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.
Welcome to Mind Over Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.
Speaker 2: And I'm Bill Thomas.
Speaker 3: It has suddenly become a winter in both of our locations,
has it not. You were wearing a hat or when
I got on this zoom call.
Speaker 2: This is crazy. It's like somebody through a switch. It's
now acting like November.
Speaker 3: Yeah, same here. It was in the forties this morning. No,
it was in the thirties this morning when I went
to school for the first time. In my heavy coat
and my scarf and my gloves, and it still feels
like it's in the forties outside. Winter has arrived.
Speaker 2: Sadly, same thing here. It was twenty nine degrees when
we got up this morning, and in the seventies. I
don't know.
Speaker 3: Two weeks ago, maybe on Saturday in northern Virginia, when
I went to watch our cross country team compete at
the state cross country meet, it was seventy degrees outside.
It was a stunningly beautiful day. And here it is
two days later, and it's freezing, and I've got the
scars and the gloves and i hate it. I hate winter.
Speaker 2: It's not my favorite either.
Speaker 3: Yes, but you live in the ice box of Connecticut,
my friend. You have to get used to it at
some point.
Speaker 2: Pamela and I are working on a project. It's mostly Pamela.
I'm just in the assist role where we're adding additional
felt lined curtains flannel I think is the correct term.
And we're up in the loundry room and she's having
me hold one of the new flannel lined curtains as
she puts new curtain rings on it. We're gonna go
hang it in one of the bedrooms, and she said
to me, if we ever move, meaning again, we're moving
somewhere warm, yep, as we shiver and prepare for the
onslaught of winter, the two worst words in anyone's language
up here in New England fuel bills. They're coming supposed
to be auci this year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet so. My goodness, gracious, from our very
very cold hands and hearts to all of you, we
hope that winter has not hit you where you are yet,
and that you were enjoying a more warm and seasonable,
maybe unseasonable day than we currently are. We are both freezing,
and neither of us like it.
Speaker 2: I did take my hat off, though too accord the podcast.
Speaker 3: You didn't have to look cute.
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, I might wear it next time at the
rate we're going.
Speaker 3: So, Bill, I know that you mentioned last time your
town had a little bit of a snaffoo would be
the small and understated way to put it. Environmental disaster
would be the larger and more accurate way to put it,
without going into too terribly much detail. How's the cleanup going,
you guys? All right?
Speaker 2: We're better. I did read something very sobering this morning,
which is that of the eighty two hundred gallons of
gasoline that's spilled on the hill leading through the center
of town. They haven't actually recovered anything close to eighty
two hundred gallons, so it's underground and that's not necessarily
a good thing. The people have been great, The crews
have been fantastic. They're working very hard to clean the
mess up. And now they've gotten the surface areas all
cleaned up, and they dug up lawns and removed soil
and all that kind of stuff, and now it's a
matter of extracting it from our groundwater, which is messy.
Speaker 3: As we said last time, thank you to all of
the responders who are there helping to try to make
life for all of y'all a little bit easier, and
so we continue to extend those thanks to everybody who
is doing their best to get you guys back to normal.
Although it sounds like it maybe a little bit.
Speaker 2: I know a lot of us tend to be critical
sometimes of government and government workers. I just have to say,
in a situation like this, man, these people have been amazing.
Volunteers and the staff here in our town, state people,
federal people, National Guard, they've all been amazing. And I
know we all tend to criticize sometimes, I have to
say these first, second, and third responders have just been
amazing and we're thrilled to have them here helping us
clean up the mess.
Speaker 3: On today's episode, we wanted to spend a little bit
of time talking about the Engage with Empathy movement. I'm
not sure what we want to call it. Is it
a movement? What is it? Specifically? Would you say if
you had to put a label on it, I would.
Speaker 2: Say it's a movement we're certainly seeing in the last
year or so a significant effort. I think I first
talked to Sarah Turney about this, maybe as far back
as two years ago, and she talked quite a bit
about ethics in true crime. I think the Engage with
Empathy campaign and even the hashtag Engage with Empathy is
a very nicely phrased way of conveying what it is
that those of us who work in the true crime
media space and are people who've been touched by violent
crime are looking for what we're going for. I'm not
saying we always get there, and I'm not one hundred
percent certain that ethics and true crime is exactly the
right phrase, whereas engagement empathy I think really works.
