October 9, 2024 • 46 mins
S.E. brings on one of her favorite true crime journalists, Dateline's Josh Mankiewicz, to talk about how he got into the business, how he managed to land the unheard-of forever job, and the one story he never thought he'd tell. SE and Josh also dive into his very famous family, discuss how Josh manages to draw boundaries at work, and just how handsome Stone Phillips is in real life. The lively conversation is all wrapped up with a Dateline-themed quiz. Can you do better than Josh? Listen and test your knowledge!
Dateline's 33rd season premiered in late September 2024. Go tune in!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
That's one of the reasons why people, Yeah, watch Dateline because,
like so much in the world, doesn't work the way
it's supposed to. But yeah, you know, Fridays at nine,
that scoundrel gets what's coming to them most of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is off the cup. I'm se Cup. And as
a journalist and someone who covers quote unquote the news,
we're usually curious about everything. It's a quality that I
find a lot of us have in common. We just
want to know stuff. And so the true crime category
of news has always been interesting to most journalists I know,
(00:37):
even if they don't report on crime. And it was
definitely true of me. I was a true crime fanatic.
And later I'll get into why I'm less of a
true crime fanatic these days, but solving crimes was always
interesting to me. And one of the earliest memories I
have of watching non cartoons was when I was about
seven or eight and my parents let me stay up
(00:58):
late to watch Murder She wrote every week, and it
terrified me, but I also loved it, and I imagined
being a writer one day, living in a small town
like habit Cove when I was older, and solving all
the crimes which seemed to happen way too often for
such a small town, but that was obviously fiction. But
I also loved unsolved mysteries and cops and America's Most Wanted.
(01:20):
Then in nineteen ninety two, Dateline comes along with Stone
Phillips and Jane Polly, and I was into the news
at a very young age as well.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
But I was hooked on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
And it was a news magazine show that covered all
kinds of stories.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I loved it.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And then of course there was this huge true crime
boom and now you know Dateline sort of synonymous with
like murders. One of the hosts, I'll tell you my
favorite Dateline host is Josh Mankowitz and his hips don't lie.
If you follow him on social media as I do,
I am thrilled to have him on off the Cup.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Welcome Josh, thank you great to be here. And yeah,
my hips, you're right. Why don't they lie? Though? That's
the question? Well, look, I.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Mean this is journalism. I mean, you know, you know,
I mean that's the thing about you know, you can't
lie when you're a reporter. So that's an easy claim
to make, you know, true Detective magazine, you can chart
that as the beginning of sort of journalism about true crime.
I mean, obviously there's earlier examples Sherlock Holmes and things
(02:24):
like that, but I mean there's a true detective magazine
in the United States talking about horrible crimes and the
dogged policeman who solved them.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Right. Yeah, that was first published in nineteen twenty four. Wow,
So that would be one hundred years of people reading
about true crime journalism. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So you know, people will to say me, oh, how
long you think it's going to last. I'm thinking, like, yeah,
a while, because it's been going on for a long time.
I mean, this has always been a topic that people
read about and were interested in, whether it was that,
whether it was in cold blood right right, I mean,
I mean all those wonderful true crime books of the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
(03:04):
or the sort of current craze of true crime on TV, podcasts, streaming,
any other way you want to get your content.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
And this is correct me. If I'm wrong, Dayline's thirty
second year on NBC, I.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Think yes, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
It depends a little bit about how you count the seasons,
because I think we started in the middle of the season.
I think they started in January instead of in September.
But yeah, I think this is thirty two years for Dayline.
I've only been here thirty I mean February thirty years.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, so only and we're going to get into that.
But a lot of people are watching them in syndication.
But you're you're still I mean you're still airing new
episodes of course.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean we've been you know, we were
off for the Olympics and we used that time to
do a lot of new stories, all of which you're
going to be airing this fall Fridays at nine o'clock Eastern.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Don't watch alone.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
There you go. So how I mean, everyone I know
in this industry wants a job that is basically forever.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
How did you pull this off?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Okay, So when I took this job in February of
ninety five, I didn't have the slightest thought like, Okay,
this is the thing you're going to retire from. You didn't,
you know, like what lasts thirty years in television? Nothing?
Monday Night Football, Meet the Press. I mean, there just
aren't a lot of things. So I thought, well, okay,
(04:29):
I'll do this for a while and then, you know,
do something else. And I'd been a political reporter before.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, I covered.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Politics in New York City and in LA and I
had I'd been an correspondent for ABC, and I'd covered
the Congress. And when I came to Dayline, we were
not doing exclusively crime. We were doing, as you remember,
because you remember the original Dayline with the Paphone and Jane.
We were doing all kinds of stories.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, corruption, scandals, yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
All sorts of things, funny stories.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
During the nineties stock market boom, we did a thing
where we pitted a stockbroker who was picking stocks against
the chimp, and we would we'd put the portfolios into
the chimp's cage, and whichever one the chip picked up,
(05:21):
we'd assumed that that was their choice of which stock
to buy. So the you know, the stockbroker was buying
like Microsoft, right, and the chimp was like, no, I'm
going with Netscape.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
So and of course, and of course after it, yeah,
and of.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Course, after a period of time, the chip was actually
a hat, which was great.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I don't remember how it came out. So we did go.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, we did all kinds of stuff. And after I'd
been here about ten years. About two thousand and five,
we started making the turn to doing in two ways.
One is we started doing hour long episodes, which we
had none before. We'd done like four or five six
stories within an hour. Sometimes you'd do a two part thing,
but usually it was you know, the choices were a
(06:09):
story that was about two to three minutes long, five
to seven minutes long, and then up to about fifteen
minutes long.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And then we started doing hours. And we also started
covering crime and mostly murders. And when that happened, I
was not super interested in doing that.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I did not really rebel in the sixties. I had
no six in the seventies, I made no money in
the eighties. So when true crime came along, I missed
that trend too. So it's not surprising.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I like, a couple of minutes in here, and I
already know so much about you, right.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, no, I was.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I was behind all of those curves. So yeah, I
did not see true crime coming. But I thought, okay,
I mean I could tell they really wanted to start
doing this, yes, and so I thought, all right, I'll
do one. So I did one, and after it was over,
I thought, well, that wasn't so bad. That was kind
of fun, it's kind of interesting. I'm still in touch
(07:10):
with the mom from that story.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And then we were just off and running and then
it the audience responded. You know, we found ways to
tell these stories that sort of wasn't being done anywhere else.
Because most crimes I'm not talking about, you know, John
Bnay Ramsey or something that everybody knows the details of it.
Most of the stories we cover the stories that you've
never heard of before. And there are stories where we're
(07:35):
able to say to the family involved, you're not going
to get two hours of coverage anywhere else. Most of
these are stories that got eight to ten inches in
the newspaper and maybe a minute or two on local
TV news, and then maybe they covered it again when.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
There was a trial, but that was pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
But at two hours, we can tell a much longer,
a much more in depth story, with a lot more texture,
a lot more context, a lot more backstory. You'll get
a sense of not just the crime and the killer,
but who the victim was, who the family was, what
that relationship was.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Like, what that loss is like.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
And sometimes in addition to these terrible stories, you also
hear stories of you know, strength and redemption, which is
kind of you know resilience, which is one of the
things that I think makes people keep coming back to Dayline,
because look, most people are never going to be touched
by violent crime in their lifetimes. Most people are not
going to be the victim of a violent crime. But
everybody has been in a relationship that did not end
(08:32):
the way they wanted it to, and Daylines about those
choices too.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yes, that's such a good point, and I want to
talk a lot about Dayline, but first I want to
talk about you. You were born in Berkeley. Did you
grow up there?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Now, my dad was going to law school at Berkeley
at the time. That's why I was born there.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And then I lived in Los Angeles till I was
about six. Then we went to South America because my
dad went to the Peace Corps. Then then he was
still with the Peace Corps when he went to DC
after that. So then by the time I was about
nine until I was twenty six twenty seven, I lived
in DC.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, and I most people don't know the history, the
long and impressive history of your very famous family.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'm going to run through it for listeners.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Okay, I want you to know I'm about to blow
a lot of people's minds. So your dad, Frank Mankowitz,
was Robert F. Kennedy's press secretary. Yes, we're gonna talk
about that, Okay. Your grandfather, Herman, along with Orson Wells,
wrote the screenplay for a little movie called Citizen Kane.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Fyi. Orson Wells had nothing to do with writing that movie.
Go ahead, amazing, amazing? Oh good.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Your great uncle Joseph was a director and screenwriter of,
among other projects, All About Eve. Your brother Ben is
a host at Turner Classic Movies. We watch you guys
fight on Twitter sometimes. And you've got a couple cousins
who are also very successful in the movie business. I mean,
I know, right, what was it like growing up with
famous relatives?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I mean, you know, you didn't really think about it.
I mean, it was just you know, I mean, yeah,
you know, George K. Koor was at the dinner table sometimes,
you know, at my grandmother's house.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
But I didn't, like, you know, I wasn't watching his movies.
