Chapter I

S-Town

S-Town begins with a mysterious email from John B. McLemore, an antique clock restorer in Woodstock, Alabama, who claims to have uncovered a

Key takeaways

• The town of Woodstock, Alabama, is characterized by extreme poverty, rampant police corruption, and widespread denial of climate change and other modern realities.

Main topics

• Police corruption in Bibb County
• The murder of Dylan Nichols

Notable quotes

"Shit Town is capitalized. I am an old-time listener who just recently rediscovered your show... We really need people like you to come down to this pathetic little Baptist shit town and blow it off the map."

Conclusion

Chapter 1 of S-Town sets the stage for a deep dive into a town where truth

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm David Marchese. And I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. And we're the hosts of The Interview from The New York Times. David and I have spent our careers interviewing some of the most interesting and influential people in the world. Which means Speaker 3 (0:12) we Speaker 1 (0:12) know when to ask tough questions and when to just sit back and listen. And now we've teamed up to have these conversations every week. We'll try to reveal something about the people shaping our world. Speaker 3 (0:22) And we'll get some great stories from them, too. Speaker 1 (0:24) It's The Interview from The New York Times. Speaker 2 (0:27) Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:33) The first episode of this series is free, but to hear the whole thing, you'll need to subscribe to The New York Times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and New York Times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're already a Times subscriber, just link your account and you're done. Chapter 1. Speaker 3 (0:57) When an antique clock breaks, a clock that's been telling time for 200 or 300 years, fixing it can be a real puzzle. An old clock like that was handmade by someone. It might take away the time with a pendulum, with a spring, with a pulley system. It might have bells that are supposed to strike the hour, or a bird that's meant to pop out and cuckoo at you. There can be hundreds of tiny individual pieces, each of which needs to interact with the others precisely. Speaker 3 (1:24) To make the job even trickier, you often can't tell what's been done to a clock over hundreds of years. Maybe there's damage that was never fixed, or fixed badly. Sometimes entire portions of the original clockwork are missing, but you can't know for sure because there are rarely diagrams of what the clock's supposed to look like. A clock that old doesn't come with a manual. So instead, the few people left in the world who know how to do this kind of thing rely on what are often called witness marks to guide their way. A witness mark could be a small dent, a hole that once held a screw. These are actual impressions and outlines and discolorations left inside the clock of pieces that might have once been there. They're clues to what was in the clockmaker's mind when he first created the thing. I'm told fixing an old clock can be maddening. You're constantly wondering if you've just spent hours going down a path that will likely take you nowhere, and all you've got are these vague witness marks, which might not even mean what you think they mean. So at every moment along the way, you have to decide if you're wasting your time or not. Anyway, I only learned about all this because years ago, an antique clock restorer contacted me, John B. McLemore, and asked me to help him solve a murder. Speaker 5 (2:47) Something's happened. Something has absolutely happened in this town. There's just too much little crap for something not to have happened. And I'm about had enough of Shittown and the things that goes on. Speaker 3 (3:10) From Serial and This American Life, I'm Brian Reed. This is Shittown. John B. McLemore lives in Shittown, Alabama. That's the subject line that catches my eye one day in late 2012 while I'm reading through emails that have come into our radio show, This American Life. The email's from John B. McLemore. Shit Town is capitalized. I am an old-time listener who just recently rediscovered your show, John writes. I live in a crummy little shit town in Alabama called Woodstock. I would like to tell your producers of two events that have happened here recently. I would hope you have the facilities to investigate. Speaker 3 (3:53) One of the events, John writes, involves a local police officer with the county sheriff's department. John's heard that a woman has been saying this officer sexually abused her. The guy's still on the force. So, that's one. The other event is a murder of a guy in his early 20s named Dylan Nichols. The murderer, John says, is the son of a