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 it is the tenth of October and we have been
back from crime Con for quite a while. And you know what that means.
It's time for the Crime Con after action report. Wow, that sounds
like fun. It does sound like fun. When what did you make of
this crime con thing, Kristen Billy? Holy cow, it was amazing up
until the food poisoning. But we'll get to that later. Oh my gosh,
I'd completely forgotten about the food poisoning. I put that out of my
mind. Yeah, it was an amazing conference, I think. Dare I
say the best crime con ever? Yeah, I would definitely say so.
Now, were there people that I wished I could see who were not there
with us? Yes? Absolutely, And that message goes directly out to Jim
Clemente, who really should have been there but was not a last your FBI
profiler crush, my profiller crush. Yes, but boy, it was a
real roundup of amazing, hard hitting, fantastic, amazing people, and I
really enjoyed myself. I know. Well, there was one sad moment,
which is you had said to me you wanted to meet Paul Holes, and
I kept running into Paul Holes at various places at Crime Con, and unfortunately,
whenever I ran into Paul, who was everybody's investigative crush, I was
not with you. So he and I chatted three or four times over the
course of the weekend, and he always asked me, what's going on with
the Colonial Parkray murders, how's your sister's case, that kind of thing,
which I appreciate. And you had said to me, why am I not
meeting Paul. It has been three crime cons now that I have not met
Paul Holes, and I'd like to go on the record as saying I was
promised by Mac and by the Middlemans that they would introduce me to Paul Holes
because they're all such good buddies, and I did not get an introduction,
and now I'm salty about it. I do feel better about one thing,
which is I thought I was the only one that you were blaming, but
it's actually several different friends. Yeah. Somehow makes it worse, actually,
because so many of you have access to Paul Holes, and yet I have
been denied this access for three crime cons. Now, well, I'm concerned
that he may not want to meet you because you're taller than he is,
and that could be part of it. He may be avoiding you, and
now Paul's going to be mad at me. It is actually amazing just the
number of people who throw themselves at Paul Holes. Mostly women. Oh yeah,
no, I definitely heard that. At his meet and greet, they
had to shut the room down because there were more people in it than was
allowable. It was a fire hazard. The man created a fire hazard.
By having more than two thousand people in the same room, all of whom
were clamoring for him. It was crazy. We could have gotten you into
that room, for sure. You in one nine hundred and ninety nine other
crazed pole holes fans. It's crazy. Some people were even saying that he
doesn't even stay on property anymore because he wouldn't get a minute's worth of peace.
And I'd believe it. I have no idea. I'd just run into
him backstage at various points. Well, that's because you're a VIP, mister
VIP, and I think we should definitely talk about that as well, because
there are perks to being Bill Thomas's podcast partner, and one of them is
that since you get to do ZIP things, I get to do ZIP things
too. I guess that's true. So on a more serious note, there
was a tremendous amount of incredibly positive conversation at Crime Con. It's not all
just about who's the sexiest investigator out there, but a lot of conversation about
advocacy, how to move through crime cases forward. I met a tremendous number
of family members, many from k Is that we all know from following true
crime as well as brand new cases which were heartbreaking that I'd never even heard
of before, and I had a chance to meet those family members talk with
them. I'll tell you a little bit about a meeting that I attended with
a bunch of people who have lost loved ones in these terrible crimes, and
their assistance and camaraderie and the offers of help, for instance, to these
people who've had something terrible happen in their families within the last few weeks or
months. But I thought the overall atmosphere of Crime Con was incredibly positive.
People were having a good time. That shouldn't be lost on anybody. If
you're a true crime fan and you want to go there and find out what's
going on in the true crime space, find out about new television shows,
new books, new podcasts, meet some of your favorite reporters and investigators,
forensics experts. It just goes on. It's really an amazing place to be.
