Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the authors and participants and do not necessarily
Speaker 1: represent those of iHeart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.
Speaker 1: This series contains discussions of violence and sexual violence. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised, whether we want to or not. We're
Speaker 1: constantly creating records of our lives. Phone calls, emails, even
Speaker 1: credit card purchases can be used to pinpoint where we
Speaker 1: were at a certain time. When we touch a door knob,
Speaker 1: the oil from our hand leaves fingerprints and her skin
Speaker 1: sheds DNA, and if we drive by a security camera,
Speaker 1: our license plate can be scanned and entered into a database.
Speaker 1: But despite all of this information we're creating all of
Speaker 1: this power that we're giving the government and police, the
Speaker 1: United States isn't getting better at saul being serious crimes
Speaker 1: like homicide. In fact, we're getting worse. Murders were solved
Speaker 1: in today. That number has dropped dramatically. One of every
Speaker 1: three murders goes unsolved. One reporter found those stats unacceptable.
Speaker 1: Every day in America, people die who did not need
Speaker 1: to die, because every solved murder reduces the occurrence of
Speaker 1: murker from my Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This is
Speaker 1: Algorithm and I'm ben Key Break, just to introduce myself
Speaker 1: really quick. Normally I don't host podcasts. I'm a producer,
Speaker 1: which means I normally just do stuff behind the scenes, research, writing,
Speaker 1: setting up interviews. Almost a year ago now, I was
Speaker 1: working on another show called Monster DC Sniper when I
Speaker 1: got an email from a friend. It was a link
Speaker 1: to a story about the murder of this young woman
Speaker 1: named Africa Hardy. The story was fascinating. It seemed to
Speaker 1: flip everything I knew about crime on its head because
Speaker 1: it wasn't just a story about trying to solve a murder.
Speaker 1: It was also a story about what could have been
Speaker 1: done to prevent the murder in the first place. And
Speaker 1: there were aspects of the case that we're still unclear.
Speaker 1: But if they checked out, then they could fundamentally change
Speaker 1: the way homicides are investigated in the United States and
Speaker 1: maybe all around the world. Obviously I was intrigued, but
Speaker 1: at the time I was busy working on the DC
Speaker 1: Sniper podcast, so I put it on the back burner.
Speaker 1: I tried to just forget about it, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I'd find myself on my phone late at night, searching
Speaker 1: for articles about Africa's case when I should have been sleeping,
Speaker 1: And I was frustrated because I had big questions about
Speaker 1: the murder investigation that it seemed like no one was asking. Eventually,
Speaker 1: I realized my curiosity wasn't going away. If I wanted
Speaker 1: these answers, I was going to have to find them myself.
Speaker 1: I decided to start researching the case in my spare
Speaker 1: time and documenting things as I went. But before I began,
Speaker 1: I wanted to reach out to Africa's mom, Lorie Townsend. Hello,
Speaker 1: Hi Lori, Yes, Hey, it's been Is now still a
Speaker 1: good time? Yes? I think I wanted her blessing to
Speaker 1: embark on this project to make sure I wasn't just
Speaker 1: opening up old wounds. If this was in person, i'd
Speaker 1: see if you had a water to drink? Do you
Speaker 1: have something like that around I? Do I have a
Speaker 1: bad rich grape juice? Great juice? Yeah? And I didn't
Speaker 1: just want to write a story about why Africa's case
Speaker 1: is so important that treated her solely as a victim
Speaker 1: or crime statistic. I wanted to learn earned more about
Speaker 1: who Africa was and how would you describe Africa. Just beautiful.
Speaker 1: She she really was beautiful. And I'm not just saying
Speaker 1: that she she's my daughter. She was beautiful. She had
Speaker 1: a very bright smile. My daughter was with African American
Speaker 1: in Caucasian, so she had tight, curly hair and her
Speaker 1: smile just she radiated with a smile. Is there like
Speaker 1: a particular memory that stands out when you think back
Speaker 1: about her everything? Um, she was Saffy WHI. She was
Speaker 1: a little shows She's try to bully her older brother.
