INSIDER SESSION | Ripple Effect: When Crime Becomes Your Story with Hannah Smith and Patia Eaton

Hello everyone, I'm Carol Costello. This is a God Hook inside session, a setup. Before we get to it though, well actually an introduction. Emily and I sat down with true crime podcasters, Hannah Smith and Patia Eaton. They host The Knife. It's a podcast about people who've been dropped into a story they didn't start but are left to finish. Through empathetic in-depth interviews, Hannah and Patia find the untold stories of people who've been touched by crime. We thought it would be interesting to talk to them about survivors and what some people don't understand about them. Now on with the show,

We worked together on a show previously that was mostly focused on things like cons, cults, and it was bigger seasons. One story similar to God Hook, how you're covering one story over 10 episodes. So I hosted that show and Patia came on to produce that show. We very quickly became fast friends and loved working together, but one of the things that we found in making those bigger narratives is that we had to cut so much of the victim stories. We would do these long interviews with them, and then so much of that got left on the cutting room floor in service of this bigger narrative. And so when we decided to start a new show together, we were like, every time we've interviewed a victim, there is just a vast and interesting story there that can really stand alone. So we wanted to make space for that. We like to say we tell stories of people who were dropped into the middle of a story that they didn't start, but then they're left to figure out how to finish and what that even looks like. Oftentimes we find there's no real end to the story. It's an ongoing thing.

And also this idea that someone who experiences a crime, there's a ripple effect for them in their life. It doesn't end when the crime is over or when they get justice. It really continues on as part of their story now. And so we like to dive into that.

We totally get that angle because we interviewed one courageous survivor named Amy, a former sex worker who went undercover to try to rid the world of Richard Beasley. She wasn't successful, but she risked her life to do it, and I perceived she never got justice. But when we were looking for Amy, we thought about all of the things that you just said, and Emily has worked extensively with trauma survivors and I don't know, Emily, I was really worried that if we reached out to Amy that somehow that would retraumatize even from the get-go before she said one word.

Absolutely, because it's been so long. So the mere fact that we'd be reaching out to ask her about something that perhaps she had dealt with or gone through therapy or just buried in a typical way that a lot of survivors do, the idea of reaching out and kind of poking at this certainly was of concern

Because you don't want them to relive that trauma, especially if they've learned to live with it. So that was our biggest concern. So the reason that we both wanted you, Hannah and Patia on our podcast today is to kind of talk about that fine line between giving survivors power and exposing them to more pain and why in our present culture, even when women speak their truth, it's just not always enough to just be heard. So I'm curious, do survivors normally reach out to you or do you reach out to them? I know it must be a combination of both, but what goes through your mind when you first talk with someone who's survived such trauma?

We are fortunate to hear from listeners who have stories that they listen to the show and feel like this is a safe space for them to tell their story. And we always fill out such a privilege. And so we have some of those and we also go out and look for stories that we think would be purposeful in telling in some way. And if the victim voice and that story takes our call answers our email, then typically we start the conversation. But one thing we do to be sensitive to Emily and Carol, what you were just touching on is not wanting to retraumatize someone, especially when you're going in pretty cold, is like, we don't pester anyone. If they don't take the call, answer the email. I would say 99% of the time we leave it at that. There's maybe moments when we think, oh, they didn't get it or something, but we kind of put a feeler out and leave it

And we're very honest with them about what we're doing with the story, what our approach is, and that we understand that them sitting down with us probably won't be a pleasant experience for them. I mean that's mostly been our experience, even though I would say the majority of time people say that they're really glad that they told their story and they got a lot out of it. We understand that them sitting down and actually telling it as you had mentioned as well is a difficult thing. So we're never trying to pressure anyone. We're like, if you want to tell your story, we would love that and we would love to help you bring it to life. There's no gotcha moments here.

I know that when we were thinking about reaching out to Amy, it was in our heads that sometimes survivors want to tell their story but don't understand fully maybe the emotional toll that it will sometimes have on them to share their pain like that.

