Ep. 31 Interview with the “Tolerable” Jerry Kolber on Crawlspace

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Your body bags, we’re going on a Slaycation. These are murders and mysterious deaths that happen while you’re on vacation. Except we’re not really going on a Slaycation this week.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
No, more like a staycation—except that it doesn’t involve murder.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Yeah, I mean, if you’re just tuning in for the first time, please check out one of our other 29 episodes. But this week, I don’t know if you listeners know, Kim and I, we actually moved this week. And we’re doing…

Speaker 2 (00:29):
…out as we speak right now, this very second. Yeah, so we weren’t really able to…

Speaker 1 (00:35):
…put it together. Yeah. And not me because, you know, I don’t actually have to do anything.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Alright. Yes, me. It’s my fault. But yes, we moved and we’re digging out.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
So instead of a Slaycation, we’re bringing you an interview with the tolerable third amigo of our trio, the one and only Jerry Kolber, talking about what he loves to talk about the most, which is Jerry Kolber.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
He’s being interviewed on our friend’s podcast, Crawl Space. Tim and Lance had a great interview with him. And I don’t know if you guys got to hear it or not, but this is your chance.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
This is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
We present to you Crawl Space featuring our very own tolerable Jerry Kolber. We’ll catch you, we promise, with new episodes next week. You’ll hear details of the move and, of course, a great Slaycation.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Thanks, guys.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Welcome to Crawl Space. I’m Tim, here today with Lance. Lance, how are you today?

Speaker 4 (02:10):
I’m doing fantastic today. We are coming out of the Christmas holiday. So I hope everyone out there who celebrates Christmas or whatever you celebrate had a good holiday season. One of our last guests for 2023 is a really cool gentleman; I’m really excited to share this with the audience.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
But Tim, I want to share with the audience how you’re doing. How was your holiday season? Are you feeling like 2023 was a good year?

Speaker 3 (02:33):
I’m feeling great, thanks for asking. Yeah, 2023 was great. I had a good time with a lot of family to end the year, which is always nice. This interview is with a fellow named Jerry Kolber. He is an Emmy nominee, and he also hosts the kids’ educational podcast Who Smarted, which is a big hit.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
But this conversation, Lance, is about his new podcast called Slaycation.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
Jerry is a seasoned television producer who has teamed up with a comedy writer and his wife, Adam and Kim, to explore these crimes that happen while people are on vacation, whether it’s international or domestic. He talks about a few of them here—some of the ones that stood out to him. The show actually premieres in January, so stay tuned for that. It’s Slaycation. And just a word of note here, Tim, do you remember that I was on a bit of a delay during this conversation?

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Yeah, I feel like I am sometimes. The brain is on a bit of a delay, but this was a technical delay as well. So just for comedy purposes, you really want to listen to the end of this episode because I leave the delay in when we talk about the delay. We didn’t cut out the delay, so you can hear the period of time that happens after I say something to the reaction. I was cracking myself up re-listening to it, so just make sure you listen to the entire episode; you’ll have a good time.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Okay, good to hear. Yeah. And Jerry is a funny guy, so we do speak about some crime. He’s also produced and developed Discovery ID’s show Homicide Hunter with Joe Kenda, who I would imagine a lot of the folks listening know who Joe Kenda is.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Alright, Tim. And you know, people can listen to this episode if they want with the commercials, or sometimes people don’t want to listen to commercials, and there’s an option.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yes, Crawlspace Premium is that option and it is available to subscribe to via Apple Podcasts. But if you’re not an Apple user, you can go to crawlspace.supportingcast.fm and sign up for the same product there.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
You get ad-free episodes, early releases, and our bonus show, which everybody loves. So make sure to follow us on social media at Crawlspace Podcast or Crawlspace Pod. And we’re gonna take a quick break here, and we’ll be right back with Jerry Kolber.

Speaker 5 (05:04):
Hi, I’m Matt Harris. Seton Tucker and I host the podcast Impact of Influence, which for two years covered in depth Alec Murdoch, who was eventually convicted in 2023 of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul.

Speaker 5 (05:17):
That story continues to evolve and we will cover that. Plus, we will tell you stories of other true crime events that have happened in the South. Please join us on Impact of Influence and give us a follow on the Impact of Influence Facebook page.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
And a thank you to our sponsors. Back to the program.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Welcome to the podcast, Jerry Kolber. How are you today?

