Inside the Investigation with Payne Lindsey, Dennis Cooper, and Kyle Tekiela

November 24, 2025·27 min·2 clips

Kyle Tekiela's father lived a secret double life as a Chicago mafia hitman for over 30 years.

The attention dies off. That blunt line sits at the middle of the conversation, with the speakers talking through why unsolved cases can stall once police departments and sheriff's offices have newer work in front of them. Open cases are still guarded. No one from the outside gets to walk in, read every file, and trace every choice that led to the dead end. So the team has to rebuild. Slowly, and with gaps. The speaker treats that as a reporting problem, but also as a human one. They are working without full files, yet the work still lands inside a family's grief. Ray changed the footing. In season one of Culpable, Christian's mother had already spent years pushing, asking questions, and refusing to let the story vanish. That gave the team a way in. It did not make the rest simple. Authorities are described as unwilling to open doors or work with them, and the frustration is there, sitting just under the surface. Not outrage, exactly. More the worn-down feeling of wanting to help while waiting for agencies to accept outside attention. The family piece is harder to shake. The speaker says he wants a real connection with relatives, but he keeps coming back to the discomfort of telling a story that belongs first to someone else's loved one. The conversation does not pretend that line is clean. It moves from casework into production ethics and lets the awkwardness stay in the room. By the end, the mood loosens. The live conversation closes with thanks to the audience and mentions of Crook County, Culpable, and upcoming Tenderfoot shows. Still, the heavier part sticks. What stays is not a reveal. It is the picture of investigators picking through what is left after attention, access, and time have thinned out.

As heard by us

A live GrimeCon conversation about the careful, frustrating work behind unresolved true crime cases.

Payne Lindsey, Dennis Cooper, and Kyle Tekiela turn this live GrimeCon conversation toward the work that happens after a case stops drawing attention.

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Why you'd press play

Live at GrimeCon: investigators talk candidly about why cold cases stay cold and what it costs to fight them.

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