Most of the people that we've interviewed, we hear from after the fact and they are happy with the interview, glad that they've done it. And we also try to sort of hedge against any discomfort we can hedge against with preliminary conversations, kind of walking 'em through, here's what the interview will look like. We don't send them a list of questions, but we kind of lay out this is the general structure of what the conversation will be. This is your story. As many details as you want to leave in or leave out, that's up to you.

I love how sensitive you guys are when you're even asking questions of survivors. Emily, I was just curious because we as storytellers approach survivors from a little bit farther away than you as a prosecutor did, do most survivors want to share their stories with prosecuting attorneys or is that a difficult road to navigate?

I think it is a difficult road to navigate, and it really depends on the team of people that you have around you. You may have a child survivor who really doesn't have the same cognitive ability to handle a lot of the things that an adult might. You may have someone who came into the system who's frequented prisons or jails as part of their story who might not trust law enforcement The same. What I've found more often than not was I would try to pair with a victim advocate. So within the court system, whether assigned by the court or through the office that I was working with, trying to work with that victim advocate who may have better skills than I in first approaching someone that had been through such a traumatic event. And I think too, we really have to think about who we include in that story.

So it's a ripple effect, and it's not just that one individual who's been either a victim or a survivor of that incident, but the family members, employers, who else can we reach out to really build that support system? I didn't want anyone to feel that they were left behind after the fact to, because so often when they're going through the court system, you're putting so much time and effort into making them comfortable and secure enough to testify or to work with law enforcement that you might forget what happens once that court date is over and that person goes back to their normal life having been through such a traumatic event. And you have to think too about just what would be for you to go and testify and sit on the stand. I know I was subpoenaed for a case one time and I was so nervous and it was like I didn't do anything wrong.

I was just there to talk about law, which I should have been really comfortable with, but even the idea of testifying was so nerve wracking to me. So to get up in an open courtroom and talk about things that are quite sensitive or really traumatic or just all around really bad, and then to have to do that in front of a room full of strangers and then to have to do that in front of the alleged perpetrator sitting across the table or across the courtroom for you, it really meant that I had to have a strong team of people around me to get that person to that point where they could get up and testify.

So when you Hannah and Patia talk to survivors, did they talk about their court experience as much?

We have an episode coming out a little later where the trial process can be arduous and emotional

Sometimes. We've heard that giving the victim impact statement has been a cathartic and helpful experience for some victims. I've heard multiple times though that if they came in hoping to get some sort of acknowledgement from the perpetrator during that period, I've never heard anyone say, and that was really satisfying, and they looked me in the eyes and said, I wronged you. It's like that never happens, right? I mean, I dunno, maybe it does sometimes, but no one I've talked to has had that experience. But we like to go into that. We do every step of the story, and oftentimes it's a mixed bag of feeling this sense of justice when there is justice. And then we've had survivors say, we won the case. And then everyone came up to me and said, okay, great. Now you can close that chapter and move on. And Emily, I'm sure you've heard that a

Lot. I've probably said that too. I mean, quite honestly, I've probably said that. Oh, we're through the hard part

Now and legally probably you are right. But one of the nice things about telling these one voice stories is that we get to dig so deep into a person's experience and we like to talk about the aftermath as well. We like to go into if there was a legal case, we go into that with them and then what that feels like afterward and dig into the emotional experience. You said at the beginning that with Amy, you had this thought about hoping people would believe her story, and that is something that patient and I talk about a lot when we are interviewing, when we're editing and writing that's top of mind. We understand that when you are putting the story together, there's certain choices that you have to make and we grapple with, well, do we live this detail in or do we take it out?

We want to make sure that the full story is being told as much as possible. In an hour, one woman who she was living a normal life, in her words, she had a boring life. That was her, not us, and she had the FBI show up to her work one day and tell her that she was on a terrorist, a known terrorist hit list, a kill list, and that she couldn't tell anyone in her life. And then she hadn't told anyone this story except for a few close friends for about nine years, and she decided she wanted to come on our podcast and tell us that, which we were so thankful that she trusted us with that. But one of the things she said was that the few people, not everyone, but that she had told in her life about this, there had been this response of dismissal like, oh, well that's probably a mistake, or, well, it's not that big of a deal.

