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Episode 275: Nile Cappello and Her Atavist Story 'The Girl in the Picture'
204 Plays3 years ago
Nile Capello (@liketheriver) is the writer and reporter behind The Atavist Magazine story 'The Girl in the Picture.'
We talk about true crime as self-preservation and how she vets out her stories. We also talk to editor-in-chief Seyward Darby.
To read the piece, visit magazine.atavist.com.
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Transcript
Why focus on Ted Bundy instead of current killers?
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Speaker
Why are we seeing the fifth project on Ted Bundy when there's, you know, all of these, there's like 25 active serial killers right now.
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Speaker
It's that Atavistian time of the month and we're featuring Niall Capello, the journalist and storyteller behind the latest true crime, piece from The Atavist magazine.
Podcast introduction with Niall Capello
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Speaker
Hey, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going?
Niall Capello on amateur sleuths solving cold cases
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Niall's piece tracks two amateur sleuths in their efforts to bring justice to Jane Doe's long gone.
The 'pace of revelation' in storytelling
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You'll hear the term pace of revelation in this episode from both Sayward Darby, the lead editor of this piece, and Niall as we unpack how she went about writing this story. We'll get there in a moment, man.
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You can head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes to this episode and nearly 300 other interviews.
Brendan's newsletter and podcast support
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Speaker
Yeah, I know. And to sign up for the monthly up to 11 newsletter. You see, when you want a newsletter to get just a bit louder, we need that extra bit of punch. You see this knob? We turn it up to 11.
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Speaker
11 things. Book recommendations, book raffles to anyone who is on the list. Blogs, articles, writing prompts. Cool shit curated from my brain to your inbox. Rage against the machine, man. Subvert the algorithm. First of the month, no spam. Can't beat it.
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Also, lots of great athletes need a coach in their corner to help them see what they can't see. So if you're ready to level up a book proposal, a book, an essay, email me and we'll start a
Niall on true crime as self-preservation
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dialogue. I'd be honored and thrilled to help you get where you want to go.
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you can support the show by heading over to patreon.com slash cnfpod and checking out the tiers it's how the audio magazine gets made and patrons get access to that as well as transcripts of which i'm horribly behind but i'm hustling i'm working on it
How Atavist Magazine selects crime stories
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Coaching calls shoutouts on the podcast as well as an ability to ask guest questions and I give you the credit for it I'm not a monster head over to patreon.com slash CNF pod if you want your dollars supporting the CNF and community You won't regret it friend Housekeeping socks, doesn't it?
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Speaker
Ugh. Anyway, so Nya was here to talk about how she got into telling true crime as a kind of self-preservation, this kind of a knowledge is power kind of thing. Very interesting way
Niall's unique access to crime stories
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of framing it. And how she decides which true crime stories are quote worth it or not. But first, we crack one open with the editor in chief of The Atavist. Say word, Darby.
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And it got me thinking, and I wanted to ask you about how you go about vetting true crime submissions and what elevates some above others. So maybe you can speak to that with respect to Niles and why maybe this one was like, oh, this is a cut above.
Ethics in true crime storytelling
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Yeah, it's a great question because we do get a lot of crime pitches and we run a good amount of true crime stories. And a lot of the pitches that I end up saying no to, they share a couple of common features, I guess. And one is that there's no resolution. This isn't to say that there aren't great true crime stories in the out of us that don't have
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I don't know, more interesting, like open-ended aspects. But for us, that question of we may never know what happened to is just not really a starting point for us because our stories are so long, so involved. And we really do like to feel like the reader is getting something out of it at the end, something that feels really satisfying and conclusive, which doesn't necessarily mean that things need to be
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You know, absolutely solved, but at least needs to feel like we really came a long way toward a better understanding of the crime or crimes that are at the heart of the story. So that's definitely really important. And then oftentimes the other thing that doesn't that, you know, makes me.
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less interested in a pitch as an editor is when it kind of feels like somebody read about a case but hasn't actually done any legwork to get closer to the case than what headlines might indicate. So they haven't gotten
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in with sources who would be really helpful. They haven't started looking into documents. Like, you can put together, especially about true crime, I feel, you can put together a really good pitch, right, that says, like, here are the twists and the turns, and, like, isn't this crazy? But then, you know, I need to feel like you're the person to tell this story. Like, you are, you know, you have the confidence of sources or you have access to materials in a way that maybe, you know, other writers don't.
