Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Devil in the Ditch | 2. The Brunch

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

People in the Mississippi Delta take their wedding traditions very seriously. But are they serious enough to be a motive for murder? Unlock all episodes of Witnessed, ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Camside media. So what makes a delta wedding different from other weddings? Our delta wedding is different from other weddings. Oh I think so. Amanda Coddingham. She's catered just about every wedding of attended in the Mississippi Delta. I mean, that's what we do. People have nothing better to do than eat, drink, and be merry.

So, we've grown up doing it since we were little. I.A. Jewelryd, who at four, was smoking cigarette butts out of the ass trays when, you know, when stealing the champagne at five out of her parents' refrigerator. That would be the southern writer and Bon Vivant, who also happened to be a Greenville native. Her dad was my Sunday school teacher. I think people drink a lot here. A dealt bar is the real McCoy. No, you know, the whole nine yards. Scotch, bourbon, vodka, gin. And there is this new resurgence of gin. I'm so happy about it.

Because, you know, gin kind of went down the tubes there for a while. You know, good one. And I will say sometimes people surf some really trashy nasty one. Yeah, I think that's what we all started early, so a party is all we know to do. Food is also very important. I cannot picture a single dress that a friend got married in, but I can tell you what

I ate. Think three-foot towers of Sharkutri, biscuits with ham and jelly, stations of grilled lamb and beefenderloin, a raw bar, pickle shrimp, and two kinds of grilled oysters. This isn't hyperbole. It's the actual menu from a wedding I went to last year, which I'm indicated. And I'm sure I'm forgetting some things.

People just pull out the stops, mortgage their house, hawk the farm, do whatever they can do to have the end all be all wetting. There's the competition, you know, Susie's is better than James, that's better than Mary's, that's better than the next person's, and it's infectious, and it's unfortunately why I have a job. As a guest at these weddings, I often see a more benign motive.

You want to thank your guest for going to the trouble of dressing up and turning out. And showing people a good time has always been one of those things that the Delta gets right. One of my cousins got married in May 2003, a few weeks before press shot. I missed that wedding because I slept through my flight, but I've heard it was a classic of the genre, if you will. It was, they were just the perfect host and hostess and it was wonderful. They were so happy and it just made it, it was all the things the wedding was supposed to be.

Well with a small hiccup. She had a bonafide wedding crash. What? She did and he had followed us from wedding to wedding all year long and he was a guy that just went everywhere we went and he was known to like eat just enormous quantities of food, do crazy things, and he even went to one wedding and sliced the wedding cake before the bride and groomed him. Sorry. He was crazy. I'm not supposed to laugh right now, but that's...

All jokes aside, this wasn't the only hiccup at her wedding that weekend. The day of the ceremony, Amanda also catered brunch for guests. But when the bill came due, there was a dispute over payment. In-significant, maybe a couple hundred dollars. But it wasn't insignificant to my grandmother Prash. Even when everyone told her to let it go, she couldn't. Four weeks later, she was dead. From Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to Witnessed, I got to Greenville in late March 2022. It was almost three years to the day from the last time I was here. That trip was for a funeral, so was the one before it. I guess these days I only

go back to Greenville for death, this time, to try to find answers about my grandmother's murder. So that's Maine. The Greenville that my grandmother precious and her children grew up in was like nowhere else on earth. That Greenville, of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, was wealthy and progressive, home to novelist, artists, great stories, and wild parties. When the New York Times covered something in Greenville which was not infrequent, they'd refer to it as a progressive oasis in Mississippi. My favorite bit of trivia, totally un-barified, is that back then Greenville was home to more

published authors per capita than anywhere in the United States. But that was a long time ago. At the time I came along in the 80s and 90s, the high end department stores were closing, but the town still hung on to its veneer of glamour, at least to me. My parents were always getting dressed up and I can remember the way they'd smell when they finally got home, like gin and the cold night air and other people's cigarettes. Like all the people who went off to college come back to town, um, over the holidays, and

everyone would meet up at the bars, and they would be packed. It was great. I'm seeing a lot of things that aren't there anymore. I think it's easy to write off Greenville as a town into cline, but its story is a little more complex. Greenville sits on the Mississippi River, and its history is one of getting wiped out and then rebuilding by the Civil War, Yellow Fever, two catastrophic floods, because there's something about Greenville that has always inspired fanatical devotion.

