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Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why?

Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪

Unless he keeps on killing.

This is Atlanta Monster. Please welcome head of new initiatives and executive producer at HowStuffWorks, Jason Hoke. Thank you. So thanks everyone for coming today. Really excited about this panel. We're going to talk about Atlanta Monster and Up and Vanish, some of the collaboration. All right. So let's bring the panel out. I'm going to let you guys introduce yourself. This is Meredith Payne and Donald, but give us a little bit more background on what each of you guys do.

Hi, I'm Meredith Seven and I'm a creative producer at Tenderfoot TV. I'm Payne Lindsey. I host and produce Up and Vanish and Atlanta Monster. Thank you. I'm Donald Albright, president of Tenderfoot TV. I'm Payne's business partner. All right, let's get started. Payne and Donald, we somehow found a way to start Atlanta Monster. How did that happen? Well, I met you first.

And you hadn't heard of Up and Vanished yet, but you knew of Up and Vanished. Yeah. And you shot me an email, and he realized that we were in the same building. And he said, come down to my office. And I went down there, and I swear it was like a job interview. He was like, so you like podcasts? I was like, yeah, I've just been making one for a while.

And then you started listening to Up and Vanished and you, for some reason, brought up the Atlanta child murders in there. And you had brought up the Atlanta child murders to me like a week prior as a podcast idea. So you were saying it, you were saying it, and I was like...

"Okay, let's all have a meeting." And then that's basically how it all started. Yeah, and it was one of those things where HowStuffWorks, although we have been doing podcasts for a long time, we had never done true crime. And I think we knew at that moment, well, we have to do something together. And, you know, I grew up, I was probably 9 or 10 at the time, did not live anywhere close to Atlanta, but burned in my brain were those images of Wayne Williams and the Atlanta child murders. And my parents kind of freaked out until they pulled me in the house.

Donald, you've got a similar story of growing up, although you were way far away also. Yeah, I was 2,000 miles away, California. I was only maybe three years old when this was happening, but I still remember kind of growing up with this because

you know being black this happened to all you know young black kids young adults um so just within the black community it was something that we talked about you know our families friends uh and it just affected my childhood growing up because it felt like it was happening right on my block and you know in my street and i looked like those victims so it's something just stuck with me so when i asked pain um i know we want to do something different before going to up in advantage season two

We're like, let's do something else. Let's do something other than a missing person. Let's try to give our audience something new. And I just texted him randomly one evening. I was like, have you ever heard of the Atlanta child murders? And he said, no. And I was like, how could this mean so much to me

and he doesn't even know what it is, and he's from Atlanta. I know there's an age difference of about 10 years, but it's still something where we know about a lot of cases that took place in the '70s and the '60s, but not very many people, even who were born at that time, even remember Atlanta child murders. So something that I felt like we needed to do, if for nothing else, to inform and educate the general public on these tragedies.

So before I ask Meredith and Payne a question about that, because you were younger than when these murders happened, let's play a clip from "Atlanta Monster."

All right, very good.

Thank you. So, our perception, kind of walking into this story, was maybe people had heard about this. Either you knew about it, but you didn't know everything, or you hadn't heard about it at all. And the overwhelming reaction that we got from fans was, "I'm angry I've never heard of this." And I think with a younger crowd, that happened over and over. What was your perspective, Meredith? Yeah, I mean, I wasn't alive at the time it was going on, and I'm from New Orleans originally, so wasn't on my radar in that way.

But I found it really interesting, all the social parallels with what we're dealing with in 2018 and what was present in 1979. And I think that's really what stood out for me the most.

To me it was fascinating how much it sort of shaped the culture in Atlanta. Before I did podcasts, I was directing music videos in Atlanta for a little bit. So a lot of them were hip-hop videos, so I was really kind of tied in to the hip-hop scene in Atlanta. And some even newer songs were referencing Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Murders, OutKast, Big Boi. It was just kind of fascinating to me just how much this sort of permeated

all over the place. I mean, for generations, this has sort of like been this urban legend in Atlanta in a lot of ways. So we took the conversation with victims and their families and people who reached out to us very, very seriously. And I think part of the approach here was not trying to step on

what they wanted to talk about and actually talking to people that had never had a voice before. Donald, what do you think about the approach of kind of letting people talk and really kind of enriching that as part of the story?

I think after this long, I mean, you know, when we first started researching this, we saw that, look, there's a story here to be told that it's not for us to tell. It's for the people who experienced it firsthand. It's for those people whose lives changed by the way they were raised, you know, growing up right in the neighborhoods where kids were disappearing from. It's the people who were 10 years old at the time who are, you know, right in that age group of the kids that were coming up missing and murdered.

let them talk. It's not about us telling you how you should feel about it. It's about that brother who was 20 years old and lost his 10-year-old younger brother. It's the moms. It's the friends. So it's not about what we were trying to do or what we were trying to accomplish. It's really like, look, let us sit back. It's too delicate of a situation for us to come in and

interject and ask a bunch of questions that are trying to turn over this rock. It's more like, look, when we're talking to victims' families, it's so that you all can really experience how this impacted real people. These aren't characters. These are real people who lost loved ones.

