July 20, 2021 • 25 mins
I spoke with Ben Kuebrich, the producer and host of the new true crime show Algorithm. Algorithm follows the investigation into Afrikka Hardy's murder, exposing the warnings that police ignored, and uncovering more than anyone expected -- that a serial killer was strangling women in Gary, Indiana could've been stopped. And that Afrikka Hardy should be alive today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio. When I
tell people what I do for work, they say that's
really cool. How'd you get into it? And I tell
him the truth. I got lucky. I really need a
different job and knew somebody when they were hiring. I
didn't know much about audio when I first got started.
I came from a video background, but I didn't know
like what a compressor was, or e Q or how
(00:22):
to talk into a mic. My first month around the
office was a little overwhelming, but I started to get
to know some people. Um Tyler Klang was my executive
producer and just a top notch human being. The guys
from stuff they don't want you to know, we're like
celebrities to me. I was thrilled when they went out
of their way to talk to me. I fanned girls
(00:42):
over Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant and even got to
meet John Hodgman. Super nice dude. By the way. There
was one guy who was pretty quiet but really nice.
I think I never saw him once without a hat,
and I was personally offended to see him editing with
his laptops touch pad instead of a mouse. His name
is Ben Keybrick, Ben had more experienced than me, but
(01:04):
not that much. I mean, Tyller has like ten years
experience and it's produced tons of top ten shows. Josh
and Chuck have hosted somewhere around two thousand episodes of
Stuff You Should Know and done literally over a billion downloads.
When I first got to know Ben, he was on
the True crime slate and working on the hit show
Monster d C Sniper. It wasn't until much later that
(01:27):
I found out he actually pitched that show. Ben seems
to have a knack for this stuff. Months ago he
told me about a story he was working on, and
when I heard the premise, I knew it would be
a hit. It's already done over a million downloads and
charted in the top ten. The show is called Algorithm.
Here's the official description. When Africa Hardy was strangled in
(01:48):
two thousand fourteen, it seemed completely random, but it wasn't.
It was part of a pattern. Four years earlier, reporter
Thomas Hargrove had created an algorithm to detect serial killers
and flagged Gary, Indiana as the site of an unusual
number of strangulations. But when Hargo've reached out to Warren
local police, he was ignored until Africa Hardy was murdered
(02:11):
and those cold cases suddenly didn't look so cold. Algorithm
fallows the investigation into Africa's murder, exposing the warnings that
police ignored and in covering more than anyone expected. That
a serial killer was strangling women in Gary, Indiana could
have been stopped, and that Africa Hardy should be alive today.
(02:32):
This podcast will explore how technology can be used to
identify and track serial killers, and how an algorithm can
influence the way homicides are investigated all across the country.
My name is Lowell Berlante and this is Prodigy. Since
(02:55):
we're both vaccinated, I brought Ben into my home studio
to talk about his new hit show, Algorithm. The next
episode you'll see in my feed is the first episode,
so you have an easy way to listen. The seventh
episode drops today, so if you like the first one,
head over to the Algorithm show page linked in the
description and check out the rest. Well friends sent this
article about this journalist, Thomas Hargrove, who had created this
(03:17):
algorithm to try to detect serial killers from from FBI data.
So most FBI data they just give it at kind
of the the county level or the police hurt's fiction level,
and it's like there were this number of robberies this
or the percentage of them that we solved, and it's
kind of this big aggregate data. But they created this
(03:38):
thing called the Supplemental Homicide Report UM for researchers who
wanted to study homicide. And again they just thought it
was for kind of statistical analysis. But this journalist, Thomas Hargrove,
he's he's an interesting dude. He's the son of a
programmable calculator salesman, so I think he was introduced to
the idea of programming at a much earlier time period
(04:02):
and younger age than most people. He went to University
of Missouri, which one of the top journalism programs in
the country. UM. He went there as an undergrad and
it was there was this new movement starting called computer
assistant reporting. This is back when they're doing like punch
card programming kind of stuff. But the idea was you
(04:23):
could use computers to really crunch numbers and do these
kind of statistical analyzes on like government records and things
like that to try to detect trends and notice interesting
patterns that you just might not miss if you're kind
of just anecdotally looking at individual cases. So from that
he went on to be just like a crime reporter.
(04:45):
That was kind of like his cutting his teeth job
in journalism, and then his computer skills kind of got
in handy with doing political polls and he was actually,
um kind of one of the early people to do
that kind of like election night and analysis kind of stuff.
From there, he got a job as a national reporter
(05:07):
and he would just do these kind of like big
data driven stories, and for one of them, he had
to request this FBI data and they ended up just
sending him that supplemental homicide report and he's like, oh,
like individualized data on crimes, Like I didn't know this existed,
Like I didn't know this data set existed. And he
says that one of the first thoughts he had was,
(05:29):
I wonder if we can look at this data and
use that to somehow detect serial killers, to look for
patterns within this data. That was before the term serial
killer existed. I remember from listening, so like what you're
do you know approximately what y'r that was? I've left
out a beat of the story, which is um that
was so in the seventies, around the time of the
(05:49):
Atlanta child murders. That was back when he was the
crime reporter UM in Alabama at that time. Maybe they
were calling them like lust killers or something like that.