I just knew him as George.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You know, when my dad was with RFK you know,
Dolores Werda was at our kitchen table sort of plotting
strategy for the farm workers. But like that was, you know,
just a friend of my dad's who came over.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So yeah. When I met Robert Kennedy a couple of.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Times when I was, you know, twelve eleven, twelve years old,
I did get the feeling like, Okay, this is this
is this is different. Not everybody has this experience.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
What do you remember about RFK senior?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Magnetic, charismatic, very soft spoken, like you had to strain
to hear him. He didn't talk, he didn't speak loudly,
and I think usually maybe more comfortable around kids than
the alt love to talk about what you were up
to as a kid, Maybe because he had so many kids.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, well, and I don't. I mean, we don't get
political here, but I just got to know, what do
you make of his son's presidential campaign.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I barely knew him back then.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I think I met him a few times, but not
accurate to say that we were even friends back then
as kids.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I think he's a year older than I am.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I ran into him again when he was practicing environmental
law in New York City and I was a political
reporter for Channel two, and I've covered some event that
he was at and then out flours, I went up
and said hi to him, and he said, wow, it's weird.
We don't know each other a lot better. And I said, yeah,
it is weird, and then we've never spoken again, So
that was left there. Yeah, that was the extent of
(11:47):
my relationship with Rfkjune.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You did not remedy the weirdness.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Right, I mean, my dad would be appalled today.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I don't think that's going to come as any shock,
and my dad would be absolutely crestfallen.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
About his campaign.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
You mean, yeah, just about sort of the nuttiness associated
with that and the damage he's doing to his own name.
But yeah, I mean, might dad be appalled with a
lot of things happening in America today, so that that
probably wouldn't even make the top ten.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So did you always want to be in the news?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
You know, I grew up watching Vietnam Civil rights movement,
Watergate on the evening news every night. Yeah, so I
did definitely think about that. You know, we watched the
CBS Evening News with water Kronkite.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Good Evening from CBS News headquarters in New York.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm going to say five days a week for you know,
probably fifteen years. I mean until I went away to college.
And then I remember being in my dorm room at
college and thinking like, oh, it's it's seven o'clock. I
got to watch the news, and I would get out
my little, tiny black on white TV and while everybody
else was doing something else, I would be I'd watch
(13:08):
the news, you know, and then it was the Patty
Hirst story, you know, when I would tell seventy three, there's.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Been a big kidnapping on the West Coast.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
The victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive
Randolph Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hearst.
Because I said, right, I did not have any sex
in the seventies, I was watching the news, so uh yeah,
I missed every trend.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I'm not sure what this decade is going to be
famous for, but I know that I will not.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Do it, okay, So yeah, I mean I always thought
about that, and I remember saying to my dad talking
about the correspondence on the evening news. I remember saying
that guy's got an interesting job, because the other day
he was in Texas covering that flood, and today here
he is in Alabama and he's covering this protest march
(13:56):
or whatever. He had to travel during that time, and
he had to get up to speed on this other story,
and I thought that sounded like a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
And my dad had been a journalist. No one remembers
this about him.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I mean, he's primarily thought of as being in politics
and being in PR but he was also president of
National Public Radio for a while, and at an earlier
stage in his life, he was a local anchorman in Washington,
d C. Which no one remembers, in like about nineteen seventy,
at which he was spectacularly unsuccessful. So he had a
(14:29):
brief foray into TV news also, which sort of exposed
me to some of the people who worked there, and
that also got me interested. So by the time I
was in college, yeah, I was already thinking about this
as some kind of career. And I started working at
ABC News on the assignment desk in the middle of
the night in the summer when everybody else was on vacation,
(14:50):
in the summer of seventy five. So it's coming up
on fifty years.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Wow, what did you study in college? She went to Haverford, Right,
I went to Haverford.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I studied sociology, which maybe not the smartest choice back then.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I can beat you. I studied art history, super super useful.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, so yeah, it comes in. Yeah, yeah, I talk
a lot about the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Yeah,
comes up, comes up all the time. I also thought
there was going to be more quadratic equations as we went.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Through life, and there have not been, indeed not been
nearly as much of that as I expected.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
No total, total waste. All right, let's get to Dateline.
It's nineteen ninety five, and your agent says, what to you?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Why are you calling me all the time?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Leave?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Leave me alone. I have actual clients. Yeah, it was
welcome to be.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
It was not my agent, it was I was in
local news in Los Angeles covering politics. Dick Reardon had
just been elected mayor. Tom Bradley had left. He was
getting sworn in. But I didn't actually cover Reard. I
covered the campaign, and that was right at the end
of that and there was a big boom of news
(16:03):
magazines on all the networks, and Dateline had been around
for a couple of years, and it had. They went
through that thing with the GM truck where a bunch
of people got fired, and the new management team that
came in involved a guy named Neil Shapiro who went
on to be president of NBC News. But he's the
guy that took Dateline from just about at death's door
(16:26):
and made it the juggernaut than it is today, first
putting us on five nights a week at one time,
the multiple editions, and he's the guy that sort of
took Dateline from failure to household name and so Neil
and I knew Neil from having worked at ABC News
with him, But instead of going to Dayline, which I
(16:46):
probably could have done, then I went to a news
magazine that Fox was doing. There was no Fox News
channel then. This was the Fox network right where the
NFL now airs called front Page, which was murdoch attempt
to do a news magazine, and it's we were on
for like less than a year. I think we were
(17:07):
on about ten months. Maybe not even Ron Reagan was
on that that might jog people's memory. And there were
a couple of other correspondents and I was one of them,
and that sort of taught me how to do magazine story.
It ultimately didn't succeed. We were, you know, I think
we were one week. I have this, I tore this
out of the newspaper. They don't do this anymore because
(17:30):
it's all on the internet.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But there was a.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
There was a time when the papers used to publish
the list of TV programs, you know, like the Nielsen raids. Yeah,
number one was you know, sixty minutes or something like that, right,
or you know, Dallas, right, And then it would go
down and one week there were one hundred and three
programs and front Page was number one hundred and three.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
So that we were.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
But even then, I mean even then, because there was
no streaming and almost no cable programs except you know,
reruns and things like that, but there's very little original
content on cable. Like even then, that rating today would
be like a that show would be a big success, right,
just you know, because of the raw numbers. Yeah, but
(18:18):
back then it definitely wasn't a success. And while it
was off the air and kind of getting retooled and
they couldn't decide what to do with it or what
to call it or when to put it back on,
I left and went to Dayline and that was in February.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Of ninety five. Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And it's always except for the time you're talking about
where I was at Death Store, it's always been a
successful franchise. But it feels like it's reached kind of
a cult status now where it's even cooler than it
was like ten or twenty years ago, and younger generations
are discovering it and there's memes about you guys, And
what's that been like to have this like resurgence.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Well, you know, for a long time when a young
person would come up to me in an airport and say,
you're Josh, make it some dayline, Like, uh huh, the
next line was always my mom.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Loves you and I take a picture. Right now they
know us, they're not asking for them for their mom.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And yeah, there was a point where Neil Shapiro, who
you know, made Dateline this big success.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
He moved up to be president of NBC.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
News, and David Corvo, who actually had produced the Fox
show that I worked on, Front Page, he came to
be executive producer of Dayline and he's the guy that
took us into true crime. And that's kind of what
made Dateline the thing that it is today. That's what
sort of got us that that that new audience. And also, yeah,
it made us cool in a way I sort of
(19:46):
didn't see coming. But we're all over popular culture now.
I mean when when Taylor Swift is talking about how
Dateline helped her create a song, I'm thinking, like, what
really mean?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, it's very cool, and you know it's funny. I
develop shows as well, And when I am in a
pitch meeting with a network, this is what they'll say.
I've heard this from several different network heads. They'll say,
we want something we can make a hundred of like Dateline.
(20:19):
People want to invest over and if they're liking something,
they want it over and over. Give it to me again,
give it to me again. And that's what's so great
about Dateline because they're endless, unfortunately, endless stories to tell.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, there are endless stories to tell, that is true. Yeah,
and also people see them again and again and again.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yes, they know how it ends, and they still want
to watch it.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And they watch it anyway. And I mean we are
all I mean not only are we all over the
podcast universe. Yes, there's about five ways to get that
Dateline twenty four to seven streaming channel. I mean, it's
on Peacock, but it's also I think on Samsung TVs.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
It's on YouTube. I mean, and so I mean you
can go back. You can't go back thirty two seasons because.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
At one point we switched from standard definition to high
definition and the standard def episodes are not streaming because
they look weird on your on your TV.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
But you can go back. You can go back a
very long way.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
You can watch a lot of those episodes, and people
do and and they see them again and again and
again and then I mean, I know people when people
now talk to me about Dayline, I always ask them
how they consume it, because some people like, don't watch
the TV show, they're listening to the podcast, right.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Some people are unaware.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That there are podcasts out there of them, you know,
and you know on the podcast, I mean, it is
the audio of Dayline.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
We don't change that at all.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
We do some original podcasts every year and those those
are done specifically to be podcasts, and they take a
lot longer. But people eat up those podcasts because they're
consumable in ways that television is not. Like in your
car or you know, when you're commuting or when you're
you know, doing work around the house.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Right to Jim, Yeah, do you and the other hosts
ever fight over stories, like tell me the process, how
a story comes to you or you get assigned a story.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I would say no, we don't, although within the way
Keith disag well. Within the last couple of weeks, just
for the first time since I've since I've been a
correspondent at Dayline, there was a story that I was
going to do in Canada, a cold case story.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
And I did a story in Canada several months ago,
and those cops put us onto this case.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So the producer and I were going to do this
one too, but it turns out that it's it's happening
in a The story occurred in a place that Keith
thinks of as his hometown, and when he saw that
story was beingid, he said to me, I want to
do that. I'm like, I thought, wait aboute my name's
(22:46):
already on that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
And then I was like, it's in everyone's interest at Dayline.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
For Keith Morrison to be as happy as possible, So
so I was like, you know what, go to Canada,
have a great time. But yeah, normally no, we do
not fight over any stories and that doesn't even qualify
as a fight. But you know, we hear about these
stories all kinds of different ways. I mean, we were
reading the papers all over the country every day, and
we're online all the time. And because we've been around
(23:14):
so long, police departments, prosecutors, local stations, even defense attorneys
are calling us and saying, I don't know how this
is going to come out, but this woman is missing.
