“Yes, I know that someone ended up being convicted of a crime they hadn’t committed, but what else were we supposed to do? The public demanded a resolution and a killer, so we had no choice, really,” says Juliet Champos, one of the presenters and producers of a popular ‘True Crime’ podcast which, it has recently been revealed, falsified evidence in a murder case, resulting in a wrongful conviction. “it all started so well, with us deciding to look into an unsolved murder in Islington ten years ago – listeners got really invested in it. The trouble was that we soon found out why it was unsolved – there were absolutely no leads, we just kept coming to dead ends! So, to keep it going, we decided to make up some new leads and, well, one thing just lead to another!” Forty seven year old Peter Preeks, an acquaintance of the victim, recently had his conviction for the murder quashed and was released from prison after serving eighteen months, having been convicted on the basis of Champos’ and her colleagues false evidence. “We never thought it would go that far,” the podcaster claims. “We didn’t think the police would actually act on our podcast – we only pointed the finger at Mr Preeks because, well, he looked a bit shifty and had told us to ‘Piss off and mind your own business’ when we approached him for an interview about the case.”
This scandal has highlighted a growing problem for ‘True Crime’ podcasters: that they are rapidly running out of cases of interest to investigate. “It’s true. By now most of all the really ‘glamourous’ murder cases where they might hope to get a result have been covered,” opines Daily Norks Chief Crime Correspondent Archie Filth. “So they’ve had to turn to other crimes but, as it turns out, the public just aren’t interested in a ten part reassessment of the theft of Mrs Jones’ push bike in Banbury in 1996 – was Jimmy from Number Thirty really the guilty culprit? Was he unjustly fined £200 and given a police warning? No, they want blood and retribution. They want to a murder solved and someone go down for it.” He adds that there is also the probability that the novelty of ‘True Crime’ podcasts has worn off as far as the wider media are concerned, so they just don’t discuss them as much, reducing their ‘visibility’ with the public, forcing podcasters to find ever more sensational crimes with equally sensational resolutions, in order to spark public interest. Unfortunately, such cases are rare.
As Champos has shown, one solution is to find an unsolvable crime and simply fabricate a solution. For other podcasters, the obvious solution was to start committing crimes themselves in order to provide subject matter for their shows. “Clearly, they’d have to be incredibly ingenious crimes so well planned and executed that the police could never solve them,” says Filth. “Which is exactly what happened in the US, when a couple of podcasters actually committed a meticulously planned ‘perfect murder’, then, when the police couldn’t solve it, used their own inside knowledge to present a solution and a culprit!” Indeed, Philadelphia ‘True Crime’ podcasters Hank Aplans and Jake Grolly not only devised and committed the ‘perfect murder’ when they killed reclusive porn collector Joseph Dirtt, but they also created the ‘perfect frame’ in order the ensure that flamboyant adult shop owner Herbie Hinx was convicted of the murder. “They ensured that there was sufficient manufactured evidence against Hinx to ensure a conviction,” explains Filth. “Then they spent twenty six episodes ‘uncovering’ it all and presenting it to the cops and District Attorney. It got them some sensational download figures, I can tell you!”
But Aplans and Golly had yet another trick up their sleeve. “Once Hinx had been convicted, they launched a second twenty six part series in which they unravelled the case and discredited the evidence in order to show that the conviction was unsafe,” says an admiring Filth. “But they didn’t leave it there – these guys were so good that they had a second fall guy lined up to be unmasked as thereal culprit1” This second culprit was already dead, so that there was no chance of them pleading innocence and encouraging other ‘True Crime’ podcasters that they were the subject of a miscarriage of justice, thereby triggering yet another amateur investigation threatening Aplans and Grolly. “Unfortunately, they were undone by their own hubris, when Aplans couldn’t help himself and boasted of his ingenuity to a girl ‘True Crime’ groupie that he’d met online,” notes Filth. “She then exposed their incriminating chat by setting up her own ‘True Crime’ podcast and Aplans and Grolly ended up going down for murder.”
Faced with the fates of the Philadelphia two, other ‘True Crime’ podcasters have, apparently, turned to the simpler expedient of simply making up sensational cases and then ‘solving’ them, rather than actually committing real crimes. “Face it, as far as most listeners are concerned, they’d have no idea whether any of the shit on these podcasts is real,” muses Filth. “Most probably wouldn’t care, either, just so long as it was sensational enough and made them feel as if they had been involved in solving a crime that had baffled the police. ‘True Crime’ or ‘Untrue Crime’ – it makes no difference to them.” In fact, Filth strongly suspects that both makers and consumers of ‘True Crime’ podcasts have clearly seen too many TV shows about amateur sleuths outwitting the police. “the likes of Father Brown and Miss Marple have a lot to answer for, convincing people that they can somehow solve crimes that the proper authorities, with all their manpower, investigative powers, forensic labs, DNA tests and scientific support can’t.” As far as the Champos case is concerned, she and her collaborators are currently being sued by Peter Preeks, while simultaneously facing criminal charges for contempt of court, perjury and criminal conspiracy. They are planning to produce a twenty six episode podcast covering the fall out from their original investigation.