Serial killer at least wasn't widespread this time. As a
crime reporter, he learned about this thing called linkage blindness,
which is this idea that oftentimes cases get assigned even
(06:11):
if cases are connected. Right, so, the same person kills
two people in an identical way, even if it's completely identical,
the cases might just get assigned to different detectives. UM
or often will get assigned to different detectives because it's
a lot of work to investigate homicide. That's why people
have been comparing your show to mind Hunter, because yeah,
I guess that's like the same thing, but kind of
(06:33):
from the behavioral analysis versus that's a great ship. Appreciate it, UM. So, anyway,
he learned from that about this idea of linkage blindness,
that it's very hard for individual detectives to to connect
these cases. And so when he saw this individualized data
that the FBI had collected, he wondered, couldn't algorithm solve
(06:57):
that problem? In the trailer. Let's play that. Now, L
do one thing that you know everything about child, because
there's something that they're not telling you. If I knew
that this is going on, I would have went out
there and brought my child back home. When Africa, Hardy
(07:18):
was murdered in it seemed completely random, but it wasn't.
It was part of a pattern. Today, Indiana police say
that seven women found murdered over the last few days,
maybe victims of a serial killer. They weren't even looking
and seven women died. I at least knew that there
was a serial killer active in Gary. I was assigned
(07:41):
to do a really interesting story and I needed the
uniform crime report. Included on that CD was a file
I had never heard of. What it was was line
after line of individual murders. The first thought I had was,
could we teach a computer to identify connected cases to
(08:05):
find serial killings? From my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV,
this is Algorithm. A podcast investigating a modern serial killer
and how he could have been stopped. The body some
of them found concealed and abandoned homes, had been there
for months. This story has the potential to change how
(08:27):
homicides are investigated. All across the country because he lone
of work. They didn't have time, and they still believe
that he has a trail of bodies from Texas all
the way to Gary, Indiana. I will think, you know
how many women he's actually killed. I think the Gary
Police Department should be looking at some of those old cases.
(08:52):
They still may have a killer out there. This is Algorithm,
a new podcast from iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Listen
and subscribe on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Why have
the like many crimes been not been solved that I
would assume that it's harder to get away with crime
(09:13):
now than it was. Yeah, I don't know fifty years ago.
There's a couple of theories. So so one is maybe
so this is clearance rates for one, So it doesn't
mean people have actually been convicted of the crime. It
could be that they were just arrested but then weren't
actually convicted. So there's different ways of measuring clearance. But
I think that stat is clearance to arrest. And so
(09:35):
it's possible that you know, in the sixties or something,
these kind of good old boy policemen were just arresting
some black guy who didn't actually commit the crime and
either um, you know, ending up incarcerating him for a
crime he didn't do, or letting him go later or
something like that. It's probably part of what's going on.
(09:58):
Another idea is that we've gotten better at um, kind
of detecting domestic violence early on and kind of intervening,
so we take stuff more seriously when it's just like
physical abuse. So as a result of that, there's we
think that now there's less kind of um, spousal or
domestic homicides. So domestic homicides are very easy to solve
(10:22):
because preventing them means suspect Yeah exactly. The ones that
do get happen are harder to solve. Yeah, we're getting
rid of the cases that are easiest to solve, and
we're left with more of the kind of stranger murders
that are hard to solve. Um. You know. There there's
ideas too that then there's an increase in gang homicides
those are particularly hard to solve. Um. And then you know,
(10:46):
I think some people think that there's something going on
to you with people being less willing to talk to
the police. Um and that that when people aren't cooperating
with the police, that makes things hard to sell all.
So I think there's this kind of cyclical problem that
then when police have the attitude that they think people
(11:06):
aren't going to talk to them, then they don't do
the basic detective work to ask people to talk to them.
And then when they're not doing the detective work, then
people trust the police less. So there's a researcher I
talked to who is kind of this is the people
not talking to the police. It's it's laid out in
this book called Ghetto Side. I think it's a badly
(11:28):
named book, but a good book by this um L
a reporter who covered crime for a long time and
she kind of embedded with the the l A. P D,
which is another kind of controversial police department for sure.
Um And I talked to a researcher who kind of
reading that book spurred her to do research into this,
(11:48):
and if I remember her her research correctly, it's kind
of this interesting study. So they look at lawsuits of
basically police black police office or is alleging that their
police departments discriminated against them in hiring. And so there
were these federal lawsuits for that, but they really caused
these reckonings for these police departments regarding kind of all
(12:13):
racial issues, and they show that kind of once that
stuff happens, then you see stuff like now police start
responding to nine one nine one one calls from their
like black constituents more quickly, and then you see that,
like the attitude, the trust between the police and the
community gets a lot better. So anyway, the police blames
(12:36):
the community, of the community blames the police. But when
these things kind of forced police to start acting better,
the community notices and become more cooperative, that's great. And
so explain exactly what an algorithm is. An algorithm is
just a set of rules to do something right. So
(12:58):
it's it's you're trying to create a systematized thing to
solve some some problem. Um. I use the metaphor in
the show that like a recipe is essentially an algorithm.
