Marc Smerling | The Jinx Moment, True Crime and Music Videos - Talking to Death with Payne Lindsey

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (00:06):
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
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Speaker 3 (00:15):
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Speaker 1 (00:23):
Welcome back. You planned that all week. You were way
too excited about doing that.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
I just thought of doing it.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Okay, well it's pretty original. Welcome back to Talking to Death.
I'm Payne Lindsay. This is my annoying friend Mike Rooney.
It's been a pretty busy week for kind of both
of us. I spend a lot of my time preparing
for my next trip to Alaska. For those of you
who don't know, I have a true crime podcast called
Up and Vanished that is in its fourth season. It's

(00:55):
coming out in January. And so I'm deep into investigating
a missing person's case right now. And I'll tell you
the one thing that I really kind of underestimated by
investigating a case in Alaska is the absolute logistical nightmare
of it all. Alaska is so far away from Atlanta,

(01:17):
ridiculously far. I was checking the flights this week, and
the fastest flight there is to get to Anchorage is
ten hours. You can literally get to London from Atlanta
and probably six It's too big of a state because
even when you get there, you're probably another two hour
flight from the next place you actually have to be.
You could easily split Alaska into thirty different states and

(01:40):
it wouldn't matter at all.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I think it's just a little too big for US.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
I mean, it's basically Russia. Like it. Seriously, it's very
close to Russia.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
I mean the parts that we're going to, which I'm
not going to divulge all the details right now because
we're still doing it, but we're very far north up there.
You can we're literally closer to Russia than we are
to anything else in the US. But yeah, I've just
been kind of, you know, trying to plan out the trip,
and the logistics are always kind of a nightmare, you know,
when you get there to concharter planes or you're doing
rental cars. And over the past few years, when it

(02:11):
comes to rental cars, I've been a fan of using
this app called Turo. It's basically the Airbnb for renting cars.
It's just more convenient, they have cooler vehicles, it's always
usually cheaper, and sometimes they'll even drop it off at
your doorstep. So I've used the Touro app for a

(02:34):
couple of years, probably almost twenty different rentals, five stars.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
You know, I have been a pretty good customer.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
But I remembered just yesterday I was trying to use
the Touro app again that actually I've been banned from Touro.
Usually nine times out of ten. When someone gets banned
from an app, they probably deserved it. They probably did
something messed up or broke the rules or tried to
cheat the system.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Usually, right, Well, it's not usually a lifetime ban, right.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah, this is a light I have a lifetime lifetime
ban from the Touro app. Let me tell you this
quick little story here. I've been a great customer. A
few months ago, I was in Providence, Rhode Island. Never
been there before. Was with one of our producers, Eric,
and we traveled there to do one interview. Got there
late at night. Eric picked up the car from the airport.

(03:25):
We slept at this hotel, woke up in the morning,
just drove a half hour outside of town. Then lunch
came around. We met at this restaurant by the airport,
dropped the car back off to the guy.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
He was even like, how'd you enjoy the car? Was?
You know? Was it nice?

Speaker 1 (03:39):
And it was like a BMW Sedan. I was like, yeah,
it's pretty comfortable. He's like, hey, well, if you're ever
in Providence again, let me know because I have other vehicles. Well,
I guess I made the mistake of just admitting to
him that I might not ever be here again. I
said something along the lines of, h I mean, who
knows of all being Providence again.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
But we'll see, I'll let you know.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
And in hindsight, I'm like, did I just tipped this
guy off that I'm maybe never coming to Providence again?

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Because here's what happened.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
I get home that night and I have an email
from Touro customer support. I can no longer log into
the app, and it says I've been permanently banned from
the app because I smoked in the vehicle. And I
was like, Okay, this guy's got it confused. Maybe it's
a different car, one of his other cars that he

(04:25):
got that day, and he's confusing me. This should be
easy to clear up. Then I scroll further down, and
I see all these different pictures he took that are
definitely the car we had the same car, and there's
ash everywhere in the seats, and this smoking gun of
a blue lighter in the passenger seat, and I was like,
holy shit, this guy is setting me up. This sounds unbelievable.

(04:50):
So clearly Turo did not believe me when I said
he's lying. But here's what he got out of this, right,
here's why I was a follows plan on his part.
I paid him a three hundred dollars fine. I'm permanently banned.
I cannot message him anymore. I can barely get through
to Touro, and when I do, they clearly don't believe
me when I say, Hey, this guy's making this up

(05:11):
and he staged these photos.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
You were framed.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
I was framed.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
And so I'm not even mad at them for not
believing me, but a part of me is just so
annoyed that he got away with this. So, Turo, if
you're listening, just know that there's a guy out there
who will probably do this again, if he's not already,
And if you've banned him or something, reach back out
to me and unlock my account because I liked using it.

(05:37):
But anyways, I got framed for smoking cigarettes in a
rental car. And I'm talking about it was a lot
of ash. It was not to be confused with anything else.
It wasn't dust. This guy seriously littered his car with
some sort of substance that looked like cigarette ash. I

(05:58):
don't know, just telling you that truth. You don't have
to believe me, because Toro doesn't either. Anyways, I just
was thinking about that last night and I got annoyed,
and I figured I would tell that story because Toro
won't listen anymore.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
So maybe you guys can listen to me. Don't message
them or anything, I mean unless you work there or something.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
Just start a petition. Yeah, change that org.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah, this is a big deal, guys. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
So preparing for Alaska, it's gonna be freezing cold.

Speaker 4 (06:25):
Did you get your booties? My booties, your booty, your
snow booties?

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Oh no, I definitely need to go clothes shopping for
some serious jackets. I mean, I think it's said it
was going to be thirteen degrees. That's not some play
around shit. That is some If you don't have the
right gear and you're outside for too long, you might
get hyperthermia kind of situation. So let's be sure to

(06:51):
overpack the gloves and the jackets.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I know I'm gonna try to do that.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Today's guest is one of my personal heroes, and I
mean in all seriousness. He's one of my biggest inspirations
when it comes to storytelling as a whole. He's a
very successful documentary filmmaker and a super talented cinematographer, and
he's produced, in my opinion, the best true crime documentary
series of all time, hands down. His name is Mark

(07:18):
Smirling in the series I'm talking about is called The
Jinx on HBO. If for whatever reason you've not seen this,
which that's you need to fix that, go watch.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
It right now. The Jinks on HBO.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
I'm going to give you the spoiler alert warning now
because we dive deep into what happens in this docu series.
If you haven't seen it, it will get spoiled for you.
In twenty fifteen, he released a true crime docu series
called The Jinks, and in my opinion, it's probably the
best true crime doc made to date, and it is

(07:51):
really what even inspired me to start telling these kinds
of stories.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
In the first place.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
So if you've seen the jinks, this interview is going
to be very interesting. If you haven't, I'll give you
a little log line here synopsis on what happens in
the dock. If you want to watch it for yourself, just
pause and go check it out on HBO.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
It'll be worth it.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
For years, Mark Smirling followed this guy around named Robert Durst.
Robert Durst was this old multimillionaire guy who inherited this
money from his dad in this real estate business in
New York City, and he became the main suspect in
a series of unsolved murders and it didn't look very
good for him.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
And Mark Smirling.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
And his directing partner Andrew Jureki followed this guy around
for years, asking him questions about these murders. And here
comes the big spoiler. If you don't know already, at
the very end of this documentary, something magical happens. Once
they've cut the interview and it's over, he's still wearing
this wireless lavalier mic Robert Durst is and he goes

(08:49):
to the bathroom and he starts talking to himself, and
he starts saying things that essentially incriminate him basically admitting
that he killed these people. It's gone down infamously now
as the Jinx moment, and if you're a true crime storyteller,
everyone is after their JINX moment.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Right.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
What's that magical ending that ties this whole story up
in a bow? How do we catch the bad guy?
Mark Smirling really did this? And it is absolutely mind
blowing to see. We dive deep into that today and
we go way behind the scenes on what it was
really like, how he framed stories, his podcasting career, his

(09:31):
career as a filmmaker. I really do look up to him,
and the way that he crafts a story to me
is so admirable. The guy is a wealth of knowledge
and on top of that, just a great human being.
I love his dry wit, which you'll see, and I
like giving him shit sometimes because he's twice my age.
I'll call him Dad or something weird, and I know

(09:53):
he doesn't think it's that funny because he also has
a son and he's like, Dude, that's kind of weird,
and I'm like, why Dad, shut up, Dad, And I
could tell he gets annoyed by it. So it makes
me want to keep doing it Dad, But yeah, I
love this guy. It's a hilarious interview and if you
haven't seen The Jinks, please go watch it because this
is about to be really badass. So, without further ado,

(10:15):
here's episode four of Talking to Death with my good
friend Mark Smirling. You have an amazing body of work,

(10:39):
and you've done the Jinks, and you have all these
podcasts and documentaries all over the place, true crime stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Don't you think you're a little fucked up in the head.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
But no, but seriously, is there not some sort of
bizarre connection and you probably put it in a more
nuanced way than I could. Is there a fine line
between this guy and this guy?

