WEBVTT 00:00:04.280 --> 00:00:07.759 You're listening to a stage talk titled Investigating 00:00:07.759 --> 00:00:10.960 Coal Cases. This week we were joined by my colleague 00:00:10.960 --> 00:00:14.279 Bellingcat researcher Peter Barth. Peter spoke 00:00:14.279 --> 00:00:16.420 about his latest investigation into the death 00:00:16.420 --> 00:00:19.679 of a Texan oilman and provided invaluable tips 00:00:19.679 --> 00:00:22.440 for investigating coal case crimes, admitting 00:00:22.440 --> 00:00:25.039 much of it he'd picked up over the three years 00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:27.739 he'd looked into this particular case. Sharing 00:00:27.739 --> 00:00:31.019 his lessons learned. He encourages everyone interested 00:00:31.019 --> 00:00:33.439 in open source research to have a look at local 00:00:33.439 --> 00:00:37.020 cold cases, as there are too many to count unsolved. 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:40.159 This talk was hosted by me, Charlotte Ma, on 00:00:40.159 --> 00:00:43.579 Thursday the 3rd of July 2025 in the Bellingcat 00:00:43.579 --> 00:00:51.700 Discord server. Hi, you're tuning into this week's 00:00:51.700 --> 00:00:54.200 stage talk. Today we're joined by my fabulous 00:00:54.200 --> 00:00:56.960 colleague, Peter Bach. On an average day, you 00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:00.240 might find Peter reporting on environmental issues 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:03.740 like the illicit wildlife trade or organized 00:01:03.740 --> 00:01:06.560 crime groups like the Kinnerheim cartel. But 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:09.519 over the last year, he's been taking on something 00:01:09.519 --> 00:01:12.280 a little different, diving into a murder that 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:15.489 took place over 50 years ago. Now, you might 00:01:15.489 --> 00:01:17.530 argue that cases like this don't necessarily 00:01:17.530 --> 00:01:19.769 matter, with so much time passing and many of 00:01:19.769 --> 00:01:22.329 those alive at the time now passed on. But the 00:01:22.329 --> 00:01:24.989 volume of cold cases that exist is staggering. 00:01:25.549 --> 00:01:28.349 In the USA alone, the Murder Accountability Project, 00:01:28.349 --> 00:01:33.450 MAP, counts almost 346 ,000 cold cases of homicide 00:01:33.450 --> 00:01:37.930 between 1965 and 2023. And this is still likely 00:01:37.930 --> 00:01:40.189 and undercount since many homicides from the 00:01:40.189 --> 00:01:42.989 earlier decades are excluded. and not all US 00:01:42.989 --> 00:01:45.829 police departments report to the FBI Uniform 00:01:45.829 --> 00:01:48.310 Crime Reporting Program on which this data is 00:01:48.310 --> 00:01:51.109 based. Online crowdsourcing efforts have also 00:01:51.109 --> 00:01:54.230 sprung up to tackle cold cases, including groups 00:01:54.230 --> 00:01:57.450 like Uncovered, with almost 50 ,000 unsolved 00:01:57.450 --> 00:02:00.269 murder and missing persons cases. All of these 00:02:00.269 --> 00:02:03.530 cases represent families who are still seeking 00:02:03.530 --> 00:02:06.030 justice, just like the one that Peter's going 00:02:06.030 --> 00:02:08.969 to talk about today. Peter's investigation was 00:02:08.969 --> 00:02:11.370 an exercise in showcasing what can be uncovered 00:02:11.370 --> 00:02:14.270 with modern investigative techniques. In this 00:02:14.270 --> 00:02:17.409 session, we'll hear a little of the tale he unraveled 00:02:17.409 --> 00:02:20.210 and how he unraveled it and talk about why open 00:02:20.210 --> 00:02:22.530 source techniques can be an incredibly beneficial 00:02:22.530 --> 00:02:25.250 skill set to have when looking into these cases. 00:02:27.069 --> 00:02:29.270 We'll discuss what it takes to investigate and 00:02:29.270 --> 00:02:31.389 what things you might need to look for as an 00:02:31.389 --> 00:02:34.310 independent researcher. As we talk, please make 00:02:34.310 --> 00:02:36.090 sure to add your questions in the chat box as 00:02:36.090 --> 00:02:38.629 I just mentioned. via the message bubble icon 00:02:38.629 --> 00:02:41.530 in the top right corner of your screen. And please 00:02:41.530 --> 00:02:43.909 note within your question if you do not want 00:02:43.909 --> 00:02:48.370 me to read your username out. Okay. Peter, tell 00:02:48.370 --> 00:02:52.909 us a story of murder, hitmen, and pigeons. Thank 00:02:52.909 --> 00:02:54.689 you, Charlie. Hello, everybody. Hopefully you 00:02:54.689 --> 00:02:57.870 can hear me okay. Thanks so much for joining 00:02:57.870 --> 00:03:00.930 us today. I'm really, really excited to talk 00:03:00.930 --> 00:03:03.250 about old case research and some of the ways 00:03:03.250 --> 00:03:06.889 we can use open source to shed light. on unsolved 00:03:06.889 --> 00:03:11.090 murders. So yeah, without further ado, I'll just 00:03:11.090 --> 00:03:13.250 kind of launch into it. I'm going to talk a little 00:03:13.250 --> 00:03:15.629 bit about my story just kind of touch on it here 00:03:15.629 --> 00:03:18.590 and there. But I mostly wanted to give you guys 00:03:18.590 --> 00:03:20.810 some tips in case you're interested in looking 00:03:20.810 --> 00:03:23.409 into cold cases yourselves from the open source 00:03:23.409 --> 00:03:25.710 side of things. I'll talk about a little bit 00:03:25.710 --> 00:03:28.650 about some of the lessons I learned in doing 00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:31.330 that and some of the challenges. And yeah, give 00:03:31.330 --> 00:03:33.110 you guys some suggestions and then just leave 00:03:33.110 --> 00:03:35.550 a ton of time open for questions at the end. 00:03:38.420 --> 00:03:41.099 So basically, I'm going to talk mostly today 00:03:41.099 --> 00:03:45.120 about unsolved homicides in the US, just because 00:03:45.120 --> 00:03:46.800 that's what I'm familiar with. That's what my 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:49.979 story touched on. And it's a huge, huge issue 00:03:49.979 --> 00:03:53.000 here. It's obviously a huge issue in other countries 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:54.639 as well. So hopefully what I'm talking about 00:03:54.639 --> 00:03:56.960 in the US still applies to wherever you are. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:58.580 And you can still take some of these open source 00:03:58.580 --> 00:04:01.039 techniques and adapt them to wherever you are 00:04:01.039 --> 00:04:03.750 around the world. And yeah, if the screen share 00:04:03.750 --> 00:04:05.770 hasn't worked, maybe you can pull up my story 00:04:05.770 --> 00:04:08.009 on the Bell and Cat website, and you'll see a 00:04:08.009 --> 00:04:10.229 lot of that in there too. So anyway, it'll be 00:04:10.229 --> 00:04:12.530 focused on the US today, but hopefully some of 00:04:12.530 --> 00:04:14.590 the same principles apply everywhere else. In 00:04:14.590 --> 00:04:18.110 the US, this problem is almost unfathomable in 00:04:18.110 --> 00:04:21.050 terms of scale of unsolved homicides, as Charlie 00:04:21.050 --> 00:04:25.050 was saying. The best estimates are about 346 00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:27.730 ,000 unsolved cases is one estimate. The most 00:04:27.730 --> 00:04:30.230 conservative one I heard in the story was 270 00:04:30.230 --> 00:04:33.519 ,000. hundreds of thousands of unsolved murders, 00:04:33.860 --> 00:04:38.899 which means even more folks, family members, 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:42.639 friends of all of these victims who are left 00:04:42.639 --> 00:04:44.620 with a gaping hole in their lives from losing 00:04:44.620 --> 00:04:47.620 a loved one. It means that there are potentially 00:04:47.620 --> 00:04:49.879 tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of 00:04:49.879 --> 00:04:53.639 killers out there as well. Dead, alive in some 00:04:53.639 --> 00:04:56.500 cases. So ultimately, this is a huge problem 00:04:56.500 --> 00:04:58.579 for a whole lot of reasons. It's an accountability 00:04:58.579 --> 00:05:02.790 issue. It's a public safety issue. And it's a 00:05:02.790 --> 00:05:06.970 problem that's so big that we don't even really 00:05:06.970 --> 00:05:09.569 have the data that like fully captures it because 00:05:09.569 --> 00:05:12.329 murder is typically handled in the US by local, 00:05:12.610 --> 00:05:16.709 county and state law enforcement. it sometimes 00:05:16.709 --> 00:05:19.930 will be looked at by the FBI if the killing involves 00:05:19.930 --> 00:05:22.310 crossing state lines, if it's a prolific serial 00:05:22.310 --> 00:05:26.189 killer, if it's organized crime related, if there's 00:05:26.189 --> 00:05:28.290 some kind of federal crime tied to it, they might 00:05:28.290 --> 00:05:30.069 look at it, but usually it's local authorities 00:05:30.069 --> 00:05:32.589 investigating. Not all of those local authorities 00:05:32.589 --> 00:05:35.470 report all of their data to the federal government. 00:05:36.509 --> 00:05:38.430 It varies state by state. So states like Mississippi 00:05:38.430 --> 00:05:41.410 are not as great at reporting as some other states. 00:05:42.410 --> 00:05:44.750 So this is really just sort of a our best guess 00:05:44.750 --> 00:05:48.110 at the scale of the problem. Yeah, behind each 00:05:48.110 --> 00:05:51.389 one of these is a story of somebody who was killed 00:05:51.389 --> 00:05:55.910 and whose case remains a mystery. And it's also 00:05:55.910 --> 00:06:00.370 a problem because police are usually incredibly 00:06:00.370 --> 00:06:03.110 under -resourced to deal with this. And the story 00:06:03.110 --> 00:06:05.009 that I looked at, for example, takes place in 00:06:05.009 --> 00:06:06.850 a city called Corpus Christi in Texas, right 00:06:06.850 --> 00:06:09.970 on the coast. It's about 600 ,000 people. Their 00:06:09.970 --> 00:06:12.230 police department has two detectives who are 00:06:12.230 --> 00:06:16.420 working a hundred plus unsolved murders part 00:06:16.420 --> 00:06:18.699 time while they're working on murders that are 00:06:18.699 --> 00:06:21.819 happening every day right now. So these are detectives 00:06:21.819 --> 00:06:23.939 who are already struggling to keep up with current 00:06:23.939 --> 00:06:26.399 homicides and who are already dealing with that. 00:06:26.680 --> 00:06:29.579 And in any free time they have, they're working 00:06:29.579 --> 00:06:32.839 on historical cases. And bear in mind that when 00:06:32.839 --> 00:06:34.800 I say working on historical cases, they usually 00:06:34.800 --> 00:06:37.379 have a paper file with like old interview notes, 00:06:37.839 --> 00:06:39.639 old handwritten notes and stuff. And that's all 00:06:39.639 --> 00:06:41.939 they're working with. These cases often are so 00:06:41.939 --> 00:06:44.060 old. But the policemen who originally worked 00:06:44.060 --> 00:06:49.439 them are dead or retired. It's a huge, huge issue. 00:06:49.939 --> 00:06:52.240 And essentially, with several of the cases that 00:06:52.240 --> 00:06:54.100 I looked at through this story, the police didn't 00:06:54.100 --> 00:06:57.139 even know that these cases were still unsolved 00:06:57.139 --> 00:06:59.839 and that they had them on file. So that's kind 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:02.459 of the issue we're talking about here. That's 00:07:02.459 --> 00:07:05.399 why I encourage anybody and everybody who's interested 00:07:05.399 --> 00:07:08.199 in this subject to try to join some kind of community, 00:07:08.220 --> 00:07:10.720 which I'll get into in a bit, and try to research 00:07:10.720 --> 00:07:13.620 this problem in your local area. because we need 00:07:13.620 --> 00:07:15.259 more folks working on it. We need more bodies 00:07:15.259 --> 00:07:19.439 on this problem trying to help with this issue. 