Deborah Roberts and ABC News Contributor Ryan Smith, who hosts the 20/20 limited run series 'Bad Romance,' discuss the combustable mix of love and true crime. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the focus of the series 'Bad Romance'?
Hi there, everybody. Welcome to 2020 The After Show. I'm Debra Roberts, and today we've got a special series to explore, 2020's limited series Bad Romance. It recently returned for its second season Tuesday nights on ABC through May 13th.
Now, as you can probably guess from the title, these are stories of people who have lost their lives at the hands of those who they thought would love them forever. We're going to look at the consequences of obsession, manipulation and take a look at the dark side of love. And joining me to discuss this combustible mix of love and true crime is
Chapter 2: What are the common themes in true crime love stories?
is abc news contributor and my friend ryan smith hi ryan deborah it's so good to talk to you good to talk to you i had to resist the urge to say and joining me as somebody who can talk about obsessive you know whatever in life because that's not quite the case but you are of course obsessed with 2020 and a lot of these stories you and i have worked on a lot of them together it's great to see you and i'm glad we can talk about this
Yeah, me too. Well, you know, at the heart of these stories, and we see a lot of overlap in these stories, so clearly we had enough, sadly, I guess you could say, to put them all together and sort of look at them through a bigger lens in this series called Bad Romance. And one of the things to me that is so compelling is
Chapter 3: Why are people fascinated by stories of obsessive love?
in these love relationships is that you know at the root of it as we said there's often obsession things that have gone wrong and people who just either snap or just do the unthinkable why do you think people are so fascinated by these stories it's because of love and i know that sounds trite for some people but love is just this basic human emotion that we all want to feel
And when we feel it, Deborah, it can make us do things that are unexpected and that make us go beyond what we would normally do. I can't tell you how many people who watch Bad Romance, they stop me on the street and say, oh, I saw this show you guys did on Bad Romance. They tell me about a particular show, and then they say something to the effect of,
You know, I could see why maybe they felt that way, but why would they go here? And I always tell them, think about the first thing you just said. You can see why they felt that way. So many of the stories we cover are about people who are in a relationship or trying to hide something in a relationship to maintain another relationship.
Chapter 4: What are the motives behind crimes of passion?
all these different emotions surrounding love that make people do things. And what I try to tell people is the reason I think people connect with a lot of these stories is because they can see parts of themselves in those stories, not in terms of the crime committed, but in terms of the emotions involved and why people end up feeling the way they're feeling.
The only difference in many of our stories is people take it too far. And one thing I like to tell people about these stories is a lot of times these cases are not often cases with people with long criminal records, with previous crimes. Oftentimes no records. Exactly. Oftentimes no records.
So you're talking about heat of passion situations, situations where people's emotions, because of love, drove them to do something that was really beyond their normal behavior.
Yeah, I agree with you. And you and I can peel back and look at some of the ones that we've covered. But as you're talking about this, I'm thinking about a story that I covered in Minnesota where someone actually betrayed his wife. And this guy had never been in trouble, in fact, was quite religious. And they're supposed to be going to church that morning when she's killed.
Chapter 5: How do double lives play a role in these narratives?
What do you make of the motives? Because oftentimes these are folks who are trying to either cover their tracks or sometimes they're involved in duplicitous relationships. Talk to me a little bit about the motives.
It's interesting that you talk about this. One thing that shocked me when I first started working on 2020s was how many of these cases involve people who are living double lives, as we call them, or have a relationship in one spot and then another relationship somewhere else. That's the motive a lot of times. Sometimes it deals—our episodes deal with— Custody issues can be the motive.
Other times it can be control issues can be the motive. Somebody didn't do what I wanted and I wanted them to change their behavior. So now I'm taking this action. But it all still comes back to the basic human feelings that we have. Just these are those feelings that are far beyond the pale. So for example, we have an episode that involves a custody situation.
And in that particular situation, you would argue, well, there's so many ways to handle that. But sometimes people feel it's gotten out of control. and that there's no other way to do anything except take this extreme action. So the motives can be all over the place.
And they feel boxed in. Yeah, they feel boxed in. You make a great point. That's exactly right. That's what gets me. And you raise an interesting point when you talk about these double lives. I mean, those are the things of TV dramas, right?
One of the ones that, of course, I remember so well is we call it Love You to Death, is this case of Molly Watson, who was found murdered on a dark country road. She was getting ready to get married. Her new marriage license was in her car. Her boyfriend of seven years, so she'd been seeing somebody for seven years, and she's got her new license there in the back of the car.