Speaker 1: She would put her hands on her hips to say,
Speaker 1: I'm not considering you, I'm not considering you. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: was like one or two wish. She was so that
Speaker 1: all the time. She loved Disney movies like Toy Story
Speaker 1: was one of her favorites. You know, William Buzz, We'll
Speaker 1: see one of those people that knows the words to
Speaker 1: all of the songs. Yeah. She could hear song once
Speaker 1: and pick it up and never leave you alone about it.
Speaker 1: She would sing it until her place out. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's my best friend. She really was. We went through
Speaker 1: so much together. To me adding that mother and daughter
Speaker 1: don't usually go through. When you say it's like going
Speaker 1: through odd stuff, do you have an example, um, I
Speaker 1: was a little abusive relationship. My daughter was there with me.
Speaker 1: She helped me get out of it. We were homeless,
Speaker 1: We lived in hotels together. You know, I wasn't financially
Speaker 1: capable of taking care of my children. Lori was a
Speaker 1: young mother trying to rebuild her life, and she felt
Speaker 1: she couldn't provide Africa or her son the stability they needed.
Speaker 1: But she didn't want to put them in foster care either.
Speaker 1: Instead of losing my children to the system, I placed
Speaker 1: them where I would be a part of their growing
Speaker 1: up and where I knew they would be safe. Lorie
Speaker 1: enrolled her kids in Moose Heart, a charity run boarding
Speaker 1: school west of Chicago, and then she worked to get
Speaker 1: both feet back on the ground. Lorie started a new
Speaker 1: life in the suburbs of Denver, and once things spelt stable,
Speaker 1: she brought her kids out there. As a teen, Africa
Speaker 1: had plans to go to college and study to become
Speaker 1: an audio engineer or maybe a nurse. But when Africa
Speaker 1: graduated from high school, Lorie was working at a seven
Speaker 1: eleven and struggling financially, and Africa wasn't sure she could
Speaker 1: afford tuition. As she tried to figure out next steps.
Speaker 1: Africa decided to move back to Chicago, where she still
Speaker 1: had a lot of family. Dun A four teams. She
Speaker 1: were back to Chicago. She went back with my ex cousind.
Speaker 1: She's nineteen, so not like she was a little kid
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but her cousin wanted to get
Speaker 1: her a job like the post office. I don't know
Speaker 1: what happened. Was that exactly why she moved his unclear.
Speaker 1: Laurie says she was nineteen and looking for independence. Other
Speaker 1: relatives wonder whether she was trying to avoid putting financial
Speaker 1: strain on her mom. Regardless, Chicago was expensive but exciting,
Speaker 1: and there were so many possibilities, so many things to do,
Speaker 1: people to meet. There was a bigger city than when
Speaker 1: she used us to about her in Denver. It was
Speaker 1: hard to get around. You know, she had a car,
Speaker 1: so you know, getting on the boat with you know,
Speaker 1: a little scary horror. But she was trying to figure
Speaker 1: things out for herself out there. Was that scary for
Speaker 1: you or did you feel like she could handle it?
Speaker 1: It was definitely scary, not being close enough to know
Speaker 1: exactly what's really going on. So it was definitely hard
Speaker 1: when we did talk. She was okay, and you know,
Speaker 1: she had the two friends and she was going out
Speaker 1: to eat nice places and she had nice polls. I
Speaker 1: had no idea anything was going on. When I think
Speaker 1: back now, I wonder maybe I could have prevented this.
Speaker 1: When we were talking and she was telling me where
Speaker 1: she was going out to eat or whatever, they never registered.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I still beat myself up. Why didn't
Speaker 1: the register to me? But maybe she was throwing the signs.
Speaker 1: I don't think that you know everything about child, because
Speaker 1: there's something that they're not telling you. They're either scared
Speaker 1: to tell you, but there is a shame to tell you.
