Journalism Professor Teams Up with Grad Student for True Crime Podcast

When journalism professor Charlie Scudder was a breaking news reporter at The Dallas Morning News, serial killer Billy Chemirmir was indicted on several murders of elderly women in the Dallas area. He quickly became involved in reporting the case culminating in a two-part narrative series for the paper and a continued interest in the case.

Now, Scudder is channeling his years of investigative journalism on Chemirmir into a nine-part narrative true crime podcast with the help of current SMU graduate student Monika Watkins. Their podcast, “Unnatural Causes,” will be season two of the true crime show The Unforgotten, produced by ex-Texas Monthly senior editor Wes Ferguson’s indie studio Free Range Productions.

While writing the series on Chemirmir for The Dallas Morning News, Scudder built a lot of sources among the victims’ families, attorneys and investigators which helped him continue to break stories, identify more victims and stay on top of the story as it evolved. And though it began as an investigative project for the paper, the story quickly became personal to him as well.

“Around the time that these crimes were being investigated, my family was considering moving my grandmother into an independent living community — the kind where Chemirmir found his victims,” explains Scudder. “I realized this wasn’t just a story about one horrific killer, but a system that millions of Americans rely on every day. Chemirmir just used those cracks in that system to kill and steal — and got away with it for years.”

Chemirmir was accused of killing 22 older women over a two-year period and was eventually convicted in 2022 for the deaths of two women. Around the time Chemirmir went to trial, Scudder began working on a book about the case which eventually developed into a podcast pitch. With so much existing audio, including recordings of Scudder’s phone calls to Chemirmir in jail before his death in prison, he knew the story would lend itself well to an audio project like a podcast. The podcast pitch eventually attracted Wes Ferguson and Free Range Productions to the project, and “Unnatural Causes” was soon under production as the second season of Ferguson’s podcast The Unforgotten.

Once the project was underway, Monika Watkins – a graduate student in Meadows’ Temerlin Advertising Institute – was brought on as an on-location audio producer, running mics and helping collect audio on many of the interviews. Watkins was originally introduced to the story as a TA for Scudder’s journalism ethics course when Shannon Dion, an SMU alumna whose mother was killed by Chemirmir, visited the class to talk about trauma and ethical crime reporting.

“When I signed with Free Range to produce the podcast, I got talking with Monika about it [and] she mentioned her experience in documentary film work and that she’d be interested in learning more about podcast production,” says Scudder. “Her experience and professionalism was central to the reporting process this summer, and it simply wouldn’t have been possible without her production help.”

With so much emotional and dramatic tape, the way the story unfolds over its nine episodes makes for a great twisty listen. The bulk of the podcast was edited and recorded over the summer, with final voiceover touches worked on in the Umphrey Lee studios at the beginning of the semester.

The first two episodes of “Unnatural Causes,” will drop on Monday, October 14, with a new episode dropping every Monday following until the nine-part series concludes. Starting Monday, you can stream season two of The Unforgotten on Spotify or Apple Podcasts!