prominent local family. His name is Cabram Burt. The Burts are millionaires. They own lots of land in the area, as well as a large timber operation with lumber yards and sawmills all over, one of which is right near John's. It's called K3 Lumber. John says it seems the Burt family has effectively made this event disappear, except that Cabram is now going around town bragging about it. Quote, bragging about how it only took 30 seconds of kicking this boy, Dylan Nichols, in the head for him to become a paraplegic, and only a few more days for him to die. We really need people like you to come down to this pathetic little Baptist shit town and blow it off the map, John writes. I would like to talk to you by phone if possible. This is just too much to type. Speaker 3 (5:00) John? Hello? Hi, it's Brian. Speaker 5 (5:03) Hey. Speaker 3 (5:05) Here we are. This is happening. Speaker 5 (5:07) That awkward moment of silence, when you realize after about a year, it finally happened. Speaker 3 (5:15) When I make this call, it's been a year since John first emailed. We'd written back and forth a couple times over the months, but we never talked until one day he sent me a message, and this time it had a link to a news report. The news story was about a sergeant with the Bibb County Sheriff's Department, Bibb County is where John lives, who'd been indicted for pulling women over and forcing them into sexual acts, both on the side of the road and back at the station. Another guy allegedly helped cover up this abuse. I thought, if corruption like this existed in the Bibb County Sheriff's Department, then maybe the other rumor John had written to me about could also be true. Then maybe it was possible a murder had happened, and had then been covered up. So, finally, I get him on the phone, and we talk for a while. Speaker 5 (5:57) Yeah, you know, my life is kind of a nuthouse, because I take care of my mom that has Alzheimer's, and we're in about our seventh or eighth year of that, so sorry about the other day when you tried to call and all hell had busted loose. Speaker 3 (6:09) No, I'm sorry. You have to deal with that. I'm sorry. Speaker 5 (6:12) Of course, losing the dog the other week, that didn't help. You know, I take in strays, which shouldn't surprise you. You know, considering where I live, you shouldn't be the least bit surprised that these people out here just dump their dogs out on the side of the road. At one time, I've had as many as 21. I've got 14 now. Well, Speaker 6 (6:30) 13, Speaker 5 (6:31) yeah, so that was really hard because that was an old dog and a good dog. But, yeah, that's another one of my projects. that I take on. I'm sort of the local humane society. Speaker 3 (6:41) Do you have a lot of property? Speaker 5 (6:43) I like to say it's my grandfather's property. It's 128 acres. Speaker 3 (6:49) And you grew up in Woodstock, is that right? Speaker 5 (6:52) Yeah, Woodstock. This whole area needs to be defined. If you look at the demographics charts of the state of Alabama and go over the poorest counties, Bibb County is maybe the fifth worst county to live in. We Speaker 6 (7:07) are one of the child Speaker 5 (7:08) molester capitals of the state. We have just an incredible amount of police corruption. We have the poorest education. We've got 95 churches in this damn county. We'll have two high schools, no secondary education. And we got Jeebus, because Jeebus is coming. And global warming is a hoax. You know, there's no such thing as climate change and all that. Speaker 6 (7:32) Yeah, I... Speaker 6 (7:35) I'm in an area that just hasn't advanced, for Speaker 5 (7:38) lack of a better word. I don't have to eat a Tums here. Sorry about that. Oh, it's one of those awful cherry-flavored ones. That would be the first one to hop out. Speaker 3 (7:45) Is your stomach bothering you? Speaker 5 (7:46) Oh, I have constant acid reflux. You know, I've had it all my life. Speaker 3 (7:51) So why, can you tell me, why did you email me? Speaker 5 (7:55) Well, you know, the original, the original reason which I gave you was just some of the things I had heard. Speaker 5 (8:05) you know, some of the goings-on down here. Remember I told you about the boy Dylan Nichols that got murdered, and apparently that was swept under the rug. I guess we'll cover that one first. Speaker 3 (8:14) Yeah, so just tell me what happened. I mean, you kind of mentioned this in an email, but there wasn't a lot of detail, and I did a little Googling online and didn't really find much. So, yeah, tell me what you know. Speaker 5 (8:24) I'm hoping that's one of the things y'all have the capability of doing is finding much. All I've managed to find out is that Dylan Nichols went to school down here at West Blockton High School. Basically, I've got these kids out here digging a hole