ASK ANY publisher, podcaster, or producer, and they’ll tell you the same thing: We’re in a golden era for true crime, with award-winning actors, directors, and journalists eager to mine every community’s darkest moments. But many of the incidents detailed in glossy documentaries and slick podcasts were first exposed by local reporters on the crime beat, often via bite-sized items penned on the fly. Those journalists are responsible for the grains of sand that high-profile, star-studded true crime pearls are formed around. Until recently, eastside resident Ryan Martin was one of them.

Martin was a reporter with The Indianapolis Star for around seven years, where his work ranged from brief, breaking news items to a Pulitzer Prize–winning group investigation into how law enforcement agencies use—and often misuse—trained dogs. That latter style of crime reporting can be the most professionally satisfying, Martin admits. But it’s also expensive for news companies to produce and is rarely profitable. “There were all these things that would happen on the police beat that I would always want more time with,” Martin says. “That’s not the nature of the beat, really.”

Instead, daily newspapers and broadcast TV rely on short and immediate reports for their bread and butter. These are the stories you see shared on Nextdoor or Facebook with amateur commentary, speculation, and infighting threaded beneath. Though those stories are often superficial, Martin says they still serve an important function. “If you’re invested in a neighborhood, you really want to know what’s happening there,” Martin says. “People have a right to know about threats to their own livelihood in their own neighborhoods.”

Ideally, those breaking news items can improve society by creating a better-informed citizenry. “If there’s a bunch of police on your street, you want to know why they were there,” Martin says. “Otherwise, people will fill the blanks in with things that may be even worse.”

But for a long time, daily crime coverage might have twisted how we see the world. As long as news organizations have existed, they’ve traded in sensational headlines and fearmongering to attract readers. “As we’ve learned over time, it can be very damaging if you cover crime in a certain way,” Martin says. “It can stereotype people. It can tokenize people. It can create misperceptions about entire neighborhoods.”

“There was a time you’d just go and pull the court record, then you’d find something egregious to play up, slap a mug shot on it, write a headline that is tantalizing, and then call it a day,” Martin says.

“It’s embarrassing to think about the lack of care, the lack of empathy, the lack of understanding of how everybody involved in those stories ended up in that situation,” he says of the professional expectations that he (as well as most other crime writers) worked under.

Things are improving, however. Many outlets have repositioned their crime reporting since the social justice uprising of 2020, increasing efforts to center those who experienced the crime (as opposed to the perpetrators), cutting use of mug shots, and relying less on a single narrative provided by law-enforcement.

Last year, Martin left the Star for a role as deputy managing editor at Mirror Indy, a community-based newsroom. The outlet, which can be found at mirrorindy.org, made a conscious decision against covering the day-to-day crime on which Martin built his career.

“We don’t want to replicate what other newsrooms are doing. We want to add to the local journalism that’s being produced,” Martin says. “We did a lot of research, interviews, and surveys and heard time and time again that there’s plenty of sports and crime news in Indy. So when we got ready to launch, we decided not to do either. Readers have ample opportunity to find that somewhere else.”

The post The Blotter appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

Photo by Matt Kryger/The Star via Imagn

At 11:11 p.m. on November 10, 2012, the southeast sky of Indianapolis flashed orange.

Houses shuddered. Sirens wailed. Social media lit up with rumors of a plane crash, a meth lab explosion—or had a bomb gone off?

In the otherwise quiet neighborhood of Richmond Hill, a blast not experienced in modern Indianapolis history—with the force of almost five tons of TNT—rocked a small community, wrecking homes and lives.

After a three-day emergency response, a yearslong investigation revealed foul play. At the center of the case, Mark Leonard, a womanizer with gambling debts who preyed on divorcees, hatched an arson plot for money with his girlfriend, Monserrate Shirley. In court, Shirley testified Leonard had promised to show her how to make a lot of money. “I thought it was crazy,” she told a jury, “but I went along with him.” Shirley upped her home insurance to $300,000 while Leonard crafted a plan to set the structure on fire. Leonard rigged a gas line and microwave, the couple boarded a cat named Snowball that belonged to Shirley’s 12-year-old daughter, and Shirley and Leonard headed out of town to the Hollywood Casino in Lawrenceburg for the night where they awaited a payday.

But what happened next far exceeded a grubby insurance scam. Two Richmond Hill residents—Dion and Jennifer Longworth—died. Twelve people were injured. Five hundred calls flooded local 911 operators at county dispatch. Thirty-three houses were destroyed to the tune of $4 million in damages. It was a plot worthy of a Coen brothers–like true-crime tale—down to Leonard’s attempt to hire a hitman from jail to kill a witness—and a multiyear prosecution eventually led to two trials, more than 5,000 pieces of evidence, and the convictions of Shirley, Leonard, and his half-brother, Robert Leonard Jr., an accomplice. Mark Leonard died in 2018 while serving two life sentences at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. Shirley, who is serving 50 years in the Indiana Women’s Prison, declined an interview request. Attempts to interview Robert Leonard—serving life without parole—were unsuccessful.

Amid the darkness of the saga, moments of humanity and kindness and Hoosier hospitality emerged, recalled many who lived through the experience and shared their stories. Citizens rushed to a staging area near the scene after the explosion to donate clothes, water, and food. A reporter who covered the explosion and its aftermath came to enjoy a Friendsgiving with one of the Richmond Hill families. Neighbors became forever bonded by their trauma, banding together to buy Christmas gifts for the child of one of the perpetrators. Here, those at the center of the ordeal recount it a decade later.

Residents took part in a candlelight vigil to honor the victims while others (right) rushed to the scene the night of the explosion with water bottles, food, and clothing. Photo by (left) Matt Kryger/The Star via Imagn; (right) Rob Goebel/The Star via Imagn

DOUG ALDRIDGE, Richmond Hill resident: I was upstairs in my bedroom watching the Notre Dame-Boston College game. My wife and son were downstairs watching something on another TV. I just got up off the bed and heard a loud explosion.

RAFAEL SÁNCHEZ, investigative reporter with WRTV-6: It was a beautiful November night—unseasonably warm.

NICOLE WEATHER, Richmond Hill resident: I was just drifting off to sleep when it happened. It felt like my husband took our refrigerator and threw it down the stairs.

RUSS FUTRELL, lieutenant, Indianapolis Fire Department: We had just finished watching the Notre Dame football game. It was shortly after 11 o’clock at night, and things were quieting down around the firehouse. Then we heard a huge explosion.

ALDRIDGE: Like a bomb.

FUTRELL: We thought maybe a vehicle hit the firehouse—it just shook the whole firehouse.

SÁNCHEZ: A photographer and I began heading there from Broad Ripple when we got the news.

ALDRIDGE: I ran out of the bedroom. I could hear my son’s car alarm going off. I thought someone had hit his car and then our house.

WEATHERS: I saw a big fireball in the sky. The house that exploded was directly behind us. I ran back inside and the house was just in shambles.

SÁNCHEZ: People were claiming that a meteorite hit the neighborhood. I thought, Come on.

MARIO GARZA, captain, Indianapolis Fire Department: I live a couple of miles from the site. My house shook, and it felt like a car had run into the house. I happened to have my department radio with me and got on the radio, listened to the traffic, and realized that whatever was going on was close. I self-dispatched and went down to the scene. I could see an orange glow.

FUTRELL: Outside of the firehouse, I looked to the south and saw a huge plume of debris in the air. I got on the intercom at the firehouse and I told my crew, “We’re going to go and investigate what that was.” We thought it maybe could have been an airplane crash at [the Indy South Greenwood Airport].

ALDRIDGE: I looked over our [upstairs] balcony, and I saw my wife and son on the floor. They had dove onto the floor when they heard the explosion. I went down to check on them, then looked out my front window. My house faces north towards the explosion, and all I could see was … it looked like a house was missing. A bunch of debris all over the road. I yelled at my son, I said, “I think the house down the street blew up. Come on.” Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have shoes on in the house. This time I was barefoot, but ran down there as fast as I could.

JEFF WAGNER, detective sergeant, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department: I was on duty. I was actually out in the 2500 block of North Meridian Street with my partner. We were on a death investigation of a homeless person. We were standing outside. We did not hear the explosion. What we heard was all the radio traffic afterward.

ALDRIDGE: People were coming out of the houses just kind of in a panic, screaming hysterically. I told my son to check on those neighbors. I went further toward Monserrate Shirley’s house, in the front yard, and stood in glass and wood and everything else. Nothing was left of this house except the furnace in the garage—and they had a car in there, too. That was it. A little flame was coming out of the furnace, and I’m thinking to myself, There is no way anybody could survive that. I looked over to the right, which would have been the Longworth house—half of that was missing. And I thought, Boy, there’s not a lot I can do there.

