Monster: BTK - Inside The Monster Series [bonus]

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

Executive Producers Matt Frederick and Trevor Young sit down for an exclusive behind-the-scenes conversation about the makings of the Monster series. Get the scoop from the beginning and find out how a one-off investigation into a serial killer in Atlanta became an award-winning global podcast franchise.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between Jeremy Scott and the son he'd never known. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Explore the winding halls of historical true crime with Holly Frye and Maria Tramarchi, hosts of Criminalia, as they uncover curious cases from the past. The legend of the highwayman suggests men dominated the field. But tell that to Lady Catherine Ferrer's, known as the Wicked Lady, who terrorized England in the mid-1600s.

Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death. Highwaymen are in the hot seat this season. Find more crime and cocktails on Criminalia. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, listeners. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of What Happened to Talina Czar. It's the story of a woman who disappears in the early days of COVID lockdowns and the group of online sleuths who try to find her.

I didn't wanna be talked out of this plan. After I post this, I am turning off my phone for exactly this reason. I kept just kind of asking everybody, anyone else think this is strange? You'll notice that about me. I don't lurk. I'm out there. I'm an action kind of girl. You can now get access to episodes of What Happened to Talina Czar, 100% ad free, with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription. I'm a subscriber and you should be too.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Hello everyone and welcome to this exclusive interview going inside the Monster franchise. It's yours only on True Crime Plus. I'm Laura from the Tenderfoot TV team, and today I'm sitting down with the producers behind the podcast, Matt Frederick and Trevor Young. Matt has been the lead executive producer at iHeartMedia behind what has become an award-winning

six-season True Crime franchise known as the Monster series. And today we're gonna dig into the long road that he and his team have taken over nearly a decade to bring you this hard-hitting investigative journalism, case after case and season after season. Quick heads up for everyone today, it's pouring rain where I'm recording, so if you hear some thunder in the background, don't freak out. I'm just hoping it's going to add a little bit to the mood as we dig into some of these gloomy topics.

Hey, Matt, thank you for joining today. Hey, thank you for having me. I'm quite excited to be here. This has been a huge part of my life and career. Yeah, I can only imagine. Can you actually just start us off by sharing a little more about you and your background and how you got into podcasting in the first place? Oh, sure.

I'm a super nerdy actor drummer kid that came out of high school, got a film degree, and didn't think I was gonna get a job for a long time. But then I got an internship at this place called How Stuff Works. And I did everything there from logging video tape to doing metadata and all kinds of stuff like that, to then shooting videos, to then editing videos, producing them.

And eventually we pivoted to audio and I became an audio producer and then moved my way up there to a supervising producer and then executive producer. And okay, what brought you into working on the Monster series? Because I was a big fan of How Stuff Works, I still am, but it's quite a different world and genre from where you've ended up. Can you talk a little bit about that journey?

Oh yeah, for sure. I was making a show called Stuff They Don't Want You To Know that I co-created with my buddy, Ben Bolin, a friend of mine that we've known each other since we started basically at How Stuff Works. And we had covered a lot of mine that we've known each other since we started basically at How Stuff Works. And we had covered a lot of true crime before in the past, but we had an opportunity to partner with Tenderfoot, which had just created Up and Vanished and happened to be in the

same office building that we were in. And our boss at the time, Jason, had a meeting with them. And I guess I was tapped along with my friend Alex Williams as the team on our side basically to partner with Tenderfoot to create a new show that was it was going to be very different than anything we had created before but we figured hey if we put our research background into this thing into a true crime story that Tenderfoot's really good at making clearly, we can make something special. And that became Atlanta Monster. At that time, man, it was just so, just to think back, like,

everybody was scared. It was always, be careful, you know, every way I go in groups. You know what I'm saying? It was like everybody was scared. And definitely the people from where we grew up. Like, like, well, around from where we're from, everybody over there was scared because that's where they was getting the kids from. It was crazy, man.

Like, that time was like the Bookerman. Kelphi Cup, it's literally somebody going around taking kids. And they would find them in Chattahoochee, they would find them behind buildings. That was just our life. When you're living through something like that, it's kind of like different. It was just something we had to deal with. Watch for the boogie man. Can you talk a little bit more about how Atlanta Monster got off the ground initially?

Like, did you have any sense at that point it would become a franchise or was it really just this one-off show that you all came together to start working on? When we began making Atlanta Monster, it was a singular show. It was a huge historical story we wanted to tell about our city, Atlanta, and, you know, about... It's a somewhat hidden story, even though it's been told before in documentaries.

It's not a thing if you walk around and you ask the people of Atlanta about this story about the missing murdered children, the child murders, Wayne Williams. A lot of people don't know much about it at that time. And we're talking 2018 when we're making the show. And we just thought, well, we can probably do this thing justice if we actually put in the work to go to the archives and find all of the old material that some of us remembered, like Monica Pearson going on the television and stating those words, it's nine o'clock, do you know where your children

are? That kind of thing. So as we're actually beginning that process of research, we're finding these archival materials that have never been digitized before. They're all just sitting on physical tape in this massive vault. So there's a team at the University of Georgia that is actually like doing the metadata thing that I started doing as a kid,

working at this company as an intern. It was actually overwhelming the amount of archival material that we found to the point where we're going through it and on the cutting room floor, you've got, I would say hundreds of hours of stuff that we didn't use in Atlanta Monster. Was a lot of that information that you found

in the vault and on these tapes, like new information to you? I mean, I imagine that since you grew up in Atlanta, you said people didn't really talk about the child murders, but it's something that you were familiar with from when you were younger, right? It's local history. Well, let me be clear. I didn't know much about it.