So we were really conscious of that when telling her story, just knowing that listeners, there's a worry that listeners would have that response. So we dug into what does it feel like emotionally to go to the grocery store and be looking around and wondering if there's someone who's a terrorist sympathizer who's going to follow you home, or to have the SWAT team come to your house and tell you to cut down the shrubs because someone could be hiding. This is a good spot for someone to hide. And we made a lot of decisions about leaving in some of these moments in the tape to show that whether or not someone reads that headline and thinks it's a big deal, we're hoping they'll walk through her shoes here and try to at least understand what she went through. And I think for her, it felt good to be able to tell that whole story to someone.

At first, I listened to her and said, oh, this is just what this random woman is put on a Tara watch list. I mean, because at first you don't quite believe what the person's telling you, but as her story went on, it was like, oh my God. So I'm sure that was in your head, right?

Yeah. It's really bringing them into the realness of the fear she was experiencing because her story, thankfully she's alive to tell it, but that doesn't mean that the threat wasn't impactful on her life and we wanted to make sure that we gave appropriate space for that in the episode,

And you could hear her acknowledge that probably some people wouldn't really believe me. So she was very brave to share her story. Amy was concerned because she has a criminal background. She was arrested dozens of times. She lived the kind of life that a lot of people don't approve of. She honestly, I think, still thinks that she needs to prove she did something good in the world before she can live with what she did in her past. And I still worry about that today, Emily. When I think about Amy, it just goes to

Show how much she has grown and how much she has. I don't want to say matured because she was already quite mature in my eyes, but that she was able to come in and sit down and she just presented so well and just talked so openly and bluntly about what had happened. And I share that concern to some extent, but at the same time, I think that she had probably gone through so much to get to the point where she could talk to us even after her episodes aired, that she was able to reach out and at least post a comment about how therapeutic it was for her to sit and tell that I would say out of most, if not all of the survivors of any kind of crime that I have dealt with, that I truly believe that what she did was more therapeutic for her than perhaps we want to acknowledge. I guess if you think about what she saw and what she was through to the point where she was able to sit down with us and talk about it, I mean, that's just such a growth. I can't even put into words how much I respect the fact that she came in and talked to us.

It's not like in every story you need to tell the listener what to think or how to feel, but there's a reason that that narrative voice should come in and be a trusted one because these people are sharing their stories with us, and we want to make sure that the listener gets a fair shot at really understanding that perspective. Amy has a life that some people might sort of disapprove of, but that doesn't discount this other chapter for her.

You all did a really good job with the choices you made, and I think she came across as so and her story was so powerful. I can hear her voice so distinctly in my head still. She has such a unique voice, and I loved the interviews you did with her and it could tell listening to the podcast that you were really thoughtful about the choices you made, but I'm just curious what those conversations were or if you made any specific choices in editing or whatnot.

Oh, we had many conversations about that. It was really interesting because we have a small team, which includes men, very thoughtful men, but they had such a different, some of them, I won't say all of them had a different perspective when listening to Amy. The challenge, at least for me as a journalist was Amy was an operator. She absolutely was. I mean, she was like an addict. She needed to be an operator to survive. So I wanted people to understand why she was an operator and not just throw out everything she did in her past that got her in the Summit County Jail. So I really thought about how can I make people understand? And to me, that was the most challenging thing because you saw it, Emily, but I don't think everyone on our team actually saw it clearly how victimized she was throughout her life and how victimization does certain things to your psyche and you do things that just don't make sense, but that's because you're traumatized.

Well, and I think too, it was a matter of we often try to put ourselves into that position and think how is it that we would react? And I think that that just goes out the window when you're dealing with people that have been through such traumatic events, especially if they're lifelong trauma events. And so she's someone who had gone through life traumas over and over, so her reaction to things was the normal for her and for us, it just seems so extraordinary because we're like, oh my gosh, you've been through so much. How can you sit here and do this so calmly? But she lived with her normal her whole life, and so I think that when people are listening to victims of crime speak, they're seeing it through their own eyes and really not trying to, and I know it's impossible, but this is what I would try to do with juries is that you can't think about things from your perspective.

