The Grisly Murder That Launched a Podcast Star

February 17, 2018 Leave a comment

I have been listening to a true crime podcast called “True Murder” for years. Each week, host Dan Zupansky interviews true crime authors about the cases they’ve written about. The complex/troubling appeal of true crime is a discussion for another time, but Zupansky is one of the first true crime podcasters and is considered an OG expert in the genre.

Zupansky will sometimes make reference on the show to a case he himself was involved with in 2003. A man named Sydney Teerhuis viciously killed another man in a Winnipeg hotel, seemingly doing so for the grim celebrity it would bring him. Zupansky, who always wanted to be a journalist, saw an opportunity to write his first book. He got in touch with Teerhuis, who agreed to work with him on the book. Zupansky unwittingly became a major witness in Teerhuis’s trial, experiencing firsthand some of the world he had so often read about. This article is about the strange Zupansky-Teerhuis affair, and how Zupansky was able to launch his own career as a result.

This was especially interesting to work on because I got to speak with Zupansky directly. I was really familiar with his voice from having listened to so many episodes of his show, and talking to him almost felt like a personal podcast playing for me.

The article was published by Narratively in September, 2017, and can be found here.

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He’s a Murderer With an Intergalactic Alibi. And She’s in Love With Him.

February 17, 2018 Leave a comment

This article is about Jo Ann and Mark Richards, a couple with a backstory that is at first hard to comprehend. Their relationship stretches across the galaxy from a California prison, and is one that got its start with a senseless murder committed in 1984.

I first came across this story when researching micronations for a separate project. A seminal text on the subject called How to Start Your Own Country featured an index of experimental nation-states across the world. One cryptic listing was for something called Pendragon, which I shortly learned was a plot to take over Marin County, California and declare it a sovereign kingdom. The plot involved a tragic murder and gullible teens, and is in and of itself a fascinating story. I looked into writing a full story about it, and I learned that from there the story only got deeper. I learned that the man allegedly behind the Pendragon plot (who is serving a life sentence for the attendant murder) has published thousands of pages of texts detailing his family’s secret history as intergalactic diplomats working for shadowy branches of the US government. He believes he has been framed, and his wife has started a nonprofit to disseminate classified government information and advocate for her husband’s release. The story chronicles this tale, and shows how this unconventional couple continues to make it work.

This story originally appeared on Narratively, and was published in November, 2017.

A link to the full article can be found here.

 

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