Speaker 6 (05:41):
I am great. I’m so happy to be here, guys. I love your show.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Thanks! Anytime a guest comes on and that’s one of the first things they say, you’re good in our book. So would you mind telling the audience who you are, what you do, and why you’re featured on this show today?

Speaker 6 (05:54):
Happy to. My name is Jerry Kolber. I am probably best known as the creator and showrunner of a TV series called Brain Games for National Geographic. My company and I also produce shows for Netflix and Discovery.

Speaker 6 (06:06):
We did a show called Brainchild for Netflix that was a science series for kids. The reason I’m here with you guys today is that for a very long time, my business partner Adam Davis and I have been kind of obsessed with vacation murders—murders that happen on vacation. We started thinking about this when we were working on a TV series called Homicide Hunter a few years back. That show was all about murders that happened in Colorado Springs investigated by this guy, Joe Kenda.

Speaker 6 (06:33):
Once in a while, one of the murders would involve people on vacation. I thought, “Wow, that’s such an interesting thought because when you’re on vacation, your guard is down, you’re having fun, you’re in a new place.”

Speaker 6 (06:44):
Oftentimes, we discovered people will murder a spouse or a business partner on a vacation to a foreign destination because they think they won’t be investigated by the United States police or that they can get away with it.

Speaker 6 (06:56):
So we started looking into it. We realized there was a lot of these—like a disturbing number of people get murdered and commit murder on vacation. Adam came up with a term for this, which is Slaycation.

Speaker 6 (07:10):
Once he said Slaycation, I was like, “We gotta make this show. I don’t care if it’s a TV show or a podcast; we need to make Slaycation.” Adam’s wife, Kim, is the third host on the show. She is an absolute true crime-obsessed person.

Speaker 6 (07:25):
She listens to, watches, any true crime thing. She’s all over it. So she’s our true crime nut on the show. Adam is there on Slaycation as a bit of comedy relief. He’s learning the cases in real-time. And I’m there because I’m fascinated by it—what makes people kill—and also really fascinated by, on our show, looking at the victims through a much more compassionate lens than they usually are in true crime. So that’s who I am, and that’s why I’m here.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Wow, very cool. Yeah, it sounds like an interesting idea. I can’t wait to listen to it. When is it premiering?

Speaker 6 (08:00):
The show premieres…

Speaker 3 (08:02):
January 9th. Okay, great. What’s the first case you’re going to cover?

Speaker 6 (08:05):
The very first case we’re doing is, I’m just gonna go to the list here, Shanquella Robinson. Shanquella was in the news a lot early this year. She was a young woman who went to Cabo for a vacation with a bunch of friends from Atlanta.

Speaker 6 (08:18):
Did you guys talk about Shanquella at all?

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Not on the podcast, but I definitely followed the story in the news.

Speaker 6 (08:23):
So it was a case where this young woman went down to Cabo with her friends and ends up getting found dead in her hotel room. There was a lot of conflicting information around what happened leading up to her death.

Speaker 6 (08:34):
The main question was, did she die from overdosing on alcohol or hitting her head, or was she murdered? The case was initially considered an accidental death, but video came out of one of her friends fighting with her and actually physically assaulting her the day she was found dead.

Speaker 6 (08:51):
Her friends claimed it was alcohol poisoning, but the autopsy and this leaked video suggested maybe there was something else going on. We covered this case on Slaycation. We’re looking at it now through the lens of like, it’s not in the news as much anymore.

Speaker 6 (09:04):
It’s kind of fallen off the public radar, but her family really doesn’t have closure. It’s one of these cases where nothing really quite added up, so we reexamine it and just try to figure out what really happened.

Speaker 4 (09:16):
Pretty amazing that you have made it one of the central themes to incorporate the compassion element and make sure that if any family members are listening, whatever you can do to bring some sort of closure, you understand is important.

Speaker 4 (09:30):
Where in the process was that decided upon?

Speaker 6 (09:33):
It’s a very interesting question. So I worked on Homicide Hunter. Homicide Hunter had run one season, it didn’t do that well. Discovery ID had seen a lot of potential in it, so they asked me and the company I was working with at the time to take a look and see if we could redevelop it.

