On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, hear from Nancy Grace on Kouri Richins, “Inside Edition” host Eva Pilgrim, producers of “Quiet on Set,” “The Fall of Diddy,” “Lost Women of Alaska,” “Wisecrack” and executives from Investigation Discovery, Audible, Pushkin Industries, Sony Podcasts and more in highlights from Variety’s True Crime Summit, held March 13 at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
One of the biggest topics probed at the summit was the simple question: Why is true crime so addictive? Emily Longeretta, Variety‘s director of features, hosted a number of the panels where that topic came up. She keyed in on a comment from Kevin Fitzpatrick, executive producer of the long-running ID series “Evil Lives Here.”
“Kevin Fitzpatrick was explaining that in today’s world, more than ever, we are desperate for answers and we’re desperate for the truth. So people turn this on just hoping that they can have a resolution to these stories,” Longeretta observes. “Of course, sadly, not every true crime story has a resolution and we all know most of them are not happy endings. But every now and then there are. So a lot of this is hearing a really powerful story and you want to relate to other people and hear the truth and hear from families. And you can relate to any story. And I think that’s the bottom line of it.”
Nancy Grace, the prosecutor turned true crime host and producer, addressed the case Kouri Richins, the Utah woman who was found guilty on March 16 of murdering her husband and the father of her two young sons. “Rot in hell, woman,” Grace yelled as she discussed the case, three days before the jury’s verdict came in, in her keynote conversation with Dea Lawrence, who is co-president and publisher of Variety.
“Richins not only murdered her husband with an overdose of fentanyl, so everyone would believe not only he’s dead but he killed himself because he’s a dope head with little boys yet to be raised now without their father,” Grace said. “She then went on to write a book about how to help your child cope with grieving and go on a televised circuit. OK, that may have been her downfall because if people weren’t paying attention to it before, then they went, what? Kouri Richins and it wasn’t the first time either. She had reportedly tried to poison him with a sandwich.”
David Karabinis, co-founder and CEO of Texas Crew Productions, a prolific producer of true-crime series for Hulu, Discovery+, History, Peacock and ID, addressed the responsibilities that come with handling true-crime material. It’s important for producers to remember that they’re dealing with people’s lives and legacies that may be shaped by their narratives.
“A lot of the what we’ve always found is that so many of the families of victims, they want answers or they just want people to understand what was lost here, you know, because I think one of the things that we all do, we’re always very respectful ultimately of the victims,” Karabinis said. “And we want to bring those victims to life through our storytelling. And I think by doing that, we end up honoring them quite a bit. And again, just making sure that the people who are consuming this, they really understand the gravity of the crime and what was taken away.”
Pilgrim, an alumnus of NBC News and many “Dateline” investigations, said she always thinks about the lasting impact on the people affected by crime.
“Because you think of the children of these people, who maybe were young at the time that something occurred, but their only sort of real sense of what it is — the thing that they look back at — which is whatever it is that you’ve created,” Pilgrim said.
(Pictured: A fan picks up a souvenir ID tote bag at Variety‘s True Crime Summit at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas on March 13.)
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