I was kind of in the same position that Payne was. Okay. Neither of us knew a ton about it, but we had people that we worked with. We had people around us that knew a much about it. I was kind of in the same position that Payne was. Okay. Neither of us knew a ton about it, but we had people that we worked with, we had people around us that knew a lot about it, and we made connections with people like Kalinda Lee at the Atlanta History Center who told us the full story before we even really dove into this thing that much. And once you hear the story and you start to see the details of it, we realize that this is a at least ten part series, like kind of following the rabbit holes that it creates when you're going down the possibilities of who could have done this, who was blamed for

doing this, you know, who was actually incarcerated for these things, and all of these children that were killed. It's just, it's an intense thing. Okay. So you're, you're looking through the vault, you're connecting with local historians, you're getting all of this information. How did you sort things out? Like, did you have, it was you and Payne and who else was on the team? How did you all approach, you know,

distilling this down into a show? Yeah, so... Uh, on the creative side, you've got Payne, Lindsay, Meredith Steadman was huge, Donald Albright is working on it. Jamie, I think, was working a little bit on the show, but more on the periphery, and there were a few other people that were working on the tenderfoot side

that were really doing the putting the story together work. What Alex and I were primarily focused on, along with Jason, was sifting through that archival stuff, finding the snippets that would fit, you know, an empty space in the story we're trying to tell, right? So in the end, other than doing that and then, you know, finding a way to negotiate how to license all of this material that we were finding,

and then also doing the final passes, basically on files that we would get from Paine. On every one of these shows, we work up until the last minute to perfect it as much as we possibly can. It's not like we lock the audio and then it's done for a month and then we just wait to release it. The nature of the show is we keep going

and we keep giving notes, we keep making passes. And one of my primary jobs, along with Alex, was to get that final from Tenderfoot and then go through and just adjust the levels, mix it and master it just perfectly, at least to our, to what we thought was as perfect as it could get, and then send it out into the world. And it was usually at like, between 10 PM and midnight or something like that, by the time we would get the files and then finish that work and then get them out.

But it was such a fun thing. It felt like college to me, working on a project late at night and like struggling to hit a deadline or something. It was pretty glorious. And what about that specific case and that story felt important to you? Like what compelled you all to dig into it?

Cause it was from, you know, the late seventies. So it's an older case. Why did it feel important to bring it back out of the shadows and out of these tapes in this vault in 2018, 2017, 2018? Well, if you go through the vault, you will find interviews of parents of children who were victims.

You will find some interviews with, they weren't law enforcement officers, they're like maybe former law enforcement officers turned private investigators who had been working on the case back then. And they're giving interviews at that time saying, oh, we don't think Wayne Williams did these, or at least all of these. And we, you know, we think there's somebody else out there doing this stuff. And just because this guy's in jail, it doesn't mean they're going to stop. And then you go in 2017, 2018 and talk to people, and they've got major doubts about

Wayne Williams being the only person responsible for these things. And I think that for me personally and for us as a team, that was enough of a reason to expose as much of the truth as we can and explore it as deeply as we can to try and get to at least a closer truth than the one we were all faced with, which was blaming one man for 30 deaths. Uh, and a man that, at least on the surface, didn't appear to be responsible for those things. Although...

Spoiler, if you haven't listened to Atlanta Monster, please do. Payne ends up talking to Wayne extensively. And I guess you'll have to just hear the show to see how his character gets illuminated over the course of, you know, months of communication. Since you were reopening a case that had more or less been closed, even though people had a lot of doubts

about who was convicted, did you and the team hit any challenges or roadblocks or points of, I guess, contention or pushback since you were, you know, digging back into a quote unquote closed file? Oh yeah. We are actually experiencing some of that right now. Spoiler alert, there might be more Atlanta monster coming to you in the future. Hey, that's great news.

It is. It is. Again, it's great news. Yeah. I guess. It is. It is. Again, it just deserves more and more attention. And the more you can give it, I think that's fantastic. From the law enforcement side, there was a lot of pressure at the time when the first arrest was made and when the investigation was hot and happening.

There was a lot of pressure from the city itself to close the case and put somebody behind bars, take a little bit of the pressure, the PR pressure off of the city itself. And you know, the city was going through a couple of huge transformations and just a lot of money was being pumped into the city and it doesn't look good when you've got a serial killer out in the loose somewhere and Gosh, I don't want to sound conspiratorial If you analyze it it appears that that pressure Pushed some things some mechanisms some official mechanisms like the police departments some of the the Justice Department here in Georgia

like the police departments, some of the justice department here in Georgia, to just get somebody behind bars, blame everything on that one person, and close it, and it's done. We don't have to think about it anymore. But as we're going through the case, you discover, oh, no, there is a pretty heavy Ku Klux Klan thing going on.

There are some individual characters that made threats against specific children that died, there is a child sex trafficking ring that was identified through the investigation that existed in a part of Atlanta, and we couldn't find where the end of that investigation went. How did that end up? Who went to jail for that child sex thing that they'd uncovered? We couldn't find it. And those kinds of things, I think, need to be further delved into.

So then, you all followed up pretty quickly, actually, with your next show, which was Zodiac Killer. And... The next year. The next year. Yeah, so you really stayed in it. What compelled you and the team to build this monster concept into a franchise, and how did you decide on what would come next? In podcasting, you want to capitalize on something that works

because you know if it was a rewarding experience to make it, then hopefully listening to it was also, you know, something somebody wants to do again. So you want to make something similar. But we didn't have another Atlanta story like this to tell. We didn't have something that was that close to home. So we were looking for a story that was big, legendary almost. And I think it was pain that identified Zodiac, specifically the image of this killer wearing this weird

executioner's hood suit thing with a gun and a knife and just this image of that thing as a monster, whatever that was. I think it really resonated with the title and what we were trying to do in the show, analyze what creates something like that out of a human being? Just somebody that was a child one time, you know? How did that thing get created? Like some kind of Gollum or Tulpa or, you know, I'm using weird terminology here, but how does one become that? So we found the Zodiac Killer to be this subject and we just immediately realized, oh boy, we need more people to help us make this in this timeline because the show Atlanta Monster came out on New Year's 2018, right? We wanted Zodiac Killer to come out on New Year's 2019, and we hadn't started research, we hadn't started interviews,

and if you've listened to these shows, you know we interview somewhere between 30 and 40 people, and when you talk to Trevor Young, who is an executive producer at iHeart Podcast now, who was working with us at that time, we've interviewed so many people, you forget how many people you talk to for one of these shows. And you should also ask him about the difficulty tracking somebody down, first of all, and then convincing them to talk to a bunch of nerdy podcasters.

It's not easy. And Trevor could tell you exactly how not easy it is. And the Zodiac Killer was also not a hometown show for you all. It was across the country, right? Yeah. It was in San Francisco. So can you talk really quickly before I get Trevor on here just about the process of, okay, you find this image, this show or the story is based in San Francisco,

you all are in Atlanta. How did you move an entire group of people across the country essentially to, yeah, find these interviews, start building the story? I imagine you had to go into physical archives in San Francisco as well for information. Like, can you talk a little bit about that process? Oh yeah, sure.

