Prosecuting Evil: A Conversation with Kelly Siegler on Nancy Guthrie, Racehorse Haynes, and Cold Cases

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01] I'm Anya, and this is the interview we did with Kelly Siegler, a longtime prosecutor and the star of Oxygen's Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler.

[00:00:09] [SPEAKER_00] Content warning, this episode contains discussion of intimate partner violence, rape, and murder.

[00:00:15] [SPEAKER_01] Kelly Siegler has tried 68 murder cases across her career. For two decades, she prosecuted major felony cases. She also served as the chief of the Special Crimes Bureau for the Harris County District Attorney's Office in Texas.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_00] Then she went on to do Cold Justice, an investigative true crime series produced by Dick Wolf. That sees Siegler and other investigators dig into unsolved murder cases. It just had its ninth season in 2025 and runs on Oxygen.

[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_01] She's also now doing Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler, which recently began its third season on October 3rd, 2026. That show is also from Dick Wolf's Wolf Entertainment. It has a real focus on fascinating cases, especially the inside stories from the attorneys who worked them, which of course Kevin and I love. If you want to watch Prosecuting Evil with Kelly Siegler, it airs on Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Oxygen True Crime. New episodes air weekly Saturday nights.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_01] In our interview, we got Kelly's thoughts on the following topics. Famed defense attorney Richard or Racehorse Haynes and his shocking tactics. The Nancy Guthrie disappearance. What police get wrong about cold cases and why winning is harder for prosecutors today. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00] And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney. And this is The Murder Sheet. We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into murder cases. We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_01] And this is Prosecuting Evil, a conversation with Kelly Siegler on Nancy Guthrie, Racehorse Haynes and cold cases.

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_01] First of all, Kelly, I just want to say I'm super excited to be talking to you. I was a longtime cold justice watcher. My mom and I both love your work and it's really cool. Kind of surreal to be talking to you. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. To start off with, one thing we often like to talk about with the people who have the prosecutorial background or the defense attorney background is just from the perspective of your career, what drew you to the law?

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_01] What made you say, I want to be a lawyer in the first place and then maybe a criminal lawyer on top of that?

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I was always kind of a nerd as a kid. I liked to read books and do all that kind of nerdy stuff, which looking back, I didn't realize how bad I was. And then I went to law school and I thought I was going to be a corporate lawyer and travel the world. And I went to work at a law firm that did business commercial stuff and it was so horribly boring. I thought if I have to do this the rest of my life, I'll shoot myself.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_02] So I started interning at the DA's office when I was in my second year of law school and fell in love with it. They put me in the domestic violence unit where I got to talk to battered women when I was only 22, 23 years old. So that's when I started realizing how much I liked all that.

[00:03:56] [SPEAKER_01] I'm curious, what about that? Because I think some people might say that sounds really tough. That sounds really heavy. You're hearing all these depressing stories, dealing with these depressing situations. What about that lit a fire in you to want to continue that? I think two things.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_02] First of all, I was, you know, 22, 23. And I realized even then that I was actually doing something to help people that mattered, that was important, where you feel like you go to work every day for a reason. And the other thing is because of how I grew up, my mom was abused by my stepdad. And I saw how law enforcement treated her and lots of other women that I grew up with. And I realized that it really does matter who you run into in the law enforcement world as far as if anything ever happens.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_01] A lot of your cases do deal with such situations. That's what I've always appreciated about your work in the media is that you don't just focus on like the flashy cases that everyone kind of knows about. It's like cases that could happen to anybody. And I'm curious from when you started as a baby prosecutor to all the way now when you are doing all this work in the media, have you seen a shift in terms of how we as a society look at some of this stuff? You mentioned maybe like law enforcement didn't get it back in the day, could hurt victims more.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_01] Has that changed? Do you think there's further to go with that? What have you seen?

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_02] So much, so much change, you know, from growing up in Matagorda County, seeing how they treated my mom to the old days in law enforcement at the office where back in we just worked a case on called justice, where the crew couldn't understand how what do you mean back then if you show up at a woman's house and she's had the hell beat out of her? The cops don't have to arrest anybody. If he says, I promise I'll leave or we promise we'll settle it. What do you mean they just left him there?