Presh was one of its devotees. She lived her whole life here. Her grandparents arrived in the 1880s, which was in Greenville, was on its second rebuild. And for the most part, my family stuck around. There were about 30 of us here when I was growing up. Now, it's just three. My parents left in the late 1990s.

This was ostensibly so my mom could attend medical school, My parents left in the late 1990s. This was ostensibly so my mom could attend medical school, but they never had plans to come back. Turns out, they've been thinking about leaving for years. My mom never really jibed with the whole Greenville housewife scene, but my dad, he's a duty-bound guy. And since he was devoted to his mom's crush, and she was devoted to the cause of Greenville, he tried really hard to be too. I also have mixed feelings about Greenville.

I love being a kid here. And then I hit middle school and this town got very small. I'm gay, and as I'm sure a lot of other gay people can relate, it turned out there was just one way to be a 13 year old girl. My memory of seventh grade is feeling like a worn pair of loafers in a sea of white cats. So I found a way out of town even before my parents did. I went to boarding school. And that is my dad's old law firm.

It was also my grandfather's firm and my uncles. And the building Caddy Corner to it on the south side of the courthouse is the firm that my dad's uncle and two cousins ran like I said a lot of lawyers and those lawyers had pulled with the police a sheriff the DA but it wasn't enough to solve my grandmother's murder she's been gone over 20 years now. But when I'm in Greenville, it's like she's still here. This is the cemetery across the street where my grandmother's buried.

It was also across the street from her house. I think she would have really enjoyed podcasts actually because she used to go on long walks and take a book with her and so she would always trip and fall. My mom, who married into the family, has always been something of an anthropologist by nature. and take a book with her, and since she would always trip and fall. My mom, who married into the family, has always been something of an anthropologist by nature. So she has great stories about Prash. I'm just gonna, and so y'all just edit me however you want to. That's fun. I'm not going to try again.

I'm gonna try to, I mean, I'm gonna go on cocktail conversation, have a thing. Cocktail conversation, what's that? I mean, just kind of rack onto a rain or something like that. I rack onto her mama, rack onto her, do whatever you're comfortable with. My mom met my dad through a friend when she was 19. She'd grown up across the river and Wilmot, Arkansas. Population, 721.

Greenville was this big city with shopping and parties and streets that had traffic lights. When I got there in 75, it was still really kind of wonderful. It was very a very sophisticated town for where it was. My mom's parents were very appearance conscious. So her new mother-in-law was a breath of fresh, unfashionable air. The first time I met her, I actually had on like, pedal pushers, a man's shirt, some man's reading glasses that were held with a safety pin on there, and she was reading

like the New York Times, and I looked over and I thought, oh, this is a really fascinating woman. I really kind of wanted to be one of her best friends. My parents moved into the one bedroom cottage and precious backyard. I cannot imagine choosing to be so close to a mother-in-law, but my mom said precious visits were usually welcome. So when precious blew her horn in the driveway one morning, and told her they were going on a road trip to an old antique store, my mom was into it. We're on dirt road, and off in the distance you see this little lone house with a

little lone tree with a little lone tree beside it and we're speeding through the cotton field to go to that house. I go in the house and we're in a living room and over on the left there's a woman in a lazy boy recliner watching a soap opera and about this time down the hall. My grandmother chimes in. I'll give you $25 for the bedside table. And the woman in the recliner turns to me and she said, are you with the woman who's in my bedroom? And I said, yes, she said, would you please

