When we’re watching an episode of 48 Hours or Dateline or any of the numerous other true crime shows on TV, we’ll see interviews with victims or members of their families or an officer investigating the crime or maybe even the person accused of the crime. Those interviews might last a minute or two, but, man, there’s a lot of work that goes into those short clips.
That’s one thing I learned while reading Killer Story: The Truth Behind True Crime Television, the first book by former 48 Hours producer Claire St. Amant. (LIKE PANAMA). She was at CBS for about 10 years and was also a contributing producer to 60 Minutes, which she calls the most exclusive hour on television.
After graduating from Baylor University, where she wrote for the Baylor Lariat newspaper, St. Amant was in the Peace Corps for a while, then began her professional career at People Newspapers in Dallas. She then moved to CultureMap Dallas and also began working for CBS on a freelance basis. She joined the network as a field producer in 2014.
In addition to 48 Hours and 60 Minutes, St. Amant also produced longform stories for CBS Evening News and CBS This Morning. Her specialty was true crime stories.
In Killer Story, St. Amant recounts her experience in trying to get a Texas Ranger to sit down for an interview for the first time in his 20-year career. The Ranger, James Holland, was testifying in a murder trial and mentioned that he had taken a confession from a serial killer who said he had claimed 93 lives. St. Amant was working for 48 Hours at the time, but that show rejected her story idea, and that’s what sent her to 60 Minutes for the first time. She literally put her job on the line to make sure that story made it on the air.
Throughout the book, St. Amant talks about the efforts that field producers such as herself put in while trying to land interviews with people associated with a case. They often have to cold call people, knock on strangers’ doors, wait for hours on the side of a road for someone to pull out of their driveway. It’s an exciting job, she writes, but the hours spent waiting are sometimes just numbingly boring.
St. Amant is also open about her struggles with the work, when countless images of crime scene or autopsy photos won’t stop running through her head, or her inclination to make sure she knows the location of the quickest exit at church or a restaurant.
St. Amant is also the host and producer of Final Days on Earth, a true crime podcast where she devotes several episodes to a single case, digging much deeper into details that would never fit into the time constraints of network television.