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_02] What? And so when I started, that was the rule back then. If you promise you'll leave her alone and go spend the night at your brother-in-law's house, we'll let it go. And now that would never happen today. So I think now we're much more aware. The laws are much better. And on called justice, I mean, you know how many of those murders are always DV victims. They turn into murder cases. It happens way too often.

[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_01] I feel like by showcasing that, you're also showing people like if this is happening in your life, it can have a really bad ending and like get help. I think that's so important. Not everything's like a serial killer, although like a lot of true crimes. Yeah. You know.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_02] And I would say, you know, to women like you, your age, because you're young and my daughters, you know, when you're dating that guy, and I'm working a case now where I have to say, or that girl, which is I'm reading this stuff going, oh my God, girls do it too. But that guy who knows all your passwords and follows you when you go to see your mom and knows that you went and got bread last Saturday, that is creepy and weird. You need to run from people like that. And those are the ones that turn into domestic violence murder cases.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_01] So I want to go back to your prosecutorial career. And just if you could talk through sticking with that for so many years, you had so many different experiences in so many cases, I imagine. Are there ones that stand out to you today, now that you're kind of in a different role doing this in the media and raising awareness and looking into cases and investigating them in that way. But I guess when you look back at the trials you did and cases you did are ones that like maybe stand out in your mind as kind of like that was a big case for me.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_02] Let me answer it this way. And I've never said this out loud before, but I've thought about it more in the last couple of years. When I look back over my career, and I was a pretty young chief that got to try a lot of cases because a lot of the people before me didn't want to try them. So there was a backlog plus new ones and good ones that came in. At the time, with every single one of those rapes or robberies or murders or capital murders, I didn't realize this is the case where I learned about blood spatter.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_02] That's the case where I learned about fingerprints. Wow, that's where I learned about DNA. And at the time when I was living through it, I was just trying to learn the stuff and move on. Now when I look back, it's like, oh my God, it's almost like a preparation for what was going to come later. In my career and later in life with all this, I had no idea. But it's really kind of crazy how I can look back and see now how it all fell together. It's weird. It's really weird how much you can learn and you don't even know you're learning it.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_01] You've done like, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you've done like 65 plus murder cases, right?

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_02] Yes.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_01] That's amazing. And like, I mean, this is, I'm sure every case is so different, right? And as you said, you're learning things, you're picking up different pieces and growing as an attorney and as a prosecutor and whatnot. But like, are there any sort of things like, or maybe commonalities or observations about murder and murder cases that people may not expect that you learned over the course of doing all those cases?

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_02] I would think like, from a juror's point of view, if you were called down for jury duty, the thing that I would have to make you understand or appreciate or at least acknowledge is that I'm not going to have all the answers. It's not going to be a nice, perfect, clean little puzzle like it is on TV or in a book. And that's the part that I think even today, it's hard for me to accept because I want to answer everything too. And I think if you were called down for jury duty, you would go in thinking,

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_02] they're going to be so good or thorough or professional or wonderful. They're going to answer all my questions and that's just never going to happen.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_01] Yes. I think I have to, as a journalist and as someone who's not an attorney, I have to sometimes sit back and say, okay, my nosy self wants to know, okay, what, why this? Why did he do this? Then my logical brain has to be like, sometimes, honestly, a motive doesn't really matter. Like sometimes it's just, you can't really put yourself in the mind of somebody who is doing something this bad. Or you can try, but maybe that's for the psychologist and maybe like, I don't have to understand it.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_02] That or I think motive is the one where we can say all we want to, that the law doesn't require us to prove it, but you better come pretty damn close. I think it's more like this really important witness swears that the killer had a red shirt, but he didn't have a red shirt. So what's the explanation for that? Those are the kind of things you have to let go. And I think for somebody like you or me, we're so nosy and detail-oriented and nerdy that it's harder for us to let it go, but you just have to in the real world.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_01] You really do. Are there other things that you think maybe the public gets wrong about these big cases? I mean, like we all follow these big, tremendous cases on court TV and whatnot, and then watch documentaries about them on Oxygen, on Netflix. But at the same time, like sometimes I feel like the public has a lot of knowledge, and then other times I'm like there might be some things that media gets wrong a bit. And again, as I said, I love your shows because they're so authentic,

[00:10:43] [SPEAKER_01] and they kind of get behind that and behind the narratives and more into like the real work. And are there other things about murder cases that you think people may not realize?

