A Dark Turn With Kevin Deutsch: Recent Episodes
Kevin Deutsch
Regina Martínez was no stranger to retaliation. A journalist out of Mexico's Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, Regina's stories for the magazine Proceso laid out the corruption and abuse underlying Mexican politics. She was barred from press conferences, and copies of Proceso often disappeared before they made the newsstands. In 2012, shortly after Proceso published an article on corruption and two Veracruz politicians, and the magazine went missing once again, she was bludgeoned to death in her bathroom. The message was clear: No journalist in Mexico was safe.
Katherine Corcoran, then leading the Associated Press coverage of Mexico, admired Regina Martínez's work. Troubled by the news of her death, Corcoran journeyed to Veracruz to find out what had happened. Regina hadn't even written the controversial article. But did she have something else that someone didn't want published? Once there, Katherine bonded with four of Regina's grief-stricken mentees, each desperate to prove who was to blame for the death of their friend. Together they battled cover-ups, narco-officials, red tape, and threats to sift through the mess of lies-and discover what got Regina killed.
A gripping look at reporters who dare to step on the deadly “third rail,” where the state and organized crime have become indistinguishable, In the Mouth of the Wolf confronts how silencing the free press threatens basic protections and rule of law across the globe.
Copyright Authors on the Air Global Radio Network.
Join host Kevin Deutsch for a freewheeling interview with true crime writing legend T.J. English.
His new book, Dangerous Rhythms, tells the symbiotic story of jazz and the underworld: a relationship fostered in some of 20th century America’s most notorious vice districts. For the first half of the century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed.
Even so, at the heart of this relationship was a festering racial inequity. The musicians were mostly African American, and the clubs and means of production were owned by white men. It was a glorified plantation system that, over time, would find itself out of tune with an emerging Civil Rights movement. Some artists, including Louis Armstrong, believed they were safer and more likely to be paid fairly if they worked in “protected” joints. Others believed that playing in venues outside mob rule would make it easier to have control over their careers.
Through English’s voluminous research and keen narrative skills, Dangerous Rhythmsreveals this deeply fascinating slice of American history in all its sordid glory.
QAnon isn’t just a dangerous right-wing conspiracy—in some cases, it’s a criminal undertaking. On this week’s episode of A Dark Turn With Kevin Deutsch, we tell the story of a Texas butterfly and animal sanctuary forced to shutter this month due to threats and attacks from QAnon supporters, as well as the right-wing politicians, political candidates and operatives who seek their votes and money. These conspiracists falsely claim the National Butterfly Center in Texas is operating a sex trafficking network along the U.S.-Mexico border. Insane? Of course. But also extremely dangerous; the center’s staff has been physically attacked and received a continuous stream of threats from QAnon believers. In this episode, we examine the butterfly center story through the broader prism of QAnon criminality, and explore how it’s contributing to the erosion of American democracy. Copyright 2022, Authors on the Air Global Radio Network.
A Dark Turn With Kevin Deutsch is proud to welcome award-winning author, writer and journalist Sam Quinones to the show to discuss his new book, THE LEAST OF US.
Many readers will be familiar with Quinones' previous book, Dreamland, a groundbreaking portrait of the opioid epidemic that awakened the nation. As America struggled to put back the pieces, Quinones was among the first to see the dangers that lay ahead: synthetic drugs and a new generation of kingpins whose product could be made in Magic Bullet blenders. In fentanyl, traffickers landed a painkiller a hundred times more powerful than morphine. They laced it into cocaine, meth, and counterfeit pills to cause tens of thousands of deaths-at the same time as Mexican traffickers made methamphetamine cheaper and more potent than ever, creating, Sam argues, swaths of mental illness and a surge in homelessness across the United States.
Quinones hit the road to investigate these new threats, discovering how addiction is exacerbated by consumer-product corporations. “In a time when drug traffickers act like corporations and corporations like traffickers,” he writes in The Least of Us, “our best defense, perhaps our only defense, lies in bolstering community.” Amid a landscape of despair, Quinones found hope in those embracing the forgotten and ignored, illuminating the striking truth that we are only as strong as our most vulnerable.
