Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly and I'm
Bill Thomas, and we're joined today by Cynthia Hill, director
of Burden of Proof, and Steven Pandos, brother of Jennifer Pandos,
here to talk about the HBO Max series Burden of Proof.
Cynthia and Stephen, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 4: So let's go ahead and get some introductory material here
out of the way. Before we talk about your serious
Burden of Proof? Can you start by telling us a
little bit about yourself? Cynthia will start with you, and
then Steven, I'll have you jumped in.
Speaker 7: I'm a filmmaker based in Durham, North Carolina. I've been
making documentaries for now twenty five years and this last project,
Burden of Proof.
Speaker 5: We've been working on this one since twenty fifteen.
Speaker 6: Or a third of your career.
Speaker 5: Exactly where do I go from here? As panic?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's where we come in.
Speaker 4: Stephen, how about you?
Speaker 6: I'm Stephen Pandos. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina and
work in a commercial real estate investment.
Speaker 4: How did the two of you end up connect team
to build this relationship that resulted in this wonderful product,
Burden of Proof?
Speaker 5: He sent me a LinkedIn message that said call me.
Speaker 2: Did he say anything else? Was there a pitch contained
or Steve?
Speaker 7: No, no, no, not my recollection is the only thing
it said was call me. And so I had just
recently brought on board Christine delp who's the producer on
this project, and she had just graduated from college and
her job for that first the first couple of weeks
was to respond to emails and clean out my voice
messages and LinkedIn messages or whatever. And so she came
across this one and she's Christie's the one that actually
called Stephen that day.
Speaker 2: Stephen, did you indicate that you were the brother of
a missing person and wanted to talk to her about it? Documentary?
Or what did you say?
Speaker 6: I don't recall really the specific message. It might just
have been as blunt as please call me or something.
Speaker 5: I think it was.
Speaker 6: And that's how it started. So it was with I
don't know how long the first conversation with Christine was,
but it was a while, and she hung on and
heard the story even though Cynthia was telling her to
hang up on me.
Speaker 5: Yeah she was. This is a time when we were
working out of my kitchen.
Speaker 7: We were in between offices, I like to say, and
I could see her getting visibly emotional as she's talking
with Steven, and I didn't know what was going on.
I could be some crazy person who knows, And so
I was motioning for her to hang up on him,
and she's showing me away.
Speaker 5: You know, it's good, it's good.
Speaker 7: And so once she hangs up, she tells me the
story that Stephen just told her, and she proceeds to
google all of the information, and everything Stephen had invayed
was there, as much as we could find online. We
knew he wasn't making up a story, and so we
spent the next couple of hours just talking about the
implications of what this kind of tragedy has on someone
like Stephen and his family.
Speaker 2: Stephen at the point you reached out to Cynthia and Christine.
Had you seen Cynthia's twenty fourteen documentary Private Violence?
Speaker 6: How did she move?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 6: No, not at the time. I got referred to Cynthia
by a firm in New York, Tendescent Films, And that
was a result of me just calling just picking up
the phone and calling people who were in the documentary
fiwn business.
Speaker 5: They were an executive producer on Private Violence.
Speaker 6: By the way, Yeah, just by coincidence, and since what
I was talking about was sort of along the same
lines as Private Violence in terms of what I was
thinking about at the time about and it's the nuances
and complications from it, and so they suggested I reach
out to Cynthia. So I did.
Speaker 4: Cynthia, once you heard Stephen's story, did you anticipate that
this is going to be a multi year event. How
did you see this partnership unspooling?
Speaker 5: Of course not.
Speaker 7: I keep promising myself after I conclude a project that
the next one will not take as long as this
last one.
Speaker 5: I keep out doing myself. I've decided to never make
that promise again.
Speaker 7: I think that when you tackle anything like this, you
have to be willing to go wherever this story takes you.
And I've learned that over the years and my career.
