Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: But I said who is he? And he said he's
Speaker 2: a murderer. And I said why does he kill people?
Speaker 2: And my dad just paused and said he likes it.
Speaker 3: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 3: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 3: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 3: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 3: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 3: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 3: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 3: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 3: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 3: unpublished details behind their stories. Meg Gardner is a thriller writer,
Speaker 3: a really great one. She has several series, but the
Speaker 3: one I'm most interested in started with a book called
Speaker 3: unsub about a serial killer, and it's based on two
Speaker 3: real serial killers, one of whom she lived very close to. So,
Speaker 3: first of all, for anybody who hasn't read your thriller books,
Speaker 3: give me an overview of what you've done so far,
Speaker 3: how many and what's the premise of different characters you've created.
Speaker 2: I now have seventeen novels published. They're all thrillers. Several series,
Speaker 2: the Evan Delaney series about a freelance journalist in Santa Barbara,
Speaker 2: the Joke Beckett series about a forensic psychiatrist who consults
Speaker 2: for the San Francisco Police Department, several standalones about a
Speaker 2: former thief Skip Tracer, and the Caitlin Hendrick series about
Speaker 2: a young cop who is eventually recruited to the FBI
Speaker 2: to hunt serial predators. Also the book I co authored
Speaker 2: with Michael Mann, Heat Too, which is a big saga
Speaker 2: crime thriller, which I'm very proud of as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so was there a book written about Heat originally
Speaker 3: before the movie came out.
Speaker 2: There was not. Heat was original screenplay by Michael Mann
Speaker 2: and he wrote it, directed it, and then he had
Speaker 2: so much material that he still wanted to create in
Speaker 2: that universe. The movie takes place over three weeks, and
Speaker 2: he had written biographies for all the main characters, decades
Speaker 2: of you know, backstory for them, and it always wanted
Speaker 2: to expand the story. So that's what we did.
Speaker 3: Well, I've interviewed boy'd have to say maybe four or
Speaker 3: five fiction authors at this point who have used, you know,
Speaker 3: real true crime stories as a jumping off point. Do
Speaker 3: you think that's pretty common with the folks who were
Speaker 3: in the mystery, you know, thriller espionage kind of genre
Speaker 3: to start somewhere? How do you think a lot of
Speaker 3: people come up with these stories? You do?
Speaker 2: You start with a what if and a big character
Speaker 2: you hope, who's going to deal with that what if?
Speaker 2: And all you have to do is now, like open
Speaker 2: your phone or turn on the news, and ideas are
Speaker 2: not the hard part. It's finding, you know, ideas are everywhere.
Speaker 2: They're just soaked into the atmosphere. And the trick is
Speaker 2: to turn that into a compelling narrative, spin it out.
Speaker 2: But if you write thrillers crime, certainly the infamous cases
Speaker 2: that have kept us and the country at the world
Speaker 2: wrapped for years, decades, centuries, now, how many years have
Speaker 2: people been fascinated with Jack the Ripper? Then using that
Speaker 2: as a spark to anchor an event, to certainly anchor
Speaker 2: the emotional tone of the story becomes enticing.
Speaker 3: And you know, I was going to ask before we
Speaker 3: get into what inspired unsub which is frankly the best
Speaker 3: title ever. Like you, so you know, before we get
Speaker 3: into that, talk to me about your research, because if
Speaker 3: you are a mystery or a thriller writer who is
Speaker 3: using true crime as a jumping off point, that has
Speaker 3: to be part of your research. You're not interviewing a
Speaker 3: serial killer in prison, but you know you have to
Speaker 3: get into this person's head.
Speaker 1: Is that why true crime is enticing?
Speaker 3: As far as like an inspiration or a place where
Speaker 3: you go where you can read real interviews with these folks.
Speaker 2: It can be. I think who knows where research starts
Speaker 2: and ends. I think it starts with the collision of
Speaker 2: the characters in real life as well as on the page.
Speaker 2: Every crime arises from physically. If it's murder, it arises
Speaker 2: from physically the collision of the perpetrator and the victim.
Speaker 2: So thinking about who they are, where they are, how
Speaker 2: they came to be together, that becomes definitely part of
Speaker 2: the what and the why about how you're creating this story.
Speaker 2: And research. I mean, you know, research can be this glorious,
Speaker 2: bottomless rabbit hole that we can just wrap ourselves around in,
Speaker 2: like it's a big cozy quilt that we can never
Speaker 2: want to leave.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I find it awful, but yes I'm glad. Other
Speaker 3: people it just depends. It's awful if I can't find
Speaker 3: what I'm looking for, it's wonderful and everything you described
Speaker 3: if it's all right there.
Speaker 1: But with true crime, you have a lot right there.
Speaker 2: I mean, you've got.
Speaker 3: Trial transcripts in some of these cases, great newspaper interviews,
Speaker 3: that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Trial transcripts haven't been that important to me for the
Speaker 2: books I've written, but news stories books written by investigators. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: websites where you can look up infamous unsolved cases are
Speaker 2: now solved cases where everybody in the world has created
Speaker 2: their own screen name and offers their own take on everything.
Speaker 2: And sometimes that's just like the worst subreddit ever. And
Speaker 2: sometimes it's extremely helpful and inspiring as far as like
Speaker 2: the dedication that people have, and it's more helpful when
Speaker 2: professionals have contributed to it, and sometimes you will all
Speaker 2: be talking. I think about some of the sites I
Speaker 2: came across where retired police officers who had worked on
Speaker 2: some cases could not let it go even though they
Speaker 2: were no longer with the department, and they would they
Speaker 2: would contribute to sites like this, and that was fascinating
Speaker 2: not only for their insights, but to see the emotional
Speaker 2: total it had taken on them and how invested they
Speaker 2: still were in trying to solve the case and to
Speaker 2: work for the victims and their families. So that becomes
Speaker 2: as interesting sometimes as figuring out some tricky little clue,
Speaker 2: like what kind of forensic evidence you can find on
Speaker 2: a shovel. Because what we're doing when we write fiction
Speaker 2: is we want to take readers on a journey, an
Speaker 2: emotional journey, a roller coaster, and do what we can't
Speaker 2: do in real life, which is bring them back safely
Speaker 2: at the end.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to say it. Okay, so let's start.