00:07:21.379 --> 00:07:25.079 Okay. Homicides aside, there's also a huge problem 00:07:25.079 --> 00:07:27.920 with unidentified folks. Some of them are murder 00:07:27.920 --> 00:07:29.939 victims, some of them died of natural causes, 00:07:30.319 --> 00:07:32.980 but there are tens of thousands of unidentified 00:07:32.980 --> 00:07:35.420 bodies and unclaimed remains all over the country. 00:07:36.199 --> 00:07:39.560 It's a related problem. a lot of them are homicide 00:07:39.560 --> 00:07:42.279 victims. So you'll look into the, you know, a 00:07:42.279 --> 00:07:44.279 file of a skeleton found in the woods, for example, 00:07:44.319 --> 00:07:46.399 I was just doing this and had two bullet holes 00:07:46.399 --> 00:07:48.160 in the back of the skull, which means this person 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:50.279 was murdered and dumped in the woods. And not 00:07:50.279 --> 00:07:52.680 only do we not know who killed that person and 00:07:52.680 --> 00:07:54.579 why and all of that, but we don't even know who 00:07:54.579 --> 00:07:58.839 that person was. It's a whole sort of separate 00:07:58.839 --> 00:08:01.560 and related issue. But I just I'm mentioning 00:08:01.560 --> 00:08:07.319 this because we just The scale of the problem 00:08:07.319 --> 00:08:10.000 is so huge, and not only do we have unsolved 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:11.980 murders, we have unidentified victims themselves. 00:08:12.079 --> 00:08:14.319 We also have tons and tons, tens of thousands 00:08:14.319 --> 00:08:16.339 of missing folks out there. These problems, a 00:08:16.339 --> 00:08:18.600 lot of folks who work cold case homicides are 00:08:18.600 --> 00:08:20.480 also interested in missing persons cases, are 00:08:20.480 --> 00:08:24.980 also interested in unidentified remains. Okay, 00:08:25.439 --> 00:08:27.399 so one of the first things, if you're considering 00:08:27.399 --> 00:08:29.899 looking into cold cases, one of the first things 00:08:29.899 --> 00:08:33.419 you should ask yourself, and I think... Honestly, 00:08:33.440 --> 00:08:35.100 one of the most important questions you can ask 00:08:35.100 --> 00:08:37.320 in the whole course of it is, is the case you're 00:08:37.320 --> 00:08:40.340 interested in even mentioned online? Is there 00:08:40.340 --> 00:08:42.980 anything about it online at all? And the Bill 00:08:42.980 --> 00:08:45.139 Richardson murder that I looked into and wrote 00:08:45.139 --> 00:08:47.480 about, there was nothing on the open web about 00:08:47.480 --> 00:08:50.620 it. The only information out there in the public 00:08:50.620 --> 00:08:53.720 about this murder was in old newspapers, some 00:08:53.720 --> 00:08:56.860 of which had been digitized. So when I did Google 00:08:56.860 --> 00:08:59.320 searches for the victim, there was hardly anything 00:08:59.320 --> 00:09:01.960 at all. And I had to go out there and just collect 00:09:01.960 --> 00:09:04.960 everything I could. And honestly, my number one 00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:07.000 goal with the story was to collect anything I 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:08.720 could about this victim and about his murder 00:09:08.720 --> 00:09:12.159 and put it online so that other folks in the 00:09:12.159 --> 00:09:14.460 community can access it in the future. So that 00:09:14.460 --> 00:09:16.539 if someone else wants to look into this, they 00:09:16.539 --> 00:09:19.759 can. And I talked to some folks who basically 00:09:19.759 --> 00:09:22.179 said, look, even just collecting, organizing 00:09:22.179 --> 00:09:24.799 and putting this stuff online is a huge help. 00:09:25.450 --> 00:09:27.950 even for law enforcement because these detectives 00:09:27.950 --> 00:09:30.149 have paper files and they go online and search 00:09:30.149 --> 00:09:32.870 for anything just like we would and there might 00:09:32.870 --> 00:09:35.509 not be any info out there on them. So there's 00:09:35.509 --> 00:09:38.850 a couple websites that are actually open source 00:09:38.850 --> 00:09:42.070 focused crowdsourcing efforts out there. They're 00:09:42.070 --> 00:09:44.610 both nonprofits and just a quick plug for them. 00:09:44.730 --> 00:09:46.590 Uncovered is one. It's the largest. There's about 00:09:46.590 --> 00:09:51.509 50 ,000 unsolved murders in the US logged on 00:09:51.509 --> 00:09:54.600 Uncovered. It's a community effort. It's really, 00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:57.299 really good for collecting and organizing information 00:09:57.299 --> 00:09:59.980 on victims. And it's run by a small nonprofit 00:09:59.980 --> 00:10:02.720 and managed by volunteers. A very similar one 00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:04.440 to that would be solve the case, which is a lot 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:07.620 newer. It was actually created by a homicide 00:10:07.620 --> 00:10:10.320 detective that I interviewed for my story. And 00:10:10.320 --> 00:10:12.039 same thing, there's a community of people uploading 00:10:12.039 --> 00:10:13.980 information about cases and commenting on them 00:10:13.980 --> 00:10:16.539 and sharing info. So if you're working on this 00:10:16.539 --> 00:10:17.700 kind of issue, and you're wondering where to 00:10:17.700 --> 00:10:20.519 get started, start by participating in a community 00:10:20.519 --> 00:10:23.120 like this. There's Loads of other ones out there 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:25.259 as well. There's all kinds of message boards 00:10:25.259 --> 00:10:27.659 and forums. I'm sure you guys know True Crime 00:10:27.659 --> 00:10:31.179 is a huge, huge community and world. There's 00:10:31.179 --> 00:10:32.860 different shades of it, but I would encourage 00:10:32.860 --> 00:10:36.720 you to kind of join a community if you're just 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:40.500 getting started. Also, just a plug, we do have 00:10:40.500 --> 00:10:42.360 a cold case channel that's pretty new in our 00:10:42.360 --> 00:10:45.360 own Discord. So definitely join that if you're 00:10:45.360 --> 00:10:47.620 interested in the topic. There's a few of us 00:10:47.620 --> 00:10:49.980 in there chatting. I plan to be a lot more involved 00:10:49.980 --> 00:10:51.600 in there. And this is a topic I care about a 00:10:51.600 --> 00:10:54.139 lot. So I encourage you guys to join that one. 00:10:54.899 --> 00:10:56.700 Okay, jumping back in. So let's say you're interested 00:10:56.700 --> 00:10:58.539 in looking at cold cases from the open source. 00:10:59.159 --> 00:11:00.860 You need to think about whether the case you're 00:11:00.860 --> 00:11:03.299 looking at is even possible to research in open 00:11:03.299 --> 00:11:08.009 source. It's a big question to start with. Let's 00:11:08.009 --> 00:11:09.769 just start with the basic fact that people commit 00:11:09.769 --> 00:11:12.330 murder for a whole plethora of different reasons, 00:11:12.529 --> 00:11:15.129 right? You have sexually motivated crimes like 00:11:15.129 --> 00:11:17.149 serial killers usually are right where they're 00:11:17.149 --> 00:11:19.049 going out there and selecting a type of victim 00:11:19.049 --> 00:11:22.850 and Killing sort of someone who matches the same 00:11:22.850 --> 00:11:25.529 profile over and over again because of some sort 00:11:25.529 --> 00:11:30.059 of deep you know, psychological impulse that 00:11:30.059 --> 00:11:32.639 they can't control. You also have domestic violence, 00:11:32.860 --> 00:11:35.320 family disputes, disputes over money, robbery 00:11:35.320 --> 00:11:36.659 has gone wrong. There's all sorts of different 00:11:36.659 --> 00:11:40.519 reasons folks commit murder. That means that 00:11:40.519 --> 00:11:42.600 each murder you look at is going to be pretty 00:11:42.600 --> 00:11:45.899 sort of its own thing, right? They're each going 00:11:45.899 --> 00:11:47.399 to be unique. They're each going to be different. 00:11:47.720 --> 00:11:49.220 There are commonalities between them you can 00:11:49.220 --> 00:11:52.379 work with. But in my case, I happen to be really 00:11:52.379 --> 00:11:56.000 interested in organized crime, specifically the 00:11:56.000 --> 00:11:57.879 American mafia and different organized crime 00:11:57.879 --> 00:12:00.159 groups that have been active here in the U .S. 00:12:00.259 --> 00:12:02.320 over time. Some of them still are. Some of them 00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:05.779 aren't anymore. And one of the reasons I looked 00:12:05.779 --> 00:12:08.139 into Bill Richardson's murder in particular is 00:12:08.139 --> 00:12:12.259 that I gambled on the fact that it was pretty 00:12:12.259 --> 00:12:14.279 apparent he'd been killed by professional killers. 00:12:14.399 --> 00:12:16.820 And so I went off of the assumption that, hey, 00:12:16.919 --> 00:12:19.879 these people probably killed other folks and 00:12:19.879 --> 00:12:23.039 they probably have. pretty hefty paper trails 00:12:23.039 --> 00:12:26.179 through agencies like the FBI who are probably 00:12:26.179 --> 00:12:28.840 monitoring these people for other crimes. So 00:12:28.840 --> 00:12:31.740 what I figured was, okay, this is a killing that's 00:12:31.740 --> 00:12:33.700 probably mob related. I don't know which mob, 00:12:34.139 --> 00:12:37.240 I don't know who did it exactly yet, but it was 00:12:37.240 --> 00:12:40.259 so apparently done by professionals, by hitmen, 00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:42.919 that I figured if I could try to figure out who 00:12:42.919 --> 00:12:45.820 those hitmen were, I could discover more public 00:12:45.820 --> 00:12:47.779 records about them and work it from an open source 00:12:47.779 --> 00:12:50.299 angle. So some murders are going to be easier 00:12:50.299 --> 00:12:52.580 to cover from open source. Others are going to 00:12:52.580 --> 00:12:55.820 be extremely difficult, like the unidentified 00:12:55.820 --> 00:12:58.580 skeleton example I just gave. There's almost 00:12:58.580 --> 00:13:01.200 no public information out there on that. In order 00:13:01.200 --> 00:13:04.620 to dig into that, you would have to make information 00:13:04.620 --> 00:13:07.679 public by requesting police records and things 00:13:07.679 --> 00:13:09.240 like that. So just consider that when you're 00:13:09.240 --> 00:13:14.759 starting your case. I will get to the family 00:13:14.759 --> 00:13:16.679 question. That's really, really good. And we'll 00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:20.269 get to that. later. So a couple more considerations 00:13:20.269 --> 00:13:22.470 really quickly. When you're thinking about doing 00:13:22.470 --> 00:13:26.029 a case, it's important to consider how extensively 00:13:26.029 --> 00:13:28.970 it was covered originally. Is there maybe just 00:13:28.970 --> 00:13:31.250 one local media mention of it? Are there multiple 00:13:31.250 --> 00:13:33.929 newspaper articles? Are there TV reports on it? 00:13:35.870 --> 00:13:39.549 There's sort of a couple different sides to this. 00:13:39.909 --> 00:13:41.909 The more coverage you have, the more data points 00:13:41.909 --> 00:13:44.409 you have to start working with. However, the 00:13:44.409 --> 00:13:46.960 more coverage you have might mean that folks 00:13:46.960 --> 00:13:50.320 have already kind of run the public research 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:53.679 side of this, the open source side of this to 00:13:53.679 --> 00:13:55.860 the end, right? So if it's covered extensively 00:13:55.860 --> 00:13:57.559 and there's a ton of journalists working on it 00:13:57.559 --> 00:13:59.220 and a ton of people in the true crime community 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:01.220 or something who have worked on it and researched 00:14:01.220 --> 00:14:03.379 it and uploaded everything online, that's one 00:14:03.379 --> 00:14:06.039 thing. I will tell you guys just anecdotally 00:14:06.039 --> 00:14:08.379 that I found multiple murders looking into this 00:14:08.379 --> 00:14:11.940 one unsolved case. I found multiple murders that 00:14:11.940 --> 00:14:14.559 there was public data out there for, there were 00:14:14.559 --> 00:14:17.500 newspaper articles about. archival records and 00:14:17.500 --> 00:14:19.539 things like that, but there was nothing on them 00:14:19.539 --> 00:14:25.360 online. There's a lot of room to do really important 00:14:25.360 --> 00:14:28.600 good research here and to contribute towards 00:14:28.600 --> 00:14:32.779 research into these cold cases. I would just 00:14:32.779 --> 00:14:34.879 say that it's a huge problem and it doesn't take 00:14:34.879 --> 00:14:36.659 very long to find cases where you're like, oh 00:14:36.659 --> 00:14:38.539 my God, there's nothing off of Google about this 00:14:38.539 --> 00:14:40.799 murder that happened in my town. I have some 00:14:40.799 --> 00:14:42.600 newspaper articles about it. I should upload 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:44.879 this to Uncovered or solve the case or something. 