of prison twenty sixteen, and she was actually
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn for a while. But now she is back
Speaker 1: in Memphis. She's you know, it's hard. It's really hard
Speaker 1: to get out of prison after you've been there for
Speaker 1: a while. You kind of have to really restart your life.
Speaker 1: Often people have a kind of prolonged form of PTSD
Speaker 1: that they're figuring out just how to live in the
Speaker 1: real world again. And Nora has no family, so in
Speaker 1: addition to the death of her mother. Her parents were divorced,
Speaker 1: but her father had actually been murdered a year and
Speaker 1: a half before her mother was killed, which is like
Speaker 1: another I know, really and perhaps that it was connected,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's the kind of missing element of the
Speaker 1: unsolved murders all along. But she really didn't have family,
Speaker 1: and so that has been really hard for her to be.
Speaker 1: You know, she got out of prison in her late twenties,
Speaker 1: mid to late twenties, and she had kind of grown
Speaker 1: up in prison, and in some ways that meant that
Speaker 1: she didn't quite grow up. So now she's in Memphis
Speaker 1: and she had a lawyer, or not the child Laura
Speaker 1: I was talking about earlier, but a later lawyer who
Speaker 1: is just a kind of incredibly caring person and so
Speaker 1: right now she is actually working for him in Memphis
Speaker 1: and you know, and getting on her feet, trying to
Speaker 1: get her own place. She also has a dog named Liberty,
Speaker 1: very deliberate name, who I'm very fond of. I actually
Speaker 1: took care of Liberty for a little while long after
Speaker 1: my book came out, just to be clear, and so
Speaker 1: I just went to Memphis to see that I was
Speaker 1: there to work on a different story. But of course
Speaker 1: I wanted to see Nora, and my big question was
Speaker 1: whether Libert was going to remember me, which she did,
Speaker 1: which is great. One thing I will say to you,
Speaker 1: Emily is that there are many journalists who interview people,
Speaker 1: hear their story, and they never call them back or
Speaker 1: hear from them again. And I don't know of another
Speaker 1: journalist who's more committed to treating people as human beings,
Speaker 1: not just for the week or day, but for years
Speaker 1: often afterwards, and it's a rare thing. Thank you. Should
Speaker 1: we take some listener questions? Absolutely? After the break, we
Speaker 1: talked more about Deep Cover, Never Seen Again, and I
Speaker 1: answer a few questions from the audience. We're back next up.
Speaker 1: We took questions from listeners in the audience. We had
Speaker 1: them write their questions out on paper and then put
Speaker 1: them in a bucket. Yes, very old school, I know.
Speaker 1: It was like seventh grade, everyone passing notes. Then someone
Speaker 1: handed the bucket to Emily and she read them aloud.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you wanted to include in the podcast
Speaker 1: that didn't make the cut? Yeah, I mean there was
Speaker 1: a lot. There was a lot probably there when I
Speaker 1: went down to Traveler's Rest, I mean, when I went
Speaker 1: down to Traveler's Rest. Before I connected with Brooks cousins,
Speaker 1: I connected with this husband and wife team, Patrick and
Speaker 1: Tammy Welch, and I didn't end up getting to put
Speaker 1: them in the podcast, and I still feel badly about
Speaker 1: that because what they do is they basically devote all
Speaker 1: their spare time to try to look for people who
Speaker 1: have gone missing, people that have kind of gone off
Speaker 1: the radar of law enforcement, and actively kind of keep
Speaker 1: the search alive. And the first thing they told me
Speaker 1: straight up was like, look, it's great you're doing this
Speaker 1: on brook but there's actually a ton of people that
Speaker 1: are missing in this area. And they were they had
Speaker 1: like a map in their house with all the pin
Speaker 1: points of the people and where they went missing. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't like they were all connected and this was
Speaker 1: some conspiracy. It was just they were like the custodians
Speaker 1: of these people's memory. And then they drove with me
Speaker 1: up to the dark corner where Brooke may have gone missing,
Speaker 1: and the whole thing was so intense for Tammy she
Speaker 1: didn't want to go, but she reluctantly went with us
Speaker 1: in the pickup truck. And it was it was one
Speaker 1: of these scenes where it was kind of late at
Speaker 1: night and were driving down some shadowy roads in the mountains,
Speaker 1: and I just got a sense for like, this is
Speaker 1: how these people spent their weekends. And it just made
Speaker 1: you think about all the stories we can't tell. And
Speaker 1: I kind of get to this at the end that
Speaker 1: we often fixate on very particular types of stories that
Speaker 1: kind of play into the fem fatale or that have
Speaker 1: some sort of Hollywood appeal, But there's all these kind
Speaker 1: of nameless cases of people that go missing. And there
Speaker 1: was just something really poignant and powerful about this couple
Speaker 1: and their pickup truck kind of winding their weight on
Speaker 1: the darkened roods of this county, kind of going to
Speaker 1: the last spots where these people were. And they're doing
Speaker 1: great work, and I hope that they hear a shout
Speaker 1: out for that in this bonus episode. Another listener question.
