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In the Dark, hosted by Madeleine Baran, is an award-winning investigative-journalism podcast that started in 2016. Its first season looked at the mysterious abduction of Jacob Wetterling in rural Minnesota and the lack of accountability that sheriffs face when they fail to solve cases. Season 2 examined the case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime. In 2020, In the Dark released a special report on the coronavirus pandemic in the Mississippi Delta. In 2023, In the Dark joined The New Yorker and Condé Nast. “The Runaway Princesses,” a four-part series that asks why the women in Dubai’s royal family keep trying to run away, came out in January.
In the Dark is a two-time Peabody Award winner and, in 2019, became the first podcast to win a George Polk Award, one of the top honors in journalism. The program has also received an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
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15After he disappeared nearly 27 years ago, Jacob Wetterling's remains have been found. Why did it take so long?
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The abduction of Jacob Wetterling, which made parents more vigilant and led to the first national requirement that states track sex offenders via registries, took place before moonrise on a warm October night in 1989.
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When Jacob Wetterling was taken, authorities launched what would turn into one of the largest searches for any missing person in the history of the United States. But that first night, law enforcement didn't cover all the basics.
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The closest you can get to a conversation with Jacob Wetterling about his abduction is to talk to Jared Scheierl. Scheierl was walking home from an ice skating rink in Cold Spring in January 1989 when a man who turned out to be Danny Heinrich forced him into a car, assaulted him, and let him go, uttering some chilling parting words: "If they come close to finding out who I am, I'll find you and kill you." That was nine months before Jacob's abduction.
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The Wetterling abduction story kept getting bigger as the case served as a conduit for public fear and grief. Capitalizing on a growing sense that pedophiles lurked in every shadow, the likes of Maury Povich and Geraldo Rivera joined the cause with sensational retellings of the crime and its consequences.
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Dan Rassier now wishes he'd insisted that police search his family's St. Joseph farm top to bottom the night Jacob Wetterling was abducted. That way, they would have known there was nothing to find. And it would have been harder for them to come back 21 years later to search with backhoes and declare him a "person of interest" in the case.
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In the 1970s and early '80s, missing children weren't considered a policing priority. You couldn't even enter missing child information into the FBI's national crime database. But that changed quickly.
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Soon after the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling in 1989, Stearns County sheriff's investigators came face to face with his killer, Danny Heinrich, who would confess to the crime 27 years later. Then they let him go. It wasn't the first time that had happened in Stearns County.
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In November 2012, a police officer named Tom Decker was shot and killed in Cold Spring, Minn., after getting out of his car to check on a man who lived above a bar. The man was quickly arrested and held in the Stearns County jail. He was interrogated but then released without charges. The state crime bureau later ruled him out as a suspect. Investigators turned their focus to another man, Eric Thomes, who hanged himself before he could be charged with the crime. Nearly four years after the murder, Sheriff John Sanner has refused to close the case "because we're still hopeful that new information will come in," he said.
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When Danny Heinrich confessed in court on Sept. 6 to abducting and murdering Jacob Wetterling and assaulting Jared Scheierl 27 years ago, investigators declared that at last, the public had the truth. But despite Heinrich's excruciatingly detailed accounts, the truth remains elusive. Many questions remain unanswered.
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The sentencing of Danny Heinrich on Nov. 21, 2016, brought to a close the 27-year investigation into the abduction and murder of Jacob Wetterling. But it didn't end the story.
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In Season 1 of our podcast, we reported that the Jacob Wetterling case was a botched investigation. Just yesterday, law enforcement acknowledged it too.
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Curtis Flowers has been tried six times for the same crime. For 21 years, Flowers has maintained his innocence. He's won appeal after appeal, but every time, the prosecutor just tries the case again. What does the evidence reveal? And how can the justice system ignore the prosecutor's record and keep Flowers on death row?
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On the morning of July 16, 1996, someone walked into a furniture store in downtown Winona, Mississippi, and murdered four employees. Each was shot in the head. It was perhaps the most shocking crime the small town had ever seen. Investigators charged a man named Curtis Flowers with the murders. What followed was a two-decade legal odyssey in which Flowers was tried six times for the same crime. He remains on death row, though some people believe he's innocent. For the second season of In the Dark, we spent a year digging into the Flowers case. We found a town divided by race and a murder conviction supported by questionable evidence. And it all began that summer morning in 1996 with a horrifying crime scene that left investigators puzzled.
