#6: Bonus - Sneak Peek of 22 Hours: An American Nightmare

Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production available on Apple Podcasts and Podcast 1.

You know, I love giving you some bonus whenever I can. So today I'm giving you bonus content.

For a new podcast called 22 Hours an American Nightmare. Stick around after the interview for a special sneak peek. If you like what you hear, click the link in the description to hear more.

And yeah, it's pretty scary.

So if you're one of those people that love scary, you gotta check this out. You're gonna love it.

All right, so I'm so excited to be welcoming to this show. My podcast fam, major fam. Love right now for a new show, 22 An American Nightmare. Now, straight up, everyone needs to know I'm a big scaredy cat. And I was a little nervous when I dug into the show and hearing about what the work that Megan and Jack are doing. But the more I learned the I am really blown away about the passion and commitment and risk that both of Megan and Jack took to pivot their careers to pursue something that they knew they needed to work on. So Megan and Jack, welcome to the show and please share with us what's going on.

Thanks Heather.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

I guess we'll basically just say what our show is about. It's essentially the prosecution said it was a case that nightmares are made of and it really just kind of shakes you to the core. It's a wealthy businessman and his wife, their 10 year old son and the family's housekeeper, just on a regular normal day in May of 2015, were all of a sudden taken hostage. They were tortured for 22 hours and then eventually they were killed. And nobody knew about this until firefighters showed up at their house when it was burning down and found them inside. And so, you know, we work for a news station in Washington D.C. and we covered that crime and then usually kind of in the news cycle as we know it, you hear about a crime and then you don't hear about it again. And we followed it all the way through until the trial, which ended up being three years later and the man was convicted in their murders after a six week trial. And so the podcast is not only about the crime and the investigation and the trial, but it's also about how Jack and I kind of found ourselves in the middle of this project and how we navigated through it and worked together to get it done.

How did you find that commitment to stick with this so long?

So I think it really comes back to the partnership aspect. And also we have a really Great boss who really has championed this project because, you know, be completely honest, we've been working on this for months, and there was probably a point several months ago where I would. Would have been working on my own. I would have given up, you know, I just couldn't. I felt like we'd hit a wall. And we were trying to get some people to speak to us for the project, people who had testified in the trial, and this was a very difficult moment of their lives, so that, you know, they didn't want to participate. And I said, well, we can't get the people that we need to talk to, you know, so I throw my hands up. I guess. I guess we're done, you know, no more podcasts. But luckily I was with, you know, working with Megan and with our boss, who really believed in the project and, you know, and kept pushing. So I think that has been essential, you know, having a good teammate, you know, having a good partnership. So when you feel like, you know, giving up, feel like you can't, you know, you can't get this project done, somebody else is there to push you.

Totally agree. When you're surrounded by people that not only encourage you and support you, but stretch you to go further than, you know you can go, that is such a key to confidence and achieving your goals. So, so happy for you guys you had those people on your team. What is it that the listeners are going to get or learn from your show?

Well, they're going to learn about this, you know, what happened to this family. And really, it's interesting because you, beyond the crime, you learn about how police actually go about doing this. Not in a CSI TV way. I mean, really. And how they found this killer was through a piece of pizza, of all things. They found his DNA on a piece of pizza crust to the trial. And it almost ends up being like a civics lesson in how, you know, some things. As humans, we want everything to fit right. We want, like, the storyline to make sense. And in court, it doesn't necessarily have to. So there was all of these details that, as you're going through the podcast with us, Jack and I, you know, we are kind of living it with you. And we have audio diaries from when I was covering the court, the trial at court. And you hear me being like, well, that doesn't make sense because so and so said this, and you. You kind of hear us figuring it out with you. And in the end, all the jury needed was reasonable doubt to convict, and they did. But podcast is not necessarily whodunit. It's how and it's why and piecing together all of these details that were sort of thrown like confetti on the floor and we had to pick them up and put them in the right spot and make sure they made sense. So it's the first time this story has been told chronologically, laid out in a way that you can like go.

Through the journey with us.

So you're basically pulling the curtain back behind the scenes to recreate exactly what happened exactly.

And I think and a big thing, you know, for Megan and I both was to, to give the listener, as Megan said, almost like a civics lesson to kind of elevate the material, you know, because this is very dark and in a really horrible crime and we didn't want to just focus on the gruesome details, but to show how the justice system works. And this case is not a normal case. It was very high profile here in the Washington D.C. area. So this is the perfect opportunity to show people how the justice system works. Outside. A lot of people have a view from tv which is kind of over dramatized and ours is trying to give people a a real picture of of how it works.

