True Story Media Presents: Fruitloops

True Story Media.

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Well, hello, Beth.

Hello, Wendy.

How are you?

Doing

good.

Yeah, very happy to be here with you.

Yeah, for sure.

Jitto,

I am very excited to have you on.

I love your show.

I had my eye on it since I decided to start a network.

And so I'm so glad that this has come to fruition.

And we met each other at CrimeCon originally.

Yeah, we did.

We sure did.

And it was a delight.

It was like, Adria,

super exciting.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was a delight.

It was so much fun.

I feel like I had the best time getting to know you.

And

I'm just so excited to

have you on today and just talk a little bit more about your experiences in the space, about your show and how it came to be.

When we met each other, felt really similarly of like, oh my gosh, kindred spirits in the space, right?

Because

not all true crime is created equally, as we have all learned.

Yeah.

So just to start with, how did the two of you meet?

And how did you end up deciding to start a true crime podcast?

You know, this is never a straight career trajectory for anyone.

So I love hearing how people got into it.

We met at work because we worked together.

And we didn't know each other that well.

We worked together for probably five to seven years.

And then

Donald Trump got elected.

We were both listening to a ton of podcasts, political ones and true crime ones.

And we discovered that we both really loved true crime.

And at the same time, I noticed: hey, you know, a lot of these cases are about the same perps, and they don't talk about any marginalized victims and kind of expressing a frustration about it.

And Beth was like, Oh, you know, there's a reason for that.

And I was like, Oh my God, what is it?

She was like, Racism.

And

then we like hugged and spun around and decided, Let's

elaborate on that.

Let's start our own podcast where we get to talk about the cases that we don't normally hear about and people's experiences that we don't normally hear about, like, because we just felt other people's stories were being left out.

And that's how it started.

Yeah.

We were actually listening to Atlanta Monster and

Wendy,

she

had never heard of a black serial killer before.

So we had a little discussion about whether or not there were any black serial killers.

There's a joke, a running joke in in the black community that, like,

of course, there's no serial killers because black people get caught every time they, you know, do one thing or even don't do anything.

So that's why there's no black serial killers.

Obviously, we know that's not true.

Sorry, go ahead, Beth.

Yeah.

But it's a good joke.

So we had a little discussion about that.

And

I said, yeah, there are black serial killers.

And she's like, who?

Yep.

And

why does nobody ever talk about them?

And so we did a little research and found that,

yeah, it's the same thing as the white woman syndrome.

You know, that's what people focus on or the media focuses on

mainly white women as victims.

And perpetrators tend to, not always, but they tend to

pick victims of the same race.

And it has to do with proximity.

Maybe, Wendy, maybe you can elaborate on that.

No, it definitely has to do with proximity.

But at the time we started the show in 2018, there weren't conversations about that subject.

Kind of like there are victims, other kinds of victims out there.

Well, why don't we know about them?

And so it also forced us to have to interrogate like systems and stuff like that, like the criminal legal system.

And so we,

gosh,

we just started compiling lists of victims and cases that we'd never heard about.

And along with our community, who were also people who were hungry for stories about marginalized victims and new cases that they'd never heard about, helped us build, you know, the case list and put together, you know, what Fruit Loops is today.

And not only that, but when we first started doing this

and telling stories, Wendy would interject with facts that I had never heard before as a white person.

I was like, what?

And so

I did a lot of learning about black history that I didn't know about.

And I was like, people should know about this.

Yeah.

And so it turned into

not only telling stories about the serial killers, but also history and stuff that we are not taught in school.

Yeah.

And so I should clarify for listeners, because we do not have visuals for this one, that Wendy is black and Beth, you are white.

So the show is serving many functions, and that's one of them is to be sort of a conversation from these two perspectives that I think is so fascinating.

And I think that you all, and we're going to, we're going to get to a question about handling criticism in a moment here, but I think that you,

you know, you, you two have dealt a lot with this and very interesting coming to, you know, that this idea came to fruition in 2016, which is the sort of beginning of whatever chapter of history we're currently in, right?

And a lot of these things being shaken loose in the post-Obama era and some of these illusions that we had about where we were as a country when it came to things like race being like a strong disillusionment happening very fast about some of these ideas that we of who we thought we were, how far we thought we'd come.

And it's always interesting to me, you know, and I think a lot of us get this commentary from listeners, from a certain sect of listeners, sort of say, I come here to hear about true crime.

I don't want to hear about politics.

As though you could ever

separate, you know, pull those two things apart.

And so it sounds like as you two embarked on this like mutual interest, saw this, you know, niche that really wasn't being covered that you both got excited about, you know, for a bunch of different reasons.

And then realizing really quickly, it sounds like that as you're talking about crime, you're also talking about all of these, you know, intersecting, you know, issues and about like sort of how systemic, in particular with your show, systemic racism, you know, affects really every institution in America.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how deep it goes.

Right.

Yeah.

That's the other thing I think that I've even been shocked throughout, you know, research.

And the reason why I say I've even been shocked is a few weeks ago on one of our

episodes, I found a book that I wrote when I was 10 about a little slave girl.

So I've always been into black history, the history that they don't tell you, you, just fascinated with, you know, the, the, what's not at the surface.

So anyway, all that to say, yeah, it is surprising how deep and pervasive these things are.

And I think many of us thought that in 2025, we might definitely be in a different place in terms of America's progress and people's rights, et cetera, et cetera.

And at some point, I think I thought, oh, we'll run out of cases to cover and the world will, the world will be solved.

And then we don't have to talk about true crime anymore.

But it's just not, that's what's surprising is that these things keep going.

And so we have to keep talking about them.

And I think I've sort of had that same sort of feeling when I started my show, right?