Speaker 3: Just tell me a little bit about Unsubbed. Was this
Speaker 3: the first book for you? I can't remember.
Speaker 2: Unsub was not the first novel I wrote. It was
Speaker 2: the first novel I wrote featuring a character who was
Speaker 2: a law enforcement professional, and we can examine why I
Speaker 2: had always avoided doing that until then. It was it
Speaker 2: was I think my eleventh novel was unsub and I'd
Speaker 2: always had somebody who was maybe on the fringes of
Speaker 2: law enforcement or investigating law enforcement someone who consulted for
Speaker 2: them or was running from the law.
Speaker 3: So my friend calls that cop adjacent, cop adjacent.
Speaker 2: So so I'll say, you can look at me and
Speaker 2: say that I have something to something going on with authority,
Speaker 2: or you can say that did I really want to
Speaker 2: just avoid the research it took to find out, you
Speaker 2: know what duty weapons did this Alameda County Sheriff's Department.
Speaker 2: She to its officers and to find out what really
Speaker 2: was required of someone in all the affidavits they had
Speaker 2: to file when they after arrest and everything like that.
Speaker 2: So I realized, if I was going to write about
Speaker 2: an infamous series of murders, that having someone who had
Speaker 2: a badge and arrest authority was probably a good way
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 3: Tell me the premise of UNSEB. You've got Caitlin Hendricks,
Speaker 3: and she's what type of officer?
Speaker 2: Is she a detective or where is she? Caitlyn Hendricks
Speaker 2: when UNTEP opens is a baby detective. She's actually working narcotics.
Speaker 2: She's been a detective for all of six months and
Speaker 2: barely out of uniform, and she finds herself hunting an
Speaker 2: infamous serial killer who starts murdering again after being dormant
Speaker 2: for twenty years. She finds out that this killer, the prophet,
Speaker 2: has begun committing more murders, and this is a killer
Speaker 2: who haunted her childhood, terrorized the Bay area, and really
Speaker 2: destroyed her family. Because her father was the homicide detective
Speaker 2: who handled the initial case and failed to uncover the
Speaker 2: identity of the UNSUB which stands for unknown subject that
Speaker 2: is FBI LINGO for the unknown perpetrator and a real
Speaker 2: life who'd done it, Mack Hendricks. Her dad could not
Speaker 2: break the case. The case broke him, broke up the family,
Speaker 2: led him to the brink of taking his own life.
Speaker 2: You know, this killer had sent the cops and the
Speaker 2: press weird puzzles, taunting messages. And now I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: if a killer came back after twenty years, what would
Speaker 2: be a way to tell the story? And I thought, okay,
Speaker 2: let's really, let's sink our fangs into having the detective
Speaker 2: who's now really got to try to put her skates
Speaker 2: on and learn how to do this be the daughter
Speaker 2: of the guy who had taken it on the first place,
Speaker 2: and of course that's haunted her family. She feels a
Speaker 2: sense of responsibility, a sense of faith, failure. She's knew
Speaker 2: she was kind of destined to be a cop because
Speaker 2: it was in her family's bones, but she does not
Speaker 2: want to let what happened to her father happened to her.
Speaker 2: She tries to say she's going to rigidly separate herself
Speaker 2: from the job, that when she comes home the batch
Speaker 2: goes off. She's relentless, but she does not want to
Speaker 2: become obsessed. And of course her dad warns her away
Speaker 2: from this case uselessly because she's determined to pursue this killer.
Speaker 2: And things start escalating. I don't know spoilers, but things
Speaker 2: escalate and percolate, and things start swirling closer and closer
Speaker 2: to her and the people she cares about.
Speaker 3: What infamous case became the kernel for this because you know,
Speaker 3: I'm curious of if it evolved as you started writing it,
Speaker 3: or did you stick with whatever this case is.
Speaker 2: The zodiac really was the initial spark for this case.
Speaker 2: I did grow up in California and recall as a
Speaker 2: small child seeing the daily newspaper and there was a
Speaker 2: police drawing on the front page of a figure with
Speaker 2: a hood over his head with a bizarre symbol on
Speaker 2: the front, and I recall asking my parents what's that?
Speaker 2: Who's that? And they said that's the zodiac, and I
Speaker 2: could kind of in my memory my mom was sort
Speaker 2: of waving my dad off in the background, kind of
Speaker 2: like let's throw this paper away. But I said who
Speaker 2: is he? And he said he's a murderer, And I said,
Speaker 2: why does he kill people? I was probably going into
Speaker 2: first grade and Catholic school, where we knew that there
Speaker 2: were always, you know, deadly sins that drove people to kill,
Speaker 2: like greed less, anger, hatred, and my dad just paused
Speaker 2: and said he likes it. And that totally threw me.
Speaker 2: I could not conceive of why someone would like to
Speaker 2: kill people, and it really threw me for a loop.
Speaker 2: And I don't know that I ever slept with my
Speaker 2: windows open again for a very long time. But of course,
Speaker 2: the zodiac has never been identified. And I went away
Speaker 2: stopped killing, supposedly, and at some point later I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: if he could set down his murderous impulses for a
Speaker 2: while at his own choosing, what's to stop him from
Speaker 2: picking it up again at a moment of his choosing.
Speaker 2: And that was the genesis for unsub which, of course
Speaker 2: the zodiac has become this I don't want to say iconic,
Speaker 2: but notorious case, partly because that killer has never been
Speaker 2: officially identified and did taunt the media. The police was
Speaker 2: very much narcissistically interested in keeping himself in the public
Speaker 2: eye with these bizarre cryptographic puzzles and letters to the
Speaker 2: San Francisco Examiner in San Francisco Chronicle, and the bizarre
Speaker 2: symbolism which makes which always people out to think that well,
Speaker 2: what is you know, what is there? Is there some
Speaker 2: kind of a cult thing going on? But the zodiac
Speaker 2: was just genuinely terrifying. So if it scares me, I
Speaker 2: think it might scare an interest readers as well. And
Speaker 2: I used that as the ground for the killer in
Speaker 2: unsept the prophet who left cryptic messages and bizarre symbols,
Speaker 2: the ancient symbol for mercury sometimes carved into a victim's flesh.
