Beth Karas
Appearances
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Welcome to the shit show. Things are going to get weird. It's your fave villain, Kale Lowry. And you're listening to Barely Famous. All right, you guys, my next guest is Beth Karras. You may recognize Beth Karras from legally analyzing cases like JonBenet Ramsey, Natalia Grace, Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias. She's covered all of these cases on shows, on documentaries, docu-series, deep dives.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So and men will either make it look like an accident, make it look like suicide, disappear the body, or sometimes they're in a rage. But a lot plotted out like Scott Peterson plotted out in a planet so that it'll look like she was abducted, you know, just disappeared.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
There are mixed reviews now, I feel, about the Scott Peterson. Do you think he was guilty? Do you think that he is where he belongs?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He's where he belongs. I never felt strongly about Scott getting the death penalty. In fact, I kind of thought, you know, it would have been fine if he didn't, if he always, you know, faced a life sentence. And he got life for killing his son. He got death for killing...
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Lacey, you know, there were two murders, but the jury looked at it like, you know, the second death was collateral, which is the little, that's why he killed her.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I don't believe he's innocent. And when it comes to circumstantial evidence, you and I were just talking before we started rolling about what that actually is, but pretty much all evidence seems to be circumstantial.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, direct evidence would be like an eyewitness. I saw it. And another example of direct evidence is a confession. Not a false confession. You want to make sure the confession is voluntarily made and it's done properly. But if somebody admits to it in lieu of take death off the table and I will plead guilty or I'll give you the confession you want in advance of a trial,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And as you guys know, that's one of the most sensational murder cases in the US. And then in 2011, and I followed this case so closely, she provides analysis of the Casey Anthony trial, a case that obviously captivated the nation. The interest is still ongoing today. From 2012 to 2013, Beth covers the Jodi Arias murder trial, which became one of Court TV's most widely followed cases.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But a lot of evidence is circumstantial, fingerprint evidence and DNA and just, oh, my God, the footprints, the tire marks, the bite marks. Bite marks is controversial evidence, but that's all circumstantial evidence. Cases are tried across the country every day. Right. And convictions are obtained by prosecutors. Jurors return convictions based on circumstantial evidence.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Sometimes it can be stronger than direct evidence because eyewitnesses can be wrong and confessions can be false.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But the evidence, the circumstantial evidence could be. Well, you have to look when you look at circumstantial evidence, the jurors get to get an instruction about like if there is an interpretation of the evidence that is consistent with innocence. And another one, it says you've got to give the benefit to the defendant. You've got to go with the innocent explanation.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But when you start piling the evidence together, then you kind of like, OK, this is there's no way that tire tracks, you know, matching the car. And, you know, fingerprints, fingerprints is pretty good. He's in a place where he hasn't ever been in his life that we know of. It's not unusual to say Scott Peterson's house is full of fingerprints. That's useless evidence, right?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Hair evidence in his own house is useless evidence. But if Scott Peterson's fingerprints were found, I mean, I don't want to say he did take the boat out on the boat ramp, but. I don't even know how to speculate. You know what I'm talking about. It's like in a place where like a burglar is coming in on a window and his fingerprints are on a window at a home. He's never been in before.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Hello. Right. So I think even I can say that I have been misinformed about circumstantial evidence then. Right. Because I mean, I could, I argued on another podcast saying that I could see how Scott Peterson maybe could have been acquitted because it was all circumstantial. But you're right. Once you add on, like you pile it on top of one another and,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's no longer circumstantial or it shouldn't be looked at as circumstantial.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But when you look at the sum total and all those little pieces fit together and it's like, well, wait a second. It excludes every other explanation for innocence, you know, kind of says it's got to be him. Right. So, I mean... I was at that trial. I mean, I heard that evidence in Scott's case.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And I know there's a whole new young generation of people, you're a part of that, who are doing a second look at it. And it's revisionist history, in my opinion. And his family, God bless them, they have been relentless in... fighting for Scott's freedom. They got him off death row.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, he had an excellent Cliff Gardner's, an appellate attorney out in the Berkeley, California area, excellent appellate attorney and prevailed in that appeal to get him off death row.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah, I don't think I have strong feelings about him on death row, but I definitely... have gone back and forth, but now that I know about the circumstantial evidence basically being puzzle pieces, it makes sense that he is where he is, and that's where he needs to stay.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But when you were talking about covering cases on The Curious Case Of, I thought of a woman that I interviewed a couple weeks ago. Her name is Sarah Turney, and her father allegedly unalived Sarah's sister. Her own dad unalived her sister, killed her sister. never found a body, and they're still sort of fighting for justice. And I feel like that case doesn't get as much coverage as it should.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So that would be cool for you to look into. So was he charged? He was charged not for the murder. I don't think he was charged for her murder.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So, you know, I get a lot of stories that come to me where people are looking for assistance because they believe a murder has happened and the authorities aren't looking at it. As a journalist, I cannot give legal advice. Sometimes they come to me as a lawyer and say, I'm licensed in New York, but I cannot give legal advice. I can operate as a journalist. I can recommend a lawyer to you.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And she also covers Conrad Murray, Drew Peterson, and Phil Spector. So if you're familiar with any of those cases, you might recognize Beth from her legal analysis on these cases. All right, today we have Beth Karras on Barely Famous Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But it breaks my heart because I'm just me and I cannot do the deep dive that a lot of these people deserve and need. What you're telling me now sounds like something I might have been contacted about. Oh, I just, I'm not, I'm not sure, but there was, I had a couple of people contact me different stories just this week, desperate for help.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And you know, the Natalia Gray series has led a lot of people with special needs children who are not getting proper care or are being abused, or they know of somebody who's special needs or somebody who was adopted and is not getting there. Those stories have been coming to me as well, but I can't always do something about it.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Do you get to pick any of the stories that come on the curious case of, um,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Actually, the network makes the ultimate decision, so I can participate. I don't know that I did this first season, but I give the producers, the production company that makes it stories, but it's not my decision. Okay. I mean, that's fair.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