We didn't relocate everybody immediately. What we did instead is take a couple of targeted trips out there. So we would pre-produce, while we're in Atlanta, arrange a bunch of interviews for this one big block of a week. And then we'd all travel out there and stay at an Airbnb or something and go out get as many interviews as we can come back to the our little home base area and start cutting those interviews up and I specifically remember a moment when Payne came out to visit during one of our trips and we

were attempting to create one of the first pieces that anybody would hear in the show I think it was the cold open for episode one and Pain came out listened to all the tape that we had gathered Listen to some of the rough cutting that we had been doing just you know trying to ideate on what this could sound like This this sound bites gonna work really well to set up this section the first thing you hear in episode one of Zodiac Killer, the cold open there, Payne came in and just started throwing that thing together because he heard some of the tape and just saw something in there that was special and goodness was

it. I don't know if Trevor wants to talk to you about Tom. Tom's a special guy. He was a photographer who was on the first scene of the first Zodiac murders. And talking to Tom, specifically the way that Payne cut that tape up, it's haunting. And it makes me remember being there in San Francisco, and it makes me remember how freaked out people were at the time.

Christmas time, 1968. All was not calm. All was not bright. Sergeant, could you briefly describe what apparently happened last night? We had a double homicide that took place out on a county road sometime after 11 o'clock. 16 year old girl and a 17 year old boy. How did this incident occur apparently? Well they were shot.

Photographer Tom Balmer arrived on the scene. The night of December 20 was an interesting one. The night of December 20 was an interesting one....6-0-0-9-5-4-9-4-5-6-0-5 Photographers back then were ambulance chasers. We had radios with the local police and fire frequencies and we followed what was going on. ...5-2-3-4-5-6-6-8- I remember a dispatch to Lake Herman Road in Benicia and they said that there were two victims there and they thought it was a murder-suicide.

The woman there that was shot was fairly small in size and they were thinking it was an adult and a child. That was what the original dispatch was as I recall it. So I headed out that way. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis, we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets,

and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. new episodes every Monday. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share.

Um, Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Ever wondered what you would do if you found yourself lost in the wild, in the desert, the jungle or the mountains?

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I heard the nylon dragging against the ice, so I was going faster and faster. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz And all of a sudden, boom! This is the worst place you can be in a lightning storm. I didn't know if I'd make it through the night. If I live until morning, I will live my greatest dreams. Listen to real survival stories. Search real survival stories in your podcast app and hit follow for weekly episodes. Hi, listeners. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of What Happened to Talina's R. It's the story

of a woman who disappears in the early days of COVID lockdowns and the group of online sleuths who try to find her. I didn't want to be talked out of this plan. After I post this, I am turning off my phone for exactly this reason. I kept just kind of asking everybody, anyone else think this is strange? You'll notice that about me. I don't lurk. I'm out there. I'm an action kind of girl. You can now get access to episodes of What Happened to Talina Czar, 100% ad free with an iHeart True

Crime Plus subscription. I'm a subscriber and you should be too. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. Let's bring Trevor on. So you have this team and off air before we started talking, you called them the Monster Squad. Yes. Which I love. That's still our name, I believe. Right, Trevor?

Yeah, it sure is. Trevor, when did you join the Monster Squad, and what was your experience as a part of the San Francisco team digging into this really grisly story of the Zodiac Killer? Because that was your first show you worked on. Yeah, so I came in in, I guess it would have been 2018. So at this point, Atlanta Monster was wrapping up. And at some point behind the scenes on that team, it was decided, hey, we're going to need like a bigger team if we're going to expand this.

Like if we want to, you know, do this again with different cases, kind of replicate Atlanta Monster in, you know, San Francisco or wherever, we're going to need a bigger team. And that's when me and a handful of other people who became the Monster Squad, the first iteration of the Monster Squad, were brought on to work on Zodiac. So that would have been my first show, kind of again at the tail end of Atlanta Monster before Zodiac started. And what was your role at that point?

So at that point I was just a writer producer. We had, I think four of us who all had that same kind of role who were equally in charge of all things from booking guests to actually writing the show, to editing the show, to sound designing the show. So can you talk a little bit about just that creative process? Because, you know, taking news and taking really heavy news and an older case and then bringing it into something

that's engaging and kind of follows an arc throughout a show is a skill. I think anytime you're looking at a story or a case, you need to ask yourself, what is the best way to tell this story? What are the elements of it? What are the beats of it? And the reality is we have to tell each of these stories

differently based on the type of story it is. So the Zodiac was a much older case, not much. I mean, it was maybe 10 years older than Atlanta Monster, but that actually makes a big difference when you're thinking about availability of like who's still alive and what kind of archives were there, you know, from news stations and things like that. And it was also a little bit more of a, I don't want to say complex, but it was just like a bigger story, right?

Like Atlanta was a little bit more of a grassroots type of story. It was a big deal, right? Like it was a big national story, but Zodiac is like one of the biggest serial killer cases known to humankind, right? So we kind of had to approach it a little differently in the sense that we wanted to do it a little more chronologically. So we thought like we would tell that story by starting at the very beginning,

like starting you off at the very first murder, and taking you through it as if you were living in San Francisco at the time, and knew nothing about what was going on. So as if you were just like a local person experiencing this in real time. And we kind of did something similar with DC sniper later, but that was very different from Atlanta Monster,

because Atlanta Monster was much more about, you know, here we are on the ground in Atlanta. Yeah, we're going to knock on people's doors. And we didn't do that so much. We did. I mean, we went to San Francisco and we interviewed people, but it was less like we're going to solve the murder, kind of like Atlanta was, and more like we're

going to uncover as much about this case as we can that maybe hasn't been explored yet. And maybe like revive the case in a way that shakes the tree and gives people new ideas. So we just had to approach it a little differently because of the type of story it was. Wow, that's really interesting. So you already mentioned DC Sniper a little bit, which was the next show that you worked on. Yeah. How was that show, I guess, similar and different to Zodiac?

