The second episode begins with a short summary of episode 1 and is concluded by the customary music before there is a silent pause and the episode begins. The narrative choice to recap about a 50 sec summary from the previous episode is appreciated by periodic listeners like myself who have a prolonged period of time since listening to the previous story. Interestingly enough, episode two had little to no movement of the story line, which it turns out had its own effect on how it related the emotional significance behind the story itself to audiences unfamiliar with the case. Much of this episode is stagnant, much like the actual case was for some fifteen plus years, and so the entirety of episode two reflects that particular period of time in which no new substantial evidence was being brought forward, and so detectives were at a lost in providing anything so much as to a clue. Perhaps this is unfair to say, as there were efforts and new leads that were being investigated, however ultimately there were too many discrepancies between actual facts and too many coincidences that just didn’t corroborate anything. So then, most of this episode is descriptive, it plays on the previous episode where the audience now understands the circumstances/context of the events, and now we are brought into a world where we are given the actions that were taken as a result of them.
The discovery of the second barrel was the cliffhanger from episode one, and in episode two we actually learn that this second barrel had only been roughly 300 ft from the first barrel, and it had gone unnoticed from around the first barrel had been found. Jason Moon, our narrator in the podcast, pushes the audience to think and rationalize how people living in the modern day had thought, “why wasn’t this barrel found when the first had been? How far did police search for it and what does that say about how the investigations were being conducted?”. This narrative choice to strongly reflect the perspective that people in the community had about the murders allows us to empathize with them and to feel both despair and desire for justice that shrouded the ongoing investigation.
Of course, the discovery of the second barrel further convoluted the initial investigation that prompted efforts on many fronts in identifying the first two unidentified victims. The second barrel had revealed the remains of two other females, both young in age and suspected to be related in some fashion to the previous victims. It would not be until 2019 (as I later researched) that they would be identified. However, because DNA testing was a new and developing forensic procedure and given the incredibly decomposed states of the bodies, audiences begin to realize how perplexed the endeavor was identifying these women. Ultimately, we are introduced to people like Ronda Randall and her brother in law John who decide to invest all their time and energy in helping to identify the victims. This is, I consider, to be a narrative choice. Why include these, whom would otherwise be called “amateur investigators”, people into the story line? What benefit could come from it? From a purely narrative perspective, it was almost like a “needed break” from the consistent information being given to us by the narrator and police/media. It was enlightening to see someone else get so caught up in a matter in which they had little to no gain, only (and most importantly) in the fact that they would be helping four people regain their humanity and image, so that it may never have been lost or forgotten. We end the episode by hearing an excerpt from the upcoming episode and learning about new tests that were conducted to begin to piece together foundational information regarding the victims like where the victims most likely came from as a first step in serving them justice and holding the person responsible for their deaths accountable. Something completely unrelated to plot that I noticed was also the cover art of each episode. They are similar in that they are black/orange in color, though each one has some unique play on what that episode is about, the first and general one is a map of bear brook with notations on the map of clues, whereas episode 2 has a cemetery background which references the ending where Jason visits the burial sites of the first two victims.
Word Count: 745