get her out of my bedroom? By this time, Prash is in the kitchen going through the cabinets. And she said, you know, this used to be a much nicer place they used to have coffee. I said, Prash, this is not an antique store. This is somebody's house. She said, well that explains it. For someone as sharp as she was, there was a lot that got by Presh. You know, they one time got her a new car and decided they wouldn't tell her to see how long it

took her to notice and after a week. They finally just gave in and she said, ooh, I just thought you got in it washed. So I mean, so she I just thought you got it washed. So I mean, so she was just a total space queen. You know those people who can't see the forest for the trees? Well, think of Prash as the opposite. She saw the forest, but couldn't tell you a single thing

about what was growing in it. And I actually think that's what made her so effective at working with all those different organizations. She had this great ability to filter out the noise and just see the big picture. Sometimes that noise was people she disagreed with. So, she would entertain those opinions with a level of impatience. I can picture her legs crossed, jangling her right foot while the person she disagreed with spoke. But if you were on her way length, she was warm and open.

What happened with her is that she was raised in a very traditional, southern, kind of prominent family. And so she did all the things you do, the debutant, and the Garden Club and everything. But she said that during the 60ss she just kept reading and reading about what was going on and she said one day she just kind of looked up and she thought this just didn't right. Let me give you an example. Greenville was the first school district in Mississippi to voluntarily desegregate. This was in 1965. When that happened, my grandfather, whose precious husband, was president of the school board.

Most of their friends were horrified. My dad remembers. When the school board voted under Daddy's leadership to do that, people approached Mama, particularly her close friends and said, he's making a terrible mistake and he's going to lose every client he has. You all are going to be impoverished if he keeps this up. And just like his attitude, Mama's attitude was, well, if that happens, it happens, but we're not going to compromise what we know is right.

Greenville may have been a progressive oasis, but that's a relative term, especially in the Jim Crow South. In the midst of this, Prush took a teaching job in a desegregated school. Myat describes it as a show of faith in the process, but it didn't exactly land with their former crowd. Instead, people they knew started a private school serving mostly white kids. But if anything, this loss just strengthened her resolve.

Presh became very active in politics. If you were running for office as a Democrat in Mississippi and you came to the Mississippi Delta, she was the person you called. Which is exactly what happened about a week before she died. The governor came over, Ronnie Musgrove, big Democrat.

She got in a call from a friend who worked with him. Musgrove was running for reelection and needed to host a coffee at a Delta home. The next morning, 7.30 a.m. So, Prash got out her silver and started polishing. Her sister and a few other friends swung by and lent a hand. And Presh, as usual, pulled it off. Well, with one hitch. Presh sort of forgot to warn the neighbors that the governor would be coming by. So when they saw a line of cars and state troopers in her driveway, there

were only so many conclusions one could draw about an 85-year-old. Our sister's phone started ringing with people asking if something terrible had happened to Prash. When she told Prash about everyone's concerns, Prash joked, Oh, I guess the casseroles are gonna start arriving now. Of course she was wrong. The casseroles wouldn't start arriving for another week. Her house was like, I called it one time like a Grand Central station. There were just people in and out all the time and just these disparate types.

I mean, you had your garden clubbers, you had some kids she brought in from the group home, she would find people in the community who had no one, and she would pick them up and kind of put them to work for her latest project. That could be people she knew from church. Someone she met in the grocery store, the kid she was tutoring. She would grab people off the street to come to yard work and stuff like that. Presh loved to delegate. My mom knows this. Like when she first got married and pressure came over. I said, um, I have signed you up for five organizations because I think it'd be good for you to get involved in Greenville. It was one way she avoided dealing with details herself. But I think she also got a lot of joy out of seeing other people get

involved. I think her default was just to accept, and it was sort of from a very naive point of view. Like all people were inherently good and worthy of her trust. It was a guiding principle in her life, so is that Protestant work ethic. The belief that your value comes from how hard you work. I don't always agree, but I was raised too, because she really was our family's moral compass. The person who taught me to look for the good, in almost everyone in every situation.