00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:49.120 Backing up a little bit, each case is going to 00:14:49.120 --> 00:14:52.279 be completely different, like I said. Is it even 00:14:52.279 --> 00:14:54.200 going to be possible to cover from a public record's 00:14:54.200 --> 00:14:57.240 open source angle? If it's someone like a gangster, 00:14:57.519 --> 00:14:59.120 a mobster, that means that there's going to be 00:14:59.120 --> 00:15:01.279 a hefty paper trail you can probably work with. 00:15:01.639 --> 00:15:03.539 It also means if it happened a long time ago 00:15:03.539 --> 00:15:05.200 that they probably committed, they probably went 00:15:05.200 --> 00:15:06.899 on to commit other crimes later on, and those 00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:08.960 might be relevant to the case you're looking 00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:12.779 at. What data points are public? What can you 00:15:12.779 --> 00:15:14.799 start to use to research? Do you have the victim's 00:15:14.799 --> 00:15:17.240 death certificate? Are there names of suspects 00:15:17.240 --> 00:15:19.440 involved with the murder? Were those suspects 00:15:19.440 --> 00:15:21.779 cleared already by the police? In my case, one 00:15:21.779 --> 00:15:25.620 of them was put on trial and acquitted. We found 00:15:25.620 --> 00:15:27.600 out some more information about him that actually 00:15:27.600 --> 00:15:30.500 turns out to be pretty incriminating. But yeah, 00:15:30.580 --> 00:15:33.419 it's something to consider. Did the police even 00:15:33.419 --> 00:15:36.240 reveal that many details about the death? In 00:15:36.240 --> 00:15:38.559 a lot of cases, they might withhold a lot of 00:15:38.559 --> 00:15:40.700 information, a lot of the details of how the 00:15:40.700 --> 00:15:43.059 person was killed, how the body was found, where 00:15:43.059 --> 00:15:45.879 it was found. they oftentimes strategically withhold 00:15:45.879 --> 00:15:48.779 that information so that it doesn't interfere 00:15:48.779 --> 00:15:50.440 with their investigation and so that if they 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:52.779 get things like witness statements later on, 00:15:52.799 --> 00:15:54.559 they can corroborate it with information that 00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:57.039 kept secret. So it depends on how much information 00:15:57.039 --> 00:15:58.720 was released about the murder, how much has been 00:15:58.720 --> 00:16:02.200 reported, that sort of thing. A really key thing 00:16:02.200 --> 00:16:04.659 is were suspects named or not? Are they still 00:16:04.659 --> 00:16:08.809 alive or not? That's a huge question. Another, 00:16:09.049 --> 00:16:10.990 this is a little bit more, if you're doing a 00:16:10.990 --> 00:16:12.350 traditional journalist approach, where you'd 00:16:12.350 --> 00:16:14.009 be going and interviewing family members, which 00:16:14.009 --> 00:16:15.549 I'll talk about more later. And I saw we have 00:16:15.549 --> 00:16:19.389 some questions about. But if you're looking strictly 00:16:19.389 --> 00:16:22.149 from an open source side, are there family members, 00:16:22.470 --> 00:16:24.350 say, who've created a Facebook group for their 00:16:24.350 --> 00:16:26.809 loved one? Oftentimes with a cold case murder, 00:16:26.929 --> 00:16:28.690 there'll be a Facebook group with members of 00:16:28.690 --> 00:16:30.509 the local community that's open and you can see 00:16:30.509 --> 00:16:33.490 people. posting news articles about it, leaving 00:16:33.490 --> 00:16:35.970 comments, posting information about their family 00:16:35.970 --> 00:16:38.649 member, posting photos. There is a lot of that 00:16:38.649 --> 00:16:42.149 online around this topic. So. Other factor factor 00:16:42.149 --> 00:16:44.850 to consider, and then lastly, which law enforcement 00:16:44.850 --> 00:16:47.490 agencies worked the case because that determines 00:16:47.490 --> 00:16:49.350 where you're going to file your public records 00:16:49.350 --> 00:16:51.629 requests, which I'm going to focus on in just 00:16:51.629 --> 00:16:54.649 a second. And Bill Richardson's case, it had 00:16:54.649 --> 00:16:56.549 been reported a lot. Initially, there were a 00:16:56.549 --> 00:16:58.429 lot of newspaper articles for me to start with. 00:16:58.490 --> 00:17:01.870 None of them. were indexed by Google, I had to 00:17:01.870 --> 00:17:05.150 pay for a newspapers .com account to find this 00:17:05.150 --> 00:17:08.170 information and kind of unlock it. But there 00:17:08.170 --> 00:17:09.769 was enough for me to get started on the case 00:17:09.769 --> 00:17:12.450 where there were suspects named, there was a 00:17:12.450 --> 00:17:14.650 related murder that was mentioned. So there was 00:17:14.650 --> 00:17:16.349 some information I could start with and then 00:17:16.349 --> 00:17:18.809 I just started blasting out FOIAs based on that 00:17:18.809 --> 00:17:20.990 information that I started with. I also took 00:17:20.990 --> 00:17:23.390 information from those newspaper articles. went 00:17:23.390 --> 00:17:26.250 to Ancestry .com and started to use that to pull 00:17:26.250 --> 00:17:28.789 more. So I was able to get death certificates. 00:17:28.809 --> 00:17:32.289 I was able to find family members that were still 00:17:32.289 --> 00:17:34.950 alive that I could try to reach out to. I was 00:17:34.950 --> 00:17:36.450 able to find a lot of information that helped 00:17:36.450 --> 00:17:39.769 me dig further on using the combination of newspapers 00:17:39.769 --> 00:17:43.670 .com and Ancestry. Not an endorsement of them. 00:17:43.690 --> 00:17:45.490 Those just are the paid tools that I happen to 00:17:45.490 --> 00:17:47.710 use for this because they're great for US -focused 00:17:47.710 --> 00:17:51.339 research. Yeah, some key suspects were named. 00:17:51.980 --> 00:17:54.500 They had extensive criminal careers, which meant 00:17:54.500 --> 00:17:57.640 that I could file FOIAs with the FBI. I could 00:17:57.640 --> 00:17:59.960 request records from local and state police. 00:18:00.299 --> 00:18:02.980 I could map out the course of their criminal 00:18:02.980 --> 00:18:05.279 career and figure out whether that was relevant 00:18:05.279 --> 00:18:08.599 to this murder. And then because these guys were 00:18:08.599 --> 00:18:11.559 dead, the suspects in my case are dead, it made 00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:15.559 it much, much easier for me to get records from 00:18:15.559 --> 00:18:18.099 them from the FBI. because I could send them 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:20.680 the death certificate and say, this person is 00:18:20.680 --> 00:18:25.279 deceased. I'm requesting any files related to 00:18:25.279 --> 00:18:27.640 their criminal history to FBI investigations 00:18:27.640 --> 00:18:31.180 into this person. And because of privacy laws, 00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:33.480 they're able to release more if the subject is 00:18:33.480 --> 00:18:36.720 deceased. OK, so I'll just keep going real quick. 00:18:37.400 --> 00:18:39.119 You guys all know this already as members of 00:18:39.119 --> 00:18:41.039 the Bill and Kat Discord, but these are the sort 00:18:41.039 --> 00:18:43.519 of typical tools we use for our open source work, 00:18:43.539 --> 00:18:46.690 right? If you're looking into a cold case homicide, 00:18:46.789 --> 00:18:49.390 it might look something more like this. I was 00:18:49.390 --> 00:18:51.609 using digitized newspapers, in my case, paid 00:18:51.609 --> 00:18:53.829 services. There are some freely available out 00:18:53.829 --> 00:18:56.549 there through libraries. If you're a student 00:18:56.549 --> 00:18:58.750 or you're a faculty member of a university, that's 00:18:58.750 --> 00:19:01.529 a nifty way to be able to access digitized newspapers 00:19:01.529 --> 00:19:05.130 as well. I also used ancestry .com, like I said, 00:19:05.650 --> 00:19:09.170 to pull some pretty vital information. So certificates, 00:19:09.170 --> 00:19:11.750 which gave me social security numbers and birthdays 00:19:11.750 --> 00:19:14.859 and surviving family members. I also did a lot 00:19:14.859 --> 00:19:16.680 of social media work, honestly, even though this 00:19:16.680 --> 00:19:20.380 case happened in 1971 before the internet. The 00:19:20.380 --> 00:19:22.259 survivors and family members are on Facebook, 00:19:23.160 --> 00:19:26.240 and they tend to be in this case, they were anywhere 00:19:26.240 --> 00:19:28.920 from in their 50s to their 80s and 90s even, 00:19:28.920 --> 00:19:31.019 and they were real active on Facebook. So I was 00:19:31.019 --> 00:19:34.019 able to reach out to some of them for interviews 00:19:34.019 --> 00:19:38.000 on here. There were people posting information 00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:40.240 and leaving comments and stuff like that. So 00:19:40.240 --> 00:19:42.059 social media, even for a case like this that's 00:19:42.059 --> 00:19:44.700 really old, was still relevant. And lastly, and 00:19:44.700 --> 00:19:47.779 crucially, FOIAs and public records requests, 00:19:47.839 --> 00:19:51.759 which I did entirely online. And many of them 00:19:51.759 --> 00:19:55.079 I did before I even joined Bill and Kat. I just 00:19:55.079 --> 00:19:57.599 had a completely different job. I wasn't a journalist. 00:19:57.799 --> 00:19:59.819 I wasn't working in the journalism space. And 00:19:59.819 --> 00:20:01.720 I was just filing FOIAs because I was interested 00:20:01.720 --> 00:20:04.359 in learning more about this murder. And because 00:20:04.359 --> 00:20:06.299 we have public record laws here in the US and 00:20:06.299 --> 00:20:10.099 in Texas that let me do that. So huge plug, huge 00:20:10.099 --> 00:20:12.519 plug for Muckrock. If you guys are at all interested 00:20:12.519 --> 00:20:14.920 in ever filing any kind of FOIA with any agency 00:20:14.920 --> 00:20:18.460 ever, Muckrock is your place to go. I say that 00:20:18.460 --> 00:20:22.940 because you can go in there, search for FOIAs 00:20:22.940 --> 00:20:24.720 that are similar to the ones that you want to 00:20:24.720 --> 00:20:27.680 file. So I can go in there and search for FOIAs 00:20:27.680 --> 00:20:30.640 sent to the FBI. And I can find example letters 00:20:30.640 --> 00:20:33.099 that other people, including journalists, have 00:20:33.099 --> 00:20:36.079 sent in. And I just use those as a template for 00:20:36.079 --> 00:20:38.539 my own. So I went in there and I found someone 00:20:38.539 --> 00:20:42.200 who had requested FBI records related to a mobster. 00:20:42.619 --> 00:20:44.539 It was a journalist and I took their letter. 00:20:45.099 --> 00:20:47.579 I changed a couple things around and I sent it 00:20:47.579 --> 00:20:50.000 into the FBI. And the second I started doing 00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:52.640 that was the second I started getting better 00:20:52.640 --> 00:20:56.599 results from FOIAs. So big plug for Muckrock. 