between the house and the yard in the summer, and we're going to plant some cast iron plant. That's Aspidistra Electora, in case y'all don't know. Speaker 3 (8:43) I don't know what either of the things you just said are, but that's fine. Okay, Speaker 5 (8:47) well, it's a scientific thing. That's a cast-iron plant. You know how these kids talk on cell phones all day long? You can't get them to do nothing because they're on their cell phone. And they're tweeting, and they're YouTubing, and they're always on Facebook. I'm out there on the back porch. If you keep your mouth shut, you'd be surprised what you can learn. Because, you know, kids around here have grown up so destitute, they don't have enough sense to be ashamed of anything. They'll just tell everything. One of them yakking away that Dylan Nichols is in such and such hospital. He's a quadriplegic now. He just got into a fight with Cabram Burt, and he's not expected to live through the night. Speaker 5 (9:25) Buddy, when I heard the last name Bert, you know, my attention just peaked. I decided I'd stick my nose in and ask. Speaker 6 (9:33) This isn't by any chance related to the famous Bert family Speaker 5 (9:37) down there that runs the K3 Lumber Store in Green Pond and the, you know, KKK Lumber Mill in Vance, is it? Oh, yes, that's Kendall's son. Speaker 5 (9:47) Took them a day or so to do their work out here, and they chatted and chatted about it. And over the course of the next few days of them tweeting to girlfriends and tweeting to other friends, it come to pass that, indeed, Dylan Nichols had died. Dead or in hell. And Cabram Burt's whereabouts was unknown. Well, later on, I have the Goodsons working out here, two boys. It just so happens one of them, Jake Goodson. Speaker 5 (10:17) Apparently, he knew the Cabram boy, and right at the darn Little Caesars Pizza in Woodstock, just happened to run into him. Hadn't seen him for a year. Asked him where he'd been. Well, I've been in drug rehab. You know, I've spent such Speaker 6 (10:29) and Speaker 5 (10:30) such months in rehab. Well, what happened? Well, that's when the Cabram boy just got out there and spilled the darn beans. And the story that I was told is that they were at some party, and the Nichols boy, Cabram and his buddy, had ganged up on him and was calling him a bitch boy and a bitch boy and a bitch boy and all that. And the boy eventually smacked one Speaker 6 (10:55) of them, and Speaker 5 (10:55) they jumped on him. Speaker 6 (10:57) Well, the boy that they jumped on, that's Dylan Nichols, pulled out a little Speaker 5 (11:02) knife and cut the throat of Cabram's friend. Well... Cabram pulled his belt off and wrapped it around the neck of the friends whose throat got cut and got the Nichols boy down the ground somehow and kicked him in the head repeatedly and kept kicking him in the head until he was basically unconscious. Of course, you know the rest of the story from the first part that I told you. You know, the boy, paraplegic, died in a few days. Jacobs knows that he asked him how did he just get by so easy, and, you know, the Burt boy, Cabram Burt, had told him they just claimed it. and the other guy kept his damn mouth shut. Family has got plenty of money, so naturally it wasn't murder. So just to Speaker 3 (11:46) clarify, so you're hearing this from a guy named Jake Goodson? Mm Speaker 1 (11:50) -hmm. Speaker 3 (11:51) He ran into Cabram, and Cabram told him that we told the other guy to keep his mouth shut and we claimed self-defense? That's what he told him? Speaker 5 (12:00) There you go. Now, at some time, I was up there at that hardware store, and Kendall, that's Cabram's father, Speaker 5 (12:19) Really? Speaker 5 (12:38) Too much little dipstick gossip going around for something not to have happened. We've got the kid out bragging about it in front of the little Caesar's Pizza Hut. And we've got a teeny little snippet of conversation inconveniently audited over at the store one afternoon. Speaker 3 (12:57) crap happened. And as far as you know, is Cabram Burt just living in town now? He's working up there at the damn K3 Speaker 5 (13:05) lumberyard. He's covered up with tattoos. He's almost skin and bones. He looks like a crackhead. Hell, I saw him this week. You know, I contacted you for a while, and I quit contacting you. And you know, I go through these stages of depression. When you live in an area like this, it's like the Darfur region of Sudan. You realize you're in one of these areas where stuff happens, and you can't help it. And after this dude got arrested, you know, that recent email I sent you about that Irvin Lee herd that had been, you know... falsely imprisoning women and using them for sex slaves. Speaker 6 (13:44) No one talks about that. Speaker 5 (13:45) Irvin Lee Speaker 3 (13:46) Hurd