Speaker 2: And yes, I know you're you're making a face there,
Speaker 2: But honestly, I did not want this book to be
Speaker 2: grim and dark. I wanted it to be compelling and
Speaker 2: fascinating and to have readers want to know as much
Speaker 2: as I did, what is really behind these crimes? Is
Speaker 2: there anything beyond someone who's psychotic and there is in
Speaker 2: the story.
Speaker 3: I remember somebody telling me, you know, we were talking
Speaker 3: about plots and mysteries or thrillers, and you know kind
Speaker 3: of like, well, someone being psychotic, isn't it enough of
Speaker 3: there has to be another reason? And I thought, now,
Speaker 3: being psychotic is enough of a reason to do this.
Speaker 3: I don't think you have to search around, you know,
Speaker 3: dig around too much in somebody's psyche to just say, well,
Speaker 3: you know, personality disorder or whatever else there was, So
Speaker 3: do you think that zodiac? And remembering this as a child,
Speaker 3: I don't want to put words in your mouth here.
Speaker 3: Was that one of the contributors for you to want
Speaker 3: to go down the road in general of telling, you know,
Speaker 3: thriller type stories.
Speaker 2: Undoubtedly, I certainly never interrogated myself about that. But I
Speaker 2: always enjoyed thrillers. I know, like a lot of people,
Speaker 2: the fact that in fiction we can make things turn
Speaker 2: out the way we want is part of the appeal
Speaker 2: of writing it, as well as making readers tear their
Speaker 2: hair out or you know, bite their fingernails or just
Speaker 2: keep flipping the pages. But I definitely like the idea
Speaker 2: that I would have characters who are in who are
Speaker 2: put to the test, who are put in jeopardy and
Speaker 2: have to help each other out, have to find out
Speaker 2: what's going wrong. And in a thriller, it's not usually
Speaker 2: that there's a body on the floor who you're trying
Speaker 2: to identify who killed them. It's that's maybe a body
Speaker 2: set the floor, which is the sign that something worse
Speaker 2: is coming down the.
Speaker 3: Road to whoever this is a character in your book,
Speaker 3: is gonna happen to you probably or someone you love.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So I found it a lot more. Come on,
Speaker 2: It's fun to write stuff where people really have to
Speaker 2: dig deep against the stakes or life and death and
Speaker 2: you want to see them rise to the occasion or
Speaker 2: die trying. And that's that's why I like to write it.
Speaker 2: I was also really terrible at attempting to write romance
Speaker 2: or science fiction, so you know, like those stories. You
Speaker 2: attempted both of those when I was very young. I did,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's like sucked harder than a vacuum cleaner,
Speaker 2: So like, let me find something else.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know how to approach either of those things.
Speaker 3: Well, okay, so let's talk about zodiac as an inspiration
Speaker 3: for fiction, because This is an interesting way of looking
Speaker 3: at it for me, because you know, if I had
Speaker 3: somebody who had written a book about Zodiac, or if
Speaker 3: I interviewed, you know, Paul Holes from the Golden State
Speaker 3: killer case. If I interviewed Paul about Zodiac, which is
Speaker 3: a case that he's been active in, he would give
Speaker 3: me a play by play. He would talk about the
Speaker 3: way that what Zodiac wore according to survivors, what exactly happened,
Speaker 3: what the settings were, and all of that stuff. It
Speaker 3: would be very methodical and it's scientific because that's that's
Speaker 3: who he is and that's what an author would would
Speaker 3: explain that too. So your point of view is a
Speaker 3: little different because you're somebody who's living in that time period,
Speaker 3: through that experience. So tell me, you know, we've talked
Speaker 3: about the symbolism that he you know, and the taunting,
Speaker 3: and he's got kind of all of the Jack the
Speaker 3: Ripper hallmarks.
Speaker 1: I think the brutality part of it.
Speaker 3: What are the things that you can pick out from
Speaker 3: what you remember, either the emotion or the scene kind
Speaker 3: of lover's lane, but not really, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: what are the things that you pick out that just
Speaker 3: go man, that is exactly the setup for a good
Speaker 3: thriller minus the serial killer. I mean, what are the
Speaker 3: things around you that just kind of go, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: this gives me the chills.
Speaker 2: I need to write it down. Well, a guy coming
Speaker 2: out of the out of the woods, wearing a hood,
Speaker 2: carrying a knife at a lover's lane. That's the instant
Speaker 2: flip of the situation from a beautiful afternoon by Lake
Speaker 2: barry Essa to absolute terror and realizing your life, your
Speaker 2: world has either completely changed permanently or is at an end.
Speaker 2: That was part of it the killing in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: As far as Zodiac of the cab driver you know
Speaker 2: to stop signed late at night, there are a number
Speaker 2: of police drawings of the zodiac, and the most famous
Speaker 2: ones were given by patrol officers from the San Francisco
Speaker 2: Police Department who saw him walking away from the murder
Speaker 2: scene and did not know it at the time that
Speaker 2: that was who they were looking at. And it was
Speaker 2: only later that everybody put two and two and two
Speaker 2: together and realized that the man that these two officers
Speaker 2: who were rushing to the scene, this person they had
Speaker 2: seen strolling away, had to have been the killer. So
Speaker 2: the fact of how close they came, how calm the
Speaker 2: killer was, how it was this terrible missed chance to
Speaker 2: stop something that was just spreading poor throughout the entire region.
Speaker 2: That's kind of like, would you do the same now?
Speaker 2: How could you set that up in a story? How
Speaker 2: could you turn that into even more suspense and drama
Speaker 2: and catharsis if you need it.
Speaker 3: As I said, what's kind of different about writing the
Speaker 3: fictionalized angle of this is you do have to get
Speaker 3: into the emotions of the victims, and the setup has
Speaker 3: to be compelling. In any good mystery, you have to
Speaker 3: have you have to get in the heads of the
Speaker 3: victims and survivors and the killer were at the same time.
Speaker 1: I think in order for us to care about those characters, right,
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 2: Sometimes you do not necessarily need to get into the
Speaker 2: killer's head, and a lot of books don't. Famously, Thomas
Speaker 2: Harris is the Silence of the Lambs is never in
Speaker 2: Hannibal Elect's point of view, but we feel like we
Speaker 2: know him. But getting into their point of view and
Speaker 2: getting readers to care about these characters, and because they
Speaker 2: become real people to us when we write. They're characters,
Speaker 2: but we feel like they're actual humans. You know, you
Speaker 2: can make readers interested in a story by raising their curiosity.
