Transcript
Speaker: ah racking up tons of new sponsors here cnf pod is brought to you by the word pathetic having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity pitifully inferior or inadequate absurd or laughable pathetic you're looking at them hey if you or any of you goons want to Come see me for a signed paperback of The Front Runner, The Life of Steve Prefontaine, which comes out today.
Speaker: you heard? Maybe not. Probably not. I doubt it. I'll be signing books 1 to 5 on Saturday, November 7th at HodgePodge Books and Taps in Eugene. And then I'm going to be at Roundabout Books in Bend, Oregon, in conversation with the brilliant former runner, Lauren Fleshman, who also wrote a New York Times bestselling book called Good for a Girl on Thursday, November 12th.
Speaker: That's a ticketed event, like five bucks. And there's already like 50 people going. Visit roundaboutbookshop.com to get a seat. These conversations, I think that's one of the biggest privileges of being a journalist. Like yeah people are opening up to you and they they give you a piece of their of their life. And I think and and and and and but ah i think that's a real privilege. So that that was really satisfying.
Speaker: OAC and Efforts is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell and the art and craft of telling true stories. It's me, ya boy, B.O. It's that Atavistian time of the month again, and we're making this a bonus episode this week, because ya boy has got some pods in the can he's got to burn through. So today we have yet another co-byline set of dudes.
Speaker: which is really skewing my gender balance of the show, but hey, it'll all balance out in the end. It always does. Not by accident, mind you. It's the third co-byline set of nudes I've had this month, two by The Atavist, and it's Berber Vipost and Alessio Perone, and they wrote the rise and fall of a super cop for The Atavist. Willy van Mechelen or Mechelen? I don't know.
Speaker: I don't know. yeah These Europeans. He was one of the most celebrated police officers in Belgian history, responsible for solving infamous kidnappings, robbery, and murders.
Speaker: Then Antwerp's lucrative drug trade came calling. Breaking bad much? Visit magazine.atavist.com to read this thrilling story. Show notes at this episode more at brendanomera.com. Hey, there you can search the vast archive of the podcast as well as peruse for hot blogs just as nature intended.
Speaker: You can also sign up for the Wicked Hot Pitch Club or the Up to 11 Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. These go to 11. Has nice tasty riffs, four book recs, and seven juicy links. It literally goes up to 11. I didn't put one out for November for the first time in many, many years, and nobody noticed.
Speaker: So that right there tells me something about the rager. Oh boy, it's on life support, isn't it? There's Patreon as well if you want one-on-one coaching calls or access to the Sunday writing sessions to keep you from drinking too much the night before. But don't, you know what? Never stop me.
Speaker: I've had several hangovers at the writing at the writing sessions, and in nobody, trust me, nobody noticed, right? Or if you just want to support this ad-free, listener-supported podcast, it's free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap.
Speaker: I believe I failed to thank longtime patron Adam Sowards for upping his membership from $4 to $10 per month, so thank you, Adam. And thank you to Sarah C. Baldwin for recently becoming a CNFerLite.
Speaker: Remember, any tier gets you access to the writing group, and some tiers get one-on-one calls with me. Alright, so before we get to Berber and Alessio, we're gonna hear from Jonah Ogles and get a sense of how he edits pieces and how you can read like an editor to make your pieces better. So why don't we just get on with the program, man.
Speaker: Riff.
Speaker: Comparison is the thief of joy, obviously. And like, he taught me how to throw a punch. That's kind of a big deal. let me tell you a story. And i forgot to press record.
Speaker: but This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: It's crazy how it seems like a more the double byline stories seem to be coming in. yeah a couple weeks ago with ah yeah Mitch and Holbrook. Mitch, yeah. And now Berber and Alessio. And when you get a co-byline piece, yeah what is the yeah it's sort of the expectation on your end when you're like, okay, here's you know two writers, two reporters in the kitchen. this is ah yeah It's a different experience. Yeah, and they tend to, in my experience, they they tend to specialize a little bit on their own, which I assume is sort of the reason they're working together, you know, where one is is maybe like has the sources and is is a really great reporter, and then the other one maybe has more experience writing at length or something.
Speaker: um But they... Yeah, it's it's a it can be a really fun way of doing it. Like in this case, you know, like Berber just knows this story. Not that Alessio doesn't, but, you know, like i could I could ask the most minute question, you know, just like the small detail. And like eight times out of 10, Berber would respond in like 15 minutes and with like a paragraph about it. You know, he just seemed to know. It's like he's lived in this piece for four years. um
Speaker: I think Alessio was maybe doing a little bit more of just like the storytelling. You know, like i think that's sort of how they split it up. um But it was it was a very smooth experience, honestly. there There can be times when two writers are working on something I experienced this when I was a fact checker at outside where you'd ask a question and they would both assume the other one was going to answer it and you'd just, you'd be waiting for a day and be like, so as is somebody going to answer this question? But these guys were great and they seemed very in sync and my God, they spent a ton of time with the story and knew it really well. So it was, once the draft came in,
Speaker: it was a very smooth and easy process it was just a very difficult story to report in part because they were waiting so long to get an interview that they ultimately never got so nice see what can you do yeah and it's one of those things where i often wonder when there's someone there's this big central figure at the center of a piece like whether I think ultimately and most reporters would be like, yeah, i would if even if I only have 10 or 15 or 20 minutes with the person, I'd rather have that than nothing. But then sometimes I wonder if it is a strength sometimes to not have that central figure in it and you just report like hell around it.