00:20:56.680 --> 00:20:58.500 They're really, really awesome. You can also 00:20:58.500 --> 00:21:01.339 just file them directly through agency websites 00:21:01.339 --> 00:21:04.599 like the FBI. But more on that in just a second. 00:21:05.240 --> 00:21:10.200 Speed up here. What's the muckrock site? We can 00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:11.799 draw there. Charlie just dropped the link. There 00:21:11.799 --> 00:21:15.039 you go. Yeah, so I kind of I want to speed through 00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:17.819 this a little bit. But when we're doing our typical 00:21:17.819 --> 00:21:19.500 Bellingcat investigations, where we're looking 00:21:19.500 --> 00:21:21.779 at maybe the social media accounts of someone 00:21:21.779 --> 00:21:24.180 who's accused of some wrongdoing, right? We're 00:21:24.180 --> 00:21:26.259 pivoting around using different data points. 00:21:26.299 --> 00:21:29.160 We're finding a username and an email and a phone 00:21:29.160 --> 00:21:31.160 number. It's a very similar idea when you're 00:21:31.160 --> 00:21:34.180 doing this type of research. In my case, I often 00:21:34.180 --> 00:21:36.339 started with a newspaper article, which would 00:21:36.339 --> 00:21:38.420 give me the name of somebody, a suspect maybe. 00:21:39.460 --> 00:21:41.440 I could search for them on ancestry .com, figure 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:44.539 out if they were alive or dead, figure out where 00:21:44.539 --> 00:21:47.000 they lived. So if they were deceased, I usually 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:48.900 got a death certificate with a date of birth, 00:21:49.519 --> 00:21:51.140 surviving family members that I could find on 00:21:51.140 --> 00:21:54.359 Facebook. And using those points above, I could 00:21:54.359 --> 00:21:57.099 also file FOIAs. If the suspect was deceased, 00:21:57.299 --> 00:22:00.099 it meant that I could... Okay, and you know, 00:22:00.099 --> 00:22:01.940 it sucks. I can't talk to this person. I can't 00:22:01.940 --> 00:22:03.980 interview them. However, it does mean I can request 00:22:03.980 --> 00:22:06.660 their records from the FBI or the local police. 00:22:07.519 --> 00:22:11.980 So okay, just an example of how it worked with 00:22:11.980 --> 00:22:15.299 in this case, in my story, if you read it, there 00:22:15.299 --> 00:22:17.480 was a suspected hitman who belonged to something 00:22:17.480 --> 00:22:20.720 called the Dixie Mafia, this really fascinating, 00:22:21.039 --> 00:22:23.460 shadowy, extremely violent organized crime group 00:22:23.460 --> 00:22:25.980 that used to be real active all across the American 00:22:25.980 --> 00:22:29.329 South and the Midwest. This guy was tied to my 00:22:29.329 --> 00:22:31.250 murder. He was a suspected getaway driver. He 00:22:31.250 --> 00:22:34.470 belonged to essentially a team of hitmen who 00:22:34.470 --> 00:22:36.730 thought to have killed the murder victim in my 00:22:36.730 --> 00:22:39.069 case. He was murdered himself, it turned out. 00:22:39.109 --> 00:22:41.910 I figured that out researching. The local police 00:22:41.910 --> 00:22:44.250 didn't even realize that his case was still unsolved, 00:22:44.289 --> 00:22:46.109 which was really interesting. I filed a FOIA 00:22:46.109 --> 00:22:49.849 with them and they responded by saying, basically 00:22:49.849 --> 00:22:52.210 they acknowledged that they didn't realize that 00:22:52.210 --> 00:22:53.710 the case was still unsolved and that they were 00:22:53.710 --> 00:22:55.900 going to treat it as an unsolved case. And they 00:22:55.900 --> 00:22:57.700 gave me some files related to it, surprisingly. 00:22:59.019 --> 00:23:01.519 So I pivoted around with different data points. 00:23:02.019 --> 00:23:04.259 In this case, I ended up using his tattoos. I 00:23:04.259 --> 00:23:06.259 had his autopsy report. I could see different 00:23:06.259 --> 00:23:09.319 tattoos he had all over his body. And because 00:23:09.319 --> 00:23:12.420 he had multiple aliases, he used multiple names, 00:23:12.980 --> 00:23:14.779 his tattoos ended up being really important because 00:23:14.779 --> 00:23:18.180 I could match up the tattoos under his autopsy 00:23:18.180 --> 00:23:21.079 in one name with his prison records, which listed 00:23:21.079 --> 00:23:23.400 his tattoos under another name. And I could prove 00:23:23.400 --> 00:23:26.579 that, hey, this is the same guy. Did that all 00:23:26.579 --> 00:23:33.880 through open source? Yeah, too long. Okay, so 00:23:33.880 --> 00:23:36.059 the other thing is just search terms, just like 00:23:36.059 --> 00:23:37.920 you would with any other investigation, right? 00:23:38.700 --> 00:23:40.799 Increasingly, a lot of older documents, especially 00:23:40.799 --> 00:23:44.240 things like FBI documents related to mobsters, 00:23:44.460 --> 00:23:46.539 people with prolific criminal careers, serial 00:23:46.539 --> 00:23:50.259 killers, things like that. As government documents 00:23:50.259 --> 00:23:52.279 that have been foiled by other people are released 00:23:52.279 --> 00:23:54.440 online or even released by the government themselves, 00:23:56.059 --> 00:23:58.559 search engines are going to start indexing some 00:23:58.559 --> 00:24:00.700 of the language in there. Even if it's a document 00:24:00.700 --> 00:24:03.400 that's handwritten, that's been OCR'd, sometimes 00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:05.059 those terms will show up off a simple Google 00:24:05.059 --> 00:24:07.980 search. In my case, a huge finding came from 00:24:07.980 --> 00:24:13.019 the most simple Google search, essentially. I 00:24:13.019 --> 00:24:15.720 searched a variant of one of the friends of the 00:24:15.720 --> 00:24:17.579 victim. I searched for a variant of his name 00:24:17.579 --> 00:24:19.920 and I got a document from the JFK assassination 00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:23.619 record collection act. It kind of made my stomach 00:24:23.619 --> 00:24:25.890 churn because I thought like, Oh, boy, I'm getting 00:24:25.890 --> 00:24:28.589 into JFK territory. I'm not prepared for this. 00:24:28.990 --> 00:24:31.750 But it ended up being huge because it involved 00:24:31.750 --> 00:24:34.069 organized crime connections, actually, to the 00:24:34.069 --> 00:24:37.150 Sicilian -American mafia, because of Nostra. 00:24:37.230 --> 00:24:39.710 So it was just off a simple Google search, like 00:24:39.710 --> 00:24:42.470 many of our investigations are. So be creative 00:24:42.470 --> 00:24:45.150 with your search terms, use every possible combination, 00:24:46.029 --> 00:24:50.269 spelling variations, use search operators like 00:24:50.269 --> 00:24:53.599 quotation marks, file type, site. usual stuff 00:24:53.599 --> 00:24:55.440 that you guys know from our other Bellingcat 00:24:55.440 --> 00:24:59.660 cases. And then like I said with with FOIAs and 00:24:59.660 --> 00:25:03.079 public records, use Muckrock, find examples that 00:25:03.079 --> 00:25:05.039 are similar to the type of FOIA you want to file 00:25:05.039 --> 00:25:07.980 and file those early, as early as you possibly 00:25:07.980 --> 00:25:11.839 can. And then get ready to A, have to negotiate 00:25:11.839 --> 00:25:13.759 a little bit, you'll have a little bit of an 00:25:13.759 --> 00:25:16.240 email back and forth, right? They'll usually 00:25:16.240 --> 00:25:19.359 email you and say, like the FBI emailed me and 00:25:19.359 --> 00:25:22.200 was Hey, we have 12 ,000 pages on this one guy 00:25:22.200 --> 00:25:24.619 you just requested for. If you want all of those, 00:25:24.680 --> 00:25:26.500 you have to wait eight years, or we can give 00:25:26.500 --> 00:25:28.819 you 50 of them in the next two months. Which 00:25:28.819 --> 00:25:31.279 do you prefer? So I had to learn just off the 00:25:31.279 --> 00:25:32.940 cuff. I'd never done that before. I had to learn 00:25:32.940 --> 00:25:35.440 off the cuff how to negotiate with them. And 00:25:35.440 --> 00:25:38.660 once I did it once, twice, three times, it got 00:25:38.660 --> 00:25:40.779 much easier each time. I got more confident doing 00:25:40.779 --> 00:25:44.319 it. And anyway, Muckrock is a good resource for 00:25:44.319 --> 00:25:46.339 learning how to do that. And you can also just 00:25:46.339 --> 00:25:48.750 shoot me a message on Discord. I'm happy to help 00:25:48.750 --> 00:25:50.690 with FOIA questions. I find the whole process 00:25:50.690 --> 00:25:53.869 really fun, frustrating as well, but also really 00:25:53.869 --> 00:25:57.089 fun. A couple things to consider. Each state's 00:25:57.089 --> 00:26:00.210 totally different in the US. For example, in 00:26:00.210 --> 00:26:02.109 Texas, it's actually easier for me to get autopsy 00:26:02.109 --> 00:26:03.769 records than it is where I live in Massachusetts. 00:26:04.049 --> 00:26:05.730 It's a lot harder. They're not considered in 00:26:05.730 --> 00:26:08.670 the public record up here, unfortunately. So 00:26:08.670 --> 00:26:10.410 just learn your state's public records laws. 00:26:10.809 --> 00:26:14.819 Learn how to game it a little bit. There's different 00:26:14.819 --> 00:26:16.500 tips and tricks for that. There's folks that 00:26:16.500 --> 00:26:20.079 do really awesome FOIA work online. File it with 00:26:20.079 --> 00:26:23.079 as many agencies as you can. If you think your 00:26:23.079 --> 00:26:25.279 murder was looked at by the local police and 00:26:25.279 --> 00:26:28.079 the county sheriff, then file a public records 00:26:28.079 --> 00:26:30.380 request with both of them for the same case. 00:26:30.539 --> 00:26:33.160 Fire them off in the same go. I would just do 00:26:33.160 --> 00:26:36.259 it in the same morning. Don't be afraid to learn 00:26:36.259 --> 00:26:38.119 as you go. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. 00:26:39.299 --> 00:26:40.819 Don't be afraid to reach out to them. I was a 00:26:40.819 --> 00:26:42.960 little intimidated with my first couple of FOIAs. 00:26:43.180 --> 00:26:45.220 But these are public record laws for a reason. 00:26:45.420 --> 00:26:47.599 We're members of the public. We can request these. 00:26:47.980 --> 00:26:49.940 You're essentially requesting that information 00:26:49.940 --> 00:26:52.180 be made available to us because we are looking 00:26:52.180 --> 00:26:55.059 into a public issue, which is unsolved murders. 00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:58.019 So keep that in mind. Also keep in mind that 00:26:58.019 --> 00:27:00.099 a lot of these officials actually want to help 00:27:00.099 --> 00:27:03.019 you. Someone told me that early on and it actually 00:27:03.579 --> 00:27:05.420 It helped me out a little bit with the process 00:27:05.420 --> 00:27:07.119 because I kind of assumed that these people wanted 00:27:07.119 --> 00:27:09.119 to hide every record from me, right? And that 00:27:09.119 --> 00:27:10.599 they were trying to fight me on these record 00:27:10.599 --> 00:27:12.680 requests. In some cases, that was a little bit 00:27:12.680 --> 00:27:15.319 true. But in a lot of cases, the public information 00:27:15.319 --> 00:27:17.960 officer at the local police department, they're 00:27:17.960 --> 00:27:20.779 like excited that someone's looking into some 00:27:20.779 --> 00:27:22.460 case that they don't have time to deal with, 00:27:22.519 --> 00:27:24.720 right? And maybe they want to strategically release 00:27:24.720 --> 00:27:26.519 a little bit of information about it. That happened 00:27:26.519 --> 00:27:30.000 to me in a couple cases. So don't be afraid to 00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:31.660 head out to negotiate with them. You'll have 00:27:31.660 --> 00:27:34.390 some email back and forth. It's really common. 