So it's like you want to you want a pancake,
If you follow these steps correctly, you will get a pancake.
You know, pretty much of the time is essentially an algorithm,
(13:21):
but it just has like a lot more variables. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
And and so a lot of what we think about
now as algorithms are actually kind of like to embedded algorithms.
So when we talk about the things like the Google
algorithm or the Instagram algorithm or something like that, you know,
we're we're trying to make an algorithm not just to
(13:44):
display something to you, but but that kind of like
feeds back on itself, and you know, it's the algorithm
is trying to maximize you doing a thing. AI or
kind of like machine learning is another term for these
kind of algorithms that that change themselves depending on the
feedback that they're getting. All right, let's take a quick
(14:05):
break to analyze the data. Be right back, Welcome back
to Prodigy. Do you think that like algorithm has the
potential to change crime solving, because it seems like we're
it's like the first step towards the minority airport. You know,
just solving cold cases is incredibly hard, and so so
the algorithm can identify cold cases that might be connected,
(14:28):
but in terms of kind of what you do with
that information, and I think it's a little harder. Right,
So maybe you want to warn people in the victim profile, like, hey,
there might be a serial killer out here. I was
thinking like new evidence you know that that you could
add to the case. And yeah, yeah, yeah potentially. But
but then I think maybe another thing it could do
(14:49):
now is spur like these cases might be connected. Do
we have DNA on them that has been sitting there.
Let's analyze all the DNA so if the DNA can
prove the connection, and if that's the case, you know,
maybe spend all the time and resources to do the
kind of forensic genealogy analysis, which is really time consuming
(15:13):
and expensive. But in the case of a serial killer,
you know, like if they're still out there, um, like
you think you'll ever solve who the Zodiac was. I
mean the big question was is there kind of DNA
sitting somewhere that I think they tried to run the
DNA analysis on the stamps and it seems to have
come up negative. That was all kind of rumor mills
(15:36):
stuff because it's an open case. You can't get access
to those documents. Um well smart uh serial killers like Kauzinski,
don't they like plant red herrings like fake stuff? Yeah,
I think there was, Like you know, some of the
Zodiac conspiracy theories are like oh yeah he got someone
else or no, well that too, but that like, you know,
like he just took it. You know, it's like you
(15:59):
hear these stories like you got someone else to lick
the stamps or something, and it's like, well, I don't
think anyone really knew like like maybe DNA existed at
that point, like the double helix, but I don't think
anyone was talking about trying it to forensics at that
point or anything. Right, Yeah, So wow, that's so what's
going on with it now? Like, I mean, have people
have has things? Have they started integrating this stuff because
(16:21):
I know this case, I mean, the harder still alive.
I mean it's still yeah, And so so that's that's
kind of one of the things that spurred me. Like
when I heard this story, it's like, why isn't why
isn't this a bigger deal? Did you first search to
see that no one has done a podcast on it? Yeah?
It was one of those things are like, surely someone
has done this, and I'm still not exactly sure. You know,
(16:42):
I think it is. It is. He's a little bit
of a weird dude. It's a little bit of an
out Their idea doesn't seem like a now right with
big data and stuff like yeah, well, yeah, so it's
less of an out there idea than it was. Um,
you know, I think the police department, I think they
see it maybe as like know, like who is this guy,
Like what does he know about solving crime? And again,
(17:04):
it's not a magic bullet, and it's not an alternative
exactly exactly. And I think maybe some of the press
reports that it's gotten, you know, I kind of like
sensationalized it and then like people just don't We'll just
send drones to rest people with algorithms like no, it's
just like a tool to help them connect things when
(17:26):
there's a crap ton of data, right yeah, And and
so you know, and I think it's there's probably a
culture thing where you know, Hardgrove is writing these letters
to police departments talking about multi varied analysis and whatever whatever,
and he just sounds like some crank. And you know,
also people don't like to note like get new information.
They're like, I'm an expert on this, so I don't
(17:47):
want some random But I mean like we had the
same thing with like electronic medical records and like convincing
doctors to do that and like trying to get you know,
there's this drive to get Watson AI to kind of
help data mind stuff from people's patient records to try
to make connections in medicine. And I was thinking it
(18:09):
was like, so I can't fill my prescription three times
at different pharmacists. But they had to do that in
Florida too, right. But but you know, I think like
even a field like medicine where people are very like
educated and stuff like that, it's just everyone's kind of
set in their ways and they have their systems and
they know all of the potential problems for something like this.