Speaker: Well, and with this story, you know, we had this, the memoir that the main character wrote that Willie wrote. And so we were able to really flesh out his early life and his career as an officer.
Speaker: Um, and, and then, i mean, things kind of, we lost his voice in the piece ah a little bit, but, um, you know, he, we still had enough court documents and everything to write the story. And then at the very end, like two days before we were supposed to lock the text, they were like, okay, we think Willie might talk to us.
Speaker: you know, is there anything we should ask? And i I had a moment of panic where I was like, oh my God, we're going to have to like rewrite this story, which would I don't think we would have needed to do. And the interview fell apart anyway. But, you know, we all we were basically going to do was add a few paragraphs because his his lawyer had answered fact check questions. So we were We were on solid ground and at that point it was only like the potential for a little color at the end, which would have been nice, but it you're right. Ultimately, we didn't need it um as nice as it would have been to have just because the reporting was there.
Speaker: Nice. And I always love getting a sense of what their their pitch like and ah looked like and yeah what excited you about it when it came across yeah the Atavis pitch inbox. So yeah, what was it about this pitch that you were like, ooh, I i really like the sound of this one?
Speaker: Yeah, well, I feel like a broken record, but the reporting, it was obvious they had the reporting locked down. You know, like they they knew where documents were. They had a bunch of them in hand, maybe most of them in hand. um They knew all the players. They they knew Willie's lawyer.
Speaker: So they were they were just very prepared to start writing the story. And and the arc of this guy's story is crazy. you know like to to be like ah i don't I don't even know if it would be possible in the United States just because of how big a country we are. But like to have this cop who basically solves like two of the biggest cases in Belgian history...
Speaker: like almost single-handedly and is like widely praised by colleagues and the press and everyone in the country he's he's like a hero a national hero and then this one thing you know like his informants say oh actually he's telling us to to transport a bunch of weed which he still claims is they were just turning on him um but the court the court ruled differently And that sets his life off on this completely different path, which for many people might have just led to like an early retirement or, you know, like sort of fading into obscurity. But instead, he he embarks on this like crazy criminal career ah that's also like exemplary in Belgian history. So it was just it was wild. And it seems like exactly the kind of story we're looking for. And I understand that there were a lot of different ways to get into the story and scenes to open it up. So what was the dialogue you were having ah to ultimately settle on the the lead in the opening vignette that you settled on?
Speaker: ah So originally the draft started with ah the case from the 90s where his informants accused him of instructing them to transport all this weed from the port in Antwerp to various places, you know, which is like a good place to start. And I i mean, i we went through, i don i think, a couple of revisions where that was the lead.
Speaker: We went through multiple revisions where that was a lead. And I felt good about it because it's a good way to start the story. Like there's tension. You sort of set the stakes. Yeah, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing I was struggling with was so we we started in the 90s and then we back up and we tell this guy's life story.
Speaker: And then we got to the end to this case, this more modern case in this decade, and they had so much great material about it. You know, like it was so detailed and rich and vivid.
Speaker: And it almost felt like the story was starting over in some way. But but like you're already 5,000 words in, words in. And so when I sent it to Sayward for a top edit, it I i i'd said like i'm i'm not sure like, I'm not sure how to deal with all this at the end. I really cut cut the more recent case down trying to just like get us to the end faster.
Speaker: And Sayward, in her infinite wisdom, was like, well, why don't we just start with the more recent case? And and it worked. you know she She added a bunch of stuff back in that I had cut.
Speaker: She moved it up to the top, and we moved the informant section down, which actually gave us like a nice, sort of relaxed scene about midway through the piece.
Speaker: And it just seemed to click. And Berber and Alessio, I think, were very nervous when I told them, like, hey, here's the top edit. By the way, we have changed the way the story started. And they were they admitted, and like, we'll read it with an open mind, but we're pretty attached to that opening.
Speaker: ah But thankfully, they were cool with it. They were great with edits. and And I do think it's it's better for the story. I think it's just a more engaging read this way. Yeah. And when you're making big cuts like you want to do, how do you keep track of those in the event that you have to put something some things back in?
Speaker: Yeah, well, everything's a new version, right? um i don't I don't really – prefer to not track changes generally. I don't know if we've talked about this, but I'm i'm of the belief that if you – If you read a piece cold without seeing the track changes, anything that needs to go back in will come to mind.
Speaker: You know, like if you're the writer or or even me as an editor, I don't like writers don't need to track changes until I'm manually compiling, you know, five different documents into one.
Speaker: But in the revision process, I just want to read it cold as if that's the story that I've been given. And if I remember things like, oh, well, where did this go? i i can now always add it back in But so, yeah, so...
Speaker: what But what I do is I just save that document that's like revision two, and then I so save it as a new document once I do my edits. And then I can all, I mean, i'm even at the end stages, I'm going back to original documents or original drafts saying to just to look in on like...
