The State of True Crime: Darkness, Ding Dongs, and Delusion: A Conversation with The Prosecutors

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[00:01:34] of their award-winning gummies. One of our very favorite podcasts out there is The Prosecutors. You can always rely on Brett and Alice to offer a level-headed, intelligent, and articulate take on true crime. Yes, we always appreciate the analysis they bring to the cases they cover

[00:01:58] and the expertise with which they discuss things. They're also just lovely people and we really admire them. So we were thrilled when they agreed to go live with us for our Patreon. Today we're going to be bringing you the conversation that we had. What we wanted to do

[00:02:15] is kind of broaden the scope of the conversations where we're not just talking about one case, we're actually talking about the state of true crime. This is a topic that interests Kevin and

[00:02:24] I a lot because before we became creators in this space with our podcast The Murder Sheet, obviously, we were really very much adamant viewers, listeners, readers of different true crime content. And we care deeply about this genre. We believe in its ability to

[00:02:43] enlighten people about unsolved cases, to do public service, to allow survivors, victims, surviving family members catharsis by speaking about their situations and maybe healing from that trauma. We believe in the potential here. But we have both been increasingly alarmed to

[00:03:03] see certain happenings in the space and sort of feel that we're not necessarily as a genre living up to that potential right now. What we wanted to do by talking with two people we very

[00:03:14] much respect, Brett and Alice, was get to the bottom of what's going on and how can we all stop it or change course before this genre becomes synonymous with just harassment, bad behavior, doxing and all sorts of other things. My name is Anya Kane. I'm a journalist.

[00:03:34] 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. And this is the state of true crime, darkness, ding-dongs and illusion, a conversation with the prosecutors.

[00:04:41] All right, we're live. Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for coming to our live with the wonderful prosecutors. We have Brett and Alice from of course, The Prosecutors, fan favorites here at The Murder Sheet. And then us as well, Anya and Kevin who do The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:59] We're super excited to talk to you both. And we just want to say thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you for having us. We love joining you guys. You're our favorite. So it

[00:05:09] works out. Agreed. Thanks for having us. I was really impressed with the article the two of you wrote together for Fox News recently. And for some of those out there who may not be familiar

[00:05:21] with the thesis of the article or the thrust of it, can you just tell us what the article was about? Sure. And thank you for that. And, you know, it's one of those things where

[00:05:32] it's been kind of weighing on us for a while. I feel like we had talked about doing something like that, writing something. Obviously, it's a different audience. But essentially just seeing the way we love true crime. You guys love true crime. That's why we

[00:05:48] do it. Right? We brought you guys together. Your love is based in true crime. And we want it to be everything it can be. But lately, particularly with some of these big cases, you really see

[00:06:00] the harm that true crime can do in the real world, where real people, real victims, people who are completely unrelated to the cases at all, suddenly see their lives thrust into some sort of spotlight and see rumor and innuendo begin to take over. And it's something that's

[00:06:20] really troubled us. And it's something you guys, we've talked about with you before. And I know you and Alice and Jason Blair were on together and had a great discussion about some of these

[00:06:29] things. And it was just something that had been kind of percolating with us. And we wanted to get out there and talk about it, not just to criticize because criticism's great, but it doesn't offer any solutions, but to hopefully kind of start a

[00:06:43] discussion of what people can do who care about this, who want to ensure that true crime doesn't slide down into the gutter. We don't want it to be in the gutter. And to prevent that, I think

[00:06:55] it's important because true crime can do so much good, and we've seen how much good it can do. And that's what it should be about, not some of the other stuff we've seen. Are you trying to lose weight and feeling like you're getting absolutely nowhere? Well,

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[00:08:17] That's rowe.co slash msheet. Really well said. I know, you know, when you talk about the good true crime can do, I know with us we've heard from people, and I'm sure you've had this experience,

[00:08:31] you know, when people share their stories or when people, you know, hear their story told, that can be very cathartic, that can be very helpful in the healing process, raising awareness of cases that are ongoing. All that is super important. And creating a community

[00:08:46] where people can kind of have discussions about crime, where we can kind of maybe learn something about a social ill or problem affecting a lot of people and have that discussion. But yeah, we share your concern that true crime is souring lately in that essentially, I'm curious,

[00:09:05] I mean, true crime is nothing new, right? I'm sure we've all like, you know, in the 30s they were doing crazy stuff. Like it's kind of been around since, you know, ancient times, you know,

[00:09:15] murder ballads and whatnot. But in our modern iteration of true crime, to what do you describe, ascribe rather, the kind of current weirdness going on that we're seeing? Like, why do you think that

[00:09:26] is happening? I think that's a great question. And you're absolutely right. The reason that we have always been interested in kind of the darkest side of humanity is because we're all connected through our humanity, right? We want to seek to understand the aberrant, the things that we hope

[00:09:44] will never happen to ourselves or to our loved ones, but they do. And they seem to happen at random and we don't like chaos. We want to make sense of chaos to better understand ourselves and

[00:09:54] the world around us, much less the whole protecting, you know, the ones that we love. And so I think the fact that we're interested in it is absolutely part of our human nature. And I think that is a

[00:10:06] good because it is seeking to understand sometimes the un-understandable. But you're right, you know, there have always been problems with that kind of desire to look into kind of the darkest depths

[00:10:19] of humanity. But more recently, I agree with you, you know, the potential to do harm seems at least to have a megaphone to it. And part of that, of course, is several factors. Number one,

[00:10:33] you know, this is not new, but we know that with the advent of lower barriers to entry to get a hot take out there, you know, anyone can have a podcast. Anyone can have a YouTube channel.

[00:10:43] Anyone can now publish articles to a number of websites. You no longer need to go through a system like a news network or, you know, some other filtering mechanism. And so a lot of voices

[00:10:55] are heard, which can be a good thing. But because of the voices being able to just be blasted out there, it's also a little bit difficult to parse through the noise and know what is dependable,

[00:11:07] but also what's being responsible reporting. And coupled with that, I do think we have a massive drop in education by the general public in our judicial system and understanding how investigations

[00:11:19] are run, what the laws are. You know, if you live in the United States, what the Constitution says, what the Constitution protects, what your constitutional rights are and how they've been interpreted by the courts over time. And what is the principle undergirding those very rights?