You just really have to take yourself out of your own body and try to put yourself in other people's shoes. And if they weren't able to do that as a juror, I was like, bye, peace. I don't want you on my jury. But two, I think with her, what caught me the most is perhaps some of the discussions that we had off camera when she was talking about things like her water heater had just broken and the everyday things that happen that we don't pay attention to. We do just see this as someone who's been through all of this and we do kind of then associate and label this person as this victim of crime, not remembering that they're an actual person who at the end of the day is brushing their teeth or has to pay a water bill and does all of the same ordinary stuff that we do. There was that moment of realness that as she really is, she's going to go back to her house and has to deal with all of the crap that comes when your water heater breaks and come up with that three grand to pay for that new one.

The thing that also struck me about Amy is she went into vivid detail of everything she perceived herself of doing wrong. And so I think as a storyteller, you sort of have to think about why someone is doing that, and you do have to be selective in how much you share. I was very protective of Amy, and I didn't want people to attack her. So I was really cognizant of everything that was the hardest interview and the hardest couple of episodes I've ever written because Amy I think is punishing herself because of what she perceived she did wrong in the past. Still, she really wants redemption, so she exaggerated maybe some of the things that she perceived she did wrong, and I'm no psychologist, but I realized that about her and I had to take that into account in the way that we told her story publicly.

If we're working on a story and there's varying levels of intensity or still really good reason for us to dive into someone's background at the beginning, to really humanize them and bring people into not just the incident, but as much as we can in the first third of an episode, why they are who they are, and we'll ask, what did the beginning of this day look like for you? And maybe those are details we end up leaving in or taking out, but they help us and they help the listener, I think sort of see what's going to come through that person's eyes. And that's always the goal for us too, because it is hard to imagine. And for example, we have an episode about a woman named Tenson Jacobson and her husband Kyle, who their home was invaded twice and in 24 hours in 24 hours,

Oh my God.

Yeah, the man who invaded their house Tenson ends up killing him in self-defense, and she's a new mother at this point. And so there's a moment at the beginning of the episode prior to the first home invasion where she's sort of mentioning a complicated relationship with her mom, and we left that in because it felt like, okay, this person's very human life and day and her mom because of this tense moment they were having leaves the room. And in that moment, this first home invasion happens and it was just painting a full picture of someone's life in that moment so that you can really bring someone into what they were experiencing and not just what we are telling you happened.

Those are subjective choices that storytellers make all the time, and they're not easy choices. I guess that's the thing that I'd like to impart for all of us as people are listening to this episode.

It's so tough and it's a balance. You want to provide enough context emotionally and practically, and you could never tell a person's story in an hour. And so that is something Hannah and I spend so much time talking about on every single edit.

It feels really bad when you do get feedback. This hasn't happened on The Knife, but on a previous show we worked on, we did a story on a troubled teen program and interviewed this woman who went through this really horrific program and witnessed some really terrible stuff and had been sent there because she already had some trauma in her life, so she agreed to talk to us. She had layers upon layers of traumatic experiences, and that can be complicated in a very human way. And so I believed her and our team believed her, and we have court documents that line up with dates of when she's talking about she was there, but for the most part I think we got good response. But we did get a couple emails. I remember after of someone just saying, well, she doesn't sound believable at all. Don't you think she was just lying about her experience? And in that moment, I felt like I had failed as a storyteller in some way. I didn't do enough. I don't think here to portray her story perhaps. And I mean people also just have their opinions. That was a real learning moment for me of I can't control everyone's opinions, but I really need to be so thoughtful, even more thoughtful than I thought I had to be about how I am telling these stories.

You bring up a really important point because I think sometimes a survivor will gather up the courage to tell her story in whatever medium, and then that story seized by people for their own purposes, usually political. And so I often wonder and worry what happens when the survivor's narrative is just hijacked, which it is a luck today, right?

