Crime Junkie: How the Most Popular True Crime Podcast Turned to Serial Plagiarism

Ashley Flowers was an Indiana native with big dreams, slick sales savvy, and a fierce determination to be number one. She was in her late twenties. She’d earned a bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University. She’d studied genetics at the University of Norte Dame. But in September 2016, the world wasn’t bending the way she thought it would. Ashley’s biotech background couldn’t land her a steady paycheck. So she worked as a software sales exec and made the best of it. Instead of squinting at genomes, she was poring over revenue reports.

She kept the tech gig because the place was dog-friendly. She could toil while Charlie wagged his tail just next to her. A playful pooch with a big bark. Proudly featured on the company’s Instagram feed. An important part of her life. The first taste of working on her own terms.

She wanted more.

She found some hope in what she had. The Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana, where she volunteered and eventually served on the Board of Directors. An important figure. A respected position. A childhood friend named Brit Prawat who shared the same birthday. A brother named David who knew how to edit or who could, theoretically at least, figure out how to. Important connections. The fond memory of watching “geriatric” mystery shows with her mother. An important formative experience. A weekly morning radio segment on Radio NOW 100.9 called Murder Monday, where she’d get up very early and be at the microphone by 7:30 and join Joe and Alex and talk about murders and missing people and creeps lurking in the night and maybe get a little attention. Important attention.

And she liked that. Both the attention and being on the radio.

But why couldn’t she be bigger? And why couldn’t the segments be longer? And why shouldn’t she make money at this? Ashley figured she could pack away some dough and beat them all her way. By working harder than anyone else. Three hours before work. Late into the night after work. She’d listened to true crime podcasts. All of them. Or so she told everybody. Why couldn’t she do it?

And so she did. The program was Crime Junkie and it had a winning formula. Two friends gossiping over a cold case or a grisly homicide as if they were discussing the right apricot chutney to serve with the duck breasts. But somehow it worked. Brit playing the bewildered pal muttering many wows as Ashley told her the crime story. No ad libbing. All of it tightly scripted. Or as scripted as she could make it. There were only so many hours each day. With David cutting it all together. A family affair. Two childhood friends together on the podcast, even though they were separated by a two and a half hour drive between West Lafayette and South Bend and they only seemed to see each other when they made promotional appearances.

She put up a new thirty minute podcast every Monday. Longer than her radio spots. On her own terms. And it blew up. With cards placed in women’s restrooms. Loads of cards. And marketing. Paid marketing, as Ashley was to tell two Italian dudes who ran a podcast in her hometown. What kind of paid marketing? Well, some have speculated. The numerous five star iTunes reviews — with their repeat use of “love this podcast,” double exclamation marks, and “obsessed” — were fishy, as were the questionable user names, which included such improbable identification choices as “Addyjeannnewcomb1234” and “vgifddssetivdyiogfdgjobvr.” The download stats were wonky. How does a show jump from nine million monthly downloads in March to sixteen million in July? What “paid marketing” cooked these numbers? Again, we can only speculate.

But who really cared? Ashley and Brit were a success. The United Talent Agency came calling. For the right price, you too could blow the entirety of your quarterly budget to have Ashley Flowers fly out and speak to you on one singular but vitally important topic: “A Conversation with Ashley Flowers.” There was a TV deal. A second podcast series. An empire to build. What could go wrong? Ashley and Brit sold out every damn venue on their maiden live show tour. Every show. You can’t argue with results. Multitudinous meetups where the duo had charmed crowds. It is estimated that Crime Junkie now earns somewhere between six figures and seven figures each year. This buys, as the old saying goes, a lot of corn chowder.

There was just one problem. One very serious problem. A math problem. A time management problem. Those twenty-five to thirty hours that Ashley spent each week to write and research the show simply weren’t enough. Ashley had to cut corners. Somewhere. The money was important. The attention was important. The adulation from her fans was important. She squashed any comment that wasn’t a fawning compliment on the Facebook forum like a bug zapper sizzling a pesky insect. Because successful people have to stay successful people. And if they believe in success, then other people will still believe they are successful.