It's not easy to just sit on the phone and let someone talk. And I think that's one thing, even with Up and Vantage, I think it's something that Payne was able to do really well, was just sit back and say less so that other people could say more. And that's how you get the good stuff. People didn't want to talk to us also because this brought up really bad, terrible memories. And then there were people who came forward also where

They wanted to tell us about the time when they were almost abducted, you know, by someone that wasn't Wayne Williams or by someone that they felt was Wayne Williams. And it took a lot of us saying, look, we'll come meet you. You know, people were scared to talk to us. They didn't want their names out there. They wanted their voices disguised. It was, you know, we dealt with everything you could imagine. And we just tried to be really delicate with how we approached it because we knew how sensitive it was. Yeah, and Meredith, um...

You and I, actually all of us, we would sit on the couch and talk about this all, that's why I have no notes, because we talk about this all the time. Meredith, this is a complicated case. Probably between the two of us, we've looked at how many hundreds of hours of archival footage, notes and research, I mean, how do you put all this stuff together and make sense of it and be able to tell a story in audio that people can digest? It's unbelievably hard.

Sometimes I forget what is in the podcast and what's just in my head from all the articles I've read. And so I feel like sometimes the story for me feels bigger and the challenge is really boiling down and deciding what

is crucial and how to balance both sides of the story. And, yeah, it's been crazy, though. We found some crazy things. A lot of stuff that we never even put out there. Payne, let's talk about music. I think something snapped with me in "Up and Vanish" where I just love theme songs, I love the hook, and I think everyone can hum the theme song of season one of "Up and Vanish" in their heads, and that was a conscious effort on your part to really

To really layer in sound, both emotionally and just kind of adding, think about it, you add music and sound, you add archival footage, you add interviews. How do you think about putting all this together, especially with music? I just wanted to sound good.

Simple as that. I like being immersed in the moment and just sounds driving you. Sometimes it means that there's this really intense music or maybe it's just the soft drone in the background that you forget is there while this guy is talking. And then oftentimes give it a break and just let it be raw for a second so you remember how real everything is. So I think that balance is what I'm always trying to find. And for Atlanta Monster, I was...

I was like, we're going straight 80s with this thing. We're gonna get the Stranger Things soundtrack of podcasts. And so I found this guy on Spotify. His name was Makeup and Vanity Set. And I found him on Twitter and I sent him a message. And then next thing you know, he's scoring the entire soundtrack for Atlanta Monster.

I think we hired him to make like 10 songs. He made like 100 songs. Every other day he was like, listen to this, listen to that. And I would send him segments of the podcast and he would kind of customize and score it.

But it was awesome. To me, the sound and just the identity of a podcast is super important to me. It's a brand. It's bigger than just a podcast to me. So the sounds and the music were super important. And that was one of the first things in the day one meeting. I was just playing samples of different music. And everyone was like, okay, I think I see what you're doing here.

But yeah, the music is a big deal to me and I was happy with the way it turned out. Well, the other thing that we did here that might be a little bit of a surprise and frankly I think we're all like 10 years older as a result of this in the aging process was out of the gates we said,

Um, we don't want to just tell a story and then release that story post, post fact. Um, we, we made the decision around the time where we knew we were going to have Wayne on the podcast to go real time. And maybe people don't realize that, but around episode five or six, we said in order to really get more people to come forward and tell their stories and to have a dynamic where we're getting a little bit more energy, um, um,

with what Wayne is saying and be able to react to it. Let's go real time. It sounds like a great idea. And it's tough. It was real tough. Meredith, talk a little bit about the complicated nature of that. It's a little daunting going in on Monday and not knowing what the podcast will be like on Thursday night. But it definitely, we did get a lot of stories last minute, things that

weren't going to pop up otherwise. Like the man who started the basketball league, I don't know, sometimes messages would come to you, random people we didn't think we were going to talk to ever. And so it definitely was an important part of the process, but it was nerve-wracking to say the least and definitely a time crunch.

I'm pretty sure I cried during this production. I was just so scared that I wasn't going to make it out in time or something. No, it's stressful because we're going like, we'll just hop on a flight and go to New York or Chicago to interview the guy in the microtrace lab about the fibers. And then the next day we're in the mountains in Georgia doing this. We also have to make a podcast too. The podcast is not just the interviews that you're getting.

