Sirens | A Southern True Crime Podcast · The Sirens Network

Girl Forgotten: What Happened to Brianna Wells? (with Dan Brown Jr.)

·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Retired homicide detectives looked at this area and said the same thing: it's easy to get murdered here.

Raven Rollins opens the episode with Dan Brown Jr., the composer and filmmaker behind Crime Sonics. He is there to talk about Girl Forgotten and the Breonna Wells case. Brown Jr. says he spent four years making the film. He also says he put about a quarter of a million dollars into it. The project leans on emotionally raw interviews. It also leans on a haunting soundtrack and his original song "Ray's Cane." The conversation keeps circling back to Breonna's life in Tempe. It also keeps circling back to where she was killed in South Phoenix. Brown Jr. is blunt about that part of the city. He says the area is dangerous, but he does not suggest the people there are all the same. He also makes a point of saying there are good people in South Phoenix and a real community there. That tension sits right in the middle of the discussion. Brown Jr. brings up retired law enforcement voices from the film. Those voices say they never wanted to go down there alone. The detail lands hard. It is used to show how risky the area felt to people who worked violence scenes for a living. The interview also pushes back on the idea that the case is some kind of mystery with no shape at all. Brown Jr. says the story is not built on speculation. He says the film has enough to move beyond guesswork. Rollins keeps steering the talk toward the human side of the case. Brown Jr. keeps returning to Gina, the mother whose perspective shapes the film. Breonna is the name at the center, but Gina is the story. That framing gives the episode a different shape from a standard victim profile. It feels like a case conversation, a family story, and a way to bring the facts back in front of the Phoenix police all at once.

As heard by us

A blunt, interview-led look at Breonna Wells's case and the people still carrying it.

Sirens frames Breonna Wells's case through a conversation with Dan Brown Jr. of Crime Sonics, and that keeps the focus on Girl Forgotten's raw interviews, haunting soundtrack, and refusal to smooth over what happened.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Breonna Wells, Dan Brown Jr., and a documentary that keeps pressing for answers without flinching.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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