GREG BALLARD, former Indianapolis mayor: I was at an event at Lucas Oil Stadium. I was wearing a tuxedo. My security guy got an alert. We left immediately to go down there.

FUTRELL: There were people in robes and various modes of dress coming down and trying to find out what happened in their neighborhood. It was like a tornado where you have two-by-fours sticking into garages and into vinyl siding. To use the cliche, it looked like a bomb went off.

ALDRIDGE: I got another set of neighbors out of their house. Then I ran home for my shoes, but when I got there, I couldn’t find my wife. Turns out that when my son and I ran out the door, our golden retriever, Brix, took off. My wife was trying to find him and ended up chasing him all over the neighborhood. So I put my shoes on, went back outside, and the first fire engine pulled right up in between the Shirley’s and the Longworth’s. The guys jumped out and just, like, froze.

FUTRELL: When you’re in the moment, you’re going through what you’re trained for—for years and years or decades and decades. I’d had just over 22 years on the department, and I fell back on the basics of what we’re supposed to do, which is search and rescue, fire suppression, and property conservation.

ALDRIDGE: When the next fire truck arrived, I flagged the crew and showed them where the hydrant hookup was in front of my house. They started evacuating people because there was a massive fire. Some of the firefighters had set up a staging area at Mary Bryan Elementary School, and, by that time, a lot of media people had shown up there, too. People were walking out of the neighborhood—it looked like something from The Walking Dead.

SÁNCHEZ: People emerged from clouds of smoke, coming out with bird cages and dog kennels and their kids in their pajamas. It was like a sci-fi movie.

BALLARD: We got there about 11:30 p.m., and a school was already opened for the victims once I got there. That’s such a classic Indianapolis story. There was a nurse on site. I walked through the neighborhood about 10 minutes after I arrived. One of the things I remember noting was, There’s no plane here. I do remember telling the press as soon as I got back from that little walk that there’s no plane here, because that was the main speculation that was going on at the time.

TROY RIGGS, former director of public safety, Indianapolis: What was so impressive was not only the response from emergency personnel who responded to the scene, but also the response from Indianapolis residents. They saw the significance of this from the first report. It was amazing how many bottled waters and pieces of clothing showed up. They were doing this on their own before we even made an ask for it.

ALDRIDGE: All of the sudden, it was three in the morning, and these people just start bringing stuff to the school. Water and snacks and food.

RIGGS: The hot spots kept popping up. Our fire department worked on it throughout the night.

FUTRELL: You’re [fighting a fire], and that turns into one hour, one hour turns into three hours, and three hours turns into six or seven hours.

RIGGS: There was somebody from the U.S. Army, maybe a reservist or someone that saw what was going on and saw a need for traffic control. To this day, I don’t know who that was, but that person directed the traffic for hours. Before we had a chance to say thank you, the need died down and they left. Numerous things like that happened.

WAGER: Several hours later, after the fire department knocked down all the fire, they discovered that there were deaths involved. I was on duty as the late-shift homicide supervisor.

ALDRIDGE: I called my sister and asked her to pick us up; she lives in Greenwood. This was about 2:30 a.m. While we were waiting, Monserrate and [Mark Leonard] showed up. He wasn’t saying a whole lot. But she was in a freakin’ panic and crying. My wife asked her what happened. “Moncy, your house blew up.” I didn’t know it at the time, but those two knew what had really happened. Monserrate was putting on a good show.

Matt Kryger/The Star via Imagn

Almost immediately, authorities suspected criminal intent based on Leonard’s prior history with insurance fraud, which investigators discovered the night of the explosion. But they kept that information from the public to see how an unsuspecting Shirley and Leonard would handle their alibi as they spoke with reporters. Detectives noticed early on that someone had removed a valve from Shirley’s gas line, which regulated the amount of gas coming into the home. Likewise, a device called a step-down regulator, which also modulated gas pressure flowing into ovens and furnaces, was missing.

WEATHERS: We’ve lived in Richmond Hill since 2001. When we moved in, we were the only house on our street. Five years later, everything was built. It was a nice neighborhood, very quiet. Never really had any troubles.

ALDRIDGE: We went to my sister’s house and stayed up all night. We were just waiting to hear something. We were looking at Facebook and flipping through all the TV channels. Channel 8 was the first one to come on with a news program on Sunday morning. They had their helicopter up. I saw the footage, and I just started bawling. I hadn’t realized it before, but it looked like someone had dropped a bomb in the middle of our neighborhood.

WAGER: When I arrived on the scene, I met with the investigators, the arson guys, and the fire department who was assisting us in the extraction of the bodies. I talked to one of my federal homicide detectives who had been an arson investigator. He was sitting on the scene in the driveway of the Shirley residence, and I walked up to him. We started talking and said he’d already looked up a couple of things on the computer. And he had found that Mark Leonard, Shirley’s boyfriend, had a prior [outside of Marion County] for insurance fraud. That was the first little thing—a red flag that makes you think that something is not right.

RIGGS: We were sifting through a debris field that was as large as the neighborhood and looking for evidence that could have been as small as a one- or two- or three-inch pipe.

WEATHERS: My cousin had breast cancer. And when my aunt was alive, she gave me her Precious Moments Fight Like a Girl figurine, because I also had breast cancer. It was right by my husband’s office, where windows had exploded. It didn’t fall off. It was miraculous. I felt like I had an angel there.

BALLARD: By the next day, investigators already knew what happened. They told me but they didn’t let on.

WAGER: Jennifer Longworth was upstairs and Dion Longworth was downstairs in the basement when the explosion occurred. The plasma ball basically exploded the house. She fell all the way through into the basement amid rubble but died almost immediately from the concussive effects of the actual explosion. They had a good security system that was actually recording. The whole event of Dion’s death was recorded. The firemen couldn’t get to him. It was horrible to listen to.

BALLARD: I went and talked to the firefighters maybe a couple of weeks after it happened. They were taking it very, very hard.

RIGGS: We were treating this as a homicide investigation. As the investigation continued to grow, evidence continued to mount.

WAGER: Within a few hours, we had the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives going through the debris, and they began to discover anomalies. The microwave [in Monserrate Shirley’s home, the epicenter of the explosion] should have been crushed, but hadn’t been. Its door had been blown off. That was just another little piece [to the puzzle].

DENISE ROBINSON, supervisor, special crimes unit/homicide coordinator, Marion County Prosecutor’s Office: Sunday night, probably about nine, I got a phone call from Detective Wager. I thought maybe he was calling about a search warrant or with some technical question, but he prefaced the conversation by saying, “I think we have a problem out here.” As soon as he said those words, I knew that things for me were going to change. By Monday morning, I was on the scene. There were still some fires going. You could smell the gas. What I remember, probably the most, was that it looked like a war zone.

WAGER: When they got to finally digging through the rubble, they found the manifold for the gas inlet that was actually inside the [Shirley] house. I don’t know if you’re familiar with gas manifolds, but you have a little round thing that’s called a step-down regulator attached to the end of an iron pipe. So when they found the iron pipe that belonged in the Shirley residence, it did not have a regulator on it. What that told me was that somebody was monkeying around with the plumbing in the house and that we were looking at some real criminal intent.

ROBINSON: I was on the site day and night for a month. We had the command tent set up. We had evidence vans. We did a very good job the first couple of weeks of shielding from the media that I was even there. If they had seen me, they would have known it was a homicide investigation. And we were keeping that close. I don’t think we released it as a homicide investigation for over a week. If I was going in and out of the subdivision, I was in the backseat of a car laying down. We didn’t want Monserrate Shirley and Mark Leonard to know what was going on. They were already coming out making statements through lawyers and so forth, and we wanted to let them talk. We wanted to let them think that they were getting away with something.

SÁNCHEZ: In the early days, we all thought, Oh my goodness, Monserrate is a victim. Her home exploded. She really led us to believe that she was a victim. And she would turn out to be a victim of psychological abuse by her boyfriend.

ROBINSON: Snowball was Monserrate Shirley’s cat. She boarded Snowball the weekend of the explosion. Then we found out that she had boarded it at two other places the two weeks before, which led us to discover that there had been two previous attempts to blow up the house. That strengthened our case about this being intentional. Shirley and Leonard made arrangements to stay at a hotel and casino and sent Shirley’s 12-year-old daughter to stay with a friend. They removed numerous personal items from the residence—televisions and furniture, for example. They removed the step-down regulator from the gas line inside the house so that the flow of gas from the meter to the appliances was no longer restricted. They poured gasoline in a couple of rooms inside the house to ignite the natural gas. Our theory of the case was that they put a metal bottle in the microwave and the microwave had a 24-hour timer, which had been set for 11 p.m.

