Monster - Behind The Podcast [bonus]

be resentenced in Virginia. In two past cases, the Supreme Court held that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders is unconstitutional. In February, before the Supreme Court made a ruling, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed a new bill into law. The law gives parole eligibility to all juvenile offenders tried, convicted, and sentenced within the adult justice system

in Virginia. As a result, Malvo agreed to withdraw his appeal and the case has been dismissed by the Supreme Court. This new law means Malvo can seek parole in Virginia. These developments will have lasting implications not just on Malvo's fate, but the fates of hundreds of others who committed felony crimes as miners in Virginia. For that reason, Monster d C Sniper is taking an extra week to conduct further research, speak with more experts, and to update the finale of

this podcast. The main season will resume next week with episode twelve with the investigation into the Sniper's killings leading up to the DC attacks, including police interviews with Lee Boyd Malvo and John Mohammed. In the meantime, we're happy to present this recording of Alive behind the scenes event from January. The creators of Monster Dacy Sniper were invited to speak at the Savannah College of Art and Designs Podcast Weekend. The event was hosted by the senior executive

director at SCAD Film, l Semen. Hi, everybody, my name is Lee Semen, and I have the distinct pleasure to head up the festivals and events produced by SCAD Film with an incredible support team from all of our SCAD family, over four campuses around the world, sixteen thousand students, over

forty thousand alumni, and seventy countries. GOAD Film was created so that we could take full advantage of our SCAD expertise and pre eminence and match it to the growing expertise that industry was bringing to Atlanta, UH and create

opportunities for a collision of creative minds. And we've been able to do that through established festivals like our SCAD Savannah Film Festival, which has been in place over twenty years, our a TV Fest which will be in its eighth year, and this sort of new palette of festivals Animation Fest, gaming Fest, and a whole year of events like this this one SCAD podcast Weekend. Now, I have a question for you, when is the last time that you counted

to seventy million? Our friends here today counted to seventy million in their first season. They counted almost to seventy million again, and they're about to count to more than seventy million with season three. These guys know what they are doing and they are led by Matt Frederick. Please join me and welcoming him. Hi, everybody, my name is Matt Frederick. I am currently a lead executive producer at I Heeart Podcasts. We're here in Atlanta were based in

pont City Market. That's where we make a lot of our shows. Back in two thousand six, I got an internship at how Stuff Works. It was back on the internet when you're on the internet just to read articles. Do you remember that time? Does anybody remember a time when that happened? Because How Stuff Works the whole time it had been a thing made articles. A couple of years later, we started making videos. So we tried to do is take those articles and put them into video format,

and it worked really well for a while. We created things like brain Stuff and one of the shows I created called stuff They Don't want you to Know. It was going really well, but there's this other emerging medium called podcasts, and nobody knew really what it was. But we figured, well, let's try taking those articles and turn them into an audio format that you could just listen

to instead of having to read it. And from those little experimentations from back in two thousand and eight two thousand nine, we created some of the biggest podcasts that exist on this planet today, Stuff you should Know, Stuff you missed in history class, stuff Mom never told you. And that was all through the website How Stuff Works, which became stuff Media, the podcast arm of that website,

and it's so weird. We moved to Pont City Market we're making all these shows, and we find out there's this amazing true crime show unlike anything anybody has ever heard before, and it's apparently being produced four floors above our office. We had no idea that was happening. It was this just a small group of people. They were called Tenderfoot TV, and we were so impressed with the content. We thought, Okay, let's contact these guys, Donald Lellbright and

Payne Lindsay, let's see what they're up to. We had a quick meeting and just over coffee, we decided we want to work together, and if we are going to work together, what do we want to tackle? What story do we want to tell. Both teams simultaneously wanted to tell Atlanta's missing and murdered children's story because it was

not something that was being talked about. We felt like it was a story that had been underserved, and it was an underserved community in the first place, and we thought, let's at least do our best to tell the stories of the people who went through this, who lived through this, and we created Atlanta Monster Atlanta, Georgia, nineteen seventy nine. One by one, kids are going missing with no explanation

seven of the children have disappeared since March. A black thirteen year old boy living in a housing project, good in school, a loner working for extra money, and as of Thursday night, missing Are you scared? Altogether nine children between the ages of seven and fourteen have disappeared in the last year. People from outside see this in the context of what's happening to black people across the country.