00:27:34.450 --> 00:27:35.750 A lot of people do this. You don't have to be 00:27:35.750 --> 00:27:40.890 a journalist to file FOIAs. Yeah, 404 Media also 00:27:40.890 --> 00:27:45.289 has a FOIA workshop. Yeah, thanks for that. 404 00:27:45.289 --> 00:27:47.650 is really, really awesome for that. And so is 00:27:47.650 --> 00:27:50.430 Muckrock. Those are my two faves. Okay, just 00:27:50.430 --> 00:27:52.349 a quick note. A lot of the research happens off 00:27:52.349 --> 00:27:54.950 of weird, obscure archives. A lot of the coolest 00:27:54.950 --> 00:27:57.130 stuff that I found that was very relevant to 00:27:57.130 --> 00:27:59.779 the murder I was looking into. was off of university 00:27:59.779 --> 00:28:02.859 libraries, was off of special collections at 00:28:02.859 --> 00:28:07.400 local libraries. They were bits of information 00:28:07.400 --> 00:28:09.660 available in archives that weren't reachable 00:28:09.660 --> 00:28:11.980 just from simple Google searches. I had to dig 00:28:11.980 --> 00:28:14.500 a little deeper, go to the library website, access 00:28:14.500 --> 00:28:16.900 photo collections, and search in there. They 00:28:16.900 --> 00:28:19.920 weren't all indexed, essentially. Get creative. 00:28:20.180 --> 00:28:21.799 Look around. You never know what you'll find. 00:28:21.839 --> 00:28:23.660 Go to your local library and talk to a reference 00:28:23.660 --> 00:28:25.740 librarian. Honestly, they're awesome, and they 00:28:25.740 --> 00:28:27.240 can help you get started, especially if you're 00:28:27.240 --> 00:28:30.640 looking at local cases. Hyperlocal Facebook groups. 00:28:31.200 --> 00:28:33.559 Find them if they're out there. Here's an example 00:28:33.559 --> 00:28:35.460 of this one, old gangster days in Fort Worth 00:28:35.460 --> 00:28:38.460 for mine. This is populated entirely by the kids 00:28:38.460 --> 00:28:40.259 and grandkids of the gangsters I was looking 00:28:40.259 --> 00:28:42.299 at. There are hundreds of family members of these 00:28:42.299 --> 00:28:44.740 gangsters who are posting photos of them. telling 00:28:44.740 --> 00:28:47.900 old stories. It's a treasure trove for journalists 00:28:47.900 --> 00:28:50.539 and crime historians and it's really awesome. 00:28:51.200 --> 00:28:52.880 And then those crowdsourcing sites I mentioned, 00:28:52.940 --> 00:28:54.500 that's a good place to start too. Maybe your 00:28:54.500 --> 00:28:56.119 case is already in there, you can start working 00:28:56.119 --> 00:28:59.200 from that. Another really good resource, NamUs. 00:29:00.619 --> 00:29:04.480 This is the national database basically for missing 00:29:04.480 --> 00:29:08.420 and unidentified people. I just searched my county 00:29:08.420 --> 00:29:11.259 in Massachusetts right before this. There's 27 00:29:11.259 --> 00:29:14.700 unidentified remains just in the database alone 00:29:14.700 --> 00:29:17.160 that I could start searching with. If you're 00:29:17.160 --> 00:29:20.200 looking at an unidentified murder victim, you 00:29:20.200 --> 00:29:23.140 can go in here and you can look for similar cases 00:29:23.140 --> 00:29:26.619 in a similar area. You can look for, you know, 00:29:26.740 --> 00:29:29.160 maybe victims who meet the same general profile, 00:29:29.259 --> 00:29:32.539 maybe the same age group, male or female, or 00:29:32.539 --> 00:29:35.480 you can search by different categories in here, 00:29:35.579 --> 00:29:36.940 and it's NamUs is a really good place to start 00:29:36.940 --> 00:29:39.839 as well. There's a couple other in here, and 00:29:39.839 --> 00:29:42.829 I really just wanted to emphasize One thing which 00:29:42.829 --> 00:29:44.609 is that if you're trying to get started in this 00:29:44.609 --> 00:29:47.150 topic and you're interested in it I urge you 00:29:47.150 --> 00:29:50.670 to look in your local area first And I urge you 00:29:50.670 --> 00:29:53.609 to dig a bit deeper than just google searches 00:29:53.609 --> 00:29:58.769 A lot of these murders are not even publicly 00:29:58.769 --> 00:30:02.809 listed online as I mentioned So get a paid, you 00:30:02.809 --> 00:30:04.990 know newspapers .com account go to your local 00:30:04.990 --> 00:30:07.710 library get a university account Ask a friend 00:30:07.710 --> 00:30:09.990 who has one start searching through your local 00:30:09.990 --> 00:30:16.319 paper or for terms like murder, Jane Doe. Look 00:30:16.319 --> 00:30:18.539 in your local area though and I guarantee you, 00:30:18.539 --> 00:30:21.000 you're going to find unsolved cases. In the couple 00:30:21.000 --> 00:30:23.400 of towns around me since I started this, I have 00:30:23.400 --> 00:30:26.619 been honestly appalled at the number and I also 00:30:26.619 --> 00:30:28.619 just hear people out and about. I heard a woman 00:30:28.619 --> 00:30:30.559 at breakfast the other day talking about how 00:30:30.559 --> 00:30:33.400 her mom is the victim of a cold case, actually 00:30:33.400 --> 00:30:36.160 a mafia related cold case too. So it's not that 00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:38.759 hard to find these everywhere. These people's 00:30:38.759 --> 00:30:42.200 family members are often posting on Facebook 00:30:42.200 --> 00:30:44.319 about it, like urging people to come forward 00:30:44.319 --> 00:30:46.420 or posting on the anniversary of their death 00:30:46.420 --> 00:30:49.240 or their birthday. Looking at these cases, we 00:30:49.240 --> 00:30:51.599 need people working on them, join groups that 00:30:51.599 --> 00:30:53.839 work on them. If you want to learn more skills 00:30:53.839 --> 00:30:56.299 about how to do this, how to do it responsibly, 00:30:56.660 --> 00:31:00.059 how to engage with, you know, family members 00:31:00.059 --> 00:31:02.220 in some cases are like parts of these groups 00:31:02.220 --> 00:31:04.059 and they're willing to chat with people you never 00:31:04.059 --> 00:31:06.200 know. So I'd say if you're just getting started, 00:31:06.200 --> 00:31:11.779 join a group and look local. Yeah. Okay. I'm 00:31:11.779 --> 00:31:13.079 going to open it up to questions. We went a little 00:31:13.079 --> 00:31:15.619 bit over time. Thanks for listening to Yap. The 00:31:15.619 --> 00:31:19.720 last point I'll say is that with a lot of these 00:31:19.720 --> 00:31:22.680 cases, especially if there's not much on them 00:31:22.680 --> 00:31:24.200 off of the Google search, if there's not much 00:31:24.200 --> 00:31:27.299 on them online, you might be the only person 00:31:27.299 --> 00:31:29.420 who is looking into that case. There's a really 00:31:29.420 --> 00:31:31.359 good chance that you will be the only person 00:31:31.359 --> 00:31:34.119 interested in a given case. So this is important 00:31:34.119 --> 00:31:38.099 stuff. There are too many of these to deal with 00:31:38.099 --> 00:31:41.190 and I hope people get out there and start working 00:31:41.190 --> 00:31:44.809 on them. Even in other countries, this is a huge 00:31:44.809 --> 00:31:46.990 problem everywhere. So reach out to me on Discord. 00:31:47.130 --> 00:31:49.509 Here's my Blue Sky account. Open the floor to 00:31:49.509 --> 00:31:52.990 questions. Thanks so much, Peter, for giving 00:31:52.990 --> 00:31:56.769 us so many useful tips there. Hopefully, we can 00:31:56.769 --> 00:32:00.349 find out some more in this discussion. Obviously, 00:32:00.349 --> 00:32:03.369 we've already dug a little bit into the FOIA 00:32:03.369 --> 00:32:06.829 requests, but quite a lot of the questions are 00:32:06.829 --> 00:32:10.369 focused on that. So I just want to Just return 00:32:10.369 --> 00:32:12.170 back to that conversation while we go. Thank 00:32:12.170 --> 00:32:14.670 you to everybody who's been popping really useful 00:32:14.670 --> 00:32:19.309 links in the chat, particularly for non -US based 00:32:19.309 --> 00:32:22.970 stories. For example, Miss B, thank you for sharing 00:32:22.970 --> 00:32:26.309 Right to Know that's useful in Australia, Ask 00:32:26.309 --> 00:32:29.529 the EU, which is useful in the EU, and the IGF 00:32:29.529 --> 00:32:31.609 .org, which is useful in Canada. Again, if you're 00:32:31.609 --> 00:32:34.069 listening to this on the podcast, all of these 00:32:34.069 --> 00:32:35.769 links will be in the description of the podcast, 00:32:35.829 --> 00:32:38.069 so you don't need to worry about that. And Scoot 00:32:38.069 --> 00:32:41.150 asked earlier, how long before the FOIA requests 00:32:41.150 --> 00:32:43.569 were answered? Because that's the big thing when 00:32:43.569 --> 00:32:46.230 it comes to FOIA requests is the actual length 00:32:46.230 --> 00:32:49.329 that it takes. And as someone who has filed a 00:32:49.329 --> 00:32:51.730 lot in her life, being an investigative journalist 00:32:51.730 --> 00:32:54.970 prior to this job, I know that often when it 00:32:54.970 --> 00:33:00.049 comes back, a certain word that you've used or 00:33:00.049 --> 00:33:03.829 a phrasing that you've used might not fit what 00:33:03.829 --> 00:33:06.130 they have on their side. And therefore you might 00:33:06.130 --> 00:33:08.430 get a rejection and that is gutting after you've 00:33:08.430 --> 00:33:11.670 waited months, maybe a year to get a response 00:33:11.670 --> 00:33:14.210 to then be rejected and not get the data you're 00:33:14.210 --> 00:33:17.250 looking for. So how long did it take you to get 00:33:17.250 --> 00:33:19.730 your data back? And did you have any instances 00:33:19.730 --> 00:33:22.109 like that where you realized that you weren't 00:33:22.109 --> 00:33:25.769 using the right legal speak or the right phrasing 00:33:25.769 --> 00:33:27.490 that you should have been to get the data that 00:33:27.490 --> 00:33:32.480 you needed? Yeah, yeah, oh man, so the the short 00:33:32.480 --> 00:33:35.140 answer to how long I waited it ranged from like 00:33:35.140 --> 00:33:39.240 a month in some cases To I think the longest 00:33:39.240 --> 00:33:41.680 FOIA that I filed was like close to 15 months 00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:44.940 with the FBI and that was I was the first big 00:33:44.940 --> 00:33:46.559 one that I filed with them and it took a lot 00:33:46.559 --> 00:33:49.960 of Negotiating but I also was new to it and and 00:33:49.960 --> 00:33:52.180 once I had learned Kind of what I was doing a 00:33:52.180 --> 00:33:54.400 little bit more. I could have sped that up. But 00:33:54.400 --> 00:33:57.039 essentially if you're doing a case like this 00:33:57.339 --> 00:34:00.700 put out the foyers at least months ahead of time 00:34:00.700 --> 00:34:03.119 and look at it like you're just you're putting 00:34:03.119 --> 00:34:05.579 irons in the fire. You're putting your casting 00:34:05.579 --> 00:34:07.900 fishing lines out there and you're hoping that 00:34:07.900 --> 00:34:10.059 months later they will start trickling back in. 00:34:10.159 --> 00:34:13.320 So the more of them you file, the more targeted 00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:16.699 you are in that language. So with the FBI, for 00:34:16.699 --> 00:34:20.159 example, I learned kind of instead of saying 00:34:20.159 --> 00:34:22.480 I'm requesting all of your files related to this 00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:26.449 person, I would And I did this just by kind of 00:34:26.449 --> 00:34:28.429 asking them how to do it too. Like I honestly 00:34:28.429 --> 00:34:30.349 would email back and forth with them and be like, 00:34:30.429 --> 00:34:32.389 I'm trying to get this, can you help me kind 00:34:32.389 --> 00:34:34.070 of adjust the language a little bit? And in some 00:34:34.070 --> 00:34:35.730 cases, they would help me do that. Not always, 00:34:35.730 --> 00:34:39.050 but sometimes. So I learned to be more specific. 00:34:39.050 --> 00:34:43.030 And I would say, I'm interested in any information 00:34:43.030 --> 00:34:45.889 you have on this person related to organized 00:34:45.889 --> 00:34:49.829 crime activity in Texas between 1965 and 1972. 