And both of you can talk about, like, how that one was chosen as the next case. I'm really curious about this process of evolution of the Monster franchise in general. And, okay, you do one story, go to San Francisco. This is a very big case. You told, you know, you wanted to really immerse people in the lifestyle as if they were experiencing it, and then show raps, it's published, it's received in the public, and you're like,

all right, we're gonna do another one. Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting question. Matt can speak to this too, but I think after Zodiac, we were like, I think we want to do something a little bit more modern, you know, something that felt a little bit more timely. And DC Sniper was early 2000s, right? Like, we were all alive and remember that time well. And there was just something about it.

I think we were looking for, you know, stories that felt significant. And this was one that wasn't clear because it wasn't a serial killer, right? It wasn't like your Zodiac or your son of Sam. But what it did have was like that same sense of like terror, right? This idea that like they were terrorizing this place and wreaking havoc and killing people. And nobody knew what was going on and nobody knew who was going to be next. And I think that was like the same thing that was consistent in the previous two seasons that felt like the same amount of fear. And that's why it felt like such a good case for us.

Well, yeah, in Atlanta Monster, there's an unknown monster stealing and killing children, right? It's hard to think of anything much more terrifying. In season two with the Zodiac, there is this physical monster that might kill you if you are being amorous, you know, with your boyfriend or girlfriend in a car. In this instance, there is a monster that nobody can see that is killing you when you're pumping gas in Washington, D.C., you know, in Virginia.

It's hard to describe that terror until you hear some of the interviews that we captured for Monster DC Sniper of people who were there pumping gas and a shot is fired and you have no idea where it's coming from and somebody gets hit and, you know, is bleeding out right next to you. Right. And it comes back to this idea that there's some mysterious evil at work here embodied in one or sometimes two people who are the perpetrators of this. And in all of these stories, navigating and kind of exploring that type of evil in a person, in a monster is the most interesting type of question

we can ask. So we're always looking for that, like is, you know, what can we say about these types of monsters who do this? And that one had a very particularly unique and interesting series of sub questions that came along with it based on the nature of who the killers were. I really enjoyed navigating again,

all of those questions that came along with the based on the nature of who the killers were. I really enjoyed navigating, again, all of those questions that came along with the DC sniper case. Yeah. And one of the main reasons that we covered that one is because we had two members on the Monster Squad. Well, let's just name them all. Ben Kieberich, Miranda Hawkins, and Josh Thane. I believe, Trevor, Ben and Miranda both had experiences with DC and the DC sniper.

Or at least Ben did. Yeah, I know Ben did. Personal connections to it? Yeah, either lived in the area or had family that lived in the area. And then of course our host Tony Harris was a Baltimore native and you know kind of came up in the news world in Baltimore. So he was actively covering it. There was a lot of like personal to the story, for sure.

Right. Well, I would say that's another evolution in the Monster series. The first season is hosted by Payne, exclusively. The second season, Payne is doing part of the hosting, part of the storytelling, and then My Voice is officially hosting it. Now we're moving to a journalist who is helping us tell the story, use that voice,

and just, it was a big step up, I think. I think that was the first time we pivoted into trying to do something that was like more akin to like a serial, right? Or like where we had like a journalism presence that was like the focal point in a very robust way, right? And it was just different. It was just a different type of show,

but I think that served us well for that particular case. Yeah, so did Tony help craft the storytelling element of it then, since he was so familiar with the case and had been reporting on it for a long time? He sounds like he was very involved in that process as well. Oh yeah, surely.

You know, he went with us to everything. You know, we went to DC. We have the creators of the third iteration. It is called Monster, DC Snipers. He was there for all the interviews. We have the host, Tony Harris, and we have two of the producers, Trevor Young and Benjamin Kiebrick.

And guys, if you'd like to... Without Tony, like that show wouldn't have been what it was. He was absolutely integral to the fabric of that show. I feel blessed to have this opportunity to tell this story that I have kind of intimate knowledge of. You remember this story, right? I mean, you remember this.

I just need to feel some energy back from the audience. You do remember this story, right? This is 2002, and I, wow, I was working at Baltimore as a news anchor for the Fox affiliate there, and on the second, I remember us getting a call in our newsroom about a shooting in Montgomery County, which was odd and weird because, you know, as was mentioned, Montgomery County is kind of this

pristine community, a high net worth county in Maryland. That would have led our newscast that night. And the next day, all hell broke loose. Five people killed on the third. And at that point, as my news brain was working at the time, I knew we had a massive story and not enough people. I'm thinking resources to cover the story. I'm thinking about

how do we get the information to people? We weren't getting anything from police. So you're just conflicted and you're wondering if you're doing a service to the public, but we have people, viewers who are clamoring to know everything there is to know about this case and so I you're feeling conflicted and everything else and and I'm still thinking as An anchor as a reporter trying to get information at some point and I don't know when at some point I started to think like a human being and I started to think about the people who had been killed their lives, their families. And then it must have been around the time when Iron Brown, 13 year old kid at Tasker Middle School

shot. Yeah, that's right. He survived. That's right. He survived at Tasker Middle School. And I think it was shortly or certainly in that moment, I began to stop thinking about this purely as a story with all the adrenaline that goes along with being, you know, a reporter or anchor on a huge story with national and international interest. And I started to think about myself as a father of two young children. And the story kind of changes for me at that point. What particularly stood out to you about DC Sniper? Like were there any themes or moments that really hit home for the two of you since it was something that happened during your lifetime? Oh yeah, one of the biggest things

that drew us to this story, it's kind of spoilery, so here you go. Listen to Monster DC Sniper, please. There were two human beings involved in those killings, at least when it comes to the trial and to the official findings of the investigation. One of those people was quite a bit older than the other one, and appeared to be a mentor, almost father figure, to the other that was a kid, basically. At least a very, very young man.

And that very, very young man, Leiboyd Malvo, was at the time that we were making the show, the legality of his sentence was being looked at. Basically, can you sentence this kid to his life in prison forever without parole? Was it legal to even sentence him to that? He was 17, right? So he's like right, he's right on that line

of what the law says, okay, you're a man now, or oh, you were just a boy. And he is potentially killing, murdering people in cold blood. Or is he? Which was all part of the trial, trying to figure out who actually is pulling the trigger on each one of these deaths. I think that sort of moral, you know, gray question was one of the most fundamental, like, paradigms of what we tried to dig into in the show

and try and explore. It's funny if you, I can't help but go back and look at reviews of shows and people are, it's funny you'll go and read reviews and they're gonna be like, oh, they ended up saying that he was far right opinion or they ended up saying he was far left opinion on that particular topic of the death penalty and all that.