Missing children have become priority number one at a p D. We cannot as a community, as a city, carry on business as usual. I want the people of Atlanta and the nation to know that this administration is totally color blind. When the producers of Up and Vanished in Health Stuff works,

you present an all new podcast, Atlanta Monster. Officially, according to the list, there were twenty three children five adults who were killed from nine the picture there is a mug shot of Wayne Williams, the man who is still in jail right now. He was convicted of killing two adults, and we spoke with him extensively for this show. I don't know if you guys realized this. There are so many people in this city that believe that man killed absolutely zero people. It was mind blowing to us to

know how many people held that as an opinion. We thought it was worth talking to him to see what he had to say. It premiered in January, and again, this is stuff media. At that time, we get acquired by I Heart Radio the end of We love the process, we love the style, and we wanted to work again with tender Foot TV. We're gonna find another time when terror was running rampant in this city, when just going about your daily life was a problem, and we looked

to San Francisco. Right at the turn of the Summer of Love n nineteen sixty nine, there was what was believed to be a man who was killing young people in their cars at lovers lanes. This person was writing letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers. He had captured a city, and he had put fear in the hearts of everyone living in the entire area from

Napa Valley to Valleo to San Francisco. In the seventies, as it was happening, a lot of us probably thought, Gee, there's a lot going on, But looking back at a decade of violence, it was just crazy. It was crazy time. Most serial killers don't make any effort to involve media or investigators. They're very secretive. They don't want attention. They

almost want their crimes to go unnoticed. But the idea of committing a crime and then calling up the police and bragging about it, that's a whole nother level of terror. A man who wore a medieval style executioner's hood, who has baffled the police and baffled the media. He seems to crave publicity. He sent letters and cryptograms to newspapers and the police. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder, no a double murder. I did it here. We are

fifty years after the first Zodiac killing. In today's world of forensics, old cases are being solved. We're talking about the most famous cold case in the last century or so in terms of it's drama and being unsolved. Who doesn't want to know how it turns out, Dear editor, this is the Zodiac speaking. If you do not print the cipher by the afternoon of Friday, first of August, I will go on to kill rampage Friday night. I will cruise around all weekend, killing loan people in the night,

then move on to kill again. The best part of it is that when I die, I'll be reborn in paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves. From My Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV, this is Monster the Zodiac Killer. That impression of the Zodiac Killer. That was an actual letter that was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hearing it in that way, I don't know if it has the same effect on you. I hope it does. That's kind of the point of it.

But it really is spine tingling to me to know that someone actually wrote that and felt that I wanted everybody else to feel that way. It kind of just fits that title, doesn't it. Monster whoever that was. So here's the deal. We are back with the third iteration of the Monster series. We went from one all the

way back to sixty nine. This year we're going to two thousand two, to a time right after nine eleven, to a time when the country was in fear already and someone came along and struck fear in the hearts of all of us. Again. We're gonna tell you all about it tonight, because tonight we have the creators of the third iteration. It is called Monster d C Sniper. Tonight we have the host, Tony Harris, and we have

two of the producers, Trevor Young and Benjamin Kiebrick. And guys, if you'd like to join me on stage, come on up. We've got Trevor Young, this is Ben Keebrick. These guys are the writers and really the backbone the creators of the show. So, Ben, I want to pose this to you. Can you tell us kind of a basic overview of the case and how you came to learn all the

information about it? So one thing just to start, So I actually I grew up in northern Virginia, so I was a high school student when all this stuff was going on. But then starting to research it, I realized, even though I was there at the time and like getting all that local news and stuff, I realized there is so much about this case that either I never knew or completely forgot about um. And that was one of the reasons I wanted to tell this story, as I felt like, well, if I don't know any of

this stuff, then I don't think many people do. So October second, two thousand two, one person was shot. The next day five people are shot. They're just going about their everyday lives. A guy mowing a lawn, people filling up their cars with gas, things like that. They seem to have no connection to one another, but when they analyzed the bullets, they realized that they're all coming from