Speaker 1: If I knew that this is going on, I would
Speaker 1: have stopped it. I would have went out there my
Speaker 1: child back home. Do you remember the last interaction you
Speaker 1: had with Africa? It was through Facebook. He has sent
Speaker 1: me two pictures and she said she was getting fat
Speaker 1: and I said, no, you're not. And then I got
Speaker 1: off of work on Thursday and I thought I had
Speaker 1: misplaced my phone. So I had message through Facebook and
Speaker 1: told her I think I may have lost my phone.
Speaker 1: So if you need me, messaged me on Facebook. That
Speaker 1: was Thursday night going into Friday. I didn't hear anything
Speaker 1: back on around Friday. Then the following days when I
Speaker 1: found out. It was the making of my fiancing birthday.
Speaker 1: So we had went out to eat earlier that day
Speaker 1: and we were just at home. Lest you walking dead,
Speaker 1: I received a message from my ex husband's girlfriends. She
Speaker 1: messaged me oundkasebook and she said, you need to call Tasha.
Speaker 1: It's about Africa. I just thought Africa might be trying
Speaker 1: to contact me through Patasha too, that's her cousin. I mean, so,
Speaker 1: did you really pay any attention to it? She messaged
Speaker 1: me back Abound ten minutes later, she said, you really
Speaker 1: need to call in regard to Africa. So I called
Speaker 1: Tashay are you doing She said, we were up at
Speaker 1: the corner's office. We have to identify Africa's body. Nothing,
Speaker 1: she said, pick my brain. I'm like the corner for
Speaker 1: what And she said, or we had to identify African's body.
Speaker 1: She said my daughter's name, and it hit me and
Speaker 1: I black out. When I came to I just looked
Speaker 1: up at my fiancee that Africa is dead. Cashould call
Speaker 1: me back and she told me what happens, and um,
Speaker 1: it just unreal to me. She was trying to give
Speaker 1: me details in phone numbers that I had a call,
Speaker 1: I had a contract. The leading detective on the case,
Speaker 1: Detective Forward. Detective Forward informed me that I'd probably hear
Speaker 1: some things about my child that I don't want to believe,
Speaker 1: but to know that it was true. On Friday, October,
Speaker 1: Lori was waiting for a response to message she had
Speaker 1: sent her daughter Africa, but Africa had already left Chicago.
Speaker 1: In fact, she had already left Illinois. She was forty
Speaker 1: five miles southeast in Indiana, living a life that she
Speaker 1: had never told her mom about. She'd gone to meet
Speaker 1: up with a man who she had only spoken to online. Originally,
Speaker 1: she was going to meet him earlier in the day,
Speaker 1: but he'd pushed things back because he said he couldn't
Speaker 1: find a babysitter. Africa knew it was risky to meet
Speaker 1: strangers from the internet, and she wanted to be safe,
Speaker 1: so she let her friend Shimika know where she was
Speaker 1: and what she was doing, and then texted her when
Speaker 1: she met up with the man. Shimika was expecting another
Speaker 1: text from her when things wrapped up, but hours passed
Speaker 1: and the second text never came, so Shimika texted Africa's
Speaker 1: phone to check in. After a delay, she got a response,
Speaker 1: but the message seemed strange. She didn't think it sounded
Speaker 1: like something Africa would right. Shamika started to worry that
Speaker 1: something was wrong, so she tried calling Africa, but she
Speaker 1: couldn't get through. Shamika kept calling over and over, but
Speaker 1: Africa wasn't picking up. So Shamika called another friend, Eduardo,
Speaker 1: and they drove out to investigate. They arrived at the address.
Speaker 1: It was a motel six just off Interstate nine. Eduardo
Speaker 1: and Shamika found Africa's room and knocked on the door,
Speaker 1: but no one answered, so they got someone from the
Speaker 1: motel to let them in. They didn't see anyone inside
Speaker 1: the motel room, but the shower was running. They called
Speaker 1: out to whoever was there, but got no response. As
Speaker 1: they walked into the room, they saw the bed was
Speaker 1: at a strange angle. One of Africa's shoes, a platform stiletto,
Speaker 1: was lying on its side. They saw a shirt button
Speaker 1: on the floor, a broken fingernail, and a torn condom wrapper.
