Truth and true crime

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Wednesday, March 9th. We’re so glad you’ve chosen WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a new podcast from WORLD Radio. Perhaps you remember this preview:

AUDIO: [CARRIE SHOW OPENER]

It’s not every day that a call-in radio show saves a life.

AUDIO: [CARRIE SHOW OPENER]

But that’s exactly what happened 20 years ago this week in Florida…

For more than a year, the creative team at WORLD Radio has been working hard on a powerful 14-part true crime podcast titled: LAWLESS. When we began promoting it last year, we had no idea just how much work it would turn out to be.

REICHER: New York Times bestselling author and WORLD Senior writer Lynn Vincent is the driving force behind the project and she’s here to fill us in. Good morning Lynn!

LYNN VINCENT, SENIOR WRITER: Good morning!

EICHER: Mary, I think you left out a couple of important facts in the Lynn bio before we get going here. You know, she's a Navy veteran. She's also the owner of a Harley Davidson. So I think we can say it couldn't possibly have been the military background—maybe the Harley—is the reason for the new podcast title: Lawless. But no, I know that there's a serious reason for that. Lynn, why don't you tell us about that.

VINCENT: Well, thanks, Nick. The reason for the title Lawless: it's a reference to Scripture. James refers to lawlessness. And there are other places in scripture where lawlessness is referred to and it just has to do with the with an ethos, it has to do with the idea that you can almost get away with anything. That's becoming more and more true in our culture, where things that really ought to be crimes, in fact, are not crimes. And that's the reason for the subtitle to the podcast. Lawless: not every crime is against the law.

REICHARD: Well, I know the Lawless podcast feed is now live on Apple podcast and Stitcher and just about anywhere podcasts are available. Lynn, let's start this way. Tell us about the trailer.

VINCENT: Well, Mary, it took us a really long time to boil this 14 episode podcast down to a three-minute trailer. And what we'd like for people to do is share on social media, get the word out, and also pray for us and those who are going to listen to this podcast. We're hoping to attract True Crime listeners. But we're also hoping to maybe get a crossover audience—people who may not be familiar with WORLD—and may not even be believers.

REICHARD: I know you have a little more than three weeks to go. I also know from experience that there’s a lot of production work happening behind the scenes even as we speak.

EICHER: Right, there is. The last time we talked about Lawless, we hoped to release it in the summer of 2021. We know why we couldn’t, but the listener doesn’t know why. Lynn, why don’t you fill us in on that?

VINCENT: Well, there was this thing, it was called a global pandemic.

EICHER: Oh, that…

VINCENT: Yeah. So that restricted a lot of our travel. And we really wanted to go directly to the sources. We wanted to go and visit with Terry Schiavo’s mom. We wanted to go and visit with her brother. We went down to Florida to St. Petersburg and talked to a whole bunch of people. And so that took a while. And there are also people that we're still trying to talk to. Terry Schiavo’s husband, for example—Michael Schiavo—and the attorney in the case on Michael Schiavo’s side, George Felos. So we're still working on that.

REICHARD: Well, the first few episodes are still being finalized. But we do have a short excerpt from the prologue. Let’s listen.

CLIP: In 1998, eight years after Terri’s brain injury, her husband went to court. Michael Schiavo said Terri was in a kind of waking coma, and that she would not have wanted to live that way.

MICHAEL: There was nothing more they could do for Terri. She told me what she wanted. And the courts heard it over and over and over again.

Michael said Terri’s parents wanted to force her to live a meaningless and humiliating existence against her wishes. But the Schindlers, along with Terri’s friends and caregivers, said her existence wasn’t meaningless at all.

CARLA: Terri was everybody's favorite.

That’s registered nurse, Carla Iyer-Sauer—who cared for Terri.

CARLA: When I first came on board. they had her at the front of the nursing station when visitors would enter…She would just smile; she would … actually react, she reacted to her environment, she reacted to people, she reacted to her name. … She would just light up.

Many witnesses said Terri could even talk.

EICHER: You know, I think as far removed as we are from the case, I think that it will be a surprise to a number of people—with that idea that you just mentioned—that she could talk.

VINCENT: Well, that's exactly right. And think about the implications of that. We talked to many witnesses. And of course, there are affidavits to this effect as well that Terry could talk. She would say things like “mommy” and “pain.” She couldn't really say the last “n” on pain, so it would come out “pay.” And these vocalizations that she would make—this speaking—didn't just happen after her injury in 1990. But this happened all the way up until March 18 2005, which is the day that her feeding tube was removed.

And so that, for us was very unsettling and part of what propelled us down the path of this reinvestigation. And there were other and unsettling details as well. Greed, broken promises, even adultery. And that's part of the story too. Let's listen to a little bit more from the podcast.

CLIP: And Terri’s parents began to wonder: Had Michael had something to do with Terri’s injury? Years later, investigators would examine Michael’s story of what happened that night.

Terry Beckstrom: There were inconsistencies all throughout the whole storyline….

That’s retired DEA investigator and behavioral expert Terry Beckstrom.

Terry Beckstrom: He says he scooped her up and he cradled her and he held her, he tried to revive her. The biggest problem I have with that is the paramedics found her face down.

REICHARD: The first episode of lawless is set to release in just over three weeks, as we mentioned on Thursday, March 31. Why that date?

VINCENT: We chose that date, Mary, because that's the date of Terry's death: March 31 2005.

EICHER: Well, as we said, the trailer is now available online. You can search for Lawless wherever you get your podcasts. And Lynn, we are grateful for all of your investigative journalism and work on this project. We’re looking forward to hearing the whole series. So thanks so much for joining us.

VINCENT: Thanks Nick.

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