Weaving analysis of the drug trade into stories of humble communities, The Least of Us delivers an unexpected and awe-inspiring response to the call that shocked the nation in Dreamland.
"DEATH ON OCEAN BOULEVARD"
The call came on the morning of July 13, 2011, from the historic Spreckels Mansion, a lavish beachfront property in Coronado, California, owned by pharmaceutical tycoon and multimillionaire Jonah Shacknai. When authorities arrived, they found the naked body of Jonah’s girlfriend, Rebecca Zahau, gagged, her ankles tied and her wrists bound behind her. Jonah’s brother, Adam, claimed to have found Rebecca hanging by a rope from the second-floor balcony. On a bedroom door in black paint were the cryptic words:
SHE SAVED HIM CAN YOU SAVE HER.
Was this scrawled message a suicide note or a killer’s taunt? Rebecca’s death came two days after Jonah’s six-year-old son, Max, took a devastating fall while in Rebecca’s care. Authorities deemed Rebecca’s death a suicide resulting from her guilt. But who would stage either a suicide ora murder in such a bizarre, elaborate way?
Award-winning investigative journalist Caitlin Rother weaves stunning new details into a personal yet objective examination of the sensational case. She explores its many layers—including the civil suit in which a jury found Adam Shacknai responsible for Rebecca’s death, and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department bombshell decision to reconfirm its original findings. As compelling as it is troubling, this controversial real-life mystery is a classic American tragedy that evokes the same haunting fascination as the JonBenet Ramsey and O.J. Simpson cases.
Caitlin Rother is a New York Times bestselling true crime author and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist. She worked for nearly two decades as an investigative reporter and has had work published in Cosmopolitan, The Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among others. As a TV crime commentator, she has done more than 200 media appearances on episodes of 20/20, People Magazine Investigates, Crime Watch Daily, Australia's World News, Nancy Grace, Snapped, and numerous shows on Netflix, Investigation Discovery, HLN, REELZ, Oxygen, E!, A&E, C‑SPAN and various PBS affiliates. Rother also works as a writing/research coach and consultant, and plays piano and sings in an acoustic band. She lives in Southern California and can be found online at CaitlinRother.com.
This is the most socially vital book we've talked about on the show. It's also one hell of a read.
From the author of El Narco, journalist Ioan Grillo's BLOOD GUN MONEY is a searing investigation into the enormous black market for firearms, essential to cartels and gangs in the drug trade and contributing to the epidemic of mass shootings.
From the book jacket:
"The gun control debate is revived with every mass shooting. But far more people die from gun deaths on the street corners of inner city America and across the border as Mexico's powerful cartels battle to control the drug trade. Guns and drugs aren't often connected in our heated discussions of gun control-but they should be. In Ioan Grillo's groundbreaking new work of investigative journalism, he shows us this connection by following the market for guns in the Americas and how it has made the continent the most murderous on earth.
Grillo travels to gun manufacturers, strolls the aisles of gun shows and gun shops, talks to FBI agents who have infiltrated biker gangs, hangs out on Baltimore street corners, and visits the ATF gun tracing center in West Virginia. Along the way, he details the many ways that legal guns can cross over into the black market and into the hands of criminals, fueling violence here and south of the border. Simple legislative measures would help close these loopholes, but America's powerful gun lobby is uncompromising in its defense of the hallowed Second Amendment. Perhaps, however, if guns were seen not as symbols of freedom, but as key accessories in our epidemics of addiction, the conversation would shift. Blood Gun Money is that conversation shifter."
BLOOD GUN MONEY is powerful enough to shake things up in America, and change the way many of us think about guns.