Speaker: do we have i want a little more here like didn't we have a nice quote that maybe i could drop into this section that i've kind of missing so i'm always referring back to those uh earlier drafts that i've saved oftentimes on on the show talk about you know reading in the the going to the game tape as i call it like reading like a writer and getting into the bones of things to get into the mechanics And, you know, you've been editing you know these narratives for a long time. And I think it's helpful for writers to as a skill is to learn how to read like an editor, too. And and i don't know for it what counsel would you offer for writers who are looking to be a bit more critical to self edit their stuff to to read like an editor and therefore kind of inhabit the editor's mind and get a little bit better at maybe landing stories.
Speaker: i I try to pay attention to basically like when I'm drifting a little bit, you know, like if I'm clicking away from the story into like a, you know, a tab on Firefox or whatever, yeah um that's that's a decent sign that like there's not a to and ton happening at that point in the story.
Speaker: Aside from that, I often tell writers that like 800 to 1200 words is a really nice section length. You know, like not that not that they can't be shorter or longer. They absolutely can. But generally speaking, when I find myself kind of bored or drifting off in a section, I'll do a word count for that section. And it's almost always like 2,300 words, you know. and And that's just, I don't know why, but that
Speaker: It's too much at a time for some reason. it it is out of this story. yeah So I think even just doing that a word count on your sections might be ah a clue that like, okay, I may be trying to do too much in this section and some of it needs to come out. Not that it can't go elsewhere, but it might be time to sort of divide things up and keep the story moving. Yeah, I think that's really astute. i Just to give the eye ah a break, too, if there's just so much text, even just having a little page break or where you're able to insert a pull quote, that just gives it just gives the eye a chance to rest a little bit, and it gives the mind a chance to rest a little bit and kind of regroup for the next thing. And I don't think it panders to short attention spans. I think it plays with our ability to...
Speaker: ingest what we've had, digest it a little bit, and then regroup for the next part or take a breather, go for a walk and come back to it. I think those things are really good to just mentally reset yourself and then you can come back at it with energy and attention and for the rest of the piece maybe.
Speaker: Yeah, because, I mean, you're trying to, in an ideal piece, each of those sections has a little arc. You know, not that there needs to be a ton of movement, but there should be some movement to it.
Speaker: And making sure that each section... has has a little bit of an arc and isn't too long, but is still making a point, you know, that I think helps the overall piece move at the right pace and and help that larger arc or the spine of the story just be a little bit stronger, more vibrant or something. Yeah, it's like any, we take it for granted in in movies, and you guys are very like aware of writing cinematically in that degree, but any movie you watch, like every little scene has its own little arc, and it's feeding into the bigger piece of like Act I, and then Act I has its arc, or that's feeding into the act of the of the whole thing. And we take it for granted with movies, but sometimes in writing, we kind of we lose the thread on that.
Speaker: Yeah, totally. I mean, as I was talking earlier, actually thought in my head, it's just like scenes in movies. If there's going be 12-minute scene...
Speaker: an awful lot better be happening in that 12 minute scene, you know, um and maybe it's a battle or something, but like it, it really needs to carry all of that 12 minutes. And that's why I think there, i have no idea what the average, like the movie scenes are, but I'm guessing it's much shorter, you know, maybe three, four or five minutes.
Speaker: and something happens and then you move on to the next storyline yeah oh for sure well that's cool i think it's really really fun insights for people to sink their teeth into and now we'll sink our teeth into our conversation with berber and alessio and get a sense of uh yeah what turned this super cop bad so uh amazing stuff jonah and thanks so much for the time thanks for having me brendan
Speaker: All right. Alessio Perone is a writer and editor whose work has been published by The Guardian, Time, Slate, and Wired, among others. He's based in Milan, Italy. He is Italian, but he has a British accent. Kind of cool.
Speaker: And Berber Verpost, he lives in Belgium, and he's got I thought believe, I don't know if you call it Belgian accent, don't or maybe it's a French accent. I don't know. I don't know my accents very well, okay?
Speaker: Berber's journalism and documentaries have appeared through VRT, Vice, AJ+, NOP1. Starting to sound like prescription drugs. And ah al aibia Arabia.
Speaker: Whatever. Among others, he's based in Belgium, as I previously said. Wild story of the super cop who breaks bad. In this episode, we learn how they work together on this piece, how they find hard to track down people working together in the cloud, and being dogged about getting that crucial interview up to the last moment, even if it means you ain't gonna get it. Good stuff here. No parting shot since these atavis pods tend to run pretty long. And it' it's going to be a two podcast weeks. You'll get your parting shot fixed in a couple days. So why don't we just get on with it, okay?
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Maybe you can bat lead off and just say like how you guys i came to the story. <unk>s I've got to say, memory is really hazy because this was this was basically what six years ago. it was four years since we seriously started working on this story.
Speaker: But i was I was the one who actually found the story and then and and then started working with Berber. on it and I found it because it was a freelance writer for a newspaper in the UK called The Independent. And because I was the only, I'm i'm Italian, my my accent is British, but I'm Italian, which which confuses people. ah But I was the only non-British um reporter on the team on that day.
Speaker: And so the editor asked me a very weird question. Can you find us some Europe stories? And so I went around looking on European outlets from different countries, what was going on that day. And I stumbled up upon a story in Belgium. Apparently, authorities there just had had just had the largest ever drugs bust in the history of the country. And a newspaper put it as the largest in European history.
