[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":116},["ShallowReactive",2],{"episode-true-crime":3},{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":8,"tags":12,"thumb":18,"excerpt":24,"content":25,"transcript":26,"transcript_file":27,"audio":28,"resources":32,"segments":33},249,"true-crime","Mystery, Murder, and Mayhem","A History of True Crime in America",{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":11},1590754612,"05.29.20","May 29, 2020",[13,14,15,16,17],"crime","murder","mystery","popular culture","publishing",{"src":19,"caption":20,"derivatives":21},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Fwebsite-Crime_Scene_Tape.jpg","Close-up of yellow crime scene tape in the grass. Source: Alamy Stock Photos",{"square_small":22,"square_medium":23},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Fsquare_small\u002Fwebsite-Crime_Scene_Tape.jpg","https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Fimages\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Fsquare_medium\u002Fwebsite-Crime_Scene_Tape.jpg","On this episode of BackStory, Joanne and Ed shine a light onto the dark history of true crime in modern American history.","\u003Cp>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the last decade or so, true crime has been everywhere\u003C\u002Fspan> \u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Netflix shows like \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Making a Murderer \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and podcast series like \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Serial. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of them are a testament to the fact that for some strange reason, so many of us love stories about murder. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But this magnetism towards the morbid is far from new. Over the years, Americans have found fascination, repulsion and sometimes even comfort in true crime stories. So on this episode of BackStory, Joanne and Ed shine a light onto the dark history of true crime in modern American history.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",null,"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Ffiles\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Ftranscript\u002FTrue-Crime.pdf",{"url":29,"duration":30,"formatted_duration":31},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fepisodes\u002Ftrue-crime.mp3","4002","01:06:42",[],[34,50,66,84,100],{"index":35,"title":36,"description":37,"audio":38,"tags":42,"transcript":44,"episode":45},0,"The Mother of Forensic Science","\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"http:\u002F\u002Fwww.rachel-monroe.com\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Monroe\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, author of \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.simonandschuster.com\u002Fbooks\u002FSavage-Appetites\u002FRachel-Monroe\u002F9781501188886\">\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">tells Joanne about Frances Glessner Lee, known as the “mother of forensic science,” thanks to her miniature models of grisly crime scenes. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cb>Music:\u003C\u002Fb>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fthe-crucible-intro-sqegr0rmik6xt8e3b.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Crucible Intro\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Emanuele Dentoni\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fclassic-burglary-music-sev7io038vsk0wy4asf.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Classic Burglary Music\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Bobby Cole\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fboom-instrumental-mix-hpj_d8fnsk36vytiv.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Boom Instrumental Mix\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Anthony Lazaro\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fevidence-slkfbyetuvbk0wybyxy.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Evidence\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Raphael Costa\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sessions.blue\u002F?fwp_search=are%20we%20loose%20yet\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Are We Loose Yet \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">by Blue Dot Sessions\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Ffear-60-seconds-rgwfbkj2uvbk0wxo22g.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fear 60 Seconds\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Gary Arnold\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":39,"duration":40,"formatted_duration":41},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Ftrue-crime-01.mp3","691","00:11:31",[13,43,14],"forensic science","\u003Cp>Speaker 1:\u003Cbr>\nMajor funding for Backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Diamond For the Humanities and Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation. From Virginia Humanities this is Backstory.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nWelcome to Backstory, the show that explores the history behind the headlines. I’m Ed Ayers.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nAnd I’m Joanne Freeman.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nIf you’re new to the podcast each week, along with our colleagues Brian Balogh and Nathan Connolly, we explore a different aspect of American history.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nNow we’re going to start the show with something very tiny.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nIn one of these, she called them, “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” and in one of the nutshells there’s a woman who is drowned in a bathtub in a poor boarding house room.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nThis is author and journalist Rachel Monroe.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nYou might assume looking at it on the surface, “Oh, this woman, maybe it was a drug overdose and she drowned in the bathtub,” but if you look at it more closely there are clues that could lead you to believe that actually this looked like an overdose but was actually a murder.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nThe Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death were miniature models made in the 1940s by a fascinating little known woman named Frances Glessner Lee.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nThe idea was to train police officers to not make assumptions and to look for those details that would reveal what had actually happened.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nLee had been interested in the work of miniatures for some time but it took a while for her to blend this hobby with her interest in murder.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nShe’s really a fascinating and a difficult woman. She grew up, she was born in the tail end of the 19th Century and she grew up in a very wealth family in Chicago. She was expected to be a society woman so she got married about when she was, I believe she was 20, and was expected to just be a wife and a mother and maybe find a charitable cause that she would give benefits for but to mostly lead a domestic life and she did that for a long time but in mid-life when she came into the bulk of her inheritance she found a field that became pretty much the passion that defined the rest of her life, which was what was then known as legal medicine. It’s close to what we would now call forensic science. Basically the scientific investigation of crimes or the use of scientific methods to investigate crimes.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nSo basically as you just suggested she’s freed because she comes into her inheritance which gives her the freedom to investigate and find something that interests her but the question, the obvious question to ask here is, how did she find her way to murder and I guess as you said what we would now call forensic science? How did she come across that?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nWell it’s interesting to think about because if she had had her way she probably would have gone to school for nursing. Her family considered that inappropriate for a woman to get an education in that way and so instead she … She did have this preoccupation with the body, with science, with how the body worked or failed to work. So I think that was part of her fascination. She also became friends, she was family friends with this really colorful character named George McGrath who was the medical examiner for Boston at the time and he was this very flashy guy. She, Frances Glessner Lee and McGrath just really hit it off and he would tell her all these wild stories about autopsies he’d done, cases he’d investigate and she would just listed raptly and find it incredibly fascinating.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nNow I would assume, so I would assume that this world or the realm and this field is probably pretty male at this point. Is this particular person, did he smooth her transition or her comfort in easing her way into that kind of world?