Female-led ethical true crime storytelling
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And in Niall's case, you know, there were a couple of things that I thought were really special about this story. First of all,
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It was conclusive. It turns out actually that multiple cases get solved in this story, which is very unusual. There's a moment, for instance, where the two amateur sleuths at the heart of it, they have thought that they were investigating one cold case, and it turns out that they were investigating two, and then it kind of turns out that they were actually investigating a lot. And I thought that that kind of Russian doll aspect of the story was really unique.
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And then the other thing that was really compelling to me was the fact that there were some really interesting characters at the heart of it. So you have this woman who for 30 years thought that this daughter that she had given up for adoption, that she had a better life because she was given up for adoption. And then she has her world shattered when she learns that that's not the case and that her daughter possibly died as a teenager and takes that moment upon herself to say, I need to find all of the answers.
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and strikes up this unusual friendship with another person who they sort of become amateur sleuths on this case together. And I think that kind of the richness of the characters at the heart of it really, really spoke to me. And then Niall also had their competence. Like she had already reached out to Kathy Tricanion, who is the mother I was just talking about. And I felt like Niall was uniquely positioned to work on this piece.
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So those were the things that really made this one special and made it feel like an out of a story.
Niall's methodical storytelling approach
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Yeah. And thinking about the access and proving that you have the access, I'm thinking of Maddie Crowell and Jordan Michael Smith and, of course, Niall for this piece. And in their pitches and in the conversations with you, how are they proving to you like, oh, yeah, I want to tell the story, but yes, I have access to files. I have access to actual people who are super close to this.
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Yeah, I mean, sometimes pitches come in and they indicate that right off the bat. They'll say, I've been talking to this person for several months. I've established a relationship with them as a reporter and source. Or I have boxes of files in my home office related to this because I've been tracking it for years. And in other cases, that actually comes up in conversation. Because to be clear, if somebody sends me a really compelling
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pitch. No matter what, I'm going to ask those questions, right? Like, why are you the person to tell this story? What access do you have? What access can you get? Are you guaranteed to get that access? So those things don't have to be in the pitch necessarily. I'm certainly great if they are. But that's the kind of stuff that usually comes up in conversation. And as an outlet,
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I don't think we're terribly unusual in this way. Maybe we go a couple more rounds than some other places just because we have the luxury of being choosy. But we don't assign based on a pitch alone. If we like something, we're going to ask questions about it and really try to get a feel for it, get a feel for the writer. And certainly in Niall's case, if I recall correctly, she actually pitched me a couple of things, a couple of ideas at once. And this was the one that really
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stood out. And so she kind of pitched them in shorter form. And then once I said, you know, this one sounds really interesting, she was able to, you know, go into more depth and tell me, you know, what access she had, what access she could get, and
From travel journalism to true crime
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all of that. So, so yeah, you know, it's really just about kind of having your ducks in a row, when you're when you're pitching. And obviously, there's a balance between I may have said this in a previous one of our conversations, honestly, like there's a balance between
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you know, doing that legwork and also, you know, you don't have to do so much work that, you know, you basically have the story written ready to go when you contact us or any publication, frankly, because, you know, in that case, you're obviously doing work and not getting paid. And that's not what we want. But you want to really
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be convincing that not only are you the person to tell this story, but you have the right take on a story. A unique take, potentially the most definitive take. And that necessarily requires more legwork, I think, than simply, oh, here's a cool idea. I was able to put it together. And this is what I will do. This is how I will get in contact with this person and this person. I will get my hands on these documents. And when somebody says, I will get in contact with
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who will be the main source in the story, that's always a little bit of a red flag to me, just from an assigning perspective, because I wanna make sure we have that before we put our eggs into the basket. And so oftentimes in that conversation we have about a pitch, I'll say, come back to me when, and you can say, I'm potentially doing this for the out of us, come back to me when you have that established and feel like that access is there.
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And whenever I'm reading True Crime, I always think back to how Janet Malcolm kind of frames the journalist relationship to sources and the fact that the writer is ultimately benefiting from someone else's trauma or story in some way.
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And it's an amazing point in why it's endured over the years. And I wonder for you as an editor of a lot of True Crime, like how you kind of reconcile that balance of wanting to tell a good, like a great story, but also you're telling a great story sometimes at the, for lack of a better term, at the expense of these people who endured incredible trauma.
