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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zufanski. Good evening, but from the
Speaker 4: notorious serial killers of the Age of Aquarius to the
Speaker 4: ruthless mob bosses of the Jazz Age and beyond. Real
Speaker 4: Crime is the first high quality true crime magazine on
Speaker 4: the new stand. Every issue of Real Crime reveals the
Speaker 4: untold stories behind the world's most gripping cases, the breathtaking
Speaker 4: experiences of investigators and survivors, and blow by blow accounts
Speaker 4: of how lawbreakers were finally brought to justice. Deliver with
Speaker 4: the same icy intensity and forensic detail of popular documentaries
Speaker 4: and TV shows. Every issue is packed with groundbreaking interviews,
Speaker 4: original research in the incriminating photos behind the world's most
Speaker 4: infamous cases, with breathtaking accounts from investigators' survivors and the
Speaker 4: criminal masterminds themselves. The magazine opens up the world of
Speaker 4: serial killers, ruthless mob bosses, organized crime, unsolved cases and beyond.
Speaker 4: James Horrer, editor in chief at Real Crime, said, we
Speaker 4: are always looking for new ways to meet our reader's
Speaker 4: need for intelligent, trusted reporting and opinion. The first of
Speaker 4: its edition takes readers on a fascinating journey into the
Speaker 4: minds of some of the most notorious serial killers, including
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Fred and Rose West. It
Speaker 4: also includes a special interview with the woman who shot
Speaker 4: footage of the OJ Simpson car chase on the twentieth
Speaker 4: annivertversary of the contentious trial. The magazine that we're featuring
Speaker 4: this afternoon is Real Crime with my special guest editor,
Speaker 4: journalist and author James Horr. Welcome to the program, and
Speaker 4: thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Speaker 3: James Horr, Well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 3: Dan really appreciate you finding the time to get me
Speaker 3: on the show.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to
Speaker 5: let the audience that has been following this program for
Speaker 5: years something new and unique and very well deserving of
Speaker 5: their attention, and this certainly is something that they would
Speaker 5: be interested in real crime.
Speaker 3: No, thank you very much. I really appreciate that.
Speaker 5: Thank you. Now tell us what did you want to
Speaker 5: create with real crime and what did you feel you
Speaker 5: could contribute to the world of true crime with this magazine.
Speaker 3: I think initially we were kind of I mean, it
Speaker 3: was born out of a very kind of basic need
Speaker 3: for us, imagine publishing. We would would witness the way
Speaker 3: that people in the office were talking about podcast like Cereal,
Speaker 3: or shows like The Jinks, you know, the documentaries like
Speaker 3: our Tales of the Grim Sleeper, things like that. These
Speaker 3: things had christ over from you know, the existing true
Speaker 3: crime subculture. You know, a world that you're deeply immersed
Speaker 3: in and your your readers are immersed in, and they
Speaker 3: were kind of making their sort of impact felt in
Speaker 3: the the mainstream. And this was, you know, before Making
Speaker 3: a Murderer. I mean, now we're living in the post
Speaker 3: Making a Murderer world and that seems kind of obvious,
Speaker 3: but back then we were just conscious of, you know,
Speaker 3: these were great, kind of compelling, exciting, thrilling stories and
Speaker 3: they were you know, they were reaching out to an
Speaker 3: audience that was sort of broader than we could really
Speaker 3: kind of wrap our heads around. So our goal was
Speaker 3: very much to create a magazine that you know, drew
Speaker 3: from that that Polk tradition of you know, the original
Speaker 3: true detective magazine and the sort of true crime magazines
Speaker 3: of the past, but presented it in a sophisticated, kind
Speaker 3: of mainstream blockbuster away that would be familiar to readers
Speaker 3: of magazines like Wired or Empire that had those kind
Speaker 3: of high production values. That was very much the kind
Speaker 3: of the written sort of newsstand equivalent of The Jinks
Speaker 3: or even Making a Murderer Now, and I think that
Speaker 3: is essentially what we wanted to bring to it. We
Speaker 3: wanted to reach out into the true crime world and
Speaker 3: bring in some of those kind of authors and some
Speaker 3: of those journalists that have a reputation already in that industry,
Speaker 3: but then bring our magazine skills to that. Our ability
Speaker 3: to create these kind of incredible bespoke graphics and reconstructions
Speaker 3: of these the inside of Edgean's house or the you know,
Speaker 3: a blow by blow account of their left hands to
Speaker 3: heist or something like that, we had I think a
Speaker 3: lot of magazine craft and a lot of kind of
Speaker 3: skill in creating a you know, sort of sophisticated, thrilling product,
Speaker 3: and we just needed the incredible stories to match it.
Speaker 3: And I think every single issue that we've produced, everything
Speaker 3: in there has just been absolutely compelling. I mean, when
Speaker 3: we pitch each issue of the magazine to our directors,
Speaker 3: they sign off the covers and they sign off the
Speaker 3: core features. They're kind of, i think appalled and fascinated
Speaker 3: by some of the stuff we're getting away with. But
Speaker 3: the point is that everything is just a great story.
Speaker 3: All of these stories are fantastic, and it's just such
Speaker 3: a privilege to kind of bring these out of the
Speaker 3: dark corners of you know, the true crime sort of
Speaker 3: subsen and the true crime niche and into the you know,
Speaker 3: the supermarkets and into the news agents.
Speaker 5: Yes, I agree, this is an incredible production value with
Speaker 5: the glossy covers and just I mean, I've been reading
Speaker 5: this stuff for years, but to see some of the
Speaker 5: photos in one of the latest editions of seven or
Speaker 5: number seven of number eight with Dennis Raider and the BTK,
Speaker 5: just incredible photos and just with with the production value
Speaker 5: that you have, this just amazing, amazing graphics in this
Speaker 5: magazine and overall, look, that's amazing. Now, can you tell us.
Speaker 5: You talked about the people that you've the team that
Speaker 5: you've assembled. Well, where do you go to get your authors?
Speaker 3: And where did you.
Speaker 5: Find these authors? And tell us tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about the unique nature of your magazine by first
Speaker 5: telling us where the source of your your authors and
Speaker 5: why you picked these authors.
Speaker 3: Well, the kind of the freelance pool that we have
Speaker 3: has unfolded very organically, and I think that is that
Speaker 3: is shown why the kind of the tone that's developed.
Speaker 3: When we first started, it was a small team that
Speaker 3: was myself and I worked across a number of other magazines,
Speaker 3: so you know, it was super kind of trench warfare
Speaker 3: publishing really, and the designer was also working across other
Speaker 3: magazine so I was being left to my own devices
Speaker 3: a little bit, and I was simply seeking out the
Speaker 3: writers that I read on the internet. As I was
Speaker 3: approaching people that I recognized from Vice from Sword and Scale.
Speaker 3: Emily Webb, who writes about kind of suburban Australian murders,
Speaker 3: I was familiar with because my partner's Australian, so she was,
Speaker 3: you know, my go to for that sort of uniquely
Speaker 3: kind of ossie sort of picket fence sense of dread
Speaker 3: that I don't think you can fake and I think
Speaker 3: that sense of place is very important as well. And
Speaker 3: from those people, they sort of put me in touch
Speaker 3: with other kind of like minded sort of freelancers. And
Speaker 3: one of the first people we approached was Seth Faranti,
Speaker 3: who kind of writes about his prison experiences and about
Speaker 3: kind of gangs that he was loosely associated with the
Speaker 3: members of when he was inside. And he writes for
Speaker 3: Vice and another other website, and he puts in touch
Speaker 3: with Christian Sepolini, who is a kind of an organized
Speaker 3: crime researcher. And all of these guys just have a
Speaker 3: fantastic attitude. They're so excited, they're so kind of they're
Speaker 3: so willing to kind of leap into the space that
Speaker 3: we provide them. I mean, it's a very writer led magazine.