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, very much so because this was at the time a really, a new and emerging field, the idea that you would use science and medicine to investigate suspicious deaths. Most counties in the United States were, if somebody died the person who would investigate the death would be a coroner and coroners often had no medical training at all. It was an elected position. It might just be the local somebody, the local mailman or something. So the idea that you needed to investigate deaths scientifically was new so it was this emerging field and McGrath was really key. The other big help of course was her money and she put it to good use. She ended up founding, donating the money that would establish a Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard which was the first department of legal medicine in the United States. She ran into some difficulties there because I think she had a different idea of maybe what her role would be than the university did. She really wanted to be hands on, she gave them these very elaborate lists of experiments she wanted them to do, she had a lot of suggestions of programs for study, she wanted to host events and invite people to lectures. The university clearly had kind of hoped she was the nice old lady who was just going to give them money and get out of the way and that was really very much not her personality.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nNow let me ask, I know at some point she becomes interested in miniatures so maybe first describe what miniatures means. I mean, I gather it was a real fad.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, you have just some really gorgeous examples in the early 20th Century of doll houses, I guess is what they would be called often, it’s hard not to call them doll houses because they’re little small houses often with dolls in them but Frances Glessner Lee found that an insulting and diminishing term so I try to avoid using it but just these small models of domestic scenes and so a lot of the ones that were made in the early 20th Century are more traditional than the ones that Frances Glessner Lee ended up making. You had wealthy women making these gorgeous, elaborate palaces, kind of fairy palaces with hundreds of rooms and they could get really elaborate with real running hot and cold running water some of them had or tiny elevators but Frances Glessner Lee took it in a different direction. She did make these very beautiful, precise miniature rooms. She had a carpenter who worked with her full time on them and they have all the little details like the tiny cans of soup and tiny mouse traps but every single one has within it a dead doll.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nThe idea was that she wanted to use these models to train police officers in how to scientifically investigate a crime scene so each of the dolls was dead either through murder, accident or suicide or natural causes and there were clues, tiny little clues embedded in each of the models that could help you if you studied it properly with the correct attention you could figure out what happened but often it wasn’t necessarily, the scene wasn’t necessarily what it appeared on first glance so she was very concerned that police officers without this training in scientific investigation would just look at a scene and go based on their intuition, which of course would involve their biases, their stereotypes.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nSo Rachel, I gather that you have some letters dating back to January of 1944 when Lee was first coming up with the idea for her models. Could you read some of that for us?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nYeah so she, at this point she’s collaborating with and corresponding with the head of the legal medicine department at Harvard just trying to get some thoughts from him about how some potential cases that she might make models from. This is from her letter.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\n“You will note from the above that I have in prospect or completed two hangings, two shootings, two assault with blunt weapon, one natural cause, one drowning, one found dead, one arson. I do not know yet how that gentleman was killed, am open to suggestions, and one poison. I need more traffic accidents, also another shooting or two, a stabbing, more poisonings, carbon monoxide and a couple puzzling found deads. Would a couple of drownings be possible or are drowned bodies too damaged and disfigured for representation?”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nRachel says these letters are indicative of the excitement and enthusiasm Lee had for a subject matter that’s so, well, morbid. Today the nutshells belong to the Maryland Medical Examiner but Rachel found a way to see them in person.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nI love small things and I kind of also love macabre things so I was like, “I have to see these. They sound incredible,” and they really are. They’re so strange because they are at once totally cute and totally sinister. You can see the really precise care that she has put into them. There are things like there’ll be a little wall calendar, a tiny little wall calendar on the wall and every month is in there, like every day, every month. The tiny little mousetrap actually works, it’ll snap closed, and the dolls that are in them that are dead, some of them are quite gruesome. She painted their faces, some of them, the discoloration that would indicate how long they’d been dead for. Sometimes there are wounds, they’re just really fascinating. The other thing that’s fascinating about them is that each of them is this kind of puzzle of what really happened but the solutions are not public. There are a few of them who, the kind of answer of what really happened, three or four of them have been made public but they’re still actually in use. There are still seminars that happen every year where police officers come and use them as a training tool.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nThe secret can’t get out. So it’s actually in some ways a really frustrating experience because you look at them and you’re looking at this scene and there’s one that’s the largest one is called a three room dwelling and it’s a cute little suburban house, charming little kitchen but there’s three dead dolls in it. A mom, a father and a baby and they’re all really bloody. You look at it and you’re trying to figure out, “Is this a murder suicide? Did somebody break in?” And you really want that closure, I think, that you’re used to finding at the end of murder mystery books or murder mystery TV shows and it’s not, you don’t know, it’s not there, which I think in some ways prolongs the fascination.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nThanks to our models, Frances Glessner Lee is often referred to as the mother of forensic science so I guess you could say her obsession with true crime really paid off. For the rest of us, a fascination with murder might just lead to extra hours on the couch binging Netflix shows like Tiger King or podcasts like Serial. Today, true crime has become synonymous with these new forms of media but over the decades, Americans have found fascination, repulsion and sometimes even comfort in true crime stories.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":46,"tags":47,"thumb":48},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":11},[13,14,15,16,17],{"src":19,"caption":20,"derivatives":49},{"square_small":22,"square_medium":23},{"index":51,"title":52,"description":53,"audio":54,"tags":58,"transcript":60,"episode":61},1,"Lizzie Borden Took An Axe...","\u003Cp>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother 40 whacks.” So goes the notorious nursery rhyme about a 1892 murder in Fall River, Massachusetts, which has captivated the public imagination for over a century. Cara Robertson, author of \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.simonandschuster.com\u002Fbooks\u002FThe-Trial-of-Lizzie-Borden\u002FCara-Robertson\u002F9781501168390\">\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Trial of Lizzie Borden\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">breaks the story down for Joanne. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cb>Music:\u003C\u002Fb>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fcrime-investigation-bebzrwrh8dbk0wy40mz.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Crime Investigation\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Jason Donnelly\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fout-of-focus-bxmkn5zzik624zzm4.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Out of Focus\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Enrico de Lucia\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fdawn-sgdxkt0hldhk0wy5yz8.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dawn\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Jason Donnelly\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FDriving\u002FGoingForwardLookingBack\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Going Forward, Looking Back\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fgasping-for-air-soo-jctjsk2xmvlgs.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gasping for Air\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Michael Vignola\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":55,"duration":56,"formatted_duration":57},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Ftrue-crime-02.mp3","1050","00:17:30",[13,14,16,59],"storytelling","\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nOn this episode of Backstory, we’re dipping into the history of true crime in modern American History.