Speaker 3: And when we're talking about that, what we're really talking
about is this idea of at least for me, and
of course you're going to have your own feelings on it.
So I'm going to get you to weigh into engage
with empathy for me means being cognizant of the fact
that behind every crime that is the basis for US splashy,
HBO or Netflix series, there are real people, real families,
real victims, real law enforcement first responders, profilers, law enforcement agencies,
you name it, who lived it, who deal with the
trauma of it, and who need our support and our
empathy rather than having their stories exploited for TV big
splashy series. Of course, I'm thinking of the current Netflix
drama Dahmer, which has invited so much controversy here recently.
I think it's important to remember, and I know you,
as the brother of a crime victim, believe this too.
It is really important if you are going to get
involved with a case, if you're going to be interested
in a case, that you remember that underneath all of
this there are real people. I had a student. This
is what really put this in my mind who asked
me a couple of weeks back, right after Dahmer first
drop on Netflix, Oh, miss Dilly, are you watching Dahmer?
And when I told her no, she looked a little
taken aback, and she was like, but you're all into crime.
Why would you not watch Dahmer? And I said, for
you aware of the fact that the victims' families and
the surviving victims, because there is one at the very
least that I'm aware of. I so, were you aware
that they feel re traumatized by watching this on the air,
that this is something that is hard for them to
watch because it is their lives right there on the screen.
They're watching someone who got paid to play them play
out the most jarring, wrenching emotional moments of their life
on TV for your entertainment. And her face dropped a
little bit. She looked a little dismayed by the whole thing.
And she said, oh, gosh, I'd never thought about it
that way. And I said, it's okay, most people don't
think of it that way, but think about it for
a second. And she said, what about all the Bundy
movies and things You've watched those two And I said,
did you know Bundy how to surviving victim? How do
you think she feels when as a culture we seem
to fetishize Ted Bundy. He is really the biggest example
of people who, for whatever reason, they really Ted Bundy.
And this goes back to when you and I went
to our first crime con together. I remember seeing a
woman walking around, not just in a dress made out
of material that had Ted Bundy and other serial killers
mugshots on it, but I remember a woman who had
a full forearm Ted Bundy tattoo, And I couldn't believe
that there is a woman walking around with the face
of a serial killer tattooed on her arm. Why would
you ever want that man tattooed on your body after
what he did to so many women? Why are we
sexualizing someone who murdered women graphically horrifically? Why are we
doing that? That's where engage with empathy comes from. For me,
we should not be glorifying, fetishizing how are you want
to put it serial killers? And we shouldn't be putting
them up for entertainment in a way that re traumatizes
the victims and their families. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Bill? I think you make a lot of really good points.
I know we've talked about this glorification of serial killers
in a way that I just find incredibly disturbing. We've
met one hundred, if not thousands of people as a
result of our work in advocacy in true crime, and
I think I would always try to find a way
to be polite. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And I remember when we saw people at crime Kin
it seemed to be kind of New Orleans was the
one I think that really popped for me, and that's
actually the crime con where the reporter from the Washington
Post was following me around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I remember that.
Speaker 2: Supporting my impressions and my experience at crime Coin, and
they talked about this conflict that we all feel about
using media to help shine the spotlight on unsolved cases.
It does have a lot of benefit, but there's a
downside to it, and some of it is things like
trying to smile as a person wearing a dress made
of the faces of serial killers walks by, as if
somehow that's hip been cool and edgy, when I think
it's disgusting.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I ever mentioned this before. I
was approached a few years ago by a museum. Oh yes,
I remember they wanted something of my sister Kathy's to
put in their museum of serial.
Speaker 3: Killers and ALCATRAZI.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was polite, but I was sitting there thinking
I told them, no, absolutely not. I remember thinking, why
in the world would I give you something that belonged
to my sister Kathy, who died in the Colonial Parkway murders,
so you can show it off at your cheeseball museum
of serial killers? Are you serious? On what planet do
you think talking to me about that is a good idea.
I just walked away, thinking, oh, I don't even have
that much that belonged to my sister Kathy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was about to say.
Speaker 2: I think in retrospect, my parents, who are both gone now,
made some mistakes thirty six years ago. One of them
was getting rid of all of Kathy's stuff, which I
think I understand it, but I think now I kind
of wish I had a few more things. They don't
have to be valuable things, just things that belong to Kathy.