Speaker 6 (09:48):
And we did, and we made it, it became their number one show. But in the process of working on that show, I discovered I really, really don’t like the true crime genre in general. Not the genre, but the way that it’s usually done.

Speaker 6 (09:59):
I think Joe Kenda brought a really beautiful sense of care for the victims and a desire to bring closure to Homicide Hunter, and I really respected that. But in the process of working on that show, we looked at a lot of other true crime shows.

Speaker 6 (10:13):
A lot of them are really exploitative, I think is the right word, where it’s really talking about the gory details and the sensationalism of the crime. I just was really turned off by that. It’s a very low-hanging fruit way to tell these stories.

Speaker 6 (10:27):
People like it and they want to listen to it, just as in for me. When we started talking about Slaycation, it was made very clear right up front, like both from me and Kim, that we really wanted to make sure that we talked about the victims here and wherever possible, bring closure.

Speaker 6 (10:40):
For Kim, that comes from her background as a social worker with victims of domestic violence. Unfortunately, that plays into a lot of these cases, emotional and physical violence. So for her, that was very important.

Speaker 6 (10:51):
For me, just from having seen enough of these shows that don’t do that, I also, I’ve been a meditator for many years. I actually got certified to teach Buddhist meditation a few years ago. I don’t do it actively, but that whole process just kind of put me a lot more in touch with making sure that every side of the story is told and really being compassionate.

Speaker 6 (11:10):
So it was really baked in from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
How do you inject a little bit of comedy into the show as well?

Speaker 6 (11:17):
That’s mostly Adam. Adam, who is my business partner, Kim’s husband, and our third host, his background is as a comedy writer. He’s written a lot of comedy screenplays. He’s also an incredibly compassionate person.

Speaker 6 (11:28):
His way of dealing with stressful or challenging situations is to make a joke. The jokes are not at the expense of the victims, but they are a way to just lighten up what can be some very heavy stories.

Speaker 6 (11:38):
Once in a while, Kim and I have a good line there, but mostly the comedy comes from Adam hearing the stories in real time. In a way, he’s like a release valve because, man, these stories, they’re fascinating, but they get pretty heavy.

Speaker 6 (11:51):
So I think for Adam’s role is like just letting a little pressure out. I think it’s good for the show. It’s good for the listeners also to just not feel like it’s just a constant barrage of heaviness.

Speaker 4 (12:01):
It’s such a unique carve-out in the true crime genre, focusing on murders that happen during a vacation. And I know you said that you’d been interested in it, and I’m curious how far back that goes.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
Like, what got you interested in that? And how did you even find somebody else who shares that interest?

Speaker 6 (12:18):
So when Adam and I were making Brain Games for Nat Geo, going back about a decade, when we first started doing it, Brain Games became like a huge hit. It became Nat Geo’s number one show, which led to pretty much every cable network that you could name calling us up and saying, “We’d like [blank] done by the Brain Games guy.”

Speaker 6 (12:36):
So, whether it was Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, you know, everybody wanted us to talk to them about what their version of Brain Games could be. One of the channels that called us was Discovery ID. During the process of trying to figure out what a show could be for them, which we never really landed on, like what’s the Brain Games version of a true crime show, but in the process of doing that research, that’s when we started noticing a lot of vacation murders.

Speaker 6 (13:05):
A couple of years after that, when we were working on Homicide Hunter and really digging into those cases, we started seeing more. So I think the germ of it came from thinking about this a decade ago. You know, man, we have a lot of ideas, but like, you know, there’s a few of them that just stick in your head forever. I don’t know if you guys are like that, where it’s like, you know, I mean, you’re ideas guys, right?

Speaker 6 (13:21):
So, once in a while, something gets in your head where you just think about it for years. And that’s when you know you probably should do something with it. So this one’s been percolating for a while.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
What would Joe Kenda think of the show?

Speaker 6 (13:37):
Joe would love this show. I’d love to have Joe on the show at some point. Joe’s a really, really good guy. And I think Joe would love Slaycation. It’s got that investigative quality he loves and the compassion that’s really important to him.