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_02] Yes, I would say this. Y'all say this in the journalistic world, and I'll tell you from the law enforcement world, this is very true and very sad that sometimes egos from the cops, from the investigators, from the feds, can I say that again, from the feds and from the prosecutors really can hurt a case. If you have a guy on this team or that team or the main guy,

[00:11:21] [SPEAKER_02] and all he's worried about is getting the credit or being the show off or being right, my God, it really can mess everything up. So I see these cases that you follow, and there's one I'm thinking of in particular, where you watch these interviews that y'all do on TV and you think, that guy has an ego bigger than Dallas, and I bet you that's a problem to all the people working with him. And it really is a problem. I hate to say it, and it's sad, but it is very, very true. Care to spell what case?

[00:11:50] [SPEAKER_02] You know, the Nancy Guthrie case, where they keep arguing between the feds and the locals and the feds and the locals. And I can tell you from working with so many feds, you know, they should come into town saying, first, I'm not your typical fed. I'm not trying to be a show off and a know-it-all and one-up you. And they should start with that because they are a problem. And I've just wondered if that was part of what happened

[00:12:13] [SPEAKER_01] and what went wrong there, to be honest. I was super worried when we started seeing, like, leaks in the press from the FBI criticizing the local sheriff. Because I'm not defending the local sheriff. I'm not defending. Maybe he messed up. I don't know. I don't know. I agree. Don't know. But, like, the FBI should not be going in to trash their local partners. Yeah.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_02] Or how about all these retired FBI guys coming on all the shows and all they can do is shit on the locals. Never the FBI. But I'm like, come on, dude. You're retiring FBI. And you've got something good to say about the locals at all. It kind of makes me crazy. The feds need to take a no.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_01] I feel like we need, aside from some retired feds that I love, Julia Cowley, I'm thinking of Jerry Williams. They have great podcasts, The Consult and FBI Case Review. Except for them, I think we need a moratorium on the retired feds coming in and commenting. Because a lot of them do it. I completely agree with you. That is a pit. Yeah. Me too. Yeah, that's terrible.

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01] In terms of, you know, like, when we're, I guess, when you're analyzing some of these cases, does that drive you crazy as somebody who is so experienced and has done so many of these big cases to see big cases unfolding now? Like, are you good at predicting outcomes of trials at all when you watch them? Or is it kind of still depends on the case?

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_02] I'm very good at predicting trial outcomes. Very good. Investigations and knowing where they're going to go, not so much. I think I'm watching like everybody else trying to see what we're going to learn next. But trials, you know what? Juries usually get it right. Believe it or not. All over the country. I feel like when it comes down to it, they usually get it right.

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[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_01] We talked a little bit about cold justice, and then I also want to talk about prosecuting evil with Kelly Siegler. Can you talk a little bit about your shift from being in the courtroom to being in front of the camera and sort of what you've sought to do with these media projects that, you know, you're using to kind of actually investigate some of these cases?

[00:17:27] [SPEAKER_02] Well, I would say, first of all, again, I didn't realize or appreciate that when I was trying cases and putting on the case, I didn't realize that that was basically what y'all do now as far as scripting out a story and, you know, starting big and ending strong and all those things. I was doing it for a jury, not realizing it's kind of the same thing that y'all do or TV shows do. So that was very wonderful to learn and very helpful.

[00:17:53] [SPEAKER_02] Y'all do a lot of things that maybe we can learn from in the prosecutor world. If I could take the knowledge I have now and go back then, oh, my God, I would be so good in the courtroom. So many more cool things I could do. And if I could make the producers I work with now get the reality in the courtroom, they would be even better. So it's kind of like these two worlds are side by side. But if they could join together, we would both be even better, I feel like.

