You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together
with Kristin Dilly. My name is Kristin Dilly. I'm a writer, a
researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social
media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas. We're back again with a crime Con after action report
from Crime Con Nashville. If you have not had a chance to listen to
part one of our after action report, please go ahead and do and then
join us here for part two. So Bill, we left off last time
talking about getting to meet one of the most i would say phenomenal and impactful
minds in true crime, and that is John Douglas the Mind Hunter himself.
We were lucky enough to encounter him both in the speaker's room before we went
on stage because we were speaking at the same time he was, and then
later on that evening at a meet and greet before his full house presentation and
evening with the Mind Hunter. What did you think about John Douglas. He
was phenomenal. First of all, we had to make a decision to buy
an extra cost ticket in order to hear John Douglas speak at this special kind
of secondary evening event. We were really disappointed when we found out that John
Douglas, who is I think a hero to both of us, that John
Douglas was going to be speaking with Chris Hansen at the same time we were
presenting on the Colonial Parkray murders, So we knew we were going up against
at least, if not the top attraction at this year's Crime Gon, certainly
one of the top three or so. Everybody was talking about John Douglas.
Both of our partners, Mark and your example, Pamela in mine urged us
to spend the extra money type budgets notwithstanding, and go to hear John Douglas
at the special ticketed event that evening because we were not able to hear John
Douglas speak with Chris Hansen. So our respective partners urged us to find the
money, and as a matter of fact, Pamela even said, you know
something, I'll give you an early birthday present. I'll give you a ticket
to see John Douglas. I know how important this is to you. I
was so glad that we ended up doing that because the John Douglas thing,
speaking of rock stars. Man Man, he is in his late seventies,
but he's a legend in terms of his world as the person that helped establish
the BAU, the Behavioral Analysis Unit at FBI Quantico, and helped develop the
science of profiling, although he's very quick to credit all of the other team
members that he worked with, including a number of other very well known criminologists.
I was so glad we ended up doing it, though, because what
a privilege to get a chance to meet him, have a photograph taken with
him, chat with him a bit, and then hear him present. He
is so phenomenal as a presenter. The cases that he described, including photographs
some of which were a little hard to look at. Ooh yeah, because
he was talking about a lot of serial killer cases and very disturbing cases involving
primarily women and children. He did something which I thought was very thoughtful,
which is they did tell us in advance that if you're triggered by this kind
of content, you do not want to attend this event because he's telling you
these stories about very disturbing cases and interviewing some of the worst serial killers.
But one of the things he would do is show you the photograph and then
he would click off the photograph, which is good because sometimes you'd be talking
about a particular case for five or ten minutes, what the circumstances were,
and then later interviewing the offenders, putting the whole thing together, helping solve
the case. What he would do is he would show you the photograph to
set the scene, and then he would click off the photograph and it would
go back to him up on a big screen. We were like in the
second or third row. Yeah, we were in the third row. We
had VIP privilege because we had paid, we paid a probably blosphemous amount of
money for the privilege to go to the cocktail hour ahead of time and then
VIP seating. So yeah, we were in the third row, right,
and so yeah, I mean we were up close. Keep in mind to
for anybody who needs a little bit of a scale of this thing. I
heard the next day there were thirteen hundred people in that ballroom. It was.
It was insane. The line. Luckily, with our VIP risk bands,
we did not have to wait in the massive line that everyone else did
because we had paid for the privilege of being within the first three rows.