Speaker 3: We don't sit back and kind of make these demands
Speaker 3: about where we want features to go or how we
Speaker 3: want things to be covered. We i mean, part of
Speaker 3: the reason that we've picked them is for their voice,
Speaker 3: and for their expertise and for you know, all these
Speaker 3: unique things that they bring to each story. We just
Speaker 3: want to give them the freedom to tell that story,
Speaker 3: give them the kind of the coaching and the guidance
Speaker 3: to kind of tell that story in a visual way
Speaker 3: that suits the publication. I think one of the most
Speaker 3: interesting kind of directions our freelance portuck was I was
Speaker 3: joined on issue one by my colleague from different magazine,
Speaker 3: Jonathan Hapfell, who is he comes from a creative writing background.
Speaker 3: I come from a journalism background, and he's a kind
Speaker 3: of a horror film fan. And that was really the
Speaker 3: overlap in the concentric circles between real crime and what
Speaker 3: he was doing in his day job. So I kind
Speaker 3: of borrowed him for a couple of weeks to do
Speaker 3: a few bits and bobs to kind of get some
Speaker 3: features commissioned for me to write some features as well.
Speaker 3: He did the the OJ Simpson article in the first issue,
Speaker 3: and he brought on a lot of his kind of
Speaker 3: peers that were interested in the subject matter. A lot
Speaker 3: of those people come from sort of more movie writing
Speaker 3: background as the kind of film critics or the cultural critics,
Speaker 3: and that took us in quite an unexpected direction. I mean,
Speaker 3: two of the articles that you picked out, the Dennis
Speaker 3: Nielson article, which was written by Charlie Orton, who is
Speaker 3: a media lecture at university, A real kind of has
Speaker 3: a real interest in taboos and transgression and sexuality and
Speaker 3: things like that. So this was all, you know, an
Speaker 3: opportunity that they were so keen to leap on. And
Speaker 3: the Hammermaniacs article as well was from another one of
Speaker 3: those those writers. And I was asked in an interview
Speaker 3: fairly recently with a Norwegian newspaper what I thought that
Speaker 3: fiction writers could take away from true crime writers. And
Speaker 3: I gave a fairly kind of concise aren't say, you know,
Speaker 3: do you research, get the facts right, your subject, get
Speaker 3: that sort of all those details nailed. Don't take anything
Speaker 3: for granted, you know, make sure when you're talking about
Speaker 3: the crunch of gravel underfol that there was actually gravel underfoot, right.
Speaker 3: But it made me think about the value that true
Speaker 3: crime writers could take away from the you know, the
Speaker 3: creative writers, the fiction writers, and these people, the horror
Speaker 3: writers have kind of become our go to guys for
Speaker 3: you know, the big name, compelling sort of visceral serial killers,
Speaker 3: the dharmas, the bundies, the gases, the milats, because I
Speaker 3: think over eight or ten pages, there's very little that
Speaker 3: real crime can offer that story in the way that
Speaker 3: we can we can add something to those smaller stories,
Speaker 3: because there's already so much out there, it's already been written.
Speaker 3: We were just kind of standing on the shoulders of
Speaker 3: giants with those kind of stories. So in order to
Speaker 3: really bring something new to that, these guys kind of
Speaker 3: they hone in on that sense of narrative. They hone
Speaker 3: in for those kind of motifs, They look for the foreshadowings,
Speaker 3: and they're the kind of you know, the nice little
Speaker 3: narrative tricks, and that I think has been what's partly
Speaker 3: opened up real crime and you know, a completely from
Speaker 3: direction for us. It's sort of bringing in that the theatrically,
Speaker 3: it's bringing in some of the tools of fiction. But
Speaker 3: it's those kind of theatrical elements and those tools of
Speaker 3: fiction that have made shows like Making a Murderer so successful,
Speaker 3: even though they're obviously kind of controversial from a straight
Speaker 3: sort of true crime the portage point of view. So
Speaker 3: it's that's a very long winded answer.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's very good. I saw that too, and myself.
Speaker 5: The only thing that's left, the only frontier left is
Speaker 5: I think is the I and I I'm very interested
Speaker 5: in what you said with this crossover with horror and
Speaker 5: true crime in that there are those true crimes that
Speaker 5: based on the you know, the the full research and
Speaker 5: the skills of the true crime authors you know that
Speaker 5: I've been interviewing now for six years, in that they
Speaker 5: bring out the stories and you can only classify it
Speaker 5: as true horror. And then there is a horror as
Speaker 5: horrible and incredible and amazing and almost unbelievable as horror stories,
Speaker 5: but they're absolutely true. So I think that's what your
Speaker 5: magazine represents to me, just fascinating stories that are written
Speaker 5: in that tone that you know, sort of because of
Speaker 5: the access as well, when you're talking to Ivan Malatt's nephew,
Speaker 5: you're getting a different perspective from the stories that we've
Speaker 5: already heard as well too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's so important to have that balance. I think
Speaker 3: we can do an article that's really sort of gets you,
Speaker 3: you know, into the cruel space in the boots of
Speaker 3: the car, like running through the forest with the you know,
Speaker 3: the branches lashing at your face and the kind of
Speaker 3: the barking of dogs behind you and all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: But I think unless you have the authority, unless you
Speaker 3: have you know, you you reach out, you try and
Speaker 3: get those things in there, You try and talk to
Speaker 3: criminologists or the investigators of the psychologists, or you know,
Speaker 3: the relatives. I think that's when you're in danger of
Speaker 3: kind of crossing too far over the line. I mean,
Speaker 3: it would be ridiculous to think that everyone who's engaging
Speaker 3: with true crime, and I mean it's a broad church.
Speaker 3: There are people who read the magazine who have, you know,
Speaker 3: what you might call professional interests. There'll be criminology students,
Speaker 3: or they'll be forensic psychology students, or they'll be you know,
Speaker 3: practicing forensic scientists and things like that. But I think
Speaker 3: the vast majority of the readers aren't, you know. I
Speaker 3: think there are all these different needs that they bring
Speaker 3: to the subject matter. So I'm sureways the case for many,
Speaker 3: if not all, true crime authors. They want to be
Speaker 3: they want to explore their fears in a safe environment.
Speaker 3: They want to kind of twitch the curtains and peer
Speaker 3: out at something horrible that's happening in the street while
Speaker 3: still being kind of safe. They want that thrill, and
Speaker 3: they want that sense of voyeurism. And there's also the
Speaker 3: fascination and the allure. And I think it's a mistake
Speaker 3: to pretend that what we're doing here is just serving
Speaker 3: that kind of higher sort of that higher need. It's
Speaker 3: not just about offering something kind of sophisticating them worthy.
Speaker 3: We're not ashamed of the fact that the allure for
Speaker 3: this is a fascination, a fascination mixed with a revulsion.
