Here's Where It Gets Interesting - The Popularity of True Crime with Kate Winkler Dawson

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

In today's episode, Sharon sits down with author and podcast host, Kate Winkler Dawson, to discuss the ways in which we talk about and consume true crime. Kate and Sharon ruminate on why the true crime genre is especially appealing to women, and how Kate feels a responsibility to the women in true crime; they are often the victims we leave behind in order to follow the movements of men who make up the majority of the perpetrators and the investigators. Join the conversation to learn more about The Bender Family, Kate’s research process, and what evidence collecting may look like in an all-digital future. Parental discretion advised due to the overall theme of crime and violence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Quick heads up on this episode, we discussed some elements of true crime. It's not graphic, but it might not be appropriate for young kids. Hello, friends. Happy you are here today. I have a very interesting conversation with author and podcaster Kate Winkler-Dawson today. We have read one of her books in my book club and she has a wildly popular podcast called Tenfold More Wicked and it is absolutely right up your alley if you love true crime and history. And so we're going to talk

more about what it takes to make a podcast, her research process, all kinds of good stuff. So let's dive into this episode. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. Oh, I'm so excited to have my friend Kate here today. We have so much to talk about. We could probably fill three hours of chatting about all the things we have to say, but why don't you start, Kate, by telling everybody who you are and what you do? Thank you. I am Kate Winkler Dawson. I am first and foremost, a journalism professor at the University of Texas, and I'm also a narrative nonfiction author. I have two books out and a third will be coming out next year. And I also have two podcasts that are on the Exactly Right Network,

which is the home of My Favorite Murderer. So that's a tenfold more wicked and wicked words. And I'm just a creative storyteller in multiple genres, which is very exciting. I love it. There's so much to unpack there. Well, first of all, let me just say this. If you are not in my book club, maybe you missed that. We read one of Kate's books over the summer as our book club pick. And we had an absolutely delightful time dissecting that. And also hearing from Kate, as she joined us for a book club meeting, people were extremely curious about your research process, all that kind of stuff. And it was so nice of you to spend time with us, fill us in, give us all the details of how it works to research

a narrative nonfiction book. So all that to say, I would love to hear more about how you became interested in this sort of genre of true crime and narrative nonfiction storytelling. First of all, your book club was fabulous. If anybody is interested in joining, I think you guys were more engaging than almost any book club I've ever been involved with. And I think that it's helpful when you write about murder, people really are engaged with that. But I think this all started with my parents. My father was a law professor at the University of Texas for 37 years before he died. And I went to his law classes and we talked a lot about bad science and good science and

true crime and how people get away with things. And then my mom is a retired clinical psychologist who is also true crime obsessed, probably even more than I am, which is surprising. And so I think that kind of came together when I became a TV news producer. I reported on crime and then I sort of segued once I got into journalism school into book writing from documentary filmmaking. And that's when I just had a lot of freedom. And I just decided that, you know, I tried a lot of different things I wanted to write about war and none of it was working. And a friend of mine said, you take a break from writing book proposals about the civil war by watching 48 hour mysteries and Dateline NBC and oxygen and everything you could think of. And she said, why don't you just think about writing that?

And so I was really hoping to sort of elevate, if I could, that whole genre because I started really feeling when I would watch some of these shows that women were not as respected as I thought they could be. And so I was really excited to fuse my interest in history, my interest in science, my interest in true crime, and also hopefully representing the victims well, as best I can. Span more on the idea that women were not being well represented in this true crime genre. You know, I think this has really evolved over the years. I think we have spent in society an

awful lot of time thinking about women in crime ultimately as props, which is unfortunate. So when you're writing, it is really, really easy when you are looking for a narrative thread that is the most compelling. Oftentimes it is the killer. It's the mystery. It's the fear. You're really playing into this idea that this person embodies everything that we fear, particularly women. But the victim is left behind. And quite often I write about women being killed by men. So it's been difficult, honestly, for me to not fall into that because I am completely fascinated by why people do what they do. But I am constantly checking myself and

saying, listen, you know, this isn't the only story here. This isn't the only character. So in the book that was in your book club, American Sherlock, I had to spend a lot of time flushing out the female characters who are real people, real victims, real witnesses, so that they could stand up to the killer and how interesting the killer was. And that was a challenge. I mean, I really had to find people who I could write from their point of view confidently and with facts so that I could pull people in, not just because they're going to find out about some freaky serial killer, but because there are strong female characters who investigate the case, prosecute them, women who certainly didn't deserve to be killed.