But the line to get into Douglas was unbelievable. I've never seen a line
that long before. I guess maybe if I went to popular concerts or something,
I would see it. Yeah, it was like going to a big
rock concert. Yeah, then it was. It was. And I would
say that out of all the cool souvenirs that we got over the weekend,
my very favorite souvenir was from the John Douglas Cocktail Hour. They limited the
cocktail Hour to one hundred and fifty people and every person received a challenge coin
which had the FBI logo on the back and a John Douglas Mine Hunter logo
on the front. And I am holding my coin right now, will this
is like, I actually may need to put this in the fireproof safe so
that I know that it's always safe. Like honestly, I'm this is my
first challenge coin, and I cherish it. This is amazing, Like it's
literally set on my bedside table since we came back from Crime God was really
just an amazing presentation, And you're right, he was very tactful about the
way that he handled the crime scene photos and it did say, like you
pointed out, well ahead of time. They gave content warnings and they said
graphic crime scene photos. And even so they blurred and blacked out some of
it which needed to happen, it was still very upsetting, and there was
actually one I think was the very first one that he showed us. I
actually I had to look away after about ten seconds. I just couldn't handle
it. And there was me too. There were a couple of spots where
they were really difficult to look at. But I also think he wants you
to know what they were up against, the kind of criminals they were investigating,
the kind of cases they were trying to crack, and just the level
of depravity was it was shocking. There were one or two times where you
turned to me and you were like, oh yeah, it's so bad for
these people. And like I said, a lot of I don't think we
saw a lot of pictures of children, but there were references to killers who
had preyed on children. But even the pictures of the adults man were really
hard to look at. You and I are no stranger to crime scene photos.
It is, but it is not a part of our everyday life.
We have seen our share of them, but it's not a part of our
everyday life. And I do the fact that at the very beginning, when
John was talking about the early part of his career, he made a point
of mentioning that in order to do what he does, you have to at
times have a sense of humor, even if it's a black sense of humor.
Yeah, you have to be irreverent at times, and you have to
just be able to take yourself away from the worst of it, the depravity
of it, like you said. And so I was amused and amazed and
actually a little like, dude, you're such a badass. The fact that
he is so funny and very irreverent and he is not willing to take himself
too seriously for all that he is just this total badass. He had a
wonderful sense of humor he did, and he was telling funny stories left and
right, and it's I think he's right. You have to have something to
get you through, and if that's a gallows sense of humor, then so
be it. If that gets you through that stack of nasty crime scene photos
and saying that, I want to be clear here, he's never ever making
fun or light of the victims. Oh no, not ever ever. It's
of the team and interactions with the team and even some interactions with the serial
killers that they interviewed and analyzed because they were trying to figure out this idea
of serial killers. They are the team that are credited even with coming up
with the expression serial killer, trying to figure out what is it about these
people that makes them the monsters that they are. Those moments of levity I
think were pivotal. It sounded like the team was very close. He mentioned
a lot of them by name, but he indicated that dark humor was necessary
just to keep yourself from just completely losing it studying what these people had done.
His talk ran long, and it was so funny because Nick from True
Crime Garage came out at one point to try to close out the session,
and everybody protested and they were not having it. He's going to keep going,
so he went on, po going on till five am. He went
on for another fifteen minutes, and then poor Nick came out on stage and
he goes They sent me back out again. He and Nick was acting as
the MC, and of course he's one of the biggest John Douglas fans out
there, and I think he came out once and then the Douglas wasn't having
it, and Nick went away. But then he came back because clearly the
producers were like, it's eleven o'clock at night. We gotta wrap this.
You gotta wrap it up. Man. It was very funny though, but
he because his talk went over, he did not have time for audience questions.
But there was one that Nick said they had determined backstage was going to
be the best one to ask him, and I liked this, I know
you was the question again. The question was who was the most evil or
depraved person that you had ever interviewed? And his answer was Bittaker, who
was one of the Toolbox Killers from California, who, in addition to raping
and murdering their victims, they also they tortured, raped, and murdered their
victims, and they recorded the audio of it. And John was sharing that
for new recruits to the BAU or the Behavioral Science Unit back then BAU now,
they would play the tape of those torture sessions, essentially to make sure
that new recruits could cut it. And so he shared the story about Scott
Glenn, who played Jack Crawford in Silence of the Lambs, the character who
was based on John Douglas. He brought Scott Glenn into the BAU and he
played the tape for Scott Glenn, and Scott Glenn could only listen to about
thirty seconds of it maybe, which I think is probably all anybody could manage.
And he did talk about the fact that he said, if there was
one person that I could pull the switch on, it would have been on
him. He did die in prison, unfortunately before he was ever executed.
I mean was surprised when he indicated he'd be willing to flip the switch on
the electric chair on a number of these people. But remember he's met these
people. He spent hours sitting across the table from them, interviewing them,
not for any personal enjoyment. They were really trying to figure out what makes
these people tick and how can we prevent this kind of thing from happening again
and again. The I was telling a friend of mine who had not been
able to come to Crime con who was a big John Douglas fan, about
the session, and he was very interested in John's answer to the question who
is it that you think is the worst person that you've ever interviewed? And
when I said he answered Bittaker, he was like, oh my gosh,
yeah, And he actually asked me, he said, have you seen that.