Speaker 3: And I think that the narrative style that we're playing
Speaker 3: with is a fair reflection of that. And that's especially
Speaker 3: brought out in some of the big serial killer features
Speaker 3: because I mean, those characters, and they are characters have
Speaker 3: taken on such a larger than life kind of folkloric element.
Speaker 3: They have names like Batman villains. They occupy a place
Speaker 3: in I think the American kind of popular culture, especially
Speaker 3: that's you know, would have traditionally been occupied by earlier
Speaker 3: civilizations in you know, why the Grendel or the Harpies
Speaker 3: or the Cyclops and things like that, that these very living,
Speaker 3: kind of visceral evidence based tales of why you should
Speaker 3: not talk to strangers or you know, you should be
Speaker 3: heaven before nightfall. It's yeah, it's a tricky balance. It's
Speaker 3: a tricky balance I think that we've been so mindful
Speaker 3: of from the outset especially because we are such a
Speaker 3: mainstream magazine and there's always that fear that the wrong
Speaker 3: people will pick up an issue and choose to be
Speaker 3: offended by what they see as being potentially exploitative or
Speaker 3: potentially sensation still potentially glib, and so it's important to
Speaker 3: have that authority, you know, present on every page. As
Speaker 3: much as we kind of you know, playing around with
Speaker 3: the sheer nastiness of the of the cases.
Speaker 5: Now we've talked about them before, we get to specific
Speaker 5: stories to demonstrate and to show the depth of the
Speaker 5: magazine itself and also the I guess the format that
Speaker 5: you that you employ here and so tell us what
Speaker 5: exactly that mix is that makes your magazine very very unique.
Speaker 5: What is that mix that you employ with the stories
Speaker 5: that you choose.
Speaker 3: Well, we've almost got a kind of a formula for
Speaker 3: the bulk of the magazine now, not to demystify it
Speaker 3: too much, but we try and have a big kind
Speaker 3: of alpha name serial killer feature. And because as I've said,
Speaker 3: these are stories that have been told, the only way
Speaker 3: I could bring anything new to ed Kemper would be
Speaker 3: if I was a you know, a forensic psychologist with
Speaker 3: you know, twenty years of experience who had spent fifteen
Speaker 3: of those years going through his files or something like that.
Speaker 3: We're not going to be breaking new ground on that.
Speaker 3: So those features are our license to kind of tell
Speaker 3: a story, not tell Lee's story, but tell a story
Speaker 3: that conforms to certain motifs. And you know, now want
Speaker 3: to get back to what I think of as the
Speaker 3: horror writers we can. Part of the joy I have
Speaker 3: as an editor is being so surprised by them because
Speaker 3: I'm able to just give them a few reference points, like,
Speaker 3: for instance, with the Eileen one Us cover a feature,
Speaker 3: all I said was, you know, give it a bit
Speaker 3: of eye spit on your grave. You know, think of
Speaker 3: this as being a kind of revenge torture porn movie.
Speaker 3: And the feature kind of sprung out of that, and those,
Speaker 3: you know, those alpha serial killer features are are kind
Speaker 3: of licensed to be a little bit more creative. The secondary,
Speaker 3: kind of sort of main feature, which I think fights
Speaker 3: with the serial killers for the cover space, are the
Speaker 3: kind of I think of them as, mean, the domestic horrors.
Speaker 3: They're the more contemporary cases, usually from the last decade
Speaker 3: or the last two decades, but they're the ones that
Speaker 3: I think that bring the you know, bring the kind
Speaker 3: of just the sheer and pleasantness of the subject home
Speaker 3: for people. They're the ones that really kind of leap
Speaker 3: off the news stand for us, and I think that's
Speaker 3: why they have been predominant the UK based cases like
Speaker 3: Madeline McCann or Becky Watts or Beverly alett Or and
Speaker 3: the hammer Maniacs was a rare international example of that.
Speaker 3: It taps into more kind of domestic fears, It taps
Speaker 3: into fears about the safety of your children, fears about
Speaker 3: your own safety. And in contrast, I think to that
Speaker 3: the serial killers can often appear remote and you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes cartoonish. I guess that's partly a result of the
Speaker 3: way in which they've informed the portrayal of characters like
Speaker 3: Michael Myers and his ilk and you know, films like
Speaker 3: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But they've kind of been absorbed
Speaker 3: into that same cannon. So you know, you look at
Speaker 3: pictures of John Wayne Gacy and his clown makeup and
Speaker 3: you think, there's no danger of me meeting that time.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to meet anyone like that. My life
Speaker 3: does not involve murderous clowns. That's just not a thing.
Speaker 3: But you see some of these, the domestic terrors, and
Speaker 3: those are the things I think that really get you.
Speaker 3: Those are the cover and the images will be the features.
Speaker 3: When we look searching through the images and we're making
Speaker 3: our imagdraces for the features, those are usually the ones
Speaker 3: that kind of might get some of the team when
Speaker 3: they're going through them. The rest of the magazine, we
Speaker 3: try and have a kind of a mob feature, not
Speaker 3: always a kind of classic mob feature, sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: sort of nineteen eighties, nineteen nineties one for a bit
Speaker 3: of balance, and we try and move around the globe
Speaker 3: a little bit as well and get some some heists
Speaker 3: in there. And the heists almost feel like a little
Speaker 3: bit of a breather after some of the more kind
Speaker 3: of you know, intense stuff. They're the features where you
Speaker 3: can pull back a little bit and almost have a
Speaker 3: bit of fun. They especially if they're a little bit
Speaker 3: caper in I think that's quite important to us. So
Speaker 3: really the core of the magazine are those two, those
Speaker 3: two tent pole features, the domestic terrors and the serial killers.
Speaker 3: And I think it's our treatment of those that gives
Speaker 3: us gives us that edge, especially with the serial killers,
Speaker 3: which you know is obviously a huge driving force of
Speaker 3: the true crime. They've got fandoms and they've got you know,
Speaker 3: murder abilia kind of industries that are sprung up around them,
Speaker 3: and they've inspired popular culture. They have inspired songs and
Speaker 3: TV shows and movies.
Speaker 5: But you've also included what I was very very interested
Speaker 5: in as well as the cutting edge journalism that you
Speaker 5: have in terms of the very very current stories that
Speaker 5: people are just hearing about somewhat. For example, you have
Speaker 5: drugs and the dark net and something called the Silk Road,
Speaker 5: and so you talk about the dark net. People are
Speaker 5: just hearing about the dark web and its influence when
Speaker 5: we're hearing about terrorist stories and are also hearing about
Speaker 5: organized crime going to this dark net. Very interesting article.
Speaker 5: And also stuff like New Guinea Street gangs as well,
Speaker 5: the Rascals, and you also have Pirates of Malaysia. So
Speaker 5: stuff that we're not hearing absolutely not in mainstream media,
Speaker 5: or at least I have not been reading this material.
Speaker 5: So this is the kind of stuff that's also in
Speaker 5: your magazine as well, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's important to us to do a
Speaker 3: little bit of globe trotting.
Speaker 5: We have.
Speaker 3: You see, we're sold all over the English speaking world,
Speaker 3: but we're also licensed to a company in France and
Speaker 3: a company in Germany who translate our articles and republished
Speaker 3: them there. So we've got to be mindful of of
Speaker 3: having that global reach, in that global responsibility. But I
Speaker 3: think for me, I'm just really fascinated by learning about
Speaker 3: new things. But it feels as the world gets bigger.