That is where most of it comes from, but who's chopping that up and bringing it down? We'll interview someone for four hours, you're going to hear ten minutes of it. So someone has to go through and pick that. So I would ingest the audio, you'd be listening to it and tagging stuff and turning it back out and trimming it down and then sending it to Makeup and Vanity Set to put music on it. And really the whole time we have this bigger picture of this story arc that we're trying to tell.

and how we're going to get there, but then something like a guy emailing you and saying, "Hey, Wayne Williams abducted me," that kind of changes things and is a new priority, and maybe you didn't plan on doing that that week. So I don't recommend doing it that way, but the coolest part about it is that it's a truly organic thing, and

anybody could come forward with new information and shape this story themselves, which we think is really cool. And Donald, listening back to, I think we had about three stories of people that came forward and we really put those out there near the end of the series. What was your reaction in hearing some of those stories or meeting some of those people? It was interesting. I think there's pros and cons of, like Payne said, how we actually produced this podcast. The biggest benefit of being able to

put it out and still not be finished with the finale is that you get these people coming forward and that changes the trajectory of where this podcast was going. And I mean, we would find them in various corners. My daughter actually put the trailer on Instagram and I read a comment on her page that said, "Wayne Williams tried to abduct my dad and my uncle." I asked her, "Who's this guy? Who's this person who commented that on your page?" She said, "Oh, that's my friend."

Let me talk to him. I talked to his dad. And then a couple weeks later, we had his dad's story. And that was the story about him being at the, his bike being stolen. And he said that Wayne Williams lured them to this church and tried to abduct him. So

I mean, the podcast doesn't sound the way it does if we don't allow, put that extra stress and pressure on ourselves to, you know, actually give the audience, the listening audience an opportunity to participate. But, I mean, hearing those stories firsthand, like I did a pre-interview with Tony, and I talked to him for 30, 45 minutes, and I heard this amazing story, and then I would, you know,

put it in Dropbox and tell Payne and Meredith to listen to it. I would send it to you guys and I'd say, "Look, this is something real. We need to bring him in and get a real interview done with him." And then I'd meet him, bring him upstairs, and he and Payne would go into our little office studio and knock out an interview. And then a lot of times I would then not listen to it until everyone else got to listen to it so that I could experience it the same way and just try to figure out. When you're too close to it sometimes,

you can miss things. I like to experience some things the same exact way the audience is. But it's an extremely interesting process and no story is the same or comes to you the same way. They're all unique experiences. Yeah, and Payne, before we move on to our discussion on Up and Vanished, talk about, I appreciate kind of, I call it fearlessness of going there.

Going there with a conversation about race, picking up the phone and talking to anyone you can, jumping on a flight like you talked about, I think that matters in the ultimate outcome of the show. What do you think about that? How do you react to that and how does that inform the way you put stories together? I mean, this is an uncomfortable story to tell.

Being a middle-aged white guy, I was nervous about telling the story, and I wanted to do it the right way. And to me, the only right way to do it was to let everyone else do the talking. The story wasn't about me. It's not about-- I wasn't even around. I was essentially learning this as I went along, so that was kind of neat for me. And I just wanted to tell a big story. I saw how much the Atlanta child murders had an impact on the city.

on the culture in Atlanta, the whole nation really with the, it's 10 o'clock, do you know where your children are? I mean, these things that people remember, but they don't know where they're from. And so I was just blown away by that. And I was nervous telling this story, but, you know, I had to be fearless in a sense because at a certain point, you just got to do it. And so you're always kind of making sure you do the right thing. And you can't be scared to get the story. I remember the first time I talked to Wayne Williams, I was like,

Shit. What have I gotten myself into now? What am I doing? What am I doing with my-- I was like, look at you. I was like, what am I doing? What am I doing? They're like, I don't know. Is he on the phone? But like, I'd probably say, what am I doing, like, every day? Like, what am I doing?

Just because it's so bizarre to me sometimes that I'm here, but people are people, and oftentimes they want to talk to you. So if you listen to them, you'd be surprised what they'll tell you, and that really is all that I am doing. Everything else is just the storytelling part of it. So you can't be scared to talk to somebody. Some people will turn you down, but most people didn't, and most people don't. They want to tell you something. That's what I've learned. Also, I think...

You have to clear up the fact that you're 30 years old, you're not middle-aged. - Middle-aged, yeah. - Yeah, that's hilarious. - I was like, I guess I'm not that old. That would make me old and I'm not accepted. - He's like, where do I live then? - Exactly. - All right, that's a great natural break.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle.

Not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes, he's innocent. But in my eyes, he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There and Gone.

Let's bring out our next guest. Please welcome Dr. Maurice Godwin. Thank you. Thank you. Maurice. Yeah. I think most everyone here is familiar with Up and Vanish. We're going to talk a lot about that. Before we do, let's take a look at a short clip.

