Murder 101 | Crime Seen epsiode 208

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[00:00:45] Hallo, ich bin Sarah Carradine, aus dem Unceded Gadigal. Ich bin Mari Forth. Und das ist Crime Seen, die True Crime Review-Podcast, wo wir uns zu den hearten, wie True Crime-Storys sind. Wir sind zurück für die 3rd time von, ich denke nicht, Pod und die Broadway. Es ist Ellen Marsh. Hey, Ellen. Hallo, danke für mich. Willkommen zurück. Ihr könnt ihr euch mal wiederkommen. Ich kann euch mal wiederkommen.

[00:01:12] Auf deinem sehr unbekannte Rekordung schedule, auf die ich eigentlicheinere. Ich bin ein bisschen auf den Schaden. Es ist unbekannte Rekordung. Ich habe etwas zu tun. Und wenn wir das alles zu machen, ich habe das alles zu machen. Und wenn wir das alles zu machen, ich ran in von meiner Sonne' Taekwondo-Klasse und sat direkt in die Karte. so yeah yeah thank you for being so flexible and i'm at work oh well i had to reschedule because i

[00:01:42] my daughter is away at camp she had a medical emergency and i all of a sudden become the smartest person on the planet when my daughter needs something but when she's here i'm an idiot and i i was like i can't she's texting me every two minutes so a reschedule for a reschedule and and here we are of course that's all that matters yeah so we have a true crime case that

[00:02:07] that we've been following ellen do you want to tell us about nolan wells well this has been a case that has been dissected and talked about at nauseam on social media and i talked about it on my podcast with joey on our monday episode of the rundown and it is tragic and puzzling and confusing and

[00:02:31] a bit polarizing and it is about the unsolved as of this moment and very puzzling death of an 18 year old named nolan wells and this happened on fourth of july weekend it took place off corn island which i guess is just 10 miles or so off the coast of mississippi and the information unfolded really

[00:02:56] rapidly this kid nolan was on this island with a bunch of high school friends and those friends returned to the mainland without nolan and days later they found a deceased nolan in the water that is the most vague overview of the case and if you have been living under a rock and you don't know the facts

[00:03:23] of the case nolan was with the friends nolan is black and his three friends were white and his parents have come out publicly christine and elmore wansley is their name they are being represented by ben crump and we're trying to figure out what happened to this boy and so before we talk about it what joey and i

[00:03:47] were talking about on the rundown was my heart is with this case because i do think that we would have very different circumstances and very different conversation if we just flipped those rates if it was one white boy and black boys it's 2026 we have to talk about it it's in the south in mississippi

[00:04:11] these kinds of things are commonplace the fact that it is getting so much attention is really uh sort of a blessing and a curse because what you get is eyes on this and then you get noise about the case and that's really what joey and i focused on because there is very little information we don't have an

[00:04:34] autopsy yet we do have some traction on his phone and what happened and what didn't happen what makes me sad about this is we do always have to walk into a situation even though we're highly emotional people and say we have to look at the evidence everybody is innocent until proven guilty are there weird situations because they said that nolan was off talking to a girl and sarah said before we hit

[00:05:02] record you never leave your group i say that to lola all the time why was he left behind however in this case that is so heightened i think the noise actually hurts the case because there are stories being told pictures that were old pictures being posted our goal is to help find out what happened to this boy

[00:05:24] and to bring their family justice not to create a hundred different narratives to confuse people so to dive in a little deeper because i gave you the cliff's note version on 4th of july nolan was last seen at about 3 p.m he didn't return with his group and like as i said his body was found on july 6th

[00:05:50] and that night of july 4th one of wells's friends contacted his mom christine at about 11 o'clock and say we don't know where nolan is again this was something very confusing in the media so she had light 360 on her phone which is if you don't have kids it's a way to track your kids and it had given

[00:06:14] different information than his snapchat did so everyone was saying why was there a difference in this and that well it's because snapchat only tracks you when the app is open so immediately when this boy said do you know where nolan is we don't she checked his light 360 and then she posted on facebook on july 5th asking for information if anybody had seen him and then she reported it to

[00:06:43] the authorities so since then the three friends that were with wells on horn island have been investigated and they immediately were like no foul play wait what we we don't we don't we don't even know his manner of death we don't know if he has water in his lungs we have no idea if he has trump wait why are you saying no foul play so that was very sus to me and again i really try and stop

[00:07:11] myself because i am very emotional and i am very suspicious and i'm like this this that and i have to sort of tame myself and say like okay calm down wait for the evidence so i found the fact that the authorities immediately ruled out foul play that just automatically ticked my spidey senses so a lot of things were very peculiar to the parents they said when that they opened his snapchat and there were

[00:07:39] no messages from the the day oh actually i just got ahead of myself apparently this boy had nolan's phone and immediately my first question is who leaves their phone behind who leaves their phone anywhere the story was this is what the boy said nolan went and met this girl katie and was like you guys go i'll catch up with you later to which my brain says without your phone who even it's not just a kid

[00:08:06] thing my phone is like velcroed to my hand and he also left his keys now the keys were eventually retrieved by nolan's dad elmore in a separate sort of separate not confrontation but he had to go to the kid's house to get it so allegedly nolan left on another boat at 4 30 p.m that day but this whole

[00:08:35] story with the girl has now been debunked slightly by attorney ben crump because he said the young woman that he was talking to nolan said that nolan told her that he was going to go back on the boat well okay the boy said that nolan was staying there is a lot of mismatched stories ben crump is sending

[00:09:01] nolan's body dc for an independent autopsy and i think that is going to tell us everything now one of joey's theories also was okay let's say these boys are telling the truth what if somebody else saw nolan talking to girl who was white the i don't want to just be a race baiter and and yell

[00:09:27] racism because i could be implicating potentially innocent people but i just can't ignore it because if that was one white kid and three black kids those black kids would already be in custody they wouldn't have had you know a nice little sit down with the deputy and that's just a fact we would just be in a very different place right now i am glad it's getting attention but there are so many things