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Yeah, I mean, gosh, it's a perennial question. And I think that over the last few years, especially, there's been a really
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interesting and maybe perhaps not surprisingly female led you know sort of raft of books and articles that involve you know rethinking what what we mean by true crime and what you know good true crime reporting and writing looks like and in in our case you know the things that i'm always thinking about and this is this story is actually a very good example of this because there are to put it in kind of
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oxygen channel parlance. There are a lot of dead girls in this story. A lot of young women who are killed, forgotten, often unidentified. And I think that what we try to do with stories like this is first of all avoid
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salaciousness, you know, stating things plainly without getting into even just now before we got on this call I was going through with our copy editor and there were one or two places where it was like, we can probably,
Finding fulfillment in true crime storytelling
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you know, it's small but like why not slightly tone down that language, you know, about, about someone's death.
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And I think that's that's one piece of it. But then also it's about, you know, whose voice are you centering and whose experience are you centering? And in this case, we really tried to center the experience of Kathy Chicanion, the mother, who was coming to this from the standpoint of how has this happened? How have these oversights been made? How have
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you know, how had her daughter slipped through the cracks, but then how had other children like her daughter slipped through the cracks. And so, you know, looking at systemic failures, not just, you know, individual criminal behavior,
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thinking of these things not as anomalies but as part of patterns. And parts of patterns that can be avoided, can be tackled from any number of standpoints, judicially, socially, otherwise. And so it's a case-by-case basis for us. And we think a lot about, and this goes all the way back to the pitching phase and conversations with writers, it's the tone with which a writer
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approaches the topic from go. And in Niall's case, she wanted to center Cathy and clearly was not interested in making it sound like the goriest story imaginable. She wanted to lay it out and tell it in a riveting fashion because it is a riveting story, particularly the pace of revelation surrounding these different cold cases.
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But she wanted to also show how that was done by people outside the system in a lot of ways, or at least the pressure was kept up on the system by people who were outside of it. So yeah, I don't think there's an easy, clear cut.
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answer. To me, it's always case by case because no two stories are alike. No two writers are alike. But it's definitely when we get true crime stories, we're always thinking, what is this beyond just a story that is about trauma? What is it saying? What is it doing that goes beyond just showing people terrible things for the sake of showing them terrible things?
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And in this case, I think that the story shows strength in a lot of ways on the part of some of the people at the heart of it. And I think that that's something that makes it special.
00:14:14
Speaker
Excellent. Well, it is, like you said, it's an incredibly riveting piece in the pace of revelation, as you said, I love hearing you say that. It is something that just keeps you wanting to, even though we're not turning pages literally, it keeps you wanting to turn the page and see how this turns out and to see how these incredible figures at the center of it endure and piece the things together. So as always, Edward, it's an amazing piece and great work on it. And thank you so much for the time as we now kick the conversation over to Nile.
Parallels between climbing and writing
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Heck yeah, thanks so much.
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Speaker
I love getting a sense of what writers are into outside of writing and some of the lessons that you can piggyback from whatever sport you play or whatever hobby you have and then imbue that on to the craft that is your vocation. So as a journalist and a storyteller, what has climbing taught you about the craft of writing?
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Speaker
The biggest thing that climbing, like the kind of overall lesson that I think I've taken from climbing is that progress is progress, like no matter how small. So there's days, you know, when, when you're working on a climb, you call it projecting a climb.
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Speaker
And so it might take me two weeks to climb a route. That means that I'm going back to that same route over and over again. And it can be really demoralizing. And I think a lot of people getting into climbing struggle with that. And what I always say is, as long as you're making it one move further than you did last time, even if you don't send the climb, you've still accomplished something and you're still making progress.
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Speaker
and so you have to measure it in that way where like you're getting closer even if you're not all the way across the finish line and I think that that
00:16:10
Speaker
It translates really well in my writing, just in the sense of my accomplishments. I'm someone who's always chasing the next thing, and the bar is always getting higher, and it's like, I'll be able to rest when I do this, and then I do that, and it's like, I'll be able to rest when I do that. I think I'm often not satisfied with my own accomplishments, and it's never good enough.
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And I think climbing has sort of taught me that lesson where it's like, as long as I'm making progress and as long as I'm like one step closer to those goals every day, that's, you know, I don't need to be in a rush to get across the finish line.