An investigative podcast about the disappearance of an Osceola teacher is set to premiere Monday. Titled Up and Vanished, the story details the findings of Atlanta filmmaker Payne Lindsey as he makes a documentary on Tara Grinstead. The former Osceola teacher has been missing for nearly 11 years now. She was last seen in October of 2005 at the Georgia Sweet Potato Pageant. She was so loving and so open and she was just a very caring person.

and almost to the point where sometimes I thought it was too much. I really do feel like it is an abduction at this point. I think it's about to flip upside down. A lot of rumors in this case end up being true. You want the truth?

Here's the truth. I found out on January the 10th what happened to Tara. More than 40 GBI agents warmed up at Con Orchard in Ben Hill County this afternoon. From Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta, this is Up and Vanished.

So, Payne, you look at that, what, year and a half, almost two years later, what's your reaction? How has that sunk in? Middle-aged white guy who... I'm just kidding. Actually, just watching that back, I was like, damn, it's still crazy to me. The whole thing is just crazy to me. It gave me goosebumps just then, just watching him back. Absolutely. And it's just an unreal story, and...

when i got involved it was something that no one was talking about and every one of tara's friends was just torn up about this and no one had any clue what happened no one had any clue and now there's been two arrests which is just unreal and i'm excited for the trial for justice yeah and i actually started re-listening yet again to up and vanished um and i was struck

After getting to know everyone more, especially you, Maurice, I was struck by, you know, this is something that you had followed for many years. Walk me through that initial conversation with pain and how you guys connected and then how you built on that over the course of many months. Okay, well, I worked the case for her sister for 12 years, for 11 years.

And I had done—I got no help from any law enforcement, so everything I found was found on my own. And I had a book binder full of information since March of '06. One day I said—I hadn't been to a web sluice, which is a website about crime and stuff. I said, "I haven't been there in a long time." This was like January of '16.

So, I said, "Let me go there and see what's happening about any case." So, I went there, and then I clicked on Tara's link, and I noticed a new post. Nobody had responded, and it was from Payne, and he was looking to do a documentary about Tara's case, and he wanted to know about some information. And I got to thinking, I said, "Well, he needs help." So, I called.

and left a message, and he called me back. We talked for two hours. And it's only because of that contact between Payne and I that this case was solved. That's it. And, I mean, we butted heads, you know, in the beginning. Still do, but...

We butted heads in the beginning and stuff, but I knew when he was making those trips to Asila that he was doing the shoe leather work that was necessary on following up. Everything that he could possibly follow up on. And it worked. And there's no, and I'm sort of biased, but there's nothing else like Up and Vantage.

There's no music. This is a signature podcast in the podcasting history. How would you describe our relationship, do you think? Well, you know, we butted heads. I mean, it was sort of like a man and a woman going through a bad divorce. And they divorced and then remarried, and they're still fighting. Yeah.

But the main thing is, our focus was on bringing justice and resolution to Tara's case. And we did -- I mean, Payne had got so much information on this thing, the GBI was calling him. They were calling me for his telephone number. Did you give it to them? Yeah.

And, I mean, this is just unreal. But this is a signature with 150 million plus downloads and a TV show coming out soon about it on Oxford Channel. This is a signature podcast that never will be repeated by any other podcast for the music or the case or anything. Thank you.

I almost don't know what to say. We're done here, so... I was actually thinking back a little bit about how the show started to build, and I think there is a little... We were talking a little bit about this before we came on, about how the perception that this show only became big when the news broke of some of the suspects being arrested. It actually is not true at all. It was actually really rising and kind of built organically as this...

Tale of a Small Town, Ocilla, Georgia, and kind of the relationships and kind of your, you know, digging for the truth. It was a hit way before. Talk a little bit about how that grew and also Donald, just how you guys kind of snapped this together early to kind of have a plan, if you had a plan, to take it out there.

Yeah, so, I mean, quick history. Payne said he was directing music videos. I was managing talent in the music industry. We were working together. And we were both burnt out of it and said, look, we want to do something else. He's the one who came up with Up and Vanish, found the case, and said, I want to do a documentary on something on this case. We realized quickly we didn't have documentary-type money, and...

The entry, the bar to enter the podcast space is low. It's a low level of entry when it comes to financials. So got some audio equipment and he just started on this journey. We didn't know what it was going to be. We didn't know if it would be big. We didn't know if it was a business or a hobby. And I think the first week he did about, what was it, maybe three months of pre-promotion. Shot some of that great footage that you just saw and

First week was like 5,000 downloads. And we were like, man, we just, we're doing something. 5,000, killing it. And I mean, we didn't know about podcasting. We didn't know about monetization. We didn't know about hosting. It was, you know, we didn't know anything. And then about five episodes in, we started really growing. And I remember looking back now, sending emails to people saying, hey, you know, this might be something that's big. We're about to hit 500,000 downloads. And I'm thinking like, wow, we're going to hit a million downloads. And then next thing you know, we're at,

10 million and like man 50 million 100 I'm like then you just like you just don't realize how quickly this thing has excelled to be something much bigger than you ever anticipated and to answer your question like the week before the case was solved I think we hit like 15 million downloads it was a really big podcast before the arrests were made and then so

As soon as those arrests were made, we had already built relationships with press, with Good Morning America, with Inside Edition. They were already in contact with us. So as soon as the case broke, they called us first and they said, look, we want Payne to be on Good Morning America tomorrow.

