Unsolved Mysteries Co-Creator Exposes the Approach to Season 2 of the Podcast’s Investigations

There are countless true-crime experiences available out there, no matter what your preferred medium might be, though all these projects owe at least some credit to the original Unsolved Mysteries TV series. Each week, the series would recount the details of strange disappearances, deaths, and even otherworldly encounters, while also closing with a hotline that would allow viewers to call in with any information they had about such cases. While Netflix has revived a TV version of the concept, Cosgrove/Meurer Productions and Cadence13 have launched their second season of the Unsolved Mysteries podcast, which delivers a deep dive into unexplained incidents each week, while also asking listeners to contact the series with any leads on these cases. New episodes of the Unsolved Mysteries podcast are released each Wednesday.

Produced and directed by Cosgrove/Meurer Productions and Cadence13, and narrated by award-winning voice actor Steve French, Unsolved Mysteries presents all-new unsolved cases from the vast Unsolved Mysteries database — including unsolved murders, missing persons, fugitives, mysterious creatures, and the paranormal — with each episode taking a deep dive into one specific mystery. In addition, listeners will hear updates on select cases explored in Season 1. Each week, the series features family members who have experienced mysterious events in their lives and law enforcement officials and forensic experts who work tirelessly to solve these cases.The cases profiled also include people who have experienced paranormal activity.All episodes of the Unsolved Mysteries podcasts end with a call-to-action directing listeners to the Unsolved Mysteries website — unsolved.com — to provide clues that could help solve the mysteries.

ComicBook.com caught up with franchise co-creator Terry Meurer to talk adapting the concept to a new medium, the mysteries of Season 2, and the future of the franchise.

ComicBook.com: Whether it be the TV show or whether it be the podcast, there’s no shortage of unsolved mysteries. There’s no shortage of true crime or paranormal cases you and your team might be trying to explore. So with Season 2 of the podcast, was there any prevailing theme or trend as opposed to Season 1, or are both seasons pretty much just that these are the cases that you think the exposure could actually result in producing evidence necessary from listeners?

Terry Meurer: I think the goal is always to see if we can solve one of these mysteries. So I guess, if somebody’s listening and has a clue, that’s always number one. So solvability is something we look at, but I think that the bar that we always try and set for the stories that we choose is creepy. I don’t know how else to describe, because there’re crimes, there’re lots of crimes, too many crimes, and unfortunately, we get a lot of submissions about crime stories, but looking for the creepiest stories that we can find. The ones that are haunting, I guess. Creepy and haunting are the two words that I would use. That’s our bar, trying to find cases where you’re just almost on the edge of your seat, like, what’s going to happen next?

We have a Bigfoot case coming up in Season 2 and the person that I interviewed for that is just, I mean, he’s an incredible storyteller, but when I say “story,” I should say “experience teller,” because this is not a story. This is what he experienced, and he’s very, very credible. You think Bigfoot and credible, you don’t necessarily put those two things together, but he’s great. His experience is very, very creepy. So, creepy and haunting, I think, is what the bar is, and solvable, certainly. 

Of this upcoming batch of episodes, you mentioned Bigfoot, is there another case that you are particularly either overwhelmingly haunted or creeped out by, or one that you do feel like you’re on the verge of just one piece of the puzzle away from solving that you’re really looking forward to getting out there?

One of my favorite episodes this season was actually the premiere, the murder of Chelsea Small, but I’m sure you’ve already heard that one. There’s just, that guy that killed her seems very identifiable, and that’s one that, because it’s actual surveillance footage of him, you would hope that one could be solved. That somebody would recognize him. Just how that went down is just chilling. Chilling, I guess, is another word that we would use to try and set the bar for the stories, because we get literally thousands of submissions and it takes a while to go through all of those cases.

But there’s another case of a man, this is in Georgia, a man and his wife, a husband and wife, Russell and Shirley Dermond. Russell’s 88. His wife is 87. They’re happily retired in this gated community in Georgia, outside of Atlanta, and they don’t show up for a Kentucky Derby party. And neighbors, they call, they don’t answer, they go to check on them. They find Russell in the garage, dead and decapitated, and his wife, 87-year-old Shirley, is missing. And 10 days later they find her in Lake Oconee, which their home was just right on Lake Oconee. She’s about five miles away from their home. And she’s in the lake but she’s been weighted down with cement blocks. So what happened there?

