abcnews

abcnews OP t1_j43f3cg wrote

I hope you feel like we've honored Andy! We really tried to approach her story with the care and respect it deserves. I hated seeing the way she was victim-blamed at the time.

I have a pretty full slate of projects that for the most part involve some element of crime, whether it be murder or scams, cults, financial fraud, etc. That said, I am really passionate about going anywhere that my investigative skills may be able to be additive — so I'm open to seeing where that takes me!

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abcnews OP t1_j3u8uh0 wrote

Thank you so much! We made all six episodes in around 6 months of production, with like 2 months of prep beforehand! We had filming and editing of different episodes happening simultaneously and teams working basically around the clock, so was an incredibly tight but fruitful turnaround. As for season two...fingers crossed!

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abcnews OP t1_j3tkmdz wrote

I had tabled the original concept for a few years before revisiting it with the team at ABC News Studios. With every project, I believe there is a right moment, platform, and people to tell it and I feel like in the end it came together as intended!

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abcnews OP t1_j3tey60 wrote

Ha! Not sure how/if this is related to the show, but I think it would be foolish and naive to think humans on Earth are the only life that exists or even the most advanced. That said, I do think most UFO sightings have logical explanations, and that our idea of what an alien or UFO might look like is limited by the boundaries of our own reality.

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abcnews OP t1_j3techk wrote

I didn't know Andy personally, but we shared a lot of mutual friends, lived on the same block, were both in sororities, etc (so when I say it could've been me, it really could have). But I would have never done the episode if her family wasn't in support of getting her story out, and I personally called her mother and sister to explain why I wanted to do this and what I thought we could accomplish. I feel incredibly lucky they trusted me with the story and honored that I was able to get to know Andy better through the process. Money-wise, I think most subjects understand that everyone needs to be paid for their work and there was a lot of work that went into the show (this is, after all, my job). However, anyone that works in unscripted will tell you these productions don't come with high budgets, and we are often making a lot work on very little.

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abcnews OP t1_j3szker wrote

I am, truthfully, incredibly nosy by nature and always have counteracted my own fears by obsessing over true crime, even as a kid. Career-wise, I am an investigative journalist by trade, mostly writing for Rolling Stone, Vice, HuffPost, and most recently, Atavist. But I've always really been a story hunter. Around 2018, I began investigating the Remnant Fellowship/Gwen Shamblin story, and felt it was more meant for a docuseries than an article. So I and approached Ross Dinerstein at Campfire, who I knew through my editorial work, and together we ended up producing my first docuseries, The Way Down on HBO Max, in 2021. Death in the Dorms is the second douseries I've created and EP'd!

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abcnews OP t1_j3sxm9f wrote

In most cases, if the family didn't want to be involved we chose to shelve that story and pursue others instead. Out of the six episodes in season one, there is only one episode where we didn't interview family members, which is Michael Deng. In that case, it was our understanding through family representatives/contacts that the parents are supportive of efforts to share their son's story, but just personally are no longer able to handle the stress of interviews. So we still moved forward with the story, and just leaned on people like Doug Fierberg, who worked with the family during that time.

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abcnews OP t1_j3svz4g wrote

In 2021, I wrote an article for Atavist called Girl in the Picture, about a young girl named Alexis (later Aundria Bowman) who was killed by her adoptive father, as discovered by her biological mother and an incredible online sleuth name Carl Koppelman decades after the teenager went missing from Michigan. We are currently working on a docuseries adaptation of that story that I am really looking forward to sharing. I also have another article coming out in Atavist at the end of the month to look out for! And a few other docs in development, ranging from a suspected serial killer to a social media scammer.

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abcnews OP t1_j3stqjd wrote

There are, unfortunately, a plethora of cases that fit the parameters for this show, and more it seems every week. We tried to keep all of our cases fairly modern, but there are two older ones that I wish more people knew about: Jeanne Cleary, who was murdered in her dorm at Lehigh in 1986, and whose parents went on to get the Cleary Act passed to protect other students; and Betsy Aarsdsma, who was killed in the book stacks in the Penn State library in 1969. Her murder was never solved.

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abcnews OP t1_j3ssxa8 wrote

We started by compiling a list of cases that weren't just random murders of college students, but where the college environment, culture, location, relationships, etc had played a significant role. We then started by reaching out to the families or representatives for the family to gauge interest, and see whether they saw potential value in sharing their loved one's story (often focusing on families who, like that of Yeardley Love or Samantha Josephson, went on to start foundations or nonprofit organizations). We only wanted to pursue cases where the family was in support of what we were doing.

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