Speaker 3: This has probably come across the needlessly philosophical now, but
Speaker 3: you know, as the world bigger, and you know, our
Speaker 3: role in it gets a little bit bigger as well,
Speaker 3: we were more aware of things that happen in other countries.
Speaker 3: We're more aware of other cultures, we see how those
Speaker 3: cultures interact with ours. It's a much more globalized, internationalized world.
Speaker 3: And I get a lift from finding these stories that
Speaker 3: remind me that there is such an incredible variety to
Speaker 3: you know, the human experience, albeit within this very you know,
Speaker 3: narrow confines of organized crime. But I love it. I
Speaker 3: love the fact that under every rock there is a
Speaker 3: you know, idiosyncratic kind of gang that has their own codes,
Speaker 3: and has their own kind of language and their own
Speaker 3: sort of rituals and things like that that I think
Speaker 3: it just really.
Speaker 5: Kind of.
Speaker 3: Opens up that world for us. With regards to the
Speaker 3: silk Oad the Darknet piece, that was something that we've
Speaker 3: been wanting to do from the first issue because it
Speaker 3: was so topical, but then also because it was a
Speaker 3: thing I didn't necessarily understand myself, coming from, you know,
Speaker 3: the pre fifty six K mode generation. I still think
Speaker 3: of the Internet as being this place where you can
Speaker 3: watch cat videos, and I'm my fears come from the
Speaker 3: power of the web sometimes because I'm not a digital
Speaker 3: native in that sense, and it was something I wanted
Speaker 3: to understand. And we've done a few other features like that.
Speaker 3: We did one in the first issue that was about
Speaker 3: the way that young people are being kind of lurd
Speaker 3: and exploited by international drug gangs the smuggling purposes, and
Speaker 3: I think those are still a little bit experimental for us,
Speaker 3: to the extent that they don't always have a face
Speaker 3: to lead them, they don't always have a human a
Speaker 3: single human tragedy that can guide them in the way
Speaker 3: that you know, the sort of the stories of Ed
Speaker 3: Kemper and his victims will steer that article through. And
Speaker 3: I think because of the way that real crime has
Speaker 3: positioned itself, because it is such a hand on heart,
Speaker 3: heart and mouth, you know, any other kind of heart
Speaker 3: combination cliche, you like, sort of edge of seat magazine.
Speaker 3: It's been quite difficult for us to find the right
Speaker 3: tone when we do those features what we pull back
Speaker 3: a little bit, but I think we have found it.
Speaker 3: I think there is a lot of back and forth
Speaker 3: with that Silk Road piece before we settled on that
Speaker 3: lead image of the the chap that had been arrested
Speaker 3: in happier times his university gown on. I think before
Speaker 3: that we were going with a more abstract kind of
Speaker 3: opening image of a guy at a laptop. But it
Speaker 3: felt a little bit too sterile. It felt like something
Speaker 3: from a you know, a warning video about piracy at
Speaker 3: the start of a you know, a film you've rented,
Speaker 3: or something like that, and it felt a little bit hokey.
Speaker 3: I mean, the only thing I knew for certain when
Speaker 3: we started working on that feature is I didn't want
Speaker 3: to see that kind of neon green on black scrolling
Speaker 3: matrix numbers or anything like that. I think that's just cheesy,
Speaker 3: and I don't think the readers would have responded well
Speaker 3: to it. But it's important we keep pushing those those
Speaker 3: kind of stories and we keep expanding that rumit. It
Speaker 3: shouldn't all be about every feature, shouldn't just be boiled
Speaker 3: down to someone's name. We should always be kind of
Speaker 3: pushing outwards. And I think that's why it's nice that
Speaker 3: we have that regular briefing feature, which is where we
Speaker 3: look at a gang or a cartel or a syndicate
Speaker 3: or an organization from around the world and we just
Speaker 3: tell a relatively simple kind of overview of them. Because
Speaker 3: it's they're less well known, we kind of have the
Speaker 3: freedom to do a more basic you know, this is
Speaker 3: what these guys do. These are the Rascals from pat
Speaker 3: New Guinea. They manufacture their own kind of home brew,
Speaker 3: terrifying looking home brew firearms and you know, battle for
Speaker 3: supremacy in the world's most dangerous city. Or this is
Speaker 3: the Mongol Mob. They're one of the you know, the
Speaker 3: most infamous biker gangs in New Zealand. And I think
Speaker 3: having a set space where we can do that's very
Speaker 3: useful because it stops us kind of sliding back into
Speaker 3: just telling stories about murder.
Speaker 5: Right now, let's go to an example of this sorry
Speaker 5: that you did write to demonstrate some of the unique
Speaker 5: stories and sort of the twist or the tone that
Speaker 5: you employ. And so we'll start with one of the
Speaker 5: first editions in that the shooting of Jordan Davis, and
Speaker 5: he was shot Jacksonville, Florida in twenty twelve. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about this story, would you.
Speaker 3: Well, that was a case that, as it was unfolding,
Speaker 3: this young man was shot.
Speaker 5: In a.
Speaker 3: Gas station as he's filling up over in an altercation
Speaker 3: with another driver who claimed that he'd been threatened and
Speaker 3: these boys were a gang. And the documentary I spoke
Speaker 3: to the durex or for that feature was this very
Speaker 3: intimate portrait of mainly his parents, Jodan David's parents during
Speaker 3: the trial, and it was I mean, it's heartbreaking the
Speaker 3: into that spending that time with them, you know, these
Speaker 3: moments of stillness, the silences, the exchanged glances, it was
Speaker 3: all super affecting and over the course of that trial.
Speaker 3: I mean, this happened not long after the Trayvon Martin shooting,
Speaker 3: so there wasn't yet a narrative developing that this is.
Speaker 3: You know, this is a big problem right now. This
Speaker 3: is a thing all the white men are pulling guns
Speaker 3: on young black guys and shooting them on the most
Speaker 3: kind of spurious of reasoning. But over the course of
Speaker 3: the trial, which I think the two trials or was
Speaker 3: in two parts, the Black Lives Matter movement was starting
Speaker 3: to gather pace, and now the Jordan Davis shootings shooting
Speaker 3: fits comfortably within that narrative. I mean, it was quite
Speaker 3: an interesting experience speaking to the director because he was
Speaker 3: is an English chap as well, so it kind of
Speaker 3: got over that initial awkwardness. You know, you never want
Speaker 3: to feel like you're a tourist in someone else's grief.
Speaker 3: I don't want to kind of enter what is an
Speaker 3: incredibly complex and emotive, you know, arena, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: racism in the United States, the kind of the criminalization
Speaker 3: of young black men, the effortlessness with which the shooter's
Speaker 3: defense team went out of their way to present Jordan
Speaker 3: Davis as being somehow threatening. He was listening to a
Speaker 3: loud that music, he was kind of shouting, you know,
Speaker 3: he's from the hood. And I didn't want to enter
Speaker 3: that world as a tourist, and it appeared disingenuous or patronize.
Speaker 3: I don't kind of open that door and make a
Speaker 3: big sweeping statement about you know, what this says about
Speaker 3: America today. And then back out again and get on
Speaker 3: with my life. I just didn't feel that it was appropriate.