[00:09:53] circulating they had an old picture that was in a pool that said that nolan was at a pool that night and that's why even though i appreciate that black and brown bodies are getting attention i don't want it to drown out the seeking justice part of it all yeah so on this island what is what is there like that they were partying it's just like boats come they drink it was fourth of july

[00:10:21] it was just drinking and hanging out you know i guess i guess that's what boys do they just drink on a boat i don't know authorities have asked for anybody with video footage i mean they've interviewed about 60 eyewitnesses that are i'm sure telling 60 different stories about what they did or didn't see yeah i can't imagine in this day and age of the snapchat and everything that there aren't people who have

[00:10:49] copious amount of videos on their phone just with like him probably in the background and stuff like that yeah i exactly i would i would be really interested in seeing that data dump of phones and if they did it my biggest worry here is like you said it's getting a it's getting a lot of attention which is great but my biggest worry is it sounds like the police department that is working this up

[00:11:13] doesn't seem to be very thorough um if we're already saying no foul play when you you they said did they say no foul play before the body was even found or because like we said we're still waiting on the on the autopsy no matter what it was when the body was found they said no foul play something else i want to get your temperature on this the four boys involved and all of their immediate family

[00:11:40] members have deactivated their media knock on private absolutely deleted their social media and one of the boys moms is a judge and she made a statement and said i know that this is weird but i'm just trying to text my family and i can look at that both ways so listen if i was accused of

[00:12:05] doing something i didn't do i would light my house on fire and i would send smoke signals because i am so terrified of being painted in a bad light and i don't think it's suspicious when people lawyer up you should lawyer up we all should be if you are in trouble do not talk and you need to lawyer up because everything you say can and will you know i get that but then there's just this little tickle

[00:12:30] in my tummy to say why did you delete it and not make it private is there something you're hiding in your social media because as we know our social media is truly just a life story of people is there some kind of deep-seated racist or maybe maga or i don't know that seems sus to me but i can see the other side and just saying in this day and age it is sometimes it is trial by social media and i don't i

[00:12:59] don't agree with that either yes and we're so glad you're here ellen to really lay out the facts as we know it so far and one of the reasons why we personally have not talked about it here on crime scene is because i i personally me mariella uh have not has not really wanted to talk about it um especially as soon as it came out because i can tell you my exact reaction i was on social media

[00:13:26] one day i saw the picture the infamous picture of him the three guys and i all i read was the headline the headline says uh uh like said something like teenager found dead doesn't come back with friends i immediately didn't need to i didn't need to guess which teenager it was i exactly knew who it was i was like let me guess and sure enough uh it was the little black boy who's dead and i was like yeah

[00:13:55] of course and i immediately was like i don't need to know any more about this right now you know um specifically ask somebody who is raising a little boy and who immediately was like well how do i explain this to a seven-year-old and people are probably like why are you trying to explain that to a seven-year-old because i have to i have to tell it to him as soon as possible because unfortunately in his lifetime he might not get a second chance to do anything you know what i'm

[00:14:24] saying like yeah the the constant running list of stuff i have to tell my children to be careful about doing because anybody could harm them because of misconstruing their intent it just grows on a daily and it's just so frustrating and it's just so tiring you know i'm saying so yeah so i i think this was the the best time to talk about it and it it is just frustrating it's just so frustrating

[00:14:52] and you know off the the heels of the of the boy who was just murdered by the um the convenience store owner who has a history of of violence against people which they were not able to bring up in the trial right those jury members were gonna have a shock when they opened their social media like it's all just so very frustrating with everything that is going on with this country

[00:15:17] to ask to have to also add this this burden of of of blackness um out in the wild it's it's it pisses me off you know it truly just enrages me and it's just like i we have to talk about it because we have to push a story we have to keep the spotlight on them because we want this this police department to investigate we need to keep the eyes on them so they can't just shove it to the side or

[00:15:43] you know um not investigate especially if there's a judge a one of the judges involved in one of the kids um parents is a judge it's just like the only only only way we can get justice is to keep this in the headline keep talking about it don't let them push it to the side and you know i appreciate i definitely appreciate you and joey spotlighting it on your podcast and and i appreciate everybody else

[00:16:09] out there doing the heavy lifting especially people who are allies and are not black or brown because we're tired so it really helps have allies who will help you know lift up when when we're we're feeling you know that low yeah no i i appreciate that it it's so funny because i go back and forth because you're right we do need to keep talking about it because public pressure works yeah look

[00:16:35] karen reed is the biggest example of it public pressure works the the idea what we said on the rundown was that we would only be reporting information from the parents or from ben crum we're not i'm not looking at people's social media sometimes i think tiktok's lists are amazing but sometimes you're

[00:16:58] just muddying the waters like for example i'll i'll give you an example of that when they uh tracked the phone you know the boy said i think his name was warren but don't quote me on that one warren said to nolan's mom he didn't come back and she tracked the phone they tracked the phone and went to go get the phone now she sent a friend christine mama christine is nolan's mom mama christine sent her

[00:17:26] best friend to shima to go get the phone and there was a little pushback with giving the phone over when i first heard that i was like well that's us and then joey said right but if some lady that you didn't know showed up and said give me nolan's phone wouldn't you be like well who are you and then they called mama christine and mama christine said no sorry that's my friend to shima please give her

[00:17:52] the phone so again that sounds sus hand over the phone then if some stranger comes and says you know give me so-and-so's phone i'll be like who the hell are you what are you doing here so it's not getting the full story and i get it you know tiktok is by the minute instagram it's by the minute and people don't really do their due diligence i want i want the bad guys caught that's what we want we don't

[00:18:18] want all this kind of like extra drama that's not honoring nolan and that is not helping the family what is helping the family is actual information you know to your point someone who has nolan in a video somewhere somebody who remembers talking to him so it is it's there's pluses and minuses to having this out there as much as it is but i totally understand your apprehension on not wanting to talk about it

