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 a Murder. I'm Kristin
Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Cynthia Hell, director
of Burden of Proof, and Stephen 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 always like panic, Oh that's where we come in.
And Stephen, how about you? I'm Stephen Pandos. I live in
Charlotte, North Carolina and work in a commercial real state 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 on LinkedIn message that
said call me. Did he say anything else? Was there a pitch contained
or Stephen? No, no, no, it was not. My recollection
is the only thing it said was called 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 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 told her to hang up on me. Yeah she was. We
were this is a time when we were working out at my kitchen. We
were in between offices, I like to say, and I could see her
getting visibly emotional as she's talking with Stephen, and I didn't know what was
going on. I could be some crazy person who the heck 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 when
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 conveyed
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 had how did she move?
Yeah? No, not. At the time. I got referred to
Cynthia by a firm in New York, Tandescent Films. And you know that
was a result of me just calling just picking up the phone and calling people
who were in the documentary film 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 arverage 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? I'm spooling, 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 the 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, as 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 would be filming for seven and a half years, I imagine
both of us would have said no. Steven and myself would have been like,
no way, We're never going to do this. But 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 Steven'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, or at least one shoot
with Stephen. And so Stephen 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 and like he'd hit a brick wall. So he
rolls up in front of my house and we just film. We film 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 Steven 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 of you? I
think that's up to you. I'm a little too close. I'm in the
fish bowl. 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 and so 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 Bills that I was sitting there watching the documentary and going sounds so
familiar, like you guys have gone through a lot of the same struggles in
terms of law enforcement issues, and I just want to take a minute,
just on a personal level and say how sorry 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 drawing. 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 into 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
Rebeccadowski, 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. Kristen and I we were like shocked by that. One of
our strongest takeaways from watching Burden of Proof is why didn't the Pandos 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 to 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?
Yeah? It 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 I just want to say, the your and Stevens stories, the way
that they parallel are so uncanny. Yeah. Yeah, And so I didn't
put that together either into we got this request from y'all for this podcast,
but it was something that we would talk about quite often with our team he
or 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 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 giving 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, 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
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 there 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 lived there, and so I spent a lot of time in my
childhood going in and out. They 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 on
who came in and who came out and if anybody actually came for Jennifer that
night? Yeah, I don't recall. I'm sure they did, because you
know, 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 opened twenty four hours in the 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'd 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 Stephen, 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, how 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 Wigel when she worked at the
News of an Observer for many years here in North Carolina, and so she
became the one that really helped us dissect the case. Because Stephen had sued
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 Stephen,
I'm stepping on all over you right now, But for the illegal 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 Stephen 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 is 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, whopping 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. Stephen, 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 is coming
back, so I'm fine either way. I've just always thought a word as
missing. But I didn't I didn't like to sue the police department my petition
the court to have Jennifer declared deceased. 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 her declared deceased. And then what the police department told my attorney
was, look, we can't give you that or this way that you asked
for it, but if you subpoena the information us with 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. And it was
at the time that 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 a responsible agency in my sister and Rebecca Dowski's murder.
I think that at the time it was probably the distinction is 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.
Yes, you're you have a different you're wrestling a different beast altogether. Yeah.
People have said to me, Bill, you should sue the FBI,
and it's 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 put their own money,
Yeah, I think they do cynthing. 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 Stephen 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 was gonna
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.
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 goals. And one
of those calls is from my roommate. Actually, you did, I know
you did speak to her, Yes, yeah, 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
not 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 Mind over 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 if 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 Tennis, and he
just 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 from 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 again. 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 vu. I've seen this before. I've heard this before. I
know, Bill gets these same phone calls, and there's just this a 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 a 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
Kristen and I were watching it at the same time, but not in the
same room. Yeah, we're both making a point of Hey, let's watch
these four episodes and compare notes, 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 Cathy's case in two thousand and nine,
which I think also roughly parallels the time frame 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 from my sister, what's what I did whatever consequently, Yeah,
that's just what I did. Was always got the big picture of the
big goal was justice from 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 in all. Yeah, I'll let Cynthia answer that. I don't
no pressure, Cynthia. No. 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 live 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 it that she could put in it. Yeah, it's a
big responsibility, but it's also an honor to have someone like Stephen 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 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 re enactments 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 those 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 from
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 amplify that theme again of having memory being unreliable too.
Stephen, how is 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 where 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 Cathy's murder and just asking him or 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? The copies of the interrogation were on DVDs in
that original 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, when
we watched it, Tom Vickers, who is the editor that I've been working
with for many years 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
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 weakening 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
Reid as well. I talked to Wendy on occasion. I don't talk to
her regularly or anything, but yeah, just on rare occasion I do.
Yeah. 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 very about what you think
may have happened to her. I'll answer it by not answering it, that's
what 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, Steven, if
you want to add anything to that, No, I think that's that's fair,
And it's one of the things that led to all this heartache, and
is speculation, right, 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 Christen 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 seemed 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 and 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, we 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 stream 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 in the throws and the thick of the investigation and uncovering things
on our own, there was some use the word excitement, but for lack
of a better word, about 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 the 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, you know, if telling Jennifer's story helps others the normal 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 Steven, 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 wives and the where fours 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 through Stephen, 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 that 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, all this and the absence of justice from my sister
and the Alumbus piece, Cynthia. It'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,
this process of so many years work? Yeah? What are you doing now?
Yes? Even I've talked about that a little bit. I feel lost,
like unward almost, And filmmakers will say this, I don't know.
Filmakers will say that you have to abandon the story, that the 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 it'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. Then 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 brand to become pretty serious. I was thinking that was to
have a lighter tone. Yeah. And the other thing that I've been doing
with two team members of mine Blair Johnson, who films with me all the
time. She's a cinematographer, an Sandra Davidson, who is our 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
in 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. But it's very cool. I look forward to
actual footage of Bigfoot 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 Dewey. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnoi. 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.