(18:31):
And you know, I think one of the issues for
we we don't collect very good data in policing too,
and it's just like a lot of detectives, especially homicide detectives,
other parts of policing might be overfunded. I think there's
a lot of predatory policing stuff with like gangs and
drugs and stuff like that. Those are money makers for
(18:54):
police departments often because if you bust a drug dealer,
you can seize the the money that they have on
them and actually bring it into your police department, which
we need to get rid of. That sounds like an
incentive to well, and it's also incentives to expand those departments,
but not expand your your homicide department or your your
(19:16):
sexual assault um department. Potentially we could do all this
great stuff if we collected better data, put it into databases,
you know, just so detectives have that themselves to to
look at. But it's just, you know, you're asking someone
to fill out another form and they're not going to
(19:38):
see the benefit of doing it maybe until six months
down the line when the connected crime happens. So it's
just monetize it then basically, yeah, yeah, exactly, we need
to fund it specifically or figure out a way that
kind of that data automatically gets generated while they do
the thing they're already doing. I don't think it's going
to take off if you make them spend an extra
(20:01):
half an hour filling out a form or something like
one of those problems I mean with air table. I
definitely understand. Yeah, what was like some of the one
of the cool things that you learned about it, like
something that you would you know, hook somebody in that's
interested in listening. I mean, so one of the things
that i'd never really I hadn't thought that much about
is you know, I first came across this story reading
(20:24):
you know, the Wikipedia page, these articles about it. You know,
I went and read every newspaper article. A lot of
these articles. It's based on whatever few public documents there
are out there. So in this case, it was the
warrant for for the arrest of this guy who is
the kind of primary suspect in Africa's murder. And you know,
(20:46):
that's something that police are just trying to throw it
together as quickly as possible. So you know, it's like
there are parts of it that are ambiguously written that
then the reporters reading it misinterpreted and then they wrote
it up and it's it kind of turns into this
like game of telephone. And I'm not blaming the reporters,
I mean or the police. It's like everyone is just
(21:08):
doing their best to turn around this stuff. But but
then that kind of got ingrained in the lore and
you see it repeated a bunch of times. And then
in this case, it was this highly publicized case right
when it happens, so the judge put a gag order
on the case where people weren't allowed to talk about
it or weak documents or anything. Um. And actually I
(21:32):
think that gag order is still in place. UM, which
is kind of highly unusual. They did end up releasing
to me certain documents despite that gag order. But I
know I'm the first person to get my hands on this,
these documents because it was a big back and forth
about whether they could release anything and what they could
(21:55):
release and some city lawyer had to go through every
document and a dock stuff. Cool. So that's in later
on in the show. Yeah. Excited, Yeah, getting there, getting
there pretty soon. So it's been great. I think the
story zigs and zags in some unusual ways. You know.
I was really impressed by how you handled, you know,
speaking to the you know, survivors, Like that's a tough
(22:20):
thing to do. I'm sure, but I wanted to ask, like,
what what was What was it like going from like
behind the mic too in front of the mic? Yeah,
I mean so I've been in front of the mic before.
So when I was a reporter at UM at this
radio station in Kansas High Plaints Public Radio in in
Garden City, Kansas, I'd been I talked into a mic,
(22:44):
but there I feel like I was just kind of
this like you know, I guess named, but like faceless
reporter who was just giving you facts and stuff like that.
And because this is a big, big show. Yeah, and
and too ended up kind of including some of the
actual interviews with these people like you mentioned, um, victims,
(23:08):
family members, surviving family members, so kind of one of
the early interviews and um, when I was still figuring
out if I was going to do this show is
with this murder victim Africa Hardy her mother. Anyway, so
it is. Yeah, it's it feels vulnerable to just put
(23:28):
the moments where you're just talking to them versus this
narrated stuff that you've written and agonized over. And um,
it's weird because people always seem to respond better to
that organic stuff, like you know, like and you're like,
I spent all this time making this perfect and the
exactly and I think the battle with writing is trying
(23:48):
to make it sound organic while still conveying all the
things you needed to say. Especially there's big words and
like if I say it too fast, no one will
understand like all the words I'm saying it. Yeah, I
get that's tough. Definitely tough. Yeah, But so anyway, it's
it has been a little bit humbling because it's like
I've been interviewing all of these people, and you know,
(24:09):
they're in even less control because they're not even editing it.
They're just handing it off to me, and they trust me.
And I think putting myself in a little bit of
the limelight, I think I'm hoping it will make me
more sensitive going forward when I'm reaching out to people
and interviewing them. Um. Yeah, it's just a reminder of
(24:33):
how nerve wracking that is done about myself. That's not
easy at all. You've done a freaking amazing job. But yeah,
I'm really excited to listen to the rest of the show. Yeah, yeah,
thanks for talking me. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Thanks so
much to Ben key Brick. The next episode of My
Feet will be the first episode of Algorithm. I love
the show and I'm fully caught up. New episodes drop
(24:54):
on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to Prodigy. I really appreciate
the messages I get from you guys. I have a
bunch of new episodes coming on subjects like UFO, Stings,
Navy Seals, Money, Colts, and a bunch more. Prodigy was
creating in produce by me Loweberlante. The executive producer is
Tyler Klang. For more podcasts, my Heart Radio, visit the
(25:14):
Ihear Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Prodigy is a production of I Heart Radio. When I
tell people what I do for work, they say that's
really cool. How'd you get into it? And I tell
him the truth. I got lucky. I really need a
different job and knew somebody when they were hiring. I
didn't know much about audio when I first got started.