[00:18:46] yeah so going forward what we're going to be looking for what we're going to be looking towards is the autopsy report some i think some of the biggest questions can be answered then especially the time of death we want to know what the time of death is if time of death comes back undetermined or something like that i'm going to side eye a lot of people um manner of death of course uh even if that comes back undetermined that i that i could see depending on what the manner of death is like

[00:19:15] drowning undetermined you don't want to go out you don't want to go accidental unless you have more evidence around that because remember when um coroners make manner of death statement they have to take into consideration not just the body but every all the information that was gathered at the scene so we're going to be really keeping our eyes on that and i i really don't understand at this juncture

[00:19:41] if we're almost weeks out i mean three weeks out sorry two and a half weeks out uh you said you have 60 plus witnesses you need to get subpoenas for all of those phones get snap snapchat is for those types the young kids that's what you need to get you need snapchat chat access to everybody who's on that island on that day if they're not doing that level of investigation then it's just not the proper

[00:20:07] proper investment like you don't care because you should you should be talking to every single person who is there that day you should be collecting phone data from every single person who is there that day i did hear that the girl he was talking to was collaborating with police is that that true only recently so originally her sister grace came out and gave a statement and i i i get it this you know

[00:20:32] the kids she was probably terrified she her parents probably insisted she talked to a lawyer first if if she was the last person to see him alive which i don't think she could be because it's an island full of people but still but she only just came out and said something sarah your thoughts well a couple of things the first is if it was no foul play it was presumably an accident and if it was an

[00:21:01] accident can we please find out if there's a safety issue on the island is it something that could be prevented another time can't just say no foul play and this young man is dead uh that is a fact so as you say we need to to wait for the autopsy and and uh and the conclusions that are drawn from there no foul play immediately being said seems very suspicious but then i would say if it is no foul

[00:21:27] play then what was it and if it's an accident and there's a safety issue on that island can we please address that so that another young person doesn't uh doesn't die and to the person who put on our spotify we love your comments on spotify we do read them all but to the person that simply wrote hey let's not make it about race so oh that's that's your privilege whoever you were we appreciate

[00:21:53] you listening we appreciate you commenting but just sit for a moment in your privilege that you are able to ask for that uh because it is all about race in my racist country in your racist country and it is the original sin certainly here because the aboriginal torres strait islander people were here first uh the original sin was the invasion by white people and so yes we must make it about race

[00:22:18] because it is about race until it's not yes it's so funny you say that joey and i were just in rome and we had reported something and we needed to update it so we ran back to our hotel and we did a really quick update and we sat at dinner and the people behind us were from alabama and so they got to talking through crime and the woman said that she goes well i just don't think they should make that

[00:22:43] about race and joey saw my head unhinged and rehinged and i said and i tried to be as nice as i could because i already prejudged them because they were white people from alabama and that's my therapy that i need to investigate but and i said to her i said i know but we don't we really can't weigh in on that right and i did and i i thought i was being trying to be as nice as you can and i said we can't decide

[00:23:09] when it isn't isn't about race and joy was like okay honey let's go she kind of like pulled me away to that i say this is my podcast so if i want to make it about race it's gonna be about and yes thank you for your listens but i will say what i want to say about race what i want to say so if that is something that that isn't for you as we would say if that is something that isn't for you

[00:23:34] kick rocks plenty yeah plenty of other podcasts to listen to it could be an accident it could have nothing to do with anything the way you said you said one one white boy with three black boys they would all be locked up well on the rundown i actually brought up the and i couldn't remember the name of the movie but it was a time to kill yeah matthew mcconaughey is giving that big speech it's such a core memory for me because i remember him he was such a brilliant actor in that movie he

[00:24:04] just said and now and now picture she's white and it was just i just got chills even just saying that yeah last week we watched worst neighbor ever with jason reed sarah what do we watch this week this week we watched murder 101 on prime it was directed by stacy lee she previously directed the secrets of hillsong in 2023 which we covered with mark blankenship we can't go a single episode without

[00:24:30] mentioning mark and here he is making his special appearance and we're going to hear from him later even he and i gave that one four magnifying glasses and murray you gave it three and a half so let's see where we land today with murder 101 so let's get to the three-part docuseries in a small tennessee town high school sociology teacher alex campbell gives his students a project looking into a 40 year old cold case known as the redhead murders so of course i took that

[00:25:00] extremely personally the redhead murders is a media epithet used to refer to a series of unsolved homicides of redheaded women between 1978 and 1992 these murders are believed to have been committed by a male serial killer occurring in tennessee arkansas kentucky mississippi pennsylvania and west virginia the bodies of these women many of whom remained unidentified for years were usually

[00:25:27] abandoned along major highways law enforcement is unsure how many people were responsible for these murders if they were all performed by the same perpetrator and how many victims there have been the total is said to be between five and 24 four of them were identified by november 2018 so it's quite a mishmash

[00:25:49] there different states different placement of bodies different methods of death the suspect is also known as the bible belt strangler please stop giving them names please please yes yes so alan you and i had a very interesting exchange yeah i was i was halfway through episode

[00:26:15] one and i messaged ellen and i said oh we've made a terrible mistake this is so dull shall we quick shall we switch to something else but you don't read your emails which i really admire so by the time you got it uh you had already watched all three episodes and you loved it tell us a bit more about that sorry i missed this but what i thought it was yes i wait are you saving it for the end or did did your

[00:26:41] mind change uh my mind did change but uh that's a spoiler so why don't you tell us your just your overall thoughts on the documentary i actually was really emotional while i'm a really emotional person but i was very emotional watching this mostly because i do i teach i don't do it as much as as i used to but i i teach theater i teach voice and and i love teaching i don't get to do it as much as as i used to

[00:27:09] and i think that what alex campbell pulls off in murder 101 it sounds sort of gimmicky when you lay it out this sociology teacher brings this whole case and we're gonna solve it but i i don't think it's that it really just sort of to me exemplifies what teaching is for because first of all i love the way