There's an entertainment component to it, and I don't have a problem with
that. People watch true crime because they find it interesting. They listened to
true crime podcasts like ours and others. The atmosphere was positive. It was
very survivor supportive, which is hard to roll off the tongue. So people
were treated with respect, I thought, And I think Crime Crime has really
made a significant effort to make sure that people are respectful, which I appreciate
it. Yeah. Absolutely, In every group of more than it was more
than five thousand people this year, I'm firmly convinced, like the official number
had to have been closer to six thousand, and so there's always going to
be one or two bad apples that slipped through. So did I see somebody
or a couple of somebody's wearing BTK fan T shirts? Yes? And do
I think that was particularly nasty considering that Carrie Rawsen, btk's daughter was there,
Yeah, I think that's awful. She should not have to go through
the crowd and see people wearing her dad's face on a T shirt. I
hate that. I think that's awful. But that's only a couple of people.
For the most part, though, we saw charming and funny shirts like
this person's my alibi or this is my crime con T shirt or this is
my Murder shows and comfy Clothes T shirt, all sorts of things like that,
right, And those are great. I saw a lot of people with
basically a detective shirts. Yeah, which makes me smile and it's funny.
I made some observations to you the audience, and there definitely were more than
five thousand people there. This was a beautiful hotel, just absolutely gorgeous,
and the ballrooms were gigantic, So it really held these thousands and thousands of
people very well. It was never too crowded, I thought. At one
point in the early going, I took a long walk to a place where
you could get a sandwich within the hotel complex, and I had a chance
to sit for a few minutes and I just watched people go by while I
ate my sandwich. Just a few observations. The audience overwhelmingly female. I
think it's even higher than seventy percent. There were a tremendous number of women
there, a lot of mother daughter duos, and a lot of small groups
of women that look like sisters or best friends who clearly watch true crime,
listen to true crime, read about true crime. And this was something that
they had planned as a kind of a fun weekend away, looking into an
interest that they share. Yeah, and I want to say now that we're
talking about audience real quick, I just want to say how absolutely positively blown
away I was when within five minutes of me arriving three hours late. We'll
get to that in a second. I got there, I got to our
booth, and within five minutes of arriving, not only did I find cow
Ramselin, who'd been looking for me. Thank god I found her because it
was the only time I got to see her, and it was for about
ten minutes, but I also had within five minutes there were people walking up
to me going, oh, oh, you're Kristen and I'm here from Williamsburg
and it was like, wait, you came from Williamsburg and they were like,
yes, to see you guys. I'm like, oh, my gosh,
what, no, you came from Williamsburg to see us? What that
happened? That happened a lot, and on that it happened a lot.
I was floored. It's really nice. We met hundreds and hundreds of people.
We met a whole bunch of people who are listeners to the podcast,
and thank you all for coming up and being so nice and saying hello.
And then we also met hundreds more people that came up to us and said,
tell us about your podcast, and we were the case or whatever else
exactly, and they had a lot of questions and we were passing up stickers
and postcards and things like that, and we had a QR code on the
back of a lot of our merchandise that allowed you to flip it over and
it take you right to mind if a murder. And people thought that was
really cool and they promised to check it out. And they had lots of
questions. They were like, what's your podcast about? Who were the two
of you? How did you get into podcasting? And we were on a
place called podcast Row, which is a very big ballroom chock full of podcasters,
but there were also all sorts of other people in the room. Yeah,
and it's great because we're We had Robin Water from the Trow and Cold
on one side. We had Mike Morford from Criminology and however many other podcasts
he currently has at the moment, doesn't he have tend Mike's on our other
side, thing going on there. Jess Bettencore was down at the end from
dna ID. It's we're here. We're in a group of our closest,
most amazing podcast colleagues the world. Just we're sitting here hanging out with each
other. It were so four hours it's really neat. It was nice because
the podcasters had a chance to see each other and maybe take some pictures together.
And then sometimes when large crowds came up, like to Robin Warder or
other podcasters, we'd run over and take a picture for them so they could
get a good picture with their fans. It was really a tremendous amount of
fun. And interestingly, this year podcast Row had all sorts of other related
entities displaying on podcast Row, so it wasn't just about podcasts. There were
a whole bunch of publishers who are putting out great new true crime books.
