Ep. 231: True Crime Podcaster Stephanie Tinsley on Everything They Missed [encore]

**Amy Devers** (0:14)
Hi, everyone. I'm Amy Devers, and this is Clever. Today, I'm talking to Stephanie Tinsley, creator of the new True Crime podcast, Everything They Missed. Just wait till you hear her creative journey. It's a powerful tale of reinvention that folds together a love story, a leap of faith, personal terror, media chaos, and a front-row seat to one of the most high-profile murder trials in recent history. At its core, though, this is a story about creativity and courage. The courage to gather up one's own internal resources, fierce determination, sound logic, specialized access, social confidence, unshakable curiosity, and an enormous capacity for care and compassion. And put them in service of something bigger. Stephanie is new to podcasting and new to investigative storytelling, but she is not new to True Crime. Before all this, she was living in Nashville and working in law, venture capital, and private equity. Until 2022, when her life collided with the Murdaugh murder saga. Her husband became a central figure in the trial, including the Netflix series Murdaugh Murders, A Southern Scandal. And suddenly she found herself navigating personal fear and a relentless media storm in real time. That extreme set of circumstances reshaped everything. With a compelling case and the trust of attorneys and the Tennessee Innocence Project, and rare inside access to people and information most of us never glimpsed, Stephanie discovered a new sense of agency and a calling. Her approach to true crime is deeply humane. She centers victims and refuses to let them be overshadowed by spectacle. When you listen to Everything They Missed, you can hear Stephanie building it as it unfolds, episode by episode, and uncovering new evidence in real time in a case that has been shut for years. When the final installments drop in December, I have no doubt it's going to blow up. Here's Stephanie.

**Stephanie Tinsley** (2:28)
I am Stephanie Tinsley. I live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I also split my time between Allendale, South Carolina, which is the low country of South Carolina. I am an unlikely investigative journalist, podcaster, if you would have asked me a year ago, it would have been completely different, but here we are.

**Amy Devers** (2:52)
It's been kind of a dramatic reshaping of your life in so many ways, and it's exactly what I like to talk about on Clever because it's all about how people came into their creative agency and how they're using it to shape the world, which is what you're doing. And this is such a crystallized moment of your transformation, but also super powerful because you already have the experience and the wisdom that you get to apply towards this with concentrated vigor. But you're a podcaster and an investigative journalist now. So tell me about the show.

**Stephanie Tinsley** (3:30)
So the show is called Everything They Missed. And I have been a true crime junkie for decades. I mean, since the 80s, I would steal true crime books from my aunt when I would stay with her in the summer.
And so Everything They Missed is a true crime podcast. It's a long narrative. Now it's 10 episodes about a brutal murder in Memphis, Tennessee. And I have followed that case for the last, I guess it's a year and a half now, but it's a savage murder. It is most likely a wrongful conviction story.
And it's a hunt for the real killer. And who knew that I would be hunting killers at my age, at this point in my life. But it's a story that if you just want to put on your headphones and work out, or you listen to podcasts on your way to work and you just want to listen to true crime, it's that. It's got all of the elements of true crime that we love. What it's turned into though, it's really blurred the lines of true crime and this heartfelt story of ripple effect of what happens when you miss things and that goes to the title of Everything They Missed, What Happens. And the title is meaningful in episodes one through six in one way. But when we come back from our break and air our last four episodes in December, Everything They Missed takes on a completely different meaning.

**Amy Devers** (5:08)
Oh my god, that's too tantalizing not to ask about, but I know I have to not spoil anything for the future episodes. But what I think is really gripping about this is it's a closed case. Somebody's convicted, somebody's in jail. It's for many people, it was wrapped up and a button was put on it. But now, in part to your investigation, it's unfolding in real time with new evidence and new light being shed on the places where things were missed and maybe wrong people went to jail. And I think, first of all, it's a good listen. Second of all, it is ultimately the most powerful thing you can do with your creative agency is to shine a light on injustices in service of justice. And, you know, that can look like a lot of different things in a lot of different industries. The one thing I really, really appreciate about the way you're handling this is the care that comes through for the victims' families, for everyone, actually. You have a pretty impartial and balanced view of the police work and the justice system and everything that goes into it. So this isn't about blanket generalizations and it's not about placing blame as much as it's about just kind of bringing light to the things that slip through the cracks and cause really big issues. You're really approaching it from a position that's deeply compassionate and very respectful of all the people involved, but also of the nature of how this could have happened. And you take us on a deep dive into the interrogation techniques that the police use, which I also respect from, you know, as a storyteller, as an academic, as a creative, as a maker.