Even when they break the rules.

And so Ashley Flowers decided to become a serial plagiarist. Sometime around the twenty-fifth episode. Continuing to this day. (Crime Junkie has released 95 episodes to date, with a June 24, 2019 episode devoted to Amanda Cope pulled after Flowers got many details wrong. Flowers released a new Episode 87 dedicated to the Sumter County Does on July 1, 2019.) Because it was her show, she had no one to answer to.

Ashley read the words — verbatim sentences or lifted syntax with willowy asides to disguise the outright theft — from Wikipedia, from passionate podcasters who put in unpaid hours doing their own research and who formed their own conclusions, from journalists who spent the day sifting through public records and who toiled for months getting their sources to trust them. Crime journalism is not a field for the timid. But Ashley was not a journalist. Still, the ends justified the means. At least that’s what Ashley kept telling herself.

But then came two vital whistleblowers: (1) The journalist Cathy Frye left a comment on Ashley’s Facebook page on the evening of August 11, 2019, pointing out how her four part series on the 2002 murder of 13-year-old Kacie Woody, “Caught in the Web,” had been severely cannibalized for “entertainment.” Frye noted that she had “spent months” working on the series and that the details that Ashley relied on could only have emerged from her exclusive time-consuming work (as BuzzFeed‘s Stephanie McNeal would report four days later, the project had “sucked a big part of [Frye’s] soul,” with Frye taking months to get Kacie Woody’s father to talk). (To get a full sense of the scale here, this document points out just how thoroughly Frye’s work has been scraped and repurposed without credit.) (2) A cheerful true crime fan by the name of Millicent Tirk who could no longer stand to see the work of her friends stolen and who, on August 13, 2019, called out Crime Junkie on Facebook. The failure to credit hard work and the subsequent outrage whipped up the true crime community, with many unsubscribing from Crime Junkie as articles in Variety and The Week started bubbling up the news feed.

When it finally started to go south for Ashley, when the many shocked listeners discovered more than one hundred instances of plagiarism and who knows how many more (all carefully collected on a Google spreadsheet generated during the course of this investigation and, most glaringly documented on YouTube by Trace Evidence‘s Steven Pacheco), the thefts were appearing nearly every week. But Ashley didn’t care. She would never acknowledge her wrongdoing, a series of transgressions comparable to those that derailed Janet Cooke (forced to return her Pulitzer), Jonah Lehrer, and a magazine that lifted recipes. She deleted episodes that had contained vast swaths of cutting and pasting and reciting, as if the words had emerged wholly from Ashley Flowers herself. Episodes revived from digital extinction with the help of three anonymous listeners — when it became necessary to create a mirror of the entire Crime Junkie archive just in case Ashley decided to delete additional episodes — revealed the plagiarism in glaring detail. When Ashley and Brit released Episode 94 on August 19, 2019, the week after the plagiarism news hit and stunned many, the two did not acknowledge the behavioral pattern that had been exposed the previous week. But there were four bright new lifts from Wikipedia. Ashley and Brit were making money. They had won fame. All Ashley had to do was pluck the work of others and claim it as hers and keep on doing this. Surely nobody would care. And because the numbers hadn’t dipped that much, she believed she could keep this ruse going.

But many previously loyal fans — such as a Reddit user named @spoilersinabox — feel betrayed by Flowers’s failure to acknowledge her wrongdoing. Spoilers, a 27-year-old teacher in the DC area who requested anonymity, became aware of Crime Junkie while awaiting a seven hour flight thanks to an Apple recommendation — a recommendation fueled by the numerous five star reviews — and quickly became a fan. “It was just the tone that Ashley and Brit had as they were talking. There’s something about a soothing voice. I said, ‘I can get behind this.’ It sounded as if they had really researched the crime.” Spoilers wanted to support Flowers in her research. She attended the first live Crime Junkie show in DC. She told her friends and family about it. She then became a Patreon regular, pledging $20 a month, believing that her money was going into “the tools and time to do research.” Spoilers cited a second podcast that initially appeared on the Crime Junkie Patreon page before disappearing without explanation.