[00:11:34] Those are very important principles to understand, to have these basic conversations that I think we've lost as a society. Whether you want to blame the education system or you want to blame the fact

[00:11:44] that we have 24-hour Wikipedias at our fingertips. We no longer learn anything because we think we can just Google search it. And that actually leads to less actual understanding of your rights, of the laws. And so I think, you know, those two things coupled together have created this

[00:12:01] perfect storm of allowing the amount of harm we are seeing to, whether it's purely innocent bystanders or harming real defendants who are currently on trial, facing real charges, to really affecting, you know, jurisdictions' ability to investigate and prosecute crimes

[00:12:21] in a way that is good for the community, good for the defendant, good for the victims, and good for our entire justice system. Lack of education by the general public, which is

[00:12:33] something that I think you and I, you know, we both try to do through our podcasts is to teach because everyone should know what these rights are and know how to think for themselves and know

[00:12:43] how to kind of tease out what they are being fed on social media, on Reddit, even on the news, so that they know how to think through these questions. And then with the rise of lower

[00:12:55] barriers to entry of all these people who can give hot takes, who may not be the most responsible hot takers. Yeah, and I just think the internet has done this in so many different areas, and

[00:13:05] true crime is just one of them. True crime is not special. It's not like you're only seeing this in true crime. I think the internet, instant communication, social media, in some ways it's the most important invention since the printing press. But we, I think as a society, haven't

[00:13:20] really figured out how to cope with it yet. We're still figuring that out. In 200 years, people are going to look back at this period and study it because of the changes. I mean, just

[00:13:30] the way we communicate with each other, the way we interact with each other, how much easier it is to share misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories. And a lot of our innate tendencies, I think have just been, they've been given so much, they've been hyper, they're hyper now,

[00:13:47] right? So we were always into conspiracy theories, and we were always into tribalism, and we always enjoyed yellow journalism, but it was limited in its reach and its scope and its abilities. But now it's not. Now all that's unlimited. And we can indulge in those,

[00:14:04] in some ways our worst tendencies, we can indulge in them to whatever extent we want. And I think what you see is people fall into this, and it gives you a sense of belonging when you

[00:14:14] don't otherwise have one. The sort of collapse of institutions and groups you can belong to, that whole bowling alone thing, now you can find meaning in being in a group of people who

[00:14:28] believe they have the secret knowledge about this case, right? It's an occult thing almost. We know the truth. All these sheep out there think this is an ordinary case, but no, in this one, there's

[00:14:40] this conspiracy and everybody's involved in it, and only we understand that. I think that's a really powerful thing. And then of course, just having the microphone for people who can say some really bizarre things. The Idaho example comes up a lot where you have this poor professor who's

[00:14:59] just a professor at the school, doesn't even know these kids, and you got a TikToker with 100,000 followers saying, she did it, I saw it in a psychic vision. And people jumped on that. And that's sort of emblematic of where we are.

[00:15:15] It so is. I got to tell you, you guys are nerds, I think you'll appreciate this, hopefully. I did an article about this years ago back when I had a different job. But my ancestor was actually

[00:15:27] executed over essentially a conspiracy theory, fake news from the 1600s. He was a Catholic bishop in Ireland, and essentially there was this fake plot where the Catholics were going to kill the

[00:15:37] king of England, and they rounded them all up over this. And so that's always kind of interested me because you had the same thing, you had a very charismatic, sort of proto YouTuber rise up and

[00:15:47] say, I know the whole plot, I'm exposing it. People love this guy. They were like, yeah, give him money, you know, and then later on, it turned out he was made up the whole thing. So we've always

[00:15:57] loved the sort of charismatic con man who's going to blow everyone's minds with the whole exposure of the conspiracy. But now, everyone truly does have the potential to become that as long as they

[00:16:08] have a computer or a phone and the ability to go live. So it's very interesting. One thing you mentioned is that, you know, even watching the media people can kind of come away with the wrong

[00:16:18] idea. How has the traditional media played a role in this current environment? I think we both have some takes on that from our experience at Delphi. But I'm curious, as you guys are looking at that,

[00:16:28] you know, why? What is happening where we're not seeing people just get their answers from where they normally would newspapers, television stations, local national press? I think the consumers have really fed this problem. We want answers right away. So

[00:16:44] where do most people go right now when something happens? They go to Twitter, or they go to Reddit. They don't actually open up the newspaper because there's not enough time to do investigative journalism. It's not even a word. Investigative journalism and confirm with

[00:17:00] two, three, four sources as we used to have to do. Go to print, print it, have the paper boy, deliver it to your house, and you open up the paper. Today, we quite literally, the second we

[00:17:10] hear a filing drops in Delphi, everyone will say, what do they mean by this? What does that mean? It's a 30 page filing. No one's read it, but somehow there are people on Twitter who can tweet

[00:17:22] droves of a 30 page filing within seconds of the filing becoming public. And so what traditional media has to do is compete against that because no one's going to go click on an article that's quite literally hours old. We already know what happened, even if that information is false.

[00:17:40] And so in a lot of ways, I feel bad for traditional media. They have to jump in the fray or be left behind completely. And when you jump in before you've had a chance to do any sort of

[00:17:52] research or even reading of the document, you're going to have misinformation. And so I think this is, we make this point a lot in our op-ed as well, is consumers, I think here really have incredible

[00:18:07] power in changing what we accept as information we are being fed. We should not be passive consumers. When you click those Twitter threads, when you like it, when you listen to shows that are spouting misinformation within seconds of information being dropped, that can't be right.

[00:18:26] And so in a lot of ways, we need to hold back and recognize that real analysis takes time. And maybe before we jump to wanting to know what someone else's take is,

[00:18:39] try to understand what we think about it first. I think we've kind of lost with that whole Google culture, we've lost the ability to know what to think. We hear this all the time from

[00:18:51] people, which they mean to flatter us, but I see this in a lot of places in the world where people say, I don't even know what to think about this until so-and-so tells me so. Their favorite

[00:19:04] newscaster, their favorite podcaster. What does that mean? You have eyes and you have a brain. Now you may want to go confirm what you have found out, and it's fine if you seek out voices

[00:19:18] that maybe agree with what you take. But to start with the premise of, I don't know how to think about this without someone telling me so is incredibly dangerous because that is essentially

[00:19:29] saying I as the consumer am seeding all of my analytical thinking and whatever you tell me, I will be your yes man. And we don't need yes men, especially in this culture. We need people to ask

[00:19:41] those critical questions and to push back and say, where's the evidence? Where did you get that? What is your citation for making that very extraordinary claim? And you guys, especially you, Anya, probably have a better understanding of this than we do,

[00:19:56] but it really feels like the traditional media is kind of in freefall. Other than the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, maybe the Washington Post, and I don't even know about the Washington Post anymore, it seems like the sort of traditional pillars of the media

[00:20:12] aren't there anymore. And you see it even in things like Delphi. The fact that that gag order just sits there and no press has challenged it. Whereas the lawsuit, 20 years ago, I think you would have had a lawsuit immediately from the various press agencies, the newspapers who would

[00:20:31] have said, hey, this is unconstitutional. You need to do something about this. This is far too broad. Now you don't even see that. And it feels like there's no resources for investigative journalism. Journalists are really good at gathering information. I don't think most journalists

[00:20:50] would tell you, I'm an expert in everything I cover. I think what they would say is, I'm really good at going out and finding the information and putting it together in a way people can

[00:20:58] understand. But right now, what that means is reaching out to YouTubers and podcasters and asking them what they think. And it's just garbage in, garbage out. You're just doing the best you

[00:21:10] can with what you have. And then, like Alice was saying, they are slaves to that hot take, instant reaction. And a lot of people, I forget the name of it. There's actually a name for this

[00:21:22] kind of bias. But a lot of times, the first thing you hear about a particular subject is going to be what you believe. And it's very hard to move you off of that.