Speaker 4 (13:51):
How do you go about doing the research on these stories? Is it the three of you primarily contributing, or does one of you kind of take the reins on that? Was it Adam who doesn’t learn about it until it’s time to record?

Speaker 4 (14:01):
He kind of learns about it in real time.

Speaker 6 (14:03):
That’s correct. Yeah. So Adam’s wife, Kim, she takes the lead on the research. She finds the cases. She’s our kind of true crime barometer. I mean, she lives and breathes true crime.

Speaker 6 (14:13):
So for us, like if she’s excited about a case, then we’re excited about it. So she finds the cases and does the initial research, then she’ll share the case with me. I’ll do research alongside of her and support her.

Speaker 6 (14:25):
Adam literally does not even know the name of the case or anything until it is revealed to him while we are recording live, which is, you can imagine, you know, it’s a little bit of a challenge because, you know, leaving her notebooks all over their house, but we’ve made it work.

Speaker 6 (14:39):
And that’s another aspect of the show that’s really interesting: to have someone on the show who’s actually a proxy for the viewer, like in real time hearing the details of the case and trying to figure out what’s happening.

Speaker 6 (14:49):
So Kim and I know what’s up and Adam is totally in the dark.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Let’s talk about Shanquella Robinson’s case a little bit more in-depth here if you don’t mind. What are your thoughts here, without spoiling the episode? Do you have some opinions you can share on this case?

Speaker 6 (15:03):
One of the things that we also try to do on this show is, when it’s possible, is to offer some takeaway. I wouldn’t call it a helpful tip on how not to get murdered on vacation, but something like that.

Speaker 6 (15:12):
On some of these cases, there’s some things that you could do to make sure you’re not in the same situation. Unfortunately, this isn’t really one of them. You know, this was one of those cases where you’re like, Shanquella Robinson did everything right.

Speaker 6 (15:25):
She went on vacation with what she thought were a group of friends. She’s not a big partier by anyone’s account, you know? So it wasn’t like she was deliberately trying to get messed up and put herself in a bad situation.

Speaker 6 (15:36):
And in fact, everything that occurred occurred in the hotel where she was staying with her friends. Tragically, this is not one of those cases where we’re like, “Oh, you know, don’t go to this place,” or “If you’d done this differently,” or “If you’d turned back at this point.”

Speaker 6 (15:49):
And honestly, even with the tips, we’re so careful. It can’t ever be about like victim blaming or somebody did something wrong. It’s just trying to like learn from what happened. The only thing I would say about this one, in places like Cabo, we’ve noticed like in places like Cabo or some of the safari destinations in South Africa where murders happen, you know, resort towns on the Atlantic coast.

Speaker 6 (16:10):
Like anywhere that’s a vacation destination, there is a tendency for the police and the coroners to try and say things are, they lean more towards accidents than murder. You don’t want to be known as the murder destination, right?

Speaker 6 (16:23):
You want to be known as a place where people come to play and sometimes people have accidents and bad things happen. So my opinion is in this case, the local police and the coroner and even the hotel to some degree, not that they were being malicious, but they’re automatically inclined to look at everything through the lens of party or got out of hand, drank too much, hit her head and passed away.

Speaker 6 (16:46):
So that’s where they start. So it was very hard to get them to move off of that. That was the initial decision of what happened.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
In your opinion, do you think the fight caused her death or led to her death?

Speaker 6 (16:55):
I do think the fight had something to do with it, yeah, because she was getting beat up pretty bad. The other part of it that was very disturbing was that her friend, her, you know, air quoting, her friends left Cabo as quickly as they could.

Speaker 6 (17:08):
Nobody hung out to make sure things were handled correctly, like everyone just got out of town. On the one hand, you know, when we talk about this on the show, it’s like on the one hand you make the argument like if you’re in a foreign country and the police are closing in around a death, like someone’s inclination might be to leave as quickly as possible.

Speaker 6 (17:26):
So you can sort of understand that, but it’s a really, really crappy thing to do, you know, for none of them to have really stayed and made sure that things were handled correctly. So that seems a bit suspicious.

Speaker 6 (17:37):
It’s suspicious, but you can’t really say it means anything because it could have just been a bunch of scared kids trying to get back to Atlanta.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, that’s kind of a worst nightmare scenario—being jailed in a foreign country. What about premeditation? In your opinion, was there any premeditation there?

