Live from CrimeCon [bonus]

Live from CrimeCon 2018, Payne Lindsey and team take you inside the hit podcasts Atlanta Monster and Up and Vanished. Moderated by HowStuffWorks’ Jason Hoch.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
In Atlanta. Another body was discovering today at Police Task
Force headquarters. There are twenty seven faces on the wall, murdered,
one missing. We do not know the person or persons
that are responsible. Therefore, we do not have the mode
from Tenderfoot TV and how staff works in Atlanta. Like
eleven other recent victims in Atlanta, Rogers apparently was as
fixy victor. Atlanta is unlikely to catch the killer unless

(00:31):
he keeps on killing. This is Atlanta Monster. Please welcome,
head of New Initiatives and an executive producer at How
Stuff Works, Jason Hope. Thank you, so thanks everyone for

(00:58):
coming today. Really excited about this panel. We're gonna talk
about Atlanta Monster and Up and Vanish some of the collaboration.
All right, so let's bring the panel up. I'm gonna
let you guys introduce yourself. This is Meredith Payne and Donald,

(01:20):
but give us a little bit more background on what
you two of you guys do. Hi. I'm Meredith seven
and I'm a creative producer at Tenderfoot TV. I'm Payine Lindsay,
I host and produce Up and Vanish in Atlanta Monster.
Thank you. I'm Donald Albright, President Tenni for TV on
Paynts business partner. All right, let's get started. Payne and Donald.

(01:49):
We we somehow found a way to um start Atlanta Monster.
How did that happen? Well, I met you first, and
you hadn't heard him in Vanish yet, but you knew
of I've been Vanished, and you shot me an email
and he realized that we were in the same building
and he said, come down to my office and I
went down there, and I swear it was like a

(02:10):
job interview. He was like, so you like podcasts. I
was like, yeah, it's been making wine for a while.
And then you started listening to Up and Vanished and you,
for some reason brought up the Atlanta child murders in there.
And you had brought up Delian Childmers to me like
a week prior as a podcast idea. So you were
saying it. You were saying it, and I was like, okay,

(02:31):
let's all have the meeting. And then that's basically how
it all started. Yeah, And it was one of those
things where house stuff works. Although we have been doing
podcasts for a long time, we had never done true crime.
And I think we knew at that moment, well, we
have to do something together, and you know, I grew up.
I was probably nine or ten at the at the time,
did not live anywhere close to Atlanta, but burned in
my brain were those images of way Williams and the

(02:52):
Atlanta child murders. And my parents kind of freaked out too.
They pulled me in the house. Donald, You've got a
similar story of growing up, although you were way far away.
So yeah, I was two thousand miles away California. Um.
I was only maybe three years old when this was happening,
but I still remember kind of growing up with this
because you know, being black, this happened to all you know,

(03:12):
young black kids, young adults. Um. So just within the
black community, it was something that we talked about, you know,
our families, friends. Uh, And it just affected my childhood
growing up because it felt like it was happening right
on my block and you know, in my street, and
I looked like those victims. So it's something just stuck
with me. So when I asked Pain, um, I knew
we want to do something different before going to up

(03:34):
in Advantage season two, We're like, let's let's let's do
something else. Let's do something other than a missing person.
Let's try you know, try to give our audience something new.
And I just texted randomly one evening. I was like,
have you ever heard of the latter of child murders?
And he said no? And I was like, how could
this mean so much to me? And he doesn't even
know what it is and he's from Atlanta, you know.
I know there's an age difference about ten years, but um,

(03:57):
it's still something where you know, we know about a
lot of cases that took place, you know, in the
seventies and the sixties, but not very many people even
who were born at that time, even remember Atlanta chymers.
So something I felt like we needed to do, if
for nothing else, to inform and educate the general public
on you know, these tragedies. So before I asked Meredith

(04:18):
and Paying a question about that, because you were younger
than when these murders happened. Let's play a clip from
Atlanta Monster. Another young boy was then the body was
of a black teenager. Is the sixtieth victim to die
by asphyxiation. He's methodical appointment. Killer has an insatiable appetite

(04:38):
for the news. Our investigation is continuating. You know, we
can set eyes on you that's very good, Thank you. So.
Our perception kind of walking into this story was maybe

(05:00):
people have heard about this, either you knew about it,
you didn't know everything where you hadn't heard it about
it at all. And the overwhelming reaction that we got
from fans was I'm angry, I've never heard of this,
and I think with a younger crowd that happened over
and over. What was your perspective, Meredith, Yeah, I mean
I wasn't alive at the time it was going on,
and I'm from New Orleans originally, so wasn't on my

(05:20):
radar in that way. But I found it really interesting
all the social parallels with what we're dealing with in
two thousand and eighteen and what was present in and
I think that's really what stood out for me the most.
To me, it was fascinating how much it sort of
shaped the culture in Atlanta. Before I did podcast, I

(05:42):
was directing music videos in Atlanta for a little bit,
so a lot of them were hip hop video, so
I was really kind of tied in to the hip
hop scene in Atlanta, and some even newer songs were
referencing Wayne Williams and the Atlanta murders. Outcast big boy.
It was just kind of fascinated to me just how
much just sort of permeated um all over the place.