Her husband is not joining in the searches, he's retained
a lawyer, he's acting very strangely. And we start making calls.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So I mean a lot of wait, are they doing
that because they want like this crime solved and exposed?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Why are they doing that just because they're being helpful?
You know? I mean why are they calling us in
the local station.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Because you know, because we'll probably end up, you know,
maybe interviewing their reporter or using their coverage, or they'll
will be on their air talking about this story. I mean,
when I go, you know, some small town and we
do a story about that, we probably will do some
little mini version of the story for them, you know,
(24:09):
if they want me to come on their newscast and
talk about it, I will. But in many cases they've
already done a huge amount of the sort of digging
on this story. They've probably covered the trial. They probably
were there early on when that search warrant was being served.
We weren't, but they were. We might be using those
pictures that they shot. So local stations call us, but
(24:29):
so do so do investigators that we've worked with in
the past, because you know, most people who have appeared
on Dateline. I'm not necessarily talking about the murderers here,
but most people who have appeared on dateline think like, yeah,
that worked out, I'm glad I did that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, well, I want to say. I said I was
a devotee of true crime, and I don't know if
you've got this a lot, But then I had a kid,
and every victim, every awful story of unsolved crime was
about my kid, and I couldn't separate it. And add
(25:05):
that to the stories I cover for a living, the
terrible things that happen to innocent people, from war to genocide.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
You know, I had to take a break from it.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And I'm better now, but I have to be in
a very good mental health space to watch a doc
or a dock series about real like violent crime. Sure,
do you ever take it home with you.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
These stories I don't I do understand because I tend
to focus on sort of the other things you learn
from those stories, not just the awful things that people
do to each other, which still shocks me all these
years later. You know, the things that people do to
somebody that they you know, once maybe love, Yeah, somebody
that might very well be the parent of their children,
(25:49):
and people think like, oh, yeah, it'll be fine, my
kids can lose their other parent in some violent way.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
I'll be okay, right, I mean, and that lose me
because I'm in jail now.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I don't understand any of that kind of thing. But
you also see tremendous stories of faith, of strength, of resiliency,
of recovery, and so I was kind of like focus
on that stuff. And sometimes it's like, it's really nice
to see justice done. I mean, that's one of the
reasons why people watch Dateline because like, so much in
the world doesn't work the way it's supposed to. But
(26:21):
you know, Fridays at nine that scoundrel gets what's coming
to them most.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Of the time, and that's sort of satisfying.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
But look, you know, we don't we could choose bloodier
stories We could do stories about serial killers. Certainly, there's
a lot of programs out there doing that. We could
do sex crimes, we could do crimes, you know, involving children,
and we could do much bloodier things than we do.
But we don't because like the audience could change the channel.
I mean, I don't want them to have the same
reaction you did, which is like I can't watch this.
(26:49):
Yeah right, yeah, we're not. You know, Dennis Murphy's famous
line about Dateline is, it's not about the murder, It's
about the marriage.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You know, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
This is about the relationships. This is not about the
mechanics of the crime. It's about the mechanics sometimes of
solving the crime, and sometimes it's about the trail that
got police and prosecutors to the door of a murderer.
But it's usually not about exactly what happened in that
room and how many times somebody got shot or stabbed.
And now we can't even show most of those pictures
(27:22):
on television, I mean the number of you know, we
always wait till the end because we wanted to be adjudicated,
and also that's when you can get any exhibit that
was shown in court crime scene photos and stuff, But
I mean, what percentage of the crime scene photos can
we show? Like maybe five percent? Most of them we can't.
So I mean this is not about shocking people because
so much of it. We could cover much more horrifying things,
(27:47):
But like, I don't want to drive people away.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I want people paying attention.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Up next, I talked to Josh about a story he
never expected to cover. Can you talk to me about
doctor Steve pitt Ugh?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Okay, Well, I met him because we interviewed him on
a story about the twenty year anniversary of the John
Benet story. Now I didn't cover the John Benet story
when it happened. Somebody else did, but they had left
Dateline by the time it was time to do a
twenty year story, so I kind of inherited that.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
So I met him.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Because he had worked with the Boulder Police on that,
and so he was an interview on that, and he
was a good friend of a producer that worked for
Dateline at the time who lived in Phoenix, which is
also where Steve lived, so they've gotten to know each other.
So through all of that I met him and we
became friends, and he came out here to La a
(28:54):
lot where I live, and he and his fiance and
and I went out. And I don't want to make
this sound like he was my best friend on the
face of the earth, but it was clear he was
going to become a better friend as the weeks and
months went on. And he called me and said, Hey,
I'm going to be in town. I'm at this art
fair and once you drop by. So I did drop by,
(29:17):
and he was there, and he was in a great mood,
and we sat around and had a couple of laughs,
and that was that. We were going to meet again
a few weeks later and a couple of weeks after that.
He was a psychiatrist, by the way, for people who
don't know, he was a forensic psychiatrist, and he did
a lot of work for law enforcement over the years,
helped police with profiles of different criminals and also did
(29:38):
some court ordered evaluations of different people. Had done that
over the years, in addition to having his own practice.
He was very successful. I worked in the Phoenix area,
and a couple of weeks after I had seen him
here in Los Angeles, I was driving up the coast
to a wedding north of la in the Wine Country
(29:58):
and the offic started calling me, and I thought, oh, no, no, no, no,
I am off. I am going to this wedding. My
wife was sitting next to me. No, no, I am not.
I don't know what you're calling me for, but I
am not available. And so I didn't answer the phone,
and they called a couple of times.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I'm like, mm mmmm, maybe you're not did not read
the memo.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Where I am taking three days off, and then they
texted me the link to the Arizona Republic. Steve Pitt
had been murdered outside of his office the night before,
and I just drove off the road. So a couple
of days later I was in Phoenix for Steve Pitt's funeral,
and I don't know, two weeks after that, which I
(30:42):
wasn't expecting, we were doing a dateline episode about his murder.
And it turned out somebody that he had done a
court ordered evaluation of like eight or nine years earlier.
Had something happened, We don't know what. That sort of
hpped him over and made him want to start avenging
(31:03):
what he saw as everybody having had done to him.
He was almost certainly looking for the woman who had
been his wife, but she was very afraid of him,
and she also had the financial wherewithal to be able
to hide herself and their son, so the guy could
(31:24):
not find them, although god, I think they would be dead. Yeah,
I'm sure at least she would be dead. But he
couldn't find her. But he could find Steve, who was
still listed, and he went to Steve's office and murdered
him as Steve was leaving. Then he went to the
attorney who had represented the wife in the divorce. The
(31:45):
attorney wasn't actually in the office, but a couple of
paralegals were, and this guy killed them. Then he went
to the psychologist's office, who he saw as having turned
his son against him. That psychologist wasn't there, but he
rented office space to some other person, and so he
killed that guy. And then it turned out he'd killed
another couple in their home, maybe before any of this happened,
(32:09):
because he had their gun. And I'm not sure what
that They weren't connected to the divorce or his issues
with his family, but he might have wanted money from them,
or it's not quite clear when he wanted, but he
had killed them too.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
And then by the time police in Phoenix and.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Scottsdale figured out like they sort of connected the dots,
they realized what this hall was. They found where he was,
they surrounded him, but the guy killed himself before before
he could be brought in. So yeah, that was the
first time I covered the story of a murder of
somebody that I had known. And the weird thing was,
(32:47):
when Steve and I had been hanging out in Los
Angeles about ten days earlier, he was already in that
guy's sites. The police found that he'd been sort of
stalking Steve for a while, I probably learning, you know,
when he went to work, and when he went home,
they saw his car. They went back on security video
and so his car park nearby. So Insteve was already
a marked man at the time that we met, which
(33:08):
was very sobering and what a loss. I mean, not
only was it this huge resource for law enforcement and
did a lot of good, but he was also just
the most wonderful guy.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
So when I hear a story like that, my broken
brain does a thing where it tells me the odds
of something awful happening to me or my family are
way better than they really are, simply because I've covered
so many awful things, and now there's something awful happening
in your own circle?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Why am I special? Why will I be spared?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Does this ever happen to you? Do you internalize stories
that way? Like the volume of stories? Does that impact you?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You know? I mean? Am I more careful?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I don't know? Maybe? I mean I don't. I don't
walk around thinking that something terrible.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Is going to happen. You know.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I know that cops who've seen like a lot of
terrible things, you know, when they're you know that that
there can be very strict parents, you know, and when
their kid says to them, you know, I'm going to
we're all going to the mall.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
No, you're not right, right, they're not Your friends can go,
You're not going. Well, we're all going out to this
all night party. No, you aren't right, which you know
can have the opposite effect.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I mean, it can make your kid chafe and end
up doing things that are dangerous. Yeah, you know, you know,
I mean, there's no way to know. Obviously. No, the
answer is you're wrong. You actually have a tiny, tiny chance.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
There's something wrong with you. It's there's something wrong with me,
and it's my anxiety and it's why I'm in I'm
in treatment and therapy and on medication.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
But I mean, but you're not alone. I mean sure
a lot of people think that.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, it's just hard to it's hard to dissociate sometimes
and it's hard to separate it, and it's hard not
to think there is trouble around every corner. And it's
so wonderful that you don't have that problem considering what
you do.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I don't sort of look around every corner and think
like something terrible is about to happen or is going
to happen.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I'm glad. It's awful, it's exhausting.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But I will say I am careful. I mean, I
you know, I don't walk to my car looking at
my phone and.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Not looking around. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Whether that comes from Dayline or not, because that's probably
just good advice no matter who you are.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Right, you wrote somewhere that we live in a world
in which there's too much violence and not enough mental
health care.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And that's for sure a fact.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I mean, I mean, one of the things that Steve
said in his evaluation of that guy was that if
he didn't get some significant medical psychological intervention, that he
was going to be a big problem, and that guy
didn't get any and he was a big problem. And
also you know, I think he was ordered by a
(35:58):
judge not to have any guns. But there's sort of
no mechanism for making sure that people in that situation,
you know, don't come into possession of a gun or
you know, there's I mean there's in Arizona where that happened,
that just wasn't anything, and there's hardly anything in a
lot of other places too, So I mean, yeah, I
mean we do. We live in a society where you know,
there's this trap door out there all the time for everybody,
(36:21):
I mean, too big a stigma against you know, going
into therapy or getting help.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
It's too hard.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
That's why I talk about it, because they don't want
there to be a stigma, and it's just so important.