You’ve got a sheriff who’s been the sheriff there for 30 years, I think almost three decades. And this is the case that he does not want to retire and leave behind. He’s amazing, Sheriff Sills. And the family is devastated and they have looked into everything and they cannot find any motive, any motive for someone to come in. They explored a mafia hit, they explored mistaken identity, robbery. It wasn’t robbery. There was too much left behind. Any motive. Shirley and Russell were just this gentle, retired couple in their 80s. So that episode is chilling because they really don’t have any leads at all. But someone, or well, more than one person, went to a lot of trouble to kill these two people. So that’s another one.

With any of these investigations, is there any type of mystery, whether it be based on the victim, let’s say, that you think is just too gruesome or too intense to try to explore in this format. Is there any type of mystery that, when it’s presented to you, that you think, “This is too dark, we cannot descend down that territory,”?

I’m trying to think of an example of when we’ve said, “Yeah, this is just too disturbing,” I guess, might be the word as well. The Dermonds’ case is pretty disturbing, but it’s also so mysterious and so fascinating. It’s a tough line to walk, and a lot of times we leave it to law enforcement and to the family to help us make those decisions, I guess. If law enforcement doesn’t, or the family, it would probably be more the family. If the family just doesn’t want details like this to be out there, or they just can’t think about it anymore, then we would certainly respect their feelings or law enforcement feelings if they don’t want us to do a particular case.

In the case of the Dermonds, as hard as it is, I interviewed the son, Brad, and you could just tell, hear in his voice how hard this is for him to talk about. But I think family members and law enforcement know that media is all they have when they’ve run out of other leads and so they are willing to do those cases. So if they want us to do a case, we will do it. But again, the Dermond case is one of the more chilling and gruesome cases that I think we’ve tackled. 

It seems more like there might be a “tame” mystery that you don’t pursue based on family requests, whereas there might be something that is potentially more gruesome or unsettling that if you have the family support, you’re more intrigued to explore that case?

Well, if a family member ever said, “Please don’t do this story,” we would never do it. But I don’t want to give you the impression that we’re out there looking for gruesome stories. I think that “gruesome” is not one of those adjectives that I would use, but chilling and mysterious, I think that’s what describes the Dermond case. We’re not looking for gruesome, but we are looking for mysterious. And the Dermond case is as mysterious as it gets from the cases that we’ve come across, because they don’t have a suspect. They don’t even know how these people — it was a gated community. Did they get to the home by car? Did they get there by boat? They don’t even know how. There’s no sign of forced entry. I mean, there is nothing, they have nothing. So it is more mysterious. We’re not looking for gruesome, we’re looking for mysterious.

I guess that reflects more of my experiences with a majority of true crime, is that the angle is to lean into the more intense stuff, whereas Unsolved Mysteries has always been about, how can we help people? Obviously, people are entertained, but when they listen, it’s because they’re engaging and they’re fascinating stories, but it’s not, “Let’s titillate you.” No, it’s, “How can we get clues, how can we get leads by presenting this case to more folks?”

Right. And Sheriff Sills says, “The reason I do these stories, these podcasts or things, media attention, is because the case goes cold.” And he said, “We always get leads when we do something like this.” And they just need that one, so that’s what motivates us, and I think it’s what motivates other people to tell these stories. It’s not easy for them to tell these stories. It’s not easy for law enforcement to say, “We haven’t been able to solve this one,” and it’s not easy for families to say, “We still don’t have closure.”

Since the beginning of Unsolved Mysteries, with the phone number at the end, the franchise — the podcast, the TV show, the Netflix series — has always been about how audiences can help. You as a viewer, you as a listener, here’s how you can get involved. And, especially since there’s been a recent surge of true crime, I feel like there’s been a lot more, you could say “armchair detectives,” there’s a lot of people who want to get involved but maybe don’t have the skills of an actual detective or of law enforcement or of a private investigator. Could you talk at all about what you’ve noticed, given your years and years of experience in this realm, what the reaction has been to true crime enthusiasts in recent years versus say 10, 15, 20 years ago?

I would say that there are a lot more people who get more deeply involved in some of these cases. With the Netflix series, we know that there’s a lot of viewers that do a deep dive and they go into social media. I think, as well as for the podcast, people want to know more, and so now they have the opportunity to know more. So when they have the opportunity to know more, they do more digging and then they come up with their own theories and then they communicate with other people who are interested in that particular case. I just think there’s more communication than there used to be. When we were just on NBC, the show would air once. You couldn’t rewind, look at any clue, you couldn’t look at anything. The next time you were going to see that episode was going to be if it reran in the summer. Now you can see all the old shows, they’re streaming on various platforms. So it’s changed.