(06:02):
I mean, for generations. This has sort of like been
this urban legend in Atlanta a lot of ways. So
we took the conversation with victims and their families and
people who reached out to us very very seriously, and
I think part of the approach here was not trying
to step on what they wanted to talk about and

(06:24):
actually talking to people that had never had a voice before. Donald,
what do you think about the approach of kind of
letting people talk and and really kind of enriching that
as part of the story. I think after this long,
I mean, you know, when we first started research in this,
we saw that, look, there's a story here to be
told that it's not for us to tell. It's for
the people who experienced it firsthand. It's for those people

(06:45):
who whose lives changed by the way they were raised,
you know, growing up right in the neighborhoods where kids
were disappearing from. It is the people who are ten
years old at the time, who are you know, writing
that age group of the kids they were coming and
missing and murdered. Let them talk. It's not about us
telling you how you should feel about it. It's about
that that brother you know who who was twenty years
old and lost his ten year old younger brother. Um,

(07:08):
you know, it's the moms, it's the the friends. So
it's not about what we were trying to do or
what we were trying to accomplish. This really like, look,
let us sit back. It's too delicate of a situation
for us to come in and interject and ask a
bunch of questions that are, you know, trying to turn
over this rock. It's more like, look when we're talking
to victims, families and so that you all can really

(07:29):
experience how this impacted real people like these aren't characters.
These are real people who lost loved ones. And there's
there's you know, it's not easy to just sit on
the phone and let someone talk. And I think that's
one thing, even with up advantage, I think it's something
that pain was able to do really well, was just
sit back and like say less so that other people
could say more. And that's how you get the good stuff.
You know, people didn't want to talk to us also

(07:51):
because this brought up really bad terrible memories. And then
there were people who came forward also where they wanted
to tell us about the time where they were almost
do you know, by someone that it wasn't Wayne Williams,
or by someone that they felt was Wayne Williams. And
it took a lot of us saying look, we'll come
meet you. You know who were scared to talk to us.
They don't want their names out there, they wanted their
voices disguise. There was you know, we dealt with everything

(08:13):
you could imagine, and we just try to be really
delicate with how we approach it because we knew how
sensitive it was. In mereth Um, you and I, actually
all of us, we would sit on the couch and
talk about this all. That's why I have no notes,
because we talked about this all the time. UM. Meredith
is a complicated case. UM. Probably between the two of us,
we've looked at how many hundreds of hours of archival footage,

(08:35):
UM notes and research. I mean, how do you put
all this stuff together and make sense of it and
be able to tell a story and audio that people
can digest. It's unbelievably hard. Sometimes I forget what is
in the podcast and what's just in my head from
all the articles I've read, and so I feel like

(08:55):
sometimes the story for me it feels bigger in the
child and just really boiling down and deciding what is
crucial and how to balance both sides of the story.
And yeah, it's been crazy though. We found some crazy things,
a lot of stuff that we never even put out there.
Um pay, let's talk about music. I think something snapped

(09:18):
with me and Up and Vanish where I just love
theme songs. I love the hook and I think everyone
can hum the theme song of season one of Up
and Banished in their heads. And that was a conscious
effort on your part to really to really layer in sound,
both emotionally and just kind of adding think about it.
You add um music and sound, you add archival footage,

(09:40):
you you add interviews, like how do you think about
putting all this together? Especially with music. I just wanted
to sound good, um, simple as that. I like being
immersed in the moment and just sounds driving you. Sometimes
it means that there's this really and tense music, or

(10:01):
maybe it's just the soft drone in the background that
you forget is there while this guy is talking. And
then oftentimes give it a break and just let it
be raw for a second, so you remember how real
everything is. So I think that balance is what I'm
always trying to find. And um for Atlanta Monster, I
was I was like, we're going straight eighties with this thing.
We're gonna get the Stranger Things soundtrack of podcasts. And

(10:25):
so I found this guy on Spotify. His name was
Makeup and Bandyset, and I found him on Twitter and
I send a message and then next thing you know,
he's scoring the entire soundtrack for Atlanta Monster. I think
we hired him to make like ten songs. He made
like a hundred songs. I'm just like every other day
he was like, listen to this, listen to that, And
I would send him segments of the podcast and he

(10:47):
would kind of customize and score it. But it was
awesome to me. The sound and just the identity of
a podcast is super important to me. It's a brand.
It's bigger than just a podcast to me. So the
sounds and the music were super important, and that was
one of the first things in the day one meeting.
I was just playing samples, remember different music, and I

(11:08):
was like, Okay, I think I see what you're doing here.
But um, yeah, the music is a big deal to me,
and I was happy with the way it turned out. Well,
the other thing that we did here that might be
a little bit of a surprise and and frankly, I
think we're all like ten years older as a result
of this. UM in the aging process was out of
the gates. We said, Um, we don't want to just

(11:29):
tell his story and then release that story post post fact. Um.
We we made the decision around the time where we
knew we were going to have Wayne on the podcast
to go real time. And maybe people don't realize that,
but around episode five or six, we said, in order
to really get more people to come forward and tell
their stories and to have a dynamic where we're getting

