Unmasking Serial Killer Expert Stéphane Bourgoin: A Conversation with Lauren Collins of “Killers Lies” and The New Yorker

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[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_02]: This episode contains discussion of sexual assault and murder.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_03]: Serial killers loom so large in our global imagination.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_03]: So do those who claim to hunt them.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Those who dedicate their lives to studying serial killers and examining their compulsions

[00:02:23] [SPEAKER_03]: make for easy heroes in our true crime space.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_03]: Forget Friedrich Nietzsche.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_03]: When it comes to those who fight monsters, those who gaze into the abyss, we can't

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_03]: seem to help but stan, to use the modern parlance.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_02]: But what happens when a trusted figure turns out to be an abyss unto themselves?

[00:02:41] [SPEAKER_02]: That's the question at the heart of the new National Geographic docuseries Killer

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Lies.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Chasing a true crime con man.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_03]: This three part series turns your typical true crime documentary on its head and explores

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_03]: the underpinnings of what I like to think of as a sort of true crime industrial complex.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_03]: True crime for the sake of true crime.

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_03]: True crime with an eye for the lurid and the sensational.

[00:03:04] [SPEAKER_03]: True crime in some cases without the truth.

[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_03]: That's the legacy of Stephane Bourguin.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_02]: For years Bourguin was France's premier expert on serial killers.

[00:03:14] [SPEAKER_02]: He boasted of interviewing 77 serial killers all over the world.

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_02]: He claimed to be motivated by a gruesome personal tragedy.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But as time went on, his stories grew more and more elaborate.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And the questions began.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Those ultimately revealed some breathtaking truths about how one man was able to con

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_02]: an entire community.

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_03]: Killer Lies came out of a wonderful New Yorker piece called The Unraveling of an

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_03]: expert on serial killers.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_03]: That was by journalist Lauren Collins.

[00:03:47] [SPEAKER_03]: Lauren was kind enough to join us on the show.

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_03]: She'll speak to us about her extensive investigation into Bourguin, what all of this means for

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_03]: true crime as a whole and how a group of enterprising everyday people work together

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_03]: to help expose an extraordinary fraud.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_03]: My name is Anya Kane.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a journalist.

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Kevin Greenlee.

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm an attorney.

[00:04:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_02]: We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews and deep dives into

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_02]: murder cases.

[00:04:16] [SPEAKER_02]: We're The Murder Sheet.

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_03]: And this is Unmasking Serial Killer Expert Stephane Bourguin, a conversation with

[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Lauren Collins of Killer Lies and the New Yorker.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_03]: So Lauren, thank you so much for joining us today.

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_03]: It's a real honor to have you on the podcast.

[00:05:16] [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for doing this.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I am thrilled to be here talking to both of you.

[00:05:20] [SPEAKER_03]: So I guess to start off with, before we get into your piece for The New Yorker and before

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_03]: we get into the documentary Killer Lies, can you just tell us a bit about yourself

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_03]: and your professional background?

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I am a staff writer at The New Yorker and have been for some years now.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina and lived there until I was 18 and struck out

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_01]: for other pastors.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And since 2010, I have been covering Europe for The New Yorker, first in London and a

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_01]: brief stint in Switzerland.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And I've been covering France for The New Yorker since 2015.

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Also, I mean, if you want to know more, I am the author of When in French, a book

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_01]: about learning a second language and what I'm forced to admit is midlife.

[00:06:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And I also have a newsletter on Substack called Lettre recommandée.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to ask you in terms of this specific French story, how did you get onto

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_03]: this? I'm curious about where this reporting process started.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's not as mysterious or thrilling as one might hope.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_01]: But honestly, it was a good old fashioned tip from a colleague that put me onto

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_01]: the story. Ben Taub, who's a colleague of mine, shout out, Ben just sent me like

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01]: kind of a little squib from a paper one day and said, you know, this sounds

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_01]: really interesting and it's happening in France.

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Have you looked into it at all?

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And as soon as I clicked on the link, I think it was just automatically like

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_01]: and immediately hours of my day down the drain.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And what really interested me is, you know, when I'm kind of casting around

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_01]: for things that I want to write about, of course, I'm looking for an

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: interesting story. And this checked all those boxes.

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It was one. But what really drew me to it was that there was another layer

[00:07:12] [SPEAKER_01]: on top of it. So not only was this a true crime story and, you know,

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_01]: the story of Stefan Bourguin and this decades long deceit, but there was

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: another layer on top of it that I thought presented a really interesting

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: way into asking questions about true crime as an industry, as a genre,

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_01]: as a way of storytelling, as a phenomenon itself.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I kind of, you know, I started clicking around, I started

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_01]: reading about the story and I thought to myself, this is a it's a true crime

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_01]: story about true crime.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was really interested in those multiple layers and kind of,

[00:07:48] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, getting into them and peeling the back and trying to figure out

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_01]: what what Stefan Bourguin's lies might be able to tell us

[00:07:56] [SPEAKER_01]: about true crime more broadly.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think it told us some pretty terrifying things about about the genre

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_03]: that we were all interested in, for sure.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm curious, you know, to start off, this is a big question in a way,

[00:08:10] [SPEAKER_03]: but it's sort of the central, you know, conceit of the article,

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_03]: but also the documentary.

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_03]: Who is Stefan Bourguin?

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_03]: I hope I'm saying that right.

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I can't. You're saying it. You're saying it perfectly.

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And we can all do, you know, our own pronunciations here.

[00:08:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think any of us has mastered the French one.

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But so Stefan Bourguin was for many years

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_01]: beginning kind of in the early 90s and up until very recently,

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_01]: France's, you know, foremost expert on serial killers,

[00:08:45] [SPEAKER_01]: former self-proclaimed and foremost.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And he became famous when he was kind of the first person who as,

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, I did a lot of research into this and kind of explained

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_01]: a lot of it in my article.

[00:08:57] [SPEAKER_01]: But he was kind of the first guy who saw what was going on in the US

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_01]: in the early 90s when serial killers became kind of

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_01]: the object of a lot of interest.