Of like, you know, if you are a person like me who comes to the genre because you had a crime in your family and had an experience with that, you know, how that crime was then treated by the media.

And, you know, that's a lot of what informed my, you know, my getting into true crime podcasting.

There's only so much unpacking that you can do of your own trauma and before it becomes just like, you know, either your listeners are in a therapy session or, you know, you like re-traumatizing yourself by continuing to go back and excavate all of that, all of that stuff that happened.

But, you know, I really thought when I made the first season of this show, like, this is a pretty niche concept, right?

It's like this one specific type of crime that we talk about on the show.

And sure enough, here I am, six seasons in and realizing that I could, you know, unfortunately for the state of of the world and the state of how this abuse is handled, I could tell these stories.

I would never run out of material, you know, potentially forever

until my expression, you know, gets to gets to such a place.

Right.

So you guys have been on the air since 2018, which is a long time in podcasting, right?

Podcasting has only existed at all as a medium for 20 years at the outside.

We can't believe it.

So you guys have been at this for a while.

And this thing that you're talking about, the missing white woman syndrome, right?

You know, true crime as a whole has really been overly focused on, again, as you said, white female victims.

And it's not, of course, that those cases do not deserve to be looked at, but, you know, but that has been really to the exclusion of talking about crime as it happens in other communities and sort of as it happens as a whole.

And so what have you guys observed about where this conversation was when you started in 2018 and how that's evolved, you know, as we went through things like 2020 and, you know, that sort of whole the George Floyd awakening of that summer and whatever sort of became of that.

But, you know, like, as I think like a lot of people's conscious, not everyone, but like a lot of people's

sort of awareness of these issues was brought to the surface sort of in a way that I think we hadn't necessarily, certainly, I can't remember an analogous moment to that, you know, in my lifetime.

And so, you know, how, how have you seen the conversation around these things evolve in this space since you've been in it?

There was a kind of a big explosion in 2020 of people's awareness of what's

happening.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And

we did get a lot of attention at that time.

And,

but since then, I think it's it's chilled quite a bit.

What do you think, Wendy?

Yeah, I agree with that.

And then I'll also say, at the time when we started, we were considered super niche.

And I don't know if that's 100% true anymore.

I, I mean, we've got, I mean, Sisters Who Kill and Affirmative Murder.

There's a lot more podcasts with the goal of ours of just including other people in these true crime stories.

I also noticed that there is more of an,

as you guys have said, like an acknowledgement of what it is in the United States, but including, I'm seeing and noticing old stories resurfacing, like historical crime

about lynchings and about

land theft

throughout the years to African-American sharecroppers.

Like things like that are also, I think, part of true crime.

And I'm seeing more and more stories included in the landscape.

So I'm excited about it seems to me to have grown and include more people.

And I just think that's great.

Yeah.

I mean, I certainly think

those conversations, even as there are many powerful attempts to snuff out those conversations, right?

And,

you know, in very direct ways,

stop people from talking about race, stop people from acknowledging the existence of structural racism and everything.

You know, I'm thinking about all of the pressure on companies to roll back any DEI initiatives that started in 2020 or before and kind of those things that are happening on a really big policy level.

I think, and once people get curious, right?

I think like the power of curiosity is so, um, can really move people.

And I think, especially in the true crime space, right?

I think like that's where we all come with a curiosity, morbid or otherwise, but like it tells us because crime tells us so much about people and it tells us so much about what's happening in society that I think like people who, you know, whether it was because they had a moment of revelation in 2020, because they were creeping up on that all along, because they'd always had it since they were a kid, you know, this interest in like, what are we not being told about our own country?

And I think when you learn these things that put things in context, and I think especially with your show, you know, focusing on some of these historical cases, there's the question of like, how did we get here?

I think the thing that occurs to me over and over again and the feeling that I, you know, because we were raised in this era of like post-racialism, you know, it's like, oh, Obama was supposed to be the big post-racial.

And we sent it.

We sent it, guys, we got it.

We nailed it.

You know, and like, I remember being told, you know, as a white child and like in a very white, you know, neighborhood, like, oh, like racism is something that happened in the past or like happens in the South, or it's just a matter of like individual sort of character flaws.

Like that person is a capital R racist and that's their problem, you know, not this thing that was sort of like so pervasive and so recent.

And I think, you know, as you learn more, it's just like, I think the thing that always strikes me is like how recent.

It's like Ruby Bridges, you know, a little girl in that famous photo who was the first child to integrate after board versus brown and Brown versus Board of Education.

is like in her what like 70s now or 60s she's in her 60s right it's just like oh my God, this was

all these people are still alive.

Like, a bunch of these people are still alive.

Like, this is so recent.

It's just like barely even the past, you know, within within our generation, you know?

Yeah, which shows you that there was a lot, there's a lot of effort to

suppress these stories and hide them because, and I'm not trying to be offensive or hurt anybody's feelings, so clutch your pearls, but

there's an idea that America is this wonderful country.

We're a melting pot.

If you work hard and pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and that myth is

the same

opportunities.

And America has to sell, has to sell that image.

And so I think there's an intentional efforts to hide things that might corrupt or disrupt that image.

And so that's why a lot of us don't know

so much of the history that we cover on our show in every single episode, because that context we believe is really, really important.

So anyway,

even understanding poverty and how poverty affects people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And how that plays into, say, child abuse.

Or a lack of, you know, women's autonomy over their bodies, which is something new for maybe modern American women, but not necessarily for women of color throughout this country's history.

So those things aren't new.

So we, by things continuing to be fucked up, we continue to get to have wonderful conversations about how

it all is connected.

Yeah.

One thing America will make sure of is that we never run out of stuff to talk about.

Yeah.

