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 Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly
and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Cynthia Hill, director of
Burden of Proof, and Steven Pandos, brother of Jennifer Pandos, here to
talk about the HBO Max series Burden of Proof. Cynthia and Stephen, thank
you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having us. Yeah,
thank you. So let's go ahead and get some introductory material here out of
the way. Before we talk about your serious Burden of Proof? Can you
start by telling us a little bit about yourself? Cynthia will start with you,
and then Steven, I'll have you jumped in. I'm a filmmaker based
in Durham, North Carolina. I've been making documentaries for now twenty five years
and this last project, Burden of Proof. We've been working on this one
since twenty fifteen, or a third of your career. Exactly where do I
go from here? As panic? Oh, that's where we come in.
Stephen, how about you? I'm Stephen Pandos. I live in Charlotte,
North Carolina and work in a commercial real estate investment. How did the two
of you end up connect team to build this relationship that resulted in this wonderful
product, Burden of Proof? He sent me a LinkedIn message that said call
me. Did he say anything else? Was there a pitch contained or Steve?
No, no, no, not my recollection is the only thing it
said was call me. And so I had just recently brought on board Christine
delp who's the producer on this project, and she had just graduated from college
and her job for that first the first couple of weeks was to respond to
emails and clean out my voice messages and LinkedIn messages or whatever. And so
she came across this one and she's Christie's the one that actually called Stephen that
day. Stephen, did you indicate that you were the brother of a missing
person and wanted to talk to her about it? Documentary? Or what did
you say? I don't recall really the specific message. It might just have
been as blunt as please call me or something I think it was. And
that's how it started. So it was with I don't know how long the
first conversation with Christine was, but it was a while, and she hung
on and heard the story even though Cynthia was telling her to hang up on
me. Yeah she was. This is a time when we were working out
of my kitchen. We were in between offices, I like to say,
and I could see her getting visibly emotional as she's talking with Steven, and
I didn't know what was going on. I could be some crazy person who
knows, And so I was motioning for her to hang up on him,
and she's showing me away. You know, it's good, it's good.
And so once she hangs up, she tells me the story that Stephen just
told her, and she proceeds to google all of the information, and everything
Stephen had invayed was there, as much as we could find online. We
knew he wasn't making up a story, and so we spent the next couple
of hours just talking about the implications of what this kind of tragedy has on
someone like Stephen and his family. Stephen at the point you reached out to
Cynthia and Christine. Had you seen Cynthia's twenty fourteen documentary Private Violence? How
did she move? Yeah? No, not at the time. I got
referred to Cynthia by a firm in New York, Tendescent Films, And that
was a result of me just calling just picking up the phone and calling people
who were in the documentary fiwn business. They were an executive producer on Private
Violence, by the way, Yeah, just by coincidence, and since what
I was talking about was sort of along the same lines as Private Violence in
terms of what I was thinking about at the time about and it's the nuances
and complications from it, and so they suggested I reach out to Cynthia.
So I did. Cynthia, once you heard Stephen's story, did you anticipate
that this is going to be a multi year event. How did you see
this partnership unspooling? Of course not. I keep promising myself after I conclude
a project that the next one will not take as long as this last one.
I keep out doing myself. I've decided to never make that promise again.
I think that when you tackle anything like this, you have to be
willing to go wherever this story takes you. And I've learned that over the
years and my career. That's what really makes a good story and a good
film is if you have the patience to let it play out. And so
obviously we did not know that this one would take this long. And if
you had told both of us that when we first did that first shoot that
we will be filming for seven and a half years, I imagine both of
us would have said no. Stephen N myself would have been like, no
way, We're never going to do this. But that's it's just the road
that we took, the path we took, and it led us to where
we are. Now, what did that shoot actually look like? Like?
How often per week, per month, per year would you see each other
and you would show up at Stephen's house with cameras and go, okay,
it's time to go to work. I'm really curious about what it looks like
to shoot with someone for seven years. The first time we shoot, it's
the first time I meet Stephen, so I had not actually spoken to him.