[00:21:30] So if the first thing you hear is a hot take that is wrong or misinformed, you may believe that for a very long time or for forever, even if it's completely wrong. And that old, you know,

[00:21:41] saw Benjamin Franklin or whatever lie goes all the way around the world before the truth can put its pants on. If that was true in the 1700s, it is entirely true now. Yeah. A lie becomes your whole personality before a true, before the truth.

[00:21:58] I'm curious, for a long time, people have been asking us to cover the Kieran Reed case. And I resisted that because when I looked at it, it just seemed to me, frankly, to be a garden variety hit and run case. Like what's so interesting here?

[00:22:13] And obviously for a lot of people, it's become quite a bit more than that. I'm curious, what do you think it is about that case that has caused it to be transformed into something that so many people are obsessed with?

[00:22:29] Yeah, we've had this discussion. I'm not sure if we actually figured it out. Alice, did we come to a conclusion on why that case? Kevin, like you, I kind of refuse to read anything about the case because I was like,

[00:22:39] the more people who post on it is probably a case that I don't want to follow, which is not a great viewpoint when you have a podcast. But I agree with you, right? When I first

[00:22:51] read it, I was like, this seems incredibly clear what's going on. But a couple things, like we said at the beginning, people love a good conspiracy theory. And when it is complex and it involves every single person in Canton, Massachusetts, it's so amazing that you want to

[00:23:07] believe it. I mean, imagine it's like the greatest heist of all time. It's a great movie, right? It's like Ocean's Eleven times a million, the Karen Reid story. That's what it is. We go pay production

[00:23:20] studios to make those movies. And here we have it in real time for free, live stream 12 hours a day with testimony all the time. Wow, this is the best TV around. Unfortunately, we know that this

[00:23:35] is real people's lives. All those people I said that had to be part of the conspiracy, every person's life and their loved ones are being dragged into this right now. And so I don't have

[00:23:44] a good answer for why this case caught fire, except media had a lot to do with it. Also, cameras in the courtroom. Look, I, especially as a podcaster, love cameras in the courtroom because

[00:23:56] I don't have time to go around the country and sit in courtrooms all day to listen to different cases that I want to cover. So I do personally love it. But what is being warned of in Delphi

[00:24:07] with cameras in the courtroom is exactly what's happening in Karen Reid. I don't believe that Karen Reid could have become what it is right now without essentially 24-7 streaming of trial because people are watching it without context. And then you have people who are doing hot takes

[00:24:26] who are not lawyers, who don't know anything about the law or investigations or what the legal conspiracy definition is giving hot takes at the same time as you're hearing testimony. And it's a lot of misinformation. And so people are getting fed hours of misinformation throughout

[00:24:41] the day before anyone who's actually had time to listen to the testimony can explain what's actually happening. So this is a real tension with the cameras in the courtroom thing. I believe in open courtrooms. I absolutely do. I believe that the public should know what's going on in

[00:24:57] these courtrooms. But because of cameras, you are always going to have people who are going to play to the cameras, not to the jury. And we are seeing that in multiple cases. And I think Karen Reid is

[00:25:08] definitely falling victim to that exact ploy. Yeah. And I'll add two things. Number one, I think Alice gives too much credit to some of our lawyer friends because there are plenty of people

[00:25:21] in the Karen Reid case and other places who should know better and do know better, but also understand that the way to get those sweet, sweet clicks is to get into the conspiracy and talk

[00:25:33] about the conspiracy. That's the way you get people to listen to you. And I think as we talked about in that article you mentioned, consumers have a responsibility, but creators do too. And I think

[00:25:47] they need to feel the impact of what they're doing. Karen Reid is a great example. If Karen Reid is guilty or if it was just some random accident, John slipped and fell and hit his head

[00:25:59] on the flagpole and died, then you've got 11, 12 people who were in that house who have been harassed for over a year, called murderers, including people who were 17 or 18 years old at the time. The Canton Police Department, State Police Department, firefighters, all these people

[00:26:15] who have been labeled as murderers and accessories to murder. And that should be a big deal. We do a really good job, I think, in this country of trying to reinforce the idea that you're innocent

[00:26:26] until you're proven guilty when you're someone that the state is accused of a crime. But for some reason, we don't give that same grace to other people who are around. People have no problem

[00:26:37] saying all sorts of terrible things about Jen McCabe. And Jen McCabe, maybe she's involved or maybe she's just a random person there. She's certainly not the person who's been indicted for the crime. And that sort of weird dichotomy is strange to me. The other thing, and we talk

[00:26:52] about this some too, people in law enforcement have a responsibility as well because one of the reasons these conspiracy theories take hold is because of actual improprieties by the police, corruption by the police, things that the police have done that allows these conspiracy theories

[00:27:11] to take hold. And we talk about this when we talk to officers, which we have the opportunity to do on occasion, is how critical it is for them to always act professionally, honorably and ethically,

[00:27:23] because if they slip up, it's not just going to be their case that suffers. It's not just going to be their career that's impacted. It's everyone they work with and it's the entire justice system.

[00:27:34] So there's a lot of blame and responsibility to go around in these cases. And I think it takes all of this coming together to create that perfect storm. I just think you're seeing more of those

[00:27:46] perfect storms lately because the media environment we live in allows us to more easily bring them, bring all these elements together and create them. Absolutely. You mentioned, you know, lawyers, creators knowing better, but still,

[00:28:02] you know, going with the conspiracy theories because they absolutely know that there is an audience built in there and they can basically easily monetize that without doing a tremendous amount of work because just tell them what they want to hear. It's very easy. I feel like I'm

[00:28:18] seeing almost a community grow up around. I've seen this with Karen Reed, Delphi, to a certain extent, Idaho. But it seems like I'm seeing the same people kind of coming into each of these

[00:28:28] cases. It's like almost nomadic and sort of doing this kind of channeling the conspiracy theories, creating very toxic online spaces, attempting to or actually engaging in real life harassment to a certain extent. Is that something you have observed as well? I'm just curious. Or do you

[00:28:45] think it's a little bit more loosely knit than that? I don't know because like I said, I don't follow all these people on purpose. But what I will tell you is they're all learning from each

