Wondry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Ghost Story ad-free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or an Apple podcast. Recently, I found myself thinking a lot about Sherlock Holmes. Not like there's got to be some clue here that would unlock this whole story, some homes in solutions to the lock door mystery that would finally reveal Naomi's killer. It's nothing like that. In fact, I don't think about Sherlock Holmes in relation to the murder as all. I think of him when I imagine talking to the ghost in my teenage bedroom. Or more to the point, I think of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

When I talk on this subject, I'm not talking about what I believe. I'm not talking about what I think. I'm talking about what I know.

That's Conan Doyle, the guy who created perhaps the most rational, evidence-obsessed character in the history of literature, describing his absolute certainty that we can talk to the dead. In fact, he was the celebrity spokesperson for what was a much larger movement. World War I had left millions dead, and those who survived were turning to the abnormal for comfort.

It was only in the time of the war, when all these splendid young fellows were disappearing from our view, the whole world was saying, Well, what's become of them? Have they dissipated into nothing? Or are they still the grand fellows that we used to know?

One person, Conan Doyle pointed to as proof that we could speak with the dead was the magician Harry Houdini. Houdini was also world-famous at this point, mostly as an escape artist, but also because he would perform seances as part of his act. He'd bring audience members up on stage to contact their dead loved ones, and Conan Doyle was enthralled. Now, Houdini, he knows it's all a trick. The crowd who comes to see him, they so badly want to connect with those who died that they're easily fooled. The illusion gives the people what they want. But when the two men become friends, Conan Doyle refuses to believe that Houdini isn't the real deal. And no amount of protest by Houdini can change Conan Doyle's mind. For years, their friendship survives this disagreement. Until that is, Conan Doyle convincing Houdini to put aside his skepticism for one night. Houdini had been grieving the loss of his mother, and in a desperate attempt to contact her, he agrees to sit with his friend and a medium in Atlantic City. Houdini closes his eyes and follows the instructions to summon her. The medium begins automatic writing, channeling the spirit and spilling everything it says onto the page, or in this case, 15 pages.

Houdini's mother appears to the medium and makes the sign of the cross. She speaks to her son in English. Houdini is silent. He doesn't mention that his mother was a Rabbi's wife and would never make the sign of the cross. Nor does he point out that she never spoke in English in her life. But inside, he's disturbed, distressed that his friend actually believes this stuff and is convincing other people too. And eventually, what was a private disagreement becomes a full-blown public rivalry. Houdini makes it his mission to debunk this whole pseudo science of the abnormal. He even testifies before Congress on it.

He says it's, quote.

A fraud from start to finish. When a congressman calls Conan Doyle an outstanding authority, Houdini responds, no, he is one of the great dupes. Friendship over. End of story. Except, a few months after that congressional hearing, Houdini suffers a ruptured appendix and is suddenly on his deathbed. After years of waging war on all things abnormal, he does something surprising. He tells his wife he'll try to communicate with her from the beyond. He promises to send her a message if he can. And for the next decade, she tries to summon her husband every year on the anniversary of his death.

We have waited, Houdini, all so long. Never have you been able to present the evidence you promised. And now this is a night of night. The world is listening. Harry, your world, your audience.

This is a recording from the night of the final seance. After years of not reaching Houdini, they give him one more chance to show up.

Harry, we are all seekers after truth. Please manifest yourself by speaking to the trumpet. Speak through it. Speak. Speak, Harry. We are watching and waiting, Harry.

They wait.

Do it, Harry. Please, Houdini. We are waiting.

And wait.

If there is communication from the Great Beyond, come through with the evidence.

And... Nothing.

Houdini did not come to do. Good night, Harry.

The thing that sticks with me, isn't that Houdini was right? It's that at the end of his life, he so desperately wanted to be wrong. It reminds me of what his story nick Hyley said last episode about the advantages of believing just in a pretty different context. Houdini devoted so much time to debunking the existence of the abnormal. But when he was at death's door, the advantages of believing in an afterlife were so great, the comfort it provided so reassuring that he was willing to put down all the evidence he had to the contrary. After years of thinking his friend was a gullible dupe, in the end, even Houdini wanted to believe. From wandering in Pineapple Street Studios, I'm Tristan Redman. This is Ghost Story. Episode five, The Bulletins. What a life.

