Snapped: Women Who Murder - BONUS: Snapped 30th Anniversary Special Interview (with Co-Executive Producer and Showrunner, Alyssa Maddox)

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

Oxygen.com Correspondent, Stephanie Gomulka, hosts a special edition episode of “Snapped: Women Who Murder.” To celebrate the 30th season of the iconic true crime show “Snapped,” she spoke with Alyssa Maddox, Co-Executive Producer and Showrunner, about how the show is produced, cases featured in this all-new season, and more exclusive details. Plus, you’ll hear a sneak peek of Sunday, October 17th’s episode.Don’t miss new episodes of “Snapped” every Sunday at 6/5 central only on Oxygen. Watch full episodes of Snapped for FREE on the Oxygen app: https://oxygentv.app.link/WsLCJWqmIebSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of One Reast Podcast American Scandal. Our newest series looks at the story of OxyContin, a popular painkiller that helps spur an epidemic of addiction and drug abuse, in which prompted a broad campaign to hold the pharmaceutical industry accountable. Listen to American Scandal on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Snap listeners! To mark the 30th season of the iconic show you know and love, we spoke with Alyssa Maddox, co-executive producer and showrunner for Snap'd. Plus, we'll be giving you a sneak peek of Sunday's all new episode.

From Oxygen.com, I'm Stephanie Gamolka. This is a special edition episode of Snaped, Women Who Murder. First off, can you introduce yourself to our listeners and tell us about your role with Snaped? My name is Alyssa Maddix, and I am the co-executive producer of Snaped. And I think I've been working on Snaped for three years now. How did you get started with snapped? There's kind of a joke at Jupyter Entertainment that if you've not worked on snapped,

then like, do you really work at Jupyter? Because snapped has been the bread and butter of our company for so long. I actually did a small stint on snapped gosh, like seven years ago as an AP. And then I was moved around to the other shows and then there was an opportunity to work as a show runner a couple of years ago and I've always wanted to come back.

So I was like, yes, I'll do it. And I moved over here in that capacity. We make a lot of snaps. So there's actually two show runners. That's a lot of episodes. So there's two of us that handle it. You know, a lot of fans might not know this, but Jupiter Entertainment, who, you know, produces snapped and that you work for is based out of Tennessee. What is your production studio like? Yeah, so we're based out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and we also have offices in New York and LA

as part of Jupiter holdings. The Knoxville office, well, it's a little different with COVID. Now my office is my bedroom, like everybody else. The Knoxville office is actually really nice. Knoxville is a really big production hub. People don't realize that. And our office is really a tight knit community, I think. All of us have worked there for so long. I think I've been there 11 years.

Yeah, and I mean one of the things that's also pretty interesting is how the studios, the studios kind of set up in Tennessee. Can you talk about some of the studio's sets Jupiter has or maybe how you execute some of the shoots for the show? Oh yeah, like a reenactments. So Jupiter has our main office where we all work and that's got like some settings that we use sometimes for cool conference room vibes, you know, like with the glass that's got the edged glass that looks cool with the lights. So we'll sometimes film in our own office, but then we also have a whole studio set. So we call it the warehouse. And in there we have a gosh, cool, gritty detectives offices, like with the paneling that look old and vintage.

Then we also have regular, more updated modern offices that will use to be detectives offices. We have a hospital set with a hospital bed and all of the stuff for that. We have a jail cell. We also have interrogation rooms and the two-sided glass, like you would find in interrogation rooms. I use that a lot in some of my scenes. So, and then we also just have the city of Knoxville itself. There's a lot of different things that we have to do. Like, if I have a case that takes place at the beach, I have to go to a lake where they also have sand.

And try to make that look like a beach in California, which is always fun. Different kinds of landscapes that we have to make work. I've made Knoxville into New York, Alaska. I think we had something that happened in one of the Virgin Islands, you know, so we just sort of use that as our own back lot. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I remember the first time I heard that I'm curious what some of our listeners will think being kind of shocked because everything looks so different and textured and layered to know that a lot of those scenes kind of happen in the same place is kind of mind blowing. Yeah, we have a really nice

downtown that can double for a lot of big cities, but then we also have a lot of suburban areas, a lot of wilderness areas here in Nierras. There's so many lakes near us, so we're able to make a lot of things work. I've actually done a couple cases in my grandma's backyard on the lake. That was kind of fun. Kind of backing up too for a story to make it on air on oxygen for snapped or maybe to debut on the podcast. What does a typical kind of production of the show maybe starting out with a pitch look like in terms of timing in terms of kind of resources you guys,