[00:28:56] other, right? Whether it's the actual attorneys who are really involved in the case or it's people who are covering it, they are absolutely all watching these different types of cases and seeing what catches fire and what blows back in people's faces. And these are each case studies

[00:29:12] for each other. And so the fact that they're all studying each other and seeing what gets the most clicks and what catches fire or what is laughed out of YouTube, they're taking note and then

[00:29:23] taking those learnings to the next conspiracy. So whether it's the same people or not, unfortunately, when we give oxygen to these fires that should not be fires whatsoever, they then kind of grow

[00:29:37] upon themselves. And of course, you have a built-in audience and you're like, you thought that was a conspiracy. Wait till I tell you about this lady in Boston, right? You already have that built-in

[00:29:48] audience and you can take those learnings and you know that that audience just followed Idaho incredibly closely or Delphi incredibly closely. So you have a built-in language, whether it's the

[00:29:57] same hot takers or not, they now know how to speak to that audience in a way where it almost seems like an inside language or inside jokes with people. All I have to tell you is a first

[00:30:10] name or a last name, McCabe. Is this totally a McCabe or what? Boy, did she pull a gull. We now know this, but no one outside of these people, this audience understands what we're talking about.

[00:30:22] We're all laughing about ding-dongs. Nobody knows what we're talking about except for a very narrow slice of the population. But this is what cult leaders do, guys. They speak to you as if you

[00:30:33] have an inside language and that that person knows you very well. And so I'm not saying these are cult leaders, but I'm saying it's very effective communication because you know what language and what communication style is an inside joke that the rest of the world doesn't understand.

[00:30:51] So this inside group who wants to believe the conspiracy says, we are in on the conspiracy. We get this. We understand this. Nobody else does because they don't understand those jokes. They haven't been following all these conspiracies. We have this heightened knowledge that no one else

[00:31:05] does. And I'm seeing that a lot in streams of how even these populations speak about these cases to each other, which is pretty dangerous because it gets more and more insular and then it becomes

[00:31:16] very self-reflective. Like we must all be right because we were right about Idaho, Delphi, and now Karen Reed. So absolutely there's no way we could be wrong on three conspiracies. Impossible.

[00:31:28] Right? And so this is what I mean when I say people need to take a step back and use their minds for themselves. Is this YouTuber or this Redditor or whatever, are they speaking directly

[00:31:38] to you and they know how to do it? Because it's pretty easy, right? Like I don't follow any of those people and I just spouted off like three inside jokes. I don't really understand

[00:31:49] those inside jokes, but I know they're inside jokes and I can say them and you probably all are like, oh yeah. Right? But that's what's dangerous about not being able to think for yourself

[00:32:00] is all you have to hear is that code word from another case that you were really bought into and you don't actually step back and analyze and think, this is nothing like Karen Reed. Why are

[00:32:10] you drawing that parallel? You're just trying to draw me in because you know I've really been following Karen Reed and I'm very invested in this storyline. So you're trying to kind of use

[00:32:19] that same currency and use it as a step up in the next conspiracy. And I think it's not like it's new. I mean, there's nothing new under the sun, right? And I think typically in media,

[00:32:31] when something succeeds, you see a lot more of it. There was no such thing as reality TV, really. And then Survivor comes along, it's a huge hit. And then for a while, everything was

[00:32:41] reality television. And I think probably you see something the same here. Do I think that Dr. Turtle Boy is going to just hang out in Canton and report on where they're given too

[00:32:55] many speeding tickets after the Karen Reed trials ever? No, I assume he'll take his show on the road and he'll be at the next place where there's a police corruption storyline that can

[00:33:06] be told. And I think you're just going to see that as long as consumers consume it, as long as there's money to be made, you're going to see creators who provide that. And look, I mean,

[00:33:21] that's the way it is, you know, and we can moralize about it all we want. But until we vote with our clicks and our time and our willingness to indulge in this stuff, we're

[00:33:33] going to keep seeing it. Sometimes people tell us, oh, well, I watch this insane YouTuber, but it's just for fun. I know they're not trustworthy, but it's funny to me. And I kind

[00:33:45] of think like, yeah, but they don't have a just for fun download button on YouTube that's still a, that's still money in their pocket. And I think people- Absolutely. Like the people who

[00:33:58] hate listen to us, I love them. Yeah, thank you. Right. When people make some snide comment about how much they hate our show and then specifically reference something from like minute 56, I'm like, thank you for listening. I don't care if you all hate us, right?

[00:34:16] But here's also the truth that we all know, right? Like I'm no psychologist, but what you fill your mind with, even if it's all in jest becomes part of like the essence of how you view the world.

[00:34:27] So if you're watching satire all the time, like that actually takes root, you know, and it seeps in and really what it is, let's say you do listen to it just for jokes. What you're doing is

[00:34:39] desensitizing yourself to the absurdity. And so, you know, what that does is when you hear an actual absurd argument, you've actually listened to absurdity all day for 12 hours. So what's so absurd about this other thing that's happening? And so even if you don't buy into what you say,

[00:34:55] you're listening to at that moment, what it's doing is changing your entire perspective of how you view absurd arguments. And look, you got to be careful because I feel the pull of that

[00:35:06] because I love conspiracy theories. I love them. You know, I love watching YouTube videos on how the moon is hollow and the aliens built the pyramids, you know, and we went to the moon,

[00:35:17] obviously, because only a moron would think we had didn't. But the reason we didn't go back is because of the aliens we found on the moon who scared us away, right? Like, I love that stuff.

[00:35:26] But Alice is right. If you if you aren't careful, all of a sudden you start thinking, I don't know, maybe everybody, maybe there are lizard men running the country from an underground bunker in the Denver airport. You have to be careful. And as we've been saying,

[00:35:43] the more you listen to it, the more you consume it, the more of it there's going to be. Yeah, that's absolutely correct. I'm, I'm the same way. I love conspiracies. I love the ancient

[00:35:54] alien stuff. But if you play with matches, you need to know the dangers of what you're doing. And I think this does this sort of thing is ultimately dangerous. I worry that, for one

[00:36:08] thing, it erodes people's faith in prosecution, law enforcement. And at the same time, I also worry that it makes people blind to the real imperfections of what goes on in prosecution and law enforcement. Because prosecutors, no offense are perfect, police are perfect.

[00:36:28] And there are some bad things that happen. And I feel like we pay less attention to those things when we're imagining extravagant, multi person conspiracies and they get in a rut that didn't happen. Yeah, actually, we were talking with Jason Blair the other day, he's awesome. And

[00:36:46] we all know him. But he, he made some very good points about like, when we are all trying to put out the fires of conspiracy theories, lesser known cold cases, like smaller cases that need

[00:36:57] people talking about them, sort of get ignored. Because it's like everyone's trying to deal with, you know, either, you know, capitalize on some nonsense, or trying to put out the fire there.