Speaker 1: They crept slowly toward the bathroom and knocked on the door,
Speaker 1: but again there was no response. Maybe someone had just
Speaker 1: left the shower running, so they cracked the door open.
Speaker 1: Shamika screamed and ran out of the room. Africa Hardy
Speaker 1: was lying in the tub, the shower water beating down
Speaker 1: on her. There was a thin red bruise going all
Speaker 1: the way around her neck. Just above that literature mark.
Speaker 1: Detectives notice that Africa had a tattoo. It was a
Speaker 1: Bible verse. It read, no weapon that is formed against
Speaker 1: me shall prosper it tap the floor informed me that
Speaker 1: I you hear some things about my child that I
Speaker 1: don't want to believe, but to know that it was true.
Speaker 1: She was an escort, prostituting, however you want to word it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely something you don't want to know about your fine
Speaker 1: teen year old, beautiful child who could have had anything,
Speaker 1: done anything that she wanted to. Detective Forward had learned
Speaker 1: that Africa was working as a call girl and that
Speaker 1: was how Africa came into contact with the man she
Speaker 1: met at the motel. He was a client. I can
Speaker 1: definitely a hundred percent day that my children will not
Speaker 1: raised that way. But my children no struggle and they
Speaker 1: know how to overcome struggle. And maybe at that time
Speaker 1: Africa may have up that was the way to overcome struggle.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with the older female that she defriended. Him
Speaker 1: was twenty six. Was you that my daughter? My daughter
Speaker 1: was nine too, and I think she kind of primmed
Speaker 1: in prop Africa. You know, the new girl on the block.
Speaker 1: She's beautiful and you can make some money off of her.
Speaker 1: M Still to this day, I don't know why she
Speaker 1: decided to do what she did. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I will never get that answer. Did you
Speaker 1: ever talk to that friend? Yeah, so I did speak
Speaker 1: with her, Like one time, we were on the phone
Speaker 1: for about a good hour and she mentioned that Africa,
Speaker 1: but hey, it's best money, put money, easy money, that
Speaker 1: Africa wanted to come back to Denver. She wanted to know,
Speaker 1: to help take care of her mom. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to assume that that's why, you know it happened. Yea.
Speaker 1: You know, it's hard to put myself in your shoes.
Speaker 1: But I imagine that that's kind of confusing to hear
Speaker 1: because in some ways it's like, you know, that's a
Speaker 1: great thing, she wants to to help you, But then
Speaker 1: it's also like hard because it's you know, like kind
Speaker 1: of connects you to it or something like that. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense exactly? Yeah, Like I feel guilty. I
Speaker 1: mean I feel guilty about the whole scenario, but the
Speaker 1: part that she wanted to help me, you know, since
Speaker 1: Africa was little, I guess she's always looked up to me,
Speaker 1: and I have little letters and know if that she
Speaker 1: write me, and so when I get famous, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to have to worry about anything anymore. I think
Speaker 1: in her mind, you know, she thought that she really
Speaker 1: had to take care of me because now that she
Speaker 1: was grown, it was her turn. You know, mother takes
Speaker 1: care of child, nor child had to take care of mother.
Speaker 1: It was just something in her that she thought she
Speaker 1: wanted to do to me. That speaks to you know
Speaker 1: that you guys were close and that she wanted to
Speaker 1: help you. When I've talked to people, lots of people
Speaker 1: talk about guilt, even in situations where it doesn't really
Speaker 1: make sense. I think that that is also sometimes just
Speaker 1: like part of losing someone you're very close to, you
Speaker 1: always kind of wonder. Yeah, if there's a lot of
Speaker 1: things I wonder about. Did she begged for him to stop?
Speaker 1: She begged him for her life? You know, I was like,
Speaker 1: I wonder these things. I don't know if I'm wrong
Speaker 1: for wondering that. I just want to know what my
Speaker 1: daughter's wife words were when we first reached out to me.