[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Silence of the Lands came out.

[00:09:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Criminal profiling was kind of, you know, this exciting emerging field.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And he had the advantage of being bilingual,

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_01]: of being plugged in kind of, you know, culturally and linguistically,

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_01]: being able to make sense of what was going on in the US.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And he was the first guy who started importing a lot of this to France

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and saying, you know, here's this new thing,

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_01]: and I'm going to tell you about it.

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And he became known for his jailhouse interviews with serial killers.

[00:09:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, at the height of his career, he claimed that he had conducted,

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I think, 77 of them.

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he always gave these like very precise, yet

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01]: it turned out totally fictitious numbers.

[00:09:47] [SPEAKER_01]: But he did get into jails and interviews, some notorious killers.

[00:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, what became very interesting about that

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_01]: after it became clear that he'd been lying about his credentials for many years

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_01]: was that incident, first of all, in claiming to be an expert on serial killers,

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_01]: he basically blagged his way into becoming one.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And then when he did and he got in and, you know,

[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_01]: managed these audiences with these people,

[00:10:16] [SPEAKER_01]: he essentially got a masterclass in deception from people

[00:10:19] [SPEAKER_01]: who were very well placed to conduct it.

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[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. Yeah, that was that was a wild observation

[00:12:04] [SPEAKER_03]: that he was essentially kind of a student of some of these folks.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_03]: And I know, you know, in the documentary at one moment,

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_03]: one of his former colleagues notes that he was essentially acting

[00:12:15] [SPEAKER_03]: as a fanboy for some of them while he's talking to them.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_03]: Can you talk about that sort of odd phenomenon?

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Right. Well, so at the beginning of his career,

[00:12:24] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, he came back, I think, from a trip to the United States

[00:12:26] [SPEAKER_01]: and was at a dinner party and was talking to a producer,

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_01]: a documentary producer he knew about serial killers.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And she said, you know, wow, I've never heard of this before.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds really interesting.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we've got to make a documentary.

[00:12:39] [SPEAKER_01]: So they went, they took a crew, they went to the U.S.,

[00:12:42] [SPEAKER_01]: they spoke to profilers, they went to a few prisons

[00:12:44] [SPEAKER_01]: and they interviewed some serial killers, for example,

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_01]: a serial killer named Otis Toole.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And this producer, you know, they had like made these huge lists of questions.

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_01]: They had really planned it all out.

[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_01]: This is how it's going to go when you get in the room.

[00:13:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And then Bourguon got in the room with Toole and went totally off script.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And so this producer told us later that she was really shocked by his behavior

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01]: and felt that he had comported himself, you know,

[00:13:15] [SPEAKER_01]: more like a fanboy than a journalist.

[00:13:17] [SPEAKER_01]: So they were like there were early signs of something perhaps being a little bit off

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_01]: or a little unusual from the get go.

[00:13:26] [SPEAKER_01]: But as his career went on, Bourguon started telling people,

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, if you devote your life to serial killers,

[00:13:34] [SPEAKER_01]: the first question that anybody is going to ask you is why.

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And Bourguon had this very ready answer.

[00:13:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever anybody posed that question, he was able to say,

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_01]: and this was very understandable, that his first wife, a woman named Eileen, had been,

[00:13:52] [SPEAKER_01]: and I quote, I think he said, you know,

[00:13:56] [SPEAKER_01]: raped, murdered and nearly decapitated by a serial killer in Los Angeles in 1976.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So the point was, Bourguon told people, you know,

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_01]: that he was doing this as a form of catharsis

[00:14:08] [SPEAKER_01]: and that he needed to confront the evil that had taken away his beloved.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_01]: He presented himself as this kind of bereaved widower seeking justice.

[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And by positioning himself that way, by taking on this mantle of victimhood,

[00:14:23] [SPEAKER_01]: he was able to gain a lot of credibility in all, you know,

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_01]: in a number of different ways and also proximity to the families

[00:14:32] [SPEAKER_01]: of people who had lost loved ones and or who had who had survived violent crimes.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. And it really seemed to allow him

[00:14:43] [SPEAKER_03]: to hand wave away like gauche elements of his persona or doing things like,

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_03]: hey, everyone, I have serial killer Gerard Schafer's remains in my basement.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Who wants them like things that would have been perhaps more red flags?

[00:14:56] [SPEAKER_03]: I think people maybe made excuses about, well, he's he's been through this.

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_03]: So perhaps. Well, for sure.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because he would do a lot of things that like seemed off.

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, certainly in hindsight, you know, he he was kind of a fan of like

[00:15:10] [SPEAKER_01]: this kind of ace Ventura meets Sherlock Holmes look.

[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And he would walk around in these ascots and like blood like quirky shoes was a thing.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_01]: But he would wear these shoes that were like made to look as though they'd been splattered in blood.

[00:15:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Or he was always posting these kind of off color memes about like,

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, electric chairs and things like that behavior that was really like a bit odd.

[00:15:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But it could all be explained as maybe just maybe like the eccentricities

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_01]: of this person who had gone through a really traumatic thing and was still working his way through it.

[00:15:50] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. You know, we being true crime podcasters, we've seen some stuff.

[00:15:56] [SPEAKER_03]: We were definitely very aware of how easy it is in our space for.

[00:16:01] [SPEAKER_03]: I guess to put it bluntly,

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_03]: charlatans to sort of accrue an audience by making claims that then turn out not to be true.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_03]: And unfortunately, at least in the United States, we can list off cases where even experts

[00:16:12] [SPEAKER_03]: can get into trials and put out junk science and wrongful convictions happen and whatnot.

[00:16:18] [SPEAKER_03]: With all that in mind, you know, as you dug into this, looking at the whole of true crime,

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, certainly from an international perspective, what were you did anything surprise you about sort of how easy it was for him to sort of trick people or do this?

[00:16:31] [SPEAKER_03]: And no one seemed to be pushing back until later on.