NBC News a couple of years ago released some archival news from the day
in the courtroom when Bittaker was on trial, And I said, no,
what footage is that? And he said, it's just cutaway footage of the
courtroom doors. And as people are listening to the tapes that were put into
evidence against Bitacker, you've got people fleeing out of the courtroom doors because they
can't handle listening to the audio of it. And every time that the door
opens, you can hear the audio from that tape echoing through the courtroom and
out into the hallway. It's just news footage of all of these people rushing
out of the courtroom, covering their ears, just running to get away from
it. The audio is chilling. It's absolutely chilling. And that's one of
those instances where I was looking at that and I thought, my God,
to be a juror for a case like that, or a duror for any
major case that, I can't imagine the toll that takes on someone to be
a juror and a trial against someone like Bittaker or any other awful, heinous
to pray serial killer. I'm not sure whether Bittaker and Norris were tried at
the same time or separate, because Norris flipped on Bittaker, Oh got it.
I wasn't sure about that because it seemed to me that they were tried
separately. I can't imagine. This is the kind of thing. I feel
this way, even about the crime scene photos and the Colonial Parkway murders.
You can't unhear this stuff, you can't unsee this stuff. And at the
same time, the prosecutors have an obligation to develop and present a strong case
against these individuals. They have to show evidence which has got to be really
difficult to look at and to listen to. The two of them, Bittaker
and Norris, are just sick and the extreme. One of the questions I
would have asked would have been, you interviewed the worst of the worst.
Were you ever tempted to reach across the table and throttle any of these people?
Because man, the stuff they had to talk about. John Douglas talked
about buddying up is not exactly what I mean, but he had to try
to develop a rapport with these people to get them to talk about these cases.
Now, in some of these examples, they're actually talking to people who
are multiple offenders, but they're also trying to solve cases. Remember there are
sometimes kidnappings mixed in here, and there's always the potential that victims may still
be alive or where the victims remains located, which is obviously incredibly important as
we know in the Colonial Parkray murders. These sorts of things required him to
spend hours with these guys and chum it up with them on some level.
And yeah, it was just chilling listening to him talk about sitting there for
hours. They did all sorts of unusual things too, Like they tended to
interview these suspects in the afternoon or evening. They tended to set these rooms
up so they were very dramatically lit. They wanted to create these kind of
moody atmospherics, and I think all of that was designed to add to a
comfort level for these offenders, to get them to talk very interesting, insightful
stuff. I'm thrilled that we got to see his session. We did get
to meet him ahead of time in the green room, yeah, before we
went out on stage, And so I did manage to have one of my
bucket list items checked off. I brought a k I'm such a doric I
truly am. I brought a copy of the Crime Classification Manual, which he
and Anne Burgess, Robert Wrestler, and a couple of other people wrote together.
And I have a second edition copy. It sound like it's fifth edition
or something like that. And I brought it because I wanted him and doctor
Ann to sign it. I'd say. I pulled up the copy of Mine
Hunter that his co author, Mark Olshaker, who's a friend of mine,
had signed for me already, and I brought it over to him and I
said, can you sign so that now I have both you and Mark?
And he was like, oh yeah, sure, and then I brought him
the Crime Classification Manual to sign and he was like, you're really into criminology?
How many tell I could tell he was impressed. It wasn't like just
another copy of the millions sold of mind Hunter or any of the other books
that he and Mark have written. I could tell he was surprised when you
pulled it out and it's a big, fat book it is, and it's
it's exceedingly well thumbed because I go through and read things through it, which
I mean it was. I was so psyched. And then I was able,
of course by the very end, to get doctor Anne to sign it
as well, which was my whole goal is to get both of them to
sign it. But he was just the nicest guy. And when I mentioned
to him, I said I'm friends with Mark Olshaker, he was like,
oh, yeah, Mark's mentioned you. And then he's like, you post
about renting on Facebook all the time, and I was like, oh my
god. I knew John Douglas was my friend on Facebook. I knew that,
but I didn't know that he was paying attention. I was like,
oh my god, you know he knew who you were. Mind Hunter's paying
attention to me. So after we had our picture done, I sent that
to Mark, his writing partner, and Mark sent back a couple of pithy
remarks. And when we saw John later that night, I said, I
don't need a picture, you took one with me already, but I did
want to show you what Mark sent to me. And he was like,
Oh, that's cool. He's just a super nice guy, very chill.
