Speaker 1: Good morning, Maggie. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing all right. How are you Erow?
Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic. I got to tell you right here from
the very beginning why I'm so fascinated with your podcast,
and it's because my wife's mother was found in a closet.
Except she wasn't like Sandy who was tied up. She
had transitioned. And the thing is that I study podcasts
like yours because I want to gain the confidence, I
want to gain everything that I need to do so
that I can be like a Liz and try to
help find answers before my wife passes on and and
basically goes to the grave realize, you know, hopefully with
an answer and not like, well, we don't know, it's
a shutcase.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think we all that's what we
all hope for, right is to have answers and closure
versus the ever ending questions that could plague you for
the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: Like that's what we all want, right Arrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did you step into this and how especially
when it comes to that connection with Liz, because I
mean she's a little sleuth as it is. I mean,
that's what I love about journalism. And people trying to
solve crimes today. There are no politics around you. You
just go in, you get the information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, because you know, once you see facts
and evidence, the facts and evidence still lie. So I
got into this, and Liz and I have a pretty
unique connection in that, you know, the very first podcast
I ever did was about my dad, and after he died,
I inherited like one hundred and fifty cassette types of
phone calls between him and this guy in the Philippines
name this American guy. So I decided I wanted to
know what happened to my dad, why he lost all
this money. So I decided I wanted to go and
fly to the Philippines and meet my dad's con artists.
So I think there were parts of Liz's story that
I could understand. You know, I do not understand what
it's like to lose a parent in the way that
Liz did at all. But I know what it's like
to lose your dad at a young age. I know
what it's like to rifle through paperwork to how this
question lingering about how my dad could fall for something
like this and try and get an answer to it.
And you know, I think Liz and I both sort
of connected in this aspiration of being two daughters who
just want to figure out what happened to our late fathers.
Speaker 1: So then when it comes to locating those answers this
this is one of my burning questions as I listened
to your podcast, Hands Tied, and that is, how do
you find the answer realizing it could be just another assumption.
Speaker 2: That's a great question, and I think, you know, I think.
Speaker 3: That what everybody has to ask themselves, from lawyers to
investigators to journalists. You know, I think at least I
can talk from my own experience, not Liza's experience. I
think for me, it was very hard to separate who
I thought my dad was versus like who you know
he was in terms of these phone calls, in terms
of this scam. And I think you kind of have
to try, and I don't know if humans are actually
able to do this one hundred percent, but you just
try to get rid of any bias or any preconceived
or trying to make this person be who you think
they are. And I think that's the weird thing that
I'm grateful for, at least in my own project, is
I know my dad three sixty five. Now I know
the best parts of him and I know the worst
parts of him, and that makes him more human to me,
and you know, I love him all the same.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: That scares a bit Gebi's out of me because I
don't have cassette tapes in that way. I've got radio
air checks. But my daily writing of thirty two years though.
I mean, I guess after I'm gone, they're going to
come in here and they're going to see who I
really am.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what secrets do you have?
Speaker 1: Air? I don't know, but it's in the book. If
you want to read it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, send it over. I'll start reading it.
Speaker 1: Well, let's break down Liz Milgard. Let's find out who
she is and why she has that drive.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So from a very young age, you know, I think,
like a lot of young people, teenagers, a lot of
people now who probably want to listen to Hands Tiede,
have a deep interest in true crime. And Liz always
was really fascinated in true crime.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: She explained her childhood bedroom and it just had books
upon books of you know, different serial killer psychology, and
she really wanted to go to school and study what
made serial killers serial killers. She wanted to study criminal
psychology and get to know like what was in their
brains and how it gets them to act this way. So,
you know, with Liz, she really went from being curious
about true crime studying to then unfortunately being thrust into
having to live a true crime story. She found out
about it while she was in England and then had
to fly all the way to Texas where she heard
that her dad was killed and her mom was found
in a closet with her hands and feet tied, and
then she immediately had to jump into investigator mode, but
in a weird way. Luckily, since she studied so much
about true crime, she knew sort of how to navigate it.
She was able to kind of shift her brain into
this investigator mode where she knew what to ask the
police for, she knew not to touch evidence, she knew
how to look for evidence that could be pertinent to
the case. You know, she really really transformed and became
a full fledged investigator and still is. Honestly, to this day,
she is still working tirelessly on this case.
Speaker 1: This fascinates me so much what you and Liz do,
and the reason why is because you go into this
investigation without you know, having to go by the book,
as they say. In fact, Bill Cunningham last night said
on its National show that crime isn't down, We just
have fewer police doing jobs. They're not hiring and they're
not going in that direction. So therefore I'm relying on
people like yourself, Maggie. You're the one that's going to
uncover a story and we bring it forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's like anything.