They were in a very big hurry to get rid
of all of those things. Now I'm sorry because I'd
like to have a few more things here in the
library where I record Mind over Murder with you each week,
that would just be physical objects that had belonged to her. Yeah.
At the same time, they got rid of letters, hundreds
and hundreds of letters that we'd received, sympathy guards and letters,
but many of them contained really wonderful stories written about Kathy,
and my parents got rid of all those and I'm
really sorry now that I don't have all those things.
Sometimes people approach true crime in a very unthinking way,
and that's where I think the Engagement Empathy campaign has
some terrific ideas. At the recent Crime Con a couple
of months ago, Sarah Turney, sister of Alisa attorney, Julie Murray,
sister of Mora, and Kelsey German Cybert. I'm not sure
Kelsey was married at that point. I think that was
a little bit before she got married. She's now Kelsey
German Cybert, who is Liberty German sister. The three of
them did an outstanding panel at Crime Con where they
talked about ethics and true crime. In my mind, that
was the kickoff of this campaign, Engage with Empathy.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because there are so many tensions and complexities
that come within the true crime space. On the one hand,
you want to do the reporting and the advocacy part
of things that we do. I hope that our listeners
would agree that we tried to do this with as
much tact and compassion and sensitivity towards the victims as
we can. If we ever reached a place where I
thought we were glorifying killers or anything else, I would say, Hey,
it's time to set this aside. This isn't working for me,
and I think you would do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: At the same time, there is also that element of
the true crime space that is looking for ratings. They're
looking for money to monitor, whether it's monetized podcast or
series like The Lover's Lane Murders, which was made about
the Colonial Parkway murders. You also have people who are
looking to make a buck off of whatever it is
that they are working with in the true crime space.
Sometimes that leads to making choices that are not empathetic.
I know that you don't want to call out the
creators of Lover's Lane Murders because you had a good
working relationship with them, but I will. I think that
the use of the crime scene photos from various of
the Colonial Parkway murders. Crime scenes was a very poor
choice that they included in The Lover's Lane Murders. I
get why they did it, and you get why they
did it too. It is all about what is going
to make the series sell, and it would not have
sold nearly as well if there weren't look gory, graphic
crime scene photos. But it was a horrible choice from
the standpoint of people who near the victims and loved
the victims, like your family and all of the other
families of the victims and the Colonial Parkway murders. And
I think that when money is on the line and
ratings and various other things, that's where the trouble tends
to begin. You've got people in the crime space who
want to honor the victims, but you also have others
who are willing to exploit what has happened from money,
ratings or what have you. And that's where things start
to get a little uncomfortable for me as a true
crime consumer and also as a true crime creator. Do
you feel the same way at times?
Speaker 2: I do, And I think your criticisms of The Lover's
Lane Murders, which of course covered the Colonial Parkway murders,
I think is one hundred percent ballot, and I feel
the same way as a consulting producer. On that show,
I expressed my opinion in the strongest possible terms about
the fact that I thought they were using the crime
scene photos which the most shocking ones are actually at
my sister Kathy and her girlfriend Rebeccadowski, and I thought
it was disgusting, and I said so, I wasn't driving
the bus if y NBC Universal and our friends at
Oxygen and Texas Crew Productions and x G Productions were
in the driver's seat. And at the end of the day,
it's the person writing the checks, which is NBC Universal.
In the series that we just described, they're the ones
that actually ultimately decide, and it didn't seem concern about
the victims' families was paramount in their decision making process.
We see this a lot with podcasters too. We're following
the Delphi case involving Liberty German and Abigail Williams, and
there's been a significant development. As we talked about a
few weeks ago on the podcast, A suspect, Richard Allen,
was arrested on October twenty sixth, The charging documents, which
are quite detailed and are usually public. In this example,
in the Delphi Twin murders of Libyan Abbey have been sealed.
I mentioned to you just before we started today that
I'm still trying to follow along in terms of developments
with the case. What I'm finding that's happening is that
there's a lot of just rank speculation going on. I
look for new information on the case from time to time.
What I'm seeing are just one podcast or after another,
and they're just completely speculating. They're just making stuff up.