Speaker: So I went back to my editor and like, look, there's this. We might want to do it. And he was like, look into it. um i I did research there and it turned out not to be the largest in European history. it It was the largest in Belgium history. And so the editor was like, no, that's too too small for us and where we won't do it too narrow. But then i I, something about it, I don't remember what got my attention, but I kept reading. And at some point I found out that the guy behind the the guy the guy who tried to smuggle the drugs into the country was a former kind of sort of chief of police super cop is how they called it, who was now near 80 years of age.
Speaker: And immediately our light bulb went off. So like, this would be an amazing story to read somewhere. But then me being at the time, I'd just moved back to Italy. I used to live in London.
Speaker: And I was like, ah this is this isn't me. It shouldn't be me who tells it. And then I waited for somebody to pick it up and and do it. And I set up a Google Alert. I started getting updates on the story, and I started looking into this guy's history.
Speaker: He's the protagonist of our story. His name is Willy van Mecklen. And at some point, I think I talked to a couple of colleagues about it, and they were like, if no one's doing it, um this guy is 80 years of age.
Speaker: Everybody around him, everybody who used to know him when he wasn't a criminal, is relatively old some people had died already um so it's basically now and ever and so and so i i contacted berber and we and we started working on it and berber how how did you and alessio uh start to ah you know report and write together well when alessio first contacted me he had this amazing story about his this this guy this this old guy who who set up this huge cocaine smuggling deal but i had never heard of him and i i'm from belgium i had heard about the the seizure of the cocaine seizure but i had never heard of willy van mechelen so since i i'm located in belgium it was logical for me to to start doing the the first research to try to get in touch with
Speaker: uh with sources with people who had worked with him who had been informants with him or he who run here he ran an into so that's how we first uh that's how we first started um that's how we first started working together i think and although we we never worked together before it it felt very natural from the from the start well once we had collected some sources who were willing to talk it took us a while to find them because they were all very old and there were not a lot of traces of them online so it took a while to find them but once we were on the right track i think we tried to collect uh to group the interviews together and alessio would come over and we'd have the interviews together actually
Speaker: And when you're trying to track people down that are maybe older and like you said, don't have much of an internet footprint, you know how it is the struggle a lot of journalists have have have of just trying to find people to put meat on the bone for a story? So um like Alessio, how do you, yeah what is step one typically when you're trying to find people that might be harder to track down?
Speaker: I would, if you don't mind, i would actually pass this over to Berber because he would have a lot more to say about this. And then I can add after his answer, maybe i can add something, but I think it would be like he's probably better placed to say this. Yeah, I went through ah through a lot of articles about him. So we first tried to track who he was. told you i never heard of him. So i was at first I was a bit embarrassed that I didn't know about this guy. But then I started contacting friends, other journalists.
Speaker: It didn't really ring a bang a bell. um ah with with people my age, but then I started contacting other journalists who had been reporting doing reporting on him when he was still a police officer.
Speaker: And then things started rolling. One person refers you to the next, then you start building an image. What struck me was like whoever talked about him,
Speaker: Whether he was he had worked together, he had good memories, or whether he was ah they had a ah bad relationship. It it was like this this amazing guy who is so ah jovial, he's an imposing figure, he's this larger-than-life guy.
Speaker: This image start to build and you get to um one source leads you to the next. And that's how we started building. We started also digging in judicial reports. We tried to pick the like the the people who were most interested for doing interviews.
Speaker: if If I can build on that, I think it was it was super interesting because because so we started from what we could find in newspaper reports from the 90s, court records, and some people that written memoirs about that overlooked with our story, let's say, in some sections. And so we started with those people.
Speaker: And what we found was that some people were, so they they were all old men, really, who had been police officers or or judges. and um And a few of them were cranky and like seemed like really bothered by what we were doing, not not because of the story, but because they wanted to be left alone, basically. But most people, it was it was basically just just like going to someone's grandpa and asking them, like can you tell me about your job? like What was it back in the old days? And so they were really happy to talk, I think, most people. They were really proud of what they did. and and
Speaker: and had a lot to say. And then, yeah, like Berber was saying, one source led us to the next. And there were there were sources who had forgotten. um There was even a guy who was part of a local history society. And when we caught and he'd been... he'd been there The police officers were really arrested Van Metelen for the very first time and nailed him for the very first crime.
Speaker: And when we phoned him, he thought we were going to ask him about 90th century history in his little town in Flanders near the coast, not about the big arrest he made in the 90s.
Speaker: But so it was, i think I think it was really fun, mostly to talk to a bunch of elderly former police officers in in Flanders. And just as a reporting duo, how did you guys create a chemistry where you could attack the reporting and then eventually the writing of the piece?
Speaker: I think everything flowed very naturally. like I was thinking about this just just a moment ago and and and thinking about the last kind of few years that we've worked together, things could have gone wrong so many times for for so many different things and and for some magical reason they they haven't. I think we really liked working with each other. And I think from...
Speaker: hi it it It naturally became clear. I'd i'd done a lot of work on the story before contacting Berber in terms of like archival research, getting some court documents, and also kind of thinking about what the story was going to look like in terms of structure. and so we started talking about it, and I think we were on the same page. and and and and so the reporting that concerned kind of...