Speaker 1: One of Estra's lies was that she was a professional
Speaker 1: chess player. So did anyone ever ask Estra to play chess,
Speaker 1: that ever threatened to blow her cover? I know, such
Speaker 1: a crazy thing to make up that there, I get,
Speaker 1: you know, she was apparently a pretty solid chess player,
Speaker 1: because you know from the podcast what happens when she
Speaker 1: says I'm a tennis player, and then she's like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: I don't actually not to play tennis. I did talk
Speaker 1: to one former boyfriend who didn't go on the record,
Speaker 1: but he did play her in chess. He did ask
Speaker 1: her she did beat him. You, Yeah, exactly. I mean
Speaker 1: we're talking about this backstage a second ago. Like I
Speaker 1: would be intimidated if I met if you just said
Speaker 1: I'm a professional chess player, There's no way in hell
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even played checkers with you. So I suspect
Speaker 1: that's scared off enough people that she could pull it off. Yeah.
Speaker 1: How do you think Esther's case would have been handled
Speaker 1: differently today? Well, we kind of we kind of talked
Speaker 1: about this a little bit the way that my mind
Speaker 1: goes to the media, and I just think that I
Speaker 1: would hope that I would hope that the ass that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't just kind of immediately. Look, when you have
Speaker 1: a story as a journalist, right, when someone brings you
Speaker 1: a story and you're operating on impartial information, right, your
Speaker 1: brain spins out. There's vast terra incognita, and we when
Speaker 1: we go on our runs. Oh, I think I talked
Speaker 1: to some of Esther and she might have done that. Well,
Speaker 1: you ask me a question. I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: have an idea of where the story maybe. But that
Speaker 1: story that I have that I'm projecting out into Terra
Speaker 1: Incognita is actually probably based on books I've read and
Speaker 1: crappy movies I've watched, and local news stories I've read,
Speaker 1: and is prompting me to make assumptions about who that
Speaker 1: person is and how the story is in fact going
Speaker 1: to play out based on like probably templates, like the
Speaker 1: fem fatal template. So what happens is you get like
Speaker 1: part way into the reporting, and inevitably you start getting
Speaker 1: facts that challenge the assumptions that you've made in the template.
Speaker 1: And our mutual friend Jack Hit always says, and I
Speaker 1: think this is so wise. He says, as soon as
Speaker 1: the story turns out not being what you thought it was,
Speaker 1: that's when your story begins. But there's dissonance there because
Speaker 1: you're like, oh shit, this isn't the story I thought.
Speaker 1: I'd mean, I told my editor and my producer was
Speaker 1: going to be this, and I promise that, And now
Speaker 1: you have to go back and say it's not quite that.
Speaker 1: And I think that sometimes it's easier when you get
Speaker 1: to that point and just say, wow, it's basically right.
Speaker 1: I mean, she did have three boyfriends in one year,
Speaker 1: and they were at military institutes, so she did kind
Speaker 1: of go through them, and you could see how if
Speaker 1: you just keep pushing and sticking to the preconception have
Speaker 1: you could just plow down that road. And I say
Speaker 1: that with empathy because I feel like, as a journalist,
Speaker 1: I've stared down that and probably done some version of that.