When Ashley and Brit issued a statement (pictured right) about the pulled Amanda Cope episode (the original Episode 87), Spoilers respected the thoughtful and “mature response” and was willing to give the two hosts the benefit of the doubt. When I asked Spoilers if she could forgive the two hosts for their plagiarism if they owned up now, she said, “On Thursday and Friday, I might have. At this point, I can’t.” She said that she felt guilt. “My time and my money should have gone to the people who told these stories first.” She remains angered that so many people have not comprehended the full scale of Flowers’s plagiarism. “Kudos to them,” said Spoilers. “They’ve pulled off a really good scam.”

Two other former fans, both of whom requested anonymity because they feared repercussions from the show’s fan base, told me over the phone that they had similar feelings — that they had been initially inclined to extend contrition to Flowers. But like Spoilers, they felt that Flowers’s silence spoke for itself. The moment had sadly passed.

As of this writing, Flowers and Prawat are gearing up to begin a second tour — this time, involving seventeen live shows, all reportedly based on the murder of six-year-old Isabel Celis, with ten of the shows presently sold out. This tour represents a sizable haul for the Crime Junkie crew, but fans who purchased tickets before the plagiarism controversy and who feel uncomfortable about supporting a program that steals content verbatim may not realize that there is no refund or exchange policy for these shows. A representative from the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida informed me that the January 17, 2020 show was still on. NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES. Indianapolis. Show on. NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES. Orlando. Show on. NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES. Atlanta. Show on. But you can only refund your ticket if you purchased it at the box office. And most people didn’t. NO REFUNDS if you purchased it online. Austin. Show on. No refunds. “The only thing we can do is give the tickets to someone else.” The average seating capacity for these venues is around 800. The ticket prices range from a $31.50 balcony ticket at San Diego’s Balboa Theatre to a VIP Meet & Greet package at $103 at the Chicago Athenaeum Main Stage. If we assume that the average ticket price is $50 and the average seating capacity, this adds up to $680,000 if the shows all sell out. If Flowers and Prawat take home 25% of this, then that’s $170,000. More corn chowder to buy.

Because Crime Junkie has continued to plagiarize in its most recent episode, one must naturally ask whether it will continue to profit greatly from the hard work of others. I looked into the sources of revenue that keeps the show going. I put in calls to AdSense, which provides ads for Crime Junkie, asking what their position was on financing sponsoring content that had been lifted verbatim elsewhere. The firm declined to comment. Presumably, Crime Junkie will hold onto many of the estimated 27,540 fans who support their show (the exact number has been hidden on Patreon) — with varying tier donations of $5 to $20 each month. (At $5/month, this works out to $137,700 per month or $1.6 million each year.) While some have publicly announced that they would no longer be supporting the show on Patreon, Reddit users noticed on Monday that Ashley and Brit may have recently changed the tier rewards without informing their listenership. (Attempts to confirm this through Web Archive proved inconclusive.)

There’s also the question of whether a podcast that cribs content from other people is a legitimate journalistic outlet. Should Crime Junkie be granted exclusive access to vital police records, as is now the case with the duo’s planned second podcast? Flowers’s influence and coziness with local law enforcement led Chris Davis, producer of the 3C Podcast, to be barred from examining records pertaining to the November 17, 1978 Burger Chef murders — an unsolved Indiana case for which he has produced fifteen episodes. Davis told me that Sheriff Bill Dalton of the Indiana State Police declined both his unofficial and official requests to look at the files. (Dalton, who was in the middle of an investigation, was unavailable for comment. But I did speak with someone at the ISP who had worked closely with Dalton and who had been there for thirty years. This person informed me, “We have a tight lane around here. So we don’t allow a lot of people here.” This makes Flowers’s access even more uncommon and more surprising.) The official request took five months to elicit a response. In both cases, Davis was denied because of an investigatory records exemption. But the prohibition also arose because Flowers had cut an exclusive access deal, where the police would have complete control of the finished product. This was a decidedly sketchy journalistic arrangement.