[00:16:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, OK, the thing is, I mean, like for sure, it's easy to be like, oh, my God, he was out there just like peddling these whoppers.

[00:16:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Why didn't anybody catch on?

[00:16:45] [SPEAKER_01]: But I don't think it's as easy as that. There were there were plenty of reasons nobody caught on.

[00:16:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one was just kind of basic human decency.

[00:16:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you say your wife was murdered by a serial killer.

[00:16:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe people should, but they're not likely to probe for all the details.

[00:17:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And then there was just this kind of inertia of reputation and position at a certain point.

[00:17:08] [SPEAKER_01]: He was big enough that people figured he must be there for a reason.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I think true crime is not one thing or another.

[00:17:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Maybe true crime would better better be thought of as true crimes.

[00:17:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Or there are just so many shades and possibilities of of what can be done in the industry and the genre.

[00:17:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I thought it was so interesting you touched on, you know, kind of junk forensic science and wrongful convictions, of course.

[00:17:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yet how powerful and how instrumental has true crime media been in educating people about police brutality,

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_01]: about prosecutorial misconduct, about false confessions, about all of these things that the average citizen is so much more likely to know about now if he or she has engaged with true crime,

[00:17:59] [SPEAKER_01]: whether that be in television or in film or in books or whatnot.

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_01]: One thing that I think is really unusual and perhaps unique about this case is so as I was saying, like each time Bourguon sat down,

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_01]: he was kind of like sitting at the knee of these masters of deception and I believe like taking notes on on how to do that.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So this was an unusual con in the sense that, you know, usually the longer the con goes on, the more difficult it becomes to sustain.

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_01]: You've told these lies so many times you can't keep them straight.

[00:18:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And it, you know, the whole thing comes tumbling down and it's all over.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But the longer this con went on, the better Bourguon was able to sustain it because as this self-proclaimed true crime expert,

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_01]: he was actually learning more and more.

[00:18:47] [SPEAKER_01]: He was he was giving himself, he was arming himself with new tools every day.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I think, however, he vastly underestimated the audience's intelligence.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_01]: What's really interesting is that here was Bourguon kind of taking notes on how all this worked,

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_01]: but people were paying attention to him and other people like him and they were taking notes too.

[00:19:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And ultimately, it was an anonymous collective of true crime fans.

[00:19:13] [SPEAKER_01]: They were the ones who twigged to this.

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_01]: They were the way it wasn't journalists, you know, it wasn't the law enforcement officials

[00:19:21] [SPEAKER_01]: who were enlisting Bourguon to come and speak at these prestigious institutions.

[00:19:27] [SPEAKER_01]: It was true crime fans and just regular people, you know, a nurse, a dispatcher who got together and were like,

[00:19:37] [SPEAKER_01]: something is fishy, something doesn't smell right here.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. I love this group, the Fourth Eye Corporation, where they got together and they just did this.

[00:19:49] [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm curious, you know, we kind of got to meet them a little bit more in the documentary as well

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_03]: and sort of hear some of what they were looking at.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_03]: But as you were sort of investigating this piece and investigating this story,

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_03]: what do you think drove these everyday people to sort of come together

[00:20:04] [SPEAKER_03]: and really just hone in on this and try to get to the truth?

[00:20:07] [SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting. I mean, I think they were driven by a sense of justice,

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_01]: but it's kind of the inverse of fandom.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Like if you think about fandom, you know, there's well, there's so much power

[00:20:25] [SPEAKER_01]: and there's so much enthusiasm and there's so much energy,

[00:20:27] [SPEAKER_01]: but it's usually harnessed out of, you know, enthusiasm about someone's work.

[00:20:33] [SPEAKER_01]: This was driven by this profound sense of disappointment that someone

[00:20:38] [SPEAKER_01]: they had a lot of esteem for turned out to be a fraud.

[00:20:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And I have to say, as someone asked me a question about, you know,

[00:20:48] [SPEAKER_01]: the relationship between professional journalists and these kind of,

[00:20:54] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, amateur sleuths who are increasingly taking part in investigations.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And the way I feel about it, when I went back, you know,

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_01]: it was the fourth eye who initially published, they launched an investigation

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_01]: and published it on their own and were able to prove that a number of Bourguon's claims

[00:21:17] [SPEAKER_01]: and that much of his resume was not true.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, I am a professional journalist and I verified and reverified

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_01]: and checked and double checked and went back over all the work

[00:21:28] [SPEAKER_01]: that they did with a fine tooth comb and almost without exception, it held up.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it was of, you know, really high quality.

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And so to me, as long as the information is accurate and true,

[00:21:46] [SPEAKER_01]: it doesn't matter if it's coming from somebody with a press card

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_01]: or with a Facebook account.

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. It's like journalism is a practice, you know,

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_03]: it's not a credential that, you know, we all can whip out necessarily.

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_03]: If you're doing journalism, you're a citizen journalist.

[00:22:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Certainly there have been cases of online vigilantism

[00:22:07] [SPEAKER_01]: that give a lot of cause for concern, but this isn't one of them.

[00:22:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Their work, you know, as I said, really held up

[00:22:15] [SPEAKER_01]: and they approached it with a diligence,

[00:22:16] [SPEAKER_01]: but also with a sense of total commitment that I can do nothing but admire.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. Yeah, I wish all the online sleuths were like this group

[00:22:26] [SPEAKER_03]: because they did. I mean, it was it was tremendously impressive.

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_03]: Even stuff like reaching out to Breguan for comment and things like that.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_03]: And reaching out to people like John Douglas saying, hey,

[00:22:37] [SPEAKER_03]: did you did you work with this guy?

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, they were they were doing journalism.

[00:22:41] [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I think the the piece and then the documentary

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_03]: really captures that is pretty impressive.

[00:22:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, they chase these leads down to the ends of the earth.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_01]: They were on the phone with the clerk of court in Port St.

[00:22:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Lucie, Florida, asking these incredibly kind of arcane questions about,

[00:23:00] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, what they do with their evidence once a trial is over.

