I'm so excited to talk to you. I know me too. It's interesting. You've got lots of cool stuff to discuss. So do you. Well, we're very interesting people apparently. I know I went to about fighting and you want to talk about crime. So yeah, I have to see.

It's kind of a similar thing. I'm recording now. Yeah, we are ready to go. That was just our pre-show, Woody Banner.

Welcome to talk is Jericho. It's the pot of thunder and rock and roll. And today I've got journalists, Jillian Lauren. She spent over a year visiting serial killer Sam Little in prison.

She built such a rapport with him that law enforcement was able to clear 63 of Sam Little's alleged 90 plus murders. He could fast to that many after he died in prison in December of 2020. He left all of his worldly possessions along with his actual brain to Jillian.

It's a crazy story and one that we're going to hear straight from her mouth. She explains what letter to contact Sam in the first place. How letter writing became in person visits and what it took to get him to reveal details about his victims and their murders. She talks about what it was like to travel to the prison and sit down face to face with Sam multiple times over multiple years.

And it stars me to documentary about Jillian and her experiences with Sam. It's called confronting a serial killer. And then Jillian wrote a full book about it called Behold the Monster. Confronting America's most prolific serial killer. It's terrifying. It's poignant. And it's available wherever you get books today.

Jillian, Laura, now in the horrific story of serial killer Sam Little and how she was able to get him to confess to dozens and dozens of murders right here right now on talk is Jericho.

Well, it's interesting because we do a lot of kind of true crime stuff here on on talk is Jericho. And you obviously have something very cool here with the book that you've written about Sam Little who we've discussed before behold the monster. But it's interesting to me.

There's something that you wrote in your acknowledgments. I'm just going to read this paragraph. It says when I first sat down with Detective Mitzi Roberts, I could not have imagined the velocity of the story barreling toward me. It was the story every writer both hopes for and fears.

The one to which you may not be equal to where the adversary no such foes fought alone. That's really interesting to me because this was basically I'm going to put on your plate. Shout we speak of having these exclusive interviews with this very vicious and you know violent series.

You know violent serial killer. And I know you've written books before about other subjects and other things, but kind of tell me how how this all started and how you became basically the exclusive interviewer of Sam Little. Am I correct in saying that?

Well, not entirely. I mean, you know, in terms of law enforcement and he did give some interviews to 60 minutes. But for the most part, yes, I'm the only journalist we talked to at length.

And that was our deal.

Right.

And I would say quite like you, Chris, I'm sort of a polymath and a pain in the ass and I have an interest in a lot of subjects.

And the detective I was interviewing when I was writing a mystery novel sort of hooked me into this story that got me where it hurts.

You know, and when I was talking to her about something in L, L's and I asked her at the end of the interview, her name is detective, Mitsu Roberts.

Now she's the head of the cold case special section at LAPD robbery homicide division, which if you have watched Bosch or dragnet.

LAPD robbery homicide division is basically the fancy the fancy detectives.

And I asked her what are you the most proud of and she said I'm proud of them all, but I did catch the serial killer once and that was pretty cool.

And you know, it was like the last of the watery ice teas and I was like, I totally screwed up this interview.

Somehow I asked all the wrong questions and I said, how did I miss this?

...