There’d be the stories that you talked about the next day, but you couldn’t do the deep dive into the research and the details and see what else you could dig up. People are just more involved, and I think the more people get involved in trying to solve mysteries and trying to analyze these cases, I think that just creates more interest in them, it feeds the beast. Many people say, “Oh, God, let’s give the viewers out there what they’re looking for. Let’s give them more true crime.” But we don’t think of ourselves, I mean, yes, we do crime stories, of course, but we do think of ourselves as a mystery story.

But we have people that talk about a Bigfoot case, or a UFO case just as much as they talk about a crime case. In fact, sometimes more. The paranormal cases are very, very popular. And it’s funny, it seems like the listeners and the viewers fall into two camps. It’s like, “Ah, I don’t want any of those UFO stories. I just want the crime.” And then somebody’s, “Oh, I don’t want any crime stories. I just want the paranormal.” Everybody has their favorite topics. So we do like to give the audience something to solve and a little bit of mystery for everyone’s interest. 

Before the podcast launch, your experience was in the TV series. What do you think you’ve noticed after the reception, the reaction, the production of Season 1, now Season 2 has just launched, what has been the biggest gift of Unsolved Mysteries in the podcast format versus the TV format?

I think just being able to tell more stories and get more mysteries out there. And just the more you put out there, the better the chances of having something solved. With the Netflix series, Season 1, we had an order of 12 episodes, and that’s 12 stories. And for our podcast, Season 1, we did 40, and Season 2, we’re doing 40. So that’s 80 stories that we’re getting out there to hopefully get listeners to solve. So I think, for us, that’s the beauty of the podcast. The stories, I think, are just as interesting as the Netflix series.

The podcast is hosted by Steve French, who’s immensely talented and invested in the mysteries. When the Netflix series started, there was automatically going to be the comparison of being a reboot, so a host is going to be compared to Dennis Farina, compared to Robert Stack, it’s going to have these comparisons and you avoided that by not having a host, but now that you’re into Volume 3 on the way, do you think you could ever see Steve transitioning to be a host, or do you think the format on Netflix works as is, and you don’t want to get into that comparison territory?

You know, that’s a Netflix call. We love Steve. I think that the audience has come, the podcast audience, certainly, has come to know Steve as the voice of the series. That’s not really our call. I think Netflix feels like the series is working well, and so I don’t think they would be probably entertaining the idea of a host, but we love Steve and would work with him on this, well, we are working with him on this and anything else as well. He’s just a great voice and a great fan. He’s actually a fan of the show. Very supportive.

All this talk about Netflix, I don’t mean this facetiously or anything, but some people have wanted there to be an Unsolved Mysteries related to Carole Baskin’s husband. Has there been any discussion of, “Oh, maybe we actually will do that. Maybe that does seem like a good case,” or do you think it’s not the right fit for the series and you’re not going to wade into those waters?

Well, I think it’s a good story. It’s a good mystery. But what we understood was that there are other companies developing that. So we wouldn’t jump in and develop an Unsolved Mysteries episode based on that. When we catch wind of — that’s the other thing about what we do, I would say, is we try and find cases that haven’t been on Dateline and Discovery ID. And, sadly, there’s still a lot of cases that haven’t received the media attention that they should. The Carole Baskin case, that’s received a lot of media attention. You would think if people had leads, they would’ve come forward by now. So that case is a little bit too high profile for us. Back in the day, we used to do higher-profile cases, but right now we try and find those smaller stories that haven’t had any exposure that the audience hasn’t seen.

And that’s actually hard because, like you say, there’s so many true crime shows out there, but we surprise ourselves, thankfully, that a lot of the viewer submissions that come in, these are not stories that have had a lot of exposure. So that’s what we try and do in the podcast, as well, especially the podcast, that the people like Chelsea Small, we just got some lovely emails from law enforcement and from the family after the launch of that episode on Wednesday, because they just feel like it’s something they can do. They can get this story out in the media and maybe it’ll be solved. It gives them hope. And I hope, never false hope, because I think they are realists and know that these cases are going to be hard to solve, but that’s one thing that we can do for families, and law enforcement agencies, small towns who haven’t gotten the exposure, some of the national exposure, that some of these other stories have. 

I know you’re in Season 2 of the podcast, it might be a few months before we get word on Season 3 of the podcast. There’s certainly no shortage of stories that your team and Steve could dive into. Netflix announced that there’s a Volume 3 on the way. Is there any update on Volume 3 still coming out this year? Is there any tease about Volume 3 you can offer?

I can say that it is coming out this year. I think I can get away with that. We’re sworn to secrecy. Netflix would have my head, literally. Volume 3 will be coming out this year, and we’ve got some great stories included in that, as well.

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Unsolved Mysteries Season 2 is available wherever you get your podcasts.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.