Bolly.

America does it again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, it's like there's a real shared thread in our two shows shows of sort of this idea of, and kind of what we're talking about, you know, we see this in these cases of like the micro versus the macro and sort of how, um, how

cultural ideas and societal ideas that are very ingrained really

can

shape policy.

They can shape how different people are treated in the different, you know, different people are treated in the justice system.

And, you know, for us, right, like we focus on, we also have a lot of of white women on our show,

but

they are usually the perpetrators of the crime, right?

So we're talking about, we do, we have talked about cases that involved black perpetrators and black children.

And they do, this is not a, you know, this is not a form of crime that necessarily has to do with some of these other things that you usually see in crime trip.

It doesn't have to do with anything with socioeconomic level or education level or, you know, necessarily race or class.

Like we, something we talk about a lot is how female criminals are treated very differently than, you know, than male criminals in the system and how they're looked at very differently, and how this, like, all of these cultural conceptions around motherhood really come to play so heavily.

And so, I think those things are just always worth looking at.

And I would encourage people that feel themselves being challenged by conversations around racism, sexism, classism, to just maybe lean into their curiosity rather than whatever other feelings they're having.

Yeah, take a breath, get curious.

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What do you hope that

people take away from your show?

Like either from kind of reflections that listeners have shared with you or just kind of your intentions in putting this show out, you know, because one of the things I think about when we're talking about like, what is an ethical true crime show versus maybe a not so ethical true crime show.

I think part of it for me is due diligence, right?

You guys do really good research, you cite sources, so that's a huge part of it.

You have a sort of, but there's also like, does it add something to the conversation?

You know, we were talking about, we mentioned affirmative murder, which is also a true story media show.

And one of the things I love about that show is I was like, this is adding something really interesting.

You know, listening to two black millennial men talk about true crime is just, you know, in the way that they do it, which is, you know, responsible and well-sourced, it's just adding something to the conversation that wasn't there before.

And I think your show does that as well.

But like, you know, what do you, what do you guys hope that listeners take away from the show beyond just, you know, curiosity about, about crime and history?

Well, we, we hope that they learn something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, uh, um, KRS1, uh, rapper, extraordinaire, um, he coined a phrase, edutain to educate and entertain and through hip-hop.

Um, and I kind of feel a little bit like that's we're just trying to edutain, educate people on these crimes and the history and the context and also entertain, which kind of sounds gross when you say in the context of true crime, but you know,

I'm fascinated by true crime, and

it's just something that I've always been interested in.

I don't know why, but it's something that I've always been interested in.

And so, we take these true crime stories and we kind of use them as a framework to talk about other things

that we've already talked about so so far

with you.

All those kinds of things, history, racism, sexism,

culture, society, culture, yeah, all that stuff.

So the true crime story is kind of the hook.

And then the rest of it is a discussion about

other things.

Yeah.

Well, and Wendy, just to kind of pick up on what you said, that I think we all, you know, we all experience that tension, right?

Of like, we are content creators, right?

We are, we have to create something that's engaging that people keep tuning in for.

It won't do any of the other good work it's supposed to do, it won't educate people, it won't, you know, help spread awareness or help, you know, protect anybody or do any of the, you know, laudable things that we're trying to do with our shows if you can't actually get people to listen to it.

So, you do have to straddle this, like, you know, you do have to make sure that you're storytelling tight is tight and you're picking interesting stories.

And I think it's also like, well, I think it's wrong

or, you know, morally questionable to treat true crime solely as entertainment.

This is something that captivates people.

And

it's a genre as old as we are, right?

Like people have always been interested.

Yeah, it's old.

Sorry,

as old as we are, hang on.

As old as we are as humans,

not as old as the three of us

who are young, spry,

fresh as daisies, but as old as we are as humans, right?

Like this is, this goes back, like this is something people have always been fascinated by.

And I think that's all.

Right.

I don't think it's part of the bias.

Yeah.

True crime.

I mean, there's a lot of time.

And what a story that was.

Oh, my.

That's the original true crime podcast.

Oh my God.

I didn't really get emails about that one.

But

yeah, I mean, so I don't think it's wrong that people are fascinated by it.

I think people are drawn to it.

You know, it has such a, like, such a strong majority female audience.

There's been interesting scholarship on why that is, you know, why women are drawn to true crime.

And obviously we are much more likely to be we're most yeah most of the time right and so you know it's so like i so i think all of those things are are sort of they're complex but they're not wrong right but i think it's when people treat it just as lurid entertainment without trying to do anything else that is that is the issue yeah i agree when they make it gross i agree and and you know we right we had to start somewhere right but over the years we i've noticed um as with our show and a lot of other shows on the landscape that everybody is trying to do this in a better way that gives reverence and respect to the people who have actually experienced these stories.

And again, just trying to be more ethical and humane in the way that we tell stories.

And I don't think there's,

you know,

a rubric or a specific set of ways that you have to do that.

Beth and I are doing our best to carry out that mission to educate, but also in an ethical and responsible way.

And so, you know, we might fuck up, excuse me, but we do our best.

We do our best.

We have messed up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tell me about that because I think like, yeah, to your point, we're all learning.

It's a very new space, you know, podcasting.

It's a very new industry.

There are, you know, for better or worse, no guardrails and no gatekeepers.

So it is the Wild West in here.

And I think it's important, though, for creators to keep each other accountable and for us to like, and then I think our listeners also keep us accountable.

So you guys were saying, you know,

you know, especially like makes sense, right?

You got in a lot of us, we don't have, you know, I've, I, I will say, like, I now consider myself a journalist, but I learned how to do that on the job, right?

We don't necessarily come in with,

you know, we come in from a lot of times all different industries, all different backgrounds.