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You might remember that in Faith's statement to the police, he tells the cops that on the night that his wife was murdered, he was awake in his study, typing a letter to the children. He wrote these letters every week. They were called the bulletins, updating the kids on how he and their mother were getting on at home. All three children were away at boarding school. Bindle, the youngest, their 13-year-old daughter, had just left home that autumn. Bindle was at this school on the day after her mother was killed. She was sitting in class when the door opened and she was told to report to the head mistress's office.

They took me out of a class and they said, Do you know where the head mistress lives? I said, Yes, she lives in that house back there. They said, Well, you go over there, the head mistress wants to talk to you. I went in there, What did I do? Head mistress. She said, I have to tell you something sad. Did you know that your Uncle Morris was going to visit at home? I said, No, but he comes often. She said, Well, I have to tell you. Your dad asked me to tell you that he shot your mother. I don't believe it. I mean, things like that didn't happen to the family I lived in.

Eighty-five years after that day, I went to visit her.

I've heard so much about you.

Well, Bindle, I have.

Heard so much about you.

It's nice to be called Bindle. Nobody calls me Bindle anymore.

She was named after her mom, Naomi Marigold-Dancy. But her family always called her by her nickname. Am I allowed to call you Bendell?

Of course you are. Of course you are. That's part of the family thing.

Bindle is nearly 100 and living in a nursing home in West Virginia. She's been in the States for almost 80 years, so she may have lost her English accent, but she still looks like a dancey, the same long, graceful neck that my wife Kate has. And she's smart like a dancey, breaking into 17th century verse at the drop of a hat.

Fair Daffodil, we wait to see you haste away so soon, as yet the early rising son has not attained his noon.

They're with some healthy American bluntness.

Fancy having to memorize that crap.

I came to see Bindle for obvious reasons. She's the only person alive who knew Fathol and Naomi together. If Fathol did indeed kill Naomi, as all but one of our murder detectives suspected, presumably, Bindle would have noticed something. There would have been signs of strife, of resentment, of anger, of something.

Oh, it was marvelous. We had a wonderful life.

Well, not if you ask Bindle.

Lots of picnics, lots of rides in the car. We didn't just ride in the car. I dad sat in this car with the top off singing all the way with that touching the horn.

What songs would he sing? What was his favorite song to sing you?

Well, cruising down the river on a Sunday afternoon, the moon above the stars.

Her earliest memories are mostly of her dad because her mom wasn't around very much.

Mom worked. She got off on the train early in the morning. I used to walk down through the gardens with her sometimes, and she get on the train and go to London to work.

Naomi spent long days working in London, delivering babies and caring for them in hospitals there. She worked grueling hours, then made her way home late at night.

I didn't see her that much. I think she was a very good mother. She taught me all the things she's supposed to teach me. But I think she was more interested in caring for poor children and things like that. She figured we had everything. She enjoyed her babies so much and she felt that they really needed her.

When you say.

She loves her babies.

The babies that she delivered, she had to teach the mothers how to look after them and keep them clean. That was her job. She was good at it.

How did that make you feel to think that your mom was more interested in spending time with other children and not with her own children.

I just figured that she was what people called a good person. Mom was the one supporting the family. Dad was doing a lot of things that women did.

Was there ever any.

Tension between.

Your parents.

Over this?

Did your dad feel ever.

Resentful towards your mom because.

She was working and he wasn't?

Oh, no, not resentful. He wanted to look after her and make sure that she was looked after when she came home tired. He wanted to make sure that the house was taken care of so that it would be nice when she got home and that we kids were dressed and clean and he'd taken us for long walks and taken care of us well.

It wasn't just that Fathor made sure the house was in order. He made everything fun, Bendel said, like putting on magic shows for the kids and their friends.

Dad was terrifically good at that. It was just like, all of a sudden, there'd be a Bunny Rabbit came out from behind his ear. He'd do it to us all the time. That's like, Oh.

How.

Did that get there? The little mouse. It must have been none of my shirt.

Was he funny when he did his magic tricks?

He was a riot. He was the best father in the world.