Anxiety is now the most common mental health disorder, and
it's really impacting a lot of kids, and it's it's tough.
We live in an anxious and anxious time and an
anxious world. Okay, my friends, yes, run a thing called
(36:48):
crime con. They started crime con YEP, which is super
popular convention.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
I know you've gone to meet with fans. I love it.
I get the appeal.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I am super proud of my friends for creating a
space for fans like this. But it's a little weird
that we live in a world where crime gets its
own celebratory convention.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Though. I mean there's a big community out there. Somebody
was certainly going to figure out that, you know, that
there was money to be made by bringing everybody together.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, you know, I like it because it's a chance
to meet.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I mean I went to the first one all along,
which was in Indianapolis, and I think there have been
six of them so far.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Maybe. I mean, it gets a little bigger every year.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
And I went to the first one in Indianapolis, and
you know, I gave a gave a little address.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Room was packed. Yeah, And I came back and said to.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Liz Cole, who's the executive producer of Dayline, I'm like,
we got to go next year. Like this is the audience,
Like they're all jammed into one room, Like we gotta go.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
And you know, there's certain rules about the guys I
aren't really well publicized, Like people cannot show up dressed
as Jody Arius. You know, I mean, yeah, I mean
this is not the equivalent of you know, comic con, right, Yeah,
I mean I mean the people who go are by
and large, very very serious, and they, in my case,
(38:21):
they ask granular questions about dateline episodes really, and I
have to yeah, I mean, they really want to know,
you know, not just what was it like to sit
across from Zoe and so, but you know, why didn't
the cops lose use luminol at the second crime scene?
Speaker 3 (38:38):
I'm thinking, like, yeah, okay, which one was that?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Right?
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I mean they refer to the episodes by their titles,
which is the only part of the episode that I
don't play any role in, rowkay, Like those are put
in by somebody, you know, Like like, you know, the
story I'm covering right now is called Internally it's called
Baltimore Missing, but it'll be called something else. Yes, yes,
when it airs, you know, it'll be called you know,
(39:05):
mystery on Eagle Road. Right, And then when someone asks
me about that in two years, something like which one
was mistery?
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Oh, I'm good, don't worry. I am going to ask
you actually about the titles?
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
So, but like like people really, I mean, at crime con,
people really know about it, and it's not just me.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I mean they know about all that.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, so when they're talking to Nancy Grace, or when
they're talking to people from Oxygen, for the authors that
go or the podcasters, I mean there's a lot of
knowledge there. Yes, and for me, it's nice to meet
the people that watch Dayline.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Sure, I get that.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
How do you What do you do to unwind?
Speaker 3 (39:46):
I read crime novels. No, no, you don't. That's your
waiting waiting.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
It's like if I said I read the newspaper.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Waiting anxiously for the next Michael Finally, the next Robert Craze,
the next George Pelicanos. I'm reading. I'm reading Jane Casey
right now. Yeah, the next Meg Gardner.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
You.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, I watch all the British crime shows.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
That's amazing. That's the last thing I expected you to say.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Right, you're gonna throw I go, okay, well I'll come
up with something better. I Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
I go fishing.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, I fish, and I uh, what's the thing where
you carve whalebone?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
What's that called? I do that? Yes? Yeah, I made yeah, yeah,
I made a ship in a bottle. Yeah, it's fabulous.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah, Okay, it's time for the lightning round. So these
are quick and fine. Okay, how many dateline podcasts?
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Can you name? My own?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Motive for murder? Missing in America? Internal Affairs, the thing
about Pam, the thing about Helen and Olga, the girl
in the Blue Mustang, murder in the Hollywood Hills. Yeah,
something about Room thirteen. That was one of keys can't
roll what that one was called?
Speaker 3 (41:14):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
And they're talking about original podcasts. Those are the ones
I can name. Yeah, I probably missed. I think I
missed one of my own.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
But yes, there's there's so many. Do you talk to
Stone Phillips? Oh yeah, sure in these days. You know,
he lived in California for a long time.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I'd been back and forth between New York and California,
and so I would see him sometimes, and he kind
of retired from broadcasting after he left eight Line.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
He's still pretty young. I mean he's had the same age. Yeah,
he's very happy. His son has grown up. I think
works here in la in the motion picture industries. I
think come out here sometimes to see him. But he's
doing fine. He plays a lot of tennis, he plays
a lot of golf. He seems really happy when I
see him.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
He's still one of the two or three best looking
people I've ever met in my life. Yeah, no, he's
he's he is stunningly handsome. And I met JFK.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Junior, So yeah, that says a lot. He was definitely
my childhood crushed stone.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
No a knockout and the sweetest, nicest guy.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
That's nice to hear. Yeah, Okay, murder she wrote took
place in a fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine. Do
you know where it was actually filmed?
Speaker 3 (42:28):
I do not. I do not, and I didn't watch that.
I wasn't into crime. Then it was filmed in Mendocino.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Really, wow, that's a long way out of the way
out right, I mean no, but I mean, like, like
to get all the crew and the gear up to
Mendocino that had to be expensive. Like, I'm surprised that
it wasn't somebody's closer to a major city, right. Did
she have a cottage up there or something that's like
the kind of thing. Don't you think that's the kind
of thing that Angela would have demanded? Like yeah, okay, yeah,
(42:57):
i'll do it, I'll do it.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
I'll do it, but you got a shoot it down
the road from where I live.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see her being like that.
Do you know what state featured the most dateline stories?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Well, we've been through this before. It's going to depend
on how you count dateline stories. The answer is almost
certainly California. It is, but that's because you got to
you add up all the oj stories and all the
Michael Jackson stories and all the Scott stories, which were
you know, all of these, you know, we didn't just
do them once and then all the other stories that
(43:30):
we cover in California, so that yes.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
It's California. But yeah, but that's true for.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
A lot of things about California, just because there's so
many people in it, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
I'm gonna name three dateline episodes by their titles good,
and I want you to tell me which one is fake?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Okay, oh good, okay, good? All right. I like this.
This is good. This is a very good thing.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yes, Secrets in Silver Lake, that's real.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
I did that. Okay.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
She wore a yellow ribbon, that's that's a real one.
Even the devil went to church.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
I'm gonna say, even the devil with the church is
the fake one?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Nope, that's real. She wore a yellow ribbon. Is not
a dateline episode, It's a Turner classic movie. And I'm
going to tell your brother, Okay, well you didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, well, good luck, good luck getting him on the phone.
Tell him to call me.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I think you passed. Though.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
This is a final question, and it's the question that
is most important to me. When is iced coffee season?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
I'm gonna say it's the same as wearing white, you know,
like interesting Memorial Day through Labor Day.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
That's incorrect, it's year round. But that's fine. That's fine.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
You can have that.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
I mean, I mean, clearly you can have it before that.
Clearly it's warm after Labor Day. But yeah, I'm gonna
say generally it's when you wear white.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Great, well, Josh Megawitz.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
This was This was a pleasure so much. Thank you
for having me. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I'm really geeking out and big fan and so I'm
just so grateful that you came on to me. Thom
next week, on Off the Cup, I talked to Henry
Winkler the Fonds. I don't know what happened, but I
changed my voice and when I changed my voice, all
of a sudden, this fonds came out.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
I had six lines.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Then I looked at.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
The man who was reading the other part with me.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And I said, hey, don't you look at me like that,
threw the script up in the air, saunted out of
the room.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
At the end of.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
The month, when my money ran out, when I had
to go back to New York, they called and said,
would you like to do this character on the show.
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Recent Choice network. I'm Your HOSTESSI Cupp
editing and sound design by Derrek Clements. Our executive producers
are Messie Cup, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffmann. If you
(46:01):
like Off the Cup, please rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts, follow, or subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday.
That's one of the reasons why people, Yeah, watch Dateline because,
like so much in the world, doesn't work the way
it's supposed to. But yeah, you know, Fridays at nine,
that scoundrel gets what's coming to them most of the time.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
This is off the cup. I'm se Cup. And as
a journalist and someone who covers quote unquote the news,
we're usually curious about everything. It's a quality that I
find a lot of us have in common. We just
want to know stuff. And so the true crime category
of news has always been interesting to most journalists I know,
(00:37):
even if they don't report on crime. And it was
definitely true of me. I was a true crime fanatic.