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Regarding your work and not feeling satisfied or the bar keeps rising as you accomplish certain things, how have you learned to find satisfaction in your work, enjoy in the work, given that it sounds like you have a penchant to not be satisfied in the moment?
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Speaker
I think it helps that my work is so character focused. And part of the reason that I've pursued true crime and more investigatory stories is because I feel a really big responsibility to the people at the center of those stories. I'm always looking for people who are, you know,
00:17:22
Speaker
screaming into the void about something and basically taking that and formulating it in a way that works for a platform and that can bring it to a larger platform and have more people hear that message. So for me, that is really where I find the satisfaction and where I'm able to live in the moment and feel good about it is
00:17:42
Speaker
When I'm able to accomplish telling someone's story in a powerful way and telling it in a way that does them justice, that does the story justice, I see myself really as sort of this bridge between people with stories and
Niall's career path and impactful storytelling
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Speaker
people who need to hear those stories. And I take a lot of I feel a lot of responsibility with that. And I take that job really seriously. And so for me, I think since I've
00:18:11
Speaker
really focused on true crime and investigative stories that's been, you know, I've been able to sort of feel satisfied with my work more so than before because each individual story is so powerful and I, it feels meaningful. I mean, not to, you know, overstate my, not to overstate my role, but you know, I think it feels when you're doing work that feels meaningful, it's easier to feel, you know, satisfied with it.
00:18:38
Speaker
I can get that. I spent so much of my early career writing slideshows for Bleacher Report. There's winners and losers from the Daytona 500. I'm like, who cares? I worked for Huffington Post right out of college, and I did their recent grad program.
00:18:57
Speaker
It was great, and I learned a ton. But at the end of the day, I was like, if I can write a story that reaches thousands of people, is what I want to be saying? Here are 30 Brussels sprouts recipes you can use tonight? That's the message that I want to be getting to people? No. And that's really why I made such a pivot. Because I used to be more of a travel and food writer.
00:19:18
Speaker
So I really, you know, as much as I love traveling food, people all the time are like, why would you ever leave traveling food? That sounds like, you know, so fun. And it was, it was so much fun. But at the end of the day, it was like, if I'm able to write something, and it's going to reach thousands of people, what is what is it that I want to say? And I realized that, you know, as much as I love Brussels sprouts, that wasn't what I wanted to be conveying to people. So
00:19:40
Speaker
sounds like you understand that first hand.
Early interest in true crime
00:19:44
Speaker
I've made how many slideshows I've built over the years of the listicles. But you got to do it. And I will say, I learned so much from Huffington Post and those experiences.
00:19:56
Speaker
you know, how to make a gif and like how to write an SEO friendly headline and all this stuff that like so many people don't even get in journalism school, you know, I mean, I didn't go to journalism school. So to be able to go into that, I always say it was like, basically four months of like condensed journalism school, but only for like the
00:20:14
Speaker
modern day, which was pretty useful. But I was able to take what I learned there and pursue topics that I felt like were a better use of my platform and my voice personally. Can you point to a particular moment when you made that pivot in the journalism and the stories you wanted to tell?
00:20:37
Speaker
because these were always the stories that I wanted to tell. I've always been interested in true crime since I was a kid. I think personally, there's a lot of talk about why women are interested in true crime, millennial women specifically. And for me, I really track it back to the Elizabeth Smart, Danielle Van Damme era as a young,
00:21:04
Speaker
blonde girl who was raised by a single mom. I was really aware that there were girls who looked like me who were in danger and being taken and things like that. And I, I've always been someone who's like a knowledge is power situation. You know, I'm the type of person who read like every single thread, every single article.
00:21:25
Speaker
You know, I'm a comprehensive researcher, and so I always felt like knowledge was power, and I think that's how I really became involved in true crime and interested in it. As a young woman, it was a way to protect myself. It was like, if I know how this happens and why, it won't happen to me.
00:21:43
Speaker
I was always watching shows. I mean, I watched Dateline every night before I went to bed in high school. Like, I was always interested in true crime as a viewer. And, you know, as I got older and as I started working as a professional writer, I started thinking, you know, okay, why are we seeing the fifth project on Ted Bundy when there's, you know, all of these, there's like 25 active serial killers right now.