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nYou’ll hear from Phoebe Judge about what it’s like behind the scenes of one of the most successful true crime podcasts, Criminal.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWe’ll return to my conversation with Rachel Monroe to learn about how true crime obscures the true nature of crime.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nAnd you’ll hear how Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood captured a pivotal moment in the history of criminology and the development of prisoners rights.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nFirst up, we thought we’d start back in 1892 with one of the most notorious whodunits in American history.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nIt was sort of a OJ Simpson trial of its day in terms of the intensity of the press coverage. Newspapers from around the country sent special correspondents to cover it in addition to having the local papers and the wire services.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nThis is author and lawyer Cara Robertson.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nMany people traveled to New Bedford, which is the site of the trial, in order to witness the proceedings in person and police had to set up special barricades. People, it was said, like to make kind of a picnic day out of it.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nThe person on trial was a 32 year old woman named Lizzie Borden and the crime, double homicide.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nWell we know that in the mid morning of August 4th, 1892, which was a Thursday that the prosperous mill town of Full River, Massachusetts was the site of a grizzly double murder. Andrew Borden, a prominent local businessman and his second wife, Abby, were found hacked to death in their home near the city center. The murders were so violent that some speculated that Jack the Ripper had come to America.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWow. Wow.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, it was gruesome. Abby had been felled by 19 blows in an upstairs guest room and about an hour and a half later, Andrew received 10 blows as he lay sleeping on the sitting room sofa. Well first of all, given then crime scene people assumed that it was going to turn out to have been the work of some murderous stranger who was obviously insane. There were two things that seemed to rule that out. The first was that the house was pretty well locked up except for a side door that had been in view of either the housekeeper or a neighbor for much of the morning and the second major issue with that theory was that the interval between the murders. The prosecution eventually called that the controlling issue of the case. That would have meant that whoever killed Abby would have had to hide in the house for an hour and a half until Andrew came home to commit the second murder.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nSo as a result, the police turned their attention to people inside the home and there were only three possible suspects. The housekeeper, Bridget Sullivan, who had been seen washing windows outside at the time of Abby’s murder. Andrew Borden’s brother in law who was visiting overnight but who was going to visit other relatives in the morning so was absent from the house and finally Andrew’s younger daughter, Lizzie. Lizzie Borden wasn’t someone who fit the profile of a suspected murderess. She seemed to tick all the boxes of upper middle class respectability but it was discovered that the house was the site of what some people thought of as almost a cold war. That there were ill feeling between Andrew Borden’s adult daughters and his second wife. It was also discovered that someone who was identified as Lizzie Borden tried to buy prussic acid on the day before the murders. Poison rather than a hatchet fit the profile of a murderess.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nLizzie is arrested and then her trial begins the following June 1893. What was the prosecutions case against her? How did they deal with all of these sort of obvious yes and no components to the murder?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nThe prosecution argued that she was the only person with motive and opportunity to commit the murders. There’s really, based on the timetable that there’s no one else who could have done it. The prosecution pointed to the tension in the household as a motive. It was hard for people to accept that that would be enough, particularly that kind of murder and it should be noted that Lizzie Borden had no blood or any other kind of sign of disturbance on her when she reported the murder of her father.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nSo the prosecution goes in a sense for the obvious argument that she makes sense as the person who did the murder. What does the defense say?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nThe defense essentially points to Lizzie Borden and says, “Someone like this couldn’t possibly have done it.” They do a good job of casting doubt on the question of exclusive opportunity by pointing to strangers who might have been seen in the vicinity and they point out that you can’t see everyone at any time so I mean, it was at least theoretically possible that someone had been in the house. At the same time, their most potent piece of evidence was the image of Lizzie Borden herself.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWas that she seemed gentile and middle class or even upper middle class and that she just didn’t seem like a sort of person who could have done that?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, she has this extraordinary self possession, that’s the thing about her that everyone notes and that’s read in contradictory ways. So the defense points to it, as do Lizzie Borden’s many supporters, as a sign of inborn gentility. That this is really a sign of true American grit.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nHmm.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nAnd that she’s burying up in a ladylike fashion under the strain of unjust suspicion. For those people who thought she was the killer they saw it quite differently. They saw it as a sign of almost a masculine nerve. The Irish Catholic paper calls her, “The sphinx of coolness,” and that same paper, the Irish Catholic Fall River Daily Globe says that if a mill hand had been suspected or a domestic servant had been suspected then that person would have been arrested without ceremony and instead the police were pussyfooting around. On the other side of the ledger, the police and the prosecution received a lot of helpful suggestions about how it must have been this immigrant or that immigrant or maybe it was some plot by the Pope.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nOkay so this is an age when sensationalist news and mass marketed newspapers and magazines are really booming so how did the press in that sort of new, dramatic form, maybe shape how people were responding to the trial?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, it’s a case that obviously dovetails well with the heyday of yellow journalism because there’s so many horrifying sensational details. The exhibits, which are quite gruesome including the skulls of the victims are brought into the court and sketch artists do visual representations of those things for the audience at home as well as the pros portraits by the journalists. The audience as well as the fellow journalists become part of the story. It’s something that probably would be familiar to us, that the journalists pick out particularly good looking or odd looking people and describe them and overhear conversations and relay those to the people at home who are eagerly awaiting for details that come via updates throughout the day. There are no women on the jury. Women weren’t allowed to serve on Massachusetts juries until 1950 but there is a dedicated section of the audience that’s female and many of the journalists refer to them as a kind of self constituted stack of jury. They’re a lot more hostile than the actual jury.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWhat was that supposed jury saying as opposed to, we’re going to get back to in a moment, what the actual jury said?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nThey seemed to think she was guilty and they viewed her as a woman who had transgressed in this fundamental way and were suspicious of the things that i think otherwise played quite well, which was the care that she devoted to her parents before trial. It was noticed that she, if her hair had been mussed, if the perfect curl was missing that she would fix it during the recesses of the trial.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nOn June 20th, Lizzie Borden ends up being acquitted by that all male jury. So how does that happen? How do they end up reaching that verdict?