Why We Shouldn’t Stop At Meeting Spec

Lessons from a true crime podcast to make the world a better place

a white blanket hangs loosely on a tall pine tree bough, blown by the wind, minimal black and white watercolor — by DALL·E

One morning in 1990, a girl appeared hanging from a tree in the border town of Portbou, Catalonia. Overworked and underpaid, the forensic doctor did not bother to drive down the winding road to the coastal town from the nearest city, asking the police to bring the dead woman to him instead. The officers had convened it had been a suicide, and the autopsy confirmed this end after seeing no signs of a struggle and attributing the cause of death to strangulation by the rope tied around her neck.

Thirty years later, a true crime podcast investigated the case, and the surprises didn’t take long: the doctor was shocked to realise he had never seen the pictures of the crime scene, as the event had never been reported as a crime, and the detectives had waited to have the cause of death confirmed to fill in the report and attach the photographs to the file, which never reached the doctor, who thought he had finished his job. When the forensic expert saw the woman on the tree, it took him a split second to determine suicide was utterly impossible unless she had known how to levitate.

The podcast didn’t have to pursue the mystery any further. It was a thrilling, tragic story as it was. Yet, they did. They got in touch with other…