Bear Brook, Reviewed
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The Bear Brook podcast is a remarkable combination of science, heart, and luck. Science, because the investigation into the cold case it covers is possible only because of innovations in the way we examine DNA. Heart, because host Jason Moon -- and many others, throughout his four years of reporting on the story -- never fails to remember that real people are at the center of the story. And luck, because unlike many homicide narratives that haunt reporters, cops, and folks like us, by the time the podcast concludes we have answers in the case.
We (that’s me and my husband, Tim) listened to every episode of the show Monday, from its initial run in October and November of 2018 through all its updates in the year following. As we drove from San Francisco to Route 66, we passed places similar to how I imagined the locations in the podcast -- the Bear Brook woods where, in 1985, the body of a woman and child were found. Many RV parks, not unlike where another figure in the tale was abandoned. When a flatbed truck passed, bearing blue barrels similar to those used by a man to dump the bodies of three children and a woman, we screamed. And we kept hitting “next episode.” We were completely gripped, a testament to the non-linear structure of the original six episodes, Moon’s appealing and intelligent humanity, and the twists and turns of the case itself.
“I’d love to see the ‘big board’ they used to organize this story,” Tim said at one point, and I agree. When you’re telling a story that began decades ago, you’ve got a tough job. Add to that multiple tangental narratives that are nevertheless important to understand the overall case, and you’ve got even more of a problem. Somehow, though, Bear Brook’s producers made it work, weaving in other people whose lives were -- unbeknownst to them -- related to the victims that kicked off the entire investigation.