It's as if you and I went out for coffee
and just sat there and just kicked around ideas. And
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but it's
one thing for you and I to do that over
a beer or an iced tea or whatever your beverage
of choice is. It's another thing to put that up
on the world wide Web. And you're just like, I'm
trying to think of a non profane way put this.
They're just pulling this stuff out of who knows where
and just throwing it up there. And they're saying, oh,
Kagan Klein has to be involved in his father and
and they maybe valid theories, but why don't we let
this process work and take this case to trial. I'm
actually very concerned there could be a possibility there may
be a mistrial in some of these examples, because people
are just throwing out baseless speculation, naming suspects, doxing as
they say, suspects, potential suspects. The practice of doxing is
providing people's information, names, addresses, dates of birth, and these
are people who have not necessarily been charged with a crime.
And I think some of this stuff is just outrageously irresponsible.
I think that's very frightening. If we're really supposed to
be on the side of the William and German family
in the Delphi case, where we are looking for justice,
we want some degree of and don't like that word closure,
but right justice I'm reasonably comfortable with. Then why would
we be just going on the world Wide Web and
just throwing out completely crackpot theories and naming names, telling
saying oh, I think this person's involved, I think that person.
I think it's outrageous and stupid and shortsighted, and it
is not helping this case move forward.
Speaker 3: Agreed, And one of the discussions that you and I
had when we first started covering the Colonial Parkway murders
for our podcast, is how do we handle the name
of suspects? Because we have people who have been named
in the media, we have people who have not been
named in the media. We have people who are the
everybody knows they've been a person of interest, but it's
never actually been reported. We really had to figure out
how are we going to deal with this, and eventually
we came up with something that we're fairly comfortable with,
which is, if the media has widely reported the name
of a person as a suspect, like for example, fred Otwell,
we were okay with mentioning that, but there are others
that we after much discussion with each other and determine,
all right, this one we're not naming because they it
may be like common knowledge on say a website, or
maybe just local hearsay, rumor gossip, but if they haven't
been named, we're not going to do it either. It's
a sticky wicket. It really truly is. If you're pardon
a vaguely British sounding expression there, it is hard to
figure out what are the ethics involved when you are
trying to do reporting. But what you're describing of people
just randomly throwing out theories with no more basis in
reality than we're sitting around and bsing and tossing the
out just to see what sticks to the wall. It's
not responsible. As you mentioned, I think there's a possibility
of very real danger when it comes time to go
to trial to the process of getting justice for these
young women. As I know I mentioned once before, I
know the FBI is not entirely thrilled that you and
I sit here and discuss this case. And they've mentioned
before the idea that if this ever goes to trial,
we're going to have some problems. Well, buddy, arrest a
suspect first, and then we'll worry about trial.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I've pushed back hard against this and said, look,
it's pretty clear that the FBI would like to muzzle
me in the Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm not having it.
They haven't even identified a suspect, at least publicly. There
are lots of people whose names have been associated with
the Colonial Parkway murders, whose names I know. I have said,
sometimes with a bit of snark in my voice, that
I feel whatever I feel like I I can name
most of the suspects. I'm not saying I know them all,
but I certainly know a fair number of them. We
have sometimes identified people by name, particularly if they're dead.
It never occurred to me until I was listening to
you a moment ago. There is one small advantage to
a case that's dragged on for thirty six years, which
is that some of the suspects are dead. I never
thought of as an advantage because most of the time
it's a frustration. 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. One of the disturbing developments
in the Delphi case is this decision by the judge
to recuse himself after some of these internet fools started
restarching him and his family and his children and outing
them on the internet. And I was shocked. Then. At
first I thought the judge was being a bit of
a woss. But now I think I want to take
that back. It certainly never said that on the air
of I thought the judge might have been overreacting, But
then I thought to myself, wait a minute, this guy's
got school age kids. Yeah, and people are outing his children.
What in the world does that have to do with
this case? I would ask any of these fools, how
do you think that's helping the community of Delphi, or
the German or Williams family get anywhere close to justice.