That's what really makes a good story and a good
film is if you have the patience to let it
play out. And so obviously we did not know that
this one would take this long. And if you had
told both of us that when we first did that
first shoot that we will be filming for seven and
a half years, I imagine both of us would have
said no. Stephen N myself would have been like, no way,
We're never going to do this. But that's it's just
the road that we took, the path we took, and
it led us to where we are.
Speaker 4: Now, what did that shoot actually look like?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: How often per week, per month, per year would you
see each other and you would show up at Stephen's
house with cameras and go, okay, it's time to go
to work. I'm really curious about what it looks like
to shoot with someone for seven years.
Speaker 7: The first time we shoot, it's the first time I
meet Stephen, so I had not actually spoken to him.
I just was getting the information from Christine and from
the initial conversation she had with him. We decided that
it was worth pursuing and at least seeing where a.
Speaker 5: Couple of shoots would get it.
Speaker 7: So at least one shoot with Stephen, and so Steven
drives to Durham. At this point, I think that he's
willing to do whatever it takes to try to get
interest in his sister's case and feel like he'd hit
a brick wall. So he rolls up in front of
my house and we just film. We filmed pretty much
as he's walking in the door, and we've been filming
with him like that ever since.
Speaker 6: So those scenes are in the first episode, right, Yep.
Speaker 7: It's the first thing with Stephen is that first meeting,
that first encounter with us, Because for me, it's really
important that I capture those first conversations because a lot
of times those are the most revealing conversations, you get
the most raw emotion because it's the first time that
they're telling me that story. Is the first time Steven's
telling me what happened, and so I just wanted to
be sure that we captured that.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about Burden of Proof. Then
someone hasn't seen the documentary series yet, what is it, Stephen?
Speaker 5: You want to tackle that one?
Speaker 6: Are you?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: I think that's up to you. I'm a little too close.
I'm in the fishbowl.
Speaker 7: I guess I can give you what we call our
elevator pitch, which is this is Burden of Proof is
the story of Jennifer Pandos, a fifteen year old girl
who went missing in Williamsburg, Virginia in nineteen eighty seven.
We follow her brother as he seeks justice for his sister.
So that, in a nutshell, is what this story is about.
Speaker 4: As soon as we started receiving requests from our listeners,
Hey have you guys watched Burden of Proof? Are you
covering Burden of Proof? And I looked at the information
about this, The first thing that I really thought was
brother seeking justice for murdered sister. That sounds a lot
like my partner in crime. This is so interesting storyline there.
It's a very familiar storyline, and so we were hooked
from minute one. Stephen, your story is it's so similar
to Bill's that I was sitting there watching the documentary
and going, this sounds so familiar, Like you guys have
gone through a lot of the same struggles in terms
of lunf s min issues, And I just want to
take a minute, just on a personal level and say
how Sarah I am that you've had to go through that,
and I really feel for you in every way that
I can, So I just wanted to throw that out there.
Speaker 6: Oh, thank you, it's John.
Speaker 2: One of the things that was very striking for us
was there's also a contrast and I'm not criticizing here,
but I don't think there's much way around this. We
were floored by how little Kristin and I knew about
the Jennifer Pandos disappearance. Kristin lives in Williamsburg. She's a
teacher in Williamsburg. She actually graduated from the same high school,
Lafayette High School, that Jennifer was attending. And Jennifer's disappearance
happens just a couple of months after the October nineteen
eighty six murder of my sister Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski.
And one of the things that's come up with us
in the discussion with other people outside the four of
us here is that one made the observation that they
felt like the Colonial Parkway murders, which weren't called that
back then because they hadn't even all happened yet, but
that the high profile murder of Kathy Thomas and Rebecca Dowski,
followed by these murders of these other young people sucked
the oxygen out of the room in Williamsburg from a
kind of a media perspective which we'd never thought about.
Kristin and I we were like shocked by that. One
of our strongest takeaways from watching Burden of Proof is
why didn't the Pando's case receive more attention back in
nineteen eighty seven when Jennifer first disappeared. Stephen, do you
have a sense of why that might have happened?
