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 Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. 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 Dilley and
I'm Bill Thomas, and welcome to an episode that we're going to call ruminations
with Bill and Kristen or like maybe antifications. I don't know, Okay,
trying to come up I'm trying to come up with the right adjective, and
I'm just not sure which it is, but between the two of us,
it could be one or the either of those words. What's the question we're
asking today, the question that we're talking about, it's actually two questions,
and it came as the result of two articles that I saw and decided to
share with you, since because they were in my head, it's only fair
that they're in yours too, fair enough. So the first article was about
national shooter Audrey Hale and about whether or not the manifesto that she wrote should
be released to the public after the behavioral analysis unit is done with it at
Quantico. I do remember initially they had indicated, yeah, we'll release this,
but the article basically said, actually, we're going to maybe walk back
on that a little bit. And the question was should we be releasing this
stuff for the general public to see? Of what value is there to see
the I guess in some case rantings or ramblings of someone like James Holmes or
Eric Harrison, Dillan Cleebald, or in the most recent case, Audrey Hale.
And I'm realizing, as I'm saying most recent case, that's not the
most recent mass shooting, and that's actually really sad too. Sadly what's happening
now is there are so many mass shootings in the United States, one after
another, that I know both of us get confused in terms of which one
are we talking about. And Nashville is not the latest mass shooting. We've
had several mass shootings since there's been an agreed upon definition that a mass shooting
is someone who is shooting four or more people. And that's happening like every
single week here in the US and nowhere else on the planet. And we
have to keep coming back to that because there are guns around the world.
There are crazy people and disturbed people and mentally ill people around the world,
some of whom might be violent, but there's nowhere else on the planet that
we have this combination of guns and all of these other factors which are resulting
in a mass shooting every single week. It's crazy. The question of do
we release these manifestos, I think it's a valid question. I think it's
an important question now when we use the term manifesto. Of course, what
I think arises to everyone's mind is the Unibomber Manifesto, which our good friend
Jim Fitzgerald has talked about at length, including a couple of episodes on this
podcast. I know when you and I were talking off air as we were
kicking around this topic. We talked about the value of releasing the unibomb manifesto,
largely because it helped to catch the guy. Let's talk about that for
a minute, just as a reminder, the unibomber had been killing people for
I think close to two decades, if I'm not mistaken. From talking to
Fits, they were still desperate to find this person, and the FBI had
been attempting to track him for years. The thinking was that in publishing the
manifesto in two major newspapers, The New York Times in the Washington Post,
if I'm not mistaken, the idea was that perhaps someone would recognize the language,
which was very unique within this lengthy, kind of scholarly document with an
anti technology slant. The hope was someone would recognize his language, and we
can't forget this. That's exactly what happened. Yes, now, Fits and
others within the FBI argued in favor of putting out the manifesto with this goal
in mind. Look, if we put this out, there's a possibility that
someone's going to recognize this language. Happens. His sister in law and then
her husband, Ted Kazynski's brother, both read the manifesto after it's published in
major newspapers, and they realize this really sounds like the dissertation and other scholarly
type documents that Ted Kazynski had written. And then they contacted a lawyer who
contacted the FBI as an intermediary and said, my clients think they know who
might be sending out these bombs, and people have been maimed and killed.
So it's I think, very different in some ways. There was an idea
which actually worked, which we think we might be able to identify this man
and therefore hopefully capture him. That's a little different from these manifestos. And
I put air quotes around it that we're seeing from some of these recent mass
killers. When you look at mass shooters, even as early as Eric Harris
and Jill in Clebald, the Columbine shooters, they had the Basement tapes,
which they were actually really hoping that those tapes would be released. They never
have been. And I believe you said before we went on the air they'd
actually been destroyed, were they not? They were I'd heard about the Basement
tapes before, which are a series of eight millimeter tapes they were shot on
cam quarters. Remember this is nineteen ninety nine Little Mini Gale. Yeah,
it sounds like a long time ago. Now. Apparently the sheriff in Colorado
made the decision to ultimately destroy the tapes with the support of the families who
had lost loved ones at Columbine High School. Coming up to speed again on
the Basement tapes. Hadn't read about them in a while. These two morons
actually thought they were going to become famous, and they even discussed on the
tapes who's going to play them in the movie and which filmmaker is going to
make a movie about them. I think the last thing we want to do
is be playing into the hands of these nut jobs who think this is going
to be their way of going out in a blaze of glory by killing a
whole bunch of people the idea. When I first read about the Basement tapes,
I was appalled just all the way around. And so you look at
something like the Basement tapes, you look at something like James Holmes writing James
Holmes being the Aurora movie theater Shooter, we get a sense of what his
writings were from Carrie Drobben's book Aurora. That also is not something I think
that should be floating out and about in the world. It is actually you
can read, James Holmes. I don't think it's really a manifesto. I
think it's just notebooks and I looked at the material in preparing for this broadcast,
James Holmes, The Aurora Shooters notebook is just filled with the ravings of
a madman. He's just got the same word repeated over and over again on
certain pages, why thirty or forty times just that word and a question mark.