00:22:07
Speaker
in the U.S. that no one's talking about, you know, but yet we've had however many projects on the same, you know, three guys that everyone knows their story. And so as a viewer, I started being like, I know that there are stories out there that people would be interested in, and I don't understand why they're not being told. And so that was really what motivated me. And, you know, as I started working with publications like Vice and, you know, started with Huffington Post, but then Vice and Rolling Stone,
00:22:35
Speaker
From there, I've just been able to really throw myself into those stories fully. And I think the reason that my editors and publications were excited about it was because I was coming in with these ideas and stories that I wanted to tell. And I already had this knowledge about them and was able to present stories that
00:22:55
Speaker
everyone agreed would be compelling. And so that's how it's sort of taken off from there. But one of the first stories I did was for Vice, and it was about murders in the Mojave Desert. So basically the stretch between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is one of the biggest killing fields in the world. So I did this article for Vice about the Mojave and some of the unsolved cases out there, some of the really graphic homicides, how it's this culmination of
00:23:25
Speaker
being this places of transiency because you have people that are going between LA and Vegas. There's a lot of truckers. There's also military. There's also people who live off the grid who, you know, this like don't tread on me libertarian population. So that was one of the first pieces that I wrote that really, you know, opened up that world for me and allowed me to pivot in that direction.
Building a journalism portfolio
00:23:47
Speaker
And then I'm executive producing a HBO Max docu-series that premieres on September 30th called The Way Down.
00:23:55
Speaker
that's about a controversial church group based out of Nashville. And that's sort of my first foray into the docu-series format. But I found that story through my journalism, through just being a person who's always keeping my ear to the ground and looking for these types of stories to be telling. That was how I came across that one. So that's also been a pretty pivotal one and really pushed me further and further in that direction.
00:24:21
Speaker
Now I suspect a lot of people who would be listening to this, there might be some very seasoned reporters who kind of know the ins and outs and probably have a foot in the door in various publications. But for you and maybe for the people who are looking to get that foot in the door and publish into more prominent places that you've been published, whether it be with True Crime or other kind of profiles or long form features, how did you get your foot in the door and get that first big byline that really
00:24:51
Speaker
gave you some momentum? I think it's all about getting momentum. Most journalists will tell you, I think anyone would tell you, you have to start smaller. I started right out of college. I went into Huffington Post's recent grad program and I started doing writing for them. I was lucky that it was a paid program but low paying. Before that, I did internships.
00:25:14
Speaker
that also were writing-based during college. I actually started my own website in college that was sort of a snarky satirical advice site for women at colleges across the United States. And so I managed a team of writers at universities like Brown, NYU, Tulane, UCLA, Cal Poly, USC.
00:25:42
Speaker
Smart kids. Yeah. The tagline was, was normal, was smart, was normal girls, smart schools. So it was basically people who wanted to find a balance between academia and entertainment and like having fun. I had never, I'm an only child and neither of my parents went to like major universities. They both went to art school.
00:26:07
Speaker
And so when I came into college, you know, I found that there was, and a lot of this is probably not useful, so I'm sorry, but when I came into college, I found that there was like really two sides of
00:26:22
Speaker
advice, I would say. There was like the really specific stuff to UCLA that would like how to apply for financial aid and like what are the hours of the dining hall. And then there was stuff like Betches Love This that had this really fun, exciting tone that everyone wanted to read. It was, you know, kind of those early blogging, like viral post days.
00:26:44
Speaker
And I really wanted there to be an in-between. I wanted someone to just like be real with me. Like, okay, which dining halls have the best food on campus? Which events are actually worth going to? Like, you know, which classes can I skip? Do I actually need to go to my 8 a.m.? Or am I going to show up and be the only person who didn't realize that they don't take attendance? You know, all of those things that like an older sister or an older friend would tell you, that was basically the website. So it was at, I think we were at like 10 or 11 schools across the country.
00:27:13
Speaker
And I manage the team in that so between my internships and this website that I had started in college that portfolio You know, I always say people come to me a lot and they're like I want to be right or how do I do it? I'm like you just have to write so whether that's you know, you're doing it for free for the first year whether that's you know, you're doing it through an internship and
Balancing work and personal boundaries
00:27:34
Speaker
whether that's you create your own blog and post your own writings online, that's really the way to start it. So through that, I was able to build a portfolio and then that portfolio is basically what landed me this recent grad fellowship at Huffington Post. I went and I did that program with Huffington Post. I went and then worked in corporate
00:27:55
Speaker
content writing for a few years for a travel company. And as I was doing that on the side, I was freelancing, getting more into these other topics that I was interested in. And eventually what I was doing on the freelance side, and at the same time I was doing some screenwriting, those things were generating enough income and becoming enough work where I was able to quit my full-time job.