Speaker 6: No, when Jennifer disappeared, I was in college in North
Carolina and never really moved back to Williamsburg other than
for maybe a few months after that, and dealing with
law enforcement was always something that my parents did. I
was whatever, eighteen at the time. That just wasn't it
wasn't my job. That was my parents thing to do.
So I don't know, I don't have a good answer
for that, Cynthia.
Speaker 2: Do you have any sense of why this case was
so low key for so.
Speaker 7: Long that we had that exact same question whenever we
first started, because when you would google Jennifer Pandos, there
were only just a few mentions, and you could if
you did some real hard digging, you could find those
earlier articles or mentions about her being missing in the
local paper, but that was it for us. It was
very disturbing, especially with what was going on with the
Parkway murders and Bill, I just want to say, your
and Stephen's stories, the way that they parallel are so uncanny. Yeah, yeah,
And so I didn't put that together either until we
got this request from y'all for this podcast. But it
was something that we would talk about quite often with
our team here, our internal team as to how did
this get such little attention and why with a fifteen
year old girl missing, was there not more done. I
think that it was a different time and with kids
going missing Unfortunately they're like, Okay, she ran away, and
the time before cell phones and new constant contact with people,
And so I think that for the cops, at least
from the questioning that I have done within the police
department and the former investigators, it was like they just
assumed that it was a runaway and they treated as
as such. But even if that's the case, a runaway
team is at so much d is in so much
danger of something worse happening, even if she did run away,
that this wasn't given the kind of attention that it
should have been given is so sad.
Speaker 2: Agreed that the times were very different, but it's actually
shocking now, especially to look back in retrospect. And agreed,
this is a pre cell phone, pre social media environment.
When we speak about the Colonial Parkway murders, I always
feel like I'm talking about the Civil War, because we
have to remind we speak to college audiences, for example,
that they will ask why didn't somebody call on their
cell phone? And how come they didn't get surveillance video.
People forget that surveillance video is a relatively new thing.
Except for maybe your local seven to eleven. You didn't
see cameras outside of homes and retail establishments. For the
most part, there's all kinds of changes. And then, of course,
I think you were touching on this a little bit indirectly,
which is the idea of a runaway fifteen year old
girl or any young person could be in danger. And
we talk about sex traffic now, which I don't remember
people talking about thirty years ago. No, but it's actually
shocking to look back and see just how little was
done with Jennifer's disappearance in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think for us that was always like
a big mystery, and that original case file from nineteen
eighty seven was missing. We didn't have a clear picture
as of what did actually happen in nineteen eighty seven.
Did they get the telephone records or did they go
to gate and acquire the ins and outs of people
coming in out of that gated community, Like, we didn't
have any idea if any of that had transpired.
Speaker 2: Was anybody from law enforcement able to answer those questions?
The original investigators didn't move to the moon. Weren't some
of those people available to answer those questions?
Speaker 7: Yeah, And that is a part of the second case
file that was created into two thousands where Wendy and
Jeff the lines. They were the investigators in the two thousands,
and they called the original investigators in nineteen eighty seven,
and so they asked them about certain things like did
you take the letter? Or was the note in the
case file? What was in the case file? Since it's
not here. Obviously, those original investigators didn't have a lot
to say about it, at least according to the notes
from Wendy and Jeff, but they were very certain that
they had collected the note that was left at the scene,
and they also just remembered it as a runaway case.
Speaker 4: Stephen, do you know if your parents ever actually went
to the guard gate and asked, Hey, did somebody call in?
Did somebody come in? I was explaining to Bill in
our first episode, because Bill isn't based here, but I am.
I was explaining about the process for getting into and
out of King's Mill. I have friends who live there,
and so I spent a lot of time in my
childhood going in and out, and I know that it's
very secure, and you have to go to the gate,
you have to stop, you have to call in. They
give you the past. Did your parents ever check one
who came in and who came out, and if anybody
actually came for Jennifer that night.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't recall if I'm sure they did, because
at the time, the one ninety nine gate at King's
Mill closed at midnight or eleven o'clock or whatever it was,
so it was only the Route sixty gate was the
only one open twenty four hours in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's good to know.