Speaker 2: And that's the puzzles, the cryptograms, the weird messages that
Speaker 2: the profit and unsub sense to leaves for the police
Speaker 2: to find that that becomes like the readers trying to
Speaker 2: see can we figure it out before the police do.
Speaker 2: But if you can make the characters people that readers
Speaker 2: care about, then that makes it a much richer story.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned a Golden State killer, and I will
Speaker 2: say that I can segue a little bit toward that.
Speaker 2: It became a case that also influenced on Sub quite
Speaker 2: a bit, and a lot of that had to do
Speaker 2: with the victims and finding out a lot about them.
Speaker 2: For a reason that I never in a million years
Speaker 2: suspected when I started writing on SUB. There had been
Speaker 2: two double murders in the neighborhood where I grew up.
Speaker 2: Wait where were you? Galada, California, oh Okay, December nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine and July nineteen eighty one, two couples were
Speaker 2: or slaughtered at home and the city was just baffled
Speaker 2: and unsettled. And I remember my parents mentioning it with
Speaker 2: sort of a gallows humor. Kind of like trying to
Speaker 2: calm the kids down, like, you don't need to worry
Speaker 2: about us, because you know what people are saying. These
Speaker 2: were couples who weren't married, so you know your mom
Speaker 2: and I have been hitched for decades. Don't even worry
Speaker 2: nobody's going to come after us. Is this a Catholic thing? Again?
Speaker 2: That could be. Now, this isn't my parents trying to say, now,
Speaker 2: don't worry about us. Whoever this guy is, nobody would
Speaker 2: ever come after us. And those cases were never solved.
Speaker 2: And it was when I was writing unsub that I
Speaker 2: just by chance took a look at one of the
Speaker 2: local Santa Barbara newspapers and there was a story saying
Speaker 2: Sheriff's office seeks information about these killings. Now this was,
Speaker 2: you know, decades later, and it said these killings have
Speaker 2: now been tied to what was then being called the
Speaker 2: original Nightstalker, East Aria rapist, Original night Stalker. And this
Speaker 2: came like a bolt of lightning, and I just could
Speaker 2: not believe it initially. And they were saying they at
Speaker 2: that time they thought perhaps they had potential evidence that
Speaker 2: the killer might have been a construction worker who was
Speaker 2: building a strip mall near the killings at the time,
Speaker 2: and I just remember sitting there staring at it and
Speaker 2: my head just throbbing because both of those double murders
Speaker 2: were within walking distance of my parents' house. It was
Speaker 2: less than a quarter of a mile away.
Speaker 1: And they were still around. Were they still alive?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, they were still around. I knew my brother
Speaker 2: and sister had been living at home at the time.
Speaker 2: It just threw men. And then when I went to
Speaker 2: visit my family, I was standing in the kitchen of
Speaker 2: my brother's new house out the window, and I realized
Speaker 2: that one of the crime scenes was right across the street.
Speaker 2: Oh gosh. At the time, he didn't know, and I
Speaker 2: just remember like standing there like a statue, thinking should
Speaker 2: I say anything to him about this? The first thing
Speaker 2: that horrified me was I remembered the murders, but I
Speaker 2: could not initially remember the names of the victims. And
Speaker 2: of course now it's impossible to forget doctor Offerman and
Speaker 2: doctor Manning and Shear Domingo and Gregory Sanchez. And then
Speaker 2: to realize that there was this statewide rampage of murders
Speaker 2: that had come within it felt like a breath of
Speaker 2: my parents' house and it turns out I think it
Speaker 2: really did that it became it became, it did become
Speaker 2: an obsession. So I did tell my brother. We ended
Speaker 2: up trying to figure out.
Speaker 3: Who it might have been, like somebody you guys might
Speaker 3: have known. Yes, of course we did. Gosh, okay, wait,
Speaker 3: where are you in your writing career? Are you knee
Speaker 3: deep and thriller? At this point, I am.
Speaker 2: I was, you know, I had a dozen novels out,
Speaker 2: I was working on un sub with this whole thing
Speaker 2: about the zodiac which had like stuck in the back
Speaker 2: of my mind for years. And then to find out
Speaker 2: that there was this more recent, horrifying series of events
Speaker 2: that was not distant, was not in the news, it
Speaker 2: was not on television. It was easy to get there
Speaker 2: across the footbridge where I had, you know, played as
Speaker 2: a little kid, and up the creek where we caught
Speaker 2: tadpoles when when I was you know, when I was
Speaker 2: in grade school, and my brother and I initially were like,
Speaker 2: who is this? Could this have been somebody that we know?
Speaker 2: We've since found out that, of course, we were not
Speaker 2: the first people to think along these lines. We took
Speaker 2: a look at every place that these killings had taken
Speaker 2: place in Golita. There had initially been an attack where
Speaker 2: the Golden skate killer would come in and he liked
Speaker 2: to tie up couples. He liked to attack couples, not initially,
Speaker 2: but he attacked couples and he would tie them up.
Speaker 2: Often he would tell the if there's a man, he
Speaker 2: would tell the man that don't make a sound, or
Speaker 2: I will kill till your partner. He'd stack dishes on
Speaker 2: the man's back and tell him to lie still on
Speaker 2: the floor because if he heard one of the one
Speaker 2: of the dishes fall off, he would know the guy
Speaker 2: was moving and then he would he would murder the
Speaker 2: murder the woman and he would take her in and
Speaker 2: sexually assault her. And one of these attacks in Golita
Speaker 2: up the same creek from where the others. The others
Speaker 2: were and the guy, the man who was tied up,
Speaker 2: decided to make up where he heard the assailants say
Speaker 2: saying I'm going to kill you both, and the guy said, okay,
Speaker 2: if that's if that's what you're going to do, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to lie here, and he jumped up. He
Speaker 2: was strip naked, bound with zip ties and he managed
Speaker 2: to get outside screaming for help, and his next door
Speaker 2: neighbor was an FBI agent who heard the cries for
Speaker 2: help and came out. At this point, the attacker realized
Speaker 2: that he was he was not going to succeed, so
Speaker 2: he ran. He jumped on a bicycle and he went
Speaker 2: racing through the neighborhood in the dark of night. The
Speaker 2: FBI guy got into his car and gave chase and
Speaker 2: lost him after a couple of blocks. And that couple
Speaker 2: were the last people that the killer let survive.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it got to the place where my brother and
Speaker 2: I would like, let's take a walk around the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Let's look and see where this guy could have been
Speaker 2: doing his you know, where he could have been hiding.