Photo by Matt Detrich/The Star via Imagn

GARZA: I’ve been on this job for 36 years. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst in people, you haven’t. As firefighters, we generally see the worst of what people can do to people, and you kind of get numb to the fact that people just can be so cruel to each other.

ALDRIDGE: We moved here in 2001. I saw all these houses built. To watch them get torn down, that was awful. Once they finally cleaned off all those lots, they put a big fence around Moncy’s lot and tried to cover it up. I called it the freak show after a while because everybody wanted to come by and look at it.

FUTRELL: It was, by far, the largest event that I’ve been on, the weight of the magnitude of it. The number of homes that were damaged overall: 80-plus homes.

GARZA: It’s one of those once-in-a-lifetime investigations.

ROBINSON: I still run into people who obviously remember it and ask me questions.

RIGGS: In my years of running events as large as sporting events with hundreds of thousands of people, nothing was ever as complicated as Richmond Hill in my 30-year career.

GARZA: For me, as a fire investigator, that’s the biggest case I’ve had. I’ve been to court several times. But this one was an all-consuming case that lasted several years to get it to the court and to get a conviction.

WAGER: There was a witness who came forward and said that they had spoken with Mark Leonard before the explosion and that the night before he was surfing online for a Lamborghini—a $300,000 car.

ROBINSON: I don’t remember my opening statements, exactly. But the case boils down to greed, pure and simple. For Monserrate, the case was one of misplaced love.

ALDRIDGE: I had to testify. The prosecutor came to everybody’s house beforehand and said, “Try to be yourself and give a truthful answer.” By that time, I couldn’t hardly talk about it anymore. My wife sent me to see a psychologist, because every time something would come on, I would feel awful and just start crying. So once they got me up there on the stand, I caved like a deck of cards.

WAGER: There were several tear-jerking moments during the trial.

ALDRIDGE: We were very lucky. Two people died, and others had some minor injuries, but it could have been worse. Leonard could have killed a lot of people. That silly son of a bitch tried to kill me all over $300,000.

RIGGS: Hoosier hospitality was on full display. The residents of the community held a dinner in honor of our first responders. And then people in the community realized Shirley’s 12-year-old daughter was a victim of what her mom did, too. They knew that her Christmas was most likely going to be miserable. And even though they were dealing with homes that had been damaged, they bought Christmas gifts for this young lady. No one really knows that story. That’s the type of citizens and the type of Hoosier hospitality that I’ve never experienced in 30 years of public safety.

WEATHERS: The neighborhood just got so close after the explosion. During COVID, when we were all isolating in our own homes, we had cabin fever and we all started sitting in our driveways with a radio on and we’d grab some beers or wine or whatever and firepits, and we’d all sit in our own driveways and all talk to each other that way. 

SÁNCHEZ: For at least a couple of years after the explosion, I would have Thanksgiving with one of the families. To me, the families of Richmond Hill became an extended family to me.

GARZA: What I remember about those days is the family and the parents of Jennifer and Dion Longworth, and not being able to do anything to ease their pain. They came to the scene quite often. They wanted to collect certain things that were special to them that reminded them of their kids. At times, they would cry. I would hold them. Sometimes you just can’t find the words.

For more stories by the residents of Richmond Hill from our April 2013 issue, click here. 

The post The Retaking Of Richmond Hill appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Harrison of Barnes United Methodist Church is one of the founders of Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition, which dates back to the late 1990s as a community group that patrols the streets of high-crime neighborhoods in an attempt to defuse and de-escalate violent crime. As those crime rates creep back toward levels not seen since the group’s founding, and Black community organizations are simultaneously rethinking their ties to police, we spoke with Harrison about how and why Indy Ten Point does the work that it does, and how he works to maintain credibility both with the police who apprehend violent criminals and the people who suffer from violence at both the hands of those criminals and, occasionally, the police themselves.

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The post Charles Harrison Of Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition On Indy’s Gun Violence Epidemic appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

You’ve taken some high-profile, progressive stances so far as prosecutor: Not prosecuting marijuana possession under a certain threshold; Not prosecuting those who were arrested downtown this past summer during the protests; Establishing a conviction integrity unit. What motivated those decisions?

I think if you look at those ideas, they all overlap with the same issue, which is equity and fairness. I have one goal in mind: I want to make sure that everybody is getting a fair shake when they come into contact with the prosecutor’s office and the criminal justice system. 

Yet you’ve already pursued the death penalty, which is criticized as violating the Eighth Amendment. How do you square your brand as a progressive with support of that?

I think equity absolutely factors into the death penalty situation. I’ve only made the decision to pursue the death penalty in one case, and the victim was an African-American police officer. One of the things I consistently hear from the community is when the victim is not a person of color, the punishments tend to go one way, and when the victim is, the punishments go another way. Not filing the death penalty in that case would have validated people’s feelings that the lives of African Americans are not valued as much by the criminal justice system. So I thought it was important. 

You’re OK as a progressive politician with state-sponsored killing?

I think it definitely needs to be the rarest choice when you’re making that assessment. When you make a death request, it is just that, a request. We have preserved the right to pursue the death penalty. That doesn’t mean that the death penalty is automatically going to be imposed, and it’s a long road before the completion of this case. As always, we keep an open mind about everything, and we’re in constant dialogue with both the victim’s family, as well as the defense attorneys, and we’re open to other potential resolutions in that case. 

As a county prosecutor, particularly one in Indiana, what do you make of the Trump Administration’s approach to the death penalty in the final weeks of the administration, specifically carrying out a number of executions at Terre Haute’s federal prison? 

I thought it was terrible. It was not something that I think anybody should be proud of, and I was really disappointed in the way that was carried out. I feel like it undermines people’s confidence in the integrity of the criminal justice system. In some of those cases, you had the people who actually prosecuted the case come out and say the death penalty was no longer warranted or appropriate. 

I imagine prosecuting the recent Adams Street murders, which claimed the lives of six family members, has occupied much of your time lately. What have gruesome episodes of violence like that taught you about the human condition?

Those cases are incredibly heartbreaking. You just can’t fathom how they could happen. But one thing that constantly amazes me is that, when you meet the survivors going through these awful scenarios, you often see the dignity and grace they carry themselves with. You see the power and goodness of people in awful times. It’s such a great reminder of why we do this: to help bring justice to those people. Even in awful situations, you sometimes get to meet and become friends with people who are just incredible.

Are you more pessimistic or optimistic about people based on what you’ve been dealing with every day?

It’s easy to get down and only think about the bad things. Unfortunately, I’ve prosecuted a lot of homicide cases, and as I’m driving through the city, I see the scenes where they occurred. But again, I continue to be optimistic because of the people I meet. Getting to understand their stories and where they’re coming from renews that optimism.

When running for prosecutor, you defeated Mayor Joe Hogsett’s special counsel Tim Moriarty, who was heavily backed by the mayor’s political machine. How did you pull off that upset?

I decided to be myself and say, “This is who I am, this is what I represent, and this is what is important to me.” And we just tried to outwork everyone else. We got in the car and went to people’s houses. We knocked on every door we could. And having had the opportunity to serve in the office in various capacities before, I felt like I was in a unique position to say, “These are the things that we can do better.” 

You started a convictions integrity unit to reexamine old Marion County criminal cases this year. Why?

We had really thoughtful conversations with the community about why there is this lack of trust with the criminal justice system. Some people felt they had friends or family members who had been treated unfairly in terms of how they were sentenced. If I’m going to sit here and acknowledge that there are systematic issues in the criminal justice system, that needs to affect how we make decisions in the office moving forward. But we also have to be willing to look backwards and say, “OK, if these convictions are not just, if they’re based on something other than the facts and the law, then we need to root out those convictions.” That’s my responsibility. 

Why do you think Mayor Hogsett has been unsuccessful so far in stemming the tide of violent crime in Indianapolis? 

I think part of it is circumstance, and some of the things that are going on are beyond his control. But I do think there has to be a greater emphasis on establishing trust in the community. It can’t be a buzzword. It can’t be the new acronym at a press conference. There have to be concrete, actionable steps that lead the community to believe that you have their best interest at heart and you’re there to help. If the only time you go into a community is when something bad happens, and then you demand information from people, you’re not going to be very successful.