That's Kindred Bindle's mantra about Fathr. He was the best father in the world. She said it many times in our chat. I suppose it's hardly surprising that a kid would have such a glowing perception of her father. But there really wasn't a hint of any family strife. Never a critical word about Fathr. After a while, I started to wonder how much of it was nostalgia. It served her better at this point in life to wear these particularly rose tinted spectacles. And who could blame her? But then months into my reporting, the family found a whole trove of documents that largely corroborate Bindle's memories, buried under some papers in a brown envelope were dozens of the weekly bulletins Fathr wrote to the children at boarding school, all from the years before and after Naomi's murder.

Would you be open, Mark? I mean, this is a question obviously for Johnny as well, but would you be open to sharing the letters with us, please, the bulletins?

Well, Johnny hasn't seen any of them yet until I physically hand them to him because they're not in any other form. I can't answer that. It took a long time for my in-laws to decide to share the letters with me. By that point, honestly, it felt like they didn't totally trust me. I think they were worried that I'd comb through them looking for anything that would help me build a case against Fever. Annie tried to assure them that we were just genuinely interested in them, whatever they contained. What has it been like reading.

Those.

Bulletins? Well, it brings him back to me. He was a very amusing man, and to my mind, very kindly as well. But I think once they read the letters, they recognized the man they remembered. So they sent them almost 200 pages in all, and we dove in.

First bulletin for the winter term, 1937. My dear children.

Here's my brother-in-law, Hugh, reading again his fathor.

A little new carbon paper and some extra thin typing paper, and away we go just as merrily with three of you to write to.

Most of the letters are just musing on everyday life.

The weather is terribly cold here and has been for the last few days, so my.

Thoughts have flowed… There's one where Fathir writes to apologize for sending Bindle's brother back to school with football boots that are the wrong size.

I felt so sorry about it that I could have cried and Mom and I were completely put off our breakfast. I know exactly what it is like to have to play in boots too small, and I have prayed many times that this shall never befall any of you.

He clearly misses his kids and he begs them to write home more.

Don't you decide which letters to me is interesting? They all are, and I keep them all. When I am old and utterly bald, I shall have nothing else to do but read them over and over.

He writes about how he and Naomi are keeping busy now that the children have gone.

We have cleared mixed room and dance almost every evening. She's learning a good deal about the dancing and improving rapidly, although she wasn't too bad before, as you know.

In fact, Fadher can be quite complementary of Naomi.

Do you realize that Mom will be 50 soon and she looks about 30? Some people say she looks far less than that.

In the weeks before Naomi's murder, Fadher writes to tell the children that their Uncle, Morris, has come to stay at the house.

We have poor old Morris here again. He began to lose the sight of his sole remaining eye a week ago and got very nervous about it, quite naturally. So we asked him here to stop for a while. He vents all his spite of poor Mom. He feels so savage sometimes with her that he says the most spiteful things.

The letters say that Naomi went to stay with her mother the week before the murder when Morris came to Queen's Road for his treatment.

All the same. We must not forget that he is badly wounded and we have a responsibility towards him for that. I read the paper to him at breakfast. He chips in irritably with caustic comments upon any of the public characters.

There's another letter written the following week that really stuck with me. Betha and Omi have just come home from visiting Bindle. They sometimes call her Widdle. He writes about how on the ride back, their car tire gets damaged and they have to drive the long way home quite slowly.

Mom was exceptionally good company and we enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed the whole of it, which is saying a lot for I usually hate these long drives. Mom and I felt very much happier about Widow after seeing her at the school. We hear you will be at home on December 18th. What ho, for the holidays. We will have a marvelous time, won't we? With love and kisses to you all, from Mom and from me.

They wouldn't be celebrating Christmas together. Within days of this long, slow drive, Naomi would be dead. And before reading these letters, a big part of me suspected that the man who killed her was the same man writing these words. But Fadher's tenderness towards Morris, towards Naomi, towards the kids. It's hard to square that with the guy I get from the police file or with the way the murder detectives talked about him like he was some criminal mastermind. If my in-laws decided to show me the letters because they'd hope they'd snap me out of whatever fantasy I was constructing about Fathor, well, it worked.

My parents had it really unusually. Gential marriage. My mom would complain, Now I'm getting fat. He'd say, You're not fat, Nay. He'd say, You're just beautiful.

What did your mom say?

Oh, Jack.