Speaker 2: Where did he hide the where did he hide his bicycle?
Speaker 2: How did he escape? And he got to the place
Speaker 2: where I took a Google satellite map and I marked
Speaker 2: spots around every place where the killer had attacked, you know,
Speaker 2: having it at Bakenya and told tech and where he
Speaker 2: shot a dog on the footbridge, and where he attacked
Speaker 2: the couple on Windsor you know, on on Windsor Lane,
Speaker 2: and where the guy rode his bicycle and it became
Speaker 2: clear against all that I marked, like where my parents lived,
Speaker 2: where my brother now lives, where my best friend lived,
Speaker 2: in around the corner from the first attack, where the
Speaker 2: one of the ushers in our wedding lived, right on
Speaker 2: the street where the bicycle escaped, from where my husband
Speaker 2: was living in college, as this guy probably got out
Speaker 2: of there. And at that point I kind of said,
Speaker 2: maybe I need to back off, because my brother and
Speaker 2: I had, well, we thought we'd figured out who it
Speaker 2: could have been. Were not the only people who thought that.
Speaker 2: You thought it was a guy named Wayne Glasby who
Speaker 2: had gone to my high school or high school, and
Speaker 2: his family lived around the corner from us, and they
Speaker 2: were kind of the family in the neighborhood that were rough,
Speaker 2: and there were four boys. We were pretty certain the
Speaker 2: large portion of the family was involved in criminal activity,
Speaker 2: and so we thought, well, Wayne looked very much like
Speaker 2: one of the identicat drawings of the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 2: Of course, then we found the blogs and the chat
Speaker 2: rooms and everything where we realized, oh, four hundred other
Speaker 2: people and Gilley have also come up with this theory.
Speaker 2: It was only later after well, you know very well
Speaker 2: that the Golden State Killer was finally identified on Masses
Speaker 2: Jesseph di'angelo by jenetic genealogy, and thank god, arrested, And
Speaker 2: it really made a difference to my family to think
Speaker 2: that there wasn't any chance that this guy could ever
Speaker 2: come back, that this seemingly sunny neighborhood that had this
Speaker 2: pall fall over it now felt clear again, at least
Speaker 2: from that threat. But it was later when I listened
Speaker 2: to the podcast The Man in the Window by the
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Times. This was after, of course, i'd read
Speaker 2: the LA magazine series by Michelle McNamara about where she
Speaker 2: came up with the name Golden State Killer and I'll
Speaker 2: be Gone in the Dark.
Speaker 1: Did you find her blog too? Michelle McNamara's blog.
Speaker 2: I initially found the LA Magazine articles and which were
Speaker 2: stunning and helpful and fed my relentless obsession with this case.
Speaker 2: And after the killer was arrested and I listened to
Speaker 2: the LA Times podcast, it suggested that not only were
Speaker 2: my brother and I convinced that at one point that
Speaker 2: Wayne Clasby had been the killer and everybody else on
Speaker 2: the chat room, but so had the Santa Barbara Sheriff's office,
Speaker 2: and my brother and I realized that he could not
Speaker 2: have been the killer because he and one of his
Speaker 2: brothers were killed in a drug deal in a beach
Speaker 2: in Mexico. Oh wow, before the final killings took place. However,
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department closed the case at that point they
Speaker 2: thought that he had done it.
Speaker 3: How does that shift your thinking about Zodiac and your
Speaker 3: original premise? What was the difference for you between what
Speaker 3: Zodiac was doing and what Golden State Killer was doing
Speaker 3: as far as the emotion or the mystery or the
Speaker 3: thriller aspect of it. Was a Golden State Killer turning
Speaker 3: in that direction with that kind of like up the
Speaker 3: game of the scaredness or what would it be?
Speaker 2: It up my own terror. And one thing that I
Speaker 2: that ended up going into unsub was that Zodiac taunted
Speaker 2: the media and the police and wanted to spread general
Speaker 2: panic in the Bay Area. Golden State Killer directly taunted
Speaker 2: his victims and the survivors. Yeah. Sometimes when he had
Speaker 2: raped someone and left them alive, then he would call
Speaker 2: and leave them messages, and you know, the answering machines
Speaker 2: recorded these messages. If you know, it was this horrifying
Speaker 2: whisper if I'm going to kill you I'm going to
Speaker 2: kill you. I'm going to kill you, and that sadism
Speaker 2: I thought was part of what defined the Golden State Killer,
Speaker 2: and I think that went into sub as well as
Speaker 2: some of the some of the actual physical evidence and
Speaker 2: stuff that I had discovered about the Golden State Killer.
Speaker 2: That you know, a map was found near one of
Speaker 2: the crime scenes which was like, look like a map
Speaker 2: of a suburban neighborhood with the word punishment written on
Speaker 2: the back of it, And so that kind of goes
Speaker 2: into unsub as well, and the whole idea that figuring
Speaker 2: out that the killer was driving into a neighborhood but
Speaker 2: then using creeks culvert storm drains to cloak himself against
Speaker 2: being found out. I used that and sub as well.
Speaker 2: So that was a bit of catharsis, I think to
Speaker 2: try to say, Okay, at least when I wrote that book,
Speaker 2: we can have Caitlin try to try to figure this out,
Speaker 2: and she's going to unmask this guy in the end,
Speaker 2: even if at the time nobody knew who the Golden
Speaker 2: State Killer was.
Speaker 3: Does so the aspect of sexual assault inside your home, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, you're vulnerable when you're taking some private time
Speaker 3: and making out in the woods, but in your own home,
Speaker 3: like in Golden State, and there's a sexual assault component.
Speaker 3: Did that make you think differently about the motivations of
Speaker 3: your killer and also just the motivations of Zodiac versus
Speaker 3: Joseph DiAngelo.
