Creating the "51 Days of Terror" Podcast

Interviewing Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn one year after the arrest in the Seminole Heights serial killings.

The entire series is out now! You can listen on iTunes, Google Podcasts and Spotify. 

Sunday, we officially finished our final episode of 51 Days of Terror. I felt like this was the first moment in four months my head was above water. I'd spent countless hours researching, writing, interviewing, approving scripts and going through episodes. Somewhere in between I planned and went on my 30th birthday trip, but the podcast was hanging over my head the entire time. When it was over, I finally felt this weight lifted off of me.

Then, I realized, the families of the victims will never have that feeling. They'll always feel a weight on them. Every family dinner, every vacation, every time someone walks through the door who isn't the person they lost—those moments will just remind them of the weight on them.

I'm not saying I've moved on from the podcast. You can't sit in someone's living room and talk about the night they lost their child and really ever move on. I feel connected to these victims, their families and this story in a way I've never experienced with any other project I've done.

For those of you who don't know, 51 Days of Terror follows the investigation into four murders that happened in the Seminole Heights neighborhood of Tampa in 2017. Fifty-one days after the first killing, police made an arrest in the case.

Going over one of the episodes with our team.

Every time there's a series of murders followed by an arrest, I always see viewers asking to learn more about the victims and less about the suspect. We can tell the victims' stories on television, but it's impossible to put together something truly meaningful when you only have a little more than a minute to get it done. I wanted to show it could be done if we used a different form of storytelling.

Thankfully, I found someone who felt the same. When I went to Amanda Ciavarri with my plan to do a podcast on the Seminole Heights serial killings and to have the main focus on the victims, she was immediately onboard. The same goes for our digital producer, Heather Monahan. We worked for months before we even brought the pitch to our boss because we wanted to be sure this was something we could tackle the right way. Serendipitously, our editor, Dallas Cotton, started just as we were entering the editing stage and he was the perfect person to execute our vision.

I know a lot of journalists wax poetic about their "noble" intentions and I don't want to come off like them. Like I did someone a favor by telling the story of their loved one. They did me the favor. They're the ones who allowed me to ask them questions about the worst moment of their lives and were so giving with their experiences.

I not only wanted to tell the stories of the victims but of their families. I wanted to show people it doesn't end after the arrest. Murder has a ripple effect and it changes the lives of everyone involved, from the families to the neighborhood to the first responders. Everyone is changed in some way, shape or form and a lot of them can never go back to how life was before.

Going through research before writing
an episode. 

During this journey, there were several times when I took a moment to thank God for putting me in a position to tell these stories. I knew this was what he wanted me to be doing at this moment. Benjamin Mitchell, Monica Hoffa, Anthony Naiboa and Ronald Felton are all in his hands now, but he called on me to play a small part in telling their stories and making sure they aren't forgotten.

Today, the final episode of the podcast was released. You can listen to the entire series on iTunes, Google Podcasts and Spotify. You'll learn a lot about the case and a lot about the way the victims were killed, but I hope what you take away from it is how they lived.