Have I just got this man completely wrong?

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Your podcasts. What if your partner developed 21 new identities or you discovered that your friend who helped you through your darkest times was actually a coniving con artist? Or what if you began seeing demons everywhere, inhabiting people, including your son? What would you do? Stay tuned to the end of this episode to hear a preview of the newest season of This is Actually Happening. I was over a year into this when I first read Favir's letters, and when I did, it was a wake-up call. How could I have been so far off? Why had I have been so quick to entertain the possibility that he was a murderer? It's not like doing this was some lark. I knew from the beginning how uncomfortable my in-laws were about it. Several members of the family had decided not to participate because they were so upset by the idea. Mark's warning was now ringing in my ears. If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer, then I will be sorry that we ever said we would contribute to it. But it wasn't just me, right? There was only one detective who thought Fathr definitely didn't do it.

All the others had pointed to Fathr as their lead suspect. So I decided to reach out to the one holdout on our panel, Hamish Campbell, the one who thought the hesitation wounds were incontrovertible evidence.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, that's much better, Hamish.

I wanted to know how he would explain why all the other detectives suspected Fathr.

A good question, but to be honest, I don't know why they think the way they think, but do you think maybe some want to find a more fantastical or exaggerated position of the case? Then yes, I do.

That instinct towards the more dramatic conclusion, the better story. Hamish says he's seen it a lot in his career.

You see that in so many cases where people want to see another explanation and in the vacuum of information and the absence of hard fact, you place incorrect thoughts and ideas, and you then build on them. You just build up a whole case. But in fact, you've created something out of nothing.

He listed half a dozen murder cases where the media, the family, even other officers offered up theories that were darker, more conspiratorial than the one right in front of them. They'd latch onto it, start seeing signs of it everywhere, only to have the real outcome be totally mundane.

Unfortunately, some cases are relatively straightforward. They're not all Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayer's investigations. They're just sad, tragic, small events of time and life.

What Hamish is identifying is a perverse desire that I think many of us have to want murders to be more exciting than they are, more true crimey.

I sense you're looking for a mystery. Perhaps the mystery is there is no mystery.

Okay, sure. But what's actually.

Driving that? Why do people come up with these theories that certain cases might be more exciting than they.

Actually.

Are? Tristan, I don't know. You could ask yourself that question.

What do.

You mean? Well, because what's driving you in this case? I sense a real belief from Utrist and that you want it to be Dr. Dancy killed his wife and killed his brother-in-law. I think you're looking in the shadows and finding shapes.

I don't know. Maybe he's right. Maybe I've been looking too hard for something that's not actually there. Trying to wedge pieces of a puzzle together that don't actually fit. Except with this story, it's not like one side is obvious and boring and the other is completely fantastical. Sure, if you believe Fator did it, then you'd have to accept some pretty extreme things. He drugged Morris. He faked hesitation wounds. He climbed out the window, shimmy down a drain pipe, and burst back into a locked bathroom. But if you believe Fator didn't do it, you have to accept a bunch of equally extreme other things. He dodged bullets that whiz past his ear. He washed Morris's hands and placed the razor back in his grasp for no apparent reason. He called Dorothy Sayers weeks after his wife's murder, just for the hell of it. In fact, to believe in his innocence or in his guilt without a smoking gun requires just that, belief. The belief that's based less on irrefutable hard facts and more on what you want to be true. In any case, it was a relief to read the bulletins, to settle into the idea that maybe Fathr didn't do it, now that I had a clearer view of the man.

Basically, the bulletins totally changed the way I thought about him because they show him as this quite devoted family man.

Because suddenly you're empathizing with him.

Yeah. As usual, I laid all my thorny feelings at the feet of my wife, Kate. Because as I spent more time reading the letters, certain details started to emerge.

It's not all great for him either. There are a few things that really stood out to me, and I was quite surprised by. I don't know if you remember in the police statement, basically, Fadher talks about giving Morris injections every Monday.

The first odd detail comes from a letter a few weeks before Naomi's murder.

Morris is in the house. He's come for his weekly Monday injection. And Fadher, he writes to the kids, It is 11:00 PM.

It is 11:00 PM. Morris is safely asleep as I have given him an injection to keep him quiet.