I came from a video background, but I didn't know
like what a compressor was, or e Q or how
(00:22):
to talk into a mic. My first month around the
office was a little overwhelming, but I started to get
to know some people. Um Tyler Klang was my executive
producer and just a top notch human being. The guys
from stuff they don't want you to know, we're like
celebrities to me. I was thrilled when they went out
of their way to talk to me. I fanned girls
(00:42):
over Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant and even got to
meet John Hodgman. Super nice dude. By the way. There
was one guy who was pretty quiet but really nice.
I think I never saw him once without a hat,
and I was personally offended to see him editing with
his laptops touch pad instead of a mouse. His name
is Ben Keybrick, Ben had more experienced than me, but
(01:04):
not that much. I mean, Tyller has like ten years
experience and it's produced tons of top ten shows. Josh
and Chuck have hosted somewhere around two thousand episodes of
Stuff You Should Know and done literally over a billion downloads.
When I first got to know Ben, he was on
the True crime slate and working on the hit show
Monster d C Sniper. It wasn't until much later that
(01:27):
I found out he actually pitched that show. Ben seems
to have a knack for this stuff. Months ago he
told me about a story he was working on, and
when I heard the premise, I knew it would be
a hit. It's already done over a million downloads and
charted in the top ten. The show is called Algorithm.
Here's the official description. When Africa Hardy was strangled in
(01:48):
two thousand fourteen, it seemed completely random, but it wasn't.
It was part of a pattern. Four years earlier, reporter
Thomas Hargrove had created an algorithm to detect serial killers
and flagged Gary, Indiana as the site of an unusual
number of strangulations. But when Hargo've reached out to Warren
local police, he was ignored until Africa Hardy was murdered
(02:11):
and those cold cases suddenly didn't look so cold. Algorithm
fallows the investigation into Africa's murder, exposing the warnings that
police ignored and in covering more than anyone expected. That
a serial killer was strangling women in Gary, Indiana could
have been stopped, and that Africa Hardy should be alive today.
(02:32):
This podcast will explore how technology can be used to
identify and track serial killers, and how an algorithm can
influence the way homicides are investigated all across the country.
My name is Lowell Berlante and this is Prodigy. Since
(02:55):
we're both vaccinated, I brought Ben into my home studio
to talk about his new hit show, Algorithm. The next
episode you'll see in my feed is the first episode,
so you have an easy way to listen. The seventh
episode drops today, so if you like the first one,
head over to the Algorithm show page linked in the
description and check out the rest. Well friends sent this
article about this journalist, Thomas Hargrove, who had created this
(03:17):
algorithm to try to detect serial killers from from FBI data.
So most FBI data they just give it at kind
of the the county level or the police hurt's fiction level,
and it's like there were this number of robberies this
or the percentage of them that we solved, and it's
kind of this big aggregate data. But they created this
(03:38):
thing called the Supplemental Homicide Report UM for researchers who
wanted to study homicide. And again they just thought it
was for kind of statistical analysis. But this journalist, Thomas Hargrove,
he's he's an interesting dude. He's the son of a
programmable calculator salesman, so I think he was introduced to
the idea of programming at a much earlier time period
(04:02):
and younger age than most people. He went to University
of Missouri, which one of the top journalism programs in
the country. UM. He went there as an undergrad and
it was there was this new movement starting called computer
assistant reporting. This is back when they're doing like punch
card programming kind of stuff. But the idea was you
(04:23):
could use computers to really crunch numbers and do these
kind of statistical analyzes on like government records and things
like that to try to detect trends and notice interesting
patterns that you just might not miss if you're kind
of just anecdotally looking at individual cases. So from that
he went on to be just like a crime reporter.
(04:45):
That was kind of like his cutting his teeth job
in journalism, and then his computer skills kind of got
in handy with doing political polls and he was actually,
um kind of one of the early people to do
that kind of like election night and analysis kind of stuff.
From there, he got a job as a national reporter
(05:07):
and he would just do these kind of like big
data driven stories, and for one of them, he had
to request this FBI data and they ended up just
sending him that supplemental homicide report and he's like, oh,
like individualized data on crimes, Like I didn't know this existed,
Like I didn't know this data set existed. And he
says that one of the first thoughts he had was,
(05:29):
I wonder if we can look at this data and
use that to somehow detect serial killers, to look for
patterns within this data. That was before the term serial
killer existed. I remember from listening, so like what you're
do you know approximately what y'r that was? I've left
out a beat of the story, which is um that
was so in the seventies, around the time of the
(05:49):
Atlanta child murders. That was back when he was the
crime reporter UM in Alabama at that time. Maybe they
were calling them like lust killers or something like that.