It's just a struggle. And for anybody who's a legitimate true crime writer who cares more about than just people buying your book because it's a really great story. I think we have a responsibility and it's a a daily struggle for me to try to keep up with that responsibility. I can see how it would be really difficult to create well-rounded female characters when so often the women are the victims of the crime and their lives are cut short. You don't have the ongoing investigation surrounding their own actions very often. It's surrounding the actions of the perpetrator. We leave her behind or we exploit details of her life because it makes her more interesting. And I've been guilty of that.

that. We want to give a character, a real person more depth because I'm trying to get that person to be as compelling, as interesting. I want people to understand the life that was taken and the loss that is felt by her family and the people around her. To do that though, oftentimes I do the things that I don't particularly like, which is, you know, I have a woman who is a murder victim in American Sherlock where her husband's accused of killing her in the bathtub. And we had her diary. And there are entries where you're trying to kind of glean information about her relationship with her husband. And I remember writing a lot of it and then taking a lot of it out and just adding one or two lines because I thought to myself this woman probably did not want millions of people reading this diary entry but you want to give depth to someone so it's a it's a big struggle and it's a to me there's no easy answer

what do we print what photographs do we use from crime scenes and oftentimes and I am not categorizing men male writers versus female writers. I think female writers, probably most of them think about it a little bit more just because we're women. And so I'm always encouraging journalism students who are interested in going and writing who are women. If you're going into writing for true crime, let's think about who we are as women and how we can be responsible without hobbling the story that we're trying to tell. It's very complicated. It was a long-winded answer to this is complicated for me. I get it though. This diary was intended to be private. When you are a killer,

your right to privacy, it goes away, right? Like we're going to dig into everything we can because you have lost the right to maintain that privacy. Whereas a victim didn't ask for any of this. Right. But yet you also have to keep in mind that in order to tell her story, you need to know more about her. She needs to be a real person and not just a caricature. Right. Not just a flat Stanley version, the two-dimensional version of a woman. the two-dimensional version of a woman. One image that bothers me is this image that I've written about two or three times now,

because again, I write a lot about men killing women, is in the case of Eileen Lamson, who was in the American Sherlock book. She is slumped over a bathtub. She is naked, blood everywhere, on every wall, on the ground, everywhere. And there are men walking around her, sticking their hand in the water to see what the temperature was, doing a liver test to see what her body temperature was. I mean, throngs of neighbors are coming through, traipsing through her blood, everything. I mean, this is a terrible scene. I don't think people really understand. Once I started reading what a lot of these crime scenes are, like my first book was the same way they're pulling people out of walls he buried women in walls and the idea of a life that was so full now she has been reduced to at least in this moment naked alone dead with tons of men all walking around women too. I mean, all of this, no privacy. It was

to me, it feels like even more tragic ending if you could think of it. So, I mean, you know, what do you think about it is it's so common. I don't think we really think about it because we see the crime scene photo and that's like, somebody is there to take that photo. Some photographers, they're taking that photo. I totally get what you're saying, that it seems incredibly disrespectful to her memory, disrespectful to her as a woman. If she were alive, we would never be okay with that. We would never be like, yeah, let's see those photos. But yet sometimes those types of scenes,

you have to carefully go over literally every single centimeter of that scene in order to ascertain what happens. So I completely understand how you have to feel torn about how to write about things like that. One of the central characters of American Sherlock is a man who is in many ways, the father of modern forensic science. And I love that you humanize him. He's not held up as this like mythic deity. Those are so boring. Those mythic deities. He was really like that. Who wants to read about

someone? I don't. I want the messy, complicated guy who's got so many issues, but he still perseveres and is a hero. I found him much more compelling as a character, knowing what he went through as a young person, also knowing his personal foibles throughout his lifetime. See, here's the thing. When somebody writes about a character from this mythic deity perspective, most of us are well-educated to know there is a lot being left out, right? And then you're suspicious. What is accurate? Right. That's right. Why are we only including the awards and the wealth? Because you know that all humans have struggles. Yeah. I mean, I think it's an insecurity that you would have, I guess, as a writer or with the material you have. And I will say that's segueing in a little bit into research. That's why I can't write a book or do a podcast or really do anything if I don't have a substantial amount of research, because you have to be able to find that stuff.

