HOT P.I. PODCASTER CATHERINE TOWNSEND
From dating columnist to cold-case investigator
Catherine townsend’s career — dating columnist, private investigator, true-crime podcaster — is straight out of a hard-boiled detective novel. But the jobs intersect. “There’s no better training than being out on tons of first dates,” she says. “It teaches you a lot about reading people.”
An Arkansas native, Townsend grew up obsessed by true crime. In 2004, she began to follow the local unsolved murder of 22-year-old Rebekah Gould, a few years her junior. But it wasn’t until 2017 — a dozen years after founding the U.K. Independent’s “Sleeping Around” column, and four years after getting her California P.I. license — that she took on Gould’s case. “Rebekah reminded me of myself,” she says. “Someone actually told me she was a high-risk victim because she was dating different guys. Come on.”
Townsend spent six months unraveling the story for Hell and Gone, her popular iHeartMedia podcast, which arguably helped authorities arrest a suspect last November. As she preps Season Four, she’s also looking into “real-life American psychos” on Red Collar, her new podcast for Audiochuck. “It mixes two of my favorite topics,” Townsend declares. “Fraud and murder.”