And later I'll get into why I'm less of a
true crime fanatic these days, but solving crimes was always
interesting to me. And one of the earliest memories I
have of watching non cartoons was when I was about
seven or eight and my parents let me stay up
(00:58):
late to watch Murder She wrote every week, and it
terrified me, but I also loved it, and I imagined
being a writer one day, living in a small town
like habit Cove when I was older, and solving all
the crimes which seemed to happen way too often for
such a small town, but that was obviously fiction. But
I also loved unsolved mysteries and cops and America's Most Wanted.
(01:20):
Then in nineteen ninety two, Dateline comes along with Stone
Phillips and Jane Polly, and I was into the news
at a very young age as well.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
But I was hooked on the show.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
And it was a news magazine show that covered all
kinds of stories.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I loved it.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And then of course there was this huge true crime
boom and now you know Dateline sort of synonymous with
like murders. One of the hosts, I'll tell you my
favorite Dateline host is Josh Mankowitz and his hips don't lie.
If you follow him on social media as I do,
I am thrilled to have him on off the Cup.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Welcome Josh, thank you great to be here. And yeah,
my hips, you're right. Why don't they lie? Though? That's
the question? Well, look, I.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Mean this is journalism. I mean, you know, you know,
I mean that's the thing about you know, you can't
lie when you're a reporter. So that's an easy claim
to make, you know, true Detective magazine, you can chart
that as the beginning of sort of journalism about true crime.
I mean, obviously there's earlier examples Sherlock Holmes and things
(02:24):
like that, but I mean there's a true detective magazine
in the United States talking about horrible crimes and the
dogged policeman who solved them.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Right. Yeah, that was first published in nineteen twenty four. Wow,
So that would be one hundred years of people reading
about true crime journalism. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
So you know, people will to say me, oh, how
long you think it's going to last. I'm thinking, like, yeah,
a while, because it's been going on for a long time.
I mean, this has always been a topic that people
read about and were interested in, whether it was that,
whether it was in cold blood right right, I mean,
I mean all those wonderful true crime books of the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties,
(03:04):
or the sort of current craze of true crime on TV, podcasts, streaming,
any other way you want to get your content.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
And this is correct me. If I'm wrong, Dayline's thirty
second year on NBC, I.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Think yes, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
It depends a little bit about how you count the seasons,
because I think we started in the middle of the season.
I think they started in January instead of in September.
But yeah, I think this is thirty two years for Dayline.
I've only been here thirty I mean February thirty years.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, so only and we're going to get into that.
But a lot of people are watching them in syndication.
But you're you're still I mean you're still airing new
episodes of course.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean we've been you know, we were
off for the Olympics and we used that time to
do a lot of new stories, all of which you're
going to be airing this fall Fridays at nine o'clock Eastern.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Don't watch alone.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
There you go. So how I mean, everyone I know
in this industry wants a job that is basically forever.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
How did you pull this off?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Okay, So when I took this job in February of
ninety five, I didn't have the slightest thought like, Okay,
this is the thing you're going to retire from. You didn't,
you know, like what lasts thirty years in television? Nothing?
Monday Night Football, Meet the Press. I mean, there just
aren't a lot of things. So I thought, well, okay,
(04:29):
I'll do this for a while and then, you know,
do something else. And I'd been a political reporter before.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Yeah, I covered.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Politics in New York City and in LA and I
had I'd been an correspondent for ABC, and I'd covered
the Congress. And when I came to Dayline, we were
not doing exclusively crime. We were doing, as you remember,
because you remember the original Dayline with the Paphone and Jane.
We were doing all kinds of stories.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, corruption, scandals, yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
All sorts of things, funny stories.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
During the nineties stock market boom, we did a thing
where we pitted a stockbroker who was picking stocks against
the chimp, and we would we'd put the portfolios into
the chimp's cage, and whichever one the chip picked up,
(05:21):
we'd assumed that that was their choice of which stock
to buy. So the you know, the stockbroker was buying
like Microsoft, right, and the chimp was like, no, I'm
going with Netscape.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
So and of course, and of course after it, yeah,
and of.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Course, after a period of time, the chip was actually
a hat, which was great.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I don't remember how it came out. So we did go.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, we did all kinds of stuff. And after I'd
been here about ten years. About two thousand and five,
we started making the turn to doing in two ways.
One is we started doing hour long episodes, which we
had none before. We'd done like four or five six
stories within an hour. Sometimes you'd do a two part thing,
but usually it was you know, the choices were a
(06:09):
story that was about two to three minutes long, five
to seven minutes long, and then up to about fifteen
minutes long.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And then we started doing hours. And we also started
covering crime and mostly murders. And when that happened, I
was not super interested in doing that.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
I did not really rebel in the sixties. I had
no six in the seventies, I made no money in
the eighties. So when true crime came along, I missed
that trend too. So it's not surprising.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I like, a couple of minutes in here, and I
already know so much about you, right.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Yeah, no, I was.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
I was behind all of those curves. So yeah, I
did not see true crime coming. But I thought, okay,
I mean I could tell they really wanted to start
doing this, yes, and so I thought, all right, I'll
do one. So I did one, and after it was over,
I thought, well, that wasn't so bad. That was kind
of fun, it's kind of interesting. I'm still in touch
(07:10):
with the mom from that story.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
And then we were just off and running and then
it the audience responded. You know, we found ways to
tell these stories that sort of wasn't being done anywhere else.
Because most crimes I'm not talking about, you know, John
Bnay Ramsey or something that everybody knows the details of it.
Most of the stories we cover the stories that you've
never heard of before. And there are stories where we're
(07:35):
able to say to the family involved, you're not going
to get two hours of coverage anywhere else. Most of
these are stories that got eight to ten inches in
the newspaper and maybe a minute or two on local
TV news, and then maybe they covered it again when.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
There was a trial, but that was pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
But at two hours, we can tell a much longer,
a much more in depth story, with a lot more texture,
a lot more context, a lot more backstory. You'll get
a sense of not just the crime and the killer,
but who the victim was, who the family was, what
that relationship was.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Like, what that loss is like.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
And sometimes in addition to these terrible stories, you also
hear stories of you know, strength and redemption, which is
kind of you know resilience, which is one of the
things that I think makes people keep coming back to Dayline,
because look, most people are never going to be touched
by violent crime in their lifetimes. Most people are not
going to be the victim of a violent crime. But
everybody has been in a relationship that did not end
(08:32):
the way they wanted it to, and Daylines about those
choices too.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yes, that's such a good point, and I want to
talk a lot about Dayline, but first I want to
talk about you. You were born in Berkeley. Did you
grow up there?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Now, my dad was going to law school at Berkeley
at the time. That's why I was born there.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And then I lived in Los Angeles till I was
about six. Then we went to South America because my
dad went to the Peace Corps. Then then he was
still with the Peace Corps when he went to DC
after that. So then by the time I was about
nine until I was twenty six twenty seven, I lived
in DC.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Well, and I most people don't know the history, the
long and impressive history of your very famous family.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
I'm going to run through it for listeners.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Okay, I want you to know I'm about to blow
a lot of people's minds. So your dad, Frank Mankowitz,
was Robert F. Kennedy's press secretary. Yes, we're gonna talk
about that, Okay. Your grandfather, Herman, along with Orson Wells,
wrote the screenplay for a little movie called Citizen Kane.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
Fyi. Orson Wells had nothing to do with writing that movie.
Go ahead, amazing, amazing? Oh good.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Your great uncle Joseph was a director and screenwriter of,
among other projects, All About Eve. Your brother Ben is
a host at Turner Classic Movies. We watch you guys
fight on Twitter sometimes. And you've got a couple cousins
who are also very successful in the movie business. I mean,
I know, right, what was it like growing up with
famous relatives?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
I mean, you know, you didn't really think about it.
I mean, it was just you know, I mean, yeah,
you know, George K. Koor was at the dinner table sometimes,
you know, at my grandmother's house.
Speaker 3 (10:18):
But I didn't, like, you know, I wasn't watching his movies.
I just knew him as George.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
You know, when my dad was with RFK you know,
Dolores Werda was at our kitchen table sort of plotting
strategy for the farm workers. But like that was, you know,
just a friend of my dad's who came over.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
So yeah. When I met Robert Kennedy a couple of.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Times when I was, you know, twelve eleven, twelve years old,
I did get the feeling like, Okay, this is this
is this is different. Not everybody has this experience.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
What do you remember about RFK senior?
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Magnetic, charismatic, very soft spoken, like you had to strain
to hear him. He didn't talk, he didn't speak loudly,
and I think usually maybe more comfortable around kids than
the alt love to talk about what you were up
to as a kid, Maybe because he had so many kids.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, well, and I don't. I mean, we don't get
political here, but I just got to know, what do
you make of his son's presidential campaign.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I barely knew him back then.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I think I met him a few times, but not
accurate to say that we were even friends back then
as kids.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I think he's a year older than I am.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I ran into him again when he was practicing environmental
law in New York City and I was a political
reporter for Channel two, and I've covered some event that
he was at and then out flours, I went up
and said hi to him, and he said, wow, it's weird.