And in my memory, we were pretty center on it. Like I think our goal was purely to ask the question and then present all the different viewpoints and let listeners kind of come to their own conclusion on it. But really like there is no answer. It's like one of the most interesting questions to me about whether or not, you know,

someone who's a minor when they do a terrible deed was fully aware of what they were doing. Like if their brain was fully developed enough to the point where they should be held responsible the same way an adult should. Right. You know, especially right on that cusp, like as Matt was saying, like right at like 17. And you know, or if like, you know, we can look at brain science and say like, no, they really weren't developed and he was entirely impressionable, you know, to this older man.

And it's so much of it comes down to like, I think, gut or instinct feeling for people. Like when they look at interviews with the young man and listen to the things he said and the way he acts, like you just kind of have to like feel it out sometimes. And it's just so open to interpretation. I found that very fascinating. Well, yeah. And just the concept of exactly what you hit on there, Trevor, how much can you as an individual

be influenced by a mentor, right? Or someone you view as a mentor? And do the actions that you take directed by this mentor, are they your, are you 100% responsible or is that mentor responsible? It is the Charles Manson kind of thing, right? It is. It is a really fascinating conundrum and I have not spent as much time as you both have thinking about this, focusing on it, trying to you know

find a way to then share that externally with millions of people. I would love to hear a little bit about your experience getting in touch with John Muhammad's wife. We haven't said his name yet, but the older mentor, you know, potentially the primary culpable person in this whole situation. Can you share about the experience of talking with Mildred and how she helped untangle this case for you all

and what it was like to work with her? That was all Matt. I think I had found Mildred and how she helped untangle this case for you all and what it was like to work with her? That was all Matt. I think I had found Mildred first, like found her number in contact and reached out. But she and her folks did not want to talk to me. So at some point, I just turned to Matt and I said, can you do anything here? Like, Matt just has like a charm with people, especially

people of Mildred's caliber. So all the credit should go to Matt because he took a crack at it, reached out to Mildred, and she was just on board after that. I know that I had an immediate connection with Mildred when we talked because she was just, she was so open and giving just as a human being, just like, she wants to help people. She's a survivor, you know, all the work she's done since a lot of the stuff went down is to teach other people about what it looks like when you've, you're in a relationship with somebody who, you know, begins to act this way when you are, you know, being abused

and you're in that situation. How do you get out of it? How do you even recognize that you're in that situation? If you're used to that situation? I honestly have no idea. There were several people that we talked to for the show that required convincing, just like being able, getting somebody to come and hang out with you and tell you about the worst moment, worst hour, worst day, worst year, worst relationship.

Like, imagine, imagine your worst relationship right now. Now, imagine somebody says, hey, come on over and talk to me for five hours about that relationship. I'm going to record it and I'm going to make it into a podcast. That's a scary thing, unless you're somebody like Mildred who wants to use that to teach other people what she has learned. Yeah, that's true. I mean, you know, one of the things about the Monster series

generally is just that thing of needing and wanting to convince people to talk about this is one of the biggest challenges to making any of these shows, right? Because like in order for the show to exist, those people have to be people to talk about this is one of the biggest challenges to making any of these shows, right? Because like, in order for the show to exist, those people have to be willing to talk. But as Matt alluded to, they oftentimes really don't want to, you know, I mean, and why would they, right? Like, so I think going into this as a producer, you have to come into it with like a large

bank of empathy and understanding for where these people are coming from and not do this, not reach out to them and try and convince them from a point of like, hey, I need this for my project, right? Like, come on, this is my job. But like try and befriend them, like try and meet them on their level and understand where they're coming from

and explain to them like the importance of what you're trying to do and why it would be important for them to be a part of it, right? Again, not demand it, but just try and build a relationship there that would make them want to talk to you about it. Yeah. And when you finally do get to speak to somebody like Mildred, one of the reasons why she was such a big deal for us in the show is you start to see a completely different perspective of a story that we all read in the news that, you know, a lot of us grew up experiencing. And then you realize this huge thing about this, this guy or this group of people that was using a sniper rifle in a vehicle to shoot people and cause

terror. And that's really what you remember in your mind. You remember the terror part, you remember a couple of the headlines, you remember seeing it on TV maybe, but you don't hear or know the story about his spouse and their children, and the potential custody battle, and the abuse, and all this other stuff. And why maybe was he in that car using a sniper rifle to kill people and what could have actually been going on in his head and Mildred just gives you that context. So when you're doing these kinds of interviews especially with her and

with people who've you know been through these really traumatic experiences. Do you, I mean, I've talked to Neil, the host of To Die For, and he talked about doing like trauma informed interview training and work around that so that he could make sure that he was, you know, conducting interviews in a way that was not causing more harm. I'm curious if you guys have ever done anything like that, or if you've learned along the way

and what kinds of tools you've learned to open up those conversations for people in a way that is, you know, it sounds like you have a lot of natural empathy to begin with, Trevor. But like, how do you approach those sensitive conversations and build trust? And can you just talk a little bit about that, that sort of side of things? Yeah, I mean, the short answer is that it's something you kind of learn, right? Like, I think it's just like a skill you develop the more you do it. And the way you, I think, approach it is just with a... You know, it sounds kind of maybe silly, but you just approach it

with like a degree of like softnessness and being unthreatening. Right? Like I think the... It's not silly at all. It's such a simple thing. And I think that's just how you approach anybody in life that you want to have a... build a relationship with or just have a successful interaction with, right? Is like, hi.

How are you? Ask them about themselves. Don't make it all about you, right, is like, hi, like, you know, how are you? Like, ask them about themselves. Like, don't make it all about you, right? You know, like, the softness approach is, you know, coming into it with just like an overwhelming friendliness that puts people at ease. You know, there's just kind of all these interpersonal ways that I think we all should talk to people anyways.

