The Real Killer

Season Three of iHeart Media's The Real Killer podcast began last month, and everyone I know seems to be listening. This season of the podcast focuses exclusively on my case, digging into the archives for never-before-released audio and playing new interviews with both outliers and those closely involved. Four episodes have dropped so far, with each one drawing listeners a few more steps into the gnarled travesty that the case quickly became.

Even though there's been other media coverage brought to bear, The Real Killer seems to offer the most in-depth examination of the circumstances leading to my arrest and conviction. Listening to reports and interviews from my case has been an object lesson in past life regression. My own young voice—lighter and with intonations I no longer recognize—speaks on tape about people I've known, places I've gone, and memory sweeps over me, cold and brackish as high tide.

I know this story, it occurs to me, but not this particular telling. The host, Leah Rothman, presents fact upon fact, and even though I know it all, I have to keep listening. (Is this how Cassandra felt, in the ancient myth?) Because Leah conducted her own independent interviews in preparation for the podcast, there are plenty of new tidbits that strike me. Because the prosecution was unforthcoming as I prepared for trial, there are also lots of crackly old recordings that I'm now hearing for the first time. I don't know which feels stranger.

I can say definitively that I dislike the voice of Young Byron. It's not his tone but his enunciation that's hard to get past. Now I understand why so many people found me insufferably pompous; in those early interviews, I somehow manage to mouth plummy vowels while simultaneously losing a battle with lockjaw. All that's missing is a moment when I propose the lead investigator meet me for tea and finger sandwiches.

I don't know what direction the podcast is going to go. We're already almost halfway through the season, and today's is the episode when Leah and I sit down for an interview. I think I know how that went, but as those recordings from half a lifetime ago show, I'm not an especially good judge of my performance during such things.