Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - A Q&A with Friendly Fire host Sean Flynn

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Spectacle: True Crime host, Mariah Smith, sits down with Sean Flynn to chat all things about the newest season of Witnessed: Friendly Fire. She puts host Sean Flynn in the hot seat and they dig into true crime – how we report these stories, why we’re so fascinated with them and what this fascination says about us. Mariah gets juicy behind-the-scenes bits from Sean ABOUT reporting Witnessed: Friendly Fire. Plus, Mariah tells Sean about the new season of Spectacle, which is a dissection of our messy obsession with true crime. From Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment, listen to Spectacle: True Crime wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, friendly fire listeners, I'm your host, Sean Flynn, and we've got something a little different today. A special kind of behind-the-scenes episode of Witnessed. Episode five will still be coming as scheduled, but today we're gonna do a little detour. I'm gonna be chatting with Mariah Smith, host of the Fantastic Podcasts Spectacle True Crime. The show is dissecting our messy obsession with the genre and revealing what it says about us, and instead of me doing the interviewing, Mariah is going to be asking me the questions. From Campside Media, Neon Hum Media, and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Witnessed Friendly Fire, a mini episode. Hey, Mariah.

Hello, Sean. Thank you for having me. I am very excited, but I have an important question. And that is, are you ready to switch roles and to get in the hot seat because I have some burning true crime questions for you. I'm not sure. I fear it may not reflect well upon me. Oh, yes, I will give it a go.

Hey, that's all I asked or just try and we'll see what happens. So before we dive in, I have been working on spectacle for a true crime for a minute now and I'm excited because I've been diving deeper into so many things and with that and before I've been listening to Witness and I'm obsessed with it so far. And I am fully invested in Mory's journey for justice. And I sort of feel like, not sort of, I know spectacle listeners would love it. And hopefully we can pull some Witness listeners over to the spectacle side because we're doing a whole season devoted to true crime. And we're examining

why we're obsessed with these stories the way that we are. But beyond that, let's just dive right in. Okay. So. Okay. Thank you for those kind of words, by the way. Of course, of course. So first off, I do want to hear a little bit about how you got into covering true crime stories. You know, I sort of fell into it in a way. This medium podcasting, I am still a new comer. This is only our second one. I've been lucky enough to work with Lindsey Kilbride who's been showing me the ropes, but I spent more years than I really want to count right now as a print reporter.

I started off as a newspaper reporter and like all young newspaper reporters, you covered cops and courts. So that was really my first sort of toe dip into true crime. And then over the years for the past, well for most of this, I was a magazine writer. And I didn't specifically set out to do true crime, but true crime, they're just good stories. And I don't mean to put a classic like that, but that's where you find the human emotion, the human drama. You find the best of people, the worst of people.

It's sort of the entire human condition to still down to one moment. And I've always sort of, I've been curious, I guess, is really what happened. So, I spent a lot of time writing for GQ, some for Esquire, the New York Times magazine, and a lot of disaster, but it always kind of circled back to crime. Yeah, I love how you said you sort of fell into it because I feel like my sort of whole career was an accident. So it's sort of it's like these things sort of happen to you, and it's somehow fits and it feels correct. And as it's endless myself and working and some of the same publications as a freelance, I know what you mean.

It's like you start out in these stories or just like, this is what you're doing. This is what you get in that just sort of gets out of control. But how with your extensive background and with your interest, how did you come across this specific story and why did you choose to pursue it? So when your full-time job is writing magazine stories, you're always looking for something that isn't being covered to death. You're looking for those little nuggets,

those little hidden stories. My wife is from Tennessee, and she's from a town called Maravil, just south of Knoxville, and we were visiting my in-laws in what had been the fall of 2008, I think, right around time of the trial. And I'm sorry, 2007. And there was a story about it in the Knoxville New Sentinel. And I saw the story and little light went off and said, wow, this is a really good GQ

story. So that's what we did. I spent a lot of time up in Scott County then, met Lori. Met a lot of the characters. Some of, we couldn't get on tape this time, like Ryan Clark, who owned the trailer, spent a lot of time with him. And it was just, the, the,

you know, as you mentioned a few minutes ago, the story of Laurie and her willingness to keep pushing forward on this, the, in this tiny community where she lives and where she still lives, it was an incredibly brave thing to do. And aside from that, it was, you know, again, a fascinating story. Yeah, and I love that you, you know, you mentioned that was all the way back in 2007 when it first sort of came across your desk and peaked your interest. So you're telling the story again now, I guess 15 years later, why return to it?

Because there's never a final answer. And it's always stuck with me. I mean, look, I've done so many crimes over the years and most of them just out of self-preservation, you don't hang on to the details of them. There's only so much bad stuff you can have in your head all at once. But Lori's story, again, back to that, just the spirit behind it, the bravery behind it.

Always stuck with me and she never got a definitive answer. Yes, there is somewhat of a conclusion, and I don't want to give it all away, but it was never, you know, okay, 100 percent, this is what happened. And I wanted to know, and there was this new medium out here that gave us a chance to tell the story again and tell it in a different way So I'd been in touch with Laurie often on over the years and I got back in touch with her and she was Ready and willing to go. She still wanted this story told If she hadn't we would have walked away from it, but Laurie was was willing to talk to us again

Why not to talk to us again as was enough other people in Scott County. They just seemed, you know, it's a story that it fit into witness and it satisfied my own curiosity. And I hope it gives Laurie a little sense of some justice that her story's at least been heard. Yeah, and I think that's a major part of it, but I do wanna talk about that first episode.

