September 9, 2025 • 18 mins
Pod Crashing episode number 387 is with Melissa Jeltson from the podcast What Happened To Talina Zar? What Happened to Talina Zar unravels the chilling mystery of a woman who vanished during the COVID-19 lockdown, the internet sleuths who wouldn't let it go, and the dark subcultures and betrayals they unearthed.
Episodes available here:
Https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-what-happened-to-talina-z-93564012/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-view-from-the-writing-instrument--1023245/support.
Episodes available here:
Https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-what-happened-to-talina-z-93564012/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-view-from-the-writing-instrument--1023245/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, thanks for coming back to the conversation. Let's do
some pod crashing. Episode number three eighty seven is with
Melissa Jelson from the podcast What Happened to Telena Czar. Well, Lissta,
what I love about this podcast is that you have
crossed the fourth dimension line. This, I mean, this was
a podcast listener that came to you, and that is
got to be one of the greatest blessings on the
(00:21):
planet because we don't know who we're reaching or why
we're reaching people, and this really does prove don't stop believing.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, I mean I was.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I often get a lot of tips, you know, in
my email from people who want me to pursue a story,
but this was a really unusual one, right, This woman
named Jess in Minnesota who reached out to me and
said she loved the show, but she had a story
for me, a COVID story, she said, was a friend
of hers who had gone missing and she wanted me
(00:54):
to dig into. Now, as I got to know her
better and found out more about the story, she didn't
know Telene that yes, she fludged the truth a little
bit to get me interested, but she was just a
really big true crime obsessive she listens to all the podcasts,
(01:14):
watches all the shows, and she saw on a Facebook
group this post by Telena that you know, in the
beginning of COVID lockdowns, this woman Telena's oar in her
fifties in Oklahoma, posted online that she was very sick
with COVID. She did not want to go to the hospital.
She was afraid of being intubated, as many people were
(01:36):
at the time, and she wanted She told everyone that
she was going off on her own. She wanted privacy.
She was going to either recover or recuperate on her
own or possibly pass away, and she asked her friends
to respect her privacy, and a lot of Telena's friends
in the comments said, okay, you know, good luck. But
(01:56):
Jess came across this post later and she couldn't understand
people's reaction to it. She was very worried about this
woman that she didn't know, and ultimately, you know, she
had gone missing and the post set people back a
few weeks to start searching for her. But I yeah,
for the next four years, Jess really made it her
(02:17):
mission to find out what happened to Telena. It's from Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's amazing that that this even takes place, because well,
then again, it shows the power of the internet, but
it also shows the compassion. That's what amazes me, the
compassion that we have for people that we don't know,
but but yet if I can reach out and help
somebody or help you know, you know, figure out what
a story is, that to me is part of the story.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, I feel like, you know, it was just kind
of a perfect storm of people were laid off. It
was people were stuck in their homes, you know, for
Jess and for a bunch of the online flutes who
got together to look for Telena online and do while
they're digging. They had a unique moment in time where
(03:04):
they didn't have much work to do, they weren't able
to leave their house, and they wanted to help this
woman that they didn't They felt like nobody was looking
for and from what they could find out about her online,
they felt connected to her as a person.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What's really interesting about the way that you set up
this entire podcast is that you allow us to get
to know who Jess is, even though it is what
happened to Telenazar. The thing is is that we had
to know who Jess was first then we're going to
take the steps.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, I think you know.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
What's also unusual about this story that I'm telling is
typically when someone when I do a podcast, I have
a lot of access to the family, right that it's
the family that brings the podcast to me or the
story to me. They want someone to tell this story,
they really want attention on it. In this case, I had,
(03:57):
you know, a stranger basically bringing me story, and so
she needed to be a big character in the In
the podcast, I was able to get some of Tolina's
friends in real life, and I was able to get
Toelina's sister, which really helped flesh out the rest of
the story. But yeah, it's a very strange. I've never
(04:19):
told a story this way, that it's coming through another
character that really didn't have any independent knowledge of her
prior to all of this happening.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I love the way that you're using the word story
because so many people they'll come to me and say,
I want to be on your podcast. I want to
be on your podcast, and I'll always say, so, what's
the story? And so I love the way that you're
using the word story because there has to be a