This judge has now stepped back from this case and
the case has to be reassigned. They're actually delaying justice,
and why they're doing these incredibly stupid and damaging things
is beyond me. That is as far away from engaged
with empathy as I could possibly believe. I'm so shocked
that people are being this stupid and so willing to
damage the successful prosecution of this case. If this man,
the current suspect, can't yet a fair trial, this could
end up in some sort of mistrial. This is insane
and I am supportive of the families in all of
these examples. Sarah Attorney's sister's case, Her father, Michael Turney,
has been charged in her stepsister Alissa's two thousand and
one murder, and that case is going to trial I
think later on this year. It was delayed due to
COVID and other issues. She's talked about it on her
Voices for Justice podcast. Believe that trial is now coming
up later on this year. If I'm not mistaken the
idea that people are going to be just inquisitive to
the point where they're starting to ask questions that we
don't really even deserve answers to it. I don't need
to know anything about the personal life of the judge
and his wife and kids in the Delphi case, Are
you kidding? How is that important or valuable or even
public knowledge? And they've scared the but Jesus out of
this poor judge. And there's one clerk in this relatively
small town of Delphi, and they were supposed to be
handling this case. At first, the judge expressed concern about
the safety of himself and his very small staff. Ultimately
he took himself out of the case and recused himself.
That is actually damaging this case.
Speaker 3: And you do have to wonder what is it the
bottom of that? Is it the sense of I want
to be involved in this case. I want to be
breaking news. I want to be giving something that hasn't
been revealed before. If the sense of oh, I want
to share information like a journalist would is what's driving
some of this journalists have a working set of ethics
and morals that they have to use as part of
their reporting. And part of that is you don't go
about revealing names and personal information of people who are
related to the case or even tangentially related to the case.
You're not, as you mentioned before, you're not getting anywhere
by scaring off any person who is even remotely related
to this case. You're not helping. What information exactly do
you think you're providing by sharing school and the address
of children belonging to the judge? Why would you do that?
You need to scare the heck out of a child just
because their dad happens to be working on this high
profile case. Why would you do that?
Speaker 2: They've lost a qualified judge who felt like he had
to step back and refuse himself. And at the same time,
another podcaster a few months back took it upon themselves
to leak documents related to the keik Incline charges. And
I'm not saying the Line is necessarily an upstanding citizen,
But even though I might personally think he's a sleeves
bag and may be involved in child porn and pursuing
sex with underaged girls and a lot of illegal and
highly distasteful stuff. He's still entitled to be treated as
innocent until proven guilty. To put those documents out which
were briefly available on an unsecured part of a law
enforcement website, which was a mistake and was corrected, the
podcasters didn't care. They put it all out there and
ended up being all over the media, which is why
I know about it. And the truth is, I actually
don't need to know that stuff, but it's too late now.
You can't put that genie back in the bottle or
whatever crazy lame expression I want to come up with here,
But these things are not helping. Actually, this bizarre compulsion
to research things that we actually don't need to know,
I will admit I am intensely curious about this case.
I want to see justice for Libby and Abbey. But
remember they're gone now, those two little girls, and that's
really what they were, are dead. We now need to
be thinking about the families. Yes, and we've met their families,
who are wonderful people. They deserve better than this. And
as curious as I might be, and as interested as
I think both of us are in seeing this case
move forward, I'm seeing things and hearing things in the
last few months in this case that I think are
incredibly disturbing. I know anyone can start a podcast, but
think you've got to keep your heart engaged while you're
looking for information. Like you said at the top of
this podcast, we all have to remember, these are real people.
This isn't some fictional story. This isn't Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
This is somebody's in this case, the three people we
just talked about, this is their sister. These three amazing women,
Sarah Turney, Julie Murray, and Kelsey Germyn Cybert. And I've
met two of the three of them. I'm so sorry
I missed meeting Julie at Crime Con because I think
she's been incredibly impressive. But these amazing women, they all
lost their sisters. Their advocacy was forced on them, which
in a way was forced on you and me because
of our family and personal connections to crime victims. And
we've actually found as we've met a lot of people
in the true crime space, not everybody, but a lot
of people who do this kind of work got into
it because they were touched by this type of true crime. Yeah,
if you can keep your sense of empathy and heart.
I think that's incredibly important and is sometimes missing one
hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And Laura Richards had posted something a couple of weeks
back that really kicked off for me, this sense of okay,
popular culture has taken this interest in true crime, and
they dragged it in the wrong direction in some senses.