Speaker 1: You said something about old wounds. This is not an
Speaker 1: old wound. This is a daily wound, you know, and
Speaker 1: um to adjusted things, but it never goes away, It
Speaker 1: never ever goes away. UM. I was telling my girlfriend
Speaker 1: that I was getting ready to do this interview, and
Speaker 1: her father passed away a year ago, and you know,
Speaker 1: a very different situation. And but she feels like other
Speaker 1: people get uncomfortable when she talks about it, like they
Speaker 1: don't want her to feel bad, but she wants to
Speaker 1: talk about him. Very true, very true, very very very true.
Speaker 1: People think that you're like completely broken, and they don't
Speaker 1: want to say anything or mention anything. But in order
Speaker 1: for me to keep my daughter's voice going, I have
Speaker 1: to talk about it. Let me talk. If I have
Speaker 1: to cry, and let me cry. If I wanted to laugh,
Speaker 1: let me laugh. So people are really like that. They're
Speaker 1: still like that with me today. So it is what
Speaker 1: it is. So before you were saying that you're like
Speaker 1: kind of curious about this, like you wanted to figure
Speaker 1: out a lot about what was going on after this happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still have some curiosities, and there's still some things
Speaker 1: that I think me to be done and could be done.
Speaker 1: Like I get angry because he killed my daughter and
Speaker 1: my daughter was found enough freaking hotel m naked in
Speaker 1: a shower. Why you know, I get her? You know
Speaker 1: why angry myself. Here's another thing. I wonder why this
Speaker 1: guy we've left loose because here's the crazy thing about
Speaker 1: Africa's case. Well, Africa's death was senseless and seemed utterly random.
Speaker 1: It wasn't random. It was part of a pattern. And
Speaker 1: years earlier, a man named Thomas Hargrove had tried to
Speaker 1: warn police. He said he had evidence that a serial
Speaker 1: killer was on the loose, strangling young women in the area,
Speaker 1: women just like Africa. Hardy. So, who was Thomas Hargrove
Speaker 1: and what was his evidence? Unfortunately, Bury, Indiana is a
Speaker 1: good place to be a killer because you're probably going
Speaker 1: to get away with him. Hey, Ben, can you hear me?
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Thomas Hargrove over zoom here. Hold on
Speaker 1: one second. I have to warn my wife. I'm doing
Speaker 1: an interview. Harkerve's the guy who warned police in Indiana
Speaker 1: that they might have a serial killer and the loose
Speaker 1: Hargrove sixty four. He's got a white beard and wear
Speaker 1: thin rimmed glasses. He wasn't the sort of guy I
Speaker 1: imagined would be investigating serial killers, so he's curious how
Speaker 1: he got into all this. I don't know where these
Speaker 1: things come from, but when I was seventeen, I decided
Speaker 1: I had to be a reporter, and investigative reporter, an
Speaker 1: investigative reporters, somebody looking into a truth that somebody is
Speaker 1: trying to hide, Like Africa. Hardy Hargrove grew up outside Chicago.
Speaker 1: He was inspired by journalists there who came up with
Speaker 1: a creative way to expose the city's corruption. Reporters kept
Speaker 1: hearing about the bribes that business owners had to pay
Speaker 1: city inspectors, but it was hard to prove any wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: so the journalists decided to go deep undercover. The reporters
Speaker 1: fought their editor into opening a bar. They called it
Speaker 1: the Mirage. Journalists were actually becoming bar keeps, and they
Speaker 1: were running this bar for months and months. They were
Speaker 1: specifically looking for indications of public corruption. And they found it.
Speaker 1: With hidden cameras running, the reporters caught inspectors taking bribes
Speaker 1: and ignoring code violations. It was a remarkable project, and
Speaker 1: it just seemed like it was so much fun. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be like these people. After high school, Hargrove
Speaker 1: studied journalism at the University of Missouri. It's actually one
Speaker 1: of the country's top programs for journalism at that time.