You know, and Oscar Heinrich with America's Sherlock was 100 boxes filled with archival material. It had his journals, it had his letters. his letters. And I think I would be at a real disadvantage with everything that I do if I wasn't, if I weren't able to pull these things and be able to quote him with confidence. I feel like besides perhaps John Boynton Kaiser, who was his sort of sidekick, I probably know Oscar better than anybody because I read all of his letters. Who else did he let read his letters? Again, though, that's a certain, that's a privilege that I've taken that wasn't given to me. But I think it's for me a higher good because this was a man who was very impactful. And I think his story needs to be told. And there are lessons learned. material you have is very clear on the page. If you don't have it, if you're just quoting newspapers, I think the reader has a good BS meter and they're going to feel like you don't have the material and it lets them know that you don't have a dynamic character, which is the death of any book or podcast or anything. This is a topic that I am very, very curious about. And I

don't even know if you will have an answer because I don't know if the answer has been determined yet, but I will be curious 20 years from now to be a fly on the wall of how crime investigation, how history writers will glean source material when all of our communication has gone digital. I know. Does that concern you? Are you worried about like, how will I get access to people's writings in the future? No, because I stubbornly stay secure in the 1800s and the early 1900s. I will never leave the security. No, I mean, I agree. I don't, I don't know how somebody would do a Ted Bundy story now when everything is done via email. And I feel like I would like you to look this up at some

point. I feel like there is a massive archive of email and it's some, and I've read about this before because I read an article from a historian who kind of said we're screwed, but also said there is some kind of a repository that's gathering these emails. Now, who knows? I mean, who knows what's going to happen? So I am concerned about that. I was thrilled with Oscar's time period, which was in the 1920s, because he'd used typewriter and a dictaphone. Super easy to read. Easy. Right. The 1800s are a nightmare. And I don't know why I keep going back. I think the stories are so good, but there's a, you know, there's a cursive about it. And you have to know when you report on crime, you have to have a lot of social context with what's happening during that time period. So I did an episode with murder squad

with Paul holes, who is this incredible investigator and a murder squad is on my network also. And we were talking about an old case. And I said, you know, the, the prosecutors handed over these letters written maybe by the suspect. We don't really know, but they had initials and there were several different initials signed with initials on several different types of letters. And Paul said, Oh, maybe he was covering for whomever had written these letters, you know, because they've been reduced to initials. And I said, I would think that too, as an investigator in 2021, but as an investigator of the 1800s, I know that almost everyone signed with initials. It was a very common thing.

So the letters were not suspicious and it was understandable why to me we had initials at the end of it. So having a social context and really being a true crime writer, and even if you want to hang out in 2021 and write about the weird stories that are happening now, you still have to understand history and you have to not just understand true crime history. You need to understand history, history, which, where you and I come in. I really love telling stories that are solidly footed in really interesting times in history. And that's where the podcast is really helpful with Tenfold More Wicked, because I can create this world with Tenfold More Wicked, with really great authentic music. I have a composer who will

do all original music from that time period. To be able to immerse yourself in history, I think is one way for people to learn about it through me and not just crime. Like what was it like in 1920s LA? What was it like for women there? What was the, what was the temperature? What was the culture? And then what are investigations like? Because yeah, boy, they're really different than they were. I mean, even from the 1800s, they literally were crossing their fingers like, God, I hope this works out because I don't know if this is gonna happen or not.

And then it gets better and better. But I love learning about history and telling historical stories through crime and why it's important today and what we learn about these stories is something that really resonates with me. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey.

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Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. and wherever you get your podcasts. Do you only like working on unsolved cases? No. Okay, so I hope nobody gets mad at me, but I do not like unsolved cases. I don't. They drive me crazy because I want an answer.