(11:50):
a little bit more energy, UM with what Wayne is
saying and be able to react to it, let's go
real time. It sounds like a great idea. UM. And
it's tough. It was real tough. Meredith talked a little
bit about the complicated nature of that. Um, it's a
little daunting going on Monday and not knowing what the
podcast will be like on Thursday night. UM. But it

(12:13):
definitely we did get a lot of stories last minute
things that weren't gonna pop up otherwise, like the man
who started the basketball league, and I don't know. Sometimes
messages would come to you random people. We didn't think
we're going to talk to you ever, and so it
definitely was an important part of the process. But it
was nerve wracking to say the least, and definitely a

(12:34):
time crunch. I'm pretty sure I cried during this production.
I was just so scared that I wasn't gonna make
it out in time or something. Um. Now it's stressful
because we're going, like, we'll just hop on a flight
and go to New York or Chicago to interview, um,
the guy in the micro trace lab about the fibers,
and then the next day we're in the mountains and

(12:56):
Georgia doing this. We also have to make a podcast.
To the podcast is not just the interviews that you're getting,
that is where most of it comes from, but who's
chopping that up and bringing it down? Whatever? You someone
for four hours, you're gonna hear ten minutes of it,
so someone has to go through and pick that. So
you know, I would ingest the audio. You'd be listening

(13:17):
to it and tagging stuff and turning it back out
and trimming it down and then sending it to makeup
and Vandy set to put music on it, and really
the whole time, we have this bigger picture of this
story arc that we're trying to tell and how we're
going to get there. But then something like a guy
emailing you and saying, hey, Wayne Williams abducted me. That
kind of changes things and is a new priority. And

(13:40):
maybe you didn't plan on doing that that week, so
I don't recommend doing it that way, but it um
the coolest part about it is that it's a truly
organic thing and anybody could come forward with new information
and shape this story themselves, which we think is really cool.
And Donald, listening back to I think we had about

(14:01):
three stories of people that came forward, and we really
put those out there near the end of the of
the series. What's what was your reaction in hearing some
of those stories or meeting some of those people. It
was interesting. I think this pros and Consts of Pain
said how we actually produced this podcast. The biggest benefit
of being able to put it out and still not

(14:23):
be finished with, you know, the finale, is that you
get these people coming forward and the changed the trajectory
of where this podcast was going in. I mean, we
would find them in various corners. I like, my daughter
actually put the trailer on Instagram and I read a
comment on her page that said Wayne Williams tried to

(14:44):
abduct my dad and my uncle. I asked her, who's
this guy? Who's this person who commented that on your page?
He said, oh, that's my friend. Let me talk to him,
and I talked to his dad, and then a couple
of weeks later we had his dad's story and that
was the story about um, him him being at the
his bike being stolen, and he said that Wayne Williams
lured them to this church and tried to deduct them. So,

(15:05):
I mean, the podcast doesn't sound the way it does
if we don't allow put that extra stress and pressure
on ourselves too, you know, actually give the audience, the
listening audience, an opportunity to participate. But I mean hearing
those stories firsthand. Like I did a pre interview with
with Tony and I talked to him for thirty or
forty five minutes and I heard this amazing story and
then I would, you know, put it in drop box

(15:26):
and tell pain. And Meredith is so I will sending
it to you guys, and I said, look, this is
something real. We need to bring him in and get
a real interview done with them. And then I meet him,
bring him upstairs, and he and Pain would go into uh,
you know, a little office studio and uh knock out
an interview. And then a lot of times I would
then not not listen to it until everyone else got
to listen to it, so that I could experience it

(15:47):
the same way and just try to figure out, you know,
when you're too close to it, sometimes you can miss things.
I like to experience something's the same exactly way the
audience is. But I mean it's it's an extremely interesting process.
And no story is this aim or comes to you
the same way. You know, It's all they're all unique experiences. Yeah,
and you know, Pain, I think before we move on
to our discussion and up and vanished, UM, you know,

(16:09):
talk about I appreciate kind of Um. I call it
fearlessness of of going there, going there with a conversation
about race, picking up the phone and talking to anyone
you can, jumping on a flight like you talked about.
I think that matters in the the ultimate upcoming of

(16:30):
the show. What do you what do you think about that? Like,
how how do you react to that? And how does
that inform the way you put stories together. I mean,
this is an uncomfortable story to tell. Being a middle
aged white guy, I was nervous about telling the story,
and I wanted to do it the right way, and
to me, that the only right way to do it

(16:51):
was to let everyone else do the talking. The story
wasn't about me. It's not about I wasn't even around.
I was essentially learning this as I went along. So
that was kind neat for me. Um, and I just
wanted to tell a big story. I saw how much, uh,
the atlantild murders had an impact on the city, on
the culture in Atlanta, the whole nation really with the

(17:13):
is sin o'clock to near your children are? I mean,
these things that people remember but they don't know where
they're from. And so I was just blown away by that,
and I was nervous telling this story. But um, you know,
I had to be fearless in a sense because at
a certain point, you just gotta I just gotta do it.
And so you're always kind of making sure you do
the right thing, and you can't be scared to get

(17:35):
the story. Remember the first time I talked to Wayne Williams,
I was like, shit, what have I got myself into? Now?
What am I doing? What am I doing? With I
was like what am I doing? What am I doing?
It's like I don't know? Is the on the phone? Um?
But like I probably say what am I doing? Like
every day, like what am I doing? Just because it's