Should the mayor have a public safety director?

I think that’s up to the mayor. A public safety director could certainly be helpful, but ultimately people are only successful if they’re empowered to do the job. The more important question is: Do people have the authority to do things they think would best serve the community? 

A lot of local Democratic insiders see you as an up-and-comer. Have you thought about pursuing a higher political office after your time as prosecutor comes to an end?

I love my current job. I think I’m pretty good at my job, and the reason is because I’ve trained my entire professional career to be the prosecutor. I can have a pretty big impact on Marion County doing what I’m doing here. If I ever became satisfied with the direction public safety is going and thought there might be a different office that could help make the community a safer place, then it would be something I’d consider. But right now, my political focus is on winning the election for prosecutor in 2022.

How do you sleep at night after spending the time that you do examining grisly evidence? Do you have nightmares? 

It’s a lot to deal with. During the week of the Adams Street murders, we were working on the probable cause affidavit. I told myself I wasn’t going to look at the photographs. Eventually, though, I had to look at them as we were working on the final document. It’s horrifying what you see, and it contextualizes everything in a way you can only understand if you see such things. I feel very fortunate because I have a great wife. I have two young kids who kind of help steer away my attention. I hate to use the word compartmentalize, but that’s really what you have to do. When work is done, I go home and have to be a dad to a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and they have to get the best of me as well. I’m a huge basketball fan. I recently got a Peloton. And I watch way too much of The Office. So between family, sports, the Peloton, and The Office, those are enough things to keep me away from the darkness. 

The post A Conversation With Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.

You had only been chief for a few months when the Black Lives Matter protests began this spring. How are you addressing the issue with your officers?
It starts with making sure officers understand why people feel the way they do. In my 33 years of law enforcement, we haven’t always done everything right, and we shouldn’t pretend that’s the case. And we have to make sure those conversations aren’t one-and-dones. We need to continually determine what changes the community wants to see and the police department is willing to abide by.

How will IMPD’s culture change in response to concerns voiced during the protests?
We won’t entertain the “dissolve the police department” notion [a decision that’s typically made by the city-county council], but I’ve always been willing to listen to most ideas from anyone in the community. Both sides will need to give and take to come up with solutions. I was very pleased with the peaceful protests we saw in early June. That always makes it easier to come to the table.

Your job seems extremely stressful right now. How did you first get interested in law enforcement, and are there days when you regret it?
When I was 18, I was fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to get stopped for running a red light by a Black officer named Richard Adkins in Champaign, Illinois, where I grew up. I ran into him again a few months later when I was working a late-night shift at White Hen Pantry. When he brought up a career in law enforcement for me, I thought he was joking. I was like, “You know you’re talking to the guy you just wrote a ticket to, right?” But I eventually realized he was right—we need more minorities in law enforcement.

What assignments from your career stand out?
My last assignment in Champaign was with D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), which helped me realize how much I cared about young people. And then I worked on sex crimes investigations in the sheriff’s department in Indy for a few years, which was a good fit because it allowed me to talk to people in crisis, which I’ve always been good at. Later, I joined IMPD’s Community Affairs unit for three years, where I met regularly with the families of murder victims. That kept me dialed into the violence going on in the minority community here. 

In what ways does being Black make your job easier, and how does it make it more difficult?       
A lot of the community knows that I’m approachable and will listen to their concerns, even though we can’t always change things. But I didn’t grow up in Indianapolis, so people who don’t know me judge me as just a cop without knowing what I stand for.

What’s the greatest challenge IMPD currently faces?
My biggest concern is the relationship between minorities and law enforcement.  Recent events have magnified the need for real conversations and actions to occur. The IMPD should always be willing to listen to our community, and we need to reassure people that our officers are there for their safety and protection. It’s our duty to ensure that everyone feels comfortable interacting with their police force.

How do you convince someone who has just had a family member killed to listen to what you have to say?
Unfortunately, I’m not always successful. My father-in-law was murdered, so I know what they’re going through, at least to some extent. But there are some people who I’m never going to be able to convince that we did things right. In cases where the investigation is still ongoing, all that I can promise them is that if we’ve done something wrong, we’ll deal with it. A lot of it is just being willing to listen.

What do you wish people knew about police work?
A lot of people think I can just fire officers when something goes wrong, but I can’t suspend someone for more than 10 days without a vote by the merit board. And in investigations, a lot of people think I should hand down a sentence based on what they perceive happened, but they don’t have all the information. That’s why I ask for patience. I know nobody likes that, but I owe it to everyone to have a thorough investigation completed before I start making decisions.

What are your biggest unanswered questions about the fatal police shootings of Dreasjon Reed on may 6 and McHale Rose on May 7?
Those investigations are ongoing, so I can’t comment. Whatever information comes out will have to be discussed with the special prosecutor before I can share it with the public.

What was your reaction to Mayor Hogsett asking the FBI to conduct an independent investigation of the shootings?

I don’t believe we have anything to hide. If we’ve done something wrong, then we’ll deal with it. But sometimes officers do it right and things still turn out bad.

IMPD is on track to begin outfitting officers with body cameras by the time this publishes. How do you balance people’s right to privacy with accountability?
If we come to your house, we’re going to let you know that camera is on. But you can certainly say you don’t want that camera on. The policy will be spelled out on our website. And I want to make sure that the community is fully aware of what rights they have to view those recordings as well.

What will trigger the cameras to activate?
We’re evaluating several options. One possibility is that if an officer unsnaps their weapon, the camera will automatically come on. There are also options for it to come on if lights and sirens are activated, if an officer gets out of their car, or if they’re horizontal for a certain period of time, like if they’re down on the ground.

You have two sons in their 20s and a 19-year-old daughter. What advice have you given your kids about interacting with law enforcement?
You can question things, but be respectful about it and don’t get into arguments. Be responsible for your actions. If you’ve done something, pull over. Don’t get yourself into a position where an officer has to do something drastic.

What do you want the Black community in Indianapolis to know right now?
I know the Black community has suffered at the hands of very poor decisions by certain officers. I would ask them to just think about their interactions before things go bad and to understand that I am for them and I’d love to talk. If there are things that need to change, then let’s change them. But if there are things that we all need to do as people to make things better, we need to be willing to do that as well. 

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To begin the story of a podcast, let’s introduce a voice:

I keep hearing that you love stories of true crime. You love all things true crime. But hearing about it once a week isn’t enough for you. You guys are just like me—you’re true Crime Junkies, and you need to hear stories more than once a week to get your fix.

Actually, those are borrowed from a podcast, someone else’s work. But don’t worry about that. Just keep reading. Someone’s about to stalk, kidnap, and kill a little girl.

Full. Body. Chills.

Go on. Someone’s about to commit a crime. That’s what we’re here for, right? A fix?

The addicts have arrived at Clowes Hall on the campus of Butler University. In droves. Hours early. Standing in line. Eager to part with $120 for the good stuff: VIP tickets to the live show of the No. 1 true-crime podcast on iTunes, Crime Junkie. Produced in Broad Ripple, the podcast is downloaded 22 million times each month, adored by a growing audience that includes 370,000 Instagram followers. The hosts, Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat, pose with fans in front of a branded Crime Junkie backdrop as an assistant hands out Crime Junkie swag bags. Britney Spears’s “Oops! … I Did It Again” plays: I’m not that innocent.

Photo by Tony Valainis

Nearby, there’s a merch table hawking $25 T-shirts: “Crime Junkie Podcast Tour,” the front reads; on the back, there’s a list of 15 cities, from Phoenix to Austin. Hoodies cost $50. One of the Junkie junkies near the merch table says, “I think I was supposed to be a detective in real life.” The 43-year-old southside woman wearing a pink Crime Junkie T-shirt works at a nearby college instead, but lives vicariously through her $5-per-month Crime Junkie subscription (packages run up to $20), which she pays via Patreon, a crowdfunding site. “Ashley’s voice is, like, the best.”

Two years and more than 100 episodes into the project that launched in December 2017, Flowers’s voice has made Crime Junkie a seven-figure franchise that’s been hailed by tastemakers like Rolling Stone and shortlisted by networks for a television project. In an upcoming venture, the duo is expected to release Red Ball, a podcast miniseries documenting the work of a young Indiana State Police detective taking over the case of the unsolved 1978 Burger Chef murders.

Now, a little past 8 p.m., more than 2,000 people—a sold-out audience—settle into their seats inside Clowes for a live version of Crime Junkie, where the hosts lead the house through a whodunit from a stage set to look like a living room. They receive adoring applause.