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nIt’s an unusually long trial for its era. It’s almost three weeks. Despite that, despite the amount of evidence that’s presented by the prosecution, the jury’s pretty much decided. They reached their verdict within 20 minutes. They just take a vote almost immediately upon entering the jury room but they decide that that would be unseemly so they delay delivering the verdict for a while so that it looks like they’d been reasonably deliberative.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWow.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nI mean, I should say that two of the most compelling pieces of evidence never reached the jury. The first is the alleged attempt by Lizzie Borden of buying prussic acid and the second is the contradictory account of her own movements that come from her inquest testimony. There’s a kind of technical legal reason why that’s not admitted but that has a lot to do with expectations about gender, as well, particularly middle class womanhood. That essentially she’s being entrapped by the police and bullied and it’s also noted that her doctor has given her a prescription for something containing morphine and so it’s no wonder she was all confused.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWow. The ways in which sort of assumptions about protecting her and suspecting her and assuming things about her and then making excuses for her, it’s an amazing bundle of things.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nYeah and I was struck by that. I’m a lawyer so I was looking at the lawyer’s strategy and trying to unpick whether they’re trying to make these arguments because they know they’ll be persuasive to the jury or is this what they believe themselves? It seems like a little bit of a mix because they act very much like paternal figures or at least her defense lawyers do. She’s 32 years old and she’s spoken about as if she is a girl. I mean, that she’s repeatedly called a, “Young girl,” but the prosecution doesn’t challenge that nor does it challenge other things that could have been quite useful. One of the most important pieces of evidence or non-evidence if you will that’s in Lizzie Borden’s favor is the absence of blood and no blood was found on Lizzie Borden or on any of her clothes. There are two things that could explain that. One is that there’s a dress that she burned on the Sunday after the murders on the theory that it’d been stained with paint and the second is that there was a pale of bloody cloths in the basement that her doctor assured the police were menstrual cloths and they may well have been but it’s something that the prosecution just prefers not to mention either.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nOnce again, gender playing a really interesting role here.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nRight. The defense gets to have it both ways because on the one hand it’s essentially kept out of the trial so they can harp of the fact that there’s no blood found on Lizzie Borden but they also use the fact of what they refer to as, “Her monthly illness,” to explain any oddities in her behavior or inconsistencies in her statements.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWow, so she’s acquitted, she’s found not guilty. How did the public respond to that?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nIn the immediate aftermath of the trial there’s celebration at the site. This seems to be a verdict that’s greeted with great enthusiasm by most people in the public. Locally it’s a lot more divisive. The same papers that criticized the police for dragging their feet about arresting Lizzie Borden viewed this as just yet another case of a member of the elite, a member of the Yankee elite, getting away with murders. It was an extremely stratified mill town. Enthusiasm about the verdict cools pretty quickly so that Lizzie Borden, when she returns to her old life and attends the church that had provided the bedrock of her support during the trial, finds herself surrounded by empty pews. That pretty much sets the tone for the way the town treated her, at least the part of the town that she aspired to join.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nSo then what happens to her in the time after the trial?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nWell one of the supposed motives for the murder was Lizzie Borden’s dissatisfaction with the cramped family house and after she’s acquitted, she and her sister move from the cramped family house in the business district to what’s effectively a McMansion in the Hill District, which is an elite residential area in Fall River. Then she lives it up. She starts to go to the theater in Boston and acts in a way that’s not entirely consistent with her earlier behavior. She was really expected to go back and live down her notoriety and instead she lived it up. She lives there with her sister for about 12 years, there’s an argument and the sister moves out and never speaks to her again. So she lives in Fall River to the end of her days but essentially alone.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nI’m going to ask you one last question and I’m very curious about your answer. Who do you think killed Andrew and Abby Borden?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nAh.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nThe question.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nWell I mean, this is a non-spoiler alert. I don’t solve the case in the book. I thought it was important not to. I think you lose credibility when you … What was important was to set out the story as completely as possible based on the primary sources and let the evidence that points in a bunch of different directions speak for itself. That said, I think I’m sort of in the same position as I was at the beginning which is that it is difficult as a practical matter to understand how she could have killed both people and presented herself in between. In between the murders and then again very quickly after the second murder in perfect attire without any blood. At the same time it seems almost impossible that anyone else could have done it and then alluded the two women who were in the house at the time.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nHmm. So you end up right there, able to see both sides and sort of standing on that border.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Cara Robertson:\u003Cbr>\nYeah. I’m comfortable with the ambiguity because I think there’s something about this case that it has a universality to it. I was interested in the specifics of it. I very much wanted to talk about Lizzie Borden’s trial in its exact social and cultural context but at the same time there’s something about this particular mystery that I think tugs at us and so not having a firm decision on it, not having made a firm decision I think is useful and probably honest.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nCara Robertson is the author of The Trial of Lizzie Borden.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":62,"tags":63,"thumb":64},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":11},[13,14,15,16,17],{"src":19,"caption":20,"derivatives":65},{"square_small":22,"square_medium":23},{"index":67,"title":68,"description":69,"audio":70,"tags":74,"transcript":78,"episode":79},2,"The Making of a True Crime Classic","\u003Cp>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the late 1950s, Truman Capote was a well-known New York City writer, best known for his novella, \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Breakfast at Tiffany’s. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But everything changed in November 1959 when he read about the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.sarasligar.com\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sara Sligar\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, author of \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fus.macmillan.com\u002Fbooks\u002F9780374272616\">\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take Me Apart\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003C\u002Fa> \u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California, gives Ed the backstory to what became Capote’s classic true crime book, \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Cold Blood.\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cb>Music:\u003C\u002Fb>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fsuspense-17-sljxutlz_rsk4bq6nqn.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Suspense 17\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Gregory Tripi\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.audioblocks.com\u002Fstock-audio\u002Fevidence-slkfbyetuvbk0wybyxy.html\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Evidence\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Raphael Costa\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":71,"duration":72,"formatted_duration":73},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Ftrue-crime-03.mp3","937","00:15:37",[75,13,76,14,17,77],"Truman Capote","journalism","writing","\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nThe whodunit nature of Lizzie Borden’s trial has captivated audiences for generations. By one account, there are some 580 books about Lizzie Borden, 120 videos and 90 theatrical pieces, including ballets, plays and even an opera. For one famous writer, the appeal of this next story wasn’t whodunit but why done it?