There are places where he does discuss a bit more kind of planning of
where he's going to lash out and where he's going to kill people. He
considered airports, he considered a movie theater, and then finally he decided to
attack a movie theater because that's much more vulnerable, much less security. So
there may be some benefit to law enforcement. I'm not actually sure there's any
public good though releasing these manifestos. Yeah, I think that it is one
thing if you're a psychologist or a psychiatrist and you were looking to gain insight
into the criminal mind, and then absolutely the BAU would have a vested interest
in it. Psychologists would have a vested interest in it. But I don't
think that it is something that needs to be broadcast for everyone to see now
as humans who are very invested in true crime culturally right now in the United
States, Are people going to be interested in what Audrey Hale had to say
and why she decided to shoot up the Covenant School. Yes, probably people
are going to be very interested. But do they need to see a chapter
in verse in what is very likely the rantings of, as you said earlier,
a mad person. I don't think we need to see that. I
don't think we do. Audrey Hale is dead. She was shot to death
by Nashville at Fulton police officers responding to the mass shooting at the Covenant School.
She's not going to go on trial. In some of these examples,
like James Holmes, the Aurora shooter, he actually went on trial, and
so these materials were introduced as part of the legal proceeding, which is how
they ended up in the public now that you actually don't learn that much in
James Holmes example, and we don't know what's in Audrey Hale's notebooks. Apparently
she was incredibly organized and had all of these files and just a lot of
material. I think that would probably be worth as you said a moment ago,
Kristen, law enforcement profilers, the FBI, the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department,
the Department of Justice, those people studying to see what's going on with
mass shooters of this type, And what was Audrey Hale thinking before she made
the decision to go in and shoot up a school that she'd actually attended some
years and killed both students and teachers and administrators there. I'm not sure there's
really much public benefit to that. No, I don't think there is.
Again, I think that as a culture, we are very fascinated, sometimes
healthfully so, with what goes on in the minds of killers. Think that
if the benefit is to law enforcement and law enforcement alone, absolutely they should
have access to it. But do the rest of us need to know the
murky, dark things that are happening in the minds of the Eric Harris and
Dylan Cleibold's of the world. I'm going to sleep a whole lot better if
I don't know that, I think. And as you mentioned when we were
off the air to Kristen, some of the experts regarding the Cleibold Harris Basement
tapes had said they didn't want to see those released because They also talked in
quite a bit of depth about their planning, what they went out and purchased
in order to have weapons and explosives, what materials they purchased. They even
videotaped themselves on the way to and from the various stores where they bought these
things. They were buying civilian items and then working to turn those into explosive
devices with some success. And as you pointed out, one of the law
enforcement expert said, this actually is a roadmap for someone who might want to
commit a similar crime. Yeah, it's a blueprint for any teenage copycat that
decides they want their ten minutes of fame the same way that Harris and Clebald
got theirs. I don't think there's any reason why things like that need to
be released to the public. Now. If you read, for example,
Dave Cullen's Columbine, which is an excellent book, he does offer excerpts and
things like that, and that's fine because that is it is all part of
the narrative. But what I want to see what they put out there into
the world, released for everybody to read it. No, not at all.