For the next two hours, Prawat and Flowers—literally armchair detectives tonight—take their listeners into the still-pending case of a 6-year-old girl from Tucson, Arizona, who went missing in 2012. Photos of suspects appear on a screen, and their faces are X’ed out as the mystery progresses. Then comes an unexpected beat: Flowers and Prawat cue up a 911 call. It’s the victim’s father, who seems more nonchalant than he should. The crowd gasps. Was it him? The junkies think he’s responsible for his daughter’s disappearance, and Flowers and Prawat egg them on with isn’t-that-suspicious looks and banter that makes the audience erupt in laughter.

More than a year ago, a man was charged for the little girl’s murder and faces a trial in 2021. He was a convicted sex offender who, in 2017, led authorities to the child’s remains among a pile of discarded tires on the outskirts of Tucson. During an investigation of the man’s home, authorities scoured his computers and internet search history, where they discovered someone had Googled the name of the little girl and “sexy” in one query and a host of disturbing others. They also found her sweatshirt buried in his backyard.

Yet the man who was indicted by a grand jury on 22 felony counts, including the murder of another child, is not the little girl’s father. Any armchair detective could tell you that straightaway.

But these two don’t.

True-crime podcasting exploded after the 2014 arrival of the NPR podcast Serial, which reexamined the 1999 murder of a Baltimore high schooler. Podcasts such as In the Dark and Criminal began to rack up tens of millions of downloads, helping to renew an American love affair with the macabre, which can be traced back to Capote’s In Cold Blood and, long before that, to Poe.

The true-crime podcast wave also gripped Flowers, 30, who until just a few years ago had run sales at a medical-device company in her hometown, South Bend, but had been fascinated with crime since her youth. As a child, she grew up watching reruns of Perry Mason and Columbo with her mom. “From the time I was 9 or 10, I just couldn’t stop,” she says. “I loved it.” But decades later, as a young adult, she was left wanting after listening to podcasts like Serial and its imitators. “What I felt was missing was a show that could tell a good story,” she says. “A narrative—not just people reading facts. Two people that could discuss a crime without going off topic.”

Photo by Tony Valainis

Flowers’s appetite for true crime led her to join the board of directors for Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana, where she began formulating the foundations of her now-hit podcast. In 2016, the leaders of the organization asked her for ideas about how to improve the organization’s standing with a younger audience. Her concept: Murder Monday, a 20-minute, three-segment show that appeared on RadioNOW 100.9 in Indianapolis as a promotional vehicle for the organization. “Oh, I got chills already,” Joe Pesh, the local radio host, said when introducing the show’s first-ever segment, where Flowers outlined the story of “Dating Game Killer” Rodney Alcala, a serial murderer in the 1970s who claimed at least five victims before and after making an appearance on the popular game show.

After a year, Flowers left the program to develop Crime Junkie with Prawat, a childhood friend and former private detective. Their first episode dropped in December 2017, focusing on Niqui McCown, an Indiana woman who disappeared from a laundromat in 2001. “I keep hearing that you love stories of true crime,” Flowers told her audience. “You love all things true crime. But hearing about it once a week isn’t enough for you. You guys are just like me—you’re true Crime Junkies, and you need to hear stories more than once a week to get your fix.”

Over the next year, the podcast took off. By January, Rolling Stone announced it as one of seven “Best True Crime Podcasts” of the year. Fans showered the show with five-star reviews, and in a flash it reached 10,000 listeners, who, like the hosts, were mostly women between the ages of 24 and 35. “It’s all happened very quickly,” Flowers says. “Two years ago, we were still sitting on our couch talking about true-crime cases and no one cared.”

The typical episode—a sort of warmed-up book report on the hosts’ chosen crime of the week—drops each Monday, clocks in at under an hour, and often features a female as its victim. Local crimes receive outsized attention: The 2011 disappearance of Indiana University sophomore Lauren Spierer, the 1990s-era Herb Baumeister slayings, and the 1988 murder of 8-year-old April Tinsley in Fort Wayne have all been chronicled.

While Flowers takes the lead in narrating the details of a case, Prawat serves as a stand-in for the audience, finding beats in the story to sound shocked at a narrative turn. “Full. Body. Chills,” she’ll often say, a catchphrase to mark a particularly hair-raising moment in an episode. “Wait, what?” she’ll interject, when a new detail feels out of place. At times, episodes feel overly didactic, like an after-school special for adults who have trouble being adults.

Photo by Tony Valainis

For example, one of the show’s mottos—“Be weird. Be rude. Stay alive.”—serves as a three-commandment public-service tip for how the show’s listeners should conduct themselves to stay safe in public. In Crime Junkie’s 100th episode, which focused on Spierer’s disappearance, the installment closed with a sermonette: “No matter what happened to Lauren, I think there’s a message of personal safety in her story,” Flowers said to listeners, relaying an anecdote about Spierer’s parents searching Bloomington days after she went missing in which they encounter a young woman drunk and alone wandering the streets in the early morning hours. “We all think this won’t happen to us, but we all have to be aware of our surroundings,” Flowers continued. “Lauren didn’t cause this on herself—someone evil is responsible for taking her from her family.”

Episodes take about 40 hours to produce. But the production values of the podcast itself are unfussy. There are seldom interviews with anyone connected to the crime (one notable exception: the Tinsley murder, in which Flowers talks to the victim’s mother and a detective involved in the case). There is rarely documentary sound, just some trademark electronic music, and over it, Flowers and Prawat having a conversation about a murder or disappearance. There is also little reporting. “I always start with Google,” Flowers told WTHR in an interview earlier this year. “I find out what’s available. I think some of the best cases that we do are when I have to track down old news articles. Whether that’s in an archive, in a library, or available on Newspapers.com.”

In the Spierer episode, Flowers spends several minutes trafficking the rumor that the victim got into an accident and, in a panic, friends covered it up. (“This is a local rumor—nothing has been substantiated,” she says, before repeating the rumor to millions of listeners.) But when confronted about her methods, Flowers is quick to point out that neither she nor Prawat is a journalist, and bristles at the notion that the friends prosper from the darkest moment of someone’s life. “I mean, we genuinely care about the people we’re talking about,” Flowers says. “We never want to forget that every week we’re talking about a real event in someone’s life that happened, and it was the worst thing that’s ever happened in their life.”

In mid-August, Cathy Frye and her daughter decided to idle away a drive back home to Little Rock from visiting family in Texas, with a true-crime podcast. Frye, a former journalist from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, told her daughter to search Spotify for something good. Crime Junkie was at the top of the charts.

Two episodes in, the chatty, casual tone rankled Frye, who had spent her career as a reporter chronicling some dark and weighty crimes. Three episodes in, Frye found herself apoplectic: The contours of the narrative was all too familiar to her. The tale, about the 2002 murder of a 13-year-old, just so happened to be a story Frye covered extensively for her former paper in a narrative series called “Caught in The Web.” Frye had interviewed detectives and the victim’s father. She won the American Society of Newspaper Editors Award for the series in the non-deadline writing category in 2004.

Frye fumed. The intimate details of the case Flowers recited, without attribution, could have come only from her copyrighted story. “They were just so giggly and gossipy,” Frye said to BuzzFeed. “What happened to Kacie Woody and her friends and her family—her story deserves to be told with respect and compassion. Honestly, that made me more angry than the plagiarism.”

Frye took to Flowers’s personal Facebook page. “You relied on my series about Kacie Woody to air your podcast, which, I would assume, profits by the sharing of crime stories,” Frye wrote. “At one point, you quoted a portion of MY copyrighted story almost verbatim.”

In a post that spanned 438 words, Frye continued: “You said in one of your podcasts that you share these stories in order to reignite interest in old cases. Bullshit. Kacie’s murder was solved. Her killer is dead. What you did was simply gratuitous. It served no purpose whatsoever except to serve as ‘entertainment’ for your audience and as a moneymaker for your podcasts.” (“I’m not going and knocking on doors or talking with witnesses or family members,” Flowers told WTHR in March. “I’m not trying to get a scoop. Everything that we tell a story on has already been reported.”)

Frye’s comments caused a firestorm. BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and Variety, among others, covered the scandal. Other true-crime podcasters accused Flowers of stealing their work. Robin Warder, the host of The Trail Went Cold podcast, accused Flowers in Variety of lifting one of his Reddit posts for an episode. Steven Pacheco, the host of Trace Evidence, posted a YouTube video exposing more evidence of near-verbatim plagiarism from his January episode that examined the 2000 disappearance of 9-year-old Asha Degree, a North Carolina girl.