story before you can take those steps.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Again, this story is different than other ones I've told
because it has so many strange elements to it. Like
my previous podcasts have really focused on typically one victim
and a case that would shine a light on a
bigger societal issue. So my first season was about police
sexual violence and a woman's death, and my second season
(05:06):
was about domestic violence, and this one is really about
It's about secrets, it's about hidden identities. It's about COVID
and hiding and masks and what happens when we are
isolated from each other. It's also about family and community
(05:31):
and the power of the internet. So it's very different.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
You totally set us up though with the COVID experience,
the way that you describe it and stuff, because because
you and I lived it, there are still people in
this world that really didn't live it because they were
too young. But when they listened to the podcast, they're
going to go, was it really like that?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
It was five years ago.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I mean there's been some comments online that are like,
I can't listen to this podcast. This woman is obviously,
you know, they don't respect the story I told my
COVID experience, which was I was living in New York
City in like the at center of the pandemic, and
it was you know, I was in an apartment building
(06:10):
where we had to share a cramped elevator to get anywhere,
and there's you know, people to the left or right
of you, And so we decided to leave, me and
my partner and kids and went and went to Pennsylvania
for six weeks and hit out. But it was, yeah,
I think if you didn't, I think it was everyone
had a different experience. The one that I had was
(06:34):
you know, being in New York seeing how many people
were dying and how many people were sick, and how
limited the resources were. It was a and having everything
change like work, school, just grocery, shopping, everything change in
an instant. It was it was a you know, so
once in a lifetime hopefully experience, and we wanted to
(06:54):
capture that as like the mood and the setting of
the show.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
The message from Telena is that really her voice or
is that a voice actor?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
That's a voice actor? Yeah, so we had to use
voice actors. Those are all real things that she that
were writ in. Okay, not making up any content, but
we had voice actors for Helena and Corey and a
few other people.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
See because I mean the thing is, as I come
across you know, stories like that, were people sharing their
heart or they're they're they're they're releasing things from their emotions,
and you sit there and you try to offer positive things,
and then then you've got the attackers that come after you.
All I was doing was trying to be positive and
people come after you. You're going, oh, I got to
get out of this one. Disconnect. Disconnect.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, there's a lot of haters. It's fine.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I think I just try to take it as you know,
this the podcast is getting attention, But.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I understood what she was going through. I mean she
had COVID. Now now, during the lockdown, I actually interviewed
a comedian that wanted someone to give him COVID so
that he could go through the experience. I mean, there
was some crazy, kinky stuff going on.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
I mean, I don't want to give any spoilers for
the podcast, so I won't go too deep into that.
But yeah, I mean COVID was very you know, no
one knew what was going.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
On, right.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
It was just like I think it's hard to capture
that now when like COVID is just a mainstream word,
but it was so fresh and so you know, not
understood that it really created a you know, a feeling
of like, what what.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Else could happen?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
It up ended the normalcy that we're just so used
to and and you know, it was bizarre.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
It was bizarre. Time.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Please do not move. There's more with Melissa Jelson coming
up next. The name of the podcast is what Happened
to Telnazar? We're back with Melissa Jelson. Don't you think though,
that this this third season of your podcast is really
a celebration of the sluice on the internet because without
those saluts, I mean seriously, they all are coming together
(09:02):
to help crime. And this is the part that really
made me kind of disgruntled with the police forces when
they say that you're not going to solve this online.
You know what, I think we are because there's a
lot of us out here that understand true crime and
we're going to take chances where you guys have rules.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
I think what I wanted to show in the podcast
is how powerful online sleuthing can be and the true
crime community can be, but also show like from both
sides that while the truth while the sluths were doing
their own thing. The police were doing their own thing
as well, and the SLUS didn't really know what the
(09:39):
police were doing in the background, right, those records weren't unvailable.