I don't think there's value to that, and it is just It is
just a roadmap. Like you said, it's a blueprint for the next person
who wants to have notoriety to pick it up and go. You know what,
that sounds like a great idea, Let's go. There are transcripts available
of the Dylan Clebald Eric Harris basement tapes, word for word what was said
by these two individuals in the interests of everyone's mental health, and I'm talking
about the collective of the Big Wei here. Yes, I don't know that
we really need to see this stuff. Now. There may be people that
are studying criminology psychology, they may want access to transcripts of this series of
eight millimeter tapes the Columbine High School shooters made, but they don't need to
see the tapes themselves. And I think what the sheriff was trying to do,
and as I mentioned, he had the full support of the families.
They were perfectly fine with destroying the tapes because who wants to see those two
losers forever boasting about what they were about to do. They shot these tapes
over weeks, including just shortly before they actually committed the heinous acts that they
brought to Columbine High School that day. As we both know, there's so
much interest now in true crime. There's a lot of material that tends to
leak, so it ends up just all over the place. And of course
this wondrous tool, the Worldwide Web, that we all use and we're using
as we record this podcast, it also allows for very quick distribution of often
extremely disturbing material that most of us don't need to see. One of the
things that I remember very clearly from one of the crime cons that we went
to in the last couple of years, I think it was New Orleans.
They have a tendency to blend together because they're all action packed and with a
lot of information, but what they do I think I think this was New
Orleans. It was Chris Darden speaking. Was that New Orleans? It was
a pretty amazing and I think that was New Orleans. Yes, So I
remember that he was doing his excellent presentation, which really was phenomenal, a
great speed, Yeah he is. But I remember that in his power point
he included very graphic, unedited crime scene photos from the Nicole Brown Simpson and
Ron Goldman murders, and I remember thinking, oh, Man, and I
never wanted to see those. I didn't either, and at the same time,
I didn't recall those ever being shown publicly before. No, they weren't.
To the best of my knowledge, they weren't. And that's the sort
of thing that there are people out there who, when they learn about this
case for the first time, they go, oh, let's see if there
are crime scene photos, the same way that there are people who google the
manson crime scene photos. And people have contacted me and they've actually asked me
for copies of the Colonial Parkway murders crime scene photos which were leaked by the
FBI about thirteen or more years ago, and I'm going to share them with
oddball people that I've never met. There are times when I don't know what
to say other than no. Yeah. The number of times we've had that
request is a little alarming. It's like, where do you get that the
idea that might be an actual, okay request to make to the brother of
a victim. I mentioned to you at one point I was contacted by someone
who was purporting to put together a museum about serial killers and they wanted something
of my sisters Alcatrazis. I think it was Yeah, why in the world
would you think that was an okay thing to ask, and I've expressed some
regret here on Mind over Murder at different times, we actually didn't end up
with very much of the things that belonged to Kathy. I'm not a big
believer that things are important, but there are times when I think I would
have liked a few more little momentos that would have reminded me of Kathy.
And I think in retrospect, we made a bit of a mistake. We
were in a kind of purging, giving away, boxing and and shipping it
off somewhere mode, mostly driven by my parents, which I understand, but
I have regret now that, for example, we threw away hundreds of letters
and cards that were sent by Kathy's friends, many of them from the Naval
Academy and from the Navy, and they were lovely and they contain funny stories
and things that made them really love and care about Kathy. And my parents
decided we needed to get rid of them, I think because perhaps they felt
that they were too painful. Now my brothers and I are sorry, because
we think it would be really lovely to have those things. I'm not saying
I'd look at them every day or every week, but it'd be nice to
have them in a box somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's odd
and sometimes disturbing the way people will ask for things that are incredibly personal and
often highly disturbing, and expect, for example, to be to read the
rantings of an obviously crazy person, or watch these videotapes recorded by these two
killers. And with regard to the crime scene photos, Bill and I have
both seen them, they are not things that we want to see. Again,
it's just not. I'm sure that there are people out there who are
like, they're interested in it, They're invested in the case, they want
to know more. Please believe me, you do not want to see what
was done to these victims. You just don't because once you see it,
as you've said a number of times, Bill and I can say too,
you can't unsee it. It's not out of your head ever, It's there.