A few days after Frye’s post, Flowers deleted a number of episodes of the show, a development documented by BuzzFeed and The New York Times. She posted a statement to the show’s Facebook page: “There is no greater priority for our team, or for me personally, than to ensure the highest levels of accuracy and integrity in our program. Our research process is thorough, rigid, and exhaustive, and those familiar with Crime Junkie are aware that we make clear references to the use of other sources and that comprehensive notes and links to all sources are made available on our show’s website.” Flowers added that the goal of the show is to “advocate for victims and a platform to educate about personal safety. Our work would not be possible absent the incredible efforts of countless individuals who investigate and report these stories originally, and they deserve to be credited as such. We are committed to working within the burgeoning podcast industry to develop and evolve its standards on these kinds of issues.”

Since announcing that Crime Junkie would help the true-crime podcast world “develop standards” on plagiarism issues, it’s unclear if Flowers has made any progress on that front. Overall, the show’s massive popularity demands a new set of rigorous ethics, says Rachel Monroe, a true-crime journalist whose work has been published by The Atlantic and The New York Times, and who wrote the 2019 book Savage Appetites, which explores, in part, women’s obsession with the genre. “It’s one thing to be telling a crazy story to your friends over brunch, but it’s another thing when you have millions of listeners or thousands of people in a room paying a ton of money,” says Monroe. “I think at that point, the calculus of your responsibility is a little bit different. You are creating mass culture. And even if this just started out as something you were doing with your friend or as a low-key hobby, it’s gotten a lot bigger than that now, and so that just means reckoning with the responsibilities that go along with that.”

So, if Flowers and company have well-publicized ethical flaws, you might think that Crime Junkie would have trouble finding opportunities to expand its brand. But, oddly, the podcast has found a willing collaborator in the Indiana State Police.

In May, Deadline.com reported that Crime Junkie was partnering with ISP exclusively to work on an audio project about the November 1978 Burger Chef murders, during which four fast-food workers in Speedway disappeared after their shift. At the Clowes live show in October, Flowers gave attendees a preview and unveiled the project’s name, Red Ball, which takes listeners inside the 41-year-old cold case. (A red ball, in the parlance of law enforcement, is a high-profile case that draws a great deal of media and political attention.)

At some point in 2018, Flowers had approached Indiana State Police Public Information Officer Sgt. John Perrine about a partnership. Perrine directed Flowers to District Investigative Commander 1st Sgt. Bill Dalton, who was assigned to the Indianapolis Post. Dalton had permission to speak to Flowers. But unbeknownst to his superiors and without their authorization, Dalton made a unilateral decision to give Flowers access to the Burger Chef files, documents that no journalist has seen.

Dalton liked that Flowers had served on the Crime Stoppers board; the ISP uses the organization to get tips in cases. But Crime Junkie’s massive reach proved even more enticing. “When I inherited the case, my thought was, We need to generate talk, and when you’re dealing with a 40-year-old case, that’s hard,” Dalton says. “It’s easy to keep a 40-year-old secret if no one is talking about it. It’s harder if it’s a topic that everyone is talking about.”

It’s worth noting that the case doesn’t really lack for publicity: Each November, Indianapolis media outlets feature blanket coverage with look-back stories and law enforcement hold press conferences to provide status checks on the case. In 2018, for instance, this magazine devoted a significant portion of editorial space to the 40th anniversary of the cold case, and focused on the futility that haunts investigators as one after the other has passed along the case to the next, unsolved. Dalton, who had just inherited the case, was a source in the 4,500-word story.

By his estimate, Dalton has spent about 40 hours with Flowers over the last year, giving her exclusive access to his work, which has irked others and may have run afoul of the state’s open-records laws. Chris Davis, the host of Circle City Crime Podcast, had sought some of the same access to the Burger Chef documents, but had an open-records request denied. Davis wrote to Luke Britt, Indiana’s Public Access Counselor, the man in charge of ensuring the state and local agencies adhere to Indiana’s Access to Public Records Act. Was ISP right to disclose records to Flowers and not me? Davis asked.

In July, Britt concluded in an informal opinion that the ISP waived its right to protect investigative proceedings in the Burger Chef case from public consumption when they gave Flowers access. “The purpose of the investigatory records exception is to protect the integrity of a law enforcement agency’s investigation into a crime, not to selectively boost the true-crime infotainment research of one party over another,” Britt wrote. Davis, the rival true-crime podcaster, used the ruling as ammo to renew his request to access the same documents from the ISP. But Cynthia Forbes, the ISP’s legal counsel, again denied his request. Meanwhile, as is his custom, Britt gave the ISP an opportunity to respond to his informal ruling. “It doesn’t look good, guys,” Britt told the agency. “If you give access to one person, you have to give it to everyone.”

In their reply, the ISP explained that not only did Dalton act wrongly, but he also was reprimanded, receiving an employee counseling form and remedial education about APRA laws. Britt issued a final ruling, writing that because Dalton acted alone, and without agency approval, APRA laws weren’t skirted, and the ISP didn’t need to give any other member of the public the Burger Chef case file. “Internal controls and protocols were not followed and corrective measures were taken to ensure compliance going forward,” Britt wrote. Translation: The ISP didn’t screw up, Dalton did—and Flowers shouldn’t have those documents, but does.

It’s unclear how Flowers will use the materials in Red Ball. “When it comes to law enforcement, working with podcasts, it’s new territory,” Dalton says, and Flowers made an appealing partner because she’s not a journalist who is looking to report the case independently, like, say, Serial’s Sarah Koenig might. “When people are knocking on doors—and there are a lot of these investigative podcasts—you can influence the investigation.”

But is it an investigation, a podcast, or something in between? Above all, Monroe, the true-crime journalist, says it’s a mess: “When there is this system of privileged access, that shapes how a narrative is produced, and it also shapes how law enforcement behaves. They’re thinking of themselves as characters on a show.” In other words, by cooperating with a podcast host who is careful to not identify as a journalist, Dalton risks becoming something other than a law enforcement officer, Monroe says; he’s a potential podcast star.

Working with an entertainer rather than a journalist, Dalton and the ISP could advance an unchecked narrative of the case. Flowers told Deadline.com she is eager that the final product pleases the authorities: “There’s been a lot of talk in the television world about how we could turn this show into a series, once it’s out and, fingers crossed, the police is happy.”

In January, Flowers inked a deal with United Talent Agency, which has represented A-listers Jim Carrey and M. Night Shyamalan.

Podcasts like Crime Junkie have become proven ways to get a book or television deal, says Nicholas Quah, the owner and writer of Hot Pod Media, the leading trade newsletter covering the podcast industry. Quah came across the podcast in reporting about the show’s plagiarism scandal, and listened to a few episodes. “It’s pretty clear that these Crime Junkie folks are really into sort of popularity, really into sort of their brand. They’re not here to do journalism, or do anything documentary-like,” he continues. “It’s very clear that this is a celebrity play. If you look at the kind of work that they’re doing, which is essentially repacking other people’s work, basically, they don’t report. It’s an entertainment product. I find it distasteful and harmful.”

Despite the charges against Crime Junkie, the show goes on. An attorney for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette series that the podcast plagiarized sent a cease-and-desist letter on August 29, 2019. In the weeks after Frye’s allegation, other true-crime podcasters followed suit. Yet fans keep downloading the podcast. The Indiana State Police still plan to move forward with Red Ball. Seven of Crime Junkie’s next 10 live shows are sold out.

Back at the October live event in Clowes, the 43-year-old southside superfan considered whether the recent plagiarism controversy surrounding the show dissuaded her from listening to future episodes. “Everybody is doing plagiarism these days,” she says. (For the record, turning in unoriginal work is a career-ender for journalists, and plagiarism isn’t a fad.)

Sarah Weinman, a true-crime writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and BuzzFeed, says when it comes to Crime Junkie and podcasts of its ilk, audiences are often unknowing accomplices. “A lot of them don’t understand what the problem is because a lot of people don’t know what journalists do,” she says. “They don’t know the ‘rules of how to be a good journalist,’ which are actually pretty simple: Be curious, get people on the record, and if you can’t get people on the record, make sure that there are appropriate agreements, and don’t burn sources.”

All true, though Flowers doesn’t identify as a reporter—“I’m not a journalist,” she once told WTHR—and argues the show promotes personal safety. (“It’s a token so they can convince their listeners that they are contributing to the public good,” says Frye. “It’s not. They’re selling coffee cups and T-shirts.” ) Meanwhile, Prawat’s bio on the Crime Junkie website includes the statement, “we are not experts.” Both assertions deserve scrutiny.