00:34:50.250 --> 00:34:51.989 And that would narrow it down. And then they 00:34:51.989 --> 00:34:55.940 would say, okay, we have files from 1968 and 00:34:55.940 --> 00:35:01.400 1969. We'll send those to you in a month. The 00:35:01.400 --> 00:35:03.619 more specific you can be, the better. But again, 00:35:03.760 --> 00:35:07.000 there's people posting like 404 and Muckrock 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:09.159 have really, really good tips on how to use that 00:35:09.159 --> 00:35:14.639 language. I would just say, look for FOIAs at 00:35:14.639 --> 00:35:16.960 the same police department that you're interested 00:35:16.960 --> 00:35:19.139 in filing with. and try to find ones that are 00:35:19.139 --> 00:35:21.900 written by a journalist or a researcher that 00:35:21.900 --> 00:35:25.099 sounds professional and that are citing specific 00:35:25.099 --> 00:35:28.280 laws. Because the minute I started doing that 00:35:28.280 --> 00:35:30.360 and basing my FOIAs off of what other people 00:35:30.360 --> 00:35:33.300 do was the minute it started happening quicker. 00:35:33.639 --> 00:35:37.000 I'd start getting files back sooner, but I literally 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:39.659 got FBI documents yesterday that I had filed 00:35:39.659 --> 00:35:43.099 eight months ago or something. Wow. More stuff 00:35:43.099 --> 00:35:46.860 to uncover then. Hopefully. I would also say 00:35:46.860 --> 00:35:50.800 that some authorities, not really the police, 00:35:50.920 --> 00:35:53.219 but if you're looking at local authority documents, 00:35:53.739 --> 00:35:58.019 like councils and state -led departments, sometimes 00:35:58.019 --> 00:36:00.840 they can be a little bit mean. If you start asking 00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:03.099 questions after you've filed your FOIA, they 00:36:03.099 --> 00:36:05.519 can then reset the clock. They can say, oh, well, 00:36:05.579 --> 00:36:07.800 you inquired about something. Therefore, we're 00:36:07.800 --> 00:36:10.900 going to reset the clock that we have to respond 00:36:10.900 --> 00:36:15.239 to. Just be aware of that. But absolutely, kind 00:36:15.239 --> 00:36:17.599 of being as specific as possible is really useful. 00:36:17.760 --> 00:36:20.260 And there's so many good books out there as well 00:36:20.260 --> 00:36:24.079 on FOIA requests per country as well. For example, 00:36:24.280 --> 00:36:27.480 if you're looking for it in Holland in the Netherlands, 00:36:27.579 --> 00:36:30.659 I'm sure you could find Netherlands specific 00:36:30.659 --> 00:36:34.000 advice as well in a book form, because there's 00:36:34.000 --> 00:36:36.179 lots of journalists that specialize in kind of 00:36:36.179 --> 00:36:39.800 the best forms of FOIAs for each country. Lots 00:36:39.800 --> 00:36:42.949 of questions coming in. Keith has asked, any 00:36:42.949 --> 00:36:45.329 comments on safety when investigating these? 00:36:46.010 --> 00:36:48.429 Did you encounter any issues? I was going to 00:36:48.429 --> 00:36:50.650 ask that as well, because obviously, you talked 00:36:50.650 --> 00:36:53.829 about reporting on mafias and organized crime. 00:36:54.269 --> 00:36:56.949 What would be your advice for people starting 00:36:56.949 --> 00:36:58.809 to investigate these kinds of cases in terms 00:36:58.809 --> 00:37:02.550 of safety for themselves? Yeah, that's a big 00:37:02.550 --> 00:37:08.750 issue. My murder was 54 years old. I had a lot 00:37:08.750 --> 00:37:14.650 of people who were very, I don't want to say 00:37:14.650 --> 00:37:17.210 afraid, but there was a stigma about talking 00:37:17.210 --> 00:37:19.730 about this, folks in their 80s, 90s, including 00:37:19.730 --> 00:37:21.269 folks in my family, by the way, because I'm from 00:37:21.269 --> 00:37:26.230 Texas, who it just didn't feel safe either talking 00:37:26.230 --> 00:37:28.849 about it or having their name attached to it 00:37:28.849 --> 00:37:32.630 because they just assume that there's this mafia 00:37:32.630 --> 00:37:35.550 presence that's still there. And understandably, 00:37:35.789 --> 00:37:38.909 they're They're worried about safety concerns 00:37:38.909 --> 00:37:41.030 for that. In my case though, because this was 00:37:41.030 --> 00:37:46.170 so old, the suspects that I was able to identify 00:37:46.170 --> 00:37:49.869 tied to this were all dead. All of them. I mean, 00:37:49.989 --> 00:37:51.389 every single person I was looking at, I found 00:37:51.389 --> 00:37:53.130 a couple of folks who were sort of tangentially 00:37:53.130 --> 00:37:56.829 related to them. But pretty much everyone was 00:37:56.829 --> 00:37:59.869 dead by this point. The mafia group that they 00:37:59.869 --> 00:38:02.429 belonged to, which was the Dixie mafia, was sort 00:38:02.429 --> 00:38:05.619 of... other topic is pretty much defunct. There's 00:38:05.619 --> 00:38:07.920 a couple guys left but pretty much gone. I'm 00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:10.460 also across the country now, which helped a little 00:38:10.460 --> 00:38:13.300 bit with safety. But if you're looking at a murder 00:38:13.300 --> 00:38:15.360 that's more recent, especially one tied to gang 00:38:15.360 --> 00:38:17.679 activity or organized crime, that's absolutely 00:38:17.679 --> 00:38:22.340 a concern. And it's more of a concern when you're 00:38:22.340 --> 00:38:24.380 starting to work on it publicly when you're when 00:38:24.380 --> 00:38:26.539 you're posting about it online or talking to 00:38:26.539 --> 00:38:29.199 folks. However, you're also keep in mind you're 00:38:29.199 --> 00:38:32.639 doing public records research. So filing foyers 00:38:32.639 --> 00:38:34.219 to the police department, looking for newspapers 00:38:34.219 --> 00:38:38.579 online, that sort of thing. Take the same precautions 00:38:38.579 --> 00:38:42.980 you would doing a modern day ongoing type of 00:38:42.980 --> 00:38:45.840 research or type of crime that's going on today. 00:38:46.139 --> 00:38:50.599 Take the same approach. A lot of cases are gonna 00:38:50.599 --> 00:38:53.880 be so old and they'll have suspects that are 00:38:53.880 --> 00:38:56.679 named who are now deceased. But you still might 00:38:56.679 --> 00:38:58.159 be able to find stuff in the open source out 00:38:58.159 --> 00:39:00.159 there. So don't let it hold you back either. 00:39:00.599 --> 00:39:02.699 But I would also say lastly, and most importantly, 00:39:03.460 --> 00:39:05.400 another good reason to join a community of people 00:39:05.400 --> 00:39:08.320 who are working on this issue. Participate in 00:39:08.320 --> 00:39:11.099 a forum and a local group of some kind. Plug 00:39:11.099 --> 00:39:14.880 in with other people who can share safety concerns 00:39:14.880 --> 00:39:17.800 and resources with you in your local area. Absolutely. 00:39:18.059 --> 00:39:19.599 Take away, don't do organized crime if you're 00:39:19.599 --> 00:39:21.880 interested in longevity. Yeah, that's a good 00:39:21.880 --> 00:39:26.099 one. We had a question earlier actually about 00:39:26.099 --> 00:39:29.079 how you find the family members, particularly 00:39:29.079 --> 00:39:32.380 as they probably aged quite a lot. Could you 00:39:32.380 --> 00:39:34.900 maybe talk about the technique of how you discover 00:39:34.900 --> 00:39:37.840 the people to talk to and then how you approach 00:39:37.840 --> 00:39:40.280 them on this particular subject? Because it's 00:39:40.280 --> 00:39:43.219 quite a hard thing to kind of bring up and possibly 00:39:43.219 --> 00:39:47.099 retrain someone about. Absolutely. It's a really 00:39:47.099 --> 00:39:49.559 good question. It's a really tough issue. It's 00:39:49.559 --> 00:39:51.619 something I was just at a... investigative journalism 00:39:51.619 --> 00:39:54.900 conference two weeks ago. And it's a thing that's 00:39:54.900 --> 00:39:56.699 like at the top of everyone's minds because each 00:39:56.699 --> 00:39:59.260 case is so different. And this is a really hard 00:39:59.260 --> 00:40:01.039 topic. I mean, even when these murders happened 00:40:01.039 --> 00:40:03.380 50 years ago, you can hear it when you're talking 00:40:03.380 --> 00:40:06.280 to these folks. I mean, this stuff is, it doesn't 00:40:06.280 --> 00:40:09.559 matter how much time has passed, it is raw. And 00:40:09.559 --> 00:40:11.880 there's a lot of anger often mixed in there. 00:40:11.880 --> 00:40:13.920 There's confusion at why the authorities have 00:40:13.920 --> 00:40:15.760 haven't been able to solve the case. There's 00:40:15.760 --> 00:40:17.820 suspicion. Who are you? Why are you looking into 00:40:17.820 --> 00:40:21.880 this? It's such a huge question, but I will start 00:40:21.880 --> 00:40:24.719 by saying I guess that I would find the family 00:40:24.719 --> 00:40:26.820 members usually I'd find their names on ancestry 00:40:26.820 --> 00:40:29.500 .com. So I would search for like I was looking 00:40:29.500 --> 00:40:31.400 at Bill Richardson, the main murder victim I 00:40:31.400 --> 00:40:34.420 was focusing my story on. I quickly was able 00:40:34.420 --> 00:40:37.820 to find birth records basically for his kids 00:40:37.820 --> 00:40:41.019 that had their names. I knew he was from Corpus 00:40:41.019 --> 00:40:43.820 Christi in Texas. So I started working with that 00:40:43.820 --> 00:40:46.539 information that I got off of genealogy websites. 00:40:46.679 --> 00:40:49.340 I started doing searches on Facebook, searching 00:40:49.340 --> 00:40:53.579 for people um, with those names in Corpus Christi. 00:40:53.719 --> 00:40:55.440 And I quickly found a couple of them. Some of 00:40:55.440 --> 00:40:57.000 them had changed their names, they'd been married 00:40:57.000 --> 00:40:59.139 or divorced and their names had changed and whatnot. 00:40:59.739 --> 00:41:01.559 Um, but I was able to find them. I was able to 00:41:01.559 --> 00:41:03.619 find them through mutual friends. I would, I 00:41:03.619 --> 00:41:06.380 would cold reach out to them and just say, you 00:41:06.380 --> 00:41:08.179 know, on Facebook, which isn't great because 00:41:08.179 --> 00:41:09.780 when you're not friends with somebody that, you 00:41:09.780 --> 00:41:11.360 know, it goes to their hidden inbox or whatever, 00:41:11.739 --> 00:41:14.000 I would then, um, later on I started finding 00:41:14.000 --> 00:41:16.360 phone numbers and stuff like that. But it was 00:41:16.360 --> 00:41:18.260 really scary at first because I'm I'm reaching 00:41:18.260 --> 00:41:21.400 out to them as a random nobody asking about their 00:41:21.400 --> 00:41:25.920 dad who was murdered 54 years ago. I sent out 00:41:25.920 --> 00:41:29.420 Facebook messages and I think it took about a 00:41:29.420 --> 00:41:31.679 month until I got my first reply back. It was 00:41:31.679 --> 00:41:36.039 one of the daughters and she said, hey, I heard 00:41:36.039 --> 00:41:37.420 through my family that you're trying to reach 00:41:37.420 --> 00:41:41.360 us. Why are you looking at my dad's case? It 00:41:41.360 --> 00:41:43.800 was a scary question to get, but I was straightforward 00:41:43.800 --> 00:41:47.829 and I just said, I'm a journalist with Bellingcat. 00:41:47.969 --> 00:41:50.349 I'm looking to publish an article on this murder. 00:41:51.130 --> 00:41:53.190 And I'm hoping to get some more information beyond 00:41:53.190 --> 00:41:55.670 just what's out there in the newspapers. And 00:41:55.670 --> 00:41:59.230 she very graciously agreed to talk with me. We 00:41:59.230 --> 00:42:02.130 still text all the time. So I was able to do 00:42:02.130 --> 00:42:04.309 that. But granted, I work in a journalism space. 