When Jefferson County residents Jennifer Flanders and Camille Anderson started their weekly true crime podcast nearly six years ago, they decided to focus on bizarre, lesser-known cases.
They said they started the podcast, called “Our True Crime Podcast,” on July 11, 2018, and since then have produced 344 episodes and garnered nearly six million downloads.
Episodes are recorded on Sundays, and a new episode is released every Wednesday at 4 p.m. The show is available on any podcast platform.
The two podcasters said they hope listeners feel like they are having coffee with friends.
Anderson and Flanders have been best friends since sixth grade. They grew up in Union and life brought each of them to Jefferson County.
Anderson, 54, lives in Crystal City. She is a mother of two children, ages 19 and 21, and is a language arts teacher at Seckman High School in Imperial. Flanders, 54, lives in Imperial. She is a stay-at-home mom of two children, ages 15 and 18.
How it began
Anderson and Flanders said they have always enjoyed watching horror movies and shows like “Unsolved Mysteries,” “Dateline” and “48 Hours.”
Flanders remembers them watching the “Helter Skelter” movie during their first sleepover.
In 2017, Flanders sent Anderson information about the CrimeCon crime convention, and Anderson surprised her with tickets. There, they met true-crime television personalities like Nancy Grace and spoke to podcasting pioneers.
On the drive home from Indianapolis, Anderson tried to convince Flanders they needed to start a true crime podcast. A year later, Flanders was ready.
When they ordered the podcasting equipment, they had no idea how to set up audio or edit it, Flanders said.
They didn’t even know what the buttons on the equipment did, but they dove in head-first, she said.
When the two finished that first episode, they thought they “knocked it out of the park” but have since changed their minds, Anderson said.
“It’s so difficult to hear that first episode,” she said. “The first few episodes were pretty rough.”
Their voices were at different volumes, and they seemed to be fighting each other to get a word in, they said.
Flanders said podcasting turned out to be a lot harder and time-consuming than they originally thought.
Six months in, after a lot of tears, they realized they needed an editor and hired Nico Vettese, who edits their podcasts from Scotland. Narrator Edward October reads their viewer discretion warning at the beginning of the podcasts, and Lauretta Allen, a published author from St. Louis, helps as a writer and researcher.
Flanders said it’s been a long road but a worthwhile one.
Camille Anderson and Jennifer Flanders sat on a panel with Bob Ruff of “Truth & Justice with Bob Ruff” and Josh Hallmark of “True Crime Bullsh**” at the True Crime Podcast Festival.
Anderson said she and Flanders have met a lot of people from all over the world, adding they have many fans in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Flanders said the podcast brings in some revenue, including some from ads the two read on the show, adding that “we do OK.”
Anderson said she’d love to see the podcast regularly get millions and millions of downloads and bring in enough money so she could retire from teaching and work on the show full time, adding that getting nearly six million downloads since the podcast’s start is pretty good for “two little Jefferson County girls” who knew nothing about podcasting when they started.
Flanders said when the podcast began, they opted against just offering up “goofy entertainment” and instead agreed to focus on advocacy, making it more about the victims than the criminals. She said it’s important to remember they are talking about a family’s worst day.
Anderson said nothing is more rewarding than having a family member reach out to them and thank them for their work on an episode.
She said listeners have asked if they are worried about running out of podcast ideas. Sadly, Anderson added, there is no shortage of true crime cases.
Flanders and Anderson take turns researching and presenting information about the case for a podcast, with the other woman hearing the information for the first time and reacting and responding to it.
“So, the reactions are genuine,” Anderson said, recalling Flanders’ case about a young Australian couple lost in the woods where she “just couldn’t get over the end.”
So far, the two have never tried to research the same case.
“We have a running document of over 400 cases that we’ve found on our own or had requests to do,” Anderson said.
She said sometimes when they are researching a case, they stumble onto a more interesting one.
The women said anywhere from six to 20 hours are spent investigating one case.
They are partial to looking into cases with ties to Missouri, but they report on cases from all over the world.
Episode 9, “Deathbed Confession: Gina Brooks Angie Housman Connection,” focuses on the 1993 murder of 9-year-old Housman of St. Ann (before her killer was caught in June 2019) and the unsolved 1989 disappearance of 12-year-old Brooks of Fredericktown.
Episode 125, “The Chief, the Gym Rat and the Hitman,” is about William Pagano, who served as Festus Police chief from 1974 to 1984, and killed himself after he was convicted of murdering Mark Timothy Todd.
“Every year at Christmas we do ‘The 12 Nightmares Before Christmas,’” Flanders said. “Starting on Dec. 13, we post an episode every day like an advent calendar. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of the podcast and it’s very popular with our listeners.”
The women said there is no cursing on the show and they try to avoid going overboard on gruesome descriptions.
“Speculations are not our thing,” Flanders said, adding they rely on police reports in their research. “We try not to give our theories.”
They are looking forward to their Dark History UK Tour from June 13-22 that will take them to Edinburgh, York and London. Flanders said 15 people have booked the tour, which includes airfare and hotels, and three are from Australia. For more information, visit the “Our True Crime Podcast” Facebook page or www.ourtruecrimepodcast.com.