Early True Crime

A retired investigator begins corresponding with a convicted murderer whose series of cryptic, poetic letters claimed to have killed dozens of people around the United States.  We chose this protopodcast from 2015 because of the bridge it creates to the contemporary true crime landscape. The story is dripping in intrigue, and the work has all the trappings of the first podcast renaissance including two hosts that sound the same.  In seriousness, the writing and performance experiments with tone and style in a way that reflects a transition from broadcast to podcast.  Noel Black and Jake Brownell bring a darker, cooler quality to the writing and performance, and the story itself could easily span multiple episodes rather than its one-hour container. That container was KRCC’s Wish We Were Here, a magazine style broadcast/podcast unearthing stories about Colorado Springs.  In the year after Serial, enterprising public radio stations adopted the podcast style to reach outside the broadcast range, create intellectual property, and energize an aging donor base. This episode of Wish We Were Here hits all of those notes. It is solid journalism, but also entertaining with a compelling story regardless of whether you’ve been to Colorado Springs. It’s a reflection of the dialogue between podcast and broadcast.  And it’s also just a really good listen. 

Narrated by Warden Jim Willett, Witness to an Execution creates a minute-by-minute account of carrying out an execution by lethal injection.  We hear narration from warden Jim Willett, and the experience of members of the “tie down” team, press, chaplains, and others that have participated in executions at the Walls Unit in Huntsville, Texas.  One voice is conspicuously missing, but it’s impossible not to hear it.  The simplicity of this work allows it to contain layers of complex emotion.  It is a tough listen, in part because it's a mirror.  Witness to an Execution is a classic Dave Isay documentary - minimal narration and sound design, linear story, clear voices and overwhelming emotion.  The style of the work reflects on the simplicity of the act.  And in doing so, it leaves the complicated question of the death penalty as a giant pregnant pause looming around the whole piece.  Witness to an Execution is a masterwork in using form and structure to speak beyond the tape, and it’s an unforgettable listen.   Peabody Award (2000)Original Series Credits:This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.Produced By: Jim Willett, Stacy Abramson, David Isay, and David MillerMusic: Bob Mellman and Henry Sapoznik

Calling this work sound-rich would be a gross understatement.  It is also silence- and emotion-rich.  It expertly uses the medium to take the listener somewhere they may never be and immerse them in that experience.  Dave Isay’s work is unquestionably canonical and Tossing Away the Keys is a masterclass in audio documentary.  Recorded in Angola Prison, the piece features voices of lifetime inmates wrestling with the idea that they may die inside.  It is narrated by Wilbert Rideau, an incarcerated journalist guiding listeners through prison life and the lives of individual prisoners.  The texture of the piece is compelling, with the harsh sounds of Angola Prison underpinning the range of emotions expressed by Rideau’s interviewees.  While the piece does not turn away from the crimes of its sources, that is not what it’s about.  Instead, we are privileged to hear stories of people living in extraordinary conditions and navigating the balance of hope and reality.  Listeners don’t hear voices from outside the prison, and by the end, are steeped in the same walled reality of those inside.  Sound Portraits - Isay’s production venture - sets this goal in their manifesto.  “When we feel we’ve succeeded it’s because we’ve managed to expose – truthfully, respectfully – the hidden, forgotten, or under-heard voices of America.”  That is exactly what Tossing Away the Keys does and why it remains deeply relevant thirty-five years after its initial release.  It also speaks directly to contemporary podcasts like Ear Hustle.  The relationship between host and producer is at the forefront of both projects as that team pioneers new and sonically exciting ways to amplify the voices of prisoners at San Quentin.  With vibrant personality infused into Ear Hustle’s presentation and sound designs, listeners are given another way into the “hidden, forgotten [and] under-heard voices of America” that Dave Isay (and the whole team at Sound Portraits) aimed to present.  Original Series Credits:This documentary comes from Sound Portraits Productions, a mission-driven independent production company that was created by Dave Isay in 1994. Sound Portraits was the predecessor to StoryCorps and was dedicated to telling stories that brought neglected American voices to a national audience.Produced By: David Isay, Wilbert Rideau, and Ron Wikberg

To quote Jay Allison: “Some stories take a long time. This one is an hour long, and took two and a half years to produce, after twenty years of living with it.”  And you can hear it in this piece.  On the one hand, narrator Samantha Broun methodically takes the listener through the details of what happened to her mother, and the choices it sparked in her own life.  Twenty years later, Broun revisits those experiences and considers how her choices rippled outward.  We chose this piece because it picks up where contemporary true crime leaves off.  Rather than just revisiting a cold case or unsolved crimes, A Life Sentence considers how a closed case impacts the broader criminal justice system and those incarcerated under it.  Broun deftly navigates between her own journey for answers and resolution, and context that is good for the piece, or what she calls the “Producer Me” and the “Me Me.”  You can hear this duality in her interviewing, and the resulting tape.  It’s an expert work of memoir and documentary, starting with a deeply personal story and spinning it out into a story about politics, rehabilitation, and forgiveness. This piece also dovetails nicely with Dave Isay’s piece Tossing Away the Keys, about lifetime inmates at Angola Prison in Louisiana. Together, they reflect the individual humanity of incarcerated people in a way not usually afforded to violent criminals. **** More information about A Life Sentence here: https://transom.org/2016/a-life-sentence-victims-offenders-justice-and-my-mother/Original Series Credits:First and foremost, thank you to my mother for her extraordinary courage. I love you.I am also hugely grateful to Jay Allison for taking this on — me, this story, this amount of tape, this amount of emotion, this amount of time. All of it. Jay was the perfect guide for both Producer Me and Me Me. He seemed to know the exact right moments to swoop in and — as he says — provide me with oxygen when I was deep in the cave of working on this.Thank you to all the people I interviewed: Jeremy Brown, James Gilligan, Timothy Broun, Mark Singel, Ernest Preate, Martin Horn, Bobby Van Cura, Tyrone Werts, Tom Ridge, Charlotte McFadden, Dr. Julia Hall, John McCullough, Jo DeMarco, and Mark Safarik.Thanks to Nancy Rosenbaum for her sleuthing skills and Daniel Denvir for doing a huge favor for a stranger. Thanks to Melissa Allison, Sydney Lewis and Viki Merrick for all their support. Thanks to my father, Daniel Broun, for always asking how the work was going, and to John Wolanski for being my mother’s rock. And to Rob Rosenthal, thank you for keeping me honest and upright (literally).This piece is dedicated to Jeremy Brown, Sonia Rosenbaum, Robert Silk, Margaret Kierer, Dana Demarco; to their families; to the thousands of lifers who are behind bars in Pennsylvania without hope for a second chance; and to the Tombs Angel.