00:42:05.730 --> 00:42:10.610 So I have a little bit of experience doing that 00:42:10.610 --> 00:42:13.090 already. So that helped. In the case, if you're 00:42:13.090 --> 00:42:14.750 not a journalist and just work in cold cases, 00:42:14.789 --> 00:42:16.650 it's a lot harder to do and it's harder to explain, 00:42:16.769 --> 00:42:19.190 hey, I'm just a random person who is into research 00:42:19.190 --> 00:42:22.530 cold cases. And yeah, so I'd say again, being 00:42:22.530 --> 00:42:24.989 part of a community where there's folks that 00:42:24.989 --> 00:42:26.889 know how to do that. Maybe there's victim advocates 00:42:26.889 --> 00:42:28.630 and stuff like that, even who already do that 00:42:28.630 --> 00:42:33.250 already. There's, in fact, here, I'll drop it 00:42:33.250 --> 00:42:34.869 in here later on, but there's a podcast that 00:42:34.869 --> 00:42:37.389 I love here in the US that's really good about 00:42:37.869 --> 00:42:40.230 how they reach out to family members and doing 00:42:40.230 --> 00:42:42.690 it in a considerate way and stuff. Otherwise, 00:42:42.829 --> 00:42:45.030 they're often available in Facebook groups and 00:42:45.030 --> 00:42:47.349 stuff too. They're literally often want people 00:42:47.349 --> 00:42:49.269 to be researching these and they're posting about 00:42:49.269 --> 00:42:51.030 it themselves or they've created a group about 00:42:51.030 --> 00:42:53.809 it themselves. Okay, I yapped a bunch about that. 00:42:53.889 --> 00:42:55.090 I want to make sure to get to other questions. 00:42:55.489 --> 00:42:57.510 If you have more questions on contacting family 00:42:57.510 --> 00:43:00.409 members, definitely reach out to me. You send 00:43:00.409 --> 00:43:02.090 me a message on Discord and stuff. I'm happy 00:43:02.090 --> 00:43:06.539 to chat. And we can also talk about it in the 00:43:06.539 --> 00:43:09.260 thread that we mentioned earlier that is in the 00:43:09.260 --> 00:43:11.440 Discord for cold cases, because we're always 00:43:11.440 --> 00:43:14.920 in there looking at potential tools and tips 00:43:14.920 --> 00:43:16.739 for looking into these cases. So please check 00:43:16.739 --> 00:43:18.780 that out. If you scroll up, you'll find it in 00:43:18.780 --> 00:43:21.360 the chat. I put it in there earlier. And thank 00:43:21.360 --> 00:43:23.900 you so much for everyone putting in missing person 00:43:23.900 --> 00:43:27.579 links as well for the various countries. They 00:43:27.579 --> 00:43:29.340 are super useful as well in these particular 00:43:29.340 --> 00:43:32.820 cases. Scoot asked, could you talk about your 00:43:32.820 --> 00:43:35.719 methodology a bit? Did you formulate hypotheses 00:43:35.719 --> 00:43:37.920 and then test them? You mentioned earlier that, 00:43:37.960 --> 00:43:40.679 for example, you kind of suspected that organized 00:43:40.679 --> 00:43:42.940 crime was involved in this particular case. I 00:43:42.940 --> 00:43:47.079 wanted to ask you, is it often hard to stop yourself 00:43:47.079 --> 00:43:49.880 pulling the thread because you found multiple 00:43:49.880 --> 00:43:52.579 murders and ended up with a huge pin board, as 00:43:52.579 --> 00:43:56.159 we see in the article? So how do you know once 00:43:56.159 --> 00:43:58.179 you've started pulling that thread, once you've 00:43:58.179 --> 00:44:01.199 started unraveling that methodology? How do you 00:44:01.199 --> 00:44:04.440 stop? How do you say, okay, well, this is the 00:44:04.440 --> 00:44:07.920 story. This is how far I can get at this point 00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:11.699 in time. Yeah. Yeah. First of all, hi, Scoot. 00:44:12.039 --> 00:44:15.099 Nice to see you here. Second of all, I wish I 00:44:15.099 --> 00:44:20.119 had an organized methodology behind doing this. 00:44:20.340 --> 00:44:22.719 I tend to work in all of the research I do pretty 00:44:22.719 --> 00:44:25.360 freeform. I have a running Google Doc of notes 00:44:25.360 --> 00:44:28.190 and I just... let myself go down to a rabbit 00:44:28.190 --> 00:44:30.150 holes and pursue it. However, with this one, 00:44:30.269 --> 00:44:32.469 I did develop a methodology kind of over time, 00:44:32.750 --> 00:44:34.710 because there were so many other murders tied 00:44:34.710 --> 00:44:39.130 to this, because it was a mafia thing. I say 00:44:39.130 --> 00:44:40.949 that loosely there, there was the mafia, but 00:44:40.949 --> 00:44:44.469 also other mafias involved with this. I started 00:44:44.469 --> 00:44:46.510 to see sort of the same types of like murders 00:44:46.510 --> 00:44:48.869 over and over again, the same suspects popping 00:44:48.869 --> 00:44:51.869 up over and over again, similar crimes. So there 00:44:51.869 --> 00:44:54.690 were a lot of different strands with this investigation. 00:44:55.710 --> 00:44:59.989 I would kind of treat each one like on an individual 00:44:59.989 --> 00:45:02.730 basis. So I'd get the name of a suspect, I'd 00:45:02.730 --> 00:45:04.750 start doing open web searches for them. I'd start 00:45:04.750 --> 00:45:06.849 running searches on newspapers .com for that 00:45:06.849 --> 00:45:10.010 same person. Same thing with ancestry .com. And 00:45:10.010 --> 00:45:11.829 I would try to find any family members online 00:45:11.829 --> 00:45:14.389 that might have posted photos about them on Facebook, 00:45:14.429 --> 00:45:18.210 for example, or posted in the forum somewhere. 00:45:19.230 --> 00:45:22.630 So I sort of I use the same set of tools on each 00:45:22.630 --> 00:45:25.730 person individually. And that was sort of the 00:45:25.730 --> 00:45:27.389 methodology approach. When it came to putting 00:45:27.389 --> 00:45:31.309 it all together, this crazy detective cork board 00:45:31.309 --> 00:45:33.309 that you see is like what was going on in my 00:45:33.309 --> 00:45:36.989 mind for three years. So I would definitely recommend 00:45:36.989 --> 00:45:39.030 being more organized. I would recommend a couple 00:45:39.030 --> 00:45:43.840 things. Become friends with Google Docs, learn 00:45:43.840 --> 00:45:46.639 how to use their organizational features, which 00:45:46.639 --> 00:45:49.139 are really awesome. I'm still learning them myself, 00:45:49.179 --> 00:45:51.400 but keep a running list of notes and keep it 00:45:51.400 --> 00:45:53.380 organized. So have contact information for people 00:45:53.380 --> 00:45:55.780 in one. Have a tab for each individual person 00:45:55.780 --> 00:45:57.519 with all of the data points you have about them, 00:45:57.619 --> 00:46:00.079 the knowns, the unknowns. That would be a good 00:46:00.079 --> 00:46:04.679 place to start. Definitely I would keep a spreadsheet 00:46:04.679 --> 00:46:07.840 of the foyers you've sent off. I would also keep 00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:10.079 a spreadsheet of like contact info for people. 00:46:10.500 --> 00:46:12.679 So in a lot of cases, I just have like four or 00:46:12.679 --> 00:46:14.400 five phone numbers per person. And I'd have to 00:46:14.400 --> 00:46:15.840 figure out which one was their current phone 00:46:15.840 --> 00:46:19.619 number, which ones were old. So yeah, being being 00:46:19.619 --> 00:46:21.920 a bit more methodical would be good. But I didn't 00:46:21.920 --> 00:46:23.940 I didn't have like a formal methodology of like 00:46:23.940 --> 00:46:27.380 hypothesis and test it was a lot looser than 00:46:27.380 --> 00:46:30.400 that. I wish I had a better answer, but pretty 00:46:30.400 --> 00:46:34.639 chaotic. Hey, we like chaos, as well as order. 00:46:35.650 --> 00:46:38.110 So I want to revisit, we've got about 10 minutes 00:46:38.110 --> 00:46:40.449 left. If you have any other questions, please 00:46:40.449 --> 00:46:42.409 pop them in the chat. I want to revisit Saiba's 00:46:42.409 --> 00:46:45.670 question. Saiba asked earlier about whether you 00:46:45.670 --> 00:46:49.489 felt the need to wait to publish in order to 00:46:49.489 --> 00:46:51.969 make sure that the family were informed and also 00:46:51.969 --> 00:46:55.349 local law enforcement. Perhaps you can talk a 00:46:55.349 --> 00:46:58.369 little bit about the ethics behind publishing. 00:46:58.710 --> 00:47:02.389 Perhaps if you can't get in touch with the family 00:47:02.389 --> 00:47:05.500 members that you might want to. Is it worth just 00:47:05.500 --> 00:47:08.380 not reporting if people aren't responding to 00:47:08.380 --> 00:47:11.019 you, for example? And then how you manage that 00:47:11.019 --> 00:47:14.980 local law enforcement issue if the law enforcement 00:47:14.980 --> 00:47:17.760 isn't happy to kind of share details with you 00:47:17.760 --> 00:47:23.940 and vice versa. Yeah. Okay. So a couple of sides 00:47:23.940 --> 00:47:28.239 to this. Okay. So to start with, it was really 00:47:28.239 --> 00:47:30.199 important for me to try to talk to someone from 00:47:30.199 --> 00:47:33.619 the family, because just from my own sense of 00:47:35.009 --> 00:47:37.190 Ethics behind it. I felt it was important that 00:47:37.190 --> 00:47:39.969 they know that I'm looking into it and I wanted 00:47:39.969 --> 00:47:42.929 to sort of for lack of a better term I kind of 00:47:42.929 --> 00:47:45.349 wanted their blessing a little bit just just 00:47:45.349 --> 00:47:49.610 to I'm digging up old heavy stuff, right their 00:47:49.610 --> 00:47:51.449 dad was murdered and in front of some of them 00:47:51.449 --> 00:47:55.610 and I'm I'm another person not in the family 00:47:55.610 --> 00:47:57.929 looking into it. So yeah when I heard from the 00:47:57.929 --> 00:48:00.849 daughter, it was sort of a big win for me and 00:48:00.849 --> 00:48:03.880 she basically said look We haven't heard from 00:48:03.880 --> 00:48:06.920 the police since the 1970s. We don't think this 00:48:06.920 --> 00:48:09.000 will ever be solved. So if you think you can 00:48:09.000 --> 00:48:11.099 find new information, good on you. Good luck. 00:48:11.239 --> 00:48:14.639 Here's what I know. And we kept in touch. That 00:48:14.639 --> 00:48:17.000 was really, really important for me. You're not 00:48:17.000 --> 00:48:18.340 going to get that in all cases. You might not 00:48:18.340 --> 00:48:19.940 even know who the person is. So how are you going 00:48:19.940 --> 00:48:21.780 to find their family? The victim could be an 00:48:21.780 --> 00:48:24.380 unidentified skeleton in the woods. That doesn't 00:48:24.380 --> 00:48:27.489 mean you shouldn't work on it. Those communities 00:48:27.489 --> 00:48:29.409 that I posted earlier uncovered and solve the 00:48:29.409 --> 00:48:30.909 case. There's others out there. There's tons 00:48:30.909 --> 00:48:33.489 of others out there Those are a good place to 00:48:33.489 --> 00:48:36.949 start because You know these people a lot of 00:48:36.949 --> 00:48:38.369 them might even have like fallen out of touch 00:48:38.369 --> 00:48:40.570 with their families You never know it could be 00:48:40.570 --> 00:48:43.110 a very stigmatized person like a sex worker or 00:48:43.110 --> 00:48:45.690 something who? Came from a rough family background 00:48:45.690 --> 00:48:47.809 or doesn't have a family or no one knows who 00:48:47.809 --> 00:48:51.150 they are there's still a person whose death remains 00:48:51.150 --> 00:48:53.309 unsolved their killer still remains out there 00:48:53.309 --> 00:48:55.940 and one way or another and That doesn't mean 00:48:55.940 --> 00:48:58.179 that if anything, that means I think people should 00:48:58.179 --> 00:49:01.559 be working on those cases even more. So it's 00:49:01.559 --> 00:49:05.159 ideal if if you're able to kind of have a family 00:49:05.159 --> 00:49:08.659 that's willing to share information and stuff. 00:49:08.920 --> 00:49:11.860 But that won't always be the case with the law 00:49:11.860 --> 00:49:15.980 enforcement side of that. I would basically file 00:49:15.980 --> 00:49:18.239 the public records request with them very early. 00:49:18.500 --> 00:49:20.619 I say, hey, I'm I'm looking at this murder. Please 00:49:20.619 --> 00:49:25.059 give me. The public information portions of your 00:49:25.059 --> 00:49:28.079 report on this murder, you know, I'm going to 00:49:28.079 --> 00:49:29.639 release it to the general public. I'm a journalist. 