Listen To Trailer For New True Crime Podcast ‘Buried Bones’

When Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator best known as the man who cracked the Golden State Killer case, appeared last year on Wicked Words, a podcast hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson, the two discussed the case of Bessie Ferguson, a northern California woman who was dismembered in the 1920s.

Dawson had included the case in one of her books, American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics and the Birth of American CSI, and Holes had actually been called to consult on the case.

“We had a wonderful chat. He actually came up with some theories that I had not thought of before for that particular case,” Dawson says. “And I just started thinking. I have never ever wanted to do a show that has a co-host—I have one show that sort of a documentary series and the other one where I interview people. But I thought, if I were to have a co-host, it would certainly be Paul.”

Holes had true crime podcast experience as co-host of the popular Murder Squad, which looked at cold cases. By contrast, the podcast envisioned by Dawson, a journalist who writes about history, would examine closed cases, not more contemporary cold ones. Thus Buried Bones was born.

The new podcast co-hosted by Dawson and Holes, which bows on September 14 from Exactly Right Media, features the two true crime aficionados revisiting cases from the 1700s through the 1960s. You can listen to the exclusive reveal for the trailer for Buried Bones below.

Google DocsBB – Extended Trailer – 1.1 MASTER.mp3

Their respective expertise leads to some interesting theorizing and even some new directions for cases.

“Kate so impressed me just with her depth of knowledge and her ability, when we did that case on her podcast, to tell the story,” says Holes. “That’s where it really clicked because she is able to lead the story, and I can follow along and then start weighing in as different facts emerge. It just was a natural fit that way. As we were gearing up to start recording Buried Bones, it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, God, I gotta go sit in front of a microphone.’ It’s like, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to hear what Kate has to say this time around.’”

Dawson says the two have complementary knowledge bases. She literally wrote the book on the birth of American CSI techniques, while Holes, whose memoir Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases was published to good reviews earlier this year, adds new ideas on how cases could have been solved using modern crime-solving techniques.

“We educate each other,” Dawson says. “I think we surprise each other with the knowledge that we have in different areas. And I am always really pleasantly surprised when we go down a road I didn’t expect, which happens often.”

Dawson presents a case on each episode, and Holes listens to the details, asking questions about evidence and how investigators approached the case. He says it’s a lot like working a real-life case.

“You know, you develop a theory. You march down those paths, and all of a sudden new information comes in and now you have to back the car up a little bit and reassess. And that is what I am constantly doing on the podcast,” he says.

He notes that he was criticized about some of his early theories related to the Golden State killer case. “People said, ‘Oh, Paul was wrong about that.’ And, you know, as a homicide investigator, you’re wrong until you’re right. And that’s really the real-world aspect,” Holes says. “And so when Kate is unfolding these stories for me, even if I do develop theories, it is within my own training my own experience to go ‘Oh, hold on, she just said something. Maybe I was wrong,’ and then start thinking about OK, how I was wrong, and I have to admit it

“It’s always about the case. You can’t let your ego get in the way.”