JUST FINISHED LISTENING: THE CLEARING

When April Balascio was 40 years old, something she’d feared for decades was finally proven true. Her father, Edward Wayne Edwards, really was a murderer. The Clearing is about what came after April called a detective in 2009 to tell him about her suspicions — a call that led to her father’s arrest and eventual conviction on multiple murders — and tracks the emotional journey as she and host Josh Dean dig back into her childhood, unravel the truth of her father’s life, and overturn a viral online narrative that had turned Edward Wayne Edwards into a kind of serial killer caricature. Produced by Pineapple Street Media in association with Gimlet.

MY REVIEW: I enjoyed listening to this podcast, it started in an unexpected place and everyone involved seemed to be treated with respect. Just imagine being kept awake at night by the niggling feeling that there was something you was meant to tell someone. April Balascio, it seems was just meant to figure this one out and it’s even mentioned in this podcast, the serendipity of all these thoughts and ideas and late night Googlings coming together at the perfect time meant she was able to help the police solve a long thought unsolvable crime.

The fact that a relation of the killer is involved in this podcast is being labelled as an original concept, I’m not sure it’s as original as they think. See my post about the Happy Face Killer here: https://claireis-ablogger.blogspot.com/2019/03/podcast-happy-face.html

There are some crazy conspiracy theories in this one which was unexpected for the tone (the theories were from the interviewees not the interviewers importantly). April herself believes her father was responsible for some high profile crimes whereas John Cameron, a former police detective, believed Edward Wayne Edwards was responsible, it seems, for ALL high profile crimes (he even wrote a book about it: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Edward-Wayne-Edwards-Serial-Killer/dp/1885793030 - which recieved very mixed reviews).

This is not a long series and very easy to listen to. The story of April’s childhood was interesting and even though it was creepy, it was interesting to listen to the recordings that Edward Wayne Edwards made. I would recommend this to anyone interested in what it might have been like to live with a killer; how that affects a family, and how bonds could be formed between the daughter of a killer and the family of those he killed.

FURTHER READING: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/clearing-podcast-pineapple-street-review-860205/