There were a number of the technology companies, that is, the labs,
the tech companies like Athram, Viagin and others. They had beautiful booths and
they were explaining how DNA can help solve cases. They had everything from the
police departments from various parts of the country, even recruiting people if they were
interested in joining the Orlando PD. Yeah, and all kinds of really interesting
merchandise t shirts and hats and all sorts of stuff, and then a massive
bookstore next door where you could get yeah, all of the latest True Climb
Books, which is one of Kristen's favorites. One of the booths that I
particularly liked was NEKMAC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They
were working on a really amazing ongoing art project all weekend essentially, but it
was they were working on a clay sculpture, building out what a child's face
would look like based on the sketch that they had been given. And they
were doing this clay sculpture all weekend long until we were packing up. At
the last minute. I saw them walking by with the finished clay sculpture of
this child's face, and I was like, that is really cool because so
you could watch people doing this and it wasn't just you're having to sit there
and talk to people. You can interact. So they had Brandon from News
Nation. He was there. They were doing stand ups and stuff like that.
You had Court TV. There were places where you can get behind the
camera and kind of record yourself doing little stand ups and things like that.
It's very interactive. And then every year since I've been at Crime Con,
there's been the there's been the booth where you can try out different types of
tasers and self defense things, and I definitely looked into a taser until I
realized you can't really bring a taser on a plane, idiot, don't do
that. Maybe you want to bring one to school. I know what you
want to do. What I was looking at, though, is I did
ask them. I said, look, I'm a runner. What is my
best option for this? And they were pointing out, here's some peppers.
Bay, Well, no, I don't want to peppers for anybody, because
what if it goes back in my face in the wind that I want to
do that? And we finally talked about okay, how about a tactical pen,
which is something that Jim Clemente actually remember that, Yeah, he's talked
about those. So they had a couple of different types of tactical pens.
Yes, they actually write, but they also have a glass breaker in the
end, and once got an embedded blade, and I love that. I
think that's great. So in Nashville, when I'm driving and not flying,
I will get a taser and a tactical pen and be ready for whatever should
befall when I go running. But I love that, and that's that is
something that has been there ever since I started going to crime Con, which
was Nashville. But I love that they offer so many different things. And
this was your fourth crime Con and my fifth, I think. Okay,
wait so Nashville, New Orleans, Vegas. Yes, so this was my
fourth one. And then you did Austin without me and was COVID but they
had that was COVID are Yeah, that was COVID And then yeah, so
my fourth ye or fifth. Yeah. There were a lot of other amazing
organizations there, like the National Center for Victims of Crime and I did a
panel with them later on in the weekend. There were so many great people
there, it was almost overwhelming. There's so many experts you can meet.
And we saw a number of people who have been guests on our podcast that
we'd never met physically, because if you think about how we do the podcast,
Kristen's in Virginia, Bill's in Connecticut, and the guest can be anywhere.
We typically will line up him or her on a zoom call we recorded
the episode, but we don't meet necessarily. As a matter of fact,
I would say in most examples, we don't meet the person. We might
talk to them in advance, but we don't actually physically meet. So it
was so great to be at Crime Con, in particular at the Clue Awards,
which was Saturday night, to have a chance to meet people and to
thank them for being onmind over murder, and how much we enjoyed talking with
them, and how much we enjoyed whatever it is they're a forensics expert or
a scientist or an author, how much we appreciated their willingness to come on
and talk with our listeners. Yeah, that was I think our only time
to grab doctor Michael Bowden and get a selfie with him was right at the
end of the Clue Awards and he was getting mobbed by people anyway, so
I think I was only able to actually pull him over for a selfie because
I don't know if you heard what I said to him. I'm sure I
lean. I said, doctor Bonden, I'd like to get a selfie with
the nicest looking gentleman in the room. And he lived line and he lit
up. It was so sweet, and he was like, yes, absolutely,
and I said I reminded him. I said, you've done our podcast
and he goes, oh, just remind me your name again, And I
reminded him and he was like, oh, yes, I remember, and
everything. So we did a couple of quick selfies with him. He said,
a lovely guy, and he was so nice. He's so smart,
and he put up with us asking all of our questions on Mind over Murder,
and then when we met him, it was like he was really excited
to say hello. There were so many people like that who were there.