(17:55):
so bizarre to me sometimes that I'm I'm here. But um,
people are people and they oftentimes they want to talk
to you. So if you listen to them, you'd be
surprised what they'll tell you. And that really is all
that I am doing. Everything else is just the storytelling
part of it. Um, So you can't be scared to
talk to somebody. Some people will turn you down, but

(18:17):
most people didn't, and most people don't they want to
tell you something. That's what I've learned. Also, I think
you have to clear the clear up the fact that
you're thirty years old, you're not middle age. It's like,
I guess I'm not bad'll make you old and I'm
not accepted the exactly. All right, that's a great natural break. Um,

(18:43):
let's bring out our next guests. Please welcome. Dr Maurice Godwin.
Thank you, Thank you something Maurice. Yeah, I think uh,
I think most everyone here is familiar with Up and Vanished.

(19:04):
We're gonna we're gonna talk a lot about that before
we do. Thank you. Let's take a look at a
short clip. An investigative podcast about the disappearance of an
Oscilla teacher is set to premiere Monday. Titled Up and Vanished,
The story details the findings of Atlanta filmmaker Payne Lindsay

(19:25):
as he makes a documentary on Terra Grinstead. The former
Oscilla teacher has been missing for nearly eleven years now.
When she was last seen in October two thousand and five,
the Georgia Sweet Potato Paget. She was so loving and
so open and just. She was just a very carried
person and almost to the point where sometimes I thought

(19:46):
it was too much. I really do feel like it
is an abduction at this point. I think it's about
the flip upside down. A lot of rumors in this
case end up being truth. Do you want the truth?

(20:12):
Here's the truth I found out on January the PM
what happened to Tara? Dude? Want g I agents swarmed
up the con Orchard and ben Hill County. This Happer,
do you want us to cant Candy Dull series do
the job to the person of Tara, her insane child,

(20:36):
the mom from Tenderfoot TV and Atlanta. This is Love
and Vanished, all right? So Payne, you look at that
what year and a half almost two years later? What's
what's your reaction? How is that sunken, middle aged white

(20:58):
guy who um actually just watching that back and I
was like, damn this It's still crazy to me. The
whole thing is just crazy to me. Um. It gave
me goose bumps just then just watching and UM, it's
just an unreal story. And when I got involved, it
was something that no one was talking about, and every

(21:20):
one of Tara's friends was just torn up about this,
and no one had any clue what happened. No one
had any clue. And now there's been two arrests, which
is just unreal. And I'm excited for the trial and
if for Dustine this look yeah, And I actually started
relistening yet again to Up and Vanished. UM. And I

(21:44):
was struck after getting to know everyone more, especially you, Maurice. UM,
I was struck by you know, this is something that
you had followed for many years. Walked me through that
initial conversation with Paine and and how you guys connected,
how you built on that over over the course of
many months. Okay, Well, I worked the case for her

(22:06):
sister for twelve years, for eleven years, and UM and
I had done I got no help from any law enforcement.
So everything I found was found on my own, and
UM and I had a book binder full of information
for since those March of O six UM. One day

(22:27):
I said I hadn't been to a web sluice, which
which is a website about crime and stuff. I said,
I hadn't been there in a long time. This was
like January of O sixteen. So I said, let me
let me go there and see what's happening, so about
any case. So I went there and then I went
to a clinical terrorist link and Uh, I noticed a
new post nobody had responded and it was from pain

(22:52):
and he was looking to do a documentary UM about
terrorist case and he wanted to know about some information.
And I got to think, and I said, well he
needs help. So UM I called and left a message
and he called me back and we talked for two hours.

(23:13):
And it's it's only because of that contact between Pain
and I that this case was solved. That's it. And uh,
I mean we we butted heads, you know, or in
the beginning, Uh still do but uh we we butted heads,

(23:35):
um in the beginning and stuff. But I knew when
he was making those trips to to a scylla, that
he was doing the shoe leather work, that it was
necessary on following one up, uh, everything that he could
possibly follow up on and um and and and it
worked and and there's no there and I'm sort of biased,

(24:00):
but there's there's nothing. There's nothing else like up and vanished.
There's no music that that this is a signature. This
is a signature podcast in the podcasting history. How would
you describe our relationship? You think, well, you know, we

(24:20):
we we but it has I mean it was sort
of like, uh, a man and a woman going through
a bad divorce. Um, and they divorced and then remarried
and there's and they're still fighting. But the main thing
is our focus was on bringing justice and resolution to

(24:42):
terrorists case. And um, and we did, I mean, Pain
had got so much information on this thing. The GB
I was calling him, They were calling me for his
telephone number. Did you give it to him? Yeah? And uh,
I mean this it's just unreal. But this is a

(25:03):
signature with a hundred and fifty million plus downloads and
a TV show coming out soon about it on Auction Channel. Um,
this is a signature podcast that never will be repeated
by any other podcast for the music, or the case
or anything spectrum. I almost don't know what to say.