It would be very interested to know what he makes of crime Con now that
he's done it. I'm sure that it's exhausting. They've been trying to get
him for several years and he's all always been on the list, including on
ours. Were Yeah, some of the people that take a few minutes at
the end of crime Con, they always ask us how we're things. They
really do want to know how they can improve things. And one of the
questions they've asked, both of us and a bunch of other people too,
is who would you like to see at crime Con next year? And John
Douglas has always been on the short list. How thrilled did they finally manage
that. I hope they get him again, but you can see what a
massive amount of interest there was from the Crime con attendees. People were really
super excited to meet him to say hello, but mostly we all wanted to
hear what he had to say. And he's such a great storyteller, talking
about all of these well known and more obscure cases, what came out of
them, what they learn, how they began to develop the so cents of
profiling, how the team worked together. It was fascinating. I really could
have listened to him talk until five o'clock in the morning. Yeah, I
know, he kept joking about that. Yeah, seriously, we could have
gone on that long's He was phenomenal. I would say. The other big
speaker of the weekend was John Walsh, and that is one of the I
was able to keep my emotions fairly well in check for most of John's other
than those couple of moments of looh, I can't look at these crime scene
photos. But I had a really hard time at John Walsh's panel because even
though he's he's absolutely one hundred percent of badass. He's done amazing things with
founding the Center for National Missing and Exploited Children neckback. He's helped really make
America's most wanted into what it is today. But of course, the story
that everyone wanted to hear was what happened to his son, Adam Walsh.
So he spoke with Angeline Hartman, one of the directors at NETMEC. She
was walking him through the story of what happened to his six year old son,
Adam Walsh, who was kidnapped from a shopping mall in Hollywood, Florida,
and who was ultimately found de capitated in a canal. He reached a
point in the telling of the story and I see this a lot with people
who were talking about the crimes that have impacted their lives, and I see
this in you two in a certain extent. Bill, when you get started
talking about it, you just roll with it and keep going, like you
have to get the story out all at once. There reached a point where
Angeline was asking him questions, but rather than if she asked him a question
to get him started to tell us the story about what happened to Adam,
And she reached a point where like it was clear she was going to interject,
and he just held up a hand and was like, I got it,
let me go, let me tell it. And so he told it
all in one long, sort of five minute monologue about what had happened to
Adam, and he was very you can tell it obviously is very much still
a part of him, as it is with everyone who was a member of
the club that nobody wants to join. But I mean, he held it
together really well. I would say that there was only one point that he
had a hard time holding it together on and that was the part that I
and I'm sure a bunch of other people struggled with. I was sitting there
really full on crying. At one point, he was talking about the fact
that he drove to the coroner's office to get Adam's skull back so that he
could bury his son, all of his son, and they wouldn't give him
his skull back because it was evidence in a murder case. Wow, And
he was so upset. He was like, I want to bury my son
and they said, we can't give you back his skull. It's evidence in
a case. That was so upsetting for me to hear, and I'm not
sure why it triggered me quite the way that it did. There was a
lot of sniffles and tears throughout the room at that point in the presentation,
But my gosh, he talk about thriving in spite of major adversity. You're
listening to mind over Murder. We'll be right back after this word from our
sponsors. We're back here at mindover Murder. Before we get back to the
podcast, just wanted to remind you that we have a go fundme effort going
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promote Mind over Murder and specifically to push the Colonial Parkway murders investigation forward.
We'd love it if you could support us in any way that you can.