[00:18:20] [SPEAKER_01] I love that. See, that's why I love being married to an attorney, because he can bring the facts and I can bring the, ooh, storytelling. There you go. Perfect combination. You know, you don't want this. I think the facts have to come first. But again, I love that. That's what I love about your shows, though, because I feel like it would kind of eschew a lot of the, I don't know, what you'd normally see that kind of felt like artifice. And it would be like more like this is raw, this is real. And we're like getting these unusual, fascinating, heartbreaking cases that you might not have seen otherwise.

[00:18:48] [SPEAKER_01] I know you've done several projects, but like across those, what goes into picking a case to cover? Like how do you bet and figure out this is a good case for us to do? We could add something here.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_02] Well, different criteria for co-justice versus prosecuting evil. So for co-justice, there are a lot of cases that we know we just can't work on. You know, there are a lot of cases where when I hear about them, my team and I, my team is really, really good. They've learned a lot in the last 13 years. We know we can't solve it. So we're not trying to get a family's hopes up and go in there and stir that pot when we know at the end of the day nothing is going to happen based on lots of different things.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_02] So we really, really try to work on cases where I believe and the team believes we are going to solve this case. And I think when you go into it because you think that and you have the knowledge that we have, that's why we have the success rate that we do. That's how we're able to solve so many of them, hopefully.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_01] Yes. And then, yeah, with prosecuting evil with Kelly Siegler, for people who maybe haven't seen it, can you talk to us about that and what the ethos behind that show is?

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_02] Yes. So, first of all, in my mind, prosecuting evil is so much easier because those are adjudicated cases that have already been trialed. We're just telling the story of what happened. And what I think is cool about that show is that in my world, every time you finish a case, you always do the, man, you're not going to believe what really happened when we put the so-and-so on the stand. Or you're not going to believe what the judge really told us. Or what about the jury when they said this?

[00:20:24] [SPEAKER_02] Those cool little things that happened in all these trials all over Texas, to me, that's the fun part of that show. And we try really hard to get as much of that in as we can while we tell about the crime and the trial and the legal aspects of everything.

[00:20:38] [SPEAKER_01] So that's the cool part to me about that show. That's amazing. Do you have any examples to share about that? Because I also love those inside stories of like, oh, this guy melted down on the stand and we didn't expect it. Because, you know, the way I see it is a lot of, and I hope this isn't offensive to you or any of the attorneys, but trials can get kind of boring. You know, like I had Hubbard murder trials. And that's good. That's good because it's about the facts. But I feel like there are moments of drama that you're like, I feel like I'm in a Law and Order episode all of a sudden.

[00:21:08] [SPEAKER_01] I'm not. It's going to go back to being boring in two minutes. But right now it's crazy. So any moments that stuck out for you that you were able to learn about through doing this show?

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_02] Well, on Prosecuting Evil, there's an episode coming up where Dan Cogdell is a very well-known defense lawyer here in Texas. You might have heard of him. And he has got a personality that will not stop. And he had this old, old case where he first learned from Racehorse Haynes. Have you ever heard of Racehorse Haynes? Yes. Okay. So, you know. And Dan, he was Dan's mentor. And Dan is already something else to watch in trial. And Racehorse was too. So I've tried cases against both of them.

[00:21:45] [SPEAKER_02] But Dan tells a story about what it was like to actually work for Racehorse and how he really talked to him and how he really taught him things. And there was one case where Dan actually tasered himself with a cattle prod in front of the jury to make the point about this ain't such a bad thing. And what really happened at the end of the day when Racehorse, I mean, he shocked himself like 15 times in front of the jury in the trial.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_02] And it's just cool the way Racehorse and him talked about that night and went and had their whiskey together at the hotel and talked about the day. So to me, that's like a super cool story that you would never know from the usual legal analysis of that trial, right?

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_01] No, you wouldn't. That is iconic. Talk about suffering for one's art. Yeah.

[00:22:33] [SPEAKER_02] Definitely. He earned his pay that day, right?

[00:22:36] He did.

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_02] And he didn't get any of anything back then. When I heard his pay, I was like, are you kidding? Racehorse Haynes is a cheapskate. That's all they paid you. To shock yourself literally in front of the jury. Yeah. You got to watch that one.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_01] I am psyched for that. That is literally insane. So for these cases that are in prosecuting evil, are there any ones that stand out for you as far as, you know, like one that like you'd always wanted to know more about and now you're finally getting that inside story? All of them.