They were in the middle of an investigation. So I've
been able to get a lot of those records so
I have a better sense. So for the sleuths, it
seemed like, oh my god, the police are doing nothing. No,
that's not true, right. The police were doing plenty, but
they were doing different things. They had yet, like you said,
(10:01):
they're operating by very different rules, and the sleuths were
able to uncover things and bring things to their attention
that were really, you know, showed to be pivotal.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
I can't imagine what it was like for you to
sift through all the information because there's a lot of
clickbait out there. How do you believe when you read
something on the internet?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh, I mean takes a lot of verification and research,
for sure. Yeah, but that's you know, that's part of
the job is making sure that the stories we're telling
are truthful and as contextualized as possible. That's very important
to me.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Without I'm going to go year route without spoiling the
story when something is shared that that something isn't real
and I hope I want to say something something wasn't real,
And I was shocked to hear that this thing that
you said was not her something real. Then I was like,
oh my god, that means that she's playing characters here.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, yeah, So I mean what we know in this
case was that, you know, there was a grand story
concocted around what happened to Telena. Right, she posted online
multiple times about being sick, having a migraine, and then
going off. She left without her cars. Her phone was
(11:23):
never discovered. So you know, did she in fact post
all those things or was it possibly a cover done
by someone else to by time. You know, those are
all questions that the podcast get into.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
You've got to love things like this because, I mean,
as a thriller chiller novel writer, I mean, I mean,
they sit there and they have to think this stuff up,
and you're sitting there going, well, I'm just going to
go to the police department. I'm going to get myself
a story.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah, I mean, this is of all the stories I've
ever done, this one has the most twists and turns.
It's the most unbelievable. I think there's even a line
in it where just says to me like, did you
believe me? I brought this to you? Like because it's
just such an unbelievable story, And there were parts of
it that I was like, I need to double check
this because how could this be true?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
It's just the same.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, But you come clean though with each and one
of our the listeners in the way of saying that
little towns have their skeletons. I chuckled when when when
you said that, because I'm going you damn right, they
have those skeletons, and that's probably where the best ones are.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yes, for sure, I know there's so many.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I'm sure even in Wagner, Oklahoma, where this story takes place,
there's five more crazy stories we could uncover.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
All of the required investigating. I mean, I mean, to
get into Jess's life was one thing, but then you
have to start, you know, creating your spider's web. How
what what kind of a time period are we talking
about here, because there's a lot of listeners that think
that you and I just bang this stuff out.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean I've been working on this for a
year and it you know, Talina was a very private person.
She had sort of segmented her life so that she
had kind of the story of who she was that
her family knew, and then she had a different persona
that some of her friends knew, and then her neighbors
(13:13):
kind of knew a different version as well. So for
me to get to know her and understand her life,
I had to do a lot of digging online and
I had to reach out to a lot of people.
And there are a number of people I reached out
to that didn't want to talk to me, but I
was able to find, you know, one of her very
close friends who I was able to interview, and then
(13:36):
a lot of people on the ground in Wagner who
had not as long a time period of friendship with her,
just you know, three or four years, but they knew her,
they loved her. And then I was also able to
get her sister. And you know, getting her sister that
took me handwriting a letter, putting it in an envelope,
mailing it to an address that I didn't know was
(13:59):
if it was her, Oh, even who she was, I
just knew they were related and hoping, And then I
got a call and her sister was so happy to
have been reached out to.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sometimes you think, oh, everyone's going to be mad if
you contact them out of the blue. They're not going
to want something like this to happen. She was thrilled.
She was like, I want my sister's story to be told.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
What is your reaction when somebody says no, I don't
want to talk about it, because I mean, instantly, I'll
sit there and go, you're lost. But then again, but
if it doesn't leave my soul, I've got to dig
in deeper. I've got to come up with a different way.
I've got to sell the spots off a leopard.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yes, I often try more than once.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
You know, I'm very persistent because what I would say,
what I said to a lot of people reporting this
story is I really want to know who Telena is.
I can't get that from Jess. I can't get that
from these online slutes who never met her. I have
to get it from the people who knew her and
loved her. So if you talk to me, you will
(14:58):
be helping flesh out her as a real person so
that we we too can know and love her.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Let's talk about the production of this because I mean
when you when you've got all of this knowledge and
you know that you're going to share it with the listener,
what is the chronological order of how you put this together?
Without spilling the beans in episode one?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Oh, it takes a lot of storyboarding to work out
how to you know, start the story off and tease
some of the bigger themes that are going to come later.
It's a complicated process. We have like a software that
we used to try to work out where what goes where,
and then it moves as we write the episodes, which
we're still writing today, the last episode.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, because I mean we call that billboarding or setting
up an appointment in radio. I mean you've got to
keep that, you know, keep that listener engaged, because when
you go into a commercial break, if that listener takes off,
it's like, ah, that's where I wanted to take off
at no.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yeah, Yeah, trying to have you know, teases that bring
people back and want to continue listening to the story.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Well, uncovering the clues. I mean, something strange was happening,
and one of them a burned mattress that was kind
of freaky that came from out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, the burned mattress is a terrifying detail and one
that I don't know if you've seen the cover art
for the show, but we do have an illustration of
the Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And you're saying that you're putting the final episode together?