“She was granted access and I have no qualms about her getting access,” said Davis. “At the end of the day, I want this case solved. We started our journey the same way.”

When I asked Davis if he would consider collaborating with Flowers or asking her if he could take a look at the records for his own investigation, he said no. He pointed to an incident in which Flowers posted a picture on social media of the old Burger Chef building with the tagline, “Guess what case I’m working on?” He replied with friendly humor, “Oh, I think I know.” Davis was swiftly blocked by Flowers on all social media immediately after.

While working on this story, I made every effort to contact Ashley Flowers. I really wanted to listen to her and understand why someone would do all this. Because one cannot deny the allure of hearing about a murder in a soothing voice. It’s one of the reasons why I love the podcast Criminal so much. As I listened to multiple Crime Junkie episodes, examining them for plagiarism, I felt increasingly sad and sorry for Ashley Flowers. Because she really was onto something with her format. Take away the speculation about automated iTunes reviews or even the profit and power motives or the errors she has sometimes made and the sonic aesthetic of two besties getting together to discuss crime possesses tremendous appeal. But here’s the thing: Flowers is even more fun and charming when she speaks in her own voice and expresses her own thoughts, as this interview with Espresso clearly reveals. Anyone who reaches people like this deserves great success, but it must be a success predicated upon her own work and her own voice.

Flowers did not return my calls, my emails, and my direct messages through social media. She’s still saying silent. A veritable content outlaw hiding in plain sight. I’ve learned that The New York Times is also working on a Crime Junkie plagiarism story. Will she say no to them?

But that’s not even the important question about Ashley’s serial plagiarism. The real question, the question often put forth to any addict before she admits that she has a problem, is whether Ashley can even stop.

[8/23/2019 UPDATE: The New York Times has reported on the Crime Junkie plagiarism. The only new information here is (a) some quotes from those were plagiarized, (b) Flowers did not responded to the Times (except through the same statement issued to Variety) and (c) Pacheco approached Flowers with a lawyer, sending along transcripts with time marks for seven episodes. As a result of Pacheco’s efforts, Crime Junkie pulled a few episodes.]

48 Comments

  1. Interesting article. I have never for one moment thought any of the episodes were original material on the part of Ashley Flowers. Just that she was relaying the details of the crimes in her podcast. I do agree that if she is borrowing material and/or relaying it verbatim she should be giving credit for that.

  2. Ashley gets an F for effort, and for honesty, character, and integrity. To continue publishing her podcasts as if she has done nothing wrong is a slap in the face of any one who has supported her. Her fall from fame will come as quickly as her rise.

  3. I listen to a ton of true crime podcasts and I’ve only heard of this one in passing. So I highly doubt it’s the “most popular” crime podcast and it seems like I’m not missing anything worthwhile.

  4. I didn’t know about the plagiarism. But I quit listening when I heard a recent episode in which this girl carefully explained that the English name Jack was, in French, “Jacques,” which was pronounced, according to her, “JAQUEEZE,” and she said it that way throughout the episode which I finally just could not listen to anymore. There are Google pronunciation sites everywhere, ladies.

  5. @Maggie, that’s hilarious.

    @ Edward Champion. I love this article and I’m happy that the story has legs. I’ve never been a fan. Too valley girl for my taste. Anyway, I hope the NYT gets through to her. I just don’t see how she can continue the show, but if anyone has the audacity to try, it’s Ashley Flowers. No shame. No pride. No morals.

  6. Don’t most true-crime podcasts use content from newspaper and news sites? Very few do original research, I assume. I doubt CJ is the only culprit.

  7. I can’t believe how many people make this their problem. Get hobbies people. If you don’t like it, don’t listen to them. It’s that simple.

  8. I never for a moment thought that their material was totally original. Like all true crime podcasts they are researching stories.
    Also…this article, while thorough, is not at all objective and should not be confused with real journalism.
    A real journalist w ethics will give you the facts without sprinkling their own bias in there. Sadly not mich of that left these days with all the click bait.