The latter claim doesn’t hold. On a weekly basis, the women produce a revenue-generating podcast that has been downloaded millions of times and has major advertisers that include BarkBox, the monthly subscription service for dog owners; Casper, the online mattress company; and ADT Security. Pretty good for a couple of amateurs, no? But Flowers is right: she’s not a journalist.

She is, however a professional nonfiction storyteller—a segment that includes journalists, and helps make up the larger category of mass media. And that distinction comes with responsibilities: striving for fairness (for instance, we sought Crime Junkie’s participation in this story; however, its representatives stopped cooperating when they learned we were asking questions about controversial topics, like plagiarism), accuracy, and, above all, the truth. And those are just the basic virtues—great storytellers put things in context, give agency to the voiceless, and approach their subject matter with both fervor and empathy.

So where has Crime Junkie found success? Monroe, the true-crime writer, says, to its credit, the show has tapped into “a certain kind of sisterhood, or maybe it gives a kind of voice to victimhood that they experienced.” But the live shows are where it can get ethically muddier, Monroe says: “People are paying money, and you want to give them a good time. They want to have fun. And that means you can only tell a story in a certain way.” She pauses. “If I were ever missing or murdered, don’t let them make a show about me.”

Back inside Clowes, a few hours after the show began, the Crime Junkie theme music reverberates across the auditorium. The crowd roars. They clap. The show is over. They’ll do it all again in Portland and Seattle and Orlando in November—and seven more shows after that. Before the tour is over, the 6-year-old girl from Tucson will be stalked, kidnapped, and murdered and her father falsely implicated 15 times.

Full. Body. Chills. Right?

In 2019—even in the face of credible allegations of plagiarism, exploitation, and corrupt storytelling—it’s not illegal to turn a podcast about horrific murders and unsolved abductions into a business.

But maybe it’s a crime.

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Chapter 1

At the beginning of 2019, a weekend after New Year’s, a small group of lookalikes and their children made what has recently become an annual trek to a rented cabin in Indianapolis for finger foods, a winter hike, and a white-elephant gift exchange. Strangers until a few years ago, the adults shared silly gifts and something else: noses and chins and hairlines and builds. Many even had gravitated toward the same profession: medicine.

Those traits aren’t surprising given that their father was a well-known fertility specialist. The shock is that Donald Cline is their father at all.

That number continues to grow as new victims come forward. According to state and federal law, fertility fraud is not a crime, though there’s a movement in at least three states—including Indiana—to change the criminal code. In 2017, Cline was convicted on two felony counts for obstructing the state attorney general’s investigation into the matter. A judge suspended the former doctor’s sentence, though Cline did pay a $500 fine and court costs, which totaled $185.

Meanwhile, Cline’s newfound biological offspring and former patients have told state legislators they’ve paid a much dearer price.

“For me as a person, I was raped 15 times and didn’t even know it,” Liz White, who went to Cline desperate to have a child in 1981, told state lawmakers in January. After the gathering at the cabin, a group of these half-siblings and their parents joined White at the Statehouse to lobby for a bill in the Indiana General Assembly that would make it possible to pursue a civil suit up to five years after discovery of the crime. It also requires the legislature to study fertility laws. “He was an old man to me,” said White. “I did not want his semen. I don’t care how it came into my body. It was against my knowledge. It was against my consent.” She held up a yellowing photo of her holding her son, newborn Matthew, a name she selected for him because it meant “gift from God.”

Matthew, now 36, recalls taking in a moment at the last sibling gathering and being struck by the human instinct to bond—even in the strangest of circumstances. “We find a lot of comfort in each other,” he told me. “I know I do. We’re the only ones that can truly understand what kind of crazy things are going on in our head. There’s no one else who can experience it.”

Nor does there appear to be anyone to answer for it.

Chapter 2

Donald Cline opened his front door, scowling. At age 80, he looked haggard, with an unshaven face and hearing aids in his ears. He appeared wan and more gaunt than in photos taken in 2017, when he filed into Courtroom 15 in the City-County Building for his sentencing. He sported a Colts hat, wearing a vest over a plaid shirt.

It was a warm day this past spring, and we were standing on his porch in Zionsville. After introducing myself, I told him I wanted to understand why he did what he did.

“You’re only about the 100th person,” he replied.

Cline at first declined to talk about the case, and told me I should call his lawyer, Peter Pogue, a medical malpractice attorney at Schultz & Pogue, a civil-litigation firm.

“There are still things going on,” Cline said, declining to elaborate, and, at press time, Pogue had not returned emails or phone calls regarding this story.

“It’s old news,” Audrey, Cline’s wife of 60 years, added, as she stood behind him in the foyer.

According to court documents, Cline’s friends and family believe the charges seem out of character for a man they regarded as a patriarch, pillar of the medical community, and devoted leader in his Zionsville Fellowship Church.

Cline earned his undergraduate degree from Indiana University and his M.D. from IU’s medical school. He interned at Methodist Hospital. He served two years in the United States Air Force and another 12 years in inactive reserve, and received an honorable discharge. Cline opened his 2020 West 86th Street clinic in 1979. With its drab concrete exterior and concrete spires that rose on its facade like prison bars, the three-story, 1970s-era medical office building didn’t look much like a beacon of hope. But its limited curb appeal belied what the address had come to represent for a generation of Indianapolis-area women in the 1970s and 80s, which was exactly that: a place they sought out as their last, best hope to conceive children. His oldest daughter, Donna Stein, worked for him as a registered nurse.

He was a “doctor’s doctor,” according to Dr. William E. Chapman, who has been a close friend of Cline’s since they met 59 years ago as students at Indiana University. The two even bought adjacent parcels of land in Zionsville to become neighbors. Chapman wrote all this to Marion Superior Court Judge Helen Marchal in November 2017, asking for leniency for his friend. Cline was one of the first doctors in Indiana to perform laparoscopic surgery, a minimally invasive technique that uses a tiny camera called a laparoscope. He was once a keynote speaker at the International Symposium for Infertility in Bologna, Italy. Indianapolis Monthly named him a top doctor multiple times. “He was the doctor other physicians chose for their own families with infertility or OB-GYN needs,” Chapman wrote the judge, noting that his wife, Susie, received gynecological care from Cline.

He was a man of faith, too. He and Audrey taught a course in his home for several hundred parents called “Growing Kids God’s Way.” They had two children, Donna and Doug.

When Cline retired after 38 years in 2009, his retirement party had a receiving line “a city block in length for a period of three hours,” according to his son-in-law and former office manager Joe Stein in a letter he wrote to the judge. “He would take calls from crying and frustrated patients at all times of the day and night. As you know, infertility is a very sensitive thing for a family to go through. He was amazing.”

So the 11 letters to the court in Cline’s support continued. John B. “Jay” Parks, the husband of one of Cline’s satisfied OB-GYN patients from the 1980s, noted: “What Dr. Cline did to mitigate this problem of [not having enough viable sperm donors] is not illegal. At least he has corrected the error publicly.” James. R. Nicholson, a fellow church member, wrote that Cline “has confessed openly to his errors and has repented of them.”

Even the then-Boone County prosecutor, Todd J. Meyer, wrote the judge asking for leniency. For five years, Meyer and his wife had struggled to become pregnant.

They had discussed adoption. But Cline helped them, presumably using a donor’s sperm, and the Meyers have three boys now. “I am convinced,” wrote Meyer, “that but for Dr. Cline, my wife and I would not have the family we have today.” Meyer requested that the judge give Cline alternate misdemeanor sentencing. “I believe he is the type of offender that alternate misdemeanor sentencing was designed for and by him demonstrating his remorsefulness and taking accountability for his actions through his plea of guilty, I personally believe such a sentence accomplishes justice.”

But when Cline talked with me on his porch in the spring, he didn’t seem remorseful. “It’s been a real hard problem for me,” he said of his mounting legal woes.

“It’s just that one woman who’s upset that she has a life,” his wife Audrey added.

Chapter 3

It isn’t clear which of Cline’s many biological daughters Audrey was referring to, but those who know the case believe it must have been Jacoba Ballard, one of the most outspoken Cline children in the case. In 2014, Ballard logged on to 23andMe, the genomics and biotech website that offers users a peek at their ancestry. The 34-year-old long knew she hadn’t been conceived by her father, a fact she learned when she was 10. She was at a point in her life when she wanted to know more about her biological father. She didn’t expect she’d be able to find him. At the least, she thought, she could build relationships with her half-siblings—if there were any. When her results showed up, she was stunned to learn that she had seven of them.