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Well? I think that crime sort of amplifies drama, mystery.
It certainly amplifies a person's personality. So everything that we
expect out of life that are like, you know, emotions
and stuff that drives story are amplified in the world

(11:23):
of crime. So for me, it was always like, this
is crazy. It's stranger than fiction.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, it's real life and different.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know how many times
you've been in this position. I'm sure you have, But
I remember thinking, while making Capturing the Freedman's just how
insane that story was and how could these people have
manufactured this witch hunt and created this world in this
suburban town outside of New York City which is a

(11:53):
very wealthy town and persecute this young man And I was, like,
it happened. Yeah, So then when you start digging at it,
you start to actually see how it happens, you know,
because you know, the one thing you don't want to
be is the person doing the Wikipedia page, you know version,
you know the ABC's of it. You do want to

(12:16):
kind of get to some sort of deeper truth about
these things.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
And why do you feel that way?

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Because I want to know. I want to know why
these things are. You want to I want to know
why these things happen.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
You think you tell better stories that way?

Speaker 3 (12:27):
Oh yeah, Yeah, it's easy to tell crime story. It's
hard to tell crime story that makes somebody feel something right,
And one of the things I'd like the people to feel,
and I don't always get the opportunity in all crime
stories is humor, irony being the sort of overriding factor in.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
A lot more of an absurdity thing.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the irony of Jim trafficking you know,
and the sort of absurdity of it.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
You know, I think some people there they wouldn't be
able to handle being this deep and true crime stories
all the time, and from a creative standpoint and talking
to the actual victims and you know, chasing down the
bad guy.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
What does that do? How do you deal with that?
I guess, but I don't.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
I don't do. I've only done one murder story, the Jinks,
you know, and.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
I actually pretty close, so I mean, right, no, there have.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
All been like capturing Threedman's was.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
No, I mean like in the Jinks you got pretty close.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
Yeah yeah, the Jinks was. But you know, I hate
to say this, but i'd written the movie for all
good things, yeah, and I was. I kind of went
kicking and screaming into making the Jinks because you know
the story. Bob reached out. Yeah, because he you know,
anybody's going to be played by such a handsome actor, right,
you know, is going to reach out.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
I didn't help himself, couldn't help himself.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
And and he reached out, and he wanted to do
this interview. And I went to meet him at at
the and it's a hotel in Beverly Hills. And we
got through that meeting and Andrew. Shit came a little later,
and my entire mission was to talk Andrew out of
making another doc about this guy and to figure out

(14:15):
a way to do this interview and give it over
to Dateline or someone like that. We cut together a
twelve minute, you know, sort of sizzle of it, and
we showed it to Diane Sawyer and we were like,
I'm going to make a great Dateline. She looked at it,
she goes, no, no, no, this is much bigger than Dayline.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
I was like, oh.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Darn, you know, it's hard to live in that world.
You live in that world much more than I do.
Because after that, I did you know? I did Crime Down.
It was about a bunch of wise guys and they're hilarious.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
They are pretty pretty damp playing, you know.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
And then I did you know? I did other things
about organized crime corruption, you know, the biggest embezzlement in
US history. But I haven't done another murder show since then.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
And I've been thinking, or is that, yeah, does it
come at a cost? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
It's one of those stories are very they I mean,
if you are as an EmPATH.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
For the lay person. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 (15:14):
I mean you have to feel when you meet somebody
like a Jerry tilling ass who's one of the more
violent gangsters in crime Town, you have to you have
to kind of find a way into that person so
that you can love them because you're going to be
telling their story and there's a reason that they're the
way they are.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Find reason to love them, yes.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Because there's a reason the way that they are the
way they are, and that's your job to figure that out,
you know. And if you listen to Crimetown, you follow
Jerry's story, you figure it.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Out, you know, you get to the bottom of that.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah, you figure out that he was you know, abused
as a child, and that he had these brothers and
when it was a drug add.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Why all this stuff happening?

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah, right right. When you do that on a story,
it's it's just much more heart wrenching, you know. It's
like you know, you get into especially with missing, missing
and murdered women like the McCormick family, it was I
just it was heart wrenching to see what that that
family had to live with after they you know, Kathy disappeared.

(16:17):
It was terrible, you know, it dictated everybody in the
families for two generations their life in some terrible subterrane
any way, So I was like, I don't want to
do that again right now?

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, you told me. I mean, I
want to say, it's the first time I talked to
you in like an official capacity. It was on up
in Vaners season one. You told me, I think you
said these stories never leave you, right, And I asked

(16:48):
you to expand on that, and you basically said that
you know you're doing this now, but these people will
be in your life forever. Yeah, And I mean it
couldn't be more true. But you know, is that when
did you When did you learn that? I guess, I mean.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
I learned that on capturing the Friedman's. You know, I still,
you know, once in a while, get get together with
Jesse Friedman, you know. I mean, after capturing the Freedman's,
Andrew and I did a four to forty motion for
him to try to get his case slipped at again,
which was a disaster at some level, but you know,
we did our best, and then you know, we you know,

(17:27):
you have to sit by and kind of watch that
not happen, knowing that what's really motivating it not happening
is politics and closed mindedness and not necessarily the truth.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
And you can't physically do it yourself, right, I mean.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
You can't do it.

Speaker 1 (17:41):
You're you're you can, you can come up agains, but
you cannot be the person to do it.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
You can't make it happen, right, Judge's going to make
that happen. Yeah, So we got close, but we didn't
get there. So, you know, you go down, you know,
you get into these relationships to go on forever. I mean,
I have I have a lot of law enforcement contacts,
and I have a lot of organized crime contacts who
I'm actually friends with, and you know, they're all you know,

(18:10):
they're all retired now or somewhat retired, but you know,
I go and visit him down in Florida and I
hang out with them. Nice. They tell great stories because
that's what you learn in prison storytelling. Oh yeah, because
storytelling in prison is.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
Like, among other things, probably yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
But storytelling in prison is like it's a way to
kind of make money.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Really.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah. You can trade stories for cigarettes. Cigarettes are actual money, Yeah,
that's right, cold cash. Yeah, So you can trade. And
there's one of the guys in who told me that.
It was Anthony Fury and Brian. Anthony Fury was in
crime Town. He was just out of prison when we
started making that, and he was a incredible storyteller and

(18:59):
he would tell He would sit there in the prison
yard and people, the young guys would come around, this
old wise guy, and he would tell these outrageous stories
and they were outrageous. I don't remember it, but he
was the guy who, you know, got a bunch of
guys together with machine guns and tried to take down
armored cars. She's kind of like heat.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, some big boys stuff. He ain't playing around, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
And he did. I think he spent thirty eight years
in prison of his life.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
I mean, that's one place I never want to go, Yeah,
is a prison cell. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
When you're in that edit mode, do you ever get
to that point where you go to sleep or something
and it's still rattling around in your brain where it's
just like it might be a SoundBite loop or a
musical cue whatever, and it's like it's just sort of
propelling you through the day.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, apart from the panic attacks of knowing what you're
going to do to make it great?