[00:37:09] And it's, it's, it's kind of it's bad for the genre as a whole. One thing, speaking of the attorneys, since I'm the only non attorney here, I want to ask you guys, um, this is something I

[00:37:19] kind of yelled at Kevin the other day, like not yell that like, you know, in a very loving way. I was like, what are what are the bar associations doing with this stuff when they're seeing this

[00:37:28] when they're seeing these defense attorneys, you know, mug for the cameras, but not only I mean, that's that's as old as time. But when we're seeing them literally like work hand in hand with bloggers to spread misinformation and leak information, then like, what is being done about

[00:37:46] this? What could be done about this? I feel like I feel like the legal communities are currently not they're sleeping at the wheel, I think, I mean, in my view, but I'm also a not I'm a

[00:37:56] non lawyer. So I can't. I can't. That's a great question. And I hope all the bar associations out there heard what your constituent is saying, what the heck are you doing? Here's the sad part. Okay,

[00:38:06] bar associations, truthfully, came together to keep out other lawyers from the profession so that lawyers who are lawyers get to make more money. Let's just say what no one is allowed to say out

[00:38:16] loud, right? They are not the medical board, making sure that we actually know how to practice law. That's not what a bar association for. I'm really sorry, the bars I'm a part of, please don't kick

[00:38:25] me out. That is just truthfully why bar associations exist. With that said, historically, bar associations, though, you do have to sign all these oaths, and they are keepers of all the complaints and bar complaints are real things. And they really do investigate them. Historically, lawyers,

[00:38:44] the main capital you have is your integrity. And because of that, lawyers protected their integrity. And there are any, you know, impropriety with their lives. And so in a lot of ways, lawyers historically have been very self regulating. We report each other, we report

[00:39:02] ourselves, we try to stay so far from the line that we can't even see the line because we don't want to get close to that line. Because if we do, that essentially goes our entire career.

[00:39:13] Not so now when you have a lot more blending of the practice of law and media personalities, right? We see a lot more of that, where, wow, I can accidentally put on a cat filter on a Zoom

[00:39:26] hearing. And all of a sudden, I have like 1000 five star reviews on Google. That really happened to that lawyer. Fantastic. I don't think that lawyer intended to put a cat filter on during a

[00:39:36] Zoom conference to get more likes, but it happened. And so with the blending of media personality and media fame, which might equal money, compared with the practice of law is very, very dangerous.

[00:39:51] Because then when you used to have one client, which is your actual client, if it was a defendant, it was the defendant, no longer are your attentions fixed on your actual job. Now your attentions are on an HBO documentary, or maybe appearing on 2020. Or maybe being invited onto

[00:40:10] Nancy Grace's podcast, or getting an editorial published. These are things that you're looking at when in fact, your law profession and the oath you took was to the Constitution and to your client. And because that's happening, bar associations weren't really set up to be

[00:40:30] the moral mechanism to keep lawyers in place. Because if you've never met lawyers, you're going to lead a lot more than this... It's not volunteer run, but it's not an agency board, like a medical board. And they haven't historically played this role of having to police

[00:40:54] lawyers. Because if they had to police every action every lawyer did that belonged to their bar, they would not have enough resources. And lawyers would be able to get away with everything.

[00:41:05] So I joke about bar associations, but the reality is we've never had to rely on them to be the police. There's nothing wrong with going on 2020. I'm just going to say that. I just said all things

[00:41:17] that I love very much. I love all of those things. I will say this, the bar associations are useless unless you steal your clients money, they're not going to do anything to you. And every lawyer

[00:41:29] wants to be F. Lee Bailey or Johnny Cochran. And used to be, the chances of doing that had to be you caught lightning in a bottle. But now once again, it's possible to be on...

[00:41:42] Some lady gets mad at her boyfriend and hits him in the snow. And all of a sudden, you're on national television as you're coming from California as a defense attorney to be her

[00:41:53] lawyer. And you're on TV all the time. And who knows what kind of name you're going to make for yourself. That guy, Alan Jackson, I had no idea who he was when he was representing Harvey Weinstein,

[00:42:05] which was probably a pretty big deal for him. But now all of a sudden he's representing Karen Reed and everybody knows who he is. And that's just, it's very tempting. And why wouldn't

[00:42:16] you want to be a part of that? Why wouldn't you want to be able to just put it in the best light to show how good a lawyer you are, to show what you can do, to show what a great defense attorney

[00:42:29] you are in a very difficult case. And I think that's probably what he tells himself while he's doing that. But he's certainly reaping the rewards of it. And will there be a Netflix documentary on this case? An HBO documentary? Absolutely. I have no doubt there will be.

[00:42:45] Just like there was with the Murdoch case, just like there was with the Dayball case. I mean, all these cases that you see rising up and becoming so famous, there is a real interest

[00:42:55] there. And what's interesting about it, I think for the legal profession, is how it affects the role of the lawyer. Defense attorneys pride themselves on the thing that matters the most to them is their client and their client's best interest in defending their client's rights and their

[00:43:09] constitutional rights. And you may not like it, but this guy gets a lawyer and by God, I'm going to represent him. But now there's this very real fear, at least for me, that some attorneys are putting their clients second to their own interest, their own values,

[00:43:33] their own future. And, you know, I always hate to accuse specific lawyers of this, but you see things like what's going on in Delphi or maybe even what's going on in the Karen Reid case. And you just wonder how much is the client's interest paramount versus other interests?

[00:43:52] What can be done to evaluate that? I think a lot of people share your concerns in Delphi. What is the corrective mechanism, if any? Well, you could remove the lawyers. Indiana Supreme Court. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you got to make a record. You know, I don't know. I mean,

[00:44:15] judges have a role to play here. Right. And we've been very critical of how Judge Gull handled that because I think her action was correct, but the way she did it

[00:44:24] caused us to be where we are now. But it's always it's fraught to do that. Right now you have the Young Thug trial or whatever it is. Not very hip, as I said on the podcast. Whatever it is

[00:44:37] that's going on in Atlanta and has been going on in Atlanta for like a year and will be going on in Atlanta for another year. Just all the wildness in that case. And you have the judge in that case

[00:44:47] tried to hold the lawyer in contempt, sentenced him to 20 days in jail. Well, then the Georgia Supreme Court stepped in and blocked that because we. You know, civilization only works for civilized

[00:45:00] people. And when you have people who don't want to play by the rules, it's really easy for them to gunk everything up. And I think you're seeing that in Delphi and I think you're seeing that

[00:45:09] in other places where lawyers are doing things that there were just unwritten rules you didn't do. You know, is there anything that stops the lawyers in Delphi from filing the same motion essentially

[00:45:21] over and over and over and over again? Well, no, except you just know that when the judge denies your motion, now you have an appeal issue, but you don't turn around and file version four.