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, to the point that some of them were kind of

[00:23:07] [SPEAKER_01]: like risking their relationships falling apart and neglecting their work.

[00:23:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And you do ask yourself, like, why?

[00:23:15] [SPEAKER_01]: What motivated these people?

[00:23:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And the thing is, they are still going.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_01]: They're still going.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And you ask yourself, but I have asked them, like, what is motivating you?

[00:23:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you, you know, why don't you just drop this

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_01]: and get back to your lives?

[00:23:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And their answer, which has remained, you know,

[00:23:39] [SPEAKER_01]: unyielding over the entire course of my reporting in the story,

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_01]: is that they simply want Borg one to admit

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_01]: that he lied, admit to his lies and and stop.

[00:23:50] [SPEAKER_03]: One thing that your investigation really kind of uncovered, though,

[00:23:55] [SPEAKER_03]: was just the amount that Borg won,

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_03]: essentially almost like a magpie took from other people's lives and stories.

[00:24:03] [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to throw out a few examples.

[00:24:04] [SPEAKER_03]: FBI profiler John Douglas claiming to have worked extensively with him,

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_03]: claiming that the killer Donald Harvey's defense attorney

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_03]: William Whalen died by suicide due to working for Harvey

[00:24:17] [SPEAKER_03]: and then claiming that, you know, he was intimately involved

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_03]: with a woman named Susan Bickrest, who is a real life murder victim.

[00:24:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And then and then claiming that he wasn't that it wasn't her.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Just, you know, in this in this story, no fact ever stays factual for long.

[00:24:33] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yeah.

[00:24:34] [SPEAKER_03]: I don't even know if there's a question here, but like,

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_03]: what do you make of this?

[00:24:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. At first, I tried, you know, I was like, OK,

[00:24:42] [SPEAKER_01]: there's so much to kind of keep track of here.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I've got to make a timeline.

[00:24:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm diligently entering all these dates and facts

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_01]: and claims on my timeline.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like this was not this is not a horizontal story.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, my timeline at a certain point, you know, kind of was like

[00:25:02] [SPEAKER_01]: sprouting just kind of upside down

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_01]: staircases and started to look like an MC Escher drawing.

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_01]: It was not these, you know, every time I tried to control the facts,

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_01]: they just struck back because he had told because Borgon had told

[00:25:16] [SPEAKER_01]: so many lies and so many different permutations over such a long period of time.

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, it was very hard to keep track of all that.

[00:25:25] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that was why, you know,

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_01]: what I really love about this series and what I think it brings to the table

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_01]: that's unique is that we were able to try to answer these larger questions

[00:25:38] [SPEAKER_01]: and these more macro and these more meta questions about what

[00:25:43] [SPEAKER_01]: what does all this mean?

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_01]: The story, because of its, you know, fundamentally

[00:25:51] [SPEAKER_01]: slippery nature.

[00:25:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It was just a really good way in to asking those larger

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_01]: questions about true crime.

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And then you mentioned a documentary series.

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to ask you, what is it like going from sort of writing

[00:26:06] [SPEAKER_03]: this piece for The New Yorker to then having that adapted into a documentary

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_03]: where you can actually even kind of go further and look more into it?

[00:26:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was so excited to have the opportunity because I had,

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, lived and breathed the story for the better part of a year

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_01]: and still was hitting brick walls on, you know, not everything.

[00:26:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I was able to I was able to, you know,

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_01]: turn over some some new ground and publish some some new reporting

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_01]: that kind of moved the ball forward in the story.

[00:26:35] [SPEAKER_01]: But for instance, you know, as soon as we started developing the documentary,

[00:26:40] [SPEAKER_01]: our incredible director and showrunner Ben Selco

[00:26:44] [SPEAKER_01]: and our producers said to me, well, is there what do you want to try to do here?

[00:26:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Are there do you still have unanswered questions?

[00:26:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Are there things that you weren't, you know, able to kind of resolve

[00:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: and print that you want to try to go further with here?

[00:26:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And one example of that is, you know, every time

[00:27:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Borgman would tell this story about his wife who was murdered,

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_01]: naturally, you know, the magazine or the television show that people

[00:27:12] [SPEAKER_01]: they would ask for an image.

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And he always showed the same photograph,

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_01]: which was this kind of like beautifully composed black and white portrait

[00:27:22] [SPEAKER_01]: of two young lovers.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_01]: So it was himself and then a woman who had,

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, kind of a blonde, like a feathered haircut and these

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_01]: rainbow shaped, you know, thinly plucked arched eyebrows.

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: She's smiling with this little snaggle tooth kind of grin.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And they're looking at each other just like this young couple,

[00:27:42] [SPEAKER_01]: like staring into each other's eyes, their noses almost touching,

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_01]: looking really smitten and the picture of young love.

[00:27:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And so once it became apparent that, you know, he had been lying

[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_01]: about the murder of his wife, that the question remained,

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_01]: well, if Eileen, if his wife didn't exist, then who is the woman

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_01]: in this picture he's been brandishing, you know, for three decades

[00:28:07] [SPEAKER_01]: and projecting, you know, he kind of like taken this

[00:28:11] [SPEAKER_01]: this person's face and projected onto it these really

[00:28:15] [SPEAKER_01]: gruesome, violent fantasies.

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was important to try to figure out who that person was.

[00:28:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I had no idea whether she,

[00:28:23] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, knew Pogba and knew that he had been using her,

[00:28:28] [SPEAKER_01]: repurposing her face as the face of a murder victim for many years.

[00:28:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And if she did know what she thought about it.

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_01]: So I was really, really keen on finding her.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_01]: That that was the beauty of being able to work in a team

[00:28:42] [SPEAKER_01]: on the documentary series.

[00:28:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, I had

[00:28:47] [SPEAKER_01]: working by myself, like to kind of sitting alone in my office.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I had done everything I could think of.