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Do you rely on the panic attacks now the job?
But I've learned that's not Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Yeah, what I've learned is it. And it usually comes
when you're talking about when you're in bed at night
and you're like thinking about something else and then it
just sort of comes.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
I mean trying to figure out figure allus to your
creative problem here.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Yeah, your storytelling problem.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, because if you try to force it never comes.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
And you you always try for a minute and then
you're like, god, yeah, it comes in a dumb.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
Time, And that's anxiety provoking. It is because you really
want to get to the end of the story of
making your story as quickly as.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
He didn't know this, So I can do all these
other things.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
And so I can sleep tonight and I don't have
to think that I'm not going to be.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Able to do this, you know, So I get some
damn sleep around here, right.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
But then you'll be like, it's weird. It's like it's
always happens when I'm not thinking about it, and then
all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, that's what I
can do, you know, I can I can go and
take this and move it up in the story and
it'll it'll give some momentum to this person that I'm
telling this story about, and I start to see it
more clearly.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
It's like the shower moment. I have those shower moments
where it'll be actually in the shower and I'm like, oh, oh, there,
I got something that that was the thing I was
looking for last week.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yeah, and it just sets it all in motion. Now.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
The weird thing about it is, after doing it for
so long, I don't necessarily feel like, oh, every time
it's just going to show up. I still have the
anxiety that moment I'm sitting in one time, I'm going
to go dry here, you know what I mean, Like,
I do you run out of cool ideas? I actually
did go dry once. It was directing a music video

(21:27):
for an artist we will not mention oh God, but
it was one of those jobs I should never have taken.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
And so what happened then?

Speaker 3 (21:35):
Well, I wrote a treatment I didn't believe in and
I didn't know how it was going to accomplish because
it was not the world I live in.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Why'd you do that?

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Money? Okay, Money's a big factor.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
You were being overly ambitious or I was.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
I needed to keep my business open. I needed to
make money for the company. I needed to keep things
rolling forward. And you know, I'm not you know, I
got talked into what I was. I was probably twenty
six years old, twenty seven years old, and I remember
that was the worst night of my life. I remember
the night before the shoot, I was literally vomiting.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
It's like, you're in college. You haven't studied for the
test yet or something. Yeah, and You're like, why did
I do this to myself? I'm so stupid, I'm about
to ruin everything exactly, and so what did you do?

Speaker 2 (22:23):
You just bombed or what?

Speaker 3 (22:24):
No? I powered through and it was a disaster. Why
because I didn't really know how to deal with the
subject matter, which I can't. I can't throw this, you know.
I mean I couldn't. Yeah, I couldn't get my head
or it didn't come. Let's just but it didn't come
in the middle of the night like you usually got. Yeah,
you know, so you know, I just didn't know how
to deal with it. And but I powered through the

(22:45):
shoot and I put the cut together. I was like,
oh man, And then I felt terrible because I really
liked the artist on personal level.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
What's huh? What it was a girl, I'll tell you
that much. Okay.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
Anyway, so that was that was an eye opener. I
sort of learned in that moment to turn down work.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
Okay, So what'd you learn besides just turning down work
about yourself?

Speaker 3 (23:10):
That I'm not going to be able to figure everything out.
You know that there's going to be stories that I'm
more inclined to figure out. There's a core of who
you are as a person, and that comes from you know, childhood.
Really yeah, And I think in a lot of really
good storytellers, they're trying to answer the questions of their
formative years. Whether those are questions or you know, on

(23:33):
the battlefields of Vietnam, or those questions are in the
Civil War, doesn't really matter. The questions are all the same.
So for me, you know, getting so involved in crime,
it was something I was thinking about when I was a.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
Kid, committing crimes exactly.

Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, can I get away with it? How much can
I get away with? You know, where would I fence?

Speaker 1 (23:53):
I get in trouble? See you you were obsessed with
crimes as a kid.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
I was.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Well. Back when I was a kid, we had books.
I don't know if you've ever seen one of these
but a long time. Yeah, so they we we didn't
have like there were three. There was ABC, CBS, NBC,
and PBS, okay, you know, and we had local WRTV
Channel eleven and then Channel five. There's a couple other ones,
but not a lot. Yeah, and you know, it was
a big deal when your TV show came on, right

(24:20):
and you would like everybody would get up in dad's
bed and mom's bed and you sit there and you
watch you know, Banichik, you know. So and I always
love those shows. But why I love those shows is
I was reading Dashel Hammett, Jim Thompson, I was reading
all those noir detective stories. Then I got into when
I read Capodi, you know, I got into the true

(24:44):
crime stuff, you know, which that book is incredible. I've
read that and you know, and you know, I just
started reading vraciously about crime stories, whether it was non
fiction or fiction.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
So you had this all to stacking up in your
brain as a.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Kid, And yeah, I always wanted to do it. So
that's why I went to newspapers.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
But do you want to do it from a fictional standpoint,
like write a story?

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Now? I was always a nonfiction guy.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
You wanted to go pook around other real crimes.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, stranger than fiction.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Right, All these years after you first started doing true
crime stories, do you have any feelings about how big
the genre of it is now in terms of everything
that's out there.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
It wasn't always like the No.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
There were there were very good writers who are working
in it, and they were usually coming out of newspapers,
you know, and out of journalism, and some were making
it up, like Thomas Perry. But I think it was
probably a newspaper guy first. But then all of a sudden,
I guess I hated you know, the Jinks came out.
The Jinks sort of reset the uh. I didn't nobody

(25:51):
could have guessed. I mean, I knew it was good.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
You know.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
The term I hear the most in the producing side
of this content.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
Is we want to get the Jinks moment?

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, I bet you even want to
get the Jinx moments sometimes, right.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
I'm not so. I think if you get it once
in a lifetime, you should be very happy.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
You want I'm not already have my CREDI that I
think I'm going to get another one.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
I'd just rather, you know, lean into the storytelling and try.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
To mean, do you feel like though outside of the
luck of it all right, because sometimes you cannot.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
I don't know if it was entirely lucky.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Well, that's what I'm getting that.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
I mean, do you feel like it's more of a
culmination of all the decisions that were made to massage
it into the possibility of happening, right, or how do
you view it?

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Well, I think it just takes time. It's physics. It
takes time and pressure. You know, it's work, work, building
the relationship with the sources, for the people you're interviewing
and the people surrounding the cases and getting closer and closer,
gaining their trust, you know. And I'm not just talking

(26:58):
about Bob right, because obviously that happened, but I'm talking
about on the law enforcement side too, having you know this,
I'm not saying this is what happened in the jinks,
but having a cop come in with the entire case file,
put it on the desk and say I'm not supposed
to be showing you this, but I'm going to go
get a lunch with my buddy. I'll be back in
an hour. And you get to kind of thumb through

(27:19):
everything and actually see things that people have not seen before,
so that when you see other things, you recognize what
they are immediately. You know, that takes work. You know,
that letter that we found that was, you know, sort
of the smoking gun for the Susan Berman murder that
you know, had her address written on top, just like

(27:41):
the kudaver note that.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
We sap for me what that meant. In that moment.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Susan Berman was murdered, someone sent a letter to the
Beverly Hills Police basically saying just with one word cadaver.
And they had an envelope and a letter inside. And
then you know, a lot of people have never seen that.
Of fact, there are people in law enforcement who had
worked on the prosecution team in White Planes for Bob
and couldn't describe that letter, you know, because it was

(28:08):
in the La County lock up, in the Evans room.
But you have to be able to recognize that the
value of something, right, So you see that letter. A
year or two before, you're going through a plastic container
of correspondence and a guy shows you another letter. Now,

(28:30):
this one is definitely from Bob and it's to Susan
Berman and you look at the the way the address
is written on that letter, and instantaneously you're like, there's
something about this. That's the hard work. That's the time,
you know, of being able to absorb all that information

(28:50):
and get so deep into it. You know, you're basically
your nose is the only thing above water, right, and
you're just you know, you're just sitting there waiting for
the fish to go by, you know. So you know,
it's really hard to do that on every project, but
that project we had the time. So we were digging, digging, digging,
there was no no you know, sometimes we would come

(29:11):
up against a brick wall and we would find another
way around it. Very simply, it meant that that Bob
had written the cadaver note. And if Bob wrote the
cadaver note in his own words, he had murdered Susan Burman.
So that was a moment. Now that moment, there's other stuff, right,
the building of the when I first called Sarabh Kaufman,

(29:33):
who was you know, Susan Berman's sort of adopted son
and had built a relationship with Bob after she died.
I mean, basically there were buddies and Bob had paid
for some of his college tuition and had helped him
out in life. He was not open to the idea
of Bob Durst being the murderer. I didn't bring it up.

