48 Hours - Case Closed: 48 Hours Season Wrap-up

Episode Date: May 28, 2024

Host Anne-Marie Green sits down with the 48 Hours correspondents and producers as they look back on the latest season of 48 Hours. Hear about the team’s most memorable moments, their most challenging stories, and their biggest takeaways.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. I'm Anne-Marie Green, host of our weekly series, Postmortem. We're at the end of another amazing season of 48 Hours. We hope our loyal fans enjoyed this season. I know I did.

And we heard really compelling stories full of unexpected twists and turns, mysteries that brought families together and then, of course, tore them apart. And I think my favorite part of hosting Host Mortem is being able to see the common themes and threads that pop up from one 48 hours to another, to another. I mean, a lot of these stories are incredibly unique, but at the core, it's about how humans react, whether it's a loss of love, it's a loss of freedom, a loss of money, how they react when they feel like something important is being taken away from them. And often in 48 hours, we see people reacting in the worst possible ways. You know, the highlight of hosting Postmortem is just really getting to find out how our incredible correspondents and producers

put these hours together. The way they approach victims, the compassion that they show is what makes all of these hours so good. As a thank you for listening, I sat down with the 48 Hours correspondents and producers who you might recognize from our weekly postmortems to share their thoughts. How would you describe this past season? I'm Erin Moriarty, and I'm a CBS News 48 Hours correspondent. And I think the best way to describe this past season is the way we always describe 48 Hours. Interesting, surprising, filled with mystery.

I'm Tracy Smith, and I filled with mystery. I'm Tracy Smith and I'm a correspondent. This past season has been unpredictable, a wild ride. My name is Marie Haequan. I'm a producer for 48 Hours. This season was interesting. A lot of interesting stories, very provocative stories that you might not necessarily hear in front page news. You heard them on 48 Hours.

My name is Guyann Kashifian-Mendez. I am a producer based on the West Coast. An emotional roller coaster. Definitely challenging, rewarding, and lots of caffeine to get me through it. Caffeinated, very caffeinated season for me. I'm Lauren Clark. I'm a field producer. I think it's definitely been dramatic and it's been very busy. I am Nikki Batiste, 48 Hours contributor. I'd say this past season was raw, competitive, exciting, lively. And giving people information they just didn't know. Hi, I'm Natalie Morales.

This season, I think, was very heartwarming in a lot of ways because justice was delivered in so many ways to a lot of the families. But also a lot of heartbreak, as usual, with telling true crime stories with victims and loss. I would say a couple of the stories that I did this season are stories that really were thought-provoking. They really stayed with you. And here's Jerika Duncan, CBS News correspondent. What are some of the most memorable moments from this past season? So one of my most memorable moments, I'd have to say, is when we shot a stand-up in the medical examiner's office. That was kind of weird, a little freaky. I hadn't done that before. And I think you naturally think about what happens in those spaces.

And you kind of have to just zone in, focus on what you have to do and do the job. But that was something I'd never done before. So that one will stick out for me. Stand-ups in a place where they lay out bodies after they're dead is a new experience for me. I was really surprised by the jury interview in the Sills case. They were so emotionally invested in this. They took their role so seriously. One of the guys teared up talking to us about it. One of the women said that she cried as soon as she got out of the courtroom after the verdict was read. I think so many people think of jury duty as just something we try to get out of,

that it really stuck with me that they took it so seriously and it meant so much to them and they realized what was at stake. Hi, I'm Jordan Kinsey and I'm a producer with 48 Hours. My most memorable moment from this season is the Kingsbury case. That was on this case from day one. And I got to get the tips from friends about what was happening. And I even got the scoop about the suspect in this case being arrested early on. So it's just nice to be involved in a case that you see from beginning to what's

going on currently with it. This is Peter Van Sant. My most memorable moment in this past season, we did an hour on the Jeff Gehrman murder case in Las Vegas. He was a renowned investigative reporter who was brutally stabbed outside his home. And I had the opportunity to interview the suspect in this case, Robert Telles. And it was a jailhouse interview. And I really confronted him about the fact that his DNA was under Jeff Gehrman's fingernails and that he was denying that he had anything to do with it. And that DNA evidence was so overwhelming, it couldn't be anyone else. And challenging him was incredibly satisfying.

