If you stop by the Ilsley Public Library’s temporary location in the National Bank of Middlebury on the first Thursday of each month and overhear a group of about 10 of your neighbors talking about a serial killing or a kidnapping streak, know that you can probably still sleep peacefully. They’re not planning a murder, nor recounting what they saw in their backyard last night. They are the library’s true crime podcast club, and anyone can join them.
Renee Ursitti, the librarian behind the club, leads the group’s discussions, using each rotating podcast as an opportunity to dissect the raw facts behind a case. This month, they dished on the first season of “The Clearing,” a 2019 podcast following the investigations of April Balascio, who unraveled the truth about her serial killer father, Ed Wayne Edwards.
“We’ve been going for over a year now, and it’s been a lot of fun,” Ursitti said.
The true crime podcast club started off discussing events that happened close to home in Vermont that some locals can still remember, such as the Bennington Triangle, an area in the mountains where multiple people went missing without a trace between 1945 and 1950. The group has also discussed a 2001 case in New Hampshire when a few local residents broke into the homes of Dartmouth professors and murdered them. The motives of both of these cases remain a mystery, inspiring much intrigue from those who remember these incidents.
The majority of the podcast club members listen to material and then discuss the crimes themselves in chronological order, breaking down the crime itself and the psychology of the killer. The group’s goal is to focus on the facts, uncovering what happened in an objective manner.
Misinformation is common within many of these unsolved crimes.
“Some podcasts are just sensational, they just want people to listen,” Ursitti said. “When I started this club, I had to do a lot of fact-checking.”
Ursitti was inspired to start the group when she visited the American Library Association National Conference in San Diego last year. She attended a session discussing a club for true crime podcasts that had been successful at another library. She had been looking for programming that would attract younger people to the library, leading her to pioneer the club at the Ilsley.
At December’s meeting, club members will have the opportunity to listen to and talk about “The Accused”, a podcast concerning a murder that happened in 1978. In January, group members will discuss “Noble,” a podcast about a property in Noble, Georgia where 300 bodies were found buried. It narrates the events on the discovery alongside the secrets of the town, including some truly horrific details.
Despite the gruesome topics, the podcast discussions have attracted a wide range of true crime enthusiasts from the local community.
“I have people as young as [college students], and I have people in their 80s and 90s that come on the regular,” Ursitti said. The range has surprised her.
Many of the attendees, including Ursitti, are horror movie fans who have been captivated by the emergent true crime genre.
“If you get into some of the more out-there, crazy criminals, they’re doing what traditionally has been, to me, a fictional horror movie. They’re bringing it to life,” Ursitti said.
The true crime genre has become widely popular in the past few years, with interest being shown through podcasts, shows and movies.
“I just read an article in Rolling Stone…about how the true crime podcast genre has become so popular that we now have podcasts that are spoofing it,” she said.
Ursitti says she would love to see more Middlebury College students in attendance at the discussions. “You have so many wonderful things on your campus, I know. But I think this is a great opportunity for students to feel more a part of the community.”