(29:54):
He didn't necessarily.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Jump in with that.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
Yeah, we could necessarily jump on board for the ride.
But I built a relationship with him over time. You know,
after I spoke to him at his place and did
my initial interview with him, I said, Hey, is there
any chance that you know you have stuff of Susan's
that you kept after she died. Oh, yeah, there's there's
storage area. Well do you mind. He was very protective

(30:16):
over this stuff. He wouldn't let me just go through it.
Do you mind going through the stuff and taking a
look at it and seeing if there's anything like letters
or anything? So I knew I was looking for a letter. Yeah,
because of the cadaver note. I was looking for handwriting.
Maybe there's something in there that.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Could Do you think you'd actually find one?

Speaker 3 (30:32):
No, of course not. I never think they're going to
find it. But he called and he recognized it before
I did.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
It took me.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
I don't know, if you if you look that scene again,
it takes me a beat. I look at it. There's
a beat where I don't recognize what it is, and
then I recognize what it is.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
So in your head, what's going on in that moment?

Speaker 3 (30:48):
What is this guy? Well, there was two things going
on right. There was my relationship with Sarah, and it
was always a little cat and mouse. I love Sarah
and he's a great guy, but it was always a
little cat else with him because he was always kind of,
you know, dodgy dodgy and not in a negative sense,
but just in like protecting himself, protecting Bob at some level,

(31:10):
protecting his rights in the story in some weird ownership way.
And so I was thinking that, like, he's what's you
want to show me? What is this going to cost me?
Not financially, but what do we where we go my
signing up for?

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Here? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (31:26):
What am I signing up for? And then he showed
it to me and I looked at it and it
took me just a beat or till you see it,
and I'm like, I realize what it is, and and
that moment I was sort of like, oh wow, So
next job is to try to get him to give
it to me, which I knew was going to be

(31:49):
very difficult.

Speaker 2 (31:50):
Did you think for a second to just take it
and run out the door.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
No, because this is a relationship that I built, and yeah,
you know it's his his mother basically was murdered. So
he's got to go through the emotional Remember he's been
friends with with Bob for years now, Bob's helped him out.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, right, right, So he's got to go through setting
news to ye person. More than anything else.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
He certainly knows what it means. And he certainly had
a reaction, which you see right, Yeah, you know, and
so I needed to let him kind of work it
out in his head. And uh. It took another three
or four days of just talking and stuff. And one
thing that I was pretty sure of and I talked
about with Andrew a lot, was the fact that if
you just took these disparate pieces of evidence and you

(32:35):
put him in a shoe box and you handed him
to law enforcement, they would be like, that's great, follow
it away. You know. It wouldn't be necessarily like, oh,
you guys are geniuses, you figured it all out. Let's
go wrest the guy.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Cool. But yeah, yeah, so one.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
Thing I told I told you know, he there was
a moment where Sarah was like, I'm just going to
give this to the police. I said, you could do that,
but can you imagine the pressure to do something positive
the police will be under if this comes out in
an HBO multi part series. So you could give this
to the police and they may be like, you know,

(33:13):
we dusted it. We Yeah, it looks a lot like
you know, his writing, but handwriting is notoriously bad evidence
in the courtroom. That's where we came up with the
idea confronting Bob with that letter. I mean, there was
other people, you know. I mean, now, I guess I
could talk about this stuff because I think Andrew's making
another season of The Jinks about this subject matter. But

(33:33):
I wouldn't talk about it back then. But now, you know,
we were you know what Marsha Clark is. Yeah, she
was our CONSIGLIERI you know, we needed somebody who had
worked in the LA DA's office and she would O trow. Yeah,
she did the OJ trow and she was the lead
prosecutor in that office for a while. So we were like,

(33:55):
what would you do? And she was like, well, I
agree with you. If you give it to the cops,
say maybe, like okay, yeah, maybe I don't know, he's
going to have the most expensive lawyer in the world.
It's just a writing sample. They're going to come up
with their other writing samples. It's going to be a
big mess in court. We're going to have an expert.
They're gonna he's gonna have an expert. Or be interesting

(34:16):
to see what what Bob says about this?

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Right?

Speaker 1 (34:19):
And so did this speed up the urgency of it
all in the documentary making process?

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Well, everything in the doc's true. So you see in
the dock that Bob must have smelled it a mile
away because he was not running towards the camera. After that,
he was sort of like.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Is that because he maybe have already told him or what?

Speaker 3 (34:38):
No. I think he woke up one morning. Look, every
he has a lot of lawyers, and I think every
one of his lawyers like, why are you doing this?
This is the dumbest thing you ever did. You're you're
going to get yourself in trouble.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Was that just getting to him, you think? And it
was just coo, Yeah, I think he was.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Just he was just like you run out. Also, the
more we were like, hey, can you come and do
another interview, the more he was like why do they
want me to come right and doing interview?

Speaker 2 (35:03):
I told you everything.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, but we always told him that we would do
a wrap round interview. Okay, but but you know, and
you know we went through a process to get him
to sit down. So yeah, it was it took a while,
but we we wanted to get it done as quickly
as possible.

Speaker 1 (35:19):
The whole scene where he's talking to himself right with
the lot of eer mic on. Was that a conscious decision?
And could you describe the moment that you realized that
it happened? Ye?

Speaker 3 (35:33):
More than that. So, So I was shooting that main
camera that was the two of them, and I had
Rosanna who was shooting his second camera sort of running around,
and Nikita was doing sound. And when we ended, I
was going to grab the camera, run downstairs and get
them going the elevator and going out the door.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
You're thinking about the next shot, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
I'm thinking about the next shot. I could hear through
my headphones, you know, Bob talking to Andrew, gotta have
a sandwitche use the bathroom. Let me go use the bathroom.
And I looked over and Nikita was like making the
cut off cut thing across his neck, should we cut?
And it's digital right at this point, it's not film anymore.
You never need to cut.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Yeah, hold the roll, you never need to cut.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
It's not going to cost anymore.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
So I'm like, no, keep rolling, and he, you know,
kept rolling, I guess, I thought. And he went in
the bathroom and I didn't know he still had the
mic on him, and I went and set up to
go follow him downstairs. And that day was over, and
we went back to the edit room and the aes,

(36:39):
the assistant editors, they would go from basically collapse, from
on off to on off, you know, they would. They
would basically, here's the interview up, camera off. Now there's
a little seven minutes here at the end. They don't
listen to it. They're just dumping it onto the hard
drive in files and then selecting from camera on to

(36:59):
camera off. Apparently Nikita had turned it off for a
second before he went like this, and then he turned
it back on when I did this, you know, keep rolling,
and so there was a camera off. So I had
hired a editor named Shelby siegl who worked on capturing
the Freedman's and she's like a rabbinical editor. She's like,
you know, just can sit there and listen to stuff.