And then, to think that these beliefs could be what got her murdered, it took me way too long to understand how much this messed me up. It took me way too long to understand how much this messed me up. Uncover from CBC podcasts brings you award-winning investigations year-round. Infiltrate an international network of neo-Nazi extremists. H-Ratin with racist language. Discover the true story of the CIA's attempts at mind control.

Their objective was to wipe my memory, or dig into a crypto king's mysterious death and a quarter billion dollars missing. There are deep oddities in this case. With episodes weekly, uncover is your home for in-depth reporting and exceptional storytelling. Find uncover wherever you get your podcasts. en la historia. Fíjense en la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la cuenta de la Once I left with the crime scene tape, my dad's two sisters spent the next few weeks in the house, partly to go through the mountains of precious things, and partly to keep an eye on the investigation. My dad spent the rest of that summer driving back and forth from Jackson to Greenville to check in with police. They were working hard to leave the impression on us

that they were committing full resources to investigating it. And from what I could tell, they were committing a lot of resources to it. This is in the early days and there are no eye witnesses and this is probably gonna take some time. One of my biggest memories was sitting on that back porch where she was murdered. I think one of the lawyers in the family saying, you know, I know these people in the police department,

I'll get them involved and here's this guy who knows a whole lot and we'll do this. Since press was murdered in Greenville City limits, police normally would have handled the investigation themselves. But for this particular murder, the sheriff's department joined in. The state crime lab not only collected evidence the day of her murder, they came back two more times that month. Ricky Spratland, the Greenville police detective who processed the scene would return again and again

to look for a murder weapon, to dust for fingerprints, even bring prison inmates to break the ground for evidence. I asked him about all of this. Was this more high profile, this particular murder, you know, higher profile than the typical murder? Yes, yeah, yes, it would have been because, you know, the family and names, and I don't think the all legal, legal businesses in town. But why would someone violently attack an 85 year old woman? The motive right off the bat was money. I mean, the purse, the chick book on the table,

stuff kind of scattered around. That hadn't been it. And the fact that she was out, you could tell she was out there reading the paper when it happened. And she came inside, you know, so it's immediately to all of us, it's money. And when you say something about money, are you thinking robbery? That would have been it. I think whoever it was, followed up in the house and she was going to the out, I'll give you a few dollars

and my own. And that's when she dropped the purse and they got what they want, whatever they got. Three weeks earlier, pressure was drawn $100 cash from her checking account. And there was that empty bank envelope on the chair beside her body. But it's unclear how much of that money, if any, she still had. And what about all the other valuables left untouched? Robert's were a familiar territory.

She'd already had her silver stolen. And four weeks before her murder, someone had broken into the backyard cottage she rented out and stolen her tenant's Xbox. The silver was out on the table. Is it odd that... She has some stuff in there that's probably worth some money. Yeah. Did you notice anything else that had been taken or disturbed?

Not that I know of other than the dish, the dish style. The one over her face. Nothing appeared to be rung through. Whatever was done was done right there. But I think I really think it's somebody that knew her. I do. The knew that she lived there, knew how to come up that access road, and I'm not a working or yard before, because I think some of them said that she'd hire anybody to work in that yard.

There is this feeling that this murder was on its way to being solved. After all, murder victims don't usually have the connections that my grandmother had. But as the weeks turn into months, it started to seem like the investigators weren't making a whole lot of progress. For all their visits to the crime scene,

police weren't connecting evidence to any suspects. Crime scene investigators had blood, shoe prints, and foot prints, but no matches. Detective Spratland had found a likely murder weapon, that brass candlestick. But the blood sample was too small to test, and there were no fingerprints. Over the months and years, some of this evidence would get destroyed by flood water before it was even tested. Persons of interest would come up, then be struck from the list. Eventually, investigators would move on to other green bull murders, many of which they would also not solve.