00:28:19
Speaker
I've been freelance, full time freelance, the oxymoron that is for about like
00:28:25
Speaker
six years now. Nice. And I've heard you say that writing the stories that you write in True Crime, that you put safeguards in place so you don't bear too much of the burden of the trauma of your sources. So I was wondering if maybe you could share like what are some of those safeguards you have in place so you're not taking too much of that burden on you as the reporter and the writer.
00:28:51
Speaker
I'm a workaholic, so I think early on it was really hard to not answer the phone at 11 p.m. at night and not respond to that text, not jump on that email, especially because so much of what I do is urgent, and also I want to be there for these people. I'm working with people who have often gone through major trauma and are looking for a friend, and I want to be that person for them.
00:29:17
Speaker
incredibly honored and you know like I said this huge sense of responsibility that these people have entrusted me to tell their stories. So I want to be there for them but I want to answer them at any time of night and you know at any moment and I especially want to be there should it be urgent or should it be an emergency. I think over time and with experience you start to figure out when it's an emergency and when it's not
00:29:40
Speaker
and to better communicate. So I think it all comes with experience. And I think for me, it's really about finding that balance between being there for these people because I want them to trust me and I want to be there for them, but also knowing that I have to keep myself healthy and that I have to be able to do my job well.
Choosing stories needing a broader platform
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Speaker
And if I'm burnt out because I'm not
00:30:03
Speaker
protecting not putting my own boundaries in place and I'm you know up till 2 a.m. Responding to emails and text messages and running myself ragged that makes me unable to do my job at the ability that I want to be able to do it. So you know it's a balance and I think I'm getting a lot better at it and you know it comes with time and experience for sure.
00:30:25
Speaker
Now as you're vetting out the kind of stories you want to tell, what is the math you're doing in your head to decide where to put your resources and to determine what is quote unquote worthy for you to tell, if that makes any sense.
00:30:44
Speaker
Totally. I love this question. For me, I really look for a few things. A, I look for stories where there is someone who wants that story to be told. This stock you series that I'm doing with HBO Max is also the company called Campfire.
00:31:00
Speaker
And Campfire, when I first met the head of the production company Ross, he was working on a project that he was really excited about. And he was telling me about it. We were talking about it. And he basically said, we got all the way to the end. And we finally got in touch with the sources. And they thought about it. We made all these offers to them. And I want to clarify, they didn't make financial offers. He just meant like,
00:31:28
Speaker
Basically, he had been really excited about this story. He had been able to get in touch with the sources. They were right at the end where they thought that this person was going to agree to talk to them. And at the end of the day, she came back and just was like, I don't think that I can do this. And I remember asking Ross, like,
00:31:48
Speaker
OK, so what do you do now? You have to find another way in. You have to find someone else to tell it. And he was like, no, that's the end. That's it. This is the person whose story it is. They're close. It was a family member to people who had died.
00:32:02
Speaker
And he was like, if they don't want to tell the story, we're not going to tell it. It's not our place to tell it. And I really, you know, I take that lesson with me and that's something I carry a lot. And so for me, the number one thing that I'm looking for is, is there someone at the center of this who wants the story to be told, who needs this story to be told? And who are those people and how can I get them on board and talking to them first? That's usually my first step, especially because I do work in various different mediums.
00:32:29
Speaker
Um, you know, sometimes I will find a story that I'm interested in and it's, you know, right for a podcast, but it's not right for print or it's right for print, but not for film, but right for film, but not for print. So, you know, figuring that out what the person wants at the center of it. But yeah, I think I'm always looking for a.
00:32:46
Speaker
someone who's a voice who's, like I said before, screaming into the void who would benefit from taking that screaming and putting it on a broader platform and helping bring it to the masses in that way. I also really look for stories that have an opportunity to have a current impact. For the most part, for me, that means stories that are actively happening. So the story for Adivis, though Andrea went missing,
00:33:16
Speaker
30 years ago, she wasn't found. Her body wasn't found until 2020. Dennis Bowman, he hasn't even gone to trial yet. He won't be going to trial until next year. So that's an active story. The docu-series that I'm doing for HBO Max, also an active story. It's a church that is currently open and recruiting new people every day.