Speaker 1: In the early seventies, a new field was emerging called
Speaker 1: computer assisted reporting. The idea was that reporters could use
Speaker 1: computers to analyze data like government records. Hard grow quickly
Speaker 1: grasped that computing had the potential to revolutionize investigative journalism.
Speaker 1: It allowed reporters to step back and look at issues
Speaker 1: with a wider lens. From this new perspective, sometimes previously
Speaker 1: invisible patterns would come into focus. If you didn't ask
Speaker 1: the question in exactly the right way, your program would fail.
Speaker 1: And it was very frustrating, but it was astonishing what
Speaker 1: computers could do. After college, Hargrove landed a job as
Speaker 1: a crime reporter for the Birmingham Post Herald. Being a
Speaker 1: police reporter in the Deep South was a remarkable way
Speaker 1: to get started. I came as a Yankee and really
Speaker 1: wasn't expecting to like that experience, but I did. Her
Speaker 1: Grove loved the work experience he was getting, but being
Speaker 1: a police reporter wasn't always easy. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: think I want to write exposes about crooked politics. That's
Speaker 1: another thing to see what happens because of bad policies,
Speaker 1: poverty and desperation and violence. Hard Grove kept a police
Speaker 1: scanner running all the time, even at home. If he
Speaker 1: heard a dispatch that sounded newsworthy, he'd immediately drive out
Speaker 1: to the scene of the crime. Sometimes, if he happened
Speaker 1: to be nearby, he would beat the cops there. One
Speaker 1: was at a convenience store in Hoover, Alabama. I opened
Speaker 1: the door and didn't see anybody, and then found the
Speaker 1: cashier behind the counter. The cashier had been shot. He
Speaker 1: was lying on the ground leading out. He didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: He wasn't especially conscious, but he breathed his last It
Speaker 1: is an experience to see someone die. I didn't really
Speaker 1: think when I was a teenager what it was like
Speaker 1: to cover the news. I guess I didn't realize that
Speaker 1: when you experience the news rather than just right about it.
Speaker 1: It really is a life changing process. Hard Group's time
Speaker 1: as a crime reporter was also when he first learned
Speaker 1: about serial killers and a phenomenon called linkage blindness. In
Speaker 1: the late nineties seventies, the term serial killer did not exist.
Speaker 1: That was invented in the eighties. The term did not exist,
Speaker 1: but the idea that someone could kill over and over
Speaker 1: again was becoming common among Americans at that time. Just
Speaker 1: to the east of Birmingham, Atlanta was experiencing the Atlanta
Speaker 1: child murders, and those murders were not being solved. It's
Speaker 1: unusual for children to be murdered. It's very unusual for
Speaker 1: child murders to go unsolved, and there was criticism of
Speaker 1: the Atlanta Police Department for not recognizing the patterns sooner.
Speaker 1: I started attending academic symposiums that looked into the question
Speaker 1: of the Atlanta child murders, and I heard from criminologists
Speaker 1: that this is a well known problem called linkage blindness,
Speaker 1: that when there are connected cases, often the connection is
Speaker 1: not made by police because of the nature of how
Speaker 1: homicides are investigated. If someone murdered, a detective is assigned
Speaker 1: to the case. When another person is murdered, Usually a
Speaker 1: different detective is assigned to the case. If there are
Speaker 1: commonalities to the two murders, those commonalities are not recognized
Speaker 1: unless those two detectives have a conversation over the water cooler.
Speaker 1: If those killings occurred in a neighboring jurisdiction, that conversation
Speaker 1: never happens. Experts in the field, we're saying that most
Speaker 1: connected murders go unrecognized. The links are very rarely made,
Speaker 1: and I kept that in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: Hargrove didn't know it yet, but this simple insight about
Speaker 1: linkage blindness, that connections between murders are often missed by police,
Speaker 1: That idea would become an obsession and completely alter the
Speaker 1: course of his life. But his next clue wouldn't come
Speaker 1: until decades later, when he was halfway across the country.
