In Her Defence: More than True Crime, It's True Dialogue

In Her Defence makes the crime the backstory, and then pivots into an open discussion about a topic that's hard to talk about: intimate partner violence and domestic abuse.

Dec 06, 2023

I’ve covered a number of True Crime series in this past year. Bone Valley—a story about wrongful conviction; The Kids of Rutherford County—a cold case that’s still unsolved; even Sold A Story is true crime, of another type. There have been others as well. Despite the fact that I actively seek out non-true-crime, inevitably, many roads lead me back to this genre.

It’s true that In Her Defence broadly sits in the True Crime genre. But I would also say that it’s a bit of an uncomfortable fit.

It isn’t a show that aims to reveal a new criminal, or conversely, exonerate the one that was convicted—Helen Naslund repeatedly admits her guilt.

Nor is it a show that aims to re-examine the cause, or the recast the perpetrator(even though, if you stick around to the end, you might be persuaded that this should happen). Yes, it does the thorough job of investigating the crime; host and reporter Jana Pruden is highly skilled and puts her efforts to great work here.

The reason why this series is different is that it’s about more than just solving a crime (I say that as though this were an easy task). In Her Defence ultimately has a different aim: To raise a public conversation about domestic violence, how the law treats women inside the justice system and what happens to women in those rare cases like this one who plead guilty.

Domestic violence is a difficult topic to discuss

Although it’s technically a generic term, the statistics tell a very different story. In Canada, women killed by their spouse or intimate partner is eight times higher than men. In the US, 1 in 7 women, versus 1 in 25 men, have been injured by an intimate partner—that’s 3.5 times higher. But these stark statistics don’t fully capture the reality because the vast majority of intimate partner violence goes completely unreported.

On this day, December 6th, in Canada we recognize this as The National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. It began after the tragic event in 1989 when 14 women were murdered at a university in Montreal, just because they were women. This day also overlaps with a wider day; International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25), which marks the start of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, until Human Rights Day (December 10), recognized by the US and many other countries.

Today I want to draw a line between this important day of recognition, and the difficult topics this series allows us to discuss

In Her Defence is the first narrative project of its kind by The Globe and Mail, which is Canada’s most-read newspaper and has been in print for more than 170 years. I will choose to see this as an optimistic sign on the horizon of an otherwise grim media landscape, this week alone.

The Origins of The True Crime Genre

When Edgar Allan Poe published “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” in 1846, he added an audacious element to the story: a detective character who solved the mystery by analyzing the facts of the crime.

At a granular level, this was also the beginning of the True Crime genre, which went on to a glorious future in film and radio and television. About 168 years later, these basic elements would be adapted by the podcast industry (pegging this to 2014, the year of Serial and Criminal). But there were many stops along the road before then.

Almost 50 years after Poe died, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would pick up where Poe left off and create the beloved Sherlock Holmes character—the genius who can solve even the most complex crimes. Agatha Christie would greatly add to the canon, as did PD James, Truman Capote, John le Carré, Stephen King and thousands of other writers. Some of the best-known and best-selling authors work in the mystery genre, which allows me to draw the conclusion that the mystery genre is as much a part of us, as we are of it.

The early days of radio also thrived on the mystery genre. True Detective Mysteries began as a radio serial in the late 1920s. The show Gang Busters ran from 1936-1957, and the seminal broadcast of Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds in 1938 is often seen as one of the birth of modern radio. It also changed radio forever.

True Crime works on many levels; just like Poe taught us, the reader enjoys the task of puzzling out the logic of a mystery and feel validated that they can solve a crime and restore order to chaos, which I believe to be part of the mystery of why it’s so compelling.

So then what about a series like In Her Defence that’s more about discussing a crime, rather than solving it? Where does this fit into the cannon?

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In Her Defence is a story about an entire family as much as it is a story about a singular murder. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I should warn you that this story dark. It doesn’t flinch as it describes scenes and details about all forms of abuse, from spousal, to child, to animal.

If domestic abuse is a triggering subject for you, please take care while listening and make sure you have supports available to you.

“I’ve written this story, stories like this, more times than I can really count,” Pruden recalled in our interview.

Pruden has spent decades writing this beat, and she does it skillfully. She manages to write this story flat and straight in a way that offers empathy for Helen, who according to the law is a criminal, without painting her as an innocent victim. But also, not a cold-blooded killer.

