Most people think they understand true crime. They’ve watched the documentaries. Heard the podcasts. Followed the headlines. But what they’re seeing is the version that’s been edited. Structured. Made safe enough to consume.

What they don’t see is what happens before that.

The letters that arrive from prison—sometimes years after the first contact. The interviews that don’t follow the script. The moment you realize the person you’re speaking to isn’t just answering questions—they’re studying you back.

Facing Evil is not about the crime. It’s about what happens when you get close enough to it that distance stops existing.

This series comes out of years spent working inside cases most people only encounter through a screen. Cases involving individuals who committed acts that are almost impossible to process from the outside.

But this isn’t a retelling.

There is no narrator guiding you through evidence. No voiceover creating separation. No clean arc that begins and ends with resolution. These stories are told from inside the process—through the perspective of the producer who stepped into them, stayed in them, and, in some cases, had to find a way back out.

Because the truth is, you don’t just “cover” this kind of work. You absorb it. And it doesn’t happen all at once. It builds slowly.

One conversation that lingers longer than it should.

One exchange that crosses a line you didn’t realize was there.

One moment where you’re no longer sure if you’re documenting the story—or becoming part of it.

That’s the part no one talks about.

The psychological cost of proximity. The blurred boundaries between subject and storyteller. The quiet, cumulative weight of spending years in conversation with people the world has already decided are beyond understanding.

Facing Evil is about that.

Not as spectacle. Not as entertainment. But as an unfiltered look at what it actually means to go inside these stories and stay there long enough to tell them.

The series will be released as both written essays and podcast episodes, because some stories don’t sit quietly on the page. And others shouldn’t be rushed past in audio.

This is not a series about making darkness digestible. It’s about removing the distance that allows it to be. Because once you step inside a story like this. Once it starts responding to you, shaping itself around you—you don’t get to go back to being just an observer.

You’re part of it now.

Facing Evil publishes as both written and audio. Subscribe to get each release as it drops.

Serial killers. Cult leaders. Survivors of unimaginable crimes. Investigators chasing answers that sometimes never came.

Those experiences shaped the way I tell stories. Both in television and now in fiction.

This video is the first episode in a short series I’m starting here on Substack. In it, I’ll revisit some of the real cases and interviews that stayed with me long after the cameras stopped rolling.

Moments that changed the way I think about human behavior, power, belief, and violence.

This episode focuses on Jeffrey Lundgren, the cult leader responsible for the murders of the Avery family.

In 2006, I covered his execution. Experiences like that don’t leave you.

They follow you into the stories you eventually write.

In many ways, the psychological landscapes inside The Last Bloom were shaped by years spent studying how people can be manipulated, controlled, and convinced of things that defy logic.

This video is a glimpse into one of those moments.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share more stories from behind the camera, including prison interviews, active investigations, and cases that never quite left me.

Because sometimes the most powerful stories begin long before the book is written.

Coming in this series:

• Sitting across from convicted killers in prison

• Conversations with cult members who still believed

• Investigating active missing persons cases

• Evidence: what it’s really like coming face-to-face with the clues of murder

• The moments that changed how I see human behavior