Just killing time!

Critically-acclaimed crime podcast RedHanded covers everything from serial killers to satanic possessions to bizarre whodunits. Now it’s being brought to the stage by its creators and co-hosts Suruthi & Hannah, who talk to Post Life

Suruthi closed the door and said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if this didn’t open from the inside’. There was no handle on the inside and there was no one in my flat, we only had what we needed to record – a laptop and a microphone. We didn’t even have our phones.

S: Full disclosure, as soon as I shut the door I heard a click and we knew we were locked in immediately. I don’t know what possessed me to shut that door.

How did you manage to get out?

H: I had to message my flatmates on Facebook. But we were trapped in there for a good three and a half hours.

S: It was absolutely roasting. It was quite an experience, but luckily we don’t have to sit in cupboards anymore.

How did the RedHanded podcast begin?

S: We met about two and a half years ago at Hannah’s house. She was having a Thanksgiving party and my childhood friend happened to be Hannah’s American housemate. At the time, I had just come back from travelling and so I felt like I needed to plug back into real life. He suggested I come to the party and I did. I got a little drunk and ended up talking to Hannah. That’s when we bonded over our love of true crime and, specifically, the murder case of JonBenét Ramsey, which is the murder of a small child.

H: There were also very small children at this party.

S: Yeah, and it’s not like we were having this conversation in a secret corner, we were having this conversation over a dining table, whilst said small children were trying to eat their Thanksgiving dinner. It was kind of like a true crime soulmate meeting. Not many people were listening to podcasts at the time, so to meet someone who was not only into podcasts, but true crime podcasts was amazing. As we were leaving, we were drunk and said ‘We should start a true crime podcast’. When I got home, I thought, ‘I’ll never see that girl again’, but I did, it was like it was meant to be.

Can you tell us about any of the cases that you have on your list for the future?

S: People beg us to cover Madeline McCann. There are cases out there that I know our listeners want us to cover desperately. They’re on the list.

H: But we won’t do any episode if we don’t think we have a new angle on it. I think sometimes with the more better-known cases, that can take a little longer to figure out.

Are there any cases that you actively avoid?

H: The only case we’ve both agreed we wont cover is Junko Furuta, the case of a Japanese teenage girl who was just really horribly kidnapped, tortured and murdered by her peers – teenage boys her own age. That’s one of the ones that we’ve drawn a line on.

S: It’s too much. We talk quite openly about true crime, but this is too much. Someone asked me the same question a few weeks ago and I said, Junko Furuta, but also said, ‘please don’t google it, I know you think I’m saying this to be cute, but I am being genuine, please don’t go and read what happened, because you will not thank me’. Obviously, they went and read what happened. The next time we spoke they were like, ‘What the hell was that’ and I was said, ‘yeah, I told you’. It is the worst case I’ve ever heard of and we have no interest in researching or reading that information out loud.

H: We have to spend a lot of time in some quite dark places. We are usually pretty good at switching off from it, but I do have to say that since leaving work to do the podcast full time I’ve started dreaming about some of the cases we cover. The one I found difficult to forget about was the David Parker Ray case we covered. That one is quite explicit and has been quite difficult to get rid of.

If you could meet any one of the subjects that you’ve covered on the RedHanded podcast, who would it be and what would you ask them?

S: I think I’d meet Darlie Routier. She is currently on death row in

Texas and is on her third and final appeal. If she is successful, she will be freed, if she is unsuccessful, she will be sent to the death chamber. She was accused of killing her two little boys – she said that someone broke in and stabbed them and she also sustained some injuries. Basically, the evidence points all over the place. Half of it points to she did it, the other half points to she didn’t do it. When I started researching the case, I thought she didn’t do it, then I thought she did and then I thought she didn’t again and then I thought she did… and I ended it thinking I have absolutely no idea if she did it or not. I would love to meet her, look her in the face and ask her if she did it.

Redhanded is at The Glee Club, Birmingham, on September 16.