INTERVIEW WITH KATE WINKLER DAWSON

SHORT BIO:

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer, podcaster, and true-crime historian whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WCBS News and ABC News Radio, PBS NewsHour, and Nightline. She is the creator of two hit podcasts: Tenfold More Wicked and Wicked Words, and the cohost of the Buried Bones podcast on the Exactly Right network. She is the author of American Sherlock, Death in the Air, All That Is Wicked, and The Sinners All Bow. She is a professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

INTERVIEW:

LYNN: At what point in your life did you first become intrigued with true crime stories, and what was the trigger?

KATE: My father was a law professor and my mother was a clinical psychologist, so we always talked about crime and forensics and the mentality behind murderers and how society deals with them. In 2001, I worked on the Gary Condit, Chandra Levy case in Modesto, California and that's when I was able to dig into a real crime story as a producer. True crime has always been my favorite genre ever since!

LYNN: You describe yourself as an ardent and everlasting true crime fan. What is it about these stories that keeps you glued to the page or TV screen?

KATE: I love a good drama. I like a compelling storyline and a strong narrative arc. I'm also an empathetic person, and I'm always hoping to see justice at the end of these stories. Like most people, I love puzzles, and I like to predict what's going to happen by the end. But mostly I'm interested in human behavior.

LYNN: Several of your books delve into the history of specific crimes, forensics, and investigative techniques. Talk to us about the research you do. The time it takes, the frustrations, the ‘aha’ moments.

KATE: My research for books tends to run together, so I'll get burned out writing one book, and then I'll start researching another book. So I end up reading an awful lot and going down far too many rabbit holes. I look at a lot of different sources, including Hathi Trust, worldcat.org, newspapers.com, and good old fashion books from the library. The lack of records for historical cases can be very frustrating, but I'm used to it. You do the best you can, cover all of your bases, and then move through your story. Definitely never give up!

LYNN: Out of all the crimes you’ve profiled on Buried Bones or in your books, which one lingers at the corner of your mind or keeps you up at night?

KATE: You know, it's actually not one of my stories from my books or from the podcasts. It's a local story from Austin, Texas called the yogurt shop murders, when 4 teenage girls were assaulted and murdered at a yogurt shop late one night when I was in high school. It was truly terrifying, and it's officially unsolved, but still an open case. It's frustrating because I feel like we get very close to solving it, and then it doesn't work out. But I have faith in law enforcement, and I think we will end up finding out who did this one day. I really hope the families get justice.

LYNN: Which story has been the most fascinating from the point of view of an investigative reporter?

KATE: I think "American Sherlock" was my favorite book to really dig into and investigate. I didn't know much about the origin of forensics in America until I started researching that book. And honestly it's been the most crucial for me, because I now have a really solid understanding of what was available to investigators in the 1920s, and what's available now. But telling a story specifically from one person's point of view can be challenging, and I really had to piece together a lot of different resources, such as personal letters, memos, police reports, and personal journals to really understand who Oscar Heinrich was.

LYNN: Which aspect of your work (teaching, reporting, writing, podcasting) do you enjoy the most and why?

KATE: I love all of it, really. And I love them all for different reasons. I enjoy connecting with young students, people who are just beginning their careers and are so excited to hear different points of view. They keep me energized. I love writing because it can be such a solo mission, where everything is on your shoulders. I tend to thrive under that kind of pressure. Podcasting is so intimate: I can make jokes. I can talk about my own life a little bit, and I can be vulnerable in a way that you really can't do with any other kind of media.

LYNN: What brought you to podcasting? How did it get added to your list of ‘things to do’?

KATE: I had never really even heard a podcast, except for "Serial", until I pitched my first show, Tenfold More Wicked. It was actually an experiment. I was watching a "48 Hour Mysteries" one day and there was a guy talking about a podcast he started about his grandmother and her best friend who were murdered before he was even born. He said this podcast had been downloaded millions of times, and I thought something like that might be helpful for my books. That's my audience! And so I really just wanted to see if it would sell more books, which it did. And then it took on a life of its own, because I started to really enjoy reaching out to so many different people and hearing back from them.

LYNN: Which case has angered you the most, either because it didn’t get solved, the bad policing, or the judicial outcome?

KATE: I'm probably most frustrated with the subject of my last book, "The Sinners All Bow". It’s about a woman named Sarah Maria Cornell who was found hanging from a haystack pole in New England in 1832. The locals were convinced that a Methodist minister had sexually assaulted her and then murdered her. He was acquitted. I weighed the evidence and hired my own experts, like a document examiner, and concluded that there wasn't enough evidence to convict him. It's a really hard lesson when you realize that just because you think you know that someone is guilty of such a terrible thing, if you can't prove it, it really doesn't matter.

LYNN: What do you see yourself doing in this arena in the next five years? What’s the next step for Kate?

KATE: I'll continue doing podcasting, for sure, and I'll stay with nonfiction books. But I've just completed writing my first mystery thriller novel, which was incredibly exciting. I have no idea if I'll have a future in that genre, but I'm certainly going to give it a shot.

LYNN: What kind of advice would you give mystery writers to create credible and compelling mysteries?

KATE: I ask myself that all the time, considering I'm writing a novel. I've interviewed quite a few mystery writers who use true crime stories as a jumping off point. That's a good recommendation. One thing about nonfiction is that I'm very constrained—I can't pretend that Oscar Heinrich, my forensic investigator from "American Sherlock", is charming or sweet or kind, because he really wasn't. I can't make that up. But in mysteries, you can, which actually makes things more difficult because these fictional people have to be realistic. So, I started thinking of my characters as real people, where I am constrained, and that seems to be helpful.

LYNN: Thanks so very much, Kate. I love your podcasts and am pretty amazed at how busy you, and yet you seem so normal. I appreciate your time more than you know.