[00:27:35] he treats his students he treats these young people he doesn't pander to them he treats them like they are absolutely capable of solving this crime they're doing actual work they're reading case files they're cross-referencing timelines they're sitting and and learning how to do this but the thing that i loved about this teacher was that he's a white man in the south and he made these kids sit with this very

[00:28:03] uncomfortable fact that the three of us know very well and it's that these women's death got deprioritized because of whose society decided they were a lot of them were in throes of addiction or were engaged sex work it's a lot to hand to teenagers and he does it very intentfully and and and i and i love that i always loved search that made us rise to the occasion and before we

[00:28:32] started recording i was trying to think of what is the elevator pitch what what do we get from this and he taught these i'm getting choked up he taught these kids empathy you know he taught that this is what we do we sit and we talk about real people this isn't oh i feel bad for victims it's why do some stories get erased it's sort of what we were talking about earlier these women didn't get the

[00:28:59] attention they didn't get the investigation they just kind of became a footnote and that was part of his lesson he made them come to the conclusion why didn't this get investigated and and we've seen that and that's sociology i just i absolutely loved it i loved when the kids kind of failed they had this one theory that came apart once they found new evidence they really you know were on the

[00:29:27] trail with this one line of thinking and then and they were really emotionally invested in that theory but then they had to be faced with facts that didn't align with this theory that they had i thought that was a really powerful through line and i think by not only did they learn the inner workings of the justice system they got to talk to real victims families they got to talk to investigators i just feel

[00:29:56] like the lesson was that you know kids can accomplish so much and we kind of like have this narrative in our heads right now of kids that you know their their faces are in their phones they you know they're distracted they're apathetic whatever and he handed them a 40 year old cold case and basically said

[00:30:20] you can do it and these kids just thrive i don't know i really emotional i thought it was a really beautiful story seeing all the kids kind of come out of their shells and some of them are awkward and it follows their life and i think that that some people who are real documentary connoisseurs to be like ah that's trimmed but i actually liked that part because it reminded us that they're just children

[00:30:44] i thought it was very i thought it was very cool and it didn't sensationalize anything they didn't frame it as we're doing this because true crime is entertaining or you know cold cases are fascinating and it wasn't just a lecture he helped these kids realize what they're capable of and an overall thing that i talk about all the time is that our education system is so broken and it's just about test

[00:31:12] scores and regurgitating information and we don't know how to teach to different types of brains and i think he accomplished all of that and marie how about you what were your overall thoughts on the docuseries only in a way of like as you would know sarah and our listeners would know i hate cold cases so i don't like him she doesn't like him i i i hate him i absolutely hate him so don't give me a three parts of all these questions that don't have answered to them because that's just gonna piss me

[00:31:40] but also like but for real like the the document the docuseries itself i thought was it was interesting for all of the things that ellen did say like seeing these kids just like blossom under this different type of teaching the engagement um it's very like dead poet society right it's like just very like if that's the documentary if the documentary is about the education system and and what it is to

[00:32:06] like get kids actually invested in school i think it's a better documentary but if it's supposed to kind of be about these murders or about how these kids are helping solve these murders then i think there's kind of a disservice done here because i'm gonna be quite honest i was so confused there were so many times i had to rewind because i was like what like there was it's almost so hard to explain it to

[00:32:34] because there were some parts that i was like this is clearly like i can tell they're recreating this i can tell that this isn't authentically happening and that's what it felt like it felt like they they wanted things to break authentically or it kind of also felt like they wish that they had did the documentary in the 2018 class because i think the 2018 class probably um really had some breakthroughs

[00:33:00] but then like they had some breakthroughs but then those breakthroughs didn't really go anywhere but if we had got those if we had got that on camera when it happened it would have been very compelling and then this stuff kind of felt like like like like i said just recreations of stuff and i was just like i was very confused um i i was i was liking like the second episode was probably my favorite episode because i liked how they were really uh uh they pulled out the maps they were putting out the

[00:33:29] string one of the students i forget her name was pulling out the strings that's the type of stuff i like and i was like oh this is kind of making sense and when they started like deconstructing some of the victims like okay this victim more than likely could not have been a part of they were they were looking at this one guy jerry johns thinking that he was a serial killer for about six of these murders um sarah gave the broad overview about a whole bunch of murders that are just basically all

[00:33:57] unsolved but they were these kids were looking at about six uh murders that happened in a quick succession in a relatively tight area and um they had was it the 28 it was the 2018 um class that had found the jerry johns dna like it led to his dna being connected to not only the um attempted murder

[00:34:22] that he went to jail for and then when he went to jail all of those murders stopped and and uh that they linked his dna to a confirmed case like a confirmed death um and like it was it was the the basis on which they were trying to also include some of these other murders and i thought that was pretty interesting but it was still kind of confusing with the layout of everything i was like okay i don't know

[00:34:50] if this could have been told better and then by the third episode when they had like completely pivoted from jerry johns and his possible victims to uh tracy sue walker one of the victims that was identified she was identified later so she was identified after the 2018 class um but she was the youngest she was

[00:35:14] about 15 and her wounds and and dna was not consistent with jerry johns so they completely pivoted to trying to find her killer um it was good but it was just like oh okay it just felt like a lack of you know what i'm saying it just felt like a lack of direction for the docuseries as a whole it was just

[00:35:37] like they it was like they were like we're gonna send these cameras there to follow this class over this school year and we're just hoping we get something and i don't think they got anything compelling enough for a true crime docus if that makes sense sarah what about you what do you think yeah i'm gonna absolutely pick up what you put down and that is this this is not a true crime

[00:36:03] docuseries the title is wrong the title is completely wrong the presentation is completely wrong these kids are not did not and really it is beyond the realms of of of expectation to expect them to solve or break the case in any way so i would have liked to have come to this docuseries