Speaker 3: So being able to talk to the director of that
Speaker 3: film was incredibly helpful to me because he was an
Speaker 3: outsider as well, so I felt like we were sharing
Speaker 3: an outsider's view. I wasn't trying to you know, I
Speaker 3: wasn't asking an insider questions and then passing off their
Speaker 3: experience as being some kind of insider insight that I've gleaned.
Speaker 3: And it really did feel like a way into into
Speaker 3: that world. And I think that why that's why it
Speaker 3: was such an effective documentary, because you know, the chap
Speaker 3: who made it was going in openly as someone who
Speaker 3: wasn't of that world, and what he was seeing he
Speaker 3: was seeing new for the first time. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think it's a similar sort of problem that I think
Speaker 3: comes with dealing, you know, as a British magazine and
Speaker 3: as largely I think British writers dealing with subjects such
Speaker 3: as gun ownership in the United States. It's easy for
Speaker 3: us to to be glib, to be arrogant, to be condescending,
Speaker 3: but ultimately that's not our world. So I definitely wouldn't
Speaker 3: have written that feature if it had been a straight
Speaker 3: retelling of the Jordan Davis case, I don't think I
Speaker 3: would have been qualified to do that at all. I
Speaker 3: was just very lucky in that my inn was something
Speaker 3: a lot kind of closer to my experience, and that,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's another thing that's informed the selection of freelancers.
Speaker 3: It made sense for us to have someone like Emily
Speaker 3: Webb tell those stories about suburban Australia because that's her world.
Speaker 3: It made sense to have a light from the North
Speaker 3: of England write about the Moor's murders because that's his world,
Speaker 3: his memories of growing up with terrace houses and the
Speaker 3: specter of Myra Hindley kind of looming on every parent's lips.
Speaker 3: And I think that sense of place is very important
Speaker 3: and the context is very important. But both of those
Speaker 3: things can only come with authenticity. So I've digressed massively
Speaker 3: from the original question. I think I will basically use
Speaker 3: any opportunity to talk about how good are writers are.
Speaker 5: That's great now, to show you know, the really unique stuff.
Speaker 5: And I think my audience I just had an opportunity.
Speaker 5: Someone just told me about a murder in Australia and
Speaker 5: a book covering the case of a woman that skinned.
Speaker 5: She used to work at an avatar and she skinned
Speaker 5: her husband and the audience. I don't think they're ghoulish
Speaker 5: at all. I think they're very much like myself, very
Speaker 5: interested in the aberrant mind. And the more aberranth, the
Speaker 5: better or the more interesting, I would say. So in
Speaker 5: that vein, I found it very very interesting. The magazine
Speaker 5: article that you have in Real Crime called I Stuck
Speaker 5: the Screwdriver in his Brain the vile snuff videos the
Speaker 5: Ukrainian team who they had caught all their murderous activities
Speaker 5: on camera. Tell us about this story about these two
Speaker 5: Ukrainian teenagers, because this is a story I had not
Speaker 5: heard anything about, and this is a fascinating story that
Speaker 5: you concluded.
Speaker 3: Well, this was pitched to us by one of the
Speaker 3: horror writers, Martin Ontario, and I think it came out
Speaker 3: of his interest in the kind of the mythology and
Speaker 3: the folklore the urban legends of the snuff movie. Is
Speaker 3: these kind of allegedly sort of real videos of showing
Speaker 3: death and showing murders and showing torture and things like that,
Speaker 3: that such as the kind of the infamous Faces of Death,
Speaker 3: which I think turned out to be hoaxed, and this
Speaker 3: was something of huge interest to him because he comes
Speaker 3: from a film background. It's all part of the kind
Speaker 3: of the tapestry of controversial cinema, and he pitched that
Speaker 3: that came straight from him. And I think there's a
Speaker 3: good balance of maybe half the content comes from the
Speaker 3: editorial team going, oh, this is a really cool story.
Speaker 3: You like, what can you do with this? How can
Speaker 3: you develop this? Does this interest you? And then the
Speaker 3: other half comes from writers just getting you know, super
Speaker 3: passionate about that. And Martin I've been keen wrestled with
Speaker 3: whether or not to even watch these videos or whether
Speaker 3: to just write around the subject. I can't off the
Speaker 3: top of my head remember what he decided in the end.
Speaker 3: But I mean we were worrying about that on team
Speaker 3: as well, because I mean, weirdly, we got into a
Speaker 3: kind of an image usage discussion about it, about the
Speaker 3: legality of screen grabbing their you know, voyeuristic torture porn
Speaker 3: footage because they owned the copyright to that, surely, but
Speaker 3: you know, the world would be in a terrible state
Speaker 3: if we had to worry about the copyright of you know,
Speaker 3: Ukrainian murderers. So we did kind of screen rab it
Speaker 3: under fair use purposes, and I think we settled for
Speaker 3: watching some of the less grizzly bits, some of the
Speaker 3: edited footage that's out there from news programs. I think
Speaker 3: what was really interesting about that case to me is
Speaker 3: these two young Ukrainian men, teenagers. They there's no pattern
Speaker 3: to what they were doing. They were doing things simply
Speaker 3: for the things in themselves. They were attacking passes by,
Speaker 3: they were filming it, they were attacking animals and filming that.
Speaker 3: And I think there's something. I mean, there are two
Speaker 3: elements of this that I think really struck me. There's
Speaker 3: the it felt like a very social media murder. It
Speaker 3: was a it was a murder native or a murdercipree
Speaker 3: native to the social media age. It was being driven
Speaker 3: by the knowledge that they could upload their experiences online
Speaker 3: and people would, you know, like it or share it
Speaker 3: or pass it on to their friends. And and that
Speaker 3: taps into a little bit of that that fear I
Speaker 3: was talking about earlier. I think fears are fears are
Speaker 3: at their heart, very conservative things. We're feared of the thing,
Speaker 3: we're afraid of the things we don't understand, and we're
Speaker 3: afraid of the things that might happen. I'm afraid of
Speaker 3: the outcome of new things, and I think the sort
Speaker 3: of the terror is offered up by social media a
Speaker 3: fantastic example. I mean, it's it's it's perfect kind of
Speaker 3: fodder for making parents alarmed about their children's Internet usage.
Speaker 3: And there's a number of other cases I think one
Speaker 3: must fit into that microasion. There's like the slender Man murders.
Speaker 3: I can't remember much of the background off at the
Speaker 3: top of my head, but they were motivated by I
Speaker 3: think a young lady was killed by two other girls
Speaker 3: as a as a kind of not offering to slender Man,
Speaker 3: who is a kind of a folkloric character created on
Speaker 3: the Internet who appears in in in memes and in
Speaker 3: videos and things like that. The other aspect of the
Speaker 3: case that really lets out of me is this story,
Speaker 3: and it's the thing that Martin wrestled give it a
Speaker 3: little bit as well. He spoke to an expert in
Speaker 3: in the kind of in the snuff film trade who
Speaker 3: sort of debunked this story a little bit. But they
Speaker 3: claimed that the videos were being produced to sell to
Speaker 3: some kind of mystery buyer, of which there was no
Speaker 3: There was no evidence and I think it kind I
Speaker 3: think that explanation was useful for them. It's useful for people,
Speaker 3: for the parents, it's useful for the you know, the survivors,
Speaker 3: because it means we don't have to accept the fact
Speaker 3: that sometimes people, especially young people, especially children, just do things.
