Hi, it's Phoebe and I'm excited to tell you about a new podcast called on with care. Switcher from our friends at new york magazine journalist, scarce wisher is known for her blunt conversations with business leaders like elon musk and cheryl Sandberg politicians like Barack obama, Hillary Clinton and celebrities, like chelsea handler in her new interview, show you can expect direct questions, surprising answers and new insight into the people behind the headlines like in her shows first episode where she talks with former cnn anchor Chris Cuomo, who is fired by the network last year. Fine you episodes of on with I wish every monday and thursday wherever you get your podcast cover story from new york magazine is back, I'm hunter as an post of season to seed money. This season. We have a story, a billionaire an ex by many many women. Almost like you

using all the women as a start, a company, and so so many lies. If I can't stop him, I don't think anybody would build to stop him covers every season to seed money coming october, twenty fifth here the trailer and fatherless wherever you listened broadcasts. The bread we are about to watch is unique, lied, investigation of the supernatural it contains, but to which some views may find to be disturbing, no creaking gates, no gothic towers, no shut windows. Yet for the past ten months, this house has been the focus of an astonishing barrage of supernatural activity on halloween night in ninety. Ninety, two at nine, twenty five p m

Usual television show aired on the bbc, so well live this halloween needs to the first ever tv ghost watch we're going to investigate when the most baffling and fascinating areas of human experience. These supernatural tonight, television is going ghost hunting in an unprecedented scientific experiment. Where hope to show you for the first time immutable proof that ghosts really do exist. The host a long time bbc talk, show host and journalist named Michael parkinson, told feelers how the live investigation would work. The BBC Sarah green, would be spending the night at a house said to be haunted with a small camera. Crew reporting live on. Whatever happened at the house, during the show. People at home could call a phone number broadcast on this. Green and share their own experiences with ghosts, and also to comment on whatever they were seeing on the show.

this style of live broadcast was popular at the time there was a show called crime watch that also at a call, an element and one called hospital watch. This one on halloween night was called those watch. The host Michael parking, Introduced a woman in the studio with him as an expert. Parents are paranormal? Who would help expire What was going on during the show she said, she'd been investigating the haunted house, which was in london on a street called foxhole drive from We ran a computer program of all the haunted. Locations in the uk and then We did a census of all the various investigators and they were all unanimous that folks will have more tangible phenomena on record than what I'm going. Any place in the world, but certainly anyplace in the uk was a chance to think of a seeing anything tonight. Adam honestly know. Em

Sometimes we saw nothing for weeks then other times things were coming through they can ask me so much so that we have different logging into any some nice it was like being in the circus arose, was What about halloween? What will that make a difference to think yeah? I think it will Certainly there are more reports on halloween than almost any other night of the year, but maybe that's because people expect to see things I've always been interested ghost stories. This is even bulk by ninety. Ninety two one ghost watch aired he had written a few horror movies. One of them was directed by the same person who directed the exorcist another. Was a re imagining of the vacation to switzerland. That inside I'd Mary Shelly, DR frankenstein here interested in the ways novels like frankenstein or brands

Chris dracula are constructed both novel are presented as nonfiction a series of letters and journal entries, and it struck me that Many many literary ghost stories that you read begin. I'm gonna tell you something that unbelievable, but I really want you to know this really really happened to me. I know you Believe me, but it really didn't happen to me being a television right. I always thought to myself: what is the television equivalent of telling that kind of ghost story with that kind of authenticity and it struck me well what they were doing tv if they told ghost story, is just put a camera in someone's face, and the person would tell you this really happened to me. This is what long fiction tv is all about. You interview,

Go straight to their fate and they tell you the story, so Stephen added to do just that be wrote. A ghost story and pitch idea to the bbc. It would be a ghost story presented as an actual life documentary investigation. Everything was designed to look as real as possible but it only at once. I'm phoebe judge This criminal stephen vote was used to writing movies. But writing. What was supposed to look like live television with something else altogether live tv was full of mistakes droppings and you never knew what would happen. He studied telephones and roving reporter pieces

and shows in front of live audiences, it was a better guesswork. Have a europe, for instance, in a movie. When you writing a movie, you never put term exposition on the screen. You never have someone saying. Oh, I moved it in this house and it was wanted and my christmas scared- and you just Don'T- do it like that and, of course, that the complete this is what you do on television. You always thrust a microphone into someone spaces. Then tell you a story or interview them and ask them questions straight, so I had to construct these kind of interviews, situations and question. And answer sessions rather than the way I normally do in a in a movie and in what was the reaction from the bbc when you first brought them this idea, I don't think they quite got what it was trying to be, which was basically something that looked like something else