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nIt all started in mid-November 1959. Truman Capote, of Breakfast at Tiffany’s fame, was in his New York City apartment when an article in the newspaper caught his eye. The story described how the family of a wealthy wheat farmer was found shot to death in Holcomb, Kansas. They had been killed by shotgun blast at close range after being bound and gagged, the article read. There were no signs of struggle and nothing had been stolen but the telephone lines had been cut.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nWhen Capote found this he wanted to find a sort of like, case or a situation or story that he would be able to explore in this long form way.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSara Sligar is an expert on true crime and pop culture.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nI think he was immediately drawn to this with this specific end goal of writing a really long form story about it and eventually the book, In Cold Blood.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nCapote was so drawn to the story that soon after hearing about the murders of Herbert Clutter, his wife Bonnie and his kids, Nancy and Kenyon, he packed his bags and flew to Kansas. Capote took his childhood friend, Harper Lee, with him. The same Harper Lee who wrote the classic book, To Kill A Mockingbird.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nCapote was from the South and had this interest in writing about areas of the United States that had a really strong regional inflection as he saw but at the same time he had lived in Manhattan for a really long time at this point and was very much a sort of Manhattan socialite. That’s actually why Harper Lee joined him because she had been … He thought of her, they had been childhood friends, so he thought of her as much more grounded in the South and so maybe more able to access this really regional area of the Midwest and so sort of saw her as someone who could help smooth over some of the interactions that he had with local people.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSo that’s what they did, right? They rushed to Holcomb and how soon after the arrest did they arrive?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nThey actually arrived well before the arrest. There were a month or two before the two men who committed the murders were apprehended. There was actually at the beginning when they first arrived there was a lot of suspicion that it had been somebody in the town who had done it. There weren’t a lot of outsiders in the town and it was sort of assumed that people who had come from outside of the town would have been noticed or that there must have been some kind of personal motivation.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nTruman Capote’s book, In Cold Blood, was the culmination of his time in Kansas and if you ask Capote, it was the first true crime book ever published. Sara Sligar says many others begged to differ.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nThere’s a lot of debate about whether or not this was the first true crime novel. I think that what you could certainly say is that it is, this book, I cannot overstate how successful it was. Even reviewers at the time when it came out in 1966, reviewers at the time were like, “This is the most talked about book of the year.” It was getting coverage everywhere, everybody was reading it. Although there, I think, were certainly many different types of long form journalism that explored some of the psychological ramifications of crimes, there were also a lot of novelizations or film versions of crimes that had actually happened.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nMm-hmm (affirmative).\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nThe extent to which this just was a cultural landmark cannot be overstated. That’s really, I think, why it’s become remembered as the first true crime book and why it’s also remembered as a foundational moment in long form journalism and narrative non-fiction, as well.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nEven though Capote’s narrative style kind of erased himself, how much of its visibility and importance came from him being a participant observer in the trial?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nCapote did erase himself totally from the narrative. He doesn’t ever use the word, “I,” there’s one moment in the entire book when he refers to a journalist and he means himself. However, I think a big part of what made the book so popular was this sense that people were getting a behind the scenes version of events.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSo it’s controversial in many ways but how would you describe the book for people who haven’t read it?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nAlthough the phrase, “Non-fiction novel,” is very controversial, I do think that’s a good way of like, a point of entry into understanding what a book like, In Cold Blood, is because it’s this long form journalistic account of these murders and of the motivations of the men who committed them. The very first chapter of the book, the first part, looks at the lives of this family, everything they did in the last day of their lives. Then it moves into a section that’s about the investigation, tracking down these men. We find out very early on that these two men, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith committed the crime and so it goes back and forth between their perspective as they’re on the run and the police perspective as they’re tracking them down. Then it goes on to show after they’re apprehended, their trial, explores the sort of criminal justice system and then their incarceration and execution. It’s really a wholistic look at this crime and it’s aftermath.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nThat really is remarkable that it’s not the usual whodunit question, right? But rather we know whodunit and then we try to figure out why. Is that the-\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nExactly, yes.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nIs that the question that drives the book?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nYes.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nYeah.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, we call it a, “Why done it?” You could think of, also you could think of books or crime books as either a whodunit, a how done it or a why done it. This is sort of a combination of a how done it and a why done it. So you’re really, the big motivation for the book is trying to understand why they committed this crime and what the sort of background was that shaped these two individuals, Perry and Dick, and brought them to a place where they would do something so horrific.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSo how does Capote describe these men and does he seem somewhat drawn to them?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nYeah there’s, I think, a real fascination on Capote’s part as he goes deeper and deeper into the story. I mean, he worked on this book for six years. I guess maybe almost seven years technically. The first two years are when most of the action is happening but then there’s like five years when the men are in prison awaiting execution and he’s still interviewing them, going to them, he’s really their main visitor, especially Perry Smith who really doesn’t have any family and who Capote becomes quite attached to in that they really form a sort of back and forth. Also, it’s a very intimate thing to try to understand why someone did something like this, to go so far into their history. He tracks down family members or old colleagues or acquaintances. There is a real fascination for it and he did go to witness their execution, which he did not want to do and almost backed out of but he said it was the worst day of his life and he did it because he felt he had to. He felt it was the thing he had to do for the story. I think he also felt a level of debt to these men whose story he had sort of taken and turned into the … And knew it was going to be such a phenomenon.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nMy understanding is that he didn’t actually tape record any of the conversations but just did them by memory? That sounds a little suspect. Did people criticize him at the time for that?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nYes, yeah, he got a lot of criticism at the time and today. Capote had, well how he put it was that he had decided some years earlier to train himself to recall conversations perfectly and so he claimed he had a 95% recall rate. It is not clear how he measured this. Clearly some stuff is also embroidered upon and you can also tell that because there is this really great study that a scholar did where he looked comparatively of the version that was published in The New Yorker and then the version that was published as the book and he found almost 5,000 changes between these and some of those are changes to actual documents, changes to quotes, changes to things that as a journalist you would say, “Oh this is a thing that cannot be changed.” Capote definitely changed them. We have the receipts and that scholar was Jack De Bellis, also I want to give credit to, so something incredibly thorough.