These are subject matter experts in a variety of different disciplines, and it's such
a pleasure to hear them present talk about their work. It was so interesting,
if anything, all of the breakout sessions as they call them, where
different people are presenting on their new project or what it is they are known
for. They're so interesting and you have to make hard decisions about who's going
to cover the booth for Mind of a Murder as well as I really have
to see this person or that person speak yeah and actually so true that.
And let's go through. Let's go through the weekend so we can talk about
the various things that we did, and we'll start with Okay, so we'll
start with you didn't have travel woes, but you certainly ended up having to
get up early. You were up by two in the morning to get to
Crime Gone, Right, I was up at two thirty in the morning,
left the house at three point fifteen, get to the airport at four o'clock
six am. Flight fly straight down, pick up the booth and my bag,
take a lift directly to the airport. And so I got to the
hotel about ten fifteen, I think, And it took me an hour to
set up the booth now, and you were, of course texting me that
you've been delayed. Yes, and we're going to get to that in a
second. So I got the booth set up, and of course I thought
to myself, when Kristen gets here, she's going to change everything I just
did. But at least I'll get us up and running. And there were
so many people waiting to get into crime Con and into podcast Row. They
actually opened up early, so at eleven thirty, even though we were scheduled
for twelve, they opened up, and they're a flood of people came into
podcast Row. You start doing the whole meet and greet and saying hi to
folks and telling them about your podcast or in many examples, meeting folks already
listened to mine over Murder, and it was really fun, but I missed
having you there. Kristen, but I knew you were delayed. I had
originally figured, Okay, if as long as I get to Orlando within a
couple of hours of crime con starting, it'll be fine. So my original
plan was, I've got a I've got like a nine to thirty flight.
It'll be down there by eleven thirty. I can get to the i can
get to everything. I'll be with Bill by say about one o'clock. Worst
case scenario is it takes me that long to get my luggage and go to
the hotel and then head over to the venue. But the flight got delayed
because the plane coming from Orlando had mechanical difficulties. Oh, I thought it
was so the storm that hit. So we were a storm was rolling in
and I had We had a couple of terrifying moments where we were like,
oh my god, if this plane is delayed any longer, we're going to
be delayed getting out of here because a tropical storm was coming in. But
now the main reason was the plane leaving Orlando, which incidentally and interestingly,
a friend of mine was on on the Orlando end because he kept posting to
Facebook and he was like, my flight from Orlando back to Richmond is delayed,
And I wrote, you, son of a bitch, is you're plane
is the one that I need to get on, and you've delayed it somehow
or another. I need that I knew that airplane. So he actually we
were texting back and forth, and I was waiting at the gate for him
when he disembarched, because it really was his plane and that I needed to
get on. And he came off. He'd been at Universal and Disney in
a bunch of other places for a couple of days, and I yelled across
the terminal, dude, where's my plane. It's right out there. But
yeah, we ended up being delayed by that mechanical issue on the ground in
Orlando, so we didn't get to Richmond until later. We didn't get to
Orlando until later than that. So by the time I finally got to you,
it was about four point thirty clock. Maybe you'd already gone to do
your advocates group, which I want you to talk about in a second.
And so I arrived. Our booth is there, and you're right immediately reorganized
and lined up all of our postcards in stam stuff. I know, It's
just I have a touch of obsessive compulsive disorder and touch, just a touch,
just a little bit, just a little bit, just a little bit.
I had gone random rakish angles all over the table and you came along.
But everything in the very neat little bond, neat little stacks and everything,
And I know it drives you nuts. I know it must, but
it's just one of those things. I'm so ridiculously regimented about the way that
I wanted things to look good. So yes, I rearranged the table.
I saw a couple of people who recognized me, and then I had a
couple of people who came up very concerned because they hadn't seen you and they
wanted you. And I was like, he went to a group and he'll
he'll be back later. And then I met up with Shane wat and we
realized, oh wait, we've got a podcaster's thing that we're going to.
