Return to Snakeland

This show does a deep dive into the unexplained death of a high school student in upstate NY and explores all possible avenues. There is definitely room for more investigation by the authorities.

Speaking as one who lived through this story and knew most of the characters described, I’m a big fan of Return to Snakeland. Jason and Aaron do a fine job of capturing the zeitgeist and larger vibe we lived through - a rust belt town bleeding industrial jobs, the rise of 666-infused heavy metal, angsty punk, Reaganism, David Cronenberg’s cinematic madness, and the social stratification of adolescence. To the critics out there doling out 1- and 2-star reviews: these guys are NOT journalists nor are they pretending to be. This is a true crime tale filtered through personal experience, triangulating awful events with first-person mosaics. Give ‘em a break. They are storytellers, not gumshoes. There’s no war chest of money here to bring in A-list guests, and cobble together primary source material. Just a couple guys who saw something terrible and distilled it into art (the graphic novel) and now a spoken-word oral history. Give it a listen. It’s taken me down memory lanes that were blocked off long ago. A disturbing chapter of my life and the life of every kid who went through it. Cheers.

This is a crazy story from Buffalo, NY. Buffalo makes Detriot look like Paris in comparison. This podcast digs deep into the attitude, ignorance and insensitive of the people, local police and Buffalo news at a time when suicides and murders were taking place in a dilapidated industrial wasteland that is Buffalo.

I grew up in Kenmore during these events, and was intrigued that this well-remembered event became a podcast. It starts off promisingly, but quickly devolves into two new friends rehashing old news articles, 30+ year-old memories, and then applying today’s scientific advancements to criticize good reporters and misguided village police. The Monday-Morning-Quarterback format gets tiresome pretty quickly, with lots of “woke” discussions, incredulous readings, and nuggets like poems written by acquaintances of one victim. What the podcast COULD use are new interviews from the story’s principals, scientists, reporters, and police. Instead there’s a lot of speculation that, frankly, becomes tiresome to sit through. I’m four episodes in and am not sure I’ll make it through, though I want to because I’ve always felt something strange was happening to people my age in my village in that era. Intriguing, but groan-worthy at times.