We don't know each other a lot better. And I said, yeah,
it is weird, and then we've never spoken again, So
that was left there. Yeah, that was the extent of
(11:47):
my relationship with Rfkjune.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
You did not remedy the weirdness.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
Right, I mean, my dad would be appalled today.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
I don't think that's going to come as any shock,
and my dad would be absolutely crestfallen.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
About his campaign.
Speaker 1 (12:01):
You mean, yeah, just about sort of the nuttiness associated
with that and the damage he's doing to his own name.
But yeah, I mean, might dad be appalled with a
lot of things happening in America today, so that that
probably wouldn't even make the top ten.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
So did you always want to be in the news?
Speaker 1 (12:29):
You know, I grew up watching Vietnam Civil rights movement,
Watergate on the evening news every night. Yeah, so I
did definitely think about that. You know, we watched the
CBS Evening News with water Kronkite.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Good Evening from CBS News headquarters in New York.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I'm going to say five days a week for you know,
probably fifteen years. I mean until I went away to college.
And then I remember being in my dorm room at
college and thinking like, oh, it's it's seven o'clock. I
got to watch the news, and I would get out
my little, tiny black on white TV and while everybody
else was doing something else, I would be I'd watch
(13:08):
the news, you know, and then it was the Patty
Hirst story, you know, when I would tell seventy three, there's.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Been a big kidnapping on the West Coast.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
The victim is Patricia Hurst, the daughter of newspaper executive
Randolph Hurst and a granddaughter of the legendary William Randolph Hearst.
Because I said, right, I did not have any sex
in the seventies, I was watching the news, so uh yeah,
I missed every trend.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I'm not sure what this decade is going to be
famous for, but I know that I will not.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Do it, okay, So yeah, I mean I always thought
about that, and I remember saying to my dad talking
about the correspondence on the evening news. I remember saying
that guy's got an interesting job, because the other day
he was in Texas covering that flood, and today here
he is in Alabama and he's covering this protest march
(13:56):
or whatever. He had to travel during that time, and
he had to get up to speed on this other story,
and I thought that sounded like a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
And my dad had been a journalist. No one remembers
this about him.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
I mean, he's primarily thought of as being in politics
and being in PR but he was also president of
National Public Radio for a while, and at an earlier
stage in his life, he was a local anchorman in Washington,
d C. Which no one remembers, in like about nineteen seventy,
at which he was spectacularly unsuccessful. So he had a
(14:29):
brief foray into TV news also, which sort of exposed
me to some of the people who worked there, and
that also got me interested. So by the time I
was in college, yeah, I was already thinking about this
as some kind of career. And I started working at
ABC News on the assignment desk in the middle of
the night in the summer when everybody else was on vacation,
(14:50):
in the summer of seventy five. So it's coming up
on fifty years.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Wow, what did you study in college? She went to Haverford, Right,
I went to Haverford.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
I studied sociology, which maybe not the smartest choice back then.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I can beat you. I studied art history, super super useful.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Yeah, so yeah, it comes in. Yeah, yeah, I talk
a lot about the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Yeah,
comes up, comes up all the time. I also thought
there was going to be more quadratic equations as we went.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Through life, and there have not been, indeed not been
nearly as much of that as I expected.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
No total, total waste. All right, let's get to Dateline.
It's nineteen ninety five, and your agent says, what to you?
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Why are you calling me all the time?
Speaker 1 (15:38):
Leave?
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Leave me alone. I have actual clients. Yeah, it was
welcome to be.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
It was not my agent, it was I was in
local news in Los Angeles covering politics. Dick Reardon had
just been elected mayor. Tom Bradley had left. He was
getting sworn in. But I didn't actually cover Reard. I
covered the campaign, and that was right at the end
of that and there was a big boom of news
(16:03):
magazines on all the networks, and Dateline had been around
for a couple of years, and it had. They went
through that thing with the GM truck where a bunch
of people got fired, and the new management team that
came in involved a guy named Neil Shapiro who went
on to be president of NBC News. But he's the
guy that took Dateline from just about at death's door
(16:26):
and made it the juggernaut than it is today, first
putting us on five nights a week at one time,
the multiple editions, and he's the guy that sort of
took Dateline from failure to household name and so Neil
and I knew Neil from having worked at ABC News
with him, But instead of going to Dayline, which I
(16:46):
probably could have done, then I went to a news
magazine that Fox was doing. There was no Fox News
channel then. This was the Fox network right where the
NFL now airs called front Page, which was murdoch attempt
to do a news magazine, and it's we were on
for like less than a year. I think we were
(17:07):
on about ten months. Maybe not even Ron Reagan was
on that that might jog people's memory. And there were
a couple of other correspondents and I was one of them,
and that sort of taught me how to do magazine story.
It ultimately didn't succeed. We were, you know, I think
we were one week. I have this, I tore this
out of the newspaper. They don't do this anymore because
(17:30):
it's all on the internet.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
But there was a.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
There was a time when the papers used to publish
the list of TV programs, you know, like the Nielsen raids. Yeah,
number one was you know, sixty minutes or something like that, right,
or you know, Dallas, right, And then it would go
down and one week there were one hundred and three
programs and front Page was number one hundred and three.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
So that we were.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
But even then, I mean even then, because there was
no streaming and almost no cable programs except you know,
reruns and things like that, but there's very little original
content on cable. Like even then, that rating today would
be like a that show would be a big success, right,
just you know, because of the raw numbers. Yeah, but
(18:18):
back then it definitely wasn't a success. And while it
was off the air and kind of getting retooled and
they couldn't decide what to do with it or what
to call it or when to put it back on,
I left and went to Dayline and that was in February.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Of ninety five. Wow.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And it's always except for the time you're talking about
where I was at Death Store, it's always been a
successful franchise. But it feels like it's reached kind of
a cult status now where it's even cooler than it
was like ten or twenty years ago, and younger generations
are discovering it and there's memes about you guys, And
what's that been like to have this like resurgence.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Well, you know, for a long time when a young
person would come up to me in an airport and say,
you're Josh, make it some dayline, Like, uh huh, the
next line was always my mom.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Loves you and I take a picture. Right now they
know us, they're not asking for them for their mom.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
And yeah, there was a point where Neil Shapiro, who
you know, made Dateline this big success.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
He moved up to be president of NBC.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
News, and David Corvo, who actually had produced the Fox
show that I worked on, Front Page, he came to
be executive producer of Dayline and he's the guy that
took us into true crime. And that's kind of what
made Dateline the thing that it is today. That's what
sort of got us that that that new audience. And also, yeah,
it made us cool in a way I sort of
(19:46):
didn't see coming. But we're all over popular culture now.
I mean when when Taylor Swift is talking about how
Dateline helped her create a song, I'm thinking, like, what
really mean?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, it's very cool, and you know it's funny. I
develop shows as well, And when I am in a
pitch meeting with a network, this is what they'll say.
I've heard this from several different network heads. They'll say,
we want something we can make a hundred of like Dateline.
(20:19):
People want to invest over and if they're liking something,
they want it over and over. Give it to me again,
give it to me again. And that's what's so great
about Dateline because they're endless, unfortunately, endless stories to tell.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, there are endless stories to tell, that is true. Yeah,
and also people see them again and again and again.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yes, they know how it ends, and they still want
to watch it.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
And they watch it anyway. And I mean we are
all I mean not only are we all over the
podcast universe. Yes, there's about five ways to get that
Dateline twenty four to seven streaming channel. I mean, it's
on Peacock, but it's also I think on Samsung TVs.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
It's on YouTube. I mean, and so I mean you
can go back. You can't go back thirty two seasons because.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
At one point we switched from standard definition to high
definition and the standard def episodes are not streaming because
they look weird on your on your TV.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
But you can go back. You can go back a
very long way.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
You can watch a lot of those episodes, and people
do and and they see them again and again and
again and then I mean, I know people when people
now talk to me about Dayline, I always ask them
how they consume it, because some people like, don't watch
the TV show, they're listening to the podcast, right.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Some people are unaware.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
That there are podcasts out there of them, you know,
and you know on the podcast, I mean, it is
the audio of Dayline.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
We don't change that at all.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
We do some original podcasts every year and those those
are done specifically to be podcasts, and they take a
lot longer. But people eat up those podcasts because they're
consumable in ways that television is not. Like in your
car or you know, when you're commuting or when you're
you know, doing work around the house.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Right to Jim, Yeah, do you and the other hosts
ever fight over stories, like tell me the process, how
a story comes to you or you get assigned a story.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I would say no, we don't, although within the way
Keith disag well. Within the last couple of weeks, just
for the first time since I've since I've been a
correspondent at Dayline, there was a story that I was
going to do in Canada, a cold case story.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
And I did a story in Canada several months ago,
and those cops put us onto this case.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
So the producer and I were going to do this
one too, but it turns out that it's it's happening
in a The story occurred in a place that Keith
thinks of as his hometown, and when he saw that
story was beingid, he said to me, I want to
do that. I'm like, I thought, wait aboute my name's
(22:46):
already on that.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
And then I was like, it's in everyone's interest at Dayline.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
For Keith Morrison to be as happy as possible, So
so I was like, you know what, go to Canada,
have a great time. But yeah, normally no, we do
not fight over any stories and that doesn't even qualify
as a fight. But you know, we hear about these
stories all kinds of different ways. I mean, we were
reading the papers all over the country every day, and
we're online all the time. And because we've been around
(23:14):
so long, police departments, prosecutors, local stations, even defense attorneys
are calling us and saying, I don't know how this
is going to come out, but this woman is missing.