Speaker 2: It did, and that's an excellent point to unpack. I
Speaker 2: deliberately decided that the killer in un the Profit was
Speaker 2: not committing sexual assaults. There is such an aspect of
Speaker 2: the novel that does feature the trying to decipher cryptic
Speaker 2: messages and the symbolism that part of me thought that
Speaker 2: sexual assault is so cruel so in face even a
Speaker 2: different way, that I did not want to do anything
Speaker 2: that might seem to be gratuitously playing on that for
Speaker 2: entertainment in the novel. But definitely to Angelo, yeah, use
Speaker 2: that as an absolute means of trying to degrade and
Speaker 2: gain power over his victims, which as of course extremely disturbing.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that Paul talks about
Speaker 1: when we talk about motivation of killers, he talks about
Speaker 1: the sexual as sought aspect of some of these serial killers.
Speaker 1: And people will say it's about control, it's not about sex,
Speaker 1: and he says, no, it's about sex. Too, it's both,
Speaker 1: And so that makes me think about You've got these
Speaker 1: two similar killers that you're sort of, you know, drawing
Speaker 1: really as emotion out of more than notes. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like, what are the things that will terrify you
Speaker 1: and you know, make your heart race? So I think
Speaker 1: about that, like the difference between Zodiac and Golden State
Speaker 1: killers sometimes, and it's different ways of evoking terror in people.
Speaker 1: Have you handled in any of your books sexual assaults
Speaker 1: since you have very strong female characters.
Speaker 2: I have in the second on sub novel, Into the
Speaker 2: Black Nowhere, the killer in that story is drawn from
Speaker 2: Ted Bundy. There's nothing explicit in the in either the
Speaker 2: victims or the killer's point of view of those assaults
Speaker 2: in that book, but it adds to the weight. It
Speaker 2: adds to the weight that some families feel sometimes, I think,
Speaker 2: especially if the victim had a male partner, husband, a
Speaker 2: father who felt like this was an invasion of even
Speaker 2: a different, more personal, more visceral level that they might
Speaker 2: wanted to have tried to protect protector from. It's so
Speaker 2: ugly that somehow sexual assault feel writing about that feels
Speaker 2: uglier than writing about murder. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It's harder and I think in a way too.
Speaker 3: You know, my first book was about a serial killer
Speaker 3: named John Reginald Christy, and he sexually assaulted women. You know,
Speaker 3: he would kind of drug them but with gas with
Speaker 3: carbon monoxide from the top of his stove, and then
Speaker 3: they would black out. And when I wrote that book,
Speaker 3: which is a nonfiction book, I thought, how do I
Speaker 3: do this without triggering people? And so I ended up
Speaker 3: having to do it from the victims, wanting to do
Speaker 3: it based on trials, you know, his confessions and all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff in their families from the victim's point
Speaker 3: of view, and for me, it was simply like, they
Speaker 3: sit down, they think they're getting this treatment to you know,
Speaker 3: this like a vic vapor rub type treatment where they
Speaker 3: would breathe it in and it would help their bronchitis,
Speaker 3: and then you know, it knocks them out and so
Speaker 3: the last thing they know, the victims know, is they
Speaker 3: black out and then they wake up and he's planting
Speaker 3: plants and stuff above them, and then you know at
Speaker 3: that point they're dead. And I just skip over all
Speaker 3: the details because I don't think you have to tread
Speaker 3: over those details in order for people to understand the
Speaker 3: credible horror that the victims must have gone through. And
Speaker 3: for me, the idea of re traumatizing anybody I think
Speaker 3: is so difficult. Is that when you're dealing, like you,
Speaker 3: with these true crime cases that have that sort of aspect,
Speaker 3: That's what I was thinking about. You know, that's an
Speaker 3: added layer a threat and terror exactly.
Speaker 2: So I have chosen deliberately to to avoid that, certainly
Speaker 2: in the in the in the novel that Drew from
Speaker 2: Drew from Bundy, and even in my most recent novel,
Speaker 2: shadow Heart, which is also in the series that that
Speaker 2: killer is drawn from Samuel Little, who drew sketches of
Speaker 2: of his victims, and I, yeah, didn't go into any
Speaker 2: detail about any assaults that the the fictional killer had
Speaker 2: had committed, just because that's not what the story's about.
Speaker 1: And I think I wish in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: people would would do that more.
Speaker 3: I had a writer email me after he read my book,
Speaker 3: the first book, and he a mail writer, and he said,
Speaker 3: I need your advice. I'm writing a non fiction book
Speaker 3: that I think is really important. In it it talks
Speaker 3: about sexual assault and I'm a man and I don't
Speaker 3: know how to handle this, you know, I mean, how
Speaker 3: do I And it was not fiction, you know, I
Speaker 3: mean he he just didn't actually know.
Speaker 2: What to include. He was scared to death.
Speaker 3: And I've had several male writers say that too, how
Speaker 3: do I do this? And I think the solution for
Speaker 3: some of my friends, like Brian Burrows one of them,
Speaker 3: is you just have a gazillion women read it and
Speaker 3: just say you know, this is what this is, what
Speaker 3: to include or not to include. But you know, if
Speaker 3: we get back to the kind of inspiration, does your
Speaker 3: profit get away?
Speaker 2: Yes? And now if I tell you anymore, I'll give
Speaker 2: away a twist. No, don't do that.
Speaker 3: But you know, the idea of then carrying somebody or
Speaker 3: the image or somebody or the spirit of a killer
Speaker 3: through a series or maybe even another book.
Speaker 1: I wonder how that could be handled.
Speaker 3: I mean with that, is that something that you have
Speaker 3: experienced where you're where you need to then develop a
Speaker 3: serial killer or a really bad character where I think
Speaker 3: you know a lot of people are more comfortable developing
Speaker 3: a good character, but like, what do you do if
Speaker 3: you have to have a bad character that go through
Speaker 3: several books, like Hannibal Lecter goes through several books.
Speaker 2: It's fun come on with developing. No developing villains is fun.
Speaker 2: A thriller is only as strong as the antagonist. Courses
Speaker 2: of antagonism make the protagonists rise to meet the occasion. So,
Speaker 2: and if you're going to have an effective antagonist, they
Speaker 2: need to have some kind of human you know, charismatic
Speaker 2: features that that they're not just incredibly repulsive. I mean
Speaker 2: they have to have some kind of strength, intellect, charm,
Speaker 2: some kind of cunning, a sense of humor. Remember that,
Speaker 2: you know your villain has They've got their own problems.
Speaker 2: They've got they yeah, they've got pets to feed, they've
Speaker 2: got you know, they've got to pick up the eye
Speaker 2: cleaning and you know, take mom to the doctor or
Speaker 2: whatever it is. So you try to keep them human.