[00:45:32] But that's what they're doing. And how do you stop them? And then the judge feels like she has to respond to every one of their... she is going to have to write something. Just imagine this. Think

[00:45:42] about this for a second. A judge on a double murder case is going to have to sit down and write an opinion that will be filed on the docket for all time explaining why she did not violate her oath

[00:45:56] of office when she called the prosecutor a ding dong, but did not call the defense attorneys a ding dong as well. Just imagine that for a second. That's where we're at. Your tax dollars, all of you should be incredibly offended because this is not the only case

[00:46:12] she has. She has hundreds and hundreds upon cases and she's also the chief judge and like administratively running a court which has civil and criminal cases and whatnot. I mean, this is why it's infuriating as attorneys to watch what's going on because anyone who's

[00:46:31] practiced law or... you don't even have to practice law to understand that a lot of this shouldn't have to be said. We don't live in a society, not just in the law, across the board,

[00:46:43] but we don't live... we are a common law system for a reason. We don't actually all want everything we are supposed to do and not supposed to do bulleted out in life. Do you walk out of your

[00:46:54] door with a bullet list of can walk to car, open car door with left hand, do not open car door with right hand, make sure do not scratch keys across tires, do not... No! You don't have a

[00:47:06] list of every single thing you can't do because you can't possibly do it. That is ineffective, it's inefficient and that's exactly what we're getting into a world where people are saying,

[00:47:15] well show me where it's written. We don't have to. Why do I have to tell you not to do x, y, and z because everyone knows you don't do x, y, and z. That's not the type of society we want to

[00:47:26] live in because we would get nothing done. Double homicides, any homicides would never be prosecuted because we'd have to sit around and write orders all day long about the use of the word ding dong

[00:47:37] which actually has nothing to do with the defendant or the victims. Take a step back. Does that have anything to do with the defendant charged with a double homicide or the victims in this case?

[00:47:48] None. None whatsoever. But here we are all talking about ding dongs and that is a travesty. So yes, they could be removed. So because they are operating within a system that was meant to

[00:48:01] work without these types of actions, honestly the only thing in our power which is incredibly powerful is what you choose to consume as the consumer. What you click on, what you choose

[00:48:14] to share among your text threads, what you spend your money and time imbibing in, it matters. And so if that's as little as I refuse to click on that YouTube video or I demand to read what I'm

[00:48:33] being told is true, do as little as that and it will transform the world. It truly will. Not just in the realm of true crime. I think if all of us did that in any type of news, it would transform

[00:48:46] the entire news cycle. Yeah, I mean we know it's pretty obvious in Delphi as it's been for a while that these attorneys are performing for a specific group which seems to be mostly conspiratorially

[00:48:59] aligned YouTubers who have an audience. That brings up something. A lot of the behavior we're talking about, maybe all the behavior we're talking about comes from defense attorneys. Defense attorneys working with bloggers or YouTubers to spread confusion and things of that nature. I'm

[00:49:17] curious, just as a thought experiment, how do you think people would react if prosecutors did things like that? What are you guys going to do? Yeah, I mean fortunately, you should be outraged. You should be outraged. And the good thing is prosecutors still get held accountable, right?

[00:49:39] I mean, number one, we would be fired. That would be the first thing. We probably would lose our license. We probably would be disbarred if we did some of these things. And look,

[00:49:52] the reason that defense attorneys get so much leeway is because of the importance we place on defense attorneys and their role in the constitutional system. We don't take away from that and we understand it. And we often will make excuses for them. I've made excuses for the

[00:50:09] attorneys in the Karen Reid case. A lot of people don't like that, but I mean they are defending their client, right? And it's really hard to put ethical limitations on a defense attorney because you're concerned about going too far and impacting the defendant's rights.

[00:50:29] Why are the Delphi lawyers still Richard Allen's lawyers? Because the Supreme Court of Indiana was terrified that if they removed them, it would create a structural error in the entire case because of his right to choose his attorney to the extent that even exists in this kind of

[00:50:44] situation. And so they were just terrified of that and the judge didn't make enough record. And so they said, hey, we're not going to do this. And it's really, really hard to do that.

[00:50:53] And I can imagine sort of the ethical quandary for a defense attorney. And if you're a defense attorney and you think your client will win if you can get someone to post a blog about how

[00:51:08] your client was framed by the police, if you know that that will help vindicate your client's rights, do you do that or not? I'm not a defense attorney, so I don't know if they have these difficult

[00:51:20] discussions or if this stuff even comes up. For prosecutors, we talk about it all the time because there's just a very real feeling that given our very different position in the constitutional system, that we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard to ensure that we

[00:51:35] don't put innocent people in prison. Defense attorneys, obviously, they don't have an obligation to only defend innocent people, quite the opposite. So that is a really difficult question. It's one that I don't have the answer to. And like I said, I don't know if defense attorneys

[00:51:52] struggle with this kind of thing or not. I think one also issue that compounds this is that I don't think a lot of courts are equipped to deal with this. I mean, not universally, but there are a

[00:52:03] lot of judges who are older. And if you tell them, hey, this Twitch streamer is going crazy and saying the courtroom should be shot up. What's a Twitch? Like, what is that? You have this situation

[00:52:14] where there's a disconnect, I think, generationally. And I think the same goes actually for things like online harassment. That's typically not something that can necessarily... Law enforcement can do a lot about legally speaking, but it can have a real impact on people's lives. I don't

[00:52:31] think our laws have caught up to the realities of the internet or our legal systems understanding of the impact of the internet. And so to quote Jason again, we were talking about this the other day,

[00:52:41] he made such a good point about how you do have a situation where judges will do things like gag orders because maybe that'll stop it. And that only muzzles the traditional press, because the traditional press says, well, we can't talk to anyone. Bye. And the YouTubers and

[00:52:58] the people who are just making stuff up online, I mean, they've never had an obligation to anything. So they become the loud voices as the press retreats. And so I think... I don't know. I'd

[00:53:09] be curious to hear your take about that. I feel like there's not really an understanding of what's coming. And I think we're only really unfortunately seeing the beginning of how chaotic this is going to get before people start hopefully taking it seriously.

[00:53:23] So I will go so far as to say, yes, I agree with everything you said. I agree that gag orders had something else in mind and it doesn't really address all the mediums of hot takes today.

[00:53:35] But I will go so far as to say there is no law or set of regulations that can catch up to deal with what we're facing today. And that's because we have the First Amendment.

[00:53:43] We all do have the right of free speech, and that is a beautiful principle of our country. And we both have podcasts because free speech exists. And it's amazing that no one gets to

[00:53:54] tell us what we think. But isn't that ironic that because we are provided this right where no one gets to tell us what we think, we seek out people to tell us what to think all the time.