What's next after this? Because you know how it is.
You can't just go to bed at night and think, Okay,
I'm done with the podcast. No, your mind is working
on something else already.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well, the interesting thing about this story is that there
are two criminal trials that to take place that involved
This case is starting in just a few weeks, so
I'll be attending that trial and doing some bonus content
from that trial, and then we need to work out, Yeah,
how much more coverage do the listeners want? Should I
attend to the second trial as well? And then yes,
(16:57):
I already have a handful of other projects that I'm
thinking about dipping my toes into, but I might want
a little break.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
How do you get that backstage pass to that courtroom?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I mean, not really backstage.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I just requested access as a journalist and they said yes,
So we'll see. It will be interesting if the podcast
comes up in the trial. Hopefully it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I'm so proud of you calling yourself a journalist because
this really is storytelling and its journalism, And I just
wish a lot more people would go into the way
that that podcasters are going because we get the full
story and it shared in a very timely manner. In
other words, we can digest it, go back and listen
to it, digest even more and get more. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I mean, I think that today the best long form
investigative reporting is happening in podcast form. Like there's nowhere
else that you're maybe like the New Yorker, but there's
nowhere else that you get to spend a year reporting
a story and then spending that time making it come
to life.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Wow, Where can people go to find out more about you?
Because I want them to check out all three seasons.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Well, you can listen to all of the what Happened
tos on anywhere that you get your podcasts. The first
one is what Happened to Sandy Beal, the second one
is what Happened to Libby Caswell, and then the third
is what happened to Teleinazar, And all of that's also
linked on my website. Which is www dot Melissa Jeltson
dot com.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Love it. Please come back to the show anytime in
the future. The door is always going to be open
for you. Melissa. Thank you, Eron, will you'd be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Okay, all right, thank you too.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Thank you.
Hey, thanks for coming back to the conversation. Let's do
some pod crashing. Episode number three eighty seven is with
Melissa Jelson from the podcast What Happened to Telena Czar. Well, Lissta,
what I love about this podcast is that you have
crossed the fourth dimension line. This, I mean, this was
a podcast listener that came to you, and that is
got to be one of the greatest blessings on the
(00:21):
planet because we don't know who we're reaching or why
we're reaching people, and this really does prove don't stop believing.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Yeah, I mean I was.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
I often get a lot of tips, you know, in
my email from people who want me to pursue a story,
but this was a really unusual one, right, This woman
named Jess in Minnesota who reached out to me and
said she loved the show, but she had a story
for me, a COVID story, she said, was a friend
of hers who had gone missing and she wanted me
(00:54):
to dig into. Now, as I got to know her
better and found out more about the story, she didn't
know Telene that yes, she fludged the truth a little
bit to get me interested, but she was just a
really big true crime obsessive she listens to all the podcasts,
(01:14):
watches all the shows, and she saw on a Facebook
group this post by Telena that you know, in the
beginning of COVID lockdowns, this woman Telena's oar in her
fifties in Oklahoma, posted online that she was very sick
with COVID. She did not want to go to the hospital.
She was afraid of being intubated, as many people were
(01:36):
at the time, and she wanted She told everyone that
she was going off on her own. She wanted privacy.