Speaker 6 (17:51):
I don’t think so. There was no indication that anyone went down there with the intention of killing Shanquella. It just seems like things got out of hand at some point, and that’s what’s a little unclear because none of the friends are talking.

Speaker 6 (18:04):
The autopsy—and I don’t want to give away too much because, you know, we get into this on the episode—but the autopsy, when the parents and the family were able to look at it, is not totally consistent with saying that she died of alcohol poisoning.

Speaker 6 (18:16):
There are just some other things going on that they found with her bones and body that suggest other things were happening. This is an interesting case, too, because her family—she’s a big family and a lot of friends and people that really love her—really just wanted answers and wanted justice done here.

Speaker 6 (18:30):
This stayed in the paper for a while and the news for a while, but it kind of fell out. I mean, there was just a lack of ability, I guess, for the U.S. authorities to do much because the Mexican authorities pretty much said this was their decision and it’s done.

Speaker 6 (18:46):
This is a very frustrating thing we’ve learned making Slaycation. If you get murdered overseas in another country, it is exponentially harder to not just have justice done, but actually figure out what actually happened. This is not to say don’t go traveling.

Speaker 4 (19:02):
I’m curious why this was the first one that you chose because it is really difficult to cover a story that takes place over the border and has a lot of these nuances. I guess if you’re actually making a show, I’m answering my own question here, it’s kind of tough to do a show about murders on vacation if you’re not crossing borders, right?

Speaker 6 (19:21):
You are definitely crossing borders sometimes, although there’s an awful lot of them that do happen in the United States. The reason we chose this one is it had been in the news a lot. Kim and I had been talking about it a lot. Both Kim and I were really heartbroken for her parents and her family and her siblings. It just felt like it needed to be talked about in a way that wasn’t just about Cabo murder, but really talking through it in terms of who was Shanquella? What really happened? Who was she? Who was the family? We really wanted to focus on the people more than the actual crime itself.

Speaker 6 (20:30):
When we started this, Kim, Adam, and I had not hosted a podcast before. Adam and I do another show, “Who Smarted,” which is more conversational. We hadn’t done one before. We thought they were great, but also really hard to do well, as you guys know. It’s a skill. Adam, Kim, and I have known each other for 20 years. We figured that would count for something, but we weren’t sure. We decided to pick a hard case to start with because if we could make it work, then we knew we could make the show work. And it worked so well for us. It was almost like, to your point, we started with a pretty hard one to test it and just kick the tires.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
How many episodes have you produced so far? Is it like broken into seasons?

Speaker 6 (20:34):
We haven’t broken it into seasons. We’ve recorded about a dozen so far, and we’re thinking of it as kind of an always-on show. It’s probably 35 to 40 episodes a year.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
We’ll be right back after a quick word from our sponsor.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
And a thank you to our sponsors, back to the program.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Cool, and what’s the second case?

Speaker 6 (20:56):
So the second case is Harold and Toni Henthorn. This is a United States case. Harold took his wife, Toni, on a wedding anniversary trip to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

Speaker 6 (21:10):
During the anniversary, they went hiking. At one point, according to Harold, Toni was taking a photo and fell off a cliff. He was able to get cell service, called the park rangers, and actually went to the bottom of the cliff where she’d fallen and attempted life-saving measures, but she did not survive.

Speaker 6 (21:32):
On the face of it, it just sounds like a really horrible accident—a terrible thing that happened. It quickly became apparent that there might be more to this story. We actually have Harold’s 911 call to the rangers.

Speaker 6 (21:44):
We play it on the show. His tone of voice is so not the tone you would expect from someone whose wife is dying. It sounds like he knows a lot about the helicopters that should be sent, the wind direction, and where they should land.

Speaker 6 (21:58):
It sounds very rehearsed. They then found out that he actually had maps in his car and discovered from his cell phone that he’d gone to this location before. On the maps, he had literally an X marking the spot.

Speaker 6 (22:10):
So they started to piece together that maybe this wasn’t an accident. Not only that, but the rangers who came to do the rescue described the location as one that would be considered difficult to access.

Speaker 6 (22:23):
It became clear pretty quickly that there might be more going on here—foul play might be involved. They discovered quite a few life insurance policies on her, and then the story gets even stranger.