  9. Good write up. I feel like the wool has been pulled of the eyes of many fans. But the one thing that pisses me off, they didn’t even make a statement on the newest episode acknowledging it!! I am canceling my pateron subscription.

  10. This podcast is fantastic and has raised SO much money for nonprofits, hurt families, and victims. Shame on you. Hundreds of podcast share the same stories- and guess what? The materials & FACTS have to come from the court and casefiles.

  11. It’s a podcast, 2 friends talking about cases. It’s only 30 minutes long typically. It’s entertainment. They don’t claim to discover all the facts themselves. They are simply discussing the cases. I’ve been prompted to look into some of the cases in more detail elsewhere.

  12. This entire article seems bias or like a jealous ex from one of the girls. I wasted precious time reading half of it. It does not seem to be true journalism at all. I’m still going to continue listening to Crime Junkie because every podcast grabs information from articles/websites, etc.

  13. you guys are so sensitive lol. plus they usually put the sources of each episode on their website. this article is a waste of time

  14. @Muhammad it’s #4 on iTunes top charted podcasts.

    Personally interest was lost once a few familiar stories had been retold as if they were something unknown. It was already understood the content was not 100% original which probably contributed to lack of interest after a few episodes but you have to agree to get paid from the efforts of others before you and never acknowledge their work? Nah fam. That’s nothing but shady.

  15. They source all of it on their website JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER PODCASTS DO! CJ was blown up because of the popularity. We don’t pay for the research, we pay for them to deliver it in their own way. If you think you’re paying patreon for “never known or discovered facts/evidence” you’re wrong and need to reevaluate. Every true crime podcasts used the same information for the most part and delivers it in a different way. Ashley and Brit REMOVED the episodes that weren’t properly sourced. I truly believe this happened by ignorance and not maliciously. They wouldn’t blatantly commit a crime if they knew they were doing it, let’s be real. Yes, the post was shitty but they have lawyers and they cannot post everything on their mind for legality reasons.

  16. I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and the only ones that ever struck me as full of particularly well-researched, original content are Serial and the ones produced by large media outlets (ie: Dirty John, Man in the Window). Certainly My Favorite Murder is just a rehashing of Wikipedia and other readily available articles.
    However, the difference between Crime Junkie and MFM, for instance, is that the MFM co-hosts are very upfront that they mostly pull from Wikipedia and have cited sources when they’ve gone to a particular source often for details. Most true crime podcasts seem to operate that way. Or at least cite sources in show notes or on their website/Facebook. I’ve never heard of Crime Junkie doing that and that’s what leaves a bad taste in my mouth. There’s no shame in reading a lot of articles and giving listeners the cliffs notes so they can hear the story on their commute or whatever but to pass it off (and CHARGE for “research costs”) as your own is pretty gross.

  17. The MFM girls use Wikipedia all the time and sometimes use whole episodes of crime shows that they basically recap so what’s the difference? Only that they acknowledge it? It’s still someone else’s hard work and research being used. The only “research” they do is watch the same crime shows we all watch.

  18. Critical comments are welcome. I am very much committed to democratic discourse. But I reserve the right to publicly identify suspicious or duplicate IP addresses for anything that appears to be automatically generated. Thank you.

  19. Your article isn’t unbiased reporting, it feels personal. The podcast is relatable, 2 friends discussing cases they’ve read about. I listen to numerous podcasts and have heard others read from practically the same script. It’s ridiculous for anyone to state they’re shocked to discover that the girls haven’t been doing their own exhaustive research of the entirety of a case in 30 hours a week. This article is much ado about nothing.

  20. And referring to Ashley in the past tense, “she was”, as if she died? What was that weird frippery about??

  21. @LightenUp: Ashley is 30 now. So she WAS in her late twenties. In writing about a past incident, you use the past tense. And you clearly didn’t read it through to the end.