Serial killer at least wasn't widespread this time. As a
crime reporter, he learned about this thing called linkage blindness,
which is this idea that oftentimes cases get assigned even
(06:11):
if cases are connected. Right, so, the same person kills
two people in an identical way, even if it's completely identical,
the cases might just get assigned to different detectives. UM
or often will get assigned to different detectives because it's
a lot of work to investigate homicide. That's why people
have been comparing your show to mind Hunter, because yeah,
I guess that's like the same thing, but kind of
(06:33):
from the behavioral analysis versus that's a great ship. Appreciate it, UM. So, anyway,
he learned from that about this idea of linkage blindness,
that it's very hard for individual detectives to to connect
these cases. And so when he saw this individualized data
that the FBI had collected, he wondered, couldn't algorithm solve
(06:57):
that problem? In the trailer. Let's play that. Now, L
do one thing that you know everything about child, because
there's something that they're not telling you. If I knew
that this is going on, I would have went out
there and brought my child back home. When Africa, Hardy
(07:18):
was murdered in it seemed completely random, but it wasn't.
It was part of a pattern. Today, Indiana police say
that seven women found murdered over the last few days,
maybe victims of a serial killer. They weren't even looking
and seven women died. I at least knew that there
was a serial killer active in Gary. I was assigned
(07:41):
to do a really interesting story and I needed the
uniform crime report. Included on that CD was a file
I had never heard of. What it was was line
after line of individual murders. The first thought I had was,
could we teach a computer to identify connected cases to
(08:05):
find serial killings? From my Heart radio and Tenderfoot TV,
this is Algorithm. A podcast investigating a modern serial killer
and how he could have been stopped. The body some
of them found concealed and abandoned homes, had been there
for months. This story has the potential to change how
(08:27):
homicides are investigated. All across the country because he lone
of work. They didn't have time, and they still believe
that he has a trail of bodies from Texas all
the way to Gary, Indiana. I will think, you know
how many women he's actually killed. I think the Gary
Police Department should be looking at some of those old cases.
(08:52):
They still may have a killer out there. This is Algorithm,
a new podcast from iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Listen
and subscribe on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Why have
the like many crimes been not been solved that I
would assume that it's harder to get away with crime
(09:13):
now than it was. Yeah, I don't know fifty years ago.
There's a couple of theories. So so one is maybe
so this is clearance rates for one, So it doesn't
mean people have actually been convicted of the crime. It
could be that they were just arrested but then weren't
actually convicted. So there's different ways of measuring clearance. But
I think that stat is clearance to arrest. And so
(09:35):
it's possible that you know, in the sixties or something,
these kind of good old boy policemen were just arresting
some black guy who didn't actually commit the crime and
either um, you know, ending up incarcerating him for a
crime he didn't do, or letting him go later or
something like that. It's probably part of what's going on.
(09:58):
Another idea is that we've gotten better at um, kind
of detecting domestic violence early on and kind of intervening,
so we take stuff more seriously when it's just like
physical abuse. So as a result of that, there's we
think that now there's less kind of um, spousal or
domestic homicides. So domestic homicides are very easy to solve
(10:22):
because preventing them means suspect Yeah exactly. The ones that
do get happen are harder to solve. Yeah, we're getting
rid of the cases that are easiest to solve, and
we're left with more of the kind of stranger murders
that are hard to solve. Um. You know. There there's
ideas too that then there's an increase in gang homicides
those are particularly hard to solve. Um. And then you know,
(10:46):
I think some people think that there's something going on
to you with people being less willing to talk to
the police. Um and that that when people aren't cooperating
with the police, that makes things hard to sell all.
So I think there's this kind of cyclical problem that
then when police have the attitude that they think people
(11:06):
aren't going to talk to them, then they don't do
the basic detective work to ask people to talk to them.
And then when they're not doing the detective work, then
people trust the police less. So there's a researcher I
talked to who is kind of this is the people
not talking to the police. It's it's laid out in
this book called Ghetto Side. I think it's a badly
(11:28):
named book, but a good book by this um L
a reporter who covered crime for a long time and
she kind of embedded with the the l A. P D,
which is another kind of controversial police department for sure.
Um And I talked to a researcher who kind of
reading that book spurred her to do research into this,
(11:48):
and if I remember her her research correctly, it's kind
of this interesting study. So they look at lawsuits of
basically police black police office or is alleging that their
police departments discriminated against them in hiring. And so there
were these federal lawsuits for that, but they really caused
these reckonings for these police departments regarding kind of all
(12:13):
racial issues, and they show that kind of once that
stuff happens, then you see stuff like now police start
responding to nine one nine one one calls from their
like black constituents more quickly, and then you see that,
like the attitude, the trust between the police and the
community gets a lot better. So anyway, the police blames
(12:36):
the community, of the community blames the police. But when
these things kind of forced police to start acting better,
the community notices and become more cooperative, that's great. And
so explain exactly what an algorithm is. An algorithm is
just a set of rules to do something right. So
(12:58):
it's it's you're trying to create a systematized thing to
solve some some problem. Um. I use the metaphor in
the show that like a recipe is essentially an algorithm.