Speaker 3: They do things just to see what the things are like,
Speaker 3: and they do things in ways that can't be fully explained.
Speaker 3: I mean, it made me think back to my own
Speaker 3: childhood when I was doing something you know, perfectly kind
Speaker 3: of silly and benign, the grand scheme of things. I
Speaker 3: wasn't attacking my standards of a hammer and then filming
Speaker 3: it or anything like that just to you know, just
Speaker 3: to put your mind at ease. But it made me
Speaker 3: think of things that my mum would suddenly reproach me
Speaker 3: for and just suddenly stop me. And I think it's
Speaker 3: the shock of being you know, pulled out of whatever
Speaker 3: weird little tangent I was on when I was pouring
Speaker 3: coffee into a pop plant or something like that, and
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be able to explain why I was doing it,
Speaker 3: so I was just doing it on a whim, on
Speaker 3: a kind of as part of I guess the whole
Speaker 3: business of young exploring the world and you know, testing
Speaker 3: their boundaries and things like that, but I'd always feel
Speaker 3: the need to retrofit an explanation to it. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, I thought the plant was thirsty and it
Speaker 3: needed coffee or something like that, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: and obviously, my without coming from a background as a
Speaker 3: psychologist or anything like that, I think there was an
Speaker 3: element of that to the hammer maniacs. I think they
Speaker 3: just did things because they could. I made it difficult
Speaker 3: to predict what they're doing, but it also makes it
Speaker 3: very difficult to rationalize what they're doing. And I think
Speaker 3: it's very important for us as people to feel like
Speaker 3: there is a logic behind this. You know, ed Kemper
Speaker 3: did these things because if he's upbringing problem solved.
Speaker 5: Yes, I agree with you too. That's I think when
Speaker 5: I encounter with people, especially people new to true crime
Speaker 5: or sometimes asking questions of stories that I was involved
Speaker 5: with in terms of applying logic to non logical things, that,
Speaker 5: like you say, there might be not a really nice
Speaker 5: fit reason for things when these people are not thinking
Speaker 5: along the same lines as you. Was not you and
Speaker 5: I anyway, I wanted to ask I know, this might
Speaker 5: not be the intended purpose, But with a mix of
Speaker 5: his story crime and current crime, serial killers and all
Speaker 5: kinds of other psychopathic personalities and killers and criminals in this,
Speaker 5: does it really give the viewer? Doesn't it really give
Speaker 5: the viewer sort of an overview of how true crime
Speaker 5: has changed? Many things remain the same in terms of personalities,
Speaker 5: but in terms of those things that have changed in
Speaker 5: true crime? Isn't this magazine sort of inadvertently demonstrating and
Speaker 5: showing and illustrating those changes.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the changes are cosmetic changes.
Speaker 3: I think they're actually small things that seem like big things.
Speaker 3: They're small in the sense that people like Albert Fish
Speaker 3: or HH Holmes could do what they did for you know,
Speaker 3: an incredible period of time, to the point where they
Speaker 3: could build up this whole kind of catalog of nightmares
Speaker 3: that you know, dwarfs anything that people are capable of today.
Speaker 3: And it's a testament to the changes in society and
Speaker 3: changes in law enforcement and and in criminal profiling and
Speaker 3: forensics and all of these things that the serial killers
Speaker 3: of today are less able to kind of build, you know,
Speaker 3: the less able to build a murder hotel basically it's
Speaker 3: very difficult to do that without someone noticing anymore, which
Speaker 3: is fantastic. But I think at the heart of it,
Speaker 3: there's a universality to it. I mean, as part of
Speaker 3: my department, I have I have two history magazines and
Speaker 3: we're launching two other history magazines soon, so we are
Speaker 3: a very busy and my first love is history, really
Speaker 3: and I'm constantly, I'm constantly amazed by how modern everything feels.
Speaker 3: When you're explaining the story to somebody, they might not
Speaker 3: always be able to tell you when it happened, from
Speaker 3: the bearbones, from the barbones details for an instance, you know,
Speaker 3: the story of Pablo Escobar, the story of El Chapter,
Speaker 3: that kind of that kind of excess and that corruption,
Speaker 3: that self aggrandizing and that empire building is I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just al Capone, but in a you know, with
Speaker 3: a wider shirt collar and no hat. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: so fascinatingly universal, and it's so fascinatingly unchanging, and I
Speaker 3: think it does neatly underline the point that they really
Speaker 3: were no good old days. There were no simpler times
Speaker 3: when these things didn't happen. It's just that our perception
Speaker 3: of them has only grown over the years, and perhaps
Speaker 3: their sophistication has grown, but so too his our sophistication
Speaker 3: in dealing with among I think the major difference is
Speaker 3: the time scale as well, which goes back to the
Speaker 3: HHH Holmes, Albert Fish Jack the Ripper kind of thing.
Speaker 3: These people have bursts of action and then they're over.
Speaker 3: I guess the only I guess the kind of the
Speaker 3: native crime of the twentieth and the twenty first century
Speaker 3: is probably the mass murder, And they've got the kind
Speaker 3: of the school shootings and the massacres, because that's something
Speaker 3: that's very much driven by the media that we have
Speaker 3: now and the media environment that would have been completely
Speaker 3: unforeseen thirty or forty years ago. But I think, yes,
Speaker 3: we do kind of give people this overview of, you know,
Speaker 3: the last hundred years in everyday nightmares. But I think
Speaker 3: I think the lesson might be a bit different. Lesson
Speaker 3: is that people have always been doing terrible things, that
Speaker 3: nothing is all that all that new. I mean, talking
Speaker 3: about the hammermoniacs, for example, I was drawn when I
Speaker 3: was talking to Martin Contario, the writer, we ended up
Speaker 3: talking about the James Bolder case, which was a big
Speaker 3: case in the UK. In the nineties where this toddler
Speaker 3: was abducted from a shopping center and he walked to
Speaker 3: a canel path and he was basically brutalized and kind
Speaker 3: of abused and tortured and then murdered by two older
Speaker 3: boys who I think were aged about eight nine or ten, right,
Speaker 3: And the similarity between the complete lack of motives really
Speaker 3: or the lack of reasoning, the lack of any tidy
Speaker 3: way of putting a bow on this and saying, oh, Okay,
Speaker 3: this is why they did it, we can avoid this
Speaker 3: next time, or this won't happen to me. Was it's
Speaker 3: just nonexistent because they just did it. They did it
Speaker 3: because they could, or because they saw an opportunity, or
Speaker 3: they wondered what it would feel like. And that's a
Speaker 3: that's a terrifying you know, constant throughout our story is,
Speaker 3: you know, true crime fans or true crime researchers. These
Speaker 3: people have always been doing these horrible things. It's just
Speaker 3: now they're doing them in color. YEA.
Speaker 5: Now you include as you talk about stories that are
Speaker 5: more well known serial killers like my uncle pardon me
Speaker 5: about the lonely psychopath Dennis Nielsen, now tell us just
Speaker 5: a little bit about what you bring to that story. Again,
Speaker 5: you say there's no use going down the well beaten
Speaker 5: path in terms of knowledge that other people have I
Speaker 5: have already written about. So what is that that you
Speaker 5: bring in this story about the lone? They so got
Speaker 5: bad for Dennis Nilsen's story.