I will say I have two exceptions to that. One is Jack the Ripper. And I don't know if really anybody really wants. I mean, what fun is that? Then, you know, this sort of this, you know, mysterious person, the most mysterious, mysterious killer in history. And if we found out that he was just some lame person, how disappointing that would be. The myth would be gone.

And I don't actually want to know if Lizzie Borden did it or didn't do it. And that's another one. I think people want to know. And I don't actually want to know if Lizzie Borden did it or didn't do it. And that's another one. I think people want to know, and I really don't, I don't, I don't want to know. I think it's more mysterious that a woman in the late 1800s could have done it. And, you know, probably, I don't know if she did or not, but could have done it. And what that evokes in me, which is just a, oh my gosh, I can't even believe would that happen again with this play in any other time period. So, but I, I don't, other than that, I would rather everything be solved and it doesn't have to be tidy, but I would like to kind of know who

did it. It makes me feel more secure. There are people who love to solve unsolved crimes. Those are amazing people. It's a gift to do that. It's a patience to do that. Yeah. I can't do it. Yes. When you look at what people have to do, like the clues they have to track down. And I know we've talked about Michelle McNamara before too, and her work on golden state Killer. And one of the clues that she hunts down is like a cuff link that she finds on like Etsy or eBay and is like, that looks like the cuff link. And then she's looking up the like, oh, there are only four people whose names started with D that were born in 1942. And they could have had those cuff link. I mean, like that level of detail is incredible. I would rather, I mean, I think it would be obviously fantastic to solve something and,

you know, I would certainly be open to being involved with something like that if it's easy. No, it's not if it's easy, but I would rather ask a lot of questions on a solved case. Why did this happen? Is there another possibility? Season three of Tenfold was about a man named Howard Pearson. And it actually is set in Austin, Texas in the 1930s, right? Essentially my backyard. And it's about a young man who kills his father and his mother in the wilderness and shoots himself in the arm. And there are so many twists and turns in that story that I didn't even really realize until I started talking to different family members. And this is 90 years later. And I know people

who know this guy. And, and I think that that is really exciting. We know Howard Pearson did it. He was arrested. He went to a mental health facility for it, secure mental health facility for it. He escaped twice. We know that all this stuff happened. What I would like to know is the why and how it affected the rest of the family, because it affected them a lot. So I think those mysterious questions are the ones I'm really interested in less the unsolved cases, because I think that would be great. But I think I do a lot more good reframing things and just kind of going, well, wait a second. I don't know if this makes sense. Have you heard of the Bender family? Oh yeah. The bloody Benders. Yes. Yes. We should go write a book about them. I think that would be hilarious because you know, who knew about them and was fascinated by them is Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Really? Yes. She of course lived a long life. She started writing her books when she was 65. Wow. And so she did not gain notoriety until she was in her sixties and seventies. And so then once her books became wildly popular, of course, she co-wrote them with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. There's a lot of speculation about how much she was involved, but she was invited to give a speech before Congress. And she mentions that. What did she say? She talked about how, when she was a little girl, they would travel through a town on their way to see one of her, I don't, I forget which side of the family it was. Somebody lived nearby and they would, they ran an in and she told tells in this speech before Congress about how every time they went past

their house, their dad, her dad, Paul Ingalls always made a remark that their garden was always tilled, freshly tilled, but there was never anything growing. Terrible. And I don't know, like as a child, if she knew what they were up to, but it stuck in her mind that Pa Ingalls remarked on it every time they went past that house. And then I think maybe I'm speculating that maybe later she discovered who they were and like connected some dots, but even, you know, little house on the Prairie, Laura was, was touched by the Bender family. Yes. Yes. Their garden is always freshly tilled, but there's never anything growing. So I think they are purported

to be the first sort of serial killer true crime. Do you think your audience knows about the Benders? Have they heard about the Benders? I have very briefly touched on it in a podcast, but never told any of the story. It was a podcast about Laura Ingalls Wilder. I would say the Bloody Benders are one of about 9,000 stories that I've thought about as a book or a podcast. And it's been gone over many, many times. Kansas, I think. Was it Kansas? Is that right? I think they're in Kansas. This was a family so remote. They were pioneering and they were so remote from everyone else that nobody could ever actually figure out where they were from. Maybe Germany. They weren't sure.

