The Latest Entry in the True-Crime Serial Market: Copcasts
The New York Police Department, like other law enforcement agencies, has created a podcast that delves into its most interesting cases.
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The New York project is directed by Jill Bauerle and
Edward Conlon, a former detective who became a best-selling author (“Blue Blood” and “The Policewomen’s Bureau”).
Last year Mr. Conlon, who retired in 2011, returned to become director of executive communications for the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill. He began trying to inject more storytelling into the department’s communications strategy, writing and posting long narratives like
“Old Hays and His Descendants: The Legacy of the Last High Constable of New York City” and
“The War at Home: Remembering Foster and Laurie” on the police website. But he found the results disappointing.
So Mr. Conlon and his departmental collaborators — Ms. Bauerle, the series’s executive producer, and Kenzie Delaine, a producer and writer — decided to create a podcast that would be very different
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The first season of “Break in the Case” will cover three investigations. Five episodes written and narrated by Mr. Conlon will trace the “Baby Hope” case, which was revived by an anonymous tip in 2013.
A single episode, scheduled for release in December, will focus on the efforts by detectives to identify a woman whose remains washed up along the Brooklyn waterfront in 2015. It will be titled “Monique” for
the tattoo found on the victim’s leg. Ms. Bauerle, who wrote the episode, said she hopes it will aid investigators in turning up new leads.
The Latest Entry in the True-Crime Serial Market: Copcasts