Speaker 1: I would think in this moment now, where there's more
Speaker 1: awareness of the way, you know, we depict among other
Speaker 1: people women in the news and such, that someone would say, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, here is this story that we're progressing on.
Speaker 1: Does it all check out? Are we making assumptions? Are
Speaker 1: we playing into stereotypes and templates that may not be
Speaker 1: one hundred percent justified. That's why I would hope we
Speaker 1: would play out differently today. Yeah, I mean some of
Speaker 1: this is it just really depends on Esther's honesty. I
Speaker 1: mean I think that that was a really I'm going
Speaker 1: to use the word lucky. Maybe that's not right, But
Speaker 1: somewhere in the alchemy of your interviewing her and her
Speaker 1: reflecting there's some like pretty gritty candor that comes across right,
Speaker 1: I think. And I would also say that like in
Speaker 1: fairness to people that were reporting her on back then,
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, this was a person who had his
Speaker 1: history of not being candid when she was younger. Now
Speaker 1: is a different story, she's a professor, it's a different life.
Speaker 1: But at the time, this is someone who had been
Speaker 1: a serial identity thief, who had told people that she
Speaker 1: was a chess champion when she was in fact not,
Speaker 1: who had told lies to her boyfriends, etc. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's the really tricky part about telling a
Speaker 1: story with an unreliable narrator is that you must be skeptical,
Speaker 1: you must be dubious. You can't let them off the hook.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't give you that blank check to project
Speaker 1: whatever you want upon them. And so, yeah, it's easy
Speaker 1: for me to say that now twenty years later looking back,
Speaker 1: But but you've learned a thing or two. Okay, speaking
Speaker 1: of compulsive liars, what about who am I going to say,
Speaker 1: George Santos? Do you have a better understanding of what
Speaker 1: motivates people like him? I think George is his own
Speaker 1: special creature. We can probably all agree on that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: is there a short answer. I mean, I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't presume to know what's going on with that guy.
Speaker 1: I do I think that I think with Esther I did.
Speaker 1: I did kind of understand it. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: that Esther agreed with my assessment of it, But I
Speaker 1: feel like, to some extent, we grew up in a
Speaker 1: certain town with certain friends and family, and we go
Speaker 1: away to college, we moved to a different place, and
Speaker 1: we enjoy being someone different in small ways. And that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that we always lie about it, but I
Speaker 1: think that sometimes it's born from this desire to remove
Speaker 1: ourselves from a place where we were. And I think
Speaker 1: that what happened in Esther's story in particular, is that
Speaker 1: the law enforcement looked at is there must be some
Speaker 1: sort of kind of deeper, more methodical, devious play here
Speaker 1: of espionage or something. And to me, it like just
Speaker 1: spoke to a more human impulse to just have space
Speaker 1: and reinvent. And that is not again to excuse it
Speaker 1: or to say that it's all right, but to try
Speaker 1: to understand it as a kind of basic human desire
Speaker 1: that just kind of, as she says, ran out of
Speaker 1: control in her case. So yeah, in some ways the
Speaker 1: answers yes, But with Santos, I don't know, it's in
Speaker 1: his own category. What led to the media thinking Esther
Speaker 1: was a potential spy when the story broke Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it starts off. I was talking to a
Speaker 1: listener in the audience during the intermission and we're kind
Speaker 1: of on the same page. It started off with a
Speaker 1: kind of John Campbell trying to come up with an
Speaker 1: explot It didn't make sense, right, It doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: Why do you enroll at college is a different name,
Speaker 1: and there's no obvious game to be made for it,
Speaker 1: and so in the absence of that knowledge, start putting
Speaker 1: together other possible theories. Oh, she's dated two guys from
Speaker 1: West Point and the shipman. Maybe it's this. I mean,
Speaker 1: in some ways, that's what detectives are supposed to do.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to speculate. But what happened was, for those
Speaker 1: of you that listen to know, is that when they
Speaker 1: were trying to get the word out about the case,
Speaker 1: the police chief in Traveler's Rest of the time told
Speaker 1: John he should owe the detective, he should open the
Speaker 1: file and feel free to talk to the press. And
Speaker 1: that's when John started to air some of his theories
Speaker 1: about espionage, and there was a local news station that
Speaker 1: ran some of them, and then there was a kind
Speaker 1: of middleman who job it was was to find interesting
Speaker 1: local stories and selve them to the national media. And
Speaker 1: he quickly wrote up a press release based on this
Speaker 1: impartial information, and three days later later it was running nationally.