So it makes sense why it sort of, you know, can be, can be all over the map depending on, you know, who, who the creator is and what their sort of experiences are.

But yeah, I mean, if you guys, if you guys don't mind sharing, like, what, what are, what are some sort of lessons you've, you've learned along the way?

And how has that informed how you've sort of shifted the way you produce content?

Well, we've made a gazillion mistakes.

Yeah.

But the big one in particular was about a trans person.

And we did not consult with the trans community when we

did the episode and it came back to bite us.

I mean, everybody let us know.

We fucked up.

Right away.

Yeah.

But then afterwards, the opportunity that I saw was, oh, there's a whole way to talk about trans

I went down a rabbit hole of trans media and guides and things like that and forums.

And I if I wish we had, I had taken the time before we published that episode to do, to go down that avenue of our research.

And we just didn't.

And so, you know, not about us.

We also had a lot of people in the trans community reaching out and saying, hey, our listeners.

Can I help you?

Yeah.

Which was really cool.

Yeah.

That was the best.

That was the other really awesome thing is that our listeners were like, hey, guys, you're not perfect every time, but let us give you a hand.

And we were so grateful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what we ended up doing was unpublishing the episode and redoing the whole thing with consulting with the trans community.

That's so, that's such a great story.

And I love that because I think that, you know, for those of us that are

left leaning, I think one of the things that we can do sometimes is be

overly policing of each other.

And what I mean by that is not giving people an opportunity to engage with the conversation, right?

So

not, I don't mean not calling people out when they, when they make an error, but I think like those are such beautiful examples of like

you did a thing with good intentions that didn't, you know, that didn't come out well.

And then that community spoke to you and then you responded to that you know outreach and i think like that's that's like such a great opportunity for growth and i think we have to like as we're holding people accountable like that's kind of an ideal progression right and so as you're as we're asking listeners to have curiosity and an open mind about these things it's like we as creators have to too and i mean i had I had an interesting kind of similar experience.

It was not quite as deep because it was just such a, it was a small piece of this episode, but I had recommended a podcast

in a context where I was talking about the the host of the podcast and like her take on like, and she's a person with an interesting history outside of this show and had like Megan Phelps Roper and had done a TED Talk.

And so I was talking about it and I mentioned like pretty casually, like, oh, she's also the host of this show, The Witch Trials of J.K.

Rowling, which I had listened to because a friend recommended it.

And I listened to it at face value and was just like, oh, this is interesting.

I, you know, vehemently disagree with J.K.

Rowling.

I've never seen someone die on such a stupid hill in all my life.

Yeah.

But, you you know, but like, but but like, you know, but I thought the podcast itself was like interesting, you know, and I was like, well, this is an interesting discussion.

And so I, I had that.

And I was like, you know, however you feel about her, I think this podcast is an interesting listen.

And quickly, you know, I heard from some trans listeners and some other folks that just were informed, more informed about this show and its creator, Barry Weiss, than I was.

And I'd heard of Barry Weiss, actually, but I just sort of like didn't, I just didn't do my due diligence and didn't sort of look into it.

And I think anything where you're talking about something sensitive is always worth like a little extra Google around getting experience.

Yeah.

Because that wasn't the focus.

I just sort of like, you know, yeah, I breezed by it.

And so, uh, and so people were like, oh, actually, you know, this like presents as a good faith discussion, but it's actually just like a, you know, Trojan horse anti-trans situation.

Oh, wow.

And, um, and, you know, this creator, Barry Weiss, is very, you know, very anti-trans.

And so at a closer look, I was like, oh, dang.

And I think that, you know, my, my response really was not like, oh my gosh, I'm being criticized, but it was was just more like, oh, I really wouldn't want someone to hear that recommendation and think, oh, is Andrea a secret transphobe?

You know, they walk among us.

Like, is she a TERF?

And we didn't realize it until now.

And I felt safe as a listener in this community.

And now I don't.

Now I'm questioning.

And so I just clarified.

I was like, I went on the next episode.

I ended up putting a topper on the, you know, in the original episode where I was just like, hey, I mentioned this podcast.

I didn't do my due diligence.

Like, here's a great YouTube explainer if you want to know like everything that's sort of underneath this podcast.

And like, just to clarify, trans women are women, we love our trans listeners, whatever, just sort of like, here's where I stand, just in case anyone would be mistaken.

And the responses I got from that whole thing from people in the trans community were so lovely, so understanding, like critical, but once I engaged with it, were like, so, you know, so lovely about it.

But I still to this day get messages about that people are mad that I added the clarification.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, that's

We have gotten comments about our episode.

People mad that we redid it.

Oh,

I have not seen those comments.

So on the top, before we get to the case that y'all brought me,

on the topic of people are wild,

people get wild in your comments and review section.

And

the bulk of these are sort of just people being mad about you guys mentioning the existence of racism, despite the fact that you are specifically a show that is meant to unpack that.

And people just being very,

yeah, people being as, yeah, in their big white feelings, I would say, about that and the sort of focus of the show.

And how do you guys

get those comments?

Why do you have to be so political?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so how do you guys, sorry, yeah, it's like, that's what the show is.

Yeah.

My existence as a woman or a person of color or the child of an immigrant is not political.

It just is.

So there you go.

That's what my argument is.

Right.

Right.

And I think, like, again, it's like, what I take that cue as when people are complaining about my politics, your politics, me using someone's prototype, whatever, it's like, I think what that request, and I wonder what you guys think of this, to me, what that request comes at as, is to decontextualize our stories for the that specific listener's comfort right i want to be able to be entertained by my curiosity about true crime without having to think about other about things like racism which is a bummer right i mean that's kind of

they don't want to be uncomfortable they just want to be entertained they yeah they don't want to have to do any inner searching or anything like that they just want to be entertained that's how i take it yeah i i mean well and back to your curiosity like if you remain curious about the content about things that make you uncomfortable um

i i just i don't know if your discomfort and your curiosity can exist at the same time you have to abandon one right um in order to get in order to get what we're trying to put out.