you know, dedicate to the show. We actually have a very robust pre-production team. So we have seven people whose jobs are just to find cases and get access to interviewees for the cases. We have a giant database of different cases that we look into and we have certain criteria. So for example, one of the cornerstones of snapped is that this person doesn't have

you know, some prior conviction like this. So it has to be something where it was like a snapped moment. You know, it's not like them to do this. So we come up with people that meet that criteria and then we start just trying to see if we can get full access. That's one of the big things on SNAP, as we like to make sure that we talk to all sides, because ultimately, there's two sides that are affected. In our show, we always end up landing to, you know, how this played out in court, but that doesn't mean that other people feel exactly the same way about it. Some people agree, some people disagree with the outcomes of the case. So we try to make sure that we have balance participation. But at any given time, we are working, having our fingers on

the pulse of, gosh, I can't even tell you how many cases, even things like, okay, we're waiting for this to be fully adjudicated. So we're already digging in on this case while we're waiting for the trial to actually wrap up and researching that. So like I said, it's a full-time job for seven people just to see before a case even actually goes into production. And then, you know, marking this occasion of the 30th season, what can you tell us about the cases you've worked on? This is actually one of the more compelling seasons that I've had, and that's saying a lot. But this season coming up, one thing that's the most intriguing to me is I actually have two episodes where the murders are caught on cell phone footage, which I have never

personally experienced, and I've been doing true crime for 11 years, and to have two of them back to back is really interesting to me. We have one where someone who committed the crime was trying to film it to show self-defense, but it ended up coming back to bite them. And so that's been kind of interesting to me just seeing how technology changes and how technology everybody's filming something, you know, everyone has their phones out at all times and how that plays into investigations

has been really interesting to me. Yeah, speaking of how technology has changed the course of how a case was solved or how, maybe even how quickly, in terms of comparing, you know, snap now to the early days of snap when it first hit oxygen, how would you say the show has evolved? Oh goodness.

So for reference, snap started when I was still in high school. So we've been making snap for a long time. I think it started it premiered my senior year of high school, which always makes my boss cringe. He's like, oh, don't say that, that makes me sound old. But it has definitely evolved. The technology has evolved on how we shoot it. You know, when I first started on SNAP, we filmed on tapes.

And we were getting things from the news stations on these giant cassette tapes. And now everything's digital. And it's just really interesting to just the technology in police work, to how that evolves, cell phone tracing technology. I mean, think about in 2005 what your cell phone looked like and how many people you knew had one. Now, how is that advanced technologically? And then also, how has that become harder with smartphones that have locks on them?

My original phone, you could just get in. This one case, one of the reasons why it took so long to solve the one where that guy had filmed himself, right when he was being killed. Well, they could not unlock the phone. And that data was sitting right there. Like they knew who the killer was, but they couldn't unlock the phone to see that footage. So how that technology plays into police work has just been really interesting to see how that evolves.

You know, before you also mentioned speaking to both sides, making sure you're getting different perspectives on the case, one thing that I think snapped often does well is making sure that the victim's voices are present. How do you say, you know, for your team, do you make sure victims voices are remembered and honored pretty consistently? Oh, yes, that is a huge personal thing for me as well as just the code of snapped.

But personally, I want to make sure that victims' families and the victims are being honored. They're sharing the most painful part of their lives with us. And that's a responsibility, I think, we have to tell the story and to tell it well and to honor them. We always make sure that we talk about this person outside of this murder, who they were. They were a mother. They were a father. They were a member of this community.

They mattered. And that's really important to us to make sure that that person and that family has a voice. One of the things that I always try to do on SNAP is end talking about something, you know, bringing it back to that victim and what the world lost when that person was lost. As a showrunner and a producer of the show, what is something you think the everyday SNAP fans should know about production in the show. I don't know. It's just sort of, it's kind of, it's an interesting balance, I think, working in true crime, which is telling these stories, you know, we have stories to tell that are, like that one coming out as the, the twin, the person that fake through and death coming

out as a twin, but then also honoring their victims in a way that's a balance. You just, you, you want to strike a balance in the storytelling of, you know, like, of these very interesting bizarre cases and the fact that these are real people that this happen to. And we always try to do that. I will say back to that line too. We just really try to take care to tell the story well and to honor the victims. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point.

And an important point to amid this kind of true crime boom where there is so much more exposure and making sure you kind of keep your own standards for not only the show but for these victims and the sure you kind of keep your own standards for not only the show but for these victims and the stories you're telling. Yeah, we definitely have high standards in that regard. We want to make sure that we are telling a compelling story, but an honest story about what really happened to these people.

And I know we work in tandem with the network execs. There'll be some cases that, you know, might be intriguing, but involve children. And we're just like, no, we're going to draw the line. Like, we're not going to talk about that. As there is a lot of crime out there, crime shows. But we have these standards for telling a compelling story and getting a balanced perspective that is integral to snap.