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nWell it’s a good thing this is a novel, right, and not the official court record. This is a part in the late ’50s, early ’60s that you’ve written about a due process revolution when it came to the legal system but what do you mean by that and how does that interact with what you just told us about In Cold Blood?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nThe due process revolution was a series of decisions that was made in the mid 20th Century by the Supreme Court that federally standardized criminal rights across the country. So actually a lot of things that we think of as criminal rights that everyone can kind of take for granted such as the right to an attorney, the protections against illegal search and seizure, a whole lot of things were not federally standardized even before 1965 in some cases. Some states had these rights or gave these rights to their citizens, some didn’t, but this was actually a really, really massive overhaul in the criminal justice system but I definitely do think that In Cold Blood is in conversation with a lot of these changes that were happening at the time and you can even see in the sections that are depicting the court room sequences, the trial, you can see references to criminal procedures that are being developed. So one particular area that Capote was really critiquing is the idea of the insanity defense and the way …\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nThe insanity defense as a concept has been around for a long time but the particular way that it’s implemented and the shape it took changed a lot in the mid 20th Century and Capote really talks a lot about the different kind of dimensions of this and how they feed into criminal justice reform. So there’s absolutely, I think, a lot of the conversation about crime, about criminal behavior that is motivating Capote’s interest in criminal psychology is also something that’s happening in the criminal justice system.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSo in the book the insanity plea is of crucial importance. Can you tell us how that worked?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nThe idea of an insanity defense had been around for a really long time but even though there are all these huge changes happening in the sort of psychology and sociology spheres there was a lot of rethinking of how criminal behavior and how psychology actually work. The standard that was being used in Kansas at this time was from the 1840s, it’s called the M’Naghten test and it was just a question of like, “Did the defendant know what they were doing was wrong at the time that they committed it?” This really like, yes, no answer. One thing that’s really interesting about In Cold Blood and I think one of its really valuable interventions is that Capote says, “That’s really insufficient to understanding who these people were and the possible reasons why they may have committed the crime.” There were actually extremely long details, sort of psychiatric profiles that were produced but they weren’t allowed to be admitted into evidence. Because it’s a book it’s a narrative account, it’s not a trial, Capote’s able to kind of introduce explanations without having to come down hard on the idea of like, “Well should these men have been exonerated or not exonerated?” But one thing I think that’s really valuable about the book and looking at it in conjunction with the legal system is that it creates a lot more space for these really complex ideas of psychology and of human behavior.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nIt sounds like In Cold Blood brought together a lot of things that were happening at the time. You’d mentioned that Capote himself said that the day of the execution of the murderers was the worst day of his life but what was the impact of this book on him other than making him rich and famous?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nIt did destroy him in a lot of ways. He died a few decades later but a lot of people who knew him said that he was just, yeah, he was never the same after working on this. He struggled a lot with addiction, he had a lot of trouble writing. It was really emotionally taxing for him and I do think it’s a great work of art but it’s explored a little bit in, there’s that great film, Capote, with Catherine Keener and Philip Seymour Hoffman. They sort of explore some of the psychological toll I think in a quite responsible way.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSo you’ve just written your own crime book but it’s a novel, not non-fiction. What did you learn from Capote and what was it like shifting from the study of true crime to the writing of crime fiction? How do you navigate that?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Sara Sligar:\u003Cbr>\nI do think from Capote as a writer his attention to detail and the kind of vividness of it, the way he can kind of immerse you in an atmosphere I find really successful and certainly something that I emulate. My book, even though it is not true crime, it does think a lot about these ethical questions of representing crime and criminal behavior, the ways in which there are popular stories that get told are different from what might really happen in someone’s life.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nSara Sligar is the author of Take Me Apart. She’s also a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":80,"tags":81,"thumb":82},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":11},[13,14,15,16,17],{"src":19,"caption":20,"derivatives":83},{"square_small":22,"square_medium":23},{"index":85,"title":86,"description":87,"audio":88,"tags":92,"transcript":94,"episode":95},3,"I Could Never Be A Criminal, Could I?","\u003Cp>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">True crime podcasts have been increasing in popularity every year, and one show has been a major influence among content creators and fans since its start in 2014. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fthisiscriminal.com\">\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Criminal\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a Radiotopia podcast produced at WUNC, carefully recounts each crime story with a deep curiosity and empathy for the people involved. Host Phoebe Judge talks to Ed about how \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Criminal\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is made. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cb>Music: \u003C\u002Fb>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FPodington_Bear\u002FBrooding\u002FTrailways_A\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Trailways\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Podington Bear\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":89,"duration":90,"formatted_duration":91},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Ftrue-crime-04.mp3","609","00:10:09",[13,93,59],"podcasts","\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nTrue crime has been a popular podcast genre since the mid 2010s. That was when Serial, a show about the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee became the most listened to podcast in America after it’s October 2014 debut.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nIn fact, 2014 was a big year for true crime podcasts. Criminal, a show produced at WUNC released its first episode earlier that year.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\n… In North Carolina. He didn’t know it at the time, but he may have just had a brush with death. I’m Phoebe Judge and this is Criminal. Lauren Spohrer, my co-creator and I, had both been working for a national public radio show called The Story with Dick Gordon and I was the guest host and she was producing a lot of the segments and directing the show and we were sitting around one night and thought to ourselves, “People who listen to public radio also watch Law and Order. They may not want to admit it but they do.”\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nRight.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\n“What if we start a crime show?” Lauren said. I thought, well that was the smartest thing I’d ever heard because I realized we would never run out of stories.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nCriminal is not only an original in its genre but a standout. It’s appeal is in the details but not in a salacious or violent way. Criminal carefully recounts each crime story with a deep curiosity and empathy for the people involved.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nWe very early on decided that we would try to make a show that was an answer to some of the crime reporting that we were seeing out there, some of the sensationalistic and violent, overdramatized, lack of empathy or concern for the victims that were being spoken about, all of that. We wanted to try and do it in a different way and to take a very broad look at what that word, “Crime,” means.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nWhat preconceived ideas do you think people have about crime or criminals? What do they bring to the show?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nWell I think that people can oftentimes believe that they could never be a criminal.