so when, when the when the bbc saw what we were up to it, it was a bit kind of taken aback and kind of bemused. I remember the executive producer richard brook when he saw the first cut that leslie the director presented to him. He was quite amazed that there was a shot with one of the. the technicians, kind of moved in the front of the camera and the camera kind of wobbled, and he said why on earth have you left that in one of the things that I love about live tv or what I did love ass. A child watching live tv, ill the mistakes, this leslie manning the director of ghost, wants to do Add it to the story as read. I I wanted to make presented as close to live tv as I possibly could like. Even leslie says she watched a lot of live tv to prepare pieces. also watched a lot of documentaries to see how she could direct the actors.

she remembers, telling them to dial back their performances. In addition to the actors she included Real people on camera talking about their own ghost stories, the ghost watched him also decided to use very well known and respected bbc host on the show people do We should be used to seeing doing interviews or documentary programmes. It was it it's, because we were casting people, like Michael parkinson s kind of like Larry king kind of characteristics we would say in terms of america, gonna be an actor and there was no guarantee that he was gonna, be able to do any of that reading unless he says they also didn't want. There is playing the camera crew say we asked around the bin. Save, saves anybody any of the studio camera guys who actually we're happy. beyond camera and we got two people buy.

One someone, one camera: they got the job. There was a lot of handheld camera leslie tended to work out right long. Take so that the camera would be moving around the whole time upstairs downstairs round the corner, and this kind of thing which is not normally how you'd work on a movie. For instance, you know you'd have hundreds of angles and hundreds of shifts of lighting I need to do one sequence of one scene and it was low quality. It was a video camera. I mean, I think, that's what outraged the higher up people at the drama department, because they'd be used, to something that was kind of well lit and conduct, a kind of while acted and well presented and the composition of every shot was considered, but because of the nature of this, none of those things really mattered. At the only thing that matters was, it had to look like it was happening before your eyes.

And it determining before your eyes all those other considerations that really matter the point of it was Do you believe everything you see on television? On the first page of the ghost watch script Stephen wrote, I won't believe it until I see it on tv On halloween night on the bbc, he's drama time slot when they usually showed movies. A short introduction indicated that if viewers were about to see was fictional, but it was vague, it described ghost, watches the film and the real bbc hosting ghost watch a starring in it. If you miss that, goodness knows what you were expecting,

According to the bbc, around eleven million people were watching on Halloween nine. The programme began with what looks like time stamped research footage from a few months earlier. It chose to girl sleeping in their bedroom, then in the middle of the night, there's allowed banging sound and they start screaming at one point, the light bulb and the bedside lamp bursts soon. After that, the camera goes to what looks like alive feed over the rapporteur at the house. Sarah green interviewing, the two girls came in suzanne and their mother PAM all plea by actresses about the problems they ve been having at the house over the last ten months. The noise is like me, coming from the walls like cut back like a thudding rongji, yes, at the whole room was going to come apart.

did anybody else here it s susan him kill me if you had it to what sort of a noise was it screaming and shouting. What is it? What is it? I didn't know what to say there without terrified. So I said it was pipes, central heating. So afterwards, whenever Kim heard something she'd say it's pipes, pipes is here in the studio someone had called into the phone line, the call her said they saw something in the earlier footage of the girl's bedroom. You know at the beginning, when you're sharing the real footage of that haunted bedroom. While it was dark, but I was sure I could say a figure standing behind It's the whole truth by the carton, yeah, very, very fake, but definitely a figure there. Michael Parkinson asked to have the tape rewind, so everyone

could see it again and then you could make out a figure standing by the curtains and Michael parkinson says I don't see anything. Do you whereas it has been on screen so agent everyone going, but I did say something he said and didn't see, and I love the idea. My dear that, surely television you couldn't do it in a movie. You couldn't do it in a book, its purely the relationship between them, center and the audience making not moment work as the programme continued. calls came in about the figure what really The strange thing is that we still cause about that shadowy figure. The receiving the haunted vegetable people think they ve seen the haunted bedroom now really weird is these are all tallying with the description. These are all different phone calls that generally all saying that it's an old man or woman ball,

with a skull like head, dark eyes, or some are just saying. Holes for eyes are wearing a black robe or address which is buttoned up to the neck. he's got a stranger and stranger at the house. There cats coming from the walls and one of the girls suddenly has scratches all over her face, at that point about an hour into the program. Michael Parkinson tells viewers that they're are extending coverage beyond the scheduled window. I should tell you to joint to see the next program that will stay with what we have here from fox, because the events are also remarkable and dramatic. The woman staying with them. For as long as we have two things continue to escalate in the house. It seems as if, at one point, one of the girls was becomes possess.