Now, an injection to keep him quiet, my understanding for speaking with doctors was that the most likely thing that Fadher was injecting Morris with was vitamins, which is sometimes given to people for failing eyesight. But Fader is admitting in the bulletin that he's giving Morris an entirely different type of injection altogether.

You might remember that a bunch of the detectives on our panel wanted to see the toxicology report for Morris, but the investigators at the time never did one. Several of our detectives suspected Fader could have drugged Morris.

Does he say, I injected him and sent him and knocked him out? Or does he say, I gave him his medicine?

All he says is, It is 11:00 PM. Morris is safely asleep, as I have given him an injection to keep him quiet.

It's an unfortunate term of phrase.

There are two kinds of Kate laughter. There's the real kind and that one, the kind that shows up when she's uncomfortable.

I mean, okay. The other thing that really stood out to me is that basically two weeks after Naomi's murder, in the first letters of the kids after the murder, a woman shows up in the letters.

K.

I mean, her name is Mary Garston, right? She's 17 years younger than him.

In that first letter, Fevered tells the kids that this woman, Mary, is helping to take care of him. Fadher even has a nickname for her, Mousie.

Mousie, by the way, is one of three people who have been good to me. Mousie has been constantly on the phone to hear how things are and has done a lot of sewing for me.

After that, she starts showing up in the bulletins pretty much every week. And by that autumn, she'd be cowriting the bulletins, signing off the letters with Fadher with love from Mary and dad.

Yeah, two weeks is not very long. I think that's really quite odd. Unless she happened to be very close with Naomi, for instance, that we don't know about. She's there as a friend of Naomi's and her best friend has just been killed.

Yeah, I mean, that's possible.

We don't know whether Fadher and Mary knew each other before Naomi died. She lived just down the road and worked as a nurse, but there's no mention of her in the letters before this. By the end of the year, though, 12 months after Naomi's murder, Mary and Fathr will be married. Mary came up briefly in my conversation with Bindle. She told me Fathol married her out of convenience or some sense of duty. The letters, though, say something else.

If you read the bulletins, you get a slightly different take on what Fevered's motivations were. And I think money is very high up the list of priorities. So, for example, he mentions a few times early on that Mary has got money.

Mary's dad is also wealthy. He's called Mr. Gaston, and he's also moved into the house on Queen's Road.

But then a few months before he marries Mary, and he writes this in the bulletin to the kids, he says, I can see that there will be big alterations.

My dears. I can see that there will be big alterations, my dears, and you need not imagine I'm doing this with my eyes shut. I've seen it coming and I've been working for it for a long time. I mean, to satisfy Mr. Guston and hang on to him for the rest of his life.

Fathid does hang on to him for the rest of his life. When Mr. Gaston dies in the house a few years later, he leaves behind around £10,000. That's almost $700,000 in 2023.

Okay. I mean, at least he's honest about that.

A few years after their marriage, Mary gets pregnant. Binny says her dad was excited about the prospect of another child. What's interesting is despite becoming Fethe's second wife, Mary is only a bit part in the Dancy family story. But maybethat's because Mary isn't around for very long. I'm about to play a clip from This is Actually Happening. Follow This is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

In my wife's system, she described it as like a big house. Everybody had rooms and then they had a common room. Everybody had their own space and they could come and co-mingle together in the common space. She described it as if she was an observer. The person that walked around was like the host. That's what she called it, the host, because it didn't have a name. It was just like a vessel. You put a key in an Ignition and drive a vehicle. It was just a tool. She was aware of the conversations, but she was never involved in them. It would be heated discussions between Paisley, which was the 17-year-old, and she wanted to go on a date. She wanted to go flirt. The mom part would be like, No, that's inappropriate. You're married. Paisley would be like, Well, I'm a 17-year-old. I want to go have fun. They would talk with one another and sometimes she would tell me that she'd just be sitting there and they would be having conversations. Blaze was the part that was in charge of finances. She was pretty much always out. Paisley was always out. Sophie was always out.

But the only one that I never saw interact with anyone else was the decimeter, which was the male part, which was pictured as like an abomination, was like a creature. That one I never saw interact with anyone other than me.

You can listen to This is actually happening early and ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the WNDYRY app or on Apple Podcasts.

Do you know what the family story is about? How Mary died?

In childbirth.