Any donation from five dollars to whatever you can afford is very much appreciated and
will be incredibly helpful. The link is in the show notes and in our
social media pages. As always, thanks for your support. Now back to
mindover Murder. This is a guy who basically said not going to let the
worst thing that has ever happened to me break me. I'm going to go
on to do better things with it. He talked about founding the National Center
for Missing and Exploited Children. It was his wife's idea and they started it
in their garage. They had received some crazy number like forty thousand letters and
cards. His wife wanted to respond to all of them, and that took
a very long time. She began to realize this interest in Adam's case and
the support for the Walsh family, that this also presented an opportunity, and
so she said, we have to do something with this. I thought that
was very powerful when you think about it from a John Walsh perspective. He's
told the basics of that story any number of times and I think to myself,
Man, how does he keep it together. It's got to be really
difficult. He does it, and he's warm and engaging and very polished.
He's very passionate. He feels very strongly about going out and capturing bad guys.
We talked about America's most Wanted and now having a sun be part of
the show. He was amazing, he really was. And again, he's
one of the biggest I don't know stars is the word that I'm looking for,
but he's one of the most important figures in the true crime world,
and people were extremely excited to meet him and most importantly to hear what he
had to say. He's a very inspiring guy, he really is. I've
met him before several years back. I remember he said to me. The
more I learned about your sister's case, meaning the Colonial Parkway murders, the
more it reminds me of Adam's case because of the problems inside the case and
friction between agencies and lack of coordination, and so I don't want to turn
this into bashing of the FBI or any of the other agencies involved. He
talked with me privately about his own frustration and heartbreak with running into exactly the
same type of problem that we've run into with the Colonial Parkway murders. I
didn't have a chance to have a one on one conversation with him at Crime
Clime because man, much like John Douglas, he was mobbed. Everybody wanted
a piece of John Walsh the one thing that I thought was very interesting,
and he brought this up at the Clue Awards. So he was awarded crime
Fighter of the Year at the Clue Awards this year. And for anybody who's
not familiar with the Clue Awards, one of my friends referred to it as
the crime Fighter's prom I said, it's more like crime Fighter's Academy Awards.
But sure, I get what you're talking about, because I sent her photos
and she was like, you dressed up all fancy, look at you.
Guys. See, he was awarded crime Fighter of the Year. The recipient
from the previous year gives the award to the person who this year, and
so that the people presenting this year were Gabby Petito's parents and stepparents, the
Potito's and the Schmids. They gave a very nice speech, and they welcomed
John Walsh out onto the stage. And one thing that I thought was very
interesting was the fact that he said, he said ninety percent, and I
assume he knows the figures better than I do, but I haven't had a
chance to fact check this. Ninety percent of all couples who lose a child
divorce within the first couple of years because they can't handle the loss. And
so he talked about the fact that he really admired the Potito's and the Schmids
because they had stuck together, they had stayed together, they'd opened up the
Gabby Patito Foundation to try to make sure that Gabby's loss had not been in
vain, much like he had done with Nekmech, so that Adam's loss hadn't
been in vain. And he acknowledged the fact that he and his wife reve
have not. They did not separate after Adam. They remain married and they
were a functional family unit. I thought it was very interesting that he mentioned
that statistic, because it did stick out to me that from my understanding,
of all the parents in the Colonial Parkway murders cases, all of those parents
stayed together too, right, like your parents stayed together after losing Kathy.
Yeah, they did. I can't think of any of the parents that separated
after that. I'm not sure about that statistic. I'm not here to debate,
yeah, the stat but the people that I know who've lost a loved
one in situations like this, I don't think they've all headed for divorce.
Far from it. I think it was mainly with reference to losing a child.
And I do remember, just anecdotally, after my friend Nikki died when
I was in college, her parents split almost immediately afterward. They just couldn't.
I do, and I do understand it happens, and I think I
have an understanding of why it happened. In my personal experience, which is
limited, I have not found that every couple split up. Now, in
the example of the Potitos in the show, Gabby's folks were already divorced and
they had both remarried. One of the things I thought was extremely impressive,
and I have had a chance to spend some one on one time with them,
is that although Gabby's folks were divorced, they and their respective news spouses
have worked together, the four of them, in a way that's really admirable.
They practically finish each other's sentences. They clearly like each other. They
get along really well. They're very dedicated to having, as you were saying,
something worthwhile needs to come out of losing a great kid like Gabby.