What has been the case that has most consumed you? In the Curious Case Of story or in my career? In your career.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Oh, I don't know that there's any one case, but there have been defendants that have fascinated me. Really? And people who've changed their identities fascinate me. One of them is in the Curious Case Of series, and it's a man named Nick Rossi, currently in Utah. facing rape charges in two separate counties in Utah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But he had faked his death in Rhode Island and fled to the UK, settling in Scotland with a new name, a new identity, marrying a woman. And then his obituary was published in Providence, Rhode Island. He had been a page in the State House. And they were singing his praises, thinking he's dead, of how he was a young man on the rise who was going to be someone. In fact, he was actually alive.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And now he's in Utah facing these rape charges. So that's a fascinating story. But also... That's so fascinating. Yeah, that was the third episode. I just saw that on the list. But there was another man whose case I covered in 2009 in Boston. He had kidnapped his daughter when he was having his first supervised visit with her after divorcing the mother. They had one child, and she was like four.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I'm so excited because I have seen you on so many docuseries and things like that, especially on ID Channel. So I'm so happy to have you.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Mm-hmm. This is a man who called himself a Rockefeller for 10 years or so, married a Harvard Business graduate woman who believed her husband was a Rockefeller. She dated him, then they married. And he was actually somebody who had come from Germany years earlier as an exchange student when he was 18, and he lived in Berlin, Connecticut.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
German, loved the Gilligan's Island show and learned how to speak with the accent of Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island. You're too young, but some of your listeners, your viewers will know what I'm talking about. And he took on this affect. Anyway, he goes eventually to – California and takes on an identity claiming he's a relative of Lord Mountbatten.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He actually has a public access show for a little while claiming to go to school at USC film school or something. He had a public access show. Anyway, he murders somebody in Pasadena area in California and flees and goes underground and surfaces in Connecticut under a different name and then goes underground and surfaces as Clark Rockefeller. So this guy
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, I'm excited to talk about my career, the shows I've been in, the latest series, whatever you want to talk about. So the latest series is The Curious Case. Curious case of, and then there's six episodes, and the rest of that phrase, the curious case of, depends on that episode. The curious case of the girl who died twice, that was the second episode.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He's murdered, at least one he's convicted of now, today. But I covered a case, his kidnapping, before he was indicted for murder. It's like a crazy story. There's been a book about him, maybe a couple documentaries. I don't know if there's been a movie about him, but Clark Rockefeller, his real name is Christian Carl Gerhardt's writer.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He's one of my favorite defendants because I was like, he became like an art expert, but he was dealing in fraudulent art, like fake art. He had this Harvard Business School educated woman fooled for a decade because when he kidnapped their child and the FBI was questioning her, they're like, where does your husband keep his money? Where's his bank? He says his money's tied up in family issues.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I don't know. I don't know. Well, what's his social security number? I don't know. What about his driver's license? Do you have his driver's license number? No, he doesn't have one. She knew nothing about her husband. She was the breadwinner. And they would eat at, like, private clubs in New York. He never wanted to go out in public because he was a well-wanted man. It's a crazy story.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I'm just so – to be fair, though, I don't know my partner's social security number or his license number. Fair enough. But she was married. I don't know if you're married. No, I'm not.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But she was married. And they had been together for 10 years. But she should have been able to find papers somewhere or something.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Right, or say, I can get it for you. Right, right. Wow, that's absolutely fast. So nothing – no murders that have, like, absolutely consumed you. Right.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, you know, like Jodi Arias, I just, I'm like, why, why that was that, you know, like, why, why did she have to kill Travis? You know, like she was living in California. He was on his way to Mexico with another woman. He just, you know, he was a good guy. And like, she tied her hair and like turned her phone off when she entered Arizona and had all those gas cans full of, uh,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So she didn't have to stop at a gas station. I mean, that was really thought out. So that one, I mean, it stays with me. Every June, June 4th is when he died. Every June 4th, I think of him. There are other murders or disappearances on that date that, on June 4th. I mean, Kyron Horman, who's never been found, disappeared in Portland, Oregon as a little boy.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
His stepmother was the last one to see him. No one's, you know, she's never been charged. she's always been under a cloud of suspicion, but she's, you know, says that she left him at school and then he disappeared from school. It was the last day of school that year. It was a science fair. That's a June 4th also, um, date. Anyway, um, there have been stories over the years.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I could probably pick one every year of the 19 years I was at quarantine that resonated with me, that stayed with me. David Westfield in San Diego was one too.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And I'm absolutely consumed by the Idaho four. And I can't stop watching any of that stuff. I'm like, I wish that there was going to be a trial way sooner than there is. When is the trial date? I believe it's August of 2025. Yeah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So I mean, I followed that certainly when it first happened. I am like everybody. I was just fascinated. And, um, You know, they were tailing him, authorities were tailing him across the country. Remember, he got stopped a few times speeding before he ended up getting arrested, I think in Pennsylvania, right? He had driven across the country with his father.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But I mean, the standard to arrest somebody is probable cause, probable cause that they committed the crime, but to proof at trial, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, every element of every crime is a much higher standard.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So I really want to believe that the authorities have felt they had a provable case before even arresting him, even though you continue investigating, of course, but you want to make sure you have good, solid evidence even before arresting him. So they probably feel that they've got a provable case.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I don't know all, I don't have all the names memorized, but each one, curious case of Bam Margera. The curious case of Natalia Grace. Yes. Curious case of Natalia Grace, but that was one ongoing story that lasted for three seasons, right? Six episodes for the first two seasons and then four episodes. And the new series that I'm in, it's just one standalone story each episode.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
When you say probable cause, is that the same thing as motive?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
No, probable cause is a standard of proof, right? There are a few standards of proof. Probable cause is very low. It's just, you know, it's probable, right? We have a reasonable suspicion of a probability that you committed this. But then the next one up is...