Speaker 2: So in terms of the documentary, one of the questions
we wanted to ask was do you feel that you
were able to be specific enough in terms of who
you think could be responsible for Jennifer's disappearance. The series
closes with things in an open ended fashion, but do
you feel and we understand there's restrictions legal and otherwise
about what you can and cannot say in a documentary,
do you feel like you were able to take it
as far as you wanted to.
Speaker 7: I thought we took it as far as we could
take it based on where the cops were currently with
the case and with the information that we were able
to gain access to ourselves. It is an active case
and they are pursuing suspects, and if you watch the film,
you get a sense of where they're headed.
Speaker 5: I think for us, when we first.
Speaker 7: Started this process, we really didn't think of this as
a who done it with the goal of trying to
solve the case like that was not what our intention
was when we first started it. When we were initially
meeting with Steven, we thought that this was more of
a story about a family tragedy and the fallout of
that trauma from nineteen eighty seven, and so that's how
we were pursuing the story. But our curiosity about the
case and how, and if you watch the series, you'll
see this in the very first frames, the cops ended
up suspecting the parents, and so we were very curious
about that, and so we brought an investigative reporter or
former investigative reporter onto our team to help us. She
became an integral a part of the team, Andrea Weigel
when she worked at the News and Observer for many
years here in North Carolina, and so she became the
one that really helped us dissect the case because Stephen
had sooned the police department or was in the process
of doing that to be able to declare Jennifer as
being deceased. I think for the illegal advice and Steven,
I'm stepping all over you right now. But for the
legal advice that he had received from the attorney that
he was working with, he was not able to take
action against his parents. And so this was I guess
one remedy for Steven to hopefully take some steps at
closure to be able to say, hey, she's always just
been listed as missing, but everybody knows that Jennifer's not
coming back, so let's go ahead and make the move
to declare her deceased. And so, because of that work
that he had done, he had gained access to that
new case file that was created in the two thousands,
and this was this big, wopping case file that he
walked into our house on that first day of shooting
or filming, and that's the material that we had to
work with. So as the documentary proceeds, you will see
the evidence that we are Steven pulls out, but that
we get to understand how the cops suspected who they
did suspect.
Speaker 4: Steven, are you comfortable referring to Jennifer's case as a
homicide case or would you still prefer that people refer
to it as missing persons? I'm just curious.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I haven't really thought about it. I don't believe
that my sister's coming back, so I'm fine either way.
I've just always thought of her as missing. But I
didn't what Snia said. I didn't like to sue the
police department. I put my petition the court to have
Jennifer declared deceased. I originally made an information request like
a public information request to the police department for Jennifer's
case file to support the petition to have ver declared deceased.
And then what the police department told my attorney was, look,
we can't give you that on or this way that
you asked for it, but if you subpoena the information
US for that information, we won't fight it. And that's
how I got the That's how I received the case file.
And then when I had Jennifer declared deceased, my attorney
had to go meet with the judge and the police
department and then he declared Jennifer deceased and that's when
I put a marker in the cemetery for and it
was at the time that felt like closure then, so
that was why I did it.
Speaker 2: I'm still pleasantly surprised they gave you the case file.
From personal experience, the FBI has fought us every step
of the way, and the FBI is the responsible agency
in my sister and Rebecca Dowski's murder.
Speaker 6: I think that at the time it was probably the
distinction set they were treating Jennifer's case as a cold
case and not active. And do won't take this offer
to say that this opportunity to say that the police
department has been great to me all the way back
to two thousand nine. They've been really good to me
and Collins, and they returned my phone calls and they've
just been great to work with.
Speaker 2: I wish I could say the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you have a difference. You're wrestling a different beast altogether.