the same rifle. There's someone out there kind of shooting people and discriminately, and it's kind of like, now, what do you do? No one knows is it terrorists, is it a serial killer? What's going on. It's a very suburban area. Immediately everyone was worried about their kids. A couple of days later, there's a shooting at a middle school. Outside that middle school, they find a terror card with a cryptic note written on it, and kind of the

story just gets crazier and crazier. When I was doing the research, one of the things is it seems like there's a lot of misinformation out there. There are some good books written about it that kind of cover narrow angles, some kind of made for TV documentaries, but it felt like no one had really put everything in one place where it tried to to really give a feel of

what it was like to live through that. And that's that's the thing that Monster does really well, is putting people into a time and a place and kind of trying to make our listeners feel what it must have been like to go through that. So, Trevor, you tracked down so many people and talked with them, tell us the different perspectives that we're actually hearing from the show. So off the bat, you can expect to hear anywhere

from forty to fifty people in this podcast. We've over the last six to nine months interview just an insane amount of people. But I think this was such a big story that affected so many people that really that's only a tiny fraction of the people we could interview. Right. Um. Dr Caroline Namro was a pediatrician. She was just um going about her day. She was dropping her kids off at school. Uh, and she stopped to get gas on October three, and she made eye contact with a man

and didn't really think anything of it. Then all of a sudden, she hears a pop and the man goes down on her car, bleeding and says, call the cops. So she tries to resuscitate this man. She's calling the police. She you heard her on the nine one one call on that teaser, and she's doing I think what all of us would do. She's just kind of reacting. She's frankly kind of freaking out. I don't know how I would react. I don't even know if I could call

nine one one. She told us her medical training kick dan and she was able to go into gear and really try and help this person. And it's a phenomenal story to hear her tell it, and it's one of the first things you hear in the podcast. There's a lot of incredible stories like that, and I think what we really want to do is really tell them to their like full extent, to really let you know the full story of what happened with each and every one

of these people from every perspective. So we're speaking with witnesses, we're speaking with victims, families, were speaking with the law enforcement officials from all of the varying organizations that were a part of this massive manhunt. And one of the people that was there at that time was this award winning journalist named Tony Harris. You have been in television for a long time, my friend, stop right there. When when is the first time? Am I not allowed to know?

Was what was first TV gig? For real? My first TV gig was eight two eight two. The first time you're yeah, and you have been working consistently this whole time. Knock would Yeah, I just want to know, why are you taking all of your TV talents and putting them into a pott Oh that's easy. Look, when you sign up for this role as a journalist, you know what you're saying to anyone who will listen to you is that you want to tell amazing stories. You want to

dig deep, and you want to share those stories. You want to investigate, you want to uncover, and you want to report. That's what you sign up for when you say you want to be a journalist, and that's what I did forever ago. And once you do that, you want to find as many venues as possible to tell amazing stories. So sure, I've I've done that work at CNN, I did that work for Al Jazeera in Dohan and

then again in New York. I have been really fortunate to cover amazing stories, everything from the Southeast Asia tsunami to Katrina to the Arab spring. And this is an opportunity that I think it's really special now. This world that you guys have created gives journalists like me an opportunity to dig, to do the deep dive this is a really deep dive, and I mean, I think that's important.

That's an important point to make here. So it's not a situation that you see a lot in television news where you got a fifteen seconds sound bite from someone. You get an opportunity to actually hear someone explain not just the moment, but what they were feeling and what they were going through emotionally in that moment. That's why I feel blessed to have this opportunity to tell this story that I have kind of intimate knowledge of. You

remember this story, right, I mean you remember this. I just need to feel some energy back from from the audience. You do remember the story, right. This is two thousand two, and I, um wow. I was working in Baltimore as a news anchor for the Fox affiliate there and on the second I remember us getting a call in our newsroom about our shooting in Montgomery County, which was odd and weird because you know, as was mentioned, Montgomery County is kind of this pristine community high net Worth County

in Maryland. That would have led our newscast that night, and the next day all all hell broke lose um five people killed on the third and at that point as my news brain was working at the time, I knew we had a massive story and not enough people. I'm thinking resources to cover the story. I'm thinking about how do we get the information to people. We weren't getting anything from police. Everyone was afraid that that it was terrorism, and we just didn't have enough resources to

