Transcript from ‘After the Carver’ – Kennedy’s Return
[Intro music: low piano over wind and faint static, growing slowly louder then fading under speech]
FREYA:
Hey everyone, and welcome back to After the Carver . I’m beyond thrilled, and honestly a little emotional, to be joined by my best friend once again… the one and only Kennedy Campbell.
KENNEDY:
Hi, everyone. It’s great to be back, and I wanted to say that I’m so grateful for all the love and support I’ve received over the last few weeks. It means more than I can ever explain.
FREYA:
We’re also joined in the studio by Detective Malachi Sieger of Corwin Bay PD. For those who haven’t already seen this on the news, Detective Sieger was the one who found Kennedy.
MALACHI:
Thanks for having me.
FREYA:
Detective, if you hadn't shown up that night, things could’ve gone very differently. Kennedy has repeatedly said that you saved her life.
MALACHI:
I was just doing my job.
KENNEDY:
He's being modest. If he wasn't there that night… I honestly don't know if I'd be sitting here right now.
MALACHI:
[Chuckles] Okay, you two need to stop before my ego gets too big.
FREYA:
[Light laugh] Fair.
All right, let’s get into it.
Kennedy, we decided not to script this, because we thought it was best that everyone hear your story in your own words.
KENNEDY:
Yeah, that felt like the right way to do it.
FREYA:
So… let’s start at the beginning. Can you take us back to the night you were abducted?
KENNEDY:
I woke up and saw a masked man in my bedroom. I tried to run, but he was much faster and stronger than me, so I was no match. He stuck a needle in my neck. After that, I was out cold.
FREYA:
God, that’s horrifying.
KENNEDY:
I eventually woke up in some sort of underground cell, and the masked man was there waiting for me. He told me his name was Jack, but I could tell that wasn’t his real name.
FREYA:
At that stage, did you have any clue who he really was?
KENNEDY:
None whatsoever. The mask hid everything, and he used one of those voice synthesizers to disguise his real voice.
FREYA:
Ah, like in the Scream movies?
KENNEDY:
Yeah, just like that.
Anyway, he told me this wild story about being the Carver. Said he’d killed eight people a decade ago, and that he’d also held my father along with Christopher Miles, Silas Boone, Brian Delgado, and Heather Voss for the last ten years. He called them his playthings.
FREYA:
Ugh, that makes my skin crawl. Especially now that we know the truth about those five…
KENNEDY:
At first, I believed him. I had no reason not to, of course. Not until things started to fall apart.
FREYA:
So what did he say when you asked why he’d taken you?
KENNEDY:
He claimed that my father had managed to escape his underground cell. So he decided to kill the other four, because he thought they’d somehow aided in the escape, and he wanted to punish them. Then he decided to kidnap me and force me to record that message to lure my father out of hiding.
FREYA:
When did you first start to get an inkling that the masked man was lying to you about everything? That he was actually your father all along, pretending to be another man?
KENNEDY:
I figured it out on the night of the meetup. Just as we arrived at the brook, he told me he needed to get something that he’d hidden nearby. Then he walked back into the woods and left me standing there alone, by the water.
FREYA:
So… he had you locked in a cell for days, obviously not wanting you to get away from him. And then he just left you standing alone in a forest?
KENNEDY:
Yep. Doesn’t really make sense, does it?
Anyway, that alone was strange enough, and I was definitely starting to get a weird feeling about the whole thing. But at the same time, I was too scared to run, because I had no idea what was going on. So I waited. A few minutes later, I saw a man step out from behind the trees.
FREYA:
Your father.
KENNEDY:
Yes. I can’t even describe the rush of emotion I felt then. To see him alive, after all those years…
FREYA:
I can’t even imagine.
KENNEDY:
After we reunited, he told me we needed to leave right away, before the Carver came back.
I still thought it was really strange that the Carver had left us both alone in the woods like that, when he’d supposedly taken me there as bait to recapture my father.
So then I wondered… did he trip over a log and knock himself out? Did a wild animal get him? My mind was just spinning all over the place.
And then… I noticed my father’s shoes.
FREYA:
The same shoes the Carver had been wearing the whole time.
KENNEDY:
Yes. When I realized that, more stuff started to click in my mind. The masked man was the exact same height as my father. He also used a lot of phrases that my father used back in the day. I hadn’t noticed it before then, because my mind was all over the place while I was being held in the cell.