Stop it, stop it then, connection with the studio is lost, and after it comes back the reporter Sarah green gets trapped in the small closet under the stairs. with whatever is haunting the house at that point, mister producer always said, Everyone's gonna realize it's a drama now, so we can do over like so much so we try to run a bit crazy about five minutes back at the studio, unmanned cameras start rolling across the stage. Studio lights are exploded and Michael park,

seems totally confused. Studios completed up just blackness, now obeyed the lights of fear that the path gone off some lights in the studio I don't know this cameras, this cameras, but I don't know it's working in that there are no cameras- men, men, difficult to know, even if anybody still still with us, but if they are this is the scene in this. In the studio, this totally deserted studio, he slowly box twice the camera or any,

becomes clear that he's become possessed by something, as the camera feeds the black round, the room, a gun like a teddy, bear, we'll be right back high, its phoebe one of her favor chose from radio Tokyo ear. Hustle is back. It's tenth season, holster alone woods deny Nigel poor, just returned from their first international reporting trip in season. Ten they'll take us inside a norwegian prison in one of the most progressive prison systems in the world.

in another episode, we'll meet a man who lied about his crime for twenty four years and find out what happened when he finally told the truth and there's an episode about what it's like to be incarcerated while pregnant. You can find your hustle wherever you get your podcasts and at ear hustle, sq, dot com. The night ghost watch aired everyone who worked on it, got together to have a party and to watch the show in part, so that no one would see Sarah green at a restaurant when she was supposed to be trapped. haunted house. The producer, Ruth baumgarten was at the BBC studios to make sure everything was going well. She wanted to keep on the phone lines they posted the normal b c number on the screen during ghost watch both to give the illusion

The calls in the show were really coming in live and to allow viewers at home to call in and react. towards the end of the night, ruth join the rest of the crew at the party she said that she was leaving the technicians we're looking up at the big screaming lobby assigned to each other, my god, what's going on his studio one, and that was the first time she thought. Oh, my god, even the technicians watching with the thing go out to start to worry about what's happening again and by the time she got to us. She said the phone system at the bbc was jam. They were hundreds of complaints. Lug stand and it's over it all went a crazy, ruth and director leslie manning had prepared for some worried

Well, there is, during the show they had operators ready to tell anyone who called that the whole thing was fake, just a halloween special, but there were too many calls and not enough operators. The BBC estimated that twenty thousand people called that night. The people in plain terms, that is quite a wide range of different reactions. Son some people were genuinely scared. Some people were outraged because They feel that they were made and love like like someone play this trick on them. You know like a candid camera and and also that there was to this additional level of trust. That's invested in the bbc To tell the truth you know, and and to be the nations protector and away baby see was the first television station and for decades, the only television station so all the way through

Second world war, both in radio and tv, that they deceive was relied on foreign, national news, and so that's why colloquially known as anti as the bbc has relied on, was kind of one of the family. If you like for the reliability and trust which I think added to that sense of outrage, the phrase I sort of stopped was that auntie had broken faith with the nation director lesley manning. I I was totally surprised by the whole reaction. The BBC show points of view, read letters. Viewers after ghost watch aired. One person said the bbc should be locked up. Some one else at the show was brilliant and that it wasn't the bbc's fault

that people didn't understand that it was fiction. Another BBC show called bite back, also responded to hello and welcome to bite back the program in which you, the viewer, take the programme makers to task, and there are hundreds of you who want to do exactly that. Following halloween night, when the bbc pretended to investigate the supernatural in ghost watch, the switchboard was jammed with complaints reports that children were terrified. Pregnant women had gone into labor and intelligent people felt duped. Conversely, many of the eleven million who watched it thought it was a brilliant piece of television. Well, what was it a treat or a dangerous trick? This wasn't the first time the bbc had aired a hoax thirty five years earlier, on April fool's day in nineteen, fifty seven,

The BBC aired a very short segment on a current affairs programme about farmers in switzerland who grew spaghetti after begging. These budget is laid out to dry in the warm alpine, so many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti is produced at such uniform. links. But this is the result of many years of patient endeavour by plant breeders who succeeded, in producing the perfect. I get a lot of people believed it by traditional in part, because not meant people cook, spaghetti at home in england in the nineteen fifties, but also because the fake documentary looks real, even the after general of the bbc tried to look up spaghetti and the in cycles the upper tana after he watched the segment, but the encyclopedia didn't even have an entry for spaghetti at the time some doers called in to ask where they could get a spaghetti.