We better hustle it upstairs. And I was a little worried I couldn't get
into the podcasters thing because you had my badge, because I pick it up
and we were not physically together at that together. Yeah, so I was
a little worried that I wasn't going to be able to get into the podcaster's
penthouse party, but was able to, thankfully because Alice recognized me. Oh
good, and something important happened and a lot of people have been asking us
about it. Friday evening, before Kristin arrived, and I want to thank
everybody for their expressions of support and concern, two sets of people came up
to me Kristin was not there yet and had information about the Colonial Parkway murders.
Now we can't get into what information they provided, but it was actually
quite important. And this was two sets of two people back to back.
I was surprised in both examples. They said they were listeners to the podcast,
and they were both from Virginia, and they had information in different aspects
of the Colonial Parkray murders, which we've since passed on to law enforcement.
I was steamed with myself because I was short on sleep and a little frazzled.
I wasn't like here I am when I'm in my home office slash podcasting
studio, where I've got paper in front of me and a pen and I'm
ready to go with various forms of technology. Somehow, when I spoke to
this first duo, they gave me information about the Colonial Parkway murders, which
I thought could be quite important. Ultimately, it's up to our investigators to
decide these things. They had given me this info, and I didn't write
down their contact information like an idiot. I was a little frazzled, and
I didn't go get my briefcase and pull out a piece of paper write down
an email or a phone number or something. They had said they were very
eager to meet you, Kristin, which of course a lot of people said
that. And they said they were going to come by later on in the
weekend because crime con goes Friday, Saturday, Sunday. So I thought I
was going to see them again, and I don't think we ever did connect.
Now, interestingly, the second pair of people that came up right after
that first pair, and this again may have played into my dropping the ball
about finding contact information for the first pair of people. They had information,
but I actually knew their names because not everybody that listens to our podcast participates
in our social media Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, all those things, but
these two people in particular, they do, and so when they said hello,
I recognized their names. I was like, oh gosh, yes,
you've commented from time to time, good thoughtful comments. And so they had
information on the Colonial Parkway murders as well, which was all new to us,
and that was very interesting. We passed that on to law enforcement as
well. Because I'd connected with the second duo, I knew how to get
a hold of them, and they actually did stop by the next day,
but I don't think the first pair of people stopped by. I was so
annoyed with myself because we wanted to get this information to law enforcement. I
wanted to talk to them again. And then when we got to the end
of crime come, I said, for the life of me, I can't
remember their names. And we'd met hundreds of people and talked with who knows
how many people. As a matter of fact, my voice was even starting
to go by the end of Yeah, And I was so upset with myself
because I said, I don't know how to get a hold of these people.
So we tried a couple of different things, and I know a number
of you had commented on this. We tried putting up notices on our social
media, and I think got increasingly dire we really want to talk to you,
Yeah, increasingly dire sounding. Yeah, Yeah, because you're not trying
to be alarmist or whatever, but when someone tells you something that you think
could be important and you would like to get into the hands of the investigators,
and only the investigators can evaluate whether information is important or not. But
it seemed important to us, and so we tried different things. So Kristen
and I Kristin put up notices on Facebook, and then I did Twitter and
Instagram, and then we did it again. And then actually the second pair
of people who had contacted us, they circled back with us and said,
did you need to hear from us again? And we're like, we're actually
looking for a different pair of people people, but we're glad to hear from
you. But we're very glad to hear from you. We tried a couple
of different things, and then I thought, let's put up a notice at
the front end of our next episode of Mind of a Murder. Yeah,
so we tried that, and then and we tried it again, and I
hope we weren't annoying anybody by this point, but people were like, have
you heard from these people? Yeah? And as a matter of fact,
a listener texted me this afternoon and said, did you ever hear from those
people, and I said, yes, why, yes, we did.
But interestingly, it wasn't until a listener suggested, Bill, why don't you
put up that same notice on one of the crime con Facebook groups, And
I said, that's a good idea. So I went ahead and did that,
and then the crime con people got a hold of me and they're like,
is there anything we can do to how we want to connect this pair
of people with this pair of podcasters, so you can pass along the information.