And then from there, I mean, we were doing 20 million downloads a month. - You had also bought a shirt from Walmart in Osceola because there was no other places. So my first time on TV, I was wearing this big old baggy-- - Walmart shirt. - Walmart shirt. But it fit nice. I mean, go Walmart.

But yeah, what's unique to me is that like, as the podcast was growing and the numbers were shooting up, really simultaneously, it was just like this pressure cooker in the town of Osceola. And it's really, it was at its height when the story broke and the tip came out and the two arrests were made. It was just happening simultaneously. You could feel it. And you know, one of the guys was arrested, Bo Dukes, for the first thing he sent,

his friend was just a link to Up and Vanish. So at that point it was just almost, if you were from Osceola or South Georgia, you knew about this. - Absolutely. - And you couldn't escape it. And so that to me was super unique.

When the case broke, it just kind of just caught fire from there. It was just unreal. But when I first met Payne, he drove from Atlanta to my house in North Carolina to first interview me and stuff. And I told him, I said, listen, I don't think my accent is going to go over. I think it might hurt the podcast, but it has done just the opposite. So, Maurice, I was just going to say,

compliment you on what an interesting person you are. And I mean that with all due respect. So we have, I think, backstage at some of the live shows. We had you in the studio a couple times.

You're a really fascinating guy. You've got a really incredible deep background in criminal psychology. You've got a PhD. You've been coming to CrimeCon for a long time. Talk to us a little bit about your feeling about podcasts and the role they have to play in solving some of these cases.

Well, I think they can play a huge role. The main thing is, Payne didn't sit behind a microphone in Atlanta

and accomplish this. He stayed in Osceola. He went to bars in Osceola. He got in some touchy situations in Osceola, interviewing people. I mean, it got pretty bad there for a while. I mean, I was threatened, and he was. So he was doing the legwork, which is what created Up and Vanish. I mean, even the episode that was about to come out before the arrest was—

We had already moved on to looking at students. We had two or three that we were trying to find information on. So with Bo and Ron being former students, I mean, we were already headed in that direction. But I think podcasting can do a great deal in helping move an investigation along. But you can't sit behind a microphone and just wait until somebody calls you on the phone with a tip.

You've got to go out and create something, especially when you didn't have any paperwork. We had no documents from law enforcement, no nothing from law enforcement. Everything that Payne did on this podcast, in this case, and myself too, we created the information out of nothing. I mean, it was good information, but we worked and worked and worked to get it out of people.

And that's one of the main differences in Up and Vanish and other podcasts. I think I'll say this, too. I think, you know, we mentioned, you know, 15 million downloads before the arrests. Osceola is a town of 3,000 people. So if there's 15 million people internationally listening to this, what do you think is happening in a town of 3,000? Everyone is talking. They're pointing fingers at each other.

- They were. - So when you're hearing about Up and Vanished, you're like, okay, what is this? What are they saying? 'Cause I know something, I'm not telling anybody. So you go and you listen to this podcast, then our discussion board. I mean, Bo Dukes, who was arrested in conjunction with the murder, was in our discussion board talking to people. The tipster was in our discussion board talking to people. I think two weeks after the podcast started, you received a tip of a group of friends who were somehow connected to this, and Bo Dukes was in that picture.

So, we were circling around like sharks, you know what I mean? And Osceola, and the threats were coming from people who knew we were getting close. They knew, like, look, you better not say my name on your podcast because they were, they didn't want to be associated as, you know, being potentially guilty, or not even guilty, but the type of person who would cover this up and just not say anything for a decade. And I think one thing important that impressed me when I first met Payne, he said, I don't care what anybody thinks.

And if he hadn't have taken that attitude, he wouldn't have got half as far as he did in the Tara Grinstead case. I care what you think, Maurice. That's the record. All right, so in a few minutes, we're going to open up for Q&A. If you all do have a question, please step up to the microphone. But I have two more important questions.

I just heard something from Season 2 of Up and Vanish just a few minutes ago, Payne. Payne and Meredith, you guys have been on the road. What can you tell us? What can you break news on with regards to what's coming with Season 2? There will be a Season 2 of Up and Vanish on a whole new case. Yes. Thank you. We added up yesterday. We were sent over 3,000 cases from people, and we've gone through...

at least three dozen cases thoroughly, and then we narrowed it down to like six cases, and then all of a sudden I got a phone call from somebody that I know, and it just changed the whole plan altogether. And we've been out west, not in Georgia, in this tiny little town, investigating this missing persons case and talking to people and building this story. And it's...