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nAh yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\n“That’s not me,” you know? Well I know people that would never be me. I’m so interested in the stories where the same person has thought that exact same thing and then something happens and they’ve become that other, that criminal. Those are so intriguing to me. I think that we like to believe that all those who do bad things, wrong things, are on one side of a line and we firmly are on the other as good people and we don’t come close to that line. I would say after doing this show for 140 episodes or more that I think we’re all much closer to that line than we may assume that we are and it just takes a circumstance, a series of events that can push us over. Now I’m not talking about terrible, violent, sadistic, serial crimes. I’m talking about those crimes that maybe we get pulled into that we never thought that we would and maybe we would never do again.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nI’m thinking about an episode we did with a woman who helped a man escape from prison. I promise you that woman had never considered herself to be a criminal and probably still today is wondering how anyone could call her a criminal because she can’t understand it herself. But those are the stories that I think are really interesting to explore.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nWas that the episode Off Leash?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nOff Leash.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, because I was just listening to that and she said, “I always counted to three at stops signs. It never occurred to me to violate any kind of law.” I thought that was a particularly powerful demonstration of your theme there, really. Would it be giving away too much to ask kind of what happens to her?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nShe helps a man escape in a dog crate out of prison. I think she believes that he’s in love with her and maybe he is, I mean, who am I to say? They end up getting caught and she now is remarried and out of prison, she spent some time in prison, and living her life. When she tells the story, the way she talks about it, it’s almost as if she’s talking about another person because she’s still so amazed that she got wrapped up in this whole thing.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nRight, right. You say you’ve done well over 100 episodes, how do you pick stories for Criminal?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nWell there really is no criteria except again our kind of own curiosity but I will say that we try to choose stories where we know that we will have some person speaking about this topic whose had some direct experience. We wanted to create a show that had a lot of first person narrative in it so that sometimes will help drive our stories. We also want to pick stories that haven’t been covered so well in the media in the past and if we do choose a story that has been covered well. I think that we oftentimes try to find a new angle on that but really the only criteria is our own curiosity and by this point as many episodes as we are in I think one of us will bring a story idea to the other and we’ll kind of immediately know, “Oh, that sounds like a Criminal story.” Criminal being this show. That sounds like something that fits the bill for the type of stories that we want to tell.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nAre there particular episodes or interviews that stand out over these years?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nA lot. There’s a lot of episodes that stand out and interviews that I’ve done. One of my favorite episodes is an episode that’s called 695BGK about an unarmed black man who was shot by a white police officer because of a mistake of a letter on a license plate. That was I think an important episode to tell and it was also going on three or four years ago when we were seeing a rise in the number of black men that were being shot by white police officers and we were trying to figure out how we could comment. Not comment on that but participate in that conversation but by doing something that maybe hadn’t been done before. What we chose to do was to pick a story many of the men who had been shot by these white police officers had died and so we couldn’t hear from them.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nRight.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nWe chose a story where a man survived and so we could hear from him and hear his perspective on exactly what happened.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nWell somehow you managed to have other podcasts even while you do this remarkable one. You have Phoebe Reads a Mystery which sounds as if you might be reading mystery novels or books. Tell me about that. How does that work?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nWell that was just a funny idea. When this whole virus started and staying at home and quarantine we had heard before that maybe sometimes people write and say, “Phoebe, would you read something?” Probably just to put them to sleep, I’m sure, but we thought that it would be a thing we could do. That I could read a chapter a day from a classic mystery novel and maybe it would just be a distraction for people and so we started with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the Agatha Christie book and we really just hoped to do that but for some reason, I don’t know, people seem to like the show and so we kept it going and now are on our third book. We’re reading The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and we’ll probably go back to an Agatha Christie next but I think it’s just a way for people to escape maybe what’s going on all around us right now and very simply just, and quietly, go to another time. That’s surprising to me that it’s continued but I’m very happy to be doing it.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nIt’s nice to have the script written beforehand for a change.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nThat’s exactly right.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nYou have another podcast called This Is Love. Love and crime, do you see a connection between these two topics?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Phoebe Judge:\u003Cbr>\nWell certainly those are one of the two most covered topics in the world but I think what we wanted to do in the same way that we had done this with the word, “Crime,” is push the boundaries of this word, “Love.” The two shows, while seemingly very different, one about love and one about crime, are actually very similar. They’re both another show about the human experience and finding stories that challenge that notion of the word, “Love,” and what it means. We have very few episodes in this show that are actually about romantic love. We’re in the middle of our fourth season, it’s a whole season about animals and the season before was a whole season about Italy. I think that it’s fun for us to be able to every episode think, “Okay, how can we surprise our listeners? What can we do? How can we get them scratching their head saying, ‘how are they calling this a love story?'” And I hope by the end maybe people see why but I think that taking on these stories has made the crime show better. It’s just another attempt to understand why people do the things they do, what drives people. The idea of it’s all going to be okay I think is an overwhelming message in the love show of just even when you don’t think it is, it will be okay. One way or another it will be okay.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nPhoebe Judge is the host of Criminal, a Radiotopia podcast produced at WUNC and distributed by PRX. You can find episodes of Criminal at Thisiscriminal.com or wherever you get your podcasts.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":96,"tags":97,"thumb":98},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":11},[13,14,15,16,17],{"src":19,"caption":20,"derivatives":99},{"square_small":22,"square_medium":23},{"index":101,"title":102,"description":103,"audio":104,"tags":108,"transcript":110,"episode":111},4,"The True Nature of True Crime","\u003Cp>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rachel Monroe returns to tell Joanne about what true crime obscures about the \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">true \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nature of crime. Rachel and Joanne also consider the surprising comfort of \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003Ci>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Law & Order \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fi>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">reruns. \u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cb>Music: \u003C\u002Fb>\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Ffreemusicarchive.org\u002Fmusic\u002FJahzzar\u002FSketches\u002Fmoney_1311\">\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Money\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fa>\u003Cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Jahzzar\u003C\u002Fspan>\u003C\u002Fp>\n",{"url":105,"duration":106,"formatted_duration":107},"https:\u002F\u002Fs3.amazonaws.com\u002Fcdn.backstoryradio.org\u002Faudio\u002Fsegments\u002Ftrue-crime\u002Ftrue-crime-05.mp3","509","00:08:29",[13,14,16,109],"television","\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nWe’re going to finish the show by returning to my conversation with Rachel Monroe. She says it might seem like true crime is particularly popular right now but we’ve been here before.