It looks like one of the decorative vases on the deck of the tub’s been broken
So Manzella, who has no journalistic or audio training but had listened to Serial , suggested they make one of their own. But he told Manzella to run with it in the hopes that helpful tips would begin to roll in.
Manzella is careful to note that she is not a journalist, but her process was not unlike what journalists do when they want to write a story. She got her hands on documents and started to dig. Manzella met with detectives who were first assigned to the case in 2012, and those working on the case now. (Detectives in Newport Beach rotate back to patrol duty every three to five years.) She gained access to the case file-photos, interview notes, evidence logs-and met with detectives to broker what information she could and couldn’t make public. They needed to be careful, she says, because if Chadwick is caught, they intend to put him on trial.
“I had to go over with investigators what bits had already been made public and what was fair game, and what we weren’t able to share in case we bring him back and put him on trial,” says Manzella. “It was a bit of a vetting process [of] what I could include in the script. I sat down and started writing narratives that weave together a story arc.”
Detectives such as Lieutenant Bryan Moore, who was assigned to the case in 2012, chime in, sharing details from the case file
Manzella wrote and recorded all six scripts herself in police conference rooms and at home. The department works with a contracted videographer (they e the person, citing a policy against helping contracted workers promote their business) who helped teach Manzella how to record audio and edit tape, a process she called “a bit of a learning curve.”
Manzella at times reveals her rookie podcaster status-a music cue a beat too soon, a pause that lasts just a bit too long, a too-dramatic line. (“But today won’t be like every other day,” Manzella croons in the first episode.) But the script itself follows a clear narrative arc, accented by scene tape, and the mystery-where is Peter Chadwick-is compelling. The podcast does not feature interviews with any of the Chadwick boys for fear of retraumatizing them needlessly, but the script intentionally targets listeners’ sympathies for the children left behind.
In the first episode, called “Something is Wrong,” Moore describes what officers found when they finally entered the Chadwick home on that night in 2012. “The bath mat is rumpled and slightly out of place,” says Moore, who recalls details from the notes officers took. “There is a towel on the floor. On the side of the Jacuzzi tub, there are shards of broken glass. Inside the tub, there is a faded reddish smudge and, on the wall, there’s a few faint drip marks, tinged with a ruddy brown color.”
What makes this different from similar, journalistic efforts, is the lack of scrutiny of the police working the case. Their bias is clear: The department harbors open disdain for Chadwick, a rich man who they say killed his wife, lied about it, and then ran away, abandoning his children. In Countdown to Capture , Peter Chadwick is the only character held under a microscope. In a journalistic version, the police work would be up for probing, too.
“It’s easy for this to become [just about] a rich man [who] kills his wife and gets away with it,” says Manzella. “The tragedy for us is that [the kids’] mother was taken, and now they don’t have closure and don’t have a father. Even if he was in jail, he would still be here.”
Connect with us