Speaker 1: And so the story just kind of got a bit
Speaker 1: ahead of itself. And that that's how I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what we do an episode four, we kind of connect
Speaker 1: the dots of this pipeline of how it comes from
Speaker 1: kind of you know, speculation to kind of headlines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sou new question. Part of the story is themed around
Speaker 1: tough mental health challenges and also running away. What advice
Speaker 1: do you think Esther might give to someone in a
Speaker 1: similar situation? You know? This is It's interesting because when
Speaker 1: we first started talking to Esther, I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: exactly I posed it, but sometimes I'll often say this
Speaker 1: is a version of like when I was asking you
Speaker 1: before about nor like what do you want out of
Speaker 1: the story, because it's just you don't always get an
Speaker 1: honest answer, but it's helpful sometimes you do. And she said, look,
Speaker 1: I was suffering from real mental health issues. And I
Speaker 1: think that I felt and I made some bad choices,
Speaker 1: and if I had had someone to talk to, OH,
Speaker 1: I could have been honest about what was going on,
Speaker 1: and I had been gotten some help earlier, I might
Speaker 1: have made some better some better choices. And so I
Speaker 1: think that she looks at this as situation of what
Speaker 1: happens to kind of anxiety and desperation, and she has
Speaker 1: social anxiety when it's kind of unchecked and left left
Speaker 1: to kind of spiral with no help. And so to me,
Speaker 1: I think that was a large part of the motivation
Speaker 1: of her, of her of her talking about the story,
Speaker 1: and she's now currently it's interesting that this is her
Speaker 1: big thing, is like advocating for mental health kind of
Speaker 1: premptively before people go off the rails and end up
Speaker 1: in incarcerated. You know. One thing that strikes me about
Speaker 1: Esther and Nora is that they had really strange things
Speaker 1: happened to them that they participated in, but that like
Speaker 1: also are just hard to explain. And I think there
Speaker 1: is something about having someone just lay out your story clearly.
Speaker 1: Noura sometimes says that she just like feels like she
Speaker 1: can just take the magazine and hand it to people
Speaker 1: just as an explanation of what happened. Anyway, I wonder
Speaker 1: if that's something that helpful to esther, and I mean,
Speaker 1: probably it is, right, I think so. I mean, I
Speaker 1: didn't you know, we did this very intense session with
Speaker 1: her when before it came out, where we went back
Speaker 1: over it. I read back what other people said about her,
Speaker 1: and I read back what I said to her, and
Speaker 1: it was it was hot and it was intense. She
Speaker 1: was not happy with some parts of it. But I
Speaker 1: think that that even that even that conversation was a
Speaker 1: conversation that she hadn't had in any of the previous
Speaker 1: media treatments of it, And so I think that there
Speaker 1: was When we talked to her a few days later,
Speaker 1: she's like, I appreciate that we had at least the
Speaker 1: chance to do that, and she was, but it's awkward.
Speaker 1: I could see why hot people don't want to do
Speaker 1: it because it wasn't fun. It is not fun, you know.
Speaker 1: Last question, Yeah, it's kind of related to what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. How do you recognize your past experiences and
Speaker 1: traumas while covering a story and work to keep them
Speaker 1: from influencing your interpretation and telling of the story. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll start by saying that I don't think
Speaker 1: I've had anything as traumatic happened to me as esther
Speaker 1: had with I mean the loss of her mother at
Speaker 1: that age. And if you've listened to the podcast, you
Speaker 1: know how parents, how her parents divorced and she was struggling.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting. I did say to her at times, like, look,
Speaker 1: I get it. I didn't say I get it. I
Speaker 1: said I I am sympathetic because I have had anxiety before,
Speaker 1: but I don't think i've had it like you. And
Speaker 1: so I think that it's actually important not to assume
Speaker 1: that you've had their experience, because that's the problem. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, if I start to let myself think that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've had anxiety too, and I didn't make up X
Speaker 1: number of identities, then I'm not on some level getting it.