(37:21):
Because we were getting close to being done, because we'd
made it all pretty much and all we didn't have
is that bathroom scene. We had the whole thing at
the end, and I just wanted to go through all
the Bob interviews and just you know, super smart young lady,
and I just thought.

Speaker 2 (37:40):
Just looking for things that stand out her.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
Yeah, things that I might have missed. I told her, Yeah,
watch all the episode rough cuts and just maybe there's
stuff I missed, you know. So she started at hour
one and two and three, went through all the twenty
three hours, then went to the second interview, which was
more like two or three hours, and then heard, just
before he touches the doorknob, there it is, You're caught.

(38:07):
There it is, You're caught. And I hear the scream
in the back room and she says you got to
come back here, and she plays it. And then Zach,
my partner on Crimetown, he was the main editor, and
he said that, you know, there might be more. We
don't know that. I mean, sometimes you know, we don't

(38:28):
take all of it into the avid. Sometimes pieces get
left behind that are the on off Hill and Dale
lends we should go look in the hard drive. We did.
I called Andrew, I said you got to come down here.
We got something to play for you. And he was
about forty minutes away. We got the hard drive, loaded
it up and you could just see on the screen,

(38:49):
you know, the little waves of Bob and we waited
till Andrew came. We played it. That's how that happened.

Speaker 2 (38:57):
And what was the tone in the room at that point?

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Shock nobody, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure.
I wasn't. I was never like gotcha, or we're going
to make a fortune, or this is going to be
the best thing ever. It was just sort of like,
holy molly, Yeah, trying to keep your show.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
And you almost blew it and it didn't if he
didn't go back that you did miss something, Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
But I mean it's kind of scary to even think
about that, right, it could.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Have gone by, But I mean you had someone in
the right role that you trusted to look around for stuff, right,
so you were thinking ahead, But scary thought to think
about how there could be stuff laying around that is
that little missing.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Piece that sort of solves a crime at some level.
I mean, you could make an argument that Bob, and
Bob certainly made this argument in the court that he
was sort of a rambler who was just sort of
talking euphemistically and sarcastically. Sure, But the reality is, when
I was there and he came out of that bathroom,

(39:58):
I think he thought he was going to get arrested,
like a land He looked very anxious. Yeah, so there's
a little another great story about.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
This, Okay, So yeah, that's what you felt in the
moment there, Yeah, like he was he looked scared. Yeah,
like there was going to be a sting thing coming
in here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
I don't remember when this was, but not long before
we did that interview, or maybe it was right after
that interview. We were just going down in the elevator.
I said, so, what are you doing next? You where
you going and what's happened with your life? And he said,
I'm going to Cuba, That's what he said. I said, oh, yeah,
he said, yeah, I was there a little while ago.

(40:34):
I did a cruise to Cuba. I'm going to go
back to Cuba, and I was like, Cuba. Interesting. When
we handed stuff to the law enforcement, the FBI got
involved and they were tracking him during the when the
episodes were dropping. We didn't know this. This is something
I learned afterwards. And they saw him throw his He

(40:56):
was watching the episodes and at one point he throws
his his cell phone away, so they can't track him
with a cell phone. But they noticed that he was
heading south like towards New Orleans, and he had a
history in the South and getting Galveston. He'd actually had
a safe house in New Orleans that he kept really yeah,
just in case Galveston was a problem. And so they

(41:17):
started focusing on New Orleans and when they arrested him,
they kind of stumbled across him at the Marriott Hotel there,
you know. They found that rubber mask, They found one
hundred and thirty thousand dollars in the gun, and they
found a ticket to Cuba, because at that time, New
Orleans was the only place you could fly out of
to get directly to Cuba, really, and Cuba had non

(41:39):
extradition obviously with the United States. So they were that
closet and that was the he knew he was in trouble.
He saw that letter and.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
That was the same problem or just another day. But
what did you mention Cuba to you.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
It was the day we were leaving, the day we
did the interview, So it might have been we met
with without cameras once before that to try to talk
him into doing the interview. It might have been on
that day that he told me about Cuba.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
But you had rattled the cage at this point.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Oh, he knew he had a problem. He definitely knew,
and when he was watching this series happen, he knew.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
Which you are pretty sure he was watching, right.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
Oh yeah, yeah, because he likes episode three. He hits
the road episode three, if I remember correctly, it ends with.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
That bizarre that he's moving and reacting as these episodes
are dropping. Yeah, like he's just on the run, in
sync with the world, learning this for the first time.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
Yeah, I'm sure he didn't know that we had a
recording of him talking about it, and.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Yeah, I bet that was a surprise. He's like in
the bathroom, come on, But he did know we had
the letter.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
Yeah, he saw himself. I mean he was always talking.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
To if you wrote that letter, you may react that way, right,
or it should mean nothing to you, right, right.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
But he also it's interesting because if you watch the
Jinks again, which of course you will do right after
this interview.

Speaker 2 (42:58):
Yeah, I'll call you every episode and recap.

Speaker 3 (43:01):
You'll notice he talks to himself all the time. We
catch him all the time. There's at the end of
one episode where he's like, I did not intentionally lie.
I did not you know, he's practicing his answers.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
He's like, that is what I need to say.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
And his lawyer comes in. He's like, you know, the
camera's rolling.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
Yeah, and they point that out, which is also great
foreshadowing for what is about to happen.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah, but he did it all the time. I went
followed him around. I don't know if this is a
sidebar story, but he got in trouble with it's in
the chinks. He got in trouble with his brother. He
approached his house when we were filming him in Times
Square just walking around. His father had a his father
his brother had had a restraining order against him, so
he violated that anyway. So I would follow him around

(43:46):
and I was I was the only camera guy, and
I was doing audio as well with the headphones on,
and I would just going for a Starbucks and he'd
be talking to himself. And that's the first time I
heard the word Cuba. He was tying his shoes in Starbucks,
and he was like a Cuba you'd be would mumble
just saying Cuba. Yeap, he had probably I thinky what
he might have been saying is, yeah, well I'll go

(44:06):
to Cuba. Maybe next month I'll go to Cuba.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Is this Are you just an earshot of this or
is no?

Speaker 3 (44:12):
No, I'm hearing through the he's fired.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
But he's by himself.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
He's by himself, he thinks.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
So he's doing this by himself at his house here. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Right, I'm over here in the corner of Starbucks in
my camera just shooting him wild. There's some of that,
I think in the git there is. Yeah, there's some
of that in the chinks. And then I also had
a still camera, my medium formats all the whole publicity,
that big poster on the side, that was stuff. I
shot him that day on a medium format Mama camera, film,
camera film.

Speaker 1 (44:41):
You said earlier that you try to find compassion in
these people when you're telling the story, and that.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Is part of your job. Yeah, were you able to
do that with Robert Durst?

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Yeah? How well, it's all in episode two, isn't it.
So episode one is sort of a boiler or played
of who this guy is and what he's accused of.
Then he sits down at the end he's going to
talk to us in the episode two is about his
life and how he was now whether these things are true,

(45:13):
you know, like Doug Dur's like the fact that his
mother jumped off the roof and he was watching, he says,
because his father had woken him up to try to
lure the mother back to the window she was on
the roof of the house. Doug came out afterwards and said,
that's not true. It doesn't really matter because in Bob's
mind it's true. You know, in Bob he remembers it.

