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
HBM126: Sounding the Deep
HBM125: Deepfaking Nixon
HBM124: Banana Softies
HBM123: Water Witches
HBM122: Should Cows Have Names?
HBM121: True North
HBM120: Own Worst Interest
HBM119: An Episode of Pebbles and Twigs
HBM118: Mountain Seabed
HBM117: Grave Oversight
HBM116: Finest and Most Rotten (Going Forward)
HBM115: Bound in Walton et al.
HBM114: Envisioning AIDS
HBM113: The Last Ones
HBM112: Negative Space
HBM111: Waiting for Earth
HBM110: Big Numbers
HBM109: Untitled Noises of New York (Sound Matters)
HBM108: Witch of Saratoga
HBM107: Carlo Surrenders
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