Speaker 3: Multiple eyes I think are always a good thing because
you know, as we were kind of talking about before,
it it's hard to not have biased So if you
have a bunch of other people looking at something, then
someone else can spot something. Somebody else might see some
detail that seems important, someone else might call out something
that you missed before. So I think also there's just
the enthusiasm that a lot of true crime people have
where they just want to pour over every single case document,
every single court document. And you know, a lot of investigators,
there's a lot of great ones out there, of course,
but you know they have tons and tons and tons
and tons of cases that they're trying to solve.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you can't be as laser focus
if you're just focusing on just the one.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite word. Focus And I have to know
how did you find your focus? Because there's so much
clickbait out there, there's so much assumption and oh I
want this, I want that, and you're you so far
off the path, but yet you have stayed so in
tune with this.
Speaker 2: Thanks. I really appreciate that. I think, jeez, what do
I think? I think?
Speaker 3: For us, it was just important to follow the story
and follow the facts that we found in our research,
and to you know, our real main protagonist in this
story is Liz, so she we were following her journey
throughout the whole thing of her early days with her parents,
which she remembers, and then you know, during the investigation
and the trial and then in this aftermath.
Speaker 2: So really our main focus was on Liz in her story.
Speaker 1: Please Do Not Move. There's more with Maggie Robinson Cats
coming up next. The name of her podcast, hands Tied.
We're back with the host Meggie Robinson Cats. How did
you react when you found out that Sandy does not
remember what happened?
Speaker 3: You know, I think a lot of people can fill
in what they think about it. You know, I know
Sandy has a lot of health ailments, she has seizures
and that's what caused her memory laps that night, is
she had a seizure, and she was complaining of seizures
before that, So, you know, I think there are probably
two sides that people think, either that yep, it was
a medical thing that she did, you can't have memory
laps when you do have seizures, or it's a convenient excuse.
And I think both are ways that listeners can go
in this story. And I think that's true with the story.
I think there are people who will hear it one
way and then there are people who will hear it
another way. And truly, the thing that I hope that
people when they listen to it is that whether you
believe in a person's innocence or not, I think that
the real human tragedy is what happened to Liz, and
that she's mourning the loss of two parents.
Speaker 1: Essentially, see the power of interpretation, because that's where to me,
it's a conversation starter, but it also is something that
could break you up because everybody has their own interpretation,
and sometimes compassion gets out of hand because they go, well,
maybe you should look at it this way, and you
won't have such a bias.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we forget like these are people, and
these are people who are experiencing and retelling the worst
thing that ever happened to them. And no matter what
I think, we can all agree that what happened to
Liz is a huge tragedy. And that's my biggest hope
that no matter what listeners think in terms of innocence
are guilty, that I hope that they resonate and can
hear that part of the story and Liz's strength and
trying to get through each day.
Speaker 1: Would you look at this as being hindsight because I mean,
I guess you know, it's like when it's happening in
real time in a court room in a police investigation,
and now you go in there and you've got all
the court records of something that's already happened. Do you
see this as hindsight or do you see it as
foresight because something needs to be uncovered.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, later on in the series, I
I think that there's a couple of things that we
highlight that could have been done better and the investigation,
and you know, I think that there are there.
Speaker 2: Were talking about bias.
Speaker 3: There is a couple of assumptions that were made early
on by the investigators. And I think that question of,
you know, if they didn't immediately jump to who they
first suspected, could they have been open to more possibilities?
Would that open up the investigation more instead of just
lasering in.
Speaker 2: So I think through the evidence that.
Speaker 3: We show in the podcast, you know, I think listeners
for themselves can kind of decide what they how they
think the investigation went and if you know, something's were
missed or if not.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being in Melissa's head in heart, knowing
that she just felt deep inside that they had the
wrong person in jail. It's like the wrong I mean
I would I'd be the person that would retreat. And
I think it goes back to that confidence saying, I go,
I guess if you guys have the evidence, okay, whatever,
go for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that, And that's still something
you know, She's still pouring over all of these documents.
Speaker 2: She's still trying to in.
Speaker 3: Her mind, you know, find the true killer of her dad,
because she believes that the wrong person is in prison
for this crime. So she is working tirelessly for it.
She still pours over the documents. You know, she still
is trying to She's they're working with a new legal
team now, so she's trying to give information to this
new legal team, and there is some new testing that
is being done.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question as a journalist, as
an investigator, and do you lean in on a chat
GPT to help you in investigating this kind of stuff?
And how do you trust the information that's coming across
that computer screen.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think because I'm you know, I
cut my teeth before chat GBT, so I just like
I'm too ingrained in what I do. It's just I
have to kind of read everything and make a bunch
of notes because I want to understand it in my
own brain by you know, it's like old school studying
a little bit.
Speaker 2: I've got the textbook in front of me.
Speaker 3: I'm highlighting things and making my own notes because that's
the only way it can start to make sense of
something in my brain. Oh.