[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_02] There's always something else behind the story that we never know about. I think for me, the challenge on that show is I know the case, whether it's Harris County or somewhere else in Texas, because I always know the ones from home better. And I know what I think happened. But then the network approves which ones we really get to do and work on. And what their requirements are are always a little different than what I would expect them to be.

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_02] So that whole push and pull between what the network thinks the audience is going to like and what I think is super cool. I think that's a dynamic that we're just going to have to keep dealing with. Right.

[00:23:41] [SPEAKER_01] I dig that. And maybe the Venn diagram there is the sweet spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm curious. Can you talk more about that? Because I know we've had that like, you know, I mean, as podcasters, we're not we're not big. We're not dealing with oxygen. But like you do sometimes have that. Here's what we're passionate about. We're super nerdy, too. Sometimes one time we made our audience sit through a whole episode just about oral arguments. And I'm sure some people were like, this is boring. But we're like, you need to know about it. OK. But then you have the sexy side of like, oh, these are like big cases and everyone wants to know about them.

[00:24:10] [SPEAKER_01] What is your personal ethos around what you want to emphasize and cover? And what is oxygen? And where do you kind of meet in the middle and you think where the magic happens?

[00:24:19] [SPEAKER_02] You know, I wish I had access to all of the focus group information that they have. Maybe I would read that and get it a little better. Or the oxygen audience and that dynamic. Maybe I would get it a little better. And they do share with me, but I'm sure I don't know everything. I know that, you know, when I go to CrimeCon, when I go to the casino gambling with my sister or when I go out and I run into women, and it's usually women my age that love true crime. And they tell me what they like or don't like or what they want to hear about.

[00:24:49] [SPEAKER_02] I listen. And it pretty much is the same everywhere I go. So to me, when I'm thinking what's going to be cool about this case is blah, blah, blah. It's hearing what those ladies tell me they really like. And I think that's kind of what my focus is when I'm trying to pick out cases that I think are going to be fun to talk about. Absolutely. What do they tend to like? They like to hear about twisted women and how they can do like super devious things. They like the details more than I thought.

[00:25:19] [SPEAKER_02] I was worried that I was boring people with the details. They like legal explanations of stuff more than I think oxygen thinks. I want to think that our viewers are geeky and nerdy and they like the inside baseball legal stuff more than maybe oxygen thinks they do. That's kind of the push that we have. I feel like we never knew that. That's really cool. Like here's an example. I was a prosecutor and I was picking a jury. I would always take an engineer. Why? Because they're analytical. They're not going to get emotional.

[00:25:49] [SPEAKER_02] They're not going to get caught up. Always take an engineer every day. I would never take a kindergarten teacher. I would never take a social worker. Why not? Because. And say why. And I think that our audience would go, oh my God, that's cool. I really never knew that. That's a nice thing to learn. And I wish we could have more of those kind of teaching things in all of our episodes, to be honest.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_01] I think people love that, too, because it's an educational thing then, not just entertainment. And they can go to their friends in the next trial and be like, oh, I bet that prosecutor is probably going to nix that guy because, you know, he said he was a teacher. And it's like, like everyone wants to feel like they know what they're talking about. Like you can go talk about what motions in limine are now. Right, right. Everybody's worked in crime now and everybody knows way more than they used to. You think so? You think the audience is actually not more informed?

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_02] Very much so. It's almost scary. It's all good. I don't have to pick juries anymore, so I'm not sure what I would say about that if I was doing that job still. But, oh no, people know what they're talking about now.

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01] Do you think the job of a modern-day prosecutor has gotten harder?

[00:26:53] [SPEAKER_02] You think so? Way harder. Way harder. Because think about it. The expectations are way up here. You have to be dramatic and have a good presence and all that now. Where in the old days, you could just be stodgy and boring and just lay the facts out there and you could get there. I don't think you can do that anymore. You have to be almost showy to be as effective these days. And I also think now that the volume of information that they have to deal with, with the body cams and every cop has a body camera.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_02] You've got to watch all those. And cell phone data. And everybody has a cell phone. You have to pour through all that, plus text messages, plus emails, plus Venmo accounts. It's just way more information that they have to pour through and deal with than what we had back when I was there. It's kind of sad and scary.