I just was getting the information from Christine and from the initial conversation she
had with him. We decided that it was worth pursuing and at least seeing
where a couple of shoots would get it. So at least one shoot with
Stephen, and so Steven drives to Durham. At this point, I think
that he's willing to do whatever it takes to try to get interest in his
sister's case and feel like he'd hit a brick wall. So he rolls up
in front of my house and we just film. We filmed pretty much as
he's walking in the door, and we've been filming with him like that ever
since. So those scenes are in the first episode, right, Yep.
It's the first thing with Stephen is that first meeting, that first encounter with
us, Because for me, it's really important that I capture those first conversations
because a lot of times those are the most revealing conversations, you get the
most raw emotion because it's the first time that they're telling me that story.
Is the first time Steven's telling me what happened, and so I just wanted
to be sure that we captured that. Tell us a little bit about Burden
of Proof. Then someone hasn't seen the documentary series yet, what is it,
Stephen? You want to tackle that one? Are you? No?
I think that's up to you. I'm a little too close. I'm in
the fishbowl. I guess I can give you what we call our elevator pitch,
which is this is Burden of Proof is the story of Jennifer Pandos,
a fifteen year old girl who went missing in Williamsburg, Virginia in nineteen eighty
seven. We follow her brother as he seeks justice for his sister. So
that, in a nutshell, is what this story is about. As soon
as we started receiving requests from our listeners, Hey have you guys watched Burden
of Proof? Are you covering Burden of Proof? And I looked at the
information about this, The first thing that I really thought was brother seeking justice
for murdered sister. That sounds a lot like my partner in crime. This
is so interesting storyline there. It's a very familiar storyline, and so we
were hooked from minute one. Stephen, your story is it's so similar to
Bill's that I was sitting there watching the documentary and going, this sounds so
familiar, Like you guys have gone through a lot of the same struggles in
terms of lunf s min issues, And I just want to take a minute,
just on a personal level and say how Sarah I am that you've had
to go through that, and I really feel for you in every way that
I can, So I just wanted to throw that out there. Oh,
thank you, it's John. One of the things that was very striking for
us was there's also a contrast and I'm not criticizing here, but I don't
think there's much way around this. We were floored by how little Kristin and
I knew about the Jennifer Pandos disappearance. Kristin lives in Williamsburg. She's a
teacher in Williamsburg. She actually graduated from the same high school, Lafayette High
School, that Jennifer was attending. And Jennifer's disappearance happens just a couple of
months after the October nineteen eighty six murder of my sister Kathy Thomas and Rebecca
Dowski. And one of the things that's come up with us in the discussion
with other people outside the four of us here is that one made the observation
that they felt like the Colonial Parkway murders, which weren't called that back then
because they hadn't even all happened yet, but that the high profile murder of
Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski, followed by these murders of these other young people
sucked the oxygen out of the room in Williamsburg from a kind of a media
perspective which we'd never thought about. Kristin and I we were like shocked by
that. One of our strongest takeaways from watching Burden of Proof is why didn't
the Pando's case receive more attention back in nineteen eighty seven when Jennifer first disappeared.
Stephen, do you have a sense of why that might have happened?
No, when Jennifer disappeared, I was in college in North Carolina and never
really moved back to Williamsburg other than for maybe a few months after that,
and dealing with law enforcement was always something that my parents did. I was
whatever, eighteen at the time. That just wasn't it wasn't my job.
That was my parents thing to do. So I don't know, I don't
have a good answer for that, Cynthia. Do you have any sense of
why this case was so low key for so long that we had that exact
same question whenever we first started, because when you would google Jennifer Pandos,
there were only just a few mentions, and you could if you did some
real hard digging, you could find those earlier articles or mentions about her being
missing in the local paper, but that was it for us. It was
very disturbing, especially with what was going on with the Parkway murders and Bill,
I just want to say, your and Stephen's stories, the way that
they parallel are so uncanny. Yeah, yeah, And so I didn't put
that together either until we got this request from y'all for this podcast. But
it was something that we would talk about quite often with our team here,
our internal team as to how did this get such little attention and why with
a fifteen year old girl missing, was there not more done. I think
that it was a different time and with kids going missing Unfortunately they're like,
Okay, she ran away, and the time before cell phones and new constant
contact with people, And so I think that for the cops, at least
from the questioning that I have done within the police department and the former investigators,
it was like they just assumed that it was a runaway and they treated
as as such. But even if that's the case, a runaway team is
at so much d is in so much danger of something worse happening, even
if she did run away, that this wasn't given the kind of attention that
it should have been given is so sad. Agreed that the times were very
different, but it's actually shocking now, especially to look back in retrospect.