But the patriarch of the family, they said did not speak in any kind of language. He had this sort of guttural grunting thing happening. The real driver of this whole story is Kate Bender. I only remember that because of the name Kate Bender. And she was beautiful, of course. And she would lure, they had an inn as you said and it was right on a key path for people going west i believe and so these people would take their little wagons and drive through and they would stay at the end yes and they would they i just remember this terrible scene of the description of they would invite particularly men to come in she would would sort of lure them in. They would sit at the dinner table and they would sit at a particular seat and then the flooring would drop out. They drop into

the basement and Paul or somebody is there and acts them, kills them. And that is where they got this Bloody Bender reputation. And it's a fascinating story because nobody knows what happened to them. Yeah. They literally disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to Kate Bender. And there were a bunch of, there's a brother and there's talk about, you know, some intermingling between family members. I mean, it's really scary sort of deliverance feeling. And then they just disappeared. They messed up in that they lured in the brother of a really famous like a military person and when the brother

went missing the man in the military came looking for him and that's when they all dispersed and that was it so laura i don't blame her it's a very dramatic pioneer story i mean there aren't that many of those i'm sure there were many many serial killers back then but but this was really people it was very clear that they were killing multiple people who they didn't know they just couldn't actually use the word serial at that point yeah yes so interesting it's such a weird interesting it's a sad story but it's a weird story very curious about if pa angles at hack actually knew anything or if he just was a man of his time who just thought it was curious that he'd go to all this trouble to plow your yard, but you never grow any

crops in it. Was he the kind of man to notice those details or did he actually know the details? I mean, my parents once had a neighbor who they said would work in his woodworking shop in the garage late at night, all night long with the light on. And my dad said, and I never heard a saw that entire time. I was thinking, what's he doing exactly in there? I mean, my goodness. But I think that those, those kinds of bloody benders are, these are sort of these real, but fantastical stories that if you are interested in crime, it does not make us lower than other people who are interested in sci-fi. It's just a different type of genre. And it's life lessons that you learn like sports stories in a really interesting narrative way. So

I talked to my students about building a narrative at the beginning, you establish the character. Why do I care about Harry Potter? Because you feel badly for him. Yeah, right. I mean, this, he is the everyman underdog and almost everyone can relate to that. And then you build up, he's got these obstacles and then you get the climax. And then what happens with Voldemort at the end? So we talk about those stories in my classes and in sports and crime are fairly easy, I think, to fit into those categories. Somebody changes over the course of this. Somebody is alive and then they're dead. The person is caught or they're not. Society is frightened or they're not. Generally, there's some kind of a conclusion. And, you know, sports are the same way. You've got people who are vying to win something. One

person, usually one team loses, the other one wins. Somebody's changed afterwards. So I think that has been, I think that's the attraction. And certainly you and I have talked about this before. Women are, to say dominant audience of true crime, I think is an understatement. I mean, it really, it's so interesting. And I think people ask the same questions over and over again. If you are the dominant victim in true crime, why are you so interested in it? So I'm going to turn it on you. I want to know why you think women are in true crime. To me, this is my hypothesis. I think it helps give women a sense of control over their environment because women often feel powerless against victimization. You know, like we all have that mental image of like, I got to get to my car in the parking

garage. There's footsteps behind me. And we'd watch the videos or take the classes on self-defense, you know, like walk purposefully, don't look at your phone, have your keys in your hand, be confident. We seek to gain an element of control about our surroundings that maybe it doesn't actually exist. But I feel like in some ways, if we feel like we can know all of the ways that women are preyed upon, then we can seek to combat them. I mean, how many women do you know that are like, why are you walking in the woods at