Speaker 1: So I think that it's I think that you have
Speaker 1: to the starting point almost has to be that I'm
Speaker 1: not seeing this the way you see it, but like,
Speaker 1: try to help me see it, right. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you're talking about empathy and one and recognizing the
Speaker 1: limits of empathy in terms of pretending to stand in
Speaker 1: someone's shoes, right. I mean, empathy is a tool for
Speaker 1: journalists like us, but I think we also have to
Speaker 1: be really careful and how we handle it totally. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's why it's important. You've got to talk
Speaker 1: to the other family members. And there's many things that
Speaker 1: weren't included in this podcast, things that like, in some
Speaker 1: ways the most you could say, some of the most
Speaker 1: significant things that that are part of a story, the
Speaker 1: things that are actually not included because you've debated at
Speaker 1: nauseum about whether or not to include them, and they
Speaker 1: would be interesting, but you feel you can't include them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like every twist in turn is
Speaker 1: like some sort of dilemma in which you know and
Speaker 1: you're getting back on Twitter, Oh you didn't do this,
Speaker 1: you do that, and it's like, yeah, I had a
Speaker 1: reason for it. Yeah, you're all right. You know, we're tried,
Speaker 1: Like we told one version of the truth, the version
Speaker 1: of the truth as best we could see it. And
Speaker 1: that's where the team of people, the four of us,
Speaker 1: sat down and went through this understanding, damn well, there's
Speaker 1: no entirely objective way to tell a story, and you
Speaker 1: want to tell it as compellingly as you possibly can,
Speaker 1: so that we have the clicks that justify season four.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, you know that you're
Speaker 1: telling just one version of the truth, and you're going
Speaker 1: to get it from one side to the other. And
Speaker 1: as my wife says to me, it just has to
Speaker 1: be a version of the truth that you can live
Speaker 1: with even if no one else likes, which is really
Speaker 1: hard to do, but that's the goal. I think. Yes,
Speaker 1: I feel like I have heard that line from Kasha
Speaker 1: a number of times from you, and it's like in
Speaker 1: my head too, which I really appreciate because Kasha is
Speaker 1: very wise. Jake, this has been so much fun. I
Speaker 1: am really looking forward to season four. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: In congratulations, thanks for listening to this special live episode
Speaker 1: of a deep Cover. I want to express my heartfelt
Speaker 1: thanks to Emily for a great conversation. We'll have another
Speaker 1: episode coming out next month. I'll be talking with Ben Ford,
Speaker 1: the current chief of Police and Traveler's Rest, all about
Speaker 1: Brooke Henson and the continued surge for closure in that case,
Speaker 1: and I have a favor to ask. It'll only take
Speaker 1: you about two minutes, I promise. If you like deep Cover,
Speaker 1: please leave review on Apple Podcasts. It helps other people
Speaker 1: find the show, it gets the word out, and it
Speaker 1: helps us make the case that yes, there should be
Speaker 1: a season four and beyond. Thank You. Deep Cover is
Speaker 1: produced by Amy Gaines and Jacob Smith. This episode was
Speaker 1: edited by Sophie Crane, mastering by Sarah Brugere. Our show
Speaker 1: art was designed by Seancarney. Original scoring and our theme
Speaker 1: was composed by Luis Gara. Special thanks to Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrell, Mia Lobell, Greta Con, Jacob Weisberg, and Karen Shakerjee.
Speaker 1: I'm Jake Albern. I want to remind you that when
Speaker 1: you sign up for Pushkin Plus, you'll get access to
Speaker 1: binge drops of future seasons of deep Cover and exclusive
Speaker 1: content from other Pushkin true crime hits. Check out Pushkin
Speaker 1: dot fm or the Apple Show page for more information.