And if you, I mean, if you can't, then I mean, our show, there's lots, so many other podcasts.

You don't have to

ours.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, like that, I guess that is the good news for those listeners.

If you would like, if you would like to listen to true crime stories solely about beautiful white women that are completely stripped of any broader gender context, there is plenty of content out there.

Yeah.

So, you know, you're talking about this really positive example of, you know, dealing with some negative feedback and then really incorporating that into, you know, both the way you told that story and then kind of the way you looked at stories involving the trans community or just like stories maybe that involved communities that you're not a part of going forward.

Yeah.

How do you guys just, what's your sort of policy on reading reviews, on reading feedback?

Because that can be a lot to take in.

It can be a bummer.

Yeah.

It's a huge bummer.

I tell Wendy not to read them.

Yeah.

So I haven't in the middle of it.

So are you the sacrificial, Beth?

Are you the sacrificial reader?

Yeah, because they don't bother me.

She's stronger.

She's a stronger

person than I am.

No, that's not true.

That's not true.

You're very strong.

I love it.

But

the

comments,

for the most part, they're upset about that we're talking about race and they call us racist and because we're talking about racism, which is stupid.

So that's how, I mean,

yeah, she's right.

I guess that's most of the comments we get um the negative ones we don't get we get a lot of good feedback from people

there's a ton of good reviews ton of positive comments yeah people that appreciate what you guys are doing but so i will bring those forward to wendy uh the good ones because those ones make our day those ones are really nice yeah after a night of researching and bad reviews when we get a good one it's like oh yeah we can keep going

and and we bust our butts too because we both have jobs, full-time jobs and families.

And so, you know, we're doing this on a side and,

you know, we're busting our butts.

So taking

it yearly.

Yeah, yeah.

So when you do hear a good review, you get to a point sometimes where, oh, I'm burning out.

And then you read one of those good reviews.

You're like, you know what?

I can keep going.

I just got a little pimped by Steph.

Yeah.

That's wonderful.

That's a good reminder to everyone.

Get those five-star reviews with a couple of kind words.

They really, they really, really, really make a difference.

I will never stop being bemused as a white person as to why

people pointing out racism makes them feel guilty or attacked.

I personally do not feel as a white person guilty or attacked when people point out the existence of structural racism.

I didn't do it.

Yeah.

So

why, why should it?

Yeah.

Why should it?

Yeah.

Or I'm taking, I'm making efforts to deconstruct it.

Right.

Right.

Right.

Unless you're racist, I guess.

Yeah.

I do think there's an awful lot of people in your comment section telling on themselves, but we will

leave it.

We will leave it at that because

we could probably spend a lot of time sort of analyzing that.

But in the meantime, you two brought me a case to talk about.

And so I am all ears.

Okay.

Well, well, well.

Okay.

So we wanted to tell you about the case of Antoinette Frank.

And Antoinette Frank

was a New Orleans police officer turned murderer.

She was responsible for a

probable.

Yeah,

there was some

evidence found underneath her home after she was convicted, but more on that later.

So she was responsible for a triple homicide during a robbery at the Kim Ahn restaurant on March 4th in 1995.

And I think you said, can we talk about a case that has to do with like women and deception?

And we felt like Antoinette Frank really took the cake.

She, you know, was a police officer and used her badge to conduct some nefarious acts.

Antoinette Frank, she was a black woman

and she had one accomplice in the carrying out of this triple homicide.

And like I said, the case takes place in New Orleans.

New Orleans, if you go back and listen to our episode about the case, has a very complicated colonial and racial history, which we do get into.

Previous indigenous land, multiple colonizers were involved, French, the French, then the Spanish took over, then America.

And so there's that history.

It's really fascinating.

Yeah.

And

as I said, the murders took place in the 90s.

The context there is important because at the time, the average salary of a New Orleans police officer was under $20,000 per year.

So police officers in New Orleans were very underpaid, sometimes underqualified, and the department was essentially, you know, rotting from the inside,

which made it a breeding ground for corruption and brutality and criminal activity, which is where we find Miss Frank.

This is a useless piece of information, but she's a tourist.

That's her son.

She was born on April 30th in 1971.

And her father was a Vietnam vet.

The story goes that he suffered from PTSD and that he was extremely abusive.

And so when Antoinette was a teenager, her mom split.

and taking the other children with her and left Antoinette with her father.

So that's not great either.

And she has alleged that her father was sexually abusive.

So then we cut to 1993 when she joins the force and

making peanuts as a police officer.

So to get extra money.

She wanted to be a police officer like

ever since she was a kid.

More than joined the junior explorers or something like that, the police, something like that.

Anyway,

yeah,

she really, really wanted to be a cop.

Yeah.

So since dreams do come true, she took all the testing needed to become a police officer and they found her unqualified.

I think

actually it's pretty devastating what the personality test on her said.

Do you remember it, Beth?

Unfit to be in the department, low empathy,

low rule following.

And, but they hired her anyway.

So

well, there was a loophole.

She got in through a loophole.

I think she had a couple of actually psychological testings done.

And they said, no, this girl's not the one.

Yeah.

But she got in.

The loophole that she got in through was she.

hired her own psychologist to do a test on her.

And she also

got people to write letters for her.

But some of them were forged.

So they weren't asking.

Boy, oh boy, that sounds right.

that sounds right on par for our show.

We're like,

yeah.