Speaker 2: And I've never had a character. I mean, there are
Speaker 2: characters that carry over, but I've kept them mysterious because
Speaker 2: that's part of the continuing storyline in the series is
Speaker 2: you know, what's what is still going on and you
Speaker 2: know mystery caps readers coming back. I agree.
Speaker 3: So I read a quote from an author, a novelist,
Speaker 3: who said, any good novelist, really really good novelist, has
Speaker 3: really bad relationships because you have to find characters from somewhere,
Speaker 3: and he said, I can't even tell you how many
Speaker 3: people are mad at me because they read my books
Speaker 3: and clearly see my characteristics popping up in your damn books.
Speaker 3: How do you well, I mean, I guess with an
Speaker 3: unknown serial killer, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But how do you develop care characters?
Speaker 3: I mean they have to be from some people you know,
Speaker 3: and then of course you're specific with Ted Bundy.
Speaker 2: You know, how do you know when to draw a
Speaker 2: line on stuff like that? I've actually found that when
Speaker 2: I've drawn characteristics from real life, a lot of times
Speaker 2: people don't recognize themselves. Okay, So if that's what you're
Speaker 2: thinking about when you're writing fiction, I wouldn't I wouldn't
Speaker 2: stress over it too much. You never want to drop
Speaker 2: someone you know wholesale into into a book and then
Speaker 2: have something terrible happen to them or make them just
Speaker 2: completely annoying, because number one, that cramps your creativity if
Speaker 2: you're trying to trying to duplicate them from real life
Speaker 2: into the story. And second, it misleads you as the
Speaker 2: writer from trying to develop the best course of action
Speaker 2: for the characters in the story versus what you're really
Speaker 2: picky bitch next door neighbor would do when the frisbee
Speaker 2: comes over the fence for the third time, and you
Speaker 2: know you're not gonna make them into a into a
Speaker 2: super villain, it'll be boring. But I've actually never had
Speaker 2: any I mean, and you can find so many people
Speaker 2: just you can. You can find people on a city bus.
Speaker 2: You watch someone who gets on. You can just see
Speaker 2: the way they walk, the way they look around, the
Speaker 2: way they carry themselves, what they're saying and conversation.
Speaker 3: Note to listeners, be careful what you say, because there
Speaker 3: could be a thriller writer sitting next to you on
Speaker 3: the bus, turning you into a character.
Speaker 2: Ab Absolutely, I've only ever had someone decide they were
Speaker 2: a character in my novels and they weren't. Oh and
Speaker 2: gotten gotten gotten a message like, boy, this sounds like
Speaker 2: someone I know, Hey, you know where'd you think you
Speaker 2: got off talking about me like this?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, did you tell them? I have other
Speaker 3: narcissistic people in my life.
Speaker 2: I tried to make it clear that it was not
Speaker 2: them at all, and that actually that was a villain
Speaker 2: based on based on someone I loosely pay on someone
Speaker 2: I knew, and I was horrified that this other person
Speaker 2: thought that it was it was them. H I could,
Speaker 2: but I couldn't say. I couldn't like point them to
Speaker 2: the to like a name and say, no, it wasn't you.
Speaker 2: It was this other, this other person. But I tried
Speaker 2: to convince them that that it had it was totally coincidental.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I find that the not the best,
Speaker 3: but sort of really compelling good true crime stories are
Speaker 3: the ones that that novelist or mystery thriller writers dig
Speaker 3: into because it's got to be a really good story
Speaker 3: for for you guys to use it as any kind
Speaker 3: of inspiration. So you know, with Megan Abbott, I had
Speaker 3: no idea about the Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 2: That was fascinating. I mean she really and she was
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: She knew all the details and and you know, like
Speaker 3: like what you said, she kind of detoured, of course off,
Speaker 3: which is what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering.
Speaker 3: I know that you've kind of dug into BTK, Dennis Raider,
Speaker 3: You've dug into Ted Bundy, and you know, those guys
Speaker 3: are sort of to me, they're sort of singular.
Speaker 1: There are these outliers.
Speaker 3: Part of it is the taunting, and of course everybody
Speaker 3: says Ted Bundy's charm and intelligence and all of that.
Speaker 3: Are there other people who you haven't written about where
Speaker 3: you sort of made a mental note like do you
Speaker 3: have a sticky somewhere that's just like, hey, think about
Speaker 3: these people or this kind of case next.
Speaker 2: They're always cases coming up. I actually don't have someone
Speaker 2: in my mind right now because I think maybe I
Speaker 2: just wanted to cleanse myself a little.
Speaker 3: Bit about a woman we've got there are women killers
Speaker 3: out there? Or is that less interesting?
Speaker 2: No, it's fascinating. And actually one of my book events
Speaker 2: in Austin, my cousin just hands shot up during Q
Speaker 2: and A and he's like, so are you ever going
Speaker 2: to have a woman be the villain? Saye read my
Speaker 2: next book? So again I can't. I can't give away everything.
Speaker 3: And I think about that because do you write from
Speaker 3: the killer's point of view also or is that part
Speaker 3: of it at all?
Speaker 2: Occasionally sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. But in
Speaker 2: the unsett series, because it's in third person point of
Speaker 2: view and has multiple points of view already, I have
Speaker 2: gone into the killer's point of view a number of
Speaker 2: times deliberately so and that always helps me get to
Speaker 2: know them a little bit better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to think about that. I don't
Speaker 3: know if there are a lot of men who write
Speaker 3: from a woman's point of view. I definitely think there are.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, Maybe I'm wrong, but I
Speaker 3: would think it's more women who write from a men's
Speaker 3: point of view. And then I thought, how do you
Speaker 3: get into the head of a serial killer and what
Speaker 3: they're thinking?
Speaker 2: Because you know, one of the things I.
Speaker 3: Think that makes such great characters, like with Patricia Cornwell
Speaker 3: and Scarpetta, is being able to actually kind of be
Speaker 3: there and find parallels. I don't know how you find
Speaker 3: parallel with a character that's a serial killer.