It's there when I close my eyes, it's on the back of my
eyelids. You can't unsee it. For every person who reaches out and is,
hey, can I see the crime scene photos, it's you don't want
to do that to yourself. You just don't. No, And on some
level, I think to myself. I'm going to give you a polite answer,
even though I don't feel like giving you a polite answer, because for
people to say, oh, I want to see the crime scene photos because
I'm interested. Are you serious? It would be another thing if it was
a law enforcement officer or somebody in behavioral analysis, someone that had a legitimate
reason to want to study the crime scene photos. But for the most part,
those people already have access to them. And even when you and I
started working together, it was a bit of a balancing act for me to
try to figure out, Okay, what details are appropriate for me to ask
and what are not, And so for the first couple of years, it
was always me prefacing conversations with if you don't want to answer this, you
don't have to. But and it You've always been very generous. All of
the family members have been very generous about sharing things and insights that are deeply
personal. But it was really only within the last year that I saw those
crime scene photos and I wish to god I hadn't. I know, they're
very disturbing. You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back after
this word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind over Murder. Among
the articles that you shared with me over the last week or so as we
were discussing putting this podcast together was a very powerful article from The New York
Times. It was a magazine story from April twentieth, twenty twenty three.
Will link to this in the show notes. I urge all of our listeners
to read this story, and of course The New York Times is not behind
a paywall, thankfully. This article is incredibly powerful and moving. It focuses
on three investigators who worked on the Sandy Hook shooting in two twelve in Sandy
Hook, Connecticut, where twenty six people were murdered, and it's a very
powerful article. I don't think most of us will be able to get through
without shedding a few tiers. Oh yeah. But they talked about the impact
that working that crime scene with twenty six victims, what that was like for
these pretty hardened professional people, but also people with hearts and souls and minds
that, like you said, can't turn the images that they've seen off.
They went home to their families and really struggled. They mentioned that there are
fourteen hundred and ninety five photos. That's almost fifteen hundred photos of the crime
scene from Sandy Hook, most of which are so horrifying they've never been shown
to the public, and they talked about being obligated to show them to Eric
Holder, who was then the Attorney General of the United States, and a
group of FBI agents and behavioral analysis people. Just the reaction of those individuals,
and these are trained law enforcement people who've seen a lot, maybe have
seen it all, as we have said, many of them also had military
experience and had seen combat. A number of people in this article actually said
that the crime scene photos from Sandy Hook were worse than anything they'd ever seen,
even in combat. The slug line for this it's very evocative, and
it's just two sentences. They saw the horrific aftermath of a mass shooting.
Should we It's a very powerful question, it is. It was an extremely
powerful article. As you said, I cried quite a few times quite a
bit while reading it. It does bring up a very interesting point. While
we don't want to encourage the rantings and ravings of people who just want to
get true crime famous by releasing the manifestos of mass shooters, should we be
doing more to make sure that people understand the outcome of mass shootings. There's
a lot of angles for this. Can we do that while still being respectful
to the victims? I don't know. I'm not sure that you can do
that when it's something like Sandy Hook, when you've got twenty six victims and
most of them are children? How do you do that? But at the
same time to be perfectly honest. And I remember exactly where I was when
I heard about Sandy Hook. I was actually in the front office at my
school where I teach now, and I remember thinking, if slaughtered children does
not make this country change its stance on gun violence, I don't know what
will. And the answer clearly is not bad. I'd have to agree,
and my personal axis is always going to bend towards respect for them. Yeah.
I have a concern, however, and I think you're touching on this,
which is for us as a society. If we don't actually see the
damage and the physical damage that's being done by weapons of war. And I'm
not talking about a standard handgun here, I'm talking about AR fifteen style weapons
or the Bushmaster rifle that was used by the shooter in Sandy Hook. If
we don't actually see some of the physical damage. On some level, we're
being shielded, protected from the carnage that's happening in these mass shootings. I
was shocked. I remember this happening, but I'd forgotten or perhaps blocked it
from my mind that sixteen little kids had crowded into the bathroom, which was
three feet by four feet, and we're all sh to death in that completely
conbined space. They weren't even able to fall to the ground. The investigators
who had to work that crime scene for days were so horrified by what they'd
seen and what that shooter and what that gun did to those little children to
the point where they weren't even recognizable as human beings. The level of just
shocking injury to these little, tiny kids is something that is going to hunt
these people, all of these investigators, the medical examiners, everyone that worked
this case for the rest of their lives. I'm actually wondering if there's got
to be a way for us to come to understand how much damage is being
done to these victims and to us as a society by these endless mass shootings.