On April 3, 1996, a team of FBI agents closed in on an isolated cabin in remote Montana, marking the end of the longest and most expensive investigation in FBI history. The cabin’s lone inhabitant was a former mathematics prodigy and wunderkind professor who had abandoned society decades earlier. Few people knew his name, Theodore Kaczynski, but everyone knew the mayhem and death associated with his nickname: the Unabomber. For two decades, Kaczynski had masterminded a campaign of random terror, killing and maiming innocent people through bombs sent in untraceable packages. The FBI task force charged with finding the perpetrator of these horrifying crimes grew to 150 people, yet his identity remained a maddening mystery. Then, in 1995, a “manifesto” from the Unabomber was published in the New York Times and Washington Post, resulting in a cascade of tips–including the one that cracked the case. With access to new primary sources and exclusive interviews with key law enforcement officials, New York Times bestselling author and former federal prosecutor Lis Wiehl meticulously reconstructs the white-knuckle, tension-filled hunt to identify and capture the mysterious killer. A revelatory, historical thriller of the years-long battle of wits between the FBI and the brilliant-but-criminally insane Kaczynski, Hunting the Unabomber is the spellbinding account of the most complex and captivating manhunt in American history. To order Lis’ books and learn more about her work, check out her website: http://liswiehlbooks.com
A DARK TURN welcomes writer, filmmaker, investigative journalist, activist, and web publisher Jake Anderson to the show.
His new nonfiction book GONE AT MIDNIGHT: THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF ELISA LAM, is a title I couldn't put down. It's got police corruption, a deeply disturbing murder mystery, and Downtown L.A. history, all wrapped into a gritty, propulsive little package.
Here's the book's set up:
"A Los Angeles hotel with a haunting history. A missing young woman. A disturbing video followed by a shocking discovery. A cold-case mystery that has become an internet phenomenon—and for one determined journalist, a life-changing quest toward uncomfortable truths.
Twenty-one-year-old Vancouver student Elisa Lam was last heard from on January 31, 2013, after she checked into downtown L.A.’s Cecil Hotel—a 600-room building with a nine-decade history of scandal and tragedy. The next day, Elisa vanished. A search of the hotel yielded nothing. More than a week later, complaints by guests of foul-smelling tap water led to a grim discovery: Elisa’s nude body floating in a rooftop water tank, in an area extremely difficult to access without setting off alarms. The only apparent clue was a disturbing surveillance video of Elisa, uploaded to YouTube in hopes of public assistance.
As the eerie elevator video went viral, so did the questions of its tens of millions of viewers. Was Elisa’s death caused by murder, suicide, or paranormal activity? Was it connected to the Cecil’s sinister reputation? And in that video, what accounted for Elisa’s strange behavior? With the help of web sleuths and investigators from around the world, journalist Jake Anderson set out to uncover the facts behind a death that had become a macabre internet meme, as well as a magnet for conspiracy theorists.
In poring through Elisa’s revealing online journals and social-media posts, Anderson realized he shared more in common with the young woman than he imagined. His search for justice and truth became a personal journey, a dangerous descent into one of America's quiet epidemics. Along the way, he exposed a botched investigation and previously unreported disclosures from inside sources who suggest there may have been a corporate conspiracy and a police cover-up. In Gone at Midnight, Anderson chronicles eye-opening discoveries about who Elisa Lam really was and what—or whom—she was running from, and presents shocking new evidence that may re-open one of the most chilling and obsessively followed true crime cases of the century."
On June 21, 1964, more than twenty Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. The killings, in what would become known as the “Mississippi Burning” case, were among the most brazen acts of violence during the civil rights movement. And even though the killers’ identities, including the sheriff’s deputy, were an open secret, no one was charged with murder in the months and years that followed.
It took forty-one years before the mastermind was brought to trial and finally convicted for the three innocent lives he took. If there is one man who helped pave the way for justice, it is investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell.