Ballard was flummoxed. Her mother was 20 years old when she first went to see her fertility doctor in the fall of 1979. The doctor had reassured her mother that he used fresh sperm from medical residents, and that a donor would only be used three times to create life. Her child, he told her, would resemble her father. Ballard was born August 26, 1980.

She shared the discovery of her seven half-siblings with her mom. What was the name of the fertility doctor? Donald Cline, her mother reminded her. Ballard began to reach out to her half-siblings, whose birthdays stretched across seven years. Surprisingly, they, too, were all in the medical fields. The half-siblings had something else in common, too: Their birth mothers had all gone to Cline.

Ballard filed a report with the Indiana attorney general’s office. Ballard and one of her newfound half-siblings, Kristy Killion, were interviewed by the office, as well as a Marion County grand jury. Killion had also taken a genetic test in 2014, learning she had five half-siblings. She double-checked her results on Ancestry.com. Killion and Ballard had met when they had both signed up for amfor.net, a registry for donor offspring, parents, and siblings. Each had uploaded her name, age, and facility her parents used to conceive. Then Killion and her sister took a DNA test and convinced Ballard to as well, revealing their relationship.

“I think as humans, we have the need and want to know where we have come from, where we fit in, where we belong.”

One of the half-siblings who lived in Arizona wrote Cline, seeking answers. Cline wrote her back, explaining that he did not keep a record of the donors’ identities. “We used fresh samples collected approximately one hour prior to the insemination,” Cline lied. “I matched the blood type of the donor to that of my patient’s husband and also his general physical characteristics. I almost always used resident physicians and most were married with children of their own. Also, their family history was entirely negative for any familial illnesses. This many years later, I could not possibly remember anything else.”

Based on separate complaints from Ballard and Killion, the Indiana attorney general’s office sent Cline two letters in January 2015 that indicated he was under investigation. Cline, who had been retired for five years, had 20 days to respond to the letter.

In his response, Cline claimed not to remember either person, and cited an Indiana statute that held that doctors only had to keep records on patients for seven years after their last treatment. Those records had long been destroyed. Cline said that he had performed artificial inseminations from 1971 to 1981 using fresh sperm. He reaffirmed what he had told all of his patients: that he did not use the same donor for more than three pregnancies. He said that sometime in the 1980s he stopped using fresh semen, and started using frozen samples from Follas Laboratories in Indianapolis, a new standard of care that started around the same time by the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. “I never knew the name of the frozen donors,” he told the AG. “I can emphatically say that at no time did I ever use my own sample for insemination nor was I a donor at Follas Laboratories.” Cline accused both women of slander and libel. In the meantime, the AG’s office continued its investigation, sending a subpoena to Follas Laboratories. No records there showed them working with Cline.

Later, in May 2015, one of the half-siblings who identified herself only as “Carrie” took her story to the media. Fox 59’s Angela Ganote interviewed Carrie and two others. The reporter referred the case to the Marion County prosecutor’s office. “I went from being an only child to having at least eight siblings overnight,” Carrie told Ganote. “I think as humans, we have the need and want to know where we have come from, where we fit in, where we belong.”

As the AG’s inquiry unfolded, Ballard and Killion mounted their own investigation. Using 23andMe, they built their own family tree. The sisters discovered they were genetically related to more than 70 of Cline’s relatives. Their closest match was a first cousin of Cline. Their suspicion started to narrow to two possibilities: Either Cline must have used a sample from one of his family members, or he had used his own. Both ideas sickened the donor children.

Eventually, Ballard and Killion arranged a meeting with two of Cline’s adult children, Doug and Donna, at a church in Brazil, Indiana. The Cline children took notes as Ballard and Killion shared their findings. Doug and Donna relayed what they had coaxed out of their father: He claimed to have donated his own samples to a sperm bank, but not on more than eight occasions. He claimed to have done so to Follas Laboratories, despite the attorney general finding no evidence of it.

Ballard and Killion knew his statement wasn’t true, based on what they were hearing from an investigator with the AG’s office. Doug confronted his father with the facts, and Cline changed his story. He had other children out there, Cline told his son.

Not long after the meeting, Ballard spoke with Doug by phone. According to an affidavit, Doug asked her to keep the story a secret. That didn’t sit well with Ballard, who demanded a meeting with Cline.

In spring 2016, Ballard, Killion, and four others met their biological father for the first time at a restaurant in Greencastle. There, Cline confessed to using his own sample as many as 50 times, court documents say. He was helping women who really wanted a baby, and his wife supported his efforts. In fact, he had never used a sperm bank. Cline also said he wasn’t sure when he stopped using his own sperm, though the youngest known Cline offspring was born in 1986.

At last count, DNA test results have linked Dr. Cline to 57 children of former patients.

Chapter 4

Shortly before the legislative hearing on the proposed fertility fraud bill, Matthew White spent nights after work at his home in Carmel typing letters to state lawmakers. But as he drafted the notes, White ran into a strange problem: News of the number of his half-siblings seemed to increase by the hour. “I couldn’t type a letter at night and then print it out in the morning and send it without it changing,” he says. “Finally, I had to write on the envelope saying, ‘Oh, the number in here has been updated since I wrote it last night.’”

Matthew had long known that his dad wasn’t his biological father. At 14, he came home one day from biology class after a lesson about blood types with some questions for his mother and father. As a social worker, his mother, Liz, had done a substantial amount of research over whether to tell Matthew the truth. The literature on the topic was divided, but she didn’t think keeping secrets was a healthy practice. So she and her husband explained to Matthew that he was a donor baby—a miracle brought to them by medicine and Cline.

At that point, passing the doctor’s office on 86th Street was still a happy occasion. “That’s where I got pregnant with you,” Liz would tell Matthew.
But over the last several years, joy has been replaced by something else. Matthew reeled for days when the news about Cline first began to break and he pieced together the unsettling circumstances of his conception. It’s a feeling shared by many of his newfound half-siblings.

At Cline’s obstruction hearing, Ballard said the former doctor was an embarrassment to the medical profession. “It was always about you,” she said. “You lied. You still lie. You even have your family believing you, and that sickens me.” Ballard went on to testify that she took medication for anxiety that resulted from the discovery that Cline was her biological father. “I isolate myself from family and friends. In addition to questioning and doubting others, I also question … the purpose of my life.”
 Killion offered similar testimony. “I lost all sense of identity and rationality,” she told the court. “Things were no longer black and white. Instead there were so many unknowns and questions and the fact that I will never have clear-cut answers has really taken its toll on me. I no longer trust. I push every person close to me away, including my husband, friends, and even siblings at times.”

“Your Honor, I am asking for mercy and compassion for myself. I have learned from scripture that the way of the fool is right in his own eyes.”

Cline eventually told the court: “Unfortunately, out of fear, I acted alone and foolishly I lied.” He said after realizing his transgressions in 2015, he met with his family and confessed to them. “Your Honor, I am asking for mercy and compassion for myself. I have learned from scripture that the way of the fool is right in his own eyes.” But Cline offered no explanation for why he used his own sperm for all of those years and kept it secret.

Liz White and her son Matthew think Cline was living out a twisted sexual fantasy. “That’s just a pattern,” Liz told me. “And that pattern is very similar to other people who have taken advantage of someone else as a kind of power shift position.”

Matthew has dealt with wondering whether he was the product of rape. But over time, the backstory of his conception has made him a better parent, he says. In his 20s, White learned that like his father, he couldn’t have children naturally. Now with two children of his own, White understands the financial and emotional struggles his parents endured to have him, but still can’t comprehend Cline’s motivations. “It was just all planned, calculated, and executed flawlessly until technology caught up to him,” White says. “Why he did it, I don’t know, but I think it’s disgusting. He had to go in, prepare the patient, step out of the room, do his business, put that in a syringe, and step right back in. That is not a medical procedure. That is definitely sexual in nature.”

At press time, the Indiana Senate had passed a bill supported by the Whites that would make Cline’s actions a felony. The House was expected to vote on the measure in April, paving the way for one of the nation’s first fertility fraud laws.

Matthew has recently learned of a few more half-siblings—pushing the number to 57. And while Cline’s children have found some strength in numbers, many continue to wrestle with their unique and bizarre situation. As Matthew says, “There’s no idiot’s guide to finding out that your biological father is your mother’s fertility doctor.”

The post Donald Cline: The Fertility Doctor Accused of Fraud appeared first on Indianapolis Monthly.