A Mystery in Marion (Part One)
Question Everything
Brian Reed
4.6 • 707 Ratings
🗓️ 5 June 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On a Friday morning in rural Kansas, the publisher of a tiny local newspaper hears a knock at the door. It’s the police—with a search warrant. Within minutes, they’re inside his home, seizing his electronics. At the same time, officers are raiding his newsroom, confiscating computers and phones. No subpoena. No warning. And, according to legal experts, no right to do it.
The publisher scrambles to understand: Why is this happening? Who’s behind it? He has made some enemies over the years, in this town of just 2,000 people.
And then—just as he starts to piece it together—something even more devastating happens. A tragedy that would make national news, and change his life forever.
Part Two of this story drops next week.
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“Question Everything” is a production of KCRW and Placement Theory.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today, I question everything, we have part one of a special two-part story this weekend next. |
| 0:04.3 | It's a small town who'd done it, filled with divorce, corruption, backstabbing. |
| 0:09.1 | The mystery? Who is behind a brazen attack on a local newspaper? |
| 0:19.0 | It was the summer of 2023, and the Marion County record had been making a lot of enemies. |
| 0:27.4 | There was the new police chief who'd come to town under suspicious circumstances from Kansas City, who the paper had been investigating. |
| 0:34.7 | There was the local restaurant owner who'd recently kicked Marion County record reporters out |
| 0:39.0 | of a political event at her cafe. |
| 0:41.5 | And then there was the mayor of Marion who had just shared this post on Facebook. |
| 0:48.8 | The real villains in America aren't black people. |
| 0:52.0 | They aren't white people. |
| 0:53.2 | They aren't Asians. |
| 1:04.8 | They aren't Latinos. They aren't women. They aren't gays. They are the radical journalists, teachers and professors who do nothing but so division between the American people. |
| 1:09.1 | I have that posted on the wall in my office. |
| 1:13.8 | Really? I printed that out and posted it on the wall in my office. |
| 1:19.4 | This is Eric Meyer, editor and publisher and owner of the Marion County record, a weekly newspaper. |
| 1:20.9 | Before this, he worked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and also taught journalism at the |
| 1:24.9 | University of Illinois. |
| 1:26.8 | Marion's a town of less than 2000 in rural Kansas. |
| 1:30.4 | There aren't too many people there with that resume. |
| 1:32.6 | I'm a journalist. |
| 1:33.5 | I'm a professor. |
| 1:34.7 | I was a teacher of this stuff. |
... |
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