Right after the Nashville Covenant School shooting, it was either the evening of
or the day after, the Washington Post made what I think was a pretty
bold step, and they produced a piece called the Blast Effect. It shows
what AR fifteen rounds due to the human body when it blasts through tissue,
bones, and organs. And they did it in a way that's very interesting.
They did not use crime scene photos, but they did some like three
D modeling are every time you scrolled up on the screen, there would be
a picture of a just effect simile of a human body, no features or
anything like that, and it would show the pattern of injuries obtained by They
chose two people from two school shootings. They picked a child from Sandy Hook
and they picked a student who was killed at Parkland. They had gotten permission
from both of these children's parents to use the injuries that happen to their kids
as part of this article. They basically showed in real time, when a
child gets hit with six rounds from an AR fifteen, this is what happens.
And I actually I want to quote this thing from the Washington Post really
because Washington Post printed a justification for why they did this, and so I
want to quote from them real quick. The catastrophic damage the bullets from AR
fifteen's cause inside human bodies is rarely made public in detail. News organizations do
not generally publish graphic autopsy or crime scene photos because the images could be viewed
as dehumanizing, exploitative, and traumatizing, or could inflict further pain on the
families of victims. As a result, the damage AR fifteen fire can due
to a human body a great deal more than handguns is not widely understood.
When we set out to chronicle the story of the our fifteen in America,
we searched for ways to illustrate the effect on bodies in an unflinching but respectful
manner. We recognize this presentation may disturb readers, but we determine the information
it contains is crucial to the public's knowledge, and then it goes on from
there. I like the fact that they did too things here that they acknowledged.
We realize what it would do to these families to show these crime scene
photos, but we also acknowledge that we have to make people aware of what
happens when you hit the human body with this many high velocity rounds. The
story definitely was divisive. I had a friend who posted it on Facebook and
then she edited her post to say, actually, you know what, I'm
taking this link down because I don't want people to click on it and be
traumatized. But I am going to tell you why you should read it.
So she didn't provide the link, but she did say, here's the information.
Here's how you can google it and find it, but I'm not going
to link it because it's very setting. Like she described how upset she got.
It's an interesting conundrum, but ultimately I think Washington Post deciding to produce
that piece. It was upsetting, absolutely, but it was brave and it
was necessary too. I think the article The Blast Effect ran in the Washington
Post on March twenty seventh, twenty twenty three. Before people complain that the
Washington Post is hidden behind a paywall, this article is available for free on
the Washington Post website. I just reconfirm that. And the reason that they
did that is because they want people to see this article. Now you can
read the material or not, but we're going to link to it. The
information is available, and it is an extremely powerful and, as you said,
Kristen, disturbing article. But I think this information needs to be out
there because for us to go through one mass shooting after another. Particularly now
we have this whole series of mass shootings that schools and churches and synagogues and
mosques and dance schools and just on and on, and yet we don't ever
see much evidence of what actually transpired in these mass shootings. We're just seeing
articles and we see pictures of the first responders and ambulances and the fronts of
buildings. We see the Uvalde Elementary School, but we don't see inside,
and we certainly don't see the damage that's been done to the buildings, to
the community, and most importantly to the people. I can already anticipate because
we get blowback whenever we talk about guns and gun violence and mass shootings,
and there are people who don't want to hear it. They don't want to
hear it from us. As a teacher who deals every day with the disturbing
realities that come with having guns in the school and with mass shooting to being
a regular thing, this is something that is constantly on my mind. And
as Bill is the brother of a murder victim, we've got a lot of
credibility wrapped up in this issue. When we talk about the idea of authentic
reporting and reporting what is right. We talk about ethics and true crime.
I think that not only do we have a right to talk about this,
I think we have the responsibility to talk about it as true crime podcasters,
as journalists. Friend laughed at me the other day, he was like,
you're not a journalist. Okay, fine, but I am here podcaster.
