In a sea of true crime podcasts — and just podcasts in general — what do you think makes “Crime Junkie” so popular?

The relationship that me and Ashley have is a huge factor. Our chemistry is really natural — we are really good friends and have been our entire lives. I also think what’s special about our show is how much we focus on advocacy. We try to always include something that we’re teaching our listeners or that our listeners can do afterwards. Education and advocacy are the pillars of every episode, and our focus on that has helped us stand out from the crowd.

Well, you guys have done an incredible job. It’s amazing how quickly it took off, and it remains consistently popular. Did you think that’s where it was going when you started it up?

Absolutely not. Ashley probably did. Ashley is a dreamer. Ashley is a very ambitious person, which is amazing. We are very much yin and yang in that way. I was like, “You know what? If this works, it’d be awesome.” It’s fun to do. It ensures that she and I get to talk for at least an hour every single week. We make that time to go over a case and hang out together, and the fact that it’s been so successful has really been amazing. It’s a life that I never thought I’d have.

Women gravitate toward true crime more than men, and that’s true for your podcast, too. Why do you think the genre is particularly appealing for women, especially when a lot of it tends to focus on the murders and disappearances of women?

It’s a “how does this not happen to me?” thing because the stories feel so familiar. We, as women, have been in situations where we’ve felt scared, been in situations where we’ve felt in danger, and we feel like we can learn more, educate ourselves better, and be more aware. That is probably at the core of why true crime is so important to women.

Has there been a particular story you covered that has stuck with you or even haunted you at night?

There is one, but it has stopped [haunting me] because it’s been solved. One of the most important cases for me that we covered really early on in our podcast was about the murder of a little girl in Indiana named April Tinsley. It happened an hour and a half away from where I grew up. She was older than me, but her story felt so familiar to both me and Ashley. It was a story that we really wanted to tell, and it had been unsolved for 30 years. 

A few months after we covered it, they identified a suspect. He went to trial, and he was convicted. As a mother, it’s still a story that haunts me, but the fact that there is some closure and some justice makes it a little bit less haunting for me now.

Is there a type of crime you two won’t touch, and if so, why?

I don’t think there’s anything that we would absolutely say no to, but we do intentionally focus on under-reported stories and stories that haven’t been told before. That’s mostly because we want to be able to share those stories, be able to find justice for those families, and be able to support those victims’ families in a way that they haven’t been served yet. Being able to give a voice to a story that’s been largely untold is something that’s really important to us.