Speaker: judicial authorities, court records, um written sources, i sort of took the lead on because that was easier to do here. Everything that required kind of phoning someone and kind of convincing them to to give us an interview, Berber did on the phone from from Belgium. And then we basically, we we both went to Antwerp.
Speaker: I think I went there three times. Barbara, you might have been there a few a few times more than me. And we did the reporting together. So kind of getting together before the interview, kind of agreeing on a bunch of questions that we would ask.
Speaker: Some sources spoke English. A lot of them didn't. So I had some basic Dutch at the time. So I was trying to follow through and follow and follow the interview. And also some some sources would go back and forth and kind of explain themselves in English and then turn turn back to to Dutch.
Speaker: And so I guess what i'm what I'm trying to get at is that that we we it's not like we sat down and kind of created a system. ah Things just started magically working for some reason that i wish I wish I could give listeners something concrete to act on. But I don't know. I don't know if I would have anything to say about this.
Speaker: I think it was very easy. It was the first time we worked together and it felt very easy, very natural. um we work together with a very good understanding like i think we had a we have the same idea of what a good story should be how it works structurally what's what kind of characters you need and i think we're on the same page there and that makes it like i think we had all the all the time we had the feeling like we're going in the same direction and even when we were struggling to get some sources we had
Speaker: to have a lot of patience because it took us a long time to to complete the story partly because there were the trial was going on it was we had a hard time finding some sources but every time we found a way to overcome these problems together and i think it was it was a great collaboration we should do it together uh we should do it again i mean uh yeah i'm certainly gonna miss working together for sure yeah ah It's weird. ah This year I've interviewed, you guys are the third co-byline, co-authors I've interviewed together. yeah Yeah, third this year, which is kind of a lot. But I'm finding that a lot of journalists, whether they're doing books or long articles, like an Atavist article, they really like, especially if you have a good rapport,
Speaker: It makes for a good division of labor. like Maybe someone else is stronger at something else. And but and then you got you can lift each other up or someone's strengths can make up for another person's weaknesses and vice versa. you know And vice versa and um um i don't know I don't know if that's a trend, or but I'm finding that a lot of people, when they can report and write together,
Speaker: It's almost like an accelerant. It feels like if you have a shared brain and a way of working, it ends up being ah really a good experience in the sense that you can it's like you have someone in the foxhole with you instead of doing it all by yourself.
Speaker: I think that's that's definitely how it felt because, because again, we hit some roadblocks. um We thought when we started out working on this story, we thought we were going to have a huge amount of material. And then as as we as we moved along, we realized we were working with fragments and with shards and and some people were not going to be available. Some people had died. Some court records that we thought we were going to be able to pull were were not available. And so it it was it it was a four-year grind, really. And so the fact that that that it was two of us together made it a lot easier. First of all, I think it made us accountable to one another.
Speaker: um we couldn't We couldn't really quit, I guess. And on the other hand, it kind of gave us the strength sometimes when when some one of the, obviously we had to do other other, we had to work during these four years and sometimes I would be busier and Berber would take the lead or Berber would be busier and I would take the lead. So it was it was a huge, huge boost.
Speaker: I would also say and and my its experience, is I have been hired several times as a fixer for long form articles. i um I hope that the fact that that that you see more and more co-bylines reflects kind of more transparency around how kind of an article actually gets written. For us, we complemented each other very well, I think. We heard we we we were we worked as a very good team. But you know in in in my experience, there's also a lot of, you could see a lot of articles where there's just one byline, but that that's not particularly transparent to the reader about how how that article got written. And, ah you know, you said you guys, it took six to four, four to six years, but I guess maybe the more meat grinder part of it was about four. ah But ah so Berber, when did you guys feel you were ready to pitch this story to the Atavist?
Speaker: I don't quite remember when we pitched it, actually. um Do you remember, Alessio, because it was quite early, I think, that we pitched it? Yeah. Because there was, I mean, the advantage of the story like is like we had a great ending. You know, the guy was ah busted with a few tons of cocaine. So ah a super cop.
Speaker: who is now an old retired man and he's busted with 12 tons of cocaine. That's ah that's ah that's a great ending. So we had that and we and once we felt like we had a lot of sources, we had enough sources, how he was as a cop and how he became a criminal, I think that was the point where we pitched, but I don't remember exactly. I think i think that like if I can pick up on that, there was there was there was also the problem of working with elderly and aging sources. So at the point we did we hadn't secured access to the protagonist, which is a story in and of itself that Berber had had experienced in until basically today. Even if we we didn't feel when we pitched that we necessarily had done all the pre-reporting, but like Berber was saying, the arc was very clear.
Speaker: We had a great ending. what and And we had the fact that kind of father time would would catch up and we were afraid that some people would not be around for for many years. Fortunately, I think all the people that we quote in the articles are, in fact, alive. nobody but But other people that we wanted to get touch with had died. Some were struggling with memory. And so there was that that question of like...
Speaker: We had to wait to obtain court records and for a sentence to be pronounced. But at the same time, we didn't want to leave it too long. We wanted to start doing kind of recorded interviews, as many as possible and as soon as possible. And we felt to do that, we we needed a commission. And so we got in touch with the activists then.