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
preponderance of the evidence, that's a civil standard, more likely than not, 51% versus 49%, that's civil when you go to, that's why OJ and Robert Blake were found liable in civil court for killing their wives, but they were found not guilty in criminal court because it was a higher standard, proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And then there's clear and convincing evidence, that's not something jurors deal with, that's something like the lawyers and judges will deal with, and then there's proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but a motive, Motive is not an element of the crime, unless it's a bias crime, unless it's a hate crime. Then you have to prove somebody was motivated because of someone's
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
sexual orientation or religion or race or whatever, but motive is not something prosecutors have to prove, okay? If you can give jurors something to sink their teeth into, like why this would happen, you can argue it, but it's not an element of the crimes, okay? The elements would be like, I don't know, intent, You have to prove that it is the person, right?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
That they were in the county, you have to prove jurisdiction, and that they had the state of mind, negligent, reckless, intentional, whatever, knowingly, with malice aforethought, whatever. Each state has little variations on the elements, depending on the degree of the crime. And then, did cause the injury, death, or whatever, using A, whatever the weapon is. So that's kind of what elements are.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But you have to prove that it's that person with that state of mind. And sometimes you get hung up on that state of mind because a person's not in their right state of mind. Okay. And that's the insanity defense if at the time of the crime they didn't know right from wrong. That's generally. You don't know right from wrong. You can't conform your conduct to the law.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Or at the time of trial, they're incompetent to stand trial. Like they don't understand the nature of the proceedings. They can't assist in their own defense. It has nothing to do with the state of mind at the time of the crime. It's at the time of trial. So insanity and competency are two very different ones. Insanity is at the time of the crime.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And competency is whether they can even go forward.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I wrote my high school graduation paper on the insanity plea. And at the time, I graduated in 2010 from high school. So that one, at the time, I think in my paper, it was most of the time the insanity plea did not work. I think was the conclusion.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Correct. And you would be right to reach that conclusion. Because when John Hinckley attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan in March of 1981, I was living in D.C. I remember hearing the ambulances, the sirens, because I was working as a paralegal at a law firm. I'm dating myself now. Don't do the math. Anyway, he got off on insanity defense, right? Not guilty by reason of insanity.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And that really upset legislators, federal, state, around the country. And my understanding is that state legislators started really shoring up their insanity defense, saying, okay, we're going to make it really hard. We don't want it to be so easy to get off. And go to a civilly committed facility. Right. But there are, I think, four states that don't even have an insanity defense.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And Idaho was one of them. Oh. My recollection is Idaho doesn't even have an insanity defense.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I think the only case that I'm familiar with off the top of my head is Andrea Yates.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I think she... Yeah, I was at her second trial. That was in Houston. She killed, she drowned her five kids. Well, let me just say, because in Idaho... Because Lori and Chad Debo tried in Idaho and the doomsday for the killing of her kids and his wife and whatever. And I just remember researching it like they don't have an insanity defense.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's not the deep dive. I mean, I felt like I was living with Natalia Grace for like two years. Yeah, I can imagine. And so I knew a lot about that story. And with the ones now that are airing, I know a little about each one, not a lot, because there's just no time to learn each story the same way that we took that deep dive in Natalia Grace.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
They could still you could still introduce evidence of someone's mental state, but it's not a defense. OK, so Andrea Yates.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
That woman was first convicted and sentenced to life without parole, and it was reversed on appeal because of something the psychiatric witness, the psychiatrist for the state, the expert said, that there had been a Law & Order episode where a woman had done just that, drowned her kids and used an insanity defense and got off, where that episode hadn't aired before she did this.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It was just a coincidence? He was wrong. He said it aired. It had nothing to do with her drowning her kids. And she got a new trial because of that. And I was at her second trial. She's a very, very sick woman. When she was married to a man who was like a NASA scientist, and they were living in a trailways bus, like made over into a home. They didn't have five kids yet. They were two or three.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And she had to homeschool the children. And then they upgraded to a little house, which was nice. And then by the time she had her fifth child, she was like very bad, like postpartum, but she was also psychotic. She thought the television was talking to her and sending her signals. And when she drowned the kids, her husband, Rusty, had gone, he's ex-husband, had gone to work.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And she drowned the kids in the bathtub in the same water, right? So she's chasing the kids around the house because, you know, they realize what's happening. They're old enough, some of them, even though there was an infant. I don't remember all the ages, like eight, six, five, you know. And she was so tired.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
after drowning four of the five, that by the fifth child, she couldn't even lift him out of the tub. And I just remember seeing a photo of him floating face down in the tub in the tall feces and urine because the children are, you know, going to the bathroom as they're being killed. And she lined up the other four in her bed with the infant in the arms of the oldest, dead.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And then she called Rusty and said, I hurt the kids. I'm paraphrasing, something like that. She called Rusty and said, I did it. I hurt the kids or something like that. So she was very, very sick. And between her two trials, there had been another woman in Texas who had killed. I remember her name, but she had killed her kids.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But she believed like God had told her to when she hit him with a rock, their heads with a rock outside of the rock. And it's it's almost like. And jurors in Texas, they learned that she was really sick, too. That they were not going to put Andrea Yates in prison. They're going to put her in a facility. And she's going to be there for the rest of her life. Right.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
That's heartbreaking. That is heartbreaking. But I know also, I think what I wrote in my paper, this was, how old am I now? Like 15 years ago. Something about it being so hard to prove insanity too, because you have like a psychiatrist or a psychologist on the defendant side, but also have maybe an
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
opposite opinion on the prosecution side, which is so hard because they're both supposed to be professionals with the same sort of education, right? And so how are these two opinions differing for the same person?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
They're looking at the same facts and they're coming up with different opinions and it's a battle of the experts. You're absolutely right. That is an issue with experts. And jurors are also instructed, well, in New York and I think probably in most places that, you know, you've just heard, you've heard expert testimony from, you know, three witnesses.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, if anyone wants to watch the Curious Case of, that's streaming on Max, and you guys can watch it over there. And we'll talk more about some of the cases that are on there as well throughout this episode. But before we get into that, what is your investigative process when you are looking into cases?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
You are, well, they told us all witnesses, you're free to Accept all the testimony, some of it, or reject it all. I mean, it's up to you. Jurors can, if they find that experts neutralize each other, it's like, oh, please, you know, we're just going to look at other things. You know, I'm sure they do that sometimes. And, you know, there's...