[00:28:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I had tracked down all these obscure B movies from the 1970s

[00:28:56] [SPEAKER_01]: because I had a hunch from the portrait that it might have been taken on a film set

[00:29:01] [SPEAKER_01]: because it was, you know, so so beautifully composed.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And it looked like it was from the 70s because of the hair and the fashion.

[00:29:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And I knew that Bourgoin had worked on some B movies in the 70s.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So I thought, let me let me get any movie that he,

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, came anywhere near and I'm going to watch it.

[00:29:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm like, you know, I think they were DVDs.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I might have even had to get a video or two.

[00:29:22] [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm like, with my nose pressed up to the television screen,

[00:29:26] [SPEAKER_01]: like it's not her, you know, pressing pause every time somebody has

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_01]: an open mouth orgasm to see if there's a snaggle tooth on the screen.

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I spent hours and hours doing that, like yielded nothing.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I called everyone I could, you know, find whom he'd crossed

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_01]: paths with in those days, all these old hands from French,

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, erotic films of the 70s.

[00:29:48] [SPEAKER_01]: One guy had started a new career as a chocolatier, an erotic

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_01]: chocolatier, making little kind of like genital shaped chocolates

[00:29:56] [SPEAKER_01]: and normal chocolates.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_01]: He was he was he was very insistent, erotic and normal chocolates.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_01]: In any case, I had not been able to locate this person.

[00:30:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And if you have seen the series,

[00:30:10] [SPEAKER_01]: you'll know that we finally were able to.

[00:30:15] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a big surprise.

[00:30:17] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, the the results of this.

[00:30:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Quest were nothing like what I would have imagined.

[00:30:23] [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to ask you, I mean, did you ever imagine that your

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_03]: your journalistic career would lead you to knowing so much about

[00:30:30] [SPEAKER_03]: like the French porno industry?

[00:30:31] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that is the beauty and thrill of a journalistic career

[00:30:35] [SPEAKER_01]: is doing way too much about things that you never thought you had,

[00:30:38] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, any business knowing about.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I am thrilled to have accumulated that that knowledge in the

[00:30:45] [SPEAKER_01]: in the line of duty.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_03]: It's pretty cool.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I wanted to ask you, you know, like one

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_03]: one person that you were able to ultimately talk to for the documentary

[00:30:55] [SPEAKER_03]: series, but also for the piece was the man at the center of this

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Bourguan himself.

[00:31:00] [SPEAKER_03]: And just I don't want to, you know, give away any spoilers for the series.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_03]: I think people should really check it out, because as Lauren says,

[00:31:06] [SPEAKER_03]: it is it is not just an interesting story about this wild situation.

[00:31:10] [SPEAKER_03]: It is it's sort of about true crime as a whole.

[00:31:13] [SPEAKER_03]: The positive side of it, and I would say the kind of more deceptive,

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_03]: negative side of it.

[00:31:18] [SPEAKER_03]: But I wanted to ask you, what was that like finally getting to,

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_03]: you know, sitting down with him in those occasions?

[00:31:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, at the beginning of my reporting, I had sent an email

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_01]: to Bourguan, you know, saying, I'm starting this piece.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Would you be willing to meet with me?

[00:31:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And he wrote back pretty quickly asking, well,

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_01]: what is it that you want to write about?

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And I told him straightforwardly and, you know,

[00:31:40] [SPEAKER_01]: he didn't reply and kind of.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't hear anything more from him.

[00:31:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, I spent I spent months reporting the piece,

[00:31:50] [SPEAKER_01]: kind of talking to everybody I could who knew him,

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_01]: who had worked with him, who had been exploited

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_01]: or by his lies or anyway, I just really immersed myself

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: in Stefan Bourguan world for for a period of time.

[00:32:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And then I think I had.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Almost, I think maybe I had even written the story,

[00:32:14] [SPEAKER_01]: and although I had no expectation

[00:32:18] [SPEAKER_01]: that he would want to talk to me,

[00:32:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I thought I've I've really got to like pull out all the stops

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_01]: trying just because.

[00:32:28] [SPEAKER_01]: As you said, I mean, he was at the center of it all,

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_01]: and I thought he really deserved like I thought I needed it was,

[00:32:34] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, incumbent upon me to do everything I could

[00:32:39] [SPEAKER_01]: to make sure he had the right of reply.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So I was able to like figure out

[00:32:45] [SPEAKER_01]: where he lived or so I thought.

[00:32:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I got on a train and then a taxi

[00:32:51] [SPEAKER_01]: and I found myself like kind of, you know, on a Tuesday afternoon

[00:32:53] [SPEAKER_01]: or something in the middle of the French countryside

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_01]: standing in front of this this house.

[00:32:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm kind of like, you know, peering over the fence and around.

[00:33:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't see anybody.

[00:33:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I called the number that I had for Stefan Borgwahn.

[00:33:09] [SPEAKER_01]: To my surprise, he picked up right off and I said,

[00:33:12] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, I think I'm at your house.

[00:33:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, well, that's not my house.

[00:33:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't live there, but I'll tell you where I do live.

[00:33:19] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, you're not far.

[00:33:20] [SPEAKER_01]: If you can be here in 15 minutes, then let's sit down and talk.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So call another taxi like, you know,

[00:33:29] [SPEAKER_01]: speeding down these like French country roads.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And I get there and, you know, he's got his little cottage

[00:33:35] [SPEAKER_01]: with the lace curtains, with little teapots on them.

[00:33:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And he's standing there waiting for me.

[00:33:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was actually.

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I was shocked.

[00:33:44] [SPEAKER_01]: I was really surprised that he accepted the request.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think, you know,

[00:33:52] [SPEAKER_01]: and he did participate in the series ultimately, too.

[00:33:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not sure why necessarily

[00:34:01] [SPEAKER_01]: because it doesn't paint a particularly flattering portrait of him,

[00:34:06] [SPEAKER_01]: except to say that this is somebody who has spent a lot of time

[00:34:10] [SPEAKER_01]: honing the craft of storytelling.

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that he is very reluctant to let go of the spotlight.