[00:36:25] as a a let's look at mr campbell mr campbell's class or the best class at school or the class everyone wants to come to something like that and that the revelation is that the project is a true crime project but that the true crime and the case is side to the story of how he teaches as you say

[00:36:51] the respect he shows them in the class the he is he is tough but fair as they say plus a lot of dad jokes which i appreciated a lot and then we go off because as soon as we went off into the side story of one of the students oh god but if it had been mr campbell's class of 2025 i would have happily gone off to to hear the story of various of these people as we do through the three episodes we hear the side

[00:37:17] stories or rather the stories of the lives of these uh they are children so how i came from this is really dull and let's not talk about it to actually liking was reframing it and if you reframe it and say it's not a true crime docuseries at all it's a docuseries about this teacher and his effect on not just this group of of children but children in the past because we have will bowers comes back from the

[00:37:43] class of 2018 and talks about what he learned this is seven years before so um i think that reframing allowed me to like it if i look at it as a true crime docuseries i am very unimpressed by it uh but if i look at it like that as a as personal stories then i'm actually you know super happy i i had a little tear in my eye when crimson got adopted i mean how amazing uh crimson and her and her sibling

[00:38:11] that's actually exactly what i was thinking when mari was talking i was like i think that i got on board with it being a story i feel like a better title would have been true crime 101 because i feel like this is what we advocate we advocate for not sensationalizing crime and which is always a struggle for joey and i because our show is a comedy podcast and some people go it and it's hard to

[00:38:41] explain that you know we try and make it we don't laugh at murder and things like that we're very respectful people and i just thought that yeah i think framing it as more of like a dangerous minds dead poet society meets the goonies type of thing is is better and i think hearing mari talk i was like yeah that's what i liked it for it it wasn't solving a crime they they didn't solve a crime i mean

[00:39:09] hannah gets extremely invested with tracy sue and she calls her my my girl and she says i've put in so much work on the case if it's a true crime documentary that's a ridiculous statement if it is an investigation of this teacher and this group of children it's it's fantastic and heartbreaking and you think this is so important to you take that passion take it forward and what i really liked was

[00:39:35] they they go down this path as you said mari and it's not she is probably not killed by him because the circumstances are different they go and stand where she was found it's not by highway and so on and there are various other reasons why it's not him and i thought they are learning to pursue an idea but take in facts and when the facts don't fit your theory so law enforcement listen listen exactly if

[00:40:02] you have a theory and the facts don't fit it change the theory don't throw away the facts so that could have been a a bubbling theme that came through so i think and the fact that because i i thought they were going to find evidence i don't even think the class of you know i thought they were going to discover or something no they're just working it through as a project not just working it through i mean they had to learn that uh you have the right through foyer uh freedom of information

[00:40:29] those files and you know not for nothing it was really tough and teaching kids it is it now that i'm like talking this through i realize that that is the the creative problem solving teaching kids how to get on the phone and ask you know for for foil you know they they foiled the files they had to get on the phone and make calls and it was it was inspirational teaching so i think it should not be under the

[00:40:58] category of true crime and it should be under the category of an inspirational documentary i think that is what i loved about it because i'm i'm so disenchanted with the school system as of you know late and you know just it's in the box and my brain is outside the box and i was like i would have loved to have taken this class in school i agree and that and that's what i'm saying because that like the trailer

[00:41:23] the lead-ups the wind-ups between the episodes was all like oh he was like sit down we got some stuff we gotta talk about which i mean is his teaching style which is great um and but it was just like every two seconds i was preparing myself for something to happen yeah that wasn't it which you know doesn't make you appreciate what's actually in front of you happening and i thought it was

[00:41:50] really cool when he demonstrated like the timeline when they're doing the timeline for the redhead murders that they think that jerry johns commits and they're talking about the time between like um the all the bodies being found like the the first body was found and she was immediately identified but the next five won't and it took 33 years for them to identify another one of the bodies back in

[00:42:15] 2018 and how they went on to the football field and he's and he showed them like visually like the basically the time gap and that that was one of those moments like at first i was like and then again i'm like oh these kids actually have to learn this stuff you know i'm saying like it's just bad it's just very poorly um uh marketed to be quite honest because yeah yeah if if i'm a

[00:42:41] true crime or if i'm a person who's like i'm here i i want to help in this investigation it's you're not that's not what you're getting here like that you're you're sitting in on a class and you're kind of like duh like you know i'm thinking you're 30 and these kids are 17 you know i'm saying so it was just i i it was just frustrating to me and now that i am listening to your your guys's

[00:43:07] reframing of it being a i never disliked those those moments like the moments with the kids and all of that i just disliked that we got absolutely like no information on the cases like i didn't think they were gonna solve something i really did and then i was like oh they led us to they led us to believe it and and i think if we knew all along that they wouldn't then their hope has has some

[00:43:33] you know sentiment to it and their disappointment we go yes but go on and keep this thinking they don't they don't all have to go on and be true crime investigators they don't all have to go on and be law enforcement but that way of thinking can take them through their lives and that's what i found absolutely stunning uh slightly less stunning was the uh b-roll the very awkward b-roll for example

[00:43:56] brandon our tbi agent is on the phone in his office and he says and i quote oh if you've got a second i want to talk to you about that case we were talking about and i said brandon there's no one on the other end of the phone brandon yeah brandon's never taken an improv class yes he just just play pretend

[00:44:19] brandon i i wanted to talk about crime crime crime stuff with crime anything crime oh the crimes yeah is it so how's crime how's crime going for you um and the other one was brandon i do crime a wonderful couple the the boy with the uh extraordinary long red hair fellow jinjan he's a ranger like me uh marvelous with his with you know first love i mean it was completely divine

[00:44:48] but we have them demonstrating what it would be like if we were to listen into one of their conversations and it is an argument about panda express and how bad panda express wasn't who said the panda express and who agreed to the panda express oh and then so how was school you are in the same class as him you know but those were not that once i reframed it and decided to like it