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Sort of interesting that, you know, throughout the whole podcast and this might speak more to your listeners, is you hear Jack and I, you know, kind of grappling with it a little bit, how to cover it, how to do it. I mean, there was a day where as a reporter I'm not supposed to have any feeling in my reports. It doesn't matter how I feel. But when I was calling Jack after like an autopsy day, I just told him, I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna do this.

You know, this is just so horrible.

And you're not only like the emotion that kind of we go through, but then also just us like going to the scenes and talking about, okay, does this, does this matter? Should we add this in? So not only is it, you know, the story of the crime and the investigation and trial, but it's also how.

We put this together that is going.

To be super interesting. And as much as I'm a big scaredy cat, I need to listen because now I have fear of missing out. So I'm totally in and I suggest everybody tuned in. Guys, when is the show live?

We have 10 episodes dropping every Monday.

Between now and June 10th. You can download, you can listen to a 10 minute kind of teaser, the first 10 minutes of the first episode.

And that's on podcast one as well as APLE podcast 22, an American nightmare, correct?

That is correct, yes.

All right, well, I'll be catching you guys in the show and I can't wait to hear it. Thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for empowering all of our listeners. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Heather.

I appreciate you having us on.

AC911, what is your emergency? Hey, I think there's a house fire at 3201 Woodland Drive. Yes. Smoke coming out of the eaves and a window. Repeat the s again. It's 3201 Woodland Drive.

It's 1 24. On May 14, 2015, it was pure chance that Donald Spence found himself at the front door of a burning house in northwest Washington, D.C. that afternoon. He'd just finished a job installing wallpaper at a house in the neighborhood. It was the kind of neighborhood you might want to walk around in, full of beautiful old houses. Some might consider the mansions, each with its own ornate style. Style and manicured green lawn. The neighborhood is tucked away behind DC's famed Embassy Row. The home of the Australian ambassador is right there across the street and the Vice President's official residence just a few blocks away.

I just drove up, saw the building and it's pouring out of the overhang. Okay, from which floor is the parts coming from? It's coming from. It looks like it initially from a bedroom, but it's going sweeping across the whole overhang on the front of the house. This is private house. Single house. It's a private mansion.

Benz had just finished eating his lunch in his truck. He was about to head home. Bored by taking the same turns on the same streets for weeks, he decided on a whim to take a new way out of the neighborhood. That decision took him right past the house with smoke pouring out of its eaves.

Okay, I've already sent a fire Department at 3201 Woodland Drive Northwest. Yes, top of the hill. No one seems to inside the house. I don't think anybody's in the house, but I can't tell. I knocked on the door and I can hear the alarm going off and there's a fire. Yeah, the house is like crackling. No flames yet, but the smoke is just pouring out. I drink wick.

DC firefighters arrive in a matter of minutes. One of the first trucks to arrive is from Engine Company 28. It's a fire station right near the National Zoo. About a five minute drive from the massive brick home on Woodland Drive, the first firefighter, Lt. Chris Hershey, rushes up the flagstone path to the front door. The address is spelled out in gold lettering on the archway. The door is locked, so he kicks it in. Hershey had no idea he was walking into a crime scene. Standing in the forest, Hershey sees thick black smoke pouring down the stairs in front of him. It's so heavy that even with his helmet light on, he can't see his hand in front of his face. Firefighters are trained to fight fires from the inside out. To go right to the source of the fire. He starts to climb the staircase, navigating up the stairs in the dark, Hershey pushes open a bedroom door. He's found it. The whole room is lit up. Orange flames are rolling up the walls.

You have a room off on the second floor. You have a line on the fire.

These are the fire department radio transmissions from that day. A line means that Hershey has a hose on the fire and he's trying to put it out. There are other recordings from this day too. They're filled with firefighter jargon, but they help illustrate the chaos at the scene as firefighters discovered this was not a normal fire. More firefighters start to pull up on Woodland Drive and pour into the house, looking for anyone who might be inside, overcome by the smoke. Private Michael Aider is one of them. He's not here to fight the fire. He doesn't even have a hose, just his tank of oxygen and a mask over his face. Facing the thick black smoke, he heads to the second floor to look for victims. And right away, Ater knows he's on a deadline. His oxygen will only last him about 25 minutes and it's a very big house, so he knows he needs to work quickly. Ader goes to a different bedroom from the one Lieutenant Hershey is in, working to extinguish the roaring flames. Ater heads across the hall to another bedroom filled with thick smoke. There's no fire here, but he knows there could be a person who couldn't find their way out. So Ader starts what's called a right hand search. He gets down close to the ground and orients himself by keeping one hand anchored to the wall on his right. Starting at the door, he runs his hand along the wall until he covers the entire room's perimeter. But Ater can barely see with one hand. Maintaining contact with the wall, he reaches out, out with the other, blindly feeling around his hand hits the back of a chair. He sort of gives it a nudge, but it's weighted down by something, almost like someone's sitting in it.