[00:34:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think, you know, he he wants to be in the center of things,

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_01]: as you said, even if that subjects him

[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_01]: to some level of unflattering scrutiny.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_03]: You get the sense of he's I mean, obviously none of us are in his head.

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_03]: But I mean, has he given any indication that he's angry or upset

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_03]: to have been exposed or is it sort of seemed like in, you know,

[00:34:48] [SPEAKER_03]: in allowing you to interview him and sort of in participating?

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_03]: He seems to be taking it with a level of gentle good humor,

[00:34:54] [SPEAKER_03]: which surprised me.

[00:34:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if gentle good humor is how I would characterize it.

[00:34:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, in our kind of final, you know, sit down,

[00:35:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I felt frustration on both of our parts, certainly,

[00:35:07] [SPEAKER_01]: certainly mine in that I thought I had mustered.

[00:35:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Evidence showing that maybe counterintuitively,

[00:35:17] [SPEAKER_01]: but that this wasn't a victimless crime,

[00:35:21] [SPEAKER_01]: that there were people who were really hurt by his lies.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And I guess on their behalf, I was sort of hoping

[00:35:27] [SPEAKER_01]: for some kind of recognition of the way that he had exploited

[00:35:33] [SPEAKER_01]: their pain and suffering, like on their part.

[00:35:36] [SPEAKER_01]: That did not that didn't happen in a way that I might have envisioned.

[00:35:45] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. And I wanted to ask jumping off on that, you know,

[00:35:47] [SPEAKER_03]: when it comes to the victims, families,

[00:35:50] [SPEAKER_03]: people who've been victimized themselves by crime,

[00:35:52] [SPEAKER_03]: who got to know this man, people in law enforcement in France,

[00:35:56] [SPEAKER_03]: people who are in the system, people in the media there.

[00:35:59] [SPEAKER_03]: What has been the fallout and the reckoning of all this

[00:36:03] [SPEAKER_03]: since the piece came out and then since the series has come out?

[00:36:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to make a note.

[00:36:07] [SPEAKER_01]: First of all, like in the in the series, we spent a lot of time

[00:36:11] [SPEAKER_01]: with a woman named Diana C,

[00:36:15] [SPEAKER_01]: who was raped by a man named Michel Fornari when she was 14.

[00:36:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Michel Fornari went on to murder a number of people.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_01]: He is he became a notorious serial killer in France.

[00:36:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And Diana, just as a point of terminology,

[00:36:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Diana asked that we call her a victim.

[00:36:36] [SPEAKER_01]: We had initially identified her as a survivor of Michel Fornari.

[00:36:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And she said that she preferred to be called a victim

[00:36:43] [SPEAKER_01]: because she felt that she had been victimized by him.

[00:36:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So that is why I'm referring to her that way at her choosing and request.

[00:36:53] [SPEAKER_01]: So for Dina, Dina got to know Bourguan

[00:36:55] [SPEAKER_01]: through his work with an advocacy association for the families of

[00:37:00] [SPEAKER_01]: for for victims and the families of survivors.

[00:37:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And she trusted him, you know, he had this aura of credibility

[00:37:09] [SPEAKER_01]: and empathy and understanding because he he was, you know,

[00:37:13] [SPEAKER_01]: positioning himself as someone who had been through the same thing.

[00:37:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So someone people trusted him.

[00:37:19] [SPEAKER_01]: She confided in him.

[00:37:21] [SPEAKER_01]: She allowed him to interview her.

[00:37:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And what he did was he turned around and without telling her,

[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_01]: published a graphic novel that included

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_01]: depictions of what had happened to her and republished their interview.

[00:37:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And all of this was without her permission,

[00:37:39] [SPEAKER_01]: without her collaboration, without her knowledge even.

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_01]: So this was just absolutely traumatizing to her.

[00:37:47] [SPEAKER_01]: She she told me that she felt like she had been raped twice.

[00:37:52] [SPEAKER_03]: That's totally horrifying.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_03]: And underscores what you're saying. It's not a victimless crime.

[00:37:57] [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I know in his in some of his statements, he indicated,

[00:38:00] [SPEAKER_03]: like, I haven't killed anybody, but certainly harmed

[00:38:04] [SPEAKER_03]: a lot of people's faith and trust in others, it seems like.

[00:38:08] [SPEAKER_03]: And I wanted to ask you in terms of the I suppose like, I mean,

[00:38:16] [SPEAKER_03]: one thing we always try to underscore

[00:38:18] [SPEAKER_03]: to our audience is, you know, the importance of skepticism.

[00:38:21] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think you made a really, really good point earlier,

[00:38:25] [SPEAKER_03]: indicating that Bourguon essentially weaponized other people's decency

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_03]: against them because you're right. That's such a good way to put it.

[00:38:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, like who could I mean, who could sit with somebody

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_03]: and hear somebody say, I lost my wife in this way

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_03]: and interrogate them about that.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_03]: But at the same time, maybe had that happened,

[00:38:44] [SPEAKER_03]: he would have never sort of, you know, escape the velocity

[00:38:48] [SPEAKER_03]: or escape the orbit of his own lives.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_03]: He would have not had the career he did.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_03]: So I guess like, do you have any insights or any thoughts on like

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_03]: maybe trying to spot fakes before they get that powerful?

[00:38:59] [SPEAKER_03]: Are there questions that people at home can ask themselves

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_03]: when presented with an expert to really determine

[00:39:05] [SPEAKER_03]: that they are who they say they are and that they have the expertise

[00:39:08] [SPEAKER_03]: that they claim to?

[00:39:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Well, I want to add, I mean, as you so absolutely put it,

[00:39:13] [SPEAKER_01]: he weaponized people's decency.

[00:39:15] [SPEAKER_01]: He also had the advantage

[00:39:19] [SPEAKER_01]: of being bilingual.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_01]: What he was doing in the beginning was often taking these things

[00:39:27] [SPEAKER_01]: that were were becoming popular in the US

[00:39:30] [SPEAKER_01]: and then like importing them to France and passing them off as his own.

