There’s a new true crime podcast on the block, and this one features a host from Denton.
Criminologist and University of North Texas professor Scott Belshaw knows a thing or two about crime on campus. So does his co-host, Dallas-based criminologist and fellow UNT faculty member Jim Marquart.
That’s why they decided to take their academic expertise onto the internet, add plenty of entertainment value to their subject matter, and hatch a podcast that will give Investigation Discovery junkies another hit of thrills and chills.
The podcast isn’t affiliated with UNT. It’s a pet project Belshaw and Marquart had been considering for a while. Both have written criminal justice books, and both professors felt like they had useful information.
“I had a true crime book come out in October, and I came over here to talk to Scott and we’re kind of going back and forth,” Marquart said. “We’re like, ‘What’s the best way to get this kind of information out?’
“We looked at each other, and it was like, ‘Podcast.’ He was mucking around with it a little bit. I didn’t know, and I was playing around with it over here. And then we got together and we put it together.”
Poison Ivy: Crime on Campus with Dr. Jim Marquart and Dr. Scott Belshaw launched with an introductory episode that aired in March. The second episode highlights Belshaw and Marquart’s encyclopedic knowledge of criminology and their talent for making it accessible with an iconic campus monster — Ted Bundy.
For the most part, each episode will focus on a single crime, or on the campus activity of a single criminal. The hosts have guests lined up for some episodes. Professor and criminologist Matt DeLisi, author of the 2023 title Ted Bundy and the Unsolved Murder Epidemic: The Dark Figure of Crime, sits in to talk about Bundy’s preoccupation with the women he targeted in a sorority house at Florida State University.
Belshaw said he thinks they can shed a different light on campus crime.
“In our podcast, we talk about the difference between us and a lot of others,” he said. “We’re criminologists. We have Ph.D.s in criminology. And this is what we do for a living, where a lot of times, the people that do this are journalists. Their work, their great research is really good. But we can kind of put in that psychological approach because we’ve been trained in it.”
If parents can glean some tips before their children move into campus housing — or off-campus housing — Poison Ivy will have paid a bonus.
“Because of our experience and our studies, we have an understanding of campuses that other people might not,” Marquart said. “Parents don’t need to be scared. They just need information and some understanding about it.”
Belshaw doesn’t want to alarm the parents of college-bound students. He does want them to understand that crime on campus is likely a touch higher than it is off campus.
“It’s dense, and intense,” he said. “Because you have schoolwork, people going crazy because there’s a lot going on.”
Marquart said that there are some crimes, such as abductions and homicides, that he considers outliers. He said the podcast will consider nonviolent and violent crime. The pair are planning to cover the murder of UNT criminal justice student Kelli Cox.
True crime has been so popular that there are genres of it: stranger danger, family affairs, heists and the ever-popular serial killer. But the pair haven’t found another podcast that focuses on colleges.
“I think you’ve had individuals out here thinking about it, you know, like atoms or molecules out here,” Marquart said. “But nobody’s ever sat down and gone, ‘We can really do this.’ Well, we know it’s in our wheelhouse, and we think people will find this just as intriguing as the other true crime stuff out there.”
While the professors are most knowledgeable about crimes on U.S. campuses, they aren’t averse to voyaging overseas.
“We can take it anywhere,” Marquart said. “The first year or two out of the gate is to probably concentrate on U.S. institutions. But, you know if we hear anything out there — London, Berlin or Caracas — I mean, yeah, we’ll entertain crimes on campus in other parts of the world.”
Belshaw said the podcast will also broach how universities respond to crime on campus.
“There’d be faculty members that would be scared to be able to talk about the bad things that happen on a campus, or their campus or something like that,” Belshaw said.
“That’s where we talk about the Clery Act, where the university is required to give the information out on crimes that happen on campus. But, you know, does the university have an influence on crime outside its borders? You look at the University of Houston. It is literally smack-dab in the middle of the city. When I was there, everything on campus felt really safe. But you walk across Cullen Boulevard and it’s a different story. So we’re definitely going to be looking at all that.”
Marquart said he hopes their research will bring listeners in, and their consideration of the cases will pique audience curiosity.
“This is for a national audience, with people that have inside knowledge of university operations that can tap into what’s the impact of this stuff on a college campus. The other goal is to inform is the public and then to inform parents,” he said.
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