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He reaches up to where he'd expect a head might be and feels a face. Ater goes to lift the person out of the chair but he can't get a good grip. Something's wrong. They keep slipping out of his grasp and he doesn't know why. He doesn't know if the person is alive, but they feel like dead weight. He goes to lay them on the floor so he can try and lift them in a different way. As he lowers the person onto the floor, he realizes he's laying them on top of another body.

Correct my crew victim Water and Delta second floor.

Ater manages to carry the first person out to the hall and hands them to another firefighter to bring to the medics outside. He turns back and finding the doorway to that same smoke filled bedroom, he sees his lieutenant has just arrived to help. Ader goes to the spot where he found the second victim on the ground and begins to lift them off the floor, but across the room his lieutenant says help me lift this person. I am. Aider insists with his hands under the arms of the second body. That's when they both realize they're holding different people. There's a third victim in the room.

There are a total of three victims. I copy. Truck two. Truck two, what side are you on? Rescue dots, three victims removed. Second floor, T delta quadrant. We're all out front, all the medic units.

The recordings are a little hard to understand. We'll need medic units. That's what the firefighter says. Outside, 3201 Woodland Drive, three victims lay in a row on the front lawn. They're covered in blood. The firefighters can't really figure it out. There's not usually that much blood at the scene of a fire. They wonder if there had been an explosion of some kind. The medics work frantically and one of the victims is lifted on a stretcher and rushed to the ambulance nearby. It's been a surprising 25 minutes and not in a good way. Ater takes a seat on the curb and starts to process what just happened. He removes his mask and draws a breath of fresh air. Up until now, the smoke had clouded his vision.

He was using his hands to get.

Around and navigate his way through the room, through the house. This is the first time he's seeing what's on his gear. He looks down and sees something red. It's definitely blood. And it's on his mask. It's covering his turnout gear. It's on his boots. It's on his gloves. After he suits up to go back inside, Ayder finds that thick smoke upstairs stairs is starting to clear. And he finally gets a good look at the bedroom where he found those three people. There's only one way to describe it. It's a bloodbath.

The room in quadrant two is a crime scene.

The police are now on the way. It's clear to everyone on the scene the bloodied victims pulled from the upstairs bedroom weren't simply overcome by smoke. And there's still another gruesome discovery for firefighters Inside the other bedroom across the hall, where Lt. Hershey and other firefighters are working to put out the fire. Lieutenant Corey Goates is working backup. He's crawling toward a window when he kind of falls into a hole in the floor. The heat from the fire had burned so intensely it melted the bed. The floorboards had given way, creating almost a crater in the middle of the bedroom filled with blackened bed springs. And something else. When Goats trips into that hole, he brushes against something, part of a body. He reaches up to confirm his suspicions and feels what might be a small knee. He reaches farther to feel another leg. And then his gloves land on what feels like a head. It's the charred body of a child.

It is being called a major crime.

Scene as homicide investigators examine a house that caught fire in Northwest D.C. the.

Room is a crime scene. They found four people, including a child.

Dead inside on the second floor.

Right now, it does not appear that.

This was just a random crime.

I said, but what happened? They said, we don't know. They killed the whole family.

Police have said they believe more than.

One person is responsible for the crime.

A wide reaching manhunt for Darren went stretching all the way to New York City.

We had the DNA on a piece across.

How did his DNA get into that house?

Got a package that I'm going to.

Need you to bring down to me.

To do what he did to four people, including a 10 year old boy, is just beyond words.

They were brutalized and we saw the evidence of that.

The jury has just reached a verdict.

In the murder trial of Darren. He was going to strike the American dream just by committing murder and mayhem.

I'm Megan Clowarty. Thanks for listening to 22 Hours An American Nightmare, a new true crime podcast from WTOP in Washington D.C.