And eventually we did hear from them. We did pass along the information
to law enforcement and they're following up and so it all worked out fine.
But thank you. Everybody who asked about it offered suggestions, and interestingly it
was that fire I don't suggestion, try the crime con social media pages,
not just Mind over Murder, which yeah, obviously one podcast has a certain
number of people that look at social media. It might be thousands of people.
We only needed to reach two, but we needed to reach those two
people. And by the way, they never said but I got the impression
they might have been on vacation or something. Yeah. Afterward, we were
in Florida, we were in Orlando, and we were right across the street
from a place called Disney World that you may have heard of. 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. It was in the traffic outside Disney.
Oh my gosh, it was crazy. So yeah, we were finally
able to connect with those people. And that was the That was just one
of the many. So you and I had met on Friday night. You
had done your advocacy group, which we want to talk about. You and
I had done the Podcasters of the Podcasters meet and great up in the Penthouse.
Thank you Kevin for allowing us up into the Penthouse where we could see
this great view of all of the Disney parks. Then afterward, it was
it had been about like ten o'clock at night or something like that, and
you and I got back to our hotel we were staying off site, and
we were sitting down at the bar and you were telling me all of this
information, and I could tell you were exhausted because you've been up since two
in the morning. And you were like, I don't I don't have the
name of that first person. And I was like, oh, I'm sure
they're going to come back around. Oh, it was just the It was
just the worst when you know, we realized by the end of the weekend,
Oh no, they never came back by, and it turned out that
was something that we really needed to be able to tell law enforcement. Thankfully,
all's well, that ends well, But it is a crazy, exhausting
weekend. And you were up far earlier than I was, so I could
tell by the time we were done with the end of the day you were
through the ringer. Yeah. I think I was more fully functional on Saturday
than I was on Friday. Yeah, we were definitely better off on Saturday,
although Saturday is just a very full day and that was it was crazy,
And so I guess one thing that you really have to keep in mind
when you do crime con is be willing to go without sleep if you want
to do a little bit of everything, because you need to be there early.
You need to be willing to stay all day. And one thing for
participants in particular, you got to make sure you have chargers with you.
You got to make sure you have food with you because there's so much to
do. Like you said, you're not going to want to leave between sessions
and miss out on something. So it becomes like you're having to make decisions
about where am I going from one minute to the next. And if you
don't want to miss a session, that might very well mean you don't get
lunch, you don't have time to charge your phone, you don't have time
to go back up to your room. It's a very hectic, very full
set of days. And so I got smart for this one. I wasn't
smart about it at Vegas, but I got smart for this one. And
I had protein bars and I had crackers in my backpack. I brought a
charger with me. I had extra drinks and stuff because there was no guarantee
between being in the booth and going to see stuff that I was ever going
to be able to go out and get a meal, and I didn't.
I don't remember eating on Saturday until we got to the Clue Awards. Yeah,
it was quite a day. Saturday was an amazing day. As Kristin
mentioned, I was invited to attend a small scale meeting with a new group
that crime Con is putting together, and Kevin balf who's the guy that runs
crime Con, and the aforementioned Paul Hols had an idea of putting together a
group of people who've lost loved ones as a result of criminal mileline. So
this would be a lot of people that you would know from cases that you
would know. Nicole and Joe Schmidt and Joe and Tara Patito were there.
These are are Gabby Potito's parents and very interesting with the four of them.