[00:54:05] And so I don't think there actually is a law that can squarely address what you're talking about, which is why it goes back to a culture and a society. And there has to be self-regulation,

[00:54:16] whether it's by professions. And if you are someone who has an audience, you have a profession now. If you have a Twitter handle or a TikTok handle, no longer are you just some person

[00:54:29] on social media. You have a responsibility. And the sooner we are able to convince people that they have a responsibility, that they have to self-regulate, and I don't know that will ever happen because you're always going to have bad actors. This is a very difficult problem that

[00:54:47] you've put your finger on that I don't know how to solve. And in some ways, our Constitution is built so as to not solve it in a way. We've always allowed unpopular opinions to be said.

[00:54:59] And I don't think the answer is to shut down conspiracy theorists or anyone who I think is wrong because who decides what's right or wrong? That's a scary world to be in. And so though

[00:55:09] we've been on the side of all this irresponsible reporting, I am also completely for free speech and recognize that the way to fix it is not to gag them all. Because if you were to do that,

[00:55:21] then you actually have one controller of people telling you what to think, which is what we don't want. So I think this falls back a lot to changing the entire culture around who has to self-regulate,

[00:55:35] which should be everybody, and also that consumer culture we were talking about before. Yeah, I think the courts should actually get out of it entirely. Gag orders are a—they're barely constitutional at all. They're only constitutional because

[00:55:51] there was a feeling—it was after, I believe, the Sam Shepard trial—that we have to have some sort of restrictions on the press and on participants speaking to the press to ensure a fair trial,

[00:56:03] to ensure an unbiased jury. But gag orders are only constitutional when they're effective. That's an important thing about rules that restrict speech. If they don't work, they're actually not constitutional anymore. Because the only reason they're constitutional

[00:56:17] is because whatever benefit you get from them outweighs the restriction on your speech. Gag orders are worthless. All they do now is restrict people like the family in Delphi from speaking. They don't restrict anybody else. They certainly are not stopping a jury pool from

[00:56:34] being tainted by the coverage in the Delphi case. I think gag orders should just go away altogether. There's no one, like Alice said, there's no one to appeal to. There's no higher

[00:56:46] power that's going to save us. The courts are going to come down and say, we figured it out. Our jury questionnaire still includes the question, do you own a PDA? Nobody's owned a PDA in 20 years. That's where the courts are. In 30 more years, they might figure out Twitter.

[00:57:04] They're never going to be able to fix this problem. It falls to all of us. It falls to creators. It falls to consumers. We are the only people who can save ourselves. So we better start doing it.

[00:57:14] I love that. I totally agree about gag orders. Gag orders are a disaster as far as I'm concerned, especially in Delphi. One thing that's funny is also no one understands them. People will often

[00:57:26] be like, well, you guys are still reporting on it. But aren't you gagged? No. It's not for the... Anyways. One thing I wanted to ask you, you've made some excellent points that courts are not

[00:57:37] going to save us. We can only save ourselves. This has to be consumer driven and consumer led. What sort of tips would you offer to true crime listeners, true crime viewers on how to assess

[00:57:51] what is worth putting in their brains and what's worth hearing out? We tell people, you shouldn't just be listening to us. You should gather some viewpoints. But then I'm terrified that they're going to run to some insane true crime swine on YouTube and just lose their mind.

[00:58:07] Is true crime swine real or did you just make that up? It's like my alter ego. It sounds real. I love it. You should talk to crime swine. Yeah. True crime swine.

[00:58:17] I have a very specific character in mind. And I feel like he is just the embodiment of all the problems with YouTube. He's having a lot of trouble with his family and he's taking out

[00:58:26] his rage on the case. So I don't know. You should trademark that because that's good. Bringing on the true crime bacon. It says something about me that I came up with this and people were like, wait, should I lock him? What should I do? He's not real.

[00:58:42] I just didn't want to be yelling at anyone and calling anyone out specifically. And we always say, oh, YouTubers, but there are a lot of nice YouTubers, you know, so I wanted to be like, this is emblematic of the bad YouTubers. And plenty of terrible podcasters.

[00:58:54] So awful podcasters. So, you know, I want some true crime swine is just from the darkest regions of my brain. But anyway, so what are some what are some red flags? What are some green flags?

[00:59:06] What are some things that people should consider when selecting those creators to maybe follow or just engage with? Such a good question that I don't have great answers for, but a couple things to help you assess. The person who you're getting your information from,

[00:59:24] why do they have the authority to have anything to say about it? Right. We have so many people who are like, because I feel strongly, feeling strongly is very important. Emotions are important,

[00:59:35] but we are not an we should not be an emotion driven judicial system. That is not what we want. I don't want the judge sentencing me to be like today. I feel like it's life. You don't want that,

[00:59:47] right? And so it doesn't mean that you have to have a law degree to interpret legal filings, but have that person explain why they even have an authority to be telling you anything.

[00:59:57] So that's number one. And number two is that we you don't have with that said the complete opposite. You don't have to be an expert to know when something smells fishy. And so when something

[01:00:11] smells fishy, don't just accept it because everyone else has liked this post. There's now 300, 3000 likes must be right. Just ask a question, right? I mean, I had a filing in my real day job today and it was making assertions about certain facts. And I turned around the

[01:00:30] draft to the person who was writing it. And I said, no, no, no, you need citations for X, Y, and Z. You gave me citations for A and B, but I need it for every single assertion you're making.

[01:00:39] That's what we are supposed to do in the law that we have gotten to the point now where no longer do we no longer even cite things. We don't even ask where people draw their conclusions from,

[01:00:52] right? You can draw your conclusion and it can be your opinion, but tell me what your opinion is based on because then I can assess. This is what we do in peer reviewed articles, right?

[01:01:01] Then I can look at your list of reasons and say, okay, I take your one, two, and three. I take issue with your four, five, and six. So what does that mean for what I actually think about this?

[01:01:11] So I would say demand more from those who are telling you things, ask them to show you the goods, show me the math proof. How did you arrive at the end? Don't just give me the answer.