Pruden’s ability to connect with her source like a ‘friend,’ while still keeping a professional distance, proves she is a journalist who is here to uncover the facts, but is also not immune to them. If you listen closely, there’s layer of complexity to her tone that’s striking, even if it’s sometimes delivered quite bluntly.

The facts of the court transcripts are this: in a taped confession with a detective, Helen Naslund confessed to killing her husband while he slept in their bed. For six years she covered up the crime, and with the help of at least one her sons, they buried his body and his truck to make it look like he has disappeared.

Below that shocking layer is a great deal of complexity. Miles was abusive. And it’s honest to put a qualifier on that word, so as to not need to offer delicate details, it would be appropriate to say he was very very abusive.

Helen was still a teenager when she met and married Miles. She had just turned 20 when her first son Wes was born. She is a slight, small woman; Miles was twice her weight at over 200 Lbs. They lived on a remote farm in the expansive Alberta Prairies. At the time of the murder, two of the three sons were still living at the family farm.

This series raises the deeply uncomfortable question: Is there a point when abuse is bad enough that killing is justified?

Saying the word ‘justified’ in relation to killing makes it sound like the Wild West. How much have we evolved in the sphere of justice?

In today’s legal system, in basically any democracy, the answer to the question: When is murder justified? The answer is basically: Never. Murder is not condoned, save for some very specific exceptions for self-defence.

But what if that 'attack,’ which often did require self-defence, was spread out over 27 years of ongoing violence…does that change the legal landscape? Could that effect the outcomes of a trial?

In 1990, a Supreme Court of Canada Decision ruled that the battered woman syndrome was a legitimate legal defence. This meant that if a case met the test, under a very certain set of circumstances, a “battered women’s defence” could be submitted in the court, and that would be taken into account in terms of the sentence.

For a great deal of technical reasons, Helen’s case did not meet these requirements. In a pivotal decision, her first lawyer opted not to apply that defence to her case. Instead she pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter on a plea deal.

The male judge who presided over the original trial couldn’t get past this question: Why she just “didn’t just leave,” presumably leave the marriage, or the house, or the farm, or the family. His statement proved that he had very little understanding of the situation that Helen lived in…one which she called a life sentence, of a different sort.

The judge went on to say that: “a man should feel safe and free in his own house.” When I heard that, I wondered if that judge had ever considered whether Helen felt that same priviledge of feeling safe or free in her own house?

In 2020, Helen was sentenced to 18 years in jail for her guilty plea of manslaughter. According to Elizabeth Sheehy, who wrote the 2013 book Defending Battered Women on Trial, Naslund received one of the longest sentences in Canadian history for a manslaughter case involving an abused woman in Canada. The majority of women in the cases she studied received two years or less, and the longest of which was 10 years (of the 11 cases that she analyzed for this book).

[spoiler alert] Eventually, the case would be overturned. Last January, Justice Sheila Greckol released her appeal decision, which read: “The 18-year joint submission proposed by counsel and accepted by the sentencing judge in this case is so unhinged from the circumstances of the offence and the offender that its acceptance would lead reasonable and informed persons, aware of all the relevant circumstances … to believe that the proper functioning of the justice system had broken down.”

In Her Defence opens with a crime. It frames a discussion, gives you insight into a complicated series of events, and then closes by taking aim at the issue of how women who are the victims of violence are treated within the legal system. If you can, it’s worth a listen.

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The following is a transcript from a Zoom interview. It has been edited for length and clarity.

[Samantha Hodder]: Tell me the origin story how this project came about.

[Jana Pruden]: I first reached out to Helen in the fall of 2020, about four days after she was sentenced. And then it was in early 2022 that Helen's lawyer, under her guidance, made a provisional agreement to speak [with me], after the Appeal was all settled.
[When] I started working on the print story, it wasn't really for sure that this would be a podcast. And in fact, my first interview I did with just my regular recorder, which was a terrible mistake.
We started working in earnest in about May, and then worked all-out until just last week [November, 2023]. We had all my original interviews, and then a few more to be done. But all the main players had already been interviewed for that piece.
From the beginning, I asked Helen if she would be willing to do this also as a podcast project, because I wanted to make sure that there was that consent. After the print piece ran (in the print version, her face was literally the entire cover of the paper), I went to the prison to drop off the paper for her.
So at that point, we had another conversation where I essentially offered her an out and said: Do you still want to go ahead with the podcast? This was I think several weeks after the print story came out. I just wanted to make sure having gone through that experience she was still in still up for it.
She said she was, and that we still had her consent to use the that audio in the podcast.