(25:31):
We're done here. So I was actually thinking back a
little bit about how the show started to build, and
I think there is a little We were talking a
little bit about this before we came on, about how
the perception that this show only became big when the
news broke of some of the suspects being arrested and
actually is not true at all. It was actually really

(25:52):
rising and kind of built organically as this tale of
a small town of Cla, Georgia and kind of the
relationships and kind of your you know, digging for the truth.
It was a hit way before. Talk a little bit
about um, how how that grew um, and and also
Donald just how you guys kind of snapped this together

(26:14):
early to kind of have a plan if you had
a plan to check it out there. Yeah, so I
mean quick history, um Pain said he was directing music videos.
I was managing talent in the music industry. We were
working together, UM, and we were both burnt out of
it and said, look, we want to do something else.
He's the one who came up with up and Vanish
found the case and said I want to do a

(26:35):
documentary on something on this case. We realized quickly we
didn't have documentary type money. And the entry, you know,
the bar to enter the podcast UM space is UM
it's low. You know, it's a low level of entry
when it comes to financial So I got some audio
equipment and he just started on this journey. UM. We
didn't know what it was gonna be. We didn't know

(26:56):
if it would be big. We didn't know if it
was a business or a hobby. And I think the
first week he did about what was about maybe three
months of pre promotion. UM shot some of that great
footage issue you just saw, and first week it was
like five thousand down loads and we're like, man, we
we just we're doing something killing it. And I mean

(27:17):
we didn't know about podcasting, We don't know about monetization.
We didn't know about hosting. It was you know, we
didn't know anything. And then about five episodes then we
started really growing and uh we we remember looking back
now seeing emails and people saying, hey, you know this
is this might be something that's big. We're about to
hit five hundred thousand downloads and I'm thinking, like, we're
gonna hit a million downloads, and then next thing, you know,

(27:38):
we're at ten million, and like, man, fifty million, a hundred.
I'm like, then you just like you just don't realize
how quickly this thing is excelled to be something much
bigger you ever anticipated. And to answer you a question,
before the week before the case was solved, I think
we hit like fifteen million down loads. It was a
really big podcast before the arrest were made. And then

(27:58):
as soon as there's arrest were made, we had already
relationships with with press, with Good Morning America, with Inside Edition,
they were already in contact with this, so as soon
as the case broke they called us first and they said, look,
we want to you know, we want Pain to be
on Good Morning America tomorrow. And then from there, I mean,
we were doing twenty million downloads a month and you
also bought a shirt from Walmart um and Ostilla because

(28:20):
there was no other places. So my first time on TV,
I was wearing this big, old baggy Walmart shirt. Walmart shirt,
but um it fit nice. I mean go Walmart. Um.
But yeah, what's unique to me is that, like, as
the podcast was growing and the numbers were shooting up
really simultaneously, the it was just like this pressure cooker

(28:41):
in the town of Oscilla, and it's really it was
its height when the story broke and the tip came
out and the two rests were made. It was just
happening simultaneously. You could feel it. And you know, one
of the guys was arrested, Bo Dukes for the first
thing he sent his friend was just a link to
up in Vanish. So at that point it was just

(29:03):
almost if you were from Oscilla or South Georgia, you
knew about this and you couldn't escape it. And so um,
that to me was super unique. And then when the
case broke, it just kind of just caught fire from there.
It was just unreal. But when I first met Payne,
he drove from Atlanta to my house, North Carolina to
first interviewed me and stuff, and I told him, I said, listen,

(29:26):
I don't think my accent is gonna go over. I
think it might hurt the podcast. But um, it's done
just the opposite. So Maurice, I was just gonna, I

(29:46):
was just gonna compliment you on what an interesting person
you are. But I mean that with all due respect.
Um So we have UM, I think backstage some of
the live shows, we have you in studio a couple
of times. You're a really fascinating guy. You've you've got
a really incredible deep background in criminal psychology, You've got

(30:08):
a PhD. You've been coming to crime con for a
long time. Um, talk to us a little bit about
um you're feeling about about podcasts and and the role
they have to play and solving some of these cases. Well,
I think they can play a huge or old The
main thing is, um pain. Um didn't sit behind a

(30:34):
microphone in Atlanta and and and accomplished this. He stayed
in a silita, He went to bars in a silla.
He got he got in some touchy situations in a
silla interviewing people. I mean he got pretty bad there
for a while. I mean I was threatened and he
was and um so he was doing the leg work,

(30:56):
which what is what created up and vantished me even
the episode that was about to come out before the
rest we were moving we we had already moved on
to looking at students. We had two A three that
we were trying to find information on so to you know,
with with Bow and Ryan being former students, I mean

(31:17):
we were already headed in that direction. Um. But I
think podcast can can do a great deal in helping
move investigation alone. But you can't set behind a microphone
and just wait till somebody calls you on the phone
with a til. You've got to go out and create something,
especially when you didn't have any paperwork. We had no

(31:40):
documents from law enforcement, no nothing law enforcement. Everything that
Paine did on this podcast in this case and myself too,
we created are We created the information out of nothing.
I mean it's it's good. It was good information, but
we worked and worked and worked to get it out
of people of and that that's one of the main

(32:02):
differences help to Vanished and another podcasts. I think I'll
say this too. I think you know we mentioned, you know,
fifteen million downloads before the arrest or still as a
as a town of three thousand people. So if there's
fifteen million people internationally listening to this, what do you
think is happening in the town of three thousand. Everyone
is talking, they're putting fingers at each other, and so
when you're hearing about up and vanished, you're like, Okay,