Speaker: Yeah, and yeah high in the story, you guys write that ah Van Michelin you know declined to be interviewed. So here's the person at the center of your story, and you know you're not really able to secure him for the kind of interviewing that you wanted. I mean, you do talk to him at the end.
Speaker: that ended up turning into more him trying to negotiate the terms of an interview. So you never really had him secure in the way I think you wanted to. um So how do you ah start crafting and reporting on the story when you don't have that central figure you know on the record for the most part? Yeah, I mean, we we we did a lot of attempts and it was several times we felt very close and we thought this time it's going to happen.
Speaker: Even as a little anecdote, even I spoke to him today to arrange an interview for for tomorrow, which would would be the last, absolute last moment. And he he kind of said that like that he would talk to us, but like he remained very... Throughout the four years, he he remained elusive somehow, and we never got him. So that was...
Speaker: perhaps our biggest frustration but the other on the other hand i think from the beginning even if we he never gets we never get to talk to him we can still we we'll still be able to write his story if we talk to a lot of we get enough other sources and i think halfway through i think we were quite confident that we could write his story without him Of course, it would have been better if we could talk to him. So we put a lot of effort in getting to speak to him. But but I think we were quite confident that it that that it was possible to write his story without without really having an interview with him.
Speaker: Yeah. And ah what what I would add to that is that Van Bechelen never really told us that he would not give us an interview. Like a lot of times he actually said, yes, let's speak. I think on one occasion he even told us, yeah, this is actually in the article. we met in his lawyer's office and he's like, I like you guys. You want one interview? I'll give you three days. I'm going to tell you the whole truth. I'm going going to say everything. And then he kind of disappeared. And and up until a couple of days ago, Bobo got in touch and and he was like, yeah, sure, I've always wanted to talk to you. And four years have gone by, mind you. And then and then again, it kind of pulled a vanishing act, which is frustrating. But at the same time, we also knew, on the other hand,
Speaker: that we couldn't really rely on vanmethalin as a source, like he would probably try to spin the story one way or the other. He wasn't particularly reliable as as a source or a witness. So we we needed a bunch of people and sources could corroborate whatever account he gave us.
Speaker: And at the end, we we had so so so many sources and so much material that he he sort of became dispensable in this story anyway. well And he also had written a memoir, too. So in a way, you you did have kind of his point of view and a little bit of his voice in the story, even if you couldn't really interview him directly about very specific things that you guys dug up through through your reporting.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially for the first part of the article, because this was a memoir written in 1997. So it kind of gave a lot of material information.
Speaker: yeah in the first kind of half of of the piece and nothing in the second. So that that that was also a bit of a challenge because because we after the midpoint, we lacked sourcing, we lacked kind of scene level detail.
Speaker: um And that was a challenge in the reporting where we had to kind yeah make make sure we had something. And I love getting a sense of, you know, once you start getting into the writing of it and you've got your materials, yeah how you're starting to think about the structure of the piece. And maybe Berber, you can ah start off by just getting a sense of how you were thinking about structuring the writing of this piece.
Speaker: Like the opening was a ah big question. Shall we start with the ending? Or we had we had a other really great opening scene. One of these informants first spoke out against him.
Speaker: And this was ah a really intriguing scene, I think, where he the informants He thought he was doing a job for Vermechler, at least he claimed. He thought he was doing an undercover job for the police. But then when he found, when he realized like, I'm in jail and nobody's going to get me out, he finally said his name. So that was also a great opening because it was kind of like very telling for how Vermechler worked. What made him so strong as ah as a cop were all his contacts, his informants.
Speaker: But it's also what made him so strong as a as a criminal, like could rely on the same network. to build this criminal empire. Yeah, Berb is right. We had this idea.
Speaker: say obviously for a story like this, it was clear from the beginning that the midpoint was going to be ah when it turned out that that this super-distabled cop in, I think one one person called him, best cop ever in Belgian history. So the midpoint had to be when it is revealed that he's actually um a criminal. And our early thinking was that we wanted to keep readers hanging as to whether he's actually a criminal or not for the first half of the piece. And so kind of give them a lot of information about what made him a a good cop.
Speaker: Give them also a lot of information about what made him bad cop. But not necessarily kind of the the opening has changed, as Bebber was saying. In the beginning, we we wanted to open in a more ambiguous way. Then we talked a lot with Jonah and with the editors, um and we we came to realize that changing the opening would propel the story into the third act in a much cleaner, more more more natural way, because um basically there's a big gap in in the story after kind of his penultimate conviction and the last conviction between 2015 and 2020 so he gets arrested he he flees to angola he works in angola then gets arrested again and then nothing happens until he's uh on the receiving end of uh you know tens of tons of cocaine in in belgium and so to kind of bridge that gap we thought it it would work better and this was really generous suggestion if If we opened with with a scene making clear, then this is the ultimate trajector trajectory that the story would have. ah kind of That's kind of how the story evolved over time as we as we started recording. Yeah, I love hearing that, how it is a fluid process or in some trial and error. but Like you had multiple different entry points and each one sets maybe a slightly different expectation for the reader. And then you ultimately settle on this one. Yes, to your point, Alessio, of like, oh, this is this is the end game right here up front.