So it's like you want to you want a pancake,
If you follow these steps correctly, you will get a pancake.
You know, pretty much of the time is essentially an algorithm,
(13:21):
but it just has like a lot more variables. Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
And and so a lot of what we think about
now as algorithms are actually kind of like to embedded algorithms.
So when we talk about the things like the Google
algorithm or the Instagram algorithm or something like that, you know,
we're we're trying to make an algorithm not just to
(13:44):
display something to you, but but that kind of like
feeds back on itself, and you know, it's the algorithm
is trying to maximize you doing a thing. AI or
kind of like machine learning is another term for these
kind of algorithms that that change themselves depending on the
feedback that they're getting. All right, let's take a quick
(14:05):
break to analyze the data. Be right back, Welcome back
to Prodigy. Do you think that like algorithm has the
potential to change crime solving, because it seems like we're
it's like the first step towards the minority airport. You know,
just solving cold cases is incredibly hard, and so so
the algorithm can identify cold cases that might be connected,
(14:28):
but in terms of kind of what you do with
that information, and I think it's a little harder. Right,
So maybe you want to warn people in the victim profile, like, hey,
there might be a serial killer out here. I was
thinking like new evidence you know that that you could
add to the case. And yeah, yeah, yeah potentially. But
but then I think maybe another thing it could do
(14:49):
now is spur like these cases might be connected. Do
we have DNA on them that has been sitting there.
Let's analyze all the DNA so if the DNA can
prove the connection, and if that's the case, you know,
maybe spend all the time and resources to do the
kind of forensic genealogy analysis, which is really time consuming
(15:13):
and expensive. But in the case of a serial killer,
you know, like if they're still out there, um, like
you think you'll ever solve who the Zodiac was. I
mean the big question was is there kind of DNA
sitting somewhere that I think they tried to run the
DNA analysis on the stamps and it seems to have
come up negative. That was all kind of rumor mills
(15:36):
stuff because it's an open case. You can't get access
to those documents. Um well smart uh serial killers like Kauzinski,
don't they like plant red herrings like fake stuff? Yeah,
I think there was, Like you know, some of the
Zodiac conspiracy theories are like oh yeah he got someone
else or no, well that too, but that like, you know,
like he just took it. You know, it's like you
(15:59):
hear these stories like you got someone else to lick
the stamps or something, and it's like, well, I don't
think anyone really knew like like maybe DNA existed at
that point, like the double helix, but I don't think
anyone was talking about trying it to forensics at that
point or anything. Right, Yeah, So wow, that's so what's
going on with it now? Like, I mean, have people
have has things? Have they started integrating this stuff because
(16:21):
I know this case, I mean, the harder still alive.
I mean it's still yeah, And so so that's that's
kind of one of the things that spurred me. Like
when I heard this story, it's like, why isn't why
isn't this a bigger deal? Did you first search to
see that no one has done a podcast on it? Yeah?
It was one of those things are like, surely someone
has done this, and I'm still not exactly sure. You know,
(16:42):
I think it is. It is. He's a little bit
of a weird dude. It's a little bit of an
out Their idea doesn't seem like a now right with
big data and stuff like yeah, well, yeah, so it's
less of an out there idea than it was. Um,
you know, I think the police department, I think they
see it maybe as like know, like who is this guy,
Like what does he know about solving crime? And again,
(17:04):
it's not a magic bullet, and it's not an alternative
exactly exactly. And I think maybe some of the press
reports that it's gotten, you know, I kind of like
sensationalized it and then like people just don't We'll just
send drones to rest people with algorithms like no, it's
just like a tool to help them connect things when
(17:26):
there's a crap ton of data, right yeah, And and
so you know, and I think it's there's probably a
culture thing where you know, Hardgrove is writing these letters
to police departments talking about multi varied analysis and whatever whatever,
and he just sounds like some crank. And you know,
also people don't like to note like get new information.
They're like, I'm an expert on this, so I don't
(17:47):
want some random But I mean like we had the
same thing with like electronic medical records and like convincing
doctors to do that and like trying to get you know,
there's this drive to get Watson AI to kind of
help data mind stuff from people's patient records to try
to make connections in medicine. And I was thinking it
(18:09):
was like, so I can't fill my prescription three times
at different pharmacists. But they had to do that in
Florida too, right. But but you know, I think like
even a field like medicine where people are very like
educated and stuff like that, it's just everyone's kind of
set in their ways and they have their systems and
they know all of the potential problems for something like this.