There was one trial I did, I believe it was a rape trial or some kind of sexual assault case that I was trying, and I knew I was going to get in trouble when I asked this question during the voir Dear. So the typical jury questioning that you put forth to the jurors, it's the only time that an attorney truly gets to talk to the jurors, and it's really important that you would use that time to educate the jurors to the kind of crime that you were going to present in the case that you were going to present. And so I remember I was like, I know I'm going to get in trouble for this. I knew that people would judge the victim of the sexual assault, and so often people think, well, if the victim doesn't remember exactly what they were wearing or exactly when it happened or the time or what song was playing on the radio or whatever, that person is not believable.

So I asked one juror in particular, he was just being such a jerk. I asked him if he could recount for the courtroom his last sexual experience, how long it lasted, were the lights on or off, and I just started blasting questions. And of course that got sustained on it, and I knew that was going to happen, but it was the point that got out. If you're expecting this person who's coming in and talking to remember every single one of those details, why don't you tell me about yours? Of course he didn't answer, don't worry.

But I do often wonder survivors, they have the courage to share their stories, and then it's hijacked by whomever, and it could be both sides of the political aisle, it could be activist organizations, it can be anyone who takes this story and uses it for their own purposes. And that's got to have, I don't know. I hope that that doesn't make survivors less likely to tell their stories publicly because it's so important.

And we try to also remind people throughout the pre-production or preliminary interview stage, we are going to fact check everything, not because we don't believe you, but because if you get a date wrong, we'll make sure that we can correct it. We want them to be able to focus on telling their story and being as vulnerable as they feel comfortable being without having to get caught up and worry about that.

I don't know if we're at the height of it, if it's still going up or what, but it does seem to be such a prevalent issue right now, and I feel like the only thing I can do is try to tell a really good story. We talk about doing justice to the stories a lot, and it's one sort of small thing, but it's like if someone might read a headline and judge someone, but then if they listen to in-depth empathetic, well done interview, that turns into a story with thoughtful narration and they can leave that and maybe just have a kernel of a thought of a little more open mind about a topic than I feel really good about what we're doing. It's one small thing, but I do think it feels important to me.

It's those little details that matter most besides telling the larger story because it just makes survivors more real, which is really weird of me to say. I think, Emily, you said when you hear a survivor's horrible traumatic story, they're forever associated with that story, and I personally would not like that.

No, you're labeled, I think, which instantly is as someone, if you're a survivor of sexual assault, that's not your identity, but for purposes of talking about it or trial, that does become the person's identity. And if you try to sway from that, some people might not like that or find it as believable if you're not focusing as much on that as possible.

I have a question for you, Emily, if I may. Yeah. We have an episode coming out soon that has to do with a person who experienced sexual assault in a college situation and actually went to court, but she talked about having to really cover up and wear makeup and not too much makeup because of course there was a lot of victim blaming about what she was wearing that night and all of that stuff. And how is that modern day in sexual assault cases? Is there a more understanding of juries about that or is that still sort of a reality that women are still being sort of blamed for what they're wearing and things like that?

I think that's any kind of case, unfortunately. I think you could probably argue that in a sexual assault case it might be something a little bit more, but at the same time, if you have, let's say you do have a sex worker come in to testify, and I don't know if you want to associate a certain kind of dress or what have you, appearance, and then they come into court looking like they've just stepped out of the C-suite then oh, well, the prosecution has worked with this person. Look how much they've been coached. Their hair is different. Everything about them is different. So I would tell people to dress like you were going to a job interview. You used to be able to say you dress like you're going to church. But that's out the window now. But I don't think that it even just falls for the people that get up to testify.

I know that we talked in our episode a little bit about even what it was like as a female prosecutor to get up in a room full of men and just be judged. And you have to realize too that jurors are sitting there for a long time. Trials can be incredibly boring, and I've had jurors fall asleep and so they have nothing else. They've been excused of course, or someone pokes them and wakes them up, but they're looking for anything to keep themselves occupied during the case. So if it's sitting and analyzing what each victim is wearing, what each witness is wearing, what a woman is wearing versus what a man, I had a judge one time talk to me about the fact I was wearing pants and not a skirt, and I'm not that old, so I'm not talking like 1920s. This was only within the last 15 years. So unfortunately, I think that still is something that people have to worry about and you're never going to have the perfect answer.