cover the story. And I don't know it. At some point during the twenty three days of panic and Hell, I can remember sort of wait a minute, You're you're trying to figure out because as an anchor, you're getting people on who are telling the story. And I think in many cases we might have been part of the problem and telling the story because we became as fixated as anyone with the idea of the white van. You remember the white panel truck. Remember that, how that sort

of dominated the story. And then the next thing was all of the leaks that we were reporting on, and how some of those leaks were coming from investigators close to the case. So you're just conflicted, and you're wondering if if you're doing a service to the public. But we have people viewers who were clamoring to know everything there is to know about this case, and so you're feeling conflicted in everything else, and and I'm still thinking as an anchor, as a reporter trying to get information.

At some point, and I don't know when, At some point, um I started to think like a human being, and I started to think about the people who had been killed, their lives, their families. And then I it must have been around the time when Iron Brown, thirteen year old, he had a Tasker Middle School shot. Yeah, that's right,

that's right at Tasker Middle School. And I think it was shortly or certainly in that moment, I began to stop thinking about this purely as a story, with all the adrenaline that goes along with being, you know, a reporter or anchor on a huge story with national and international interest, and I started to think about myself as a father or two young children, and the story kind of changes for me at that point. So there are two routes I want to go with that, Steve Antoni.

The first one is how making a show like this affects you when you are speaking to somebody like this, then you're perhaps in an editing bay and listening to it over and over again and really trying to pull out the truth and the emotion in something horrific that you're listening to. How has that affected you, guys, Has it affected you guys at all? Or how do you

think about it? Well, I think all are most of us here come from a journalism background, and I think when you work in journalism for so many years, um, you kind of in a way learn how to harden yourself when you're talking and hearing and dealing with these stories. So you know, when you go into this, when you're in the moment you're talking to this person, you're doing

two things. You're you're one trying to get the story, get the information really like talk with this person, empathize with them, But you know, at the end of the day also you are trying to connect with them on an emotional level. And I think in the podcasting world, we're trying to do that more over longer periods of time, and it's harder to not let that affect you. It's hard not to feel more emotionally invest in these people when you were talking with them on multiple occasions, sometimes

for hours at a time. You know, these are not like TV interviews that you see on a talk show. These are people that when you leave the room with them, or you get off the phone with them. You feel like you know each other and there's a piece of each other that you've shared that you are probably gonna

remember forever and you can't take back. And I personally have walked away from a lot of interviews I don't want to say shaken, but feeling like I had experienced something myself that somebody had explained to me because they you know, we're so open with me, because they went to so much detail, because they gave me something so vivid, I almost felt like I'd been there. And it's good for us to hear that stuff because then we know

we have something powerful. One of the major purposes of these shows is to learn something from the experience of all of the people that have gone through all of these things. People who have, you know, been on the side of the law, chasing somebody down, or on on the wrong side of a gun. It's basic storytelling stuff, but it's also very important to us when we're making a show like this, looking at the big picture and

thinking about ourselves. Then I want to jump to you really quickly because one of the ways we do that is to kind of time travel. In these shows, and play archival footage from news organizations. Talk to me about how we're using archival footage in this and how that's helping to shape the story. But it's also telling us some things about what was going on between law enforcement and the media. So this is kind of an interesting case from an archival perspective because it turned into a

national news story. I mean, you have George W. Bush talking about it. You know, it's covered by all the stations, and and there are kind of these massive trials that happened afterwards where things like the nine one one calls got entered into that that public records. We have a lot of kind of primary documents of kind of what was going on at that time, how people thought about it, you know, people calling in to call in radio shows

to breasts, their their fears and their concerns. So we really had a ton of stuff to work with and and try to incorporate that kind of whenever we could.