Yeah, that was the family story we were told by I was told by your dad as well. But Bindle told us a different story.

I walked Kate through this story, but this is what Bindle told me. It started with a call from her brother.

I was at university by then, and I remember nick calling me up and saying, Bindle, you better come home. Dad's going to need help. Mary just died. I cut math class and got on a train and came home.

How did she die?

She got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, pregnant, and dad had told her not to get up in the night and if she had to go to the bathroom to call him and he'd take her.

Why did he say that to her?

Because he thought she might fall. But she didn't want to wake him. She got up and she fell and hit her head, I think, when she passed out and died.

There are a lot of new details flying by here, so just to recap. Phaetha's future much younger wife shows up in the Bulletins two weeks after Naomi dies. Within the year they're married. A few years later, she gets pregnant and then suddenly dies one night on the landing. The family says she died in childbirth, but Bindle says she died by hitting her head. I looked into Mary's death and it seems there was no autopsy done at the time because her death wasn't regarded as suspicious. She had a anemia and the death certificate says she'd fainted. But I did find out that the doctor who examined the body and signed off on this almost certainly wasn't a stranger.

One of Fathr's colleagues, a doctor that he knows, comes to the house and certifies the death. Fathr is there as a witness of the death, and then his colleague, friend.

Certifies it. So there's a level of trust there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't look great, does it? But it also could just be a ton of circumstances that stack up and you end up asking tons of questions, or you wouldn't have asked any questions about it if you hadn't thought about this stuff before.

No, exactly. But that's the thing, right?

And Bindle didn't ask any questions.

And she.

Clearly never has.

Bindle didn't see anything odd in.

Any of this. And has never seen anything odd.

But perhaps the most bizarre detail I've come across has been nagging at me for a while. It's about a song that Fathir claims to have written. Remember he was a songwriter? I read it both in Bindle's personal memoir and Fathir's.

So I tracked down the song and.

The.

Lyrics are interesting.

It's called I Married a wife.

Would you like to hear, I married a Wife?

Sure. Okay.

Imany wife, oh, then, oh, then. I married a wife, oh, then. I married a wife, she's a plague of my life. And I long to be single again.

Again- The song starts pretty tame, standard man complaining about the old ball and chain.

I married a wife, she's a plague of my life, and I long to be single again.

But then his wife gets ill.

My wife, she died. Oh, then, oh, then. My wife, she died. Oh, then. My wife, she died and I laughed and I cried. I was glad I was single again. Again and again.

The man is thrilled to be free at last.

Again and again.

Except he finds himself in a similar predicament.

But I married another or then, oh, then. I married another. Oh, then I married another far worse than the other, and I long for the old one again.

It's very sick, sense of humor. I mean, if what everybody says that he's this guy who's very eccentric and has a gift of a gap and is all silly and playful with the kids. Maybe that's the biggest joke for him to say that he wrote that.

Is that a joke in very poor taste, or is it a confession?

He doesn't say he killed them. Just says, I married them and they died, and I married another one. I missed the other one.

So you don't find that disturbing?

You can imagine that's like a sick joke. I'm a guy who's lost two wives. They both died. I'm going to make a joke on that. And it's my joke that this song has come out. Oh, yeah, I wrote that because it sounds funny.

Yeah. I mean, I can't square that with a guy who writes tenderly about his wife in his letters to the kids.

Make you feel a bit sorry for Naomi?

And Mary.

And Mary? Sorry, yes. I just don't know so much about Mary. Yeah. But I'm sure the plague of my life is quite strong. I mean, maybe the guy is really messed up all the time. Imagine he's innocent. He's had a really shit time. At the end, he's just making stuff up. He's just, you know...

Still, there aren't really very many generous interpretations of it for me.

Yeah, it's weird. It doesn't necessarily mean he killed her. He could have enjoyed being single again. I'm sure lots of people become widowed or whatever and might actually feel relieved in some way. It doesn't mean that they're necessarily killed in order to become a widow.

Yeah, that's true.

I don't know. This is tough for me. Is Kate just not hearing things the way that I'm hearing them? Is one of us bending the truth more to our liking? Kate isn't one to get frazzled. She's extremely even keeled. But I could hear her getting frustrated with me. I am.

Not going to.

