Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Ashley Flowers from Crime Junkie

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

In this special episode of Conan O’Brien IS a Fan, Conan sits down with Ashley Flowers of the podcast Crime Junkie to discuss what got her into true crime, why LA is the place to be for the genre, and her novel All Good People Here.

Hey, Conan O'Brien here, and this podcast is a little different today. Normally on Thursdays, we drop a Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan where I talk to anybody anywhere in the world who wishes to speak to me, and it's really fun. We form these connections. Well, today is going to be a little different. If you're a regular listener or you know anything about me, you know that I am a true crime fanatic. I've always been very interested in true crime since I was a kid, and probably the biggest,

by far, true crime podcast out there is one I really love called Crime Junkie, and it is hosted by Ashley Flowers, who does an amazing job. I had the opportunity recently to sit down and talk to her, and this is one of my passions, and I thought, all right, let's release this in the Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan slot. Conan O'Brien is a fan. Yes. That's what we'll call this one. Conan O'Brien is a fan of Ashley Flowers and Crime Junkie, and this is my chance to chat

with her about our shared passion for all things criminal. So let's get started. All my fans know that I am a true crime fanatic, I think about murder all the time. I know that sounds nefarious, and it is, by the way, but I'm obsessed with true crime, and so I'm very excited right now because I have the opportunity to sit with the person who I consider to be the queen slash king of all true crime, Ashley Flowers from Crime Junkie, Ashley, welcome. So nice to meet you.

Hi. I'm so glad to be here. I think I work murder into most of the conversations we have. So would you say that's fair? Just your overall dialogue. You say murderer, murderer a lot to just even strangers. I murder murderer a lot, yeah, I've been, since I was a kid, fascinated, and I'm a big fan of yours and very thrilled for your incredible success, which is well deserved.

When did you start thinking about true crime, murder, was this a childhood thing? Well, it was. I grew up, but my mom would read to me the fiction stuff, Nancy Drew, then we graduated at Agatha Christie, and then at some point I realized that these stories weren't all fiction and that the murders and stuff that we were reading about could really happen in real life. And I think John Benet, when I was real little, that's when I first started, I always say tabloid height, I was looking at that, and I think that I started.

So you were a similar age, and you thought, wait a minute, this happened to someone who looks a little like me in real life. Yeah, and then I started realizing more and more that these cases were actually happening, and I was just fascinated. So I always say my mom was the OG crime junkie, her mom before her, and I also, someone just brought this up to me the other day, and I literally had this aha moment where I grew up super religious, like no Harry Potter, no Furbys, no Cabbage Patch Kids, I don't know what was wrong with Cabbage Patch, oh, really religious.

Wait, so Harry Potter, well Furbys I can see are demonic, but yeah, we forbade that in our home too. But you're not even religious. Oh, please, I'm very, very religious. Oh, okay. Devout, yeah, devout Methodist. No, no, wait, wait a minute, you're Catholic. Well, same thing, eventually, there's a voice in the sky, and I'm trying to be a good person.

If that's all it was, I could get behind it, because that voice in the sky. But moving on, so you, yeah, you got- So I couldn't do a lot of things, and so I think that one of the reasons someone pointed out, maybe you were so invested in this, is because this was one of the things that we could read or watch or whatever, for whatever reason, that was allowed. And so possibly that's one of the reasons I was so deeply invested. That's so interesting. So you find something that you love, absolutely love that fascinates you, and you feel like

you were put on this earth to do it, and then you get to make a living doing that. That is- It's truly- That's the miracle. I know that that is so rare, and I say it all the time, that I don't, it feels like work sometimes, but I love every second of it. I have never worked harder or more in my entire life, but I've never been happier. I'm curious, is there a certain kind of profile of a killing that interests you more than

others? I'm definitely drawn to unsolved cases, because I feel like there's something I can do. And that's kind of been the theme of, the whole reason I started this, is I was looking for what can I do, where I'm just consuming, consuming, consuming, I felt like I was taking and taking and taking from the true crime community, and I wanted to give back. I also, which my audience, I think, fucking hates, but I was really drawn to crimes with children. Yeah.

I was never a fan of a crime story that involved a child, but then once you have kids, and I think, Sona, you have kids now, you have a child, it's like, I have two kids, I just said eight child. You have two of them. Eight child. Your favorite, that's for sure. Eight child, who I really respect, and then that other guy. I love them both to death, but to death.