Yeah, so I think part of that is exactly as you're saying, on the job training, and you see when, oh, I'm being a little too cold and just asking questions right now, because I can read on the face of the person I'm talking to that that's happening. Yeah, there's something about the skill of specifically being in a physical room with somebody

and just feeling their presence and knowing when you're going in the wrong direction. And you can feel it. You can literally feel it. We had a moment on Monster the Zodiac Killer, and we were interviewing Dean Farron, who was the husband of Darlene Farron, who was part of the second shooting that occurred in the Zodiac killings. And that man had such a complicated life in relationship with his wife, and his daughter, and, you know, a new family, and all this other stuff going on in his world. I could see that specifically I was stepping on toes and a new family and all this other stuff going on in his world, I could see that specifically I was stepping on toes

and taking him to really uncomfortable places as I was talking to him. And ultimately, I did the thing where you kind of just let him talk a little bit about what he wants to talk about, and then you just pull back the layers, you know, that are this list of questions that you're going in with, which we're kind of doing on this interview, Sasha, right now. It's what happens organically, right? You're like, oh, we don't actually need to go

that route right now, let's just talk. Yeah, having that like in the moment sensitivity is crucial. And, you know, as you said, I think like one of the biggest things we could ever do to, you know, convince people that we're worth talking to is explaining to them that we don't have an agenda. We literally just want you to tell us your story, unfiltered, no way that we're trying to manipulate this.

We just want you to express your honest feelings and recollections and nothing more. We're not asking you to subscribe to any ideology or, you know, that's always a big issue with some people is like, how is this going to be used? Like, how am I going to be manipulated in some way? And I think we always just have to like let people know, like, no, like you're going to start your story,

you're going to end your story and we're going to put that in there. That's all it is. Yeah. A lot of the individuals that we end up talking to are used to going on an episodic true crime show on like, true TV or one of these places or Oxygen and they just go on, they tell their story and they're on a 30 minute episode, right? And often a producer is behind the camera in those tapings saying, could you say that again, but just really like angle in on the

fact that your daughter was this, this, this, and that's not at all the energy we're coming at anybody. Right. I mean, that's really unique and I think important and a service to people, right? Like, to me, if I'd been through something like that, I think it would be a relief to be able to just talk. Yeah. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast, Serial Killers, where we go deep into notorious true crime cases. With significant research and careful analysis,

we examine the psyche of a killer, their motives and targets, and law enforcement's pursuit to stop their spree. Follow Serial Killers wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. wherever you get your podcasts and get new episodes every Monday. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid.

Long silent voices from his past came forward. And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share. Gilbert King, I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story. I was part of it. Every time I hear about my dad is, oh, he's a killer. He's just straight evil. I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known. If the cops and everything would have done their job properly, my dad would have been in jail. I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place. Now I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley, season two. Jeremy, Jeremy, I want to tell you something. I'm literally a son of a killer. Bone Valley Season 2. Jeremy. Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Ever wondered what you would do if you found yourself lost in the wild? In the desert, the jungle, or the mountains? Would you make the right choices to stay alive? Introducing real survival stories, the new podcasts from Noiza. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

How the heck did I get here and how the heck am I going to get out of here? Am I going to be a pile of bones in the Australian outback or am I going to make it out? I heard the nylon dragging against the ice so I was going faster and faster. And all of a sudden, boom. This is the worst place you can be in a lightning storm. I didn't know if I'd make it through the night. If I live until morning, I will live my greatest dreams. Listen to real survival stories.

Search real survival stories in your podcast app and hit follow for weekly episodes. Hi, listeners. I'm Melissa Jeltsin, host of What Happened to Talina's R. It's the story of a woman who disappears in the early days of COVID lockdowns and the group of online sleuths who try to find her. I didn't want to be talked out of this plan. After I post this, I am turning off my phone for exactly this reason." I kept just kind of asking everybody, anyone else think this is strange?

You'll notice that about me. I don't lurk. I'm out there. I'm an action kind of girl. You can now get access to episodes of What Happened to Talina Czar, 100% ad free, with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription. I'm a subscriber and you should be too. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts, search iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today. So, I'm going to pull us back into the world of the Monster franchise and kind of the journey that it's taken. So, after DC, this big national story, you all went abroad for the first time.

And how did that happen? How did you go from all these U.S. stories and, you know, starting with a very local story in Atlanta to Belgium? On June 24th, 1995, two young girls went missing in the province of Liège in Belgium. went missing in the province of Liège in Belgium. There's still no news of the two girls from Grasse-Sologne. It was 25 years ago right here on this overpass that they disappeared. A local man explains that eight-year-olds Julie Lejeune and Melissa Rousseau lived less than 500 meters away.

And they wanted to come here to sign the car. They came to this overpass to wave at the cars passing on the highway below and were never seen again, alive. We can't really take credit for La Monstre. La Monstre was something that was the brainchild of Matt Graves, who's the host of that show. And so it's less that we had some burning desire to make an international monster show, as it is that some very talented person came to us and said, I have a monster show for you, but here's the catch. It takes place in Belgium.

And I don't think we were expecting this or planning on this, but the more we talked with Matt Gray about that case and the more we looked into it, we were like, it's such a compelling case. And so from that point on, it was as simple as saying, yeah, do this, let's see what you got. And he came back to us essentially with all of the research, all the writing, basically did it himself as a one-man band. And we guided him somewhat along the way,

but really it was his baby. And, you know, again, we can't take credit for that, but we think he made something really compelling and we're so glad it's part of the Monster family. Do you think that there's a future in the Monster franchise that goes abroad again? Like, is that something that you all have been considering doing a little more proactively or not so much? Yeah, I don't want to give anything away. But we are working on a sort of ongoing monster series that would explore cases in different countries.

Interesting. I'll leave it at that. I have so many follow up questions and I won't ask them until a later time. So when a show isn't brought to you like Matt did, how do you find a host that's the right fit? We talked a little bit about this with DC Sniper with Tony. Can you just share a little bit more about bringing a host on board, finding the right person?

I'm thinking about the next show in the Monster series after you all came back, which is Freeway Phantom, which also takes place in DC. And we had Celeste Headley as the host for that show, and she was an excellent host, but not really the same relationship that Tony had to DC Sniper. So, can you talk about that process of bringing a host into a show and how really their role within the makeup of everything? Yeah, so, I mean, just to be honest, part of it is like,

who's in your rolodex, right? Like, I had known Tony going back years because we had worked together on other things. And I'd also known Celeste. Celeste was the host of a show I had worked on in NPR. And I was her producer for many years. And so, it's a few things. Who's close to this story, right? So in Tony's case, he was close to the DC sniper story. In Celeste's case, she is a DC person and you know, the freeway phantom case takes place in the DC area. She lived in DC.