Yeah, I am a podcaster, and I have a forum. We have
a forum, and we have the right to speak about it, and more
importantly, we have the responsibility to speak about it. So are we going
to get blowback for this episode? Yeah? Probably, we always do.
I think if anybody has the right to speak out about it, it's people
who live it. Within the true crime space. We have always tried to
be very respectful of the fact that our listeners come from a wide variety of
backgrounds. First of all, you're all over the country, you're all over
the world. Politically, it's the gamut from our most conservative friends to our
most liberal friends, and lots of stops in between. I don't even know
why I feel I need to say this. Understand, no one's coming for
your guns. We're not proposing that anyone take away your guns. But if
we as a country don't figure out how to do something. We're headed down
a road here that is so excruciatingly painful and divisive. We've got to figure
out a way for kids to be able to go to school safely. And
then, as I was mentioning all those other categories, and I'm just scratching
the surface, you can't go anywhere now without being worried that you're going to
be gunned down by a crazy person with an automatic weapon. Let me read
from the ap for a moment. The US is setting a record pace for
mass killings in twenty twenty three. We're playing the horror on a loop roughly
once a week. So far this year, the carnage has taken eighty eight
lives in seventeen mass killings over one hundred and eleven days, each time the
killers wielded firearms. Only two thousand and nine was marked by as many such
tragedies in the same period of time. Eighty eight lives seventeen mass killings in
the first hundred and eleven days of this year. This is insane and we
can't keep doing this. We've got to figure out something. If people want
to say that we're falling off the Planet lefty tree huggers. That actually is
true when it comes to me, and I'm not embarrassed about that. But
at the same time, we understand a lot of the people that we work
with in law enforcement are coming at this from a much more conservative perspective.
I am respectful, and I know, Kristen you are too, of our
friends and family that are coming at this from perhaps a more conservative, perhaps
even pro gun point of view. But I don't think it is bomb throwing
in any way, shape or form to say we have to do something together
to figure out how to address this issue, and arming teachers isn't even a
serious suggestion, so let's not even bother to go there. But do think
we need to take steps and work together. And if people want to say
that we're communists or whatever, quite frankly, it probably means you don't know
what you're talking about. All we're saying is we think we need to do
something, and we need to do something now. One of the other things
that also came up when I read this piece, but particularly the New York
Times piece about the incredibly brave law enforcement personnel who had to deal with the
carnage at Sandy Hook, we need to be doing more as a country to
address for the first responders and the families victims, helping them get past the
trauma that comes with living with something like this. Whether it's responding to sixteen
young children crowded into a bathroom who have been shot to death, or whether
it's a family member who has lost one person in their family to gun violence,
we still, I think, need to be doing better as a country
in terms of how can we support you, how can we help you?
This is hard stuff to live through, and Bill, I know you can
attest to that. And I never signed on for this. I'm not in
law enforcement. I'm not an investigator. I'm not a cop. I have
tremendous respect for our friends in law enforcement that do these jobs that many of
us wouldn't have the heart to do. Me included, I would not be
able to do this kind of gig now, not at all. And so
whether it is all of us maybe learning a little bit more about trauma response
and how to better help people who have been in a traumatic situation, or
whether it's going a step bigger and reforming healthcare in this country so that mental
health is not stigmatized and so that we have more options in terms of getting
therapy or counseling or whatever the heck else it is that you need once you've
had to deal with this. I think that's another step we need to take
as a country. If we're going to deal how this level of violence,
we need to figure out a way to support the people who have been impacted
by it. That goes from me as someone who has been a victim of
you, who is the brother of a murder victim. I can't think of
a single person that I know within the true crime space who either hasn't been
in some way, shape or form touched by crime. I'm not advocating that
we all get together and sing Kumbaya around a fire or anything like that,
but I'm also thinking that probably wouldn't hurt for everybody to sit down and have
a therapy session or something like that. Altogether, it is hard to deal
with. It is rough. The thing that nobody tells you when you deal
with this, And again I know you can attest to this bill, especially
if you don't sign up for it, is you don't suffer just one time.
It's not something that happens and then magically you wake up and you're better
you deal with it over and over again every single day. Your family's dealt
with it for thirty five years. I can't even imagine. As we steer
this episode to a close, I just want to summarize where I am,
and then I'd like to hear Kristen if at the same place or not.