In Race Against Time, Mitchell takes readers on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact. His work played a central role in bringing killers to justice for the assassination of Medgar Evers, the firebombing of Vernon Dahmer, the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham and the Mississippi Burning case. Mitchell reveals how he unearthed secret documents, found long-lost suspects and witnesses, building up evidence strong enough to take on the Klan. He takes us into every harrowing scene along the way, as when Mitchell goes into the lion’s den, meeting one-on-one with the very murderers he is seeking to catch. His efforts have put four leading Klansmen behind bars, years after they thought they had gotten away with murder.
This episode is dedicated to my friend Darran Simon, a wonderful man and brilliant journalist we lost this month amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Rest in peace, champion.
Award-winning journalist Vivian Ho exposes a shattering true-crime story, shedding light on America’s new lost generation.
In 2015, the senseless Bay Area murders of twenty-three-year-old Audrey Carey and sixty-seven-year-old Steve Carter were personal tragedies for the victims’ families. But they also shed light on a more complex issue. The killers were three drifters scrounging for a living among a burgeoning counterculture population. Soon this community of runaways and transients became vulnerable scapegoats of a modern witch hunt. The supposedly progressive residents of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, only two generations removed from the Summer of Love, now feared all of society’s outcasts as threats.
In Those Who Wander, Vivian Ho delves deep into a rising subculture that’s changing the very fabric of her city and all of urban America. Moving beyond the disheartening statistics, she gives voices to these young people—victims of abuse, failed foster care, mental illness, and drug addiction. She also doesn’t ignore the threat they pose to themselves and to others as a dangerous dark side emerges. With alarming urgency, she asks what can be done to save the next generation of America’s vagabond youth.
The electrifying, untold story of the women born into the most deadly and obscenely wealthy of the Italian mafias—and how they risked everything to bring it down.
The Calabrian mafia—known as the ’Ndrangheta—is no myth or movie but one of the richest and most ruthless crime syndicates ever to exist, with operations from America to Australia. With its control of seventy percent of the cocaine supply in Europe, billion-dollar extortion rackets, the embezzlement of billions more in Italian state and European Union funds, a global illegal arms business, and a money laundering empire that cleans money for organized crime the world over, it earns $50 to $100 billion a year, around 3.5 percent of Italy’s annual economic output.
How did the ’Ndrangheta grow so big? Why has almost no one ever heard of it? One word: omertà, a claustrophobic secrecy enforced by excruciating violence. Loyalty is absolute. Bloodshed is revered. You go to prison or your grave and kill your own father, brother, sister, or mother before you betray The Family. Accompanying this reverence for blood, kin, and tradition is a violent misogyny. Women are viewed as chattel, vassals of property and honor, to be beaten and married off—or worse—as the men decree.
When Lea Garofalo marries a man she thinks will save her from the mob only to discover he is an ’Ndrangheta cocaine smuggler, she helps send him to prison and goes into hiding with her young daughter. Thirteen years later, in 2009, Lea “disappears.” For most Italians, Lea’s fate is just another mafia tragedy. But prosecutor Alessandra Cerreti considers a tantalizing possibility: that the ’Ndrangheta’s murderous sexism might be its greatest flaw—and her most effective weapon. Approaching two more mafia wives, Alessandra must persuade them to court death by testifying against their families in return for a new future for themselves and their children.
A feminist saga of true crime and justice, The Good Mothers is the riveting story of a high-stakes battle that pits a brilliant, driven woman fighting to save a nation against astonishingly powerful mafiosi fighting for their existence. Caught in the middle are three mothers fighting for their lives. Not all will survive.
“True Crime Addict" author James Renner joins us to discuss his investigation into the strange disappearance of Maura Murray.
Episode 4 of “A Dark Turn" is the first in an occasional series exploring the unsolved Boca mall murders and abductions of 2007, ritualistic crimes that left two mothers and a child dead, saw five victims kidnapped, and a sixth robbed. America's Most Wanted Host John Walsh called the crimes--which involved ritualistic binding and placement of blacked-out motorcycle goggles over the eyes of several victims--the work of a cunning, pathological serial killer.