Speaker: ah But then you're going to backtrack and be like, well, this is what made him so great. and then But it also made what it also pushes him. kind of to the dark side as well. So maybe you can run with that a little bit too about what what was it that drove him to the to the dark side and not to stay kind sort of on the straight and narrow of more justice driven like like a lifestyle and a career. I think it's it was evident from his childhood and and growing up in rural belgium would say uh that he was a very driven person who wanted kind of action um recognition um he clearly thought he was uh great at whatever he did and that he always played a bit loose with with procedures uh i think at some point uh there's definitely a lot of um
Speaker: ego involved, and i'm I'm trying to think of the right word, that and hubris as well. So he thought he was probably bigger than some of the rules. This is also a story about how kind of procedures, bureaucracy, and policing changes in Belgium around, like, as the story evolves. In then in the 90s in particular, there's a big change in the way policing is done. Before then, a source told us it was a bit of a cowboy mentality, so cops could basically do whatever they want as as long as they caught the criminals.
Speaker: After that, there starts to be checks and balances and and again procedures, rules that cops have to follow. and You can see how he clashes with with a system that no longer appreciates the way he's doing the job.
Speaker: Assur, the first cop who ever arrested him, um not actually not that ever arrested him, but the cop who arrested him on his first conviction, Kerrimans told us that he seemed concerned with kind of things like status and money and prestige. And um um people told he dressed very sharply. In suits, he was always very elegant, a very very kind of polished appearance and a very fun person to be around.
Speaker: And that maybe he was he was worried about money a bit too much for for a cop of his of his rank. You know, earlier you're talking about, you know, we're working with a lot of older sources and what that ends up doing for you guys as reporters is you don't you brought this up already alluded to it that yeah they yeah they're closer to the end of life than the beginning. So when you're interviewing them, there is a sense of urgency that maybe this is the last time we're going to talk to this person.
Speaker: ah So maybe, Berber, like when you're you've got a source and you're like, OK, maybe they're pushing pushing in their 80s, which isn't to say that they're not going to live to 100. But you never know. How do you interview with that sense of urgency and treat that interview like this might be the only time I get them? So I got to make sure I get everything I need.
Speaker: it I try to go to. every interview in that way so i have everything i need well prepared um i think one is uh sometimes we we had to ask them about things like of 30 50 years ago even So ah like even for for everybody, they were they were struggling to to remember exactly how it happened. So we had to double check sometimes with official sources or other sources. So it it was like difficult to get the nitty gritty details and to have everything like ah super clear. and and then and And sometimes they would contradict contradict each other.
Speaker: On the other hand, they had such a long and rich life, a lot of them, so they had a lot of stories to tell. It was really... fun. it was ah It was really fun doing. like It's like listening to your to your grandfather, but then like ah a grandfather in in crime or in ah catch catching criminals or being criminal.
Speaker: So they they had a lot of great stories and it was it was a lot of fun doing those interviews. and and And you really get propelled into another era, really. I think this is also what we're trying to do in the story a bit like getting a feeling of of what it was like to like to to be a cop or in that age and and and how things went, which were was was often very different from from how it happens now.
Speaker: luckily in in a lot of ways. Yeah, just to underscore, we had like a lot of interviews were really fun. and I think the only thing I would add is that we needed to have patience because because some some sources had a lot of stories to tell.
Speaker: and we had to make sure they were we were there to hear them. um But yeah, just because of that, the atmosphere was always very, i would say lot easier very open. We only hit a couple of stumbling blocks with with a couple of sources, but most of the time they were really were very happy to talk and kind of say whatever they remembered, which sometimes was a lot, other times wasn't. a couple of times with there were beer beers flowing after the interview. And it was it was just was just it was just really fun. Yeah.
Speaker: Nice. And i always love getting a sense of how reporters and writers, when most of the reporting is done, how you organize your materials so you can best access it for the writing. You know, some people rely on spreadsheets. Other people are more analog and it's all print everything out and do that or note cards, whatever. um So for you guys, how did you organize your materials? So when you were writing, you know, you you had access to all those materials.
Speaker: So like the two of us being in different countries, we we had to rely on some sort of cloud service. So we used Google Drive for for throughout the reporting to kind of organize where the transcripts were or the audio files were, any notes, any kind of yeah organizational kind of notes on who said what during what interview and kind of who said that they would speak to us.
Speaker: and who said they they wouldn't. On top of that, we we used Scrivener. So very very early on, we started working on a timeline um to to to know, like the timeline went was very long because the story really starts in 1943. So so to to kind of lay out all the facts in chronological order. And another thing that we used later on in the process was Pinpoint, which made it easier to kind of access every note record an interview and and and and court document at the same time. Yeah, and I think earlier I heard you mention that yeah in the writing of the piece they run into some roadblocks or yeah hiccups along the way, which is totally natural. And it's a matter of how we either have dialogue with editors to get through that stuff or conversations among yourself about how you wrestle with know places where you just get stuck or maybe you're experiencing some doubt. self-doubt in this process of which many of us suffer from. So maybe like Berber, like for when you guys would run into a roadblock or just some doubt about whether you could stick the landing, like how did you push through that?
Speaker: We talked about the advantage of working, of being two on on a story. I think there it's really, it's really, really an advantage. If you, if you start doubting when you're alone, it's, ah it can get in your head and you can feel but but But if you can talk to someone who's offers a different perspective, I think it's it's really helpful. and and And we always, I think, found a way and to push through.