It's really bizarre and we think that this is a place where it's in a lot of ways similar to Tara Grinstead's story and we're hoping to create a similar environment in this town where people are talking again

cases go cold because people aren't talking about them anymore. So we want to get people talking again and just turn over some stones and find out what happened to this person. And it'll be coming out in likely August this year. And Meredith, you've been on the road too. Any little bit that you can tell us? Anything? I'll blow this. By the way, I wasn't even... I should stop there. I've...

I think Payne's been telling me lies through text of where he's actually at. And I'm convinced that he's trying to throw me off the trail too. So, pay attention. It's not in Georgia, it's in the West Coast. I can't get him to text me at all. Did you get a new number? Just kidding. How about you Meredith? I'd say it's very different tonally. It doesn't feel like a real place. It feels like, if you're familiar with the show Twin Peaks, it feels like Twin Peaks. All right.

That sounds great. Secondly, it's going to be a busy summer. You've got a TV show starting up production here pretty soon for Oxygen. Anything you want to talk about there?

I'm super excited. It's been a long journey, but we have been developing an Up and Vantage TV show where we're going to go to other small towns and tell their story of a missing person and try to figure out what happened to them. And just take what we've learned from this and tell their stories and create an outlet for people and a vocal piece for families who need that. So we're super excited about that.

flying out again next week to talk to them about it. And things are going well. And hopefully very soon we'll have an update on when you can watch this. Awesome. And my last kind of question for all of you is where do you see the stories, where do you see things heading for your team? Are you, you want to get more into TV? Is it a hybrid of storytelling? Like,

Now that things have... I know you're a filmmaker at heart, Payne. What's kind of the thing that's driving you moving forward now? I just want to tell great stories. I like podcasts. I like telling it that way. I've always wanted to be a filmmaker since I was a kid, so I want to make films. I don't want to just label myself one thing. I'm a filmmaker, I'm a podcaster, I'm doing this, I can only do that. I want to do all of it. I want to tell stories on every scale, every medium that I can that works. And...

That's what I'm trying to do. So I love podcasts. There's still other podcast ideas I have that are outside of Atlanta Monster and Up and Vanish that I'm eventually going to do as well. But I also want to take a stab at TV and film and tell a story that way. And so I'm looking forward to the chance to do that.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Stories about regaining a sense of safety, a handle on reality after your entire world is flipped upside down.

From unbelievable romantic betrayals... The love that was so real for me was always just a game for him. To betrayals in your own family... When I think about my dad, oh, well, he is a sociopath. Financial betrayal...

This is not even the part where he steals millions of dollars. And life or death deceptions. She's practicing how she's going to cry when the police calls her after they kill me. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio.

I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. I've collected the stories of hundreds of aspiring little Hitlers of the suburbs, from the Nazi cop who tried to join ISIS, to the National Guardsman plotting to assassinate the Supreme Court, to the Satanist soldier who tried to get his own unit blown up in Turkey. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil,

They're just some weird guy. And you can laugh. Honestly, I think you have to. Seeing these guys for what they are doesn't mean they're not a threat. It's a survival strategy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America. Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. We're looking at a whole new series of episodes this season to understand why and how our lives look the way they do. Why does your memory drift so much? Why is it so hard to keep a secret? When should you not trust your intuition?

Why do brains so easily fall for magic tricks? And why do they love conspiracy theories? I'm hitting these questions and hundreds more because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life by digging into unexpected questions. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. Nobody hears anything. Nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident? Or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle.

Not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes he's innocent, but in my eyes he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's open it up for some questions. How about you? Hello. Hello.

I actually wanted to ask about my dad. I grew up hearing about the Atlanta child murders, actually, even though they predate me by about three years. I'm 33, so I'm ancient. I don't know how I'm upright and walking. Anyway, but no, he...

always told me about that because he had gone to conventions. He was a police officer and had gone to training and heard lectures and everything. And I think he may have talked to some of the detectives. I don't remember. But he always told me about the capture of Wayne Williams when they heard the splash in the river and found him not far away. And...

That was an educated guess reasoned that he might be dumping a body there and they thought they may be able to find it. But what always stuck with me was the terror of the random chance they had someone there. They had someone there that heard it and they found him quickly enough and they were able to find a body later to tie it to it.

