Terry Dunn Meurer, executive producer of the 'Unsolved Mysteries' podcast, joins Cheddar News to discuss the new season and why people are obsessed with true crime.  

Between Bells

Season Two of 'Unsolved Mysteries' Podcast 

one of the longest running programs in the history of television is now back in podcast form. Unsolved mysteries just launched their season to the podcast, shares many of those elements of the beloved original and updated netflix series, like intimate interviews, stories and even a call to listeners to help solve those mysteries. Now. This season will feature 40 weekly episodes. That's enough to satisfy anybody's cold case fix. So joining us now to discuss is Terry Done muir, executive producer of unsolved mysteries the podcast. Teri such a pleasure to have you here. Thanks so much for joining us. Fans have been patiently waiting for season two. So how does this sort of stack up from season one? You know, we have 40 more very chilling and gripping mysteries to present a variety of categories from murder and unexplained deaths and wanted and missing cases. Um There are so many cases unsolved cases out there in uh in our database and we just want to get as many of them out to the to the public in the effort to try and solve them as we possibly can. Alright, so let's talk about season two. What can you tell us? What can fans expect this time around. What are sort of the cases that we're investigating here. There there are a variety there, the murder cases as I said, a missing person case. We have wanted cases, we have paranormal cases. Um a Ufo and alien abduction case. We really try and mix it up for our viewers because different viewers like some of the viewers like the true crime mysteries and some like the paranormal mysteries. So we try and give everyone a little bit of everything as somebody who used to watch the original unsolved mysteries. I mean, even the theme music sort of just sucks you into that show podcast, a different forum here. Do you almost feel like it's more intimate how you're sort of connecting with people and why do you think this podcast is so well loved and received by fans? I think it's, I think it's well loved and received because um it's, it really does kind of mirror the original series. It it tells stories that uses the interviewees. It actually has a host which the netflix series doesn't have. Um and just um steve french is our host. He's a wonderful, wonderful host, tough to replace bob stack from the old days. But steve does a wonderful, wonderful job telling these stories. And I think that that's one of the things that the audience really likes is the, is the voice of steve, kind of walking them through through these different stories. Oh yeah, the voice matters. I mean, you're absolutely robert stack is is definitely a legend when it comes to this. You know, the netflix show also tackled unsolved cases from different categories. So walk us through, sort of the creative process to find these stories. Where do you, where do you basically find a lot of this stuff, a lot of the stories are submitted through our website unsolved dot com people from law enforcement? Um individual family members who have a case that they would like to share, shine a light on Oftentimes law enforcement. If we're working with one law enforcement agency, they will give us another story that they would like us to try and help themselves FBI marshals if it's a wanted case. We work with law enforcement all over the country. So they come to us from um everywhere. And then we have a research team that's also looking for cases that might not come to us through the website. What are the major differences terry maybe between the podcast of the show? How how did you sort of work to separate the two here? You know, we wanted that. We wanted them to be similar to the host of course with the podcast is different. These podcasts are a little bit shorter than than the netflix episodes. Um We have two or three interviewees, people that we talked to, we didn't want to have because it's voices and we're not seeing someone's face and we don't want the listeners to get confused about who's speaking. So we have two or three, usually law enforcement or a family member telling the story. So there's fewer, fewer interviewees and of course we can't do any reenactments like we do of the actual mystery or the crime? Yeah. The reenactments sometimes for the best part of of of the show a lot of times? Is there a story maybe in this upcoming season that really stood out to you? Was there really a really interesting one maybe, you know um the pilot episode the the death of Chelsea Small um is pretty, it's it's it's a chilling episode, very creepy. This guy comes into this check cashing establishment and just shoots this woman dead. Um They have him on surveillance camera but they can't figure out who he is. Um So we're hoping that someone will Go to our website where we have the surveillance footage and see that and Brian um figure out who that might be. Um and then we have a very confounding mystery that took place outside of Atlanta in Georgia. In a small retirement community where a husband and wife and an 88 and 87 were found. Well the husband was found dead in his garage is the uh and he was decapitated. His head was not there. And a few days later his wife was found in the lake that was fronted their their home and they have no theories that this was a beloved couple. Uh no enemies, not an enemy in the world and they have no idea, not even a single theory about who could have wanted these people dead. Um So they've been retired for for 10 years and just kind of living out their lives in this community. So those are two cases. Um We have an uh an alien abduction case um which is also intriguing of the paranormal fans and a ghost ghost story or two. Um so we're definitely mix it up. Yeah, and you're keeping everybody happy because that was the best, that's always the best part about unsolved mysteries. You get the murders, you get the aliens, you get all the good stuff. Why do you think terry our culture is so obsessed with these true crime stories? I mean they work so well. If you look at every single top 10 list of podcasts are almost all true crime stories. I just think that people can relate to these cases um in some cases their cautionary tales, it's like you don't want to do what they did and and end up as a as a true crime story. Um I think people are just intrigued. Um you know, there I think, and I think there's an emotional element to it. People for us the cases are a little bit more frustrating, I think for the viewers and listeners because they're unsolved. I know we've had people, even though the title of the show is unsolved mystery, we've had people say I'm so frustrated I got to the end and it wasn't solved. Um so I think that the amateur detectives out there at least for unsolved mysteries. I like to think that they can help solve it. They like to put the clues together, they go back and they look at they look at all the clues and they like to come up with their own theories. So I think that there's an involvement. There's an interaction that unsolved mysteries has with its audience. But I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. I think it's the detective in the mystery and putting sort of it all together that everybody wants to sort of decode I think is the reason why we're obsessed with it. Terry is such a pleasure to have you here, Terry done. You're the executive producer for unsolved mysteries, the podcast and you can listen to the new season anywhere, you get your podcasts.