Speaker 2: Yeah. People have said to me, Bill, you should see
the FBI, and you do recognize that what that actually
looks like is William F. Thomas versus the United States
of America. That's actually who I'm suing. Yeah, when you
think about the resources, they can a picture own money. Yeah,
I think they do.
Speaker 4: Cynthia, I know you said that you didn't set up
for it to be who done it, But if I
had to guess, I would imagine that probably tips have
begun to come in, either to you or to Steven
or to James City County. Can you speak to that
whether or not tips have come in. Are you getting
leads in this case at all?
Speaker 2: There?
Speaker 5: Now you go ahead, I say.
Speaker 6: No, I haven't. I've received a couple of phone calls
that I've referred to the police department. I know I've
spoken to Jake, but he's told me that he has
received some calls. Nothing really specific that he can follow
up on, but he has received a few calls.
Speaker 4: And one of those callses from my roommate. Actually, I
know you did speak to her, yes, but I know
I was very curious whether or not this was going
to yield any investigative leads eventually.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I hope it does, and I know the police
department is hoping that as well.
Speaker 2: 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. Let's talk about Jake Rice for a minute.
He appears in the documentary what's his role now as
a forensic investigator? Is he still with the James City
County Police Department on a full time basis or what's
his status.
Speaker 6: He's there part time. He retired as a police officer,
but he still works for the police department. He just
doesn't carry a badge and a gun. And he and
Rich are the principal investigators on the case. Jake has
the most history with it, going back to two thousand,
probably tennish and he knows.
Speaker 2: The most And what's your relationship like with Investigator Rice.
Speaker 6: Jake is great. That's not to say that we haven't
had tense conversations, or at least because we have. He
has a process that he has to work through. I
have to respect the process. I can't change it. The
only thing I can do is try to help him
get through it as fast as he can. But you know,
Jake has been terrific.
Speaker 4: There were definitely times when I was watching and we
were watching you make phone calls to Jake, and Jake
was saying, there's stuff is still out of the lab.
I don't have results for you yet. And again I
had that sense of deja vous. I've seen this before,
I've heard this before. I know Bill gets these same
phone calls. There's just this real sense of empathy about
this whole entire thing with what you're going through is
related to what Bill's going through. It's a little startling
to realize that seems to be what most people who
have a cold case are going through rather than I
think it's the norm rather than a surprise, and I
hate that. I hate that's the norm.
Speaker 2: One of the things we talk about in Mind over
Murder is that there are two hundred and fifty thousand
cold case homicides in the United States, so there are
at least potentially millions of people. If you think about
everybody having a few loved ones within their family, there
are actually millions of people going through this. It's actually
usually a very quiet process. It was a privilege to
meet you through the documentary process, and then Kristin and
I were watching it at the same time, but not
in the same room. We were both making a point of, hey,
let's watch these four episodes and compare notes to some
of which we did on the air on our podcast.
Because it's usually such a private process, it was unusual
to see all of these very strong parallels between your
journey and mine. I think I got most heavily involved
in Kathy's case in two thousand and nine, which I
think also roughly parallels the timeframe where you decided you
wanted to step forward. How did you feel about opening
up your at least that part of your life over
the course of seven plus years.
Speaker 6: I just the big picture was justice for my sister,
and so whatever I had to do to help deliver
justice for my sister was what I did, whatever consequence. Yeah,
that's just what I did. Was I always kept the
big picture of the big goal was justice for my sister,
and so I just did whatever was required for that.
Speaker 2: Did you ever find yourself circling back with Cynthia as
a filmmaker and saying, let's not put that in or
did you think to yourself, I'm focused on the larger
goal and I'm willing to do this show the process
works and.
Speaker 6: All, yeah, I'll let Cynthia answer that.
Speaker 2: No, prescient Cynthia.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 7: The interesting thing and when Stephen watched the episodes towards
the end, he had not seen anything. He walked out
and he said, what did you say again about the
the trust exercise?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yeah, this was the ultimate kind of trustball exercise.