(45:35):
That's how he remembers it.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:36):
Right, And here is a guy who I believe has
got pieces that are actually missing, like he's got some
sort of he's on the spectrum in some way, and
he's competing against a brother who's very intelligent. He's not unintelligent,
he just doesn't have the same deck of cards sure
that his brother has for the family business. And he

(45:57):
has a very overbearing father who you know, he would
like to please in some subconscious way, but hates consciously
all the stories about him being in the sushi at
the company meetings, and you know, showing up dressed in
shorts and a T shirt for big meetings and just
being a complete rebel. You know how he went up

(46:18):
to Vermont and started a health food store and also
smoke pot just all day long, every day. It's a
big pot smoker. So he was damaged goods. He was
damaged goods. And you know, in some ways he was
sort of constructed to commit these crimes, you know, by who,

(46:39):
by his physiological and neurological makeup, whatever was happening in
his brain that was limiting his ability to feel sympathy
because he was not an EmPATH at all. And what
was happening in his life, the pressure he was under
to be the next heir to the Durst real estate

(47:03):
fortune and then losing that. People don't know this and
they it's in the jinks, I think. But he didn't
speak to his family for years after he was passed over.
He left town. He was out crushed him, crushed him,
and I feel like, you know, those were the years
that he was with Kathy. He was supposedly working, but

(47:25):
he was rebelling. He was not functional. In the family business.
He was competing against Doug, who was much more capable.
His father was in this position of tough love probably
combined with what do I do with this? You know?
And you know, Kathy was stepping out. He was stepping out,

(47:45):
Kathy was stepping out. Kathy was unhappy. Kathy was going
to medical school. She was successful at it. She was
going to be successful. She was going to be a
doctor and independent, not dependent on him.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
And so how did that make him? Phil?

Speaker 3 (48:00):
You think he was going to lose somebody else because
of who he is, right, So that was not going
to happen. So, you know, they had an argument, he
killed her.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
So how did it spin from one murder to more
than that?

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Then it was just about covering his tracks. So you know,
in two thousand and this is all that. This is
the story of the Jenks. In two thousand and one seven,
oh my god, anyway, what year is it? And Janey
Piro reopened the da in Westchester County, reopened the case,
and Saber rattled a lot about going after him, and

(48:40):
and he disappeared. Went down to Galveston as a woman,
lived in an apartment in a house like a you know,
like a college kid wouldn't even want to live in it,
you know, and befriended a guy named Morris Black, and
you know, and the rest of that is history. Morris
ended up body parts floating around Galveston Bay.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Why did he commit that second murderer? I mean what,
Morris probably figured out who he was, so.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
You think everything from that point, from the murder of
his wife was just covering up.

Speaker 3 (49:10):
It's about betrayal. Track, it's about betrayal. There's two things
I used to say to Andrew. If you're if you're
in a relationship with Bob Durst, never ask him for money.
Why it's a trigger. So you know, there was there
were reports that Kathy was contacting other family members and
she was asking money because he'd cut her off as

(49:32):
a way to control her. And you know, and then
when she initiated divorce proceedings, she was asking for two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars settlement, which they could have afforded.
It's like nothing to the Durst family, right, But he
refused and then they got in this argument and she
was killed. Morris, I'm pretty sure figured out who this

(49:54):
guy was and was like, okay, now you got to
pay me, you know, to get my mouth shut right,
And that was the end of him. And then Susan
Berman was having a hard time. She was broke, completely broke.
She was living in a borrowed apartment house in Beverly Hills.
She had no money. She had already borrowed two twenty

(50:16):
five thousand dollars installments from Bob, and she was probably
asking for more money. She's probably the only person who
knew that Bob had murdered Kathy. And somebody called the
hospital where the medical school where Kathy was going to
medical school, after he would have been able to kill her,

(50:37):
saying that she was sick and she couldn't show up
the medical school that week. That was probably Susan.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
So how did you find compassion for this person?

Speaker 3 (50:46):
First of all, Bob was funny. He was you know,
you could sit and talk to the guy. He was
amusing in a very off kilter sort of way. And
you could see that he suffered what is this constant
pot smoking and drug taking, but medicating himself against his
own mind, right, you know, he was suffering all the time.

(51:11):
To say that he was a sociopath that felt no guilt,
I don't think that's true. I think he felt a
lot of guilt about That's why I sent the cadaver
butt note. You know, that's why he left little pieces
of evidence along the way and by the way, that's
why he reached out to us. He had a compulsion
to confess.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Okay, See, you think that he was just playing with
fire and trying to just testing whether or not he
would tell you everything.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Oh how many of these guys who do these crimes
end up somehow trying to not get caught, but to
take credit for them. That's one part of it. The
other part of it is, I think he had a
compulsion to confess. I think he had guilt. I think
he wanted to. He wanted to, you know, get it
off his chest. He was eating at him. Man, he

(51:59):
had so many physical problems that were like, you know,
he had terrible gurd. Yeah, God is right, So it's
an anxiety issue. Yeah, right, So he had awful gourd.
They had done the surgery on his esophagus. He had
all kinds of physical problems from years of drug abuse,
alcohol abuse, and just living with the guilt of all

(52:19):
these things.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
He had done.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
So, yeah, you feel bad for him, you know, I
was happy when he got caught, and I was happy
for the McCormick family that they had some sort of closure.
Although he was never actually convicted of Kathy's murder, but
you can still feel bad for the guy.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Did you ever talk to Bob after he was arrested? No, No, that.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
Would have been bad for everybody.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
Yeah, I didn't think so.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
I mean, there was a time when we thought that
we would be a big part of the trial, right
because you know, the defense was going to be and
they started with this. There was a little rumblings with this.
Those those greedy filmmakers set my poor Bob up, you know,
my flying up.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
And they didn't get that far though.

Speaker 3 (53:05):
Yeah, they cut it all together and made something out
of it. But the judge, Yeah, but the judge, we
really didn't. I mean the judge and John Lewin, who's
a brilliant cold case prosecutor, they headed that off the
pass by basically saying, well, we're not going to use
the jinx's evidence in a trial. We're going to use
the footage, the raw footage, uh, and we're going to

(53:27):
use the recordings audio recordings, but and they're not going
to be edited. And your experts can look at it
and say they're not edited, and that's what we're going
to use. We're not going to call the film. And
then when the defense try to call the film, I
think the judge said, it's not doesn't it's not doesn't
make any sense that that would be part of this trial.

(53:47):
We're not. The film is not on trial.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
There was a moment when I thought I'd have to testify. Yes,
I'm very very happy that I didn't have to.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
That would be fun. No, I thought I was going
to have to as well for Up and Vanish.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Right, we had a very similar experience.

Speaker 1 (54:02):
Right, it was pretty so, I mean it was my
Jenkes moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah it was.

Speaker 3 (54:07):
I think the first time we talked to you said
that you were looking for a Jinks moment. You you
like you saw the Jinks here?

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Was it before my Jinxs moment?

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Yes, it was when I came down to Atlanta, the
first foreshadowing when we got drunk in that bar with Donald.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Yeah, Doll had one drink and he was drunk.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
We had five. He's the best.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
I love Donald.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, it's a weird. It's a weird moment.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, and when it takes this big turn like that,
and now there's all these other players in the system
involved as a reaction to something that you did in
your investigative work.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Yeah, and you know it's.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
What was your strategy? I know what my strategy was
when I when I when law enforcement got involved, which
was not something like you see in the movies. You know,
we had to I think I made a four versions
of a power point that showed.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
The la DA and we had a whole process by
which basically we were like, you need to look at this,
you know, and luckily John Lewin was a very very
smart guy and.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
He got it. Yeah, but what was it like for
you when you when you engage with them? Was it confrontational?
Because a lot of times.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
At what point in time, Because in the beginning, it was,
you know, the local police would entertain me enough to
talk to me, at least one of the sheriffs would,
but they really kind of wanted to figure it out
on their own, and they didn't really think that this
was important. You know, this is just some random guy
from Atlanta making a podcast in South Georgia.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Who cares? I mean, if you're one of those.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
Executives, who's you know, scratching their head, bagging their headgainst
the wall, trying to figure out how to make a hit.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
What is it like? In your opinion?

Speaker 1 (55:51):
That is the special sauce When it comes to why
this one has that big moment.