You get cherry-picked psychologists.

Yeah.

Letters of recommendation that are not necessarily

the vaccine.

Yeah, so she was led on to the force.

They were also, you know, they didn't have enough people on the force to begin with.

So there was an opening.

It turns out there's a spot open.

So yeah, so she did end up joining the force.

And can I tell you, I'm just loving the Venn diagram of our show right now that you just pointed out, Andrea.

Thank you.

So

she had an accomplice.

His name was Rogers Lacaz.

And she met Rogers and they, you know, for some reason, she became really invested in him.

Like she would give him gifts and money.

She even helped him earn his GED.

She met him in the course of her duties.

Like there was a shooting incident that he was involved in and he was in the hospital.

so she went to visit him and it's just really weird yeah yeah none of that makes much sense um and uh

police officer right yeah

so um she it to get this um she is enjoying rogers lacaz so much that she decides to make him her unofficial police trainee and he starts coming in with her in the patrol car going on ride-alongs um and i think she even like let him direct traffic Is did I yeah, did I reduce that right now?

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Okay, so she picks up in like unofficial intern type

situation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And other officers noticed.

Oh, something else we should mention is that he had gold teeth.

Yeah.

And so

he was obviously not a, not a police officer.

Yes.

So they were, I think, doing some small-time scams with other criminals,

like

taking their money or whatever, like stuff, shakedowns, little things like that.

And then,

so we want to also tell you about the victims in the case, which are the Vu family and

Officer Ronald Williams.

The Vu family were the owners of the Kim On restaurant, and they came to the United States about four years before this incident happened.

They were Vietnamese immigrants, very tight-knit family, very hardworking.

And Officer Ronald Williams was there that night.

One thing I forgot to mention is because police officers in New Orleans had such low pay, oftentimes they would do side hustle or moonlight as like security.

That is why police officers were at the restaurant.

So Ronald Williams on the night of the murder was assigned to work security that night.

Antoinette Frank was not on the schedule.

Ronald Williams, more about him.

He was an NOPD officer.

He was married with two young children, and his second son had just been born 10 days before the murder.

And he was known as a dedicated and warm, you know, father and man.

Ha Vu, with 24 years old.

That's one of the family members, the oldest sibling in the Vu family.

She was a devout Catholic, was even considering becoming a nun, and she helped run the family's restaurant alongside her siblings.

And she was executed while kneeling in prayer at the time.

Kuang Vu was 17 years old.

He was the youngest sibling, and he was an altar boy.

And he played high school football and dreamed of becoming a priest.

He was also shot multiple times.

So as I said, on the night of the murder, Frank was not needed for that shift, but she showed up anyway.

And then she kept leaving and then come back.

She did that about three times, which was weird.

And again, so she showed up as a police officer on duty or she showed up as security at the restaurant?

Neither.

She showed up to get some food.

So she just came as a civilian.

Yeah, the Vu family,

all of the police officers that were moonlighting at their restaurant for security, they treated them like family.

They would give them free food.

So she came, Antoinette Frank came to the restaurant to get her free food.

Oh, yes, but she knew the family.

She'd been security at their restaurant previously.

She was a son.

They knew her very well.

Okay.

Yeah.

They knew her very, very well.

And as Beth said, they treated her like family.

She showed up.

She didn't need to work, but she got her food and then she left.

So Chao Vu, one of the siblings, sensed that something was wrong and told her siblings not to open the door when Frank arrived the third time.

Yeah.

So they had locked the door already and she returned and started shaking the door.

And do they know what happened?

Was Antoinette just acting off?

Or they just went off.

She was just acting weird.

Yeah.

And Frank had a key, even though the door was locked.

So she let herself in.

She was with La Caz.

She had stolen the key.

Did she steal it that night?

Yeah.

She went to the restaurant three times.

And I think one of the previous trips, she stole the key.

Okay.

So she makes her way into the restaurant uninvited, but she had a key.

So she let herself in.

She was with her accomplice, trainee lacaz um and when they entered the restaurant lacaze shot officer williams execution style um and then uh frank antoinette frank pushed um some of the um people who were there chow and kwok into the the kitchen there was gunfire there was chaos Ha and Kwang Vu were kneeling on the floor, praying and begging for their lives.

Frank shot them both.

And then Kwang tried to speak and Frank shot him again, twice in the head.

Kwok and Chow hid in the cooler.

They watched it all and they ran for help.

After Frank and Lacaze left, they were able to get out of the cooler and run for help.

So they're running for help and obviously police are responding to the scene.

And guess who shows up in uniform?

Antoinette Frank.

So she leaves.

So she commits the crime and then she leaves, puts her uniform on and comes with the rest of the police to the scene of the crime.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Crazy.

Right.

Okay.

So

that's wild.

Knowing that there are some victims who survived.

And they know, it's not like this was their first time that they saw Internet Frank.

Like they knew her.

Oh, no.

So they knew they knew her well.

Wow.

They knew her well.

I think that my suspicion is that she thought because they were immigrants that and they, you know, they didn't speak English all that well, that the police would not believe them.

Got it.

Yeah.

And I agree with my friend Beth's take there.

So

the police respond and the survivors are trying to explain what happened.

And Chow sees Antoinette and says, oh my gosh, you were there.

You know everything.

Why would you ask me what happened?

You were there, right?

And then

we cut to a little bit later.

They figure out Antoinette is involved.

She gets arrested.

They arrest her accomplice, La Caz, and La Caze and Frank are at odds.

They start blaming each other.

She did it.

No, he did it.

So then they both go to trial.

They both get sentenced to death.

Later, La Caz gets retried.

He's re-sentenced to life without parole.

And Antoinette is,

isn't she the only woman on Louisiana's death row, I believe?