[00:45:15] as the pedagogical that's a word study and the this personal story of some of these these children i liked it a lot i thought it was let down by a few things like that but i did love that they got the tbi the tennessee bureau of investigation to come and talk to them and they had the svu shot down the corridor of the school of them lined up in a triangle walking towards us i thought yes ridiculous

[00:45:43] ridiculous just ridiculous and can i just say speaking of uh the redhead guy him and the girl lacy were dating that's the people who you were just talking about lacy disappears for four months right not disappears she says we we we learned that lacy's mom died tragically seven years earlier one of the reasons why she was so enamored with this case in this class was because her mom was of the what

[00:46:11] the what would be considered a high-risk victim she was addicted to drugs and her mother died because she was in a car with her ex-boyfriend and she essentially fell out of the car now the from what she understood what the investigation was her mom fell out of the car they said fell backwards she wanted to get more information about her mom's case and she asked mr campbell like how he could help

[00:46:36] her do this and she basically took all the stuff that she learned in the class to apply it to her mother's case but before we get to that she leaves so she said she tells uh her boyfriend uh during the christmas break that i gotta go back home so that i can kind of figure out what was going on with my mom and she leaves for four months and then she comes back but when she comes back that's when she's actually investigating what was going on with her so i was a little i on that part i was like okay i

[00:47:04] think i think she had to leave stop recording for some other reason i don't know what the reason was i'm not here to speculate but it just didn't make sense to me and she was like yeah i just kind of want to go home and get some answers but then you come back and this is where you're getting answers on camera like which was also very compelling so we're seeing her call the uh lead detective in her mom's case

[00:47:29] over and over leaving messages because that's what she learned in the class she also has her mom's uh like autopsy report uh death report she learns that her her the time of injury was like at 1 30 a.m but she was pronounced dead she wanted to know what was happening in those two hours she finally gets the police officer who was in charge of her mom's case on the phone and he's quite lovely

[00:47:53] yes yes he he answers all her questions he says i can assure you that we thoroughly looked this up uh this is what we were able to conclude with the evidence that we got and she was like thank you so much you know and she felt like she it seemed like she felt like she had some sort of closure well he asked sure he asked her does that does that help you does that you know he seemed very available

[00:48:19] yeah that she couldn't get hold of him but once he was talking to her he seemed very available yeah and he said that she could call him back whenever and again that was great that was great to see because we got to see it and i was like man that's amazing but what happened those past four months like it was just it was just weird to me like i'm not not weird and like i think something's going on with her but i was just like why are we again it feels very staged should i say almost like

[00:48:47] it's staged not the the call not the call with with the police officer not everything that happened but just something there just i don't know i was like this doesn't make sense story storyboard wise if i'm storyboarding this docuseries as a murder investigation docu series so yeah it was just there there were there were really good moment moments i think this is why i i'm not like down on the

[00:49:14] docuseries it had great moments that were strung together just in weird ways to me and i think that's what i think that let me down the most so ellen how many magnifying glasses are you going to rate murder 101 out of a possible five i'm gonna do 3.7 oh nice it's really in talking this through i think

[00:49:37] that i just love the inspiration of it all just seeing a teacher genuinely believe that young people are capable of really extraordinary things humanizing victims and watching them go through the emotions of you know hey when you hear a news story on the news that someone died that was a person with

[00:50:00] a family and a brother and that moment seeing that victim's brother and just it was real life it was real life in a classroom and and and i i agree about the shortcomings and i also agree that this wasn't true crime this was a an inspirational story that had a true crime through line underneath it and i i didn't realize that when i was watching it but that makes sense to me now and marie how many magnifying

[00:50:30] glasses would you give this docu-series i'm gonna rate murder 101 i'm gonna give it a two like i said just personally for me this is my rating marie hates education and she hates children as a university professor i hate education yes

[00:50:52] very inspiration you guys yeah write that on spotify right yeah check that um yeah i just i i this had everything that i dislike about again true crime docu-series now personal stories that's what's getting the two like the what is getting the two is is talking to these kids talking with crimson about

[00:51:21] her father's predicament and and how she relates to the victims talking to the the one girl uh you were saying sarah who was like so personally invested in in these cases that she took the class again as a senior and said i don't care how you grade it i just need to be in this class like hannah i loved her yes those stories were so good so compelling but if you're gonna try and hook me with the the redhead

[00:51:50] murders i need more information about the redhead murders i do and then you can't pivot and i i swear i looked down for two seconds i looked up and now we're not even worried about the redhead murders anymore it's all about uh tsw uh tracy sue walker which i really do hope that they they're able to find more um information about her death but it's it it was just too hodgepodge for me when it comes to

[00:52:18] crime and that was the failure wasn't these kids it wasn't mr campbell mr campbell was amazing he was very funny a very funny teacher like we said um and so it it's it's not their fault it it's just how i my my thoughts going into and i'm i'm strict i'm very strict around here if you promise me uh somebody's trying to crack down and break a case i want to see you crack down and break a case

[00:52:44] what a case cracked yes exactly i'm strict sarah how about you what are your thoughts what are your ratings well my ratings i have two ratings as a true crime property it gets one and that's it as a docu-series let's call it human interest i don't like that expression but i've been desperately for the last hour trying to think of a difference as a human interest documentary i think it's fantastic i'm going to give it 3.5 i would rate

[00:53:12] it higher but there's some awkwardness in the recreations and so on but once you realize it's not a true crime property but a story about this teacher and these children it's actually super good inspiring moving thought-provoking you have this sort of massive teenagers you go it's just spotty teenagers but each of them has a story even our wonderful documentary filmmaker i'm he is going to go on and be a documentary filmmaker andrew so i'm definitely going to so my rating is going to be

[00:53:41] 3.5 but true crime listeners if you only want true crime i i give it a one which is less than marie yeah agree we have a mini today back in february last year abc news studios aired a four-part docu-series on hulu four parts called the fox hollow murders playground of a serial killer of course barry loved it because it was unsolved it was directed by alex jablonski it was the most watched