She had posted a picture of a sweatshirt that was
available on Etsy that she found to be particularly insensitive
and quite frankly disgusting, And I agree with her one
hundred and ten percent. It is your basic, cute little
hoodie that you can wear for the fall, like a
nice color. It was like a rust colored shade, and
in white cursive script it said choke me like Bundy,
eat me like Domer. And that, quite frankly, is disgusting.
Speaker 2: And if somebody thinks that somehow that T shirt, hoodie,
whatever is edgy and that makes them a true crime fan,
I would say, you know something, I think it makes
you a borderline ghoul. It's just disgusting. The glorification of
serial killers is not hip and cool. It's disgusting that
I hope that no one else goes through the kind
of experience that people that we know and my family
have been through. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. No,
it's very hard not to climb off that soapbox when
you see things like that. And this is where Laura
Richards is absolutely right and your reaction is very natural.
You just end up shaking your head like what are
you thinking?
Speaker 3: And even things like friends of a friend sent me
a picture on Facebook of a sweatshirt that said murder
shows and comfy clothes, And there's nothing wrong with that
except for the fact that there's blood spatter all over it.
Speaker 2: That part I don't get.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could wear murder shows and comfy clothes, but
I will not wear it because it's got blood spatter
on it. You and I have the same crime scene photos.
I'm not interested in walking around being evocative of a
crime scene.
Speaker 2: Photo at the same time. The murder shows and company clothes,
I get it. Or our friend Cheryl McCollum and they
talk about a wine in crime where they have their
get togethers, where there's actually a lot of amazing people,
a lot of true crime experts, forensics experts, investigators, all
sorts of amazing people. So there's a lot to be
learned and inspired by when you attend something like that.
I don't have a problem with that. And look, do
I watch crime shows? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, both of us do.
And my partner Pamela, who's not anywhere near as into
this as you and I are, but even she'll say, oh,
let's watch one. She likes the ones where there's a
advancement of the case or maybe a conviction or a
suspect is an amy, that sort of thing, And don't.
Speaker 3: We all Yeah, you and I'll both watch Unsolved Mysteries.
I like the most recent season of Unsolved Mysteries. Yeah,
haven't sound doing to watch it yet, but I will.
Speaker 2: Those are really good, and I'm not troubled by the
ones that are left as a question mark at the
end of the show, but they ask some interesting questions.
I like the ones too that maybe do identify a
suspect then indicate that someone is going to trial or whatever. Again,
innocent until proven guilty. I think Sarah, Juliet and Kelsey
were emphasizing at Crime Con there has to be a
way to cover these cases and tell these stories. And
remember you're telling the victims story, yes, exactly. There has
to be a way to do that in a way
that is sympathetic to the victims and their survivors. And
this is where Ryan Murphy's production team got some pretty
serious criticism for the recent Dahmer series because they reenacted
some very difficult scenes, including the murders, but then also
some courtroom scenes where family members were given an opportunity
as part of the judicial process to express themselves and
their loss, and they tapped into some real anger and emotion,
which I completely understand. I've never had anybody to focus
on in the Colonial Parkray murders. I hoped had that
opportunity at some point, but you can understand how someone
would feel the way they feel having lost their loved one.
Some of those people made the point that seeing that reenacted,
as you mentioned a moment ago by actors, it's like
reliving it all over again. No one contacted them and
told them that was going to be part of the series,
and Ryan Murphy made some incredibly lame comment about we
tried to reach the families. I'm sorry. I've actually found
if we put in a little bit of time, we've
been able to pretty much find anybody unless someone has
moved off the grid like Ted Kaczynski. For the most part,
you can find them if you want to. I'm not
buying that. Ryan Murphy with his staff and the money
behind those productions, and they made a lot of money
with Domrich.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did big hit.
Speaker 2: They actually said it's the biggest hit he's ever had.
You can't tell me that they couldn't find those people
to let them know what they were working on and
to at least get their input. Know that these stories,
to some extent are public because they're based on trials
and public documents. So it's not like you need their permission.
It's not like The New York Times needs my permission
to write an article about the Colonial Parkway murders. They
have and I'm hopefully they will again. I'm not always
one hundred percent happy with how things are portrayed or whatever,
but I think some consideration for victim families is really important,
and I think that's part of what the Engage with
Empathy campaign is all about.
Speaker 3: I agree. And I remember when they were filming Lovers
Lane Murders here and you and I were both on set,
and I remember the day that they brought on the
actress playing Kathy in the reenactments, and I was concerned
that day about whether or not you were going to
be okay, And of course you were going to be okay.