And what do you think-- I hate calling it luck because there was a lot of hard work involved. But what do you think about the role of luck or chance in solving these murders, especially when it's a serial killer and it's often a stranger crime? I wouldn't put anything past him. I thought one time, "What if Wayne knew they were doing these takeouts?" I had a theory for a second that

Maybe Wayne tossed nothing off the bridge. Maybe Wayne's just hanging out over here being suspicious and he's just like, what? I didn't do anything. And that's kind of what he did when he got pulled over. I don't know what you're talking about. But why was he there? And why is this story changing? Why is he still lying about it 30 plus years later? It's the only story in your life that matters right now. You should have figured it out by now.

And so that part bothers me. He lied to me about it. I think that I wouldn't put it past him that he was there knowing that the police were there, almost wanting to get caught. I'm also almost 33, so ancient over here as well. That's so young. You're not going to live this down, Payne.

My question is, did you ever actually get, obviously Atlanta Monster ended with you not getting to speak to Wayne in jail because of all of the lockdowns and things that prevented. Did you ever get to go after the fact or do you have plans to actually talk to him in person at all? Yeah, I mean, there may be a point where I talk to him face to face on camera for like

maybe a documentary about this project or something. But other than that, I have a lot of material of Wayne that I can use for that as well. - Thank you. - Yeah, go ahead. - Well, I'm 43, so I'm absolutely decrepit. I grew up in a tiny town in northern Minnesota in the mid '80s, and

heard about the Atlanta child monster in my almost all-white town, and that it was a, our mothers would tell us, you'd be home by dark, because just like that man was taking children in Atlanta, there's somebody out there that's going to take you, you know, it was kind of this thing that we heard, so I always grew up knowing a little bit about it, and as I got into true crime, I kind of became somewhat fascinated with Wayne, in a sense, and after listening to the podcast, in the

In the sense of, on the one hand, okay, he's a convenient scapegoat for the city to get this public relations nightmare out of the way. Then I listen to him and the story conflicts, and I'm thinking, well, yeah, he absolutely did it. And I don't know a whole lot about...

did these killings really truly stop with his apprehension? Were there still children missing, and in any big city I suppose they go missing, but that fit his profile afterwards, or are the police just kind of like putting those under the rug because they don't want to? I can't really get an answer, and I wondered if you guys had any thoughts on that or definitive idea either way on were these poor little children still missing afterwards, being taken and

Thank you. I think you're right on both. I mean, I think both things happened. I think that the murders didn't necessarily entirely stop. Of course they wanted people to think that because it made their case look better. I think it's just a story of law enforcement needing to close this thing out, needing, almost having to sweep it under the rug. It was the wrong thing to do. They handled it the wrong way. But that's what they did. And it doesn't mean that Wayne wasn't guilty of anything.

So did they handle it the wrong way? Yes, they did. Is Wayne guilty of something? Yes. And you know the mythology that builds the longer that time passes on so many things, like did it stop, did murder stop or not? So many examples of this. I think it was a one-sided narrative for so many years that these things kind of became urban legends. And as a result, I think we needed to

We need to get some of the crazies in there too. Like part of this was getting all the stories on the table, even the ones we didn't believe and let them talk to and let you make up your mind. - Yep. - Yeah. - But the story isn't just about

the victims or Wayne Williams, it's how big this thing was in the city and how big it was culturally, you know, for generations. So we wanted you all to understand why someone could come up with such a crazy conspiracy theory. And it's because, yeah, the city did, you know, sweep this under the rug for how many murders? 10, 12, 15? This is one of those cases where

Anything you're thinking, any opinion in here of what happened in the Atlanta child murders could be partially true. All theories can work together in some way. The Klan could have done some. Wayne could have done some. Some could have been random. The city did rush to judgment and close this. And, you know, everything that you're thinking could be partially true. And that's why this case is so big. That's why there's so many questions that are still left unanswered. Yes, go ahead.

I am 64. Lovely. About 19 years ago, I had a son that was murdered. It's not got anything to do with Wayne Williams. I've not been able to watch any kind of crime stories that were on regular TV because I can't afford cable.

I'm so proud to be here. About nine years ago, a private investigator, through a friend, begging, she agreed to take my son's case on. When you said about law enforcement, we have Barney Fife's that work in the county where I came from. Arrogant, arrogant Barney Fife. Yes. My son was executed. I lived in a small area. We know who killed our son. We know.

There's no proof. About two years ago, the new district attorney exhumed his body because I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about DNA under his fingernails. I was so angry because there was TBI. I have no faith in anybody. But there was 20 people and the private investigator that had helped me in the exhumation.

Of course, nothing came out of it. This is a small area, and we know who did it. And there's been other people that's died there. It's Carroll County, Tennessee, McKenzie, Tennessee. My son was 15 years old. Tony Drumwright, and he was an absolute great kid. You couldn't get him to say a swear word. And there was a meth lab in our woods that he happened upon.

And we know all of this, but we cannot prove anything. And it's just been so frustrating to me, and I will never shut up about it. Private investigator, it's cost me my family and my marriage, and it's been a real struggle every day. But Sheila Wasaki, which is a speaker here, she is the private investigator that's been trying to help me.