[00:54:09] abc news studio documentary on hulu uh that year and it was nominated for an emmy for outstanding crime and justice documentary i'm laughing because you're about to find out what we thought about it briefly to the crime in 1996 responding to a tip police searched the grounds and woods of fox hollow farm in indiana finding human remains eventually numbering over 10 000 pieces the presumptive suspect

[00:54:35] owner of the farm herb baumeister was never arrested a warrant was never written for his arrest and nor was he surveilled he completed suicide with a gun seven days after the search of his property uh we covered the docu-series with mark blankenship uh here in brief are our thoughts and i think at the end of the day one of the things that is true about this whole case is nobody's ever going to actually know so there's only so much that you legitimately say

[00:55:03] yeah and it doesn't take four hours to say what you can actually know for sure it doesn't take four hours to say well we think it was him and one but at the same time am i am i glad that i watched this yes how many magnifying glasses are going to rate the fox hollow murders out of a possible five i'm gonna give it the right dead center three marie how about you

[00:55:25] i'm gonna give it a 3.5 it was it was entertaining okay was it it was was it accurate was it tasteful no none of the above it was not but it did have me hooked i'm gonna give it a three i love track and i also love really well made my frustration with this is that it's neither

[00:55:55] and my frustration is that it's gaudy trash with an overbearing soundtrack about the very sad death of some very loved men yes so hulu dropped uh another episode just now episode five and it's called return to fox hollow new victims darker secrets uh thanks to jules for alerting us to this

[00:56:21] it's 66 minutes long and of course we had to watch it marie why don't you get us started we said we didn't need four episodes we didn't need a fifth i was like i was watching it i was like what like who told y'all to do this like that it must have been that emmy it must have been that emmy because i okay so basically they're like man did you see that weird mark dude on the first four

[00:56:49] episodes it was mark right yeah mark um yeah and they were like y'all think it was him yes that's what we said through the whole four episodes we said somebody should really look into this man and they're like yeah maybe we should look but we did it guess what there might be another person and i was like okay oh okay so there might be another accomplice tell me more no no i was like well what are we doing here why am i watching this what are we doing here that is like the perfect

[00:57:18] encapsulation of my review what are we doing here and i particularly like oh well we're going to talk to mark agreed to talk to mark here we are here is film evidence of us waiting to talk to mark and he doesn't arrive so listeners i feel that uh previous ratings were generous i am retroactively reducing them if you want to dive a little further the wonderful kate casey has an interview up with

[00:57:44] the director alex jablonski on her podcast reality life we'll link that in the show notes uh uh no i say i say no to return to fox hollow i do not want to return marie how about you yeah no it wasn't worth it it wasn't it wasn't worth it it the the small little things that kind of piqued my interest like oh so there was another married man who might have been an accomplice that would have been very like

[00:58:11] kind of compelling and it was just like but he's dead we don't know maybe maybe sure sure i mean that did did the documentary go into the underground pool with all the mannequins yeah we covered that case i mean it was he was such a weirdo and all the bones on the property and everything you're allowed to be a weirdo it was just yeah yeah i mean the the mannequins in the

[00:58:37] pool were the were the centerpiece of the original four parts ellen that's that's my general complaint with documentary because even when i enjoy it i think to myself we're busy people we could have we could have solved this in an hour and a half perfect neighbor perfect timing that was so expertly done it's so compelling it was a sit down it was one episode unknown number i'm just like the four parts

[00:59:05] i mean like i mean marie's got to get a babysitter you know just to sit and watch documentaries exactly you know exactly thank you for for recognizing my struggle and that was what we and that was our main gripe against fox hollow four episodes yeah and it just it was not neat so i so adding this fifth episode basically edging us saying that mark is going to do another uh interview just didn't make

[00:59:32] sense yeah yeah i didn't need it the only thing we got was the fleshing of the headlights to another house question mark yeah no no the the diddy for part was i could have gone two more parts with the ditty documentary because that was like dd but these thin documentaries like we we need to protest we need to write some letters and just say like we need to have like a campaign like do it in one or something

[00:59:59] do it in one do it in four and solve it okay you don't get to do it in four and not so let's talk about things that we do like ellen what do you have to recommend to our listeners company retreat i that is my type of humor if you if you don't know what it is basically they hire this sweet golden retriever

[01:00:19] the sweetest most down bitch most yes and guy and everyone in this company on this retreat is an actor it's just my kind of comedy the only thing that angers me about it is that i didn't think of it and i'm not in it because that would be my dream job and that man was the best they picked the best they picked the best guy for the job he was amazing i'm i'm obsessed with it my my boyfriend and i watched

[01:00:48] it this past weekend yeah season three has been green lit and if you want to hear a week by week breakdown chapelle and i talked about company retreat over on recap kickback oh you did did you wait did you guys love it yeah absolutely okay i thought i thought maria was gonna break my heart again maria not at all i got some notes that's good it's just my kind of comedy perfect

[01:01:13] and what about you maria what do you have to recommend so we did watch the university of cosmic intelligence uh i think it was cults university of cosmic intelligence on id from hbo max it was just one of those things where i was like okay this might be a little fun to talk about we we've been i'm all culted out to be quite honest the listeners know we've been really talking about a lot of cults

[01:01:39] but this one this one was interesting uh because we had previously talked about the case itself um when we covered the uh the missing episodes we were talking about america's most wanted colon the missing um we talked about the disappearance of four adults and two children and uh uh labeled the missouri six and they were actually tied to this cult the university of cosmic

[01:02:05] intelligence um so watching this documentary from a different perspective about prophet himself uh rashad jamal and his online cult uh it was very interesting it was very uh shades of the nature boy documentary it was very like the same kind of mindset of like black people we need to get to the sun

[01:02:29] we're of gods da da da da da and i'm i'm watching it and i'm watching it and then all of a sudden it's like oh yeah 5g is gonna get us birds are government drones and i'm like oh lord uh but it was a very interesting um document uh because it just shed light on how cults nowadays can be online like