Speaker 6 (22:35):
We get into this on the show. His first wife died under mysterious circumstances. There was another woman who had some issues with him. He’d actually accidentally dropped a giant girder on his wife a year earlier when they were doing construction.

Speaker 6 (22:50):
This guy has a pattern. We get into it, and it’s a very sad story, but also very interesting and one that we think has a lot of good takeaways for women in abusive relationships.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Wait, so Harold tried to kill Toni about a year before?

Speaker 6 (23:03):
Yeah, it was considered an accident at the time, but in retrospect, they are quite sure it was an earlier murder attempt. This case, guys, was interesting because it’s a wild story about what happened, but at the heart of it is Toni, the woman who was murdered.

Speaker 6 (23:17):
This was her second marriage, and this is something we really dig into on the show. She was someone who had been married before. This was her second chance. She was in her forties and saw this as the relationship she would be in for the rest of her life.

Speaker 6 (23:30):
Harold did a lot of things early on that were just red flags, like cutting off communication between her and her friends, moving her away from where she lived, where she had her successful doctor practice, to another place, isolating her physically.

Speaker 6 (23:45):
There were a lot of red flags in terms of his behavior that suggested he was not a safe person for her. Kim was able to speak to this much more eloquently than me because of her work with domestic violence survivors.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
We talk about this a lot on the show—things to look for. Not that any of it could have necessarily been prevented, but there were a lot of red flags in this case.

Speaker 4 (24:05):
Do you find that when you’re speaking about these domestic violence cases, the red flags are so subtly occurring and spread out that the survivor or the victim of the domestic violence doesn’t really see them happening because it’s so gradual?

Speaker 4 (24:19):
Have you had experience with stories like that? It feels like big red flags to us, but to them, they probably don’t realize it’s even happening until it’s far too late.

Speaker 6 (24:30):
Lance, you’re absolutely right. There’s not a giant flashing red light. It’s more of a small red flag. And so what we try to do with cases like this is to just highlight for people that, often, it’s someone who might not even have thought in a million years they would be in this situation.

Speaker 6 (24:43):
Most people in abusive relationships don’t think they’re likely to be in one. So they’re not really looking for it. But you’re absolutely right—it’s like this little thing, then this little thing, then a bigger thing, and then another little thing.

Speaker 6 (24:55):
People on the outside, some of Toni’s family were very concerned. They saw it. Oftentimes, the person in the relationship doesn’t because they’re so subtle. We see that a lot.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
Did Toni’s friends and family figure out that something was wrong right away?

Speaker 6 (25:12):
Yes, they did. Some of them immediately assumed that Harold had done it. There had been enough little things.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
My God, I just—I can’t imagine. It strikes me as total evil. Just like, to go through the steps of planning and traveling and looking at the maps and making all these arrangements, like you’re planning the whole time to kill your partner that you’re living with.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Are you kidding me?

Speaker 6 (25:39):
Planning to kill her, which is so deeply evil. He was also grooming another woman to be murdered and who he was probably planning on making his next wife. This is also related to the earlier wife he killed, and he had taken out insurance policies.

Speaker 6 (25:54):
There’s a whole other piece of this story that we get into on the show that’s just, man, it’s complicated and diabolical. It does make you realize that some people are actually evil.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Does that make him a serial killer?

Speaker 6 (26:08):
I don’t know what the technical definition of serial killer is, but he’s killed at least two people. It might be three, but with the same kind of MO. So he’s close, if not there.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
I had heard of this and I just had to Google it to see if he was found guilty. Do you have follow-up episodes anytime there are updates with the stories that you talk about?

Speaker 6 (26:33):
Often the story has already, you know, when we’re talking about it, it may have already been concluded in terms of the trial. We’re just revisiting and telling the story from a different angle, with the victims in mind.

Speaker 6 (26:46):
In cases where the trial is still ongoing or something is outstanding, we will do follow-ups.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
And as you mentioned, it must be easier for a murderer in this case to get away with it if it’s in a foreign country. I guess what’s the ratio of cases that you’re covering that are domestic versus foreign?