Between April 1971 and September 1972, six young black girls were snatched off the streets in Washington, D.C. It took four murders before the police finally realized that one person was responsible. I will admit the others when you catch me if you can. Signed, freeway phantom. This child was laying on the side of the road. It appeared that she was probably either dragged out of the car on the side of the road. It appeared that she was probably either dragged out of the car or thrown out of the car. The person said, I murdered your daughter. The killer believed that he may have been seen by the mother. My mother's for me. That guy is, he's out of sync with even the worst people. I thought that they

would catch him. I thought it was just a matter of time. Is it possible that the killer is still alive? Did she have a memory of that happening? Cause that was the eighties, wasn't it? Yeah, it was mostly. Seventies, okay. So it was before her. Yeah, she didn't grow up there,

but she is kind of a DC transplant. So she knows DC very well and has lived there for a long time. That was a big piece of it. And then, you know, just certain, you know, resume pieces that are important, you know, both of them are fantastic journalists with really great voices, you know, people who are very good at interviewing, good at telling stories, who are writers, who know how to tell a coherent story either in video or audio, and who are lovely to listen to, of which both of them are. In so many ways, they were such no brainers for those stories.

Like they just checked off all the boxes. And so you're always looking for that person, right, who just matches all these things in the right ways. Well, and coming back to where we are now, which is Monster BTK, the host for that show, Susan Peters, is she also fits into that category, right? She's very familiar with the case. How did she get involved in Monster BTK? And how did you all get involved in Monster BTK?

Yeah, so I guess we'll go back to the origins of the Btk series in a sec, but just about Susan, for anybody who hasn't listened yet, Susan is a TV journalist local to Wichita who's been there for decades. And so she actually was covering the Btk story in real time, was directly involved, knew, like had communications with Dennis Rader, you know, just very, like, probably the closest to the story that we've ever had a host on one of these, right, was like, knew everybody involved in the case very intimately, right? So we had actually interviewed Susan just as an interview guest

when we were first starting out this series. When we didn't know who was hosting, what the story was going to be yet, we were just reaching out to people close to the story and talking to them. At some point we interviewed Susan and we were like, wow, she's an incredible story. Also, she has a long history of both journalism and speaking on air and storytelling, right? I think it just occurred to us that Susan would make a fantastic host for that show and bring a kind of fresh perspective that we hadn't had on a monster show yet. But the story of how we started BTK

is something I can let Matt talk about. So one of the incredible things that happens when you make a hit true crime show, the way Payne and Donald did, and they made up and vanished, is that people want to talk to you. They reach out to you, and they want to tell you their story.

And sometimes it's just a, you know, a casual connection. Sometimes it's a, hey, let's get started on a project. In this particular case, Payne just hit it off with Carrie Rossin, the daughter of Dennis Rader. And they were just talking a bit and realized, hey, let's do an interview and let's try and make a monster series about your dad. And so we had Carrie come down to Atlanta. We went into a studio. Trevor, was it like four or five hours maybe?

It was at least five hours. With a break in between. Yeah. It was a long, long interview. Yeah. And we captured everything. She was just telling her story that time? Like that whole time? Yeah. Yeah. And we captured everything. She was just telling her story that time, like that whole time. Yeah. Yeah. She sat with Payne and just they just talked. And again, Payne is one of the best interviewers I've ever seen.

He just puts everybody at ease and just sits there and will just chat with you for a while. And it can jump around because Payne thinks about stuff like an editor. So he might get a chunk here that he knows, he's like, oh man, we can use that to tell this story later. And you can see him editing in real time. It's kind of awesome. It was a spectacular starting place for this story, right?

That became the groundwork for what became Monster BTK, right? Even though that was actually like over two years ago at this point that we did that interview, it was like the starting point from which we spawned the rest of the series. And built it around, really. Yeah, then we talked with John Douglas after that. And he was an integral piece of just understanding. Wrapping our heads around Dennis Rader a bit.

Yeah. And then we just dug deeper and, you know, as I said, we talked to Susan. Susan, you know, at some point, you know, became our host and became very helpful in tracking down the family members of victims in the BTK story. And we could not have done that without Susan, because Susan had very personal connections with all of those people. As, you know, Raider was being captured in 2005, Susan was the first person to reach out to those people and interview them and get to know them,

and has maintained those relationships over the years. Yeah, again, we wouldn't have had that kind of access without Susan's involvement. What is different about Monster BTK than some of the other stories? relationships over the years. Yeah, again, we wouldn't have had that kind of access without Susan's involvement. What is different about Monster BTK than some of the other stories? Like this one, this case was closed in 2005, you said, right? Essentially, yeah.

Why do you feel like it's important, significant to cover now? And what does it bring to the story? Like, what does this series bring to the story that people haven't heard before? Yeah, I'll say one thing that's particularly different about this series, and we went back and forth on how to do this, but this is the first time in a monster show

where we give you who the monster is pretty early in the series. And rather than keep their identity a mystery throughout most of the series, we instead kind of put you in their shoes and you walk through the story alongside the killer, which is kind of an uncomfortable place to be. But this is, again, you have to approach each story differently

based on the type of story it is. And this one just made more sense to do it that way, because there's so much out there about exactly how he did everything he did down to like the minute detail. And so it made the most sense to, as we're telling you the things that happened, do it from almost his perspective. I thought I could control it.

I soon realized I was in over my head and I was too embarrassed to ask for help. I quickly was into sexual fantasies beyond my control. I had set my goals to be a white hat high, but the lifeboat drifted away from my reach until the deep water became my coping. I had trusted myself to steer the right course, but when I studied books about past serial killers,

the more I learned, the closer I came to believe I could someday become one. I was on a powerful train and could not get off. The track was set. Superman could stop it, but I was not Superman. To cope with what I was doing, I cubed like I would do as a kid. The only way we know most of that stuff is because he said it out loud. Right. Whether in court, like on live television, or to Catherine Ramsland, the person who wrote the book with him, or several other people that he's spoken to over the years.