  22. @Muhammad & Uncle D/ She’s the hot one.
    I am SO over this. I was a fan and supporter. I now have pulled my support and am listening to Beach Too Sandy Water Too Wet.

  23. Have listened to all of CJ episodes, and not once has either host claimed to be investigative journalists or to have new, original information.
    Also, on their website, each episode has work cited.

    Maybe not the best format for giving credit, but it’s certainly not worth this smear campaign over hurt feelings.

  24. THIS ARTICLE IS A WASTE OF TIME!!!! I don’t listen to this Podcast because I think Ashley and Brit do their own research… this is a Podcast in which they discuss cases in a conversational way…. I personally don’t give a rats ass where they got their info. I enjoy the way they tell the stories, the ones they pick and the flow of the Podcast.. I think they have started to become targets because of their fast success… journalist who wrote this is obviously jealous.

  25. People who defend plagiarism are people with zero knowledge of journalistic ethics and the hard work that goes into original journalistic research, and, people who have never had their own original work stolen from them. The Crime Junkie women are thieves. Scam artists. I have nothing but contempt for such grifters.

  26. I just took this podcast as them talking about cases and googling the info already made public. She earned a big fan base because in my opinion her voice is not as annoying as others on podcasts. She turned into a money making machine I bet because her fans asked for more content so why not give them what they want and make some money. This article is reaching and they have never passed themselves off as journalists. I just see pure jealousy for two woman who decided to talk about cases and became successful doing it. I googled every single one of the cases to put a name with the face only because of this podcast. Keep up the good work Crime Junkies! I look forward to my weekly dose of true crime.

  27. Why are people defending them?? Re-read the article, look at the YouTube link, they are not even bothering to do their own research, they are lifting other people’s hard work with NO CITATIONS!

  28. Okay, let’s be honest here, how does the news get their “news”? From another person/network/etc. how do almost ALL podcasts get their info? From other sources. How would anyone know ANYTHING if they hadn’t heard it someplace else? I mean unless you invented something on your own?! Do you go to the store and buy “store brand” items? How do you suppose they know what ingredients to put in their “pasta sauce”? From another pasta sauce that was already made. Why aren’t we fighting the stores to only have ONE pasta sauce with the exact same ingredients?I have looked a lot and can’t find ONE instance where Ashely says anything word for word how someone else says it. If she actually made an episode of her saying the exact things another podcast said I could understand this. I just feel like if every business or person “cited” everything they took from, this world would be nothing but long lists everywhere. Show me an exact replicate of something, not this crap about how someone said “the sky was a lovely shade of blue” and then Ashley said “the beautiful blue sky was a lovely sight to behold”
    That’s not plagiarism, that’s saying the same things in different words. If she did “deviate” from the story or facts and said everything in a totally original way, the story wouldn’t be correct. I just don’t get it. None of these podcasters would have a story to tell if they weren’t all telling the SAME STORIES. I really feel like people are jumping on this bandwagon out of some misdirected bitterness.

  29. They aren’t CONTENT CREATORS, they steal content made by other people and make more money in one month than many of us do in a YEAR! They were not siting source materials, but once there started to be whispers about all this they pulled episodes and added a few sources here and there. Actual content creators aren’t able to do a story on on 4 sources. Sorry but that is truth. Their rabid fans can’t understand basic concepts that most learned in middle school. When actual facts with sources are in front of their face for them to verify themselves, they stick their fingers in their ears, call people jealous, and keep handing over their own cash they earned, and not stole, I assume 😂 I cant with it all. I’m just grateful that I used to be a listener and never have them a cent. They CAN AFFORD an actual whole team of researchers for the amount they are dragging in. I would say do better but their silence them gas lighting is clear, these ladies have zero integrity and do.not.care. All the shame🤷🏻‍♀️

  30. I listened to it but honestly couldn’t handle another “full body chills” comment or remark. You can just tell she wasnt doing her research and got swept away by trying to change things that she just said it verbatim. The fact that she would pretty much tell her listeners to rate her only 5 🌟 daily like a teen fishing for compliments wasn’t a red flag, idk what to tell you.