And when police find her, they feel like they're going to go and drop this horrible news on this fiancé who's going to be just devastated. And they shockingly discovered his wife, his wife at home, that he's got a double life. I was the correspondent on this story, and I still think about it to this day for a lot of reasons. But let's listen to a clip.
I talked to Melanie Addy, who is the ex-wife of the perpetrator, James Addy, and it was the first time she had actually given an interview. Let's take a listen. The police tell you that your husband has a dead fiancé?
Yes.
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Chapter 6: What shocking revelations came from the interview with Melanie Addy?
Were you... Were you hurt?
What were you feeling? Probably just disbelief in the beginning. It didn't seem right. This was not my life.
Did you think that your husband was capable of murder?
Yes. It just seemed like something he would do to fix a problem. He was a pretty selfish person. He could be controlling and intimidating, and it could be challenging.
Wow. Right? Wow. Yeah. First of all, I can't believe she said yes, but then also, I'm not only registering the shock from her, but the shock in your voice as you're going through it. Yeah.
I was, you know, the incredulity because, you know, you have to think that people are going to wonder if you've been married to somebody for 23 years, did you see any signs, you know? And I did go into that thinking, you know, come on, you had to have seen something. I was a little surprised at how matter of fact she was about it. She was clearly still very hurt by it.
But she absolutely stood by her story that she, you know, they had problems in their marriage and, you know, they weren't necessarily probably on the best of terms. You know, he went his way. She would go to bed early. You know, they didn't have a great marriage. But she never, ever would have imagined. And Ryan, remember, he worked at a prison.
And so, you know, this is somebody you would expect to at least think about, you know, right and wrong and so forth. So I just I wanted to sort of represent the viewer there with those questions and the shock of what she told me. First of all, my heart went out to her because her life just blew up as she knew it. But wow is right.
I mean, and I also like the fact that you talk about this idea, because a lot of people ask me about this as well, that how could this person not have known? How could you not know? I mean, this is your husband, your spouse. And then they try to make, I think in many ways, judgments on the relationship. I'm not trying to say that everybody should or should not know in different situations.
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Chapter 7: What behind-the-scenes moments highlighted the impact of these stories?
He would say he was going off to some kind of a convention or some kind of a meeting out of town. Of course, he's with Molly. This relationship goes on. And this is the part, I think, that intrigues people so much is that probably James Addy was content to just continue this affair. But Molly, with no knowledge, of course, that this guy is living a double life, wants to get married.
And so he is going to honor that at a certain point. You know, she's pushing, she's pushing, she wants to get married, and he's got to figure it out. So he goes so far as to get the marriage license, and, you know, he's caught on videotape. You see the two of them on surveillance tape going to the office to go get the marriage license, and you know his mind is spinning. What am I going to do?
What am I going to do? And that's the kind of stuff I think that people find so intriguing. But Ryan, one of the things that I so enjoy about this kind of a conversation, us getting a chance to talk about these stories that we cover, is sharing with our viewers and our listeners the things that happen behind the scenes, right?
Chapter 8: What is the significance of the hair and makeup team's connection to the case?
Whether we're struggling to work a story and get some video that maybe something goes wrong or, you know, those kinds of things. But in this particular instance... This was one I will never forget. We are interviewing Melanie Addy, and we have a hair and makeup team there to touch her up, to touch me up.
So we're sitting there doing this interview, and after we finish, when I go back behind the scenes to say something to them, they both, these two women, are standing there. Their face is almost ashen, and they said, we have something to tell you. We have to tell you something. And I said, what is that? We knew Molly. We were the hair and makeup team hired for her wedding. We knew this woman.
We knew something happened to her. We never knew what. And then they proceed to play the last audio clip they have of her on their cell phone, you know, talking about the wedding.
Hi, Crystal. This is Molly Watson. I just wanted to call you and get my balance, please. And I forgot you guys spoke to her.
I mean, it was stunning. We didn't get a chance to put that in our piece, but it was just like, what?
Wow, I can't believe that. Now them hearing that firsthand, standing right there with you, I can't believe that. Just in real time, they're like, oh my goodness, that job that canceled on us was this woman.
And they had no idea because they didn't know what had happened to her. They didn't know what story we were there covering. So as they're hearing all of this unfold, they're thinking, wait a second, this is familiar. So these unusual things happen to us sometimes behind the scenes. And that I have to say is probably one of the strangest ones for me.
I have never had that happen. Somebody on the set who was in some way connected to what happened. I've never had that happen. But that is that is remarkable.
That's mind blowing. So, you know, I just thought you'd get a kick out of hearing it. Well, listen, let's take a quick break because when we come back, there are more stories about double lives and crimes of passion from our Bad Romance series. This episode is sponsored by Get Contact.
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