Um and one of our recent episodes there is kind of a particularly harrowing one call that we had a big internal debate about, you know, whether to use and how much to use, and there's kind of this balance of you know, you want to respect the people that went through these things, but it's also it's something that really happened, and so kind of to accurately present what was going on, do you want to kind of show that in its kind of most dark and brutal fashion

there was tension occurring between the media and law enforcement about what information should be put out into the public. This is what I want to learn from you, Tony, So from the newsperson's the journalist perspective, what do you think about if information gets lead to you that is really important for people's understanding about this case, even though you know it's important to the case. Look, are you

going to hinder the investigation? Obvious at CNN when Jazira got the Alqaeda tapes and you know, there was a lot of back and forth and ringing of hands and a lot of criticism from inside our own building of Jazeera for going with those those tapes. When the reality is if if we had gotten the tapes, we would have we would have run those tapes, right. And so if you get information like that that you know is really hot and really provocative, what do you do with it? Well,

there's an editorial process. We all know that you just described an editorial process, and I think you've got a way. It's all that that's the old question of the public's right to know, right, and the extent to which sharing that information might hinder an investigation. I think there are their circumstances where during that case we got it wrong. Channel nine and the Washington Post should not have gone with the information, in my opinion, on the Tarot card.

The reason they did is the fact that the writing on the Tarot card essentially eliminated the thought that this was foreign terrorism, right, was the reason I believe those news organizations decided to go with that. I think it's always the sort of balancing act, and there are serious editorial meetings about this, and I think there are some cases where we absolutely got it wrong. We didn't challenge in the way that we should have, the whole idea

of the white panel truck. So, because you've been here today and you've been hearing us talk about this, when you go outside today and head home, all you're gonna see our white panel trucks, that's all you're gonna see. And so I suppose that's that's the way I feel about it. We got we got a lot of things wrong. Um, we should have questioned more closely. Uh, we should have pushed back a lot more aggressively, but we were We were operating at a moment when this nation was scared shipless.

Can I say that I just did? We just got a note? He said, absolutely not, Tony, Tony, you have to leave now. They're they're coming to get you too. Could I add something to that? Yeah, police, So there was another interesting element the way the media and the investigation was interacting. And then maybe you can help me with this. The snipers, the tarot card was one of their kind of communications, but there were all these other communications as well, all these demands for money, all these

demands for police to say certain things publicly. So both the snipers and the investigation ended up using the media to kind of, you know, as their own kind of megaphones. They were kind of talking through the media at each other because they weren't interacting directly, the investigators and the snipers for the most part. There were a few phone calls, but for the most part in the in a big sense, they were really using press conferences and newscasts to get

information on both sides. And that kind of goes into the archival things. So then you have actually these press conferences of the chief of police for Montgomery County communicating to the snipers and kind of, you know, none of the reporters or the public at home really knows what's going on. Is kind of these coded, cryptic messages that are responding to the messages from the snipers, and it it really was just kind of this very bizarre scenario or it's kind of hard for the media to know

how to cover it, how much to cover it. Yeah, but then that doesn't and you're not making this point, but I will. It doesn't. It doesn't explain away the irresponsibility in my opinion of local television stations, national networks putting every Tom Dick and Harry On who claims to be a law enforcement expert just doing rank speculation. And that continues today. So that's kind of a pet peeve of mine. Folks who are not a part of the investigation.

We're going to take some questions. Is anybody out there have any questions, because if you don't, I'll keep asking them. I have a question about your video trailers. So as a podcast, you know it's strictly audio, um, but you've created these incredible video trailers. Can you talk a little bit about the benefit of that and why that's a great question. I want to hear this answer. Okay, you want me to just keep answering these okay, cool um.

Video trailers I think are very, very beneficial for any podcast, and I think it's mostly what we use it for social That's one of the major aspects is just being able to put something on say Instagram or some other platform that you can watch and get people excited about, especially if you're telling a story that's already exciting just inherently, but if you can show something that's exciting, that can

only make your show better and make your audience more interested. Uh. In our case, we're working with Tenderfoot TV, guys who came from video production. I have a video production degree, like, so we we would get together and make these pretty, I think, pretty great little video trailers. The other reason that you want a video trailer, I think, especially if you think your story is good enough to translate into other mediums. One of the big things is happening with

podcasts now is that TV is very interested. TV producers across the planet are interested in taking your podcast and trying to turn it into a television show. You've done all the work exactly. You've got the story, you've got the pre production, you've got everything. You've got interviews, you've got all the people that you want to get on camera.

