National podcast interviews Lorraine Ahearn about prominent serial killer case

The assistant professor of journalism served as a featured guest on “Fearfully, She Walked the Streets,” a five-part national podcast available on Spotify and iTunes.

Assistant Professor of Journalism Lorraine Ahearn was the featured guest in a five-part national podcast, “Fearfully, She Walked the Streets,” about the case of a serial killer convicted of murdering a series of prostitutes.

Lorraine Ahearn

The January edition of the true-crime Spotify and iTunes podcast on serial killers, Late Edition: Crime Beat Chronicles, detailed a Greensboro case in which six African American women were found murdered and mutilated over a two-year period in the early 1990s. Ahearn, who was an investigative reporter at the time, situated the case within the context of the crack epidemic and discussed how police handling of the cases reflected racial and socioeconomic inequity.

In interviews with the Madison, Wisconsin-based podcast producers, Ahearn explained the impact of underrepresentation the case exemplified, and how journalism education helps media producers and consumers overcome the cultural bias critiqued as “missing white woman syndrome.”