She was going to either recover or recuperate on her
own or possibly pass away, and she asked her friends
to respect her privacy, and a lot of Telena's friends
in the comments said, okay, you know, good luck. But
(01:56):
Jess came across this post later and she couldn't understand
people's reaction to it. She was very worried about this
woman that she didn't know, and ultimately, you know, she
had gone missing and the post set people back a
few weeks to start searching for her. But I yeah,
for the next four years, Jess really made it her
(02:17):
mission to find out what happened to Telena. It's from Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's amazing that that this even takes place, because well,
then again, it shows the power of the internet, but
it also shows the compassion. That's what amazes me, the
compassion that we have for people that we don't know,
but but yet if I can reach out and help
somebody or help you know, you know, figure out what
a story is, that to me is part of the story.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, I feel like, you know, it was just kind
of a perfect storm of people were laid off. It
was people were stuck in their homes, you know, for
Jess and for a bunch of the online flutes who
got together to look for Telena online and do while
they're digging. They had a unique moment in time where
(03:04):
they didn't have much work to do, they weren't able
to leave their house, and they wanted to help this
woman that they didn't They felt like nobody was looking
for and from what they could find out about her online,
they felt connected to her as a person.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
What's really interesting about the way that you set up
this entire podcast is that you allow us to get
to know who Jess is, even though it is what
happened to Telenazar. The thing is is that we had
to know who Jess was first then we're going to
take the steps.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, I think you know.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
What's also unusual about this story that I'm telling is
typically when someone when I do a podcast, I have
a lot of access to the family, right that it's
the family that brings the podcast to me or the
story to me. They want someone to tell this story,
they really want attention on it. In this case, I had,
(03:57):
you know, a stranger basically bringing me story, and so
she needed to be a big character in the In
the podcast, I was able to get some of Tolina's
friends in real life, and I was able to get
Toelina's sister, which really helped flesh out the rest of
the story. But yeah, it's a very strange. I've never
(04:19):
told a story this way, that it's coming through another
character that really didn't have any independent knowledge of her
prior to all of this happening.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
I love the way that you're using the word story
because so many people they'll come to me and say,
I want to be on your podcast. I want to
be on your podcast, and I'll always say, so, what's
the story? And so I love the way that you're
using the word story because there has to be a
story before you can take those steps.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Again, this story is different than other ones I've told
because it has so many strange elements to it. Like
my previous podcasts have really focused on typically one victim
and a case that would shine a light on a
bigger societal issue. So my first season was about police
sexual violence and a woman's death, and my second season
(05:06):
was about domestic violence, and this one is really about
It's about secrets, it's about hidden identities. It's about COVID
and hiding and masks and what happens when we are
isolated from each other. It's also about family and community
(05:31):
and the power of the internet. So it's very different.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
You totally set us up though with the COVID experience,
the way that you describe it and stuff, because because
you and I lived it, there are still people in
this world that really didn't live it because they were
too young. But when they listened to the podcast, they're
going to go, was it really like that?
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:47):
It was five years ago.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
I mean there's been some comments online that are like,
I can't listen to this podcast. This woman is obviously,
you know, they don't respect the story I told my
COVID experience, which was I was living in New York
City in like the at center of the pandemic, and
it was you know, I was in an apartment building
(06:10):
where we had to share a cramped elevator to get anywhere,
and there's you know, people to the left or right
of you, And so we decided to leave, me and
my partner and kids and went and went to Pennsylvania
for six weeks and hit out. But it was, yeah,
I think if you didn't, I think it was everyone
had a different experience. The one that I had was
(06:34):
you know, being in New York seeing how many people
were dying and how many people were sick, and how
limited the resources were. It was a and having everything
change like work, school, just grocery, shopping, everything change in
an instant. It was it was a you know, so
once in a lifetime hopefully experience, and we wanted to
(06:54):
capture that as like the mood and the setting of
the show.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
The message from Telena is that really her voice or
is that a voice actor?
Speaker 3 (07:02):
That's a voice actor? Yeah, so we had to use
voice actors. Those are all real things that she that
were writ in. Okay, not making up any content, but
we had voice actors for Helena and Corey and a
few other people.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
See because I mean the thing is, as I come
across you know, stories like that, were people sharing their
heart or they're they're they're they're releasing things from their emotions,
and you sit there and you try to offer positive things,
and then then you've got the attackers that come after you.
All I was doing was trying to be positive and
people come after you. You're going, oh, I got to
get out of this one. Disconnect. Disconnect.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, there's a lot of haters. It's fine.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
I think I just try to take it as you know,
this the podcast is getting attention, But.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I understood what she was going through. I mean she
had COVID. Now now, during the lockdown, I actually interviewed
a comedian that wanted someone to give him COVID so
that he could go through the experience. I mean, there
was some crazy, kinky stuff going on.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
I mean, I don't want to give any spoilers for
the podcast, so I won't go too deep into that.
But yeah, I mean COVID was very you know, no
one knew what was going.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
On, right.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
It was just like I think it's hard to capture
that now when like COVID is just a mainstream word,
but it was so fresh and so you know, not
understood that it really created a you know, a feeling
of like, what what.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Else could happen?