Any conclusions myself.

I'm not trying to paint your- You are.

A little, I'm just saying the links to the murder have to be clear or it doesn't make any sense.

And that laugh again.

I mean, we're going to be more traumatized by this podcast than we were about the murder, I'll tell you that.

Why do you say that?

Because carry on, stare it up more some more. What else? What else happened? Katie. Go on.

Oh, dear. How are.

You feeling about all this?

Well, I'm actually feeling pretty mentally exhausted from.

Those interviews. Annie and I were driving through England on a reporting trip when even she put me on the spot about this. I mean.

But can you acknowledge that at least.

There's a part of you.

That wants Fathr to have done it?

I will acknowledge that it's a thing.

That I worry about in myself all the time, yes.

I don't know. It's really hard because the idea that I just want Fathr to do it because it's a better story is a very hard idea to swallow, and it's quite a hard thing to admit to yourself. And there are moments where I really worry that that's what I'm actually thinking. But there are.

Other moments where I'm like.

Hang on, I'm not… This is not madness to.

Think that there are serious questions here, but it's.

Very hard to distinguish between when you're actually seeing something as.

Suspicious.

And when you're.

Wanting it to be suspicious.

I.

Have a theory about this, which is that I think as.

More and.

More people.

Get with what you're finding, the pressure internally to have what you're finding be true grows. So as more and more people get upset with you, I feel like.

You.

Want this thing to be true.

So that.

It's worth it. It's worth having upset all these people.

I half agree with you, and I half totally disagree with you. Okay. All right.

Tell me about the-.

Because for sure, there is a tendency to think, Okay, right.

Well, it's really important to buy into it. In retrospect.

I think Annie is.

Probably more than half right here. She's calling me out in the way Hamish did, the way Kate did. All of them telling me that I have something to gain by believing Fever is guilty. Not just because I'm a reporter and I want the most exciting story, but because it would be upsetting, embarrassing even, to put my family through all of this, only to find out that there's nothing to it. There's a part of me, I'm sure, that's like, If I can prove Fathor did it, then it will have been worth it. But there's another big part of me that wants the opposite, that really wants to believe wholeheartedly that Fever didn't do it, that he was the man they all think he was. Partly because that would make the.

Conversation.

I'm about to have with Kate's family a lot easier. Next time on Ghost Story. There's a huge amount of trust placed on you by us that you will represent it in a way that doesn't leave the family thinking they had a murder in their midst. There are.

Things coming out here that are.

Not terrible and nice. I don't think that helps anybody at all.

So are you.

Saying you'd.

Rather not know?

No, I'd rather it.

Were not the case. Follow Ghost Story on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes and free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondry. Com/survey. Ghost Story is a production of Wondry and Pineapple Street Studios. It's hosted by me, Tristan Redman. Our lead producer is Annie Brown. Our senior producers are Chloe Prasinos and Jess Hackel. Our producers are Sandra, Ellen, and Emerald O'Brien, and our associate producer is Natalie Peard. Joel Lovall is our editor with fact-checking by Maximo Anderson. Themed song and music by Darryl Griffith, supplied by APM Music with mixing and original music by Hannis Brown. Pineapple's Head of Sound and Engineering is Raj Makhajia, with Assistant Engineers Sharon Badales and Jade Brooks. The Senior Audio Engineer for Ghost Story is Davie Sumner. Jess Hackl was our senior producer of Development. Our artwork was designed by Brian Kludgey, legal services for Pineapple Street by Rachel Strom and Sam Cate-Gumpert from Davis Wright-Tremaine, Crystal Tupier at Audicee, and David Hearst from 5RB. Our senior producer for WNDYRY is Michelle Martin, with producers Brian Taylor White and Grant Rutter.

Rachel Sibley is the managing producer for WNDYRY, and Sarah Mathis is the coordinating producer. Our executive producers at Pineapple Street are Maddie Sprun-Keiser, Max Linsky, and Jenna Weiss-Burman. Our executive producers for WNDYRY are Morgan Jones, Rich Knight, Marshall Louis, and Jessica Radburn. Special thanks to Barb Fisher, Jackie Vegas, Casey Kaufman, Alison Vermulin, and Barney Lee. This episode contains public sector information, licensed under the Open Government license, version 3.0..