Speaker 1: Hargrove had climbed up through the ranks, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand four he was living his teenage dream. He was
Speaker 1: working as an investigative reporter in Washington, d C. And
Speaker 1: he was using the programming skills he learned in college
Speaker 1: to write big data driven stories. In two thousand four,
Speaker 1: I was assigned to do a really interesting story. He
Speaker 1: just started a piece on prostitution when he stumbled across
Speaker 1: another clue. In some cities, anti prostitution laws are vigorously enforced.
Speaker 1: In other cities, the laws are virtually ignored, and in
Speaker 1: other cities just the men who higher prostitutes are arrested.
Speaker 1: So it was all across the board, who gets arrested,
Speaker 1: whether anyone gets arrested. To study this, I needed the
Speaker 1: uniform crime report because prostitution is something the FBI counts,
Speaker 1: So hart Grove ordered a CD with FBI records about crime.
Speaker 1: He was planning to compare prostitution arrest between different cities
Speaker 1: when he discovered something else. Included on that CD at
Speaker 1: no extra charge was a file I had never heard of,
Speaker 1: called the Supplemental Homicide Report. Being paid to be curious,
Speaker 1: I opened it up and what it was was line
Speaker 1: after line of individual murders. It showed the age, race,
Speaker 1: sex of each victim. Victim is a blackmail eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: It had the weapon that was used. He was shut
Speaker 1: with a handgun. It had the police theory as to
Speaker 1: why the homicide occurred. The murder is thought to be
Speaker 1: due to an argument over money or property. It had
Speaker 1: the month and year and the jurisdiction January two thousand,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Long Beach, California. I had never seen the
Speaker 1: individual crime data before, and I don't know where all
Speaker 1: these connections occur in our minds, But the first thought
Speaker 1: I had upon opening the s HR the Supplemental Homicide
Speaker 1: Report was could we teach a computer to identify connected
Speaker 1: cases to find serial killings? Hard Grove had a feeling
Speaker 1: that an algorithm could find patterns within that data and
Speaker 1: detect serial killers. And maybe you could even be used
Speaker 1: to detect active serial killers who had not yet been caught.
Speaker 1: This idea started hard Grove down a winding path that
Speaker 1: eventually led him to discover a trail of bodies, bodies
Speaker 1: that he says, we're left behind by the man who
Speaker 1: killed Africa Hardy. But this isn't just a story investigating
Speaker 1: Africa Hardy's killer and cold cases that might be connected
Speaker 1: to him. If there's one thing that will become clear
Speaker 1: from this story, it's that Africa Hardy didn't need to
Speaker 1: die next time on algorithm. Serial killer Gary Ridgway was
Speaker 1: convicted in a court of law of murdering forty eight
Speaker 1: girls and women. The question was could we teach a
Speaker 1: computer a process that would tell us that something god
Speaker 1: awful happened in Seattle. My editors recognized that this could
Speaker 1: be something very cool, but it's hard to commit to
Speaker 1: a project you don't know up front whether it's possible.
Speaker 1: The stereotypes about the profile of a serial killer or
Speaker 1: profile of the victims is not really very consistent with
Speaker 1: the facts. This is really one of the most frustrating
Speaker 1: experiences of my life. Your only hope is to get
Speaker 1: Jackie to talk. I think the Gary Police Department should
Speaker 1: be looking at some of those old cases. They still
Speaker 1: may have a killer out there. Episode two of Algorithm
Speaker 1: is out now. Listen to subscribe on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Speaker 1: This episode was written and produced by me ben Key Brick.
Speaker 1: Algorithm is executive produced by Alex Williams, Donald Albright, and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. Production assistance in mixing by Eric Quintana. The
Speaker 1: music is by Makeup and Vanity Set and Blue Dot Sessions.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Christina Dana, Miranda Hawkins, Jamie Albright, rema El Kaili,
Speaker 1: Trevor Young, and Josh Thane for their help and notes.
Speaker 1: Also really thanks for listening. Um, it means a lot.
Speaker 1: Like I was saying, this is my first time hosting
Speaker 1: a podcast like this and I love to know what
Speaker 1: you think. So if you have a moment, please subscribe
Speaker 1: and leave a review.