Because I didn't see any of it until I guess
about a year before it came out. I saw the
first couple episodes, and we were still waiting on lab
results and everything else for the fourth. But yeah, I
didn't see any of it for six and a half years.
And this was Cynthia's film, and whatever she wanted to
put in it, she could put in it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a big responsibility, but it's also an honor
to have someone like Steven trust you like that with
all the material that we had and the intimacy and
everyone that we filmed was great about that, I have
to say, or mostly I have to say, But it's
like that as a documentary filmmaker all the time. It's
like that that fine line between being there and showing
enough so the audience is very clear about the emotional
trauma and the struggles, and then when does it become exploitation,
and so you have to be mindful of that at
all times.
Speaker 4: I feel like Cynthia, I wanted to ask one thing
in particular about the re enactments. I noticed you had actors,
of course, for Jen, for Margie and for Ron. Were
you there orchestrating everything that was going on with all
of the actors and actresses? How long did that take?
I'm really curious about that when Stephen, I'm curious how
you felt about watching somebody playing your sister. But let
me start with Cynthia talk about the reenactments a little bit.
Speaker 7: Sure, Yeah, they were very much a part of the
whole process of what I was envisioning for the film.
And I'd never directed actors before, so that was a
bit I was a bit nervous about that process, as
it felt very foreign to me.
Speaker 5: But I really was determined to use.
Speaker 7: That thre's recreation scenes to amplify the unreliableness of memory.
That's how it all started, was that we were getting
these different takes on Jennifer, like who Jennifer was. So
it started out with that, like everybody had a different
Jennifer when they talked about her, and I thought that
was so interesting and compelling and shouldn't be that surprising
when you think about a fifteen year old girl, she
is going to be a play a different role for
different people. She's going to be for her mom, her dad,
her brother, her friends, her teachers, she's she will be
different and described differently, And that started out this whole
idea of trying to implify that theme again of having
memory being unreliable too.
Speaker 4: Stephen, How was it for you watching someone playing Jennifer?
Speaker 6: So much of this whole experience and not just the
film going back to two thousand and nine has been surreal.
And that's just one other surreal moment. But the first
time you know that I met Savannah, Yeah, it was
just super weird. And you know that was long before
I had seen anything. I think it was at a
birthday party for Cynthia. That where I first met Savannah, that's.
Speaker 5: The actress that played Jennifer.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: See, that's another experience that you and Bill actually have
in common. When Oxygen Today documentary on the Colonial Parkway murders,
we also had re enactments, and I remember sitting with
Bill in a van right outside of the area where
they were doing a reenactment of Kathy's murder and just
asking him, mariy are you okay meeting an actress who's
playing your sister? Essentially, I can't imagine how surreal it is.
I think that's a great word, Stephen. This is going
to be a very intense and unusual process, but your
product is amazing.
Speaker 2: One of the things I was very struck by were
the use of the real life footage from what essentially
are interrogations of Stephen and Jennifer's mother. How did you
gain access to them and how did you feel like
you were going to preserve the integrity of the conversation
in showing them. Obviously you're not going to show hours
of footage in a documentary that has a limited runtime, Cynthia,
how do you work around that?
Speaker 7: Copies of the interrogation were on DVDs in that original
that case file that Stephen acquired in twenty fourteen, and
so that's how we got access to that materials because
it was just part of what was given over Stephen
made this petition, and so when we came across that
or when we watched it. Tom Vickers, who is the
editor that I've been working with for many years, he's
he and I've been a team or all of the
work since I don't know, for fifteen years almost he
was like, oh my god, because I was like spot
checking stuff because we're out in the field and he's
you got to sit down and watch it from start
to finish, and so sitting down and watching it, and
we contemplated for a long time as we're editing, is
like how much.
Speaker 5: Do you think that we can show?
Speaker 7: And it's like, gosh, it would be amazing to have
a whole episode of just that material so that you
can really get a sense of what that experience is
like for someone, and especially after you see the ending
of the series, going back and watching that again.