I just want to go back for a minute about the sex worker

Not

Looking like she came out of the C-suite,

But

She had to look somehow authentically sex worker ish.

There's no perfect way. That's why I would say dress, you're going to an interview. I wanted them to present as themselves. I mean, there's certain courtroom attire that's not allowed. So you have to get over that first hump. Some judges will say, you have to come in with closed shoes with certain things, but you didn't want to dress someone up.

So in a sense, you're kind of agreeing that the way a sexual assault woman dresses really does matter when she takes the stand.

It can. Yes, it can, unfortunately.

But I think too, it might differ if you are in a very rural part of the country versus if you're doing a case in one of the larger cities. So it really is going to be dependent on where you are also. What's the feel of that environment in which you're trying the case? What's the community? That's why you work hand in hand with law enforcement, with the victim advocates. If they don't, they might not have clothes that are suitable for a courtroom. So you're really working as a team and all relying on each other. What's the best way to make this person not just appropriate for court, but comfortable? Because if you're trying to put them in something that they're not comfortable in, it's going to show on their face. But at the same time, you can't have someone show up in booty shorts and a crop top.

When we hear about people going to trial for a crime they experienced and were the victim of, it's like, okay, you don't just go in and assume everyone's going to believe you.

Well, too, the defendant usually is wearing something that he's not used to. I mean, so they are given a suit and appropriate court attire. It might not be theirs. It might come from someone else in the jail. So it's not just the survivor of the assault or the crime that's stressing a certain way. You have to remember the defendant doesn't look like that. And we would point that out to the jurors. We're like, oh, he might look like he's dressed up to go to a job interview today, but this is not what he looked like on the date of the incident.

So as far as coaching victims to take the stand, do you do mock trials and the whole schill like that?

I didn't, but I invested a lot of time in trying to get to know the person in their own space. So if it was appropriate and if it was something that they were comfortable with, and I never went alone. I always went with someone, we would say, where is it that you're comfortable meeting? Sometimes it was in their own home, sometimes it was in a Panera or some kind of restaurant. Sometimes it was the prosecutor's office. But I would always ask them where they were comfortable and I would start well in advance of the actual court date because I wanted to build that rapport and just make sure that they were comfortable talking about things and any human emotion, it's going to ebb and flow over time. So there were highs where they were really excited to get in and tell their story to the absolutely fearful, and I can't do this.

I don't want to do this. Or it changed over time. So as long as they had a relationship where they could convey that back and forth with me, that's what I would try to do. So there was never a coaching. I mean people can see right through the coaching aspect of it, I want it always to be just a comfortable conversation. And don't worry, there were times that they just clammed up on the stand and I'm looking around, what do I do? What can I say to remind them that we're cool and they can talk

About this, that moment And your podcast when you talked about how Beasley was so good on the stand and then one of the victims just because of human things was not very good. And I thought that was such a gripping moment in the podcast, and I was like, oh my gosh, this is terrifying me.

Poor Scott Davis, I know Scott Davis escapes Richard Beasley's Wrath. He's the guy that will tell the story of how these crimes went down, and Emily was in charge of Scott Davis. And Scott Davis had a bad experience with the police who did not initially believe him. And so Emily, how did you talk about that with Scott?

I think the way it started with the voir dire and educating the jurors as to how people react and respond on the stand, and that again, they had to not think about how it is that they would do it, but to really be in the place of that individual and understand they might not react the way that we would expect them to. And Scott was great. Scott was Scott throughout from the first minute that I met him to the time that he was on the stand, he didn't offer up more information than what was asked. So we spent a lot of time talking to Scott, both at his residents and on the phone, and many times talking with him

Initially he looked at you with distrust, right? Of course, because you part of the system.

