Although the story was featured on48 Hoursin 2011, Peter Van Sant’s experiences researching that story have lingered.
“He called me up and said, ‘you’re not going to believe what is happening.'”
“My family homesteaded on [the San Juan Islands] back in the 1800s.
We go there every year, to an island called Orcas Island.
It’s one of the most beautiful places on Earth.
That’s always been my launchpad, and Anacortes was paradise.
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It really burst the bubble for me.
I desperately wanted to get to the bottom of this.”
“I was able to connect with people like Linda Opdycke.
Peter Van Sant, Correspondent, 48 HOURS / Credit: Michele Crowe/CBS ©2022 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
I have a buddy whose wife grew up with her!
There were connections that got us access to Linda and Michael Oakes.
We interviewed them before the authorities did… that was special to me.
There’s such an enormous amount of background information that we can finally get out.
When we did this story for 48 Hours, that’s like doing the magazine piece.
With this, it’s like we’re making the movie.”
This added a great deal of complexity to the story, as Van Sant explained.
“When we dug into Mark Stover he was loved by his family.
We to his sister and his loved ones.
But he was also a bit of a pit bull.”
They felt he was not the common key in that lived in Anacortes.
He was very driven, a very serious guy.
Oakes would later be convicted of murdering Stover, claiming it was in self-defense.
However, more and more details about the story further indicted him and raised suspicions about Linda.
“It’s this mystery of human violence.
Is it in all of us?
Linda was from this wealthy family, everything in life was handed to her.
She could do anything, be anything she wanted.
Could she have been involved in a murder conspiracy?
Mark Stover was this guy who had a terrible childhood.
How does he become this violent, harassing man?”
To Van Sant, this is the key appeal to stories of true crime.
When you have these kinds of stories, you just think about how this could have happened.
It’s fascinating."
For Van Sant, it was impossible not to dive back into the story as a podcast.
With this, I have the imagination of the mind.
It wouldn’t stop, as the first employee gets there in the pre-dawn darkness and opens the door.
It’s like a horror movie!"
“Imagine that all in your head.
The darkness, the barking, it’s all suggesting danger.
Something dreadful has happened.
Trained to Killis the second season of the48 Hours+podcast series.
The first season,Blood is Thicker Than Water, is also available to stream and download.
“I’ve interviewed her three times.
I’ve looked into her eyes, and I saw an honest woman.
She tells an absolutely convincing story.
There were more than 20 firearms in her house.
As we were putting this together, I’m reliving all of those moments.
For a journalist, that’s the dream.”
We didn’t know that was coming when we went to her house.
It made for compelling television.
It makes for perhaps an even more compelling podcast.