They're determined, like John Walsh and so many others, to have something positive
come out of their loss. One of the great things to come out of
crime Con is that it is a very it is very inspiring weekend. It
is very emotional. Obviously, you're seeing things like graphic crime scene photos,
you're hearing just absolutely harrowing tales, but you do get a lot of here
are the ways that we can carry on. Here are the ways that we
move forward. Here are the ways that we do not let trauma beat us
down or ruin us. I really admire that from so many of these people,
whether it's investigators or victims' families, who say, this is not the
end of me, This is not the breaking of me. There is more
beyond this. There is life beyond this. One of the other groups of
people that we were very privileged to get to hang out with at Crime Con
was Aaron and Denise Quinn, who survived in absolutely brutal home invasion in twenty
fifteen. They wrote Victim f along with our friend Nikki Egan, the story
about the home invasion and Denise's kidnapping and the subsequent major issues with the Vallejo
Police Department that resulted, and Netflix recently made a series about them called American
Nightmare. They had a wonderful panel with Nikki Egan that I was happy to
go listen to, and then we got to spend some time with them after
the Clue Awards and they're just the nicest people that you could possibly imagine,
And they too, have turned major tragedy and major trauma into an opportunity to
grow and say, you know what, I am not this horrible thing that
has happened to me. I am more than that, I am better than
that. That was very inspiring to be able to spend some time with them.
I liked them both quite a bit, and I know we were hoping
to have them on Mind over Murder at some point a couple of weeks ago,
and there were some scheduling issues. We will be having them on a
future episode. I was super impressed with the two of them. I just
thought they were amazing. It was really fun getting to know them, and
there are young, vibrant couple who are determined to tell their story. But
I also felt like they were also trying to send a message that life goes
on and that you can recover from this kind of trauma. The two of
them were a lot of fun. Had a really good time talking with them
till far into the night. We ended up a whole bunch of us ended
up going out to the bar after Crime Con, which is not normal for
either Bill or I. We don't drink, either of us, but we
were perfectly happy to have diet cokes and waters and there and talk and I
think Aaron and I ended up talking about and Nikki. We all ended up
talking about movies of all things. Like Aaron was asking what do I teach
and I mentioned my movie class and he was like, oh, give me
the rundown, what do you watch? And we talked and talked, and
it's nice to know too that, like, you can go to a thing
like Crime Con and not all of your conversations have to be about crime,
trauma, violence, or anything else. We could sit there and talk about
movies and we debate, debated the merits of m Night Shyamalan and whether or
not he is Hitchcock's sort of modern day successor. We talked about Jaws.
Just wonderful stuff and I love that. I love being able to talk to
people and go, hey, we can connect everything's other than crime. Yeah,
that's true. And also different people had books out talking about that experience,
what that was like, This is something that I know you and I
would like to do in the future. So it's interesting talking to people about
their relationships with their agents, their publishers, how they got their book deals,
all that kind of stuff. Those really interesting talking about lots of other
stuff that's of interest to us. That wasn't necessarily about shocking true crime or
true crime details. It was a just a phenomenal experience. We're not paid
to promote Crime Cone, not by any stretch, but it's such a phenomenal
experience if you're interested in true crime, It's definitely something to think about next
September in Denver. It's in Aurora, which is outside Denver. As I
was reading today, it's a fairly healthy commute from Aurora to Denver. So
apparently we're at I think another gay right, another gaylord. Yeah. Actually,
I'm going to get off of here in book a hotel to make sure
that we're able to get there, because I do want to stay on property.
I don't know if we're under a giant bubble this time like we were
less time. Oh it's beautiful. I looked up pictures of the resort.
It's absolutely stunning. And it's got a great, big, wide lawn with
lots of lawn games and chairs. And I've never actually seen the Rocky Mountain.