Tree for themselves and whether it would grow in english. Whether BBC operators had been coached to stick with the joke and say place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best one viewer said he thought the program had used tricks. photography because quote spaghetti grows horizontally, not vertically, but the bbc reported that most of the callers quote did not quite grasp what was going on but somehow felt spaghetti does not grow on trees and that most of the people who called in took the joke? Well, the viewers have ghost watch were much more upset even though the show ran after nine p m the publicized time when the BBC transition to content that might not be appropriate for children, many children did watch it, and many of them were scared

One view on the bite back programme said she knew it was a spoof, but her son didn't he reacted instantly. He was very distressed instantly to something very sinister in the presentation, and nothing had actually happened, and I think you mentioned that you were anxious to put it against the no story against a contemporary background. I think it's that actually, that made it most sinister mustn't plum. You want to make point, I didn't know it was a drama. I've got three children and fourteen toward contain and are just thought that it was good of you very safe and where they frighten well, yes from and to the degree of it, my youngest child, whose ten russia very room vomited in the hole

It's was absolutely ashen. Faced, wouldn't even talk about the things for two or three hours. It was at one o'clock in the morning that I got to talk about it and she wanted to sleep in her own bed for two nights. If days after ghost watch aired and ninety. Ninety two, a teenager with intellectual disabilities, died by suicide. His parents said the show caused their son's death. They said he had seemed hypnotized by the show and that when the pipes in their house made the same banging sound as the ghost and ghost watch he became upset, he asked him of bedrooms and spoke to his parents, often about ghosts. The note he left read: please don't worry. If there are ghosts, I will be a

first and I will be with you always as a ghost history, father told reporters in my own mind, I hold the bbc completely responsible for his death. His parents said in a formal complaint to the broadcasting standards council, which eventually concluded that the bbc had quote a duty to do more than simply hint at the deception it was practicing on the audience. Bourgeois reaction was real two battened down the hatches and pretend the programme never happened. I think a member went round that nobody should ever mention it again. Now, seven years later, the movie, the blair witch project, is the similar documentary style approach. The movie was presented as found footage that had been shot by three film student who decided to take recording equipment into the woods to investigate a series of murders rumoured to have been coming.

By which the students never make it out of the woods, but what they recorded eventually does the way the mood it was marketed, made it hard to tell if it was real or not. It was night Ninety nine and the marketing team use relatively new internet to create confusion. They post missing persons photos and chat rooms, and even the movies I am db page made, it seem like the cast was missing three years later, the british institute released a ten year anniversary dvd of ghost watch and many people were finally able to see it for the first time since then, the documentary style format has become popular in horror movies, like paranormal activity, but Stephen, says that when ghost watch came out, this kind of style was

it's so well known, and even people close to him who knew exactly what he was trying to make were still confused by the show couple of weeks before ad on halloween- and I spent some time with a friend of mine and said, as I was leaving Oh by the way, I've got this trauma going out and television night. Let me know what you think of as one does and I spoke to her after the event, and she said. Oh, I thought it was real and I said what you mean. You thought it was real. Do I've written and she said, oh yeah, but when I saw Michael parkinson, I thought you must have got something wrong and that may be as the power of the candidates image of tv. That, however much you tell people, it might not be real. You know the conceptual me sit, it feels rail and that, for me, was the whole purpose of it is tat. They get the owners something one.

Looking at what about listening to do. I believe this you now can, I believe, my eyes. You know that one of the things that happened that was held on the part of our psyche, if you like, when we make us watch, was it was during the time of the year. The first goal, war. We remember things and thirteen by sea and cnn. the oil. We see news footage of the bombing of baghdad and the news station had put music over it and risk. The producer said: look at this: they put music of the bombing and his kind like that's a drama convention, but they use the news. You know- and I was saying Oh, my gosh, I was like chemistry blues and wiping, you know what I'd documentary techniques like handheld hundreds will be used and drama to make it look like documentary and documentaries like rats.

