Three decades after a series of murders of radio broadcasters in Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood stumped police, a new podcast is looking back at the assassinations of three broadcasters who may have paid the ultimate price for their pro-democracy broadcasts. The series Silenced: The Radio Murders, created by Kaleidoscope and iHeartPodcasts, in collaboration with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), comes at a time when the rights of journalists reporting abroad continue to be violated in record numbers, with the shocking detention of Evan Gershkovich in Russia the latest example.
“These men were killed for words they spoke on the airwaves,” says one of the detectives involved in the investigation of the Little Haiti murders in the early 1990s. Yet the murders were never solved, leaving a wound in the neighborhood that the show’s creators say remains open to this day.
“When we began this podcast we wanted to tell a story about impunity and the impact it has on immigrant communities,” said journalist and cohost Ana Arana. “However, as the series developed, we realized the need to have federal authorities re-examine the cases because they encroached on the First Amendment and the essential right to free speech. With their murders, these voices and the ideas that those broadcasters held were silenced.”
Arana first reported on the murders in the early 1990s for the Committee to Protect Journalists, and is returning to the investigation in hopes of finding the masterminds behind the murders and have them held accountable. In Silenced, she has partnered with Oz Woloshyn, the Kaleidoscope co-founder who previously investigated the serial murders of hundreds of women along the U.S.-Mexico border in the 2020 podcast series, Forgotten: Women of Juarez.
In Silenced, Woloshyn and Arana uncover elements that show missteps and mysteries, perhaps politically motivated, that remain unaccounted for decades later. To illuminate the context and possible motive for the murders, that includes conversations with DEA agents who shed light on the rampant cocaine trafficking among the Haitian military during the early 1990s, which enjoyed strong support in certain quarters in the U.S.
“Nearly 30 years after Ana first reported on these cases, the fight for justice persists,” said Gypsy Guillén Kaiser, Advocacy and Communications Director at CPJ. “We look forward to digging into the new evidence they've uncovered and continuing our pursuit of full accountability for the murders of these Haitian journalists, which have never received the attention they deserve.”
Kaleidoscope is a New York-based podcast company founded by Woloshyn and Mangesh Hattikudur, co-founder of the online magazine Mental Floss and former Senior VP of Podcast Development at iHeartMedia. Last October it announced an alliance with iHeartMedia to produce and distribute a slate of narrative podcasts that looks to tell stories from around the world. The collaboration includes an initial slate of six podcasts that tell largely-unknown true stories from different corners of the globe. Silenced: The Radio Murders is Kaleidoscope’s fourth series release with iHeartPodcasts following Obsessions: Wild Chocolate, Skyline Drive and The Last Soviet.
“Silenced is the latest example of Kaleidoscope’s unrivaled ability to bring to life international non-fiction stories that resonate with U.S. audiences and move the conversation forward,” Kate Osborn, Executive VP & Head of Podcast Development at Kaleidoscope. “We hope that Silenced will bring a new focus to a story that deserves far greater attention.”
New episodes of Silenced: The Radio Murders will be released every Thursday through June 22.
“We are proud to collaborate with Kaleidoscope on their impressive slate of scripted podcasts,” said Will Pearson, President of iHeartPodcasts. “Listeners everywhere have been drawn to these real-life stories of wild chocolate hunters, unsuspected astrologists and Russian cosmonauts, and we know ‘Silenced’ will do the same – hopefully leading to some answers as to who was behind these unsolved murders.”
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