[01:02:53] people can get caught up in these cults without even interacting with the so-called cult leader and not only do we hear the case about the missouri six but we learn about two other cases that are like tied to his cult um one that that ends up with a young in a young man's death um so it was very it was a very compelling story very like scary to be quite honest because the far-reaching effects that

[01:03:22] this cult had uh we spoke to a father whose daughter was basically taken from him he didn't know that he had a daughter with his ex who like basically ran away to join this this cult and the this father stopped at nothing to get his daughter back because of course what the cult leader rashad jamal ends up going down on is is child sexual abuse because shocker shocker who could have seen

[01:03:48] that one coming so uh it's very compelling i would definitely recommend it and let us know if you have watched it sarah what about you what do you have to recommend to our listeners yeah i'd recommend the university of cosmic intelligence as well it was really interesting we originally watched the case from the law enforcement side so it was very interesting to come at it from from the other side i thought it was very well made and yet again the cult starts really well black people stand up you you are worthy you

[01:04:17] can walk the earth you can do anything and by the way the birds are drones and people are trying to eat your brain it's okay and then and then child sex it's like but i would like to also recommend two movies so the invite stars penelope kruth edward norton seth rogan and olivia wilde so it's a four-hander it's directed by olivia wilde one couple and the other couple comes over everything's who's

[01:04:45] afraid of virginia uh and this is that but super super good pedelope kruth is one of my favorites edward norton one of my favorites so please do see the invite i also saw the odyssey starring matt damon directed by christopher nolan yes no spoilers no spoilers from i'm going to see you tomorrow 5 000 year old story sure no spoilers that was like my cousin when i told him in hamilton

[01:05:12] that hamilton died and he goes hamilton died and i was like bro it's in the opening number and it's also history yeah i know what happens to the honesty i am a greek mythology buff and i recommended epic the musical on here which you should listen to and watch if you have it i loved every minute of it i don't care that they were saying mom doesn't bother me it's an american

[01:05:39] film they're gonna say mom what's your problem they would have been speaking ancient greek you don't know with what the nickname for a mother was i think all the things that i hear people complain about i go just sit in a big chair and watch it just let it let it watch you no let yourself watch it and enjoy it and get excited and because there's a lot of bass in the soundtrack my seat was vibrating i absolutely loved it yes you may have another take and i'm happy to talk about it with you

[01:06:07] and i'll probably agree with everything you say that's wrong with it i loved it at crime scene where you get to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes you can subscribe by going to crime scene pod.com or search crime scene that's s-e-e-n it's a joke get it wherever you get your podcasts you can follow crime scene everywhere at crime scene pod or email us crime scene pod at gmail.com you can support us at buymeacoffee.com slash crime scene pod you can sling us a couple bucks or join our

[01:06:37] monthly membership members receive episodes early and free as well as other exclusive bonus content there are six full episodes waiting for our latest discussion of bachelorette season 22 with mel barrett and the a-perman heard of her you can also support us by buying our merch yes we have crime scene

[01:06:55] tumblers available at marie's shop go to mariecraftstomuch.bigcartel.com and while you're there look at her other amazing book themed tumblers if you can't find your favorite book let her know and she will make something just for you the link to the store is in the show notes you can also support us for free it's great that's a great price by rating by rating and review crime scene so so others can find us five stars only

[01:07:25] five stars your support makes a huge difference this is sarah from the editing room breaking news you will be able to see marie and me live yes live in milwaukee wisconsin at rhap con which is the 26th 27th and 28th of august this year oh so exciting we can't wait to see all of you then

[01:07:52] ellen what do you have going on where can the people find you because i know they want to oh thank you so much the best one is through social media you can follow me personally at ellen marsh i spell my name with a y e-l-l-y-n you can also subscribe to my two podcasts i think not which is my true crime podcast with my best friend joey taranto and if you like trash and your little

[01:08:17] reality tv oscar the grouch i also have a love is blind recap podcast with my other bestie daisy egan and that is called shut the fuck up nicholache and you can find us at shut the f up b f f nicholache on instagram and i think not pod even if you don't listen just subscribe just you know subscribe follow download you don't have to listen but uh yeah that's the best way um i'm

[01:08:44] also on tiktok at ellen marsh i am insufferable on social media i create tons of content true crime comedy politics and you know a little bit of man bashing but just when they deserve it are men okay ellen have you discovered yet no they are not okay and i have proof men are not okay yes we have andrew tate's arrest outfit to prove it oh his capris and his going out top

[01:09:12] his little ballet flats what have you got going on mari where can the people find you over on blue sky at mari talks too much that's two likes men number two right now i'm talking a lot of big brother so uh you can check me out over there uh also over our recap kickback me and chapelle just finished our coverage of the vampire list that it is such a great show so many more people need to

[01:09:37] watch it because it is amazing the season just wrapped up and you can go and hear all of our thoughts over on recap kickback.com to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or even better you can look at our faces as we uh pull up nice pretty pictures by going to youtube.com slash at recap kickback um we are still in the midst of our uh house of the dragon coverage so we're having a lot of fun over

[01:10:04] there so make sure you are following recap kickback over on youtube sarah what about you what do you have going on and where can people find you other people can follow me on blue sky at sarah carradine if they'd like to do that over on babes in the conclave i'm covering non-english language seasons of the traitors with annabelle fiddler we're in the end game of hungary season three and several of the players listen to our pod which is wild they've been sending us messages and it's like whoop doesn't

[01:10:33] change how we talk about them marie what are we watching next week next time on crime scene we're covering shipwrecked nightmare at sea about the grounding of the costa concordia kevin flynn from crime writers on will be our guest you can watch it on netflix and send us your comments and questions oh kevin flynn that guy we adore he's the best kevin thanks to ellen mush for joining us well from

[01:11:00] america for the theme music and all the good teachers and people fighting to educate the children uplift the children and let the children live until next time case closed