Speaker 6 (27:06):
That’s a good question. I’m going to look at my list right now and tell you. Let’s say our first 10 cases, four or five of them are U.S.-based and four or five are overseas.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Wow, okay. And with the overseas ones, are those mostly cases where the person got away with it?

Speaker 6 (27:20):
No. You know, I’ll throw out one more interesting wrinkle that we get into on Slaycation. We also explore cases where there’s an assumption it was murder, but it might not have been.

Speaker 6 (27:31):
So there’s the reverse—sometimes it’s someone trying to make it look like an accident, but it was murder. Other times, people are accused of murder, but it might actually have been an accident.

Speaker 6 (27:40):
We do some of those as well. They are, especially if they’re overseas, even more complicated. But yeah, we have found resolution with some of the overseas ones. There’s actually a handful that are just really tragic, with no resolution, where, in some cases, people haven’t even been found or they’ve been found dismembered.

Speaker 6 (28:01):
Untangling what happened is really tough. Some of those have become two-part episodes for us because there’s so much to cover.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
And we’ll be right back after a quick word from our sponsors.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Thanks to our sponsors, and now we’re back to the program.

Speaker 4 (28:18):
How about some rabbit holes that you might have gone down? You’ve covered, you said, about 30 cases so far?

Speaker 6 (28:24):
We have about 30 that we’ve researched. We’ve recorded a dozen so far.

Speaker 4 (28:27):
Okay, so out of the 30 or so that you’ve researched and the ones that you’ve recorded, which one was like the rabbit hole? The one that you go to bed at night and you just can’t get it out of your head?

Speaker 6 (28:38):
There was one that was just awful. Yeah, this one was really tough. It was a spring break story in Myrtle Beach involving a young woman who was 17. She was a college student. She went to Myrtle Beach for spring break and disappeared—vanished.

Speaker 6 (28:54):
They had her on cameras at one point when they were trying to figure it out, and then she was just gone. The really tragic part of this story is she wasn’t even supposed to be there. Her mother had forbidden her from going.

Speaker 6 (29:04):
Her mom had said, “I don’t know who you’re going with. I don’t know these people. I don’t want you down there. You can’t go.” So she concocted a story and went very far away from home to this place she’d never been.

Speaker 6 (29:16):
Yeah, this one was really tough. They eventually found her about 10 years later—over 10 years later. They found her in a grave and were able to piece together what happened and figured out who did it.

Speaker 6 (29:30):
But that one was just really hard—on every level. A young person, the mom, the tragedy of the mother being so adamant that she not go on this trip, and then she sneaks away. This led to a total lack of closure for the family for a decade.

Speaker 6 (29:46):
And then the closure was not, I mean, kind of know where it’s going, but it’s still just horrible. What made this one really tough, I think of all the ones we’ve done so far, is there’s just no good takeaway from it.

Speaker 6 (29:58):
There’s no, “Hey kids, don’t go on trips if your mom says not to,” but it’s like, this shouldn’t happen to anybody. None of this should happen to anyone. But that one was just, that one just hit us really hard—really hard.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Was that a case where there was someone she traveled with that did it, or was that something that happened while she was there?

Speaker 6 (30:17):
No, it happened while she was there. Someone she didn’t know abducted her, assaulted her, and murdered her.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
That’s awful. Do you have any plans for a TV version of Slaycation with all your TV background?

Speaker 6 (30:32):
Absolutely. We would love to do a TV version of this show. The original idea was for TV. We originally envisioned it as a TV show for Discovery ID back in the day. This version of it, where the three of us are talking about the cases, is wildly different from what we’d pictured a decade ago and so much better.

Speaker 6 (30:48):
It’s so much richer and more interesting. I hate to say it, but there is something fun about the way we go through the stories. Yeah, it would be a great TV show. It’s just endlessly fascinating.

Speaker 6 (31:00):
Each story is so different. When you really get into the details and start thinking about the victims and the families, there’s so much to each of these stories that doesn’t get told.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
What about a live version? Have you ever thought about taking it on stage?

Speaker 6 (31:14):
Yes, actually. A few people have suggested we do that, and we are 100% open to it. We haven’t figured out how and when to do that yet, but that’s definitely in the cards. Would you want to come see us record the show?

Speaker 4 (31:25):
Well, that’s kind of what I was getting at. I was looking for some free tickets.