[00:27:42] [SPEAKER_01] That sounds pretty tough. I feel like people also, the expectations. Sometimes, I think having high expectations is good. Sometimes I think the expectations, especially around forensic evidence, are kind of unrealistic. They are. CSI. They are. Yeah. I know.

[00:27:57] [SPEAKER_02] Everybody thinks that there's got to be a camera that caught something. And oh my God, there just never is.

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_01] So yes, you're right. Like, yeah, or like, you know, DNA is cool, but like DNA is circumstantial and touch DNA isn't as good as blood isn't as good. Like there's just layers to this. One thing I really wanted to ask you about, because I know you're passionate about it, as are we at the Murder Sheet, with your work on cold justice and your work over time, is just your passion for cold cases. I hear from so many families where they just feel like, OK, the police aren't doing anything. It's just it's a nightmare. We're kind of stuck there. What would your advice be?

[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_01] I guess to we have a lot of prosecutors and law enforcement who listen to us for prosecutors and law enforcement about how to prioritize perhaps cold cases, even in the face of like restricted budgets and not having a lot of time. How can we kind of encourage some of these places to do what you guys have done and really kind of put a spotlight on them and try to get them solved?

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_02] This is important. And law enforcement is not going to like this because this is what a lot of them are doing.

[00:28:55] [SPEAKER_02] It has been my experience, and I mean old job and new job, that when you form a cold case squad team and you just pick recent retirees that are semi-checked out or already checked out, or that guy who's a nerd but he doesn't really want to work real hard, or you have the guys come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays for their cold case squad, or you have the guy that just works every other week. That is not going to work.

[00:29:52] [SPEAKER_02] I don't know.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_02] But that is what agencies all over the country are doing, and it's really sad because it's not going to work.

[00:30:29] [SPEAKER_01] I feel like also sometimes there's like an over-focus on DNA. DNA has obviously solved a ton of cold cases, and that's wonderful, but like it's not a magic bullet. Can you say that again, please?

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_02] It's not a magic bullet. Oh my God. Right, and that's the other thing. Even here in Texas, and I'm shitting on my own state here, even here in Texas, there's a brand new grant that lets you open up your cold case all across Texas with the Texas Rangers if you have something we can DNA test. And I'm like, wow, okay, so y'all think it's going to be a rape murder and she left something behind after she was raped in her panties and they never bothered to test it. Great.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_02] Go open all those up. We kind of did that in the 90s. So, you know, when you think that you have to have DNA to test to even start to work on a cold case, that's a bad start because there are a lot of them out there. Watch Cold Justice where DNA is never going to solve those cases.

[00:31:26] [SPEAKER_01] And I love it because you guys talk to people. You do the, like, the investigation, which is like half the battle, and if it's cold, people are going to start dying, you know? Like, I mean, like, you're not going to have that. And I just see sometimes it's like, well, we'll just DNA test and it's like, well, that's not always going to work.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_01] One thing I wanted to ask you, we talked about the investigation side of cold cases, but what is it like to prosecute a cold case and maybe what are some skills that might be useful for that that aren't necessarily with your typical fresh case? Like, I guess, what goes into that kind of prosecution that can make a difference? You mean as far as presenting the evidence to a jury?

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_02] Yeah, when it's like so old, yeah. This is cool. What you do when you're a cold case prosecutor in trial is you start out minimizing all expectations. Like, I used to stand up in front of my jury panel of 60 people and go, hey, this case, you heard the judge, the indictment says this happened in 1987, and I'm here to tell y'all we do not have any fingerprint evidence. We do not have DNA. We do not have a confession. We do not have the gun.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_02] We don't have ballistics. We don't have any of all that. What are y'all thinking? And somebody out there will go, then why am I here, lady? Because you ain't got nothing. And I'll think, oh, you got an X by your name, buddy. You're out. And somebody will go, you know what? You must have something. And I want to hear what it is because I like puzzles. And I'm like, lady, you're on the jury as far as I'm concerned. So you make them think you have no evidence, right? And they get on the jury. And then you give your opening statement.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_02] And then you lay out the evidence you do have where hopefully they're going, whoo, okay, okay. We got something going on here. I want to hear what this case is all about. And then they're sitting in ready to be interested. And that's the way you start out trying to cold case.