And agreed, this is a pre cell phone, pre social media environment.
When we speak about the Colonial Parkway murders, I always feel like I'm talking
about the Civil War, because we have to remind we speak to college audiences,
for example, that they will ask why didn't somebody call on their cell
phone? And how come they didn't get surveillance video. People forget that surveillance
video is a relatively new thing. Except for maybe your local seven to eleven.
You didn't see cameras outside of homes and retail establishments. For the most
part, there's all kinds of changes. And then, of course, I
think you were touching on this a little bit indirectly, which is the idea
of a runaway fifteen year old girl or any young person could be in danger.
And we talk about sex traffic now, which I don't remember people talking
about thirty years ago. No, but it's actually shocking to look back and
see just how little was done with Jennifer's disappearance in nineteen eighty seven. Yeah,
And I think for us that was always like a big mystery, and
that original case file from nineteen eighty seven was missing. We didn't have a
clear picture as of what did actually happen in nineteen eighty seven. Did they
get the telephone records or did they go to gate and acquire the ins and
outs of people coming in out of that gated community, Like, we didn't
have any idea if any of that had transpired. Was anybody from law enforcement
able to answer those questions? The original investigators didn't move to the moon.
Weren't some of those people available to answer those questions? Yeah, And that
is a part of the second case file that was created into two thousands where
Wendy and Jeff the lines. They were the investigators in the two thousands,
and they called the original investigators in nineteen eighty seven, and so they asked
them about certain things like did you take the letter? Or was the note
in the case file? What was in the case file? Since it's not
here. Obviously, those original investigators didn't have a lot to say about it,
at least according to the notes from Wendy and Jeff, but they were
very certain that they had collected the note that was left at the scene,
and they also just remembered it as a runaway case. Stephen, do you
know if your parents ever actually went to the guard gate and asked, Hey,
did somebody call in? Did somebody come in? I was explaining to
Bill in our first episode, because Bill isn't based here, but I am.
I was explaining about the process for getting into and out of King's Mill.
I have friends who live there, and so I spent a lot of
time in my childhood going in and out, and I know that it's very
secure, and you have to go to the gate, you have to stop,
you have to call in. They give you the past. Did your
parents ever check one who came in and who came out, and if anybody
actually came for Jennifer that night. Yeah, I don't recall if I'm sure
they did, because at the time, the one ninety nine gate at King's
Mill closed at midnight or eleven o'clock or whatever it was, so it was
only the Route sixty gate was the only one open twenty four hours in nineteen
eighty seven. Okay, that's good to know. So in terms of the
documentary, one of the questions we wanted to ask was do you feel that
you were able to be specific enough in terms of who you think could be
responsible for Jennifer's disappearance. The series closes with things in an open ended fashion,
but do you feel and we understand there's restrictions legal and otherwise about what
you can and cannot say in a documentary, do you feel like you were
able to take it as far as you wanted to. I thought we took
it as far as we could take it based on where the cops were currently
with the case and with the information that we were able to gain access to
ourselves. It is an active case and they are pursuing suspects, and if
you watch the film, you get a sense of where they're headed. I
think for us, when we first started this process, we really didn't think
of this as a who done it with the goal of trying to solve the
case like that was not what our intention was when we first started it.