It's uh, it's laid out for you. If and as a TV executive that's not me, but as some TV executive out there, I can imagine it being very great if you walk in with essentially a sizzle reel, so you will hear this podcast and and I guarantee you you will think, Wow, that could be on television today. And this is what I wanted to get into before we switched over. It's it's exactly that. The way that you guys use music, and the editing style and the way you cut to and from a commercial, and the

cliffhangers and all of that. It gets me so pumped and excited and scared and sad. Episode two of the show, I love it. I cry every time I listened to that episode. It moves me in the way a really great HBO show or or some other television show does. And it's because of the music, because of the stories, the way you guys are putting it together, and there's this voice that keeps talking to you, but it's just

so smooth and awesome whatever. So the only thing I would add to that is that I've been making films and I've had a television show on Discovery I D so I've been in this true crime space for four almost five years now, and what these guys are doing in their storytelling rivals anything then I've been connected to in true crime. So I don't get an opportunity often to say really nice things to about these guys in

front of a room of people. But they are that good at what they do, and if you haven't listened to it, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about when you listen. Thank you, And going back to the kind of music for a second. I think one of the interesting things about Atlanta Monster in the Monster series and

I guess up and vanished too. It's one of the first kind of big podcasts that didn't come out directly from public radio, you know, so like Cereal sarracan Ex was on This American Life, a lot of people making

podcast kind of came from that background. Um, I think this was one of the first podcast series to kind of be made by someone who really had more of like a TV aesthetic, and that goes into the way you cut things, the way you use music, and we try to keep the journalism, We try to keep that same rigor, but maybe the way things are timed in space and the musical cues a little bit more similar to a TV documentary than you know, a standard public

radio story or something. Well, and they're not here tonight, but I think we have a lot of that to Tenterfoot TV absolutely frankly invented a lot of that model. They came from kind of a documentary producing background. They kind of brought that to podcasting with Up and Vanish and then Atlanta Monster. Uh So, I mean they have taught us a lot how to do that, and we talked about music a lot and we should shut out

maps makeup. In Vanity Set. He does all of the soundtracks, and I think he's really another team member, and I think that's also kind of a unique thing to kind of, you know, have one person doing the whole soundtrack, and like we go back and forth about what we want and he sends us stuff that's super inspiring and that's a big part of our process. Those guys, they make such exciting content, and really what we're trying to do

is you hit on the head. We were trying to balance the excitement that they bring with this journalism murder, and I think that's what we're achieving this season more than we have ever before. So we're gonna do something here. We're gonna play this quick clip. This is kind of an example of the style, really using music, using a cliffhanger to get you excited about wanting to listen to either the rest of the show or the next episode. So here we go next time on Monster d C Sniper,

I need an ambulance right here. God came out from behind the store and uh and shop Paul arupa and uh. Leading The pressure of the blood inside me was collapsing my lungs. He drove and I shot because I was the smallest. And back there later they told me, Oh, they found you. John sent Lee to your door pretending to be a salesperson. Oh, ma'am, I am buying one that was gonna for somebody to me. Have you been goot you? He said, So, don't get this twisted. Don't

believe that tim million dollar madness. He came there to kill you, That said Malvo has talked about Mohammed having a plan and to go create a utopian society in Canada. Here you okay, Thank you guys, Thank you so much. UM. Everybody's in the download DC Sniper. If you haven't done Zodi at Killer or Atlanta Monster, download that one too. Thank you to the guys from my heart, UM, and thank you to all of you for making our first god podcast weekend. It won't be the last watch out.

It was a success and we appreciate your contribution to that. Scad film dot com has all the information you need about upcoming events that we'll be doing. There is a newsletter you can sign up for that. You can also stop by SCAD dot e du to learn more about everything that SCAD produces is here and in Savannah, we have a great fashion museum called SCAD Fash. We have events throughout the year and we really hope that we'll see more of you at them. Thank you and good

night Monster. DC Sniper is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Tony Harris and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio alongside producers Trevor Young, ben Kiebrick, and Josh Thain. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Steadman and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.

If you haven't already, be sure to check out the first two seasons at Lanta Monster and Monster the Zodiac Killer. If you have questions or comments, email us at Monster at i heeart media dot com, or you can call us at one eight three three to eight five six six six seven. Thanks for listening.