00:49:29.659 --> 00:49:32.760 That's what I would say. And sometimes they'd 00:49:32.760 --> 00:49:35.059 share more than I asked for. Usually they'd send 00:49:35.059 --> 00:49:38.059 me a heavily redacted single page document or 00:49:38.059 --> 00:49:40.699 they wouldn't respond or there'd be a back and 00:49:40.699 --> 00:49:44.679 forth. It was all over the place. Sometimes the 00:49:44.679 --> 00:49:46.559 public information officer was willing to chat 00:49:46.559 --> 00:49:47.820 and they were happy I was looking into it. Other 00:49:47.820 --> 00:49:50.489 times they clearly didn't want to be dealing 00:49:50.489 --> 00:49:52.230 with me. You know, they see I'm a journalist 00:49:52.230 --> 00:49:54.769 and automatically shut off because I'm talking 00:49:54.769 --> 00:50:00.230 about the American South here. So so it's kind 00:50:00.230 --> 00:50:03.590 of all over the place. Sometimes they'll be they'll 00:50:03.590 --> 00:50:05.369 be retired policemen, for example, who used to 00:50:05.369 --> 00:50:07.389 work for the police department, who've maybe 00:50:07.389 --> 00:50:10.849 spoken to journalists before who are involved. 00:50:11.639 --> 00:50:13.320 who've spoken publicly about the case, who've 00:50:13.320 --> 00:50:14.699 been interviewed in newspapers. You might be 00:50:14.699 --> 00:50:16.559 able to reach out to them and talk to them about, 00:50:16.760 --> 00:50:18.119 hey, you worked this case when you were back 00:50:18.119 --> 00:50:20.039 with the department. Can you share anything about 00:50:20.039 --> 00:50:22.219 it? They might even have old files sometimes. 00:50:22.340 --> 00:50:25.199 I mean, these cases are old on paper. Sometimes 00:50:25.199 --> 00:50:29.000 people share stuff like that. However, most of 00:50:29.000 --> 00:50:30.800 the time the police aren't going to release information 00:50:30.800 --> 00:50:33.159 to you. They'll consider it an active and ongoing 00:50:33.159 --> 00:50:35.420 case, even when it's not, even when they have 00:50:35.420 --> 00:50:36.860 a hundred other cases and they're not looking 00:50:36.860 --> 00:50:40.179 at this one and they know nothing about it. So 00:50:40.179 --> 00:50:41.760 by all your information requests, don't expect 00:50:41.760 --> 00:50:44.619 much from them. It doesn't mean that they are 00:50:44.619 --> 00:50:47.119 like, you know, hate folks looking into it, but 00:50:47.119 --> 00:50:49.840 they usually just are prohibited from releasing 00:50:49.840 --> 00:50:51.960 information about cases that are technically 00:50:51.960 --> 00:50:54.400 still open. What part of that question, Charlie, 00:50:54.460 --> 00:50:58.099 did I miss any? I think you answered it very 00:50:58.099 --> 00:51:02.639 well. I was going to just ask, did you send the 00:51:02.639 --> 00:51:04.940 information to the police as well afterwards? 00:51:07.500 --> 00:51:11.340 A couple of the public information officers, 00:51:11.380 --> 00:51:12.880 so sometimes it'll be like a policeman assigned 00:51:12.880 --> 00:51:14.539 to the role. Sometimes it's just an administrative 00:51:14.539 --> 00:51:17.420 person who responds to these. A couple of times 00:51:17.420 --> 00:51:19.320 when they were working with me and we had a little 00:51:19.320 --> 00:51:21.320 bit of a rapport when the article was published, 00:51:21.340 --> 00:51:24.800 I'd send it to them. Just because I kind of got 00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:26.139 to know the person a little bit or whatever, 00:51:26.199 --> 00:51:27.760 we talked on the phone, we had an email back 00:51:27.760 --> 00:51:32.440 and forth. I didn't know if it was just a police 00:51:32.440 --> 00:51:36.059 official who shared the bare minimum and I wouldn't 00:51:36.059 --> 00:51:40.440 send it to them. But once the article was published, 00:51:40.840 --> 00:51:43.360 I would. But I shared it to them in the published 00:51:43.360 --> 00:51:46.539 form. I wasn't going with them and working with 00:51:46.539 --> 00:51:48.460 them actively. Yeah, we don't do that at Bell 00:51:48.460 --> 00:51:51.929 and Cat, so it wasn't like that. The last part 00:51:51.929 --> 00:51:55.349 of the question, Charlie, that you asked ethically 00:51:55.349 --> 00:51:58.170 about like interacting with the family and when 00:51:58.170 --> 00:52:01.269 to publish and everything. That was the big reason 00:52:01.269 --> 00:52:04.289 why we partnered up with Texas Observer. We partnered 00:52:04.289 --> 00:52:07.030 with local journalists who cover crime in Texas 00:52:07.030 --> 00:52:11.309 because they're familiar with all of the nuances 00:52:11.309 --> 00:52:16.880 of that area. Again, the more local you can go, 00:52:17.280 --> 00:52:19.320 the more you can team up with folks in your local 00:52:19.320 --> 00:52:23.820 area to do this type of research. The better 00:52:23.820 --> 00:52:26.820 off you'll be. The reaction locally was pretty 00:52:26.820 --> 00:52:31.320 good, right? Yeah. There's a couple of things. 00:52:32.059 --> 00:52:35.360 Because this case dealt with the Southern mafia 00:52:35.360 --> 00:52:38.539 for lack of a better term, the Dixie mafia, there's 00:52:38.539 --> 00:52:41.260 still a lot of stigma around that. Especially 00:52:41.260 --> 00:52:44.480 folks in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. I don't want 00:52:44.480 --> 00:52:47.500 to talk about this stuff a lot of the time. So, 00:52:47.960 --> 00:52:50.719 for example, I learned through some of the family 00:52:50.719 --> 00:52:52.920 members and stuff that I talked to and keeping 00:52:52.920 --> 00:52:55.099 up with, that the article is definitely going 00:52:55.099 --> 00:52:57.300 around Corpus Christi, that people are sharing 00:52:57.300 --> 00:52:59.280 it and talking about it and calling each other 00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:01.380 and stuff like that. They're not necessarily 00:53:01.380 --> 00:53:05.280 commenting on it on social media, reaching out 00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:06.960 to me or anything like that, but I know that 00:53:06.960 --> 00:53:08.420 it's making the rounds because I've heard that 00:53:08.420 --> 00:53:12.510 from multiple people. And the reaction has been 00:53:12.510 --> 00:53:15.510 surprise from the family members. They had no 00:53:15.510 --> 00:53:19.650 idea that a lot of these people were tied to 00:53:19.650 --> 00:53:21.489 this kind of organized crime. They didn't know 00:53:21.489 --> 00:53:24.809 the extent of it. The murder victim's family 00:53:24.809 --> 00:53:26.530 knew he was probably involved with gambling, 00:53:27.289 --> 00:53:31.690 but his friends and stuff had suspected mafia 00:53:31.690 --> 00:53:34.250 ties and their families didn't know a lot of 00:53:34.250 --> 00:53:37.190 that. So it was a kind of a mix of surprise. 00:53:37.829 --> 00:53:42.409 Um, a little bit of shock. Um, uh, but it was, 00:53:42.449 --> 00:53:45.269 it was sort of mostly, wow, you know, we, we 00:53:45.269 --> 00:53:46.929 didn't know that this was kind of going on in 00:53:46.929 --> 00:53:50.369 the background and it kind of explains why the 00:53:50.369 --> 00:53:52.469 killing happened the way it did and who might've 00:53:52.469 --> 00:53:55.710 been involved in the types of people, um, that 00:53:55.710 --> 00:53:58.329 the victim was associating with. So it's been 00:53:58.329 --> 00:53:59.909 interesting and I'm still, I'm still hearing 00:53:59.909 --> 00:54:02.630 back from people. I've gotten some, some interesting 00:54:02.630 --> 00:54:04.750 texts and phone calls and stuff like that. So. 00:54:05.519 --> 00:54:08.559 I'm glad it's resonating on the ground. Last 00:54:08.559 --> 00:54:11.519 question, final one. Mossman asked, when investigating 00:54:11.519 --> 00:54:15.360 a cold case, how do you decide when or if to 00:54:15.360 --> 00:54:18.699 throw in the towel if you're not finding what 00:54:18.699 --> 00:54:21.699 you need to find? That was a question that a 00:54:21.699 --> 00:54:23.199 lot of journalists were just asking me, so it's 00:54:23.199 --> 00:54:25.199 a really good one. It's one that we all struggle 00:54:25.199 --> 00:54:27.980 with. I would say this, if you're hitting dead 00:54:27.980 --> 00:54:29.800 end after dead end, or if you're burning yourself 00:54:29.800 --> 00:54:34.840 out, or you're frustrated, or you've kind of... 00:54:34.780 --> 00:54:38.340 Run the public information open source Angles 00:54:38.340 --> 00:54:40.699 to their to their end. Don't give up on it. Just 00:54:40.699 --> 00:54:43.840 put it on the back burner have it like Have it 00:54:43.840 --> 00:54:45.699 on a Google Doc that you revisit every now and 00:54:45.699 --> 00:54:48.599 then I worked on this off and on for three plus 00:54:48.599 --> 00:54:53.380 years I wasn't Actively 100 % of the time. I 00:54:53.380 --> 00:54:56.139 was doing other stories. I had other jobs. I 00:54:56.139 --> 00:54:59.639 You know life happened So I would have to pause 00:54:59.639 --> 00:55:03.119 pause my research on do it and jump back in it 00:55:03.119 --> 00:55:05.619 at a later date I'd get like a shower thought 00:55:05.619 --> 00:55:07.760 where I'm like, oh my gosh, I didn't search for 00:55:07.760 --> 00:55:09.780 this set of search terms. I'm going to go do 00:55:09.780 --> 00:55:12.440 that. Just keep it on the back burner. Don't 00:55:12.440 --> 00:55:15.380 give it up. Be part of a group. Share information 00:55:15.380 --> 00:55:18.320 with them. Keep it going. You don't have to just 00:55:18.320 --> 00:55:20.039 like permanently give things up. It's not black 00:55:20.039 --> 00:55:22.159 or white. You can keep it on the back burner. 00:55:22.579 --> 00:55:27.599 So how do you know when to stop? I encourage 00:55:27.599 --> 00:55:31.570 you like with any other research. If it's coming 00:55:31.570 --> 00:55:34.889 from a place of curiosity and excitement at the 00:55:34.889 --> 00:55:37.650 most basic level, for me, I was just obsessed 00:55:37.650 --> 00:55:42.550 with this group of people. I need to know what 00:55:42.550 --> 00:55:44.929 their organized crime ties were because there 00:55:44.929 --> 00:55:47.070 were hitmen involved in gambling. I have to know 00:55:47.070 --> 00:55:49.590 which mafia this was, where these people were. 00:55:50.590 --> 00:55:59.059 I was obsessed with it. I just pursue that. getting 00:55:59.059 --> 00:56:00.619 tired of it. If you're hitting dead ends and 00:56:00.619 --> 00:56:02.699 you need to pause it, pause it, but you don't 00:56:02.699 --> 00:56:06.139 have to give it up. Hope that helps. Thanks so 00:56:06.139 --> 00:56:10.380 much, Peter. And excitingly, this week's, this 00:56:10.380 --> 00:56:13.159 month's Bell and Cat challenge is actually inspired 00:56:13.159 --> 00:56:16.300 by cold case research as well, which you helped 00:56:16.300 --> 00:56:19.500 design. So if you have been having a go at the 00:56:19.500 --> 00:56:22.639 Bell and Cat challenges, look out this Sunday 00:56:22.639 --> 00:56:26.019 slash Monday for the release of a new set of 00:56:26.019 --> 00:56:29.670 challenges from Peter. And you can let him know 00:56:29.670 --> 00:56:32.329 how you're doing on that in the Discord server 00:56:32.329 --> 00:56:35.409 as well. Yeah, good luck, everybody. It was hard 00:56:35.409 --> 00:56:38.510 to write them. So hopefully it's not impossible 00:56:38.510 --> 00:56:40.510 to solve. But it's been really fun. And some 00:56:40.510 --> 00:56:44.469 of them are tied to the story. And yeah, I love 00:56:44.469 --> 00:56:47.949 the historical stuff in general. So yeah, reach 00:56:47.949 --> 00:56:50.130 out to me guys on Discord. I'm on Blue Sky as 00:56:50.130 --> 00:56:52.670 well. But shoot me a DM on Discord if you have 00:56:52.670 --> 00:56:54.949 questions. I'm always happy to help with like 00:56:54.949 --> 00:56:59.440 a FOIA question or... even ethically, you know, 00:56:59.780 --> 00:57:02.840 just hit me up and work on cold cases. Please, 00:57:02.840 --> 00:57:05.460 please, please work on them. We need lots of 00:57:05.460 --> 00:57:07.980 people. Thank you for listening to the stage 00:57:07.980 --> 00:57:11.260 talk. If you'd like to catch a stage talk live 00:57:11.260 --> 00:57:14.320 where you can ask the guest questions, join the 00:57:14.320 --> 00:57:19.159 Bell and Cat Discord server by visiting www .discord. 00:57:21.670 --> 00:57:25.590 The music you've heard is titled Dawn by Newer 00:57:25.590 --> 00:57:28.090 Self and is courtesy of Artlist.