Speaker 5: And we do visually reference.
Speaker 7: That at the end of episode four, so that we
remind the audience of what emotionally that probably was doing
at that time.
Speaker 5: It was important for us to have as much as
we could have in there.
Speaker 7: But yes, when you are doing something for a large
streamer broadcaster like HBO, they are concerned about audiences and
making sure that they don't tune away, and so it
was a negotiation as to how much we get.
Speaker 6: And that was that was long, because you know, that
was that first interview with my mom took place on
a Thursday, from around six pm to midnight. There were
six hours of it from that day and then three
hours of it the following day. Wow, And that was
that was a really hard day.
Speaker 2: Are you in touch with former investigator Wendy Read as well?
Speaker 6: I talked to Wendy on occasion. I don't talk to
regularly or anything, but yeah, just on where occasion I do.
Speaker 4: So, are the two of you on the same page
in terms of your personal theories about the case, about
what may have happened to Jennifer or is there any
place in which the two of you vary about what
you think may have happened to her?
Speaker 5: I'll answer it by not answering it. That's what okay.
Speaker 7: And obviously, as a filmmaker, and I think Steven's been
on this similar ride with us, we have to imagine
what transpired because that helps us figure out where do
we want to go with asking more questions and who
do we think we should talk to and all that stuff. So,
of course, over the course of working on this case
or making the film, I've had different ideas floating in
my head as to what you can think, what you
think transpired, and it has varied wildly. I have to say,
I think that what you'll see is we still don't know,
because like trying to put those pieces together with what
information we do have now, which is a lot more
than what we started with, some of it still doesn't
line up, so like how does that happen? So still
trying to make sense of how she got out of
the house, without anybody.
Speaker 5: Knowing is still a mystery, and so.
Speaker 7: It's yeah, we I mean, I was hoping that we
would have more answers, and I think we I don't know, Stephen,
if you want to add anything to.
Speaker 6: That, No, I think that's that's fair. And it's look,
one of the things that led to all this heartache,
and is speculation right to try hard not to repeat
that same mistake in the absence of actually knowing.
Speaker 2: So well put, we're not trying to compare our limited
experience with anything close to the number of years now
that the two of you have dedicated to Jennifer's disappearance.
Even Christin and I have spent hours talking about just
that one issue, for example, and lots of others. How
did Jennifer get out of the house without anyone noticing?
And we went through any number of options, some of
which seem to make sense to us at the time,
even my view of the case, which again is limited
based on all the articles we've read. Watching the series
very carefully, really being very impressed with the amount of
work that you've put in, you still end up with
almost as many questions as you have answers. Was that
a hard sell? Cynthia for a documentary. Were you ever
under any pressure to push this in a particular direction.
Obviously we don't know what happened to Jennifer, and the
series has to end on a question mark.
Speaker 7: I think that you, as a filmmaker could have a
lot of pressure from executives from certain networks or streaming platforms.
But working with HBO, they came on board fairly early
on for development when we had no idea that we
were the case was going to even become active again.
So we never said from the very get go that
this was going to be a case that was going
to be solved. So I think that there was never
this oh my gosh, you didn't solve that awful.
Speaker 5: But I do think that as.
Speaker 7: The case became active and we were there and the
throws and the thick of the investigation and uncovering things
on our own, there was some I use the word
excitement but for lack of a better word, about the
excitement over the potential of learning more.
Speaker 5: And we do learn a lot more.
Speaker 7: We don't have the definitive answer, but we do learn
a heck of a lot more, and I think that
we're closer to understanding more about Jennifer's state of mind
and other things that are going on surrounding Jennifer that
play into this whole case. And so I felt as
though that not having a case that was solved did
not hinder the power of the story when it finally
did come to an end for us and how we
were telling.
Speaker 2: The story, would you ever consider returning with a fifth
episode if there were significant developments in the case.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would love to be able to do that,
to pick it up and hoping that we do have
more concrete answers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Stephen, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm open for it. Well, you just have to
wait and see it. You know, if telling Jennifer's story
helps others, than I'm all for it.