When we were initially meeting with Steven, we thought that this was more of
a story about a family tragedy and the fallout of that trauma from nineteen eighty
seven, and so that's how we were pursuing the story. But our curiosity
about the case and how, and if you watch the series, you'll see
this in the very first frames, the cops ended up suspecting the parents,
and so we were very curious about that, and so we brought an investigative
reporter or former investigative reporter onto our team to help us. She became an
integral a part of the team, Andrea Weigel when she worked at the News
and Observer for many years here in North Carolina, and so she became the
one that really helped us dissect the case because Stephen had sooned the police department
or was in the process of doing that to be able to declare Jennifer as
being deceased. I think for the illegal advice and Steven, I'm stepping all
over you right now. But for the legal advice that he had received from
the attorney that he was working with, he was not able to take action
against his parents. And so this was I guess one remedy for Steven to
hopefully take some steps at closure to be able to say, hey, she's
always just been listed as missing, but everybody knows that Jennifer's not coming back,
so let's go ahead and make the move to declare her deceased. And
so, because of that work that he had done, he had gained access
to that new case file that was created in the two thousands, and this
was this big, wopping case file that he walked into our house on that
first day of shooting or filming, and that's the material that we had to
work with. So as the documentary proceeds, you will see the evidence that
we are Steven pulls out, but that we get to understand how the cops
suspected who they did suspect. Steven, are you comfortable referring to Jennifer's case
as a homicide case or would you still prefer that people refer to it as
missing persons? I'm just curious. Yeah, I haven't really thought about it.
I don't believe that my sister's coming back, so I'm fine either way.
I've just always thought of her as missing. But I didn't what Snia
said. I didn't like to sue the police department. I put my petition
the court to have Jennifer declared deceased. I originally made an information request like
a public information request to the police department for Jennifer's case file to support the
petition to have ver declared deceased. And then what the police department told my
attorney was, look, we can't give you that on or this way that
you asked for it, but if you subpoena the information US for that information,
we won't fight it. And that's how I got the That's how I
received the case file. And then when I had Jennifer declared deceased, my
attorney had to go meet with the judge and the police department and then he
declared Jennifer deceased and that's when I put a marker in the cemetery for and
it was at the time that felt like closure then, so that was why
I did it. I'm still pleasantly surprised they gave you the case file.
From personal experience, the FBI has fought us every step of the way,
and the FBI is the responsible agency in my sister and Rebecca Dowski's murder.
I think that at the time it was probably the distinction set they were treating
Jennifer's case as a cold case and not active. And do won't take this
offer to say that this opportunity to say that the police department has been great
to me all the way back to two thousand nine. They've been really good
to me and Collins, and they returned my phone calls and they've just been
great to work with. I wish I could say the same. Yeah,
you have a difference. You're wrestling a different beast altogether. Yeah. People
have said to me, Bill, you should see the FBI, and you
do recognize that what that actually looks like is William F. Thomas versus the
United States of America. That's actually who I'm suing. Yeah, when you
think about the resources, they can a picture own money. Yeah, I
think they do. Cynthia, I know you said that you didn't set up
for it to be who done it, But if I had to guess,
I would imagine that probably tips have begun to come in, either to you
or to Steven or to James City County. Can you speak to that whether
or not tips have come in. Are you getting leads in this case at
all? There? Now you go ahead, I say, no, I
haven't. I've received a couple of phone calls that I've referred to the police
department. I know I've spoken to Jake, but he's told me that he
has received some calls. Nothing really specific that he can follow up on,
but he has received a few calls. And one of those callses from my
roommate. Actually, I know you did speak to her, yes, but
I know I was very curious whether or not this was going to yield any
investigative leads eventually. Yeah, I hope it does, and I know the
police department is hoping that as well. 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. Let's talk about Jake Rice for a minute. He appears in
the documentary what's his role now as a forensic investigator? Is he still with
the James City County Police Department on a full time basis or what's his status.
He's there part time. He retired as a police officer, but he
still works for the police department. He just doesn't carry a badge and a
gun. And he and Rich are the principal investigators on the case. Jake
has the most history with it, going back to two thousand, probably tennish
and he knows the most And what's your relationship like with Investigator Rice, Jake
is great. That's not to say that we haven't had tense conversations, or
at least because we have. He has a process that he has to work
through. I have to respect the process. I can't change it. The
only thing I can do is try to help him get through it as fast
as he can. But you know, Jake has been terrific. There were
definitely times when I was watching and we were watching you make phone calls to
Jake, and Jake was saying, there's stuff is still out of the lab.