She is, yeah.

She's still in the middle of appeals.

And after the trial,

a a search was done of her home and some human remains were found underneath her home.

And it's believed that those remains belong to her missing estranged father.

So this case was

pretty well.

Yeah, it was like, wait, she did what?

What?

What?

It's a lot of whats.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what do we know about the motive for these murders?

Like what?

Money.

Yeah, we didn't tell the whole story um they had about ten thousand dollars in the restaurant um and she likely knew about it because she had worked security for them yeah okay so did did anything ever happen with the following up on the father no which is really weird so um what they say is that because she's already in prison you know she's on death row we don't need to look into that but wouldn't you want to know just who it is, like do a DNA test and find out who this guy is?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, they think it's probably her father, but we don't know that.

Right.

You know, it's surprising, except that it's absolutely not surprising, because I think what you learn quickly when you get into the true crime space is how many crimes go unsolved and how many like the clearance rates of police departments, even relatively functional ones, which it sounds like NOPD at this time was not at all.

Not sure it has a great reputation overall, even today.

Yeah.

So, so, but I think that's like, so in that context, you're sort of like, well, why didn't anyone look into this?

It's like, I think the thing that maybe a lot of people don't realize, and especially when it's a murder or another interpersonal crime, rather than like a, you know, case where a company lost a bunch of money or something that's like easier to track and there might be, you know, more will to track it.

Like, it's, yeah, it's like they're, they're just, the clearance rate for murder is like below 50 in most places, so yeah, it's terrible.

It's more likely actually that no one will be held accountable for interpersonal crimes, um, murder, rape, child abuse, any of those things.

So, in that context, it's like, especially if they have someone where they're just like, oh, well, we've already got her for other things, like why bother?

Yeah, yeah, they're like, yeah, it's probably your dad.

Wait, yeah, but wait a minute, aren't you guys supposed to investigate?

Do you think they need to at least make sure, right?

I mean,

wait a minute,

at least identify the victim for christ's sakes yeah even even if you don't solve the the murder you could at least find out who the victim is exactly exactly yeah we'll we'll put that under question marks um but yeah so so why did this uh let me ask you like why did this case in particular strike you guys as interesting all the deception um is fascinating to me um and to become a police officer and be this corrupt and have so many problems is just wild.

I just thought it was a wild story.

How about you, Wendy?

Agree.

I mean, it is a wild story.

I also,

you know, I thought about how interesting it was that it was a black woman on the police force who it seemed to me maybe she forgot herself for a minute.

You know, like the badge clouded her mind to lead her to believe that she too could engage in the same type of corruption as perhaps the good old boys in the NOPD might have historically engaged in or with.

And

she didn't, I think I said this in the episode, she did not have the complexion for the protection despite being in blue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Seems like there's like a lot to unpack there about sort of power dynamics.

And

yeah, because I think we do, you know, we're much more used to hearing stories about police corruption and misconduct that involve, you know,

like involve white male

men.

Yeah, men and more men and I think in general, I think.

But yeah, you know, those white police gangs that they have in the LA Sheriff's Department who are, you know, breaking people's legs and unaliving people.

But yeah, it's by all accounts, should have gotten away with it.

I mean, if it had

been anybody else, I think we might be talking about a different case.

But

also who she was

contributed to her getting caught.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And do you get the sense, I mean, looking at this, that her fellow officers turned on her pretty fast or that there was some, I mean, did this, did they sort of attempt to slow this down at all?

Because I know this is something that, you know, really, no, they just.

No, yeah.

And I think in any other context, again, she didn't have the complexion for the protection,

but she had a, people didn't like her.

I don't think she's like, yeah, I was going to say there was, there was a lot of talk about how she people didn't like her, her fellow officers didn't like her, but how much of that was sexism?

I mean, there's a, I think there's a lot of

black men on the force, but for a black woman to be on the force, she also sounded like she was not a good officer.

Sounds like her vibe.

I mean, she's, you know, she's bringing it like just to just to level set.

I mean, yes, like never, I think you, you know, you did say anybody that argues that we should not factor in sexism and racism to how, you know, black women are being treated.

That's just like not a valid argument.

However, Antoinette also sounds like

she was doing a lot of bonkers things and like bringing, bringing along an unofficial intern on ride-alongs to go shake people down.

And it sounds like her vibes were also horrendous.

So

I also heard a funny, funny quote when I was listening to a podcast.

A guy who wrote a book about her and he said that La Cause

described her as crazy.

Oh no, wait, La Cause turned on her too.

I didn't realize La Cause described her as crazy.

So

don't tell me anything.

Yeah, so she was, I mean, you know, it doesn't sound like she was the best at maintaining relationships.

So I think we can assume.

Well, that's, that's a very sad story for that family.

And what a horrible ordeal to go through.

So

I'm glad that they got justice.

Of course, there's nothing that can ever undo that kind of pain and tragedy,

but I'm glad that there was justice.

And

one would hope that maybe

that brought about some kind of reckoning in the New Orleans Police Department.

However, given just recent gossip alone, maybe it didn't quite do the tricks.

Perhaps.

I also really like the immigrant aspect of the story

that

I wanted to say.

Like they had really

made themselves a pillar in the community.

That restaurant meant a lot to people.

The family and their generosity meant a lot to people.

And Officer Williams meant a lot to people.

And so I never, I just don't want to forget to honor, honor them and say rest in power and all that.

The victims.

Yeah.

And I have to add that the family, the Vu family, they kept the restaurant open, I think, until Katrina.

And after Katrina, they closed it, but they reopened it in a different location.

So they're still running a restaurant.

Oh, that's good to know.

