In April 2022, Assistant Director of Corrections at the Lauderdale County Detention Center in Florence, Alabama, broke an inmate out of the center and ran away with him on the day she was set to retire. Now, TROY Public Radio has had the opportunity to take a deep-dive into the case with its first true crime podcast, “Inside Job: Understanding Vicky White.”
Ann Kenda, Digital Media Producer and the podcast’s host, said after initially covering the story for NPR, an opportunity arose to take a closer look at the details of the event, and the proximity and a bounding interest in true crime stories among students encouraged the station to create the podcast.
“It’s such an interesting case and there’s so much to talk about, and there was an opportunity to really do a deep dive and find out what are the red flags for this type of situation, how could this have been prevented and how to prevent things like this from happening again,” she said. “True crime podcasts are really popular these days, and a lot of students are interested in true crime, so it also gave us an opportunity to enter into that world.”
Interviews feature a former detainee who spent time behind bars when Vicky was her jailer, a corrections official in Virginia who had a similar job to Vicky White and a professor at Southern Illinois University
“These interviews offer some insight about how guards need to keep up an emotional barrier with inmates, how you can’t reveal details about your personal life to inmates because they might remember it and be able to manipulate you based on what they found out about your personal life,” she said, “and about the health effects of working as a prison guard. It doesn’t tend to be an easy job for anyone, so people tend to overuse alcohol and sleeping aids.”
The podcast will feature five, 10-15 minutes episodes that will combine into an hour-long special. The first episode, “The Escape in Alabama,” launched Monday morning. The next four episodes are set to launch Tuesday-Friday.
“Because people like to binge true crime, we’re going to make that easy by putting out an episode every day,” Kenda said. “It’s been really interesting to become part of the true crime world. Because it’s not a murder and most true crime podcasts are about murder, I think one that’s about a dramatic escape might catch people’s attention even a little bit more so.”
“Inside Job: Understanding Vicky White” and more can be found on PodBean, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, PlayerFM, Podchaser and BoomPlay.