But I don't think we're meant to understand the concept of the end of the universe, or the end of time, and we're not, our brains are not meant to understand how someone could do that. I'm also really interested by missing persons cases. Like this idea that someone can be there, living their life, and then just vanish into thin air, which obviously is not what happened. It's not an alien abduction, but that there's no trace is mind-boggling to me. Yeah.

Are you fascinated by this world of true crime? You know I am. I mean, I feel like you and I first bonded because of our shared fascination with murder. That's right. When we first, I interviewed Sona, chose her to be my assistant. We all make mistakes. Okay. I have to mention that.

Okay. Well, whatever. I was young and foolish. I wasn't that young. I was like, how long ago was this? I was middle-aged and foolish. No, but I swear to God, and Sona's being super professional, and I'm being professional as the boss, and we happen to be driving someplace.

The next thing I know. Stop. You and I are driving up. Yeah. L-C-L-O drive. That was your interview? No, no. This was after the interview.

Very early on, working for him. Yeah, this is how I, now I'm going to get in big trouble. Let me drive you to the house. I was like, I can't tell if this is a dream or the biggest red flag. I know. I know. I know. I would love it if this was the interview.

Yeah. Of the nine people I took to the Sharon Tate crime scene, only one seemed interested, so she's got the job. You realize she can't read. She doesn't know how to work a computer. Oh my God. No, it was after you were hired, but I remembered we were both finishing each other's sentences, and that's when true crime people find each other, we can finish each other's sentences.

And I'm sure you've had that many times, you meet people, and they're in lockstep with you. Yeah, it's the stuff that you've been dying to talk about, but you don't want to be the weirdo in the room usually. And so when you find somebody who you can have those conversations with, it feels amazing. I think it's also just being in Los Angeles too. I feel like LA is so rich with just like serial murderers and all these like fascinated twisted murder stories.

It's almost like it's just in the air sometimes. That's a good ad for LA. Come to LA. We're in murders in the air. Murders in the air. You know, it is. I have to say when I first came out here a million years ago to start my career, I came to LA right out of college and I remembered driving around and feeling it's such a sprawling

place with these long highways. And it does feel like there's a reason that Richard Ramirez thrived here, like that there's a certain kind of killer that almost thrives in the way that LA is constructed. Does that make sense? Yeah, I get that. You're here and you can, do you know what I mean? You can come from anywhere. LA is filled with so many people who weren't from here and things can feel ruthless and

creepy if you're driving out in the outer reaches of LA. There was a guy back in the 60s named Mac Ray Edwards and he killed children and he actually buried them in the freeways in LA. He worked construction and so they're like still there and they'll never dig them up because it's too expensive. They can't shut down the roadways. It's wild. That's insane.

I never heard about this. Oh my God. Mac Ray Edwards. Yeah, we did a whole episode on him. It was unreal. This is a very specific question, but in all of your thinking and all of your work that you've done on this, is there an effective way to get rid of a body or like a really effective way?

I mean, clearly everyone, I would think burying a body would be, oh, that's great. Who's going to find that? They always find it. They always find it. They always find it. And animals find it. They go pretty deep in a pretty remote spot. Water seems to be pretty effective, very deep water, if you can like really weight it down.

I'm running this down. I had an ex-cop who I worked with for a long time and he was like, if you ever need to get rid of a body, there's this marshy area in Indianapolis and I'm like, why are you telling me that? He's like, trust me. Trust me. It never lets me down. It's like, yeah, you got to find the places that are just like hard to get to.

You're throwing people over canyons and if you can just make it somewhere that isn't easily accessible, even if police have an idea, there's a lack of funds, there's a lack of personnel, so maybe you can get down there, but you don't have the resources to, or there's places where you just physically can't get and that's... Breaking Bad made a really good case for a giant vat of acid, which, you know, because interesting. Okay, that's great. Problem.

Then in your credit card history, there's a giant vat of bone dissolving acid. Body be gone. Body be gone. Like, where do you... I bought three vats. Where do you keep that? So, if they come looking for the missing person, you're like, ignore the vat in my garage.