Laurie and it is just really upset. And one thing that I have thought a lot about as I'm going through some of these true crimes and sort of the splashy retellings or interviews, how do you and how did you navigate interviewing people about what is truly one of the worst days of their life? Yeah I

I have a lot of practice doing that and it's I am always surprised at how willing traumatized people are to talk to an empathetic stranger. And that's where the key to it is to be empathetic and you can't fake that. I am genuinely curious and sympathetic and empathetic. The key really is to just listen. It's, you don't want to grill people, you don't want to, you know, put, you don't want to interview people.

You just want to talk to people and mostly you just want to listen. And that's, you don't want to get in the way, really. These are, it's something that's always sitting on your shoulder, you know, when we're putting this together. We always have Lauren in the back of our mind. We know this is a project for us, it's a job for us, but this is Lori's life and it's her kids' life. So you always have to be

very respectful of that. Yeah, I think that sometimes what I always try to harp on is like you have to really know, understand and respect that these are with true crime, it's people's real lives. Like you're not, they're not characters, they're not on billboards, even. Like these are the people you have to always go back to the actual human behind whatever you're reporting on. And with that though, you mentioned, you know,

listening and having that sort of conversation and allowing that organic back and forth, but even within that was there any part of the narrative or any subject or topic you had to be especially careful about or even avoid? No. And that's interesting because often there is. You know, you're always aware of sort of that knife edge. But Lori's been living with this for, you know, almost 20 years now.

She's told the story before. She's told me the story before, which helped quite a bit. Obviously, I mean, it's, it's already had a lot of the background. We'd already had a relationship. And trusted me. But no, I don't think in this there was any part that she shied away from. That's great. And I think that that goes to show that you said you guys have already had some of these conversations and you've been in contact with her on and off for a decade and a half.

So it already has that built in comfort that I think is really beneficial. And I like what you said earlier when you were saying that what you're doing, you know, you're reporting on this, this is a job and this is something you do. But as we mentioned, you have to be aware in Congress and empathetic towards the Spain more, more is real life. So what that

being said, there aren't things don't wrap up in a bow. And again, you said earlier, too, you never really have a final answer. And it's never really the end of something. So how do you tow the line then between these real life issues and creating something that is ultimately entertainment? Yeah. That is, I think, most people who do this kind of work, whether it's in prints or audio, if they're being honest with themselves, at some point wonder if they're just a parasite,

feeding off of other people's misery and grief. And I don't really have an answer to that. I certainly hope not. I try not to be. You want to be able to tell the stories that are important to be told. Because I think these stories do say something. I think witness friendly fire does get into some deep examination of perspective and who wants to believe what and why they want

to believe those things. I think the story goes beyond just this one single moment. But you always have to wonder if you're doing a service here or if you're exploiting somebody. So again, back to what I said a minute ago, if Laurie hadn't been on board with this, there's no way we would have done it. We wouldn't have touched it. Because the other thing to remember, the thing about true crime is,

the shooting isn't when it happened, it's when it started happening. The incident itself, sure, that happened one night. But that's just when it starts for Lori. This never really ends. And I think you always have to be respectful of that, that this is still an ongoing thing. Yeah, I really love how you how you put that and I add someone who's reported on many people you're so

right it's like there is that true moment of like am I on the right or wrong side of history and it is something you have to you really have to grapple. And I think even in the lightest things I've ever reported on to the most terrible. So I think that is a true, true testament to how connected you are to the materials because you have even that thought. So what was then the hardest part of reporting this particular story? But what was then the hardest part of reporting this particular story? Not being able to get Marty's perspective, we had access to a tremendous amount of information

more than I had back in 2007, far more. Statements, audio, an entire investigatory file, but there are still some people who wouldn't talk, who just wouldn't do it. And I think something's missing from that. I don't know what, but I think something is that in finding people, I mean, I know that sounds sort of silly, but you know, we're talking about something that happened 18 years ago, 19 years ago, and then 15 and then a trial.

And anyways, trying to find people was tough. But there you go. Otherwise, I know this is not a great answer, right? That was a fairly straightforward one. No, I love it. That's the truth. That is the truth. And those are truly some of the hardest things to do.

People think it's easier than it actually is to find people with the internet nowadays. It's sometimes like even me who for work is very nosy online, it gets tough. So to recap where we are now, the DA says who's not going to bring any charges and Lori now has a lot of new information. And so can you give us an idea of what is to come?

Yes. Lori has to find a different set of rules to play by. She's in a system where the system has said, we can't do anything, and that's not good enough for her. So she's got to find another way to approach this. And then she still has to figure out why, you know, at this point, and really from within a few days after the shooting, she is convinced that it was deliberate. But she has no idea why. She has a theory, but it's a bad theory, and that's all going to unravel pretty soon. Oh my goodness. Well, I truly can't wait. You've enlightened me, given me a lot of

to think about in terms of going forward as we continue to produce and work on Spectacle True Crime. But Sean, thank you for letting me put you in the hot seat on your own show. I appreciate it. Absolutely. We did the best we could, and I hope people enjoy it. And good luck with spectacle true crime. I cannot wait to listen to it. You know, my life's work more or less is waiting through true crime. So yeah, I would love to see it dissected. Maybe it can help me explain it. Oh my goodness. Thank you so much. And you know, that's what we're trying to do. So for those who don't know we're doing spectacle

true crime, which is like you said, it's a dissection of truly the messy obsession with true crime and we're going to celebrate it because I personally, I love a date line so do so many other people and also pull back curtain. But we're also going to talk about sexualizing serial killers, missing white woman syndrome, and even talk to my idol and the all-around icon

that is Keith Morrison. But episodes are airing now, and anyone who is listening can find it on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you again so much, Sean, and excited for witness, more nubs to drop, and I hope to talk to you soon. Thank you again so much Sean and excited for witness more you