FREYA:
Fear can really wreak havoc on the brain. Plus, you weren’t expecting the masked man to turn out to be your father.
KENNEDY:
Exactly. I never saw it coming. Not in a million years. I mean, who would, right?
FREYA:
No one. That’s for sure. [Brief pause] So what happened next?
KENNEDY:
My father noticed me staring at his shoes. I could see it on his face then. He knew I was starting to figure things out.
FREYA:
So you couldn’t play dumb. Pretend not to know anything until you got to safety.
KENNEDY:
That’s right. He knew that I knew things weren’t as they seemed. So his plan was totally falling apart.
FREYA:
For our listeners who might not know all the details yet… what was his plan, exactly?
KENNEDY:
Well, as we’ve now learned, the killer we all knew as the Carver for so long was actually a group of five friends working together. My father, Christopher Miles, Silas Boone, Brian Delgado, and Heather Voss.
They killed eight people together. Faked their own deaths. And then they disappeared.
But my father eventually grew tired of his new life. He had all the money and freedom he wanted, but he missed Corwin Bay. Missed his old life.
FREYA:
So he wanted to come back.
KENNEDY:
Yes. But he couldn’t just stroll back into our lives after we all thought he was murdered by a serial killer a decade ago, right? He needed a way to explain it without getting in trouble.
So, he decided to continue using the original Carver mythos to his benefit. He wanted everyone to keep believing that there was just one killer all along—
FREYA:
—a mysterious masked man who called himself Jack.
KENNEDY:
Yes. Jack . Just one man who kidnapped five people a decade ago before killing another eight. He supposedly kept the first five to toy with. Torture for his own sick pleasure.
But after all those years, my father finally managed to escape. He didn’t go to the police, because ‘Jack’ told him he was a cop, so he was too scared. Instead, he went into hiding.
That was going to be his big story.
FREYA:
But there was a glaring problem with that plan, wasn’t there?
And that was: Christopher, Silas, Brian, and Heather were all still alive out there, free as birds, and one of them might get mad at your father for his brazen decision to return, as it could put their new lives at risk.
So then they might decide to expose the truth about him.
KENNEDY:
Exactly. My father realized that, and he decided that he couldn’t risk one of them ruining his plan. So, he murdered all four of them, and pretended that the so-called Carver was back.
FREYA:
And he used our show to get everyone’s attention on the revived case.
KENNEDY:
Yes. Then he kidnapped me and forced me to record that message. He told me it would lure my father back from wherever he was hiding, and of course, that made sense to me at the time. But it was all theatre. A twisted performance.
FREYA:
Sociopathic levels of planning and manipulation.
KENNEDY:
Yes. But that’s the thing with people like him. Their hubris makes them think they can get away with anything.
FREYA:
So, when you finally realized that the masked man and your father were one and the same… what did he do?
KENNEDY:
He knew his plan was falling apart, and I guess that was enough to make something snap in his desperate mind.
FREYA:
So then he attacked you?
KENNEDY:
He tried, because I guess he realized he only had one move left. And that was to murder me and later tell the police that the Carver had killed me because he was late to the meetup.
FREYA:
Because if he left you alive, you’d tell everyone the truth that you’d figured out, which was that he was the Carver himself.
KENNEDY:
Exactly. So he pulled a knife on me. Told me he’d make it as quick and painless as possible if I stayed still and cooperated. But I didn’t. I ran. He caught me, and we fought.
FREYA:
And that’s when Malachi arrived.
Detective, you weren’t even on duty that night, were you?
MALACHI:
No, I wasn’t. I was originally supposed to be heading up the task force to find Kennedy. We had people searching all up and down the coast for the right fishing spot. Of course, at the time, we had no idea we were looking in all the wrong places.
Anyway, earlier that day, I got hit with food poisoning after a sketchy gas station sandwich. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but I had to go home.
FREYA:
You were just too sick to work.
MALACHI:
Yes. I was devastated that I couldn’t be there, because that night was supposed to be the culmination of all our hard work to find the Carver. But I was simply far too ill. After I spent three hours hugging a toilet bowl, I crawled into bed and passed out.
Then I suddenly jolted awake again, a little before midnight.
FREYA:
Something occurred to you?
MALACHI:
Yes. The case was still on my mind, despite the sickness clouding everything, and then this memory just slid back in.