Yeah, yeah. And then, exactly. Or, and then you have to make up like, not so I cook my turkey. You've heard of deep frying. I just put it in acid for three minutes. I do think construction zones are pretty effective too. Like, they just build on top of it, then no one will ever look for it. You have to break an entire building to find a vat.

That's what I would do. Yeah. So, you would... Find a construction zone and then just kind of dump it really deep there and then try to... Like, if you knew when they were pouring the concrete, ideally. Exactly. Yes.

That's good. That's good. Are you taking notes? Are we okay? Keep in mind, son, my legs are very long. Just keep in... Remember how long my legs are. I'm just saying, because I know what you're thinking.

No, I don't think... They're like, I love this new library. Why are these long, skinny legs sticking out? Oh, yeah. I don't know about that. No one would know it was me if you did get murdered. I would not... There wouldn't even be...

Well, there would be quite a few suspects, but I think they would know it would be me. Yeah. Sonor wrote a very popular book all about our strange relationship and the subtext of it is, I'd like to kill my boss. Yeah. Yeah, it's really sweet. That's sweet. Yeah.

So anyway, that will be evidence. If anything... You have to do me a favor. Refer to the book. You wrote a novel. I did. It's my first novel. My hat's off to you.

It's a huge success. Thank you. Yeah. All good people here. Tell me what led to you writing this novel. So I had this story, because it's a fiction novel, a little bit away from my true crime background. And I had this story kind of in the back of my head after hearing so many cases, again,

what's the perfect crime? What are the mistakes that made? This idea that we all think we know what's happening in a case and can pass judgment when really we have no idea what's happening. And for the longest time, I just didn't know what to do with that story, because it didn't fit into my true crime world. I didn't think it would make a good fictional podcast. I also didn't want to confuse what we were doing and podcasting.

And so finally, I decided, you know, if this is going to be anything, I think it's big enough that it could be a book. And I had no idea if it was going to work, but you don't know until you try. I thought the same thing about the podcast, and I gave it a go, and it was a number one New York Times bestseller. That's fantastic. And do you think you're going to write more of them? I do.

Yeah. I really want to do another novel like All Good People Here. And then I also want to do something more young adult, like a modern day Nancy Drew. I was reading Nancy Drew the other day and realized I would like never read it to my daughter. It's just... Is it pretty sexist? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, it was one that was four, but the crimes were always just things like the chocolate bar went missing. I know. You know? And I think, come on Encyclopedia Brown, let's step it up a little bit. It's clear to me who ate the chocolate bar. And then the answer was always written at the back of the book, like Upside Down. How Encyclopedia Brown cracked it.

It's quite simple, really, he said. And then you find out how he did it. The guy had chocolate on his face. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Pre-lame. Pre-lame.

Pre-lame. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's cool. I think that's cool and I would encourage you. I think that's a great niche, I think.

I think young women, like being able to read, young adults being able to read. It is great when women can read. Yes. Yes. I suppose it is. You know, I used to be against it and in fairness, until very recently. Yeah. About five years ago.

I came around. Yeah. Your daughter would read and you'd be like, why? What is going on? Why are you reading that? You don't. You should be baking a pie. Read this Nancy Drew.

Yeah. So, but I'm glad you talked to me soon and, you know, and convinced me. I'm really glad I did too. Yeah. Yeah. And it's good. It's going to change your opinion on that. Your position.

And now I also think she should be able to vote. Oh, okay. Progress. So I'm getting there slowly. Yeah. We're almost there. A white man on our side. You're not an ally.

You're a true ally. A very slow to convert ally. Ashley, I'm so happy to get to talk to you. And it's funny because technically it's supposed to be work that we get together and have an interview. And then it's available on the podcast, but this is not work at all. Like I do feel like if we were snowed in and trapped in a diner for like six days, we would just be talking about murder.

I wouldn't even know it was six days. It would not know it was six days. Well, the food would start to go back and then you'd know. And I would really start to stink. But thank you so much for doing it. Ashley Flowers, Crime Junkie, the biggest podcast in the history of podcasts. So congratulations to you. Thank you so much.

And thanks for doing this. Thank you. This is great. Conan O'Brien Needs a Fan with Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Salateroff and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Music by Jimmy Vivino.

Supervising producer, Aaron Blair. Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples. Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm. Engineering by Eduardo Perez, please rate, review and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.