00:33:38
Speaker
So I'm looking for places where it feels like, wow, if people knew what was going on, it could really make a difference. That is the type of story that I want to be telling and the types of stories that I'm always looking for.
00:33:52
Speaker
And in my countless conversations with either Jonah or Sayward with Adivis, they're always thinking of story, story, story, beginning, middle, end. It has to have that kind of pace and revelation and resolution most of the time. And Sayward was saying that the pace of revelation was
00:34:14
Speaker
something that the conversation she was having with you as you were constructing and synthesizing this piece. So maybe you can speak to just the writing of it and how you teased out these various elements to, even though it's not a physical thing where it's a page turner, you are turning the metaphorical page as you're reading this piece. I give a lot of credit to Sayward for that. I mean, I really think that she helped me shape
00:34:42
Speaker
the structure of the story and the best way to tell it. This is an interesting story because there are multiple cases that are intersecting. You have this main case, which is the missing person's case of Andrea Bowman, eventually the murder of Andrea Bowman, but you also have
00:34:58
Speaker
the racing county Jane Doe case, who ended up being Peggy Lynn Johnson. You also have Kathleen Doyle from Virginia. You have all these other cases that pop up along the way and are folded in. You have Kathy Terpanian, the biological mother's own personal story. She was raised in a really unhealthy environment. She was sexually abused at a young age. She ended up
00:35:22
Speaker
running away, leaving home, became pregnant with Andrea, her birth name was Alexis, at a very young age, had her at 16, went and
00:35:32
Speaker
was married at a young age. So all of these things, I, you know, there's, there's a lot, all that to say is there are a lot of different stories within the singular story. So when Sayward and I were, were initially looking at the structure, it was really about how can we fold these stories together in a way that feels exciting and where, you know, they each have their own moments of resolution throughout the piece.
00:35:56
Speaker
And I think that, you know, with her help, we've hopefully been really successful at that. And I think what I love about the piece is how it does sort of weave together these different storylines. Andrea is the focus, but it really is about these multiple women who were kind of wronged and forgotten by the system and, you know,
00:36:17
Speaker
in many ways slipped through the cracks and whose cases should have been solved years and years ago. So it's, you know, the piece is about Andrea, but it's also about what she stands for and these other women that she represents.
Surprises in the reporting process
00:36:28
Speaker
And what struck me too is just what must have been like the element of surprise just in the reporting, because it certainly comes across that way in the writing. And as you were researching or reporting this piece, what was the surprise or what surprised you as you kept uncovering stones over the course of reporting out this story?
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, so it's really interesting. I actually started being interested in this story before Dennis was ever arrested. So I know Carl Copelman just through my work, him and I have been in contact I think since like 2018. So when we had very first connected, I had asked him, you know, if there is any, I basically said, you know, if there's ever any cases that specifically you feel like are particularly complicated or interesting or have
00:37:18
Speaker
You know, there's something unique about them where you feel like there would be an article or a docu-series or something, you know, to take it to the next level. I would love to work with you on something. And so he mentioned this case. This was really like the first thing that came to mind for him.
00:37:33
Speaker
And he's kind of like a hobbyist cold case investigator, if you will, right? Yeah. Yeah. So Copelman is a he's a amateur sketch forensic sketch artist. So most of if you see like a missing persons, not usually missing persons, sorry, if you see like a Jane Doe flyer or or listing on like Namis, which is the database for that.
00:38:00
Speaker
there often is like a digital drawing of the person. Those are most often created by Carl Hopelman. So that's like his unique niche. He is a hobbyist. He has a regular full-time job as a CPA. And on the side, he does online sleuthing as part of the WebSYS community, but also creates these forensic sketches that are used to help identify Jane and John Does and missing persons from that database.
00:38:28
Speaker
I met Carl Copelman around 2018 and he had mentioned this case at that point and basically said, there's this guy and he is probably going to be arrested at some point for the murder of his adoptive daughter and told me about the missing persons case and that they had all this evidence on him. And I was like, okay, so, you know, he mentioned this story to me and you know, it was,
00:38:56
Speaker
There's this missing person's case. It's been unsolved for all these years. The biological mother has come into the picture and we have figured out that it's probably the stepfather who killed her. I was obviously excited about the idea that this case could potentially be solved. It was a cold case that was looking like it was approaching closing.
