Dead of the Night Podcast · Kenneth Bailey

Ep 11: The Thing About Kenneth

January 16, 2021·37 min·3 clips

Jessica O'Neill takes over the podcast, feeling betrayed as she uncovers that everything she thought about Kenneth was wrong.

Jessica O'Neill opens in damage control. She is filling in for Kenneth Bailey, and Devin Riesling's disappearance suddenly feels less like a file than a personal betrayal. She almost quit the podcast. Instead, she goes back to the call from Brett about forensic testing on the blood evidence they had been waiting on. The result is left out here, which only makes the silence heavier. Jessica keeps returning to the same ugly problem: the story she trusted has started to buckle. Kenneth becomes the problem in the room. The search runs through old online traces, including a blogger questionnaire where he answered prompts about books, procrastination, and losing his virginity. One answer points to Moscow, Idaho. Jessica links it to Capital Debate Summer Camp, where Emmett High School students took a bus to the University of Idaho. By day, it sounds ordinary enough. Students studied speech, rhetoric, research, and brief writing. At night, some slipped out of the dorm rooms. The yearbooks do not give Jessica the clean connection she wants. They show candid camp photos and list both Devin and Kenneth as attendees, but she cannot find them together in a picture. That empty space does a lot of work. Near the end, the trail turns toward an image Kenneth may have set, though the audio stays broken and hard to hold onto. Then the phone call falls apart. A hospital worker says Kenneth is in group therapy, and before Jessica can pin anything down, another call cuts in with a question about a picture. No answer lands. Just a missing person, an absent cohost, old camp records, and Jessica stuck asking why.

As heard by us

A forensic turn narrows the case and puts Kenneth Bailey under harsher light.

The episode is strongest when it stays close to the evidence. The blood result, the school-camp link to Moscow, Idaho, and the yearbook search all give the case shape, even if they do not hand over a neat answer.

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Why you'd press play

A forensic update sends the case sideways and puts Kenneth Bailey back under a hard spotlight.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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