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_01]: He built the perfect shield and the perfect,

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah, the perfect kind of like skepticism,

[00:39:41] [SPEAKER_01]: deflector for a number of reasons.

[00:39:44] [SPEAKER_01]: People just couldn't quite penetrate his story.

[00:39:47] [SPEAKER_01]: However, yeah, OK.

[00:39:50] [SPEAKER_01]: How how how might we know a fraud?

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the kind of like

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_01]: high emotion to specific detail ratio in his stories was quite off.

[00:40:06] [SPEAKER_01]: It was always going to be something like incredibly gruesome

[00:40:10] [SPEAKER_01]: and attention getting.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_01]: But as he told the stories, even like,

[00:40:13] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, very, very basic things fluctuated.

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And that that was how the fourth eye finally caught up with him.

[00:40:22] [SPEAKER_01]: It was with the repeated telling of these stories.

[00:40:25] [SPEAKER_01]: His wife, for example, sometimes he called her his wife.

[00:40:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he called her his girlfriend.

[00:40:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes he called her his companion.

[00:40:32] [SPEAKER_01]: He was incredibly imprecise, actually,

[00:40:36] [SPEAKER_01]: as detailed and kind of like precise as he would be about these

[00:40:40] [SPEAKER_01]: these gruesome details of her murder.

[00:40:42] [SPEAKER_01]: He couldn't even quite decide like if they'd been married or not.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I think you might see this like gravitation

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_01]: towards the sensational parts of the story with little attention paid

[00:40:53] [SPEAKER_01]: to the the kind of banal but very basic ones.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_01]: What else? I mean, I don't this could probably not be generalized.

[00:41:01] [SPEAKER_01]: But something that I noticed as I just went back through

[00:41:04] [SPEAKER_01]: like everything Bourguin had ever said or written or done was

[00:41:09] [SPEAKER_01]: he had this tick almost of using these incredibly.

[00:41:12] [SPEAKER_01]: He was always using like very precise figures

[00:41:17] [SPEAKER_01]: instead of being like, I've interviewed dozens of serial killers.

[00:41:20] [SPEAKER_01]: He would be like, you know, I've interviewed dozens of serial killers

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_01]: all over the world.

[00:41:24] [SPEAKER_01]: He would say, I've interviewed 77 serial killers in 28 countries.

[00:41:28] [SPEAKER_01]: It was kind of protesting too much in a way for I just

[00:41:32] [SPEAKER_01]: these started to jump out at me.

[00:41:33] [SPEAKER_01]: But again, it's all in hindsight.

[00:41:35] [SPEAKER_01]: But he had this very strange tick of always

[00:41:39] [SPEAKER_01]: using specific numbers when he didn't necessarily need to,

[00:41:43] [SPEAKER_01]: which I think was kind of a compensatory technique,

[00:41:47] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, knowing that he was lying.

[00:41:49] [SPEAKER_01]: He thought that he would just he thought it would sound less

[00:41:52] [SPEAKER_01]: like he was lying if if he trotted out these like figures and statistics.

[00:41:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's see. That's I think that that's the best I can do on like

[00:42:02] [SPEAKER_01]: on on signs of a fraud for now.

[00:42:05] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, those are a couple of things that jump out.

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[00:42:09] [SPEAKER_03]: And I imagine in fairness to the journalists of the past

[00:42:12] [SPEAKER_03]: and everyone in in past decades, it used to be a lot harder

[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_03]: to be able to just pull up information about a woman named Elaine

[00:42:21] [SPEAKER_03]: murdered in California, whereas today with the Internet,

[00:42:23] [SPEAKER_03]: you can do that and you can you can dig up newspapers dot com

[00:42:27] [SPEAKER_03]: and you can go into archives and it's it's a lot easier

[00:42:30] [SPEAKER_03]: to actually pinpoint details that somebody throws out.

[00:42:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. Another thing he did was, I mean, he he told lies

[00:42:39] [SPEAKER_01]: that he didn't have to at all.

[00:42:42] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, he claimed to have been a professional football player,

[00:42:46] [SPEAKER_01]: professional soccer player and just, you know,

[00:42:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's very easy from the details he gave to see that the

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_01]: not only did the years not add up, I think it was something

[00:42:55] [SPEAKER_01]: like he would have been like eight years old in the year

[00:42:58] [SPEAKER_01]: that he claimed to have played professional soccer,

[00:43:01] [SPEAKER_01]: but he gives no signs of, you know, being a high level athlete.

[00:43:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just improbable, like far fetched lies

[00:43:09] [SPEAKER_01]: that didn't make any sense.

[00:43:10] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think he did this for a reason.

[00:43:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think he did this strategically to muddy the waters

[00:43:17] [SPEAKER_01]: because later when people came back to him

[00:43:21] [SPEAKER_01]: and presented him, you know, with an inventory of his lies,

[00:43:26] [SPEAKER_01]: he was able to say, well, clearly I was joking.

[00:43:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, some of them, some of them were just were were such

[00:43:34] [SPEAKER_01]: just, you know, total kind of he told varying degrees of lies

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_01]: and varying categories of lies, which, you know, turned out

[00:43:44] [SPEAKER_01]: to be useful later just because it confused people

[00:43:48] [SPEAKER_01]: when they came back to him and said, well, here are all the things

[00:43:50] [SPEAKER_01]: that you've said that weren't true.

[00:43:54] [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:43:55] [SPEAKER_03]: It was like it was like a smoke screen in a way.

[00:43:57] [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that that's fascinating about him because

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's not me.

[00:44:02] [SPEAKER_03]: It's obviously horrible, but I think we can all understand

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_03]: the rationality behind lying to bolster your career

[00:44:08] [SPEAKER_03]: and get a lot of money and get a lot of acclaim.