Speaker: Sometimes it required quite some patience because also there was an ongoing trial which took a long time, so you have to wait sometimes. But since we're we're working also on other projects in the meantime,
Speaker: So you you jump to another project and then when the time is is right again, you you jump back in. Working together on a story, i think it's most, you you feel the advantages most when you're in trouble, when you're in doubts.
Speaker: And Alessio, what about ah the story was the most satisfying for you?
Speaker: Let me think about this for a second. um I would go back to... how fulfilling kind of the experience was to talk to these people and kind of slide. So at the beginning, we had the contours of a story that was gathered through archival newspaper records, a couple of memoirs written like 30 years ago. And as we spoke to people and gathered more court documents, the the kind of the seeing the building blocks turn into, or like the the blocks of rock turn into a statue was was what what was most fulfilling, I would say. The kind of slow chiseling of of of the of the raw material that we had. I would say that, and I carry in my memory kind of a clear image. Obviously, it was...
Speaker: Articles like these can can seem very long, and we but we do we did have to cut a lot of ah of stuff. and But we carry in our memory, I think, and a clear kind of gallery of very colourful people that we met.
Speaker: And I think at some point, like i still I still think about each one of them and how how distinctive every interviewee was and and kind of what made them unique. And I think those were the two things that that really resonated and stuck with me.
Speaker: For me, it it was also the the interviews and one in particular with Etienne Keremans. He was the, Alessio already told about him, he was the the guy who arrested Van Mechelen in the 90s.
Speaker: And he was like a total opposite of Van Mechelen, who was like, uh really macho guy and wanting action all the time and and and bragging about this and that and he was just soft-spoken very meticulous but a very very good interrogator so he he as he went on his he was even philosophical about ah how we what about what we should do about criminals and is it really right to put them in jail and i really enjoy
Speaker: these conversations, I think that's one of the biggest privileges of being a journalist. Like yeah people are opening up to you and they they give you a piece of their of their life. And i think and and and and and but I think that's a real privilege. So that that was really satisfying.
Speaker: Excellent. Yeah, I love hearing that because, yeah, it is you want to treat everyone fairly and decently because they are sharing you know information with them and then they're trusting you with that information to shape it into a story. But ultimately, those decisions are kind of like on your shoulders and they're trusting you with that. And that's always the especially with like civilian types who aren't like super public figures or high level politicians like when they're yeah, when there's like normal people, it's like the responsibility to treat them fairly and decently is like, it's ah it's always on the mind that you want to you be a little more delicate with them versus some other high level politicians who, you know, have but they they know what they're getting into.
Speaker: Yeah, and I would say it was it it was a help that that we had, though there had been lots of court cases that we had to kind of pull from to to build this story. And so there was there was a kind of legal truth already. It's not like we were trying to kind of nail someone for their crimes, that that those responsible had been convicted. And we even spoke to some other people who had been convicted for for for these crimes. And they were also quite interesting to to talk to. And so, and that made the interviews, most of the interviews, I think kind of laid back and kind of, it it was more about kind of trying to get more precise image of how things went um
Speaker: and and detail and scene level details that we that we could use than a standard kind of investigation where you would you would try to catch some sort of wrongdoing because the wrongdoing hadn't been caught.
Speaker: I want to be mindful of your time, gentlemen. And as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind. That's just like anything that you're finding fun and cool that you want to share with the listeners. So maybe, Berber, I'll start with you. Is there anything ah on your mind you want to recommend to the listeners out there?
Speaker: Yeah, ah well, I'm i'm not a big social media person, but I actually delete yeah Instagram whenever I don't need it for for work. I get it off my phone. But whenever I reinstall it, I always look up Harry Mack. I don't know if you know him. He's ah he' like a freestyle rapper and who asks like strangers for random words. And then He turns them into a freestyle rhyme on the spot. And it every time I hear him, me he brings me joy. We we spent hours like working on sentences story structure, and he just produces these brilliant rhymes and punchlines out of nowhere. So I think if I can choose one talent, ah that would be it. But so far, we need several drafts to get to our story. Yeah.
Speaker: uh with me i'm gonna be a lot more boring and i'm gonna say um hike uh basically i've started i've made the last couple of years i've started going on on very long distance hikes uh for for multiple days or or weeks um and it was not something that had really appealed to me but when i started it kind of opened up a new world to me of like clear vision and kind of i don't know having Being extremely fatigued, but somehow having more energy and more time. So i would recommend like people start walking and and then and hike whenever you can.
Speaker: Oh, fantastic. Well, guys, this is so great to talk to you and celebrate this really excellent Atavis story that you guys have reported and written so well. So just thank you so much for the time and thanks for the work you've you've done.
Speaker: Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for doing the play.
Speaker: Awesome. Thanks very much, CNFers, for making it this far. And thanks to Jonah, of course, and Berber and Alessio. Visit magazine.atavist.com and follow the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Better yet, subscribe to Pitch Club on Substack and plug into brendonomero.com for updates and blog posts and a fun way to party on the internet that doesn't involve the billionaire class and doesn't involve data tracking algorithms.
Speaker: Okay? Okay. You good? I think we're good. Stay wild, C&Evers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