I don't have results for you yet. And again I had that sense
of deja vous. I've seen this before, I've heard this before. I
know Bill gets these same phone calls. There's just this real sense of empathy
about this whole entire thing with what you're going through is related to what Bill's
going through. It's a little startling to realize that seems to be what most
people who have a cold case are going through rather than I think it's the
norm rather than a surprise, and I hate that. I hate that's the
norm. One of the things we talk about in Mind over Murder is that
there are two hundred and fifty thousand cold case homicides in the United States,
so there are at least potentially millions of people. If you think about everybody
having a few loved ones within their family, there are actually millions of people
going through this. It's actually usually a very quiet process. It was a
privilege to meet you through the documentary process, and then Kristin and I were
watching it at the same time, but not in the same room. We
were both making a point of, hey, let's watch these four episodes and
compare notes to some of which we did on the air on our podcast.
Because it's usually such a private process, it was unusual to see all of
these very strong parallels between your journey and mine. I think I got most
heavily involved in Kathy's case in two thousand and nine, which I think also
roughly parallels the timeframe where you decided you wanted to step forward. How did
you feel about opening up your at least that part of your life over the
course of seven plus years. I just the big picture was justice for my
sister, and so whatever I had to do to help deliver justice for my
sister was what I did, whatever consequence. Yeah, that's just what I
did. Was I always kept the big picture of the big goal was justice
for my sister, and so I just did whatever was required for that.
Did you ever find yourself circling back with Cynthia as a filmmaker and saying,
let's not put that in or did you think to yourself, I'm focused on
the larger goal and I'm willing to do this show the process works and all,
yeah, I'll let Cynthia answer that. No, prescient Cynthia. Now.
The interesting thing and when Stephen watched the episodes towards the end, he
had not seen anything. He walked out and he said, what did you
say again about the the trust exercise? Oh? Yeah, this was the
ultimate kind of trustball exercise. Because I didn't see any of it until I
guess about a year before it came out. I saw the first couple episodes,
and we were still waiting on lab results and everything else for the fourth.
But yeah, I didn't see any of it for six and a half
years. And this was Cynthia's film, and whatever she wanted to put in
it, she could put in it. Yeah, it's a big responsibility,
but it's also an honor to have someone like Steven trust you like that with
all the material that we had and the intimacy and everyone that we filmed was
great about that, I have to say, or mostly I have to say,
But it's like that as a documentary filmmaker all the time. It's like
that that fine line between being there and showing enough so the audience is very
clear about the emotional trauma and the struggles, and then when does it become
exploitation, and so you have to be mindful of that at all times.
I feel like Cynthia, I wanted to ask one thing in particular about the
re enactments. I noticed you had actors, of course, for Jen,
for Margie and for Ron. Were you there orchestrating everything that was going on
with all of the actors and actresses? How long did that take? I'm
really curious about that when Stephen, I'm curious how you felt about watching somebody
playing your sister. But let me start with Cynthia talk about the reenactments a
little bit. Sure, Yeah, they were very much a part of the
whole process of what I was envisioning for the film. And I'd never directed
actors before, so that was a bit I was a bit nervous about that
process, as it felt very foreign to me. But I really was determined
to use that thre's recreation scenes to amplify the unreliableness of memory. That's how
it all started, was that we were getting these different takes on Jennifer,
like who Jennifer was. So it started out with that, like everybody had
a different Jennifer when they talked about her, and I thought that was so
interesting and compelling and shouldn't be that surprising when you think about a fifteen year
old girl, she is going to be a play a different role for different
people. She's going to be for her mom, her dad, her brother,
her friends, her teachers, she's she will be different and described differently,
And that started out this whole idea of trying to implify that theme again
of having memory being unreliable too, Stephen, How was it for you watching
someone playing Jennifer? So much of this whole experience and not just the film
going back to two thousand and nine has been surreal. And that's just one
other surreal moment. But the first time you know that I met Savannah,
Yeah, it was just super weird. And you know that was long before
I had seen anything. I think it was at a birthday party for Cynthia.
That where I first met Savannah, that's the actress that played Jennifer.