Speaker 2 (55:57):
I don't know, one doesn't.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
I've lost track of that. I can't say like.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
You did at one now you don't, or yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
Generally, I'm not really sure there was a time when oh,
this is this is. This is a difficult subject because
there's social and political considerations that come into making these
choices now that we're not part of the equation before.
I'm not saying that that's wrong at all any and

(56:23):
any way, but it makes it more difficult to figure
out how to There's like two more pieces to the
puzzle that you have to make to create a piece
of IP. It doesn't have to it doesn't just have
to be compelling, have momentum, have central characters you love,
and all the things that we used to do. It
has to have, you know, all these politically correct pieces

(56:46):
to it. Sure, and so I'm not really sure how
much of that, how little of that is you know
the the you know, I don't know how to do
how to how to quantify.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
That, right, and maybe does anyone per se I mean,
I think that me as a society. And then they
were making it up. We were creating these you know,
these boundaries or the recipe for what it should be
as we're going here.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
Right, well, we're trying to make something compelling. Yeah, yeah,
we weren't thinking about that, but I think we needed
to be thinking about that, so you know that there's
other stories that need to be told, and you know,
and other storytellers who should be telling those stories. I
when I was making music videos, it was all hip
hop and rap and name one. And then I wasn't

(57:34):
the guy to make those anymore.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
No name one, g rap, coolio, Coolry J Blige, really yeah,
and not all.

Speaker 3 (57:43):
As director, I had a company called Notorious, and I
had other directors. We did rock and roll, we did
we did everything. Marilyn Manson, we did everybody.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
What was your favorite one? You think of all the.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Ones that we made or the ones that I mean,
I made the gwanton Emera video for the Fujis. It
got nominated for an MTV Award. Nice I really liked
working for with the Fuji's Lauren Hill. She was amazing.
But you know, I did, like I did a documentary
about Destiny's Child for Columbia Records. I mean I was

(58:17):
in the music world, you know. Yeah, yeah, are.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
You always into the music scene?

Speaker 3 (58:22):
I mean hip hop and stuff In the beginning for me,
I mean, I'm going to say, so many things get
me in trouble. But when puff Daddy got into it, yeah,
and it became you know, puff Dding no longer his name, okay,
whatever his name is now. Yeah, So when it became
Bling and Benjamin's and Booties, I was sort of like,

(58:44):
all right, I don't know if I want to do
this anymore.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
That's a long time ago.

Speaker 3 (58:49):
Then I'm old because I was doing cool g rap
and we were doing we were going down to Houston songs.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
That you'd like.

Speaker 1 (58:56):
There is I mean, no doubt the sound has changed
and there's some stuff that you probably would not like.

Speaker 3 (59:02):
But no, there was just a period where it was
all you know, the cars and the women and the
money and the gold and the day, and.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
That was just it wasn't Puff Daddy doing that too.

Speaker 3 (59:12):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Okay, yes, you mean when
he came in it changed everything. Oh oh, I see
it changed everything. Biggie was amazing, but you know, but
it changed a lot about what was and for the better.
I mean, but it wasn't stories. I could tell. Everything
I was doing was a story. You know, Scarface he
told stories. Cool g rap he told a story, and

(59:33):
you know, so we would just cinematize. Yeah, the rap song.
It was kind of really fun.

Speaker 2 (59:39):
Yeah, you know, and then we went to life really yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
Yeah, but then it became you know, I'm not a
choreographer and I'm not you know, I'm not a fashion
designer or you know, so so it wasn't going to
be for me anymore.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
I mean, would you learn from that that you were
able to apply later at all?

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Because I was shooting him, That's where I learned it.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
I used to do music videos too, where it's like
and they seem like starkly different where you have Okay,
I was doing hip hop videos and I'm doing I'm
investigating a cold case and telling a story.

Speaker 3 (01:00:10):
I wasn't doing it all at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Well I wasn't either.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
But just to make a long story short, when I
got I worked for Brokaw, there was a crash in TV.
This is not the first one we're going through right now.
And I'd come east to work on a weekly show
with Tom called I can't remember what it was called.
It was an investigative show.

Speaker 2 (01:00:33):
And what time.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Period is this? What year was this?

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Like a round one?

Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Nineteen ninety two? Yeah, And then everything got canceled and
I was working as a waiter at an Italian restaurant
on eighty sixth Street. And then I got a job
with Berlsconi Television and I did that for a while.
I really built their thing in Rockfeller Center and everything
like that, and did a bunch of work with them

(01:01:00):
and was night editing, and and then you know, a
friend of mine said to me, I'm starting a company
do music videos, and do you want to do them?
And hip hop and rap was just it was still
something in the street. It was Bismarckuy, yeah, one hundred
and twenty fifth Street, you know, And and we just
start shooting him. We had clients wh would show up

(01:01:22):
with thirty five thousand dollars and shopping bags, yeah, to
shoot a music video.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
I've been paid that way too, actually, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
And what I did was I shot him. You know,
you didn't get cinematographer, you got a camera.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Yeah exactly. You're the guy who does this now.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Yeah, oh yeah, you know. So I you know, I
had gone to film school. My cinematographer teacher was Conrad Hall,
so I knew how to shoot stuff. So all of
a sudden, this stuff he was making jumped up in
quality a bunch, you know, And and we started just
growing and growing, and we had other directors, directors. Marcus
ray Boy, I don't know if you've heard that name.

(01:01:58):
He was a big hip hop director back then. Guy
Gia was a big director back then. Paul Fedor was
a big director back then.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
You have a good memory, No, not so good, but yeah,
I mean that that leap. I think for some people
it is hard to understand. Yeah, you know, and they
seem like they're very different. Is there any crossover to you?

Speaker 3 (01:02:18):
And for me, they weren't because they were about I
thought there was a revolution going on. Listening to the music,
oh yeah, and talking to these guys, I thought that they.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Were still bigger than just a music video. To you, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Thought we were doing something important for sure, and that
ended obviously.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Is that important to you and telling a story? Is
that you feel like it's something important?

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
It must be. I try not to think about it
because it sounds very you know, platitudy, But it must
be because I'm always looking for it, that important story.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Do you think you'll ever stop being a storyteller?

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Let's see the only way I can make a living.
So I still wait tables. But he would hurt a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Yeah, they would. I come tippy every now and then.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
I mean, seriously, me, is there ever going to be
a moment that you think that you could that you'll
hang up the hat and you'll just stop. Are you
gonna just Martin Scorsese The Ship where you just do
a city?

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Lumette? I would like to think, Well, he's eighty three,
Sidney Lumette, you know he is. He day Afternoon. He
did a lot of movies, Prince of the City, that
where you would love that are based on true stories. Okay,
it was a Sidney Lumette film. And his last film
was When the Devil Knows You're Dead. I think is
the name of the so good Philip Seymour Hoffman, and

(01:03:41):
and I think he was eighty three. He did it
almost a movie a year, so he was eighty three
years old. And he died within a couple of years
of that. So yeah, well what else would I do?

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
I want to say?

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
I mean, I think this is right you guys at
some like only at a certain point in the series
and the jinks turn the cameras back around.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
Yourselves a little bit, only after we found the letter.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
And so was that a conscious thing, right? I mean
just no, it was what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
I mean in terms of like, well, I mean in
terms of the you guys weren't filming yourselves at all
really now all of a sudden, now we're I mean,
so when did that thought come into play? Say, hey,
well this is happening. Should we just be recording this?

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
When Zach and right when Zach and I were out
in California and and Sarah Kaufman called and he said,
I found something. I need you to come over here.
And I was like, what you said? I can't tell you,
but I'll show you when you get here. I was like,
all right, we got to shoot.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
This, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:04:43):
It was sort of the first time, Yeah, that we
that that was your first thought, right, remember we you know,
we were sort of experimenting with small cameras at that time.
We used I think the little cannons the which oh
like the yeah, the old and so the little ones
that were tiny, okay, yeah, and so we shot that,

(01:05:05):
and then of course from that moment, I'm like, now
we're not taking we can't turn the cameras off at all.
We're gonna shoot everything.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Yeah, that's why from that point forward, you were That's
why all systems go like, we're recording.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Right when we found the bathroom recording, that's why I'm like,
don't play it. I'm gonna call Jareki, set up a camera.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
Yeah, capture it in the moment. Yeah, yep.