[01:01:20] Show me exactly in the text or exactly within the law or the trial transcript or the testimony where you are drawing that conclusion from so I can assess if it is a factual statement you are

[01:01:31] making or your opinion and interpretation of a factual statement, which might not actually be factual. Right? And so no longer be a passive consumer, but we consumers are supposed to be active. So be those active consumers. Yeah. And I would also say, you know,

[01:01:50] to harken back, we've been talking about the fourth, the fourth, the first amendment a lot. And, you know, there's viewpoint neutrality. To me, it's not about their viewpoint. It's not, well, that person, in fact, it definitely shouldn't be this. Well, that person, they disagree with me

[01:02:08] and they think he's innocent and I think he's guilty or vice versa. It's about the way, or at least one red flag, ask for red flags, vitriol and hatred. If you have somebody who is telling you

[01:02:23] that you should hate someone for their views, that is telling you, you know, that people, people deserve to die. I mean, these are pretty low bars, but these are things we see,

[01:02:35] you know, it, what is it about this turtle boy character that is so troubling? It's not that he thinks Karen Reed is innocent. It's that he goes to people's kids' sporting events and shouts

[01:02:47] cop killer at them. You know, it's that he, he's done a lot of things I'm not going to mention on this channel. Some of them pretty disgusting, but that is the problem. And if you see people

[01:02:59] who trade in that, who trade in hate, who trade in division, who want you to not listen to other people because those people are evil and you shouldn't even give them the time of day, that's

[01:03:12] going to show you something. That's different from righteous indignation. You can be righteously indignant. You know, you can point to something someone does and be deeply troubled by it and criticize it. I struggle with this with the Delphi attorneys, because at this point, I really do not

[01:03:25] like them. Like I have reached a point where I have personal issues with them and how they've conducted themselves and what it says about the legal profession and what it tells people about

[01:03:35] the justice system. But we try and focus on the things they actually do. And the things they actually do are bad enough to not attack them personally. I don't know anything about them personally. I don't care to know anything about them personally, but their actions in the case

[01:03:47] are problematic. And I think if you weed those people out, you'll go a long way to avoiding some of the worst stuff. You know, if you have people who are accusing random people of a crime, that is

[01:04:02] a bad sign. Go back to the Idaho case. If someone's telling you I had a dream or a psychic vision that this person who you've never heard presented as a suspect did it, that's a problem. You know,

[01:04:12] if you got people in Delphi who were saying, well, it's obviously this guy because I've looked at them side by side and they look very similar and we should show up at his house and protest.

[01:04:21] That's a problem. You know, a lot of these things are not subtle. If we could get to the point where we only had to worry about the subtle people, we'd be much better off.

[01:04:31] Yeah, that would be nice. I think when you said it's like, I think it sounds like such a low bar and most of the people watching this probably like, Oh, well, I would definitely not watch that.

[01:04:40] But I think unfortunately, things have gotten so toxic that that is an important cut off. I'm just curious to completely switch and to be Pollyanna optimism over here. Wait, Pollyanna. Pollyanna. Oh, that's good. Good. You guys are going with the puns tonight.

[01:05:05] We call each other all sorts of weird things. But I think, you know, I'm curious, what gives you hope going forward about true crime about how this genre could not drive itself off a cliff?

[01:05:19] And how does that, you know, be a force of, you know, some positivity in the world? Are there any things going on in the space or that you're working on that sort of give you some of that optimism?

[01:05:30] Absolutely. Because the great news is the bad actors, they're just the loud ones, but they are not the majority. We say this about police conspiracies all the time. There are bad cops. But hearteningly, having worked with many, many different jurisdictions,

[01:05:48] are small, small percentage of the whole. And the majority of people in the true crime space, I truly think, want to help victims, want answers, want to highlight stories that maybe traditional media doesn't have time for in their news cycle. And we see great things every day.

[01:06:06] Just yesterday, we had Kristen Middleman from Authorum on our show, where as we were interviewing her, they were literally solving cases in real time. People in the back were like high fiving each other because they just identified like this murderer, right? Real good is coming from it.

[01:06:22] And it's coming because we are, we do have responsible reporters. We do have family members of victims who will not stop until there is justice for their loved ones. And it is a

[01:06:35] beautiful thing that we have so many voices, because there are so many voices out there now, that cases should be able to be covered. You don't have to be the John Bonnet Ramsey

[01:06:45] of cases to be able to be covered now. That's amazing that we are able to do that. And so I agree with you. I want to hold on to that positive because true crime will not go away.

[01:06:55] I don't think it should go away. I want crime to go away. If that went away, that meant true crime went away. But unfortunately, we live in a fallen world. As long as this world exists, there will be

[01:07:06] true crime. And I think it is a beautiful part of the community to want to come together. All of these people here in this chat, watching this live right now, in different communities online who have found each other across the world, joined under a

[01:07:22] banner of helping a particular victim is beautiful. Isn't that humanity at one of its best? I mean, truly it is the love your neighbor as yourself mentality. And I believe in that. And I think

[01:07:38] that love and that kind of humanity will rise above all of this junk. Because the thing we know is that the viral and the cheap and the fleeting, they don't endure dust to dust. It will be gone.

[01:07:53] It will not carry over because people will tire of that conspiracy. They'll move on to the next thing. There's no enduring power, but truth always has power. And so I do believe that time

[01:08:07] will tell. It always has, and it always will. And it will endure here. And so those of you who are in it for the right reasons, those of you who are content creators, who are taking the long road,

[01:08:20] reading those hundred page documents and taking your time to put out good content, I truly think that you will be the voices that will endure when the fire flames out quickly in a lot of kind of these bad actors. Alice, that was beautiful. Thank you.

[01:08:41] That was terrific. That was like inspiring. I'm sorry. I'm a Pollyanna too. I can't help it. This is why Alice always speaks last. We really, this was a lot of fun. Thank you so much for talking with us. Our traditional last

[01:08:58] question is, was there anything we didn't ask you that you wanted to say or talk about? I mean, after what Alice just said, I got nothing. Well, thank you so much.

[01:09:10] No, I really thank you guys for doing what you do. The great thing is to be on this positive note after we just spent an hour talking about the doldrums is the bar can be set and it can

[01:09:21] be raised by each other. And people, once they hear good content, the good news is you don't have to be told what the red flags are. It becomes part of you and good content creators raise the

[01:09:32] bar for each other and let the low bar be there. We can be so far from it. It doesn't matter. And so thank you for being that for us too. We love the way you cover things. We love

[01:09:44] the way that you treat other content creators as well. And so just as a kind of a positive for all the people, it's not a losing fight. I think it's an absolutely winning fight in the longterm. I love that. We appreciate you guys so much.

[01:09:59] You guys do such great work. Honestly, your inspirations for us, the way you are able to kind of just analyze these cases and bring clarity in a very accessible way. I think it's just we've always admired you for that. But we also admire you as lovely people. So

[01:10:14] thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. And we're talking again soon. Yeah, I'm sure we will. Thank you guys. Anytime. Thanks. Bye. We want to again thank Brett and Alice for taking the time to speak with us. They are

[01:10:37] wonderful people, as Anya said at the top of the show, and their podcast is one we highly recommend. I actually recommend both of their podcasts because they have two. They have their main program, The Prosecutors. They also have another program called Legal Briefs.

[01:10:52] And both of them are well worth your time. 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.com. If you have actionable

[01:11:08] information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities. If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so

[01:11:29] at www.buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support. 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. If you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered,

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