You're Bill Thomas, You're virtually freaking and destructible. But it
was really a question for me of Okay, are you
going to be able to handle watching this woman who
looks like your sister? Are you going to be able
to watch her essentially reenact Kathy's murderer? And I wasn't
thrilled that they were choosing to do reenactments for that.
I really wasn't. I remember, I couldn't stay for that
part of the shoot because I had grading in papers
and various other things I needed to do, so I
wasn't able to stick around. But I remember leaving and
being very concerned, like, is this something that's going to
shake you up badly? Or are you going to be
able to take it in stride? And being here you
took it in stride. I know you.
Speaker 2: It was difficult, though. Part of the role of consulting
producer Justin is you're listening very carefully. Now, Remember you're
going to shoot a ton of video that's never going
to end up in the series, because that's just the
nature of television. Part of the role of the consulting
producers is to help make sure that they don't make
any mistakes, any errors of fact. So a lot of
times I'd be off camera, wearing headphones, listening very carefully
to the conversation. And it's not one hundred percent scripted,
so there's a little bit of improv going on there.
So it's not like every word is on a telepropter,
but they're trying to tell the story. If it's an
expert like a Jim Clemente describing how a well prepared
aggressive offender might approach a couple, or it's them re enacting.
Not my favorite either. But I remember at se points
that night when they were concentrating on telling the story
of Kathy and Becky's murder, and they brought in a
small white car that looked like Kathy's car. Yeah, we're
next to the river and it's designed to look like
that parking area. They asked me several times, are you okay?
Are you okay? Are you okay? And I appreciated them
asking and it was difficult, and it was very weird
when I met the actress and all of the young
actors that were playing the parts. There were you know,
there was a young woman playing Kathy Becky. They actually
set it up with one offender and two offenders, because
you know, there were different theories about whether there were
one offender or two offenders there, so you had to
have four actors, two women, two men. And I remember
thinking how much this woman looked like Kathy, and of
course she was dressed like Kathy was that night and
had her hairstyled in the same way. And it was
really weird, and it was sometimes a different cult, and
there were a couple of times when I thought, I'm
not going to watch this, I'm not going to listen
to this. A lot of that didn't end up in
the show, but I was there when they were getting
the shots they needed in the way that they felt
would help tell the story. And it's really.
Speaker 3: Difficult for all that as a genre, we are trying
to make sure that the victim stories are told appropriately,
that the families have a voice, that justice is done.
There is still so much work left to be done
on everybody's part, and it's not just the role of
journalists or podcasters or production companies or whatever. It takes
all of us to be aware and empathetic of the
people who have lived with this, whether it's a surviving victim,
or family members or investigators who have worked to this case,
or they have a very intense emotional attachment. It's really
important as content creators that we be mindful of all
of these people and try to, as Kelsey and Sarah
and Julie have said, engage with empathy. And so that
means being mindful of these things. It means not giving
into salacious speculation that may be hurtful to friends or family,
surviving victims, or might hurt the legal process. And it
means maybe just being a little more mindful about what
you're buying. If you happen to go on Etsy and
see a sweatshirt that may seem funny in the moment,
but honestly, would you want to go up to Kathy
Kleiner wearing that sweatshirt she survived Ted Bundy. I would
hate to see her face if anyone ever walked over
to her wearing a sweatshirt that glorified Ted Bundy. Bill,
any final thoughts for you about engage with empathy. I
know that this is something that is very close to
both of us, but clearly you have a lot of
feelings on the subject. As well, how would you like
to close out?
Speaker 2: I think the idea of engage with empathy is beautifully phrased.
I think it's something that all of us should be
aspiring to. And when I say all of us, those
of us that are producing content and those of us
that are enjoying content, listening and learning and hopefully growing
and understanding of what some of these victims have been through.
Speaker 3: And I think that also means not being afraid to
call out people who are behaving badly and tell them
this is not the appropriate way to engage with empathy.
Speaker 2: I think that works for me.
Speaker 3: Well, that is going to do it for this episode
of mind Over Murder. Thank you so much for listening.
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: Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.
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 on Facebook.
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas. Five six Thank
Speaker 1: You for listening to Mind Over Murder.