Her husband is not joining in the searches, he's retained
a lawyer, he's acting very strangely. And we start making calls.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So I mean a lot of wait, are they doing
that because they want like this crime solved and exposed?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Why are they doing that just because they're being helpful?
You know? I mean why are they calling us in
the local station.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Because you know, because we'll probably end up, you know,
maybe interviewing their reporter or using their coverage, or they'll
will be on their air talking about this story. I mean,
when I go, you know, some small town and we
do a story about that, we probably will do some
little mini version of the story for them, you know,
(24:09):
if they want me to come on their newscast and
talk about it, I will. But in many cases they've
already done a huge amount of the sort of digging
on this story. They've probably covered the trial. They probably
were there early on when that search warrant was being served.
We weren't, but they were. We might be using those
pictures that they shot. So local stations call us, but
(24:29):
so do so do investigators that we've worked with in
the past, because you know, most people who have appeared
on Dateline. I'm not necessarily talking about the murderers here,
but most people who have appeared on dateline think like, yeah,
that worked out, I'm glad I did that.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, well, I want to say. I said I was
a devotee of true crime, and I don't know if
you've got this a lot, But then I had a kid,
and every victim, every awful story of unsolved crime was
about my kid, and I couldn't separate it. And add
(25:05):
that to the stories I cover for a living, the
terrible things that happen to innocent people, from war to genocide.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
You know, I had to take a break from it.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
And I'm better now, but I have to be in
a very good mental health space to watch a doc
or a dock series about real like violent crime. Sure,
do you ever take it home with you.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
These stories I don't I do understand because I tend
to focus on sort of the other things you learn
from those stories, not just the awful things that people
do to each other, which still shocks me all these
years later. You know, the things that people do to
somebody that they you know, once maybe love, Yeah, somebody
that might very well be the parent of their children,
(25:49):
and people think like, oh, yeah, it'll be fine, my
kids can lose their other parent in some violent way.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
I'll be okay, right, I mean, and that lose me
because I'm in jail now.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I don't understand any of that kind of thing. But
you also see tremendous stories of faith, of strength, of resiliency,
of recovery, and so I was kind of like focus
on that stuff. And sometimes it's like, it's really nice
to see justice done. I mean, that's one of the
reasons why people watch Dateline because like, so much in
the world doesn't work the way it's supposed to. But
(26:21):
you know, Fridays at nine that scoundrel gets what's coming
to them most.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Of the time, and that's sort of satisfying.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
But look, you know, we don't we could choose bloodier
stories We could do stories about serial killers. Certainly, there's
a lot of programs out there doing that. We could
do sex crimes, we could do crimes, you know, involving children,
and we could do much bloodier things than we do.
But we don't because like the audience could change the channel.
I mean, I don't want them to have the same
reaction you did, which is like I can't watch this.
(26:49):
Yeah right, yeah, we're not. You know, Dennis Murphy's famous
line about Dateline is, it's not about the murder, It's
about the marriage.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You know, it's so good.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
This is about the relationships. This is not about the
mechanics of the crime. It's about the mechanics sometimes of
solving the crime, and sometimes it's about the trail that
got police and prosecutors to the door of a murderer.
But it's usually not about exactly what happened in that
room and how many times somebody got shot or stabbed.
And now we can't even show most of those pictures
(27:22):
on television, I mean the number of you know, we
always wait till the end because we wanted to be adjudicated,
and also that's when you can get any exhibit that
was shown in court crime scene photos and stuff, But
I mean, what percentage of the crime scene photos can
we show? Like maybe five percent? Most of them we can't.
So I mean this is not about shocking people because
so much of it. We could cover much more horrifying things,
(27:47):
But like, I don't want to drive people away.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
I want people paying attention.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Up next, I talked to Josh about a story he
never expected to cover. Can you talk to me about
doctor Steve pitt Ugh?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Okay, Well, I met him because we interviewed him on
a story about the twenty year anniversary of the John
Benet story. Now I didn't cover the John Benet story
when it happened. Somebody else did, but they had left
Dateline by the time it was time to do a
twenty year story, so I kind of inherited that.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
So I met him.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Because he had worked with the Boulder Police on that,
and so he was an interview on that, and he
was a good friend of a producer that worked for
Dateline at the time who lived in Phoenix, which is
also where Steve lived, so they've gotten to know each other.
So through all of that I met him and we
became friends, and he came out here to La a
(28:54):
lot where I live, and he and his fiance and
and I went out. And I don't want to make
this sound like he was my best friend on the
face of the earth, but it was clear he was
going to become a better friend as the weeks and
months went on. And he called me and said, Hey,
I'm going to be in town. I'm at this art
fair and once you drop by. So I did drop by,
(29:17):
and he was there, and he was in a great mood,
and we sat around and had a couple of laughs,
and that was that. We were going to meet again
a few weeks later and a couple of weeks after that.
He was a psychiatrist, by the way, for people who
don't know, he was a forensic psychiatrist, and he did
a lot of work for law enforcement over the years,
helped police with profiles of different criminals and also did
(29:38):
some court ordered evaluations of different people. Had done that
over the years, in addition to having his own practice.
He was very successful. I worked in the Phoenix area,
and a couple of weeks after I had seen him
here in Los Angeles, I was driving up the coast
to a wedding north of la in the Wine Country
(29:58):
and the offic started calling me, and I thought, oh, no, no, no, no,
I am off. I am going to this wedding. My
wife was sitting next to me. No, no, I am not.
I don't know what you're calling me for, but I
am not available. And so I didn't answer the phone,
and they called a couple of times.
Speaker 3 (30:16):
I'm like, mm mmmm, maybe you're not did not read
the memo.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Where I am taking three days off, and then they
texted me the link to the Arizona Republic. Steve Pitt
had been murdered outside of his office the night before,
and I just drove off the road. So a couple
of days later I was in Phoenix for Steve Pitt's funeral,
and I don't know, two weeks after that, which I
(30:42):
wasn't expecting, we were doing a dateline episode about his murder.
And it turned out somebody that he had done a
court ordered evaluation of like eight or nine years earlier.
Had something happened, We don't know what. That sort of
hpped him over and made him want to start avenging
(31:03):
what he saw as everybody having had done to him.
He was almost certainly looking for the woman who had
been his wife, but she was very afraid of him,
and she also had the financial wherewithal to be able
to hide herself and their son, so the guy could
(31:24):
not find them, although god, I think they would be dead. Yeah,
I'm sure at least she would be dead. But he
couldn't find her. But he could find Steve, who was
still listed, and he went to Steve's office and murdered
him as Steve was leaving. Then he went to the
attorney who had represented the wife in the divorce. The
(31:45):
attorney wasn't actually in the office, but a couple of
paralegals were, and this guy killed them. Then he went
to the psychologist's office, who he saw as having turned
his son against him. That psychologist wasn't there, but he
rented office space to some other person, and so he
killed that guy. And then it turned out he'd killed
another couple in their home, maybe before any of this happened,
(32:09):
because he had their gun. And I'm not sure what
that They weren't connected to the divorce or his issues
with his family, but he might have wanted money from them,
or it's not quite clear when he wanted, but he
had killed them too.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
And then by the time police in Phoenix and.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Scottsdale figured out like they sort of connected the dots,
they realized what this hall was. They found where he was,
they surrounded him, but the guy killed himself before before
he could be brought in. So yeah, that was the
first time I covered the story of a murder of
somebody that I had known. And the weird thing was,
(32:47):
when Steve and I had been hanging out in Los
Angeles about ten days earlier, he was already in that
guy's sites. The police found that he'd been sort of
stalking Steve for a while, I probably learning, you know,
when he went to work, and when he went home,
they saw his car. They went back on security video
and so his car park nearby. So Insteve was already
a marked man at the time that we met, which
(33:08):
was very sobering and what a loss. I mean, not
only was it this huge resource for law enforcement and
did a lot of good, but he was also just
the most wonderful guy.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
So when I hear a story like that, my broken
brain does a thing where it tells me the odds
of something awful happening to me or my family are
way better than they really are, simply because I've covered
so many awful things, and now there's something awful happening
in your own circle?
Speaker 3 (33:41):
Why am I special? Why will I be spared?
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Does this ever happen to you? Do you internalize stories
that way? Like the volume of stories? Does that impact you?
Speaker 3 (33:50):
You know? I mean? Am I more careful?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
I don't know? Maybe? I mean I don't. I don't
walk around thinking that something terrible.
Speaker 3 (33:59):
Is going to happen. You know.
Speaker 1 (34:01):
I know that cops who've seen like a lot of
terrible things, you know, when they're you know that that
there can be very strict parents, you know, and when
their kid says to them, you know, I'm going to
we're all going to the mall.
Speaker 3 (34:13):
No, you're not right, right, they're not Your friends can go,
You're not going. Well, we're all going out to this
all night party. No, you aren't right, which you know
can have the opposite effect.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
I mean, it can make your kid chafe and end
up doing things that are dangerous. Yeah, you know, you know,
I mean, there's no way to know. Obviously. No, the
answer is you're wrong. You actually have a tiny, tiny chance.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
There's something wrong with you. It's there's something wrong with me,
and it's my anxiety and it's why I'm in I'm
in treatment and therapy and on medication.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Right.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
But I mean, but you're not alone. I mean sure
a lot of people think that.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Yeah, it's just hard to it's hard to dissociate sometimes
and it's hard to separate it, and it's hard not
to think there is trouble around every corner. And it's
so wonderful that you don't have that problem considering what
you do.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I don't sort of look around every corner and think
like something terrible is about to happen or is going
to happen.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
I'm glad. It's awful, it's exhausting.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
But I will say I am careful. I mean, I
you know, I don't walk to my car looking at
my phone and.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Not looking around. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Whether that comes from Dayline or not, because that's probably
just good advice no matter who you are.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Right, you wrote somewhere that we live in a world
in which there's too much violence and not enough mental
health care.
