Gabby Petito case an exception to Ashley Flowers’ fundamental tenet of ‘Crime Junkie’
The disappearance and death of Gabby Petito have taken the world’s headlines by storm this month, with even the buzzy crime podcasts breaking their own rules to spread the word.
The ladies of “Crime Junkie,” creator and host Ashley Flowers and her lifelong best friend, co-host Brit Prawat, generally reserve the digital airwaves of their much adored podcast for cases that might have flown under the radar. It’s part of their mission, to bring awareness to these oftentimes unsolved mysteries that are in need of more eyes, ears and helping hands.
Flowers — founder and CEO of podcast network audiochuck, which produces the show — said the show had every intention of leaving the JonBenét specials to other outlets.
“The roadblock we always come to is, ‘At this time, we don’t have anything new to add,’” Flowers, 31, told the Daily News. “And so us continuing to cover it, we don’t feel like helps bring justice, we don’t feel like contributes to anything. And if we ever found an angle that did, we would be happy to do it, but to do it just to do it is not really our mission.”
But case of Petito, the 22-year-old Long Island woman whose disappearance earlier this month has overtaken media big and small, might have been an exception, said Flowers.
“If we covered [recent, headline-grabbing cases], it would probably be in a different way. I don’t know that we could do a full episode,” she explained. “And we may cover Gabby. I’ve never seen our email and our DMs get flooded the way that they have in the last couple of weeks and I think it’s because of all of the national and even international attention that the case is getting. So we may cover the story. Again, it might just sound a little bit different than it normally does. But people are obsessed.”
On Sunday, Flowers released a solo bonus episode of “Crime Junkie” covering the bits and pieces known about the case at the time. Remains discovered that day in Wyoming have since been confirmed as Petito’s.
The young woman was reported earlier this month during her much-documented cross country “van life” excursion with fiancé — and now person of interest — Brian Laundrie, 23, who authorities are searching for after he was reported missing by his family on Sept. 17. The publicity surrounding the case has been bolstered by social media, with throngs of users not only getting the word out, but acting as armchair detectives to help police.
Stephen King this week echoed author Don Winslow’s point that, he has “never seen a young Black woman’s disappearance covered like the #gabbypetito disappearance. Not once. That is horribly wrong.”
“Absolutely correct,” tweeted the horror master.
Recently crowned iHeartRadio’s Best Crime Podcast of 2021, and even getting a shoutout from Taylor Swift, “Crime Junkie” wants to ensure that when covering these current stories, there is “enough reliable source material” to utilize.
“What we try not to do on our show is speculate,” said Flowers, pointing to an earlier episode covering the 2012 murder of college student Faith Hedgepeth, for which a suspect was only arrested last week.
He wasn’t “on anyone’s radar,” Flowers said of the suspect, adding that “Crime Junkie” did their episode “when there was a ton of information and we could do it responsibly. But I think a lot of people are really quick to point the finger.”
Ahead of its fourth anniversary, “Crime Junkie” — which faced allegations of plagiarism in 2019 and has since changed its sourcing practices — has brought on an investigative reporter to do a few episodes annually which will comprise solely of original reporting.
“I am by no means an investigator and would do no justice going and knocking on doors,” Flowers said with a laugh.
The new hire, Flowers hopes, will help the show to “start telling those underreported stories” and “be a little bit of a solution to that problem” of underreported cases.
“Back in May, we hired a full-time investigative reporter to do original reporting on stories that don’t [get] the attention Gabby’s case did. The victims and families of underreported stories deserve just as much awareness. We hope to bring at least one in-depth reporting case a quarter to our show so instead of only amplifying the big cases we can use our platform to bring light to those underreported ones as well. And hopefully, this increased attention can prompt additional resources to bring justice to these cases.”
As she noted at the end of the show’s Monday episode about the death of Joyce Chiang, “Even when the ending isn’t as neat and tidy as we’d like, there is still a human at the heart of it all and that person’s life mattered.”
