Like so many others, they hatched their plot at a bar. Meeting on a work trip, Harley Adsit, a staffer for Georgia Republican Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter, and Sarah Geary, a media manager at Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, found themselves hitting it off, talking about podcasts and their media-adjacent jobs over drinks.
As the August sun set and the last rays of daylight faded away, their conversation turned similarly dark. Their colleagues, buzzed and buzzing all around them, were unaware of the sinister shift as the pair admitted to one another they shared another love: murder.
“We were talking about our mutual love of true crime,” is how Adsit put it a year later, after they released more than a dozen episodes of their “Crime in Congress” podcast.
“We just started to get to thinking about how there are probably so many members that have interesting tidbits about murders in their hometown … but there’s no true crime podcast that exists with that insight,” she said.
Unlike most well-lubricated plans crafted by 20-somethings at the bar, Adsit and Geary actually followed through. Both credited the other, along with recent events on and around Capitol Hill, with shifting their idle chatter into drive when they returned to Washington.
“The time that we came up into politics, it was Trump. It was Jan. 6. It’s George Santos and Bob Menendez, like all of this is happening very early in our career,” Adsit said. “I think that that got the wheels turning for us a little bit, because we are experiencing a little bit more crime in Congress than usual.”
After some planning and writing, they created a pilot episode of sorts in November, mostly to make sure they really wanted to do the work. They also came up with a logo — a bloody gavel and the podcast’s name set in front of an approximation of the Capitol Rotunda — and built a website. They launched their first real episode a few months later and have released another episode or two every month since.
Each “session” of the podcast lasts somewhere around 30 minutes to an hour. Like Congress itself, they sometimes need multiple sessions to finish a topic: The murder of Philip Barton Key II, son of “The Star-Spangled Banner” author Francis Scott Key, at the hands of a sitting congressman took two episodes, and Watergate stretched over four.
The hosts’ love of true crime started with the gateway drug of fictionalized “Law and Order” plots ripped from real-world mayhem, and for Adsit specifically, something her father once told her. “We were driving past a dumpster one day when I was a teenager, and my dad, very nonchalantly, pointed at it and said, ‘I had a friend who was dumped there,’” she said. “That’s my earliest memory with ‘true crime.’”
Both said they graduated to shows like “Dateline” and then into the sprawling world of true crime podcasts like “Crime Junkie” and “Morbid,” which inspired their own.
It isn’t for everyone, but for Geary, exploring a criminal mind is like visiting a foreign land. “It’s always trying to fathom how folks end up breaking the law to that extent,” she said. “Like, how do you kill someone?”
True crime can be empowering, Adsit said, a way to deal with the all-too-real anxiety many young women feel walking home at night. “Initially, it became a way to feel like I was protecting myself, to have more information and learn how other victims ended up in their positions,” she said.
Recorded mostly in Geary’s basement, along with some interviews over Zoom, it has a lo-fi, DIY aura. But with an upgrade in recording equipment and the addition of a few meal kit delivery ads, the podcast would sound indistinguishable from a professional show. The hosts are confident, chatty speakers inviting you to listen in on their conversation, as they trade off describing gory details. To newcomers, the disparity between the blood-soaked subject matter and the sunny disposition can be jarring, but that’s one of the hallmarks of the genre.
While both hosts align on the right, politically, they say the podcast is “political, but not partisan,” and you can’t tell from listening where their sympathies lie — other than with the victims of the crimes they discuss.
And neither worries about running out of material for the show.
“No,” Adsit said, laughing. “First of all, at this rate, politicians are committing crimes monthly. So, we’ve got plenty to talk about.”
The pair also interprets the “in Congress” part of their name very broadly, Geary added. Just about any crime involving a politician will do, whether they were the victim, culprit or just someone tangentially connected to the case, like when then-Mayor Dianne Feinstein revealed too much about an at-large serial killer terrorizing San Francisco in the 1980s.
They’ve had two members of Congress on as guests so far: Adsit’s boss, Buddy Carter, discussed a 1909 murder in Savannah, Ga. And an upcoming episode will feature Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn. — himself a “true crime aficionado,” per Adsit. So far, they’ve relied on personal connections to book members, but hope to get Democrats on the show soon. Still, they recognize it’ll take some convincing.
“It’s a weird interview,” said Adsit. “I never thought in my life I would be saying ‘double nipple’ to a member of Congress, and yet we had a conversation about it.”
“Yeah, the press corps is usually not asking them what their death row meal would be, or if they believe in ghosts,” Geary added. “We want this to be a must-do podcast in D.C. for politicians.”
Each episode is the product of about 15 hours of research, which means “a lot of Saturdays in the library,” according to Geary. So far, the show averages around 150 downloads per episode, but they expect to pick up more “crimestituents” as more big political names drop in.
For now, the pair covers closed cases, but they aim to one day help solve open crimes. “The ultimate ‘Crime in Congress’ podcast episode is going to be, we get connected with a member, and they connect us with their local police department to elevate a cold case that hasn’t gotten any national attention,” said Adsit.
And they plan on tackling more recent incidents — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — in due time, once the trials end and dust clears. “It’s on the list,” Adsit said. “And it will be multiple episodes.”
The show is a passion project, but their hopes go beyond that. “We would both be excited if this became a full-time endeavor,” Adsit said, noting that they already have merchandise in the works, like the blood-stained gavel from their logo.
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