Speaker 6 (31:28):
I feel like I should have some tickets for you guys right now. But yeah, we’d love to do it and would love to have you guys there.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
Yeah, that’d be a blast. Will you try to focus on a different version of this for TV again?

Speaker 6 (31:45):
Yeah, so what we’re going to focus on first is building a fantastic podcast and a great community around the podcast. That’s our focus now. We’ve also found that we love podcasting because we have this direct relationship with our fans that we don’t have when we make a TV show.

Speaker 6 (31:59):
I would love to just spend a while building the show up and building up a community, really hearing from our fans what they love, giving them more of what they love, getting feedback. And eight months or a year down the road, when we’re crushing it and the numbers are huge, we’ll talk about TV and figure it out. But our focus now is making a great podcast and building a great community of fans.

Speaker 4 (32:19):
All right, so you’ve put all of this work into the production. You’ve recorded a bunch of episodes. It’s going to go live in January. You yourself, it feels to me, could use a vacation. So where is your dream vacation?

Speaker 4 (32:32):
Is there a place that you are planning to go or maybe saving up for? Like, this is my place that I’m not going to get murdered if I go.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, and who would you go with too? I feel like that’s such a big part of this.

Speaker 6 (32:45):
So I actually am going on a dream vacation a couple of weeks after this launches. I’m going to South Africa with my husband and one of our best friends from Germany, Sky Mono. We’re going down there for our friend Robert.

Speaker 6 (32:59):
Robert’s getting married to Katie in Cape Town or near Cape Town.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
I see you’re giving all these details.

Speaker 6 (33:06):
Yes. See, this is my thing. I can’t talk about anything without details.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Wait a second, Mono sounds a little bit like a Bond villain.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
A German guy named Mono. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (33:19):
Yeah, he’s definitely not a Bond villain. It’s a nickname. So yeah, but we’re going down there, and yeah, I’m not gonna get murdered. I’m going with people I trust.

Speaker 4 (33:30):
As far as you know. I’m hung up on Mono’s nickname. How did he get the nickname Mono?

Speaker 6 (33:36):
It’s a good question. I’ve never asked him. I’ve known Mono for years, I’ve traveled all over with him, and I have no idea where that nickname comes from.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
Well, we’ll need to know next time you’re on these airwaves.

Speaker 6 (33:50):
You want a follow-up episode? It’ll be all about Mono.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
We’ll just ask him in person when you take us to South Africa with you. Okay, okay.

Speaker 6 (34:01):
So you guys are coming to South Africa, then we’re gonna do a live show. You’re coming to that.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
And then you come back on Crawl Space. Awesome.

Speaker 4 (34:08):
It’s a whole thing. Well, in person. I don’t speak in a delay, by the way.

Speaker 6 (34:17):
That would be kind of wild if you did.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
That would be really wild. You know, if this is the weirdest thing to…

Speaker 6 (34:24):
It’s like…

Speaker 4 (34:30):
The delay is so annoying.

Speaker 6 (34:33):
It is. No, if you had to be introduced in person, it was like, “This is my friend Lance. His thing is he talks with a delay. So, just wait a few seconds after he speaks, and then speak, and then wait a few seconds.”

Speaker 3 (34:48):
That’s his nickname, Delay.

Speaker 6 (34:50):
Delay.

Speaker 4 (34:52):
Oh my god, Mono and I could have a show together—Delay and Mono.

Speaker 6 (34:59):
The Mono and Delay Show, I love it.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
The Mono and Delay Show. It’s so weird to say something and then watch the two of you not do anything for like three seconds, and I’m like, “Okay.”

Speaker 6 (35:10):
Thank you for being in real time.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Thank you for that as well. Yeah, this has been a great chat. Any other cases you want to mention here?

Speaker 6 (35:21):
There’s no specific cases. Every case we do on Slaycation is absolutely wild and interesting, and even though I know the details, I’m still sitting there on the edge of my seat. I would just say tune in, man.

Speaker 6 (35:32):
We’ll be there with a new slay each week.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Very cool. Well, thanks so much for joining us. This has been a lot of fun meeting you.

Speaker 6 (35:41):
Thank you guys. Yeah, this has been a lot of fun for me too. I appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (35:47):
Thanks for watching!