(32:23):
what is this? What are they saying? Because I know
something I'm not telling anybody, So you're going you listen
to this podcast. Then our discussion board, I mean bow Dukes,
who was arrested, Um, you know, in conjunction with the
with the murder, was in our discussion board talking to people.
The tipster was in our discussion board talking to people.
You know. I think two weeks after the podcast started
you received a tip of a group of friends who

(32:45):
were somehow connected to this, and bow Dukes was in
that picture. So, um, we're circling around like sharks, you
know what I mean? And it's stilla in the threats
who are coming from people who knew we were getting close.
They knew that look, you better not say my name
on your cast because they were they didn't want to
be associated as you know, being potentially guilty or not
even guilty, but the type of person who would cover

(33:06):
this up and just not say anything for a decade.
And I think one thing important to impressed me. When
I first met Pain, he said, I don't care what
anybody thinks. And if he, if he, if he, if he,
if he had to take him the attitude he would
to go half as far as he did in the
Tea gram steadcase, I care what you think. Record all right,

(33:30):
So in a few minutes, we're gonna open up for
Q and A. If you if you all do have
a question, please stop up to the microphone. But I
have two more important questions. Uh. I just heard something
from season two of Up and Vanished just a few
minutes ago. Pain painted, Meredith. You you guys have been
on the road. What can you what can you tell us?

(33:51):
What can you break news on with regards of what's
coming with season two? Um, there will be a season
two of Up and Vanished on a whole new case. Yes,
thank you. UM, we were saying, maybe we added up yesterday.
We were sent over three thousand cases from people, and
we've gone through at least three dozen cases thoroughly, and

(34:16):
then we narrowed it down to like six cases. And
then all of a sudden, I got a phone call
from somebody that I know, and it just changed the
whole plan altogether. And we've been out west um, not
in Georgia, in this tiny little town UM, investigating this
missing person's case and talking to people and building this story.

(34:39):
And it's UM, it's really bizarre. And we think that
this is a place where UM it's in a lot
of ways similar to Tearr Grinstead's story, and we're hoping
to create a similar environment UM in this town where
people are talking again. Cases go cold because people weren't

(35:00):
talking about them anymore. So we want to get people
talking again and just turn over some stones and find
out what happened to this person. And it'll be coming
out in uh likely August this year. So yeah, and Meredith,
you've been on the road to any any little bit
that you can tell us anything. Blow this. By the way,

(35:25):
I wasn't even I should stop there. I've I think
Paine has been telling me lies through text of where
he's actually at and I'm convinced that he's trying to
throw me off the trail to so pay attention. It's
not in Georgia, it's in the West coast. I can
get me at all get a new number. He's getting there.

(35:45):
How about you, Mereth, I'd say it's UM very different totally.
It doesn't feel like a real place. It feels like
if you're familiar with the show Twin Peaks, it feels
like Twin Peaks. All right, that sounds great. UM. Secondly,
it's going to be a busy summer. You've got a

(36:09):
TV show starting up production here pretty soon for Oxygen
UM anything you want to talk about their UM super excited. UM.
It's been a long journey, but we have been developing
an up and vanished TV show, UM where we're gonna
go UM to other small towns and tell their story
of a missing person and trying to figure out what

(36:30):
happened to them and just take what we've learned from
this and tell their stories and create an outlet for
people and a vocal piece for families who need UM
who need that. So we're super excited about that. UM
flying out again next week to talk to them about it,
and UM things are going well and hopefully very soon
we'll have an update on when you can watch this.

(36:52):
So yeah, awesome And and my and my last uh
A question for for all of you is, UM, where
do you see the stories. Where do you see things
heading for for your your team? Are you you want
to get in more into TV? Is it a hybrid

(37:13):
of storytelling? Like now that things that I know you're
a filmmaker at heart. Pain, What's what's kind of the
thing that's driving you moving forward? Now? UM, I just
want to tell great stories. UM. I like podcasts. I
like telling it that way. UM. I've always want to
be a filmmaker since I was a kid. So I
want to make films. I don't want to just label
myself one thing. I'm a filmmaker, I'm a podcaster. I'm

(37:35):
doing this. I can only do that. I want to
do all of it. I want to tell stories on
every scale, every medium that I can that that works,
and UM, that's what I'm trying to do. So, UM,
I love podcasts. There's still other podcast ideas I have
that are outside of Atlanta Monster End Up in Advantage
that I'm eventually going to do as well. But I
also want to take a stab at TV and film

(37:58):
and UM tell story that way, and so I'm looking
forward to the chance to do that. All right, let's
open it up for some questions. How about you? Hello? UM,
I actually wanted to ask about my dad. I grew
up hearing about the Atlantic child murders, actually, even though
they predate me abo about three years and thirty three,

(38:20):
So I'm ancient. Um. I don't know how I'm I'm
upright and walking um anyway, But no, he always told
me about that because he had gone to conventions. He
was a police officer um, and gone to training and
heard lectures and everything. And I think he may have
talked to some of the detectives. I don't remember, but

(38:40):
he always told me about the capture Wayne Williams when
they heard the splash in the river and found him
not far away, and that was an educated guest reasoned
that he might be dumping a body there, and they
thought they might may be able to find it. But
the was always stuck with me was the terror of