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, well it’s funny when people always talk about the true crime boom that’s happening right now and there is a part of me that wants to say, “Well aren’t we constantly in a true crime boom?” I do kind of feel like as long as we’ve had mass media these stories of crimes of investigation, of bad deeds, have always been really popular among humans so our fascination with them is a pretty long standing thing but what does seem to change is what kinds of stories are popular, how those stories are told, the medium. I tend to think that when a new form comes out, the crime stories adapt themselves to the new form. I mean, they’re just a great …\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nRight now you’ll see in these podcasts or on these TV shows they’re recapitulating stories that have been told many times before. I mean, how much content can be produced about Ted Bundy, right? It’s a story that maybe you think, “This has been told over and over and over again,” but when you have a new format like the podcast or these limited series, the change in medium offers a kind of new way to package the story or to frame it and it reaches a new audience. I think there are a lot of reasons that true crime has preoccupied people recently but I think that these new forms is definitely one reason.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nNow you just mentioned that a lot of these stories like Ted Bundy, they get told again and again and again. What generally speaking would you say some of these true crime narratives obscure or omit about the realities of certain kinds of things that they focus on and other kinds of things that they just leave out?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nDefinitely, yeah. The vast majority of violent crime in the United States doesn’t look anything like the stories that we get in these true crime programs. In that way I think it can be a stretch to refer to it as true crime. I mean, first of all something that I always tell people that shocks them is that if you look at the crime statistics in the United States, the murder statistics, the percentage of murders where a woman is murdered by a man is only like a quarter of the murders in the United States but those crimes make up such an overwhelming proportion of the crimes that we see on TV that are covered in the paperback books and in the podcasts and overwhelmingly and disproportionately the crimes, the victims that we see depicted in these stories tend to be attractive, young, middle class white women when we know that that’s typically not who is most at risk of being a victim of violent crime in our culture. That’s definitely one thing. Like whose stories count? What kind of victims are we granting attention and granting the spotlight to?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nSomething that you don’t hear a lot about in these true crime programs is that violent crime is actually way, way, way down in the US. Peaked in the early ’90s and since then it’s about half what it was then but there are some very interesting studies done by Pew that ask people, “Do you feel like crime is going up or going down?” And almost every single year, while violent crime is going down, people report the feeling that it’s going up and I think that that can partly be attributed to the fact that there’s just so much attention to these violent stories in our media so it can really skew our perception of how dangerous the world is and who is at risk. It does affect you.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nLet me ask one last question. You found that women are the biggest consumers of true crime. Why do you think that is? Why are women in particular drawn to those kinds of stories?\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nWell I think there are a number of reasons and that was one of the reasons I wanted to write a whole book about it because I think sometimes there can be reductive answers to that question, right? The one you hear a lot is women want to avoid being a victim and so they read these stories to get tips for how to avoid a serial killer and to me, that seems really reductive. I think the motivations are really complex and layered but I think the thing that I hear a lot and that seems to be really primary is that these stories can often be a way to think about and metabolize trauma and so people who have been victims of violent crime or have somebody close to them who’ve been victims of violent crime might turn to these stories to kind of work through feelings.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nEven if you haven’t been the victim of a violent crime, even if you’re just sort of living life in a society where misogyny is a problem, where you deal with sexism, maybe you haven’t been assaulted but you’ve feared being assaulted, these things, the threat of violence is something that’s present in your mind in a daily life then these stories are a way to acknowledge that fear and to deal with it in a way and sometimes it can deal with the fear by kind of stoking and alarming it and sometime it deals with it in a more nuanced way but I do think that’s something that a lot of women have told me what draws them into these stories.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nSo in a way, though, books and TV shows that are true crime, they’re framing it and kind of almost suggesting that it’s controllable because there’s a beginning and a middle and I guess some of the time an end. So it’s interesting, it sounds like what you’re suggesting is that process of seeing these stories put in that form might be part of what draws women in.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nExactly, I think that you hear a lot of people paradoxically refer to true crime as soothing or relaxing, which on its surface sounds kind of hard to understand but then the more that you watch it you realize yes, these stories are often told in a formulaic way, the threat is embodied in one bad guy usually, often he meets justice, right? These books and podcasts and stories often end with a trial with the doors to the jail slamming closed and so there is this feeling at least within the confines of the story that justice has been served.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nIt makes me think of the endless, countless iterations of Law and Order.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nMm-hmm (affirmative).\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nThe TV show, which are so formulaic, right? There’s a crime at the beginning and then there’s the two members with the police department hunting it down and then there’s the trial at the end and then something happens and it’s resolved and there’s a happy, quirky little comment or a dark comment at the end and it’s over. I can’t say I’m hugely invested in true crime but there was a period when I watched a heck of a lot of Law and Order and I think that precisely what we’re talking about here is what drew me in. They were predictable and despite the fact that they were dark, the predictability of it was comforting.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Rachel Monroe:\u003Cbr>\nYeah, definitely, and I’ve found in my … I definitely had periods of my life when I’ve turned to a lot of Law and Order, particularly Law and Order SVU and it’s been at times of my life when there’s a certain amount of chaos or instability in my own life and I think there is something about these shows where they acknowledge that. They don’t pretend that the world is a rosy and happy place but at the same time you have these dogged investigators who won’t stop until they get justice and so it kind of stokes your fear and anxiety and then assuages it and that is a really powerful formula.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Joanne Freeman:\u003Cbr>\nRachel Monroe is the author of Savage Appetites, Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Ed Ayers:\u003Cbr>\nThat’s going to do it for us today but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your questions about history. You’ll find us at Backstoryradio.org or send an email to Backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter, @Backstoryradio. Backstory’s produced at Virginia Humanities. Major support is provided by anonymous donor, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Additional support is provided by the Tomato Fund, cultivating fresh ideas in the arts, the humanities and the environment.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Speaker 1:\u003Cbr>\nBrian Balogh is professor of history at the University of Virginia. Ed Ayers is professor of the humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. Joanne Freeman is professor of history and American studies at Yale University. Nathan Connolly is the Herbert Baxter Adams associate professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University. Backstory was created by Andrew Windham for Virginia Humanities.\u003C\u002Fp>",{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"subtitle":7,"pubdate":112,"tags":113,"thumb":114},{"utc":9,"short":10,"medium":11,"long":11},[13,14,15,16,17],{"src":19,"caption":20,"derivatives":115},{"square_small":22,"square_medium":23},1790963934978]