Speaker 3: I mean, that was a fantastic example, just because it
Speaker 3: was written by Charlie Orton, who, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 3: is a lecturer in media, but their interests are kind
Speaker 3: of very wide reaching, and they touch on issues of
Speaker 3: sexuality and taboo and transgression. And this was a feature
Speaker 3: that we wanted to do, but we pitched it to
Speaker 3: them just on a hunch that it will be right
Speaker 3: up their street because of the the element of sexual violence,
Speaker 3: the fact that it is a kind of, you know,
Speaker 3: from a certain angle. Dennis Nilsen, like Jeffrey Darmer, is
Speaker 3: a character and a love story. It's just not a
Speaker 3: love story for anyone else. And I think Charlie has
Speaker 3: that kind of that playful willingness to kind of explore
Speaker 3: those angles, and it fits quitely into their existing academic work.
Speaker 3: ChIL you'd written something on grief tourism and actually actually
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks before we approached him to do
Speaker 3: the piece, had visited one of Dennis Nielsen's homes and
Speaker 3: kind of had a little look around to get into
Speaker 3: the mood. And in that case it was, you know,
Speaker 3: a narrative presented itself quite easily. Is it's very much
Speaker 3: a trend in the United Kingdom of people of Scott's
Speaker 3: moving down to London and working and you know, struggling.
Speaker 3: There was that sense of alienation and it's a story
Speaker 3: I'm you know, personally familiar with. I've got Scottish friends
Speaker 3: who made the journey to work in London because you know,
Speaker 3: it's the center of media, it's the center of finance
Speaker 3: or whatever in the in the UK. And he was
Speaker 3: very much one of those. He's a man that didn't
Speaker 3: fit in wherever he was. You know, it's a smart,
Speaker 3: sensitive young man that grew up to be a lonely
Speaker 3: older man that grew up to be an older man
Speaker 3: that didn't know how to how to kind of regulate
Speaker 3: his feelings, how to get the sexual romantic satisfaction that
Speaker 3: he wanted. And he picked men up and he murdered
Speaker 3: them and he kind of broke down their remains and
Speaker 3: is flat and clogged up the pipes with their you know,
Speaker 3: their insides, and the narrative kind of naturally came out
Speaker 3: of that, and it naturally kind of coincided with the
Speaker 3: evolution of the kind of the gay scene in London
Speaker 3: at the time around SOHO, and I think being able
Speaker 3: to pull back a bit and tell it almost as
Speaker 3: if it's a horrible love story. It makes me think
Speaker 3: of that Ryan Reynolds film The Voices, where he stops
Speaker 3: taking his medication and he starts doing terrible things. He
Speaker 3: murders a girl that likes him, and it's a kind
Speaker 3: of black comedy. But the frame shifts between the real
Speaker 3: world where everything's dowdy and dark and the flies are
Speaker 3: buzzing and you can almost you know, smell that stench
Speaker 3: of rotting meat through the through the TV set, to
Speaker 3: this kind of fairy tale, you know, bright pastor pink
Speaker 3: world that he lives in, where the severed heads are
Speaker 3: talking to him and his cat, his dog are talking
Speaker 3: to him. And there's an element of that to Nielsen,
Speaker 3: I think, an element to dharma, and it's it's an
Speaker 3: interesting thing to play with because we can see a
Speaker 3: little bit of ourselves in that. We can see a
Speaker 3: little bit of you know, our own motivations just on
Speaker 3: a just you know, cast through this with this this
Speaker 3: sort of funhouse mirror that's twisted them all out of
Speaker 3: shape and turned them into something malevolent and murderous. And
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, that's another one of those appeals
Speaker 3: true crime.
Speaker 5: Really.
Speaker 3: I think for me especially is that you know that
Speaker 3: sense that you know but for another world, this could
Speaker 3: be me. And it's important to be reminded of our
Speaker 3: potential to do terrible things so that we're kind of
Speaker 3: constantly aware of them. I think there's a bit of
Speaker 3: an ethical consideration with the Nielsen features where we we
Speaker 3: wanted it to be to be disgusting, to be gory,
Speaker 3: to be unpleasant, but we didn't want it to be
Speaker 3: exploitative and to be to be too titillating. Because this
Speaker 3: one's a lot closer to home for us geographically and
Speaker 3: in terms of the time frame, is you know this
Speaker 3: guy is still still alive, is there are survivors that
Speaker 3: are still there? And because we were telling you know,
Speaker 3: arguably a more sympathetic version of that story, we didn't
Speaker 3: want it to look as though we were writing him,
Speaker 3: you know, a retrospective blank check to be a monster.
Speaker 4: We were.
Speaker 3: So he was showing the grizzliness and the nastiness, but
Speaker 3: we were showing it as grizzly and we're showing it
Speaker 3: as nasty. And I think it did a very good
Speaker 3: job of kind of balancing all of those things. It
Speaker 3: had that cultural element to it. There was some of
Speaker 3: my favorite bits, some of the kind of the cheeky
Speaker 3: kind of innuendo and wordplay that were buried in there.
Speaker 3: We get to tell the story of, you know, a
Speaker 3: young man out of you know, out of his element,
Speaker 3: who's finding his place in the world and against the
Speaker 3: backdrop of you know, London's emerging kind of gay and
Speaker 3: lesbian culture. But we also get to tell this horrible
Speaker 3: kind of cautionary tale. This this this this modern fairy
Speaker 3: tale with a nice kind of ending of a man
Speaker 3: that goes to prison because he was a murderer. And
Speaker 3: that is absolutely one of my favorite features that Real
Speaker 3: Crime has published. I think is it balanced all those
Speaker 3: elements so well and I think it served all of
Speaker 3: those needs. It's you know, I can't praise that one
Speaker 3: highly enough.
Speaker 5: Absolutely one of the Again we've just touched on it
Speaker 5: a little bit about the overall production value of this
Speaker 5: magazine is is amazing. It's brilliant. So tell us you
Speaker 5: must have some philosophy too in terms of picking photos
Speaker 5: that the world hasn't seen before. So tell us a
Speaker 5: little bit about the incredible photography involved with real crime.
Speaker 3: Well, it takes a lot of research, and it takes
Speaker 3: a lot of you know, making phone calls, building up
Speaker 3: contacts with smaller image libraries, with local newspapers which share
Speaker 3: its departments with you know, police agencies and things like that.
Speaker 3: And we have a full time picture editor who works
Speaker 3: across all of our you know, our knowledge magazines, our
Speaker 3: History of magazines, our science magazines, which has been a
Speaker 3: huge help because he can put in a lot of
Speaker 3: the legwork in terms of tracking these people down. If
Speaker 3: it was just down to you know, the editorial team
Speaker 3: to source everything, it just wouldn't be possible and we'd
Speaker 3: be very much reduced to using the same, you know,
Speaker 3: the images that you've seen from the Press Association or
Speaker 3: from Getty or Corbis over and over again. And I
Speaker 3: think sometimes it just takes a couple of new incidental
Speaker 3: shots to suddenly bringing a story to life. I think
Speaker 3: if people are flicking through on the newsstands and they
Speaker 3: see something that they haven't seen before. It makes them
Speaker 3: reconsider the product, especially in you know, those well known cases.
Speaker 3: I mean it's because of that. I think our illustrations
Speaker 3: are very important as well, and they kind of bespoke
Speaker 3: cutaways and recreations and graphics that we do, know, the
Speaker 3: top down views of crime scenes and things like that.