(39:01):
the random chance they had someone there, they had someone
there that hurt it, and they found him quickly enough,
and they were able to find a body later to
tie it to it. And what do you think. I
hate calling it luck because there was a lot of
hard work involved. What do you think about the role
of luck or chance in solving these murders, especially when
it's serial killer, and it's often a stranger crime. I

(39:24):
wouldn't put anything past him. I thought one time, what
if Wayne knew they were doing this takeouts. I had
a theory for a second that maybe Wayne tossed nothing
off the bridge. Maybe Wayne's just hanging out over here
being suspicious and he's just like, what, I didn't do anything,
And that's kind of what he did when he got
pulled over. I don't know what you're talking about, but

(39:45):
why was he there? And why is this story changing?
Why is he still lying about it thirty plus years later.
It's the only story in your life that matters right now.
You should have figured it out by now. And so
that part bothers me. He lied to me about it.
I think I wouldn't put it past him that he
was there, knowing that the police were there, almost wanting

(40:05):
to get caught. I'm also almost thirty three, so ancient
over here as well. That's you're not going to live
this down payne Um. My question is did you ever
actually get you? Obviously Atlanta Monster ended with you not
getting to speak to Wayne in in jail. Um because

(40:27):
of all of the lockdowns and things that prevented. Did
you ever get to go after the fact, or do
you have plans to actually talk to him in person
at all? Yeah, I mean there may be a point
where I talked to him face to face on camera, UM,
for maybe a documentary about this project or something. Um.
But other than that, I have a lot of material

(40:47):
of Wayne that I can use for that as well.
Thank you. Well, I'm forty three, so I'm absolutely decrediful. Um.
I grew up in a tiny town in northern Minnesota
in the mid eighties, and I heard about the Atlanta
child Monster in my almost all white town, and that

(41:09):
it was that our mothers would tell us you'd be
home by dark because just like that man was taking
children in Atlanta, there's somebody out there that's going to
take you. You know. It was kind of this thing
that we heard, So I always grew up knowing a
little bit about it, and as I got into true crime,
I kind of became somewhat fascinated with Wayne in a sense. Um,
And after listening to the podcast in the sense I'm

(41:30):
on the one hand, Okay, it's a convenient scapegoat for
the city to get this public relations nightmare out of
the way. Then I listened to him, and the story conflicts,
and I'm thinking, well, yeah, he absolutely did it, and
I don't know a whole lot about did these killings
really truly stop with his apprehension? Were there still children

(41:50):
missing and in any big city, I suppose they go
missing but that fit his profile afterwards, or the police
just kind of like putting those under the rug because
they don't want to do I can't really get an answer,
and I wondered if you guys had any thoughts in
that or definitive idea either way on were these poor
little children still missing afterwards being taken? And thank you?

(42:13):
I think you're right on both. I mean, I think
both things could happened. I think that, uh, the murders
didn't necessarily entirely stop. Of course, they wanted people to
think that because it made their case look better. I
think it's just a story of law enforcement needing to
close this thing out, needing almost having to sweep it

(42:33):
under the rug. It was the wrong thing to do.
They handled it the wrong way, but that's what they did.
And it doesn't mean that Wayne wasn't guilty of anything.
So did they handle the wrong way? Yes? They did?
Is Wayne guilty of something, yes, and you know the
mythology of the mythology that builds the longer that time

(42:54):
passes on, so many things like did that stop? Did
murders stop? Or not? Um, so many examples of this.
I think it was a one sided narrative for so
many years that these things kind of became urban legends.
And as a result, I think we needed to We
need to get some of the crazies in there too.
Like part of this was getting all the stories on

(43:16):
the table, even the ones we didn't believe, and let
them talk to and let you make up your mind. Yea, yeah.
But the story isn't just about um the victims or
Wayne Williams. Is how big this thing was in the
city and how big it was culturally, you know, for generations.
So we wanted you all to understand why someone could
come up with such a crazy conspiracy theory. And it's because, yeah,

(43:39):
the city did you know, sweep us under the rug
for how many murders? Ten, twelve, fifteen. This is one
of those cases where anything you're thinking, any opinion here
of what happened in the Lanta child murders could be
partially true. All theories can work together in some way.
The clan could have done some, Wayne could have done some.
Some could have been around them. Um, the city did

(44:02):
rush to judgment and close this. And you know, there's
everything that you're thinking could be partially true. And that's
the that's why this case is so big, that's why
there's so many questions that are still left unanswered. Yes,
go ahead. I am sixty four, lovely. About about nineteen

(44:27):
years ago, I had a son that was murdered. It's
not got anything to do with Wayne Williams. I've not
been able to watch any kind of crime stories that
we're on regular TV because I can't afford cable. I'm
so proud to be here. About nine years ago, a
private investigator, through her friend begging, she agreed to take

(44:47):
my sen's case. On when you said about law enforcement,
we have Barney fives that work in the county where
I came from. Arrogant, arrogant, barn Barney Fine. My son
was executed. I lived in a small area. We know
who killed our son, we know there's no proof. About