[00:33:13] [SPEAKER_01] They under-promise and over-deliver. Yes, exactly. Love that. So back to prosecuting evil. We talked about that racehorse episode. That's amazing. I'm very excited to watch that. I do. Like that's incredible and iconic. Are there other cases or episodes that you're excited for people to see that kind of, you know, like you got super into or you just think are kind of a standout in some way?

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_02] Well, the one coming up next on November the 7th has two prosecutors that one of them I train and the other one is doing the job that I used to do. And they're really, really good in trial. This is the one where the defendant killed her boyfriend with her high-heeled shoe. So they reenacted that in the courtroom, just like John Jordan saw me do it the day I did it on the bed with Susan Wright. They're doing that in the courtroom. And we get to hear about all that and how that went down.

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_02] And then we have the one later this season where I tried a defendant who was 17 years old when he killed a cop. And what, you know, the whole push pull of, wait, can you get the death penalty when you're only 17? Well, you could in Texas back then anyway. And that discussion comes into play. So I think we still have a lot of really juicy things to talk about on Prosecuting April for the rest of the season.

[00:34:31] [SPEAKER_01] I'm really excited. And people should watch it. And they can watch it on Oxygen, right? Yes, Saturday night at 8 Central. Okay. And then I'm assuming it's also going to be streaming on Oxygen somewhere? Yes, yes. Very cool. Before we wrap up, I do want to ask you, for anyone listening to this who, you know, we talk to people, younger people who listen to the show, and sometimes they're interested in becoming an attorney of some kind, and oftentimes they're interested in the criminal side of things. What would your recommendation for a young person who is interested in that,

[00:35:01] [SPEAKER_01] maybe becoming a defense attorney, or maybe in particular a prosecutor, on what to expect but maybe what they should be thinking about?

[00:35:08] [SPEAKER_02] I think that would be wonderful for all the people out there who are thinking about it. Whether you think you might want to be a cop who becomes an investigator or a detective, or a prosecutor or a defense lawyer, however you can figure it out as an intern, as a shadower, your mom or dad's best friend's cousin, go watch them do it, go follow them around, you know, in the real job. Because I think that when you go see it for real, at the police department, at the DA's office, at the PD's office,

[00:35:38] [SPEAKER_02] you might see something that makes you go, ooh, ah, this is not for me. Or you might see something that makes you go, wow, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. That's what happened to me. But I think you need to go there, there. Don't just think about it, or read about it, or think you know it in law school. Go check it out and see what you think.

[00:35:57] [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, for so many jobs, I think that's important. Just get that experience, make sure you like it. So, Prosecuting Evil is coming out right now. We're kind of in the middle of the season. Can you give us a hint about anything that might be coming after that? Do you have any projects in the works or anything like that? Things are looking good for Cold Justice as far as looking for cases. How are you balancing both doing two shows at the same time? And like, both of them seem like they kind of take a lot of work. So like, how do you do that?

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_02] There are days where I can't keep my head straight. Between watching cuts and reading files and talking on the phone and trying to find cases where I think I'm going crazy. So those days happen too.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_01] But it's all good. That's amazing. That's really cool. I mean, they're both great shows and I think people should absolutely check them out. If you haven't seen Cold Justice, I think a lot of people who listen to us have. I love it. And then Prosecuting Evil is also awesome. And I just love the in-depth attorney stories. So, thank you for doing what you do, Kelly. We really appreciate you. Is there anything that I didn't ask you about that you wanted to know? No, you asked me a lot of great questions. Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Kelly for speaking with us.

[00:37:01] [SPEAKER_00] Thanks so much for listening to The Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us at murdersheet at gmail dot com. If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_01] If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com slash murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www.buymeacoffee.com slash murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.

[00:37:45] [SPEAKER_00] Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for The Murder Sheet, and who you can find on the web at kevintg.com

[00:37:54] [SPEAKER_01] If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience, as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.