We're only talking 10 or 15 homicides a year in Greenville, but based on FBI stats, around 85% of homicides here are unsolved. The year-pressed died. The FBI reported zero of the 13 killing solved. My dad's sister Ann took it especially hard. They couldn't give us much information. I know stuff has to be sent off and all, but in the months and years that went by,

it was pathetic. It was just an awful experience. Why are they not doing this? Why are they not this? And I felt like there was a lot of movement but not much being done. My belief is that the police didn't do a good job back at the most critical time,

which was in the 24, 48, 72 hours after the murder. was in the 24-48 72 hours after the murder and that they just don't have the evidence that is needed to convict. I reached out to the Greenville Police Department for this story, Centeno with questions about the case. The city attorney responded, saying that because most of our questions predate the current administration, the department, quote, cannot offer an opinion or perspective on these issues or the merits therein. As such, the City of Greenville and its Police Department have no additional comments on this subject.

End quote. My grandmother, who had ingrained in my dad the importance of trying to find the good in everyone had been murdered. So as my dad and his sisters became frustrated with the official investigation, they began to work on their own. My aunt Anne would go on to fill several three-ring binders with her own research, newspaper clippings, timelines, any police records that came her way. For years, she kept a journal of conversations she had about the murder and her conclusions and theories. And certain theories end up sticking. Well, really just one.

They zeroed in on that detail from the murder scene the police had been so interested in. Whoever killed Prash covered her face. A sign they said that she was killed by somebody she knew. And that's when the accusations began. I'm Adam McCay, Director Writer and most importantly, Podcast Host. In the first season of our show, Death at the Wing, we explored a series of tragic deaths from the wild world of 80s basketball.

This season we're going back further to the 50s, the aftermath of World War II, and a series of tragedies in Hollywood. We'll tell stories of trailblazing actors who lived fast and die young. I hope you'll join us on death on the lot. With police unable to provide answers, my family began to look for their own. And they didn't have to look far. You're going to need a little bit of history to understand why.

Pressure sister, the one who found her dead, had just one child. She would have loved her if had more she told me, but she and her husband had struggled to conceive. Finally, when she was 33, they'd been able to adopt an infant, Richard. Richard isn't his real name. We're giving him a suit in them because Richard has never been arrested for anything. He's never been charged with a crime. And a lot of what you're going to hear people say about him is rumor, speculation, opinion. We're also giving his mom another name. We're calling her Charlotte. She's a precious sister, the one who found fresh dead. Richard always seemed like a fish out of water to the family. In a family of lawyers, he was a part-time DJ at the easy-listening radio station.

In a family of Democrats, he was a libertarian. After he graduated from college in the 1970s, he didn't marry or go to graduate school. He moved back in with his mother, where he's remained for the last 45 years. I think this has been hard on Charlotte. She's always craved inclusion for herself and for Richard. It's something I notice growing up. Like, she dealt with his differences by pretending they weren't there. My dad's younger sister, my aunt Martha, was close to Richard in age, but that's it.

He would sort of back up into the corner at a Christmas party, except to say something passive-aggressive in the room when there was silence. And it would usually be, turn off to somebody. We let it go because one of the things in the family, or perhaps even in a greater sense, the South, you know, you just let these supposed eccentricities go. You don't focus on them. You move on.

So she says Charlotte was always inviting precious kids over, trying to connect her son with his cousins. Like Havis on Saturday morning for pancakes. Havis for meatloaf that, you know, was like her signature dish. And had lots of toys around. It was always wanting myself, my sister, my brother, to be around. My dad gives this example.

Charlotte would often interrupt the flow of conversation, saying something like, oh, Richard said the funniest thing today. Tell him what you said. Tell him what you said. He wouldn't say a word. And this didn't happen once. It would happen over and over and over again. And it was painful for everybody at the table. But as Richard got older, Prash wanted him to be more like her own kids, and she thought she had the power to do that. So she worked on Charlotte, trying to convince her to cut Richard loose.