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
So we became players because we were players at that
point in the in the drama. You know, we've found
this thing. Sarah had found this thing and shown it
to us, and then we were gonna have to figure
out what it meant, what we were going to do
with it. I mean a lot of people, you know,
there were a couple of people, not a lot, but
there were a few people who are like, why did

(01:05:46):
you give them the law enforcement right away? The guy
could have murdered three more people.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Because I knew about her. Well, I mean that's a
you know, a big decision. But you also didn't tell
her not to do it, you said to me, Sarah, Yeah,
you said, I told them, you know it's gonna happen.
They're gonna put it in a box.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
That's I think they're gonna put it in a box,
shove it in Evans room, and then it'll be gone forever.
And just like they right, you need the pressure of
something big coming down the pipe, which is like an
HBO series to get people to pay attention. And that

(01:06:25):
was the leverage through the whole conversation with the DA's
robbery homicide in l A. The leverage we had to
get them to pay attention was we're making it. It's coming.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Really they may We just said the storm's coming that
we got it's gonna be big.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
It's you want to see what we got, Yeah, we'll
show you. And you know in the jinks, they're not
in it. We weren't doing that because we were like,
it's going to make a better show if we have
the cops coming at the end and arrest them. That's
not part of it. Yeah, you know, I think that's
you know, that would have been wrong. But what is
what we were doing was you know, I'd spent I mean,

(01:07:06):
Andrew and I had spent so much time with the
McCormick family. We were just trying to get some closure
and you know, even you know, the Sarab thing was
what do we say? It was? Uh we you had
a good word for it, rocky.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Oh no, I said, dodgy, dodgy, Well, dodgy. Right.

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
You know it's like you'll be able to eventually get
a hold of this person most likely, right, And you
know it might take a lot more effort, but if
you've already given it a go, you might need to
give it a beat before you go send that long
text whatever it is that your method is to try
to get someone's attention and tell them what you're trying
to do. Never, I mean we got different methods then, yeah,

(01:07:49):
I mean I'm texting stuff that I text people who
liked to text.

Speaker 3 (01:07:54):
Yeah, yeah, of course, right, And this.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
Guy I called me I called to do recordings stuff
and or but sometimes just a setup situation where it's like, hey,
like a logistical thing and making sure everyone's comfy.

Speaker 3 (01:08:09):
This is getting into the territory of like tactics, which
I don't like to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Do, Like, oh, that's not the class we're doing today.

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Well, I mean, you know, I don't want to ready
to ever think that I'm doing something to them that
is like a tactic.

Speaker 1 (01:08:24):
Yeah, and the and that's I mean, and it isn't
is a thing, right, It's it's as much of a
tactic as it is a getting to know somebody thing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:34):
It's like if I want to be your friend, and
I what.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
I say to people is that if I expect people
to be vulnerable with me, then I have to be
vulnerable with them.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
I'm with you one hundred percent. But how you deliver
that information, there's for me, there's a three tiers. It
is really there's a three tier value or three things
you can do. You can talk to them. That's the best,
you know, Like nothing shows that you want their attention
then flying across the country at showing up at their door,

(01:09:06):
taking them to dinner.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Yeah, hey, I'll be there tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (01:09:09):
I often tell my producers that dinners are the most
important thing you're gonna do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
Right. That's the second thing is writing a letter. I
write a lot of letters because a lot of the
guys physical letters, physical letters.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
And you go to the you go to a mailbox
and you you lick a stamp and you use that.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
Yeah, especially if they're improved.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
I mean, you're right, there's something just you know, it's
specially you get a letter, you feel special.

Speaker 3 (01:09:33):
It's not even that they feel special.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
It's does anymore either. Though.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
It's a contract you can hold in your hand.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Oh it's you mean as a just a representation of this.

Speaker 3 (01:09:43):
Yeah, this is who I am. You can hold in
your hand, you can weigh it. I took the time
to do it. It's not disposable, you know, it's something
that exists in the world.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
The last thing is it is an email?

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (01:09:56):
Yeah, the last thing is an email because it's so disposable, and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
It just I mean, I say text because texts are
more intimate than an email is. Yes, an email is
just automatically cold. There's nothing personal, I mean unless you're
just saying I've said my piece and that's it to
some business person.

Speaker 3 (01:10:14):
Yeah. Can I tell you a story about this? And
I'm working on something right now. It's a wise guy
thing with the New York Mafia and I'm just trying
to round I'm just trying to doubt all the eyes
and you know, figure out who's who and what's what.
And there's one guy who's in prison who's a very
high up in this crime family. He's been in prison

(01:10:36):
for a very long time though it's probably going to
be in prison forever. So of course that's a letter.
I can't call a guy in prison. I write him
a letter, and like a week or two later, I
get a text. He's texting me from prison.

Speaker 2 (01:10:53):
Yeah, I mean, I got a story about that too.
I don't know if I can double for this or not.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
I just don't name any names.

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Yeah, there's there's no names here. Okay, there was a time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Yeah, and there's been a couple of times, but there's
one time that this is the way that it happened
that I.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
You probably shouldn't tell this story.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
What is the what let's look up.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
Yeah, I don't think that's a good This is not
a good story to tell. Okay, you tell me when we.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
Have yeah, we'll cut.

Speaker 4 (01:11:27):
Cut.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
I think you using the word tape, I mean, because
I have zero reason to use the word tape other
than it's like that's what the guys say. I guess,
but it's not tape anymore. But yeah, when you say
tape in a production sense, you know what.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
I want that good tape. Yeah, yeah, just to kind
of close it out years ago. You you you.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
Left a little earworm in my head about you know,
these stories never leave you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
What are your words of wisdom today? What would you say?

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
It?

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Better be good?

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
God boy?

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Yeah, don't vomit?

Speaker 3 (01:12:07):
Well, you know, I guess the thing I would say
is what I often say is you know, when we
were making the Jinks, I met Dick Degarran, and Dick
de Garan told me once he said, if you're going
to be a defense lawyer in a murder trial, you
only have to prove two things. You got to prove

(01:12:30):
that the victim deserve getting murdering and your client is
the guy to do it. So that was sort of
his strategy murder trials. So often I find myself telling
young podcast people who bring me a pilot tape because
they've been working on it for three four years. You

(01:12:52):
got to figure out why you're the guy to tell
the story and why the story is worth telling, you know.
So those are two things. That's what. There's a lot
of stuff out there, and some of it's good, but
the stuff that really touches people, the stuff that really
makes connection with people, It goes ballistic. It's stuff where

(01:13:15):
you know, it's s down, it's those it's those stories
serial where the person who's telling the story connects themselves.
It doesn't have to be like and then you know,
we were driving the car together to rob a bank.
It has to be an emotional connection. And then you've
got to figure out why, why the story needs to exist?

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
Why me? Why?

Speaker 4 (01:13:38):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
Yeah, that's good. I like that, cheers man. Yeah, one
more take.

Speaker 4 (01:13:49):
Talking to Death is a production of Tenorfoot TV and
iHeart podcast created and hosted by Pain Lindsay. For Tenderfoot TV,
executive producers are Pain Lindsey and Donald Albright. Co executive
producer is Mike Rooney. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are
Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. With original music by Makeup

(01:14:10):
and Vanity Set. Additional production by Mike Rooney, Dylan Harrington,
Sean Nurney, Dayton Cole, and Gustave Wilde for Coohedo. Production
support by Tracy Kaplan, Mara Davis, and Trevor Young. Mixing
and mastering by Cooper Skinner and Dayton Cole. Our cover
art was created by Rob Sheridan. Check out our website,

(01:14:31):
Talking Todeathpodcasts dot com

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Marc Smerling | The Jinx Moment, True Crime and Music Videos

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Host

Payne Lindsey

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Marc Smerling | The Jinx Moment, True Crime and Music Videos