  31. I never heard either say this was original material they presented. Often, it has been said you can find it for yourself on the internet. Journalists could have copyrighted their material and made it paid content. That isn’t the case. I do subscribe on Patreon. I feel like they have gathered info already out there and out it together in one story instead of 50 pieces all floating around.

    As for the two men wanting to know which one is Ashley (hot or fat) get a life!!

  32. Sounds like sour grapes to me. Can’t allow women success, gotta take them down anyway you can. I honestly felt like you could replace Ashley’s name with Trump and then have an honest article.

  33. Those who have left comments claiming that my motivations for writing this piece involved jealousy clearly haven’t read the entire article. I’m happy to clear this up. To reiterate my sentence: “Anyone who reaches people like this deserves great success, but it must be a success predicated upon her own work and her own voice.”

  34. News flash…this is what true crime podcasts do. They aren’t authors or detectives! This seems like a personal attack on this podcast.

  35. She clearly states in many episodes all her material citing can be found on their website. Have you checked that? I personally never thought she was giving us her own investigation information, but rather info she got from the internet and sources already available. Sometimes speaking to people somehow connected to the cases.

  36. @Kelly – the problem is that they weren’t citing their sources consistently. You can’t use someone’s hard work VERBATIM, profit from it, and not list them as a source. I never thought for a second they were doing firsthand investigative research, I just enjoyed their retelling. But it’s a real shame that they didn’t take the time to credit people who did the grunt work for them.

  37. CJ sites all of their sources under each episode on their website. Has anyone from this thread even listened to their podcast? She is definitely reading facts off of a paper – which sound like statements or really well worded lines to describe murders. I never once thought she handwrote every single episode. In each ep. she literally says “I couldn’t find anything on that online, but i did read that “_______” like 20 times. Then all of her sources are sited online – with LINKS.

  38. To @Muhammad @Uncle D. and anyone else who wish to make a comment about Brit and Ash’s appearance, you are misogynistic, sexist and shallow. They are just horrible, disgusting, mean comments that do not have anything to do with the article or plagiarism. Get a life and piss off.

  39. this would have been much easier to try to get behind if you didn’t spend so much time talking about how the host craved attention, which since you didn’t a get a response for her seems pretty made up. They need to cite their sources, there is no question about that, but I think the show has been fairly clear about Ashley getting her sources from online search, she references most episodes (she should credit the authors of said articles of course). But I think many of the people complaining are more jealous than morally outraged.

  40. Hi,

    I’m Cathy Frye, the journalist who was plagiarized by “Crime Junkie” in the Kacie Woody episode. First, check out their most recent Instagram post, which basically gives the finger to journalists.

    Second, I’m happy to announce that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is taking legal action. There is a story about the cease-and-desist letter on the newspaper’s website.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B1qzMnKAfoA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/aug/29/democrat-gazette-sends-cease-and-desist-letter-cri/?fbclid=IwAR12DBP8x9cPvmNw5uPUDlhOt5bflzadMHnqBZJWo-uVJJAKVuLKtxzXqaw

  41. I’m appalled at the number of commenters who either don’t understand what plagiarism is, or who don’t care if someone is a thief as long as they are “entertaining”.
    Sad.

  42. Did anyone else notice e this article cites a reddit user, his first and last name- age- occupation, then says “who requested anonymity”???? Do some freaking editing please!

  43. You must always cite sources, there are no excuses for not giving credit where credit is due.

    Anons claiming that because Flowers and company aren’t ‘journalists’ and therefore aren’t subject to the same ethics as others are using faulty reasoning to justify bad behavior. You cannot just lift entire articles of research and not expect to list where you got it from. If you didn’t write it, it’s not yours and you must cite it. Anything which is not an original idea, research, quote…you must cite. There’s no way around it. You’re supposed to be taught this in grade school.

  44. If anyone wants to check out another True Crime Podcast, check out Murder Amongst Friends on Apple & Spotify ✌🏻

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