Her parents divorced a number of years ago and they both remarried. They are
amazing people, incredibly positive and sweet and just really great, nice people who've
been through the ringer in terms of losing Gabby and then of course the media
firestorm that occurred as a result of Gabby's disappearance. But it's interesting these two
couples, including her mom and dad who divorced, they get along so amazingly
well. They actually finish each other's sentences and they're the loveliest people. And
they've now set up Gabby Patito Foundation and they're doing a lot of really worthwhile
things. They want something good to come from using Gabby, and they were
incredibly wonderful. And there were a number of other people that you would know,
Carrie Rawson, who was btk's daughter, Margaret Wardlow, who survived the
East Area rapist or who later became known as the Golden State Killer. David
Robinson who's been looking for his son Daniel Robinson for two years. Lovely,
lovely man Becky Patty from the Delphi case. She's the grandmother of Liberty German,
one of the two victims in that case. Together with her friend Abigail
Williams. Becky's absolutely lovely. And then there were new people that had terrible
things had happened to them recently. There was a woman who spoke named Melissa
Winters. She was speaking about her missing child case. So this is someone
this has just happened within the last few months. It was amazing listening to
these other pretty highly experienced I mean, you had the sister survivors from the
Golden State Killer case there who were just amazing people, and they were offering
advice and it was it was pretty powerful. It was supposed to be an
hour and a half and someone made the decision. After we'd just had brief
remarks from Paul Holds and Kevin balf welcoming everybody, someone said, why doesn't
everybody go around the room and talk a little bit about who they are and
what their involvement in this thing is. So we made our way around the
room, and of course these are some people that I know and many people
that I admire. To listen to each person's story briefly was incredibly difficult.
There were a lot of tears and a lot of pain, and it was
difficult. I told Kristin, I know, I told you this. Afterwards,
I felt like I'd been through a washing machine, like I felt wrung
out listening. Some people only spoke for a moment or two, and other
people spoke for a couple of minutes, and everybody was they just let them
talk. As you made your way around the circle, you realized that about
thirty of us, I would say, in the room, and every single
person in that room has been directly touched by criminal violence and man. Some
of the stories, including the new ones, there were a couple that were
so shocking they were so hard to listen to because you were like, how
can one human being do that to another human being? And these are,
like I said, some very high profile cases that all of us have followed
through crime know about, and then a bunch of cases that you've never heard
about before, you haven't heard about yet, and each one was equally heartbreaking
in its own way. Man, it was a privilege to be in the
room, but it wasn't much fun. That is one of the things that
I think I'm most blessed by to be able to experience at Crime con.
It is a privilege for me every single day to work with you, Bill,
because you who are dealing with I think, some of the worst trauma
and pain that anybody can But here you are doing it. You're advocating for
Kathy, You're advocating for the rest of the families in these cases, You're
advocating for everybody who has gone through a magnificent and tremendous loss. You're not
letting it beat you. You're getting up and living your life and doing everything
and trying to make the world a better place for everybody else in it.
That's a privilege for me. But it's even more so when, Oh,
I'm not just getting to hang out with Bill today, I'm getting to hang
out with Jane Carson Sandler and Debbie Dominga, Marha wardlow Right, who I
had a very intense and very heartfelt and moving conversation with two of the three
of them at Crime con in Vegas, and I was able to follow it
up this time by telling them, as a result of the conversation that we
had, because of the things that we have gone through and that we have
shared, I was able to make these changes in my life for the better.
And I wanted to thank you both for that. And that always results
in tears and hugs and this sense of shared we're fighting, but we're getting
through it. Whether you're talking to Kathy Kleiner or Jane Barowski or Jane or
Debbie or you or anybody else. It is my great privilege to be able
to share this with you, guys, and to know that here you are.
You've suffered this awful stuff, but you're still standing and you're still thriving,
and that's amazing. Oh, thank you, But I have to I
can only imagine how difficult it must have been to sit in that room.
Yeah, it's an honor to meet those people and to be in the room
with those people, but to hear their stories, even the short version of
their stories, is not easy. We're putting together this group, they're calling
it the Advocates, and they asked us just the other day in a follow
up email, are you interested in continuing to participate, and I said,
of course yes, and I hope that a number of other people will feel
the same way. We're going to talk about where we want to take this
group and what we want to do with this collection of people. And it
occurred to me I thought of John Walsh from America's Most Wanted. He had
said that we're members of the club that no one wants to be invited to
join, and it does feel like that. It's I think any of us
would give anything to not be invited to a meeting like that, because we
hadn't experienced what we have, but it was. It was a rare and
special, but not an easy place to be. Crime con has definitely become,
as you mentioned at the top of the pod, a place for survivors,
a place for advocates, and a place where people who are trying to
do some good in the world can come together and continue to make good things
happen, and people are able to connect with each other in a way that
they might not otherwise. I would say that probably the most There were a
number of great impactful, emotional moments from that weekend, but I think probably
the one that I am going to have resonate with me for a long time.