You mean, like mine, were using it Just two reenacted seems to happen to people. actors will being used in nonfiction and fiction was thanks to look like a documentary. So it's glaring at the edges between these things in the early nineties and and that was very much what we were playing with the note what a strange that what is made up of many people, patients have called ghost watch a descendant of the most famous broadcast hoax or Well, nineteen, thirty, eight radio drama adaptation of hd wells, the war of the worlds it was broadcast on october, thirtieth just before halloween. If you don't know it, the war of the worlds was presented as breaking news about a strange object, landing on a farm in new jersey and whatever and after it opened

environment, whether someone calling something going on about black holes, luminous death, the eyes. If they might be on seven, nothing. like a great. I have another one on another one and another one. They looked like articles to me during the rest of the broadcast. Reports continue to come. about martians, invading new jersey and new york and possibly the rest of the country, but the broadcast ends with an announcement from orson welles gordon world. Gentlemen out of character. It was short well, that the war of the world had no further significance than at the holiday offering it was intended to be a mercury theatre, own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying

goodbye everybody and remember plead for the next day. I saw the terrible that new learn tonight that grinning glowing globular, invader. Your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin fashion if your door bell rings and nobody there that with no martian following The next day, newspapers reported that listeners had really believed. That there is a martian invasion and had panicked. Orson welles told papers that he didn't expect most people to believe the broadcast was real but said that

We can only suppose that the special nature of radio, which is often heard in fragments or in parts disconnected from the hall, has led to this misunderstanding. The fcc received more than six hundred letters telegrams and petitions in response to war of the worlds, many of them asking it to do something to punish the people. Who'd made it or something to prevent this from happening again, but many of the letters the fcc received, also praised the war of the worlds and warned against any move that might promote censorship. One letter from north carolina read, if you take them to task over this, won't you also have the stop fairy tales and stories about santa claus to keep a gullible public from becoming excited. The fcc conducted a formal investigation and, in the end they decide not to take any action and broadcast hoaxes continued.

the seven writer I work at Kayla S in the afternoon, and I was part of the governing being morning. Radio show in los angeles, at K, we'll be right back. Thirty, three years ago, a nineteen eighty, nine kevin rider, his dream job. As a radio fiji at K, rock in los Angeles p a dj before, but this would be a first morning. Dr time call ngo, which was its it's in, Sanity. To think that I got my first morning show in los angeles, a station like iraq, but for people who aren't from los angeles, what is cave rock, how big of a station is it

Iraq is a legendary station, mainly because of the it was really kind of a nothing station with a terrible signal, an people that got it started playing interesting music like punk music. in the late seventies that no one else los angeles was playing, and then in the these came new wave and you ve got to push more and you ve got the keys and no other radio station in LOS angeles was playing that either and down the impact that Iraq had. Through the years. Is it's impossible? The measure I mean we were there, first station to play the remains first. Persons to play than hale in and out from that standpoint was a monstrous station Even though was run like a five and dime store, caverns ass. He wasn't qualified for the job, but there is no way he was going to say no.

He hopes to the show each week day morning with another dj. Gene in Baxter caverns- has they around forty on every day to start getting ready. The format was they play for songs an hour and talk four times in our. Sometimes it wouldn't be until the songs were fading, that they'd come up with what they talk about Kevin says that every day they try to find a way to get people to call in in one day they came up with an idea. They called confess your crime. It started out as just everybody he he commits crimes. How, however small they may be. Maybe you go fifty six in a fifty five mile per hour. That's committing a crime, so you know there's a there's a whole scale of sizes of the crimes that you commit, so we thought it'd be funny for people to call in and tell

was the crime that they had done and most likely gotten away with, and you know we thought it was some we thought would be stupid stuff. like us, I stole a car and I got caught the next morning because I was sleeping at it alongside them in our something like it was. It was very light hearted suggestion at first and it wasn't going incredibly well, you get that feeling when you're in the middle of something that it's not really what you hoped it would be listeners content confess the dead, stolen bowling balls that they'd run over a cat or that they are sleeping with the girlfriends mother, the calls we were getting were really lane. You know I've. I parked in no parking zone kind of stuff. That's not interesting! And so you know we were screening for people who are trying to get calls, and it was really it was really difficult because sometimes stuff just doesn't work and