The Blue Ridge is the closest mountain range that we have, and they
are tiny because they're so old. I have yet to see really big,
tall mountains like the Rockies. My boyfriend grew up in la but he went
to school in Oregon, and so he spent a lot of time in his
youth backpacking and things like that, and I have never seen anything related to
mountains that size. I'm really looking forward to going just to see real mountains
as opposed to the Blue Ridge, which are real, but like I said,
they're very small because they're very old. The Rocky Mountains are pretty spectacular,
and Colorado is a beautiful place. So I'm very much looking for to
it and I'm sure it's going to be a fascinating trip. And if they
do the kind of job they did at Crime Con Nashville next year in Denver,
it'll be completely off the charts. One thing I wanted to talk about
was social media is so integral to this experience. There were a small number
of people but very vocal on social media complaining about crime Con afterward. This
is while I was delayed at the airport, so I was starting to catch
up on my social media and reading some of the comments, to the point
where one of the organizers, Kevin balf reached out to me and he wrote
me a note and said, did you have any bad experiences? Did you
and Kristin have a good time? And I wrote him back and I said,
we thought it was phenomenal. We thought it was one of the best
crime cons ever. You guys did a great job and he said, Oh,
I'm so glad because he said, I saw you like something where someone
had commented, and I said, Kevin, sometimes I'm just liking something just
to remind myself that I've read it. What was strange was there were a
bunch of people that got onto social media and they were complaining about like ridiculous
stuff. First of all, that doesn't have anything to do with the event
organizers, Like they were complaining about water pressure in their showers, Oh,
come on. And the fact that the hotel was extremely large, which we
all knew, and that there was a lot of walking around, which again
welcome to Crime Con. It's a very large event with sixty five hundred people
and thousands of people staying in hotel rooms, and you can only do that
at a place that is very large. As a result, there's a fair
amount of hiking around. When people ask me what advice would I give a
first time Crime con visitor, I would say, really comfortable walking shoes,
ring a sweater or a sweatshirt because the ballrooms tend to be cold, and
bring snacks because you're going and going, and unless you want to skip out
on a panel or something like that, bring something to eat because it can
take a while to go and grab lunch or whatever. I was kind of
shocked by the ridiculous minutia that people were complaining about, and they were saying
it was such a long walk and it was so busy, and the lines
were so long, and it's have you never been to a major event before?
These people are putting on multiple panel discussions in different ballrooms, with meet
and greets and photo opportunities and on. They're trying to present multiple events back
to back, and I thought they did a great job. The volunteers that
were working there, you know you see them in the crime concerts, were
extremely helpful because I often found myself turned around, like where's this ballroom?
Or how do we get to the green room? All that kind of stuff,
And everybody was unbelievably friendly and helpful and excited to be there. I
thought the grousing after the fact was ridiculous. I've noticed over the last few
days now that I've been home, the pendulum has swung back to I think
a more balanced perspective, yes, which is people saying I had a phenomenal
time. I saw these amazing people. I listened, I learned, I
was inspired by their stories, so I felt like the balance swung back in
a more positive direction. But I was shocked at the stuff I was reading
at at the airport, people like I couldn't believe how far it was,
and it's like, yeah, it's yeah, welcome, welcome to Crime cod
Like I said in our previous episode, twenty two miles of walking on the
fitbit over three days. It was unbelievable and it's so worth it. Any
large scale event that I've ever been to, I've been to a lot of
conferences and stuff outside the true crime space, it always involves very large facilities
because if you bring thousands of people together, where else are you going to
put them? You can't just put them up at Motel six. It's just
not going to work. It has to be at a larger facility with very
large production facilities because you're trying to present simultaneous events. And I thought that
Kevin Bealf and his team did an amazing job. He helped us out and
at several points when we had questions or concerns, and I think to myself,
how many hundred, if not thousand people hit that staff with questions or
problems or whatever, and they resolved things as quickly as they could. I
thought they did a great job, and they have at every crime con I've
attended, which I think is I lost count? I think it's six or
seven? Yeah, I think five? About five for me, No,
six for me, seven for you? I think yeah at this point,
and i'ming forward to the next one. Yeah. Same. I will say
that we did have the dubious distinction, and this is not crime CON's fault
at all, of being I'm sure that there are other things that happened to
other people at crime Con. We may we just haven't heard about them.
We are probably one of the group of creators that ended up having a crime
committed against us at crime Con. That's right. I remember tell us as
part of a partnership that we've developed with my wonderful friend Michelle, who runs
a great little store called The Glittered Squirrel, which she is quick to point
out on her website is not a strip club. She makes wonderful. She
calls it glassware with flair drinkwear with flair rather, and it is just saucy,
attitudinous, funny tumblers, glass beer cans with things emblazoned on them.