(45:09):
two years ago, the new district attorney exhumed his body
because I woke up in the middle of the night
thinking about DNA undrew his fingernails. Uh. I was so
angry because there was t B. I have no faith
in anybody, but there was twenty people and the private
investigator that had helped me in the exhimation. Uh. Of

(45:35):
course nothing came out of it. This is a small
area and we know who did it and this people.
There's been other people that's died there. It's Carroll County, Tennessee, Mackenzie, Tennessee.
My son was fifteen years old, Tony Drumwright, and he
was an absolute great kid. You couldn't get him to
say us, to wear a word. And there was a

(45:56):
meth lab in our woods that he happened up on.
And we you know, we know all of this, but
we cannot prove anything. And it's just been so frustrating
to me and I will never shut up about it,
private investigators. It's cost me my family and my marriage

(46:17):
and it's been a real struggle every day. But Shila Wausaki,
which is a speaker here, she is the private investigator
that's been trying to help me, and I pray that
someday it will come to pass. But when you said
that about law enforcement, it's just really disheartening. Now we
have a new district attorney in Carroll County, and I

(46:40):
feel like I was pivotal in helping him get elected.
I trust him, but you know, he can only do
what he can do, and the people that worked for
him are still the same arrogant, pompous Barney Five's So
I know that has nothing to do with what you
guys are doing, but I just want to interject that

(47:01):
Sheila had told me that here about a month ago,
she did a podcast. First time I've ever heard what's
a podcast? I still haven't been able to hear it,
But tomorrow I'm bringing in my computer and they're gonna
get me up to date. We'll thank you than sorry
for the loss to you. I just wanted to interject that,
thank you very much. So I'm twenty eight, so I

(47:27):
guess I'm a child. Uh So. The thing that really
strikes me about both of these cases is how they
really give you a snapshot of the identity of a community.
And I think it's also really interesting that both of
them have had the opportunity to get responses from the
community that they're about in real time. And I was

(47:50):
hoping you could talk a little bit about how as
a creator, as a storyteller, the experience has been to
be getting feedback from the people that you're sort of
trying to portray. It's, uh, it's interesting. It's nerve wracking.
You're you're always trying to I mean, you gotta answer
for everything you do. So, um, I'm just trying to

(48:10):
be honest about it and just straightforward and kind of
like you said it back to the fearlessness. At a
certain point, you gotta just let go and not be
afraid to get out there and talk to somebody and
then put it out there. Um, it's interesting when the
town is listening to it, you can see it having
an effect on people. Um, they may they may be

(48:34):
scared to talk to you again, or someone might come
out of the woodwork and want to talk to you
all of a sudden. It's a constant game and battle
you're you're playing, and so it's you gotta be on
your toes at all times and just be careful. So
it definitely makes it more difficult, but their result is
people talking again and um, new information being able to
shape this story, which is important. Yeah, I mean, can

(48:56):
we finally have conversations about some of these big topics
in America? Can we put them out there? I feel
like listening to podcasts is a way for us to
put something out there, but for people in their own
one to one intimate space to be able to kind
of get a little bit deeper in a way that
they cannot engage on Twitter or with the local news.

(49:16):
And it's just being honest. It's having an honest conversation.
And podcasting is the most honest form of communication these days,
I believe, and that's why it resonates so much, and
I think we need to do more of that last question,
I'm sorry, thank you. I'm twenty nine, so I have
a couple of months left of my youth. Um. So

(49:37):
it's my understanding that there was some DNA that linked
Williams to bal dessert. Can you tell me a little
bit more about that and your thoughts on it and
why it wasn't in the podcast much. Um? Well, first
of all, I'd be clear, it didn't entirely link him.
It was it was partial and it was yeah, they've
matched in a way, but it wasn't any more conclusive

(50:01):
than um I would say the bloodstains or anything else. Um.
And to me, it was that was sort of an
investigative finding from somebody else, but we was CNN who
too Brooke then Yeah, and we actually talked a little
bit about that where recent I we had that conversation
about do they still have the clothes from some of

(50:23):
the kids, and could they match the d N A
and could they go back in time? And the answer is,
we don't know. We don't know where that stuff is,
we don't know if it would will ever be public. Um.
I think it is really interesting to hear in kind
of the present day news of the Golden State Killer
and others, this kind of new wave of what can
we do with older cases and match DNA evidence? I

(50:44):
think that is compelling, but kind of where do we
go from here? We just we didn't want to put
something out there where we didn't have the whole, the
whole story, and so that was one thing that we
just really didn't concentrate on. There's really no more that
I could add to that, and I knew that there
was already investigative findings that we had through Larry that
was new information that said the same thing, but actually

(51:06):
even more clear and more definitive. And you know, having
talked to Patrick Baltazar's brother and heard his side of
the story. There was just a lot of just misinformation
over there, and I wanted to find the information on
my own. Bauma is every piece information out there just
doesn't make it in there, and it's that for some

(51:26):
people that that's like, uh, it's hard to understand that.
But we looked at the big picture at all times
and we were never going to omit something that we
thought did steered you the wrong way. We also wanted
to make sense to you too, because for a while
it didn't even make sense to us. That's a good question.
Thank you, Thank you, except well, thank you to Meredith Payne,
Donald and Maurice, and thank you all days here. Thank

(51:50):
you with a future starting sh