Speaker 3: It's all hugely important because not only does it enhance
Speaker 3: the experience of reading the thing, but it's such a
Speaker 3: fantastic advert for what's in the magazine. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: very firm believer that you can do as much marketing
Speaker 3: as you like on a product, but nothing sells the
Speaker 3: product like the product.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, Now with that, what I found interesting. I
Speaker 5: just looked online and you know, we featured a magazine
Speaker 5: here of Serial Killer Quarterly, which is a very fine magazine,
Speaker 5: but it's only a digital versions to digital editions. So
Speaker 5: you have digital editions and you have these physical additions
Speaker 5: that around the newstands. As we spoke about, but unless
Speaker 5: I'm I've read it wrong, it said that the first
Speaker 5: two editions are sold out, So tell us a little
Speaker 5: bit about those editions. How many editions there are? Just
Speaker 5: tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: The first is the first couple of issues. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's very difficult to know where they're all gone to
Speaker 3: a certain extent because of the kind of the business
Speaker 3: of publishing. There's a lot of getting them into different places.
Speaker 3: There's a certain number that are set aside for different
Speaker 3: distributors and different newsagents and things like that. And they
Speaker 3: did really, really well, and we made sure that we've
Speaker 3: got extra copies into the office, especially for this because
Speaker 3: I know there is there is such a loyal global
Speaker 3: community for true crime, and I thought, you know, this,
Speaker 3: one of all the magazines we do is going to
Speaker 3: be the one where we get a lot of direct sales.
Speaker 3: And those just vanished almost straight away. The first issue,
Speaker 3: the launch issue, was limited directly by myself, and we're
Speaker 3: really trying to make a statement with it and to
Speaker 3: kind of set out our store, let people know just
Speaker 3: how much they were going to get with every issue
Speaker 3: of Real Crime. We wanted to give them the kind
Speaker 3: of startup interviews like James L. Roy and Zoey tur
Speaker 3: the O. J. Simpson Chase Pilot would to give them
Speaker 3: a good array of the alpha serial killers and some
Speaker 3: smaller stories as well. From around the world, and I
Speaker 3: think that became quite a good template for the following issues.
Speaker 3: The second issue, which was the Charles Manson issue, I
Speaker 3: think I set up, but then I passed the direct
Speaker 3: running of the magazine on to Ben Biggs, who's the editor.
Speaker 3: My role now is mainly to talk about features with
Speaker 3: them and to talk about covers and things like that.
Speaker 3: I don't really you know, roll my sleeves up very
Speaker 3: often and get involved in the you know, the page
Speaker 3: furniture and things like that. And that was the first
Speaker 3: feature where we gave Charlie Orton then It's Nilson writer
Speaker 3: a little bit of a free run to tell the
Speaker 3: story of the Manson family from the perspective of the
Speaker 3: family members, to focus on how he controlled them and
Speaker 3: the mood of the time. And it was a fantastic
Speaker 3: kind of learning experience for us that second issue because
Speaker 3: in that one feature, I think we kind of pushed
Speaker 3: down the picket fence that surrounds us in terms of
Speaker 3: what we've already felt like magazines can and can't do,
Speaker 3: and opened ourselves up to telling stories in those different ways.
Speaker 3: And we brought in kind of song lyrics from the
Speaker 3: time that reflected the kind of the era we talked
Speaker 3: about the effect of psychedelic drugs on the family members.
Speaker 3: And they're always incredible little sort of clever references to
Speaker 3: sort of Age of Aquarius mythology and New Age beliefs
Speaker 3: and things like that. So I think those first two
Speaker 3: issues are both incredibly important, and yeah, they are available digitally,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately the physical copies are in the wind.
Speaker 5: Yes, well that's deservedly for sure. That's certainly of fascinating
Speaker 5: covers and chark four of amazing stories, some that we know,
Speaker 5: some we are about to learn when we read the
Speaker 5: fine magazine. Now, just tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: the subscription rates and how people might get the magazine
Speaker 5: and where they might just go to get that.
Speaker 3: Obviously, well, in individual issues in the UK get sold
Speaker 3: in wh Smith's and many independent news agents and supermarkets.
Speaker 3: In the US, we're stocked in Barnes and Noble and Borders,
Speaker 3: and I'm not one hundred percent sure what our you know,
Speaker 3: what our hit rate is in terms of getting into
Speaker 3: each individual store, but you can subscribe at ww dot imagines,
Speaker 3: subs dot co dot uk and.
Speaker 5: There is a.
Speaker 3: The US rate that I think is about as reasonable,
Speaker 3: reasonable as we can get it, given me the conversion
Speaker 3: rates and things. But that's the most you know, effective
Speaker 3: way of making sure you get every issue. It can
Speaker 3: be difficult to rely on say one store in a
Speaker 3: big city always having what you want.
Speaker 5: Now, how many additions are there.
Speaker 3: We have? We've done nine so far. We've got I
Speaker 3: think we sent the tenth to press on Monday actually,
Speaker 3: which was quite terrifying. To ten whole issues, that's a
Speaker 3: staggering thing. We've also got a number of bookisines which
Speaker 3: are sort of wider, sort of thicker, prestige, sort of
Speaker 3: coffee table jobs. We've got one on serial killers, one
Speaker 3: on Unsolved Crimes, and there's one on conspiracy theories, which
Speaker 3: isn't really a real crime one, but it sort of
Speaker 3: fits the tone a little bit. And then, as I said,
Speaker 3: we've got the French and the German editions as well.
Speaker 3: So I think, piece by piece our empire is growing
Speaker 3: a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely, And you know, you talk about the other
Speaker 5: magazines that you have, but this is an incredibly collectible.
Speaker 5: I got to tell the audience, this is an incredibly collectible.
Speaker 5: The kind of magazines that people used to hang on
Speaker 5: two years ago, these this magazine is just like that,
Speaker 5: a very collectible, glossy as you advertise on the magazine
Speaker 5: one hundred pages of crime as well, so really not
Speaker 5: full of advertising except for stuff that's related to the
Speaker 5: subject matter that the entire magazine is full of. So
Speaker 5: I've got to give you kudos to just a brilliant magazine.
Speaker 5: Especially for this audience that listens to this program. It's
Speaker 5: just be very much in their interest to check this out.
Speaker 3: I thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Indeed, now for those people that might want to contact you,
Speaker 5: I'm not sure why, but do you do Facebook? Do
Speaker 5: you have a website? Well, you mentioned the website, but
Speaker 5: to do any of that personal contact kind of thing
Speaker 5: Facebook page let us know if people are more interested
Speaker 5: about this or what might want to contact you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we were very prolific on Twitter and
Speaker 3: on Facebook. It's just set for Real Crime or Real
Speaker 3: Crime magazine and you'll find us no problem. What a
Speaker 3: member of the team is always kind of checking checking
Speaker 3: the messages. We can get back to you with any
Speaker 3: kind of queries about content or subscriptions or supply, or
Speaker 3: even just the chats about terrible things you like.
Speaker 5: Well, James, I want to thank you very much for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking about your very fine magazine, Real Crime.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much and hope to talk to you
Speaker 5: again real soon.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Lad, you've been a very gracious host.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much, James, have a good day.
Speaker 5: Thank you you too, Brian, wellbye time.