[SH]: So if the job of podcasts is to start a public conversation about something about a topic, what is the job of this podcast? What is the job of this story? What is the conversation you want it to start in the wider world?

[JP]: Do you know in a way, I think that like that is like the last five seconds of the podcast, when we hear Bertha Wilson says:
“The law changes because of society.”
And that, I think, means that we as a society have to demand more from these systems.

[Kasia Mychajlowycz]: We've been hearing a lot from people who have survived intimate partner violence and family violence as well.
One person I ran into at a cafe who heard the podcast and wanted to tell me about her own experience of family violence growing up…it made me think that part of this is just acknowledging the existence and the extent to which this affects so many people's lives.
Our job as journalists is to bring things out into the light, and say, look, this is a part of our society (and it's actually a pretty pervasive part).
To be able to receive that and hear that and say, like, I am not an expert, I have nothing useful to offer but my ability to create stories is and just say I hear you, and I hope you feel reflected in the podcast.

[SH]: Kasia, I'm wondering how the Globe and Mail work can more efficiently… more at more the headwaters…to train and tool up reporters to go out and have the right equipment and have the training of how to do [audio]. Is that is that a conversation that you're that you're having around The Globe?

[KM]: I'm definitely advising people who make those decisions. And I should say that this project came about in my new role here at The Globe, which is Special Projects Producer, as well as actually my old role as the founding Senior Producer of The Decibel, the daily podcast that The Globe makes, was thanks to Angela Pacienza, who's made a lot of space for podcasts here and also integrated it in the newsroom really strongly.
When we started The Decibel, we started talking to people about how they could use the voice memo on their iPhones to record better audio…maybe also not typing right next to the phone while you're recording an interview…just the tips and tricks of getting audio that could be at least usable in like clip form for a daily a daily podcast.
But with a narrative project like this, you're going to have to go a step further. For example, we sent Amber [also the photographer] with a recording kit, which was a great thing.
Amber really took it on… obviously being a photographer is a whole job. We asked a lot of her and it was it was great to have those moments like in episode one. And if you listen to the postscript of the series (Episode 8), you're [also] going to get two journalists on a journalist quest. I love being able to take people on the journey with us.
This is our first narrative project at the Globe, and the first in my role as Special Projects Producer. And we're still learning as we go. But this was a great. This was a great first project to do. I'm feeling bereft at being over.

[SH]: This is the first… what are you hearing about where this might go in the future?

[KM]: Well, we hit number one on the Apple Podcast charts. And the feedback that we've been getting from across Canada has been overwhelmingly positive.
And I think we've hit all the metrics of success that we in the organization had for ourselves. And so I don't have a next project lined up but the idea is to do this again, with a different project.

[SH]: Jana, you've been a reporter for a long time…is this the first time you've worked with audio?

[JP]:Yeah, Absolutely. I've been on The Decibel a few times, but I basically just gave them my tape and then I was interviewed. So this was definitely my first time thinking about how you write for audio, how you structure a story in audio? And yeah, it was a really, really interesting challenge.
This is a full, true 50-50 collaboration. It wasn't just simply me doing what I want, and Kasia running alongside, or vice-versa. I think that it was really us finding a way that we take her skill and expertise and knowledge of how to use this format, and my voice—literally and figuratively—and then put them together to do something that is truly a creation of ours.

[SH]: What were some of the challenges that you had to overcome with Helen?