Speaker 2: Well, this is the right what you know question? Right? Yes,
Speaker 2: there you go. Any of us who've written written fiction,
Speaker 2: none of us have committed murder, I certainly hope, but
Speaker 2: we all find ways to write about it. I think
Speaker 2: if you dig deep into human nature, sometimes it's tough
Speaker 2: to try to put yourself into the headspace of someone
Speaker 2: who sees the world from a twisted point of view.
Speaker 2: But that's what you've got to do. If you're going
Speaker 2: to write from the from the villain's perspective, You remember
Speaker 2: that everybody has a reason for doing what they what
Speaker 2: they do, and even the villains in your books are
Speaker 2: convinced that they are justified. Yeah, they've come up with
Speaker 2: some preposterous, monstrous reason to convince themselves of that. But
Speaker 2: in their own mind, they are doing what they need
Speaker 2: to and that it is it's the right course of action,
Speaker 2: and they are the stars of their own you know,
Speaker 2: their own mental show, and the heroes of their own lives.
Speaker 2: So remembering that as you as you write, you can
Speaker 2: kind of try to try to see your way into
Speaker 2: understanding how someone could be convinced of the righteousness of
Speaker 2: something that the rest of us want to throw them
Speaker 2: in prison for.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the criticisms of true crime, one
Speaker 3: of my criticisms is the idea that there are a
Speaker 3: lot of fans, consumers and content creators who glorify the killers,
Speaker 3: you know, and so they come off looking like I mean,
Speaker 3: some good examples that some of the shows that you
Speaker 3: can see on the streamers where you know, they come
Speaker 3: off looking a certain way and there's like a sex appeal,
Speaker 3: which I think is always weird. How do you know
Speaker 3: what that line is? When you're writing fiction when you
Speaker 3: can literally make this person, this killer, look any way
Speaker 3: that you want, how do you know that you're not
Speaker 3: putting out this image that you know being a killer
Speaker 3: is cool or you're a criminal mastermind or something like that. Like,
Speaker 3: is there a responsibility at all with fiction writers?
Speaker 2: I put the responsibility on myself. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 2: having somebody else read it to make sure that if
Speaker 2: you've tried to create a charismatic, plausible villain that readers
Speaker 2: turn away from that they will want to follow at
Speaker 2: least to see what happens, that you're not making that
Speaker 2: person evil. That person's evil seem sparkly and fun. You
Speaker 2: just have to You just have to watch yourself because
Speaker 2: if you find yourself falling in love with your villain,
Speaker 2: since they're all drawn from our own experience and unconscious,
Speaker 2: I think you need to interrogate yourself pretty deeply about
Speaker 2: why you find it delightful at some level and back
Speaker 2: away from it pretty sharply.
Speaker 3: I interviewed the author of Victorian Psycho, who really, I mean,
Speaker 3: that book really is so violent, it's really kind of unreal,
Speaker 3: and you really do kind of get into the head
Speaker 3: of the killer because it's her point of view and
Speaker 3: all of that, And so I think about that gone
Speaker 3: girl where you're sort of read especially use women, where
Speaker 3: you're reading and the killer is a woman or the
Speaker 3: deceiver as a woman, and then you're kind of going, well.
Speaker 2: This is interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not repulsed by this person, but I'm
Speaker 3: repulsed by basically every male killer or so I wonder
Speaker 3: if there's some like reverse sexism that I'm experiencing here.
Speaker 2: It's fiction, You're permitted to enjoy it, Okay.
Speaker 3: I have wondered about that, you know, I mean the
Speaker 3: glorifying the killer part. I definitely have. I've actually talked
Speaker 3: to some nonfiction folks and I've said, you know, is
Speaker 3: there a lesson learned from your book? Or what's the
Speaker 3: big takeaway or what are you hoping people learn kind
Speaker 3: of an educational standpoint. A few of them up said,
Speaker 3: I don't really care about that. So I wonder if
Speaker 3: there when, what is the point? What's the emotion you're
Speaker 3: trying to get at? I know, fear blah blah, fear,
Speaker 3: you're writing thriller, But is there anything that it's like
Speaker 3: a female heroine or family connection or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly, and on set. That's that's those are the
Speaker 2: two big things, the female heroine, family connection and the
Speaker 2: idea that this chaos has has risen up again, and
Speaker 2: Caitlin takes it on her own shoulders to try to
Speaker 2: be the one who unmasks it and stops it. So
Speaker 2: it's a sense of compassion, it's a sense of responsibility
Speaker 2: that she feels to try to try to put the
Speaker 2: world to rights. And that's part of the ongoing theme
Speaker 2: of the series is that she's convinced herself that it's
Speaker 2: on her to take the world on her shoulders and
Speaker 2: put it right, and even though intellectually she knows that
Speaker 2: that's not the way the world works, she's going to
Speaker 2: try to do it as much as she can. And well,
Speaker 2: I think for mystery crime thriller, it's I mean, I've
Speaker 2: had people ask me like, well, do you just love violence?
Speaker 2: Are you just trying to glorify violence? That why you
Speaker 2: write all this stuff? And I say, I hope not.
Speaker 2: And the thing about certainly American and most European and
Speaker 2: British crime thrillers is that we write from a place
Speaker 2: where we have a justice system that we hope is
Speaker 2: trying its best to protect us. And put things to write,
Speaker 2: and the crime and thriller genre generally comes from a
Speaker 2: place of believing that the concept of justice is real,
Speaker 2: and that when your world falls apart, when some kind
Speaker 2: of spirit of evil is manifested and creates chaos and
Speaker 2: tears the world apart, that it's okay, it's right, it's
Speaker 2: good for others to stand up and try to stitch
Speaker 2: the world back together, to put a stop to it,
Speaker 2: and that it is possible, as imperfect and irregular as
Speaker 2: that might be. So, I think crime thrillers are often
Speaker 2: hopeful in that sense, that because we can put the
Speaker 2: world to rights, at least at least partly in a story,
Speaker 2: where often in the real world we can't count on that.
Speaker 3: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 3: audio versions of my books The Sinners All Bow, The
Speaker 3: Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Speaker 3: Don't Forget. There are twelve seasons of my historical true
Speaker 3: crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,
Speaker 3: scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.
Speaker 3: This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
Speaker 3: is Alexis Mrosi. Our Associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
Speaker 3: episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer.
Speaker 3: Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen
Speaker 3: Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and
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Speaker 3: More and if you know of a historical crime that
Speaker 3: could use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked,
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Speaker 3: Words