Yeah, we were part of the law enforcement. What am I going to tell you guys? So it was building up that trust with him. And I think that both myself and the co-counsel that went with me, we did come across as very authentic. We're very much ourselves goofy, like, Hey, you can talk to us or not, we're here to help. And it is about offering up just a little bit about yourself, but knowing where to stop, right? Because you do want to relate to this person. So I don't even remember what topic it was that my co-counsel talked about, if it was about bikes or whiskey or I don't remember exactly, but making that connection and then just gaining the trust that way. But even though we established that relationship and talked to him so many times, I mean, he still stopped talking on the stand a couple times, and I was just standing there like, oh my God, this is so uncomfortable.

There's so many people in this courtroom. What do I ask him next? He's giving me yes or no answers. Like I need more. I'm trying to pull it out of him. Eventually he gave us what we needed, even though it might've been uncomfortable, at least for me, it had to be a thousand zillion times more uncomfortable for him. But he communicated his story in the way that was authentic to him. So even though I expected him to act a certain way and to answer things a certain way, he answered things the way that he was comfortable doing, which I think in the end came across as more authentic than someone who was getting up and speaking in eloquent prose about all of the events of that day. So I think it came across as truly, Scott.

It reminds me of building trust. It's so interesting to hear you talk about that. It makes so much sense that it would be such a crucial part of the work that you did, but we talk about that a lot too, building trust with people. And sometimes it takes a long time. Thinking of the hijacked episode that we did about Jackie Fluke who was on this airplane in 1985 that was hijacked, and it's a wild story. She's been through so much and she went through a lot of physical trauma as well, and Patia had spent hours on the phone with her building this relationship, talking through things, not in any kind of convincing way, but just to really build that trust.

She's written two books, and Hannah and I both read them and let her know that we were going to let those help us guide her through the story, because obviously one of her concerns was this hijacking took place in 1985, and she didn't want to seem unbelievable by or not believable if she couldn't recall a certain memory. And we have these preliminary conversations and read books when people have written them for that reason. So we can protect against that concern.

Well, maybe we should wrap up by reminding people of how important it is to open your mind and listens to someone's story and why that matters.

Be empathetic and you never think it's going to be you. And that's I think something we encounter all the time in our interviews is like this kind of thing had never happened to me before, and of course it hadn't, and you never think that it will, and then you find yourself the victim of a crime and there's no playbook.

We're not telling stories about perfect people that had this one bad thing happen to them, which goes back to they might have a criminal record or whatnot, and they don't have to be perfect people to also be telling the truth. And I think that's something that always sticks with

Me. It's important to remember that different courts exist throughout the country. So you have small courts within small municipalities, you have large attorney, general, big appellate courts, what have you. And at every one of those levels is someone who's trained differently, perhaps as to how to be a victim advocate. Some of the courts might not have a dedicated victim advocate that can help walk people through the system. You might not have prosecuting attorneys who have a small enough docket that they can dedicate so much time to establishing that rapport and trust. So if someone does find themselves to be a victim of crime, whether themselves or through a family or friend, there have to be ways to get out resources for these individuals and how they can seek out help through a victim advocate and the different avenues that exist for them. So just remember too that not every prosecuting attorney is trained or is as fortunate to be trained across the country in different ways as the next one. So there are some really good people that work in the courts that are really good at working with victim advocates, and they're going to be some that are really crappy. So as long as they can at least find their way to a resource that can help get them through this kind of event is what's important.

And I just would like to add one more thing. I think that these stories are important to share because they provide courage to others. And at least for me as a journalist, I learned so much from these survivors. They're rich in my education and I appreciate that about them. Just to wrap up, just tell me about The Knife and where people can find it and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. The Knife is a weekly podcast. We have two types of episodes. We do in-depth interviews, and then every other week we have The Knife off record, which is more casual conversations between Pat and I where we'll follow up on past episodes we've done talk about more current crime cases and offer recommendations. And you can listen. We're on exactly right. Media, the exactly right network, and you can listen to us wherever you listen to podcasts. Am I missing anything? No, I think that's perfect for every listen to podcast.

That sounded perfect to me. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Thank you for having us. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to all of you who are out there listening. We always appreciate your support and we'll catch you next time. Bye.