We've always committed by the way that we don't have to agree on every little
thing. I like the fact that we have different perspectives. I'll put this
out from my point of view. Your mileage may vary. In thinking about
these two issues for today's podcast, should law enforcement be releasing manifests those of
this type? In thinking about it, I think the answer for me is
no. Interestingly, the related question about whether or not we should be seeing
more evidence of what's happening physically to our victims in these mass shootings, as
long as we can do this in a way that's respectful of victims and victims
families. And I know this is a hard one. I actually think we
may want to be thinking about finding ways to allow people to see the horrific
damage it's being done by these weapons of war. So I'm actually leaning towards
perhaps allowing some limited public and media viewing of what is actually happening to these
victims, because I think people would be shocked, and what I hope would
happen is they would be galvanized into taking active steps to do something about gun
violence here in the US. I'm with you on I'm like ninety five percent
of that. I do agree that. Yes, the manifestos, the rantings,
the rabings, so whatever you want to call it from mass shooters,
we don't need to be putting that out there. Are we going to be
curious about what was Saint Audrey Hill's NERT books? Yeah? Absolutely? But
do we need to see it? No. If the FBI says, hey,
we don't want to release it because we don't think it's a good idea,
and I'll respect your opinion, we probably don't need to release it.
We don't need to see it. The crime scene photo issue is harder because,
as you said, it would have to be done respectfully. I'm not
sure what that would look like. So I'm always a little hesitant to agree
to something without knowing in full how would this look. I'm all about playing
in an organization, and I don't like agreeing to things if I don't know
how it's going to work out in terms of wake up calls might be a
good one, but the cynical part of me is afraid and does not want
to see what would happen if people looked at that and we're like, I'd
still rather have my gun, and I know that there would be people who
would react that way, and I don't know if my bruised little heart can
take that. I don't know that I could deal with that, especially from
people that I know and love who are they like their guns, protective of
their guns, and I've told them I'm not the mean liberal here to take
away your gun. You can have your gun, and I'm fine with that.
I don't know how I would feel if someone that I really truly loved
saw those crime scene photos and said, you know it, that doesn't matter
to me, because it matters to me. I find myself in a really
weird place right there. The appropriate it compromise might actually be articles like the
blast Effect in the Washington Post, which managed to be descriptive and informative without
necessarily being horrifically graphic because they were illustrations. Yeah, we'll recommend the New
York Times article and the Washington Post articles as both very much worth our listener's
time. I would also add to that, if you know that this is
something that is going to greatly upset you, then please use your own best
discretion and don't put yourself through something that you don't feel like you have the
emotional capacity to handle. Right then, I definitely wish that I had waited
a day or two before I looked at the Washington Post article. It was
very necessary, it was something that I needed to see, but I didn't
have good dreams that night. It stayed there in the back of my head
and all I ended up having that night was gun related nightmares. So know
where you're at and where you're coming from before you embark on these particular articles,
and if you need to use discretion, I would say air on the
side of using discretion, I think we should steer to a close. That's
going to wrap it up for ruminations with Bill and Kristen. We've got to
come up with a better title for this, I think. But I feel
like this is what you would get if you were to ask the two of
us to coffee. We would talk about these things. We would do it
with a caffeinated beverage and maybe a scone or two. But this is what
you would get if you had Bill and I for coffee. Hopefully this has
at least been a slightly illuminating experience for you. As you were saying that,
I thought to myself, we could change it from ruminations to disturbing thoughts
with Kristin vill disturbing conversations with Kristin and Bill, disturbing but necessary conversations with
Kristin and Bill. We'll figure out some sort of title for this, but
we do hope that you have enjoyed spending a little bit of time with the
two of us today. If you like what we're dealing with the podcast,
please do you make sure that you leave us a five star rating and review
on any of your podcast platforms. Do you check us out on social media?
And we do still have merchandise by the way over at Tea Public,
Please do feel free to buy some mind Over Murder merchandise. We love seeing
you at Crime Con in various other places in that march. It's going to
do it for 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. Our theme music is by Kevin McLeod. 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 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.