Yeah, that's see. That's another experience that you and Bill actually have in
common. When Oxygen Today documentary on the Colonial Parkway murders, we also had
re enactments, and I remember sitting with Bill in a van right outside of
the area where they were doing a reenactment of Kathy's murder and just asking him,
mariy are you okay meeting an actress who's playing your sister. Essentially,
I can't imagine how surreal it is. I think that's a great word,
Stephen. This is going to be a very intense and unusual process, but
your product is amazing. One of the things I was very struck by were
the use of the real life footage from what essentially are interrogations of Stephen and
Jennifer's mother. How did you gain access to them and how did you feel
like you were going to preserve the integrity of the conversation in showing them.
Obviously you're not going to show hours of footage in a documentary that has a
limited runtime, Cynthia, how do you work around that? Copies of the
interrogation were on DVDs in that original that case file that Stephen acquired in twenty
fourteen, and so that's how we got access to that materials because it was
just part of what was given over Stephen made this petition, and so when
we came across that or when we watched it. Tom Vickers, who is
the editor that I've been working with for many years, he's he and I've
been a team or all of the work since I don't know, for fifteen
years. Almost he was like, oh my god, because I was like
spot checking stuff because we're out in the field and he's you got to sit
down and watch it from start to finish, and so sitting down and watching
it, and we contemplated for a long time as we're editing is like,
how much do you think that we can show? And it's like, gosh,
it would be amazing to have a whole episode of just that material so
that you can really get a sense of what that experience is like for someone,
and especially after you see the ending of the series, going back and
watching that again. And we do visually reference that at the end of episode
four, so that we remind the audience of what emotionally that probably was doing
at that time. It was important for us to have as much as we
could have in there. But yes, when you are doing something for a
large streamer broadcaster like HBO, they are concerned about audiences and making sure that
they don't tune away. And so it was a negotiation as to how much
we get. And that was that was long, because you know, that
was that first interview with my mom took place on a Thursday, from around
six pm to midnight. There were six hours of it from that day and
then three hours of it the following day. Wow, And that was that
was a really hard day. Are you in touch with former investigator Wendy Read
as well? I talked to Wendy on occasion. I don't talk to regularly
or anything. But yeah, just on where occasion I do so, are
the two of you on the same page in terms of your personal theories about
the case about what may have happened to Jennifer or is there any place in
which the two of you vary about what you think may have happened to her?
I'll answer it by not answering it. That's what okay. And obviously,
as a filmmaker, and I think Steven's been on this similar ride with
us, we have to imagine what transpired because that helps us figure out where
do we want to go with asking more questions and who do we think we
should talk to and all that stuff. So, of course, over the
course of working on this case or making the film, I've had different ideas
floating in my head as to what you can think what you think transpired,
and it has varied wildly. I have to say, I think that what
you'll see is we still don't know, because like trying to put those pieces
together with what information we do have now, which is a lot more than
what we started with, some of it still doesn't line up, so like
how does that happen? So still trying to make sense of how she got
out of the house without anybody knowing is still a mystery, and so it's
yeah, we I mean, I was hoping that we would have more answers,
and I think we I don't know, Stephen, if you want to
add anything to that, No, I think that's that's fair. And it's
look, one of the things that led to all this heartache, and is
speculation right to try hard not to repeat that same mistake in the absence of
actually knowing so well put, we're not trying to compare our limited experience with
anything close to the number of years now that the two of you have dedicated
to Jennifer's disappearance. Even Christin and I have spent hours talking about just that
one issue, for example, and lots of others. How did Jennifer get
out of the house without anyone noticing? And we went through any number of
options, some of which seem to make sense to us at the time,
even my view of the case, which again is limited based on all the
articles we've read, watching the series very carefully, really being very impressed with
the amount of work that you've put in, you still end up with almost
as many questions as you have answers. Was that a hard sell Cynthia for
a documentary. Were you ever under any pressure to push this in a particular
direction. Obviously we don't know what happened to Jennifer, and the series has
to end on a question mark. I think that you, as a filmmaker
could have a lot of pressure from executives from certain networks or streaming platforms.
