From the Elm Park Courier, published September 22, 2015
Erin Ann Blake Buhrman, 49, passed away on September 20, 2015. The daughter of Patrick and Abigail Blake, Erin was born in Elm Park, Illinois, on February 8, 1966. On August 2, 1986, Erin married Charles “Chuck” Buhrman. Erin was preceded in death by her husband, her parents, and her brother, Dennis. She is survived by her daughters, Josephine and Madeline, and her sister, Amelia. A visitation will be held on Wednesday, September 23, at 2:00 p.m. at Wilhelm Funeral Home in Elm Park. A short funeral service and burial will take place on Friday, September 25, at 11:00 a.m. at Elm Park Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests donations be made to the National Center for Suicide Prevention.
chapter 4
Two hours later, I called Ellen from Gate 25 at JFK, a stack of celebrity gossip magazines on my lap and a Red Eye from Starbucks in my hand.
“Tell me you’re coming home,” she said in lieu of hello.
“My flight boards in twenty minutes.”
“Thank God. I have my mother on the other line, and she’s been crying for the last thirty minutes. I need reinforcements. When do you get in?”
“Just after two. Are you going to pick me up, or should I rent a car?”
“I’ll pick you up. Have a safe flight.”
“Wait, Ellen.” I took a deep breath, mentally preparing myself to ask my next question. “What about Lanie?”
“Josie, I have to go.”
“Don’t avoid the question. Will Lanie be there?”
“Josie, my mother is in tears on the other line. I have to go. I’ll see you soon.”
Ellen disconnected the call without another word.
My flight was delayed by more than two hours, during which time I jumped at least seven times thinking I had overheard my father’s name. Only once did that turn out to be the case. Agitated by the delay and my increasingly unmanageable paranoia, I tried to distract myself with Facebook.
It was a ruse that worked for only a moment. Mentions of the podcast lurked among the usual barrage of cheerful announcements (engagements, babies, culinary successes) like snakes in the grass. One link in particular caught my eye: Why Exactly Poppy Parnell Is Investigating That Chuck Buhrman Murder: An Interview with the Reconsidered Host.
Yes, I thought. Why exactly is Poppy Parnell investigating this murder? Even though I knew I would regret it, I clicked through.
Why Exactly Poppy Parnell Is Investigating That Chuck Buhrman Murder: An Interview with the Reconsidered Host
by Eric Ashworth
Everyone is listening to Reconsidered: The Chuck Buhrman Murder, right? If you’re not, stop whatever you’re doing and go download it. Right now. I’ll wait.
Everyone with me now? Good.
The serial podcast, hosted by blogger-cum-journalist Poppy Parnell and funded by the communications giant Werner Entertainment Company, promises to reconsider the 2002 murder of midwestern professor Chuck Buhrman in weekly, hour-long installments. The twist is that these podcasts haven’t been prerecorded, or even outlined. Parnell is investigating the case right now and is generating the podcasts in real time. A true-crime junkie’s wet dream, this format allows listeners to be intimately involved in the investigation. Parnell even welcomes armchair detectives to tweet leads and theories to her.
Even more intriguing than the revolutionary format is the subject matter. The case doesn’t fit the mold for this type of investigative journalism. The murder of Chuck Buhrman is not a cold case. It’s not even unsolved.
That’s right: the local police maintain that they got their guy. Within hours of the murder, a suspect—Warren Cave, the then seventeen-year-old neighbor—was arrested. Eyewitness testimony helped convict him, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
It sounds like an open-and-shut case with not much to reconsider. In the first few minutes of the podcast, Parnell invites us to question whether Cave actually pulled the trigger. But why should we?
Some elementary Googling turned up a small niche of online conspiracy theorists that have been espousing Cave’s innocence since the early ’00s. But you can find support for just about anything on the internet, and these are largely the kind of people who create websites in neon green fonts on black backgrounds and casually mention that 9-11 was an inside job. How—and why—did Parnell choose this case? And how did she get Werner Entertainment to back her?
Even though she’s neck-deep in her investigation, Poppy Parnell, the brains (and beauty) behind Reconsidered, graciously granted me an interview so I could ask her just that.
Q: First, Poppy, let me get this out of the way: I’m completely obsessed with Reconsidered. I’ve listened to each episode at least three times and I’ve been taking notes. I think I speak for most of us when I say that I had never heard of the Buhrman case until your podcast began. How did you get interested in it?
A: My mother, actually. She met Melanie Cave at a gardening conference in Iowa last year, where they bonded over their shared love of heritage roses and hatred of aphids. When Melanie heard about my old blog and that I’m an investigative journalist, she asked my mother for my contact information. And here we are.
Q: Ah, yes. Your roots as a humble blogger. Tell us about it. It was a true-crime blog, right?
A: Yes, that’s right. From 2008 through 2013, I ran a blog called From the Unsolved Archives where I catalogued unsolved murders and kidnappings. It’s no secret that websites run by true-crime enthusiasts can get mired down with conspiracy theories, and I worked really hard to keep my blog firmly out of tin-foil-hat territory. I kept things strictly to the facts—while refusing to blindly adhere to the conventional interpretation of those facts. I’m really proud of the work I did there, and of course the blog laid the groundwork for my transition into an investigative reporter.
Q: Let’s get back to the Buhrman murder. You want us to believe that Warren is innocent. But there was an eyewitness!
A: Let me set the record straight: I take no position on Warren’s guilt or innocence. I assume I will eventually—but there’s a whole lot of investigating I have to do before I reach that point. For now, I just want my listeners to question the dominant narrative. The alleged eyewitness is an excellent example. Lanie Buhrman notably changed her story at least once on the night of the murder, so why should we believe her?
Q: You think she’s lying?
A: Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe she was, as Melanie puts it, “confused.”