And he tried to suggest that that DNA had been planted there by someone, that he was being framed. And it was a powerful moment in the hour. Hi, I'm Judy Ryback, and I am a producer on 48 Hours. I've been with the show for nearly 14 years now. I think one of my most memorable moments of the season was meeting the U.S. Marshals on the Tammy Myers case and meeting Nikki Bates. I mean, everybody we met on that case was so remarkable. I mean, they will stay with me for a very long time. I think that Nikki is now officially one of my

heroes along with the U.S. Marshals. It was truly an honor to meet them and an honor to be able to tell their stories. I'd say my most memorable reporting from this past season was working on the Sarah Yarborough Hour in the fall. That was just a really emotional case that I was able to really bond or connect with people involved and we were able to tell a really rich story from it. The most memorable is that for, I guess, four years now,

I've been covering the Amy Harwick case. Amy Harwick, who was this wonderful woman who was killed in LA, I finally got to meet her parents and they were lovely. And probably the most memorable was to finally kind of put the story to rest because we went through the trial and her killer was convicted. And we got to honor this wonderful woman who died way too young. I think perhaps for me, the story that was most challenging, but also most memorable is reporting on the Menendez brothers story. And that is because that was a story when I was growing up, when I was in college, it was at the forefront of my

young life and being at a similar age as the Menendez brothers are now in their lives. And now covering this story, given new evidence in their case, also a new perspective. Back then, over 30 plus years ago, it was not widely understood what men dealt with as victims of sexual abuse. And now I think there's much more sensitivity and awareness that men are also victims of abuse

and how that may shape them. And what has been the most challenging? When I think about what's most challenging, you might think, oh, that must be some sort of maybe a physical ordeal during the course of a report. And we do get out in far-flung places. But to me, when we did our University of Idaho student massacre hour to connect with these families, let them tell their story, the most challenging thing I think in that story was to meet all these people face to face, to try to gently draw them out and tell a story that they

desperately wanted to share in the memory of their lost child and also in their pursuit of justice that the alleged killer is brought to justice and is convicted. That was the most challenging part, I think, of my season with those remarkable family members. The most challenging moment is having to walk into a courtroom and no one knows your name and then convince them that they should tell you their story. And then convincing them to share the most intimate details of their lives. I think that's always the most challenging in every case. Walking to a courtroom and sitting behind a mother whose son has been accused of murdering his wife and then asking her to talk to you, to share her pain with you.

She doesn't know you. You have to get to know her in five minutes or less so that you can bring their stories to the forefront. For me, it's more about telling that person's story and hopefully getting the opportunity to convey their feelings in a way that speaks when they can't speak. So hoping to be that gap where you are helping to tell that story in a way that matters. where you are helping to tell that story in a way that matters. On the Stephen Smith case, which we spent several months working on, it was really challenging trying to do an investigative piece about a cold case that was so highly publicized and linked to the Murdoch murders, even though there was no evidence connecting them. But it was really challenging to get people to feel comfortable going on camera, talking about what they may have known and just even describing Stephen. So that was definitely a challenge. I'm a producer for 48 Hours. It's been a challenging season because I've done two stories that were very circumstantial. Kristen Trickle, Autopsy of the Mind.

It was suicide versus homicide. And that's kind of a hard story to tell because you do read a lot about suicide and suicide statistics. And you try to figure out a person's life without really knowing anyone from their family. Every one of these stories are hard. The Colby trickle hour was so tough because you know, on one hand, was it a suicide or a homicide? And getting to the answer was tough. My name is Iris Carreras and I'm a field producer. Narrowing down all the big elements of the story, it's so hard because we don't have a lot of time on the air and we go out there, we meet these people,

we do these great interviews and they say so many great things, but we often don't have a place for everything in our 40 minutes of broadcast. So that's been very challenging. For example, in Kristen Trickle's case, we had footage of the family with super cute puppies and we couldn't use that in the show. We had so much fun holding them. Who cares?