(18:31):
And you know, I think one of the issues for
we we don't collect very good data in policing too,
and it's just like a lot of detectives, especially homicide detectives,
other parts of policing might be overfunded. I think there's
a lot of predatory policing stuff with like gangs and
drugs and stuff like that. Those are money makers for
(18:54):
police departments often because if you bust a drug dealer,
you can seize the the money that they have on
them and actually bring it into your police department, which
we need to get rid of. That sounds like an
incentive to well, and it's also incentives to expand those departments,
but not expand your your homicide department or your your
(19:16):
sexual assault um department. Potentially we could do all this
great stuff if we collected better data, put it into databases,
you know, just so detectives have that themselves to to
look at. But it's just, you know, you're asking someone
to fill out another form and they're not going to
(19:38):
see the benefit of doing it maybe until six months
down the line when the connected crime happens. So it's
just monetize it then basically, yeah, yeah, exactly, we need
to fund it specifically or figure out a way that
kind of that data automatically gets generated while they do
the thing they're already doing. I don't think it's going
to take off if you make them spend an extra
(20:01):
half an hour filling out a form or something like
one of those problems I mean with air table. I
definitely understand. Yeah, what was like some of the one
of the cool things that you learned about it, like
something that you would you know, hook somebody in that's
interested in listening. I mean, so one of the things
that i'd never really I hadn't thought that much about
is you know, I first came across this story reading
(20:24):
you know, the Wikipedia page, these articles about it. You know,
I went and read every newspaper article. A lot of
these articles. It's based on whatever few public documents there
are out there. So in this case, it was the
warrant for for the arrest of this guy who is
the kind of primary suspect in Africa's murder. And you know,
(20:46):
that's something that police are just trying to throw it
together as quickly as possible. So you know, it's like
there are parts of it that are ambiguously written that
then the reporters reading it misinterpreted and then they wrote
it up and it's it kind of turns into this
like game of telephone. And I'm not blaming the reporters,
I mean or the police. It's like everyone is just
(21:08):
doing their best to turn around this stuff. But but
then that kind of got ingrained in the lore and
you see it repeated a bunch of times. And then
in this case, it was this highly publicized case right
when it happens, so the judge put a gag order
on the case where people weren't allowed to talk about
it or weak documents or anything. Um. And actually I
(21:32):
think that gag order is still in place. UM, which
is kind of highly unusual. They did end up releasing
to me certain documents despite that gag order. But I
know I'm the first person to get my hands on this,
these documents because it was a big back and forth
about whether they could release anything and what they could
(21:55):
release and some city lawyer had to go through every
document and a dock stuff. Cool. So that's in later
on in the show. Yeah. Excited, Yeah, getting there, getting
there pretty soon. So it's been great. I think the
story zigs and zags in some unusual ways. You know.
I was really impressed by how you handled, you know,
speaking to the you know, survivors, Like that's a tough
(22:20):
thing to do. I'm sure, but I wanted to ask, like,
what what was What was it like going from like
behind the mic too in front of the mic? Yeah,
I mean so I've been in front of the mic before.
So when I was a reporter at UM at this
radio station in Kansas High Plaints Public Radio in in
Garden City, Kansas, I'd been I talked into a mic,
(22:44):
but there I feel like I was just kind of
this like you know, I guess named, but like faceless
reporter who was just giving you facts and stuff like that.
And because this is a big, big show. Yeah, and
and too ended up kind of including some of the
actual interviews with these people like you mentioned, um, victims,
(23:08):
family members, surviving family members, so kind of one of
the early interviews and um, when I was still figuring
out if I was going to do this show is
with this murder victim Africa Hardy her mother. Anyway, so
it is. Yeah, it's it feels vulnerable to just put
(23:28):
the moments where you're just talking to them versus this
narrated stuff that you've written and agonized over. And um,
it's weird because people always seem to respond better to
that organic stuff, like you know, like and you're like,
I spent all this time making this perfect and the
exactly and I think the battle with writing is trying
(23:48):
to make it sound organic while still conveying all the
things you needed to say. Especially there's big words and
like if I say it too fast, no one will
understand like all the words I'm saying it. Yeah, I
get that's tough. Definitely tough. Yeah, But so anyway, it's
it has been a little bit humbling because it's like
I've been interviewing all of these people, and you know,
(24:09):
they're in even less control because they're not even editing it.
They're just handing it off to me, and they trust me.
And I think putting myself in a little bit of
the limelight, I think I'm hoping it will make me
more sensitive going forward when I'm reaching out to people
and interviewing them. Um. Yeah, it's just a reminder of
(24:33):
how nerve wracking that is done about myself. That's not
easy at all. You've done a freaking amazing job. But yeah,
I'm really excited to listen to the rest of the show. Yeah, yeah,
thanks for talking me. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Thanks so
much to Ben key Brick. The next episode of My
Feet will be the first episode of Algorithm. I love
the show and I'm fully caught up. New episodes drop
(24:54):
on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to Prodigy. I really appreciate
the messages I get from you guys. I have a
bunch of new episodes coming on subjects like UFO, Stings,
Navy Seals, Money, Colts, and a bunch more. Prodigy was
creating in produce by me Loweberlante. The executive producer is
Tyler Klang. For more podcasts, my Heart Radio, visit the
(25:14):
Ihear Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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