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
there's a lot of criticism of experts who will testify mainly on one side or the other because they could be bought. I mean, those are allegations. I don't know that it's actually true, but I've seen prosecutors really go at some experts in the courtroom and challenged the science.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, it's happening in the Karen Reid case right now with cell phone evidence and whether or not... Do you know what I'm talking about? Cell phone and a laptop? Karen Reid? Okay, well, she's getting a new trial. It was a mistrial. She's accused of killing her Boston police officer boyfriend by leaving him in a snowbank. Hitting him and leaving him in a snowbank in Massachusetts in January 2021?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Like she hit him with her car? She says she didn't, but... They say, yeah, she did, and that she did it intentionally, that they were having a fight, and then he froze to death in the car. And the defense is saying, no, no, no, he made it into the house. It was a party that she wasn't going to.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He was going to on a Saturday night, and he was killed in there by people who didn't like him, and then they put him in the snow. They planted them in the snow and framing her. Those are the arguments. Karen Reed, R-E-A-D. So anyway, there's argument right now with experts on how to interpret some of the searches on Google searches on a phone.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And those experts, one says one thing, one says another, and it's pretty damning evidence.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
How much weight does a Google search hold in a courtroom?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, you have to have somebody who can – it carries weight, sure. But, I mean, this is a Google search that was either made at 2.27 in the morning or 6.27 in the morning. His body isn't found until like 5 or 5.30, and yet somebody on the defense side – I mean, on the prosecution side is Googling how long –
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
for a body to freeze in the cold or something like that, and it was either made at 2.27 or 6.27. So the prosecution is saying, oh, no, that was a window that was open, and it was a search within a window that was open at 2.27, but it was made much later. It was made at 6.27, but it was opened much earlier.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And the defense expert is saying, no, no, no, no, that window was open for that search at 2.27, three hours before his body was found. I don't know. Whose computer or whose phone? Oh, it was a witness whose brother-in-law, it was at his house. But they can't prove who did it? Well, they know it was her phone. She did it, but she says, I did it after we found his body.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So I'm just part of a team of people. So when we come up with cases, we'll present them to the network and they'll choose the ones they want. But we look everywhere. We look at podcasts, we look at articles, we look at books. We sometimes just get emails from people with their own stories. So we can get a story through various sources and that's what everybody does. And then it's a matter of
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And they're like, no, no, no, you did it before. You were helping to cover up. It's a very involved story. I'm sorry to even bring it up.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Oh, no. I'm fascinated now because I hadn't even heard of this case.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Oh, yeah. Karen Reid. R-E-A-D. It's being tried in Dedham, Massachusetts, and it happened in Canton.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It happened in Canton, Massachusetts, south of Boston. People colluded? There was multiple people involved, or they think it was just Karen?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
No, just Karen Reid is charged, but the defense thinks multiple people covered it up.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's so fascinating to me when I hear of cases where there are multiple people involved in a murder or a disappearance or anything like that, because just to picture knowing one person that is capable of that seems so... unfathomable to think of two or more people that would be in on something is so fascinating to me.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah, but the more people involved, the less likely it really happened, right? Because I mean, you have to have a really good little conspiracy for a lot of people to be involved and no one to break and talk about it. have their conscience get the better of them and tell the truth.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I'm not saying it's impossible, but the more people, you can stand up there as a prosecutor and say, come on, what is the likelihood that these, I mean, they can list seven people would have to be up here lying under oath to you jurors in order for this to be true.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, I wish that the officials that were on Amanda Knox's case felt that way.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah, she got a real bad rap. Her real story, her true story should shine. And I feel bad that she went through everything that she went through.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I feel bad for the family of her roommate, her British... Absolutely.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah. Because they deserve justice. But there just wasn't the forensic evidence. Wasn't there, like, Rudy Gaudet? Or there was somebody who was found washing blood off himself in a fountain that morning. And there was an open window.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yes. Rudy... And he went to prison for a long time. But for some reason, they still... I mean, they were slut shaming Amanda and making her out to be, you know, something that she wasn't. And so I just think that's so fascinating because to your point, I mean, if it was her and Raphael colluding to murder Meredith and Rudy was involved in that as well, you know, somebody would have broke.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Somebody would have said, you know. it was, it was them. It wasn't me. Or you know what I mean?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I seem to recall that somebody did say, but maybe it has been widely reported. Somebody did say she had nothing to do with it. Not really someone else, but I, I haven't looked at that story in a long time. However, it was a real, I, the book monster of Florence written, it's a coauthored by, um, Doug Preston.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And I think his name is Mario Spezzi, but I want to say Mario Spezzi, a journalist in, in, um, Italy may have passed away. Anyway. Um, They talk about the criminal justice system in Italy, and the end of the book is about Amanda's case. When it first came out, I mean, a later edition talks about Amanda's case, but she hadn't been exonerated yet. Probably editions today have her as exonerated.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But it is the investigation into a serial killer, Monstro Florence, who hadn't been caught. Okay. And had been killing, just viciously, women, couples, you know, like on Lover's Lane, if I recall. It's been a long time since I read it, but it's awful. And at one point, like Mario Spezi was arrested because he did such a good investigation as a journalist that they thought, you must be part of it.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
determining exactly what the issues are. And do we have access? Because you can't really tell a story visually, at least. I mean, you can sit and talk about it in a podcast, for example. And a lot of people do talk about a case. They read about it. They learn about it. And they're good storytellers as an individual. But not for television. You've got to have the visuals.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
You know something, you must somehow be part of it. He wasn't, you know, held forever. But yeah, it was a real eye-opener to the Italian criminal justice system. And it helped me understand more of what Amanda went through. Was that before or after Amanda? It was before. I mean, I think the first murders were in the 60s or 70s or something.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But the last like a like a last chapter of the book deals with Amanda since it was a high profile Italian prosecution, high profile American. And but the edition I read, she hadn't been exonerated. So I think probably later printings have an update. And then she was reconvicted a second time.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah, but wasn't that on appeal, couldn't they? Yes, and then it was eventually, I think, overturned. I would never go to Italy if I were she. No, absolutely not. So when you are investigating a certain case, what helps you decide what cases you're going to invest in? For a TV show, for commentary, for anything?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's not my decision, but I believe that some of the issues they look at is, where was it? When was it? What happened? What's the story here? Is it a clear-cut case? Is it a little bit open-ended? Maybe we don't know. I know... For Curious Quesa, we like to find these stories where we're not really quite sure, like, what's going on here? Do you have a good storyteller? Who do we believe?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, Natalia Grace, we were flip-flopping all the time, like, what's going on here, right? I was flip-flopping. So... And sometimes the public will tell you what a good story is because there's just a story that's out there that the public is like responding to.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah. Or Gabby Petito even. We know what happened, but we still want more for some reason.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So, you know, that's interesting that, um, reminds me of another point I like to make, which is that the stories that fascinate me often the most are not the ones where it's a whodunit. It's like we know who did it. We know what happened. We know Brian Laundrie killed her. It's like a why.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Right. What was the motive here? What, why? Yeah. Why motive? Why do you do this? Yeah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Of course it could have been prevented, but you know. And that's kind of how I feel about the Idaho four with Brian Koberger. It's just like, what was the purpose? What, what, what were you getting at? What was your end game? Was it a thrill kill? Yeah. What is this?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I think there were theories that I've seen online and obviously this is alleged for safety purposes, but I, I saw theories online that it was, you know, He wanted to prove that he was smarter than everybody else. Could he get away with this? Yeah. And so I just want to know why and if they'll ever admit it. Yeah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Just feeding his own ego that he could. He was studying criminal justice or something.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Or psychology, criminal criminology or something like that. Yeah. Didn't he have like a questionnaire that he was sending to criminals or serial killers maybe about – or criminals about like –