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Right?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
It up ended the normalcy that we're just so used
to and and you know, it was bizarre.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
It was bizarre. Time.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Please do not move. There's more with Melissa Jelson coming
up next. The name of the podcast is what Happened
to Telnazar? We're back with Melissa Jelson. Don't you think though,
that this this third season of your podcast is really
a celebration of the sluice on the internet because without
those saluts, I mean seriously, they all are coming together
(09:02):
to help crime. And this is the part that really
made me kind of disgruntled with the police forces when
they say that you're not going to solve this online.
You know what, I think we are because there's a
lot of us out here that understand true crime and
we're going to take chances where you guys have rules.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
I think what I wanted to show in the podcast
is how powerful online sleuthing can be and the true
crime community can be, but also show like from both
sides that while the truth while the sluths were doing
their own thing. The police were doing their own thing
as well, and the SLUS didn't really know what the
(09:39):
police were doing in the background, right, those records weren't unvailable.
They were in the middle of an investigation. So I've
been able to get a lot of those records so
I have a better sense. So for the sleuths, it
seemed like, oh my god, the police are doing nothing. No,
that's not true, right. The police were doing plenty, but
they were doing different things. They had yet, like you said,
(10:01):
they're operating by very different rules, and the sleuths were
able to uncover things and bring things to their attention
that were really, you know, showed to be pivotal.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
I can't imagine what it was like for you to
sift through all the information because there's a lot of
clickbait out there. How do you believe when you read
something on the internet?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Oh, I mean takes a lot of verification and research,
for sure. Yeah, but that's you know, that's part of
the job is making sure that the stories we're telling
are truthful and as contextualized as possible. That's very important
to me.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Without I'm going to go year route without spoiling the
story when something is shared that that something isn't real
and I hope I want to say something something wasn't real,
And I was shocked to hear that this thing that
you said was not her something real. Then I was like,
oh my god, that means that she's playing characters here.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, yeah, So I mean what we know in this
case was that, you know, there was a grand story
concocted around what happened to Telena. Right, she posted online
multiple times about being sick, having a migraine, and then
going off. She left without her cars. Her phone was
(11:23):
never discovered. So you know, did she in fact post
all those things or was it possibly a cover done
by someone else to by time. You know, those are
all questions that the podcast get into.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
You've got to love things like this because, I mean,
as a thriller chiller novel writer, I mean, I mean,
they sit there and they have to think this stuff up,
and you're sitting there going, well, I'm just going to
go to the police department. I'm going to get myself
a story.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Yeah, I mean, this is of all the stories I've
ever done, this one has the most twists and turns.
It's the most unbelievable. I think there's even a line
in it where just says to me like, did you
believe me? I brought this to you? Like because it's
just such an unbelievable story, And there were parts of
it that I was like, I need to double check
this because how could this be true?
Speaker 2 (12:10):
It's just the same.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yeah, But you come clean though with each and one
of our the listeners in the way of saying that
little towns have their skeletons. I chuckled when when when
you said that, because I'm going you damn right, they
have those skeletons, and that's probably where the best ones are.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yes, for sure, I know there's so many.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I'm sure even in Wagner, Oklahoma, where this story takes place,
there's five more crazy stories we could uncover.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
All of the required investigating. I mean, I mean, to
get into Jess's life was one thing, but then you
have to start, you know, creating your spider's web. How
what what kind of a time period are we talking
about here, because there's a lot of listeners that think
that you and I just bang this stuff out.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean I've been working on this for a
year and it you know, Talina was a very private person.
She had sort of segmented her life so that she
had kind of the story of who she was that
her family knew, and then she had a different persona
that some of her friends knew, and then her neighbors
(13:13):
kind of knew a different version as well. So for
me to get to know her and understand her life,
I had to do a lot of digging online and
I had to reach out to a lot of people.
And there are a number of people I reached out
to that didn't want to talk to me, but I
was able to find, you know, one of her very
close friends who I was able to interview, and then
(13:36):
a lot of people on the ground in Wagner who
had not as long a time period of friendship with her,
just you know, three or four years, but they knew her,
they loved her. And then I was also able to
get her sister. And you know, getting her sister that
took me handwriting a letter, putting it in an envelope,
mailing it to an address that I didn't know was
(13:59):
if it was her, Oh, even who she was, I
just knew they were related and hoping, And then I
got a call and her sister was so happy to
have been reached out to.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's the thing.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Sometimes you think, oh, everyone's going to be mad if
you contact them out of the blue. They're not going
to want something like this to happen. She was thrilled.