But working with HBO, they came on board fairly early on for development when
we had no idea that we were the case was going to even become active
again. So we never said from the very get go that this was going
to be a case that was going to be solved. So I think that
there was never this oh my gosh, you didn't solve that awful. But
I do think that as the case became active and we were there and the
throws and the thick of the investigation and uncovering things on our own, there
was some I use the word excitement but for lack of a better word,
about the excitement over the potential of learning more. And we do learn a
lot more. We don't have the definitive answer, but we do learn a
heck of a lot more, and I think that we're closer to understanding more
about Jennifer's state of mind and other things that are going on surrounding Jennifer that
play into this whole case. And so I felt as though that not having
a case that was solved did not hinder the power of the story when it
finally did come to an end for us and how we were telling the story,
would you ever consider returning with a fifth episode if there were significant developments
in the case. Yeah, I would love to be able to do that,
to pick it up and hoping that we do have more concrete answers.
Yeah, Stephen, how do you feel about that? Yeah, I'm open
for it. Well, you just have to wait and see it. You
know. If telling Jennifer's story helps others, than I'm all for it.
And ultimately, I think for us, it was like I think and Bill
you were hitting on this earlier, like having the access to a family who
is in this limbo about a cold case and about a family member and not
having the answers and this lingering trauma from all of that and what it does
to all the parties at play was really important and we didn't want that to
be lost, and that was what our primary storyline was to begin with.
And we always honored that, even when the case became more active and there's
more interest in the clues and stuff like that, for us on our team
and also with Stephen, it's like, it's still about It's still about the
process, it's still about the family, and that always was what we made
for us important to continue to follow. And I think that's ultimately what does
come out most in our episode where we sat and deconstructed everything. Knowing Jennifer's
case and the whereabouts and the wise and the where of it all is great.
But what really came across to me, and I kept saying to Bill
over and over, is how very much I feel for Steven, how empathetic
I felt about all of this. And part of that is just because nobody
should have to go through this. Also part of it is I've watched Bill
go through it. I know it. I just felt an enormous amount of
empathy and sympathy to the point where I couldn't binge it all at once.
Normally I would, but I couldn't do it all at once. I had
to divide it up over two days because it just felt at times this is
so emotional and so wrenching and that I couldn't manage to do it all at
once. If that is your ultimate goal, from my point of view,
you achieved it. I guess. Last question for both of you is what's
next for the two of you? Oh gosh. For me, it's just
about moving forward, still doing what I can for Jennifer, but moving forward
and being at peace knowing that I've done all I can do for me.
That's all I ever wanted to know. All this in the absence of justice
for my sister and the Alemabus piece, Cynthia. What's next for you?
I know it's probably got to feel a little I asked you off air,
does this feel exciting or does it feel anti climactic now that you've got it
out there in this process of so many years work? Yeah? What are
you doing now? Yes? Even and I've talked about that a little bit.
I feel lost, like unmoored almost. And filmmakers will say this,
you don't know. Filmmakers will say that you have to abandon the story,
that this story never concludes. It's one of those things where I don't want
to feel like we've abandoned this storyline or Jennifer's story. And I's still very
much present, because I still think that there's things that that we haven't told.
There are things that in the back of my brain that keep it alive
and wanting to continue with this story. But I'm a need to have work
that pays, so I am working on other contents and I was hired by
NASCAR to do a series about nine year olds that race at a dirt track
outside of Charlotte, and that's been very different and really fun. So it's
nice to have that balance between serious, more serious material and something that is
not. But surprisingly this is pretty become pretty serious. I was thinking that
we was going to have a lighter tone. Yeah. And the other thing
that I've been doing with two team members of mine, Claire Johnson, who
films with me all the time, she's a cinematographer, and Sandra Davidson,
who is a producer. We've been going to the Ozarks filming with bigfoot hunters,
and so that has been a real gift. Actually you get to go
camping and off grid, and so it allows me to really disconnect and to
think about life in a really different way. And surprisingly, like how a
lot of these stories overlap and interesting and unique ways, is that this is
a story about the pursuit. It's a story about a journey, and I
find myself telling a lot of those kinds of stories. That is very cool.
I look forward to actual footage of Bigfoot in that case. That is
going to do it for this episode of mind Over Murder. Burden of Proof
is available on HBO Max or I guess we're just calling it Max now.
Burden of Proof is available on Max. We do encourage you to stream it.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of mind Over Murder.
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. Theme music is by Kevin McLeod.
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media. You can follow
us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. You can also follow our page
on 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.