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So we get people who will tell the story for us, right? The players. So
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
how they went about it was it to criminals or was it to just people about if they could commit crimes i think it might have been maybe if it was just if they could i thought it was criminals you might be right i just i think it's so fascinating i'll be curious to see what happens with that i'm fascinated by natalia grace too and i think watching some of the some of the things that i've seen and reading online i think maybe parts of both sides could be true
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
See, this is what jurors have to deal with. And a lot of times, like at Court TV, we used to say that the viewer was the 13th juror, and we'd often put up like a 13th juror question for the day, like which witness today did you believe most, whatever. It would be a 13th juror, because this is what jurors have to deal with. Jurors are the triers of the fact, right?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
The judge is just there to deal with the legal issues, triers of the fact. You have to determine what the truth is. The truth... People believe the truth will come out at trial. You've got people under oath, yeah, like they never lie. And, you know, many people say a trial is a search for the truth. Yeah, okay.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
we have to have access that's key so the next once you decide on the story you're also looking for who the storytellers are can you get people from both sides of the story for example if somebody's been under arrest you want both sides family members victims you know families of the accused lawyers whatever so it's getting the access that's critical right um and then of course you
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's a search for the truth under the rules of evidence because judges will keep out evidence a lot. They'll say, oh, it's too remote. It's too prejudicial. Not all evidence is prejudicial. That's why it's being introduced because it hurts the defendant. Right. But some judges will leave it out if it's just too inflammatory, too long ago, whatever. Right.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Harvey Weinstein is getting a new trial in New York because the judge did let in some evidence that was like remote. Right. And jurors convicted and the appellate court said, yeah, they probably shouldn't have heard that. So he's getting a new trial in New York, but he's not going anywhere. He's here in New York. I actually didn't know that he was getting a new trial. That's. Yeah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But I think he's got something pending in L.A. too. And some new charges. I mean. He's never, he's never getting out.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But what do you do as a juror when you think okay both sides can be true and does the truth ever actually come out because they feel like defense and prosecution can both paint a really good picture but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is exactly how it happened.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, I mean, jurors are told to vote with their conscience, and if you can't decide, then I would say it's a not guilty, because if you can't decide, if you really don't know what happened and you just flip-flop, I mean, you have to give the benefit of doubt to the defendant, right? Most of the time, jurors come up with a verdict one way or the other.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, they feel like they've been able to resolve a case. A not guilty finding, by the way, is not innocence. It does not mean innocence. That just means the prosecution did not prove every element of the crimes charged beyond a reasonable doubt.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I remember covering a case in Springfield, Missouri years ago where a father, a school teacher, a man was accused of killing his wife and his two children. One was a a toddler and the other one, maybe four or something. I mean, bashed in his son's head, strangled the baby with the cord from the,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
drapes or blinds or something, strangled, and then bludgeoned mom and turned up the heat on the waterbed, positioned her body face down so she decomposed really fast, accelerated the decomposition because he turned up the heat. And then he drove in the night. These were the allegations. He drove in the night back to a conference where he had been. He had been at a teacher's conference.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And he was acquitted. and continued to live in this Springfield, Missouri community. I don't know where he is today, John Feeney, but that's what he was accused of doing. And the jurors told me later, we think he probably did it, but we just couldn't place him in Springfield. The prosecution had a witness to say, oh, he stopped to get gas. And it turns out that that worker who saw him in the car
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Wasn't working that night. He was working a different night. So he was wrong about the night. And that was the evidence that had placed him in. That was the linchpin of the case that had placed him in Springfield. They couldn't place him there. So the jurors like there's just reasonable doubt. We just don't know if he actually drove back.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So when you say that a juror's job is to give the verdict with their conscience, so their conscience is telling them that they did it, that he did it.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yeah, but the evidence, it just wasn't there. That's true. Good. But it has to be both. Yeah, that's a very good question because it sounds like I'm talking on both sides of my mouth, but I'm not. It has to be the evidence. So evidence plus using your conscience. Yeah, you've got to vote with your conscience on what you believe the evidence shows you.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But these jurors, enough of them believe, but we can't place him. Once they learned later, late in the trial, that that worker actually wasn't working on the night of the murders, they're like, oh my gosh, we think he probably did it, but we can't place him here.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
File public records requests to get any documents. If it's a case that's been filed, you want to get police records, court records, whatever you can. So you gather as much material as possible, and then you start putting it together, telling the story.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
There's not enough evidence. Do you think the same happened for the Casey Anthony trial? They couldn't place Casey?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
now what happened in casey anthony was kaylee wasn't found for like six months by the time she was found only a quarter mile from her house i remember she had been in a swamp she was in a garbage bag and then in a laundry bag and she had she had been she was completely decomposed with through animal activity and the swamp and all that like her bones were scattered everywhere so they couldn't determine how she died or when she died and that was the problem now
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
There are cases, there are convictions with no body. But it was just that, that there was no... I think that's what it was primarily. I mean... I didn't understand the verdict. I thought she should have been. It knocked the wind out of me. I was sitting in the courtroom. You were in the courtroom? I was in the courtroom. And I just remember sitting. There was a balcony for the media.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And I was looking down. The jury here. Casey's over there. They were facing each other. And the judge was over there. And the defense had put her in a lower seat. So she looked very diminutive. They lowered her seat. So the table came up to here or something. They put her in these high-collar things. And hair was not like the... the Casey who, you know, the way she acted a year earlier.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
With the first not guilty, I thought, okay, but it's going to be something less. There's something, because there were other crimes, not just the four misdemeanors of lying to police officers, but there were other crimes like child neglect and maybe manslaughter or something. And it went not guilty, not guilty. I leaned back in my seat, and I just like exhaled, and I was like, what? What?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And then she's found guilty of the misdemeanors only. Misdemeanors. So she's done her time on. She's already been in for three years. And I thought, not even child neglect? She didn't report her two-year-old, two years, ten-month-old child missing for a month? And you don't even... convictor of child neglect. So I just didn't understand it.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But the defense really hammered the prosecution for seeking death. I mean, they were seeking death. And maybe they shouldn't have done that. I don't know. But I just remember Cheney Mason, the defense attorney, up there saying, we don't know how she died. We don't know when she died. And then they had that argument that it was an accidental drowning. And the grandfather, George, found her.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Is that similar in law, you know, not on TV? Were you kind of doing the same thing before you transitioned? So it's a good question.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And they had a story. that enough jurors bought that they couldn't have resolution. They just said, we're going to let her go.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Do you think personally and professionally that George had anything to do or either of the grandparents had anything to do with it?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I don't either. That case will haunt me, I think, for the rest of my life because I had just had my first child when that case was happening or when she was being tried for it. And I remember seeing a lot of it on TV and I just could not believe it, especially with the mom making – when she made the call talking about – It smells like a dead body died in the car, a dead body.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And then there was some evidence or whatever in the trunk of a hair, something decomposition. Yeah. Yeah. And so I just, and I, as a mom, I have seven kids, so I have seven children and they're all my seven children.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Yes. You've only been out of high school for 15 years. So you started right away. You've had one every other year.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