[JP]: These were some of the hardest interviews I've ever done truthfully, in a lot of ways. I always say that nobody in this series wanted to talk to me; Helen herself didn't want to.
But then Helen decided that she would. There are obvious things that that I tried to do to make someone feel comfortable and empowered in an interview. And it's really important to me. There are various ways to do that. Some people do that by being aggressive, or by being shocking.
[But with what] Helen had been through, where so much is out of [her] control, moving along this legal system, often you're just like a fish caught in the stream where you don't have much control over what's happening.
I really want people to feel empowered in their conversations with me. So that means I check in a lot to see if people need breaks, I want to make sure that they're comfortable to tell me if they need a break, and that if there's things that they don't want to talk about, they can tell me that too. [I tell them] that that they can ask me about myself and I can share about myself, so it's not only a one way street. I'm not a robot just trying to extract information from you.
These relationships [with sources], they're really profound [for me]. And they last for a really long time. Someone just texted me this morning from a story, a domestic violence homicide that I worked on in 2013, she has been having some cancer tests and she wanted to text to tell me how her test results came out.
But I think all of the credit truly goes to Helen because she's the one who decided, even though she knew it would be hard. Our interviews were hours and hours and hours [long]. And we wrote…she is the longest most successful pen pal I've ever had in my life.

[SH]: I want to talk about story structure…it's sort of it opens with a kind of a True Crime format: You lay out the case, set the scene of the day, go back to the source, go back to the people.

And then but it unfolds and interesting other ways, because you have the episode with the son, Episode 3. That was very chilling to me.

When I listened, all of a sudden some of the details that I could remember from before didn’t totally add up. And then, and then at the end, you unraveled it in a different way.

So you really, you really made the choice not to cast doubt on Helen’s story; [you stuck with] the court transcript through line. And it really isn't until the end where you realize, wait a second, is this really a shut-book-case?

You took her word… you did the reporter job of asking the right questions, but the structure of the episodes and the story took a long time to cast doubt. Why did you make that choice?

[KM]: I didn’t start out that way. But it did end up that way.

[JP]: The structure of the piece was our biggest challenge, because it's a complex story. It has different timelines to it. It has a lot of legal stuff that we wanted to get into in this piece that we didn't really get into in the print piece; I felt it was is really important to look systemically at what happened in Helen's case.
And, you know, we didn't want to lose people for that stuff, which is not the same level of emotional intensity. And then there's there was this; the theory that she didn't actually do it.
The Did She Really Do It piece essentially appears chronologically.
And it was a tricky thing, deciding what to do with it, because it's kind of a sensational idea. You could build [that story]…it's in the trailer. But I think, in the end, we both felt that that was sensationalizing it.
I put the question directly to her, and I do believe her answer.
And so I think we thought that it had to go in there at some point, because it is something that people wonder and think about. But we didn't want to use it as something that it was an explosive thing, because in the end, I do believe that, that she killed him. I don't believe that it was someone else, like one of her boys.
[KS]: One weird way that we worked together was we would call each other on the phone. We're just on the phone all day on speakerphone, feeding the dogs feeding my cat, doing everything. Going on a walk, writing…everything together [ed. Jana and Kasia live in different parts of the country].
But we had to let the tape lead the way, which is something that I feel very, very strongly about, coming from an audio background, [I believe] that the tape tells the story. And we need to facilitate that the best way we can.
That's what makes an audio format compelling. And so we started with the phone call with Wes, when he tells us he got a phone call from the farm. And how does he put it “the father” has gone missing…and in that one sentence, you really get a lot about what the dynamic is going on here.

[SH]: This doesn't properly fit in the true crime bandwagon: All the reporting was done. It wasn't happening live like one of these cases that's unfolding in the courtroom. It was all done. Her case was overturned and she was already free, wasn't she, by this point? When did she get released from prison?

[JP]: Last March.

[SH]: Okay, so, she was. And you were waiting for the [Appeal] Decision at that point?

[JP]: Yeah, in Episode 7, where she's getting she's nervously about to go before the parole board. That's where I am present in the story as it's happening, because I was working with her on the print story and the story at the time she was applying for parole.

[SH]:One of the things I look for is the timestamp of the story. When did you [the reporter] get involved? And where did the where does the history tape line up with the present day tape? Which allows you to have scene tape which that’s a totally different emotional experience than the key pieces of tape.…like the [police] interrogation, where she made her confession.

Because [that’s when] as the reporter, you become a you become a character in the story. I always look to see where do these two characters meet up… when does the past meet the present. So here that was in Episode seven.

[KM]: Yeah, that scene [in Episode 7] where they're waiting in the car for Senator Kim Pate to come out of the parole hearing.

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