But most of it are words directly from his mouth. So you kind of have to say who this guy is and then let people go into his mind. And it's my voice, by the way, so sorry about that. Matt is the voice actor for Dennis Rader in the series. For anybody who doesn't know, fun little nugget there. And I'll just say I think that's important to the series for a number of reasons, but you know, I think the biggest thing is like understanding

like the mind of a killer essentially, right? Like I think this is the first time we've kind of intimately put you deep into the psyche of one of these people in this kind of way. And I think through that, hopefully we have a deeper and darker understanding of who these types of people are. And with that sort of insight, we know how to catch this stuff much sooner, right?

Like the whole second episode of the series is like understanding the upbringing and childhood of this person. And you know, if they knew the things then that we know now, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Trevor, do you have any processes that you go through when you're deep in a case and you're investigating these really dark stories? You mean for like how to manage it mentally? Yeah, how you manage it. I think mental health is a big question

that a lot of true crime listeners have, and I think it's really valuable to share how you separate yourself while you're all in on a story like this. Hmm, I mean, this is probably not the answer you want to hear or that you want to replicate or share to people, but to be honest, while I'm in the middle of something,

I intentionally don't. I intentionally like to go all in and let it kind of consume me for however many months that it's part of my life. And then what I do after it's over is I have like a long like detox period essentially, right? So like, I almost feel like it's necessary to like really throw myself into it

to like get the best product. And then like it's necessary to really throw myself into it to get the best product. And then once it's over, then I just go through a sort of tearing apart away from it and then kind of refinding myself. And that is very much a producer thing to do. And that's why I don't recommend people do that. It's like a, I don't know. You're such a musician, Trevor. Gosh, man. You're still like, whatever. It's like a, I don't know. I don't know what to say about it. You're such a musician, Trevor.

Gosh, man, you're still like, whatever. Trevor's an incredible musician, by the way. I can't wait to ask about that after we stop rolling. Did you do any music on the show? No, no. So the person who does all the music for all these shows is Makeup and Vanity set, Matt. And he is phenomenal. He's like one of the best composers I've ever met. And you can really just listen to in general.

He's amazing. So no, he scores everything for all these monster shows. Lovely guy. So in a broader sense, who do you hope listens to shows like this? To the monster franchise shows? And what do you hope they gain from them? Well, first of all, I hope everybody listens that's over the age of, let's say, 17, maybe.

Let's just be safe. I hope everybody listens because these shows, well, I'm so biased. They're important to me because I do think there are stories in here you're not going to hear anywhere else about things that we can all learn from. And most of it is just how our minds work. And you know, there's this weird thing, I don't know if you ever have this, but sometimes I feel really weird about just being either so nerdy or into the hobbies I'm into or just the way I think sometimes. I'm like, oh man, people are gonna think I'm a weirdo

for thinking that way. But when you listen to these shows about the actual real horrifying things that could be going on in your mind, the actions you could be taking, because you can see images, you can see the terrible stuff that exists out there that monsters do.

Your weird little thing, playing video games all the time, makes you feel really good about it. I know that's a weird answer, but really like this, sometimes when you see the darkness, like the true darkness, it makes you appreciate whatever little spark of light you've got going on. Especially if you're in a... I've been in a couple of dark mental places in my life, and I would say this show has helped me realize that, man, it is never as bad as it could be. Yeah, I don't know if I have an answer to the question of, you know, who I would want to listen to this.

Just because... I don't know if I have an answer to the question of, you know, who I would want to listen to this, just because I don't know if I really think about that necessarily when I go into it. You know, I think my approach to telling these stories is first and foremost a responsibility to the people in the stories, right? And, you know, getting what they have to say out into the world in a way that feels responsible and important. And in my mind, there's like nobody on this planet

who wouldn't benefit from telling what are some of the most significant, most harrowing and emotional stories that we've ever faced as a modern society. I can't think of anybody who shouldn't be exposed to, you know, what it's like to lose someone close to you or the kind of effect that violence has on our lives. You know, I think it's too important to limit it to any one demographic or type of person. I really like the tidbit that you had of by seeing the dark, it allows us to acknowledge the light. I hear what you're saying that it did resonate with me.

Last question that I will ask you all is whether there's any updates on past cases that we can expect because some of these cases are well closed, but quite a few of them, you all reopened a lot of kind of new light within them. So I'm curious if there's been any new information that's released in any of the Monster series stories or that you all are planning to release in the future if you go back and revisit any of these. I'll just say real quick, I think we generally try and pick cases that aren't open and shut as much as possible.

I think we like to leave people with a feeling of there's still more to be discovered here. Finding stories that are finished already, just what's the point? You know, to some degree, obviously there is some point, right, in reexamining something, but I think we always want to touch on something that feels like it's ongoing somehow.

So Matt alluded to this already, but there are more developments in the Atlanta child murders case that will likely be explored by us sometime in the future. DC Sniper, we touched on this at the end of the podcast, but it's going to be going on for years. Lee Boyd Malvo's, the young boy in that case, his initiative to try and get parole essentially is going to be an ongoing legal battle that will have a lot of huge implications for the legal system as it develops. And again, that'll probably go on for the rest of his life. So that's something to always keep an eye on. And then the BTK case, I will just say,

I don't want to spoil anything for the end of the series, but anybody who pays attention to the news will see that it's very likely that the murders we knew about during that run were not the only ones. And this is all very new developing information that there are probably other BTK murders that we don't know about or we're learning about in real time as we speak.

So, yeah, all of these things have developments and we're always trying to keep our finger on the pulse and, you know, update things as we go. But, you know, I'll let Matt speak to the rest of it. Yes, there's more coming. And more shows and more Monster. I love it. Thank you both so much for this conversation. I had a great time, which is an odd thing to say,

I guess, given the content. But it's really been fascinating to hear more about all the work, all of the intention, all of the research and empathy, everything that goes into these shows. And thank you for the work that you do. I'm excited to finish Monster BTK. I have not listened to the whole series yet. I'm with everybody else week by week,

waiting for it to come out. So thank you all so much. Any final words or sign-offs? Well, you can visit monster-podcast.com and check out every season. if you don't know a lot about each one. You can learn more about each one. I think Zodiac has some really cool art and some cool behind the scenes stuff.

I think we did the same thing at least a little bit with DC Sniper and La Monstra, the Detroit Fair. Yeah, there's video, all kinds of stuff. Go check it out. Thank you guys so much. Yeah, thank you so much, appreciate it. If you're fascinated by the darker sides of humanity, join us every week on our podcast,

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