My oldest is 15, so I had him right my senior year. Yeah. And then it took me seven years to get my undergrad, but we're here. We made it. Congratulations. That's fascinating. Now I want to interview you. Oh, anytime. Anytime. I'll be the coffee runner on anything you're working on. I'll be the PA, whatever you need.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I found that the skills that I developed as an assistant DA in Manhattan, which is where we are today, translated well into my next job, which was starting out as a journalist at Court TV.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Now there's six episodes all streaming on Max. Yes. And we talked about some of them and Bam Margera, Nick Rossi, the guy who faked his death, the girl who died twice as the second episode. Then there's the funeral parlor guy who told people he would cremate their loved ones and never did, kept the money, let the bodies decompose, and then would give the family someone else's ashes or cement dust.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
How does he get caught? Oh, you could have watched the episode.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I'm not telling. That's so crazy. On another podcast, we were talking about animal cremation. And, you know, sometimes or we've heard rumors that they sometimes put multiple animals in there for cremation and you have to pay extra or ask for your animal to be cremated separately. But and we know that animals are a part of the family. Right.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But a human being, you're giving them some like just ashes.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
You'll see in the trailer, one of the women, the victims, you know, her son died, says, I believe those are human ashes, just not my human ashes. Because there's some hardware in there, like somebody who maybe had a knee replacement or something, and her son didn't have any of that. She got someone else's ashes.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But another person said she took a little bit of the ashes, put it in water, and it hardened. So cement dust. And there's a lot of cement dust found at the place. You've got to watch that one. That's episode four. Absolutely be watching that. And Jodi Hildebrandt, that's the curious case of the Mormon therapist. With Frankie. With Ruby Frankie.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But, you know, Ruby Frankie's story's been told, but we go in telling Jodi Hildebrandt, the therapist who met Ruby along the way, but she was like a marriage counseling therapist and was actually driving couples apart. On purpose? Yes. It sure seems like it. I mean, she's in prison today.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It sure seems like it because she was telling the women, of course, the religion does see adultery as bad as murder. And I guess masturbating and looking at porn is really right up there also. Very simple. And so some of these men were doing what's Quite natural. And their wives were icing them out because they had masturbated or looked at porn and admitted it. So that's an interesting story, too.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I was there for 19 years at the original Court TV, talking to a jury, talking into the camera, making sure that I don't talk down to the jury, but explain things in terms that they understand, not talking legally. It's something I would do to the audience as well, right? And so I found that skill translated well. But also, once I got into what I'm doing, because when I was at Court TV, it was like
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But that's the way in. But we also tell the Ruby Frankie and the child abuse story toward the second half.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I started following the Ruby Frankie story sort of early on. I didn't really know who she was outside of like one really viral TikTok. And so that's sort of where I did the deep dive. Once the allegations came out about what she was actually doing to her children, I couldn't watch it anymore. I couldn't do... I couldn't watch the TikToks. I didn't want to hear about... It literally broke me.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So I was like, I cannot get behind this. But I would be curious to know how Jodi Hildebrandt, how she got where she is. Yeah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So this is sort of Jodi's story, but Ruby is in it. Because once the two of them get together and they start their own YouTube page, and then... Ruby's younger children, two of her younger children, end up living with Jodi and they're abused. Right. And very, very severely abused. So like malnourished and tied up and sores and this and that.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, and Ruby is aware of what was happening with her children. They're both in prison today.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, that's why I knew that. And I know that Sherry, Ruby's daughter, just wrote a book, a memoir, The House of My Mother, The House of My Mom, something like that. This kind of goes back to what I said about Two people willing to or being capable of murdering someone is the same sort of thing with Ruby and Jodi. How do you have two people willing to abuse a child? Like I just cannot fathom.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And not see it as abuse. Oh, they just didn't see it as abuse. They don't see what we saw. I can't wrap my head around that. Not that I expect it from men, but a mom, like a mother, like you birthed this child. Do you know what I mean? That's heartbreaking. Yes. That is absolutely heartbreaking.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So that is the fifth episode. Okay. And the last one is basically a cat cult. A woman who... is a self-proclaimed prophet and has a following. Small, but she has a following. She started in the Pacific Northwest. She's in the Tennessee area now, Tennessee, maybe Kentucky now. They've been moving around.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And she has people believing that cats are the vessel to the afterlife and that you have to take care of these cats. And her followers will adopt like 30 cats from a shelter. And you have to care for the cat before you care for yourself or your children or whatever. I mean, the cat comes first. And, you know, that's a lot of food at their own expense, you know.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And it's smelly and it's just like – so that's one part of it. It's a cat cult. But there were also some pretty dark things that were happening because she, Cheryl Ruthven is her name, had been – a very conventional mother, wife, married to a man in the Pacific North, I think Oregon, Washington, Washington.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And, um, they had a couple of kids and, and, and she, then she went to church and she kind of got taken in by this female pastor and then decided she wanted to start her own church and things just went downhill from there. And, you know, she got divorced from the husband and tried to keep him from his kids and wanted him dead. And so there's that whole thing. It's a two hours show.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
The last one, episode six is actually two hours. Would that be something like a psychotic break or what is that? No, I mean, I don't know. It's not a psychotic break. I don't think I'm not a psychiatrist, but not a psychologist. But this is just somebody who is like maybe a narcissist who gets off on the power of controlling people and having them do her. I mean, these are what cult leaders do.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's not like it's something that is... Normal. True. It's such a bizarre, it's sort of, what was the, did you see the docu-series on, I think her name was Mother of God or something where she had people believing that aliens were going to come down and get them and then she had her
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
cult follower I don't know what the politically correct term is they essentially assisted her like she was drinking she was drinking silver oh no I don't know that one but there's so many I mean I just can't I don't understand vulnerable people who just want to feel like they belong somewhere feel like they belong and are being saved and this is the right way and this is what they need to do to get to a better life even on this earth and yeah there are a lot of people who get off on the power of controlling others
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
The case was there in court. There wasn't going to be any more investigation. It was investigated. Sometimes I do some digging around, but I was on the air, you know, morning to night. There wasn't a lot of time to do my own investigation beyond what was being presented in court. When I left Court TV, because it actually went off to air, it came back under new management.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I'm like, I just want, I would like my kids to listen to me, but that's where it goes. That's where it ends. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I'm good with that, you know, do good, be a good person and work hard. I don't know. So, um, the curious case of that season one, those, those episodes, and then are you allowed to say if there's a season two? I don't know.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So I hope so. I would imagine, but I don't know yet. I haven't heard. We have a lot of cases to pick from, hoping for it. So I hope there'll be an announcement, but I don't know yet.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