Mama had said for years, you have got to live your own life, he's got to make his own living. Move him out. It had escalated to the point that Mama was so frustrated and angry with him. You know, she couldn't let it go, which brings us back to the epicenter of Southern Shudds and Shud Nots,

Delta weddings. The famous thing is the wedding luncheon. That's my cousin's wedding, the one with the wedding crasher. My dad's whole side of the family hosted this luncheon, which really means that one cousin opens up their home for the event, and everyone else pays for the catering.

The deal in the family was when somebody in the family got married. The family members all got together and gave the day of the wedding luncheon. Everybody had to tally up and pay their portion of it. And so if you were a married couple, you got a bill, a bill of two people treated as a unit, a little family there. And you would get X amount, but if you were separate.

You paid the same amount. It was a household rate. So couples like my parents gave $200, as did single people like Richard and widows like Charlotte and Prash. But Richard and Charlotte. Born to be seen as a couple. He was not married to his mother. They were two separate individuals, so each one got a bill, which meant Mama decided she told me this. The reason I'm dividing it like this is he is going to stop living off his mother. He's going to pay his own bill and we said, Mama, look, he's not going to pay it.

You know he's not. The figured Richard's mom would cover it for him. She said, I don't care. He just needs to know that at least this bill went to him. He was furious. He said, well, everybody else is treated as a couple. We live in the same household. We are a household We should get one bill. She decided he had to pay his own part. You are 40 years old. This is ridiculous and that was one of those Bees in the bonnet that precious God. And she was on his case a lot. He and Mama were so at such cross purposes at the time

and she was unrelenting. It was an enormous deal, enormous with my mother. I can see her now. You are going to pay this because he didn't like it. He told mama, no, this is not right. And by the way, you were off by a penny and tallying it up. It was part of her campaign. Her campaign to give her sister a better life, she says. Move him out. It's not going to get rid of him, you know, but this is not wrong. He's living off of her and she had very modest resources at that time.

So when press was murdered and the police were unable to name a single robbery suspect, my dad and his sisters asked police to look and to Richard, the guy who refused to pay his bill. I realize some of you may be thinking, hang on. A disagreement over brunch is a ridiculous motive for murder. It does. But like so many family disputes, this wasn't really about brunch.

Nothing was taken, except, I mean, there was an empty envelope, money envelope in her wallet, but she could have cared that around for months. He had motive, not in what you would think would be rational sense that you're fussing about $20 or $30 or something. I mean, a lot of people thought it was him. I've thought it could be Richard. Right after the murder, that's what I kept hearing from my dad, his sisters, some of my cousins.

But there was never any evidence tying him to the murder. So now I wonder if he's a convenient scapegoat. If it's a good story. A way to justify what we all felt long before Prashdad. That there was a reason some people in our family never liked him. But there's one thing I'd never thought to do. Though it's probably the first thing I should have done. And that's talked to Richard about it. Next time on Witnessed Devil in the Ditch. On the day, do you remember the day that pressed I'd? So you were sitting here with, well actually, can you tell me what it

was? Another set of the story. You know they blamed it for it. I was, it was a nightmare. but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts. All ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listing now by clicking subscribe. At the top of the witness, devil in the ditch, show page on Apple Podcasts,

or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Witnessed as a production of Campside Media and Sony Music Entertainment, Devil in the Ditch was reported and hosted by me, Larison Campbell. Lindsey Kilbride is the senior producer, and Shiba Joseph is the associate producer. The story editor is Sean Flynn. Studio recording by E-Win Lai Tremuen and Shiba Joseph. Sound design mixing and original music by Garrett Tiedemann.

Additional music by APM and Blue Dot Sessions. Additional field recording by Johnny Kaufman and Ambreel Crutchfeld. Fact checking by Ben Kaelin. Special thanks to Emily Martinez and our operations team, Doug Slaywin, Alia Papers, Destiny Dingle, Ashley Warren and Savina Mora. The executive producers at Campside Media are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gergoriatus, Adam Hoff and and Matt Cher.