Yeah, we did. Who cares? I still want that little black one. Oh my God. I really tried hard to put it into the show, but it just didn't go anywhere. Sorry, that was not relevant. Early in this season, I did a case, Jade Jenks, the young woman who discovered nude photos of herself on her stepfather's computer. And I think the most challenging thing there was to keep perspective because, ew, I mean, really, it's horrifying, right? And she goes on trial for his murder. And it's very hard as a woman to step back from that and say, okay, we got to look at this objectively. And was that her Jesse Krzyzewski trial when the sentencing was suddenly delayed, when we had a whole shoot fully planned. We were ready to go. And then we couldn't talk to as many people as we

wanted to because sentencing had not yet happened. But it was still Wisconsin and it was December, and we didn't know what the weather was going to be like going forward. So we went out there and we got done what we could get done, and we were able to produce a great story from it. My name is Susan Malley and I'm a producer for 48 Hours. One of the most memorable reporting moments from this past season also happens to be one of my most challenging. It was the case against Jesse Krzyzewski in Wisconsin and we were tasked with including an entire trial that ran for weeks in a show. We had to sit down with all the evidence and all the witness testimony and decide what would make it in front of our viewers.

It was a different way to tell the story. It was a challenge to me as a producer. And I have to tell you, by the end of it, I had learned so much and I could only hope that the audience really enjoyed it. You know, now fans don't just watch. They get online. They're hosting. They're asking questions. What have you heard from the fans? What I love getting the most from our fans is the reaction is that the storytelling is very fair and it's very balanced. And also that the best thing you can hear is you really made

me feel one way or the other. And, you know, that's what, you know, we hope to do. We want to make sure that people understand and feel for, you know, the victims in our storytelling, but also they know that this is a family that is still living with loss, that they're still dealing with that in their everyday lives, no matter how many years later. love to do their own research about the forensics, about the science. And so I know that fans have been really into looking into gunshot residue, gunshot residue testing. That's something that came up in the Fannion case. And I know it's come up in other cases just this season at 48 hours. So I know the fans are always into the forensics and those kinds of details that can allow them to be their own detectives and do their own sort of investigation from home. I do keep up with the chatter online. And I also have people come up to me in the grocery store or in an airport.

Are you serious? Oh, yeah. And they they it's interesting. A lot of flight attendants watch 48 hours. a lot of flight attendants watch 48 hours. And I love my favorite comment is, I'm addicted to 48 hours and I watch it right before I go to sleep. Because I just find that so interesting that that's what people watch before they go to sleep. I love it. I do read the Facebook comments. Usually I'm on there chatting along with fans. I can say that it seems like people really enjoy that we've been telling different types of stories and that we've been finding kind of interesting ways to tell stories that wouldn't have been easily told otherwise.

It seems like people have been enjoying that. Well, I think the fans were saying that we were bringing cases that they hadn't seen on other networks. We were bringing the goods. We were delivering. I think they were feeling like we were tapped in to what was going on around us, that we were tapped into the true crime world. Definitely, we were bringing stories that mattered. Often, what I hear from fans is that we give them information they're not seeing elsewhere. Our 48 hours are sometimes very movie-like and beautifully shot and the story is beautifully

told. What I love about being a part of this team at 48 hours is that, you know, this is a team that is so detailed and thorough in our reporting. And we strive to every week really bring new details to light, new reporting to light. Whatever questions you have as a viewer, I think we try to answer that and more. And, you know, I'm just so proud of the work that we do. I feel like, you know, this is the best reporting team there is when it comes to telling true crime stories. And, you know, they're not just stories. These are people's lives. And so I think we honor people every day when we go out there and report on the stories that we choose to tell. I'm working on this show for many years. I've been in all 50 states, over 40 countries, working the greatest job

I think a journalist can have. That's it for this season of Postmortem. Thanks for tuning in. Postmortem was produced by Caroline Casey and Annie Cronenberg. Karen Norbitz is the coordinating producer. Edited by Jamie Benson, Alan Peng,

and Pedro Rafael Rosado. Production help from Reginald Bazil and Marlon Polycarp. Megan Marcus is the VP of Paramount Podcasts. If you like this episode, please rate and review 48 Hours on Apple Podcasts and follow 48 Hours wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen ad-free on the Amazon Music and Wondery app or with a 48 Hours Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey

at wondery.com slash survey. Listen to Murder in the Orange Grove, the Trouble Case Against Crosley Green, early and ad-free with a 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free on Wondery Plus and the Wondery app.