the curious case of is an ID series that you can stream on max and where can people find you? You said you were working on a website. Yeah.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, I have my website, bethcaris.com where I just, you know, that's sort of a static resume, but there's a contact on there. So a lot of people reach me through my website, bethcaris.com. And I, you know, I have some stuff about, about myself on there a little bit. Um, I, I do podcasts as well. I'm in, in a seat,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
in production for season two of a podcast called Unrestorable with iHeartRadio and this company in LA called Anonymous Content that I work with. And Unrestorable season one did well. That was a story of a woman in Maryland who... allegedly killed her two toddler children, ages two and three. Their bodies were never found. She was arrested. She was the last one with them.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And she had never married the father, but they were together. They had a third child also. But they were separating because things were not going well. And maybe that's what she did in retaliation. I don't know. But she was found incompetent to stand trial and never killed. that after five years, they had to dismiss the charges.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
She was charged with murder, double murder, but never found competent to stand trial. And you can only hold someone in Maryland for so long before you have to dismiss the charges. And she was found unrestorable. She could never be restored to competency, hence the name of the series, Unrestorable. Season two is about the only woman on Tennessee's death row who killed when she was 18 and she's 48.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
she'll be 49, I think in March. And she, um, you know, basically they're saying she's not, she's not resorable. I mean, she's not worthy of living and Tennessee just, they just approved a new lethal injection protocol because they had a hiatus on, on, um, executions because of the lethal injection issues and the drugs and stuff. And so they, they, they're going to start executing again.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So she is on death row and she is getting executed.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, she doesn't have a date, but she's the only woman on Tennessee's death row. I believe there are 44 men. And so we're just telling her story and examining what is justice. She's not the same person she was when she was 18 and killed a person she supposedly perceived to be a love rival and then bashed her head in and kept a piece of the skull.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
You probably know it. It's the story has been told, but we're like looking at it from a justice point of like, what is justice?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's a little different today, but it's still a Court TV channel. Then I started doing my own digging. People would come to me with issues, and I would start doing what I maybe would do as a prosecutor, but the problem is, when you're a civilian investigator, you don't have the tools that a police officer or prosecutor have. You can't subpoena somebody. You can't get the records you want.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Right. I mean, sort of similar to Menendez brothers, right? Like what is justice? Do you think that they've served their time and they are accountable for their actions or do you think that they, you know, should be free? Are you asking me?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, I can, how do you, I mean, I, based on what I know today, I mean, at the time, At the time, I was a prosecutor when they were first tried. I was like, ugh, abuse excuse. I wasn't buying it. I buy it today. I don't know that it justifies the circumstances under which they killed their parents, but they have served 35 years. That's a lot of time. They can't have children now.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I think that they probably have served their time.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I would agree with you. I mean, I'm not in the law, but you know.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I thought they were going to get exonerated. Well, then the new DA came in. And he said that he didn't have adequate time to prepare for the case. It was the last thing that I read. Yeah, but I think it's been... And it's been postponed, the hearing, right? Yeah, because as far as I know, they were maybe going to be released in December of 2024.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And then the new DA came in around the same time and said he didn't have... you know, enough knowledge or research on the case, so.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Right. And a judge wanted to hold off and wait for the new DA. Yeah, that's right. See, never a loss for words in conversation when you're talking about crime, right? Never.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, I feel like every single thing that we've talked about led into something else. Yep. And we probably could do this for two more hours. Well, if you ever need me for anything, let me know. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to help you out. I mean, I don't know what I could offer you, but, you know. You never know. I loved having you on Barely Famous Podcast. I appreciate you.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, I loved being here. Thank you. Really, we're good conversationalists. I agree. Yes, I agree.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
You can't get phone records unless maybe a lawyer in a case will give it to you or it's been introduced as evidence in a trial so now you can have it, maybe in a civil case and now you can look at it, maybe there's a criminal matter it's relevant to. So your hands are a little bit tied compared to what you can do as a public servant with police powers, right?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Throughout her career, Beth has provided legal analysis on different cases and she's very knowledgeable. She does the deep dives and I absolutely love her. I think I first saw Beth on ID Channel. So that's where I know her from. She got a bachelor's degree in political science and Spanish from Mount Holyoke. And she graduated with a Juris Doctor from Fordham Law School.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
to put somebody in a grand jury or get a subpoena. But still, I mean, there are great investigative journalists who do some great work.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So it's not impossible. Do you always recommend for investigative journalists to have a law background? Or do you mean like, you know, the people on the internet that are looking into cases?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So here's what I used to always say when I was at Court TV, that if you're going to be on a network that holds itself out as the place to go to watch trials and get analysis, you really should have people telling you about the process who have been there in the trenches. I firmly believe that.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's not really a rule that's followed, but back in the day in the early or the first Court TV, it was followed. You want somebody telling you because they've been there. Oh, I remember I tried a case once. I remember a judge did this to me. You can draw on your memory. But there are plenty of great journalists, great reporters who have covered trials who don't have that background.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
It's just that if you were the legal network, you should have lawyers. Now, to answer your question more directly, it is not necessary that you have a legal background. But there are some schools that, like Yale Law School, for example, has a one-year course for Law for Journalists. You can find these courses. It doesn't hurt, especially if you're digging into criminal cases.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Even if you can audit a class in criminal procedure or evidence or something or pick up a book and just talk to as many people as you can. Because I do find that when I listen to true crime podcasts, and I get that there are people who just absolutely love the challenge of an investigation, love that deep dive, have a good brain for minutia and putting things together.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But sometimes they make mistakes because they're misinterpreting the law. They may say something defamatory. They can get themselves sued, you know. If you don't have like a journalism editor to say to you, you better not say that. You know, somebody to like do a legal review, you can get in trouble.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And I don't know how often podcasters are sued, but back in the day, bloggers were getting sued and they were losing because they were putting out defamatory things. And now and then they'd come to me for advice. I'd say, take that down right now. You've got a cease and desist letter. Take it down. You know? So it's just a matter of learning, learning maybe, you know, through practice.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
But I recommend just continuing. I mean, life's a journey, right? I mean, we're constantly learning. You don't stop learning when your formal education ends. So if you're really into true crime, then... learn as much as you can about evidence and the rules and stuff.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Well, I think if people put in half as much energy as they do to spreading false information, they could put that same energy into getting a degree in something. So they have the credentials. You know what I mean? Oh yes.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I'll just leave it at that. So you have, you were admitted to the New York state bar and then you worked as an 80 and you worked as an ADA in New York and then you transitioned to court TV. Yes. And then you're, Is it true that your first major, you know, big coverage was the Scott Peterson trial?