Then this person calls and says I think I may have killed my girlfriend Six point, seven care. I scarecrow q, wednesday morning to until nine we're doing confess your crime. We have some more on hold in this. Of those now hello hi. What's your name? I'd really rather not say you want to confess a crime. This morning yeah, I heard you It's talking and just kind of you know I dunno I just I just kind of felt like I should buy. I really needed to tell somebody about this case sounds serious, but what happened tell us to tell us about it. I had the girl,

friends for like about a year, then we're right on the verge of getting married and all that stuff, and I came home and I caught her with somebody. You call your girlfriend with another man, yeah, okay and a good friend of mine in the matter. Oh really, what did you do in bed? I don't know honestly, I don't I dunno what happened early. I dunno she's sure what he is saying. Well, I dunno she. I don't. I don't even know she's still, if he, if he made it through the series there is there a chance seriously that you might have killed your girlfriend,

yeah I know sarah, let us try to get you some help. Can you hold on the phone just a minute? I think I really better go I mean if you want wanted to get you in contact light somebody or allow allow the call was fake. We had called a friend cars and in phoenix who we had known from working with him at a station, there and woke him up, and we said hey. We need to use up this topic little bit, it's not really going. Well, so can you you know what things have become confession crime. Can you just say something? That's a little bit, you know, that's got something that gets people's attention and we were talking to a guy who was just waking up while the sun was fading and we threw out. You know you, you stole a car, you you're gonna fight, you did

ever and somebody said something about hurting a girlfriend, and then when he said that on the air he said, I think I may have killed my girlfriend. It was felt like hit in the head on collision, because that was out one billion miles further than we had hoped, and I just remember being in a in a fog like one second, we were in charge of everything and the next second, didn't know what was happening and I couldn't price says what was being said quick enough, so it felt like I was in a hurry. Yes, I don't know, I don't remember what we said back to him minor. Remember hanging up, I don't remember any of it and then The tv stations wanted to interview us about it

the timeline that I remember is our Do, sir? Coming into the studio in saying I just got a call from casey bs and can be see at all stations. One interview you- and I remember this is the first thing that I remember clearly that I said to being. We have to go talk about this and we will, into the restroom we made sure. No one else was in there and I said, look yay. Yes, it was faked, but we'll get fired. If we tell the truth also, we know for a fact that there is no crime. that it was something somebody made up on the phone, so you know that the police could search for the rest of our lives. It would find nothing because there was nothing because it was made up. So I said because there is no crime for anyone to find,

let's just deny deny, deny and it'll go away, so they agreed never to tell anyone and within I don't know five minutes. We had requests from all the major tv stations you interviews about that call, and what did we know about it and how come about in did we know the person and death in a could. We could we tell if it was true or not, and we didn't, we said we didn't have any of those answers. We said we don't know, we don't know who calls us enough. telling the truth or not later in the show they apologize to there sinners for what they heard on air and read some help line numbers Kevin says that when Finally finish their show, a sheriff was waiting for them in the stations lobby. Who was asking for a copy of the object, the tape and they gave it to a voice expert who said that

either real or the person deserves an academy award and they start a Thus the geisha into exactly what was said and who could it have been and doesn't match any the cases that we are working on and it just sort of started from their. Why do you think he was so convincing in the call it? What I can tell you exactly, because I'm talk to him about it. It was. He was high, smoking marijuana and had gone to bed Two hours before that, so he was just in a complete haze and he, never answer the phone, but he saw was us and is room. dark and he picked up the phone, and he literally I mean literally, had no idea what was going on and we were probably talking a little too quickly because

the sun was fading and we needed him to do something. So that's he was just out of it and was trying to help us out Ass, the days went on and you realize now the police were taking seriously and train investigated. Did you in jean continue to check in and say I may be- maybe it's gone too. Maybe now we've got to say so what you mean with each other yeah? No, not really. I think we sort of had the cast the die we sort of had said okay. Well, this is gonna, be our response and every time somebody brought it up in any way. I wanted to crawl in a hole, and then The case was covered on the tv show unsolved mysteries, which reportedly resulted in four hundred people getting in touch with the police. One other thing

things that I said? Don't the only thing that I remember saying other than the line we had created the whole time wishes. We don't have who calls us? We don't know if what they say, Israel for some reason I didn't feel like that was enough for unsolved mystery. So I actually said the sentence. There are definite lines that you don't cross and that's one of them there. There are real definite lines that you do not cross. Obviously everybody's trying to get ratings, trying to get noticed, trying to be this and that. But there are lines that you just don't cross and that's one of them