And she had a host of six of them, six samples that she wanted
us to take to Crime con in order to see if these would be a
hit with the true crime audience. So we took six of her samples,
along with two really wonderful tumblers that she created that said partners in Crime with
bloody handprints on them and a QR code, and we set them up on
our table. We're ready to go to our speaking engagement, and we'd had
our table set up and people were taking a look at everything, and because
things were going so well, I didn't want to I didn't want to break
down the whole entire booth while we were out and going to speak. So
I asked the people on either side of us, can you guys just keep
an eye on our booth while we're gone. We'll be gone about an hour,
and just make sure nobody swipes her stuff. They absolutely both agreed,
Yes, we will one hundred percent take a look at this. But it
got busy, as things tend to do, and when we came back from
speaking, three of those glass tumblers were gone off the table. When I
asked around, several people up and down Creator's row on our end indicated that
there was a woman with gray, slightly frizzy hair in a walker with a
very large black bag, and she was going through and sweeping stuff off of
the table and into her bag, assuming that all of them were freebies,
even though all of these things were clear early marked with price tags. So
we ended up losing sixty dollars worth of merchandise. Showed this woman, and
I will give the crime con staff a ton of credit. As soon as
I went up to someone and said, hey, we've had a problem over
at our boost. Someone stole stuff from us, they jumped on it and
were like, we will help. Let me call the resort police, let
me see if we have video all sorts of stuff, and so they jumped
right on it. They were very helpful. And this was volunteers, by
the way, This was volunteers who were staffing it. One of the volunteers
came over and she was like, let me help you make some signs that
say these are not freebies, just in case it wasn't obvious we were doing
everything. It was pretty obvious that they were not freebies obviously, but still
I'll shoot. Everybody was very good about it. Unfortunately, I did get
a call from the resort police on my way back home, and they said,
hey, we looked at the video. There's really nothing that we can
see that's going to identify this person other than the description that you gave.
There is no way to get back your merchandise. Imbursh you for that,
and I figured that's okay. We weren't going to get reimbursed for it.
We weren't going to be able to get the merchandise back. It still ticked
me off because it should have been really obvious that those were not freebies.
But lesson learned for next time. G littered squirrels. Cool stuff attracted lots
of attention, not all of it from thieves. Yes, people did ultimately
buy our floor models, so I did not have to take those home with
me. It was one less thing to carry back, right. And one
extremely good hearted person when she heard, because I'd posted on a crime con
group, hey somebody stole our stuff. Can you see if you see these
around make a citizen's arrest or something kidding? One woman came over and she
said, oh my gosh, I read that you had stuff taken from you.
I'm so sorry, and I said you, thank you. I appreciate
it. And she actually she just handed me a twenty dollars bill and said,
here, this is to make up for it. I said, you
do not have to do that, and she goes, no, it's the
donation. She goes, I'm really sorry your stuff got stolen. That's not
cool. There was a lot of outrage. I turned it into a joke.
I was still pretty pissed about it, and I still am. But
hey, we do have I would say the singular distinction of having a crime
committed at crime Fortunately it wasn't a violent crime. Yeah, sariously, just
some random person. And I guess she was doing this to everybody. She
was taking more than her fair share of everything off of people's tables, and
that sucks. Like, if you're listening to this screw, you don't do
that to people. It's not cool. Agreed, Petty Crime's notwithstanding a phenomenal
experience, we hope to see you at crime Con next year in beautiful Denver.
I hope our enthusiasm for all that we saw and experienced at crime Con.
Let you know what a great experience it was, I think for us
in six five hundred of our favorite true crime fans agreed, and before we
close. A very heartfelt thank you to everyone who contributed to our go fundmate
to help us with our expenses. This is not a cheap event and we
pay for all of it out of so for everybody who contributed. That helps
us with our printing costs, That helps us with travel, It helps with
gas, it helps with everything. So thank you so much to everybody who
was willing to help us out. We really appreciate you more than we can
tell you. That is going to do it for this episode of mind Over
Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you next time.
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our
executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela
Arnois. Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed
in partnership with Coral Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter,
or Instagram. You can also follow our page in the Colonial Parkway Murders
on Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill
Thomas five six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.