Terry Dunn Meurer has produced more than 500 episodes of Unsolved Mysteries since the original show began in 1987. Those early episodes would air once, and viewers who caught them—and had something to report—would call in tips. But when Netflix rebooted the series over the summer, the batch of six new episodes quickly brought in thousands of tips from around the world. Living room armchair detectives could now watch, rewatch, pause, search for clues, jump down Reddit rabbit holes, and investigate all the featured cold cases themselves.
That was wonderful news for Meurer, who’s spent decades as the show's executive producer working to solve these cold cases. Even with an encyclopedia-like knowledge of nightmarish crimes from her years of work, it’s the hope that they might be solved that keeps her going, and Netflix’s huge reach only increases the chances of that.
Another six episodes of Unsolved Mysteries drop onto Netflix on October 19. We caught up with Terry Dunn Meurer about the status of last season’s unsolved cases as well as what she’s hopeful might come once the world sees this new batch.
Esquire: How did the response to the first season compare to your expectations for it?
TM: It's exceeded our expectations. We were just overwhelmed by the social media engagement and the engagement of all the viewers. The original episodes just aired at a given time on a given day, and then they'd maybe rerun, but that’s all the audience would ever see of them. But because the new series is on Netflix, viewers have the opportunity to go back, look at them again, look at the clues, and just get very involved in trying to solve these cases. This was our first experience with Unsolved Mysteries and the world of the internet and social media, and it's been great.
Did any of the tips from volume one lead to any concrete development on any of the cases that you know of?
There are no cases that have been solved, so I guess that's as concrete as it could get. We had over 100 tips on the House of Terror story come in on Xavier, the fugitive in France, and those tips came in from all over the world. There was an interesting development there, because you always look for clusters of tips that come in from one particular area, and there were a few clusters from countries like Italy and England and France but there was actually a cluster of tips that came in from Chicago. Apparently there's a big French ex-pat community there and there was even a photo that looked very much like it could've been Xavier. All those tips we forward on to the French police and they follow up on them. I know that Alonzo Brooks' body was exhumed by the FBI to see if they could find some more forensic evidence and I know that they're still interviewing people every week, following up on tips as they continue to come in. I think the episode that had the most social media engagement was Mystery on the Rooftop, the Rey Rivera story. People were just really trying to figure out what happened and how he could come off the roof, the note that was left behind, trying to decipher the note. So there are no solved cases but lots of leads have come in.
How many tips did you receive all together for the whole season?
Over 4,000, I would say.
What's the process like once you receive a tip or a comment?
We have a team of researchers who go through each of the tips that come in and forward them immediately to law enforcement or whoever is designated to receive those tips. If it's a comment, we make note of that. We really encourage people...sometimes they think, oh, I don't have any information, but they might! They might have some little thing that would add up combined with another tip where you could see a pattern happening.
How did you choose the cases?
We have many, many stories that are submitted and it's very hard to choose. We look for diversity of categories, we knew we wanted to do some international stories, we look for urban versus rural, the makeup of the actual interviewees, the age of a case, the age of the story, the racial profile, ethnicity, cultural...we try and create a complete diverse mix of stories as best we can. And solvability is really important. We look for cases that we feel or that the authorities feel would really benefit from exposure to generate some tips, to cases that have gone cold that they just think there's something out there, like the Rey Rivera case, or in Volume 2, the Death in Oslo. The woman that died in the Plaza Hotel, they just feel like if they can get her face out there and that composite that they presented that somebody is gonna identify her. Or the case of the missing kids, if we can just get people to see and study those faces and say, do I know somebody who looks like that or who has that birthmark or that scar? So we look for solvability. For sure.
Which episode of this upcoming volume are you most excited for viewers to see?
That's a real hard question. I am very close to all the stories and all the people who are involved in the stories, so I can never pick just one. I think I'm most excited when we get close to the premiere of these episodes that we might solve something. I just am all about solving these cases. I feel like there are some solvable cases here. I think the Death Row Fugitive, somebody knows where he is or maybe he passed away, but somebody knows that. We can maybe get a solve. So for me it's not about one particular case, it's about trying to solve all of them.
So you feel like the Death Row Fugitive episode is the most likely to be solved after it reaches this audience?
I think so. I guess if I had to rank them, I would say that one would be number one. I think that Death in Oslo is solvable, and also Stolen Kids. At the end of that episode, it's not just Shane and Christopher we're looking for, but there's all the other missing kids in the roll call. We're hoping that the audience watches the whole roll call of other faces and cases and that one of those cases could be solved, or more than one. I get very optimistic at this time, right before launch.
Did you have a favorite one to work on?
No. I go out on all the scouts and I was on a lot of the stories for production as well. I think the most intriguing, the most interesting part of the process is actually standing in the locations where many of the stories happened. There's the hotel in Oslo, trying to understand how somebody could get into that hotel room. Or you're at the park where the boys disappeared and looking around going, how could somebody possibly take him from this park without somebody noticing? Or John Wheeler, that case, we were in the landfill where his body was found and just thanking god that his body came out of that trash truck the way it did and landed on top of that trash pile. In our episode, you can see how the trash is compacted and if he had been buried under that, he would be a missing person right now rather than a victim of murder.
I'm sure what you do is often very difficult and sad, as you're working with families and people who have been affected by these tragedies. In light of that, how do you feel about the cult-following-like obsession people have with true crime content?
Well, we think of ourselves as a mystery show more than a true crime show. I think a lot of the shows out there are about cases that are closed and adjudicated. Many of those stories are very well told, but our show is a little bit different because we are asking the audience for help to try and solve these mysteries. So I don’t feel like we're just telling stories that have a beginning and a middle and an end—we're telling stories that have a beginning and a middle and no end. I think for me it's the hope I feel about helping people solve cases, the hope that these cases can get solved—that's how we rise above the sadness and the tragedy of hearing about these situations that have gone on in people's lives. There's just the hope that we give them and that they feel when their story is about to premiere. I know they're all just ready to see what can come of the airing of these shows.
Do you have any news on a Volume 3?
We don't. We are hoping for one, but there's no news on that for now.
