Karen Schepers had been missing for more than four decades when an Illinois police department launched a podcast about her case. A few weeks after the first episode aired, her body was found at the bottom of a river.
That outcome — improbable, unhurried, achieved through a medium built for commuters and insomniacs — is now being studied by departments across the country.
A new investigative tool, borrowed from entertainment
The Aurora Police Department in Colorado released its own podcast this summer, titled White Whale, focused on the 2016 murder of Chelsea Yasser, a 21-year-old woman found stabbed to death in a shopping center parking lot. Yasser had climbed into a van that stopped in the lot; she collapsed moments after stepping out. Security footage captured the van rocking during the assault but was too blurry to identify a face. DNA recovered from beneath her fingernails matched no one in any database.
'The true crime genre — whether on television, podcasts, or books — is tremendously popular,' said Joe Moylan, spokesman for the Aurora Police Department. 'And we set out to reach that broader audience.'
By late July, White Whale had been downloaded 7,184 times, according to the department. Several new tips followed, including at least one investigators are still pursuing.
In California, the Newport Beach Police Department produced an earlier podcast about Peter Chadwick, a millionaire accused of murdering his wife in October 2012 who had been a fugitive for nearly four years. Chadwick was arrested in August 2019 and later pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He remains incarcerated. The officer who produced the podcast, public information officer Jennifer Manzella, said it helped by putting pressure on Chadwick while he was on the run, making it more likely he would make mistakes. Investigators were also able to obtain court orders and extraditions 'in record time,' according to Manzella.
The limits are real, too
The Newport Beach podcast drew criticism for introducing Chadwick in its first episode as 'a man who murdered his wife' — without the word 'alleged' — before any trial had taken place. Critics argued this violated the presumption of innocence. Manzella defended the framing at the time, saying the department 'issues the same type of statements all the time.'
Beyond legal risk, the logistical barriers are steep. Most police departments lack the staff, budget, equipment, and production experience needed to sustain a multi-episode series, said Michael Alcazar, a retired New York Police Department detective and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Others stay away for fear of lawsuits and retaliation.
Alyce McGovern, associate professor of criminology at the University of New South Wales in Australia — where police have also begun experimenting with podcasts — notes that law enforcement audio is not new. Retired detectives have long hosted shows discussing old cases. What is less common, she says, is departments producing their own content specifically to solicit tips on active cold cases.
'I think it is a tool that everyone will end up adopting,' Alcazar said.
What the record suggests
Say it plainly: the podcast is not a courtroom and it is not a search warrant. It is a distribution mechanism — a way to place a case in front of an audience that never saw the local news broadcast the night it happened. Follow the incentive: a cold case costs the public money in perpetuity; a single credible tip, delivered by a listener three states away, can close it.
The risks — prejudicing a jury pool, inviting litigation, misstating facts to a mass audience — are not trivial and deserve scrutiny. But the underlying logic is sound. Information locked inside a detective's filing cabinet solves nothing. The question is not whether police should communicate; it is whether they can do so accurately, fairly, and within the law. The departments that answer yes to all three will find the tool works. The ones that cut corners on the 'accurately' and 'fairly' parts will find out why those words are not optional.