And I pray that someday it'll come to pass. But when you said that about law enforcement, it's just really disheartening. Now, we have a new district attorney in Carroll County, and I feel like I was pivotal in helping him get elected. I trust him. But, you know, he can only do what he can do. And the people that work for him are still the same arrogant, pompous Barney Fife's.

So I know that has nothing to do with what you guys are doing, but I just wanted to interject that. Sheila had told me that here about a month ago she did a podcast. First time I've ever heard, what's a podcast? I still haven't been able to hear it, but tomorrow I'm bringing in my computer, and they're going to get me up to date. That's good. We'll get you updated. Thank you. Thank you, Trey. Sorry for your loss. Thank you. I just wanted to interject that. Thank you very much. You're welcome.

So I'm 28, so I guess I'm a child. So the thing that really strikes me about both of these cases is how they really give you a snapshot of the identity of a community. And I think it's also really interesting that both of them have had

the opportunity to get responses from the community that they're about in real time. And I was hoping you could talk a little bit about how, as a creator, as a storyteller, the experience has been to be getting feedback from the people that you're sort of trying to portray. It's interesting. It's nerve-wracking. You're always trying to... I mean, you've got to answer for everything you do, so...

I'm just trying to be honest about it and just straightforward. And kind of like you said, back to the fearlessness, at a certain point you've got to just let go and not be afraid to

get out there and talk to somebody and then put it out there. It's interesting when the town is listening to it, you can see it having an effect on people. They may be scared to talk to you again or someone might come out of the woodwork and want to talk to you all of a sudden. It's a constant game and battle you're playing.

You've got to be on your toes at all times and just be careful. So it definitely makes it more difficult, but the end result is people talking again and new information being able to shape this story, which is important. Yeah, I mean, can we finally have conversations about some of these big topics in America? Can we put them out there? I feel like listening to podcasts is a way for us to put something out there, but for people in their own one-to-one intimate space to be able to kind of

get a little bit deeper in a way that they cannot engage on Twitter or with the local news. And it's just being honest. It's having an honest conversation. And podcasting is the most honest form of communication these days, I believe. And that's why it resonates so much. And I think we need to do more of that. Last question. I'm sorry. Thank you. I'm 29, so I have a couple months left of my youth. Um...

So it's my understanding that there was some DNA that linked Williams to Balthazar. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and your thoughts on it and why it wasn't in the podcast much? Well, first of all, we have to be clear, it didn't entirely link him. It was partial. It was partial, and it was... Yeah, they matched in a way, but it wasn't any more conclusive than, I would say, the bloodstains or anything else. And...

to me it was, that was sort of an investigative finding from somebody else. Was it CNN who broke that? Yeah. And we actually talked a little bit about that where Maurice and I, we had that conversation about

do they still have the clothes from some of the kids and could they match the dna and could they go back in time and the answer is we don't know we don't know where that stuff is we don't know if it would will ever be public um i think it is really interesting to hear in kind of the present day news of the golden state killer and others this kind of new wave of what can we do with older cases and match dna evidence i think that is uh compelling but

kind of where do we go from here if we just we didn't want to put something out there where we didn't have the whole the whole story and so that was one thing that we just really didn't concentrate on there's really no more that i could add to that and i knew that there was already investigative findings that we had through larry that was new information that said the same thing but actually even more clear and more definitive and you know having talked to

Patrick Balthazar's brother and heard his side of the story. There was just a lot of just misinformation over there and I wanted to find the information on my own. Bottom line is that every piece of information out there just doesn't make it in there and it's that, for some people that's like, it's hard to understand that but we looked at the big picture at all times and we were never going to omit something that we thought

steered you the wrong way. We also wanted it to make sense to you too. For a while, it didn't even make sense to us. That was a good question. Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. Well, thank you to Meredith, Payne, Donald, and Maurice. And thank you all for being here. Thank you. We appreciate it. Oh no!

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week, you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Molly Conger, host of Weird Little Guys, a new podcast from Cool Zone Media on iHeartRadio. I've spent almost a decade researching right-wing extremism, digging into the lives of people you wouldn't be wrong to call monsters. But if Scooby-Doo taught us one thing, it's that there's a guy under that monster mask. The monsters in our political closets aren't some unfathomable evil. They're just some weird guy. So join me every Thursday for a look under the mask at the weird little guys trying to destroy America.

Listen to Weird Little Guys on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman from the podcast Inner Cosmos, which recently hit the number one science podcast in America. I'm a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. Join me weekly to explore the relationship between your brain and your life, because the more we know about what's running under the hood, the better we can steer our lives.

Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all-new podcast There and Gone. It's a real-life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck, and vanished. A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. But which victim was the intended target and why?

Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.