I I don't know that anyone could sit down and say someone confessing to murder will make her ratings go up. Then gene comes in you know. All we could say is you know with the the experts feel that this guy was legitimate. It's the one we know and, as you know, as far as we're concerned, you know that that's his story. We certainly hope it's not true. You know I'd trade. Whatever publicity we got from it, you do for the story not to be true cause, it's pretty grim, really for nearly ten months they kept up the lie. Cave rock unknowingly ended up hiring the man who had called in dog roberts. He had never told anyone either and then one day it all fell apart during Doug. he called us off the air one time when he was doing to shift caverns hath during the call talked about the murder confession they thought it was approved.

Conversation, but the way the studio was set up to colleagues, overheard them and one of them called a reporter the elite. times, so she called a general manager trip breed and she said trapper really Sorry doubt out you this, because I know this is all, but is there a possibility that they faked it and try assured her that there wasn't she said, would you mind asking, and he said, yell ass, no problem, so we call this in an trip said. Was that phone call fake? And we said ya, yes, it was. he had to call the l a times back and tell them that it was fake and then It all started again with the early times. The headline was: will k right, get away with murder a morning? J at another radio station was quoted in the article saying I

that morning radio has got to be one giant trash been that we need to examine a little bit. Another dj said to stoop to such a sleazy level. To get another tenth. A ratings point spits and so everything bob Dylan and John lennon and the rolling stones and you to stand for another said they couldn't have bought press like this. The general manager of another radio station told the reporter. I think they went so far and they couldn't get out It's like a kid who steals all of us and you tell a lie, and you have to tell another to get out of the first line, cave rock suspended Kevin and his co host jean Baxter without pay. And the whole time we just were assuming. That was our care Career that was it. We had the golden ticket, a great opportunity and we throw it away and and

I was really nothing else to be done at tat, point cabin and jean weren't charged, but the company they don't care rock, told them to pay back the sheriffs department twelve thousand one hundred and seventy dollars for the money it had spent on the investigation and to do a hundred and forty nine hours of community service to compensate for hundred and forty nine hours the homicide detective spent on the case. The homicide detective told the allay times that he'd had multiple people contact him. About their missing loved ones, hoping the honor confession would be a clue. One woman, whose daughter had been killed a couple of months before the prank call was quoted, saying

the de jays have obviously never had anything serious or painful happen in their lives in the sis ii launched an investigation into the hoax to determine whether management ever knew about it. If they did the state and could lose its licence. The commission her testimony under oath for multiple K, rock staffers, Kevin and gene, or both at the hearing to be denied. This was the ultimate radio. This is the best Radio station in the world- and it was devastating to think that this radio station that we worshipped might go down because we were eighty is it just fell like

If this happens, I don't know how I'll ever get over that. In the end, key rock received a letter of reprimand the lightest punishment. The fcc could give kevin and jean continue doing their morning show for the next twenty years, and I do think since that happen. You know we see that was ninety. Ninety one. When we went to cork, I think we urge that trust. Back, but it took a while because people were a little hesitant and it took a while for us too, you know help. People understand that we're decent people that you can trust and were also idiots at times. You know we're, never gonna be that level of eddie. It again. You know you'd one of the things that you one of the only things that you have been

Being a radio station is listeners is trust and that trust when it's you, no one has betrayed like that. It feels like Thank you know you ve been betrayed by a family member, and I just if there was one one thing that I can add it out of my life. It would be that I wish it. I wish it didn't happen. The in our next episode, a broadcaster the tourist city apart

criminal is created by born spore and me. Media Wilson is our senior producer, katy bishop, our supervising producer, our producers are sustainable person. Jackie said chico Libby, fostering samantha brown, our technical directors were our buyers engineering by russ Henry julian. Alexander makes original illustrations preach episode of criminal. You can see them. This is criminal dot com. If you like the show, tell a friend or leave us review, it means a lot we're on facebook and twitter at criminal show an instagram at criminal underscore podcast we're on tiptoe criminal. Score podcast were posting some behind the scenes, content criminal is recorded in the studio of north carolina. Public radio, w you and see were part of the vocs media. Podcast network discover more great shows at podcast dot, vocs media dot com.

I'm phoebe judge. This is criminal. The.