Speaker 5: And ultimately, I think for us it was like I
think and Bill you were hitting on this earlier, like
having the access to a family who is in this
limbo about a cold.
Speaker 7: Case and about a family member and not having the
answers and this lingering trauma from all of that and
what it does to all the parties at play was
really important and we didn't want that to be lost,
and that was what our primary storyline was to begin with,
and We always honored that, even when the case became
more active and there's more interest in the clues and
stuff like that, for us on our team and also
with Stephen, it's like, it's still about It's still about
the process, it's still about the family, and that always
was what we made for us important to continue to follow.
Speaker 4: And I think that's ultimately what does come out most
in our episode where we sat and deconstructed everything. Knowing
Jennifer's case and the whereabouts and the wise and the
where of it all is great. But what really came
across to me, and I kept saying to Bill over
and over, is how very much I feel for Steven,
how empathetic I felt about all of this. And part
of that is just because nobody should have to go
through this. Also part of it is I've watched Bill
go through it. I know it. I just felt an
enormous amount of empathy and sympathy to the point where
I couldn't binge it all at once. Normally I would,
but I couldn't do it all at once. I had
to divide it up over two days because it just
felt at times this is so emotional and so wrenching,
and that I couldn't manage to do it all at once.
If that is your ultimate goal, from my point of view,
you achieved it.
Speaker 2: I guess last question for both of you is what's
next for the two of you?
Speaker 6: Oh gosh. For me, it's just about moving forward, still
doing what I can for Jennifer, but moving forward and
being at peace knowing that I've done all I can
do for me. That's all I ever wanted to know.
All this in the absence of justice for my sister
and the Alemabus piece, Cynthia.
Speaker 4: What's next for you? I know it's probably got to
feel a little I asked you off air, does this
feel exciting or does it feel anti climactic now that
you've got it out there in this process of so
many years work?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: What are you doing now?
Speaker 7: Yes? Even, and I've talked about that a little bit.
I feel lost, like unmoored almost. And filmmakers will say this,
you don't know. Filmmakers will say that you have to
abandon the story, that this story never concludes.
Speaker 5: It's one of those.
Speaker 7: Things where I don't want to feel like we've abandoned
this storyline or Jennifer's story. And I's still very much present,
because I still think that there's things that that we
haven't told. There are things that in the back of
my brain that keep it alive and wanting to continue
with this story. But I'm a need to have work
that pays, so I am working on other contents and
I was hired by NASCAR to do a series about
nine year olds that race at a dirt track outside
of Charlotte, and that's been very different and really fun.
So it's nice to have that balance between serious, more
serious material and something that is not. But surprisingly this
is pretty become pretty serious.
Speaker 2: I was thinking that we was going to have a
lighter tone. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And the other thing that I've been doing with two
team members of mine, Claire Johnson, who films with me
all the time, she's a cinematographer, and Sandra Davidson, who
is a producer. We've been going to the Ozarks filming
with bigfoot hunters, and so.
Speaker 5: That has been a real gift.
Speaker 7: Actually you get to go camping and off grid, and
so it allows me to really disconnect and to think
about life in a really different way. And surprisingly, like
how a lot of these stories overlap and interesting and
unique ways, is that this is a story about the pursuit.
It's a story about a journey, and I find myself
telling a lot of those kinds of stories.
Speaker 4: That is very cool.
Speaker 2: I look forward to actual footage of Bigfoot in that case.
Speaker 4: That is going to do it. For this episode of
mind Over Murder. Burden of Proof is available on HBO
Max or I guess we're just calling it Max now.
Burden of Proof is available on Max. We do encourage
you to stream it. Thank you so much for listening
to this episode of mind Over Murder. We'll see you
next time.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.
Speaker 2: Theme music is by Kevin McLeod.
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway Murders.
Speaker 2: On Facebook, and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on
Twitter at Bill Thomas five six.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.