This is exactly right.

This story contains adult content and language

along with references to sexual assault.

Listener discretion is advised.

It took more than two decades for this police officer who committed a cold-blooded off-duty murder crime of passion to be arrested and even after the arrest was made the family sought answers about why it took so long and made accusations of a cover-up and those questions were covered up by the police department.

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a non-fiction author and journalism professor in Austin,

Texas. I'm also the host of the Historical True Crime Podcast, Tenfold More Wicked on Exactly Right.

I've traveled around the world interviewing people for the show.

I've interviewed some people in person and some from my home studio over Zoom.

And they are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true crime

stories and now we want to tell you those stories with details that have

never been published. Tenfold More Wicked Presents, Wicked Words, is about the choices that writers make, good and bad.

It's a deep dive into the stories behind the stories.

Journalist Matthew McGough has worked for years on his true crime book, The Lazarus

files. It's a very twisty case about an LAPD police officer who got away with

murder for more than 20 years.

It turns out that McGough had actually interviewed Detective Stephanie Lazarus

for a story about art theft,

and then something odd happened at McGough's other job as a writer for the TV

show Law and Order.

I went into work at Law and Order and people were throwing around ideas for the new season of episodes and

someone mentioned that coming into work that morning they'd heard on the radio that

...