[00:44:10] [SPEAKER_03]: But the amount of lies here and I don't want to spoil anything,

[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_03]: but I think your article and also the docuseries really get

[00:44:16] [SPEAKER_03]: into his background and where some of that may have come from

[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_03]: in a really fascinating way that kind of adds

[00:44:22] [SPEAKER_03]: adds some more interest to his character and why he became

[00:44:26] [SPEAKER_03]: the way he is.

[00:44:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Totally. And without, again, spoiling it for anybody,

[00:44:31] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, one of the biggest shockers for me and reporting this

[00:44:34] [SPEAKER_01]: was probably his most seemingly

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_01]: what I thought was the greatest fabulism of all turned out to be

[00:44:45] [SPEAKER_01]: one of the few.

[00:44:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Dead true things that he has ever said.

[00:44:52] [SPEAKER_03]: That was wild because that definitely sounded made up.

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_03]: But, yeah, I know everyone should check it out and read the article,

[00:44:59] [SPEAKER_03]: but also watch the docuseries Killer Lies.

[00:45:01] [SPEAKER_03]: It's really well done. And we definitely enjoyed it.

[00:45:04] [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's just an important topic just to just to,

[00:45:07] [SPEAKER_03]: you know, keep people skeptical.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_03]: It's OK to trust an expert and to, you know, hear them out

[00:45:12] [SPEAKER_03]: and to enjoy different creators and experts in the true crime space.

[00:45:18] [SPEAKER_03]: But it's always good to at least double check as we as we've seen

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_03]: from the damage that this person has done.

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's been such a pleasure, like it's just trading notes with you

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_01]: and and hearing what you have to say, too, about this,

[00:45:33] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, about this space that you're working in.

[00:45:37] [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, Lauren. We really, really appreciate it.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_03]: You're even a wonderful guest. I wanted to ask you,

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_03]: is there anything we didn't hit on the article or the docuseries

[00:45:45] [SPEAKER_03]: before we wrap up? Anything about the story that sort of lingers

[00:45:47] [SPEAKER_03]: with you, just anything like that?

[00:45:49] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I think you totally mean you.

[00:45:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Your questions were so good and so interesting.

[00:45:55] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we covered, I think we covered a lot.

[00:45:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we covered it all.

[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_03]: I love it. I love to hear that.

[00:46:02] [SPEAKER_03]: And again, coming from you, that that makes a a lot

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_03]: that means a lot in particular.

[00:46:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciate your taking the time,

[00:46:09] [SPEAKER_01]: particularly in the midst of Kevin's summer cold.

[00:46:14] [SPEAKER_03]: It's not too bad because as anyone who's interviewed with us

[00:46:17] [SPEAKER_03]: will tell you, I usually end up doing all the talking anyway

[00:46:20] [SPEAKER_03]: because I can never shut up and he's a gentleman.

[00:46:23] [SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to ask you, because I was really excited

[00:46:26] [SPEAKER_03]: to see this in your New Yorker bio,

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_03]: but you are working on a book about a very violent

[00:46:33] [SPEAKER_03]: insurrection from the past that I'm very interested in.

[00:46:36] [SPEAKER_03]: And I was wondering if you could say a few words

[00:46:38] [SPEAKER_03]: about that before we go.

[00:46:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I grew up in a town called Wilmington, North Carolina.

[00:46:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And for I think it's been so long, I can't even do the math.

[00:46:48] [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm going to say for the past seven years,

[00:46:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I have been working on a book about the long term effects

[00:46:56] [SPEAKER_01]: of a white supremacist coup.

[00:46:59] [SPEAKER_01]: It was an overthrow of the democratically elected

[00:47:03] [SPEAKER_01]: bi-racial local government in 1898.

[00:47:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And what I'm really interested in doing is looking,

[00:47:10] [SPEAKER_01]: yeah, looking at the long term effects all the way

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_01]: into the present day of this event.

[00:47:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm doing that by tracing the kind of

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_01]: multi-generational destinies of four families,

[00:47:22] [SPEAKER_01]: two white families, perpetrators and two black families,

[00:47:26] [SPEAKER_01]: survivors and their experiences from 1898

[00:47:29] [SPEAKER_01]: all the way into the present day.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_03]: Well, not to get too far ahead of ourselves,

[00:47:33] [SPEAKER_03]: but when that is out, we would love to have you back on

[00:47:35] [SPEAKER_03]: to talk about it, because that sounds absolutely fascinating.

[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_01]: It would be my honor.

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to hold you to it probably in 2025,

[00:47:43] [SPEAKER_01]: maybe even in 2026.

[00:47:45] [SPEAKER_01]: But the book is, you know, the manuscript is written

[00:47:48] [SPEAKER_01]: and the book is on the way.

[00:47:50] [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much for taking an interest in it.

[00:47:53] [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, my gosh, that's so cool.

[00:47:54] [SPEAKER_03]: OK, I'm nerding out.

[00:47:56] [SPEAKER_03]: But thank you.

[00:47:57] [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you so much, Lauren.

[00:47:57] [SPEAKER_03]: You've been absolutely delightful to talk to you.

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_03]: And we just really appreciate you taking the time to come on our show.

[00:48:03] [SPEAKER_01]: OK, well, I can't wait to hear it.

[00:48:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Can't wait to hear the episode.

[00:48:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm coming back when the book's ready.

[00:48:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So we'll talk soon.

[00:48:12] [SPEAKER_03]: We want to thank Lauren for talking to us.

[00:48:14] [SPEAKER_03]: It was a great conversation.

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_02]: Don't miss Killer Lies from the National Geographic.

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_02]: It aired on their channel on August 28th and is now streaming on Hulu.

[00:48:24] [SPEAKER_02]: We will link to Lauren's article for The New Yorker

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_02]: and her newsletter and book in our show notes.

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet.

[00:48:33] [SPEAKER_02]: If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover,

[00:48:36] [SPEAKER_02]: please email us at murdersheet at Gmail dot com.

[00:48:41] [SPEAKER_02]: If you have actionable information about an unsolved crime,

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_02]: please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[00:48:50] [SPEAKER_03]: If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_03]: www dot patreon dot com slash murder sheet.

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