She was like, I want my sister's story to be told.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
What is your reaction when somebody says no, I don't
want to talk about it, because I mean, instantly, I'll
sit there and go, you're lost. But then again, but
if it doesn't leave my soul, I've got to dig
in deeper. I've got to come up with a different way.
I've got to sell the spots off a leopard.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yes, I often try more than once.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
You know, I'm very persistent because what I would say,
what I said to a lot of people reporting this
story is I really want to know who Telena is.
I can't get that from Jess. I can't get that
from these online slutes who never met her. I have
to get it from the people who knew her and
loved her. So if you talk to me, you will
(14:58):
be helping flesh out her as a real person so
that we we too can know and love her.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Let's talk about the production of this because I mean
when you when you've got all of this knowledge and
you know that you're going to share it with the listener,
what is the chronological order of how you put this together?
Without spilling the beans in episode one?
Speaker 3 (15:17):
Oh, it takes a lot of storyboarding to work out
how to you know, start the story off and tease
some of the bigger themes that are going to come later.
It's a complicated process. We have like a software that
we used to try to work out where what goes where,
and then it moves as we write the episodes, which
we're still writing today, the last episode.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, because I mean we call that billboarding or setting
up an appointment in radio. I mean you've got to
keep that, you know, keep that listener engaged, because when
you go into a commercial break, if that listener takes off,
it's like, ah, that's where I wanted to take off
at no.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
Yeah, Yeah, trying to have you know, teases that bring
people back and want to continue listening to the story.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
Well, uncovering the clues. I mean, something strange was happening,
and one of them a burned mattress that was kind
of freaky that came from out of nowhere.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, the burned mattress is a terrifying detail and one
that I don't know if you've seen the cover art
for the show, but we do have an illustration of
the Wow.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And you're saying that you're putting the final episode together?
What's next after this? Because you know how it is.
You can't just go to bed at night and think, Okay,
I'm done with the podcast. No, your mind is working
on something else already.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Well, the interesting thing about this story is that there
are two criminal trials that to take place that involved
This case is starting in just a few weeks, so
I'll be attending that trial and doing some bonus content
from that trial, and then we need to work out, Yeah,
how much more coverage do the listeners want? Should I
attend to the second trial as well? And then yes,
(16:57):
I already have a handful of other projects that I'm
thinking about dipping my toes into, but I might want
a little break.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
How do you get that backstage pass to that courtroom?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
I mean, not really backstage.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I just requested access as a journalist and they said yes,
So we'll see. It will be interesting if the podcast
comes up in the trial. Hopefully it doesn't.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
I'm so proud of you calling yourself a journalist because
this really is storytelling and its journalism, And I just
wish a lot more people would go into the way
that that podcasters are going because we get the full
story and it shared in a very timely manner. In
other words, we can digest it, go back and listen
to it, digest even more and get more. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
I mean, I think that today the best long form
investigative reporting is happening in podcast form. Like there's nowhere
else that you're maybe like the New Yorker, but there's
nowhere else that you get to spend a year reporting
a story and then spending that time making it come
to life.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Wow, Where can people go to find out more about you?
Because I want them to check out all three seasons.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Well, you can listen to all of the what Happened
tos on anywhere that you get your podcasts. The first
one is what Happened to Sandy Beal, the second one
is what Happened to Libby Caswell, and then the third
is what happened to Teleinazar, And all of that's also
linked on my website. Which is www dot Melissa Jeltson
dot com.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Love it. Please come back to the show anytime in
the future. The door is always going to be open
for you. Melissa. Thank you, Eron, will you'd be brilliant today?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Okay, all right, thank you too.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
The Charlie Kirk Show
Charlie is America's hardest working grassroots activist who has your inside scoop on the biggest news of the day and what's really going on behind the headlines. The founder of Turning Point USA and one of social media's most engaged personalities, Charlie is on the front lines of America’s culture war, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of students on over 3,500 college and high school campuses across the country, bringing you your daily dose of clarity in a sea of chaos all from his signature no-holds-barred, unapologetically conservative, freedom-loving point of view. You can also watch Charlie Kirk on Salem News Channel