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The case against Curtis Flowers relies heavily on three threads of evidence: the route he allegedly walked the morning of the murders, the gun that investigators believe he used, and the people he supposedly confessed to in jail. In this episode, we meet the witnesses who said they saw Flowers walking through downtown Winona, Mississippi, the morning of the murders. Some of their stories now waver on key details.
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Investigators never found the gun used to kill four people at Tardy Furniture. Yet the gun, and the bullets matched to it, became a key piece of evidence against Curtis Flowers. In this episode, we examine the strange histories of the gun and the man who owned it.
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Over the years, three inmates have claimed that Curtis Flowers confessed to them that he killed four people at the Tardy Furniture store. But they've all changed their stories at one time or another. In this episode, we investigate who's really telling the truth.
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No witness has been more important to the prosecution's case against Curtis Flowers than Odell Hallmon. He testified in four trials that Flowers had confessed to him while the two men were in prison together. Hallmon has an astonishingly long criminal history that includes repeated charges for drug dealing, assault, and robbery. So how reliable is his testimony and did he receive anything in exchange for it? In this episode, we investigate the veracity of the prosecution's star witness.
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Odell Hallmon, the state's key witness in the Curtis Flowers case, is serving three consecutive life sentences. We wondered what he might say now that there are no deals to cut, and he will spend the rest of his days in prison. Would he stick to his story that Flowers had confessed to the Tardy Furniture murders? We wrote him letters and sent him a friend request on Facebook. Weeks went by and we heard nothing. And then, one day, he wrote back.
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There's one critical aspect of the Curtis Flowers case that we haven't looked at yet -- the makeup of the juries. Each of the four times Flowers was convicted, the jury was all white or nearly all white. So we decided to look more closely at why so few black jurors had been selected. And it wasn't always happenstance.
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So she was helpless to protect her daughter because she was abused growing up? What an absolute trash excuse. Why would In the Dark feature this horrible interview? I'm really surprised and put off by this.
Tyranny is “stopping the word of god”. Seriously? I had to stop listening at that point.
Watt explained the situation from his side very well. I know that everyone wanted him to say that it was wrong in black and white but he chose to speak in shades of grey. Even then, it was clear: Everything that happened that day was wrong, but the Marines didn't start it.
what you do is not right. portraying freedom fighters as sociopaths
I don't know what's wrong me .. or what's wrong with the whole God darn world. But when she said "WOW" I , a 40 year old man who had looked death in the eyes like a nasty bad habit so many times burst into tears. in this world of a billion religions, everyone prays the same ways. but please don't say American Marines, say a bad company of hardly 20 year olds.
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Thank you for the important story - I don't know how to take in stories like this and feel good about the world.
absolutely bullshit
wow. these dirtbags child molesters have the highest recitivism rate among EVERY type of criminal!! THATS why you need to keep track of them on a registry. we shouldn't be thinking - Awww those poor sex offenders. fuck em all
wow, this episode hits like a punch to the stomach.
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In The Dark is an incredibly compelling listen! The storytelling is so immersive, and the investigative depth is truly impressive. Each episode keeps me on the edge of my seat! https://www.anibookmark.com/business/nyc-packaging-solution-bs198918.html
unfortualy it's need VIP in Iran😪
incredible.... it is hard to believe how many war crimes the American military is responsible for... how much of this insanity lingers under the surface.
agreed, this is completely crazy! who does this!! I don't care how young they were.
How dare the sheriff or whoever that was that said we can "have the closure and peace that come next." Those parents will NEVER have closure and definitely not peace. My heart goes out to them for this devastating loss.
thank you so much for this great great season. you have done a big job, telling the truth I would never know. God bless You. thank you so so much
thank you so much for this great great season. you have done a big job, telling the truth I would never know. God bless You. thank you so so much
thank you so much for this great great season. you have done a big job, telling the truth I would never know. God bless You. thank you so so much
I’ve been thoroughly captivated by ‘In The Dark’! The storytelling is incredibly compelling, and the depth of research is evident in every episode. https://sites.google.com/view/packaging-san-diego/home The way the podcast delves into complex cases with such nuance and clarity is impressive. It’s not just a podcast; it’s a profound exploration of justice and human nature. Highly recommend it to anyone who loves true crime with a thoughtful, investigative approach!