Speaker 3 (35:34):
And that's for sure a fact.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I mean, I mean, one of the things that Steve
said in his evaluation of that guy was that if
he didn't get some significant medical psychological intervention, that he
was going to be a big problem, and that guy
didn't get any and he was a big problem. And
also you know, I think he was ordered by a
(35:58):
judge not to have any guns. But there's sort of
no mechanism for making sure that people in that situation,
you know, don't come into possession of a gun or
you know, there's I mean there's in Arizona where that happened,
that just wasn't anything, and there's hardly anything in a
lot of other places too, So I mean, yeah, I
mean we do. We live in a society where you know,
there's this trap door out there all the time for everybody,
(36:21):
I mean, too big a stigma against you know, going
into therapy or getting help.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
It's too hard.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
That's why I talk about it, because they don't want
there to be a stigma, and it's just so important.
Anxiety is now the most common mental health disorder, and
it's really impacting a lot of kids, and it's it's tough.
We live in an anxious and anxious time and an
anxious world. Okay, my friends, yes, run a thing called
(36:48):
crime con. They started crime con YEP, which is super
popular convention.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
I know you've gone to meet with fans. I love it.
I get the appeal.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
I am super proud of my friends for creating a
space for fans like this. But it's a little weird
that we live in a world where crime gets its
own celebratory convention.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
Though. I mean there's a big community out there. Somebody
was certainly going to figure out that, you know, that
there was money to be made by bringing everybody together.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, you know, I like it because it's a chance
to meet.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
I mean I went to the first one all along,
which was in Indianapolis, and I think there have been
six of them so far.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Maybe. I mean, it gets a little bigger every year.
Speaker 1 (37:38):
And I went to the first one in Indianapolis, and
you know, I gave a gave a little address.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Room was packed. Yeah, And I came back and said to.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Liz Cole, who's the executive producer of Dayline, I'm like,
we got to go next year. Like this is the audience,
Like they're all jammed into one room, Like we gotta go.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
And you know, there's certain rules about the guys I
aren't really well publicized, Like people cannot show up dressed
as Jody Arius. You know, I mean, yeah, I mean
this is not the equivalent of you know, comic con, right, Yeah,
I mean I mean the people who go are by
and large, very very serious, and they, in my case,
(38:21):
they ask granular questions about dateline episodes really, and I
have to yeah, I mean, they really want to know,
you know, not just what was it like to sit
across from Zoe and so, but you know, why didn't
the cops lose use luminol at the second crime scene?
Speaker 3 (38:38):
I'm thinking, like, yeah, okay, which one was that?
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Right?
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I mean they refer to the episodes by their titles,
which is the only part of the episode that I
don't play any role in, rowkay, Like those are put
in by somebody, you know, Like like, you know, the
story I'm covering right now is called Internally it's called
Baltimore Missing, but it'll be called something else. Yes, yes,
when it airs, you know, it'll be called you know,
(39:05):
mystery on Eagle Road. Right, And then when someone asks
me about that in two years, something like which one
was mistery?
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Oh, I'm good, don't worry. I am going to ask
you actually about the titles?
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
So, but like like people really, I mean, at crime con,
people really know about it, and it's not just me.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
I mean they know about all that.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
Yeah, so when they're talking to Nancy Grace, or when
they're talking to people from Oxygen, for the authors that
go or the podcasters, I mean there's a lot of
knowledge there. Yes, and for me, it's nice to meet
the people that watch Dayline.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Sure, I get that.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
How do you What do you do to unwind?
Speaker 3 (39:46):
I read crime novels. No, no, you don't. That's your
waiting waiting.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
It's like if I said I read the newspaper.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Waiting anxiously for the next Michael Finally, the next Robert Craze,
the next George Pelicanos. I'm reading. I'm reading Jane Casey
right now. Yeah, the next Meg Gardner.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
You.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah, I watch all the British crime shows.
Speaker 2 (40:15):
That's amazing. That's the last thing I expected you to say.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Right, you're gonna throw I go, okay, well I'll come
up with something better. I Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
I go fishing.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
Yeah, I fish, and I uh, what's the thing where
you carve whalebone?
Speaker 3 (40:28):
What's that called? I do that? Yes? Yeah, I made yeah, yeah,
I made a ship in a bottle. Yeah, it's fabulous.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Yeah, Okay, it's time for the lightning round. So these
are quick and fine. Okay, how many dateline podcasts?
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Can you name? My own?
Speaker 1 (40:53):
Motive for murder? Missing in America? Internal Affairs, the thing
about Pam, the thing about Helen and Olga, the girl
in the Blue Mustang, murder in the Hollywood Hills. Yeah,
something about Room thirteen. That was one of keys can't
roll what that one was called?
Speaker 3 (41:14):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
And they're talking about original podcasts. Those are the ones
I can name. Yeah, I probably missed. I think I
missed one of my own.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
But yes, there's there's so many. Do you talk to
Stone Phillips? Oh yeah, sure in these days. You know,
he lived in California for a long time.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
I'd been back and forth between New York and California,
and so I would see him sometimes, and he kind
of retired from broadcasting after he left eight Line.
Speaker 3 (41:42):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
He's still pretty young. I mean he's had the same age. Yeah,
he's very happy. His son has grown up. I think
works here in la in the motion picture industries. I
think come out here sometimes to see him. But he's
doing fine. He plays a lot of tennis, he plays
a lot of golf. He seems really happy when I
see him.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
That's great.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
He's still one of the two or three best looking
people I've ever met in my life. Yeah, no, he's
he's he is stunningly handsome. And I met JFK.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
Junior, So yeah, that says a lot. He was definitely
my childhood crushed stone.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
No a knockout and the sweetest, nicest guy.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
That's nice to hear. Yeah, Okay, murder she wrote took
place in a fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine. Do
you know where it was actually filmed?
Speaker 3 (42:28):
I do not. I do not, and I didn't watch that.
I wasn't into crime. Then it was filmed in Mendocino.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Really, wow, that's a long way out of the way
out right, I mean no, but I mean, like, like
to get all the crew and the gear up to
Mendocino that had to be expensive. Like, I'm surprised that
it wasn't somebody's closer to a major city, right. Did
she have a cottage up there or something that's like
the kind of thing. Don't you think that's the kind
of thing that Angela would have demanded? Like yeah, okay, yeah,
(42:57):
i'll do it, I'll do it.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
I'll do it, but you got a shoot it down
the road from where I live.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see her being like that.
Do you know what state featured the most dateline stories?
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Well, we've been through this before. It's going to depend
on how you count dateline stories. The answer is almost
certainly California. It is, but that's because you got to
you add up all the oj stories and all the
Michael Jackson stories and all the Scott stories, which were
you know, all of these, you know, we didn't just
do them once and then all the other stories that
(43:30):
we cover in California, so that yes.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
It's California. But yeah, but that's true for.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
A lot of things about California, just because there's so
many people in it, you know, I mean.
Speaker 3 (43:40):
That makes sense.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
I'm gonna name three dateline episodes by their titles good,
and I want you to tell me which one is fake?
Speaker 3 (43:47):
Okay, oh good, okay, good? All right. I like this.
This is good. This is a very good thing.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Yes, Secrets in Silver Lake, that's real.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
I did that. Okay.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
She wore a yellow ribbon, that's that's a real one.
Even the devil went to church.
Speaker 1 (44:06):
I'm gonna say, even the devil with the church is
the fake one?
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Nope, that's real. She wore a yellow ribbon. Is not
a dateline episode, It's a Turner classic movie. And I'm
going to tell your brother, Okay, well you didn't know that.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, well, good luck, good luck getting him on the phone.
Tell him to call me.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
I think you passed. Though.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
This is a final question, and it's the question that
is most important to me. When is iced coffee season?
Speaker 1 (44:32):
I'm gonna say it's the same as wearing white, you know,
like interesting Memorial Day through Labor Day.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
That's incorrect, it's year round. But that's fine. That's fine.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
You can have that.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
I mean, I mean, clearly you can have it before that.
Clearly it's warm after Labor Day. But yeah, I'm gonna
say generally it's when you wear white.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Great, well, Josh Megawitz.
Speaker 3 (44:56):
This was This was a pleasure so much. Thank you
for having me. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
I'm really geeking out and big fan and so I'm
just so grateful that you came on to me. Thom
next week, on Off the Cup, I talked to Henry
Winkler the Fonds. I don't know what happened, but I
changed my voice and when I changed my voice, all
of a sudden, this fonds came out.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
I had six lines.
Speaker 2 (45:26):
Then I looked at.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
The man who was reading the other part with me.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
And I said, hey, don't you look at me like that,
threw the script up in the air, saunted out of
the room.
Speaker 3 (45:37):
At the end of.
Speaker 2 (45:38):
The month, when my money ran out, when I had
to go back to New York, they called and said,
would you like to do this character on the show.
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Recent Choice network. I'm Your HOSTESSI Cupp
editing and sound design by Derrek Clements. Our executive producers
are Messie Cup, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffmann. If you
(46:01):
like Off the Cup, please rate and review wherever you
get your podcasts, follow, or subscribe for new episodes every Wednesday.
Host
S.E. Cupp
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