night? Don't you know what happens out there? You know, like women know all the places that other women are victimized. If you hear somebody calling your name in the, at night, while you're standing on a corner, you don't turn around and look, I mean, you know, like it's a little backseat driving, I think is what it is. So I, a little, little, what's a better phrase, armchair quarterbacking. And I, and not in a negative way, but it is sometimes gratifying to watch a show or hear a podcast and just say, I don't think I would have done that. I don't think I would have done that. It doesn't mean you don't feel badly for what happened to that person, but I do think you're right. I think you're trying to gather information for protection to a us through. Okay. So first of all, you have a couple of different podcasts. I do. They're different too. Yep. And so for somebody who hasn't listened to it, what is the general

format? Describe the format for people. The show we just wrapped was called Wicked Words and it was on for about eight or nine months or so. And that show, it's an interview format. So I'm doing what you and I are doing right now. I have a journalist on and we talk about their best story. For instance, I had Isha Sese, who is a fantastic journalist from Nigeria, who talked about the Bring Back Our Girls movement. She was there during the abduction of the young Nigerian women who were abducted and some are still gone. I've talked about, we've done just the standard

true crime, BTK killer. We've talked to people who write memoirs about their stories. It kind of runs the gamut. We did one on the Colonial Parkway murder, which was really interesting. A series of somebody who, boy, it's a whole other level if you pull off killing couples and that's what happened in the colonial parkway and so that interview was really interesting it's almost like sitting down with a buddy with me and having a coffee and we talk just like this and i say tell me what the story is and i gasp because i i know the stories but i don't know them that well i don't do a full read on the books because i want to be told the story and ask the questions that people want to ask. So that's, that's wicked words. And that's really nice because journalists have such

a good perspective, usually have a good perspective and they're telling the story for a reason. So the final two episodes of the series were with Elon Green, who wrote a book called The Last Call. And that was about a serial killer who preyed on gay men in New York in the 1990s and how he got caught and why he took so long to get caught. There are some really personal stories, but it runs the gamut as far as true crime goes. And the show we just kicked off is called Tenfold More Wicked. And that was what the original show was. I think of it as a documentary series, a very long documentary series for me, which is six episodes. They're about 40 minutes each. And it is a deep dive into one true crime. But it's more than that. It's soundscape. And when we're talking about like season one was about Edward Ruloff, who was a genius in the 1800s in upstate New York, but he also killed his wife and

child and his sister-in-law and her child and created this sort of crime ring in New York. And when we talk about how he met his wife, he was her teacher in school. You can hear talk going in the background. We can hear the fire happening. You know, it's an immersive experience. And we have great music. The big hook for me with these stories is if I can't talk to a relative descendant, then it won't work for me. That's very important. Second season is about Burke and Hare, who are famous in Europe,

but we found their relatives, which was pretty amazing. And the relatives have some questions about these two serial killers who killed people so they could sell their bodies to an anatomy professor. And one of the other things we do besides talk about this time in history is why it's important. So there was a lack of bodies in 1828, Edinburgh, and there's a lack of bodies now. So I visit the body farm, which is the forensic anthropology center at Texas State University. And we see if you donate your body there, how they use it, what kind of research they do with animals. It's really fascinating. And I went to the anatomy school in Edinburgh, where these guys sold bodies hundreds of years

ago. We talk about the challenge now which is people are graduating without ever working on a real cadaver and it's dangerous and it's killed people before so this is all builds towards the season that we're in right now which is about my first female killer which is very exciting because i said most of the people how i deal with are men killing women so this is a woman named Clara Phillips who has I think it's pretty clear psychopathy and what's interesting about her is that women with psychopathy present very very differently than men with psychopathy and we miss a lot there are more female psychopaths than we think because it's mistaken for other things. Women are more manipulative.

Men are more violent. And so I talked to a psychiatrist about, I said to him, you know, I mean, we shouldn't criminalize people who have psychopathy and all this. And he said, this is what you do. If you know somebody who you think really has psychopathy, you videotape them, you get them on the record. He was very alarming. So it's a lot of why do we care about the story now? And that story is a pretty good example of an interesting character. It was very much a challenge for me to make the

