Devil We Know

Devil We Know is a scripted true crime show that puts its credits on the record. Aaron hosts and produces. David Wayne Young is credited with writing and research, Sammy Taylor and Chantel York with research, and Chase Gray with editing. That division of labor shows in the narration, which is thick with names, dates and small physical facts. Several episodes open with a plain warning about adult themes, explicit language and graphic violence before the case begins. The prose has a taste for dark flourishes, calling a prison one of the unopenable doors where the nation keeps its killers, but it keeps coming back to the record. The Dannemora case gets two episodes, which makes it a natural place to start. The prison sits in the Adirondack region of upstate New York, and the story centers on two maximum security inmates, Ricky and David. 'The Men Who Went To Dannemora' spends time on Ricky's past, including a 1995 parole hearing. He told the board a man had hired him to kill four people and presented himself as someone who never intended to go through with it. The narration does not buy it, and says he played the board like a violin. 'Escape From Dannemora' follows the plan across the months from November 2014 to June 6, 2015. A man named Gene vouches for David and supplies money, and cigarettes, a familiar prison currency, help Ricky win David his old cell back. Other episodes hand the story to investigators. In 'Nikki's Law', a walker comes across a human skull on December 7, and Clark County Search and Rescue searches the area for two days. Months into Nikki's disappearance, detectives also get a meeting with a man named David, who tells them about a bar, his coat, vodka and a white van. 'A Partial Truth' hinges on a mother's version of events. Jennifer said her daughter fled the back seat after an argument, but Detective Todd Steele found a clump of Jennifer's own hair in the front seat, roots attached, which pointed to a physical fight. The name Brian sits at the center of two more episodes. In 'In Memoriam (Old Patreon Mini Episode)', Brian is a newly naturalized citizen in Midtown Anchorage whom friends such as Debbie Driesel saw as unflappable, yet he had posted online comments about race that the narration calls a side the world never saw. In 'One Cold Morning', township employees recall Brian tapping his portfolio or his ankle to suggest a gun before the events of mid-December 2016. What ties these cases together is one question: how far a person's story can drift from the facts before someone notices. Closings credit the team, point toward a Patreon and end on the same parting line about keeping your head on a swivel.