In the nearly 20 years that Susan Randall’s been working as a private investigator, she’s seen Vermont’s most disadvantaged people struggling to have life’s most basic amenities. Sometimes her job is to interview people addicted to crack, to help determine whether they’re suitable parents. Sometimes her job is to examine blood spatter at gruesome crime scenes. She recently helped defend a client who murdered a DCF worker in broad daylight.
Content Note:
Descriptions of violent crimes
Susan has seen how humanity’s worst instincts become possible where cyclical poverty, incarceration, and drug addiction wreak havoc on communities.
There’s a necessary split screen in Susan’s mind. One screen shows a home life: dropping her kids off at lacrosse, helping them with school projects. And another screen shows a work life: prison visitation rooms, run-down trailer parks, the color-shifted skin of a corpse.
Producer Erica Heilman interviewed Susan over the course of three years. Erica is a private investigator herself, and Susan was her mentor. The two talk about the mechanics of the legal system, poverty and how to survive a job that takes such an emotional toll.
Producer: Erica Heilman of Rumble Strip
Editor: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot
HBM144: Keeping A Place
HBM143: Laughing Rats and Dawn Rituals
HBM142: The Vastness of the Universe
HBM141: Filthy Riches
Season 9 = February 17th
HBM Continues as an Independent Podcast
HBM140: The New Black Wall Street
HBM139: Acceptable Pains
HBM138: Did Neanderthals Bury their Dead?
HBM137: Superhappiness
HBM136: Jacob's Lost Biography
HBM135: Dying Well
HBM134: Questionable Hobbies of the Socially Isolated
HBM133: Prey of Worms
HBM132: Moral Enhancement
HBM131: A Cure for Carsickness
HBM130: Mother Pigeon / Sister Marta
HBM129: The Underearthlings
HBM128: Seeing Auras
HBM127: QALYs
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