You know, I think like in our sort of, yeah, again, to just take a real zoom out, you know, and we were talking about how,

you know,

America sometimes doesn't like stories that challenge its image.

And I wonder if you guys, I would like to hear your sort of takes on it after, especially after your collective experience of, you know, being making this show since 2018.

But I think like the truth is the story of America is just extremely complex because it does have all those beautiful things, right?

Wendy, you said you're the daughter of an immigrant.

I am too, also the daughter of an immigrant.

Nobody is raised, I think, with in some ways with more patriotism than the children of immigrants, right?

Because we hear about why,

you know, why, why our parents came here.

Like I certainly heard, you know, that story over and over again.

Like that, they never could have, you know, my dad's from England.

So it's, you know, it's, it's maybe not as as dramatic as a lot of other, you know, immigrant stories, but like, nonetheless, like, he really strongly felt like he could never have had the life that he had here, you know, back home for a variety of reasons.

And, you know, I think like we really get, we really get it like inculcated with all the stories of like why America is special.

And immigrants are a huge part of what it makes America special.

And that's still true, even in this current horrific, you know, climate around immigrants.

We just have to sort of like incorporate new information and incorporate the real history.

And just my stances, and I wonder where you guys fall, like, I do love America and I want the best for her and I want her to be better.

And so I think that to me is all about, is all about loving.

I think that that's what loving a country is to me.

It's very complicated.

Yeah.

And that's why we talk about these things.

If we didn't care, we wouldn't.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You know, I've heard it said that, you know, people of color and black people have like an abusive relationship with America, that it's like an abusive parent with a very bad drinking problem who hurts us a lot.

But we still love it very, we still love her very much.

And we hope that she turns.

turns things around.

And that may not necessarily be my sentiment, but I did want to convey that

that is the sentiment of some people.

And I agree.

I believe that.

America needs rehab.

america does need rehab america america's on a real bender right now we hope that we're getting near rock bottom and it's checking into the checking into the clinic is like checking into the you know is like the next step let's all hope yeah america it's just a lot of people who love you like crazy we just want you to get help yeah no um i love this country we're rooting for you

how can we help no i i'm i love this country and i believe i you know, when people said all men are created equal

and we the people, I believe that stuff and I want it to come to fruition for myself and for everybody.

So

yeah, and I'm still holding that hope that it gets better.

Yeah.

How about you, Beth?

Yep.

Same.

Yeah.

Like I said, we wouldn't be talking about these things if we didn't think that it could get get get better.

Yeah.

And that we all deserve it too.

Well, um,

yeah yeah that's i i agree i think the uh the beautiful idea of what it all could be i think is something worth holding on to so yeah yeah um

yeah well i thank you guys so much for being on i mean i i wonder and just like have you just so kind of a final question on that um you know on that topic because i think like as much as like sometimes people will you know pop up like little gophers and remind you to stay in your lane, I do actually think true crime podcasts are a great place to talk about all of these issues and to unpack and have those conversations with each other and have those conversations with our listeners.

And, you know, obviously, um, it's also just like the thing about podcasting that's so different from book publishing, which is what I was in before and I'm still in, I'm still writing books, um, is that the conversation is so two ways, right?

It's so dynamic.

You're in this sort of broadcast space, right, where you're regularly on the air, you're regularly hearing from people, and obviously, a lot of listeners are just feeling a lot of despair right now.

Yeah, How do you guys

keep waking up and doing this work?

And how do you

like, what is like, how do you sort of keep, keep on keeping on for those listeners that are, you know, get it, that get so much out of being a part of your community and get comfort from listening to your voices and all of that.

And like, how do you sort of see, see your role here in 2025?

Well, our fruities for sure help keep us going.

We have a, we have an incredible community of listeners um day ones new people the people out there who do rock with us they rock with us for reels and we um are so grateful to them and they know who they are um the other thing that keeps me going i love beth like i love my husband and my children and then beth is like under them like i and i would i would i would take a bullet for her um so doing this with her same girl

doing this with her makes it all worthwhile and gosh we've been through so much over these past i don't know seven years since since uh fruit loops was born and it's just been i i mean incred i never thought my regular schmegler degular behind would ever set foot in england but here we are in crime con in england thanks to our fruities and thanks to me and beth like working really hard um to um do a really uh a good show.

And I also wanted to say, we're not journalists, investigators, or psychologists.

So no, we're just gals who like true crime, find it interesting, and do our best to tell these stories.

So we are regular people.

So I want to convey that to you.

What keeps you going, Beth?

You know, just what we were talking about before about

wanting things to get better.

I just keep thinking that if I keep, if we keep talking about these things, someday

things will get better.

I just think communication is key to these problems a lot of these problems that we have also talking about them is therapeutic so yeah that's true

yeah yeah well i i love that hopeful note um it's very sweet to learn that you two would take a bullet for each other let's hope that doesn't come to that fingers

let me get in front of you we would like we would like to stay on we would like to stay on this side of the true crime divide right right right

Thank you so much for being here.

We are going to obviously, we will share links to this episode in the show notes.

We're going to be sharing a different episode in the feed tomorrow on the Nobody Should Believe Me feed.

So, but in the meantime, if listeners want to go and binge seven years worth of bat catalog, where can they find you?

Well, we're on fruitloopspod.com.

That's our website.

And then Fruit Loops pod for all of our social media.

Yeah, pretty much that's it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, again, thank you.

Thank you so much for being here.

And everyone, go listen to Fruit Loops.

All right.

Thank you.

This was so awesome, Andrea.

Thank you.

Nobody should believe Meek is produced and hosted by me, Andrea Dunlop.

Our editor is Greta Stromquist, and our senior producer is Mariah Gossett.

Administrative support from NOLA Carmouche.