This is the true story of how a 1999 murder in Florida spun on for almost 20 years and across two continents.

I am a Canadian reporter working in Scotland for more than 20 years, mostly for local newspapers as well as freelancing for national papers. While working at a local paper many years ago, I came across a case and I have followed it ever since. The story starts in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1999 before moving to Scotland and leading to one of the longest-running extradition battle in UK legal history.
But ultimately this is a story about a mother's fight for justice, across continents and decades.
This is a story about murder, but also about how the justice system works, in more than one country, and the clashes when those systems meet. It's for true crime fans, but also for listeners who want to learn more about how the justice system works. The vast majority of people will never sit in a court room. But everyone should learn about what goes on inside.
 

I have reported on this case for many years, but never with as much detail as it deserved. In interviewing the victim's mother, I realised I had material that could let her tell her story in her own voice. I originally envisioned a book, but the audio presented an opportunity to do something new. But that also meant I needed to teach myself to write for audio. The first scripting started during the pandemic before recording, editing, re-recording and editing and many thousands of hours. The series was released all at once in April 2023.
 

This project was entirely self-funded in my spare time, so many evenings and weekends for years. There was no external funding. It was a labour of love, and maybe a little bit of obsession, that kept pushing me through so many years to craft this series outside my full-time day reporting job.
 

This is an opportunity to do reporting in a different medium and get a truly unique true crime story to a different audience than would be possible simply with the written word. I didn't want to include ads in the podcast as I didn't want the audience taken out of the episode. My goal was to grab a listener's attention, and keep it all the way to the end of all nine episodes.
 

The series was recorded in my closet with a Yeti Nano mic and Hindenburg, where I also edited the series. The script was written first, then recorded and edited, then the entire series was done a second time to polish the script and improve editing. I then did post-production work and a detailed fact-checking process before the series was made public. Music by Dillon Anthony was a gradual addition over 10 months adjusting its timing and volume. The music, like the logo by Jason Skinner, elevated the entire series to an ever more professional standard.
 

A Murder Without End is available on all major platforms and has been promoted through Twitter, Reddit, word of mouth and press releases. Reddit has been a particularly good source of listeners from true crime fans always in search of a new series to grip them. We are also branching into YouTube and TikTok for different audiences. We have charted in a number of countries, demonstrating how global a podcast is. Though this is a US and UK story, a potential listener could be anywhere.
 

The original writing process would not have been possible without narrative lessons I learned from the WriteLane podcast. I took feedback from a number of people from different backgrounds, as well as journalism students in a Texas high school. But ultimately, as hard as it is something, especially when working on a largely solo project, you have to trust yourself which can be hard as you will always be your own harshest critic. It is important to find people you can trust that you can bounce ideas off of to help keep you in the right track.
 

Tomorrow.is has more about my reporting as well as an opportunity to donate and support my work. There are also further resources, such as images and background to the court cases. At the end of each episode, I summarise my sources for that part of the story. It is important to the reporting process to account for the source and process of journalism. It is a craft, and a profession.