You Never Can Forget: The Fiasco

Murder Sheet

There's a reason why we rarely speak about the modern day investigation into the Burger Chef. We have no confidence in the abilities of the officer who is currently tasked with looking into this high-profile quadruple homicide. And today, in the interest of transparency, we're going to tell you exactly why that is.

Bill Dalton is the current lead investigator on the Burger Chef for the Indiana State Police. Ashley Flowers is a millionaire serial plagiarist who also makes true crime podcasts, most notably Crime Junkie. Together, they came up with Red Ball, a four-part podcast on the Burger Chef murders that ran in November of 2019. It was badly-written copaganda, but the backstory behind the series is even worse.

You see, Flowers handed over complete editorial control of her show to the state police. In exchange for this puffery, Dalton allowed Flowers to exclusively read and monetize investigative case files that not even the families of the victims have ever been permitted to see. And the Indiana State Police collectively shrugged their shoulders at the misconduct.

In this episode, we'll get into Flowers' reputation within the true crime community. We'll talk to true crime podcasters Robin Warder and Esther Ludlow, who Flowers plagiarized, as well as journalist Cathy Frye, who blew the whistle on the scandal. We'll tell you about all the unprofessional nonsense between Flowers and Dalton that Kevin witnessed firsthand. And we'll break down why exactly all of this should horrify anyone who cares about unsolved cold cases in Indiana.

Because, to put it bluntly, the ISP seem to have learned the wrong lesson from this mess.

• Listen to Esther Ludlow's episode "Let's Taco 'Bout the Crime Junkie Plagiarism Scandal": (shorturl.at/pBDGS)
• Read Cathy Frye's series "Caught in the Web" about the murder of Kacie Woody: (shorturl.at/lvzI0)
• Watch Dalton's Burger Chef press conference here: (shorturl.at/aiqsD)
• Here's Adam Wren's story for the Indianapolis Monthly: (shorturl.at/klD36)
• Here's the Flowers interview by Tracy Hazzard of Authority magazine: (shorturl.at/eBXZ5)
• Here's the Flowers interview that ran on Her Campus: (shorturl.at/hoILT)
• Here's the article about Crime Junkie from Peter White that ran in Deadline Hollywood: (shorturl.at/ajBRV)
• Here's the recent article on Flowers' business moves from Variety's Todd Spangler: (shorturl.at/ouzHU)
• Here's Spangler's reporting on the Crime Junkie plagiarism scandal: (shorturl.at/fmxJK)
• Here's the New York Times report on the Crime Junkie plagiarism scandal from Derrick Bryson Taylor and Christine Hauser: (shorturl.at/jJKV5)
• Here's the Buzzfeed article on the Crime Junkie plagiarism scandal from Stephanie McNeal: (shorturl.at/qwDJM)

Check out the Trail Went Cold from Robin Warder (shorturl.at/evwS4) and Once Upon a Crime from Esther Ludlow (shorturl.at/joxMX) wherever you listen to podcasts.

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