Criminal Creators & Guests

Phoebe Judge is an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured on a numerous national radio programs. She is a co-founder of the podcast Criminal, and is the host of the podcasts, This is Love and Phoebe Reads a MysteryShe regularly conducts interviews and anchors WUNC's broadcast of Here & Now. Previously, Phoebe served as producer, reporter and guest host for the nationally distributed public radio program The Story. Earlier in her career, Phoebe reported from the gulf coast of Mississippi. She covered the BP oil spill and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for Mississippi Public Broadcasting and NPR.Her work has won multiple Edward R. Murrow and Associated Press awards.

Nadia Wilson is currently a senior producer for Criminal. Before that, she was a producer for NPR’s How To Do Everything and Planet Money.

Susannah Roberson is an assistant producer of the Criminal Podcast.

Lauren is the producer of Criminal and This Is Love, and the producer, director and editor for The Story with Dick Gordon. She is from Durham, North Carolina and has previously been a teacher as well as a producer at NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR's Bryant Park Project, and American Public Media’s The Story with Dick Gordon.

Jackie Sojico is the Producer of The Longest Shortest Time Podcast.

Susan Wels is a bestselling author, historian, and journalist.

Stacy St. Clair is a journalist, currently reporting for the Chicago Tribune.Previously, St. Claire reported for the Daily Herald, the Dayton Daily News and The Topeka Capital-Journal. She has received numerous national honors for her work.St. Clair received her B.A. in Journalism degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, with minors in American politics and Spanish.

David Grann is an American journalist, a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and a best-selling author.

Sheila Wysocki is a licensed private investigator, known for her work on cold criminal cases.Wysocki became a private investigator in order to help solve the cold-case murder of her college roommate, Angie Samota. Realizing that her skills could help other people, she began her professional career.

Amy Westervelt is an award-winning journalist with eighteen years' experience writing about health, psychology, technology, business, and environmental issues. Her work has recently appeared in Popular Science, Elle, Smithsonian, and Aeon. As a cofounder of Climate Confidential--an award-winning collaboration between six female journalists who syndicated environmental reporting to various national outlets--she helped get longform investigative environmental journalism into a host of national publications, including The Atlantic, Quartz, Smithsonian, Modern Farmer, and many more. In 2014 she was awarded a Rachel Carson Award for environmental journalism.

Rachel L. Swarns is an author, news correspondent and investigative reporter. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University. She is also a contributing writer to The New York Times, where she writes about race and history.Swarns's first book, "American Tapestry: The Story of the Black, White, and Multiracial Ancestors of Michelle Obama," was published in 2012. Her second book, "Unseen: Unpublished Black History from The New York Times Photo Archives," was published in 2017. Her third book, "The 272," was published in 2024.

Audrey Clare Farley is a writer, book reviewer, and historian of twentieth-century American fiction and culture. She occasionally lectures in history and literature at universities.Farley's first book, "The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt," was published in 2021. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Public Books, Lady Science, Longreads, and Marginalia Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.Farley received a PhD in English from the University of Maryland at College Park.

Amy Loughren is an American reiki master and former registered nurse. She is known for assisting in the arrest and prosecution of serial murderer Charlie Cullen.Loughren worked with and befriended Cullen in the intensive care unit at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey. In 2003, she joined a law enforcement investigation into deaths associated with Cullen. He was arrested and convicted for 29 murders.

Jack Barsky is an IT specialist and author.

Margalit Fox is a writer, she was a member of the obituary department of The New York Times and authored over 1,400 obituaries before her retirement. She has also written three non-fiction books and plans to pursue book writing full time.

Max Marshall is a writer and journalist.

Stephen Volk is a screenwriter and novelist who specializes in horror fiction. He is best known for writing the teleplay for the controversial 1992 BBC mockumentary "Ghostwatch."Volk wrote the screenplays for "Gothic," "The Kiss," "The Guardian," and "The Awakening." His first book, "Gothic," was published in 1987.Before becoming a full-time screenwriter, Volk was an advertising copywriter at Ogilvy Benson.Volk studied Graphic Design at Lanchester Polytechnic in Coventry, specialising in Film. He received a postgraduate certificate in Radio Film and Television Studies from Bristol University's Department of Drama.

Helen Prejean is a Roman Catholic sister, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph based in New Orleans, and a leading American advocate for the abolition of the death penalty.

Gina Perry is an Australian writer, science historian, and Author of the book 'The Lost Boys.'