00:39:18
Speaker
There was no, you know, it was in the middle of the case wrapping up. So as a journalist, there's not really much that I can do at that point because no one's going to talk to me right before the arrest happens. If it looks like the arrests are imminent, which at that point it was seeming like it probably was.
00:39:34
Speaker
Um, you know, we kept in touch over the next year or so until November, 2019, when Dennis was arrested for the murder of Kathleen Doyle. And so I, you know, heard about all of that in real time. You know, I heard from Copelman, I, him and I talked about it. I then found out that it was Kathy and not, um, it was, it was the murder of Kathleen and not having anything to do with Andrea.
00:40:01
Speaker
But we knew that Andrea was probably coming, so we kept in touch about that. And then, you know, when he finally was arrested. So it's been a really unique experience, you know, writing this piece because I was really living through those moments in real time. It wasn't like I came into this story recently and then, you know, was getting caught up on it. It was me.
00:40:25
Speaker
waiting along with Copeland and Turkanian for this story to break in the news. And then it did. And so it's been really wild to be kind of watching it firsthand. And I've sort of been waiting for the right moment to tell this story and the right place to tell it. And so it was really exciting, you know, once he was arrested and charged with Andrea's murder to then be able to bring this to activist, it really felt like the right time to be telling the story in a way that, you know, could be powerful and really meaningful.
00:40:53
Speaker
Oh great, it's a fantastic piece and I think you landed it at the perfect place to tell it. So I gotta commend you, it's a wonderful piece and just beautifully told. Thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome. It's rare you get that kind of timing, you know?
00:41:14
Speaker
It's pretty, um, I've been, you know, I feel really lucky with that. And I, you know, I gave really big props to, like, Carl and Kathy, who, you know, have been on this story way longer than I have and knew that this was, you know, knew that it was solvable. And when I talked to, you know, when I talked to Carl those years ago in that very first conversation, he told me Dennis Bowman will eventually be arrested and charged for the murder of Andrea, and he was right. And so,
00:41:43
Speaker
Um, it's pretty cool. And, and, you know, as, as obviously sad and tragic as all of this is, it's been amazing to be able to watch it firsthand, watch these people who fought so hard for this conclusion and fought so hard for answers. Sure. Canadian who, you know, I mean, you look back at her Facebook posts on the find Andrea page and, you know, I mean, we're talking five years ago, she was on there writing.
00:42:12
Speaker
exactly what ended up happening, you know, accusing Dennis of killing Andrea and burying her under the cement plot where that's exactly where they ended up finding her. So there's a real prophetic element to it in that sense. And I feel really lucky and, again, honored that Turkanian and Copelman kind of brought me into their circle and have given me sort of this front row seat to this case.
Podcast wrap-up and call to action
00:42:37
Speaker
And I just hope that
00:42:39
Speaker
people will understand all the dynamics that went into it and that this, you know, this article kind of tells the story in this way that hasn't been out there yet.
00:42:51
Speaker
As I want to say, that was a toe tap and good time. Be sure to subscribe to The Atavist and get incredible stories like Niles and Scott Edens and Lindsey Jones and Jordan Michael Smith and Maddie Crowell and Daniel Colitz and Phil Hoad. Yeah, those are just a few who have been on the podcast as part of this Atavistian, CNF, Podian partnership.
00:43:13
Speaker
But if you like me love ad-free journalism, then why wouldn't you subscribe? Magazine.adivus.com and no, I don't get kickbacks. CNF-ers. Kickbacks? Kickbacks. Yeah, no, I don't get kickbacks either, whatever the hell that might be. Thanks for listening. And if you don't already, consider subscribing to the show wherever you get your podcasts and visiting patreon.com slash cnfpod or brendanomera.com. Hey, I know it's a lot.
00:43:42
Speaker
It's a bit much. And if you don't want to, listen, I get it. It's okay. The podcast has seven horcruxes scattered around the world, so it can't die, per se. But your support is always welcome in whatever way you can afford, be that time, money, or both.
00:44:00
Speaker
This is usually the place where I have a parting shot or a riff. And I put it at the end of the show because I'm not a monster. And it's there if you want to hear it. But I'm here to spare you that riff. But I guarantee there'll be one on the usual CNF Friday, this Friday, when I talk to Earl Swift when he returns to the podcast to talk about his new book, Across the Airless Wilds. Let's just say we're going to the moon.
00:44:28
Speaker
Stay wild, CNF'ers. And remember, if you can do interview, see ya.