Hey listener, it is me Jason Bateman. I want to tell you that we've struck podcast gold in our new episode with David Letterman available four weeks early on one Drupal. It's like a late night talk show hangout but with a smart list twist. We are diving deep into David Letterman's incredible career in the moments that shaped him into the beloved icon he is today. Our interview with David Letterman was reported live

in Brooklyn in front of thousands of our biggest fans from our smart list tour. This is the fourth of 10 interviews with new episodes releasing every Thursday. We're talking with celebrities and icons like the great. Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart, Mark Cuban, Jimmy Campbell, so many more. Join us for an unforgettable conversation that will have you laughing pondering and quite possibly contemplating growing a beard

like Letterman's. I know I have. You can listen to these episodes four weeks early and at free on Wundry Plus, find Wundry Plus in the Wundry app or on Apple Podcasts. Can you talk about some of the cases that fans can expect in this upcoming season? Yeah, so we have this one episode that I'm really excited about, which centers around a up incoming actress who actually filmed the murder from her cell phone to try to use that as claims for self-defense. And then while she's out on bail actually acts in a movie where she's killing someone and thinks she's doing it in self-defense, it's one of those things where truth is stranger than fiction and it plays out in this really dramatic way. I'm pretty excited about that episode. And then there's also a case where an aspiring rapper

out of Atlanta, his death was also filmed, which is just a really tragic angle, but a really compelling story to tell and how they were able to solve that case using his own footage is really interesting. Actually, it did cross my mind when you were talking about, you know, case selection with some of the courts having so many delays, but also because you mentioned production,

yeah, what has the pandemic been like for your team? Yeah, it's really interesting. The pandemic made our team have to pivot in many ways. For example, we all went home and started working remotely. And then we also had to change, you know, how we get our crews. We used to travel our own director of photography to every place. Well, now we have to expand and get someone local. We can't have more than three people in the room.

When we shoot reenactments, we can't have more than five talent. We can't have talent touch. So that's been interesting trying to come up with creative ways to still keep in production. And we haven't stopped down. We're one of the companies that's been able to weather the storm and keep making good content. But it has definitely challenged and made us be more creative in how we do that. And you touched on it a little bit. The court systems, that all changed. Also, their priorities changed, you know, so they might have us on the back burner for getting back to us about an archive because it's got so many more other things they have to deal with with the pandemic. So it's been really interesting. But I think the way we've had to overcome

reenactments has probably been the biggest challenge. Okay, how can I film two people in a car without a mask on? You're not supposed to do that. So you have to film one person at a time and get creative angles to where it looks like two people are in a car. So it's making us have to be a little bit more creative and how we can do this. And it plays, you know, I get the footage. I'm like, oh, that works.

But, you know, it's just interesting for someone, I think at home, to have no idea that, yes, that scene where you thought they were both in the same room, no, we were able to splice that together because of COVID. Wow, yeah. It makes me a little bit excited to be able to watch this new season with that kind of in mind,

just to try to pick up on that if I can. It's interesting. It's been kind of a fun challenge for us to try to come up with creative ways to do that. You're as a first look at this Sunday's all new episode of Snap. He's raised to the home of 43-year-old Mary Ann Hughes, who hasn't seen her husband Larry in over 24 hours. The morning of the 28th, 1990, Mary Ann and Larry got up as they usually did.

They lived in the country. They had a farm, but they also were partners in a hardware store here in town, and that's where they worked. He had took the day off. She says when she left about seven that morning he was in the house, drinking cup of coffee and everything was fine.

She wrote to work with one of the neighbors, Jeff Cloud, who worked at hardware store. Marianne said she made an attempt to call Larry around 12 o'clock that day, and there was no answer. She returned back home that afternoon, sometime around 5, 530 p.m. Marianne tells investigators as Jeff dropped her back home, she immediately noticed something wasn't right.

She goes in the house. He's not there. The car's there, it hadn't been moved. So she gets in her car and drives and starts to look for them. And she goes by a brother's house, Rex's house. And her and Rex go looking for Larry. so they went out there and didn't find them. So she went back to the house. With no word from Larry in over a day, Mary-Anne says her worry intensified. So 36 hours after Larry's missing, shoe contacts, the local Sheriff's Department, and reports Larry missing.

With time not on their side, investigators hit the ground running. You want to find out what kind of person they are, what their habits are. I think it along with their family. I mean, you're hoping tips come along that will help you find them. When tips come along, they will help you find them. Join us for the 30th season of Snaped. New episodes air every Sunday at 6-5 Central, only on Oxygen.