victim as interesting, if not even more interesting. And again, that is not to say that victims aren't interesting. A lot of times they're really good people. They're families, they're living quiet lives. This is the most high profile thing that's ever happened to them, unfortunately. And the killer is frequently different than that. So it's just this battle that I have all the time with podcasts, with everything, just to make sure that we understand that the victim has as much as an, of an impact as the killer does more. Hopefully this current season of tenfold more wicked, you're telling one story through the entire season. I want to know more about your research process. Everybody always wants to know, how do you find these stories? How do

you research these stories? Like give us all of the inside deets. So this is an example of finding what I think is a good story and then figuring out, is this a book? Is this a podcast? Is this an audio book? And again, a big requirement for me for the podcast is to find relatives. And so we found Clara Phillips, who is the killer in this case, I found her relatives, and they knew her and had a lot of information about her. And it is very different than reading a Wikipedia entry, which is what what we get with some true crime podcasts is they sort of read a brief summary of it and and maybe they don't even talk about the pertinent issues and this this really to me is important because when you talk to relatives you're always reminded I'm always reminded of how important it is to treat everybody with respect whether they're the relatives of the

killers or the victims I think the next criteria is it needs to last six episodes. As my producer would say, we need to have the dramatic beats. Usually one murder isn't enough if there's nothing else happening. What are you going to do for six episodes? And nothing drives me more crazy than watching a TV series or reading a book or anything with tons of fat. So I think making sure that the storyline can sustain six episodes is important. Having the relatives is important. Having a great time period. I definitely think though, the biggest thing is what is the bigger picture that I can pull from this story? Tell everybody what your book is that you're working on. Can you tell us any details or when it's coming out? It should be out this October. We haven't, I have a publishing guide

and it's very exciting and it's going to be called All That Is Wicked. And it's, if you listen, I promise if you listen to season one of Tenfold More Wicked, this will not ruin the book because it's a totally different take on the book, but it's about Edward Ruloff, who is this genius in linguistics and a killer in the 1800s, and how people like Mark Twain and Horace Greeley, who was a very famous politician, tried to save his life, even though he had killed all these people because they thought that his brain was worth more than the retribution with these people. that his brain was worth more than the retribution with these people. And there's a scene in that story where he is finally caught and he's awaiting execution, but we don't know if that's actually going to happen.

And he is this genius killer that is sort of the Ted Bundy of the 1800s. And the very first person really to be analyzed, his brain was analyzed, the very first person to be analyzed and sort of mapped in the criminal mind. And he became this avatar for people who are depraved, but who don't fit into the construct of what we think a killer was. So if you hear the podcast, you get the context for the story. There's, you know, it's an overview of the story. We talked to his relatives and all that, but in the book, it's very much about the criminal mind, because in the 1970s, the FBI did the same thing. They started the behavioral science unit. They went into prisons and they interviewed Edmund Kemper and Ted Bundy. And these guys

actually gave valuable information about the criminal mind. And so did Ruloff. So he was sort of the Ted Bundy before the Ted Bundy and really kicked off this fascination that we have with genius killers or people who you just don't expect that people who don't look like Charles Manson. And those are the scariest people. That's the most frightening thing. Yeah. That book will be out in October. And that, so that's really exciting. That's been great. Yes. Super exciting. Also tell everybody about your new season of Tenfold More Wicked. So Tenfold again, the new season is about Clara Phillips. Don't Google her. A woman who ends up killing someone. I'm not going to say who and why women are viewed in the criminal justice system one way and men are viewed differently and why that's important.

And it's just a really good story. It's a story about flappers. She's a former showgirl. She's married to a grifter. I love a good grifter. The victim is the victim is tragic and lovely. And it's a very upsetting story in that way but it created a media circus like they had really never seen and we're talking about 1920s LA which was media circus central with Fatty Arbuckle which was in my book and you know all of these different crimes so I think it's a really interesting story with a lot of really good characters and her family members have very little love loss for her. I have some feisty folks in this, in this episode. Yeah, that's great. I'm excited. I can't wait to, can't wait to dive in. Well, Kate, thank you so much for doing this. Always a pleasure to chat.

Always a pleasure to pick your brain and hear what, hear what is going on. Thank you. I like to hear it too sometimes. This has been a a pleasant surprise I'm even surprised by myself sometimes well thank you so much we'll talk again soon okay thank you thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast I am truly grateful for you and I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.