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Actually, Scott Peterson was tried in 2004. I had been at court for 10 years at that point. I had covered OJ's road rage case, which was a few years after he was acquitted of murder.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And it was in Miami. Actually, I... It was a felony. He got mad at a man who was tailing him on a not a very busy road street in south of Miami. And he got out in a rage. It was road rage. And he put his put his fist through the hand through the window of the man's car and like grabbed at his hand.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Those are her credentials to start. In 1987, she was admitted to the New York State Bar. And from 1987 to 1994, she actually worked as an ADA, an assistant district attorney in New York City under the legendary district attorney Robert Morgenthau. They were prosecuting cases ranging from robbery and rape to racketeering and political corruption.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
hat or his glasses or something that was considered a burglary of an occupied vehicle so that because a part of his body went through the open window and scratched the man's face so that was a felony he was acquitted of that not a bad verdict if he just was angry and his kids were in the back seat of the car and they were little at the time his two youngest that he had with nicole so um
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I had covered that, but at the time, 9-1-1 had just happened, and the anthrax scare was going on.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And so all the media were in Washington, you know, at the Pentagon, or in lower Manhattan, or in Boca Raton, where a man at American Media had just died from inhaling anthrax. So no one's covering this case, but it was OJ on the stand in a criminal case. And, you know, like People Magazine was there, a few places like that, but it was Court TV. So I had lunch with OJ early on, his lawyer.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He had two lawyers. They invited me to lunch. I've told this story before, but maybe some of your listeners haven't heard it. So we're sitting at a round table at a Chinese restaurant that was fast because we had to get back to court. It was lunch.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
My food came first. And everybody, yeah, O.J. is sitting right to my left. And my food came first, and O.J. is sitting there. He reached over, and he started to eat off my plate. And I'm very rude. I tell everybody, when O.J. Simpson is sitting next to you with a fork and a knife in his hand, you let him eat as much as he wants.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Might as well just scoot the plate over and let him have it. Go ahead. I mean, his food came soon enough, but it's like, oh, but I would talk to him periodically through the trial. Now it wasn't high profile like Scott Peterson, but Scott Peterson's was probably one of the biggest ones in terms of like national or international press. But David Westerfield was kind of big.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
I mean, that was two years earlier. It was big in that in San Diego, he kidnapped a little girl out of her home. Bed at home seven-year-old girl sleeping in the middle of the night. He broke into the home.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
He kidnapped her as a neighbor Killed her she was found three weeks later probably raped her, but she was too decomposed to tell if she was raped Oh my gosh, and I just remember in that case thinking God Your child isn't safe in her own bed. Where's your child safe? This is a beautiful neighborhood called Saber Springs in, you know, outside of the city of San Diego, but in San Diego County.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
That, I remember, we had monitors out on the street when the verdict was coming in, and there were crowds of people who came down to the courthouse because we were waiting for the verdict. And when he was convicted, because there was a camera, it was televised, there were cheers everywhere. Just like there were cheers at Jodi Arias and there were cheers at Scott Peterson.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And there were not cheers at Casey Anthony. People were outraged at Casey Anthony because she was acquitted. But people want to be a part of the process. People would take their summer vacation because a lot of these trials are in the summer. Casey Anthony, Jodi Arias, Scott Peterson, all in the summer.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Or is there a rhyme or reason for that? No, coincidence. But they're long. They're a couple months or more. So people would actually do like a destination vacation. We're going to Phoenix for vacation. We'll go to Sedona, Scottsdale, whatever. But we're going to go to the trial for a day. And so we always had big crowds at these big televised cases. And a lot of them,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
were female defendants or the wife is murdered right Lacey Casey Nicole Nicole yeah that's so do you think any of those cases would be ever be on the curious case of We are looking at cases that haven't been told or haven't been told so much. I can't say they never would be, but there'd have to be a new angle.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
And in 1994, she actually joins Court TV, later True TV, as an on-air legal analyst and correspondent. She begins covering high profile criminal cases across the United States. And so that's where she transitions to, you know, covering all of these cases. And in 2003 into 2004, she covers the Scott Peterson trial, which we talk about in this episode.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Because we're looking at stories that either aren't widely told, aren't necessarily murders. I've actually spoken to a few men, two last Friday, who said that... They don't really like to watch all the murder stories. Right. But they like Curious Case of because they're twisted crime stories that kind of make your head spin, some of them. But there's no dead body and there's no autopsy report.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Why do you think that women are more interested in the murder over men? Because my partner also feels the same way. He thinks I'm nuts for watching the ID channel as much as I do.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Oh, yeah. you're not alone and he's not alone. Okay. Like that's very common. And back in the day at core TV, we were told like 70% of our viewerships, like the Eastern half of the U S but that was probably different today. But, but also it skews female. Um,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
You know, I know in Scott Peterson, I remember the New York Times reporter or somebody telling me that the New York Times didn't routinely cover a case like Scott Peterson. It's on the other coast. Right. But they were doing it a couple times a week or so because the readers wanted it. Women wanted it. There was a demand for it because I think a lot of women were saying,
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
Is my husband the next Scott Peterson? I mean, there was no sign. He had no criminal, he wasn't abusive to her. I mean, he was cheating on her, but she, and she did know it early on in their marriage, but it wasn't, you know, she was willing to make it work and believe that it was going to work. Right.
Barely Famous
The Curious Case Of...With Beth Karas
So a lot of women just wonder, because a lot of cases we've covered and I read about and even dabble in a little bit now are spousal murders, right? Generally, the husband killing the wife and divorce or pregnancy. Those are the triggers for the most part in spousal murders.