Speaker 1: I'm so with you on that, because you should see
the way that I show prep. It's a mess. It's
a mess, but somehow, some way it all comes together
as one.
Speaker 2: Take me through the visual. What does it look like?
Speaker 1: Oh, it really is. I mean, I've got every book open.
I do go to websites. I want to make sure
that I'm getting the right answer. I go to three
and four different websites to see if you know, what
is the coincidence? Is there something here that works together?
And so and if you could see my handwriting, you go,
why are you in radio? You're the perfect doctor dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that phone call proves to be a very
important game changer here for Liz.
Speaker 2: The phone call that she received. Yeah, so you know.
Speaker 3: She, I mean, this is what changed her life. Like
she was just I just want to clarify you're talking
about the phone call when she heard about her day
being killed. Yes, okay, I just wanted to make sure.
So yeah, she yeah, I mean this completely changed her life.
You know, she was celebrating Christmas and again, like if
you can think of a possibly worse time to get
bad news like this, it's Christmas and then to get
the yearly constant reminders where there's lights everywhere, people are
being really happy, and she's with her in laws in
England and then gets this news that something horrible has
happened back home, that her dad has been killed. And
in this first moment when she gets this phone call,
she doesn't know what happened to her mom. She nobody
tells her where Sandy is her mom, and she just
has to immediately go into action mode and try to
book flights and fly there as quickly as they can.
And I always try to remind people, you know, you
got to this happened in twenty twelve. And when she's
flying back, she has no WiFi, she can't email people,
she can't text message people, like she is just in
this airplane, not knowing what's happening on the ground and
not knowing what's going to await her when she arrives.
Speaker 1: Well, you say twenty twelve, and yet when I'm listening
to it, it just feels like it happened yesterday. We're
and we're just getting the news now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well I take that as a compliment to
the storytelling that's unfolding.
Speaker 1: How do you build your stories in the way, I mean,
because you've got so much sound, how do you bring
them together to create forward motion?
Speaker 2: It's a great question, you know.
Speaker 3: I think each story is different, so I really never
want to get into a prescribed mold on how.
Speaker 2: Things are told.
Speaker 3: So you know, I'm sure you say this too, but
you know, at least with podcast storytelling, you know, we
really want the tape to lead, so the interviews any
archi fle so that we always want to have the
tape lead. And you know, for us, when we were
all working on the story together, we felt like to
put people immediately in Liza's shoes is right at the beginning,
you know, to create this idea of like a warm
Christmas and then turn it around so that listeners can
maybe feel the moment of your celebrating and then the
worst thing happens to you, and then you know, we
try to tell the story sort of lineary from there
to help the listener understand and have it unfold for
them at the same time, and try to have when
Liz is finding out something or when I'm finding out something,
that that's when the listener is finding something out too.
Speaker 1: Do you ever want to go into a conversation recording
but they don't know it, Maybe you've got some metaglasses
on you're recording it with through a video or something.
I mean, because there are sometimes that you once you
bring out that microphone, people go a different direction. They're
no longer in that moment they're going, Okay, what am
I going to say? That sound going to get me
in trouble? Oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that. But that's kind
of like the gift of podcast interviews is you know,
they're usually long and they are just conversations. You know,
kind of like what we're having right now is it's
a conversation and they don't have to be perfect by
any means. So you know, I always want people to
feel comfortable with me that they don't have to perform,
Like we can talk about you know, we can talk
about anything but the case for the first hour if
we want to. But I really want to build a
rapport with people and a place of trust and really
help guide them through the conversation to get to these
harder places. So it's a warm up act and also
just a place of building and also just I like
talking to people and having conversations, and I hope that
that comes through when I talk to other people as well.
Speaker 1: That's so funny you bring up that word trust because
somebody asked me because they have to go to an interview,
and they said, how do I begin to build up
my trust with that person? And then I'm gonna meet
for the very first time. And I said, make it
about them. Do you agree?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean I think if anybody wants to show curiosity,
and I think, you know, if I showed that I'm
curious about you and you show that you're curious about me,
then we'll just keep exchanging things that we.
Speaker 2: Like don't like.
Speaker 3: I think it just comes from being open and being curious.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you?
Speaker 2: You know, I have a website.
Speaker 3: I'm horrible at updating, so you know, maybe check on
it in a couple of weeks, but it's maggiearcats dot com.
And then you can listen to Hands Tied pretty much
anywhere where you get your podcasts, Spotify, Apple, you know, Amazon,
wherever you listen to podcasts, but that's where that's where
they can find out and they can listen to some
of the other things that I've made.
Speaker 1: Well, you got to come back to this show anytime,
and a few you're twenty minutes with you is not enough.
Speaker 2: I agree, Arrow, I loved it. I can talk to
you forever.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, you too,