Was being able to introduce Jane Barowski to Kathy Kleiner. I was thinking
about that those two women had never met before, and we were each big
fans of one another, and what a privilege to introduce those two people.
And just the way that they both survived something that very few other people on
this planet will ever survive. They survived two serial killers. That was amazing.
Just to see the way that Kathy's so very generous. And as soon
as I said, hey, Kathy, want to introduce you to Jane,
Jane gasped yes because I told her she knew who Kathy was, and she
gasped and she goes, oh my gosh. And Kathy just held out her
arms to her and she's come here, It's okay, Like we got it.
And there were tears, and it was a real privilege to be able
to introduce those two amazing women and to watch them heal each other. And
the most interesting thing that I take from every time I talk with Kathy,
because she says it a number of different times in her book, in the
panel that she did with you and Brian and Renee, she says that talking
about it helps her heal, and I think that's amazing, And so I
like the fact that crime con offers a place for people like Kathy and Jane
and everyone else who has suffered to be able to heal by talking about it
if that's what they need, And if they don't want to talk about it,
that's fine too. They can meet other people and gather resources and things.
But I like the fact that there is so much dialogue around this is
experience, both shared and individual, and here is how we can build a
community that is going to help people survive it and thrive in spite of it.
And one of the things that's worth noting is that, for instance,
with James Burrowsky, who survived the Connecticut Valley serial killers still unidentified after all
these years, and Kathy Kleiner, who's better known as surviving Ted Bundy,
so many of these other people that you meet a crime con they're incredibly positive
people. And so there's actually a lot of joy and a fair amount of
laughter, and people are having fun and people are celebrating being alive. And
you can't have people like Cheryl McCollum and so many other people, Joseph Scott
Morgan and I could just keep naming names. They're just incredibly positive, joyful,
life affirming people. And so even though they deal with some very heavy
issues and work with sur and helping to solve cases and just deal with some
heavy stuff, they're also joyful, fun caring people who are really so great
to be around. It's very inspiring. Yeah, yeah, it really is.
And so that does mean when you're having to figure out, Okay,
am I going to listen to Joe Scott Morgan? Am I going to go
listen to Kathy? Am I going to go listen to Nancy Grace? Do
what Nancy Grace do? You have to make a lot of hard decisions.
So on Saturday, as always, you and I had to figure out where
are we going, what are we doing, who's going to be in the
booth? And we did have to figure out what are my absolute musts?
Right, So I actually only had one absolute must for Saturday, like it
was a non negotiable. It was absolutely had to go listen to doctor Anne
Burgess talk about her work at Quanticout and that blew me away. Wow,
it was amazing. And the fact that I got to go with podcast Overlord
Tim Pilari and Jemmamel and go listen too. It was like, not only
do I get to listen to this amazing lady, I get to do it
with two amazing podcasters. Like how cool is this? What is my life
like? How did I get this privilege to be here? It was so
cool? God, she is absolutely amazing. What a firecracker, what energy
and what an amazing mind. She is so intelligent and just so completely amazing.
I adored her session. It was so cool. Yeah, now there's
one I missed but would love to hear another time. And by the way,
a number of these sessions are available. Fox recorded a number of sessions
and we'll put links in the show notes here. And crime Con also has
a subscriber level that you can join that would also allow you to hear and
see a number of these presentations. So there are ways to enjoy crime Con
online. We have so much more information that we want to share about our
time at crime Con, and of course we have to share all about the
panel that Bill was on with Renee Williams and Kathy Kleiner, Rubin and Brian
attend. So we are going to continue our coverage of crime Con and our
after action report in a second episode. That's going to do it for this
episode, but please stay tuned for our next one. Thank you so much
for listening to 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 McLoud. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership
with Coral Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or
Instagram. You can also follow our page 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.